LF 526 B8 J3 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 3 1822 01086 8636 LIBRARY CAUKKW1A SAN DIEGO 3 1822 01086 8636 I T& /£ \/ '^khstreir-^ INGRAM BYWATER THE MEMOIR OF AN OXFORD SCHOLAR 1 840-1 9 14 BY WILLIAM WALROND JACKSON, D.D. v HONORARY FELLOW, FORMERLY RECTOR, OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1917 For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill. Milton, Lycidas. PREFACE A few words of preface are necessary in order to explain the origin and aim of the present memoir. Soon after By water's death on December 17, 19 14, Professor Cook Wilson, to whom he had left his unfinished literary work, was asked by the British Academy to write a memoir of his distinguished colleague on their behalf. Professor Cook Wilson did not become intimate with Bywater until some twenty- five years after the election of the latter to a Fellow- ship at Exeter College. He therefore asked me, as Bywater's oldest surviving friend and colleague, to assist him in the memoir. This I readily undertook to do ; but before we had discussed matters together, or fixed any time for beginning the work, Professor Cook Wilson died in August 19 15. His lamented death was an irreparable loss. Nobody had known Bywater more intimately in his later years, or was better acquainted with the merits of his work as a scholar, or in closer sympathy with his aims and ideals. Some of Bywater's friends, however, still desired a fuller record of his life than had been contained in the notices that appeared after his death. Sir Herbert Warren, K.C.V.O., President of Magdalen College, whom I specially consulted, kindly expressed a wish that I should take up the project which had fallen from Professor Cook Wilson's hands, and offered to place any material that he possessed, together with his own reminiscences, at my disposal. Bywater's repre- a 2 iv PREFACE sentatives were also anxious that a memoir should still be written, and that it should deal more fully than had been at first contemplated with his private life and characteristics. After ascertaining from the British Academy that they had no intention of appointing a successor to Professor Cook Wilson, I resolved to undertake the task. In arriving at this decision, I was moved partly by a natural wish to aid in keeping alive the memory of a friend, and partly by the conviction that a memoir, if written at all, should be attempted by one who had known Bywater intimately in early life, and was per- sonally familiar with the circumstances and various influences which then determined his future career, as well as with the movement of opinion at Oxford during the last fifty years, so far as Bywater was affected by it. The materials for a memoir of Bywater, compared with those ready to the hand of some biographers, such as those of Jowett for example, are comparatively scanty. He left no diary of any kind, and was in the habit of destroying all private papers. His interests were severely limited. He wrote very few letters of an intimate character, or dealing with subjects out of his own sphere. On the other hand, his life presented a singular unity in all its different aspects. It was always the life of an Oxford scholar. The same characteristics were everywhere traceable both in his intercourse with his friends and in his literary work. Neither half of his life could be understood without the other. The materials at my disposal, other than my own recollections, may be briefly enumerated. There is first of all a short, but very characteristic, autobio- PREFACE v graphical account of his early life, and some of his later opinions, given to a representative of the Morning Post and published in that newspaper on June 27, 1914, the seventy-fourth anniversary of his birth. There is also a certain number of papers, partly of a private nature and partly referring to his literary work, which have been most kindly placed in my hands by his executrix, Mrs. Charles Cornish. This memoir is under the deepest obligation to her for the care with which she has sought for any document that could be of use. I am also greatly indebted to Mrs. Bywater's nephew, Dr. Vaughan Cornish, well known in the world of science, both for advice and for his very interesting reminiscences of Bywater's private conversa- tion prepared specially for this memoir. There is also a box of letters deposited by Bywater in the Bodleian Library, to which the Curators of the Bodleian have most kindly given me free access. This box contains a few papers and letters referring to the late Mark Pattison, and a great number of letters and post cards addressed to Bywater by various scholars, chiefly foreigners. Many of these are of little or no value, except from the personality of their writers ; but many of them have been of service, and there are a few drafts of important letters from Bywater himself. There is, fortunately, among these papers a small number of letters addressed by him to Professor Bernays, almost all of which are printed in this memoir. From inquiries which I have made, I am inclined to think that there are few, if any, other letters from him of much value in existence, unless there should be some in Germany, which under present circumstances are inaccessible. VI PREFACE Many of the letters preserved in the Bodleian refer to rare books, especially those from Monsieur Legrand, which doubtless contain much information that would be valued by an expert bibliophile. Of these letters I have ventured to print a few as specimens, and must express my special obligations to Monsieur Henri Omont, the eminent French savant, for his kindly interest in this memoir, and his permission to print one of his own letters, as well as for the authorization he has obtained for me to print those of Monsieur Legrand and others. Bywater's merits as a scholar could not be ade- quately treated except by a scholar of the same calibre as himself. The best tribute to his work as a scholar would be a volume of selections from his miscellaneous papers, edited by some competent hand. I have attempted, however inadequately, to give such an account of Bywater's literary aims and per- formance as may enable persons who are not specialists to understand their general character and significance. In doing so, I have derived great assistance from documents which I have been able to print, and from the estimate of his position as a scholar for which I am indebted to some of those who are entitled to speak with authority, especially to Professor J. Burnet of St. Andrews, who has kindly furnished me with an account of Bywater's work on the text of Diogenes Laertius which no one else could have supplied. The insertion of such testimony in these pages may, I ven- ture to hope, impart to this portion of the memoir a value which it would not otherwise possess. It remains for me to express my thanks to a few of those besides the persons already named, to whom I am PREFACE vii specially indebted for information or advice. The counsel and information kindly bestowed on me by Bywater's intimate friend Dr. Henry Jackson, O.M., Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, and one of his colleagues in the editorship of the Journal, of Philology have been of special value. I am also very grateful to Sir John Edwin Sandys, the Public Orator at Cambridge, not only for the words quoted in the following pages and for various information, but for the help derived from the third volume of his History of Classical Scholarship, which I have constantly consulted for information as to the scholars with whom Bywater corresponded. I am much indebted to the Rector of Exeter College for permission to print the Bibliography prepared by Bywater himself for the Rector's Bibliography of the Fellows and Tutors of Exeter College in Recent Times ; to Professor J. Stewart for help and criticism in the chapters referring to Bywater's literary work ; to Mr. J. R. Thursfield, who was one of the most intimate of Mark Pattison's younger friends, for his comments on the chapter in which I have spoken of Pattison ; to Sir Ray Lankester, K.C.B. ; to Mr. Charles Cannan, the Secretary to the Delegacy of the University Press; to Mr. P. S. Allen ; and to Professor Gildersleeve. Of the tributes paid to Bywater by the four last-named friends (especially of Mr. Caiman's) I have made the fullest possible use. From many other friends (espe- cially from Dr. C. H. O. Daniel, Provost of Worcester College, and Dr. J. R. Magrath, Provost of Queen's) I have also derived information of various kinds. Some of those who would have been most helpful, such as the late Professor Pelham, Professor Henry viii PREFACE Nettleship, Mr. Shute, and others, have, alas ! passed away. I must, in conclusion, tender my special thanks to Bodley's Librarian, Mr. Falconer Madan, for constant aid and encouragement, and to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press for undertaking the publication of this memoir. But for the help which has been so kindly and generously extended to me this biography would be far more defective than it is. It should not, how- ever, be regarded as in any sense official. For all its deficiencies, as well as for the opinions expressed in it, the present writer is solely responsible. W. W. JACKSON. Oxford, March 191 7. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGES Childhood, School, and College — University and King's College Schools — Scholar of Queen's, Oxford — Undergraduate life — Degree 1-15 CHAPTER II Decision of future career — Election to Fellowship at Exeter College — Death of Father — Mark Pattison and his friends — Professor J. Bernays . . . 16-34 CHAPTER III Social life at Oxford, 1863-84 — Friendships — Relations with foreign scholars — Franco-German War — Per- sonal reminiscences by Prebendary Humble-Crofts . 35 - 6i CHAPTER IV Work in College and the University, 1863-84 — Oxford Reform — Relations with J. Wordsworth and W. H. Pater — University Commission of 1877 — Sub- Librarianship of Bodleian — Delegate of University Press ......... 62-90 CHAPTER V Literary work, 1865-84 — Various monographs — Hera- clitus — Edits Priscianus Lydus for Berlin Academy — Work on the text of Diogenes Laertius — Rela- tions with Cobet — Editor of Journal of Philology . 9 1 - 1 09 CONTENTS CHAPTER VI PAGES Progress in life, 1884-95 — Reader in Greek — Marriage — Regius Professor of Greek — Contrast between Jowett and Bywater — Letters of congratulation . 1 10-130 CHAPTER VII Literary work after 1884 — Aristotelian studies — Edits text of the Ethics and of the Poetics — Monographs — Estimate of unfinished work on Diogenes Laertius by Professor Burnet — General results . . . 131-146 CHAPTER VIII Life at Oxford and in London, 1885-1908 — Bodleian Tercentenary — Various correspondence — Professor J. A. Gomperz — Foundation of British Academy — Reminiscences of Sir Herbert Warren — Wife's illness and death — Letters from various scholars . . 147-170 CHAPTER IX Closing years, 1908-14 — Regius Professorship — Leaves Oxford — Various interests — Eknchns Librorum — Reminiscences of Dr. Vaughan Cornish — Last ill- ness and death — Brief estimate of character . . 171-195 APPENDIX I. Autobiographical statement communicated to the Morning Post of June 27, 1914 . . . 196-199 II. Bibliography ....... 200-201 III. Mrs. Bywater's benefaction to the University of Oxford for the promotion of the study of the language and literature of Byzantine and Modern Greece 201-202 CONTENTS xi PAGES IV. Gifts and bequests of Mr. and Mrs. Bywater to the Ashmolean Museum ..... 203-205 V. Extracts from an article and obituary notice of Ingram Bywater in The Times of December 18, 1914 205-206 VI. Portraits ' • 207 INDEX • 209-212 CHAPTER I Childhood, School, and College — University and King's College Schools — Scholar of Queen's, Oxford — Undergraduate life — Degree. Ingram Bywater was born in London, in the parish of Islington, on June 27, 1840. His father, John Ingram Bywater, was a clerk in H.M. Customs. His mother's maiden name was Marshall. Bywater was the sole issue of their marriage. As his father and his grandfather had been, like himself, the only offspring of their respective parents, he had few save very distant kinsfolk. His father was born at Presteign in Radnorshire, and his grandfather, John Jenkin By- water, in the parish of Llanbister in the same county. The residence of his family in Wales in the eighteenth century warrants the conclusion that Bywater had at all events a large admixture of Celtic blood. How far a man's personal qualities are derived from his race is a moot question. But if strength of will and love of learning are among the best characteristics of the Welsh, Bywater certainly has reflected no discredit on his ancestry. 1 1 Late in life Bywater had occasion to make use of armorial bearings. His grandfather had been in the habit of using a coat of arms which had been granted to a family of his name at an early period. Bywater, however, examined the evidence of his grand- father's right to use them, and, failing to satisfy himself on this point, applied in due form to the College of Heralds for a grant of arms. Those which he then obtained may be seen on his book-plate in the 2011 B 2 CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE Bywater's mother was of a bright, active disposition and transmitted some of her qualities to her son. But the closest affinity existed between him and his father. Mr. John Ingram Bywater was a man of unusual distinction and cultivation of mind. His son always maintained that his father's natural gifts were superior to his own. Mr. Bywater had received a thoroughly good education, mainly at Hanover. He knew German well, and had read many of the best books in that language. He had a fair command of French, and some knowledge of Greek and Latin. He was, moreover, a lover of English literature and of the great English writers. A well-filled common-place book, preserved by his son, affords evidence both of the extent and of the quality of his reading. He had been ambitious of entering a learned profession, but circumstances had thwarted his aspirations. He was now determined that his son should, if possible, enjoy the advantages denied to himself. After the labours of the day were over he devoted himself to the formation of his son's mind. He made him his constant companion, and gave him his first lessons in Greek, Latin, and French. He sent him to the best schools within reach, and though he had never more than a very modest income spared no expense that he deemed conducive to his son's progress. The same wise liberality was continued when Bywater went to Oxford. He was provided with the means of procuring the best private tuition, and with a select but well-stocked library. A list is still extant, in Mr. Bywater's handwriting, of the books which his son took with him to Oxford, nearly two volumes bequeathed by him to the Bodleian, and in one of the stained-glass windows in the Hall of Exeter College. EARLY REMINISCENCES 3 hundred in number. Very few of these are obsolete even now. 1 It might have been thought that these relations between father and son in early life, especially as Bywater was an only child, might have encouraged juvenile conceit and dogmatism. But such a result would have been incompatible either with the aims and ideals of the father, or with the disposition of the son. The memory of those early days never faded from Bywater's mind. Bywater's experiences in childhood and youth may best be described in his own words. The following particulars are taken from the autobiographical state- ment published in the Morning Post on June 27, 1914, the seventy-fourth anniversary of his birth. ' I am a Londoner by birth,' he said, ' having been born in Islington, but my earliest recollections are connected with Liverpool, where my family went to reside when I was still in my infancy. My father was a clerk in the Customs, and he was transferred from London to Liverpool, and, after a considerable lapse of time, back to London. During our stay at Liverpool great apprehension was felt owing to the outbreak of the Chartist riots. It was thought the rioters might do something to injure the shipping, and troops were drafted into the city and its suburbs. I distinctly remember seeing a regiment encamped at Everton. That was when I was eight years old. In the following year, 1849, we returned to London, where we resided in various districts. After being sent to two or three private elementary schools, where I learned little, I believe, except reading and writing, 1 When he was breaking up his house in Oxford, 6 Norham Gardens, he parted with a number of his books. At the end of a long day of selection he said to a friend : ' My moral being is fluttered. I have been turning over books that I have not handled for a long time, books that my father gave me, the best editions of their day.' Mr. P. S. Allen in the Jotirnal of Philology, No. 67, p. 9. B 2 4 CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE I was sent, at the age of thirteen, to University College School. The Headmaster at that time was Mr. Thomas Hewitt Key, a most excellent man, a good classic and mathe- matician, and a skilful administrator. Among the pupils were John Morley, now Lord Morley, and Mr. Justice Charles, but as they were in the Sixth Form, far above me, I cannot say that I knew them. At school, you know, a difference in age of a couple of years or so constitutes a big gulf between boys. In my own class were De Morgan, who afterwards achieved distinction as a novelist, and Adler, who became Chief Rabbi in London. 1 The mention of the late Dr. Adler reminds me that University College was open to all creeds, whence it was that it contained a number of boys belonging to parents who were orthodox Nonconformists, or Unitarians, or Jews. It was as a consequence of this that King's College was founded by the Church people, who were determined to have a religious test, and the two Colleges amalgamated, the consent of University College to the amalgamation being secured because the latter institution was averse to having two degree-giving bodies in the Metropolis. For my part I went to University College School not because my views on religious matters were not orthodox, but because it happened to be near where we were living. In fact, I was actually transferred to King's College School — from Dan, as it were, to Beersheba — when the time came for my leaving the former place. The reason was that whereas one had to 1 Joseph Chamberlain, the future Colonial Secretary and Tariff Reformer, was just leaving or had just left University College School when Bywater entered it, and could hardly be called a school-fellow, but they met occasionally on friendly terms in after life. They were first introduced to each other in Exeter College. Professor Thorold Rogers brought John Bright and Chamberlain to see the garden one Sunday morning about 1869 when Bywater and a friend were sitting there. Chamberlain at once fraternized with Bywater on the strength of their common attachment to their old school. It may be added that John Bright looked round with much interest and asked various questions. When leaving the garden he turned KING'S COLLEGE SCHOOL 5 leave University College at sixteen, at King's College School one could remain for some considerable time longer. The Headmaster of King's College School when I entered there was Dr. Mayor, and among the students in my time were Lord Alverstone, the ex-Lord Chief Justice, and Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, since so well known in connection with Kew Gardens. Both of these, however, were my juniors. My most intimate friend there was Charles Taylor, the distinguished Hebrew scholar, who became Master of St. John's College, Cambridge, and died about five years ago.' Something may be added to Bywater's own account of his school life. During the two years spent at University College School he learned no Greek, but took up German and those branches of mathematics that were allowed as a substitute for Greek in the school curriculum. He frequently spoke with gratitude of the admirable instruction he then received in Mathematics, and of the interest infused into it by his teacher. To this probably was due in later life his keen appreciation of the value of mathematics and science both as branches of knowledge, and as instru- ments of mental training. His serious pursuit of Greek began with his admission to King's College. His early education had a permanent effect on his general as well as on his intellectual development. He was, as he says himself, a Londoner by birth, and he always felt at home in London. Though he was by no means insensible to the beauties of nature, the life of great cities appealed to him more strongly. He soon became interested in the sights of the London streets, then very different from their present aspect, but especially with the book-shops that studded his route round and said to Bywater, ' All that I see and hear of your colleges makes me feel that they are class institutions.' 6 CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE to and from school. H is London training also confirmed his indifference and even distaste for athletic pursuits, for which his two schools then afforded little or no opportunity. He had been a sensitive and delicate child, 1 and could not have passed unscathed through the ordeal of a great boarding school with its compulsory games, and constant sacrifice of the individual to the mass. He never knew either the joys or the distractions of that sense of exuberant physical vigour that seeks an outlet in violent athletic sports. But his daily walks through the London streets developed in him that kind of constitution which best suits a sedentary life, and remains at its normal level with no more bodily exercise than can be taken easily in the course of the day's work. Though in earlier life, both as an under- graduate and as Fellow of a College, he was ready for a good tramp if necessary, he could affirm in later years that he never took a walk unless he had some business to transact, and became unequal to any effort of this kind. He might at one time, if circumstances had been favourable, have taken to riding, but no other form of exercise ever had any attraction for him. He was sensitive, as many students have been, to atmo- spheric influences, especially to anything like malaria, even in the mild form resulting from the evaporation of a summer flood at Oxford. To the end of his life he made too light of any bodily ailment, and never would lie in bed for it, though he sometimes had to interrupt his studies. He had the inestimable gift of sound sleep. Though he became an inveterate smoker 1 This, with some other statements in this chapter, has been derived from a private memorandum of Bywater, part of which has been confided to the present writer. SCHOLAR OF QUEEN'S 7 and constantly sat over his folios without ever relaxing his attention till one or two o'clock in the morning, he would fall asleep at once on retiring to bed, and sleep soundly till he was called. 1 In his later life By water, although he had received his more advanced teaching from King's College, was. more closely associated with University College. His first school claimed him as one of its distinguished alumni, and University College desired to obtain the benefit of his counsel. In 1869 he received from the council of University College the copy of a resolution signed by George Grote, the chairman, thanking him 'for presiding at the distribution of the prizes to the pupils of University College School, and for his con- tinued interest in the institution of which he was formerly a pupil '. He was also a life governor of the College Corporation until its dissolution in 1907, and was elected a member of the Council of University College, London, in 1887, and continued in office till 1891. At eighteen he was elected by open competition to a Scholarship at Queen's College, Oxford, and went into residence in the Michaelmas Term of 1858. There he very soon made himself at home. Thomson, after- wards Archbishop of York, was then Provost of Queen's. But Thomson saw very little of the undergraduates with the exception of those who showed musical taste and ability. The Rev. J. Percival, now Bishop of 1 Some notices of Bywater which have appeared since his death speak of his ' splendid physical health '. This expression, however, is a little misleading, though he certainly had unusual endurance and power of resisting the effects of a sedentary life. Bywater, like Jowett, became during his lifetime a somewhat mythical personage. 8 CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE Hereford, though still a Fellow of Queen's, had left Oxford for a mastership at Rugby, and the present Provost, who was elected to a Fellowship in i860, was not appointed Tutor until 1863. But among the teaching staff were W. Wolfe Capes, afterwards the first University Reader in Ancient History, an impres- sive personality, and a student of the first rank, and Lewis Campbell, afterwards Professor of Greek at the University of St. Andrews, the editor of Sophocles and of various dialogues of Plato, and the biographer (with Evelyn Abbott) of Jowett. Bywater was among those who attended Jowett's lectures and availed themselves of the Professor's invitation to bring essays to him. He was fond of telling a characteristic story of Jowett ; how the Professor after hearing him and Pater read their essays to him said, ' Thank you, both you gentle- men will take first classes in your schools.' This fore- cast was fully justified by the promise of both students, although Pater did not concentrate himself sufficiently on his studies for the schools to attain the highest success, and descended to the second class. Bywater also attended the lectures of John Conington, Professor of Latin. A few copies of Latin verses with Coning- ton's pencilled corrections still survive among Bywater's papers. His labour was not altogether wasted. In his examination for a Fellowship at Exeter College in which passages for translation into Latin and Greek verse were set, the Latin verses he wrote (probably the last which he composed) attracted special attention. Besides profiting by College and University teach- ing, Bywater, thanks to his father's generosity, enjoyed the advantage, as he has told us, of receiving private instructions from Robinson Ellis, afterwards Professor UNDERGRADUATE LIFE 9 of Latin, James Bryce, now Viscount Bryce, O. M M and T. H. Green, afterwards Professor of Moral Philosophy, idealist and social and municipal reformer. Lord Bryce has kindly communicated his impression of Bywater as a pupil in the following terms : ' Bywater ', he writes, 'was my private pupil in 1862, just after I took my degree, for either two or three terms. His powers had not then fully showed themselves, but I was impressed by the exactness and accurate habit of his mind. He was thorough in everything, and anxious always to get to the bottom of the question. There was a remarkable ' neatness ', so to speak, in his think- ing and composing, just as there was in his handwriting.' Robinson Ellis used to speak of him as ' the busy bee', but this appellation did not become widely current. But in the career of an undergraduate the spirit pre- valent in the society in which he moves, and the friend- ships which he forms, count for even more than the teaching which he receives. There were marked differences between the undergraduate life of 1858 and that of 1914. At the earlier date there were not more than half as many undergraduates residing as in the latter year. Athletic pursuits were then much less prominent. Rowing and cricket were almost the sole athletic exercises of any count. The University Sports were not instituted until i860, and the Inter-University Sports not until 1864. There was no football except an occasional motley scratch game, or a Winchester game played by the old members of that school at New College, and there were none of the innumerable inter- collegiate competitions which have since grown up. Any man who was not athletic and had not gone io CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE through the usual routine at school could, at that date, more easily fall into the stream, and become prominent in the social life of any College which was not domina- ted by an extravagant and fashionable set. What was more important from an intellectual point of view, an undergraduate was left much more free to develop his own tastes. Lectures were less exacting than they afterwards became. Each examiner in Literae Huma- niores was not a specialist requiring every candidate to be familiar with the latest view current in his own department. The various appeals presented in a definite shape at a later day — political, religious, and philanthropic — were still unorganized. Above all, some of the most stirring intellectual influences of the century were then in their early freshness — Mill, Carlyle, Tennyson, Ruskin, all had enthusiastic admirers: Browning was only emerging above the horizon. Of these Carlyle was the most attractive to Bywater, not for the sake of his political ideals, but on account of his literary gifts, his hatred of shams, and his penetrating and incisive criticisms of conventional beliefs. To the end of his days Bywater had much of the spirit of Carlyle, and was fond of quoting him. Two or three years after Bywater took his degree he had an animated discussion with Swinburne as to the relative merits of the writers of their day, in which, though differing on various other points, they unanimously accorded the first place to Carlyle. Among 1 his friends Pater and the members of the O Old Mortality Society hold the foremost place. Walter H. Pater matriculated as a Commoner at Oueen's in the same term as that in which Bywater was admitted a scholar, and they became bosom friends. Bywater, in INTIMACY WITH PATER n the sketch of his early life, hardly does justice either to Pater or to the intimacy that sprung up between them. For a time they were inseparable companions, always associated in the minds of their common friends. 1 As undergraduates each had something to learn from the other. Both were moving together towards a definite aim, though their aims were to be widely divergent. Bywater's strong practical sense recalled Pater to the studies preparatory for the Schools. By- water, on the other hand, owed something to his friend. Pater, who, as Bywater tells us, had come to Oxford with the intention of seeking Holy Orders, felt the attraction of the aesthetic element in the Catholic Movement within the Church of England, though this was not then so prominent as it afterwards became. Pater can hardly be termed the father of aestheticism at Oxford. Though Burne Jones after a brief sojourn had left the University almost unnoticed, William Morris resided for two years after taking his degree in 1858, and there were a select few by whom Dante Gabriel Rossetti was admired both as a poet and as a painter. But Pater, soon after his degree, became the leading representative of aestheticism at Oxford. Everything about him, his dress, the furniture of his rooms, his taste in colour, was marked by a refinement which effectually concealed the pains which he must have taken over them. The impression left on the mind of a visitor to Pater in his rooms, or in his house, resembled that produced by Bellini's picture of St. Jerome in his study. Pater, indeed, himself once remarked that this picture embodied his ideal of what 1 Although, in later life, their companionship was not so close, their mutual regard suffered no abatement. 12 CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE a student's room should be. Pater numbered among his friends most of the younger Fellows of Colleges who afterwards took the lead in the University. Almost all of these derived from him some tinoe of aestheticism. Such tendency to ecclesiasticism as Bywater displayed early in life was, like that of his friend, in the direction of Catholic ceremonial, whether Roman or Anglican. The only decided musical preference he ever expressed was for Gregorian chants. In his room in Exeter College, when he was sitting after midnight over the tomes of Greek philosophers or Fathers, he might be heard solacing himself with a deep-voiced strain, reminiscentof his early predilection. Bywater, moreover, was always something of a connoisseur in his material surroundings, and, though not in the least foppish, or affected, was neat and careful in his dress. He was, however, always so conspicuous for neatness, whether in his literary work, in his style of expression, in his handwriting, or in the matters just referred to, that in this characteristic he probably owed little to Pater. He was by no means extravagant in the purchase of furniture or engravings, but whatever he bought was always carefully studied, and in the most perfect taste, and generally possessed of some additional interest from its date or associations. Bywater's election, towards the end of his under- graduate career, as a member of the Old Mortality Society is a proof of the estimation in which he was held outside his own College. The Old Mortality was a society founded at Balliol in the rooms of John Nichol (afterwards Professor of English Literature at Glasgow University) for the purpose of affording to its members ' such intellectual pastime and recreation THE OLD MORTALITY 13 as should seem most suitable and agreeable '. The original members were J. Nichol, A. V. Dicey (now Professor Dicey, K.C.), A. S. Grenfell, G. R. Luke (afterwards Student of Christ Church), Algernon C. Swinburne (the poet), all of Balliol ; and G. Birkbeck Hill (afterwards the Editor of Boswell's Life of Johnson), of Pembroke College. The name of the Society, according to the minute book, was derived ' from the following weighty consideration : that every member of the aforesaid Society was, or lately had been, in so weak and precarious a condition of bodily health as plainly and manifestly to instance the great frailty, and, so to speak, mortality of this our human life and constitution'. Some of its later members, however intellectually distinguished, cannot be said to have been qualified for membership by bodily weak- ness. The Society came to an end after 1866. Among those elected subsequently to 1856 were R. S. Wright (afterwards Mr. Justice Wright), J. Bryce, T. H. Green, T. E. Holland (now Professor Holland, K.C.), W. Esson (late Savilian Professor of Geometry), H. Nettleship (afterwards Professor of Latin), E. Caird (late Master of Balliol), C. L. Shadwell (afterwards Provost of Oriel), J. R. Magrath (Provost of Queen's), J. A. Symonds, Bywater, and Pater (both elected in 1862), Alfred Robinson (Fellow of New College), and W. Wallace (afterwards Professor of Moral Philosophy). One of the last to be elected was J. Wordsworth (the future Bishopof Salisbury), with whom Bywater was after- wards to cross swords in a pamphlet warfare. Through his membership of the Old Mortality Bywater was brought into friendly and even intimate association with many men who achieved distinction in the University i4 CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE or in literature or public life. With Swinburne his relations were especially cordial. The poet, after leaving College, frequently revisited Oxford, often as Jowett's guest, and never left without renewing his intercourse with Bywater. 1 Bywater was a fairly regular attendant at the debates of the Union Society and occasionally took part in them. His sympathies were, as might be expected, with the Liberals. The records of the Society show that on March 20, 1862, the Hon. E. L. Stanley (the present Lord Sheffield) moved : — ' That such Reforms in the University are wanted as will make it more accessible generally to the nation', and that Ingram Bywater spoke for the motion. There were some lively scenes at the Union in those days. Bywater was present on a memorable occasion when a promi- nent member of the Society was called to order and fined £\ for having shaken his fist at the President. Bywater had an unbounded admiration for the oratorical ability of A.V. Dicey, now Professor Dicey, K.C., who, to his many other titles to distinction adds that of having been by far the most incisive and finished speaker and debater of the Union Society of that day. It may be added here that shortly after his election to a Fellowship Bywater was elected Librarian of the Union, and held that office for two Terms, being succeeded by C. P. Ilbert, scholar of Balliol, now Sir Courtenay Ilbert, G.C. B., Clerk of the House of Commons. At a later date he became once more 1 The information about the Old Mortality here given is derived chiefly from a printed paper compiled from the minute book of the Society by Professor Holland, K.C., and very kindly placed by him at the disposal of the present writer. SUCCESSES IN THE SCHOOLS 15 connected with the Union as a member of the Library Committee. With the year 1862 Bywater's undergraduate career came to an end. His friendships and literary interests had never diverted him from the pursuit of the main objects of his ambition. He had obtained a First Class in Classics in Moderations in the Summer term of i860, and in the Michaelmas term of 1862 he was placed in the First Class in the School of Literae Humaniores. At that date success in an Honour School was not a title to a degree, unless supplemented by Honours or a Pass in another School. Bywater accordingly offered himself as a candidate for a Pass in Mathematics. Thanks to his early training at University College School, he was awarded an Honorary Fourth Class. He left Oxford at the end of the year, having achieved the object of his ambition, and fulfilled the hopes and expectations of his friends. He had also shown his ability to decide for himself, and to steer his own course through the shoals and quicksands of life. CHAPTER II Decision of future career — Election to Fellowship at Exeter College — Death of Father — Mark Pattison and his friends — Professor J. Bernays. In June 1863 Bywater was elected to a Fellowship at Exeter College. At that time and for many years afterwards all Fellowships controlled by the Com- missioners' Statutes of 1854 were awarded by open competition. On this occasion there were eighteen candidates for two Fellowships. This was an unusually large number owing to the dearth of open Fellowships at that time. A number of Bywater's unsuccessful rivals at Exeter were afterwards elected to Fellowships elsewhere. The statutes relating to Fellowships framed under the Commission of 1854 differed in some respects at different Colleges. But they had one point in common, by which they were differentiated from the statutes framed by the second Commission of 1877. Under the former a Fellowship was a benefice for life, provided that the holder accepted the conditions attached to it. Under the latter a Fellowship is a terminable stipendiary office, except where it is an endowment annexed to a Professorship. At Exeter College in 1863 a Fellowship (subject to certain disqualifications attached to the possession of other income) was tenable for life if the holder remained unmarried. At most Colleges some or all of the Fellowships were also confined to those who had proceeded, or intended to proceed, to Holy Orders. FELLOWSHIP AT EXETER 17 But this latter rule admitted of relaxation. At Exeter a Fellowship could be held by a layman for fifteen years after election as a Probationer. After the expiry of that period it was vacated, unless the holder had been admitted to Holy Orders, or was at the time a member of the staff, or if he had been engaged in College teaching for ten years altogether, whether continuously or not. He was then exempt from the obligation to proceed to Holy Orders, and could hold his Fellowship for life, subject only to the condition of celibacy. At Exeter therefore (as at many other Colleges) a considerable amount of liberty was enjoyed by a newly elected Fellow ; and there was also the certainty of permanence, if the necessary conditions were fulfilled. To those who were dependent on their own exertions, election to a Fellowship brought a sense of relief which added greatly to the satisfaction of success in an open competition. The life of a College Common Room was specially congenial to Bywater ; and, as it existed in Exeter College at that time, gave full scope to his tastes and energies. The Exeter Common Room had long enjoyed a good social reputa- tion, which was further raised in the years following Bywater's election. The old traditions were still strong everywhere, and were well represented in Exeter by W. Ince, afterwards Regius Professor of Divinity. Among the tutors were H. F. Tozer, who has recently passed away at the ripe age of 87, and might at the time of his retirement have been justly termed the doyen of classical scholarship in Oxford, as well as the last and not the least distinguished of the Classical Tourists ; and C. W. Boase — afterwards the first Uni- versity Reader in Modern History, and author of the 2011 18 DECISION OF FUTURE CAREER History of Exeter College prefixed to the Register of Members of the Foundation, compiled by himself, and published by the Oxford Historical Society, and of various other works — who not only possessed an ency- clopaedic knowledge which was a constant source of delight and surprise to his brother Fellows, but was one of the most genial and kindly of companions and friends. With C. W. Boase Bywater soon formed a close alliance. Of the points in dispute between the supporters of the old system and the advocates of further change something will be said on a later page. In 1863 Bywater's aims in life had still to be fixed and defined. During his first year at Exeter he had only a small part assigned to him in the tuition of the undergraduates. He had as yet no anxieties about the future, and enjoyed leisure for various reading. He had early determined to master the German language, and to make himself familiar with the methods of German scholars. With this object he spent the long vacation of 1864 with a German family in Hanover, and by steady application acquired a knowledge of the language, which afterwards enabled him both to speak and to write it almost as easily as English. Towards the close of the holidays he was summoned home by alarming accounts of his father's health. Mr. John Ingram Bywater, who had for some time been weakened by a chronic disorder, after a brief illness succumbed to it at the end of September, 1864, at the age of 51. The ties of affection and mutual sympathy between Bywater and his father, as has been already remarked, were unusually close and tender. This bereavement deepened Bywater's ever-present sense of the precariousness, and of the responsibilities of life. DEATH OF HIS FATHER 19 It also threw upon him the duty of making provision for his mother. He at once responded to the call, and henceforth maintained a home for her in London for nearly forty years, sharing it with her during the Oxford vacations until his marriage in 1885. He continued to provide thus for her until her death in September, 1903, a few weeks before her son's nomina- tion to the Regius Professorship of Greek. The death of Bywater's father decided his choice of a profession. It was essential for him to make a sufficient income at once. As Fellow and Tutor of a College he would be able to do this. In order to o retain this position it would be necessary for him to remain unmarried. It is probable that under any circumstances he would have chosen an academic career. At all events he did not hesitate. As he himself once remarked, his philosophy was to accept the inevitable, and to make the best of the situation, Natura parendo vincitur. The same maxim applies to life. Success in any vocation is impossible, unless the conditions are rightly apprehended and cheerfully accepted. In the pursuit of his literary ambitions By water was afterwards guided by the same rule. He reviewed the whole situation, and recognized that freedom in one direction can be purchased only at the price of renunciation in another. Bywater's innate courtesy, his quick intelligence and responsiveness, rendered him a persona grata in ladies' society ; but until his marriage he never laid himself open to the suspicion of a wish to change his state. About the end of 1864 Bywater was specially introduced to Mark Pattison, Rector of Lincoln College, and a close intimacy rapidly grew up between them. c 2 2 o DECISION OF FUTURE CAREER The part which this friendship played in Bywater's life cannot be estimated without some knowledge of Pattison's individuality, and of the influence which he exercised on academic studies, both by defining their aims and by expounding the function of a university in the life of the nation. This is not the place for attempting to re-write Pattison's life; but a statement of the impression which he left on some at least of his younger friends, independently of the light which it sheds on Bywater's development, may not be wholly valueless as a slight contribution to the history of an epoch which will soon pass away from living memory. A word or two must first be said about the social aspect of Pattison's life at this time. Soon after his election to the Rectorship of Lincoln College he had married a lady much younger than himself, of great intellectual gifts and personal charm. Before her marriage she had studied art at South Kensington, and had come under the influence of Mulready, of Watts, and of Ruskin. After her marriage she became a student of the first rank, taking as her speciality the Art of France after the Renaissance, and was recognized as an authority on that subject, even before the publication of her chief books. 