John Nichol

Not to be confused with John Nichols.

John Nichol (1833-1894). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

John Nichol (8 September 1833 - 11 October 1894) was a Scottish poet, academic, and literary critic.

Life

Overview

Nichol was the son of John P. Nichol, professor of astronomy in Glasgow. He was educated at Glasgow and Oxford, and held the chair of English literature in Glasgow, 1862-1889. Among his writings are Hannibal (1873), a drama, Death of Themistocles, and other poems (1881), Fragments of Criticism, and American Literature; also Lives of Bacon, Burns, Carlyle, and Byron.

Youth and education

Nichol, the only son of astronomer John Pringle Nichol by his 1st wife, was born at Montrose, Angus, where his father was then rector of the academy.

From 1836 onwards Glasgow was his home,and from 1842 to 1848 he went to school at the Western Academy, without, according to his own account, deriving much advantage from it. His imaginative powers were, however, early stimulated by foreign travel, and by excursions nearer home, especially in Arran.

In 1848 he entered the University of Glasgow. His 7 years of student life at Glasgow were marked by eager work and ardent enthusiasms devoted in part to the revival of the "liberal cause" in the university. His fellow students, Dr. John Service, Dr. Henry Crosskey, and Dr. Edward Caird, now master of Balliol, remained his closest friends through every subsequent stage of his career.

From 1853 onwards Nichol and his sister Agnes (afterwards the wife of Professor William Jack) found a 2nd mother in his father's 2nd wife, Elizabeth Pease, at whose house in Edinburgh (Huntley Lodge) he was in his later years a frequent visitor.

Before he left Glasgow Nichol printed for private circulation a volume of poems of remarkable promise, entitled Leaves (Edinburgh, 1852).

At Oxford

In 1855, at the late age of 22, Nichol entered Balliol College, Oxford. There in the following year he gained a Glasgow Snell exhibition. He graduated in 1860 with 1st-class honours in the final classical school. Initially Oxford pleased him, but disenchantment and bitterness followed, although he conceived a lasting admiration for Benjamin Jowett, then tutor of his college, and formed many enduring friendships, with (among other undergraduates of Balliol) George Rankine Luke (afterwards senior student and tutor of Christ Church, whose premature death by drowning in the Isis in 1862 was mourned by Nichol in a passionate sonnet); Thomas Hill Green; Albert Venn (now Professor) Dicey;, and Algernon Charles Swinburne.

With these and a few kindred "spirits of flame" from other colleges Nichol formed in 1856-1857 the Old Mortality Society, for the purpose of seriously discussing literary and other topics. It is said that members of the society showed a "marked tendency towards professorial positions;" but few literary and philosophical societies of the kind have better vindicated their transitory fame (Professor Dicey, ap. Knight, 147).

Nichol's studies at Oxford took a philosophical rather than a linguistic direction; and owing probably to the defects of his early training he never became a very accurate scholar. A few months after he had gained his first class he lost his father ; but, in accordance with the paternal wish, he became on 12 November 1859 a member of Gray's Inn. He seems never to have been actually called to the bar.

After earning a B.A. (he declined to proceed to an M.A. until 1874, after the abolition of university tests), he resided at Oxford, successfully engaging in the work of a 'philosophical coach for greats.' This he carried on at intervals, latterly chiefly by vacation parties, till 1873. But already in 1859 he was intent upon securing a Scottish professorial chair.

While a candidate for the professorship of logic and English literature at St. Andrews in 1859, he privately printed a volume of Fragments of Criticism (Edinburgh, 1860), consisting of condensed Oxford lectures on ancient philosophy and of English literary criticisms, partly reprinted from the Westminster Review and from university periodicals, especially the audacious Undergraduate Papers. The volume included noticeable estimates of Carlyle, whose influence Nichol in these days reflected with striking force; Tennyson; Browning, in the tardy popularization of whose work Nichol was pre-eminently instrumental; and his intimate friend, Sydney Thompson Dobell, to whose Poems (1875) and Thoughts on Art, Philosophy, and Religion (1876) he afterwards wrote introductions, accompanied, in the former instance, by a memoir.

On 10 April 1861 he married Jane Stewart, eldest daughter of Henry Glassford Bell, afterwards sheriff of Lanarkshire. The marriage, from which were born a son and 2 daughters, was a union of perfect happiness.

At Glasgow

In April 1862, a year after his marriage, Nichol was appointed by the crown to the newly established chair of English language and literature in the university of Glasgow. This post he filled till his resignation of it in 1889. In the interval, from various motives chiefly from an ineradicable restlessness of disposition he was an unsuccessful candidate for several other educational posts; but his success as a professor at Glasgow was from first to last extraordinary.

He was a brilliant example of a genuinely Scottish type of academical teacher, who had assimilated the enlightened spirit of Oxford. It was his habit to write out his lectures with extreme care, and to subject them to incessant revision. Several of his pupils subsequently attained literary distinction; but more important was the general influence, incalculable alike in breadth and depth, exercised by him during a quarter of a century upon the progress of culture among the general body of his students.

2 of the earlier of Nichol's occasional courses on English literature (in 1868 and 1869) were, at Jowett's request, redelivered at Oxford. From 1866 he was counted among the most distinguished pioneers of the movement afterwards known as university extension, and he lectured with conspicuous success in many English and Scottish towns. Indeed, as a popular lecturer on literature he had in his day few, if any, rivals.

His activity was not, however, exhausted by his work of this sort at home and abroad. He was associated with his friend, Professor Knight of St. Andrews, in the foundation in 1867 of the New Speculative Society, which held its inaugural meeting at his house in Glasgow, and was afterwards divided into 3 branches (at Glasgow, Edinburgh, and St. Andrews respectively).

