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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/12001-0.txt b/12001-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5724f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/12001-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6689 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12001 *** + +STUDIES IN LITERATURE + +BY + +JOHN MORLEY + + +1907 + + + + +NOTE. + +The contents of the present collection have all been in print before, +either in the _Nineteenth Century_ and _Fortnightly Review_, or +in some other shape. I have to thank the proprietors of the two +periodicals named for sanctioning the reproduction of my articles +here. + +J.M. + +_October_ 1890. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +WORDSWORTH +APHORISMS +MAINE ON POPULAR GOVERNMENT +A FEW WORDS ON FRENCH MODELS +ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE +VICTOR HUGO'S _NINETY-THREE_ +ON _THE RING AND THE BOOK_ +MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF LETTERS +VALEDICTORY + + + + +WORDSWORTH.[1] + +[Footnote 1: Originally published as an Introduction to the new +edition of Wordsworth's _Complete Poetical Works_ (1888).] + + +The poet whose works are contained in the present volume was born in +the little town of Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7, 1770. He +died at Rydal Mount, in the neighbouring county of Westmoreland, on +April 23, 1850. In this long span of mortal years, events of vast and +enduring moment shook the world. A handful of scattered and dependent +colonies in the northern continent of America made themselves into one +of the most powerful and beneficent of states. The ancient monarchy of +France, and all the old ordering of which the monarchy had been the +keystone, was overthrown, and it was not until after many a violent +shock of arms, after terrible slaughter of men, after strange +diplomatic combinations, after many social convulsions, after many +portentous mutations of empire, that Europe once more settled down for +a season into established order and system. In England almost alone, +after the loss of her great possessions across the Atlantic Ocean, +the fabric of the State stood fast and firm. Yet here, too, in these +eighty years, an old order slowly gave place to new. The restoration +of peace, after a war conducted with extraordinary tenacity and +fortitude, led to a still more wonderful display of ingenuity, +industry, and enterprise, in the more fruitful field of commerce +and of manufactures. Wealth, in spite of occasional vicissitudes, +increased with amazing rapidity. The population of England and Wales +grew from being seven and a half millions in 1770, to nearly eighteen +millions in 1850. Political power was partially transferred from a +territorial aristocracy to the middle and trading classes. Laws were +made at once more equal and more humane. During all the tumult of the +great war which for so many years bathed Europe in fire, through all +the throes and agitations in which peace brought forth the new time, +Wordsworth for half a century (1799-1850) dwelt sequestered in +unbroken composure and steadfastness in his chosen home amid the +mountains and lakes of his native region, working out his own ideal of +the high office of the Poet. + +The interpretation of life in books and the development of imagination +underwent changes of its own. Most of the great lights of the +eighteenth century were still burning, though burning low, when +Wordsworth came into the world. Pope, indeed, had been dead for six +and twenty years, and all the rest of the Queen Anne men had gone. +But Gray only died in 1771, and Goldsmith in 1774. Ten years later +Johnson's pious and manly heart ceased to beat. Voltaire and Rousseau, +those two diverse oracles of their age, both died in 1778. Hume had +passed away two years before. Cowper was forty years older than +Wordsworth, but Cowper's most delightful work was not produced until +1783. Crabbe, who anticipated Wordsworth's choice of themes from rural +life, while treating them with a sterner realism, was virtually his +contemporary, having been born in 1754, and dying in 1832. The two +great names of his own date were Scott and Coleridge, the first born +in 1771, and the second a year afterwards. Then a generation later +came another new and illustrious group. Byron was born in 1788, +Shelley in 1792, and Keats in 1795. Wordsworth was destined to see one +more orb of the first purity and brilliance rise to its place in the +poetic firmament. Tennyson's earliest volume of poems was published in +1830, and _In Memoriam_, one of his two masterpieces, in 1830. Any one +who realises for how much these famous names will always stand in +the history of human genius, may measure the great transition that +Wordsworth's eighty years witnessed in some of men's deepest feelings +about art and life and "the speaking face of earth and heaven." + +Here, too, Wordsworth stood isolated and apart. Scott and Southey were +valued friends, but, as has been truly said, he thought little of +Scott's poetry, and less of Southey's. Of Blake's _Songs of Innocence +and Experience_ he said, "There is something in the madness of this +man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter +Scott." Coleridge was the only member of the shining company with whom +he ever had any real intimacy of mind, for whom he ever nourished real +deference and admiration as one "unrelentingly possessed by thirst of +greatness, love, and beauty," and in whose intellectual power, as the +noble lines in the Sixth Book of the _Prelude_ so gorgeously attest, +he took the passionate interest of a man at once master, disciple, and +friend. It is true to say, as Emerson says, that Wordsworth's genius +was the great exceptional fact of the literature of his period. But he +had no teachers nor inspirers save nature and solitude. + +Wordsworth was the son of a solicitor, and all his early circumstances +were homely, unpretentious, and rather straitened. His mother died +when he was eight years old, and when his father followed her five +years later, two of his uncles provided means for continuing +at Cambridge the education which had been begun in the rural +grammar-school of Hawkshead. It was in 1787 that he went up to St. +John's College. He took his Bachelor's degree at the beginning of +1791, and there his connection with the university ended. + +For some years after leaving Cambridge, Wordsworth let himself drift. +He did not feel good enough for the Church; he shrank from the law; +fancying that he had talents for command, he thought of being a +soldier. Meanwhile, he passed a short time desultorily in London. +Towards the end of 1791, through Paris, he passed on to Orleans +and Blois, where he made some friends and spent most of a year. He +returned to Paris in October 1792. France was no longer standing on +the top of golden hours. The September massacres filled the sky with +a lurid flame. Wordsworth still retained his ardent faith in the +Revolution, and was even ready, though no better than "a landsman on +the deck of a ship struggling with a hideous storm," to make common +cause with the Girondists. But the prudence of friends at home forced +him back to England before the beginning of the terrible year of '93. +With his return closed that first survey of its inheritance, which +most serious souls are wont to make in the fervid prime of early +manhood. + +It would be idle to attempt any commentary on the bare facts that we +have just recapitulated; for Wordsworth himself has clothed them with +their full force and meaning in the _Prelude_. This record of the +growth of a poet's mind, told by the poet himself with all the +sincerity of which he was capable, is never likely to be popular. Of +that, as of so much more of his poetry, we must say that, as a whole, +it has not the musical, harmonious, sympathetic quality which seizes +us in even the prose of such a book as Rousseau's _Confessions_. +Macaulay thought the _Prelude_ a poorer and more tiresome _Excursion_, +with the old flimsy philosophy about the effect of scenery on the +mind, the old crazy mystical metaphysics, and the endless wilderness +of twaddle; still he admits that there are some fine descriptions and +energetic declamations. All Macaulay's tastes and habits of mind made +him a poor judge of such a poet as Wordsworth. He valued spirit, +energy, pomp, stateliness of form and diction, and actually thought +Dryden's fine lines about to-morrow being falser than the former clay +equal to any eight lines in Lucretius. But his words truly express +the effect of the _Prelude_ on more vulgar minds than his own. George +Eliot, on the other hand, who had the inward eye that was not among +Macaulay's gifts, found the _Prelude_ full of material for a daily +liturgy, and it is easy to imagine how she fondly lingered, as she +did, over such a thought as this-- + + "There is + One great society alone on earth: + The noble Living and the noble Dead." + +There is, too, as may be found imbedded even in Wordsworth's dullest +work, many a line of the truest poetical quality, such as that on +Newton's statue in the silent Chapel of Trinity College-- + + "The marble index of a mind for ever + Voyaging through strange seas of Thought alone." + +Apart, however, from beautiful lines like this, and from many noble +passages of high reflection set to sonorous verse, this remarkable +poem is in its whole effect unique in impressive power, as a picture +of the advance of an elect and serious spirit from childhood and +school-time, through the ordeal of adolescence, through close contact +with stirring and enormous events, to that decisive stage when it has +found the sources of its strength, and is fully and finally prepared +to put its temper to the proof. + +The three Books that describe the poet's residence in France have a +special and a striking value of their own. Their presentation of the +phases of good men's minds as the successive scenes of the Revolution +unfolded themselves has real historic interest. More than this, it +is an abiding lesson to brave men how to bear themselves in hours of +public stress. It portrays exactly that mixture of persevering faith +and hope with firm and reasoned judgment, with which I like to think +that Turgot, if he had lived, would have confronted the workings +of the Revolutionary power. Great masters in many kinds have been +inspired by the French Revolution. Human genius might seem to have +exhausted itself in the burning political passion of Burke, in the +glowing melodrama of fire and tears of Carlyle, Michelet, Hugo; but +the ninth, tenth, and eleventh Books of the _Prelude_, by their +strenuous simplicity, their deep truthfulness, their slowfooted and +inexorable transition from ardent hope to dark imaginations, sense of +woes to come, sorrow for human kind, and pain of heart, breathe the +very spirit of the great catastrophe. There is none of the ephemeral +glow of the political exhortation, none of the tiresome falsity of the +dithyramb in history. Wordsworth might well wish that some dramatic +tale, endued with livelier shapes and flinging out less guarded words, +might set forth the lessons of his experience. The material was +fitting. The story of these three Books has something of the severity, +the self-control, the inexorable necessity of classic tragedy, and +like classic tragedy it has a noble end. The dregs and sour sediment +that reaction from exaggerated hope is so apt to stir in poor natures +had no place here. The French Revolution made the one crisis in +Wordsworth's mental history, the one heavy assault on his continence +of soul, and when he emerged from it all his greatness remained to +him. After a long spell of depression, bewilderment, mortification, +and sore disappointment, the old faith in new shapes was given back. + + "Nature's self, + By all varieties of human love + Assisted, led me back through opening day + To those sweet counsels between head and heart + Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace, + Which, through the later sinkings of this cause, + Hath still upheld me and upholds me now." + +It was six years after his return from France before Wordsworth +finally settled down in the scenes with which his name and the power +of his genius were to be for ever associated. During this interval it +was that two great sources of personal influence were opened to him. +He entered upon that close and beloved companionship with his sister, +which remained unbroken to the end of their days; and he first made +the acquaintance of Coleridge. The character of Dorothy Wordsworth has +long taken its place in the gallery of admirable and devoted women who +have inspired the work and the thoughts of great men. "She is a woman, +indeed," said Coleridge, "in mind I mean, and heart; for her person is +such that if you expected to see a pretty woman, you would think her +rather ordinary; if you expected to see an ordinary woman, you would +think her pretty." To the solidity, sense, and strong intelligence +of the Wordsworth stock she added a grace, a warmth, a liveliness +peculiarly her own. Her nature shines transparent in her letters, in +her truly admirable journal, and in every report that we have of her. +Wordsworth's own feelings for her, and his sense of the debt that +he owed to her faithful affection and eager mind, he has placed on +lasting record. + +The intimacy with Coleridge was, as has been said, Wordsworth's one +strong friendship, and must be counted among the highest examples of +that generous relation between great writers. Unlike in the quality +of their genius, and unlike in force of character and the fortunes of +life, they remained bound to one another by sympathies that neither +time nor harsh trial ever extinguished. Coleridge had left Cambridge +in 1794, had married, had started various unsuccessful projects for +combining the improvement of mankind with the earning of an income, +and was now settled in a small cottage at Nether Stowey, in +Somersetshire, with an acre and a half of land, from which he hoped to +raise corn and vegetables enough to support himself and his wife, as +well as to feed a couple of pigs on the refuse. Wordsworth and his +sister were settled at Racedown, near Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire. +In 1797 they moved to Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, their principal +inducement to the change being Coleridge's society. The friendship +bore fruit in the production of _Lyrical Ballads_ in 1798, mainly the +work of Wordsworth, but containing no less notable a contribution from +Coleridge than the _Ancient Mariner_. The two poets only received +thirty guineas for their work, and the publisher lost his money. +The taste of the country was not yet ripe for Wordsworth's poetic +experiment. + +Immediately after the publication of the _Lyrical Ballads_, the +two Wordsworths and Coleridge started from Yarmouth for Hamburg. +Coleridge's account in Satyrane's Letters, published In the +_Biographia Literaria_, of the voyage and of the conversation between +the two English poets and Klopstock, is worth turning to. The pastor +told them that Klopstock was the German Milton. "A very German Milton +indeed," they thought. The Wordsworths remained for four wintry months +at Goslar, in Saxony, while Coleridge went on to Ratzeburg, Göttingen, +and other places, mastering German, and "delving in the unwholesome +quicksilver mines of metaphysic depths." Wordsworth made little way +with the language, but worked diligently at his own verse. + +When they came back to England, Wordsworth and his sister found their +hearts turning with irresistible attraction to their own familiar +countryside. They at last made their way to Grasmere. The opening book +of the _Recluse_, which is published for the first time in the present +volume, describes in fine verse the emotions and the scene. The face +of this delicious vale is not quite what it was when + + "Cottages of mountain stone + Clustered like stars some few, but single most, + And lurking dimly in their shy retreats, + Or glancing at each other cheerful looks + Like separated stars with clouds between." + +But it is foolish to let ourselves be fretted by the villa, the hotel, +and the tourist. We may well be above all this in a scene that is +haunted by a great poetic shade. The substantial features and elements +of beauty still remain, the crags and woody steeps, the lake, "its one +green island and its winding shores; the multitude of little rocky +hills." Wordsworth was not the first poet to feel its fascination. +Gray visited the Lakes in the autumn of 1769, and coming into the vale +of Grasmere from the north-west, declared it to be one of the sweetest +landscapes that art ever attempted to imitate, an unsuspected paradise +of peace and rusticity. We cannot indeed compare the little crystal +mere, set like a gem in the verdant circle of the hills, with the +grandeur and glory of Lucerne, or the radiant gladness and expanse of +Como: yet it has an inspiration of its own, to delight, to soothe, to +fortify, and to refresh. + + "What want we? have we not perpetual streams, + Warm woods, and sunny hills, and fresh green fields, + And mountains not less green, and flocks and herds, + And thickets full of songsters, and the voice + Of lordly birds, an unexpected sound + Heard now and then from morn to latest eve, + Admonishing the man who walks below + Of solitude and silence in the sky. + These have we, and a thousand nooks of earth + Have also these, but nowhere else is found, + Nowhere (or is it fancy?) can be found + The one sensation that is here;...'tis the sense + Of majesty, and beauty, and repose, + A blended holiness of earth and sky, + Something that makes this individual spot, + This small abiding-place of many men, + A termination, and a last retreat, + A centre, come from wheresoe'er you will, + A whole without dependence or defect, + Made for itself, and happy in itself, + Perfect contentment, Unity entire." + +In the Grasmere vale Wordsworth lived for half a century, first in a +little cottage at the northern corner of the lake, and then (1813) in +a more commodious house at Rydal Mount at the southern end, on the +road to Ambleside. In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, of Penrith, and +this completed the circle of his felicity. Mary, he once said, was to +his ear the most musical and most truly English in sound of all the +names we have. The name was of harmonious omen. The two beautiful +sonnets that he wrote on his wife's portrait long years after, when +"morning into noon had passed, noon into eve," show how much her large +heart and humble mind had done for the blessedness of his home. + +Their life was almost more simple than that of the dalesmen their +neighbours. "It is my opinion," ran one of his oracular sayings to Sir +George Beaumont, "that a man of letters, and indeed all public men +of every pursuit, should be severely frugal." Means were found for +supporting the modest home out of two or three small windfalls +bequeathed by friends or relatives, and by the time that children had +begun to come Wordsworth was raised to affluence by obtaining the post +of distributor of stamps for Westmoreland and part of Cumberland. His +life was happily devoid of striking external incident. Its essential +part lay in meditation and composition. + +He was surrounded by friends. Southey had made a home for himself +and his beloved library a few miles over the hills, at Keswick. De +Quincey, with his clever brains and shallow character, took up his +abode in the cottage which Wordsworth had first lived in at Grasmere. +Coleridge, born the most golden genius of them all, came to and fro +in those fruitless unhappy wanderings which consumed a life that once +promised to be so rich in blessing and in glory. In later years Dr. +Arnold built a house at Fox How, attracted by the Wordsworths and the +scenery; and other lesser lights came into the neighbourhood. "Our +intercourse with the Wordsworths," Arnold wrote on the occasion of his +first visit in 1832, "was one of the brightest spots of all; nothing +could exceed their friendliness, and my almost daily walks with him +were things not to be forgotten. Once and once only we had a good +fight about the Reform Bill during a walk up Greenhead Ghyll to see +the unfinished sheep-fold, recorded in _Michael_. But I am sure that +our political disagreement did not at all interfere with our enjoyment +of each other's society; for I think that in the great principles of +things we agreed very entirely." It ought to be possible, for that +matter, for magnanimous men, even if they do not agree in the great +principles of things, to keep pleasant terms with one another for more +than one afternoon's walk. Many pilgrims came, and the poet seems to +have received them with cheerful equanimity. Emerson called upon him +in 1833, and found him plain, elderly, whitehaired, not prepossessing. +"He led me out into his garden, and showed me the gravel walk in +which thousands of his lines were composed. He had just returned from +Staffa, and within three days had made three sonnets on Fingal's Cave, +and was composing a fourth when he was called in to see me. He said, +'If you are interested in my verses, perhaps you will like to hear +these lines.' I gladly assented, and he recollected himself for a few +moments, and then stood forth and repeated, one after the other, the +three entire sonnets with great animation. This recitation was so +unlooked for and surprising--he, the old Wordsworth, standing apart, +and reciting to me in a garden-walk, like a schoolboy declaiming--that +I at first was near to laugh; but recollecting myself, that I had come +thus far to see a poet, and he was chanting poems to me, I saw that he +was right and I was wrong, and gladly gave myself up to hear. He never +was in haste to publish; partly because he corrected a good deal.... +He preferred such of his poems as touched the affections to any +others; for whatever is didactic--what theories of society, and so +on--might perish quickly, but whatever combined a truth with an +affection was good to-day and good for ever" (_English Traits_, ch. +i.). + +Wordsworth was far too wise to encourage the pilgrims to turn into +abiding sojourners in his chosen land. Clough has described how, when +he was a lad of eighteen (1837), with a mild surprise he heard the +venerable poet correct the tendency to exaggerate the importance of +flowers and fields, lakes, waterfalls, and scenery. "People come to +the Lakes," said Wordsworth, "and are charmed with a particular spot, +and build a house, and find themselves discontented, forgetting that +these things are only the sauce and garnish of life." + +In spite of a certain hardness and stiffness, Wordsworth must have +been an admirable companion for anybody capable of true elevation +of mind. The unfortunate Haydon says, with his usual accent of +enthusiasm, after a saunter at Hampstead, "Never did any man so +beguile the time as Wordsworth. His purity of heart, his kindness, +his soundness of principle, his information, his knowledge, and the +intense and eager feelings with which he pours forth all he knows, +affect, interest, and enchant one" (_Autobiog._ i. 298, 384). The +diary of Crabb Robinson, the correspondence of Charles Lamb, the +delightful autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher, and much less delightfully +the autobiography of Harriet Martineau, all help us to realise by many +a trait Wordsworth's daily walk and conversation. Of all the glimpses +that we get, from these and many other sources, none are more pleasing +than those of the intercourse between Wordsworth and Scott. They were +the two manliest and most wholesome men of genius of their time. They +held different theories of poetic art, but their affection and esteem +for one another never varied, from the early days when Scott and his +young wife visited Wordsworth in his cottage at Grasmere, down to that +sorrowful autumn evening (1831) when Wordsworth and his daughter went +to Abbotsford to bid farewell to the wondrous potentate, then just +about to start on his vain search for new life, followed by "the might +of the whole earth's good wishes." + +Of Wordsworth's demeanour and physical presence, De Quincey's account, +silly, coxcombical, and vulgar, is the worst; Carlyle's, as might be +expected from his magical gift of portraiture, is the best. Carlyle +cared little for Wordsworth's poetry, had a real respect for the +antique greatness of his devotion to Poverty and Peasanthood, +recognised his strong intellectual powers and strong character, but +thought him rather dull, bad-tempered, unproductive, and almost +wearisome, and found his divine reflections and unfathomabilities +stinted, scanty, uncertain, palish. From these and many other +disparagements, one gladly passes to the picture of the poet as he was +in the flesh at a breakfast-party given by Henry Taylor, at a +tavern in St. James's Street, in 1840. The subject of the talk was +Literature, its laws, practices, and observances:--"He talked well in +his way; with veracity, easy brevity and force; as a wise tradesman +would of his tools and workshop, and as no unwise one could. His voice +was good, frank, and sonorous, though practically clear, distinct, +and forcible, rather than melodious; the tone of him business-like, +sedately confident; no discourtesy, yet no anxiety about being +courteous: a fine wholesome rusticity, fresh as his mountain breezes, +sat well on the stalwart veteran, and on all he said and did. You +would have said he was a usually taciturn man, glad to unlock himself +to audience sympathetic and intelligent, when such offered itself. His +face bore marks of much, not always peaceful, meditation; the look of +it not bland or benevolent, so much as close, impregnable, and hard; +a man _multa tacere loquive paratus_, in a world where he had +experienced no lack of contradictions as he strode along! The eyes +were not very brilliant, but they had a quiet clearness; there +was enough of brow, and well shaped; rather too much of cheek +('horse-face,' I have heard satirists say), face of squarish shape and +decidedly longish, as I think the head itself was (its 'length' going +horizontal); he was large-boned, lean, but still firm-knit, tall, and +strong-looking when he stood; a right good old steel-gray figure, with +rustic simplicity and dignity about him, and a vivacious _strength_ +looking through him which might have suited one of those old +steel-gray _Markgrafs_ [Graf = _Grau_,'Steel-gray'] whom Henry the +Fowler set up to ward the 'marches,' and do battle with the intrusive +heathen, in a stalwart and judicious manner." + +Whoever might be his friends within an easy walk, or dwelling afar, +the poet knew how to live his own life. The three fine sonnets headed +_Personal Talk_, so well known, so warmly accepted in our better +hours, so easily forgotten in hours not so good between pleasant +levities and grinding preoccupations, show us how little his +neighbours had to do with the poet's genial seasons of "smooth +passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought." + +For those days Wordsworth was a considerable traveller. Between 1820 +and 1837 he made long tours abroad, to Switzerland, to Holland, to +Belgium, to Italy. In other years he visited Wales, Scotland, +and Ireland. He was no mechanical tourist, admiring to order and +marvelling by regulation; and he confessed to Mrs. Fletcher that he +fell asleep before the Venus de Medici at Florence. But the product of +these wanderings is to be seen in some of his best sonnets, such as +the first on Calais Beach, the famous one on Westminster Bridge, the +second of the two on Bruges, where "the Spirit of Antiquity mounts to +the seat of grace within the mind--a deeper peace than that in deserts +found"--and in some other fine pieces. + +In weightier matters than mere travel, Wordsworth showed himself no +mere recluse. He watched the great affairs then being transacted in +Europe with the ardent interest of his youth, and his sonnets to +Liberty, commemorating the attack by France upon the Swiss, the fate +of Venice, the struggle of Hofer, the resistance of Spain, give no +unworthy expression to some of the best of the many and varied motives +that animated England in her long struggle with Bonaparte. The sonnet +to Toussaint l'Ouverture concludes with some of the noblest lines in +the English language. The strong verses on the expected death of Mr. +Fox are alive with a magnanimous public spirit that goes deeper than +the accidents of political opinion. In his young days he had sent Fox +a copy of the _Lyrical Ballads_, with a long letter indicating his +sense of Fox's great and generous qualities. Pitt he admits that he +could never regard with complacency. "I believe him, however," he +said, "to have been as disinterested a man, and as true a lover of his +country, as it was possible for so ambitious a man to be. His first +wish (though probably unknown to himself) was that his country should +prosper under his administration; his next that it should prosper. +Could the order of these wishes have been reversed, Mr. Pitt would +have avoided many of the grievous mistakes into which, I think, he +fell." "You always went away from Burke," he once told Haydon, "with +your mind filled; from Fox with your feelings excited; and from Pitt +with wonder at his having had the power to make the worse appear the +better reason." + +Of the poems composed under the influence of that best kind of +patriotism which ennobles local attachments by associating them with +the lasting elements of moral grandeur and heroism it is needless to +speak. They have long taken their place as something higher even than +literary classics. As years began to dull the old penetration of a +mind which had once approached, like other youths, the shield of human +nature from the golden side, and had been eager to "clear a passage +for just government," Wordsworth lost his interest in progress. +Waterloo may be taken for the date at which his social grasp began to +fail, and with it his poetic glow. He opposed Catholic emancipation as +stubbornly as Eldon, and the Reform Bill as bitterly as Croker. For +the practical reforms of his day, even in education, for which he +had always spoken up, Wordsworth was not a force. His heart clung to +England as he found it. "This concrete attachment to the scenes about +him," says Mr. Myers, "had always formed an important element In his +character. Ideal politics, whether in Church or State, had never +occupied his mind, which sought rather to find its informing +principles embodied in the England of his own day." This flowed, we +may suppose, from Burke. In a passage in the seventh Book of the +_Prelude_, he describes, in lines a little prosaic but quite true, +how he sat, saw, and heard, not unthankful nor uninspired, the great +orator + + "While he forewarns, denounces, launches forth + Against all systems built on abstract rights." + +The Church, as conceived by the spirit of Laud, and described by +Hooker's voice, was the great symbol of the union of high and stable +institution with thought, faith, right living, and "sacred religion, +mother of form and fear." As might be expected from such a point of +view, the church pieces, to which Wordsworth gave so much thought, +are, with few exceptions, such as the sonnet on _Seathwaite Chapel_, +formal, hard, and very thinly enriched with spiritual graces or +unction. They are ecclesiastical, not religious. In religious +poetry, the Church of England finds her most affecting voice, not in +Wordsworth, but in the _Lyra Innocentium_ and the _Christian Year_. +Wordsworth abounds in the true devotional cast of mind, but less than +anywhere else does it show in his properly ecclesiastical verse. + +It was perhaps natural that when events no longer inspired him, +Wordsworth should have turned with new feelings towards the classic, +and discovered a virtue in classic form to which his own method had +hitherto made him a little blind. Towards the date of Waterloo, he +read over again some of the Latin writers, in attempting to prepare +his son for college. He even at a later date set about a translation +of the _Aeneid_ of Virgil, but the one permanent result of the classic +movement in his mind is _Laodamia_. Earlier in life he had translated +some books of Ariosto at the rate of a hundred lines a day, and he +even attempted fifteen of the sonnets of Michael Angelo, but so much +meaning is compressed into so little room in those pieces that he +found the difficulty insurmountable. He had a high opinion of the +resources of the Italian language. The poetry of Dante and of Michael +Angelo, he said, proves that if there be little majesty and strength +in Italian verse, the fault is in the authors and not in the tongue. + +Our last glimpse of Wordsworth in the full and peculiar power of his +genius is the Ode _Composed on an evening of extraordinary splendour +and beauty_. It is the one exception to the critical dictum that all +his good work was done in the decade between 1798 and 1808. He lived +for more than thirty years after this fine composition. But he added +nothing more of value to the work that he had already done. The public +appreciation of it was very slow. The most influential among the +critics were for long hostile and contemptuous. Never at any time did +Wordsworth come near to such popularity as that of Scott or of Byron. +Nor was this all. For many years most readers of poetry thought more +even of _Lalla Rookh_ than of the _Excursion_. While Scott, Byron, and +Moore were receiving thousands of pounds, Wordsworth received nothing. +Between 1830 and 1840 the current turned in Wordsworth's direction, +and when he received the honour of a doctor's degree at the Oxford +Commemoration in 1839, the Sheldonian theatre made him the hero of the +day. In the spring of 1843 Southey died, and Sir Robert Peel pressed +Wordsworth to succeed him in the office of Poet-Laureate. "It is a +tribute of respect," said the Minister, "justly due to the first +of living poets." But almost immediately the light of his common +popularity was eclipsed by Tennyson, as it had earlier been eclipsed +by Scott, by Byron, and in some degree by Shelley. Yet his fame among +those who know, among competent critics with a right to judge, to-day +stands higher than it ever stood. Only two writers have contributed so +many lines of daily popularity and application. In the handbooks of +familiar quotations Wordsworth fills more space than anybody save +Shakespeare and Pope. He exerted commanding influence over great minds +that have powerfully affected our generation. "I never before," said +George Eliot in the days when her character was forming itself (1839), +"met with so many of my own feelings expressed just as I should like +them," and her reverence for Wordsworth remained to the end. J.S. Mill +has described how important an event in his life was his first reading +of Wordsworth. "What made his poems a medicine for my state of mind +was that they expressed not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling +and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. I +needed to be made to feel that there was real permanent happiness in +tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without +turning away from, but with greatly increased interest in the common +feelings and common destiny of human beings" _(Autobiog_., 148). This +effect of Wordsworth on Mill is the very illustration of the phrase +of a later poet of our own day, one of the most eminent and by his +friends best beloved of all those whom Wordsworth had known, and on +whom he poured out a generous portion of his own best spirit:-- + + Time may restore us in his course + Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force. + But where will Europe's latter hour + Again find Wordsworth's healing power? + +It is the power for which Matthew Arnold found this happy designation +that compensates us for that absence of excitement of which the +heedless complain in Wordsworth's verse--excitement so often meaning +mental fever, hysterics, distorted passion, or other fitful agitation +of the soul. + +Pretensions are sometimes advanced as to Wordsworth's historic +position, which involve a mistaken view of literary history. Thus, we +are gravely told by the too zealous Wordsworthian that the so-called +poets of the eighteenth century were simply men of letters; they had +various accomplishments and great general ability, but their thoughts +were expressed in prose, or in mere metrical diction, which passed +current as poetry without being so. Yet Burns belonged wholly to +the eighteenth century (1759-96), and no verse-writer is so little +literary as Burns, so little prosaic; no writer more truly poetic in +melody, diction, thought, feeling, and spontaneous song. It was Burns +who showed Wordsworth's own youth "How verse may build a princely +throne on humble truth." Nor can we understand how Cowper is to be set +down as simply a man of letters. We may, too, if we please, deny the +name of poetry to Collins's tender and pensive _Ode to Evening_; +but we can only do this on critical principles, which would end in +classing the author of _Lycidas_ and _Comus_, of the _Allegro_ and +_Penseroso_, as a writer of various accomplishments and great general +ability, but at bottom simply a man of letters and by no means a +poet. It is to Gray, however, that we must turn for the distinctive +character of the best poetry of the eighteenth century. With +reluctance we will surrender the Pindaric Odes, though not without +risking the observation that some of Wordsworth's own criticism on +Gray is as narrow and as much beside the mark as Jeffrey's on the +_Excursion_. But the _Ode on Eton College_ is not to have grudged to +it the noble name and true quality of poetry, merely because, as +one of Johnson's most unfortunate criticisms expresses it, the ode +suggests nothing to Gray which every beholder does not equally think +and feel. To find beautiful and pathetic language, set to harmonious +numbers, for the common impressions of meditative minds, is no small +part of the poet's task. That part has never been achieved by any poet +in any tongue with more complete perfection and success than in the +immortal _Elegy_, of which we may truly say that it has for nearly +a century and a half given to greater multitudes of men more of the +exquisite pleasure of poetry than any other single piece in all the +glorious treasury of English verse. It abounds, as Johnson says, "with +images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which +every bosom returns an echo." These moving commonplaces of the human +lot Gray approached through books and studious contemplation; not, as +Wordsworth approached them, by daily contact with the lives and habit +of men and the forces and magical apparitions of external nature. But +it is a narrow view to suppose that the men of the eighteenth century +did not look through the literary conventions of the day to the truths +of life and nature behind them. The conventions have gone, or are +changed, and we are all glad of it. Wordsworth effected a +wholesome deliverance when he attacked the artificial diction, the +personifications, the allegories, the antitheses, the barren rhymes +and monotonous metres, which the reigning taste had approved. But +while welcoming the new freshness, sincerity, and direct and fertile +return on nature, that is a very bad reason why we should disparage +poetry so genial, so simple, so humane, and so perpetually pleasing, +as the best verse of the rationalistic century. + +What Wordsworth did was to deal with themes that had been partially +handled by precursors and contemporaries, in a larger and more +devoted spirit, with wider amplitude of illustration, and with the +steadfastness and persistency of a religious teacher. "Every great +poet is a teacher," he said; "I wish to be considered as a teacher or +as nothing." It may be doubted whether his general proposition is at +all true, and whether it is any more the essential business of a poet +to be a teacher than it was the business of Handel, Beethoven, or +Mozart. They attune the soul to high states of feeling; the direct +lesson is often as nought. But of himself no view could be more sound. +He is a teacher, or he is nothing. "To console the afflicted; to add +sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the +young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and +therefore to become more actively and sincerely virtuous"--that was +his vocation; to show that the mutual adaptation of the external +world and the inner mind is able to shape a paradise from the "simple +produce of the common day"--that was his high argument. + +Simplification was, as I have said elsewhere, the keynote of the +revolutionary time. Wordsworth was its purest exponent, but he had one +remarkable peculiarity, which made him, in England at least, not only +its purest but its greatest. While leading men to pierce below the +artificial and conventional to the natural man and natural life, as +Rousseau did, Wordsworth still cherished the symbols, the traditions, +and the great institutes of social order. Simplification of life and +thought and feeling was to be accomplished without summoning up the +dangerous spirit of destruction and revolt. Wordsworth lived with +nature, yet waged no angry railing war against society. The chief +opposing force to Wordsworth in literature was Byron. Whatever he was +in his heart, Byron in his work was drawn by all the forces of his +character, genius, and circumstances to the side of violent social +change, and hence the extraordinary popularity of Byron in the +continental camp of emancipation. Communion with nature is in +Wordsworth's doctrine the school of duty. With Byron nature is the +mighty consoler and the vindicator of the rebel. + +A curious thing, which we may note in passing, is that Wordsworth, who +clung fervently to the historic foundations of society as it stands, +was wholly indifferent to history; while Byron, on the contrary, as +the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_ is enough to show, had at least +the sentiment of history in as great a degree as any poet that ever +lived, and has given to it by far the most magnificent expression. No +doubt, it was history on its romantic, rather than its philosophic or +its political side. + +On Wordsworth's exact position in the hierarchy of sovereign poets, +a deep difference of estimate still divides even the most excellent +judges. Nobody now dreams of placing him so low as the _Edinburgh +Reviewers_ did, nor so high as Southey placed him when he wrote to +the author of _Philip van Artevelde_ in 1829 that a greater poet than +Wordsworth there never has been nor ever will be. An extravagance of +this kind was only the outburst of generous friendship. Coleridge +deliberately placed Wordsworth "nearest of all modern writers to +Shakespeare and Milton, yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and his +own." Arnold, himself a poet of rare and memorable quality, declares +his firm belief that the poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after +that of Shakespeare and Milton, undoubtedly the most considerable in +our language from the Elizabethan age to the present time. Dryden, +Pope, Gray, Cowper, Goldsmith, Burns, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, +Keats--"Wordsworth's name deserves to stand, and will finally stand, +above them all." Mr. Myers, also a poet, and the author of a volume on +Wordsworth as much distinguished by insight as by admirable literary +grace and power, talks of "a Plato, a Dante, a Wordsworth," all three +in a breath, as stars of equal magnitude in the great spiritual +firmament. To Mr. Swinburne, on the contrary, all these panegyrical +estimates savour of monstrous and intolerable exaggeration. Amid these +contentions of celestial minds it will be safest to content ourselves +with one or two plain observations in the humble positive degree, +without hurrying into high and final comparatives and superlatives. + +One admission is generally made at the outset. Whatever definition +of poetry we fix upon, whether that it is the language of passion or +imagination formed into regular numbers; or, with Milton, that it +should be "simple, sensuous, impassioned;" in any case there are great +tracts in Wordsworth which, by no definition and on no terms, can be +called poetry. If we say with Shelley, that poetry is what redeems +from decay the visitations of the divinity in man, and is the record +of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds, then +are we bound to agree that Wordsworth records too many moments that +are not specially good or happy, that he redeems from decay frequent +visitations that are not from any particular divinity in man, and +treats them all as very much on a level. Mr. Arnold is undoubtedly +right in his view that, to be receivable as a classic, Wordsworth must +be relieved of a great deal of the poetical baggage that now encumbers +him. + +The faults and hindrances in Wordsworth's poetry are obvious to every +reader. For one thing, the intention to instruct, to improve the +occasion, is too deliberate and too hardly pressed. "We hate poetry," +said Keats, "that has a palpable design upon us. Poetry should be +great and unobtrusive." Charles Lamb's friendly remonstrance on one of +Wordsworth's poems is applicable to more of them: "The instructions +conveyed in it are too direct; they don't slide into the mind of the +reader while he is imagining no such matter." + +Then, except the sonnets and half a score of the pieces where he +reaches his topmost height, there are few of his poems that are not +too long, and it often happens even that no degree of reverence for +the teacher prevents one from finding passages of almost unbearable +prolixity. A defence was once made by a great artist for what, to the +unregenerate mind, seemed the merciless tardiness of movement in one +of Goethe's romances, that it was meant to impress on his readers the +slow march and the tedium of events in human life. The lenient reader +may give Wordsworth the advantage of the same ingenious explanation. +We may venture on a counsel which is more to the point, in warning the +student that not seldom in these blocks of afflicting prose, suddenly +we come upon some of the profoundest and most beautiful passages that +the poet ever wrote. In deserts of preaching we find, almost within +sight of one another, delightful oases of purest poetry. Besides being +prolix, Wordsworth is often cumbrous; has often no flight; is not +liquid, is not musical. He is heavy and self-conscious with the burden +of his message. How much at his best he is, when, as in the admirable +and truly Wordsworthian poem of _Michael_, he spares us a sermon and +leaves us the story. Then, he is apt to wear a somewhat stiff-cut +garment of solemnity, when not solemnity, but either sternness or +sadness, which are so different things, would seem the fitter mood. In +truth Wordsworth hardly knows how to be stern, as Dante or Milton was +stern; nor has he the note of plangent sadness which strikes the ear +in men as morally inferior to him as Rousseau, Keats, Shelley, or +Coleridge; nor has he the Olympian air with which Goethe delivered +sage oracles. This mere solemnity is specially oppressive in some +parts of the _Excursion_--the performance where we best see the whole +poet, and where the poet most absolutely identifies himself with his +subject. Yet, even in the midst of these solemn discoursings, he +suddenly introduces an episode in which his peculiar power is at its +height. There is no better instance of this than the passage in the +second Book of the _Excursion_, where he describes with a fidelity, at +once realistic and poetic, the worn-out almsman, his patient life and +sorry death, and then the unimaginable vision in the skies, as they +brought the ancient man down through dull mists from the mountain +ridge to die. These hundred and seventy lines are like the landscape +in which they were composed; you can no more appreciate the beauty of +the one by a single or a second perusal, than you can the other in a +scamper through the vale on the box of the coach. But any lover of +poetry who will submit himself with leisure and meditation to the +impressions of the story, the pity of it, the naturalness of it, the +glory and the mystic splendours of the indifferent heavens, will feel +that here indeed is the true strength which out of the trivial raises +expression for the pathetic and the sublime. + +Apart, however, from excess of prolixity and of solemnity, can it be +really contended that in purely poetic quality--in aerial freedom and +space, in radiant purity of light or depth and variety of colour, in +penetrating and subtle sweetness of music, in supple mastery of the +instrument, in vivid spontaneity of imagination, in clean-cut sureness +of touch--Wordsworth is not surpassed by men who were below him in +weight and greatness? Even in his own field of the simple and the +pastoral has he touched so sweet and spontaneous a note as Burns's +_Daisy_, or the _Mouse_? When men seek immersion or absorption in the +atmosphere of pure poesy, without lesson or moral, or anything but +delight of fancy and stir of imagination, they will find him less +congenial to their mood than poets not worthy to loose the latchet of +his shoe in the greater elements of his art. In all these comparisons, +it is not merely Wordsworth's theme and motive and dominant note that +are different; the skill of hand is different, and the musical ear and +the imaginative eye. + +To maintain or to admit so much as this, however, is not to say the +last word. The question is whether Wordsworth, however unequal to +Shelley in lyric quality, to Coleridge or to Keats in imaginative +quality, to Burns in tenderness, warmth, and that humour which is so +nearly akin to pathos, to Byron in vividness and energy, yet possesses +excellences of his own which place him in other respects above +these master-spirits of his time. If the question is to be answered +affirmatively, it is clear that only in one direction must we look. +The trait that really places Wordsworth on an eminence above his +poetic contemporaries, and ranks him, as the ages are likely to rank +him, on a line just short of the greatest of all time, is his direct +appeal to will and conduct. "There is volition and self-government in +every line of his poetry, and his best thoughts come from his steady +resistance to the ebb and flow of ordinary desires and regrets. He +contests the ground inch by inch with all despondent and indolent +humours, and often, too, with movements of inconsiderate and wasteful +joy" (_R.H. Hutton_). That would seem to be his true distinction and +superiority over men to whom more had been given of fire, passion, and +ravishing music. Those who deem the end of poetry to be intoxication, +fever, or rainbow dreams, can care little for Wordsworth. If its +end be not intoxication, but on the contrary a search from the wide +regions of imagination and feeling for elements of composure deep and +pure, and of self-government in a far loftier sense than the merely +prudential, then Wordsworth has a gift of his own in which he was +approached by no poet of his time. Scott's sane and humane genius, +with much the same aims, yet worked with different methods. He once +remonstrated with Lockhart for being too apt to measure things by some +reference to literature. "I have read books enough," said Scott, +"and observed and conversed with enough of eminent and splendidly +cultivated minds; but I assure you, I have heard higher sentiments +from the lips of poor uneducated men and women, when exerting +the spirit of severe yet gentle heroism under difficulties and +afflictions, or speaking their simple thoughts as to circumstances in +the lot of friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the +pages of the Bible. We shall never learn to respect our real calling +and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as +moonshine compared with the education of the heart." This admirable +deliverance of Scott's is, so far as it goes, eminently Wordsworthian; +but Wordsworth went higher and further, striving not only to move the +sympathies of the heart, but to enlarge the understanding, and exalt +and widen the spiritual vision, all with the aim of leading us towards +firmer and austerer self-control. + +Certain favourers of Wordsworth answer our question with a triumphant +affirmative, on the strength of some ethical, or metaphysical, or +theological system which they believe themselves to find in him. But +is it credible that poets can permanently live by systems? Or is not +system, whether ethical, theological, or philosophical, the heavy lead +of poetry? Lucretius is indisputably one of the mighty poets of the +world, but Epicureanism is not the soul of that majestic muse. So with +Wordsworth. Thought is, on the whole, predominant over feeling in his +verse, but a prevailing atmosphere of deep and solemn reflection does +not make a system. His theology and his ethics, and his so-called +Platonical metaphysics, have as little to do with the power of his +poetry over us, as the imputed Arianism or any other aspect of the +theology of _Paradise Lost_ has to do with the strength and the +sublimity of Milton, and his claim to a high perpetual place in the +hearts of men. It is best to be entirely sceptical as to the existence +of system and ordered philosophy in Wordsworth. When he tells us that +"one impulse from a vernal wood may teach you more of man, of moral +evil and of good, than all the sages can," such a proposition cannot +be seriously taken as more than a half-playful sally for the benefit +of some too bookish friend. No impulse from a vernal wood can teach us +anything at all of moral evil and of good. When he says that it is his +faith, "that every flower enjoys the air it breathes," and that +when the budding twigs spread out their fan to catch the air, he is +compelled to think "that there was pleasure there," he expresses a +charming poetic fancy and no more, and it is idle to pretend to see +in it the fountain of a system of philosophy. In the famous _Ode on +Intimations of Immortality_, the poet doubtless does point to a set of +philosophic ideas, more or less complete; but the thought from which +he sets out, that our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, and that +we are less and less able to perceive the visionary gleam, less and +less alive to the glory and the dream of external nature, as infancy +recedes further from us, is, with all respect for the declaration of +Mr. Ruskin to the contrary, contrary to notorious fact, experience, +and truth. It is a beggarly conception, no doubt, to judge as if +poetry should always be capable of a prose rendering; but it is at +least fatal to the philosophic pretension of a line or a stanza if, +when it is fairly reduced to prose, the prose discloses that it is +nonsense, and there is at least one stanza of the great _Ode_ that +this doom would assuredly await. Wordsworth's claim, his special gift, +his lasting contribution, lies in the extraordinary strenuousness, +sincerity, and insight with which he first idealises and glorifies the +vast universe around us, and then makes of it, not a theatre on which +men play their parts, but an animate presence, intermingling with +our works, pouring its companionable spirit about us, and "breathing +grandeur upon the very humblest face of human life." This twofold and +conjoint performance, consciously and expressly--perhaps only too +consciously--undertaken by a man of strong inborn sensibility to +natural impressions, and systematically carried out in a lifetime +of brooding meditation and active composition, is Wordsworth's +distinguishing title to fame and gratitude. In "words that speak of +nothing more than what we are," he revealed new faces of nature; he +dwelt on men as they are, men themselves; he strove to do that which +has been declared to be the true secret of force in art, to make the +trivial serve the expression of the sublime. "Wordsworth's distinctive +work," Mr. Ruskin has justly said (_Modern Painters_, iii. 293), "was +a war with pomp and pretence, and a display of the majesty of simple +feelings and humble hearts, together with high reflective truth in his +analysis of the courses of politics and ways of men; without these, +his love of nature would have been comparatively worthless." + +Yet let us not forget that he possessed the gift which to an artist is +the very root of the matter. He saw Nature truly, he saw her as she +is, and with his own eyes. The critic whom I have just quoted boldly +pronounces him "the keenest eyed of all modern poets for what is deep +and essential in nature." When he describes the daisy, casting the +beauty of its star-shaped shadow on the smooth stone, or the boundless +depth of the abysses of the sky, or the clouds made vivid as fire by +the rays of light, every touch is true, not the copying of a literary +phrase, but the result of direct observation. + +It is true that Nature has sides to which Wordsworth was not +energetically alive--Nature "red in tooth and claw." He was not +energetically alive to the blind and remorseless cruelties of life +and the world. When in early spring he heard the blended notes of the +birds, and saw the budding twigs and primrose tufts, it grieved him, +amid such fair works of nature, to think "what man has made of man." +As if nature itself, excluding the conscious doings of that portion of +nature which is the human race, and excluding also nature's own share +in the making of poor Man, did not abound in raking cruelties and +horrors of her own. "_Edel sei der Mensch_," sang Goethe in a noble +psalm, "_Hulfreich und gut, Denn das allein unterscheidet ihn, Von +allen Wesen die wir kennen._" "_Let man be noble, helpful, and good, +for that alone distinguishes him from all beings that we know. No +feeling has nature: to good and bad gives the sun his light, and for +the evildoer as for the best shine moon and stars_." That the +laws which nature has fixed for our lives are mighty and eternal, +Wordsworth comprehended as fully as Goethe, but not that they are +laws pitiless as iron. Wordsworth had not rooted in him the sense of +Fate--of the inexorable sequences of things, of the terrible chain +that so often binds an awful end to some slight and trivial beginning. + +This optimism or complacency in Wordsworth will be understood if we +compare his spirit and treatment with that of the illustrious French +painter whose subjects and whose life were in some ways akin to his +own. Millet, like Wordsworth, went to the realities of humble life for +his inspiration. The peasant of the great French plains and the forest +was to him what the Cumbrian dalesman was to Wordsworth. But he saw +the peasant differently. "You watch figures in the fields," said +Millet, "digging and delving with spade or pick. You see one of them +from time to time straightening his loins, and wiping his face with +the back of his hand. Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy +brow. Is that the gay lively labour in which some people would have +you believe? Yet it is there that for me you must seek true humanity +and great poetry. They say that I deny the charm of the country; I +find in it far more than charms, I find infinite splendours. I see +in it, just as they do, the little flowers of which Christ said that +Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of them. I see +clearly enough the sun as he spreads his splendour amid the clouds. +None the less do I see on the plain, all smoking, the horses at the +plough. I see in some stony corner a man all worn out, whose _han han_ +have been heard ever since daybreak--trying to straighten himself a +moment to get breath." The hardness, the weariness, the sadness, the +ugliness, out of which Millet's consummate skill made pictures that +affect us like strange music, were to Wordsworth not the real part of +the thing. They were all absorbed in the thought of nature as a whole, +wonderful, mighty, harmonious, and benign. + +We are not called upon to place great men of his stamp as if they were +collegians in a class-list. It is best to take with thankfulness and +admiration from each man what he has to give. What Wordsworth does +is to assuage, to reconcile, to fortify. He has not Shakespeare's +richness and vast compass, nor Milton's sublime and unflagging +strength, nor Dante's severe, vivid, ardent force of vision. Probably +he is too deficient in clear beauty of form and in concentrated power +to be classed by the ages among these great giants. We cannot be sure. +We may leave it to the ages to decide. But Wordsworth, at any rate, by +his secret of bringing the infinite into common life, as he evokes +it out of common life, has the skill to lead us, so long as we yield +ourselves to his influence, into inner moods of settled peace, +to touch "the depth and not the tumult of the soul," to give us +quietness, strength, steadfastness, and purpose, whether to do or to +endure. All art or poetry that has the effect of breathing into men's +hearts, even if it be only for a space, these moods of settled +peace, and strongly confirming their judgment and their will for +good,--whatever limitations may be found besides, however prosaic may +be some or much of the detail,--is great art and noble poetry, and the +creator of it will always hold, as Wordsworth holds, a sovereign title +to the reverence and gratitude of mankind. + + + + +APHORISMS.