ETON LILIES.*
AT Eton there is an ancient and honourable tradition of verse- writing. At Eton as nowhere else verse has formed the centre of the Classical man's training, and there the shapely elegiac is still cast and polished daily in the sweat of the Junior brow. At Eton every occasion is adorned by a stanza or an epigram and every chance brings out a poet. Mr. Ramsay, the Lower Master, is surely the most accomplished of occasional poets, and his book will bring joy to all who care for a graceful art, too difficult to be now in fashion. He writes in Greek to a boy who has German measles :— "ray vaiZa rbv vocrarra ripe Pepµavcehn
xatpcts• . . •
and replies in English to a pupil's Latin letter, ending with this pleasant stanza :- " Be sober, be loyal. Remember the royal Estate that a scholar inherits.
Remember, remember the Sixth of December, And pay to your king what he merits."
But the bulk of his book is a collection of over a hundred and fifty Latin poems in various metres and on all sorts of subjects, every one of them a little masterpiece of grace and skill. He
writes about Joby :— " Iobe qui vendis pueris placentas, Solis et venti patiens et imbris."
about " Going into Tails" :-
" Nune licet a tergo lenges demittere caudas Albaque non certa vincla ligare menu."
and about many other things of more than Etonian interest ; about Sirmio and the Spring and Hannibal and Chess, and about the Riga Tiger and Jack Horner :-
" Ridens in isto quid facis angulo, Parvo Johannes corpore Corniger ?
Qua mente Saturnale crustum Police sic penctras adwaco ? "
But Mr. Ramsay is more than a skilful versifier ; there is some real poetry in this book, poetry in three languages. Here are four lines in English on " A Greek Saying Lesson " :- " Enshrined by men with love and pride, The voice of Hellas lives, that died ; And, fluttering into sunlight, sips
The dew of heaven on children s lips."
• Inter Lilia. By A. B. Ramsay. Lower Master at Eton College. Cambridge 1 at the University Press. [es. ed. net.]
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