The Henson Journals

[119]

Tuesday, May 23rd, 1922.

I travelled to London by the early train; on the way I read Loeb's translation of the Lives of the Sophists by Philostratus, published at some date between A.D. 230 and A.D. 238. I found this work very entertaining. Occasionally there are good things worth noting, e.g.

"Unless our public utterances and our moral character are in accord, we shall seem, like flutes, to speak with a tongue that is not our own." (p. 49.)

Again, this passage gives food for reflection:–

"When he (sc. Polemo) died he was about fifty–six years old, but this age–limit, though for the other professions it is the beginning of senility, for a sophist still counts as youthfulness, since in this profession a man's knowledge grows more adaptable with advancing age." (p. 135.).

May one say that the clergyman is the modern equivalent of the sophist?

I attended the debate in the House of Lords, where the Allotments Bill was under discussion, and I voted twice with the Government. I dined with Lady Scarbrough, Lady Serena, & Miss Grosvenor.

After dinner Lady S. & I sate & talked in the garden. I wrote to Ella.

[120]

Buckle told me a story about the late Sir William Harcourt, which is worth placing on record. At the beginning of 1886, when the Unionist Party was being constituted to resist the Home Rule proposals of Mr Gladstone, he (Buckle) had a conversation with Harcourt, in which the latter gave utterance to the following remarkable observation:

"If we give self-government to the Irish, we shall certainly after an interval be compelled to re-conquer the island: but we shall stand better with the rest of the world, if before doing so, we have given the Irish what they want."

In the light of what is now happening in Ireland, this rather cynical opinion takes high rank as a political prophecy.

When I stayed with Bishop D'Arcy at Belfast, I remember asking him whether he himself really believed that, in the event of Home Rule, the Protestants in Celtic Ireland would be in danger of actual violence. His answer astonished and impressed me. He explained that Celtic Ireland was really not modern. The moral contrasts of the Middle Ages were exhibited there in savage cruelty, blind fanaticism, fantastic devotion, the unearthly charm of ascetic piety, & the Divine Charity of S. Francis.

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