Pater, Walter

Pater, Walter, was born in London, August 4, 1839, and educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Queen's College, Oxford, taking a classical second-class in 1862. He was elected to an open fellowship at Brasenose; has travelled in Italy, France, and Germany; and, both by his subtle critical insight and the exquisite finish of his style, secured a rank among the best prose- writers of his time. With a wise reticence he husbanded his gift; hence all his work maintains the same high level of excellence. His books are Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), a series of essays on art and letters, on such men as Leonardo, Botticelli, Joachim du Bellay, and others, written in exquisitely modulated prose, with faint traces of a conscious daintiness, from which he soon shook himself free; Marius the Epicurean: his Sensations and Ideas (2 vols. 1885), an imaginary biography of a young man brought up in Roman paganism, who passes through varied spiritual experiences, meets Marcus Aurelius himself, and at last, shortly before his unexpected death, makes acquaintance with the mysterious new Eastern religion, yet without being profoundly influenced by it; Imaginary Portraits (1887) of Watteau, Denys l'Auxerrois, and others; Appreciations (1889) of Charles Lamb, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rossetti, Sir Thomas Browne, Blake, and of Style itself; Greek Studies (1895); Miscellaneous Studies (1895) on Raphael, Pascal, North Italian art, certain French cathedrals, with some romantic tales; and Gaston de Latour: An Unfinished Romance (1896). From 1885 on, Pater had a house in Kensington, and divided his time between Oxford and London. He died 30th July 1894. See Gosse's Critical Kit-Kats (1896).