Part 2
Such was the man, such the gentleman, the true ‘Hglaford,’ the modern ‘Godgebidden Eorldemanthingancanning,’ whose inner thoughts shall unroll themselves in the pages that follow.
II.
Lambkin’s Newdigate
POEM WRITTEN FOR “NEWDIGATE PRIZE” IN ENGLISH VERSE
BY J. A. LAMBKIN, ESQ., OF BURFORD COLLEGE
_N.B._--[_The competitors are confined to the use of Rhymed Heroic Iambic Pentameters, but the introduction of_ LYRICS _is permitted_]
Subject: “THE BENEFITS CONFERRED BY SCIENCE, ESPECIALLY IN CONNECTION WITH THE ELECTRIC LIGHT”
_For the benefit of those who do not care to read through the Poem but desire to know its contents, I append the following headings_:
INVOCATION TO THE MUSE
Hail! Happy Muse, and touch the tuneful string! The benefits conferred by Science[10] I sing.
HIS THEME: THE ELECTRIC LIGHT AND ITS BENEFITS
Under the kind Examiners’[11] direction I only write about them in connection With benefits which the Electric Light Confers on us; especially at night. These are my theme, of these my song shall rise. My lofty head shall swell to strike the skies,[12] And tears of hopeless love bedew the maiden’s eyes.
SECOND INVOCATION TO THE MUSE
Descend, O Muse, from thy divine abode,
OSNEY
To Osney, on the Seven Bridges Road; For under Osney’s solitary shade The bulk of the Electric Light is made. Here are the works, from hence the current flows Which (so the Company’s prospectus goes)
POWER OF WORKS THERE
Can furnish to Subscribers hour by hour No less than sixteen thousand candle power,[13] All at a thousand volts. (It is essential To keep the current at this high potential In spite of the considerable expense.)
STATISTICS CONCERNING THEM
The Energy developed represents, Expressed in foot-tons, the united forces Of fifteen elephants and forty horses. But shall my scientific detail thus Clip the dear wings of Buoyant Pegasus?
POETICAL OR RHETORICAL QUESTIONS
Shall pure statistics jar upon the ear That pants for Lyric accents loud and clear? Shall I describe the complex Dynamo Or write about its commutator? No!
THE THEME CHANGES
To happier fields I lead my wanton pen, The proper study of mankind is men.
THIRD INVOCATION TO THE MUSE
Awake, my Muse! Portray the pleasing sight That meets us where they make Electric Light.
A PICTURE OF THE ELECTRICIAN
Behold the Electrician where he stands: Soot, oil, and verdigris are on his hands; Large spots of grease defile his dirty clothes, The while his conversation drips with oaths. Shall such a being perish in its youth? Alas! it is indeed the fatal truth. In that dull brain, beneath that hair unkempt, Familiarity has bred contempt. We warn him of the gesture all too late; Oh, Heartless Jove! Oh, Adamantine Fate!
HIS AWFUL FATE
Some random Touch--a hand’s imprudent slip-- The Terminals--a flash--a sound like “Zip!” A smell of Burning fills the startled Air-- The Electrician is no longer there!
* * * * *
HE CHANGES HIS THEME
But let us turn with true Artistic scorn From facts funereal and from views forlorn Of Erebus and Blackest midnight born.[14]
FOURTH INVOCATION TO THE MUSE
Arouse thee, Muse! and chaunt in accents rich The interesting processes by which The Electricity is passed along: These are my theme, to these I bend my song.
DESCRIPTION OF METHOD BY WHICH THE CURRENT IS USED
It runs encased in wood or porous brick Through copper wires two millimetres thick, And insulated on their dangerous mission By indiarubber, silk, or composition, Here you may put with critical felicity The following question: “What is Electricity?”
