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Title: Lambkin's Remains

Author: Hilaire Belloc

Release date: August 21, 2021 [eBook #66103]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: J. C. R, 1900

Credits: Tim Lindell, Benjamin Fluehr and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAMBKIN'S REMAINS ***




                           LAMBKIN’S REMAINS

                                BY H. B.

           _Author of “The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts,” etc_


                              PUBLISHED BY
                   THE PROPRIETORS OF THE _J.C.R._ AT
                              J. VINCENT’S
                         96, HIGH STREET OXFORD

                                  1900


_Lambkin on “Sleep” appeared in “The Isis.” It is reprinted here by
kind permission of the Proprietors. The majority of the remaining
pieces were first published in “The J. C. R.”_

[_All rights reserved._]




                               DEDICATION


                                   TO

                          THE REPUBLICAN CLUB

                            I AM DETERMINED
                                   TO
                                DEDICATE
                               THIS BOOK
                     AND NOTHING SHALL TURN ME FROM
                               MY PURPOSE.




DEDICATORY ODE.


    I mean to write with all my strength
      (It lately has been sadly waning),
    A ballad of enormous length--
      Some parts of which will need explaining.[1]

    Because (unlike the bulk of men,
      Who write for fame and public ends),
    I turn a lax and fluent pen
      To talking of my private friends.[2]

    For no one, in our long decline,
      So dusty, spiteful and divided,
    Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,
      Or loved them half as much as I did.

           *       *       *       *       *

    The Freshman ambles down the High,
      In love with everything he sees,
    He notes the clear October sky,
      He sniffs a vigorous western breeze.

    “Can this be Oxford? This the place”
      (He cries), “of which my father said
    The tutoring was a damned disgrace,
      The creed a mummery, stuffed and dead?

    “Can it be here that Uncle Paul
      Was driven by excessive gloom,
    To drink and debt, and, last of all,
      To smoking opium in his room?

    “Is it from here the people come,
      Who talk so loud, and roll their eyes,
    And stammer? How extremely rum!
      How curious! What a great surprise.

    “Some influence of a nobler day
      Than theirs (I mean than Uncle Paul’s),
    Has roused the sleep of their decay,
      And decked with light their ancient walls.

    “O! dear undaunted boys of old,
      Would that your names were carven here,
    For all the world in stamps of gold,
      That I might read them and revere.

    “Who wrought and handed down for me
      This Oxford of the larger air,
    Laughing, and full of faith, and free,
      With youth resplendent everywhere.”

    Then learn: thou ill-instructed, blind,
      Young, callow, and untutored man,
    Their private names were----[3]
      Their club was called REPUBLICAN.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Where on their banks of light they lie,
      The happy hills of Heaven between,
    The Gods that rule the morning sky
      Are not more young, nor more serene

    Than were the intrepid Four that stand,
      The first who dared to live their dream,
    And on this uncongenial land
      To found the Abbey of Theleme.

    We kept the Rabelaisian plan:[4]
      We dignified the dainty cloisters
    With Natural Law, the Rights of Man,
      Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters.

    The library was most inviting:
      The books upon the crowded shelves
    Were mainly of our private writing:
      We kept a school and taught ourselves.

    We taught the art of writing things
      On men we still should like to throttle:
    And where to get the blood of kings
      At only half-a-crown a bottle.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Eheu Fugaces! Postume!
      (An old quotation out of mode);
    My coat of dreams is stolen away,
      My youth is passing down the road.

           *       *       *       *       *

    The wealth of youth, we spent it well
      And decently, as very few can.
    And is it lost? I cannot tell;
      And what is more, I doubt if you can.

    The question’s very much too wide,
      And much too deep, and much too hollow,
    And learned men on either side
      Use arguments I cannot follow.

    They say that in the unchanging place,
      Where all we loved is always dear,
    We meet our morning face to face,
      And find at last our twentieth year....

    They say, (and I am glad they say),
      It is so; and it may be so:
    It may be just the other way,
      I cannot tell. But this I know:

    From quiet homes and first beginning,
      Out to the undiscovered ends,
    There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,
      But laughter and the love of friends.

           *       *       *       *       *

    But something dwindles, oh! my peers,
      And something cheats the heart and passes,
    And Tom that meant to shake the years
      Has come to merely rattling glasses.

    And He, the Father of the Flock,
      Is keeping Burmesans in order,
    An exile on a lonely rock
      That overlooks the Chinese border.

    And One (myself I mean--no less),
      Ah!--will Posterity believe it--
    Not only don’t deserve success,
      But hasn’t managed to achieve it.

    Not even this peculiar town
      Has ever fixed a friendship firmer,
    But--one is married, one’s gone down,
      And one’s a Don, and one’s in Burmah.

           *       *       *       *       *

    And oh! the days, the days, the days,
      When all the four were off together:
    The infinite deep of summer haze,
      The roaring boast of autumn weather!

           *       *       *       *       *

    I will not try the reach again,
      I will not set my sail alone,
    To moor a boat bereft of men
      At Yarnton’s tiny docks of stone.

    But I will sit beside the fire,
      And put my hand before my eyes,
    And trace, to fill my heart’s desire,
      The last of all our Odysseys.

    The quiet evening kept her tryst:
      Beneath an open sky we rode,
    And mingled with a wandering mist
      Along the perfect Evenlode.

    The tender Evenlode that makes
      Her meadows hush to hear the sound
    Of waters mingling in the brakes,
      And binds my heart to English ground.

    A lovely river, all alone,
      She lingers in the hills and holds
    A hundred little towns of stone,
      Forgotten in the western wolds.

           *       *       *       *       *

    I dare to think (though meaner powers
      Possess our thrones, and lesser wits
    Are drinking worser wine than ours,
      In what’s no longer Austerlitz)

    That surely a tremendous ghost,
      The brazen-lunged, the bumper-filler,
    Still sings to an immortal toast,
      The Misadventures of the Miller.

    The vasty seas are hardly bar
      To men with such a prepossession;
    We were? Why then, by God, we _are_--
      Order! I call the club to session!

    You do retain the song we set,
      And how it rises, trips and scans?
    You keep the sacred memory yet,
      Republicans? Republicans?

    You know the way the words were hurled,
      To break the worst of fortune’s rub?
    I give the toast across the world,
      And drink it, “Gentlemen: the Club.”




CONTENTS.


                                                      PAGE

          DEDICATORY ODE                                 v

          PREFACE                                       xv

       I. INTRODUCTORY                                   1

      II. LAMBKIN’S NEWDIGATE                           14

     III. SOME REMARKS ON LAMBKIN’S PROSE STYLE         22

      IV. LAMBKIN’S ESSAY ON “SUCCESS”                  28

       V. LAMBKIN ON “SLEEP”                            37

      VI. LAMBKIN’S ADVICE TO FRESHMEN                  42

     VII. LAMBKIN’S LECTURE ON “RIGHT”                  51

    VIII. LAMBKIN’S SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE              58

      IX. LAMBKIN’S ADDRESS TO THE LEAGUE OF PROGRESS   72

       X. LAMBKIN’S LEADER                              83

      XI. LAMBKIN’S REMARKS ON THE END OF TERM          88

     XII. LAMBKIN’S ARTICLE ON THE NORTH-WEST CORNER
            OF THE MOSAIC PAVEMENT OF THE ROMAN VILLA
            AT BIGNOR                                   95

    XIII. LAMBKIN’S SERMON                             104

     XIV. LAMBKIN’S OPEN LETTER TO CHURCHMEN           114

      XV. LAMBKIN’S LETTER TO A FRENCH FRIEND          123

     XVI. INTERVIEW WITH MR. LAMBKIN                   132




PREFACE


The preparation of the ensuing pages has been a labour of love, and
has cost me many an anxious hour. “Of the writing of books,” says the
learned Psalmist (or more probably a Syro-Chaldæic scribe of the third
century) “there is no end”; and truly it is a very solemn thought
that so many writers, furnishing the livelihood of so many publishers,
these in their turn supporting so many journals, reviews and magazines,
and these last giving bread to such a vast army of editors, reviewers,
and what not--I say it is a very solemn thought that this great mass
of people should be engaged upon labour of this nature; labour which,
rightly applied, might be of immeasurable service to humanity, but
which is, alas! so often diverted into useless or even positively
harmful channels: channels upon which I could write at some length,
were it not necessary for me, however, to bring this reflection to a
close.

A fine old Arabic poem--probably the oldest complete literary work in
the world--(I mean the Comedy which we are accustomed to call the Book
of Job)[5] contains hidden away among its many treasures the phrase,
“Oh! that mine enemy had written a book!” This craving for literature,
which is so explicable in a primitive people, and the half-savage
desire that the labour of writing should fall upon a foeman captured in
battle, have given place in the long process of historical development
to a very different spirit. There is now, if anything, a superabundance
of literature, and an apology is needed for the appearance of such a
work as this, nor, indeed, would it have been brought out had it not
been imagined that Lambkin’s many friends would give it a ready sale.

Animaxander, King of the Milesians, upon being asked by the Emissary
of Atarxessus what was, in his opinion, the most wearying thing in the
world, replied by cutting off the head of the messenger, thus outraging
the religious sense of a time to which guests and heralds were sacred,
as being under the special protection of Ζεύς (pronounced “Tsephs”).

Warned by the awful fate of the sacrilegious monarch, I will put a term
to these opening remarks. My book must be its own preface, I would that
the work could be also its own publisher, its own bookseller, and its
own reviewer.

It remains to me only to thank the many gentlemen who have aided me
in my task with the loan of letters, scraps of MSS., portraits, and
pieces of clothing--in fine, with all that could be of interest in
illustrating Lambkin’s career. My gratitude is especially due to Mr.
Binder, who helped in part of the writing; to Mr. Cook, who was kind
enough to look over the proofs; and to Mr. Wallingford, Q.C., who very
kindly consented to receive an advance copy. I must also thank the
Bishop of Bury for his courteous sympathy and ever-ready suggestion; I
must not omit from this list M. Hertz, who has helped me with French,
and whose industry and gentlemanly manners are particularly pleasing.

I cannot close without tendering my thanks in general to the printers
who have set up this book, to the agencies which have distributed it,
and to the booksellers, who have put it upon their shelves; I feel a
deep debt of gratitude to a very large number of people, and that is a
pleasant sensation for a man who, in the course of a fairly successful
career, has had to give (and receive) more than one shrewd knock.

  THE CHAPLAINCY,
  BURFORD COLLEGE,
  OXFORD.

P.S.--I have consulted, in the course of this work, Liddell and
Scott’s _Larger Greek Lexicon_, Smith’s _Dictionary of Antiquities_,
Skeats’ _Etymological Dictionary_, _Le Dictionnaire Franco-Anglais,
et Anglo-Français_, of Boileau, Curtis’ _English Synonyms_, Buffle on
_Punctuation_, and many other authorities which will be acknowledged in
the text.




Lambkin’s Remains

_Being the unpublished works of J. A. Lambkin, M.A. sometime Fellow of
Burford College_




I.

INTRODUCTORY


It is without a trace of compunction or regret that I prepare to edit
the few unpublished essays, sermons and speeches of my late dear
friend, Mr. Lambkin. On the contrary, I am filled with a sense that
my labour is one to which the clearest interests of the whole English
people call me, and I have found myself, as the work grew under my
hands, fulfilling, if I may say so with due modesty, a high and noble
duty. I remember Lambkin himself, in one of the last conversations I
had with him, saying with the acuteness that characterised him, “The
world knows nothing of its greatest men.” This pregnant commentary upon
human affairs was, I admit, produced by an accident in the _Oxford
Herald_ which concerned myself. In a description of a Public Function
my name had been mis-spelt, and though I was deeply wounded and
offended, I was careful (from a feeling which I hope is common to all
of us) to make no more than the slightest reference to this insult.

The acute eye of friendship and sympathy, coupled with the instincts of
a scholar and a gentleman, perceived my irritation, and in the evening
Lambkin uttered the memorable words that I have quoted. I thanked him
warmly, but, if long acquaintance had taught him my character, so had
it taught me his. I knew the reticence and modesty of my colleague,
the almost morbid fear that vanity (a vice which he detested) might be
imputed to him on account of the exceptional gifts which he could not
entirely ignore or hide; and I was certain that the phrase which he
constructed to heal my wound was not without some reference to his own
unmerited obscurity.

The world knows nothing of its greatest men! Josiah Lambkin! from
whatever Cypress groves of the underworld which environs us when on
dark winter evenings in the silence of our own souls which nothing can
dissolve though all attunes to that which nature herself perpetually
calls us, always, if we choose but to remember, your name shall be
known wherever the English language and its various dialects are
spoken. The great All-mother has made me the humble instrument, and I
shall perform my task as you would have desired it in a style which
loses half its evil by losing all its rhetoric; I shall pursue my way
and turn neither to the right nor to the left, but go straight on in
the fearless old English fashion till it is completed.

Josiah Abraham Lambkin was born of well-to-do and gentlemanly parents
in Bayswater[6] on January 19th, 1843. His father, at the time of his
birth, entertained objections to the great Public Schools, largely
founded upon his religious leanings, which were at that time opposed
to the ritual of those institutions. In spite therefore of the
vehement protestations of his mother (who was distantly connected on
the maternal side with the Cromptons of Cheshire) the boy passed his
earlier years under the able tutorship of a Nonconformist divine, and
later passed into the academy of Dr. Whortlebury at Highgate.[7]

Of his school-days he always spoke with some bitterness. He appears
to have suffered considerably from bullying, and the Headmaster,
though a humane, was a blunt man, little fitted to comprehend the
delicate nature with which he had to deal. On one occasion the nervous
susceptible lad found it necessary to lay before him a description of
the treatment to which he had been subjected by a younger and smaller,
but much stronger boy; the pedagogue’s only reply was to flog Lambkin
heartily with a light cane, “inflicting,” as he himself once told me,
“such exquisite agony as would ever linger in his memory.” Doubtless
this teacher of the old school thought he was (to use a phrase then
common) “making a man of him,” but the object was not easily to be
attained by brutal means. Let us be thankful that these punishments
have nearly disappeared from our modern seminaries.

When Josiah was fifteen years of age, his father, having prospered
in business, removed to Eaton Square and bought an estate in Surrey.
The merchant’s mind, which, though rough, was strong and acute,
had meanwhile passed through a considerable change in the matter
of religion; and as the result of long but silent self-examination
he became the ardent supporter of a system which he had formerly
abhorred. It was therefore determined to send the lad to one of the
two great Universities, and though Mrs. Lambkin’s second cousins, the
Crumptons, had all been to Cambridge, Oxford was finally decided upon
as presenting the greater social opportunities at the time.[8]

Here, then, is young Lambkin, in his nineteenth year, richly but
soberly dressed, and eager for the new life that opens before him. He
was entered at Burford College on October the 15th, 1861; a date which
is, by a curious coincidence, exactly thirty-six years, four months,
and two days from the time in which I pen these lines.

Of his undergraduate career there is little to be told. Called by his
enemies “The Burford Bounder,” or “dirty Lambkin,” he yet acquired the
respect of a small but choice circle who called him by his own name. He
was third _proxime accessit_ for the Johnson prize in Biblical studies,
and would undoubtedly have obtained (or been mentioned for) the
Newdigate, had he not been pitted against two men of quite exceptional
poetic gifts--the present editor of “The Investor’s Sure Prophet,” and
Mr. Hound, the well-known writer on “Food Statistics.”

He took a good Second-class in Greats in the summer of 1864, and was
immediately elected to a fellowship at Burford. It was not known at the
time that his father had become a bankrupt through lending large sums
at a high rate of interest to a young heir without security, trusting
to the necessity under which his name and honour would put him to pay.
In the shipwreck of the family fortunes, the small endowment was a
veritable godsend to Josiah, who but for this recognition of his merits
would have been compelled to work for his living.

