English man of letters, born at Fifehead, Dorset, on the 10th of July 1840. He was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, taking his degree in 1862, and subsequently entered the Indian civil service, becoming in 1869 secretary to the governor of Madras. Owing to a breakdown in health, however, he had to return to England, where he devoted himself to literature. Lilly was a convert to Roman Catholicism, and from 1874 was secretary to the Catholic Union of Great Britain. His works include Ancient Religion and Modern Thought (1884), The Claims of Christianity (1894); Four English Humourists of the Nineteenth Century (1895), and Studies in Religion and Literature (1904). He died in London on the 29th of August 1919.