1 For some years in the sixties and seventies, before Mrs. Pattison's health compelled her to spend the whole of the winter 1 The present writer had the good fortune to meet with Mr. and Mrs. Pattison at Vienna in 187 1 and to visit the principal galleries in their company. The Keeper of the French Collection in the Imperial Art Gallery fell into conversation with them, and said to them that the best authority on his subject was an Englishman, ' Mr.' Pattison. Mrs. Pattison was widely known by her monographs in the various art journals of Europe, but these were signed only with her name and initials, which did not reveal the sex of the writer. INTIMACY WITH PATTISON 21 abroad, the Rector's Lodgings at Lincoln College were the centre of a society unique in the Oxford of that day. It was the meeting-place of Pattison's friends among the older residents in the University, of various persons of distinguished attainment from London or the country, of a few of the rising younger scholars in Oxford, such as the late Henry Nettleship, and of some of those accomplished ladies who heralded the change that has since revolutionized Oxford society. Mrs. Pattison was especially kind to foreigners and persons of ability who needed help and encouragement. Nor were undergraduates of promise, such as the late Leonard Montefiore, absent from the group. During these years Pattison showed his best side to his friends. He took very kindly to the society which gathered round him, especially to clever women, and was willing if necessarv to advise and direct them in their studies. He excelled in conversation, and had a rich store of knowledge and experience on which to draw, but he liked younger men to speak freely to him, and readily entered into the spirit of the hour. 1 Bywater was specially privileged. As he himself tells us, he paid a visit to Pattison every Sunday, and sat and smoked and talked with him among- his books. Pattison also made a point of introducing Bywater to his own personal friends, and among them to Sir Mountstuart 1 The following incident illustrates the terms on which he asso- ciated with them : Pattison, in criticizing the rarity of high intel- lectual aims at Oxford, occasionally spoke of a Fellowship as ' the grave of learning '. One of his most attached younger friends observed that if a Fellowship were the grave of learning, a Headship might be termed its cenotaph. Pattison, when he heard of the remark, was so far from resenting that he heartily enjoyed it, and repeated it. 22 DECISION OF FUTURE CAREER Grant-Duff and Mr. Cartwright of Aynho. Both of these became fast friends of Bywater, who afterwards enjoyed the hospitality of the former at Twickenham, and was a frequent guest in the house of the latter. He also became intimate with R. Copley Christie, the author of Eticnne Dolet, a Protestant martyr, a former pupil of Pattison's and one of his most congenial friends, who afterwards wrote the sketch of his life for the Dictionary of National Biography. G. H. Lewes and George Eliot were friends of the Pattisons, and had spent some days under their roof, although in their later visits to Oxford they stayed at Balliol with Jowett. Browning was also a friend of Pattison, who afterwards became the President of a Browning Society. But Bywater, though he made the acquaintance of the poet and the novelist, never formed any close ties with either George Eliot or Browning. His attitude to both of them was that of a critic rather than a devotee. Bywater was not only a privileged friend of the Pattisons, he frequently accompanied them on trips abroad, as for instance to Touraine in 1875. In Pattison's last tour on the Continent in 1881, in which he was accompanied by a niece, Bywater followed their track, staying together with them at their various halting-places. Pattison's friendship, bestowed on him at a time when he was feeling his recent bereavement most keenly, was, as Bywater himself freely acknowledged, of the greatest service to him. It saved him from the danger of becoming a recluse. It proved to him that he was valued for his own sake by those who were scrupulous in their choice of friends, and that common intellectual aims are a sound basis on which to found personal UNIVERSITY REFORM 23 friendship. Bywater was indebted to the Pattisons not only for much kindness but for the opportunity of gaining experience that was helpful to him in the intercourse of life. In order to understand By water's developments as well as to estimate Pattison's influence on it, a word must be said as to the position of affairs within the University at the beginning of the period now under consideration. That position had been created by the Statutes of the Commission of 1854. The report of the Commission of Inquiry in 1852 had pointed to the reconstitution of the University as an organ of the highest intellectual life of the nation. To effect this object it was necessary that the University should be rendered accessible to the whole of the nation without distinction of creed or place of birth, and that much more should be done by it for the advancement of learning than in the recent past. The opening of the University, though it could be advocated on academical grounds, may be considered the inevitable result of the revolution which began its course with the Reform Bill of 1832. The desire for the advancement of learning was stimulated by various causes. Sound traditions of learning had not entirely died out, though the University had done little to foster them. The increased intellectual activity within the University, the growth of Natural Science, and of studies other than that of the Classics, external criticism, especially that of Sir William Hamilton of Edinburgh, himself an Oxford man, and not least the example of Germany, contributed to strengthen it. As the Universities could not be fully opened without attacking the exclusive privileges of the Church of England, political, 24 DECISION OF FUTURE CAREER academic, and religious feeling alike were stirred by proposals for reform. The problem was further complicated at the older Universities by the College system. The University had almost ceased to exist apart from the Colleges, and was to be reconstituted, if at all, at their expense. If endowments for learning were required, College revenues might be made to supply them. If tests were abolished, the pastoral relation between the College tutor and his pupil, which was part of the old ideal, would be done away. There was thus a conflict raised between the interests of the Colleges and the University which can hardly be said even now to be finally adjusted. The executive Commission of 1854 bestowed on the University, as such, an independent constitution, and to a large extent removed local restrictions on endowments. Open competition and the multiplica- tion of examinations were to usher in the millennium. But the exclusive privileges of the Church of England were left untouched, and learning was insufficiently recognized. In 1864 some most important questions were still unsettled. Men were drawn different ways. Some uncompromising partisans of the old system were distinguished for their learning, and some reformers became conservative when the interests of the Colleges were assailed. Pattison may be regarded as the leading representa- tive of those tendencies which ultimately gained the upper hand in the direction of academic studies. His various learning, his grasp of first principles, and command of clear and incisive expression gave him an influence far beyond his immediate circle. His opinions had been moulded by his own experience PATTISON'S IDEALS 25 acting on a powerful and original mind, and a morbidly sensitive nature. The earlier phases of his development, though deeply interesting, are irrelevant to the object of the present memoir. But for the last thirty years of his life his interest was concentrated on classical learning, its claim on a University, its methods, and its relation to life. There are few of its aspects on which he does not touch either in his Essays or in his Memoirs. He had been the pupil and friend of Newman, and had never lost his admiration for his great teacher. The reconciliation of reason and faith, which was one of the dreams of Newman's life, is also one of Pattison's aspirations both in his contribution to Essays and Reviews and in his University Sermons, though he approaches itf rom a very different point of view. Both Newman and Pattison had regarded a state of mind, to which they gave the name ' philo- sophy', as the students' goal. In his instructive essay on Oxford Studies (first published in 1856), Pattison adopts as his own a definition of this state of mind, laid down by Newman in one of his University Sermons : ' Philosophy is reason exercised on knowledge : the elements of the physical and moral world, sciences, arts, pursuits, ranks, offices, events, opinions, individualities, are all viewed, not in themselves but as relative terms, suggesting a multitude of correlatives, and gradually, by successive combinations, converging one and all to their true centre.' Pattison, it is true, departed widely from his early teacher. In his Memoirs he attributes two fatal defects to Newman as a thinker : ignorance of the great development of human reason, especially after the revival of learning, and the adoption of authority in place of reason as the criterion of truth. 26 DECISION OF FUTURE CAREER But in his conception of the end of human life Pattison never changed. In one of his latest essays l he speaks of ' philosophy', in the sense just defined, in the same terms as in 1856. 'Philosophy', he says, 'is like religion ; it is a temper, a habit of mind : not so much anything per se as a form under which we think our thoughts, and live our life.' It was an intellectual attitude, con- ceived by him as the summum bonum which could not be attained except by bringing reason to bear on knowledge. No man of letters ever had a more genuine passion for learning than Pattison, or a higher ideal of the qualities needful in a scholar. He held that classical learning, i.e. 'a knowledge of human nature as exhibited in antiquity ', expanded the soul as no other kind of learning could expand it. The revival of this learning had roused Europe from a state of intellectual torpor. Its cultivation was essential for maintaining the intellectual life of a nation. But he by no means over- looked the claims of Natural Science. He valued it both for its own sake and for the attitude of mind that it helped to diffuse. He complained of the classicists who ' did not know that the classical system in its origin had comprehended a complete cultivation of mind, an expansion of the faculties adequate to the whole field of knowledge '. He never himself loses sight of the con- 1 In Mi?id for January 1876, p. 83. In an admirable appreciation of Pattison which appeared in 77/6' Times of July 31, 1884, and was generally attributed to one of the most intimate of his younger friends and admirers, the writer justly says of him that ' the beatific vision would have been for him, as it was for Aristotle, rather the ineffable splendour of perfect knowledge than the opening heaven of the Communion of Saints '. PATTISON'S TEACHING 27 nexion between the two aspects of that mental condition which he desires to produce. ' The perfection of education consists in the perfection and enlargement of the intellect per se! But on the other hand ' education must be real, i.e. based on knowledge, a comprehensive view of science, and not a mere acquaintance with the terminology of science '. Pattison has done as much as any one to place the controversies between the classi- cists and their opponents in a clear light, and to define the principles on which the issue should be decided. Knowledge cannot produce the desired result unless it is thorough, both comprehensive and exact. The lives of the great representatives of learning since the Renaissance were his favourite study, and Scaliger realized more nearly than any other scholar his ideal. As an example of thoroughness he refers to Scaliger's treatment of the Eusebian Chronicle : ' Of the extent of his research and ingenuity in detecting the smallest scrap of Eusebius under whatever disguise it might be hid, it may be sufficient to cite the testimony of a wit- ness not too well disposed to him : " Universam pae- ne Graeciam lustraverat, nee veterum scriptorum erat quisquam, unde aliquid in suam rem posset mutuari, qui diligentissimi hominis aciem effugisset." When the study of the classics ceased to be pursued in this spirit, it no longer had any claim to ascendancy. Pattison had an irresistible tendency to push to an extreme any principle which he espoused. When he was a Tractarian he trembled on the verge of Romanism. He expected the rigorous application of a principle to do more for the solution of the various problems of life than could ever be effected by it. So now, he judged every one and everything by their relation to his 28 DECISION OF FUTURE CAREER ideal of the scholar's life. He applied this standard with the same ruthlessness to his own parent, and to Milton the statesman, drawing on himself the condem- nation of the public in the one case, and that of Lord Morley in the other. 1 It was also Pattison's policy, when he saw the scale he favoured likely to kick the beam, to throw his whole weight into it, although it might be far more than sufficient to redress the balance. His Suggestions on Academical Organization supply a good illustration of his method. Pattison nwht have pleaded justification for carrying out this policy in his condemnation of the current conception, or lack of any clear conception, of the ideal scholar's task, too common in the Oxford of that day. Jowett has often been regarded as the antithesis to Pattison at that time. But Jowett, although in many respects his views as to learning, its methods, and its aims differed widely from those of Pattison, had exercised far too great an influence on thought, and had too many associations in common with Pattison to serve this purpose. Pattison himself selected John Conington, the Professor of Latin, as the example of the spirit which he deprecated. Pattison desired to uphold what may be called the scientific ideal of scholarship. Conington considered the refinement of taste, and of the critical faculty, and the command of Latin and Greek as instruments of literary skill, to be the best proofs of scholarship. Pattison was the more hostile to Conington because the latter had once held out the promise of better things, and because of his well known and somewhat peculiar religious views. A later generation has done more justice to Conington's good qualities. Many of his 1 In MacmillarCs Magazine, vol. li, pp. 456 ff. RELATION TO PATTISON pupils owe him a deep debt of gratitude, and so eminent a scholar after Pattison's own heart as H. A. J. Munro pronounced Conington's translation of the Satires and Epistles of Horace to be the most perfect example of what a translation from Latin into English verse should be. This digression on the questions before the Univer- sity in 1864, and Pattison's attitude to them, will help to explain both Pattison's influence on Bywater and By water's own position as a scholar. He was what he describes H. Nettleship to have been, ' one of a small band of academic reformers who thought that a University should be organized with a view to learning and research, as well as with a view to Education.' This band of reformers would have come into existence independently of Pattison ; but he rendered them valuable service as a leader and exponent. Bywater's view of the function and responsibilities of a scholar coincided with Pattison's. His opinion of Conington's attitude was the same as Pattison's. Bywater appre- ciated the sarcasms of Pattison on the Colleges, ' which decently shrouded the incompetence of their tutors in the seclusion of a private apartment.' Bywater had the same conception of thoroughness as Pattison. Pattison's description of Scaliger's method of dealing with the Eusebian Chronicle would equally have applied to Bywater's treatment of the problems with which he dealt. Bywater too, like Pattison, never forgot that the final end of scholarship is to throw light on literature and history. With none of those whom he influenced was Pattison in more complete agreement respecting the ideals of a scholar than with Bywater, and none of the younger scholars did 3 o DECISION OF FUTURE CAREER so much to make Pattison's influence felt as By- water. But this very coincidence between their views rather increased than diminished the obligation of the younger to the older scholar. Bywater's intercourse with Pattison did not create his literary ambitions, but it enabled him to define clearly the aims which he was already beginning to entertain, and set before him the means by which they were to be achieved. It impressed him with the magnitude of the task, with the thoroughness and exactness demanded by the pursuit of knowledge in a scientific spirit. Pattison's infinitely greater experience furnished Bywater with the answer to many questions which were stirring in his own mind, and which he could not for a long time to come have answered for himself. Every doubt and difficulty as it presented itself could be discussed with one who could throw light on them. The best results of the older man's wider knowledge were passed on to a mind in many respects closely akin to his own. Pattison's influence greatly accelerated Bywater's development. But Bywater was not merely receptive : he always preserved his own individuality. From the first he recognized the limitations of the province which he had marked out for himself, and kept strictly within them, although it cost him some effort to do so. The attainment of excellence within his own sphere was a task sufficient, and more than sufficient for one life. He cherished no visionary hopes or expectations. He was uncompromising, especially in early life, in the assertion of a principle ; but he had strong practical instincts, and was fully aware that principles could not be applied without regard to existing conditions. He PROFESSOR BERNAYS 31 wished to reform not to destroy, and reform could be effected only if learning were fitly recognized and rewarded, and if knowledge were pursued in the proper spirit and by the proper method, and placed in its right relation to every part of University life. But he did not elaborate schemes for reforming- the details of University education : he desired a change of prin- ciple. He, as well as his friend Nettleship, recognized that in a University education and learning must be treated as not incompatible but complementary. There were two other matters in which Pattison's experience and knowledge were specially useful to By water, viz. the cultivation of friendly relations with foreign scholars, and the collection of rare and valuable books. Pattison conceived of learning as international. His model scholar was a French Protestant who found a haven of rest in Holland. Wolf, a German schoolmaster, was regarded by him as the man who launched classical scholarship alongthelineson which it hassincedeveloped in his native country. Bywater was early impressed with the need of studying German methods, and of getting into touch with learned men both in Germany and elsewhere. No friendship which he formed with foreign scholars was more helpful to him than that of Jacob Bernays, Professor Extraordinary in the Faculty of Philosophy, and Librarian of Bonn University, to whom he was introduced by Pattison in 1868. Pattison and Bernays were very intimate friends. They had much in common. They had the same conception of learning. To a large extent their studies covered the same ground. Bernays had written on Scaliger, and had dedicated to Pattison his work Die Dialoge des Aris- toteles in ihrem Vcrhaltniss zu seinen ilbrigen IVerken, 32 DECISION OF FUTURE CAREER a work which led By water to speak of ' the critical and poetical insight into the mind of antiquity, by virtue of which Professor Bernays stands so completely alone among living scholars'. He had also written on Hera- clitus, and this fact may possibly have influenced By water in the choice of a subject for his first independent work. Bernays was a Jew, and had suffered much from ecclesiastical intolerance in his earlier days. German law forbade the appointment of a Jew to a University Professorship. Bernays' great literary distinction had forced the Prussian Government at length to find an excuse for conferring on him a recognition which was not strictly legal. This experience of Bernays and his detachment from the prejudices of his countrymen increased Pattison's feeling for him. Bernays and Bywater very soon became fast friends. A few notes and letters from Bywater to Bernays were returned to the former by Professor Schaarschmidt when writing a sketch of Bernays's life, some of which will be printed later. They show how close was the intimacy which had grown up between them. Bywater writes word to Bernays that Matthew Arnold would send him his Selections from Wordsworth. He gives him informa- tion as to books interesting to Bernays as a Jew, Rabbi Jeshna, "Joshua Davidson, and more par- ticularly as to Daniel Deronda, and as to any sources of information on which George Eliot was drawing. Of Bywater's relations with Bernays and various other distinguished scholars more will be said subsequently. His friendship with Bernays has been mentioned here at some length, because, next to Pattison, Bernays was the friend to whom he was most indebted for guidance and encouragement. PATTISON'S EXAMPLE 33 But for Pattison's example and teaching it is possible that Bywater might never have been the ardent and learned book-collector he afterwards became. Pattison's knowledge of the books produced by the great printers of the Renaissance was unsurpassed. His collection followed the lines of his studies on the scholars of the sixteenth and later centuries. Bywater, towards the end of his life, excelled his teacher in the extent of his own collection, possibly even in the range of his know- ledge. But Pattison's stores of information must have saved him both time and expense in gaining experience. A more particular account of the library which he amassed, as well as of his literary labours on the lines which have now been indicated, must be reserved for future chapters. Supplementary Note. In the foregoing sketch of Pattison's relations with Bywater an attempt has been made not only to give some account of the influence exercised by the older over the younger student, but to call attention to an aspect of Pattison's life which has been almost completely ignored since the publication of his Memoirs. Feelings of strong personal regard continued to exist between Pattison and his earlier Tractarian friends long after they had finally parted company. He never spoke of Newman without respect and even affection. Mr. Wilfrid Ward in his Life of the Cardinal tells us how Newman made a special journey to Oxford to see Pattison on his death-bed, and spent some hours closeted with him. Neither of the friends ever revealed what then passed between them. Among Bywater's papers in the Bodleian is a long letter to Pattison from J. B. Morris, perhaps the blindest devotee among all those who followed Newman to Rome. Morris writes to con- gratulate Pattison on his election to the Rectorship of Lincoln College after his former disappointment, referring at the same 2011 D 34 DECISION OF FUTURE CAREER time to their early friendship in terms which proved that even in those days Pattison was regarded as a peculiarly privileged person, not altogether intelligible to his High Church friends, and that despite his separation from them he had not entirely forfeited their regard. Pattison himself speaks of the kindness shown him by Church, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, when acutely feeling his disappointment after the election of Thompson to the Rectorship of Lincoln. Church not only sympathized with Pattison, but recommended pupils to him when he supported himself by private tuition, after he had ceased to be a Tutor of his College. With regard to Church, Viscount Bryce tells the following anecdote, and has kindly permitted its repetition here : ' I remember Dean Church once said to me after Pattison's autobiography had appeared, " Pattison has presented a less favourable view of himself than the true one " ; and when I told this one day in the division lobby of the House of Commons to Mr. Gladstone, who knew Church well, and Pattison a little, he observed, " How interesting ; yes, it is always better to be charitable " — adding, with a grim smile, " especially in politics ".' CHAPTER III Social life at Oxford, 1863-84 — Friendships — Relations with foreign scholars — Franco-German War — Personal reminiscences by Prebendary Humble-Crofts. Towards the end of 1865 By water definitely resolved to devote himself for the rest of his life to the study of the language and literature of Greek philosophy. For the attainment of a scientific knowledge of this subject it was necessary for him to be familiar with the distinc- tive usages of the Greek language at various periods of its development, with a great body of philosophic writings, as well as with a number of authors in whose pages some traces of lost philosophic treatises might be found. Although he was not a professed student of poetry few scholars were more familiar with the ancient scholia and commentators on the Greek poets, and few- professed students of theology knew so much of the Greek Fathers in their literary aspects. Besides this exhaustive study of Greek texts he had to acquaint himself with all that had been done to elucidate them for the last three centuries or more. Greek philo- sophical literature was his speciality, but the same spirit of thoroughness characterized his excursions into every branch of classical literature. Scholars who knew the character of his work could feel sure that, whether he wrote on the Erasmian pronunciation of Greek or on the Latinizations of the modern surname, he had made an exhaustive review of all the literary material which could throw light on his subject. In d 2 36 SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 concentrating himself on his life's work Bywater was well aware of the sacrifice it entailed. No one had derived more enjoyment from general literature than he. But his main object could not be attained except by making it his primary aim. Bywater never felt tempted to spend labour on the advocacy of any modern philosophical system. As a teacher for the School of Literae Humaniores he had, with his usual thoroughness, made a study of the history of philosophical thought, including the writings of Kant and Hegel. But he was not a professed adherent of any school. Some form of Hegelianism perhaps had most attraction for him on account of the intellectual basis of that system. He had also, like every other Oxford man of his standing, been influenced by Mill, though he was by no means to be reckoned among his disciples, either in philosophy or in economics. But, whatever Bywater's own philosophical faith might have been, it engrossed little of his time and thoughts. Nor did he follow the example of many distinguished students and devote himself by way of recreation to some minor speciality outside his own subject. He kept up his interest in modern literary developments, as any other well-read man would do, but was not an uncritical admirer of any one great modern writer or poet. The man of letters with whom he had most in common was Matthew Arnold, both as an essayist and as a reflective poet. Bywater not only enjoyed the keenness of Arnold's wit and admired his ability as a critic, but shared his views on the defects of English character and the attitude of the English people generally towards knowledge. Bywater's own opinion on this point was exactly represented by such an essay LITERARY TASTES 37 of Arnold's as that on Falkland. When a vacancy in the Professorship of Poetry occurred, (which was after- wards filled by the election of Sir Francis Doyle), he joined in presenting a request to Arnold that he would allow himself to be nominated again. Arnold however declined. He had already held the appointment for two periods of five years each ; but a still stronger reason was his reluctance to face the opposition of the clergy, who were beginning to be provoked by his incursions into the realm of theology. Among German writers Heine was By water's favourite. If he had a special taste in English litera- ture it was for the writers of the eighteenth century. In this he may partly have followed Pattison's lead ; but he, as well as Pattison, would have been naturally attracted by the rationalist tendencies of that age. After his daily task had been completed he often solaced himself with a few pages of Sterne, or Fielding, or Swift. His fondness both for Heine and Swift was highly characteristic. To the former he was drawn by Heine's detachment from the prejudices of his country, by the fineness of his satire, and the sallies of wit which could not be repressed by cruel suffering and the near prospect of death. Swift's Journal to Stella was his special favourite. What he most appreciated in Swift was not his relentless and vindictive satire on the failings of humanity, so much as the purity of his style, and the tenderness of heart, and craving for sympathy which a hard experience and a morbid con- stitution could not wholly extinguish. Solid knowledge however of any kind, even remote from the sphere of classical scholarship, always had an attraction for By water. He assimilated it whenever it 38 SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 came in his way. Sometimes he indulged himself by reading a book of acknowledged merit, though remote from his own subject, such as Stubbs's Constitutional History of England. As time went on he accumulated stores of information which often surprised even those who knew him well. Of this something more will be said hereafter. Bywater himself, a year before he died, supplied to the Rector of Exeter a list of all those of his published writings, including articles in various journals, German as well as English, which had received his final approval. This list was published by the Rector in 1 9 14 in his 'Bibliography of the Fellows and Tutors of Exeter College, Oxford, in recent times', and with his kind permission is reprinted in the Appendix to this memoir. An attempt will be made in subsequent chapters to review Bywater's literary activity and its results. The year 1884, in which Pattison died, soon after Bywater's appointment to the University Reader- ship in Greek, seems for various reasons to mark a natural division in the account of his life and activity. A clearer impression may perhaps be conveyed if his general social life and interests, his share in College and University business, and his literary pursuits up to that date are handled separately. The three following chapters will be devoted to these subjects in the order just specified. College Common Rooms in 1864 were much more important as centres of intercourse between the members of different Colleges, as well as those of the same College, than they have since become. Two week-days were specially set apart at Exeter for the entertainment of friends by the Fellows. The High COMMON ROOM LIFE 39 Table was always well filled on these occasions with guests of various seniority and every shade of opinion. In the early days of Bywater's Fellowship, H. L. Mansel, Waynflete Professor of Moral Philosophy until 1867, was occasionally entertained by one of the Senior Fellows, and Stubbs, the future Bishop of Oxford, after his nomination to the Regius Professor- ship of Modern History in 1866, was a very frequent guest as well as an intimate friend of C. W. Boase. Successive elections, such as those of P. F. Willert (1867), H. F. Pelham (1869), E. Ray Lankester, now Sir E. Ray Lankester, K.C.B. (1872), each of whom had a wide circle of friends, further strengthened the ties between Exeter and the members of other Common Rooms. In those days almost every resident Fellow of a College had numerous acquaintances in the majority of Colleges with whom he occasionally dined in the College Hall during the course of the year, and in this way almost all resident Fellows in the various Colleges had some acquaintance with each other. This friendly interchange of hospitality was the chief form of social intercourse, and imparted a flavour to College Society at that period which can never be quite recalled. The change which has taken place was inevitable and has had excellent results. But when the limitations of the old system had been accepted, it produced a feeling of camaraderie among the various Oxford Common Rooms, as well as among the members of the same Common Room, which was inevitably weakened when Fellows became stipendiaries, and family life the rule. Bywater did not accept general hospitality or enter- tain indiscriminately. He invited few persons to dine with him in Hall with whom he did not wish, for some 4o SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 reason, to confer. But nevertheless his rooms became a centre both for his colleagues and for the members of other Colleges who were guests at the High Table. There was no common smoking-room in Exeter at that time, and for an hour or so after the dinner party had broken up Bywater's rooms served that purpose, and the bright conversation, inspired by his dry and caustic humour and command of original expression, was a delightful interlude before study was resumed, for which the early dinner hour of those days left ample time. Bywater's enthusiasm for his collection of books, which even then was rapidly growing, added to the interest of these gatherings. In this way his personality made a deep impression even on many of those who did not share his intellectual ideas. All sorts and conditions of men received an impression of his bonhomie, ready sympathy, and incisiveness. There was besides a strong feeling of brotherhood between those who entertained similar ideals in every branch of study. These included some who lived a recluse life, and never dined outside their own College. Such were H. W. Chandler, who succeeded Mansel as Waynflete Professor of Moral Philosophy, and H. A. Pottinger of Worcester College. Both of these were not only authorities on their own subjects, but shared Bywater's passion for acquiring a knowledge of books. Chandler, moreover, was deeply versed in Aristotle ; but there were in fact few genuine students at Oxford in any department of knowledge, whether in letters or in science, whom he might not have reckoned among his friends. He had a specially keen apprecia- tion of Thorold Rogers, Professor of Political Economy in King's College, London, and some time M.P. for VARIOUS FRIENDSHIPS 41 Southwark, a man of somewhat unchastened language, but a shrewd critic, never afraid to utter wholesome or unpalatable truths, and above all a thorough student of Economic History in fields hitherto little explored. As time went on and Bywater formed friendships with persons outside Oxford, he used the opportunity afforded by the Long Vacation, much of which he spent in Oxford for purposes of study, to entertain some of those whom he had met under Pattison's roof and elsewhere. Such were J. Cotter Morrison (the author of the Life of St. Bernard, of The Service of Man, and the Life of Gibbon in the English Men of Letters Series), J. Copley Christie, who has already been mentioned, and Sir Charles Dilke. Dilke, who had an exceptionally wide range of knowledge, was one of the most agreeable of guests, and no one lamented more deeply than Bywater the tragic circum- stances which blighted his public career. After the year 187 1, when William Morris acquired Kelmscott Manor, his house near Lechlade, he too was among Bywater's most welcome visitors. Though he rarely spent a night in Oxford, Morris was often to be seen in Bywater's rooms. He was a true Englishman, the most robust and masculine incarnation of the Romantic spirit conceivable. Dressed as he commonly was in blue serge, he looked as much like a yachtsman as a poet or artist. His unconventionality and entire absence of pose, added to the outspoken expression of his opinions literary and artistic, heightened the attraction of his personality. His visits not unfrequently had some reference to the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings. Bywater was one of its early supporters, and occasion- ally gave the Secretary a hint of an intended 'restora- 42 SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 tion '. He always lamented the havoc wrought by the Neo-Gothic revival, by which many of the Colleges in Oxford were carried away about the middle of the nineteenth century. His own College had been one of the principal sufferers. In 1854 Sir Gilbert Scott had induced the Rector and Fellows to destroy build- ings of the early seventeenth century which should have been held sacred on account of their historical associations and harmony with their surroundings, and to replace them by structures in the style of the thir- teenth century, which, whatever their abstract merits might be, were a flagrant anachronism and entirely out of keeping with the rest of the College. While greatly admiring Morris as a poet and artist, he adopted a critical attitude to his political views. In 1884, when Morris came to Oxford under the auspices of an under- graduate society, Bywater received a pressing invitation to take his place with the speakers on the platform. Though he declined this honour he occupied a seat near them among the audience. Morris, who made an excellent speech, has left a graphic account of the meeting. 1 The three speakers were C. J. Faulkner, Fellow and formerly Tutor of University College, also an old friend of Bywater, in the chair ; Morris himself, and Dr. Aveling, at that time the exponent in England of the views of Karl Marx. After the meeting had broken up, Bywater went at Morris's invitation to supper with him at his hotel, together with some choice spirits among the undergraduates. On leaving the room he remarked to a friend that he now understood the elements which contributed to the making of a revolution. There was the man who had a quarrel 1 See Mackail's Life of William Morris, ii. 141 ff. RELATIONS WITH PELHAM 43 with society, the honest enthusiast, and the interested and intriguing adventurer. The meeting that had just been held certainly lent some support to this generalization. Bywater was a warm friend and admirer of Burne Jones as well as of Morris, but cultivated his intimacy with the former by intercourse in London, not at Oxford. It is hardly necessary to refer again to Bywater's intimacy with Henry Nettleship and the other members of the group who regarded Pattison as their leader, or to his friendships within the walls of his own College. But his relations with H. F. Pelham, afterwards Camden Professor of Ancient History (1889) and President of Trinity College (1897), whose election to a Fellowship at Exeter College in 1869 has already been mentioned, were so close, and contributed so materially to extend the range of Bywater's influence, as to call for special notice here. Pelham's powerful and independent mind had early been tinged with the love of learning. He had come as a Scholar to Trinity College from Harrow, where Westcott, the future Bishop of Durham, was his House Master. Pelham had been deeply influenced by Westcott, not so much by his theological views as by his lofty conception of the duties and responsibilities of the Scholar. He was thus prepared to enter closely into sympathy with Bywater and to learn from him. To some extent their qualities were supplementary to each other. Pelham had great practical ability, and was an admirable speaker. No one carried more weight in the counsels of the University, whether as a member of the Hebdomadal Council or of Congrega- tion than he, but the measures he advocated had been thoroughly discussed with Bywater, and frequently 44 SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 owed much to the suggestion and inspiration of the latter. Thus Bywater, who stood aloof as much as possible from the arena of University politics, was able to influence their course more than was often suspected. Pelham's death at the age of sixty-one was an irreparable loss to all his friends, but especially to Bywater. Happily the main objects for which they had worked together had already been attained. One of the group of his friends, of whom Henry Nettleship was the foremost, should also be noticed here. C. A. Appleton, who held a Fellowship at St. John's College under the Laudian Statutes, was a man of indomitable energy and perseverance, and one of the staunchest supporters ot Pattison's views respecting the function of a University. He had brought out a volume on the Endowment of Research to which various writers, Pattison among them, had contributed. In October, 1869, Appleton started the Academy, a journal intended to appear twice a month, to record all that was worth chronicling in the world of letters and science, and to contain articles signed by persons who could speak with authority on the subjects on which they wrote. Appleton was so fortunate as to persuade Mr. Murray of Albemarle Street to under- take the publication. Mr. Murray kindly contributed to the first number a most interesting unpublished statement by Lord Byron as to the circumstances under which he consented to his separation from his wife ; and also an account of Mr. Murray's father's, and the poet Moore's share in the destruction of Lord Byron's MS. Memoirs. Together with these contributions the first number of the Academy contained articles by Matthew Arnold, J. B. Lightfoot, D. B. Monro, and DR. W. A. GREENHILL 45 other well-known men of letters. For some time all promised well, until Appleton, unfortunately for his enterprise, admitted articles on theological subjects written by a person who had no claim to be considered an expert, and offensive both to the publisher and to other friends of the Journal. Mr. Murray withdrew his support, and the Academy, after all efforts to keep it going under Appleton's editorship had failed, was finally sold, and lost its original character. This was a keen disappointment to Bywater, who had induced some of his friends to join him in the futile attempt to avert its collapse. A characteristic friendship between Bywater and a scholar of an older generation may well be mentioned here. Dr. W. A. Greenhill had been educated at Rugby under Arnold with Stanley, Clough, Vaughan, and other distinguished Ru^beians. He matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1832, and knew many of the Tractarians of that day, either as tutors or as friends. He afterwards studied Medicine in Paris and in Oxford, taking his M.B. in 1839, and his M.D. (Oxford) in 1840, and was for some years Physician at the Radcliffe Infirmary, while he also practised as a medical man at Oxford. He early became interested in the Greek medical writers, and learned Arabic in order to help him with his studies. Richard Burton, afterwards the celebrated traveller, coached with him before matriculation at Trinity in 1840, and began Arabic under his tuition. A very interesting account of his relations with Jowett is given in the biography of the latter. He was also a personal friend of J. H. Newman, and was his churchwarden when the latter resigned his living in 46 SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 1843. Among his publications were editions of Sir Thomas Browne's Rcligio Medici, Sydenham's Latin works, and a translation of them, and a translation from the Arabic of al-Razi. He was also the author of various articles in Smith's Dictionaries. Late in life he brought out a kind of ' Gnomologium ' consisting of moral apothegms collected from various classical authors of whom Isocrates was the earliest, together with early translations or imitations of them, under the title of The Contrast, Duty and Pleasure, Right and Wrong. In 1851 he had removed to Hastings, where he resided till the end of his life. Bywater's friendship with Dr. Greenhill arose out of correspondence about the Greek medical writers, but he soon discovered that they had many other interests in common. He frequently visited Hastings on purpose to converse with Dr. Greenhill, and kept up this friendship until the death of the latter in 1894. Bywater's friendship with Adolf Neubauer stands somewhat apart from his relations to foreign savants generally. Neubauer was a Semitic scholar of the highest rank, whohad hada singularly varied experience, from the time when as a lad of sixteen he had fought in Kossuth's army at the storming of Buda-Pest. 1 He came to Oxford in 1869 to catalogue the Hebrew MSS. in the Bodleian, received the degree of M.A. from the University in 1873, was appointed Sub-librarian of the Bodleian in the same year, and elected Honorary Fellow of Exeter College in 1890. He and Bywater became close friends, and Neubauer's intimacy with 1 An account of Neubauer, written by the late Professor Driver, will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography, and need not be repeated here. VISIT TO HEIDELBERG 47 Renan, Gaston Paris, Paul Meyer, and almost all the leading men of letters in Paris was useful to Bywater in helping on his intercourse with them. Before mentioning some of those foreign scholars with whom Bywater contracted ties during this period, a short account of a visit which he paid to Germany in 1866 in company with the writer of this memoir may not be without interest. He desired thus early in his career to make the personal acquaintance of Zeller, then Professor of Philosophyat the University of Heidelberg, who held the foremost place at that time in the esteem of all students of Greek Philosophy. The travellers left England on July 2nd, although the Seven Weeks' War between Prussia and Austria was then ra^ingf. They slept at Luxemburg, then occupied by a Prussian garrison, on the night of July 3rd, the day of the battle of Sadowa, so far as repeated salvos of artillery rendered sleep possible. The next day they went on to Treves. Of all German towns this was Bywater's favourite. He revisited it more than once, spending there the first few days after his marriage in 1885. Coblenz was the next halting place, where a brief delay took place owing to the war. The hotels were full of Prussian officers, at that time far less imperious and offensive in their bearing than they afterwards became. After two days, steamboat traffic was resumed and the travellers went on to Mannheim, When the boat had passed out of Prussian waters it was brought to a halt by a regiment of Baden troops, who came on board this enemy steamer, and paid their fare like honest men to the next station, a proceeding that con- trasts strangely with German frightfulness in 19 14. 48 SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 At Heidelberg Bywater was most kindly received by Zeller, with whom he formed a friendship that proved afterwards of much value to him. At Heidelberg Bywater also saw something of a German student's life from the inside. The hotel at which he stayed was the head-quarters of the Pomeranian Corps, one of the most fashionable in the University. The landlord was on intimate terms with the students, took Bywater to witness their duels, and had much to tell of their manners and customs. Bywater never again took so many country walks or made so many concessions to the love of the picturesque. The townspeople were sociable, and expressed their hatred of France in forcible terms when Louis Napoleon threatened to seek compen- sation for Sadowa. Bywater had just a glimpse of the realities of war when the Baden troops, who had had a sharp fight with the Prussians at Kissingen, came through Heidelberg utterly demoralized by their defeat. Shortly before the Prussians entered the town he left for Paris. Bywater paid many other visits to the Continent for the purpose of cultivating personal relations with foreign scholars. Some of these will be mentioned later. They were generally made with short notice as occasion served. But he took special pains wherever it was possible to attend the gatherings of scholars (Philologen- Sammlungen) which were held abroad from time to time for the purpose of taking stock of the progress of know- ledge in various departments. Such were the meetings at Treves in 1879, atWiirzburgin 1882, when the Uni- versity of that city was celebrating its tercentenary, and at Florence in 1878. So late as 1895 he appears to have attended a meeting at Bonn. His friendships DR. WOERMANN AND M. BOURGET 49 with some of the most distinguished men of letters both in France and in Germany made rapid progress during the whole of the period covered by this chapter. Many younger men also from both those countries who were still preparing themselves for their future life's work brought introductions to him at Oxford. Among these Dr. Karl Woermann, now Director of the Royal Picture Gallery, and Monsieur Paul Bourget, now Mem- ber of the French Academy, specially stand out. Dr. Woermann belonged to a family engaged in business at Hamburg, but had early transferred his affections from commerce to art. He made Oxford his head-quarters for some time while studying the art treasures of England, partly with a view to revising Dr. Waagen's well-known book. He was a thoroughly genial and sympathetic friend, keenly interested in English art and literature, and a warm admirer both of Rossetti and of Swinburne. He was in Oxford in 1867 and 1868, became Director of the Gallery of Dusseldorf in 1872, and was transferred to the position he now holds in 1882. The letters which passed between him and Bywater for more than twenty years after their first acquaintance contain abundant evidence of their mutual regard. 1 Monsieur Bourget visited Oxford about a year later, bringing Bywater a card of introduction from Renan, who styled him ' un de nos jeunes ecrivains les plus intelligents et les plus distingues '. M. Bourget had begun his career as a pupil and admirer of Taine. But even when he was in Oxford the tendencies which have 1 Dr. Woermann's family were largely concerned in trade with West Africa. The first ship captured by the English in their attack on the Cameroons was the Professor Woermann, so named after By water's friend. 