Dons are picturesque figures. Their fussy ways and their oddities,
personal and intellectual, are as becoming to them as black feathers
to the blackbird. Their minds are all gaunt pinnacles, closed gates,
and little hidden gardens. A mediaeval tradition survives in their
notion of learning and in their manner of life; they are monks flown
from the dovecot, scholastics carrying their punctilious habits into
the family circle. In the grander ones there may be some assimilation
to a prelate, a country gentleman, or a party leader; but the rank and
file are modest, industrious pedagogues, sticklers for routine, with a
squinting knowledge of old books and of young men. Their politics are
narrow and their religion dubious. There was always something slippery
in the orthodoxy of scholastics, even in the Middle Ages; they are so
eager to define, to correct, and to trace back everything, that they
tend to cut the cloth on their own bias, and to make some crotchet
of theirs the fulcrum of the universe. The thoughts of these men are
like the Sibylline leaves, profound but lost. I should not call them
pedants, because what they pursue and insist on in little things is
the shadow of something great; trifles, as Michael Angelo said, make
perfection, and perfection is no trifle. Yet dry learning and much
chewing of the cud take the place amongst them of the two ways men
have of really understanding the world--science, which explores it,
and sound wit, which estimates humanly the value of science and of
everything else.
The function of dons is to expound a few classic documents, and to
hand down as large and as pleasant a store as possible of academic
habits, maxims, and anecdotes. They peruse with distrust the new
books published on the subject of their teaching; they refer to them
sometimes sarcastically, but their teaching remains the same. Their
conversation with outsiders is painfully amiable for a while; lassitude
soon puts the damper on it, unless they can lapse into the academic
question of the day, or take up the circle of their good old stories.
Their originality runs to interpreting some old text afresh, wearing
some odd garment, or frequenting in the holidays some unfrequented
spot. When they are bachelors, as properly they should be, their pupils
are their chief link with the world of affection, with mischievous
and merry things; and in exchange for this whiff of life, which they
receive with each yearly invasion of flowering youth, like the fresh
scent of hay every summer from the meadows, they furnish those empty
minds with some humorous memories, and some shreds of knowledge. It
does not matter very much whether what a don says is right or wrong,
provided it is quotable; nobody considers his opinions for the matter
they convey; the point is that by hearing them the pupils and the
public may discover what opinions, and on what subjects, it is possible
for mortals to devise. Their maxims are like those of the early
Greek philosophers, a proper introduction to the good society of the
intellectual world. So are the general systems to which the dons may
be addicted, probably some revision of Christian theology, of Platonic
mysticism, or of German philosophy. Such foreign doctrines do very well
for the dons of successive epochs, native British philosophy not being
fitted to edify the minds of the young: those vaster constructions
appeal more to the imagination, and their very artificiality and
ticklish architecture, like that of a house of cards, are part of
their function, calling for paradoxical faith and--what youth loves
quite as much--for captious and sophistical argument. They lie in the
fourth dimension of human belief, amongst the epicycles which ingenious
error describes about the unknown orbit of truth; for the truth is not
itself luminous, as wit is; the truth travels silently in the night
and requires to be caught by the searchlight of wit to become visible.
Meantime the mind plays innocently with its own phosphorescence, which
is what we call culture and what dons are created to keep alive.
Wit the dons often have, of an oblique kind, in the midst of their
much-indulged prejudices and foibles; and what with glints of wit and
scraps of learning, the soul is not sent away empty from their door:
better fed and healthier, indeed, for these rich crumbs from the
banquet of antiquity, when thought was fresh, than if it had been
reared on a stuffy diet of useful knowledge, or on some single dogmatic
system, to which life-slavery is attached. Poor, brusque, comic,
venerable dons! You watched over us tenderly once, whilst you blew your
long noses at us and scolded; then we thought only of the roses in
your garden, of your succulent dinners, or perhaps of your daughters;
but now we understand that you had hearts yourselves, that you were
song-birds grown old in your cages, having preferred fidelity to
adventure. We catch again the sweet inflection of your cracked notes,
and we bless you. You have washed your hands among the innocent; you
have loved the beauty of the Lord's house.
14