VOLUME XV SLICE VI Justinian II. to Kells (continued 11)

A selection from his writings and addresses was edited by Maurice Francis Egan under the title Onward and Upward: A Year Book (Baltimore, 1902).

KEARNEY, a city and the county-seat of Buffalo county, Nebraska, U.S.A., about 130 m. W. of Lincoln. Pop. (1890), 8074; (1900), 5634 (650 foreign-born); (1910), 6202. It is on the main overland line of the Union Pacific, and on a branch of the Burlington & Missouri River railroad. The city is situated in the broad, flat bottom-lands a short distance N. of the Platte River. Lake Kearney, in the city, has an area of 40 acres. The surrounding region is rich farming land, devoted especially to the growing of alfalfa and Indian corn. At Kearney are a State Industrial School for boys, a State Normal School, the Kearney Military Academy, and a Carnegie library. Good water-power is provided by a canal from the Platte River about 17 m. above Kearney, and the city’s manufactures include foundry and machine-shop products, flour and bricks. Kearney Junction, as Kearney was called from 1872 to 1875, was settled a year before the two railways actually formed their junction here, where the city was planned. Kearney became a town in 1873, a city of the second class and the county seat in 1874, and a city of the first class in 1901. It is to be distinguished from an older and once famous prairie city, popularly known as “Dobey Town” (i.e. Adobe), founded in the early ’fifties on the edge of the reservation of old Fort Kearney (removed in 1848 from Nebraska City), in Kearney county, on the S. shore of the Platte about 6 m. S.E. of the present Kearney; here in 1861 the post office of Kearney City was established. In the days of the prairie freighting caravans Dobey Town was one of the most important towns between Independence, Missouri, and the Pacific coast, and it had a rough, wild, picturesque history; but it lost its immense freighting interests after the Union Pacific had been extended through it in 1866. The site of Dobey Town, together with the Fort, was abandoned in 1871. Fort Kearney and the city too were named in honour of General Stephen W. Kearny, and the name was at first correctly spelt without a second “e.”

KEARNY, PHILIP (1815-1862), American soldier, was born in New York on the 2nd of June 1815, and was originally intended for the legal profession. He graduated at Columbia University (1833), but his bent was decidedly towards soldiering, and in 1837 he obtained a commission in the cavalry regiment of which his uncle, (General) Stephen Watts Kearny (1794-1848), was colonel and Lieutenant Jefferson Davis adjutant. Two years later he was sent to France to study the methods of cavalry training in vogue there. Before his return to the United States in 1840 he had served, on leave, in Algeria. He had inherited a large fortune, but he remained in the service, and his wide experience of cavalry work caused him to be employed on the headquarters staff of the army. After six more years’ service Kearny left the army, but almost immediately afterwards he rejoined, bringing with him a company of cavalry, which he had raised and equipped chiefly at his own expense, to take part in the Mexican war. In December 1846 he was promoted captain. In leading a brilliant cavalry charge at Churubusco he lost his left arm, but he remained at the front, and won the brevet of major for his gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco. In 1851 he again resigned, to travel round the world. He saw further active service with his old comrades of the French cavalry in the Italian war of 1859, and received the cross of the Legion of Honour for his conduct at Solferino. Up to the outbreak of the American Civil War he lived in Paris, but early in 1861 he hastened home to join the Federal army. At first as a brigade commander and later as a divisional commander of infantry in the Army of the Potomac, he infused into his men his own cavalry spirit of dash and bravery. At Williamsburg, Seven Pines, and Second Bull Run, he displayed his usual romantic courage, but at Chantilly (Sept. 1, 1862), after repulsing an attack of the enemy, he rode out in the dark too far to the front, and mistaking the Confederates for his own men was shot dead. His body was sent to the Federal lines with a message from General Lee, and was buried in Trinity Churchyard, New York. His commission as major-general of volunteers was dated July 4, 1862, but he never received it.

See J. W. de Peyster, Personal and Military History of Philip Kearny (New York, 1869).

KEARNY, a town of Hudson county, New Jersey, U.S.A., between the Passaic and Hackensack rivers, adjoining Harrison, and connected with Newark by bridges over the Passaic. Pop. (1900), 10,896, of whom 3597 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 18,659. The New York & Greenwood Lake division of the Erie railroad has a station at Arlington, the principal village (in the N.W. part), which contains attractive residences of Newark, Jersey City and New York City business men. The town covers an area of about 7 sq. m., including a large tract of marsh-land. In Kearny are railway repair shops of the Pennsylvania system, and a large abattoir; and there are numerous manufactures. The value of the town’s factory products increased from $1,607,002 in 1900 to $4,427,904 in 1905, or 175.5%. Among its institutions are the State Soldiers’ Home, removed here from Newark in 1880, a Carnegie library, two Italian homes for orphans, and a Catholic Industrial School for boys.

The neck of land between the Passaic and the Hackensack rivers, for 7 m. N. from where they unite, was purchased from the proprietors of East Jersey and from the Indians by Captain William Sandford in 1668 and through Nathaniel Kingsland, sergeant-major of Barbadoes, received the name “New Barbadoes.” After the town under this name had been extended considerably to the northward, the town of Lodi was formed out of the S. portion in 1825, the town of Harrison was founded out of the S. portion of Lodi in 1840, and in 1867 a portion of Harrison was set apart as a township and named in honour of General Philip Kearny, a former resident. Kearny was incorporated as a town in 1895.

KEARY, ANNIE (1825-1879), English novelist, was born near Wetherby, Yorkshire, on the 3rd of March 1825, the daughter of an Irish clergyman. She was the author of several children’s books and novels, of which the best known is Castle Daly, an Irish story. She also wrote an Early Egyptian History (1861) and The Nation Around (1870). She died at Eastbourne on the 3rd of March 1879.

KEATE, JOHN (1773-1852), English schoolmaster, was born at Wells, Somersetshire, in 1773, the son of Prebendary William Keate. He was educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, where he had a brilliant career as a scholar; taking holy orders, he became, about 1797, an assistant master at Eton College. In 1809 he was elected headmaster. The discipline of the school was then in a most unsatisfactory condition, and Dr Keate (who took the degree of D.D. in 1810) took stern measures to improve it. His partiality for the birch became a by-word, but he succeeded in restoring order and strengthening the weakened authority of the masters. Beneath an outwardly rough manner the little man concealed a really kind heart, and when he retired in 1834, the boys, who admired his courage, presented him with a handsome testimonial. A couple of years before he had publicly flogged eighty boys on one day. Keate was made a canon of Windsor in 1820. He died on the 5th of March 1852 at Hartley Westpall, Hampshire, of which parish he had been rector since 1824.

See Maxwell Lyte, History of Eton College (3rd ed., 1899); Collins, Etoniana; Harwood, Alumni Etonienses; Annual Register (1852); Gentleman’s Magazine (1852).

KEATS, JOHN (1795-1821), English poet, was born on the 29th or 31st of October 1795 at the sign of the Swan and Hoop, 24 The Pavement, Moorfields, London. He published his first volume of verse in 1817, his second in the following year, his third in 1820, and died of consumption at Rome on the 23rd of February 1821 in the fourth month of his twenty-sixth year. (For the biographical facts see the later section of this article.)

