Robert Payne Smith

Robert Payne Smith (7 November 1818 – 31 March 1895) was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and Canon of Christ Church from 1865 until 1870, when he was appointed Dean of Canterbury by Queen Victoria on the advice of William Ewart Gladstone.

Early life and education

Payne Smith was born in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, on 7 November 1818, the only son and second of four children of Robert Smith, a land agent, and his wife, Esther Argles Payne, of Leggsheath, Surrey. He attended Chipping Campden grammar school and was taught Hebrew by his eldest sister, Esther. In 1837 he obtained an exhibition at Pembroke College, Oxford to study classics. In 1841 he graduated with second-class honours. Payne Smith won the Boden Sanskrit scholarship in 1840 and the Pusey and Ellerton Hebrew scholarship in 1843.

Career

In 1843, he became a fellow of Pembroke and was ordained a deacon, and became a priest a year later.

He gave to 1869 Bampton Lectures at Oxford and from 1870 until 1885 he was a member of the Old Testament Revision Committee (the whole duration of the Committee's existence).

He published the Thesaurus Syriacus (1868–1901, supplement added 1927), later abridged and translated into English by his daughter Jessie Margoliouth as A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (1903). Payne Smith died at his deanery on 31 March 1895 and was buried on 3 April in St Martin's churchyard, Canterbury.

Payne Smith was reticent towards the Oxford Movement and Tractarian and Ritualist developments.

References

• Simpson, R. S. 'Payne Smith, Robert (1818–1895)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.

External links

• Dukhrana online searchable version of Payne Smith's A Compendious Syriac Dictionary