Ionica

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William Johnson)
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Title: Ionica
Author: William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
Release Date: June 8, 2007 [EBook #21766]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IONICA ***
Produced by David Widger
IONICA
BY
WILLIAM CORY
(AKA Johnson)
WITH BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY
ARTHUR C. BENSON FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE
THIRD EDITION
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN

156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1905
NOTE
William Johnson published in 1858 a slender volume bound in green
cloth, (Smith, Elder & Co.) which was entitled "Ionica," and which
comprised forty-eight poems.
In 1877 he printed privately a little paper-covered book (Cambridge
University Press), entitled "Ionica II," containing twenty-five poems.
This book is a rare bibliographical curiosity. It has neither titlepage nor
index; it bears no author's name; and it is printed without punctuation,
on a theory of the author's, spaces being left, instead of stops, to
indicate pauses.
In 1891 he published a book, "Ionica" (George Allen), which contained
most of the contents of the two previous volumes, together with some
pieces not previously published--eighty-five poems in all.
The present volume is a reprint of the 1891 volume; but it has been
thought well to include, in an appendix, certain of the poems which
appeared in one or other of the first two issues, but were omitted from
the 1891 issue, together with a little Greek lyric, with its English
equivalent, from the "Letters and Journals."
The poems from page 1 to page 104, Desiderato to All that was
possible, appeared in the 1858 volume, together with those on pages
211 to 216, To the Infallible, The Swimmer's Wish, and An Apology.
The poems from page 105 to page 162, Scheveningen Avenue to
L'Oiseau Bleu, appeared in the 1877 volume, together with those on
pages 217 and 218, Notre Dame and In Honour of Matthew Prior. The
remainder of the poems, from page 163 to page 210, appeared in the
1891 volume for the first time. The dates subjoined to the poems are
those which he himself added, and indicate the date of composition.
INTRODUCTION

WILLIAM CORY (Johnson) was born at Torrington in Devonshire, on
January 9, 1823. He was the son of Charles William Johnson, a
merchant, who retired at the early age of thirty, with a modest
competence, and married his cousin, Theresa Furse, of Halsdon, near
Torrington, to whom he had long been attached. He lived a quiet,
upright, peaceable life at Torrington, content with little, and
discharging simple, kindly, neighbourly duties, alike removed from
ambition and indolence. William Cory had always a deep love of his
old home, a strong sense of local sanctities and tender associations. "I
hope you will always feel," his mother used to say, "wherever you live,
that Torrington belongs to you." He said himself, in later years, "I want
to be a Devon man and a Torrington man." His memory lingered over
the vine-shaded verandah, the jessamine that grew by the balustrade of
the steps, the broad-leaved myrtle that covered the wall of the little
yard.
The boy was elected on the foundation at Eton in 1832, little guessing
that it was to be his home for forty years. He worked hard at school,
became a first-rate classical scholar, winning the Newcastle
Scholarship in 1841, and being elected Scholar of King's in 1842. He
seems to have been a quiet, retiring boy, with few intimate friends,
respected for his ability and his courtesy, living a self-contained,
bookish life, yet with a keen sense of school patriotism--though he had
few pleasant memories of his boyhood.
Honours came to him fast at Cambridge. He won the Chancellor's
English Medal with a poem on Plato in 1843, the Craven Scholarship in
1844. In those days Kingsmen did not enter for the Tripos, but received
a degree, without examination, by ancient privilege. He succeeded to a
Fellowship in 1845, and in the same year was appointed to a
Mastership at Eton by Dr. Hawtrey. At Cambridge he seems to have
read widely, to have thought much, and to have been interested in
social questions. Till that time he had been an unreflecting Tory and a
strong High Churchman, but he now adopted more Liberal principles,
and for the rest of his life was a convinced Whig. The underlying
principle of Whiggism, as he understood it, was a firm faith in human
reason. Thus, in a letter of 1875, he represents