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 lIBfTARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 I GEORGE • ERNESTMOI^SON | 
 
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 /
 
 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS 
 
 By H. B.^' 
 
 HI 
 
 Authov of "The Bad Child's Book of Beasts," etc 
 
 PtTBLISHED BY 
 
 The Proprietors of the J.C.R. at 
 
 J. Vincent's 
 
 96, High Street Oxford 
 
 1900
 
 VR&003 
 c.Z 
 
 Lambkin on "■ Sleep'^ appeared in ^^The 
 Jsisy It is reprinted here by kind perniissio7i of 
 the Proprietors. The majority of the remaining 
 pieces were first published f« " The J. C. R." 
 
 [All rights reserved.']
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 TO 
 
 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 I AM DETERMINED 
 
 TO 
 
 DEDICATE 
 
 THIS Book 
 
 AND NOTHING SHALL TURN ME FROM 
 
 MY Purpose.
 
 DEDICATORY ODK. 
 
 I MEAN to write with all my strength 
 (It lately has been sadly waning), 
 
 A ballad of enormous length — 
 
 Some parts of which will need explain- 
 ing* 
 
 Because (unlike the bulk of men, 
 
 Who write for fame and public ends), 
 
 I turn a lax and fluent pen 
 
 To talking of my private friends. f 
 
 For no one, in our long decline, 
 So dusty, spiteful and divided. 
 
 Had quite such pleasant friends as mine, 
 Or loved them half as much as I did. 
 
 ^* ^ *r ^ 
 
 The Freshman ambles down the High, 
 In love with everything he sees. 
 
 He notes the clear October sky. 
 
 He sniffs a vigorous western breeze. 
 
 • But do not think I shall explain 
 To any great extent. Believe me, 
 I partly write to give you pain, 
 And if you do not like me, leave me. 
 
 t And least of all can you complain. 
 Reviewers, whose unhol}' trade is, 
 To puff with all j-our might and main 
 Biographies of single ladies
 
 vi DEDICATORY ODE 
 
 " Can this be Oxford ? This the place " 
 (He cries), "of which my father said 
 
 The tutoring was a damned disgrace, 
 The creed a mummery, stuffed and dead ? 
 
 " Can it be here that Uncle Paul 
 Was driven by excessive gloom, 
 
 To drink and debt, and, last of all. 
 To smoking opium in his room ? 
 
 •* Is it from here the people come. 
 Who talk so loud, and roll their eyes, 
 
 And stammer ? How extremely rum ! 
 How curious ! What a great surprise. 
 
 "Some influence of a nobler day 
 Than theirs (I mean than Uncle Paul's), 
 
 Has roused the sleep of their decay, 
 
 And decked with light their ancient walls. 
 
 " O ! dear undaunted boys of old. 
 
 Would that your names were carven here, 
 
 For all the world in stamps of gold. 
 That I might read them and revere. 
 
 " Who wrought and handed down for me 
 
 This Oxford of the larger air, 
 Laughing, and full of faith, and free, 
 
 With youth resplendent everywhere."
 
 DEDICATORY ODE Vil 
 
 Then learn : thou ill-instructed, blind. 
 Young, callow, and untutored man, 
 
 Their private names were *' 
 
 Their club was called Repubi,ican. 
 
 « « r» « 
 
 Where on their banks of light they lie. 
 The happy hills of Heaven between. 
 
 The Gods that rule the morning sky 
 Are not more young, nor more serene 
 
 Than were the intrepid Four that stand, 
 The first who dared to live their dream, 
 
 And on this uncongenial land 
 To found the Abbey of Theleme. 
 
 We kept the Rabelaisian plan : f 
 We dignified the dainty cloisters 
 
 With Natural Law, the Rights of Man, 
 Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters. 
 
 The library was most inviting : 
 
 The books upon the crowded shelves 
 
 Were mainly of our private writing : 
 We kept a school and taught ourselves. 
 
 * Never mind. 
 
 t The plan forgot (I know not how. 
 Perhaps the Refectory filled it), 
 To put a chapel in : and now 
 
 We're mortgaging the rest to build it..
 
 Vlll DEDICATORY ODE 
 
 We taught the art of writing things 
 
 On men we still should like to throttle : 
 
 And where to get the blood of kings 
 At only half-a-crown a bottle. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Eheu Fugaces ! Postume ! 
 
 (An old quotation out of mode) ; 
 My coat of dreams is stolen away. 
 
 My youth is passing down the road. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 The wealth of youth, we spent it well 
 And decently, as very few can. 
 
 And is it lost? I cannot tell ; 
 
 And what is more, I doubt if you can. 
 
 The question's very much too wide, 
 And much too deep, and much too hollow, 
 
 And learned men on either side 
 Use arguments I cannot follow. 
 
 They say that in the unchanging place, 
 Where all we loved is always dear, 
 
 We meet our morning face to face, 
 
 And find at last our twentieth year .... 
 
 They say, (and I am glad they say), 
 
 It is so ; and it may be so : 
 It may be just the other way, 
 
 I cannot tell. But this I know :
 
 DEDICATORY ODE IX 
 
 From quiet homes and first beginning, 
 
 Out to the undiscovered ends, 
 There's nothing worth the wear of winning, 
 
 But laughter and the love of friends. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 But something dwindles, oh ! my peers. 
 And something cheats the heart and 
 passes. 
 
 And Tom that meant to shake the years 
 Has come to merely rattling glasses. 
 
 And He, the Father of the Flock, 
 
 Is keeping Burmesans in order, 
 An exile on a lonely rock 
 
 That overlooks the Chinese border. 
 And One (myself I mean — no less), 
 
 Ah ! — will Posterity believe it — 
 Not only don't deserve success. 
 
 But hasn't managed to achieve it. 
 Not even this peculiar town 
 
 Has ever fixed a friendship firmer, 
 But — one is married, one's gone down. 
 
 And one's a Don, and one's in Burmah. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 And oh ! the days, the days, the days, 
 
 When all the four were oS" together : 
 
 The infinite deep of summer haze. 
 
 The roaring boast of autumn weather ! 
 « ^ « «
 
 X DEDICATORY ODE 
 
 I will not try the reach again, 
 
 I will not set my sail alone, 
 To moor a boat bereft of men 
 
 At Yarnton's tiny docks of stone. 
 
 But I will sit beside the fire, 
 
 And put my hand before my eyes, 
 
 And trace, to fill my heart's desire, 
 The last of all our Odysseys. 
 
 The quiet evening kept her tryst : 
 
 Beneath an open sky we rode, 
 And mingled with a wandering mist 
 
 Along the perfect Evenlode. 
 
 The tender Evenlode that makes 
 
 Her meadows hush to hear the sound 
 
 Of waters mingling in the brakes, 
 
 And binds my heart to English ground. 
 
 A lovely river, all alone. 
 
 She lingers in the hills and holds 
 A hundred little towns of stone, 
 
 Forgotten in the western wolds. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 I dare to think (though meaner powers 
 Possess our thrones, and lesser wits 
 
 Are drinking worser wine than ours. 
 In what's no longer Austerlitz)
 
 DEDICATORY ODK XI 
 
 That surely a tremendous ghost, 
 
 The brazen-lunged, the bumper-filler, 
 
 Still sings to an immortal toast. 
 The Misadventures of the Miller. 
 
 The vasty seas are hardly bar 
 
 To men with such a prepossession ; 
 
 We were ? Why then, by God, we are — 
 Order ! I call the club to session ! 
 
 You do retain the song we set, 
 And how it rises, trips and scans ? 
 
 You keep the sacred memory yet, 
 Republicans ? Republicans ? 
 
 You know the way the words were hurled. 
 To break the worst of fortune's rub ? 
 
 I give the toast across the world. 
 
