talent, but all are artificial, bearing the impress of literary aspiration rather than of literary vocation. His lyrical verse was graceful and facile, but rarely rose to the level of poetry. Of his three acted dramas, ‘Old Love and New Fortune,’ ‘The Love-lock,’ and ‘Duchess Eleanour,’ the first alone attained any success. His work as an æsthetic writer was much more important and more highly appreciated. In 1841 he published ‘Music and Manners in France and Germany,’ three delightful volumes abounding not only in description of musical performances and observations in society, but in lively and incisive, if frequently prejudiced, sketches of foreign authors and artists. A portion was reprinted in ‘Modern German Music’ (1854), a book containing the most uncompromising utterance of his musical convictions. ‘Thirty Years' Musical Recollections’ is a most valuable repertory not only of musical criticism but of musical history, relating to vocalists even more than to composers, by one who, as he says, ‘had not missed one new work, or one first appearance, which has taken place in London from the year 1834 to the present one’ (1862). In the same year he delivered four lectures at the Royal Institution on ‘The National Music of the World,’ which, expanded by the writer into essays, were published by Mr. H. G. Hewlett in 1880. Chorley was also a most industrious librettist and writer of words for music. He did not always agree with his coadjutors. ‘Musicians,’ says Mr. Henry Leslie, ‘not unnaturally expect that in the composition of musical works their ideas should be deemed worthy of consideration, but Mr. Chorley was of a contrary opinion.’ He also produced (1836) ‘Memorials of Mrs. Hemans,’ a very creditable work, considering the deficiency of material, and contributed the letterpress to ‘The Authors of England,’ a series of medallion portraits after the Collas process.
Chorley's leading position as a critic necessarily gained him warm friendships and bitter enmities. The latter need not be recorded; the former constitute a list of which any man might be proud. It is a high testimony to his worth that they include not merely followers of literature and art, whom he might have placed under obligation, such as Dickens, Miss Mitford, Lady Blessington, Mr. and Mrs. Browning, Mendelssohn, and Moscheles, but men so aloof from ordinary literary coteries as Grote and Sir William Molesworth. His tenderest attachments seem to have been those he entertained for Mendelssohn and the son of his benefactor, Benson Rathbone; his greatest intimacy that with Dickens, who, if he had not predeceased him, would have inherited a ring ‘in memory of one greatly helped.’ Help was indeed needed to soothe Chorley's declining years. The deceptions and irritations incident to a sensitive nature, grievously misunderstood; the failure to form any truly intimate tie; the consequent sensation of loneliness; frequent painful estrangements due to the irritability thus engendered; the wearing sense of the hopeless malady of his sister, and the shock of his brother's death, combined to render his latter years querulous and disconsolate, and to foster habits of self-indulgence detrimental to his happiness and self-respect as far as they proceeded, though they did not proceed far. Yet he continued to enjoy company and practise private generosity and social hospitality, having been placed in affluent circumstances by the decease of his brother. He retired from the literary department of the ‘Athenæum’ in 1866, and from the musical in 1868. He subsequently edited Miss Mitford's correspondence, and was employed in writing his autobiography when he died very suddenly, 16 Feb. 1872. His character is well drawn by his biographer as ‘upright, sincere, generous, and affectionate; irritable and opinionated, but essentially placable; an acute and courageous critic, a genuine if incomplete artist, a warm-hearted honourable gentleman.’
[Chorley's unfinished autobiography formed the basis of the Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters prepared with admirable taste by his friend, H. G. Hewlett, and published in 1873. See also the article in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, by Julian Marshall.]
CHORLEY, JOHN RUTTER (1807?–1867), poet and scholar, brother of Henry Fothergill Chorley [q. v.], was born about 1807 at Blackley Hurst, Lancashire, and entered the same mercantile house as his brother, finding the employment no less distasteful. He displayed, however, much greater perseverance and capacity for business; and at the termination of his engagement obtained, through a solicitor, who had been struck by his ability, the highly responsible office of secretary to the Grand Junction railway between Liverpool and Birmingham. After years of work, interspersed with hard literary study, he became independent in his circumstances through the bequest of his uncle, and removed to London. Here he was successively called upon to assume the charge of an invalid mother and an invalid sister, and the harassing confinement, combined, as his brother admits, with the haughtiness and unsociability of his own temperament, made him almost a recluse. He devoted himself especially to the Spanish drama, and formed a
