HOWELL, JAMES. 



. HOWITT, WILLIAM AWD MARY. 



search for the Spanish fleet, ha anchored at Spithead, Uth September, 

 and uujoyed repose on (bore for a considerable time. In 1791 he 

 again advanced with tho MTral convoys to the Luanl, and the same 

 day discovered thive frigate* outride of Brat harbour. On the 25th 

 of Hay two French corvettes were taken; and on the 28th of May 

 several French vessels won teM far to the south-east, and the 

 Bdlarophon engaged with the KoVolutionnaire. The enemy's motions 

 haTing been watched during the night, the two fleets continued in 

 the aame relative position on the morning of the 29th : on the 30th 

 and Slut the state of the weather prevented an engagement, but on 

 the 1st of June the action commenced at A.K. The Marlborougb, 

 Defence, Queen Charlotte, Ac., broke the enemy's line : ten of the 

 enemy's ships were dismasted, seven were taken, three only rejoined 

 the French admiral, and Uowe had the glory of towing into Ports- 

 mouth six ships of the line. 



Lord Howe's health now began to fail; but notwithstanding his 

 infirmities, be consented to go in person to quell the mutinies that 

 had arisen at Portsmouth, Spithead, *c. ; he ascertained the causes 

 of complaint, and endeavoured to remove them by causing the 

 obnoxious officers to be superseded : bis concessions wero judicious, 

 but they did not escape censure. 



This was the last public act of hia life. With his wife and daughter 

 he spent the rest of his life in retirement at his house at Porter'* 

 Lodge, in the enjoyment of a fortune of about 18002. a year. He had 

 declined a pension, which was offered him after the action of the 

 1st of June. On the death of Dr. Warren, and in the absence of his 

 other medical adviser, Dr. Pitcairn, at Lisbon, he tried electricity as 

 a remedy for his complaint; the disease, which was the gout, was by 

 these means driven to his head, and after sinking rapidly, he expired 

 on the 5th of August, 1799. He was buried in the family vault in 

 Nottinghamshire, and a monument by Flaxman was erected to his 

 memory at the public expense. In person Lord Howe was tall and 

 well proportioned; his features strongly marked and dark their 

 expression generally harsh. HU mind was strong, and his judgment 

 usually correct Hia reserve gave rise to the saying, that "Howe 

 never made a friendship but at the mouth of a cannon." Bravery, 

 patient endurance under advene events, and coolness in danger, were 

 his chief characteristics. He was the first sea-officer of hia time. 

 (Barrow, Life of Hove.) 



HOWELL, JAMES, the son of a clergyman in Wales, was born near 

 Brecknock, about the year 1596. He was educated at Jesus College, 

 Oxford, where in 1013 he took his bachelor's degree, but then left the 

 university. His father's family was numerous, and he had to shift for 

 himself. Several men of rank having set up a patent glass-manufactory 

 in London, Howell was appointed to be their steward or manager; 

 and in 1019 he undertook for his employers a tour on the Continent, 

 in the course of which he visited Holland, Flanders, France, Spain, 

 and Italy. Returning home in 1621, he was elected a Fellow of Jeaus 

 College. He next travelled as tutor to a young gentleman; after which 

 he was sent to Madrid to negociate the restoration of a confiscated 

 merchant vessel. His skill and activity in business had now made him 

 well known. In 1(326, after having been treated with for a diplomatic 

 appointment, he became secretary to Lord Scropo, the president of 

 the North, and was next year chosen to sit in parliament for the 

 borough of Richmond. In 1632 he went to Denmark as secretary to 

 an extraordinary embassy ; and on his return he continued to be for 

 some time unemployed, visiting Ireland to seek service under Stratford, 

 but being disappointed by that nobleman's fall. In 1640 his diversified 

 services were rewarded by an appointment to the clerkship of the 

 Council at Whitehall; but the breaking out of the civil war soon 

 made his place dangerous, and in no Ion; time deprived him of it. 

 In 1643 be was committed to the Fleet, where he was detained till 

 after the king's death. He was penniless, and even in debt ; but, with 

 his characteristic versatility and spirit, be set about writing for the 

 press, by which he contrived to maintain himself, both during his 

 Imprisonment and afterwards under the Protectorate. A little Battery 

 which he had found it convenient to administer to Cromwell was for- 

 given at the Restoration, when the place of historiographer-royal was 

 created as a means of providing for him. He retained this office till 

 bis death, which happened in November 1666. He waa buried in the 

 Temple church. 



Howell's writings are very numerous. A few of them are in verse, 

 the principal being hi* ' Dodona's Grove, or the Vocal Forest,' 1640, 

 which he himself translated into French. But his prose works alone 

 deserve remembrance ; and of these there are not a few which either 

 were pamphlets of temporary interest or translations of historical 

 pieces from the French and Italian, and were forgotten even in his 

 own time. Howell's name is preserved by the good sense, sagacity, 

 and liveliness of his letters, which were the earliest collection of the 

 kind published in our country. They were whimsically called ' Epistola) 

 Ilo-Klianco : familiar Letters, domestic and foreign, partly historical, 

 partly political, and partly philosophical.' The first volume appeared 

 in 1045, the fourth and last in 1055, and they have since gone through 

 many editions. 



* HOWITT, WILLIAM AKD MARY, are names associated in 

 English literary history, and therefore to be treated together. 



