President of the Council, Lord Granville; who was then ill, and had, indeed, but a few days to live. Seeing what his condition was, Wood proposed to withdraw; but the statesman replied that it could not prolong his life to neglect his duty, and then quoted in Greek from the "Iliad," the words of Sarpedon to Glaucus:—"Ah, friend, if, once escaped from this battle, we were for ever to be ageless and immortal, I would not myself fight in the foremost ranks, nor would I send thee into the war that giveth men renown; but now,—since ten thousand fates of death beset us every way, and these no mortal may escape or avoid,—now let us go forward." He repeated the last word, ἴομεν, "let us go forward," several times, says Wood, "with a calm and determinate resignation"; and then, after a pause, asked to hear the Treaty read. That is what I meant by a man recurring, in a crisis of life, to the great thoughts of the literature on which he has been nourished. Or, to give one other example: what a forcible testimony to the hold which this discipline could retain on a congenial spirit is afforded by such a man as the Marquis Wellesley, when, at the close of his career, he addresses his old school in those exquisite Latin elegiacs which can be read in the Chapel of Eton College, where he lies buried,—the lines beginning,
Fortunae rerumque vagis exercitus undis,
In gremium redeo serus, Etona, tuum.
It was Eton, he says, which had taught him to aim
