The Times/1900/Obituary/Henry Furneaux

OBITUARY

Oxford has sustained a great loss in the lamented death of Rev. Henry Furneaux, M.A., from failure of action of the heart. Mr. Furneaux, who was in his 71st year, was a Winchester boy, where he was noticeable for a remarkably retentive memory. He obtained a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, and a first class in 1851, and became in due course Fellow and tutor of his college, was moderator in 1856, in which year he was ordained, proctor in 1865, and examiner in Lit. Hum. from 1871 to 1876. In 1868 he accepted the college living of Heyford, near Oxford, which he resigned in 1893, and fixed his residence in Oxford. Mr. Furneaux had for years been making a special study of Tacitus, and the leisure thus acquired enabled him to complete editions of the works of that author which at present hold the field, and have earned for Mr. Furneaux recognition as a principal authority on the "Annals," the "Germania," and the "Agricola."

Mr. Furneaux was of a well-known Devonshire family. His ancestor Admiral Furneaux, and the family name is borne at this day by a group of islands in the South Pacific discovered by him. But, though of Devonshire extraction, he was born at St. Germans, in Cornwall, of which place his father was vicar for a period of nearly 50 years, and it would be difficult for his friends to dissociate his memory from that county. He had a repertory of stories of Cornish life and manners, which he professed to have acquired from the famous Mr. Hicks, of Bodmin, and his unfailing good humour and remarkable memory were at the constant service of his friends for their repetition, and the scholarly historian was for the time lost sight of in the humorous storyteller. His cheerful, kindly company, his sound scholarship, his unostentatious but profoundly appreciated virtues, will be for long sorely missed in the life of the University. Mr Furneaux married in 1870 Eleanor, daughter of Mr. Joseph Severn, the friend of Keats, by whom he leaves two sons and three daughters.