# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Merry, William Walter

​MERRY, WILLIAM WALTER (1835–1918), classical scholar, born at Evesham 6 September 1835, was the only son of Walter Merry, of that town, by his wife, Elizabeth Mary Byrch. He entered Cheltenham College as a day boy in 1846 and was elected to an open scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1852. He obtained a first class in classical moderations (1854) and a second class in literae humaniores (1856). In 1858 he gained the Chancellor's Latin essay prize and in the following year he was elected a fellow of Lincoln College, where he filled the office of classical lecturer until his election to the rectorship twenty-five years later. Merry ​ordained deacon in 1860, priest in the next year, and in 1862 was presented by his college to the perpetual curacy of All Saints, Oxford. As this living was also a college chaplaincy his tenure of it enabled him to retain his fellowship on his marriage later in the same year.
While holding this living Merry acquired considerable popularity as a preacher. He was select preacher before the university in 1878–1879 and 1889–1890, and Whitehall preacher in 1883–1884. He also found time to pursue his studies in the Greek classics. His friendship with James Riddell [q.v.], who had been his tutor at Balliol, at first fixed him as a student of Homer. After Riddell's early death (1866) he completed for the Clarendon Press and published in 1876 the large edition of the Odyssey, books i–xii, which Riddell had begun. He was also entirely responsible for the minor edition of the whole of the Odyssey which was issued by the Clarendon Press in two volumes in 1870 and 1878. Later he edited for the same press the plays of Aristophanes: the Clouds (1879), the Acharnians (1880), the Frogs (1884), the Knights (1887), the Birds (1889), the Wasps (1893), and the Peace (1900). These editions have been familiar to several generations of students. They are sufficiently erudite, full of sound learning, and spiced with congenial humour.
Merry's Latinity was at least on a par with his Greek. He had remarkable verbal knowledge of the Latin poets and of Cicero, and great facility as a writer of Latin verse. The distinctive mark of his scholarship, however, was his power of interpretation. His colleague, William Warde Fowler [q.v.], has observed that he never found any one quite so helpful in divining the meaning of a difficult passage: ‘He took the bearings of it with wonderful rapidity, and then looked straight into it without the least hesitation or confusion’ [Oxford Magazine, 15 March 1918]. In 1875 he published a volume on Greek Dialects and another in 1891 on Selected Fragments of Roman Poetry.
In 1880 Merry was appointed public orator of the university, an office which he held till 1910; and in 1884 he succeeded Mark Pattison [q.v.] as rector of Lincoln College, not long after the election of his colleague, Thomas Fowler [q.v.], as president of Corpus Christi College. His fine presence, his lively wit, and the extraordinary lucidity of his Latin, which was aided by his delivery, made him an ideal public orator. His Orationes tum Creweianae tum Gratulatoriae were published by the Clarendon Press in 1909. As rector of Lincoln he was distinguished by his care for the interests of that society and by the kindly feeling and genial humour which endeared him to fellows of a younger generation and to many generations of undergraduate members of the college. He had great qualities as a host, as he showed when he filled the office of vice-chancellor from 1904 to 1906 and maintained the tradition of hospitality associated with that office.
Merry died in Lincoln College 5 March 1918 and was buried beside his wife in Holywell churchyard, Oxford. He had married in 1862 Alice Elizabeth (died 1914), only daughter of Joseph Collings, jurat of the royal court of Guernsey. They had two sons and two daughters. Merry's portrait, painted by Cyrus Johnson, R.I., is in the hall of Lincoln College.
[The Times, 7 March 1918; Oxford Magazine, 15 March 1918; Classical Review, May–June 1918; Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, 1887–1891; Men of the Time; personal knowledge.]
E. I. C.