The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-23 00:00:00

Eton School Days. By an Old Etonian. One Vol,,
pp. 316. Maxwell and Co.
A capital work, this is—and one that we have
found thoroughly enjoyable. It is nothing more
than it affects to be : namely, a narrative of school-
boy life, told in a gay, helter-skelter, rollicking
schoolboy fashion. Here and there, in the manner
of it, there is a touch of affectation—a rather
powerful flavour of the sesquipedalia verba. Occa-
sionally the schoolboy slang is wonderful in its
truthfulness—the odd little phrase (picturesque,
almost poetical, like the gipsy slang fami-
liar to the glib tongue of Harrison Ains-
worth's Paterers, of which perfection of
slang the Romany Rye is the incomparable master-
piece)—precisely the right word in the shape of
some odd little phrase of the schoolboy lingo drop-
pinginto its place, at times,with a sort of aplomb that
is quite delightful. There is something, in fact, so
thoroughly boy like in the whole performance—
something so lacy of the schoolroom and the play-
ground—that we should almost be tempted to re-
gard the book as the performance of a Young
Etonian instead of an Old Etonian. Only—that, in
that case, the writer would have to be regarded as
some such hardly conceivable lusus naturce
as a humouristic Chatterton. An Old Etonian,
as the author calls himself upon his title-page, if
he be old at all, must certainly be what you would
call a genuine Old Boy—one of those warm-hearted
creatures, gifted in temperament with a shadowy
semblance of immortal youth, but having a decided
tendency, in the body, to that dread of dandies, that
result of constitutional laughter—corpulence !
Sometimes, or rather it should be said, in some few
particulars, the puerile diction put into the
mouths of the interlocutors, will be found to have
rather a tedious leaning to iteration. The changes
are rung, for example, usque ad nauseant, upon
several pet schoolboy words most fantastically
applied, according to the wont of boys. As, par
exemple, when the young hero of the narrative, But-
ler Burke, talks, in a rapture of admiration, about
Charley'a sister Constance being " awfully pretty"
—or again, as where another urchin speaks of an
opposing player at football, playing "beastly well."
Etonian Life in all its varieties—in its " ins" (even
spelling those with a double n), no less than in its
"outs" (indulged in, some of those, at no inconside•
rable risk of a sound switching afterwards, when
caught)—Etonian Life, both high and low, from
the head master to the itinerant vendor of tarts,
from the Swell Colleger down to the veriest brat of
an Oppidan, from the mere child who fags up to
that terrible' being the hobbedehoy who fags him!
To a certain extent, in a lighter, in a more super-
ficial, not to say it invidiously, in a more frivolous
way, the work, so far as it goes, is of the genes of
which "Tom Brown's Schooldays" is the most ini-
mitable of exemplars, the very chef dceuvres! as
in Tom Brown's Schooldays, here in Eton Echool-
days, we have an account of a Football Match. But,
whereas the Rugby football match, as described
by Mr. Thomas Hughes, has about it a Homeric
sweep of vicissitudes, a sort of epic importance—
our author's account of the Eton Football -31atch is
more of the Tom Crib character, than either the
Tom Brown or the Tom Hughes. It is admi-
rably well done, nevertheless—it is full of life
and animation. Only—it comes second ; and,
therefore, it comes off by comparison second best.
Butler Burke is a lesser, shorter, stouter, " nub-
blier" sort of a blundering Tom brown in his way.
A thorough boy—a boy full of impulse, with a good
deal of passion about him as well as impetuosity,
plenty of affection, some humour, lots of pluck, a
spice of mischief, and an unmistakeable tendency to
dare-devilry. The Bad Boy, the very Bad Boy of
the book—and yet with redeeming traits, too, about
him—is Edmund Chorley, Thief, in some sense
Sneak, also Liar, ditto Bully, ibid Traducer, and so
forth through a nice little hotly peppered catalogue
of vices. Vices more odious almost in the boy than
in the adult, and this is because so grossly in ante-
gonism-,to what is so charming as the dominant
characteristic of boyhood—frank, bold, uncompro-
mising, instant ingenuousness. The friend, the
chum, the alter ego of Butler Burke is his cousin
Reginald Purefoy—the Good Boy of the story.
