THE OVERWHELMING impression one got from a first meeting with
Professor Gilbert Murray was of his charming humility. It was difficult for the casual acquaintance to believe that this was one of the outstanding scholars of the age and its most distinguished humanist. He listened and smiled and passed one the sandwiches again. One did not remain in the dark for very long, though, for his melodious voice when he warmed to a subject carried, even in his old age, a tremendous sincerity and the authentic authority of a great man. Even those who never met him personally caught the same charm and sincerity in his trans- lations. His lectures never failed to move genera- tions of undergraduates whether he was talking of the Classics or Liberalism or internationalism, and my last memory of him is of seeing a seething mob of students in St. Giles on a cold December night four years ago waiting to be let into the Taylorian Institute and being told that Professor Murray was due to speak there. These people were not going to hear him because he presented a set of values of historical interest to them, but because he seemed to personify a way of life wiser and perhaps in the long run more valuable than their own.
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