In Keats’s first book there was little foretaste of anything greatly or even genuinely good; but between the marshy and sandy flats of sterile or futile verse there were undoubtedly some few purple patches of floral promise. The style was frequently detestable—a mixture of sham Spenserian and mock Wordsworthian, alternately florid and arid. His second book, Endymion, rises in its best passages to the highest level of Barnfield and of Lodge, the two previous poets with whom, had he published nothing more, he might most properly have been classed; and this, among minor minstrels, is no unenviable place. His third book raised him at once to a foremost rank in the highest class of English poets. Shelley, up to twenty, had written little or nothing that would have done credit to a boy of ten; and of Keats also it may be said that the merit of his work at twenty-five was hardly by comparison more wonderful than its demerit at twenty-two. His first book fell as flat as it deserved to fall; the reception of his second, though less considerate than on the whole it deserved, was not more contemptuous than that of immeasurably better books published about the same time by Coleridge, Landor and Shelley. A critic of exceptional carefulness and candour might have noted in the first book so singular an example of a stork among the cranes as the famous and notable sonnet on Chapman’s Homer; a just judge would have indicated, a partial advocate might have exaggerated, the value of such golden grain amid a garish harvest of tares as the hymn to Pan and the translation into verse of Titian’s Bacchanal which glorify the weedy wilderness of Endymion. But the hardest thing said of that poem by the Quarterly reviewer was unconsciously echoed by the future author of Adonais—that it was all but absolutely impossible to read through; and the obscener insolence of the “Blackguard’s Magazine,” as Landor afterwards very justly labelled it, is explicable though certainly not excusable if we glance back at such a passage as that where Endymion exchanges fulsome and liquorish endearments with the “known unknown from whom his being sips such darling (!) essence.” Such nauseous and pitiful phrases as these, and certain passages in his correspondence, make us understand the source of the most offensive imputations or insinuations levelled against the writer’s manhood; and, while admitting that neither his love-letters, nor the last piteous outcries of his wailing and shrieking agony, would ever have been made public by merciful or respectful editors, we must also admit that, if they ought never to have been published, it is no less certain that they ought never to have been written; that a manful kind of man or even a manly sort of boy, in his love-making or in his suffering, will not howl and snivel after such a lamentable fashion. One thing hitherto inexplicable a very slight and rapid glance at his amatory correspondence will amply suffice to explain: how it came to pass that the woman so passionately beloved by so great a poet should have thought it the hopeless attempt of a mistaken kindness to revive the memory of a man for whom the best that could be wished was complete and compassionate oblivion. For the side of the man’s nature presented to her inspection, this probably was all that charity or reason could have desired. But that there was a finer side to the man, even if considered apart from the poet, his correspondence with his friends and their general evidence to his character give more sufficient proof than perhaps we might have derived from the general impression left on us by his works; though indeed the preface to Endymion itself, however illogical in its obviously implied suggestion that the poem published was undeniably unworthy of publication, gave proof or hint at least that after all its author was something of a man. And the eighteenth of his letters to Miss Brawne stands out in bright and brave contrast with such as seem incompatible with the traditions of his character on its manlier side. But if it must be said that he lived long enough only to give promise of being a man, it must also be said that he lived long enough to give assurance of being a poet who was not born to come short of the first rank. Not even a hint of such a probability could have been gathered from his first or even from his second appearance; after the publication of his third volume it was no longer a matter of possible debate among judges of tolerable competence that this improbability had become a certainty. Two or three phrases cancelled, two or three lines erased, would have left us in Lamia one of the most faultless as surely as one of the most glorious jewels in the crown of English poetry. Isabella, feeble and awkward in narrative to a degree almost incredible in a student of Dryden and a pupil of Leigh Hunt, is overcharged with episodical effects of splendid and pathetic expression beyond the reach of either. The Eve of St Agnes, aiming at no doubtful success, succeeds in evading all casual difficulty in the line of narrative; with no shadow of pretence to such interest as may be derived from stress of incident or depth of sentiment, it stands out among all other famous poems as a perfect and unsurpassable study in pure colour and clear melody—a study in which the figure of Madeline brings back upon the mind’s eye, if only as moonlight recalls a sense of sunshine, the nuptial picture of Marlowe’s Hero and the sleeping presence of Shakespeare’s Imogen. Beside this poem should always be placed the less famous but not less precious Eve of St Mark, a fragment unexcelled for the simple perfection of its perfect simplicity, exquisite alike in suggestion and in accomplishment. The triumph of Hyperion is as nearly complete as the failure of Endymion; yet Keats never gave such proof of a manly devotion and rational sense of duty to his art as in his resolution to leave this great poem unfinished; not, as we may gather from his correspondence on the subject, for the pitiful reason assigned by his publishers, that of discouragement at the reception given to his former work, but on the solid and reasonable ground that a Miltonic study had something in its very scheme and nature too artificial, too studious of a foreign influence, to be carried on and carried out at such length as was implied by his original design. Fortified and purified as it had been on a first revision, when much introductory allegory and much tentative effusion of sonorous and superfluous verse had been rigorously clipped down or pruned away, it could not long have retained spirit enough to support or inform the shadowy body of a subject so little charged with tangible significance. The faculty of assimilation as distinguished from imitation, than which there can be no surer or stronger sign of strong and sure original genius, is not more evident in the most Miltonic passages of the revised Hyperion than in the more Shakespearian passages of the unrevised tragedy which no radical correction could have left other than radically incorrigible. It is no conventional exaggeration, no hyperbolical phrase of flattery with more sound than sense in it, to say that in this chaotic and puerile play of Otho the Great there are such verses as Shakespeare might not without pride have signed at the age when he wrote and even at the age when he rewrote the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. The dramatic fragment of King Stephen shows far more power of hand and gives far more promise of success than does that of Shelley’s Charles the First. Yet we cannot say with any confidence that even this far from extravagant promise would certainly or probably have been kept; it is certain only that Keats in these attempts did at least succeed in showing a possibility of future excellence as a tragic or at least a romantic dramatist. In every other line of high and serious poetry his triumph was actual and consummate; here only was it no more than potential or incomplete. As a ballad of the more lyrical order, La Belle dame sans merci is not less absolutely excellent, less triumphantly perfect in force and clearness of impression, that as a narrative poem is Lamia. In his lines on Robin Hood, and in one or two other less noticeable studies of the kind, he has shown thorough and easy mastery of the beautiful metre inherited by Fletcher from Barnfield and by Milton from Fletcher. The simple force of spirit and style which distinguishes the genuine ballad manner from all spurious attempts at an artificial simplicity was once more at least achieved in his verses on the crowning creation of Scott’s humaner and manlier genius—Meg Merrilies. No little injustice has been done to Keats by such devotees as fix their mind’s eye only on the more salient and distinctive notes of a genius which in fact was very much more various and tentative, less limited and peculiar, than would be inferred from an exclusive study of his more specially characteristic work. But within the limits of that work must we look of course for the genuine credentials of his fame; and highest among them we must rate his unequalled and unrivalled odes. Of these perhaps the two nearest to absolute perfection, to the triumphant achievement and accomplishment of the very utmost beauty possible to human words, may be that to Autumn and that on a Grecian Urn; the most radiant, fervent and musical is that to a Nightingale; the most pictorial and perhaps the tenderest in its ardour of passionate fancy is that to Psyche; the subtlest in sweetness of thought and feeling is that on Melancholy. Greater lyrical poetry the world may have seen than any that is in these; lovelier it surely has never seen, nor ever can it possibly see. From the divine fragment of an unfinished ode to Maia we can but guess that if completed it would have been worthy of a place beside the highest. His remaining lyrics have many beauties about them, but none perhaps can be called thoroughly beautiful. He has certainly left us one perfect sonnet of the first rank and as certainly he has left us but one.

Keats has been promoted by modern criticism to a place beside Shakespeare. The faultless force and the profound subtlety of his deep and cunning instinct for the absolute expression of absolute natural beauty can hardly be questioned or overlooked; and this is doubtless the one main distinctive gift or power which denotes him as a poet among all his equals, and gives him a right to rank for ever beside Coleridge and Shelley. As a man, the two admirers who did best service to his memory were Lord Houghton and Matthew Arnold. These alone, among all of their day who have written of him without the disadvantage or advantage of a personal acquaintance, have clearly seen and shown us the manhood of the man. That ridiculous and degrading legend which imposed so strangely on the generous tenderness of Shelley, while evoking the very natural and allowable laughter of Byron, fell to dust at once for ever on the appearance of Lord Houghton’s biography, which gave perfect proof to all time that “men have died and worms have eaten them” but not for fear of critics or through suffering inflicted by reviews. Somewhat too sensually sensitive Keats may have been in either capacity, but the nature of the man was as far as was the quality of the poet above the pitiful level of a creature whose soul could “let itself be snuffed out by an article”; and, in fact, owing doubtless to the accident of a death which followed so fast on his early appearance and his dubious reception as a poet, the insolence and injustice of his reviewers in general have been comparatively and even considerably exaggerated. Except from the chief fountain-head of professional ribaldry then open in the world of literary journalism, no reek of personal insult arose to offend his nostrils; and the tactics of such unwashed malignants were inevitably suicidal; the references to his brief experiment of apprenticeship to a surgeon which are quoted from Blackwood, in the shorter as well as in the longer memoir by Lord Houghton, could leave no bad odour behind them save what might hang about men’s yet briefer recollection of his assailant’s unmemorable existence. The false Keats, therefore, whom Shelley pitied and Byron despised would have been, had he ever existed, a thing beneath compassion or contempt. That such a man could have had such a genius is almost evidently impossible; and yet more evident is the proof which remains on everlasting record that none was ever further from the chance of decline to such degradation than the real and actual man who made that name immortal.

(A. C. S.)

Subjoined are the chief particulars of Keats’s life.

He was the eldest son of Thomas Keats and his wife Frances Jennings, and was baptized at St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, on the 18th of December 1795. The entry of his baptism is supplemented by a marginal note stating that he was born on the 31st of October. Thomas Keats was employed in the Swan and Hoop livery stables, Finsbury Pavement, London. He had married his master’s daughter, and managed the business on the retirement of his father-in-law. In April 1804 Thomas Keats was killed by a fall from his horse, and within a year of this event Mrs Keats married William Rawlings, a stable-keeper. The marriage proved an unhappy one, and in 1806 Mrs Rawlings, with her children John, George, Thomas and Frances Mary (afterwards Mrs Llanos, d. 1889), went to live at Edmonton with her mother, who had inherited a considerable competence from her husband. There is evidence that Keats’s parents were by no means of the commonplace type that might be hastily inferred from these associations. They had desired to send their sons to Harrow, but John Keats and his two brothers were eventually sent to a school kept by John Clarke at Enfield, where he became intimate with his master’s son, Charles Cowden Clarke. His vivacity of temperament showed itself at school in a love of fighting, but in the last year of his school life he developed a great appetite for reading of all sorts. In 1810 he left school to be apprenticed to Mr Thomas Hammond, a surgeon in Edmonton. He was still within easy reach of his old school, where he frequently borrowed books, especially the works of Spenser and the Elizabethans. With Hammond he quarrelled before the termination of his apprenticeship, and in 1814 the connexion was broken by mutual consent. His mother had died in 1810, and in 1814 Mrs Jennings. The children were left in the care of two guardians, one of whom, Richard Abbey, seems to have made himself solely responsible. John Keats went to London to study at Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals, living at first alone at 8 Dean Street, Borough, and later with two fellow students in St Thomas’s Street. It does not appear that he neglected his medical studies, but his chief interest was turned to poetry. In March 1816 he became a dresser at Guy’s, but about the same time his poetic gifts were stimulated by an acquaintance formed with Leigh Hunt. His friendship with Benjamin Haydon, the painter, dates from later in the same year. Hunt introduced him to Shelley, who showed the younger poet a constant kindness. In 1816 Keats moved to the Poultry to be with his brothers George and Tom, the former of whom was then employed in his guardian’s counting-house, but much of the poet’s time was spent at Leigh Hunt’s cottage at Hampstead. In the winter of 1816-1817 he definitely abandoned medicine, and in the spring appeared Poems by John Keats dedicated to Leigh Hunt, and published by Charles and James Ollier. On the 14th of April he left London to find quiet for work. He spent some time at Shanklin, Isle of Wight, then at Margate and Canterbury, where he was joined by his brother Tom. In the summer the three brothers took lodgings in Well Walk, Hampstead, where Keats formed a fast friendship with Charles Wentworth Dilke and Charles Armitage Brown. In September of the same year (1817) he paid a visit to his friend, Benjamin Bailey, at Oxford, and in November he finished Endymion at Burford Bridge, near Dorking. His youngest brother had developed consumption, and in March John went to Teignmouth to nurse him in place of his brother George, who had decided to sail for America with his newly married wife, Georgiana Wylie. In May (1818) Keats returned to London, and soon after appeared Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818), bearing on the title-page as motto “The stretched metre of an antique song.” Late in June Keats and his friend Armitage Brown started on a walking tour in Scotland, vividly described in the poet’s letters. The fatigue and hardship involved proved too great a strain for Keats, who was forbidden by an Inverness doctor to continue his tour. He returned to London by boat, arriving on the 18th of August. The autumn was spent in constant attendance on his brother Tom, who died at the beginning of December. There is no doubt that he resented the attacks on him in Blackwood’s Magazine (August 1818), and the Quarterly Review (April 1818, published only in September), but his chief preoccupations were elsewhere. After his brother’s death he went to live with his friend Brown. He had already made the acquaintance of Fanny Brawne, a girl of seventeen, who lived with her mother close by. For her Keats quickly developed a consuming passion. He was in indifferent health, and, owing partly to Mr Abbey’s mismanagement, in difficulties for money. Nevertheless his best work belongs to this period. In July 1819 he went to Shanklin, living with James Rice. They were soon joined by Brown. The next two months Keats spent with Brown at Winchester, enjoying an interval of calmness due to his absence from Fanny Brawne. At Winchester he completed Lamia and Otho the Great, which he had begun in conjunction with Brown, and began his historical tragedy of King Stephen. Before Christmas he had returned to London and his bondage to Fanny. In January 1820 his brother George paid a short visit to London, but received no confidence from him. The fatal nature of Keats’s illness showed itself on the 3rd of February, but in March he recovered sufficiently to be present at the private view of Haydon’s picture of “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem.” In May he removed to a lodging in Wesleyan Place, Kentish Town, to be near Leigh Hunt who eventually took him into his house. In July appeared his third and last book, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and other Poems (1820). Keats left the Hunts abruptly in August in consequence of a delay in receiving one of Fanny Brawne’s letters which had been broken open by a servant. He went to Wentworth Place, where he was taken in by the Brawnes. The suggestion that he should spend the winter in Italy was followed up by an invitation from Shelley to Pisa. This, however, he refused. But on the 18th of September 1820 he set out for Naples in company with Joseph Severn, the artist, who had long been his friend. The travellers settled in the Piazza de Spagna, Rome. Keats was devotedly tended by Dr (afterwards Sir) James Clarke and Severn, and died on the 23rd of February 1821. He was buried on the 27th in the old Protestant cemetery, near the pyramid of Cestius.

