"I have also read a causerie on Virgil and one on Theocritus. So many French littérateurs give me the idea that they don't go nearer the Greek authors than the Latin translations.… Sainte Beuve [Nouveaux Lundis, vii. 1—52, on 'The Greek Anthology'] is an enthusiastic champion for our side, but, oddly enough, he never strikes me as knowing much about the matter!"
"Your Latin verses [translating Cowley] I greatly enjoy. The dear old Abraham goes straight off into your beautiful lines. Of course he has not a scrap of modern impedimenta. You go through the customs at the frontier with a whistle and a smile. You have nothing to declare. The blessed old man by your side is himself a Roman to begin with, and you pass together as cheerfully as possible.…"
"I have also been reading Karl Elze's Essays on Shakespeare. He is not bad, but don't you resent the imperturbable confidence of men who, after attributing a play of Shakespeare's to two authors, proceed to suggest a third, urged thereto by some fatuous and self-sought exigency?"
"Did you ever try to write a Burns song? I mean the equivalent in ordinary English of his Scotch. Can it be done? A Yorkshireman— could he do it? A Lancashire man (Waugh)? I hardly think so. The Ayrshire dialect has a Schwung and a confidence that no-English county can pretend to. Our dialects are apologetic things, half-ashamed, half-insolent. Burns has no doubts, and for his audience unhesitatingly demands the universe.…"
"There is an ethos in Fitzgerald's letters which is so exquisitely idyllic as to be almost heavenly. He takes you with him, exactly accommodating his pace to yours, walks through meadows so tranquil, and yet abounding in the most delicate surprises. And these surprises seem so familiar, just as if they had originated with yourself. What delicious blending! What a perfect interweft of thought and diction! What a sweet companion!"
Lastly, let me quote a passage in which his thoughts return to Clifton, where it had been suggested that Greek should be omitted from the ordinary form-routine and taught in "sets," or separate classes:—
"This is disturbing about Greek, 'set' Greek. Yes, you would fill your school to overflowing, of course you would, so long as other places did not abandon the old lines. But it would be detestable treachery to the cause of education, of humanity. To me the learning of any blessed thing is a matter of little moment. Greek is not learned by nineteen-twentieths of our Public School boys. But it is a baptism into a cult, a faith, not more irrational than other faiths or cults; the baptism of a regeneration which releases us from I know not what original sin. And if a man does not see that, he is a fool, such a fool that I shouldn't wonder if he gravely asked me to explain what I meant by original sin in such a connection.…"
"This is disturbing about Greek, 'set' Greek. Yes, you would fill your school to overflowing, of course you would, so long as other places did not abandon the old lines. But it would be detestable treachery to the cause of education, of humanity. To me the learning of any blessed thing is a matter of little moment. Greek is not learned by nineteen-twentieths of our Public School boys. But it is a baptism into a cult, a faith, not more irrational than other faiths or cults; the baptism of a regeneration which releases us from I know not what original sin. And if a man does not see that, he is a fool, such a fool that I shouldn't wonder if he gravely asked me to explain what I meant by original sin in such a connection.…"
So his thoughts reverted to the school he had left in 1892. In October, 1897, he returned to it on a visit. He was the guest of one of the house masters, Mr. Tait, and on Friday evening, October 29th, gave an address to the boys of the house. He had spoken for some minutes with brightness and vigour, when his voice grew thick and he was seen to stagger. He died in less than two hours.
His letters have been collected and piously given to the world by Mr. Irwin, one of his closest friends. By far the greatest number of them belong to those last five years in the Island—the happiest, perhaps, of his life, certainly the happiest temperamentally. "Never the time and the place…" but at least Brown was more fortunate than most men. He realised his dream, and it did not disappoint him. He could not carry off his friends to share it (and it belongs to criticism of these volumes to say that he was exceptionally happy in his friends), but he could return and visit them or stay at home and write to them concerning the realisation, and be sure they understood. Therefore, although we desire more letters of the Clifton period—although twenty years are omitted, left blank to us—those that survive confirm a fame which, although never wide, was always unquestioned within its range. There could be no possibility of doubt concerning Brown. He was absolute. He lived a fierce, shy, spiritual life; a wise man, keeping the child in his heart: he loved much and desired permanence in the love of his kind. "Diuturnity," says his great seventeenth-century namesake, "is a dream and folly of expectation. There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality." And yet, prosit amâsse!
The railway took me on to Oxford—
"Like faithful hound returning
For old sake's sake to each loved track
With heart and memory burning."
"Like faithful hound returning
For old sake's sake to each loved track
With heart and memory burning."
"I well remember," writes Mrs. Green of her husband, the late John Richard Green, "the passionate enthusiasm with which he watched from the train for the first sight of the Oxford towers against the sky:" and although our enthusiasm nowadays has to feed on a far tamer view than that which saluted our forefathers when the stage-coach topped the rise of Shotover and its passengers beheld the city spread at their feet, yet what faithful son of Oxford can see her towers rise above the water-meadows and re-greet them without a thrill?