William Howitt waa born in 1795 at Heanor in Derbyshire, of a 

 family lung settled in that county as proprietors of land. His father 



on his marriage had joined the Society of Friends, to which hia wife 

 belonged, and his children ware brought up iu tho principles of that 

 religious body. William Howitt was one of six brothers. He was 

 educated at various schools in the connection of the Society of Friends, 

 supplementing the knowledge there obtained however by studies of 

 his own ranging over a wider field, and including natural science, 

 modern languages, and English literature generally. In bis boyhood 

 and youth he was also particularly fond of open-air sports, such as 

 shooting and fishing; and thus he acquired much of that intimate 

 knowledge of English rural nature and life which he has exhibited iu 

 his writings. He was already a writer of poems when his marriage in 

 1823, at the age of twenty-eight, with a lady of similar tastes, who had 

 also become known in the circle of her friends as a poetess, helped to 

 determine him to a life of authorship. The lady who then became 

 Mrs. Howitt waa Miss Mary Botham of Uttoxeter, of a family whose 

 attachment to the principles of Quakerism reached back to the old 

 times, when those who held those principles were proscribed and 

 persecuted. Like her future husband. Miss Botham had by her own 

 efforts in self-education, as supplementary to the instruction provided 

 for her at home and at school, enlarged the range of her knowledge 

 and her accomplishments far beyond what was then common in her 

 circumstances. At the time of their marriage she and her husband 

 were precisely iu the same position both were writers, and writers 

 too of similar tastes and faculties ; but neither of them had published. 

 From the year 1823 commences the literary career of both. In that 

 year appeared the ' Forest- Minstrel and other Poems,' which bore their 

 joint names on its title-page. They were then residing iu St iffortl- 

 ahire, where however they remained but for a year, removing aftonv.u-. 1- 

 to otlier places of residence in the midland counties, including Not- 

 tingham, and only occasionally paying visits to London. During these 

 three or four years their literary productions consisted almost exclu- 

 sively of poetical and other contributions to animals and periodicals. 

 A aelection of these contributions, with new additional poems, was 

 published in 1827, under tha title of 'The Desolation of Eyam, the 

 Emigrant, and other Poems.' During the next ten yeara their pens 

 were occupied separately in works chiefly iu prose, Mr. Howitt pub- 

 lishing successively hia 'Book of tho Seasons (1831), his 'Popular 

 History of Priestcraft' (1833), and hia 'Tales of tho Pantika, or 

 Traditions of the most Ancient Times;' and Mra. Howitt at the same 

 time publishing two works of fiction, namely, a collection of dramatic 

 stories called ' The Seven Temptations,' and a novel of English country 

 life called ' Wood-Leighton.' Mr. Howitt's ' History of Priestcraft,' 

 written as it was in a spirit of very pronounced political liberalism, 

 led to his election as one of the aldermen of Nottingham, and to other 

 connections with the active politics of the time. In 1837 he ami Mr". 

 Howitt, with their family, removed to Esher in Surrey, in order to be 

 nearer to London, and more out of politics ; and here Mr. Howitt wrote 

 in succession his ' Rural Life of England ' (1838) ; hia ' Colonisation 

 and Christianity,' giving on account of the treatment of aborigines by 

 European colonists (1833) ; his 'Boy's Country Book' (1839) ; and the 

 first series of his 'Visits to Remarkable Places -Old Halls, Battle- 

 Fielils, &c.' (1840). Mrs. Howitt at the same time wrote some of h. r 

 well-known tales for children, which form in themselves a aeries toe 

 long to be individually enumerated. 



In 1840 the Howitta removed to Heidelberg for the education of 

 their children ; and their residence of two years at this place, varied 

 as it was by tours through several parts of Germany, gave a new 

 direction to the literary plans of both. Thus in 1842 Mr. Howitt, 

 besides a second series of his ' Visits to Remarkable Places,' published 

 his work on the ' Rural and Domestic Life of Germany,' which was 

 followed in 1844 by his ' German Experiences addressed to the 

 English.' It was duriug the same residence in Germany that Mrs. 

 Howitt, while continuing to write stories of her own for tho young, 

 was attracted, through a German translation of one of Miss Bremer'a 

 Swedish novels, to the rich field of Scandinavian literature generally. 

 Perceiving what a freshness there was iu this literature, she set herself 

 to acquire the Swedish and Danish languages ; and the results have 

 been her well-known series of translations of Miss Bremer's novels from 

 the one tongue, and of tales of Hans C. Andersen and other writers 

 from the other. These translations were produced at intervals between 

 1844 and 1852 ; during which period also Mra. Howitt, besides con- 

 tinuing her juvenile tales and contributions to periodicals, published 

 her original fiction called ' The Heir of Wast-Waylon' (1847), a new 

 edition of her ' Ballads and other Poems ' (1847), and her ' Sketches of 

 Natural History in Verse ' (1851). She also edited for three years the 

 ' Drawiug-Room Scrap-Book,' writing for it among other things bio- 

 graphical sketches of the queens of England ; she edited the ' Pictorial 

 Calendar of the Seasons,' published in Bonn's ' Illustrated Library ' in 

 1850 ; she translated ' Ennemoaer's History of Magic ' for Bohn's 

 ' Scientific Library ' (1847); and she wrote, along with her husband, 

 'Stories of English and Foreign Life' in Bohu's 'Illustrated Library' 

 (1850). 



Meanwhile Mr. Howitt had been equally indefatigable. In 1843 he 

 translated the story of Peter Schlemihl ; in 1846 he published a work 

 of a political character entitled ' The Aristocracy of England ;' in 1847 

 he published, in two volumes, bis ' Haunts and Homes of the most 

 Eminent Britiah Poeta ;' in 1848 ' The Hall and the Hamlet ; or, Scenes 

 and Characters of Country Life;' in 1850 'The Year-Book of the 



