Travel was one of his chief pleasures, but it was, if possible, a still greater pleasure to his fellow-travellers, for he was the most agreeable of companions, fertile in suggestion, candid in discussion, swift in decision. He cared nothing for luxury and very little for comfort; he was absolutely unselfish and imperturbably good-humoured; he could get enjoyment out of the smallest incidents of travel, and his curiosity to see the surface of the earth as well as the cities of men was inexhaustible. He loved the unexpected, and if one had written proposing an 359 expedition to explore Tibet, he would have telegraphed back, “Start to-night: do we meet Charing Cross or Victoria?”
I have dwelt on Bowen’s gifts and methods as a teacher, because teaching was the joy and the business of his life, and because he showed a new way in which boys might be stimulated and guided. But he was a great deal besides a teacher, just as his brother Charles was a great deal besides a lawyer. Both had talents for literature of a very high order. Charles published a verse translation of Virgil’s Eclogues and the first six books of the Æneid, full of ingenuity and refinement, as well as of fine poetic taste. Edward’s vein expressed itself in the writing of songs. His school songs, composed for the Harrow boys, became immensely popular with them, and their use at school celebrations of various kinds has passed from Harrow to the other great schools of England, even to some of the larger girls’ schools. The songs are unique in their fanciful ingenuity and humorous extravagance, full of a boyish joy in life, in the exertion of physical strength, in the mimic strife of games, yet with an occasional touch of sadness, like the shadow of a passing cloud as it falls on the cricket field over which the shouts of the players are ringing. The metres are various: all show rhythmical skill, and in all the verse has a swing which makes it singularly 360 effective when sung by a mass of voices. Most of the songs are dedicated to cricket or football, but a few are serious, and two or three of these have a beauty of thought and perfection of form which make the reader ask why a poetic gift so true and so delicate should have been rarely used. These songs were the work of his middle or later years, and he never wrote except when the impulse came upon him. The stream ran pure but it ran seldom. In early days he had been for a while, like many other brilliant young University men of his time, a contributor to the Saturday Review. (There surely never was a journal which enlisted so much and such varied literary talent as the Saturday did between 1855 and 1863.) Bowen’s articles were, like his elder brother’s, extremely witty. In later life he could seldom be induced to write, having fallen out of the habit, and being, indeed, too busy to carry on any large piece of work; but the occasional papers on educational subjects he produced showed no decline in his vivacity or in the abundance of his humour. Those who knew the range and the resources of his mind sometimes regretted that he would do nothing to let the world know them. But he was, to a degree most unusual among men of real power, absolutely indifferent, not only to fame, but to opportunities for exercising power or influence.
The stoicism which he sought to form in his pupils was inculcated by his own example. It 361 was a genial and cheerful stoicism, which checked neither his affection for them nor his brightness in society, and which permitted him to draw as much enjoyment from small things as most people can from great ones. But if he had the gaiety of an Irishman, he had a double portion of English reserve. He never gave expression in words to his emotions. He never seemed either elated or depressed. He never lost his temper and never seemed to be curbing it. His tastes and way of life were simple to the verge of austerity; nor did he appear to desire anything more than what he had obtained.
It is natural—possibly foolish, yet almost inevitable—that those who perceive in a friend the presence of rare and brilliant gifts should desire that his gifts should not only be turned to full account for the world’s benefit, but should become so known and appreciated as to make others admire and value what they admire and value. When such a man prefers to live his life in his own way, and do the plain duties that lie near him, with no thought of anything further, they feel, though they may try to repress, a kind of disappointment, as though greatness or virtue had missed its mark because known to few besides themselves. Yet there is a sense in which that friend is most our own who has least belonged to the world, who has least cared for what the world has to offer, who has 362 chosen the simplest and purest pleasures, who has rendered the service that his way of life required with no longing for any wider theatre or any applause to be there won. Is there indeed anything more beautiful than a life of quiet self-sufficing yet beneficent serenity, such as the ancient philosophers inculcated, a life which is now more rarely than ever led by men of shining gifts, because the inducements to bring such gifts into the dusty thoroughfares of the world have grown more numerous? Bowen had the best equipment for a philosopher. He knew the things that gave him pleasure, and sought no others. He knew what he could do well. He followed his own bent. His desires were few, and he could gratify them all. He had made life exactly what he wished it to be. Intensely as he enjoyed travel, he never uttered a note of regret when the beginning of a Harrow school term stopped a journey at its most interesting point, so dearly did he love his boys. What more can we desire for our friends than this—that in remembering them there should be nothing to regret, that all who came under their influence should feel themselves for ever thereafter the better for that influence, that a happy and peaceful life should be crowned by a sudden and painless death?
EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN
As with the progress of science new arts emerge and new occupations and trades are created, so with the progress of society professions previously unknown arise, evolve new types of intellectual excellence, and supply a new theatre for the display of peculiar and exceptional gifts. Such a profession, such a type, and the type which is perhaps most specially characteristic of our times, is that of the Editor. It scarcely existed before the French Revolution, and is, as now fully developed, a product of the last eighty years. Various are its forms. There is the Business Editor, who runs his newspaper as a great commercial undertaking, and may neither care for politics nor attach himself to any political party. America still recollects the familiar example set by James Gordon Bennett, the founder of the New York Herald. There is the Selective Editor, who may never pen a line, but shows his skill in gathering an able staff round him, and in allotting to each of them the work he can do best. Such an one was John Douglas Cook, a man of slender cultivation 364 and few intellectual interests, but still remembered in England by those who forty years ago knew the staff of the Saturday Review, then in its brilliant prime, as possessed of an extraordinary instinct for the topics which caught the public taste, and for the persons capable of handling those topics. John T. Delane, of the Times, had the same gift, with talents and knowledge far surpassing Cook’s. A third and usually more interesting form is found in the Editor who is himself an able writer, and who imparts his own individuality to the journal he directs. Such an one was Horace Greeley, who, in the days before the War of Secession, made the New York Tribune a power in America. Such another, of finer natural quality, was Michael Katkoff, who in his short career did much to create and to develop the spirit of nationality and imperialism in Russia thirty years ago.
It was to this third form of the editorial profession that Mr. Godkin belonged. He is the most remarkable example of it that has appeared in our time—perhaps, indeed, in any time since the profession rose to importance; and all the more remarkable because he was never, like Greeley or Katkoff, the exponent of any widespread sentiment or potent movement, but was frequently in opposition to the feeling for the moment dominant.