Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/514

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
Lyall
494
Lyne

Lyall's chief prose essays were collected in 1882 under the title of 'Asiatic Studies,' of which the first essay had appeared in the 'Fortnightly Review' under John (afterwards Viscount) Morley's editorship in Feb. 1872. Hindu religion and custom were here treated by an administrator who had seen how these things actually worked out in real life. 'He drew attention,' it has been said, 'to the necessity of examining Hinduism not only from the evidence in the Sacred Books, but as a popular religion actually existing and undergoing transformation before our eyes.' A second series of the 'Asiatic Studies' was published in 1899. This series included the Rede lecture, 'Natural Religion in India,' which Lyall delivered at Cambridge in 1891, and also three 'letters' originally published under the pseudonym of Vamadeo Shastri. Lyall represented the author to be 'an orthodox Brahmin, versed in the religion and philosophy of his own people, who is chiefly interested in the religious situation, and who surveys from that standpoint the moral and material changes that the English rule is producing in India.' This series also includes an interesting chapter on the relations between history and fable.

'Asiatic Studies' is mainly a masterly contribution to the comparative study of religions. History came next to that study in Lyall's intellectual interests. His 'Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India' (1893), which was developed in successive editions, is, like Seeley's 'Expansion of England,' a luminous essay upon determining causes and their results rather than mere narration. Other books were the short life of Warren Hastings (1889) in the 'English Men of Action' series; a critical appreciation in the 'Men of Letters' series (1902) of Tennyson, of whom he had been a friend from 1881 until the poet's death; and the 'Life of the Marquis of Dufferin' (2 vols. 1905). In 1908 he delivered the Ford lectures on Indian history at Oxford, and he gave an address at Oxford in the same year to the 'Congress of Religions' over which he presided. He was a frequent contributor to the 'Edinburgh Review' upon subjects connected with Indian history and philosophy, and with general literature. In recognition of his position as both a distinguished public servant and a man of letters and of philosophic intellect he received the D.C.L. degree from Oxford in 1889 and the LL.D. degree from Cambridge University in 1891; and he became an honorary fellow of King's College, Cambridge in 1893, a fellow of the British Academy in 1902, and a member of the Academic Committee of the Royal Society of Literature in 1910. He was a governor of Dulwich College from 1891, and became chairman of that board in April 1907. He was appointed a trustee of the British Museum in 1911.

In home politics Lyall was a liberal unionist, a strong free trader, and an active opponent of the movement for extending the suffrage to women. In his last years he took an active part in the central administration of the Charity Organisation Society.

Lyall died suddenly from heart disease on 10 April 1911 at Farringford in the Isle of Wight, where he was on a visit to Lord Tennyson, the son of his friend the poet-laureate. He was buried at Harbledown near Canterbury, the home of his boyhood, after a funeral service in the cathedral. He married in 1863 Cora, daughter of P. Cloete of Cape Colony, and left two sons and two daughters.

Of four portraits in oils, one, by J. J. Shannon, R.A. (1890), is at Allahabad University; a second, by Mr. Christopher Williams (1908), is at Dulwich College; and two, respectively by Lady Stanley (1889) and by Lady Walpole (1896), are in Lady Lyall's possession. A memorial tablet is to be affixed in the nave of Canterbury Cathedral.

[The Times, 11 April 1911; Sir C. P. Ilbert in Proc. of British Academy, vol. v. 1911; Dr. G. W. Prothero in Proc. of Academic Committee of Royal Soc. of Lit. 1912; Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1886–1901; private information. A Life by Sir Mortimer Durand is in preparation.]

B. H. H.


LYALL, EDNA, pseudonym. [See Bayly, Ada Ellen (1857–1903), novelist.]

LYNE, JOSEPH LEYCESTER, 'Father Ignatius' (1837–1908), preacher, born in Trinity Square in the parish of All Hallows Barking, on 23 Nov. 1837, was the second son of seven children of Francis Lyne, merchant of the City of London, by his wife Louisa Genevieve (d. 1877), daughter of George Hanmer Leycester, of White Place, near Maidenhead, Berkshire, who came of the well-known Cheshire family, the Leycesters of Tabley. In October 1847 Lyne entered St. Paul's school under Herbert Kynaston [q. v.]. In 1852, after suffering corporal punishment for a breach of discipline, he was removed, and his education was completed at private schools at Spalding and Worcester. He early developed advanced views of sacramental doctrine. An acquaint-