EPILOGUE TO DIPSYCHUS.
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I don’t very well understand what it’s all about,’ said my uncle. ‘Iwon’t say I didn’t drop into a doze while the young man was drivellingthrough his latter soliloquies. But there was a great deal that wasunmeaning, vague, and involved; and what was most plain, was least decentand least moral.’ ‘Dear sir,’ said I, ‘says the proverb—“Needs must when the devil drives;”and if the devil is to speak——’ ‘Well,’ said my uncle, ‘why should he? Nobody asked him. Not that hedidn’t say much which, if only it hadn’t been for the way he said it, andthat it was he who said it, would have been sensible enough.’ ‘But, sir,’ said I, ‘perhaps he wasn’t a devil after all. That’s thebeauty of the poem; nobody can say. You see, dear sir, the thing which itis attempted to represent is the conflict between the tender conscienceand the world. Now, the over-tender conscience will, of course,exaggerate the wickedness of the world; and the Spirit in my poem may bemerely the hypothesis or subjective imagination formed——’ ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, my dear boy,’ interrupted my uncle, ‘don’tgo into the theory of it. If you’re wrong in it, it makes bad worse;if you’re right, you may be a critic, but you can’t be a poet. Andthen you know very well I don’t understand all those new words. But asfor that, I quite agree that consciences are much too tender in yourgeneration—schoolboys’ consciences, too! As my old friend the Canon saysof the Westminster students, “They’re all so pious.” It’s all Arnold’sdoing; he spoilt the public schools.’ ‘My dear uncle,’ said I, ‘how can so venerable a sexagenarian utter sojuvenile a paradox? How often have I not heard you lament the idlenessand listlessness, the boorishness and vulgar tyranny, the brutish mannersalike, and minds——’ ‘Ah!’ said my uncle, ‘I may have fallen in occasionally with the talkof the day; but at seventy one begins to see clearer into the bottomof one’s mind. In middle life one says so many things in the way ofbusiness. Not that I mean that the old schools were perfect, any morethan we old boys that were there. But whatever else they were or did,they certainly were in harmony with the world, and they certainly did notdisqualify the country’s youth for after-life and the country’s service.’ ‘But, my dear sir, this bringing the schools of the country into harmonywith public opinion is exactly——’ ‘Don’t interrupt me with public opinion, my dear nephew; you’ll quote mea leading article next. “Young men must be young men,” as the worthy headof your college said to me touching a case of rustication. “My dear sir,”said I, “I only wish to heaven they would be; but as for my own nephews,they seem to me a sort of hobbadi-hoy cherub, too big to be innocent, andtoo simple for anything else. They’re full of the notion of the worldbeing so wicked and of their taking a higher line, as they call it. Ionly fear they’ll never take any line at all.” What is the true purposeof education? Simply to make plain to the young understanding the lawsof the life they will have to enter. For example—that lying won’t do,thieving still less; that idleness will get punished; that if they arecowards, the whole world will be against them; that if they will havetheir own way, they must fight for it. As for the conscience, mamma, Itake it—such as mammas are now-a-days, at any rate—has probably set thatagoing fast enough already. What a blessing to see her good little childcome back a brave young devil-may-care!’ ‘Exactly, my dear sir. As if at twelve or fourteen a roundabout boy, withhis three meals a day inside him, is likely to be over-troubled withscruples.’ ‘Put him through a strong course of confirmation and sacraments, backedup with sermons and private admonitions, and what is much the same asauricular confession, and really, my dear nephew, I can’t answer for itbut he mayn’t turn out as great a goose as you—pardon me—_were_ about theage of eighteen or nineteen.’ ‘But to have passed _through_ that, my dear sir! surely that can be noharm.’ ‘I don’t know. Your constitutions don’t seem to recover it, quite. We didwithout these foolish measles well enough in my time.’ ‘Westminster had its Cowper, my dear sir; and other schools had theirsalso, mute and inglorious, but surely not few.’ ‘Ah, ah! the beginning of troubles——’ ‘You see, my dear sir, you must not refer it to Arnold, at all at all.Anything that Arnold did in this direction——’ ‘Why, my dear boy, how often have I not heard from you, how he used toattack offences, not as offences—the right view—against discipline, butas sin, heinous guilt, I don’t know what beside! Why didn’t he flog themand hold his tongue? Flog them he did, but why preach?’ ‘If he did err in this way, sir, which I hardly think, I ascribe it tothe spirit of the time. The real cause of the evil you complain of, whichto a certain extent I admit, was, I take it, the religious movement ofthe last century, beginning with Wesleyanism, and culminating at last inPuseyism. This over-excitation of the religious sense, resulting in thisirrational, almost animal irritability of consciences, was, in many ways,as foreign to Arnold as it is proper to——’ ‘Well, well, my dear nephew, if you like to make a theory of it, praywrite it out for yourself nicely in full; but your poor old uncle doesnot like theories, and is moreover sadly sleepy.’ ‘Good night, dear uncle, good night. Only let me say you six moreverses.’ _DIPSYCHUS CONTINUED._
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