20 LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK oh. 



that he was able to find was the statement — 

 of questionable accuracy — among sentences for 

 translation into Latin prose, that " the Sun and 

 the Moon are Planets." 



" The system did not suit him." No doubt 

 the nail was hit rightly on the head with that 

 stroke ; and it is indeed somewhat of a Pro- 

 crustean system which would fit every boy, no 

 matter what his mental bent, into the fixed curri- 

 culum of the classics. " He yearned for other 

 things also." That perhaps, combined with his 

 constitutional delicacy at the time, is the ex- 

 planation of the attitude of which his tutor com- 

 plains. But possibly there is more in it than this. 

 It is stated that he did not " dislike " Latin 

 and Greek. His tutor hoped to make him " a 

 sounder scholar," but we may doubt whether 

 his mind was ever really of the type that is 

 attuned readily to the niceties of scholarship. 

 Scholarship is very largely a matter of the form, 

 and it was never the form and always the sub- 

 stance that made appeal to him. His mode of 

 expression was always lucid and entirely adequate 

 to his purposes, but never savouring greatly of 

 " style." It is the language of a man of very 

 fine intellect who would appear to have almost 

 a suspicion of " style " in literature, as a mode 

 of striving after effect which was absolutely 

 distasteful to his natural simplicity. It gives 

 the frequent impression of an almost purposed 

 rejection of the word that might add force, and 

 a deliberate preference for the more usual phrase. 

 Probably it is a quality that has worked in aid 

 of the immense popularity of his writings. 



