113 



EGBERT OF GLOUCESTER. 



ROBERTS, DAVID. 



114 



to arrange a peace, or long truce, between the two countries, but 

 without success. Hostilities however had been for a considerable time 

 suspended by these negociations, when King Robert, now awakened to 

 a strong suspicion of the designs of his brother Albany, resolved to 

 send his only surviving son James, styled Earl of Carrick, to France 

 for safety; and the prince, then in his eleventh year, was on the 30th 

 of March 1405 captured at sea by an English vessel on his way to that 

 country. [JAMES I. of Scotland.] His detention by King Henry is 

 believed to have broken the heart of his father, who expired at the 

 castle of Rothsay, in Bute, on the 4th of April 1406. He was succeeded 

 by his son, James I. 



ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER is supposed to have been a monk in 

 the abbey there, but of his personal history nothing whatever is cer- 

 tainly known. It may however be collected, from a passage in his work, 

 that he was living at tho time of the battle of Evesham ; and he seems 

 to have lived not very long after that event, as the history of English 

 affairs which he has left us ends before the beginning of the reign of 

 Edward I. 



This history is the only writing that is attributed to him, and is, iii 

 more points of view than one, among the most curious and valuable 

 writings of the middle period that have come down to us. It is a history 

 of English affairs from the beginning, including the pictures of Geoffrey 

 of Monmouth, and ending with the death of Sir Henry of Almaine, 

 valuable in the latter portions for the facts which it contains, whether 

 peculiar to itself or correlative with the statements of other chroniclers ; 

 and abounding throughout with anecdotes or minor historical circum- 

 stances peculiar to itself, and sometimes of an interesting if not useful 

 nature. 



It is in the vernacular language of the time ; that is, in the language 

 in which we find the Anglo-Saxon passing into the language of Chaucer 

 and Wycliffe, this work and the similar work of Robert of Bonne being 

 the best specimens which remain of the language. It is in verse, and 

 may stand therefore as a specimen of the poetry of the time. It 

 consists of more than ten thousand lines. 



The work was popular in the middle ages, as appears by the number 

 of manuscripts that still exist of it. The principal are the Bodleian, 

 the Cottouian, and the Harleian. There is one in the library of the 

 Heralds' College. There are slight variations in the text of each, and 

 that at the Heralds' College appears to have had the language 

 modernised by some early copyist. Little regard was paid to Robert 

 by the persons who in the reign of Elizabeth collected and printed the 

 manuscripts of the best English chroniclers, though Camden, in his 

 ' Britannia,' and still more frequently in his ' Remains,' has citations 

 from him. AVeever, in his ' Antient Funeral Monuments,' has many 

 quotations from him ; and Selden quotes him on several occasions. 

 The work was given at large to the public in 1724 by Hearne in two 

 octavo volumes, of which there was a reprint in 1810. 



ROBERT (GROSSETESTE), Bishop of Lincoln, a very eminent 

 scholar and prelate in the early years of the reign of Henry III. The 

 exact time and the place of his birth, and the family from which he 

 sprung, are alike lost in the obscurity of those remote times ; but it 

 may be calculated from the dates ascertained of other events in his 

 life, that he was born about the year 1175. He studied at Oxford, and, 

 like most of the very eminent of the English theologians of that period, 

 he went from thence to Paris. He there applied himself to the study 

 of the Hebrew and Greek languages, of both of which he attained the 

 mastery, and distinguished himself by his attainments in the whole 

 course of study presented to the students in that learned university. 

 He returned to England skilled not only in the five languages, English, 

 French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but skilled also in logic and philo- 

 sophy, divinity and the Scriptures, and possessing also a knowledge of 

 medicine and ecclesiastical law. There is no exaggeration in this, for 

 many of his writings have descended to our time, which prove the 

 statement, to a considerable extent at least. We may refer particularly 

 to his numerous treatises in natural philosophy, which it will not be 

 expected of us to describe individually, as the titles, with little more 

 respecting them, fill four quarto pages of Dr. Pegge's Life of him (4to, 

 1793, pp. 278-283). 



When he returned to England, he settled at Oxford, where he 

 delivered lectures. There is extant a letter of Giraldus Cambrensis to 

 the Bishop of Hereford, recommending Grosseteste to his notice, but 

 the bishop died so soon after, that little advantage can have arisen 

 from it. He found however a very efficient patron in another prelate, 

 namely, Hugh de Wells, Bishop of Lincoln, who, as a first mark of his 

 favour, gave him the prebend of Clifton in the church of Lincoln. He 

 had also several archdeaconries, as of Chester, Northampton, and 

 Leicester, and in 1235 he succeeded his patron in the bishopric of 

 Lincoln, then a diocese of immense extent. This dignity he held for 

 eighteen years, dying in 1253. 



