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High Commissioner's Office, Johannesburg.
Jan: 30:: 1902
My dear Murray
Very many thanks for your letter and the book. Nothing has pleased me so much for years as the "Euripides", and I know no translation in English half as good, except the fragment of the 'Cyclops' in Shelley. The book is so intensely 'Yourself' that it brought back to me very really the Glasgow class-room where you used to read your prose translations and I laboured far behind trying to take them down. I like the introductory essay very much: it is most illuminating and convincing. Besides there are two choruses - both
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in the 'Hippolytus' - one beginning "There is a rock-born River' & the other "Could I fly in to some cavern for my hiding" which I think easily among the most beautiful verse written for years. Please pardon my enthusiasm, but the book pleased me very much. I read it in most unsuitable surroundings - travelling across the veld in a mule-waggon, inspecting shipments of Australian cattle
There is one thing I must say. You constantly tremble on the brink of drawing a parable [parallel?] between degenerate Athens & England today, or more concretely
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between Cleon & the ordinary Briton. I am glad you refrain, for it would be unjust & unworthy. You know I am no lover of the demagogue of Empire. But I have realised so deeply how much of poetry & religion the thing means to thousands of honest simple-minded folk all over our possessions that I can only be thankful for it. It is an idea, and Heaven knows these are rare enough in our politics, and there is no rival idea with a hundredth part of its power.
I am writing a book! I could not help it. I am so much in love with this country, & have so many things to say which
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I think ought to be said. It may be out any time in the next 2 years, & I can't find a title. I want to talk about the beauty & mystery of the landscape, the union history, the intricacies of the Boer character, & the racial & economic questions ahead. A funny hotch-potch, but I think it will have a certain unity.
My Bantus have no hankering after Mother Church or Hugh Cecil. They have a kind of ingenuous jungle-book folk-lore, mostly collected by Jacottel in his Contes Populaires des Bassutos.
With kindest regards to Lady Mary & the children & best wishes for the new year
Ever yours
John Buchan
