He was seized by ossification of the brain

From Lexicographer, spare those minor clerics by Paul Johnson. Johnson is writing back in 1993, to appeal to those updating the magnificent institution of the Dictionary of National Biography. An archived version of earlier editions is here. From the article:

In what work do these terminal sentences appear? 'He died of erysipelas in the head, contracted by attending a political meeting.' He was always eccentric; and his behaviour one night at dinner was so strange that a guest intervened. He was placed under restraint at Northwood, in Surrey, and died without issue.' After vainly travelling abroad in hope of relief he died unmarried.' Yes; quite right. The tone is umistakable: the Dictionary of National Biography. It was that modern antiquary Geoffrey Madan, a perpetual browser in its tomes, who spotted these gems. Madan, like all scholars, would have been delighted by the news that the DNB is to be revised; and equally, like me, apprehensive that some quaint babies will be thrown out with the antique bathwater.

[snip]

Then there are the innumerable people who do not fit into any category at all but are simply worth recording. I was disturbed to read, in the Daily Telegraph, that the British Academy president, Dr Kenny, thinks more `scientists and engineers' should be included and `fewer minor clerics'. More boffins by all means, but spare those clerical gents: they are often the salt which gives the DNB its savour. I am thinking, for instance, of James Gatliff, 1766- 1831, Perpetual Curate of Gorton and a minor cleric if ever there was one. He published a four-volume theological work `which involved him in pecuniary difficulties with his publisher' and led to his imprisonment for debt. Released, he put out a vindication, called 'A Firm Attempt at Investigation; or, the Twinkling Effects of a Falling Star to Relieve the Cheshire Full Moon', believed to be a scurrilous reference to the Bishop of Chester. Or there was Henry Aldrich, 1647-1710, Dean of Christ Church and designer of Peckwater Quad, who translated 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Sailor' into Latin, was a fanatical smoker and wrote a song `to be sung by Four Men smoking their Pipes, not more difficult to sing than diverting to hear'. (Well: dons had even less to do then than now.) Or Scott's friend, the Revd John Marriott, doughty hymn-writer until, without warning, `he was seized by ossification of the brain'. Or even the less minor Charles Lloyd, 1784-1829, tutor to Sir Robert Peel, who got him made Bishop of Oxford. In return, Lloyd changed his mind over Catholic Emancipation and supported Peel 'by an impressive speech in the House of Lords'. Alas, `for some time Lloyd had taken insufficient exercise, and his health was further weakened by the censure of the newspapers and the cold treatment of his friends. A chill which he caught at the Royal Academy Dinner hastened his end.'

Nor are minor clerics the only characters we must hang onto. Let us not annihilate Elizabeth Bland, ft 1681-1712, one of the first women to write Hebrew and compose phylacteries, who taught the language to her son and daughter, sole survivors of her six children. I vote, too, to retain Anthony Addington, father of the Prime Minister, who kept a mad-house, was empiric doctor to Chatham, and cured his son William Pitt the Younger of a childhood complaint by prescribing large quantities of port.