very ridiculous mistake (I will not call it by a harsher name) in
representing this head to be a figure of Winter. In one case (that of
M. Bischoff) I have no doubt that patriotic notions were too strong
for a well-balanced judgment;[66] but in the other, I am at a loss to
find a sufficient basis for a statement which is not only false, but
calculated to do a grave hurt to history and even to public morals.
M. Bischoff admits that he visited England in company with Herr
Crapiloni--I have no doubt that the latter influenced the former, and
that the blame and shame of this matter must fall on the ultra-montane
German and not on the philosophical but enthusiastic Gaul.
For my opponents’ abuse of myself in the columns of such rags as
the _Bulletin de la Société Historique de Bourges_, or the _Revue
d’Histoire Romaine_, I have only contempt and pity; but _we_ in
_England_ are taught that a lie on any matter is equally serious, and I
will be no party to the calling of the Mosaic a figure of “Winter” when
I am convinced it is nothing of the kind.
As far as I can make out from their somewhat turgid rhetoric, my
opponents rely upon the inscription “Hiems” put in with white stones
beneath the mosaic, and they argue that, as the other four corners are
admitted to be “Spring,” “Summer,” and “Autumn,” each with their title
beneath, _therefore_ this fourth corner must be Winter!
It is just such an argument from analogy as I should have expected
from men brought up in the corrupt morality and the base religious
conceptions of the Continent! When one is taught that authority is
everything and cannot use one’s judgment,[67] one is almost certain to
jump at conclusions in this haphazard fashion in dealing with definite
facts.
For my part I am convinced that the head is the portrait of the Roman
proprietor of the villa, and I am equally convinced that the title
“Hiems” has been added below at a later date, so as to furnish a trap
for all self-sufficient and gullible historians. Are my continental
critics aware that _no single copy_ of the mosaic is to be found in
the whole of the Roman Remains of Britain? Are they aware the villa at
Bignor has changed hands three times in this century? I do not wish
to make any insinuations of bad faith, but I would hint that the word
“Hiems” has a fresh new look about it which puzzles me.
To turn to another matter, though it is one connected with our subject.
The pupil of the eye has disappeared. We know that the loss is of
ancient date, as Wright mentions its absence in his catalogue. A very
interesting discussion has arisen as to the material of which the pupil
was composed. The matter occupied the Society at Dresden (of which I
am a corresponding member) in a debate of some days, I have therefore
tried to fathom it but with only partial success. I have indeed found
a triangular blue fragment which is much the same shape as the missing
cavity; it is however, somewhat larger in all its dimensions, and is
convex instead of flat, and I am assured it is but a piece of blue
china of recent manufacture, of which many such odds and ends are to
be found in the fields and dustbins. If (as I strongly suspect) these
suggestions are only a ruse, and if (as I hope will be the case) my
fragment, after some filing and chipping, can be made to fit the
cavity, the discovery will be of immense value; for it will show that
the owner of the villa was a Teuton and will go far to prove the theory
of Roman continuity, which is at present based on such slight evidence.
I will let you know the result.
The coins recently dug up in the neighbourhood, and on which so many
hopes were based, prove nothing as to the date of the mosaic. They
cannot be of Roman origin, for they bear for the most part the head and
inscription of William III., while the rest are pence and shillings of
the Georges. One coin was a guinea, and will, I fear, be sold as gold
to the bank. I was very disappointed to find so poor a result: ever
since my enquiry labourers have kept coming to me with coins obviously
modern--especially bronze coins of Napoleon III.--which they have
buried to turn them green, and subsequently hammered shapeless in the
hopes of my purchasing them. I have had the misfortune to purchase,
for no less a sum than a sovereign, what turned out to be the circular
brass label on a dog’s collar. It contained the name of “Ponto,”
inscribed in a classic wreath which deceived me.
Nothing else of real importance has occurred since my last
communication.
XIII.
Lambkin’s Sermon.
A man not over-given to mere words, Lambkin was always also somewhat
diffident of his pulpit eloquence and his sermons were therefore rare.
