Sonnets and Translations (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Sonnets and TranslationsA short appreciation, taken from the Pauline, is printed separately in an appendix together with a notice from Tbc Times.Before the war he had lived much the life that any ordinary Public School boy lives. He played the ordinary games and did the ordinary work, with perhaps the ordinary amount of distinction. He was not an athlete, but he played for his second XV.: he was not a classical scholar, as the term is generally understood, but he was a classical exhibitioner of New College, Oxford. It was, however, mainly outside the round of school life that his work really lay. A love of litera ture may be, and usually is, begun at school, its pursuit must always be more or less a matter of private inclination. He had, it is true, won the Milton prize for the best poem in two successive years. He had also edited the Pauline in his last year and contributed poems, both light and serious, to it, and to an unofficial magazine. But the Pauline is even less than most school magazines a literary paper, and though, when editor, he had tried with some success to alter it, it still remains true that his literary work was more a matter of his home than his school life. It was encouraged by his pastors and masters, and helped by the natural'course of his school work, but it could probably not have developed itself as it did if all his time had belonged to the school. The fact that St. Paul's is mainly a day school was of great assist ance to him, and he always gratefully recognised his good fortune in this. The ample leisure of a day school gave him all the opportunity he desired for the private pursuit of literature. He was a wide and voracious reader - mainly, of course, of poetry, and especially of dramatic poetry - but he had more than a nodding acquaintance with such other branches of literature as fiction and history. From school he had naturally acquired a considerable knowledge of the classical masterpieces, and a sufficient foundation in the French and German tongues upon which privately to build an eventual familiarity with the written speech of the formerand a ripening acquaintance with that of the latter. In both of these, however, he had been chie¿y interested in poetry and the drama. He had intended to add a knowledge of Italian, but had never had time to acquire more than the barest smattering. In all these languages he had been in the habit of translating what most appealed to him. For the most part, except perhaps with Horace, these translations do not contain his best work, they partake rather of the nature of a literary exercise.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.