man Poets of the Republic_, but it has never been
surpassed, and it has very seldom been equalled.

On another scheme and in other circumstances names like those of Kennedy
and Shilleto, of Linwood and Burges, of Monk and Blomfield, would cry
for admission here, but as it is they must be ruled out. And it is not
possible to widen the scope much, so as to take in some eminent students
who have given not unliterary expression to the study of languages and
subjects other than the classical. It has indeed been a constantly
increasing feature of the century that fresh studies--AEgyptology, the
study of the Semitic languages, the study of the older forms not merely
of English but of the other modern tongues, the enormous range of
knowledge opened to Englishmen, and as it were forced on them by our
possession of India and our commerce and connection with other nations
of the East, as well as the newer subjects of comparative mythology,
folk-lore, and the like, all more or less offshoots of what may be
generally termed scholarship, have been added to the outer range of the
Humanities. Some of these appeal to very few, none of them to more than
few persons; and literature, in its best description if not exactly
definition, is that which does or should appeal to all persons of
liberal education and sympathies. Yet one exponent of these studies (and
of more than one of them) must have a place here, as well for the more
than professionally encyclopaedic character of his knowledge as for his
intellectual vigour and his services to letters.

William Robertson Smith was born in 1846, and died in 1894. A native of
Aberdeenshire, the son of a Free Kirk minister, and educated at Aberdeen
and elsewhere, he became Professor of Hebrew in the Free Church College
of that city, and for some years discussed his subject, in the manner of
the Germans, without hindrance. His articles in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, however, gave offence, and after much controversy he was
deprived of his chair in 1881. Two years later, however, he was made
Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, where he also became
Fellow of Christ's and University Librarian. And from a contributor he
proceeded to be first assistant-editor and then editor in chief of the
_Encyclopaedia_. His health, never very strong, became worse and worse,
and he finally succumbed to a complication of diseases. It was
understood that the theological scandal connected with his name wa