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LEE, FREDERICK RICHARD, R.A. 



LEE, SOPHIA AND HARRIET. 



830 



inland parts of Africa, to undertake a journey into that region. There 

 is a characteristic story, that on being asked how soon he could 

 be ready to set out, he replied, " To-morrow morning." He left 

 London, June 30, 1788 ; and travelling by Marseille and Alexandria, 

 reached Cairo August 19. The ardent, persevering, intelligent spirit 

 of inquiry shown in his first and only despatches raised high expecta- 

 tion of the value of his labours; but these were cut short by his 

 premature death, in that city, of a bilious disorder on the 17th of 

 January 1789. His route was to have been from Sennaar westward, 

 in the supposed direction of the Niger, so that he would have crossed 

 that great continent in its widest part. From his scanty education 

 and mode of travelling, Ledyard probably would have contributed 

 little to scientific knowledge ; but his keenness of observation, vigour 

 and endurance, mental and bodily ; and indifference to pain, hardship, 

 and fatigue, fitted him admirably for a geographical pioneer ; and his 

 death, the first of many lives sacrificed to African discovery, excited 

 a strong feeling of regret " I have known," he said, shortly before 

 leaving England for the last time, "hunger and nakedness to the 

 utmost extremity of human suffering. I have known what it is to 

 have food given as charity to a madman ; and I have at times been 

 obliged to shelter myself under the miseries of that character, to avoid 

 a heavier calamity. My distresses have been greater than I have 

 ever owned, or ever will own, to any man. Such evils are terrible to 

 bear, but they never yet had power to turn me from my purpose." 



LEE, FREDERIC RICHARD, R.A., was born near the close of 

 the last century at Barnstaple, Devonshire, a county which has con- 

 tributed an unusually large proportion of names to the list of eminent 

 English painters. Mr. Lee did not however in the first instance adopt 

 painting as his profession. It was not indeed until he had seen 

 some service in the army that he laid down the sword and took up 

 the pencil. But having adopted landscape painting out of a real love 

 of the art, and a hearty enjoyment of nature, he made rapid progress 

 and loon attracted attention. From the first bis pictures were marked 

 by a direct reference to nature, and perhaps the circumstance of his 

 turning to painting as a profession after his general tastes were formed 

 may have done something to preserve him from the too common 

 habit of looking to the works of previous painters for guidance rather 

 than to nature : at any rate his pictures remind one often of 

 Constable's rule for the landscape painter, " when painting your 

 picture forget every other picture." Mr. Lee began to exhibit at the 

 Royal Academy in 1824, but he had previously exhibited at the British 

 Institution, where he bad gained one of the prizes (501.) then occa- 

 sionally awarded there. Mr. Lee has painted pretty nearly every kind 

 of native scenery, but, as might be expected from an ardent fly-fisher, 

 he has shown a preference for the river or the loch. And it is in 

 river scenery, as we think, his strength especially lies. The broad 

 open moorland with the distant hills, or the wild and rugged moun- 

 tain tract, he paints with much force, but from want of appreciation, 

 apparently, of the atmospheric phenomena which play so important a 

 part in such scenes, and also from the not having acquired a thorough 

 mattery over mountain form, he is, in these subjects, far from beiug 

 so successful as in his rivers. So in the sea views which he has of late 

 painted rather frequently, his success is far from complete. His 

 rocks ire wanting in variety and grandeur of form, his rolling seas 

 are often poor in colour, and without freedom, life, and elasticity. 

 But in bis river scenes, whether ' The Watering Place,' or 'The Ford,' 

 The Fisherman's Haunt,' ' The Mill,' or ' The Broken Bridge,' so that 

 there is a sandy bank, with above it a mass of dense foliage, and 

 below a stream, whether sluggish or rapid, clear, or " in spate," be is at 

 bis ease, and paints with a firm, free, crisp touch, and a well-filled 

 pencil, and never fails to impart to the spectator a large share of the 

 pleasure he has evidently felt himself. (July inferior to his river 

 scenes are his admirably painted " Avenues," of which those at North- 

 wick, Sherbrooke, and Penshurst, are well known. But wherever he 

 can make trees the chief object of Lis picture, he is sure to produce 

 a picture which it is a pleasure to look at. And equally pleasing 

 are such fresh homely scenes as his ' Village Green,' ' Harvest 

 Field,' 'Ploughed Field,' a 'Devonshire Village,' or a 'Devonshire 

 Lane.' Perhaps among the best pictures by English painters working 

 in union are those of which Mr. Lee has painted the landscapes and 

 Mr. Cooper the cattle and horses, pictures which never fail to win very 

 general admiration at the Academy Exibitions. 



We spoke of Mr. Lee as a painter of native scenery. He is in fact 

 one of our most thoroughly British landscape painters. His earlier 

 pictures were mostly taken from the rivers and lanes of his native 

 Devonshire, or about Penshurst Park always a favourite haunt oi 

 his or else by the Yorkshire Wharfe, a favourite haunt of every true 

 lover of English river scenery. The Highlands formed his next great 

 sketching field, and subsequently he turned to North Wales, the river 

 scenery of which, as may be supposed, he wandered along with 

 thorough enjoyment, and painted with genuine zest. Lincolnshire 

 on the one side, and Cornwall on the other, have served to vary the 

 range of his subjects, but the places first enumerated have furnished 

 the staple. Beyond our own little island he has never gone for 

 inspiration. Mr. Lee has been a most industrious painter. From his 

 connection with the Royal Academy he was elected A.R.A. in 1834, 

 R.A. in 1838 not an exhibition has passed which has not contained 

 several pictures by him. A general favourite, the pictures of Mr. Lee 



are to be found in almost every private collection. The National 

 Gallery we need uot Bay has none. In the Veruon Collection is a 

 choice specimen of his early manner, the ' Cover-Side,' in which the 

 dogs and keepers were painted by Landseer, and a ' Scene on the 

 jincolashire Coast.' 



