Martin Joseph Routh

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Martin Joseph Routh (18 September 1755- 22 December 1854) was an English classical scholar born at South Elmham, Suffolk. Educated at Queen's College and Magdalen College, Oxford, he was elected in 1775 to a fellowship at Magdalen, of which in 1791 he became president for the next sixty-three years. Shrunken in size and deaf, he retained his eyesight, his remarkable memory, and his other intellectual powers almost to the last, dying at Magdalen.

He was the author of editions of the Euthydemus and Gorgias of Plato (1784), to which Karl Wilhelm Dindorf declared himself indebted for his first ideas of Greek criticism, and of Gilbert Burnet's History of his Own Time (2nd ed., 1833) and History of the Reign of King James the Second (1852). Routh was above all an authority on patristic literature, his Reliquiae Sacrae (2nd ed., 184648), a collection of the fragments of the Fathers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum opuscula praecipua quaedam (2nd ed., 1840) being valuable contributions to ecclesiastical knowledge.

Many affectionate stories were told of him, but he is best known today for his response to J.W. Burgon, who asked him what he would say to a young don seeking advice, still daily ignored by those in politics, the media, and academia who should know better: "You will find it a very good practice always to verify your references, sir!" This is also to be found in the short form, "Always verify your references", with and without the "sir". His last words when he collapsed taking a heavy volume from a high shelf in his library allegedly were: 'A worthless volume, sir! A worthless volume!'.