Chaucer. Silently and secretly, as was his wont, he examined all the
manuscripts within his reach, and then set to work to determine (1) what
was Chaucer’s own work; (2) what is the real order of the _Canterbury
Tales_. In the course of his researches it occurred to him that the
rhymes used would prove a test of what was Chaucer’s and what was not.
Without assistance from any one he wrote out a complete rhyme-list—an
astonishing labour for an individual, when it is remembered that the
_Tales_ contain some eight thousand lines, every one of which must have
been registered twice, and many three or four times. The labour,
however, was not thrown away. The rhymes employed turned out to be a
true test, and Mr Bradshaw was enabled to publish in 1867 ‘The Skeleton
of Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_: an attempt to distinguish the several
Fragments of the Work as left by the Author.’ We regret to say that this
pamphlet of fifty-four octavo pages is all that the world is ever likely
to see of this splendid piece of work. With characteristic
self-depreciation he says, in a note appended in 1871, ‘Mr Furnivall’s
labours have put far out of date any work that I have ever done upon
this subject’; but it is gratifying to turn to Mr Furnivall, and read,
‘There is only one man in the world, I believe, who thoroughly
understands this subject, Mr Henry Bradshaw.’ He welcomed Mr Furnivall
with habitual generosity, and placed in his hands, without reserve, all
that he had got ready for the edition of Chaucer which he at one time
intended to publish himself. Publication, however, was what he could
rarely be persuaded to attempt. It was not criticism that he feared; but
he had set up in his own mind such a lofty standard of excellence that
he could not bear to abandon a piece of work while it was yet possible
to add some trifling detail, or to correct some imperfection which his
own fastidious taste would alone have been able to detect. It is sad to
think how much has perished with him. His excellent memory enabled him
to dispense with notes to a far greater extent than most persons, and
those which he did put down were written on a system to which we fear it
will be impossible now to find the key. What he actually published
amounts to very little. When we have mentioned eight short octavo
pamphlets, which he called ‘Memoranda’; a few papers printed by the
Cambridge Antiquarian Society; some communications to _Notes and
Queries_ and other periodicals; and an admirable edition of the new
_Statutes for the University of Cambridge, and for the Colleges within
it_, we fear that the list is complete. He had made important
discoveries respecting the old Breton language in connexion with the
early collection of canons known as the _Hibernensis_, and had collected
materials for a Breton glossary which would have placed him in the first
rank of philologers; he had worked at Irish literature with the special
object of elucidating the history of early Irish printing; in knowledge
of ancient service-books he was probably second to none, and at the time
of his death he was writing a preface to the new edition of the Sarum
Breviary; and, lastly, he had made considerable progress towards a
catalogue of the fifteenth-century books in the University Library. On
all these subjects considerable materials exist; but who is fit to take
his place and make use of them?
_20 February, 1886._
WILLIAM HEPWORTH THOMPSON.
The death of the Master of Trinity College has severed almost the last
of the links which connect the present life of Cambridge with the past.
From 1828 until his death[114] in 1886 his connexion with his college
was unbroken; for a brief absence soon after his election to a
Fellowship, and the periods of canonical residence at Ely need hardly be
taken into account. He was, therefore, up to a certain point, a typical
Trinity man of the older school; a firm believer in the greatness of his
college, and in the obligation laid upon him personally to increase that
greatness by every means in his power. But he did not admire blindly. He
could recognize, if he did not welcome, the necessity for changes in the
old order from time to time; and he was known throughout the best period
of his intellectual life as a Liberal and a reformer. He was a rare
combination of a student without pedantry, and a man of the world
without foppishness, or want of principle.
As an undergraduate he was fortunate in obtaining the friendship of men
who afterwards became celebrated in the world of letters, most of them
members of that famous coterie of which Tennyson and Hallam were the
most notable figures. Indeed it is not impossible that the poet may have
intended to include Thompson himself among those who
“held debate, a band
Of youthful friends, on mind and art
And labour, and the changing mart,
And all the framework of the land.”
