soon terminated by mutual consent; she nevertheless brought up one of Mr Linton’s daughters by a former marriage. A few years before her death she retired to Malvern. She died in London on the 14th of July 1898.
Her reminiscences appeared after her death under the title of My Literary Life (1899) and her life has been written by G. S. Layard (1901).
LINTON, WILLIAM JAMES (1812–1897), English wood-engraver, republican and author, was born in London. He was educated at Stratford, and in his sixteenth year was apprenticed to the wood-engraver G. W. Bonner. His earliest known work is to be found in Martin and Westall’s Pictorial Illustrations of the
Bible (1833). He rapidly rose to a place amongst the foremost
wood-engravers of the time. After working as a journeyman
engraver with two or three firms, losing his money over a cheap
political library called the “National,” and writing a life of
Thomas Paine, he went into partnership (1842) with John Orrin
Smith. The firm was immediately employed on the Illustrated
London News, just then projected. The following year Orrin
Smith died, and Linton, who had married a sister of Thomas
Wade, editor of Bell’s Weekly Messenger, found himself in sole
charge of a business upon which two families were dependent.
For years he had concerned himself with the social and European
political problems of the time, and was now actively engaged in
the republican propaganda. In 1844 he took a prominent part
in exposing the violation by the English post-office of Mazzini’s
correspondence. This led to a friendship with the Italian
revolutionist, and Linton threw himself with ardour into European
politics. He carried the first congratulatory address of English
workmen to the French Provisional Government in 1848. He
edited a twopenny weekly paper, The Cause of the People, published
in the Isle of Man, and he wrote political verses for the
Dublin Nation, signed “Spartacus.” He helped to found the
“International League” of patriots, and, in 1850, with G. H.
Lewes and Thornton Hunt, started The Leader, an organ which,
however, did not satisfy his advanced republicanism, and from
which he soon withdrew. The same year he wrote a series of
articles propounding the views of Mazzini in The Red Republican.
In 1852 he took up his residence at Brantwood, which he afterwards
sold to John Ruskin, and from there issued The English
Republic, first in the form of weekly tracts and afterwards as a
monthly magazine—“a useful exponent of republican principles,
a faithful record of republican progress throughout the world;
an organ of propagandism and a medium of communication for
the active republicans in England.” Most of the paper, which
never paid its way and was abandoned in 1855, was written by
himself. In 1852 he also printed for private circulation an
anonymous volume of poems entitled The Plaint of Freedom.
After the failure of his paper he returned to his proper work of
wood-engraving. In 1857 his wife died, and in the following year
he married Eliza Lynn (afterwards known as Mrs Lynn Linton)
and returned to London. In 1864 he retired to Brantwood, his
wife remaining in London. In 1867, pressed by financial difficulties,
he determined to try his fortune in America, and finally
separated from his wife, with whom, however, he always corresponded
affectionately. With his children he settled at Appledore,
New Haven, Connecticut, where he set up a printing-press. Here
he wrote Practical Hints on Wood-Engraving (1879), James
Watson, a Memoir of Chartist Times (1879), A History of Wood-Engraving
in America (1882), Wood-Engraving, a Manual of
Instruction (1884), The Masters of Wood-Engraving, for which
he made two journeys to England (1890), The Life of Whittier
(1893), and Memories, an autobiography (1895). He died at
New Haven on the 29th of December 1897. Linton was a singularly
gifted man, who, in the words of his wife, if he had not
bitten the Dead Sea apple of impracticable politics, would have
risen higher in the world of both art and letters. As an engraver
on wood he reached the highest point of execution in his own line.
He carried on the tradition of Bewick, fought for intelligent as
against merely manipulative excellence in the use of the graver,
and championed the use of the “white line” as well as of the
black, believing with Ruskin that the former was the truer and
more telling basis of aesthetic expression in the wood-block
printed upon paper.
See W. J. Linton, Memories; F. G. Kitton, article on “Linton” in English Illustrated Magazine (April 1891); G. S. Layard, Life of Mrs Lynn Linton (1901). (G. S. L.)
