Tales of the RidingsMoorman, F. W. (Frederic William)
General
Tales of the Ridings
Moorman, F. W. (Frederic William)
Yorkshire (England) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
After some five years at Caterham, he began his academical studies at
University College, London; but, on the strength of a scholarship, soon
removed to University College, Aberystwyth (1890), where the
scenery--sea, heron-haunted estuaries, wooded down to the very shore,
and hills here and there rising almost into mountains--offered
surroundings far more congenial to him than the streets and squares of
Bloomsbury.
In these new surroundings, he seems to have been exceptionally happy,
throwing himself into all the interests of the place, athletic as well
as intellectual, and endearing himself both to his teachers and his
fellow-students. His friendship with Professor Herford, then Professor
of English at Aberystwyth, was one of the chief pleasures of his student
days as well as of his after life. Following his natural bent, he
decided to study for Honours in English Language and Literature, and at
the end of his course (1893) was placed in the Second Class by the
examiners for the University of London, to which the Aberystwyth College
was at that time affiliated. Those who believe in the virtue of infant
prodigies--and, in the country which invented Triposes and Class Lists,
it is hard to fix any limit to their number--will be distressed to learn
that, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge of such matters,
he was not at that time reckoned to be of "exceptionally scholarly
calibre." Perhaps this was an omen all the better for his future
prospects as a scholar.
It is a wholesome practice that, when the cares of examinations are once
safely behind him, a student should widen his experience by a taste of
foreign travel. Accordingly, in September, 1893, Moorman betook himself
to Strasbourg, primarily for the sake of continuing his studies under
the skilful guidance of Ten Brinck. The latter, however, was almost at
once called to Berlin and succeeded by Brandl, now himself of the
University of Berlin, who actually presided over Moorman's studies for
the next two years, and who thought, and never ceased to think, very
highly both of his abilities and his acquirements. It was only natural
that Moorman should make a pretty complete surrender to German ideals
and German methods of study. It was equally natural that, in the light
of subsequent experience, his enthusiasms in that line should suffer a
considerable diminution. He was not of the stuff to accept for ever the
somewhat bloodless and barren spirit which has commonly dominated the
pursuit of literature in German universities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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