member of the Academy: he had considerable means,
apart from his profession. In 1857 he took a leading part in selecting
and arranging the modern paintings in the Art-Treasures Exhibition in
Manchester. His constitution being naturally frail, he went in 1853,
with Dickens and Wilkie Collins, to Italy for a short trip, and in 1863
he visited Algeria. Here he benefited so far as his chronic lung-disease
was concerned; but exposure to a cold wind while out riding brought on
an attack of asthma, from which he died on the 26th of March 1863 at
Algiers, near which city his remains were buried.

Egg was a gifted and well-trained painter of genre, chiefly in the way
of historical anecdote, or of compositions from the poets and novelists.
Among his principal pictures may be named: 1843, the "Introduction of
Sir Piercie Shafton and Halbert Glendinning" (from Scott's _Monastery_);
1846, "Buckingham Rebuffed"; 1848, "Queen Elizabeth discovers she is no
longer young"; 1850, "Peter the Great sees Catharine for the first
time"; 1854, "Charles I. raising the Standard at Nottingham" (a study);
1855, the "Life and Death of Buckingham"; 1857 and 1858, two subjects
from Thackeray's _Esmond_; 1858, "Past and Present, a triple picture of
a faithless wife"; 1859, the "Night before Naseby"; 1860, his last
exhibited work, the Dinner Scene from _The Taming of the Shrew_. The
Tate Gallery contains one of his earlier pictures, Patricio entertaining
two Ladies, from the _Diable boiteux_; it was painted in 1844.

Egg was rather below the middle height, with dark hair and a handsome
well-formed face; the head of Peter the Great (in the picture of Peter
and Catharine, which may be regarded as his best work, along with the
Life and Death of Buckingham) was studied, but of course considerably
modified, from his own countenance. He was manly, kind-hearted,
pleasant, and very genial and serviceable among brother-artists; social
and companionable, but holding mainly aloof from fashionable circles.
As an actor he had uncommon talent. He appeared among Dickens's company
of amateurs in 1852 in Lord Lytton's comedy _Not so Bad as we Seem_, and
afterwards in Wilkie Collins's _Frozen Deep_, playing the humorous part
of Job Want.

EGG (O.E. _aeg_, cf. Ger. _Ei_, Swed. _aegg_, and prob. Gr. [Greek:
oon], Lat. _ovum_), the female reproductive cell or ovum of animals,
which gives rise generally only after fertilization to the young. The
largest eggs are thos