2011 E 50 SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 become marked in his subsequent career were beginning to assert themselves. He was a frequent guest of Bywater at dinner in Hall and Common Room, and afterwards at the tobacco parliament in his host's rooms. He wrote at that time in Le Monde, the Catholic organ in the French Press, and contributed to its columns a description of an Oxford don's apart- ments and habits, which was evidently based on his experiences in Exeter College. Some years after- wards, when M. Bourget was already known to fame, his early memories supplied him with the mate- rial of a fascinating ' appreciation ' of Oxford which appeared in the Nouvelle Revue for January, 1883, and included a description of the rooms and the conversation of a typical Fellow of a College. Although the scene is not professedly laid in Exeter College, various features are evidently borrowed from Exeter and from Bywater's rooms. But the sketch, though full of literary charm, is not sufficiently faithful to fact to justify reproduction here. M. Bourget was in England again in 1884, an d Bywater continued to see him occasionally and to hear from him until within a few years of the end. Bywater's intimacy with Bernays has already been mentioned. Further reference will be made to it in the account of his literary work. Mr. T. Case, the President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, has informed the present writer that when staying at Bonn in 1869 ne made Bernays' acquaintance, and was impressed by the admiration Bernays expressed for Bywater's ability and attainment even in this early stage of his career. Bywater had, when visiting Paris in the company of Neubauer or of Pattison, made the MONSIEUR TAINE 51 acquaintance of some of the leading French men of letters, including both Renan and Taine. His friend- ship with the latter was particularly cordial. Taine's early devotion to philosophical studies, the results of which were embodied in his work De V Intelligence, his appreciation of the spirit of classical art, his attitude to Catholicism, his outlook on life, and above all his desire to base criticism on a comprehensive review of the facts, were all points of affinity between them. By- water had come to know Taine in Paris before the Franco-German War. But they saw most of one another in 1871, when Taine came to Oxford for the purpose of delivering a course of lectures on French literature at the invitation of the Curators of the Taylor Institution. During his visit to Oxford he frequently dined with Bywater and a small party of friends in his rooms. The author of the History of English Literature, though of course perfectly familiar with the language, was unable to speak it, so that con- versation was carried on by the great writer in his own tongue and by his fellow-guests in theirs, to their mutual advantage and satisfaction. Bywater occasionally saw Taine in Paris during the next ten years. In 1892 Madame Taine asked him to send back to her all the letters addressed to him by her husband, whose health was then rapidly failing, offering to send Bywater those written by himself and preserved by her husband. This offer seems, unhappily, not to have been accepted, or else the letters, if sent, were destroyed. Taine died in Paris in March, 1893. 1 1 The notice of Taine's death sent to Bywater by his family men- tions his interment in the Protestant Cemetery, and adds the words E 2 52 SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 In the same year Renan also visited Oxford, where, as well as in London, he delivered the Hibbert Lectures for 1871. During his stay at Oxford, both Renan himself and his wife received much attention from By water and were entertained by him at a luncheon party in the Hall of Exeter College. The great savant was, like Taine, unable to speak English, though Madame Renan was partly of English extrac- tion and a mistress of the language. Renan, notwith- standing his ungainly figure, left the most favourable impression on all who had the pleasure of meeting him at Oxford. He had no occasion to write to By water on literary matters, but one or two brief letters passed between them in later years. He writes to thank By- water for a copy of his Heraclitus : — ' C'est dans ce charmant volume, que je lirai desormais les trop courts debris que nous avons d'un des plus grands penseurs de l'antiquite ' ; — and in 1884 Madame Renan, in ac- knowledging a letter from Bywater introducing a friend to their notice, refers in graceful terms to their visit to Oxford : ' Notre sejour a Oxford a ete si charmant pour nous, et nous a laisse de si bons souvenirs, qu'il nous semble renouveler les impressions agreables quand nous voyons ceux qui nous l'ont rendu tel, et personne n'y a contribue plus que vous.' Bywater had made during this time other friendships, which he kept up in later years, such as those with Monsieur Paul Meyer, and Monsieur Henri Omont of the Ecole des Chartes, to some of which reference will be made later. The beginning of his friendship with Theodor Mommsen also belongs to this period. By- from St. Matt. v. 6, • Heureux ceux qui ont faim et soif de la justice, car ils seront rassasies '. THEODOR MOMMSEN 53 water was first brought closely into relation with this great writer in 1880, after he had suffered an irrepar- able loss through the burning of his library. This was almost an international calamity, as certain MSS. belonging to more than one of the great libraries of Europe, among others to the Bodleian, which had been lent to him for collation, perished in the flames. An address of condolence from his admirers in Great Britain was presented to him, and a suggestion was put before him that his friends in England would deem it an honour if they were allowed to contribute to the replenishing of his shelves. Bywater was one of the moving spirits on this occasion and acted as Secretary in communicating with Mommsen, who gratefully but decisively rejected the proposal. In 1882 Bywater was also deputed to ascertain if Mommsen would accept the degree of Hon. D.C.L. from the University of Oxford. This offer Mommsen had also to decline in consequence of the oath imposed on him when he graduated in Law at the University of Kiel that he would never accept a degree in that Faculty from any other University. 1 He availed himself of Bywater's help in arranging for the collation of a MS. of Claudian at Cambridge, and stayed in Exeter College as his guest in 1885, when he addressed to Bywater a grace- ful and cordial little note on his marriage. Mommsen stayed once again in Exeter College in 1889, this second time under the auspices of Professor Pelham and Sir W. Mitchell Ramsay. He died in 1903. To these names may be added that of his Excellency 1 Some other German Universities have imposed the same restric- tions on their alumni, and have thus debarred them from accepting even honorary degrees in Law elsewhere. 54 SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 Joannes Gennadius, lately Greek Minister at the Court of St. James's, formerly First Secretary to the Greek Legation in London. Monsieur Gennadius (as he then was) and Bywater were drawn closely together by their common tastes as well as by mutual regard. The former was not only a learned scholar but an accom- plished bibliophile, to whom Bywater was frequently indebted for information about books of which he was in search. In 1882 the Archbishop of Corfu (Antony Chariates) visited England, and M. Gennadius, who was making arrangements for him, wrote to Bywater about the conferment of the honorary degree of D.D. of Oxford on his distinguished guest. The Archbishop was entertained by Bywater when he visited Oxford to receive the degree. The honorary degree of D.D. was conferred on the Archbishop, and at the same time that of D.C.L. on M. Gennadius. The relations between Bywater and various other foreign scholars have to be mentioned hereafter. The particulars which have been introduced here will show the early date at which he became recognized as one of the media of communication between continental and English scholars, and the character of the friendships which he formed with them. There was always, when- ever possible, a personal element about these : they were not merely relations limited to those studies in which both felt a common interest. All genuine scholars were one brotherhood. Nor did the nationality of his friends make any difference in the feeling with which he regarded them as individuals. Bywater would never have depreciated the great services rendered to learning by Germany, especially in the organization and successful prosecution of study and FRANCO-GERMAN WAR 55 research. But his openness of mind in this respect did not blind him to the defects of the German character. Early in his career he learned the wisdom of avoiding controversy with German scholars. After the publication of his Heraclitus, Professor Teichmuller, in the Gottingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, jealous perhaps of a foreign rival, accused Bywater of appropriating an emendation to which Teichmuller himself laid claim. Bywater could easily have proved that such an accusa- tion, which was particularly galling to him, was not only unjust, but evinced ignorance of the history of the text, as neither he nor Teichmuller had an exclusive claim to it. But after consulting Bernays he decided to follow what afterwards became his fixed rule, and to keep clear of controversy. Bywater was deeply sensible of the defects of the German mind, which led both scholars and men of science to depreciate the literary and scientific achievements of other nations, and became much more marked after 1870. 1 He was also alive to the dangers of over-specialism, and took rather a mis- chievous pleasure in pointing out the vagaries of an eminent German critic who, having come across a detached line of so familiar a book as the Georgics of Virgil, had taken it for a fragment of a lost writer, and proceeded to emend it on this hypothesis by the light of his inner consciousness. The Franco-German War applied a searching test both to the sympathies and to the foresight of residents in Oxford. From the first a small minority inclined to the French side. Among these, though from very 1 Sir Ray Lankester, who is entitled to speak on this subject, testi- fies to Bywater's feeling in a sketch of his life that appeared in Nature, Dec. 24, 1914. 56 SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 different motives, were Jowett and Liddon. For a time these two distinguished men were drawn more closely together by their common feeling than at any earlier or later date. Pattison, on the other hand, was decidedly anti-Gallican. When the terms of peace were being discussed, Bernays, in a letter to Pattison, deprecated the annexation of territory and the harshness of the terms imposed. But Pattison, who profoundly disliked the spirit which the intolerance of the Roman Church in the eighteenth century had fostered in the French character, was unsympathetic. Most of the Oxford residents were at first strongly pro-German. The majority of the historians in Oxford, even after Sedan, sympathized with Ranke, who when asked why, after the fall of Louis Napoleon, Germany should still fight, replied that Germany was now fighting Louis XIV. By water distrusted Germany from the first ; and though few people then suspected the duplicity of Bismarck, he always considered that both Bismarck and Moltke, for reasons of policy, were exploiting the religious and patriotic enthusiasm of the Emperor and of his people. At that time animated discussions on the merits of the contending nations were constantly taking place in the Exeter Com- mon Room ; and Bywater found a strong supporter in Mr. H. T. Riley, the well-known authority on historical documents, who was reporting on the Oxford Historical Manuscripts for the Government, and had been admitted a member of Exeter College. Both then and after- wards the cultivation and spirit and refinement of the educated Frenchman were far more to Bywater s taste than the self-assertion of the average German. But both then and afterwards his friendships were THE BROTHERS MARKHEIM 57 formed with scholars irrespectively of nationality. Whether it were Bernays, the most revered of his German friends, who was as much French as German in temper and attitude of mind, or Mommsen, or Taine, when once Bywater heartily trusted and admired a great scholar, nationality made no difference in his feeling towards him. In the last years of his life two of his most intimate foreign friends and correspondents were Germans, one a great scholar still living, the other, also still living, a man of varied accomplishments, who had many ties with this country, but warmly sym- pathized with German political ambitions. Bywater lived long enough to declare himself whole-heartedly on the side of the Allies. The last communication he received from the second of the two friends above referred to was a copy of the document in which the most distinguished men of letters and science in Germany expressed their deliberate approval of the crimes perpetrated by their Government in the pursuit of Weltmacht. To this communication he returned no answer. He was deeply grieved by the interruption, if it be not the dissolution, of that fraternity between English and German scholars which he had done his utmost to promote. The mention of the Franco-German War will have recalled to the minds of Oxford residents who remember those days the memory of two brothers who were special friends of Bywater, William and Alfred Markheim. They were the sons of a gentleman, resident in Paris for the greater part of his life, who had been a citizen of the Republic of Poland before its final dismember- ment, and after a temporary sojourn in the East had settled down in the French capital. He had married 58 SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 an English wife, but both his sons were brought up in Paris, and were characteristically French. W. Mark- heim obtained a Classical Scholarship at University College, Oxford, First Class Honours in Classical Moderations and in Literae Humaniores, and a Fellow- ship at Queen's. He was in Paris throughout the siege, and wrote an account of his experiences. Alfred Markheim early achieved distinction as a doctor of medicine in Paris. He was a friend of N61aton, the famous surgeon, and of other leading Parisians of that day. At the risk of his own life he smuggled Andrieux, a notorious Communist leader, out of Paris just after the suppression of the Commune, and sent him over to England commended to By water's good offices at Oxford. By taking French lessons from him, and persuading some of his friends to do the same, Bywater was able to assist the refugee. Andrieux had some literary ability, and was employed to examine in French for the Prince Consort's prize at Eton, and to deliver lectures on French literature to an Etonian society. By means of the kindness shown to him both at Oxford and elsewhere he succeeded in maintaining himself until the proclamation of amnesty enabled him to return to his own country. Prebendary W. J. Humble-Crofts, Rector of Waldron, Sussex, who was one of Bywater's pupils and attached friends at the end of the sixties, has, in answer to a request for some reminiscences of a lighter kind, referring to those early days, most kindly replied as follows : ' When I went to Hanover in 1870 Bywater with his usual kindness gave me a letter of introduction to his German tutor there, Morgenstern, who told me that, though Bywater on his PERSONAL ANECDOTES 59 arrival at Hanover knew little or no German, in four months he could not only read and write it, but read and write it remarkably well. I remember the emphasis with which he said this. In the spring of 1873 Bywater and the Pattisons appeared at the hotel in Blois where I was staying with some pupils, and remained for a day or two en route for Touraine. I have a distinct recollection of our all going into a cafe, and Mrs. Pattison being the first lady whom I had ever seen smoke a cigarette, and read the Figaro pari passu. She also informed me that, both on the way to and return from Chambord, Bywater never ceased from quip and witticism. Bywater on the other hand said that he had greatly astonished the Patti- sons by his knowledge of the historical lore of Blois and the neighbourhood, because he took to bed with him the night before a little book which I had lent to him on the subject. They seemed pleased with a letter of introduction I gave them to the Librarian at Tours (M. Dorange), who told me after- wards that there was one particular book for which Mrs. Patti- son had long been searching. I cannot remember whether it was the " Hours " of Anne of Bretagne, or the gilt-lettered New Testament on which the Kings of France placed their hand when swearing the Royal Oath, or some other volume ; but she was so excited at finding it that she would not wait for chair and table, but sat down on the floor, and became absorbed in it. Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff just before he died asked for some Exeter College anecdotes, as his were chiefly derived from Balliol ; and amongst others I sent him this, which he con- sidered " highly characteristic ". For some reason or other Bywater had a strong antipathy to Professor X. ; and when the latter was among the nominees for some honorary office awarded by vote of Congregation, Bywater, to whom it fellas Proctor to count the votes, turned to his colleague as the pro- ceeding drew to a close and said with that never-to-be-forgotten lisp : "There is reason to suppose that Professor X. has voted more than once." " What do you mean? " was the astonished reply. " There are two votes for Professor X." 60 SOCIAL LIFE AT OXFORD, 1863-84 When he was Reader in Greek, some guests in the Common Room were anxious to know what was the difference between a Reader and a Professor. "A Reader is a man who reads, and a Professor is a man who professes to read," was the characteristic reply. I once heard C. W. Boase tell this story to Professor Skeat, prefacing it by saying that the proper term for Professor was Praelector. " Which means, I sup- pose," rejoined Skeat, " a man who lectures before he has read." While he was Proctor it happened that the fees for Modera- tions were increased, and, very unfairly, the increase was attributed by some of the undergraduates to his influence, or was at any rate supposed to find its way into his pocket. When the candidates, who in those days put down their names before the Proctor in his College, arrived at Exeter and were informed that they would have to pay the higher fee,facit indignatio versus. Their feelings vented themselves in these lines which were found posted in the Porter's lodge. A guinea 's enough for Mods, one would think, But we're told by the Exeter Porter That, though some of it goes to buy paper and ink, The greater part goes to B r. The following story you may perhaps have heard. The undergraduate who lived over his head occasionally annoyed him by the sounds of scuffling with his athletic friends at various times- of the day, but especially by racing down his staircase two or more steps at a time, until Bywater, who had been almost knocked over in the process, stopped his apologies with the reply, " Mr. A., I must request that you will find some other staircase on which to practise for the quarter of a mile." No one appreciated the rebuke more than the offender, who both entertained a great admiration for his monitor and claimed, somewhat to the amusement of his comrades, to be on terms of special intimacy with him.' The feeling of the men who attended By water's Pass lectures towards him was hardly less significant than RELATION WITH PASSMEN 61 that of his Honour pupils. They were often the subject of some very pointed sarcasms. But they rather treasured than resented them. The under- graduate will forgive a great deal to one whom they admire, and who is never commonplace or humdrum. CHAPTER IV Work in College and the University, 1863-84 — Oxford Reform — Relations with J. Wordsworth and W. H. Pater — University Com- mission of 1877 — Sub-Librarianship of Bodleian — Delegate of University Press. The period between Bywater's election to a Fellow- ship in 1863 and the enactment in 1882 of the Statutes framed by the University Commission of 1877 was marked by numerous academic changes. The Commission of 1854 had, as was stated in a former chapter, left various important questions untouched, some of which are still awaiting a final settlement. But during the twenty years now before us there was great activity in various directions. Large sums were expended in promoting the study of Natural Science. The Non-Collegiate System, by which students could become members of the University without belonging to a College or Hall, was established in 1868. The rule that undergraduates must reside for three years in College was relaxed. A connexion between the University and the Secondary teaching of the country, which has since borne abundant fruit, had been formed by the institution of the Local Examinations in 1858. In 1870 girls as well as boys were admitted to these examinations. Colleges for Women were founded at Oxford and University examinations thrown open to them. In 1873 the Joint Oxford and Cambridge Board was established for the examinations of schools, mainly for the sake of schools of the highest grade. LIMITATION OF INTERESTS 63 The movement which is now widely known under the name of University Extension, and has recently made progress among the industrial classes, was just begin- ning in the later years of this period. From schemes of this kind, which tended to the popularization of know- ledge and to the spread of the influence of the University outside its own borders, Bywater always stood aloof. He was neither a prominent nor a fanatical opponent of those who desired to see the University playing a conspicuous part in the organization of the higher education throughout the country ; but he was decidedly adverse to any large expenditure on such objects, as well as to the absorption in University business of time and energy which should be devoted to the advancement of learning. One of the most important and far-reaching changes that took place within the first ten years of his academic life was the passing of the Universities Tests Act, in 1 87 1, which prepared the way for further encroachments on the academic privileges of the Church of England, by the Commission of 1877. The Tests Act, though it was warmly supported by the great majority of University reformers, and by none more heartily than by Bywater, was as much a political as an academic measure. But the secularization of endowments to which it was a necessary preliminary, and the changes and disputes which attended this further change, are so important a part of University history that a somewhat lengthened statement on these points may be considered not irrelevant here. This was, moreover, almost the only controversy in which Bywater actively intervened. The pamphlet which he wrote on the subject, A Letter to the Rev. John 64 WORK IN OXFORD Wordsworth, in 1880, was highly characteristic of its author, and received his final approval in the biblio- graphy which he drew up in 1 914. A review of the whole controversy will shortly be attempted. The other reforms in which Bywater was chiefly interested were the improvement of College teaching and study, and of University examinations, and the revision of the College Statutes preparatory to the Commission of 1877. He did not at first take any large share of the teaching of his own College. After a while, partly in order to increase his income, and partly to keep in touch with the examination for Literae Humaniores, he took a few private pupils, though he did not long- continue to do so. Among his early pupils were S. R. Driver, afterwards Regius Professor of Hebrew, I. S. Leadam, afterwards Fellow of Brasenose, and the present Master of University (Dr. R. W. Macan), all of whom appeared in the First Class. Bywater's private teaching (as Dr. Macan has kindly informed the present writer) was characterized by finish and thoroughness. He was not content to correct his pupils' mistakes. He gave them an example of the kind of answer which he himself would have returned to the questions set. At that time, as well as in later life, he had no special love for examinations. But for practical purposes he took the most effectual means of achieving success. 1 Bywater also began the practice of 1 Dr. Macan adds, however, that he at least studied the personal equation of the examiners more successfully than his tutor. When T. H. Green was appointed examiner, Dr. Macan asked Bywater to allow him to write an essay on ' mysticism '. Bywater assented, but expressed his opinion that it was not a likely or a fit subject for the general philosophy paper in the schools. It turned out, however, to be the subject of the first question set in that paper. COLLEGE LECTURES 65 taking one or two private pupils on a reading party in the Long Vacation and inviting some of his College pupils to join it as friends. Those who accepted his invitation never forgot their debt to him. The requirements of his own studies compelled him to dis- continue this practice also ; but he had established a reputation as a teacher, and soon became ambitious of attracting a larger class than could be found within the walls of a single College. At the outset of Bywater's career the quality of College lectures suffered materially from the conditions under which they were delivered. Many Colleges had no lecture-room, though the College Hall was occasion- ally used for that purpose. The scene of the lecture was generally the private room of the lecturer or tutor. Occasionally the ideal tutor might give the ideal lecture under such circumstances. But this was not generally the case. Moreover, every College, however small, had to find its own teachers in every subject, so that comparatively few College Tutors could be speci- ally expert in any one department. Lecturers in the newer branches of study first attempted to reform this state of things. The movement began with the Law and History School. Some of the most distinguished teachers in this School issued a scheme of joint lectures open without fee to members of the Colleges of all those lecturers whose names appeared on the list. This example was followed by the Lecturers in Divinity, and Mathematics ; and this system of combination among teachers has been continued in those subjects to the present time. There was greater difficulty in dealing with lectures for the Honour Classical Examinations, on account of the large number of lecturers. Two 2011 F 66 WORK IN OXFORD pairs of Colleges, one of which consisted of Balliol and New College, had for a time formed an alliance for teaching in common ; and there was also a short list of allied lecturers for the School of Literae Humaniores advertised in the University Gazette. But this latter combination, though it included some distinguished names, was wholly inadequate to secure a general interchange of lectures for that School. Bywater stood aloof from this combination, but in 1872, when he began to lecture on Aristotle's Poetics, which was about to become an optional subject for the Honour Classical School in the First Public Examination, he threw open his lecture on payment of a fee to undergraduates of Colleges other than his own. A year or two later the same course was adopted by his colleague H. F. Pelham in lecturing on Roman History for the School of Literae Humaniores. Both By water's and Pelham's lectures were crowded, and they received a considerable sum in fees, which with characteristic generosity they both handed over to the tuition fund of their own Col- lege. The experience of Bywater and Pelham had much influence in brinoino- about the combination between Colleges in teaching for the Schools of Literae Humaniores, and of Honour Classics in Moderations, which was established after the second University Commission, while the system of combination between lecturers still prevails in the other Honour Schools. The subject of Bywater's other chief Honour lecture was Plato's Republic. But the admission of under- graduates from other societies did not prevent him from forming close relations with his College pupils, who were reading for the School of Literae Humaniores. He never overlooked the need of bringing the person- CHARACTERISTICS AS LECTURER 67 ality of the teacher to bear on individual members of his class, and set hardly any limit to the time and attention bestowed on a promising pupil. Sir Herbert Warren, K.C.V.O., President of Mag- dalen College, who, when a scholar of Balliol, attended some of Bywater's lectures, has kindly contributed to this memoir the following account of the impression they produced on him. ' My first recollections of Bywater date from my under- graduate days. I was sent, when I was reading for Greats, in a very lucky hour, for in those days Balliol was chary of sending her pupils to Lectures at other Colleges, to two courses of his, the first, a lecture on the Republic of Plato, the second one on the First Book of the Metaphysics of Aristotle, which was also a lecture on the Pre-Socratic philosophers. They made a more definite and sustained impression upon me than any other lectures I attended. I say sustained, for I heard isolated lectures on subjects more capable of rhetorical treatment, which were more rhetorically striking, but I cannot recollect that my interest in these lectures of Bywater's ever flagged, or that I failed to learn something from each one. The lecture on the Republic was distinctly of the scholarly kind, to use the more old-fashioned word — it was philological rather than philosophical. It was directed, that is to say, to showing, not what Plato " meant ", which was a matter to some extent of speculation, and in any case implied the reading of Plato as a whole and not only of the Republic, but to showing what he "said", upon the exact appreciation of which must depend the subsequent statement of his whole meaning. It was, then, largely devoted to an explanation of the lan- guage, and it did not neglect the determination of that language, where it was in doubt, by reference to textual con- siderations. In the handling of these I felt myself, for the first time in my life, in the presence of an original master, and learned a new attitude towards, and view of, critical scholarship, and F 2 68 WORK IN OXFORD realized the importance of names like those not only of Madvig which I already knew, but of Cobet and W. H. Thomp- son and Badham. I remember well the excitement with which, when I turned to the critical preface of Baiter and Orelli's edition of Plato I found Bywater's own name as the contributor of a " palmary " emendation amongst those suggested by these heroes. Such a lecture, hovering between " Mods " and " Greats ", to use the Oxford parlance, is a very difficult thing to give, far more difficult than reading out a continuous disquisition. Somewhat later, when I came to know Bywater well, I remember his saying " An Oxford lecture is usually a bad book, badly delivered ". A lecture ought not to be a book, at any rate not a book which has reached the book stage. Bywater's lecture w T as not a book and it was wonderfully delivered. He had a method all his own. He was clear and business-like, but easy and almost colloquial, yet he had an air of authority, and at times of mystery and hierophancy, and a trick, very effective, of going off at the end of a demonstration, into an impressive whisper. Matthew Arnold was at that time one of our chief literary lights. . In particular Friendship's Garland had just come out and we read it and re-read it. There was a very amusing mock heroic sentence of his, in the Dedicatory Epistle, of which I was very fond : " In the garden of the Hesperides the inscrutable-eyed Sphinx whispers, with half-parted lips, mysteries more than Eleusinian of the Happy Dead ! " " Whispering mysteries more than Eleusinian." The phrase seemed to me to describe Bywater's manner, helped out by a drawl and a lisp which he affected in a most amusing way. " Such ", I remember his saying in one of these mystic whispers, as the last words of a lecture, " such, is Plato's idea of God ! " He too could use the same artifice in a mock heroic manner, as when he told us one day of an emendation proposed by Madvig, and then added whispering, " but it is too horrible ". In the same hierophantic manner, and it seemed to suit them PERSONAL REMINISCENCES 69 peculiarly well, he spoke of the early Greek Philosophers, of Xenophanes, of the " dark " sage, Heraclitus, and of Parmeni- des, the prophet of unity. I well remember especially, how he brought out with great empressement the appearance of Anaxagoras and his discovery of nous which made him appear " like a sober man after the wild talk of his predecessors ". It need hardly be said that he was specially at home in this region, and that he traced in a simple and most suggestive manner the filiation of thought and discovery as shown in the succession of these sages. It was only later that I realized how much I had learnt and been made to think. At the time I was spell-bound. The result was that I became very much attached to Bywater, who seemed to take a personal interest in his hearers, and spoke to me once or twice upon special points ; but I remained a little in awe of him until, after my degree, I came to know him better. My further introduction is perhaps worth recording. When I became Librarian of the Union and was casting about as to how to form a Committee, I consulted my friend the late Prime Minister, who had recently been President. He said at once, " You should get some Don who really knows about books. Why don't you ask Bywater, who knows more about books than any one in Oxford ? " I said, " Do you think he would accept ? ". " Yes," he replied, " I am sure he would." I plucked up courage and asked the great man, who at once replied most kindly, and" served for a Term. When I settled down in Oxford and became a tutor he was always specially kind and gave me from time to time excellent advice, in particular as to what to read upon palaeography, but very wisely he recommended me to the practice and the actual reading and copying of manuscripts, rather than any reading about the art. He did, however, recommend a most interesting treatise — C. G. Cobet's Oratio de arte interpretandi grammatices et critices fundamentis inuixa — for which I was very grateful. It contains the famous description of the modern scholars, Qui Graeca carmina paiigt/Ht quae )ieque Gracca sunt 7 o WORK IN OXFORD ncqae carmina. I dined with him from time to time and went to his rooms, which always seemed to me to have a special air of scholarly elegance and distinction. He was a most amusing talker and raconteur. He used to affect to be very critical of Jowett, and of his indifference to real learning and textual scholarship. " I do not suppose ", he would say, half in jest, " he ever looked at any text of Plato beyond Parker's little Oxford edition." I did not at that time appreciate the position of the rival schools of research and examination, but gradually I began to do so and found of course that Bywater, the follower of Patti- son, was one of the leaders of research.' Bywater never took any very active part in Univer- sity legislation, though he was on two occasions for a short time a member of the Hebdomadal Council in 1873-4, and after the end of the Second Commission in 1884. On the first occasion he represented Exeter College as Proctor. He was Junior Proctor, his friend Dr. C. H. O. Daniel, the present Provost of Worcester, being his senior colleague. The disciplinary duties of the Proctor's office would not have had any special attraction for Bywater, though he was both efficient and not unpopular as a Proctor. He more enjoyed the opportunity of becoming practically con- versant with University legislation and of making the acquaintance of some of the leading personages in academic life, whom he might not otherwise have known. Among these was Dr. Pusey, for whose abilities as a leader and tactician he conceived a high opinion. There were no measures of very critical importance before the University during his year of office, unless the selection of the plan for the New Schools should be deemed an event of this kind. PROCTORSHIP 7 i Before 1872 two rival schemes had been started, each involving the expenditure of a very large sum. Various influential persons were anxious to erect a fire-proof building in the University Park, and to transfer the Bodleian Library to it : while others strongly advocated the building of new Examination Schools, which would incidentally provide further accommodation for the Bodleian. Bywater would for different reasons have opposed both schemes. The former, besides destroying old associations, would have rendered the Bodleian inaccessible to students for many years to come. On the other hand he considered examinations overdone and hoped to see them cut down. He was fond of quoting the motto of the New Schools with the insertion of a negative : ' Multi per- transibunt et non augebitur scientia ' ; and often referred to them as the ' Temple of Dagon ', not perhaps foreseeing that with the growth of the Univer- sity the building would become indispensable for various public purposes besides examinations. How- ever this may be, in 1873, when he became Proctor, the decision in favour of erecting new Examination Schools had already been taken. In June, 1872, a Delegacy of nine persons consisting of Dean Liddell, then Vice-Chancellor, E. A. Freeman, the historian, and seven others had been appointed in order to procure a design. This Delegacy invited five archi- tects to compete, but only three of these accepted their invitation. The plans prepared by one of them, Mr. J. Oldrid Scott, were selected by the Delegacy. But when they were presented to Convocation on May 23, 1873, they were decisively rejected, and the scheme was thus temporarily hung up. The Vice-Chancellor 72 WORK IN OXFORD was much chagrined at this result, and wished to retain the architect whose plan had been condemned, and to instruct him to revise it. He hoped in this way after a time to bring the rejected design again before Convoca- tion and to procure its approval. On this the Proctors intervened with decisive effect, and privately informed the Vice-Chancellor that, if this course were adopted, they would exercise their right of veto, and throw out the proposal. On learning this, the Vice-Chancellor consented to arrange for the appointment of a fresh Delegacy of nine persons with power to invite five architects to send in designs, from which the Delegates should select one to be submitted to the approval of Convocation. Mr. T. G. Jackson, now Sir T. Graham Jackson, R.A., was one of the five architects who com- peted. The design submitted by Mr. T. G. Jackson was selected by the Delegacy, whose decision was accepted by Convocation without any division of opinion. The only other matter in which Bywaterwas specially interested during his Proctorship was the nomination of examiners, a duty which in those days was not always dischargedwithout regard to the interests of the Colleges to which the nominators belonged. Bywater was untiring in his efforts to secure the services of the most capable men, especially in the School of Natural Science, and made arrangements with his colleague by which the appointment of an examiner in that subject fell to his share. 1 Bywater officiated as an Examiner in the School of 1 The Provost of Worcester has kindly contributed some of these particulars, and has given permission to publish them. The present writer was himself a member of the second Delegacy mentioned above. COLLEGE REFORM 73 Literae Humaniores on two occasions: for the first time for a full term of office in 1874-5, and again for one year in 1881. In his own College, the Fellowship Elections sub- sequent to those of 1863 had in 1871 given a majority on the Governing Body to those who looked forward to further academic changes, such as were effected by the Second Commission appointed in 1877. Exeter was one of four Colleges in the University which in consequence of their voluntary acceptance of the policy of the Commission of 1854 had then been invested with the power of changing their own Statutes by a majority of two-thirds of the Governing Body with the consent of the Visitor. The Bishop of Exeter was ex officio Visitor of the College. When Philpotts died and was succeeded by Temple, who was notoriously in favour of further reforms, the new Bishop was at once approached and his consent obtained to the preparation of a body of draft Statutes to be laid before him in due course for confirmation and approval. The Bishop was even better than his word, and repeatedly conferred with two of the Fellows, of whom Bywater was one, as to the lines on which the new Statutes should be drafted. The majority of the Fellows worked in perfect harmony. The chief labour of preparation did not fall on Bywater, but no one exercised a more decisive influence on the policy which was adopted. He was especially anxious that the interests of learning should not be overlooked, and suggested such provisions as would enable Exeter College to co-operate in advancing them to such extent as its revenues allowed, although he was fully alive to the necessity of con- sulting the educational interests of a College which 74 WORK IN OXFORD depended for its existence chiefly on the services it rendered to undergraduate training. During the interval of suspense, while new Statutes were being prepared, and the Commission of 1877 was still in the future, three or four elections to Fellowships in the College were made under special provisions. Bywater more particularly interested himself in these. To him chiefly was due the election of E. Ray Lankester (now Sir E. Ray Lankester, K.C.B.) and H. N. Moseley, both of whom, though in reverse order, afterwards filled the Chair of the Linacre Professor at Oxford. Though Professor Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, the explorer of Phrygia, was not elected to a Fellowship until after 1882, it may be mentioned here that Exeter College owes to Bywater the honour of reckoning that eminent scholar also among its former Fellows. The appointment of the Commission of 1877 superseded the labours of the Visitor and of the Governing Body, though they had supplied useful material to lay before the Commissioners. When it became necessary for Exeter College to send three representatives to sit with the other Commissioners for the purpose of drawing up the Statutes of their own College, Bywater was one of the three Fellows deputed for that purpose, and took a leading part in the final settlement. The abolition of tests for degrees, and the removal of clerical restrictions from the great majority of Head- ships and Fellowships, are now seen to have been inevitable. But if Bywater's attitude on these questions is to be clearly understood, some mention must be made of the controversies they provoked and the feelings they roused in the period under review. It was a misfortune for the University that the THEOLOGICAL TESTS 75 Government of the day (that of Lord Aberdeen), when appointing the University Commission of 1854, did not place the imposition of tests for the M.A. degree out- side the region of controversy by removing them in accordance with the recommendation of the Com- mission of Inquiry of 1852. The half-hearted action of Government on this point, and not on this point only, has seriously hampered the development of the Uni- versity to the present day. The agitation for the abolition of tests kept gaining strength until the passing of the Tests Act, while the extreme Church party within the University were proportionately anxious to make the most of them, so long as they had the power to do so. The affront offered to Jowett when he was called upon to sign the XXXIX Articles after the publi- cation of his Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles will not be forgotten. But the same kind of policy was occasionally pursued with regard to individuals of less note. Before Bywater and one of his colleagues were appointed assistant tutors they were summoned before the Head of their College to sign the XXXIX Articles as a proof of their orthodoxy. As Bywater himself frequently attended the College Chapel, and his colleague was reading for Holy Orders, to which he was afterwards admitted, this summons was plainly due to a wish on the part of some of the seniors to restrict freedom of opinion. Action of this sort was not likely to promote harmony among the members of a Govern- ing Body. A layman at all events might fairly say that he signed the Articles merely to show that he was a member of the Church of England and of no other denomination. Bywater, who signed the Articles as a matter of course when admitted to the M.A. degree, 76 WORK IN OXFORD and had always been ranked as a member of the Church of England, felt considerable exasperation at the challenge thus addressed to him. The passing of the Tests Act came as a welcome relief to a state of tension, and as a message of peace. The Tests Act, however, left clerical restrictions on endowments untouched, so that another and in some respects a more thorny con- troversy was carried on until the ratification of the Statutes of the Second Commission in 1882. The reformers felt that the University had been only half opened to the nation so long as the great mass of Col- lege endowments were restricted to one denomination. On the other hand the advocates of clerical restrictions were unfeignedly anxious that the influence of religious ideals on the life of the undergraduates should not be weakened, as in their opinion it necessarily would be, when all security for the religious beliefs of their teachers was destroyed. It would have been easier to come to some understanding if the controversy had been left to the most reasonable disputants on either side, and had not, like most controversies, passed at least on the Conservative side chiefly into the hands of uncompromising partisans. J. W. Burgon, afterwards Dean of Chichester.who stood forward as the protagonist of the existing regime, was a true lover of Oxford, a master of pure and idiomatic English, and a genuine student of the Bible, but a vehement and unscrupulous controversialist. The Conservative wire-pullers, whose aims were chiefly political, also found it convenient to ally themselves with those whose aims were, or at least should have been, chiefly spiritual. An event also occurred at this juncture to which an importance was attached which is now easilyseen to have THE BISHOP'S CHARGE 77 been greater than ought to have been attributed to it. W. H. Pater's Studies in the History of the Renaissance appeared in 1873, and not unnaturally provoked a storm of criticism in Oxford, although the world outside took a less serious view of it. Most of the essays of which the book consisted had appeared in various Reviews. No later work of Pater, not even Marius the Epicurean, produced a stronger impression or showed more literary ability. The concluding essay in the book, which in substance had already been published in a review of an early volume of W. Morris's Earthly Paradise, advocated the claim of aesthetic enjoyment to be the sole end of human life and activity. The most questionable passage was modified by Pater in a later edition. But the whole work may be regarded as a literary exercise on the emotions kindled by the revived study of pagan art and poetry, and the uncom- promising; development of a particular point of view. The theologians, however, treated it as an attempt to destroy the moral and religious basis of character. Dr. Mackarness, then Bishop of Oxford, in his ' Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese ', shortly afterwards delivered in the Cathedral of Christ Church, not unnaturally fastened on the most pronounced passages of the Studies and dwelt on what he conceived to be an imminent danger, viz. that the Oxford tutors, when free from clerical restrictions, would instil the principles of the book into the minds of their pupils. Bywater, who was looked upon as Pater's most intimate friend and accomplice, was exposed at the time to a good deal of suspicion in orthodox circles. The Bishop's son, who in later life was Archdeacon of the East Riding, was a College pupil, and a friend and admirer of Bywater. 