. It must be presumed that the boys who boarded in his
House knew something of him, but with the School in general he never
came in contact. His special work was to supervise the composition,
English and classical, of the Sixth Form, and on this task he lavished
all his minute and scrupulous scholarship, all his genuine enthusiasm
for literary beauty. But, until we were in the Sixth, we saw Westcott
only on public occasions, and one of these occasions was the calling
over of names on half-holidays, styled at Eton "Absence," and at Harrow
"Bill." To see Westcott performing this function made one, even in those
puerile days, feel that the beautifully delicate instrument was
eminently unfitted for the rough work of mere routine on which it was
employed. We had sense enough to know that Westcott was a man of
learning and distinction altogether outside the beaten track of
schoolmasters' accomplishments; and that he had performed achievements
in scholarship and divinity which great men recognized as great.
"Calling Bill" was an occupation well enough suited for his
colleagues--for Huggins or Buggins or Brown or Green--but it was
actually pathetic to see this frail embodiment of culture and piety
contending with the clamour and tumult of five hundred obstreperous
boys.

It was not only as a great scholar that we revered Westcott. We knew,
by that mysterious process by which school-boys get to know something of
the real, as distinct from the official, characters of their masters,
that he was a saint. There were strange stories in the School about his
ascetic way of living. We were told that he wrote his sermons on his
knees. We heard that he never went into local society, and that he read
no newspaper except _The Guardian_. Thus when Liddon, at the height of
his fame as the author of the great Bampton Lectures, came to Harrow to
preach on Founder's Day, it was reported that Westcott would not dine
with the Head-master to meet him. He could not spare three hours from
prayer and study; but he came in for an hour's conversation after
dinner.

All that we saw and heard in Chapel confirmed what we were told. We saw
the bowed form, the clasped hands, the rapt gaze, as of a man who in
worship was really _solus cum Solo_, and not, as the manner of some of
his colleagues was, sleeping the sleep of the just, or watching for the
devotional delinquencies of the Human Boy. His sermons were rare events;
but some of us looked forward to the