[Samuel Henry]. English classical scholar, the eldest son of Samuel Butcher, classical tutor and lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently Bishop of Meath. Born in Dublin on the 16th of April 1850, he went to Marlborough in 1864 and won an open scholarship for classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1869. In 1870 he won the Bell scholarship at Cambridge, in 1871 the Waddington scholarship, and in 1871 and 1872 the Powis medal. In 1873 he graduated as senior classic and won a Chancellor’s medal. He took an assistant mastership at Eton for a year, but returned to Trinity, Cambridge, as fellow and lecturer in classics. On his marriage in 1876 to Rose, daughter of Archbishop Trench of Dublin, he had to resign his Trinity fellowship, and was then elected tutor and “married fellow” at University College, Oxford. In 1882 he succeeded Professor Blackie as professor of Greek in the university of Edinburgh. During his tenure of this chair he became widely known, not only as a scholar, but as a judicious administrator and educational reformer. He was a member of the royal commission which was appointed after the passing of the Scottish Universities bill in 1889 to reform the whole academical system in Scotland, and which reported in April 1900. In 1902 Mrs. Butcher died, and two years later he resigned his professorship and went to reside in London. He had been a member of the royal commission of 1901 on University Education in Ireland, which produced an abortive report with eight reservations in 1903; and he was also included on the royal commission of 1906. In the latter year, on the death of Sir Richard Jebb, he was chosen as a Unionist to represent the university of Cambridge in Parliament, where his brother J. G. Butcher (1853–1935; created a baronet in 1918), a well-known barrister, had sat for many years as Unionist member for York; he made an effective maiden speech on the Irish University bill and frequently took a valuable part in debate. His grave and thoughtful style and gift of natural eloquence were combined with a charm and sincerity which won him universal respect and affection, no less in public than in private life. He was however, above all, a fine Greek scholar, full of the true spirit of classical learning, with a remarkable power of literary expression, shown especially in such publications as Some Aspects of the Greek Genius (1891); Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (1895); Greek Idealism in the Common Things of Life (1901); Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects (1904) and his prose translation (with Andrew Lang) of the Odyssey (1879). In 1907 he was president of the English Classical Association, of which he had been one of the principal founders in 1903. He was also the first president of the Irish Classical Association, and an original member of the British Academy, becoming its president in 1909. In 1908 he was appointed a trustee of the British Museum. Two years later his health began to fail, and he delivered his last speech on October 21, 1910, at the dinner given to celebrate the publication of the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica by the Cambridge University Press. He died in London on the 2nd of December 1910.
