been called to a foolish essay on my grandfather by Mr. Lytton
Strachey, none the less foolish because it is the work of an extremely
clever man. If Mr. Strachey imagines that the effect of my
grandfather's life and character upon men like Stanley and Clough, or a
score of others who could be named, can be accounted for by the eidolon
he presents to his readers in place of the real human being, one can
only regard it as one proof the more of the ease with which a certain
kind of ability outwits itself.]

He had been his father's special favorite among the elder children, as
shown by some verses in my keeping addressed to him as a small boy, at
different times, by "the Doctor." Those who know their _Tom Brown's
Schooldays_ will perhaps remember the various passages in the book where
the softer qualities of the man whom "three hundred reckless childish
boys" feared with all their hearts, "and very little besides in heaven
or earth," are made plain in the language of that date. Arthur's
illness, for instance, when the little fellow, who has been at death's
door, tells Tom Brown, who is at last allowed to see him: "You can't
think what the Doctor's like when one's ill. He said such brave and
tender and gentle things to me--I felt quite light and strong after it,
and never had any more fear." Or East's talk with the Doctor, when the
lively boy of many scrapes has a moral return upon himself, and says to
his best friend: "You can't think how kind and gentle he was, the great
grim man, whom I've feared more than anybody on earth. When I stuck, he
lifted me, just as if I'd been a little child. And he seemed to know all
I'd felt, and to have gone through it all." This tenderness and charm of
a strong man, which in Stanley's biography is specially mentioned as
growing more and more visible in the last months of his life, was always
there for his children. In a letter written in 1828 to his sister, when
my father as a small child not yet five was supposed to be dying, Arnold