that I must give up work for a time. This may, I fear, make a difficulty in my joining you in Switzerland, at least with the view of going over the Republic. TO THE COUNTESS OF WEMYSS. INGLEWOOD, TORQUAY, January 5, 1874. If you consider, it is a wonderful thing (only to be found among officers in the army) that a young man having all the enjoyment of society and the prospects of life before him should have offered himself to an even chance of death, without any considerable prize or reward to be obtained if he had survived. It is unlike this interested frivolous world in which we live, and has a touch of nobleness which may comfort you in this great sorrow. The two brothers are at rest now. Whether they recognize one another or whether we shall recognize others in another life we cannot tell. I cannot believe myself in consolations of this sort. They are removed from our sight, and are in the hands of God, where we shall soon be. We must leave them with Him, though often recalling their gracious and noble ways when they were with us. To R. R. W. LINGEN. BALLIOL COLLEGE, January 12, 1874. Will you look at the enclosed circular1, and if you can, will you kindly assist us in an undertaking which will contribute greatly to the comfort and dignity of the College? I am reluctant (though not ashamed) to beg. But several old Balliol men have told me that they would gladly contribute. I know that you are attached to the College, though I certainly shall not measure your attachment by the amount of your subscription. I have thought it right for the sake of the College, to which I owe so much, to make this effort. When the Hall is completed nothing more in the way of buildings will be desirable; we shall 1 With reference to the new Hall, see next chapter. be as well housed as anybody. At present we are very cramped and uncomfortable. If we had not given a great part of our revenues for public purposes, the Fellowships would have been increased in value £100 a year. This is, perhaps, our best title to the liberality of our old members. To the new Hall the Fellows propose to give, some £50 and some £100, according to their means, and I subscribe £500. I mention this lest we should seem to be asking of others and doing nothing for ourselves. TO PROFESSOR LEWIS CAMPBELL. WESTMINSTER Arms Hotel, West Malvern, I shall look forward to seeing you here on May 1. I return to Oxford on Tuesday week and shall come back here about a week later (very dissipated this running away in Term time). There are some excellent lodgings here, kept by an old servant of the Stanleys, which I am thinking of taking for myself. Shall I take rooms for you also? They will probably not be vacant if we leave them, and it would be convenient to be together. Do you know the place? The opposite side from Great Malvern, looking towards the Welsh hills-the air is firstrate1. I think that we might read over the Republic together. I fear that it will require a great deal of labour before we get it up to the mark. I have been reading over Grote and Schleiermacher on the Republic. Schleiermacher was the first pioneer in those regions and therefore one is less disposed to find fault with him, though he surely might have seen obvious things, such as the difference between the character of Glaucon and Adimantus. But Grote is really inexcusable in his matter-of-fact and at the same time inconsistent manner of reading Plato, never seeing anything according to its true meaning or intention, and defending Plato as paradoxically as he attacks him. He is always thinking, and always thinking wrong. 1 Jowett had previously stayed at West Malvern. See vol. i. pp. 163, 225. To C WEST MALVERN, July 17, [1874]. I do not think that I am seriously unwell, but I have gone to Malvern partly to work and partly to get well. The long years of work rather tell upon me. And I have found the revision of Plato, now about two-thirds printed, very laborious. When that is finished I shall leave off for a year or two, and then, if I am able, begin again with something else. TO PROFESSOR LEWIS CAMPBELL. Address OXFORD, October 8, 1874. giving up your work. And I hope that you I am sorry to hear that you are But I have no doubt that it is better. will stick obediently to the commands of your physician. It has long struck me (and I think, as Socrates would say, that 'God has given me an insight into these sort of affections') that you were below the proper standard of health, though you declared the contrary. You know, of course, that the mind grows as much by idleness as by work; and that life, if properly husbanded, is long enough for all your undertakings. I am trying to write an Essay on Sensation and Sensational Philosophy to illustrate the