Etonian

“ But one thing his heart has a long time found out,
[110]
'Tis his love for Etonian elves. For the college, and dames, and the dear playing fields Where science and friendship preside, For the spot which the balm of true happiness yields, As each day by its fellow doth glide. Adieu, honor'd masters! kind dames, fare thee well! Ye light-hearted spirits adieu! How feeble my Vale—my griev'd feelings to tell As Etona declines from my view.
[112]
"Men are my subject, and not fictions vain; Oxford my chaunt, and satire is my strain." ”

“ I found it very difficult to settle the title of my book. Should it be the stately “Life of Peregrine Courtenay, Esq., of the College of Eton, foolscap octavo”? or should it be the quaint “Notice of a Gentleman who has left Long Chamber?” or should it be the concise and attractive “Peregriniana”? It was a weighty affair; and I abandoned the design before I could settle the point. For I at last began to believe, my public, that this is all of which you ought to be informed—that I have lived long at Eton, and that have I edited the Etonian ”

“ All these details I observed later in corroboration, but I knew him first as Hook by his extraordinary note of noblesse oblige. I do not merely mean that Etonian was written all over him: there was something even more than that, as if (may I venture) he was two Etonians rolled by the magnanimous Gods into one. In a word, the handsomest man I have ever seen. Though, at the same time, perhaps slightly disgusting.”
“The moon,” Mr. Jasparin continues, “Paused for a moment (which it so often seems to me to do over Eton, as if awaiting some singular transaction) . ”

“ Is he making love, or making verses? Studying Euclid or the Sporting Magazine? Meditating on the trial of the Queen last October, or the trial for King’s next July?” For surely no light cause should induce one Etonian to be “Not at Home” to another. ”

“ My four remaining years then, at Eton, formed, indeed, a dream of happiness.
When not otherwise particularly engaged, it was my delight, on the instant of coming out of school, or church, to fix my eyes on some distant object, and to start off for it, merely, I suppose, because it was out of bounds. Being constantly in the habit of this, I became acquainted with the localities of the neighbourhood, perhaps more accurately than any other boy at Eton. The two most distant points I ever reached, were Staines and the race-course at Ascot Heath. These excursions I ever undertook in solitude. ”

“ One Oxonian—Henry Neech—con{15}tributed, and five Cantabs—Henry Nelson Coleridge, John Moultrie, John Louis Petit, William Sydney Walker, and another. Among the anonymous contributors were R. Streatfield and J. A. Kinglake.
The Etonian appeared regularly every month until July 1821, when it was discontinued in consequence of the editor and principal contributor going up to Cambridge. In Charles Knight’s “Passages of a Working Life” there occur, about this date, many references to his first connection with Praed and his friends in the conduct of the Etonian. ”

“ The parson then conducted his wife home, and went up to the Hall to report Lenny's safe return; for the squire was very uneasy about him, and had even in person shared the search. As soon as he heard Lenny was safe—"Well," said the squire," let him go the first thing in the morning to Rood Hall, to ask Master Leslie's pardon, and all will be right and smooth again."
"A young villain!" cried Frank, with his cheeks the colour of scarlet; "to strike a gentleman and an Etonian, who had just been to call on me! ”

“ One of the most ludicrous jokes ever perpetrated upon any Eton master was played some ten years ago. At that time several new masters, not all of whom were Etonians, had been appointed, more or less, I believe, upon probation. One of these, who taught modern languages, though a clever man, was of too confiding and gentle a disposition to cope with the boys, and during school hours a scene of great disorder became the almost invariable rule. Paper darts flew all over the class-room, and every kind of queer noise was heard, though the poor man was always unable to bring the offenders to book. ”

