Sussex villages—clusters of lowly habitations, some thatched, some tiled, some abutting the street, some standing angularly towards it, all built of flint or boulders. A barn, a stable, a circular pigeon-house, centuries old, with all its denizens (direct descendants of the old manorial pigeons which lived here in the days of the Plantagenets), and an antique gable or two, peer out among the tall elms.' We fancied we met Mr. Lower close by Lewes Castle. I sketched on the margin of my Murray the ample forehead of the unknown, beneath an archaic hat, the keen observant eyes behind archaic spectacles; and shall leave it by will to the Sussex Archæological Society."[1]
When in his prime, his constant devotion to his work, scholastic, literary, archaeological, kept him too much, it may be, engaged and, always talking about the holidays he meant to, but did not, take, when his school vacations arrived, one who knew his habits, Mr. Joseph Ellis, of Brighton, who, as his special intimates only know, is an admirable inditer of good-humoured flings at the amiable foibles of his acquaintances, "poked his fun" at his Lewes friend after the following facetious fashion:—
Mark Antony Lower enjoys his vacation,
But says there's no time in it for recreation !
And then, for long months, he pursues his vocation,
Like horse in a mill, without any cessation ;
Hence a problem involving no small botheration,
Namely:—which is Vocation, and which is Vacation ?
For the difference here between vo and va,
Should value the same as between work and play,
Or even as much as between do and say.
But whether in vo, or whether in va,
Or whether in work or whether in play,
Or whether in do, or whether in say,
The metamorphosis is with O and A:—
So with Lower—a slave who ne'er kicks off his fetters—
Call it work, call it play, 'tis a question of Letters![2]
- ↑ The author of this pleasant paper, "Through Sussex," was the late Mortimer Collins, who died in July, 1876, and whose vigorous, yet remarkably graceful, vers de société gave such a charm to the columns of Punch. H. C.
- ↑ Mr. Ellis has since, and with marked success, turned his leisure to themes of a higher character. See The Times of 10th Feb. 1877, for a most appreciative notice of his "Cæsar in Egypt, and other poems." H. C.
