Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Ellis, Robinson
ELLIS, ROBINSON (1834-1913), classical scholar, born at Barming, near Maidstone, 5 September 1834, was the third son of James Ellis, landowner and hop-grower. His mother, the third wife, was a Miss Robinson, who is described (disparagingly) by Keats in his first letter about Fanny Brawne [H. B. Forman’s Keats, ed. 1901, iv. 198.] Educated first at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, and afterwards, from August 1850, at Rugby School, where he owed much to George Granville Bradley [q.v.], he won a scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1852 and matriculated in 1853. He obtained a first class in classical moderations in 1854, the Ireland scholarship and Latin verse prize in 1855, a first class in literae humaniores in 1856, and the Boden (Sanscrit) scholarship in 1858, in which year he was elected fellow of Trinity College, where he resided, save for partial absence in 1870-1876, for the rest of his life. He was influenced by Benjamin Jowett and John Conington, and was for a time interested in ritualism and mesmerism. In later life he was attracted, but only superficially, by the Church of Rome, since, apart from pure scholarship and literature, he cared only for classical music. After twelve years of college teaching, mostly in composition and Latin authors, varied by reading parties, he was elected in 1870 professor of Latin at University College, London; but he was not successful with the larger and less advanced classes there, and in 1876 returned to Oxford for good.
By this time Ellis’s position as a latinist was well established. He had examined in classical moderations at Oxford in 1861, 1862, and 1872, was elected reader in Latin in 1883, and professor (on the death of Henry Nettleship) in 1893, thereby becoming a fellow of Corpus Christi College. Having been vice-president of Trinity from 1879 to 1893 he was made an honorary fellow in 1894 and allowed to retain his rooms in college. He suffered all his life from bad eyesight, and at the last, when nearly blind and otherwise infirm, he consented unwillingly to the appointment of a deputy; but he died a few months later, after an operation in the Acland Home at Oxford, 9 October 1913, and was buried in St. Sepulchre’s cemetery, leaving to distant relations a much larger sum than any one, even the testator, had expected. He had received the honorary LL.D. of Dublin in 1882, and was made a fellow of the British Academy in 1902. He was a corresponding associate of the Accademia Virgiliana of Mantua.
Ellis was well read in standard English poetry, essays, and translations, and took great interest, as an occasional contributor, in the New English Dictionary. In Greek he published emendations to Herodas and other fragmentary works, but his forte was in Latin. He was a very fine composer; some of his best pieces, mostly in hendecasyllables, are in Nova Anthologia Oxoniensis, which he edited with A. D. Godley in 1899. His work on Catullus commenced in 1859; he published a plain text, with conjectures based on original study of manuscripts, in 1866, and a larger edition in 1867 (second edition, 1878; revised text, 1904). This was followed by an unexpurgated translation in the metres of the original poems in 1871, very ingenious but barely intelligible, either in sense or in metre, without the Latin. His great Commentary on Catullus appeared in 1876 (second edition, 1889). His erudition is shown rather by his wide knowledge of the early commentators than by skill in dealing with the codices, and he was subjected to severe criticism, e.g. by E. Baehrens and H. A. J. Munro; but his mastery of the subject was unmistakable. In later life he devoted more attention to palaeography, but in this field, owing probably to his defective eyesight, he never became really proficient.
His next work was an elaborate edition of the Ibis of Ovid in 1881; then, considering that it would be ‘too marked to edit another amatory poet’, he devoted himself to minor authors. His principal recensions were of Avianus (1887), Orientius (1888), the Opuscula Virgiliana (1895, 1907), Velleius Paterculus (1898), and the Aetna (1901). He dealt exhaustively, though less formally, with other authors in his Noctes Manilianae (1886-1891), and in the glosses on Apollinaris Sidonius, &c. (1885); and published a dozen of the public lectures which from time to time were read for him (from the proof sheets) in the hall of Corpus Christi College. A full list of these, beginning with his inaugural lecture on Phaedrus (1894), will be found in the catalogue of the Bodleian Library, which also records most of the articles, such as those on Maximianus (1884), which he contributed at frequent intervals to the Cambridge and the American Journals of Philology, to Hermathena, Philologus, &c. The same library has a quantity of manuscript volumes of collations and compositions by him. His professorial lectures to undergraduates were usually on Catullus, Propertius, Lucan, or Statius, on Latin verse composition, and (later) on Latin palaeography with specimen pages selected by himself from Bodleian manuscripts. He was assiduous in maintaining friendly, though cautious, relations with foreign scholars–‘not Baehrens’, however; and he showed much intrepidity in visiting distant libraries in search of codices. His work both as commentator and as textual critic is characterized by vast erudition and minute investigation, but is perhaps deficient in decision and logical exactness. He was, however, under no illusions about the art of emendation; in Catullus he believed that he had ‘divined the truth’ in one, or perhaps two, passages only (preface to Commentary, second edition, p. xiv).
Both by constitution and by habit Ellis was a recluse; his simplicity, his dependence on physical help, his unconventional but frequent hospitality, and not least his impressive devotion to scholarship, attracted the interest not only of his colleagues but also of many of the undergraduates, especially the rising scholars of about 1880 to 1900. At the same time the naïveté, not always unintentional, of his remarks about his acquaintances and his or their tastes, opinions, appearance, and his casual familiarity with the improprieties of his favourite authors, made him somewhat embarrassing in social life, and led to the circulation of numerous stories about him. Some of these, referring to his own eccentricities or mistakes, he could be easily induced to relate and discuss; new material could be obtained by artful questions; and eventually there was a considerable body of anecdota, some of which have found their way into reminiscences of Oxford life in connexion with Balliol, Trinity, or Corpus. His dress and manner were peculiar, and he was frequently caricatured; but there is a fine portrait of him in the hall of Trinity College, painted by G. P. Jacomb-Hood in 1889, and a posthumous bust in bronze by A. Broadbent in the Bodleian gallery.
[Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition, 1910, ix. 294; The Times, 14 October 1913; personal knowledge; an admirable appreciation of Ellis’s work and character was contributed to vol. vi, 1913-1914, of the Proceedings of the British Academy by his successor in the Corpus professorship, Mr. A. C. Clark.]