“ From the moment that I entered the college, I had been carelessly placed far above my acquirements; and constant flogging was inevitable, for a year or two at least, until, perhaps, by close application, I had made myself equal to my daily tasks. But this was a prospect by far too distant to be entertained by a boy of nine years old; for it is the ambition of a boy [43] not to be flogged at all—not as little as possible.
An objection to sending a boy early to Eton is, that should he have the hardihood to brave frequent punishment, he may be very nearly as idle as he pleases ”

“ Those who know what our public schools are, will reckon it, I believe, almost incredible that I should be four years at Eton, and remain, as I did, still almost ignorant of what the language of wickedness meant. Mr. Godley's yoke I certainly thought at the time to be a heavy one. Several times each day we were obliged to go across the playing-fields to school, to chapel, or to absence (which was the term by which Etonians will yet understand the calling over the names of the boys at certain times) ”

“ This word bears, indeed, an ominous insinuation; but at Eton it is not so disreputable as it sounds. The shuffler ever employs what ingenuity he may be gifted with, in contriving how he may do as little in school, and as much out of it, with the least possible flogging ”

“ Whilst Eton has occasionally produced some very fine scholars—the Marquis Wellesley was a case in point—it cannot be said that the traditions of the school are very favourable to learning, which to a large proportion of Etonians has seemed of less importance than the acquisition of worldly wisdom. More than a hundred years ago De Quincey noted the peculiar tone which prevailed amongst Eton boys, who showed a premature knowledge of the world far exceeding that possessed by the scholars at any other school. ”

“ For, if it be true of schoolboys that “thought would destroy their paradise”—that is, the thought merely of the personal ailments of mature age—how much more disturbing would be the contemplation of the vast social wrongs that fill the world with suffering! Of such sombre thought Eton knew nothing, but basked content in the warmth of her own supreme self-satisfaction; and the Eton life was probably the most enjoyable of all hitherto invented forms of heedless existence. ”

“ Etienne spoke these words with deep emotion, but still firmly and distinctly.
"Fear not, my son, thy father's death shall be avenged, or my sword has lost its power. Weep not for the dead--women weep, men avenge wrongs on the wrongdoer; but tell me, art thou certain of these facts? didst thou or any one else see this Wilfred at the head of the outlaws?"
"My liege, I saw him myself; I penetrated their fastnesses in the forest, and but narrowly escaped with life." ”

“ A dissonant note from hidden harp-strings drawn
Troubled the dreams of Eochaidh and Etain.
By day the dream had faded to a mist [Pg 17]
In some far-folded valley of the mind;
But when, heart-charmed in evening's amethyst,
The labouring world grew wonderfully kind,
And upturned lips by brooding love were kissed;
Like silent rain in summer twilight spilled,
A wandering thought King Eochaidh touched and chilled. ”

“ Dost thou think English torches fired an English house of God? Times are changed now, and thou seest me surrounded by the vassals of my father's house, who own no lord but their natural chieftain. But where is Etienne? We have watched your party all day, and know that the young tyrant was their leader. Is he amongst the dead?"
"Look for thyself."
No. Etienne was not amongst the dead. How, then, had he escaped?
"Search the premises--search the woods--stop the paths across the morass--men and dogs, all of you. Better all the rest had escaped: he shall never, never live to be lord of Aescendune." ”

“ Etienne, like a silent witness day and night, had pointed upward to the great beyond, to the immeasurable depths of stars, away from this world of struggle, passion, and human desire. Men had fought, schemed, died, and been forgotten since the rising sun first turned its fane to golden fire ”

“ May those yet to come continue to bear the torch of Eton, handed down from distant generations, bravely aloft, whilst never ceasing to keep before their eyes the duty of delivering it to their successors, its flame bright and brilliant as of old. ”

“ He lay in deep remorse, knowing that he still owed his life to the forbearance, and more than forbearance, with which he had been treated.
"If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head."
Etienne now felt these coals of fire.
He was not all pride and cruelty. His education had made him what he was, and probably, under the same circumstances, with such a father and the training of a Norman castle, many of my young readers who have detested his arrogance would have been like him, more or less. ”

