SYMONDS, JOHN ADDINGTON English critic and poet, was born at Bristol, on Oct. 5, 1840. He was the only son of John Addington Symonds, M.D. (1807-71), and was educated at Harrow and at Balliol college, Oxford, where he won many distinctions. In 1862 he became a fellow of Magdalen. His health broke down under the strain of study, and he went to Switzerland to recuperate. There he met Janet Catherine North, whom he married in 1864. They lived at Clifton, where he lec tured in the well-known schools. At Clifton he wrote his Intro duction to the Study of Dante (1872) and his admirably vivid Studies of the Greek Poets (1873-76). Meanwhile he was occu pied upon his Renaissance in Italy (7 vols., 1875-86), which re mains a classic authority in English on its subject. His work, how ever, was again interrupted by illness, and in 1877 his life was in acute danger. He recovered at Davos Platz, and from that time
onwards he practically made his home there.
His works written in his Swiss exile include biographies of Shelley (1878), Sir Philip Sidney (i886), Ben Jonson (1886), and Michelangelo (1893), several volumes of poetry and of essays, and a fine translation of the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (1887). There, too, he completed his study of the Renais sance, the work by which he will be longest remembered. For many years he spent the autumn in the house of his friend, Horatio F. Brown, on the Zattare, in Venice. He died at Rome on April 19, 1893, and was buried close to Shelley.
See Horatio F. Brown, Life of John Addington Symonds (from his letters) (2 vols., 1895), and V. W. Brooks, Biographical Study of John Addington Symonds (59'4).