No.129
Rev’d Dr Samuel Rolles Driver –
Hebrew (Old Testament)
(1846-1914; Commoner, 1862-65)
At Winchester he won the Duncan
Prize for Maths. He progressed
to New College (1, Lit Hum) and
stayed there as Fellow and Tutor. He
was appointed by Gladstone to be
Pusey’s successor as Regius Professor
of Hebrew and canon of Christ
Church, 1882. He wrote numerous
commentaries and monographs on
the Old Testament, including his
Introduction to the Literature of the
Old Testament, which was still in
print after his death. His obituary
in The Wykehamist states that
‘His writings… revolutionised the
attitude of cultured and intelligent
Englishmen towards what is known
as the Higher Criticism.’ He was on
the committee which produced the
Revised Version of the Bible, the first
significant attempt in 300 years to
update the King James Version and
the forerunner of the whole modern
translation tradition. His most lasting
achievement was his collaboration
with two American scholars to
produce what remains the standard
lexicon for Biblical Hebrew and
Aramaic, commonly known as Brown-
Driver-Briggs (1906).
The Trusty Servant
Rev’d Dr David Margoliouth –
Arabic (Qur’an & Islamic History
(1858-1940; Scholar, 1872-77)
He was the son of a convert from
Judaism who worked as a missionary
to the Jewish population of Bethnal
Green. He had previously attended
Hackney Collegiate School. He
entered College 8 th on Roll and won
a clutch of prizes across Classics
(Goddard Scholar in 1875, gold
medal for Latin essay and silver
medal for Latin speech in 1877,
Warden and Fellows prize for Greek
iambics and Latin essay in 1876,
and for Greek prose and Latin verse
in 1877), Religion (Moore Stevens
prize for Divinity in 1875), Modern
Languages (1876), and English
(Hawkins literature prize in 1877).
Despite all the silverware it brought
him, he later said that ‘the time in
my life I consider most wasted is the
time I spent composing Latin verses
at Winchester.’ He was also a keen
debater; The Wykehamist summarizes
several of his speeches, including
his opposition to a motion ‘that the
poets of present day as represented
by Swinburne, Tennyson and
Browning tend to degrade the art of
poetry to mere word-painting.’ He
was 1 st on Roll for New College in
1877 (1, Lit Hum) and again won an
unprecedented number of prizes, for
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and
16
Sanskrit. To that impressive arsenal
of languages he also added Arabic,
Persian, Turkish and Armenian.
Laudian Professor of Arabic, 1889-
1937 (appointed by a board including
Samuel Driver, above). He wrote
the then-standard works in English
on the history of Islam, produced
editions and translations of early
Arabic writers and published several
papyri. His reputation in Arabic
studies now suffers from his dismissal
of most pre-Islamic Arab poetry as a
later forgery and for the ‘polemical
and contentious content’ typical of
the period. In 1899 he was ordained
to the Anglican priesthood; although
he never took up parish ministry, he
did preach fiery evangelistic sermons
in Oxford churches. His manner
was difficult to read, characterised,
according to his DNB entry, by a
‘curious air of withdrawn detachment
and introspection’. Possibly this
stemmed from the rough treatment
a pupil from a Jewish East-End
background might have met with at
Victorian Winchester.
Sir Frederic Kenyon –
Greek (New Testament)
(1863-1952; College, 1875-82;
Warden, 1925-30)
Elected 3 rd on Roll, Kenyon was the
fourth of seven brothers to attend
Win Coll. He won a glittering array of
prizes, but also played in the College
VI and XV; the former defeated a
Commoner VI led by Herbert Chitty.
In a letter of 1937 he recalled wearing
‘serges’ for football, with flannel
trousers for XVs and knickerbockers
for VIs; ‘shorts were not invented’.
He said of the two Headmasters
he had known, ‘Ridding, I think,
impressed one more, and was
exceedingly stimulating, partly
because he did unexpected and
original things, and partly because he
suggested high standards and made
one want to satisfy him. Fearon was
more ordinary, but most encouraging
and especially good in history.’ He