Milman, HENRY HART, dean of St Paul's, poet and ecclesiastical historian, was the youngest son of Sir Francis Milman (1746-1821), physician to George III., and was born in London, 10th February 1791. He was educated at Greenwich under Dr Burney, at Eton, and at Brasenose
College, Oxford, where in 1812 he won the Newdigate with his Belvidere Apollo, the best of all Oxford prize poems. In 1815 he was elected a fellow; in 1816 was ordained priest, and appointed vicar of St Mary's, Reading; from 1821 to 1831 was professor of Poetry at Oxford, where in 1827 he delivered the Bampton Lectures, on The Character and Conduct of the Apostles considered as an Evidence of Christianity; in 1835 became rector of St Mary's, Westminster, and a canon of Westminster; and in 1849 was promoted to the deanery of St Paul's. He died at Sunninghill, near Ascot, 24th September 1868, and was buried in St Paul's.
The collected edition of Dr Milman's Poems and Dramatic Works (3 vols. 1839) comprises Fazio, a Tragedy (1815), which, without his consent, was acted first at Bath, and then in 1818 at Covent Garden, with Charles Kemble and Miss O'Neil in the leading parts; Samor, Lord of the Bright City, an heroic poem (1818); The Fall of Jerusalem (1820), a beautiful dramatic poem, with some fine sacred lyrics interspersed; three other dramas, The Martyr of Antioch (1822), Belshazzar (1822), and Anne Boleyn (1826); and Nala and Damayanti, with other Poems translated from the Sanskrit (1834). Forgotten as a whole, the poems live, and will live, through three or four much prized hymns—'When our heads are bowed with woe,' 'Brother, thou art gone before us,' and 'Ride on, ride on in Majesty.' The complete edition of Dean Milman's Historical Works (15 vols. 1866-67) includes his History of the Jews (1829), History of Christianity to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire (1840), and History of Latin Christianity to the Pontificate of Nicholas V. (1854-56). The last—a complete epic and philosophy of mediæval Christendom—is Milman's masterpiece; it is really a great work, great in all the essentials of history—subject, style, and research. But, though vastly inferior, the History of the Jews was in a way more important. For 'it was,' in Dean Stanley's words, 'the first decisive inroad of German theology into England; the first palpable indication that the Bible "could be studied like another book;" that the characters and events of the sacred history could be treated at once critically and reverently.' Milman also edited Gibbon and Horace, and wrote much for the Quarterly Review. After his death appeared the delightful Annals of St Paul's Cathedral (1868), and Savonarola, Erasmus, and other Essays (1870). See the Life of Dean Milman by his son (1900).