“With pleasure,” said Julian. “That dark-haired fellow is Owen, is it not? I hear he’s going to do great things!”
“Oh yes! booked for a Fellow and a double-first; so you ought to know him, you know.”
“Silence, gentlemen,” said Mr. Grayson, turning his stony gaze on Kennedy, whose bright face instantly assumed a demure expression of deep attention, while the light of laughter which still danced in his eyes might have betrayed to a careful observer the fact that the notes on which he appeared to be so assiduously occupied mainly consisted of replications of Mr. Grayson’s placid physiognomy and Roman nose.
“I’ve brought an umbra with me, Kennedy, in the person of Mr. Lillyston, who sits next to me at lectures, and wanted to be introduced to you,” said Owen, as he came in to Kennedy’s room that evening.
“I’m delighted,” said Kennedy. “Mr. Lillyston, let me introduce you to Mr. Home.”
“We hardly need an introduction, Hugh, at this time of day; do we?” said Julian, laughing; and the four were soon as much at home as it was possible for men to be. There was no lack of conversation. I think the rooms of a Camford undergraduate are about the last place where conversation ever flags; and when men like Kennedy, Owen, Julian, and Lillyston meet, it is perhaps more genuinely earnest and interesting than in any other time or place.
The next day, as Kennedy was sitting in Julian’s rooms, glancing over the Aeschylus with him, in strutted Hazlet, whom we have incidentally mentioned as having been the son of a widow lady living at Ildown. He had come up to Camford straight from home, and as he had only received a home-education everything was strangely bewildering to him, and Julian was almost the only friend he knew. Nor was he likely to attract many friends; his manner was strangely self-confident, and his language dictatorial and dogmatic. In his mother’s house he had long been the centre of religious tea-parties, before which he was often called upon to read and even to expound the Scriptures. “At the tip of his subduing tongue” were a number of fantastic phrases, originally misapplied, and long since worn bare of meaning, and the test of his orthodoxy was the universality with which he could reiterate proofs of heresy against every man of genius, honesty, and depth—who loved truth better than he loved the oracles of the prevalent idols. Hazlet practised the duty of Christian charity by dealing indiscriminate condemnation against all except those who belonged to his own exclusive and somewhat ignorant school of religious intolerance. His face was the reflex of his mind; his lank black hair stuck down in stiff dry straightness over a contracted forehead and an ill-shaped head; his spectacles gave additional glassiness to a lack-lustre eye, and the manner in which he carried his chin in the air seemed like an acted representation of “I am holier than thou.”
Far be it from me to hold up to ridicule any body of earnest and honest men, to whatever party they may belong. I am writing of Hazlet, not of those who hold the same opinions as he did. That man must have been unfortunate in life who has not many friends, and friends whom he holds in deep affection, among the adherents of opinions most entirely antagonistic to his own. Hazlet’s repulsiveness was due to a very mistaken education, developing a very foolish idiosyncrasy, and especially to the pernicious system of encouraging sentiments and expressions which in a boy’s mind could not be other than sickly exotics. He had to be taught his own hypocrisy by the painful progress of events, and, above all, he had to learn that religious shibboleths may be no proof of sanctification, and that religious intolerance is usually the hybrid offspring of ignorance and conceit. In many essential matters he held the truth—but he held it in unrighteousness.
It may be imagined that Hazlet was no favourite companion of Julian Home. But Julian loved and honoured to the utmost of his power the good points of all; he had a deep and real veneration for humanity, and rarely allowed himself an unkind expression, or a look which indicated ennui, even to those associates by whose presence he was most unspeakably bored. Hazlet mistook his courteous manner for a deferential agreement, and was, too often, in Julian’s presence more than usually insufferable in his Pharisaical tendencies.
“Good heavens!” said Kennedy, who saw Hazlet coming across the court. “Who’s this, Home? He looks as if he had been just presiding at three conventicles and a meeting at Philadelphus Hall. Surely he can’t be coming here.”
“Oh, yes,” said Julian, “that’s a compatriot of mine named Hazlet; a very good fellow, I believe, though rather obtrusive perhaps.”
“Good morning, Home,” said Hazlet, in a measured and sanctified tone, as he entered the room and sat down.
Kennedy glanced impatiently at the Aeschylus.
“Ah! I see you’re engaged on that heathen poet. It often strikes me, Home, that we may be wrong after all in spending so much time on these works of men, who, as Saint Paul tells us, were ‘wholly given to idolatry.’ I have just come from a most refreshing meeting at—”
“I say, Home,” cut in Kennedy hastily, “shall I go? I suppose you won’t do over any more of the Agamemnon this morning.”
“I don’t know,” said Julian; “perhaps Hazlet will join us in our construe.”
“No, I think not,” said Hazlet, with a compassionate sigh. “I have looked at it; but some of it appeared to me so pagan in its sentiments that I contented myself with praying that I might not be put on. But you haven’t told me what you think about what I was saying.”
“Botheration,” said Kennedy; “so your theory is that Christianity was intended to put an extinguisher over the light of heaven-born genius, and that the power and passion and wisdom of Aeschylus came from himself or the devil, and not from God? Surely, without any further argument on such an absurd proposition, it ought to be sufficient for you that this kind of learning forms a part of your immediate duty.”
“I find other duties more paramount—now prayer, for instance, and talk with sound friends.”
“Phew!!!” whistled Kennedy, thoroughly disgusted at language which was as new to him as it was distasteful; and, to relieve his feelings, he abandoned the conversation to Julian, and began to turn over the books on the table. Julian, however, seemed quite disinclined to enter into the question, and after a pause, Hazlet, gracefully waiving his little triumph, asked him with a peculiar unction—
“And how goes it, my dear Home, with your immortal soul?”
“My soul!” said Julian carelessly. “Oh! it’s all right.”
Hazlet then began to look at Julian’s pictures.
“Ah,” he observed with a deep sigh, “I’m sorry to see that you have the portrait of so unsound, so dangerous a man as Mr. Vere.”
“We’ll drop that topic, please, Hazlet,” said Julian, “as we’re not likely to agree upon it.”
“Have you ever read one word that Mr. Vere ever wrote?” asked Kennedy.
“Well, yes; at least no, not exactly: but still one may judge, you know; besides, I’ve seen extracts of his works.”
“Extracts!” answered Kennedy scornfully; “extracts which often attribute to him the very sentiments which he is opposing. But it isn’t worth arguing with one of your school, who have the dishonesty to condemn writers whom you are incapable of understanding, on the faith of extracts which they haven’t even read.”
The wrathful purpling of Hazlet’s sallow countenance portended an explosion of orthodox spleen, but Julian gently interposed in time to save the devoted Kennedy from a few unmeasured anathemas.
“Hush!” he said, “none of the odium theologicum, please, lest the mighty shade of Aeschylus smile at you in scorn. Do drop the subject, Hazlet.”
“Very well, if you like, Home; but I must deliver my conscience, you know. But really, Julian, you are not very Christian in your other pictures.”
This was too much even for Julian’s politeness,