In their society he laid the foundation of that wide knowledge of
literature, that keen interest in whatever was going forward, that habit
of weighing all things in the nicely-adjusted balance of thoughtful
criticism, which made what he wrote so valuable, and what he said so
delightful. Nor, after he had obtained his Fellowship, and was free to
do as he liked, was he content to become a student and nothing more. He
was careful to add a knowledge of men and manners to what he was
learning from books. He travelled abroad, and acquired a competent
knowledge of more than one modern language; he was fond of art, and a
good judge of pictures and sculpture. Nor did he forget the friends of
his undergraduate days. He was a welcome, and we believe a frequent,
guest at their houses both in town and country, where his fine presence,
his courteous bearing, and his quiet, epigrammatic conversation were
keenly appreciated. To the influence of these social surroundings he
owed that absence of narrowness which is inseparable from a University
career, if it be not tempered by influences from the outside.
Academic lives usually contain few details to arrest the biographer, and
his was no exception to the rule. His father was a solicitor at York,
and he was born in that city 27 March, 1810. He was educated at a
private school, which he left when thirteen years old, and was then
placed under the care of a tutor, with whom he remained until he came up
to Trinity in the Michaelmas Term, 1828, as one of the pupils of Mr
Peacock, afterwards Dean of Ely. To his watchful care and sound advice
Thomson felt himself under deep obligation, and in after-life he used to
describe him as “the best and wisest of tutors.” It had been at first
intended that he should enter as a sizar; but this decision was reversed
at the last moment, and he matriculated as a pensioner. He obtained a
scholarship in 1830, and one of the Members’ prizes for a Latin Essay in
1831. At that time candidates for Classical Honours could not present
themselves for the Classical Tripos until they had satisfied the
examiners for the Mathematical. Thompson must have devoted a
considerable portion of his time to that subject, for he appears in the
Tripos of 1832 as tenth Senior Optime. In the Classical Tripos of the
same year he obtained the fourth place, being beaten by Lushington,
Shilleto, and Dobson, the first of whom beat him again in the
examination for the Chancellor’s medals, of which he won only the
second. He was elected Fellow of his College in 1834. His reputation as
a scholar marked him out for immediate employment as one of the
assistant-tutors; but for a time either no vacancy presented itself, or
men senior to himself were appointed. Meanwhile he accepted a mastership
in a school at Leicester, work which, we believe, he did not find
congenial. In October 1837 he was recalled to Cambridge by the offer of
an assistant-tutorship. In 1844, on the retirement of Mr Heath, he
became tutor, an office which he held until he obtained the Regius
Professorship of Greek in 1853. The other candidates on that occasion
were Shilleto and Philip Freeman, but the electors were all but
unanimous in their choice of Thompson. In the spring of 1866, on the
death of Dr Whewell, he was appointed to the Mastership of Trinity
College.
In attempting to estimate the value of his work as a classical teacher,
it must be remembered that he was the direct heir of the system
introduced into Trinity College by Hare and Thirlwall. We are not aware
that he attended the lectures of the former, though he may well have
done so, but we have heard from his own lips that he derived great
benefit from those of the latter, which were as systematic as Hare’s had
been desultory. Those distinguished scholars, while not neglecting an
author’s language, were careful to direct the attention of their pupils
to his matter. They did not waste time unduly on the theories of this or
that commentator, though they had carefully digested them, but they
showed how their author might be made to explain himself. In fine, the
discovery of his thoughts, not the dry elucidation of his words, was the
object of their teaching. Translation, again, received from them a
larger share of attention than it had done from their predecessors. In
this particular Thompson attained an unrivalled excellence. His
translations never smelt of the lamp, though it may be easily imagined
that this perfection had not been arrived at without much preliminary
study. But, when presented to the class, toil was carefully kept out of
sight. The lecturer stood at his desk and read his author into English,
with neither manuscript nor even notes before him, as though the
translation was wholly unpremeditated, in a style which reflected the
original with exact fidelity, whatever the subject selected might be. He
seemed equally at home in a dialogue of Plato, a tragedy of Euripides in
which, like the _Bacchae_, the lyric element predominates, or a comedy
of Aristophanes. He did not labour in vain. The lecture-room was crowded
with eager listeners; and the happiest renderings were passed from mouth
to mouth, and so made the round of the University. But we are glad to
think that his fame as a scholar rests on a firmer foundation than
traditions of the lecture-room, however brilliant. The author of his
choice was Plato, and though ill-health and a too fastidious criticism
of his own powers, which made him unwilling to let a piece of work go
out of his hands so long as there was any chance of making it better,
stood in the way of the complete edition, or, at any rate, translation,
of the author, which he once meditated, yet he has left enough good work
behind him to command the gratitude of future scholars. To this study he
was doubtless directed, in the first instance, by natural predilection;
but, if we mistake not, he was confirmed in it by the scholars
above-mentioned, either directly or by their suggesting to him the study
of Schleiermacher, whose writings were first introduced to English
readers by their influence. That critic’s theory—that Plato had a
comprehensive and precise doctrine to teach, which he deliberately
concealed under the complicated machinery of a series of dialogues,
leaving his readers to combine and interpret for themselves the dark
hints and suggestions afforded to them—was followed by Thompson with
great learning, unerring tact, and firm grasp. His editions of the
_Phaedrus_ (1868) and the _Gorgias_ (1871) are models of what an
edition, based on these principles, ought to be; and the paper on the
_Sophistes_, long lost sight of in the _Transactions_ of the Cambridge
Philosophical Society, but republished in the _Journal of Philology_
(1879), is a masterpiece. Nor must we omit an introductory lecture on
the _Philebus_, written in 1855, and published in the same journal
(1882), which is a piece of literature as well as a piece of criticism;
or the learned and instructive notes to Archer Butler’s _Lectures on the
History of Ancient Philosophy_, the first edition of which appeared in
1855.
