Some Diversions of a Man of Letters

ketch of his magnificent work as an administrator, or, as the cant phrase goes, "an empire-builder." For thirty years, during which time he advanced to be one of the most power

d literary activity, which I had the privilege of observing. It would be a pity, perhaps, to let this be wholly submerged, and I propose to give, from my own recollection, some features of it. Lord Cromer was the author

) the Hooligans had the graceful habit of asking some of their elders to dine with them in a private room of the House of Commons. At one of these little dinners the only guests were Lord Cromer an

ed ex typographia societatis Bipontin?, and I couldn't imagine for the life of me what 'Bipontium' was. No doubt you're quite right." Nothing could be more characteristic of Lord Cromer's habit of mind than this sudden revulsion of ideas. His active brain needed no preparation to turn from subject to subject, but seemed to be always ready, at a moment's notice, to take up a fresh

him to stay, he had replied, in the words of Herodotus, "I am too old, oh King, and too inactive; so bid thou one of the younger men here to do these things." He very soon, however, recovered elasticity of mind and body when the load of office was removed from his shoulders, and "inactive" was the last epithet which could ever be applied to

year and the next Lord Cromer spoke with increasing frequency. There were great differences of opinion with regard to his efficiency in Parliament. I may acknowledge that I was not an unmeasured admirer of his oratory. When he rose from his seat on the Cross-bench, and advanced towards the table, with a fine gesture of his leonine head, sympathy was always mingled with respect. His independence and his honesty were patent, and his slight air of authority satisfa

n. But no doubt he was right in saying that, coming as he did from the florid East, he found English eloquence more plain and businesslike than he left it. He used to declare that he never spoke impromptu if he could possibly help doing so, and he made great fun of the statesmen who say, "Little did I think when I came down to this House to-day that I should

zeal of Lord Cromer, who was always egging me on to the purchase of fresh rarities. He was indefatigable in kindness, sending me booksellers' catalogues in which curious texts were recorded, and scouring even Paris and Leipzig in our behalf. When I entered into this sport so heartily as to provide the Greek and Latin Fathers also for their Lordships, Lord Cromer became unsympathetic. He had no interest wh

his infancy, and we may conjecture that she sowed in his bosom the seeds of his love of antiquity. Lord Cromer made no pretension to be what is called an "exact" scholar, but I think it is a mistake to say, as has been alleged, that he did not take up the study of Latin and Greek until middle life. It is true that he enjoyed no species of university training, but passed from Woolwich straight into the diplomatic service. In 1861, at the age of twenty, he was appointed A.D.C. to

used to say. We may conjecture further that he did not allow his curiosity to be balked by the barrier of a hopelessly obscure passage, but leaped over it, and went on. He always came back to Homer, whom he loved more than any other writer of the world, and particularly to the Iliad, which I think he knew nearly by heart. But he did not, as some pundits consider dignified and necessary, confine himself to the reading of the principal classics in order to preserve a pure taste. On the contrary, Lord Cromer, especially towards the close of

ion of principles, and above all, as I have said, the discovery of identities of thought between the modern and the ancient world. He was delighted when he found in Theognis the proverb about having an ox on the tongue. I suppose this was quite well known to the learned, but the charm of the matter for Lord Cromer was that he was no

n that he was fond of setting classic instances side by side with modern ones. If books dealt with this parallelism, they exercised a charm over Lord Cramer's imagination which may sometimes have led him a little astray about their positive value. I recall a moment when he was completely under the sway of M. Ferrero's Greatness and Decline of Rome, largely because of the pertinacity with which the Italian historian comp

seemed to him a phantasmagoria dancing across the real world of Rameses. This tendency of thought coloured one branch of his reading; he could not bear to miss a book which threw any light on the social and political manners of antiquity. Works like Fowler's Social Life at Rome or Marquardt's Le Culte chez les Romains thrilled him with excitement and animated his conversation for days. He wan

e. He spoke with the firm accent of one accustomed to govern, but never dictatorially. His voice was a very agreeable one, supple and various in its tones, neither loud nor low. Although he had formed the life-long habit of expressing his opinions with directness, he never imposed them unfairly, or took advantage of his authority. On the contrary, there was something extremel

other hand, time produced a humanising and mellowing effect. It may very well prove that he has stamped his mark on the East of the twentieth century, as Turgot did his on the West of the nineteenth century; but without straying into the perilous fields of prophecy we are safe in recording the impression that Lord Cromer was not altogether a man of to-day; he looked forward and he looked backward. Probably the nearest counterpart to his manner of mind and conversation may be found in the circle of whom we read in the D

of the Whigs, and it seems to me to apply so ex

ation, little prone to enthusiastic sentiment, heedless of large theories and speculations, careless of dreamy scepticism, with a clear view of the next step, and a w

