Paley, FREDERICK APTHORP

Paley, FREDERICK APTHORP, classical scholar, grandson of the author of the Evidences, was born at Easingwold, near York, in 1816. He had his education under Dr S. Butler at Shrewsbury, and at St John's College, Cambridge, but, not obtaining mathematical honours, by the regulations of the time was shut out from the classical tripos, and likewise did not obtain a fellowship. He resided, however, at Cambridge till his conversion to the Roman Catholic faith in 1846, and later from 1860 till 1874, when he was appointed professor of Classical Literature at the abortive Roman Catholic college at Kensington. He next went to live at Bournemouth, was twice classical examiner to London University and for the classical tripos at Cambridge, and continued till the sudden close of his life (11th December 1888) his arduous labours in classical scholarship. In early life at Cambridge he helped to found the Camden Ecclesiological Society, and published books on Gothic architecture; but the important work of his life began in 1844 with the first part of his edition of Æschylus with Latin notes. He re-edited Æschylus for the 'Bibliotheca Classica,' as well as Euripides, Hesiod, the Iliad, and completed the Sophocles of Mr Blaydes, all for the same series; and also prepared minor editions of similar works, or parts of these, for the 'Cambridge Texts' series. His Propertius, Ovid's Fasti, and Martial were less successful; but his three comedies of Aristophanes, Theocritus, and his Select Private Oration of Demosthenes (in conjunction with Dr Sandys) were recognised as works of the very highest value. He published prose translations of the Philebus and Theæctetus of Plato, the 5th and 10th books of Aristotle's Ethics, the Odes of Pindar, and the Tragedies of Æschylus, and renderings in verse of the 5th book of Propertius and Fragments of the Greek Comic Poets (1888). Other works were a treatise on Greek Particles (1881), Greek Wit (1881), and an unsatisfactory edition of the Gospel of St John (1887). Paley received the degree of LL.D. from Aberdeen in 1883. A sagacious textual critic and sound exegete, he left behind him traditions of a high type of scholarship, of the age when yet scientific philology was not, and German might be neglected. In his later years he adopted a late date for Homer.