poems, the society gave a private performance of the 'Cenci' at the Grand Theatre. Islington, on 7 May 1886.
Furnivall's work for his societies was unpaid, and though he found time for some external labour, including an edition of Rohert de Brunne's 'Chronicle of England' for the Rolls Series in 1887, his literary activity was never really remunerative. His pecuniary resources were, during the last half of his life, very small. On his father's death on 7 June 1865 he received a substantial share of his large estate, but he invested all his fortune in Overend and Gurney's Bank, which stopped payment in 1867. Furnivall, left well-nigh penniless, was forced to dispose of his personal property, but this his rich friends, Henry Hucks Gibbs (afterwards Lord Aldenham) and Henry Huth, purchased and restored to him. In 1873 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the post of secretary to the Royal Academy. Among others who testified to his fitness were Tennyson. William Morris, Charles Kingsley, J. R. Seeley, M. Taine, and Delius. Thenceforth he lived on his occasional and small literary earnings and on an annual payment as trustee of a relative's property until 1884 when he was granted in addition a civil list pension of 150l.
In 1884 Furnivall, whose reputation as a scholar stood high in Germany, received the honorary degree of Ph.D. from Berlin University. 'In 1901, in honour of his 75th birthday, a volume entitled 'An English Miscellany,' to which scholars of all countries contributed, was printed at the Clarendon Press. At the same time the sum of 450l. was presented to the Early English Text Society, and an eight-sculling boat was given to Furnivall. His portrait was painted for Trinity Hall, of which he was made an hon. fellow on 21 April 1902. He received the hon. D.Litt. of Oxford University in 1901, and he was chosen an original fellow of the British Academy next year.
Till his death he advocated with characteristic warmth the value of sculling as a popular recreation. In 1891 he fiercely attacked the Amateur Rowing Association for excluding working men from the class of amateurs. By way of retaliation he founded on 15 Sept. 1891 the National Amateur Rowing Association on thoroughly democratic lines. In 1903 he became president in succession to the duke of Fife, the first president. In 1896 he formed, in accordance with his lifelong principles, the Hammersmith Sculling Club for girls and men, which was re-named the Furnivall Club in 1900. Until the year of his death he sculled each Sunday with members of the club from Hammersmith to Richmond and back, and took a foremost part in the social activities of the club.
Furnivall died at his London residence of cancer of the intestines on 2 July 1910, and his remains were cremated at Golder's Green. Until his fatal illness prostrated him, he carried on his varied work with little diminution of energy.
Fumivall's disinterested devotion to many good causes entitles him to honourable remembrance. The enthusiasm with which he organised societies for the purpose of printing inedited MSS. and of elucidating English literature of many periods stimulated the development of English literary study at home and abroad. His taste as a critic was, like his style, often crude and faulty. But he was indefatigable in research, and spared no pains in his efforts after completeness and accuracy. In his literary labour he was moved by a sincere patriotism. But there was no insularity about his sympathies. Powerful democratic sentiments and broad views dominated his life. He believed in the virtue of athletics no less than of learning, and he sought to give all classes of both sexes opportunities of becoming scholars as well as athletes.
Devoid of tact or discretion in almost every relation of life, he cherished throughout his career a boyish frankness of speech which offended many and led him into unedifying controversies. He cannot be absolved of a tendency to make mischief and stir up strife. His declarations of hostility to religion and to class distinctions were often unseasonable, and gave pain. But his defects of temper and manner were substantially atoned for not merely by his self-denying services to scholarship but by his practical sympathy with poverty and suffering, and by his readiness to encourage sound youthful endeavour in every sphere of work.
In 1862 Furnivall married at the registrar's office, Hampstead, Eleanor Nickel, daughter of George Alexander Dalziel. Separation followed in 1883. Of two children of the marriage, a daughter, Ena, died in infancy in 1866. The son, Percy, is a well-known surgeon.
Of portraits of Furnivall, one by Mr. William Rothenstein is at Trinity Hall. Cambridge; another by A. A. Wolmark was presented to the Working Men's College in 1908; a life-size head, drawn in crayons
