CRAIK, George Lillie (1799-1866), professor of English literature at Queen’s College, Belfast, was the son of a Schoolmaster in Fifeshire. He studied at the university of St Andrews with the intention of entering the church, but altering his plans, removed to London, at the age of twenty-five, to devote himself to literature. He became connected with a short-lived literary paper called the Verulam; in 1831 he published his Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties among the works of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; he contributed a considerable number of biographical and historical articles to the Penny Cyclopaedia; and he edited the Pictorial History of England, himself writing much of the work. In 1844 he published his History of Literature and Learning in England from the Norman Conquest to the Present Time, illustrated by extracts, and in the same year his History of British Commerce from the Earliest Times. In the next year appeared his Spenser and his Poetry, an abstract of Spenser’s poems, with historical and biographical notes and frequent quotations; and in 1847 his Bacon, his Writings and his Philosophy, a work of a similar kind. The four last-mentioned works appeared among Knight’s Weekly Volumes. Two years later Craik obtained the chair of history and English literature at Queen’s College, Belfast, a position which he held till his death, which took place on the 23d February 1866. Besides the works already noticed, Craig published the Romance of the Peerage, Outline of the History of the English Language, and The English of Shakespeare.