A Writers Recollections, vol 1 | Page 4

the eidolon he presents to his readers in place of the real human being, one can only regard it as one proof the more of the ease with which a certain kind of ability outwits itself.]
He had been his father's special favorite among the elder children, as shown by some verses in my keeping addressed to him as a small boy, at different times, by "the Doctor." Those who know their _Tom Brown's Schooldays_ will perhaps remember the various passages in the book where the softer qualities of the man whom "three hundred reckless childish boys" feared with all their hearts, "and very little besides in heaven or earth," are made plain in the language of that date. Arthur's illness, for instance, when the little fellow, who has been at death's door, tells Tom Brown, who is at last allowed to see him: "You can't think what the Doctor's like when one's ill. He said such brave and tender and gentle things to me--I felt quite light and strong after it, and never had any more fear." Or East's talk with the Doctor, when the lively boy of many scrapes has a moral return upon himself, and says to his best friend: "You can't think how kind and gentle he was, the great grim man, whom I've feared more than anybody on earth. When I stuck, he lifted me, just as if I'd been a little child. And he seemed to know all I'd felt, and to have gone through it all." This tenderness and charm of a strong man, which in Stanley's biography is specially mentioned as growing more and more visible in the last months of his life, was always there for his children. In a letter written in 1828 to his sister, when my father as a small child not yet five was supposed to be dying, Arnold says, trying to steel himself against the bitterness of coming loss, "I might have loved him, had he lived, too dearly--you know how deeply I do love him now." And three years later, when "little Tom," on his eighth birthday, had just said, wistfully--with a curious foreboding instinct, "I think that the eight years I have now lived will be the happiest of my life," Arnold, painfully struck by the words, wrote some verses upon them which I still possess. "The Doctor" was no poet, though the best of his historical prose--the well-known passage in the Roman History, for instance, on the death of Marcellus--has some of the essential notes of poetry--passion, strength, music. But the gentle Wordsworthian quality of his few essays in verse will be perhaps interesting to those who are aware of him chiefly as the great Liberal fighter of eighty years ago. He replies to his little son:
Is it that aught prophetic stirred Thy spirit to that ominous word, Foredating in thy childish mind The fortune of thy Life's career-- That naught of brighter bliss shall cheer What still remains behind?
Or is thy Life so full of bliss That, come what may, more blessed than this Thou canst not be again? And fear'st thou, standing on the shore, What storms disturb with wild uproar The years of older men?
* * * * *
At once to enjoy, at once to hope-- That fills indeed the largest scope Of good our thoughts can reach. Where can we learn so blest a rule, What wisest sage, what happiest school, Art so divine can teach?
The answer, of course, in the mouth of a Christian teacher is that in Christianity alone is there both present joy and future hope. The passages in Arnold's most intimate diary, discovered after his death, and published by Dean Stanley, show what the Christian faith was to my grandfather, how closely bound up with every action and feeling of his life. The impression made by his conception of that faith, as interpreted by his own daily life, upon a great school, and, through the many strong and able men who went out from it, upon English thought and feeling, is a part of English religious history.
[Illustration: MATTHEW ARNOLD.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. From a drawing in possession of H. E. Wilberforce, Esq.]
But curiously enough the impression upon his own sons _appeared_, at any rate, to be less strong and lasting than in the case of others. I mean, of course, in the matter of opinion. The famous father died, and his children had to face the world without his guiding hand. Matthew and Tom, William and Edward, the eldest four sons, went in due time to Oxford, and the youngest boy into the Navy. My grandmother made her home at Fox How under the shelter of the fells, with her four daughters, the youngest of whom was only eight when their father died. The devotion of all