Studies in Contemporary BiographyBryce, James Bryce, Viscount
History
Studies in Contemporary Biography
Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount
Great Britain -- Biography
He was born in Yorkshire in 1836, the son of a country clergyman; was
educated at Rugby School and at Balliol College, Oxford, of which he
became a fellow in 1860, and a tutor in 1869. In 1867 he was an
unsuccessful candidate for a chair of philosophy at St. Andrews, and
in 1878 was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in his own
University, which he never thereafter quitted. He was married in 1869
and died in 1882. It was a life externally uneventful, but full of
thought and work, and latterly crowned by great influence over the
younger and great respect from the senior members of the University.
I can best describe Green as he was in his undergraduate days, for
it was then that I saw most of him. His appearance was striking, and
made him a familiar figure even to those who did not know him
personally. Thick black hair, a sallow complexion, dark eyebrows,
deep-set eyes of rich brown with a peculiarly steadfast look, were
the features which first struck one; and with these there was a
remarkable seriousness of expression, an air of solidity and quiet
strength. He knew comparatively few people, and of these only a
very few intimately, having no taste or turn for those sports in
which university acquaintances are most frequently made, and seldom
appearing at breakfast or wine parties. This caused him to pass for
harsh or unsocial; and I remember having felt a slight sense of
alarm the first time I found myself seated beside him. Though we
belonged to different colleges I had heard a great deal about him,
for Oxford undergraduates are warmly interested in one another, and
at the time I am recalling they had an inordinate fondness for
measuring the intellectual gifts and conjecturing the future of those
among their contemporaries who seemed likely to attain eminence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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