Constance Chorley, the Bad Boy's sister, we have
a glimpse or two of, as the little heroine
of the tale. Mr. Wynne, the Tutor, is charmingly
sketched, being a favourable specimen of a Master
at Eton—just precisely what a Master at a College
like Eton ought to be. A scholar and a gentleman,
every inch of him, entitled to be loved as well as to
be respected. One preposterous flaw there is in the
book, and that flaw a whole chapter. Of all the ab-
surdities we ever remember to have seen perpe-
trated by any story-teller gifted with a iively,
not to say skittish, imagination, this is the
most ridiculous. Chapter the twenty-fifth it is—
entitled, with almost impertinent significance,
"H.R.H." The impertinence of it, in truth, almost,
as one may say, amounts to the heinousness of Uze
majeste. Will it be believed that the incident this
chapter undertakes (in the coolest and most off-hand
manner imaginable) to relate, brings upon the
scene—that scene, now the gardens, now the
terraces, now the drawing-rooms of Windsor
Caetle—her Majesty the Queen, H.R.H. the
Prince of Wales, and H.R.H. Prince Alfred !
These being revealed to us in familiar converse
with the two Eton Boys, one of them Butler
Burke, the other his school companion the Boy
Earl of Horsham. In such familiar intercourse
with their Royal Highnesses, indeed, that we
have them actually skylarking together—the
Princes "boneing" (there is no other word for it)
the hate of the two young gentlemen from Eton,
and after boneing them, and running off with them,
absolutely turning the said hats into a couple
of imp omptu footballs ! Nay, nor is that
the whole of this outrageous and audacious
extravagance--W° have Butler Burke's boy-com-
panion chasing the Heir Apparent within an inch
of his life, as one may say, along the terrace to
one of the garden entrances to the Castle, and there,
just upon the threshold, " bonnetting" his Royal
Highness, or, at any rate, knocking the Prince of
Wales's own hat off in retaliation. Her Majesty the
Queen, after this, actually complimenting the
Etonian upon his performance and requiring
H.R.H. to apologize. The whole thing is as bizarre,
as improbable, we repeat it, as utterly preposterous
as anything that was ever penned by way of afford-
ing a reader a surreptitious peep into a palace.
Apart from this one nonsensical chapter, the de-
tziption here given by an Old Etonian of Eton
School-
u.-'s' under all their phases, whether of fun
delightful effusion—pleasantly
drawn, for the most 12.'uto
we should imagine, less
from the writer's fancy
or tribulation, is a
Oanfrom some of his
most dearly cherished recollectieens of what Eton
School-days were in his own experience.

LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS FOR THE
WEEK.—Moaday—Actuaries, at 7—Entomological,
at 7, Anniversary—Geographical, at 8 30, " Mr. Hector's
Exploring Expedition, Middle Island, New Zealand"—
"Report of Mr. Maerrow on Lake District of Otago"—
" Lefroy's Expedition in Western Australia—" Aseellt of
the Moisie River," Professor Hind. Tuesday—Ethnologica:,
at 8, " Ethnology of Indian Archipelago," Mr. Wallace—
" An Account of the Mookwas, district of Putlam. Ceylon,"
S. Casie Chitty Maniegar. Engineers, at 8, "East Coast
between the Thames and the Wash," Mr. Redman. Royal
Institution, at 3, " Experimental Optics," Professor Tyn-
dall. Zoological, at 9, "New Australian Serpent," Mr.
Krefft—" New Goliath Beetle from the Zambesi," Mr.
Gray. IVeduesday—Society of Arts, at 8, "Metric System
of Weights and Measures, and its Proposed Adoption in
this Country," Mr, Brown. Arch avtlogic.d Association,at
"Stone Coffin and Cross discovered at Ash," Mr. Planch6
—" Roman Remains at Carlisle," Mr. Vera Irving.
Thursday—Royal Academy, at 8, "Architecture," Pro-
fessor Smirke. Antiquaries, at 8. Royal, at 81- Royal
Institution, at 3, " Experimental Optics," Professor Tyn-
dall. Friday—Royal Institution, at 8, "The Glacial
Epoch," Professor Frankland. Saturday—Royal Institu-
tion, at 3, "Antiquity of Man," Mr. Lubbock.—Atheraettm.
THE SHAKSPERE TERCF.NTENARY.—A corres-
pondent writes to us as follows your
report of the meeting on the above subject, it appears that
Mr. Tom Taylor and his friends propose to devote a theatre
to Shaksporo and the high class dramatists, which sugges-
tion you did me the honour to publish in the columns of
The Sun in June last. As for the Statue Committee, I, as
one of the public, thank them for an amusing performane,
of " The Comedy of Errors,"
and " Much Ado About
Nothing,"
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