[5] Master of the Temple.
About this time a scribbling fever attacked the upper boys at Rugby. A year or two earlier the Rugby Magazine had gained considerable repute, from the publication of some of Clough’s early poems, and contributions by others of the Stanley and Vaughan generation; and had thus furnished a healthy local outlet for the literary secretions of the sixth form. But that journal was now no more, so we were thrown back on the periodicals of the outside world. To get a copy of verses, or a short article, into one of these, was looked upon as an heroic feat, like making fifty runs in a school match. And of all the magazines, and they were much fewer in those days, Bentley’s was the favourite; chiefly, I think, because of the “Ingoldsby Legends,” which were then coming out in it. Mr. Barham was an old friend of your grandfather; and I believe it was through him that George had the pleasure of seeing himself in print for the first time. The editor accepted some translations of Anacreon, which he had done out of school-hours. Here are two specimens, and though I do not care to see any of you writing for magazines, I should be glad to think that you could render a classic so well at the age of seventeen:—
ANACREON MADE EASY.
η γη μελαινα πινει.
The dark earth drinks the heaven’s refreshing rain;
Trees drink the dew; the ocean drinks the air;
The sun the ocean drinks; the moon again
Drinks her soft radiance from the sun’s bright glare.
Since all things drink, then—earth, and trees, and sea,