Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 150.djvu/286
His first step into life out of the university was the head-mastership of Rugby in succession to Arnold—a step sufficient to take away any man's breath. It is impossible not to wonder even now on what ground he offered himself, or why he was accepted for such a post. No young man of thirty in the world, one is tempted to think, could fill such a place, and scarcely any one from a foreign sphere, who had not been formed under the overmastering prestige and influence of Arnold,—a man who was not only a beloved teacher but a superstition. “It was mainly at the instigation of Lake and Stanley” that this step was taken; but both these authorities were stricken with awe and alarm, partially comic, at the consequence of the step they had advised, when, to their terror and wonder, their candidate, not a Rugby man, not sharing Dr Arnold’s views, not a fine scholar, the climax of objection, was actually appointed. They express their alarm with youthful frankness,—a candour which, though it was deadly serious, is very amusing. “Oh, my dear Tait,” cries the first, “I do not envy you if you get it! I quite quake for the awful responsibility of putting on that giant’s armour. However, I really believe you are far the best. My main fears are for your sermons being dull, and your Latin prose and composition generally weak, in which latter points you will have, I think, hard work.” Arthur Stanley is still more comic in his appalled sense of the tremendous responsibility. All the vivacious twitterings of his letters (very schoolboyish, one must acknowledge) come to an end in the overwhelming thought of his friend’s temerity. This is what he says:—
“The awful intelligence of your election has just reached me. At any time it would have been a most serious responsibility to me: from circumstances which have transpired in the last week, it is absolutely overwhelming. I have not heart to say more than that I conjure you by your friendship for me, your reverence for your great predecessor, your sense of the sacredness of your office, your devotion to Him whose work you are now more than ever called upon to do, to lay aside every thought for the present except that of repairing your deficiencies.”
There is something half ludicrous, and which no doubt brought the twinkle of ever-lively humour to the new head-master’s eye, even in the midst of his own very serious sense of responsibility, in the despair of his proposers over their success—which would not be less when Stanley’s rueful apology reached him:—
“Forgive me if, in the first agony of distress, when your election brought before me what I had lost—not only in him at Rugby, but in you at Oxford—I may have spoken too sadly. You must not expect that I could go scathless through so terrible a convulsion as this has been.”
There is a note of the hysterical in these outcries which is in curious contrast to the serious composure and inalienable good sense of the object of them. Tait no doubt knew his Stanley well, and understood what this terrible convulsion meant. He himself stands with a perfect modesty through all, feeling the seriousness of the position, the responsibility, the extreme difficulty of the task before him, yet standing fast with no emotional perturbations. “Without incessant prayer I am lost,” is what he himself says in the privacy of his daily record. “Almighty God, give me strength of body to stand the labour of this place, and strength of mind to conduct myself in it aright.”
The boys at Rugby, who in