the Upper Eocene of Hampshire, and deposits of corresponding date in Central France, remains of a snake (named Paleryx) have been found, which is regarded as a near ally of the existing pythons; while in the Upper Eocene of North America bones of a creature have been found, for which the name Boavus has been proposed as a sign of its probable affinity to the American boas of to-day. It has been suggested that cobras lived in Bavaria in Middle Miocene times; while somewhat later a huge viper, like those now living in the hottest parts of Africa, had its home in Switzerland.

Those fossil serpents to which we first referred, and which inhabited England in the Eocene period, ranged also, as might be expected, over the continent of Europe. But their range was, in fact, much more extended; as a specimen, which must have been thirty feet in length, has been found in the Eocene of North America. These serpents, the name bestowed on which is Palæophis, are regarded by Sir Richard Owen as having probably been marine animals allied to the family of sea-snakes (Hydrophidae) which we have described. If so, they were probably poisonous, and thus it is absolutely certain that most fully developed members of the Ophidian Order extended far and wide over this planet in ages long before that to which the most speculative of geologists would assign as the period during which Man first appeared in Creation, even if we had not grounds to regard them as having formed part of the earth's fauna during the Secondary period.

ART.

ART. VII. John William Burgon, late Dean of Chichester. A Biography, with Extracts from his Letters and Early Journals. By Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., D.C.L., sometime Dean of Norwich. In 2 vols. London, 1892.

'NOM

TOMEN intra has ædes semper venerandum.' These words, taken from the inscription under Cardinal Wolsey's bust in the Quadrangle of Christ Church, may not unsuitably be prefixed to an article on Dean Burgon in the Quarterly Review. Within these precincts, if anywhere, the Dean's name is to be held in respectful remembrance. With this Review his relations were long and intimate: to those responsible for its conduct he was bound by ties of mutual regard in its pages some of his most brilliant and most characteristic writings first saw the light: it was here that, by his dashing onslaught on prosaic pedantry, he so effectually routed the authors of the Revised Version of the New Testament, and taught the public, and we trust also the Revisers themselves, to rate more modestly and therefore more accurately the value of their handiwork.

John William Burgon was born on the 21st of August, 1813. His father, Mr. Thomas Burgon, was a merchant of London, and, paternally, his descent was purely English. But his mother, Catherine de Cramer, was the daughter of the Austrian Consul at Smyrna, by a Miss Maltass, a lady who had Greek or Smyrniote blood in her veins, and a sister of that Mrs. Baldwin (née Jane Maltass) whose beauty created a great sensation both at Vienna and in London, procured for her attentions from the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., and elicited even from Dr. Johnson a burst of clumsy amorousness,' and whose portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, formerly in the collection at Strawberry Hill, was this spring sold by Messrs. Christie.

Mr. Thomas Burgon was a High Tory and a High Churchman, an antiquary and a connoisseur. He dealt in Greek and Turkish produce, and the nature of his business obliged him to reside for several years at Smyrna, where his eldest son-John William-was born. But shortly after the boy's birth he returned to England, and London was henceforth his home.

John William Burgon, during the first eleven years of his life, was taught by his mother. In 1824 he was sent to a private school at Putney, and subsequently to one at Blackheath. We do not find that he made any special proficiency in classical study, but he was a thoughtful and precocious boy-in fact, we suspect, not a little of a prig. Reviewing at the age of twenty

one

one some records of his school-days, he says, 'I notice the same love of books and of study, the same hatred of school and contempt for the society of my equals in age, which since I was eleven, and first went to school, I have never been able to shake off.'

6

From early days his mind was of a seriously, though not an emotionally, religious cast. At the age of sixteen he was confirmed, and it is curious to find that, though he was constant in his attendance at church, he only communicated twice in the next five years. What makes this fact the more remarkable is that at this period his heart was set on taking Holy Orders; though the fulfilment of this design was unavoidably deferred. Difficulties, destined before long to be fatal, were beginning to gather round his father's business, and it became necessary for young Burgon, instead of proceeding to Oxford or Cambridge, to enter the paternal countinghouse. 'He disliked it more than I can tell,' writes his sister, and found relief only in the pursuit of Poetry and Art during his leisure moments, when he returned from the City.' These scanty intervals of leisure he used with praiseworthy diligence. He attended lectures at the University of London, worked hard at archæology and kindred studies; published a considerable number of fugitive pieces, both in prose and verse, and one work of more pretensiona historical treatise on the Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham.' Meanwhile he had the advantage of early and frequent access to the society of literary men whom he met at his father's table, and his annual holidays were occupied in various excursions which seem generally to have had historical or archæological research for their object. A visit paid to Mr. Dawson Turner, at Yarmouth, in April, 1838, had, however, an interest of a different kind; and we gather from his biographer's hint, that it was only the constraining sense of domestic duty, and the absolute necessity of trying to relieve his father's embarrassed finances, that restrained him from offering marriage to his host's daughter.

And so some ten years rolled by, and the skies were all the time darkening for a storm. It broke on the 19th of August, 1841, when Mr. Thomas Burgon's house suspended payment, and bankruptcy ensued.

