for them, and in February 1857 he went on this business to Dublin, where he delivered an address on archæology before the Royal Irish Academy, which was much admired. While in Dublin he over-exerted himself, caught cold, and died at the Gresham Hotel, of inflammation of the lungs, on 26 March 1857. He was buried in the cemetery of St. Jerome. His wife survived him for some years. He left three children—Gertrude, born 1837, married to (Sir) Charles Santley, the baritone singer, died in 1882; Henry Charles, born in 1840, a colonel in the Bengal cavalry; and Mildred, born in 1841, married to the Rev. Charles Edward Donne, son of W. B. Donne, and vicar of Faversham, Kent (died in 1876). A bust of Kemble, by Woolner, is in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, and there is a likeness of him when a young man in an engraving by Lane, representing him, his father, his brother Henry James Vincent Kemble, and his two sisters Frances Anne, Mrs. Butler, and Adelaide, Mrs. Sartoris. A drawing of him by Lady Eastlake is in the possession of the Rev. C. E. Donne. He was a member of the Royal Academies of Berlin, Munich, and of other learned societies on the continent.
Kemble's mind was vigorous, his critical faculty acute, and his memory retentive. Besides knowing French, Spanish, and German, of which last he was sufficiently master to write a German treatise and instruct German audiences, he was familiar with Greek, and studied attentively the works of the Byzantine historians. In his knowledge of Teutonic philology he was far ahead of any of his fellow-countrymen, and was the recognised exponent of the investigations of Jacob Grimm and other German writers on the subject. With regard to the study of Anglo-Saxon, Kemble had a more scientific as well as a more accurate knowledge of the language than any earlier scholar, and a deeper insight into its relations to other branches of Teutonic speech. He used his knowledge chiefly in illustrating Anglo-Saxon literature and history, writing in all his original work as a man of letters no less than as a scholar. In commenting on an early fable he notes its significance, traces its development, and examines the forms under which it appears at different times and in various countries. The publication of his collection of documents belonging to the Anglo-Saxon period may be said to have laid the foundation of our present knowledge of the institutions and customs of the English before the Norman conquest. Useful additions may be made to his collection, but his ‘Codex Diplomaticus’ must remain the great original of all such undertakings, and the pattern to be followed by all future editors of charters. Besides the exact knowledge of Anglo-Saxon and the skill in deciphering manuscripts displayed by this book, it presents, though so unobtrusively as to be almost likely to escape notice, proofs of an amazing amount of knowledge and critical acumen. Every charter which offers ground for suspicion is marked with an asterisk. Kemble's work was always done with minute care, and a charter that he has not marked as spurious may as a rule safely be accepted as genuine. Founded on the ‘Codex,’ Kemble's ‘Saxons in England’ was, until the appearance of Bishop Stubbs's ‘Constitutional History’ in 1873, the best English treatise on the polity of our ancestors before the coming of the Normans. Its arrangement is not good, and it is in parts diffuse. Some of Kemble's opinions, as, for example, certain theories respecting the mark in England, the gá, the hide, and the status of the gesith, have been rejected by later and better informed writers. He was given to exaggeration and was apt to build a good deal on rather slender supports. But by far the larger number of his opinions, many of them expounded by him for the first time in England, have been confirmed by later investigation, and his book is remarkable both on account of the use made in it of the documents in the ‘Codex’ and as being the first work in which the institutions of other branches of the Teutonic race set forth by German scholars were treated to any large extent as a guide in the examination of those in force among the Anglo-Saxons.
Much of Kemble's published work must be sought for in periodical literature. He contributed to the ‘Foreign Quarterly Review,’ the ‘British and Foreign Review,’ the ‘Archæologia,’ occasionally to the ‘Journal of the Royal Institute’ and the publications of other learned societies, and, towards the close of his life, to ‘Fraser's Magazine.’ His writings that appeared in book form are:
- ‘The Poems of Beowulf,’ with a glossary and an historical preface, 8vo, 1833, 1837.
- ‘Ueber die Stammtafel der Westsachsen,’ a short treatise dedicated to Jacob Grimm, Munich, 1836.
- ‘An Introduction to Francisque Michel's “Bibliothèque Anglo-Saxonne,”’ 8vo, Paris, 1836.
- ‘A Few Historical Remarks upon the supposed Antiquity of Church Rates,’ 1836, anonymously for the Reform Association; not seen, but see ‘Saxons in England,’ i. 559 n., and answer to the ‘Remarks’ by W. H. (Archdeacon) Hale, 1837.
- ‘Translation of the Poem of Beowulf,’ with glossary and notes, uniform with the 2nd edition of (1) the ‘Poems,’ 8vo,
