R. Selbourne

Selborne, Roundell Palmer, Earl of, son of W. J. Palmer, Rector of Mixbury, Oxford, was b. Nov. 27, 1812, and educated at Trinity College, Oxford. Called to the Bar he rapidly advanced in the profession, and became Lord Chancellor in 1872. Lord Selborne did great service to hymnody by the publication of his Book of Praise, 1862 (enlarged ed., 1867), in which the original texts of some of the finest of English hymns were restored; and by calling attention in his paper on English Church Hymnody at the York Church Congress in 1866, to the mutilations which those hymns had undergone. Since 1866 editors of repute have recognized the justice of Lord Selborne's strictures, and far better work than heretofore is the result. He d. May 4, 1895.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)