CORRESPONDENCE

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 6, 8 January 1891, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE

ROYAL HUMANE SOCIETY'S

MEDAL,

Quce Amissa, Salvo,

(To the Editor.) Sir,—The question has often been propounded, " vVhich is tho greater maris ib the dignity which attaches to the man who has done something worthy of recording which gives him the pre-eminence, or is the palm carried by the man who has written something worthy to be.read?" Milbon and Wordsworth stood loftily on the consciousness of their own power, yet each believed he was a vessel chosen to far higher uses than prince, statesman, or commander, and this may be the mental attitude wo look for in creative genius of the first order. What Heine said of Luther is true of all great writers, " their wordc are battles." Some, however, hold that the statesman or commander is a being of a higher order than the poet. I think, however, the feeling of inferiority' is on the other side. Wolfe, when being conveyed to the scene of his brilliant victory and untimely death, exclaimed thab he would rather be the author of Grey's lines than the conqueror of Quebec. Sometimes thought and action are developed in a remarkable manner in one individual. In ancient Greece one of her poets was first in fight, first in manly sports and first in letters. Possibly, there is nothing so much as self-sacrifice and the risking of life in order to rescue others from an untimely death, which commends the deed and the person so strongly as such a circumstance. In the case of the man Watson, who plunged into the Manukau to save his wife and two children from their impending fate, is an act which cannot be sufficiently eulogised. After the hacid and graphic description fmnished in your columns of sth instant, it is not necessary further to review the desaile. 1 have only to add thab in my opinion this deed of bravery should be rewarded in a public manner, and the medal of thßrßoyal Humane Society might with propriety be awarded as an enduring trophy of thiß plucky and gallant rescue.—l am, etc., J no. Abbott, St. George's Bay Road, Parnell, January Bth, 1891.