101 
before bis day. While fully realising the living interest which the 
book, regarded as a treatise on human nature, has for all times, he 
was one of the first to recognise the truth, now universally acted 
upon, that it was to be interpreted, not vaguely and arbitrarily in 
accordance with any theological bias or with the moral sentiment 
of our own time, but historically in accordance with the evolution 
of Greek thought and the conditions of Greek life, and with the 
whole system of the Aristotelian philosophy. The mature result of 
his study and teaching was his edition of the Ethics of Aristotle, 
the first volume of which was first published in 1857. It is on 
this work, of which a fourth edition appeared a few weeks before his 
death, that his reputation as a scholar and a writer on philosophy 
mainly rests. Though it is more than a quarter of a century since 
it was given to the world, and though during all that time the 
subject has been assiduously studied and taught at Oxford, his 
edition still remains the standard one, and among English scholars 
his name is as familiarly associated with the Ethics of Aristotle 
as that of Conington with Virgil, and of Munro with Lucretius. In 
proof of the estimate still formed of its merits by those who are 
constantly using it, I may be allowed to quote the words of one of 
the most competent among the younger tutors at Oxford. While 
admitting that the work is exposed to some criticism in the 
present day, he adds — “We are too apt not to realise how much 
such a work has done directly and indirectly for the appreciation of 
Greek philosophy in this country. It was the first and it still 
remains the only attempt in any language to unite a scholarly study 
of the very difficult text with a literary and philosophical apprecia- 
tion of the treatise in its relation to the whole history of Greek 
thought. Certainly no one of the German editions attempts any- 
thing so extensive, and only one of them (in Latin) has a philo- 
sophical value.” He goes on a few sentences later — “ In Edinburgh 
his name will always be associated with a most brilliant period in 
the history of the University. Throughout the world of English- 
speaking scholars he will be remembered as one of those who have 
set before themselves and others an ideal of scholarship which 
excludes neither philosophical thinking nor a regard for literary 
excellence. We are sometimes apt to boast that this is a specially 
English or even a specially Oxonian ideal ; we are too often 