It must not be imagined that he was one of those who rebel vainly
against established usage. There was nothing in him of the blatant and
destructive demagogue; no character could have been more removed from
the demons who drenched the fair soil of France with such torrents of
blood during the awful reign of terror.
But just as he was in politics a liberal in the truest sense (not in
the narrow party definition of the word), so in the religious sphere
he descried the necessity of gentle but persistent reform. “The
present,” he would often say, “is inseparable from the past,” but he
would add “continual modification to suit the necessities of a changing
environment is a cardinal condition of vitality.”
It was, therefore, his aim to keep the form of all existing
institutions and merely to change their matter.
Thus, he was in favour of the retention of the Regius Professorship
of Greek, and even voted for a heavy increase in the salary of its
occupant; but he urged and finally carried the amendment by which
that dignitary is at present compelled to lecture mainly on current
politics. Mathematics again was a subject whose interest he discerned,
however much he doubted its value as a mental discipline; he was,
therefore, a supporter of the prize fellowships occasionally offered on
the subject, but, in the determination of the successful candidate he
would give due weight to the minutiae of dress and good manners.
It will be seen from all this that if Lambkin was essentially a modern,
yet he was as essentially a wise and moderate man; cautious in action
and preferring judgment to violence he would often say, “_trans_former
please, not _re_former,” when his friends twitted him over the port
with his innovations.[68]
Religion, then, which must be a matter of grave import to all, was not
neglected by such a mind.
He saw that all was not lost when dogma failed, but that the great
ethical side of the system could be developed in the room left by the
decay of its formal character. Just as a man who has lost his fingers
will sometimes grow thumbs in their place, so Lambkin foresaw that in
the place of what was an atrophied function, vigorous examples of an
older type might shoot up, and the organism would gain in breadth what
it lost in definition. “I look forward to the time” (he would cry)
“when the devotional hand of man shall be all thumbs.”
The philosophy which he thus applied to formal teaching and dogma took
practical effect in the no less important matter of the sermon. He
retained that form or shell, but he raised it as on stepping-stones
from its dead self to higher things; the success of many a man in this
life has been due to the influence exerted by his simple words.
The particular allocution which I have chosen as the best illustration
of his method was not preached in the College Chapel, but was on the
contrary a University Sermon given during eight weeks. It ran as
follows:
SERMON
I take for my text a beautiful but little-known passage from the
Talmud:
“_I will arise and gird up my lions--I mean loins--and go; yea, I
will get me out of the land of my fathers which is in Ben-ramon, even
unto Edom and the Valley of Kush and the cities about Laban to the
uttermost ends of the earth._”
There is something about foreign travel, my dear Brethren, which seems,
as it were, a positive physical necessity to our eager and high-wrought
generation. At specified times of the year we hunt, or debate; we
attend to our affairs in the city, or we occupy our minds with the
guidance of State. The ball-room, the drawing-room, the club, each have
their proper season. In our games football gives place to cricket, and
the deep bay of the faithful hound yields with the advancing season to
the sharp crack of the Winchester, as the grouse, the partridge, or the
very kapper-capercailzie itself falls before the superior intelligence
of man. One fashion also will succeed another, and in the mysterious
development of the years--a development not entirely under the guidance
of our human wills--the decent croquet-ball returns to lawns that had
for so long been strangers to aught but the fierce agility of tennis.
So in the great procession of the times and the seasons, there comes
upon us the time for travel. It is not (my dear Brethren), it is
not in the winter when all is covered with a white veil of snow--or
possibly transformed with the marvellous effects of thaw; it is not
in the spring when the buds begin to appear in the hedges, and when
the crocus studs the spacious sward in artful disorder and calculated
negligence--no it is not then--the old time of Pilgrimage,[69] that our
positive and enlightened era chooses for its migration.[70]
It is in the burning summer season, when the glare of the sun is almost
painful to the jaded eye of the dancer, when the night is shortest and
the day longest, that we fly from these inhospitable shores and green
fields of England.
