Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/100

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Allen
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Allingham

contributed regularly to newspapers, magazines, and reviews, which contain some of his best work, often not reprinted. Of those that were republished in book form, the fullest light was thrown on the author's real views of life in 'Falling in Love, with other Essays on more exact Branches of Science' (1889),and 'Postprandial Philosophy' (1894). Twice he returned to the more abstruse science of his earlier days. In 1888 he brought out 'Force and Energy,' which embodies the results of his lonely reading and cogitations in Jamaica, where the first draft of it was privately printed (1876). Physicists generally declined to discuss his novel theory of dynamics as being that of an amateur. Nevertheless Allen persisted in it, and when the book passed into the remainder market in 1894, he presented a copy to a friend with this inscription: 'It contains my main contribution to human thought. And I desire here to state that, when you and I have passed away, I believe its doctrine will gradually be arrived at by other thinkers.' His other serious work was 'The Evolution of the Idea of God' (1897), an inquiry into the origin of religions. This book is crowded with anthropological lore, and contains numerous brilliant aperçus, but it labours under the defect of attempting to explain everything by means of a single theory. In connection with this should be read an essay on the origin of tree worship that he prefixed to a verse translation of the 'Attis' of Catullus (1892). In 1894 he issued a volume of poems which he modestly entitled 'The Lower Slopes' (1894). In technique they are the verses of a prose writer, though they reveal not a little of the heart of the author, and the ideals of his youth, when most of them were actually written. In the later years of his life Allen found a fresh interest in art, and particularly in Italian art. To art as a handicraft he had always been attracted, as may be seen in his very first contribution to the 'Cornhill' on 'Carving a Coco-nut.' The appreciation of painting and architecture came later, as the result of repeated visits to Italy. To his scientific mind they fell into their place as branches of human evolution. It is this unifying conception of art, as well as of history, that inspires the series of guide-books which he wrote in his last years on Paris, Florence, Venice, and the cities of Belgium (1897, 1898).

Grant Allen never enjoyed robust health. London was always distasteful to him. In 1881 he settled at Dorking, where he delighted in botanical walks in the woods and sandy heaths; but nearly every year he was compelled to winter in the south of Europe, usually at Antibes, though once or twice he went as far as Algiers and Egypt. In 1892 he bought a plot of ground almost on the summit of Hind Head, and built himself a charming cottage which he called the Croft. Here he found that he could endure the severity of an English winter amid surroundings wilder than at Dorking, and with the society of a few congenial friends. Continental trips he still made, chiefly to prepare his guide-books. His favourite holiday resort was on the Thames, near Marlow. Early in 1899 he was seized with a mysterious illness, the real nature of which was not detected till after his death. After months of suffering he died on 28 Oct. His body was cremated at Woking, the only ceremony being a memorial address by Mr. Frederic Harrison. In 1873, just before starting for Jamaica, he married his second wife, Ellen, youngest daughter of Thomas Jerrard of Lyme Regis. She survives him, together with one son, the only issue of the marriage.

[Grant Allen, a Memoir, by Edward Clodd, with portrait and bibliography, London, 1900.]

J. S. C.

ALLINGHAM, WILLIAM (1824–1889), poet, was born at Ballyshannon, Donegal, on 19 March 1824. William Allingham, his father, who had formerly been a merchant, was at the time of his birth manager of the local bank; his mother, Elizabeth Crawford, was also a native of Ballyshannon. The family, originally from Hampshire, had been settled in Ireland since the time of Elizabeth. Allingham entered the bank with which his father was connected at the age of thirteen, and strove to perfect the scanty education he had received at a boarding-school by a vigorous course of self-improvement. At the age of twenty-two he received an appointment in the customs, successively exercised for several years at Donegal, Ballyshannon, and other towns in Ulster. He nevertheless paid almost annual visits to London, the first in 1843, about which time he contributed to Leigh Hunt's 'Journal,' and in 1847 he made the personal acquaintance of Leigh Hunt, who treated him with great kindness, and introduced him to Carlyle and other men of letters. Through Coventry Patmore he became known to Tennyson, as well as to Rossetti and the pre-Raphaelite circle in general. The correspondence of Tennyson and Patmore attests the high opinion which both entertained of the poetical promise of the young Irishman. His first volume, entitled simply 'Poems' (London, 1850, 12mo), published in 1850, with a dedication to Leigh Hunt, was