Thompson discharged the difficult duties of a college tutor with
admirable patience and discretion. Those who knew him imperfectly called
him cold, hard, and sarcastic; and his bearing towards his brother
Fellows gave occasionally, we must admit, some colour to the accusation.
But in reality he was an exceedingly modest man, diffident of himself,
reserved, and at first somewhat shy in the society of those whom he did
not know well. Again, it must be recollected that nature had dealt out
to him a measure of ‘irony, that master-spell,’ of a quality that a
Talleyrand might have envied. Hence, especially when slightly nervous,
he got into a habit of letting his words fall into well-turned sarcastic
sentences almost unconsciously. The most ordinary remark, when uttered
by him, became an epigram. We maintain, however, that he never said an
unkind word intentionally, or crushed anybody who did not richly deserve
it. For the noisy advocate of crude opinions, or the pretender to
knowledge which he did not possess, were reserved those withering
sentences which froze the victim into silence, and, being carefully
treasured up by his friends, and repeated at intervals, clung to him
like a brand. To his own pupils Thompson’s demeanour was the reverse of
this. At a time when the older men of the University—with the exception,
perhaps, of Professor Sedgwick—were not in sympathy with the rising
generation, he made them feel that they had in him a friend who would
really stand _in loco parentis_ to them. Somewhat indolent by nature, on
their behalf he would spare no trouble; but, on the other hand, he would
allow of no interference. ‘He is a pupil of mine, you had better leave
him to me,’ he would say to the Seniors, when an undergraduate on his
‘side’ got into trouble; but it may be questioned whether many a
delinquent would not have preferred public exposure to the awful
half-hour in his tutor’s study by which his rescue was succeeded. Nor
did his interest in his pupils cease when they left college. He was
always glad to see them or to write to them, and few, we imagine, took
any important step in life without consulting him.
When Thompson became Greek Professor, a canonry at Ely was still united
to the office—an expedient for augmenting the salary which, we are glad
to say, will not trouble future Professors. To most men, trained as he
had been, the new duties thus imposed upon him would have been
thoroughly distasteful; and we are not sure that he ever took a real
pleasure in his residences at Ely. In fact, more than one bitter remark
might be quoted to prove that he did not. Notwithstanding, he made
himself extremely popular there, both with the Chapter and the citizens,
and he soon became a good preacher. It is to be regretted that only one
of his sermons—that on the death of Dean Peacock—has been printed; that
one is in its way a masterpiece.
He became Master rather late in life, when the habits of a bachelor
student had grown upon him; and he lacked the superabundant energy of
his great predecessor. But notwithstanding, the twenty years of his
Mastership were years of activity and progress; and he took his due
share of University and College business. He was alive to the necessity
for reform, and the statutes framed in 1872, as well as those which
received the royal assent in 1882, owed much to his criticism and
support. It should also be recorded that he was an excellent examiner,
appreciating good work of very different sorts. Gradually, however, as
his health grew worse, he was compelled to give up much that he had been
able to do when first elected, and to withdraw from society almost
entirely. Yet he did not become a mere lay figure. Even strangers who
caught a glimpse in chapel of that commanding presence, the dignity of
which was enhanced by singularly handsome features, and silvery
hair[115], were compelled to recognize his power. There was an innate
royalty in his nature which made his Mastership at all times a reality,
and he contrived, from the seclusion of his study, to exert a stronger
influence and to maintain a truer sympathy with the Society than
Whewell, with all his activity, had ever succeeded in
establishing. His very isolation from the worry and bustle of the world
gave authority to his advice; those who came to seek it felt, as they
sat by his armchair, that they were listening to one who was not
influenced by considerations of the moment, but who was giving them some
of the garnered treasures of mature experience.
