It was established in 1917 as the Marshall Chair of Modern Romance Language from a lectureship instituted in 1895, and had its title changed in 1966.

His legacy was combined with that of James Clason-Harvie of Brownlie[4] and others to endow the existing lectureship, created as a chair in 1917.

[5] He was succeeded in 1937 by Alan Boase, a graduate of Oxford, Cambridge and the Sorbonne, and an authority on influential French Renaissance writer Michel de Montaigne.

[7] Gill was a specialist in French literature of the 19th century and particularly the work of symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé.

[8] He was made an Officier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques, the second of three grades of that Order.