 And drink it, " Gentlemen : the Club."
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dedicatory Ode - - v 
 
 Preface- - - xv 
 
 I. Introductory - - - i 
 
 II. Lambkin's Newdigate - - 14 
 
 III. Some Remarks on Lambkin's 
 
 Prose Styi.e - - - 22 
 
 IV Lambkin's Essay on "Success"- 28 
 
 V. Lambkin on "Sleep" - - 37 
 
 VI. Lambkin's Advice to Freshmen 42 
 
 VII. Lambkin's Lecture ON " Right "- 51 
 
 VIII.' Lambkin's Speciai< Correspon- 
 dence - - - - 5^ 
 
 IX. Lambkin's Address to the League 
 
 OF Progress - - - 72 
 
 X. Lambkin's Leader - - 85 
 
 XI. Lambkin's Remarks on the End 
 OF Term . . . 
 
 XII Lambkin's Artici.e on the North- 
 west Corner of the Mosaic 
 PA\rEMENT OF the Roman Vii,i,a 
 AT Bignor - - - 95 
 
 XIII. Lambkin's Sermon - - 104 
 
 XIV. Lambkin's Open Letter to 
 
 Churchmen - - - 114 
 
 XV. Lambkin's Letter to a French 
 
 Friend - - - 123 
 
 XVI. Interview with Mr. Lambkin -
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The preparation of the ensuing pages 
 has been a labour of love, and has cost me 
 many an anxious hour. ** Of the writing of 
 books," says the learned Psalmist (or more 
 probably a Syro-Chaldaeic 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 pub- 
 lishers, 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 hu- 
 manity, 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 
 ia close. 
 
 -A
 
 XVI PREFACE 
 
 A fine old Arabic poem — probably the 
 oldest complete literary work in the world — 
 (I mean the Comedy which we are accus- 
 tomed to call the Book of Job)* 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 pro- 
 cess 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 im- 
 agined that Lambkin's many friends would 
 give it a ready sale. 
 
 Animaxander, King of the Milesians, 
 
 * There can be no doubt that the work is a true ex- 
 ample of the early Semitic Comedy. It was probably 
 sung in Parts at the Spring-feast, and would be acted 
 by shepherds wearing masks and throwing goat- 
 skins at one another, as they appear on the Bas- 
 relief at Ik-shmul. See the article in Righteousness, 
 by a gentleman whom the Bible Society sent out to 
 Ass3Tia at their own expense ; and the note to Ap- 
 pendix A of Benson's Og: King of Bashan.
 
 PREFACE XVll 
 
 upon being asked by the Emissary of 
 Atarxessus what was, in his opinion, the 
 most wearying thing in the world, repHed 
 by cutting oflf 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 
 Zeus (pronounced "Tsephs"). 
 
 Warned by the awful fate of the sacri- 
 legious 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 book- 
 seller, 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 illus- 
 trating 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
 
 XVlll PREFACE 
 
 courteous sympathy and ever-ready sugges- 
 tion ; I must not omit from this list M. 
 Hertz, who has helped me with French, 
 and whose industry and gentlemanly man- 
 ners 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 Diction- 
 naire Frajtco- Anglais^ et Anglo-Frafifais, of 
 Boileau, Curtis' English Synonyms, Buffle 
 on Punctuation, and many other authorities 
 which will be acknowledged in the text.
 
 lambkin's lUmains 
 
 Being the unpuhlhhed works of 
 
 J. A. Lamhkin, M.A. 
 
 sometime Fellow of Bur ford College 
 
 I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 It is without a trace of compunction or 
 regret that I prepare to edit the few unpub- 
 lished 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 re- 
 member Lambkin himself, in one of the last 
 conversations I had with him, saying with 
 the acuteness that characterised him, " The 
 world knows nothing of its greatest men.'*
 
 This pregnant commentary upon human 
 affairs was, Tadmit, produced by an accident 
 in the Oxford Herald which concerned my- 
 self. 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 com- 
 mon 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 memor- 
 able 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 excep- 
 tional gifts which he could not entirely 
 ignore or hide ; and I was certain that the 
 phrase which he constructed to heal my 
 wound was not without some reference to 
 his own unmerited obscurity. 
 
 The world knows nothing of its greatest
 
 men ! Josiah Lambkin ! from whatever 
 Cypress groves of the underworld which 
 environs us when on dark winter evenings 
 in the silence of our own souls which no- 
 thing 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 lyambkin was born of 
 well-to-do and gentlemanly parents^in Bays- 
 water* on January 19th, 1843. His father, 
 at the time of his birth, entertained objec- 
 tions to the great Public Schools, largely 
 founded upon his religious leanings, which 
 were at that time opposed to the ritual of 
 
 * The house is now occupied by Mr. Heavy, the 
 well-known financier.
 
 "those institutions. In spite therefore of the 
 vehement protestations of his mother (who 
 Vas 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.* 
 
 ^Of his school-days he always spoke with 
 %ome 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 peda- 
 gogue's only reply was to flog I^ambkin 
 heartily with a light cane, ** inflicting," as 
 he himself once told me, " such exquisite 
 
 * The old school house has been pulled down to 
 make room for a set of villas called "Whortlebury 
 Gardens." I believe No. 35 to be the exact spot, but 
 was unable to determine it accurateh- on account of 
 the uncourteous action of the present proprietor.
 
 agony as would ever linger in his memory." 
 Doubtless this teacher of the old school 
 thought he was (to use a phrase then com- 
 mon) "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, re- 
 moved 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 consider- 
 able change in the matter of religion ; and 
 as the result of long but silent self-examina- 
 tion 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 
 Crumpton's, had all been to Cambridge, 
 Oxford was finally decided upon as present- 
 ing the greater social opportunities at the 
 time.* 
 
 * I am speaking of 1861.
 
 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 proxtme 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 ex- 
 ceptional poetic gifts — the present editor 
 of " The Investor's Sure Prophet," and Mr. 
 I Hound, the well-known writer on " Food 
 Statistics." 
 
 He took a good Second-class in Greats in 
 the summer of 1864, and was immediately 
 elected to a fellowship at Burford. It was 
 not known at the time that his father had
 
 become a bankrupt through lending large 
 sums at a high rate of interest to a young 
 heir without security, trusting to the 
 necessity under which his name and honour 
 would put him to pay. In the shipwreck 
 of the family fortunes, the small endow- 
 ment 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 Com- 
 mission, 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 spot-
 
 8 
 
 less. He never offered or took compensa- 
 tions 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 pub- 
 lish. 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 deserv-
 
 ing 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, con- 
 trived to direct with energy and guide 
 without offence the men upon whom Eng- 
 land's greatness depends. 
 
 He was by no means a snob — snobbish- 
 ness 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 com- 
 pelled 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 con- 
 stitution confers upon society and upon our 
 individual selves.
 
 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 con- 
 versation with the Duke of Berkshire, whom 
 he met upon the top of an omnibus in Pic- 
 cadilly and instantly recognised. He pos- 
 sessed letters, receipts or communications 
 from no less than four Marquises, one Mar- 
 quess, 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.* 
 
 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 hap- 
 
 * Mr. Lambkin has assured me that his lordship had 
 maintained these relations to the day of his death.
 
 II 
 
 pened to be dining in Hall, It was some 
 days after the death of Mr. Hooligan, the 
 well-known Home Rule leader. The dis- 
 tinguished 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 won- 
 dered 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 remark- 
 able 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 intro- 
 duction of Mr. Gladstone's famous Bill in 
 1885. 
 
 In the delicate matter of religious contro- 
 versy his own writings must describe him, 
 nor will I touch here upon a question which 
 did not rise to any considerable public impor- 
 tance until after his death. Perhaps I may
 
 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 es- 
 caped 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 read- 
 ing here was in the works of Voltaire, 
 wherein, however, he confessed, "He could
 
 13 
 
 find no style, and little more than blasphe- 
 mous ribaldry." Indeed, of the European 
 languages he would read German with the 
 greatest pleasure, confining himself chiefly 
 to the writings of LessingjjKant, 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 ' Godge- 
 bidden Eorldemanthingancanning,' whose 
 inner thoughts shall unroll themselves in 
 the pages that follow.
 
 II. 
 
 lambkin's l^^tobigat^ 
 
 POEM WRITTEN FOR "NEWDI- 
 GATE PRIZE " IN ENGLISH VERSE 
 
 By J. A. Lambkin, Esq., of Burford 
 College 
 
 N.B. — [The competitors are confined to the use of 
 Rhymed Heroic latnbic Pentameters, but the 
 introduction 0/ 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 knoiv its contents, I ap- 
 pend the following headings : 
 
 Invocation to the Muse 
 
 Hail ! Happy Muse, and touch the tuneful 
 
 string ! 
 The benefits conferred by Science* I sing. 
 
 • To be pronounced as a tnonosyllable in the Ameri- 
 can fashion. 
 
 14
 
 15 
 
 HrS THEME : THE ElyECTRIC LiGHT AND ITS 
 
 BENEFITS 
 
 Under the kind Examiners'* direction 
 
 I only write about them in connection 
 
 With benefits which the Electric Light 
 
 Confers on us ; especially at night. 
 
