I have said that we—those of us, at any rate, who were not of Brown's House—were conscious of a rich and honourable possession in him, rather than of an active influence. Yet that influence must not be underrated. Clifton, as I first knew it, was already a great school, although less than twenty years old. But, to a new-comer, even more impressive than its success among schools, or its aspirations, was a firmness of tradition which (I dare to say) would have been remarkable in a foundation of five times its age. It had already its type of boy; and having discovered it and how to produce it, fell something short of tolerance towards other types. For the very reason which allows me with decency to call the type an admirable one, I may be excused for adding that the tradition demanded some patience of those who could not easily manage to conform with it. But there the tradition stood, permanently rooted in a school not twenty years old. Is it fanciful to hold that Brown's passion for 'continuity' had much to do with planting and confirming it? Mr. Irwin quotes for us a passage from one of his sermons to the school: "Suffer no chasm to interrupt this glorious tradition. . . . Continuous life . . . that is what we want—to feel the pulses of hearts that are now dust." Did this passage occur, I wonder, in the sermon of which I rather remember a fierce, hopeless, human protest against 'change and decay'?—the voice ringing down on each plea, "What do the change-and-decay people say to that?"

"I postulate the continuity." Vain postulate it often seems, yet of all life Brown demanded it. Hear him as he speaks of his wife's death in a letter to a friend:—

"My dear fellow-sufferer, what is it after all? Why this sinking of the heart, this fainting, sorrowing of the spirit? There is no separation: life is continuous. All that was stable and good, good and therefore stable, in our union with the loved one, is unquestionably permanent, will endure for ever. It cannot be otherwise. . . . When love has done its full work, has wrought soul into soul so that every fibre has become part of the common life— quis separabit? Can you conceive yourself as existing at all without her? No, you can't; well, then, it follows that you don't, and never will."

I believe it to have been this passion for continuity that bound and kept him so absolute a Manxman, drawing his heart so persistently back to the Island that there were times (one may almost fancy) when the prospect of living his life out to the end elsewhere seemed to him a treachery to his parents' dust. I believe this same passion drew him—master as he was of varied and vocal English—to clothe the bulk of his poetry in the Manx dialect, and thereby to miss his mark with the public, which inevitably mistook him for a rustic singer, a man of the people, imperfectly educated.

"I would not be forgotten in this land."—

This line of another true poet of curiously similar temperament[1] has haunted me through the reading of Brown's published letters. But Brown's was no merely selfish craving for continuity—to be remembered. By a fallacy of thought, perhaps, but by a very noble one, he transferred the ambition to those for whom he laboured. His own terror that Time might obliterate the moment:

"And all this personal dream be fled,"

Became for his countrymen a very spring of helpfulness. Antiquam exquirite matrem—he would do that which they, in poverty and the stress of earning daily bread, were careless to do—would explore for them the ancient springs of faith and custom.

"Dear countrymen, whate'er is left to us Of ancient heritage— Of manners, speech, of humours, polity, The limited horizon of our stage— Old love, hope, fear, All this I fain would fix upon the page; That so the coming age, Lost in the empire's mass, Yet haply longing for their fathers, here May see, as in a glass, What they held dear— May say, ''Twas thus and thus They lived'; and as the time-flood onward rolls Secure an anchor for their Keltic souls."

This was his task, and the public of course set him down for a rustic. "What ought I to do?" he demands. "Shall I put on my next title-page, 'Late Fellow of Oriel, etc.'? or am I always to abide under this ironic cloak of rusticity?" To be sure, on consideration (if the public ever found time to consider), the language and feeling of the poems were penetrated with scholarship. He entered his countrymen's hearts; but he also could, and did, stand outside and observe them with affectionate, comprehending humour. Scholarship saved him, too—not always, but as a rule—from that emotional excess to which he knew himself most dangerously prone. He assigns it confidently to his Manx blood; but his mother was Scottish by descent, and from my experience of what the Lowland Scot can do in the way of pathos when he lets himself go, I take leave to doubt that the Manxman was wholly to blame. There can, however, be no doubt that the author of "The Doctor," of "Catherine Kinrade," of "Mater Dolorosa," described himself accurately as a "born sobber," or that an acquired self-restraint saved him from a form of intemperance by which of late our literature has been somewhat too copiously afflicted.

To scholarship, too, imposed upon and penetrating a taste naturally catholic, we owe the rare flavour of the many literary judgments scattered about his letters. They have a taste of native earth, beautifully rarefied: to change the metaphor, they illuminate the page with a kind of lambent common sense. For a few examples:—

"I have also read a causerie on Virgil and one on Theocritus. So many French litterateurs give me the idea that they don't go nearer the Greek authors than the Latin translations. . . . Sainte Beuve [Nouveaux Lundis, vii. 1—52, on 'The Greek Anthology'] is an enthusiastic champion for our side, but, oddly enough, he never strikes me as knowing much about the matter!"

"Your Latin verses [translating Cowley] I greatly enjoy. The dear old Abraham goes straight off into your beautiful lines. Of course he has not a scrap of modern impedimenta. You go through the customs at the frontier with a whistle and a smile. You have nothing to declare. The blessed old man by your side is himself a Roman to begin with, and you pass together as cheerfully as possible. . . ."

"I have also been reading Karl Elze's Essays on Shakespeare. He is not bad, but don't you resent the imperturbable confidence of men who, after attributing a play of Shakespeare's to two authors, proceed to suggest a third, urged thereto by some fatuous and self-sought exigency?"

"Did you ever try to write a Burns song? I mean the equivalent in ordinary English of his Scotch. Can it be done? A Yorkshireman— could he do it? A Lancashire man (Waugh)? I hardly think so. The Ayrshire dialect has a Schwung and a confidence that no-English county can pretend to. Our dialects are apologetic things, half-ashamed, half-insolent. Burns has no doubts, and for his audience unhesitatingly demands the universe. . . ."

"There is an ethos in Fitzgerald's letters which is so exquisitely idyllic as to be almost heavenly. He takes you with him, exactly accommodating his pace to yours, walks through meadows so tranquil, and yet abounding in the most delicate surprises. And these surprises seem so familiar, just as if they had originated with yourself. What delicious blending! What a perfect interweft of thought and diction! What a sweet companion!"

Lastly, let me quote a passage in which his thoughts return to Clifton, where it had been suggested that Greek should be omitted from the ordinary form-routine and taught in "sets," or separate classes:—

"This is disturbing about Greek, 'set' Greek. Yes, you would fill your school to overflowing, of course you would, so long as other places did not abandon the old lines. But it would be detestable treachery to the cause of education, of humanity. To me the learning of any blessed thing is a matter of little moment. Greek is not learned by nineteen-twentieths of our Public School boys. But it is a baptism into a cult, a faith, not more irrational than other faiths or cults; the baptism of a regeneration which releases us from I know not what original sin. And if a man does not see that, he is a fool, such a fool that I shouldn't wonder if he gravely asked me to explain what I meant by original sin in such a connection. . . ."

So his thoughts reverted to the school he had left in 1892. In October, 1897, he returned to it on a visit. He was the guest of one of the house masters, Mr. Tait, and on Friday evening, October 29th, gave an address to the boys of the house. He had spoken for some minutes with brightness and vigour, when his voice grew thick and he was seen to stagger. He died in less than two hours.

His letters have been collected and piously given to the world by Mr. Irwin, one of his closest friends. By far the greatest number of them belong to those last five years in the Island—the happiest, perhaps, of his life, certainly the happiest temperamentally. "Never the time and the place . . ." but at least Brown was more fortunate than most men. He realised his dream, and it did not disappoint him. He could not carry off his friends to share it (and it belongs to criticism of these volumes to say that he was exceptionally happy in his friends), but he could return and visit them or stay at home and write to them concerning the realisation, and be sure they understood. Therefore, although we desire more letters of the Clifton period—although twenty years are omitted, left blank to us—those that survive confirm a fame which, although never wide, was always unquestioned within its range. There could be no possibility of doubt concerning Brown. He was absolute. He lived a fierce, shy, spiritual life; a wise man, keeping the child in his heart: he loved much and desired permanence in the love of his kind. "Diuturnity," says his great seventeenth-century namesake, "is a dream and folly of expectation. There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality." And yet, prosit amasse!

The railway took me on to Oxford—

"Like faithful hound returning For old sake's sake to each loved track With heart and memory burning."

"I well remember," writes Mrs. Green of her husband, the late John Richard Green, "the passionate enthusiasm with which he watched from the train for the first sight of the Oxford towers against the sky:" and although our enthusiasm nowadays has to feed on a far tamer view than that which saluted our forefathers when the stage-coach topped the rise of Shotover and its passengers beheld the city spread at their feet, yet what faithful son of Oxford can see her towers rise above the water-meadows and re-greet them without a thrill?

In the year 1688, and in a book entitled The Guardian's Instruction, a Mr. Stephen Penton gave the world a pleasing and lifelike little narrative—superior, in my opinion, to anything in Verdant Green— telling us how a reluctant father was persuaded to send his son to Oxford; what doubts, misgivings, hesitations he had, and how they were overcome. I take the story to be fictitious. It is written in the first person, professedly by the hesitating parent: but the parent can hardly have been Penton, for the story will not square with what we know of his life. The actual Penton was born, it seems, in 1640, and educated at Winchester and New College; proceeded to his fellowship, resided from 1659 to 1670, and was Principal of St. Edmund's Hall from 1675 to 1683. He appears to have been chaplain to the Earl of Aylesbury, and, according to Antony a Wood, possessed a "rambling head." He died in 1706.

The writer in The Guardian's Instruction is portrayed for us—or is allowed to portray himself—rather as an honest country squire, who had himself spent a year or so of his youth at the University, but had withdrawn when Oxford was invaded by the Court and the trouble between King Charles and Parliament came to a head: and "God's grace, the Good example of my parents, and a natural love of virtue secured me so far as to leave Oxford, though not much more learned, yet not much worse than I came thither." A chill testimonial! In short, the old squire (as I will take leave to call him) nursed a somewhat crotchety detestation of the place, insomuch "that when I came to have children, I did almost swear them in their childhood never to be friends with Oxford."