_9 October, 1886._
COUTTS TROTTER.
The Society of Trinity College had long been aware of the critical
condition of their Vice-Master’s health, and his numerous friends in the
wider circle of the University had shared their alarm. And yet, though
everybody had been expecting the worst for several weeks, the news that
the end had really come[116] fell upon the University with the stunning
force of a wholly unexpected event. The full extent of the loss can only
be measured by time; for the moment we can but feel that the University
of Cambridge misses an influence which pervaded and animated every
department of her affairs. For the last fifteen years no one has been so
completely identified with what may be termed modern Cambridge; no one
has been admitted to so large a share in her councils, or has devoted
himself with such unremitting diligence to the administration of her
complex organization.
Mr Trotter proceeded to his degree in 1859. He was thirty-seventh
wrangler, and third in the second class of the Classical Tripos. It is
evident, however, that his acquirements must not be measured by his
place in these two Triposes, for he was soon after elected to a
Fellowship in his college, where, as is well known, the proficiency of
candidates is tested by a fresh examination. After his election he took
Holy Orders, and devoted himself for a time to active clerical work. For
this, however, after a fair trial, he found himself unsuited, and,
resigning his curacy, he returned to college. Between the years 1865 and
1869 he spent a considerable portion of his time in German universities.
In 1869 he became Lecturer in Natural Science in Trinity College, and in
due course succeeded to the Tutorship. In 1874 he was elected a member
of the Council of the Senate—a position which he occupied, without
interruption, until his death. In early life he had been a staunch
Conservative; but, as time went on, his views changed, and he became not
only a Liberal in politics, but an ardent University reformer. In the
latter capacity he threw himself energetically into the movement for
reform which led to the present University and College statutes—to
which, in their actual shape, he largely contributed. We have said that
he was a Liberal and a reformer. This position placed him, it is almost
needless to remark, in direct antagonism to many of those with whom he
was called upon to act; but his conciliatory manners, his excellent
temper, and his perfect straightforwardness, not only disarmed
opposition, but enabled him to make friends even among those who
differed from him most widely. In fact, what was sometimes called in
jest ‘the Trotterization of the University’ was so complete that he had
come to be regarded as indispensable; and his name will be found at one
time or another on all the more important Boards and Syndicates. But it
was not merely his knowledge of University business and detail that
placed him there. He was gifted with an intelligence of extraordinary
quickness. He could grasp the bearings of a complicated question swiftly
and readily—disentangle it, so to speak, from all that was not strictly
essential to it—and while others were still talking about it, doubtful
how to act, he would commit to paper a draft of a report which was
commonly accepted by those present as exactly resuming the general sense
of the meeting. He was in favour of a wide enlargement of University
studies, especially in the scientific direction—a course which was
impossible without funds; but at the same time no man ever loved his
college more dearly than he did—no man held more closely to the old idea
of duty to the college as a corporation; and it may be added that no
Vice-Master ever dispensed the hospitality incidental to the office with
greater geniality.
We have dwelt on Mr Trotter’s University career at some length; but let
it not be supposed that he was immersed in the details of University
business to the exclusion of other subjects. Though modest and retiring
almost to a fault, his interests were wide, and his knowledge extensive
and accurate. He had no mean acquaintance with physical science, on
which he gave collegiate lectures; he spoke and read several modern
languages, and was familiar with their literature; he took great
interest in music; he travelled extensively, and had a singularly minute
knowledge of out-of-the-way parts of the Alps, and of the little visited
country towns of Italy, to which he was attracted partly by their
history, partly by their art-treasures. He wrote easily and clearly,
though he never cared to cultivate a particularly elegant style; and as
a speaker he was always forcible, and sometimes exceedingly happy in the
utterance of tersely-worded, epigrammatic sentences, which resumed much
thought in few words.
We have dwelt of necessity in these brief remarks almost exclusively on
Mr Trotter’s public career. But there was another side to his character.
