Spedding, JAMES, was born at Mirehouse, near Bassenthwaite, 26th June 1808, the younger son of a Cumberland squire. From Bury St Edmunds, where he was head of the school, he proceeded in 1827 to Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he became a scholar, and of which too at his death he had long been an honorary fellow. Still, brilliant scholar though he was, his degree was only a second-class in classics and junior optime. From 1835 to 1841 he held a post at the Colonial Office; in 1842 he accompanied Lord Ashburton (q.v.) to America as private secretary; and in 1847 he might, had he chosen, have become Under-secretary of State, with £2000 a year. But he had already devoted himself to the task of his life—'to re-edit Bacon's Works, which did not want any such re-edition, and to vindicate his character, which could not be vindicated.' So writes Edward Fitz Gerald, the oldest of Spedding's many brilliant friends—Tennyson and Carlyle were also of the number—and he adds: 'He was the wisest man I have known; not the less so for plenty of the boy in him; a great sense of humour; a Socrates in life and death, which he faced with all serenity so long as consciousness lasted.' That death was in St George's Hospital, on 9th March 1881, Spedding having eight days before been run over by a cab.
His publications were Works, Life, and Letters of Bacon (14 vols. 1857-74); Publishers and Authors (1867); Account of the Life and Times of Bacon (2 vols. 1878); Reviews and Discussions not relating to Bacon (1879); Studies in English History (1881), in conjunction with J. Gairdner; and Evenings with a Reviewer (relating to Bacon, 2 vols. 1881). See the brief Memoir by G. S. Venables prefixed to the last, and also Fitz Gerald's Letters (1889).