He tried his eldest son with a course of foreign travel as a substitute for University training; but this turned out a failure, and he had the good sense to acknowledge his mistake. So for his second boy he cast about to find a profession; "but what course to take I was at a loss: Cambridge was so far off, I could not have an eye upon him; Oxford I was angry with."

In this fix he consulted with a neighbour, "an old grave learned divine," and rigid Churchman, who confessed that many of the charges against Oxford were well grounded, but averred that the place was mending. The truth was, the University had been loyal to the monarchy all through the Commonwealth times; and when Oliver Cromwell was dead, and Richard dismounted, its members perceived, through the maze of changes and intrigues, that in a little time the heart of the nation would revert to the government which twenty years before it had hated. And their impatient hopes of this "made the scholars talk aloud, drink healths, and curse Meroz in the very streets; insomuch that when the King came in, they were not only like them that dream, but like them who are out of their wits, mad, stark, staring mad." This unholy 'rag' (to modernise the old gentleman's language) continued for a twelvemonth: that is to say, until the Vice-Chancellor—holding that the demonstration, like Miss Mary Bennet's pianoforte playing in Pride and Prejudice, had delighted the company long enough—put his foot down. And from that time the University became sober, modest, and studious as perhaps any in Europe. The old gentleman wound up with some practical advice, and a promise to furnish the squire with a letter of recommendation to one of the best tutors in Oxford.

Thus armed, the squire (though still with misgivings) was not long in getting on horseback with his wife, his daughters, and his young hopeful, and riding off to Oxford, where at first it seemed that his worst suspicions would be confirmed; "for at ten o'clock in the inn, there arose such a roaring and singing that my hair stood on end, and my former prejudices were so heightened that I resolved to lose the journey and carry back my son again, presuming that no noise in Oxford could be made but scholars must do it,"—a hoary misconception still cherished, or until recently, by the Metropolitan Police and the Oxford City Bench. In this instance a proctor intervened, and quelled the disturbance by sending 'two young pert townsmen' to prison; "and quickly came to my chamber, and perceiving my boy designed for a gown, told me that it was for the preservation of such fine youths as he that the proctors made so bold with gentlemen's lodgings." The squire had some talk with this dignitary, who was a man of presence and suitable address, and of sufficient independence to deny—not for the first time in history—that dons were overpaid.

Next morning the whole family trooped off to call upon the tutor whom their old neighbour had recommended. Oddly enough, the tutor seemed by no means overwhelmed by the honour. "I thought to have found him mightily pleased with the opinion we had of his conduct, and the credit of having a gentleman's son under his charge, and the father with cap in hand. Instead of all this he talked at a rate as if the gentry were obliged to tutors more than tutors to them." The tutor, in short, was decidedly tart in his admonitions to this honest family—he did not forget, either, to assure them that (generally) a college tutor was worse paid than a dancing-master. Here is a specimen of his advice—sound and practical enough in its way:—

"I understand by one of your daughters that you have brought him up a fine padd to keep here for his health's sake. Now I will tell you the use of an horse in Oxford, and then do as you think fit. The horse must be kept at an ale-house or an inn, and he must have leave to go once every day to see him eat oats, because the master's eye makes him fat; and it will not be genteel to go often to an house and spend nothing; and then there may be some danger of the horse growing resty if he be not used often, so you must give him leave to go to Abingdon once every week, to look out of the tavern window and see the maids sell turnips; and in one month or two come home with a surfeit of poisoned wine, and save any farther trouble by dying, and then you will be troubled to send for your horse again. . . ."

The humour of college tutors has not greatly altered in two hundred years. I have known one or two capable of the sardonic touch in those concluding words. But conceive its effect upon the squire's lady and daughters! No: you need not trouble to do so, for the squire describes it: "When the tutor was gone out of the room, I asked how they liked the person and his converse. My boy clung about his mother and cry'd to go home again, and she had no more wit than to be of the same mind; she thought him too weakly to undergo so much hardship as she foresaw was to be expected. My daughter, who (instead of catechism and Lady's Calling) had been used to read nothing but speeches in romances, and hearing nothing of Love and Honour in all the talk, fell into downright scolding at him; call'd him the merest scholar; and if this were your Oxford breeding, they had rather he should go to Constantinople to learn manners! But I, who was older and understood the language, call'd them all great fools. . . ."

On the tutor's return they begged to have his company at dinner, at their inn: but he declined, kept the young man to dine with him, and next day invited the family to luncheon. They accepted, fully expecting (after the austerity of his discourse) to be starved: "and the girles drank chocolette at no rate in the morning, for fear of the worst." But they were by no means starved. "It was very pleasant," the squire confesses, "to see, when we came, the constrain'd artifice of an unaccustomed complement." There were silver tankards 'heaped upon one another,' 'napkins some twenty years younger than the rest,' and glasses 'fit for a Dutchman at an East-India Return.' The dinner was full enough for ten. "I was asham'd, but would not disoblige him, considering with myself that I should put this man to such a charge of forty shillings at least, to entertain me; when for all his honest care and pains he is to have but forty or fifty shillings a quarter; so that for one whole quarter he must doe the drudgery to my son for nothing." After dinner, our good squire strolled off to a public bowling-green, "that being the onely recreation I can affect." And "coming in, I saw half a score of the finest youths the sun, I think, ever shined upon. They walked to and fro, with their hands in their pockets, to see a match played by some scholars and some gentlemen fam'd for their skill. I gaped also and stared as a man in his way would doe; but a country ruff gentleman, being like to lose, did swear, at such a rate that my heart did grieve that those fine young men should hear it, and know there was such a thing as swearing in the kingdom. Coming to my lodging, I charged my son never to go to such publick places unless he resolved to quarrel with me."

And so, having settled the lad and fitted him up with good advice, the father, mother, and sisters returned home. But the squire, being summoned to Oxford shortly after to "sit in parliament" (presumably in the last Parliament held at Oxford, in March, 1681), took that opportunity to walk the streets and study the demeanour of the "scholars." And this experiment would seem to have finally satisfied him. "I walk'd the streets as late as most people, and never in ten days ever saw any scholar rude or disordered: so that as I grow old, and more engaged to speak the truth, I do repent of the ill-opinion I have had of that place, and hope to be farther obliged by a very good account of my son."

Old Stephen Penton may have had a rambling head; but unless I have thumbed the bloom off his narrative in my attempt to summarise it, the reader will allow that he knew how to write. He gives us the whole scene in the fewest possible touches: he wastes no words in describing the personages in his small comedy—comic idyll I had rather call it, for after a fashion it reminds me of the immortal chatter between Gorgo and Praxinoe in the fifteenth idyll of Theocritus. There the picture is: the honest opinionated country squire; the acidulous tutor; the coltish son; the fond, foolish, fussing mother; the prinking young ladies with their curls and romantic notions; the colours of all as fresh as if laid on yesterday, the humour quite untarnished after two hundred years. And I wonder the more at the vivacity of this little sketch because, as many writers have pointed out, no one has yet built upon University life a novel of anything like first-class merit, and the conclusion has been drawn that the elements of profound human interest are wanting in that life. "Is this so?" asks the editor of Stephen Penton's reminiscences in a volume published by the Oxford Historical Society—

"In spite of the character given to Oxford of being a city of short memories and abruptly-ended friendships, in spite of the inchoative qualities of youths of eighteen or twenty, especially in respect to the 'ruling passion' so dear to novelists, yet surely in the three or four years spent at Oxford by an incredible company of young students 'fresh from public schools, and not yet tossed about and hardened in the storms of life'—some of them Penton's 'finest youths,' some obviously otherwise—there must be, one would think, abundance of romantic incident awaiting its Thackeray or Meredith. For how many have these years been the turning point of a life! . . ."

There at any rate is the fact: the novel of University life has not been written yet, and perhaps never will be. I am not at all sure that The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green do not mark the nearest approach to it— save the mark! And I am not at all sure that The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green can be called a novel at all, while I am quite certain it cannot be called a novel of first-class merit. Tom Brown at Oxford still counts its admirers, and has, I hear, attained the dignity of translation into French; but Tom Brown, though robust enough, never seemed to get over his transplantation from Rugby—possibly because his author's heart remained at Rugby. 'Loss and Gain' is not a book for the many; and the many never did justice to Mr. Hermann Merivale's 'Faucit of Balliol' or Mr. St. John Tyrwhitt's 'Hugh Heron of Christ Church.' Neither of these two novels obtained the hearing it deserved—and 'Faucit of Balliol' was a really remarkable book: but neither of them aimed at giving a full picture of Oxford life. And the interest of Miss Broughton's 'Belinda' and Mr. Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure' lies outside the proctor's rounds. Yes (and humiliating as the confession may be), with all its crudities and absurdities, Verdant Green does mark the nearest approach yet made to a representative Oxford novel.

How comes this? Well, to begin with, Verdant Green, with all his faults, did contrive to be exceedingly youthful and high-spirited. And in the second place, with all its faults, it did convey some sense of what I may call the 'glamour' of Oxford. Now the University, on its part, being fed with a constant supply of young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty, does contrive, with all its faults, to keep up a fair show of youth and high spirits; and even their worst enemies will admit that Oxford and Cambridge wear, in the eyes of their sons at any rate, a certain glamour. You may argue that glamour is glamour, an illusion which will wear off in time; an illusion, at all events, and to be treated as such by the wise author intent on getting at truth. To this I answer that, while it lasts, this glamour is just as much a fact as The Times newspaper, or St. Paul's Cathedral, just as real a feature of Oxford as Balliol College, or the river, or the Vice-Chancellor's poker: and until you recognise it for a fact and a feature of the place, and allow for it, you have not the faintest prospect of realising Oxford. Each succeeding generation finds that glamour, or brings it; and each generation, as it passes, deems that its successor has either found or brought less of it. But the glamour is there all the while. In turning over a book the other day, written in 1870 by the Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, I come on this passage:—

"When I recall my own undergraduate life of thirty years and upwards agone, I feel, notwithstanding modern vaunt, the laudator temporis acti earnest within me yet, and strong. Nowadays, as it seems to me, there is but little originality of character in the still famous University; a dread of eccentric reputation appears to pervade College and Hall: every 'Oxford man,' to adopt the well-known name, is subdued into sameness within and without, controlled as it were into copyism and mediocrity by the smoothing-iron of the nineteenth century. Whereas in my time and before it there were distinguished names, famous in every mouth for original achievements and 'deeds of daring-do.' There were giants in those days—men of varied renown— and they arose and won for themselves in strange fields of fame, record and place. Each became in his day a hero of the Iliad or Odyssey of Oxford life—a kind of Homeric man."

