Part 5

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

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

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

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

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

XII.

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

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

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

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

THE ARTICLE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XIII.

Lambkin’s Sermon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SERMON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XIV.

Lambkin’s Open Letter to Churchmen

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

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

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

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

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

The letter is as follows:--

AN OPEN LETTER

BURFORD. _St. John’s Eve, 1876._

MY DEAR BURFLE,

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

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

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