But it was not so. One may
meet man after man, old pupils of his, who have gone on into the
homely drudging rounds of business, the law, journalism--men whose
faces will light up with affection and remembrance when Doctor
Gummere's name is mentioned. We may have forgotten much of our
Chaucer, our Milton, our Ballads--though I am sure we have none of
us forgotten the deep and thrilling vivacity of his voice reciting:
O where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son?
O where hae ye been, my handsome young man?
I hae been to the wild wood; mither, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting and fain wald lie doun.
But what we learned from him lay in the very charm of his
personality. It was a spell that no one in his class-room could
escape. It shone from his sparkling eye; it spoke in his
irresistible humour; it moved in every line of that well-loved face,
in his characteristic gesture of leaning forward and tilting his
head a little to one side as he listened, patiently, to whatever
juvenile surmises we stammered to express. It was the true learning
of which his favourite Sir Philip Sidney said:
This purifying of wit, this enriching of memory, enabling of
judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call
learning, under what name soever it come forth or to what
immediate end soever it be directed, the final end is to lead
and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls,
made worse by their clay lodgings, can be capable of.
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