And whither do we fly? Is it to the cool and delicious north, to the
glaciers of Greenland, or to the noble cliffs and sterling characters
of Orkney? Is it to Norway? Can it be to Lapland? Some perhaps, a very
few, are to be found journeying to these places in the commodious
and well-appointed green boats of Mr. Wilson, of Tranby Croft. But,
alas! the greater number leave the hot summer of England for the yet
more torrid climes of Italy, Spain, the Levant and the Barbary coast.
Negligent of the health that is our chiefest treasure, we waste our
energies in the malaria of Rome, or in Paris poison our minds with the
contempt aroused by the sight of hideous foreigners.
Let me turn from this painful aspect of a question which certainly
presents nobler and more useful issues. It is most to our purpose,
perhaps, in a certain fashion; it is doubtless more to our purpose in
many ways to consider on an occasion such as this the moral aspects of
foreign travel, and chief among these I reckon those little points of
mere every day practice, which are of so much greater importance than
the rare and exaggerated acts to which our rude ancestors gave the name
of Sins.
Consider the over-charges in hotels. The economist may explain,
the utilitarian may condone such action, but if we are to make for
Righteousness, we cannot pass without censure a practice which we would
hardly go so far as to condemn. If there be in the sacred edifice any
one of those who keep houses of entertainment upon the Continent,
especially if there sit among you any representative of that class in
Switzerland, I would beg him to consider deeply a matter which the
fanatical clergy of his land may pardon, but which it is the duty of
ours to publicly deplore.
Consider again the many examples of social and moral degradation which
we meet with in our journeyings! We pass from the coarse German, to the
inconstant Gaul. We fly the indifference and ribald scoffing of Milan
only to fall into the sink of idolatory and superstition which men
call Naples; we observe in our rapid flight the indolent Spaniard, the
disgusting Slav, the uncouth Frisian and the frightful Hun. Our travels
will not be without profit if they teach us to thank Heaven that our
fathers preserved us from such a lot as theirs.
Again, we may consider the great advantages that we may gather as
individuals from travel. We can exercise our financial ingenuity (and
this is no light part of mental training) in arranging our expenses
for the day. We can find in the corners of foreign cities those relics
of the Past which the callous and degraded people of the place ignore,
and which are reserved for the appreciation of a more vigorous race. In
the galleries we learn the beauties of a San Mirtānoja, and the vulgar
insufficiency and ostentation of a Sanzio.[71] In a thousand ways the
experience of the Continent is a consolation and a support.
Fourthly, my dear brethren, we contrast our sturdy and honest crowd of
tourists with the ridiculous castes and social pettiness of the ruck
of foreign nations. There the peasant, the bourgeois, the noble, the
priest, the politician, the soldier, seems each to live in his own
world. In our happier England there are but two classes, the owners of
machinery and the owners of land; and these are so subtly and happily
mixed, there is present at the same time so hearty an independence
and so sensible a recognition of rank, that the whole vast mass of
squires and merchants mingle in an exquisite harmony, and pour like a
life-giving flood over the decaying cities of Europe.
But I have said enough. I must draw to a close. The love of fame, which
has been beautifully called the last infirmity of noble-minds, alone
would tempt me to proceed. But I must end. I hope that those of you who
go to Spain will visit the unique and interesting old town of Saragossa.
(_Here Mr. Lambkin abruptly left the Pulpit._)
XIV.
Lambkin’s Open Letter to Churchmen
The noise made by Mr. Lambkin’s famous advice to Archdeacon Burfle
will be remembered by all my readers. He did not, however, publish
the letter (as is erroneously presumed in _Great Dead Men of the
Period_),[72] without due discussion and reflection. I did not
personally urge him to make it public--I thought it unwise. But
Mr. Large may almost be said to have insisted upon it in the long
Conversation which he and Josiah had upon the matter. When Lambkin
had left Large’s room I took the liberty of going up to see him
again, but the fatal missive had been posted, and appeared next day
in _The Times_, the _Echo_, and other journals, not to mention the
_Englishman’s Anchor_. I do not wish to accuse Mr. Large of any
malicious purpose or deliberately misleading intention, but I fear that
(as he was not an impulsive man) his advice can only have proceeded
from a woeful and calculated lack of judgment.
