Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/136

 a gymnasium called by his name has also been erected in Bishop Cotton's school at Bangalore.

Pope married (1) in 1841 Mary, daughter of the Rev. J. Carver; she died at Tuticorin in 1845; (2) in 1849, at Madras, Henrietta Page, daughter of G. Van Someren. She and her two daughters were awarded a joint civil list pension of 50l. in 1909. She died at Forest Hill, London, on 11 Sept. 1911, and is buried with her husband. Three sons won distinction in the service of the Indian government, viz. John Van Someren Pope, for seventeen years director of public instruction in Burma; Arthur William Uglow Pope, C.I.E. (1906), railway engineer and manager in India and China; and Lieut.-colonel Thomas Henry Pope, I.M.S., professor of ophthalmology at the Madras Medical College. A not very satisfactory portrait by Alfred Wolmark, painted by subscription among his Madras pupils, is in the Indian Institute at Oxford.

Pope ranks as the first of Tamil scholars, even when compared with Beschi, [q. v.], and Bishop Caldwell, though he did not concern himself much with the cognate Dravidian languages. With him Tamil was the means to understand the history, religion, and sentiment of the people of Southern India. As early as 1842 he published (in Tamil) his 'First Catechism of Tamil Grammar,' which was re-issued in 1895, with an English translation, by the Clarendon Press. His educational books of this kind reached completion in the series entitled 'Handbook to the Ordinary Dialect of the Tamil Language,' which includes Tamil-English and English-Tamil dictionaries, as well as a prose reader and the seventh edition of his Tamil handbook (Oxford, 1904-6). But his reputation rests upon his critical editions of three classical works of old Tanul literature: the 'Kurral' of the pariah poet Tiruvalluvar, which has supplied a metrical catechism of morality to the people of Southern India for at least a thousand years (1886); the 'Naladiyar,' or four hundred quatrains of similar didactic sayings, probably of yet earlier date and of equal popularity (1893); and the 'Tiruvaçagam,' or sacred utterances of Manikka-Va9agar, to which is prefixed a summary of the life and legends of the author, with appendices illustrating the system of philosophy and religion in Southern India known as Saiva Siddhantam (1900). Of this last the preface is dated on the editor's eightieth birthday and the dedication is to the memory of Jowett. All these books contain translations into English, together with copious notes and a lexicon. Apart from their erudition, they reveal Pope's warm sympathy with the people and their literature. In addition to his published books. Pope left in MS. complete editions and English translations of at least three Tamil works, as well as a vast amount of material for a standard Tamil dictionary, which it is hoped will be utilised by a committee of native scholars that has been formed at Madras. He further began about 1890 a catalogue of the Tamil printed books in the British Museum, which was carried out by Dr. L. D. Barnett. Among numerous pamphlets and sermons, published chiefly in his early days, was 'An Alphabet for all India' (Madras, 1859), a plan for adapting the Roman alphabet to all the languages of India.

Pope, whose culture was wide, was an enthusiastic student of all great literature. His favourite poet was Browning, to whose loftiness of speculation he paid tribute in his 'St. John in the Desert' (1897; 2nd edit. 1904, an introduction and notes to Browning's ' A Death in the Desert). He knew Browning personally, and to him the poet gave the 'square old yellow book with crumpled vellum covers,' which formed the basis of 'The Ring and the Book,' and which Pope presented to the library of Balliol College. Keenly interested in all phases of philosophy and religion, he welcomed the development of modern Christian thought, but was always loyal to the Wesleyanism in which he had been brought up. His brilliant and picturesque talk bore witness to the variety of his intellectual interests and his catholicity of thought.



POPE, SAMUEL (1826–1901), barrister, born at Manchester on 11 Dec. 1826, was eldest son of Samuel Pope, a merchant of London and Manchester, by his wife Phebe, daughter of William Rushton, merchant, of Liverpool. After private education he was employed in business, and in his leisure cultivated in debating societies an aptitude for public speaking. Coming to London, he studied at London University, entered at the Middle Temple on 13 Nov. 1855, and was called to the bar on 7 June 1858. Deeply interested in politics, he unsuccessfully contested Stoke as a liberal 