character of A.’s views, however, led to its stoppage in deference to the authorities of the Church.  He, however, maintained a lifelong opposition to the Ultramontane party in the Church, and in 1874 controverted their position in four letters to The Times which were described as the most crushing argument against them which ever appeared in so condensed a form.  A.’s contributions to literature were few, and, in comparison with his extraordinary learning, comparatively unimportant.  He wrote upon Cardinal Wolsey (1877) and German Schools of History (1886).  He was extremely modest, and the loftiness of his ideals of accuracy and completeness of treatment led him to shrink from tasks which men of far slighter equipment might have carried out with success.  His learning and his position as a universally acknowledged master in his subject were recognised by his appointment in 1895 as Professor of Modern History at Cambridge.  Perhaps his most valuable services to historical literature were his laying down the lines of the great Cambridge Modern History, and his collection of a library of 60,000 vols., which after his death was purchased by an American millionaire and presented to Lord Morley of Blackburn, who placed it in the University of Cambridge.

ADAMNAN, ST. (625?-704).—­Historian, b. in Donegal, became Abbot of Iona in 679.  Like other Irish churchmen he was a statesman as well as an ecclesiastic, and appears to have been sent on various political missions.  In the great controversy on the subject of the holding of Easter, he sided with Rome against the Irish Church.  He left the earliest account we have of the state of Palestine in the early ages of the Church; but of even more value is his Vita Sancti Columbae, giving a minute account of the condition and discipline of the church of Iona.  He d. 704.

ADAMS, FRANCIS, W.L. (1862-1893).—­Novelist, was b. at Malta, and ed. at schools at Shrewsbury and in Paris.  In 1882 he went to Australia, and was on the staff of The Sydney Bulletin.  In 1884 he publ. his autobiographical novel, Leicester, and in 1888 Songs of the Army of the Night, which created a sensation in Sydney.  His remaining important work is Tiberius (1894), a striking drama in which a new view of the character of the Emperor is presented.  He d. by his own hand at Alexandria in a fit of depression caused by hopeless illness.

ADDISON, JOSEPH (1672-1719).—­Poet, essayist and statesman, was the s. of Lancelot Addison, Dean of Lichfield. B. near Amesbury, Wilts., A. went to the Charterhouse where he made the acquaintance of Steele (q.v.), and then at the age of fifteen to Oxford where he had a distinguished career, being specially noted for his Latin verse.  Intended at first for the Church, various circumstances combined to lead him towards literature and politics.  His first attempts in English verse took the form