7 8 WORK IN OXFORD The Bishop himself, who had once been a Fellow of Exeter, was on friendly terms with Bywater, and could hardly have wished to throw any imputation on him. But many persons certainly thought that Bywater was one of the tutors most to be feared. How mistaken this impression was will be obvious to any one who considers the irreconcilable opposition between Bywater's ideal and that put forward in the Shidies. Even Conington, who included the practical command of Latin and Greek among the necessary qualifications of a scholar, failed to satisfy Bywater's standard. Still less could he have attached any great value to mere aesthetic sensibility. Happily we are not without evidence as to Bywater's impartial estimate of Pater and his ideals. Some years later, in writing to an intimate friend in Germany who was keenly interested in Pater's point of view and had asked Bywater's opinion, he dispatched a letter in reply, the draft of which still survives among his papers and is inserted below. But the reader should remember, in the first place, that Pater himself never confused aesthetic with sensual' enjoyment ; and in the second place, that Bywater in giving a strictly dispassionate estimate of Pater from a literary point of view, naturally omitted to dwell on the close friendship between Pater and himself, which was dissolved only by Pater's death. (Draft of a Letter from Bywater to Dr. H. Diels, Berlin.) You will find a fairly full account of Pater's life in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 44, — a book no doubt to be found in some Berlin library. The writer of the article did not know Pater in his early ESTIMATE OF PATER 79 days: there are several grave mistakes in his account of his intellectual development. I knew Pater 'very intimately at this time : we were undergraduates of the same College (Queen's), we attended the same lectures, and were in every way inseparable. His mind was much more mature than mine and he completely subjugated me by his verve, and originality of view. He came up to the University with strong religious interests — I say interests rather than convictions — and he never quite lost them, though he often seemed to superficial observers to have cast them aside. I always thought there was a possibility of his ending his days as a Catholic. If he had come across a really great Catholic like Cardinal New- man he would have satisfied his emotional and aesthetic nature. As an undergraduate, however, he devoured all the serious literature of the period. Carlyle, Ruskin, Browning, J. S. Mill, and also our older writers, Berkeley and Hume. He managed also to learn in a Vacation enough German to read Hegel in the original ; I distinctly remember his reading the Phano- mologie dcs Geistcs during one Long Vacation — that of 1862, I think. All this was in his period of intellectual Sturm und Drang, the end of which is marked by his marvellous Essay on Cole- ridge, which, though anonymous, took the cultivated world by storm. After this he threw himself into Art and Literature proper. The beginnings of his studies in Art are to be seen in his Essay on Winckelmann — a very remarkable piece of work which you should read for yourself. You will notice, I think, a certain sympathy with a certain aspect of Greek life ; I must tell you that that was not confined to him. But he never had any real knowledge of Art. He was attracted to what is enigmatic or suggestive, to Botticelli and Burne-Jones rather than to the greater masters. In Literature, however, his taste was of the finest. As a critic he was, I think, nebulous ; but that was, I imagine, partly the result of his theory that the main function of the critic is to set forth his own impressions, so that he is as it were a literary impressionist. Whether he was led to this by Sainte-Beuve 80 WORK IN OXFORD I cannot say, but my notion is that he was. His style I do not like : it seems to me affected and pretentious and often sadly wanting in lucidity. It is much admired by a small but devout body of followers — very superior persons in their own view, though of little importance in the view of the large literary public in this country. This little coterie of admirers has much to answer for. For Pater with his large intellectual and spiritual experience and great natural gifts was too good to be made the hierophant of a rather feeble form of ' culture '. But that is what he eventually became ; and his very manner became ' pontifical '—pose', or rather that of a sort of lay ' director ' or confessor. 1 Neither Bywater nor any other of those who might have deemed themselves assailed by the Bishop of Oxford attempted any reply. But Dr. Ince, at that time Sub-Rector of Exeter College, rendered a public service to the University in a paper read by him at the Church Congress in the same year on ' Religion in the University of Oxford', which was virtually an answer to the Bishop. Dr. Ince pointed out the true causes of the prevalent unsettlement of religious opinion, and while acknowledging that the Bishop was more than justified in warning men against accepting 1 This dispassionate criticism of Pater has been given at length both for its intrinsic interest and for its value as illustrating Bywater's own attitude. He would gladly have seen Pater concentrating him- self on literary criticism and production. But he considered that Pater, when he took up art criticism, and dogmatized on the emotions which should be kindled by the works of various artists, had not a sufficient basis of knowledge for such a task. This would also have been the judgement of Pattison and his friends, who regarded Pater from Bywater's point of view. Pater has long ceased to exercise the influence at Oxford that he once wielded. But he will always be remembered as one of the most prominent Oxford writers of his day, and as the author of the Studies, of Marius the Epicurian, and many charming literary appreciations. LETTER TO WORDSWORTH 81 Pater's ideal of life, exculpated the college tutors from any such designs as had been attributed to them. Dr. Ince's reply was the more effective as he was known to be a stout opponent of Bywater on questions of University and College policy, and was moreover Examining Chaplain to the Bishop. Bywater's active share in theological controversy was limited to his Letter to the Rev. yo/m Words- worth, M.A., on the subject of a statement in his recent letter to Mr. C. S. Roundell, M.P., already referred to. The future Bishop had in 1880, while the Commission was still sitting, published a letter to Mr. C. S. Roundell, a prominent advocate of the removal of clerical re- strictions on College endowments. In this letter Wordsworth had referred to Exeter College as intended by its founder to be 'a College of priests '. Bywater wrote privately to him pointing out that Walter of Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter, had founded his College on the lines on which Merton had been founded by Walter of Merton fifty years before, and Merton was notoriously not founded as a College of priests. On this Wordsworth in a second edition of his 'Letter' replied that he did not refer to Walter of Stapeldon as the founder of Exeter College, but to Sir William Petre, who in the reign of Elizabeth obtained a second Charter for this foundation under the name of Exeter College, altering thereby its original designation of Stapeldon Hall. Bywater pointed out that Exeter College had already existed for two centuries, had played a prominent part in the University, and had been generally known as Exeter College for almost the whole of that period. He did not, however, make much of this refinement of Wordsworth's, but showed 2011 G 82 WORK IN OXFORD conclusively that neither the earlier nor the later Statutes operated, or were meant to operate, to the exclusion of laymen from the foundation ; but that the long time which was then required for study from persons proceeding to the higher degrees in Theology was probably the reason why candidates for these degrees were allowed to retain their Fellowships for life. Wordsworth had called his argument merely a ' point of archaeology ', but he had used it in defence of a principle. In fact, he had ventured to dogmatize on a matter in the history of the University to which he had not devoted sufficient attention. Although the future Bishop was mistaken on this occasion, the con- troversy was conducted with perfect good will on both sides. Bywater did not confound Wordsworth with Burgon and his followers, but had a very sincere respect for him, both as a scholar of the first rank and as a fellow member of the ' Old Mortality'. In subsequent years the Bishop of Salisbury might often be seen on his visits to Oxford coming into Exeter College in search of his old friend. This episode has been related at some length because it was the only occasion on which Bywater engaged in a public controversy. It also furnishes a convenient opportunity for referring to Bywater s general attitude to religious belief, as well as for considering it from an academic point of view. Any person who either at that time or subsequently imputed to Bywater any desire to weaken the religious influences which help to mould the character of young men under education did him injustice. He could make very caustic, and at times perhaps even unjust remarks on those who desired that academic rewards should be RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE 83 reserved for the clergy in excess of their intellectual claims. But he never underrated the importance of character, or spoke lightly to any pupil about the pattern set before men in the Gospel. He very rarely spoke even to an intimate friend on matters of religious belief. When he says in his sketch of Henry Nettle- ship that his friend ' throughout life was firmly opposed to tests and other impediments to freedom of thought and inquiry in matters of religion : at the same time there was a serious religious vein in his nature, and he had no sympathy with the coarser forms of theological liberalism ', this description may be considered at least to some extent autobiographical. By water's ideals were too purely intellectual for him ever to be regarded as an example of the anima naturaliter Christiana. But he shrank from anything that out- raged ordinary human feelings. He was specially impressed by the Burial Service of the Church. More than once, in returning from the funeral of some friend, he spoke with emotion of the consolation which was thus ministered to those who were bidding a last farewell to one whom they had loved. It would have distressed him that any friend of his should wish, or that he himself should be thought capable of wishing, to be laid in the grave without a religious service. He accepted and faced the possibility of a future life without any search- ing of heart, in the firm conviction that the seeker after truth, if he were true to his vocation, had nothing to fear. 1 1 Bywater on one occasion when coming back to Oxford to attend the funeral of an old acquaintance, whom he thought likely to have left instructions forbidding a religious service, characteristically re- marked to the friend who had arranged for a service in the College G 2 84 WORK IN OXFORD It would have been wellforthe University if Bywater's academic principles could have been applied to the settlement of religious controversies in the University both during the period under review and at a later date. It is not necessary here to touch on the religious influences that have been brought to bear on undergraduates. Time has shown that the misgivings expressed by the opponents of change have proved exaggerated. It would be generally admitted that there is more of what may be called religious life in the Colleges than there was thirty or forty years ago. But it may be permissible to express regret that the canons which Bywater would have applied to all the other studies in the University should never have been frankly applied to Theology. After the Univer- sity and its endowments were opened to all denomina- tions the Theological Faculty could be retained only on the hypothesis that it represented a branch of learn- ing of eternal interest and value. Bywater and his friends would readily have accepted this view, and would have acquiesced in any measures necessary for giving effect to it. Teachers of Divinity would thus have been regarded primarily as students, not as orthodox partisans. In the attempts that have been made to widen the Faculty of Theology, this issue has never been fairly and adequately presented to the University. Discussion has always degenerated into a fight between contending factions : and the fatal alliance between soi-disant orthodoxy and academic obstruction has always been renewed whenever it has been found serviceable to either side. The past history Chapel, ' I am glad you are giving P. a proper funeral. He was a straight man'. SUB-LIBRARIANSHIP OF BODLEIAN 85 of Oxford since the beginning- of the Tractarian move- ment, though not a justification, furnishes a sufficient explanation of this state of things. In some respects there is a close resemblance between individuals and institutions. A constitutional taint is not eradicated in a day. In the same year, 1879, Bywater held for a time the office of Sub-Librarian of the Bodleian, which he accepted provisionally, while gaining experience of its duties. He now had a great reputation both as a bibliophile and as a classical scholar conversant with MSS. The Curators of the Bodleian, of whom Mark Pattison was one, might well be anxious to obtain his services for the Library, and circumstances at that time rendered it specially important for them to do so. The history of this transaction throws so much light on Bywater's views and characteristics that it is worth while to recount it at some length. The Librarian of the Bodleian at that time was the Rev. H. O. Coxe, one of the greatest living authorities on MSS., and one of the most prominent figures in Oxford, universally admired and respected. 1 Coxe was oh very friendly terms with Bywater, and was doubly anxious to obtain his assistance, as the state of his own health rendered his retirement probable at no very distant date. Though no definite promise could be given, there was no one whom Coxe himself and the majority of the Curators would so gladly have seen establishing a claim of succession to the Chief Libra- rianship. Bywater was, however, from the first afraid 1 An admirable sketch and appreciation of Mr. Coxe will be found in J. W. Burgon's Lives of Tivelve Good A/en. 86 WORK IN OXFORD that the duties which would be thrown on the Sub- Librarian would prove insufferably irksome. He would not commit himself finally until he could be definitely assured on this point, but obtained leave of absence from his College duties until he could gain the experience necessary for arriving at a decision. There was then, as there has been more than once, talk of a subject catalogue of the Library, and of the rearrangement of the shelves, an interminable task. There were, besides Latin MSS. to be catalogued, the articles in foreign literary journals to be separately entered, besides an amount of supervision for which he was not prepared. Moreover the hours of attendance, especially in summer, were long, and a Sub-Librarian with Bywater's scholarly pursuits, who was employed on Library work during the whole of the office hours, would have time for nothing- else. Dr. Rolleston, the Linacre Professor of Comparative Anatomy, one of the foremost men of Science in the University, was one of the Curators, and was specially anxious that the duties of the Sub-Librarianship should be defined in such a sense as to enable Bywater to hold that position. After discussing the matter with Rolleston, Bywater wrote a long letter to him defining the terms which would satisfy him. He desired nothing more or less than a definite assurance that his time in the Library after two o'clock in the day should be at his own disposal. The following extract from his letter has a general as well as a particular interest : ' Nov. 21st, 1879. I once thought— till recent experience taught me a different lesson — that Bodley was exacting as regards the length of LETTER TO ROLLESTON 87 hours, but not otherwise — that the function of the Librarians was to administer the Library with judgement ; to understand and anticipate the wants of students ; to see that the shelves were well supplied with the best literature ; to see that the catalogue was kept posted up, and to rectify any errors or omissions in it ; to supervise and direct the assistants ; finally, to know the Library and its resources so as to be able to facilitate the researches of students and learned strangers. A sub-librarian who does his share of this work will find the whole morning from 9. 15 to 1 and a good deal of the afternoon fully occupied. The Statute requires him to do this and to be there at all times, but it does not demand more : it does not imply that his whole time is surrendered in the same way as some exacting Hausfranai are said to require their maids, after cooking or cleaning all day, to knit or sew for their mistress till bed-time. Your suggestion (if I understand it aright) would provide the unfortunate Sub- Librarian with definite tangible official duty for the best part of the working- day during the great part of the year. The hours of atten- dance being so long, I do not think you should impose on the staff any work beyond what is absolutely necessary to keep the Library going. If the officials find they have any moments of leisure during the long official hours, the disposal of this ought to be left to them. As regards the study or transcription of MSS., the work may or may not be interesting ; and there are many scholars who simply detest it. J. Bernays of Bonn is a librarian as well as a scholar, but I don't suppose he has seen or wished to see a MS. for the last twenty years. I myself at the present moment do not feel any interest in any Oxford MS., except one — and that is not in Bodley but in the Balliol Library. Speak- ing generally, I will venture to say this much, that a scholar's interest in MSS. depends mainly on the direction his studies take at a particular moment : one engaged on Pindar, for instance, will read a hundred pages of crabbed handwriting to find a new reading in an obscure fragment, when he would simply refuse to grind through ten pages of a MS. of Thucy- 88 WORK IN OXFORD dides. Those who care for MSS. per se are usually dull dogs like Cramer — men who through lack of ideas and the interest that quickens drudgery do mechanical work and do even that badly. I have in my time read many Greek and some Latin MSS. (probably more than any man in Oxford except Coxe), and I can tell you that it is not good for the intellect to do much of this kind of work, and that the work is tolerable only when there is a distinct literary end in view. In the course of my studies I may perhaps have the chance of working at MSS. again before I have done with these eyes of mine ; but as to the notion of my consenting to read MSS. without this motive, simply as a matter of business, during the whole of hours of day-light, that is an idea which I would not harbour for an instant. If not originally fiLKpoyfrv^o?, the professional student of MSS. rapidly becomes so. My conviction therefore is this : if a Librarian is allowed to keep up his interest in interesting subjects he will naturally and without pressure take up the MSS. relating to them, but he ought not to be driven to MSS. as the whole or main part of his regulation work for such portion of the long official hours as the ordinary business of a library happens to leave unemployed. If he is required to catalogue or transcribe MSS., he ought to be considered to have done a good day's work when he has had four hours of it. What I have said applies mutatis mutandis to reports or monographs on MSS. also.' Dr. Rolleston, after receiving this letter, wrote in reply expressing his hope that Bywater would in effect have sufficient liberty to content him. But Bywater had made up his mind that nothing but an explicit promise from the Curators, which would leave no room for doubt or dispute in the future, would meet his difficulties. He therefore wrote to the Librarian definitively resigning his appointment, and acquainted Pattison also with his determination. The following letter from Pattison illustrates the friendly, almost RESIGNS SUB-LIBRARIANSHIP 89 paternal, interest which he felt in Bywater's welfare, and the point of view from which he regarded the present situation. Lincoln College, Oxford, 15th April, 1880. My dear Bywater, I need not tell you how concerned I am to know what your note, last night received, tells me. As for the Sub-Librarianship in itself, I never regarded that as anything but a necessary and annoying step to the highest post. It is only therefore from this point of view that I regret your resignation. How will your giving up the Library in disgust affect your chance of this ? Or have you, after what you have seen of the economy of the Library, changed your opinion of the eligibility of even the highest post in it? That you should not be at the head of the Bodleian seems to me a calamity for the Library, and for yourself. What future do you see your way to ? Yours ever, M. P. Mr. Coxe himself went so far as to plead his own strong wish to see Bywater installed as his successor, and his hope that Bywater might be content to ' rough it' until that time came. It was difficult to resist so much kindness, but Bywater had formed his resolution. A doubt may be expressed whether Bywater, in wishing to attach the conditions for which he stipulated to his acceptance of the Sub-Librarianship, was not attempting to reconcile contradictory aims. It was a dictum of Pattison that the librarian who reads is lost. Bywater wished to be a ' librarian who reads '. At all events he would not run the risk of being forced to exchange study for administrative drudgery. He therefore adhered to his decision. He had no reason, as far as his own happiness was concerned, to regret it. 90 WORK IN OXFORD In 1879 By water was nominated a Delegate of the Clarendon Press, an office which he continued to discharge to the advantage of the University until his death. 1 The importance of this office to the University and the labour involved in it are not always fully recognized. The Delegates are not only responsible through their officers for the control of one of the largest houses of business of the kind in Great Britain, they have to decide the policy to be pursued and the particular books to be accepted or proposed for publication. The greatest and most costly contri- bution ever made to the Lexicography of the English Language, the New English Dictionary, could not have been undertaken without the aid of the Clarendon Press. Individual Delegates, beside the general responsibilities attached to the office, also have to spend a large amount of time in ascertaining the merits of the works proposed to them for publication. No one was more assiduous in the performances of the various duties of a Delegate than Bywater, or could speak with more authority whether to his colleagues or on their behalf with regard to the merits of classical and philosophical books submitted to their considera- tion. 1 The Delegates of the Press are ten in number, half being nomi- ' nated by the Vice-Chancellor and the Proctors for a term of years ; the other half being Perpetual Delegates, chosen by their colleagues from those who have already borne office after nomination. Bywater served until 1908 as one of the ten, and, by decree of Convocation (October 27), was constituted a Perpetual Delegate in addition to the ten. CHAPTER V Literary Work, 1865-84 — Various monographs — Heraclitus — Edits Priscianus Lydus for Berlin Academy — Work on the text of Diogenes Laertius — Relations with Cobet — Editor of Journal of Philology. In this chapter an attempt will be made, with the help of Bywater's bibliography printed in the Appendix, to give some account of his studies and their fruits for the twenty years preceding his election to the Reader- ship in Greek at Oxford as well as to indicate the conception of scientific scholarship which he adopted as his guide. js^ s soon as he settled down to his life's work he applied himself with unflagging industry to gain experience in handling manuscripts as well as to become familiar with those classical and patristic writings which had any relation to the literature of Greek philosophy. Some of the acquaintance with MSS. of which he speaks in his letter to Dr. Rolleston quoted in the last chapter was acquired at home in an early stage of his career. Later on he visited various foreign libraries for the collation of MSS. Thus in 1872 after embarking on his Heraclitus he obtained leave of absence from his College duties in order to work in the Library of Florence. In 1877 he stayed at Naples for the same purpose and went thence to the Vatican library at Rome. He also worked himself in Paris for his edition of Priscianus Lydus. Although he carried out his own principles, and frequently employed a competent scholar to collate a MS. in 92 LITERARY WORK, 1865-84 a foreign library on his behalf, he had first mastered the art for himself. 1 His attention was necessarily directed at an early period to that 'encyclopedia of learning, as Pattison aptly terms it, which goes by the name of Aristotle '. He approached Aristotelian problems through Diogenes Laertius, through Church Fathers, through the Stoics and Neo-Platonists, and through the remains of the literature which owed its origin to the revival of Aristotelian studies in the last century of the Roman Republic and the earlier centuries of the Christian era. Bywater from the first adopted that conception of scientific scholarship which was upheld by Bernays and by the editors of the volumes supplementary to the Berlin edition of Aristotle. These scholars no longer regarded the conjectural emendation of classical texts founded on the comparison of MSS. as their highest task. They by no means under-rated the importance of constructing a trustworthy text. This was indeed the essential basis of the fabric. Much had been done by those who spent their labour on the collation of MSS. and on the study of the early grammarians and lexicographers. They had raised con- jectural emendation above mere guesswork by these means. But these means alone were not sufficient to achieve the desired aim. The construction of a final text called for the exercise of higher faculties. The commen- tators on Aristotle, and the later philosophical writers who referred to him, had access to MSS. some centuries 1 Collations were made for him at Rome in 1877 (Diogenes Laertius), and again at Rome in 1889 (Elias Cretensis), at Florence in 1884, and with the kind help of Monsieur Omont at Paris in 1884 (Priscianus Lydus). METHODS OF STUDY 93 older than most of those now surviving. By the study of these sources it was possible not only to reconstruct existing texts, but even to recover con- siderable fragments of lost treatises. This was a task which demanded the highest mental qualities, and could be termed scientific in the fullest acceptation of the word. Moreover it carried on the best traditions of the revival of learning. The productions of the great printers of that epoch (such as Aldus) had included various early commentaries on Aristotle. But these publications were now inaccessible even to the mass of scholars, and were moreover vitiated by the defects of the MSS. from which they were printed. Hence the importance of the work undertaken by the Berlin Academy of Sciences in which Bywater was invited to take part. This brief account of By water's aims and ideals will shortly be supplemented and confirmed by the testimony of two of the most eminent of his German friends. But his conception of the task before him was the same from the beginning. How he gave effect to it will be seen by referring to his principal monographs down to 1884, and to his separate publica- tions including Prisciamis Lydus, prepared for the press in that year, but not published till 1886. His work on the text of Aristotle, including his editions of the Poetics, will be reserved for a subsequent chapter. Happily for him the Journal of Philology, with which he was afterwards to be intimately associated as one of the editors from 1879 to his death, had been founded in 1868 by a band of Cambridge scholars, with the help of Messrs. Macmillan. He thus had a literary journal of the highest repute in which to 94 LITERARY WORK, 1865-84 publish such results of his studies as he wished to give to the world from time to time, although he mi^ht send an occasional contribution elsewhere. 1 His monograph ' On a lost dialogue of Aristotle' {Journal of Philology, vol. ii, 1869) is one of the most masterly of his minor writings, and shows the command he had already acquired over his materials. He there struck new ground in comparing the Protrepticus of Iamblichus with Cicero's Hortensius, and thus unearthed many hitherto undiscovered fragments of the Protrepticus of Aristotle. The letter sent by Bywater to Bernays with a copy of this monograph is printed at the end of this chapter. The course of his reading is further indicated by his ' Review of Dindorf's edition of Clemens Alexandrinus '. {Academy 1870), his ' Por- phyrios ' {Hermes 1871), and 'Aristotle's Dialogue on Philosophy' {J. P. 1877). The first of these was a short but crushing exposure of what seemed to Bywater 'nothing less than a literary scandal'. He had made a very special study of Clement of Alexandria. Dindorf's errors, which were due to defects rather of character than of ability, were peculiarly distasteful to Bywater, as he shows by a reference to them in his correspondence with Professor Maas in 1886. His article on ' Porphyrios ' in the Hermes contained the results of his collation of a MS. of Porphyry, and was afterwards used by Nauck in 1 His earliest contribution to the Journal of Philology on the fragments of Philolaus appeared in the first volume published in 1868: his latest, signed with his initials, a 'Note on the so-called Gnomica Basiliensia' in 1915, after his death. Bywater printed a number of short reviews in the Athenaeum and in the Acadenry. But he regarded these as merely ephemeral. No attempt has there- fore been made to give a list of them here. HERACLITI EPHESII RELIQUIAE 95 re-editing the remains of that writer in 1885. The third article above mentioned was similar in character to his monograph ' On a lost Dialogue of Aristotle ' noticed above, though on a different theme. Bywater's contributions to English and German periodicals would however have hardly sufficed to secure for him the recognized position which he won for himself, unless they had been supplemented by his edition of the fragments of Heraclitus, published by the Clarendon Press in 1877. His choice of a subject may partly have been determined by his admiration of Bernavs, who had £iven close attention to it. There was in Germany a considerable body of literature on Heraclitus. 1 But Bywater wished to supply what was still lacking, viz. a critical edition of the text, citing the authorities for each fragment, and placing the fragments in their proper order. Both some of the authorities and one or two of the fragments were his own discovery. He aimed at producing a work which should render further labour in the same field super- fluous, unless unexpected discoveries should unearth further material. Such a work would be a test and triumph of scientific scholarship. As soon as the proposals that he had submitted to the Clarendon Press had been accepted by the Delegates he sent some specimen pages of his book to Bernays with a letter printed below. At a later stage he forwarded a proof of the whole book to Bernays for his criticisms and suggestions. To that eminent scholar he makes the fullest and most graceful acknowledgement in his preface to his Heraclitus (p. xiii). As soon as the 1 The chief writers on this topic are enumerated by Bywater in the preface to his Heraclitus, p. v. 96 LITERARY WORK, 1865-84 work appeared he sent copies with the aid and advice of Bernays to all the eminent foreign scholars of his acquaintance as well as to some of those by whom, though unknown to him personally, he wished to be regarded as a fellow labourer. 1 In 1 8 78, the year after the publicationof hisHeraclitus, Bywater printed for private circulation his Gnomologium Baroccianum, a short collection of Greek aphorisms which may be regarded as a labour of love on his part, a ' chip ' from his workshop ; though to any one who had not gone through his training, it could have been compiled only after the most laborious research. The title of the work indicated that it came from the ' Baroccianum ', the great collection of MSS. purchased by the Earl of Pembroke, at Venice, from the repre- sentatives of Jacopo Barocci, and presented by him to the Bodleian in 1629. ' Gnomologia ' of this kind had enjoyed a wide popularity in their day, and various scholars, especially C. Wachsmuth and Schenkel, were devoting special attention to them. With some of these scholars Bywater's excursion into this province brought him into relation ; and this little book, though slight in comparison with his Heraclitus, was regarded as not unworthy to be ranked beside it. In July 1882 Bywater received from the Berlin Academy of Sciences an invitation to edit the writings of Priscianus Lydus, one of the latest representatives of Greek philosophy in the Christian era, for the Supplemcntum Aristotclicum, the third and concluding portion of the great edition of the writings of Aristotle 1 Among the great scholars of an older generation from whom he received letters were Madvig, Torstrik, and Bonitz. P. de Lagarde, who also corresponded with him, was specially friendly. PRISCIANUS LYDUS 97 and his commentators undertaken by the Academy. Bywater has given a short account of this writer in the autobiographical sketch printed in the Appendix to this memoir, and some further particulars are contained in the extract from an article on the Berlin Aristotle by the late Professor Usener in the Gottingische Gelehrte Anzeigeu of December 1892, and translated below. The invitation to edit Priscian was forwarded to Bywater through Professor Diels, the Secretary of the Academy, one of the most eminent living authorities on Greek philosophical literature, with whom he main- tained a close and intimate friendship until his death. Bywater at once set vigorously to work. He visited Paris himself, and also employed the assistance of competent scholars in collating the MSS. of Priscian. The book, though not published till 1886, was ready for printing in September 1884. In August 1885 Bywater sent Dr. Diels his final corrections. He probably exerted his utmost energies to complete his task as far as possible before his marriage, but he could not have made such rapid progress unless he had already become familiar with the literature of the subject. Bywater's correspondence with Dr. Diels illustrates his extreme anxiety for strict accuracy, and his final resolution to commit himself in his published writings only to such statements as were supported by the evidence. Dr. Diels was untiring in his help and sympathy. The following is a translation, somewhat condensed, of Professor Usener's comment on Bywater's work : ' The second part of the first volume ' (of the Supplementum Aristotelicum) 'brings I. Bywater's Priscianus Lydus. Every one who has learned to appreciate the neat and well-balanced 2011 H 98 LITERARY WORK, 1865-84 treatment, which distinguishes everything that comes from By- water's hand, will rejoice that our Academy has given him the opportunity of accomplishing this work. Priscian is in fact bestowed on us for the first time in this edition. Any one has only to read the variety of inconsistent statements which Nicolai's History of Greek Literature presents to us with reference to Priscian, in order to convince himself how little the majority of scholars know about him. Not only did Priscian take part in the migration of the Athenian philosophers to the Court of Chosroes, but he alone has left us, in the Solutiones eorum de quibus dubitavit Chosroes Persarwn rex, a monument of this memorable episode which brought Greek philosophy to a close. Jules Quicherat discovered this writing in a MS. of the ninth century at St. Germain, and Fr. Dtibner edited it from the MS. in the appendix to Didot's Plotinus. But there was a hiatus of fifteen leaves in the Paris MS. Bywater was the first person who, by the aid of the rest of the MSS., was enabled to present us with the entire book. By his careful indication of the sources, and by his index of the Latin words to which he appends their Greek equivalents, he has for the first time unlocked it for us and rendered it accessible. The book was worth this labour. For in it not only is use often made of Theophrastus side by side with Aristotle, but important contributions to the knowledge of Neoplatonism can be gained from it. The catalogue of sources which the author gives in the introduction brings together, it is true, as such compilations do, sources used both at first and at second-hand ; but it is not to be under- valued as a guide to research. The remarkable elucidations which H. von Arnim arrived at from a comparison of Nemesius and Priscian c. 1. are a proof of this It is evident that the book which now lies before us is virtually a new work, presenting us with a Neoplatonic recen- sion of the fifth book of Theophrastus' Physics, together with important fragments of this Peripatetic writer.' An even fuller and not less authoritative statement of LETTER OF DR. DIELS 99 Bywater's quality as a scholar, and of the estimation in which he was held by those best qualified to judge, will be found in the following extract from a letter written to Professor Cook Wilson by Dr. Diels at the time of the vacancy in the Greek Professorship, and referred to in the next chapter. Professor Diels writes as follows (the translation is due to Professor Cook Wilson) : ' At the time when Bywater's Heraclitus appeared I reviewed it in detail in the J 'cnaer Litter aturzeitung, and drew attention to the high significance of the work. Since that time By- water's book has come to be accounted not only as the only reliable collection of the remains of that philosopher, but also as the model of an edition of Fragments. His edition of Priscian's treatise in our Supplementum Aristotelicum was not only received with the highest apprecia- tion by German criticism, but was the occasion upon which our Academy made him a Corresponding Member, in con- sideration of his achievements, and of the high position which they have won for him in the scientific world If the lustre of Bywater's merits is not so conspicuous in wider circles, that is because it is his way only to submit to the world that which he has tested by long and thorough- going investigation. Thus above all things it is the certainty of his method which inspires confidence, and his procedure proves that he has followed the progress of Scholarship with full appreciation. For whereas, thirty or forty years ago, principally through the brilliant success of Cobet, whom By- water calls his teacher, conjectural " divination " and the emendation of the text in accordance with the recognized normal forms still constituted the chief business of the scholar, science has progressed beyond that, and has, more especially in the study of Aristotle, opposed to the typical and normal the special and the individual. It is no longer true that people see at once in every deviation from Attic idiom a mistake of the Byzantine Graeculi; but they consider whether H 2 ioo LITERARY WORK. 1865-84 they have not rather to recognize in the deviation a peculiarity of the writer, of his tendency, or of his times. And so now the inclination is more and more to the exactest testing of the manuscripts, and the most careful interpretation of the text found in the manuscripts. This tendency is represented in the most brilliant manner by Bywater, and I believe he is the better fitted for it, because the English character, I imagine, harmonizes better with this method than with the ingenious '• levelling;" which is characteristic of the School of Cobet.' •& This careful estimate will not only help to account for Mr. Gladstone's choice of Bywater for the Regius Professorship of Greek, but will give the reader a clear insight into some of Bywater's characteristic excellences as a scholar. To this period of Bywater's life also belongs a pro- ject on which he expended much time and labour, though it was never brought to completion, viz. a critical edition of the text of Diogenes Laertius, together with an English version and a commentary. Of the reasons why it was never finished something will be said in a subsequent chapter. His biblio- graphy affords various indications of the attention he was bestowing on Diogenes Laertius, and his journeys to Naples and Rome were undertaken for the purpose of examining the MSS. of that writer. It was well known that Cobet regarded the text he had supplied to Didot as inadequate, and intended to publish a critical edition. Bywater therefore went to Leyden in 1876 to see Cobet and to ascertain whether his design was likely to be fulfilled. Cobet received him with great courtesy, and informed him that he had renounced his project, and would, if he could find his materials, put them into his hands. Bywater carried JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY 101 away a deep impression of Cobet's kindness to him on this visit. His further attempts to obtain the materials promised him by Cobet, although made subsequently to the period covered by this chapter, may fitly be recorded here. After Cobet's death in 1889 Bywater wrote to an eminent Dutch scholar (now deceased), a former pupil of Cobet, both to ask if he might contribute to any memorial raised by Cobet's friends, and also to inquire about the disposition of his papers. An extract from the letter he received in reply is printed at the end of this chapter, on account of the interesting sketch it gives of some personal traits of one of the most distinguished students of his day. Bywater never succeeded in gaining access to the collations left by Cobet. Among Bywater's labours for the promotion of sound learning must certainly be reckoned his share in the editorship of the Journal of Philology, to which he had long been a contributor. The Journal continued under the original editorship until the year 1877. Volume vii was issued under the names of J. W. Clark, J. E. B. Mayor, and Aldis Wright. Volume viii, dated 1879, gives as editors Aldis Wright, Ingram Bywater, and Dr. Henry Jackson, now Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge. Bywater's duties as editor brought him into close relation with the eminent scholar last named, who became one of his most intimate and valued friends, as well as with other Cambridge men. His editorship was therefore fruitful in two directions ; first of all in maintaining the high standard of excellence in the articles contri- buted to the Journal, and secondly by bringing him 102 LITERARY WORK, 1865-84 into confidential communication with many of the con- tributors, especially with those whom his example helped to inspire. He never grudged any time or trouble spent in assisting younger men with aims and ambitions similar to his own. Bywater also took a keen interest in the foundation of the Hellenic Society, and was a member of the Council until his death. A letter addressed byhim to Bernays respecting the Journal of the Society will be found at the end of this chapter, dated January 28, 1881. This must have been about his last letter to Bernays, who died in the following May. It is interesting from the reference it contains both to his labours on Diogenes, and to his design with respect to an edition of Aristotle's Poetics which was not fully carried out till 1909. In the latter years of his life Bywater was frequently consulted by the editor of the Hellenic Journal, and devoted a great deal of time and pains to the various questions sub- mitted to him. Letters from Bywater to Professor J ' . Bernays. Exeter College, Oxford, June 12, 1869. My dear Professor Bernays, Your great kindness to me last year encourages me to think that you may perhaps take some interest in the number of the Journal oj Philology which accompanies this letter. It contains a short paper of mine on the Protrepticns of Aris- totle, some portions of which I conceive myself to have redis- covered in the works of Iamblichus. I am quite aware how much my Dissertation falls short of a German standard of philological knowledge, but I hope you will not judge it too severely, seeing that it was written in a hurry and without the LETTERS TO BERNAYS 103 possibility of getting guidance or criticism from any competent adviser. Believe me, Very faithfully yours, Ingram Bywater. Exeter College, Nov.. 20, 1875. My dear Professor Bernays, I trust the copy of Dobree has not disappointed your expectations. The Post Office order has duly arrived. Enclosed is a specimen of what may some day become a little volume containing the Heraclitean fragments : I should be extremely obliged if you would cast your eye over the three pages and give me a candid opinion as to whether it is worth while to print the whole collection in the same way. It is not part of my programme to put in the passages you have pointed out in Hippocrates and elsewhere: my series of fragments therefore would not be so long as Schuster's ; but on the other hand I should aim at giving all the known fragments — whereas he has certainly omitted some that he might have embodied — and besides the known fragments I think I have one or two new ones discovered by myself to add to the series. In the matter of testimonies I hope to be able to give a good deal that is, as far as I know, new. Under this head I have endeavoured to present in chronological order all the direct citations of each fragment, together with the more important of the indirect and anonymous ones — the latter being introduced by the word Respic. or in some instances simply by Co/if. The notes immediately under the text of the Fragments are designed to serve as a sort of aduoteitio critica. I am some- what perplexed about this part of the work, because I find it so difficult in some cases to separate the eidn. crit. and the testimonies. I have also for the sake of brevity omitted much that might have been introduced, for I cannot persuade myself to cumber the page with an account of such philological 104 LITERARY WORK, 1865-84 failures as, for instance, that attributed by Creuzer to his friend Werfer. You will see moreover that I have ignored the doubts of Zeller and others as to certain words in Fr. cxi and thus said nothing of your discussion in reply in the Heraclit. Briefe. Do you think this eclecticism a wise and judicious procedure? I should very much like to know whether you approve of the general arrangement of the materials ; whether you observe any serious omission in the series of testimonia appended to the five specimen Fragments ; and whether judging from this specimen you think the work fairly adequate and worth pub- lishing. From the kind language you used in your letter I am sure you will not mind telling me your real opinion on these various points. When you see that I have submitted to you not one but three pages, you will be reminded of our English proverb : Give him an inch and he will take an ell ! With many apologies for giving you so much trouble, I remain, Very sincerely yours, Ingram Bywater. Exeter College, Oxford, March 15, 1877. Dear Professor Bernays, I have just sent you ' brass in return for gold ' — in the shape of an early copy of my little book. As soon as the volume is regularly out, I will send you a second copy, or rather as many copies as you wish. Having had so often to mention your name in my preface and elsewhere, I trust I have not seriously misrepresented you, or compromised you by any blunders of which I may have been guilty. Your invariable