PREFATORY NOTE. A few days before my father left Addington for Ireland, in the September of last year (1896), he called me into his library, and handed me the proof of the preface of his Cyprian-the book that is here presented-asking me to criticise anything that struck me in it. The following day I brought him a paper of minute suggestions. He went through them with the utmost patience, accepting some, and carefully justifying the rejection of others. When he had finished, he said, “You seem to find my style very obscure!" (smiling) "you are not the only person who does." I ventured to say that I thought he was too careful to avoid the obvious : "No," he said, "it's not that: I only wish to say the obvious thing without the customary periphrases:-it all comes of hours and hours spent with intense enjoyment over Thucydides, weighing the force of every adjective and every particle." I went on to ask whether the Cyprian was really finished, and reminded him of how more than fifteen years before, when he was at Truro, he had come out of his study one evening, and announced that his Cyprian was “practically finished." "Yes," he said, “it is all done: only a few corrections and verifications to make.” I asked whether he was not glad it was done: "I ought to be;' -he said, and began turning over some of the proofs on the table: then he looked up with a smile: "but I am not really glad my only amusement will be gone." And this was literally true: my father was less capable of "amusing himself," of resting, than any one I have ever known: |