THE LATE MASTER OF TRINITY.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Bishop Welldon in his interesting letter says that when he succeeded the late Dr. Montagu Butler at Harrow he was told that because of the nobility of Butler's ideal " the small every- day faults of school life were apt to become a little exaggerated in his eyes." It is difficult to believe that as a Head-Master, or in any other capacity, Butler can have shown himself extreme to mark what was done amiss. He always seemed to be one of those persons who by a natural instinct see the good in other people more clearly than the evil. That he was alive to the danger— which specially besets the zealous schoolmaster—of exaggerating both the faults and the virtues of boys may be inferred from a discerning remark of his with regard to F. W. Farrar, a man who in many of his gifts and qualities, as well as in the circum- stances of his career, formed a singularly close parallel to Butler himself. Farrar (he wrote), when preaching in the Harrow school chapel, "seemed always to have before him two haunting visions, the one of boyish innocence, the other of boyish wicked- ness. . . . To some of us he appeared sometimes to see these two great extremes out of their due proportion, and to be less clear-sighted as to the wide region which lies between them" (Life of Dean Farrar, by his son, 1904, p. 140).—I am, Sir, &c.,
C. L. D.
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