THE LATE W. J. CRAIG.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'SPECTLTOR...1
Sin,—Scores of people in London, in Ireland, and broadcast over the world are probably thinking, since they learnt the most unexpected news of.W. J. Craig's death, that they never guessed how great a blank he could . leave. Lovable eccentricity seems of all things the rarest, and in a sense the hardest, to be spared ; for the essence of Craig's distinction was not his vast knowledge, but hia personality. Yet scholars will deplore that with so rare an equipment he has left so little work, for his knowledge of Elizabethan literature, and indeed of all English literature, was bard to rival; and without the faculty of articulate criticism, he had an apprecia- tion of the best work in all literary kinds which reached almost to genius. A proof of this lay in his success as a teacher. In the days when he was an Army coach, young gentlemen used to come to him without an idea of reading beyond the works, say, of Hawley Smart, and depart after a year or two imbued with a taste for sound literature, and a contempt for bad. But it was not only his enthusiasm, his sincerity, and his enormous range of reading • that so often effected this miracle : it was his personality. Craig was never a bookworm, though never without a book in his hand or his pocket. The open air continually called to him, and whatever enterprise was proposed, to climb a mountain or sail a boat, he flung himself (book and all) into it With a total disregard of fatigue or danger. All the twenty years that I knew him he was constantly invalided by some imprudence, which in his younger days often took the form of battle. I never saw him actually fight, but I have often restrained him from doing so. At College he was a notable boxer, without any natural advantage except a gnarled and twisted hardiness, and an indomitable spirit. Another pursuit of these days was walking races (seven miles an hour), and those who have seen his short, bandy-legged figure attempting this exertion will never forget the sight. The two accom- plishments led into and up to one another, for Craig often walked himself into a dusty lameness which exposed him to derision ; and though no man was ever less self-conscious, none was more ready to resent what he considered insolence. Many of those who knew him (and no one who knew him ever forgot him) will find memories of kindly laughter rising up in their minds if they see these lines. Those who knew and can judge his full worth as a literary man will probably speak of it elsewhere. But I may say here that several of us found Ourselves constantly called upon to help Craig in difficulties with his work, for all his methods were chaos, and his writing even the initiated could hardly decipher. We assisted him with the small half-mechanical dexterities which come so
easy to the competent. But if Craig was ready to ask help, he was ten times more ready to give it, and not a few, and those not obscure scholars, have profited again and again by a treasure-house of learning thrown prodigally open to them. Nobody was ever less self-centred or self-contained. He expected sympathy for his own affairs ; he was always ready with it for his friends ; and this made him the most clubbable of mankind. A Londoner by adoption, familiar for long years in the British Museum reading-room and the Savage Club (to name two of his chief haunts), he was yet more at home on an Irish mountain or lake among Irish country people, gentle or simple; and with all his traditional Unionism, he was as truly and unmistakably Irish, and as proud of his country, as any man I ever knew.—I am, Sir, &c., House of Commons. STEPHEN GWYNN.
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