[1] + +[Footnote 1: An Address delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical +Institution, _November_ 11, 1887.] + + +Since I accepted the honour of the invitation to deliver the opening +address of your course, I have found no small difficulty in settling +down on an appropriate subject. I half wrote a discourse on modern +democracy,--how the rule of numbers is to be reconciled with the rule +of sage judgment, and the passion for liberty and equality is to be +reconciled with sovereign regard for law, authority, and order; and +how our hopes for the future are to be linked to wise reverence for +tradition and the past. But your secretary had emphatically warned me +off all politics, and I feared that however carefully I might be on my +guard against every reference to the burning questions of the hour, +yet the clever eyes of political charity would be sure to spy out +party innuendoes in the most innocent deliverances of purely abstract +philosophy. Then for a day or two I lingered over a subject in a +little personal incident. One Saturday night last summer I found +myself dining with an illustrious statesman on the Welsh border, and +on the Monday following I was seated under the acacias by the shore of +the Lake of Geneva, where Gibbon, a hundred years ago almost to the +day, had, according to his own famous words, laid down his pen after +writing the last lines of his last page, and there under a serene sky, +with the silver orb of the moon reflected from the waters, and amid +the silence of nature, felt his joy at the completion of an immortal +task, dashed by melancholy that he had taken everlasting leave of an +old and agreeable companion. It was natural that I should meditate on +the contrast that might be drawn between great literary performance +and great political performance, between the making of history and the +writing of it,--a contrast containing matter enough not only for one, +but for a whole series of edifying and instructive discourses. But +there were difficulties here too, and the edifying discourse remains, +like many another, incomplete. + +So I am going to ask you after all to pass a tranquil hour with me in +pondering a quiet chapter in the history of books. There is a loud cry +in these days for clues that shall guide the plain man through the +vast bewildering labyrinth of printed volumes. Everybody calls for +hints what to read, and what to look out for in reading. Like all the +rest of us, I have often been asked for a list of the hundred best +books, and the other day a gentleman wrote to me to give him by return +of post that far more difficult thing--list of the three best books in +the world. Both the hundred and the three are a task far too high for +me; but perhaps you will let me try to indicate what, among so much +else, is one of the things best worth hunting for in books, and one +of the quarters of the library where you may get on the scent. Though +tranquil, it will be my fault if you find the hour dull, for this +particular literary chapter concerns life, manners, society, conduct, +human nature, our aims, our ideals, and all besides that is most +animated and most interesting in man's busy chase after happiness and +wisdom. + +What is wisdom? That sovereign word, as has often been pointed out, is +used for two different things. It may stand for knowledge, learning, +science, systematic reasoning; or it may mean, as Coleridge has +defined it, common sense in an uncommon degree; that is to say, the +unsystematic truths that come to shrewd, penetrating, and observant +minds, from their own experience of life and their daily commerce with +the world, and that is called the wisdom of life, or the wisdom of the +world, or the wisdom of time and the ages. The Greeks had two words +for these two kinds of wisdom: one for the wise who scaled the heights +of thought and knowledge; another for those who, without logical +method, technical phraseology, or any of the parade of the Schools, +whether "Academics old and new, Cynic, Peripatetic, the sect +Epicurean, or Stoic severe," held up the mirror to human nature, and +took good counsel as to the ordering of character and of life. + +Mill, in his little fragment on Aphorisms, has said that in the first +kind of wisdom every age in which science flourishes ought to surpass +the ages that have gone before. In knowledge and methods of science +each generation starts from the point at which its predecessor left +off; but in the wisdom of life, in the maxims of good sense applied to +public and to private conduct, there is, said Mill, a pretty nearly +equal amount in all ages. + +If this seem doubtful to any one, let him think how many of the +shrewdest moralities of human nature are to be found in writings as +ancient as the apocryphal Book of the Wisdom of Solomon and of Jesus +the Son of Sirach; as _Aesop's Fables_; as the oracular sentences that +are to be found in Homer and the Greek dramatists and orators; as +all that immense host of wise and pithy saws which, to the number +of between four and five thousand, were collected from all ancient +literature by the industry of Erasmus in his great folio of Adages. As +we turn over these pages of old time, we almost feel that those are +right who tell us that everything has been said, that the thing that +has been is the thing that shall be, and there is no new thing under +the sun. Even so, we are happily not bound to Schopenhauer's gloomy +conclusion (_Werke_, v. 332), that "The wise men of all times have +always said the same, and the fools, that is the immense majority, of +all times have always done the same, that is to say, the opposite of +what the wise have said; and that is why Voltaire tells us that we +shall leave this world just as stupid and as bad as we found it when +we came here." + +It is natural that this second kind of wisdom, being detached and +unsystematic, should embody itself in the short and pregnant form of +proverb, sentence, maxim, and aphorism. The essence of aphorism is the +compression of a mass of thought and observation into a single +saying. It is the very opposite of dissertation and declamation; its +distinction is not so much ingenuity, as good sense brought to a +point; it ought to be neither enigmatical nor flat, neither a truism +on the one hand, nor a riddle on the other. These wise sayings, said +Bacon, the author of some of the wisest of them, are not only for +ornament, but for action and business, having a point or edge, whereby +knots in business are pierced and discovered. And he applauds Cicero's +description of such sayings as saltpits,--that you may extract salt +out of them, and sprinkle it where you will. They are the guiding +oracles which man has found out for himself in that great business +of ours, of learning how to be, to do, to do without, and to depart. +Their range extends from prudential kitchen maxims, such as Franklin +set forth in the sayings of Poor Richard about thrift in time and +money, up to such great and high moralities of life as are the prose +maxims of Goethe,--just as Bacon's Essays extend from precepts as to +building and planting, up to solemn reflections on truth, death, and +the vicissitudes of things. They cover the whole field of man as he +is, and life as it is, not of either as they ought to be; friendship, +ambition, money, studies, business, public duty, in all their actual +laws and conditions as they are, and not as the ideal moralist may +wish that they were. + +The substance of the wisdom of life must be commonplace, for the best +of it is the result of the common experience of the world. Its most +universal and important propositions must in a certain sense be +truisms. The road has been so broadly trodden by the hosts who have +travelled along it, that the main rules of the journey are clear +enough, and we all know that the secret of breakdown and wreck is +seldom so much an insufficient knowledge of the route, as imperfect +discipline of the will. The truism, however, and the commonplace may +be stated in a form so fresh, pungent, and free from triviality, as +to have all the force of new discovery. Hence the need for a caution, +that few maxims are to be taken without qualification. They seek +sharpness of impression by excluding one side of the matter and +exaggerating another, and most aphorisms are to be read as subject to +all sorts of limits, conditions, and corrections. + +It has been said that the order of our knowledge is this: that we know +best, first, what we have divined by native instinct; second, what +we have learned by experience of men and things; third, what we have +learned not in books, but by books--that is, by the reflections that +they suggest; fourth, last and lowest, what we have learned in books +or with masters. The virtue of an aphorism comes under the third of +these heads: it conveys a portion of a truth with such point as to set +us thinking on what remains. Montaigne, who delighted in Plutarch, +and kept him ever on his table, praises him in that besides his long +discourses, "there are a thousand others, which he has only touched +and glanced upon, where he only points with his finger to direct us +which way we may go if we will, and contents himself sometimes with +only giving one brisk hit in the nicest article of the question, +from whence we are to grope out the rest." And this is what Plutarch +himself is driving at, when he warns young men that it is well to go +for a light to another man's fire, but by no means to tarry by it, +instead of kindling a torch of their own. + +Grammarians draw a distinction between a maxim and an aphorism, and +tell us that while an aphorism only states some broad truth of general +bearing, a maxim, besides stating the truth, enjoins a rule of conduct +as its consequence. For instance, to say that "There are some men with +just imagination enough to spoil their judgment" is an aphorism. But +there is action as well as thought in such sayings as this: "'Tis a +great sign of mediocrity to be always reserved in praise"; or in this +of M. Aurelius, "When thou wishest to give thyself delight, think of +the excellences of those who live with thee; for instance, of the +energy of one, the modesty of another, the liberal kindness of a +third." Again, according to this distinction of the word, we are +to give the name of aphorism to Pascal's saying that "Most of the +mischief in the world would never happen, if men would only be content +to sit still in their parlours."[1] But we should give the name of +maxim to the profound and admirably humane counsel of a philosopher of +a very different school, that "If you would love mankind, you should +not expect too much from them." + +[Footnote 1: La Bruyère also says:--"All mischief comes from our +not being able to be alone; hence play, luxury, dissipation, wine, +ignorance, calumny, envy, forgetfulness of one's self and of God."] + +But the distinction is one without much difference; we need not labour +it nor pay it further attention. Aphorism or maxim, let us remember +that this wisdom of life is the true salt of literature; that those +books, at least in prose, are most nourishing which are most richly +stored with it; and that it is one of the main objects, apart from the +mere acquisition of knowledge, which men ought to seek in the reading +of books. + +A living painter has said, that the longer he works, the more does be +realise how very little anybody except the trained artist actually +perceives in the natural objects constantly before him; how blind men +are to impressions of colour and light and form, which would be full +of interest and delight, if people only knew how to see them. Are not +most of us just as blind to the thousand lights and shades in the +men and women around us? We live in the world as we live among +fellow-inmates in a hotel, or fellow-revellers at a masquerade. Yet +this, to bring knowledge of ourselves and others "home to our business +and our bosoms," is one of the most important parts of culture. + +Some prejudice is attached in generous minds to this wisdom of the +world as being egotistical, poor, unimaginative, of the earth earthy. +Since the great literary reaction at the end of the last century, men +have been apt to pitch criticism of life in the high poetic key. They +have felt with Wordsworth:-- + + "The human nature unto which I felt + That I belonged, and reverenced with love, + Was not a punctual presence, but a spirit + Diffused through time and space, with aid derived + Of evidence from monuments, erect, + Prostrate, or leaning towards their common rest + In earth, the widely-scattered wreck sublime + Of vanished nations." + +Then again, there is another cause for the passing eclipse of interest +in wisdom of the world. Extraordinary advances have been made in +ordered knowledge of the various stages of the long prehistoric +dawn of human civilisation. The man of the flint implement and the +fire-drill, who could only count up to five, and who was content to +live in a hut like a beehive, has drawn interest away from the man of +the market and the parlour. The literary passion for primitive times +and the raw material of man has thrust polished man, the manufactured +article, into a secondary place. All this is in the order of things. +It is fitting enough that we should pierce into the origins of human +nature. It is right, too, that the poets, the ideal interpreters of +life, should be dearer to us than those who stop short with mere +deciphering of what is real and actual. The poet has his own sphere +of the beautiful and the sublime. But it is no less true that the +enduring weight of historian, moralist, political orator, or preacher +depends on the amount of the wisdom of life that is hived in his +pages. They may be admirable by virtue of other qualities, by +learning, by grasp, by majesty of flight; but it is his moral +sentences on mankind or the State that rank the prose writer among the +sages. These show that he has an eye for the large truths of action, +for the permanent bearings of conduct, and for things that are for the +guidance of all generations. What is it that makes Plutarch's Lives +"the pasture of great souls," as they were called by one who was +herself a great soul? Because his aim was much less to tell a story +than, as he says, "to decipher the man and his nature"; and in +deciphering the man, to strike out pregnant and fruitful thoughts on +all men. Why was it worth while for Mr. Jowett, the other day, to give +us a new translation of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War? +And why is it worth your while, at least to dip in a serious spirit +into its pages? Partly, because the gravity and concision of +Thucydides are of specially wholesome example in these days of +over-coloured and over-voluminous narrative; partly, because he knows +how to invest the wreck and overthrow of those small states with the +pathos and dignity of mighty imperial fall; but most of all, for the +sake of the wise sentences that are sown with apt but not unsparing +hand through the progress of the story. Well might Gray ask his friend +whether Thucydides' description of the final destruction of the +Athenian host at Syracuse was not the finest thing he ever read in +his life; and assuredly the man who can read that stern tale without +admiration, pity, and awe may be certain that he has no taste for +noble composition, and no feeling for the deepest tragedy of mortal +things. But it is the sagacious sentences in the speeches of +Athenians, Corinthians, Lacedaemonians, that do most of all to give +to the historian his perpetuity of interest to every reader with the +rudiments of a political instinct, and make Thucydides as modern as if +he had written yesterday. + +Tacitus belongs to a different class among the great writers of the +world. He had, beyond almost any author of the front rank that has +ever lived, the art of condensing his thought and driving it home +to the mind of the reader with a flash. Beyond almost anybody, he +suffered from what a famous writer of aphorisms in our time has +described as "the cursed ambition to put a whole book into a page, a +whole page into a phrase, and the phrase into a word." But the moral +thought itself in Tacitus mostly belongs less to the practical wisdom +of life, than to sombre poetic indignation, like that of Dante, +against the perversities of men and the blindness of fortune. + +Horace's Epistles are a mine of genial, friendly, humane observation. +Then there is none of the ancient moralists to whom the modern, from +Montaigne, Charron, Ralegh, Bacon, downwards, owe more than to Seneca. +Seneca has no spark of the kindly warmth of Horace; he has not the +animation of Plutarch; he abounds too much in the artificial and +extravagant paradoxes of the Stoics. But, for all that, he touches the +great and eternal commonplaces of human occasion--friendship, health, +bereavement, riches, poverty, death--with a hand that places him high +among the wise masters of life. All through the ages men tossed in the +beating waves of circumstance have found more abundantly in the essays +and letters of Seneca than in any other secular writer words of good +counsel and comfort. And let this fact not pass, without notice of the +light that it sheds on the fact of the unity of literature, and of +the absurdity of setting a wide gulf between ancient or classical +literature and modern, as if under all dialects the partakers in +Graeco-Roman civilisation, whether in Athens, Rome, Paris, Weimar, +Edinburgh, London, Dublin, were not the heirs of a great common stock +of thought as well as of speech. + +I certainly do not mean anything so absurd as that the moralities, +whether major or minor, whether affecting the foundation of conduct or +the surface of manners, remain fixed. On the contrary, one of the most +interesting things in literature is to mark the shifts and changes in +men's standards. For instance, Boswell tells a curious story of the +first occasion on which Johnson met Sir Joshua Reynolds. Two ladies of +the company were regretting the death of a friend to whom they owed +great obligations. Reynolds observed that they had at any rate the +comfort of being relieved from a debt of gratitude. The ladies were +naturally shocked at this singular alleviation of their grief, but +Johnson defended it in his clear and forcible manner, and, says +Boswell, "was much pleased with the mind, the fair view of human +nature, that it exhibited, like some of the reflections of +Rochefoucauld." On the strength of it he went home with Reynolds, +supped with him, and was his friend for life. No moralist with a +reputation to lose would like to back Reynolds's remark in the +nineteenth century. + +Our own generation in Great Britain has been singularly unfortunate +in the literature of aphorism. One too famous volume of proverbial +philosophy had immense vogue, but it is so vapid, so wordy, so futile, +as to have a place among the books that dispense with parody. Then, +rather earlier in the century, a clergyman, who ruined himself by +gambling, ran away from his debts to America, and at last blew his +brains out, felt peculiarly qualified to lecture mankind on moral +prudence. He wrote a little book in 1820; called _Lacon; or Many +Things in Few Words, addressed to those who think_. It is an awful +example to anybody who is tempted to try his hand at an aphorism. +Thus, "Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than +the dinner." I had made some other extracts from this unhappy sage, +but you will thank me for having thrown them into the fire. Finally, a +great authoress of our time was urged by a friend to fill up a gap in +our literature by composing a volume of Thoughts: the result was that +least felicitous of performances, _Theophrastus Such_. One living +writer of genius has given us a little sheaf of subtly-pointed maxims +in the _Ordeal of Richard Feverel_, and perhaps he will one day +divulge to the world the whole contents of Sir Austin Feverel's +unpublished volume, _The Pilgrim's Scrip_. + +Yet the wisdom of life has its full part in our literature. Keen +insight into peculiarities of individual motive, and concentrated +interest in the play of character, shine not merely in Shakespeare, +whose mighty soul, as Hallam says, was saturated with moral +observation, nor in the brilliant verse of Pope. For those who love +meditative reading on the ways and destinies of men, we have Burton +and Fuller and Sir Thomas Browne in one age, and Addison, Johnson, +and the rest of the Essayists, in another. Sir Thomas Overbury's +_Characters_, written in the Baconian age, are found delightful +by some; but for my own part, though I have striven to follow the +critic's golden rule, to have preferences but no exclusions, Overbury +has for me no savour. In the great art of painting moral portraits, +or character-writing, the characters in Clarendon, or in Burnet's +_History of His Own Time_, are full of life, vigour, and coherency, +and are intensely attractive to read. I cannot agree with those who +put either Clarendon or Burnet on a level with the characters in St. +Simon or the Cardinal de Retz: there is a subtlety of analysis, a +searching penetration, a breadth of moral comprehension, in the +Frenchmen, which I do not find, nor, in truth, much desire to find, +in our countrymen. A homelier hand does well enough for homelier men. +Nevertheless, such characters as those of Falkland, or Chillingworth, +by Clarendon, or Burnet's very different Lauderdale, are worth a +thousand battle-pieces, cabinet plots, or parliamentary combinations, +of which we never can be sure that the narrator either knew or has +told the whole story. It is true that these characters have not the +strange quality which some one imputed to the writing of Tacitus, that +it seems to put the reader himself and the secrets of his own heart +into the confessional. It is in the novel that, in this country, the +faculty of observing social man and his peculiarities has found its +most popular instrument. The great novel, not of romance or adventure, +but of character and manners, from the mighty Fielding, down, at a +long interval, to Thackeray, covers the field that in France is held, +and successfully held, against all comers, by her maxim-writers, like +La Rochefoucauld, and her character-writers, like La Bruyère. But the +literature of aphorism contains one English name of magnificent and +immortal lustre--the name of Francis Bacon. Bacon's essays are the +unique masterpiece in our literature of this oracular wisdom of life, +applied to the scattered occasions of men's existence. The Essays are +known to all the world; but there is another and perhaps a weightier +performance of Bacon's which is less known, or not known at all, +except to students here and there. I mean the second chapter of the +eighth book of his famous treatise, _De Augmentis_. It has been +translated into pithy English, and is to be found in the fifth volume +of the great edition of Bacon, by Spedding and Ellis. + +In this chapter, among other things, he composes comments on between +thirty and forty of what he calls the Aphorisms or Proverbs of +Solomon, which he truly describes as containing, besides those of +a theological character, "not a few excellent civil precepts and +cautions, springing from the inmost recesses of wisdom, and extending +to much variety of occasions." I know not where else to find more of +the salt of common sense in an uncommon degree than in Bacon's terse +comments on the Wise King's terse sentences, and in the keen, +sagacious, shrewd wisdom of the world, lighted up by such brilliance +of wit and affluence of illustration, in the pages that come after +them. + +This sort of wisdom was in the taste of the time; witness Ralegh's +_Instructions to his Son_, and that curious collection "of political +and polemical aphorisms grounded on authority and experience," +which he called by the name of the _Cabinet Council_. Harrington's +_Political Aphorisms_, which came a generation later, are not moral +sentences; they are a string of propositions in political theory, +breathing a noble spirit of liberty, though too abstract for practical +guidance through the troubles of the day. But Bacon's admonitions +have a depth and copiousness that are all his own. He says that the +knowledge of advancement in life, though abundantly practised, had +not been sufficiently handled in books, and so he here lays down +the precepts for what he calls the _Architecture of Fortune_. They +constitute the description of a man who is politic for his own +fortune, and show how he may best shape a character that will attain +the ends of fortune. + +_First_, A man should accustom his mind to judge of the proportion and +value of all things as they conduce to his fortune and ends. + +_Second_, Not to undertake things beyond his strength, nor to row +against the stream. + +_Third_, Not to wait for occasions always, but sometimes to challenge +and induce them, according to that saying of Demosthenes: "In the same +manner as it is a received principle that the general should lead the +army, so should wise men lead affairs," causing things to be done +which they think good, and not themselves waiting upon events. + +_Fourth_, Not to take up anything which of necessity forestalls a +great quantity of time, but to have this sound ever ringing in our +ears: "Time is flying--time that can never be retrieved." + +_Fifth_, Not to engage one's-self too peremptorily in anything, but +ever to have either a window open to fly out at, or a secret way to +retire by. + +_Sixth_, To follow that ancient precept, not construed to any point +of perfidiousness, but only to caution and moderation, that we are to +treat our friend as if he might one day be a foe, and our foe as if he +should one day be friend. + +All these Bacon called the good arts, as distinguished from the evil +arts that had been described years before by Machiavelli in his +famous book _The Prince_, and also in his _Discourses_. Bacon called +Machiavelli's sayings depraved and pernicious, and a corrupt wisdom, +as indeed they are. He was conscious that his own maxims, too, stood +in some need of elevation and of correction, for he winds up with +wise warnings against being carried away by a whirlwind or tempest +of ambition; by the general reminder that all things are vanity and +vexation of spirit, and the particular reminder that, "Being without +well-being is a curse, and the greater being, the greater curse," and +that "all virtue is most rewarded, and all wickedness most punished in +itself"; by the question, whether this incessant, restless, and, as it +were, Sabbathless pursuit of fortune, leaves time for holier duties, +and what advantage it is to have a face erected towards heaven, with a +spirit perpetually grovelling upon earth, eating dust like a serpent; +and finally, he says that it will not be amiss for men, in this eager +and excited chase of fortune, to cool themselves a little with that +conceit of Charles V. in his instructions to his son, that "Fortune +hath somewhat of the nature of a woman, who, if she be too closely +wooed, is commonly the further off." + +There is Baconian humour as well as a curious shrewdness in such an +admonition as that which I will here transcribe, and there are many +like it:-- + + "It is therefore no unimportant attribute of prudence in a man to + be able to set forth to advantage before others, with grace and + skill, his virtues, fortunes, and merits (which may be done + without arrogance or breeding disgust); and again, to cover + artificially his weaknesses, defects, misfortunes, and disgraces; + dwelling upon the former and turning them to the light, sliding + from the latter or explaining them away by apt interpretations and + the like. Tacitus says of Mucianus, the wisest and most active + politician of his time, 'That he had a certain art of setting + forth to advantage everything he said or did.' And it requires + indeed some art, lest it become wearisome and contemptible; but + yet it is true that ostentation, though carried to the first + degree of vanity, is rather a vice in morals than in policy. For + as it is said of calumny, 'Calumniate boldly, for some of it + will stick,' so it may be said of ostentation (except it be in a + ridiculous degree of deformity), 'Boldly sound your own praises, + and some of them will stick.' It will stick with the more ignorant + and the populace, though men of wisdom may smile at it; and the + reputation won with many will amply countervail the disdain of a + few.... And surely no small number of those who are of a solid + nature, and who, from the want of this ventosity, cannot spread + all sail in pursuit of their own honour, suffer some prejudice and + lose dignity by their moderation." + +Nobody need go to such writings as these for moral dignity or moral +energy. They have no place in that nobler literature, from Epictetus +and Marcus Aurelius downwards, which lights up the young soul with +generous aims, and fires it with the love of all excellence. Yet the +most heroic cannot do without a dose of circumspection. The counsels +of old Polonius to Laertes are less sublime than Hamlet's soliloquy, +but they have their place. Bacon's chapters are a manual of +circumspection, whether we choose to give to circumspection a high or +a low rank in the list of virtues. Bacon knew of the famous city which +had three gates, and on the first the horseman read inscribed, "Be +bold"; and on the second gate yet again, "Be bold, and evermore be +bold"; and on the third it was written, "Be not too bold." + +This cautious tone had been brought about by the circumstances of +the time. Government was strict; dissent from current opinions was +dangerous; there was no indifference and hardly any tolerance; +authority was suspicious and it was vindictive. When the splendid +genius of Burke rose like a new sun into the sky, the times were +happier, and nowhere in our literature does a noble prudence wear +statelier robes than in the majestic compositions of Burke. + +Those who are curious to follow the literature of aphorism into +Germany, will, with the mighty exceptions of Goethe and Schiller, find +but a parched and scanty harvest. The Germans too often justify the +unfriendly definition of an aphorism as a form of speech, that wraps +up something quite plain in words that turn it into something very +obscure. As old Fuller says, the writers have a hair hanging to the +nib of their pen. Their shortness does not prevent them from being +tiresome. They recall the French wit to whom a friend showed a +distich: "Excellent," he said; "but isn't it rather spun out?" + +Lichtenberg, a professor of physics, who was also a considerable hand +at satire a hundred years ago, composed a collection of sayings, not +without some wheat amid much chaff. A later German writer, of whom +I will speak in a moment or two, Schopenhauer, has some excellent +remarks on Self-reflection, and on the difference between those who +think for themselves and those who think for other people; between +genuine Philosophers, who look at things first hand for their own +sake, and Sophists, who look at words and books for the sake of making +an appearance before the world, and seek their happiness in what +they hope to get from others: he takes Herder for an example of the +Sophist, and Lichtenberg for the true Philosopher. It is true that we +hear the voice of the Self-thinker, and not the mere Book-philosopher, +if we may use for once those uncouth compounds, in such sayings as +these:-- + + "People who never have any time are the people + who do least." + + "The utmost that a weak head can get out of experience + is an extra readiness to find out the weaknesses + of other people." + + "Over-anxiously to feel and think what one could + have done, is the very worst thing one can do." + + "He who has less than he desires, should know that + he has more than he deserves." + + "Enthusiasts without capacity are the really dangerous + people." + +This last, by the way, recalls a saying of the great French +reactionary, De Bonald, which is never quite out of date: "Follies +committed by the sensible, extravagances uttered by the clever, crimes +perpetrated by the good,--there is what makes revolutions." + +Radowitz was a Prussian soldier and statesman, who died in 1853, +after doing enough to convince men since that the revolution of 1848 +produced no finer mind. He left among other things two or three +volumes of short fragmentary pieces on politics, religion, literature, +and art. They are intelligent and elevated, but contain hardly +anything to our point to-night, unless it be this,--that what is +called Stupidity springs not at all from mere want of understanding, +but from the fact that the free use of a man's understanding is +hindered by some definite vice: Frivolity, Envy, Dissipation, +Covetousness, all these darling vices of fallen man,--these are at the +bottom of what we name Stupidity. This is true enough, but it is not +so much to the point as the saying of a highly judicious aphorist of +my own acquaintance, that "Excessive anger against human stupidity is +itself one of the most provoking of all forms of stupidity." + +Another author of aphorisms of the Goethe period was Klinger, a +playwriter, who led a curious and varied life in camps and cities, who +began with a vehement enthusiasm for the sentimentalism of Rousseau, +and ended, as such men often end, with a hard and stubborn cynicism. +He wrote _Thoughts on different Subjects of the World and Literature_, +which are intelligent and masculine, if they are not particularly +pungent in expression. One of them runs--"He who will write +interestingly must be able to keep heart and reason in close and +friendliest connection. The heart must warm the reason, and reason +must in turn blow on the embers if they are to burst into flame." This +illustrates what an aphorism should not be. Contrast its clumsiness +with the brevity of the famous and admirable saying of Vauvenargues, +that "great thoughts come from the heart." + +Schopenhauer gave to one of his minor works the name of _Aphorismen zu +Lebens-Weisheit_, "Aphorisms for the Wisdom of Life," and he put to +it, by way of motto, Chamfort's saying, "Happiness is no easy matter; +'tis very hard to find it within ourselves, and impossible to find it +anywhere else." Schopenhauer was so well read in European literature, +he had such natural alertness of mind, and his style is so pointed, +direct, and wide-awake, that these detached discussions are +interesting and most readable; but for the most part discussions they +are, and not aphorisms. Thus, in the saying that "The perfect man of +the world should be he who never sticks fast in indecision, nor ever +falls into overhaste," the force of it lies in what goes before and +what follows after. The whole collection, winding up with the chapter +of Counsels and Maxims, is in the main an unsystematic enforcement of +those peculiar views of human happiness and its narrow limits which +proved to be the most important part of Schopenhauer's system. "The +sovereign rule in the wisdom of life," he said, "I see in Aristotle's +proposition (_Eth. Nic_. vii. 12), [Greek: ho phronimos to alupon +diokei, ou to haedu]: Not pleasure but freedom from pain is what +the sensible man goes after." The second volume, of Detached though +systematically Ordered Thoughts on Various Circumstances, is +miscellaneous in its range of topics, and is full of suggestion; but +the thoughts are mainly philosophical and literary, and do not come +very close to practical wisdom. In truth, so negative a view of +happiness, such pale hopes and middling expectations, could not guide +a man far on the path of active prudence, where we naturally take for +granted that the goal is really something substantial, serious, solid, +and positive.[1] + +[Footnote 1: Burke says on the point raised above: "I am satisfied the +ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the +part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made +to suffer are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than +any pleasures which the most learned voluptuary could suggest. Nay, +I am in great doubt whether any man could be found, who would earn a +life of the most perfect satisfaction at the price of ending it in +the torments which justice inflicted in a few hours on the late +unfortunate regicide in France" (_Sublime and Beautiful_, pt. I. sec. +vii.). The reference is, of course, to Damien.] + +Nobody cared less than Schopenhauer for the wisdom that is drawn from +books, or has said such hard things of mere reading. In the short +piece to which I have already referred (p. 80), he works out the +difference between the Scholar who has read in books, and the +Thinkers, the Geniuses, the Lights of the World, and Furtherers of +the human race, who have read directly from the world's own pages. +Reading, he says, is only a _succedaneum_ for one's own thinking. +Reading is thinking with a strange head instead of one's own. People +who get their wisdom out of books are like those who have got their +knowledge of a country from the descriptions of travellers. Truth that +has been picked up from books only sticks to us like an artificial +limb, or a false tooth, or a rhinoplastic nose; the truth we have +acquired by our own thinking is like the natural member. At least, as +Goethe puts it in his verse, + + Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, + Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen. + + _What from thy fathers thou dost inherit, be sure thou + earn it, that so it may become thine own_. + +It is only Goethe and Schiller, and especially Goethe, "the strong, +much-toiling sage, with spirit free from mists, and sane and clear," +who combine the higher and the lower wisdom, and have skill to put +moral truths into forms of words that fix themselves with stings in +the reader's mind. All Goethe's work, whether poetry or prose, his +plays, his novels, his letters, his conversations, are richly bestrewn +with the luminous sentences of a keen-eyed, steadfast, patient, +indefatigable watcher of human life. He deals gravely and sincerely +with men. He has none of that shallow irony by which small men who +have got wrong with the world seek a shabby revenge. He tells us the +whole truth. He is not of those second-rate sages who keep their own +secrets, externally complying with all the conventions of speech and +demeanour, while privately nourishing unbridled freedom of opinion +in the inner sanctuary of the mind. He handles soberly, faithfully, +laboriously, cheerfully, every motive and all conduct. He marks +himself the friend, the well-wisher, and the helper. I will not begin +to quote from Goethe, for I should never end. The volume of _Spruche_, +or aphorisms in rhyme and prose in his collected works, is accessible +to everybody, but some of his wisest and finest are to be found in the +plays, like the well-known one in his _Tasso_, "In stillness Talent +forms itself, but Character in the great current of the world." + +But here is a concentrated admonition from the volume that I have +named, that will do as well as any other for an example of his +temper-- + + "Wouldst fashion for thyself a seemly life?-- + Then fret not over what is past and gone; + And spite of all thou mayst have lost behind, + Yet act as if thy life were just begun. + What each day wills, enough for thee to know; + What each day wills, the day itself will tell. + Do thine own task, and be therewith content; + What others do, that shalt thou fairly judge; + Be sure that thou no brother-mortal hate, + Then all besides leave to the Master Power." + +If any of you should be bitten with an unhappy passion for the +composition of aphorisms, let me warn such an one that the power of +observing life is rare, the power of drawing new lessons from it is +rarer still, and the power of condensing the lesson in a pointed +sentence is rarest of all. Beware of cultivating this delicate art. +The effort is only too likely to add one more to that perverse +class described by Gibbon, who strangle a thought in the hope of +strengthening it, and applaud their own skill when they have shown +in a few absurd words the fourth part of an idea. Let me warmly urge +anybody with so mistaken an ambition, instead of painfully distilling +poor platitudes of his own, to translate the shrewd saws of the wise +browed Goethe. + +Some have found light in the sayings of Balthasar Gracian, a Spaniard, +who flourished at the end of the seventeenth century, whose maxims +were translated into English at the very beginning of the eighteenth, +and who was introduced to the modern public in an excellent article +by Sir M.E. Grant Duff a few years ago. The English title is +attractive,--_The Art of Prudence, or a Companion for a Man of Sense_. +I do not myself find Gracian much of a companion, though some of his +aphorisms give a neat turn to a commonplace. Thus:-- + + "The pillow is a dumb sibyl. To sleep upon a thing + that is to be done, is better than to be wakened up by + one already done." + + "To equal a predecessor one must have twice his + worth." + + "What is easy ought to be entered upon as though + it were difficult, and what is difficult as though it were + easy." + + "Those things are generally best remembered which + ought most to be forgot. Not seldom the surest remedy + of the evil consists in forgetting it." + +It is France that excels in the form no less than in the matter of +aphorism, and for the good reason that in France the arts of polished +society were relatively at an early date the objects of a serious and +deliberate cultivation, such as was and perhaps remains unknown in the +rest of Europe. Conversation became a fine art. "I hate war," said +one; "it spoils conversation." The leisured classes found their +keenest relish in delicate irony, in piquancy, in contained vivacity, +in the study of niceties of observation and finish of phrase. You have +a picture of it in such a play as Molière's _Misanthropist_, where we +see a section of the polished life of the time--men and women making +and receiving compliments, discoursing on affairs with easy lightness, +flitting backwards and forwards with a thousand petty hurries, and +among them one singular figure, hoarse, rough, sombre, moving with a +chilling reality in the midst of frolicking shadows. But the shadows +were all in all to one another. Not a point of conduct, not a subtlety +of social motive, escaped detection and remark. + +Dugald Stewart has pointed to the richness of the French tongue +in appropriate and discriminating expressions for varieties of +intellectual turn and shade. How many of us, who claim to a reasonable +knowledge of French, will undertake easily to find English +equivalents for such distinctions as are expressed in the following +phrases--Esprit juste, esprit Ă©tendu, esprit fin, esprit dĂ©liĂ©, esprit +de lumière. These numerous distinctions are the evidence, as Stewart +says, of the attention paid by the cultivated classes to delicate +shades of mind and feeling. Compare with them the colloquial use of +our terribly overworked word "clever." Society and conversation have +never been among us the school of reflection, the spring of literary +inspiration, that they have been in France. The English rule has +rather been like that of the ancient Persians, that the great thing is +to learn to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the truth. There +is much in it. But it has been more favourable to strength than to +either subtlety or finish. + +One of the most commonly known of all books of maxims, after the +Proverbs of Solomon, are the Moral Reflections of La Rochefoucauld. +The author lived at court, himself practised all the virtues which +he seemed to disparage, and took so much trouble to make sure of the +right expression that many of these short sentences were more than +thirty times revised. They were given to the world in the last half +of the seventeenth century in a little volume which Frenchmen used +to know by heart, which gave a new turn to the literary taste of the +nation, and which has been translated into every civilised tongue. It +paints men as they would be if self-love were the one great mainspring +of human action, and it makes magnanimity itself no better than +self-interest in disguise. + + "Interest," he says, "speaks all sorts of tongues and + plays all sorts of parts, even the part of the disinterested." + + "Gratitude is with most people only a strong desire + for greater benefits to come." + + "Love of justice is with most of us nothing but the + fear of suffering injustice." + + "Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of + interests, a mutual exchange of good offices; it is a + species of commerce out of which self-love always + intends to make something." + + "We have all strength enough to endure the troubles + of other people." + + "Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we + have done, as fear of the ill that may come to us in + consequence." + +And everybody here knows the saying that "In the adversity of our best +friends we often find something that is not exactly displeasing." + +We cannot wonder that in spite of their piquancy of form, such +sentences as these have aroused in many minds an invincible repugnance +for what would be so tremendous a calumny on human nature, if the +book were meant to be a picture of human nature as a whole. "I count +Rochefoucauld's _Maxims_," says one critic, "a bad book. As I am +reading it, I feel discomfort; I have a sense of suffering which I +cannot define. Such thoughts tarnish the brightness of the soul; +they degrade the heart." Yet as a faithful presentation of human +selfishness, and of you and me in so far as we happen to be mainly +selfish, the odious mirror has its uses by showing us what manner of +man we are or may become. Let us not forget either that not quite all +is selfishness in La Rochefoucauld. Everybody knows his saying that +hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. There is a subtle +truth in this, too,--that to be in too great a hurry to discharge an +obligation is itself a kind of ingratitude. Nor is there any harm in +the reflection that no fool is so troublesome as the clever fool; nor +in this, that only great men have any business with great defects; +nor, finally, in the consolatory saying, that we are never either so +happy or so unhappy as we imagine. + +No more important name is associated with the literature of aphorism +than that of Pascal; but the Thoughts of Pascal concern the deeper +things of speculative philosophy and religion, rather than the wisdom +of daily life, and, besides, though aphoristic in form, they are in +substance systematic. "I blame equally," he said, "those who take +sides for praising man, those who are for blaming him, and those +who amuse themselves with him: the only wise part is search for +truth--search with many sighs." On man, as he exists in society, he +said little; and what he said does not make us hopeful. He saw the +darker side. "If everybody knew what one says of the other, there +would not be four friends left in the world." "Would you have men +think well of you, then do not speak well of yourself." And so forth. +If you wish to know Pascal's theory you may find it set out in +brilliant verse in the opening lines of the second book of Pope's +_Essay on Man_. "What a chimera is Man!" said Pascal. "What a confused +chaos! What a subject of contradiction! A professed judge of all +things, and yet a feeble worm of the earth; the great depository and +guardian of truth, and yet a mere huddle of uncertainty; the glory and +the scandal of the universe." Shakespeare was wiser and deeper when, +under this quintessence of dust, he discerned what a piece of work is +man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving +how express and admirable. That serene and radiant faith is the +secret, added to matchless gifts of imagination and music, why +Shakespeare is the greatest of men. + +There is a smart, spurious wisdom of the world which has the +bitterness not of the salutary tonic but of mortal poison; and of this +kind the master is Chamfort, who died during the French Revolution +(and for that matter died of it), and whose little volume of thoughts +is often extremely witty, always pointed, but not seldom cynical and +false. "If you live among men," he said, "the heart must either break +or turn to brass." "The public, the public," he cried; "how many fools +does it take to make a public!" "What is celebrity? The advantage of +being known to people who don't know you." + +All literatures might be ransacked in vain for a more repulsive saying +than this, that "A man must swallow a toad every morning if he wishes +to be quite sure of finding nothing still more disgusting before the +day is over." We cannot be surprised to hear of the lady who said that +a conversation with Chamfort in the morning made her melancholy until +bedtime. Yet Chamfort is the author of the not unwholesome saying that +"The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed." +One of his maxims lets us into the secret of his misanthropy. +"Whoever," he said, "is not a misanthropist at forty can never have +loved mankind." It is easy to know what this means. Of course if a man +is so superfine that he will not love mankind any longer than he can +believe them to be demigods and angels, it is true that at forty he +may have discovered that they are neither. Beginning by looking for +men to be more perfect than they can be, he ends by thinking them +worse than they are, and then he secretly plumes himself on his +superior cleverness in having found humanity out. For the deadliest +of all wet blankets give me a middle-aged man who has been most of a +visionary in his youth. + +To correct all this, let us recall HelvĂ©tius's saying that I have +already quoted, which made so deep an impression on Jeremy Bentham: +"In order to love mankind, we must not expect too much from them." And +let us remember that FĂ©nelon, one of the most saintly men that ever +lived, and whose very countenance bore such a mark of goodness that +when he was in a room men found they could not desist from looking at +him, wrote to a friend the year before he died, "I ask little from +most men; I try to render them much, and to expect nothing in return, +and I get very well out of the bargain." + +Chamfort I will leave, with his sensible distinction between Pride and +Vanity. "A man," he says, "has advanced far in the study of morals who +has mastered the difference between pride and vanity. The first is +lofty, calm, immovable; the second is uncertain, capricious, unquiet. +The one adds to a man's stature; the other only puffs him out. The one +is the source of a thousand virtues; the other is that of nearly all +vices and all perversities. There is a kind of pride in which are +included all the commandments of God; and a kind of vanity which +contains the seven mortal sins." + +I will say little of La Bruyère, by far the greatest, broadest, +strongest, of French character-writers, because his is not one of the +houses of which you can judge by a brick or two taken at random. For +those in whom the excitements of modern literature have not burnt up +the faculty of sober meditation on social man, La Bruyère must always +be one of the foremost names. Macaulay somewhere calls him thin. But +Macaulay has less ethical depth, and less perception of ethical depth, +than any writer that ever lived with equally brilliant gifts in other +ways; and _thin_ is the very last word that describes this admirable +master. If one seeks to measure how far removed the great classic +moralists are from thinness, let him turn from La Bruyère to the inane +subtleties and meaningless conundrums, not worth answering, that do +duty for analysis of character in some modern American literature. +We feel that La Bruyère, though retiring, studious, meditative, and +self-contained, has complied with the essential condition of looking +at life and men themselves, and with his own eyes. His aphoristic +sayings are the least important part of him, but here are one or two +examples:-- + + "Eminent posts make great men greater, and little + men less." + + "There is in some men a certain mediocrity of mind + that helps to make them wise." + + "The flatterer has not a sufficiently good opinion + either of himself or of others." + + "People from the provinces and fools are always + ready to take offence, and to suppose that you are + laughing at them: we should never risk a pleasantry, + except with well-bred people, and people with brains. + + "All confidence is dangerous, unless it is complete, + there are few circumstances in which it is not best + either to hide all or to tell all." + + "When the people is in a state of agitation, we do + not see how quiet is to return; and when it is tranquil, + we do not see how the quiet is to be disturbed." + + "Men count for almost nothing the virtues of the + heart, and idolise gifts of body or intellect. The man + who quite coolly, and with no idea that he is offending + modesty, says that he is kind-hearted, constant, faithful, + sincere, fair, grateful, would not dare to say that + he is quick and clever, that he has fine teeth and a + delicate skin." + +I will say nothing of Rivarol, a caustic wit of the revolutionary +time, nor of Joubert, a writer of sayings of this century, of whom +Mr. Matthew Arnold has said all that needs saying. He is delicate, +refined, acute, but his thoughts were fostered in the hothouse of a +coterie, and have none of the salt and sapid flavour that comes to +more masculine spirits from active contact with the world. + +I should prefer to close this survey in the sunnier moral climate of +Vauvenargues. His own life was a pathetic failure in all the aims of +outer circumstance. The chances of fortune and of health persistently +baulked him, but from each stroke he rose up again, with undimmed +serenity and undaunted spirit. As blow fell upon blow, the sufferer +hold, firmly to his incessant lesson,--Be brave, persevere in the +fight, struggle on, do not let go, think magnanimously of man and +life, for man is good and life is affluent and fruitful. He died a +hundred and forty years ago, leaving a little body of maxims behind +him which, for tenderness, equanimity, cheerfulness, grace, sobriety, +and hope, are not surpassed in prose literature. "One of the noblest +qualities in our nature," he said, "is that we are able so easily to +dispense with greater perfection." + + "Magnanimity owes no account to prudence of its + motives." + + "To do great things a man must live as though he + had never to die." + + "The first days of spring have less grace than the + growing virtue of a young man." + + "You must rouse in men a consciousness of their + own prudence and strength if you would raise their + character." + +Just as Tocqueville said: "He who despises mankind will never get the +best out of either others or himself."[1] + +[Footnote 1: The reader who cares to know more about Vauvenargues will +find a chapter on him in the present writer's _Miscellanies_, vol. +ii.] + +The best known of Vauvenargues' sayings, as it is the deepest and the +broadest, is the far-reaching sentence already quoted, that "Great +thoughts come from the heart." And this is the truth that shines out +as we watch the voyagings of humanity from the "wide, grey, lampless +depths" of time. Those have been greatest in thought who have been +best endowed with faith, hope, sympathy, and the spirit of effort. And +next to them come the great stern, mournful men, like Tacitus, Dante, +Pascal, who, standing as far aloof from the soft poetic dejection +of some of the moods of Shelley or Keats as from the savage fury +of Swift, watch with a prophet's indignation the heedless waste of +faculty and opportunity, the triumph of paltry motive and paltry aim, +as if we were the flies of a summer noon, which do more than any +active malignity to distort the noble lines, and to weaken or to +frustrate the strong and healthy parts, of human nature. For practical +purposes all these complaints of man are of as little avail as Johnson +found the complaint that of the globe so large a space should be +occupied by the uninhabitable ocean, encumbered by naked mountains, +lost under barren sands, scorched by perpetual heat or petrified by +perpetual frost, and so small a space be left for the production of +fruits, the pasture of cattle, and the accommodation of men. + +When we have deducted, said Johnson, all the time that is absorbed +in sleep, or appropriated to the other demands of nature, or the +inevitable requirements of social intercourse, all that is torn from +us by violence of disease, or imperceptibly stolen from us by languor, +we may realise of how small a portion of our time we are truly +masters. And the same consideration of the ceaseless and natural +pre-occupations of men in the daily struggle will reconcile the wise +man to all the disappointments, delays, shortcomings of the world, +without shaking the firmness of his own faith, or the intrepidity of +his own purpose. + + + + +MAINE ON POPULAR GOVERNMENT.[1] + +[Footnote 1: February 1886.] + + +"If the government of the Many," says the distinguished author of the +volume before us, "be really inevitable, one would have thought that +the possibility of discovering some other and newer means of enabling +It to fulfil the ends for which all governments exist would have been +a question exercising all the highest powers of the strongest minds, +particularly in the community which, through the success of its +popular institutions, has paved the way for modern Democracy. Yet +hardly anything worth mentioning has been produced on the subject in +England or on the Continent." To say this, by the way, Is strangely to +ignore three or four very remarkable books that have been published +within the last twenty or five-and-twenty years, that have excited +immense attention and discussion, and that are the work of minds that +even Sir Henry Maine would hardly call weak or inactive. We are no +adherents of any of Mr. Hare's proposals, but there are +important public men who think that his work on the _Election of +Representatives_ is as conspicuous a landmark in politics as the +_Principia_ was in natural philosophy. J.S. Mill's volume on +_Representative Government_, which appeared in 1861, was even a more +memorable contribution towards the solution of the very problem +defined by Sir Henry Maine, than was the older Mill's article on +Government In 1820 to the political difficulties of the eve of the +Reform Bill. Again, Lord Grey's work on Parliamentary Government +failed in making its expected mark on legislation, but it was worth +mentioning because It goes on the lines of the very electoral law in +Belgium which Sir Henry Maine (p. 109) describes as deserving our most +respectful attention--an attention, I suspect, which it is as little +likely to receive from either of our two political parties as Lord +Grey's suggestions. Nor should we neglect Sir G.C. Lewis's little +book, or Mr. Harrison's volume on _Order and Progress_, which abounds +in important criticism and suggestion for the student of the abstract +politics of modern societies. In the United States, too, and In our +own colonies, there have been attempts, not without merit, to state +and to deal with some of the drawbacks of popular government. + +Nothing has been done, however, that makes the appearance in the field +of a mind of so high an order as Sir Henry Maine's either superfluous +or unwelcome. It is hardly possible that he should discuss any subject +within the publicist's range, without bringing into light some of its +less superficial aspects, and adding observations of originality and +value to the stock of political thought. To set people thinking at all +on the more general and abstract truths of that great subject which is +commonly left to be handled lightly, unsystematically, fragmentarily, +in obedience to the transitory necessities of the day, by Ministers, +members of Parliament, journalists, electors, and the whole host who +live intellectually and politically from hand to mouth, is in itself a +service of all but the first order. Service of the very first order is +not merely to propound objections, but to devise working answers, and +this is exactly what Sir Henry Maine abstains from doing. + +No one will think the moment for a serious political inquiry ill +chosen. We have just effected an immense recasting of our system of +parliamentary representation. The whole consequences of the two great +Acts of 1884 and 1885 are assuredly not to be finally gauged by +anything that has happened during the recent election. Yet even this +single election has brought about a crisis of vast importance in +one part of the United Kingdom, by forcing the question of an Irish +constitution to the front. It is pretty clear, also, that the infusion +of a large popular element into the elective House has made more +difficult the maintenance of its old relations with the hereditary +House. Even if there were no others, these two questions alone, and +especially the first of them, will make the severest demands on the +best minds in the country. We shall be very fortunate if the crisis +produces statesmen as sagacious as those American publicists of whom +Sir Henry Maine rightly entertains so exalted an opinion. + +Whether or not we are on the threshold of great legislative changes, +it is in any case certain that the work of government will be carried +on under new parliamentary and social conditions. In meeting this +prospect, we have the aid neither of strong and systematic political +schools, nor powerful and coherent political parties. No one can +pretend, for instance, that there is any body of theoretic opinion so +compact and so well thought out as Benthamism was in its own day +and generation. Again, in practice, there are ominous signs that +Parliament is likely to break up into groups; and the substitution of +groups for parties is certain, if continental experience is to count +for anything, to create new obstacles in the way of firm and stable +government. Weak government throws power to something which usurps +the name of public opinion, and public opinion as expressed by the +ventriloquists of the newspapers is at once more capricious and more +vociferous than it ever was. This was abundantly shown during the last +five years by a variety of unfortunate public adventures. Then, +does the excitement of democracy weaken the stability of national +temperament? By setting up what in physics would be called a highly +increased molecular activity, does it disturb not merely conservative +respect for institutions, but respect for coherence and continuity of +opinion and sentiment in the character of the individual himself? Is +there a fluidity of character in modern democratic societies which +contrasts not altogether favourably with the strong solid types +of old? Are Englishmen becoming less like Romans, and more like +disputatious Greeks? These and many other considerations of the same +kind are enough to secure a ready welcome for any thinker who can +light up the obscurities of the time. + +With profound respect for Sir Henry Maine's attainments, and every +desire to profit by illumination wherever it may be discerned, we +cannot clearly see how the present volume either makes the problems +more intelligible, or points the way to feasible solutions. Though +he tries, in perfect good faith, to be the dispassionate student, he +often comes very close to the polemics of the hour. The truth is +that scientific lawyers have seldom been very favourable to popular +government; and when the scientific lawyer is doubled with the Indian +bureaucrat, we are pretty sure beforehand that in such a tribunal it +will go hard with democracy. That the author extremely dislikes and +suspects the new order, he does not hide either from himself or +us. Intellectual contempt for the idolatries of the forum and the +market-place has infected him with a touch of that chagrin which +came to men like Tacitus from disbelief In the moral government of +a degenerate world. Though he strives, like Tacitus, to take up his +parable _nec amore et sine odio_, the disgust is ill concealed. There +are passages where we almost hear the drone of a dowager in the +Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was said of Tocqueville that he was an +aristocrat who accepted his defeat. Sir Henry Maine in politics is a +bureaucrat who cannot bear to think that democracy will win. He is +dangerously near the frame of mind of Scipio Emilianus, after the +movement of the Gracchi and the opening of the Roman revolution. +Scipio came to the conclusion that with whichever party he took sides, +or whatever measures a disinterested and capable statesman might +devise, he would only aggravate the evil. Sir Henry Maine would seem +to be nearly as despondent. Hence his book is fuller of apprehension +than of guidance, more plausible in alarm than wise or useful in +direction. It is exclusively critical and negative. There Is, indeed, +an admirable account of the constitution of the United States. But on +the one great question on which the constitution of the United States +might have been expected to shed light--the modification of the House +of Lords--Sir Henry Maine explicitly admits (p. 186) that it is very +difficult to obtain from the younger institution, the Senate, any +lessons which can be of use in the reconstruction of the older. At +every turn, the end of the discussion lands us in a philosophical +_cul-de-sac_, and nothing is so depressing as a _cul-de-sac_. The tone +is that of the political valetudinarian, watching with uneasy eye the +ways of rude health. Unreflecting optimism about Popular Government is +sickening, but calculated pessimism is not much better. + +Something, no doubt, may often be gained by the mere cross-examination +of catchwords and the exposure of platitudes. Popular government is +no more free from catchwords and platitudes than any other political, +religious, or social cause which interests a great many people, and is +the subject of much discussion. Even the Historical Method has its own +claptrap. But one must not make too much of these things. "In order +to love mankind," said HelvĂ©tius, "one must not expect too much from +them." And fairly to appreciate institutions you must not hold them up +against the light that blazes in Utopia; you must not expect them +to satisfy microscopic analysis, nor judge their working, which is +inevitably rough, awkward, clumsy, and second-best, by the fastidious +standards of closet logic. + +Before saying more as to the substance of the hook, we may be allowed +to notice one or two matters of literary or historical interest in +which Sir Henry Maine is certainly open to criticism. There is an old +question about Burke which was discussed by the present writer a long +time ago. A great disillusion, says Sir Henry Maine, has always seemed +to him to separate the _Thoughts on the Present Discontents_ and the +_Speech on Taxation_ from the magnificent panegyric on the British +Constitution in 1790. "Not many persons in the last century could +have divined from the previous opinions of Edmund Burke the real +substructure of his political creed, or did in fact suspect it till +it was uncovered by the early and comparatively slight miscarriage of +French revolutionary institutions." This is, as a statement of fact, +not at all correct. Lord Chatham detected what he believed to be the +mischievous Conservatism in Burke's constitutional doctrines at the +very outset. So did the Constitutional Society detect it. So did Mrs. +Macaulay, Bishop Watson, and many other people. The story of Burke's +inconsistency is, of course, as old as Sheridan. Hazlitt declared +that the Burke of 1770 and the Burke of 1790 were not merely opposite +persons, but deadly enemies. Mr. Buckle, who is full of veneration for +the early writings, but who dislikes the later ones, gets over the +difficulty by insisting that Burke actually went out of his mind after +1789. We should have expected a subtler judgment from Sir Henry Maine. +Burke belonged from first to last to the great historic and positive +school, of which the founder was Montesquieu. Its whole method, +principle, and sentiment, all animated him with equal force whether he +was defending the secular pomps of Oude or the sanctity of Benares, +the absolutism of Versailles, or the free and ancient Parliament at +Westminster.