The crash of his father's fortunes proved an unspeakable blessing to John William Burgon. It terminated his commercial career at a stroke, and left him free to follow the bent of his own inclinations. He had long desired to go to Oxford with a view to seeking Holy Orders, and this desire was now fulfilled. On the 23rd of August, 1841, he wrote to his friend,

Mr.

Mr. Dawson Turner, who had generously offered him pecuniary aid:

My backwardness (in Greek especially), is what you would not believe; and indeed my ignorance generally is frightful. I can only hope by a few months' serious application to get into a condition to be fit to go to Oxford. Then my necessities will begin. What they will be, I know not. If it depended on me, I should say little enough... I shall keep no society; get into a garret, if I can (for two reasons), my habits are quite the reverse of expensive, and I have books. On the other hand, a good tutor I will have, coûte que coûte. I cannot suppose that I shall want much more than 1007. a year,—at least I fix that sum in my mind as a kind of point to reason from.'

On the 21st of October, 1841, Burgon matriculated at Oxford, as a Commoner of Worcester College; having chosen that Society on the recommendation of Dr. Pusey, whose brother-in-law, Dr. Cotton, was its Provost. Owing to domestic engagements, connected with the winding-up of his father's affairs, and his family's removal from the old home, he did not begin residence at Oxford till the following year. Once established there, he threw himself with characteristic earnestness into his new life; was equally attentive to the religious and the educational duties of the place, and toiled terribly' to make up for lost time.

'Never,' writes a contemporary, 'did a more devoted, humble, loyal, dutiful alumnus pass the threshold of Alma Mater; never did any student strive more vigorously to avail himself of all advantages within his reach. Day and night were all alike to him; and I have ever marvelled how his constitution bore the excessive strain, continuous as it was, and how in the intervals of meals, and slight, restricted recreation, he invariably maintained a buoyant, exuberant cheerfulness and fun, which made happy all who had the good fortune to be associated with him. Burgon took no more than a Second Class. How was this? You are doubtless aware of his disadvantageous start. I do not attribute his failure (shall I so call it ?) to this; but as in a march—a forced march-through a territory, the man who now and again steps aside in botanical or geological research, is retarded in his progress, so Burgon was never satisfied without a nice exact ferreting-out of every difficulty, sometimes amusingly apparent in the lecture-room, where the tutor always indulged and appreciated his integrity and zeal. He never rested until he had acquired all that could be known respecting the matter before him. His interruptions of the lecture were to be seen as well as heard, and his humble, plaintive manner of enquiry was a striking contrast to the dry, solemn mode of the tutor's reply, who nevertheless, I believe, always appreciated Burgon's earnest thirst for information. I believe his notes on the Classics would wonderfully testify to the fact of his probing every question to the depth, and would thus tell

of

of hours lost; I mean by lost, that a much more superficial acquaintance would have answered his purpose in the schools.'

The foregoing account of Burgon's reading is fully confirmed by a letter of his own, written just after the examination :

'I cannot fully realize the notion that the heavy labour I was going through is all ended. It seems impossible that I may go to bed at twelve, if I like; that I may breakfast without Butler's Sermons before me, or take tea without reading so many hundred lines of a Greek Play; nay, that I may breakfast or dine when I please. Even Magazines and Reviews are open to me now, which they have not been for the last three years. How my health has stood it, I cannot understand. I did not let anyone know how I was going on;-but fear I was, at last, acting as it would have been impossible for me to have gone on acting. For many weeks past I have not had five hours' sleep-and in order to read without molestation, abridged myself in food and exercise to the minimum point (consistent with comfort). The very eve of going in for vivá voce, I read for nineteen hours without stirring, except to chapel.'

This excessive strain produced its natural result. During his Public Examination he was giddy and tired, and his memory failed him. The Examination, on the whole, went against him,' and he felt that, from one cause or another, he had done much less well than he had a right to expect. On the 26th of November, 1845, the result was declared, and Burgon was in the Second Class. His keen and ambitious temper was deeply mortified. The only notice of the event in his diary is the modest ejaculation, ‘Thank God I am no lower;' but to a friend he writes: If the Examiners had been IN me, they would have given me a First Class. To judge from my papers, I had perhaps no right to hope for more than a Second. But the report had got abroad that I was to have been at the top of the tree; and I am conscious that the power is not lacking and so I cannot but feel a little crest-fallen.'

It is impossible not to sympathize with this natural outbreak of vexation; but, when the disadvantages of his early training and his late entrance into the University are taken into account, the attainment of a Second Class in an examination so drastic and so far-reaching as that for Classical honours at Oxford may well be regarded as a triumph. Meanwhile the technical studies required for 'the Schools' were not allowed to engross the whole of Burgon's time. They were lightened and brightened by a more romantic pursuit. He had a genuine and inborn love of, and capacity for, Poetry, as may be seen by his volume of collected poems published in 1885. In his first, second, and third years of residence at Oxford, he competed for

the