Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/297

 BUTCHER, SAMUEL HENRY (1850–1910), scholar and man of letters, was born in Dublin on 16 April 1850. His father, Samuel Butcher [q.v.], was then professor of ecclesiastical history in Trinity College. His mother was Mary Leahy, a member of a Kerry family. His early years were spent in Dublin, or at Ballymoney, co. Cork, where his father held a college living, and after 1866, when his father became bishop of Meath, at Ardbraccan, near Navan. His only brother, John George (b. 1853), is now a K.C. and M.P. for the city of York. His eldest sister, Elizabeth, became Lady Monteagle (d. 1908). He had three younger sisters—Mary Frances (Mrs. G. W. Prothero), Augusta (Mrs. Charles Crawley, d. 1899), and Eleanor, who died unmarried in 1894. Butcher was educated at home till the age of fourteen, when he went to Marlborough. His progress was rapid. In 1865 he won a senior scholarship. He also carried off many prizes for Latin and Greek composition, and ultimately became senior prefect. In later life he often acknowledged the debt he owed to the teaching of George Granville Bradley [q. v. Suppl. II], then headmaster. He also showed keenness in games, was a fair cricketer, and became captain of football. In 1869 he won an open scholarship for classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and began residence at the university in the autumn of that year. His undergraduate career at Cambridge was one of unbroken success. In 1870 he won the Bell scholarship, in 1871 the Waddington scholarship, in 1871 and 1872 the Powis medal. In 1873 he graduated as senior classic, and was awarded a chancellor's medal. As an undergraduate he was the centre of a brilliant group of friends, and a member of the select society known as ‘The Apostles.’ In 1874 he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity.

Shortly after taking his degree he accepted from Dr. Hornby the offer of an assistant-mastership at Eton, and remained there for a year (1873–4). He then returned to Cambridge, and took up the post of lecturer in classics at his own college. There he might have remained, but for his engagement in 1875 to Rose, youngest daughter of Archbishop Trench [q. v.]. Under the existing statutes, a fellowship was forfeited by marriage. In this dilemma Dr. Bradley, then Master of University College, Oxford, offered him a tutorship at University, to the tenure of which a ‘married’ fellowship was attached. He therefore migrated to Oxford, and in 1876 married. At Oxford his teaching rapidly made its mark. His scholarship, at once brilliant and solid, his enthusiasm for the classics, his interest in the matter as well as the language of his authors, made his lectures both attractive and profitable. Among his pupils were J. W. Mackail, (Sir) Cecil Spring-Rice, and other men who later won distinction in various lines, and to whom he was a friend as well as a teacher. A university commission was appointed in 1877, and Butcher gained an acquaintance with academical problems which was highly useful to him in later years. In the promotion of female education he showed an active interest, and he was honorary secretary to the council of the association for the higher education of women at Oxford (1879–82). He also began to distinguish himself as an author. In 1879 he published, with Mr. Andrew Lang, a translation of the ‘Odyssey,’ which was at once recognised as the most successful prose reproduction of the original that had yet appeared. It combines great literary charm with delicate feeling for the subtleties of Greek; it is correct without being slavish; and has just enough archaic flavour, without an affectation of archaism. In the same year Butcher published an admirable little book on Demosthenes, which gives, in brief compass, the political conditions of the day and the peculiar methods and excellences of the orator's rhetoric.

These works, and his growing reputation as a scholar and a teacher, procured for him, in 1882, his appointment to the chair of Greek in the University of Edinburgh, rendered vacant by the retirement of Professor Blackie [q. v. Suppl. I]. He met at first some opposition as a southerner; but the charm of his character and the ability of his teaching soon overcame all obstacles. Popular among his students, with whom he was on much more intimate terms than is usual in Scottish universities, he speedily gained a leading rank in the senatus. In 1889 the Scottish universities bill became law; and a royal commission was nominated to draw up new statutes and reform the whole academical system in Scotland. The chairman of the commission was Lord Kinnear; and Butcher was chosen to represent the professorial body. The work of the commission, which was an executive and not merely (as usual) an advisory body, was peculiarly difficult and onerous, for two reasons. In the first place, the duty of the commissioners was to draw up for all the four Scottish universities not only statutes but ordinances