Bibliography.—Keats’s friends provided the material for the authoritative biography of the poet by Richard Monckton Milnes (afterwards Lord Houghton) entitled Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats (1848; revised ed., 1867). The Poetical Works of John Keats were issued with a memoir by R. M. Milnes in 1854, 1863, 1865, 1866, 1867, and in the Aldine edition, 1876. The standard edition of Keats is The Poetical Works and other Writings of John Keats now first brought together, including Poems and numerous Letters not before published, edited with notes and appendices by Harry Buxton Forman (4 vols., 1883; re-issue with corrections and additions, 1889). Of the many other editions of Keats’s poems may be mentioned that in the Muses’ Library, The Poems of John Keats (1896), edited by G. Thorn Drury with an introduction by Robert Bridges, and another by E. de Sélincourt, 1905. The Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne (1889) were edited with introduction and notes by H. Buxton Forman, and the Letters of John Keats to his Family and Friends (1891) by Sidney Colvin, who is also the author of the monograph, Keats (1887), in the English Men of Letters Series. See also The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the Writings of the late Charles Wentworth Dilke (1875), and for further bibliographical information and particulars of MS. sources the “Editor’s Preface,” &c. to a reprint edited by H. Buxton Forman (Glasgow, 1900). A facsimile of Keats’s autograph MS. of “Hyperion,” purchased by the British Museum in 1904, was published by E. de Sélincourt (Oxford, 1905).

(M. Br.)

KEBLE, JOHN (1792-1866), English poet and divine, the author of the Christian Year, was born on St Mark’s Day (April 25), 1792, at Fairford, Gloucestershire. He was the second child of the Rev. John Keble and his wife Sarah Maule. Descended from a family which had attained some legal eminence in the time of the Commonwealth, John Keble, the father of the poet, was vicar of Coln St Aldwyn, but lived at Fairford, about 3 m. distant from his cure. He was a clergyman of the old High Church school, whose adherents, untouched by the influence of the Wesleys, had moulded their piety on the doctrines on the non-jurors and the old Anglican divines. Himself a good scholar, he did not send his son to any school, but educated him and his brother at home so well that both obtained scholarships at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. John was elected scholar of Corpus in his fifteenth, and fellow of Oriel in his nineteenth year, April 1811. In Easter term 1810 he had obtained double first class honours, a distinction which had been obtained only once before, by Sir Robert Peel. After his election to the Oriel fellowship Keble gained the University prizes, both for the English essay and also for the Latin essay. But he was more remarkable for the rare beauty of his character than even for academic distinctions. Sir John Taylor Coleridge, his fellow scholar at Corpus and his life-long friend, says of him, after their friendship of five and fifty years had closed, “It was the singular happiness of his nature, remarkable even in his undergraduate days, that love for him was always sanctified by reverence—reverence that did not make the love less tender, and love that did but add intensity to the reverence.” Oriel College was, at the time when Keble became a fellow, the centre of all the finest ability in Oxford. Copleston, Davison, Whately, were among the fellows who elected Keble; Arnold, Pusey, Newman, were soon after added to the society. In 1815 Keble was ordained deacon, and priest in 1816. His real bent and choice were towards a pastoral cure in a country parish; but he remained in Oxford, acting first as a public examiner in the schools, then as a tutor in Oriel, till 1823. In summer he sometimes took clerical work, sometimes made tours on foot through various English counties, during which he was composing poems, which afterwards took their place in the Christian Year. He had a rare power of attracting to himself the finest spirits, a power which lay not so much in his ability or his genius as in his character, so simple, so humble, so pure, so unworldly, yet wanting not that severity which can stand by principle and maintain what he holds to be the truth. In 1823 he returned to Fairford, there to assist his father, and with his brother to serve one or two small and poorly endowed curacies in the neighbourhood of Coln. He had made a quiet but deep impression on all who came within his influence in Oxford, and during his five years of college tutorship had won the affection of his pupils. But it was to pastoral work, and not to academic duty, that he thenceforth devoted himself, associating with it, and scarcely placing on a lower level, the affectionate discharge of his duties as a son and brother. Filial piety influenced in a quite unusual degree his feelings and his action all life through. It was in 1827, a few years after he settled at Fairford, that he published the Christian Year. The poems which make up that book had been the silent gathering of years. Keble had purposed in his own mind to keep them beside him, correcting and improving them, as long as he lived, and to leave them to be published only “when he was fairly out of the way.” This resolution was at length overcome by the importunities of his friends, and above all by the strong desire of his father to see his son’s poems in print before he died. Accordingly they were printed in two small volumes in Oxford, and given to the world in June 1827, but with no name on the title-page. The book continued to be published anonymously, but the name of the author soon transpired.

Between 1827 and 1872 one hundred and fifty-eight editions had issued from the press, and it has been largely reprinted since. The author, so far from taking pride in his widespread reputation, seemed all his life long to wish to disconnect his name with the book, and “as if he would rather it had been the work of some one else than himself.” This feeling arose from no false modesty. It was because he knew that in these poems he had painted his own heart, the best part of it; and he doubted whether it was right thus to exhibit himself, and by the revelation of only his better self, to win the good opinion of the world.

Towards the close of 1831 Keble was elected to fill the chair of the poetry professorship in Oxford, as successor to his friend and admirer, Dean Milman. This chair he occupied for ten eventful years. He delivered a series of lectures, clothed in excellent idiomatic Latin (as was the rule), in which he expounded a theory of poetry which was original and suggestive. He looked on poetry as a vent for overcharged feeling, or a full imagination, or some imaginative regret, which had not found their natural outlet in life and action. This suggested to him a distinction between what he called primary and secondary poets—the first employing poetry to relieve their own hearts, the second, poetic artists, composing poetry from some other and less impulsive motive. Of the former kind were Homer, Lucretius, Burns, Scott; of the latter were Euripides, Dryden, Milton. This view was set forth in an article contributed to the British Critic in 1838 on the life of Scott, and was more fully developed in two volumes of Praelectiones Academicae.

His regular visits to Oxford kept him in intercourse with his old friends in Oriel common room, and made him familiar with the currents of feeling which swayed the university. Catholic emancipation and the Reform Bill had deeply stirred, not only the political spirit of Oxford, but also the church feeling which had long been stagnant. Cardinal Newman writes, “On Sunday July 14, 1833, Mr Keble preached the assize sermon in the University pulpit. It was published under the title of National Apostasy. I have ever considered and kept the day as the start of the religious movement of 1833.” The occasion of this sermon was the suppression, by Earl Grey’s Reform ministry, of ten Irish bishoprics. Against the spirit which would treat the church as the mere creature of the state Keble had long chafed inwardly, and now he made his outward protest, asserting the claim of the church to a heavenly origin and a divine prerogative. About the same time, and partly stimulated by Keble’s sermon, some leading spirits in Oxford and elsewhere began a concerted and systematic course of action to revive High Church principles and the ancient patristic theology, and by these means both to defend the church against the assaults of its enemies, and also to raise to a higher tone the standard of Christian life in England. This design embodied itself in the Tractarian movement, a name it received from the famous Tracts for the Times, which were the vehicle for promulgating the new doctrines. If Keble is to be reckoned, as Newman would have it, as the primary author of the movement, it was from Pusey that it received one of its best known names, and in Newman that it soon found its genuine leader. To the tracts Keble made only four contributions:—No. 4, containing an argument, in the manner of Bishop Butler, to show that adherence to apostolical succession is the safest course; No. 13, which explains the principle on which the Sunday lessons in the church service are selected; No. 40, on marriage with one who is unbaptized; No. 89, on the mysticism attributed to the early fathers of the church. Besides these contributions from his own pen, he did much for the series by suggesting subjects, by reviewing tracts written by others, and by lending to their circulation the weight of his personal influence.