 These are my theme, of these my song shall 
 
 rise. 
 
 My lofty head shall swell to strike the 
 skies, + 
 
 And tears of hopeless love bedew the 
 maiden's eyes. 
 
 Second Invocation to the Muse 
 Descend, O Muse, from thy divine abode, 
 
 Osney 
 To Osney, on the Seven Bridges Road ; 
 For under Osney's solitary shade 
 The bulk of the Electric L-ight is made. 
 Here are the works, from hence the current 
 
 flows 
 Which (so the Company's prospectus goes) 
 
 Power of Works there 
 Can furnish to Subscribers hour by hour 
 
 ' Mr. Punt, Mr. Howl, and Mr. Grewcock — (now, 
 alas ! deceased). 
 
 t A neat rendering of "Sublimi feriam sidera 
 vertice." 
 
 B
 
 i6 
 
 No less than sixteen thousand candle power,* 
 All at a thousand volts. (It is essential 
 To keep the current at this high potential 
 In spite of the considerable expense.) 
 Statistics concerning them 
 
 The Energy developed represents, 
 Expressed in foot-tons, the united forces 
 Of fifteen elephants and forty horses. 
 But shall my scientific detail thus 
 Clip the dear wings of Buoyant Pegasus ? 
 
 POETICAI, OR RhETORICAI, QUESTIONS 
 
 Shall pure statistics jar upon the ear 
 That pants for Lyric accents loud and clear ? 
 Shall I describe the complex Dynamo 
 Or write about its commutator ? No ! 
 
 The Theme changes 
 
 To happier fields I lead my wanton pen. 
 The proper study of mankind is men. 
 
 Third Invocation to the MuSEj 
 
 Awake, my Muse ! Portray the pleasing 
 
 sight 
 That meets us where they make Electric 
 
 Light. 
 
 * To the Examiners. — These facts (of which I guar- 
 antee the accuracy) were given me by a Director.
 
 17 
 
 A PICTURE OF THE El^ECTRICIAN 
 
 Behold the Electrician where he stands : 
 Soot, oil, and verdigris are on his hands ; 
 Large spots of grease defile his dirty clothes, 
 The while his conversation drips with oaths. 
 Shall such a being perish in its youth ? 
 Alas ! it is indeed the fatal truth. 
 In that dull brain, beneath that hair un- 
 kempt. 
 Familiarity has bred contempt. 
 We warn him of the gesture all too late ; 
 Oh, Heartless Jove ! Oh, Adamantine Fate ! 
 
 His awfui, fate 
 
 Some random Touch — a hand's imprudent 
 
 slip — 
 The Terminals — a flash — a sound like 
 
 " Zip ! " 
 A smell of Burning fills the startled Air — 
 The Electrician is no longer there ! 
 * * # * 
 
 He changes his Theme 
 But let us turn with true Artistic scorn 
 From facts funereal and from views for- 
 lorn
 
 i8 
 
 Of Erebus and Blackest midnight born.* 
 Fourth Invocation to the Muse 
 
 Arouse thee, Muse ! and chaunt in accents 
 
 rich 
 The interesting processes by which 
 The Electricity is passed along : 
 These are my theme, to these I bend my 
 
 song. 
 
 Description of method by which the Current 
 
 IS USED 
 
 It runs encased in wood or porous brick 
 Through copper wires two millimetres thick, 
 And insulated on their dangerous mission 
 By indiarubber, silk, or composition. 
 Here you may put with critical felicity 
 The following question : " What is Electri- 
 city ? " 
 
 difficuivty of determining nature of 
 Electricity 
 
 " Molecular Activity," say some. 
 
 Others when asked say nothing, and are 
 
 dumb. 
 Whatever be its nature : this is clear, 
 The rapid current checked in its career, 
 
 * A reminiscence of Miltou : " Fas est et ab hoste 
 doceri."
 
 19 
 
 Baulked in its race and halted in its course* 
 Transforms to heat and light its latent force : 
 
 Conservation of Enkrgy. Proofs of this : 
 no experiment needed 
 
 It needs no pedant in the lecturer's chair 
 To prove that light and heat are present 
 
 there. 
 The pear-shaped vacuum globe, I under- 
 stand, 
 Is far too hot to fondle with the hand. 
 While, as is patent to the meanest sight. 
 The carbon filament is very bright. 
 
 Doubts on the Municipai, system, but — 
 
 As for the lights they hang about the town. 
 Some praise them highly, others run them 
 
 down. 
 This system (technically called the arc) 
 Makes some passages too light, others too 
 
 dark. 
 
 None on the Domestic 
 
 But in the house the soft and constant rays 
 Have always met with universal praise. 
 
 * Lambkin told me he regretted this line, which 
 was for the sake of Rhj'me. He would willingly have 
 replaced it, but to his last day could construct no 
 substitute.
 
 20 
 
 ITS ADVANTAGES 
 
 For instance : if you want to read in bed 
 No candle burns beside your curtains' head, 
 Far from some distant corner of the room 
 The incandescent lamp dispels the gloom, 
 
 Advantages of IvArge Print 
 
 And with the largest print need hardly try 
 The powers of any young and vigorous eye. 
 
 Fifth Invocation to the Muse 
 
 Aroint thee, Muse ! inspired the poet sings ! 
 I cannot help observing future things ! 
 
 The oni,y hope of Humanity is in Science 
 
 Life is a vale, its paths are dark and rough 
 Only because we do not know enough. 
 When Science has discovered something 
 
 more 
 We shall be happier than we were before. 
 
 Peroration in the spirit of the rest of the 
 
 Poem 
 
 Hail ! Britain, mistress of the Azure Main, 
 Ten Thousand Fleets sweep over thee in 
 
 vain ! 
 Hail ! mighty mother of the brave and free. 
 That beat Napoleon, and gave birth to me !
 
 21 
 
 Thou that canst wrap in thine emblazoned 
 
 robe 
 One quarter of the habitable globe. 
 Thy mountains, wafted by a favouring 
 
 breeze, 
 L/ike mighty hills withstand the stormy 
 
 seas. 
 
 Warning to Britain 
 
 Thou art a Christian Commonwealth. And 
 
 yet 
 Be thou not all unthankful — nor forget 
 As thou exultest in Imperial might 
 The benefits of the Electric Light.
 
 III. 
 ^amt E^marks on lambkin s ^xose 
 
 No achievement of my dear friend's pro- 
 duced a greater effect than the English 
 Essay which he presented at his examina- 
 tion. 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 
 insieht into human character and contem- 
 porary psychology, was enough to warrant 
 the remark of the then Warden of Burford : 
 '' If these things" (said the aged but emi- 
 nent divine), " if these things" (it was said 
 in all reverence and with a full sense of the 
 responsibility of his position), " If these 
 
 23
 
 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 Under- 
 graduate 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 interpre- 
 tation of a work which is necessarily pre- 
 sented 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.* His manuscript was, 
 like Lord Byrons (and unlike the famous 
 
 • The anecdote will be found in my Fifty Years of 
 Chance Acquaintances. (Isaacs & Co., 445. nett.)
 
 24 
 
 Codex V in the Vatican), remarkable for its 
 erasures, of which as many as three may be 
 seen in some places super-imposed, ladder- 
 wise, en echelle, 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 pro- 
 duct what we might criticise in the method.
 
 25 
 
 and when we judge as critics we are com- 
 pelled 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 deplor- 
 able 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 can- 
 not 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 nauseat- 
 ing: in the literarv man." He drew a dis- 
 tinction between eloquence and rhetoric, often
 
 26 
 
 praising the one and denouncing the other 
 with the most abandoned fervour : indeed, it 
 was his favourite diversion in critical con- 
 versation accurately to determine the mean- 
 ing 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 limita- 
 tions 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
 
 27 
 
 that remains to us was the ordinary ruled 
 foolscap of commerce ; but this again he re- 
 garded 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 re- 
 gard 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 won- 
 der what would be offered for a similar 
 sacred relic, of a man more obscure, but in- 
 directly of far greater influence ; a relic 
 which I keep by me with the greatest rever- 
 ence, 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 senti- 
 mental peroration, and be told that I am 
 myself indulging in that rhetoric which 
 Lambkin so severely condemned.
 
 IV. 
 
 lambkin s (Bssa^ on ** ^utasa " 
 
 On " Success: " its causes and results 
 
 Difficulty of In approaching a problem of 
 Subject |.-^-g na^y^j-g^ 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 analusis to permanently fix the defini- 
 tions and terms we shall be talking of, with, 
 and by. 
 
