“His life here was always joyous, a fearless, keen boyhood, spent sans peur et sans reproche.  Many will remember him as fleet of foot and of lasting powers, winning the mile and the steeplechase in 1871, and the walking race in 1875.  As master of the Beagles in 1875, he showed himself to possess all the qualities of a keen sportsman, with an instinctive knowledge of the craft.”  On this last sentence Arnold fastened with his characteristic insistence, and used it to point the moral which he was always trying to teach.  The Barbarian, as “for shortness we had accustomed ourselves to call” a member of the English upper classes, even when “adult and rigid,” had often “invaluable qualities.”  “It is hard for him, no doubt, to enter into the Kingdom of God—­hard for him to believe in the sentiment of the ideal life transforming the life which now is, to believe in it and even to serve it—­hard, but not impossible.  And in the young the qualities take a brighter colour, and the rich and magical time of youth adds graces of its own to them; and then, in happy natures, they are irresistible.”

And so he goes on to give a truly appreciative and affectionate sketch of young Arthur Mynors; and then he quotes the sentence about the Master of the Beagles, and on this he comments thus:  “The aged Barbarian will, upon this, admiringly mumble to us his story how the battle of Waterloo was won in the playing-fields of Eton.  Alas! disasters have been prepared in those playing-fields as well as victories; disasters due to inadequate mental training—­to want of application, knowledge, intelligence, lucidity.  The Eton playing-fields have their great charm, notwithstanding; but with what felicity of unconscious satire does that stroke of ‘the Master of the Beagles’ hit off our whole system of provision of public secondary schools; a provision for the fortunate and privileged few, but for the many, for the nation, ridiculously impossible!” This is his last word on the Public Schools, as that title is conventionally understood.  He had a much fuller and more searching criticism for the schools in which the great Middle Class is educated.

It may perhaps be fairly questioned whether great humourists much enjoy the humour of other people.  If we apply this question to Arnold’s case and seek to answer it by his published works, we shall probably answer in the negative.  From first to last, he takes little heed of humorous writers or humorous books.  Even in those great authors who are masters of all moods, it is the grave, rather than the humorous mood, which he chooses for commendation.  He was a devout Shakespearian, but it is difficult to recall an allusion to Shakespeare’s humour, except in the rather oblique form of Dogberry as the type of German officialdom.  Swift he quoted with admirable effect, but it was Swift the reviler, not Swift the jester.  He says that he made a “wooden Oxford audience laugh aloud with two pages of Heine’s wit”; but the lecture, as we read it, shows