Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/616

 professor of Latin in succession to Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro [q. v.]. He remained professor till his death. His favourite subjects for lectures were Martial and the Letters of Seneca and the younger Pliny, with Minucius Felix and Tertullian. But, like his college lectures, those delivered before the university were too closely packed with references to parallel passages to be appreciated by the ordinary student. His lectures on Bede bore fruit in 1878 in a joint edition (with Dr. J. R. Lumby) of the 'Ecclesiastical History' (bks. iii. and iv.), in which the learned and multifarious commentary fills a little more space than the text.

Mayor pursued his studies unremittingly, 'taking no exercise for its own sake' and rarely going abroad except on academic or learned business. In 1875 he represented Cambridge University at the tercentenary of Leyden, where he met Madvig and Co bet. In the same year he paid his only visit to Rome, where, apart from its ancient associations, he was mainly interested in the modern schools, where the boys learnt by heart whole books of Virgil and Tasso. A keen interest in the Old Catholics led him to attend the Congress convened at Constance in 1873, when he delivered a German as well as an English discourse (Mayor's Report of Congress, 1873 ; also his edit, of Bishop Beinkens' Second Pastoral Letter and Speeches, and Prof. Messmer's Speech, 1874).

His physical constitution was remarkably strong. He attributed the vigour of his old age to his strict adherence to vegetarian diet, which he adopted in middle life and thenceforth championed with enthusiasm. He set forth his views on diet first in 'Modicus Cibi Medicus Sibi, or Nature her Own Physician' (1880); and subsequently in the selected addresses published in 'Plain Living and High Thinking' (1897). Li 1884 he became president of the Vegetarian Society, and held office till death. Throughout that period he was a frequent contributor to the 'Dietetic Reformer and Vegetarian Messenger' ; and the Vegetarian Society in 1901 printed selections by him from the Bible and from English poets under the title of ' Sound Mind in Body Sound : a Cloud of Witnesses to the Golden Rule of not too much.' He was also keenly interested in missionary work at home and abroad, and especially in the college mission in Walworth.

Mayor became president of his college in Oct. 1902, and at the fellows' table he charmed visitors of the most varied tastes by his old-fashioned courtesy, and by his learned and lively talk. His interests within their own lines remained alert to the last. When the National Library of Turin was partly destroyed by fire on 26 Jan. 1904, he promptly sent the library no fewer than 710 volumes (The Eagle, xxvi. 264 f.). In 1907 he easily mastered Esperanto.

Mayor's wide learning received many marks of respect in his later years. He received the honorary degree of D.C.L. from Oxford in 1895, that of LL.D. from Aberdeen in 1892 and from St. Andrews in 1906, and that of D.D. from Glasgow in 1901. He was one of the original fellows of the British Academy (1902). In 1905, on his 80th birthday, a Latin address of congratulation written by Prof. J. S. Reid and numerously signed, was presented to him at a meeting held in the Combination Room of St. John's, under the presidency of Sir Richard Jebb. Until 1908 he preached in the college chapel and occasionally in the university church. He printed his sermons immediately after delivery, without his name, but with the date and place, and with an appendix of interesting notes. His style in the pulpit reflected the best seventeenth and eighteenth century examples, and his sermons dealt exhaustively with subjects of importance. 'The Spanish Reformed Church' was the theme of two sermons in 1892 and 1895, the first of which was partly delivered in the university church and was published in 'Spain, Portugal, the Bible' (1895). His last sermon, that on 'The Church of Scotland' (1908), was in praise of Scottish learning and Scottish missionary enterprise. A selection of his sermons was edited for the Cambridge University Press by the Rev. H. F. Stewart in 1911, after his death.

Mayor, who was unmarried, died suddenly of heart failure within two months of completing the 86th year of his age, on 1 Dec. 1910, while he was preparing to leave his Cambridge residence, with a view to reading prayers in the college chapel. He was buried in St. Giles's cemetery, on the Huntingdon road, Cambridge. Mayor possessed an unusual power of accumulating knowledge. He had small faculty of construction, and much of the work that he designed was not attempted, or if attempted was uncompleted. A projected commentary on Seneca never appeared. A Latin dictionary, which might have been his magnum opus, was never seriously begun. Contemplated editions of Milton and of Boswell's 'Life of Johnson,' and an ecclesiastical history of the first