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

TO

THE REPUBLICAN CLUB

I am determined
to
dedicate
this Book
and nothing shall turn me from
my Purpose.

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.

[Pg xvi]

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,[Pg xvii] 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[Pg xviii] 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.

Being the unpublished works of J. A. Lambkin, M.A. sometime Fellow of Burford College

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.”[Pg 2] 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[Pg 3] 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[Pg 4] 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[Pg 5] 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]

[Pg 6]

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[Pg 7] 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.[Pg 8] 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[Pg 9] 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.

[Pg 10]

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[Pg 11] 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[Pg 12] 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[Pg 13] 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.

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:

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[Pg 23] 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[Pg 24] 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,[Pg 25] 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[Pg 26] 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[Pg 27] 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.

Lambkin’s Essay on “Success”

On “Success:” its causes and results

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.

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[Pg 29] 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.

[Pg 30]

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[Pg 31] cases (we will come to that later) and vice-versâ.

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

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[Pg 32] 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.”

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[Pg 33] 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[Pg 34] two catēgories upon which we had built such high hopes have disappeared for ever!

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!

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.

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,[Pg 35] 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:—

[Pg 36]

“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 .”

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[Pg 38] 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[Pg 39] 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[Pg 40] 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—

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[Pg 41] 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]

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[Pg 43] 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[Pg 44] 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[Pg 45] 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[Pg 46] 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]

[Pg 47]

“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.

[Pg 48]

[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[Pg 49] 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[Pg 50] 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.”

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[Pg 52] 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”

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[Pg 53] 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,[Pg 54] 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[Pg 55] 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[Pg 56] 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’[Pg 57] 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.

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,[Pg 59] 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,[Pg 60] 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[Pg 61] 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[Pg 62] 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.

[Pg 63]

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[Pg 64] 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]

[Pg 65]

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.

[Pg 66]

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[Pg 67] 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.

[Pg 68]

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[Pg 69] 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[Pg 70] 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[Pg 71] 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]

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[Pg 73] 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[Pg 74] “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[Pg 75] 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[Pg 76] 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[Pg 77] [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]

[Pg 78]

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[Pg 79] (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.

[Pg 80]

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[Pg 81] 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[Pg 82] 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.

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[Pg 84] 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[Pg 85] 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[Pg 86] 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[Pg 87] 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.”

Lambkin’s Remarks on the End of Term

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.

[Pg 89]

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[Pg 90] 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[Pg 91] 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[Pg 92] 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[Pg 93] 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[Pg 94] 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.

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[Pg 96] “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[Pg 97] 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[Pg 98] 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][Pg 99] 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[Pg 100] “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[Pg 101] 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[Pg 102] 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,”[Pg 103] inscribed in a classic wreath which deceived me.

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

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[Pg 105] 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, “transformer[Pg 106] please, not reformer,” 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[Pg 107] 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:

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[Pg 108] 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[Pg 109] 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[Pg 110] 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[Pg 111] 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[Pg 112] 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[Pg 113] 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.)

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,[Pg 115] 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[Pg 116] 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.

[Pg 117]

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[Pg 118] 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[Pg 119] 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,[Pg 120] 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[Pg 121] 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[Pg 122] 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.

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.

[Pg 124]

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.[Pg 125] 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[Pg 126] 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,[Pg 127] 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[Pg 128] 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.[Pg 129] 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[Pg 130] 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[Pg 131] 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.

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[Pg 133] 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?’”

[Pg 134]

“‘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[Pg 135] 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[Pg 136] 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[Pg 137] 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.