He came to seriousness at once.
"There were two or three teachers, Frank," he replied, "greater than
Mahaffy; teachers of the world as well as of Oxford. There was Ruskin
for instance, who appealed to me intensely--a wonderful man and a most
wonderful writer. A sort of exquisite romantic flower; like a violet
filling the whole air with the ineffable perfume of belief. Ruskin has
always seemed to me the Plato of England--a Prophet of the Good and
True and Beautiful, who saw as Plato saw that the three are one
perfect flower. But it was his prose I loved, and not his piety. His
sympathy with the poor bored me: the road he wanted us to build was
tiresome. I could see nothing in poverty that appealed to me, nothing;
I shrank away from it as from a degradation of the spirit; but his
prose was lyrical and rose on broad wings into the blue. He was a
great poet and teacher, Frank, and therefore of course a most
preposterous professor; he bored you to death when he taught, but was
an inspiration when he sang.
"Then there was Pater, Pater the classic, Pater the scholar, who had
already written the greatest English prose: I think a page or two of
the greatest prose in all literature. Pater meant everything to me. He
taught me the highest form of art: the austerity of beauty. I came to
my full growth with Pater. He was a sort of silent, sympathetic elder
brother. Fortunately for me he could not talk at all; but he was an
admirable listener, and I talked to him by the hour. I learned the
instrument of speech with him, for I could see by his face when I had
said anything extraordinary. He did not praise me but quickened me
astonishingly, forced me always to do better than my best--an intense
vivifying influence, the influence of Greek art at its supremest."
"He was the Gamaliel then?" I questioned, "at whose feet you sat?"
"Oh, no, Frank," he chided, "everyone sat at my feet even then. But
Pater was a very great man. Dear Pater! I remember once talking to
him when we were seated together on a bench under some trees in
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