Thursday, October 08, 2009

Hugh Lloyd-Jones: The Times Obituary

Tomorrow's Times has its obituary of Hugh Lloyd-Jones who died on Sunday:

Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones: Regius professor of Greek at Oxford

It is splendidly written, the highlight perhaps this paragraph:
The effect was enhanced by the peculiar postures and gestures in which his nervous energy found continuous expression. Shoulders hunched, a talon tensed now before him, now half behind him, scowling like some oriental demon, prowling like one of his beloved cats, or scrabbling among the piles of books and pamphlets that littered his room, he was a fascinating and unforgettable figure, unlike anyone else.
But I also loved the note that "The worst vice in a scholar, in his view, was to be boring, and of that he was never guilty". I was amused by the remark that he disdained "the parades of erudition with which many scholars inflate their footnotes".

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