The death of the Master of Trinity College has severed almost the last of the links which connect the present life of Cambridge with the past. From 1828 until his death^[114] in 1886 his connexion with his college was unbroken; for a brief absence soon after his election to a Fellowship, and the periods of canonical residence at Ely need hardly be taken into account. He was, therefore, up to a certain point, a typical Trinity man of the older school; a firm believer in the greatness of his college, and in the obligation laid upon him personally to increase that greatness by every means in his power. But he did not admire blindly. He could recognize, if he did not welcome, the necessity for changes in the old order from time to time; and he was known throughout the best period of his intellectual life as a Liberal and a reformer. He was a rare combination of a student without pedantry, and a man of the world without foppishness, or want of principle.

As an undergraduate he was fortunate in obtaining the friendship of men who afterwards became celebrated in the world of letters, most of them members of that famous coterie of which Tennyson and Hallam were the most notable figures. Indeed it is not impossible that the poet may have intended to include Thompson himself among those who

In their society he laid the foundation of that wide knowledge of literature, that keen interest in whatever was going forward, that habit of weighing all things in the nicely-adjusted balance of thoughtful criticism, which made what he wrote so valuable, and what he said so delightful. Nor, after he had obtained his Fellowship, and was free to do as he liked, was he content to become a student and nothing more. He was careful to add a knowledge of men and manners to what he was learning from books. He travelled abroad, and acquired a competent knowledge of more than one modern language; he was fond of art, and a good judge of pictures and sculpture. Nor did he forget the friends of his undergraduate days. He was a welcome, and we believe a frequent, guest at their houses both in town and country, where his fine presence, his courteous bearing, and his quiet, epigrammatic conversation were keenly appreciated. To the influence of these social surroundings he owed that absence of narrowness which is inseparable from a University career, if it be not tempered by influences from the outside.

Academic lives usually contain few details to arrest the biographer, and his was no exception to the rule. His father was a solicitor at York, and he was born in that city 27 March, 1810. He was educated at a private school, which he left when thirteen years old, and was then placed under the care of a tutor, with whom he remained until he came up to Trinity in the Michaelmas Term, 1828, as one of the pupils of Mr Peacock, afterwards Dean of Ely. To his watchful care and sound advice Thomson felt himself under deep obligation, and in after-life he used to describe him as “the best and wisest of tutors.” It had been at first intended that he should enter as a sizar; but this decision was reversed at the last moment, and he matriculated as a pensioner. He obtained a scholarship in 1830, and one of the Members’ prizes for a Latin Essay in 1831. At that time candidates for Classical Honours could not present themselves for the Classical Tripos until they had satisfied the examiners for the Mathematical. Thompson must have devoted a considerable portion of his time to that subject, for he appears in the Tripos of 1832 as tenth Senior Optime. In the Classical Tripos of the same year he obtained the fourth place, being beaten by Lushington, Shilleto, and Dobson, the first of whom beat him again in the examination for the Chancellor’s medals, of which he won only the second. He was elected Fellow of his College in 1834. His reputation as a scholar marked him out for immediate employment as one of the assistant-tutors; but for a time either no vacancy presented itself, or men senior to himself were appointed. Meanwhile he accepted a mastership in a school at Leicester, work which, we believe, he did not find congenial. In October 1837 he was recalled to Cambridge by the offer of an assistant-tutorship. In 1844, on the retirement of Mr Heath, he became tutor, an office which he held until he obtained the Regius Professorship of Greek in 1853. The other candidates on that occasion were Shilleto and Philip Freeman, but the electors were all but unanimous in their choice of Thompson. In the spring of 1866, on the death of Dr Whewell, he was appointed to the Mastership of Trinity College.

