ANNALS OF ETON.*

ETON has found many historians, and, as the author of this

volume confesses, it is impossible to write a new history of the famous school without incurring a heavy debt of obliga- tion to predecessors in the same field. Mr. Sterry, however, has not only made handsome acknowledgment of all such debts, but has fairly justified his own intrusion into the well- filled ranks by his own gleanings, as well as by the pleasant way in which he presents the gleanings of others. It is true that Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte, Messrs. Willis and Clark, and other collectors of Etonian annals have left but scanty pickings for the late corner. Nevertheless, Mr.

Sterry has found much original matter in his own re- searches, and may be as fairly congratulated on that score as on the interest and charm of a very well-written book. One might wish, however, that he had been more successful in his search for old letters and diaries, which may have possibly been preserved among Etonian families, that would give us a glimpse of an Eton boy's life in the old times. Such a source of information would undoubtedly afford a more lively and entertaining idea of the old Eton life than could be obtained from the dry formality of the school statutes and records. As it is, Mr. Starry has to fall back upon the well- known Paston letters and quote once more from the cor- respondence of the Eton Oppidan who, about the end of the fifteenth century, wrote to his parents for clothes, pocket- money, and permission to come home on leave in much the same fashion as does his nineteenth-century successor to- day. In one respect, however, William Fasten was decidedly more precocious than the modern Etonian. We doubt whether any sixth-form boy of our times would write from school a businesslike proposition for his own marriage, with a cold-blooded description of the young " jentylwoman " whom h3 desired to honour with his hand.

The light thrown upon old Eton life by some of its statutes, especially the disciplinary statutes, is sometimes

not a little curious. For instance :—

" The Founder provides in Statute XIX. that no scholar, fellow, chaplain, or other minister or servant of the College, shall keep or have hunting dogs, nets for hunting, ferrets, falcons or hawks, or practise hunting ; nor shall they have or keep among them- selves, or in the College, any ape, bear, fox, stag, hind, deer, badger, or any other rapacious or rare beast, which shall not profit or even harm. Further, the like persons were forbidden to grow long hair or a beard, to wear peaked shoes or moulded hoods, er unless they walked in the town, to carry swords, long knives, or any arms. And lastly, they were forbidden on any account to wear red, green, or white hose."

The spirit, if not the letter, of the last injunction must be somewhat set at naught by the many-hued glories of house. colours, while the Eton beagles still remain a standing defiance to the Founder's prohibition of sport. Masquerading and the enjoyment of the most cruel form of sport seem, indeed, to have always been a staple form of amusement in the school, for the only diversion of which we read in the older records are those of play-acting and bear-baiting. Two young Cavendishes, who joined the school about 1560, relate, among other things, how they saw "bare-baiting and a camell in the Colledge," and paid 3d. for it, "as other schollers dyd." It is rather difficult to realise in these days, when the organised pursuit of cricket, football, and racquets has become so important a part of the ordinary school

• Annate of Eton CoUege. By Wasey Sterry, M.A. London: Metbnen and 0o. (h. ed.]

curriculum, how haphazard were the amusements of an earlier period. And yet it was little more than half-a- century ago that the Eton boy actually drove his hoop, "Hoops, tops, marbles, all had their seasons with Fourth Form and Lower School boys. Hoops were stout ash laths bent round and the bark left on, and every year the season of hoops ended with a pitched battle between Collegers and Oppidans." Mr. Arthur Coleridge, another Eton historian and author of a capital book which was recently noticed in these columns, writes :—

"I rather blush to own that for two halves the school went mad on the subject of tops. The School Yard, before lessons began at eleven o'clock of a morning, was humming all over with peg-tops, and he who could split his comrade's plaything into two halves at the first fling was voted an expert."

This should be painful reading for that very correct young gentleman, the modern Eton boy. Perhaps he will be more willing to forgive his school ancestors the somewhat lawless and rebellious spirit which they frequently displayed in the face of authority, and for the rather cruel sports which, until fairly recent times, still exercised upon them an irresistible attraction. Bear-fighting had disappeared, but-

" Dog-fighting, badger-baiting, rat-catching, cock-fighting, could all be enjoyed in Bachelors Acre or on the Brocas. and the 'cads' who haunted the Wall varied the more legitimate trade of 'sock' vending with the purveying of these questionable amuse- ments, and the encouragement of every sort of wickedness. Why they were tolerated so long, except on the same principle that it was suggested that the Christopher should not be abolished, namely to teach resistance to temptation, is impossible to say. The Reverend C. A. Wilkinson tells the story of one boy com- plained of to Keats for keeping his own badger in his room. /Coate shouldered his birch and harangued the criminal while the taking down' was carried on. His conduct was disgraceful, he shirked his tutor, he got up no lessons for school, he had been seen carrying his own badger-bag on the Brocas, and another day actually going up town with his cock under his arm ; if he did not mend his ways he would live unrespected and die unregretted, and—and—give me another birch. I have no opinion of a boy who keeps a badger."

Of Keats, the most famous of all Eton Head-Masters, the author has much to say. Innumerable stories have been told of his fiery temper, his peculiar appearance, and his strong faith in the efficacy of a birchrod ; many of them purely apocryphaL All the world knows Kinglake's picturesque description of the little man who wore "a fancy dress partly resembling the costume of Napoleon, and partly that of a widow woman," and has heard Keate's famous comment on the beatitude : " ' Blessed are the pure in heart.' Mind that.

It's your duty to be pure in heart. If you are not pure in heart, I'll flog yon,"—but it would be a great mistake to regard Keats as merely an irascible pedagogue of eccentric speech and manners. He did believe in flogging, and when the occasion arose flogged wholesale—witness the famous instance when he mistook his lists and flogged all the candidates for confirmation—also he could not be induced to trust his boys, but for all that he was a man of generous temper and a noble nature as well as of indomitable courage, and deserved well of a school which has certainly always kept his memory green. Of another great and better loved Head- Master the author is able to write from personal knowledge. The schoolboy traditions that have gathered round the memory of Dr. Hawthey--nitidissimus—are already almost as numerous as those concerning Keats.

The evolution of that microcosm, a public school, is full of suggestive interest. The gradual changes that have taken place at Eton, and the slow growth of the old Foundation, from the school that is shown in Malim's Consuetudinarium to the school that we know to-day, reflect faithfully in their way the changes and the growth of the greater world outside. For which reason Mr. Sterry's history of his old school may well appeal to a wider circle of readers than that of Etonians.

In any case, it deserves to be read as a piece of history, not without an importance of its own, skilfully compiled and

excellently written.