AN ORDINARY MORTAL.*

THERE is room for a little alarm as to the effect which Mr. Liddell's book may have upon that large class in which he professes to be included. Why should not other ordinary mortals do what one ordinary mortal has done P The answer, we fear, is that in this case nature or circumstances have com- bined to make one ordinary mortal very unlike others. We have been very much amused by Mr. Liddell's recollections, but the interest of his " Notes " hangs in a great measure upon an experience which has made his life exceptional. There are not many ordinary mortals who combine with such excellent social opportunities so retentive a memory and so light a touch in recording what that memory has preserved for his readers. When we have said this the critic's function is at an end. All that is left him is the agreeable duty of making selections from a very interesting volume.

The chapter on Eton will please the many friends of the present Provost. " Warre," says Mr. Liddell, "was brimful of energy, he was profuse in his exhortations on all topics, just as he was not content with the routine work, but turned on new kinds of private business and gave prizes for essays and verses. When he had a house be hardly ever missed coming round after we had gone to bed, and occasionally appeared at odd times and had a talk more in the style of an elder brother than a tutor." This encourage- ment of verse composition had in one instance a striking result. The subject was David and Goliath, and Mr. Liddell's memory, or his common-place book, retains these three lines by one of his rivals 7.— " Tum digit David, volo pugnare Goliath.

Bespondit Saulns, non potes vincere monstrum Bed dixit David, ego possum vincere monstrum."

" In their canine simplicity," he adds, " they always struck me as quite Homeric." Something of the same praise may be given to a couplet from the verses with which kr. _Liddell himself won a prize for the best English epigram on the Prince of Wales's Visit to America :—

"Ladies admire the beauty of his nose,

And gentlemen take patterns from his clothes."

The mathematical limitations of Eton in those days may be inferred from the shock Mr. Liddell received when the father Notes from the Life of an. Ordinary Bartel. By A. 0. Liddell, C.B. London: Murray [10s. ed. net.] of a friend with whom he was staying requested his son—in the middle of dinner, too—to state the fifth proposition of Euclid algebraically: "This terrible test was met with pro- found silence ; I doubt if anyone in Eton had ever conceived such a possibility. It certainly appeared to our minds to be contrary to the laws of nature that anything in Euclid could he solved out of algebra, which was another book." But the period of his Eton life which seems to have left most mark on Mr. Liddell was the few weeks he was under Johnson, after- wards Cory, the author of lonica. In that short time "he kindled an interest in scholarship and poetry which I had never had. Before I was up to him, though fairly industrious, I bad never taken thought on what we were trying to do when we translated or composed, but just went straight ahead, sub- stituting an English word for a Latin or Greek one, or a Latin or Greek word for an English one, as the case might be. Johnson first gave me an inkling that this was not enough, that in translation one should write English and in composi- tion write Latin or Greek, not merely alter the words of one language into another."

At Oxford Mr. Liddell made acquaintance with the most distinguished, perhaps, of the many groups of tutors which have made Balliol famous. Jowett, T. H. Green, James Riddell, Edwin Palmer, Newman, and Henry Smith were an extraordinary combination for a single college. Of Jowett's unique position Mr. Liddell says frankly that it has always " rather puzzled" him. "Hi had none of the brilliant gifts of mind or body which usually attract youth; he was not a great scholar or lecturer.., . . Nor was he a great saint or kindler of high moral ideas." Mr. Liddell draws an interest- ing comparison between him and T. H. Green :— "lowed was very different from an ordinary Englishman, resembling in everything but the austerity of his morals an abbe of the old l'rench type, a would-be man of the world, brilliant with a sort of silvery radiance, taking an intellectual rather than a sympathetic interest in men and things. With all his virtue he was hardly a man, and one could not imagine him ever having gone wrong or ever filling any other post but that of a Don. Green, on the other hand, was a Briton to the backbone, of the old Puritan type. . . . He was silent and expressed himself with difficulty, but you had no doubt as to the depth of his sympathy, and felt that, except for his practised self-control, he was a man of like passions with yourself. There was no touch of worldliness in his composition; indeed he was by nature a recluse, only his stern sense of duty forcing him to take part in municipal affairs. Jowett was always the revered schoolmaster, in whose company we endeavoured to be virtuous for fear of exciting his displeasure. But Green was an elder brother, in whose society we were ashamed to be selfish or mean, and who taught rather by example than precept."

In 1870 Mr. Liddell settled in London, and for a time gave

himself up to society. But for a young man society meant dancing, and this was an art he still had to master. But a course of private lessons did all that was wanted and supplied the learner with a " note." " This was a very trying per-

formance. I was turned into a room with two active young

women, who in turn played the piano and whirled me round on a stretched crumb-cloth. As luck would have it, the house was being painted outside, and the time of my lesson corre- sponded with the dinner hour of the painters, who sat in a row watching my efforts and making sarcastic remarks, which were perhaps the more telling because they could not be heard through the glass." The year's holiday which his father had prescribed as a preparation for serious work came to an end with the Epiphany term of 1871, and for some time Mr.

