WILLIAM COSMO

See also:

• WILLIAM COSMO MONKHOUSE (1840—1901)

MONKHOUSE (1840—1901)  , English poet and critic, was born in' London on the 18th of March 184o . His father, Cyril John Monkhouse, was a solicitor; his mother's maiden name was Delafosse . He was educated at St Paul's School, quitting it at seventeen to enter the board of trade as a junior supplementary clerk, from which grade he rose eventually to be the assistant-secretary to the, finance department of the office . In 187o—1871 he visited South America in connexion with the hospital accommodation for seamen at Valparaiso and. other ports; and he served on different departmental committees, notably that of 1894—1896 on the Mercantile Marine Fund . He was twice married: first, to Laura, daughter of James Keymer of Dartford; and, secondly, to . Leonora Eliza, daughter of Commander Blount, R.N . He died in LonSlon on the loth of July 1901 . Cosmo Monkhouse was one of those who have not only a vocation, but an avocation . His first bias was to poetry, and in 1865 he issued A Dream of Idleness and Other Poems, a collection strongly coloured by his admiration for Wordsworth and Tennyson . It was marked by exceptional maturity, and scarcely received the recognition it deserved . Owing perhaps to this circumstance, it was not till 1890 that he put forth Corn and Poppies, a collection which contains at least one memorable effort in the well-known " Dead March." Five years later appeared a limited edition of the striking ballad of The Christ upon the Hill, illustrated with etchings by Mr William Strang . After his death his poetical output was completed by Pasiteles the Elder and other Poems (including The Christ upon the Hill) .

In 1868 Monkhouse essayed a novel, A Question of

Honour . Then, after preluding with a Life of Turner in the " Great Artists Series " (1879), he devoted himself almost exclusively to art criticism . Besides many contributions to the Academy, the Saturday Review, the Magazine of Art and other periodicals, he published volumes on The Italian Pre-Raphaelites (1887), The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters (1890 and 1897), In the National Gallery (1895) and British Contemporary Artists (1899) . He was a contributor to the Dict . Nat . Biog. from the beginning . Monkhouse also wrote an excellent Memoir of Leigh Hunt in the " Great Writers Series " (1887) . As an art critic Monkhouse's judgments were highly valued; and he had the rare gift of differing without offending, while he invariably secured respect for his honesty and ability . As a poet, his ambition was so wide and his devotion to the art so thorough, that it is difficult not to regret the slender bulk of his legacy to posterity .