Walter Headlam, His Letters and Poems

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Walter George Headlam was born in London upon February 15, 1866.When he died, by a sudden mischance, at the age of forty-two, not Cambridge only, but the world of letters, suffered a loss not easily to be measured. His was a personality singularly complex and exceedingly rare in the history of Intellect. For not only had he made his mark in the academic world as a creative classical critic, who must take his rank with the greatest of the interpreters of Greek thought and language and art, but he combined with the industry and acumen of a scholar the temperament, the individuality, and the achievement of a poet and man of genius. These qualities, rare in the history of literature, still rarer in the history of a university, had made him for the last twenty years one of the most remarkable men in Cambridge. But an individuality such as his, a temperament so intense and many-sided, does not rapidly mature. Time and the experience of years are needed for the harmonising of discordant elements, and the painful working out of a philosophy of life.