DIFFICULTY OF DETERMINING NATURE OF ELECTRICITY
“Molecular Activity,” say some, Others when asked say nothing, and are dumb. Whatever be its nature: this is clear, The rapid current checked in its career, Baulked in its race and halted in its course[15] Transforms to heat and light its latent force:
CONSERVATION OF ENERGY. PROOFS OF THIS: NO EXPERIMENT NEEDED
It needs no pedant in the lecturer’s chair To prove that light and heat are present there. The pear-shaped vacuum globe, I understand, Is far too hot to fondle with the hand. While, as is patent to the meanest sight, The carbon filament is very bright.
DOUBTS ON THE MUNICIPAL SYSTEM, BUT--
As for the lights they hang about the town, Some praise them highly, others run them down. This system (technically called the arc) Makes some passages too light, others too dark.
NONE ON THE DOMESTIC
But in the house the soft and constant rays Have always met with universal praise.
ITS ADVANTAGES
For instance: if you want to read in bed No candle burns beside your curtains’ head, Far from some distant corner of the room The incandescent lamp dispels the gloom,
ADVANTAGES OF LARGE PRINT
And with the largest print need hardly try The powers of any young and vigorous eye.
FIFTH INVOCATION TO THE MUSE
Aroint thee, Muse! inspired the poet sings! I cannot help observing future things!
THE ONLY HOPE OF HUMANITY IS IN SCIENCE
Life is a vale, its paths are dark and rough Only because we do not know enough. When Science has discovered something more We shall be happier than we were before.
PERORATION IN THE SPIRIT OF THE REST OF THE POEM
Hail! Britain, mistress of the Azure Main, Ten Thousand Fleets sweep over thee in vain! Hail! mighty mother of the brave and free, That beat Napoleon, and gave birth to me! Thou that canst wrap in thine emblazoned robe One quarter of the habitable globe. Thy mountains, wafted by a favouring breeze, Like mighty hills withstand the stormy seas.
WARNING TO BRITAIN
Thou art a Christian Commonwealth. And yet Be thou not all unthankful--nor forget As thou exultest in Imperial might The benefits of the Electric Light.
III.
Some Remarks on Lambkin’s Prose Style
No achievement of my dear friend’s produced a greater effect than the English Essay which he presented at his examination. That so young a man, and a man trained in such an environment as his, should have written an essay at all was sufficiently remarkable, but that his work should have shown such mastery in the handling, such delicate balance of idea, and so much know-ledge (in the truest sense of the word), coupled with such an astounding insight into human character and contemporary psychology, was enough to warrant the remark of the then Warden of Burford: “If these things” (said the aged but eminent divine), “if these things” (it was said in all reverence and with a full sense of the responsibility of his position), “If these things are done in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?”
Truly it may be said that the Green Wood of Lambkin’s early years as an Undergraduate was worthily followed by the Dry Wood of his later life as a fellow and even tutor, nay, as a Bursar of his college.
It is not my purpose to add much to the reader’s own impressions of this _tour de force_, or to insist too strongly upon the skill and breadth of treatment which will at once make their mark upon any intelligent man, and even upon the great mass of the public. But I may be forgiven if I give some slight personal memories in interpretation of a work which is necessarily presented in the cold medium of type.
Lambkin’s hand-writing was flowing and determined, but was often difficult to read, a quality which led in the later years of his life to the famous retort made by the Rural Dean of Henchthorp to the Chaplain of Bower’s Hall.[16] His manuscript was, like Lord Byron’s (and unlike the famous Codex V in the Vatican), remarkable for its erasures, of which as many as three may be seen in some places super-imposed, ladderwise, _en échelle_, the one above the other, perpendicularly to the line of writing.
This excessive fastidiousness in the use of words was the cause of his comparatively small production of written work; and thus the essay printed below was the labour of nearly three hours. His ideas in this matter were best represented by his little epigram on the appearance of Liddell and Scott’s larger Greek Lexicon. “Quality not quantity” was the witty phrase which he was heard to mutter when he received his first copy of that work.
The nervous strain of so much anxiety about his literary work wearied both mind and body, but he had his reward. The scholarly aptitude of every particle in the phrase, and the curious symmetry apparent in the great whole of the essay are due to a quality which he pushed indeed to excess, but never beyond the boundary that separates Right and Wrong; we admire in the product what we might criticise in the method, and when we judge as critics we are compelled as Englishmen and connoisseurs to congratulate and to applaud.
