The past twelve months have been singularly fatal to Cambridge; but no loss has caused grief so widespread and so sincere as that of the distinguished scholar and man of letters who passed quietly away while sitting at his library-table on the night of last Wednesday week^[113]. If proof were needed of the respect in which he was held, we have only to point to the vast assemblage of past and present members of the University which filled the chapel of King’s College on Monday last to do honour to his funeral. Nor will the grief be confined to Cambridge. Though Mr Bradshaw rarely quitted his own University, and took no trouble to bring himself into notice, few men were more highly appreciated, both at home and abroad. It is hardly necessary to observe that this recognition of his merits was of no sudden growth. We can recall the time when he was working silently and unknown, and when even a small circle of devoted friends had not realised the extent and thoroughness of those studies which he carefully kept in the background. But gradually the world of letters became aware that there were many points in bibliography and kindred subjects which could not be set on a right footing unless the inquirer were willing to pay a visit to him. No one who did so had any cause to regret his journey. He was certain to be received with a courtesy which, we regret to say, is nowadays commonly called old-fashioned, and to find himself before he left far richer than when he came. Mr Bradshaw was the most unselfish of men; and the stores of his knowledge were invariably laid open, freely and ungrudgingly, to every inquirer, provided he was satisfied that the work proposed would be thoroughly well done. He was modest to a fault; and we believe that he really preferred to remain in the background, while others, at his suggestion and with his help, worked out the subjects in which he took special interest. It was no fault of theirs if his share in their work remained a secret. His generous wish to help others forward made him refuse more than once, as we well know, to allow his name to appear in connexion with work that he had really done; and posterity will have to tax its ingenuity to discover, from a few words in a preface or a line in a note, how much belongs of right to him. Nor was it only in subjects with which he was specially familiar that his help was valuable. He seemed equally at home in all branches of knowledge. He knew so thoroughly how materials should be used, and in what form the results would be best presented, that, whether the subject were art, or archeology, or history, or bibliography, or early English texts, his clear and accurate judgment went straight to the point, and reduced the most tangled facts to order. But, devoted student as he was, he was no bookworm. He took the liveliest interest in all that was going on around him. His strong common sense, his kind, charitable nature, and his habit of going to the bottom of every question presented to him, enabled him to sympathize with those who had arrived at conclusions widely different from his own. As a younger man he was too reserved, too diffident of himself, to feel at ease in the society of men of his own standing. He thought they disliked him, and this idea increased his natural sensitiveness and his love of retirement. The truth was that he was too honest to be popular. Like Alceste in Le Misanthrope, he would rebuke insincerity and pretentiousness with a few blunt stern words that made the offender tremble; and, if he disliked anybody, as happened sometimes, he took no pains to conceal it. Hence he was respected, but he was not liked. By slow degrees, however, the natural geniality of his disposition gained the upper hand, and the warm heart which beat under that calm exterior was allowed to assert itself. The old severity of denunciation, instead of being exercised on individuals, was reserved for slovenly work, unjust criticism, or unfair treatment. He began to go more into society, in which he took a keen pleasure, though he would rarely allow himself to spend what he called an idle evening. At all times he had sought the company of young people. At a period when undergraduates hardly ventured to speak to men older than themselves, his quiet kindness attracted them to him, and obtained their confidence. In him they were certain of a friend whose sympathy never failed them, and from whom, no matter what trouble or difficulty had befallen them, they were sure of advice and help. Many a man now successful in life may thank him for the influence which, exercised at a critical time, determines a career for good; and not a few have been enabled by his generosity to begin the studies in which they are now distinguished.

