Gradiva

“ Hardly anywhere was there a nook which successfully protected itself against the ocean of light and veiled itself in a dusky, silver web; every street lay between the old walls like long, rippling, white strips of linen spread out to bleach; and without exception all were equally motionless and mute, for not only had the last of the rasping and nasal tones of the English and American messengers disappeared, but the former slight evidences of lizard- and butterfly-life seemed also to have left the silent city of ruins. ”

“ To the manner born, he loved his State and his South with all the ardor of the highest type of patriot. His tongue was never silent nor his inkhorn dry when our people were aspersed. He met traducers with truths and a glittering wit which were matchless.
Grady was a genius born. His work has proved it. Ah! the sad part of it is that Death has snatched him with so much of the grand mission which was plainly his unfinished. Nature seldom endows her children with the gifts with which she favored Grady. Among modern orators he was the peer of any and his pen spoke as eloquently as his tongue. ”

“ Yesterday Henry Grady, a young, strong man, rejoicing in his growing strength, with the blood of life and power and hope bounding through his veins, flushed with the triumph of new and splendid achievement and returned to his home with the proud burden of fresh laurels well won, was swiftly struck down by that relentless power and taken from the world he graced and lighted, to be known and heard no more. ”

“ Henry W. Grady had the zeal of a martyr and valor of a patriot. If it be permitted to mortals who have put on immortality to look upon this world from their celestial home, the incense of praise which ascends from our stricken hearts will be grateful to the soul of Henry Grady. God has set his seal upon his silver tongue, and no more forever will his eloquent voice, stimulating his fellow-countrymen to deeds of noble enterprise, be heard on earth. ”

“ In the hush of that dark hour which just precedes the dawn—in its silence and darkness, while Love kept vigil by his couch of pain and breathed sweet benedictions on his dying brow—the spirit of Henry Grady, the South’s fame-crowned son—her lover and her champion—the Man Eloquent—the courtly gentleman—whose laureled brow while yet flushed with earth’s triumphs towered into immortality—the spirit of this man of love and might passed from the scenes which its radiance had illumined to the loftier life of the world beyond. ”

“ Over and above the beautiful lyrical flow, the sharply etched phrase, the abundant fine imagery, familiar to all lovers of our verse, there is a touch of restless modernity, an increasing burden of thought, that mark the true poet of our own time. Dropping the ‘No Verb’ manner and returning with increased power to the older forms, Grigsby, in this volume, presents us with an extraordinary variety of measures, alike only in their marvellous fitness for each subject and mood. ”

“ The ancient poets thought their distinction to be not in verse, but in lore of astronomy, optics, music, logic, history, geography. In ratio dicendi historians are likest to poets. Vergil was expert in rhetoric and logic as well as in cosmogony, morals, law and polity, medicine, athletics, etc. Poetry belongs under ratio civilis. Its object is to teach, to delight, to move [the stock summary for oratory] . ”

“ Made fatherless in youth by the cruel ravage of war, he struck out with a stout heart and strong hands for success—how well he achieved it, the praises showered upon him from every quarter forcibly demonstrate the fact! Who has not felt the warmth of his sunny nature?—it glows in every stroke of his pen, and shines in all his eloquent utterances, and brightens his memory as his name and triumphs pass into history. Mr. Grady, by his pen and eloquence, has done more for the South than any other of her sons, and their love and appreciation is attested in their universal sorrow. ”

“ Gratry is as sure as any Science-teacher of the present day, that Education means educing the faculties by which man discovers Truth for himself. But:—what Truth? And what faculties? The highest object of intellectual culture, according to Gratry, is to educe and fortify the sense by which we perceive what the Unseen Teacher is saying to us. ”

“ Grady comes to us as a sorrow with all the force of a painful surprise. He was cut down in the bloom of a robust physical manhood, in the full enjoyment of his magnificent mental powers by which he had just ascended to the very pinnacle of fame. The eyes of the country were fixed upon him, the son of the South, whose transcendent genius inspired the hope of the blessed realization of promises with which his brief but 552brilliant career was so full. But in the death of this illustrious journalist and matchless orator the lesson is enforced that “The path of glory leads but to the grave.” ”

“ Grady was a big-hearted, whole-souled fellow, a man of the people, a statesman and a patriot. His intellectual attainments and all fitted him for the grand and brilliant position which he reached. True as steel to his native South, he was able to conciliate the North. A man of noble impulses, he never offended. ”

“ Oh, the folly of it all, the shame and the pitiful folly! Yet when I rose in wisdom and spoke thereof, surely they would have slain me in the name of their outraged gods. Well, so hath it ever been;—but, my Holly, art thou weary of me already, that thou dost sit so silent? Or dost thou fear lest I should teach thee my philosophy?—for know I have a philosophy. What would a teacher be without her own philosophy? ”

“ Another article, that makes a conspicuous figure in the education of our youth, is composition. Before they are acquainted with the true difference between verse and prose, before they are prepared to decide upon the poetical merit of Lily and Virgil, they are called upon to write Latin verse themselves. In the same manner some of their first prose compositions are in a dead language. An uniform, petty, ridiculous scheme is laid down, and within that scheme all their thoughts are to be circumscribed. ”

“ Many a living, blossoming branch all around us, and this solitary dry twig, with a tag hanging from it, on which you will find: 'Branton Hills; A twig too lazy to grow!'"
Now this put a "hunch" in Gadsby's brain, causing him to say; "A High School pupil is not a child, now. Naturally a High School boy has not a man's qualifications; nor has a High School girl womanly maturity. But such kids, born in this swiftly moving day, think out many a notion which will work, but which would pass our dads and granddads in cold disdain. ”

