Background
John Conington was born on the 10th of August, 1825 in Boston, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom.
John Conington was born on the 10th of August, 1825 in Boston, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom.
John Conington was educated at Beverley Grammar School, at Rugby School and at Oxford, where, after matriculating at University College, he came into residence at Magdalen, where he had been nominated to a demyship.
In 1866 John Conington published his best-known work, the translation of the Aeneid of Virgil into the octosyllabic metre of Walter Scott. He was Ireland and Hertford scholar in 1844. In March 1846 he was elected to a scholarship at University College, and in December of the same year he obtained a first class in classics. In February 1848 he became a fellow of University.
During his brief residence in London, John Conington began writing for the Morning Chronicle and continued to do so after leaving. He showed no special aptitude for journalism, but a series of articles on university reform (1849–1850) was the first public expression of his views on a subject that always interested him. In 1854 his appointment, as the first occupant, to the chair of Latin literature, founded by Corpus Christi College, Oxford, gave him a congenial position. From this time John Conington confined himself with characteristic conscientiousness almost exclusively to Latin literature. The only important exception was the translation of the last twelve books of the Iliad in the Spenserian stanza in completion of the work of P.S. Worsley, and this was undertaken in fulfillment of a promise made to his dying friend.
Chancellor