# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Raper, Robert William

​RAPER, ROBERT WILLIAM (1842–1915), classical scholar, born at Llanwenarth, Monmouthshire, 9 March 1842, was the second son of Lieutenant-Colonel Timothy Raper (died 1862), of the 19th Foot, by his wife, Christian Mary, daughter of Robert Steavenson, M.D., of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Colonel Raper, afterwards of Hoe Court, Colwall, Herefordshire, was highly distinguished in the Ceylon expedition of 1815; and his youngest son, Major-General Allan Graeme Raper (died 1906), of the 98th Foot and North Staffordshire regiments, was assistant quartermaster-general at the War Office 1895–1900, and commanded the infantry brigade at Gibraltar 1902–1905. From Cheltenham College (1857–1859) Raper passed to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1861, but in his first term was elected to a scholarship at Trinity College, where in 1862 he obtained the university prizes for Greek and Latin verse and a first class in moderations, and in 1865 a first class in literae humaniores and a fellowship at Queen's College. Having from 1866 lectured in classics at Trinity, he was in 1871 elected under a special statute to a life fellowship there, and thenceforward took a leading part in the administration of the college, being tutor until 1882, then lecturer in classics, bursar from 1887, and vice-president from 1894, remaining continuously in residence until his death. He would probably have been elected president in 1878, if laymen had then been eligible; in 1887, 1897, and 1907 he declined to accept the post. In the university he soon acquired extensive though informal influence; he only once acted as examiner in the Schools, but he was a curator of the Parks from 1885 and a visitor of the Ashmolean Museum from 1895 to 1908. He lectured mainly on favourite authors, Homer, Virgil, Aristophanes, and Tacitus, but he published nothing except an ingenious but not altogether serious attempt to prove that the Ibis of Ovid was directed against Septimius Severus (Journal of Philology, 1885), a remarkable imitation of Walt Whitman in Echoes from the Oxford Magazine (1890), a few brilliant versions in Latin verse in the Nova Anthologia Oxoniensis of 1899, and a rather fantastic paper on Virgil in the Classical Review (1913). His skill in translation and composition is frequently acknowledged by friends, as by Andrew Lang in the preface to his translation of the Odyssey, and by pupils whom he had encouraged to write.
From an early date Raper's wide acquaintance with influential Oxford men enabled him to recommend Trinity undergraduates of promise and others for tutorial, scholastic, and secretarial posts; and eventually in 1894 he founded, and for a time presided over, an Appointments Committee for the university on the model of one organized at Cambridge by Professor James Stuart. As an accomplished cricketer, rider, and skater, he was familiar with athletes as well as with students; but he was best known, especially in his own college, as a genial and judicious host, a sagacious and witty counsellor, a sympathetic and, on the whole, sound disciplinarian. Though his ability was appreciated by non-residents also, he was not drawn into public life except in connexion with the preservation of open spaces. He defended with passionate and persistent vigour the rights both of the commoners and of the general public to the enjoyment of the Malvern Hills, obtained legislation for their protection, and became in 1884 one of the first conservators, giving 16 acres of land and receiving in 1887 the right to appoint a conservator in perpetuity. In later life he lost local influence and became entangled in controversy and even litigation; but he was not unsupported, and in 1905 and later he conveyed some more land and manorial rights, which he had purchased in order to prevent encroachments and to control quarrying. He also served on the council of the National Trust from 1895. As a young man he was somewhat of an invalid, but later enjoyed life fully, ​until he failed rather rapidly, and died suddenly in his college rooms on 15 July 1915. He was buried at Colwall. A memorial window was placed in the hall of Trinity College in 1920; and in the common room there is a sketch in oils of his head by Brian Hatton, of Hereford. His numerous objects of art and virtù, collected as an amusement without much discrimination, were sold in Oxford and London in 1915 and 1916.
[Memoir, with a vivid appreciation, by ‘C’ (Lord Curzon of Kedleston), in The Times 17 and 20 July 1915; Malvern newspapers; personal knowledge.]
H. E. D. B.