kindness to me encourages me in the hope that you will not be too severe a censor of my language if I have not always succeeded in saying the right thing. LETTERS TO BERNAYS 105 I mean to take up Diogenes forthwith. As regards Am- brosius, I have already paid some attention to him : we have several MSS. of him here, and the text in the MSS. is decidedly better than that in Brognoli's edition. For some time I have been collecting subsidia and materials for an edition of Diogenes, but I cannot quite make up my mind as to the plan and form which the book ought to assume. My present idea is that the Greek text and English version ought to be en regard and not given in separate volumes. Neubauer's opinion, I think, was asked on sundry points in Daniel Deronda, but only in comparatively small matters of detail: if Mrs. Lewes ever had a confessor of any sort, it must have been when she was very young indeed, a good many years before she set about translating Strauss and Feuerbach. The reason why the book had not been so successful as some of her former works is, I imagine, that we are getting tired of what I may perhaps term ' moral vivisection '. . . . We had hoped that Matthew Arnold would stand for the vacant professorship of Poetry, but it turns out that he fears the odium theologicum too much to run the risk. Believe me, Very sincerely yours, Ingram Bywater. Exeter College, Jan. 26, 1 88 1. Dear Professor, A certain portion of our English public has suddenly discovered that Greek antiquity is interesting and that our ordi- nary scholastic studies do not exhaust the subject. Theoreti- cally the Hellenic Society (as it is generally called) wishes to deal with everything that relates to Greece and the Greek race from the beginning of time to the present century. As a matter of fact, however, archaeology is the staple of the first volume of the Journal, the literary and critical articles being either weak or popular. But we hope in time to improve, and take the shine out of the French Society with that name. 106 LITERARY WORK, 1865-84 Diogenes progresses very slowly. At present I am over- whelmed with business, and have little time for irdpepya. I am however trying my hand on what is to me a new kind of work — a paraphrase or free translation of Aristotle's Poetics. Whether it will ever come to anything decoy tv yovvao-i KeTrai. You don't say what your new book is. I hope it is a con- tinuation of your Philo. This next week I shall be hard at work examining till the middle of July. After that I think I shall vote myself a holi- day — in which case I shall not be surprised if I found my way to Bonn in the course of my wanderings. I trust the severity of this winter has not affected your health : we have not had such a winter for more than forty years ; and our English mode of life does not adapt itself easily to such very trying conditions. Pattison is away in Paris just now. I will give him your message as soon as he returns. The situation in Berlin is indeed deplorable, but I hope that the opportune words of the Crown Prince may be considered an indication that the worst is over. About three years ago Goldwin Smith attempted to get up a similar agitation here, but happily nothing came of it. Very sincerely yours, Ingram Bywater. Letters from Mark Pattison to Bywater. December 21, 1877. My dear Bywater, As I hear you are likely to be the next Pope, I wish to bring myself to your remembrance, like Erasmus, who never neglected to write a complimentary letter to each new occu- pant of the chair of the Fisherman. Your report on the Naples MS. of D. L. is, I am horrified to see, already as old as November 3rd. Bernays is quite right — the commentary will be the interesting thing to do, and must become, under your hands, LETTERS FROM PATTISON 107 a great work, though I cannot hope to see it, as you cannot take less than a septennate for the collection of the material. If you find anything good in Rome — Aldine or other — which you don't want yourself, advertise me of it on a card, and I will commission it through Have. We are all highly pleased to know you have kept well all the dangerous time — but Dr. Prior tells me that the most dangerous is the first three weeks after leaving Naples. How could you stick yourself down on the flat at the Angleterre, when you might have been up on the hill at the Quirinale, one of the best hotels in Europe, and for the same money? The Bodleian Catalogue will be finished in a few weeks, and the Professor of Greek is urging his favourite ' classified catalogue ', and has so far succeeded that Neubauer is to go on a mission to Berlin and Munich to see how classification works. Neubauer, like all the rest of us, is against classification, but could not resist the temptation of being sent to Berlin at the public charges — so he starts to- morrow. H. Coxe has had another operation, which, how- ever, is said to have gone off satisfactorily. I shall, for one, be rejoiced to have you back, and imbibe knowledge over the evening cigar. I feel to have been getting very ignorant lately, and the sound of Greek unfamiliar to my ears, herding with the ' baser sort ', aKayjuJ-tvos rjrop. I shall hope to see you pay Gomperz off by catching him out in a lapsus calami, and howling over it with a scholar's indignation. Yours ever, M. PATTISON. {On a Post card.) Bad Ems, Sept. 1, 1879. I had three good talks with Bernays, and most suggestive he was on the present state of public opinion. He is very con- servative, and religious— he is counting on your visit. But you must come here first, and drop back upon Bonn, or I shall be gone. I am in excellent quarters here, and I am sure you could please yourself much for a week. The walks are 108 LITERARY WORK, 1865-84 infinite, and lots of queer people about — nur fehlt es an franzosischen Frauenzimmern ganzlich — every other species of human is represented. M. P. Extract from a letter dated Ley den, Nov. 10, 1889. Cobet did not encourage any familiarity, nor did he betray the inner workings of his mind ; so it may be questioned if any one would be able to give a picture of him as a man. In ordinary affairs and daily intercourse he put on an appearance of levity and carelessness, which we have some reason to believe a mask covering a rather melancholy view of life. He could astound you by the childishness of his talk and the repeating of a string of well-worn poor jokes and anecdotes, provoking the contempt of even boys and girls ; also by a rare ignorance of things of general interest and common learning, — and then at once, on a question touching the work on which he happened to be engaged just then, give for a moment the most brilliant evidence of his learning and ingenuity. I do not know who wrote about him in the Athenaeum, of Nov. 2, but there he is certainly too much represented as a French character. Not only is a love of clearness and system, and the rest of characteristics mentioned there, as often met with in this country as in France — our mental habits being very different from those of the Germans — but there is not men- tioned a truly Dutch homeliness and sobriety and dislike for all display, for which he was as much conspicuous as for the qualities inherited from his foreign mother. There is some talk now of a Latin biography to be composed by several of his best pupils in collaboration, each taking the part of Cobet's work on which he is best qualified to formulate a judgment. As neither philosophy nor Semitic learning was in his way, I am not able to contribute anything to a work of that kind. Still I am obliged to my old master in Greek, as are many more in this country, for many a lesson of which the fruit will appear in departments of learning to which he never thought COBET'S COLLATIONS 109 of turning his attention. We shall not look upon his like again. R. I. P. If you are still wishing to consult the collations upon which is founded the Didot edition of Diogenes Laerlms, pray let me know so at your earliest opportunity, as I can apply for them to the executors, knowing that the defunct intended to let you have them for the asking. Neither in 1889 nor at any subsequent period did Bywater succeed in obtaining any of the materials for an edition of Diogenes Laertius left by Cobet at his death. A reference to the interesting sketch of Cobet's life given by Sir J. E. Sandys {History of Classical Scholarship, vol. iii, pp. 282 ff.) will explain the anxiety of Bywater's correspondent to claim the credit of some of Cobet's most brilliant qualities for his Dutch parentage on his father's side rather than for his French ancestry through his mother. CHAPTER VI Progress in life, 1884-95 — Reader in Greek — Marriage — Regius Professor of Greek — Contrast between Jowett and Bywater — Letters of congratulation. The ascendancy of the academic policy advocated by Bywater and his friends was confirmed by the enactment in 1882 of the Statutes drawn up by the Commission of 1877. Clerical restrictions on Head- ships and Fellowships, except those to which clerical duties were attached, were almost entirely abolished. Fellowships generally, as has already been mentioned, ceased to be benefices tenable for life and became stipendiary offices held for a term of years. Prize Fellowships pure and simple were greatly diminished in number, and even where they were retained the possibility of using them as aids to learning and research was recognized. New Professorships were created and endowed ; Boards of Faculties were con- stituted, the contributions of the Colleges for Univer- sity purposes increased, and a common University Fund established, which might be applied to the foundation of Readerships or other purposes subsidiary to learning and research. Ultimately Bywater's future fortunes were determined by the passing of these Statutes. But before they came into force he, with many other Fellows of Colleges, had to make up his mind on a critical point. Was he to place himself under the new Statutes which made all Fellowships terminable but removed the restriction of celibacy, and UNIVERSITY READER IN GREEK in provided College officers with a pension ; or was he to retain his Fellowship under the former Statutes, by which he was now enabled to hold it as a benefice for life, free of all restrictions except those of celibacy and the possession of private income ? He had little hesita- tion in choosing the latter alternative. The income of a Fellowship at Exeter College, if the holder con- tinued subject to the old conditions, was fixed at ^280 by the Commissioners, who based their estimate on the average income of a Fellowship for the last few years. Bywater, with his usual generosity, so long as he was in receipt of this income, annually returned to the College the sum of ^"80, which was the stipend of an open scholar. In 1884 he lost his attached and much-loved friend Pattison, who died at Harrogate on July 30 after a lingering illness. Bywater and Pattison's widow and brother were his executors. Little or no responsibility for the publication of Pattison's Memoirs, which fol- lowed in 1885, attaches to Bywater. His co-executors deemed themselves irrevocably bound by Pattison's explicit directions ; and, whatever may be thought of the book, no one who is interested in the history of learning and education at Oxford could wish that it had been suppressed. In the previous year, 1883, as soon as the Common University Fund was in working order, a Readership in Greek was founded, to which Bywater, with the general approval of the University, was nominated. In resigning the Sub-Librarianship of the Bodleian, Bywater had given proof of his indifference to worldly considerations. He now reaped his reward, and was placed in a position such as Pattison, in urging him to ii2 PROGRESS IN LIFE, 1884-95 accept that appointment, had desired for him. The Readership gave him, while still retaining his Fellow- ship, an academic standing and an income independent of any College office. In the following year, 1884, By water was elected without a contest to a seat on the Board of the Curators of the Bodleian. Although he had declined the Sub-Librarianship, there was a general desire to obtain his services for the Library as a Curator. Few of the tributes paid to him by the University were more appropriate than this. As Regius Professor of Greek he afterwards became an ex officio member of the Board, ceasing to hold this office in 1908, when he resigned the Professorship. In the same year, 1884, he somewhat reluctantly yielded to the unanimous request of his Liberal friends and consented to be nominated as a candidate for one of the three Professorial seats in the Hebdomadal Council for which an election was held in the Michael- mas Term of that year. He with Professor, afterwards Sir William, Markby was returned at the top of the poll by a small majority, J. Wordsworth, at that time University Reader in Latin, obtaining the third seat, and Dr. King, Professor of Pastoral Theology, and afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, coming last. The numbers were : Markby 131, Bywater 1 28, Wordsworth 127, King 125. At that time the revision of the First Public Examination, Pass School, was under the con- sideration of the Hebdomadal Council. D. Binning Monro had prepared a scheme by which the First Public Examination should be constituted a University Intermediate Examination, and should include a large number of options, out of which any one who intended HEBDOMADAL COUNCIL 113 to read for Honours in a Final School might choose those best suited to his own needs. Pelham and Bywater and their friends, on the other hand, desired to organize a number of special courses leading up to each of the Final Honour Schools. The immediate result of the discussion was the institution of the so- called Law Preliminary Examination, under which successive generations of undergraduates laboured until it was reconstituted in 191 5 in a shape better fitted to fulfil the intentions of its original promoters. After a brief experience of the Hebdomadal Council Bywater came to the conclusion that the time he was devoting to its business might be more profitably employed in study, and resigned his seat on it at the end of 1885, a little more than a year after his election. He never afterwards took any prominent part in pro- moting any of the various measures which came before the University, though his advice was frequently sought by those who were responsible for them, and some of the more important, especially the reconstitution of the Boards of Faculties, were ancillary to the policy which he had always advocated. In 1885, two years after his appointment to the Readership in Greek, Bywater married Charlotte, the second daughter of the late Charles John Cornish, of Salcombe Regis, and widow of Hans William Sotheby, a lady whom he had long known and admired. No union was ever cemented by a more perfect accord than this. Mrs. Bywater will be remembered by all who knew her as a lady of rare distinction of mind and character. She became the partner of all her husband's interests ; and her name will be handed down to pos- terity with his in the list of benefactors of the Univer- 2011 1 ii4 PROGRESS IN LIFE, 1884-95 sity of Oxford. No memoir of Bywater would be complete without a special notice of his wife. Her father belonged to a branch of a well-known Devonshire family, many members of which achieved distinction at the Universities and in various walks of life. 1 Her first husband was a scion of a family of high standing in Northamptonshire. He obtained a First Class in Literae Humaniores, and the Chan- cellor's Prize for an English Essay at Oxford, and was elected Fellow of Exeter College in 185 1, but vacated his Fellowship on his marriage in 1864. He then settled in London and devoted himself to literature, contributing to the Quarterly Review, the Saturday and London Reviews, and other literary journals and perio- dicals. He was also much interested in the rising school of art represented by William Morris and his circle. Mr. Sotheby, though he had left Oxford, con- tinued to cultivate the acquaintance of the junior Fellows of his old College. Bywater thus became intimate both with him and with his wife, who entered heartily into all her husband's pursuits, and shared his tastes both in literature and in art. Their house, 93, Onslow Square, which was her home until her death, was already adorned with a choice collection of books 1 Among the members of this branch of the Cornish family may be mentioned F. Warre Cornish, the late Vice-Provost of Eton (formerly Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and son of a former Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford), well known both to all Etonians and in the world of letters, and the late Bishop of Madagascar, Dr. Robert Kestell Kestell-Cornish, who were both cousins of Mrs. Bywater. The late Charles John Cornish, M.A., F.L.S., well known as a writer on natural history and country life, was one of Mrs. Bywater's nephews, as also his brother, Dr. Vaughan Cornish, to whom the writer is deeply indebted. MRS. HANS SOTHEBY 115 and objects of art when her husband died in 1874. After a time Bywater renewed his friendship with Mrs. Sotheby, and the harmony of their tastes and sentiments gradually drew them together. Mr. Sotheby, when he knew that the end was surely approaching, had expressed a wish that his widow should seek consolation for her bereavement in the studies that they had begun together, and in the society of scholars. Among the latter, a prominent place must be given to Signor Comparetti, 1 the eminent classical scholar, widely known in this country through the translation of his book on Virgil in the Middle Ages. Mr. Sotheby's last literary production was a review of this work for the pages of the Quarterly Review. He finished correcting the proofs of his article during the last days of his life, but died before Signor Comparetti, who was on his way to England, had reached this country. Signor Comparetti, however, made the acquaintance of his widow, and was of great service to her by encouraging her both in her classical studies and in her love of Italy and Italian literature. Indeed Professor Comparetti's constant friendship was one of her chief resources during her widowhood. She became a thorough Italian scholar, and passed several winters at Florence. She also visited almost every place of interest in Italy, never shrinking from any hardship which the traveller in out-of-the-way districts of that 1 At the time of By water's death Signor Comparetti addressed a letter to Sir Herbert Warren, the President of Magdalen College, which has supplied authority for some of the statements here made. The present writer is greatly indebted to Sir Herbert Warren for communicating this letter to him, as well as for the contributions which appear elsewhere. I 1 n6 PROGRESS IN LIFE, 1884-95 country has to encounter. She was a diligent student of classical Greek, Homer being her chief favourite, though she did not neglect the tragedians. In the last year of her life she was devoting special attention to Sophocles. But her command of modern Greek, which she first studied with the aid of a Greek instruc- tor, Mr. Michael Constantinides, was perhaps her most remarkable attainment ; and the benefaction which she left to the University of Oxford, associated with Mr. Sotheby's name, was designed to promote the study of Byzantine and modern Greek. 1 After her second marriage she added Spanish to her other acquisitions, studying both the language and literature with characteristic thoroughness, and visiting the chief Spanish towns and centres of learning with Bywater during their wedded life. No one could have been better fitted than Mrs. Bywater to appreciate the aims and ideals of an eminent scholar. But her marriage was not due to intellectual sympathy alone. Mrs. Bywater had none of the characteristics of a blue-stocking. She was essentially womanly. She left on her acquaintance the impression of great sensibility, and of the most scrupulous taste and refinement. Such feminine grace and dignity have rarely been combined with so ardent a love of knowledge and such solid attainment. Her union with Bywater was a marriage of affection on both sides. Bywater himself would never have entered 1 The provisions made by Mrs. Bywater with that object are given in the Appendix. Bywater himself was much interested in modern Greek literature. He regularly corresponded with Mr. Con- stantinides, as well as with various members of the University of Athens. MARRIAGE WITH MRS. SOTHEBY 117 the marriage state on any other terms. He found in his wife that perfect sympathy with all his deeper feelings and aspirations which had existed in early life between his father and himself. It was Mrs. Bywater's pleasure to adapt the arrange- ments of their home in London to her husband's requirements. The top floor of the house, which commanded a charming prospect of trees and gardens, was devoted to his study and to his library, in which his collection of rare books was installed, of which more will be said hereafter. He was even more free from interruption there than in his old College rooms. Bywater, on his part, was as solicitous for his wife's happiness as she for his; but in order to please his wife he was not obliged to care for the things of the world. By his marriage, Bywater vacated the Fellow- ship at Exeter College, which he held under the con- ditions defined by the Statutes of 1854. But by the new Statutes of 1882 it was possible for his College to elect a University Reader to a non-official Fellow- ship. His colleagues were unanimously of opinion that no one could have deserved such a tribute more than Bywater. His re-election was not less gratifying to them than to him. In 1887, some two years after his marriage, the Headship of his College became vacant, and he was informed by the Fellows of Exeter that, if he would allow himself to be nominated for that office,' he would be elected with entire unanimity. But neither he nor Mrs. Bywater could be tempted to give up the course of life which they had planned together, and he put aside for the second time the prospect of a position in Oxford which most men would have deemed attractive. n8 PROGRESS IN LIFE, 1884-95 Neither of them had any ambition to shine in what is usually called London Society, but their house became the resort of a number of like-minded friends both of earlier and of later days. Bywater also now found in his wife's relatives what he had lacked in his youth, a highly cultivated and congenial family circle, into which he was at once adopted, and in which he found his chief solace after his wife's death. He was received with the utmost cordiality not only by his wife's rela- tives but by those of her first husband, with whom he maintained a constant intercourse to the end. The pos- session of a home in London moreover gave him an opportunity, which both he and his wife greatly appreciated, of paying some attention to his numerous acquaintance in Continental and American Universities during their visits to England. Hardly any of these passed through London without receiving some atten- tion from him, and there are among his papers many letters of warm thanks for his hospitality. After his election to the Greek Professorship, Bywater resided for a time within the walls of Christ Church. In this way he became thoroughly naturalized in the great foundation of which he became a member by his appointment to the Chair of Greek. But after a year or two he decided to take a house in Oxford, No. 6 Norham Gardens, and to keep his statutable residence there, rather than in College rooms. This change enabled Mrs. Bywater to join him in Oxford from time to time and to form pleasant ties with some of her husband's friends, especially among the younger tutors in the University. But their London house continued to be their favourite abode : and Bywater, to whom his wife bequeathed it for his life, occupied it as his PROFESSORSHIP OF GREEK 119 sole residence after his retirement from the Greek Professorship in 1908. 1 The token of the esteem with which his work as a scholar was regarded in Germany, received by Bywater in 1886, the year after his marriage, gave him perhaps more pleasure than any of the honorary distinctions which afterwards fell to his lot. On the completion of his edition of Priscianus Lydus he was unanimously recommended by the Philosophical-His- torical Class of the Berlin Academy of Sciences for admission as a corresponding member of that body ; and his friend Dr. Diels forwarded him the diploma of membership signed by Ernst Curtius and Theodor Mommsen, secretaries of the Class. Bywater was elected a member of the Roxburghe Club in 1 89 1, and continued to take an active share in its proceedings until his death. The chief event of his academic life, his nomination to the Regius Professor- ship of Greek, closes the period now under review. Professor Jowett, whose health had for some time been failing, died on October 1, 1893. As the Regius Professorships are Crown appointments, the duty of nominating Jowett's successor devolved on the then Premier, Mr. Gladstone. Whenever it fell to Mr. Glad- stone's lot to exercise the patronage of the Crown at the Universities, he was untiring in his efforts to sift the qualifications of the persons whose names were 1 Bywater's executrix, Mrs. Charles Cornish, has presented to the University of Oxford a charming portrait of Mrs. Bywater in early womanhood, a little less than a quarter of life-size, painted by the late Walter Crane. This has been deposited in the University Galleries, together with pictures by the English School of landscape painters of the eighteenth century and some of Burne-Jones's drawings bequeathed to the University by Bywater and his wife. 120 PROGRESS IN LIFE, 1884-95 brought before him. One who was intimately acquainted with the Premier was able, when writing to congratulate Bywater on his nomination, to assure him that Mr. Gladstone ' had been more interested in the question as to this vacancy, and more visibly anxious to get the absolutely best man, than in the case of any other appointment he had had to make since he had been in office '. The selection of a Professor with Bywater's clearly defined conception of Greek scholar- ship, which in some respects differed widely from that of his predecessor, was of so much importance for the University both at that juncture and in the future, as to justify a somewhat detailed statement of the circumstances attending it. The great majority of Greek scholars in Oxford, perhaps in England, if they had been asked their opinion would probably have replied that there were two Oxford scholars between whom they would have found it hard to discriminate — Bywater and David Binning Monro, the Provost of Oriel College. It is needless to dwell on the great accomplishments and merits of the latter, one of the foremost, if not the fore- most of Homeric scholars in Europe, with whom Mr. Gladstone would have had a special sympathy ; because the Premier, soon after the Professorship fell vacant, let it be known that he did not intend to recommend one who was already the Head of his College. There was precedent for this, as at the time of Jowett's appointment the Premier of the day, after the Pro- fessorship had been declined by Dean Liddell, had declined to nominate Dr. Scott, then Master of Balliol, for a similar reason. 1 This decision removed Bywater's 1 See Jowett's Life, i. 237. TESTIMONY OF SCHOLARS 121 most formidable rival. But there were at least two other persons, who although they could hardly be placed on the same level as Bywater at that time, had sufficient merit to justify their friends in urging their claims. On behalf of these, strong personal or political influence was brought to bear on the Premier. By- water, on the other hand, had no political friends to help him, and he was generally known to have criticized Gladstone's work on Homer rather severely. At this juncture his high reputation in Germany as well as in England stood him in good stead. There can be no indiscretion in stating that Professor Cook Wilson, who had a wide and intimate acquaintance with German scholars, exerted himself untiringly on Bywater's behalf. He collected strong testimony in his favour from men such as Zeller, Usener, Vahlen, and Gomperz, who have since passed away, and from one or two of the highest authorities who are still living. The extract from a letter written by one of these scholars, which has already been printed on a former page, clearly shows the estimation in which Bywater was held in Germany, and the general character of the testimony which they gave on his behalf. But Bywater's friends both at Oxford and at Cam- bridge were by no means idle. Sir Herbert Warren, President of Magdalen College, and recently Professor of Poetry at Oxford, an acquaintance of Mr. Gladstone, to whom this memoir is already indebted, has most kindly supplied the following statement : ' It so happened that Mr. Gladstone had occasion to write to me in answer to a letter of mine on another subject, and he asked me, if I had any decided opinion as to the most fitting successor in the Greek Chair, to inform him of it, telling me that 122 PROGRESS IN LIFE, 1884-95 Mr. Rutherford of Westminster School had been pressed upon him. Rutherford was an old friend of mine for whom I had great esteem, but while thinking very highly of his vigour and his ruthless industry, I was not equally impressed with his literary taste or his critical judgement. I thought also very highly of another friend, Monro, the Provost of Oriel. He possessed, to a high degree, those last qualities which Rutherford lacked. For his work on Homer I had always felt nothing but admiration, but he was not a successful lecturer, and he was already Head of a House, and much occupied with affairs both in College and in the University. I had heard Byvvater lecture, as I have described, and knew his rare power in that line. I knew, too, his vast learning and his keen critical gift. My own preference was decidedly for him. Fortunately Sir Richard Jebb was staying with me at the moment for an Educational Conference, and I consulted him. Jebb, though he was very sensitive and had some feeling that Bywater had been a little cold to himself, was the most generous of men, and I found he entirely agreed with me and authorized my quoting his opinion. 1 I therefore wrote advocating our joint views as warmly as I could.' It is not necessary here to enumerate all the eminent scholars at Cambridge, as well as at Oxford, whose testimony was given in favour of Bywater. Enough has been said on this point. It now remained for Mr. Glad- stone to estimate the relative weight of various con- siderations which he had to take into account. But 1 In Bywater's papers there is some evidence that he was careful to avoid coming into collision with Jebb on matters of administration and policy, e. g. with regard to the lines on which a Greek Thesaurus should be compiled. But there is no evidence whatever to indicate that he failed to recognize Jebb's great eminence as a scholar. On the contrary, there is among Bywater's papers the draft of a long letter to Jebb on the views of the latter respecting Theophrastus, which proves that Bywater and Jebb could discuss matters of scholar- ship in the most frank and friendly manner. APPOINTED PROFESSOR 123 the opinion of experts in favour of Bywater cannot but have been a potent factor in producing the desired result. After some slight further delay the Premier decided to recommend him to the Crown for the vacant Professorship, and submitted his name to the Queen in the first week of November in 1893. As soon as the announcement of Her Majesty's approval appeared in the papers a few days later, By- water received a shower of conoratulatorv letters from scholars in this and other countries, and from friends and old acquaintances and pupils. A great number of these expressed the pleasure that the appointment had given the writers on public as well as private grounds. A few characteristic specimens appended to this chap- ter are enough to show that the satisfaction generally felt was not confined to persons of the same way of thinking as Bywater on political and academic questions. There can be no doubt that Bywater, though reticent as was his wont, was deeply gratified by his nomination to the Chair of Greek. It was the only recognition for which he really cared, and he cared for it not merely because it was an object of honourable ambition, and a source of Gratification to those nearest to him, but because it set the stamp of official approval on that conception of Greek scholarship which he and his friends had long upheld. What it meant to the University and the study of Greek in Oxford can hardly be understood without a brief contrast between his aims and ideals, and those of the Professor whom he succeeded. No friend of Bywater would desire to institute a comparison between him and Jowett with regard either to the influence which they respectively exercised on the general policy of the University, or to i2 4 PROGRESS IN LIFE, 1884-95 the place which they filled in the estimation of the world. They can be here compared only with respect to the view they entertained concerning the function of a scholar. Jowett's attitude to Greek scholarship was determined by the general bent of his genius. Whether he was dealing with affairs or with the study of Greek, he wished his labours to bear fruit in the practical conduct of life. Imbued with the Socratic spirit, he applied it himself and wished others to apply it to modern problems. The application of Greek philosophy to life, not the knowledge of Greek, was his main interest. He addressed himself to a wide audience of thoughtful and cultivated persons, but not solely, nor even especially, to scholars. He was thus essentially a popularizer in the best sense of the word, and this was the reason why he set such store by translations. Nor is it possible to belittle his achievements. His translation of Plato has become an English classic. 1 The introductions to the Dialogues show keen philoso- phical insight, and few of the writings of scholars can rival his work in purity and delicacy of style as well as in insight and fineness of literary perception. To the end of his life he was an enthusiast for Greek, and a learner. After his election to the Mastership of Balliol, still more after his succession to the Vice-. Chancellorship, he was immersed in the cares of adminis- tration ; but until his breakdown in health his industry was so unflagging that he never became an ' idle pro- fessor'. His translations of Thucydides and of the Politics of Aristotle were executed in the midst of 1 'Jowett made Plato an English classic' (Sir R. C. Jebb quoted by Sir J. E. Sandys, op. cit., p. 419, which gives an excellent sum- mary and estimate of Jowett's literary performances and merits). JOWETT AND BYWATER 125 various distractions which compelled him to leave the most characteristic parts of the works he had designed unattempted. Jowett was uncompromising in his advocacy of Greek as a necessary part of the highest education. He undoubtedly did much to impress the public mind with the intimate connexion between Greek thought and modern civilization, which consti- tutes the strongest argument for the retention of Greek as a necessary subject in higher grade schools and in the Universities. The aspect under which Jowett regarded the Classics will never lose its interest and importance. But when all has been said, the verdict of one who, though a friend and admirer, 1 judged Jowett dispassionately from the outside remains true. He was not a scientific scholar, any more than he was a scientific theologian. Learning in the scientific sense of the word can be fully attained only by those who make it their primary aim, and for him it never was a primary aim. He was aware of the difficulties which beset the student who aims at perfect knowledge of antiquity, but he did not know how far or by what means it was possible to overcome them, nor how important it was, even for the attainment of the object which he held dear, that they should be overcome. Jowett was deficient pre- cisely in those qualities which constituted Bywater's strength. It is not necessary here to restate those points in Bywater's conception of scholarship which are defined elsewhere in these pages. They will have been suggested by the mere description of some of Jowett's 1 Dr. Andrew Fairbairn, in the Contemporary Review, 1897, pp. 829 ff. 126 PROGRESS IN LIFE, 1884-95 characteristics. The perfection of learning, not the popularization of knowledge, was Bywater's aim. He, like Pattison and his friends, was unwilling that any competent scholar should ' lapse into translation '. There were things more serious that remained, and always will remain to be done, although the harvest that is still to be reaped may not be comparable with that which awaited the student in the days of the Re- naissance. Even the work which Jowett himself undertook could not be satisfactorily performed unless its foundation was laid on a sound basis of knowledge. A thorough exegesis, employing the most approved methods and availing itself of all existing material, was the primary requisite. This was the lesson which needed to be enforced at Oxford in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It commanded the approval of the seeker after truth, but could not be called popu- lar. Jowett had suffered much in earlier life for his devotion to what he believed to be the truth ; and he strove to keep it alive until the end ; but he did not perhaps realize that it burned just as brightly in the breasts of those who pursued learning in a scientific spirit as in his own. There were differences of opinion respecting practical measures between Jowett on the one hand, and Pattison and his friends on the other, arising out of the opposition between their respective points of view. Jowett, for example, desired to keep prize fellowships undiminished in number in order to attract able men to the University and to assist them in making their way in professional and public life. He also deprecated the creation of professorships in the interests of learn- ing and research, unless the professor was likely to CONTRAST WITH JOWETT 127 attract a lar^e class of students. These differences helped to accentuate the feeling of opposition between him and those whose policy had on the whole gained the upper hand. In their professed objects, at least, the two parties had much in common. Bywater and his friends repeatedly affirmed that the ultimate aim of learning is to throw light on literature and history. It is impossible to achieve this result without considering learning both as a means and as an end. History and literature, moreover, are continuous ; so that a Greek thinker or historian cannot be fully understood without reference both to the past and to the future. There was, however, a marked opposition between Jowett and Bywater, even where they might have been expected to approach one another. How much of the modern element is implicit in an ancient writer can be properly estimated only by those who have a thorough and exact knowledge of the remains of antiquity. Without this, records easily become falsified and analogies mis- leading. Jowett was impatient of the tests which By- water's methods would have compelled him to apply to his materials before he could make use of them as he wished to do. He, no doubt, under-estimated the value of scientific scholarship even for his own purposes. He did not recognize that minute researches are carried on largely by the division of labour, and that by means of them the divinations of genius are rendered possible and acquire a certainty which would otherwise be unattainable. The writings of some of these younger scholars who have been imbued with Bywater's aim sufficiently prove that the scientific ideal of learning does nothing to dull the sense of beauty, or impair the consciousness of the 128 PROGRESS IN LIFE, 1884-95 affinities between Greek thought and the highest culti- vation of our own day. Bywater' s appointment to the Greek Chair marks a definite stage in the history of classical scholarship at Oxford. The movement represented by him and by his fellow workers in the advancement of classical studies was part of a larger movement, which was felt in other provinces of knowledge, especially in what may be called modern studies, such as Modern History, Languages, and Literature. In these departments it was easier for the student to adopt the best methods and to learn without prejudice from the example set elsewhere. These studies had been recently introduced into the older Universities and were not, as the Classics were, strongly entrenched behind vested interests and old prescription. The success which Bywater and his friends achieved is therefore the more remarkable. Is it likely to be durable ? Whatever happens in the future, the scientific conception of classical learning has been clearly expounded and illustrated. It will certainly not be necessary always to seek a scholar of exactly the same stamp as Bywater to fill the Greek Chair. Ability displayed in fields other than that which By- water chose for himself will have to be recognized. Greek is a complex whole. This has been practically acknowledged by the creation of a separate Professor- ship of Classical Archaeology and Art, and of various Readerships. But even when a subject is divided its representatives may still be animated by the same general conception of learning. The lesson which Bywater and his friends have inculcated has been too generally taken to heart to be forgotten ; so that although the emphasis on particular aspects of CONGRATULATORY LETTERS 129 scholarship should vary from time to time there should be no fear that the particular work which has been done by them will have to be begun anew. 1 Bywater's inaugural lecture as Professor on ' Three Centuries of Greek Learning in England ' would have been deeply interesting, if it had survived. For what reason he was dissatisfied with it, whether on account of its reference or absence of reference to his predeces- sor, or because of some statements which on further con- sideration appeared to him inadequate, it is impossible to surmise. He did not include it in the bibliography drawn up by himself and printed in the Appendix, nor has any trace of the MS. been discovered among his papers. In the absence of all information speculation is idle. The following characteristic letters will be read with interest. That of Bishop Stubbs shows his deep sense of the brotherhood of all genuine students. The Presi- dent of Corpus is himself a great Aristotelian. Between Dr. I nee and Bywater, although they were often dia- metrically opposed on matters of college policy, there was always a feeling of mutual respect and goodwill. Fro?n the Right Rev. W. Stubbs, D.D., Bishop of Oxford. The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, Nov. 13, 1894. My dear Bywater, I am very glad — especially glad — and wish you all good wishes. This is not a matter of form — we have known each 1 The opinion which the present writer has ventured to indicate here seems to be in agreement with the views expressed so lucidly and in such attractive form by the present Regius Professor of Greek in his inaugural lecture. 2011 K 130 PROGRESS IN LIFE, 1884-95 other long enough to trust one another. I have been thinking how pleased poor Pattison would have been. It is strange that at last the G.O.M. should have done something in which he has my full sympathy. Yours ever, W. OXON. From Professor T. Case {now President of Corpus Christi). Beam Hall, Oxford, Nov. 12, 1893. Dear Bywater, I congratulate the University on your appointment to the Professorship of Greek, an event which many of us have looked forward to for many years, in the interests of Greek, of Ari- stotle, and of sound learning in general. From the discussions of possible appointments I am sure your appointment will be universally approved. Yours very truly, T. Case. From the Rev. Dr. luce, Regius Professor of Divinity. Christ Church, Oxford, Nov. 15, 1893. My dear Bywater, I hope you will allow me to add my congratulations to the numerous ones which you will doubtless have been receiving on your appointment to the Greek Professorship. It was a promotion to which I think the general opinion of Oxford had designated you. Let me wish you much happiness and success in it. Before long, I suppose, we shall once more be members of the same Governing Body. If occasionally we have to differ in policy, I hope we may not cease each to respect the other's conscience. I am, Yours sincerely, William Ince. CHAPTER VII Literary work after 1884 — Aristotelian studies — Edits text of the Ethics and of the Poetics — Monographs — Estimate of unfinished work on Diogenes Laertius by Professor Burnet — General results. The present chapter continues the account of By water's literary labours, begun in Chapter V. It deals with his public teaching from the time of his appointment as Reader in Greek and the various writings mentioned in his bibliography, from his appointment as Reader in Greek and the publication of his edition of Priscianus Lydus until his death. The lectures he gave after his appointment as Reader in Greek were for the most part devoted to some portion of Aristotle's works, selected for the convenience of his class. He also formed a class for the special study of Greek MSS., leaving the more general treatment of the subject to the Reader in Palaeography. He neither desired nor expected a large audience for his lectures, with the exception of that on the Poetics of Aristotle, which he continued to give, constantly adding to his materials and reducing them to shape, until his resignation of the Greek Chair. The institution of the Oxford Aristotelian Society soon after he became Reader in Greek afforded him an opportunity of influencing advancing students among the Fellows and Lecturers of Colleges, of which he made full use. Whether the inception of the Society was due solely to him or not, he regarded k 2 132 LITERARY WORK AFTER 1884 it as a kind of ' seminar ', and an adjunct to his public duties. Mr. C. Cannan, in the article in the Journal of Philology (vol. xxxiv, No. 67) which has already been quoted, thus writes of the Society : ' The Oxford Aristotelian Society came into existence with- out a formal constitution in the early eighties, about the time that Bywater became Reader. He took the chair at the first meeting (which, beginning first with the first things, proceeded to read Metaphysics Z), and the Society met in his rooms under his presidency until he resigned his Professorship in 1908. The Society has had its vicissitudes. Shute, 1 who held a flaming torch in the van of the earliest reconnaissances, died : other qualified commentators fell away, finding themselves deprived of sleep, and of the younger men several departed to professorships and the like away from Oxford. At one time the effective force of the Society was not above three or four. It was characteristic of Bywater that he never remarked on the rise or fall of the attendance, and never recognized it by any change in his preparations. There was always every week on the appointed day the same big table cleared, the same lighted sconces, the same number of teacups. In a quarter of a century Bywater himself cannot have missed half a dozen of the weekly meetings. Once a backslider corrupted some friends and announced that they would not attend next week — they were going to hear an itinerant philosopher who had come up to give a lecture. " Ah," said Bywater, " in that case . . . will dine with me, and after dinner we will do our best together to con- strue the words of the master of them that know." Gradually as the generations grew up recruits came in, and when Bywater retired from the presidency, there was quite a little company to sign a very cordial address which commemorated the benefit conferred on the Oxford exegesis of Aristotle by the common study of the more important writings of the philosopher, and 1 Richard Shute, Senior Student of Christ Church, whose early death deprived Oxford scholarship of one of the most indefatigable and accomplished of students. ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY 133 spoke of the personal debt of those who had been permitted an insight into the methods of Bywater's own laborious, profound, and brilliant scholarship.' 1 The fruits of his Aristotelian studies were given to the world both in his monographs and in his edi- tions of the Ethics and the Poetics. His method of handling Aristotelian questions was the same as that which he had already employed in dealing with Heraclitus. He was always in the first place strongly conservative in his treatment of manuscript texts. It was in his opinion the business of a commentator first of all to obtain the best text available, or if there was no good text to provide one, and then to understand it. Not until it was proved to be hopelessly corrupt was it lawful to attempt the work of reconstruction. Such a reconstruction, as has already been pointed out, could be undertaken only by one who had a supreme command of the whole of the material available for enabling him to enter into the thought of the writer with whom he was dealing. It was this qualification which impressed those who had to go over any of the ground which Bywater had already traversed with the sense of an inexhaustible fund of knowledge behind all that he had written. 2 With regard to Bywater's treatment of Aristotelian problems, Professor Burnet, to whom the present writer is deeply indebted, kindly permits the following extract from a letter which he has written on the subject to be printed here : ' As to the Ethics, there is really not much to say that has 1 The address is printed in the Oxford Magazine, Feb. 25, 1908, and will be found infra, p. 143. 2 See Professor Gilbert Murray's Inaugural Lecture, p. 1. 134 LITERARY WORK AFTER 1884 not been said already ; but, as I read the proofs before the book came out, I was immensely impressed by two things : (1) The extraordinary care with which By water attended to the punctuation. He seemed to hold (and I think rightly) that this was one of an editor's chief functions. In some cases his punctuation made the sense clear for the first time. This is in striking contrast to the practice of most English editors, who simply reproduce the punctuation of their German arche- type, in spite of the fact that German punctuation proceeds on quite different principles from ours. (2) The immense labour of the Index at the end, with which Bywater took a very great deal of pains. He once told me how many slips he had made for it, but I cannot remember the number now. There is a small personal matter in connexion with the edition of the Ethics which may interest you, as it throws light on Bywater's character. I had published one or two rather juvenile notes on the text of the Ethics in the Classical Review shortly after taking my degree. At that time I had never even met Bywater, but he sent for me and told me that I had hit on the same emendations as he had in two places, a fact which he went out of his way to mention in his Preface. That is how I came to read the proofs for him, and that is what encouraged me to try and become a scholar.' In editing the text of the Poetics Bywater was under obligation to some of his immediate predecessors, especially to Vahlen, to whom he makes ample acknowledgement. But all Vahlen's conclusions were revised by him and many of them were rejected. The reasons, both for disagreeing with Vahlen and for adding various corrections of his own, were discussed in the English commentary. The English edition of the Poetics will be generally regarded as the chief monument of Bywater's labours in the latter part of his life. It affords, moreover, the EDITION OF THE 'POETICS' 135 most complete example of his method of dealing with a classical writer, of the objects he desired to accom- plish, and of the limitations which he imposed upon himself. A brief description of the work will also enable us to deal with some of the criticisms which have been passed upon it. The Introduction of some fifty pages is one of the most masterly studies which has come from Bywater's pen. He presents the reader with a summary of all the information about this fragmentary treatise which can be extracted from the study of the manuscripts themselves, including such fragments of the Arabic version as are now generally accessible. The paraphrase conveys to the English reader the nearest equivalent obtainable to the meaning that the perusal of the Greek text might have conveyed to a Greek. How far a thoroughly English phrase can be the equivalent of a Greek expression of which it is not a literal translation can be decided only by one who is so familiar with Greek that the language becomes to him a perfectly transparent medium for the communication of ideas, and who has an equally fine sense of English and of the exact force of the terms employed in literary criticism. Few could pretend to rival Bywater in either of these essentials for the kind of interpretation which is given in this paraphrase. When we come to the notes we encounter the criticisms which may be advanced by those who do not adopt the same ideal of an edition of the Poetics as Bywater. Such criticisms cannot be met without stating the nature of the aim he set before himself. Upon this Bywater's remark addressed to Mr. Caiman and Mr. Cannan's comment upon it shed a clear light. 1 1 Journal of Philology, No. 67, p. 6. 136 LITERARY WORK AFTER 1884 " You must not expect from me ", Bywater said, when the book was leaving the press, " anything about fine art, for I don't think Aristotle said anything about it. I have looked it up in the dictionaries and I see that the term is much later." But what else is so hilbsch objectiv closely appreciative of the Sprachgebi'auch — the two terms which Bywater commonly quoted from the Germans — and what above all combines with so elaborate a knowledge of the tradition Greek, Latin, Italian, French, German, and English, an insight so serene into the logical sequence of the ideas?' The same view is expressed by Bywater himself in the following extract from the preface to his book : ' I have not ventured ', he says, ' on a discussion of the problem of this general theory of poetry and art. . . . Aristotelian theories of art constructed in this way are not unlike the Aristotelian systems of logic, of which we have seen so many. The parts are Aristotle's, but the synthesis is always to some extent our work, not his. I cannot repress a suspicion that if he could come back to life again, he would be surprised to find how large a meaning we are able to read into some of his more incidental utterances. We must not forget, too, that the very idea of a theory of art is modern, and that our present use of the term " art " does not go further back than the age of Winckelmann and Goethe.' Consistently with this view he gives in the notes an exhaustive survey of all the references in Greek Literature to the dramas and poems mentioned by Aristotle, all the criticisms and references to the Poetics in Greek Literature subsequent to the composition of the treatise, and all the criticism or interpretation of the Poetics worth noting in the writings of scholars PLAN OF THE 'POETICS' 137 who have handed down the oreat traditions of learning from the Renaissance. Where Aristotle compares the plastic arts with poetry, Bywater reviews the judgement of Lessing on the same subject, and he cites statements or lines of modern writers, such as Pope or Wordsworth or Shelley, which illustrate a passage in his author. But he did not apply Aristotle's dicta to later composi- tions, or frame general canons of crititism by their aid. He had no wish to construct with the aid of the Poetics a philosophy of poetry, or to reduce to rule and order the shifting material which the creative faculty of successive ages brings into being. Wnether such an enterprise is profitable or not we need not inquire, for this was not Bywater's aim. The task which he set himself demanded great learning and ability, but was strictly limited and defined. He desired to execute it in such a way that unless unforeseen discoveries should largely add to the material available, the work need not be done over acrain, but should be as far as possible final and complete. Bywater must be judged by his success or failure in accomplishing the aim which he set before himself. Has he failed or succeeded ? To this question the verdict of scholars both in England and abroad has given a decisive reply. The Enolish edition of the Poetics was termed in one of the reviews at the time of its publication ' the fruit of Bywater's leisure '. Though published in 1909, the year after the resignation of his professorship, it had already been completed before that date. He mentions in a letter to Berrtays in 1881 that he was then contem plating an edition of this kind. He had been for some thirty years lecturing on the book, constantly recasting his materials and revising them until he had reduced 138 LITERARY WORK AFTER 1884 them to such a form as would, in his judgement, justify their publication. Nothing- important could have been added to a work of such infinite labour in the short time that elapsed between his resignation and the sending of the MS. to the printer. In the later years under review By water printed two very interesting monographs on subjects outside the range of his Aristotelian studies. The first was a public lecture, 'The Erasmian Pronunciation of Greek'. He briefly states at the end of his lecture his object in writing it, viz. in order ' to vindicate the memory of Erasmus from a reproach which has been too long permitted to tarnish his name ', and ' to draw attention to the illustrious Spaniard Antonio of Lebrixa as the precursor of Erasmus and the first we know of to start a question of large philological interest ' — that of the pronunciation of Greek in the classical period of the language. Antonio was just such a scholar as to attract By water's interest and sympathy. He was a pioneer who had been overlooked, and he was in his day a champion of free thought. It is probable that Bywater turned his attention to Antonio before his visits to Spain had begun ; but at all events he used the opportunities then afforded him for prosecuting his studies in the Spanish libraries, and he paid a special visit to Alcala, where Antonio had resided as a Pro- fessor in the University for the later years of his life. This lecture is full of obiter dicta, which indicate not only Bywater's learning but his sympathies and habits of thought. Any one who reads the lecture will regret that he did not oftener produce from his store of know- ledge such an interesting study as this. DIOGENES LAERTIUS 139 His article in the Journal of Philology on 'The Latinizations of the Modern Surname' was the out- come of his comprehensive reading and his constant attention to detail. Scholars had of course long been familiar with the pseudonyms adopted by scholars in the sixteenth century, most of which, such as Capnio, Melancthon, Oecolampadius, &c, were latinized with the help of Greek. But the variety and caprices of the lati- nization of scholars' names in after ages could have been properly treated only by one who had the subject present to his mind during a long and varied course of study. In the later period of his activity he had finally to give up his long-cherished design of bringing out an edition of Dioeenes Laertius with a revised text and commentary. Pattison had warned him (in a letter printed on an earlier page) that he would need seven years' work for the collection of his materials, and his various labours had never left him sufficient leisure for the task which he had proposed to himself. Professor Burnet, in whose hands Bywater's materials were placed by Professor Cook Wilson, has most kindly supplied the following account of their nature and value, which will be read with the greatest interest by all Greek scholars. It is impossible to avoid expressing a wish that Professor Burnet himself might some day find time to bring the work to completion. ' Unfortunately Byvvater did not date his collations or state by whom they were made. Those mentioned below are in his own handwriting, and I believe them to have been made by himself before 1878. Each collation is made in a separate copy of Cobet's edition (ed. Didot), with the exception of that of A (cod. Arundel. 531), which is in a copy of Hiibner's edition (Leipzig, 1828). 140 LITERARY WORK AFTER 1884 In 1879 By water published privately a text of the Life of Aristotle from Diogenes based on the following MSS. : A = cod. Arundelianus 531, saec. xv. B = cod. Neapolitanus (Burbonicus) 253, saec. xii. L = cod. Laurentianus 69. 13, saec. xii. O = cod. Parisinus 1758, saec. xv. V = cod. Vaticanus 1302, saec. xii. The collations of all these exist and are in my possession. The MS. Adnotatio Critica to the rest of Diogenes is com- plete on this scale. Only pp. 111-18 (which contained the Life of Aristotle) are missing. They were probably sent to the press in 1879. There is also an interleaved copy of Cobet's edition con- taining references to Testimonia and to the modern literature of the subject. This also is undated. It will be noted that the oldest of the Paris MSS. (P = cod. Parisinus 1759) is not included in the Apparatus Criticus. P is the original of O, but has been ruined by correction in accordance with the vulgate text, so that it would be of little use but for the copy, which was made before the correction took place. (See Max Bonnet, RJicin. M?ts. xxxii, pp. 578, 599.) In the years immediately following this Bywater was having collations made for him at Rome and Naples, apparently for the purpose of determining the filiation of the later MSS. In September 1883 he transcribed at Leyden : (1) Ruhnken's Adversaria to D. L. from MS. Wytt. 42. (2) Valckenaer's notes from MS. xviii, N. 406. (3) Scaliger's notes from a copy of the Stephanus edition of 1570, which had belonged to Gerard and Isaac Vossius. The last piece of work on Diogenes which can be dated is connected with P (Par. 1759). From a post card dated Aug. 3, 1887, from H. Diels which has been preserved, it appears that Bywater had sent him his collations. In returning them Diels offers to lend him his collation of P as a ' Wiedergabe '. It is probable that he actually did so ; for Bywater has entered a full collation of P in his own copy of the privately WORK FOR CLARENDON PRESS 141 printed Life of Aristotle. There is no trace of anything later than this. From the materials he has left it would be possible to con- struct a text of Diogenes on the same lines as the Life of A ristotle published in 1879, but I can find nothing which bears upon any discussion of the subject subsequent to that date. The collations, however, are of the most minute and accurate character, and doubtful points have in many cases been settled by subsequent inspection and inquiry. The foundations of the work have been firmly laid, but the building can hardly be said to have begun. 1 Some of Bywater's critics, and even of his admirers, have often expressed surprise or regret that he has not left a greater body of finished work behind him. He will be remembered by scholars perhaps chiefly on account of his Heraclitus, his work on Priscianus Lydus for the Berlin Academy, his editions of the text of the Ethics and the Poetics, and above all his English edition of the Poetics. But in addition to these, as has already been pointed out, the amount and quality of his monographs must be included ; and attention should specially be called to the fruitful and unostentatious labour expended by him in the performance of his duties as Delegate of the University Press. He held that office for thirty-five years, and throughout all that time was a principal adviser of the Delegates in all their various enterprises. To the value of his services 1 Bywater was very reluctant to resign the hope of making further progress with Diogenes Laertius. In 1896 Dr. Edgar Martini, writing from his home in Oberlausitz, informs Bywater that, acting on Wachsmuth's advice, he proposes to edit Diogenes Laertius, and requests Bywater's counsel and help. Bywater preserved a draft of his answer to Dr. Martini, in which he states that he still hopes to bring out an edition himself. 142 LITERARY WORK AFTER 1884 emphatic testimony is borne in the Journal of Philology (No. 67) by Mr. Cannan, the Secretary to the Delegates, whose account of the Aristotelian Society and of Bywater's procedure as its Chairman has already been quoted. Mr. Cannan writes as follows : ' At the Clarendon Press, to which so much devoted service is given by the members of its Board, Bywater's thirty-five years of heavy work will stand unrivalled. He took a personal interest in every piece of sound learning that was offered for publication. " That book of . . .", he said, " has given me a horrible interest in mediaeval geography, and there is no subject so remote from my proper studies." He found — or made- — time to assist or direct all kinds of undertakings in very different fields. He studied, for instance, not merely all the proofs of the Oxford Classical Texts (which are planned on the model of his own edition of the Ethics) but huge slices of the English Dictionary. When every one else had failed to find the word inferentia, and when at least one dissertation had proved that it could not have been used in Latin, By water produced a quotation from Abelard. " Murray ", he said, " asked me for an early instance of poetria (' poetry '), and when I tell you that I found it at last in a seventh-century scholium to the Epistles of Horace, you may imagine that it took me some time : but I am sometimes lucky on Sunday." Another Sunday produced — by telegram on Monday morning — a Gladstonian use of "science" in the old Oxford sense of metaphysics. Bywater's immense bibliographical knowledge in many fields of learning enabled him to estimate with accuracy the value of a new book, regarded as a contribution to the common stock ; and his long experience gave him an uncanny skill in predicting without arithmetical data the cost of pro- duction and the willingness — or unwillingness — of the public to buy. He never missed an opportunity of getting a good piece of work before the world ; and if he sometimes set limits to an enterprise, or relegated what was conceived to be a book " to the pages of a learned periodical ", it was not INFLUENCE ON YOUNGER SCHOLARS 143 a scholar's hypercriticism but a practical man's estimate of possibilities and values that suggested his caution. To all the problems of practical administration he brought a very shrewd and incisive appreciation of the governing factors ; and in his long tenure of office the sum of his work at the Press, or in connexion with it, must be quite comparable to that which eminent private publishers find necessary for their business.' The two factors just mentioned, viz. the number and excellence of Bywater's monographs, and the services he rendered to the University Press, may fairly be taken into account when estimating" the quantity of his literary work. But in forming a judgment upon this another most important side of his activity to which attention has already been called deserves further notice here. Great students in any department leave a permanent impression only through the influence exercised on younger men by their personality and example, Much of Bywater's highest work bore fruit in the labours of others which would never have been undertaken but for his guidance and inspiration. The record of his literary activity may be further supplemented by two statements which very clearly show the effect produced by his generous and ungrudg- ing expenditure of time and trouble in stimulating production on the part of younger men. Mention has already been made [supra, p. 132) of the Aristotelian Society, the promotion of which he regarded as one of his* special contributions to the advanced study of Greek at Oxford. Although the Society ceased to meet after Bywater left Oxford finally in 1908, it has had permanent results of which it is not necessary to speak here. The address which he received on resigning the Presidency, with the names appended, bears eloquent testimony to his work : i 4 4 LITERARY WORK AFTER 1884 ' Sir, — On your resignation of the Presidency of the Ari- stotelian Society we desire to express to you our thanks for your initiative in founding the Society and for your guidance of it during the more than twenty years of its existence. During those years you have never except of necessity been absent from any of our weekly meetings, and you have thus given our Society a permanence and stability which it must otherwise have lacked. It has been, we venture to think, no small gain to the University and to Greek Scholarship that through the Society successive generations of Tutors and Lecturers have enjoyed regular opportunities of studying together the more difficult treatises of the Philosopher ; and that common study has, we believe, greatly improved the exegesis in Oxford of the Aristotelian writings more com- monly offered in the Schools. But we, the members of the Society, owe you a more personal debt. Not all of us have been able to withstand the pressure of other occupations, or the attractions of other fields of work, but, whatever may now be the chief interest of our individual studies, we desire to thank you for the insight you have allowed us into the methods of your own laborious, profound, and brilliant scholarship. We shall not forget the courteous firmness with which at our meetings you have kept us to the matter in hand, the readi- ness with which you welcomed any suggestion that was in any respect correct, the decision with which at some vexed place you would pronounce that a solution was for us and in the actual state of our resources to be sought for but scarcely to be found. We beg you to accept our thanks for what we have learnt from you, and our best wishes, now that you are freeing yourself from the obligations of oral teaching, for the long, the happy, and the fruitful prosecution of the studies which are dear to you. J. A. Stewart, John Burnet, J. A. Smith, Charles Cannan, Sidney Ball, H. W. B. Joseph, S. Alexander, W. D. Ross, A. J. Jenkinson, W. A. Pickard-Cambridge, R. W. Chapman, Harold H. Joachim, Clement C. J. Webb, G. E. Underhill, W. Temple, J. L. Stocks, F. W. Hall, John Murray, Edwin INFLUENCE ON YOUNGER SCHOLARS 145 James Bombay, A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, E. W. Webster, F. J. Wylie.' The other statement which follows consists of an extract from a letter addressed to the Oxford Magazine of January 29, 191 5, by Mr. H. W. Garrod, Fellow of Merton College, who succeeded Dr. Aldis Wright as Bywater's colleague with Professor Henry Jackson in the Editorship of the Journal of Philology, and is most eminently qualified to speak with authority on the sub- ject on which he writes : — ' I will not say with the newspapers, in the cant phrase which condones so much of the literary inertia of Oxford, that By- water was " greater than his books ". I do not think so. The quality of his writings was supreme. . . . None the less, Bywater did great and important work outside his books — work which he never talked about, and which, I suspect, has not been adequately recognized even in Oxford. He may be said to have written a great many books to which he never gave his name. There are at any rate a great many books in the world which would never have come there save for By- water, and which, whatever their quality, would have been much inferior to what they are except for Bywater's help. I doubt if any man was ever so generous in the assistance which he gave to young and untried scholars. He would suggest subjects to them. He would read their manuscripts. He would lend — or, more often, give — them books. His learning, which seemed infinite, and his judgement, which was, perhaps, as near faultless as the nature of human frailty permits, was at their disposal, whether in conversation or by letter. Indeed, he spent more time and pains, I believe, over other people's books than most men spend on their own. At the same time he never helped one too much — he never committed the fault so common in persons more learned than oneself, when they offer assistance, of giving one more than one wanted. He passed for a somewhat fastidious critic. Yet, for myself, I 2011 146 LITERARY WORK AFTER 1884 never met any one who had so fine an art of correcting one's faults without hurting one's feelings. He was always at pains to suggest to one an ideal — and never to let one feel that it was unattainable. He was at his best in the library of his own house in London. It was there — and not in College, or in the Schools — that he was a great teacher. It was not merely that he was a master of his subject — and of one's own — ; but one felt powerfully the stimulus of a temperament from which what may be called the casual impurities of intellectual life — pedantry, hurry, irrelevance, pretentiousness, cleverness — had been purged away. I know that there are other persons in Oxford besides myself to whom By water's library was, as it were, a place of pilgrimage, and who heard of Bywater's death somewhat as an ancient Greek might have heard of the sudden cessation of the Delphic Oracle. They are persons who, like myself, were, when they first came under Bywater's influence, young men, the neophytes of philological study, and who would be as ready, I am sure, as myself to acknowledge that they owe to Bywater any perception which they have of the true method by which such study should be pursued.' Any one who should hereafter desire rightly to estimate the part to be assigned to Bywater in the development of the study of Greek at Oxford during the last half-century would omit a most important element, unless his survey of Bywater's literary work comprehended the results due to his influence in those spheres to which attention has here been called. 1 1 It should perhaps be noted here that some contributions from Bywater not mentioned in his bibliography appeared in the Archiv der Geschichte der Philosophic, a journal published in Berlin by Dr. Ludwig Stein, formerly of Zurich, under the auspices of Dr. Diels and others, and intended to supply an annual record of the literary products of the different countries of Europe. Bywater, at Dr. Diels's request, wrote an account of the ' Literature of Ancient Philosophy in England ' for vols. 3 and 5 of the journal, but did not contribute to any subsequent number. CHAPTER VIII Life at Oxford and in London, 1885-1908 — Bodleian Tercentenary — Various correspondence — Professor J. A. Gomperz — Foun- dation of British Academy — Reminiscences of Sir Herbert Warren — Wife's illness and death — Letters from various scholars. After Bywater's marriage in 1885 and his appoint- ment to the Regius Professorship of Greek, the general tenor of his life underwent no change until Mrs. By- water's illness and death and his subsequent resignation of the Greek Chair. In such leisure as his professorial duties and his literary work allowed him, intellectual interests in some form constantly occupied his time and thoughts both in London and in Oxford. Even in his visits to the Continent with his wife, great libraries and University towns were to him the main object and attraction. As this chapter derives its material partly from the letters of various scholars deposited by him in the Bodleian, which throw much light on the course of his later years, a few specimens of them are printed at the end. One or two of these belong to a date subsequent to 1907, but may appropriately be inserted here. One of his chief occupations has already been men- tioned more than once. The collection of rare books was begun early in his career, and was pursued with increasing diligence as time went on. At the date of his marriage he estimated the value of his Libri rariores at not less than ^3,000. This sum was probably much less than what they would have fetched in the market. l 2 148 OXFORD AND LONDON, 1885-1908 Few collectors have wasted so little money in buying their experience, or have made purchases with so much judgement as Bywater. Many of his books were of extreme rarity. Pattison on taking a friend to call on Bywater remarked, by way of illustrating the character of Bywater s collection, that on a recent visit Bywater had shown him five books, three of which he had seen but never hoped to acquire, two he had heard of but never expected to see. After his marriage, and still more after his election to the Greek Chair, his collection increased rapidly, and he was able to add works to it which would in his earlier days have been more costly than he could then afford. After his marriage Mrs. Bywater was almost as anxious as he was himself to add to his treasures. In 1906 he acquired a costly work much prized by collectors, the editio princeps of Homer published at Florence in 1488. Bywater sometimes repeated to his friends the story of its acquisition. He had received one Satur- day morning an early copy of a Parisian bookseller's catalogue containing an advertisement of the Homer. When he mentioned this to his wife at breakfast she exclaimed, ' Oh, we must get it, and you must go at once to Paris to inspect it'. Bywater accordingly packed his travelling-bag, started off, and reached Paris that evening. The next morning he found the book- seller at home, inspected the book, and satisfied himself that it was perfect in every respect — paper, type, margin especially — came to terms with its owner, and arrived in London again that night, bringing the prize with him and leaving a very substantial cheque in its place. Mrs. Bywater was in the habit of looking for some choice object to present to her husband on the anniver- M. LEGRAND AND M. OMONT 149 sary of his birth. This was the last gift of the kind which she was destined to bestow on him. The fame of his library had long spread abroad. Various scholars wrote to him from time to time asking for the loan of some book in his possession, or offering to acquire it by exchange. His chief correspondent on questions of book-lore was Monsieur £mile Legrand, the learned author of the Bibliographie helldnique in nine volumes, 1 885-1 903. Bywater must have made Legrand's acquaintance some time before 1888. After that date the letters that passed between them became very numerous. M. Legrand is constantly appealing to Bywater for information, or asking him for the loan of some rare book in his collection. This correspon- dence was terminated only by the death of M. Legrand in 1 903. None but a learned bibliophile could properly appreciate it. Besides references to books, it contains constant indications of that mutual regard between them which characterized all Bywater's more intimate literary friendships. One of M. Legrand's letters to Bywater is printed at the end of this chapter. Another eminent scholar with whom Bywater was on terms of close friendship was Monsieur Henri Omont, the Librarian of the MSS. department of the Ecole des Chartes. He has already been mentioned as one of those whose acquaintance Bywater made at an early period. Monsieur Omont in accepting Bywater's offer of hospitality in 1902 refers to a visit he paid to him in Exeter College eighteen years before. Bywater frequently appealed for help to M. Omont with regard to MSS. which he wished to collate or have collated on his behalf at Paris. M. Omont, who more than once received a book from Bywater's store, in one of i 5 o OXFORD AND LONDON, 1885-1908 his letters thanking him for a gift of this kind winds up with the following graceful tribute : ' Ce sont (i.e. books) des amis rappelant nombre de souvenirs, et qu'on aime a feuilleter et a manier, quand on est comme vous bibliophile dans le vrai et le meilleur sens du mot.' A letter of M. Omont to Bywater referring to a scholar in whom they were both interested is among those printed below. Another intimate friend with whom Bywater was in frequent correspondence was Professor W. W. Goodwin of Harvard, the well-known scholar and archaeologist. Professor Goodwin's letters range from 1884 to 1906, although he and Bywater must have been friends at a much earlier date. The discussion of points of scholarship does not enter largely into this correspon- dence. It is chiefly concerned with Goodwin's move- ments and plans. He in common with so many others received gifts of books from Bywater's store. Two brief extracts from his letters will not be without an interest to scholars. On April 4, 1890, he writes from Sicily : ' We explored Epipolae. I am convinced that Thucydides knew the ground, and that no ^xpt. is to be omitted in vii. 7, and no h to be inserted in vi. 101. Everything seems perfectly plain when read on the spot'; and on September 15, 1898, from Harvard : ' Greek is fast losing ground in this country, and I have lost all hope of its recovery. But I trust that it will last for my few remaining years of College work.' Bywater also corresponded with Professor Goodwin about the project of a new Greek Thesaurus, of which something more will be said later. Though Professor Goodwin was his most intimate friend amono- American scholars, there were others PROFESSORS GOODWIN AND GOMPERZ 151 with whom By water corresponded. Among these were Professors Whitney, Eliot Norton, and especially Professor Gildersleeve of Johns Hopkins University, who had visited him in earlier days at Oxford, and renewed intercourse with him, and made the acquaint- ance of Mrs. Bywater in London. Gifts of books from Bywater to various friends, such as those mentioned above, were very frequent. Mr. Cannan in the Philological Journal (1. c.) tells us that Bywater in retiring from the Presidency of the Aristotelian Society bestowed some of his volumes on all of its members. One of the most considerable of his benefactions of this kind was conferred on the University of Turin, which had suffered a loss of books by fire in 1903. Numerous scholars and public bodies presented books to the Library to fill the void. Bywater in 1 904 gave fifty volumes, valued at 2,795 lire according to the Gazzetta del Popolo of Turin of December 27, 1 904, in which a list of them is printed. In 1 886 he had filled a gap in the Library of Louvain by presenting it with a rare book by one of the earliest Professors of the University. From 1900 till the end of his life he made many gifts to the Library of the University of Cambridge, chiefly sixteenth-century Paris editions of Greek works. 1 Among Bywater's literary friends in the later period of his life, Professor Gomperz of Vienna deserves special notice on account of the intimate relation between them, and also because the visit of the Inter- national Association of Academies to London in 1903, 1 See the Cambridge University Reporter, June 22, 19 15, p. 115. This information is due to the kindness of Sir J. E. Sandys. 152 OXFORD AND LONDON, 1885-1908 in which Gomperz took part, introduced him to various other English scholars. Gomperz first corresponded with Bywater in 1882 about a MS. of Hippocrates and Galen which Schenkel had affirmed to exist in the Library of Glasgow University. Bywater, with the kind assistance of Sir R. C. J ebb, then Professor of Greek at Glasgow, was able, though it was no easy task, to convince Gomperz that there was no such MS. This led to further correspondence and personal intimacy. Many letters passed between them, and they frequently met during the years preceding Gomperz's death in 1 9 1 2. Bywater was much interested in this eminent scholar's book on the Greek Thinkers. He suggested the English trans- lation to him and assisted him to find a translator. In 1 90 1 Gomperz consulted Bywater about a reading in Diogenes Laertius, adding, ' It is hard that in the twentieth century we should still correspond about a reading in an important Greek book '. The existence of the International Association of Academies had given the impulse to the foundation of the British Academy. Before its institution there was no literary society in England which was indis- putably qualified to send representatives to the inter- national body just mentioned. Bywater was one of the original members of the British Academy, and from the beginning, through his knowledge of foreign Universities and his wide acquaintance with foreign scholars, carried great weight in its counsels. He took a special interest in a project for the com- pilation of a new Greek Thesaurus on a large scale, strongly urged on the International Association of Academies and advocated by many influential scholars. VISIT TO VIENNA 153 There are various letters among Bywater's papers referring to this project. The negotiations concern- ing it, and the reasons why it was not carried out, lie outside the province of this memoir ; but it may be permissible to print at the end of this chapter the draft of a letter from Byvvater to Professor Diels which indi- cates that he was keenly interested in the project, and would gladly have seen the Thesaurus undertaken if it could have been executed in the manner and under the conditions which he approved. This letter was drafted with a practical aim, although nothing seems to have come of it. In 1906 the Conference of the Inter- national Association of Academies was held at Vienna, and Lord Reay, who was at that time President of the British Academy, was deputed by that body to represent them. Lord Reay, however, was unable to fulfil his engagement, and Bywater was nominated in his place. Bywater had also recently been nominated, in place of the late Sir R. C. J ebb, a member of the Committee of Academies charged to consider the scheme of the Greek Thesaurus. He had never before visited Vienna, and he much enjoyed the opportunity of seeing that capital and cultivating the acquaintance of the Viennese scholars. 1 Among his special friends 1 Sir E. Ray Lankester in his notice of Bywater in Nature, Dec. 24, 1914, thus writes : 'Only a month ago, when my friend had tem- porarily rallied from the illness which has now ended fatally, he dis- coursed to me in his characteristically cautious yet vigorous style on German, more especially on Prussian, arrogance and intrigue. . . . He contrasted their grasping and pretentious attitude at the Inter- national Conference of Academies in Vienna, where he represented the British Academy, with the charm and refinement of the leading Austrian delegate, Professor Suess, the geologist, now also gone from us, who, he declared, justified his name by the sweetness both of his nature and his behaviour.' 154 OXFORD AND LONDON, 1885-1908 at Vienna was Professor Sachau, whose acquaintance he had made some years before. Byvvater had urged Sachau to undertake the editing of the Arabic version of the Poetics. Dr. Sachau, however, declined the task, and Bywater was afterwards indebted for his know- ledge of that text to Professor Margoliouth's Analecta orientalia ad Poeticam Aristotelcam, as he acknowledges in the Preface to his Poetics (p. xxxi). Bywater was in correspondence with Gomperz in 191 2 about the meeting of the representatives of Academies fixed for St. Petersburg in 191 3. After Gomperz's death in 191 2 the following sketch of his life from By waters pen appeared in The Times of August 31, 191 2 : ' The son of a wealthy Jewish manufacturer in Moravia, Professor Gomperz was enabled from his youth to devote himself to philosophical studies. Originally a disciple of Hegel, he was subsequently attracted by the views of J. S. Mill, with whom and with the late Lord Houghton he was intimately acquainted. His intellectual interests were univer- sal, his linguistic talent remarkable, and his powers of adapta- tion extraordinary. The English translation of his Greek Thinkers, published by Murray some years ago, rendered his name familiar to Anglo-Saxon readers of philosophy. In Austria his death has caused general regret both on account of his eminent personal qualities and because his hospitable house was one of the very few intellectual centres of that capital.' The distinctions conferred on Bywater by various learned bodies may find an appropriate place in this chapter of his life. When he was made Regius Professor of Greek and became in consequence a Student of Christ Church, he not only ceased to be a Fellow of Exeter but was obliged by the Statutes of HONORARY DISTINCTIONS 155 Christ Church to remove his name from the list of ordinary members of Exeter College. He was, how- ever, immediately elected to an Honorary Fellowship by the Rector and Fellows, and retained a warm attachment to his old home until his death, frequently dining in Hall and cultivating the acquaintance of younger Fellows. His earliest college in Oxford, Queen's, which numbers several eminent scholars and archaeologists among its Honorary Fellows, offered him a similar tribute. The distinction of being elected Corresponding Member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, in 1886, has already been mentioned. In 1900, before his election to the Greek Chair, he had the honour of receiving the degree of Hon. Litt.D. at the Cambridge Commencement together with other distinguished scholars, including the veteran W. L. Newman, Professor Flinders Petrie, and Professor Sir William Mitchell Ramsay. Bywater, who was accompanied on his visit to Cambridge by Mrs. Bywater, greatly enjoyed the opportunity of meeting his Cambridge friends under the roof of his host and old friend the Master of St. John's, and at the house of the Public Orator, Sir J. E. Sandys. When he was presented for the degree of Litt.D. the Public Orator, with his wonted grace of style, after mentioning Bywater's editions of Heraclitus and Priscianus Lydus, and his services to Aristotelian literature, added the following pointed sentences : ' In litteris Graecis recensendis novimus quanta ingenii subtilitate, quanto ingenii acumine, quanta eruditione praeditus sit : novimus etiam quanto librorum rariorum amore captus sit. Utinam in posterum ab ipso eruditionis tantae fructus in annos singulos minus raros 156 OXFORD AND LONDON, 1885-1908 percipiamus. Interim in libris Graecis accuratissime edendis unus nobis est instar aliorum plurimorum : etenim in hunc potissimum quadrare videntur verba ilia Heracliti : 6 el? fxvpioi kdv dpio-ros 77.' The degree of Hon. D.Litt. was also conferred on him by the Universities of Dublin and of Durham. In 1904 he was elected Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the Section of Philology and Archaeology to fill the place of Jowett. The diploma was signed by J. P. Cook, President, and C. Loring Jackson, Secretary. The latest honour of this kind awarded to him was the diploma of the Doctorate of Letters at the University of Athens in 191 2. That University was then celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of its foundation, and was bestowing honorary degrees for the first time, as the Rector, Dr. Spiridion Lambros, when forwarding the diploma, informed him. Byvvater returned thanks in the following concise letter to the Rector : ' Monsieur, je vous prie d'exprimer pour moi ma vive reconnaissance a la Faculte des Lettres de votre Universite pour l'honneur quelle m'a accorde en me recevant honoris causa entre les docteurs de la Faculte : dvSpl yap (piXkWrjvt re kcu (piXoXoyco ris \dpLS X a P L * aTe P a > Ti? TL / X ^I d^toXoyoorepa ; ' The Commemoration of the Tercentenary of the Bodleian in 1902 brought together the largest number of distinguished scholars from all parts of the world ever assembled in Oxford. This gave Bywater an opportunity which he gladly turned to account of welcoming many of his foreign friends and acquaintance. Monsieur Omont and Dr. Sachau stayed under his roof at 6 Norham Gardens, and he corresponded with many TERCENTENARY OF BODLEIAN 157 others on the arrangements made for their entertain- ment. His friend Dr. Diels, much to his regret, was unable to be present. The brilliant spectacle at the evening reception in the University Galleries on the night of October 8, and in the Sheldonian Theatre on the next day, will never be forgotten by any of those who were present. The Tercentenary of the Bodleian was almost the only marked event that interrupted the even tenor of Bywater's life in Oxford until the failure of his wife's health. He had necessarily played a somewhat prominent part in this celebration. It was one of the official duties of the Professor of Greek to present the persons on whom honorary degrees in Letters were conferred either in the Sheldonian Theatre or in the Convocation House. This office, however, could be discharged by a deputy appointed by the Professor. Bywater had no taste for public functions, and almost always engaged a deputy to present for him, except in the case of those in whom he felt a strong per- sonal interest, such as the eminent persons on whom degrees were conferred at the Tercentenary of the Bodleian. 