and dear old Cecil's soldiers and henchmen beat a hasty retreat before her. The affair was much discussed. Those who had not been bidden to the feast declared that dear old Cecil would let the lot of us in, but all seemed to agree that whatever happened he would come off scot free.

When dear old Cecil was sufficiently recovered to interview "Chawles," as our pastor and master was irreverently called, he laid before him a diagnosis of his illness, connecting it with the intense heat and a basket of permitted strawberries. "The Enemy," however, gave evidence of crumbs of pastry on the window-sill and an empty bottle of raspberry vinegar found under some one's pillow. It was then that dear old Cecil remembered how the new boy had insisted, against Cecil's warning, in feasting the dormitory from the contents of his hamper, and I was sent for to "Chawles's" study to listen with awe to the story of my misdemeanors and to learn what would happen to me if I transgressed a second time.

When we came out, dear old Cecil patted me on the shoulder saying, "Pug Dog"-he had nicknamed me "Pug Dog" the evening before "Pug Dog, I very nearly had to give those other fellows away. They must stand us something for having seen them through."

And they did, and for a year and more dear old Cecil promoted feasts at the expense of others and sat at the head of the table, or rather on the widest part of the window-sill, and took the lion's share. For, as the head of the school said, with an emphasis on the participle, "Cecil would eat or drink any given quantity." I never remember a feast at which dear old Cecil was the host in any pecuniary sense. Perhaps it was that, inasmuch as our code of honor demanded that the giver of the feast should bear the penal con

sequences, if any, that might ensue, dear old Cecil, with regal instinct, considered that the promotion of a feast might lead to his being placed in a false position. Be that as it may, whenever there was a raid or a discovery of any kind Cecil would make a clean breast of the affair to old "Chawles," but always in such a way that a few paltry lines fell to his lot, whilst a business interview in the study was our portion-and we had to write the lines for dear old Cecil afterwards.

We

And though some might think, to read this, that Cecil was a tyrant or a bully, as some of his enemies have said of him in afterlife, yet we who served and worshipped him knew better. gloried in his rule and statecraft; and if in his method of government the kicks fell to the soldiers and the halfpence to the general-is it not so in all armies? We were loyal subjects and never murmured, but wagged our heads and chuckled over whatever he did, saying to each other, "Just like dear old Cecil, isn't it?"

When a few years afterwards I went to Birchester, where he had preceded me, I found his dominion was scarcely so powerful as I had expected. There is something in the tone of a public school unfavorable to the development of a genius like dear old Cécil's. Would Cromwell or Napoleon, think you, have been grateful persons to the classical-minded disciplinarians that sway the fortunes of our public schools? I doubt it. These rare natures made to rule the smaller people on the earth cannot even in youth be curbed by the narrow trammels of honor and honesty that are the watchwords of our school code. Had dear old Cecil been broken in to the circusring of Birchester morality, that great financial career which for so many years dominated the world of gold, and of "paper" that is even more per

suasive than gold, might never have dazzled the universe. Dear old Cecil himself in later years has confessed to me that his Birchester days were the most difficult of his life. He was openly despised by those brawny heroes who contended for laurel wreaths in the field. He was too short-sighted for cricket, he shirked the dangers of football, and was too fat and overfed to run. Among the studious he was looked down upon as an ignoramus, and a lazy one at that. In his contests with the Doctor, who was suspicious of his outward righteousness, he was often in a tight place, and it was one of his own frank sayings that "in a scrap between the old man and himself the Doctor was always worth backing for a place."

But in spite of popular opinion high and low being against Cecil and all his ways, he had his little court of flatterers, among whom I was leader, and in course of time he gained, not popularity perhaps, but a form of power over the whole school. He commenced money-lenaer and bookmaker, and rumor had it that not only the senior boys, but some of the junior masters, owed him a few sovereigns. Certainly there were those in the school who treated Cecil with an apparent cordiality that could only have been bought with money. And if at Birchester, which, as I have said, was not a soil suited to his growth, he did not reign supreme as he had with old "Chawles" and afterwards did in the greater world of finance which he adorned, yet even there he managed by his genius to preserve himself from the worst dangers of discipline by which he was hourly surrounded.