[1] + +[Footnote 1: It is satisfactory to have the authority of Mr. Lecky on +the same side. _England in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. iii. chap. +ix. p. 209.] + +Versailles reminds us of a singular overstatement by Sir Henry Maine +of the blindness of the privileged classes in France to the approach +of the Revolution. He speaks as if Lord Chesterfield's famous passage +were the only anticipation of the coming danger. There is at least one +utterance of Louis XV. himself, which shows that he did not expect +things to last much beyond his time. D'Argenson, in the very year of +Chesterfield's prophecy, pronounced that a revolution was inevitable, +and he even went so close to the mark as to hint that it would arise +on the first occasion when it should be necessary to convoke the +States General. Rousseau, in a page of the _Confessions_, not only +divined a speedy revolution, but enumerated the operative causes of it +with real precision. There Is a striking prediction In Voltaire, and +another in Mercier de la Rivière. Other names might be quoted to +the same effect, including Maria Theresa, who described the ruined +condition of the French monarchy, and only hoped that the ruin might +not overtake her daughter. The mischief was not so much that the +privileged classes were blind as that they were selfish, stubborn, +helpless, and reckless. The point is not very important in itself, +but it is characteristic of a very questionable way of reading human +history. Sir Henry Maine's readiness to treat revolutions as due to +erroneous abstract ideas naturally inclines him to take too narrow a +view both of the preparation in circumstances, and of the preparation +in the minds of observant onlookers. + +In passing, by the way, we are curious to know the writer's authority +for what he calls the odd circumstance that the Jacobins generally +borrowed their phrases from the legendary history of the early Roman +Republic, while the Girondins preferred to take metaphors from the +literature of Rousseau (p. 75). There was plenty of nonsense talked +about Brutus and Scaevola by both parties, and It Is not possible +to draw the line with precision. But the received view Is that the +Girondins were Voltairean, and the Jacobins Rousseauite, while Danton +was of the school of the Encyclopaedia, and HĂ©bert and Chaumette were +inspired by Holbach. + +The author seems to us greatly to exaggerate the whole position of +Rousseau, and even in a certain sense to mistake the nature of his +influence. That Jean-Jacques was a far-reaching and important voice +the present writer is not at all likely to deny; but no estimate of +his influence in the world is correct which does not treat him rather +as moralist than publicist. _Emilius_ went deeper into men's minds in +France and in Europe at large, and did more to quicken the democratic +spirit, than the _Social Contract_ Apart from this, Sir Henry Maine +places Rousseau on an isolated eminence which does not really belong +to him. It did not fall within the limited scope of such an essay as +Sir Henry Maine's to trace the leading ideas of the _Social Contract_ +to the various sources from which they had come, but his account +of these sources is, even for its scale, inadequate. Portions of +Rousseau's ideas, he says truly, may be discovered in the speculations +of older writers; and he mentions Hobbes and the French Economists. +But the most characteristic of all the elements in Rousseau's +speculation were drawn from Locke. The theoretic basis of popular +government Is to be found in more or less definite shape in various +authors from Thomas Aquinas downwards. But it was Locke's philosophic +vindication of the Revolution of 1688, in the famous essay on +Civil Government, that directly taught Rousseau the lesson of the +Sovereignty of the People. Such originality as the _Social Contract_ +possesses is due to its remarkable union of the influence of the two +antagonistic English Thinkers. The differences between Hobbes and +Rousseau were striking enough. Rousseau looked on men as good, Hobbes +looked on them as bad. The one described the state of nature as a +state of peace, the other as a state of war. The first believed that +laws and institutions had depraved man, the second that they had +improved him. In spite of these differences the influence of Hobbes +was important, but only important in combination. "The total result +is," as I have said elsewhere, "a curious fusion between the premises +and the temper of Hobbes, and the conclusions of Locke. This fusion +produced that popular absolutism of which the _Social Contract_ was +the theoretical expression, and Jacobin supremacy the practical +manifestation. Rousseau borrowed from Hobbes the true conception of +sovereignty, and from Locke the true conception of the ultimate seat +and original of authority, and of the two together he made the great +image of the Sovereign People. Strike the crowned head from that +monstrous figure which is the frontispiece of the _Leviathan_, and +you have a frontispiece that will do excellently well for the _Social +Contract_."[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Rousseau_, chap. xii.] + +One more word may be said by the way. The very slightest account of +Rousseau is too slight to be tolerable, if it omits to mention Calvin. +Rousseau's whole theory of the Legislator, which produced such +striking results in certain transitory phases of the French +Revolution, grew up in his mind from the constitution which the great +reformer had so predominant a share in framing for the little republic +where Rousseau was born. + +This omission of Locke and Calvin again exemplifies the author's +characteristic tendency to look upon political ideas as if speculative +writers got them out of their own heads, or out of the heads of other +people, apart from the suggestions of events and the requirements of +circumstance, Calvin was the builder of a working government, and +Locke was the defender of a practical revolution. + +Nor does the error stop at the literary sources of political theories. +A point more or less in an estimate of a writer or a book is of +trivial importance compared with what strikes us as Sir Henry +Maine's tendency to impute an unreal influence to writers and books +altogether. There is, no doubt, a vulgar and superficial opinion that +mere speculation is so remote from the real interests of men, that it +is a waste of time for practical people to concern themselves about +speculation. No view could be more foolish, save one; and that one is +the opposite view, that the real interests of men have no influence +on their speculative opinions, and no share either in moulding those +opinions or in causing their adoption. Sir Henry Maine does not push +things quite so far as this. Still he appears to us to attribute +almost exclusive influence to political theories, and almost entirely +to omit what we take to be the much more important reaction upon +theory, both of human nature, and of the experience of human life and +outward affairs. He makes no allowance among innovating agencies for +native rationalism without a formula. His brilliant success in other +applications of the Historic Method has disposed him to see survivals +where other observers will be content with simpler explanations. +The reader is sometimes tempted to recall Edie Ochiltree's rude +interruption of Mr. Oldbuck's enthusiasm over the praetorium of the +Immortal Roman camp at Monkbarns. "Praetorian here, Praetorian there! +I mind the bigging o 't!" + +Sir Henry Maine believes that the air is thick with ideas about +democracy that were conceived _a priori_, and that sprung from the +teaching of Rousseau. A conviction of the advantages of legislative +change, for example, he considers to owe its origin much less to +active and original intelligence, than to "the remote effect of words +and notions derived from broken-down political theories." There are +two great fountains of political theory in our country according to +the author: Rousseau is one, and Bentham is the other. Current +thought and speech Is infested by the floating fragments of these two +systems--by loose phrases, by vague notions, by superstitions, that +enervate the human intellect and endanger social safety. This is the +constant refrain of the pages before us. We should have liked better +evidence. We do not believe that it is a Roman praetorium. Men often +pick up old phrases for new events, even when they are judging events +afresh with independent minds. When a politician of the day speaks of +natural rights, he uses a loose traditional expression for a view of +social equities which has come to him, not from a book, but from a +survey of certain existing social facts. Now the phrase, the literary +description, is the least significant part of the matter. When Mr. +Mill talks of the influence of Bentham's writings, he is careful to +tell us that he does not mean that they caused the Reform Bill or the +Appropriation Clause. "The changes which have been made," says Mill, +"and the greater changes which will be made, in our institutions are +not the work of philosophers, but of the interests and instincts +of large portions of society recently grown into strength" +_(Dissertations_, i. 332). That is the point. It is the action of +these interests and instincts which Sir Henry Maine habitually +overlooks. For is the omission a mere speculative imperfection. It has +an important bearing on the whole practical drift of the book. If he +had made more room for "the common intellect rough-hewing political +truths at the suggestion of common wants and common experience," +he would have viewed existing circumstances with a less lively +apprehension. + +It is easy to find an apposite illustration of what is meant by +saying that this talk of the influence of speculation is enormously +exaggerated and misleading. When Arthur Young was in France in the +autumn of 1787, he noticed a remarkable revolution in manners in two +or three important respects. One of them was a new fashion that had +just come in, of spending some weeks in the country: everybody who had +a country seat went to live there, and such as had none went to visit +those who had. This new custom, observed the admirable Young, is one +of the best that they have taken from England, and "its introduction +was effected the easier being assisted by the magic of Rousseau's +writings." The other and more generally known change was that women +of the first fashion were no longer ashamed of nursing their own +children, and that infants were no longer tightly bound round by +barbarous stays and swaddling clothes. This wholesome change, too, +was assisted by Rousseau's eloquent pleas for simplicity and the life +natural. Of these particular results of his teaching in France a +hundred years ago the evidence is ample, direct, and beyond denial. +But whenever we find gentlemen with a taste for country life, and +ladies with a fancy for nursing their own children, we surely need not +cry out that here is another proof of the extraordinary influence of +the speculations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We need not treat it as a +survival of a broken-down theory. "Great Nature is more wise than I," +says the Poet. Great Nature had much more to do with moulding men and +women to these things than all the books that have ever been printed. + +We are entirely sceptical as to the proposition that "men have at all +times quarrelled more fiercely about phrases and formulas than even +about material interests" (p. 124). There has been a certain amount of +fighting in the world about mere words, as idle as the faction fights +between Caravats and Shanavests, or Two-Year-Olds and Three-Year-Olds +in Ireland. But the more carefully we look into human history, the +more apparent it becomes that underneath the phrase or the formula +there is usually a material or a quasi-material, or a political, or +a national, or an ecclesiastical interest. Few quarrels now seem so +purely verbal as those which for several centuries raged about the +mysteries of the faith in the Western and the Eastern Churches. Yet +these quarrels, apparently as frivolous as they were ferocious, +about the relations of mind and matter, about the composition of +the Trinity, about the Divine nature, turned much less on futile +metaphysics than on the solid competition for ecclesiastical power, or +the conflict of rival nationalities. The most transcendental heresy or +orthodoxy generally had business at the bottom of it. + +In limiting the parentage of Modern English Liberalism of a Radical or +democratic type to Rousseau and Bentham, the author has left out +of sight what is assuredly a much more important factor than any +speculative, literary, or philosophic matter whatever. "Englishmen," +he says truly, "are wont to be content with the rough rule of success +or failure as the test of right or wrong in national undertakings." +The same habit of mind and temper marks the attitude of Englishmen +towards their national institutions. They look to success and failure, +they take the measure of things from results, they consult the +practical working of the machine, they will only go to school with +experience. We cannot find the proof that _a priori_ Radicalism ever +at any time got a real hold of any considerable mass of the people of +this country, or that any of the great innovations in domestic policy +since the end of Lord Liverpool's administration have been inspired +or guided by Rousseauite assumptions. Godwin, whose book on Political +Justice was for a long time the great literary fountain of English +Radicalism, owed quite as much to the utilitarian HelvĂ©tius as to the +sentimental Rousseau. Nor can either William Cobbett or Joseph Hume be +said to have dealt largely in _a priori_. What makes the Radical of +the street is mostly mother-wit exercising itself upon the facts of +the time. His weakness is that he does not know enough of the facts of +other times. + +Sir Henry Maine himself points to what has had a far more decisive +influence on English ways of thinking about politics than his two +philosophers, put together. "The American Republic," he says (p. 11), +"has greatly influenced the favour into which popular government grew. +It disproved the once universal assumptions that no Republic could +govern a large territory, and that no strictly Republican government +could be stable." Nothing can be more true. When Burke and Chatham +and Fox persistently declared that the victory of England over the +colonists would prove fatal in the long run to the liberties of +England itself, those great men were even wiser than they knew. +The success of popular government across the Atlantic has been the +strongest incentive to the extension of popular government here. +We need go no further back than the Reform Bill of 1867 to remind +ourselves that the victory of the North over the South, and the +extraordinary clemency and good sense with which that victory +was used, had more to do with the concession of the franchise to +householders in boroughs than all the eloquence of Mr. Gladstone and +all the diplomacies of Mr. Disraeli. + +To the influence of the American Union must be added that of the +British colonies. The success of popular self-government in these +thriving communities is reacting on political opinion at home with a +force that no statesman neglects, and that is every day increasing. +There is even a danger that the influence may go too far. They are +solving some of our problems, but not under our conditions, and not +in presence of the same difficulties. Still the effect of colonial +prosperity--a prosperity alike of admirable achievement and boundless +promise--is irresistible. It imparts a freedom, an elasticity, an +expansiveness, to English political notions, and gives our people a +confidence in free institutions and popular government, which +they would never have drawn from the most eloquent assumptions of +speculative system-mongers, nor from any other source whatever, save +practical experience carefully observed and rationally interpreted. +This native and independent rationality in men is what the jealous +votary of the historic method places far too low. + +In coming closer to the main current of the book, our first +disappointment is that Sir Henry Maine has not been very careful to +do full justice to the views that he criticises. He is not altogether +above lending himself to the hearsay of the partisan. He allows +expressions to slip from him which show that he has not been anxious +to face the problems of popular government as popular government is +understood by those who have best right to speak for it. "The more +the difficulties of multitudinous government are probed," he says (p. +180), "the stronger grows the doubt of the infallibility of popularly +elected legislatures." We do not profess to answer for all that may +have been said by Mr. Bancroft, or Walt Whitman, or all the orators of +all the Fourths of July since American Independence. But we are not +acquainted with any English writer or politician of the very slightest +consideration or responsibility who has committed himself to the +astounding proposition, that popularly elected legislatures are +infallible. Who has ever advanced such a doctrine? Further, "It +requires some attention to facts to see how widely spread is the +misgiving as to the absolute wisdom of popularly elected chambers." We +are not surprised at the misgiving. But after reasonable attention to +facts, we cannot recall any publicist, whom it could be worth while +to spend five minutes in refuting, who has ever said that popularly +elected chambers are absolutely wise. Again, we should like the +evidence for the statement that popularly elected Houses "do not +nowadays appeal to the wise deduction from experience, as old as +Aristotle, which no student of constitutional history will deny, that +the best constitutions are those in which there is a large popular +element. It is a singular proof of the widespread influence of the +speculations of Rousseau that although very few First Chambers really +represent the entire community, nevertheless in Europe they almost +invariably claim to reflect it, and as a consequence they assume an +air of divinity, which if it rightfully belonged to them would be +fatal to all argument for a Second Chamber." That would be very +important If it were true. But is it true that First Chambers assume +an air of divinity? Or is such an expression a "burlesque of the real +argument?" A reasonable familiarity with the course of the controversy +in France, where the discussion has been abundant, and in England, +where it has been comparatively meagre, leaves me, for one, entirely +ignorant that this claim for divinity, or anything like it, is ever +heard in the debate. The most powerful modern champion of popular +government was Gambetta. Did Gambetta consider First Chambers divine? +On the contrary, some of the most strenuous pleas for the necessity of +a Second Chamber are to be found precisely in the speeches of Gambetta +(_e.g._ his speech at Grenoble, in the autumn of 1878, _Discours_ +viii. 270, etc.). Abstract thinking is thinking withdrawn from the +concrete and particular facts. But the abstract thinker should not +withdraw too far. + +Sir Henry Maine speaks (p. 185) of "the saner political theorist, who +holds that in secular matters it is better to walk by sight than by +faith." He allows that a theorist of this kind, as regards popularly +elected chambers, "will be satisfied that experience has shown the +best Constitutions to be those in which the popular element is large, +and he will readily admit that, as the structure of each society of +men slowly alters, it is well to alter and amend the organisation by +which this element makes itself felt." Sir Henry Maine would surely +have done better service in this grave and difficult discussion, if he +had dealt with views which he mistrusts, as they are really held and +expressed by sane theorists, and not by insane theorists out of sight. +In France, a hundred years ago, from causes that are capable of +explanation, the democracy of sentiment swept away the democracy of +utility. In spite of casual phrases in public discussion, and in spite +of the incendiary trash of Red journalists without influence, it is +the democracy of reason, experience, and utility that is now in the +ascendant, both in France and elsewhere. + +The same spirit of what we must call parody is shown in such a +statement as that (p. 78) "an audience composed of roughs or clowns is +boldly told by an educated man that it has more political information +than an equal number of scholars." By "roughs" Sir Henry Maine +explains that he means the artisans of the towns. The designation is +hardly felicitous. It is not even fashionable; for the roughs and +clowns are now by common consent of Tories and Liberals alike +transformed into capable citizens. Such a phrase gives us a painful +glimpse of the accurate knowledge of their countrymen that is +possessed by eminent men who write about them from the dim and distant +seclusion of college libraries and official bureaux. If Sir Henry +Maine could spare a few evenings from dispassionate meditations on +popular government in the abstract, to the inspection of the governing +people in the concrete, he would be the first to see that to dispatch +an audience of skilled artisans as an assembly of roughs is as +unscientific, to use the mildest word, as the habit in a certain +religious world of lumping all the unconverted races of the earth +in every clime and age in the summary phrase, the heathen. A great +meeting of artisans listening to Mr. Arthur Balfour or Sir Henry +Roscoe at Manchester, to Sir Lyon Playfair at Leeds (the modern +democrat, at any rate, does not think the Republic has no need of +chemists), or to anybody else in a great industrial centre anywhere +else, is no more an assemblage of roughs than Convocation or the +House of Lords. Decidedly, an enemy of the unverified assumptions of +democracy ought to be on his guard against the unverified assumptions +of pedantocracy. + +As for the particular bit of sycophancy which educated men wickedly +dangle before roughs and clowns, we should like to be sure that the +proposition is correctly reported. If the educated man tells his +roughs (if that be the right name for the most skilful, industrious, +and effective handicraftsmen in the world) that they have as much +of the information necessary for shaping a sound judgment on the +political issues submitted to them, as an equal number of average +Masters of Arts and Doctors of Laws, then we should say that the +educated man, unless he has been very unlucky with his audience, is +perfectly right. He proves that his education has not confined itself +to books, bureaux, and an exclusive society, but has been carried on +in the bracing air of common life. I will not add anything of my +own on this point, because any candidate or member of Parliament +is suspect, but I will venture to transcribe a page or so from Mr. +Frederic Harrison. Mr. Harrison's intellectual equipment is not +inferior to that of Sir Henry Maine himself; and he has long had close +and responsible contact with the class of men of whom he is speaking, +which cannot be quite a disqualification after all. + + "No worse nonsense is talked than what we are told as to the + requisites for the elective franchise. To listen to some people, + it is almost as solemn a function as to be a trustee of the + British Museum. What you want in a body of electors is a rough, + shrewd eye for men of character, honesty, and purpose. Very plain + men know who wish them well, and the sort of thing which will + bring them good. Electors have not got to govern the country; they + have only to find a set of men who will see that the Government is + just and active.... All things go best by comparison, and a body + of men may be as good voters as their neighbours without basing + the type of the Christian hero. + + "So far from, being the least fit for political influence of all + classes in the community, the best part of the working class forms + the most fit of all others. If any section of the people is to + be the paramount arbiter in public affairs, the only section + competent for this duty is the superior order of workmen. + Governing is one thing; but electors of any class cannot or ought + not to govern. Electing, or the giving an indirect approval + of Government, is another thing, and demands wholly different + qualities. These are moral, not intellectual; practical, not + special gifts--gifts of a very plain and almost universal order. + Such are, firstly, social sympathies and sense of justice; then + openness and plainness of character; lastly, habits of action, and + a practical knowledge of social misery. These are the qualities + which fit men to be the arbiters or ultimate source (though + certainly not the instruments) of political power. These qualities + the best working men possess in a far higher degree than any other + portion of the community; indeed, they are almost the only part of + the community which possesses them in any perceptible degree."[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Order and Progress_, pp. 149-54, and again at p. 174.] + +The worst of it is that, if Sir Henry Maine is right, we have no more +to hope from other classes than from roughs and clowns. He can discern +no blue sky in any quarter. "In politics," he says, "the most +powerful of all causes is the timidity, the listlessness, and the +superficiality of the generality of minds" (p. 73). This is carrying +criticism of democracy into an indictment against human nature. What +is to become of us, thus placed between the devil of mob ignorance +and corruption, and the deep sea of genteel listlessness and +superficiality? After all, Sir Henry Maine is only repeating in more +sober tones the querulous remonstrances with which we are so familiar +on the lips of Ultramontanes and Legitimists. A less timid observer of +contemporary events, certainly in the land that all of us know best +and love best, would judge that, when it comes to a pinch, Liberals +are still passably prudent, and Conservatives quite sufficiently +wide-awake. + +Another of the passages in Sir Henry Maine's book, that savours rather +of the party caricaturist than of the "dispassionate student of +politics," is the following:-- + + "There is some resemblance between the period of political reform + in the nineteenth century and the period of religious reformation + in the sixteenth. Now as then the multitude of followers must be + distinguished from the smaller group of leaders. Now as then + there are a certain number of zealots who desire that truth shall + prevail.... But behind these, now as then, there is a crowd which + has imbibed a delight in change for its own sake, who would reform + the Suffrage, or the House of Lords, or the Land Laws, or the + Union with Ireland, in precisely the same spirit in which the mob + behind the reformers of religion broke the nose of a saint in + stone, made a bonfire of copes and surplices, or shouted for the + government of the Church by presbyteries" (p. 130). + +We should wish to look at this remarkable picture a little more +closely. That there exist Anabaptists in the varied hosts of the +English reformers is true. The feats of the Social Democrats, however, +at the recent election hardly convince us that they have very +formidable multitudes behind them. Nor is it they who concern +themselves with such innovations as those which Sir Henry Maine +specifies. The Social Democrats, even of the least red shade, go a +long way beyond and below such trifles as Suffrage or the Upper House. +To say of the crowd who do concern themselves with reform of the +Suffrage, or the Land Laws, or the House of Lords, or the Union with +Ireland, that they are animated by a delight in change for its own +sake, apart from the respectable desire to apply a practical remedy to +a practical inconvenience, is to show a rather highflying disregard +of easily ascertainable facts. The Crowd listen with interest to talk +about altering the Land Laws, because they suspect the English land +system to have something to do with the unprosperous condition of the +landlord, the farmer, and the labourer; with the depopulation of the +country and the congestion in the towns; with the bad housing of the +poor, and with various other evils which they suppose themselves to +see staring them daily in the face. They may be entirely mistaken +alike In their estimate of mischief and their hope of mitigation. But +they are not moved by delight in change for its own sake. When the +Crowd sympathises with disapproval of the House of Lords, it is +because the legislative performances of that body are believed to have +impeded useful reforms in the past, to be impeding them now, and to be +likely to impede them in the future. This may be a sad misreading +of the history of the last fifty years, and a painfully prejudiced +anticipation of the next fifty. At any rate, it is in intention a +solid and practical appeal to experience and results, and has no +affinity to a restless love of change for the sake of change. No +doubt, in the progress of the controversy, the assailants of the House +of Lords attack the principle of birth. But the principle of birth is +not attacked from the _a priori_ point of view. The whole force of +the attack lies in what is taken to be the attested fact that the +principle of a hereditary chamber supervising an elective chamber has +worked, is working, and will go on working, inconveniently, stupidly, +and dangerously. Finally, there is the question of the Irish Union. Is +it the English or Scottish Crowd that is charged with a wanton desire +to recast the Union? Nobody knows much about the matter who is not +perfectly aware that the English statesman, whoever he may be, who +undertakes the inevitable task of dealing with the demand for Home +Rule, will have to make his case very plain indeed in order to make +the cause popular here. Then is it the Irish Crowd? Sir Henry Maine, +of all men, is not likely to believe that a sentiment which the wisest +people of all parties in Ireland for a hundred years have known to lie +in the depths of the mind of the great bulk of the Irish population, +to whom we have now for the first time given the chance of declaring +their wishes, is no more than a gratuitous and superficial passion for +change for its own sake. The sentiment of Irish nationality may or may +not be able to justify itself in the eye of prudential reason, and +English statesmen may or may not have been wise in inviting it to +explode. Those are different questions. But Sir Henry Maine himself +admits in another connection (p. 83) that "vague and shadowy as are +the recommendations of what is called a Nationality, a State founded +on this principle has generally one real practical advantage, through +its obliteration of small tyrannies and local oppressions." It is not +to be denied that it is exactly the expectation of this very practical +advantage that has given its new vitality to the Irish National +movement which seems now once more, for good or for evil, to have +come to a head. When it is looked into, then, the case against the +multitudes who are as senselessly eager to change institutions as +other multitudes once were to break off the noses of saints in stone, +falls to pieces at every point. + +Among other vices ascribed to democracy, we are told that it is +against science, and that "even in our day vaccination is in the +utmost danger" (p. 98). The instance is for various reasons not a +happy one. It is not even precisely stated. I have never understood +that vaccination is in much danger. Compulsory vaccination is perhaps +in danger. But compulsion, as a matter of fact, was strengthened as +the franchise went lower. It is a comparative novelty in English +legislation (1853), and as a piece of effectively enforced +administration it is more novel still (1871). I admit, however, that +it is not endured in the United States; and only two or three years +ago it was rejected by an overwhelming majority on an appeal to the +popular vote in the Swiss Confederation. Obligatory vaccination may +therefore one day disappear from our statute book, if democracy has +anything to do with it. But then the obligation to practise a medical +rite may be inexpedient, in spite of the virtues of the rite itself. +That is not all. Sir Henry Maine will admit that Mr. Herbert Spencer +is not against science, and he expresses in the present volume his +admiration for Mr. Spencer's work on _Man and the State_. Mr. Spencer +is the resolute opponent of compulsory vaccination, and a resolute +denier, moreover, of the pretension that the evidence for the +advantages of vaccination takes such account of the ulterior effects +in the system as to amount to a scientific demonstration. Therefore, +if science demands compulsory vaccination, democracy in rejecting the +demand, and even if it went further, is at least kept in countenance +by some of those who are of the very household of science. The +illustration is hardly impressive enough for the proposition that it +supports. + +Another and a far more momentous illustration occurs on another page +(37). A very little consideration is enough to show that it will by +no means bear Sir Henry Maine's construction. "There is, in fact," he +says, "just enough evidence to show that even now there is a marked +antagonism between democratic opinion and scientific truth as applied +to human societies. The central seat in all Political Economy was from +the first occupied by the theory of Population. This theory ... has +become the central truth of biological science. Yet it is evidently +disliked by the multitude and those whom the multitude permits to lead +it." + +Sir Henry Maine goes on to say that it has long been intensely +unpopular in France, and this, I confess, is a surprise to me. It has +usually been supposed that a prudential limitation of families is +rooted in the minds and habits of nearly, though not quite, all +classes of the French nation. An excellent work on France, written by +a sound English observer seven or eight years ago, chances to be lying +before me at the moment, and here is a passage taken almost at random. +"The opinions of thoughtful men seem to tend towards the wish to +introduce into France some of that improvidence which allows English +people to bring large families into the world without first securing +the means of keeping them, and which has peopled the continent of +North America and the Australian colonies with an English-speaking +race" (Richardson's _Corn and Cattle Producing Districts of France_, +p. 47, etc.). Surely this is a well-established fact. It is possible +that denunciations of Malthus may occasionally be found both in +Clerical and Socialistic prints, but then there are reasons for that. +It can hardly be made much of a charge against French democracy that +it tolerates unscientific opinion, so long as it cultivates scientific +practice. + +As for our own country, and those whom the multitude permits to lead +it, we cannot forget that by far the most popular and powerful man _in +faece Romuli_--as Sir Henry Maine insists on our putting it in that +polite way--was tried and condemned not many years ago for publishing +a certain pamphlet which made a limitation of population the very +starting-point of social reform. It is not necessary to pronounce an +opinion on the particular counsels of the pamphlet, but the motives +which prompted its circulation (motives admitted to be respectable by +the Chief-Justice who tried the case), and the extraordinary reception +of the pamphlet by the serious portion of the workmen of the towns, +would make a careful writer think twice before feeling sure that +popular bodies will never listen to the truth about population. No +doubt, as Sir Henry Maine says in the same place, certain classes now +resist schemes for relieving distress by emigration. But there is a +pretty obvious reason for that. That reason is not mere aversion +to face the common sense of the relations between population and +subsistence, but a growing suspicion--as to the reasonableness of +which, again, I give no opinion--that emigration is made into an easy +and slovenly substitute for a scientific reform in our system of +holding and using land. In the case of Ireland, other political +considerations must be added. + +Democracy will be against science, we admit, in one contingency: if +it loses the battle with the Ultramontane Church. The worst enemy +of science is also the bitterest enemy of democracy, _c'est le +clĂ©ricalisme_. The interests of science and the interests of democracy +are one. Let us take a case. Suppose that popular Government in France +were to succumb, a military or any other more popular Government would +be forced to lean on Ultramontanes. Ultramontanes would gather the +spoils of democratic defeat. Sir Henry Maine is much too well informed +to think that a clerical triumph would be good for science, whatever +else it might be good for. Then are not propositions about democracy +being against science very idle and a little untrue? "Modern +politics," said a wise man (Pattison, _Sermons_, p. 191) "resolve +themselves into the struggle between knowledge and tradition." +Democracy is hardly on the side of tradition. + +We have dwelt on these secondary matters, because they show that +the author hardly brings to the study of modern democracy the ripe +preparation of detail which he gave to ancient law. In the larger +field of his speculation, the value of his thought is seriously +impaired by the absence of anything like a philosophy of society as a +whole. Nobody who has studied Burke, or Comte, or Mill--I am not sure +whether we should not add even De Maistre--can imagine any of them as +setting to work on a general political speculation without reference +to particular social conditions. They would have conducted the inquiry +in strict relation to the stage at which a community happened to be, +in matters lying outside of the direct scope of political government. +So, before all other living thinkers, should we have expected Sir +Henry Maine to do. It is obvious that systems of government, called +by the same name, bearing the same superficial marks, founded and +maintained on the same nominal principles, framed in the same verbal +forms, may yet work with infinite diversity of operation, according +to the variety of social circumstances around them. Yet it is here +inferred that democracy in England must be fragile, difficult, and +sundry other evil things, because out of fourteen Presidents of the +Bolivian Republic thirteen have died assassinated or in exile. If +England and Bolivia were at all akin in history, religion, race, +industry, the fate of Bolivian Presidents would be more instructive to +English Premiers. + +One of the propositions which Sir Henry Maine is most anxious to bring +home to his readers is that Democracy, in the extreme form to which +it tends, is of all kinds of government by far the most difficult. +He even goes so far as to say (p. 87) that, while not denying to +Democracies some portion of the advantage which Bentham claimed for +them, and "putting this advantage at the highest, it is _more than +compensated_ by one great disadvantage," namely, its difficulty. This +generalisation is repeated with an emphasis that surprises us, for two +reasons. In the first place, if the proposition could be proved to be +true, we fail to see that it would be particularly effective in its +practical bearings. Everybody whose opinions are worth consideration, +and everybody who has ever come near the machinery of democratic +government, is only too well aware that whether it be far the most +difficult form of government or not, it is certainly difficult enough +to tax the powers of statesmanship to the very uttermost. Is not that +enough? Is anything gained by pressing us further than that? "Better +be a poor fisherman," said Danton as he walked in the last hours of +his life on the banks of the Aube, "better be a poor fisherman, than +meddle with the governing of men." We wonder whether there has been +a single democratic leader either in France or England who has not +incessantly felt the full force of Danton's ejaculation. There may, +indeed, be simpletons in the political world who dream that if only +the system of government were made still more popular, all would be +plain sailing. But then Sir Henry Maine is not the man to write for +simpletons. + +The first reason, then, for surprise at the immense stress laid by the +author on the proposition about the difficulty of popular government +is that it would not be of the first order of importance if it were +true. Our second reason is that it cannot be shown to be true. +You cannot measure the relative difficulty of diverse systems of +government. Governments are things of far too great complexity for +precise quantification of this sort. Will anybody, for example, read +through the second volume of the excellent work of M. Leroy-Beaulieu +on the Empire of the Czars (1882), and then be prepared to maintain +that democracy is more difficult than autocracy? It would be +interesting, too, to know whether the Prince on whose shoulders +will one day be laid the burden of the German Empire will read the +dissertation on the unparalleled difficulties of democracy with +acquiescence. There are many questions, of which the terms are no +sooner stated than we at once see that a certain and definite answer +to them is impossible. The controversy as to the relative fragility, +or the relative difficulty, of popular government and other forms of +government, appears to be a controversy of this kind. We cannot decide +it until we have weighed, measured, sifted, and tested a great mass of +heterogeneous facts; and then, supposing the process to have been +ever so skilfully and laboriously performed, no proposition could be +established as the outcome, that would be an adequate reward for the +pains of the operation. + +This, we venture to think, must be pronounced a grave drawback to the +value of the author's present speculation. He attaches an altogether +excessive and unscientific importance to form. It would be +unreasonable to deny to a writer on democracy as a form of government +the right of isolating his phenomenon. But it is much more +unreasonable to predicate fragility, difficulty, or anything else of a +particular form of government, without reference to other conditions +which happen to go along with it in a given society at a given time. +None of the properties of popular government are independent of +surrounding circumstances, social, economic, religious, and historic. +All the conditions are bound up together in a closely interdependent +connection, and are not secondary to, or derivative from, the mere +form of government. It is, if not impossible, at least highly unsafe +to draw inferences about forms of government in universals. + +No writer seems to us to approach Machiavelli in the acuteness with +which he pushes behind mere political names, and passes on to the real +differences that may exist in movements and institutions that are +covered by the same designation. Nothing in its own way can be more +admirable, for instance, than his reflections on the differences +between democracy at Florence and democracy in old Rome--how the first +began in great inequality of conditions, and ended in great equality, +while the process was reversed in the second; how at Rome the people +and the nobles shared power and office, while at Florence the victors +crushed and ruined their adversaries; how at Rome the people, by +common service with the nobles, acquired some of their virtues, while +at Florence the nobles were forced down to seem, as well as to be, +like the common people (_Istorie Fiorentine_, bk. iii). + +This is only an example of the distinctions and qualifications which +it is necessary to introduce before we can prudently affirm or deny +anything about political institutions in general terms. Who would +deny that both the stability and the degree of difficulty of popular +government are closely connected in the United States with the +abundance of accessible land? Who would deny that in Great Britain +they are closely connected with the greater or less prosperity of our +commerce and manufactures? To take another kind of illustration +from Mr. Dicey's brilliant and instructive volume on the Law of the +Constitution. The governments of England and of France are both of +them popular in form; but does not a fundamental difference in their +whole spirit and working result from the existence in one country of +the _droit administratif_, and the absolute predominance in the other +of regular law, applied by the ordinary courts, and extending equally +over all classes of citizens? Distinctions and differences of this +order go for nothing in the pages before us; yet they are vital to the +discussion. + +The same fallacious limitation, the same exclusion of the many various +causes that cooperate in the production of political results, is to be +discerned in nearly every argument. The author justly calls attention +to the extraordinary good luck which has befallen us as a nation. He +proceeds to warn us that if the desire for legislative innovation be +allowed to grow upon us at its present pace--pace assumed to be very +headlong indeed--the chances are that our luck will not last. We shall +have a disaster like Sedan, or the loss of Alsace Lorraine (p. 151). +This is a curiously narrow reading of contemporary history. Did +Austria lose Sadowa, or was the French Empire ruined at Sedan, +in consequence of the passion of either of those Governments for +legislative innovations; or must we not rather, in order to +explain these striking events, look to a large array of military, +geographical, financial, diplomatic, and dynastic considerations and +conditions? If so, what becomes of the moral? England is, no doubt, +the one great civilised power that has escaped an organic or +structural change within the last five-and-twenty years. Within that +period, the American Union, after a tremendous war, has revolutionised +the social institutions of the South, and reconstructed the +constitution. The French Empire has foundered, and a French Republic +once more bears the fortunes of a great State over troubled waters. +Germany has undergone a complete transformation; so has the Italian +peninsula. The internal and the external relations alike of the +Austrian Power are utterly different to-day from what they were twenty +years ago. Spain has passed from monarchy to republic, and back to +monarchy again, and gone from dynasty to dynasty. But what share had +legislative innovation in producing these great changes? No share at +all in any one case. What is the logic, then, of the warning that if +we persist in our taste for legislative innovation, we shall lose +our immunity from the violent changes that have overtaken other +States--changes with which legislative innovation had nothing to do? + +In short, modern societies, whether autocratic or democratic, are +passing through a great transformation, social, religious, and +political. The process is full of embarrassments, difficulties, and +perils. These are the dominant marks of our era. To set them all down +to popular government is as narrow, as confused, and as unintelligent +as the imputation in a papal Encyclical of all modern ills to +Liberalism. You cannot isolate government, and judge it apart from the +other and deeper forces of the time. Western civilisation is slowly +entering on a new stage. Form of government is the smallest part of +it. It has been well said that those nations have the best chance of +escaping a catastrophe in the obscure and uncertain march before us, +who find a way of opening the most liberal career to the aspirations +of the present, without too rudely breaking with all the traditions of +the past. This is what popular government, wisely guided, is best able +to do. + +But will wise guidance be endured? Sir Henry Maine seems to think that +it will not. Mill thought that it would. In a singularly luminous +passage in an essay which for some reason or another he never +republished, Mill says-- + + "We are the last persons to undervalue the power of moral + convictions. But the convictions of the mass of mankind run hand + in hand with their interests or their class feelings. _We have a + strong faith, stronger than either politicians or philosophers + generally have, in the influence of reason and virtue over men's + minds_; but it is in that of the reason and virtue of their own + side of the question. We expect few conversions by the mere force + of reason from one creed to the other. Men's intellects and hearts + have a large share in determining what _sort_ of Conservatives or + Liberals they will be; but it is their position (saving individual + exceptions) which makes them Conservatives or Liberals." + +This double truth points to the good grounds that exist why we should +think hopefully of popular government, and why we should be slow to +believe that it has no better foundation to build upon than the unreal +assumptions of some bad philosophers, French or others. + + + + +A FEW WORDS ON FRENCH MODELS.[1] + +[Footnote 1: March 1888.] + + Nunquamne reponam, + Vexatus toties rauci Theseide Codri? + + +Historians are only too fond of insisting on the effect of the French +Revolution in checking English reform. One of the latest of them +dwells on the fatal influence of this great event in our own country, +in checking, blighting, and distorting the natural progress of things. +But for that influence, he says, the closing years of the century +would probably have seen the abolition of the English Slave Trade, the +reform of Parliament, and the repeal of the Test Act.[1] The question +of the precise degree of vitality in sectarian pride, and of tenacity +in a great material interest, a hundred years ago or at any time, is +not very easy to settle. It is quite possible that the Slave Trade +and the Test Act might have died nearly as hard, if there had been +no French Revolution. In any case, it is a curious implication that +underlies all writing in this familiar vein, that France ought to +have gone on with a bad government, in order to secure to England the +advantages of a good one. + +[Footnote 1: Lecky, vi. 297.] + +As to one disservice, however, there can be no doubt. The French +Revolution has furnished the enemies of each successive proposal of +reform with a boundless supply of prejudicial analogies, appalling +parallels, and ugly nicknames, which are all just as conclusive with +the unwise as if they were the aptest arguments. Sydney Smith might +well put "the awful example of a neighbouring nation" among the +standing topics of the Noodle's Oration. The abolition of rotten +boroughs brought down a thousand ominous references to noyades, +fusillades, and guillotines. When Sir Robert Peel took the duty off +corn, Croker warned him with great solemnity that he was breaking up +the old interests, dividing the great families, and beginning exactly +such a castastrophe as did the Noailles and the Montmorencis in 1789. +Cobden and Bright were promiscuously likened to Baboeuf, Chaumette, +and Anacharsis Clootz. Baboeuf, it is true, was for dividing up all +property, and Chaumette was an aggressive atheist; but these were +mere _nuances_, not material to the purposes of obloquy. Robespierre, +Danton, Marat have been mercilessly trotted forth in their sanguinary +shrouds, and treated as the counterparts and precursors of worthies so +obviously and exactly like them as Mr. Beales and Mr. Odger; while +an innocent caucus for the registration of voters recalls to some +well-known writers lurid visions of the Cordeliers and the Jacobin +Club. + +A recent addition has been made to the stock of nicknames drawn from +the terrible melodrama of the last century. The Chancellor of the +Exchequer at Dublin described the present very humble writer as "the +Saint-Just of our Revolution." The description was received with +lively applause. It would be indelicate to wonder how many in a +hundred, even in that audience of the elect, had ever heard of +Saint-Just, how many in five hundred could have spelt his name, and +how many in a thousand could have told any three facts in his career. +But let us muse for a moment upon the portrait. I take down the first +picture of Saint-Just that comes to my hand, M. Taine is the artist:-- + + "Among these energetic nullities we see gradually rising _a young + monster_--with face handsome and tranquil--Saint-Just! A sort of + precocious Sulla, who at five-and-twenty suddenly springs from + the ranks, and _by force of atrocity wins his place!_ Six years + before, he began life by an act of domestic robbery: while on a + visit at his mother's, he ran away in the night with her plate and + jewels; for that he was locked up for six months. On his release, + he employed his leisure in the composition of an odious poem. Then + he flung himself head foremost into the revolution. Blood calcined + by study, a colossal pride, a conscience completely unhinged, + an imagination haunted by the bloody recollections of Rome and + Sparta, an intelligence falsified and twisted until it found + itself most at its ease in the practice of enormous paradox, + barefaced sophism, and murderous lying--all these perilous + ingredients, mixed in a furnace of concentrated ambition, boiled + and fermented long and silently in his breast." + +It is, no doubt, hard to know ourselves. One may entertain demons +unawares, and have calcined blood without being a bit the wiser. +Still, I do not find the likeness striking. It would have done just as +well to call me Nero, Torquemada, Iago, or Bluebeard. + +Whether the present writer does or does not deserve all the +compliments that history has paid to Saint-Just, is a very slight +and trivial question, with which the public will naturally not much +concern itself. But as some use is from time to time made of the +writer's imputed delinquencies to prejudice an important cause, it is +perhaps worth while to try in a page or two to give a better account +of things. It is true that he has written on revolutionists like +Robespierre, and destructive thinkers like Rousseau and Voltaire. It +is true that he believes the two latter to have been on the whole, +when all deductions are made, on the side of human progress. But what +sort of foundation in this for the inference that he "finds his models +in the heroes of the French Revolution," and "looks for his methods +in the Reign of Terror"? It would be equally logical to infer that +because I have written, not without sympathy and appreciation, of +Joseph de Maistre, I therefore find my model in a hero of the Catholic +Reaction, and look for my methods in the revived supremacy of the Holy +See over all secular and temporal authorities. It would be just +as fair to say that because I pointed out, as it was the critic's +business to do, the many admirable merits, and the important moral +influences on the society of that time, of the _New HeloĂŻsa_, +therefore I am bound to think Saint Preux a very fine fellow, +particularly fit to be a model and a hero for young Ireland. Only on +the principle that who drives fat oxen must himself be fat, can it be +held that who writes on Danton must be himself in all circumstances a +Dantonist. + +The most insignificant of literary contributions have a history and +an origin; and the history of these contributions is short and simple +enough. Carlyle with all the force of his humoristic genius had +impressed upon his generation an essentially one-sided view both of +the eighteenth century as a whole, and of the French thinkers of that +century in particular. His essay on Diderot, his lecture on Rousseau, +his chapters on Voltaire, with all their brilliance, penetration, and +incomparable satire, were the high-water mark in this country of the +literary reaction against the French school of Revolution. Everybody +knows the famous diatribes against the Bankrupt Century and all its +men and all its works. Voltaire's furies, Diderot's indigestions, +Rousseau's nauseous amours, and the odd tricks and shifts of the whole +of them and their company, offered ready material for the boisterous +horseplay of the transcendental humourist. Then the tide began to +turn. Mr. Buckle's book on the history of civilisation had something +to do with it. But it was the historical chapters in Comte's +Positive Philosophy that first opened the minds of many of us, who, +five-and-twenty years ago, were young men, to a very different +judgment of the true place of those schools in the literary and social +history of Western Europe. We learnt to perceive that though much in +the thought and the lives of the literary precursors of the Revolution +laid them fairly open to Carlyle's banter, yet banter was not all, and +even grave condemnation was not all. In essays, like mine, written +from this point of view, and with the object of trying to trim the +balance rather more correctly, it may well have been that the better +side of the thinkers concerned was sometimes unduly dwelt upon, and +their worse side unduly left in the background. It may well have been +that an impression of personal adhesion was conveyed which only very +partially existed, or even where it did not exist at all: that is a +risk of misinterpretation which it is always hard for the historical +critic to escape. There may have been a too eager tone; but to be +eager is not a very bad vice at any age under the critical forty. +There were some needlessly aggressive passages, and some sallies which +ought to have been avoided, because they gave pain to good people. +There was perhaps too much of the particular excitement of the time. +It was the date when _Essays and Reviews_ was still thought a terrible +explosive; when Bishop Colenso's arithmetical tests as to the flocks +and herds of the children of Israel were believed to be sapping not +only the inspiration of the Pentateuch but the foundations of the +Faith and the Church; and when Darwin's scientific speculations were +shaking the civilised world. Some excitement was to be pardoned in +days like those, and I am quite sure that one side needed pardon at +least as much as the other. For the substantial soundness of the +general views winch I took of the French revolutionary thinkers at +that time, I feel no apprehension; nor--some possible occasional +phrases or sentences excepted and apart--do I see the smallest reason +to shrink or to depart from any one of them. So far as one particular +reference may serve to illustrate the tenour of the whole body +of criticism, the following lines, which close my chapter on the +"Encyclopaedia," will answer the purpose as well as any others, and I +shall perhaps be excused for transcribing them:-- + + "An urgent social task lay before France and before Europe: it + could not be postponed until the thinkers had worked out a scheme + of philosophic completeness. The thinkers did not seriously make + any effort after this completeness. The Encyclopaedia was the most + serious attempt, and it did not wholly fail. As I replace in my + shelves this mountain of volumes, 'dusky and huge, enlarging on + the sight,' I have a presentiment that their pages will seldom + again be disturbed by me or by others. They served a great purpose + a hundred years ago. They are now a monumental ruin, clothed with + all the profuse associations of history. It is no Ozymandias of + Egypt, king of kings, whose wrecked shape of stone and sterile + memories we contemplate. We think rather of the grey and crumbling + walls of an ancient stronghold, reared by the endeavour of stout + hands and faithful, whence in its own day and generation a band + once went forth against barbarous hordes, to strike a blow for + humanity and truth."[1] + +[Footnote 1: Diderot, i. 247.] + +It is gratifying to find that the same view of the work of these +famous men, and of its relation to the social necessities of the time, +commends itself to Mr. Lecky, who has since gone diligently and with +a candid mind over the same ground.[1] Then where is the literary +Jacobin? + +[Footnote 1: See his vol. vi. 305 _et seq_.] + +Of course, it is easy enough to fish out a sentence or a short passage +here and there which, if taken by itself, may wear a very sinister +look, and carry the most alarming impressions. Not many days ago a +writer addressed a letter to the _Times_ which furnishes a specimen of +this kind of controversy. He gave himself the ambiguous designation of +"Catholicus"; but his style bore traces of the equivocally Catholic +climate of Munich. His aim was the lofty and magnanimous one of +importing theological prejudice into the great political dispute of +the day; in the interest, strange to say, of the Irish party who have +been for ages the relentless oppressors of the Church to which he +belongs, and who even now hate and despise it with all the virulence +of a Parisian Red. This masked assailant conveys to the mind of the +reader that I applaud and sympathise with the events of the winter of +1793, and more particularly with the odious procession of the +Goddess of Reason at Notre Dame. He says, moreover, that I have "the +effrontery to imply that the horrible massacres of the Revolution ... +were 'a very mild story compared with the atrocities of the Jews or +the crimes of Catholicism.'" No really honest and competent disputant +would have hit on "effrontery" as the note of the passage referred to, +if he had had its whole spirit and drift before him. The reader shall, +if he pleases, judge for himself. After the words just quoted, I go on +to say:-- + + "Historical recriminations, however, are not edifying. It is + perfectly fair, when Catholics talk of the atheist Terror, to + rejoin that the retainers of Anjou and Montpensier slew more men + and women on the first day of the Saint Bartholomew, than perished + in Paris through the Years I. and II. But the retort does us no + good beyond the region of dialectic. Some of the opinions of + Chaumette were full of enlightenment and hope. But it would be + far better to share the superstitious opinions of a virtuous and + benignant priest, like the Bishop in Victor Hugo's _MisĂ©rables_, + than to hold these good opinions of Chaumette, as he held them, + with a rancorous intolerance, a reckless disregard of the rights + and feelings of others, and a shallow forgetfulness of all that + great and precious part of our nature that lies out of the domain + of the logical understanding.... In every family where a mother + sought to have her child baptised, or where sons and daughters + sought to have the dying spirit of the old consoled by the last + sacrament, there sprang up a bitter enemy to the government which + had closed the churches and proscribed the priests. How could a + society whose spiritual life had been nourished in the solemn + mysticism of the Middle Ages suddenly turn to embrace a gaudy + paganism? The common self-respect of humanity was outraged by + apostate priests ... as they filed before the Convention, led by + the Archbishop of Paris, and accompanied by rude acolytes bearing + piles of the robes and the vessels of silver and gold with which + they had once served their holy office."