MARTIN, JOHN (1789-1854), English painter, was born at Haydon Bridge, near Hexham, on the 19th of July 1789. He was apprenticed by his father to a coachbuilder to learn heraldic painting, but owing to a quarrel the indentures were cancelled, and he was placed under Bonifacio Musso, an Italian artist, father of the enamel painter Charles Musso. With his master Martin removed to London in 1806, where he married at the age of nineteen, and supported himself by giving drawing lessons, and by painting in water colours, and on china and glass. His leisure was occupied in the study of perspective and architecture. His first picture, “Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion,” was exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1812, and sold for fifty guineas. It was followed by the “Expulsion” (1813), “Paradise” (1813), “Clytie” (1814), and “Joshua” (1815). In 1821 appeared his “Belshazzar’s Feast,” which excited much favourable and hostile comment, and was awarded a prize of £200 at the British Institution, where the Joshua had previously carried off a premium of £100. Then came the “Destruction of Herculaneum” (1822), the “Creation” (1824), the “Eve of the Deluge” (1841), and a series of other Biblical and imaginative subjects. In 1832-1833 Martin received £2000 for drawing and engraving a fine series of designs to Milton, and with Westall he produced a set of Bible illustrations. He was also occupied with schemes for the improvement of London, and published various pamphlets and plans dealing with the metropolitan water supply, sewage, dock and railway systems. During the last four years of his life he was engaged upon his large subjects of “The Judgment,” the “Day of Wrath,” and the “Plains of Heaven.” He was attacked with paralysis while painting, and died in the Isle of Man on the 17th of February 1854.
MARTIN, LUTHER (1748-1826), American lawyer, was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on the 9th of February 1748. He graduated at the college of New Jersey (now Princeton University) at the head of a class of thirty-five in 1766, and immediately afterwards removed to Maryland, teaching at Queenstown in that colony until 1770, and being admitted to the bar in 1771. He practised law for a short time in Virginia, then returned to Maryland, and became recognized as the leader of the Maryland bar and as one of the ablest lawyers in the United States. From 1778 to 1805 he was attorney-general of Maryland; in 1814-1816 he was chief judge of the court of Oyer and Terminer for the city of Baltimore; and in 1818-1822 he was attorney-general of Maryland. He was one of Maryland’s representatives in the Continental Congress in 1784-1785 and in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 at Philadelphia, but opposed the constitution and refused to affix his signature. He subsequently allied himself with the Federalists, and was an opponent of Thomas Jefferson, who in 1807 spoke of him as the “Federal Bull-Dog.” His ability was shown in his famous defence of Judge Samuel Chase (q.v.) in the impeachment trial before the United States Senate in 1804-1805, and in his defence of Aaron Burr (q.v.) against the charge of treason in 1807. He has been described by the historian Henry Adams, writing of the Chase trial, as at that time the “most formidable of American advocates.” Though he received a large income, he was so improvident that he was frequently in want, and on the 22nd of February 1822 the legislature of Maryland passed a remarkable resolution—the only one of the kind in American history—requiring every lawyer in the state to pay an annual licence fee of five dollars, to be handed over to trustees appointed “for the appropriation of the proceeds raised by virtue of this resolution to the use of Luther Martin.” This resolution was rescinded on the 6th of February 1823. Martin died at the home of Aaron Burr in New York on the 10th of July 1826. In 1783 he had married a daughter of the Captain Michael Cresap (1742-1775), who was unjustly charged by Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, with the murder of the family of the Indian chief, John Logan, and whom Martin defended in a pamphlet long out of print.
See the biographical sketch by Henry P. Goddard, Luther Martin, the Federal Bull-Dog (Baltimore, 1887), No. 24 of the “Peabody Fund Publications,” of the Maryland Historical Society.
MARTIN, SIR THEODORE (1816-1909), British author and translator, the son of a solicitor, was born at Edinburgh on the 16th of September 1816, and educated at the Royal High School and the University, from which he subsequently received the honorary degree of LL.D. He practised for some time as a solicitor in Edinburgh, but in 1846 went to London, where he became senior partner in the firm of Martin & Leslie, parliamentary agents. He early contributed to Fraser’s Magazine and Tait’s Magazine, under the signature of “Bon Gaultier,” and in 1856, in conjunction with Professor Aytoun, he published the Book of Ballads under the same pseudonym. This work at once obtained popular favour. In 1858 he published a volume of translations of the Poems and Ballads of Goethe, and this was followed by a rendering of the Danish poet Henrik Hertz’s lyric drama, King René’s Daughter. The principal character in this drama, Iolanthe, was sustained by Helena Faucit (q.v.), who in 1851 became the author’s wife. Martin’s translations of Öhlenschläger’s dramas, Correggio (1854) and Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp (1857), widened the fame of the Danish poet in England. In 1860 appeared Martin’s metrical translation of the Odes of Horace; and in 1870 he wrote a volume on Horace for the series of “Ancient Classics for English Readers.” In 1882 his Horatian labours were concluded by a translation of the poet’s whole works, with a life and notes, in two volumes. A poetical translation of Catullus was published in 1861, followed by a privately printed volume of Poems, Original and Translated, in 1863. Then came translations of the Vita Nuova of Dante, and the first part of Goethe’s Faust. A metrical translation of the second part of Faust appeared in 1866. Martin wrote a memoir of his friend Aytoun in 1867, and while engaged upon this work he was requested by Queen Victoria, to whom he was introduced by his friend Sir Arthur Helps, to undertake the Life of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort. The first volume of this well-known work was published in 1874. In 1878 Martin’s translation of Heine’s Poems and Ballads appeared. Two years later the Life of the Prince Consort was brought to a successful conclusion by the publication of the fifth volume. A knighthood was then conferred upon him. In the following November he was elected lord rector of the university of St Andrews. Martin’s Life of Lord Lyndhurst, based upon papers furnished by the family, was published in 1883. In 1889 appeared The Song of the Bell, and other Translations from Schiller, Goethe, Uhland, and Others; in 1804 Madonna Pia, a Tragedy, and three Other Dramas; a translation of Leopardi’s poems in 1905; and in 1901 he published a biography of his wife. The kindly relations which subsisted between Queen Victoria and Sir Theodore Martin were continued after the completion of the Life of the prince consort up to the queen’s death. Sir Theodore’s account of these relations was privately printed in 1902, and, with King Edward’s consent, for general publication in 1908. This little book, Queen Victoria as I knew her, throws a good deal of light on the Queen’s character and private life. Sir Theodore Martin died on the 18th of August 1909.
MARTIN, WILLIAM (1767-1810), English naturalist, the son of a hosier, was born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in 1767. He studied drawing at an early age from James Bolton at Halifax, and gained from him a taste for the study of natural history. In 1805 he was appointed drawing master in the grammar school at Macclesfield. Meanwhile he cultivated his taste for natural history, and was in 1796 elected a fellow of the Linnaean Society. He is best known for his early works on British fossils, entitled Petrifacta derbiensia or Figures and Descriptions of Petrifactions collected in Derbyshire (1809); and Outlines of an Attempt to establish a Knowledge of Extraneous Fossils on Scientific Principles (1809). He died at Macclesfield on the 31st of May 1810.