He agreed with Aristotle in regarding lucidity as the main virtue of style. And if he sometimes failed to attain his ideal in this matter, the obscurity was due to none of those mannerisms which are so deplorable in a Meredith or a Browning, but rather to the fact that he found great difficulty in ending a sentence as he had begun it. His mind outran his pen; and the sentence from his University sermon, “England must do her duty, or what will the harvest be?” stirring and patriotic as it is, certainly suffers from some such fault, though I cannot quite see where.
The Oxymoron, the Aposiopesis, the Nominativus Pendens, the Anacoluthon and the Zeugma he looked upon with abhorrence and even with dread. He was a friend to all virile enthusiasm in writing but a foe to rhetoric, which (he would say) “Is cloying even in a demagogue, and actually nauseating in the literary man.” He drew a distinction between _eloquence_ and rhetoric, often praising the one and denouncing the other with the most abandoned fervour: indeed, it was his favourite diversion in critical conversation accurately to determine the meaning of words. In early youth he would often split an infinitive or end a sentence with a preposition. But, ever humble and ready to learn, he determined, after reading Mrs. Griffin’s well-known essays in the _Daily American_, to eschew such conduct for the future; and it was a most touching sight to watch him, even in extreme old age, his reverend white locks sweeping the paper before him and his weak eyes peering close at the MSS. as he carefully went over his phrases with a pen, scratching out and amending, at the end of his day’s work, the errors of this nature.
He commonly used a gilt “J” nib, mounted upon a holder of imitation ivory, but he was not cramped by any petty limitations in such details and would, if necessity arose, make use of a quill, or even of a fountain pen, insisting, however, if he was to use the latter, that it should be of the best.
The paper upon which he wrote the work that remains to us was the ordinary ruled foolscap of commerce; but this again he regarded as quite unimportant. It was the matter of what he wrote that concerned him, not (as is so often the case with lesser men) the mere accidents of pen or paper.
I remember little else of moment with regard to his way of writing, but I make no doubt that these details will not be without their interest; for the personal habits of a great man have a charm of their own. I read once that the sum of fifty pounds was paid for the pen of Charles Dickens. I wonder what would be offered for a similar sacred relic, of a man more obscure, but indirectly of far greater influence; a relic which I keep by me with the greatest reverence, which I do not use myself, however much at a loss I may be for pen or pencil, and with which I never, upon any account, allow the children to play.
But I must draw to a close, or I should merit the reproach of lapsing into a sentimental peroration, and be told that I am myself indulging in that rhetoric which Lambkin so severely condemned.
IV.
Lambkin’s Essay on “Success”
ON “SUCCESS:” ITS CAUSES AND RESULTS
[Sidenote: Difficulty of Subject]
In approaching a problem of this nature, with all its anomalies and analogues, we are at once struck by the difficulty of conditioning any accurate estimate of the factors of the solution of the difficulty which is latent in the very terms of the above question. We shall do well perhaps, however, to clearly differentiate from its fellows the proposition we have to deal with, and similarly as an inception of our analysis to permanently fix the definitions and terms we shall be talking of, with, and by.
[Sidenote: Definition of Success]
Success may be defined as the _Successful Consummation of an Attempt_ or more shortly as the _Realisation of an imagined Good_, and as it implies Desire or the Wish for a thing, and at the same time action or the attempt to get at a thing,[17] we might look at Success from yet another point of view and say that _Success is the realisation of Desire through action_. Indeed this last definition seems on the whole to be the best; but it is evident that in this, as in all other matters, it is impossible to arrive at perfection, and our safest definition will be that which is found to be on the whole most approximately the average mean[18] of many hundreds that might be virtually constructed to more or less accurately express the idea we have undertaken to do.
So far then it is evident that while we may have a fairly definite subjective visual concept of what Success is, we shall never be able to convey to others in so many words exactly what our idea may be.
