{{short description|British teacher of classics}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox writer | name = W.H.D. Rouse | image = | image_size = 250px | caption = | pseudonym = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{birth date|1863|5|30|df=y}} | birth_place = Calcutta, British India | death_date = {{death date and age|1950|2|10|1863|5|30|df=y}} | death_place = Hayling Island, England | occupation = Translator | nationality = British | period = 20th century | genre = Historical fiction | spouse = | subject = }}'''William Henry Denham Rouse''' ({{IPAc-en|r|aʊ|z}}; 30 May 1863 – 10 February 1950) was a pioneering British teacher who advocated the use of the "direct method" of teaching Latin and Greek.
==Life== Rouse was born in Calcutta, British India on 30 May 1863.<ref name="CLP">{{cite web|url=http://www.aristarchus.unige.it/cphcl/schede.php?word=nt |title=Catalogus Philologorum Classicorum |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120719090221/http://www.aristarchus.unige.it/cphcl/schede.php?word=nt |archive-date=July 19, 2012 }}</ref> After his family returned home on leave to Britain, Rouse was sent to Regent's Park College in London, where he studied as a lay student. In 1881 he won a scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35849|title=Rouse, William Henry Denham| publisher=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|url-access=subscription}}</ref> He achieved a double first in the Classical Tripos at the University of Cambridge, where he also studied Sanskrit. He became a Fellow of Christ's College in 1888,<ref>{{acad|id=RS882WH|name=Rouse, William Henry Denham}}</ref> and later received the degree Doctor in Letters from the college in early 1903.<ref>{{Cite newspaper The Times |title=University intelligence|date=11 February 1903 |page=4 |issue=37001}}</ref>
After brief spells at Bedford School (1886–1888) and Cheltenham College (1890–1895),<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U231267/ROUSE_William_Henry_Denham?index=9&results=QuicksearchResults&query=0|url-access=subscription|title=Who's Who|publisher=Oxford University Press|date=2019}}</ref> he became a master at Rugby School, where he encouraged Arthur Ransome to become a writer, against his parents' wishes. Ransome later wrote: "My greatest piece of good fortune in coming to Rugby was that I passed so low into the school ... that I came at once into the hands of a most remarkable man whom I might otherwise never have met. This was Dr W.H.D. Rouse."<ref name="Ransome">"The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome", Hart-Davis (ed), Jonathan Cape, London 1976, p.52.</ref>
Rouse was appointed headmaster of The Perse School, Cambridge, in 1902. He restored it to a sound financial footing following a crisis. He believed firmly in learning by doing as well as by seeing and hearing. Although the curriculum at the Perse was dominated by classics, he urged that science should be learned through experiment and observation. He was described by the school archivist as the school's greatest headmaster: "Rouse was strongly independent to the point of eccentricity. He hated most machines, all bureaucracy and public exams."<ref name="Jones">"A Vision Realised: A History of the Perse and its move from Gonville Place to Hills Road forty years ago", D.J. Jones, Perse School 2001, p.29.</ref> He retired from teaching in 1928.
In 1911 Rouse started a successful series of summer schools for teachers to encourage the use of the direct method of teaching Latin and Greek. The Association for the Reform of Latin Teaching (ARLT) was formed in 1913 as a result of these seminars.
The same year, James Loeb chose W.H.D. Rouse, together with two other eminent classical scholars, T. E. Page and Edward Capps, to be founding editors of the Loeb Classical Library.
Rouse is known for his plain English prose translations of Homer's ''Odyssey'' (1937) and ''Iliad'' (1938). He is also recognized for his translations of some of Plato's dialogues, including ''The Republic'', ''Apology'', ''Crito'', and ''Phaedo''. {{further|English translations of Homer#Rouse}}
Rouse died on Hayling Island on 10 February 1950.<ref name = "CLP"/>
==Bibliography==
* The Giant Crab, and Other Tales from Old India by W. H. D. Rouse, 1897 * The Talking Thrush, and Other Tales from India, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1899 * Demonstrations in Latin elegiac verse, The Clarendon Press, 1899 * Apocolocyntosis: or Ludus de morte Claudii: The Pumpkinification of Claudius, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, translated by W. H. D. Rouse, 1902 * Greek Votive Offerings; an Essay in the History of Greek Religion, 1902 * Marcus Aurelius, Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, with an introduction by W. H. D. Rouse. Translated by Meric Casaubon, 1906 * The Jataka: or, Stories of the Buddha's Former Births (6 volumes), 1895-1907 * Lucian's Dialogues Prepared for Schools with Short Notes in Greek, 1909 * Apuleius, The most pleasant and delectable tale of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, translated by W. H. D. Rouse, 1914 * Joseph Pennell's Pictures in the Land of Temples, J.B. Lippincott Co., 1915 * Gods, Heroes and Men of Ancient Greece: Mythology's Great Tales of Valor and Romance, 1934 * The Odyssey: The Story of Odysseus, translated by W. H. D. Rouse, 1937 * Homer: The Iliad: The Story of Achillês, translated by W. H. D. Rouse, 1938 * Nonnus: Dionysiaca, in Three Volumes, translated by W. H. D. Rouse, 1940 * Plato, Great Dialogues of Plato, translated by W. H. D. Rouse, et al. * The Arabian Nights - Illustrated by Walter Paget * The March Up Country: A Translation of Xenophon's Anabasis, translated by W. H. D. Rouse, 1958
==References== {{Reflist}}
===Further reading=== * ''Great Dialogues of Plato'' translated by W. H. D. Rouse (Signet Classics) {{ISBN|0-451-52745-3}} * ''The Living Word: W. H. D. Rouse and the Crisis of Classics in Edwardian England'' by Christopher Stray (Bristol Classical Press, 1992) ({{ISBN|1-85399-262-3}})
==External links== {{Commons category-inline}} * {{FadedPage|id=Rouse, W.H.D.|name=W.H.D. Rouse|author=yes}} * {{Gutenberg author|id=34722}} * {{Internet Archive author |sname=W. H. D. Rouse}} * {{Librivox author |id=183}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rouse, W. H. D.}} Category:1863 births Category:1950 deaths Category:Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge Category:Alumni of Regent's Park College, London Category:English classical scholars Category:Fellows of Christ's College, Cambridge Category:People educated at Cheltenham College Category:Greek–English translators Category:Headmasters of the Perse School Category:Translators of Homer Category:Presidents of the Folklore Society Category:British people in British India