Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/538

 221 for Middlesex against Somerset at Lord's in June 1900.

Stoddart's style as a batsman was a model for imitation: his driving, cutting, and leg-play were admirable. Though essentially a forcing player, his defence on difficult wickets was sound. He was also a first-rate fieldsman anywhere, and a useful change bowler. He was also well-known as a three-quarter back at Rugby football. He played for the Harlequins Club as well as for Blackheath, and represented England in the international matches between 1886 and 1893. He enjoyed the uncommon distinction of captaining an English international team both at cricket and football.

Apart from his skill as an athlete Stoddart deserves to be remembered for the success with which he filled the difficult office of leader and manager of a touring side in Australia. His relations with his opponents were as pleasant as those with his colleagues, a happy result due to his genuine and unassuming character.

Stoddart as a youth was articled to a London architect, and passed into the Royal Academy School, but he did not follow the profession; he subsequently became a member of the Stock Exchange. On his retirement from first-class cricket he was for a time secretary of the Queen's Club, West Kensington. He married in 1906 Ethel Luckham, a widow, the daughter of Theodor von Sinnbech. There was no issue of the marriage. The early failure of his health, and his death at his house in St. John's Wood under sad circumstances on 3 April 1915, caused grief to his numerous friends, both in this country and in the colonies.

 STRACHAN - DAVIDSON, JAMES LEIGH (1843–1916), classical scholar, the eldest son of James Strachan, merchant (who took the name of Davidson in 1861), by his second wife, Mary Anne Richardson, was born at Byfleet, Surrey, 22 October 1843. His father came of a Dundee family, and was a merchant trading and residing in Madras. His mother was the daughter of a Yorkshire land-agent who lived at Kirkby Ravensworth; she died when her eldest son was only four years old. Her husband married again in 1853 and retired to Leamington, where he resided until his death (1867). James Leigh Strachan became a day-boy at Leamington College in 1854. Thence he passed to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1862 as an exhibitioner; among those who entered the college at the same time were (Sir) William Reynell Anson [q.v.]. Evelyn Abbott [q.v.], Paul Ferdinand Willert, and Francis de Paravicini, who became and remained his close friends. Strachan-Davidson (as he was now named) obtained first classes in classical moderations (1864) and literae humaniores (1866). In 1864 he was elected to the Jenkyns exhibition (the chief college prize for classical men), and in 1866 to a fellowship. As an undergraduate he read with three remarkable tutors, Edwin Palmer, Benjamin Jowett, and William Lambert Newman; by the last of these three he was inspired to make ancient history the avocation of his life. He was a frequent speaker at the Union Society, of which he was successively secretary (1863), librarian (1866–1867), and president (1867).

In his early years as a fellow Strachan-Davidson was much abroad, owing to the weakness of his health. He began to lecture regularly in 1874, but for many years wintered habitually in Egypt. In 1875 he accepted the office of senior dean, which he was to hold for thirty-two years. In this capacity he was Jowett's right-hand man. His own personality, which though elusive was singularly charming, made him the social centre of the senior common room and the idol of those undergraduates to whom he acted as a tutor or a censor morum. The subjects which he habitually taught were political economy, in which he represented orthodox individualism, and Roman history, of which he was an acknowledged master. In 1880 he contributed a study of Polybius to a volume of Hellenica, edited by Evelyn Abbott, and in 1888 he published Selections from Polybius with substantial prolegomena and appendices. In 1886 and 1890 he contributed to the English Historical Review two articles on ‘The Growth of Plebeian Privilege at Rome’ and ‘The Decrees of the Roman Plebs’. In 1890–1891 he wrote articles on Roman subjects for the third edition of William Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. His small but learned volume on Cicero and the Fall of the Roman Republic (1894) was a brilliant vindication of his favourite Roman statesman and an effective rejoinder to Mommsen's eulogy of Julius Caesar. In 1901 he criticized at some length the Römisches Strafrecht of Mommsen in the English Historical Review; and out of this article developed his own searching examination of Problems of the Roman Criminal Law (2 vols., 1912), his most elaborate and ambitious work, 512