As it was, his peculiar powers were set free to plan his great
monograph on “Being,” a work which, to the day of his death, he
designed not only to write but to publish.

There was not, of course, any incident of note in the thirty years
during which he held his fellowship. He did his duty plainly as it lay
before him, occasionally taking pupils, and after the Royal Commission,
even giving lectures in the College hall. He was made Junior Dean in
October, 1872, Junior Bursar in 1876, and Bursar in 1880, an office
which he held during the rest of his life.

In this capacity no breath of calumny ever touched him. His character
was spotless. He never offered or took compensations of any kind, and
no one has hinted that his accounts were not accurately and strictly
kept.

He never allowed himself to be openly a candidate for the Wardenship of
the College, but it is remarkable that he received one vote at each of
the three elections held in the twenty years of his residence.

He passed peacefully away just after Hall on the Gaudy Night of last
year. When his death was reported, an old scout, ninety-two years of
age, who had grown deaf in the service of the College, burst into tears
and begged that the name might be more clearly repeated to him, as he
had failed to catch it. On hearing it he dried his eyes, and said he
had never known a better master.

His character will, I think, be sufficiently evident in the writings
which I shall publish. He was one of nature’s gentlemen; reticent,
just, and full of self-respect. He hated a scene, and was careful to
avoid giving rise even to an argument. On the other hand, he was most
tenacious of his just rights, though charitable to the deserving poor,
and left a fortune of thirty-five thousand pounds.

In the difficult questions which arise from the superior rank of
inferiors he displayed a constant tact and judgment. It is not always
easy for a tutor to control and guide the younger members of the
aristocracy without being accused of pitiless severity on the one
hand or of gross obsequiousness on the other. Lambkin, to his honour,
contrived to direct with energy and guide without offence the men upon
whom England’s greatness depends.

He was by no means a snob--snobbishness was not in him. On the
other hand, he was equally removed from what is almost worse than
snobbishness--the morbid terror of subservience which possesses some
ill-balanced minds.

His attitude was this: that we are compelled to admit the aristocratic
quality of the English polity and should, while decently veiling
its cruder aspects, enjoy to the full the benefits which such a
constitution confers upon society and upon our individual selves.

By a genial observance of such canons he became one of the most
respected among those whom the chances of an academic career presented
to him as pupils or parents. He was the guest and honoured friend of
the Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of Pembroke, the Duke of Limerick
(“Mad Harry”), and the Duke of Lincoln; he had also the honour of
holding a long conversation with the Duke of Berkshire, whom he met
upon the top of an omnibus in Piccadilly and instantly recognised. He
possessed letters, receipts or communications from no less than four
Marquises, one Marquess, ten Barons, sixteen Baronets and one hundred
and twenty County Gentlemen. I must not omit Lord Grumbletooth, who had
had commercial dealings with his father, and who remained to the end of
his life a cordial and devoted friend.[9]

His tact in casual conversation was no less remarkable than his general
_savoir faire_ in the continuous business of life. Thus upon one
occasion a royal personage happened to be dining in Hall. It was some
days after the death of Mr. Hooligan, the well-known Home Rule leader.
The distinguished guest, with perhaps a trifle of licence, turned to
Lambkin and said “Well, Mr. Bursar, what do you think of Hooligan?” We
observed a respectful silence and wondered what reply Lambkin would
give in these difficult circumstances. The answer was like a bolt from
the blue, “De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” said the Classical Scholar, and
a murmur of applause went round the table.

Indeed his political views were perhaps the most remarkable feature
in a remarkable character. He died a convinced and staunch Liberal
Unionist, and this was the more striking as he was believed by all his
friends to be a Conservative until the introduction of Mr. Gladstone’s
famous Bill in 1885.

In the delicate matter of religious controversy his own writings must
describe him, nor will I touch here upon a question which did not rise
to any considerable public importance until after his death. Perhaps
I may be permitted to say this much; he was a sincere Christian in
the true sense of the word, attached to no narrow formularies, but
following as closely as he could the system of Seneca, stiffened (as it
were) with the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, though he was never so
violent as to attempt a practice of what that extreme stoic laid down
in theory.

Neither a ritualist nor a low-churchman, he expressed his attitude
by a profound and suggestive silence. These words only escaped him
upon one single occasion. Let us meditate upon them well in the stormy
discussions of to-day: “Medio tutissimus ibis.”

His learning and scholarship, so profound in the dead languages, was
exercised with singular skill and taste in the choice he made of modern
authors.

He was ignorant of Italian, but thoroughly conversant with the
French classics, which he read in the admirable translations of the
‘Half-crown Series.’ His principal reading here was in the works of
Voltaire, wherein, however, he confessed, “He could find no style,
and little more than blasphemous ribaldry.” Indeed, of the European
languages he would read German with the greatest pleasure, confining
himself chiefly to the writings of Lessing, Kant, and Schiller. His
mind acquired by this habit a singular breadth and fecundity, his style
a kind of rich confusion, and his speech (for he was able to converse
a little in that idiom) was strengthened by expressions of the deepest
philosophic import; a habit which gave him a peculiar and individual
power over his pupils, who mistook the Teutonic gutturals for violent
objurgations.

Such was the man, such the gentleman, the true ‘Hglaford,’ the modern
‘Godgebidden Eorldemanthingancanning,’ whose inner thoughts shall unroll
themselves in the pages that follow.




II.

Lambkin’s Newdigate

POEM WRITTEN FOR “NEWDIGATE PRIZE” IN ENGLISH VERSE

BY J. A. LAMBKIN, ESQ., OF BURFORD COLLEGE

_N.B._--[_The competitors are confined to the use of Rhymed Heroic
Iambic Pentameters, but the introduction of_ LYRICS _is permitted_]

Subject: “THE BENEFITS CONFERRED BY SCIENCE, ESPECIALLY IN CONNECTION
WITH THE ELECTRIC LIGHT”

_For the benefit of those who do not care to read through the Poem but
desire to know its contents, I append the following headings_:


INVOCATION TO THE MUSE

    Hail! Happy Muse, and touch the tuneful string!
    The benefits conferred by Science[10] I sing.


HIS THEME: THE ELECTRIC LIGHT AND ITS BENEFITS

    Under the kind Examiners’[11] direction
    I only write about them in connection
    With benefits which the Electric Light
    Confers on us; especially at night.
    These are my theme, of these my song shall rise.
    My lofty head shall swell to strike the skies,[12]
    And tears of hopeless love bedew the maiden’s eyes.


SECOND INVOCATION TO THE MUSE

    Descend, O Muse, from thy divine abode,


OSNEY

    To Osney, on the Seven Bridges Road;
    For under Osney’s solitary shade
    The bulk of the Electric Light is made.
    Here are the works, from hence the current flows
    Which (so the Company’s prospectus goes)


POWER OF WORKS THERE

    Can furnish to Subscribers hour by hour
    No less than sixteen thousand candle power,[13]
    All at a thousand volts. (It is essential
    To keep the current at this high potential
    In spite of the considerable expense.)


STATISTICS CONCERNING THEM

    The Energy developed represents,
    Expressed in foot-tons, the united forces
    Of fifteen elephants and forty horses.
    But shall my scientific detail thus
    Clip the dear wings of Buoyant Pegasus?


POETICAL OR RHETORICAL QUESTIONS

    Shall pure statistics jar upon the ear
    That pants for Lyric accents loud and clear?
    Shall I describe the complex Dynamo
    Or write about its commutator? No!


THE THEME CHANGES

    To happier fields I lead my wanton pen,
    The proper study of mankind is men.


THIRD INVOCATION TO THE MUSE

    Awake, my Muse! Portray the pleasing sight
    That meets us where they make Electric Light.


A PICTURE OF THE ELECTRICIAN

    Behold the Electrician where he stands:
    Soot, oil, and verdigris are on his hands;
    Large spots of grease defile his dirty clothes,
    The while his conversation drips with oaths.
    Shall such a being perish in its youth?
    Alas! it is indeed the fatal truth.
    In that dull brain, beneath that hair unkempt,
    Familiarity has bred contempt.
    We warn him of the gesture all too late;
    Oh, Heartless Jove! Oh, Adamantine Fate!


HIS AWFUL FATE

    Some random Touch--a hand’s imprudent slip--
    The Terminals--a flash--a sound like “Zip!”
    A smell of Burning fills the startled Air--
    The Electrician is no longer there!

       *       *       *       *       *


HE CHANGES HIS THEME

    But let us turn with true Artistic scorn
    From facts funereal and from views forlorn
    Of Erebus and Blackest midnight born.[14]


FOURTH INVOCATION TO THE MUSE

    Arouse thee, Muse! and chaunt in accents rich
    The interesting processes by which
    The Electricity is passed along:
    These are my theme, to these I bend my song.


DESCRIPTION OF METHOD BY WHICH THE CURRENT IS USED

    It runs encased in wood or porous brick
    Through copper wires two millimetres thick,
    And insulated on their dangerous mission
    By indiarubber, silk, or composition,
    Here you may put with critical felicity
    The following question: “What is Electricity?”


DIFFICULTY OF DETERMINING NATURE OF ELECTRICITY

    “Molecular Activity,” say some,
    Others when asked say nothing, and are dumb.
    Whatever be its nature: this is clear,
    The rapid current checked in its career,
    Baulked in its race and halted in its course[15]
    Transforms to heat and light its latent force:


CONSERVATION OF ENERGY. PROOFS OF THIS: NO EXPERIMENT NEEDED

    It needs no pedant in the lecturer’s chair
    To prove that light and heat are present there.
    The pear-shaped vacuum globe, I understand,
    Is far too hot to fondle with the hand.
    While, as is patent to the meanest sight,
    The carbon filament is very bright.


DOUBTS ON THE MUNICIPAL SYSTEM, BUT--

    As for the lights they hang about the town,
    Some praise them highly, others run them down.
    This system (technically called the arc)
    Makes some passages too light, others too dark.


NONE ON THE DOMESTIC

    But in the house the soft and constant rays
    Have always met with universal praise.


ITS ADVANTAGES

    For instance: if you want to read in bed
    No candle burns beside your curtains’ head,
    Far from some distant corner of the room
    The incandescent lamp dispels the gloom,


ADVANTAGES OF LARGE PRINT

    And with the largest print need hardly try
    The powers of any young and vigorous eye.


FIFTH INVOCATION TO THE MUSE

    Aroint thee, Muse! inspired the poet sings!
    I cannot help observing future things!


THE ONLY HOPE OF HUMANITY IS IN SCIENCE

    Life is a vale, its paths are dark and rough
    Only because we do not know enough.
    When Science has discovered something more
    We shall be happier than we were before.


PERORATION IN THE SPIRIT OF THE REST OF THE POEM

    Hail! Britain, mistress of the Azure Main,
    Ten Thousand Fleets sweep over thee in vain!
    Hail! mighty mother of the brave and free,
    That beat Napoleon, and gave birth to me!
    Thou that canst wrap in thine emblazoned robe
    One quarter of the habitable globe.
    Thy mountains, wafted by a favouring breeze,
    Like mighty hills withstand the stormy seas.


WARNING TO BRITAIN

    Thou art a Christian Commonwealth. And yet
    Be thou not all unthankful--nor forget
    As thou exultest in Imperial might
    The benefits of the Electric Light.




III.

Some Remarks on Lambkin’s Prose Style


No achievement of my dear friend’s produced a greater effect than the
English Essay which he presented at his examination. That so young
a man, and a man trained in such an environment as his, should have
written an essay at all was sufficiently remarkable, but that his
work should have shown such mastery in the handling, such delicate
balance of idea, and so much know-ledge (in the truest sense of the
word), coupled with such an astounding insight into human character
and contemporary psychology, was enough to warrant the remark of the
then Warden of Burford: “If these things” (said the aged but eminent
divine), “if these things” (it was said in all reverence and with a
full sense of the responsibility of his position), “If these things are
done in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?”

Truly it may be said that the Green Wood of Lambkin’s early years as an
Undergraduate was worthily followed by the Dry Wood of his later life
as a fellow and even tutor, nay, as a Bursar of his college.

It is not my purpose to add much to the reader’s own impressions of
this _tour de force_, or to insist too strongly upon the skill and
breadth of treatment which will at once make their mark upon any
intelligent man, and even upon the great mass of the public. But I may
be forgiven if I give some slight personal memories in interpretation
of a work which is necessarily presented in the cold medium of type.

Lambkin’s hand-writing was flowing and determined, but was often
difficult to read, a quality which led in the later years of his life
to the famous retort made by the Rural Dean of Henchthorp to the
Chaplain of Bower’s Hall.[16] His manuscript was, like Lord Byron’s
(and unlike the famous Codex V in the Vatican), remarkable for its
erasures, of which as many as three may be seen in some places
super-imposed, ladderwise, _en échelle_, the one above the other,
perpendicularly to the line of writing.

This excessive fastidiousness in the use of words was the cause of his
comparatively small production of written work; and thus the essay
printed below was the labour of nearly three hours. His ideas in this
matter were best represented by his little epigram on the appearance
of Liddell and Scott’s larger Greek Lexicon. “Quality not quantity”
was the witty phrase which he was heard to mutter when he received his
first copy of that work.

The nervous strain of so much anxiety about his literary work wearied
both mind and body, but he had his reward. The scholarly aptitude of
every particle in the phrase, and the curious symmetry apparent in
the great whole of the essay are due to a quality which he pushed
indeed to excess, but never beyond the boundary that separates Right
and Wrong; we admire in the product what we might criticise in the
method, and when we judge as critics we are compelled as Englishmen and
connoisseurs to congratulate and to applaud.

He agreed with Aristotle in regarding lucidity as the main virtue
of style. And if he sometimes failed to attain his ideal in this
matter, the obscurity was due to none of those mannerisms which are so
deplorable in a Meredith or a Browning, but rather to the fact that he
found great difficulty in ending a sentence as he had begun it. His
mind outran his pen; and the sentence from his University sermon,
“England must do her duty, or what will the harvest be?” stirring and
patriotic as it is, certainly suffers from some such fault, though I
cannot quite see where.

The Oxymoron, the Aposiopesis, the Nominativus Pendens, the Anacoluthon
and the Zeugma he looked upon with abhorrence and even with dread.
He was a friend to all virile enthusiasm in writing but a foe to
rhetoric, which (he would say) “Is cloying even in a demagogue, and
actually nauseating in the literary man.” He drew a distinction between
_eloquence_ and rhetoric, often praising the one and denouncing the
other with the most abandoned fervour: indeed, it was his favourite
diversion in critical conversation accurately to determine the meaning
of words. In early youth he would often split an infinitive or end
a sentence with a preposition. But, ever humble and ready to learn,
he determined, after reading Mrs. Griffin’s well-known essays in the
_Daily American_, to eschew such conduct for the future; and it was a
most touching sight to watch him, even in extreme old age, his reverend
white locks sweeping the paper before him and his weak eyes peering
close at the MSS. as he carefully went over his phrases with a pen,
scratching out and amending, at the end of his day’s work, the errors
of this nature.

He commonly used a gilt “J” nib, mounted upon a holder of imitation
ivory, but he was not cramped by any petty limitations in such details
and would, if necessity arose, make use of a quill, or even of a
fountain pen, insisting, however, if he was to use the latter, that it
should be of the best.

The paper upon which he wrote the work that remains to us was the
ordinary ruled foolscap of commerce; but this again he regarded as
quite unimportant. It was the matter of what he wrote that concerned
him, not (as is so often the case with lesser men) the mere accidents
of pen or paper.

I remember little else of moment with regard to his way of writing, but
I make no doubt that these details will not be without their interest;
for the personal habits of a great man have a charm of their own. I
read once that the sum of fifty pounds was paid for the pen of Charles
Dickens. I wonder what would be offered for a similar sacred relic, of
a man more obscure, but indirectly of far greater influence; a relic
which I keep by me with the greatest reverence, which I do not use
myself, however much at a loss I may be for pen or pencil, and with
which I never, upon any account, allow the children to play.

