Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/141

 published only two works, a translation of the 'Fsereyinga Saga' (1896), dedicated jointly to Henry Liddell, dean of Christ Church, and Henry Stone, an old fisherman at Sandgate, and a rendering of some quatrains from 'Omar Khayyam' (1901). His services to knowledge cannot however, be measured by the ordinary tests. Powell was the most generous as well as the most unambitious of men. His time was his friends' time, and the hours which might have been spent upon his own work were freely lavished upon the assistance of others. Thus the edition of the mythical books of 'Saxo Grammaticus,' translated by Professor Elton, was due to his suggestion, and the bulk of the introduction was his work ; and again as delegate of the Clarendon Press, an office which he held from 1885 till his death, Powell was able to render services to the advancement of learning which were none the less substantial because they were unadvertised. As professor he regularly lectured in his rooms at Christ Church on the sources of English history, and on every Thursday evening was at home to undergraduates, and here, as on any other informal occasion, he was an unfailing source of inspiration. In his pleasant rooms in the Meadow Buildings of Christ Church, with their stacks of books and Japanese prints, his shyness would disappear and he would discourse freely on any subject which came up, from boxing and fencing (of which he was an excellent judge) to the last Portuguese novel. His knowledge of foreign, especially of Romance, literature was singularly wide. He brought Verlaine to lecture in Oxford in 1891, and as a curator of the Taylorian Institute (from 1887) procured an invitation to Stephane Mallarme to give a lecture at the Taylorian on 28 Feb. 1894. The Belgian poet Verhaeren and the French sculptor Rodin were likewise at different times Powell's guests at Christ Church. He had also worked at Old Irish, and as one of the presidents of the Irish Texts Society urged in 1899 the importance of publishing the MS. Irish literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On 7 April 1902 he lectured in Dublin to the Irish Literary Society on Irish influence in English literature, and in December of the same year went to Liverpool to speak for the endowment of Celtic studies in the university. Meanwhile, he was becoming a student of Persian, had dived into Maori and Gypsy, and had made a valuable collection of Japanese prints. Rumour asserted that he contributed to the 'Sporting Times,' and he was certainly as well acquainted with the boxing reports in the 'Licensed Victuallers' Gazette' as with the 'Kalevala' or 'Beowulf.' With all this he foxmd time to write numerous reviews for the daily and weekly press, principally for the 'Academy,' and after 1890 for the 'Manchester Guardian' (see extracts in Elton's Biography). Another side of Powell's versatile nature is illvtstrated by the preface which he wrote to a penny garland of songs of labour, written by his friend William Hines (1893), chimney sweeper, herbalist, and radical agitator, of Oxford, and by the active share which he took in the foundation of Ruskin College, an institution devised to bring working men to Oxford. Powell, who had the genius for making friends among the poor, presided over the inaugural meeting at the town hall on 22 Feb. 1899, and acted from the first as a member of the council of the college. In religion Powell described him-self as a 'decent heathen Aryan,' in politics as 'a socialist and a jingo.' He was a strong home ruler, an advocate of the Boer war, and the first president of the Oxford Tariff Reform League. He was made hon. LL.D. of Glasgow in 1901.

In 1874 Powell married Mrs. Batten, a widow with two young daughters. Mrs. Powell did not Uve in Oxford. It was Powell's habit for many years to spend the middle of the week during term time in Oxford and the week-end with his family in town. In January 1881 he moved his household from 6 Stamford Green West, Upper Clapton, where he had resided since his marriage, to Bedford Park, then 'an oasis of green gardens and red houses' and the resort of painters, players, poets, and journalists, where he resided till 1902. Here his only child, a daughter, Mariella, was born in 1884. Four years later Powell lost his wife. In the summer of 1894 he visited Ambleteuse on the coast of Normandy for the first time, and for the next ten years was 'a centre at the Hotel Delpierre' during the summer season. Many of his graphic letters and poems refer to the delights of Ambleteuse, where he developed a taste for sketching. In December 1902 Powell gave up his London house and settled in North Oxford with his daughter. The next year came warnings of heart trouble. He died on 8 May 1904 at Staverton Grange, Woodstock Road, Oxford. He was buried at Wolvercote cemetery, without religious rites by his own desire. His daughter was granted