North American Scholar

HUTTON, Maurice

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  • Date of Birth (YYYY-MM-DD): 1856-10-08
  • Born City: Manchester
  • Born State/Country: England
  • Date of Death (YYYY-MM-DD): 1940-04-05
  • Death City: Toronto
  • Death State/Country: ON
  • Married: Annie Margaret McCaul, 1885.
  • Education:

    B.A. Oxford (Worcester Coll.), 1879; fell. Merton Coll., Oxford, 1879-86; M.A., 1882; LL.D., Toronto, 1903; Queen's U. (Kingston, Ont.), 1903.
  • Professional Experience:

    Lctr. class. & anc. hist. Firth Coll. (Sheffield) 1880; prof, class. Univ. Coll., U. Toronto, 1880-7; prof. Gk., 1887-1901; princ. Univ. Coll., U. Toronto, 1901-28; actng. pres. U. Toronto, 1906-7; fell. RSC, 1913; pres. sect. II, 1918-9.
  • Publications:

    “Notes on Herodotus and Thucydides,” TAPA 41 (1910) 11-17; “The Mind of Herodotus,” TAPA 42 (1911) 33-43; Many Minds (Toronto & London, 1900; 2d ed., Toronto, 1927); Germania and Agricola (trans.) in Cornelius Tacitus. Dialogus, Agricola, Germania, LCL (London & New York, 1914); “Thucydides and History,” TRSCser. 3, 10 (1916) 11:225-46; “Wit, Humour and Satire,” TRSC ser. 3, 13 (1919) 11:1-18; The Greek Point of View (Toronto, 1925); All Rivers Run into the Sea (Toronto, 1928); The Sisters Jest and Earnest (Toronto & London, 1930).
  • Notes:

    Maurice Hutton was largely responsible for redesigning Toronto's honor classics program as another “Greats” with literature as the foremost ingredient. Students regarded him as “brilliant, Periclean Greek, far-ranging, witty, gently sarcastic ... an erudite Plato with a dash of the lightheartedness of Alcibiades.” His wide-ranging mind and penchant for historical and contemporary parallels made him a lion in the defense and promulgation of the classics. His visit and idiosyncratic address to Gildersleeve's seminar at Johns Hopkins captivated his audience. His contributions to the Loeb Classical Library (revised later by R. M. Ogilvie and E. H. Warmington), his urbane wit, and provocative essays illuminated and graced a time of strain for classics in Toronto's higher education.
  • Sources:

    AA. W. Honour Classics in the University of Toronto (Toronto, 1929); The Canadian Men and Women of the Time, ed. H. J. Morgan (Toronto, 1898); Can WhWh 3; R. A. Falconer, PRSC ser. 3, 34 (1940) 111-4: MacDCB 78:376; Royal Canadian Inst. Toronto Centenn. Vol. 1849-1949 (Toronto, 1949) 200; WhWhCan (1938-9) 474; A. S. P. Woodhouse in University College: A Portrait 1853-1953, ed. Claude T. Bissell (Toronto, 1953), 54-9, esp. 52: “[Hutton's] writing, for all its urbanity, is not of the highest order or a fair measure of his power . . . [he] shaped the honour course in Classics and impressed and charmed every audience that came under his spell.”
  • Author: Alexander G. McKay