But I must draw to a close, or I should merit the reproach of lapsing
into a sentimental peroration, and be told that I am myself indulging
in that rhetoric which Lambkin so severely condemned.




IV.

Lambkin’s Essay on “Success”


ON “SUCCESS:” ITS CAUSES AND RESULTS

[Sidenote: Difficulty of Subject]

In approaching a problem of this nature, with all its anomalies and
analogues, we are at once struck by the difficulty of conditioning any
accurate estimate of the factors of the solution of the difficulty
which is latent in the very terms of the above question. We shall do
well perhaps, however, to clearly differentiate from its fellows the
proposition we have to deal with, and similarly as an inception of
our analysis to permanently fix the definitions and terms we shall be
talking of, with, and by.

[Sidenote: Definition of Success]

Success may be defined as the _Successful Consummation of an Attempt_
or more shortly as the _Realisation of an imagined Good_, and as it
implies Desire or the Wish for a thing, and at the same time action
or the attempt to get at a thing,[17] we might look at Success from
yet another point of view and say that _Success is the realisation
of Desire through action_. Indeed this last definition seems on the
whole to be the best; but it is evident that in this, as in all
other matters, it is impossible to arrive at perfection, and our
safest definition will be that which is found to be on the whole most
approximately the average mean[18] of many hundreds that might be
virtually constructed to more or less accurately express the idea we
have undertaken to do.

So far then it is evident that while we may have a fairly definite
subjective visual concept of what Success is, we shall never be able to
convey to others in so many words exactly what our idea may be.

                “What am I?
       ,     .     .     .     .
    An infant crying for the light
    That has no language but a cry”

[Sidenote: Method of dealing with Problem]

It is, however, of more practical importance nevertheless, to arrive
at some method or other by which we can in the long run attack the
very serious problem presented to us. Our best chance of arriving at
any solution will lie in attempting to give objective form to what it
is we have to do with. For this purpose we will first of all divide
all actions into (א) Successful and (ב) Non-successful[19] actions.
These two categories are at once mutually exclusive and collectively
universal. Nothing of which Success can be truly predicated, can at
the same time be called with any approach to accuracy Unsuccessful;
and similarly if an action finally result in Non-success, it is quite
evident that to speak of its “Success” would be to trifle with words
and to throw dust into our own eyes, which is a fatal error in any
case. We have then these two primary catēgories what is true of one
will, with certain reservations, be untrue of the other, in most cases
(we will come to that later) and _vice-versâ_.

  (1)   Success.
  (2)   Non-success.

[Sidenote: First great Difficulty]

But here we are met at the outset of our examination by a difficulty of
enormous dimensions. There is not one success; there are many. There
is the success of the Philosopher, of the Scientist, of the Politician,
of the Argument, of the Commanding Officer, of the Divine, of the
mere unthinking Animal appetite, and of others more numerous still.
It is evident that with such a vast number of different subsidiary
catēgories within our main catēgory it would be impossible to arrive at
any absolute conclusions, or to lay down any firm general principle.
For the moment we had erected some such fundamental foundation the
fair structure would be blown to a thousand atoms by the consideration
of some fresh form, aspect or realisation, of Success which might
have escaped our vision, so that where should we be then? It is
therefore most eminently a problem in which we should beware of undue
generalisations and hasty dogmatism. We must abandon here as everywhere
the immoral and exploded cant of mediæval deductive methods invented by
priests and mummers to enslave the human mind, and confine ourselves to
what we absolutely _know_. Shall we towards the end of this essay truly
_know_ anything with regard to Success? Who can tell! But at least let
us not cheat ourselves with the axioms, affirmations and dogmas which
are, in a certain sense, the ruin of so many; let us, if I may use a
metaphor, “abandon the _à priori_ for the _chiaro-oscuro_.”

[Sidenote: Second much greater Difficulty]

But if the problem is complex from the great variety of the various
kinds of Success, what shall we say of the disturbance introduced
by a new aspect of the matter, which we are now about to allude to!
Aye! What indeed! An aspect so widespread in its consequences, so
momentous and so fraught with menace to all philosophy, so big with
portent, and of such threatening aspect to humanity itself, that we
hesitate even to bring it forward![20] _Success is not always Success:
Non-success (or Failure) is an aspect of Success, and vice-versâ._ This
apparent paradox will be seen to be true on a little consideration.
For “Success” in any one case involves the “Failure” or “Non-success”
of its opposite or correlative. Thus, if we bet ten pounds with one of
our friends our “Success” would be his “Non-success,” and _vice-versâ_,
collaterally. Again, if we desire to fail in a matter (_e.g._, any man
would hope to fail in being hanged[21]), then to succeed is to fail,
and to fail is to succeed, and our successful failure would fail were
we to happen upon a disastrous success! And note that the _very same
act_, not this, that, or another, but THE VERY SAME, is (according
to the way we look at it) a “successful” or an “unsuccessful” act.
Success therefore not only _may_ be, but _must_ be Failure, and the two
catēgories upon which we had built such high hopes have disappeared for
ever!

[Sidenote: Solemn considerations consequent upon this]

Terrible thought! A thing can be at once itself and not itself--nay
its own opposite! The mind reels, and the frail human vision peering
over the immense gulf of metaphysical infinity is lost in a cry for
mercy and trembles on the threshold of the unseen! What visions of
horror and madness may not be reserved for the too daring soul which
has presumed to knock at the Doors of Silence! Let us learn from the
incomprehensible how small and weak a thing is man!

[Sidenote: A more cheerful view]

But it would ill-befit the philosopher to abandon his effort because
of a kind of a check or two at the start. The great hand of Time
shouts ever “onward”; and even if we cannot discover the Absolute in
the limits of this essay, we may rise from the ashes of our tears to
better and happier things.

[Sidenote: The beginning of a Solution]

A light seems to dawn on us. We shall not arrive at the full day
but we shall see “in a glass darkly” what, in the final end of our
development, may perhaps be more clearly revealed to us. It is evident
that we have been dealing with a relative. _How_ things so apparently
absolute as hanging or betting can be in any true sense relative we
cannot tell, because we cannot conceive the majestic whole of which
Success and Failure, plus and minus, up and down, yes and no, truth
and lies, are but as the glittering facets of a diamond borne upon the
finger of some titled and wealthy person.

Our error came from foolish self-sufficiency and pride. We thought
(forsooth) that our mere human conceptions of contradiction were real.
It has been granted to us (though we are but human still), to discover
our error--there is no hot or cold, no light or dark, and no good or
evil, all are, in a certain sense, and with certain limitations (if I
may so express myself) the Aspects----

_At this point the bell rang and the papers had to be delivered up.
Lambkin could not let his work go, however, without adding a few words
to show what he might have done had time allowed. He wrote:--_

“No Time. Had intended examples--Success, Academic, Acrobatic,
Agricultural, Aristocratic, Bacillic ... Yaroslavic, Zenobidic,
etc. Historical cases examined, Biggar’s view, H. Unity, Univ.
Consciousness, Amphodunissa,[22] Setxm [Illustration].”




V.

Lambkin on Sleep


[_This little gem was written for the great Monograph on “Being,” which
Lambkin never lived to complete. It was included, however, in his
little volume of essays entitled “Rictus Almae Matris.” The careful
footnotes, the fund of information, and the scholarly accuracy of
the whole sketch are an example--(alas! the only one)--of what his
full work would have been had he brought it to a conclusion. It is an
admirable example of his manner in maturer years._]

In sleep our faculties lie dormant.[23] We perceive nothing or almost
nothing of our surroundings; and the deeper our slumber the more
absolute is the barrier between ourselves and the outer world. The
causes of this “Cessation of Consciousness” (as it has been admirably
called by Professor M‘Obvy)[24] lie hidden from our most profound
physiologists. It was once my privilege to meet the master of physical
science who has rendered famous the University of Kreigenswald,[25] and
I asked him what in his opinion was the cause of sleep. He answered,
with that reverence which is the glory of the Teutonic mind, “It is in
the dear secret of the All-wise Nature-mother preserved.” I have never
forgotten those wise and weighty words.[26]

Perhaps the nearest guess as to the nature of Sleep is to be
discovered in the lectures of a brilliant but sometimes over-daring
young scholar whom we all applaud in the chair of Psychology. “Sleep”
(he says) “is the direct product of Brain Somnolence, which in its
turn is the result of the need for Repose that every organism must
experience after any specialised exertion.” I was present when this
sentence was delivered, and I am not ashamed to add that I was one of
those who heartily cheered the young speaker.[27]

We may assert, then, that Science has nearly conquered this last
stronghold of ignorance and superstition.[28]

As to the Muses, we know well that Sleep has been their favourite
theme for ages. With the exception of Catullus (whose verses have been
greatly over-rated, and who is always talking of people lying awake
at night), all the ancients have mentioned and praised this innocent
pastime. Everyone who has done Greats will remember the beautiful
passage in Lucretius,[29] but perhaps that in Sidonius Apollinaris, the
highly polished Bishop of Gaul, is less well known.[30] To turn to our
own literature, the sonnet beginning “To die, to sleep,” etc.,[31] must
be noted, and above all, the glorious lines in which Wordsworth reaches
his noblest level, beginning--

  “It is a pleasant thing to go to sleep!”

lines which, for my part, I can never read without catching some of
their magical drowsy influence.[32]

All great men have slept. George III. frequently slept,[33] and that
great and good man Wycliffe was in the habit of reading his Scriptural
translations and his own sermons nightly to produce the desired
effect.[34] The Duke of Wellington (whom my father used to call “The
Iron Duke”) slept on a little bedstead no larger than a common man’s.

As for the various positions in which one may sleep, I treat of them
in my little book of Latin Prose for Schools, which is coming out next
year.[35]




VI.

Lambkin’s Advice to Freshmen


Mr. Lambkin possessed among other great and gracious qualities the
habit of writing to his nephew, Thomas Ezekiel Lambkin,[36] who
entered the college as an undergraduate when his uncle was some four
years a Fellow. Of many such communications he valued especially
this which I print below, on account of the curious and pathetic
circumstances which surrounded it. Some months after Thomas had been
given his two groups and had left the University, Mr. Lambkin was
looking over some books in a second-hand book shop--not with the
intention of purchasing so much as to improve the mind. It was a
favourite habit of his, and as he was deeply engaged in a powerful
romance written under the pseudonym of “Marie Corelli”[37] there
dropped from its pages the letter which he had sent so many years
before. It lay in its original envelope unopened, and on turning to
the flyleaf he saw the name of his nephew written. It had once been
his! The boy had so treasured the little missive as to place it in his
favourite book!

Lambkin was so justly touched by the incident as to purchase the
volume, asking that the price might be entered to his account, which
was not then of any long standing. The letter he docketed “to be
published after my death.” And I obey the wishes of my revered friend:

  “MY DEAR THOMAS,

“Here you are at last in Oxford, and at Burford, ‘a Burford Man.’ How
proud your mother must be and even your father, whom I well remember
saying that ‘if he were not an accountant, he would rather be a Fellow
of Burford than anything else on earth.’ But it was not to be.

“The life you are entering is very different from that which you
have left behind. When you were at school you were under a strict
discipline, you were compelled to study the classics and to play
at various games. Cleanliness and truthfulness were enforced by
punishment, while the most instinctive habits of decency and good
manners could only be acquired at the expense of continual application.
In a word, ‘you were a child and thought as a child.’

“Now all that is changed, you are free (within limits) to follow your
own devices, to make or mar yourself. But if you use Oxford aright she
will make you as she has made so many of your kind--a perfect gentleman.

“But enough of these generalities. It is time to turn to one or two
definite bits of advice which I hope you will receive in the right
spirit. My dear boy, I want you to lay your hand in mine while I speak
to you, not as an uncle, but rather as an elder brother. Promise me
three things. First never to gamble in any form; secondly, never to
drink a single glass of wine after dinner; thirdly, never to purchase
anything without paying for it in cash. If you will make such strict
rules for yourself and keep them religiously you will find after years
of constant effort a certain result developing (as it were), you will
discover with delight that your character is formed; that you have
neither won nor lost money at hazards, that you have never got drunk
of an evening, and that you have no debts. Of the first two I can only
say that they are questions of morality on which we all may, and all
_do_, differ. But the third is of a vital and practical importance.
Occasional drunkenness is a matter for private judgment, its rightness
or wrongness depends upon our ethical system; but debt is fatal to any
hope of public success.

“I hesitate a little to mention one further point; but--may I say
it?--will you do your best to avoid drinking neat spirits in the early
morning--especially Brandy? Of course a Governor and Tutor, whatever
his abilities, gets removed in his sympathies from the younger men.[38]
The habit may have died out, and if so I will say no more, but in my
time it was the ruin of many a fair young life.

“Now as to your day and its order. First, rise briskly when you are
called, and into your cold bath, you young dog![39] No shilly-shally;
into it. Don’t splash the water about in a miserable attempt to deceive
your scout, but take an Honest British Cold Bath like a man. Soap
should never be used save on the hands and neck. As to hot baths,
never ask for them in College, it would give great trouble, and it is
much better to take one in the Town for a shilling; nothing is more
refreshing than a good hot bath in the Winter Term.

“Next you go out and ‘keep’ a Mosque, Synagogue, or Meeting of the
Brethren, though if you can agree with the system it is far better to
go to your College Chapel; it puts a man right with his superiors and
you obey the Apostolic injunction.[40]

“Then comes your breakfast. Eat as much as you can; it is the
foundation of a good day’s work in the Vineyard. But what is this?--a
note from your Tutor. Off you go at the appointed time, and as you
may be somewhat nervous and diffident I will give you a little
Paradigm,[41] as it were, of a Freshman meeting his Tutor for the first
time.

“[_The Student enters, and as he is half way through the door says:--_]

“_St._--Good morning! Have you noticed what the papers say
about--[_Here mention some prominent subject of the day._]

“[_The Tutor does not answer but goes on writing in a little book; at
last he looks up and says:--_]

“_Tut._--Pray, what is your name?

“_St._--M. or N.

“_Tut._--What have you read before coming up, Mr. ----?

“_St._--The existing Latin authors from Ennius to Sidonius
Apollinaris, with their fragments. The Greek from Sappho to Origen
including Bacchylides.

[_The Tutor makes a note of this and resumes...._]

“_Tut._--Have you read the Gospels?

“_St._--No, Sir.

“_Tut._--You must read two of them as soon as possible in the Greek, as
it is necessary to the passing of Divinity, unless indeed you prefer
the beautiful work of Plato. Come at ten to-morrow. Good morning.

“_St._--I am not accustomed to being spoken to in that fashion.

[_The Tutor will turn to some other Student, and the first Student will
leave the room._]

“I have little more to say. You will soon learn the customs of the
place, and no words of mine can efficiently warn you as experience
will. Put on a black coat before Hall, and prepare for that meal
with neatness, but with no extravagant display. Do not wear your cap
and gown in the afternoon, do not show an exaggerated respect to the
younger fellows (except the Chaplain), on the one hand, nor a silly
contempt for the older Dons upon the other. The first line of conduct
is that of a timid and uncertain mind; it is of no profit for future
advancement, and draws down upon one the contempt of all. The second
is calculated to annoy as fine a body of men as any in England, and
seriously to affect your reputation in Society.

“You will find in every college some club which contains the wealthier
undergraduates and those of prominent position. Join it if possible
at once before you are known. At its weekly meetings speak soberly,
but not pompously. Enliven your remarks with occasional flashes of
humour, but do not trench upon the ribald nor pass the boundary of
right-reason. Such excesses may provoke a momentary laugh, but they
ultimately destroy all respect for one’s character. Remember Lot’s wife!

