EDITOR’S STATEMENT
It has fallen to my lot to edit this essay, the first, and last, work of Kenneth John Freeman, a brilliant young Scholar of Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge, whose short life closed in the summer of 1906.
He was born in London on June 19, 1882, and died at Winchester on July 15, 1906,—a brief span of twenty-four years, the greater part of which was spent in the strenuous pursuit of truth and beauty, both in literature and in the book of Nature, but above all among the Classics.
Scholarly traditions and interests he inherited in no small measure: he was the son of Mr. G. Broke Freeman, a member of the Chancery Bar, and a Classical graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the grandson of Philip Freeman, Archdeacon of Exeter, himself a Scholar of the same great Foundation, Craven University Scholar and Senior Classic in 1839. He was also a great-grandson of the Rev. Henry Hervey Baber, for many years Principal Librarian of the British Museum, and Editor of the editio princeps of the Codex Alexandrinus. From them he inherited a passion for Classical study, a keen sense of form, and a determined pursuit of knowledge, which nothing could daunt, not even the recurrent shadow of a long and distressing illness.
Through his mother, a daughter of Dr. Horace Dobell, of Harley Street, London, he was also a great-nephew of the poet Sydney Dobell; and thus he may well have derived that poetic feeling which distinguished a number of verses found among his papers, since printed for private circulation.
His School and University career was uniformly successful. At Winchester he won prizes in many subjects and several tongues, and carried off the Goddard Scholarship, the intellectual blue ribbon, at the age of sixteen.
At Cambridge he was Browne University Scholar in 1903, and in the first “division” of the Classical Tripos in 1904, in which year he also won the Craven Scholarship. The senior Chancellor’s medal fell to him in the following year.
There is no need to enumerate his other distinctions, but the epigram with which he won the Browne Medal in 1903 is so beautiful in itself and so true an epitome of the boy and the man, that I am tempted to quote it here:
ξεῖνε, καλὸν τὸ ζῆν καταγώγιόν ἐστιν ἅπασιν
νηπυτίους γὰρ ὅμως νυκτιπλανεῖς τε φιλεῖ,
δῶρα χαριζόμενον φιλίας καὶ τερπνὸν ἔρωτα
καὶ πόνον εὔανδρον φροντίδα τ’ οὐρανίαν·
τρυχομένους δ’ ἤδη κοιμᾷ τὸν ἀκήρατον ὕπνον
πέμπει δ’ ὥστε λαθεῖν οἰκάδ’ ἐληλυθότας.
He was always an optimist, who regarded life as a “fair Inn,” which provided much good cheer. Shyness and ill-health limited sadly the range of his friends, but not his capacity and desire for “friendship.” “Manly toil,” both physical and intellectual, was dear to his soul: thus, though no great athlete, he was an ardent Volunteer both at School and College, and declared that, had he not chosen the teacher’s profession, he would have wished to be a soldier: he writes of Sparta and Xenophon with evident sympathy. Also he fought and won many an intellectual battle against great odds; to quote one instance, he wrote the papers for his Craven Scholarship while convalescent in his old nursery. His poems, to complete the parallel, may justly be described as the “aspiring thoughts” of a singularly pure and reverent heart.
It is a simple, uneventful record: six happy years as a Winchester Scholar; three as a Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge; one year of travel and study, mainly devoted to the subject of Education, which always had a special attraction for him; and lastly, one year, the happiest of his life, when he returned to teach at his old school.
All appeared bright and promising; he was doing the work he desired at the school of his choice, health and vigour seemed fully restored, and a strenuous life as a Winchester Master lay before him, when an acute attack of the old trouble, borne with perfect patience, cut him off in the prime of his promise.
Then, to quote his own translation of his epigram:
When I was aweary, last and best
They gave me dreamless rest;
And sent me on my way that I might come
Unknown, unknowing, Home.
The work itself was never finished for the press; indeed, some chapters, dealing with Sokrates, Plato, and Aristotle, did not appear sufficiently complete to justify publication: these, therefore, we have withheld. But this book is in substance what he left it, and he was fully aware that the omitted chapters were in need of further revision.
In any case, it would have been a labour of love to me to edit this dissertation; but the labour has been lightened at every turn by the ungrudging help and friendship of many Scholars. Dr. Verrall, besides contributing a Preface, has contributed much advice in general and in detail; Dr. Sandys has revised the proofs and given me the benefit of his comprehensive knowledge of the subject; Dr. Henry Jackson went through some of the later chapters and discussed points of general interest. The original Essay or the proofs have in addition been revised, from different points of view, by Mr. Edmund D. A. Morshead, late Fellow of New College, Oxford, and Mr. F. M. Cornford, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Mr. G. S. Freeman (brother of the author) is responsible for the Index; while Mr. W. R. H. Merriman has spent much pains upon verifying the numerous quotations. In a few cases Dr. F. G. Kenyon’s erudition came to the rescue. To all these my best thanks are due. Mr. A. Hamilton Smith of the British Museum was most helpful in identifying the vases from which the illustrations are derived. The author, who was a considerable draughtsman, had drawn scenes from Greek vases with his own hand; but of course our illustrations are derived from published reproductions, with two exceptions. The two British Museum vase-scenes (Illustrations III. and IV.) were specially drawn for this book: they have never been carefully reproduced before. I must thank the Syndics of the Pitt Press at Cambridge for their kind permission to reproduce their print of Douris’ Educational Vase from Dr. Sandys’ History of Classical Scholarship. The design which appears on the cover of this volume is also adapted from this vase.
It remains to add a few sentences from a Statement which the author himself drew up:
“I have,” he says, “confined my attention very largely for several years to original texts and eschewed the aid of commentaries.” This will be patent to the reader.
“As to accepted interpretations, I have, purposely and on principle, neither read nor heard much of them, since I wished, in pursuance of the bidding of Plato himself, not to receive unquestioningly the authority of those whom to hear is to believe, but to develop views and interpretations of my own. For I have always believed that education suffers immensely from the study of books about books, in preference to the study of the books themselves. M. Paul Girard’s book in French (L’Éducation Athénienne) and Grasberger’s in German (Erziehung und Unterricht im klassischen Alterthum), the latter of which I have only read in part, have set me on the track of authorities whom I should otherwise have missed, but I believe that my acknowledgments in the text and in the notes fully cover my direct obligations to them in other respects, although my indirect obligations to M. Girard’s stimulating book, which are great, remain unexpressed.
“An apology is, perhaps, needed for the peculiar, and not wholly consistent, spelling of the Greek words. I had meant to employ the Latinised spelling. But when I came to write Lyceum, Academy, and pedagogue, my heart failed me. For I did not wish to suggest modern music-halls, modern art, and, worst of all, modern ‘pedagogy.’ In adopting the ancient spelling I had Browning on my side. But again, when I wrote Thoukudides, my heart sank, for I could hardly recognise an old friend in such a guise. So I decided, perhaps weakly, to steer a middle course, and preserve the Latinised forms in the case of the more familiar words. Thus I put Plato, not Platon, but Menon and Phaidon.” We have adhered to this principle in the main; we need hardly say that Lakedaimon is the transliteration of a Greek word: Lacedaemonian is an English adjective. So a citizen of Troizen is a Troezenian, and of Boiotia a Boeotian. “I have,” the author concludes, “preferred Hellas and Hellene to Greece and Greek. For a rose by any other name does not always smell as sweet.”
M. J. RENDALL.
Winchester College,
March 1907.