expected his own views to be advocated in the journal. In consequence, when the three years during which he had undertaken to superintend the ‘Daily News’ came to an end, Dilke withdrew from its management. It was not till several years afterwards that, by resuming his policy and reducing its price to a penny, the journal succeeded in obtaining the assured position it has held for the last seventeen years.
A third period in Dilke's career began with his retirement from newspaper management, and the articles on which his reputation rests are all of them subsequent to 1847. While editing the ‘Athenæum’ he had on principle avoided writing in it; having ceased to edit it he became a contributor. Although he preserved his early partiality for the Elizabethan drama—a couple of articles on Shakespeare were among his later contributions to the paper—he had studied the literary history of the seventeenth century, and still more carefully that of the eighteenth. The mystery attaching to the authorship of the ‘Letters of Junius’ especially fascinated him, and he acquired with his wonted thoroughness a knowledge of everything bearing on the problem that none of his contemporaries could rival. Unlike other students of the riddle, he was not so anxious to find out who Junius was as to show who he was not; and although he is said to have had his own ideas of the identity of the unknown, his published criticisms were entirely destructive. He commenced in the ‘Athenæum’ of July 1848 by demolishing Britton's theory that Colonel Barré was Junius, and in the course of the five following years he wrote a series of reviews which form the most weighty contribution to the perennial controversy that has yet appeared. The study of Junius led inevitably to the study of Burke and Wilkes, and he was the first to rescue Wilkes from the obloquy that attached to his name. He also became the apologist of Peter Pindar.
To Dilke's papers on Junius succeeded his articles on Pope. He had been long interested in Pope, but his investigations were much aided by the purchase by the British Museum in 1853 of the Caryll papers, which revealed the manner in which Pope prepared his correspondence for publication. In a series of contributions to the ‘Athenæum’ and ‘Notes and Queries’ Dilke was able to explain the mystery of the publication of the letters by Curll, to make clear the poet's parentage, to settle several matters in his early life, to identify the ‘Unfortunate Lady,’ and in various other points to throw fresh light on Pope's career and his poetry. These articles brought the writer into controversy with Peter Cunningham, the late Mr. Carruthers, Mr. Kerslake, and other students of Pope, but his conclusions remained unshaken by his assailants, and have been adopted by Mr. Elwin and Mr. Courthope in their elaborate edition of Pope, an edition in which Dilke was invited to take part, but owing to his advancing years he was obliged to decline. One of his last articles in the ‘Athenæum’ was devoted to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her quarrel with Pope, an article prompted by the appearance of Mr. Moy Thomas's edition of her works in 1861.
In his later life the affairs of the Literary Fund occupied a large part of Dilke's attention. As early as 1836 he began to scrutinise the management of the fund; but it was not till 1849 that the controversy became open and violent. In 1858 he joined with Dickens and Forster in the manifesto called ‘The Case of the Reformers of the Literary Fund,’ which will be found in the ‘Athenæum’ for 6 March of that year. The reformers, although they had the best of the argument, had the worst of the voting, and, finding it impossible to convert their minority into a majority, they attempted, with the aid of Lord Lytton, to found the Guild of Art and Literature, a scheme which did not meet with the success anticipated.
Dilke in 1862 withdrew altogether from London and settled at Alice Holt in Hampshire, where he died after a few days' illness on 10 Aug. 1864. The best comments on his character and his literary work were those of his old friend Thoms in ‘Notes and Queries:’ ‘The distinguishing feature of his character was his singular love of truth, and his sense of its value and importance, even in the minutest points and questions of literary history.’
[The articles on Pope, Junius, &c. of Dilke were collected and published in 1875, under the title of ‘Papers of a Critic,’ by the present Sir C. W. Dilke, who prefixed to them a memoir of his grandfather, from which the facts of the above notice have been derived.]
DILKE, Sir CHARLES WENTWORTH (1810–1869), the son of Charles Wentworth Dilke [q. v.], was born in 1810. He was educated at Westminster School and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, taking his degree in 1834. He became connected with the Royal Horticultural Society, and, along with Professor Lindley, founded the ‘Gardener's Chronicle.’ He was also an active member of the Society of Arts, and was for several years chairman of its council. He was among the first to propose the International Exhibition of 1851, and, as one of the executive committee, he worked with more zeal and persistence than