 Success may be defined as the 
 
 Definition of "^ 
 
 Success 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 
 
 a!
 
 29 
 
 thing,* we might look at Success from yet 
 another point of view and say that Suc- 
 cess is the realisation of Desire through 
 action. Indeed this last definition seems 
 on the whole to be the best ; but it is evi- 
 dent 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 approxi- 
 mately the average meant of many hun- 
 dreds that might be virtually constructed 
 to more or less accurately express the idea 
 we have undertaken to do. 
 
 So far then it is evident that while we 
 may have a fairly definite subjective visual 
 concept of what Success is, we shall never 
 be able to convey to others in so many 
 words exactly what our idea may be. 
 
 "What am I? 
 
 An infant crying for the light 
 That has no language but a cry " 
 
 * Lambkin resolutely refused to define Happiness 
 when pressed to do so by a pupil in June, 1881 : in fact, 
 his hatred of definitions was so well-known as to earn 
 him the good-humoured nick-name of " the Sloucher " 
 among the wilder young scholars. 
 
 I TO fiicrov
 
 30 
 It is, however, of more practical 
 
 Method of . , i i , • 
 
 dealing with importance nevertheless, to arrive 
 
 Problem i . i 
 
 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 pur- 
 pose we will first of all divide all actions into 
 (N)Successful and(i)Non-successful*actions. 
 These two categories are at once mutually 
 exclusive and collectively universal. No- 
 thing of which Success can be truly pre- 
 dicated, 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 categories : 
 what is true of one will, with certain reser- 
 vations, be untrue of the other, in most 
 
 * This was the first historical example of Lamb- 
 kin's acquaintance with Hebrew — a knowledge which 
 he later turned to such great account in his attack 
 on the pseudo-Johannes.
 
 31 
 
 cases (we will come to that later) and vice- 
 versa. 
 
 (i) Success. 
 
 (2) Non-success. 
 
 But here we are met at the out- 
 First great 
 
 Difficulty gg|- Qf Q^j- examination by a difB- 
 culty 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 Argu- 
 ment, 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 cate- 
 gories within our main category it would be 
 impossible to arrive at any absolute conclu- 
 sions, 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 
 
 c
 
 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 mediaeval deductive methods invented by 
 priests and mummers to enslave the human 
 mind, and confine ourselves to what we abso- 
 lutely kfiow. 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 ct 
 priori for the chiaro-oscuroy 
 
 But if the problem is complex 
 
 Second much . - 
 
 greater Diffi- from tlic great variety of the 
 
 culty *=■ ■' 
 
 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
 
 33 
 
 bring it forward ! * Success is not always 
 Success : Non-success {or Failure) is an aspect 
 of Success^ and vice-versa. 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-versa^ collaterally. Again, 
 if we desire to fail in a matter {e.g.^ any 
 man would hope to fail in being hangedf), 
 then to succeed is to fail, and to fail 
 is to succeed, and our successful failure 
 would fail were we to happen upon a dis- 
 astrous success ! And note that the very 
 same act, not this, that, or another, but 
 THE VKRY SAME, is (according to the 
 way we look at it) a "successful" or an 
 " unsuccessful " act. Success therefore not 
 only may be, but mtcst be Failure, and the 
 
 * It is the passage that follows which made so 
 startling an impression on the examiners. At that 
 time young lyambkin was almost alone in holding 
 the views which have since, through the Fellows of 
 Colleges who may be newspaper men or colonial 
 governors, influenced the whole world. 
 
 t Jocular.
 
 34 
 
 two categories upon which we had built 
 
 such high hopes have disappeared for ever ! 
 
 Terrible thought ! A thing 
 
 Solemn con- " '-' 
 
 siderations ^au bc at oucc itself and not it- 
 
 consequent 
 
 upon this self— nay its own opposite ! The 
 mind reels, and the frail human vision 
 peering over the immense gulf of meta- 
 physical 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 incompre- 
 hensible how small and weak a thing is man! 
 But it would ill-befit the philo- 
 
 A more cheer- ^ 
 
 fui view sopher to abandon his efibrt be- 
 cause of a kind of a check or two at the start. 
 The great hand of Time shouts ever " on- 
 ward " ; 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. 
 
 The beginning ° 
 
 of a Solution ^g ghall uot arrivc at the full 
 day but we shall see " in a glass darkly" 
 what, in the final end of our development,
 
 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, be- 
 cause 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-suffici- 
 ency and pride. We thought (forsooth) 
 that our mere human conceptions of con- 
 tradiction 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: —
 
 36 
 
 " No Time. Had intended examples — 
 Success, Academic, Acrobatic, Agricultural, 
 Aristocratic, Bacillic . . . Yaroslavic, 
 Zenobidic, etc. Historical cases examined, 
 Biggar's view, H. Unity, Univ. Conscious- 
 ness, Amphodunissa,* Setxm .^-vn^^." 
 
 * The MS. is here almost illegible
 
 V. 
 lambkin on Mctp 
 
 [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." Tlie 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.* 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 
 
 * The very word "dormant" comes from the L,atin 
 for " sleeping." 
 
 37
 
 38 
 
 M'Obvy)* lie hidden from our most pro- 
 found physiologists. It was once my 
 privilege to meet the master of physical 
 science who has rendered famous the Uni- 
 versity of Kreigenswald, t 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.:!: 
 
 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, 
 v/hich in its turn is the result of the need 
 for Repose that every organism must ex- 
 perience after any specialised exertion." I 
 
 * I knew Professor M'O. in the sixties. He was a 
 charming and cultured Scotchman, with a thorough 
 mastery of the English tongue. 
 
 t Dr. von Lieber-Augustin. I knew him well. He 
 was a charming and cultured German. 
 
 ; How different from the C3-nical ribaldry of 
 Voltaire.
 
 39 
 
 was present when this sentence was de- 
 livered, and I am not ashamed to add that 
 I was one of those who heartily cheered the 
 young speaker.* 
 
 We may assert, then, that Science has 
 nearly conquered this last stronghold of 
 ignorance and superstition. t 
 
 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 pas- 
 time. Ever\'one who has done Greats 
 will remember the beautiful passage in 
 Lucretius,:!: but perhaps that in Sidonius 
 Apollinaris, the highly ^polished Bishop of 
 
 * Mr. Buffin. I know him well. His uncle is Lord 
 Glenaltamont, one of the most charming and cul- 
 tured of our new peers. 
 
 t See especially "Hypnotism," being the researches 
 of the Research Society (xiv. vols., London, 1893), 
 and " Superstitions of the Past, especially the belief 
 in the Influence of Sleep upon Spells," by Dr. Bera- 
 dini. Translated by Mrs. Blue. (London : Tooby & 
 Co., 1895.) 
 
 + Bk. I. or Bk. IV.
 
 40 
 
 Gaul, is less well known.* To turn to our 
 own literature, the sonnet beginning "To 
 die, to sleep," etc.,t must be noted, and 
 above all, the glorious lines in which 
 Wordsworth reaches his noblest level, be- 
 ginning — 
 
 " It is a pleasant thing to go to sleep ! " 
 
 lines which, for my part, I can never read 
 without catching some of their magical 
 drowsy influence4 
 
 All great men have slept. George III. 
 frequently slept, § 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. II The Duke of Wellington (whom 
 
 * "Amo dormire. Sed nunquam dormio post 
 nonas horas nam episcopus sum et volo dare bonum 
 exemplum fidelibus." App. Sid. Epistol., Bk. III., 
 Epist. 26. (Libermach's edition. Berlin, 1875.) It 
 has the true ring of the fifth century. 
 
 + So Herrick, in his famous epigram on Buggins. 
 A learned prelate of my acquaintance would fre- 
 quently quote this. 
 
 X The same lines occur in several other poets. 
 Notably Ttipper and Montgomery. 
 
 § See " Private Memoirs of the Court of Geo. III. 
 and the Regent," by Mrs.Fitz-H 1. 
 
 II See further, The Morning Star of England, in 
 ^' Stirrers of the Nations Series," by the Rev. H.
 
 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.* 
 
 Tumisey, M.A. Also Foes and Friends of John oj 
 Gaimt, by Miss Matchkin. 
 
 * "Latin Proses," 3^. 6d. net. Jason and Co., 
 Piccadilly.
 