For myself, I was as much under the spell of his greatness as I had been in the old days. We were in the same house, and we shared the same study and slept in the same dormitory. Whilst he pored over a greasy note

book of bets and accounts I wrote his exercises. So much had I become his creature, accustomed dog-like to obey his voice instinctively, that I can only remember one occasion on which I ventured to cross his will. And I set down the story of this as a useful warning to those meaner spirits who on occasion think they can usefully assert some small individual right of their own against the higher purposes of the born rulers of mankind.

The drama in which I played such a tragic or, if you will, comic part began after this fashion. I had made some verses for a prize, and showed them to dear old Cecil, who was pleased to say they were jolly good. Not that his opinion of Latin verse was of any value, but his approbation was always praise indeed. The day the verses were to have been sent in they were missing from my desk. Cecil showed himself unusually sympathetic and interested in the search, but we could not find them. I set to work to write them out again as well as I could from memory, but Cecil danced round the study singing the latest ditty from the pantomimes in a way that made Latin verse impossible.

"Do shut up, Cecil," I cried impatiently. "How can I do the things?" "Well, don't do them, Pug Dog, old boy. Leave them undone. You'll never get the prize."

"Not get the prize!" I cried. "Why, you yourself said they were A1." And I racked my brains to remember the second line.

Dear old Cecil looked at me curiously and whistled softly to himself. Then he said in a serious tone:

"Pug Dog, I don't want you to go in for that prize."

"Why not?" I asked, turning round in surprise.

"Because I want it. If I can write to my uncle that I have got that prize it will be worth something to me."

even at this moment, I can see it would have been wiser to have shrugged my shoulders and said to myself, "How like dear old Cecil!"

We small ones of the world ought to be thankful that we are allowed to crawl unharmed in the golden presence of those who are born to govern and to rule, and must learn the essential lesson that it is not for us to thwart the schemes of those we are here to worship and obey by the selfish assertion of some pedantic claim of right. And indeed in the past I had been myself to blame in giving way in everything, merging my individuality in Cecil's and becoming a mere human chattel, his property, stamped with his die, to be used for any purpose he wished. And instead of being honored that he had chosen workmanship of mine to minister to his own greatness-as if a

Cecil looked at me in amazement.

"What have you done with them, you thief?" I cried in a passion, clenching my fists.

Cecil elevated his eyebrows. To do him justice, he showed no fear. He put up his fat hand deprecatingly.

"Not so much noise, Pug Dog. Your verses will get the prize, but it will be my prize. I have sent them in as mine. I tell you I want the prize."

"I don't care what you have done," I said wildly. "I shall send in my own verses. I don't care what you want.

You are a cheat and a thief." "You will not send in your own verses," said Cecil in a tone that, had I been calmer and wiser, would have ended the matter. "And if you do, and there is trouble, you will be left to your fate. I shan't help you. Remember that. I shan't help you." And with this magnificent threat dear old Cecil chuckled to himself and, turning on his heel, left the study.

Looking back on the whole affair

one of his captains for use in the fight -here was I shedding hot tears of anger at the larceny of my verses, and eagerly penning them again, to the imminent danger of myself and my master. I think there is a demon in literary vanity that prompts those who are attacked by it to the most hateful action of personal conceit. I thought nothing of my treachery to dear old Cecil as I trimmed and perfected my lines. I thought only of my own cleverness, which I was using for my own ends in forgetfulness of the needs of the master. Several really clever emendations gave me an added delight when I remembered that the edition of error had already been sent in by the thief. There was a cunning cœsura that I shall never forget, and a delicate substitution of subjunctive for indicative that even the Doctor himself stopped to congratulate me upon in the middle of what was to me a most painful interview.

At length my task was completed. I read the verses a third time. They

were enormously improved.

I put them in an envelope, and, walking proudly across the playground to Doctor's House; dropped them in the letter-box. It was only when the packet left my fingers and fell out of reach that the passionate anger in my heart was cold, and, like many another mad fool, as soon as I had struck the blow the rage which had blinded my judgment ceased. I could see to repent, and I knew that I had done wrong.

When I returned to our study Cecil was lolling in my wicker chair, the only easy-chair we possessed, eating chocolate-creams and reading “Jonathan Wild." He had a great respect for that hero.

"You have done it?" he said, looking up from his book.

I nodded sulkily.

"You have made a great ass of yourself, Pug Dog, and you will suffer for it," he said, looking at me curiously over the top of his book. "Don't expect me to help you-that's all."