In 1835 Keble’s father died at the age of ninety, and soon after this his son married Miss Clarke, left Fairford, and settled at Hursley vicarage in Hampshire, a living to which he had been presented by his friend and attached pupil, Sir William Heathcote, and which continued to be Keble’s home and cure for the remainder of his life.

In 1841 the tracts were brought to an abrupt termination by the publication of Newman’s tract No. 90. All the Protestantism of England was in arms against the author of the obnoxious tract. Keble came forward at the time, desirous to share the responsibility and the blame, if there was any; for he had seen the tract before it was published, and approved it. The same year in which burst this ecclesiastical storm saw the close of Keble’s tenure of the professorship of poetry, and thenceforward he was seen but rarely in Oxford. No other public event ever affected Keble so deeply as the secession of Newman to the Church of Rome in 1845. It was to him both a public and a private sorrow, which nothing could repair. But he did not lose heart; at once he threw himself into the double duty, which now devolved on himself and Pusey, of counselling the many who had hitherto followed the movement, and who, now in their perplexity, might be tempted to follow their leader’s example, and at the same time of maintaining the rights of the church against what he held to be the encroachments of the state, as seen in such acts as the Gorham judgment, and the decision on Essays and Reviews. In all the ecclesiastical contests of the twenty years which followed 1845, Keble took a part, not loud or obtrusive, but firm and resolute, in maintaining those High Anglican principles with which his life had been identified. These absorbing duties, added to his parochial work, left little time for literature. But in 1846 he published the Lyra Innocentium; and in 1863 he completed a life of Bishop Wilson.

In the late autumn of the latter year, Keble left Hursley for the sake of his wife’s health, and sought the milder climate of Bournemouth. There he had an attack of paralysis, from which he died on the 29th of March 1866. He was buried in his own churchyard at Hursley; and in little more than a month his wife was laid by her husband’s side.

Keble also published A Metrical Version of the Psalter (1839), Lyra Innocentium (1846), and a volume of poems was published posthumously. But it is by the Christian Year that he won the ear of the religious world. It was a happy thought that dictated the plan of the book, to furnish a meditative religious lyric for each Sunday of the year, and for each saint’s day and festival of the English Church. The subject of each poem is generally suggested by some part of the lessons or the gospel or the epistle for the day. One thing which gives these poems their strangely unique power is the sentiment to which they appeal, and the saintly character of the poet who makes the appeal, illumining more or less every poem.

The intimacy with the Bible which is manifest in the pages of the Christian Year; and the unobtrusive felicity with which Biblical sentiments and language are introduced have done much to endear these poems to all Bible readers. “The exactness of the descriptions of Palestine, which Keble had never visited, have been noted, and verified on the spot,” by Dean Stanley. He points to features of the lake of Gennesareth, which were first touched in the Christian Year; and he observes that throughout the book “the Biblical scenery is treated graphically as real scenery, and the Biblical history and poetry as real history and poetry.”

As to its style, the Christian Year is calm and grave in tone, and subdued in colour, as beseems its subjects and sentiments. The contemporary poets whom Keble most admired were Scott, Wordsworth and Southey; and of their influence traces are visible in his diction. Yet he has a style of language and a cadence of his own, which steal into the heart with strangely soothing power. Some of the poems are faultless, after their kind, flowing from the first stage to the last, lucid in thought, vivid in diction, harmonious in their pensive melody. In others there are imperfections in rhythm, conventionalities of language, obscurities or over-subtleties of thought, which mar the reader’s enjoyment. Yet even the most defective poems commonly have, at least, a single verse, expressing some profound thought or tender shade of feeling, for which the sympathetic reader willingly pardons artistic imperfections in the rest.

Keble’s life was written by his life-long friend Mr Justice J. T. Coleridge. The following is a complete list of his writings:—1. Works published in Keble’s lifetime: Christian Year (1827); Psalter (1839); Praelectiones Academicae (1844); Lyra Innocentium (1846); Sermons Academical (1848); Argument against Repeal of Marriage Law, and Sequel (1857); Eucharistical Adoration (1857); Life of Bishop Wilson (1863); Sermons Occasional and Parochial (1867). 2. Posthumous publications: Village Sermons on the Baptismal Service (1868); Miscellaneous Poems (1869); Letters of Spiritual Counsel (1870); Sermons for the Christian Year, &c. (11 vols., 1875-1880); Occasional Papers and Reviews (1877); Studia Sacra (1877); Outlines of Instruction or Meditation (1880).

KECSKEMÉT, a town of Hungary, in the county of Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun, 65 m. S.S.E. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900), 56,786. Kecskemét is a poorly built and straggling town, situated in the extensive Kecskemét plain. It contains monasteries belonging to the Piarist and Franciscan orders, a Catholic (founded in 1714), a Calvinistic and a Lutheran school. The manufacture of soap and leather are the principal industries. Besides the raising of cereals, fruit is extensively cultivated in the surrounding district; its apples and apricots are largely exported, large quantities of wine are produced, and cattle-rearing constitutes another great source of revenue. Kecskemét was the birthplace of the Hungarian dramatist József Katona (1792-1830), author of the historical drama, Bánk-Bán (1815).

KEDDAH (from Hindu Khedna, to chase), the term, used in India for the enclosure constructed to entrap elephants. In Ceylon the word employed in the same meaning is corral.

KEDGEREE (Hindostani, khichri), an Indian dish, composed of boiled rice and various highly-flavoured ingredients. Kedgeree is of two kinds, white and yellow. The white is made with grain, onions, ghee (clarified butter), cloves, pepper and salt. Yellow kedgeree includes eggs, and is coloured by turmeric. Kedgeree is a favourite and universal dish in India; among the poorer classes it is frequently made of rice and pulse only, or rice and beans. In European cookery kedgeree is a similar dish usually made with fish.

KEEL, the bottom timber or combination of plates of a ship or boat, extending longitudinally from bow to stern, and supporting the framework (see Ship-building). The origin of the word has been obscured by confusion of two words, the Old Norwegian kjole (cf. Swedish köl) and a Dutch and German kiel. The first had the meaning of the English “keel,” the other of ship, boat. The modern usage in Dutch and German has approximated to the English. The word kiel is represented in old English by céol, a word applied to the long war galleys of the Vikings, in which sense “keel” or “keele” is still used by archaeologists. On the Tyne “keel” is the name given to a flat-bottomed vessel used to carry coals to the colliers. There is another word “keel,” meaning to cool, familiar in Shakespeare (Love’s Labour Lost, v. ii. 930), “while greasy Joan doth keel the pot,” i.e. prevents a pot from boiling over by pouring in cold water, &c., stirring or skimming. This is from the Old English célan, to cool, a common Teutonic word, cf. German kühlen.

KEELEY, MARY ANNE (1806-1899), English actress, was born at Ipswich on the 22nd of November 1805 or 1806. Her maiden name was Goward, her father being a brazier and tinman. After some experience in the provinces, she first appeared on the stage in London on the 2nd of July 1825, in the opera Rosina. It was not long before she gave up “singing parts” in favour of the drama proper, where her powers of character-acting could have scope. In June 1829 she married Robert Keeley (1793-1869), an admirable comedian, with whom she had often appeared. Between 1832 and 1842 they acted at Covent Garden, at the Adelphi with Buckstone, at the Olympic with Charles Mathews, and at Drury Lane with Macready. In 1836 they visited America. In 1838 she made her first great success as Nydia, the blind girl, in a dramatized version of Bulwer Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii, and followed this with an equally striking impersonation of Smike in Nicholas Nickleby. In 1839 came her decisive triumph with her picturesque and spirited acting as the hero of a play founded upon Harrison Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard. So dangerous was considered the popularity of the play, with its glorification of the prison-breaking felon, that the lord chamberlain ultimately forbade the performance of any piece upon the subject. It is perhaps mainly as Jack Sheppard that Mrs Keeley lived in the memory of playgoers, despite her long subsequent career in plays more worthy of her remarkable gifts. Under Macready’s management she played Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, and Audrey in As You Like It. She managed the Lyceum with her husband from 1844 to 1847; acted with Webster and Kean at the Haymarket; returned for five years to the Adelphi; and made her last regular public appearance at the Lyceum in 1859. A public reception was given her at this theatre on her 90th birthday. She died on the 12th of March 1899.

See Walter Goodman, The Keeleys on the Stage and off (London, 1895).

KEELING ISLANDS (often called Cocos and Cocos-Keeling Islands), a group of coral islands in the Indian Ocean, between 12° 4′ and 12° 13′ S., and 96° 49′-57′ E., but including a smaller island in 11° 50′ N. and 96° 50′ E. The group furnished Charles Darwin with the typical example of an atoll or lagoon island. There are altogether twenty-three small islands, 9½ m. being the greatest width of the whole atoll. The lagoon is very shallow and the passages between many of the islands are fordable on foot. An opening on the northern side of the reef permits the entrance of vessels into the northern part of the lagoon, which forms a good harbour known as Port Refuge or Port Albion. The coco-nut (as the name Cocos Islands indicates) is the characteristic product and is cultivated on all the islands. The flora is scanty in species. One of the commonest living creatures is a monstrous crab which lives on the coco-nuts; and in some places also there are great colonies of the pomegranate crab. The group was visited by Dr H. O. Forbes in 1878, and later, at the expense of Sir John Murray, by Dr Guppy, Mr Ridley and Dr Andrews. The object of their visits was the investigation of the fauna and flora of the atoll, more especially of the formation of the coral reefs. Dr Guppy was fortunate in reaching North Keeling Island, where a landing is only possible during the calmest weather. The island he found to be about a mile long, with a shallow enclosed lagoon, less than 3 ft. deep at ordinary low water, with a single opening on its east or weather side. A dense vegetation of iron-wood (Cordia) and other trees and shrubs, together with a forest of coco-nut palms, covers its surface. It is tenanted by myriads of sea-fowl, frigate-birds, boobies, and terns (Gygis candida), which find here an excellent nesting-place, for the island is uninhabited, and is visited only once or twice a year. The excrement from this large colony has changed the carbonate of lime in the soil and the coral nodules on the surface into phosphates, to the extent in some cases of 60-70%, thus forming a valuable deposit, beneficial to the vegetation of the island itself and promising commercial value. The lagoon is slowly filling up and becoming cultivable land, but the rate of recovery from the sea has been specially marked since the eruption of Krakatoa, the pumice from which was washed on to it in enormous quantity, so that the lagoon advanced its shores from 20 to 30 yards. Forbes’s and Guppy’s investigations go to show that, contrary to Darwin’s belief, there is no evidence of upheaval or of subsidence in either of the Keeling groups.