“You will row, of course, and as you rush down to the river after a
hurried lunch and dash up to do a short bit of reading before Hall,
your face will glow with satisfaction at the thought that every day of
your life will be so occupied for four years.

“Of the grosser and lower evils I need not warn you: you will not give
money to beggars in the street, nor lend it to your friends. You will
not continually expose your private thoughts, nor open your heart to
every comer in the vulgar enthusiasm of some whom you may meet. No, my
dear Ezekiel, it would be unworthy of your name, and I know you too
well, to fear such things of you. You are a Gentleman, and that you
may, like a gentleman, be always at your ease, courteous on occasion,
but familiar never, is the earnest prayer of--

  “JOSIAH LAMBKIN.”




VII.

Lambkin’s Lecture on “Right”


Of the effects of Mr. Lambkin’s lectures, the greatest and (I venture
to think) the most permanent are those that followed from his course
on _Ethics_. The late Dean of Heaving-on-the-Marsh (the Honourable
Albert Nathan-Merivale, the first name adopted from his property in
Rutland) told me upon one occasion that he owed the direction of his
mind to those lectures (under Providence) more than to any other
lectures he could remember.

Very much the same idea was conveyed to me, more or less, by the
Bishop of Humbury, who turned to me in hall, only a year ago, with a
peculiar look in his eyes, and (as I had mentioned Lambkin’s name) said
suddenly, like a man who struggles with an emotion:[42] “Lambkin(!)[43]
... did not he give lectures in your hall ... on Ethics?” “Some,”
I replied, “were given in the Hall, others in Lecture Room No. 2
over the glory-hole.” His lordship said nothing, but there was a
world of thought and reminiscence in his eyes. May we not--knowing
his lordship’s difficulties in matters of belief, and his final
victory--ascribe something of this progressive and salutary influence
to my dear friend?


ON “RIGHT”

  [_Being Lecture V. in a course of Eight, delivered, in the Autumn
  Term of 1878._]

We have now proceeded for a considerable distance in our journey
towards the Solution. Of eight lectures, of which I had proposed to
make so many milestones on the road, the fifth is reached, and now we
are in measurable distance of the Great Answer; the Understanding of
the Relations of the Particular to the Universal.

It is an easy, though a profitable task to wander in what the late Sir
Reginald Hawke once called in a fine phrase “the flowery meads and
bosky dells of Positive Knowledge.” It is in the essence of any modern
method of inquiry that we should be first sure of our facts, and it
is on this account that all philosophical research worthy of the name
must begin with the physical sciences. For the last few weeks I have
illustrated my lectures with chemical experiments and occasionally
with large coloured diagrams, which, especially to young people like
yourselves have done not a little to enliven what might at first appear
a very dull subject. It is therefore with happy, hopeful hearts,
with sparkling eyes and eager appetite that we leave the physical
entry-hall of knowledge to approach the delicious feast of metaphysics.

But here a difficulty confronts us. So far we have followed an
historical development. We have studied the actions of savages and the
gestures of young children; we have enquired concerning the habits
of sleepwalkers, and have drawn our conclusions from the attitudes
adopted in special manias. So far, then, we have been on safe ground.
We have proceeded from the known to the unknown, and we have correlated
Psychology, Sociology, Anatomy, Morphology, Physiology, Geography,
and Theology (_here Mr. Darkin of Vast, who had been ailing a long
time, was carried out in a faint; Mr. Lambkin, being short-sighted,
did not fully seize what had happened, and thinking that certain of
his audience were leaving the Hall without permission, he became as
nearly angry as was possible to such a man. He made a short speech on
the decay of manners, and fell into several bitter epigrams. It is only
just to say that, on learning the occasion of the interruption, he
regretted the expression “strong meat for babes” which had escaped him
at the time._)

So far so good. But there is something more. No one can proceed
indefinitely in the study of Ethics without coming, sooner or later,
upon the Conventional conception of _Right_. I do not mean that this
conception has any philosophic value. I should be the last to lay down
for it those futile, empirical and dogmatic foundations which may
satisfy narrow, deductive minds. But there it is, and as practical men
with it we must deal. What is _Right_? Whence proceeds this curious
conglomeration of idealism, mysticism, empiricism, and fanaticism to
which the name has been given?

It is impossible to say. It is the duty of the lecturer to set
forth the scheme of truth: to make (as it were) a map or plan of
Epistemology. He is not concerned to demonstrate a point; he is not
bound to dispute the attitude of opponents. Let them fall of their own
weight (_Ruant mole suâ_). It is mine to show that things _may_ be thus
or thus, and I will most steadily refuse to be drawn into sterile
argument and profitless discussion with mere affirmations.

“The involute of progression is the subconscious evolution of the
particular function.” No close reasoner will deny this. It is the
final summing up of all that is meant by Development. It is the root
formula of the nineteenth century that is now, alas! drawing to a close
under our very eyes. Now to such a fundamental proposition I add a
second. “The sentiment of right is the inversion of the subconscious
function in its relation to the indeterminate ego.” This also I take
to be admitted by all European philosophers in Germany. Now I will not
go so far as to say that a major premiss when it is absolutely sound,
followed by a minor equally sound, leads to a sure conclusion. God
fulfils himself in many ways, and there are more things in heaven and
earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But I take this
tentatively: that if these two propositions are true (and we have the
word of Herr Waldteufel,[44] who lives in the Woodstock Road, that
it is true) then it follows conclusively that no certainty can be
arrived at in these matters. I would especially recommend you on this
point (_here Mr. Lambkin changed his lecturing voice for a species of
conversational, interested and familiar tone_) to read the essay by
the late Dr. Barton in _Shots at the Probable_: you will also find the
third chapter of Mr. Mendellsohn’s _History of the Soul_ very useful.
Remember also, by the way, to consult the footnote on p. 343, of
Renan’s _Anti-Christ_. The Master of St. Dives’ _Little Journeys in the
Obvious_ is light and amusing, but instructive in its way.

There is a kind of attitude (_this was Lambkin’s peroration, and he was
justly proud of it_) which destroys nothing but creates much: which
transforms without metamorphosis, and which says “look at this, I have
found truth!” but which dares not say “look away from that--it is
untrue.”

Such is our aim. Let us make without unmaking and in this difficult
question of the origin of _Right_, the grand old Anglo-Saxon sense
of “Ought,” let us humbly adopt as logicians, but grimly pursue as
practical men some such maxim as what follows:

“Right came from nothing, it means nothing, it leads to nothing; with
it we are nothing, but without it we are worse than nothing.”[45]

Next Thursday I shall deal with morality in international relations.




VIII.

Lambkin’s Special Correspondence


Lambkin was almost the first of that great band of Oxford Fellows who
go as special correspondents for Newspapers to places of difficulty
and even of danger. On the advantages of this system he would often
dilate, and he was glad to see, as he grew to be an older, a wealthier,
and a wiser man, that others were treading in his footsteps. “The
younger men,” he would say, “have noticed what perhaps I was the first
to see, that the Press is a Power, and that men who are paid to educate
should not be ashamed to be paid for any form of education.” He was,
however, astonished to see how rapidly the letters of a correspondent
could now be issued as a book, and on finding that such publications
were arranged for separately with the publishers, and were not the
property of the Newspapers, he expressed himself with a just warmth in
condemnation of such a trick.

“Sir” (said he to the Chaplain), “in my young days we should have
scorned to have faked up work, well done for a particular object, in
a new suit for the sake of wealth”; and I owe it to Lambkin’s memory
to say that he did not make a penny by his “Diary on the Deep,”[46]
in which he collected towards the end of his life his various letters
written to the Newspapers, and mostly composed at sea.

The occasion which produced the following letter was the abominable
suppression by Italian troops of the Catholic Riots at Rome in 1873.
Englishmen of all parties had been stirred to a great indignation at
the news of the atrocities. “As a nation” (to quote my dear friend) “we
are slow to anger, but our anger is terrible.” And such was indeed the
case.

A great meeting was held at Hampstead, in which Mr. Ram made his famous
speech. “This is not a question of religion or of nationality but of
manhood (he had said), and if we do not give our sympathy freely, if we
do not send out correspondents to inform us of the truth, if we do not
meet in public and protest, if we do not write and speak and read till
our strength be exhausted, then is England no longer the England of
Cromwell and of Peel.”

Such public emotion could not fail to reach Lambkin. I remember his
coming to me one night into my rooms and saying “George (for my name
is George), I had to-day a letter from Mr. Solomon’s paper--_The Sunday
Englishman_. They want me to go and report on this infamous matter, and
I will go. Do not attempt to dissuade me. I shall return--if God spares
my life--before the end of the vacation. The offer is most advantageous
in every way: I mean to England, to the cause of justice, and to that
freedom of thought without which there is no true religion. For,
understand me, that though these poor wretches are Roman Catholics, I
hold that every man should have justice, and my blood boils within me.”

He left me with a parting grip of the hand, promising to bring me back
photographs from the Museum at Naples.

If the letter that follows appears to be lacking in any full account of
the Italian army and its infamies, if it is observed to be meagre and
jejune on the whole subject of the Riots, that is to be explained by
the simple facts that follow.

When Lambkin sailed, the British Fleet had already occupied a deep and
commodious harbour on the coast of Apulia, and public irritation was
at its height; but by the time he landed the Quirinal had been forced
to an apology, the Vatican had received monetary compensation, and the
Piedmontese troops had been compelled to evacuate Rome.

He therefore found upon landing at Leghorn[47] a telegram from the
newspaper, saying that his services were not required, but that the
monetary engagements entered into by the proprietors would be strictly
adhered to.

Partly pleased, partly disappointed, Lambkin returned to Oxford,
taking sketches on the way from various artists whom he found willing
to sell their productions. These he later hung round his room, not on
nails (which as he very properly said, defaced the wall), but from a
rail;--their colours are bright and pleasing. He also brought me the
photographs I asked him for, and they now hang in my bedroom.

This summary must account for the paucity of the notes that follow, and
the fact that they were never published.

[There was some little doubt as to whether certain strictures on
the First Mate in Mr. Lambkin’s letters did not affect one of our
best families. Until I could make certain whether the Estate should
be credited with a receipt on this account or debited with a loss I
hesitated to publish. Mr. Lambkin left no heirs, but he would have been
the first to regret (were he alive) any diminution of his small fortune.

I am glad to say that it has been satisfactorily settled, and that
while all parties have gained none have lost by the settlement.]


       *       *       *       *       *


THE LETTERS

  _s.s. Borgia, Gravesend,
  Sunday, Sept. 27th, 1873_

Whatever scruples I might have had in sending off my first letter
before I had left the Thames, and upon such a day, are dissipated
by the emotions to which the scenes I have just passed through give
rise.[48]

What can be more marvellous than this historic river! All is dark, save
where the electric light on shore, the river-boats’ lanterns on the
water, the gas-lamps and the great glare of the town[49] dispel the
gloom. And over the river itself, the old Tamesis, a profound silence
reigns, broken only by the whistling of the tugs, the hoarse cries of
the bargemen and the merry banjo-party under the awning of our ship.
All is still, noiseless and soundless: a profound silence broods over
the mighty waters. It is night.

It is night and silent! Silence and night! The two primeval things!
I wonder whether it has ever occurred to the readers of the _Sunday
Englishman_ to travel over the great waters, or to observe in their
quiet homes the marvellous silence of the night? Would they know of
what my thoughts were full? They were full of those poor Romans,
insulted, questioned and disturbed by a brutal soldiery, and I thought
of this: that we who go out on a peculiarly pacific mission, who have
only to write while others wield the sword, we also do our part. Pray
heaven the time may soon come when an English Protectorate shall be
declared over Rome and the hateful rule of the Lombard foreigners shall
cease.[50]

There is for anyone of the old viking blood a kind of fascination in
the sea. The screw is modern, but its vibration is the very movement
of the wild white oars that brought the Northmen[51] to the field of
Senlac.[52] Now I know how we have dared and done all. I could conquer
Sicily to-night.

As I paced the deck, an officer passed and slapped me heartily on
the shoulder. It was the First Mate. A rough diamond but a diamond
none the less. He asked me where I was bound to. I said Leghorn. He
then asked me if I had all I needed for the voyage. It seems that I
had strayed on to the part of the deck reserved for the second-class
passengers. I informed him of his error. He laughed heartily and said
we shouldn’t quarrel about that. I said his ship seemed to be a Saucy
Lass. He answered “That’s all right,” asked me if I played “Turn-up
Jack,” and left me. It is upon men like this that the greatness of
England is founded.

Well, I will “turn in” and “go below” for my watch; “you gentlemen of
England” who read the _Sunday Englishman_, you little know what life is
like on the high seas; but we are one, I think, when it comes to the
love of blue water.

  _Posted at Dover, Monday, Sept. 28, 1873._

We have dropped the pilot. I have nothing in particular to write.
There is a kind of monotony about a sea voyage which is very depressing
to the spirits. The sea was smooth last night, and yet I awoke this
morning with a feeling of un-quiet to which I have long been a
stranger, and which should not be present in a healthy man. I fancy
the very slight oscillation of the boat has something to do with it,
though the lady sitting next to me tells me that one only feels it in
steamboats. She said her dear husband had told her it was “the smell of
the oil”--I hinted that at breakfast one can talk of other things.

The First Mate sits at the head of our table. I do not know how it is,
but there is a lack of _social reaction_ on board a ship. A man is a
seaman or a passenger, and there is an end of it. One has no fixed
rank, and the wholesome discipline of social pressure seems entirely
lost. Thus this morning the First Mate called me “The Parson,” and I
had no way to resent his familiarity. But he meant no harm; he is a
sterling fellow.

After breakfast my mind kept running to this question of the Roman
Persecution, and (I know not how) certain phrases kept repeating
themselves literally “_ad nauseam_” in my imagination. They kept pace
with the throb of the steamer, an altogether new sensation, and my
mind seemed (as my old tutor, Mr. Blurt, would put it) to “work in a
circle.” The pilot will take this. He is coming over the side. He is
not in the least like a sailor, but small and white. He wears a bowler
hat, and looks more like a city clerk than anything else. When I asked
the First Mate why this was, he answered “It’s the Brains that tell.” A
very remarkable statement, and one full of menace and warning for our
mercantile marine.

       *       *       *       *       *

  _Thursday, Oct. 1, 1873._

I cannot properly describe the freshness and beauty of the sea after a
gale. I have not the style of the great masters of English prose, and
I lack the faculty of expression which so often accompanies the poetic
soul.

The white curling tips (white horses) come at one if one looks to
windward, or if one looks to leeward seem to flee. There is a kind of
balminess in the air born of the warm south; and there is jollity in
the whole ship’s company, as Mrs. Burton and her daughters remarked to
me this morning. I feel capable of anything. When the First Mate came
up to me this morning and tried to bait me with his vulgar chaff I
answered roundly, “Now, sir, listen to me. I am not seasick, I am not a
landlubber, I am on my sea legs again, and I would have you know that I
have not a little power to make those who attack me feel the weight of
my arm.”

He turned from me thoroughly ashamed, and told a man to swab the decks.
The passengers appeared absorbed in their various occupations, but I
felt I had “scored a point” and I retired to my cabin.

My steward told me of a group of rocks off the Spanish coast which we
are approaching. He said they were called “The Graveyard.” If a man can
turn his mind to the Universal Consciousness and to a Final Purpose all
foolish fears will fall into a secondary plane. I will not do myself
the injustice of saying that I was affected by the accident, but a lady
or child might have been, and surely the ship’s servants should be
warned not to talk nonsense to passengers who need all their strength
for the sea.