There is no doubt that (from Lambkin’s own point of view), the
publication of this letter was a very serious error. It bitterly
offended Arthur Bundleton, and alienated all the “Pimlico” group (as
they were then called). At the same time it did not satisfy the small
but eager and cultured body who followed Tamworthy. It gave a moderate
pleasure to the poorer clergy in the country parishes, but I doubt
very much whether these are the men from whom social advantage or
ecclesiastical preferment is to be expected. I often told Lambkin that
the complexity of our English Polity was a dangerous thing to meddle
with. “A man,” I would say to him, “who expresses an opinion is like
one who plunges a knife into some sensitive part of the human frame.
The former may offend unwittingly by the mere impact of his creed or
prejudice, much as the latter may give pain by happening upon some
hidden nerve.”
Now Lambkin was essentially a wise man. He felt the obligation--the
duty (to give it a nobler name)--which is imposed on all of us of
studying our fellows. He did not, perhaps, say where his mind lay
in any matter more than half a dozen times in his life, for fear of
opposing by such an expression the wider experience or keener emotion
of the society around him. He felt himself a part of a great stream,
which it was the business of a just man to follow, and if he spoke
strongly (as he often did) it was in some matter upon which the vast
bulk of his countrymen were agreed; indeed he rightly gave to public
opinion, and to the governing classes of the nation, an overwhelming
weight in his system of morals; and even at twenty-one he had a
wholesome contempt for the doctrinaire enthusiast who neglects his
newspaper and hatches an ethical system out of mere blind tradition or
(what is worse) his inner conscience.
It is remarkable, therefore, that such a man should have been guilty of
one such error. “It was not a crime,” he said cleverly, in speaking of
the matter to me, “it was worse; it was a blunder.” And that is what we
all felt. The matter can be explained, however, by a reference to the
peculiar conditions of the moment in which it appeared. The Deanery of
Bury had just fallen vacant by death of Henry Carver, the elder.[73] A
Liberal Unionist Government was in power, and Lambkin perhaps imagined
that controversy still led--as it had done but a few years before--to
the public notice which it merits. He erred, but it was a noble error.
One thing at least we can rejoice in, the letter may have hurt Lambkin
in this poor mortal life; but it was of incalculable advantage to the
generation immediately succeeding his own. I cannot but believe that
from that little source springs all the mighty river of reform which
has left so profound a mark upon the hosiery of this our day.
The letter is as follows:--
AN OPEN LETTER
BURFORD. _St. John’s Eve, 1876._
MY DEAR BURFLE,
You have asked my advice on a matter of deep import, a matter upon
which every self-respecting Englishman is asking himself the question
“Am I a _sheep_ or a _goat_?” My dear Burfle, I will answer you
straight out, and I know you will not be angry with me if I answer
also in the agora, “before the people,” as Paul would have done. Are
you a _sheep_ or a _goat_? Let us think.
You say rightly that the question upon which all this turns is the
question of boots. It is but a symbol, but it is a symbol upon which
all England is divided. On the one hand we have men strenuous,
determined, eager--men (if I may say so) of true Apostolic quality,
to whom the buttoned boot is sacred to a degree some of us may find
it difficult to understand. They are few, are these devout pioneers,
but they are in certain ways, and from some points of view, among the
_élite_ of the Nation, so to speak.
On the other hand we have the great mass of sensible men, earnest,
devout, practical--what Beeker calls in a fine phrase “Thys corpse
and verie bodie of England[74]”--determined to maintain what their
fathers had before them, and insisting on the laced boot as the
proper foot-gear of the Church.
No one is more sensible than myself (my dear Burfle), I say no one is
more sensible than I am, of the gravity of this schism--for schism
it threatens to be. And no one appreciates more than I do how much
there is to be said on both sides. The one party will urge (with
perfect justice), that the buttoned boot is a development. They
maintain (and there is much to be said in their favour), that the
common practice of wearing buttoned boots, their ornate appearance,
and the indication of well-being which they afford, fit them most
especially for the Service of the Temple. They are seen upon the feet
of Parisians, of Romans, of Viennese; they are associated with our
modern occasions of Full Dress, and when we wear them we feel that we
are one with all that is of ours in Christendom. In a word, they are
Catholic, in the best and truest sense of the word.
