Listen again to one Montagu, a sixth-form boy who has caught a gang of dormitory roysterers preparing an apple-pie bed for him. Does he call them "cheeky young swine," and knock their heads together? No!
"'By heavens, this is _too_ bad!' he exclaimed, stamping his foot with anger. 'What have I ever done to you young blackguards that you should treat me thus? Have I ever been a bully? Have I ever harmed one of you? And _you_, too, Vernon Williams!'
"The little boy trembled and looked ashamed under his glance of sorrow and scorn.
"'Well, I _know_ who has put you up to this; but you shall not escape so. I shall thrash you, every one.'
"Very quietly he suited the action to the word, sparing none."
Again, do, or did, English schoolboys ever behave like this?
"Vernon hid his face on Eric's shoulder; and, as his brother stooped over him and folded him to his heart, they cried in silence, for there seemed no more to say, until, wearied with sorrow, the younger fell asleep; and then Eric carried him tenderly downstairs, and laid him, still half-sleeping, upon his bed."
The characters in _Eric_ are far superior to the incidents. They may be exaggerated and irritating, but they are consistently drawn. Wildney is a true type, and still exists. Russell is a fair specimen of a "good" boy, though it is difficult to feel for him the tenderness which most of us extend, perhaps furtively, to Arthur in _Tom Brown_. But some of the masters are beyond comprehension. Pious but depressing pedagogues of the type of Mr. Rose (who at moments of crisis, it will be remembered, was usually to be found upon his knees in the School Library, oblivious of the greater privacy and comfort offered by his bedroom) have faded from our midst. Their place to-day is occupied by efficient and unsentimental young men in fancy waistcoats.
But the book for clear types is _Tom Brown_. East, the two Brookes, and Arthur--we recognise them all. There is Flashman the bully--an epitome of all bullies. He is of an everlasting pattern. And there is that curiously attractive person Martin, the scientist, with his jackdaw and his chemical research, and his chronic impecuniosity. You remember how he used to barter his allowance of candles for birds' eggs; with the result that, in those pre-gas-and-electricity days, he was reduced to doing his preparation by the glow of the fire, or "by the light of a flaring cotton wick, issuing from a ginger-beer bottle full of some doleful composition"? Lastly, there is Arnold himself. He is only revealed to us in glimpses: he emerges now and then like a mountain-peak from clouds; but is none the less imposing for that.