Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/259

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Knight
253
Knight

which at first she wore the portrait of her husband, from whom she soon ‘was parted … upon a gallantry she had with Dalton, the reviver of Comus and a divine,’ and ‘retired to a hermitage on Parnassus.’ The story may be a scandal, but Lady Luxborough was certainly separated from, or deserted by, her husband within a few years of their marriage; and was an intimate friend of Frances Seymour, countess of Hertford, afterwards duchess of Somerset [q. v.], in whose house Dalton resided as tutor to Lord Beauchamp [see Dalton, John, 1709–1763]. The hermitage mentioned by Walpole was her husband's estate of Barrells, which she had laid out in the artificial style of landscape gardening. Here she was within easy reach of Shenstone, whom she frequently visited at the Leasowes, and with whom she kept up a regular correspondence. Shenstone celebrated their somewhat artificial Arcadia in his ode on ‘Rural Elegance,’ addressed to the Duchess of Somerset (1750). Lady Luxborough was also a friend of the poet William Somervile [q. v.] She died towards the end of March 1756, and was buried in the church of Wootton Wawen, the parish in which Barrells is situate, whence her remains were afterwards removed to a mausoleum near Barrells. Though she had been supposed to share her brother's religious opinions, she took the sacrament on her deathbed. By Lord Luxborough she had one son, Henry, who married, 21 June 1750, a daughter of Thomas Heath of Stanstead, Essex, and died without issue in the lifetime of his father; also two daughters, one of whom married a French count; the other, Henrietta, married Charles Wymondesold of Lockinge, Berkshire, but, eloping in 1753 with the Hon. Josiah Child, brother of John, second earl Tylney, was divorced, and married her paramour on 7 May 1754. Lady Luxborough's ‘Letters to William Shenstone, Esq.,’ published by Dodsley, London, 1775, are very insipid. Four little poems of slight merit, printed as ‘by a lady of quality’ in Dodsley's ‘Collection of Poems by several hands’ (1775), iv. 313, are attributed to her by Horace Walpole. See also Hull's ‘Select Letters between the late Duchess of Somerset, Lady Luxborough … and others,’ London, 1778, 2 vols. 8vo.

[Collins's Peerage (Brydges), vi. 75; Add. MS. 23728; marginalia and other manuscript notes by E. Gulston in the British Museum copy of Lady Luxborough's ‘Letters to Shenstone;’ Mrs. Delany's Autobiography, ed. Lady Llanover; Gent. Mag. 1746 p. 384, 1754 p. 243, 1756 p. 206; Horace Walpole's Letters, ed. Cunningham; Horace Walpole's Cat. of Royal and Noble Authors, ed. Park, v. 260, where there is an engraving of Lady Luxborough's portrait by an unknown artist; Grenville Papers, ed. Smith, ii. 48; Colvile's Worthies of Warwickshire; Official Lists of Members of Parliament; Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. App. p. 291; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ii. 379, vi. 204; Burke's Extinct Peerage.]

KNIGHT, HENRY GALLY (1786–1846), writer on architecture, born on 2 Dec. 1786, was the only son of Henry Gally Knight of Langold Hall, Yorkshire, barrister, by his wife Selina, daughter of William Fitzherbert of Tissington, Derbyshire. His grandfather, John Gally (who assumed the additional name of Knight), was M.P. for Aldborough and Boroughbridge, and a son of Henry Gally, D.D. [q. v.], the classical scholar. Knight was educated at Eton, and apparently at Trinity College, Cambridge, though his name does not appear in the list of graduates. In 1810 and 1811 he travelled in Spain, Sicily, Greece, Egypt, and Palestine, in company with the Hon. Frederick North and Mr. Fazakerly. His first publications were in verse, being ‘Ilderim, a Syrian Tale,’ 1816, 8vo; ‘Phrosyne, a Grecian Tale:’ ‘Alashtar, an Arabian Tale,’ London, 1817, 8vo; ‘Eastern Sketches, in verse,’ 3rd edit. London, 1830, 8vo. Byron (whose ‘Giaour’ was published in May 1813) bestowed praise on some of Knight's oriental verses (Moore, Life of Byron, under 4 Dec. 1813, p. 218, in one-vol. ed. 1846; cf. ib. p. 245), though he does not seem to have relished ‘Ilderim’ (Byron, Works, ‘Versicles:’ ‘I tried at “Ilderim”—Ahem!’) Knight turned from poetry to architecture. In May 1831 he landed at Dieppe, and during the year examined the buildings and libraries of Normandy. After his return to England he published ‘An Architectural Tour in Normandy,’ London, 1836, 12mo (French translation by M. A. Campion, Caen, 1838, 8vo). In August 1836 he started for Messina, and afterwards published ‘The Normans in Sicily,’ London, 1838, 12mo (French translation by M. A. Campion, Caen, 1839, 8vo; German translation, ed. C. R. Lepsius, Leipzig, 1841, 8vo), and ‘Saracenic and Norman Remains to illustrate the “Normans in Sicily,”’ London [1840], fol. He was assisted in his studies by professional architects: in Normandy by Richard Hussey, in Sicily by George Moore. In 1842–1844 he published ‘The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy from … Constantine to the 15th Century’ (2 vols., London, fol.), with eighty-one litho-chromatic plates by Owen Jones. Knight was also the author of some minor works.

Knight, who had succeeded to the family estates on his father's death in 1808, was elected M.P. for Aldborough (between 1824