He was a generous and warm-hearted friend, whose friendship was all the
more sincere because it was so quiet and undemonstrative. Few had the
rare privilege of his intimacy; but those few will never forget that
kindly face, that bright smile of welcome, that charity which found
excuses for everybody—that liberality which, while it eschewed
publicity, was always ready to help the deserving, whether it was a
cause or an individual.
_10 December, 1887._
RICHARD OKES.
The death of Dr Okes, though he had reached the mature age of
ninety-one, has taken the University by surprise[117]. He had become an
institution of the place. While everything around him changed, and old
things became new, his venerable figure remained unaltered, like a
monument of an older faith which has survived the attacks of successive
iconoclasts, to tell the younger generation what manner of men the Dons
of the past had been. He was fond of saying that the first public event
he could distinctly remember was the battle of Trafalgar. He had been a
Master at Eton when Goodall was Provost and Keate Head-master, and he
had begun to rule over King’s College when the University of Cambridge
differed as widely from what it is now as the Europe of Napoleon from
its present condition. Still, his load of years sat so lightly upon him,
his interest in what was going forward was still so keen, that there
seemed to be no reason why he should not complete his century of life.
The slight infirmities from which he suffered did not prevent him, until
quite lately, from attending service in chapel, at least on Sundays; his
hearing was but little affected; his sight was good; and he could still
enjoy the society of his friends. Only a few days before his death he
was reading Miss Burney’s _Evelina_ to his daughters. When it became
known on Sunday last that he had really passed away, it was hard to
believe that the sad news could possibly be true.
Richard Okes was born in Cambridge, 15 December, 1797. His father,
Thomas Verney Okes, was a surgeon in extensive practice. Tradition is
silent respecting the future Provost’s childhood and early education;
but, as in those days boys began their lives at Eton at a very early
age, it is probable that when he was little older than a child he was
sent to fight his battles among the collegers, in what even devoted
Etonians have called ‘a proverb and a reproach’—Long Chamber. In 1816,
when he was rather more than eighteen, he obtained a scholarship at
King’s College; but it appears from the University records that he did
not formally matriculate until November in the following year. In those
days, be it remembered, King’s College was a very different place from
what it is now, both structurally and educationally. The magnificent
site, on which Henry VI. intended to place an equally magnificent
college, was occupied by no structures of importance except the Chapel,
and the Fellows’ Building, part of a second grand design which, like the
first, was never completed. The scholars, or at all events the greater
part of them, were packed into Old Court—the small, irregular quadrangle
west of the University Library, to which the founder intended originally
to limit his college. It must have been a curious structure—picturesque
and interesting from an archeological point of view, but unwholesome and
uncomfortable as a place of residence. The very nicknames given to some
of the chambers—“the Tolbooth,” “the Block-house,” and the like—are a
sufficient proof of their discomfort. In one of these, on the ground
floor, facing Clare Hall, young Okes resided; and until a few months
ago, when the last remnant of this part of the old college was absorbed
by the University Library, the present generation could form a fairly
correct idea of the gloom and damp that their ancestors were obliged to
put up with. But members of Kings College had to endure something far
worse than physical discomfort. It had been the object of their founder
to make his college independent of the University, and, as a consequence
of these well-intentioned provisions, scholars of King’s were not
allowed to compete for University honours, but obtained their degrees as
a matter of course. The result is not difficult to conceive. In every
society there will be some whose love of letters, or whose ardour for
distinction, is so strong that nothing can check it; but, as a rule, the
young Etonians who were obliged to spend three years in Cambridge threw
learning to the winds, and enjoyed to their hearts’ content the liberty,
not to say license, of their new surroundings. It was a bad state of
things; and that Okes felt it to be so is proved by the eagerness with
which he, a strong Conservative, set himself to get it abolished as soon
as he had the power to do so. We do not claim for the late Provost any
specially studious habits as a young man; he was too genial and too fond
of society to have ever been a very hard reader; but his scholarship in
after years would not have been as accurate as it certainly was had he
wasted his time at Cambridge; and, as a proof that he aimed at
distinction, it should be mentioned that he obtained Sir William
Browne’s prize for Greek and Latin Epigrams in 1819 and 1820. To the
very end of his life he was fond of writing Latin verse; and when the
Fellows of his college congratulated him on his ninetieth birthday in
Latin and English poems, he replied in half-a-dozen Latin lines which
many a younger scholar could not have turned so neatly.