The atoll has an exceedingly healthy climate, and might well be used as a sanatorium for phthisical patients, the temperature never reaching extremes. The highest annual reading of the thermometer hardly ever exceeds 89° F. or falls beneath 70°. The mean temperature for the year is 78.5° F., and as the rainfall rarely exceeds 40 in. the atmosphere never becomes unpleasantly moist. The south-east trade blows almost ceaselessly for ten months of the year. Terrific storms sometimes break over the island; and it has been more than once visited by earthquakes. A profitable trade is done in coco-nuts, but there are few other exports. The imports are almost entirely foodstuffs and other necessaries for the inhabitants, who form a patriarchal colony under a private proprietor.

The islands were discovered in 1609 by Captain William Keeling on his voyage from Batavia to the Cape. In 1823 Alexander Hare, an English adventurer, settled on the southernmost island with a number of slaves. Some two or three years after, a Scotchman, J. Ross, who had commanded a brig during the English occupation of Java, settled with his family (who continued in the ownership) on Direction Island, and his little colony was soon strengthened by Hare’s runaway slaves. The Dutch Government had in an informal way claimed the possession of the islands since 1829; but they refused to allow Ross to hoist the Dutch flag, and accordingly the group was taken under British protection in 1856. In 1878 it was attached to the government of Ceylon, and in 1882 placed under the authority of the governor of the Straits Settlements. The ownership and superintendency continued in the Ross family, of whom George Clunies Ross died in 1910, and was succeeded by his son Sydney.

See C. Darwin, Journal of the Voyage of the “Beagle,” and Geological Observations on Coral Reefs; also Henry O. Forbes, A Naturalist’s Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago (London, 1884); H. B. Guppy, “The Cocos-Keeling Islands,” Scottish Geographical Magazine (vol. v., 1889).

KEEL-MOULDING, in architecture, a round on which there is a small fillet, somewhat like the keel of a ship. It is common in the Early English and Decorated styles.

KEENE, CHARLES SAMUEL (1823-1891), English black-and-white artist, the son of Samuel Browne Keene, a solicitor, was born at Hornsey on the 10th of August 1823. Educated at the Ipswich Grammar School until his sixteenth year, he early showed artistic leanings. Two years after the death of his father he was articled to a London solicitor, but, the occupation proving uncongenial, he was removed to the office of an architect, Mr Pilkington. His spare time was now spent in drawing historical and nautical subjects in water-colour. For these trifles his mother, to whose energy and common sense he was greatly indebted, soon found a purchaser, through whom he was brought to the notice of the Whympers, the wood-engravers. This led to his being bound to them as apprentice for five years. His earliest known design is the frontispiece, signed “Chas. Keene,” to The Adventures of Dick Boldhero in Search of his Uncle, &c. (Darton & Co., 1842). His term of apprenticeship over, he hired as studio an attic in the block of buildings standing, up to 1900, between the Strand and Holywell Street, and was soon hard at work for the Illustrated London News. At this time he was a member of the “Artists’ Society” in Clipstone Street, afterwards removed to the Langham studios. In December 1851 he made his first appearance in Punch and, after nine years of steady work, was called to a seat at the famous table. It was during this period of probation that he first gave evidence of those transcendent qualities which make his work at once the joy and despair of his brother craftsmen. On the starting of Once a Week, in 1859, Keene’s services were requisitioned, his most notable series in this periodical being the illustrations to Charles Reade’s A Good Fight (afterwards rechristened The Cloister and the Hearth) and to George Meredith’s Evan Harrington. There is a quality of conventionality in the earlier of these which completely disappears in the later. In 1858 Keene, who was endowed with a fine voice and was an enthusiastic admirer of old-fashioned music, joined the “Jermyn Band,” afterwards better known as the “Moray Minstrels.” He was also for many years a member of Leslie’s Choir, the Sacred Harmonic Society, the Catch, Glee and Canon Club, and the Bach Choir. He was also an industrious performer on the bagpipes, of which instrument he brought together a considerable collection of specimens. About 1863 the Arts Club in Hanover Square was started, with Keene as one of the original members. In 1864 John Leech died, and Keene’s work in Punch thenceforward found wider opportunities. It was about this time that the greatest of all modern artists of his class, Menzel, discovered Keene’s existence, and became a subscriber to Punch solely for the sake of enjoying week by week the work of his brother craftsman. In 1872 Keene, who, though fully possessed of the humorous sense, was not within measurable distance of Leech as a jester, and whose drawings were consequently not sufficiently “funny” to appeal to the laughter-loving public, was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Mr Joseph Crawhall, who had been in the habit for many years of jotting down any humorous incidents he might hear of or observe, illustrating them at leisure for his own amusement. These were placed unreservedly at Keene’s disposal, and to their inspiration we owe at least 250 of his most successful drawings in the last twenty years of his connexion with Punch. A list of more than 200 of these subjects is given at the end of The Life and Letters of Charles Keene of “Punch.” In 1879 Keene removed to 239 King’s Road, Chelsea, which he occupied until his last illness, walking daily to and from his house, 112 Hammersmith Road. In 1881 a volume of his Punch drawings was published by Messrs Bradbury & Agnew, with the title Our People. In 1883 Keene, who had hitherto been a strong man, developed symptoms of dyspepsia and rheumatism. By 1889 these had increased to an alarming degree, and the last two years of his life were passed in acute suffering borne with the greatest courage. He died unmarried, after a singularly uneventful life, on the 4th of January 1891, and his body lies in Hammersmith cemetery.

Keene, who never had any regular art training, was essentially an artists’ artist. He holds the foremost place amongst English craftsmen in black and white, though his work has never been appreciated at its real value by the general public. No doubt the main reason for this lack of public recognition was his unconventionality. He drew his models exactly as he saw them, not as he knew the world wanted to see them. He found enough beauty and romance in all that was around him, and, in his Punch work, enough subtle humour in nature seized at her most humorous moments to satisfy him. He never required his models to grin through a horse collar, as Gillray did, or to put on their company manners, as was du Maurier’s wont. But Keene was not only a brilliant worker in pen and ink. As an etcher he has also to be reckoned with, notwithstanding the fact that his plates numbered not more than fifty at the outside. Impressions of them are exceedingly rare, and hardly half a dozen of the plates are now known to be in existence. He himself regarded them only as experiments in a difficult but fascinating medium. But in the opinion of the expert they suffice to place him among the best etchers of the 19th century. Apart from the etched frontispieces to some of the Punch pocket-books, only three, and these by no means the best, have been published. Writing in L’Artiste for May 1891 of a few which he had seen, Bracquemond says: “By the freedom, the largeness of their drawing and execution, these plates must be classed amongst modern etchings of the first rank.” A few impressions are in the British Museum, but in the main they were given away to friends and lie hidden in the albums of the collector.

Authorities.—G. S. Layard, Life and Letters of Charles Keene of “Punch”; The Work of Charles Keene, with an introduction and notes by Joseph Pennell, and a bibliography by W. H. Chesson; M. H. Spielmann, The History of “Punch”; M. Charpentier, La Vie Moderne, No. 14 (1880); M. H. Spielmann, Magazine of Art (March 1891); M. Bracquemond, L’Artiste (May 1891); G. S. Layard, Scribner’s (April 1892); Joseph Pennell, Century (Oct. 1897); George du Maurier, Harper’s (March 1898).

(G. S. I.)

KEENE, LAURA (c. 1820-1873), Anglo-American actress and manager, whose real name was Mary Moss, was born in England. In 1851, in London, she was playing Pauline in The Lady of Lyons. She made her first appearance in New York on the 20th of September 1852, on her way to Australia. She returned in 1855 and till 1863 managed Laura Keene’s theatre, in which was produced, in 1858, Our American Cousin. It was her company that was playing at Ford’s theatre, Washington, on the night of Lincoln’s assassination. Miss Keene was a successful melodramatic actress, and an admirable manager. She died at Montclair, New Jersey, on the 4th of November 1873.

See John Creahan’s Life of Laura Keene (1897).

KEENE, a city and the county-seat of Cheshire county, New Hampshire, U.S.A., on the Ashuelot river, about 45 m. S.W. of Concord, N.H., and about 92 m. W.N.W. of Boston. Pop. (1900), 9165, of whom 1255 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 10,068. Area, 36.5 sq. m. It is served by the Boston & Maine railroad and by the Fitchburg railroad (leased by the Boston & Maine). The site is level, but is surrounded by ranges of lofty hills—Monadnock Mountain is about 10 m. S.E. Most of the streets are pleasantly shaded. There are three parks, with a total area of about 219 acres; and in Central Square stands a soldiers’ and sailors’ monument designed by Martin Milmore and erected in 1871. The principal buildings are the city hall, the county buildings and the city hospital. The Public Library had in 1908 about 16,300 volumes. There are repair shops of the Boston & Maine railroad here, and manufactures of boots and shoes, woollen goods, furniture (especially chairs), pottery, &c. The value of the factory product in 1905 was $2,690,967. The site of Keene was one of the Massachusetts grants made in 1733, but Canadian Indians made it untenable and it was abandoned from 1746 until 1750. In 1753 it was incorporated and was named Keene, in honour of Sir Benjamin Keene (1697-1757), the English diplomatist, who as agent for the South Sea Company and Minister in Madrid, and as responsible for the commercial treaty between England and Spain in 1750, was in high reputation at the time; it was chartered as a city in 1874.

