Hawtrey, on the contrary, was full of fun—witness some of his translations in the “Arundines Cami.” He could turn an epigram in French, Italian or German such as would deceive the very elect into the belief that it was the work of a native; some of his Italian poems, privately printed, won special praise from those best capable of judging. His appreciation of wit was alive to the last. When he was already a very old man, and I a clerk in the Foreign Office, I remember the enthusiasm with which he welcomed the arrival of Mrs. Poyser to enrich the gaiety of the world. It was this spirit of fun which enabled him to enter into the wildest pranks of his boys—so long as they were harmless. Windsor Fair, held in Bachelor’s Acre, was a forbidden playground for the younger boys. The sixth form, on the other hand, went there to act as police. Once I had been sent for to dine with the Head Master, with whom my father was staying during the Fair time. He came in rather late, dressed in cap and gown, laughing merrily, and carrying half a dozen penny dolls, monkey-sticks, and toys which had been laid upon his desk. “What in the name of wonder have you got there?” asked my father. “I always get my fairings,” he said. He made the life of a pedagogue a life of sympathy and good comradeship, and so a life of joy for all who came under his kindly rule. What wonder that he was adored? After all, the worth of the work for good or for evil which has been done by an administrator must be judged by the fruit which it has borne. How did Hawtrey find Eton? how did he leave it? Happily we are able to call upon a great and unimpeachable witness. It was Hawtrey who first sent up for good Mr. Gladstone. “It was,” he writes, “an event in my life. He and it together then for the first time inspired me with a desire to learn and to do.” Again—“The popular supposition is” (Mr. Gladstone, January 3, 1890), “that Eton from 1830 onwards was swept along by a tide of renovation due to the fame and contagious example of Dr. Arnold. But this, in my opinion, is an error. Eton was in a singularly small degree open to influence from other public schools. There were three persons to whom Eton was more indebted than any others for the new life poured into her arteries: Dr. Hawtrey, the contemporary Duke of Newcastle, and Bishop Selwyn.”[20] In 1846, the year of which I am writing, mathematics were no part of the school curriculum, which remained untouched as it had been from all time. Hawtrey in 1851 made mathematics compulsory, to the intense disgust of all us, little conservatives to the core, who considered that the knowledge that two and two make four might be an accomplishment, but formed no part of the education of a gentleman. He substituted competition for nomination to scholarships on the foundation. He fostered the study of modern languages, promoted examinations, and did all that was in his power to bring Eton up to the standard required by modern advancement and culture.