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Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro

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HUGH ANDREW JOHNSTONE MUNRO (1819-1885), British scholar, was born at Elgin on the 19th of October 1819. He was educated at Shrewsbury school, where he was one of Kennedy's first pupils, and proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1838. He became scholar of his college in 1840, second classic and first chancellor's medallist in 1842, and fellow of his college in 1843. He became classical lecturer at Trinity College, and in 1869 was elected to the newly-founded chair of Latin at Cambridge, but resigned it in 1872. The great work on which his reputation is mainly based is his edition of Lucretius, the fruit of the labour of many years (text only, I vol., 1860; text, commentary and translation, 2 vols., 1864). As a textual critic his knowledge was profound and his judgment unrivalled; and he made close archaeological studies by frequent travels in Italy and Greece. In 1867 he published an improved text of Aetna with commentary, and in the following year a text of Horace with critical introduction, illustrated by specimens of ancient gems selected by C. W. King. His knowledge and taste are nowhere better shown than in his Criticisms and Elucidations of Calullus (1878). He was a master of the art of Greek and Latin verse composition. His contributions to the famous volume of Shrewsbury verse, Sabrinae corolla, are among the most remarkable of a remarkable collection. His Translations into Latin and Greek Verse were privately printed in 1884. Like his translations into English, they are characterized by minute fidelity to the original, but never cease to be idiomatic. He died at Rome on the 30th of March 1885.

See Memoir by J. D. Duff, prefixed to a re-issue of the trans. of Lucretius in "Bohn's Classical Library" (1908).