the mist of deceit and sham humanitarianism in which the modern world is involved, to the career of one who never paltered with his convictions, and who never sacrificed a respect for the past to the exigent opportunism of the present. J. E. B. Mayor, whose death scholars and men of letters alike will mourn, was a survival from a distant and a wiser age. To discover his rivals you must go to another time and another place. Scaliger and Casaubon, Ruhnken and Hemsterhuis, are his real forerunners. His kampf," and none of his time did as much as he to make this light shine upon the world. His mind was a true encyclopædia. He carried therein, easily and joyously, the learning of all the ing of all the ages. His edition of Juvenal holds a place apart in the history of modern scholarship. No other work of our day equals it in severity of treatment and breadth of range. When it appeared, the wits said the obvious thing, that the Professor of Latin had raised a monument to himself, beneath which he had buried Juvenal. At first sight twelve pages of commentary in small type to one of text in large seems a too liberal allowance. And, indeed, it would have been excessive had Professor Mayor's object been the mere elucidation of the Latin text. object was far larger than that. He might have taken for his own, Juvenal's motto: learning was both broad and deep. He considered that nothing written in Latin or Greek was outside his purview. His interest was limited neither by race nor creed. He saw only "a riddle in the taste which, allowing Libanius, lay Chrysostom under ban." The Golden and Silver Ages, "the Fathers and their successors even to our day," all contributed to the ripeness of his knowledge, the maturity of his judgment. He had little sympathy with those who thought that no more work was to be done in the field of the Classics. "Mr Goldwin Smith," said he with his gentle irony, "who deserted the pursuits of philology because the vein was exhausted, may be reassured." He had a devout belief in "the advent of a sober and a healing philology, whose silent light will be more effectual to dissipate the falsehood of extremes than any stage thunder of a Cultur His Quidquid agunt hominesnostri farrago libelli est." Through the eyes of Juvenal he looked out upon the history of the world, and illuminated that history not only with his own comments, but with the enlightened comments of all the ages. His famous note upon the word recitantes is typical of his method. The satirist abuses those who recite their verses under the burning sun of August, and his editor snatches the opportunity to write treatise upon recitation, which follows the practice from the Greece of Herodotus, through 8 the France of Racine, to the icism." "Nay, there are," London of Dickens and said he, including himself, Thackeray, and which, forti- "who cannot stomach modern fied as it is by Latin and novels, which, in lip service Greek citations, Burton himself, decorous to prudery, but rotten the author of 'The Anatomy,' at heart, fret against the inhad not disdained to write. exorable law." He refused to agree with Pliny that even the worst book is of some use, deplored the swelling of overgrown literatures, and rejoiced that of most books the span of life was a fortnight. "In the twentieth century," said he with some satisfaction, "remainders find their way to the scrap-heap close on the heels of publication." And yet with a kind of perversity he admitted that there was no rubbish that might not give a spur to wisdom. "No feeblest trash," he wrote in a characteristic passage, "no election lie (even when evoking from Limbo the worn-out spells of Endor), no favourite of the hour, however weak or wicked (and 'all wickedness is weakness'), but may prick the conscience and unloose the tongue of some shy owner of knowledge." A shy owner of knowledge! Such perhaps he deemed himself, and assuredly there was little in the nature of printed matter that did not serve to unloose his tongue, to quicken his ardent love of literary allusion. Thus it was that in an encyclopædic spirit Professor Mayor surveyed the literature of all time to elucidate the text of Juvenal, and in revenge he applied the counsel of the satirist to common life. Wise saws and modern instances were ever upon his pen. On the authority of Juvenal, his constant guide, he condemns co-operative stores, by whose influence men become emaces. And when the satirist says, "ventre nihil novi frugalius," his commentator denounces "the growing cost of college dinners." In brief, he could no more exclude himself and his preferences from his books than he could suppress the unchanging prejudices and humours of his brain. And the result is that his annotations upon this author or that rise high above the general level of such works. Not merely do they explain the original text; they reveal to us a kindly, whimsical character such as is born of genius and fashioned by erudition. Catholic as was his taste, there were certain sorts of modern books which he sternly condemned. A true Rabelaisian, despite his ascetic nature, he read Petronius and Martial, he tells us, "without hurt," yet would he have nothing to do with "fantastic æsthet So it is that, though Mayor never stooped to the modern methods of the newspaper, though he lived his life cloistered in St John's, we may, we consult his works, picture him as he wrote and thought. Being a scholar of an earlier pattern, he loathed the en nor a facile avenue to success in life. Though, as he declared truthfully, he was never "illiberal," the word "liberal" was detestable to him. He croachment upon the University vain did he invoke the names of strange studies. For him of Benjamin Hall Kennedy, Cambridge was the home of Charles Merivale, Thomas learning, not an almshouse Sanders Evans, Hugh Munro, and Richard Shilleto. These and their example were sufficient for him. In his ears the phrase, the wisdom of the ancients, had no empty sound. "The ancients," he said, "standing aloof, speak with impartial voice." None ever valued more highly the acquisition of modern languages, but he recognised that the teaching of them was not the work of a University. "We are not yet a mere Mechanics' Institute," he said. "French, German, and the rest we can teach ourselves in spare moments, as we want them.” The argument that many are no whit better in after-life for the study of the Classics he brushed away as worthless. Indeed, it is an argument not against the Classics but against learning of all kinds. "The same holds," said he, "of every subject of examination: as for the cram manuals which you promise us, they are carrion already, and cannot build up a sound body except for vultures or hyenas.' His counsel of perfection was to strike at the root of the evil, the athletic frenzy and the degradation of knowledge into "a meregate of fatness and ease. He spoke most often to deaf ears, yet it is his good fortune to