Arthur Augustus Tilley

[7] The young Tilley was educated at Eton College, where he was celebrated as "Scholar of the Year" for 1871,[5] winning both the Newcastle Scholarship for Classics and the Tomline Mathematical Prize.

He did not turn his back on the law until 1882, when Anthony Trollope wrote to his wife Rose: "Arthur has given up the bar for good & all: – is to live at Cambridge.

Although not a reactionary, he was very keen on good form and correct dress, and was critical of the behaviour of the growing number of members of the college who failed to respect them.

"[5][13] In 1884, Tilley was still a tutor and lecturer for the Classical Tripos, and in that year he penned a valedictory: The old type of scholarship, the name by which we have been accustomed to know 'a minute acquaintance with the niceties of the dead languages', is rapidly passing away from us.

Denys Hay later commented that "Looking back on this presentation of the Renaissance the most striking feature is its desultory character... an amalgam of assertions of broad principles with antiquarian observation of detail, in which the structure of society and politics was all but ignored...

[18] Arthur died on 4 December 1942, three days after his 91st birthday, and at the time of his death was living at number 2, Selwyn Gardens, Cambridge.