elaborated to the utmost. I asked him why he was writing so little now. He said, because of the labour work costs me; just exactly parallel to what Gray said to Bonstetten. We got on poets and talked a good deal of Pope and Dryden, and giving Pope's line in his dedication to Lord Oxford in his edition of Parnell's poems

When Interest calls off all her sneaking train,

And all the oblig'd desert, and all the vainwhich he greatly admired as flowing so easily and being free from excessive brilliance and fatiguing antithesis. He emphasized And all the Obleeged desart: and then went on to notice how "desert" in our old poets always sounds "desart." I gave him one or two quotations.

He is a manly, simple, hearty fellow, remarkably courteous, hospitable and kindly: and this is what I have always found him. He is wholly & absolutely devoid of vanity or side. On the contrary singularly modest, and this gives him a great charm. It certainly is difficult to associate his personality with what he is as a poet. His speech & manner give no indication of what is in his poetry. One of the things he said, when we were talking about allegory, was, that Hutton in the Spectator assumed that the Prince's quest was an allegory, and made himself an excellent allegory out of it; but Watson said there was absolutely no allegory in it, and that he was too young and inexperienced and too much under the spell of mere sensuousness to invest it with such an allegory as Hutton found in it; and that, he says, makes me distrust allegory. He told me that what gave the turn to his whole life and turned him from merely sensuous

WILLIAM WATSON

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poetry, which up to that time had wholly appealed to him, was six weeks with Shakespeare, which he read day and night incessantly, always having a volume with him: that got him into a sphere where Keats and Coleridge seem like toys and flimsy candles, so that for a time he could not read them, they seemed so little. When I asked him to what poet he owed, he thought most, and out of whom he had got most for himself, he said, “Well, I suppose Wordsworth," but that Wordsworth was always revolting his artistic sense. He is often so cumbrous, dull, prolix, & diffuse.

We parted just opposite 64 Oakfield Road, where I was staying with dear good Cowl, at or about 5.35. He gave me a very long gripped and hearty lingering handshake, the light falling on his bronzed semi-Celtic, semi-Roman features, for that is just what they are, and he said, "Our friend Lane is going to get us together when he comes back from America, which will be in about a fortnight, and we will have Pritchard," and I said, "Yes and Coutts. Farewell." Why I have jotted down all this I know not, but I have had a sort of impulse to do so.

In 1904 Mr William Watson composed an Ode to my father which runs as follows:

TO JOHN CHURTON COLLINS.

Collins, that with the elect of Greece and Rome
Dost daily in familiar converse dwell—

Have I not sat, long after bell on bell

Hath tolled the noon of night from spire and dome,

To hear you summon from their shadowy home

The laurelled ghosts obedient to your spell?
Bards from the fields of deathless asphodel,
And one with locks white as the Chian foam.

Oft be it mine, at your fireside, to meet
The phantoms that assail not, nor alarm;
The gracious lyrist of the Sabine farm,
Coming cool-thoughted from that green retreat;
Or loftier Mantuan, more divinely sweet,
Lord of the incommunicable charm.

The following anecdote, which has the additional merit of being true, appeared in The Times :

On a certain occasion he was deploring the fact that at present there was little or no literature of a permanent classical character being produced in England. One of his hearers raised the question whether Mr William Watson's poetry did not deserve this rank. The Professor demanded an illustration and the lines

Beyond the fateful wave which from our side
Sunders the lovely and the lonely bride
Whom we have wedded, but have never won

were quoted. Upon this Churton Collins gave a look of gratification, and said—" My dear fellow, I shall tell William Watson the first time I meet him that one of his admirers considered those the best lines he had written. I am partly responsible for them. The poem, as it first appeared, was without any lines about Ireland. It was I who persuaded William Watson to insert them, so I claim a part in the lines which you regard as among the most perfect lines written by any living poet.

CHAPTER XVII

THE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM

T

HE last scheme in which he was engaged was a scheme for a proposed school of Journalism. The general idea was that the Universities (excluding Oxford and Cambridge) should add to their existing "schools" a new "school" in which students could take a diploma or degree in subjects which would especially fit them for the journalistic profession.

His first references to this are:

Yesterday, June 5th, 1907, I took the first step towards a scheme for instruction in journalism at the University had a talk with Fiedler, Ashley and the Editor of the Birmingham Daily Post-all of them most sympathetic. I hope something will come of the idea.

This day, July 2nd, 1907, Tuesday, at a meeting of the Senate, my proposal for a School or Diploma in Journalism was passed without opposition, and a Sub-Committee consisting of the Principal, Ashley, Kirkaldy, Sonnenschein, Masterman, Frankland & myself was formed to draw up a scheme: we have our first meeting next Thursday: this may be the beginning of a "big thing "—the first organized

University instruction in Journalism in England. Deus sit propitius.

To-day, Monday, October 28th, 1907, we had a meeting about the School of Journalism. Joseph Chamberlain had expressed himself as interested in it, though he would not write a letter, as Neville Chamberlain in a letter to the Principal said; he also was strongly in favour of the project. It was resolved that the University should take it up, and the Principal and Vice-Principal are going to draft a scheme out of mine, so that it may work in with the studies of the University, as much as possible. The great difficulty is money. However, the scheme has this day advanced a good step.

As the whole idea is set forth in detail in an article1 which appeared early in the following year, it will not be necessary to state it here at any length.

The following extracts will give some idea of its purpose :

Everything points to the fact that a time has come when, after reconstruction or modification has done its work with other academic curricula, an entirely new curriculum should be instituted. It should be essentially modern; its aim to initiate young men in all that directly pertains to the duties and interests of citizenship in the widest and most comprehensive sense of the term, and 1 Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1908: "The Universities and Journalism."