1 His aversion from the duty imposed on him by Statute was increased when, as in one or two in- stances, the person selected for the degree did not seem to him to reach a sufficiently high academic standard. Bywater had a rare mastery over Latin writing. His style was idiomatic with a marked individuality of its 1 The duty of presenting for Honorary Degrees has recently been transferred by Statute to the Public Orator. Bywater often appointed his friend Dr. L. R. Farnell, now Rector of Exeter, to present for him. 158 OXFORD AND LONDON, 1885-1908 own, as may be seen in the Preface to his Heraclitus. But he never published any of the speeches he made in presenting distinguished persons for degrees, nor have any of his notes for them been preserved among his papers. His dislike of anything like the glare of publicity increased as time went on, and was shared by his wife. In a friendly atmosphere he was at his ease and at his best. Occasionally he had to make a speech at a College Gaudy in proposing or answering a toast. Nothing could be more polished and effective than his utterances on these occasions, and his friends often regretted that he did not avail himself of the oppor- tunities he might have enjoyed of impressing the academic or outside world with the qualities which those who knew him well admired in him. This shrinking from publicity of all kinds on the part of his wife and of himself to some extent curtailed his intercourse not only with general society in Oxford but with some of his older friends. The relations between him and them were as intimate as ever when they met or sought each other out ; but they met less frequently than the latter could have wished. As Regius Professor of Greek he was bound to residence in Oxford for six months out of the year, an obligation which could be discharged by residing during full Term in each of the three academical Terms. Mrs. Bywater almost always joined her hus- band some time after Term began, and left Oxford some time before it ended. They both put aside the greater part of the invitations they received in Oxford, singly or together. They preferred that their coming and going should pass as far as possible unnoticed. Their joint life in Oxford, although under very different circumstances, was in kind similar to Bywater's LIFE IN OXFORD 159 bachelor life in College described on a former page. 1 Their practice in this respect had some considerable advantages, as well as some disadvantages. Bywater's devotion to the various responsibilities he had under- taken besides those of his Professorship was very exact- ing. Quiet was essential for his pursuits and studies. He lived the life best suited to himself and his wife. But if both he and his wife kept themselves somewhat aloof from general society, his influence over younger men kept constantly increasing. The parties of friends who assembled at his house, both when Mrs. Bywater was with him and when he was alone, almost always included some of the more distinguished younger students who were aspiring to carry on the tradition of learning and research at Oxford. Few men of Bywater's age and standing had a larger acquaintance with scholars rising into note, or made so deep an impression on them by their individuality. The pleasant personal relations that were established between him and all those younger men with whom he thus came in contact as a host as well as in other ways, increased his hold on them. His habits of life in Oxford thus enabled him to strengthen the influence he had acquired over the younger generations of scholars, which has already been admirably set forth in Mr. Garrod's letter printed in the preceding chapter. But Bywater, although he kept aloof from what might be called general society in the University, was necessarily brought into close relation with the Vice- Chancellor and other officials. His friend Sir Herbert Warren was Vice-Chancellor from 1905 to 1909, and 1 See Chapter III, p. 39. i6o OXFORD AND LONDON, 1885-1908 has most kindly supplied the present writer with the following reminiscences which refer to the later years of Bywater's activity and may appropriately find a place here. He writes as follows : 1 When I became Vice-Chancellor I much enjoyed the oppor- tunity of meeting Bywater, an old friend of whom I had some- what lost sight, more regularly, in particular upon the Delegacy of the Common Fund, and still more that of the University Press, the meetings of which were frequent in Term time. On the Common Fund Delegacy I was able to assist him in carrying through the experiment of appointing a Lecturer in Modern Greek. About this I found Bywater exceedingly eager and keen. I did not know at that time that he shared his enthusiasm with his wife and that this was part of its secret. He took very great pains both in discussing the arrangements and still more in finding the first holder, Dr. Simos Menardos. When Dr. Menardos was appointed, Bywater came from London on purpose to hear his Inaugural Lecture, and saw him frequently both in Oxford and in London, giving him every possible aid and encouragement. An interesting tribute to him recording this relation was published by Dr. Menardos in the Athenian paper the Hestia at his death. On the Press Delegacy Bywater was peculiarly in his element and at his very best. His extraordinary knowledge of books in all their aspects, his amazing memory for their prices and their trade history, as well as for their contents and intellectual value, was amazing. On his own subjects of scholarship, philosophy, and the ancient " Humanities", he was in reality as perfect and infallible as a man can be. But he made no affectation of either omniscience or authority, and it was often difficult to get him to express an opinion. He had further a remarkable knowledge of Art in general, of men and of things, and was emphatically a citizen of the world. When he resigned his Professorship and ceased to reside he assumed, and the University with him, that his position as Delegate SIR H. WARREN'S REMINISCENCES 161 must necessarily lapse. I always considered that one of the best strokes I was enabled to achieve for the University was procuring his appointment, by Decree, as a Perpetual Extra- ordinary Delegate, and I have reason to believe that this appointment, coming as it did as a surprise, brought him very special pleasure. I felt myself more than rewarded when we came to the discussion of certain serious questions affecting the larger policy of the Press. On these Bywater's advice was masterly. He remained a Delegate until the day of his death, and his last visits to Oxford, made when his health had already most gravely broken, were in fulfilment of his duties to this office. No one could be long in Bywater's company without dis- covering that he was a bibliophile, and indeed a prince among bibliophiles. Almost as soon as I came to know him well, I began to understand and appreciate this and to count it as a privilege to be of any service to him in the matter. This was difficult, for his own knowledge was transcendent ; but I was able on one or two occasions to call his attention to volumes in the catalogues of booksellers whom I knew, and I remember in particular my pleasure when he telegraphed to one of these to secure an item offered by him. One conversation of his I shall never forget. After the death of Dr. W. H. Thompson, Regius Professor of Greek and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, I bought a fine copy, which had belonged to him, of the edition by Stephanus of Plato, in good condition and handsomely bound. I showed it with some pleasure to Bywater. " Yes," he said, "it is a fine book, and you were right to buy it. There are various reasons for buying books. Some people buy books for the contents, and that is a very vulgar reason ; and some people buy books for the binding, and that is a little better and not so vulgar ; and others buy books for the printing, and that is really a very good reason ; but the real reason for which to buy a book is the margin ! Always look at the margin." It came as a revelation to me to find, when Mr. Joseph Chamberlain came to the front as an advocate of Tariff Reform, 20U M 162 OXFORD AND LONDON, 1885-1908 that Bywater had much sympathy both on personal and on public grounds with this movement, that he had known Mr. Chamberlain for years, and was greatly interested in his policy, and in particular in this new development. He was specially anxious that Chamberlain should be invited to Oxford and given the opportunity of making a declaration and exposition of his tenets. I was myself much in sympathy with this, and we exchanged views on " Jo: Camerarius" as we called him, the Latin title being adopted from that of the well-known Renaissance scholar.' x The following letter from Bywater will be read with interest : 6 Norham Gardens, Oxford, Dear President, 8 Nov. 1905. Yes; I am on the side of ' Camerarius ' in this question. I find no difficulty in explaining my position, as I learnt the * limits of Political Economy ' and the Laissez-faire system more than forty years ago from Comte ; and was confirmed in this attitude of reserve by two statements to the same effect, one by F. Harrison, the other by the Irishman, Dr. Ingram (of Dublin). Carlyle and, in a very minor degree, Ruskin may have had some influence, but my conversion from Cobdenism is really due to the three men I have mentioned. When I was a College Tutor I always made my pupils read — or if they failed to read it themselves, gave them the substance of — Comte's Critique of Pol. Econ. And I remem- ber once telling this to John Morley, who said he was very glad to hear it. I should like to be able to look inside his head, and see what he really thinks of the scheme of our friend ' Camerarius '. Sincerely yours, Ingram Bywater. 1 The family name of this famous scholar, the friend of Melan- cthon, was Liebhard. He assumed the name of Camerarius, in accordance with the literary fashion of the day, because the office of Court Chamberlain at Tubingen was hereditary in his family. DEATH OF MRS. BYWATER 163 Bywater's frequent visits to Spain in the company of his wife have already been mentioned. Whether these foreign tours were first prompted by Mrs. Bywater's love of Spanish literature and language or by his own interest in Antonio of Lebrixa is not clear. He searched the Spanish libraries for Antonio's writings, and paid a special visit to the University of Alcala. He also formed an acquaintance with one or two Spanish scholars. 1 But the travellers moved freely about, visiting the shrine of St. James of Compostella and other places of general interest. These holiday excursions, whatever their inspiration, were among the chief pleasures of Bywater's later years. But this happy and congenial married life was drawing to its close. Mrs. Bywater had always enjoyed unusually sound health until the year 1907, when she became con- scious that there was something amiss. Before very long she was pronounced to be suffering from a com- plaint which must ultimately prove fatal. Bywater could not bear, even in writing to his most intimate friends, to acknowledge the full weight of his anxieties. But his acts were more expressive than his words, and when he sought leave of absence from his professorial duties, those who cared for him could not but fear the worst. Mrs. Bywater died on February 17, 1908. She was buried at Salcombe Regis, the home of her family and of her youth. Her last resting-place was at the end of the graveyard, in a quiet spot not far from the sea, where Bywater before many years had passed was to lie 1 The papers deposited in the Bodleian supply evidence of this, especially two interesting letters from Dr. Lutoslawski, of Corunna, ask- ing for an expression of Bywater's opinion about his writings on Plato. M 1 164 OXFORD AND LONDON, 1885-1908 by her side. Even his fortitude and self-command were not proof against this calamity. Some time elapsed before his spirit recovered elasticity enough to permit his return to some of the usual occupations of his life. The following letter of M. Legrand refers to subjects on which other correspondence passed between him and Bywater. They were both interested in tracing the history of Greeks who settled in England at dif- ferent times. The forgeries of Rodocanakis specially roused M. Legrand's curiosity. Paris, rue Humboldt, n° 25, Cher Monsieur, 28 Nov. 1888. Je vous remercie bien sincerement de votre excellente lettre du 25 courant et je vous suis tres cordialement recon- naissant pour les trois descriptions de livres que vous avez eu l'extreme bonte de faire a mon intention. Elles sont une precieuse contribution a mes futurs volumes, ou elles figureront, comme c'est justice, avec votre nom. Je vous remercie beaucoup pour la proposition que vous me faites de me donner copie des certificats concernant Chr. Angel os ; je n'en ai pas besoin, car je connais deja cette curieuse piece, que j'ai rencontree ailleurs. Merci pour votre indication de la ' National Biography '. J'ai depuis longtemps copie la notice de Wood sur Angelos dans l'ouvrage bien connu intitule ' Athenae Oxonienses ', ou elle se trouve, colonne 618 du t. i er . Wood y donne une indication relative a la sepulture d'Angelos, dans l'^glise de S* Ebbe a Oxford. Comme il a donne la date exacte du d^ces et de l'inhumation, on pourrait peut-etre retrouver quelque indication dans les registres de cette paroisse, si elle existe encore et s'il y avait des actes mortuaires a cette epoque. J'ai la description de l'ouvrage d'Angelos intitule: ' De Apostasia Ecclesiae et de homine peccati scilicet Antichristo, etc' (Londres, 1624, 4 .) II se trouve a la Bodleienne. Pressmark : 4 . P. 12. Th. BS (4). LETTER FROM M. LEGRAND 165 Puisqu'il est question des Grecs ayant vecu en Angleterre, je pense que j'ai publie il y a quelques annees un petit poeme sur le ' Retour de Charles II' par Constantin Rhodocanakis (ou Rodocanakis, sans h), d'apres l'exemplaire conserve a la Bodleienne. Si vous ne possedez pas cette reimpression, comme c'est probable (car elle n'a pas ete mise en vente et n'a ete tiree qu'a 50 exempl.), dites-le moi, et je me ferai un devoir de vous en offrir un. II m'en reste encore 3 ou 4. Si vous avez occasion de visiter la Bodleienne, vous m'o- bligeriez beaucoup en y demandant du susdit Rhodocanakis (ou Rod.) son ' Tractatus de Resolutione verborum ' publie separement a Cambridge en 1676 et 1685. Je voudrais bien en avoir le titre. C'est le meme opuscule qui a ete si souvent publie dans le vieux dictionnaire de Schrevelius et qui fut publie pour la i re fois dans une ed. du meme diet, donnee a Londres en 1663 par Joseph Hill. Je vous ai renvoye hier recommandi votre ' Janus Lascaris, Epigrammata'. Et je vous remercie une fois encore pour tant d'amabilites envers moi. Si je puis vous etre utile a Paris en qnoi que ce soit, disposez de moi, je vous prie, sans le moin- dre scrupule. Bien tout a vous E. Legrand. Bywater had acquired a very rare volume, Reper- toriiim in libros Aristotclis by Riverius (J. Nebriensis). His curiosity was roused by the second name, J. Nebriensis, all the more because the place which gave a name to his favourite Antonio was called indifferently Nebrixa or Lebrixa. On one of his visits to Spain he made special inquiries at Madrid, but gained no information. He afterwards addressed himself to M. Omont, whose reply is here printed. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cher et savant Ami, 13 Juilht 1910. Vous voudrez bien m'excuser d'avoir ete si long a repon- dre a votre aimable lettre. Nous n'avions ici aucun renseigne- i66 OXFORD AND LONDON, 1885-1908 ment sur J. Nebriensis et les correspondances que je viens d'avoir a son sujet n'apportent pas grand resultat. Je serais porte a croire que le nom Riverius doit etre inter- prete de Riverie, village pres de Lyon. Mais personne ici et a Lyon n'a pu me donner l'interpreta- tion de Nebriensis et nous n'avons pas votre precieux Reper- torium in libros Aristotelis,(\\xo. le bibliothecaire de Lyon m'e- crit ne point posseder non plus. Dans Allut, etude biographique et bibliographique sur Symphorien Champier (Lyon, 1859, 8°), p. 52, l'auteur cite parmi les amis de S. Champier ' Jean de Riverie, lyonnois conseiller au Parlement de Toulouse '. Mais cette citation est empruntee au Ducllum epistolare (Venise, 1519, 8°), 011 est cite : ' Jacobus Riviriacus Lugdunensis, Tholosani Parlamenti senator, vir literatissimus.' Et dans la table du Catalogue des actes de Francois I, on trouve mentionne Jacques de Riverie, Riverya ou Riviere, de Tournefeuille, conseiller au Parlement de Tou- louse, jusqu'en 1543. Je vais continuer la petite enquete, mais sans grand espoir d'arriver a un resultat nouveau et utile. N'y aurait-il pas dans votre Rcpertorium quelque detail pouvant mettre sur la voie ? Tous les bibliophiles se rejouiront de parcourir la notice des vieux et bons livres que vous avez si patiemment et si judicieusement recueillies. Ce sont de vieux amis, toujours stirs, rappelant d'agreables souvenirs et avec lesquels on aime toujours a causer. Ne vous rameneront-ils pas cet automne a Paris ? Je n'ose vous promettre, quelqu'envie que j'en aie, ma visite a Londres, au milieu de vos tresors. Veuillez agreer l'hommage de mes sentiments tres cordiale- ment devoues. H. OMONT. Bywater, soon after acquiring a copy of Melancthon De Anima inscribed with Rabelais's autograph, had written to Monsieur Seymour de Ricci, President of the Rabelaisian Society in Paris, and had sent him the LETTER FROM M. DE RICCI 167 book. M. de Ricci at once pronounced the signature genuine, and the book worth at least .£200, which was much more than Bywater had given. M. de Ricci afterwards submitted the book to his Society. The letter (written in English) from which the following extracts are given was addressed to Bywater in reply to further inquiries from him : Grand Continental Hotel, Cairo, Egypt, 1 February, 1909. Dear Sir, It is too bad of our Hon. Sec. ! Not only did we greatly admire your Rabelaisian monument, but immediately voted its publication in our Bulletin. I then moved a vote of thanks to the owner and lender : carried on the spot. I also suggested you might like a copy of the part containing your book described in it. This was also voted, but as it appears never carried out. There is not the slightest doubt as to the genuineness of your autograph ; the best proof of all being the evidence that as early as 1610 your copy belonged to quite an excellent French bibliophile, a gentleman whose name (being now for a couple of months an Egyptologist) I have quite forgotten, but which you will find written across the bottom of your title- page in a bold seventeenth-century hand. . . . Another curious fact is that Rabelais had another copy of Melancthon de Anima (which by the way is a treatise of anatomy) : this second copy, if I remember rightly, appeared or rather disappeared at one of the Marquis de Morante's sales in Paris (1(872 rather than 1878). As Morante (better known to many bibliophiles as Gomez de la Cortina) lived himself in Madrid, both his book and yours must have been a mile or two apart some thirty years ago. Is it not a marvellous coincidence ? . . . Truly S. de Ricci. 168 OXFORD AND LONDON, 1885-1908 The purport of the following letter from the eminent scholar and writer whose name it bears is clear. But there is among Bywater's papers no indication of the reason why he addressed inquiries to M. Boutroux. Paris, 5 rond-point Bugeaud, 30 Juin 1907. TRES HONORE ET CHER COLLEGUE, Voici tous les renseignements que j'ai pu recueillir sur S. Clarke moulin a raisonner. Voltaire, dans une lettre a Formont de 1 73 3, qualifie S. Clarke de ' raisonneur ' et du ' meilleur sophiste qui ait jamais ete'. Dans Le Philosophc ignorant il dit que S. Clarke ' a combattu avec mauvaise foi des verites dont il sentait la force ' et que ' chez lui, le predicateur a etouffe le philosophe '. Le passage le plus developpe ou Voltaire parle de S. Clarke et resume le bien et le mal qu'il pense de lui est la section II de l'article Platon du Dictionnairc philosophiqnc. Voila tout ce que nous avons pu trouver. Nous ne voyons pas indique, dans les editions les plus completes de Voltaire, de passage ou il ait traite S. Clarke de ' moulin a raisonner '. Permettez-moi de vous redire le grand plaisir que j'ai eu a me retrouver avec vous a Vienne, et croyez, tres honore et cher collegue, a mes sentiments bien cordialement devoues, Em. Boutroux. The following draft of a letter from Prof. Bywater to Dr. Diels refers to the project of a New Greek Thesaurus. 93 Onslow Square, S.W., 14 May, 1906. Dear Friend, [A few sentences referring to the business of the British Academy are omitted.] The proposal [of preparing a new Greek Thesaurus] having been made, and accepted by the Associated Academies, I BYWATER TO DR. DIELS 169 think it ought to be carried out, and carried out soon. I say ' soon ', because Greek learning is still cultivated and recognized in many countries. But I see the handwriting on the wall everywhere — even in Germany, and am not hopeful as to the future of the old humanities. At the present moment, how- ever, there is an abundant supply of competent and willing workers ; so that the main difficulty is after all the question of expense. In your Hamburg paper you have very properly laid great stress on the financial difficulty. But I do not feel that so strongly, as I know that such undertakings never pay. Oxford stands to lose at least £100,000 over the New Englisli Diction- ary ; and our Dictionary of National Biography was equally costly, and would have ruined a less wealthy publisher. George Smith, however, was rich, and also public-spirited ; so that the work was carried out to the finish in spite of its costly nature. As to another point on which you lay stress, viz. the enor- mous scale of a Thesaurus, I feel that as strongly as you do ; but I am not convinced that a scale of such magnitude is wanted or desirable. The lesson the new Latin Thesaurus teaches one is the need of moderation and limit. This might be done (1) by drawing the line at 622 absolutely ; and (2) treating all works during the period from A.D. 1 to 622 in an eclectic way — dealing more especially with the new words and the technical words which appear in this period, and leaving most of the rest to take care of themselves. But a letter is not the place for a complete scheme. Then again as to the idea of having, at any rate in the first instance, a series of special lexica dealing with blocks of literature. It involves a good deal of overlapping, and repetition of meanings common to all the writers of a certain period. And (2) the classifications must be to a large degree rough or artificial. Thus Aristotle would be, I presume, put among the philosophers, but as far as the Politics are concerned, his language would put him among the Historici, and as far as the Rhet. among the RJictores. 170 OXFORD AND LONDON, 1885-1908 The following interesting letter was written by the late Professor Silvanus Thompson in answer to Bywater's inquiries : Morland, Chislett Road, West Hampstead, N.W., Mar. 23, 1907. Dear Sir, Your kind letter revives in me a fresh interest in the Serpent-Mark, and its use by Conrad Neobar. I have done nothing for the last ten years about this matter ; but am still eager to learn anything that may complete the subject. It happens that quite lately I have heard of something which may explain why so many printers seem to have chosen an almost identical device at almost the same epoch. At the foot of p. 10 of my monograph on Peter Short, I mention a puzzle, namely, that while Vincentius used the brazen-serpent Mark, he described his shop as dal segno d ' Erasmo. I have been told, but have not verified it, that Erasmus, when he adopted his Latinized name, ceased to use the Ghaerhardt arms, and adopted as his own the brazen serpent emblazoned on a shield. This clears up the mystery. It also accounts for the appearance of the serpent on the title- page of books printed by Hans Lufft of Wittenberg (see p. 12), who printed some of Erasmus's works. Did Neobar print any editions of Erasmus ? I possess hardly any Paris-printed books of the sixteenth century, and know nothing of the Paris printers beyond the scraps in my paper on Peter Short. Believe me, Yours most truly, Silv. P. Thompson. CHAPTER IX Closing years, 1908-14 — Regius Professorship — Leaves Oxford — Various interests — Elenchus Librorum — Reminiscences of Dr. Vaughan Cornish — Last illness and death — Brief estimate of character. As soon after Mrs. Bywater's death as Bywater was able to form plans for his future life, he made up his mind to resign the Regius Professorship. He briefly states his reason in the autobiographical fragment already referred to : 'I have a strong feeling that a Professor should not remain at his post after his energies have begun to wane.' Mrs. Bywater had bequeathed to him their London house and its contents and the greater part of her income for his life, so that there was no necessity for deferring this step, and there was unfortunately no doubt that the state of his health rendered it expedient. Even before his wife's death, time and hard work had begun to tell on him. After his bereavement, his bodily strength continued gradually to decline, although the brightness and keenness of his intellect remained unimpaired to the last. Early in life he had taken a fancy to Hastings, and was in the habit of spending a few days there to recruit after one of the slight attacks of malaria from which he suffered. He was attracted thither in the first instance partly because it was the residence of Dr. W. A. Greenhill, whose friendship with him has already been mentioned. In Bywater's later years he was also on terms of friendship with Coventry Pat- more the poet, and spent a few days under his roof at 172 CLOSING YEARS, 1908-14 Hastings. In his last years he would run down to his old haunt from time to time, though he now derived little benefit from the change. After his wife's death his early friends, such as Sir Ray Lankester, were often with him, and he took special pleasure in the society of Mrs. Bywater's relatives — her sisters (one of whom died before him), her nephew, Dr.Vaughan Cornish, whose reminiscences are printed later, and of Mrs. Charles Cornish, after- wards his executrix, the widow of another distinguished nephew of Mrs. Bywater ; and he still continued to welcome the visits of his younger friends, and of foreign acquaintance. One of the last of these whom he re- ceived at his house was Father Duchesne, the eminent Church historian. His favourite form of hospitality was luncheon. After a repast at which everything was admirably ordered, and nothing excessive, and conversa- tion had freely flowed, he would adjourn to his library with his friend or friends, who neither wished nor were allowed to leave until the need for catching a train or some other engagement forced them to bid him farewell. He still kept up his practice of paying periodical visits to Mr. Cartwright of Aynho, and Mr. Sotheby of Ecton Park, Northamptonshire, until the death of the latter, and occasionally spent a day or two with some other friend, besides passing some time at Sidmouth. His life indeed, though he had no companion permanently installed in his house, was far from solitary. With his beloved books all round him, he could not feel really companionless. ' His books', Mr. P. S. Allen tells us, ' were wonderful, filling completely the walls of his study and an adjoin- ing room, standing- in cabinets in the drawing-room, the 'ELENCHUS LIBRORUM VARIORUM' 173 drawers of which were packed with folios and over- flowing into book-cases, on the stairs, and in bed- rooms where, in washing one's hands, one could survey long lines of volumes (the wisdom of fifty years ago) which now undeservedly find themselves on back shelves in libraries.' His collection of books went on growing in number and value until the end of his life. During these last years he was still adding to them and setting them in order before making" his disposition for their final destination. In 191 1 he printed for his own use, and for private circulation only, in an octavo pamphlet, a list of his choicer books, entitled Elenchus librorum vetustiorum apud ** hospitantium, characteristically concealing the name of the owner, although, as Mr. Madan points out, by a freak of fortune the foot of page 1 exhibits the tell-tale legend 'I. B.' This Elenchus is dedicated Pits Manibus Emilii Legrand, the author of the Biblio- graphic Hellduique, his intimacy with whom has been mentioned in the preceding chapter. In the note below are statistics derived from the Elenchus, but not including additions made to the collection since 191 1. 1 1 The list contains 3,622 separate works, of which, for instance, 171 are entries under Aristotle, 39 under Galen, 44 under J. J. Sca- liger, 37 under H. Stephanus, and under a comparatively little-known writer like Fortunatus Licetus 26. Fifty-three bear De Thou's arms on their binding, and a like number have manuscript marginalia by such scholars as Boissonade, Casaubon, Justel, Nodier, Peiresc, Pithou, Porson, Salmasius, and J. J. Scaliger, and 185 bear auto- graphs of several of the above and of Baluze, Sir Kenelm Digby, Gronovius, the two Heinsius, Kulencamp, Labbaeus, Racine, Wytten- bach, and the like. A copy of the Commeutatio de Anima of Melan- cthon (1540) bears the rare autograph ' Francisci Rabelesi, koi tuv avrov v\ The Incunabula number 152, of which 31 are Greek : the books printed in the first half of the sixteenth century are 1,159 174 CLOSING YEARS, 1908-14 The number of books added to his collection after 191 1 was considerable. As he told his friend, Bodley's Librarian, the task of balancing his accounts for the year derived additional zest from his speculations as to the possibility of affording the outlay necessary for the purchase of some coveted treasure. One of these treasures was the rare edition of Aesop {Aesopi Vitae et Fabulae), published in three parts, 4to, Milan, circa 1476, a work precious in the eyes of collectors and proportionately costly. Happily for By water and the Bodleian, there was a sufficient balance on the right side to enable him, after one or two disap- pointments, to acquire it a couple of years before his death. The whole of the books enumerated in his printed list, together with the additions made to them since April, 191 1, entered with his own hand in an inter- leaved copy of the Elenchus, he bequeathed to the Bodleian, with an express wish that for at least twenty- one years they should be kept together. By the pious care of Bodley's Librarian, assisted by the contributions of some of Bywater's personal friends, the collection has been sumptuously housed in handsome book-cases, carefully constructed so as to show off the books to the best advantage. The room in which they are placed will be known as the Bywater Room ; and the book-cases are adorned with a reproduction of his portrait by Sargent. His bequest will remain as a monument to future generations of a student who, as (459 Greek), no fewer than 414 coming from Paris presses, of which Mr. Bywater made a special study, as might be deduced from his possessing 41 volumes from the rare press of Gilles Gourmont. (From the Bodleian Quarterly Record, No. 4, p. S3.) 'ELENCHUS LIBRORUM VARIORUM' 175 a bibliophile, deserves to rank with any of those who have enriched the great Library by the gift of their collections. Nothing impressed Bywater's friends more than the stores of unsuspected knowledge which were constantly pouring forth from the treasure-house of his mind. There have been various persons from time to time who have impressed their friends in this manner. Almost all these had special tastes which partly accounted for their wide range of knowledge. But the love of books was common to them all. Bywater had the instincts both of the student and of the book collector very strongly developed. Whenever his attention was drawn to any subject he did not rest until he had acquainted himself with the sources from which the most thorough and scientific knowledge of that subject could be obtained. From an early period in his career his friends became aware that if they desired direction as to their reading in any department of knowledge, however far remote it might seem from his special line, they might receive it by consulting him. In the same way, when he added a precious volume to his collection, he did more than turn over its pages. If the book itself were authoritative on any subject, he carried away some of its contents in his retentive memory, or if it awakened his interest but was not authoritative he ascertained at least where his best information might be procured. ' He gave me a new idea of scholarship,' said an astonished expert after conversing with him upon an obscure point in the history of Italian art. ' I must go away and work for years.' Mr. P. S. Allen (in the Journal of Philology) 176 CLOSING YEARS, 1908-14 illustrates Bywater's practice, even in his last years, of mastering subjects that interested him by referring to his treatment of the great edition of the Letters of Erasmus, now being issued from the Clarendon Press. ' When the Clarendon Press undertook an edition of the Letters of Erasmus Bywater readily charged himself with the supervision of the book. This task might have been light if he had wished to spare himself, but he made it heavy by his thorough scrutiny of texts and notes. Three volumes of 600 pages each passed under his hand and came back sometimes with convincing emendations, sometimes with addition to the notes of sources that should have been cited, the publication of antiquarian societies — and once even a College magazine at Cambridge — or corrections in the forms of names or in the initials of German scholars. With his characteristic reserve he would say no word of praise or compliment : but he could let his dissatisfaction be felt if necessary, and he was unhesitating in esteeming work of which he approved.' When we take account of the time and labour devoted by Bywater to matters of literary interest that came before him incidentally, either on the Delegacy of the Press or in dealing with his own collection of books, while at the same time he was conscientiously discharging his duties as editor of the y our nal of Philo- logy and was answering questions addressed to him from various quarters on points of scholarship, it is not surprising that in his last years he quailed before the task of completing his edition of Diogenes Laertius or of undertaking any fresh work of research. As time went on, his independence of judgement on topics of general interest and his freshness of mind were not less strongly marked than in his earlier days. Before recording some reminiscences illustrative of COMPULSORY GREEK 177 these characteristics, it may be permissible to dwell at some length on a point of special interest at the present time on which Bywater did not definitely declare himself until near the close of his life, viz. on the expediency of granting some exemption from the study of Greek, which is still compulsory on all persons who are desirous of proceeding to an Oxford degree. H is final judgement is expressed in the autobiographical fragment already quoted and printed in the Appendix. His words are so pregnant, and convey his own feeling towards Greek, as well as the grounds on which he was prepared to make this concession, with so much force and exactness, that any reader interested in this subject should refer to the Appendix and read them for himself. The Editor of the journal who asked for the state- ment printed by him evidently regarded the expression of Bywater's final opinion on compulsory Greek as the most important point in it, and although this might not have been Bywater's own view, he plainly wished to leave no doubt on the subject. In order to understand the significance of his remarks it is necessary to refer, however briefly, to the history of the controversy about compulsory Greek at Oxford in recent years. To a certain extent Latin as well as Greek is involved ; but as Latin is generally regarded by the assailants of Classics with more indulgence, and is very generally recognized in the curriculum of secondary schools, Greek has to bear the brunt of the assault. The controversy was started less than a hundred years ago by those who advocated the teaching of Natural Science on the ground that it was the more ' useful ' kind of knowledge, i. e. more conducive to son N 178 CLOSING YEARS, 1908-14 material advantage and enjoyment. So long as the monopoly enjoyed by the classical languages at the public schools and the Universities was attacked by the votaries of Natural Science on this ground, the classicists had little to fear. From the first they never lost sight of the sound principle that a liberal education must aim at the cultivation of the mental faculties ; in other words, at the perfecting of the instrument by which the power of dealing both with knowledge and with all the various problems which present themselves to the mind for solution is best attained. But in a few years the position was changed, when the ardour for scientific research had become one of the great spiritual forces of the age, and the methods and conclusions of Natural Science were exercising a powerful influence on all other branches of study and in all departments of thought. The advocates of Science, of whom Huxley was the most prominent, now took up the ground that the study of Natural Science was itself a means of developing the mind, apart from any utilitarian considerations. Moreover, the scientific temper was essential for the acquisition of any sound knowledge either of man or of nature. By the study of Natural Science men were taught to test their conclusions by the light of facts, and to be content with no knowledge unless it was as thorough as circumstances permitted. From every point of view the study of Natural Science was the best means of qualifying men to play their proper part in the environment in which they were placed. The strength of the attack compelled the classicists to revise and enlarge their theory. The defence of classical studies was gradually placed on the ground which it at present occupies. It was pointed out that COMPULSORY GREEK 179 the study of Greek, which was chiefly impugned, was more than a mental gymnastic. Not only was it the best means of sharpening the faculties of the mind, but the thought and point of view of the Greeks had become inextricably blended with the best thought and cultivation of succeeding ages, and the latter could not be interpreted without the aid of the former. Moreover, the study of Science was not the sole means of develop- ing the scientific habit of mind. Greek and Latin might be studied scientifically as well as Physics or Chemistry, and thoroughness of study was as essential for the one as for the other. It is evident that in principle the two parties were approximating to one another. The classicists hardly perceived that in allowing the need of thoroughness in all study alike they had made a concession which, in the present circumstances of education, might prove fatal to the exclusive supremacy which they had hitherto enjoyed. Not only were scientific studies rapidly ad- vancing, but modern studies generally. History and modern languages (including English) especially were clamouring for recognition. Without a knowledge of modern languages it was hardly possible for a student of Natural Science to prosecute his inquiries. Scaliger's dictum that ' He who knows no Greek knows nothing' may be quite true of those who concern them- selves exclusively with what may be called the Humanities. It may be quite true that a knowledge of Greek thought in its relation to modern life is necessary for those who wish to understand the origin and inner significance of some of the most powerful movements affecting the development of modern society. But even this is not enough to justify the statement that N 2 180 CLOSING YEARS, 1908-14 there are no studies which may not, in certain circum- stances, and for certain classes of students, be acceptable as a substitute for Greek. The admission that knowledge must be scientific and thorough seems to carry with it a principle which both sides may accept. If, for the thorough and complete mastery of any branch of knowledge, the acquisition of Latin and Greek is indispensably necessary, then by all means let the study of the classical languages be retained for those students ; but if, as e. g. in the case of Mathematics or Physics, the knowledge of the ancient languages is not essential, then let it be permitted to substitute some other study which may fairly be called liberal, although in itself that study may not have the prestige or the claims that belong to the classical languages. If this principle were adopted, a very large number of candidates for a degree would still have to acquire a knowledge of Greek, and even those who were allowed to substitute another subject for it would in many cases adhere to Greek. At the older Universities the compulsory require- ment of a modicum of Greek and Latin is quite incon- sistent with the maintenance of the scientific ideal of study. When a man who has not learned Greek at school, but is a really enthusiastic student of Science, acquainted with the best methods, and eager to make progress on his own account, comes to Oxford or Cambridge, he is told that the first thing he must do is to lay aside his own pursuits, to give up the notion of thoroughness, and cram a modicum of knowledge which he will do his best to forget as soon as he has acquired it, and regards at the time as an intolerable burden and interruption. It is difficult for any one who COMPULSORY GREEK 181 holds what may be called the scientific theory of know- ledge to defend such a practice, when he takes into account the vast field of knowledge, and the need of thoroughness for deriving the fullest advantage from every intellectual pursuit. The foregoing sketch is not intended as a complete statement of the arguments in favour of allowing in certain studies an option for Greek at the older Universities, but it is enough to explain the concession to the modernist view which Bywater very explicitly makes in the passage from his autobiographical state- ment just referred to. He had been very unwilling to make this concession. The study of Greek especially is regarded by those who have taken to it heart and soul in their earlier years with an affection which those who have not had this experience find difficult to understand. Jowett felt such an affection. He never for a moment wavered in his adherence to the require- ment of both Greek and Latin for every one who aspires to an Oxford degree. With him it was almost a personal affection, like that of Socrates for his father Parmenides. Bywater had shared this feeling, which was only intensified by what he considered to be the attacks of ignorant and vulgar prejudice. This sentiment comes out repeatedly in his correspondence with other scholars. Nor was he disposed to think much of the plea that the acquisition of a modicum of Greek was a serious interruption to a man's scientific studies. He did not perhaps to the last take into account the difficulty interposed by a man's idiosyncrasies, or by the pedantry and inexperience of examiners. But the scientific ideal of study which he did his best to uphold both by precept and by practice finally decided him. i8 2 CLOSING YEARS, 1908-14 Even the more advanced study of Greek at the Universities under existing circumstances he thought to be often little more than a convention. For the mere acquisition of a modicum which is at present all that is or can be required, so long as it is compulsory on every one, he had no respect whatever. It is now undeniable that in the great and growing variety of secondary schools throughout the country, one invariable curriculum is impossible. The student of Science, as Bywater clearly saw, must be left free to choose that curriculum which is best adapted to his own needs. He would have been the last person to wish that Oxford should open her doors to the classical student alone, or should decline to take her full share in the teaching and advancement of Natural Science. Every Oxford man must desire that the School of Literae Humaniores, which has done so much to train men for the higher administrative work in the State, should not abdicate its function and fall into neglect. 1 The position of the School will be challenged and may have to be further modified. The danger to which it is exposed arises not from those who would give Natural Science its due, but from the tendency which is again strongly asserting itself to regard all education under a grossly material aspect, and to favour those studies only which contribute to material pleasure and profit. Bywater's lifelong devotion to a scholar's ideal is a protest against this tendency. The impression which Bywater produced on those who were nearest to him in his last years, and the 1 For an excellent statement of the services rendered to the nation by the School of Literae Humaniores, see Professor Gilbert Murray's Inaugural Lecture, p. 9. TABLE-TALK 183 fashion of his talk, will be illustrated by the remini- scences which have been most kindly supplied by Dr. Vaughan Cornish, Mrs. Bywater's nephew, and £ favourite companion of Bywater after her death. These reminiscences are the more valuable as embody- ing the observation of a student of Science whose own o pursuits lay in other fields than those with which Bywater was familiar. Dr. Vaughan Cornish writes as follows : Ingram Bywater"s Conversation. I first came to know Ingram Bywater well in 1908 during the illness of my aunt, Mrs. Bywater, and in the lonely months which followed her death. Later, in 1911, I myself suffered a bereavement which made me somewhat dependent on By- water's companionship, and, in addition to seeing a good deal of him in London, we stayed together more than once in the Victoria Hotel at Sidmouth during the month of August. When in London our talk generally began at luncheon, some- times with other company, but usually tite a tete. In the latter case half-past three found us still in the dining-room, my host now in full conversational swing. Presently he would propose an adjournment to the study, where his cigarettes were followed by pipes ; and then tea, which he somewhat despised, appeared. I left at about five o'clock, not because my host's conversation was exhausted, but because my head would not hold any more. At Sidmouth also we did not meet in the morning, but our afternoons were more varied, as we used to take a deliberate walk, or a drive, or, occasionally, attend a garden-party. A long evening talk followed, which was only curtailed by my bad habit of going early to bed. Bywater was always studying. By the time we met at luncheon he had done three or four hours' reading and anno- tating, and I think it was almost necessary for him to have a listener now that he had given up his Professorship. More- over, he would not talk to everybody. I once joined him at Sidmouth when he had already been a fortnight in the hotel 184 CLOSING YEARS, 1908-14 without speaking to any one. One of the charms of his con- versation was that one never knew where it would lead. If it began with mutton chops, it went to mutton-chop whiskers and the fashion for them in the British Army in Wellington's time. Then the adornment, supposed to be characteristically- British, was traced to the prevalence of this fashion among our Spanish allies, and we came, finally, to the Spanish bull- fighter, who still wears this form of whisker. When I say that we came to this finally, I only mean finally as far as the mutton-chop-and-whisker part of the conversation was con- cerned, for, having embarked upon Peninsular matters, he had a good deal to say about things which the Spaniards tock from us, particularly English clocks, with details of their workmanship and makers. Bywater was always interested in the history of artistic workmanship and fine crafts, and would show me specimens of printing done not long after the inven- tion of the art in which the type was better than any now made. This he would cite, among other examples, to show that the march of human events is not by any means invariably progressive. I remember a saying of his about the way furni- ture is tested by time : ' The good ', he said, ' becomes venerable with age, the bad simply shabby.' Of houses he preferred the stately Georgian country mansion, with its large well-proportioned rooms of simple shape, and he liked such houses to remain as free as possible from what he regarded as modern inconveniences. He made an exception in favour of hot-water pipes for halls and passages, but that was merely a return to the arrangements of the Roman villa in Britain. He said that ' he did not like a performing house, but preferred that things should be done by properly trained servants '. Sir Ray Lankester, one of his oldest and closest friends, has referred, in an obituary notice, to Bywater's acquaintance with, and appreciation of, the work of modern physical science. This being my own line, our conversation used, at first, to veer pretty frequently in this direction, but latterly I introduced the subject less often as I found it unprofitable. The fact, TABLE-TALK 185 I am sure, was that his interest in Natural Science was in the examples it afforded of the exercise of mental powers. Nature, outside human nature, made very little appeal to him. He could be interested in a scientific research, but not in the thing investigated. In the same way he might be interested in a landscape painting, but had no critical appreciation of scenery. He was not indifferent, indeed, to the soothing charm of the Sidmouth Valley, but was contented with the aspect which it presented from Salcombe House, where he used to stay in the old days, or, later, from the Marine Parade and the neighbourhood of his hotel. He did not trouble to climb a hill for the wider view. But all good work, particularly in scientific scholarship and literary art, appealed to him intensely. Unfortunately he would talk very little to me of scientific scholarship, knowing that my Greek was still that of the Fourth Form. In all our talks he only referred once to Aristotle, when he said that, on account of the range of his subjects, ' he inclined to the opinion that Aristotle, at least in his later years, became a syndicate '. He was at that time reading the ' Natural History ', with books relating to which he had filled the travelling book-trunk (extra strong with straps attached) which he used to bring down to Sidmouth. One day, when talking about books, I asked Bywater why a satisfactory biography was so rare ; to which he replied, ' The reason is that while the people are alive to whom it refers the truth cannot be told, and after they are dead it can seldom be ascertained '. Then he smiled happily and drank his sherry, for he enjoyed saying a good thing neatly. He was, however, extremely conscientious in this respect, never colouring the truth to adorn a phrase. I have often noticed that a man's conscience develops along the line of his occupation, and the moral obligation of accuracy was always present to Bywater's mind. Perhaps one of the best ways of illustrating the character of a man's conversation is to record the way in which he handles a hackneyed subject. One day, when I adverted to the well- worn topic of clerical standards, he said : ' You see, my dear Vaughan, the truth is that the clergy are very good men, and 186 CLOSING YEARS, 1908-14 knowing this they allow themselves a latitude of conduct in merely mundane matters which you or I could not possibly afford \ One of the merits of Bywater's conversation was that it lent itself to quotation. The words I have cited above are in each case his own, without alteration, for he spoke as a book. This made him a somewhat slow speaker as judged by rate of articulation, but, as he never needed to correct himself or change the course of a sentence when in the middle of it, he probably got through as much as most people in a given time, for it is singular how few men talk without, so to speak, crossing out words. I have quoted the above remark about the clergy merely as a good example of his table-talk ; but he often spoke more seriously on Church matters, particularly on the relation of Anglican, Roman, and Greek clergy to the laity. He held that in England we were particularly fortunate in the circumstance that our clergy are recruited from so good a class of society, and he was impressed by the sum total of useful and unobtrusive work done throughout the kingdom by the parochial clergy. Referring to a man who had gone over to Rome, Bywater said that he had, generally speaking, a very poor opinion of any one who changed the religion in which he was brought up ; ' but ', he added, thoughtfully, ' if I had been offered the posi- tion of Librarian at the Vatican, I confess I should have been tempted to become a Roman Catholic. I don't know that I should have done it, but I certainly should have been tempted.' Bywater frequently spoke to me on University education, particularly that given at Oxford. He was not an advocate of Greek as a compulsory subject for all Undergraduates. He was of opinion that for savants the University course should be long and elaborate, but that men who had to go into prac- tical life were kept under tuition too long. ' I often think ', he said, 'that modern education is a conspiracy on the part of schoolmasters and dons to keep men babies until they are four-and-twenty.' It was after the outbreak of the war with Germany that he TABLE-TALK 187 spoke of the excellent service which had so often been rendered by very young officers in Wellington's time. The scale of pay of officers he thought iniquitously low, making, as he said, no due allowance for the difference between work which entailed risk of wounds and death, and the safe occupations of civilian life. This bad treatment of officers he attributed to the influ- ence of commercialism, and particularly of the Manchester school of politics. In the early days of the war, when many protests were being raised against interference with the comfort of our enemies, he declared that ' of late years humanitarianism has gone mad in England '. The claims of Liberalism to be an important agent in the elevation of mankind he regarded as without foundation. He looked upon its doctrines as being, on the contrary, subversive of much that is best in human nature. Thus, when speaking of the patriotic and military virtues of the Japanese, he said that he did not think these would last, because the mode of life on which that nation had entered would surely introduce among them ' the virus of liberalism ' which would sap these qualities. Democracy he did not admire, quoting with approval some sharp sayings of Carlyle about it. In the realm of ideas he was particularly hostile to the influence of the greatest of democracies, the United States, which was, he said, the great breeding-ground of popular crazes. Bywater was remarkably well acquainted with the character and scope of German scholarship. He spoke to me more than once, before the war broke out, of the propensity of the German professor, or aspirant for professorship, for stealing other men's thunder. He said, however, that we in England rather laid ourselves open to these piratical practices by our habit of withholding publication until a perfect statement can be framed. In the meantime the matter becomes known and is snapped up by the wily German, who secures priority of publication. Bywater was of opinion that when a man has made a discovery he should publish as soon as the main fact is certain, and that elaboration should be left for a later paper or treatise. 