The head
editor of the
OED, considered to be the second
protagonist next to
Dr. William Minor.
Born in Hawick, Scotland, in February of 1837. He had a ferocious appetite for learning, and though he was forced to leave school at the age of fourteen, became a scholar of nearly unparalleled honor. Friends with Henry Sweet, the dialect specialist who George Bernard Shaw's character Professor Henry Higgins, (Pygmalion) was based on.
He was elite when it came to the comprehension of language and culture, from which sprang his earnestness to complete the Oxford English Dictionary. An antique dem bones, say, if you will.