• Date of Birth: February 18, 1864
  • Born City: Uxbridge
  • Born State/Country: ON
  • Parents: John and Mary Pirt M.
  • Date of Death: July 30, 1932
  • Death City: Baltimore
  • Death State/Country: MD
  • Married: Charlotte Rogers Smith, 5 Aug. 1921.
  • Education:

    A.B. Toronto, 1886; fell., 1886-90; examiner, 1889-91; A.M., 1890; fell. Johns Hopkins, 1890-1; Ph.D., 1891; D. Litt. U. Toronto, 1921.

  • Dissertation:

    "The Etymologies in the Servian Commentary to Vergil" (Johns Hopkins, 1891); printed, Colorado Coll. Stud. Ann. Publ. 3 (1892).

  • Professional Experience:

    Prof. Lat. Colorado Coll., 1891-3; instr. to prof. Lat. Haverford, 1893-1907; collegiate prof. Lat. Johns Hopkins, 1907-19; prof. Lat., 1919-32; corr. fell. Royal Virgilian Acad. Mantua, 1922; asso. ed. AJP, 1920-32; pres. CAAS, 1913-4.

  • Publications:

    John Bond & Arthur S. Walpole, Stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses, rev. by Mustard (New York & London, 1893); "Tennyson and Virgil," AJP20 (1899) 186-94; "Tennyson and Homer," AJP 21 (1900) 143-53; "Homeric Echoes in Matthew Arnold's Balder Dead," Studies Gildersleeve, 19-28; Classical Echoes in Tennyson (New York & London, 1904); "Vergil's Georgics and the British Poets," PAPA 37 (1906) xxv-xxvii, expanded in AJP 29 (1908) 1-32; "Siren-Mermaid," MLN 23 (1908) 21-4; "Later Echoes of the Greek Bucolic Poets," AJP 30 (1909) 245-83; "On the Eclogues of Baptista Mantuanus," TAPA 40 (1909) 151-83; The Eclogues of Baptista Mantuanus (Baltimore, 1911); The Piscatory Eclogues of Jacopo Sannazaro (Baltimore, 1914); "Lodowick Brysket and Bernardo Tasso," AJP 35 (1914) 192-9; "The Pastoral, Ancient and Modern,'" CW8 (1914-5) 161-7; "Later Echoes of Calpurnius and Nemesianus," AJP 37 (1916) 73-83; The Eclogues of Faustus Andrelinus and Joannes Arnollerus (Baltimore, 1918); "Later Echoes of the Greek Bucolic Poets," AJP 39 (1918) 193-8; "E. K.'s Classical Allusions," MLN 34 (1919) 193-203; "Petrarch's Africa," AJP 42 (1921) 97-120; The Eclogues of Antonio Geraldini (Baltimore, 1924); "Notes on John Lyly's Plays," SP 22 (1925) 267-71; "Notes on Thomas Nashe's Works," MLN 40 (1925) 469-76; Aeneae Silvii De Curialium Miseriis (Baltimore, 1928); The Eclogues of Henrique Caiado (Baltimore, 1931).Bibliography: AJP 53 (1932) 290-3.

  • Notes:

    W. P. Mustard was one of our first classicists who devoted himself seriously and extensively to the study of the classical tradition. A man with an amazing breadth of knowledge, he came to Johns Hopkins as had his fellow Canadians G. J. Laing and H. R. Fairclough to study Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit under Minton Warren, Gildersleeve, Kirby Flower Smith, and Maurice Bloomfield. Following stints at Colorado College and Haverford, he returned to Johns Hopkins as Collegiate Professor. At the death of Kirby Flower Smith, Mustard was elevated to Professor of Latin, joining Tenney Frank in the administration of the program. His most enduring work is his contribution to our study of the ancient sources of the European pastoral, work that he fostered by his regular classes in pastoral poetry. His work on classical echoes in Tennyson as well as other English poets is always precise and encyclopedic and his ability to find correspondences and allusions in authors widely separated by place and time represents a diversity if not a skill in reading that has nearly disappeared. He served classics effectively in the pages of AJP as associate editor, writing numerous reports and reviews. The sheer amount of careful publication is impressive, and is typical of the production of Johns Hopkins classicists of the time: over 30 notes of a page or less, many long articles citing classical parallels in modern authors, six critical editions of Renaissance pastoralists, and over 50 reviews.

  • Sources:

    AJP 53 (1932) 287-89; WhAm 1:885.

  • Author: Ward W. Briggs, Jr.