I confess to believing in strenuous work
at the classics, as offering, apart from all material reward, the
best and most solid basis, especially where there is no exuberant
original genius, for the career of a man of letters. The mental
discipline is invaluable, the training in accuracy is invaluable,
and invaluable is the life led in the society of the greatest minds,
the noblest poets, the most faultless artists of the world. To
descend to ordinary truths, scholarship is, at lowest, an honourable
gagne-pain. But Murray, like the majority of students endowed with
literary originality, did not share these rather old-fashioned
ideas. The clever Scottish student is apt to work only too hard,
and, perhaps, is frequently in danger of exhausting his powers
before they are mature, and of injuring his health before it is
confirmed. His ambitions, to lookers-on, may seem narrow and
school-boyish, as if he were merely emulous, and eager for a high
place in his `class,' as lectures are called in Scotland. This was
Murray's own view, and he certainly avoided the dangers of academic
over-work.
Pages:
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28