Nearly all bearers of the name of Rendel link up
somehow. Thus there is a distant but clearly traceable connexion between Dr. Rendel Harris, who died last Saturday, and Mr. George William Rendel, still, as I write, British Minister at Sofia. Both find a common original in one James Harris, who set up In business at Plymouth about 1770. Having a family of twenty-three he was able to weave extensive and complicated relationships, involving, among others, Gladstone's friend, Lord Rendel, the Wedgwoods of Etruria, Lord Justice Bowen and Mr. Austin Dobson. (Even " Janus " comes in some- where.) One of James Harris's sons was Dr. Rendel Harris's father, one of his many daughters was mother of Mr. George Wightwick Rendel, father of the Minister at Sofia. Start- ing life as a mathematician, Dr. Harris switched surprisingly over to palaeography, and became Reader in that subject at Cambridge. His studies on the Codex Bezae were classic in their time. His most important discovery—in a monastery en. Mount Sinai—was the full Syrian text of the Apology of Aristides, of which till then only a fragment was known. His textual criticism was often audaciously conjectural, but generally brilliantly conjectural all the same—till his later Years, when he drew fascinating but by no means convincing conclusions about race-migrations from collections of name- resemblances: Dr. Harris had many sides. One of the authors 111 whom he was peculiarly versed was Artemus Ward.
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