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William Young Sellar

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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WILLIAM YOUNG SELLAR (1825-1890), Scottish classical scholar, was born at Morvich, Sutherlandshire, on the 22nd of February 1825. Educated at the Edinburgh Academy and afterwards at Glasgow University, he entered Balliol College, Oxford, as a scholar. Graduating with a first-class in classics, he was elected fellow of Oriel, and, after holding assistant professorships at Durham, Glasgow and St Andrews, was appointed professor of Greek at St Andrews (1857). In 1863 he was elected professor of humanity in Edinburgh University, and occupied that chair down to his death on the 12th of October 1890. Sellar was one of the most brilliant of modern classical scholars, and was remarkably successful in his endeavours to reproduce the spirit rather than the letter of Roman literature.

His chief works, The Roman Poets of the Republic (3rd ed., 1889) and The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age (Virgil, 3rd ed., 1897), and Horace and the Elegiac Poets (2nd ed., by W. P. Ker, 1899), with memoir by Andrew Lang, are standard authorities. Sellar contributed to the 9th edition of the Ency. Brit. a series of brilliant articles on the Roman poets, the substance of which has been retained in the present edition.