1890 - 91 .] 
Chairman’s Opening Address. 
11 
born at Morvich, in Sutherlandshire, in 1825. From his earliest 
years he was a classical scholar. His earlier education was got at 
the Edinburgh Academy under Archdeacon Williams. He went 
to Glasgow University at the early age of fourteen, carrying with 
him from the Academy so much of classical lore as to lead him to 
go at once into the Senior University Classes, whence he came forth 
with highest honours in Greek and Latin, and much distinction in 
the other classes. He was elected to a scholarship at Balliol College, 
Oxford, in 1843. In 1847 he obtained first-class honours in Literce 
humaniores , and in 1850 was made a Fellow of Oriel. He had for 
contemporaries a brilliant assemblage of men more or less connected 
with Scotland, two of them, Shairp and Grant, subsequently becoming 
Principals of Scottish Universities. After acting as Assistant to 
the Professor of Humanity in Glasgow, and to the Professor of Greek 
in St Andrews, he was in 1859 elected to the Greek Chair in the 
latter University, and from this he was transferred to the Latin 
Chair in Edinburgh in 1863. Honours flowed in upon him. He 
received the degree of LL.D. both from St Andrews and Dublin, 
and was admitted to the membership of the Athenaeum Club, 
without ballot, “ as being of distinguished eminence in literature.” 
Though his first published writing was an article on Thucydides, 
which appeared in the Oxford Essays, the works by which he is best 
known, and for which he is everywhere appreciated, were in con- 
nection with Latin literature. His volumes on the “ Roman Poets of 
the Republic,” and the “ Roman Poets of the Augustan Age,” hold 
a foremost place in modern classical literature, have passed through 
several editions, and are valued by all scholars, British and Con- 
tinental. His teaching as a professor, though his minute scholarship 
was profound, was characterised by great breadth ; and he imparted 
to his students a large share of that with which he was himself 
imbued, the insight which the study of the Roman poets gives into 
the political, social, and moral characteristics of the Romans. 
He had been working for some time at a new volume of the 
Roman poets, which would embrace studies of Horace, Ovid, 
Propertius, Tibullus, and Martial, and which a few weeks more of 
work would have completed. But unhappily this was not to be, for 
an unexpected attack of hepatic disease proved fatal to him at his 
country residence in Kirkcudbrightshire on 12th October. It is to 