[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Misc._ i 77-79.] + +Where is the effrontery, the search for methods in the Reign of +Terror, the applause for revolutionary models? Such inexcusable +perversion of a writer's meaning for an evanescent political +object--and a very shabby object too--is enough to make one think that +George III. knew what he was talking about, when he once delivered +himself of the saying that "Politics are a trade for a rascal, not for +a gentleman." + +Let me cite another more grotesque piece of irrelevancy with a similar +drift. Some months ago the present writer chanced to express an +opinion upon Welsh Disestablishment. Wales, at any rate, would seem to +be far enough away from _Emile, Candide_, the Law of Prairial, and the +Committee of Public Safety. The _Times_, however, instantly said[1] +that it would be affectation to express any surprise, because my +unfortunate "theories and principles, drawn from French sources +and framed on French models, all tend to the disintegration of +comprehensive political organisations and the encouragement of +arrangements based on the minor peculiarities of race or dialect." Was +there ever in the world such prodigious nonsense? What French sources, +what French models? If French models point in any one direction rather +than another, it is away from disintegration and straight towards +centralisation. Everybody knows that this is one of the most notorious +facts of French history from the days of Lewis XI. or Cardinal +Richelieu down to Napoleon Bonaparte. So far from French models +encouraging "arrangements based on the minor peculiarities of race and +dialect," France is the first great example in modern history, for +good or for evil, of a persevering process of national unification, +and the firm suppression of all provincial particularismus. This +is not only true of French political leaders in general: it is +particularly true of the Jacobin leaders. Rousseau himself, I admit, +did in one place point in the direction of confederation; but only in +the sense that for freedom on the one hand, and just administration +on the other, the unit should not be too large to admit of the +participation of the persons concerned in the management of their +own public affairs. If the Jacobins had not been overwhelmed by the +necessity of keeping out the invaders, they might have developed the +germ of truth in Rousseau's loose way of stating the expediency of +decentralisation. As it was, above all other French schools, the +Jacobins dealt most sternly with particularist pretensions. Of all +men, these supposed masters, teachers, and models of mine are least +to be called Separatists. To them more than to any other of the +revolutionary parties the great heresy of Federalism was most odious; +and if I were a faithful follower of the Jacobin model, I should +have least patience with nationalist sentiment whether in Ireland, +Scotland, or Wales, and should most rigorously insist on that +cast-iron incorporation which, as it happens, in the case of Ireland +I believe to be equally hopeless and undesirable. This explanation, +therefore, of my favour for Welsh Disestablishment is as absurdly +ignorant as it is far-fetched and irrelevant. + +[Footnote 1: Nov. 3, 1886.] + +The logical process is worth an instant's examination. The position is +no less than this,--that to attempt truly to appreciate the place and +the value in the history of thought and social movements of men who +have been a hundred years in their graves, and to sympathise with +certain sides and certain effects of their activity under the peculiar +circumstances in which French society then found itself, is the same +thing as binding yourself to apply their theories and to imitate their +activity, under an entirely heterogeneous set of circumstances, in +a different country, and in a society with wholly dissimilar +requirements. That is the argument if we straighten it out. The +childishness of any such contention is so obvious, that I should be +ashamed of reproducing it, were it not that this very contention has +made its appearance at my expense several times a month for the last +two years in all sorts of important and respectable prints. + +For instance, it appears that I once said somewhere that Danton +looked on at the doings of his bloodier associates with "sombre +acquiescence." _Argal_, it was promptly pointed out--and I espy the +dark phrase constantly adorning leading articles to this day--the man +who said that Danton sombrely acquiesced in the doings of Billaud, +Collet, and the rest, must of necessity, being of a firm and logical +mind, himself sombrely acquiesce in moonlighting and cattle-houghing +in Ireland. Apart from the curious compulsion of the reasoning, +what is the actual state of the case? Acquiescence is hardly a good +description of the mood of a politician who scorns delights and lives +laborious days in actively fighting for a vigorous policy and an +effective plan which, as he believes, would found order in Ireland +on a new and more hopeful base. He may be wrong, but where is the +acquiescence, whether sombre or serene? + +The equally misplaced name of Fatalism is sometimes substituted for +acquiescence, in criticisms of this stamp. In any such sense anybody +is a fatalist who believes in a relation between cause and effect. +If it is fatalism to assume that, given a certain chain of social or +political antecedents, they will inevitably be followed by a certain +chain of consequences, then every sensible observer of any series of +events is a fatalist. Catholic Emancipation, the extension of the +franchise, and secret ballot, have within the last sixty years +completely shifted the balance of political power in Ireland. Land +legislation has revolutionised the conditions of ownership. These vast +and vital changes in Ireland have been accompanied by the transfer of +decisive power from aristocracy to numbers in Great Britain, and Great +Britain is arbiter. Is it fatalism, or is it common sense, to perceive +that one new effect of new causes so potent must be the necessity +of changing the system of Irish government? To dream that you could +destroy the power of the old masters without finding new, and that +having invited the nation to speak you could continue to ignore the +national sentiment was and is the very height of political folly, and +the longer the dream is persisted in the ruder will be the awakening. +Surely the stupidest fatalism is far more truly to be ascribed to +those who insist that Ireland was eternally predestined to turmoil, +confusion, and torment; that there alone the event defies calculation; +and that, however wisely, carefully and providently you modify or +extinguish causes, in Ireland, though nowhere else, effects will still +survive with shape unaltered and force unabated. + +No author has a right to assume that anybody has read all his books or +any of them, but he may reasonably claim that he shall not be publicly +classified, labelled, catalogued, and placed In the shelves, on the +strength of half of his work, and that half arbitrarily selected. If +it be permitted to me without excess of egotism to name the masters to +whom I went to school in the days of early manhood, so far from being +revolutionists and terrorists, they belonged entirely to the opposite +camp. Austin's _Jurisprudence_ and Mill's _Logic_ and _Utilitarianism_ +were everything, and Rousseau's _Social Contract_ was nothing. To the +best of my knowledge and belief, I never said a word about "Natural +Rights" in any piece of practical public business in all my life; +and when that famous phrase again made its naked appearance on the +platform three or four years ago, it gave me as much surprise and +dismay as if I were this afternoon to meet a Deinotherium shambling +down Parliament Street. Mill was the chief influence for me, as he was +for most of my contemporaries in those days. Experience of life and +independent use of one's mind--which he would have been the most ready +of men to applaud--have since, as is natural, led to many important +corrections and deductions in Mill's political and philosophical +teaching. But then we were disciples, and not critics; and nobody will +suppose that the admirer of Wordsworth, the author of the Essay on +Coleridge, and of the treatise on Representative Government, the +administrator in the most bureaucratic and authoritative of public +services, was a terrorist or an unbridled democrat, or anything else +but the most careful and rationalistic of political theorisers. It +was Mill who first held up for my admiration the illustrious man whom +Austin enthusiastically called the "godlike Turgot," and it was he who +encouraged me to write a study on that great and inspiring character. +I remember the suspicion and the murmurings with which Louis Blanc, +then living in brave and honourable exile in London, and the good +friend of so many of us, and who was really a literary Jacobin to +the tips of his fingers, remonstrated against that piece of what he +thought grievously misplaced glorification. Turgot was, indeed, a very +singular hero with whom to open the career of literary Jacobin. So +was Burke,--the author of those wise sentences that still ring in +our ears: "_The question with me is, not whether you have a right to +render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to +make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what +humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. Nobody shall +persuade me, where a whole people are concerned, that acts of lenity +are not means of conciliation._" Burke, Austin, Mill, Turgot, +Comte--what strange sponsors for the "theories and principles of the +Terror"! + +What these opinions came to, roughly speaking, was something to this +effect: That the power alike of statesmen and of publicists over the +course of affairs is strictly limited; that institutions and movements +are not capable of immediate or indefinite modification by any amount +of mere will; that political truths are always relative, and never +absolute; that the test of practical, political, and social proposals +is not their conformity to abstract ideals, but to convenience, +utility, expediency, and occasion; that for the reformer, +considerations of time and place may be paramount; and finally, as +Mill himself has put it, that government is always either in the +hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the strongest power +in society, and that what this power is, and shall be, depends less on +institutions than institutions depend upon it. If I were pressed for +an illustration of these principles at work, inspiring the minds and +guiding the practice of responsible statesmen in great transactions of +our own day and generation, I should point to the sage, the patient, +the triumphant action of Abraham Lincoln in the emancipation of the +negro slaves. However that may be, contrast a creed of this kind with +the abstract, absolute, geometric, unhistoric, peremptory notions and +reasonings that formed the stock in trade of most, though not quite +all, of the French revolutionists, alike in action and in thought. It +is plain that they are the direct opposite and contradictory of one +another. + +To clench the matter by chapter and verse, I should like to recall +what, I have said of these theories and principles in their most +perfect and most important literary version. How have I described +Rousseau's _Social Contract_? It placed, I said, the centre of social +activity elsewhere than in careful and rational examination of social +conditions, and careful and rational effort to modify them. It +substituted a retrograde aspiration for direction, and emotion for the +discovery of law. It overlooked the crucial difficulty--namely, how to +summon new force, without destroying the sound parts of a structure +which it has taken many generations to erect. Its method was geometric +instead of being historic, and hence its "desperate absurdity." Its +whole theory was constructed with an imperfect consideration of the +qualities of human nature, and with too narrow a view of society. It +ignored the great fact that government is the art of wisely dealing +with huge groups of conflicting interests, of hostile passions, of +hardly reconcilable aims, of vehemently opposed forces. It "gives us +not the least help towards the solution of any of the problems of +actual government." + +Such language as all this is hardly that of a disciple to a master, in +respect of theories and principles which he is making his own for the +use of a lifetime. "There has been no attempt" [in these pages], +I said in winding up, "to palliate either the shallowness or the +practical mischievousness of the _Social Contract_. But there is +another side to its influence. We should be false to our critical +principle, if we do not recognise the historical effect of a +speculation scientifically valueless." Any writer would have stamped +himself as both unfit for the task that I had undertaken, and entirely +below the level of the highest critical standard of the day, if he had +for a moment dreamed of taking any other point of view. + +As for historical hero-worship, after Carlyle's fashion, whether +with Jacobin idols or any other, it is a mood of mind that must be +uncongenial to anybody who had ever been at all under the influence +of Mill. Without being so foolish as to disparage the part played by +great men in great crises, we could have no sympathy with the barbaric +and cynical school, who make greatness identical with violence, force, +and mere iron will. Cromwell said, in vindication of himself, that +England had need of a constable, and it was true. The constable, the +soldier, the daring counsellor at the helm, are often necessities of +the time. It is often a necessity of the time that the energy of a +nation or of a movement should gather itself up in a resolute band +or a resolute chief; as the revolutionary energy of France gathered +itself up in the greater Jacobins, or that of England in Oliver +Cromwell. Goethe says that nature bids us "_Take all, but pay_." +Revolutions and heroes may give us all, but not without price. This is +at the best, and the best is the exception. The grandiose types mostly +fail. In our own day, people talk, for example, with admiration of +Cromwell's government in Ireland,--as if it were a success, instead of +being one of the worst chapters in the whole history of Irish failure. +It was force carried to its utmost. Hundreds were put to the sword, +thousands were banished to be slaves of the planters in the West +Indies, and the remnant were driven miserably off into the desolate +wilds of Connaught. But all this only prepared the way for further +convulsions and deadlier discontent. + +It is irrational to contrast Carlyle's heroes, Cromwell, Mirabeau, +Frederick, Napoleon, with men like Washington or Lincoln. The +circumstances were different. The conditions of public use and of +personal greatness were different. But if we are to talk of ideals, +heroes, and models, I, for one, should hardly look to France at all. +Jefferson was no flatterer of George Washington; but his character of +Washington comes far nearer to the right pattern of a great ruler than +can be found in any of Carlyle's splendid dithyrambs, and it is no +waste of time to recall and to transcribe it:-- + + "His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first + order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a + Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was + ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by + invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common + remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils + of war, where, hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was + best; and certainly no general ever planned his battles more + judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if + any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, + he was slow in a readjustment. He was incapable of fear, meeting + personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest + feature in his character was prudence, never acting until + every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; + refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going through + with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was + most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no + motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, + being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense + of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was + naturally irritable and high toned; but reflection and resolution + had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it." + +In conclusion, the plain truth is that all parallels, analogies, and +similitudes between the French Revolution, or any part or phase of it, +and our affairs in Ireland are moonshine. For the practical politician +his problem is always individual. For his purposes history never +repeats itself. Human nature, doubtless, has a weakness for a +precedent; it is a weakness to be respected. But there is no +such thing as an essential reproduction of social and political +combinations of circumstance. To talk about Robespierre in connection +with Ireland is just as idle as it was in Robespierre to harangue +about Lycurgus and Brutus in Paris. To compare the two is to place +Ireland under a preposterous magnifying-glass of monstrous dimension. +Nor is disparity of scale the only difference, vital as that is. In +no one of the leading characteristics of a community in a state of +ferment, save the odium that surrounds the landlords, and that not +universal, does Ireland to-day really resemble the France of a +hundred years ago. Manners, ideas, beliefs, traditions, crumbling +institutions, rising aspirations, the ordering of castes and classes, +the rivalry of creeds, the relations with the governing power--all +constitute elements of such radical divergence as to make comparison +between modern Ireland and revolutionary France for any more serious +purpose than giving a conventional and familiar point to a sentence, +entirely worthless. + +It is pure dilettantism, again, to seek the moral of Irish commotions +in the insurrection of La VendĂ©e. That, as somebody has said, was like +a rising of the ancient Gauls at the voice of the Druids, and led by +their great chiefs. It will be time enough to compare La VendĂ©e +with Ireland when the peasantry take the field against the British +Government with Beresfords, Fitzgeralds, and Bourkes at their head. If +the VendĂ©ans had risen to drive out the Charettes, the Bonchamps, the +Larochejacquelins, the parallel would have been nearer the mark. The +report of the Devon Commission, the green pamphlet containing an +account of the famous three days' discussion between O'Connell and +Butt in the Dublin Corporation In 1843, or half a dozen of Lord +Clare's speeches between 1793 and 1800, will give a clearer insight +into the Irish problem than a bushel of books about the VendĂ©an or any +other episode of the Revolution. + +Equally frivolous is it, for any useful purpose of practical +enlightenment, to draw parallels between the action of the Catholic +clergy in Ireland to-day and that of the French clergy on the eve of +the Revolution. There is no sort of force in the argument that because +the French clergy fared ill at the Revolution,[1] therefore the Irish +clergy will fare ill when self-government is bestowed on Ireland. +Such talk is mere ingenious guess-work at best, without any of the +foundations of a true historical analogy. The differences between the +two cases are obvious, and they go to the heart of the matter. For +instance, the men who came to the top of affairs in France were +saturated both with speculative unbelief for one thing, and with +active hatred of the Church for another. In Ireland, on the contrary, +there is no speculative unbelief, as O'Connell used so constantly to +boast; and the Church being poor, voluntary, and intensely national +and popular, has nourished none of those gross and swollen abuses +which provoked the not unreasonable animosity of revolutionary France. +In truth, it is with precisely as much or as little reason that most +of the soothsayers and prognosticators of evil take the directly +opposite line. Instead of France these persons choose, as they have an +equally good right to do, to look for precedents to Spain, Belgium, or +South America. Why not? They assure us, in their jingling phrase, that +Home Rule means Rome Rule, that the priests will be the masters, and +that Irish autonomy is only another name for the reign of bigotry, +superstition, and obscurantism. One of these two mutually destructive +predictions has just as much to say for itself as the other, and no +more. We may leave the prophets to fight it out between them while we +attend to our business, and examine facts and probabilities as +they are, without the aid of capriciously adopted precedents and +fantastical analogies. + +[Footnote 1: The Church did not fare so very ill, after all. The +State, in 1790, undertook the debts of the Church to the tune of +130,000,000 livres, and assured it an annual Budget of rather more +than that amount.--Boiteau's _Etat de la France_, p. 202.] + +Parallels from France, or anywhere else, may supply literary +amusement; they may furnish a weapon in the play of controversy. They +shed no light and do no service as we confront the solid facts of the +business to be done. Lewis the Fourteenth was the author of a very +useful and superior commonplace when he wrote: "No man who is badly +informed can avoid reasoning badly. I believe that whoever is rightly +instructed, and rightly persuaded of _all the facts_, would never do +anything else but what he ought." Another great French ruler, who, +even more than Lewis, had a piercing eye for men and the world +of action, said that the mind of a general ought to be like a +field-glass, and as clear; to see things exactly as they are, _et +jamais se faire des tableaux_,--never to compose the objects before +him into pictures. The same maxim is nearly as good for the man who +has to conquer difficulties in the field of government; and analogies +and parallels are one way of substituting pictures for plans and +charts. Just because the statesman's problem is individual, history +can give him little help. I am not so graceless as to depreciate +history or literature either for public or for private persons. "You +are a man," Napoleon said to Goethe; and there is no reason why +literature should prevent the reader of books from being a man; why it +should blind him to the great practical truths that the end of life +is not to think but to will; that everything in the world has its +decisive moment, which statesmen know and seize; that the genius of +politics, as a great man of letters truly wrote, has not "All or +Nothing" for its motto, but seeks on the contrary to extract the +greatest advantage from situations the most compromised, and never +flings the helve after the hatchet. Like literature the use of history +in politics is to refresh, to open, to make the mind generous and +hospitable; to enrich, to impart flexibility, to quicken and nourish +political imagination and invention, to instruct in the common +difficulties and the various experiences of government; to enable a +statesman to place himself at a general and spacious standpoint. All +this, whether it be worth much or little, and it is surely worth much, +is something wholly distinct from directly aiding a statesman in +the performance of a specific task. In such a case an analogy from +history, if he be not sharply on his guard, is actually more likely +than not to mislead him. I certainly do not mean the history of the +special problem itself. Of that he cannot possibly know too much, nor +master its past course and foregone bearings too thoroughly. Ireland +is a great standing instance. There is no more striking example of +the disastrous results of trying to overcome political difficulties +without knowing how they came into existence, and where they have +their roots. The only history that furnishes a clue in Irish questions +is the history of Ireland and the people who have lived in it or have +been driven out of it. + + + + +ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE.[1] + +[Footnote 1: The annual address to the students of the London Society +for the Extension of University Teaching, delivered at the Mansion +House, February 26th, 1887.] + + +When my friend Mr. Goschen invited me to discharge the duty which +has fallen to me this afternoon I confess that I complied with many +misgivings. He desired me to say something on the literary side of +education. Now, it is almost impossible--and I think those who know +most of literature will be readiest to agree with me--to say anything +new in recommendation of literature in a scheme of education. I have +felt, however, that Mr. Goschen has worked with such zeal and energy +for so many years on behalf of this good cause, that anybody whom he +considered able to render him any co-operation owed it to him in its +fullest extent. The Lord Mayor has been kind enough to say that I am +especially qualified to speak on English literature. I must, however, +remind the Lord Mayor that I have strayed from literature into the +region of politics; and I am not at all sure that such a journey +conduces to the aptness of one's judgment on literary subjects, or +adds much to the force of one's arguments on behalf of literary study. +Politics are a field where action is one long second-best, and where +the choice constantly lies between two blunders. Nothing can be +more unlike in aim, in ideals, in method, and in matter, than are +literature and politics. I have, however, determined to do the best +that I can; and I feel how great an honour it is to be invited to +partake in a movement which I do not hesitate to call one of the most +important of all those now taking place in English society. + +What is the object of the movement? What do the promoters aim at? I +take it that what they design is to bring the very best teaching that +the country can afford, through the hands of the most thoroughly +competent men, within the reach of every class of the community. Their +object is to give to the many that sound, systematic, and methodical +knowledge, which has hitherto been the privilege of the few who can +afford the time and money to go to Oxford and Cambridge; to diffuse +the fertilising waters of intellectual knowledge from their great and +copious fountain-heads at the Universities by a thousand irrigating +channels over the whole length and breadth of our busy, indomitable +land. Gentlemen, this is a most important point. Goethe said that +nothing is more frightful than a teacher who only knows what his +scholars are intended to know. We may depend upon it that the man +who knows his own subject most thoroughly is most likely to excite +interest about it in the minds of other people. We hear, perhaps more +often than we like, that we live in a democratic age. It is true +enough, and I can conceive nothing more democratic than such a +movement as this, nothing which is more calculated to remedy defects +that are incident to democracy, more thoroughly calculated to raise +modern democracy to heights which other forms of government and older +orderings of society have never yet attained. No movement can be more +wisely democratic than one which seeks to give to the northern miner +or the London artisan knowledge as good and as accurate, though he +may not have so much of it, as if he were a student at Oxford or +Cambridge. Something of the same kind may be said of the new frequency +with which scholars of great eminence and consummate accomplishments, +like Jowett, Lang, Myers, Leaf, and others, bring all their +scholarship to bear, in order to provide for those who are not able, +or do not care, to read old classics in the originals, brilliant and +faithful renderings of them in our own tongue. Nothing but good, I am +persuaded, can come of all these attempts to connect learning with the +living forces of society, and to make industrial England a sharer in +the classic tradition of the lettered world. + +I am well aware that there is an apprehension that the present +extraordinary zeal for education in all its forms--elementary, +secondary, and higher--may bear in its train some evils of its own. It +is said that before long nobody in England will be content to practise +a handicraft, and that every one will insist on being at least a +clerk. It is said that the moment is even already at hand when a great +deal of practical distress does and must result from this tendency. I +remember years ago that in the United States I heard something of the +same kind. All I can say is, that this tendency, if it exists, is sure +to right itself. In no case can the spread of so mischievous a notion +as that knowledge and learning ought not to come within reach of +handicraftsmen be attributed to literature. There is a familiar +passage in which Pericles, the great Athenian, describing the glory of +the community of which he was so far-shining a member, says, "We at +Athens are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes; we +cultivate the mind without loss of manliness." But then remember that +after all Athenian society rested on a basis of slavery. Athenian +citizens were able to pursue their love of the beautiful, and their +simplicity, and to cultivate their minds without loss of manliness, +because the drudgery and hard work and rude service of society were +performed by those who had no share in all these good things. With us, +happily, it is very different. We are all more or less upon a level. +Our object is--and it is that which in my opinion raises us infinitely +above the Athenian level--to bring the Periclean ideas of beauty and +simplicity and cultivation of the mind within the reach of those who +do the drudgery and the service and rude work of the world. And it can +be done--do not let us be afraid--it can be done without in the least +degree impairing the skill of our handicraftsmen or the manliness of +our national life. It can be done without blunting or numbing the +practical energies of our people. + +I know they say that if you meddle with literature you are less +qualified to take your part in practical affairs. You run a risk of +being labelled a dreamer and a theorist. But, after all, if we take +the very highest form of all practical energy--the governing of the +country--all this talk is ludicrously untrue. I venture to say that in +the present Government [1887], including the Prime Minister, there are +three men at least who are perfectly capable of earning their bread as +men of letters. In the late Government, besides the Prime Minister, +there were also three men of letters, and I have never heard that +those three were greater simpletons than their neighbours. There is +a Commission now at work on that very important and abstruse +subject--the Currency. I am told that no one there displays so acute +an intelligence of the difficulties that are to be met, and so ready +an apprehension of the important arguments that are brought forward, +and the practical ends to be achieved, as the chairman of the +Commission, who is not what is called a practical man, but a man +of study, literature, theoretical speculation, and university +training.[1] Oh no, gentlemen, some of the best men of business in the +country are men who have had the best collegian's equipment, and are +the most accomplished bookmen. + +[Footnote 1: Mr. Arthur Balfour.] + +It is true that we cannot bring to London, with this movement, the +indefinable charm that haunts the grey and venerable quadrangles of +Oxford and Cambridge. We cannot take you into the stately halls, the +silent and venerable libraries, the solemn chapels, the studious +old-world gardens. We cannot surround you with all those elevated +memorials and sanctifying associations of scholars and poets, of +saints and sages, that march in glorious procession through the ages, +and make of Oxford and Cambridge a dream of music for the inward ear, +and of delight for the contemplative eye. We cannot bring all that to +you; but I hope, and I believe, it is the object of those who are more +intimately connected with the society than I have been, that every +partaker of the benefits of this society will feel himself and herself +in living connection with those two famous centres, and feel conscious +of the links that bind the modern to the older England. One of the +most interesting facts mentioned in your report this year is that last +winter four prizes of ÂŁ10 each were offered in the mining district of +Northumberland, one each to the male and female student in every term +who should take the highest place in the examination, in order to +enable them to spend a month in Cambridge in the long vacation for the +purpose of carrying on in the laboratories and museums the work in +which they had been engaged in the winter at the local centre. That is +not a step taken by our society; but the University of Cambridge has +inspired and worked out the scheme, and I am not without hope that +from London some of those who attend these classes may be able to +realise in person the attractions and the associations of these two +great historic sites. One likes to think how poor scholars three or +four hundred years ago used to flock to Oxford, regardless of cold, +privation, and hardship, so that they might satisfy their hunger and +thirst for knowledge. I like to think of them in connection with this +movement. I like to think of them in connection with students like +those miners in Northumberland, whom I know well, and who are +mentioned in the report of the Cambridge Extension Society as, after +a day's hard work in the pit, walking four or five miles through cold +and darkness and rough roads to hear a lecture, and then walking +back again the same four or five miles. You must look for the same +enthusiasm, the same hunger and thirst for knowledge, that presided +over the foundation of the Universities many centuries ago, to carry +on this work, to strengthen and stimulate men's faith in knowledge, +their hopes from it, and their zeal for it. + +Speaking now of the particular kind of knowledge of which I am going +to say a few words--how does literature fare in these important +operations? Last term, out of fifty-seven courses in the Cambridge +scheme, there were ten on literature: out of thirty-one of our +courses, seven were on literature. I am bound to say I think that +such a position for literature in the scheme is very reasonably +satisfactory. I have made some inquiries, since I knew that I was +going to speak here, in the great popular centres of industry in the +North and in Scotland as to the popularity of literature as a subject +of teaching, I find very much what I should have expected. The +professors all tell very much the same story, and this is, that it +is extremely hard to interest any considerable number of people in +subjects that seem to have no direct bearing upon the practical work +of everyday life. There is a disinclination to study literature for +its own sake, or to study anything which does not seem to have a +visible and direct influence upon the daily work of life. The nearest +approach to a taste for literature is a certain demand for instruction +in history with a little flavour of contemporary politics. In short, +the demand for instruction in literature is strictly moderate. That is +what men of experience tell me, and we have to recognise it, nor ought +we to be at all surprised. Mr. Goschen, when he spoke some years ago, +said there were three motives which might induce people to seek the +higher education. First, to obtain greater knowledge for bread-winning +purposes. From that point of view science would be most likely to feed +the classes. Secondly, the improvement of one's knowledge of political +economy, and history, and facts bearing upon the actual political work +and life of the day. Thirdly, was the desire of knowledge as a luxury +to brighten life and kindle thought. I am very much afraid that, in +the ordinary temper of our people, and the ordinary mode of looking at +life, the last of these motives savours a little of self-indulgence, +and sentimentality, and other objectionable qualities. There is a +great stir in the region of physical science at this moment, and it is +likely, as any one may see, to take a chief and foremost place in the +field of intellectual activity. After the severity with which science +was for so many ages treated by literature, we cannot wonder that +science now retaliates, now mightily exalts herself, and thrusts +literature down into the lower place. I only have to say on the +relative claims of science and literature what Dr Arnold said:--"If +one might wish for impossibilities, I might then wish that my children +might be well versed in physical science, but in due subordination to +the fulness and freshness of their knowledge on moral subjects. This, +however, I believe cannot be; wherefore, rather than have it the +principal thing in my son's mind, I would gladly have him think that +the sun went round the earth, and that the stars were so many spangles +set in the bright blue firmament" (Stanley's _Life of Arnold_, ii. +31). It is satisfactory that one may know something of these matters, +and yet not believe that the sun goes round the earth. But if there +is to be exclusion, I, for one, am not prepared to accept the rather +enormous pretensions that are nowadays sometimes made for physical +science as the be-all and end-all of education. + +Next to this we know that there is a great stir on behalf of technical +and commercial education. The special needs of our time and country +compel us to pay a particular attention to this subject. Here +knowledge is business, and we shall never hold our industrial +pre-eminence, with all that hangs upon that pre-eminence, unless we +push on technical and commercial education with all our might. But +there is a third kind of knowledge, and that too, in its own way, is +business. There is the cultivation of the sympathies and imagination, +the quickening of the moral sensibilities, and the enlargement of the +moral vision. The great need in modern culture, which is scientific +in method, rationalistic in spirit, and utilitarian in purpose, is to +find some effective agency for cherishing within us the ideal. That +is the business and function of literature. Literature alone will not +make a good citizen; it will not make a good man. History affords too +many proofs that scholarship and learning by no means purge men of +acrimony, of vanity, of arrogance, of a murderous tenacity about +trifles. Mere scholarship and learning and the knowledge of books do +not by any means arrest and dissolve all the travelling acids of the +human system. Nor would I pretend for a moment that literature can be +any substitute for life and action. Burke said, "What is the education +of the generality of the world? Reading a parcel of books? No! +Restraint and discipline, examples of virtue and of justice, these are +what form the education of the world." That is profoundly true; it is +life that is the great educator. But the parcel of books, if they are +well chosen, reconcile us to this discipline; they interpret this +virtue and justice; they awaken within us the diviner mind, and rouse +us to a consciousness of what is best in others and ourselves. + +As a matter of rude fact, there is much to make us question whether the +spread of literature, as now understood, does awaken the diviner mind. +The numbers of the books that are taken out from public libraries are +not all that we could wish. I am not going to inflict many figures on +you, but there is one set of these figures that distresses +booklovers,--I mean the enormous place that fiction occupies in the +books that are taken out. In one great town in the North prose fiction +forms 76 per cent of all the books lent. In another great town prose +fiction is 82 per cent; in a third 84 per cent; and in a fourth 67 per +cent. I had the curiosity to see what happens in the libraries of the +United States; and there--supposing the system of cataloguing and +enumeration to be the same--they are a trifle more serious in their +taste than we are; where our average is about 70 per cent, at a place +like Chicago it is only about 60 per cent. In Scotland, too, it ought to +be said that they have a better average in respect to prose fiction. +There is a larger demand for books called serious than in England. And I +suspect, though I do not know, that one reason why there is in Scotland +a greater demand for the more serious classes of literature than +fiction, is that in the Scotch Universities there are what we have not +in England--well-attended chairs of literature, systematically and +methodically studied. Do not let it be supposed that I at all underrate +the value of fiction. On the contrary, when a man has done a hard day's +work, what can he do better than fall to and read the novels of Walter +Scott, or the Brontes, or Mrs. Gaskell, or some of our living writers. I +am rather a voracious reader of fiction myself. I do not, therefore, +point to it as a reproach or as a source of discouragement, that fiction +takes so large a place in the objects of literary interest. I only +suggest that it is much too large, and we should be better pleased if it +sank to about 40 per cent, and what is classified as general literature +rose from 13 to 25 per cent. + +There are other complaints of literature as an object of interest in +this country. I was reading the other day an essay by the late head of +my old college at Oxford, that very learned and remarkable man Mark +Pattison, who was a booklover if ever there was one. He complained +that the bookseller's bill in the ordinary English middle class family +is shamefully small. It appeared to him to be monstrous that a man +who is earning ÂŁ1000 a year should spend less than ÂŁ1 a week on +books--that is to say, less than a shilling in the pound per annum. I +know that Chancellors of the Exchequer take from us 8d. or 6d. in the +pound, and I am not sure that they always use it as wisely as if they +left us to spend it on books. Still, a shilling in the pound to be +spent on books by a clerk who earns a couple of hundred pounds a year, +or by a workman who earns a quarter of that sum, is rather more, I +think, than can be reasonably expected. A man does not really need +to have a great many books. Pattison said that nobody who respected +himself could have less than 1000 volumes. He pointed out that you can +stack 1000 octavo volumes in a bookcase that shall be 13 feet by 10 +feet, and 6 inches deep, and that everybody has that small amount of +space at disposal. Still the point is not that men should have a great +many books, but that they should have the right ones, and that they +should use those that they have. We may all agree in lamenting +that there are so many houses--even some of considerable social +pretension--where you will not find a good atlas, a good dictionary, +or a good cyclopaedia of reference. What is still more lamentable, in +a good many more houses where these books are, they are never referred +to or opened. That is a very discreditable fact, because I defy +anybody to take up a single copy of the _Times_ newspaper and not come +upon something in it, upon which, if their interest in the affairs of +the day were active, intelligent, and alert as it ought to be, they +would consult an atlas, dictionary, or cyclopaedia of reference. + +No sensible person can suppose for a single moment that everybody +is born with the ability for using books, for reading and studying +literature. Certainly not everybody is born with the capacity of being +a great scholar. All people are no more born great scholars like +Gibbon and Bentley, than they are all born great musicians like Handel +and Beethoven. What is much worse than that, many come into the world +with the incapacity of reading, just as they come into it with the +incapacity of distinguishing one tune from another. To them I have +nothing to say. Even the morning paper is too much for them. They can +only skim the surface even of that. I go further, and frankly admit +that the habit and power of reading with reflection, comprehension, +and memory all alert and awake, does not come at once to the +natural man any more than many other sovereign virtues come to that +interesting creature. What I do venture to press upon you is, that +it requires no preterhuman force of will in any young man or +woman--unless household circumstances are more than usually vexatious +and unfavourable--to get at least half an hour out of a solid busy day +for good and disinterested reading. Some will say that this is too +much to expect, and the first persons to say it, I venture to predict, +will be those who waste their time most. At any rate, if I cannot get +half an hour, I will be content with a quarter. Now, in half an hour I +fancy you can read fifteen or twenty pages of Burke; or you can read +one of Wordsworth's masterpieces--say the lines on Tintern; or +say, one-third--if a scholar, in the original, and if not, in a +translation--of a book of the Iliad or the Aeneid. I do not think that +I am filling the half-hour too full. But try for yourselves what you +can read in half an hour. Then multiply the half-hour by 365, and +consider what treasures you might have laid by at the end of the year; +and what happiness, fortitude, and wisdom they would have given you +during all the days of your life. + +I will not take up your time by explaining the various mechanical +contrivances and aids to successful study. They are not to be despised +by those who would extract the most from books, Many people think of +knowledge as of money. They would like knowledge, but cannot face the +perseverance and self-denial that go to the acquisition of it. The +wise student will do most of his reading with a pen or a pencil in his +hand. + +He will not shrink from the useful toil of making abstracts and +summaries of what he is reading. Sir William Hamilton was a strong +advocate for underscoring books of study. "Intelligent underlining," +he said, "gave a kind of abstract of an important work, and by the +use of different coloured inks to mark a difference of contents, +and discriminate the doctrinal from the historical or illustrative +elements of an argument or exposition, the abstract became an analysis +very serviceable for ready reference,"[1] This assumes, as Hamilton +said, that the book to be operated on is your own, and perhaps is +rather too elaborate a counsel of perfection for most of us. Again, +some great men--Gibbon was one, and Daniel Webster was another, and +the great Lord Strafford was a third--always before reading a book +made a short, rough analysis of the questions which they expected to +be answered in it, the additions to be made to their knowledge, and +whither it would take them. + +[Footnote 1: Veitch's _Life of Hamilton_, pp. 314, 392.] + +"After glancing my eye," says Gibbon, "over the design and order of +a new book, I suspended the perusal until I had finished the task of +self-examination; till I had revolved in a solitary walk all that I +knew or believed or had thought on the subject of the whole work or of +some particular chapter: I was then qualified to discern how much the +author added to my original stock; and if I was sometimes satisfied +by the agreement, I was sometimes armed by the opposition, of our +ideas."[1] + +[Footnote 1: Dr. Smith's _Gibbon_, i. 64.] + +I have sometimes tried that way of steadying and guiding attention; +and I commend it to you. I need not tell you that you will find that +most books worth reading once are worth reading twice, and--what +is most important of all--the masterpieces of literature are worth +reading a thousand times. It is a great mistake to think that because +you have read a masterpiece once or twice, or ten times, therefore you +have done with it. Because it is a masterpiece, you ought to live with +it, and make it part of your daily life. Another practice is that of +keeping a commonplace book, and transcribing into it what is striking +and interesting and suggestive. And if you keep it wisely, as Locke +has taught us, you will put every entry under a head, division, or +subdivision.[1] This Is an excellent practice for concentrating your +thought on the passage and making you alive to its real point and +significance. Here, however, the high authority of Gibbon is against +us. He refuses "strenuously to recommend." "The action of the pen," he +says, "will doubtless imprint an idea on the mind as well as on the +paper; but I much question whether the benefits of this laborious +method are adequate to the waste of time; and I must agree with Dr. +Johnson (_Idler_, No. 74) that 'what is twice read is commonly better +remembered than what is transcribed.'"[2] + +[Footnote 1: "If I would put anything in my Common-place Book, I +find out a head to which I may refer it. Each head ought to be some +important and essential word to the matter in hand" (Locke's _Works_, +iii. 308, ed. 1801).] + +[Footnote 2: This is for indexing purposes, but it is worth while to +go further and make a title for the passage extracted, indicating its +pith and purport.] + +Various correspondents have asked me to say something about those +lists of a hundred books that have been circulating through the world +within the last few months. I have examined some of these lists with +considerable care, and whatever else may be said of them--and I speak +of them with deference and reserve, because men for whom one must +have a great regard have compiled them--they do not seem to me to be +calculated either to create or satisfy a wise taste for literature +in any very worthy sense. To fill a man with a hundred parcels of +heterogeneous scraps from the _Mahabharata_, and the _Sheking_, down +to _Pickwick_ and _White's Selborne_, may pass the time, but I cannot +perceive how it would strengthen or instruct or delight. For instance, +it is a mistake to think that every book that has a great name in the +history of books or of thought is worth reading. Some of the most +famous books are least worth reading. Their fame was due to their +doing something that needed in their day to be done. The work done, +the virtue of the book expires. Again, I agree with those who say +that the steady working down one of these lists would end in the +manufacture of that obnoxious product--the prig. A prig has been +defined as an animal that is overfed for its size. I think that these +bewildering miscellanies would lead to an immense quantity of that +kind of overfeeding. The object of reading is not to dip into +everything that even wise men have ever written. In the words of one +of the most winning writers of English that ever existed--Cardinal +Newman--the object of literature in education is to open the mind, to +correct it, to refine it, to enable it to comprehend and digest its +knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, +flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, address, and +expression. These are the objects of that intellectual perfection +which a literary education is destined to give. I will not venture on +a list of a hundred books, but will recommend you instead to one book +well worthy of your attention. Those who are curious as to what they +should read in the region of pure literature will do well to peruse +Mr. Frederic Harrison's admirable, volume, called _The Choice of +Books_. You will find there as much wise thought, eloquently and +brilliantly put, as in any volume of its size and on its subject, +whether it be in the list of a hundred or not. + +Let me pass to another topic. We are often asked whether it is best to +study subjects, or authors, or books. Well, I think that is like most +of the stock questions with which the perverse ingenuity of mankind +torments itself. There is no universal and exclusive answer. My own +answer is a very plain one. It is sometimes best to study books, +sometimes authors, and sometimes subjects; but at all times it is best +to study authors, subjects, and books in connection with one another. +Whether you make your first approach from interest in an author or in +a book, the fruit will be only half gathered if you leave off without +new ideas and clearer lights both on the man and the matter. One of +the noblest masterpieces in the literature of civil and political +wisdom is to be found in Burke's three performances on the American +war--his speech on Taxation in 1774, on Conciliation in 1775, and his +letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol in 1777. I can only repeat to you +what I have been saying in print and out of it for a good many years, +and what I believe more firmly as observation is enlarged by time and +occasion, that these three pieces are the most perfect manual in all +literature for the study of great affairs, whether for the purpose of +knowledge or action. "They are an example," as I have said before +now, "an example without fault of all the qualities which the critic, +whether a theorist or an actor, of great political situations should +strive by night and by day to possess. If their subject were as remote +as the quarrel between the Corinthians and Corcyra, or the war between +Rome and the Allies, instead of a conflict to which the world owes the +opportunity of one of the most important of political experiments, we +should still have everything to learn from the author's treatment; the +vigorous grasp of masses of compressed detail, the wide illumination +from great principles of human experience, the strong and masculine +feeling for the two great political ends of Justice and Freedom, the +large and generous interpretation of expediency, the morality, the +vision, the noble temper." No student worthy of the name will lay +aside these pieces, so admirable in their literary expression, so +important for history, so rich in the lessons of civil wisdom, until +he has found out something from other sources as to the circumstances +from which such writings arose, and as to the man whose resplendent +genius inspired them. There are great personalities like Burke who +march through history with voices like a clarion trumpet and something +like the glitter of swords in their hands. They are as interesting as +their work. Contact with them warms and kindles the mind. You will not +be content, after reading one of these pieces, without knowing the +character and personality of the man who conceived it, and until you +have spent an hour or two--and an hour or two will go a long way with +Burke still fresh in your mind--over other compositions in political +literature, over Bacon's civil pieces, or Machiavelli's _Prince_, and +others in the same order of thought. + +This points to the right answer to another question that is constantly +asked. We are constantly asked whether desultory reading is among +things lawful and permitted. May we browse at large in a library, as +Johnson said, or is it forbidden to open a book without a definite aim +and fixed expectations? I am for a compromise. If a man has once got +his general point of view, if he has striven with success to place +himself at the centre, what follows is of less consequence. If he has +got in his head a good map of the country, he may ramble at large with +impunity. If he has once well and truly laid the foundations of a +methodical, systematic habit of mind, what he reads will find its way +to its proper place. If his intellect is in good order, he will find +in every quarter something to assimilate and something that will +nourish. + +Next I am going to deal with another question, with which perhaps I +ought to have started. What is literature? It has often been defined. +Emerson says it is a record of the best thoughts. "By literature," +says another author, "we mean the written thoughts and feelings of +intelligent men and women arranged in a way that shall give pleasure +to the reader." A third account is that "the aim of a student of +literature is to know the best that has been thought in the world." +Definitions always appear to me in these things to be in the nature +of vanity. I feel that the attempt to be compact in the definition of +literature ends in something that is rather meagre, partial, starved, +and unsatisfactory. I turn to the answer given by a great French +writer to a question not quite the same, viz. "What is a classic?" +Literature consists of a whole body of classics in the true sense of +the word, and a classic, as Sainte-Beuve defines him, is an "author +who has enriched the human mind, who has really added to its treasure, +who has got it to take a step further; who has discovered some +unequivocal moral truth, or penetrated to some eternal passion, +in that heart of man where it seemed as though all were known and +explored, who has produced his thought, or his observation, or his +invention under some form, no matter what, so it be great, large, +acute, and reasonable, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to +all in a style of his own, yet a style which finds itself the style +of everybody,--in a style that Is at once new and antique, and is the +contemporary of all the ages." Another Frenchman, Doudan, who died in +1872, has an excellent passage on the same subject:-- + + "The man of letters properly so called is a rather singular being: + he does not look at things exactly with his own eyes, he has not + impressions of his own, we could not discover the imagination with + which he started. 'Tis a tree on which have been grafted Homer, + Virgil, Milton, Dante, Petrarch; hence have grown peculiar flowers + which are not natural, and yet which are not artificial. Study has + given to the man of letters something of the reverie of RenĂ©; with + Homer he has looked upon the plain of Troy, and there has remained + in his brain some of the light of the Grecian sky; he has taken a + little of the pensive lustre of Virgil, as he wanders by his side + on the slopes of the Aventine; he sees the world as Milton saw it, + through the grey mists of England, as Dante saw it, through the + clear and glowing light of Italy. Of all these colours he composes + for himself a colour that is unique and his own; from all these + glasses by which his life passes on its journey to the real + world, there is formed a special tint, and that is what makes the + imagination of men of letters." + +At a single hearing you may not take all that in; but if you should +have any opportunity of recurring to it, you will find this a +satisfactory, full, and instructive account of what is a classic, and +will find in it a full and satisfactory account of what those who have +thought most on literature hope to get from it, and most would +desire to confer upon others by it. Literature consists of till the +books--and they are not so many--where moral truth and human passion +are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form. +My notion of the literary student is one who through books explores +the strange voyages of man's moral reason, the impulses of the human +heart, the chances and changes that have overtaken human ideals +of virtue and happiness, of conduct and manners, and the shifting +fortunes of great conceptions of truth and virtue. Poets, dramatists, +humorists, satirists, masters of fiction, the great preachers, +the character-writers, the maxim-writers, the great political +orators--they are all literature in so far as they teach us to know +man and to know human nature. This is what makes literature, rightly +sifted and selected and rightly studied, not the mere elegant trifling +that it is so often and so erroneously supposed to be, but a +proper instrument for a systematic training of the imagination and +sympathies, and of a genial and varied moral sensibility. + +From this point of view let me remind you that books are not the +products of accident and caprice. As Goethe said, if you would +understand an author, you must understand his age. The same thing is +just as true of a book. If you would fully comprehend it, you must +know the age. There is an order; there are causes and relations +between great compositions and the societies in which they have +emerged. Just as the naturalist strives to understand and to explain +the distribution of plants and animals over the surface of the globe, +to connect their presence or their absence with the great geological, +climatic, and oceanic changes, so the student of literature, if he be +wise, undertakes an ordered and connected survey of ideas, of tastes, +of sentiments, of imagination, of humour, of invention, as they affect +and as they are affected by the ever changing experiences of human +nature, and the manifold variations that time and circumstances are +incessantly working in human society. + +Those who are possessed, and desire to see others possessed, by that +conception of literary study must watch with the greatest sympathy and +admiration the efforts of those who are striving so hard, and, I hope, +so successfully, to bring the systematic and methodical study of our +own literature, in connection with other literatures, among subjects +for teaching and examination in the Universities of Oxford and +Cambridge. I regard those efforts with the liveliest interest and +sympathy. Everybody agrees that an educated man ought to have a +general notion of the course of the great outward events of European +history. So, too, an educated man ought to have a general notion of +the course of all those inward thoughts and moods which find their +expression in literature. I think that in cultivating the study of +literature, as I have perhaps too laboriously endeavoured to define +it, you will be cultivating the most important side of history. +Knowledge of it gives stability and substance to character. It +furnishes a view of the ground we stand on. It builds up a solid +backing of precedent and experience. It teaches us where we are. It +protects us against imposture and surprise. + +Before closing I should like to say one word upon the practice of +composition. I have suffered, by the chance of life, many things from +the practice of composition. It has been my lot, I suppose, to read +more unpublished work than any one else in this room. + +There is an idea, and, I venture to think, a very mistaken idea, that +you cannot have a taste for literature unless you are yourself an +author. I make bold entirely to demur to that proposition. It is +practically most mischievous, and leads scores and even hundreds of +people to waste their time in the most unprofitable manner that the +wit of man can devise, on work in which they can no more achieve even +the most moderate excellence than they can compose a Ninth Symphony +or paint a Transfiguration. It Is a terrible error to suppose that +because one is happily able to relish "Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted +idyll, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie," therefore a solemn mission +calls you to run off to write bad verse at the Lakes or the Isle +of Wight. I beseech you not all to turn to authorship. I will even +venture, with all respect to those who are teachers of literature, +to doubt the excellence and utility of the practice of over-much +essay-writing and composition. I have very little faith in rules of +style, though I have an unbounded faith in the virtue of cultivating +direct and precise expression. But you must carry on the operation +inside the mind, and not merely by practising literary deportment on +paper. It is not everybody who can command the mighty rhythm of the +greatest masters of human speech. But every one can make reasonably +sure that he knows what he means, and whether he has found the right +word. These are internal operations, and are not forwarded by writing +for writing's sake. Everybody must be urgent for attention to +expression, if that attention be exercised in the right way. It has +been said a million times that the foundation of right expression in +speech or writing is sincerity. That is as true now as it has ever +been. Right expression is a part of character. As somebody has +said, by learning to speak with precision, you learn to think with +correctness; and the way to firm and vigorous speech lies through the +cultivation of high and noble sentiments. So far as my observation has +gone, men will do better if they seek precision by studying carefully +and with an open mind and a vigilant eye the great models of writing, +than by excessive practice of writing on their own account. + +Much might here be said on what is one of the most important of all +the sides of literary study. I mean its effect as helping to preserve +the dignity and the purity of the English language. That noble +instrument has never been exposed to such dangers as those which +beset it to-day. Domestic slang, scientific slang, pseudo-aesthetic +affectations, hideous importations from American newspapers, all bear +down with horrible force upon the glorious fabric which the genius of +our race has reared. I will say nothing of my own on this pressing +theme, but will read to you a passage of weight and authority from the +greatest master of mighty and beautiful speech. + +"Whoever in a state," said Milton, "knows how wisely to form the +manners of men and to rule them at home and in war with excellent +institutes, him in the first place, above others, I should esteem +worthy of all honour. But next to him the man who strives to establish +in maxims and rules the method and habit of speaking and writing +received from a good age of the nation, and, as it were, to fortify +the same round with a kind of wall, the daring to overleap which let a +law only short of that of Romulus be used to prevent.... The one, as I +believe, supplies noble courage and intrepid counsels against an +enemy invading the territory. The other takes to himself the task of +extirpating and defeating, by means of a learned detective police of +ears, and a light band of good authors, that barbarism which makes +large inroads upon the minds of men, and is a destructive intestine +enemy of genius. Nor is it to be considered of small consequence what +language, pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their customary +degree of propriety in speaking it.... For, let the words of a country +be in part unhandsome and offensive in themselves, in part debased by +wear and wrongly uttered, and what do they declare, but, by no light +indication, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent, +idly-yawning race, with minds already long prepared for any amount of +servility? On the other hand, we have never heard that any empire, any +state, did not at least flourish in a middling degree as long as its +own liking and care for its language lasted."