The Henson Journals

[168]

Thursday, August 5th, 1909.

Empress of Ireland.

A fine morning, but a day degenerating into rain. When I went to my bath the steward called me to see the Allan liner "Corsican", which started with us, & had the advantage of our 14 hours wait at Rimouski. We passed her easily & soon drew away. The next excitement was caused by the appearance of a shoal of porpoises.

The order of the day was a replica of that of its predecessors. I walked & talked with Dr Denny before lunch, & with mine unknown friend afterwards. I read Driver's lectures in the interval, & finished "The Saint".

Our conversation turned on the Cambridge trio. Dr Denny agrees with me in giving the primacy to Hort, & in placing "The Ecclesia" at the head of his writings in decisive importance. Westcott, he considered, was 'more oracular than philosophic'. It was matter of wonderment to him that Westcott should have allowed his commentary on St John to re–appear – edition after edition – without ever so much as alluding to the advancing criticism of the Johannine literature. The posthumous publication of the Geek text with the old notes was, he thought, little less than a fraud on the public. Of all Anglican divines, he thought, Lightfoot was most widely read in Scotland. He himself owed much to Lightfoot & so venerated his memory that he had made a pilgrimage to his grave.

[169]

I observed on the extensive use made of dictionaries in America, & he admitted the fact but added that in Great Britain there was also a quickly extending use. In proof of this he said that no less than 6000 copies of the shorter edition of Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible had been sold before publication. I said that Glover's chapters on Tertullian were in my judgment the best presentation of that divine I knew: & he replied that he had made the same observation in a review which he had contributed to the 'British Weekly'. He says that Robertson Nichol has an immense knowledge, & a marvellously accurate and retentive memory. His ambition is to write a history of English literature in the 19th century, &, if he could get clear of journalism, would set himself seriously to that task. He thinks Nichol is dominated by two convictions, (1) the essential wrongfulness of Establishment, and (2) that Evangelicalism is the essence of Christianity.

After dinner there was a short concert in the first saloon. Judge Mabee presided. I proposed a vote of thanks to him. There was a collection for the Liverpool Sailors' orphan Institution which amounted to over £12.

The stewardess asked me to write my name in her book: & I did so over the sentence from Coleridge:– "Not even terrestrial charts can be made without celestial observations".

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