FASTI ETONENSES.*
MR. BENSON must be a man of energy, since he has com- posed this book at the same time that he was writing the Life of his father, the late Archbishop, and carrying on the distracting occupation of Eton Mastership. His method is to string together a line of biographical notices of the most dis- tinguished Etonians from the day of Henry VI. ta that of Mr. Gladstone, and to hang thereon here and there bits of information as to the customs and manners of the school itself at various periods. It is a well-written and well- printed volume, and it is adorned with many portraits from the interesting collection at Eton. The main links in the chain are the Lives of the Provosts and Head-Masters of the College. During the first half of the seventeenth cen- tury the Eton Provostship, a post in the Crown's gift, was keenly competed for by men of the great world with academic leanings. Sir Henry Savile, who edited a magnificent edition of Chrysostom, and died in 1622, was a man of this kind; and yet more so was his successor, Sir Henry Wotton, who shone in the diplomatic service of King James L The great Bacon, when fallen, tried for the post, and thought that it would be "a pretty cell for my fortune." During the Commonwealth, Lord Rona. who was Speaker in the "Barebone's Parliament," held the office. After the Restoration the Provostship was, as it still is, usually given to an ex-Head-Master, or to a " lower Master," or to some Eton divine of mild distinction; and no Eton Provost seems to have been much in touch with the outside world until Hawtrey filled that throne. It would, we think, be good for Eton if a return were made to the earlier practice, and Etonians who bad lived in those wide fields of action to which so many Etonians are called, were offered in their age this pleasant retirement. Eton is apt to be too self-absorbed; and a man like Lord Dufferin, for instance, or Sir Alfred Lyall, at the Provost's Lodge would give to the society of masters an inlet of fresh air from without.
Eton has slowly attained to undisputed hegemony among English schools. Different, indeed, from the College of Priests founded by Henry VI., with its educational annexe of seventy scholars, its Head-Master and Hostiarius, or Usher, is modern Eton, with its varied staff of over • Runt Ettmensa. By A. C. Benson. Eton : R. Ingalton Drake. [ale, net sixty masters. In 1678 there were two hundred boys, in 1780 there were five hundred, in 1870 about eight hundred. Now there are over one thousand. Daring the eighteenth century Westminster was a formidable rival; at the be. ginning of the nineteenth century leading Whig families sent their boys to Harrow ; later on Rugby was in the running. But now Eton more and more draws to itself magnetically all the boys of the more wealthy and aristocratic families. In some ways Eton life has changed much in modern times. Mr. Benson observes that at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth Eton life was very different from the present school life, and more resembled that of the University. "There was no athletic organisation, and no definite tradition to dictate how every moment was to be employed." One result was, perhaps, that boys were then intellectually older for their age than they are now. Those were the days of the brilliant literary produc- tions, the .1ficrocosnt, and later the Etonian. Mr. Benson gives, of course, the classic anecdotes about the tyrannical reign of Dr. Keate. Is it known that he once even flogged Mr. Gladstone for a lapse from strict morality in performing his duties in "marking in "P Mr. Gladstone supplied Mr. Benson with several good anecdotes of those days. One is of Bishop Pelham, of Lincoln, who, addressing Eton confir- mation candidates, said : " Let me urge you to maintain the practice of piety without lukewarmness, and above all with- out enthusiasm,"--a very superfluous piece of advice to Eton boys in any age.
Eton has nursed the boyhood of many statesmen of mark. Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Bolingbroke, the first Pitt, the first and second Fox, George Grenville, Lord North, George Canning, the first and second Lord Derbys, Lord Melbourne, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, Randolph Churchill, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Lord Rosebery, are among these. The Indian Vice- royalty has been for a hundred years almost an Eton monopoly, and is now held by one of the most brilliant of living Etonians. Soldiers in abundance have also been bred at Eton, headed by the great name of Wellington. At present about one Eton boy out of five enters the Army, and the Eton Chronicle gave some weeks ago, as a first list, the names of four hundred Eton officers serving in South Africa. The number must now be far larger. Eton might say to her sons, Tu regere imperio populos Eontane memento, &c. Certainly, like Rome, she mostly leaves the arts and sciences to others. Yet in these fields Eton is not altogether unrepresented. She has chanced now and then on a poet, such as Waller, Shelley, Swinbarne. She has brought forth a novelist in Henry Fielding ; a man of science, Robert Boyle; a philosopher or two, such as Henry More, the Platonist. In music she is now represented by Sir Hubert Parry, and, fitly enough, the conquering tune of " Rule Britannia " was composed by an Etonian, Arne. In religion Eton can boast of Charles Simeon, the great Evangelical, and in the active line, of Bishop Selwyn and the martyred Patteson. In law she produced Camden, and in our days, FitzJames Stephen. Bat, on the whole, Eton men have been pre-eminent neither in art nor in science, neither in learning, nor in theology, nor in juris- prudence. The great work of the school has consisted in moulding after a firm and constant pattern the character of the ordinary English gentleman. Calmness, endurance, good form, suppression of all outward appearance of emotion, indeed of emotion itself, power to rule oneself, and therefore others, dislike to theory, adherence to custom and traditions loyalty to superiors, consideration for the feelings of subor- dinates, hatred of pompousness and priggishness, dread of ridicule; these are the marks of the kind of Englishmen educated at Eton, and at schools influenced by the example of Eton.
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