  _Friday, Oct. 2, 1873._

To-day I met the Captain. I went up on the bridge to speak to him.
I find his name is Arnssen. He has risen from the ranks, his father
having been a large haberdasher in Copenhagen and a town councillor. I
wish I could say the same of the First Mate, who is the scapegrace son
of a great English family, though he seems to feel no shame. Arnssen
and I would soon become fast friends were it not that his time is
occupied in managing the ship. He is just such an one as makes the
strength of our British Mercantile marine. He will often come and walk
with me on the deck, on which occasions I give him a cigar, or even
sometimes ask him to drink wine with me. He tells me it is against the
rules for the Captain to offer similar courtesies to his guests, but
that if ever I am in Ernskjöldj, near Copenhagen, and if he is not
absent on one of his many voyages, he will gratefully remember and
repay my kindness.

I said to the Captain to-day, putting my hand upon his shoulder, “Sir,
may one speak from one’s heart?” “Yes,” said he, “certainly, and God
bless you for your kind thought.” “Sir,” said I, “you are a strong,
silent, God-fearing man and my heart goes out to you--no more.” He was
silent, and went up on the bridge, but when I attempted to follow him,
he assured me it was not allowed.

Later in the day I asked him what he thought of the Roman trouble. He
answered, “Oh! knock their heads together and have done with it.” It
was a bluff seaman’s answer, but is it not what England would have said
in her greatest days? Is it not the very feeling of a Chatham?

I no longer speak to the First Mate. But in a few days I shall be able
to dismiss the fellow entirely from my memory, so I will not dwell on
his insolence.

  _Leghorn, Oct. 5, 1873._

Here is the end of it. I have nothing more to say. I find that the
public has no need of my services, and that England has suffered a
disastrous rebuff. The fleet has retreated from Apulia. England--let
posterity note this--has not an inch of ground in all the Italian
Peninsula. Well, we are worsted, and we must bide our time; but this I
will say: if that insolent young fool the First Mate thinks that his
family shall protect him he is mistaken. The press is a great power and
never greater than where (as in England) a professor of a university or
the upper classes write for the papers, and where a rule of anonymity
gives talent and position its full weight.[53]




IX.

Lambkin’s Address to the League of Progress


Everybody will remember the famous meeting of the Higher Spinsters
in 1868; a body hitherto purely voluntary in its organisation, it
had undertaken to add to the houses of the poor and wretched the
element which reigns in the residential suburbs of our great towns. If
Whitechapel is more degraded now than it was thirty years ago we must
not altogether disregard the earlier efforts of the Higher Spinsters,
they laboured well each in her own sphere and in death they were not
divided.

The moment however which gave their embryonic conceptions an organic
form did not sound till this year of 1868. It was in the Conference
held at Burford during that summer that, to quote their eloquent
circular, “the ideas were mooted and the feeling was voiced which
made us what we are.” In other words the Higher Spinsters were merged
in the new and greater society of the League of Progress. How much
the League of Progress has done, its final recognition by the County
Council, the sums paid to its organisers and servants I need not here
describe; suffice it to say that, like all our great movements, it
was a spontaneous effort of the upper middle class, that it concerned
itself chiefly with the artisans, whom it desired to raise to its own
level, and that it has so far succeeded as to now possess forty-three
Cloisters in our great towns, each with its Grand Master, Chatelaine,
Corporation of the Burghers of Progress and Lay Brothers, the whole
supported upon salaries suitable to their social rank and proceeding
entirely from voluntary contributions with the exception of that part
of the revenue which is drawn from public funds.

The subject of the Conference, out of which so much was destined to
grow, was “The Tertiary Symptoms of Secondary Education among the Poor.”

Views upon this matter were heard from every possible standpoint; men
of varying religious persuasions from the Scientific Agnostic to the
distant Parsee lent breadth and elasticity to the fascinating subject.
Its chemical aspect was admirably described (with experiments) by Sir
Julius Wobble, the Astronomer Royal, and its theological results by the
Reader in Burmesan.

Lambkin was best known for the simple eloquence in which he could
clothe the most difficult and confused conceptions. It was on this
account that he was asked to give the Closing Address with which the
Proceedings terminated.

Before reciting it I must detain the reader with one fine anecdote
concerning this occasion, a passage worthy of the event and of the man.
Lambkin (as I need hardly say) was full of his subject, enthusiastic
and absorbed. No thought of gain entered his head, nor was he the
kind of man to have applied for payment unless he believed money to
be owing to him. Nevertheless it would have been impossible to leave
unremunerated such work as that which follows. It was decided by the
authorities to pay him a sum drawn from the fees which the visitors had
paid to visit the College Fish-Ponds, whose mediæval use in monkish
times was explained in a popular style by one who shall be nameless,
but who gave his services gratuitously.

After their departure Mr. Large entered Lambkin’s room with an
envelope, wishing to add a personal courtesy to a pleasant duty, and
said:

“I have great pleasure, my dear Lambkin, in presenting you with this
Bank Note as a small acknowledgment of your services at the Conference.”

Lambkin answered at once with:

“My dear Large, I shall be really displeased if you estimate that
slight performance of a pleasurable task at so high a rate as ten
pounds.”

Nor indeed was this the case. For when Lambkin opened the enclosure
(having waited with delicate courtesy for his visitor to leave
the room) he discovered but five pounds therein. But note what
follows--Lambkin neither mentioned the matter to a soul, nor passed
the least stricture upon Large’s future actions, save in those matters
where he found his colleague justly to blame: and in the course of the
several years during which they continually met, the restraint and
self-respect of his character saved him from the use of ignoble weapons
whether of pen or tongue. It was a lesson in gentlemanly irony to see
my friend take his place above Large at high table in the uneasy days
that followed.


  THE ADDRESS

  MY DEAR FRIENDS,

I shall attempt to put before you in a few simple, but I hope
well-chosen words, the views of a plain man upon the great subject
before us to-day. I shall attempt with the greatest care to avoid
any personal offence, but I shall not hesitate to use the knife with
an unsparing hand, as is indeed the duty of the Pastor whosoever he
may be. I remember a late dear friend of mine [who would not wish me
to make his name public but whom you will perhaps recognise in the
founder and builder of the new Cathedral at Isaacsville in Canada[54]].
I remember his saying to me with a merry twinkle of the eye that
looms only from the free manhood of the west: “Lambkin,” said he,
“would you know how I made my large fortune in the space of but three
months, and how I have attained to such dignity and honour? It was by
following this simple maxim which my dear mother[55] taught me in the
rough log-cabin[56] of my birth: ‘Be courteous to all strangers, but
familiar with none.’”[57]

My friends, you are not strangers, nay, on the present solemn occasion
I think I may call you friends--even brethren!--dear brothers and
sisters! But a little bird has told me.... (_Here a genial smile passed
over his face and he drank a draught of pure cold water from a tumbler
at his side._) A little bird has told me, I say, that some of you
feared a trifle of just harshness, a reprimand perhaps, or a warning
note of danger, at the best a doubtful and academic temper as to the
future. Fear nothing. I shall pursue a far different course, and
however courteous I may be I shall indulge in no familiarities.

“The Tertiary symptoms of Secondary Education among the Poor” is
a noble phrase and expresses a noble idea. Why the very words are
drawn from our Anglo-Saxon mother-tongue deftly mingled with a few
expressions borrowed from the old dead language of long-past Greece and
Rome.

What is Education? The derivation of the word answers this question. It
is from “e” that is “out of,” “duc-o” “I lead,” from the root Duc--to
lead, to govern (whence we get so many of our most important words such
as “Duke”; “Duck” = a drake; etc.) and finally the termination “-tio”
which corresponds to the English “-ishness.” We may then put the whole
phrase in simple language thus, “The threefold Showings of twofold
Led-out-of-ishness among the Needy.”

The Needy! The Poor! Terrible words! It has been truly said that
we have them always with us. It is one of our peculiar glories in
nineteenth century England, that we of the upper classes have fully
recognised our heavy responsibility towards our weaker fellow-citizens.
Not by Revolution, which is dangerous and vain, not by heroic
legislation or hair-brained schemes of universal panaceas, not by
frothy Utopias. No!--by solid hard work, by quiet and persistent
effort, with the slow invisible tenacity that won the day at Badajoz,
we have won this great social victory. And if any one should ask me for
the result I should answer him--go to Bolton, go to Manchester, go to
Liverpool; go to Hull or Halifax--the answer is there.

There are many ways in which this good work is proceeding. Life is a
gem of many facets. Some of my friends take refuge in Prayer, others
have joined the Charity Organisation Society, others again have
laboured in a less brilliant but fully as useful a fashion by writing
books upon social statistics which command an enormous circulation. You
have turned to education, and you have done well. Show me a miner or
a stevedore who attends his lectures upon Rossetti, and I will show
you a man. Show me his wife or daughter at a cookery school or engaged
in fretwork, and I will shew you a woman. A man and a woman--solemn
thought!

A noble subject indeed and one to occupy the whole life of a man! This
“Education,” this “Leading-out-of,” is the matter of all our lives here
in Oxford except in the vacation.[58] And what an effect it has! Let me
prove it in a short example.

At a poor lodging-house in Lafayette, Pa., U.S.A., three well-educated
men from New England who had fallen upon evil times were seated at a
table surrounded by a couple of ignorant and superstitious Irishmen;
these poor untaught creatures, presuming upon their numbers, did not
hesitate to call the silent and gentlemanly unfortunates “Dommed
High-faluthing Fules”; but mark the sequel. A fire broke out in the
night. The house was full of these Irishmen and of yet more repulsive
Italians. Some were consumed by the devouring element, others
perished in the flames, others again saved their lives by a cowardly
flight.[59] But what of those three from Massachusetts whom better
principles had guided in youth and with whom philosophy had replaced
the bitter craft of the Priest? They were found--my dear friends--they
were found still seated calmly at the table; they had not moved; no
passion had blinded them, no panic disturbed: in their charred and
blackened features no trace of terror was apparent. Such is the effect,
such the glory of what my late master and guide, the Professor of
Tautology, used to call the “Principle of the Survival of the Fittest.”

(_Applause, which was only checked by a consideration for the respect
due to the Sacred edifice._)

Go forth then! Again I say go forth! Go forth! Go forth! The time is
coming when England will see that your claims to reverence, recognition
and emolument are as great as our own. I repeat it, go forth, and when
you have brought the great bulk of families to change their mental
standpoint, then indeed you will have transformed the world! For
without the mind the human intellect is nothing.




X.

Lambkin’s Leader


Mr. Solomon was ever determined to keep the _Sunday Englishman_ at a
high level. “We owe it” (he would say) “first to the public who are
thereby sacrificed--I mean satisfied--and to ourselves, who secure
thereby a large and increasing circulation.” [“Ourselves” alluded to
the shareholders, for the _Sunday Englishman_ was a limited Company, in
which the shares (of which Mr. Solomon held the greater number) were
distributed in the family; the tiniest toddler of two years old was
remembered, and had been presented with a share by his laughing and
generous parent.]

In this laudable effort to keep “abreast of the times” (as he phrased
it), the Editor and part Proprietor determined to have leaders written
by University men, who from their position of vantage enjoy a unique
experience in practical matters. He had formed a very high opinion
of Lambkin’s journalistic capacity from his unpublished letters as a
special correspondent. Indeed, he was often heard to say that “a man
like him was lost at Oxford, and was born for Fleet Street.” He wrote,
therefore, to Mr. Lambkin and gave him “Carte Blanche,” as one French
scholar to another, sending him only the general directions that his
leader must be “smart, up-to-date, and with plenty of push,” it was to
be “neither too long nor too short,” and while it should be written in
an easy familiar tone, there should be little or no seriously offensive
matter included.

Mr. Lambkin was delighted, and when at his request the article had been
paid for, he sent in the following:

       *       *       *       *       *

THE LEADER.

“The English-Speaking Race has--if we except the Dutch, Negro, and
Irish elements--a marvellous talent for self-government. From the
earliest origins of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers to the latest Parish
Council, guided but not controlled by the modern ‘Mass Thegen’ or local
‘Gesithcund man,’ this talent, or rather genius, is apparent. We cannot
tell why, in the inscrutable designs of Providence, our chosen race
should have been so specially gifted, but certain it is that wherever
plain ordinary men _such as I who write this and you who read it_,[60]
may be planted, there they cause the desert to blossom, and the waters
to gush from the living rock. Who has not known, whether among his
personal acquaintance or from having read of him in books, the type
of man who forms the strength of this mighty national organism? And
who has not felt that he is himself something of that kidney? We stand
aghast at our own extraordinary power, and it has been finely said that
Nelson was greater than he knew. From one end of the earth to the other
the British language is spoken and understood. The very words that I am
writing will be read to-morrow in London, the day after in Oxford--and
from this it is but a step to the uttermost parts of the earth.

“Under these conditions of power, splendour, and domination it is
intolerable that the vast metropolis of this gigantic empire should
be pestered with crawling cabs. There are indeed many things which in
the Divine plan have it in their nature to crawl. We of all the races
of men are the readiest to admit the reign of universal law. Meaner
races know not the law, but we are the children of the law, and where
crawling is part of the Cosmos we submit and quit ourselves like
men, being armed with the armour of righteousness. Thus no Englishman
(whatever foreigners may feel) is offended at a crawling insect or
worm. A wounded hare will crawl, and we Read that ‘the serpent was
cursed and crawled upon his belly’; again, Aristotle in his Ethics
talks of those whose nature (φύσις) it is ‘ἕρπειν,’ which is usually
translated ‘to crawl,’ and Kipling speaks of fifes ‘crawling.’ With
all this we have no quarrel, but the crawling cab is a shocking and
abominable thing; and if the titled owners of hansoms do not heed
the warning in time they will find that the spirit of Cromwell is
not yet dead, and mayhap the quiet determined people of this realm
will rise and sweep them and their gaudy gew-gaws and their finnicky
high-stepping horses, and their perched-up minions, from the fair face
of England.”




XI.

Lambkin’s Remarks on the End of Term

  _Delivered in Hall on Saturday, Dec. 6th, 1887, the morning upon
  which the College went down._


  MY DEAR FRIENDS; MY DEAR UNDERGRADUATE MEMBERS OF THIS COLLEGE,

The end of Term is approaching--nay, is here. A little more, and we
shall meet each other no longer for six weeks. It is a solemn and
a sacred thought. It is not the sadness, and even the regret, that
takes us at the beginning of the Long Vacation. This is no definitive
close. We lose (I hope) no friends; none leave us for ever, unless I
may allude to the young man whom few of you knew, but through whose
criminal folly the head of this foundation has lost the use of one eye.

This is not a time of exaltation, so should it not be a time for too
absolute a mourning. This is not the end of the Easter Term, nor of
the Summer Term. It is the end of Michaelmas Term. That is the fact,
and facts must be looked in the face. What are we to do with the
approaching vacation? What have we done with the past term?

In the past term (I think I can answer for some of you) a much deeper
meaning has entered into your lives. Especially you, the young freshmen
(happily I have had the control of many, the teaching of some), I know
that life has become fuller for you. That half-hour a week to which you
pay so little heed will mean much in later years. You have come to me
in batches for half-an-hour a week, and each of you has thus enjoyed
collectively the beginning of that private control and moulding of
the character which is the object of all our efforts here in Oxford.
And can you not, as you look back, see what a great change has passed
over you in the short few months? I do not mean the corporeal change
involved by our climate or our prandial habits; neither do I allude to
the change in your dress and outward appearance. I refer to the mental
transformation.

You arrived sure of a number of things which you had learnt at school
or at your mother’s knee. Of what are you certain now? Of nothing! It
is necessary in the mysterious scheme of education that this blind
faith or certitude should be laid as a foundation in early youth.
But it is imperative that a man--if he is to be a man and not a
monster--should lose it at the outset of his career. My young friends,
I have given you the pearl of great price. You have begun to doubt.

Half-an-hour a week--four hours in all the term ... could any positive,
empirical, or dogmatic teaching have been conveyed in that time, or
with so much fullness as the great scheme of negation can be? I trow
not.

