Hugh Andrew JOHNSTONE-MUNRO Jr., M.A., LL.D

HUGH ANDREW, M.A., LI.D, classical British scholar and critic, was the natural son of PENELOPE FORBES & HUGH ANDREW Sr. of Novar, Ross-shire, born out of wedlock.

HUGH received his early education in Elgin. He was later sent by his father to Shrewsbury, where he became one of the most distinguished pupils of Professor Kennedy, and later became Professor of Greek at Cambridge.

His University career was a series of brilliant successes. In 1842 he received his degree with Honours being second in the Classical Tripos (Greek and Latin languages) and gained the first Chancellor’s medal.

He was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 1843, and after some residence in Paris, Florence, and Berlin took holy orders and began to lecture on classical subjects at Trinity.

From this time until his death, Trinity College was his permanent home, though he paid many visits to the Continent, and generally spent some part of the summer in Scotland.

HUGH was for some years Professor of Latin at the University of Cambridge. He was universally admitted to have been the best Latin scholar of his day in Britain. He became a classical lecturer at Trinity College, and in 1869 was elected to the newly founded chair of Latin at Cambridge, but resigned it in 1872.

HUGH was also recognised as such on the Continent after his edition of Lucretius, which secured for him a European reputation. He was also widely known for his Elucidations of Catullus.

The ‘Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus’—Munro's last book—appeared in 1878. Much of it had already been printed in the form of papers in the ‘Journal of Philology,’ to which he was a constant contributor from its first appearance in 1864. As there was no necessity here for extreme compression, this book contains the strongest evidence of his knowledge and appreciation of literature, both ancient and modern.

Throughout his whole life, Munro had a great fondness for composing in Greek and especially in Latin verse, and many specimens may be seen in the ‘Sabrinæ Corolla’ and ‘Arundines Cami.’

HUGH MUNRO will always hold a high position among English scholars. He spoke French, German and Italian, deliberately, indeed, as he did English, but with correct idiom and good accent.

His translations into Latin and Greek Verse were privately printed in 1884. Like his translations into English, these are characterized by minute fidelity to the original, but never cease to be idiomatic. HUGH published many books and wrote many chief papers in learned journals.

HUGH MUNRO’S strong constitution and temperate habits gave every promise of a very long life; but in the spring of 1885 he suffered from sleeplessness, and, going abroad for change and rest, he was attacked at Rome by an inflammation of the mucous membrane, and, when this was abating, a malignant abscess, which proved fatal, appeared on the neck.

HUGH MUNRO died, unmarried, on 31 March 1885, in his sixty-sixth year. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, where his college has erected a marble cross in his memory. Memorial brasses have also been placed in Trinity College chapel and in the Elgin Academy.