KEEP, ROBERT PORTER (1844-1904), American scholar, was born in Farmington, Connecticut, on the 26th of April 1844. He graduated at Yale in 1865, was instructor there for two years, was United States consul at the Piraeus in Greece in 1869-1871, taught Greek in Williston Seminary, Easthampton, Massachusetts, in 1876-1885, and was principal of Norwich Free Academy, Norwich, Conn., from 1885 to 1903, the school owing its prosperity to him hardly less than to its founders. In 1903 he took charge of Miss Porter’s school for girls at Farmington, Conn., founded in 1844 and long controlled by his aunt, Sarah Porter. He died in Farmington on the 3rd of June 1904.

KEEP (corresponding to the French donjon), in architecture the inmost and strongest part of a medieval castle, answering to the citadel of modern times. The arrangement is said to have originated with Gundulf, bishop of Rochester (d. 1108), architect of the White Tower. The Norman keep is generally a very massive square tower. There is generally a well in a medieval keep, ingeniously concealed in the thickness of a wall or in a pillar. The most celebrated keeps of Norman times in England are the White Tower in London, those at Rochester Arundel and Newcastle, Castle Hedingham, &c. When the keep was circular, as at Conisborough and Windsor, it was called a “shell-keep” (see Castle). The verb “to keep,” from which the noun with its particular meaning here treated was formed, appears in O.E. as cépan, of which the derivation is unknown; no words related to it are found in cognate languages. The earliest meaning (c. 1000) appears to have been to lay hold of, to seize, from which its common uses of to guard, observe, retain possession of, have developed.

KEEWATIN, a district of Canada, bounded E. by Committee Bay, Fox Channel, and Hudson and James bays, S. and S.W. by the Albany and English rivers, Manitoba, Lake Winnipeg, and Nelson river, W. by the 100th meridian, and N. by Simpson and Rae straits and gulf and peninsula of Boothia; thus including an area of 445,000 sq. m. Its surface is in general barren and rocky, studded with innumerable lakes with intervening elevations, forest-clad below 60° N., but usually bare or covered with moss or lichens, forming the so-called “barren lands” of the north. With the exception of a strip of Silurian and Devonian rocks, 40 to 80 m. wide, extending from the vicinity of the Severn river to the Churchill, and several isolated areas of Cambrian and Huronian, the district is occupied by Laurentian rocks. The principal river is the Nelson, which, with its great tributary, the Saskatchewan, is 1450 m. long; other tributaries are the Berens, English, Winnipeg, Red and Assiniboine. The Hayes, Severn and Winisk also flow from the south-west into Hudson Bay, and the Ekwan, Attawapiskat and Albany, 500 m. long, into James Bay. The Churchill, 925 m., Thlewliaza, Maguse, and Ferguson rivers discharge into Hudson Bay on the west side; the Kazan, 500 m., and Dubawnt, 660 m., into Chesterfield Inlet; and Back’s river, rising near Aylmer Lake, flows north-eastwards 560 m. to the Arctic Ocean. The principal lakes are St Joseph and Seul on the southern boundary; northern part of Lake Winnipeg, 710 ft. above the sea; Island; South Indian; Etawney; Nueltin; Yathkyed, at an altitude of 300 ft.; Maguse; Kaminuriak; Baker, 30 ft.; Aberdeen, 130 ft.; and Garry. The principal islands are Southampton, area 17,800 sq. m.; Marble Island, the usual wintering place for whaling vessels; and Bell and Coats Islands, in Hudson Bay; and Akimiski, in James Bay.

A few small communities at the posts of the Hudson Bay Company constitute practically the whole of the white population. In 1897 there were 852 Indians in the Churchill and Nelson rivers district, but no figures are available for the district as a whole. The principal posts in Keewatin are Norway House, near the outlet of Lake Winnipeg; Oxford House, on the lake of the same name; York Factory, at the mouth of Hayes river; and Forts Severn and Churchill, at the mouths of the Severn and Churchill rivers respectively. In 1905 the district of Keewatin was included in the North-West Territories and the whole placed under an administrator or acting governor. The derivation of the name is from the Cree—the “north wind.”

KEF, more correctly El-Kef (the Rock), a town of Tunisia, 125 m. by rail S.S.W. of the capital, and 75 m. S.E. of Bona in Algeria. It occupies the site of the Roman colony of Sicca Veneria, and is built on the steep slope of a rock in a mountainous region through which flows the Mellegue, an affluent of the Mejerda. Situated at the intersection of main routes from the west and south, Kef occupies a position of strategic importance. Though distant some 22 m. from the Algerian frontier it was practically a border post, and its walls and citadel were kept in a state of defence by the Tunisians. The town with its half-dozen mosques and tortuous, dirty streets, is still partly walled. The southern part of the wall has however been destroyed by the French, and the remainder is being left to decay. Beyond the part of the wall destroyed is the French quarter. The kasbah, or citadel, occupies a rocky eminence on the west side of the town. It was built, or rebuilt, by the Turks, the material being Roman. It has been restored by the French, who maintain a garrison here.

The Roman remains include fragments of a large temple dedicated to Hercules, and of the baths. The ancient cisterns remain, but are empty, being used as part of the barracks. The town is however supplied by water from the same spring which filled the cisterns. The Christian cemetery is on the site of a basilica. There are ruins of another Christian basilica, excavated by the French, the apse being intact and the narthex serving as a church. Many stones with Roman inscriptions are built into the walls of Arab houses. The modern town is much smaller than the Roman colony. Pop. about 6000, including about 100 Europeans (chiefly Maltese).

The Roman colony of Sicca Veneria appears from the character of its worship of Venus (Val. Max. ii. 6, § 15) to have been a Phoenician settlement. It was afterwards a Numidian stronghold, and under the Caesars became a fashionable residential city and one of the chief centres of Christianity in North Africa. The Christian apologist Arnobius the Elder lived here.

See H. Barth, Die Küstenländer des Mittelmeeres (1849); Corpus Inscript. Lat., vol. viii.; Sombrun in Bull. de la soc. de géog. de Bordeaux (1878). Also Cardinal Newman’s Callista: a Sketch of the Third Century (1856), for a “reconstruction” of the manner of life of the early Christians and their oppressors.

KEHL, a town in the grand-duchy of Baden, on the right bank of the Rhine, opposite Strassburg, with which it is connected by a railway bridge and a bridge of boats. Pop. 4000. It has a considerable river trade in timber, tobacco and coal, which has been developed by the formation of a harbour with two basins. The chief importance of Kehl is its connexion with the military defence of Strassburg, to the strategic area of which it belongs. It is encircled by the strong forts Bose, Blumenthal and Kirchbach of that system. In 1678 Kehl was taken from the imperialists by the French, and in 1683 a new fortress, built by Vauban, was begun. In 1697 it was restored to the Empire and was given to Baden, but in 1703 and again in 1733 it was taken by the French, who did not however retain it for very long. In 1793 the French again took the town, which was retaken by the Austrians and was restored to Baden in 1803. In 1808 the French, again in possession, restored the fortifications, but these were dismantled in 1815, when Kehl was again restored to Baden. In August 1870, during the Franco-German War, the French shelled the defenceless town.

KEIGHLEY (locally Keithley), a municipal borough in the Keighley parliamentary division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 17 m. W.N.W. of Leeds, on branches of the Great Northern and Midland railways. Pop. (1901), 41,564. It is beautifully situated in a deep valley near the junction of the Worth with the Aire. A canal between Liverpool and Hull affords it water communication with both west and east coasts. The principal buildings are the parish church of St Andrew (dating from the time of Henry I., modernized in 1710, rebuilt with the exception of the tower in 1805, and again rebuilt in 1878), and the handsome Gothic mechanics’ institute and technical school (1870). A grammar school was founded in 1713, the operations of which have been extended so as to embrace a trade school (1871) for boys, and a grammar school for girls. The principal industries are manufactures of woollen goods, spinning, sewing and washing machines, and tools. The town was incorporated in 1882, and the corporation consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors.

KEI ISLANDS [Ke, Key, Kii, &c.; native, Ewab], a group in the Dutch East Indies, in the residency of Amboyna, between 5° and 6° 5′ S. and 131° 50′ and 133° 15′ E., and consisting of four parts: Nuhu-Iut or Great Kei, Roa or Little Kei, the Tayanda, and the Kur group. Great Kei differs physically in every respect from the other groups. It is of Tertiary formation (Miocene), and has a chain of volcanic elevations along the axis, reaching a height of 2600 ft. Its area is 290 sq. m., the total land area of the group being 572 sq. m. All the other islands are of post-Tertiary formation and of level surface. The group has submarine connexion, under relatively shallow sea, with the Timorlaut group to the south-west and the chain of islands extending north-west towards Ceram; deep water separates it on the east from the Aru Islands and on the west from the inner islands of the Banda Sea. Among the products are coco-nuts, sago, fish, trepang, timber, copra, maize, yams and tobacco. The population is about 23,000, of whom 14,900 are pagans, and 8300 Mahommedans.

The inhabitants are of three types. There is the true Kei Islander, a Polynesian by his height and black or brown wavy hair, with a complexion between the Papuan black and the Malay yellow. There is the pure Papuan, who has been largely merged in the Kei type. Thirdly, there are the immigrant Malays. These (distinguished by the use of a special language and by the profession of Mohammedanism) are descendants of natives of the Banda islands who fled eastward before the encroachments of the Dutch. The pagans have rude statues of deities and places of sacrifice indicated by flat-topped cairns. The Kei Islanders are skilful in carving and celebrated boat-builders.

See C. M. Kan, “Onze geographische kennis der Keij-Eilanden,” in Tijdschrift Aardrijkskundig Genootschap (1887); Martin, “Die Kei-inseln u. ihr Verhältniss zur Australisch-Asiatischen Grenzlinie,” ibid. part vii. (1890); W. R. van Hoëvell, “De Kei-Eilanden,” in Tijdschr. Batavian. Gen. (1889); “Verslagen van de wetenschappelijke opnemingen en onderzoekingen op de Keij-Eilanden” (1889-1890), by Planten and Wertheim (1893), with map and ethnographical atlas of the south-western and south-eastern islands by Pleyte; Langen, Die Key- oder Kii-Inseln (Vienna, 1902).