die before the complete ruin of his University is achieved. had no illusions as to whence the evil came. What he said of Todhunter might be said word by word of him: "Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur." "He knew history too well," thus he wrote of his friend, "to identify Puritanism and Whiggery with toleration; he needed not to be told that of the last five persecutions which have harried Cambridge, four were the work of the Liberal party." All the base attempts which have been made of late years to turn Cambridge into what he called "an Infant School" were repelled by him with a humour and energy not unworthy a true descendant of Erasmus. He defended the studies of his University with incomparable zeal. When a halfpenny print called "the Cambridge pedants" arrant shams even at their own poor trade, "we here know and are proud to know," replied he, "what must ever remain sealed to this scribbler and his million dupes. For the knowledge implies some soul, some scholarship, and a bird's-eye of letters for 2500 years.' He declared, as he above all men had the right to declare, that "Cambridge in the nineteenth century bred Greek and Latin poets such as no age had seen since Aristophanes and Virgil." Not in So with sorrow he deplored the extravagant adding to University buildings, and foresaw the time when the vast cost of mere apparatus would over whelm us. For "Scientia furiosa, as of the Prize Ring, not peaceful and humble, as of Newton, and Newton's suocessors, of Barrow, Ray, Kepler," he had a hearty contempt. He recognised even in early days how much the nondescript meetings of the British Association, "half academy, half picnic," were answerable for. When Huxley assailed Shrewsbury School to the glory of Darwin, he asked Quis vituperavit? and thought that sufficient answer, as it was. "None but a scholar," said he with perfect truth, "can intelligently oriticise such a nurse of scholars as my old school;" and he was ever intent to "hunt the trail of this bigotry down to our own day, showing Ultramontanism, Science,' and the modern Puritans, who excommunicate both, united in common hatred of that humanity which is needed to make good the shortcomings of each and all." Above all, he defended the study of Greek with the loyalty of a neighbour. "Mea res agitur paries cum proximus ardet." When he was told that the abolition of Greek would make his Chair of Latin all the firmer, he rejected the bribe indignantly. "Before I risk my capital," said he, "down with the dust, I must have confidence in the security." And in whatever he wrote or said he proved a literary touch. He was not merely a scholar, but an English man of letters-the rarest combination. Humour and irony were among his gifts; he had studied the best models of his own country, and he was by temperament a maker of phrases. He recognised that the discourses of Bishop Fisher "rank him high among the fathers of English prose; of that prose which, in the sermons of John Donne, reached perhaps the greatest majesty of which our language is capable." If he owed something to those noble masters of style, he owed yet more, as we have hinted, to Robert Burton. His debt to the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy' was a conscious debt. Here, for instance, are two passages, culled from his "Life of Todhunter,' which echo the very cadences of his model : "He and I, mutum et turpe pecus, sour, crotchety lucifuga, quaint, uncouth, restless, uncanny, non-such as sphinx or kraken, could be silent (so suspicion darkly muttered) in more languages than one; hankering after forbidden fruit, the black art of German necromancy." And again: "In catholic patriotism a citizen of the world, he cut his lasting Toû or before his own Lares and Penates. Never so happy as when at home and at work; never so little alone as when alone. Noli turbare circulos meos," &c. If you came upon these passages unrecorded, would you not seek them diligently in the pages of 'The Anatomy'? His quick humour, indeed, shows itself best in this 'Life of Todhunter.' It amused him to describe his friend, as it were, by his opposites. "He was no painted butterfly," he wrote solemnly of this solemn don, "no oiled and scented Assyrian bull, no roaring lion nor cooing dove, that he should make a party go off well." It pleased him also, he confessed, to compare small things with great. Todhunter, he tells us with exquisite irony, "for dogs in general manifested little sympathy, distrusting their self-control"; but there was a certain Newfoundland dog who recognised him, after an interval, with almost human joy; and whom could he recall but the dog Argos, ware of Odysseus, standing by? So when Todhunter's child was frightened at the spectacle of his father arrayed in cap and gown, Mayor saw instantly a vision of the young Astyanax in dread at the bronze and horse - hair crest that he beheld nodding fiercely from the helmet's top. Thus history repeated itself; thus Mayor detected in the simplest incidents of life a swift illustration of his familiar classics. Withal he was the simplest of men. The immense weight of learning that he carried never oppressed his childlike spirit. He could not understand that his own profound knowledge of the past was not shared by all men. Once upon a time he preached a hospital sermon in a fen village, and he quoted the oath of the Asclepiadæ in the original Greek, and quoted it with so much gusto, and translated it afterwards into such vivid English, that not one of his congregation missed its application. And thus it was that many things which seem of slight importance in themselves acquired in his eyes a kind of humorous gravity. He was an eloquent advocate of what is now called the simple life. For many years he had been a convinced and practising vegetarian, and he has explained his foible with the wit and irony which belong to him. With a half-smile at himself he once wrote: "Were I still a sepulchre for fowl, I should choose one bird in hand before two in the bush." When he first succumbed to the creed of the Pythagoreans, he registered his weight every day, and walked solemnly from St John's College to the county jail for that purpose! espoused in his time many heresies, espoused them halfhumorously, and then declared in a moment of self-knowledge that he was animated by a "healthy, involuntary paganism." And when once he had taken up a dangerous position, he would support it with the worst possible authorities, and disarm criticism with an absurdity of which none was more acutely conscious than himself. But scholars are notoriously credulous. Did not Casaubon believe that earth brought from Palestine would cure disease, or that women were sometimes turned into men? He His life was as simple as his character. Its plain record is a high testimony to its happiness and success. Born in 1828, he was educated at Shrewsbury, to which school his gratitude was constant and |