To which I am constrained to reply, "Mere stuff and nonsense!" Mr. Hawker—and more credit to him—carried away Homeric memories of his own seniors and contemporaries. But was it in nature that Mr. Hawker should discover Homeric proportions in the feats of men thirty years his juniors? How many of us, I ask, are under any flattering illusion about the performances of our juniors? We cling to the old fond falsehood that there were giants in our days. We honestly believed they were giants; it would hurt us to abandon that belief. It does not hurt us in the least to close the magnifying-glass upon the feats of those who follow us. But this generation, too, will have its magnifying-glass. "There were giants in our days?" To be sure there were; and there are giants, too, in these, but others, not we, have the eyes to see them.

Say that the scales have fallen from our eyes. Very well, we must e'en put them on again if we would write a novel of University life. And, be pleased to note, it does not follow, because we see the place differently now, that we see it more truly. Also, it does not follow, because Oxford during the last twenty years has, to the eye of the visitor, altered very considerably, that the characteristics of Oxford have altered to anything like the same extent. Undoubtedly they have been modified by the relaxation and suspension of the laws forbidding Fellows to marry. Undoubtedly the brisk growth of red-brick houses along the north of the city, the domestic hearths, afternoon teas and perambulators, and all things covered by the opprobrious name of "Parks-system," have done something to efface the difference between Oxford and other towns. But on the whole I think they have done surprisingly little.



Speaking as a writer of novels, then, I should say that to write a good novel entirely concerned with Oxford lies close upon impossibility, and will prophesy that, if ever it comes to be achieved, it will be a story of friendship. But her glamour is for him to catch who can, whether in prose or rhyme.

ALMA MATER.

Know you her secret none can utter? Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown? Still on the spire the pigeons flutter; Still by the gateway flits the gown; Still on the street, from corbel and gutter, Faces of stone look down.

Faces of stone, and other faces— Some from library windows wan Forth on her gardens, her green spaces Peer and turn to their books anon. Hence, my Muse, from the green oases Gather the tent, begone!

Nay, should she by the pavement linger Under the rooms where once she played, Who from the feast would rise and fling her One poor sou for her serenade? One poor laugh from the antic finger Thrumming a lute string frayed?

Once, my dear—but the world was young then— Magdalen elms and Trinity limes— Lissom the blades and the backs that swung then. Eight good men in the 'good old times— Careless we, and the chorus flung then Under St. Mary's chimes!

Reins lay loose and the ways led random— Christ Church meadow and Iffley track— 'Idleness horrid and dogcart' (tandem)— Aylesbury grind and Bicester pack— Pleasant our lines, and faith! we scanned 'em: Having that artless knack.

Come, old limmer, the times grow colder: Leaves of the creeper redden and fall. Was it a hand then clapped my shoulder? —Only the wind by the chapel wall. Dead leaves drift on the lute; so . . . fold her Under the faded shawl.

Never we wince, though none deplore us, We, who go reaping that we sowed; Cities at cock-crow wake before us— Hey, for the lilt of the London road! One look back, and a rousing chorus! Never a palinode!

Still on her spire the pigeons hover; Still by her gateway haunts the gown; Ah, but her secret? You, young lover, Drumming her old ones forth from town, Know you the secret none discover? Tell it—when you go down.

Yet if at length you seek her, prove her, Lean to her whispers never so nigh; Yet if at last not less her lover You in your hansom leave the High; Down from her towers a ray shall hover— Touch you, a passer-by!

[1] "The Quest of the Sangraal," R. S. Hawker.



JUNE.



The following verses made their appearance some years ago in the pages of the Pall Mall Magazine. Since then (I am assured) they have put a girdle round the world, and threaten, if not to keep pace with the banjo hymned by Mr. Kipling, at least to become the most widely-diffused of their author's works. I take it to be of a piece with his usual perversity that until now they have never been republished except for private amusement.

They belong to a mood, a moment, and I cannot be at pains to rewrite a single stanza, even though an allusion to 'Oom Paul' cries out to be altered or suppressed. But, after all, the allusion is not likely to trouble President Kruger's massive shade as it slouches across the Elysian fields; and after all, though he became our enemy, he remained a sportsman. So I hope we may glance at his name in jest without a suspicion of mocking at the tragedy of his fate.

THE FAMOUS BALLAD OF THE JUBILEE CUP.

You may lift me up in your arms, lad, and turn my face to the sun, For a last look back at the dear old track where the Jubilee Cup was won; And draw your chair to my side, lad—no, thank ye, I feel no pain— For I'm going out with the tide, lad, but I'll tell you the tale again.

I'm seventy-nine, or nearly, and my head it has long turned grey, But it all comes back as clearly as though it was yesterday— The dust, and the bookies shouting around the clerk of the scales, And the clerk of the course, and the nobs in force, and Is 'Ighness, the Prince of Wales.

'Twas a nine-hole thresh to wind'ard, but none of us cared for that, With a straight run home to the service tee, and a finish along the flat. "Stiff?" Ah, well you may say it! Spot-barred, and at five-stone-ten! But at two and a bisque I'd ha' run the risk; for I was a greenhorn then.

So we stripped to the B. Race signal, the old red swallow-tail— There was young Ben Bolt, and the Portland colt, and Aston Villa, and Yale; And W. G., and Steinitz, Leander, and The Saint, And the German Emperor's Meteor, a-looking as fresh as paint;

John Roberts (scratch), and Safety Match, The Lascar, and Lorna Doone, Oom Paul (a bye), and Romany Rye, and me upon Wooden Spoon; And some of us cut for partners, and some of us strung to baulk, And some of us tossed for stations—But there, what use to talk?

Three-quarter-back on the Kingsclere crack was station enough for me, With a fresh jackyarder blowing and the Vicarage goal a-lee! And I leaned and patted her centre-bit, and eased the quid in her cheek, With a 'Soh, my lass!' and a 'Woa, you brute!'—for she could do all but speak.

She was geared a thought too high, perhaps; she was trained a trifle fine; But she had the grand reach forward! I never saw such a line! Smooth-bored, clean-run, from her fiddle head with its dainty ear half-cock, Hard-bit, pur sang, from her overhang to the heel of her off hind sock.

Sir Robert he walked beside me as I worked her down to the mark; "There's money on this, my lad," said he, "and most of 'em's running dark; But ease the sheet if you're bunkered, and pack the scrimmages tight, And use your slide at the distance, and we'll drink to your health to-night!"

But I bent and tightened my stretcher. Said I to myself, said I,— "John Jones, this here is the Jubilee Cup, and you have to do or die." And the words weren't hardly spoken when the umpire shouted "Play!" And we all kicked off from the Gasworks end with a "Yoicks!" and a "Gone away!"

And at first I thought of nothing, as the clay flew by in lumps, But stuck to the old Ruy Lopez, and wondered who'd call for trumps, And luffed her close to the cushion, and watched each one as it broke, And in triple file up the Rowley mile we went like a trail of smoke.

The Lascar made the running: but he didn't amount to much, For old Oom Paul was quick on the ball, and headed it back to touch; And the whole first flight led off with the right, as The Saint took up the pace, And drove it clean to the putting green and trumped it there with an ace.

John Roberts had given a miss in baulk, but Villa cleared with a punt; And keeping her service hard and low, The Meteor forged to the front, With Romany Rye to windward at dormy and two to play, And Yale close up—but a Jubilee Cup isn't run for every day.

We laid our course for the Warner—I tell you the pace was hot! And again off Tattenham Corner a blanket covered the lot. Check side! Check side! Now steer her wide! And barely an inch of room, With The Lascar's tail over our lee rail, and brushing Leander's boom!

We were running as strong as ever—eight knots—but it couldn't last; For the spray and the bails were flying, the whole field tailing fast; And the Portland colt had shot his bolt, and Yale was bumped at the Doves, And The Lascar resigned to Steinitz, stale-mated in fifteen moves.

It was bellows to mend with Roberts—starred three for a penalty kick: But he chalked his cue and gave 'em the butt, and Oom Paul scored the trick— "Off-side—no-ball—and at fourteen all! Mark cock! and two for his nob!"— When W. G. ran clean through his lee, and yorked him twice with a lob.

He yorked him twice on a crumbling pitch, and wiped his eye with a brace, But his guy-rope split with the strain of it, and he dropped back out of the race; And I drew a bead on The Meteor's lead, and challenging none too soon, Bent over and patted her garboard strake, and called upon Wooden Spoon.

She was all of a shiver forward, the spoondrift thick on her flanks, But I'd brought her an easy gambit, and nursed her over the banks; She answered her helm—the darling!—and woke up now with a rush, While The Meteor's jock he sat like a rock—he knew we rode for his brush!

There was no one else left in it. The Saint was using his whip, And Safety Match, with a lofting catch, was pocketed deep at slip; And young Ben Bolt with his niblick took miss at Leander's lunge, But topped the net with the ricochet, and Steinitz threw up the sponge.

But none of the lot could stop the rot—nay, don't ask me to stop!— The Villa had called for lemons, Oom Paul had taken his drop, And both were kicking the referee. Poor fellow! He done his best; But, being in doubt, he'd ruled them out—which he always did when pressed.

