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THE STUDY OF STYLE
knew scarcely anything. His immediate answer was to
unearth from his arehives a longish list of references to
difficult and " likely " chspters. Armed with this and
a third-rate Bohn's translation, I supposed thst I was
imbibing the spirit of the greatest period of Roman
history.
Moreover, the purpose of this antiquated and abortive
toil was not seriously pursued, If someone had pointed
out to us, what the Illite no doubt perceived, viz. the
beauty of the style of Cicero and Livy, something would
hsve been gained, but the men of the seeond flight
gathered no notion whatever of what style meant. The
superb Greek scholar Shilleto translated, while lecturing,
into dull, crabbed English. Our Latin and Greek Prose
composition taught us, I will say, lueidity of statement
and some insight into the meaning of words. But by
twenty-three years of age I had not the foggiest conception
of how to write an English essay ; or of the difference
between the styles of Macaulay and Gibbon. I mean that
if the aim of the Classical course was literary-it certainly
was not historical nor philosophieal-no reasonable pre·
cautions were taken to attain it. There was apparently
a widespread idea thst all the classical honour-men could
pick up history and philosophy and literary insight in
their stride ; in spite of every sort of distraction and the
imperious claim pressing upon most of us to waste no
time in any intellectual effort whstever outside of the
jejune cram which I have described.
This must not be taken to mean thst all the minds
of even the second- or third-rate order stagnated. The
social life was stimulating, and we were fortunate enough
· to come across older members of the University on the
occasions of their week-end visits.
Mention, too, must be made of one or two strong personalities
from whom Trinity men gained much good. The
one whom I felt to have something of real moral inspiration
about him was James Stuart, the pioneer in University
extension and a prominent ally of Josephine Butler in