“ A man of fine taste, he also possessed a large fund of vivacity and spirits, which, with his unvarying kindness, made him very popular among his pupils; indeed, only at Eton itself could there have been a more delightful life, regarded from the boyish point of view, than that which we led in those summer months, fishing, bathing, bird’s-nesting. ”

“ IT was to go and see their friend Jean that Roger, Marcel, Bernard, Jacques, and Etienne set out along the broad highroad that winds like a handsome yellow riband through the fields and meadows. Now they are off. They start all abreast; it is the best way. Only there is one defect in the arrangement this time; Etienne is too little to keep up.
He tries hard and puts his best foot foremost. His short legs stretch their widest. He swings his arms into the bargain. But he is too little; he cannot go as fast as his companions. He falls behind because he is too small; it is no use. ”

“ Eton ranks, manfully and stoutly, for a whole year, are first seasoned with salt and then separately described in little poems which must be as salted and graceful as possible. Next, they make epigrams against the new boys, one vying with another to surpass in all elegance of speech and in witticisms. Whatever comes to the lips may be uttered freely so long as it is in Latin, courteous, and free from scurrility. ”

“ At Eton he formed one of his romantic attachments for a youth of his own age. He seems now, as ever after, to have felt the yearning for perfect sympathy in some human being; as one idol fell short of his self-formed ideal, he sought for another. This was not the nature to be trained by bullying and flogging, though sympathy and reason would never find him irresponsive. ”

“ He had cruelly slain young Eadwin, and the mother of the murdered lad--for he knew her--had rescued him from what his conscience told him would have been a deserved fate, at least at the hands of the English.
There are crises in all men's lives--and this was one in the life of Etienne--when they choose good or evil. ”

“ The impression he made at Cambridge corresponded to his position at Eton. Every one interested in him agreed that he might have taken a high place if his motives had been of a more pushing sort, and if he had not, instead of regarding studies as instruments of success, hampered himself with the notion that they were to feed motive and opinion—a notion which set him criticising methods and arguing against his freight and harness when he should have been using all his might to pull. ”

“ Beyond this, however, and the release from shirking the masters, his position was in no wise altered or improved.
Fifty years ago Eton in respect to school work somewhat resembled an oriental state in which the first symptoms of modernisation are beginning [49] to appear. In the main the old classical traditions commanded a rigid adherence, boys with a totally insufficient knowledge of Greek being by a polite fiction supposed to be able to construe Homer with ease, whilst dunces who could not write a sentence in correct English were every week obliged to show up a copy of Latin verses. ”

“ Etienne began his tale, and the reader will easily guess that Wilfred's character fared very badly at his hands--that without any wilful falsehood, of which indeed this proud young Norman was incapable, so distorted a version of the facts known to our readers was presented, that the abbot shuddered at the daring bloodthirstiness and impiety of one so young as this English lad.
"It is enough--thou shalt have audience with the king at once. I can obtain it for thee; God's justice shall not ever sleep, and William is His chosen instrument. ”

“ Edicon struck the chord aright, and Theodore's heart replied, though his lips were silent. "These men," continued the Hunnish chief, pointing to the barbarians, who were again seated round the fire, and took but little notice either of Theodore or their newly-arrived companions, who had followed him with Edicon--"these men have been chosen by the king himself, not because they speak thy language better than others in the camp, but because they are known as faithful and just. They will accompany thee back into our land; and, though they go with regret, thou wilt find them true and trustworthy. ”

“ One came up roaring with open mouth to devour him, when he struck it with his wand, and laid it in an instant dead at his feet. He soon came to the Ettin's castle, where he knocked, and was admitted. The old woman who sat by the fire warned him of the terrible Ettin, and what had been the fate of his brother; but he was not to be daunted. The monster soon came in, saying:
“Snouk but and snouk ben, I find the smell of an earthly man; Be he living, or be he dead, His heart shall be kitchen to my bread.” ”