So, inch by inch, I tightened the winch, and chucked the sandbags out— I heard the nursery cannons pop, I heard the bookies shout: "The Meteor wins!" "No, Wooden Spoon!" "Check!" "Vantage!" "Leg before!" "Last lap!" "Pass Nap!" At his saddle-flap I put up the helm and wore.

You may overlap at the saddle-flap, and yet be loo'd on the tape: And it all depends upon changing ends, how a seven-year-old will shape; It was tack and tack to the Lepe and back—a fair ding-dong to the Ridge, And he led by his forward canvas yet as we shot neath Hammersmith Bridge.

He led by his forward canvas—he led from his strongest suit— But along we went on a roaring scent, and at Fawley I gained a foot. He fisted off with his jigger, and gave me his wash—too late! Deuce—vantage—check! By neck and neck, we rounded into the straight.

I could hear the 'Conquering 'Ero' a-crashing on Godfrey's band, And my hopes fell sudden to zero, just there with the race in hand— In sight of the Turf's Blue Ribbon, in sight of the umpire's tape, As I felt the tack of her spinnaker crack, as I heard the steam escape!

Had I lost at that awful juncture my presence of mind? . . . but no! I leaned and felt for the puncture, and plugged it there with my toe . . . Hand over hand by the Members' Stand I lifted and eased her up, Shot—clean and fair—to the crossbar there, and landed the Jubilee Cup!

"The odd by a head, and leg before," so the Judge he gave the word: And the Umpire shouted "Over!" but I neither spoke nor stirred. They crowded round: for there on the ground I lay in a dead-cold swoon, Pitched neck and crop on the turf atop of my beautiful Wooden Spoon.

Her dewlap tire was punctured, her bearings all red-hot; She'd a lolling tongue, and her bowsprit sprung, and her running gear in a knot; And amid the sobs of her backers, Sir Robert loosened her girth And led her away to the knacker's. She had raced her last on earth!

But I mind me well of the tear that fell from the eye of our noble Prince, And the things he said as he tucked me in bed—and I've lain there ever since; Tho' it all gets mixed up queerly that happened before my spill, —But I draw my thousand yearly: it'll pay for the doctor's bill.

I'm going out with the tide, lad.—You'll dig me a humble grave, And whiles you will bring your bride, lad, and your sons (if sons you have), And there, when the dews are weeping, and the echoes murmur "Peace!" And the salt, salt tide comes creeping and covers the popping-crease,

In the hour when the ducks deposit their eggs with a boasted force, They'll look and whisper "How was it?" and you'll take them over the course, And your voice will break as you try to speak of the glorious first of June, When the Jubilee Cup, with John Jones up, was won upon Wooden Spoon.



"To me," said a well-known authority upon education, "these athletics are the devil." To me no form of athletics is the devil but that of paying other people to be athletic for you; and this, unhappily—and partly, I believe, through our neglect to provide our elementary schools with decent playgrounds—is the form affected nowadays by large and increasing crowds of Englishmen. The youth of our urban populations would seem to be absorbed in this vicarious sport. It throngs the reading-rooms of free public libraries and working men's institutes in numbers which delight the reformer until he discovers that all this avidity is for racing tips and cricket or football "items." I am not, as a rule, a croaker; but I do not think the young Briton concerns himself as he did in the fifties, sixties, and seventies of the last century with poetry, history, politics, or indeed anything that asks for serious thought. I believe all this professional sport likely to be as demoralising for us as a nation as were the gladiatorial shows for Rome; and I cannot help attributing to it some measure of that combativeness at second-hand—that itch to fight anyone and everyone by proxy—which, abetted by a cheap press, has for twenty years been our curse.

Curse or no curse, it is spreading; and something of its progress may be marked in the two following dialogues, the first of which was written in 1897. Many of the names in it have already passed some way toward oblivion; but the moral, if I mistake not, survives them, and the warning has become more urgent than ever.



THE FIRST DIALOGUE ON CRICKET.

1897.

Some time in the summer of 1897—I think towards the end of August—I was whiling away the close of an afternoon in the agreeable twilight of Mr. D—'s bookshop in the Strand, when I heard my name uttered by some one who had just entered; and, turning about, saw my friend Verinder, in company with Grayson and a strapping youth of twenty or thereabouts, a stranger to me. Verinder and Grayson share chambers in the Temple, on the strength (it is understood) of a common passion for cricket. Longer ago than we care to remember—but Cambridge bowlers remember—Grayson was captain of the Oxford eleven. His contemporary, Verinder, never won his way into the team: he was a comparatively poor man and obliged to read, and reading spoiled his cricket. Therefore he had to content himself with knocking up centuries in college matches, and an annual performance among the Seniors. It was rumoured that Grayson—always a just youth, too— would have given him his blue, had not Verinder's conscientiousness been more than Roman. My own belief is that the distinction was never offered, and that Verinder liked his friend all the better for it. At the same time the disappointment of what at that time of life was a serious ambition may account for a trace of acidity which began, before he left college, to flavour his comments on human affairs, and has since become habitual to him.

Verinder explained that he and his companions were on their way home from Lord's, where they had been 'assisting'—he laid an ironical stress on the word—in an encounter between Kent and Middlesex. "And, as we were passing, I dragged these fellows in, just to see if old D—' had anything." Verinder is a book-collector. "By the way, do you know Sammy Dawkins? You may call him the Boy when you make his better acquaintance and can forgive him for having chosen to go to Cambridge. Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage, and—as the Oxford Magazine gloomily prophesied—he bowls out Athens in his later age." The Boy laughed cheerfully and blushed. I felt a natural awe in holding out an exceedingly dusty hand to an athlete whose fame had already shaken the Antipodes. But it is the way of young giants to be amiable; and indeed this one saluted me with a respect which he afterwards accounted for ingenuously enough—"He always felt like that towards a man who had written a book: it seemed to him a tremendous thing to have done, don't you know?"

I thought to myself that half an hour in Mr. D—'s shop (which contains new books as well as old) would correct his sense of the impressiveness of the feat. Indeed, I read a dawning trouble in the glance he cast around the shelves. "It takes a fellow's breath away," he confessed. "Such a heap of them! But then I've never been to the British Museum."

"Then," said I, "you must be employing researchers for the book you are writing."

"What?" he protested. "Me writing a book? Not likely!"

"An article for some magazine, then?"

"Not a line."

"Well, at least you have been standing for your photograph, to illustrate some book on Cricket that another fellow is writing."

He laughed.

"You have me there. Yes, I've been photographed in the act of bowling— 'Before' and 'After': quite like Somebody's Hair Restorer."

"Well," said I, "and I wish you had contributed to the letterpress, too. For the wonder to me is, not that you cricketers write books (for all the world wants to read them), but that you do it so prodigiously well."

"Oh," said he, "you mean Ranji! But he's a terror."

"I was thinking of him, of course; but of others as well. Here, for instance, is a book I have just bought, or rather an instalment of one: The Encyclopaedia of Sport, edited by the Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, Mr. Hedley Peek, and Mr. Aflalo, published by Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen: Part IV., CHA to CRO. I turn to the article on Cricket, and am referred 'for all questions connected with fast bowling, and for many questions associated with medium and slow' to 'the following paper by Tom Richardson.'"

"Tom Richardson ought to know," put in Grayson.

"Good Heavens!" said I, "I am not disputing that! But I remember Ruskin's insisting—I think in Sesame and Lilies—that no true artist ever talks much of his art. The greatest are silent. 'The moment,' says Ruskin, 'a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about it. All words become idle to him—all theories.' And he goes on to ask, in his vivacious way, 'Does a bird theorise about building its nest?' Well, as to that one cannot be sure. But I take it we may call Richardson a true artist?"

"Certainly we may."

"And allow that he can really do his work?"

"Rather!"

"Then it seems to me that Ruskin's rule may apply to other arts, but not to Cricket. For here is Richardson not only talking about fast bowling, but expressing himself with signal ease and precision. Listen to this, for instance:—

"'A ball is said to break when, on touching the ground, it deviates sharply from its original line of flight.'

"And again:—"

"'A ball is said to have 'spin' on it when it gains an acceleration of pace, not necessarily a variation of direction, on touching the ground.'

"It would be hard, I think, to improve upon these definitions. But let me satisfy you that I was not exaggerating when I spoke of the dignity of Mr. Richardson's English style:—

"'The bowler, whether born or made, should cultivate and acquire a high action and a good swing of arm and body, as such a delivery will make the ball rise quickly and perpendicularly from the pitch; but the action must at all costs be easy and free, qualities which neither imitation nor education must allow to disappear.'

"We often hear complaints—and reasonable ones for the most part—that the wage given to first-class professional cricketers is no longer adequate. But one of the pet arguments for increasing it is that their employment begins and ends with the summer. Now, I certainly think that, while bowlers write in this fashion, they can have little or nothing to dread from the winter months."

"I declare," said Grayson, "I believe you are jealous!"

"Well, and why not? For, mark you, Mr. Richardson's is no singular case, of which we might say—to comfort ourselves—that the Goddess of Cricket, whom he serves so mightily, has touched his lips and inspired him for a moment. Turn over these pages. We poor novelists, critics, men of letters, have no such paper, such type, as are lavished on the experts who write here upon their various branches of sport. Our efforts are not illustrated by the Swan Engraving Company. And the rub for us is that these gentlemen deserve it all! I am not going to admit—to you, at any rate—that their subjects are of higher interest than ours, or of more importance to the world. But I confess that, as a rule, they make theirs more interesting. When Mr. C. B. Fry discourses about Long Jumping, or Mr. W. Ellis about Coursing, or Mr. F. C. J. Ford upon Australian Cricket, there are very few novelists to whom I had rather be listening. It cannot be mere chance that makes them all so eloquent; nor is it that they have all risen together to the height of a single great occasion; for though each must have felt it a great occasion when he was invited to assist in this sumptuous work, I remarked a similar eloquence in those who contributed, the other day, to Messrs. Longmans' 'Badminton Library.' When sportsmen take to writing admirable English, and peers of the realm to editing it, I hardly see where we poor men of letters can expect to come in."