“What am I? , . . . . An infant crying for the light That has no language but a cry”
[Sidenote: Method of dealing with Problem]
It is, however, of more practical importance nevertheless, to arrive at some method or other by which we can in the long run attack the very serious problem presented to us. Our best chance of arriving at any solution will lie in attempting to give objective form to what it is we have to do with. For this purpose we will first of all divide all actions into (א) Successful and (ב) Non-successful[19] actions. These two categories are at once mutually exclusive and collectively universal. Nothing of which Success can be truly predicated, can at the same time be called with any approach to accuracy Unsuccessful; and similarly if an action finally result in Non-success, it is quite evident that to speak of its “Success” would be to trifle with words and to throw dust into our own eyes, which is a fatal error in any case. We have then these two primary catēgories what is true of one will, with certain reservations, be untrue of the other, in most cases (we will come to that later) and _vice-versâ_.
(1) Success. (2) Non-success.
[Sidenote: First great Difficulty]
But here we are met at the outset of our examination by a difficulty of enormous dimensions. There is not one success; there are many. There is the success of the Philosopher, of the Scientist, of the Politician, of the Argument, of the Commanding Officer, of the Divine, of the mere unthinking Animal appetite, and of others more numerous still. It is evident that with such a vast number of different subsidiary catēgories within our main catēgory it would be impossible to arrive at any absolute conclusions, or to lay down any firm general principle. For the moment we had erected some such fundamental foundation the fair structure would be blown to a thousand atoms by the consideration of some fresh form, aspect or realisation, of Success which might have escaped our vision, so that where should we be then? It is therefore most eminently a problem in which we should beware of undue generalisations and hasty dogmatism. We must abandon here as everywhere the immoral and exploded cant of mediæval deductive methods invented by priests and mummers to enslave the human mind, and confine ourselves to what we absolutely _know_. Shall we towards the end of this essay truly _know_ anything with regard to Success? Who can tell! But at least let us not cheat ourselves with the axioms, affirmations and dogmas which are, in a certain sense, the ruin of so many; let us, if I may use a metaphor, “abandon the _à priori_ for the _chiaro-oscuro_.”
[Sidenote: Second much greater Difficulty]
But if the problem is complex from the great variety of the various kinds of Success, what shall we say of the disturbance introduced by a new aspect of the matter, which we are now about to allude to! Aye! What indeed! An aspect so widespread in its consequences, so momentous and so fraught with menace to all philosophy, so big with portent, and of such threatening aspect to humanity itself, that we hesitate even to bring it forward![20] _Success is not always Success: Non-success (or Failure) is an aspect of Success, and vice-versâ._ This apparent paradox will be seen to be true on a little consideration. For “Success” in any one case involves the “Failure” or “Non-success” of its opposite or correlative. Thus, if we bet ten pounds with one of our friends our “Success” would be his “Non-success,” and _vice-versâ_, collaterally. Again, if we desire to fail in a matter (_e.g._, any man would hope to fail in being hanged[21]), then to succeed is to fail, and to fail is to succeed, and our successful failure would fail were we to happen upon a disastrous success! And note that the _very same act_, not this, that, or another, but THE VERY SAME, is (according to the way we look at it) a “successful” or an “unsuccessful” act. Success therefore not only _may_ be, but _must_ be Failure, and the two catēgories upon which we had built such high hopes have disappeared for ever!
[Sidenote: Solemn considerations consequent upon this]
Terrible thought! A thing can be at once itself and not itself--nay its own opposite! The mind reels, and the frail human vision peering over the immense gulf of metaphysical infinity is lost in a cry for mercy and trembles on the threshold of the unseen! What visions of horror and madness may not be reserved for the too daring soul which has presumed to knock at the Doors of Silence! Let us learn from the incomprehensible how small and weak a thing is man!
[Sidenote: A more cheerful view]
But it would ill-befit the philosopher to abandon his effort because of a kind of a check or two at the start. The great hand of Time shouts ever “onward”; and even if we cannot discover the Absolute in the limits of this essay, we may rise from the ashes of our tears to better and happier things.