 VI. 
 
 lambkin's ^Wtct ia '^xt^)jmm 
 
 Mr. Lambkin possessed among other 
 great and gracious qualities the habit of 
 writing to his nephew, Thomas Ezekiel 
 I/ambkin,* who entered the college as an 
 undergraduate when his uncle was some 
 four years a Fellow. Of many such com- 
 munications 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 im- 
 prove the mind. It was a favourite habit of 
 his, and as he was deeply engaged in a 
 
 * Now doing his duty to the Empire nobly as a 
 cattle-man in Minnesota. 
 
 42
 
 43 
 
 powerful romance written under the pseu- 
 donym of " Marie Corelli "* 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 ac- 
 count, which was not then of any long stand- 
 ing. The letter he docketed "to be pub- 
 lished 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 
 
 * Everyone will remember the striking article on 
 this author in The Christian Home for July, 1886. It 
 was from I,ambkin's pen.
 
 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
 
 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 prac- 
 tical importance. Occasional drunkenness 
 is a matter for private judgment, its right- 
 ness 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
 
 46 
 
 from the younger men.* 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 !t No 
 shilly-shally ; into it. Don't splash the 
 water about in a miserable attempt to de- 
 ceive 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. J 
 
 • Lanibkin was, when he wrote this letter, fully 
 twenty-six years of age. 
 
 t Only a playful term of course. 
 
 X A considerable discussion has arisen as to the 
 meaning of this.
 
 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,* as it 
 were, of a Freshman meeting his Tutor for 
 the first time. 
 
 " [^The Student enters^ and as he ts half 
 way throtigh 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 onr 
 writing in a little book; at last he looks up 
 and says : — ] 
 
 " Tut. — Pray, what is your name? 
 
 "-5-/.— M. or N. 
 
 " Tut. — What have you read before com- 
 ing up, Mr. ? 
 
 ''St. — The existing Latin authors from 
 Ennius to Sidonius Appollinaris, with their 
 fragments. The Greek from Sappho to. 
 Origen including Bacchylides. 
 
 • A jocular allusion. 
 
 D
 
 48 
 
 {The Tutor makes a note of this and re- 
 sumes . . .] 
 
 *' Tut. — Have you read the Gospels? 
 
 **^/.— 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. 
 
 "vSV. — 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 theroom.^ 
 
 " 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 experi- 
 ence 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 
 liand, 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
 
 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 
 aflfect 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 boun- 
 dary of right-reason. Such excesses may 
 provoke a momentary laugh, but they ulti- 
 mately 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 be- 
 fore Hall, your face will glow with satisfac- 
 tion 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
 
 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."
 
 VII. 
 tambkm a Wednn on " Eigljt " 
 
 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- Meri vale, 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 (un- 
 der 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 Hum- 
 bury, 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 :* " Lambkin (!)t . . . did not 
 
 * "Sicut ut homo qui" — my readers will fill in 
 the rest. 
 
 \ The note of exclamation is my own. 
 
 51
 
 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 — as- 
 cribe something of this progressive and 
 salutary influence to my dear friend ? 
 
 On "Right" 
 
 [Being Lecture V. in a course of Eight, delivered in the 
 Autumn Tettn o/"i878.] 
 
 We have now proceeded for a consider- 
 able 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 Rela- 
 tions 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
 
 53 
 
 Knowledge." It is in the essence of am'" 
 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 physi- 
 cal 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 sleep- 
 walkers, 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 un- 
 known, and we have correlated Psychology,
 
 54 
 
 Sociology, Anatomy, Morphology, Physio- 
 logy, Geography, and Theology {Jiere Mr. 
 Darkin of Vast., who had been ailing a long 
 time, was carried out in a faint ; Air. Lamb- 
 kin, being short-sighted, did not fully seize 
 what had happened, and thinking that certain 
 of his audience were leaving the Hall witliouf 
 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 fust to say 
 that, on learning the occasiofi of the interrup- 
 tion, 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 concep- 
 tion has any philosophic value. I should 
 Tdc 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 pro-
 
 55 
 
 ceeds this curious conglomeration of ideal- 
 ism, 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 Epistc- 
 mology. He is not concerned to de- 
 monstrate a point ; he is not bound to 
 dispute the attitude of opponents. Let 
 them fall of their own weight {Ruant mole 
 sua). It is mine to show that things may 
 be thus or thus, and I will most steadily re- 
 fuse 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 proposi- 
 tion 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
 
 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,* 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 
 {Jiere 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 Histoiy of the Soul very 
 useful. Remember also, by the way, to 
 consult the footnote on p. 343, of Renan's 
 Afiti-Christ. The Master of St. Dives' 
 
 * Author of Pi'ussian Morals.
 
 57 
 
 Little Journeys in the Obvious is light and 
 amusing, but instructive in its way. 
 
 There is a kind of attitude {this was 
 Lamhkifis peroration^ aiid he was justly proud 
 of it) which destroys nothing but creates 
 much : which transforms without metamor- 
 physis, 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." * 
 
 Next Thursday I shall deal with morality 
 in international relations. 
 
 * These are almost the exact words that appeared 
 in the subsequent and over-rated book of Theophile 
 Gauthier: "Rien ne mene a rien cependant tout 
 arrive."
 
 VIII. 
 lambkin's ^p^rial €axxtsT^ontma 
 
 I^AMBKiN 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 corres- 
 pondent could now be issued as a book, and 
 on finding that such publications were ar- 
 ranged for separately with the publishers, 
 
 58
 
 59 
 
 and were not the property ot the News- 
 papers, 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 par- 
 ticular 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,"* in 
 which he collected towards the end of his 
 life his various letters written to the News- 
 papers, and mostly composed at sea. 
 
 The occasion which produced the follow- 
 ing 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, 
 
 * It was by my suggestion (quorum pars parvafui} 
 that was added the motto " They that go down to the 
 sea in ships, thej see the wonders of the Lord."
 
 6o 
 
 in whicli 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 Crom- 
 well and of Peel." 
 
 vSuch 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 Su7iday Ejigltshman. 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
 
 6i 
 
 have justice, and my blood boils within 
 
 me." 
 
 He left me with a parting grip of the 
 hand, promising to bring me back photo- 
 graphs 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 commodi- 
 ous 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 re- 
 ceived monetary compensation, and the 
 Piedmontese troops had been compelled to 
 evacuate Rome. 
 
 He therefore found upon landing at Leg- 
 horn* a telegram from the newspaper, say- 
 ing that his services were not required, but 
 that the monetary engagements entered into 
 
 • Livorno in Italian.
 
 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 pro- 
 ductions. These he later hung round his 
 room, not on nails (which as he very pro- 
 perly 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 cer- 
 tain 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.
 
 63 
 
 I am glad to say that it has been satis- 
 factorily settled, and that while all parties 
 have gained none have lost by the settle- 
 ment.] 
 
 * * * * 
 
 The Letters 
 
 s.s. Borgia^ Gravesend, 
 Sunday^ Sept. 27///, 1S73 
 
 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.* 
 
 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 townf dispel the 
 gloom. And over the river itself, the old 
 
 • Or "have given rise." Myself and my col- 
 leagues attempted (or had attempted) to determine 
 this point. But there can be little doubt that the 
 version we arrived at is right both in grammar and 
 in fact. The MS. is confused. 
 
 t Though posted in Gravesend this letter appears 
 to have been written between London and the Estuary 
 Some say in Dead Man's Reach.
 
 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 English7nan 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.* 
 
 * This passage was set for the Latin Prose in the 
 Burford Scholarship of 1875. It was won by Mr. 
 Hurt, now Chaplain of the Wainmakers' Guild.
 
 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* to the field of 
 Senlact 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 I^ass. He an- 
 swered " 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. 
 
 * Normans. t Hastings.
 
 66 
 
 Well, I will "turn in" and "go below" 
 for my watch ; "you gentlemen of England" 
 who read the Sunday Enghshuian, 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. 
 
 Posied at Dover, Monday, Sept. 28, 1873. 
 
 We have dropped the pilot. I have no- 
 thing 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
 
 67 
 
 is an end of it. One has no fixed rank, and 
 the wholesome discipline of social pres- 
 sure seems entirely lost. Thus this morn- 
 ing 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 literaWy^^ ad nausea ;u^^ 
 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 an- 
 swered " It's the Brains that tell." A very 
 remarkable statement, and one full of men- 
 ace and warning for our mercantile marine.
 
