Conington, JOHN

Conington, JOHN, a great classical scholar, was born at Boston, 10th August 1825. He was educated at Beverley, and for five years at Rugby, obtained a demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1843, and next year carried off, in the same term, the Hertford and Ireland scholarships. In 1846 he betook himself to University College, where he was elected to a fellowship two years later. Other distinctions he won were the chancellor's prize for Latin verse, for an English essay, and for a Latin essay. Determining not to take orders, he tried the study of law, but soon abandoned it in disgust. In 1854 he was appointed to the newly-founded chair of Latin Language and Literature at Oxford, which he filled until his untimely death at his native place, October 23, 1869. The impulse that Conington's lofty and contagious enthusiasm gave to classical scholarship and real culture in England was far more considerable than anything he was able to effect in the way of performance. His unique personality and the singular charm of his simple but serious nature made a profound and permanent impression upon his friends and pupils. His greatest work is his edition of Virgil (3 vols. 1861-68), with its singularly subtle and suggestive essays. His edition of the Agamemnon (1848) and Choephori (1857) of Æschylus are of less moment, though indeed the latter is admirable. In his last years he gave himself much to translation, the results of which were his metrical version of the Odes of Horace (1863); the Æneid (1866), in Scott's ballad-metre; the Iliad (1868), in the Spenserian stanza; and the Satires and Epistles of Horace (1869), in the couplet of Pope. Of these the last is without doubt the most valuable. His edition of Persius was published in 1872, and in the same year his Miscellaneous Writings (2 vols.), with a short Life by Professor H. J. S. Smith.