So much for knowledge and tutorship. What of morals? It is a delicate
subject, but I will treat of it boldly. You all remember how, shortly
after the month of October, the College celebrated Guy Fawkes’ day:
the elders, by a dinner in honour of their founder, the juniors by
lighting a bonfire in the quadrangle. You all know what followed. I do
not wish to refer again--certainly not with bitterness--to the excesses
of that evening; but the loss of eyesight is a serious thing, and one
that the victim may forgive, but hardly can forget. I hope the lesson
will suffice, and that in future no fellow of this College will have to
regret so serious a disfigurement at the hands of a student.

To pass to lighter things. The Smoking Concert on All Souls’ Day
was a great success. I had hoped to organise some similar jollity
on Good Friday, but I find that it falls in the Easter vacation. It
is, however, an excellent precedent, and we will not fail to have
one on some other festal occasion. To the action of one of our least
responsible members I will not refer. But surely there is neither good
breeding nor decency in dressing up as an old lady, in assuming the
name of one of our Greatest Families, and in so taking advantage of the
chivalry, and perhaps the devotion, of one’s superiors. The offence is
one that can not lightly be passed over, and the culprit will surely be
discovered.

Of the success of the College at hockey and in the inter-University
draughts competition, I am as proud as yourselves. [_Loud cheers,
lasting for several minutes._] They were games of which in my youth I
was myself proud. On the river I see no reason to be ashamed; next term
we have the Torpids, and after that the Eights. We have no cause to
despair. It is my experience (an experience based on ten years of close
observation), that no college can permanently remain at the bottom of
the river. There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the
flood leads on to fortune, let us therefore taking heart of grace and
screw our courage to the sticking point. We have the lightest cox. in
the ’Varsity and an excellent coach. Much may be done with these things.

As to the religious state of the college it is, as you all know,
excellent--I wish I could say the same for the Inorganic Chemistry.
This province falls under the guidance of Mr. Large, but the deficiency
in our standing is entirely the fault of his pupils. There are not
twenty men in the University better fitted to teach Inorganic Chemistry
than my colleague. At any rate it is a very grave matter and one by
which a college ultimately stands or falls.

We have had no deaths to deplore during this term, and in my opinion
the attack of mumps that affected the college during November can
hardly be called an epidemic. The drains will be thoroughly overhauled
during the vacation, and the expense of this, spread as it will be
among all undergraduate members whether in residence or not, will form
a very trifling addition to Battells. I doubt if its effect will be
felt.

There is one last thing that I shall touch upon. We have been
constantly annoyed by the way in which undergraduates tread down the
lawn. The Oxford turf is one of the best signs of our antiquity as
a university. There is no turf like it in the world. The habit of
continually walking upon it is fatal to its appearance. Such an action
would certainly never be permitted in a gentleman’s seat, and there
is some talk of building a wall round the quadrangle to prevent the
practice in question. I need hardly tell you what a disfigurement such
a step would involve, but if there is one thing in the management of
the college that I am more determined upon than another it is that no
one be he scholar or be he commoner shall walk upon the grass!

I wish you a very Merry Christmas at the various country houses you may
be visiting, and hope and pray that you may find united there all the
members of your own family.

Mr. Gurge will remain behind and speak to me for a few moments.




XII.

Lambkin’s Article on the North-west Corner of the Mosaic Pavement of
the Roman Villa at Bignor


Of Mr. Lambkin’s historical research little mention has been made,
because this was but the recreation of a mind whose serious work
was much more justly calculated to impress posterity. It is none
the less true that he had in the inner _coterie_ of Antiquarians, a
very pronounced reputation, and that on more than one occasion his
discoveries had led to animated dispute and even to friction. He is
referred to as “Herr Professor Lambkin” in Winsk’s “Roman Sandals,”[61]
and Mr. Bigchurch in the Preface of his exhaustive work on “The
Drainage of the Grecian Sea Port” (which includes much information
on the Ionian colonies and Magna Graecia) acknowledges Mr. Lambkin’s
“valuable sympathy and continuous friendly aid which have helped him
through many a dark hour.” Lambkin was also frequently sent books on
Greek and Roman Antiquities to review; and it must be presumed that the
editor of _Culture_,[62] who was himself an Oxford man and had taken
a House degree in 1862, would hardly have had such work done by an
ignorant man.

If further proof were needed of Mr. Lambkin’s deep and minute
scholarship in this matter it would be discovered in the many
reproductions of antiquities which used to hang round his room
in college. They were photographs of a reddish-brown colour and
represented many objects dear to the Scholar, such as the Parthenon,
the Temples of Paestum, the Apollo Belvedere, and the Bronze head at
the Vatican; called in its original dedication an Ariadne, but more
properly described by M. Crémieux-Nathanson, in the light of modern
research, as a Silenus.

Any doubts as to Lambkin’s full claim to detailed-knowledge in those
matters, will, however, be set at rest by the one thing he has left
us of the kind--his article in the _Revue Intellectuelle_, which was
translated for him by a Belgian friend, but of which I have preserved
the original MSS.[63] It is as follows:


THE ARTICLE.

I cannot conceive how M. Bischoff[64] and Herr Crapiloni[65] can have
fallen into their grotesque error with regard to the Head in the Mosaic
at Bignor. The Head, as all the world knows, is to be found in the
extreme north-west corner of the floor of the Mosaic at Bignor, in
Sussex. Its exact dimensions from the highest point of the crown to
the point or cusp of the chin, and from the furthest back edge of the
cerebellum to the outer tip of the nose are one foot five inches and
one foot three inches, respectively. The Head is thus of the Heroic or
exaggerated size, and _not_ (as Wainwright says in his _Antiquities_),
“of life size.” It represents the head and face of an old man, and is
composed of fragments, in which are used the colours black, brown,
blue, yellow, pink, green, purple and bright orange. There can be no
doubt that the floor must have presented a very beautiful and even
brilliant appearance when it was new, but at the present day it is much
dulled from having lain buried for fifteen hundred years.

My contention is that M. Bischoff and Herr Crapiloni have made a
very ridiculous mistake (I will not call it by a harsher name) in
representing this head to be a figure of Winter. In one case (that of
M. Bischoff) I have no doubt that patriotic notions were too strong
for a well-balanced judgment;[66] but in the other, I am at a loss to
find a sufficient basis for a statement which is not only false, but
calculated to do a grave hurt to history and even to public morals.
M. Bischoff admits that he visited England in company with Herr
Crapiloni--I have no doubt that the latter influenced the former, and
that the blame and shame of this matter must fall on the ultra-montane
German and not on the philosophical but enthusiastic Gaul.

For my opponents’ abuse of myself in the columns of such rags as
the _Bulletin de la Société Historique de Bourges_, or the _Revue
d’Histoire Romaine_, I have only contempt and pity; but _we_ in
_England_ are taught that a lie on any matter is equally serious, and I
will be no party to the calling of the Mosaic a figure of “Winter” when
I am convinced it is nothing of the kind.

As far as I can make out from their somewhat turgid rhetoric, my
opponents rely upon the inscription “Hiems” put in with white stones
beneath the mosaic, and they argue that, as the other four corners are
admitted to be “Spring,” “Summer,” and “Autumn,” each with their title
beneath, _therefore_ this fourth corner must be Winter!

It is just such an argument from analogy as I should have expected
from men brought up in the corrupt morality and the base religious
conceptions of the Continent! When one is taught that authority is
everything and cannot use one’s judgment,[67] one is almost certain to
jump at conclusions in this haphazard fashion in dealing with definite
facts.

For my part I am convinced that the head is the portrait of the Roman
proprietor of the villa, and I am equally convinced that the title
“Hiems” has been added below at a later date, so as to furnish a trap
for all self-sufficient and gullible historians. Are my continental
critics aware that _no single copy_ of the mosaic is to be found in
the whole of the Roman Remains of Britain? Are they aware the villa at
Bignor has changed hands three times in this century? I do not wish
to make any insinuations of bad faith, but I would hint that the word
“Hiems” has a fresh new look about it which puzzles me.

To turn to another matter, though it is one connected with our subject.
The pupil of the eye has disappeared. We know that the loss is of
ancient date, as Wright mentions its absence in his catalogue. A very
interesting discussion has arisen as to the material of which the pupil
was composed. The matter occupied the Society at Dresden (of which I
am a corresponding member) in a debate of some days, I have therefore
tried to fathom it but with only partial success. I have indeed found
a triangular blue fragment which is much the same shape as the missing
cavity; it is however, somewhat larger in all its dimensions, and is
convex instead of flat, and I am assured it is but a piece of blue
china of recent manufacture, of which many such odds and ends are to
be found in the fields and dustbins. If (as I strongly suspect) these
suggestions are only a ruse, and if (as I hope will be the case) my
fragment, after some filing and chipping, can be made to fit the
cavity, the discovery will be of immense value; for it will show that
the owner of the villa was a Teuton and will go far to prove the theory
of Roman continuity, which is at present based on such slight evidence.
I will let you know the result.

The coins recently dug up in the neighbourhood, and on which so many
hopes were based, prove nothing as to the date of the mosaic. They
cannot be of Roman origin, for they bear for the most part the head and
inscription of William III., while the rest are pence and shillings of
the Georges. One coin was a guinea, and will, I fear, be sold as gold
to the bank. I was very disappointed to find so poor a result: ever
since my enquiry labourers have kept coming to me with coins obviously
modern--especially bronze coins of Napoleon III.--which they have
buried to turn them green, and subsequently hammered shapeless in the
hopes of my purchasing them. I have had the misfortune to purchase,
for no less a sum than a sovereign, what turned out to be the circular
brass label on a dog’s collar. It contained the name of “Ponto,”
inscribed in a classic wreath which deceived me.

Nothing else of real importance has occurred since my last
communication.




XIII.

Lambkin’s Sermon.


A man not over-given to mere words, Lambkin was always also somewhat
diffident of his pulpit eloquence and his sermons were therefore rare.
It must not be imagined that he was one of those who rebel vainly
against established usage. There was nothing in him of the blatant and
destructive demagogue; no character could have been more removed from
the demons who drenched the fair soil of France with such torrents of
blood during the awful reign of terror.

But just as he was in politics a liberal in the truest sense (not in
the narrow party definition of the word), so in the religious sphere
he descried the necessity of gentle but persistent reform. “The
present,” he would often say, “is inseparable from the past,” but he
would add “continual modification to suit the necessities of a changing
environment is a cardinal condition of vitality.”

It was, therefore, his aim to keep the form of all existing
institutions and merely to change their matter.

Thus, he was in favour of the retention of the Regius Professorship
of Greek, and even voted for a heavy increase in the salary of its
occupant; but he urged and finally carried the amendment by which
that dignitary is at present compelled to lecture mainly on current
politics. Mathematics again was a subject whose interest he discerned,
however much he doubted its value as a mental discipline; he was,
therefore, a supporter of the prize fellowships occasionally offered on
the subject, but, in the determination of the successful candidate he
would give due weight to the minutiae of dress and good manners.

It will be seen from all this that if Lambkin was essentially a modern,
yet he was as essentially a wise and moderate man; cautious in action
and preferring judgment to violence he would often say, “_trans_former
please, not _re_former,” when his friends twitted him over the port
with his innovations.[68]

Religion, then, which must be a matter of grave import to all, was not
neglected by such a mind.

He saw that all was not lost when dogma failed, but that the great
ethical side of the system could be developed in the room left by the
decay of its formal character. Just as a man who has lost his fingers
will sometimes grow thumbs in their place, so Lambkin foresaw that in
the place of what was an atrophied function, vigorous examples of an
older type might shoot up, and the organism would gain in breadth what
it lost in definition. “I look forward to the time” (he would cry)
“when the devotional hand of man shall be all thumbs.”

The philosophy which he thus applied to formal teaching and dogma took
practical effect in the no less important matter of the sermon. He
retained that form or shell, but he raised it as on stepping-stones
from its dead self to higher things; the success of many a man in this
life has been due to the influence exerted by his simple words.

The particular allocution which I have chosen as the best illustration
of his method was not preached in the College Chapel, but was on the
contrary a University Sermon given during eight weeks. It ran as
follows:


SERMON

I take for my text a beautiful but little-known passage from the
Talmud:

  “_I will arise and gird up my lions--I mean loins--and go; yea, I
  will get me out of the land of my fathers which is in Ben-ramon, even
  unto Edom and the Valley of Kush and the cities about Laban to the
  uttermost ends of the earth._”

There is something about foreign travel, my dear Brethren, which seems,
as it were, a positive physical necessity to our eager and high-wrought
generation. At specified times of the year we hunt, or debate; we
attend to our affairs in the city, or we occupy our minds with the
guidance of State. The ball-room, the drawing-room, the club, each have
their proper season. In our games football gives place to cricket, and
the deep bay of the faithful hound yields with the advancing season to
the sharp crack of the Winchester, as the grouse, the partridge, or the
very kapper-capercailzie itself falls before the superior intelligence
of man. One fashion also will succeed another, and in the mysterious
development of the years--a development not entirely under the guidance
of our human wills--the decent croquet-ball returns to lawns that had
for so long been strangers to aught but the fierce agility of tennis.

So in the great procession of the times and the seasons, there comes
upon us the time for travel. It is not (my dear Brethren), it is
not in the winter when all is covered with a white veil of snow--or
possibly transformed with the marvellous effects of thaw; it is not
in the spring when the buds begin to appear in the hedges, and when
the crocus studs the spacious sward in artful disorder and calculated
negligence--no it is not then--the old time of Pilgrimage,[69] that our
positive and enlightened era chooses for its migration.[70]

It is in the burning summer season, when the glare of the sun is almost
painful to the jaded eye of the dancer, when the night is shortest and
the day longest, that we fly from these inhospitable shores and green
fields of England.

And whither do we fly? Is it to the cool and delicious north, to the
glaciers of Greenland, or to the noble cliffs and sterling characters
of Orkney? Is it to Norway? Can it be to Lapland? Some perhaps, a very
few, are to be found journeying to these places in the commodious
and well-appointed green boats of Mr. Wilson, of Tranby Croft. But,
alas! the greater number leave the hot summer of England for the yet
more torrid climes of Italy, Spain, the Levant and the Barbary coast.
Negligent of the health that is our chiefest treasure, we waste our
energies in the malaria of Rome, or in Paris poison our minds with the
contempt aroused by the sight of hideous foreigners.

Let me turn from this painful aspect of a question which certainly
presents nobler and more useful issues. It is most to our purpose,
perhaps, in a certain fashion; it is doubtless more to our purpose in
many ways to consider on an occasion such as this the moral aspects of
foreign travel, and chief among these I reckon those little points of
mere every day practice, which are of so much greater importance than
the rare and exaggerated acts to which our rude ancestors gave the name
of Sins.

Consider the over-charges in hotels. The economist may explain,
the utilitarian may condone such action, but if we are to make for
Righteousness, we cannot pass without censure a practice which we would
hardly go so far as to condemn. If there be in the sacred edifice any
one of those who keep houses of entertainment upon the Continent,
especially if there sit among you any representative of that class in
Switzerland, I would beg him to consider deeply a matter which the
fanatical clergy of his land may pardon, but which it is the duty of
ours to publicly deplore.

Consider again the many examples of social and moral degradation which
we meet with in our journeyings! We pass from the coarse German, to the
inconstant Gaul. We fly the indifference and ribald scoffing of Milan
only to fall into the sink of idolatory and superstition which men
call Naples; we observe in our rapid flight the indolent Spaniard, the
disgusting Slav, the uncouth Frisian and the frightful Hun. Our travels
will not be without profit if they teach us to thank Heaven that our
fathers preserved us from such a lot as theirs.

Again, we may consider the great advantages that we may gather as
individuals from travel. We can exercise our financial ingenuity (and
this is no light part of mental training) in arranging our expenses
for the day. We can find in the corners of foreign cities those relics
of the Past which the callous and degraded people of the place ignore,
and which are reserved for the appreciation of a more vigorous race. In
the galleries we learn the beauties of a San Mirtānoja, and the vulgar
insufficiency and ostentation of a Sanzio.[71] In a thousand ways the
experience of the Continent is a consolation and a support.

