and St. John's College, Cambridge; he was senior classic in the tripos of February 1853, became a fellow of his college in 1854 and lecturer in 1855, and lived in Cambridge till 1861. Among his friends, afterwards distinguished, were J. B. Lightfoot and Henry Philpott, G. D. Liveing, Isaac Todhunter, Joseph Mayor, J. L. Hammond, and H. M. Butler; and he himself was a leading spirit among the young Cambridge tutors who were agitating for the proper use of college revenues and for other university reforms. He was one of the founders and the first secretary of the Cambridge local examinations; and during this time he examined for the classical tripos, the moral science tripos, and the degrees in law, as well as in a great many schools.
In 1861 Roby married Matilda (died 1889), daughter of Peter Albert Ermen, of Dawlish; she was an accomplished linguist and keenly interested in women's education. Because in those days marriage put an end to a fellowship, he had accepted the second mastership at Dulwich College shortly before. There, becoming soon dissatisfied with the Latin grammar of King Edward VI, then still in use, he wrote an Elementary Latin Grammar (1862), which had a large sale. With this however, he was so little content as to refuse to allow any second issue. Long-continued work led to the publication (1871–1874) of his Grammar of the Latin Language from Plautus to Suetonius, his greatest achievement as an author. He also continued his study of law. In 1864 he was appointed secretary to the Schools Inquiry commission, which was succeeded in 1869 by the Endowed Schools commission, an executive body. These dealt with all endowed schools in England and Wales other than the nine which had been the subject of the Public Schools commission of 1861. In 1865 he retired from Dulwich, and, although from 1866 to 1868 he also held the chair of jurisprudence at University College, London, he devoted himself almost wholly to school-reform for the next nine years—‘the most interesting portion of my life’ he called it afterwards.
Hand in hand with Dr. (afterwards Archbishop) Temple, Roby took a leading part in inquiries and legislation affecting over eight hundred schools for boys and girls. Most of them were in an indescribable state of inefficiency and maladministration, due partly to the inexpert control of the court of Chancery. For every one of these schools the Endowed Schools commission established, under the Committee of the Privy Council on Education, a scheme of management, which provided the necessary machinery for its own revision from time to time, but completely precluded any loose handling of the endowments. This reform was largely due to Roby's strenuous and brilliant pleading. Few public men can ever have enjoyed a greater reward than to have been the means, not merely of reforming the life and teaching of this multitude of schools, but also of enormously increasing the number of children to whom their doors were opened.
The Endowed Schools commission, of which Roby was first the secretary, and after 1872 a member, ended on 31 December 1874. He then accepted a business partnership with a relative of his wife, creating the firm of Ermen & Roby, of Manchester, sewing-cotton manufacturers; this he held for the next twenty years while his children (three sons and a daughter) grew up. The confidence with which he had come to be regarded in the commerce and society of Manchester led to his election as member of parliament for the Eccles division of Lancashire in October 1890, as a supporter of Mr. Gladstone. He lost his seat in the conservative reaction of 1895 and never re-entered parliament.
After his retirement from business in 1894 Roby settled, as became a lover of mountains and a devoted student of Wordsworth, in a beautiful corner of Easedale, below Helm Crag, near Grasmere; his garden was famous for the variety of roses which he established and improved. Here he delighted to entertain with genial hospitality a continual succession of friends, old and young; and the generous interest which he took in their concerns, and in everything that affected education or public questions, made the last twenty years of his life hardly less busy and hardly less fruitful than any that had gone before. He celebrated the completion of his eightieth year by the ascent of Scafell. He died at his home on 2 January 1915.
Roby's great Latin Grammar (seventh edition 1904) is distinguished from all its predecessors by the wealth of illustration drawn directly from his reading of all the authors from Plautus to Suetonius, and by its severe impartiality. Not that his statements lack precision; but they show a lawyer-like caution. Everywhere he preferred that the passages cited should speak for themselves; and that the limits of any general rule should be made plain by sharply contrasted examples. Thus in his treatment of the
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