St Ignatius College - Ignatian Yearbook (San Francisco, CA)

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26 IGNA TIAN To his having been nursed on the knees of the hills of the north fBallade of his own Countryj, as well as to his excursions into French literature was due, also, no doubt, the distinguishing grace of his writings. While chiefly occupied as scholar, translator, journalist, critic, Lang was a master of metrical forms. His .Ballades in Blue China won for him recognition, and his subsequent works in this line made him a worthy rival of Austin Dobson in his light, neat verses. Versatile and equally voluminous, he was ever about Hunresting and nomadic pursuits of new fields in letters fAthenaeumj. A new vogue for French forms had been set by Dobson, and here especially the influence of French, the mainspring of the dexterity and diversity of all of Lang's writings, is particularly seen. Besides the pleasant ease of his expression, Lang as a versiiier has embued with the same rare imagery that he summoned at will into his prose, such lines as these from The New Millennium in Rhymes a la Modev: Till slowly from the wrinkled skies, The fireless, frozen Sun shall wane, Nor summer come with golden grain, Till men be glad, mid frost and snow To live such equal lives of pain As now the hutted Eskimo. As a critic Andrew Lang was one of an illustrious trio, together with Edmund Gosse and Austin Dobson, whose services to belle-letters were immeasurable. Criticism in their hands was a means of keeping flying the colors of the highest literature, of all that makes and records the flower of civilization QI-Iomer and the Epicj. Any one of Lang's essays on our late masters, as Stev- enson, Dickens, Scott, or Thackeray, should persuade the reader to peruse, as well, its subject, or, if so fortunate, to peruse again, for who could fail to be caught in the

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.Anhrrm lang HE British literary world sustained a heavy A5 loss in the sudden death, on July 20, of 'Qf Andrew Lang, the litterateur and scholar. The deepest interest of the cultivated pub- lic throughout the English speaking world attaches to the life and name of this im- mortal Scotsman. gr! Qi Born at Selkirk on March 31, 1844, Andrew Lang was educated at Edinburgh Academy, at St. Andrews University, and finally at Balliol College, Oxford. He evidenced in his academic life the predilection for the classics which influenced so notably his future ideals. His translation of the Odyssey first brought him into the prominence en- hanced by his later translations of Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, the Iliad and the Homeric Hymns. He always ar- dently defended Homeric unity. The dust and awful treasures of the dead, Hath Learning scattered wide, but vainly thee Homer, she meteth with her tool of lead, And strives to rend thy songs, too blind to see The Crown that burns on thine immortal head, Of indivisible supremacy. Lang was an earnest Scotsmang critics have traced even his affection for things French, in particular for the Blessed Jeanne d'Arc, to Scottish history. In Almae Matres, among Rhymes a la Mode, he frankly ex- presses his loyalty to St. Andrew's: All these hath Oxfordg all are dear, But dearer far the little town The drifting surf, the wintry year The college of the scarlet gown- St. Andrew's by the Northern Sea. I 7

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ANDREW LANG Z7 meshes of his admirable portrayal of hidden human feelings and the relation thereto of the characters, the creatures of the great novelists. Lang has been compared in appearance and character to Robert Louis Stevenson, yet they worked in utterly di- verse fields of writing. Of especial interest therefore is the essay on Mr. Stevenson's works in the Essays in Little. It is the lover, writer, translator of fairy tales that says in the aforementioned essay: thus in the fogs and horrors of London he plays at being an Arabian tale teller, and his 'New Arabian Nights' are a new kind of romanticism- Oriental, freakish, like the work of a changeling. Indeed, this curious genius, springing from a family of Scottish engineers, resembles nothing so much as one of the fairy children, whom the ladies of Queen Proserpina's court used to leave in thescradles of Border keeps or of Peasant's cottages. The Letters to Dead Authors were very popular, al- though Lang confesses they are by no means his favorite work as they came too easily and do not sort well with his ideas of reverence. They are written in archaic style. They have been called neat things, easy, unpretentious, and give evidence of varied taste and wide knowledge. There is a masterly trend of playful imitation in the letter to Herodotus, with a basis of true English humor. The fol- lowing lines at the expense of British' climatic conditions fairly illustrate the style of the entire sketch: Now the island is not small, but large, greater than the whole of Hellasg and they call it Britain. In that island the east wind blows for ten parts of the year, and the people know not how to cover themselves from the cold. But for the other two months the sun shines fiercely so that some of them die thereof, and others die of the frozen mixed drinks, for they have ice even in the summer, and this ice they put to their liquor. Langls faults, for his scholarship was rather broad than