PROCRUSTES 



PROCTOR 



435 





546 ; and four on the Gothic war, going down to 

 652) ; De ALdificiis, or six books on the buildings 

 executed or restored by Justinian ; and Anekdota, 

 or Historia Arcana, a sort of chronique scandaleuse 

 of the court of Justinian, in which the emperor, 

 his wife Theodora, Belisarius, his wife Antonina, 

 and other distinguished persons, are depicted in the 

 darkest colours. The most valuable or these pro- 

 ductions is undoubtedly the first, in which Pro- 

 copius writes with the clearness and fullness of 

 knowledge that might be expected of a man who 

 had been an eye-witness of much of what he nar- 

 rates, and who had occupied a position that fitted 

 him to thoroughly understand what he had seen. 

 He is the principal authority for the reign of 

 Jiintinian. The best edition of his complete works 

 is that by Dindorf ( 1833-38 ). See Dahn, Prokopios 

 i-nii 1'iisarea (1866); a work by Kenan, Essais de 

 Mwalc (3d ed. 1867) ; Haury, Procopiann ( 1891). 



Procrustes (Gr. Prokroustes; from prokrouein, 

 'to beat out,' 'to stretch out'), the surname of 

 a celebrated robber of Attica, named Damastes, or 

 Polypemon. All who fell into his hands lie placed 

 on a bed which was either too long or too short for 

 them, but to which he adjusted them either by 

 racking or by amputation till they died. This he 

 continued to do until Theseus overpowered him, 

 and made him suffer the tortures he had inflicted 

 on others. 



Procter, BRYAN WALLER ( ' Barry Cornwall '), 

 was lxrn in London, 21st November 1787. Educated 

 at Harrow, with Byron and Peel for schoolfellows, 

 he was articled to a solicitor at Calne, about 1807 

 came to London to live, and in 1815 began to con- 

 tribute poetry to the Literary Gazette. In 1816 he 

 succeeded by his father's death to about 500 a 

 year, and in 1823 married Basil Montagu's step- 

 daughter, Anne Benson Skepper ( 1799-1888). He 

 had meanwhile published four volumes of poems, 

 and produced a tragedy at Covent Garden, whose 

 Mil'", " was largely due to the acting of Macready 

 and Kenihle. He was called to the bar in 1831, 

 from 1832 to 1861 was a metropolitan commissioner 

 of lunacy, and died 4th October 1874. 



His works, issued under the pseudonym 'Barry 

 Cornwall' (a faulty anagram of his real name), 

 comprise Dramatic Scenes (1819), A Sicilian Story 

 and Marcian Colonna ( 1820), The Flood of Thessafy 

 ( 1823), and English Songs ( 1832), besides memoirs 

 of Kean ( 1835 ) and Charles Lamb ( 1866 ). The last 

 is always worth reading; but his poems may )>e 

 safely neglected by the student of poetry, for they 

 rarely are more than studied if graceful exercises, 

 hannonioui? echoes of bygone and contemporary 

 fiingi-i's ; in Mr Gosse's words, ' his lyrics do not 

 pOMOen passion or real pathos or any very deep 

 magic of melody, but he has written more songs 

 that deserve the comparative praise of good than 

 any other modern writer except Shelley and Tenny- 

 son." Yet 'Barry Cornwall will be remembered 

 aa the man whom every one loved that every one 

 including a hundred of the greatest of the century : 

 Liimb, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, 

 Keats, Landor, Scott, Tennyson, Browning, 

 Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, rfazlitt, Macau lay, 

 Carlyle, Dickens, and Thackeray were only a few 

 of his numberless friends and acquaintances. 



See Bryan Waller Procter : an A utobiographical 

 Frryiment (1877), edited by Coventry Patmore ; an 

 article thereon in the Edinburgh Review for April 1878 ; 

 the critical introduction by Mr Gosse in Ward a Kmilish 

 Port* (2d ed. 1883) ; and a long obituary of Mrs Procter 

 in the Academy for 17th March 1888. 



ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER, Barry Cornwall's 

 daughter, was l>orn in London, 30th October 1825, 

 and died there 3d February 1864, having in 1851 

 become a Konian Catholic. By her Legends and 

 Lyrics (1858-60), first written some of them for 



Household Words, she won no small poetical 

 renown. 



Proctor, or PROCURATOR, one who acts for 

 another. This name was formerly given to a class 

 of practitioners in the English Admiralty and 

 ecclesiastical courts ; but proctors are now merged 

 for almost all purposes in the general body of 

 solicitors. The King's or Queen's Proctor is an 

 officer (now the Solicitor to the Treasury) who 

 intervenes to oppose a petition for divorce if he 

 has reason to suspect fraud or collusion. The 

 clergy appoint proctors to represent them in the 

 convocation of their province. 



In each of the universities of Oxford and Cam- 

 bridge there are two proctors, whose duties are 

 to preserve the peace of the university, to repress 

 disorders among the students, and indict summary 

 academical punishment. They have the com- 

 mand of the academical constabulary, and have 

 also an extensive police jurisdiction in the town. 

 They patrol the streets after dark, attended 

 by officers popularly known as 'bull-dogs.' The 

 proctors must be Masters of Arts, and are chosen 

 by the colleges according to a certain rotation. 

 They nominate two pro-proctors to be their 

 deputies and assistants. The summary authority 

 of the proctors extends both to undergraduates and 

 Bachelors of Arts. They vote in the election of 

 some of the professors and other officers. At 

 Durham also there are two proctors, who, how- 

 ever, do not personally patrol the streets, and have 

 command over only the university police. 



Proctor, RICHARD ANTHONY, astronomer 

 and popular author, was born at Chelsea in March 

 1834. He was educated first at King's College, 

 London, and then at St John's, Cambridge, where, 

 however, he devoted himself chieHv to athletics. 

 He graduated in 1860 as twenty-third wrangler. 

 His first literary venture was, in 1865, an article 

 on ' Double Stars ' in the Cornhill Magazine, and 

 from that time he devoted himself to astronomy. 

 In 18B6 he was elected an F.R.A.S., and in 1872 

 its honorary secretary, but he retired in 1873 to 

 make a lecturing tour in America. About this 

 time he communicated to the R.A.S. some import- 

 ant papers on 'The Construction of the Milky 

 Way,' ' The Transit of Venus,' ' Star Distribution,' 

 &c. ; and his name is associated with the accurate 

 determination of the rotation of the planet Mare, 

 and with the theory of the solar corona. One of 

 his undertakings was the charting of the 324,198 

 stars contained in Argelander's great catalogue. 

 His science magazine Knowledge was founded as a 

 weekly in 1881, and liecame a monthly in 1885. 

 He died at New York, September 12, 1888. He 

 was a man of untiring energy, and, although the 

 author of fifty-seven books, he found time to culti- 

 vate music, and was a great chess and whist player. 

 As an author and lecturer he succeeded in interest- 

 ing in astronomy a large public in America and 

 the colonies as well as in England. In 1890-91 a 

 memorial teaching observatory was erected in his 

 honour near San Diego, California. 



Among his works are Saturn and its System (1865), 

 Handbook of the Stars (1866), The Constellation 

 Seasons (1867), Half -hours with the Telescope (1868), 

 Other World* than Ours (1870), Star Atlas (1870), Light 

 Science for Leisure Hours (1871 ), The Sun (1871 ), The 

 Orbs around Us (1872), Essays on Astronomy (1872), 

 The Expanse of Heaven (1873), The Moon (1873), The 

 Borderland of Science ( 1873), The Universe and the com- 

 ing Transits (1874), Our Place among Infinities (1875), 

 Myths and Marvels of Astronomy ( 1877 ), The Universe 

 of Stars (1878), Treatise on the Cycloid (1878), Flowers 

 of the Skv (1879), The Poetry of Astronomy (1880), 

 Mysteries of Time and Space (1883), The Universe of 

 Suns (1884), The Seasons (1885), Other Suns than Ours 

 (1887), Old and New Astronomy (nearly completed in 

 MS. at his death, and published 1888-90). 



