120 CAPTAIN BOBADIL. constitution; I would choose them by an instinct, a character that I have; and I would teach these nineteen the special rules, as your pointo, your reverso, your stoccata, your imbroccato, your passada, your montanto, till they could all play very near or altogether as well as myself. This done, say the enemy were forty thousand strong, we twenty would come into the field the tenth of March or thereabouts, and we would challenge twenty of the enemy; they could not in their honour refuse us. Well, we would kill them; challenge twenty more, kill them; twenty more, kill them too; and thus would we kill every man his twenty a day, that's twenty score; twenty score, that's two hundred; two hundred a day, five days a thousand; forty thousand, forty times five, five times forty, two hundred days kills them all up by computation. And this will I venture my poor gentleman-like means to perform, provided there be no treason practised upon us, by fair and discreet manhood, that is, civilly by the sword." In every large school you will meet with a Captain Bobadil. For that matter, I fear there is something of the Bobadil in all of us—a tendency to vaunt our wit or wisdom, to make the most of our achievements, to set ourselves in the best light, to draw attention to the fine points which we think we possess; a tendency that needs stern repression, lest it should plunge us into ridicule and disgrace. True genius and true courage are always modest; men like Sir Isaac Newton, or Nelson, or Marlborough, or John Howard, do not need to proclaim their deeds upon the housetop. The strong men are silent and self-contained, like Wellington and Prince Eugene. By a natural transition we pass on to the Liar :—most despicable of all characters, worse even than the sneak and the bully, though it is to be observed that the sneak and the bully are necessarily untruthful, are liars on occasion, and, when opportunity serves, not less persistent and audacious in their falsity than the liar par excellence;-the boy who has always an equivocation or a falsehood on his tongue. Unhappy mortal! the habit of lying grows upon him until it becomes a mania, and he adheres to it though aware that he has been found out and that no one gives him credence, that no one is weak enough to trust to his word, let him pledge it ever so strongly. This lamentable mental disease is so insidious in character and fatal in effect, that parent and teacher should THE LIAR AND THE TOADY. 121 be watchful to arest it in its very first symptoms. The first lie should be sternly punished. No mercy should be shown to the offender; it is a case in which to be cruel is to be kind. Persevere until you have awakened a spirit of practical repentance, and revived and strengthened the boy's better feelings, lest he go on from bad to worse, and it should come to be said of him (in Shakespeare's words) that he is "Past all shame-so past all truth!” Recall that impassioned passage in one of Beaumont and Fletcher's comedies :— "Oh, my best sir, take heed, Take heed of lies! Truth, though it trouble some minds, And, like the sun, though never so eclipsed, I can hope and believe in the reform and recovery of any boy, bad as he may be, who is not a liar; but the old seasoned fibber and equivocator, for him and of him I can hope nothing. Happy are the boys to whom can be applied the eulogium which the historian and statesman Clarendon bestows on Lord Falkland :- "He was so severe an adorer of truth that he could as easily have given himself leave to steal as to dissemble." Passing over the Toady, the lad who fawns upon authority or rank or wealth-a character not very common among schoolboys, who, as a rule, are great levellers, and among themselves enthusiastic democrats, we glance at the Cad, in whom all the worst qualities of every other species of the disagreeable genus we are considering seem to concentrate. Hear him speaking irreverently of sacred things! Hear him dropping foul oaths and blasphemies from his poisonous lips! Hear him making a mock of all that is good, pure, and true! And oh! turn away from him with a shudder! Pray for him -he needs it; but as you love your soul, shrink from his companionship; close your ears to his vile utterances; let not the Upas-shadow of his influence fall upon your young life! One such boy becomes a source of contamination for a whole school-fons et origo mali. With his lewd anecdotes and gross 122 THE CAD CONDEMNed. suggestions he infuses a poison into the blood, of which it is not easy to get rid; and years hence, when memory brings them back to you, unbidden and unwelcome, you will regret that you listened to them, even for a moment! The sneak, the bully, the braggart; these are creeping creatures after their kind, but at least they seldom injure any but themselves. Far otherwise is it with the cad; he drags down to his own depth of degradation every one who weakly permits of his approaches. He is like the ant-lion, which lies await in its sandy lair, and when an incautious insect draws near, flings over it a shower of dust, which brings it within its clutches. He cannot be at rest alone. He wants a companion to listen to his impurities, and to admire his "fastness;" a companion to whom he can retail the latest music-hall jest, the last bit of slang which he has picked up in the billiard-room. God help him! He who sows the wind must reap the whirlwind. God help him! May his eyes be opened to the danger of his course before it is too late, so that he may not be compelled to look back with tears to a sinful youth as the prelude to a wrecked and ruined manhood: "Raro antecedentem scelestum Schoolboys and their friendships-Byron and his friend Wingfield-The poet Gray and Richard West-Gray's sonnet in memoriam-Cowper and Russell-Warren Hastings and Impey-Friendships at schoolThe inseparable chums-Cowper on friendship-Influence of example -Choose your friends carefully-Words of counsel. CANNOT imagine a schoolboy without a friend. David Copperfield had his beloved Tommy Traddles. Tom Brown reposed in sweetest confidence upon Harry East. Eric Williams found a brother-in-arms in Edwin Russell. The present writer hardly dares to place himself on the same level as these historic characters, but well does he remember to this day the two staunch comrades to whom he was bound in bonds of the warmest affection. And, to speak of more famous men, had not Lord Byron his Wingfield? "Of all human beings," he says, "I was, perhaps, at one time, the most attached to poor Wingfield." In one of his early poems he apostrophises him thus tenderly: 124 FRIENDSHips of great men. "Alonzo! best and dearest of my friends, Thy name ennobles him who thus commends: Of those with whom I lived supremely blest!" A boy's heart is sufficiently capacious, however, for half-adozen friendships, though one will always be closer and more intimate and dearer than the others. So Byron in his journal writes "My school friendships were with me passions (for I was always violent); but I do not know that there is one which has endured (to be sure some have been cut short by death) till now. That with Lord Clare began one of the earliest and lasted longest-being only interrupted by distancethat I know of. I never hear the word 'Clare' without a beating of the heart even now. . . . The prodigy of our schooldays was George Sinclair; he made exercises for half the school (literally), verses at will, and themes without it. . . . He was a friend of mine, and in the same remove, and used at times to beg me to let him do my exercise-a request always most readily accorded upon a pinch, or when I wanted to do something else, which was usually once an hour. On the other hand, he was pacific and I savage; so I fought for him, or thrashed others for him, or thrashed him himself, to make him thrash others when it was necessary, as a point of honour and stature, that he should so chastise; or we talked politics, for he was a great politician, and were very good friends." If Byron had his Wingfield and his Clare, Canning had his Lord Henry Spencer, and Charles James Fox was strongly attached to Sir George Macartney. Gray, the poet, as a schoolboy at Eton, found his "other self" in the amiable and accomplished Richard West, who was fully worthy of the affection bestowed upon him. With West for a period of eight years Gray enjoyed what the moralist calls "the most virtuous as well as the happiest of all attachments-the wise security of friendship-Par studiis, ævique modis ;" and their mutual attachment was terminated only by West's early death. The latter, in one of the poems he left behind him, speaks of himself and his friend as walking hand in hand 66 Through many a flow'ry path and shelly grot, |