Liddell began each day with an hour's study of " an exhilarating work called Williams on Real Property.' " After Easter, however, dancing again claimed a considerable part of his time. His father " bad always held strongly to the view that it was part of a young man's education to take his fill of society during the early years of his life." It was a view that a popular son was not likely to quarrel with. But it is worth recording that Mr. Liddell's own judgment is against it. "It is not merely that it prevents regularity of work, leads to desultory habits, and accustoms its votary to a mode of life which renders discomfort difficult. Its great drawback is that it softens a young man's whole fibre, sur- rounding him with shallow standards in morals and taste, and, substituting persiflage for earnestness, prevents him taking things seriously till it is too late." As is the wont of

young barristers with friends at Court, Mr. Liddell more than once went as Judge's Marshal. Of Baron Martin's peculiar attitude towards literature he gives some quaint illustrations. Martin had a sound know ledge of commercial law and "a pro- digious acquaintance with racing history." But there his intel- lectual equipment ended. " Shakespeare," he once said," is an enormously overrated man." He described the complexities of an election petition as so great that " neither Minos, nor Rhadamanthus, nor any other angel from heaven " was fit to try one. In one vacation when he was much enjoying himself at Folkestone, "sitting on the beach and reading the new Bankruptcy Act," he announced to his family that he was going to Canterbury. They felt some surprise, and on his return asked him what he thought of the cathedral. " What cathedral F " replied the Baron. " Why, didn't you go to Canterbury to see the cathedral," said Lady Martin. " Cathedral," answered old Sam, " what should I want with a cathedral? I went to see the cattle show, of course." A year in Chambers with Charles Bowen followed. Unfortunately for his pupils it was the year of the Tichborne trial, and Bowen, as Coleridge's junior, had little time to spare for anything else. Nor indeed had his pupils. Those who can recall the universal excitement which the case caused, and the array of professional ability which it called into play, will easily imagine bow it must have caught hold of the pupil- room of one of the counsel employed. " I remember Coleridge's head clerk putting his head into our room one day and saying in a voice of dignified delight, "E have a Ha Ho on his right arm.."' Once Mr. Liddell was more directly concerned with the trial. He was just leaving Chambers when Bowen rushed in "and asked me if I would like to come and bear the examination of a dying man which was to be taken on commission." He proved to be the son of a farmer, to whose house Arthur Orton had been sent for his health. The witness's business was to throw buckets of cold water over the invalid every morning, and this enabled him to identify him with the Claimant by various physical peculiarities.

There is an amusing chapter dealing with Mr. Liddell's experience as Ecclesiastical Secretary to the Lord Chancellor. The vacant livings of all classes then averaged about one a week. This mearirtto the private secretary a correspondence varying from five to fifty letters a day and much interviewing. The applicants themselves were naturally insistent ; even Members of Parliament could not be convinced that their recommendations were not a necessary part of the equipment of a successful candidate. In the late eighties it was uni- versally believed that the Lord Chancellor's patronage was given on strictly political grounds, and in one case Mr. Liddell got a letter from a candidate informing the Lord Chancellor that " his strenuous efforts in his Master's service did not prevent an unobtrusive devotion to the Conservative club twice a week in the evenings." In some cases these " unob- trusive " labours in the interest of the Government had but a passing connexion with any particular party. Mr. Liddell has known several cases where, on a change of Govern- ment, a letter claiming reward for political services has been found to be almost identical in terms with a former letter from the same man addressed to the party which had left office." The general rule as regards opinions was to avoid change where it was possible, though when the living was a very poor one this respect for "continuity of teaching" could not always be shown. At all events it had to be waived in the case of benefices which no one else would take. An Evangelical lady wrote to Mr. Liddell, " We looked for a cedar of Lebanon and you have sent us a cabbage." From time to time identity of names led to difficulties, as where a Radical Home Ruler was by mistake presented to a parish a great part of which was owned by an ardent Conservative. Among other complaints afterwards urged against this for- tunate presentee was one that "having quarrelled with the squire, who kept the hounds," be preached a sermon on Esau, in which he said, "Esau, my brethren, was a real sportsman : he didn't hunt for the subscription."

Much of this volume is made up of extracts from Mr.Liddell's diary. They are good reading, though some will prefer the earlier recollections. These have a vividness of their own which it is bard to retain in a sober chronicle of the days as they pass. But we can confidently assure our readers that in neither part of his book is Mr. Liddell ever dull.