1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Merry, William Walter

MERRY, WILLIAM WALTER (1835–1918), English classical scholar, was born at Evesham Sept. 6 1835. Educated at Cheltenham and Balliol College, Oxford, he became fellow and lecturer of Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1859 and rector of the college in 1884. A witty and fluent speaker both in Latin and in English, he acquired a great reputation as public orator to the university, a post he held from 1880 down to the time of his death. He published editions of many of the plays of Aristophanes (1879–1900), as well as an edition of Homer's Odyssey (1870–8) and Selected Fragments of Roman Poetry (1891). He died at Oxford March 5 1918.