"The only cure that I can see," said Verinder, "is for Her Majesty to turn you into peers of the realm. Some of you suggest this from time to time, and hitherto it has puzzled me to discover why. But if it would qualify you to edit the writings of sportsmen—"

"And why not? These books sell: and if aristocracy have its roots in Commerce, shall not the sale of books count as high as the sale of beer? The principle has been granted. Already the purveyors of cheap and wholesome literature are invited to kneel before the Queen, and receive the accolade."

"She must want to cut Tit-bits out of them," put in the Boy.

"Of course we must look at the proportion of profit. Hitherto the profits of beer and literature have not been comparable; but this wonderful boom in books of sport may redress the balance. Every one buys them. When you entered I was glancing through a volume of new verse, but without the smallest intention of buying it. My purchases, you see, are all sporting works, including, of course, Prince Ranjitsinhji's Jubilee Book of Cricket."

"Just so," snapped Verinder. "You buy books about sport: we spend an afternoon in looking on at sport. And so, in one way or another, we assist at the damnation of the sporting spirit in England."

When Verinder begins in this style an oration is never far distant. I walked back with the three to the Temple. On our way he hissed and sputtered like a kettle, and we had scarcely reached his chamber before he boiled over in real earnest.

"We ought never to have been there! It's well enough for the Boy: he has been playing steadily all the summer, first for Cambridge and afterwards for his county. Now he has three days off and is taking his holiday. But Grayson and I—What the deuce have we to do in that galley? Far better we joined a club down at Dulwich or Tooting and put in a little honest play, of a week-end, on our own account. We should be crocks, of course: our cricketing is done. But we should be honest crocks. At least it is better to take a back row in the performance, and find out our own weakness, than pay for a good seat at Lord's or the Oval, and be Connoisseurs of what Abel and Hearne and Brockwell can and cannot do. If a man wants to sing the praises of cricket as a national game, let him go down to one of the Public Schools and watch its close or cricket-ground on a half-holiday: fifteen acres of turf, and a dozen games going on together, from Big Side down to the lowest form match: from three to four hundred boys in white flannels—all keen as mustard, and each occupied with his own game, and playing it to the best of his powers. Playing it—mark you: not looking on. That's the point: and that's what Wellington meant by saying—if he ever said it—that Waterloo was won upon the playing-fields at Eton. In my old school if a boy shirked the game he had a poor time. Say that he shirked it for an afternoon's lawn-tennis: it was lucky for him if he didn't find his racquet, next day, nailed up on the pavilion door like a stoat on a gamekeeper's tree. That was the sporting spirit, sir, if the sporting spirit means something that is to save England: and we shall not win another Waterloo by enclosing twenty-two gladiators in a ring of twenty-two thousand loafers, whose only exercise is to cheer when somebody makes a stroke, howl when some other body drops a catch, and argue that a batsman was not out when the umpire has given him 'leg-before.' Even at football matches the crowd has some chance of taking physical exercise on its own account—by manhandling the referee when the game is over. Sport? The average subscriber to Lord's is just as much of a sportsman as the Spaniard who watches a bull-fight, and just a trifle more of a sportsman than the bar-loafer who backs a horse he has never clapped eyes on. You may call it Cricket if you like: I call it assisting at a Gladiatorial Show. True cricket is left to the village greens."

"Steady, old man!" protested the Boy.

"I repeat it. For the spirit of the game you might have gone, a few years ago, to the Public Schools; but even they are infected now with the gladiatorial ideal. As it is you must go to the village green; for the spirit, you understand—not the letter—"

"I believe you!" chuckled young Dawkins. "Last season I put in an off day with the villagers at home. We played the nearest market town, and I put myself on to bowl slows. Second wicket down, in came the fattest man I ever saw. He was a nurseryman and seedsman in private life, and he fairly hid the wicket-keep. In the first over a ball of mine got up a bit and took him in the ab-do-men. 'How's that?' I asked. 'Well,' said the umpire, 'I wasn't azackly looking, so I leave it to you. If it hit en in the paunch, it's 'not out' and the fella must have suffered. But if it took en in the rear, I reckon it didn't hurt much, and it's 'leg-before.'' I suppose that is what you would call the 'spirit' of cricket. But, I say, if you have such a down on Lord's and what you call the gladiatorial business, why on earth do you go?"

"Isn't that the very question I've been asking myself?" replied Verinder testily.

"Perhaps we have an explanation here," I suggested; for during Verinder's harangue I had settled myself in the window-seat, and was turning over the pages of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book.

"'It is a grand thing for people who have to work most of their time to have an interest in something or other outside their particular groove. Cricket is a first-rate interest. The game has developed to such a pitch that it is worth taking interest in. Go to Lord's and analyse the crowd. There are all sorts and conditions of men there round the ropes—bricklayers, bank-clerks, soldiers, postmen, and stockbrokers. And in the pavilion are Q.C.'s, artists, archdeacons, and leader-writers. . . .'"

"Oh, come!" Grayson puts in. "Isn't that rather hard on the stockbroker?"

"It is what the book says.

"'Bad men, good men, workers and idlers, all are there, and all at one in their keenness over the game. . . . Anything that puts very many different kinds of people on a common ground must promote sympathy and kindly feelings. The workman does not come away from seeing Middlesex beating Lancashire, or vice versa, with evil in his heart against the upper ten; nor the Mayfair homme de plaisir with a feeling of contempt for the street-bred masses. Both alike are thinking how well Mold bowled, and how cleanly Stoddart despatched Briggs's high-tossed slow ball over the awning. Even that cynical nil admirari lawyer—'"

I pointed a finger at Verinder.

"'Even that cynical nil admirari lawyer caught himself cheering loudly when Sir Timothy planted Hallam's would-be yorker into the press-box. True, he caught himself being enthusiastic, and broke off at once—'"

"When I found it hadn't killed a reporter," Verinder explained. "But I hope Ranjitsinhji has some better arguments than these if he wants to defend gladiatorial cricket. At least he allows that a change has come over the game of late years, and that this change has to be defended?"

"Yes, he admits the change, and explains how it came about. In the beginning we had local club cricket pure and simple—the game of your Village Green, in fact. Out of this grew representative local cricket— that is, district or county cricket which flourished along with local club cricket. Out of county cricket, which in those days was only local cricket glorified, sprang exhibition or spectacular or gladiatorial cricket, which lived side by side with, but distinct from, the other. Finally, exhibition and county cricket merged and became one. And that is where we are now."

"Does he explain how exhibition and county cricket came, as he puts it, to be merged into one?"

"Yes. The introduction of spectacular cricket (he says) changed the basis of county cricket considerably. For many years the exhibition elevens and the counties played side by side; but gradually the former died out, and the new elements they had introduced into the game were absorbed into county cricket. The process was gradual, but in the end complete. The old county clubs and the new ones that from time to time sprang up added the exhibition side of cricket to the old local basis. The county clubs were no longer merely glorified local clubs, but in addition business concerns. They provided popular amusement and good cricket; in fact, they became what they are now—local in name, and partly local in reality, but also run upon exhibition or spectacular lines."

"A truly British compromise! Good business at the bottom of it, and a touch of local sentiment by way of varnish. For of course the final excuse for calling an eleven after Loamshire (let us say), and for any pride a Loamshire man may take in its doings, is that its members have been bred and trained in Loamshire. But, because any such limitation would sorely affect the gate-money, we import players from Australia or Timbuctoo, stick a Loamshire cap with the county arms on the head of each, and confidently expect our public to swallow the fiction and provide the local enthusiasm undismayed."

"My dear Verinder, if you propose to preach rank Chauvinism, I have done. But I don't believe you are in earnest."

"In a sense, I am not. My argument would exclude Ranjitsinhji himself from all matches but a few unimportant ones. I vote for Greater Britain, as you know: and in any case my best arguments would go down before the sheer delight of watching him at the wicket. Let the territorial fiction stand, by all means. Nay, let us value it as the one relic of genuine county cricket. It is the other side of the business that I quarrel with."

"Be good enough to define the quarrel."

"Why, then, I quarrel with the spectacular side of the New Cricket; which, when you come to look into it, is the gate-money side. How does Ranjitsinhji defend it?"

"Let me see. 'Its justification is the pleasure it provides for large numbers of the public.'"

"Quite so: the bricklayer and the stockbroker by the ropes, and the cynical lawyer in the pavilion! But I prefer to consider the interests of the game."

"'From a purely cricket point of view,' he goes on, 'not much can be said against it.'"

"Let us inquire into that. The New Cricket is a business concern: it caters for the bricklayer, the stockbroker, and the whole crowd of spectators. Its prosperity depends on the attraction it offers them. To attract them it must provide first-class players, and the county that cannot breed first-class players is forced to hire them. This is costly; but again the cash comes out of the spectators' pockets, in subscriptions and gate-money. Now are you going to tell me that those who pay the piper will refrain from calling the tune? Most certainly they will not. More and more frequently in newspaper reports of cricket-matches you find discussions of what is 'due to the public.' If stumps, for some reason or other, are drawn early, it is hinted that the spectators have a grievance; a captain's orders are canvassed and challenged, and so is the choice of his team; a dispute between a club and its servants becomes an affair of the streets, and is taken up by the press, with threats and counter-threats. In short, the interest of the game and the interest of the crowd may not be identical; and whereas a captain used to consider only the interest of the game, he is now obliged to consider both. Does Ranjitsinhji point this out?"

"He seems, at any rate, to admit it; for I find this on page 232, in his chapter upon 'Captaincy':—

"'The duties of a captain vary somewhat according to the kind of match in which his side is engaged, and to the kind of club which has elected him. To begin with, first-class cricket, including representative M.C.C., county and university matches, is quite different from any other—partly because the results are universally regarded as more important, partly because certain obligations towards the spectators have to be taken into consideration. The last point applies equally to any match which people pay to come to see. . . . With regard to gate-money matches. The captains of the two sides engaged are, during the match, responsible for everything in connection with it. They are under an obligation to the public to see that the match is played in such a way as the public has a reasonable right to expect.'"