 68 
 
 Thursday^ Oct. r, 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
 
 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 
 oflfthe Spanish coast which we are approach- 
 ing. 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 haber- 
 dasher 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
 
 ■o 
 
 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 Ernskjoldj, 
 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 at- 
 tempted 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 an- 
 swered, " Oh ! knock their heads together 
 and have done with it." It was a bluff
 
 7i 
 
 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 pos- 
 terity 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.* 
 
 * These letters were never printed till now
 
 IX. 
 
 lambkin a ^btiwss to tlje %taQm of 
 ^rogwsa 
 
 Everybody will remember the famous 
 meeting of the Higher Spinsters in 1868 ; 
 a body hitherto purely voluntary in its 
 orofanisation, 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 White- 
 chapel is more degraded now than it was 
 thirty years ago we must not altogether dis- 
 regard 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 
 
 72
 
 summer that, to quote their eloquent circu- 
 lar, " 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 recog- 
 nition 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 spontane- 
 ous 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, Chate- 
 laine, Corporation of the Burghers of Pro- 
 gress and Lay Brothers, the whole sup- 
 ported upon salaries suitable to their social 
 rank and proceeding entirely from volun- 
 tary 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
 
 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 1 must detain the reader 
 with one fine anecdote concerning this oc- 
 casion, 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
 
 75 
 
 it would have been impossible to leave un- 
 remunerated such work as that which fol- 
 lows. 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 mediaeval use in monk- 
 ish 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 Lamb- 
 kin, 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 dis- 
 pleased if you estimate that slight perform- 
 ance 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
 
 76 
 
 pounds therein. But note what follows — 
 lyambkin 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 dur- 
 ing which they continually met, the re- 
 straint 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
 
 n 
 
 [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*]. I re- 
 member his saying to me with a merry 
 twinkle of the eye that looms only from the 
 free manhood of the west: " lyambkin," 
 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! 
 taught me in the rough log-cabin$ of my 
 birth : ' Be courteous to all strangers, but 
 familiar with none."'§ 
 
 * The late Hon. John Tupton, the amiable colonial 
 who purchased Marlborough House and made so 
 great a stir in London some years ago. 
 
 t Mrs. Tupton, senior, a woman whose heroic 
 struggles in the face of extreme poverty were a con- 
 tinual commentarj' on the awful results of our so- 
 called perfected Penal Sj-stem. 
 
 X There is great doubt upon the exactitude of this. 
 In his lifetime Tupton often spoke of "the poor tene- 
 ment house in New York where I was born," and in a 
 letter he alludes to "my birth at sea in the steerage 
 of a I/iner." 
 
 § This was perhaps the origin of a phrase which 
 may be found scattered with profusion throughout 
 Lambkin's works.
 
 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 repri- 
 mand perhaps, or a warning note of dan- 
 ger, at the best a doubtful and academic 
 temper as to the future. Fear nothing. I 
 shall pursue a far different course, and how- 
 ever 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 
 deadlanguageoflong-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 Due — to lead, to govern
 
 79 
 
 (whence we get so many of our most im- 
 portant 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 recog- 
 nised 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 uni- 
 versal panaceas, not by frothy Utopias. No ! 
 — by solid hard work, by quiet and per- 
 sistent effort, with the slow invisible tena- 
 city 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 Manches- 
 ter, go to Liverpool ; go to Hull or Halifax 
 — the answer is there.
 
 8o 
 
 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 enor- 
 mous circulation. You have turned to edu- 
 cation, 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 " Educa- 
 tion," this " Leading-out-of," is the matter 
 of all our lives here in Oxford except in the 
 vacation.* 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 
 
 * Mr. Lambkin did not give the derivation of this 
 word.
 
 8i 
 
 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 
 imfortunates " 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 de- 
 vouring element, others perished in the 
 flames, others again saved their lives by a 
 cowardly flight.* But what of those three 
 from Massachusetts whom better principles 
 had guided in youth and with whom philo- 
 sophy 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 
 
 * "Alii igni infamiae vitam alii fugA dederunt." — 
 Tacitus, In Omnes Caesares, I. viii. 7.
 
 82 
 
 guide, the Professor of Tautology, used to 
 call the "Principle of the Survival of the 
 Fittest." 
 
 {Applause^ which was only checked by a con- 
 sideration for the respect due to the Sacred 
 edifice^ 
 
 Go forth then ! Again I say go forth ! 
 Go forth ! Go forth ! The time is coming 
 when England will see that your claims to 
 reverence, recognition and emolument are as 
 great as our own. I repeat it, go forth, and 
 when you have brought the great bulk of 
 families to change their mental standpoint, 
 then indeed you will have transformed the 
 world ! For without the mind the human 
 intellect is nothing.
 
 X. 
 
 lambkin's Wtahtx 
 
 Mr. Solomon was ever determined to 
 keep the Sunday English^nan 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 
 
 83
 
 84 
 
 unique experience in practical matters. He 
 had formed a very high opinion of Lamb- 
 kin's journalistic capacity from his unpub- 
 lished 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-
 
 85 
 
 Saxon forefathers to the latest Parish Coun- 
 cil, 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 de- 
 signs 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* may be 
 planted, there they cause the desert to blos- 
 som, 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 lyondon, the day after in Ox- 
 
 * The italicised words were omitted in the article.
 
 So 
 
 ford — and from this it is but a step to the 
 uttermost parts of the earth. 
 
 " Under these conditions of power, 
 splendour, and domination it is intolerable 
 that the vast metropolis of this gigantic 
 empire should be pestered with crawling 
 cabs. There are indeed many things which 
 in the Divine plan have it in their nature to 
 crawl. We of all the races of men are the 
 readiest to admit the reisfn 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 English- 
 man (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 (^uVis) it is 
 ' cpTreiv,' which is usually translated * to 
 crawl,' and Kipling speaks of fifes ' crawl- 
 ing.' With all this we have no quarrel, 
 but the crawling cab is a shocking and 
 abominable thing ; and if the titled owners
 
 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."
 
 XL 
 
 lambkin's E^marks on t))t (Bnti of €txm 
 
 Delivered in Hall on Saturday^ Dec. 6th y 
 1887, the morning upon which the College 
 went down. 
 
 My dear Friends; my dear Under- 
 graduate MEMBERS OF THIS COLLEGE, 
 
 The end of Term is approaching — 
 nay, is here. A little more, and we shall 
 meet each other no longer for six weeks. 
 It is a solemn and a sacred thought. It is 
 not the sadness, and even the regret, that 
 takes us at the beginning of the lyong 
 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. 
 
 88
 
 89 
 
 This is not a time of exaltation, so should 
 it not be a time for too absolute a mourn- 
 ing. 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 charac- 
 ter 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
 
 go 
 
 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 mon- 
 ster — 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, empiri- 
 cal, or dogmatic teaching have been con- 
 veyed in that time, or with so much full- 
 ness 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 re- 
 member how, shortly after the month of
 
 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 for- 
 get. I hope the lesson will suflSce, 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
 
 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 com- 
 petition, I am as proud as yourselves. 
 [Lotid cheers^ lasting for several mtnules.^ 
 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 ex- 
 perience (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 
 coiild say the same for the Inorganic
 
 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 under- 
 ofraduate 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 univer- 
 sity. There is no turf like it in the world. 
 The habit of continually walking upon it is 
 fatal to its appearance. Such an action
 
 94 
 
 would certainly never be permitted in a 
 ofentleman's seat, and there is some talk of 
 building a wall round the quadrangle to 
 prevent the practice in question. I need 
 hardly tell you what a disfigurement such a 
 step would involve, but if there is one 
 thing in the management of the college 
 that I am more determined upon than 
 another it is that no one be he scholar or be 
 he commoner shall walk upon the grass ! 
 
 I wish you a very Merry Christmas at the 
 various country houses you may be visiting, 
 and hope and pray that you may find united 
 there all the members of your own family. 
 
 Mr. Gurge will remain behind and speak 
 to me for a few moments.
 
 XII. 
 
 lambkin s ^rtith on t\jt |lortlj-faiest 
 
 €axmv of tlj^ jEosait ^P^^^^^^^t 'jf t^^ 
 
 Homan Utlla ai IBignnr 
 
 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 calcu- 
 lated to impress posterity. It is none the 
 less true that he had in the inner cot&rie 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,"* and Mr. Bigchurch in 
 the Preface of his exhaustive work on 
 
 * The full title of the translation is " The Roman 
 Sandal : Its growth, development and decay. Its 
 influence on society and its position in the liturgy of 
 the Western Church." 
 
