THE briefest notice of the Etonians of the eighteenth century would imply a biographical dictionary of half the distinguished names in Church and State. It is only some few, whose school-days are best known to us, that must find record here. Their maturer fame is written in English history; it is in the few and scattered memorials of their boyhood that our special interest lies.

Foremost of such names should stand Horace Walpole; sprung from an Etonian family, he was all his life an Etonian, heart and soul. That fact alone should save him from the charge of heartlessness. Like his great father, he never forgot an Eton schoolfellow. His references to the old school-times have a sort of self-accusing pathos, as if he felt that he was not growing wiser as he grew older, and that the world of folly and fashion was hardening a kindly heart. "The playing-fields of Eton" are his notion of a lost paradise. "An expedition against bargemen" (so early were those hereditary feuds), or a match at cricket," were worth all the pleasures of riper ambition. Alexander, at the head of the world, never tasted the true pleasure that boys enjoy at the head of a public school." Cambridge was a wilderness to him, compared with the "dear scene" he had left. How could Gray "live so near it, without seeing it"? He was at Eton nearly seven years; being entered at ten years old, under Bland as head-master, in 1727, and leaving for King's College (but as a fellowcommoner) in 1734. He made many friendships there, marked by some of the fantastic romance of his day. Gray was there with him, quiet and studious, reading Virgil for amusement in his play-hours, writ

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ing graceful Latin verse, and almost as fond of Eton as himself. With him and with Richard West and Thomas Ashton (afterwards fellow) Horace formed the "quadruple alliance," in which, like Sir William Jones and his friends at Harrow, they figured under heroic names, and appear to have ruled imaginary kingdoms. Walpole himself was Tydeus; Gray, Orosmades; Ashton, Plato; and West, Almanzor. Then, again, he was one of another "triumvirate," as their schoolfellows called them, in which he was associated with George and Henry Montagu. His letter to the former, dated from "The Christopher," when he revisited Eton three years after leaving school, is one of the most charming in all his pleasant correspondence, especially as it breathes no thought but of kindly recollections. Even the memory of a flogging only amuses him, as he looks forward to hearing a sermon on Sunday from his old schoolfellow Ashton, who, when he last saw him in chapel, was "standing funking over against a Conduct to be catechised," and thinks he "shall certainly be put in the bill for laughing in church."

Charles James Fox entered under Dr Barnard in 1758; Francis, the translator of Horace, being his private tutor. He was a troublesome and irregular pupil-"more of a mutineer than a courtier," says one of his contemporaries; yet he gave out flashes of ability from time to time. He had his father to thank for much irrational indulgence; in the middle of his Eton career he took the boy off to Paris and to Spa for four months. He came back to school, as might be expected, not at all improved, "with all the fopperies and follies of a young man.' It speaks volumes for the whole

some discipline of Eton under Barnard, that the boys teased and laughed at him, and the Doctor took the first opportunity of administering a flogging. The two contemporaries of Fox who most distinguished themselves in after life were William Windham and William (afterwards Lord) Grenville; but no school friendship appears to have been formed between them.

But the most remarkable scholar trained under Barnard, in the reputation of all his Eton contemporaries, was one whose memorial has almost perished-Sir James Macdonald of Sleat. "A miracle of talent," George Hardinge calls him, who was in the same remove. He came to Eton with few previous advantages, but a ripe scholar in almost every point but Latin verse. Barnard saw his powers at once, and placed him exceptionally high at his entrance. "Boys," said he to the form, "I am going to put over your heads a boy who cannot write a verse; but I trust you-for I know your generous feelings." The result justified the master in every way. He was "the Marcellus of his day," both at Eton and at the University. But he died early, abroad, before his great abilities were matured.

Dr Foster entered upon his school list, in 1771, the name of perhaps the most elegant Latin scholar whom Eton can boast, Richard Colley Wellesley. As Marquess Wellesley, he will be long remembered there, not only for the honour which he did the school, but for the love which he bore it to his dying day. Years only strengthened his affec

tion for Eton, and distance only increased his longing for the old familiar scenes. In those inimitable school exercises preserved in the 'Musæ Etonenses '-the ode Ad Genium Loci, the elegiacs on the "Willow of Babylon," or those in which he takes his farewell-it is difficult to know whether to admire most the classic beauty of the verse, or the tenderness of the feeling. He was buried by his expressed wish in the college chapel, where his own beautiful Latin lines* record the satisfaction with which he looked forward to resting there. Six weeping willows were planted by his request on the river-bank in different parts of the playing-fields, and a bench fixed at one particular point which commanded his favourite view. His younger brother, the Great Duke, was at Eton a few years afterwards,-a shy retiring boy, who left the school before he had even risen into the Fifth Form, and in whom neither masters nor schoolfellows seem to have detected the germs of future greatness. He, like his brother, loved his old school, and took his two sons to see the place where he had cut his name on the kitchen-door of his dame's house.

