Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/667

 of the Osmanic, and was also awarded the G.B. In May 1884 he was appointed commodore commanding the ships in the Red Sea, and protected Suskin till the arrival of Sir Gerald Grahams expedition in 1885. Special reference was made to this service by the secretary to the admiralty in parliament, and More-Molyneux was mentioned in despatches by the commander-in-chief and by Lord Wolseley, received the clasps for Suskin and the Nile, and was advanced to the K.C.B. He next served as captain-superintendent of Sheerness dockyard till promoted to his flag on 1 May 1888. He was an aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria from 1885 to 1888.

His further service was administrative and advisory. In 1889 he was one of the British representatives at the International Marine Conference held at Washington; from Aug. 1891 to Aug. 1894 he was admiral-superintendent at Devonport; on 28 May 1894 he became vice-admiral, and on 13 July 1899 reached the rank of admiral. From Oct. 1900 he was president of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, until his retirement in Aug. 1903. He was promoted G.C.B. in Nov. 1902, and died at Cairo on 29 Feb. 1904. His body was embalmed, sent home, and buried at St. Nicholas's church, Guildford.

More-Molyneux married in 1874 Annie Mary Carew, daughter of Captain Matthew Charles Forster, R.N.; she died in 1898, leaving a daughter, Gwendolen.

 MORFILL, WILLIAM RICHARD (1834–1909), Slavonic scholar, born at Maidstone, Kent, on 17 Nov. 1834, was eldest son of William Morfill, professional musician, of Huguenot origin. Educated first at the grammar school of his native town, he was sent in 1848 to Towbridge school, where he rose to be head boy in 1853, winning a Judd exhibition to the university. In the same year he was elected to a scholarship at Oriel College, Oxford. He was placed in the first class in classical moderations, but a break-down in health compelled him to take a pass degree (B.A. 1857; M.A. 1860). During the remainder of his life he stayed at Oxford, first as a 'coach' or private tutor. For some time he lectured on English literature at Wren's in London, and was always busy reading, writing, and reviewing. His long vacations were spent in travelling on the Continent, especially in Slavonic countries, where he made many friends. In very early life he acquired an interest in the literature, languages, and history of the Slav and his neighbours in the Near East, which became the main study of his life; he owed almost everything to self-teaching. His knowledge of Russian is said to date from his school days, when one of the masters presented him with a Russian grammar. In 1870, and again on two subsequent occasions, he was nominated by the curators of the Taylorian Institution to deliver the lectures on the Ilchester foundation upon Slavonic literature. In 1889 he was appointed, on the recommendation of the same body, to be university reader in Russian, a position which was raised in 1900 to that of professor of Russian and of the Slavonic languages. He was a corresponding member of many learned societies on the Continent, and Ph.D. of the Czech university of Prague. In 1903 he was elected fellow of the British Academy, in the philological section.

Morfill was a voluminous author in the subjects that he had made his own. He wrote grammars of Polish (1884), Serbian (1887), and Bulgarian (1897) for Trübner's series of 'Simplified Grammars'; of Russian (1889) and Czech (1889) for the Clarendon press; for 'The Story of the Nations' histories of Russia (1885; 6th edit. 1904) and Poland (1893); for 'Religious Systems of the World' a sketch of Slavonic religion; besides many articles in the 'Encyclopedia Britannica.' He also published 'Slavonic Literature' (1883) and 'A History of Russia from Peter the Great to Alexander II' (1902). In conjunction with Dr. R. H. Charles he translated the Slavonic version of the 'Book of the Secrets of Enoch' (1896) and other Apocryphal literature. At the time of his death be was engaged on a translation of the ancient 'Norgorod Chronicle.' His interests, however, were by no means confined to Slavonic From a boy he had read widely in English literature, and he possessed a most retentive memory. His first publication was an edition of ballads from MSS. of the reign of Elizabeth for the Ballad Society (1873). He kept up his classics to the last, and found time to make himself acquainted with Welsh and Old Irish, and also with Georgian and Turkish. This fortunate gift of tongues was valued by him, not so much for linguistic purposes, as affording a key to the knowledge of a national character