Furnivall

Furnivall, FREDERICK JAMES, a laborious and enthusiastic student of early English, was born at Egham in Surrey, February 4, 1825, and educated at private schools, University College, London, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1846, M.A. in 1849. He was called to the Bar in 1849. In early life he associated himself in philanthropic work with Frederick Maurice, &c., taught in the Working Men's College every term for ten years, and was for the same period a captain in its rifle corps. He has devoted himself to English philology, and with characteristic energy has succeeded in founding, for the publication of texts, 'The Early English Text Society,' 1864 (with the 'Extra Series,' 1867); 'The Chaucer Society' (1868); 'The Ballad Society' (1868); the 'New Shakspeare Society' (1874); 'The Browning Society' (1881, with Miss Hickey); 'The Wyclif Society' (1882); and 'The Shelley Society' (1886). He has been honorary secretary of the Philological Society since 1854, while he edited for some years the Society's great English Dictionary, the first part of which saw the light under the supervision of Dr Murray in 1884. Through these societies he has raised and expended upwards of £30,000 in printing early MSS. and rare books, and has thus placed in the hands of thousands of students cheap and accurate texts, some score of these well edited by himself. His Robert of Brunne's Handlyng Synne and Chronicle were edited for the Roxburghe Club and Rolls Series. His most valuable work, however, has been his splendid edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: 'A Six-text Print of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales' (7 parts, 1868-75), being an exact print (with the Tales in their proper order and groups) of six of the seven most important MSS.; the seventh he has since printed by itself, besides all the MSS. of Chaucer's Minor Poems. This work has given a new impulse to early English scholarship, and will always remain a monument of the noble and patient enthusiasm of its editor. For the New Shakspeare Society he has edited several books of worth in its 'Shakspeare's England Series,' specially Harrison's Description of England (1577-87) and Stubbes's Anatomy of Abuses in England (1583). Of his introduction to the Leopold Shakspeare, describing the plays and poems in chronological order, over 100,000 copies have been sold. He and a friend built the first narrow wagerboat in England in 1845, and he first introduced sculling fours and eights in 1884 and 1885, and was in the winning crews of the first races ever sculled in these boats. Furnivall was granted in 1884 a Civil List pension of £150. On his sixtieth birthday the university of Berlin conferred on him its Ph.D. degree, honoris causa. In 1881 he prepared a careful bibliography of Browning. In 1888 he edited, with his medical son Percy (a champion cyclist), the first English book on anatomy, which was written by Thomas Vicary in 1548. The series of forty-three fac-similes of the quartos of Shakspeare's Plays was edited by Dr Furnivall and a number of other scholars under his superintendence.