Richard Porson was a contemporary of Lord Wellesley, entering as a colleger four years subsequently, but his senior in age. It is more singular that the great scholar should have failed to earn any remarkable distinction there, than that the future hero should have passed unnoticed. They "thought nothing," wrote one of his schoolfellows," of the Norfolk boy," who had come there with such an alarm

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ing reputation. But Porson's early training was deficient, though his powers were great and his classical reading voracious. He was inaccurate in his prosody-a fatal defect at Eton; and his Latin verses, almost the only road to distinction there, were never remarkable. In that, as in other points of elegant scho larship, Lord Wellesley was far his superior. But he was a very popular boy, ready at all games, and clever at schoolboy satire-narrowly escaping the penalty of this dangerous gift in the shape of a thrashing from Charles Simeon, who, strange to say, was a fop at school. Porson addressed an ode to him as "the ugliest boy in Dr Davies's dominions;" but as he had written it with his left hand, Simeon could never bring it home to him. The late age at which Porson entered college gave him no chance of succession to King's. He retained no great love for Eton in after life, perhaps feeling that he had hardly his fair share of success there. "The only thing he recollected with pleasure," he said, was the rathunting in Long Chamber.

Dr Jonathan Davies, one of the assistant-masters, succeeded Foster at this time in the head-mastership. He ruled for nearly twenty years, when (upon his election to the provostship) Dr George Heath succeeded. The school continued to flourish under both, enjoying the especial favour of King George III., who desired that the boys on the foundation should be henceforth called "The King's Scholars." The numbers slowly rose, with occasional fluctuations, reaching 489 in Heath's second year, but declining as low as 357 in his last. Not many details of the administration of either of these masters are readily

to be obtained; but the Eton names were great names still-Grey, Canning, Lamb (Lord Melbourne), were all Etonians, as were a host of those who held office under them: it was pre-eminently the school of statesmen, as Westminster had been of theologians.

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In the first year of the present century Heath resigned, and Joseph Goodall, who had been for eighteen years an assistant - master, elected in his place. Under him the numbers rose to 511-not yet up to the point which had been reached fifty years back under Barnard. Goodall had many of the best qualifications of a master. ripe and excellent scholar and a thorough gentleman, he commanded on those grounds the entire respect of his pupils. His bearing was dignified and courteous, and he looked every inch the head-master of the first school in England; and no man more fully appreciated the position. Eton was his all in all. But there was a lack in his character of some of the harder qualities which his office required. "There was a pleasant joyousness in him," says one of his pupils, "which beamed and overflowed in his face; and it seemed an odd caprice of fortune by which such a jovial spirit was invested with the solemn dignity of a schoolmaster." The blandness and good-nature which made him universally popular both as schoolmaster and as provost, were an element of weakness when he had to cope with the turbulent spirits who will always be found in a large school; and Eton discipline did not improve under his rule. His rich fund of anecdote, sprightly wit, and genial spirit, made his society very much sought in days when those pleasant qualifications

were perhaps more valued than in our more practical generation: and he was a great personal favourite with the King. It was not so much the fault of the individual as of the age, if (as is said) he had a profound respect for the peerage, and could see few defects of scholarship in his more aristocratic pupils.

There was considerable licence in Goodall's days, and at one time heavy complaints were made as to the moral habits of the boys, not without too much foundation. Ascot races were regularly attended by many of the older boys. Hunting and tandem-driving were not uncommon. Henry Matthews, author of the Diary of an Invalid,' a very clever and eccentric boy, drove a tandem right through Eton and Windsor. Billiards were very popular, not only with the boys but with their masters. At Gray's rooms, at the foot of the bridge, says a player of those days, "one had sometimes to give up the table to one's tutor."

