Dictionary of National Biographies

Blake

http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2585?docPos=3

'[Catherine Blake] was the most important person in Blake's adult life, a constant companion, helpmate, and faithful believer in his genius. The couple had no children.'

Castlereagh

I met Murder on the way—
He had a mask like Castlereagh—.

Canning

'Although Canning was to disagree with Pitt's political strategy during the Addington ministry, the compact made between them in 1792 was broken only by Pitt's death in 1806, if then. Canning declared in 1812, ‘my political allegiance lies buried in his grave’ (Therry, 6.326), and claimed always to pursue the line that his mentor would have taken.'

Animus -  Hostility or ill feeling.

'[Castlereagh] sent Canning a challenge to a duel. Canning, though he had asked for Castlereagh's removal, had certainly not been responsible for the shilly-shallying of Camden and Portland. But he felt he had to accept the challenge, despite having never fired a pistol in his life. He made his will and wrote a touching farewell letter to his wife. The duel was fought on Putney Heath on 21 September: Canning was wounded but survived. Those in the know criticized Castlereagh for unreasonable overreaction, but the fault was very generally believed to lie with Canning.'

 Sir John Everett Millais

From 1852, when he showed Ophelia and A Huguenot, on St Bartholomew's day, refusing to shield himself from danger by wearing a Roman Catholic badge (priv. coll.) at the Royal Academy exhibition, Millais enjoyed increasing public and critical acclaim. With its touching subject of ill-fated lovers in a historical conflict, A Huguenot was especially popular, preparing the way for his election as an associate of the Royal Academy on 7 November 1853. He went on to paint several variations on the same general theme, including The Proscribed Royalist, 1651 (exh. RA, 1853; priv. coll.), The Order of Release, 1746 (exh. RA, 1853; Tate collection), and The Black Brunswicker (exh. RA, 1860; Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight). He also caught the popular imagination with a scene of a heroic fireman carrying children from a burning house, The Rescue (exh. RA, 1855; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne).

Duke of Wellington
Peevish -  Easily irritated, esp. by unimportant things.
Peremptory - Not open to appeal or challenge; final
Obsolescent - Becoming obsolete

'Though neat and almost dandyish in his dress on formal occasions, Wellington remained spartan in his personal habits, frugal in his diet, and notoriously indifferent to the quality of the food and wine he consumed. Physically he was a trim but never a handsome man.'

'Besides these outward virtues were the more human and endearing aspects: his lack of conceit, his ability to reflect with humorous detachment on his astonishing life, and a fundamental simplicity which charmed his friends and disarmed his enemies.'

'If chance seemed to favour him, it was because he left so little to chance.'

Queen Anne

Reticence - reserve: the trait of being uncommunicative; not volunteering anything more than necessary
Propitiate  - win or regain the favor of (a god, spirit, or person) by doing something that pleases them.

Disraeli's Bicentennary

http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/theme/92729?backToResults=list=yes|group=yes|feature=yes|aor=4|orderField=alpha
'successful oppositions win friends through leaving governments to make enemies.'

George IV

http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10541?docPos=1

By Christopher Hibbert

'For the prince had fallen in love again and had made up his mind to marry the object of his passion, Mrs Maria Fitzherbert (1756–1837), a handsome, charming, and sedate Roman Catholic widow of twenty-eight, six years older than himself, who had fled to France after the prince had stabbed himself in a frenzied effort to prevent her doing so.'

'Eventually Princess Caroline decided to go to live abroad; but their difficult daughter, Princess Charlotte, talkative, hoydenish, and rather coarse, was left behind to worry him. '

(Hoydenish - used of girls; wild and boisterous)

'Ever since her arrival on the continent Caroline had been providing Europe with scandalous stories about her astonishingly imprudent behaviour; and her husband, who had employed agents to report upon her activities, had good grounds for supposing that she had committed adultery with her major-domo, Bartolomeo Bergami. His agents' reports were, therefore, sent by the king to parliament in the hope that the queen might not only be divorced but tried for high treason. But, since Bergami was Italian and not subject to English law, and since the alleged offences had not taken place in England, it was impossible to institute a trial for high treason; moreover, the king's own conduct had rendered an ecclesiastical divorce unobtainable. The only option was to introduce a bill of pains and penalties, a parliamentary method of punishing a person without resort to a trial in a court of law.

The proceedings in the House of Lords, which opened on 17 August 1820, did not go as well for the king as he had hoped.'

(http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw00036/The-Trial-of-Queen-Caroline-1820?LinkID=mp03045&role=sit&rNo=1)
'After George IV's death at Windsor on 26 June 1830 and his burial in St George's Chapel, Windsor, on 15 July, obituarists had little good to say of this ‘Leviathan of the haut ton’.'

'Very few of the king's contemporaries saw fit to give thanks for the treasures which had been bestowed upon the nation by this greatest royal patron since Charles I, and which were his true memorial.'

'[George IV] had bought fine works by Rembrandt and Rubens, Dou, Steen, and De Hooch, and had welcomed Canova to London and immediately commissioned sculptures from him; he had also commissioned paintings from almost every commendable British artist of the day, including Gainsborough and Reynolds, Stubbs and Beechey, Hoppner, Cosway, and Constable. '

'Yet, in the end, [Wellington] was forced to recognize that, tiresome and evasive as[George IV] was when political matters had to be discussed, the nation would always have cause to be grateful to a man who had been ‘a most magnificent patron of the arts in this country, and in the world’. '