[1] + +[Footnote 1: Letter to Bonmattei, from Florence, 1638.] + +The probabilities are that we are now coming to an epoch of a quieter +style. There have been in our generation three strong masters in the +aft of prose writing. There was, first of all, Carlyle, there was +Macaulay, and there is Mr. Raskin. These are all giants, and they have +the rights of giants. But I do not believe that a greater misfortune +can befall the students who attend classes here, than that they should +strive to write like any one of these three illustrious men. I think +it is the worst thing that can happen to them. They can never attain +to the high mark which they have set before themselves. It Is not +everybody who can bend the bow of Ulysses, and most men only do +themselves a mischief by trying to bend it. If we are now on our way +to a quieter style, I am not sorry for it. Truth is quiet. Milton's +phrase ever lingers in our minds as one of imperishable beauty--where +he regrets that he is drawn by I know not what, from beholding the +bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful +studies. Moderation and judgment are, for most purposes, more than the +flash and the glitter even of the genius. I hope that your professors +of rhetoric will teach you to cultivate that golden art--the steadfast +use of a language in which truth can be told; a speech that is +strong by natural force, and not merely effective by declamation; an +utterance without trick, without affectation, without mannerisms, +without any of that excessive ambition which overleaps itself as +disastrously in prose writing as in so many other things. + +I will detain you no longer. I hope that I have made it clear that we +conceive the end of education on its literary side to be to make a man +and not a cyclopaedia, to make a citizen and not an album of elegant +extracts. Literature does not end with knowledge of forms, with +inventories of books and authors, with finding the key of rhythm, with +the varying measure of the stanza, or the changes from the involved +and sonorous periods of the seventeenth century down to the _staccato_ +of the nineteenth, or all the rest of the technicalities of +scholarship. Do not think I contemn these. They are all good things to +know, but they are not ends in themselves. The intelligent man, says +Plato, will prize those studies which result in his soul getting +soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and he will less value the +others. Literature is one of the instruments, and one of the most +powerful instruments, for forming character for giving us men +and women armed with reason, braced by knowledge, clothed with +steadfastness and courage, and inspired by that public spirit and +public virtue of which it has been well said that they are the +brightest ornaments of the mind of man. Bacon is right, as he +generally is, when he bids us read not to contradict and refute, nor +to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but +to weigh and to consider. Yes, let us read to weigh and to consider. +In the times before us that promise or threaten deep political, +economical, and social controversy, what we need to do is to induce +our people to weigh and consider. We want them to cultivate energy +without impatience, activity without restlessness, inflexibility +without ill-humour. I am not going to preach to you any artificial +stoicism. I am not going to preach to you any indifference to money, +or to the pleasures of social intercourse, or to the esteem and +good-will of our neighbours, or to any other of the consolations and +necessities of life. But, after all, the thing that matters most, both +for happiness and for duty, is that we should strive habitually to +live with wise thoughts and right feelings. Literature helps us more +than other studies to this most blessed companionship of wise thoughts +and right feelings, and so I have taken this opportunity of earnestly +commending it to your interest and care. + + + + +VICTOR HUGO'S "NINETY-THREE." + + +"History has its truth, Legend has its truth. Legendary truth is of +a different nature from historic truth. Legendary truth is invention +with reality for result. For the rest, history and legend have the +same aim--to paint under the man of a day eternal humanity." These +words from his new and latest work (ii. 4) are a repetition of what +Victor Hugo had already said in the introduction to his memorable +_Legend of the Ages_[1]. But the occasion of their application is far +more delicate. Poetry lends itself naturally to the spacious, distant, +vague, highly generalised way of present and real events. A prose +romance, on the other hand, is of necessity abundant in details, in +special circumstances, in particularities of time and place. This +leaves all the more room for historic error, and historic error in +a work of imagination dealing with actual and known occurrences is +obviously fatal, not only to legendary truth, but to legendary beauty +and poetic impressiveness. And then the pitfalls which lie about the +feet of the Frenchman who has to speak of 1793,--the terrible year +of the modern epoch! The delirium of the Terror haunts most of the +revolutionary historians, and the choicest examples in all literature +of bombast, folly, emptiness, political immorality, inhumanity, formal +repudiation of common sense and judgment, are to be found in the +rhapsodies which men of letters, some of them men of eminence, call +histories of the Revolution, or lives of this or that actor in it. + +[Footnote 1: The references are to the "Édition DĂ©finitive" in two +volumes.] + +It was hardly a breach, therefore, of one's allegiance to Hugo's +superb imaginative genius, if one had misgivings as to the result of +an attempt, even in his strong hands, to combine legend with truth on +a disastrous field, in which grave writers with academic solemnity had +confounded truth with the falsest kind of legend. The theme was so +likely to emphasise the defects incident to his mighty qualities; so +likely to provoke an exaggeration of those mannerisms of thought no +less than of phrase, which though never ignoble nor paltry, yet now +and then take something from the loftiness and sincerity of the +writer's work. Wisdom, however, is justified of her children, and M. +Hugo's genius has justified his choice of a difficult and perilous +subject. _Quatrevingt-treize_ is a monument of its author's finest +gifts; and while those who are happily endowed with the capacity of +taking delight in nobility and beauty of imaginative work will find +themselves in possession of a new treasure, the lover of historic +truth who hates to see abstractions passed off for actualities and +legend erected in the place of fact escapes with his sensibilities +almost unwounded. + +The historic interlude at the beginning of the second volume is +undoubtedly open to criticism from the political student's point of +view. As a sketch of the Convention, the scene of its sittings, the +stormful dramas that were enacted there one after another for month +after month, the singular men who one after another rode triumphant +upon the whirlwind for a little space, and were then mercilessly in an +instant swept into outer darkness, the commoner men who cowered before +the fury of the storm, and were like "smoke driven hither and thither +by the wind," and laboured hard upon a thousand schemes for human +improvement, some admirable, others mere frenzy, while mobs filed in +and danced mad carmagnoles before them--all this is a magnificent +masterpiece of accurate, full, and vivid description. To the +philosophy of it we venture to demur. The mystic, supernatural view of +the French Revolution, which is so popular among French writers who +object to the supernatural and the mystical everywhere else, is to us +a thing most incredible, most puerile, most mischievous. People talk +of '93, as a Greek tragedian treats the Tale of Troy divine, or the +terrible fortunes of the house of Atreus, as the result of dark +invincible fate, as the unalterable decree of the immortal gods. Even +Victor Hugo's strong spirit does not quite overcome the demoralising +doctrine of a certain revolutionary school, though he has the poet's +excuse. Thus, of the Convention:-- + + "Minds all a prey to the wind. But this wind was a wind of miracle + and portent. To be a member of the Convention was to be a wave + of the ocean. And this was true of its greatest. The force of + impulsion came from on high. There was in the Convention a will, + which was the will of all, and yet was the will of no one. It was + an idea, an idea resistless and without measure, which breathed in + the shadow from the high heavens. We call that the Revolution. As + this idea passed, it threw down one and raised up another; it bore + away this man in the foam, and broke that man to pieces upon the + rocks. The idea knew whither it went, and drove the gulf of waters + before it. To impute the Revolution to men is as one who should + impute the tide to the waves. The revolution is an action of the + Unknown.... It is a form of the abiding phenomenon that shuts us + in on every side and that we call Necessity.... In presence + of these climacteric catastrophes which waste and vivify + civilisation, one is slow to judge detail. To blame or praise men + on account of the result, is as if one should blame or praise the + figures on account of the total. That which must pass passes, the + storm that must rage rages. The eternal serenity does not suffer + from these boisterous winds. Above revolutions truth and justice + abide, as the starry heaven abides above the tempests" (i. + 188-189). + +As a lyric passage, full of the breath of inspiration; as history, +superficial and untrue; as morality, enervating and antinomian. The +author is assuredly far nearer the mark in another place when +he speaks of "_that immense improvisation_ which is the French +Revolution" (ii. 35)--an improvisation of which every step can be +rationally explained. + +After all, this is no more than an interlude. Victor Hugo only surveys +the events of '93 as a field for the growth of types of character. His +instinct as an artist takes him away from the Paris of '93, where the +confusion, uproar, human frenzy, leave him no background of nature, +with nature's fixity, sternness, indifference, sublimity. This he +found in La VendĂ©e, whose vast forests grow under the pencil of this +master of all the more terrible and majestic effects, into a picture +hardly less sombre and mighty in its impressiveness than the memorable +ocean pieces of the _Toilers of the Sea_. If the waves are appalling +in their agitation, their thunders, their sterility, the forest is +appalling in its silence, its dimness, its rest, and the invisibleness +of the thousand kinds of life to which it gives a shelter. If the +violence and calm and mercilessness of the sea penetrated the romance +of eight years ago with transcendent fury, so does the stranger, more +mysterious, and in a sense even the more inhuman life of the forest +penetrate the romance of to-day. From the opening chapter down to the +very close, even while the interlude takes us for a little while to +the Paris cafĂ© where Danton, Robespierre, and Marat sit in angry +counsel, even while we are on the sea with the royalist Marquis and +Halmalo, the reader is subtly haunted by the great Vendean woods, +their profundity, their mystery, their tragic and sinister beauties. + + "The forest is barbarous. + + "The configuration of the land counsels man in many an act. More + than we suppose, it is his accomplice. In the presence of certain + savage landscapes, you are tempted to exonerate man and blame + creation; you feel a silent challenge and incitement from nature; + the desert is constantly unwholesome for conscience, especially + for a conscience without light. Conscience may be a giant; that + makes a Socrates or a Jesus: it may be a dwarf; that makes an + Atreus or a Judas. The puny conscience soon turns reptile; the + twilight thickets, the brambles, the thorns, the marsh waters + under branches, make for it a fatal haunting place; amid all this + it undergoes the mysterious infiltration of ill suggestions. The + optical illusions, the unexplained images, the scaring hour, + the scaring spot, all throw man into that kind of affright, + half-religious, half-brutal, which in ordinary times engenders + superstition, and in epochs of violence, savagery. Hallucinations + hold the torch that lights the path to murder. There is something + like vertigo in the brigand. Nature with her prodigies has a + double effect; she dazzles great minds, and blinds the duller + soul. When man is ignorant, when the desert offers visions, + the obscurity of the solitude is added to the obscurity of the + intelligence; thence in man comes the opening of abysses. Certain + rocks, certain ravines, certain thickets, certain wild openings + of the evening sky through the trees, drive man towards mad or + monstrous exploits. We might almost call some places criminal" + (ii. 21). + +With La VendĂ©e for background, and some savage incidents of the bloody +Vendean war for external machinery, Victor Hugo has realised his +conception of '93 in three types of character: Lantenac, the royalist +marquis; Cimourdain, the puritan turned Jacobin; and Gauvain, for whom +one can as yet find no short name, he belonging to the millenarian +times. Lantenac, though naturally a less original creation than the +other two, is still an extremely bold and striking figure, drawn with +marked firmness of hand, and presenting a thoroughly distinct and +coherent conception. It is a triumph of the poetic or artistic part +of the author's nature over the merely political part, that he should +have made even his type of the old feudal order which he execrates +so bitterly, a heroic, if ever so little also a diabolic, personage. +There is everything that is cruel, merciless, unflinching, in +Lantenac; there is nothing that is mean or insignificant. A gunner +at sea, by inattention to the lashing of his gun, causes an accident +which breaks the ship to pieces, and then he saves the lives of the +crew by hazarding his own life to secure the wandering monster. +Lantenac decorates him with the cross of Saint Lewis for his +gallantry, and instantly afterwards has him shot for his carelessness. +He burns homesteads and villages, fusillades men and women, and makes +the war a war without quarter or grace. Yet he is no swashbuckler of +the melodramatic stage. There is a fine reserve, a brief gravity, +in the delineation of him, his clear will, his quickness, his +intrepidity, his relentlessness, which make of him the incarnation +of aristocratic coldness, hatred, and pride. You might guillotine +Lantenac with exquisite satisfaction, and yet he does not make us +ashamed of mankind. Into his mouth, as he walks about his dungeon, +impatiently waiting to be led out to execution, Victor Hugo has put +the aristocratic view of the Revolution. Some portions of it (ii. +224-226) would fit amazingly well into M. Renan's notions about the +moral and intellectual reform of France. + +If the Breton aristocrat of '93 was fearless, intrepid, and without +mercy in defence of God and the King--and his qualities were all +shared, the democrat may love to remember, by the Breton peasant, +whether peasant follower or peasant leader--the Jacobin was just as +vigorous, as intrepid, as merciless in defence of his Republic. "Pays, +Patrie," says Victor Hugo, in words which perhaps will serve to +describe many a future passage in French history, "ces deux mots +rĂ©sument toute la guerre de VendĂ©e; querelle de l'idĂ©e locale centre +l'idĂ©e universelle; paysans contre patriotes" (ii. 22).[1] Certainly +the Jacobins were the patriots of that era, the deliverers of France +from something like that process of partition which further east was +consummated in this very '93. We do not mean the handful of odious +miscreants who played fool and demon in turns in the insurrectionary +Commune and elsewhere: such men as Collot d'Herbois, or Carrier, +or Panis. The normal Jacobin was a remarkable type. He has been +excellently described by Louis Blanc as something powerful, original, +sombre; half agitator and half statesman; half puritan and half monk +half inquisitor and half tribune. These words of the historian are the +exact prose version of the figure of Cimourdain, the typical Jacobin +of the poet. "Cimourdain was a pure conscience, but sombre. He had in +him the absolute. He had been a priest and that is a serious thing. +Man, like the sky, may have a dark serenity; it is enough that +something should have brought night into his soul. Priesthood had +brought night into Cimourdain. He who has been a priest is one still. +What brings night upon us may leave the stars with us. Cimourdain +was full of virtues, full of truths, but they shone in the midst +of darkness" (i. 123). If the aristocrat had rigidity, so had the +Jacobin. "Cimourdain had the blind certitude of the arrow, which only +sees the mark and makes for it. In revolution, nothing so formidable +as the straight line. Cimourdain strode forward with fatality in his +step. He believed that in social genesis the very extreme point must +always be solid ground, an error peculiar to minds that for reason +substitute logic" (i. 127). And so forth, until the character of the +Jacobin lives for us with a precision, a fulness, a naturalness, such +as neither Carlyle nor Michelet nor Quinet has been able to clothe it +with, though these too have the sacred illumination of genius. Victor +Hugo's Jacobin is a poetic creation, yet the creation only lies in the +vivid completeness with which the imagination of a great master has +realised to itself the traits and life of an actual personality. It is +not that he has any special love for his Jacobin, but that he has the +poet's eye for types, politics apart. He sees how much the aristocrat, +slaying hip and thigh for the King, and the Jacobin, slaying hip and +thigh for the Republic, resembled one another. "Let us confess," +he says, "these two men, the Marquis and the priest [Lantenac and +Cimourdain], were up to a certain point the self-same man. The bronze +mask of civil war has two profiles, one turned towards the past, the +other towards the future, but as tragic the one as the other. Lantenac +was the first of these profiles, Cimourdain was the second; only the +bitter rictus of Lantenac was covered with shadow and night, and on +the fatal brow of Cimourdain was a gleaming of the dawn" (ii. 91). + +[Footnote 1: In corroboration of this view of the Vendean rising as +democratic, see Mortimer-Ternaux, _Hist. de la Terreur_, vol. vi. bk. +30.] + +And let us mark Victor Hugo's signal distinction in his analysis +of character. It is not mere vigour of drawing, nor acuteness of +perception, nor fire of imagination, though he has all these gifts in +a singular degree, and truest of their kind. But then Scott had +them too, and yet we feel in Victor Hugo's work a seriousness, a +significance, a depth of tone, which never touches us in the work of +his famous predecessor in romance, delightful as the best of that work +is. Balfour of Burley is one of Scott's most commanding figures, and +the stern Covenanter is nearly in the same plane of character as the +stern heroic Jacobin. Yet Cimourdain impresses us more profoundly. He +is as natural, as human, as readily conceivable, and yet he produces +something of the subtle depth of effect which belongs to the actor in +a play of Aeschylus. Why is this? Because Hugo makes us conscious of +that tragedy of temperament, that sterner Necessity of character, +that resistless compulsion of circumstance, which is the modern and +positive expression for the old Destiny of the Greeks, and which in +some expression or other is now an essential element in the highest +presentation of human life. Here is not the Unknown. On the contrary, +we are in the very heart of science; tragedy to the modern is +not [Greek: tuchae], but a thing of cause and effect, invariable +antecedent and invariable consequent. It is the presence of this +tragic force underlying action that gives to all Hugo's work its lofty +quality, its breadth, and generality, and fills both it, and us who +read, with pity and gravity and an understanding awe. + +The action is this. Cimourdain had the young Gauvain to train from his +earliest childhood, and the pupil grew up with the same rigid sense +of duty as the master, though temperament modified its form. When the +Revolution came, Gauvain, though a noble, took sides with the people, +but he was not of the same spirit as his teacher. "The Revolution," +says Victor Hugo, "by the side of youthful figures of giants, such as +Danton, Saint-Just, and Robespierre, has young ideal figures, like +Hoche and Marceau. Gauvain was one of these figures" (ii. 34). +Cimourdain has himself named delegate from the Committee of Public +Safety to the expeditionary column of which Gauvain is in command. The +warmth of affection between them was undiminished, but difference in +temperament bred difference in their principles. They represented, as +the author says, with the candour of the poet, the two poles of +the truth; the two sides of the inarticulate, subterranean, fatal +contention of the year of the Terror. Their arguments with one another +make the situation more intelligible to the historic student, as they +make the characters of the speakers more transparent for the purposes +of the romance. + +This is Cimourdain:-- + + "Beware, there are terrible duties in life. Do not accuse what is + not responsible. Since when has the disorder been the fault of the + physician? Yes, what marks this tremendous year is being without + pity. Why? Because it is the great revolutionary year. This year + incarnates the revolution. The revolution has an enemy, the old + world, and to that it is pitiless, just as the surgeon has + an enemy, gangrene, and is pitiless to that. The revolution + extirpates kingship in the king, aristocracy in the noble, + despotism in the soldier, superstition in the priest, barbarity in + the judge, in a word whatever is tyranny in whatever is tyrant. + The operation is frightful, the revolution performs it with a sure + hand. As to the quantity of sound flesh that it requires, ask + Boerhave what he thinks of it. What tumour that has to be cut out + does not involve loss of blood?... The revolution devotes itself + to its fated task. It mutilates but it saves.... It has the past + in its grasp, it will not spare. It makes in civilisation a deep + incision whence shall come the safety of the human race. You + suffer? No doubt. How long will it last? The time needed for the + operation. Then you will live," etc. (ii. 65-66). + +"One day," he adds, "the Revolution will justify the Terror." To which +Gauvain retorts thus:-- + + "Fear lest the Terror be the calumny of the Revolution. Liberty, + Equality, Fraternity, are dogmas of peace and harmony. Why give + them an aspect of alarm? What do we seek? To win nations to the + universal public. Then why inspire fright? Of what avail is + intimidation? It is wrong to do ill in order to do good. You do + not pull down the throne to leave the scaffold standing. Let us + hurl away crowns, let us spare heads. The revolution is concord, + not affright. Mild ideas are ill-served by men who do not know + pity. Amnesty is for me the noblest word in human speech. I will + shed no blood save at hazard of my own.... In the fight let us be + the enemies of our foes, and after the victory their brothers" + (ii. 67). + +These two together, Cimourdain and Gauvain, make an ideal pair of the +revolutionists of '93. Strip each of them of the beauty of character +with which the poet's imagination has endowed them, add instead +passion, violence, envy, egoism, malice; then you understand how in +the very face of the foreign enemy Girondins sharpened the knife +for the men of the Mountain, HĂ©bertists screamed for the lives +of Robespierrists, Robespierre struck off the head of Danton, +Thermidorians crushed Robespierre. + +Victor Hugo has given to this typic historical struggle of '93 the +qualities of nobleness and beauty which art requires in dealing with +real themes. Lantenac falls into the hands of the Blues, headed by +Cimourdain and Gauvain, but he does so in consequence of yielding to a +heroic and self-devoting impulse of humanity. Cimourdain, true to his +temperament, insists on his instant execution. Gauvain, true also to +his temperament, is seized with a thousand misgivings, and there is +no more ample, original, and masterly presentation of a case of +conscience, that in civil war is always common enough, than the +struggle through which Gauvain passes before he can resolve to deliver +Lantenac. This pathetic debate--"the stone of Sisyphus, which is only +the quarrel of man with himself"--turns on the loftiest, broadest, +most generous motives, touching the very bases of character, and +reaching far beyond the issue of '93. The political question is seen +to be no more than a superficial aspect of the deeper moral question. +Lantenac, the representative of the old order, had performed an +exploit of signal devotion. Was it not well that one who had faith in +the new order should show himself equally willing to cast away his +life to save one whom self-sacrifice had transformed from the infernal +Satan into the heavenly Lucifer? + + "Gauvain saw in the shade the sinister smile of the sphinx. The + situation was a sort of dread crossway where the conflicting + truths issued and confronted one another, and where the three + supreme ideas of man stood face to face--humanity, the family, the + fatherland. Each of the voices spoke in turn, and each in turn + declared the truth. How choose? Each in turn seemed to hit the + mark of reason and justice, and said, Do that. Was that the thing + to be done? Yes. No. Reasoning counselled one thing; sentiment + another; the two counsels were contradictory. Reasoning is only + reason; sentiment is often conscience; the one comes from man, + the other from a loftier source. That is why sentiment has less + distinctness, and more might. Yet what strength in the severity + of reason! Gauvain hesitated. His perplexity was so fierce. Two + abysses opened before him: to destroy the marquis, or to save him. + Which of these two gulfs was duty?" + +The whole scene (ii. 206-219) is a masterpiece of dramatic strength, +sustention, and flexibility--only equalled by the dramatic vivacity of +the scene in which Cimourdain, sitting as judge, orders the prisoner +to be brought forward, to his horror sees Gauvain instead of Lantenac, +and then proceeds to condemn the man whom he loves best on earth to be +taken to the guillotine. + + * * * * * + +The tragedy of the story, its sombre tone, the overhanging presence of +death in it, are prevented from being oppressive to us by the variety +of minor situation and subordinate character with which the writer has +surrounded the central figures. No writer living is so consummate a +master of landscape, and besides the forest we here have an elaborate +sea-piece, full of the weird, ineffable, menacing suggestion of the +sea in some of her unnumbered moods; and there is a scene of late +twilight on a high solitary down over the bay of Mont Saint-Michel, to +which a reader blessed with sensibility to the subtler impressions of +landscape will turn again and again, as one visits again and again +some actual prospect where the eye procures for the inner sense +a dream of beauty and the incommensurable. Perhaps the palm for +exquisite workmanship will be popularly given, and justly given, to +the episode humorously headed _The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew_, +at the opening of the third volume. It is the story of three little +children, barely out of infancy, awaking, playing, eating, wondering, +slumbering, in solitude through a summer day in an old tower. As a +rule the attempt to make infancy interesting in literature ends in +maudlin failure. But at length the painters have found an equal, or +more than an equal, in an artist whose medium lends itself less easily +than colour and form to the reproduction of the beauty and life of +childhood. In his poetry Victor Hugo had already shown his passing +sensibility to the pathos of the beginnings of our life; witness such +pieces as _Chose vue un Jour de Printemps, Les Pauvres Gens_, the +well-known pieces in _L'AnnĂ©e Terrible_, and a hundred other lively +touches and fragments of finished loveliness and penetrating sympathy. +In prose it is a more difficult feat to collect the trivial details +which make up the life of the tiny human animal into a whole that +shall be impressive, finished, and beautiful. And prose can only +describe by details enumerated one by one. This most arduous feat +is accomplished in the children's summer day in the tower, and with +enchanting success. Intensely realistic, yet the picture overflows +with emotion--not the emotion of the mother, but of the poet. There +is infinite tenderness, pathos, love, but all heightened at once and +strengthened by the self-control of masculine force. A man writing +about little ones seems able to place himself outside, and thus to +gain more calmness and freedom of vision than the more passionate +interest or yearning of women permits to them in this field of art. +Not a detail is spared, yet the whole is full of delight and pity and +humour. Only one lyric passage is allowed to poetise and accentuate +the realism of the description. Georgette, some twenty months old, +scrambles from her cradle and prattles to the sunbeam. + + "What a bird says in its song, a child says in its prattle. 'Tis + the same hymn; a hymn indistinct, lisping, profound. The child has + what the bird has not, the sombre human destiny in front of it. + Hence the sadness of men as they listen, mingling with the joy of + the little one as it sings. The sublimest canticle to be heard on + earth is the stammering of the human soul on the lips of infancy. + That confused chirruping of a thought, that is as yet no more than + an instinct, has in it one knows not what sort of artless appeal + to the eternal justice; or is it a protest uttered on the + threshold before entering in, a protest meek and poignant? This + ignorance smiling at the Infinite compromises all creation in the + lot that shall fall to the weak defenceless being. Ill, if it + shall come, will be an abuse of confidence. + + "The child's murmuring is more and is less than words; there are + no notes, and yet it is a song; there are no syllables, and yet it + is a language.... This poor stammering is a compound of what the + child said when it was an angel, and of what it will say when + it becomes a man. The cradle has a Yesterday as the grave has a + Morrow; the Morrow and the Yesterday mingle in that strange cooing + their twofold mystery...." + + "Her lips smiled, her eyes smiled, the dimples in her cheeks + smiled. There came forth in this smile a mysterious welcome of the + morning. The soul has faith in the ray. The heavens were blue, + warm was the air. The fragile creature, without knowing anything, + or recognising anything, or understanding anything, softly + floating in musings which are not thought, felt itself in safety + in the midst of nature, among those good trees and that guileless + greenery, in the pure and peaceful landscape, amid the rustle of + nests, of flowing springs, of insects, of leaves, while over all + there glowed the great innocency of the sun" (ii. 104). + +As an eminent man has recently written about Wordsworth's most famous +Ode, there may be some bad philosophy here, but there is assuredly +some noble and touching poetry. + +If the carelessness of infancy is caught with this perfection of +finish, there is a tragic companion piece in the horror and gnawing +anguish of the wretched woman from whom her young have been taken--her +rescue from death, her fierce yearnings for them like the yearnings of +a beast, her brute-like heedlessness of her life and her body in the +cruel search. + +And so the poet conducts us along the strange excursive windings of +the life and passion of humanity. The same hand which draws such noble +figures as Gauvain--and the real Lanjuinais of history was fully as +heroic and as noble as the imaginary Gauvain of fiction--is equally +skilful in drawing the wild Breton beggar who dwells underground among +the branching tree-roots; and the monstrous Imânus, the barbarous +retainer of the Lord of the Seven Forests; and Radoub, the serjeant +from Paris, a man of hearty oaths, hideous, heroic, humoursome, of +a bloody ingenuity in combat. And the same hand which described the +silent sundown on the sandy shore of the bay, and the mysterious +darkness of the forests, and the blameless play of the little ones, +gives us the prodigious animation of the night surprise at DĂ´l, the +furious conflict at La Tourgue, and, perhaps most powerful of all, the +breaking loose of the gun on the deck of the _Claymore_. You may say +that this is only melodrama; but if we turn to the actual events of +'93, the melodrama of the romancer will seem tame compared with the +melodrama of the faithful chronicler. And so long as the narrative +of melodramatic action is filled with poetry and beauty, there is no +reproach in uncommon situation, in intense passion, in magnanimous or +subtle motives that are not of every day. Of Hugo's art we may say +what Dr. Newman has said of something else: _Such work is always open +to criticism and it is always above it_. + +There is poetry and beauty, no doubt, in the common lives about us, if +we look at them with imaginative and sympathetic eye, and we owe much +to the art that reveals to us the tragedy of the parlour and the +frockcoat, and analyses the bitterness and sorrow and high passion +that may underlie a life of outer smoothness and decorum. Still, +criticism cannot accept this as the final and exclusive limitation of +imaginative work. Art is nothing if not catholic and many-sided, and +it is certainly not exhausted by mere domestic possibilities. Goethe's +fine and luminous feeling for practical life, which has given such +depth of richness and wisdom to his best prose writing, fills us with +a delightful sense of satisfaction and adequateness; and yet why +should it not leave us with a mind eagerly open for the larger and +more inventive romance, in which nature is clothed with some of that +awe and might and silent contemplation of the puny destinies of man, +that used to surround the conception of the supernatural? Victor Hugo +seeks strong and extraordinary effects; he is a master of terrible +image, profound emotion, audacious fancy; but then these are as real, +as natural, as true to fact, as the fairest reproduction of the moral +poverties and meannesses of the world. And let it be added that while +he is without a rival in the dark mysterious heights of imaginative +effect, he is equally a master in strokes of tenderness and the most +delicate human sympathy. His last book seems to contain pieces that +surpass every other book of Hugo's in the latter range of qualities, +and not to fall at all short in the former. And so, in the words of +the man of genius who last wrote on Victor Hugo in these pages,[1] +"As we pity ourselves for the loss of poems and pictures which have +perished, and left of Sappho but a fragment and of Zeuxis but a name, +so are we inclined to pity the dead who died too soon to enjoy the +great works we have enjoyed. At each new glory that 'swims into our +ken,' we surely feel that it is something to have lived to see that +too rise." + +[Footnote 1: Mr. Swinburne.] + + + + +ON "THE RING AND THE BOOK." + + +When the first volume of Mr. Browning's new poem came before the +critical tribunals, public and private, recognised or irresponsible, +there was much lamentation even in quarters where a manlier humour +might have been expected, over the poet's choice of a subject. With +facile largeness of censure, it was pronounced a murky subject, +sordid, unlovely, morally sterile, an ugly leaf out of some ancient +Italian Newgate Calendar. One hinted in vain that wisdom is justified +of her children, that the poet must be trusted to judge of the +capacity of his own theme, and that it is his conception and treatment +of it that ultimately justify or discredit his choice. Now that the +entire work is before the world, this is plain, and it is admitted. +When the second volume, containing _Giuseppe Caponsacchi_, appeared, +men no longer found it sordid or ugly; the third, with _Pompilia_, +convinced them that the subject was not, after all, so incurably +unlovely; and the fourth, with _The Pope_, and the passage from the +Friar's sermon, may well persuade those who needed persuasion, that +moral fruitfulness depends on the master, his eye and hand, his vision +and grasp, more than on this and that in the transaction which has +taken possession of his imagination. + +The truth is, we have for long been so debilitated by pastorals, by +graceful presentation of the Arthurian legend for drawing-rooms, by +idylls, not robust and Theocritean, by verse directly didactic, that a +rude blast of air from the outside welter of human realities is apt +to give a shock, that might well show in what simpleton's paradise +we have been living. The ethics of the rectory parlour set to sweet +music, the respectable aspirations of the sentimental curate married +to exquisite verse, the everlasting glorification of domestic +sentiment in blameless princes and others, as if that were the poet's +single province and the divinely-appointed end of all art, as if +domestic sentiment included and summed up the whole throng of +passions, emotions, strife, and desire; all this might seem to be +making valetudinarians of us all. Our public is beginning to measure +the right and possible in art by the superficial probabilities of life +and manners within a ten-mile radius of Charing Cross. Is it likely, +asks the critic, that Duke Silva would have done this, that Fedalma +would have done that? Who shall suppose it possible that Caponsacchi +acted thus, that Count Guido was possessed by devils so? The poser +is triumphant, because the critic is tacitly appealing to the normal +standard of probabilities in our own day. In the tragedy of Pompilia +we are taken far from the serene and homely region in which some of +our teachers would fain have it that the whole moral universe can be +snugly pent up. We see the black passions of man at their blackest; +hate, so fierce, undiluted, implacable, passionate, as to be hard of +conception by our simpler northern natures; cruelty, so vindictive, +subtle, persistent, deadly, as to fill us with a pain almost too great +for true art to produce; greediness, lust, craft, penetrating a whole +stock and breed, even down to the ancient mother of "that fell house +of hate,"-- + + "The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke, + The hag that gave these three abortions birth, + Unmotherly mother and unwomanly + Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame, + Womanliness to loathing: no one word, + No gesture to curb cruelty a whit + More than the she-pard thwarts her playsome whelps + Trying their milk-teeth on the soft o' the throat + O' the first fawn, flung, with those beseeching eyes, + Flat in the covert! How should she but couch, + Lick the dry lips, unsheathe the blunted claw, + Catch 'twixt her placid eyewinks at what chance + Old bloody half-forgotten dream may flit, + Born when herself was novice to the taste, + The while she lets youth take its pleasure" (iv. 40). + +But, then, if the poet has lighted up for us these grim and appalling +depths, he has not failed to raise us too into the presence of +proportionate loftiness and purity. + + "Tantum vertice in auras + Aetherias quantum radice in Tartara tendit." + +Like the gloomy and umbrageous grove of which the Sibyl spake to the +pious Aeneas, the poem conceals a golden branch and golden leaves. +In the second volume, Guido, servile and false, is followed by +Caponsacchi, as noble alike in conception and execution as anything +that Mr. Browning has ever achieved. In the third volume, the austere +pathos of Pompilia's tale relieves the too oppressive jollity of Don +Giacinto, and the flowery rhetoric of Bottini; while in the fourth, +the deep wisdom, justice, and righteous mind of the Pope, reconcile +us to endure the sulphurous whiff from the pit in the confession of +Guido, now desperate, naked, and satanic. From what at first was sheer +murk, there comes out a long procession of human figures, infinitely +various in form and thought, in character and act; a group of men and +women, eager, passionate, indifferent; tender and ravenous, mean and +noble, humorous and profound, jovial with prosperity or half-dumb with +misery, skirting the central tragedy, or plunged deep into the thick +of it, passers-by who put themselves off with a glance at the surface +of a thing, and another or two who dive to the heart of it. And +they all come out with a certain Shakespearian fulness, vividness, +directness. Above all, they are every one of them men and women, +with free play of human life in limb and feature, as in an antique +sculpture. So much of modern art, in poetry as in painting, runs to +mere drapery. "I grant," said Lessing, "that there is also a beauty in +drapery, but can it be compared with that of the human form? And shall +he who can attain to the greater, rest content with the less? I much +fear that the most perfect master in drapery shows by that very talent +wherein his weakness lies." This was spoken of plastic art, but it has +a yet deeper meaning in poetic criticism. There too, the master is he +who presents the natural shape, the curves, the thews of men, and does +not labour and seek praise for faithful reproduction of the mere moral +drapery of the hour, this or another; who gives you Hercules at strife +with Antaeus, Laocoon writhing in the coils of the divine serpents, +the wrestle with circumstance or passion, with outward destiny or +inner character, in the free outlines of nature and reality. The +capacity which it possesses for this presentation, at once so varied +and so direct, is one reason why the dramatic form ranks as the +highest expression and measure of the creative power of the poet; and +the extraordinary grasp with which Mr. Browning has availed himself of +this double capacity is one reason why we should reckon _The Ring and +the Book_ as one of his masterpieces. + +We may say this, and still not be blind to the faults of the poem. +Many persons agree that they find it too long, and if they find it so, +then for them it is too long. Others, who cannot resist the critic's +temptation of believing that a remark must be true if it only look +acute and specific, vow that the disclosure in the first volume of the +whole plan and plot vitiates subsequent artistic merit. If one +cannot enjoy what comes, for knowing beforehand what is coming, this +objection may be allowed to have a root in human nature; but then two +things might perhaps be urged on the other side,--first, that the +interest of the poem lies in the development and presentation of +character, on the one hand, and in the many sides which a single +transaction offered to as many minds, on the other; and therefore that +this true interest could not be marred by the bare statement what the +transaction was or, baldly looked at, seemed to be; and, second, that +the poem was meant to find its reader in a mood of mental repose, +ready to receive the poet's impressions, undisturbed by any agitating +curiosity as to plot or final outcome. A more valid accusation touches +the many verbal perversities, in which a poet has less right than +another to indulge. The compound Latin and English of Don Giacinto, +notwithstanding the fan of the piece, still grows a burden to the +flesh. Then there are harsh and formless lines, bursts of metrical +chaos, from which a writer's dignity and self-respect ought surely +to be enough to preserve him. Again, there are passages marked by a +coarse violence of expression that is nothing short of barbarous (for +instance, ii. 190, or 245). The only thing to be said is, that the +countrymen of Shakespeare have had to learn to forgive uncouth +outrages on form and beauty to fine creative genius. If only one could +be sure that readers, unschooled as too many are to love the simple +and elevated beauty of such form as Sophocles or as Corneille gives, +would not think the worst fault the chief virtue, and confound the +poet's bluntnesses with his admirable originality. It is certain that +in Shakespeare's case his defects are constantly fastened upon, by +critics who have never seriously studied the forms of dramatic art +except in the literature of England, and extolled as instances of +his characteristic mightiness. It may well be, therefore, that the +grotesque caprices which Mr. Browning unfortunately permits to himself +may find misguided admirers, or, what is worse, even imitators. It +would be most unjust, however, while making due mention of these +things, to pass over the dignity and splendour of the verse in +many places, where the intensity of the writer's mood finds worthy +embodiment in a sustained gravity and vigour and finish of diction not +to be surpassed. The concluding lines of the _Caponsacchi_ (comprising +the last page of the second volume), the appeal of the Greek poet in +_The Pope_, one or two passages in the first _Guido_ (e.g. vol. ii., +p. 156, from line 1957), and the close of the _Pompilia_, ought to be +referred to when one wishes to know what power over the instrument +of his art Mr. Browning might have achieved, if he had chosen to +discipline himself in instrumentation. + +When all is said that can be said about the violences which from +time to time invade the poem, it remains true that the complete work +affects the reader most powerfully with that wide unity of impression +which it is the highest aim of dramatic art, and perhaps of all art, +to produce. After we have listened to all the whimsical dogmatising +about beauty, to all the odious cant about morbid anatomy, to all the +well-deserved reproach for unpardonable perversities of phrase and +outrages on rhythm, there is left to us the consciousness that a +striking human transaction has been seized by a vigorous and profound +imagination, that its many diverse threads have been wrought into a +single, rich, and many-coloured web of art, in which we may see traced +for us the labyrinths of passion and indifference, stupidity and +craft, prejudice and chance, along which truth and justice have to +find a devious and doubtful way. The transaction itself, lurid +and fuliginous, is secondary to the manner of its handling and +presentment. We do not derive our sense of unity from the singleness +and completeness of the horrid tragedy, so much as from the power +with which its own circumstances as they happened, the rumours which +clustered about it from the minds of men without, the many moods, +fancies, dispositions, which it for the moment brought out into light, +playing round the fact, the half-sportive flights with which lawyers, +judges, quidnuncs of the street, darted at conviction and snatched +hap-hazard at truth, are all wrought together into one self-sufficient +and compacted shape. + +But this shape is not beautiful, and the end of art is beauty? Verbal +fanaticism is always perplexing, and, rubbing my eyes, I ask whether +that beauty means anything more than such an arrangement and +disposition of the parts of the work as, first kindling a great +variety of dispersed emotions and thoughts in the mind of the +spectator, finally concentrates them in a single mood of joyous, sad, +meditative, or interested delight. The sculptor, the painter, and the +musician, have each their special means of producing this final +and superlative impression; each is bound by the strictly limited +capability in one direction and another of the medium in which he +works. In poetry it is because they do not perceive how much more +manifold and varied are the means of reaching the end than in the +other expressions of art, that people insist each upon some particular +quiddity which, entering into composition, alone constitutes it +genuinely poetic, beautiful, or artistic. Pressing for definition, you +never get much further than that each given quiddity means a certain +Whatness. This is why poetical criticism is usually so little +catholic. A man remembers that a poem in one style has filled him with +consciousness of beauty and delight. Why conclude that this style +constitutes the one access to the same impression? Why not rather +perceive that, to take contemporaries, the beauty of _Thyrsis_ Is +mainly produced by a fine suffusion of delicately-toned emotion; that +of _Atalanta_ by splendid and barely rivalled music of verse; of _In +Memoriam_ by its ordered and harmonious presentation of a sacred mood; +of the _Spanish Gypsy_, in the parts where it reaches beauty, by +a sublime ethical passion; of the _Earthly Paradise_, by sweet and +simple reproduction of the spirit of the younger-hearted times? There +are poems by Mr. Browning in which it is difficult, or, let us frankly +say, impossible, for most of us at all events and as yet, to discover +the beauty or the shape. But if beauty may not be denied to a work +which, abounding in many-coloured scenes and diverse characters, in +vivid image and portraiture, wide reflection and multiform emotion, +does further, by a broad thread of thought running under all, bind +these impressions into one supreme and elevated conviction, then +assuredly, whatever we may think of this passage or that, that episode +or the other, the first volume or the third, we cannot deny that _The +Ring and the Book_, in its perfection and integrity, fully satisfies +the conditions of artistic triumph. Are we to ignore the grandeur of +a colossal statue, and the nobility of the human conceptions which it +embodies, because here and there we notice a flaw in the marble, a +blemish in its colour, a jagged slip of the chisel? "It is not force +of intellect," as George Eliot has said, "which causes ready repulsion +from the aberration and eccentricities of greatness, any more than it +is force of vision that causes the eye to explore the warts in a +face bright with human expression; it is simply the negation of high +sensibilities." + +Then, it is asked by persons of another and still more rigorous +temper, whether, as the world goes, the subject, or its treatment +either, justifies us in reading some twenty-one thousand and +seventy-five lines, which do not seem to have any direct tendency to +make us better or to improve mankind. This objection is an old enemy +with a new face, and need not detain us, though perhaps the crude +and incessant application of a narrow moral standard, thoroughly +misunderstood, is one of the intellectual dangers of our time. You may +now and again hear a man of really masculine character confess that +though he loves Shakespeare and takes habitual delight in his works, +he cannot see that he was a particularly moral writer. That is to say, +Shakespeare is never directly didactic; you can no more get a system +of morals out of his writings than you can get such a system out +of the writings of the ever-searching Plato. But, if we must be +quantitative, one great creative poet probably exerts a nobler, +deeper, more permanent ethical influence than a dozen generations of +professed moral teachers. It is a commonplace to the wise, and an +everlasting puzzle to the foolish, that direct inculcation of morals +should invariably prove so powerless an instrument, so futile a +method. The truth is that nothing can be more powerfully efficacious +from the moral point of view than the exercise of an exalted creative +art, stirring within the intelligence of the spectator active thought +and curiosity about many types of character and many changeful issues +of conduct and fortune, at once enlarging and elevating the range of +his reflections on mankind, ever kindling his sympathies into the warm +and continuous glow which purifies and strengthens nature, and fills +men with that love of humanity which is the best inspirer of virtue. +Is not this why music, too, is to be counted supreme among moral +agents, soothing disorderly passion by diving down into the hidden +deeps of character where there is no disorder, and touching the +diviner mind? Given a certain rectitude as well as vigour of +intelligence, then whatever stimulates the fancy, expands the +imagination, enlivens meditation upon the great human drama, is +essentially moral. Shakespeare does all this, as if sent Iris-like +from the immortal gods, and _The Ring and the Book_ has a measure of +the same incomparable quality. + +A profound and moving irony subsists in the very structure of the +poem. Any other human transaction that ever was, tragic or comic or +plain prosaic, may be looked at in a like spirit, As the world's talk +bubbled around the dumb anguish of Pompilia, or the cruelty and hate +of Guido, so it does around the hourly tragedies of all times and +places. + + "The instinctive theorizing whence a fact + Looks to the eye as the eye likes the look."-- + "Vibrations in the general mind + At depth of deed already out of reach."-- + "Live fact deadened down, + Talked over, bruited abroad, whispered away:"-- + +if we reflect that these are the conditions which have marked the +formation of all the judgments that we hold by, and which are vivid in +operation and effect at this hour, the deep irony and the impressive +meaning of the poem are both obvious:-- + + "So learn one lesson hence + Of many which whatever lives should teach, + This lesson that our human speech is naught, + Our human testimony false, our fame + And human estimation words and wind" (iv. 234). + +It is characteristic of Mr. Browning that he thus casts the moral of +his piece in an essentially intellectual rather than an emotional +form, appealing to hard judgment rather than to imaginative +sensibility. Another living poet of original genius, of whom we have +much right to complain that he gives us so little, ends a poem in two +or three lines which are worth quoting here for the illustration they +afford of what has just been said about Mr. Browning:-- + + "Ah, what dusty answer gets the soul, + When hot for certainties in this our life!-- + In tragic hints here see what evermore + Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force, + Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse, + To throw that faint thin line upon the shore?"[1] + +[Footnote 1: Mr. George Meredith's _Modern Love_.] + +This is imaginative and sympathetic in thought as well as expression, +and the truth and the image enter the writer's mind together, the one +by the other. The lines convey poetic sentiment rather than reasoned +truth; while Mr. Browning's close would be no unfit epilogue to a +scientific essay on history, or a treatise on the errors of the human +understanding and the inaccuracy of human opinion and judgment. This +is the common note of his highest work; hard thought and reason +illustrating themselves in dramatic circumstance, and the thought +and reason are not wholly fused, they exist apart and irradiate with +far-shooting beams the moral confusion of the tragedy. This is, at any +rate, emphatically true of _The Ring and the Book_. The fulness +and variety of creation, the amplitude of the play and shifting of +characters and motive and mood, are absolutely unforced, absolutely +uninterfered with by the artificial exigencies of ethical or +philosophic purpose. There is the purpose, full-grown, clear in +outline, unmistakeable in significance. But the just proprieties of +place and season are rigorously observed, because Mr. Browning, like +every other poet of his quality, has exuberant and adequate delight in +mere creation, simple presentment, and returns to bethink him of the +meaning of it all only by-and-by. The pictures of Guido, of Pompilia, +of Caponsacchi, of Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, of Pope +Innocent, are each of them full and adequate, as conceptions of +character in active manifestation apart from the truth which the whole +composition is meant to illustrate, and which clothes itself in this +most excellent drama. + +The scientific attitude of the intelligence is almost as markedly +visible in Mr. Browning as the strength of his creative power. The +lesson of _The Ring and the Book_ is perhaps as nearly positive as +anything poetic can be. It is true that ultimately the drama ends in +a vindication of what are called the ways of God to man, if indeed +people are willing to put themselves off with a form of omnipotent +justice which is simply a partial retribution inflicted on the +monster, while torture and butchery fall upon victims more or +less absolutely blameless. As if the fact of punishment at length +overtaking the guilty Franceschini were any vindication of the justice +of that assumed Providence, which had for so long a time awarded +punishment far more harsh to the innocent Pompilia. So far as you +can be content with the vindication of a justice of this less than +equivocal quality, the sight of the monster brought to the + + "Close fetid cell, + Where the hot vapour of an agony, + Struck into drops on the cold wall, runs down + Horrible worms made out of sweat and tears,"-- + +may in a sense prove satisfactory enough. But a man must be very dull +who in reading the poem does not perceive that the very spirit of it +points to the thousand hazards which even this fragment of justice had +to run in saving itself, and bringing about such partially righteous +consummation as destiny permits. True opinion fares yet more +perilously. _Half-Rome_, the _Other Half-Rome_, the _Tertium Quid_, +which is perhaps most masterly and finished of the three, show us +how ill truth sifts itself, to how many it never comes at all, how +blurred, confused, next door to false, it is figured even to those who +seize it by the hem of the garment. We may, perhaps, yawn over the +intermingled Latin and law of Arcangeli, in spite of the humour of +parts of it, as well as over the vapid floweriness of his rival; but +for all that, we are touched keenly by the irony of the methods by +which the two professional truth-sifters darken counsel with words, +and make skilful sport of life and fact. The whole poem is a parable +of the feeble and half-hopeless struggle which truth has to make +against the ways of the world. That in this particular case truth and +justice did win some pale sort of victory does not weaken the force +of the lesson. The victory was such and so won as to stir in us awful +thoughts of fatal risks and certain defeats, of falsehood a thousand +times clasped for truth, of fact a thousand times banished for +fancy:-- + + "Because Pompilia's purity prevails, + Conclude you, all truth triumphs in the end? + So might those old inhabitants of the ark, + Witnessing haply their dove's safe return, + Pronounce there was no danger all the while + O' the deluge, to the creature's counterparts, + Aught that beat wing i' the world, was white or soft, + And that the lark, the thrush, the culver too, + Might equally have traversed air, found earth, + And brought back olive-branch In unharmed bill. + Methinks I hear the Patriarch's warning voice-- + 'Though this one breast, by miracle, return, + No wave rolls by, in all the waste, but bears + Within it some dead dove-like thing as dear, + Beauty made blank and harmlessness destroyed!'" + + (iv. 218). + +Or, to take another simile from the same magnificent passage, in which +the fine dignity of the verse fitly matches the deep truth of the +preacher's monitions:-- + + "Romans! An elder race possessed your land + Long ago, and a false faith lingered still, + As shades do, though the morning-star be out. + Doubtless, some pagan of the twilight day + Has often pointed to a cavern-mouth, + Obnoxious to beholders, hard by Rome, + And said,--nor he a bad man, no, nor fool,-- + Only a man, so, blind like all his mates,-- + 'Here skulk in safety, lurk, defying law, + The devotees to execrable creed, + Adoring--with what culture ... Jove, avert + Thy vengeance from us worshippers of thee!... + What rites obscene--their idol-god, an Ass!' + So went the word forth, so acceptance found, + So century re-echoed century, + Cursed the accursed,--and so, from sire to son, + You Romans cried, 'The offscourings of our race + Corrupt within the depths there: fitly, fiends + Perform a temple-service o'er the dead: + Child, gather garment round thee, pass nor pry!' + So groaned your generations: till the time + Grew ripe, and lightning hath revealed, belike,-- + Thro' crevice peeped into by curious fear,-- + Some object even fear could recognise + I' the place of spectres; on the illumined wall, + To-wit, some nook, tradition talks about, + Narrow and short, a corpse's length, no more: + And by it, in the due receptacle, + The little rude brown lamp of earthenware, + The cruse, was meant for flowers, but held the blood, + The rough-scratched palm-branch, and the legend left + _Pro Christo_. Then the mystery lay clear: + The abhorred one was a martyr all the time, + A saint whereof earth was not worthy. What? + Do you continue in the old belief? + Where blackness bides unbroke, must devils be? + Is it so certain, not another cell + O' the myriad that make up the catacomb, + Contains some saint a second flash would show? + Will you ascend into the light of day + And, having recognised a martyr's shrine, + Go join the votaries that gape around + Each vulgar god that awes the market-place?" + (iv. 219). + +With less impetuosity and a more weightily reasoned argument the Pope +confronts the long perplexity and entanglement of circumstances with +the fatuous optimism which insists that somehow justice and virtue do +rule in the world. Consider all the doings at Arezzo, before and after +the consummation of the tragedy. What of the Aretine archbishop, to +whom Pompilia cried "Protect me from the fiend!"