For two days I led the life of the doomed. Dear old Cecil seemed quite easy about his fortune and equally certain about mine. He took me into favor again the next day, and put me back on to Latin exercises and the smaller remaining specimens of half a pound of mixed chocolates. I felt a longing to ask his forgiveness, and at every knock at our door dreaded the worst. And as the hours passed into days I became more convinced that I had done a great wrong and should suffer for it.

It was the morning of the third day that Cecil alluded to the matter for the first time, expressing a confident opinion that the Doctor never read the verses, but gave the prize to some pet of his own, and that it looked as though we should hear nothing further of it. As coincidence or telepathy would have it, at that moment a monitor put his head in with the news that LIVING AGE. VOL. LII. 2704

we were both "wanted" by the Doctor. We walked across the playground in gloomy silence, and as Cecil rang the bell he said, "Don't you lose your head, Pug Dog, and whatever you do follow my lead."

Cecil, being my senior, was interviewed first, and I could see when I entered the Doctor's presence that his comfortable smile betokened a winning hand in the three-cornered game to be played. For a moment I thought of crying out the truth aloud, but a glance at the Doctor's cold, glittering, steelgray eyes assured me that this was one of those judicial inquiries in which the only thing that was certain of disbelief was the truth. But shall we blame the good Doctor? Schoolmasters are not the only investigators highly trained in the gentle art of eliciting error from a simple chain of facts. The Doctor instinctively disliked dear old Cecil, and this undoubtedly warped his judgment, so ready is a good man to disbelieve in his natural instinct and to take pride in qualities of discernment that he does not possess.

"Your companion," said the Doctor sternly-looking at me across the table as though investigation were a quite unnecessary preliminary to conviction and execution-"your companion has, with a sense of honor that does him credit"-dear old Cecil! Honor was the Doctor's fad-"great credit, refused to answer any questions about the verses before me, one set of which must clearly have been copied dishonestly copied from the other. He expressed the greatest surprise-genuine surprise, if I am any judge of human nature at the sight of two copies of what are in effect the same verses; but when I cross-examined him about the matter he declined to answer my questions on the ground that in extricating himself from a charge of dishonesty he must of necessity implicate his

friend. Now what have you to say about this affair?"

A fat wink from the other side of the table reminded me that I was to follow the Master's lead.

"I should prefer, sir," I stuttered, "not to say anything that might throw blame on another."

The Doctor showed his new teeth. It was the nearest he had to a smile, and both were false. He just showed them for a minute, and then hid them; but it was meant for a smile.

"I do not think you better your case," he said sternly, "by aping a virtue that you have shown by your acts you cannot possess. When you entered this room you could, if innocent, have known nothing whatever of these two sets of verses, one copied from the other. Yet it does not occur to you to express surprise that such a thing has happened." (Dear old Cecil had not forgotten the necessity of surprise.) "You do not ask to see the papers and compare them. It was with great difficulty I could convince your friend that a copy of his verses had been made, and made by one who was a study companion. Moreover, if fur

The Cornhill Magazine.

ther proof were needed it lies in the fact that in your copy of verses there are no less than seven emendations, all creditable to you as a student of syntax, but each conclusive against you as an honorable boy."

My soul cried out against this injustice, and I tried to speak.

"Not a word," he said sternly. "If you want to stay at Birchester do not add to your wickedness by further falsehood."

Then turning to dear old Cecil he said, "You may leave us. I am glad to think that the painful duty I have now to perform may be preceded by the pleasant task of announcing to you that you have gained the prize for Latin verse. I regret that I should have worried you even by a momentary suspicion."

Dear old Cecil bowed himself out of the room without any undue haste or expression of joy at his escape.

When I reached our study again he was full of triumph at his ingenuity, but I was sore. Looking back on the incident, there is only one thing to be said about it. It was so like dear old Cecil.

It is an unfortunate accident-the result of a literary half-truth-that the name of Aristophanes should connote to the modern "cultured person" something of which he is conscious that he ought to be unconscious-something, like Adrian Harle's table-talk, "delicately not decent, but so delicately so, that it was not decent to perceive it." It is more curious that the adjective "Aristophanic" reduces the delicacy. But the real Aristophanes, while no coarser than his age, was and

is a poet for all time; indeed he was more, because he was not only a poet in our modern interpretation of the word, but also a consummate artist in lyric forms. It is just this which careless users of his name do not know. Add the characteristic, that his genius ran to satire, and one can realize how it has come to pass that he is the eponymous hero of a particular kind of

art.

We English do not easily laugh at ourselves; we have never tolerated sat