HORA.CE HOWARD FURNESS. 879 



the moment of his death, and though he died in the fulness of years, 

 he retained his intellectual powers to the end, and his death left a 

 genuine feeling of sorrow among all who had known him either at the 

 bar, during his career on the bench, or in the more intimate relations 

 of private life. 



MooRFiELD Storey. 



HORACE HOWARD FURNESS (1833-1912) 



Fellow in Class III, Section 4, 1897. * 



Horace Howard Furness was born in Philadelphia on November 2, 

 1S33, the son of Dr. William Henry Furness, the well-known Unitarian 

 minister and author. After graduating from Harvard in 1854, he 

 travelled in Europe for two years, returning to study law in Phila- 

 delphia. Though admitted to the bar in 1859, he was prevented by 

 deafness from taking up practice; and the same infirmity hindered 

 him from active service in the Civil War. He was thus led to adopt 

 the career of a private scholar, being the fortunate possessor of means 

 sufficient to enable him to devote himself to his chosen studies without 

 regard to their earning power, and to collect around him a library 

 with few rivals in its field. 



The enthusiasm for Shakespeare, which, it is said, was kindled in 

 him as a boy of fourteen by hearing Fanny Kemble read, led him while 

 still a very 3'oung man to begin the serious study of the plays; and 

 gradually there formed in his mind the plan for the great work with 

 which his name will always be associated. No attempt to sum up 

 compendiously the results of Shakespearian criticism had been made 

 since the publication of the Boswell-Malone edition in 1821, and mean- 

 while much had happened in this department of scholarship. The 

 new methods of approach to Shakespeare represented by such critics 

 of the Romantic period as Coleridge, Hazlitt, and Lamb had added 

 a whole region to the domain of criticism; and the investigation of 

 Shakespearian problems on the Continent, and especially in Germany, 

 had vastly increased the area over which a student had now to work 

 in order to come abreast of the scholarship of the day. The Cambridge 

 edition of 1863 had, indeed, marked an epoch by recording in full the 

 readings not only of all early editions but of all important later critics 



