* * * * *

So away with Greek Prose,
The source of my woes!
(This metre's too tough, I must draw to a close.)
May Sargent be drowned
In the ocean profound,
And Sidgwick be food for the carrion crows!'


Greek prose is a stubborn thing, and the biographer remembers being
told that his was `the best, with the worst mistakes'; also
frequently by Mr. Sellar, that it was `bald.' But Greek prose is
splendid practice, and no less good practice is Greek and Latin
verse. These exercises, so much sneered at, are the Dwellers on the
Threshold of the life of letters. They are haunting forms of fear,
but they have to be wrestled with, like the Angel (to change the
figure), till they bless you, and make words become, in your hands,
like the clay of the modeller. Could we write Greek like Mr. Jebb,
we would never write anything else.

Murray had naturally, it seems, certainly not by dint of wrestling
with Greek prose, the mastery of language. His light verse is
wonderfully handled, quaint, fluent, right. Modest as he was, he
was ambitious, as we said, but not ambitious of any gain; merely
eager, in his own way, to excel. His ideal is plainly stated in the
following verses:-