"And pray," demanded Verinder, "what are these 'obligations towards the spectators,' and 'reasonable rights' of the public?"

"Well, I suppose the public can reasonably demand punctuality in starting play; a moderate interval for luncheon and between innings; and that stumps shall not be drawn, nor the match abandoned, before the time arranged, unless circumstances make it absolutely necessary."

"And who is to be judge of these circumstances."

"The captain, I suppose."

"In theory, yes; but he has to satisfy the crowd. It is the crowd's 'reasonable right' to be satisfied; and by virtue of it the crowd becomes the final judge. It allows the captain to decide, but will barrack him if displeased with his decision. Moreover, you have given me examples to illustrate this 'reasonable right,' but you have not defined it. Now I want to know precisely how far it extends, and where it ceases. Does Ranjitsinhji provide this definition?"

"No," said I; "I cannot find that he does."

"To be sure he does not; and for the simple reason that these claims on the side of the public are growing year by year. Already no one can say how much they cover, and assuredly no one can say where they are likely to stop. You observe that our author includes even University matches under the head of exhibition cricket, in which obligations towards the spectators have to be taken into account. You remember the scene at Lord's in 1893 when Wells purposely bowled no-balls; and again in 1896 when Shine bowled two no-balls to the boundary and then a ball which went for four byes, the object in each case being to deprive Oxford of the follow-on. This policy was hotly discussed; and luckily the discussion spent itself on the question whether play could be at the same time within the laws and clean contrary to the ethics of cricket. But there was also a deal of talk about what was 'due to the public'; talk which would have been altogether wide of the mark in the old days, when Oxford and Cambridge met to play a mere friendly match and the result concerned them alone."

"And is this," I asked, "the sum of your indictment?"

"Yes, I think that is all. And surely it is enough."

"Then, as I make out, your chief objections to spectacular cricket are two. You hold that it gives vast numbers of people a false idea that they are joining in a sport when in truth they are doing no more than look on. And you contend that as the whole institution resolves itself more and more into a paid exhibition, the spectators will tend more and more to direct the development of the game; whereas cricket in your opinion should be uninfluenced by those who are outside the ropes?"

"That is my case."

"And I think, my dear Verinder, it is a strong one. But there is just one little point which you do not appear to have considered. And I was coming to it just now—or rather Prince Ranjitsinhji was coming to it—when you interrupted us. 'From a purely cricket point of view,' he was saying, 'not much can be said against exhibition cricket.' And in the next sentence he goes on: 'At any rate it promotes skill in the game and keeps up the standard of excellence.'"

"To be sure it does that."

"And cricket is played by the best players to-day with more skill than it was by the best players of twenty or forty years ago?"

"Yes, I believe that; in spite of all we hear about the great Alfred Mynn and other bygone heroes."

"Come then," said I, "tell me, Is Cricket an art?"

"Decidedly it is."

"Then Cricket, like other arts, should aim at perfection?"

"I suppose so."

"And that will be the highest aim of Cricket—its own perfection? And its true lovers should welcome whatever helps to make it perfect?"

"I see what you are driving at," said he. "But Cricket is a social art, and must be judged by the good it does to boys and men. You, I perceive, make it an art-in-itself, and would treat it as the gardeners treat a fine chrysanthemum, nipping off a hundred buds to feed and develop a single perfect bloom."

"True: we must consider it also as a social art. But, my dear fellow, are you not exaggerating the destruction necessary to produce the perfect bloom? You talk of the crowd at Lord's or the Oval as if all these thousands were diverted from honest practice of the game to the ignoble occupation of looking on; whereas two out of three of them, were this spectacle not provided, would far more likely be attending a horse-race, or betting in clubs and public-houses. The bricklayer, the stockbroker, the archdeacon, by going to see Lockwood bowl, depopulate no village green. You judge these persons by yourself, and tell yourself reproachfully that but for this attraction you, John Verinder, would be creditably perspiring at a practice-net in Tooting or Dulwich; whereas, the truth is—"

"Why are you hesitating?"

"Because it is not a very pleasant thing to say. But the truth is, your heart and your conscience in this matter of athletics are a little younger than your body."

"You mean that I am getting on for middle age."

"I mean that, though you talk of it, you will never subscribe to that suburban club. You will marry; you will be made a judge: you will attend cricket matches, and watch from the pavilion while your son takes block for his first score against the M.C.C.

"And when with envy Time transported, Shall think to rob us of our joys, I, with my girls (if I ever have any), will sit on the top of a drag (if I ever acquire one) and teach them at what to applaud, While you go a-batting with your boys."

Verinder pulled a wry face, and the Boy smacked him on the back and exhorted him to "buck up."

"And the round world will go on as before, and the sun will patrol Her Majesty's dominions, and still where the Union Jack floats he will pass the wickets pitched and white-flannelled Britons playing for all they are worth, while men of subject races keep the score-sheet. And still when he arrives at this island he will look down on green closes and approve what we all allow to be one of the most absolutely gracious sights on earth— the ordered and moving regiments of schoolboys at cricket. Grayson, reach round to that shelf against which your chair is tilted; take down poor Lefroy's poems, and read us that sonnet of his, 'The Bowler.'"

Grayson found the book and the place, and read:—

"Two minutes' rest till the next man goes in! The tired arms lie with every sinew slack On the mown grass. Unbent the supple back, And elbows apt to make the leather spin Up the slow bat and round the unwary shin,— In knavish hands a most unkindly knack; But no guile shelters under the boy's black Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin. Two minutes only! Conscious of a name, The new man plants his weapon with profound Long-practised skill that no mere trick may scare. Not loth, the rested lad resumes the game: The flung ball takes one maddening, tortuous bound, And the mid-stump three somersaults in air!"

"Topping!" the Boy ejaculated. "Who wrote it?"

"His name was Lefroy. He died young. He left Oxford a few years before we went up. And I think," continued Verinder, musing, "that I, who detest making acquaintances, would give at this moment a considerable sum to have known him. Well," he continued, turning to me and puffing at his pipe, "so you warn Grayson and me that we must prepare to relinquish these and all the other delights sung by Lefroy and Norman Gale and that other poet—anonymous, but you know the man—in his incomparable parody of Whitman: 'the perfect feel of a fourer'—

"'The thousand melodious cracks, delicious cracks, the responsive echoes of my comrades and the hundred thence resulting runs, passionately yearned for, never, never again to be forgotten.

"'Overhead meanwhile the splendid silent sun, blending all, fusing all, bathing all in floods of soft ecstatic perspiration.'

"—To all this we must say good-bye. And what do you offer us in exchange?"

"Merely the old consolation that life is short, art is long; that while you grow old, cricket in other hands will be working out its perfection, and your son, when you have one, will start with higher ideals than you ever dreamed of."

"And this perfection—will it ever be attained?"

"I dare say never. For perhaps we may say after Plato, and without irreverence, that the pattern of perfect cricket is laid up somewhere in the skies, and out of man's reach. But between it and ordinary cricket we may set up a copy of perfection, as close as man can make it, and, by little and little, closer every year. This copy will be preserved, and cared for, and advanced, by those professional cricketers against whom the unthinking have so much to say; by these and by the few amateurs who, as time goes on, will be found able to bear the strain. For the search after perfection is no light one, and will admit of no half-hearted service. I say nothing here of material rewards, beyond reminding you that your professional cricketer is poorly paid in comparison with an inferior singer of the music-halls, although he gives twice as much pleasure as your lion comique, and of a more innocent kind. But he does more than this. He feeds and guards the flame of art; and when his joints are stiff and his vogue is past, he goes down as groundman and instructor to a public school, and imparts to a young generation what knowledge he can of the high mysteries whose servant he has been: quite like the philosopher in the Republic—"

"Steady on!" interposed Grayson. "How on earth will the Boy stand up to Briggs' bowling if you put these notions in his head? He'll be awe-struck, and begin to fidget with his right foot."

"Oh, fire ahead!" said that cheerful youth. He had possessed himself of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book and coiled himself comfortably into a wicker chair.—"You're only rotting, I know. And you've passed over the most important sentence in the whole book. Listen to this: 'There are very few newspaper readers who do not turn to the cricket column first when the morning journal comes; who do not buy a halfpenny evening paper to find out how many runs W.G. or Bobby Abel has made.' That's the long and short of the matter. Verinder, which do you read first in your morning paper— the Foreign Intelligence or the Cricket News?"

THE SECOND DIALOGUE. 1905.

A few days ago—to be precise, on Saturday the 24th of this month—my friend Verinder reminded me of the long-past conversation. We had met by appointment at Paddington to travel down to Windsor for the second day of the Eton and Winchester match, taking with us (or rather, being taken by) a youngster whom we call The Infant. The Infant, who talks little save in the bosom of his family, and even so preserves beneath his talk that fine reticence of judgment which most adorns the age of fifteen, not unfrequently surprises me by his experiments in the art of living. On this occasion, while I was engaged in the booking-office and Verinder in scanning the shelves of Messrs. Smith's bookstall, he had found our train, chosen our compartment, and laid out twopence in four halfpenny papers, which he spread on the cushions by way of reserving our seats.

"But why four," I asked, "seeing there are but three of us?"

"It will give us more room," he answered simply.

He had hoped, I doubt not, by this devise to retain the whole compartment; but the hope was soon and abruptly frustrated by a tall, well-dressed and pompous man who came striding down the platform while we idled by the door, and thrusting past us almost before we could give way, entered the compartment, dropped into a corner seat, tossed his copy of The Times on to the seat opposite, took off his top-hat, examined it, replaced it when satisfied of its shine, drew out a spare handkerchief, opened it, flicked a few specks of dust from his patent-leather boots, looked up while reaching across for The Times, recognised me with a nod and a "Good morning!" and buried himself in his paper.

