Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/261

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afterwards chaplain to Frederick, prince of Wales. It did not, however, see the footlights till 19 July 1759, when it was acted at Drury Lane (Genest, iv. 555). It reappeared, in a reduced form, at Covent Garden on 14 April 1790 (ib. vi. 602). Lillo's softening of the character of Alicia, the sinning wife, shows theatrical instinct. He is also said to have left behind him a comedy called ‘The Regulators,’ of which no trace has been discovered (cf. Davies, ii. 239–40).

Fielding, in a generous tribute paid to Lillo soon after his death, in the ‘Champion’ (cited ib. i. 32; and Chalmers, xx. 264), declares that ‘he had the spirit of an old Roman, joined to the innocence of a primitive Christian.’ The author of the ‘Life’ published in the name of Theophilus Cibber less grandiloquently describes him as ‘a man of strict morals, great good-nature, and sound sense, with an uncommon share of modesty.’ ‘George Barnwell,’ which owed little or nothing to any literary predecessor, contributed more effectively than any other English eighteenth-century drama—more effectively even than its lineal successors, Edward Moore's ‘Gamester’ (1753) and the plays of Richard Cumberland—to popularise the species known as the ‘domestic drama.’ In England the new style was not very long-lived on the stage, but it bore enduring fruits in the novel, more especially in the hands of Lillo's friend, Fielding. In France, Diderot and others followed in the footsteps of Lillo; in Germany, Lessing, in his ‘Miss Sara Sampson’ (1755), distinctly introduced the new species into the German drama, and found in it for a time a valuable ally in his campaign against the French ‘classical’ theatre (cf. W. Cosack, Materialien zu Lessing's Hamburgischer Dramaturgie, Paderborn, 1876, pp. 83–5, and among the authorities cited by him, especially H. Hettner, Litteraturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts, i. 514 sqq.) Nevertheless Lillo, like many other reformers, cast a lingering look upon what he was leaving behind him, viz. the heroic drama. Pope gently hinted at the chief defect in ‘George Barnwell,’ its occasionally stilted diction, much of which is in bastard blank-verse. Lillo's ‘Fatal Curiosity,’ where his natural capacity gets the better of his ambition, is indisputably thrilling, and he cannot be held responsible for his tour de force having, directly or indirectly, been made the starting-point of a new and not very praiseworthy series of ‘fatality’ plays.

[Lillo's Dramatic Works, with Memoir of the Author by Thomas Davies, 2 vols. 2nd edit. 1810; Life of Lillo in vol. v. of ‘Cibber's’ Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, 1753; Genest's Account of the English Stage; Biographia Dramatica, ed. 1812; Brayley and Mantell's Surrey, iii. p. 274; A. Brandl's Zu Lillo's Kaufmann von London, in Vierteljahrschrift für Litteraturgeschichte, iii. 47 sqq.]

A. W. W.

LILLY. [See also Lily and Lyly.]

LILLY, CHRISTIAN (d. 1738), military engineer, commenced his military career in the service of the Dukes of Zelle and Hanover in 1685, and was under the command of Prince Frederick Augustus and of Lieutenant-general Chauvet. He served several campaigns against the Turks in Hungary, and was present at the battle of Grau and the sieges of Neuhausel, Caschaw, Polack, and Buda (1683–6). In 1688 he entered the service of William III, by whom he was naturalised as an Englishman. He served in Scotland in 1689, and in Ireland during the greater part of the war. He was posted to King William's Dutch train of artillery, and served first under Count Solmes at the battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690, and afterwards under General Ginkell at the first siege of Athlone and the first siege of Limerick, raised on 27 Aug. On 3 Sept. 1690 he was appointed ensign in Lieutenant-general Douglas's regiment, and quartermaster-general to the grand detachment of the army commanded by that officer. He again served under Ginkell at Ballymore in June 1691, was director of the approaches in the second siege of Athlone during the same month, took part in the battle of Aughrim on 11 July, was engineer at the short siege of Galway which followed, and during August and September at the second siege of Limerick, which ended the war.

On 1 May 1692 Lilly was appointed engineer of the office of ordnance, and was sent with the train of artillery upon an expedition under the Duke of Leinster, to make a descent upon the French coast, but this proving unsuccessful, a descent was made upon Flanders instead. By royal warrant of 4 Aug. 1692 he was appointed engineer at 10s. a day to accompany a train of brass ordnance and mortars to the West Indies. In 1693 he was sent with the expedition under Sir Francis Wheeler to Barbados, Martinique, the Leeward Islands, New England, and Newfoundland, where besides his post of engineer he had chief command of the artillery train, and was captain of a company of foot. On his return home he was appointed on 30 Oct. 1693 captain in Colonel Lillingston's regiment of foot, and was sent into garrison at Plymouth.

On 12 Oct. 1694 the Earl of Romney, master-general of the ordnance, appointed him engineer and to command the train of artillery for the West Indies. He went out