The lower-master during most of Goodall's time was John Keate, who ruled his own department, literally as well as metaphorically, with a very vigorous hand. On Dr Goodall's election to the provostship in 1809, Keate succeeded as head-master. His reign was long and successful, though not always peaceful by any means. "Keate's time" is quoted by those who remember it, with various comments, differing probably very much with the character of the individuals who came under his rule, but always as important in Eton's history. He was not a weak ruler, at all events, even if he were not always a judicious one. There were times when he was terribly unpopular, and when the boys rose in actual rebellion; but his firmness and decision carried the school through more than one dangerous crisis without serious damage. Although the numbers at Eton were larger than at any other

public school, and the class of boys might be fairly considered to stand more upon their personal independence, and to be less amenable to rigid discipline, it is remarkable that at Eton there seems to have been none of those determined outbreaks which, in their consequences, were almost the ruin of the smaller schools of Winchester and Harrow, or at least they were more readily suppressed. Possibly the very severity of Keate's discipline, so far as corporal punishment went, acted as a safety-valve. Boys will stand flogging, and have no absurd notions of injured personal honour on that score, whatever modern theorists may hold. It is anything. like interference with recognised privileges, right or wrong, which they resent as an indignity. Their notions of the liberty of the subject are as lively and as strongly defined, however absurd the definition may sometimes be, as those of any independent Englishman of riper years; and no head-master will rule a public school successfully, who has not tact enough to understand and recognise the claim. Either he will spoil the honesty and the manliness of his boys, or he will ruin the interests of his school. School rebellions have been caused, not by severity of discipline, but by its laxity or irregularity, or by some interference, real or imagined, with these popular rights.

Dr Keate's personal appearance has been graphically described by one of his ablest pupils - the well-known author of 'Eothen.' The sketch, if somewhat broadly touched, is drawn with characteristic humour:

"He was little more, if more at all, than five feet in height, and was not very great in girth; but within this space was concentrated the pluck of ten battalions. He had a really noble voice, and this he could modulate with great skill; but he had also the power of quacking like an angry duck, and he almost always adopted this mode of communication in order to inspire re

spect. He was a capital scholar, but his ingenuous learning had not 'softened his manners,' and had permitted them to be fierce'-tremendously fierce. He had such a complete command over his temper-I mean over his good temperthat he scarcely ever allowed it to appear: you could not put him out of humour that is, out of the ill-humour which he thought to be fitting for a head-master. His red shaggy eyebrows were so prominent that he habitually

used them as arms and hands, for the purpose of pointing out any object towards which he wished to direct attention; the rest of his features were equally striking in their way, and were all and all his own. He wore a fancy dress, partly resembling the costume of Napoleon, and partly that of a widow

woman.

The resemblance to Napoleon is to be explained by the fact that all the masters at Eton, up to a comparatively recent date, wore cockedhats, and that Keate retained the fashion when it had been given up by others.

But in spite of some personal eccentricities, and in spite of his vigorous penal discipline, which led to the schoolboy derivation of his name from xew-arn-" dispenser of woe"-his pupils learned to honour and respect him as they grew up, for what one of them justly calls "his unbending moral courage and conscientiousness;" and Eton never enjoyed a higher reputation than under his vigorous rule.

The scene at his taking leave was positively affecting, from the hearty enthusiasm which made the school ring with cheers as he with drew.

Anecdotes of his day abound in all Eton memories. Practical jokes were more common then than now, and there was perhaps an additional enjoyment of them by Keate's pupils from the certain explosion of rage which they called forth from him when discovered. This enjoyment was intense when what may be called the serious business of the school was suddenly interrupted by the disappearance of the flogging-block, an instrument

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of indispensable daily use, which the young Marquess of Waterford and some companions, after a Fourth of June supper, had abstracted, in some mysterious manner, from that chamber of horrors known as the "Library." It was little less than sacrilege in Keate's eyes, and his wrath was terrible; but it was supposed that he soon found out the culprit, and as he was whose escapades were to a certain degree privileged, the matter was allowed to drop. Another young nobleman, disguised in an old gown and cocked-hat, so as to present by moonlight a passable likeness of the Doctor, painted Keate's door a brilliant red one night, before the very eyes of the college watchman, who stood locking on at a respectful distance, wondering what the Doctor could be at, but not questioning his right to do what he would with his own. Amongst other forbidden indulgences in the school, Keate had thought proper to include umbrellas, which he regarded as signs of modern effeminacy. Boys are perverse; and when to the comfort of an umbrella was added the spice of unlawfulness, it became a point of honour with some of the bigger boys to carry one. The Doctor harangued his own division on the subject in his bitterest style, and ended by expressing his regret to find that Eton boys had degenerated into "school-girls." The next night a party made an expedition to the neighbouring village of Upton, took down a large board inscribed in smart gilt letters " Seminary for Young Ladies," and fixed it up over the great west entrance into the school - yard, where it met Keate's angry eyes in the morning. He had also declared war against a fashion, creeping in among the "swells" of those days, of sportingcut coats with brass buttons, which he denounced as against the statutes. One morning several boys appeared in school in knee-breeches extemporised out of flannel, which