[Sidenote: The beginning of a Solution]
A light seems to dawn on us. We shall not arrive at the full day but we shall see “in a glass darkly” what, in the final end of our development, may perhaps be more clearly revealed to us. It is evident that we have been dealing with a relative. _How_ things so apparently absolute as hanging or betting can be in any true sense relative we cannot tell, because we cannot conceive the majestic whole of which Success and Failure, plus and minus, up and down, yes and no, truth and lies, are but as the glittering facets of a diamond borne upon the finger of some titled and wealthy person.
Our error came from foolish self-sufficiency and pride. We thought (forsooth) that our mere human conceptions of contradiction were real. It has been granted to us (though we are but human still), to discover our error--there is no hot or cold, no light or dark, and no good or evil, all are, in a certain sense, and with certain limitations (if I may so express myself) the Aspects----
_At this point the bell rang and the papers had to be delivered up. Lambkin could not let his work go, however, without adding a few words to show what he might have done had time allowed. He wrote:--_
“No Time. Had intended examples--Success, Academic, Acrobatic, Agricultural, Aristocratic, Bacillic ... Yaroslavic, Zenobidic, etc. Historical cases examined, Biggar’s view, H. Unity, Univ. Consciousness, Amphodunissa,[22] Setxm [Illustration].”
V.
Lambkin on Sleep
[_This little gem was written for the great Monograph on “Being,” which Lambkin never lived to complete. It was included, however, in his little volume of essays entitled “Rictus Almae Matris.” The careful footnotes, the fund of information, and the scholarly accuracy of the whole sketch are an example--(alas! the only one)--of what his full work would have been had he brought it to a conclusion. It is an admirable example of his manner in maturer years._]
In sleep our faculties lie dormant.[23] We perceive nothing or almost nothing of our surroundings; and the deeper our slumber the more absolute is the barrier between ourselves and the outer world. The causes of this “Cessation of Consciousness” (as it has been admirably called by Professor M‘Obvy)[24] lie hidden from our most profound physiologists. It was once my privilege to meet the master of physical science who has rendered famous the University of Kreigenswald,[25] and I asked him what in his opinion was the cause of sleep. He answered, with that reverence which is the glory of the Teutonic mind, “It is in the dear secret of the All-wise Nature-mother preserved.” I have never forgotten those wise and weighty words.[26]
Perhaps the nearest guess as to the nature of Sleep is to be discovered in the lectures of a brilliant but sometimes over-daring young scholar whom we all applaud in the chair of Psychology. “Sleep” (he says) “is the direct product of Brain Somnolence, which in its turn is the result of the need for Repose that every organism must experience after any specialised exertion.” I was present when this sentence was delivered, and I am not ashamed to add that I was one of those who heartily cheered the young speaker.[27]
We may assert, then, that Science has nearly conquered this last stronghold of ignorance and superstition.[28]
As to the Muses, we know well that Sleep has been their favourite theme for ages. With the exception of Catullus (whose verses have been greatly over-rated, and who is always talking of people lying awake at night), all the ancients have mentioned and praised this innocent pastime. Everyone who has done Greats will remember the beautiful passage in Lucretius,[29] but perhaps that in Sidonius Apollinaris, the highly polished Bishop of Gaul, is less well known.[30] To turn to our own literature, the sonnet beginning “To die, to sleep,” etc.,[31] must be noted, and above all, the glorious lines in which Wordsworth reaches his noblest level, beginning--
“It is a pleasant thing to go to sleep!”
lines which, for my part, I can never read without catching some of their magical drowsy influence.[32]
All great men have slept. George III. frequently slept,[33] and that great and good man Wycliffe was in the habit of reading his Scriptural translations and his own sermons nightly to produce the desired effect.[34] The Duke of Wellington (whom my father used to call “The Iron Duke”) slept on a little bedstead no larger than a common man’s.
As for the various positions in which one may sleep, I treat of them in my little book of Latin Prose for Schools, which is coming out next year.[35]
VI.
Lambkin’s Advice to Freshmen