KEIM, KARL THEODOR (1825-1878), German Protestant theologian, was born at Stuttgart on the 17th of December 1825. His father, Johann Christian Keim, was headmaster of a gymnasium. Here Karl Theodor received his early education, and then proceeded to the Stuttgart Obergymnasium. In 1843 he went to the university of Tübingen, where he studied philosophy under J. F. Reiff, a follower of Hegel, and Oriental languages under Heinrich Ewald and Heinrich Meier. F. C. Baur, the leader of the new Tübingen school, was lecturing on the New Testament and on the history of the church and of dogma, and by him in particular Keim was greatly impressed. The special bent of Keim’s mind is seen in his prize essay, Verhältniss der Christen in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten bis Konstantin zum römischen Reiche (1847). His first published work was Die Reformation der Reichstadt Ulm (1851). In 1850 he visited the university of Bonn, where he attended some of the lectures of Friedrich Bleek, Richard Rothe, C. M. Arndt and Isaak Dorner. He taught at Tübingen from June 1851 until 1856, when, having become a pastor, he was made deacon at Esslingen, Württemberg. In 1859 he was appointed archdeacon; but a few months later he was called to the university of Zürich as professor of theology (1859-1873), where he produced his important works. Before this he had written on church history (e.g. Schwäbische Reformationsgeschichte bis zum Augsburger Reichstag, 1855). His inaugural address at Zürich on the human development of Jesus, Die menschliche Entwicklung Jesu Christi (1861), and his Die geschichtliche Würde Jesu (1864) were preparatory to his chief work, Die Geschichte Jesu von Nazara in ihrer Verkettung mit dem Gesamtleben seines Volkes (3 vols., 1867-1872; Eng. trans., Jesus of Nazareth, and the National Life of Israel, 6 vols.), 1873-1882. In 1873 Keim was appointed professor of theology at Giessen. This post he resigned, through ill-health, shortly before his death on the 17th of November 1878. He belonged to the “mediation” school of theology.

Chief works, besides the above: Reformationsblätter der Reichsstadt Esslingen (1860); Ambrosius Blarer, der Schwäbische Reformator (1860); Der Übertritt Konstantins d. Gr. zum Christenthum (1862); his sermons, Freundesworte zur Gemeinde (2 vols., 1861-1862); and Celsus’ wahres Wort (1873). In 1881 H. Ziegler published one of Keim’s earliest works, Rom und das Christenthum, with a biographical sketch. See also Ziegler’s article in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie.

KEITH, the name of an old Scottish family which derived its name from the barony of Keith in East Lothian, said to have been granted by Malcolm II., king of Scotland, to a member of the house for services against the Danes. The office of great marishal of Scotland, afterwards hereditary in the Keith family, may have been conferred at the same time; for it was confirmed, together with possession of the lands of Keith, to Sir Robert Keith by a charter of King Robert Bruce, and appears to have been held as annexed to the land by the tenure of grand serjeanty. Sir Robert Keith commanded the Scottish horse at Bannockburn, and was killed at the battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346. At the close of the 14th century Sir William Keith, by exchange of lands with Lord Lindsay, obtained the crag of Dunnottar in Kincardineshire, where he built the castle of Dunnottar, which became the stronghold of his descendants. He died about 1407. In 1430 a later Sir William Keith was created Lord Keith, and a few years afterwards earl marishal, and these titles remained in the family till 1716. William, fourth earl marishal (d. 1581), was one of the guardians of Mary queen of Scots during her minority, and was a member of her privy council on her return to Scotland. While refraining from extreme partisanship, he was an adherent of the Reformation; he retired into private life at Dunnottar Castle about 1567, thereby gaining the sobriquet “William of the Tower.” He was reputed to be the wealthiest man in Scotland. His eldest daughter Anne married the regent Murray. His grandson George, 5th earl marishal (c. 1553-1623), was one of the most cultured men of his time. He was educated at King’s College, Aberdeen, where he became a proficient classical scholar, afterwards studying divinity under Theodore Beza at Geneva. He was a firm Protestant, and took an active part in the affairs of the kirk. His high character and abilities procured him the appointment of special ambassador to Denmark to arrange the marriage of James VI. with the Princess Anne. He was subsequently employed on a number of important commissions; but he preferred literature to public affairs, and about 1620 he retired to Dunnottar, where he died in 1623. He is chiefly remembered as the founder in 1593 of the Marischal College in the university of Aberdeen, which he richly endowed. From an uncle he inherited the title of Lord Altrie about 1590. William, 7th earl marishal (c. 1617-1661), took a prominent part in the Civil War, being at first a leader of the covenanting party in north-east Scotland, and the most powerful opponent of the marquess of Huntly. He co-operated with Montrose in Aberdeenshire and neighbouring counties against the Gordons. With Montrose he signed the Bond of Cumbernauld in August 1640, but took no active steps against the popular party till 1648, when he joined the duke of Hamilton in his invasion of England, escaping from the rout at Preston. In 1650 Charles II. was entertained by the marishal at Dunnottar; and in 1651 the Scottish regalia were left for safe keeping in his castle. Taken prisoner in the same year, he was committed to the Tower and was excluded from Cromwell’s Act of Grace. He was made a privy councillor at the Restoration and died in 1661. Sir John Keith (d. 1714), brother of the 7th earl marishal, was, at the Restoration, given the hereditary office of knight marishal of Scotland, and in 1677 was created earl of Kintore, and Lord Keith of Inverurie and Keith-Hall, a reward for his share in preserving the regalia of Scotland, which were secretly conveyed from Dunnottar to another hiding-place, when the castle was besieged by Cromwell’s troops, and which Sir John, perilously to himself, swore he had carried abroad and delivered to Charles II., thus preventing further search. From him are descended the earls of Kintore.

George, 10th earl marishal (c. 1693-1778), served under Marlborough, and like his brother Francis, Marshal Keith (q.v.), was a zealous Jacobite, taking part in the rising of 1715, after which he escaped to the continent. In the following year he was attainted, his estates and titles being forfeited to the Crown. He lived for many years in Spain, where he concerned himself with Jacobite intrigues, but he took no part in the rebellion of 1745, proceeding about that year to Prussia, where he became, like his brother, intimate with Frederick the Great. Frederick employed him in several diplomatic posts, and he is said to have conveyed valuable information to the earl of Chatham, as a reward for which he received a pardon from George II., and returned to Scotland in 1759. His heir male, on whom, but for the attainder of 1716, his titles would have devolved, was apparently his cousin Alexander Keith of Ravelston, to whom the attainted earl had sold the castle and lands of Dunnottar in 1766. From Alexander Keith was descended, through the female line, Sir Patrick Keith Murray of Ochtertyre, who sold the estates of Dunnottar and Ravelston. After the attainder of 1716 the right of the Keiths of Ravelston to be recognized as the representatives of the earls marishal was disputed by Robert Keith (1681-1757), bishop of Fife, a member of another collateral branch of the family. The bishop was a writer of some repute, his chief work, The History of the Affairs of the Church and State of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1734), being of considerable value for the reigns of James V., James VI., and Mary Queen of Scots. He also published a Catalogue of the Bishops of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1755), and other less important historical and theological works.

Robert Keith (d. 1774), descended from a younger son of the 2nd earl marishal, was British minister in Vienna in 1748, and subsequently held other important diplomatic appointments, being known to his numerous friends, among whom were the leading men of letters of his time, as “Ambassador Keith.” His son, Sir Robert Murray Keith (1730-1795), was on Lord George Sackville’s staff at the battle of Minden. He became colonel of a regiment (the 87th foot) known as Keith’s Highlanders, who won distinction in the continental wars, but were disbanded in 1763; he was then employed in the diplomatic service, in which he achieved considerable success by his honesty, courage, and knowledge of languages. In 1781 he became lieutenant-general; in 1789 he was made a privy councillor.

From the Keith family through the female line was descended George Keith Elphinstone, Baron Keith of Stonehaven, Marishal and afterwards Viscount Keith (q.v.), whose titles became extinct at the death of his daughter Margaret, Baroness Keith, in 1867.

See Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, edited by J. Bain (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1881-1888); Peter Buchan, An Account of the Ancient and Noble Family of Keith (Edinburgh, 1828); Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir Robert Murray Keith, edited by Mrs. Gillespie Smyth (London, 1849); John Spalding, Memorialls of the Trubles in Scotland, 1624-1645 (2 vols., Spalding Club Publ. 21, 23, Aberdeen, 1850-1851); Sir Robert Douglas, The Peerage of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1813); G.E.C., Complete Peerage, vol. iv. (London, 1892).

(R. J. M.)

KEITH, FRANCIS EDWARD JAMES (1696-1758), Scottish soldier and Prussian field marshal, was the second son of William, 9th earl marishal of Scotland, and was born on the 11th of June 1696 at the castle of Inverugie near Peterhead. Through his careful education under Robert Keith, bishop of Fife, and subsequently at Edinburgh University in preparation for the legal profession, he acquired that taste for literature which afterwards secured him the esteem of the most distinguished savants of Europe; but at an early period his preference for a soldier’s career was decided. The rebellion of 1715, in which he displayed qualities that gave some augury of his future eminence, compelled him to seek safety on the Continent. After spending two years in Paris, chiefly at the university, he in 1719 took part in the ill-starred expedition of the Pretender to the Highlands of Scotland. He then passed some time at Paris and Madrid in obscurity and poverty, but eventually obtained a colonelcy in the Spanish army, and, it is said, took part in the siege of Gibraltar (1726-27). Finding his Protestantism a barrier to promotion, he obtained from the king of Spain a recommendation to Peter II. of Russia, from whom he received (1728) the command of a regiment of the guards. He displayed in numerous campaigns the calm, intelligent and watchful valour which was his chief characteristic, obtaining the rank of general of infantry and the reputation of being one of the ablest officers in the Russian service as well as a capable and liberal civil administrator. Judging, however, that his rewards were not commensurate with his merits, he in 1747 offered his services to Frederick II. of Prussia, who at once gave him the rank of field marshal, in 1749 made him governor of Berlin, and soon came to cherish towards him, as towards his brother, the 10th earl marishal, a strong personal regard. In 1756 the Seven Years’ War broke out. Keith was employed in high command from the first, and added to his Russian reputation on every occasion by resolution and promptitude of action, not less than by care and skill. In 1756 he commanded the troops covering the investment of Pirna, and distinguished himself at Lobositz. In 1757 he commanded at the siege of Prague; later in this same campaign he defended Leipzig against a greatly superior force, was present at Rossbach, and, while the king was fighting the campaign of Leuthen, conducted a foray into Bohemia. In 1758 he took a prominent part in the unsuccessful Moravian campaign, after which he withdrew from the army to recruit his broken health. He returned in time for the autumn campaign in the Lausitz, and was killed on the 14th of October 1758 at the battle of Hochkirch. His body was honourably buried on the field by Marshal Daun and General Lacy, the son of his old commander in Russia, and was shortly afterwards transferred by Frederick to the garrison church of Berlin. Many memorials were erected to him by the king, Prince Henry, and others. Keith died unmarried, but had several children by his mistress, Eva Mertens, a Swedish prisoner captured by him in the war of 1741-43. In 1889 the 1st Silesian infantry regiment No. 22 of the German army received his name.

