Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/430

 and Cambridge race of 1856, and was stroke in 1858. He was a member of the Alpine Club from 1862 to 1875. He was one of the earliest members of the Amateur Dramatic Club, and became a freemason. Throughout his life he was devoted to the craft, passing the chair in Foundation Lodge, Cheltenham, and afterwards being grand chaplain of England and one of the founders of Universities Lodge, Durham.

In 1858 Snow returned to Eton as assistant master and was ordained deacon in 1859 and priest in 1860. After sixteen years at Eton, he was elected principal of Cheltenham College in 1874. In 1875 he assumed his mother's family surname of Kynaston. In 1881 he proceeded B.D. and the next year D.D. at Cambridge; for the former degree he wrote a Latin thesis on the use of the expression 'The Kingdom of God' in the New Testament, and for the latter an English essay on 'The Influence of the Holy Spirit on the Life of Man.'

Resigning Cheltenham in 1888, Kynaston was for nearly a year vicar of St. Luke's, Kentish Town. In 1889 Bishop Lightfoot appointed him canon of Durham and professor of Greek in the university, in succession to the distinguished scholar and teacher, Thomas Saunders Evans. He remained at Durham till his death there on 1 Aug. 1910. He married (1) in 1860 Mary Louisa Anne, daughter of Thomas Bros, barrister; and (2) in 1865 Charlotte, daughter of Rev. John Cordeaux of Hooton Roberts. He had four sons and three daughters.

Kynaston's academic distinctions fail to exhibit the range of his powers. Always devoted to music, of which he had a practical as well as a theoretical knowledge, he had a good tenor voice. As a linguist he was at home in five or six languages, and could improvise effective poetical translations. Once, in less than two hours, he rendered an Italian song into English verse which fitted the music.

An admirable composer in Greek and Latin, Kynaston was too fastidious a writer to make any contribution to scholarly literature commensurate with his capacities. His best-known book is an edition of Theocritus with English notes (Oxford, 1869; 5th edit. 1910). His other works are: 1. 'Nucipruna: exercises in Latin Elegiac Verse,' 12mo, 1873. 2. 'Sermons preached in the College Chapel, Cheltenham,' 1876. 3. 'Poetæ Grseci,' extracts with English notes, 1879. 4. 'Exercises in Greek Iambic Verse' and Key, 12mo, 1879-80. 5. 'Exemplaria Cheltoniensia,' 1880. 6. 'Selections from the Greek Elegiac Poets,' 18mo, 1880. He also published translations of Euripides's 'Alcestis' into English verse (1906) and of the prayers from 'Vita Jesu Christi' of Ludolphus of Saxony (1909).

 L LABOUCHERE,. HENRY. [See (1841–1910), actress.]

LAFONT, EUGÈNE (1837–1908), science teacher in India, born at Mons, Belgium, on 26 March 1837, was eldest son of Pierre Lafont by his wife Marie Soudar. Educated at St. Barbara's College, Ghent, and at the Jesuits' seminary, he was admitted to the order in 1854, and did educational work in Belgium until 1865. He was then sent to Calcutta to inaugurate science teaching at St. Xavier's College, which had been founded by the Jesuit fathers in 1860 for the 'domiciled' European and Eurasian communities. He was rector of the college from 1873 to 1904, when failing health caused his retirement. After leaving Europe he only revisited it twice, in 1878 to recruit after severe illness, and in 1900 to visit the Paris exhibition for scientific purposes.

Indian education on Lafont's arrival in India was almost exclusively literary, and Lafont was the pioneer of scientific teaching in Bengal. He combined a thorough knowledge of experimental physics with great skill as a teacher and lecturer. He equipped St. Xavier's with a fine meteorological and solar observatory, and with a physical laboratory second to none in India. He was one of the founders of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, and for nineteen years gave weekly honorary lectures under its auspices, and was its senior vice-president. A popular and eloquent preacher, he also frequently lectured on Christian evidences, claiming that true science was the handmaid of faith. 