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BENSON AND WICKHAM 111
quite easy to understand, no matter how sincere was the
relish he always found in the perfection of Horace's literary
gift. For Wickham was in point of refinement one of
the elect of the earth, and his want of sympathy with
ordinary worldly standards was mainly, I think, because
he really did not know exactly what they were. At least
that was the case down to the end of his Wellington time ;
for till then his contact with common humanity was but
slight. At Lincoln, as Dean, he did his best work. As
Headmaster and the successor of Benson, whose gifts and
defects were alike the exact opposite of Wickham's, it
was not possible that he should be a popular and successful
man of the usual type. There was nothing usual
about him : his clearness of judgment, foresight, statesmanship-of
mind, fitted him to be in every way a guide to
the Governors during twenty years while the school was
being established in the favour and confidence of the
public. Benson, though a poet and mystical High Churchman,
had the temperament which found congenial work
in crashing through obstacles and was warrior enough to
be appreciated by the military world. How could they
be supposed to understand the fastidious and apparently
shrinking scholar, whose vitality was not of a buoyant type
and who, rather than utter an ill-considered opinion,
would remain quite silently thinking on all sides of the
question and seeing further than anyone present. He
was commonly thought to be nothing more than a scholar
and a good reflective preacher, the truth being that his
warmth of heart and steadfast courage when the situation
became impossible were only known to a few. He was
underestimated by the parents and the boys ; with the
latter, except with the very few literary scholars, he certainly
found sympathy difficult ; and meantime, the
stream of acrid, not to say rancid, criticism from the
younger masters must have made life lonely and very
trying for a temperament deficient in the sanguine clements,
Yet his sermons, to a careful reader, breathe a note of