Kennedy, BENJAMIN HALL, one of the greatest of modern schoolmasters, was born in 1804, son of the Rev. Rann Kennedy, second master of King Edward's School, Birmingham, and had his education there and at Shrewsbury under Dr Butler, whence he passed to St John's College, Cambridge. His course was unusually distinguished: he carried off the Porson prize thrice, the medal for the Latin ode twice, and for the Greek ode once, and graduated in 1827 as senior classic, senior Chancellor's medalist, and senior optime. Next year he became Fellow and classical lecturer of his college, in 1830 an assistant-master at Harrow, and in 1836 was appointed to succeed his old master, Dr Butler, at Shrewsbury. Here for thirty years he laboured with assiduous vigour and conspicuous success, forming for almost a generation a series of brilliant scholars, of whom need only here be named the greatest, H. A. J. Munro, the editor of Lucretius. The famous Sabrinæ Corolla (1850; 4th ed. 1890) is an imperishable memorial at once of his own brilliant scholarship and of the spirit he could inspire. There never was perhaps a more dexterous and clever versifier in both Greek and Latin. In 1867 Dr Kennedy was appointed professor of
Greek at Cambridge and Canon of Ely. He died at Torquay, April 6, 1889.
Among his books were Palæstra Latina (1850); Curriculum Stili Latini (1858); the Public School Latin Grammar (1871); an admirable school edition of Virgil, annotated (1876); and editions, with verse translations, of the Birds of Aristophanes (1874), the Agamemnon of Æschylus (1878), and the Edipus Tyrannus of Sophocles (1882). In Between Whites (1877) are collected many excellent poetical pieces in Greek, Latin, and English. Other works were Occasional Sermons (1877), Plato's Theætetus, with translation (1881), and Ely Lectures on the Revised Translation of the New Testament (1882).