Fourthly, my dear brethren, we contrast our sturdy and honest crowd of
tourists with the ridiculous castes and social pettiness of the ruck
of foreign nations. There the peasant, the bourgeois, the noble, the
priest, the politician, the soldier, seems each to live in his own
world. In our happier England there are but two classes, the owners of
machinery and the owners of land; and these are so subtly and happily
mixed, there is present at the same time so hearty an independence
and so sensible a recognition of rank, that the whole vast mass of
squires and merchants mingle in an exquisite harmony, and pour like a
life-giving flood over the decaying cities of Europe.

But I have said enough. I must draw to a close. The love of fame, which
has been beautifully called the last infirmity of noble-minds, alone
would tempt me to proceed. But I must end. I hope that those of you who
go to Spain will visit the unique and interesting old town of Saragossa.

(_Here Mr. Lambkin abruptly left the Pulpit._)




XIV.

Lambkin’s Open Letter to Churchmen


The noise made by Mr. Lambkin’s famous advice to Archdeacon Burfle
will be remembered by all my readers. He did not, however, publish
the letter (as is erroneously presumed in _Great Dead Men of the
Period_),[72] without due discussion and reflection. I did not
personally urge him to make it public--I thought it unwise. But
Mr. Large may almost be said to have insisted upon it in the long
Conversation which he and Josiah had upon the matter. When Lambkin
had left Large’s room I took the liberty of going up to see him
again, but the fatal missive had been posted, and appeared next day
in _The Times_, the _Echo_, and other journals, not to mention the
_Englishman’s Anchor_. I do not wish to accuse Mr. Large of any
malicious purpose or deliberately misleading intention, but I fear that
(as he was not an impulsive man) his advice can only have proceeded
from a woeful and calculated lack of judgment.

There is no doubt that (from Lambkin’s own point of view), the
publication of this letter was a very serious error. It bitterly
offended Arthur Bundleton, and alienated all the “Pimlico” group (as
they were then called). At the same time it did not satisfy the small
but eager and cultured body who followed Tamworthy. It gave a moderate
pleasure to the poorer clergy in the country parishes, but I doubt
very much whether these are the men from whom social advantage or
ecclesiastical preferment is to be expected. I often told Lambkin that
the complexity of our English Polity was a dangerous thing to meddle
with. “A man,” I would say to him, “who expresses an opinion is like
one who plunges a knife into some sensitive part of the human frame.
The former may offend unwittingly by the mere impact of his creed or
prejudice, much as the latter may give pain by happening upon some
hidden nerve.”

Now Lambkin was essentially a wise man. He felt the obligation--the
duty (to give it a nobler name)--which is imposed on all of us of
studying our fellows. He did not, perhaps, say where his mind lay
in any matter more than half a dozen times in his life, for fear of
opposing by such an expression the wider experience or keener emotion
of the society around him. He felt himself a part of a great stream,
which it was the business of a just man to follow, and if he spoke
strongly (as he often did) it was in some matter upon which the vast
bulk of his countrymen were agreed; indeed he rightly gave to public
opinion, and to the governing classes of the nation, an overwhelming
weight in his system of morals; and even at twenty-one he had a
wholesome contempt for the doctrinaire enthusiast who neglects his
newspaper and hatches an ethical system out of mere blind tradition or
(what is worse) his inner conscience.

It is remarkable, therefore, that such a man should have been guilty of
one such error. “It was not a crime,” he said cleverly, in speaking of
the matter to me, “it was worse; it was a blunder.” And that is what we
all felt. The matter can be explained, however, by a reference to the
peculiar conditions of the moment in which it appeared. The Deanery of
Bury had just fallen vacant by death of Henry Carver, the elder.[73] A
Liberal Unionist Government was in power, and Lambkin perhaps imagined
that controversy still led--as it had done but a few years before--to
the public notice which it merits. He erred, but it was a noble error.

One thing at least we can rejoice in, the letter may have hurt Lambkin
in this poor mortal life; but it was of incalculable advantage to the
generation immediately succeeding his own. I cannot but believe that
from that little source springs all the mighty river of reform which
has left so profound a mark upon the hosiery of this our day.

The letter is as follows:--


AN OPEN LETTER

  BURFORD. _St. John’s Eve, 1876._

  MY DEAR BURFLE,

  You have asked my advice on a matter of deep import, a matter upon
  which every self-respecting Englishman is asking himself the question
  “Am I a _sheep_ or a _goat_?” My dear Burfle, I will answer you
  straight out, and I know you will not be angry with me if I answer
  also in the agora, “before the people,” as Paul would have done. Are
  you a _sheep_ or a _goat_? Let us think.

  You say rightly that the question upon which all this turns is the
  question of boots. It is but a symbol, but it is a symbol upon which
  all England is divided. On the one hand we have men strenuous,
  determined, eager--men (if I may say so) of true Apostolic quality,
  to whom the buttoned boot is sacred to a degree some of us may find
  it difficult to understand. They are few, are these devout pioneers,
  but they are in certain ways, and from some points of view, among the
  _élite_ of the Nation, so to speak.

  On the other hand we have the great mass of sensible men, earnest,
  devout, practical--what Beeker calls in a fine phrase “Thys corpse
  and verie bodie of England[74]”--determined to maintain what their
  fathers had before them, and insisting on the laced boot as the
  proper foot-gear of the Church.

  No one is more sensible than myself (my dear Burfle), I say no one is
  more sensible than I am, of the gravity of this schism--for schism
  it threatens to be. And no one appreciates more than I do how much
  there is to be said on both sides. The one party will urge (with
  perfect justice), that the buttoned boot is a development. They
  maintain (and there is much to be said in their favour), that the
  common practice of wearing buttoned boots, their ornate appearance,
  and the indication of well-being which they afford, fit them most
  especially for the Service of the Temple. They are seen upon the feet
  of Parisians, of Romans, of Viennese; they are associated with our
  modern occasions of Full Dress, and when we wear them we feel that we
  are one with all that is of ours in Christendom. In a word, they are
  Catholic, in the best and truest sense of the word.

  Now, my dear Burfle, consider the other side of the argument. The
  laced boot, modern though it be in form and black and solid, is
  yet most undoubtedly the Primitive Boot in its essential. That the
  early Christians wore sandals is now beyond the reach of doubt or the
  power of the wicked. There is indeed the famous forgery of Gelasius,
  which may have imposed upon the superstition of the dark ages,[75]
  there is the doubtful evidence also of the mosaic at Ravenna. But
  the only solid ground ever brought forward was the passage in the
  Pseudo-Johannes, which no modern scholar will admit to refer to
  buttons. ξύγον means among other things a lace, an absolute lace,
  and I defy our enemies (who are many and unscrupulous), to deny. The
  Sandal has been finally given its place as a Primitive Christian
  ornament; and we can crush the machinations of foreign missions, I
  think, with the plain sentence of that great scholar, Dr. Junker,
  “The sandal,” he says, “is the parent of the laced boot.”

  So far then, so good. You see (my dear Burfle), how honestly the two
  sides may differ, and how, with such a backing upon either side, the
  battle might rage indefinitely, to the final extinction, perhaps, of
  our beloved country and its most cherished institutions.

  Is there no way by which such a catastrophe may be avoided?

  Why most certainly _yes_. There is a road on which both may travel,
  a place in which all may meet. I mean the boot (preferably the
  cloth boot) with elastic sides. Already it is worn by many of our
  clergy.[76] It offends neither party, it satisfies, or should
  satisfy, both; and for my part, I see in it one of those compromises
  upon which our greatness is founded. Let us then determine to be in
  this matter neither _sheep_ nor _goats_. It is better, far better, to
  admit some sheepishness into our goatishness, or (if our extremists
  _will_ have it so), some goatishness into our sheepishness--it is
  better, I say, to enter one fold and be at peace together, than to
  imperil our most cherished and beloved tenets in a mere wrangle upon
  non-essentials. For, after all what is essential to us? Not boots, I
  think, but righteousness. Righteousness may express itself in boots,
  it is just and good that it should do so, but to see righteousness in
  the boot itself is to fall into the gross materialism of the middle
  ages, and to forget our birthright and the mess of pottage.

  Yours (my dear Burfle) in all charity,

  JOSIAH LAMBKIN.




XV.

Lambkin’s Letter to a French Friend


Lambkin’s concern for the Continent was deep and lasting. He knew the
Western part of this Division of the Globe from a constant habit of
travel which would take him by the Calais-Bâle, passing through the
St. Gothard by night, and so into the storied plains of Italy.[77] It
was at Milan that he wrote his _Shorter Anglo-Saxon Grammar_, and in
Assisi that he corrected the proofs of his article on the value of
oats as human food. Everyone will remember the abominable outrage at
Naples, where he was stabbed by a coachman in revenge for his noble and
disinterested protection of a poor cab-horse; in a word, Italy is full
of his vacations, and no name is more familiar to the members of the
Club at the Villa Marinoni.

It may seem strange that under such circumstances our unhappy
neighbours across the Channel should so especially have taken up his
public action. He was no deep student of the French tongue, and he
had but a trifling acquaintance with the habits of the common people
of that country; but he has said himself with great fervour, in his
“Thoughts on Political Obligations,” that no man could be a good
citizen of England who did not understand her international position.
“What” (he would frequently exclaim) “what can they know of England,
who only England know?”[78] He did not pretend to a familiarity with
the minute details of foreign policy, nor was he such a pedant as to
be offended at the good-humoured chaff directed against his accent in
the pronunciation of foreign names. Nevertheless he thought it--and
rightly thought it--part of his duty to bring into any discussion of
the affairs of the Republic those chance phrases which lend colour and
body to a conversation. He found this duty as it lay in his path and
accomplished it, without bombast, but with full determination, and
with a vast firmness of purpose. Thus he would often let drop such
expressions as “état majeur,” “la cléricalisme c’est l’ennemi,” “l’état
c’est moi,”[79] and such was his painful and exact research that he
first in the University arrived at the meaning of the word “bordereau,”
which, until his discovery, all had imagined to be a secret material of
peculiar complexity.

Mr. Lambkin had but one close friend in France, a man who had from
cosmopolitan experience acquired a breadth and humour which the
Frenchman so conspicuously lacks; he united, therefore, the charm
of the French character to that general experience which Lambkin
invariably demanded of his friends, and the fact that he belonged to
a small political minority and had so long associated with foreigners
had winnowed from that fine soul the grossness and one-sidedness, the
mingled vanity and ferocity, which seems so fatal a part of the Gallic
temper. In some ways this friend reminded one of the great Huguenots
whom France to her eternal loss banished by the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, and of whom a bare twenty thousand are now to be found in
the town of Nîmes. In other ways this gifted mind recalled--and this
would be in his moments of just indignation--the manner and appearance
of a Major Prophet.

Jules de la Vaguère dè Bissac was the first of his family to bear that
ancient name, but not the least worthy. Born on a Transatlantic in the
port of Hamburg, his first experience of life had been given him in the
busy competition of New York. It was there that he acquired the rapid
glance, the grasp, the hard business head which carried him from Buenos
Ayres to Amsterdam, and finally to a fortune. His wealth he spent in
the entertainment of his numerous friends, in the furtherance of just
aims in politics (to which alas! the rich in France do not subscribe
as they should), to the publication of sound views in the press, and
occasionally (for old habit is second nature[80]), in the promotion
of some industrial concern destined to benefit his country and the
world.[81] With transactions, however sound and honest, that savoured
of mere speculation De Bissac would have nothing to do, and when his
uncle and brother fled the country in 1887, he helped, indeed, with his
purse but he was never heard to excuse or even to mention the poor,
fallen men.

His hotel in the Rue des Fortifications (a modest but coquettish
little gem, whose doors were bronze copies of the famous gates of the
Baptistery at Florence), had often received Mr. Lambkin and a happy
circle of friends. Judge then of the horror and indignation with which
Oxford heard that two of its beautiful windows had been intentionally
broken on the night of June 15th, 1896. The famous figure of “Mercy,”
taken from the stained glass at Rheims, was destroyed and one of the
stones had fallen on the floor within an inch of a priceless Sèvres
vase that had once belonged to Law and had been bought from M. Panama.
It was on the occasion of this abominable outrage that Mr. Lambkin sent
the following letter, which, as it was published in the _Horreur_, I
make no scruple of reprinting. But, for the sake of the historical
interest it possesses, I give it in its original form:--

  “CHER AMI ET MONSIEUR,

  Je n’ai pas de doute que vous aurez souvenu votre visite à Oxford,
  car je suis bien sur que je souviens ma visite à Paris, quand je fus
  recu avec tant de bienveillance par vous et votre aimable famille.

  Vous aurez donc immediatement après l’accident pensé à nous car vous
  aurez su que nous étions, moi et Bilkin, vos amis sincerès surtout
  dans la politique. Nous avons expecté quelque chose pareille et nous
  comprenons bien pourquoi c’est le mauvais Durand qui a jété les
  pierres. Vous avez été trop bon pour cet homme là. Souvenez-vous en
  future que c’est exactement ceux à qui nous pretons de l’argent et
  devraient être dévoués à nous, qui deviennent des ennemis. Voilà
  ce qui empêche si souvent de faire du bien excepté à ceux qui nous
  seront fideles et doux.

  (_All this, being of a private nature, was not printed in M. de
  Bissac’s paper. The public portion follows._)

  Il est bien evident d’où viennent des abominables et choquants choses
  pareilles. C’est que la France se meurent. Un pays où il n’y a
  personne[82] qui peut empecher des fanatiques de briser les verres
  est un pays en décadence, voilà ce que l’Irlande aurait été si nous
  étions pas là pour l’empecher. On briserait des verres très surement
  et beaucoup. J’espère que je ne blesse pas votre cœur de Français en
  disant tout celà, mais il est bien mieux de connaître ce que l’on a,
  même si c’est mortel comme en France.

  Vous l’avez bien dit c’est les militarisme et cléricalisme qui font
  ces outrages. Examinez bien l’homme qui a fait ça et vous verrez
  qu’il a été baptisé et très probablement il a fait son service
  militaire. Oh! Mon cher ami que Dieu[83] vous a merveilleusement
  préservé de l’influence du Sabe et du Goupillon! Vous n’avez pas
  fait votre service et si vous êtes sage ne faites le jamais car il
  corrompt le caractère. Je nous ne l’avons pas.

  J’ai lu avec grand plaisir votre article “Le Prêtre au Bagne,” oui!
  c’est au Bagne que’l on devrait envoyer les Prêtres seulement dans
  un pays ou tant de personne sont Catholiques, je crains que les jurys
  sentimentales de votre pays aquitterait honteusement ces hommes
  néfastes.

  J’espère que je ne blesse pas votre Cœur de Catholique en disant
  cela.[84] Nos Catholiques ici ne sont pas si mauvais que nos
  Catholiques là-bas. Beaucoup des notres sont de très bonnes familles,
  mais en Irlande l’ignorance et terrible, et on veut le faire plus
  grand avec une Université!

  En éspérant que la France redeviendra son vrai même[85] ce que je
  crains être impossible, je reste, mon cher ami (et Monsieur) votre
  ami sincère, agriez mes vœux pressés, tout-à-toi.

  JOSUE LAMBKIN.




XVI.

Interview with Mr. Lambkin.


A representative of _The J. C. R._ had, but a short while before
his death, the privilege of an interview with Mr. Lambkin on those
numerous questions of the day which the enterprise of the Press puts
before its readers. The meeting has a most pathetic interest! Here
was the old man full and portly, much alive to current questions, and
to the last a true representative of his class. Within a week the
fatal Gaudy had passed and he was no more! Though the words here given
are reported by another, they bear the full, fresh impress of his
personality and I treasure them as the last authentic expression of
that great mind.

