OBITUARY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1566, 9 October 1912, Page 7

OBITUARY.

PROFESSOR W. W. SKEAT. By Toleerar/h-Press Association—Copyright London, October 7. Professor Walter William Skeat, the philologist, is, dead, aged 76. Professor Skcat was born in London off November 21, .1835, and educated at Kings College, Highgate Grammar &c »<™. and Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in July, 1860. In 1878 ho was elected Ellington and- Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge. Hβ completed Mitchell Jvcnibles edition of the Anglo-Saxon , Gospels, and did much other work, both in Anglo-Saxon and Gothic, but was perhaps most seiiernliy known for his Inbours in middle English, and for his standard editions of Chaucer and "Piers Plowman." As ho himself generously declared, lie was nt first mainly guided in the study of Chaucer by Henry Bradsliaw, with whom lie was to have participated in tho edition of Chaucer planned in 1070 h.r fhn I7niv«rsity of Oxford having declined in Bradshaw's favour (in offer of the. editorship made to himself. Bradshaw's perseverance was not equal to his genius, and the scheme camo to nothing for the time, but was eventually resumed and carried into effect by Skeat in an edition of six volumes (1891), a supplementary volume of Chaucerian Pieces being published in 1897. He also issued an edition of Chaucer in one volume for general readers, and a. separate edition of hie "Treatise on the Astrolabe," with .a learned commentary. His edition of "Piers' Plowman" in three parallel texts wns published in 1886; and, besides the "Treatise on the Astrolabe," he edited numerous books for the Early Knglish Text Society. In pure pliilnlojrr Skcat's principal achievement was his "Etymological English Dictionary" ft parts, 13791882; rev. and enlarged, 1910), the most, important of all his works, which must be considered in connection with the numerous publications of the English IJialect Society, in all of which, even when not edited by himself, Jin had a hand as tht founder <if tho society and afterwards its president. ■ i 1