Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/33

 Rh In 1852 Dasent was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple, becoming an Advocate in Doctors' Commons in November of the same year. At the time of his death he was one of the last survivors of that ancient legal Corporation.

In 1852 he also took his degree as D.C.L. He now accepted, under Jelf, the post of Professor of English Literature and Modern History at King's College, and the lectures delivered by him in that capacity from 1853 to 1865 were uniformly of a high order of merit, and well deserve publication in a collected form. Through the instrumentality of Lowe, who quickly perceived his value for educational purposes, he was frequently employed henceforth as a Government examiner of candidates for admission to the Army and the permanent Civil Service. In the autumn of 1854 Delane, whose interest in military affairs was always a keen one, was so impressed by Russell's letters from the front describing the pitiable condition of our troops, that he went to the Crimea to see for himself how the war was progressing, leaving Dasent in supreme command at Printing House Square.

During a similar interregnum in the following year Reeve took umbrage at the alterations which the temporary editor thought it necessary to make in his contributions to the paper on foreign policy, but Delane upheld Dasent's line of action, and Reeve withdrew from the Times to assume the editorship of the Edinburgh Review