literature, and who touched all poetry with an innate tact and sense of its meaning, a comparison in detail between modern and ancient poetical feeling and modes of utterance.
The ‘public lectures,’ two of which are exacted by statute annually from the Latin professor, were, in his hands, either literary essays on Latin authors, or prose translations of Virgil. Most of them have long been before the world, either in his published editions of ‘Virgil’ and ‘Persius,’ or in the collection of his ‘Miscellaneous Writings.’ One of the best, perhaps, is the comparison of the style of Lucretius and Catullus with that of Virgil and Horace, 1867 (Miscellaneous Writings, i. 256).
After his appointment to the professorship he seldom left the field of Latin literature. His edition of the ‘Choëphoroe’ (1857) had no doubt, in great part, been written before 1854; for the rest, all that need be mentioned here is the essay on Pope (Oxford Essays, 1858), and some slighter papers in the ‘Contemporary Review’ in 1868, reprinted in the first volume of the ‘Miscellaneous Writings.’ He had intended, after finishing his ‘Virgil,’ to write a ‘History of the Latin Poetry of the Silver Age.’ Two of his public lectures, one on Statius, the other on the tragedies of Seneca, may perhaps be regarded as preliminary studies for this work. He had also hopes of one day undertaking an edition of Tacitus, on whose English translators he once gave an interesting public lecture.
But all these plans were extinguished by his premature death, which robbed Oxford of a lofty character and an imposing personality. For Conington was a man whose personality impressed itself on those who knew him in a way which those who did not would find it hard to realise. His flow of conversation, his most characteristic humour, enhanced by a slight hesitation in utterance, his transparent sincerity and childlike simplicity, made him a delightful companion. One or two quaint peculiarities heightened the general impression. His numerous friends were classed according to degrees of intimacy; and to each of those who had been promoted to the inner circle a certain day in the week was allotted for an afternoon walk. To miss this engagement on short (still more without any) notice was a high crime and misdemeanor. The reading parties, on which, during part of the long vacation, he used to gather a few promising men, were great events. Conington, who was very short-sighted, had hardly any appreciation of the wonders or beauties of nature. Of the comet of 1858 he said that he did not think ‘that phenomenon ought to be encouraged.’ This characteristic trait drew from him a great deal of humour at his own expense. There was, indeed, a kind of sublime detachment in the way in which, while his young friends would be earnestly expatiating on the beauties of a country, Conington would tramp vigorously along the high road, refusing to be allured by any blandishments to the right hand or the left.
The real secret of his influence in Oxford lay in his unbounded powers of sympathy, his desire of making friends, and his singleminded determination to be of use to all the students whom he had any reasonable hope of benefiting. All this won him many devoted friends and pupils, not a few of whom were without any special interest in his own pursuits, and perhaps disagreed with his opinions. But again, behind this there was a moral dignity and seriousness in him which was rooted in a deeply religious nature. His speculative religious opinions were for the greater part of his life those of an evangelical christian. Criticism of an illustrative or exegetical kind he was always ready to welcome, but he had no sympathy with rationalism. He seems in 1854 to have gone through a mental and moral crisis, in which what before had been an intellectual assent was transformed into an absorbing practical conviction. The result of this was that Conington was not only what is commonly described as ‘a good christian man,’ but that he set himself to mould all details of conduct and observance according to his belief. Thus his natural simplicity and warm affections were deepened into an invincible goodness, which was, perhaps, of all his characteristics, that which was the most superficially obvious to those with whom he came into contact. When he died, it was felt that Oxford had lost a man unlike others, of remarkable powers, who set himself a noble and disinterested work in life, and never abandoned it.
[Memoir by Professor H. J. S. Smith, prefixed to the Miscellaneous Writings of John Conington; personal knowledge.]
CONN of the Hundred Battles (d. 157), king of Ireland, was son of King Fedlimid, Reichtmar or the Lawgiver. There is a strange story that 'on the night of his birth were discovered five principal roads leading to Tara which were never observed till then.' The names of the roads are given, and most of them have been identified. The explanation of Dr. O'Donovan is that these roads were finished by the king on his son's birthday. On the death of King Fedlimid he was
