Used by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.]
ON AN OLD LATIN TEXT BOOK
I remember the very day when the schoolmaster gave it to me.... And I
remember that the rather stern and aquiline face of our teacher relaxed
into mildness for a moment. Both we and our books must have looked very
fresh and new to him, though we may all be a little battered now; at
least, my _New Latin Tutor_ is. It is a very precious book, and it
should be robed in choice Turkey morocco, were not the very covers too
much a part of the association to be changed. For between them I
gathered the seed-grain of many harvests of delight; through this low
archway I first looked upon the immeasurable beauty of words....
What liquid words were these: _aqua_, _aura_, _unda_! All English poetry
that I had yet learned by heart--it is only children who learn by heart,
grown people "commit to memory"--had not so awakened the vision of what
literature might mean. Thenceforth all life became ideal....
Then human passion, tender, faithful, immortal, came also by and
beckoned. "But let me die," she said. "Thus, thus it delights me to go
under the shades." Or that infinite tenderness, the stronger even for
its opening moderation of utterance, the last sigh of Aeneas after
Dido,--
Nec me meminisse pigebit Elissam
Dum memor ipse mihi, dum spiritus hos regit artus.
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