I on my part, almost before glancing at his face, had recognised him by his manner for a personage next to whom it has been my lot to sit at one or two public banquets. I will call him Sir John Crang. He is a K.C.M.G., a Colonial by birth and breeding, a Member of Parliament, and a person of the sort we treat in these days with consideration. Since the second year of Jubilee (in which he was knighted) he and his kind have found themselves at ease in Sion, and of his kind he has been perhaps the most fortunate. In his public speeches he alludes to himself humorously as a hustler. He has married a wealthy lady, in every other respect too good for him, entertains largely at dinners which should be private but are reported in the press, and advocates conscription for the youth of Great Britain. Upon conscription for his native colony, as upon any other of its duties towards Imperial defence, if you question him, you will find him sonorously evasive.

The Infant, accustomed to surprise at the extent of my acquaintance, gazed at him politely for a moment as we took our seats and the train moved out of the station. I noted a veiled disapproval in his eye as he picked up a newspaper, and at that moment Verinder, who had picked up another, emitted a noise not unlike the snort of the engine as it gathered speed. I glanced at him in some apprehension. Verinder's bearing toward strangers is apt to be brutal, and by an instinct acquired as his companion on old reading-parties I was prepared to be apologetic.

His ill-humour, however, had nothing to do with Sir John Crang. He had laid the newspaper across his knee, and was pointing to it with a scornful forefinger.

"Look here," he said. "Do you remember a talk we had some years ago—you and I and Grayson? It started in D—'s shop one afternoon after a Kent and Middlesex match. You ought to remember, for I picked up the Pall Mall Magazine a month later and found you had made copy out of it."

"To be sure," said I. "We discussed cricket, and a number of reputations then well known, about which the public troubles itself no longer. Let us try their names upon The Infant here, and discover with how many of them he is acquainted."

"We discussed," said Verinder, "the vulgarisation of cricket. You made me say some hard things about it, but be hanged to me if anything I prophesied then came near to this! Listen—

"'I suppose I may say that, after some luck at starting, I played a pretty good innings: but a total of 240 is poor enough for first knock on such a wicket as Hove, and, as things stand, the omens are against us. However, as I write this wire the clouds are gathering, and there's no denying that a downfall during the night may help our chances.'"

"What on earth are you reading?" I asked.

"Stay a moment. Here's another—

"'With Jones's wicket down, the opposition declared, somewhat to the annoyance of the crowd: and indeed, with Robinson set and playing the prettiest strokes all around the wicket, I must admit that they voiced a natural disappointment. They had paid their money, and, after the long period of stonewalling which preceded the tea interval, a crowded hour of glorious life would have been exhilarating, and perhaps was no more than their due. Dickson, however, took his barracking good-humouredly. Towards the end Jones had twice appealed against the light.'"

"I suppose," said I, "that is how cricket strikes the Yellow Press. Who are the reporters?"

"The reporters are the captains of two county teams—two first-class county teams; and they are writing of a match actually in progress at this moment. Observe A.'s fine sense of loyalty to a captain's duty in his published opinion that his side is in a bad way. Remark his chivalrous hope for a sodden wicket to-morrow."

"It is pretty dirty," I agreed.

Verinder snorted. "I once tried to kill a man at mid-on for wearing a pink shirt. But these fellows! They ought to wear yellow flannels."

"What, by the way, is the tea interval?" I asked.

"It is an interval," answered Verinder seriously, "in which the opposing captains adjourn to the post office and send telegrams about themselves and one another."

"Excuse me," put in Sir John Crang, looking up from his Times and addressing me, "but I quite agree with what you and your friend are saying. Interest in the Australian tour, for instance, I can understand; it promotes good feeling, and anything that draws closer the bonds of interest between ourselves and the colonies is an imperial asset."

"Good Lord!" murmured Verinder.

Sir John fortunately did not hear him. "But I agree with you," he continued, "in condemning this popular craze for cricket per se, which is after all but a game with a ball and some sticks. I will not go the length of our imperial poet and dub its votaries 'flannelled fools.' That was poetical license, eh? though pardonable under the circumstances. But, as he has said elsewhere, 'How little they know of England who only England know.'" (At this point I reached out a foot and trod hard on Verinder's toe.) "And to the broader outlook—I speak as a pretty wide traveller—this insular absorption in a mere game is bewildering."

"Infant!" said Verinder suddenly, still under repression of my foot, "What are you reading?"

The Infant looked up sweetly, withdrawing himself from his paper, however, by an effort.

"There's a Johnny here who tells you how Bosanquet bowls with what he calls his 'over-spin.' He has a whole column about it with figures, just like Euclid; and the funny thing is, Bosanquet writes just after to say that the Johnny knows nothing about it."

"Abandoned child," commanded Verinder, "pass me the paper. You are within measurable distance of studying cricket for its own sake, and will come to a bad end."

Within twenty seconds he and The Infant were intently studying the diagrams, which Verinder demonstrated to be absurd, while Sir John, a little huffed by his manner, favoured me with a vision of England as she should be, with her ploughshares beaten into Morris Tubes.

In the midst of this discourse Verinder looked up.

"Let us not despair of cricket," says he. "She has her victories, but as yet no prizes to be presented with public speeches."

"Curious fellow that friend of yours," said Sir John, as he took leave of me on Windsor platform. "Yes, yes, I saw how you humoured him: but why should he object to a man's playing cricket in a pink shirt?"

He went on his way toward the Castle, while we turned our faces for Agar's Plough and the best game in the world.



JULY.

Our Parliamentary Candidate—or Prospective Candidate, as we cautiously call him—has been visiting us, and invited me to sit on the platform and give the speeches my moral support. I like our candidate, who is young, ardent, good-natured, and keeps his temper when he is heckled; seems, indeed, to enjoy being heckled, and conciliates his opponents by that bright pugnacity which a true Briton loves better than anything else in politics. I appreciate, too, the compliment he pays me. But I wish he would not choose to put his ardour in competition with Sirius and the dog-days; and I heartily wish he had not brought down Mr. Blank, M.P., to address us in his support.

Mr. Blank and I have political opinions which pass, for convenience, under a common label. Yet there are few men in England whose attitude of mind towards his alleged principles I more cordially loathe. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I think him a hypocrite. But he has chosen the side which is mine, and I cannot prevent his saying a hundred things which I believe.

We will suppose that Mr. Blank is a far honester fellow than I am able to think him. Still, and at the best, he is a sort of composite photograph of your average Member of Parliament—the type of man to whom Great Britain commits the direction of her affairs and, by consequence, her well-doing and her well-being and her honour. Liberal or Conservative, are not the features pretty much the same? a solid man, well past fifty, who has spent the prime of his life in business and withdrawn from it with a good reputation and a credit balance equally satisfactory to himself and his bankers. Or it may be that he has not actually retired but has turned to politics to fill up those leisure hours which are the reward or vexation (as he chooses to look at them) of a prosperous man of business; for, as Bagehot pointed out, the life of a man of business who employs his own capital, and employs it nearly always in the same way, is by no means fully employed. "If such a man is very busy, it is a sign of something wrong. Either he is working at detail, which subordinates would do better, or he is engaged in too many speculations." In consequence our commerce abounds with men of great business ability and experience who, being short of occupation, are glad enough to fill up their time with work in Parliament, as well as proud to write M.P. after their names. For my part I can think of nothing better calculated to reassure anyone whose dreams are haunted by apprehensions of wild-cat legislative schemes, or the imminence of a Radical millennium, than five minutes' contemplation of our champions of progress as they recline together, dignified and whiskered and bland, upon the benches of St. Stephen's.

But let us proceed with our portrait, which I vow is a most pleasing one. Our typical legislator is of decent birth, or at least hopeful of acquiring what he rightly protests to be but 'the guinea stamp' by judiciously munificent contributions to his party's purse; honest and scrupulous in dealing; neither so honest nor so scrupulous in thinking; addicted to phrases and a trifle too impatient of their meaning, yet of proved carefulness in drawing the line between phrase and practice; a first-rate committeeman (and only those who have sat long in committee can sound the depths of this praise); locally admired; with much bonhomie of manner, backed by a reputation for standing no nonsense; good-tempered, honestly anxious to reconcile conflicting interests and do the best for the unconflicting ones of himself and his country; but above all a man who knows where to stop. I vow (I repeat) he makes a dignified and amiable figure. One can easily understand why people like to be represented by such a man. It gives a feeling of security—a somewhat illusory one, I believe; and security is the first instinct of a state. One can understand, why the exhortations, dehortations, precepts, and instructions of parents, preachers, schoolmasters tend explicitly and implicitly to the reproduction of this admired bloom.

Yet one may whisper that it has—shall we say?—its failings; and its failings are just those which are least to be commended to the emulation of youth. It is, for instance, constitutionally timid. Violent action of any kind will stampede it in a panic, and, like the Countess in Evan Harrington, it "does not ruffle well." It betrays (I think) ill-breeding in its disproportionate terror whenever an anarchist bomb explodes, and in the ferocity of its terror it can be crueller than the assailant. "My good people," it provokes one to say, "by all means stamp out these dangers, but composedly, as becomes men conscious of their strength. Even allowing for the unscrupulousness of your assailant, you have still nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand of the odds in your favour; and so long as you answer the explosions of weak anarchy by cries suggestive of the rage of the sheep, you merely raise the uncomfortable suspicion that, after all, there must be something amiss with a civilisation which counts you among its most expensive products."

But in the untroubled hour of prosperity this weakness of breeding is scarcely less apparent. Our admired bloom is admired rather for not doing certain things than for doing others. His precepts are cautious and mainly negative. He does not get drunk (in public at any rate), and he expends much time and energy in preventing men from getting drunk. But he does not lead or heartily incite to noble actions, although at times— when he has been badly frightened—he is ready to pay men handsomely to do them. He wins and loses elections on questions of veto. He had rather inculcate the passive than the active virtues. He prefers temperance and restraint to energy and resolve. He thinks more of the organisation than the practice of charity, esteems a penny saved as three halfpence gained, had liefer detect an impostor than help a deserving man. He is apt to label all generous emotions as hysterical, and in this he errs; for when a man calls the generous emotions hysterical he usually means that he would confuse them with hysterics if they happened to him.