In attempting to estimate the value of his work as a classical teacher, it must be remembered that he was the direct heir of the system introduced into Trinity College by Hare and Thirlwall. We are not aware that he attended the lectures of the former, though he may well have done so, but we have heard from his own lips that he derived great benefit from those of the latter, which were as systematic as Hare’s had been desultory. Those distinguished scholars, while not neglecting an author’s language, were careful to direct the attention of their pupils to his matter. They did not waste time unduly on the theories of this or that commentator, though they had carefully digested them, but they showed how their author might be made to explain himself. In fine, the discovery of his thoughts, not the dry elucidation of his words, was the object of their teaching. Translation, again, received from them a larger share of attention than it had done from their predecessors. In this particular Thompson attained an unrivalled excellence. His translations never smelt of the lamp, though it may be easily imagined that this perfection had not been arrived at without much preliminary study. But, when presented to the class, toil was carefully kept out of sight. The lecturer stood at his desk and read his author into English, with neither manuscript nor even notes before him, as though the translation was wholly unpremeditated, in a style which reflected the original with exact fidelity, whatever the subject selected might be. He seemed equally at home in a dialogue of Plato, a tragedy of Euripides in which, like the Bacchae, the lyric element predominates, or a comedy of Aristophanes. He did not labour in vain. The lecture-room was crowded with eager listeners; and the happiest renderings were passed from mouth to mouth, and so made the round of the University. But we are glad to think that his fame as a scholar rests on a firmer foundation than traditions of the lecture-room, however brilliant. The author of his choice was Plato, and though ill-health and a too fastidious criticism of his own powers, which made him unwilling to let a piece of work go out of his hands so long as there was any chance of making it better, stood in the way of the complete edition, or, at any rate, translation, of the author, which he once meditated, yet he has left enough good work behind him to command the gratitude of future scholars. To this study he was doubtless directed, in the first instance, by natural predilection; but, if we mistake not, he was confirmed in it by the scholars above-mentioned, either directly or by their suggesting to him the study of Schleiermacher, whose writings were first introduced to English readers by their influence. That critic’s theory—that Plato had a comprehensive and precise doctrine to teach, which he deliberately concealed under the complicated machinery of a series of dialogues, leaving his readers to combine and interpret for themselves the dark hints and suggestions afforded to them—was followed by Thompson with great learning, unerring tact, and firm grasp. His editions of the Phaedrus (1868) and the Gorgias (1871) are models of what an edition, based on these principles, ought to be; and the paper on the Sophistes, long lost sight of in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, but republished in the Journal of Philology (1879), is a masterpiece. Nor must we omit an introductory lecture on the Philebus, written in 1855, and published in the same journal (1882), which is a piece of literature as well as a piece of criticism; or the learned and instructive notes to Archer Butler’s Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, the first edition of which appeared in 1855.

Thompson discharged the difficult duties of a college tutor with admirable patience and discretion. Those who knew him imperfectly called him cold, hard, and sarcastic; and his bearing towards his brother Fellows gave occasionally, we must admit, some colour to the accusation. But in reality he was an exceedingly modest man, diffident of himself, reserved, and at first somewhat shy in the society of those whom he did not know well. Again, it must be recollected that nature had dealt out to him a measure of ‘irony, that master-spell,’ of a quality that a Talleyrand might have envied. Hence, especially when slightly nervous, he got into a habit of letting his words fall into well-turned sarcastic sentences almost unconsciously. The most ordinary remark, when uttered by him, became an epigram. We maintain, however, that he never said an unkind word intentionally, or crushed anybody who did not richly deserve it. For the noisy advocate of crude opinions, or the pretender to knowledge which he did not possess, were reserved those withering sentences which froze the victim into silence, and, being carefully treasured up by his friends, and repeated at intervals, clung to him like a brand. To his own pupils Thompson’s demeanour was the reverse of this. At a time when the older men of the University—with the exception, perhaps, of Professor Sedgwick—were not in sympathy with the rising generation, he made them feel that they had in him a friend who would really stand in loco parentis to them. Somewhat indolent by nature, on their behalf he would spare no trouble; but, on the other hand, he would allow of no interference. ‘He is a pupil of mine, you had better leave him to me,’ he would say to the Seniors, when an undergraduate on his ‘side’ got into trouble; but it may be questioned whether many a delinquent would not have preferred public exposure to the awful half-hour in his tutor’s study by which his rescue was succeeded. Nor did his interest in his pupils cease when they left college. He was always glad to see them or to write to them, and few, we imagine, took any important step in life without consulting him.

When Thompson became Greek Professor, a canonry at Ely was still united to the office—an expedient for augmenting the salary which, we are glad to say, will not trouble future Professors. To most men, trained as he had been, the new duties thus imposed upon him would have been thoroughly distasteful; and we are not sure that he ever took a real pleasure in his residences at Ely. In fact, more than one bitter remark might be quoted to prove that he did not. Notwithstanding, he made himself extremely popular there, both with the Chapter and the citizens, and he soon became a good preacher. It is to be regretted that only one of his sermons—that on the death of Dean Peacock—has been printed; that one is in its way a masterpiece.

He became Master rather late in life, when the habits of a bachelor student had grown upon him; and he lacked the superabundant energy of his great predecessor. But notwithstanding, the twenty years of his Mastership were years of activity and progress; and he took his due share of University and College business. He was alive to the necessity for reform, and the statutes framed in 1872, as well as those which received the royal assent in 1882, owed much to his criticism and support. It should also be recorded that he was an excellent examiner, appreciating good work of very different sorts. Gradually, however, as his health grew worse, he was compelled to give up much that he had been able to do when first elected, and to withdraw from society almost entirely. Yet he did not become a mere lay figure. Even strangers who caught a glimpse in chapel of that commanding presence, the dignity of which was enhanced by singularly handsome features, and silvery hair^[115], were compelled to recognize his power. There was an innate royalty in his nature which made his Mastership at all times a reality, and he contrived, from the seclusion of his study, to exert a stronger influence and to maintain a truer sympathy with the Society than Whewell, with all his activity, had ever succeeded in

establishing. His very isolation from the worry and bustle of the world gave authority to his advice; those who came to seek it felt, as they sat by his armchair, that they were listening to one who was not influenced by considerations of the moment, but who was giving them some of the garnered treasures of mature experience.

9 October, 1886.