The Deceased Wife's Sister, and My Beautiful Neighbour, v. 3
The Deceased Wife's Sister, and My Beautiful Neighbour, v. 3
By William Clark Russell
5 Nov, 2020
I found Martelli to be more useful to me than I could have expected. He had called himself practical, and he was practical. He was used to the punctilious regularity of schools, to the difficult inattention of pupils; and the habits these experiences
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I found Martelli to be more useful to me than I could have expected. He had called himself practical, and he was practical. He was used to the punctilious regularity of schools, to the difficult inattention of pupils; and the habits these experiences had engendered well qualified him in one sense for the post I had offered. In one sense I say: by which I mean my need of an influence to direct my studies and keep me to them. But in him I missed what I had sought, and would have taken in preference, could I have found. Sympathies he had in abundance, but they were commonplace. He shone indeed; but rather with the borrowed light of letters than the luminous atmosphere of imagination. He could not comprehend me, though he would never appear puzzled. He would miss a delicate implication. In taste he was a sensualist, esteeming the full-blooded, florid, and passionate conceptions of art above her chaste aerial hints and tender moonlit beauties. Yet he was a good and sound scholar. His knowledge of Greek and Latin was singularly exact. Less