Bishop Grosseteste made the power which his acknowledged and 

 extraordinary attainments gave him, subservient to the accomplish- 

 ment of important public objects. He was a great reformer of his 

 diocese, a vigilant superintendent of his clergy, a maintainer of order 

 among them and in all ecclesiastical affairs. If one of the great earls 

 or barons offended, he did not scruple to assert at once the right he 

 possessed to correct the abuse, of which an instance is related in his 

 calling the Earl of Warren to account for irregular religious solemnisa- 

 tions. He stood up against the king when he would interfere with the 



BIOG. DIV. \OL. v. 



rights of the clergy, who formed in those times the strongest part of 

 the opposition to the will of kings, who, if there had been no clergy, 

 would have been almost absolute ; and he opposed with equal firmness 

 and success the pope, when he would support ancient abuses or intro- 

 duce new, to the injury of the English clergy or people. In short, he 

 can hardly be regarded in any other light than one of the great bene- 

 factors to the English Church and nation in the discharge of his 

 political duties as a bishop, and he was one of the lights of his age by 

 the lectures which he delivered and the books which he wrote. His 

 attainments in natural science, however, gamed for him the repu- 

 tation of being a magician and a sorcerer, and many fables gathered 

 about his name. 



Many of his writings have been printed, and many remain in manu- 

 script and are found in most of the great libraries of Europe. An 

 ample list of these is given in Dr. Pegge's work before referred to; in 

 which work may be found critical inquiries into all the particulars of 

 his life, and a great mass of curious information respecting the state of 

 ecclesiastical affairs iu England in the first half of the thirteenth 

 century. 



ROBERT, HUBERT, an artist, celebrated for his admirable archi- 

 tectural compositions and subjects of that class, was born at Paris in 

 1733. On quitting school Robert applied himself assiduously to his 

 studies. In 1753 he set out for Rome, and spent twelve years in that 

 city, occupied not merely in making drawings and views of nearly all 

 the numerous architectural monuments, but studying their character 

 completely. Thoroughly impressed with the poetry of such subjects, 

 he enabled others to feel it likewise, by the peculiar charm with which 

 he invested them and by his felicitous treatment, so different from 

 that whose chief merit consists in literal exactness and cold correct- 

 ness. On his return to Paris he was immediately elected by the 

 Academy, and his reputation became established as one whose pro- 

 ductions formed an epoch in that department of the art which he had 

 selected. 



Among his numerous works are many chefs-d'oeuvre of first-rate 

 excellence. Two of the most remarkable for the singularity of the 

 idea are those representing the Muse"e Napoleon, the one in all its 

 pride and pomp, and the other, an architectural wreck, as it 

 may perhaps present itself to the eye after the lapse of centuries. 

 Robert was an enthusiast in his profession : he was indeed one of those 

 fortunate persons whose existence seems to form an exception from 

 the common lot of mortals. Happy in himself, happy in his union 

 with a most amiable woman, possessing a source of constant enjoy- 

 ment in his art, his life passed in one uninterrupted tenor ; in a calm, 

 undisturbed even by the stormy period of the revolution. Nor was 

 he less happy at its close, for he died almost without a struggle, and 

 with his pencil in his hand, on the 15th of April 1808, at the age of 

 seventy-six. 



ROBERT, LEOPOLD, a modern French artist of great and deserved 

 celebrity, was born at Chaux-le-Fonds, in the canton of Neufchatel, in 

 1797. His father intended to bring him up to his own trade, which 

 was that of a watchmaker ; but yielding to the boy's decided inclina- 

 tion for the arts, sent him to Paris to study engraving under Girardet, 

 an artist known by his print of the ' Transfiguration,' after Raffaelle. 

 His progress was BO rapid, that in 1812 he obtained the second grand 

 prize at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, after which he began to study 

 painting in the school of David. He then proceeded to Italy, and, 

 renouncing engraving altogether, devoted himself entirely to his pencil, 

 leading a life of solitude and privation, without either patrons or 

 friends. But though his enthusiasm for his art was great, it was 

 marked rather by severe application than by that promptitude which 

 is generally supposed to characterise genius. Though he worked con- 

 stantly, he executed few productions, being not only remarkably slow 

 with his pencil, but in the habit of destroying or laying aside picture 

 after picture until he could satisfy himself with the subject that he 

 had commenced. He is said to have thus spent between three and 

 four years on a single picture ; for instance, that of the ' Reapers,' 

 which excited so much admiration when first exhibited at Paris in 

 1831. In that piece, in the ' Neapolitan Improvisatore,' the 'Madonna 

 dell' Arco,' and similar subjects, he succeeded in delineating Italian 

 life and character in the happiest manner, with perfect fidelity, but 

 also with a touching refinement and grace, at the same time without 

 any of that affectation which the French schools are apt to mistake 

 for refinement. His last work was his ' Venetian Fishermen,' a picture 

 that has served to raise his name as that of the greatest artist of his 

 age in tho peculiar walk which he had chosen. The general admira- 

 tion which it excited when exhibited at Paris was however mingled 

 with mournful regret at the fato of the artist himself ; for he had 

 previously put an end to his life at Venice, where he had resided 

 several years, and where he drowned himself on the 20th of March 

 1835, in his thirty-eighth year. 



* ROBERTS, DAVID, R.A., was born in 1796, at Stockbridge, 

 Edinburgh. Being designed for business, he was apprenticed to a 

 house-painter in that city ; but as soon as he could follow his own 

 bent, he entered as a student in the Trustees' Academy, whence 

 have proceeded so many eminent painters in every branch of the art. 

 About 1821 or 1822 he came to London, and for some years practised 

 as a scene-painter, having, during much of his career in the theatre, 

 Stanfield for his colleague. Occasionally however an oil-painting by 



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