The events of such a life are not numerous. Mr Bradshaw was born 2 February, 1831. He was educated at Eton College, on the foundation, and came up to King’s College, Cambridge, in February, 1850. He proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1854. At that time members of King’s College were not obliged to submit themselves to University examinations, but he and some others availed themselves of the permission then accorded to them to do so, and he was placed tenth in the second class of the Classical Tripos. Soon afterwards he accepted a mastership at S. Columba’s College, near Dublin, then under the direction of his old friend, the late Mr George Williams; but finding tuition, after a few months’ trial, uncongenial to his tastes, he returned to Cambridge, and to those studies which ended only with his life. His connexion with the University Library began two years afterwards. In 1856 he was appointed principal assistant, a post which he resigned in 1858. In 1859 he returned to the Library as Keeper of the Manuscripts, an office specially created for the purpose of retaining his services, the value of which had even then been discovered. This office he held until 1867, when, on the resignation of Mr J. E. B. Mayor, he was elected librarian. From a boy he had been distinguished for a love of books; but it was not until his return to Cambridge from Ireland that he was able to devote himself seriously and systematically to the study of bibliography in its widest sense, with all that is subsidiary to it. Most of us know what a dreary subject bibliography is when treated from the ordinary point of view. In his hands, however, it acquired a human interest. He studied specimens of early printing, not for themselves, but for the sake of the men who produced them. In following out this system he went far more thoroughly than an ordinary bibliographer cares to do into every particular of the book before him. Paper, type, signature, tailpiece, were all taken into account, so as to settle not only who printed the volume, but in what relation he stood to his predecessors and successors.

Bradshaw had an unerring eye for detecting small differences in style, a memory which never failed him, and an instinct of discovery little short of marvellous. Again and again in well-known libraries, both in England and on the Continent, he has been able, after a brief examination, to point out important facts which scholars who had worked there for the best part of their lives had failed to notice.

In the same spirit of discovery he applied himself to the study of Chaucer. Silently and secretly, as was his wont, he examined all the manuscripts within his reach, and then set to work to determine (1) what was Chaucer’s own work; (2) what is the real order of the Canterbury Tales. In the course of his researches it occurred to him that the rhymes used would prove a test of what was Chaucer’s and what was not. Without assistance from any one he wrote out a complete rhyme-list—an astonishing labour for an individual, when it is remembered that the Tales contain some eight thousand lines, every one of which must have been registered twice, and many three or four times. The labour, however, was not thrown away. The rhymes employed turned out to be a true test, and Mr Bradshaw was enabled to publish in 1867 ‘The Skeleton of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: an attempt to distinguish the several Fragments of the Work as left by the Author.’ We regret to say that this pamphlet of fifty-four octavo pages is all that the world is ever likely to see of this splendid piece of work. With characteristic self-depreciation he says, in a note appended in 1871, ‘Mr Furnivall’s labours have put far out of date any work that I have ever done upon this subject’; but it is gratifying to turn to Mr Furnivall, and read, ‘There is only one man in the world, I believe, who thoroughly understands this subject, Mr Henry Bradshaw.’ He welcomed Mr Furnivall with habitual generosity, and placed in his hands, without reserve, all that he had got ready for the edition of Chaucer which he at one time intended to publish himself. Publication, however, was what he could rarely be persuaded to attempt. It was not criticism that he feared; but he had set up in his own mind such a lofty standard of excellence that he could not bear to abandon a piece of work while it was yet possible to add some trifling detail, or to correct some imperfection which his own fastidious taste would alone have been able to detect. It is sad to think how much has perished with him. His excellent memory enabled him to dispense with notes to a far greater extent than most persons, and those which he did put down were written on a system to which we fear it will be impossible now to find the key. What he actually published amounts to very little. When we have mentioned eight short octavo pamphlets, which he called ‘Memoranda’; a few papers printed by the Cambridge Antiquarian Society; some communications to Notes and Queries and other periodicals; and an admirable edition of the new Statutes for the University of Cambridge, and for the Colleges within it, we fear that the list is complete. He had made important discoveries respecting the old Breton language in connexion with the early collection of canons known as the Hibernensis, and had collected materials for a Breton glossary which would have placed him in the first rank of philologers; he had worked at Irish literature with the special object of elucidating the history of early Irish printing; in knowledge of ancient service-books he was probably second to none, and at the time of his death he was writing a preface to the new edition of the Sarum Breviary; and, lastly, he had made considerable progress towards a catalogue of the fifteenth-century books in the University Library. On all these subjects considerable materials exist; but who is fit to take his place and make use of them?

20 February, 1886.