Now, my dear Burfle, consider the other side of the argument. The
laced boot, modern though it be in form and black and solid, is
yet most undoubtedly the Primitive Boot in its essential. That the
early Christians wore sandals is now beyond the reach of doubt or the
power of the wicked. There is indeed the famous forgery of Gelasius,
which may have imposed upon the superstition of the dark ages,[75]
there is the doubtful evidence also of the mosaic at Ravenna. But
the only solid ground ever brought forward was the passage in the
Pseudo-Johannes, which no modern scholar will admit to refer to
buttons. ξύγον means among other things a lace, an absolute lace,
and I defy our enemies (who are many and unscrupulous), to deny. The
Sandal has been finally given its place as a Primitive Christian
ornament; and we can crush the machinations of foreign missions, I
think, with the plain sentence of that great scholar, Dr. Junker,
“The sandal,” he says, “is the parent of the laced boot.”
So far then, so good. You see (my dear Burfle), how honestly the two
sides may differ, and how, with such a backing upon either side, the
battle might rage indefinitely, to the final extinction, perhaps, of
our beloved country and its most cherished institutions.
Is there no way by which such a catastrophe may be avoided?
Why most certainly _yes_. There is a road on which both may travel,
a place in which all may meet. I mean the boot (preferably the
cloth boot) with elastic sides. Already it is worn by many of our
clergy.[76] It offends neither party, it satisfies, or should
satisfy, both; and for my part, I see in it one of those compromises
upon which our greatness is founded. Let us then determine to be in
this matter neither _sheep_ nor _goats_. It is better, far better, to
admit some sheepishness into our goatishness, or (if our extremists
_will_ have it so), some goatishness into our sheepishness--it is
better, I say, to enter one fold and be at peace together, than to
imperil our most cherished and beloved tenets in a mere wrangle upon
non-essentials. For, after all what is essential to us? Not boots, I
think, but righteousness. Righteousness may express itself in boots,
it is just and good that it should do so, but to see righteousness in
the boot itself is to fall into the gross materialism of the middle
ages, and to forget our birthright and the mess of pottage.
Yours (my dear Burfle) in all charity,
JOSIAH LAMBKIN.
XV.
Lambkin’s Letter to a French Friend
Lambkin’s concern for the Continent was deep and lasting. He knew the
Western part of this Division of the Globe from a constant habit of
travel which would take him by the Calais-Bâle, passing through the
St. Gothard by night, and so into the storied plains of Italy.[77] It
was at Milan that he wrote his _Shorter Anglo-Saxon Grammar_, and in
Assisi that he corrected the proofs of his article on the value of
oats as human food. Everyone will remember the abominable outrage at
Naples, where he was stabbed by a coachman in revenge for his noble and
disinterested protection of a poor cab-horse; in a word, Italy is full
of his vacations, and no name is more familiar to the members of the
Club at the Villa Marinoni.
It may seem strange that under such circumstances our unhappy
neighbours across the Channel should so especially have taken up his
public action. He was no deep student of the French tongue, and he
had but a trifling acquaintance with the habits of the common people
of that country; but he has said himself with great fervour, in his
“Thoughts on Political Obligations,” that no man could be a good
citizen of England who did not understand her international position.
“What” (he would frequently exclaim) “what can they know of England,
who only England know?”[78] He did not pretend to a familiarity with
the minute details of foreign policy, nor was he such a pedant as to
be offended at the good-humoured chaff directed against his accent in
the pronunciation of foreign names. Nevertheless he thought it--and
rightly thought it--part of his duty to bring into any discussion of
the affairs of the Republic those chance phrases which lend colour and
body to a conversation. He found this duty as it lay in his path and
accomplished it, without bombast, but with full determination, and
with a vast firmness of purpose. Thus he would often let drop such
expressions as “état majeur,” “la cléricalisme c’est l’ennemi,” “l’état
c’est moi,”[79] and such was his painful and exact research that he
first in the University arrived at the meaning of the word “bordereau,”
which, until his discovery, all had imagined to be a secret material of
peculiar complexity.