Part 18 (2/2)

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Nay, I do not object to conversation on any subject. I object to after-dinner lectures. I have had some unfortunate experiences. I have found what began in conversation end in a lecture. I have, on different occasions, met several men, who were in that respect all alike. Once started they never stopped. The rest of the good company, or rather the rest which without them would have been good company, was no company. No one could get in a word. They went on with one unvarying stream of monotonous desolating sound. This makes me tremble when a discussion begins. I sit in fear of a lecture.

_Lord Curryfin._ Well, you and I have lectured, but never after dinner.

We do it when we have promised it, and when those who are present expect it. After dinner, I agree with you, it is the most doleful blight that can fall on human enjoyment.

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ I will give you one or two examples of these postprandial inflictions. One was a great Indian reformer. He did not open his mouth till he had had about a bottle and a half of wine. Then he burst on us with a declamation on all that was wrong in India, and its remedy. He began in the Punjab, travelled to Calcutta, went southward, got into the Temple of Juggernaut, went southward again, and after holding forth for more than an hour, paused for a moment. The man who sate next him attempted to speak: but the orator clapped him on the arm, and said: 'Excuse me: now I come to Madras.' On which his neighbour jumped up and vanished. Another went on in the same way about currency.

His first hour's talking carried him just through the Restriction Act of ninety-seven. As we had then more than half-a-century before us, I took my departure. But these were two whom topography and chronology would have brought to a close. The bore of all bores was the third. His subject had no beginning, middle, nor end. It was education. Never was such a journey through the desert of mind: the Great Sahara of intellect. The very recollection makes me thirsty.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ If all the nonsense which, in the last quarter of a century, has been talked on all other subjects were thrown into one scale, and all that has been talked on the subject of education alone were thrown into the other, I think the latter would preponderate.

_Lord Curryfin._ We have had through the whole period some fine specimens of nonsense on other subjects: for instance, with a single exception, political economy.

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ I understand your lords.h.i.+p's politeness as excepting the present company. You need not except me. I am 'free to confess,' as they say 'in another place,' that I have talked a great deal of nonsense on that subject myself.

_Lord Curryfin._ Then, we have had latterly a mighty ma.s.s on the purification of the Thames.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Allowing full weight to the two last-named ingredients, they are not more than a counterpoise to Compet.i.tive Examination, which is also a recent exotic belonging to education.

_Lord Curryfin._ Patronage, it used to be alleged, considered only the fitness of the place for the man, not the fitness of the man for the place. It was desirable to reverse this.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ True: but--

'dum vitant stulli vitium, in contraria currunl.' {1}

1 When fools would from one vice take flight. They rush into its opposite.--Hor. Sal. i. 2, 24.

Questions which can only be answered by the parrotings of a memory crammed to disease with all sorts of heterogeneous diet can form no test of genius, taste, judgment, or natural capacity. Compet.i.tive Examination takes for its _norma_: 'It is better to learn many things ill than one thing well'; or rather: 'It is better to learn to gabble about everything than to understand anything.' This is not the way to discover the wood of which Mercuries are made. I have been told that this precious scheme has been borrowed from China: a pretty fountain-head for moral and political improvement: and if so, I may say, after Petronius: 'This windy and monstrous loquacity has lately found its way to us from Asia, and like a pestilential star has blighted the minds of youth otherwise rising to greatness.'{1}

1 Nuper ventosa isthaec et enormis loquacitas Athenas ex Asia commigravit, animosque juvenum, ad magna surgentes, veluti pestilenti quodam sidere afflavit.

_Lord Curryfin._ There is something to be said on behalf of applying the same tests, addressing the same questions, to everybody.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I shall be glad to hear what can be said on that behalf.

Lord Curryfin (after a pause). 'Ma.s.s,' as the second grave-digger says in _Hamlet_, 'I cannot tell.'

A chorus of laughter dissolved the sitting.

CHAPTER XX

ALGERNON AND MORGANA--OPPORTUNITY AND REPENTANCE--THE FOREST IN WINTER

Les violences qu'on se fait pour s'empecher d'aimer sont souvent plus cruelles que les rigueurs de ce qu'on aime.

--La Rochefoucauld.

The winter set in early. December began with intense frost. Mr.

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