Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/398

 by the results of his excavations in Melos, and to which his collection of Greek antiquities was now sold. He was a great collector and connoisseur of ancient art, and was especially learned in all that related to coins. In 1813 he discovered at Athens one of the most ancient vases known, which was named after him (, Greece, ed. 1882, pp. 31-3). He died on 28 Aug. 1858 (see Athenæum, 11 Sept. 1858), and was buried in Holywell cemetery, Oxford. He married Catharine Marguerite (1790-1854), daughter of the Chevalier Ambroise Hermann de Cramer, Austrian consul at Smyrna, by Sarah, daughter of William Maltass, an English merchant of Smyrna (Standard, 16 March 1892; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. i. 292). Dean Goulburn, in his 'Life' of Burgon, suggests that possibly she had Greek blood in her veins; but there is no corroboration for the hypothesis. By her Burgon had issue two sons and several daughters, of whom Sarah Caroline married Henry John Rose [q. v.], and Emily Mary married [q. v.]

John William was the elder of the two sons, and was only a few months old when the family returned to England. On the way they stayed at Athens, where their friend, [q. v.], carried the infant up the Acropolis, and playfully dedicated him to Athene. At the age of eleven Burgon was sent to a private school at Putney, kept by a brother of [q. v.] Thence in 1828 he went to a private school at Blackheath, and in 1829-30 he attended classes at London University, afterwards University College. In the latter year, in spite of his desire to enter the church, he was taken into his father's counting-house. He inherited his father's love of archaeology, and in 1833 he published a 'Mémoire sur les Vases Panathenaiques par le Chevalier P.O. Bönsted, traduit de l'Anglais par J. W. Burgon' (Paris, 4to). He corresponded with [q. v.] on Shakespeare, thought he had discovered a clue to the sonnets, and wrote an essay on the subject which he did not publish. Among the Burgons' friends were [q. v.], the architect, [q. v.], the painter, and Samuel Rogers (, Rogers and his Contemporaries, ii. 240, 241). At Rogers's house young Burgon met [q. v.], whose friendship he further cultivated in the state paper office, and whose life he wrote under the title 'Portrait of a Christian Gentleman: a Memoir of P. F. Tytler' (London, 1859, 8vo; 2nd edit, same year).

In 1833 the lord mayor of London offered a prize for the best essay on Sir Thomas Gresham. Burgon thereupon began a work which won the prize in 1836; this developed into his 'Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham' (London, 1839, 2 vols. 8vo), a valuable book based upon laborious researches into original authorities. During the course of these researches he visited Oxford, which he described as 'an infernally ill-governed place,' and suffered much from librarians, whom he denounced as 'knowing and desiring to know nothing of what was under their charge.' In 1837 he won the prize for a song given by the Melodists' Club, and in 1839 he began contributing to the 'New General Biographical Dictionary,' edited by his brother-in-law, Henry John Rose. His father's failure in 1841 left him free, with the financial aid of his friend, [q. v.], to carry out his intention of taking orders, and on 21 Oct, in that year he matriculated, at the age of twenty-eight, from Worcester College, Oxford. He graduated B. A. with a second class in lit. hum. in 1845, and in the same year won the Newdigate with a poem on 'Petra' (Oxford, 1845, 8vo; 2nd edit., with a few additional poems, 1840). In 1847 he won the Ellerton theological prize, and the Denyer theological prize in 1851. He was elected fellow of Oriel in 1846, graduated M.A. in 1848, and was ordained deacon on 24 Dec. 1848, and priest on 23 Dec. 1849. From 25 Feb. 1849 to 20 March 1850 he was curate of West Ilsley, Berkshire, in 1850-1 of Worton in Oxfordshire, and from 1851 to 10 June 1853 of Finmere in the same county.

On his return to Oxford Burgon devoted himself to literary work, and in 1855 produced 'Historical Notices of the Colleges of Oxford,' which formed the letterpress for Henry Shaw's 'Arms of the Colleges of Oxford' (Oxford, 1855, 4to). For three months in 1860 he took charge of the English congregation at Rome, to which he dedicated his 'Letters from Rome' (London, 1862, 8vo). From September 1861 to July 1862 Burgon was absent on a tour in Egypt, the Sinaitic peninsula, and Palestine. On 15 Oct. 1863 he was presented to the vicarage of St. Mary's, Oxford, where he revived the afternoon services instituted by Newman. In 1864 he declined an offer from Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter of the principalship of the theological college at Exeter, but in December 1867 he accepted the Gresham professorship of divinity, which did not oblige him to leave Oxford. There Burgon was a leading champion of lost causes and impossible beliefs; but the vehemence of his advocacy