A GREAT MANXMAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 103, 3 May 1930, Page 9 (Supplement)

A GREAT MANXMAN.

POET AND DOMINEE. - T. E. BROWN'S CENTENARY. (By RICHARD JAMES.) There was living one hundred years ago in Douglas, the capital of the Isle of Man, a clergyman so fastidious in point of style that before answering an invitation he would have read to him a few sentences from an English classic. This eccentricity would not need to be recalled to-day were it not for the fact that this divine was the father of Thomas Edward Brown, an English poet of last century/ horn just a hundred years ago, on May 5, 1830. Brown's education was begun at King Williams' College in his own island, but it is safe to assume that the foundations of a remarkably wide culture were laid in his own home, under the influence of a man who knew no university, but whose natural scholarship was of the highest order. From school Brown went to Christ Church, Oxford, as a servitor. There he took a double first, and at the age of 24 was elected a fellow of Oriel— this after the refusal of his college" to promote him to a senior studentship on the ground that this was an honour never before attained by a servitor. Of his fellowship, however, he took advantage for a short time only, and soon j adopted teaching as a career. To this work he was eminently suited, by the gifts that were his. A Friend to Youth. Brown taught first of all in his old | school in the Isle of Man, from there going to the Crypt Grammar School in Gloucester. He was not happy in Gloucester, but w r e may be glad he went there, if only for the reason that he was able to give of himself generously to the young W. E. Henley, who was later to make for himself a spectacular career in letters, and who was to be the intimate friend of Stevenson. . Of Brown Henley has said that "he was singularly kind to me at a moment when I needed kindness even more than I needed encouragement," and one can be sure that it was not only books Brown lent to him, but all the resources of his mind. From Gloucester the poet went to Clifton, then a new a,nd struggling school, and there he stayed for the best part of 30 years, until he retired at last to the little island that he loved. Although a fine teacher, well beloved by his pupils, Brown regarded his profession mainly as a means of income, and gave his inmost self to the writing of the poetry which was to make him famous. In his letters he said that his was a dual life, and to him the more important side of it, and the essential side, was the spiritual, which found expression in his verse. He was often homesick for Manx glens and mountain?, and often he must have rebelled against the lot that was his: Alert, I seek exactitude of rule, I step, and square my shoulders with the squad; But there are 'blaeberries on old Barrule, And Langness has its heather still — thank God 1 And yet he loved Clifton, and his thoughts often went back there when he was joying in new-found leisure on his island again, and it was at Clifton that .he died. But his ultimate home was in the island: A body for my needs, that so I may not all unclothed go. "The Island Heart." It was of this island, this "little island in the sea," that Brown's most notable poems were written. They were in narrative form, and the tales they told were simple, though the philosophy that lay in them was often deep. It was Brown's avowed desire To sing a song shall please iny countrymen; To unlock the treasures of the island heart ; and to do these things he used the Manx dialect (easily understandable to English readers), in an endeavour,, as he put it, to reach his people's "inmost consciousness'." Ironically enough, he failed to (to this, for his countrymen found the moral implications of his stories too deep for them. He was fond of introducing passages of philosophy, such as the following (and putting them into tile mouths of very simple people), and it is easy to underst(md why they failed to appeal to his Manx public: Oorsre." I said, "isn't there no love That's greater than that, that's risin'above rphA lpk o' that —"Why can t there be No love without wivin' and Ml that S pVmirin' ve love, and never make to her No love nor nothing, nor never spake to Couldn' ye look to hetllkeastftr; Up in the heavens quite leggilar? This, to the average Manxman, was hardly "the old familiar Speech, But his narrative poems remain great poems, full of observation and sympathy, of humour and pathos. It is oft them that his reputation mainly rests, and those who know him only by his lyrics do not know him well. "A Sea of Laughter.'' It was natural that. Brown, the son of a divine, himself ordained a deacon, and by nature profoundly reflective, should have been much preoccupied Avith moral ideas, and that his poetry should have reflected them. But his morality was incidental to his poetry, and it was broad and brotherly, and kind. His lyrics will live through their beauty of conception'and phrase, by such lines as I wonder if the hills are long and lonely That North from South divide, but an added interest-is given them by their author's creed. He was much interested'in the problem of God, and his God is everywhere to be seen, a jolly laughing, humane God, who is in the nbte of bird, word. But He is ineman, to 6, and of all in children: Methinks in Him there dwells a'lway A sea of laughter very deep, Where the leviathans leap, And little children play. at. Q H Hp is a God of laughter— "And if He laughs at fools, why should tt and He is a servant rather than a Lord, making the world a lovely place for the delight of men. Brown was too much a scholar, too e reat a thinker, ev& to be a popular mS i, of lim to-day. But which will retain even a popular . immortality.