Epitaph for Brander Matthews
 

A1ILTON SMITH
 

I MET Brander Marthews in September of 1916, when I
came to Columbia as a graduate student and as a teacher in
the Horace Mann School. The first course for which I reg¬
istered was his "Shakespeare." I knew him until his death on the
last day of March, 1929, in the beginning as his student, and later
as his friend and colleague, and as a guest in his home and at his
table. During the many hours I spent with him, at his lectures,
in meals at the Faculty Club, and in visits—some of them during
his long final illness—to his home, I cannot recall an occasion
when his talk was not stimulating and exciting. And there were
few moments when he was not talking. He himself loved to tell
about the time at dinner when a young lady said, "Pardon me.
Professor Marthews, for interrupting you, but—." "My dear
young lady," he said instantly, "don't apologize. Wherever I am,
nobody can talk without interrupting me!" A'ly experience bears
out the truth of this statement.

Brander talked because he had a lot to say. This doesn't mean
that he just babbled on. To him, talking was an art to be studied.
Sentences should be well-formed, clear, and interesting. Talk
should be informarive, but also gay and amusing. He worked on
his lectures from this point of view—and they showed it. They
seemed to us instructive, delightful, and completely spontaneous.
But I remember one occasion when he forgot where he had
stopped the preceding week, and so repeated the last half hour
of the previous lecture. In the repetition, there were—it seemed
to me—the same pauses, the same sudden recollection of what he
said to Rudyard and what Rudyard said to him, the same little
jokes, the same witty twists and turns of thought. Above all, there
was in him the same unforced enthusiasm. So far as I know,

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