ful. He had a multitude of social interests: the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was elected president in 1899, the Volunteer movement, the welfare of African natives, the betterment of elementary schools, the Church Missionary Society, Missions to Seamen, and the Commons Preservation Society. He was closely associated with the movement begun in 1866 for saving Epping Forest, and was a generous contributor to the fund raised to enable a labourer named Willingale to contest the legality of enclosures at Loughton.
In 1895 Buxton was appointed governor of South Australia. The choice was a happy one. The colony owed its foundation very largely to the efforts of men like the Buxtons—the members of the South Australian Association in London. This association included many people who had some of the spirit of the later Fabian socialists and who planned to set up in a new land a model state which would not reproduce the social inequalities of older countries. Many of the early South Australian settlers were people who had given up good positions in the home country in pursuit of this ideal. Their influence persisted in after generations, and Buxton, as governor of the colony, found himself in a sympathetic atmosphere. He retired from the governorship on completing his term of office in 1898, and in 1899 was created G.C.M.G. in recognition of his services. He died at Cromer 28 October 1915.
Buxton married in 1862 Lady Victoria Noel (died 1916), youngest daughter of the first Earl of Gainsborough, and had five sons and five daughters. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son, Thomas Fowell Victor (1865-1919).
[G. W. E. Russell, Lady Victoria Buxton: a Memoir, with some account of her Husband, 1919]
BYWATER, INGRAM (1840-1914), Greek scholar, the only son of John Ingram Bywater, a clerk in the Customs, was born in London 27 June 1840. He was educated at University College School and King’s College School, London, and at Queen’s College, Oxford, where he matriculated as a scholar in 1858. In 1863 he was elected to an open fellowship at Exeter College.
As an undergraduate Bywater was the pupil of Jowett and Robinson Ellis, and the friend of Pater and Swinburne. As a young Fellow he became intimate with Mark Pattison and his accomplished wife; and this intimacy was influential in forming his tastes. The Pattisons were fond of foreign travel, and Bywater visited in their company many of the libraries and museums of Europe. Pattison was a collector of early printed books; and Bywater’s regular Sunday visits to his lodgings were doubtless devoted to bibliography as well as to tobacco and desultory conversation. Pattison was also an uncompromising advocate of the claims of learning, who expressed with more truth than moderation the view that the atmosphere of Oxford was inimical to study: ‘a Fellowship is the grave of learning’. Bywater’s opinions were more moderate, and the expression of them more conciliatory; but he did not conceal his view that recognition and support were too grudgingly accorded to research at Oxford, and that the college tutorial system in particular left too little leisure, and too little initiative, either to the student or to his teachers.
During the twenty years of Bywater’s life as a tutor most of his time was given to teaching and to the studies for which he became famous. The publication in 1877 of his edition of the Fragments of Heraclitus won for him an assured position in the world of European scholarship, and he was invited by the Prussian Academy of Sciences to edit the works of Priscianus Lydus (published 1886). His relations with continental scholars, notably with Professor Jacob Bernays, of Bonn, were cordial and fruitful.
Charles Cannan [q.v.] used to say that though Bywater was doubtless an eminent Aristotelian, it was to be deplored that he had not become a bookseller, in which profession he must have been pre-eminent. Actually, he might well have become librarian of the Bodleian. The curators, of whom Pattison was one, and Coxe, the veteran librarian, were anxious to secure him; and he accepted, experimentally, the post of sub-librarian. He found, however, that the duties were too irksome. He was expected to read manuscripts as a matter of routine, and shrank from the prospect: ‘those who care for MSS. per se are usually dull dogs’. He therefore resigned. Pattison deplored the decision; but Pattison had himself declared that ‘the librarian who reads is lost’; Bywater was not prepared to be merely the cause of learning in others. He declined also the headship of Exeter College, offered to him in 1887.
In 1884 Bywater was appointed to a newly created readership in Greek. In 1885 he married. His wife was a member of the well-known Devonshire family of
82
