LEARNING AND LONGEVITY

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4654, 28 January 1924, Page 4

LEARNING AND LONGEVITY

The career of Dr. Henry Boyd—who died recently at the age of 91 after being principal of Hertford since 1877 —does something to keep up the tradition of longevity among Oxford Heads of Houses. The position of Seniority, says the Manchester Guardian, now passes to Dr. J. R. Magrath, who, recently entered his 84th year, and has been provost of Queen’s since 1878. Even Dr. Boyd’s record does not quite come up to that of Dr. Bollock Marsham, who w'as appointed warden of Merton in 1826, amd was holding that office when he died in 1880 at the age of 94. Then, of course, there was Dr. Routh, the famous president of Magdalen, who told Goldwin -Smith —an undergraduate at the college during the Routh regime—-that he remembered having seen Samuel Johnson. Routh’s longevity, according to Goldwin Smith, was the result not only of an easy life but/of extraordinary precautions. “No rough winds had ever touched him. Now and then, on very fine summer afternoons, he came to chapel. The shuffling sound of .the centenarian’s feet was heard in the anti-chapel. Our august porter, whose place was supposed to be worth £4OO a year, put himself into a reverential posture, a movement of interest lyent round the congregation, and the quaint form appeared.” There was a legend that th? corridors through which Dr. Routji passed on his way from the president’s lodge to the chapel used to. be artificially warmed in order tint his health might not be endangered by any variation of tempera--ture. Although Goldwin Smith spoke ■of him as a centenarian, that was a .distinction that actually he just missed. He was born in September, 1755, -and died in December, 1854. Tn his

94th year he was able to walk six miles a day.