in their hearts must deplore it. When you were at the University
(let me congratulate you on your degree) you edited, or helped to
edit, The Bull-dog. It was not a very brilliant nor a very witty,
but it was an extremely "racy" periodical. It spoke of all men and
dons by their nicknames. It was full of second-hand slang. It
contained many personal anecdotes, to the detriment of many people.
It printed garbled and spiteful versions of private conversations on
private affairs. It did not even spare to make comments on ladies,
and on the details of domestic life in the town and in the
University. The copies which you sent me I glanced at with extreme
disgust.

In my time, more than a score of years ago, a similar periodical,
but a much more clever periodical, was put forth by members of the
University. It contained a novel which, even now, would be worth
several ill-gotten guineas to the makers of the chronique
scandaleuse. But nobody bought it, and it died an early death.
Times have altered, I am a fogey; but the ideas of honour and
decency which fogies hold now were held by young men in the sixties
of our century. I know very well that these ideas are obsolete. I
am not preaching to the world, nor hoping to convert society, but to
YOU, and purely in your own private, spiritual interest. If you
enter on this path of tattle, mendacity, and malice, and if, with
your cleverness and light hand, you are successful, society will not
turn its back on you. You will be feared in many quarters, and
welcomed in others. Of your paragraphs people will say that "it is
a shame, of course, but it is very amusing." There are so many
shames in the world, shames not at all amusing, that you may see no
harm in adding to the number. "If I don't do it," you may argue,
"some one else will." Undoubtedly; but WHY SHOULD YOU DO IT?