LINTOT, BARNABY BERNARD (1675–1736), English publisher, was born at Southwater, Sussex, on the 1st of December
1675, and started business as a publisher in London about 1698.
He published for many of the leading writers of the day, notably
Vanbrugh, Steele, Gay and Pope. The latter’s Rape of the Lock
in its original form was first published in Lintot’s Miscellany,
and Lintot subsequently issued Pope’s translation of the Iliad
and the joint translation of the Odyssey by Pope, Fenton and
Broome. Pope quarrelled with Lintot with regard to the supply
of free copies of the latter translation to the author’s subscribers,
and in 1728 satirized the publisher in the Dunciad, and in 1735
in the Prologue to the Satires, though he does not appear to have
had any serious grievance. Lintot died on the 3rd of February
1736.
LINUS, one of the saints of the Gregorian canon, whose festival is celebrated on the 23rd of September. All that can be said with
certainty about him is that his name appears at the head of all
the lists of the bishops of Rome. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. iii. 3. 3)
identifies him with the Linus mentioned by St Paul in 2 Tim. iv.
21. According to the Liber Pontificalis, Linus suffered martyrdom,
and was buried in the Vatican. In the 17th century an
inscription was found near the confession of St Peter, which was
believed to contain the name Linus; but it is not certain that
this epitaph has been read correctly or completely. The
apocryphal Latin account of the death of the apostles Peter and
Paul is falsely attributed to Linus.
See Acta Sanctorum, Septembris, vi. 539-545; C. de Smedt, Dissertationes selectae in primam aetatem hist. eccl. pp. 300-312 (Ghent, 1876); L. Duchesne’s edition of the Liber Pontificalis, i. 121 (Paris, 1886); R. A. Lipsius, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten, ii. 85-96 (Brunswick, 1883–1890); J. B. de Rossi, Bullettino di archeologia cristiana, p. 50 (1864). (H. De.)
LINUS, one of a numerous class of heroic figures in Greek legend, of which other examples are found in Hyacinthus and
Adonis. The connected legend is always of the same character:
a beautiful youth, fond of hunting and rural life, the favourite
of some god or goddess, suddenly perishes by a terrible death.
In many cases the religious background of the legend is preserved
by the annual ceremonial that commemorated it. At Argos
this religious character of the Linus myth was best preserved:
the secret child of Psamathe by the god Apollo, Linus is exposed,
nursed by sheep and torn in pieces by sheep-dogs. Every year
at the festival Arnis or Cynophontis, the women of Argos mourned
for Linus and propitiated Apollo, who in revenge for his child’s
death had sent a female monster (Poinē), which tore the children
from their mothers’ arms. Lambs were sacrificed, all dogs found
running loose were killed, and women and children raised a
lament for Linus and Psamathe (Pausanias i. 43. 7; Conon,
Narrat. 19). In the Theban version, Linus, the son of Amphimarus
and the muse Urania, was a famous musician, inventor
of the Linus song, who was said to have been slain by Apollo,
because he had challenged him to a contest (Pausanias ix.
29. 6). A later story makes him the teacher of Heracles, by whom
he was killed because he had rebuked his pupil for stupidity
(Apollodorus ii. 4. 9). On Mount Helicon there was a grotto
containing his statue, to which sacrifice was offered every year
before the sacrifices to the Muses. From being the inventor of
musical methods, he was finally transformed by later writers
into a composer of prophecies and legends. He was also said to
have adapted the Phoenician letters introduced by Cadmus to
the Greek language. It is generally agreed that Linus and
Ailinus are of Semitic origin, derived from the words ai lanu
(woe to us), which formed the burden of the Adonis and similar
songs popular in the East. The Linus song is mentioned in
Homer; the tragedians often use the word αἴλινος as the refrain
in mournful songs, and Euripides calls the custom a Phrygian
one. Linus, originally the personification of the song of lamentation,
becomes, like Adonis, Maneros, Narcissus, the representative