LEE, NATHANIEL, was born in the latter part of the 17th 

 century. He was educated at Westminster School, and afterwards 

 went to Trinity College, Cambridge. A passion for the theatre led 

 lim to appear as an actor on the London stage, but he met with no 

 success. He wrote however thirteen tragedies, of which two, ' Alex- 

 ander the Great,' and ' Theodosius,' remained favourites for a long 

 time, though the first alone is now remembered. A derangement of 

 mind led to Lee's temporary confinement in Bedlam, and though he 

 was released, he did not long enjoy his liberty. He died at the age of 

 ;hirty-four, in 1C91, having, as Gibber supposes, been killed in a night 

 ramble. Some recent critics, while admitting the bombast that per- 

 vades the works of Lee, ascribe it to a wild and powerful imagination ; 

 but his inflated words and thoughts are too often merely common- 

 places dressed up in extravagant language. The imagination of Lee, 

 mch as it is, is seldom under his own control, and frequently is little 

 better than a sort of arithmetical exaggeration. The author has 

 brought together a number of impossible characters, uttering some- 

 times hardly a single word of true feeling, or a phrase in good taste ; 

 and the reader consequently not only feels no interest, but finds it 

 difficult to repress a smile at the woes of the gaudy heroes and 

 heroines. But in judging of his poetry it is proper to bear in mind 

 his mental and physical misery, the quantity of verse he wrote, and 

 the early age at which he died. 



LEE, REV. SAMUEL, D.D., was born May 14, 1783, at Longnor, 

 a village in Shropshire, about eighteen miles from Shrewsbury. He 

 received the rudiments of education at a charity-school in that village, 

 where at the age of twelve years he was apprenticed to a carpenter 

 and joiner. At the age of seventeen he formed a determination to 

 learn the Latin language, and though he had at first only six shillings 

 a week, and afterwards seven, to subsist on, he contrived to buy 

 rudimentary books arid then classical writers, and by the end of his 

 apprenticeship had accomplished his purpose. He then determined to 

 learn the Greek, and this he also accomplished. The Hebrew, Chaldaic, 

 and Syriac languages were next mastered. When in his twenty-fifth 

 year he removed into Worcestershire to superintend on the part of his 

 employer the repairing of a large house, in which however a fire broke 

 out, when he lost all his tools, and was reduced to extreme poverty. 

 In the meantime the Kev. Archdeacon Corbett had heard of his studious 

 habits, saw him at Longnor, lent him books, and assisted him in 

 pronunciation. In the course of a few months he acquired the Arabic 

 and Persian languages, and afterwards a tolerable knowledge of French, 

 German, and Italian. For two or three years previously to 1813 Mr. 

 Lee held the mastership of Bowdler's foundation school in Shrewsbury. 

 In 1813 he left Shrewsbury, and obtained an engagement with the 

 Church Missionary Society. In the same year he entered himself of 

 Queen's College, Cambridge, and in 1817 took his degree of B. A. Having 

 received ordination, he preached in the following year at Shrewsbury a 

 sermon in aid of the funds of the Shropshire Auxiliary Bible Society. 



On the llth of March 1819 Mr. Lee was elected Arabic Professor of 

 the University of Cambridge, but not having been at college the time 

 requisite for taking his degree of M.A. (which was necessary before he 

 took the chair), a grace passed the senate to request the Prince-Regent 

 to grant a mandamus, which was obtained accordingly. In 1822 the 

 University of Halle conferred on him, without solicitation, the degree 

 of D.D. In 1823 he was appointed chaplain to the jail at Cambridge, 

 and in 1825 was presented to the rectory of Bilton with Harrowgate. 

 He took the degree of B.D. in 1827, and in 1831 was elected Regius 

 Professor of Hebrew to the University of Cambridge, and with it 

 obtained the accompanying canonry in the cathedral of Bristol. The 

 degree of D.D. was conferred upon him by the University of Cambridge 

 in 1833. He was afterwards presented to the rectory of Barley in 

 Hertfordshire, He died on the 16th of December, 1852, at Barley 

 rectory. He was twice married. 



Among the more important of Dr. Lee's works are the following : 

 'Hebrew Grammar,' 1830; 'Travels of John Batuta, translated from 

 the Arabic,' 1833 ; ' The Book of Job, translated from the original 

 Hebrew,' 1837; 'Hebrew, Chaldaic, and English Lexicon,' 1840; 'An 

 Inquiry into the Nature, Progress, and End of Prophecy,' 8vo, Cam- 

 bridge, 1849 ; ' The Events and Times of the Visions of Daniel and St. 

 John, investigated, identified, and determined,' 8vo, London, 1851. 

 Besides these works, Dr. Lee published several pamphlets on subjects 

 of religious controversy, sermons, and contributions to periodical 

 literature. 



LEE, SOPHIA AND HARRIET, were the daughters of John Lee, 

 a performer at Covent Garden Theatre in the last century. Harriet 

 was born in 1756; Sophia was a few years her senior. Soon after 

 their father's death they opened a school at Bath. In this under- 

 taking they acquired a moderate competence, upon which they 

 retired to Clifton, where both died, Sophia on March 13, 1624, and 

 Harriet on August 1, 1851, aged ninety-five. Sophia first appeared 

 in 1780 as author of a comedy, ' The Chapter of Accidents,' which was 

 performed at the Haymarket with considerable success. Her next 

 work was ' The Recess,' which appeared in 1785 in three volumes, one 



