LONGLEY, CHARLES THOMAS (1794-1868), archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Rochester, and educated at Westminster and Oxford. He was ordained in 1818, and was appointed vicar of Cowley, Oxford, in 1823. In 1827 he received the rectory of west Tytherley, Hampshire, and two years later he was elected headmaster of Harrow. This office he held until 1836, when he was consecrated bishop of the new see of Ripon. In 1856 he was translated to the see of Durham, and in 1860 he became archbishop of York. In 1862 he succeeded John Bird Sumner as archbishop of Canterbury. Soon afterwards the questions connected with the deposition of Bishop Colenso were referred to him, but, while regarding Colenso’s opinions as heretical and his deposition as justifiable, he refused to pronounce upon the legal difficulties of the case. The chief event of his primacy was the meeting at Lambeth, in 1867, of the first Pan-Anglican conference of British, colonial and foreign bishops (see [Lambeth Conferences]). His published works include numerous sermons and addresses. He died on the 27th of October 1868 at Addington Park, near Croydon.
LONGMANS, a firm of English publishers. The founder of the firm, Thomas Longman (1) (1699-1755), born in 1699, was the son of Ezekiel Longman (d. 1708), a gentleman of Bristol. Thomas was apprenticed in 1716 to John Osborn, a London bookseller. At the expiration of his apprenticeship he married Osborn’s daughter, and in August 1724 purchased the stock and household goods of William Taylor, the first publisher of Robinson Crusoe, for £2282 9s. 6d. Taylor’s two shops were known respectively as the Black Swan and the Ship, and occupied the ground in Paternoster Row upon which the present publishing house stands. Osborn, who afterwards entered into partnership with his son-in-law, held one-sixth of the shares in Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia of the Arts and Sciences, and Thomas Longman was one of the six booksellers who undertook the responsibility of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. In 1754 Thomas Longman took his nephew into partnership, the title of the firm becoming T. and T. Longman.
Upon the death of his uncle in 1755, Thomas Longman (2) (1730-1797) became sole proprietor. He greatly extended the colonial trade of the firm. He had three sons. Of these, Thomas Norton Longman (3) (1771-1842) succeeded to the business. In 1794 Owen Rees became a partner, and Thomas Brown, who was for many years after 1811 a partner, entered the house as an apprentice. Brown died in 1869 at the age of 92. In 1799 Longman purchased the copyright of Lindley Murray’s English Grammar, which had an annual sale of about 50,000 copies; he also purchased, about 1800, the copyright, from Joseph Cottle, of Bristol, of Southey’s Joan of Arc and Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads. He published the works of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and Scott, and acted as London agent for the Edinburgh Review, which was started in 1802. In 1804 two more partners were admitted; and in 1824 the title of the firm was changed to Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green. In 1814 arrangements were made with Thomas Moore for the publication of Lalla Rookh, for which he received £3000; and when Archibald Constable failed in 1826, Longmans became the proprietors of the Edinburgh Review. They issued in 1829 Lardner’s Cabinet Encyclopaedia, and in 1832 M’Culloch’s Commercial Dictionary.
Thomas Norton Longman (3) died on the 29th of August 1842, leaving his two sons, Thomas (4) (1804-1879) and William Longman (1813-1877), in control of the business in Paternoster Row. Their first success was the publication of Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, which was followed in 1849 by the issue of the first two volumes of his History of England, which in a few years had a sale of 40,000 copies. The two brothers were well known for their literary talent; Thomas Longman edited a beautifully illustrated edition of the New Testament, and William Longman was the author of several important books, among them a History of the Three Cathedrals dedicated to St Paul (1869) and a work on the History of the Life and Times of Edward III. (1873). In 1863 the firm took over the business of Mr J. W. Parker, and with it Fraser’s Magazine, and the publication of the works of John Stuart Mill and J. A. Froude; while in 1890 they incorporated with their own all the publications of the old firm of Rivington, established in 1711. The family control of the firm (now Longmans, Green & Co.) was continued by Thomas Norton Longman (5), son of Thomas Longman (4).
LONGOMONTANUS (or Longberg), CHRISTIAN SEVERIN(1562-1647), Danish astronomer, was born at the village of Longberg in Jutland, Denmark, on the 4th of October 1562. The appellation Longomontanus was a Latinized form of the name of his birthplace. His father, a poor labourer called Sören, or Severin, died when he was eight years old. An uncle thereupon took charge of him, and procured him instruction at Lemvig; but after three years sent him back to his mother, who needed his help in field-work. She agreed, however, to permit him to study during the winter months with the clergyman of the parish; and this arrangement subsisted until 1577, when the illwill of some of his relatives and his own desire for knowledge impelled him to run away to Viborg. There he attended the grammar-school, defraying his expenses by manual labour, and carried with him to Copenhagen in 1588 a high reputation for learning and ability. Engaged by Tycho Brahe in 1589 as his assistant in his great astronomical observatory of Uraniborg, he rendered him invaluable services there during eight years. He quitted the island of Hveen with his master, but obtained his discharge at Copenhagen on the 1st of June 1597, for the purpose of studying at some German universities. He rejoined Tycho at Prague in January 1600, and having completed the Tychonic lunar theory, turned homeward again in August. He visited Frauenburg, where Copernicus had made his observations, took a master’s degree at Rostock, and at Copenhagen found a patron in Christian Friis, chancellor of Denmark, who gave him employment in his household. Appointed in 1603 rector of the school of Viborg, he was elected two years later to a professorship in the university of Copenhagen, and his promotion to the chair of mathematics ensued in 1607. This post he held till his death, on the 8th of October 1647.
Longomontanus, although an excellent astronomer, was not an advanced thinker. He adhered to Tycho’s erroneous views about refraction, held comets to be messengers of evil and imagined that he had squared the circle. He found that the circle whose diameter is 43 has for its circumference the square root of 18252—which gives 3.14185... for the value of π. John Pell and others vainly endeavoured to convince him of his error. He inaugurated, at Copenhagen in 1632, the erection of a stately astronomical tower, but did not live to witness its completion. Christian IV. of Denmark, to whom he dedicated his Astronomia Danica, an exposition of the Tychonic system of the world, conferred upon him the canonry of Lunden in Schleswig.
The following is a list of his more important works in mathematics and astronomy: Systematis Mathematici, &c. (1611); Cyclometria e Lunulis reciproce demonstrata, &c. (1612); Disputatio de Eclipsibus (1616); Astronomia Danica, &c. (1622); Disputationes quatuor Astrologicae (1622); Pentas Problematum Philosophiae (1623); De Chronolabio Historico, seu de Tempore Disputationes tres (1627); Geometriae quaesita XIII. de Cyclometria rationali et vera (1631); Inventio Quadraturae Circuli (1634); Disputatio de Matheseos Indole (1636); Coronis Problematica ex Mysteriis trium Numerorum (1637); Problemata duo Geometrica (1638); Problema contra Paulum Guldinum de Circuli Mensura (1638); Introductio in Theatrum Astronomicum (1639); Rotundi in Plano, &c. (1644); Admiranda Operatio trium Numerorum 6, 7, 8, &c. (1645); Caput tertium Libri primi de absoluta Mensura Rotundi plani, &c. (1646).