Page:Literary Landmarks of Oxford.djvu/104

76 to the world. Scott became Master of Balliol in 1854, and Liddell, Dean of Christ Church in 1855; and thus in their greatness as Dons, as through all their life's work, there was but little in time and in space to divide them.

Dean Liddell lies in the burial ground of the Cathedral.

John Ruskin remembered Liddell as "one of the rarest types of nobly presenced Englishmen," and said that he was the only one in Oxford among the Masters of his (Ruskin's) day, who knew anything of art.

Nearly half a century ago, in a small New England town, lived a small boy, not yet into his "teens," who wished a certain lexicon, supposed to be necessary only to boys much his senior in years and in experience, and which he could not afford to buy. The sympathetic vendor of second-hand books to whom he appealed, impressed by the unexpected desire of so immature-looking a student, sold the volume on the instalment plan, the boy collecting old bones in the streets and disposing of them to a dealer in such things for a cent or two a pound, until the necessary amount, only a dollar or two, was raised, and the account settled. The title of the work was Liddell and Scott's "Greek-English Lexicon" and the boy, a good many years later, told the story, in Oxford