Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/239

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Lightfoot
233
Lightfoot

lighted in work, and rarely joined in games. He had a cheerful temper, with much dry humour, and a certain quaintness of manner. On those who knew him best he left a deep impression of genuine piety. His chief friend at the school was E. W. Benson [q. v.], afterwards archbishop of Canterbury. On half-holidays they usually walked and read Greek plays together, and on whole holidays, in company with another friend, they made expeditions of thirty or forty miles on foot, visiting famous places. The intimacy lasted through life.

In October 1847 Lightfoot went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a pensioner, his college tutor being the Rev. W. H. Thompson, subsequently regius professor of Greek and master of Trinity. At the end of his first year he became a private pupil of B. F. Westcott, afterwards bishop of Durham, and read classics with him for the rest of his undergraduateship. Westcott had come up from King Edward's School, Birmingham, to Trinity three years before him. The intimacy thus formed exercised thenceforward a powerful, yet never overpowering, influence over Lightfoot's mind. As an undergraduate Lightfoot appears to have matured slowly. But he came out at the head of the classical tripos list of 1851, and also as first of the two chancellor's medallists, after he had graduated B.A. as thirtieth wrangler. Having been elected a scholar of Trinity in 1849, the earliest then possible date, he was elected a fellow in 1852. ‘When Mr. Lightfoot makes one of his charges,’ was the comment of his tutor, Thompson, ‘there is no resisting him.’ The following years were spent in the routine usual for a young resident fellow who had taken high honours—private study, instruction of private pupils (till the end of 1855), and college lectures. In 1853 Lightfoot obtained the Norrisian prize, the virtual subject being Philo. His essay was never published, and the manuscript was apparently destroyed by himself. In 1854 he was admitted to deacon's orders, and in 1858 to priest's orders, both times at the hands of Dr. Prince Lee, now become bishop of Manchester. Early in 1857, before he had completed his twenty-ninth year, he was appointed one of the three tutors of Trinity, and he threw himself with zeal into his work. In personal intercourse with his pupils, his natural shyness was a sore hindrance to him wherever the initiative had to be supplied and renewed by himself; but the slightest advance made by a pupil he seized eagerly as an opening for cordial speech and mutual confidence. He seems to have taken especial pleasure in gathering round him a few college pupils for long-vacation parties, in which he freely gave his time to helping them in their work, besides joining them in their expeditions. His college lectures were chiefly on classical subjects, and a marked feature of them was the warm interest displayed in the subject-matter, no less than the language. Some of these lectures were intended to take permanent shape in an edition of the Orestean trilogy of Æschylus, amply illustrated with essays; but unfortunately the project was never carried out, though even in the later years of residence at Cambridge it had hardly been relinquished. Besides classics, he lectured on the Greek New Testament with at least equal thoroughness and success. The study of this subject in Trinity had received a fresh impulse from the institution of prizes for distinction in it by the college in 1849, and by the foundation of the Dealtry prizes in the following year. This simultaneous occupation with classical and Christian literature approved itself entirely to his judgment, and was maintained in one form or another in his later literary work. The same ideal of study was represented in the title and purpose of the ‘Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology,’ of which he was one of the founders and, while it lasted (March 1854 to December 1859), one of the editors. His own contributions, however—some of the shorter notices of books excepted—dealt almost exclusively with St. Paul's Epistles or kindred topics.

In 1860 Lightfoot was an unsuccessful candidate for the newly established Hulsean professorship of divinity [see under Hulse, John], but when his successful rival, Mr. C. J. Ellicott, became in 1861 bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, Lightfoot was chosen professor in his place. Lightfoot's professorial lectures consisted chiefly, if not wholly, of expositions of parts of books of the New Testament, and especially of St. Paul's Epistles, with discussions of the leading topics usually included in ‘Introductions’ to these books. Their value and interest were soon widely recognised in the university, and before long no lecture-room then available sufficed to contain the hearers, both candidates for holy orders and older residents; so that leave had to be obtained for the use of the hall of Trinity. Nor was it through his public teaching alone that the university benefited. At a time of theological disquiet and violence outside Cambridge, Lightfoot's deliberate tone of toleration aided in counteracting any tendencies to disunion within the university.

Meanwhile Lightfoot took his full share in the various business of the university. In 1860 he was elected a member of the new