In Professor J. S. Brewer, the study of English history
has lost one of the most original, accomplished, and disinterested of its labourers. He was Professor at King's College, London, but the greater part of his work was done in editing for the public the Calendars preserved in the Record Office relating to the reign of Henry VIII. This was a work of very great labour, requiring a very unusual knowledge both of the middle-ages and of modern times ; and hardly any one except Professor Brewer could have done the work as he did it. He was one of those who can give their lives to laborious investigation, without obtaining, or wishing to obtain, any reward beyond the results of that investigation,—who can labour through a long life-time for knowledge, without dreaming of fame, or expecting any other reward than the reward of knowledge. He did not even retire to a country vicarage, to which he was at last presented by the Crown, till he was sixty-seven years of age, and he did not live long to enjoy that comparative rest. Now and then he rushed. into hot controversy,—as, for instance, on the subject of the Irish Church, to the disestablishment of which he was much opposed. But even in controversy he was as fair and single- minded as he was hot. His life will at least leave behind it a durable though modest historical monument.
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