He was also keenly interested in politics. In his youth his foreign politics had been coloured by his father's intimacy with Kossuth and Mazzini, both of whom he afterwards came to know personally. As an Oxford undergraduate he had warmly sympathised with the north in the great American civil war. In course of time his political sentiments took a pronouncedly conservative hue; but in matters ecclesiastical he always remained a consistent liberal. He was warmly interested in educational politics, and addresses delivered by him on national education (Glasgow, 1869), and on university reform (Glasgow, 1888), attested the vigour of his public utterances.

In the autumn of 1865 Nichol paid a visit to the United States, where he made the personal acquaintance of Emerson and Longfellow. In later years he was a frequent visitor to the continent, while other long vacations were devoted to literary work in Scottish country retreats.

Besides an admirable historical review of "American Literature" for the Encyclopædia Britannica, 1882 (reprinted in a revised and enlarged edition, 1885), Nichol contributed to T.H. Ward's English Poets from 1880, and to many reviews and journals. He endeavoured to meet some of the requirements of his teaching of literature by his Tables of European Literature (Glasgow, 1876, and later editions, that of 1888 including 'America') and Tables of Ancient Literature (Glasgow, 1877), as well as by his Primer of English Composition (1879), and his Questions and Answers on the same (1890).

Last years

On resigning his chair at Glasgow in 1889, Nichol spent much time abroad; but in the autumn of 1890 he settled definitively in London, ultimately in Kensington. In November 1891 he revisited Glasgow, on the occasion of the presentation of his portrait by Mr. Orchardson, R.A., and delivered a characteristic address to the subscribers, mostly members of the university. In London, while his pen remained active, he occasionally lectured in public.

The death of his wife in January 1894 broke the mainspring of his powers, and he died on 11 October of the same year. He was cremated 4 days afterwards at Woking, his ashes being taken to St. George's cemetery, Edinburgh, where she had been laid to rest.

Writing

From beginning to end Nichol's chief ambition was a literary eminence which he never realized, and, owing to a constitutional nervousness rather than to vanity, he nursed the delusion that his literary claims were belittled by a critical clique. But if as a poet he missed fame, he vindicated his right to a high place among writers of spirited, sincere, and thoughtful verse.

His historical drama, Hannibal (Glasgow, 1873), remained his most notable original effort in poetry. The Death of Themistocles, and other poems (Glasgow, 1881) added a fine dramatic fragment of a cognate kind, with which was printed a selection of lyrics full of fire and intensity.

If, as Jowett said, Nichol's prose style "bristled too much," it was often tipped with fire. As a critic he was distinguished by independence of judgment founded on philosophic thought, and by perfect fearlessness of sympathy. His chief critical works were his Byron in the 'English Men of Letters' series (1880), which went some way towards converting Swinburne from his unduly deprecatory opinion of that poet; his Robert Burns: A summary of his career and genius (Edinburgh, 1882), which was designed as an introduction to Paterson's library edition, and proved one of the most finished in form as well as concentrated in treatment of all Nichol's prose productions; his Francis Bacon (2 vols., "Life" and "Philosophy," in 'Blackwood's Philosophical Classics for English Readers,' 1888-9); and Carlyle, the fruit of a life's intellectual and moral sympathy ('English Men of Letters' series, 1892).

Recognition

In 1873 the University of St. Andrews conferred on Nichol the honorary degree of LL.D.

Nichol's portrait was presented to the University of Glasgow in 1891, and a window in Bute Hall was dedicated to him.

The Nichol Memorial Prize was founded in 1895 by his sister, Lucy Jack.

Publications

Poetry

• Leaves. Edinburgh: privately published, printed by Ballantyne, 1854.
• The Death of Themistocles, and other poems. Glasgow: J. Maclehose, 1881.

Play

• Hannibal: A historical drama. Glasgow: J. Maclehose, 1873.

Non-fiction

• Fragments of Criticism. Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1860.
• Address on National Education. Glasgow: J. Maclehose, 1869.
• Tables of European Literature and History, A.D. 200-1876. Glasgow: J. Maclehose, 1877.
• Tables of Ancient Literature and History. B.C. 1500- A.D. 200. Glasgow: J. Maclehose, 1877.
• English Composition. London: Macmillan, 1879; New York: Appleton, 1879.
• Byron]. London: Macmillan (English Men of Letters), 1880; New York: Harper, 1880.
• Robert Burns: A summary of his career and genius. Edinburgh: W. Paterson, 1882; Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1896.
• American Literature: An historical sketch, 1620-1880. Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1882; Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1972.
• Francis Bacon: His life and philosophy (2 volumes), Edinburgh: Wm. Blackwood (Philosophical Classics for English Readers) 1888; Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1888. Volume I
• Tables of European History, Literature, and Art; from A.D. 200 to 1882; and of American history, literature, and art. Glasgow: J. Maclehose, 1884; New York: Macmillan, 1888.
• Questions and Exercises on English Composition. London & New York: Macmillan, 1890.
• Thomas Carlyle. London: Macmillan (English Men of Letters), 1892; New York: Harper, 1892.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Articles by John Nichol

• Sydney Dobell: Critical introduction

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Ward, Adoplphus William (1901). "Nichol, John (1833-1894)". In Sidney Lee. Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement​. 3. London: Smith, Elder. pp. 225-227. . Wikisource, Web, Feb. 25, 2017.

External links

Poems

• Nichol in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "Mare Mediterraneum," "H.W.L."

About

• Nichol, John in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• John Nichol at the University of Glasgow Story

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement (edited by Sidney Lee)​. London: Smith, Elder, 1901. Original article is at: Nichol, John (1833-1894)