Henry W. Chandler

Henry William Chandler (31 January 1828 – 16 May 1889) was an English classical scholar.

Life

Henry William Chandler was the only son of Robert Chandler, of London, and was born in London on 31 January 1828.

His early education was neglected, but by diligent study in the Guildhall Library he acquired enough Greek and Latin to enable him to matriculate at Oxford on 22 June 1848.

On 8 December 1851, he took a scholarship at Pembroke College, of which on 4 November 1853 he was elected fellow, having graduated B.A. (first class in literæ humaniores) in the preceding year.

He proceeded M.A. in 1855, was for some years lecturer and tutor at his college, and held the Waynflete professor of moral and metaphysical philosophy from 1867 until his death.

After the publication of an inaugural lecture, The Philosophy of Mind: a Corrective for some Errors of the Day, London, 1867, 8vo, he confined himself to oral teaching.

His favourite topic was the Nicomachean Ethics, of which his exposition was acute and stimulating.

He lived the life of a scholarly recluse, devoted to the study of Aristotle and his commentators, and is understood to have amassed copious materials for an edition of the master's Fragments, in which he was unhappily forestalled by the German scholar, Valentin Rose.

In 1884, he was appointed curator of the Bodleian Library.

An enthusiastic bibliophile, he began his accession to office by a strong protest against the practice of lending the rare printed books and manuscripts preserved in that venerable repository.