“ Irene and Cara might have been considered as genuine English. The ready and accurate English; the pure Parisian French; the varied information, in an atmosphere of light falling from above on a table glittering with costly plate; the order and the dignified ornaments of the great hall; the grand scale of living seemed undoubted high life. There was a moment in which Darvid cast his glance around and threw back his head somewhat; his forehead freed itself from wrinkles—smooth, clever, shining somewhat at the temples—it seemed to be carved out of ivory. ”

“ Greville, with her exquisite good-nature and her innocent fatuity, is embalmed for me; so that she becomes in that light a truly shining specimen, almost the image or compendium of a whole side of a social order. ”

“ Greville! we must not meet no more!
“And since my son will shortly attain an age when seclusion in this remote spot would be prejudicial to his interests and to the formation of his character, I pray you to take him from me at once, that I may have no further sacrifice to contemplate. Let him reside with you at Silsea, under the tuition of proper instructors—breed him up in nobleness and truth—and let not his early nurture, and the care with which I have sought to instil into his mind principles of honour and virtue, be utterly lost. ”

“ It is too often true that honor men mistake the text-books which are merely the keys to the understanding, for objects worthy of ultimate pursuit and mastery, and we sometimes find these gentlemen grubbing for Greek roots and construing abstruse problems, while the great, busy, throbbing world is passing them by, and has forgotten their existence. From the University of Georgia, Grady went to the University of Virginia. ”

“ Out of my life into the beautiful beyond have passed the two friends I loved best on earth—the chivalrous Gordon, the peerless Grady. God keep my friends and lead them gently through the meadow-lands where the river flows in song eternal. I know that near its crystal banks, where the birds sing sweetest and flowers bloom brightest, they have clasped hands in blessed and happy reunion. The love with which Henry Grady inspired his friends has never been surpassed by mortal man. Beautiful and touching have been the expressions of devotion that have come to his family. ”

“ Even should an orator, whose eloquence might sway multitudes, rise to reign in the dead hero’s stead, it is more than probable that he would not combine with his oratory the wonderful statistical knowledge possessed by Mr. Grady, whose solid reasoning was only exceeded by the winsome touch, creeping in here and there, of the true artistic nature. He spoke in his last address of the South’s vast resources—of its “cotton whitening by night beneath the stars, and by day the wheat locking the sunshine in its bearded sheaf.” ”

“ Thus in school, as from time immemorial boys got their first notions of worldly wisdom by memorizing Latin beast-fables, so they learned Latin grammar, with Latin verse, from shepherd rivalries typifying wider struggles. Since many Renaissance boys continued to imitate the Bucolics when they [81] grew up, many Renaissance eclogues are published themes. That Vergil’s eclogues have survived all this is evidence of immortality. They need no further praise; but having been used for grammar, they need to be read again for poetry and for literary history. ”

“ With this suggestive subject he interwove all imaginable learning, collected from his own library, rich in works that few others had read, and from that of his beloved University, crabbed with Greek, rich with Latin, drawing into itself, like a whirlpool, all that men had thought hitherto, and combining them anew in such a way that it had all the charm of a racy originality. ”

“ I heard the Head once asking Miss Graves, in that 'life is real, life is earnest' voice of hers, what she thought was the most beautiful thing in the world. And Gravy said, 'The most beautiful thing in the world? ”

“ He, a general, Graeme, had to rely on another man's knowledge; he admitted it himself when he said, 'Ah, Gneisenau, what a general I should have been had I only read!'"
"I'd read fast enough, Godwin," said Graeme, "if I'd got any incentive to do so. It's recognition I want; give me a start, I'll do the rest."
"Bah!" replied the other, "some men go without recognition all their lives, and still struggle on. And it may come yet, who knows? Be prepared for it when it does, that's my point; don't handicap yourself with ignorance. ”

“ With Yva, the last of my blood, it is otherwise. She is the child of my age and of a race outworn; too gentle, too much all womanly. The soul that triumphs must shine like steel in the sun, and cut if need be; not merely be beauteous and shed perfume like a lily in the shade. Yet she is very wise and fair,” here he looked at me, “perchance of her might come children such as were their forefathers, who again would wield the sceptre of the dominion of the earth.” ”

“ He was also trained up in human literature at the school in Linlithgow, where he made a very considerable progress in the languages. I remember to have heard him quote some passages in the Latin classics very pertinently, though his employment in life, and the various turns which his mind took under different impulses in succeeding years, prevented him from cultivating such studies. ”

“ Unhappily we have no fragments of the orations of Gracchus; the more brilliant fame of his brother has eclipsed his literary renown, but we may judge of their special features by those of their author's character, and be sure that while lacking in genius they were temperate, earnest, pure, and classical. In fact the Gracchi may he called the founders of classical Latin. That subdued power whose subtle influence penetrates the mind and vanquishes the judgment is unknown in literature before them. ”

“ It all seemed real, because Gracchus was a true artist as well as a true man, and knew by an unerring instinct when to pause. This type of objective oratory, with its simple and vivid pictures, its brilliant but never laboured wit, its capacity for producing the illusion that the man is revealed in the utterance, its suggestion of something deeper than that which the mere words convey—a suggestion which all feel but only the learned understand—is equally pleasing to the trained and the unlettered mind. ”

“ I have a firm belief that the harmony of its forms will be so absolute, the sincerity of its reality so evident, its method and justification so deeply rooted, that the artist's hand will remain absolutely invisible. ”

“ Wherefore I ask you very earnestly to write me one piece of verse, and then I will show it to this poet and others, and I will boast that you are my friend, and you are a much better poet than he.”
The war against the secular poets, or advocates of the new learning, is kept up with spirit through this ludicrous correspondence. One correspondent presses Ortuinus Gratius to “write to me whether it be necessary for eternal salvation that scholars learn grammar from the secular poets, such as Virgil, Tullius, Pliny, and others ”