188 CLOSING YEARS, 1908-14 One day when I referred to some public buildings with fanciful features which had recently been erected in London, Bywater complained of our ' experimental architecture ', which he contrasted with the results obtained by following good tradition. Referring to church architecture, he said that the Romanists had in the matter a great advantage over the Anglicans, for their clergy had never lost touch with the best architectural talent, whereas in our Church we never knew what combination of persons would determine the style of each new church, and therefore that all sorts of vagaries were possible. It was not only in matters of art that he was severe on departures from good tradition. Once, in speaking of a family who are generally regarded as almost painfully intellectual, I incautiously referred to them as 'clever'. He replied with unusual warmth, ' Clever, certainly not ; they have no cleverness, only an enthusiasm for cheap causes '. One kind of departure from sound tradition which he could not tolerate was the use of what he called ' bad words '. ' Chandelier ' was permissible, ' gaselier ' could be endured, but ' electrolier ' made him downright angry. He did not regard total abstinence as meritorious ; indeed he reproved his niece for declining champagne, saying, ' I think you make a mistake, my dear ; it is one of the good things of life, and there are not too many of them '. He smoked largely, and did not think it necessary to excuse the habit. He used instead to tell the following story. Pio Nono, when in conversation with Cardinal Antonelli, lit a cigar- ette and handed the case to the Cardinal, who said, 'You know, Holiness, that I have not that vice'. 'You know, Eminence,' replied the Pope, ' that if it were a vice you would have it.' In reply to a remark on the lack of interest in scientific research which is displayed in general society, Bywater said, ' The desire to know the reason of things is quite exceptional, and always has been. Plato said that philosophers must always be few.' But the charge, sometimes made by people of restless mind, that the English are a stupid race, he hotly declared to be monstrously absurd in the light of our national record. RAPID DECLINE 189 A considerable time elapsed before I fully realized Bywater's ability. At first I missed in his conversation anything like the quick flashes of original genius. You could not strike sparks out of him. The value of what he said was always due to the amount of thought which he had previously given to the sub- ject, and there seemed, at first, a lack of individuality of opinion. Gradually I learnt that for him the sum of the views of the best minds was to be preferred to an individual opinion. But if he were not actually a genius he was far from being merely a learned man, for Nature had endowed him in an exceptional and pre-eminent degree with the judicial faculty, and it was the possession of this talent which made his great learning valuable. He said himself that he believed he had a legal mind and that he always derived keen pleasure from the reading of 'considered judgements ' in the Times Law Reports. During the later years to which these reminiscences refer, Bywater's strength had been rapidly failing. In early manhood he had looked the picture of health. He was just about middle height, but his square shoulders and straight figure made him look taller. He had completely lost his air of physical vigour even before Mrs. Bywater's last illness. About 191 1 he fell away rapidly, lost weight, and began to stoop. With characteristic indifference to his own symptoms he made light of them and attributed them to dyspepsia, but his friends could not help fearing some more serious mis- chief, and there is good reason to believe that Bywater himself was aware of the truth. When he obtained com- petent medical advice his complaint was far advanced. Nothing could be done by medical skill, even if he would have consented to extreme measures, except to make the inevitable as little trying as possible. He made no difference in his way of living. One of his interests in his last days was the celebra- igo CLOSING YEARS, 1908-14 tion of the 600th anniversary of the Foundation of his old college, Exeter. This was commemorated in various ways, among which was the insertion of the arms and monograms of distinguished members of that Foundation since the year 13 14 in the windows of the college hall. He was one of the committee appointed to procure the design and to select the arms and mono- crrams to be placed in the windows, and was constant in the performance of his duties. He was present at the festivities of this commemoration on June 25, 19 14, and was bright and cheerful as usual. Two days later, on June 27, the seventy-fourth anniversary of his birth, he gave to the Morning Post the autobiographical fragment of which use has been freely made in this memoir. Those who knew Bywater best will feel the least surprised that on this anniversary of his birth, which he must have known was the last he was likely to see, he should have wished to place on record a brief but authentic statement of some of his experiences and opinions. He spent the summer in his usual manner and enjoyed the society of his friends, returning to London for the winter. One of his friends, a brother scholar from the North, was to have spent the evening with him on a day subsequent to the date of his death, but graver symptoms suddenly began to appear. His attached friend and relative, Mrs. Charles Cornish, at once came to his side. He had every consolation that care and affection could bestow, till he passed away with comparatively little suffering, except from weakness, quite composedly and in possession of his faculties until almost the last, on Friday, December 17, 19 14. On the following ILLNESS AND DEATH 191 Wednesday he was buried at Salcombe Regis, Sid- mouth, beside his wife. A plain marble headstone which marks the spot bears the simplest possible inscription, placed there by Mrs. Charles Cornish with the help of Professor Cook Wilson. To the brief record of Mrs. Bywater's parentage, marriage, and death, drawn up by Bywater, the follow- ing lines were added : Also of • Ingram Bywater • Regius Professor of Greek • In the University of Oxford • And Student of Christ Church • 1 893-1 908 • Formerly Fellow of • Exeter College only son of • John Ingram Bywater • Born 27 June 1840 • Died 17 Dec. 19 14. His Amor unus erat. This short inscription, coupling his father's name with his own, and referring to the bond between himself and his wife with the reserve involved in the use of the Latin language, is exactly what Bywater himself might have composed. After all that has been said in the foregoing pages it is needless to attempt any lengthy enumeration of Bywater's characteristics, either in his work as a scholar or in his private life ; but it may not be out of place to sum up, as briefly as possible, the impression which his personality as a whole has left on the minds of his friends, even though such a summary can add little or nothing to the portrait already drawn. If it is permissible to adapt a well-known saying, he might be called ' felix opportunitate vitae '. Oxford scholars had come to feel that Oxford scholarship, with all its excellences, lacked something, if Oxford were to continue to hold its proper place among the Univer- sities of Europe. The hour strikes in vain unless the rg2 CLOSING YEARS, 1908-14 men are forthcoming to answer to the call. What was still required Byvvater and a band of congenial friends set themselves to supply. What his friends Henry Nettleship, Robinson Ellis, and H. F. Pelham were attempting in other portions of the field of classical learning, Bywater essayed to do for the study of Greek philosophical language and literature. He devoted him- self to the task he had undertaken not only with the most untiring industry but with a concentration of purpose which set aside every other pursuit, however attractive, that could have interfered with it. His most prominent characteristics were undoubtedly the sensitiveness of his intellectual conscience and the implicit obedience which he yielded to it. He regarded a University as the organ of the highest intellectual life of the nation. This was its differentia. If, there- fore, in any department it failed to fulfil its specific function, whatever else it might do it was a failure. No one will contend that the intellect is the whole man, but it enters largely into every department of life, espe- cially into morals. Bywater's habit of mind raised his conception of life in every department to a higher plane. In the sphere of conduct as in the pursuit of knowledge truth was always supreme. There was no one to whom a friend could £0 with greater confidence for advice in any grave perplexity, or even in minor matters of social propriety. He hardly ever, even in these minor matters, made a mistake himself. Entirely free from self-assertion and from any interested motive, he took an impartial view of the situation before him, and was under no illusions concerning either himself or others. At the same time he was no visionary, and did not aim at impossibilities. If he CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS 193 was inflexibly opposed to anything like a limitation of intellectual freedom, he had also a strong distaste for the claptrap of a commonplace, or conventional, Liberalism. It would be difficult to say whether he regarded a person whom he would call a specimen of the radicalis vulgaris, or the uncompromising opponent of all change, with greater dislike. He was sceptical about the remedies which were popularly advertised as a panacea for the ills of the body politic. He might in consequence have often been claimed by Conservatives as an ally ; for he was very unwilling to disturb wholesome conventions which he regarded as bonds and safeguards essential to the stability and welfare of society. 1 Men of strong personality, though they may impress, do not attract others, unless they have some qualities which are complementary and even opposite to those on which their main strength lies. Bywater was a great humanist, but he was also what every humanist should be — essentially human. He was, as Dr. Vaughan Cornish has told us, not a professed humanitarian : but to the sorrows and needs of a struggling scholar, young or old, his heart was ever tender and his purse open. Like many men of strong character, he had a high standard of service, but he was always considerate and grateful to those who served him loyally and well. To a friend who once asked him if an old and faithful domestic was still employed by him, he merely replied by quoting the words of Polonius to Laertes : ' The friends thou hast and their adaption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.' 1 It should be remembered that when Bywater spoke of political Liberalism, he almost always referred to that older form of Liberalism which was assailed by Carlyle and Ruskin, and is now generally regarded as obsolete. 2011 O J94 CLOSING YEARS, 1908-14 There was a deep vein and a deep-felt need of sympathy in his nature. It was this that helped him to influence younger men. It showed itself in such a trait as his reluctance to let a congenial friend leave him, or break off the pleasant flow of talk so long as it was possible to detain him. It was the sympathy of his nature which gave him the strong feeling of comrade- ship with all who were like-minded with himself. Although he could not be said to suffer fools gladly, he was always tolerant and indulgent to persons of com- paratively slight performance, if he felt sure that their aims and intentions were in keeping with his own. But there was a masculine reserve in his nature which imposed itself upon all with whom he associated. He preferred sympathy to be understood, rather than expressed. Everything commonplace, or florid, or exaggerated in expression or feeling, grated upon him. His irony and epigrammatic talk sometimes had a keen edge ; but no disguise could conceal the genuine kind- ness of his nature. We are told that many substances, in which the most powerful forces reside, depend for their efficacy on the proportion in which their constituent parts are blended. This holds true of human beings as well as of material objects. It is difficult to convey to strangers the impression which any man of strong individuality leaves on the minds of his friends. It cannot be done by a mere enumeration of characteristics. Among the shorter notices of Bywater that appeared in the press at the time of his death, none was more lifelike and appreciative than that written by Professor Gildersleeve of the Johns Hopkins University for the CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS 195 American Journal of Philology. With this tribute the present estimate may fitly conclude. ' A fine morning, fine in every sense of the word, was the morning I spent with Ingram Bywater in his rooms at Exeter, part of the time pacing up and down the " hortus conclusus " of the college, and talking of Dion Chrysostomus, who was engaging my attention at the time. I recall his illuminating comment on an author whom he knew far better than I did, and how sharp was his dissidence from those English Grecians who never go further down than Aristotle and heap scorn on the Graeculi. It was no surprise to me to find in the catalogue of his books a number of editions of Dion. No wonder that I remember gratefully his various courtesies to me on my occasional visits to England. I read and re-read with deepest interest the tributes paid to him in the last number of the Journal of Philology, of which he was the editor. They reveal in a measure the wide interests of the scholar. They give some idea of his vast and accurate learning. They afford some glimpses of the man Bywater which will waken precious memories in the minds of those who were privileged to know him. Bywater was so much more than the prince of Aristo- telians that he was.' If this memoir should enable some of those who were not personally acquainted with Bywater, or with the Oxford of his day, in some measure to understand his ideals and the reasons for the impression which he made upon his contemporaries, it will not have been written in vain. o 2 APPENDIX AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT The following autobiographical statement is printed here by the kind permission of the Editor of the Morning Post, as it appeared in that journal on June 27, 1914, except the first paragraph, already inserted in the body of this memoir : AN EMINENT CLASSICAL SCHOLAR PROFESSOR BYWATER'S REMINISCENCES THE PASSING OF GREEK Professor Ingram By water, the eminent classical scholar, for many years Regius Professor of Greek and Student of Christ Church, Oxford, which positions he resigned six years ago, completes to-day his seventy-fourth year. A repre- sentative of the Morning Post had the pleasure of calling on him during the present week, and gathering at first-hand some of his impressions and recollections. Birth and Parentage [The reminiscences here omitted have already been printed in this memoir, pp. S~5-] At Oxford with Pater ' After staying for two years at King's College I went to Queen's College, Oxford, the Provost of which at that time was Dr. Thomson, afterwards Archbishop of York. I went into residence at the same time as the late Mr. Walter Pater, and he and I took our degrees together. I knew Pater inti- mately. He was a queer, strange creature. His reading was extraordinarily wide — I think he would have done better in the examinations if it had been less so — and he was full of ability. At first his interests were theological, but in this AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT 197 respect his mind soon underwent a change, and he became more literary and philosophical. The period of which I am speaking was one of great unrest at Oxford. The famous Oxford movement had spent itself, and the Essays and Reviezvs were influencing the minds of the young men, who were immersed in Herbert Spencer and Mill and Hegel. We undergraduates mostly had coaches ; and mine were Robinson Ellis, Thomas Hill Green, and the distinguished man now known as Lord Bryce. I became a Fellow of Exeter in 1863. There were two open Fellowships vacant, and Dr. Jackson, afterwards Rector of Exeter College, and I were the two successful candidates out of eighteen. Very soon after I took my degree I made the acquaintance of Mark Pattison, and became as intimate with him as a man well can be with one considerably his senior. This acquaintance I consider was a great piece of good luck for me, for Pattison was a singularly interesting character, and most men found him difficult of approach. We went on holiday jaunts together, and while I was at Oxford it soon became a recognized thing that I should drop in on him every Sunday evening after dinner. Usually we discussed history and the history of literature, in both of which subjects he was very learned. I remember that at that time he was engaged in writing his well-known book on Casaubon. Outside Queen's College there was Jowett, whose lectures I used to attend. Jowett's was a commanding personality, and his influence over the minds of the younger men of his time was very great. That influence was due in large measure to the sympathy he felt towards young men. For myself, I shall never forget the encouragement he gave me. In 1883 I was made University Reader in Greek, and was the first to hold that appointment. At the same time Robinson Ellis was appointed Reader in Latin. Ten years later I became Regius Professor of Greek, a post which I resigned six years ago on account of advancing years. I have a strong feeling that a Professor should not remain at his post after his energies have begun to wane.' Obligatory Greek Studies Naturally, Mr. Bywater is an enthusiast as regards the Greek language and literature. For all that, however, he is not in favour of Greek studies being obligatory at our schools and Universities. ' Where the study of Greek is obligatory,' he says, ' the ordinary student learns little more than the elements of the language, and certainly never succeeds in o 3 198 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT realizing to the full its beauties or the greatness of the thinking that is to be found in Greek philosophy. Then, again, my view is that science has now got into such a position that you must let scientific men arrange their course of study in accor- dance with their own notions. At Oxford at the present time they still have to show some elementary knowledge of the Greek language, but such knowledge I do not consider of any great value. Even that, however, will have to go. It is only a question of time. I shall regret the change, but one must bear in mind that the knowledge of Greek has never been nearly as widely diffused as the knowledge of Latin. In the earliest days of the Renaissance all cultivated men had a con- siderable knowledge of Latin, which was the common ground on which scholars of all countries met, but Greek was far less studied and understood. A sufficient proof of this is afforded by the fact that translations of Greek works were numerous, while those Greek works which were published in the originals were quite commonly accompanied by Latin translations. At a later period a knowledge of Greek became more general, and now, with the competition of newer studies, it is inevitable that the number of persons with a decent knowledge of that lan- guage should become fewer and fewer. I may add that the same tendency exists on the Continent, particularly in Holland and in Germany.' Anecdote of the German Emperor 1 This reminds me of rather an amusing incident which happened on the occasion when the German Emperor had an honorary degree conferred on him by Oxford University. The ceremonial took place at Windsor, where the Emperor was staying at the time, and I was one of a deputation, headed by our Chancellor, Lord Curzon, who waited upon him there. His Majesty was most courteous, making a point of approach- ing each of us in turn in order to have a little chat. When it came to my turn he was informed that I was a Greek Pro- fessor, and thereupon he spoke of what had been done in the German Universities with regard to Greek studies. What he told me amounted to this, that there were many examinations for which Greek was no longer obligatory. It did not seem to occur to the Emperor, who was evidently inspired by the most friendly motives, that such information was hardly calcu- lated to cheer a Greek Professor. Really, though, it was rather as if he had told a butcher that people were turning vegetarians.' AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT 199 Among Mr. Bywater's many distinctions is that of being a Member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, which paid him the great compliment of inviting him to edit the works of Priscianus Lydus, which accordingly he did, in 1886, for a series issued by that body. ' My first published work, apart from magazine articles,' he goes on to say, ' was Frag- ments of Hcraclitiis, which I wrote in 1877. Heraclitus, of course, is almost at the beginning of Greek philosophy, while Priscianus Lydus is at the end. When Justinian shut up the schools of philosophy in Athens as relics of barbarism, a num- ber of philosophers who still declined to accept Christianity emigrated to Persia, and Priscianus Lydus was one of them. His writings are chiefly valuable because he had opportunities of using Greek books which are now lost. In particular, he laid under contribution a lost work of Theophrastus, from which we are very glad to have even quotations. My chief works, however, have been on Aristotle, a philosopher who influences people to this day without their knowing it. So great was Jowett's admiration for Aristotle's works that he left a sum of money to have them published in translations. It is astonishing how profound in some ways was Aristotle's knowledge of science. He made lots of mistakes, of course, but in many cases he anticipated modern scientific discoveries. In everything that relates to animal life he is extremely good.' A Remarkable Collection For many years Mr. Bywater has collected books, and he has many fine specimens, including the earliest printed edition of Homer, which is dated 1488. This is as clean and as crisp as when it first issued from the press, a perfect work of art in typography. The binding, which is modern, is also very fine. Of the other books many are from famous collections. In spite of the decline in Greek studies, Mr. Bywater does not think that rare early editions of the Greek classics will ever become cheaper. ' Prices ', he remarks, ' are fully maintained ; in fact early editions can hardly be had at any price. The fall has been in eighteenth-century editions, which left much to be desired from the point of view of scholarship, and have been superseded by better modern versions. Some few editions of Greek works, published the century before last, are still esteemed, but these owe their attraction to the typography and appeal rather to those who are interested in the art of printing than to students of Greek literature.' 200 II BIBLIOGRAPHY The following list of Books and Articles, which received By water's final approval, was drawn up by him in i9i4forthe ' Bibliography of the Fellows and Tutors of Exeter College, Oxford, in Recent Times ' published by the Rector of Exeter ; and is reprinted here by the Rector's kind permission : Books and Articles i. On the fragments of Philolaus. Jour, of Phil. vol. i, 1868. 2. On a lost Dialogue of Aristotle. Jour, of Phil. vol. ii, 1869. 3. Review of Dindorf's edition of Clemens Alexandrinus. Academy, 1870. 4. Ueber den ungcdruckten Commentar zu Aristoteles, Eth. V. Hermes, Bd. 5, 187 1. 5. Porphyrios. Hermes, Bd. 5, 1871. 6. Critical notes on Clement of Alexandria. Jour, of Phil, vol. iv, 1873. 7. Aristotelia. Jour, of Phil. vol. v, 1874. 8. Two passages in Plato's Republic. Jour, of Phil. vol. v, 1874. 9. Heraclitus and Ammianus Marcellinus. Jour, of Phil, vol. vi, 1875. 10. Aristotle's Dialogue on Philosophy. Jour, of Phil. vol. vii, 1877. 11. Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae. Oxonii, 1877. 12. Gnomologium Baroccianum. Oxonii, 1878. 13. Aristotelis Vita Scriptore Laertio. Oxonii, 1879. 14. Diogenis Laertii de Vita philosophorum versionis antiquae fragmenta. Oxonii, 1880. 15. Heraclitus and Albertus Magnus. Jour, of Phil. vol. ix, 1880. t6. A letter to the Rev. John Wordsworth. Oxford, 1880. 17. ATAKTA. Jour, of Phil. vol. x, 1882. 18. Ecphantidis locus restitutus. Rhein. Mus. Bd. 37, 1882. 19. The Cleophons in Aristotle. Jour, of Phil. vol. xii, 1883. BIBLIOGRAPHY 201 20. Note on Diogenes Laertius IX. 1, 7. Jour, of Phil. vol. xiii, 1884. 31. Platonis locus correctus. Rhein. Mus. Bd. 39, 1884. 22. Aristotelia II. Jour, of Phil. vol. xiv, 1885. 23. Prisciani Lydi quae extant. Berolini, 1886. 24. Scaliger's und Labbe's handschriftliche Noten zu den Veteres glossae verborum iuris. Rhein. Mus. Bd. 42, 1887. 25. Aristotelia III. Jour, of Phil. vol. xvii, 1888. 26. Miscellanea. Jour, of Phil. vol. xvii, 1888. 27. Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea. Oxonii, 1890. 28. Contributions to the Textual Criticism of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Oxford, 1892. 29. Henry Nettleship. Diet. Nat. Biog. vol. xl, 1894. 30. Aristotelis de Arte Poetica liber. Oxonii, 1898. 31. Milton and the Aristotelian Definition of Tragedy. Jour, of Phil. vol. xxvii, 1901. 32. On certain technical terms in Aristotle's Poetics. Festschrift Th. Gomperz dargebracht. Wien, 1902. ■^. Aristotelia IV. Jour, of Phil. vol. xxviif, 1903. 34. The Erasmian pronunciation of Greek and its precursors. London, 1908. <$$. Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. Oxford, 1909. 36. ATAKTA II. Jour, of Phil. vol. xxxi, 1910. 37. Aristotelis de Arte Poetica liber. Editio altera. Oxonii, 1911. 38. Aristotelia V. Jour, of Phil. vol. xxxii, 191 2. 39. Palaeographica. Jour, of Phil. vol. xxxii, 1913. 40. The Latinizations of the modern surname. Jour, of Phil. vol. xxxiii, 1913. Ill MRS. BYWATER'S BENEFACTION TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD The will of Mrs. Charlotte Bywater (wife of Mr. Ingram By water), who died on the 17th February, 1908, was proved in the Principal Registry on the 27th March, 1908. After specifying- various freehold properties at Highbury in the County of London, she leaves the income to her husband for life, and at his death she devises the same free of legacy duty 202 MRS. BYWATER'S BENEFACTION to the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Oxford, proceeding as follows : 'And I declare that the aforesaid devise to the said Chan- cellor Masters and Scholars of the said University of Oxford is made with the intention of establishing a Fund to be devoted to the promotion of the study of the language and literature of Byzantine and Modern Greece at the University of Oxford either by the endowment or establishment of a Professor or Reader or in such other way as the University may from time to time determine AND I declare that I make this bequest to the said University for the purposes aforesaid because I know that the promotion of such study was a subject which my late husband Hans Sotheby had very much at heart and I accordingly desire but without imposing any trust or obliga- tion in that behalf that if and so far as may be possible the name of Hans Sotheby shall be associated with the gift hereby made to the said University Provided that so long as the main intention of my endowment is kept in view the Univer- sity make [may] from time to time make such provisions with regard to the same as may in their opinion be necessary or desirable.' Mr. Bywater also by his will left to the University a sum of ^1,500 London County Council three per cent. Consols, to be treated as an addition to the fund bequeathed by Mrs. Bywater as above stated, and to be administered on the same principles and in the same way and by the same academical committee or other administrative authority as that fund. Mr. By- water in his will speaks of the fund as the ' Hans Sotheby fund '. The title of the Fund in the future will bear the name of Bywater as well as that of Hans Sotheby. In the University Statutes the foundation is entitled the Bywater and Sotheby Professorship of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature. 203 IV GIFTS AND BEQUESTS OF MR. AND MRS. BYWATER TO THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology has been enriched by Mr. and Mrs. Bywater with a large number of drawings, pictures, and other smaller objects of Art. Mr. Bywater on leaving Oxford in 1908 presented the Museum with ten original studies of draped female figures by Sir E. Burne-Jones which had been presented to Mrs. Bywater by the artist. Two of them are sketches for the Mirror of Venus (1867-77), others for the series of the Story of St. George (1865-6), and four belong to a period about twenty years later. The bequest received on Mr. Bywater's death includes a number of Byzantine objects, comprising mother-of-pearl shells carved with sacred scenes, figures of saints and the like made for sale to pilgrims in Palestine (seventeenth or eighteenth centuries), bronze Russian ikons, and painted ikons. It also includes fifteen fans, Chinese, Spanish, English, and French ; and eleven small enamelled bag-shaped patch-boxes with inscriptions on the lids, all probably made at Bilston c. 1790-1820. The following list of pictures included in the bequest is taken from the Report of the Visitors of the Ashmolean for 1915:— The Descent from the Cross ; composition of ten figures in a rocky landscape ; tempera on linen 15 x 2\\ inches. Northern Italian school, attributed to Bernardino Parentino (c. 1437-1531). Formerly in the collection of Mr. G. P. Boyce. The Virgin and Infant Christ with two Angels. Tempera on a circular panel 1 "j\ inches in diameter. Florentine, about 1475-1500. This is in a very decayed state and has not yet been placed on exhibition. 2o 4 GIFTS TO THE ASHMOLEAN The Raising of Lazarus. Composition of twenty-nine figures in a rocky landscape. Tempera on a gilt panel 17^x12^. Veneto-Byzantine. Acquired by Mrs. Bywater in Venice. The Assumption of the Virgin with numerous figures of Apostles and Saints. A Russo-Greek ikon. Tempera on a gilded panel 10 x 8^. Five Saints with a mystical representation of the Eucharist above. Russo-Greek ikon. Tempera on panel 6^ x 5f . Study of a Cornfield, by George Heming Mason (1818-72). Slightly executed sketch in oil on canvas, 6| x 14^. Warwick Castle from the Bridge, twilight, by George Barrett the younger (c. 1767-1842). Water colours, I2§x 19^. Pangbourne, Berks., after sunset, by George Price Boyce (1826-1897), signed and dated 1865. Water colours, 4|xu. Study of the head of the Virgin from the Madonna of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci in the National Gallery, by Sir Frederick William Burton (1 816-1900). Black chalk, 12^X8|. The Shores of Loch Fyne, Inverary, Sunset, by Joshua Cristall (1 767-1847). Water colours, u^x 17. Newark Castle, by Peter de Wint (1 784-1 849), broadly treated work of the artist's early middle period, unfinished. Water colours, 14 x 22^. Lowther Castle, by the same. Magnificent one-day sketch in the painter's later manner. Water colours, 16^ x 24. Lowther Castle (?) by the same. Finished studio work. Water colours, io| x 15^. Scene in the Highlands. Attributed to Giles Firman Phillips (1780-1867). Water colours, io|x 15^. The Vale of Dwygyfylchi, Carnarvonshire, by Thomas Sewell Robins (c. 1815-1 880). Signed and dated 1869. Water colours, 14^ x 22^. Apollo and Shepherds, by Thomas Stothard (1 755-1 834). Indian ink, 3! x 3|. Vignette to Langhorne's Fables of Flora, 1794. Puck and Mella, by the same. Indian ink, 3^x 3!. Vignette for Poems of TJiomas Townshend, 1796. Three designs : the Four Quarters of the Globe, Ceres, and the Female Mercury, by the same. Pen and bistre touched GIFTS TO THE ASHMOLEAN 205 with water colours, each if x 3^. Engraved as the frontispiece to a cookery book, 1825. Cupid sleeping disarmed by a Nymph, by the same. Water colours, 3! x i\. Kyleakin Castle, Isle of Skye, moonlight, by William Turner of Oxford (1789-1862). Water colours, i6| x 34^. Mrs. C. J. Cornish appropriately supplemented the bequest by presenting the portrait of her aunt, Mrs. Bywater, by whom all the foregoing works of art had been collected ; it is a small whole-length in water colours (271x18) painted in 1872 by Walter Crane (1845-19 15). Mr. and Mrs. Bywater were amongst the most frequent visitors to the Museum, always showing the warmest interest in its growth and development, and the University is particularly indebted to Mrs. Cornish for adding the portrait of so great a benefactress to its permanent collections. V EXTRACTS FROM 'THE TIMES' On December 18, 19 14, the day after Bywater's death, an obituary notice and a leading article appeared in The Times written by one who had evidently been well acquainted both with Bywater and with Pattison. They admirably reproduce the sentiments with which Bywater inspired those who knew him at all intimately in any part of his career. They also, when compared with the cold reception accorded by The Times to his appointment in a leading article of November 15, 1893, afford an unmistakable proof of the strong if silent influence exercised on public opinion by the force of his personality in recent years. ' By the death of Ingram Bywater the world of letters has lost one of the most learned and scholarly of modern Hellen- ists. His fame was not widespread in this country, at any rate, though there was no University in Europe that would not have given him high rank in the role of modern scholars, for his learning and labours were largely esoteric and appreciated only by the fit and the few, and his output, though supreme in quality, was comparatively small in quantity. Bywater was 206 EXTRACTS FROM 'THE TIMES' of the race of scholars who combine humanism with con- summate and comprehensive learning with a knowledge not merely of classical Greek literature but of Greek literature as a whole, who are pre-eminently men of learning as learning is defined by his friend and mentor, Mark Pattison. " Learning is a peculiar compound of memory, imagination, scientific habit, accurate observation, all concentrated through a prolonged period on the analysis of the remains of literature. The result of this sustained effort is not a book but a man." ' But we may say of Bywater what Pattison says of Casau- bon : " Casaubon's books whatever their worth were not the man, the scholar is greater than his books." He made no parade of his wide and comprehensive learning. It was only incidentally that those who knew him discovered that he had explored the whole range of Greek literature and Greek scholarship. The scanty texts that he edited, with their modest seeming " apparatus criticus ", were, in truth, like the few ounces of pure gold which the miner extracts, refines, and sublimates out of many tons of intractable and painfully gotten material. The pupils who attended his lectures, the few friends who could understand and appeciate his researches, alone knew how incessant was the labour, how comprehensive the grasp of his material, how acute and searching was the critical analysis which lay behind his unassuming, but never ill-considered, deliverances. The busy world ignored him and passed him by ; but scholarship recognized him and claimed him for its own.' ' Of late years he lived alone among his books in London and was rarely seen in the haunts of men. Yet though he lived apart, the charm of his personality was irresistible to all who were admitted to his intimacy. His intellectual interests extended far beyond the range of his special pursuits, his judgement of character and events was shrewd, individual, penetrating and tolerant withal, his talk was crisp, epigrammatic, humorous, saturated with the culture of a man of wide learning and generous humanity and absolutely devoid of pedantry. In a word, he was not only a great scholar but a very lovable man.' 207 VI PORTRAITS The frontispiece of this volume is a reproduction of a photo- graph taken in Bywater's fifty-first year. A portrait painted for Mrs. Ingram Bywater by Mr. J. S. Sargent, R.A., and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1851, will doubtless be regarded by future generations as the chief record of Bywater's outer man. It is indisputably a very fine picture; and the painter, like other great artists, has fixed on canvas some of the most characteristic traits of the original. The portrait has the air of ' neatness ' which was conspicuous in everything that came from Bywater's hand. It also wears a look of judicial severity, suitable to one who was an impartial critic of his own work and that of others. But the photograph records the expression he wore in ordinary life and in the society of his friends, and has therefore been used in this memoir. A fine photographic reproduction of Mr. Sargent's picture adorns the bookcase in the Bywater Room of the Bodleian. INDEX Academy, The, 44, 94. Adler, Rev, Dr., 4. Allen, Mr. P. S., 3, 172, 176. Alverstone, Lord, 5. Andrieux, Monsieur, 58. Appleton, C. A., 44. Aristotelian Society, 131. Address from, with members' names, 142. Aristotle, Ethics, 133. Poetics, 134 ff. On a lost Dialogue of,§\. Arnold, M., 32, 37, 105. Aveling, Dr., 42. Berlin Academy of Sciences, 96, 119. Bernays, J., 31, 50, 56, 95, 102 ff. Boase, C. W., 1 7, 39, 60. Bodleian, Sub-Librarianship of, 85. Tercentenary of, 157. Bonitz, H., 96. Bourget, Monsieur P., 49. Bright, John, 4. British Academy, 152. Browning, R., 22. Bryce, Viscount, 9, 13, 34. Burgon, J. W., 76, 82, 85 n. Burne-Jones, E., n, 43. Burnet, Professor, 133, 139. Bywater, Ingram — Birth and parentage, 1. Early childhood, 3. School education, 4 ff. Scholar of Queen's, 7. Undergraduate life, 8 ff. Degree, 15. Fellow of Exeter College, 17. Father's death, 19. Intimacy with Pattison, 20 ff. Bywater, Ingram (continued)- — Introduction to Bernays, 37. Chooses his vocation, 35. Literary tastes, 36. Oxford life and friendships, 38 ff Visit to Heidelberg, 47. Friendships with foreigners, 48 ff. French sympathies, 56. Takes pupils, 64. Opens his lectures, 66. Junior Proctor, 70. Public Examiner, 73. College Commissioner, 74. Has to sign XXXIX Articles, 75- Criticism of Pater, 78. Religious attitude, 83. Sub-Librarian of the Bodleian, 85. Letter to Rolleston, 86. Resigns Sub-Librarianship, 89. Delegate of Clarendon Press, 90. Conception of Greek Scholar- ship, 92. Monographs, 94. Edits Fragments of Heraclitus, 95- Edits Priscianus Lydus, 96. Prepares to edit Diogenes Laertius, 100. Visits Cobet, ib. Co-editor of Journal of Philo- logy, 1 01. Reader in Greek, 111. Member of Hebdomadal Coun- cil, 1 12. Marriage, 113. 2IO INDEX B water, Ingram {continued) — Offered Headship of College, 117. Corresponding member of Berlin Academy of Sciences, 119. Member of Roxburghe Club, ib. Regius Professor of Greek, 123. President of Aristotelian So- ciety, 132. Aristotelian studies, 133. Edits Ethics and Poetics, 134 ff. Unfinished work on Diogenes Laertius, 139. Influence on young ex-students, 143 ff. Collection of books, 147. Friendships with various scholars, 149 ff. Gives presents of books, 151. Visit to Vienna, 153. Honorary distinctions, 155. Later life in Oxford, 159. Death of Mrs. By water, 160. Letter about Greek Thesaurus, 169. Resigns Professorship, 171. Prints Elenchus librorum vetus- tiorum, 173. Bequest of his books to Bod- leian, 174. Last illness and death, 191. Gifts and bequests to Ash- molean Museum, 202 ff. Bywater, Mrs. Ingram, n5ff, 148, 150, 160. — John Ingram, 1, 2, 3, 18. — Mrs. John Ingram, 1, 19. — John Jenkin, 1. Campbell, Lewis, 8. Cannan, Mr. C, 132, 135, 142. Capes, W. W., 8. ' Carlyle, T., 10, 187. Cartwright, W. C, 22, 172. Case, Professor T., 50, 130. Chamberlain, J., 4, 162. Chandler, H. W., 40. Charles, Mr. Justice, 4. Christie, R. C., 22, 41. Clemens Alexandrinus, 94. Cobet, C. G., 100, 108. Combined College Lectures, 65. Comparetti, Signor, 115. Conington, J., 8, 18. Constantinides, Mr. M.. 116. Corfu, Archbishop of, 54. Cornish, Mrs. C. J., 132, 135, 142. — Dr. Vaughan, 183 ff. Daniel, Dr. C. H. O., 71. Daniel Dcronda, 105. De Morgan, W. F., 4. Dicey, Professor, 13, 14. Diels, Dr. H., 78, 97, 99, 160, 189. Dilke, Sir C, 47. Dindorf, W., 94. Diogenes Laertius, 100, 109, 139 ff Driver, S. R., 64. Eliot, George, 22, 105. Ellis, R., 8, 192. Emperor, the German, 198. Erasmian Pronunciation of Greek, 138. Esson, W., 13. Examination Schools, New, 72. Fairbairn, Dr. A., 125. Faulkner, C. J., 40. Freeman, E. A., 71. Garrod, Mr. H. W., 145. Gennadius, Monsieur J., 54. Gildersleeve, Professor, 151, 194. Gladstone, W. E., 100, 1196°. Gnomologium Baroccianum, 96. Gomperz, J., 151 ff. Goodwin, W. W., 150. Grant-Duff, Sir M., 21, 59. Greek, option for, 177 ff., 199. Green, T. H., 9, 13, 64. INDEX 211 Greenhill, Dr. W. A., 45. Grenfell, A. S., 13. Hamilton, Sir W., 23. Hebdomadal Council, 70, 113. Heine, H., 37. Hellenic Society, 105. Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae, 95. Holland, Professor T. E., 13, 14. Humble-Crofts, Prebendary W. J., 58. Iamblichus, 94. Ilbert, Sir C. P., 14. Ince, W., 17, 80, 130. Jackson, Professor H., 101. Jackson, Sir T. G., 72. Jebb, Sir R. C, 122, 153. Jowett, B., 8, 28, 124 ff., 199. Key, T. Hewitt, 4. King, Professor E., 112. Lagarde, P. de, 96. Lambros, Dr. Spiridion, 156. Lankester, Sir Ray, 39, 55, 74, 153- Lati?iizations of the Modern Sur- name, 139. Leadam, I. S., 64. Legrand, E., 149, 164, 173. Lewes, G. H., 22. Liddell, Dean, 71. Luke, G. R., 13. Maas, Professor, 94. Macan, Dr. R. W., 64. Mackarness, Bishop, 77 ff. Mackarness, Ven. C. C, 77. Madvig, J. N., 96. Magrath, Dr. J. R., 13. Mansel, H. L., 7,9. Margoliouth, Professor, 154. Markby, Sir W., 112. Markheim, A., 57. Markheim, W. C, 57. Mayor, Rev. Dr., 5. Merton, Walter of, 81. Meyer, Professor P., 52. Mommsen, T., 53. Monro, D. B., 112, 122. Montefiore, L., 21. Morley, Viscount, 4, 28, 163. Morris, J. B., 33. Morris, W., 11, 41. Morrison, J. C, 41. Moseley, H. N., 74. Munro, H. A. J., 29. Murray, J., 44. Murray, Professor G., 129, 133, 182. Nettleship, H, 21, 83, 192. Neubauer, A., 46, 105, 107. Newman, Cardinal, 25, 33, 45. Nichol, J., 13. Norton, Professor Eliot, 151. Old Mortality Society, 12. Omont, Monsieur H., 52, 93, 149, 166. Pater, W. H, 8, 13, 77 ff. Pattison, Mark, 20, 59, 80, 85, 89, 106 ff., 1 1 1, 126. Pattison, Mrs., 20, in. Pelham, H. F., 39, 43, 192. Percival, Bishop, 8. Petre, Sir W., 81. Porphyrios, 94. Pottinger, H. A., 40. Priscianus Lydus, 91, 93, 97, 199. Pusey, Dr., 70. Ramsay, Sir W. M., 74. Renan, E., 49, 51. Riley. H. T., 56. R igers, J. E. T., 4, 40. Rolleston, G., 86. Rossetti, D. G., 11. Roundell, C. S., 81. Rutherford, W. G., 122. 212 INDEX Sachau, Professor, 154, 157. Sandys, Sir J. E., 151, 155. Scaliger, J. T., 27, 31. Schenkel, K., 96. Scott, Sir G., 42. Scott, J. O., 71. Shute, R., 132. Skeat, W. W., 60. Smith, Goldwin, 106. Sotheby, Hans W., 114. Sotheby, Mrs., see By water, Ingram. Stapeldon, Walter of, 81. Stubbs, Bishop, 39, 129. Swift, Jonathan, 37. Swinburne, A., 10, 13. Symonds, J. A., 13. Taine, H., 51. Taylor, Dr. C, 5, 155. Teichmuller, G., 55. Temple, Archbishop, 71. Theophrasius, 98. Thistleton-Dyer, Sir W. T., Mrs. Thompson, S., 170. Thomson, Archbishop, 7. Torstrik, A., 96. Tozer^ H. F., 17. Turin, University of, 151. Universities Tests Act, 65. Usener, H., 97. Vahlen, J., 121, 134. Wachsmuth, C, 96. Wallace, W., 13. Warren, Sir Herbert, 67, 115, 160. Whitney, Professor, 151. Willert, P. F., 39. Wilson, Professor Cook, 99, 121, 191. Wordsworth, Bishop J., 63, 81, 112. Wormann, Dr. K., 49. Wright, Aldis, 10 1. Zeller, E., 47, 104, 121. University of California SOUTHERN BEGWNALU^/t* 951388 305 De Neve Drive - Pg**^ 900 95-1388 LOS ANGELES, CAuir borrowed^ Retumthis^a^^ u f SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 338 526 i