John Conington

John Conington (10 August 1825 – 23 October 1869) was an English classical scholar. In 1866 he published his best-known work, the translation of the Aeneid of Virgil into the octosyllabic metre of Walter Scott.

He was born at Boston in Lincolnshire, and is said to have learned the alphabet at fourteen months, and to have been reading well at three and a half. He 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. 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. He also obtained the Chancellor's prize for Latin verse (1847), English essay (1848) and Latin essay (1849). He successfully applied for the Eldon law scholarship in 1849, and went to Lincoln's Inn; but after six months he resigned the scholarship and returned to Oxford.

During his brief residence in London he 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 first occupant, to the chair of Latin literature, founded by Corpus Christi College, Oxford, gave him a congenial position. From this time he 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 fulfilment of a promise made to his dying friend.

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