"Any Scotch
boy that likes to learn finds the way open to him."
"I am aware of that. But were you really reading Epictetus when we
left you in the park this morning?"
"Yes, sir: why not?"
"In the original?"
"Yes, sir; but not very readily. I am a poor Greek scholar. But my
copy has a rough Latin translation on the opposite page, and that
helps me out. It's not difficult. You would think nothing of it if
it had been Cornelius Nepos, or Cordery's Colloquies. It's only a
better, not a more difficult book."
"I don't know about that. It's not every one who can read Greek
that can understand Epictetus. Tell me what you have learned from
him?"
"That would be hard to do. A man is very ready to forget how he
came first to think of the things he loves best. You see they are
as much a necessity of your being as they are of the man's who
thought them first. I can no more do without the truth than Plato.
It is as much my needful food and as fully mine to possess as his.
His having it, Mr Graham says, was for my sake as well as his own.
--It's just like what Sir Thomas Browne says about the faces of
those we love--that we cannot retain the idea of them because
they are ourselves. Those that help the world must be served like
their master and a good deal forgotten, I fancy.
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