Byron, Shelley, Matthew Arnold, and the like.  These letters also show that Page, as a relaxation from Greek roots and syntax, was indulging in poetic flights of his own; his efforts, which he encloses in his letters, are mainly imitations of the particular poet in whom he was at the moment interested.  This correspondence also takes Page to Germany, in which country he spent the larger part of the summer of 1877.  This choice of the Fatherland as a place of pilgrimage was probably merely a reflection of the enthusiasm for German educational methods which then prevailed in the United States, especially at Johns Hopkins.  Page’s letters are the usual traveller’s descriptions of unfamiliar customs, museums, libraries, and the like; so far as enlarging his outlook was concerned the experience does not seem to have been especially profitable.

He returned to Baltimore in the autumn of 1877, but only for a few months.  He had pretty definitely abandoned his plan of devoting his life to Greek scholarship.  As a mental stimulus, as a recreation from the cares of life, his Greek authors would always be a first love, as they proved to be; but he had abandoned his early ambition of making them his everyday occupation and means of livelihood.  Of course there was only one career for a man of his leanings, and, more and more, his mind was turning to journalism.  For only one brief period did he again listen to the temptations of a scholar’s existence.  The university of his native state invited him to lecture in the summer school of 1878; he took Shakespeare for his subject, and made so great a success that there was some discussion of his settling down permanently at Chapel Hill in the chair of Greek.  Had the offer definitely been made Page would probably have accepted, but difficulties arose.  Page was no longer orthodox in his religious views; he had long outgrown dogma and could only smile at the recollection that he had once thought of becoming a clergyman.  But a rationalist at the University of North Carolina in 1878 could hardly be endured.  The offer, therefore, fortunately was not made.  Afterward Page was much criticized for having left his native state at a time when it especially needed young men of his type.  It may therefore be recorded that, if there were any blame at all, it rested upon North Carolina.  He refers to his disappointment in a letter in February, 1879—­a letter that proved to be a prophecy.  “I shall some day buy a home,” he says, “where I was not allowed to work for one, and be laid away in the soil that I love.  I wanted to work for the old state; it had no need for it, it seems.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  From “The Southerner,” Chapter I. The first chapter in this novel is practically autobiographical, though fictitious names have been used.]

[Footnote 2:  “The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths.” (1902.)]

[Footnote 3:  “The Southerner,” Chapter I.]