Many men are counting their balances by millions. Money was never so
abundant, and nothing that is good to be done with it. ("Hear, hear,"
and a laugh.) No man knows--or very few men know--what benefit to get
out of his money. In fact, it too often is secretly a curse to him.
Much better for him never to have had any. But I do not expect that
generally to be believed. (Laughter.) Nevertheless, I should think it
a beautiful relief to any man that has an honest purpose struggling
in him to bequeath a handsome house of refuge, so to speak, for some
meritorious man who may hereafter be born into the world, to enable
him a little to get on his way. To do, in fact, as those old Norman
kings whom I have described to you--to raise a man out of the dirt and
mud where he is getting trampled, unworthily on his part, into some
kind of position where he may acquire the power to do some good in his
generation. I hope that as much as possible will be done in that way;
that efforts will not be relaxed till the thing is in a satisfactory
state. At the same time, in regard to the classical department of
things, it is to be desired that it were properly supported--that
we could allow people to go and devote more leisure possibly to the
cultivation of particular departments.
We might have more of this from Scotch Universities than we have. I
am bound, however, to say that it does not appear as if of late times
endowment was the real soul of the matter. The English, for example,
are the richest people for endowments on the face of the earth in
their Universities; and it is a remarkable fact that since the time
of Bentley you cannot name anybody that has gained a great name in
scholarship among them, or constituted a point of revolution in the
pursuits of men in that way. The man that did that is a man worthy
of being remembered among men, although he may be a poor man, and not
endowed with worldly wealth. One man that actually did constitute
a revolution was the son of a poor weaver in Saxony, who edited his
"Tibullus" in Dresden in the room of a poor comrade, and who, while he
was editing his "Tibullus," had to gather his pease-cod shells on the
streets and boil them for his dinner. That was his endowment. But he
was recognised soon to have done a great thing. His name was Heyne.
I can remember it was quite a revolution in my mind when I got hold
of that man's book on Virgil. I found that for the first time I had
understood him--that he had introduced me for the first time into
an insight of Roman life, and pointed out the circumstances in which
these were written, and here was interpretation; and it has gone on in
all manner of development, and has spread out into other countries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account