Now the passive virtues—continence, frugality, and the like—are desirable, but shade off into mere want of pluck; while the active virtues—courage, charity, clemency, cheerfulness, helpfulness—are ever those upon which the elect and noble souls in history have laid the greater stress. I frankly detest Blank, M.P., because I believe him to be a venal person, a colourable (and no doubt self-deceiving) imitation of the type. But, supposing him to be the real thing, I still think that, if you want a model for your son, you will do better with Sir Philip Sidney. If ever a man illustrated the beauty of the active virtues in his life and in his death, that man was Sidney; but he also gave utterance in noble speech to his belief in them. In the Apologie for Poetrie you will find none of your art-for-art's-sake chatter: Sidney boldly takes the line that poetry helps men, and helps them not to well-being only, but to well-doing, and again helps them to well-doing not merely by teaching (as moral philosophy does) but by inciting. For an instance—

"Who readeth AEneas carrying old Anchises on his back that wisheth not it were his fortune to perform so-excellent an act?"

There speaks, anticipating Zutphen, the most perfect knight in our history. Again—

"Truly I have known men that even with reading Amadis de Gaule (which, God knoweth, wanteth much of a perfect poesy) have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and especially courage."—

All active virtues be it noted. "We are not damned for doing wrong," writes Stevenson, "but for not doing right. Christ will never hear of negative morality: Thou shalt was ever His word, with which He superseded Thou shalt not. To make our morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto. . . . In order that a man may be kind and honest it may be needful that he should become a total abstainer: let him become so then, and the next day let him forget the circumstance. Trying to be kind and honest will require all his thoughts." Yet how many times a day will we say 'don't' to our children for once that we say 'do'? But here I seem to be within reasonable distance of discussing original sin, and so I return to Mr. Blank.

I do not like Mr. Blank; and I disliked his speech the other night so heartily that it drove me to sit down when I reached home and put my reflections into verse; into a form of verse, moreover, which (I was scornfully aware) Mr. Blank would understand as little as the matter of it. He would think them both impractical. Heaven help the creature!

CHANT ROYAL OF HIGH VIRTUE.

Who lives in suit of armour pent, And hides himself behind a wall, For him is not the great event, The garland, nor the Capitol. And is God's guerdon less than they? Nay, moral man, I tell thee Nay: Nor shall the flaming forts be won By sneaking negatives alone, By Lenten fast or Ramazan, But by the challenge proudly thrown— Virtue is that beseems a Man!

God, in His Palace resident Of Bliss, beheld our sinful ball, And charged His own Son innocent Us to redeem from Adam's fall. —"Yet must it be that men Thee slay." —"Yea, tho' it must must I obey," Said Christ,—and came, His royal Son, To die, and dying to atone For harlot and for publican. Read on that rood He died upon— Virtue is that beseems a Man!

And by that rood where He was bent I saw the world's great captains all Go riding to the tournament— Cyrus the Great and Hannibal, Caesar of Rome and Attila, Lord Charlemagne with his array, Lord Alisaundre of Macedon— With flaming lance and habergeon They passed, and to the rataplan Of drums gave salutation— Virtue is that beseems a Man!

Had tall Achilles lounged in tent For aye, and Xanthus neigh'd in stall, The towers of Troy had ne'er been shent, Nor stay'd the dance in Priam's hall. Bend o'er thy book till thou be grey, Read, mark, perpend, digest, survey— Instruct thee deep as Solomon— One only chapter thou shalt con, One lesson learn, one sentence scan, One title and one colophon— Virtue is that beseems a Man!

High Virtue's hest is eloquent With spur and not with martingall: Sufficeth not thou'rt continent: BE COURTEOUS, BRAVE, AND LIBERAL. God fashion'd thee of chosen clay For service, nor did ever say "Deny thee this," "Abstain from yon," Save to inure thee, thew and bone, To be confirmed of the clan That made immortal Marathon— Virtue is that beseems a Man!

ENVOY.

Young Knight, the lists are set to-day: Hereafter shall be long to pray In sepulture with hands of stone. Ride, then! outride the bugle blown And gaily dinging down the van Charge with a cheer—Set on! Set on! Virtue is that beseems a Man!

A friend to whom I showed these verses remarked that Mr. Blank was indeed a person who fed his soul upon negatives; but that I possibly did him some injustice in charging so much of this to timidity, whereas the scent lay rather in the gusto with which he judged his fellow-men.

"And, by the way," said he, "is there not some gusto in the scorn with which you are judging Mr. Blank at this moment?" "Do you remember," I answered, "how that man, after voting for war the other day, went straight off to a meeting of the Peace Society and put up a florid appeal to the Prince of Peace for a time when wars should be no more? Let him be, however: I do wrong to lose my temper with him. But on this matter of national timidity I have something to say. . . ."

I have been reading John Holland's two Discourses of the Navy, written in 1638 and 1659, and published the other day by the Navy Records Society. The object of Mr. Holland's discourses was to reform the Navy, purge it of abuses, and strengthen it for the defence of this realm; and I have been curious to compare his methods with those of our own Navy League, which has been making such a noise for ten years or so. The first thing I observe is the attitude of mind in which he approaches his subject:—

"If either the honour of a nation, commerce or trust with all nations, peace at home, grounded upon our enemies' fear or love of us abroad, and attended with plenty of all things necessary either for the preservation of the public weal or thy private welfare, be things worthy thy esteem (though it may be beyond thy shoal conceit) then next to God and thy King give thy thanks for the same to the Navy. As for honour, who knows not (that knows anything) that in all records of late times of actions, chronicled to the everlasting fame and renown of this nation, still the naval part is the thread that runs through the whole wooft, the burden of the song, the scope of the text? . . ."

He proceeds to enumerate some particular commercial advantages due to our mastery of the sea, and sums up in these words:—

"Suffice it thus far, nothing under God, who doth all, hath brought so much, so great commerce to this Kingdom as the rightly noble employments of our navy; a wheel, if truly turned, that sets to work all Christendom by its motion; a mill, if well extended, that in a sweet yet sovereign composure contracts the grist of all nations to its own dominions, and requires only the tribute of its own people, not for, but towards, its maintenance."

The eloquence may be turgid, but the attitude is dignified. The man does not scold; does not terrify. He lays his stress on the benefits of a strong navy—on the renown it has won for England in the past. He assumes his readers to be intelligent men, amenable to advice which will help them to perpetuate this renown and secure these benefits in time to come. His exordium over, he settles down to an exposition of the abuses which are impairing our naval efficiency, and suggests reforms, some wisely conceived, others not so wisely, with the business-like, confident air of one who knows what he is talking about.

Now I open the prospectus in which our Navy League started out to make everyone's flesh creep, and come plump upon language of this sort:—

"It is the close, let us suppose, of our second month of war. The fleet has been neglected, and has been overwhelmed, unready and unprepared. We have been beaten twice at sea, and our enemies have established no accidental superiority, but a permanent and overwhelming one. The telegraph cables have been severed, one and all; these islands are in darkness."—

For presumably the gas-mains, as well as the cables, have been 'severed' (imposing word!)—

—"Under a heavy cloud of woe. Invasion is in the air, our armies are mustering in the south. We are cut off from the world, and can only fitfully perceive what is happening. Our liners have been captured or sunk on the high seas; our ocean tramps are in our enemies' hands; British trade is dead, killed by the wholesale ravages of the hostile cruisers. Our ports are insulted or held up to ransom, when news reaches us from India it is to the effect that the enemy is before our troops, a native insurrection behind. Malta has fallen, and our outlying positions are passing from our hands. Food is contraband, and may not be imported. Amid the jeers of Europe 'the nation of shopkeepers' is writhing in its death agony."

Pretty, is it not? But let us have just a little more.

"COMMERCIAL COLLAPSE.

"And what of the internal, of the social position? Consols have fallen to nearly 30; our vast investments in India have been lost; trade no longer exists. . . . The railways have no traffic to carry. . . . Banks and companies are failing daily. . . The East End of London is clamouring for bread and peace at any price. If we fall, we fall for ever. . . . The working man has to choose whether he will have lighter taxation for the moment, starvation and irretrievable ruin for the future . . ."

—And so on, till Z stands for Zero, or nothing at all. Or, as the late Mr. Lear preferred to write:—

"Z said, 'Here is a box of Zinc, Get in, my little master! We'll shut you up; we'll nail you down: we will, my little master! We think we've all heard quite enough of this your sad disaster!'"

To speak as seriously as may be, the language is no longer hortatory, like Holland's, but minatory, even comminatory. It is (as its author would not deny) the language of panic deliberately employed, a calculated attempt to strengthen the materiel of the navy at the cost of Englishmen's fears. Now let me define my feeling towards the Navy League. As an ordinary British citizen, I must heartily approve its aim of strengthening the navy and keeping it efficient. As an ordinary reasonable man, I must admit that its efforts, if rightly directed, may be of great national service. But language such as I have quoted must (so far as it is not merely contemptible) be merely demoralising, and anyone who works on the fears of a nation—and especially of a nation which declines conscription and its one undoubted advantage of teaching men what war means—does a harm which is none the less wicked for being incalculable. These Navy Leaguers cry incessantly for more material strength. They tell us that in material strength we should at least be equal to any two other countries. A few months pass, and then, their appetite growing with the terror it feeds upon, they insist that we must be equal to any three other countries. Also "it does not appear," they sagely remark, "that Nelson and his contemporaries left any record as to what the proportion of the blockading should bear (sic) to one blockaded,"—a curious omission of Nelson's, to be sure! He may perhaps have held that it depended on the quality of the antagonists.