ne myself to humbler topics. Whatever else he is,
Henry Scott Holland is, beyond doubt, one of the most delightful people
in the world. In fun and geniality and warm-hearted, hospitality, he
is a worthy successor of Sydney Smith, whose official house he
inhabits; and to those elements of agreeableness he adds certain
others which his famous predecessor could scarcely have claimed.
He has all the sensitiveness of genius, with its sympathy, its
versatility, its unexpected turns, its rapid transitions from grave
to gay, its vivid appreciation of all that is beautiful in art and
nature, literature and life. No man in London, I should think,
has so many and such devoted friends in every class and station;
and those friends acknowledge in him not only the most vivacious
and exhilarating of social companions, but one of the moral forces
which have done most to quicken their consciences and lift their
lives.

* * * * *

By the death of Henry Scott Holland a great light is quenched,[*]
or, to use more Christian language, is merged in "the true Light
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."

[Footnote *: Written in 1918.]

Light is the idea with which my beloved friend is inseparably associated
in my mind. His nature had all the attributes of light--its revealing
power, its cheerfulness, its salubrity, its beauty, its inconceivable
rapidity. He had the quickest intellect that I have ever known. He
saw with a flash into the heart of an argument or a situation. He
diffused joy by his own joy in living; he vanquished morbidity by
his essential wholesomeness; whatever he touched became beautiful
under his handling. "He was not the Light, but he came to bear
witness of that Light," and bore it for seventy years by the mere
force of being what he was. My friendship with Dr. Holland began
in my second term at Oxford, and has lasted without a cloud or a
break from that day to this. He was then twenty-five years old,
and was already a conspicuous figure in the life of the University.
In 1866 he had come up from Eton to Balliol with a high reputation
for goodness and charm, but with no report of special cleverness.
He soon became extremely popular in his own College and outside
it. He rowed and played games and sang, and was recognized as a
delightful companion wherever he went. But all the time a process
of mental development was going on, of which none but his intimate
friends were aware.