Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/199

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Blaydes
179
Blaydes

ford's work. He was again home on furlough from 1879 to 1881, during which he attended the geological congress at Bologna. After he returned to India in October 1881, field work brought on an attack of fever which rendered retirement from the service prudent. Settling in London he recovered his health and took an active part in scientific societies, writing numerous papers, and editing for the government of India a series of books on the fauna of British India. To this series he contributed two volumes on the mammals (1888 and 1891) and two on birds (vols. iii. and iv., 1895 and 1898); he was engaged at his death on a volume on the land and fresh-water molluscs, which was completed by Lieut.-colonel H. H. Godwin-Austen, and published in 1908. At the Montreal meeting of the British Association in 1884 he was president of the geological section; he also took part in the Toronto meeting and visited Vancouver Island in 1897. He was secretary, member of council, vice-president, and treasurer, as well as president, of the Geological Society (1888-90), delivering addresses on the nomenclature and classification of geological formations and on the permanence of ocean basins, to which he gave a guarded adherence. The society awarded him the Wollaston medal in 1882. He was elected F.R.S. in 1874, receiving a royal medal in 1901. The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by Montreal University in 1884, the Italian order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus in 1881; and he was made C.I.E. in 1904. His published papers are nearly 170 in number, and embrace a great variety of subjects. 'His many-sided accomplishments gave him a notable place among geologists, geographers, palaeontologists, and zoologists.' He was master of the Cordwainers' Company 1900-1. He shot well, and on the whole enjoyed good health till near the end. He died in London on 23 June ]905. He married in February 1883 Ida Gertrude, daughter of Mr. R. T. Bellhouse, an artist. His widow survived him with two sons and a daughter.

[Nature, lxxii.; Geol. Mag. (with portrait), 1906; Quarterly Journal of Geological Soc., 1906; Proc. Roy. Soc. lxxix. B, 1907; information from T. Blanford, Esq. (brother); personal knowledge.]

T. G. B.

BLAYDES, FREDERICK HENRY MARVELL (1818–1908), classical scholar, born at Hampton Court Green on 29 Sept. 1818, was third son of Hugh Blaydes (1777–1829) of High Paull, Yorkshire, and of Ranby Hall, Nottinghamshire, J.P. and high sheriff for the latter county; his mother was Delia Maria, second daughter of Colonel Richard Wood of Hollin Hall, Yorkshire. James Blaides of Hull, who married on 25 March 1615 Anne, sister of the poet Andrew Marvell, was a direct ancestor.

After his father's death in 1829, Blaydes was sent to a private school at Boulogne, and thence, on 14 Sept. 1831, to St. Peter's School, York, where he became a free scholar in June 1832 and gained an exhibition before matriculating at Oxford, 20 Oct. 1836, as a commoner of Christ Church. John Ruskin, about five months his junior, was already a gentleman commoner there, and Thomas Gaisford [q. v.] was dean (of. Ruskin, Præterita, 1900, i. 371). In 1838 A Blaydes was elected Hertford scholar and v a student of Christ Church, and in Easter term 1840 4 was placed in the second class in literae humaniores along with (Sir) George Webbe Dasent [q. v. Suppl. I] and James Anthony Froude [q. v. Suppl. I], He graduated B.A. in 1840, proceeding M.A. in 1843.

After a long tour (which he described in family letters) through France and Italy in 1840-1, finally spending a week in Athens, he returned to Oxford in Aug. 1841. and issued an edition of Aristophanes' 'Birds' (1842), with short Latin notes. Ordained deacon in 1842 and priest in 1843, he accepted the college living of Harringworth, Northamptonshire. Harringworth was Blaydes' home for forty-three years (1843-86). A staunch 'protestant,' he joined on 10 Dec. 1850 the deputation from his university which, headed by the Chancellor, the Duke of Wellington, presented an address to Queen Victoria against the 'papal aggression' (The Times, 11 Dec. 1850).

But Blaydes' interest and ample leisure were mainly absorbed by classical study. In 1845 he published an edition of a second play of Aristophanes the 'Acharnians.' In 1859 he published in the 'Bibliotheca classica' three plays of Sophocles. The reception of the book was not altogether favourable, and a difference with the publishers (Bell & Daldy) led him to issue separately the four remaining plays with Williams & Norgate. He reckoned that he gave more than twenty years to Sophocles, and, with intervals, more than fifty to Aristophanes.

Blaydes resigned his benefice in 1884, and from 1886 lived at Brighton. In 1907 he moved to Southsea, where he died, retaining his vigour till near the end, on 7 Sept. 1908; he was buried in Brighton cemetery.

Scholarship meant for Blaydes what it