the peerage as Baron Houghton, of Great Houghton in the West Riding of the County of York. George W. E. Russell said of him: "As years advanced he became not (as the manner of most men is) less Liberal, but more so; keener in sympathy with all popular causes; livelier in his indignation against monopoly and injustice." Literary career and interests Milnes' literary career was often influenced by church matters. He wrote a tract in 1841, which was praised by John Henry Newman. He took part in the discussion about "Essays and Reviews", defending the tractarian position in One Tract More (1841). He published two volumes of verse in 1838, Memorials of Residence upon the Continent and Poems of Many Years, Poetry for the People in 1840 and Palm Leaves in 1844. He also wrote a Life and Letters of Keats in 1848, the material for which was largely provided by the poet's friend, Charles Armitage Brown. Milnes' ballads were among the most popular of their day. In 1868, Lord Houghton was elected to the Royal Society. In 1870, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. Despite his piety, he had apparently an almost unsurpassed collection of erotic literature, which he bequeathed to the British Library, a collection known to few in his lifetime. A man whom his biographer Saunders said, "had many fine tastes and some coarse ones," Milnes authored The Rodiad, a pornographic poem on the subject of flagellation. However, his chief distinctions were his sense of literary merit in others, and the way he fostered it. He was surrounded by the most brilliant men of his time, many of whom he had been the first to acclaim. His reputation rests largely on the part he played, as a man of influence in society and in moulding public opinion on literary matters, in connection with his large circle of talented friends. He secured a pension for Tennyson and, as an abolitionist, helped to make Ralph Waldo Emerson known in Britain. He was one of the earliest champions of Algernon Charles Swinburne and helped David Gray by writing a preface for The Luggie. He helped to obtain a job for Coventry Patmore at the British Museum. He was, in the traditional sense, a patron of literature, who never abused the privileges of his position. Women's rights He admired the literacy brilliance in female writers and was