-- + + "No, for thy Guido is one heady, strong, + Dangerous to disquiet; let him bide! + He needs some bone to mumble, help amuse + The darkness of his den with; so, the fawn + Which limps up bleeding to my foot and lies, + --Come to me, daughter,--thus I throw him back!" + +Then the monk to whom she went, imploring him to write to Rome:-- + + "He meets the first cold sprinkle of the world + And shudders to the marrow, 'Save this child? + Oh, my superiors, oh, the Archbishop here! + Who was it dared lay hand upon the ark + His betters saw fall nor put finger forth?'" + +Worst of all, the Convent of the Convertites, women to whom she was +consigned for help, + + "They do help; they are prompt to testify + To her pure life and saintly dying days. + She dies, and lo, who seemed so poor, proves rich! + What does the body that lives through helpfulness + To women for Christ's sake? The kiss turns bite, + The dove's note changes to the crow's cry: judge! + 'Seeing that this our Convent claims of right + What goods belong to those we succour, be + The same proved women of dishonest life,-- + And seeing that this Trial made appear + Pompilia was in such predicament,-- + The Convent hereupon pretends to said + Succession of Pompilia, issues writ, + And takes possession by the Fisc's advice.' + Such is their attestation to the cause + Of Christ, who had one saint at least, they hoped: + But, is a title-deed to filch, a corpse + To slander, and an infant-heir to cheat? + Christ must give up his gains then! They unsay + All the fine speeches,--who was saint is whore." + +It is not wonderful if his review of all the mean and dolorous +circumstance of this cycle of wrong brings the Pope face to face with +the unconquerable problem for the Christian believer, the keystone +of the grim arch of religious doubt and despair, through which the +courageous soul must needs pass to creeds of reason and life. Where is +"the gloriously decisive change, the immeasurable metamorphosis" in +human worth that should in some sort justify the consummate price that +had been paid for man these seventeen hundred years before? + + "Had a mere adept of the Rosy Cross + Spent his life to consummate the Great Work, + Would not we start to see the stuff it touched + Yield not a grain more than the vulgar got + By the old smelting-process years ago? + If this were sad to see in just the sage + Who should profess so much, perform no more, + What is it when suspected in that Power + Who undertook to make and made the world, + Devised and did effect man, body and soul, + Ordained salvation for them both, and yet ... + Well, is the thing we see, salvation?" + +It is certain that by whatever other deficiencies it may be marked +_The Ring and the Book_ is blameless for the most characteristic of +all the shortcomings of contemporary verse, a grievous sterility of +thought. And why? Because sterility of thought is the blight struck +into the minds of men by timorous and halt-footed scepticism, by a +half-hearted dread of what chill thing the truth might prove itself, +by unmanly reluctance or moral incapacity to carry the faculty of +poetic vision over the whole field; and because Mr. Browning's +intelligence, on the other hand, is masculine and courageous, moving +cheerfully on the solid earth of an articulate and defined conviction, +and careful not to omit realities from the conception of the great +drama, merely for being unsightly to the too fastidious eye, +or jarring in the ear, or too bitterly perplexing to faith or +understanding. It is this resolute feeling after and grip of fact +which is at the root of his distinguishing fruitfulness of thought, +and it is exuberance of thought, spontaneous, well-marked, and sapid, +that keeps him out of poetical preaching, on the one hand, and mere +making of music, on the other. Regret as we may the fantastic rudeness +and unscrupulous barbarisms into which Mr. Browning's art too often +falls, and find what fault we may with his method, let us ever +remember how much he has to say, and how effectively he communicates +the shock of new thought which was first imparted to him by the +vivid conception of a large and far-reaching story. The value of the +thought, indeed, is not to be measured by poetic tests; but still the +thought has poetic value, too, for it is this which has stirred in the +writer that keen yet impersonal interest in the actors of his story +and in its situations which is one of the most certain notes of +true dramatic feeling, and which therefore gives the most unfailing +stimulus to the interest of the appreciative reader. + +At first sight _The Ring and the Book_ appears to be absolutely wanting +in that grandeur which, in a composition of such enormous length, +criticism must pronounce to be a fundamental and indispensable element. +In an ordinary way this effect of grandeur is produced either by some +heroic action surrounded by circumstances of worthy stateliness, as in +the finest of the Greek plays; or as in _Paradise Lost_ by the presence +of personages of majestic sublimity of bearing and association; or as in +_Faust_ or _Hamlet_ by the stupendous moral abysses which the poet +discloses fitfully on this side and that. None of these things are to be +found in _The Ring and the Book_ The action of Caponsacchi, though noble +and disinterested, is hardly heroic in the highest dramatic sense, for +it is not much more than the lofty defiance of a conventionality, the +contemplated penalty being only small; not, for example, as if life or +ascertained happiness had been the fixed or even probable price of his +magnanimous enterprise. There was no marching to the stake, no +deliberate encountering of the mightier risks, no voluntary submission +to a lifelong endurance. True, this came in the end, but it was an end +unforeseen, and one, therefore, not to be associated with the first +conception of the original act. Besides, Guido is so saturated with +hateful and ignoble motive as to fill the surrounding air with +influences that preclude heroic association. It has been said of the +great men to whom the Byzantine Empire once or twice gave birth, that +even their fame has a curiously tarnished air, as if that too had been +touched by the evil breath of the times. And in like manner we may say +of Guido Franceschini that even to have touched him in the way of +resistance detracts from pure heroism. Perhaps the same consideration +explains the comparative disappointment which most people seem to have +felt with _Pompilia_ in the third volume. Again, there is nothing which +can be rightly called majesty of character visible in one personage or +another. There is high devotion in Caponsacchi, a large-minded and free +sagacity in Pope Innocent, and around Pompilia the tragic pathos of an +incurable woe, which by its intensity might raise her to grandeur if it +sprang from some more solemn source than the mere malignity and baseness +of an unworthy oppressor. Lastly, there is nothing in _The Ring and the +Book_ of that "certain incommensurableness" which Goethe found in his +own _Faust_. The poem is kept closely concrete and strictly +commensurable by the very framework of its story:-- + + "pure crude fact, + Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard, + And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since." + +It moves from none of the supernatural agencies which give the impulse +to our interest in _Faust_, nor from the sublimer passions and +yearning after things unspeakable alike in _Faust_ and in _Hamlet._ + +Yet, notwithstanding its lack of the accustomed elements of grandeur, +there is a profound impressiveness about _The Ring and the Book_ +which must arise from the presence of some other fine compensating +or equivalent quality. Perhaps one may say that this equivalent for +grandeur is a certain simple touching of our sense of human kinship, +of the large identity of the conditions of the human lot, of the +piteous fatalities which bring the lives of the great multitude of men +to be little more than "grains of sand to be blown by the wind." This +old woe, the poet says, now in the fulness of the days again lives, + + "_If precious be the soul of man to man_." + +This is the deeply implanted sentiment to which his poem makes +successful appeal. Nor is it mocked by mere outpouring of scorn on the +blind and fortuitous groping of men and societies of men after truth +and justice and traces of the watchfulness of "the unlidded eye of +God." Rather it is this inability to see beyond the facts of our +condition to some diviner, ever-present law, which helps to knit us to +our kind, our brethren "whom we have seen." + + "Clouds obscure-- + But for which obscuration all were bright? + Too hastily concluded! Sun-suffused, + A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze,-- + Better the very clarity of heaven: + The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear. + What but the weakness in a faith supplies + The incentive to humanity, no strength + Absolute, irresistible, comports? + How can man love but what he yearns to help + And that which men think weakness within strength + But angels know for strength and stronger get-- + What were it else but the first things made new, + But repetition of the miracle, + The divine instance of self-sacrifice + That never ends and aye begins for man?" + + + + +MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF LETTERS. + + +What are the qualities of a good contributor? What makes a good +Review? Is the best literature produced by the writer who does nothing +else but write, or by the man who tempers literature by affairs? What +are the different recommendations of the rival systems of anonymity +and signature? What kind of change, if any, has passed over periodical +literature since those two great periodicals, the _Edinburgh_ and the +_Quarterly_, held sway? These and a number of other questions in the +same matter--some of them obviously not to be opened with propriety in +these pages--must naturally be often present to the mind of any one +who is concerned in the control of a Review, and a volume has just +been printed which sets such musings once more astir. Mr. Macvey +Napier was the editor of the _Edinburgh Review_ from 1829--when +Jeffrey, after a reign of seven-and-twenty years, resigned it into +his hands--until his death in 1847. A portion of the correspondence +addressed to Mr. Napier during this period is full of personal +interest both to the man of letters and to that more singular being, +the Editor, the impresario of men of letters, the _entrepreneur_ of +the spiritual power. + +To manage an opera-house is usually supposed to tax human powers more +urgently than any position save that of a general in the very heat +and stress of battle. The orchestra, the chorus, the subscribers, +the first tenor, a pair of rival prima donnas, the newspapers, the +box-agents in Bond Street, the army of hangers-on in the flies--all +combine to demand such gifts of tact, resolution, patience, foresight, +tenacity, flexibility, as are only expected from the great ruler +or the great soldier. The editor of a periodical of public +consideration--and the _Edinburgh Review_ in the hands of Mr. Napier +was the avowed organ of the ruling Whig powers--is sorely tested +in the same way. The rival house may bribe his stars. His popular +epigrammatist is sometimes as full of humours as a spoiled soprano. +The favourite pyrotechnist is systematically late and procrastinatory, +or is piqued because his punctuation or his paragraphs have been +meddled with. The contributor whose article would be in excellent +time if it did not appear before the close of the century, or never +appeared at all, pesters you with warnings that a month's delay is a +deadly blow to progress, and stays the great procession of the ages. +The contributor who could profitably fill a sheet, insists on sending +a treatise. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who had charge of the +_Edinburgh_ for a short space, truly described prolixity as the _bĂŞte +noire_ of an editor. "Every contributor," he said, "has some special +reason for wishing to write at length on his own subject." + +_Ah, que de choses dans un menuet!_ cried Marcel, the great +dancing-master, and ah, what things in the type and [Greek: idea] of +an article, cries an editor with the enthusiasm of his calling; such +proportion, measure, comprehension, variety of topics, pithiness of +treatment, all within a space appointed with Procrustean rigour. This +is what the soul of the volunteer contributor is dull to. Of the minor +vexations who can tell? There is one single tribulation dire enough +to poison life--even if there were no other--and this is disorderly +manuscript. Empson, Mr. Napier's well-known contributor, was one of +the worst offenders; he would never even take the trouble to mark his +paragraphs. It is my misfortune to have a manuscript before me at this +moment that would fill thirty of these pages, and yet from beginning +to end there is no indication that it is not to be read at a single +breath. The paragraph ought to be, and in all good writers it is, as +real and as sensible a division as the sentence. It is an organic +member in prose composition, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, +just as a stanza is an organic and definite member in the composition +of an ode, "I fear my manuscript is rather disorderly," says another, +"but I will correct carefully in print." Just so. Because he is too +heedless to do his work in a workmanlike way, he first inflicts +fatigue and vexation on the editor whom he expects to read his paper; +second, he inflicts considerable and quite needless expense on the +publisher; and thirdly, he inflicts a great deal of tedious and +thankless labour on the printers, who are for the most part far more +meritorious persons than fifth-rate authors. It is true that Burke +returned such disordered proofs that the printer usually found it +least troublesome to set the whole afresh, and Miss Martineau tells +a story of a Scotch compositor who fled from Edinburgh to avoid +Carlyle's manuscript, and to his horror was presently confronted with +a piece of the too familiar copy which made him cry, "Lord, have +mercy! Have _you_ got that man to print for!" But most editors will +cheerfully forgive such transgressions to all contributors who will +guarantee that they write as well as Burke or Carlyle. Alas! it is +usually the case that those who have least excuse are the worst +offenders. The slovenliest manuscripts come from persons to whom +the difference between an hour and a minute is of the very smallest +importance. This, however, is a digression, only to be excused partly +by the natural desire to say a word against one's persecutors, and +partly by a hope that some persons of sensitive conscience may be led +to ponder whether there may not be after all some moral obligations +even towards editors and printers. + +Mr. Napier had one famous contributor, who stands out alone in the +history of editors. Lord Brougham's traditional connection with the +Review,--he had begun to write either in its first or third number, +and had written in it ever since--his encyclopaedic ignorance, his +power, his great fame in the country, and the prestige which his +connection reflected on the Review, all made him a personage with whom +it would have been most imprudent to quarrel. Yet the position in +which Mr. Napier was placed after Brougham's breach with the Whigs, +was one of the most difficult in which the conductor of a great organ +could possibly be placed. The Review was the representative, the +champion, and the mouthpiece of the Whig party, and of the Whigs who +were in office. Before William IV. dismissed the Whigs in 1834 as +arbitrarily as his father had dismissed the Whigs in 1784, Brougham +had covered himself with disrepute among his party by a thousand +pranks, and after the dismissal he disgusted them by asking the +new Chancellor to make him Chief Baron of the Exchequer. When Lord +Melbourne returned to power in the following year, this and other +escapades were remembered against him. "If left out," said Lord +Melbourne, "he would indeed be dangerous; but if taken in, he would +simply be destructive." So Brougham was left out, Pepys was made +Chancellor, and the Premier compared himself to a man who has broken +with a termagant mistress and married the best of cooks. Mr. Napier +was not so happy. The termagant was left on his hands. He had to +keep terms with a contributor who hated with deadly hatred the very +government that the Review existed to support. No editor ever had such +a contributor as Brougham in the long history of editorial torment +since the world began. He scolds, he storms, he hectors, he lectures; +he is for ever threatening desertion and prophesying ruin; he exhausts +the vocabulary of opprobrium against his correspondent's best friends; +they are silly slaves, base traitors, a vile clique "whose treatment +of me has been the very _ne plus ultra_ of ingratitude, baseness, and +treachery." He got the Review and its editor into a scrape which shook +the world at the time (1834), by betraying Cabinet secrets to spite +Lord Durham. His cries against his adversaries are as violent as +the threats of Ajax in his tent, and as loud as the bellowings of +Philoctetes at the mouth of his cave. Here is one instance out of a +hundred:-- + + "That is a trifle, and I only mention it to beg of you to pluck up + a little courage, and not be alarmed every time any of the little + knot of threateners annoy you. _They want to break off all kind of + connection between me and the Edinburgh Review_. I have long seen + it. Their fury against the article in the last number knows no + bounds, and they will never cease till they worry you out of your + connection with me, and get the whole control of the Review into + their own hands, by forcing you to resign it yourself. A _party + and a personal_ engine is all they want to make it. What possible + right can any of these silly slaves have to object to my opinion + being--what it truly is--against the Holland House theory of Lord + Chatham's madness? I _know_ that Lord Grenville treated it with + contempt. I know others now living who did so too, and I know that + so stout a Whig as Sir P. Francis was clearly of that opinion, and + he knew Lord Chatham personally. I had every ground to believe + that Horace Walpole, a vile, malignant, and unnatural wretch, + though a very clever writer of Letters, was nine-tenths of the + Holland House authority for the tale. I knew that a baser man in + character, or a meaner in capacity than the first Lord Holland + existed not, even in those days of job and mediocrity. Why, then, + was I bound to take a false view because Lord Holland's family + have inherited his hatred of a great rival?" + +Another instance is as follows:-- + + "I solicit your best attention to the fate which seems hastening + upon the _Edinburgh Review_. The having always been free from the + least control of booksellers is one of its principal distinctions, + and long was peculiarly so--perhaps it still has it _nearly_ to + itself. But if it shall become a _Treasury_ journal, I hardly see + any great advantage in one kind of independence without the + rest. Nay, I doubt if its _literary_ freedom, any more than its + political, will long survive. Books will be treated according as + the Treasury, or their under-strappers, regard the authors.... + But, is it after all possible that the Review should be suffered + to sink into such a state of subserviency that it dares not insert + any discussion upon a general question of politics because it + might give umbrage to the Government of the day? I pass over the + undeniable fact that it is _underlings_ only whom you are scared + by, and that the Ministers themselves have no such inordinate + pretension as to dream of interfering. I say nothing of those + underlings generally, except this, that I well know the race, and + a more despicable, above all, in point of judgment, exists not. + Never mind their threats, they _can_ do no harm. Even if any of + them are contributors, be assured they never will withdraw because + you choose to keep your course free and independent." + +Mr. Napier, who seems to have been one of the most considerate and +high-minded of men, was moved to energetic remonstrance on this +occasion. Lord Brougham explained his strong language away, but he +was incapable of really controlling himself, and the strain was never +lessened until 1843, when the correspondence ceases, and we learn +that there had been a quarrel between him and his too long-suffering +correspondent. Yet John Allen,--that able scholar and conspicuous +figure in the annals of Holland House--wrote of Brougham to Mr. +Napier:--"He is not a malignant or bad-hearted man, but he is an +unscrupulous one, and where his passions are concerned or his vanity +irritated, there is no excess of which he is not capable." Of +Brougham's strong and manly sense, when passion or vanity did not +cloud it, and even of a sort of careful justice, these letters give +more than one instance. The _Quarterly Review_, for instance, had an +article on Romilly's Memoirs, which to Romilly's friends seemed to do +him less than justice. Brougham took a more sensible view. + + "Surely we had no right whatever to expect that they whom Romilly + had all his life so stoutly opposed, and who were treated by him + with great harshness, should treat him as his friends would do, + and at the very moment when a most injudicious act of his family + was bringing out all his secret thoughts against them. Only place + yourself in the same position, and suppose that Canning's private + journals had been published,--the journals he may have kept while + the bitterest enemy of the Whigs, and in every page of which there + must have been some passage offensive to the feelings of the + living and of the friends of the dead. Would any mercy have been + shown to Canning's character and memory by any of the Whig party, + either in society or in Reviews? Would the line have been drawn of + only attacking Canning's executors, who published the papers, and + leaving Canning himself untouched? Clearly and certainly not, + and yet I am putting a very much weaker case, for we had joined + Canning, and all political enmity was at an end: whereas the + Tories and Romilly never had for an hour laid aside their mutual + hostility." + +And if he was capable of equity, Brougham was also capable of hearty +admiration, even of an old friend who had on later occasions gone into +a line which he intensely disliked. It is a relief in the pages of +blusterous anger and raging censure to come upon what he says of +Jeffrey. + + "I can truly say that there never in all my life crossed my mind + one single unkind feeling respecting him, or indeed any feeling + but that of the warmest affection and the most unmingled + admiration of his character, believing and knowing him to be as + excellent and amiable as he is great in the ordinary, and, as I + think, the far less important sense of the word." + +Of the value of Brougham's contributions we cannot now judge. They +will not, in spite of their energy and force, bear re-reading to-day, +and perhaps the same may be said of three-fourths of Jeffrey's once +famous essays. Brougham's self-confidence is heroic. He believed that +he could make a speech for Bolingbroke, but by-and-by he had sense +enough to see that, in order to attempt this, he ought to read +Bolingbroke for a year, and then practise for another year. In 1838 he +thought nothing of undertaking, amid all the demands of active life, +such a bagatelle as a History of the French Revolution. "I have some +little knack of narrative," he says, "the most difficult by far of all +styles, and never yet attained in perfection but by Hume and Livy; +and I bring as much oratory and science to the task as most of my +predecessors." But what sort of science? And what has oratory to do +with it? And how could he deceive himself into thinking that he could +retire to write a history? Nobody that ever lived would have more +speedily found out the truth of Voltaire's saying, "_Le repos est +une bonne chose, mais l'ennui est son frère_." The truth is that one +learns, after a certain observation of the world, to divide one's +amazement pretty equally between the literary voluptuary or +over-fastidious collegian, on the one hand, who is so impressed by the +size of his subject that he never does more than collect material and +make notes, and the presumptuous politician, on the other hand, who +thinks that he can write a history or settle the issues of philosophy +and theology in odd half-hours. The one is so enfeebled in will and +literary energy after his _viginti annorum lucubrationes_; the other +is so accustomed to be content with the hurry, the unfinishedness, +the rough-and-ready methods of practical affairs, and they both in +different ways measure the worth and seriousness of literature so +wrongly in relation to the rest of human interests. + +The relations between Lord Brougham and Mr. Napier naturally suggest +a good many reflections on the vexed question of the comparative +advantages of the old and the new theory of a periodical. The new +theory is that a periodical should not be an organ but an open pulpit, +and that each writer should sign his name. Without disrespect to ably +conducted and eminent contemporaries of long standing, it may be said +that the tide of opinion and favour is setting in this direction. Yet, +on the whole, experience perhaps leads to a doubt whether the gains of +the system of signature are so very considerable as some of us once +expected. An editor on the new system is no doubt relieved of a +certain measure of responsibility. Lord Cockburn's panegyric on the +first great editor may show what was expected from a man in such a +position as Jeffrey's. "He had to discover, and to train, authors; to +discern what truth and the public mind required; to suggest subjects; +to reject, and, more offensive still, to improve, contributions; to +keep down absurdities; to infuse spirit; to excite the timid; to +repress violence; to soothe jealousies; to quell mutinies; to watch +times; and all this in the morning of the reviewing day, before +experience had taught editors conciliatory firmness, and contributors +reasonable submission. He directed and controlled the elements he +presided over with a master's judgment. There was not one of his +associates who could have even held these elements together for a +single year.... Inferior to these excellences, but still important, +was his dexterity in revising the writings of others. Without altering +the general tone or character of the composition, he had great skill +in leaving out defective ideas or words, and in so aiding the original +by lively or graceful touches, that reasonable authors were surprised +and charmed on seeing how much better they looked than they thought +they would" (Cockburn's _Life of Jeffrey_, i. 301). + +From such toils and dangers as these the editor of a Review with +signed articles is in the main happily free. He has usually +suggestions to make, for his experience has probably given him points +of view as to the effectiveness of this or that feature of an article +for its own purpose, which would not occur to a writer. The writer is +absorbed in his subject, and has been less accustomed to think of the +public. But this exercise of a claim to a general acquiescence in the +judgment and experience of a man who has the best reasons for trying +to judge rightly, is a very different thing from the duty of drilling +contributors and dressing contributions as they were dressed and +drilled by Jeffrey. As Southey said, when groaning under the +mutilations inflicted by Gifford on Iris contributions to the +_Quarterly_, "there must be a power expurgatory in the hands of +the editor; and the misfortune is that editors frequently think it +incumbent on them to use that power merely because they have it" +(Southey's Life, iv. 18). This is probably true on the anonymous +system, where the editor is answerable for every word, and for the +literary form no less than for the substantial soundness or interest +of an article. In a man of weakish literary vanity--Jeffrey was +evidently full of it--there may well be a constant itch to set his +betters right in trifles, as Gifford thought that he could mend +Southey's adjectives. To a vain editor, or a too masterful editor, the +temptation under the anonymous system is no doubt strong. M. Buloz, +it is true, the renowned conductor of the _Revue des deux Mondes_, is +said to have insisted on, and to have freely practised, the fullest +editorial prerogative over articles that were openly signed by the +most eminent names in France. But M. Buloz had no competitor, and +those who did not choose to submit to his Sultanic despotism were +shut out from the only pulpit whence they were sure of addressing the +congregation that they wanted. In England contributors are better +off; and no editor of a signed periodical would feel either bound or +permitted to take such trouble about mere wording of sentences as +Gifford and Jeffrey were in the habit of taking. + +There is, however, another side to this, from an editor's point of +view. With responsibility--not merely for commas and niceties and +literary kickshaws, but in its old sense--disappears also a portion of +the interest of editorial labour. One would suppose it must be more +interesting to command a man-of-war than a trading vessel; it would be +more interesting to lead a regiment than to keep a tilting-yard. But +the times are not ripe for such enterprises. Of literary ability of +a good and serviceable kind there is a hundred or five hundred times +more in the country than there was when Jeffrey, Smith, Brougham, and +Horner devised their Review in a ninth storey in Edinburgh seventy-six +years ago. It is the cohesion of a political creed that is gone, and +the strength and fervour of a political school. The principles that +inspired that group of strong men have been worked out. After their +reforms had been achieved, the next great school was economic, and +though it produced one fine orator, its work was at no time literary. +The Manchester school with all their shortcomings had at least the +signal distinction of attaching their views on special political +questions to a general and presiding conception of the modern phase of +civilisation, as industrial and pacific. The next party of advance, +when it is formed, will certainly borrow from Cobden and Bright their +hatred of war and their hatred of imperialism. After the sagacity and +enlightenment of this school came the school of persiflage. A knot of +vigorous and brilliant men towards 1856 rallied round the late editor +of the _Saturday Review_,--and a strange chief he was for such +a group,--but their flag was that of the Red Rover. They gave +Philistinism many a shrewd blow, but perhaps at the same time helped +to some degree--with other far deeper and stronger forces--to produce +that sceptical and centrifugal state of mind, which now tends to +nullify organised liberalism and paralyse the spirit of improvement. +The Benthamites, led first by James Mill, and afterwards in a +secondary degree by John Mill, had pushed a number of political +improvements in the radical and democratic direction during the +time when the _Edinburgh_ so powerfully represented more orthodox +liberalism. They were the last important group of men who started +together from a set of common principles, accepted a common programme +of practical applications, and set to work in earnest and with due +order and distribution of parts to advocate the common cause. + +At present [1878] there is no similar agreement either among the +younger men in parliament, or among a sufficiently numerous group of +writers outside of parliament. The Edinburgh Reviewers were most +of them students of the university of that city. The Westminster +Reviewers had all sat at the feet of Bentham. Each group had thus a +common doctrine and a positive doctrine. In practical politics it does +not much matter by what different roads men have travelled to a given +position. But in an organ intended to lead public opinion towards +certain changes, or to hold it steadfast against wayward gusts of +passion, its strength would be increased a hundredfold if all the +writers in it were inspired by that thorough unity of conviction which +comes from sincerely accepting a common set of principles to start +from, and reaching practical conclusions by the same route. We are +probably not very far from a time when such a group might form itself, +and its work would for some years lie in the formation of a general +body of opinion, rather than in practical realisation of this or that +measure. The success of the French Republic, the peaceful order of the +United States, perhaps some trouble within our own borders, will lead +men with open minds to such a conception of a high and stable type of +national life as will unite a sufficient number of them in a common +project for pressing with systematic iteration for a complete set of +organic changes. A country with such a land-system, such an electoral +system, such a monarchy, as ours, has a trying time before it. Those +will be doing good service who shall unite to prepare opinion for the +inevitable changes. At the present moment the only motto that can be +inscribed on the flag of a liberal Review is the general device of +Progress, each writer interpreting it in his own sense, and within +such limits as he may set for himself. For such a state of things +signature is the natural condition, and an editor, even of a signed +Review, would hardly decline to accept the account of his function +which we find Jeffrey giving to Mr. Napier:--"There are three +legitimate considerations by which you should be guided in your +conduct as editor generally, and particularly as to the admission or +rejection of important articles of a political sort. 1. The effect of +your decision on the other contributors upon whom you mainly rely; 2. +its effect on the sale and circulation, and on the just authority +of the work with the great body of its readers; and, 3. your own +deliberate opinion as to the safety or danger of the doctrines +maintained in the article under consideration, and its tendency +either to promote or retard the practical adoption of those liberal +principles to which, and _their practical advancement_, you must +always consider the journal as devoted." + +As for discovering and training authors, the editor under the new +system has inducements that lie entirely the other way; namely, +to find as many authors as possible whom the public has already +discovered and accepted for itself. Young unknown writers certainly +have not gained anything by the new system. Neither perhaps can they +be said to have lost, for though of two articles of equal merit +an editor would naturally choose the one which should carry the +additional recommendation of a name of recognised authority, yet any +marked superiority in literary brilliance or effective argument or +originality of view would be only too eagerly welcomed in any Review +in England. So much public interest is now taken in periodical +literature, and the honourable competition in securing variety, +weight, and attractiveness is so active, that there is no risk of +a literary candle remaining long under a bushel. Miss Martineau +says:--"I have always been anxious to extend to young or struggling +authors the sort of aid which would have been so precious to me in +that winter of 1829-30, and I know that, in above twenty years, I have +never succeeded but once." One of the most distinguished editors +in London, who had charge of a periodical for many years, told the +present writer what comes to the same thing, namely, that in no single +case during all these years did a volunteer contributor of real +quality, or with any promise of eminence, present himself or herself. +So many hundreds think themselves called, so few are chosen. It used +to be argued that the writer under the anonymous system was hidden +behind a screen and robbed of his well-earned distinction. In truth, +however, it is impossible for a writer of real distinction to remain +anonymous. If a writer in a periodical interests the public, they are +sure to find out who he is. + +Again, there is folly unfathomable in a periodical affecting an +eternal consistency, and giving itself the airs of continuous +individuality, and being careful not to talk sense on a given question +to-day because its founders talked nonsense upon it fifty years ago. +This is quite true. There is a monstrous charlatanry about the old +editorial We, but perhaps there are some tolerably obvious openings +for charlatanry of a different kind under our own system. The man who +writes in his own name may sometimes be tempted to say what he knows +he is expected from his position or character to say, rather than what +he would have said if his personality were not concerned. As far as +honesty goes, signature perhaps offers as many inducements to one kind +of insincerity, as anonymity offers to another kind. And on the public +it might perhaps be contended that there is an effect of a rather +similar sort. They are in some cases tempted away from serious +discussion of the matter, into frivolous curiosity and gossip about +the man. All this criticism of the principle of which the _Fortnightly +Review_ was the earliest English adherent, will not be taken as the +result in the present writer of Chamfort's _maladie des dĂ©sabusĂ©s_; +that would be both extremely ungrateful and without excuse or reason. +It is merely a fragment of disinterested contribution to the study of +a remarkable change that is passing over a not unimportant department +of literature. One gain alone counterbalances all the drawbacks, and +that is a gain that could hardly have been foreseen or expected; I +mean the freedom with which the great controversies of religion and +theology have been discussed in the new Reviews. The removal of the +mask has led to an outburst of plain speaking on these subjects, which +to Mr. Napier's generation would have seemed simply incredible. The +frank avowal of unpopular beliefs or non-beliefs has raised the whole +level of the discussion, and perhaps has been even more advantageous +to the orthodox in teaching them more humility, than to the heterodox +in teaching them more courage and honesty. + +Let us return to Mr. Napier's volume. We have said that it is +impossible for a great writer to be anonymous. No reader will need to +be told who among Mr. Napier's correspondents is the writer of the +following:-- + + "I have been thinking sometimes, likewise, of a paper on Napoleon, + a man whom, though handled to the extreme of triteness, it will be + long years before we understand. Hitherto in the English tongue, + there is next to nothing that betokens insight into him, or even + sincere belief of such, on the part of the writer. I should like + to study the man with what heartiness I could, and form to myself + some intelligible picture of him, both as a biographical and as + a historical figure, in both of which senses he is our chief + contemporary wonder, and in some sort the epitome of his age. + This, however, were a task of far more difficulty than Byron, and + perhaps not so promising at present." + +And if there is any difficulty in recognising the same hand in the +next proposal, it arises only from the circumstance that it is this +writer above all others who has made Benthamism a term of reproach on +the lips of men less wise than himself:-- + + "A far finer essay were a faithful, loving, and yet critical, and + in part condemnatory, delineation of Jeremy Bentham, and his place + and working in this section of the world's history. Bentham will + not be put down by logic, and should not be put down, for we need + him greatly as a backwoodsman: neither can reconciliation be + effected till the one party understands and is just to the other. + Bentham is a denyer; he denies with a loud and universally + convincing voice; his fault is that he can _affirm_ nothing, + except that money is pleasant in the purse, and food in the + stomach, and that by this simplest of all beliefs he can + reorganise society. He can shatter it in pieces--no thanks to him, + for its old fastenings are quite rotten--but he cannot reorganise + it; this is work for quite others than he. Such an essay on + Bentham, however, were a great task for any one; for me a very + great one, and perhaps rather out of my road." + +Perhaps Carlyle would have agreed that Mr. Mill's famous pair of +essays on Bentham and Coleridge have served the purpose which he had +in his mind, though we may well regret the loss of such a picture of +Bentham's philosophic personality as he would surely have given us. It +is touching to think of him whom we all know as the most honoured name +among living veterans of letters,[1] passing through the vexed ordeal +of the young recruit, and battling for his own against the waywardness +of critics and the blindness of publishers. In 1831 he writes to Mr. +Napier: "All manner of perplexities have occurred in the publishing +of my poor book, which perplexities I could only cut asunder, not +unloose; so the MS. like an unhappy ghost still lingers on the wrong +side of Styx; the Charon of ---- Street durst not risk it in his +_sutilis cymba_, so it leaped ashore again." And three months later: +"I have given up the notion of hawking my little Manuscript Book about +any further; for a long time it has lain quiet in its drawer, waiting +for a better day." And yet this little book was nothing less than the +History of the French Revolution. + +[Footnote 1: Carlyle died on February 5, 1881.] + +It might be a lesson to small men to see the reasonableness, sense, +and patience of these greater men. Macaulay's letters show him to have +been a pattern of good sense and considerateness. Mr. Carlyle seems +indeed to have found Jeffrey's editorial vigour more than could be +endured: + + "My respected friend your predecessor had some difficulty with me + in adjusting the respective prerogatives of Author and Editor, for + though not, as I hope, insensible to fair reason, I used sometimes + to rebel against what I reckoned mere authority, and this partly + perhaps as a matter of literary conscience; being wont to write + nothing without studying it if possible to the bottom, and writing + always with an almost painful feeling of scrupulosity, that light + editorial hacking and hewing to right and left was in general + nowise to my mind." + +But we feel that the fault must have lain with Jeffrey; the +qualifications that Lord Cockburn admired so much were not likely to +be to the taste of a man of Mr. Carlyle's grit. That did not prevent +the most original of Mr. Napier's contributors from being one of the +most just and reasonable. + + "I have, barely within my time, finished that paper + ['Characteristics'], to which you are now heartily welcome, if you + have room for it. The doctrines here set forth have mostly long + been familiar convictions with me; yet it is perhaps only within + the last twelvemonth that the public utterance of some of them + could have seemed a duty. I have striven to express myself with + what guardedness was possible; and, as there will now be no time + for correcting proofs, I must leave it wholly in your editorial + hands. Nay, should it on due consideration appear to you in your + place (for I see that matter dimly, and nothing is clear but my + own mind and the general condition of the world), unadvisable to + print the paper at all, then pray understand, my dear Sir, now and + always, that I am no unreasonable man; but if dogmatic enough (as + Jeffrey used to call it) in my own beliefs, also truly desirous to + be just towards those of others. I shall, in all sincerity, beg of + you to do, without fear of offence (for in _no_ point of view will + there be any), what you yourself see good. A mighty work lies + before the writers of this time." + +It is always interesting, to the man of letters at any rate if not +to his neighbours, to find what was first thought by men of admitted +competence of the beginnings of writers who are now seen to have made +a mark on the world. "When the reputation of authors is made," said +Sainte-Beuve, "it is easy to speak of them _convenablement_: we have +only to guide ourselves by the common opinion. But at the start, at +the moment when they are trying their first flight and are in part +ignorant of themselves, then to judge them with tact, with precision, +not to exaggerate their scope, to predict their flight, or divine +their limits, to put the reasonable objections in the midst of all +due respect--this is the quality of the critic who is born to be a +critic." We have been speaking of Mr. Carlyle. This is what Jeffrey +thought of him in 1832:-- + + "I fear Carlyle will not do, that is, if you do not take the + liberties and the pains with him that I did, by striking out + freely, and writing in occasionally. The misfortune is, that he + is very obstinate, and unluckily in a place like this, he finds + people enough to abet and applaud him, to intercept the operation + of the otherwise infallible remedy of general avoidance and + neglect. It is a great pity, for he is a man of genius and + industry, and with the capacity of being an elegant and impressive + writer" + +The notion of Jeffrey occasionally writing elegantly and impressively +into Carlyle's proof-sheets is rather striking. Some of Jeffrey's +other criticisms sound very curiously in our ear in these days. It +is startling to find Mill's _Logic_ described (1843) as a "great +unreadable book, and its elaborate demonstration of axioms and +truisms." A couple of years later Jeffrey admits, in speaking of Mr. +Mill's paper on Guizot--"Though I have long thought very highly of his +powers as a reasoner, I scarcely gave him credit for such large and +sound views of _realities_ and practical results as are displayed +in this article." Sir James Stephen--the distinguished sire of two +distinguished contributors, who may remind more than one editor of our +generation of the Horatian saying, that + + "Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis, + ... neque imbellera feroces + Progenerant aquilae columbam" + +--this excellent writer took a more just measure of the book which +Jeffrey thought unreadable. + + "My more immediate object in writing is to remind you of John + Mill's book [System of Logic], of which I have lately been reading + a considerable part, and I have done so with the conviction that + it is one of the most remarkable productions of this nineteenth + century. Exceedingly debatable indeed, but most worthy of debate, + are many of his favourite tenets, especially those of the last + two or three chapters. No man is fit to encounter him who is not + thoroughly conversant with the moral sciences which he handles; + and remembering what you told me of your own studies under Dugald + Stewart, I cannot but recommend the affair to your own personal + attention. You will find very few men fit to be trusted with it. + You ought to be aware that, although with great circumspection, + not to say timidity, Mill is an opponent of Religion in the + abstract, not of any particular form of it. That is, he evidently + maintains that superhuman influences on the mind of man are but a + dream, whence the inevitable conclusion that all acts of devotion + and prayer are but a superstition. That such is his real meaning, + however darkly conveyed, is indisputable. You are well aware that + it is in direct conflict with my own deepest and most cherished + convictions. Yet to condemn him for holding, and for calmly + publishing such views, is but to add to the difficulties of fair + and full discussion, and to render truth (or supposed truth), less + certain and valuable than if it had invited, and encountered, + and triumphed over every assault of every honest antagonist. I, + therefore, wish Mill to be treated respectfully and handsomely." + +Few of Mr. Napier's correspondents seem to have been more considerate. +At one period (1844) a long time had passed without any contribution +from Sir James Stephen's pen appearing in the Review. Mr. Senior +wrote a hint on the subject to the editor, and Napier seems to have +communicated with Sir James Stephen, who replied in a model strain. + + "Have you any offer of a paper or papers from my friend John + Austin? If you have, and if you are not aware what manner of man + he is, it may not be amiss that you should be apprised that in + these parts he enjoys, and deservedly, a very high and yet a + peculiar reputation. I have a great attachment to him. He is, in + the best sense of the word, a philosopher, an earnest and humble + lover of wisdom. I know not anywhere a larger minded man, and yet, + eloquent as he is in speech, there is, in his written style, an + involution and a lack of vivacity which renders his writings a + sealed book to almost every one. Whether he will be able to assume + an easier and a lighter manner, I do not know. If not, I rather + fear for him when he stands at your bar. All I ask is, that you + would convey your judgment in measured and (as far as you can + honestly) in courteous terms; for he is, for so considerable a + man, strangely sensitive. You must have an odd story to tell of + your intercourse with the knights of the Order of the Quill." + +And the letter closed with what an editor values more even than +decently Christian treatment, namely the suggestion of a fine subject. +This became the admirable essay on the Clapham Sect. + +The author of one of the two or three most delightful biographies +in all literature has published the letter to Mr. Napier in which +Macaulay speaks pretty plainly what he thought about Brougham and the +extent of his services to the Review. Brougham in turn hated Macaulay, +whom he calls the third or greatest bore in society that he has ever +known. He is furious--and here Brougham was certainly not wrong--over +the "most profligate political morality" of Macaulay's essay on Clive. + + "In my eyes, his defence of Clive, and the audacious ground of + it, merit execration. It is a most serious, and, to me, a painful + subject. No--no--all the sentences a man can turn, even if he made + them in pure taste, and not in Tom's snip-snap taste of the lower + empire,--all won't avail against a rotten morality. The first and + most sacred duty of a public man, and, above all, an author, is + to keep by honest and true doctrine--never to relax--never to + countenance vice--ever to hold fast by virtue. What? Are we + gravely to be told, at this time of day, that a set-off may be + allowed for public, and, therefore, atrocious crimes, though he + admits that a common felon pleads it in vain? Gracious God, where + is this to end! What horrors will it not excuse! Tiberius's great + capacity, his first-rate wit, that which made him the charm of + society, will next, I suppose, be set up to give a splendour to + the inhabitants of Capreae. Why, Olive's address, and his skill, + and his courage are not at all more certain, nor are they + qualities of a different cast. Every great ruffian, who has filled + the world with blood and tears, will be sure of an acquittal, + because of his talents and his success. After I had, and chiefly + in the _Edinburgh Review_, been trying to restore a better, a + purer, a higher standard of morals, and to wean men from the silly + love of military glory, for which they are the first to pay, I + find the _Edinburgh Review_ preaching, not merely the old and + common heresies, but ten thousand times worse, adopting a vile + principle never yet avowed in terms, though too often and too much + taken for a guide, unknown to those who followed it, in forming + their judgments of great and successful criminals." + +Of the essay on Warren Hastings he thought better, "bating some +vulgarity and Macaulay's usual want of all power of reasoning." +Lord Cockburn wrote to Mr. Napier (1844) a word or two on Macaulay. +"Delighting as I do," says Lord Cockburn, "in his thoughts, views, and +knowledge, I feel too often compelled to curse and roar at his words +and the structure of his composition. As a corrupter of style, he is +more dangerous to the young than Gibbon. His seductive powers greater, +his defects worse." All good critics now accept this as true. Jeffrey, +by the way, speaking of the same essay, thinks that Macaulay rates +Chatham too high. "I have always had an impression," he says, "(though +perhaps an ignorant and unjust one), that there was more good luck +than wisdom in his foreign policy, and very little to admire (except +his personal purity) in any part of his domestic administration." + +It is interesting to find a record, in the energetic speech of +contemporary hatred, of the way in which orthodox science regarded a +once famous book of heterodox philosophy. Here is Professor Sedgwick +on the _Vestiges of Creation_:-- + + "I now know the Vestiges well, and I detest the book for its + shallowness, for the intense vulgarity of its philosophy, for its + gross, unblushing materialism, for its silly credulity in catering + out of every fool's dish, for its utter ignorance of what is meant + by induction, for its gross (and I dare to say, filthy) views of + physiology,--most ignorant and most false,--and for Its shameful + shuffling of the facts of geology so as to make them play a + rogue's game. I believe some woman is the author; partly from the + fair dress and agreeable exterior of the Vestiges: and partly from + the utter ignorance the book displays of all sound physical logic. + A _man_ who knew so much of the surface of Physics must, at least + on some one point or other, have taken a deeper plunge; but _all_ + parts of the book are shallow.... From the bottom of my soul, I + loathe and detest the Vestiges. 'Tis a rank pill of asafoetida and + arsenic, covered with gold leaf. I do, therefore, trust that your + contributor has stamped with an iron heel upon the head of the + filthy abortion, and put an end to its crawlings. There is not one + subject the author handles bearing on life, of which he does not + take a degrading view." + +Mr. Napier seems to have asked him to write on the book, and +Sedgwick's article, the first he ever wrote for a review, eventually +appeared (1845),--without, it is to be hoped, too much of the raging +contempt of the above and other letters. "I do feel contempt, and, +I hope, I shall express it. Eats hatched by the incubations of a +goose--dogs playing dominos--monkeys breeding men and women--all +distinctions between natural and moral done away--the Bible proved +all a lie, and mental philosophy one mass of folly, all of it to be +pounded down, and done over again in the cooking vessels of Gall and +Spurzheim!" This was the beginning of a long campaign, which is just +now drawing near its close. Let us at least be glad that orthodoxy, +whether scientific or religious, has mended his temper. One among +other causes of the improvement, as we have already said, is probably +to be found in the greater self-restraint which comes from the fact of +the writer appearing in his own proper person. + + + + +VALEDICTORY.[1] + +[Footnote 1: On the writer's retirement from the editorship of the +_Fortnightly Review_, in 1882.] + + +The present number of the Review marks the close of a task which was +confided to me no less than fifteen years ago--_grande mortalis cevi +spatium_, a long span of one's mortal days. Fifteen years are enough +to bring a man from youth to middle age, to test the working value of +convictions, to measure the advance of principles and beliefs, and, +alas! to cut off many early associates and to extinguish many lights. +It is hardly possible that a Review should have been conducted for so +considerable a time without the commission of some mistakes; articles +admitted which might as well have been left out, opinions expressed +which have a crudish look in the mellow light of years, phrases +dropped in the heat or hurry of the moment which one would fain +obliterate. Many a regret must rise in men's minds on any occasion +that compels them to look back over a long reach of years. The +disparity between aim and performance, the unfulfilled promise, the +wrong turnings taken at critical points--as an accident of the hour +draws us to take stock of a complete period of our lives, all these +things rise up in private and internal judgment against anybody who is +not either too stupid or too fatuously complacent to recognise facts +when he sees them. But the mood passes. Time, happily, is merciful, +and men's memories are benignly short. + +More painful is the recollection of those earlier contributors of ours +who have vanished from the world. Periodical literature is like the +manna in the wilderness; it quickly loses its freshness, and to turn +over thirty volumes of old Reviews can hardly be exhilarating at the +best: least of all so, when it recalls friends and coadjutors who +can give their help no more. George Henry Lewes, the founder of the +Review, and always cordially interested in its fortunes, has not +survived to see the end of the reign of his successor, His vivacious +intelligence had probably done as much as he was competent to do for +his generation, but there were other important contributors, now gone, +of whom this could not be said. In the region of political theory, the +loss of J.E. Cairnes was truly lamentable and untimely. He had, as +Mill said of him, "that rare qualification among writers on political +and social subjects--a genuine scientific intellect." Not a month +passes in which one does not feel how great an advantage it would have +been to be able to go down to Blackheath, and discuss the perplexities +of the time in that genial and manly companionship, where facts were +weighed with so much care, where conclusions were measured with such +breadth and comprehension, and where even the great stolid idols of +the Cave and the Market Place were never too rudely buffeted. Of +a very different order of mind from Cairnes, but not less to be +permanently regretted by all of us who knew him, was Mr. Bagehot, +whose books on the English Constitution, on Physics and Politics, +and the fragment on the Postulates of Political Economy, were all +published in these pages. He wrote, in fact, the first article in +the first number. Though himself extremely cool and sceptical about +political improvement of every sort, he took abundant interest in more +ardent friends. Perhaps it was that they amused him; in return his +good-natured ironies put them wholesomely on their mettle. As has been +well said of him, he had a unique power of animation without combat; +it was all stimulus and yet no contest; his talk was full of youth, +yet had all the wisdom of mature judgment _(R.H. Hutton)_. Those who +were least willing to assent to Bagehot's practical maxims in judging +current affairs, yet were well aware how much they profited by his +Socratic objections, and knew, too, what real acquaintance with men +and business, what honest sympathy and friendliness, and what serious +judgment and interest all lay under his playful and racy humour. + +More untimely, in one sense, than any other was the death of Professor +Clifford, whose articles in this Review attracted so much attention, +and I fear that I may add, gave for a season so much offence six or +seven years ago. Cairnes was scarcely fifty when he died, and Bagehot +was fifty-one, but Clifford was only four-and-thirty. Yet in this +brief space he had not merely won a reputation as a mathematician of +the first order, but had made a real mark on his time, both by the +substance of his speculations in science, religion, and ethics, and +by the curious audacity with which he proclaimed at the pitch of his +voice on the housetops religious opinions that had hitherto been kept +among the family secrets of the _domus Socratica_. It is melancholy +to think that exciting work, done under pressure of time of his own +imposing, should have been the chief cause of his premature decline. +How intense that pressure was the reader may measure by the fact that +a paper of his on _The Unseen Universe_, which filled eighteen pages +of the Review, was composed at a single sitting that lasted from a +quarter to ten in the evening till nine o'clock the following morning. +As one revolves these and other names of eminent men who actively +helped to make the Review what it has been, it would be impossible to +omit the most eminent of them all. Time has done something to impair +the philosophical reputation and the political celebrity of J.S. Mill; +but it cannot alter the affectionate memory in which some of us must +always hold his wisdom and goodness, his rare union of moral ardour +with a calm and settled mind. He took the warmest interest In this +Review from the moment when I took it up, partly from the friendship +with which he honoured me, but much more because he wished to +encourage what was then--though it is now happily no longer--the only +attempt to conduct a periodical on the principles of free discussion +and personal responsibility. While recalling these and others who are +no more, it was naturally impossible for me to forget the constant +and valuable help that has been so freely given to me, often at much +sacrifice of their own convenience, by those friends and contributors +who are still with us. No conductor ever laid down his _bâton_ with a +more cordial and sincere sense of gratitude to those who took their +several parts in his performance. + +One chief experiment which the Review was established to try was that +of signed articles. When Mr. Lewes wrote his Farewell Causerie, as I +am doing now, he said: "That we have been enabled to bring together +men so various in opinion and so distinguished in power has been +mainly owing to the principle adopted of allowing each writer perfect +freedom; which could only have been allowed under the condition of +personal responsibility. The question of signing articles had long +been debated; it has now been tested. The arguments in favour of +it were mainly of a moral order; the arguments against it, while +admitting the morality, mainly asserted its inexpediency. The question +of expediency has, I venture to say, been materially enlightened +by the success of the Review." The success of other periodicals, +conducted still more rigorously on the principle that every article +ought to bear its writer's signature, leaves no further doubt on the +subject; so that it is now almost impossible to realise that only +fifteen or sixteen years ago scarcely anybody of the class called +practical could believe that the sacred principle of the Anonymous was +doomed. One of the shrewdest publishers in Edinburgh, and also himself +the editor of a famous magazine, once said to me while Mr. Lewes was +still editor of this Review, that he had always thought highly of our +friend's judgment "until he had taken up the senseless notion of +a magazine with signed articles and open to both sides of every +question." Nobody will call the notion senseless any longer. The +question is rather how long the exclusively anonymous periodicals will +resist the innovation. + +Personally I have attached less stern importance to signature as an +unvarying rule than did my predecessor; though, even he was compelled +by obvious considerations of convenience to make his chronique of +current affairs anonymous. Our practice has been signature as the +standing rule, occasionally suspended in favour of anonymity when +there seemed to be sufficient reason. On the whole it may be said that +the change from anonymous to signed articles has followed the course +of most changes. It has not led to one-half either of the evils or of +the advantages that its advocates and its opponents foretold. That +it has produced some charlatanry, can hardly be denied. Readers are +tempted to postpone serious and persistent interest in subjects, to a +semi-personal curiosity about the casual and unconnected deliverances +of the literary or social star of the hour. That this conception has +been worked out with signal ability in more cases than one; that it +has made periodical literature full of actuality; that it has tickled +and delighted the palate--is all most true. The obvious danger is lest +we should be tempted to think more of the man who speaks than of the +precise value of what he says. + +One indirect effect that is not unworthy of notice in the new system +is its tendency to narrow the openings for the writer by profession. +If an article is to be signed, the editor will naturally seek the name +of an expert of special weight and competence on the matter in hand. A +reviewer on the staff of a famous journal once received for his week's +task, _General Hamley on the Art of War_, a three-volume novel, a work +on dainty dishes, and a translation of Pindar. This was perhaps taxing +versatility and omniscience over-much, and it may be taken for granted +that the writer made no serious contribution to tactics, cookery, +or scholarship. But being a man of a certain intelligence, passably +honest, and reasonably painstaking, probably he produced reviews +sufficiently useful and just to answer their purpose. On the new +system we should have an article on General Hamley's work by Sir +Garnet Wolseley, and one on the cookery-book from M. Trompette. It is +not certain that this is all pure gain. There is a something to be +said for the writer by profession, who, without being an expert, will +take trouble to work up his subject, to learn what is said and thought +about it, to penetrate to the real points, to get the same mastery +over it as an advocate or a judge does over a patent case or a suit +about rubrics and vestments. He is at least as likely as the expert to +tell the reader all that he wants to know, and at least as likely to +be free from bias and injurious prepossession. + +Nor does experience, so far as it has yet gone, quite bear out Mr. +Lewes's train of argument that the "first condition of all writing is +sincerity, and that one means of securing sincerity is to insist on +personal responsibility," and that this personal responsibility +can only be secured by signing articles. The old talk of "literary +bravoes," "men in masks," "anonymous assassins," and so forth, is out +of date. Longer experience has only confirmed the present writer's +opinion, expressed here from the very beginning: "Everybody who knows +the composition of any respectable journal in London knows very well +that the articles which those of our own way of thinking dislike +most intensely are written by men whom to call bravoes in any sense +whatever would be simply monstrous. Let us say, as loudly as we +choose, if we see good reason, that they are half informed about some +of the things which they so authoritatively discuss; that they are +under strong class feeling; that they have not mastered the doctrines +which they are opposing; that they have not sufficiently meditated +their subject; that they have not given themselves time to do justice +even to their scanty knowledge. Journalists are open to charges of +this kind; but to think of them as a shameless body, thirsting for the +blood of better men than themselves, or ready to act as an editor's +instrument for money, involves a thoroughly unjust misconception." + +As to the comparative effects of the two systems on literary quality, +no prudent observer with adequate experience will lay down an +unalterable rule. Habit no doubt counts for a great deal, but +apart from habit there are differences of temperament and peculiar +sensibilities. Some men write best when they sign what they write; +they find impersonality a mystification and an incumbrance; anonymity +makes them stiff, pompous, and over-magisterial. With others, +however, the effect is just the reverse. If they sign, they become +self-conscious, stilted, and even pretentious; it is only when they +are anonymous that they recover simplicity and ease. It is as if an +actor who is the soul of what is natural under the disguises of his +part, should become extremely artificial if he