I PERSONAL AND PARTICULAR

’Perhaps there is something in old age that likes to have a young mind clinging to it.’  Sir George Grey was speaking of the famous people he had known in his youth long, long before.  He struck an inner note of nature which is surely equally valid the other way?  Whenever I think of the remark, I am inclined to discover one reason why I came to know Sir George so well.

I met him, as I have met other characters of English story in our own day.  You go into these great waters, seeking that all who care may know.  You cry across them, answer comes back or it does not, and there endeth the lesson, until the next time.

It was different with Sir George Grey.  He hauled me straight in-board, saying, ’Now, call upon me often, and we’ll talk mankind over.  Going by myself, no two people can meet without being a means of instruction to each other, to say nothing else.  You are where the swing of events must be felt, and I am in the back-water of retirement.  It may entertain us both, to study new subjects under old lights.’

Thus flew many an hour, and many an evening, and the memory of them is green and grateful to me.  Here was an incident, there a reflection, and always it was Sir George Grey intimate, whether in a frame large or small.  It is the rivulets, babbling to the big stream, that really tell its tale, for without them it would not be; and so with the river of life.  Beside me, a scarred veteran looked back upon himself, hailing some venture from the mist of years.  Again, it might be an event on the wing; or the future, and him bending eagerly forward into its sunshine.

We wrote things, he inspiring, I setting down, and by and by I exclaimed:  ‘Why, I am getting, to be quite a depository of your memories and ideas.’  At that he smiled, ‘And who, do you fancy, would thank you for them?’ Thus a portrait of Sir George grew with me, and I was for stroking it down somehow.  ‘Oh well,’ quoth he, ’let’s try and gather together what may be fresh, or suggestive, in my experiences, and yours be the blame.  Whatever you do must have a certain spirit of action—­you know what I mean!—­or nobody will look at it.  You’ll need to whisk along.’

In Froude’s phrase, the life of Sir George Grey had been a romance, and that was the road which caught me.  No wonder, for it was a broad road, in the sense that his whole being was a romance.  He saw things beneath a radiant light, and he saw many which to others would have been invisible.  Nor, was his grasp of them less accurate, because he strained his eye most earnestly for what was most beautiful.  The romantic element in his outlook gave colour, vividness, meaning to the unconsidered trifles—­in fine, you had a chronicle and a seer.

On the one hand, then, I sought for the texts with a likely stir in them; on the other for those of personality, streaked by affairs.  The references were consulted, or Sir George’s own words of old delved among; and from his discourse there sprang a regular series of notes.  ’It’s a kind of task,’ he remarked once, ’that might easily enough lend itself to vain-glory.  We must avoid that.’