superannuation of Sir George Webbe Dasent at the close of the last financial year. Appointed Commissioner in 1870, before the principle of open competition was applied to the Home Civil Service, he helped, in conjunction with the late Sir Edward Kyan, aided by the late Mr. Theodore Walrond, then secretary to the Commissioners, to organise the new system; he continued to watch over and guide its development; and whatever success has attended its administration has been largely due to his ability and judgment."
He was forced to retire, notwithstanding his unwearied exertions in the public interest, on a very inadequate pension: in such fashion does an ungrateful Treasury reward its best servants. His last contribution to the Times was a letter which appeared on December 6th, 1893, when he wrote from his retirement at Tower Hill to claim the authorship of a classical epigram made on the occasion of the marriage of Mr. Henry Wyndham "West to Miss Violet Campbell, which had been wrongly attributed (in a mention of Mr. West's death in the same newspaper) to Abraham Hayward. The epigram ran as follows:—
"Quaerebat Zephyrus brumali tempore florem:
En! Campis Bellis incidit in Violam."
And to the right understanding of this dainty classical morsel it should be added that Mr. West's nickname in early life was "Zephyr," and that he was married in mid-winter to Miss Violet Campbell, a sister of Lady Granville, and half-sister of Dasent's old friend, John Campbell of Islay.
Yet another book was to be published under his name before the curtain fell—his masterly translation of the Orkney and Hacon Sagas issued in 1894 for the series of