 95
 
 96 
 
 " The Drainage of the Grecian Sea Port " 
 (which includes much information on the 
 Ionian colonies and Magna Graecia) ac- 
 knowledges Mr. Ivambkin's " valuable sym- 
 pathy 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* 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 
 
 * Nephew of Mr. Child, the former editor ; grandson 
 of Mr. Pilgrim, the founder ; and father of the 
 present editor of Culture.
 
 97 
 
 in its original dedication an Ariadne, but 
 more properly described by M. Cremieux- 
 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.* It is as 
 follows : 
 
 THE ARTICLE. 
 
 I cannot conceive how M. Bischojfff and 
 Herr CrapiloniJ can have fallen into their 
 grotesque error wnth 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 
 
 * Mr. Cook criticises this sentence. It is a point 
 upon which friends may " agrSer a differer" 
 
 t Author of Psychologic de V Absurde. 
 
 X Professor of Micro-graph j^ at Bonn.
 
 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 com- 
 posed 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. BischojSf) 
 I have no doubt that patriotic notions were 
 too strong for a well-balanced judgment;* 
 
 ' This was rather severe, as M. Bischofif had spent 
 o me years in a Maison de Santd.
 
 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 
 Sociite 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 fissure of" Winter " when I am convinced it 
 is nothing of the kind. 
 
 As far as I can make out from their some- 
 what 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 ad- 
 mitted to be " Spring," " Summer," and
 
 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 re- 
 ligious conceptions of the Continent! When 
 one is taught that authority is everything 
 and cannot use one's judgment,* one is al- 
 most 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 Big- 
 nor has changed hands three times in 
 this century ? I do not wish to make any 
 insinuations of bad faith, but I would hint 
 
 * An example of these occasional difficulties in 
 style, due to the eagerness of which I have spoken.
 
 lOI 
 
 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 Wrio;ht 
 mentions its absence in his catalogue. A 
 very interesting discussion has arisen as to 
 the material of which the pupil was com- 
 posed. 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 frag- 
 ment, after some filing and chipping, can 
 be made to fit the cavity, the discovery will
 
 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 con- 
 tinuity, which is at present based on such 
 slight evidence. I will let you know the 
 result. 
 
 The coins recently dug up in the neigh- 
 bourhood, 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 dis- 
 appointed to find so poor a result : ever 
 since my enquiry labourers have kept com- 
 ing to me with coins obviously modern — 
 especially bronze coins of Napoleon III.— 
 which they have buried to turn them 
 green, and subsequently hammered shape- 
 less 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,"
 
 103 
 
 inscribed in a classic wreath which deceived 
 me. 
 
 Nothing else of real importance has 
 occurred since my last communication.
 
 XIII. 
 
 Hambktn'a ^^rmnn. 
 
 A MAN not over-given to mere words, 
 Lambkin was always also somewhat diffi- 
 dent of his pulpit eloquence and his ser- 
 mons 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 modifi- 
 
 104
 
 105 
 
 cation 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 lec- 
 ture mainly on current politics. Mathema- 
 tics again was a subject whose interest he 
 discerned, however much he doubted its 
 value as a mental discipline ; he was, there- 
 fore, a supporter of the prize fellowships 
 occasionally offered on the subject, but, in 
 the determination of the successful candi- 
 date he would give due weight to the 
 minutiae of dress and good manners. 
 
 It will be seen from all this that if 
 Lambkin was essentially a modern, yet he 
 was as essentially a wise and moderate man ; 
 cautious in action and preferring judgment 
 to violence he would often say, ^^ trans-
 
 io6 
 
 former please, not r-^former," when his 
 friends twitted him over the port with his 
 innovations.* 
 
 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 ex- 
 amples 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 devo- 
 tional 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 
 
 * The meaning of this sentence is made clear thus: 
 They (subject) twitted (predicate), with-his-qualifica- 
 tions (adverbially "how"), over — the — port (adverbi- 
 ally " where and when "), him (object).
 
 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 : 
 
 " I will arise and gird up my lions — / mean 
 loins — and go ; yea, I will get me out of the land 
 of my fathers which is in Ben-ramon, even unto 
 Edom and the Valley of Kush and the cities 
 about Laban to the uttermost ends of the earth." 
 
 There is something about foreign travel, 
 my dear Brethren, which seems, as it were, 
 a positive physical necessity to our eager 
 and high-wrought generation. At specified 
 times of the year we hunt, or debate ; we 
 attend to our affairs in the city, or we
 
 io8 
 
 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 de- 
 velopment 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 —
 
 log 
 
 no it is not then — the old time of Pilgrim- 
 age,* that our positive and enlightened era 
 chooses for its migration* t 
 
 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 commo- 
 dious 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 
 
 * Mr. L,ambkin loved to pass a quiet hour over the 
 MSS. in the Bodleian, and would quote familiarly the 
 rare lines of Chaucer, especially, among the mediaeval 
 poets. 
 
 t This sentence is an admirable example of Lamb- 
 kin's later manner.
 
 no 
 
 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 Conti- 
 nent, especially if there sit among you any
 
 Ill 
 
 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 journey ings ! 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 advan- 
 tages 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.
 
 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 Mirtanoja, and the vulgar insufficiency 
 and ostentation of a Sanzio.* In a thou- 
 sand 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 pea- 
 sant, 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 
 
 * Raphael.
 
 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.)
 
 XIV. 
 lambkin's (^^m %ttUv to Cljurtljntfn 
 
 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 erro- 
 neously presumed in Great Dead Men of the 
 Period)* without due discussion and reflec- 
 tion. 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, 
 
 * P. 347, "The impetuosity of the action ill-suits 
 with what is known of Lambkin." It is all very well 
 for the editor of Great Dead Men to say that this 
 apologises for the misfortune ; that apology does not 
 excuse the imputation of impetuosity (forsooth !) to a 
 man whose every gesture was restrained. 
 
 114
 
 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 ad- 
 vantage 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
 
 ii6 
 
 by the mere impact of his creed or prejudice, 
 much as the latter may give pain by hap- 
 pening 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. 
 
 1
 
 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.* A 
 Liberal Unionist Government was in power, 
 and Lambkin perhaps imagined that con- 
 troversy 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 advan- 
 tage to the generation immediately succeed- 
 ing his own. I cannot but believe that from 
 that little source springs all the mighty 
 
 * Better known perhaps as an author than as a 
 cleric. He met his end in a shocking manner in a 
 railway accident. His life was, however, insured, 
 and he had upon him a copy of Golden Deeds.
 
 ii8 
 
 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. Johnh 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 ? 
 L,et 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
 
 119 
 
 lis 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 elite 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* " — 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 main- 
 tain (and there is much to be said in their 
 favour), that the common practice of wear- 
 ing buttoned boots, their ornate appearance, 
 
 * Becker's A Torch for the Chapell; or the Non- 
 conformists out-done. Folio, 1663, p. 71.
 
 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 Vien- 
 nese ; 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 Chris- 
 tians 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,* 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 
 
 * Referring to the edict on Buttoned Boots of 
 Romulus Augustulus : a verj- shameless injustice.
 
 121 
 
 will admit to refer to buttons, ivyov 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 indefinite- 
 ly, to the final extinction, perhaps, of our 
 beloved country and its most cherished 
 institutions. 
 
 In there no way by which such a catas- 
 trophe 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.* It 
 
 • Lambkin lived to see its almost universal adop- 
 tion : a result in which he was no mean agent.
 
 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 deter- 
 mine 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 ex- 
 press itself in boots, it is just and good 
 that it should do so, but to see righteous- 
 ness in the boot itself is to fall into the 
 gross materialism of the middle ages, and 
 to forget our birthright and the mess of 
 pottage. 
 
 Yours (my dear Burfle) in all charity, 
 
 JosiAH Lambkin.
 
 XV. 
 Eambktn's l^tt^r to a fvtnd} JFrwnb 
 
 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 
 takehim by the Calais-Bale, passing through 
 the St. Gothard by night, and so into the 
 storied plains of Italy.* 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 re- 
 member the abominable outrage at Naples, 
 where he was stabbed by a coachman in re- 
 venge for his noble and disinterested pro- 
 tection 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. 
 
 • " On fair Italia's storied plains," Biggin, xii., /. 32. 
 
