LITERARY LINKS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 73, 29 March 1937, Page 12

LITERARY LINKS

MEN OF LAST CENTURY

COCKERELL ANECDOTES

In the year that Coleridge and Lamb died there was bom in England one William Morris, destined to be one of

the most remarkable men of any age,

says a writer in the Melbourne "Age." During his entrance examination to Exeter College, Oxford, he found himself seated next to a boy who was to become his life-long friend—Edward Burne-Jones, the famous painter. At Oxford both met Algernon Swinburne, whose speech, like that of his own Thalassius, "was as a burning fire."

They both later came under the' influence of John Ruskin, who had just left Oxford, and was soon to become the greatest English art critic of his era, and one of the most powerful of all social reformers. All three were influenced by Dante Gabriel Rpsetti's pre-Raphaelite brotherhood (which included Holman Hunt and Sir J. Millais), whose motto was "the hand is to paint the soul." All were bound together in the quest of the religion of beauty.

Sir Sydney Cockerell, who has recently left Melbourne on his return to England, where he will act as art adviser to the Felton Bequest, was secretary to William Morris, and, as a result, knew Swinburne, Ruskin, and BurneJones. He remembers Morris declining the Poet Laureateship on the grounds that "he was not a ceremonial writer of official verse," and he acted las secretary to the famous Kelmscott Press, which Morris founded in 1890, a few years before, in companay with Bernard Shaw and H. M. Hyndman, he published the manifesto of the English Socialists. MAN OF GREAT STRENGTH. When interviewed just before he left Melbourne, Sir S. CockerelV said he could recollect nobody who was a j greater craftsman in all he undertook | than Morris. "He was a man of great physical and intellectual strength and courage," said Sir Sydney Cockerell. "He impressed one like the west wind. His char t ;er was full of the most noble aspirations, and there was no pettiness in him." :. Of Ruskin, who brought new music to the English language, and who agitated all his life for all the great social reforms which took place in the twentieth century—after his death—and who pioneered the campaign against slums and industrial sweating, Sir Sydney Cockerell has the most lively recollection. . "I shall never forget," he said, "the moments when Ruskin read to me chapters of his autobiography." Those who have read some of these prose-poems which Ruskin delivered in the form"of lectures may wonder if i he expounded them as wonderfully as they were written. Sir S. Cockerell. can reassure them. "He carried people I off their feet by his magic," said Sir Sydney Cockerell when questioned on this-point and he added that Ruskin had a" less .'masculine but more affectionate nature than Morris, who, on the contrary, was inclined to be undemonstrative and direct. Of Swinburne, the . auburn-haired genius, Sir Sydney Cockerell said that when he knew him he had become very deaf, but he would sometimes indulge in a brilliant monologue. If Shelley, for instance, or some other .hero of his,.like,Victor Hugo or Mazzini, was the subject of conversation, he would suddenly break into a long enchanting speech. "I have heard Swinburne read his poetry in a peculiar but very impressive sing-song," he said.. EXECUTOR OF HARDY. '"'•■•' Sir S. Cockerell, who was the literary executor of Thomas Hardy, was then asked if Hardy was as gloomy as some of his poetry seemed to suggest. "Not at all," was Sir Sydney Cockerell's emphatic answer. "He was thoughtful, certainly, but I could detect none of that despondency which seems'to appear at times in his work," Kipling he found as robust as one would expect. "A delightful man, full of animation," was how Sir Sydney Cockerell.described him. Sir Sydney Cockerell was with Robert Bridges on the day he was appointed Poet Laureate. Asked if he thought Bridges's "Testament of Beauty" with its "measureless music," contained his philosophy, Sir Sydney Cockerell said, "Yes; all of it that is possible to express." Of living poets, Sir Sydney Cockerell knows W. B. Yeats, John Masefield, Laurence Binyon (with whom he was at school), and Walter de la Mare.

When asked if he did not think Yeats had a greater claim to the Poet Laureateship than Masefield, Sir Sydney. Cockerell said:."Yes, and I know Masefield himself would be the first to admit it." •

Thus in a personal way, through authors dead and.living, is brought to us in the life of one who is now so intimately connected with the cultural lite of Melbourne some glimpses of those who had added more glory to the immortality and eternal beauty of English literature.

Yet, so swift is the material progress of today, that the young generation is inclined to think of Ruskin and Morris as one with Plato and Aristotle. It is as well sometimes to remember that Wordsworth welcomed the French revolution, and lived to speak to Morris who went to Paris to celebrate the 100 th anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.

But Sir Sydney Cockerell can bring this point out better.

"My mother," he said, "sat on Thackeray's knee as a child, and was present when Dickens and Thackeray walked together at the funeral of Douglas Jerrold. I have just received a letter (in Melbourne) from a relative in England who was once spoken to by the Duke of Wellington."