Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/328



further pursuit of it is no irksome task, but has become to them one of the chief pleasures of life. The busiest man can find some leisure for congenial studies, and even old age delights in "a renewal of acquaintance with the favorite studies and favorite authors of youth." How many illustrations of the truth of this might be quoted from the lives of English Statesmen. Take one of the latest examples.

Look at Lord Derby, the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, who for more than quarter of a century has taken an active part sometimes in the administration of public affairs, always in the busy turmoil of political life, yet has always found leisure to cultivate the classical studies of his youth, and has in his old age given to the world an admirable translation of the Iliad, in the preface to which he assures us that the task has been his most delightful recreation. These, gentlemen, are the examples which we desire to hold up to our graduates for imitation. How great a triumph it would be for one of you, even though it were the work of a life, to produce a commendable translation in your mother-tongue of any one of our great English classics. How signal would be the benefit conferred upon your country. How proud would this University be of your achievement!

But, on the other hand, gentlemen, this one thing is certain, that you cannot stand still where you are. If you abandon your studies now, you will assuredly this time next year be less worthy of your degrees than you are now; and, the following year, less worthy still; and, in a few years, probably not worthy of those degrees at all. The very title you have now won may suffice to suggest to you that this is but a step in your career, and that unless you are content to retrograde you must be prepared to make the necessary effort to ensure further progress. Do you remember that Bacon, in his "Advancement of Learning," points out this continual effort at self-improvement as constituting the essential difference between the learned and the unlearned man? He says that "Learning disposeth the. constitution of the mind not to be fixed or settled in the defects thereof, but still to be capable and susceptible of growth and reformation. For the unlearned man knows not what it is to descend into himself or to call himself to account; nor the pleasure of that suavissima vita indies sentire se fieri meliorem. The good parts he hath, he will learn to show to the full and use them dexterously, but not much to increase them : the faults he hath, he will learn how to hide and colour them, but not much to amend them : like an ill-mower that mows