In 1877 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the University of Cambridge. The degree was conferred on November 17, and with the customary Latin speech from the Public Orator, concluding with the words: "Tu vero, qui leges naturæ tam docte illustraveris, legum doctor nobis esto."
The honorary degree led to a movement being set on foot in the University to obtain some permanent memorial of my father. In June 1879 he sat to Mr. W. Richmond for the portrait in the possession of the University, now placed in the Library of the Philosophical Society at Cambridge.
A similar wish on the part of the Linnean Society—with which my father was so closely associated—led to his sitting in August, 1881, to Mr. John Collier, for the portrait now in the possession of the Society. The portrait represents him standing facing the observer in the loose cloak so familiar to those who knew him, with his slouch hat in his hand. Many of those who knew his face most intimately, think that Mr. Collier's picture is the best of the portraits, and in this judgment the sitter himself was inclined to agree. According to my feeling it is not so simple or strong a representation of him as that given by Mr. Ouless. The last-named portrait was painted at Down in 1875; it is in the possession of the family,[265] and is known to many through Rajon's fine etching. Of Mr. Ouless's picture my father wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker:
"I look a very venerable, acute, melancholy old dog; whether I really look so I do not know."
Besides the Cambridge degree, he received about the same time honours of an academic kind from some foreign societies.
On August 5, 1878, he was elected a Corresponding Member of the French Institute in the Botanical Section,[266] and wrote to Dr. Asa Gray:—
"I see that we are both elected Corresponding Members of the Institute. It is rather a good joke that I should be elected in the Botanical Section, as the extent of my knowledge is little more than that a daisy is a Compositous plant and a pea a Leguminous one."
He valued very highly two photographic albums containing portraits of a large number of scientific men in Germany and Holland, which he received as birthday gifts in 1877.
In the year 1878 my father received a singular mark of recognition in the form of a letter from a stranger, announcing that the writer intended to leave to him the reversion of the greater part of his fortune. Mr. Anthony Rich, who desired thus to mark his sense of my father's services to science, was the author of a Dictionary of Roman and Greek Antiquities, said to be the best book of the kind. It has been translated into French, German, and Italian, and has, in English, gone through several editions. Mr. Rich lived a great part of his life in Italy, painting, and collecting books and engravings. He finally settled, many years ago, at Worthing (then a small village), where he was a friend of Byron's Trelawny. My father visited Mr. Rich at Worthing, more than once, and gained a cordial liking and respect for him.
Mr. Rich died in April, 1891, having arranged that his bequest[267] should not lapse in consequence of the predecease of my father.