e
motive, he thinks, is a small ambition. But surely a man may be fond of
metaphysics for the sweet sake of Queen Entelechy, and, moreover, these
students looked forward to days in which real work would bear fruit.

'You must grind up the opinions of Plato, Aristotle, and a lot of other
men, concerning things about which they knew nothing, and we know
nothing, taking these opinions at second or third hand, and never looking
into the works of these men; for to a man who wants to take a place,
there is no time for anything of that sort.'

Why not? The philosophers ought to be read in their own language, as
they are now read. The remarks on the most fairy of philosophers--Plato;
on the greatest of all minds, that of Aristotle, are boyish. Again 'I
speak but brotherly,' remembering an old St. Leonard's essay in which
Virgil was called 'the furtive Mantuan,' and another, devoted to ridicule
of Euripides. But Plato and Aristotle we never blasphemed.

Murray adds that he thinks, next year, of taking the highest Greek Class,
and English Literature. In the latter, under Mr. Baynes, he took the
first place, which he mentions casually to Mrs. Murray about a year after
date:--

'A sweet life and an idle
He lives from year to year,
Unknowing bit or bridle,
There are no Proctors here.'

In Greek, despite his enthusiastic admiration of the professor, Mr.
Campbell, he did not much enjoy himself:--

'Thrice happy are those
Who ne'er heard of Greek Prose--
Or Greek Poetry either, as far as that goes;
For Liddell and Scott
Shall cumber them not,
Nor Sargent nor Sidgwick shall break their repose.

But I, late at night,
By the very bad light
Of very bad gas, must painfully write
Some stuff that a Greek
With his delicate cheek
Would smile at as 'barbarous'--faith, he well might.

* * * * *

So away with Greek Prose,
The source of my woes!
(This metre's too tough, I must draw to a close.)
May Sargent be drowned
In the ocean profound,
And Sidgwick be food for the carrion crows!'

Greek prose is a stubborn thing, and the biographer remembers being told
that his was 'the best, with the worst mistakes'; also frequently by Mr.
Sellar, that it was 'bald.' But Greek prose is splendid practice, and no
less good practice is Greek and Latin verse. These exercises, so much
sneered at, are the Dwellers on the Thresho