 123
 
 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 coun- 
 try; 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?"* He did not pretend to a fami- 
 liarity with the minute details of foreign 
 policy, nor was he such a pedant as to be 
 offended at the good-humoured chaff di- 
 rected against his accent in the pronuncia- 
 tion 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 conversa- 
 
 • I am assured by Mr. Venial that this well-known 
 line originally took shape on Mr. Lambkin's lips.
 
 125 
 
 tion. 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 " etat 
 majeur," "la clericalisme c'est I'ennemi," 
 " I'etat c'est moi,"* and such was his painful 
 and exact research that he first in the Uni- 
 versity 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 experi- 
 ence 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 win- 
 nowed from that fine soul the grossness 
 and one-sidedness, the mingled vanity and 
 
 * This phrase he noticed early in his studies to be 
 a rhyming catchword, and pronounced it so to the 
 day of his death.
 
 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 Nimes. In 
 other ways this gifted mind recalled — and 
 this would be in his moments of just indig- 
 nation — the manner and appearance of a 
 Major Prophet. 
 
 Jules de la Vaguere d^ 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,
 
 127 
 
 and occasionally (for old habit is second 
 nature*), in the promotion of some indus- 
 trial concern destined to benefit his country 
 and the world. f With transactions, how- 
 ever 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 
 T5th, 1896. The famous figure of " Mercy," 
 taken from the stained glass at Rheims, 
 was destroyed and one of the stones had 
 
 * Hobbes. 
 
 t Thus M. de Bissac was the President of the Societe 
 Anonyme des Voitures-fixes. 
 
 I
 
 128 
 
 fallen on the floor within an inch of a 
 priceless Sevres vase that had once be- 
 longed to Law and had been bought 
 from M. Panama. It was on the occasion 
 of this abominable outrage that Mr. Lamb- 
 kin 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 h Oxford, car je 
 suis bien sur que je souviens ma visite 2l 
 Paris, quand je fus recu avec tant de 
 bienveillance par vous et votre aimable 
 famille. 
 
 Vous aurez done immediatement apr^s 
 I'accident pense k nous car vous aurez su 
 que nous etions, moi et Bilkin, vos amis 
 sincer^s surtout dans la politique. Nous 
 avons expecte quelque chose pareille et 
 nous comprenons bien pourquoi c'est le 
 mauvais Durand qui a jete les pierres. 
 Vous avez ete trop bon pour cet homme Ik.
 
 129 
 
 Souvenez-vous en future que c'est exacte- 
 ment ceux k qui nous pretons de I'argent 
 et devraient etre devoues h nous, qui de- 
 viennent des ennemis. Voilk ce qui em- 
 peche si souvent de faire du bien excepte h 
 ceux qui nous seront fideles et doux. 
 
 (A II this, being of a private nature, was not 
 printed in M. de Bissac's paper. The public 
 portion follows.) 
 
 II est bien evident d'oii viennent des 
 abominables et choquants choses pareilles. 
 C'est que la France se meurent. Un pays 
 ou il n'y a personne* qui pent empecher des 
 fanatiques de briser les verres est un pays 
 en decadence, voilk ce que I'Irlande aurait 
 ete si nous etions pas Ik pour I'empecher 
 On briserait des verres' tr^s surement et 
 beaucoup, J'espere que je ne blesse pas 
 votre cceur de Francais en disant tout celk, 
 mais il est bien mieux de connaitre ce que 
 I'on a, meme si c'est raortel comme en 
 France. 
 
 Vous I'avez bien dit c'est les militarisme 
 et clericalisme qui font ces outrages. Ex- 
 
 * "Accuracy in the use of negatives," Mr. I^ambkin 
 would say, " is the test of a scholar,"
 
 I30 
 
 aminez bieii I'homme qui a fait ca et vous 
 verrez qu'il a ete baptise et tres probable- 
 ment il a fait son service militaire. Oh ! 
 Mon cherami que Dieu*vous amerveilleuse- 
 ment preserve de I'influence du Sabe et du 
 Goupillon ! Vous n'avez pas fait votre 
 service et si vous etes sage ne faites le 
 jamais car il corrompt le caractere. Je nous 
 ne I'avons pas. 
 
 J'ai lu avec grand plaisir votre article 
 " Le Pretre au Bagne," oui ! c'est au 
 Bagne que'l on devrait envoyer les Pretres 
 seulement dans un pays ou tant de person ne 
 sont Catholiques, je crains que les jurys 
 sentimentales de votre pays aquitterait hon- 
 teusement ces hommes nefastes. 
 
 J'espere que je ne blesse pas votre Coeur 
 de Catholique en disant cela.f Nos Catho- 
 liques ici ne sont pas si mauvais que nos 
 
 * Changed to "le Destin " in the newspaper. 
 
 t M. de Bissac was a Catholic, but one of the most 
 liberal temper. He respected the Pope, but said that 
 he was led astray by his advisers. He voted every 
 year for the suppression of public worship in France 
 and the turning of the churches into local museums. 
 He was in every way remarkably unprejudiced for a 
 man of that persuasion. His indefatigable attacks 
 upon the clergy of his country have earned him the 
 admiration of part of the whole civilised world.
 
 131 
 
 Catholiques Ik-bas. Beaucoup des notres 
 sont de tres bonnes families, mais en 
 Irlande I'ignorance et terrible, et on vent 
 le faire pins grand avec nne Universite ! 
 
 En esperant que la France redeviendra 
 son vrai meme* ce que je crains etre im- 
 possible, je reste, mon clier ami (et Mon- 
 sieur) votre ami sincere, agriez mes vceux 
 presses, tout-k-toi. 
 
 JOSUE IvAMBKIN. 
 
 * The phrase is " return to her true self." It was a 
 favourite one of Ivambkin's, but is I fear untranslat- 
 able. The French have no such subtle ideas. The 
 whole sentence was left out in the Horreur, and the 
 final paragraph began with "Je reste."
 
 XVI. 
 
 Uttt^rtrteiti faiitij iltr. lambkin. 
 
 A REPRESENTATIVE of The J. C. R. had, 
 but a short while before his death, the 
 privilege of an interview with Mr. Lamb- 
 kin on those numerous questions of the day 
 which the enterprise of the Press puts before 
 its readers. The meeting has a most pa- 
 thetic 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 represen- 
 tative) "at a neat villa in the Banbury Road, 
 
 the door was answered by a trim serving- 
 
 132
 
 ^33 
 
 maid in a chintz gown and with a white 
 cap on her head. The whole aspect of Mr. 
 Lambkin's household without and within 
 breathes repose and decent merriment. I 
 was ushered into a well-ordered study, and 
 noticed upon the walls a few handsome 
 prints, chosen in perfect taste and solidly 
 mounted in fine frames, * The meeting of 
 Wellington and Blucher at Waterloo,' 'John 
 Knox preaching before Mary Queen of 
 Scots,' ' The trial of Lord William Russell,' 
 and two charming pictures of a child and a 
 dog : * Can 'oo talk? ' and ' Me too ! ' com- 
 pleted 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 daguer- 
 reotype 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 ? "
 
 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 aflfected, 
 ' 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. ' How- 
 ever,' continued he with quiet emphasis, 
 ' Home Rule is dead, and there is no 
 immediate danger of any tampering with
 
 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 Cromzdell 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 ex- 
 cellent port of Baron Gusmann at West- 
 burton Abbey. Then there is the expan- 
 sion of this book, English Boyhood^ in three 
 
 K
 
 136 
 
 volumes, of which only two have appeared 
 — Anglo-Saxon Boyhood and MedicEval Boy- 
 hood 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 ; " '■''Ele- 
 ments of the Leibnitzian Mojtodology 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 fair}', 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 
 al!,^ he replied with finished courtesy, ' but 
 I always make a point of going in to High
 
 Tea and seeing my wife and family well 
 under weigh before I go off to Hall. Surely 
 that must be the gong, and there (as the 
 pleasant sound of children's high voices 
 filled the house) come what I call my young 
 barbarians.' 
 
 " He accompanied me to the door with 
 true old-world politeness and shook me 
 beautifully by the hand. ' Good-bye,' he 
 said, ' Good-bye and God-speed. You may 
 make what use you like of this, that I 
 believe the task of the journalist to be 
 amono^ the noblest in our broad land. The 
 Press has a great mission, a great mis- 
 sion.' 
 
 "With these words still ringing in my 
 ears I gathered up my skirts to cross the 
 muddy roadway and stepped into the tram.'' 
 
 Womsn's Printing Society, Ltd., 66, Whitcnmb St. W.C
 
 DATE DUE 
 
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