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HENRY MELVILL GWATKIN SOME IMPRESSIONS IN spite of the late Dr. Gwatkin's Welsh-looking surname, and of the fact that Gwatkins do exist in the Welsh Marches, there seems to be no warrant in his case for following the usual Welsh practice of claiming all men of distinction as Welshmen. Yet it is only natural that an organ of Welsh opinion should offer its tribute to his memory. Only a few weeks ago, our University honoured itself by inscribing his name on its roll of honorary graduates, as one who had done great things for our people. The courses of study prescribed by the Faculty of Divinity are at this moment being subjected to con- siderable criticism, and to some extent the criticism is not undeserved yet, I think, there are in these schemes of study certain features distinctive of them, certain marks of originality, which are in brilliant contrast to the hackneyed copies of English curricula which serve us as degree courses in the other faculties. For this ethos, the Welsh theological scheme is primarily indebted to two great scholars from across the Border-to Andrew Martin Fair- bairn and Henry Melvill Gwatkin. Yet it is not upon Dr. Gwatkin's services to the cause of theological study in our land that I wish to dwell in these few pages my desire is to express gratitude of a more personal kind, and to give the reader some idea, however inadequate, of his great services to the cause of historical studies at Cam- bridge. Membership of large professorial classes does not in most cases lead to personal contact with the lecturer, and to such an acquaintance I can lay no claim. There is at least one Welsh Professor who has had this privilege, and if these lines should meet his eye and induce him to contribute his own impressions of his master and friend, then I shall be more than happy, even if in the course of his remarks he should disagree with much of what I have written. But in the meantime, if constant attendance at Dr. Gwatkin's lectures and close study of (I believe) all his published work count for anything, then I may perhaps be permitted to try to record a few impressions. As a lecturer, the Dixie Professor was, if the phrase be allowed, an acquired taste. His physical pecularities were of an obvious kind, and the out- sider was rather disposed to wonder why his lecture room was so well filled. When he delivered the Sessional Address at Bala College some years ago, many of his auditors marvelled exceedingly, and one was amused at hearing their comments. The uninitiated, I am convinced, regarded his perfor- mance as one more proof of the extreme wrongness of things at our effete older Universities, and even the B.D. men," familiar as they were with his books, were rather taken aback. For the well- known mot, that he had lost a faculty for each of the several Triposes in which he gained honours, had a good deal of foundation in fact. His appearance in the streets, though not perhaps glaringly out of place in a town well accustomed to eccentrically- garbed dons, was yet unusual. On entering the lecture-room, he would divest himself, with a sweeping flourish, of a voluminous white muffler, and with a resounding clap deposit on the nearest article of furniture a veteran umbrella, after which he would navigate his way to the reading-desk, pull out his notes, roll his eye inquiringly round the room, and without further prelude plunge in medias res. During the lecture he would ramble up and down in front of the class, swinging round abruptly on his heel when such things as walls suddenly cropped up in his path. Nor was the subject which he had announced always the subject of the lecture as actually delivered. I remember him one day rolling into the lecture-room the debris of his predecessor's lecture (on Geography) had not been removed, and the Doctor paused, on his way to his desk, in front of a large orographical map which included the North African Coast. For a few moments he was lost in thought, then, tracing with his finger the course of one of the rivers of that region (separated from the sea by merely a few miles of mountain. yet having to run many a score of miles westward before finding a passage through that barrier), he swung suddenly round There." said he, what a lesson in history that is And so we passed on to a discourse on the history of Northern Africa, and on the physical reasons for the course taken by that history. After the first lecture, his audiences had no more doubts, the attendance was large, and there were no fluctuations. Nor was this due to the fact that he lectured on paying subjects, from the examinee's point of view. For though General Medieval History," his stock subject in the History School, was certainly a compulsory Tripos-subject, he did not always lecture on it. A course on the elements of Historical Criticism, which he gave in the large hall of Emmanuel College, and which could not possibly be turned into marks, drew a very large