ANDREW LANG.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1545, 14 September 1912, Page 9

ANDREW LANG.

In tho minds of readers who were young twenty-five years ago (says on English writer) the namo of- Andrew Lang always suggested that of Stevenson, as being the two. writers who represented Scotland in literature. "Both their heads wore in ono aureole,' and it was taken for granted that they were on terms of extreme intimacy with each other. Lnch at any rate was cordially appreciative of ■ tho other's achievement, but it is curious that at their first meeting the initial impulso on both sides was one of repulsion. Lang wrote down otcvpnson as affected and a poseur, while vension wrote down Lang as donnish. Both were right; but whereas Stevenson's affectation was tho expression of his interest in a personality in which even-one was interested who met him either directly. in. the flesh or indirectly through his books, • Lang's donnishness developed into a certain reticent aloofness which made him an exceedingly isolated personality in the literary world. Ho had few intimate friends, and a certain superficial' roughness of mannerwhich, nevertheless, to a certainty, covered a'niuch larger measure than usual of warmth and generosity of heart-diseoiir-aged mere acquaintances. That is why in the articles consecrated to him this week there have been so few personal "pickings" of the sort that sometimes enliven such compositions. He had, it appears, a "Cummy," like Stewuson, an old nurse whom ho visited yearly, and to whom ho wrote letters which that worthy iburned, first because thev were difficult to read, and second because when read they proved "fu' o' nonsense." That is about all.

•Attention, accordingly, has been concentrated upon his work, and, among other things, general justice has been dono to the excellence of his translations from the Greek. In partnership with Butcher he translated the Odyssey, and in partnership with.Leaf and Myers the Iliad. -How such, partners work is a ■mystery, and it would be as vain to try to split the double-star of the Elizabethan firmament and assign one part of. a play to Beaumont and another to Fletcher as to divide shares anion" Lang and his coadjutors, but it is safe to credit the former with the exquisite English in which the rendering is made. This is borne out by the merit of the translation, of Theocritus, which he accomplished without the aid of any partner soever, and of : which a competent authority has said that it would have been remarkable as a man's single achievement. That Lang, accordingly, will be looked back upon as ono of tho Greek scholars of his time is certain. Yet recently he took up the pose of an anti-Greek. Ho did so in an article contributed a few weeks ago to the "Cape Argus." There ho contemplated wiih equanimity the decline of Greek in his native country, and was resigned to tho prospect that the Germans and Americans would keep the knowledge of Greek alive, but that "in this country it is doomed— with a number. , of other things." Ono must make allowance for a spirit of banter that runs through the article, for a touch of perverse humour, and also, perhaps, for the fact,that it was written for a 'new country," where Greek studies are not much in vogue, but after, all such allowance has been made there remains a residuum of settled conviction ■ and a feeling of resignation to tho passing away of Greek. To his main argument that there have been many who have done , ve'ry well without it, it is sufficient to answer that there like Arnold or Tennyson, who without Greek could not possibly have been what they are. Argumentf-apart, however, the article is interesting for tho revelation it gives of Lang's own attitude. He could havo taken his First at Oxford "by native loheek," or at any rato without, any scholarly knowledge of the language. Ho could never have sat an examination in simple Greek grammar; he only saw what a writer meant and was driving at. Nor was he one of tho minority of those who take up a Greek book for pleasure. "To confess the plain truth, for a generation or more 1 have only read Greek for business purposes, not as a literary recreation, just as I read German—with a dictionary —when necessity compels." "Greek," •he adds, "has given mo much pleasure and some profit., Soon, it will, bring no profit to a'man—iii'this cauhtry.at-all. It might.ba..retained for the sake•*, of pleasure, therefore ;Tfpr*'ißit is onjyi ;a stage in "a""person's development, yet-iu the case of a clever young fellow'it is.-an important stage, "'aM gives a training and leaves memories that'do not pass away when it.is. left behind.' '■'■•".-•