Theaetetus. I go back to Malvern to live between Malvern and Oxford the week after next. I wish we were beginning the summer again instead of ending it. TO JOHN FFOLLIOTT. OXFORD, January 7, 1875. I was very pleased to get your letter and to find that I was not forgotten by you. Will not you and Mrs. ffolliott come to England this spring or summer and pay us a visit? I can find room for the young ladies too. I hold it a good principle that all people should go to London once a year to enliven their minds, to keep their friendships in repair, and perhaps to marry their daughters. From 'Joe',' I have not heard for a long time. A day or ' R. B. D. Morier. two ago I heard of him that he had refused the secretaryship at Paris. I am afraid that he is rather disappointed (and with reason) at not rising faster in the service. He would have liked to go to Lisbon. His father, that wonderful old man, I heard about to-day-he is quite well and very happy and contented. You, I suppose, are still busy with Church matters, and all the world are expecting to be busy with them. Yet if the High Church have any sense or moderation, the cry should come to nothing. They should give up the vestments and the eastern position, and then, seeing the difficulties of the case, the political instincts of the House of Commons would refuse to stir in the path of Church Reform. I believe that they are so infatuated that they will not do this, and then probably will come a secession and great changes. I shall be very much interested to hear what you are doing in Ireland; for the disestablishment, first, of the Scotch Church, and, secondly, of the English Church, is looming in the distance. This letter is 'like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer,' nothing; but I wanted to send a few words of greeting and good wishes to you and Mrs. ffolliott. TO PROFESSOR LEWIS CAMPBELL. MUNICH, July 11, 1875. Dr. Kennedy will have done good to both of us if he impresses upon us the necessity of absolute clearness. I suppose too that there must be some limit to oscillation between two or three constructions:- for the purposes of teaching the wavy line is troublesome. I feel convinced that with time and thought you can make a clearer and also a more philosophical edition of Sophocles than any which has yet appeared. I came here intending to go to the Tyrol with Morier, but am stopped here by his illness. He was taken ill about ten days ago a cold caught after the Cur at Wildbad. On Wednesday we were very much alarmed about him; but since then he has been coming round, and is now thought to be out of danger, though he will probably be confined to bed for a week or ten days longer. Having nothing to do and hardly any one to speak to, I have been reading Euripides, and mean to read him through, though I detest him; for what I did not know of him-Electra, Rhesus, Iph. in Tauris, &c.- seems to me a great deal worse than what I knew. I am struck by his sophistry, scepticism, sensationalism, sentimentalism. He is to a far greater extent than I supposed a bad imitator of Sophocles and Aeschylus. Browning is mistaken in describing him as delivering a new world. He has no world either new or old to deliver himself of, but he mixes together the worst parts of mythology and of modern Athenian ideas. In short, I read him though I don't think him worth reading, except for the light which he throws on Athenian ideas and for the Greek. I shall be here or in the Tyrol for about three weeks longer, and on August 9 propose to be at Malvern with Knight and a party of undergraduates. I shall then begin regularly to dictate to Knight a volume on the Early Greek Philosophy, so as to get it into its first shape. It has a threefold interest to me— (1) I believe it to be the most important period in the history of the human mind. (2) It will contain a life of Socrates, (3) a connected sketch of Plato. TO THE REV. J. D. LA TOUCHE1. OXFORD, July 27, [1875]. I am sorry that I have delayed to answer your letter 2. You must have been in Natal at a very interesting time. It seems sad that natives and Europeans never remain on good terms, at least in English colonies. I was very sorry to hear of the defection of the Bishop's friend, Mr. Shepstone. The Bishop really is in the position of one man against the world, and in the right too. We have been astonished in England at a sort of explosion against the Ritualists shown in the reception of the Public Worship Bill by the House of Commons. No one thought that they were so weak. The subject is not done with, but will 1 Rector of Stokesay, Salop. a suggestion that some appointHe had gone out to assist Bishop Colenso. ment at home should be provided for the Bishop of Natal.' J. La T. |