Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/313

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Hanmer
299
Hann

Magazine' for 1747 (xvii. 239), and was probably written either by Johnson or Hawkesworth (Boswell's Johnson, i. 177-8). Lord Hervey describes him as 'a sensible, impracticable, honest, formal, disagreeable man, whose great merit was loving his country, and whose great weakness loving the parsons' (Memoirs, 1884, i. 105-6). Lord Hanmer possessed three portraits of his ancestor, one of them being the full-length portrait by Kneller, the head of which is engraved in Yorke's 'Royal Tribes of Wales' (opp. p. 172). Another portrait by Kneller was lent by Sir Charles J. F. Bunbury, bart., to the Loan Exhibition of 1867 at South Kensington (Catalogue, No. 174).

Hanmer married first, in October 1698, Isabella, dowager duchess of Grafton, widow of Henry Fitzroy, the first duke, and only daughter of Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington. She died on 7 Feb. 1723. His second wife was Elizabeth, only daughter of Thomas Folkes of Barton, Suffolk, who afterwards eloped with the Hon. Thomas Hervey, second son of John, first earl of Bristol, and died on 24 March 1741. There being no issue by either marriage, the baronetcy became extinct upon Hanmer's death, while the Mildenhall estate in Suffolk devolved upon his nephew, Sir William Bunbury, bart., and the Hanmer estate in Flintshire passed by settlement to his cousin and heir male, William Hanmer of Fenns, and is now possessed by Sir Edward John Henry Hanmer, bart.

In 1743-4 appeared Hanmer's edition of 'The Works of Shakespear in six vols., carefully revised and corrected by the former editions, and adorned with Sculptures designed and executed by the best hands,' Oxford, 4to. It contained a number of engravings by Gravelot, chiefly after designs by F. Hayman, and displayed a certain amount of ingenuity in the alterations made in the text, but as a critical work it was perfectly valueless. It was, however, the first Shakespeare, says Dibdin, 'which appeared in any splendid typographical form. . . . The first edition was a popular book, and was proudly displayed in morocco binding in the libraries of the great and fashionable. ... In the year 1747, when Warburton's edition was selling off at 18s. a copy (the original price having been 2l. 8s.), Hanmer's edition, which was published at 3l. 3s., rose to 9l. 9s., and continued at that price till its reprint in 1771' (The Library Companion, 1825, pp. 801-2). The first volume of the second edition (1770-1771, Oxford, 4to) contains additional matter in the shape of an 'advertisement,' and 'an epistle addressed to Sir Thomas Hanmer, on his edition of Shakespear's Works by Mr. William Collins.' Hanmer's announcement of his intention to publish his edition of Shakespeare occasioned a violent quarrel between him and Warburton, a full account of which will be found in The Castrated Letter of Sir Thomas Hanmer in the sixth volume of 'Biographia Britannica,' &c., 1763, and in Nichols's 'Literary Anecdotes' (1812, v. 588-90). Pope makes an allusion to Hanmer and his Shakespeare in the following passage from the 'Dunciad' (book iv. 11. 105 et seq.):

There mov'd Montalto with superior air;
His stretch'd-out arm display'd a volume fair;
Courtiers and patriots in two ranks divide,
Thro' both he pass'd and bow'd from side to side.

The authorship of the following two anonymous works has been ascribed to Hanmer by Sir H. Bunbury: 1. 'A Review of the Text of the twelve Books of Milton's "Paradise Lost," in which the chief of Dr. Bentley's Emendations are consid'd,' &c., London, 1733, 8vo. 2. 'Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, written by Mr. William Shakespeare,' London, 1736, 8vo.

[The Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, edited by Sir Henry Bunbury, 1838; Lord Hanmer's Memorial of the Parish and Family of Hanmer, 1877; Davy's MS. Suffolk Collections, lviii. 103–21; Swift's Works, 1824, ii. 502–5, 508, iii. 118–19, v. 118–35, xvi. 51–2, xviii. 21, 332; Wentworth Papers, 1883; Biog. Brit. 1766, vi. pt. ii. App. 222–4; Granger's Biog. Hist. (Noble, 1806), ii. 171–3; Manning's Speakers of the House of Commons, 1850, pp. 423–31; Boswell's Life of Johnson (G. B. Hill's edit.), i. 175, 177–8, ii. 25, 32, 33, v. 245; Walpole's Letters (Cunningham), i. 101, 340, ix. 254; Burke's Peerage, &c. 1888, p. 644; Official Return of Lists of Members of Parliament, pt. i. pp. 595, 599, 606, pt. ii. 4, 13, 22, 24, 33, 44, 55; Chester's London Marriage Licenses, 1887, p. 619; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

G. F. R. B.


HANN, JAMES (1799–1856), mathematician, was born in 1799 at Washington, near Gateshead, where his father was a colliery smith. After being fireman at a pumping-station at Hebburn, he was for several years employed in one of the steamers used on the Tyne for towing vessels. At the same time he studied mathematics, and was on one occasion found reading the works of Emerson the fluxionist. He afterwards became a teacher, and when keeping a school at Friar's Goose, near Newcastle, he published in 1833 (as joint author with Isaac Dodds of Gateshead) his first work, 'Mechanics for Practical Men.' An acquaintanceship with Woolhouse the mathematician led to his obtaining a situation as calculator in the Nautical Almanac Office. A few years later he was appointed writing-master, and then a little later ma-