See K. A. Varnhagen von Ense, Biographische Denkmale, part 7 (1844); Fragment of a Memoir of Field-Marshal James Keith, written by himself (1714-1734; edited by Thomas Constable for the Spalding Club, 1843); T. Carlyle, Frederick the Great, passim; V. Paczynaski-Tenczyn, Leben des G. F. M. Jakob Keith (Berlin, 1889); Peter Buchan, Account of the Family of Keith (Edinburgh, 1878); Anon., Memoir of Marshal Keith (Peterhead, 1869); Pauli, Leben grosser Helden, part iv.

KEITH, GEORGE (c. 1639-1716), British divine, was born at Aberdeen about 1639 and was educated for the Presbyterian ministry at Marischal College in his native city. In 1662 he became a Quaker and worked with Robert Barclay (q.v.). After being imprisoned for preaching in 1676 he went to Holland and Germany on an evangelistic tour with George Fox and William Penn. Two further terms of imprisonment in England induced him (1684) to emigrate to America, where he was surveyor-general in East New Jersey and then a schoolmaster at Philadelphia. He travelled in New England defending Quakerism against the attacks of Increase and Cotton Mather, but after a time fell out with his own folk on the subject of the atonement, accused them of deistic views, and started a community of his own called “Christian Quakers” or “Keithians.” He endeavoured to advance his views in London, but the Yearly Meeting of 1694 disowned him, and he established a society at Turner’s Hall in Philpot Lane, where he so far departed from Quaker usage as to administer the two sacraments. In 1700 he conformed to the Anglican Church, and from 1702 to 1704 was an agent of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in America. He died on the 27th of March 1716 at Edburton in Sussex, of which parish he was rector. Among his writings were The Deism of William Penn and his Brethren (1699); The Standard of the Quakers examined; or, an Answer to the Apology of Robert Barclay (1702); A Journal of Travels (1706). Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, a fellow-Aberdonian, speaks of him as “the most learned man that ever was in that sect, and well versed in the Oriental tongues, philosophy and mathematics.”

KEITH, GEORGE KEITH ELPHINSTONE, Viscount (1746-1823), British admiral, fifth son of the 10th Lord Elphinstone, was born in Elphinstone Tower, near Stirling, on the 7th of January 1746. Two of his brothers went to sea, and he followed their example by entering the navy in 1761, in the “Gosport,” then commanded by Captain Jervis, afterwards Earl St Vincent. In 1767 he made a voyage to the East Indies in the Company’s service, and put £2000 lent him by an uncle to such good purpose in a private trading venture that he laid the foundation of a handsome fortune. He became lieutenant in 1770, commander in 1772, and post captain in 1775. During the war in America he was employed against the privateers, and with a naval brigade at the occupation of Charleston, S.C. In January 1781, when in command of the “Warwick” (50), he captured a Dutch 50-gun ship which had beaten off an English vessel of equal strength a few days before. After peace was signed he remained on shore for ten years, serving in Parliament as member first for Dumbartonshire, and then for Stirlingshire. When war broke out again in 1793 he was appointed to the “Robust” (74), in which he took part in the occupation of Toulon by lord Hood. He particularly distinguished himself by beating a body of the French ashore at the head of a naval brigade of English and Spaniards. He was entrusted with the duty of embarking the fugitives when the town was evacuated. In 1794 he was promoted rear-admiral, and in 1795 he was sent to occupy the Dutch colonies at the Cape of Good Hope and in India. He had a large share in the capture of the Cape in 1795, and in August 1796 captured a whole Dutch squadron in Saldanha Bay. In the interval he had gone on to India, where his health suffered, and the capture at Saldanha was effected on his way home. When the Mutiny at the Nore broke out in 1797 he was appointed to the command, and was soon able to restore order. He was equally successful at Plymouth, where the squadron was also in a state of effervescence. At the close of 1798 he was sent as second in command to St Vincent. It was for a long time a thankless post, for St Vincent was at once half incapacitated by ill-health and very arbitrary, while Nelson, who considered that Keith’s appointment was a personal slight to himself, was peevish and insubordinate. The escape of a French squadron which entered the Mediterranean from Brest in May 1799 was mainly due to jarrings among the British naval commanders. Keith followed the enemy to Brest on their retreat, but was unable to bring them to action. He returned to the Mediterranean in November as commander-in-chief. He co-operated with the Austrians in the siege of Genoa, which surrendered on the 4th of June 1800. It was however immediately afterwards lost in consequence of the battle of Marengo, and the French made their re-entry so rapidly that the admiral had considerable difficulty in getting his ships out of the harbour. The close of 1801 and the beginning of the following year were spent in transporting the army sent to recover Egypt from the French. As the naval force of the enemy was completely driven into port, the British admiral had no opportunity of an action at sea, but his management of the convoy carrying the troops, and of the landing at Aboukir, was greatly admired. He was made a baron of the United Kingdom—an Irish barony having been conferred on him in 1797. On the renewal of the war in 1803 he was appointed commander-in-chief in the North Sea, which post he held till 1807. In February 1812 he was appointed commander-in-chief in the Channel, and in 1814 he was raised to a viscounty. During his last two commands he was engaged first in overlooking the measures taken to meet a threatened invasion, and then in directing the movements of the numerous small squadrons and private ships employed on the coasts of Spain and Portugal, and in protecting trade. He was at Plymouth when Napoleon surrendered and was brought to England in the “Bellerophon” by Captain Maitland (1777-1839). The decisions of the British government were expressed through him to the fallen Emperor. Lord Keith refused to be led into disputes, and confined himself to declaring steadily that he had his orders to obey. He was not much impressed by the appearance of his illustrious charge, and thought that the airs of Napoleon and his suite were ridiculous. Lord Keith died on the 10th of March 1823 at Tullyallan, his property in Scotland, and was buried in the parish church. A portrait of him by Owen is in the Painted Hall in Greenwich. He was twice married: in 1787 to Jane Mercer, daughter of Colonel William Mercer of Aldie; and in 1808 to Hester Maria Thrale, who is spoken of as “Queenie” in Boswell’s Life of Johnson and Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary. He had a daughter by each marriage, but no son. Thus the viscounty became extinct on his death, but the English and Irish baronies descended to his elder daughter Margaret (1788-1867), who married the Comte de Flahault de la Billarderie, only to become extinct on her death.

There is a panegyrical Life of Lord Keith by Alex. Allardyce (Edinburgh, 1882); and biographical notices will be found in John Marshall’s Royal Naval Biography, i. 43 (1823-1835), and the Naval Chronicle, X. 1.

(D. H.)

KEITH, a police burgh of Banffshire, Scotland, on the Isla, 53¼ m. N.W. of Aberdeen by the Great North of Scotland railway. Pop. (1901), 4753. A branch of the Highland railway also gives access to Elgin, and there is a line to Buckie and Portessie on the Moray Firth. The burgh includes Old Keith and New Keith on the east bank of the Isla, and Fife-Keith on the west bank. Though Old Keith has a charter dating from William the Lion it fell into gradual decay; New Keith, founded in the 18th century by the second earl of Seafield, being better situated for the growth of a town. Fife-Keith has sprung up since 1816. The principal public buildings include the Turner memorial hospital, the Longmore hall, and the Institute. In the Roman Catholic church there is a painting of the “Incredulity of St Thomas,” presented by Charles X. of France. The industries include manufactures of tweeds, blankets, agricultural implements, and boots and shoes; there are also distilleries, breweries, flour mills, and lime and manure works. But the main importance of Keith lies in the fact that it is the centre of the agricultural trade of the shire. The “Summer Eve Fair” held in September is the largest cattle and horse fair in the north of Scotland; the town is also the headquarters of the dressed-meat trade in the north.

KEJ, or Kech, the chief place in a district of the province of Makran in Baluchistan, which has given its name to Kej-Makran, as distinguished from Persian Makran. There is no town, but a number of small villages dominated by a fort built upon a rock, on the eastern bank of the Kej River. This fort, like many others similarly placed throughout the country, is supposed to be impregnable, but is of no strength except against the matchlocks of the surrounding tribes. Kej (or Kiz) was an important trade centre in the days of Arab supremacy in Sind, and the rulers of Kalat at various times marched armies into the province with a view to maintaining their authority. At the beginning of the 19th century it had the reputation of a commercial centre, trading through Panjgur with Kandahar, with Karachi via Bela, and with Muscat and the Persian Gulf by the seaport of Gwadar, distant about 80 m. The present Khan of Kalat exercises but a feeble sway over this portion of his dominion, although he appoints a governor to the province. The principal tribe residing around Kej is that of the Gichki, who claim to be of Rajput origin, and to have settled in Makran during the 17th century, having been driven out of Rajputana. The climate during summer is too hot for Europeans. During winter, however, it is temperate. The principal exports consist of dates, which are considered of the finest quality. A local revolt against Kalat rendered an expedition against Kej necessary in 1898. Colonel Mayne reduced the fortress and restored order in the surrounding districts.