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1868, he was further promoted to the class of Senior Assistants in the same department. In 1849 he pub- lished an "Index to the Heralds' Visitations ;" in 1854, " A Handbook to th« Library of the British Mu- seum ; " in 1856, " A Manual for the Genealo^t, Topographer, Anti- quary, and Legal Professor;*' in 1855, in conjunction with Mr. F. Netherclift, lun., the "Autograph Miscellany; ' in 1860-61, "The Handbook to Autographs : being a Beady Guide to the Handwriting of Distinguished Men and Women of every Nation;" and in 1861-5, "The Autograph Souvenir." Mr. Sims has been for some time eng^ed in preparing for the press "A Classical Catalogue of Manuscripts relating to British Heraldry and Topography, deposited in the Public, and many of the Private Libraries of the King- dom," as well as a second edition of the afore-mentioned " Index to the Heralds' Visitations."
SKEAT, The Rev. Walteb WrL- liiAM, M.A.,bom in London, Nov. 21, 1835, was educated at King's Col- lege School ; at Sir E. Cholmeley*8 School, Highgate ; and at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he gradu- ated 6.A. in 1858, being 14th Wrangler. He was elected Fellow of his college in July, 1860 ; became Curate of East Dereham, Norfolk, in Dec. 1860 ; Curate of Godalming, Surrey, in Dec. 1862; Mathematical Lecturer at Christ's College in Oct. 1864 ; he is also English Lecturer at Christ's College. He was elected to the recently founded Elrington and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo- Saxon, in the University of Cam- bridge, May 15, 1878; and to a Fellowship at Christ's College in Jan. 1883. Mr. Skeat, who has chiefly devoted his attention to Early English literature and Eng- lish etymology, has published : The Songs and Ballads of Uhland, translated from the German." 1864 ; " A Tale of Ludlow Castle : a Poem," 1866 ; and " A Maeso-Gothic Glos- sary," printed by the Philological
Society, 1868. For the Early Eng- lish Text Society he has edited "Lancelot of the Laik: a Scotch Metrical Romance," 1865 ; " Parallel Extracts from twenty-nine MSS. of Piers the Plowman," 1866 ; " The Romans of Partenay or Lusignen ; otherwise known as the Tale of Melusine," 1866 ; " The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman," four p^rts, 1867-77 ; "Pierce the Ploughman's Crede," 1867 ; " The Romance of William of Palerne ; or, William and the Werwolf," 1867; "The Lay of Havelok the Dane," 1868; "The Bruce ; by Master John Barbour," 3 paii;s, 1870-77 ; " Joseph of Ari- mathie ; or. The Romance of the Seint Graal, or Holy Grail ; with other Lives of Joseph of Arimathea," 1871 ; Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe, &c. In a new edition of Chatterton's Poems, he has finally settled the question of the authen- ticity of the so-called Rowley Poems, by showing the precise sources from which Chatterton obtained the old words which abound in them. The woU-known Anglo-Saxon scholar, the late J. M. Kemble, having com- menced an edition of the Anglo- Saxon Gospels, exhibiting all the readings of all the extsmt MSS., which he unfortunately did not live to complete, Mr. Skeat was chosen by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press to continue and complete the work. In 1873, with the help of others, Mr. Skeat started the English Dialect Society, for the record and preservation of pro- vincial English words, of which Society he was the Director for f our years. In the course of 1873 and 1874, six works were published for this Society, five of which were edited by him. For the Oxford press, he has edited several of Chau- cer's Canterbury Tales, a portion of " Piers the Plowman," and three volumes of Specimens of English Literature ; two of them in conjunc- tion with Dr. Morris ; also, for the same press, the " Gospel of St. Mark
