Garnett, RICHARD

Garnett, RICHARD, philologist, was born at Otley, in Yorkshire, in 1789. He had already tried commerce and the church, when in 1838 he found his work in the appointment of assistant-keeper of printed books at the British Museum. He died in 1850. One of the founders of the Philological Society, he contributed many striking papers (on Celtic subjects, largely) to its Proceedings and to the Quarterly Review. These were collected by his son in Philological Essays (1859).—RICHARD, his son, was born at Lichfield, February 27, 1835, and appointed in 1851 assistant in the printed book department of the British Museum, where also he became superintendent of the reading-room in 1875. This office he resigned in 1884 to devote himself to the printing of the Museum Catalogue; in 1896 he became Keeper of the Printed Books. LL.D. of Edinburgh since 1883, he has published several volumes of verse; Relics of Shelley (1862), Selections of Shelley's Poems (1880) and Letters (1882); De Quincey's English Opium Eater (1885); a sensible little book on Carlyle (1883); a volume of humorous and satirical prose tales, The Twilight of the Gods (1888); and a book on the literature of The Age of Dryden (1895). The article on Milton in the present work is from his pen. He retired in 1899, and is C.B.