d of the eighteenth century, have in their hands a volume in which the very accents of Lord Cromer may seem to be heard. Isaac d'Israeli said that Green had humbled all modern authors in the dust; Lord Cromer had a short way with many of the writers most fashionable at this moment. When he was most occupied with the resuscitations of ancient manners, of which I have already spoken, I found to my surprise that he had never read Marius the Epicurean. I recommended it to him, and with his usual instant response to suggestion, he got it at onc

during the course of the nineteenth century, German influences had seriously perturbed the balance of taste in Europe. I do not know that Lord Cromer had pursued these impressions very far, or that he had formed any conscious theory with regard to them. But he was very "eighteenth century" in his suspicion of enthusiasm, and I always found him amusingly impervious to ideas of a visionary or mystical order. It was impossible that so intelligent and omnivorous a reader as he should not be drawn to the pathetic

tudy. It was too individualistic in its direction. It tended, moreover, Lord Cromer thought, to disturb the balance of judgment, that "level-headedness" which he valued so highly, and had exercised with such magnificent

e sure to madn

tions do their

y about Mazzini, whom he swept aside impatiently, except that he "was a semi-lunatic," and I have heard him declare of Chatterton and Verlaine-

ous paper on Disraeli, which he afterwards issued as a pamphlet. He was an avid reader of memoirs, and of political memoirs in particular, but he almost always passed upon them the same criticism-that they were too public. "I don't want Mr. --," he would say, "to tell me what I can learn for myself by turning up the file of the Morning Post. I want him to tell me what I can't find out elsewhere. And he need not be so very much afraid

ds mainly on the subject which absorbed that friend most, and as his own range of sympathies and interests was very wide, it is probable that his letters will prove excellent gener

the other is always to affix the day of the month and the year to every document, however unimportant, that I sign. I have received numbers of letters, not only from women, one of whose nume

d wove a shrewd modern reflection round it. For instance, a couple of years before the war,

s principle, though they gloss it over with fine words. Its princi

hucydides that war educates through vi

modern representatives of this view. There is just this amount of truth in it-that at the cost of undue

of France. Lord Cromer's reflections, thrown off in the warmth of personal

hat, as the late Lord Salisbury might have said, they 'put their money on the wrong h

ter his return from Cairo he allowed this feature of his character a much freer run. The legend used to be that he was looked upon in Egypt as rather grim, and by no means to be trifled with. He was not the man, we may be su

rds that he has since become. Lord Cromer was one of those who were not entirely reconciled to the fina

y the inhabitants of that province to diminish the land tax, he replied that, so far as he was concerned, n

nspired Lord Cromer with a really delightful parallel from Dryden's Absa

weakened, well

ust to DAVID'

and deprived

ubled as they

arder yet to f

aced, and burnt

e of his audience, and then it was most painful to an orator to make a literary reference which was not taken up. Once at Sh

comes wailin

uture thunder

rate audience, and I recollect that on one occasion, when Lord Cromer himsel

Preference) serves

is Protection) i

the couplet with hi

his stories were numberless. One was of a petition which he once receiv

hear quite ghastly behaviour of Public Wor

things with an inimita

It was rather unlucky that, with a view to propitiate the angry critics, Lord Cromer prefixed to this little book a preface needlessly modest. He had no cause to apologise so deeply for exercises which were both elegant and learned. It is a curious fact that, in this collection of paraphrases, the translator did not touch the Attic authors whom he knew so well-he used to copy out pages of ?schylus and So

f Euripides, which should not be lost, if only because Lord Cromer

what may

hat may

r wants

m Heaven i

er, I believe, gave any to the world, but they deserve preservation. Some serious refl

ffice for Br

prize wa

ngs of a p

ousness of

degree, the rewards

But he was more ambitious than this. So lately as February 1911, during the course of one of our long conversations upon literature, he asked me to suggest a task of translation on which he could engage. It was just the moment when he was particularly busy with Constitutional Free Trade and Woman Suffrage and other public topics, but that

composed in my head these few lines

gh, at the third

e sweet than h

ough the brain so

veil which h

ent a fearful

f a maid whose

direful clash

pa, was the v

d I do not think much of them myself. But do y

schus returned herewith." So far as I know, this version of the Europa, conducted with great spirit in his se

. His general attitude to poetry, which he read incessantly and in four languages, was a little difficult to define. He was ready to give lists of his life-long prime favourites, and, as was very natural, these differed from time to time. But one list of the books he had "read more frequently than any other" consi

and earlier classics. But surely he had followed his instinct, and it would have been a pity if he had narrowed his range. It was the modernness of the Alexandrian authors, and perhaps their Egyptian flavour, which had justly attracted him. He did not care very much for an antiquity

ysicians forbade him, four years ago, to expend his failing strength any longer on political and social propaganda, instead of retiring, as most men of his age would have done, to dream in the recesses of his library, he plunged with renewed ardour into the one occupation still permitted to him: literature. The accident of his publishing a criticism which excited wide popular attention led to his becoming, when past his seventieth birthday, a "regular reviewer" for the Spectator, where the very frequent papers signed "C." became a