370 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



visiting him there, and of witnessing the great influence 

 he exercised over his fellow-undergraduates. Before 

 Christmas, however, he fell ill, and for five or six weeks 

 lay struck down with a most painful and what proved 

 to be a fatal malady. 



He died early on the second morning of the New Year, 

 and sleeps now in the beautiful little Holy well cemetery, 

 within sight as his friends here will always like to think 

 within sight of his own college tower, under the shadow of 

 its walls, within sound of its bells. 



So ends, prematurely, a career which seems yet in a sense 

 not without a completeness of its own. Twenty years of life, 

 one year one little year, scarcely more of Oxford, offer but 

 scant opportunities to do anything for fame or name, to 

 accomplish anything great in art or affairs. What beginnings 

 could be made of these, he made. But for the life of self- 

 education, of duty, of friendship, of affection, there is much 

 time even in this short space, and whatever there was he used 

 most fully. 



Of early promise, of powers just beginning to open out, just 

 between bud and blossom, it is easy to form too high an 

 opinion. It is perhaps impossible to judge of them exactly. 

 But goodness, sweetness, modesty, enthusiasm, loyalty, eager- 

 ness, frank generosity these are the peculiar virtues of youth, 

 and seem never more themselves than when, as in Edmund 

 Roscoe, they have never lost their early bloom. 



These words were written by his dear friend 

 Herbert Warren, President of Magdalen, and I quote 

 the closing lines : 



Those who were ambitious for him may feel moved to echo 

 the words of an old and forgotten writer, on the tomb of an 

 inheritor of an illustrious name : 



Mors perfecit tua ut essent omnia brevia 

 Honos fama virtusque gloria atque ingenium 

 Quibus sei in longa licuiset tibi utier vita 

 Facile facteis superases gloriam maiorum." 



But more of us, perhaps, will say of such a life what is sung 

 by one nearer our own day : 



Although it fall and die that night 

 It was the plant and flower of light. 

 In small proportions we just beauties see, 

 And in short measures life may perfect be. 



