1906.] on Walter Fater. 213 



The clear light of his vivid mind shone not upon the subjects of 

 which he treated, but through them. He was eclectic indeed in his 

 treatment, and attached perhaps a disproportionate value to aesthetic 

 and poetical tendencies ; he did not perhaps sufficiently emphasise 

 the intense poHtical and national activities of the Greeks. It was 

 said of him laughingly that he was a philosopher who had gone to 

 Italy by mistake, in search of philosophy, instead of to Germany ; 

 which means that he attached a greater importance to artistic interests 

 than to metaphysical ; but the fact remains that he understood and 

 interpreted a certain side of the Greek mind, its rapturous delight in 

 the beauty of thought, of form, of colour, in a way which Englishmen 

 as a rule are but Httle equipped to do. 



Besides his lecturing, he held for a long time the tutorship of his 

 college. And here he was not considered to have wholly succeeded. 

 In the educational part of the work, the reading and criticising of his 

 pupils' essays, he displayed his best qualities. 



He was also endlessly kind in discussing any practical questions, 

 such as the choice of a profession, with his pupils, and above all 

 things laboured to remove any scruples or difficulties in the minds of 

 men who had intended to take orders, and found themselves doubtful 

 of their vocation. But in the practical part, the business of his 

 tutorship, he was not wholly successful ; indeed, his whole view of 

 the position was not quite positive enough ; he did not consider him- 

 self a kind of schoolmaster whose duty it was to urge and goad men 

 to work ; he did not think that there was any question of compulsion 

 in the matter ; he rather considered that it was not his business to 

 communicate impulse, but to be available for purposes of consultation 

 and advice. Those who know the English undergraduate will realise 

 that though this may be effective enough with the best men, yet the 

 average man is not inspired with a sufficiently ardent love of know- 

 ledge for its own sake to profit by the advantages offered him so 

 unobtrusively and delicately. 



Now I am anxious to make it clear that Pater, at the beginning 

 of his academical life, was a very different person from what he after- 

 wards became. After his election to a Fellowship at Brasenose, his 

 whole nature seemed to awaken ; the frozen, soHtary, and inarticulate 

 mood broke up and vanished. He became aware that he could hold 

 his own in conversation, in argument, in wit. He experienced the 

 delight of intellectual collision, the pleasure, after his shy, secluded, 

 and indolent boyhood, of finding that his interests expanded, his zest 

 in life increased, and that he was the equal or superior of men who 

 had before maintained a social superiority over him. He became a 

 brilhant and paradoxical talker — so paradoxical indeed that he was 

 often grievously misunderstood. " I would not go abroad," said 

 Mark Pattison, on one occasion, with characteristic peevishness, " with 

 Pater for anything. He would maintain that the Channel was not the 

 Channel, that the steamer was not a steamer, and that Calais was not 



