Walter George Headlam was born in London upon February 15, 1866.When he died, by a sudden mischance, at the age of forty-two, not Cambridge only, but the world of letters, suffered a loss not easily to be measured. His was a personality singularly complex and exceedingly rare in the history of Intellect. For not only had he made his mark in the academic world as a creative classical critic, who must take his rank with the greatest of the interpreters of Greek thought and language and art, but he combined with the industry and acumen of a scholar the temperament, the individuality, and the achievement of a poet and man of genius. These qualities, rare in the history of literature, still rarer in the history of a university, had made him for the last twenty years one of the most remarkable men in Cambridge. But an individuality such as his, a temperament so intense and many-sided, does not rapidly mature. Time and the experience of years are needed for the harmonising of discordant elements, and the painful working out of a philosophy of life.