SKEAT, WALTER WILLIAM ( 1835—). An English philologist. He was horn in Park Lane, London, but passed his boyhood in Sydenham, London suburb, then well in the country. It was here that he became familiar with the Kent ish dialect. He attended King's College School, a school at Highgate, and entered Christ's Col lege. Cambridge, where he graduated in 185S, and two years later was elected a fellow. Ordained to the ministry in 1860, he held two curacies, first at East Dereham in Norfolk, and then at Godalming in Surrey; but, owing to an affection of the throat, he was compelled to give up the ministry. He returned to Cambridge, and resumed his studies in English philology and lit erature. In 1873 he helped to found the English Dialect Society, becoming its first director and afterwards its president. He had already be gun editing Middle English texts for the Early English Text Society, established by his friend F. J. Furnivall. In 1878 he was appointed to the Erlington and Bosworth professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge, and in 1883 he was reelected fellow of Christ's College. Among
his separate publications may be mentioned The Songs and Ballads of Uhland, trans lated from the German (1864) • Lancelot of the Lail; (1S65; revised 1870) ; the three texts of Langland's Piers the Plowman (1865 84; reprinted together 1886) ; An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1879 84) ; A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1882) ; Barbour's Bruce (1870-77; and for the Scottish Text Society. 1S93-94) ; Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1894); The Student's Chaucer (1895): A Stu dent's Pastime, being a select series of articles reprinted from Notes and Queries (1S96); The Chaucer Canon (1900) ; Place Names of Cam bridgeshire (1901) ; and Notes on English Etymology (1901). Skeat is one of the leading scholars in the revival of our older literature, and has done much to popularize his subject. To him more than to all others is due the very general interest in Chaucer.