Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/389

 and I were close friends; with countless differences of opinion, we never quarreled; with opposite views of the line of history and of the value of character, we never went into controversy; his letters were a delight and honour to me; I believe that my visits were a pleasure and in some way a comfort to him. In the joint dedication of his book I confess that I received a compliment which I place on a level with the highest honours I have ever received.

I am tempted to modify the excessive dryness, as the Edinburgh Reviewer puts it, of my discourse, by telling the story of our first introduction to one another, chiefly because it has been made the subject of a myth which has made us both a little, or not a little ridiculous. Some of you I dare say remember a paragraph that went the round of the September papers years ago; and told how two persons, a stout and pompous professor and a bright ascetic young divine, met in a railway carriage; how the burly professor aired his erudition by a little history lecture (an anticipation of the informal instruction of the Commissioners) on every object of interest that was passed on the road, and how each of his assumptions and assertions was capped by an answer from the ascetic divine which showed that he knew it all and knew it better. The professor at last, exasperated by the rejoinders, broke into a parody of the famous address of Erasmus, 'aut Morus aut diabolus,' substituting for Morus 'Johnny Green.' Could this be true? It was in 1863 that we met; I was not yet a professor, he had not begun to wear the air of an ascetic. We were invited to Wells, to a meeting of the Somerset Archaeological Society, to stay with a common friend whom you will have no difficulty in identifying. I was told, 'if you leave the station at two you will meet Green, and possibly Dimock,' the biographer of S. Hugh whom I knew already. I knew by description the sort of man I was to meet; I recognised him as he got into the Wells carriage, holding in his hand a volume of Renan. I said to myself, 'if I can hinder, he shall not read that book.' We sat opposite and fell immediately into conversation. I dare say that I aired my erudition so far as to tell him that