“Ringing the bell” (writes our representative) “at a neat villa in
the Banbury Road, the door was answered by a trim serving-maid in a
chintz gown and with a white cap on her head. The whole aspect of Mr.
Lambkin’s household without and within breathes repose and decent
merriment. I was ushered into a well-ordered study, and noticed upon
the walls a few handsome prints, chosen in perfect taste and solidly
mounted in fine frames, ‘The meeting of Wellington and Blucher at
Waterloo,’ ‘John Knox preaching before Mary Queen of Scots,’ ‘The trial
of Lord William Russell,’ and two charming pictures of a child and a
dog: ‘Can ’oo talk?’ and ‘Me too!’ completed the little gallery. I
noticed also a fine photograph of the Marquis of Llanidloes, whose
legal attainments and philological studies had formed a close bond
between him and Mr. Lambkin. A faded daguerreotype of Mr. Lambkin’s
mother and a pencil sketch of his father’s country seat possessed a
pathetic interest.

“Mr. Lambkin came cheerily into the room, and I plunged at once ‘in
medias res.’

“‘Pray Mr. Lambkin what do you think of the present position of
parties?’”

“‘Why, if you ask me,’ he replied, with an intelligent look, ‘I think
the great party system needs an opposition to maintain it in order, and
I regret the absence of any man of weight or talent--I had almost said
of common decency--on the Liberal side. The late Lord Llanidloes--who
was the old type of Liberal--such a noble heart!--said to me in this
very room, ‘Mark my words, Lambkin’ (said he) ‘_the Opposition is
doomed_.’ This was in Mr. Gladstone’s 1885 Parliament; it has always
seemed to me a wonderful prophecy. But Llanidloes was a wonderful man,
and the place of second Under-Secretary for Agriculture was all too
little a reward for such services as his to the State. ‘Do you know
those lines,’ here Mr. Lambkin grew visibly affected, ‘Then all were
for the party and none were for the State, the rich man paid the poor
man, and the weak man loved the great’? ‘I fear those times will never
come again.’

“A profound silence followed. ‘However,’ continued he with quiet
emphasis, ‘Home Rule is dead, and there is no immediate danger of any
tampering with the judicial system of Great Britain after the fashion
that obtains in France.’

“‘Yes,’ he continued, with the smile that makes him so familiar, ‘these
are my books: trifles,--but my own. Here’ (taking down a volume), ‘is
_What would Cromwell have done?_--a proposal for reforming Oxford. Then
here, in a binding with purple flowers, is my _Time and Purpose_,--a
devotional book which has sold largely. The rest of the shelf is what
I call my ‘casual’ work. It was mainly done for that great modern
publisher,--Matthew Straight, who knows so well how to combine the
old Spirit with Modern exigencies. You know his beautiful sign of the
Boiling Pot in Plummer’s Court? It was painted for him by one of his
young artists. You have doubtless seen his name in the lists of guests
at country houses; I often meet him when I go to visit my friends, and
we plan a book together.

“‘Thus my _Boys of Great Britain_--an historical work, was conceived
over the excellent port of Baron Gusmann at Westburton Abbey. Then
there is the expansion of this book, _English Boyhood_, in three
volumes, of which only two have appeared--_Anglo-Saxon Boyhood_ and
_Mediæval Boyhood in England_. It is very laborious.

“‘No,’ he resumed, with nervous rapidity, ‘I have not confined myself
to these. There is “_What is Will?_” “_Mehitopel the Jewess of Prague_”
(a social novel); “_The Upper House of Convocation before History_;”
“_Elements of the Leibnitzian Monodology for Schools_” (which is the
third volume in the High School Series); “_Physiology of the Elephant_”
and its little abbreviated form for the use of children, “_How Jumbo
is made Inside_,” dedicated, by the way, to that dear little fairy,
Lady Constantia de la Pole: such a charming child, and destined, I am
sure, to be a good and beautiful woman. She is three years old, and
shooting up like a graceful young lily.’

“‘I fear I am detaining you,’ I said, as the good man, whose eyes
had filled with tears during the last remark (he is a great lover of
children) pulled out a gold watch and consulted its tell-tale dial.
‘Not at all!,’ he replied with finished courtesy, ‘but I always make a
point of going in to High Tea and seeing my wife and family well under
weigh before I go off to Hall. Surely that must be the gong, and there
(as the pleasant sound of children’s high voices filled the house) come
what I call my young barbarians.’

“He accompanied me to the door with true old-world politeness and
shook me beautifully by the hand. ‘Good-bye,’ he said, ‘Good-bye and
God-speed. You may make what use you like of this, that I believe the
task of the journalist to be among the noblest in our broad land. The
Press has a great mission, a great mission.’

“With these words still ringing in my ears I gathered up my skirts to
cross the muddy roadway and stepped into the tram.”


Women’s Printing Society, Ltd., 66, Whitcomb St. W.C.




FOOTNOTES.


[1]

    But do not think I shall explain
      To any great extent. Believe me,
    I partly write to give you pain,
      And if you do not like me, leave me.


[2]

    And least of all can you complain,
      Reviewers, whose unholy trade is,
    To puff with all your might and main
      Biographies of single ladies.


[3] Never mind.

[4]

    The plan forgot (I know not how,
      Perhaps the Refectory filled it),
    To put a chapel in: and now
      We’re mortgaging the rest to build it.


[5] There can be no doubt that the work is a true example of the early
Semitic Comedy. It was probably sung in Parts at the Spring-feast, and
would be acted by shepherds wearing masks and throwing goatskins at one
another, as they appear on the Bas-relief at Ik-shmûl. See the article
in _Righteousness_, by a gentleman whom the Bible Society sent out to
Assyria at their own expense; and the note to Appendix A of Benson’s
_Og: King of Bashan_.

[6] The house is now occupied by Mr. Heavy, the well-known financier.

[7] The old school house has been pulled down to make room for a set
of villas called “Whortlebury Gardens.” I believe No. 35 to be the
exact spot, but was unable to determine it accurately on account of the
uncourteous action of the present proprietor.

[8] I am speaking of 1861.

[9] Mr. Lambkin has assured me that his lordship had maintained these
relations to the day of his death.

[10] To be pronounced as a monosyllable in the American fashion.

[11] Mr. Punt, Mr. Howl, and Mr. Grewcock--(now, alas! deceased).

[12] A neat rendering of “Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.”

[13] _To the Examiners._--These facts (of which I guarantee the
accuracy) were given me by a Director.

[14] A reminiscence of Milton: “Fas est et ab hoste doceri.”

[15] Lambkin told me he regretted this line, which was for the sake of
Rhyme. He would willingly have replaced it, but to his last day could
construct no substitute.

[16] The anecdote will be found in my _Fifty Years of Chance
Acquaintances_. (Isaacs & Co., 44s. nett.)

[17] Lambkin resolutely refused to define Happiness when pressed to do
so by a pupil in June, 1881: in fact, his hatred of definitions was so
well-known as to earn him the good-humoured nick-name of “the Sloucher”
among the wilder young scholars.

[18] τὸ μεσόν

[19] This was the first historical example of Lambkin’s acquaintance
with Hebrew--a knowledge which he later turned to such great account in
his attack on the pseudo-Johannes.

[20] It is the passage that follows which made so startling an
impression on the examiners. At that time young Lambkin was almost
alone in holding the views which have since, through the Fellows of
Colleges who may be newspaper men or colonial governors, influenced the
whole world.

[21] Jocular.

[22] The MS. is here almost illegible

[23] The very word “dormant” comes from the Latin for “sleeping.”

[24] I knew Professor M‘O. in the sixties. He was a charming and
cultured Scotchman, with a thorough mastery of the English tongue.

[25] Dr. von Lieber-Augustin. I knew him well. He was a charming and
cultured German.

[26] How different from the cynical ribaldry of Voltaire.

[27] Mr. Buffin. I know him well. His uncle is Lord Glenaltamont, one
of the most charming and cultured of our new peers.

[28] See especially “Hypnotism,” being the researches of the Research
Society (xiv. vols., London, 1893), and “Superstitions of the Past,
especially the belief in the Influence of Sleep upon Spells,” by Dr.
Beradini. Translated by Mrs. Blue. (London: Tooby & Co., 1895.)

[29] Bk. I. or Bk. IV.

[30] “Amo dormire. Sed nunquam dormio post nonas horas nam episcopus
sum et volo dare bonum exemplum fidelibus.” App. Sid. Epistol., Bk.
III., Epist. 26. (Libermach’s edition. Berlin, 1875.) It has the true
ring of the fifth century.

[31] So Herrick, in his famous epigram on Buggins. A learned prelate of
my acquaintance would frequently quote this.

[32] The same lines occur in several other poets. Notably _Tupper_ and
_Montgomery_.

[33] See “Private Memoirs of the Court of Geo. III. and the Regent,” by
Mrs. Fitz-H----t.

[34] See further, _The Morning Star of England_, in “Stirrers of the
Nations Series,” by the Rev. H. Turmsey, M.A. Also _Foes and Friends of
John of Gaunt_, by Miss Matchkin.

[35] “Latin Proses,” 3_s._ 6_d._ net. Jason and Co., Piccadilly.

[36] Now doing his duty to the Empire nobly as a cattle-man in
Minnesota.

[37] Everyone will remember the striking article on this author in _The
Christian Home_ for July, 1886. It was from Lambkin’s pen.

[38] Lambkin was, when he wrote this letter, fully twenty-six years of
age.

[39] Only a playful term of course.

[40] A considerable discussion has arisen as to the meaning of this.

[41] A jocular allusion.

[42] “Sicut ut homo qui”--my readers will fill in the rest.

[43] The note of exclamation is my own.

[44] Author of _Prussian Morals_.

[45] These are almost the exact words that appeared in the subsequent
and over-rated book of Théophile Gauthier: “Rien ne mène à rien
cependant tout arrive.”

[46] It was by my suggestion (_quorum pars parva fui_) that was added
the motto “They that go down to the sea in ships, they see the wonders
of the Lord.”

[47] _Livorno_ in Italian.

[48] Or “have given rise.” Myself and my colleagues attempted (or had
attempted) to determine this point. But there can be little doubt that
the version we arrived at is right both in grammar and in fact. The MS.
is confused.

[49] Though posted in Gravesend this letter appears to have been
written between London and the Estuary. Some say in Dead Man’s Reach.

[50] This passage was set for the Latin Prose in the Burford
Scholarship of 1875. It was won by Mr. Hurt, now Chaplain of the
Wainmakers’ Guild.

[51] Normans.

[52] Hastings.

[53] These letters were never printed till now.

[54] The late Hon. John Tupton, the amiable colonial who purchased
Marlborough House and made so great a stir in London some years ago.

[55] Mrs. Tupton, senior, a woman whose heroic struggles in the face of
extreme poverty were a continual commentary on the awful results of our
so-called perfected Penal System.

[56] There is great doubt upon the exactitude of this. In his lifetime
Tupton often spoke of “the poor tenement house in New York where I was
born,” and in a letter he alludes to “my birth at sea in the steerage
of a Liner.”

[57] This was perhaps the origin of a phrase which may be found
scattered with profusion throughout Lambkin’s works.

[58] Mr. Lambkin did not give the derivation of this word.

[59] “Alii igni infamiae vitam alii fugâ dederunt.”--_Tacitus, In Omnes
Caesares_, I. viii. 7.

[60] The italicised words were omitted in the article.

[61] The full title of the translation is “The Roman Sandal: Its
growth, development and decay. Its influence on society and its
position in the liturgy of the Western Church.”

[62] Nephew of Mr. Child, the former editor; grandson of Mr. Pilgrim,
the founder; and father of the present editor of _Culture_.

[63] Mr. Cook criticises this sentence. It is a point upon which
friends may “_agréer à différer_.”

[64] Author of _Psychologie de l’Absurde_.

[65] Professor of Micro-graphy at Bonn.

[66] This was rather severe, as M. Bischoff had spent some years in a
Maison de Santé.

[67] An example of these occasional difficulties in style, due to the
eagerness of which I have spoken.

[68] The meaning of this sentence is made clear thus: They (subject)
twitted (predicate), with-his-qualifications (adverbially “how”),
over--the--port (adverbially “where and when”), him (object).

[69] Mr. Lambkin loved to pass a quiet hour over the MSS. in the
Bodleian, and would quote familiarly the rare lines of Chaucer,
especially, among the mediæval poets.

[70] This sentence is an admirable example of Lambkin’s later manner.

[71] Raphael.

[72] P. 347, “The impetuosity of the action ill-suits with what is
known of Lambkin.” It is all very well for the editor of _Great Dead
Men_ to say that this apologises for the misfortune; that apology does
not excuse the imputation of impetuosity (forsooth!) to a man whose
every gesture was restrained.

[73] Better known perhaps as an author than as a cleric. He met his
end in a shocking manner in a railway accident. His life was, however,
insured, and he had upon him a copy of _Golden Deeds_.

[74] Beeker’s _A Torch for the Chapell; or the Nonconformists
out-done_. Folio, 1663, p. 71.

[75] Referring to the edict on Buttoned Boots of Romulus Augustulus: a
very shameless injustice.

[76] Lambkin lived to see its almost universal adoption: a result in
which he was no mean agent.

[77] “On fair Italia’s storied plains,” Biggin, xii., _l._ 32.

[78] I am assured by Mr. Venial that this well-known line originally
took shape on Mr. Lambkin’s lips.

[79] This phrase he noticed early in his studies to be a rhyming
catchword, and pronounced it so to the day of his death.

[80] Hobbes.

[81] Thus M. dè Bissac was the President of the Société Anonyme des
Voitures-fixes.

[82] “Accuracy in the use of negatives,” Mr. Lambkin would say, “is the
test of a scholar.”

[83] Changed to “le Destin” in the newspaper.

[84] M. de Bissac was a Catholic, but one of the most liberal temper.
He respected the Pope, but said that he was led astray by his advisers.
He voted every year for the suppression of public worship in France and
the turning of the churches into local museums. He was in every way
remarkably unprejudiced for a man of that persuasion. His indefatigable
attacks upon the clergy of his country have earned him the admiration
of part of the whole civilised world.

[85] The phrase is “return to her true self.” It was a favourite one of
Lambkin’s, but is I fear untranslatable. The French have no such subtle
ideas. The whole sentence was left out in the _Horreur_, and the final
paragraph began with “Je reste.”




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE.


This eBook makes the following corrections to the printed text:

    Pg v footnote
        single ladies
        single ladies.
    Table of Contents
        End of Term
        End of Term 88
    Table of Contents
        Mr. Lambkin
        Mr. Lambkin 132
    Pg 5
        the Crumpton’s
        the Crumptons
    Pg 13
        teutonic gutturals
        Teutonic gutturals
    Pg 14
        WITH THE ELECTRIC LIGHT
        WITH THE ELECTRIC LIGHT”
    Pg 28
        our analusis
        our analysis
    Pg 47
        from Ennius to Sidonius Appollinaris
        from Ennius to Sidonius Apollinaris
    Pg 57
        transforms without metamorphysis
        transforms without metamorphosis
    Pg 63 footnote
        London and the Estuary
        London and the Estuary.
    Pg 71 footnote
        never printed till now
        never printed till now.
    Pg 98 footnote
        o me years in a Maison
        some years in a Maison
    Pg 121
        In there no way
        Is there no way
    Pg 129
        si nous etions pas pour l’empecher
        si nous étions pas pour l’empecher.
    Pg 129
        les militarisme et clericalisme
        les militarisme et cléricalisme
    Pg 133
        position of parties?”
        position of parties?’”
    Pg 136
        “Physiology of the Elephant
        “Physiology of the Elephant”
    Pg 136
        ‘Not at al!,’
        ‘Not at all!,’
    Pg 137
        Whitcomb St. W.C
        Whitcomb St. W.C.



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