Ramage did not collect bric-a-brac like other travellers; he collected
knowledge of humanity and its institutions, such knowledge as
inscriptions reveal. It is good to hear him discoursing upon these
documents in stone, these genealogies of the past, with a pleasingly
sentimental erudition. He likes them not in any dry-as-dust fashion, but
for the light they throw upon the living world of his day. Speaking of
one of them he says: "It is when we come across names connected with men
who have acted an illustrious part in the world's history, that the
fatigues of such a journey as I have undertaken are felt to be
completely repaid." That is the humanist's spirit.
His equipment in the interpretation of these stones and of all else he
picked up in the way of lore and legend was of the proper kind.
Boundless curiosity, first of all. And then, an adequate apparatus of
learning. He knew his classics--knew them so well that he could always
put his finger on those particular passages of theirs which bore upon a
point of interest. We may doubtless be able to supply some apt quotation
from Virgil or Martial. It is quite a different thing remembering, and
collating, references in. Aelian or Pliny or Aristotle or Ptolemy. And
wide awake, withal; not easily imposed upon. He is not of the kind to
swallow the tales of the then fashionable cicerone's. He has critical
dissertations on sites like Cannae and the Bandusian Fountain and
Caudine Forks; and when, at Nola, they opened in his presence a
sepulchre containing some of those painted Greek vases for which the
place is famous, he promptly suspects it to be a "sepulchre prepared for
strangers," and instead of buying the vases allows them to remain where
they are "for more simple or less suspicious travellers.
Pages:
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257