“ He gave Frederick Denison Maurice valuable assistance in the Christian Socialist movement, and was one of the founders of the Working Men’s College. For half a century he indefatigably promoted the study of early English literature, partly by his own work as editor, and still more efficaciously by the agency of the numerous learned societies of which he was both founder and director, especially the Early English Text Society (1864) , which has been of inestimable service in promoting the study of early and middle English. ”