FOUR LOVERS OF TRUTH.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12869, 22 September 1904, Page 4

FOUR LOVERS OF TRUTH.

At the summer graduation ceremony in Edinburgh University, the degree of LL.D. was conferred, among others, on Mr John Morley and Sir W. HelyUulchinson, Governor of Cape Colony. Sir Ludovic Grant, in presenting Air Morley, said that in the great republic of letters no living English writer lick! a position of prouder pre-eminence than that which his sovereign achievements had secured for Mr John Morley. His literary activity might be dated from 1867, when he became editor of the “Fortnightly Review,” ami gathered under his limner a company of writers whose names were household words to-1 day. His published works formed a little library in themselves, while for j brilliance and beauty of style, constructive skill, critical acumen, and I elevation of thought they were not I surpassed by any writings hi the lan- ■ guage, and justified the assertion that j he was the greatest living master of \ English prose. Mr Jlorley had found i his favourite theme in the lives of j those who had risen to fame in the j sphere of practical statesmanship, or in I that of State theory. In Ills life of: Gladstone the Metropolitan University ; of Scotland congratulate! him on the i creation of a masterpiece which would ! prove as imperishable, they believed, j as the monuments created by the genius ! of Bowsell and Lockhart. I Mr Morley, at the luncheon to the ! new honorary graduates, said he asked himself at times whether their University system (ended entirely to promote the liberty of mind which was the marked distinction between the really-educated man and the self-edu-cated man. He had been assured by a friend that there were not more than four prominent men who were really lovers of truth, "I mean,” he added, “men who are free from the imprisonment of formula; I mean men who are tolerably free, tolerably detached from the affairs of party in Church and State, with width of apprehension, power of comprehension, which, after all, is the true aim of culture.”