Seeley, SIR JOHN ROBERT, K.C.M.G. (knighted in 1894), was born in London in 1834, the third son of the publisher, Robert B. Seeley (1798-1886). He was educated at the City of London School, and at Christ's College, Cambridge, and graduated in 1857 first (equal with three others) in the first class in the classical tripos. Next year he became a Fellow of his college, later a lecturer there, then at his old school, but in 1863 was professor of Latin in University College, London, in 1869 of Modern History at Cambridge, with a fellowship at Christ's in 1882. Ecce Homo appeared anonymously in 1865, and excited an extraordinary commotion in the religious world in England, which was startled almost as much by its consummate literary excellence and its spiritual reverence as by the absence of the supernatural element. As a study of the human character of Jesus it still stands unrivalled. It was followed in 1882 by Natural Religion, a work hardly less valuable, though less known. He died 14th January 1895.
Other, and acknowledged, works of Seeley's are English Lessons for English Readers, in collaboration with Dr E. A. Abbott (1869); Lectures and Essays (1870); an edition of Living, Book I. (1871); Life and Times of Stein: or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age, a work that has satisfied even German scholars (3 vols. 1879); The Expansion of England (1883); A Short Life of Napoleon the First (1885); and Growth of British Policy (1892; new ed. with Life by Prothero, 1895); Introduction to Political Science (1896)—besides many important contributions to magazines.