Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Jackson, Henry
JACKSON, HENRY (1839–1921), regius professor of Greek at Cambridge, was born at Sheffield 12 March 1839, being the eldest son of Henry Jackson, an eminent surgeon of that town, by his wife, Frances, third daughter of James Swettenham, of Wood End, near Winksworth. He was educated at the Sheffield Collegiate School and Cheltenham College, from which he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1858, taking his B.A. degree in 1862. He became a fellow of Trinity in 1864, assistant tutor in 1866, praelector in ancient philosophy in 1875, and vice-master in 1914. In 1906 he succeeded Sir R. C. Jebb as regius professor of Greek in the university, and in 1908 received, as crown of many other distinctions, the order of merit. As professor he continued to lecture on ancient philosophy in his deeply interesting and fascinating manner, as one talking familiarly out of fullness of knowledge. His principal contribution to learning was his doctrine of Plato’s ‘later theory of Ideas’, published in a series of articles in the Journal of Philology, of which he was one of the editors from 1879 to his death. These articles were invaluable not only in themselves but in giving an impulse to later speculation: he insisted that Plato criticized and modified his own views, not remaining content with the crude form in which they were first put forth; he showed that various statements of Aristotle’s chimed in with what he found in Plato’s later dialogues; and he held that the Ideas finally became ‘natural kinds’ like John Stuart Mill’s. He also published an edition of Aristotle’s Ethics, book V (1879), translations, papers, articles in encyclopaedias dealing with ancient philosophy, and a book About Edwin Drood (1911).
But all who knew Jackson felt his personality to be more wonderful than any printed book, and every one fell under the spell of it. The secret of this was an extraordinary power of sympathy, inherited from his father, and such an interest in others that he remembered details about them forgotten by themselves. His interest in school and college life was intense, and great was his pleasure at becoming a governor of Winchester College. He took a leading part in university reform; his last appearance in public was when he was carried to the senate house to vote for women’s degrees. An ardent politician, he was a Home Ruler before Gladstone. He was deeply interested in anthropology. In literature, after his beloved Greek philosophers, he was devoted to French and English fiction, Thackeray most of all; many years before his death he had read Esmond forty times. His rooms were crowded with all sorts of people, especially on Sunday evenings, and every distinguished visitor to Trinity would be taken under his wing. But he had some strong dislikes, hating all pretension and affectation. No man was ever more free from envy, jealousy, or self-conceit.
His constitution was strong indeed. In teaching he never spared himself, and he was constantly occupied with college and university business during the day. He would often sit up late talking with any visitor till three or four o’clock, then work at a lecture, go to bed sometimes as late as six, and lecture at ten. And he took infinite pains over his work, spending much care over testimonials and letters of importance, and keeping up a large and delightful correspondence. Yet for many years all this had no visible effect upon him, and though he had to become more careful when about seventy, the breakdown only came just after eighty. For two years he was a helpless invalid, yet even then was carried into the hall to lecture several days a week with indomitable spirit. He died at Bournemouth 25 September 1921.
He married in 1875 Margaret, daughter of the Rev. Francis Vansittart Thornton, vicar of South-Hill with Callington, Cornwall, and had two sons and three daughters. His married life was clouded by the illness of his wife, many years bedridden and unable to live at Cambridge.
[Private information; personal knowledge. See also R. St. John Parry, Henry Jackson, 1926 (portrait).]