HOUSMAN, ALFRED EDWARD scholar and poet, was born on March 26, 1859. He was educated at Bromsgrove school (187o-77) and held a scholarship at St. John's college, Oxford (1877-81), of which college he has since been made an honorary 'fellow. After leaving Oxford he held a post in H.M. patent office till he was appointed professor of Latin at University college, London, in 1892. In 1911 he was made a fellow of Trinity college, Cambridge, and professor of Latin in that university. His chief publications, besides many papers in classical journals (for which see A List of Adversaria printed at Cambridge in 1926) are editions of Juvenal (19o5), Manilius (I., 1903, II., 1912, III., 1916, IV., 1920) and Lucan (1926); two volumes of lyrics, A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922) ; and a lecture, The Name and Nature of Poetry (1933).
As a scholar Housman invites comparison with Bentley for learning, ingenuity and controversial vigour. He has led the attack on superstitious fidelity to the "best ms." and "palaeographical probability," and brought to the defence of common-sense in scholarship an armoury of sarcastic wit which has helped to make him the most widely feared of contemporary scholars. It is not these powers, however, nor the range, depth, and unfailing ac curacy of his learning, but the strength and keenness of his in tellect, which give to his work its quality of greatness and to him his claim to pre-eminence in the world of scholarship.
As a poet Housman appeals to a larger public. The popularity of A Shropshire Lad grew slowly, but so surely that Last Poems had an immediate success greater than that of any other book of poetry published in England during the century. The poems are enjoyed by those readers whose interests are not literary because the language is simple and the verse melodious, the subjects are attractive, and the thought is easily understood; they are admired by the best judges because they are flawless in taste and execution and possess a quality both in their form and in their feeling which it is equally vain to imitate and to seek elsewhere in literature : they are as romantic as ballads, as classical as the Greek Anthol ogy. The poems number little more than a hundred; about a third are written in the character of a country boy who is exiled in London; they deal with the vicissitudes of friendship, the passing of youth, the beauty and the cruelty of nature, and the vanity of human wishes, as experienced by one whom nothing can cheat either of his courage or of his despair. (J. Se.) Housman died April 3oth, 1936. By his will he permitted his brother, Laurence, to publish such of his unpublished poems as appeared not unworthy of comparison with his other works ; in Oct. 1936 this posthumous volume appeared under the title More Poems.
See A. S. F. Gow, A. E. Housman: A Sketch (1936).