were compelled to come +upon the stage in his own proper clothes and speaking only in his +ordinary voice. + +The newspaper press has not yet followed the example of the new +Reviews, but we are probably not far from the time when here, too, the +practice of signature will make its way. There was a silly cry at one +time for making the disuse of anonymity compulsory by law. But we +shall no more see this than we shall see legal penalties imposed +for publishing a book without an index, though that also has been +suggested. The same end will be reached by other ways. Within the last +few years a truly surprising shock has been given to the idea of a +newspaper, "as a sort of impersonal thing, coming from nobody knows +where, the readers never thinking of the writer, nor caring whether +he thinks what he writes, so long as _they_ think what he writes." +Of course it is still true, and will most likely always remain true, +that, like the Athenian Sophist, great newspapers will teach the +conventional prejudices of those who pay for it. A writer will long +be able to say that, like the Sophist, the newspaper reflects the +morality, the intelligence, the tone of sentiment, of its public, and +if the latter is vicious, so is the former. But there is infinitely +less of this than there used to be. The press is more and more taking +the tone of a man speaking to a man. The childish imposture of +the editorial We is already thoroughly exploded. The names of all +important journalists are now coming to be as publicly known as the +names of important members of parliament. There is even something over +and above this. More than one editor has boldly aspired to create +and educate a public of his own, and he has succeeded. The press is +growing to be much more personal, in the sense that its most important +directors are taking to themselves the right of pursuing an individual +line of their own, with far less respect than of old to the supposed +exigencies of party or the _communiquĂ©s_ of political leaders. The +editor of a Review of great eminence said to the present writer (who, +for his own part, took a slightly more modest view) that he regarded +himself as equal in importance to seventy-five Members of Parliament. +It is not altogether easy to weigh and measure with this degree of +precision. But what is certain is that there are journalists on both +sides in politics to whom the public looks for original suggestion, +and from whom leading politicians seek not merely such mechanical +support as they expect from their adherents in the House of Commons, +nor merely the uses of the vane to show which way the wind blows, but +ideas, guidance, and counsel, as from persons of co-equal authority +with themselves. England is still a long way from the point at which +French journalism has arrived in this matter. We cannot count an +effective host of Girardins, Lemoinnes, Abouts, or even Cassagnacs and +Rocheforts, each recognised as the exponent of his own opinions, and +each read because the opinions written are known to be his own. But +there is a distinctly nearer approach to this as the general state of +English journalism than there was twenty years ago. + +Of course nobody of sense supposes that any journalist, however +independent and however possessed by the spirit of his personal +responsibility, tries to form his opinions out of his own head, +without reference to the view of the men practically engaged in public +affairs, the temper of Parliament and the feeling of constituencies, +and so forth. All these are part of the elements that go to the +formation of his own judgment, and he will certainly not neglect to +find out as much about them as he possibly can. Nor, again, does the +increase of the personal sentiment about our public prints lessen the +general working fidelity of their conductors to a party. It is their +duty, no doubt, to discuss the merits of measures as they arise. In +this respect any one can see how radically they differ from the Member +of Parliament, whose business is not only to discuss but to act. The +Member of Parliament must look at the effect of his vote in more +lights than one. Besides the merits of the given measure, it is his +duty to think of the wishes of those who chose him to represent them; +and if, moreover, the effect of voting against a measure of which +he disapproves would be to overthrow a whole Ministry of which he +strongly approves, then, unless some very vital principle indeed were +involved, to give such a vote would be to prefer a small object to +a great one, and would indicate a very queasy monkish sort of +conscience. The journalist is not in the same position. He is an +observer and a critic, and can afford, and is bound, to speak the +truth. But even in his case, the disagreement, as Burke said, "will +be only enough to indulge freedom, without violating concord or +disturbing arrangement." There is a certain "partiality which becomes +a well-chosen friendship." "Men thinking freely will, in particular +instances, think differently. But still as the greater part of the +measures which arise in the course of public business are related to, +or dependent on, some great leading general principles in government, +a man must be peculiarly unfortunate in the choice of his political +company if he does not agree with them at least nine times in ten." +The doctrine that was good enough for Burke in this matter may be +counted good enough for most of us. Some of the current talk about +political independence is mere hypocrisy; some of it is mere vanity. +For the new priest of Literature is quite as liable to the defects of +spiritual pride and ambition as the old priest of the Church, and it +is quite as well for him that he should be on his guard against these +scarlet and high-crested sins. + +The success of Reviews, of which our own was the first English type, +marks a very considerable revolution in the intellectual habits of the +time. They have brought abstract discussion from the library down to +the parlour, and from the serious student down to the first man in +the street. We have passed through a perfect cyclone of religious +polemics. The popularity of such Reviews means that really large +audiences, _le gros public_, are eagerly interested In the radical +discussion of propositions which twenty years ago were only publicly +maintained, and then in their crudest, least true, and most repulsive +form, in obscure debating societies and little secularist clubs. +Everybody, male or female, who reads anything serious at all, now +reads a dozen essays a year to show, with infinite varieties of +approach and of demonstration, that we can never know whether there be +a Supreme Being or not, whether the soul survives the body, or whether +mind is more and other than a mere function of matter. No article +that has appeared in any periodical for a generation back excited so +profound a sensation as Mr. Huxley's memorable paper On the Physical +Basis of Life, published in this Review in February 1869. It created +just the same kind of stir that, in a political epoch, was made by +such a pamphlet as the _Conduct of the Allies_ or the _Reflections on +the French Revolution_. This excitement was a sign that controversies +which had hitherto been confined to books and treatises were now to be +admitted to popular periodicals, and that the common man of the world +would now listen and have an opinion of his own on the bases of +belief, just as he listens and judges in politics or art, or letters. +The clergy no longer have the pulpit to themselves, for the new +Reviews became more powerful pulpits, in which heretics were at least +as welcome as orthodox. Speculation has become entirely democratised. +This is a tremendous change to have come about in little more than a +dozen years. How far it goes, let us not be too sure. It is no new +discovery that what looks like complete tolerance may be in reality +only complete indifference. Intellectual fairness is often only +another name for indolence and inconclusiveness of mind, just as love +of truth is sometimes a fine phrase for temper. To be piquant counts +for much, and the interest of seeing on the drawing-room tables of +devout Catholics and high-flying Anglicans article after article, +sending divinities, creeds, and Churches all headlong into limbo, was +indeed piquant. Much of all this elegant dabbling in infidelity has +been a caprice of fashion. The Agnostic has had his day with the fine +ladies, like the black footboy of other times, or the spirit-rapper +and table-turner of our own. What we have been watching, after all, +was perhaps a tournament, not a battle. + +It would not be very easy for us now, and perhaps it would not be +particularly becoming at any time, to analyse the position that has +been assigned to this Review in common esteem. Those who have watched +it from without can judge better than those who have worked within. +Though it has been open, so far as editorial goodwill was concerned, +to opinions from many sides, the Review has unquestionably gathered +round it some of the associations of sect. What that sect is, people +have found it difficult to describe with anything like precision. For +a long time it was the fashion to label the Review as Comtist, and +it would be singularly ungrateful to deny that it has had no more +effective contributors than some of the best-known disciples of Comte. +By-and-by it was felt that this was too narrow. It was nearer the +truth to call it the organ of Positivists in the wider sense of that +designation. But even this would not cover many directly political +articles that have appeared in our pages, and made a mark in their +time. The memorable programme of Free Labour, Free Land, Free Schools, +Free Church had nothing at all Positivist about it. Nor could that +programme and many besides from the same pen and others be compressed +under the nickname of Academic Liberalism. There was too strong a +flavour of action for the academic and the philosophic. This passion +for a label, after all, is an infirmity. Yet people justly perceived +that there seemed to be a certain undefinable concurrence among +writers coming from different schools and handling very different +subjects. Perhaps the instinct was right which fancied that it +discerned some common drift, a certain pervading atmosphere, and +scented a subtle connection between speculations on the Physical Basis +of Life and the Unseen Universe, and articles on Trades Unions and +National Education. + +So far as the Review has been more specially identified with one set +of opinions than another, it has been due to the fact that a certain +dissent from received theologies has been found in company with new +ideas of social and political reform. This suspicious combination at +one time aroused considerable anger. The notion of anything like an +intervention of the literary and scientific class in political affairs +touched a certain jealousy which is always to be looked for in the +positive and practical man. They think as Napoleon thought of men of +letters and savans:--"Ce sont des coquettes avec lesquelles il faut +entretenir un commerce de galanterie, et dont il ne faut jamais songer +Ă faire ni sa femme ni son ministre." Men will listen to your views +about the Unknowable with a composure that instantly disappears if +your argument comes too near to the Rates and Taxes. It is amusing, as +we read the newspapers to-day, to think that Mr. Harrison's powerful +defence of Trades Unions fifteen years ago caused the Review to be +regarded as an incendiary publication. Some papers that appeared here +on National Education were thought to indicate a deliberate plot for +suppressing the Holy Scriptures in the land. Extravagant misjudgment +of this kind has passed away. But it was far from being a mistake to +suppose that the line taken here by many writers did mean that there +was a new Radicalism in the air, which went a good deal deeper than +fidgeting about an estimate or the amount of the Queen's contribution +to her own taxes. Time has verified what was serious in those early +apprehensions. Principles and aims are coming into prominence in the +social activity of to-day which would hardly have found a hearing +twenty years ago, and it would be sufficient justification for the +past of our Review if some writers in it have been instrumental in the +process of showing how such principles and aims meet the requirements +of the new time. Reformers must always be open to the taunt that they +find nothing in the world good enough for them. "You write," said a +popular novelist to one of this unthanked tribe, "as if you believed +that everything is bad." "Nay," said the other, "but I do believe that +everything might be better." Such a belief naturally breeds a spirit +which the easy-goers of the world resent as a spirit of ceaseless +complaint and scolding. Hence our Liberalism here has often been +taxed with being ungenial, discontented, and even querulous. But such +Liberals will wrap themselves in their own virtue, remembering the +cheering apophthegm that "those who are dissatisfied are the sole +benefactors of the world." + +This will not be found, I think, too lofty, or too thrasonical an +estimate of what has been attempted. A certain number of people have +been persuaded to share opinions that fifteen years ago were more +unpopular than they are now. A certain resistance has been offered to +the stubborn influence of prejudice and use and wont. The original +scheme of the Review, even if there had been no other obstacle, +prevented it from being the organ of a systematic and constructive +policy. There is not, in fact, a body of systematic political thought +at work in our own day. The Liberals of the Benthamite school surveyed +society and institutions as a whole; they connected their advocacy of +political and legal changes with carefully formed theories of human +nature; they considered the great art of Government in connection with +the character of man, his proper education, his potential capacities. +Yet, as we then said, it cannot be pretended that we are less in need +of systematic politics than our fathers were sixty years since, or +that general principles are now more generally settled even among +members of the same party than they were then. The perplexities of +to-day are as embarrassing as any in our history, and they may prove +even more dangerous. The renovation of Parliamentary government; the +transformation of the conditions of the ownership and occupation of +land; the relations between the Government at home and our adventurers +abroad in contact with inferior races; the limitations on free +contract and the rights of majorities to restrict the private acts +of minorities; these are only some of the questions that time and +circumstances are pressing upon us. These are in the political and +legislative sphere alone. In Education, in Economics, the problems are +as many. Yet ideas are hardly ripe for realisation. We shall need +to see great schools before we can make sure of powerful parties. +Meanwhile, whatever gives freedom and variety to thought, and +earnestness to men's interest in the world, must contribute to a good +end. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in Literature, by John Morley + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12001 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..da9202e --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #12001 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12001) diff --git a/old/12001-8.txt b/old/12001-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..de591c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12001-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7107 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in Literature, by John Morley + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Studies in Literature + +Author: John Morley + +Release Date: April 12, 2004 [EBook #12001] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + +STUDIES IN LITERATURE + +BY + +JOHN MORLEY + + +1907 + + + + +NOTE. + +The contents of the present collection have all been in print before, +either in the _Nineteenth Century_ and _Fortnightly Review_, or +in some other shape. I have to thank the proprietors of the two +periodicals named for sanctioning the reproduction of my articles +here. + +J.M. + +_October_ 1890. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +WORDSWORTH +APHORISMS +MAINE ON POPULAR GOVERNMENT +A FEW WORDS ON FRENCH MODELS +ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE +VICTOR HUGO'S _NINETY-THREE_ +ON _THE RING AND THE BOOK_ +MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF LETTERS +VALEDICTORY + + + + +WORDSWORTH.[1] + +[Footnote 1: Originally published as an Introduction to the new +edition of Wordsworth's _Complete Poetical Works_ (1888).] + + +The poet whose works are contained in the present volume was born in +the little town of Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7, 1770. He +died at Rydal Mount, in the neighbouring county of Westmoreland, on +April 23, 1850. In this long span of mortal years, events of vast and +enduring moment shook the world. A handful of scattered and dependent +colonies in the northern continent of America made themselves into one +of the most powerful and beneficent of states. The ancient monarchy of +France, and all the old ordering of which the monarchy had been the +keystone, was overthrown, and it was not until after many a violent +shock of arms, after terrible slaughter of men, after strange +diplomatic combinations, after many social convulsions, after many +portentous mutations of empire, that Europe once more settled down for +a season into established order and system. In England almost alone, +after the loss of her great possessions across the Atlantic Ocean, +the fabric of the State stood fast and firm. Yet here, too, in these +eighty years, an old order slowly gave place to new. The restoration +of peace, after a war conducted with extraordinary tenacity and +fortitude, led to a still more wonderful display of ingenuity, +industry, and enterprise, in the more fruitful field of commerce +and of manufactures. Wealth, in spite of occasional vicissitudes, +increased with amazing rapidity. The population of England and Wales +grew from being seven and a half millions in 1770, to nearly eighteen +millions in 1850. Political power was partially transferred from a +territorial aristocracy to the middle and trading classes. Laws were +made at once more equal and more humane. During all the tumult of the +great war which for so many years bathed Europe in fire, through all +the throes and agitations in which peace brought forth the new time, +Wordsworth for half a century (1799-1850) dwelt sequestered in +unbroken composure and steadfastness in his chosen home amid the +mountains and lakes of his native region, working out his own ideal of +the high office of the Poet. + +The interpretation of life in books and the development of imagination +underwent changes of its own. Most of the great lights of the +eighteenth century were still burning, though burning low, when +Wordsworth came into the world. Pope, indeed, had been dead for six +and twenty years, and all the rest of the Queen Anne men had gone. +But Gray only died in 1771, and Goldsmith in 1774. Ten years later +Johnson's pious and manly heart ceased to beat. Voltaire and Rousseau, +those two diverse oracles of their age, both died in 1778. Hume had +passed away two years before. Cowper was forty years older than +Wordsworth, but Cowper's most delightful work was not produced until +1783. Crabbe, who anticipated Wordsworth's choice of themes from rural +life, while treating them with a sterner realism, was virtually his +contemporary, having been born in 1754, and dying in 1832. The two +great names of his own date were Scott and Coleridge, the first born +in 1771, and the second a year afterwards. Then a generation later +came another new and illustrious group. Byron was born in 1788, +Shelley in 1792, and Keats in 1795. Wordsworth was destined to see one +more orb of the first purity and brilliance rise to its place in the +poetic firmament. Tennyson's earliest volume of poems was published in +1830, and _In Memoriam_, one of his two masterpieces, in 1830. Any one +who realises for how much these famous names will always stand in +the history of human genius, may measure the great transition that +Wordsworth's eighty years witnessed in some of men's deepest feelings +about art and life and "the speaking face of earth and heaven." + +Here, too, Wordsworth stood isolated and apart. Scott and Southey were +valued friends, but, as has been truly said, he thought little of +Scott's poetry, and less of Southey's. Of Blake's _Songs of Innocence +and Experience_ he said, "There is something in the madness of this +man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter +Scott." Coleridge was the only member of the shining company with whom +he ever had any real intimacy of mind, for whom he ever nourished real +deference and admiration as one "unrelentingly possessed by thirst of +greatness, love, and beauty," and in whose intellectual power, as the +noble lines in the Sixth Book of the _Prelude_ so gorgeously attest, +he took the passionate interest of a man at once master, disciple, and +friend. It is true to say, as Emerson says, that Wordsworth's genius +was the great exceptional fact of the literature of his period. But he +had no teachers nor inspirers save nature and solitude. + +Wordsworth was the son of a solicitor, and all his early circumstances +were homely, unpretentious, and rather straitened. His mother died +when he was eight years old, and when his father followed her five +years later, two of his uncles provided means for continuing +at Cambridge the education which had been begun in the rural +grammar-school of Hawkshead. It was in 1787 that he went up to St. +John's College. He took his Bachelor's degree at the beginning of +1791, and there his connection with the university ended. + +For some years after leaving Cambridge, Wordsworth let himself drift. +He did not feel good enough for the Church; he shrank from the law; +fancying that he had talents for command, he thought of being a +soldier. Meanwhile, he passed a short time desultorily in London. +Towards the end of 1791, through Paris, he passed on to Orleans +and Blois, where he made some friends and spent most of a year. He +returned to Paris in October 1792. France was no longer standing on +the top of golden hours. The September massacres filled the sky with +a lurid flame. Wordsworth still retained his ardent faith in the +Revolution, and was even ready, though no better than "a landsman on +the deck of a ship struggling with a hideous storm," to make common +cause with the Girondists. But the prudence of friends at home forced +him back to England before the beginning of the terrible year of '93. +With his return closed that first survey of its inheritance, which +most serious souls are wont to make in the fervid prime of early +manhood. + +It would be idle to attempt any commentary on the bare facts that we +have just recapitulated; for Wordsworth himself has clothed them with +their full force and meaning in the _Prelude_. This record of the +growth of a poet's mind, told by the poet himself with all the +sincerity of which he was capable, is never likely to be popular. Of +that, as of so much more of his poetry, we must say that, as a whole, +it has not the musical, harmonious, sympathetic quality which seizes +us in even the prose of such a book as Rousseau's _Confessions_. +Macaulay thought the _Prelude_ a poorer and more tiresome _Excursion_, +with the old flimsy philosophy about the effect of scenery on the +mind, the old crazy mystical metaphysics, and the endless wilderness +of twaddle; still he admits that there are some fine descriptions and +energetic declamations. All Macaulay's tastes and habits of mind made +him a poor judge of such a poet as Wordsworth. He valued spirit, +energy, pomp, stateliness of form and diction, and actually thought +Dryden's fine lines about to-morrow being falser than the former clay +equal to any eight lines in Lucretius. But his words truly express +the effect of the _Prelude_ on more vulgar minds than his own. George +Eliot, on the other hand, who had the inward eye that was not among +Macaulay's gifts, found the _Prelude_ full of material for a daily +liturgy, and it is easy to imagine how she fondly lingered, as she +did, over such a thought as this-- + + "There is + One great society alone on earth: + The noble Living and the noble Dead." + +There is, too, as may be found imbedded even in Wordsworth's dullest +work, many a line of the truest poetical quality, such as that on +Newton's statue in the silent Chapel of Trinity College-- + + "The marble index of a mind for ever + Voyaging through strange seas of Thought alone." + +Apart, however, from beautiful lines like this, and from many noble +passages of high reflection set to sonorous verse, this remarkable +poem is in its whole effect unique in impressive power, as a picture +of the advance of an elect and serious spirit from childhood and +school-time, through the ordeal of adolescence, through close contact +with stirring and enormous events, to that decisive stage when it has +found the sources of its strength, and is fully and finally prepared +to put its temper to the proof. + +The three Books that describe the poet's residence in France have a +special and a striking value of their own. Their presentation of the +phases of good men's minds as the successive scenes of the Revolution +unfolded themselves has real historic interest. More than this, it +is an abiding lesson to brave men how to bear themselves in hours of +public stress. It portrays exactly that mixture of persevering faith +and hope with firm and reasoned judgment, with which I like to think +that Turgot, if he had lived, would have confronted the workings +of the Revolutionary power. Great masters in many kinds have been +inspired by the French Revolution. Human genius might seem to have +exhausted itself in the burning political passion of Burke, in the +glowing melodrama of fire and tears of Carlyle, Michelet, Hugo; but +the ninth, tenth, and eleventh Books of the _Prelude_, by their +strenuous simplicity, their deep truthfulness, their slowfooted and +inexorable transition from ardent hope to dark imaginations, sense of +woes to come, sorrow for human kind, and pain of heart, breathe the +very spirit of the great catastrophe. There is none of the ephemeral +glow of the political exhortation, none of the tiresome falsity of the +dithyramb in history. Wordsworth might well wish that some dramatic +tale, endued with livelier shapes and flinging out less guarded words, +might set forth the lessons of his experience. The material was +fitting. The story of these three Books has something of the severity, +the self-control, the inexorable necessity of classic tragedy, and +like classic tragedy it has a noble end. The dregs and sour sediment +that reaction from exaggerated hope is so apt to stir in poor natures +had no place here. The French Revolution made the one crisis in +Wordsworth's mental history, the one heavy assault on his continence +of soul, and when he emerged from it all his greatness remained to +him. After a long spell of depression, bewilderment, mortification, +and sore disappointment, the old faith in new shapes was given back. + + "Nature's self, + By all varieties of human love + Assisted, led me back through opening day + To those sweet counsels between head and heart + Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace, + Which, through the later sinkings of this cause, + Hath still upheld me and upholds me now." + +It was six years after his return from France before Wordsworth +finally settled down in the scenes with which his name and the power +of his genius were to be for ever associated. During this interval it +was that two great sources of personal influence were opened to him. +He entered upon that close and beloved companionship with his sister, +which remained unbroken to the end of their days; and he first made +the acquaintance of Coleridge. The character of Dorothy Wordsworth has +long taken its place in the gallery of admirable and devoted women who +have inspired the work and the thoughts of great men. "She is a woman, +indeed," said Coleridge, "in mind I mean, and heart; for her person is +such that if you expected to see a pretty woman, you would think her +rather ordinary; if you expected to see an ordinary woman, you would +think her pretty." To the solidity, sense, and strong intelligence +of the Wordsworth stock she added a grace, a warmth, a liveliness +peculiarly her own. Her nature shines transparent in her letters, in +her truly admirable journal, and in every report that we have of her. +Wordsworth's own feelings for her, and his sense of the debt that +he owed to her faithful affection and eager mind, he has placed on +lasting record. + +The intimacy with Coleridge was, as has been said, Wordsworth's one +strong friendship, and must be counted among the highest examples of +that generous relation between great writers. Unlike in the quality +of their genius, and unlike in force of character and the fortunes of +life, they remained bound to one another by sympathies that neither +time nor harsh trial ever extinguished. Coleridge had left Cambridge +in 1794, had married, had started various unsuccessful projects for +combining the improvement of mankind with the earning of an income, +and was now settled in a small cottage at Nether Stowey, in +Somersetshire, with an acre and a half of land, from which he hoped to +raise corn and vegetables enough to support himself and his wife, as +well as to feed a couple of pigs on the refuse. Wordsworth and his +sister were settled at Racedown, near Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire. +In 1797 they moved to Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, their principal +inducement to the change being Coleridge's society. The friendship +bore fruit in the production of _Lyrical Ballads_ in 1798, mainly the +work of Wordsworth, but containing no less notable a contribution from +Coleridge than the _Ancient Mariner_. The two poets only received +thirty guineas for their work, and the publisher lost his money. +The taste of the country was not yet ripe for Wordsworth's poetic +experiment. + +Immediately after the publication of the _Lyrical Ballads_, the +two Wordsworths and Coleridge started from Yarmouth for Hamburg. +Coleridge's account in Satyrane's Letters, published In the +_Biographia Literaria_, of the voyage and of the conversation between +the two English poets and Klopstock, is worth turning to. The pastor +told them that Klopstock was the German Milton. "A very German Milton +indeed," they thought. The Wordsworths remained for four wintry months +at Goslar, in Saxony, while Coleridge went on to Ratzeburg, Göttingen, +and other places, mastering German, and "delving in the unwholesome +quicksilver mines of metaphysic depths." Wordsworth made little way +with the language, but worked diligently at his own verse. + +When they came back to England, Wordsworth and his sister found their +hearts turning with irresistible attraction to their own familiar +countryside. They at last made their way to Grasmere. The opening book +of the _Recluse_, which is published for the first time in the present +volume, describes in fine verse the emotions and the scene. The face +of this delicious vale is not quite what it was when + + "Cottages of mountain stone + Clustered like stars some few, but single most, + And lurking dimly in their shy retreats, + Or glancing at each other cheerful looks + Like separated stars with clouds between." + +But it is foolish to let ourselves be fretted by the villa, the hotel, +and the tourist. We may well be above all this in a scene that is +haunted by a great poetic shade. The substantial features and elements +of beauty still remain, the crags and woody steeps, the lake, "its one +green island and its winding shores; the multitude of little rocky +hills." Wordsworth was not the first poet to feel its fascination. +Gray visited the Lakes in the autumn of 1769, and coming into the vale +of Grasmere from the north-west, declared it to be one of the sweetest +landscapes that art ever attempted to imitate, an unsuspected paradise +of peace and rusticity. We cannot indeed compare the little crystal +mere, set like a gem in the verdant circle of the hills, with the +grandeur and glory of Lucerne, or the radiant gladness and expanse of +Como: yet it has an inspiration of its own, to delight, to soothe, to +fortify, and to refresh. + + "What want we? have we not perpetual streams, + Warm woods, and sunny hills, and fresh green fields, + And mountains not less green, and flocks and herds, + And thickets full of songsters, and the voice + Of lordly birds, an unexpected sound + Heard now and then from morn to latest eve, + Admonishing the man who walks below + Of solitude and silence in the sky. + These have we, and a thousand nooks of earth + Have also these, but nowhere else is found, + Nowhere (or is it fancy?) can be found + The one sensation that is here;...'tis the sense + Of majesty, and beauty, and repose, + A blended holiness of earth and sky, + Something that makes this individual spot, + This small abiding-place of many men, + A termination, and a last retreat, + A centre, come from wheresoe'er you will, + A whole without dependence or defect, + Made for itself, and happy in itself, + Perfect contentment, Unity entire." + +In the Grasmere vale Wordsworth lived for half a century, first in a +little cottage at the northern corner of the lake, and then (1813) in +a more commodious house at Rydal Mount at the southern end, on the +road to Ambleside. In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, of Penrith, and +this completed the circle of his felicity. Mary, he once said, was to +his ear the most musical and most truly English in sound of all the +names we have. The name was of harmonious omen. The two beautiful +sonnets that he wrote on his wife's portrait long years after, when +"morning into noon had passed, noon into eve," show how much her large +heart and humble mind had done for the blessedness of his home. + +Their life was almost more simple than that of the dalesmen their +neighbours. "It is my opinion," ran one of his oracular sayings to Sir +George Beaumont, "that a man of letters, and indeed all public men +of every pursuit, should be severely frugal." Means were found for +supporting the modest home out of two or three small windfalls +bequeathed by friends or relatives, and by the time that children had +begun to come Wordsworth was raised to affluence by obtaining the post +of distributor of stamps for Westmoreland and part of Cumberland. His +life was happily devoid of striking external incident. Its essential +part lay in meditation and composition. + +He was surrounded by friends. Southey had made a home for himself +and his beloved library a few miles over the hills, at Keswick. De +Quincey, with his clever brains and shallow character, took up his +abode in the cottage which Wordsworth had first lived in at Grasmere. +Coleridge, born the most golden genius of them all, came to and fro +in those fruitless unhappy wanderings which consumed a life that once +promised to be so rich in blessing and in glory. In later years Dr. +Arnold built a house at Fox How, attracted by the Wordsworths and the +scenery; and other lesser lights came into the neighbourhood. "Our +intercourse with the Wordsworths," Arnold wrote on the occasion of his +first visit in 1832, "was one of the brightest spots of all; nothing +could exceed their friendliness, and my almost daily walks with him +were things not to be forgotten. Once and once only we had a good +fight about the Reform Bill during a walk up Greenhead Ghyll to see +the unfinished sheep-fold, recorded in _Michael_. But I am sure that +our political disagreement did not at all interfere with our enjoyment +of each other's society; for I think that in the great principles of +things we agreed very entirely." It ought to be possible, for that +matter, for magnanimous men, even if they do not agree in the great +principles of things, to keep pleasant terms with one another for more +than one afternoon's walk. Many pilgrims came, and the poet seems to +have received them with cheerful equanimity. Emerson called upon him +in 1833, and found him plain, elderly, whitehaired, not prepossessing. +"He led me out into his garden, and showed me the gravel walk in +which thousands of his lines were composed. He had just returned from +Staffa, and within three days had made three sonnets on Fingal's Cave, +and was composing a fourth when he was called in to see me. He said, +'If you are interested in my verses, perhaps you will like to hear +these lines.' I gladly assented, and he recollected himself for a few +moments, and then stood forth and repeated, one after the other, the +three entire sonnets with great animation. This recitation was so +unlooked for and surprising--he, the old Wordsworth, standing apart, +and reciting to me in a garden-walk, like a schoolboy declaiming--that +I at first was near to laugh; but recollecting myself, that I had come +thus far to see a poet, and he was chanting poems to me, I saw that he +was right and I was wrong, and gladly gave myself up to hear. He never +was in haste to publish; partly because he corrected a good deal.... +He preferred such of his poems as touched the affections to any +others; for whatever is didactic--what theories of society, and so +on--might perish quickly, but whatever combined a truth with an +affection was good to-day and good for ever" (_English Traits_, ch. +i.). + +Wordsworth was far too wise to encourage the pilgrims to turn into +abiding sojourners in his chosen land. Clough has described how, when +he was a lad of eighteen (1837), with a mild surprise he heard the +venerable poet correct the tendency to exaggerate the importance of +flowers and fields, lakes, waterfalls, and scenery. "People come to +the Lakes," said Wordsworth, "and are charmed with a particular spot, +and build a house, and find themselves discontented, forgetting that +these things are only the sauce and garnish of life." + +In spite of a certain hardness and stiffness, Wordsworth must have +been an admirable companion for anybody capable of true elevation +of mind. The unfortunate Haydon says, with his usual accent of +enthusiasm, after a saunter at Hampstead, "Never did any man so +beguile the time as Wordsworth. His purity of heart, his kindness, +his soundness of principle, his information, his knowledge, and the +intense and eager feelings with which he pours forth all he knows, +affect, interest, and enchant one" (_Autobiog._ i. 298, 384). The +diary of Crabb Robinson, the correspondence of Charles Lamb, the +delightful autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher, and much less delightfully +the autobiography of Harriet Martineau, all help us to realise by many +a trait Wordsworth's daily walk and conversation. Of all the glimpses +that we get, from these and many other sources, none are more pleasing +than those of the intercourse between Wordsworth and Scott. They were +the two manliest and most wholesome men of genius of their time. They +held different theories of poetic art, but their affection and esteem +for one another never varied, from the early days when Scott and his +young wife visited Wordsworth in his cottage at Grasmere, down to that +sorrowful autumn evening (1831) when Wordsworth and his daughter went +to Abbotsford to bid farewell to the wondrous potentate, then just +about to start on his vain search for new life, followed by "the might +of the whole earth's good wishes." + +Of Wordsworth's demeanour and physical presence, De Quincey's account, +silly, coxcombical, and vulgar, is the worst; Carlyle's, as might be +expected from his magical gift of portraiture, is the best. Carlyle +cared little for Wordsworth's poetry, had a real respect for the +antique greatness of his devotion to Poverty and Peasanthood, +recognised his strong intellectual powers and strong character, but +thought him rather dull, bad-tempered, unproductive, and almost +wearisome, and found his divine reflections and unfathomabilities +stinted, scanty, uncertain, palish. From these and many other +disparagements, one gladly passes to the picture of the poet as he was +in the flesh at a breakfast-party given by Henry Taylor, at a +tavern in St. James's Street, in 1840. The subject of the talk was +Literature, its laws, practices, and observances:--"He talked well in +his way; with veracity, easy brevity and force; as a wise tradesman +would of his tools and workshop, and as no unwise one could. His voice +was good, frank, and sonorous, though practically clear, distinct, +and forcible, rather than melodious; the tone of him business-like, +sedately confident; no discourtesy, yet no anxiety about being +courteous: a fine wholesome rusticity, fresh as his mountain breezes, +sat well on the stalwart veteran, and on all he said and did. You +would have said he was a usually taciturn man, glad to unlock himself +to audience sympathetic and intelligent, when such offered itself. His +face bore marks of much, not always peaceful, meditation; the look of +it not bland or benevolent, so much as close, impregnable, and hard; +a man _multa tacere loquive paratus_, in a world where he had +experienced no lack of contradictions as he strode along! The eyes +were not very brilliant, but they had a quiet clearness; there +was enough of brow, and well shaped; rather too much of cheek +('horse-face,' I have heard satirists say), face of squarish shape and +decidedly longish, as I think the head itself was (its 'length' going +horizontal); he was large-boned, lean, but still firm-knit, tall, and +strong-looking when he stood; a right good old steel-gray figure, with +rustic simplicity and dignity about him, and a vivacious _strength_ +looking through him which might have suited one of those old +steel-gray _Markgrafs_ [Graf = _Grau_,'Steel-gray'] whom Henry the +Fowler set up to ward the 'marches,' and do battle with the intrusive +heathen, in a stalwart and judicious manner." + +Whoever might be his friends within an easy walk, or dwelling afar, +the poet knew how to live his own life. The three fine sonnets headed +_Personal Talk_, so well known, so warmly accepted in our better +hours, so easily forgotten in hours not so good between pleasant +levities and grinding preoccupations, show us how little his +neighbours had to do with the poet's genial seasons of "smooth +passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought." + +For those days Wordsworth was a considerable traveller. Between 1820 +and 1837 he made long tours abroad, to Switzerland, to Holland, to +Belgium, to Italy. In other years he visited Wales, Scotland, +and Ireland. He was no mechanical tourist, admiring to order and +marvelling by regulation; and he confessed to Mrs. Fletcher that he +fell asleep before the Venus de Medici at Florence. But the product of +these wanderings is to be seen in some of his best sonnets, such as +the first on Calais Beach, the famous one on Westminster Bridge, the +second of the two on Bruges, where "the Spirit of Antiquity mounts to +the seat of grace within the mind--a deeper peace than that in deserts +found"--and in some other fine pieces. + +In weightier matters than mere travel, Wordsworth showed himself no +mere recluse. He watched the great affairs then being transacted in +Europe with the ardent interest of his youth, and his sonnets to +Liberty, commemorating the attack by France upon the Swiss, the fate +of Venice, the struggle of Hofer, the resistance of Spain, give no +unworthy expression to some of the best of the many and varied motives +that animated England in her long struggle with Bonaparte. The sonnet +to Toussaint l'Ouverture concludes with some of the noblest lines in +the English language. The strong verses on the expected death of Mr. +Fox are alive with a magnanimous public spirit that goes deeper than +the accidents of political opinion. In his young days he had sent Fox +a copy of the _Lyrical Ballads_, with a long letter indicating his +sense of Fox's great and generous qualities. Pitt he admits that he +could never regard with complacency. "I believe him, however," he +said, "to have been as disinterested a man, and as true a lover of his +country, as it was possible for so ambitious a man to be. His first +wish (though probably unknown to himself) was that his country should +prosper under his administration; his next that it should prosper. +Could the order of these wishes have been reversed, Mr. Pitt would +have avoided many of the grievous mistakes into which, I think, he +fell." "You always went away from Burke," he once told Haydon, "with +your mind filled; from Fox with your feelings excited; and from Pitt +with wonder at his having had the power to make the worse appear the +better reason." + +Of the poems composed under the influence of that best kind of +patriotism which ennobles local attachments by associating them with +the lasting elements of moral grandeur and heroism it is needless to +speak. They have long taken their place as something higher even than +literary classics. As years began to dull the old penetration of a +mind which had once approached, like other youths, the shield of human +nature from the golden side, and had been eager to "clear a passage +for just government," Wordsworth lost his interest in progress. +Waterloo may be taken for the date at which his social grasp began to +fail, and with it his poetic glow. He opposed Catholic emancipation as +stubbornly as Eldon, and the Reform Bill as bitterly as Croker. For +the practical reforms of his day, even in education, for which he +had always spoken up, Wordsworth was not a force. His heart clung to +England as he found it. "This concrete attachment to the scenes about +him," says Mr. Myers, "had always formed an important element In his +character. Ideal politics, whether in Church or State, had never +occupied his mind, which sought rather to find its informing +principles embodied in the England of his own day." This flowed, we +may suppose, from Burke. In a passage in the seventh Book of the +_Prelude_, he describes, in lines a little prosaic but quite true, +how he sat, saw, and heard, not unthankful nor uninspired, the great +orator + + "While he forewarns, denounces, launches forth + Against all systems built on abstract rights." + +The Church, as conceived by the spirit of Laud, and described by +Hooker's voice, was the great symbol of the union of high and stable +institution with thought, faith, right living, and "sacred religion, +mother of form and fear." As might be expected from such a point of +view, the church pieces, to which Wordsworth gave so much thought, +are, with few exceptions, such as the sonnet on _Seathwaite Chapel_, +formal, hard, and very thinly enriched with spiritual graces or +unction. They are ecclesiastical, not religious. In religious +poetry, the Church of England finds her most affecting voice, not in +Wordsworth, but in the _Lyra Innocentium_ and the _Christian Year_. +Wordsworth abounds in the true devotional cast of mind, but less than +anywhere else does it show in his properly ecclesiastical verse. + +It was perhaps natural that when events no longer inspired him, +Wordsworth should have turned with new feelings towards the classic, +and discovered a virtue in classic form to which his own method had +hitherto made him a little blind. Towards the date of Waterloo, he +read over again some of the Latin writers, in attempting to prepare +his son for college. He even at a later date set about a translation +of the _Aeneid_ of Virgil, but the one permanent result of the classic +movement in his mind is _Laodamia_. Earlier in life he had translated +some books of Ariosto at the rate of a hundred lines a day, and he +even attempted fifteen of the sonnets of Michael Angelo, but so much +meaning is compressed into so little room in those pieces that he +found the difficulty insurmountable. He had a high opinion of the +resources of the Italian language. The poetry of Dante and of Michael +Angelo, he said, proves that if there be little majesty and strength +in Italian verse, the fault is in the authors and not in the tongue. + +Our last glimpse of Wordsworth in the full and peculiar power of his +genius is the Ode _Composed on an evening of extraordinary splendour +and beauty_. It is the one exception to the critical dictum that all +his good work was done in the decade between 1798 and 1808. He lived +for more than thirty years after this fine composition. But he added +nothing more of value to the work that he had already done. The public +appreciation of it was very slow. The most influential among the +critics were for long hostile and contemptuous. Never at any time did +Wordsworth come near to such popularity as that of Scott or of Byron. +Nor was this all. For many years most readers of poetry thought more +even of _Lalla Rookh_ than of the _Excursion_. While Scott, Byron, and +Moore were receiving thousands of pounds, Wordsworth received nothing. +Between 1830 and 1840 the current turned in Wordsworth's direction, +and when he received the honour of a doctor's degree at the Oxford +Commemoration in 1839, the Sheldonian theatre made him the hero of the +day. In the spring of 1843 Southey died, and Sir Robert Peel pressed +Wordsworth to succeed him in the office of Poet-Laureate. "It is a +tribute of respect," said the Minister, "justly due to the first +of living poets." But almost immediately the light of his common +popularity was eclipsed by Tennyson, as it had earlier been eclipsed +by Scott, by Byron, and in some degree by Shelley. Yet his fame among +those who know, among competent critics with a right to judge, to-day +stands higher than it ever stood. Only two writers have contributed so +many lines of daily popularity and application. In the handbooks of +familiar quotations Wordsworth fills more space than anybody save +Shakespeare and Pope. He exerted commanding influence over great minds +that have powerfully affected our generation. "I never before," said +George Eliot in the days when her character was forming itself (1839), +"met with so many of my own feelings expressed just as I should like +them," and her reverence for Wordsworth remained to the end. J.S. Mill +has described how important an event in his life was his first reading +of Wordsworth. "What made his poems a medicine for my state of mind +was that they expressed not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling +and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. I +needed to be made to feel that there was real permanent happiness in +tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without +turning away from, but with greatly increased interest in the common +feelings and common destiny of human beings" _(Autobiog_., 148). This +effect of Wordsworth on Mill is the very illustration of the phrase +of a later poet of our own day, one of the most eminent and by his +friends best beloved of all those whom Wordsworth had known, and on +whom he poured out a generous portion of his own best spirit:-- + + Time may restore us in his course + Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force. + But where will Europe's latter hour + Again find Wordsworth's healing power? + +It is the power for which Matthew Arnold found this happy designation +that compensates us for that absence of excitement of which the +heedless complain in Wordsworth's verse--excitement so often meaning +mental fever, hysterics, distorted passion, or other fitful agitation +of the soul. + +Pretensions are sometimes advanced as to Wordsworth's historic +position, which involve a mistaken view of literary history. Thus, we +are gravely told by the too zealous Wordsworthian that the so-called +poets of the eighteenth century were simply men of letters; they had +various accomplishments and great general ability, but their thoughts +were expressed in prose, or in mere metrical diction, which passed +current as poetry without being so. Yet Burns belonged wholly to +the eighteenth century (1759-96), and no verse-writer is so little +literary as Burns, so little prosaic; no writer more truly poetic in +melody, diction, thought, feeling, and spontaneous song. It was Burns +who showed Wordsworth's own youth "How verse may build a princely +throne on humble truth." Nor can we understand how Cowper is to be set +down as simply a man of letters. We may, too, if we please, deny the +name of poetry to Collins's tender and pensive _Ode to Evening_; +but we can only do this on critical principles, which would end in +classing the author of _Lycidas_ and _Comus_, of the _Allegro_ and +_Penseroso_, as a writer of various accomplishments and great general +ability, but at bottom simply a man of letters and by no means a +poet. It is to Gray, however, that we must turn for the distinctive +character of the best poetry of the eighteenth century. With +reluctance we will surrender the Pindaric Odes, though not without +risking the observation that some of Wordsworth's own criticism on +Gray is as narrow and as much beside the mark as Jeffrey's on the +_Excursion_. But the _Ode on Eton College_ is not to have grudged to +it the noble name and true quality of poetry, merely because, as +one of Johnson's most unfortunate criticisms expresses it, the ode +suggests nothing to Gray which every beholder does not equally think +and feel. To find beautiful and pathetic language, set to harmonious +numbers, for the common impressions of meditative minds, is no small +part of the poet's task. That part has never been achieved by any poet +in any tongue with more complete perfection and success than in the +immortal _Elegy_, of which we may truly say that it has for nearly +a century and a half given to greater multitudes of men more of the +exquisite pleasure of poetry than any other single piece in all the +glorious treasury of English verse. It abounds, as Johnson says, "with +images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which +every bosom returns an echo." These moving commonplaces of the human +lot Gray approached through books and studious contemplation; not, as +Wordsworth approached them, by daily contact with the lives and habit +of men and the forces and magical apparitions of external nature. But +it is a narrow view to suppose that the men of the eighteenth century +did not look through the literary conventions of the day to the truths +of life and nature behind them. The conventions have gone, or are +changed, and we are all glad of it. Wordsworth effected a +wholesome deliverance when he attacked the artificial diction, the +personifications, the allegories, the antitheses, the barren rhymes +and monotonous metres, which the reigning taste had approved. But +while welcoming the new freshness, sincerity, and direct and fertile +return on nature, that is a very bad reason why we should disparage +poetry so genial, so simple, so humane, and so perpetually pleasing, +as the best verse of the rationalistic century. + +What Wordsworth did was to deal with themes that had been partially +handled by precursors and contemporaries, in a larger and more +devoted spirit, with wider amplitude of illustration, and with the +steadfastness and persistency of a religious teacher. "Every great +poet is a teacher," he said; "I wish to be considered as a teacher or +as nothing." It may be doubted whether his general proposition is at +all true, and whether it is any more the essential business of a poet +to be a teacher than it was the business of Handel, Beethoven, or +Mozart. They attune the soul to high states of feeling; the direct +lesson is often as nought. But of himself no view could be more sound. +He is a teacher, or he is nothing. "To console the afflicted; to add +sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the +young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and +therefore to become more actively and sincerely virtuous"--that was +his vocation; to show that the mutual adaptation of the external +world and the inner mind is able to shape a paradise from the "simple +produce of the common day"--that was his high argument. + +Simplification was, as I have said elsewhere, the keynote of the +revolutionary time. Wordsworth was its purest exponent, but he had one +remarkable peculiarity, which made him, in England at least, not only +its purest but its greatest. While leading men to pierce below the +artificial and conventional to the natural man and natural life, as +Rousseau did, Wordsworth still cherished the symbols, the traditions, +and the great institutes of social order. Simplification of life and +thought and feeling was to be accomplished without summoning up the +dangerous spirit of destruction and revolt. Wordsworth lived with +nature, yet waged no angry railing war against society. The chief +opposing force to Wordsworth in literature was Byron. Whatever he was +in his heart, Byron in his work was drawn by all the forces of his +character, genius, and circumstances to the side of violent social +change, and hence the extraordinary popularity of Byron in the +continental camp of emancipation. Communion with nature is in +Wordsworth's doctrine the school of duty. With Byron nature is the +mighty consoler and the vindicator of the rebel. + +A curious thing, which we may note in passing, is that Wordsworth, who +clung fervently to the historic foundations of society as it stands, +was wholly indifferent to history; while Byron, on the contrary, as +the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_ is enough to show, had at least +the sentiment of history in as great a degree as any poet that ever +lived, and has given to it by far the most magnificent expression. No +doubt, it was history on its romantic, rather than its philosophic or +its political side. + +On Wordsworth's exact position in the hierarchy of sovereign poets, +a deep difference of estimate still divides even the most excellent +judges. Nobody now dreams of placing him so low as the _Edinburgh +Reviewers_ did, nor so high as Southey placed him when he wrote to +the author of _Philip van Artevelde_ in 1829 that a greater poet than +Wordsworth there never has been nor ever will be. An extravagance of +this kind was only the outburst of generous friendship. Coleridge +deliberately placed Wordsworth "nearest of all modern writers to +Shakespeare and Milton, yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and his +own." Arnold, himself a poet of rare and memorable quality, declares +his firm belief that the poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after +that of Shakespeare and Milton, undoubtedly the most considerable in +our language from the Elizabethan age to the present time. Dryden, +Pope, Gray, Cowper, Goldsmith, Burns, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, +Keats--"Wordsworth's name deserves to stand, and will finally stand, +above them all." Mr. Myers, also a poet, and the author of a volume on +Wordsworth as much distinguished by insight as by admirable literary +grace and power, talks of "a Plato, a Dante, a Wordsworth," all three +in a breath, as stars of equal magnitude in the great spiritual +firmament. To Mr. Swinburne, on the contrary, all these panegyrical +estimates savour of monstrous and intolerable exaggeration. Amid these +contentions of celestial minds it will be safest to content ourselves +with one or two plain observations in the humble positive degree, +without hurrying into high and final comparatives and superlatives. + +One admission is generally made at the outset. Whatever definition +of poetry we fix upon, whether that it is the language of passion or +imagination formed into regular numbers; or, with Milton, that it +should be "simple, sensuous, impassioned;" in any case there are great +tracts in Wordsworth which, by no definition and on no terms, can be +called poetry. If we say with Shelley, that poetry is what redeems +from decay the visitations of the divinity in man, and is the record +of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds, then +are we bound to agree that Wordsworth records too many moments that +are not specially good or happy, that he redeems from decay frequent +visitations that are not from any particular divinity in man, and +treats them all as very much on a level. Mr. Arnold is undoubtedly +right in his view that, to be receivable as a classic, Wordsworth must +be relieved of a great deal of the poetical baggage that now encumbers +him. + +The faults and hindrances in Wordsworth's poetry are obvious to every +reader. For one thing, the intention to instruct, to improve the +occasion, is too deliberate and too hardly pressed. "We hate poetry," +said Keats, "that has a palpable design upon us. Poetry should be +great and unobtrusive." Charles Lamb's friendly remonstrance on one of +Wordsworth's poems is applicable to more of them: "The instructions +conveyed in it are too direct; they don't slide into the mind of the +reader while he is imagining no such matter." + +Then, except the sonnets and half a score of the pieces where he +reaches his topmost height, there are few of his poems that are not +too long, and it often happens even that no degree of reverence for +the teacher prevents one from finding passages of almost unbearable +prolixity. A defence was once made by a great artist for what, to the +unregenerate mind, seemed the merciless tardiness of movement in one +of Goethe's romances, that it was meant to impress on his readers the +slow march and the tedium of events in human life. The lenient reader +may give Wordsworth the advantage of the same ingenious explanation. +We may venture on a counsel which is more to the point, in warning the +student that not seldom in these blocks of afflicting prose, suddenly +we come upon some of the profoundest and most beautiful passages that +the poet ever wrote. In deserts of preaching we find, almost within +sight of one another, delightful oases of purest poetry. Besides being +prolix, Wordsworth is often cumbrous; has often no flight; is not +liquid, is not musical. He is heavy and self-conscious with the burden +of his message. How much at his best he is, when, as in the admirable +and truly Wordsworthian poem of _Michael_, he spares us a sermon and +leaves us the story. Then, he is apt to wear a somewhat stiff-cut +garment of solemnity, when not solemnity, but either sternness or +sadness, which are so different things, would seem the fitter mood. In +truth Wordsworth hardly knows how to be stern, as Dante or Milton was +stern; nor has he the note of plangent sadness which strikes the ear +in men as morally inferior to him as Rousseau, Keats, Shelley, or +Coleridge; nor has he the Olympian air with which Goethe delivered +sage oracles. This mere solemnity is specially oppressive in some +parts of the _Excursion_--the performance where we best see the whole +poet, and where the poet most absolutely identifies himself with his +subject. Yet, even in the midst of these solemn discoursings, he +suddenly introduces an episode in which his peculiar power is at its +height. There is no better instance of this than the passage in the +second Book of the _Excursion_, where he describes with a fidelity, at +once realistic and poetic, the worn-out almsman, his patient life and +sorry death, and then the unimaginable vision in the skies, as they +brought the ancient man down through dull mists from the mountain +ridge to die. These hundred and seventy lines are like the landscape +in which they were composed; you can no more appreciate the beauty of +the one by a single or a second perusal, than you can the other in a +scamper through the vale on the box of the coach. But any lover of +poetry who will submit himself with leisure and meditation to the +impressions of the story, the pity of it, the naturalness of it, the +glory and the mystic splendours of the indifferent heavens, will feel +that here indeed is the true strength which out of the trivial raises +expression for the pathetic and the sublime. + +Apart, however, from excess of prolixity and of solemnity, can it be +really contended that in purely poetic quality--in aerial freedom and +space, in radiant purity of light or depth and variety of colour, in +penetrating and subtle sweetness of music, in supple mastery of the +instrument, in vivid spontaneity of imagination, in clean-cut sureness +of touch--Wordsworth is not surpassed by men who were below him in +weight and greatness? Even in his own field of the simple and the +pastoral has he touched so sweet and spontaneous a note as Burns's +_Daisy_, or the _Mouse_? When men seek immersion or absorption in the +atmosphere of pure poesy, without lesson or moral, or anything but +delight of fancy and stir of imagination, they will find him less +congenial to their mood than poets not worthy to loose the latchet of +his shoe in the greater elements of his art. In all these comparisons, +it is not merely Wordsworth's theme and motive and dominant note that +are different; the skill of hand is different, and the musical ear and +the imaginative eye. + +To maintain or to admit so much as this, however, is not to say the +last word. The question is whether Wordsworth, however unequal to +Shelley in lyric quality, to Coleridge or to Keats in imaginative +quality, to Burns in tenderness, warmth, and that humour which is so +nearly akin to pathos, to Byron in vividness and energy, yet possesses +excellences of his own which place him in other respects above +these master-spirits of his time. If the question is to be answered +affirmatively, it is clear that only in one direction must we look. +The trait that really places Wordsworth on an eminence above his +poetic contemporaries, and ranks him, as the ages are likely to rank +him, on a line just short of the greatest of all time, is his direct +appeal to will and conduct. "There is volition and self-government in +every line of his poetry, and his best thoughts come from his steady +resistance to the ebb and flow of ordinary desires and regrets. He +contests the ground inch by inch with all despondent and indolent +humours, and often, too, with movements of inconsiderate and wasteful +joy" (_R.H. Hutton_). That would seem to be his true distinction and +superiority over men to whom more had been given of fire, passion, and +ravishing music. Those who deem the end of poetry to be intoxication, +fever, or rainbow dreams, can care little for Wordsworth. If its +end be not intoxication, but on the contrary a search from the wide +regions of imagination and feeling for elements of composure deep and +pure, and of self-government in a far loftier sense than the merely +prudential, then Wordsworth has a gift of his own in which he was +approached by no poet of his time. Scott's sane and humane genius, +with much the same aims, yet worked with different methods. He once +remonstrated with Lockhart for being too apt to measure things by some +reference to literature. "I have read books enough," said Scott, +"and observed and conversed with enough of eminent and splendidly +cultivated minds; but I assure you, I have heard higher sentiments +from the lips of poor uneducated men and women, when exerting +the spirit of severe yet gentle heroism under difficulties and +afflictions, or speaking their simple thoughts as to circumstances in +the lot of friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the +pages of the Bible. We shall never learn to respect our real calling +and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as +moonshine compared with the education of the heart." This admirable +deliverance of Scott's is, so far as it goes, eminently Wordsworthian; +but Wordsworth went higher and further, striving not only to move the +sympathies of the heart, but to enlarge the understanding, and exalt +and widen the spiritual vision, all with the aim of leading us towards +firmer and austerer self-control. + +Certain favourers of Wordsworth answer our question with a triumphant +affirmative, on the strength of some ethical, or metaphysical, or +theological system which they believe themselves to find in him. But +is it credible that poets can permanently live by systems? Or is not +system, whether ethical, theological, or philosophical, the heavy lead +of poetry? Lucretius is indisputably one of the mighty poets of the +world, but Epicureanism is not the soul of that majestic muse. So with +Wordsworth. Thought is, on the whole, predominant over feeling in his +verse, but a prevailing atmosphere of deep and solemn reflection does +not make a system. His theology and his ethics, and his so-called +Platonical metaphysics, have as little to do with the power of his +poetry over us, as the imputed Arianism or any other aspect of the +theology of _Paradise Lost_ has to do with the strength and the +sublimity of Milton, and his claim to a high perpetual place in the +hearts of men. It is best to be entirely sceptical as to the existence +of system and ordered philosophy in Wordsworth. When he tells us that +"one impulse from a vernal wood may teach you more of man, of moral +evil and of good, than all the sages can," such a proposition cannot +be seriously taken as more than a half-playful sally for the benefit +of some too bookish friend. No impulse from a vernal wood can teach us +anything at all of moral evil and of good. When he says that it is his +faith, "that every flower enjoys the air it breathes," and that +when the budding twigs spread out their fan to catch the air, he is +compelled to think "that there was pleasure there," he expresses a +charming poetic fancy and no more, and it is idle to pretend to see +in it the fountain of a system of philosophy. In the famous _Ode on +Intimations of Immortality_, the poet doubtless does point to a set of +philosophic ideas, more or less complete; but the thought from which +he sets out, that our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, and that +we are less and less able to perceive the visionary gleam, less and +less alive to the glory and the dream of external nature, as infancy +recedes further from us, is, with all respect for the declaration of +Mr. Ruskin to the contrary, contrary to notorious fact, experience, +and truth. It is a beggarly conception, no doubt, to judge as if +poetry should always be capable of a prose rendering; but it is at +least fatal to the philosophic pretension of a line or a stanza if, +when it is fairly reduced to prose, the prose discloses that it is +nonsense, and there is at least one stanza of the great _Ode_ that +this doom would assuredly await. Wordsworth's claim, his special gift, +his lasting contribution, lies in the extraordinary strenuousness, +sincerity, and insight with which he first idealises and glorifies the +vast universe around us, and then makes of it, not a theatre on which +men play their parts, but an animate presence, intermingling with +our works, pouring its companionable spirit about us, and "breathing +grandeur upon the very humblest face of human life." This twofold and +conjoint performance, consciously and expressly--perhaps only too +consciously--undertaken by a man of strong inborn sensibility to +natural impressions, and systematically carried out in a lifetime +of brooding meditation and active composition, is Wordsworth's +distinguishing title to fame and gratitude. In "words that speak of +nothing more than what we are," he revealed new faces of nature; he +dwelt on men as they are, men themselves; he strove to do that which +has been declared to be the true secret of force in art, to make the +trivial serve the expression of the sublime. "Wordsworth's distinctive +work," Mr. Ruskin has justly said (_Modern Painters_, iii. 293), "was +a war with pomp and pretence, and a display of the majesty of simple +feelings and humble hearts, together with high reflective truth in his +analysis of the courses of politics and ways of men; without these, +his love of nature would have been comparatively worthless." + +Yet let us not forget that he possessed the gift which to an artist is +the very root of the matter. He saw Nature truly, he saw her as she +is, and with his own eyes. The critic whom I have just quoted boldly +pronounces him "the keenest eyed of all modern poets for what is deep +and essential in nature." When he describes the daisy, casting the +beauty of its star-shaped shadow on the smooth stone, or the boundless +depth of the abysses of the sky, or the clouds made vivid as fire by +the rays of light, every touch is true, not the copying of a literary +phrase, but the result of direct observation. + +It is true that Nature has sides to which Wordsworth was not +energetically alive--Nature "red in tooth and claw." He was not +energetically alive to the blind and remorseless cruelties of life +and the world. When in early spring he heard the blended notes of the +birds, and saw the budding twigs and primrose tufts, it grieved him, +amid such fair works of nature, to think "what man has made of man." +As if nature itself, excluding the conscious doings of that portion of +nature which is the human race, and excluding also nature's own share +in the making of poor Man, did not abound in raking cruelties and +horrors of her own. "_Edel sei der Mensch_," sang Goethe in a noble +psalm, "_Hulfreich und gut, Denn das allein unterscheidet ihn, Von +allen Wesen die wir kennen._" "_Let man be noble, helpful, and good, +for that alone distinguishes him from all beings that we know. No +feeling has nature: to good and bad gives the sun his light, and for +the evildoer as for the best shine moon and stars_." That the +laws which nature has fixed for our lives are mighty and eternal, +Wordsworth comprehended as fully as Goethe, but not that they are +laws pitiless as iron. Wordsworth had not rooted in him the sense of +Fate--of the inexorable sequences of things, of the terrible chain +that so often binds an awful end to some slight and trivial beginning. + +This optimism or complacency in Wordsworth will be understood if we +compare his spirit and treatment with that of the illustrious French +painter whose subjects and whose life were in some ways akin to his +own. Millet, like Wordsworth, went to the realities of humble life for +his inspiration. The peasant of the great French plains and the forest +was to him what the Cumbrian dalesman was to Wordsworth. But he saw +the peasant differently. "You watch figures in the fields," said +Millet, "digging and delving with spade or pick. You see one of them +from time to time straightening his loins, and wiping his face with +the back of his hand. Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy +brow. Is that the gay lively labour in which some people would have +you believe? Yet it is there that for me you must seek true humanity +and great poetry. They say that I deny the charm of the country; I +find in it far more than charms, I find infinite splendours. I see +in it, just as they do, the little flowers of which Christ said that +Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of them. I see +clearly enough the sun as he spreads his splendour amid the clouds. +None the less do I see on the plain, all smoking, the horses at the +plough. I see in some stony corner a man all worn out, whose _han han_ +have been heard ever since daybreak--trying to straighten himself a +moment to get breath." The hardness, the weariness, the sadness, the +ugliness, out of which Millet's consummate skill made pictures that +affect us like strange music, were to Wordsworth not the real part of +the thing. They were all absorbed in the thought of nature as a whole, +wonderful, mighty, harmonious, and benign. + +We are not called upon to place great men of his stamp as if they were +collegians in a class-list. It is best to take with thankfulness and +admiration from each man what he has to give. What Wordsworth does +is to assuage, to reconcile, to fortify. He has not Shakespeare's +richness and vast compass, nor Milton's sublime and unflagging +strength, nor Dante's severe, vivid, ardent force of vision. Probably +he is too deficient in clear beauty of form and in concentrated power +to be classed by the ages among these great giants. We cannot be sure. +We may leave it to the ages to decide. But Wordsworth, at any rate, by +his secret of bringing the infinite into common life, as he evokes +it out of common life, has the skill to lead us, so long as we yield +ourselves to his influence, into inner moods of settled peace, +to touch "the depth and not the tumult of the soul," to give us +quietness, strength, steadfastness, and purpose, whether to do or to +endure. All art or poetry that has the effect of breathing into men's +hearts, even if it be only for a space, these moods of settled +peace, and strongly confirming their judgment and their will for +good,--whatever limitations may be found besides, however prosaic may +be some or much of the detail,--is great art and noble poetry, and the +creator of it will always hold, as Wordsworth holds, a sovereign title +to the reverence and gratitude of mankind. + + + + +APHORISMS.[1] + +[Footnote 1: An Address delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical +Institution, _November_ 11, 1887.] + + +Since I accepted the honour of the invitation to deliver the opening +address of your course, I have found no small difficulty in settling +down on an appropriate subject. I half wrote a discourse on modern +democracy,--how the rule of numbers is to be reconciled with the rule +of sage judgment, and the passion for liberty and equality is to be +reconciled with sovereign regard for law, authority, and order; and +how our hopes for the future are to be linked to wise reverence for +tradition and the past. But your secretary had emphatically warned me +off all politics, and I feared that however carefully I might be on my +guard against every reference to the burning questions of the hour, +yet the clever eyes of political charity would be sure to spy out +party innuendoes in the most innocent deliverances of purely abstract +philosophy. Then for a day or two I lingered over a subject in a +little personal incident. One Saturday night last summer I found +myself dining with an illustrious statesman on the Welsh border, and +on the Monday following I was seated under the acacias by the shore of +the Lake of Geneva, where Gibbon, a hundred years ago almost to the +day, had, according to his own famous words, laid down his pen after +writing the last lines of his last page, and there under a serene sky, +with the silver orb of the moon reflected from the waters, and amid +the silence of nature, felt his joy at the completion of an immortal +task, dashed by melancholy that he had taken everlasting leave of an +old and agreeable companion. It was natural that I should meditate on +the contrast that might be drawn between great literary performance +and great political performance, between the making of history and the +writing of it,--a contrast containing matter enough not only for one, +but for a whole series of edifying and instructive discourses. But +there were difficulties here too, and the edifying discourse remains, +like many another, incomplete. + +So I am going to ask you after all to pass a tranquil hour with me in +pondering a quiet chapter in the history of books. There is a loud cry +in these days for clues that shall guide the plain man through the +vast bewildering labyrinth of printed volumes. Everybody calls for +hints what to read, and what to look out for in reading. Like all the +rest of us, I have often been asked for a list of the hundred best +books, and the other day a gentleman wrote to me to give him by return +of post that far more difficult thing--list of the three best books in +the world. Both the hundred and the three are a task far too high for +me; but perhaps you will let me try to indicate what, among so much +else, is one of the things best worth hunting for in books, and one +of the quarters of the library where you may get on the scent. Though +tranquil, it will be my fault if you find the hour dull, for this +particular literary chapter concerns life, manners, society, conduct, +human nature, our aims, our ideals, and all besides that is most +animated and most interesting in man's busy chase after happiness and +wisdom. + +What is wisdom? That sovereign word, as has often been pointed out, is +used for two different things. It may stand for knowledge, learning, +science, systematic reasoning; or it may mean, as Coleridge has +defined it, common sense in an uncommon degree; that is to say, the +unsystematic truths that come to shrewd, penetrating, and observant +minds, from their own experience of life and their daily commerce with +the world, and that is called the wisdom of life, or the wisdom of the +world, or the wisdom of time and the ages. The Greeks had two words +for these two kinds of wisdom: one for the wise who scaled the heights +of thought and knowledge; another for those who, without logical +method, technical phraseology, or any of the parade of the Schools, +whether "Academics old and new, Cynic, Peripatetic, the sect +Epicurean, or Stoic severe," held up the mirror to human nature, and +took good counsel as to the ordering of character and of life. + +Mill, in his little fragment on Aphorisms, has said that in the first +kind of wisdom every age in which science flourishes ought to surpass +the ages that have gone before. In knowledge and methods of science +each generation starts from the point at which its predecessor left +off; but in the wisdom of life, in the maxims of good sense applied to +public and to private conduct, there is, said Mill, a pretty nearly +equal amount in all ages. + +If this seem doubtful to any one, let him think how many of the +shrewdest moralities of human nature are to be found in writings as +ancient as the apocryphal Book of the Wisdom of Solomon and of Jesus +the Son of Sirach; as _Aesop's Fables_; as the oracular sentences that +are to be found in Homer and the Greek dramatists and orators; as +all that immense host of wise and pithy saws which, to the number +of between four and five thousand, were collected from all ancient +literature by the industry of Erasmus in his great folio of Adages. As +we turn over these pages of old time, we almost feel that those are +right who tell us that everything has been said, that the thing that +has been is the thing that shall be, and there is no new thing under +the sun. Even so, we are happily not bound to Schopenhauer's gloomy +conclusion (_Werke_, v. 332), that "The wise men of all times have +always said the same, and the fools, that is the immense majority, of +all times have always done the same, that is to say, the opposite of +what the wise have said; and that is why Voltaire tells us that we +shall leave this world just as stupid and as bad as we found it when +we came here." + +It is natural that this second kind of wisdom, being detached and +unsystematic, should embody itself in the short and pregnant form of +proverb, sentence, maxim, and aphorism. The essence of aphorism is the +compression of a mass of thought and observation into a single +saying. It is the very opposite of dissertation and declamation; its +distinction is not so much ingenuity, as good sense brought to a +point; it ought to be neither enigmatical nor flat, neither a truism +on the one hand, nor a riddle on the other. These wise sayings, said +Bacon, the author of some of the wisest of them, are not only for +ornament, but for action and business, having a point or edge, whereby +knots in business are pierced and discovered. And he applauds Cicero's +description of such sayings as saltpits,--that you may extract salt +out of them, and sprinkle it where you will. They are the guiding +oracles which man has found out for himself in that great business +of ours, of learning how to be, to do, to do without, and to depart. +Their range extends from prudential kitchen maxims, such as Franklin +set forth in the sayings of Poor Richard about thrift in time and +money, up to such great and high moralities of life as are the prose +maxims of Goethe,--just as Bacon's Essays extend from precepts as to +building and planting, up to solemn reflections on truth, death, and +the vicissitudes of things. They cover the whole field of man as he +is, and life as it is, not of either as they ought to be; friendship, +ambition, money, studies, business, public duty, in all their actual +laws and conditions as they are, and not as the ideal moralist may +wish that they were. + +The substance of the wisdom of life must be commonplace, for the best +of it is the result of the common experience of the world. Its most +universal and important propositions must in a certain sense be +truisms. The road has been so broadly trodden by the hosts who have +travelled along it, that the main rules of the journey are clear +enough, and we all know that the secret of breakdown and wreck is +seldom so much an insufficient knowledge of the route, as imperfect +discipline of the will. The truism, however, and the commonplace may +be stated in a form so fresh, pungent, and free from triviality, as +to have all the force of new discovery. Hence the need for a caution, +that few maxims are to be taken without qualification. They seek +sharpness of impression by excluding one side of the matter and +exaggerating another, and most aphorisms are to be read as subject to +all sorts of limits, conditions, and corrections. + +It has been said that the order of our knowledge is this: that we know +best, first, what we have divined by native instinct; second, what +we have learned by experience of men and things; third, what we have +learned not in books, but by books--that is, by the reflections that +they suggest; fourth, last and lowest, what we have learned in books +or with masters. The virtue of an aphorism comes under the third of +these heads: it conveys a portion of a truth with such point as to set +us thinking on what remains. Montaigne, who delighted in Plutarch, +and kept him ever on his table, praises him in that besides his long +discourses, "there are a thousand others, which he has only touched +and glanced upon, where he only points with his finger to direct us +which way we may go if we will, and contents himself sometimes with +only giving one brisk hit in the nicest article of the question, +from whence we are to grope out the rest." And this is what Plutarch +himself is driving at, when he warns young men that it is well to go +for a light to another man's fire, but by no means to tarry by it, +instead of kindling a torch of their own. + +Grammarians draw a distinction between a maxim and an aphorism, and +tell us that while an aphorism only states some broad truth of general +bearing, a maxim, besides stating the truth, enjoins a rule of conduct +as its consequence. For instance, to say that "There are some men with +just imagination enough to spoil their judgment" is an aphorism. But +there is action as well as thought in such sayings as this: "'Tis a +great sign of mediocrity to be always reserved in praise"; or in this +of M. Aurelius, "When thou wishest to give thyself delight, think of +the excellences of those who live with thee; for instance, of the +energy of one, the modesty of another, the liberal kindness of a +third." Again, according to this distinction of the word, we are +to give the name of aphorism to Pascal's saying that "Most of the +mischief in the world would never happen, if men would only be content +to sit still in their parlours."[1] But we should give the name of +maxim to the profound and admirably humane counsel of a philosopher of +a very different school, that "If you would love mankind, you should +not expect too much from them." + +[Footnote 1: La Bruyčre also says:--"All mischief comes from our +not being able to be alone; hence play, luxury, dissipation, wine, +ignorance, calumny, envy, forgetfulness of one's self and of God."] + +But the distinction is one without much difference; we need not labour +it nor pay it further attention. Aphorism or maxim, let us remember +that this wisdom of life is the true salt of literature; that those +books, at least in prose, are most nourishing which are most richly +stored with it; and that it is one of the main objects, apart from the +mere acquisition of knowledge, which men ought to seek in the reading +of books. + +A living painter has said, that the longer he works, the more does be +realise how very little anybody except the trained artist actually +perceives in the natural objects constantly before him; how blind men +are to impressions of colour and light and form, which would be full +of interest and delight, if people only knew how to see them. Are not +most of us just as blind to the thousand lights and shades in the +men and women around us? We live in the world as we live among +fellow-inmates in a hotel, or fellow-revellers at a masquerade. Yet +this, to bring knowledge of ourselves and others "home to our business +and our bosoms," is one of the most important parts of culture. + +Some prejudice is attached in generous minds to this wisdom of the +world as being egotistical, poor, unimaginative, of the earth earthy. +Since the great literary reaction at the end of the last century, men +have been apt to pitch criticism of life in the high poetic key. They +have felt with Wordsworth:-- + + "The human nature unto which I felt + That I belonged, and reverenced with love, + Was not a punctual presence, but a spirit + Diffused through time and space, with aid derived + Of evidence from monuments, erect, + Prostrate, or leaning towards their common rest + In earth, the widely-scattered wreck sublime + Of vanished nations." + +Then again, there is another cause for the passing eclipse of interest +in wisdom of the world. Extraordinary advances have been made in +ordered knowledge of the various stages of the long prehistoric +dawn of human civilisation. The man of the flint implement and the +fire-drill, who could only count up to five, and who was content to +live in a hut like a beehive, has drawn interest away from the man of +the market and the parlour. The literary passion for primitive times +and the raw material of man has thrust polished man, the manufactured +article, into a secondary place. All this is in the order of things. +It is fitting enough that we should pierce into the origins of human +nature. It is right, too, that the poets, the ideal interpreters of +life, should be dearer to us than those who stop short with mere +deciphering of what is real and actual. The poet has his own sphere +of the beautiful and the sublime. But it is no less true that the +enduring weight of historian, moralist, political orator, or preacher +depends on the amount of the wisdom of life that is hived in his +pages. They may be admirable by virtue of other qualities, by +learning, by grasp, by majesty of flight; but it is his moral +sentences on mankind or the State that rank the prose writer among the +sages. These show that he has an eye for the large truths of action, +for the permanent bearings of conduct, and for things that are for the +guidance of all generations. What is it that makes Plutarch's Lives +"the pasture of great souls," as they were called by one who was +herself a great soul? Because his aim was much less to tell a story +than, as he says, "to decipher the man and his nature"; and in +deciphering the man, to strike out pregnant and fruitful thoughts on +all men. Why was it worth while for Mr. Jowett, the other day, to give +us a new translation of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War? +And why is it worth your while, at least to dip in a serious spirit +into its pages? Partly, because the gravity and concision of +Thucydides are of specially wholesome example in these days of +over-coloured and over-voluminous narrative; partly, because he knows +how to invest the wreck and overthrow of those small states with the +pathos and dignity of mighty imperial fall; but most of all, for the +sake of the wise sentences that are sown with apt but not unsparing +hand through the progress of the story. Well might Gray ask his friend +whether Thucydides' description of the final destruction of the +Athenian host at Syracuse was not the finest thing he ever read in +his life; and assuredly the man who can read that stern tale without +admiration, pity, and awe may be certain that he has no taste for +noble composition, and no feeling for the deepest tragedy of mortal +things. But it is the sagacious sentences in the speeches of +Athenians, Corinthians, Lacedaemonians, that do most of all to give +to the historian his perpetuity of interest to every reader with the +rudiments of a political instinct, and make Thucydides as modern as if +he had written yesterday. + +Tacitus belongs to a different class among the great writers of the +world. He had, beyond almost any author of the front rank that has +ever lived, the art of condensing his thought and driving it home +to the mind of the reader with a flash. Beyond almost anybody, he +suffered from what a famous writer of aphorisms in our time has +described as "the cursed ambition to put a whole book into a page, a +whole page into a phrase, and the phrase into a word." But the moral +thought itself in Tacitus mostly belongs less to the practical wisdom +of life, than to sombre poetic indignation, like that of Dante, +against the perversities of men and the blindness of fortune. + +Horace's Epistles are a mine of genial, friendly, humane observation. +Then there is none of the ancient moralists to whom the modern, from +Montaigne, Charron, Ralegh, Bacon, downwards, owe more than to Seneca. +Seneca has no spark of the kindly warmth of Horace; he has not the +animation of Plutarch; he abounds too much in the artificial and +extravagant paradoxes of the Stoics. But, for all that, he touches the +great and eternal commonplaces of human occasion--friendship, health, +bereavement, riches, poverty, death--with a hand that places him high +among the wise masters of life. All through the ages men tossed in the +beating waves of circumstance have found more abundantly in the essays +and letters of Seneca than in any other secular writer words of good +counsel and comfort. And let this fact not pass, without notice of the +light that it sheds on the fact of the unity of literature, and of +the absurdity of setting a wide gulf between ancient or classical +literature and modern, as if under all dialects the partakers in +Graeco-Roman civilisation, whether in Athens, Rome, Paris, Weimar, +Edinburgh, London, Dublin, were not the heirs of a great common stock +of thought as well as of speech. + +I certainly do not mean anything so absurd as that the moralities, +whether major or minor, whether affecting the foundation of conduct or +the surface of manners, remain fixed. On the contrary, one of the most +interesting things in literature is to mark the shifts and changes in +men's standards. For instance, Boswell tells a curious story of the +first occasion on which Johnson met Sir Joshua Reynolds. Two ladies of +the company were regretting the death of a friend to whom they owed +great obligations. Reynolds observed that they had at any rate the +comfort of being relieved from a debt of gratitude. The ladies were +naturally shocked at this singular alleviation of their grief, but +Johnson defended it in his clear and forcible manner, and, says +Boswell, "was much pleased with the mind, the fair view of human +nature, that it exhibited, like some of the reflections of +Rochefoucauld." On the strength of it he went home with Reynolds, +supped with him, and was his friend for life. No moralist with a +reputation to lose would like to back Reynolds's remark in the +nineteenth century. + +Our own generation in Great Britain has been singularly unfortunate +in the literature of aphorism. One too famous volume of proverbial +philosophy had immense vogue, but it is so vapid, so wordy, so futile, +as to have a place among the books that dispense with parody. Then, +rather earlier in the century, a clergyman, who ruined himself by +gambling, ran away from his debts to America, and at last blew his +brains out, felt peculiarly qualified to lecture mankind on moral +prudence. He wrote a little book in 1820; called _Lacon; or Many +Things in Few Words, addressed to those who think_. It is an awful +example to anybody who is tempted to try his hand at an aphorism. +Thus, "Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than +the dinner." I had made some other extracts from this unhappy sage, +but you will thank me for having thrown them into the fire. Finally, a +great authoress of our time was urged by a friend to fill up a gap in +our literature by composing a volume of Thoughts: the result was that +least felicitous of performances, _Theophrastus Such_. One living +writer of genius has given us a little sheaf of subtly-pointed maxims +in the _Ordeal of Richard Feverel_, and perhaps he will one day +divulge to the world the whole contents of Sir Austin Feverel's +unpublished volume, _The Pilgrim's Scrip_. + +Yet the wisdom of life has its full part in our literature. Keen +insight into peculiarities of individual motive, and concentrated +interest in the play of character, shine not merely in Shakespeare, +whose mighty soul, as Hallam says, was saturated with moral +observation, nor in the brilliant verse of Pope. For those who love +meditative reading on the ways and destinies of men, we have Burton +and Fuller and Sir Thomas Browne in one age, and Addison, Johnson, +and the rest of the Essayists, in another. Sir Thomas Overbury's +_Characters_, written in the Baconian age, are found delightful +by some; but for my own part, though I have striven to follow the +critic's golden rule, to have preferences but no exclusions, Overbury +has for me no savour. In the great art of painting moral portraits, +or character-writing, the characters in Clarendon, or in Burnet's +_History of His Own Time_, are full of life, vigour, and coherency, +and are intensely attractive to read. I cannot agree with those who +put either Clarendon or Burnet on a level with the characters in St. +Simon or the Cardinal de Retz: there is a subtlety of analysis, a +searching penetration, a breadth of moral comprehension, in the +Frenchmen, which I do not find, nor, in truth, much desire to find, +in our countrymen. A homelier hand does well enough for homelier men. +Nevertheless, such characters as those of Falkland, or Chillingworth, +by Clarendon, or Burnet's very different Lauderdale, are worth a +thousand battle-pieces, cabinet plots, or parliamentary combinations, +of which we never can be sure that the narrator either knew or has +told the whole story. It is true that these characters have not the +strange quality which some one imputed to the writing of Tacitus, that +it seems to put the reader himself and the secrets of his own heart +into the confessional. It is in the novel that, in this country, the +faculty of observing social man and his peculiarities has found its +most popular instrument. The great novel, not of romance or adventure, +but of character and manners, from the mighty Fielding, down, at a +long interval, to Thackeray, covers the field that in France is held, +and successfully held, against all comers, by her maxim-writers, like +La Rochefoucauld, and her character-writers, like La Bruyčre. But the +literature of aphorism contains one English name of magnificent and +immortal lustre--the name of Francis Bacon. Bacon's essays are the +unique masterpiece in our literature of this oracular wisdom of life, +applied to the scattered occasions of men's existence. The Essays are +known to all the world; but there is another and perhaps a weightier +performance of Bacon's which is less known, or not known at all, +except to students here and there. I mean the second chapter of the +eighth book of his famous treatise, _De Augmentis_. It has been +translated into pithy English, and is to be found in the fifth volume +of the great edition of Bacon, by Spedding and Ellis. + +In this chapter, among other things, he composes comments on between +thirty and forty of what he calls the Aphorisms or Proverbs of +Solomon, which he truly describes as containing, besides those of +a theological character, "not a few excellent civil precepts and +cautions, springing from the inmost recesses of wisdom, and extending +to much variety of occasions." I know not where else to find more of +the salt of common sense in an uncommon degree than in Bacon's terse +comments on the Wise King's terse sentences, and in the keen, +sagacious, shrewd wisdom of the world, lighted up by such brilliance +of wit and affluence of illustration, in the pages that come after +them. + +This sort of wisdom was in the taste of the time; witness Ralegh's +_Instructions to his Son_, and that curious collection "of political +and polemical aphorisms grounded on authority and experience," +which he called by the name of the _Cabinet Council_. Harrington's +_Political Aphorisms_, which came a generation later, are not moral +sentences; they are a string of propositions in political theory, +breathing a noble spirit of liberty, though too abstract for practical +guidance through the troubles of the day. But Bacon's admonitions +have a depth and copiousness that are all his own. He says that the +knowledge of advancement in life, though abundantly practised, had +not been sufficiently handled in books, and so he here lays down +the precepts for what he calls the _Architecture of Fortune_. They +constitute the description of a man who is politic for his own +fortune, and show how he may best shape a character that will attain +the ends of fortune. + +_First_, A man should accustom his mind to judge of the proportion and +value of all things as they conduce to his fortune and ends. + +_Second_, Not to undertake things beyond his strength, nor to row +against the stream. + +_Third_, Not to wait for occasions always, but sometimes to challenge +and induce them, according to that saying of Demosthenes: "In the same +manner as it is a received principle that the general should lead the +army, so should wise men lead affairs," causing things to be done +which they think good, and not themselves waiting upon events. + +_Fourth_, Not to take up anything which of necessity forestalls a +great quantity of time, but to have this sound ever ringing in our +ears: "Time is flying--time that can never be retrieved." + +_Fifth_, Not to engage one's-self too peremptorily in anything, but +ever to have either a window open to fly out at, or a secret way to +retire by. + +_Sixth_, To follow that ancient precept, not construed to any point +of perfidiousness, but only to caution and moderation, that we are to +treat our friend as if he might one day be a foe, and our foe as if he +should one day be friend. + +All these Bacon called the good arts, as distinguished from the evil +arts that had been described years before by Machiavelli in his +famous book _The Prince_, and also in his _Discourses_. Bacon called +Machiavelli's sayings depraved and pernicious, and a corrupt wisdom, +as indeed they are. He was conscious that his own maxims, too, stood +in some need of elevation and of correction, for he winds up with +wise warnings against being carried away by a whirlwind or tempest +of ambition; by the general reminder that all things are vanity and +vexation of spirit, and the particular reminder that, "Being without +well-being is a curse, and the greater being, the greater curse," and +that "all virtue is most rewarded, and all wickedness most punished in +itself"; by the question, whether this incessant, restless, and, as it +were, Sabbathless pursuit of fortune, leaves time for holier duties, +and what advantage it is to have a face erected towards heaven, with a +spirit perpetually grovelling upon earth, eating dust like a serpent; +and finally, he says that it will not be amiss for men, in this eager +and excited chase of fortune, to cool themselves a little with that +conceit of Charles V. in his instructions to his son, that "Fortune +hath somewhat of the nature of a woman, who, if she be too closely +wooed, is commonly the further off." + +There is Baconian humour as well as a curious shrewdness in such an +admonition as that which I will here transcribe, and there are many +like it:-- + + "It is therefore no unimportant attribute of prudence in a man to + be able to set forth to advantage before others, with grace and + skill, his virtues, fortunes, and merits (which may be done + without arrogance or breeding disgust); and again, to cover + artificially his weaknesses, defects, misfortunes, and disgraces; + dwelling upon the former and turning them to the light, sliding + from the latter or explaining them away by apt interpretations and + the like. Tacitus says of Mucianus, the wisest and most active + politician of his time, 'That he had a certain art of setting + forth to advantage everything he said or did.' And it requires + indeed some art, lest it become wearisome and contemptible; but + yet it is true that ostentation, though carried to the first + degree of vanity, is rather a vice in morals than in policy. For + as it is said of calumny, 'Calumniate boldly, for some of it + will stick,' so it may be said of ostentation (except it be in a + ridiculous degree of deformity), 'Boldly sound your own praises, + and some of them will stick.' It will stick with the more ignorant + and the populace, though men of wisdom may smile at it; and the + reputation won with many will amply countervail the disdain of a + few.... And surely no small number of those who are of a solid + nature, and who, from the want of this ventosity, cannot spread + all sail in pursuit of their own honour, suffer some prejudice and + lose dignity by their moderation." + +Nobody need go to such writings as these for moral dignity or moral +energy. They have no place in that nobler literature, from Epictetus +and Marcus Aurelius downwards, which lights up the young soul with +generous aims, and fires it with the love of all excellence. Yet the +most heroic cannot do without a dose of circumspection. The counsels +of old Polonius to Laertes are less sublime than Hamlet's soliloquy, +but they have their place. Bacon's chapters are a manual of +circumspection, whether we choose to give to circumspection a high or +a low rank in the list of virtues. Bacon knew of the famous city which +had three gates, and on the first the horseman read inscribed, "Be +bold"; and on the second gate yet again, "Be bold, and evermore be +bold"; and on the third it was written, "Be not too bold." + +This cautious tone had been brought about by the circumstances of +the time. Government was strict; dissent from current opinions was +dangerous; there was no indifference and hardly any tolerance; +authority was suspicious and it was vindictive. When the splendid +genius of Burke rose like a new sun into the sky, the times were +happier, and nowhere in our literature does a noble prudence wear +statelier robes than in the majestic compositions of Burke. + +Those who are curious to follow the literature of aphorism into +Germany, will, with the mighty exceptions of Goethe and Schiller, find +but a parched and scanty harvest. The Germans too often justify the +unfriendly definition of an aphorism as a form of speech, that wraps +up something quite plain in words that turn it into something very +obscure. As old Fuller says, the writers have a hair hanging to the +nib of their pen. Their shortness does not prevent them from being +tiresome. They recall the French wit to whom a friend showed a +distich: "Excellent," he said; "but isn't it rather spun out?" + +Lichtenberg, a professor of physics, who was also a considerable hand +at satire a hundred years ago, composed a collection of sayings, not +without some wheat amid much chaff. A later German writer, of whom +I will speak in a moment or two, Schopenhauer, has some excellent +remarks on Self-reflection, and on the difference between those who +think for themselves and those who think for other people; between +genuine Philosophers, who look at things first hand for their own +sake, and Sophists, who look at words and books for the sake of making +an appearance before the world, and seek their happiness in what +they hope to get from others: he takes Herder for an example of the +Sophist, and Lichtenberg for the true Philosopher. It is true that we +hear the voice of the Self-thinker, and not the mere Book-philosopher, +if we may use for once those uncouth compounds, in such sayings as +these:-- + + "People who never have any time are the people + who do least." + + "The utmost that a weak head can get out of experience + is an extra readiness to find out the weaknesses + of other people." + + "Over-anxiously to feel and think what one could + have done, is the very worst thing one can do." + + "He who has less than he desires, should know that + he has more than he deserves." + + "Enthusiasts without capacity are the really dangerous + people." + +This last, by the way, recalls a saying of the great French +reactionary, De Bonald, which is never quite out of date: "Follies +committed by the sensible, extravagances uttered by the clever, crimes +perpetrated by the good,--there is what makes revolutions." + +Radowitz was a Prussian soldier and statesman, who died in 1853, +after doing enough to convince men since that the revolution of 1848 +produced no finer mind. He left among other things two or three +volumes of short fragmentary pieces on politics, religion, literature, +and art. They are intelligent and elevated, but contain hardly +anything to our point to-night, unless it be this,--that what is +called Stupidity springs not at all from mere want of understanding, +but from the fact that the free use of a man's understanding is +hindered by some definite vice: Frivolity, Envy, Dissipation, +Covetousness, all these darling vices of fallen man,--these are at the +bottom of what we name Stupidity. This is true enough, but it is not +so much to the point as the saying of a highly judicious aphorist of +my own acquaintance, that "Excessive anger against human stupidity is +itself one of the most provoking of all forms of stupidity." + +Another author of aphorisms of the Goethe period was Klinger, a +playwriter, who led a curious and varied life in camps and cities, who +began with a vehement enthusiasm for the sentimentalism of Rousseau, +and ended, as such men often end, with a hard and stubborn cynicism. +He wrote _Thoughts on different Subjects of the World and Literature_, +which are intelligent and masculine, if they are not particularly +pungent in expression. One of them runs--"He who will write +interestingly must be able to keep heart and reason in close and +friendliest connection. The heart must warm the reason, and reason +must in turn blow on the embers if they are to burst into flame." This +illustrates what an aphorism should not be. Contrast its clumsiness +with the brevity of the famous and admirable saying of Vauvenargues, +that "great thoughts come from the heart." + +Schopenhauer gave to one of his minor works the name of _Aphorismen zu +Lebens-Weisheit_, "Aphorisms for the Wisdom of Life," and he put to +it, by way of motto, Chamfort's saying, "Happiness is no easy matter; +'tis very hard to find it within ourselves, and impossible to find it +anywhere else." Schopenhauer was so well read in European literature, +he had such natural alertness of mind, and his style is so pointed, +direct, and wide-awake, that these detached discussions are +interesting and most readable; but for the most part discussions they +are, and not aphorisms. Thus, in the saying that "The perfect man of +the world should be he who never sticks fast in indecision, nor ever +falls into overhaste," the force of it lies in what goes before and +what follows after. The whole collection, winding up with the chapter +of Counsels and Maxims, is in the main an unsystematic enforcement of +those peculiar views of human happiness and its narrow limits which +proved to be the most important part of Schopenhauer's system. "The +sovereign rule in the wisdom of life," he said, "I see in Aristotle's +proposition (_Eth. Nic_. vii. 12), [Greek: ho phronimos to alupon +diokei, ou to haedu]: Not pleasure but freedom from pain is what +the sensible man goes after." The second volume, of Detached though +systematically Ordered Thoughts on Various Circumstances, is +miscellaneous in its range of topics, and is full of suggestion; but +the thoughts are mainly philosophical and literary, and do not come +very close to practical wisdom. In truth, so negative a view of +happiness, such pale hopes and middling expectations, could not guide +a man far on the path of active prudence, where we naturally take for +granted that the goal is really something substantial, serious, solid, +and positive.[1] + +[Footnote 1: Burke says on the point raised above: "I am satisfied the +ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the +part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made +to suffer are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than +any pleasures which the most learned voluptuary could suggest. Nay, +I am in great doubt whether any man could be found, who would earn a +life of the most perfect satisfaction at the price of ending it in +the torments which justice inflicted in a few hours on the late +unfortunate regicide in France" (_Sublime and Beautiful_, pt. I. sec. +vii.). The reference is, of course, to Damien.] + +Nobody cared less than Schopenhauer for the wisdom that is drawn from +books, or has said such hard things of mere reading. In the short +piece to which I have already referred (p. 80), he works out the +difference between the Scholar who has read in books, and the +Thinkers, the Geniuses, the Lights of the World, and Furtherers of +the human race, who have read directly from the world's own pages. +Reading, he says, is only a _succedaneum_ for one's own thinking. +Reading is thinking with a strange head instead of one's own. People +who get their wisdom out of books are like those who have got their +knowledge of a country from the descriptions of travellers. Truth that +has been picked up from books only sticks to us like an artificial +limb, or a false tooth, or a rhinoplastic nose; the truth we have +acquired by our own thinking is like the natural member. At least, as +Goethe puts it in his verse, + + Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, + Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen. + + _What from thy fathers thou dost inherit, be sure thou + earn it, that so it may become thine own_. + +It is only Goethe and Schiller, and especially Goethe, "the strong, +much-toiling sage, with spirit free from mists, and sane and clear," +who combine the higher and the lower wisdom, and have skill to put +moral truths into forms of words that fix themselves with stings in +the reader's mind. All Goethe's work, whether poetry or prose, his +plays, his novels, his letters, his conversations, are richly bestrewn +with the luminous sentences of a keen-eyed, steadfast, patient, +indefatigable watcher of human life. He deals gravely and sincerely +with men. He has none of that shallow irony by which small men who +have got wrong with the world seek a shabby revenge. He tells us the +whole truth. He is not of those second-rate sages who keep their own +secrets, externally complying with all the conventions of speech and +demeanour, while privately nourishing unbridled freedom of opinion +in the inner sanctuary of the mind. He handles soberly, faithfully, +laboriously, cheerfully, every motive and all conduct. He marks +himself the friend, the well-wisher, and the helper. I will not begin +to quote from Goethe, for I should never end. The volume of _Spruche_, +or aphorisms in rhyme and prose in his collected works, is accessible +to everybody, but some of his wisest and finest are to be found in the +plays, like the well-known one in his _Tasso_, "In stillness Talent +forms itself, but Character in the great current of the world." + +But here is a concentrated admonition from the volume that I have +named, that will do as well as any other for an example of his +temper-- + + "Wouldst fashion for thyself a seemly life?-- + Then fret not over what is past and gone; + And spite of all thou mayst have lost behind, + Yet act as if thy life were just begun. + What each day wills, enough for thee to know; + What each day wills, the day itself will tell. + Do thine own task, and be therewith content; + What others do, that shalt thou fairly judge; + Be sure that thou no brother-mortal hate, + Then all besides leave to the Master Power." + +If any of you should be bitten with an unhappy passion for the +composition of aphorisms, let me warn such an one that the power of +observing life is rare, the power of drawing new lessons from it is +rarer still, and the power of condensing the lesson in a pointed +sentence is rarest of all. Beware of cultivating this delicate art. +The effort is only too likely to add one more to that perverse +class described by Gibbon, who strangle a thought in the hope of +strengthening it, and applaud their own skill when they have shown +in a few absurd words the fourth part of an idea. Let me warmly urge +anybody with so mistaken an ambition, instead of painfully distilling +poor platitudes of his own, to translate the shrewd saws of the wise +browed Goethe. + +Some have found light in the sayings of Balthasar Gracian, a Spaniard, +who flourished at the end of the seventeenth century, whose maxims +were translated into English at the very beginning of the eighteenth, +and who was introduced to the modern public in an excellent article +by Sir M.E. Grant Duff a few years ago. The English title is +attractive,--_The Art of Prudence, or a Companion for a Man of Sense_. +I do not myself find Gracian much of a companion, though some of his +aphorisms give a neat turn to a commonplace. Thus:-- + + "The pillow is a dumb sibyl. To sleep upon a thing + that is to be done, is better than to be wakened up by + one already done." + + "To equal a predecessor one must have twice his + worth." + + "What is easy ought to be entered upon as though + it were difficult, and what is difficult as though it were + easy." + + "Those things are generally best remembered which + ought most to be forgot. Not seldom the surest remedy + of the evil consists in forgetting it." + +It is France that excels in the form no less than in the matter of +aphorism, and for the good reason that in France the arts of polished +society were relatively at an early date the objects of a serious and +deliberate cultivation, such as was and perhaps remains unknown in the +rest of Europe. Conversation became a fine art. "I hate war," said +one; "it spoils conversation." The leisured classes found their +keenest relish in delicate irony, in piquancy, in contained vivacity, +in the study of niceties of observation and finish of phrase. You have +a picture of it in such a play as Moličre's _Misanthropist_, where we +see a section of the polished life of the time--men and women making +and receiving compliments, discoursing on affairs with easy lightness, +flitting backwards and forwards with a thousand petty hurries, and +among them one singular figure, hoarse, rough, sombre, moving with a +chilling reality in the midst of frolicking shadows. But the shadows +were all in all to one another. Not a point of conduct, not a subtlety +of social motive, escaped detection and remark. + +Dugald Stewart has pointed to the richness of the French tongue +in appropriate and discriminating expressions for varieties of +intellectual turn and shade. How many of us, who claim to a reasonable +knowledge of French, will undertake easily to find English +equivalents for such distinctions as are expressed in the following +phrases--Esprit juste, esprit étendu, esprit fin, esprit délié, esprit +de lumičre. These numerous distinctions are the evidence, as Stewart +says, of the attention paid by the cultivated classes to delicate +shades of mind and feeling. Compare with them the colloquial use of +our terribly overworked word "clever." Society and conversation have +never been among us the school of reflection, the spring of literary +inspiration, that they have been in France. The English rule has +rather been like that of the ancient Persians, that the great thing is +to learn to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the truth. There +is much in it. But it has been more favourable to strength than to +either subtlety or finish. + +One of the most commonly known of all books of maxims, after the +Proverbs of Solomon, are the Moral Reflections of La Rochefoucauld. +The author lived at court, himself practised all the virtues which +he seemed to disparage, and took so much trouble to make sure of the +right expression that many of these short sentences were more than +thirty times revised. They were given to the world in the last half +of the seventeenth century in a little volume which Frenchmen used +to know by heart, which gave a new turn to the literary taste of the +nation, and which has been translated into every civilised tongue. It +paints men as they would be if self-love were the one great mainspring +of human action, and it makes magnanimity itself no better than +self-interest in disguise. + + "Interest," he says, "speaks all sorts of tongues and + plays all sorts of parts, even the part of the disinterested." + + "Gratitude is with most people only a strong desire + for greater benefits to come." + + "Love of justice is with most of us nothing but the + fear of suffering injustice." + + "Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of + interests, a mutual exchange of good offices; it is a + species of commerce out of which self-love always + intends to make something." + + "We have all strength enough to endure the troubles + of other people." + + "Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we + have done, as fear of the ill that may come to us in + consequence." + +And everybody here knows the saying that "In the adversity of our best +friends we often find something that is not exactly displeasing." + +We cannot wonder that in spite of their piquancy of form, such +sentences as these have aroused in many minds an invincible repugnance +for what would be so tremendous a calumny on human nature, if the +book were meant to be a picture of human nature as a whole. "I count +Rochefoucauld's _Maxims_," says one critic, "a bad book. As I am +reading it, I feel discomfort; I have a sense of suffering which I +cannot define. Such thoughts tarnish the brightness of the soul; +they degrade the heart." Yet as a faithful presentation of human +selfishness, and of you and me in so far as we happen to be mainly +selfish, the odious mirror has its uses by showing us what manner of +man we are or may become. Let us not forget either that not quite all +is selfishness in La Rochefoucauld. Everybody knows his saying that +hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. There is a subtle +truth in this, too,--that to be in too great a hurry to discharge an +obligation is itself a kind of ingratitude. Nor is there any harm in +the reflection that no fool is so troublesome as the clever fool; nor +in this, that only great men have any business with great defects; +nor, finally, in the consolatory saying, that we are never either so +happy or so unhappy as we imagine. + +No more important name is associated with the literature of aphorism +than that of Pascal; but the Thoughts of Pascal concern the deeper +things of speculative philosophy and religion, rather than the wisdom +of daily life, and, besides, though aphoristic in form, they are in +substance systematic. "I blame equally," he said, "those who take +sides for praising man, those who are for blaming him, and those +who amuse themselves with him: the only wise part is search for +truth--search with many sighs." On man, as he exists in society, he +said little; and what he said does not make us hopeful. He saw the +darker side. "If everybody knew what one says of the other, there +would not be four friends left in the world." "Would you have men +think well of you, then do not speak well of yourself." And so forth. +If you wish to know Pascal's theory you may find it set out in +brilliant verse in the opening lines of the second book of Pope's +_Essay on Man_. "What a chimera is Man!" said Pascal. "What a confused +chaos! What a subject of contradiction! A professed judge of all +things, and yet a feeble worm of the earth; the great depository and +guardian of truth, and yet a mere huddle of uncertainty; the glory and +the scandal of the universe." Shakespeare was wiser and deeper when, +under this quintessence of dust, he discerned what a piece of work is +man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving +how express and admirable. That serene and radiant faith is the +secret, added to matchless gifts of imagination and music, why +Shakespeare is the greatest of men. + +There is a smart, spurious wisdom of the world which has the +bitterness not of the salutary tonic but of mortal poison; and of this +kind the master is Chamfort, who died during the French Revolution +(and for that matter died of it), and whose little volume of thoughts +is often extremely witty, always pointed, but not seldom cynical and +false. "If you live among men," he said, "the heart must either break +or turn to brass." "The public, the public," he cried; "how many fools +does it take to make a public!" "What is celebrity? The advantage of +being known to people who don't know you." + +All literatures might be ransacked in vain for a more repulsive saying +than this, that "A man must swallow a toad every morning if he wishes +to be quite sure of finding nothing still more disgusting before the +day is over." We cannot be surprised to hear of the lady who said that +a conversation with Chamfort in the morning made her melancholy until +bedtime. Yet Chamfort is the author of the not unwholesome saying that +"The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed." +One of his maxims lets us into the secret of his misanthropy. +"Whoever," he said, "is not a misanthropist at forty can never have +loved mankind." It is easy to know what this means. Of course if a man +is so superfine that he will not love mankind any longer than he can +believe them to be demigods and angels, it is true that at forty he +may have discovered that they are neither. Beginning by looking for +men to be more perfect than they can be, he ends by thinking them +worse than they are, and then he secretly plumes himself on his +superior cleverness in having found humanity out. For the deadliest +of all wet blankets give me a middle-aged man who has been most of a +visionary in his youth. + +To correct all this, let us recall Helvétius's saying that I have +already quoted, which made so deep an impression on Jeremy Bentham: +"In order to love mankind, we must not expect too much from them." And +let us remember that Fénelon, one of the most saintly men that ever +lived, and whose very countenance bore such a mark of goodness that +when he was in a room men found they could not desist from looking at +him, wrote to a friend the year before he died, "I ask little from +most men; I try to render them much, and to expect nothing in return, +and I get very well out of the bargain." + +Chamfort I will leave, with his sensible distinction between Pride and +Vanity. "A man," he says, "has advanced far in the study of morals who +has mastered the difference between pride and vanity. The first is +lofty, calm, immovable; the second is uncertain, capricious, unquiet. +The one adds to a man's stature; the other only puffs him out. The one +is the source of a thousand virtues; the other is that of nearly all +vices and all perversities. There is a kind of pride in which are +included all the commandments of God; and a kind of vanity which +contains the seven mortal sins." + +I will say little of La Bruyčre, by far the greatest, broadest, +strongest, of French character-writers, because his is not one of the +houses of which you can judge by a brick or two taken at random. For +those in whom the excitements of modern literature have not burnt up +the faculty of sober meditation on social man, La Bruyčre must always +be one of the foremost names. Macaulay somewhere calls him thin. But +Macaulay has less ethical depth, and less perception of ethical depth, +than any writer that ever lived with equally brilliant gifts in other +ways; and _thin_ is the very last word that describes this admirable +master. If one seeks to measure how far removed the great classic +moralists are from thinness, let him turn from La Bruyčre to the inane +subtleties and meaningless conundrums, not worth answering, that do +duty for analysis of character in some modern American literature. +We feel that La Bruyčre, though retiring, studious, meditative, and +self-contained, has complied with the essential condition of looking +at life and men themselves, and with his own eyes. His aphoristic +sayings are the least important part of him, but here are one or two +examples:-- + + "Eminent posts make great men greater, and little + men less." + + "There is in some men a certain mediocrity of mind + that helps to make them wise." + + "The flatterer has not a sufficiently good opinion + either of himself or of others." + + "People from the provinces and fools are always + ready to take offence, and to suppose that you are + laughing at them: we should never risk a pleasantry, + except with well-bred people, and people with brains. + + "All confidence is dangerous, unless it is complete, + there are few circumstances in which it is not best + either to hide all or to tell all." + + "When the people is in a state of agitation, we do + not see how quiet is to return; and when it is tranquil, + we do not see how the quiet is to be disturbed." + + "Men count for almost nothing the virtues of the + heart, and idolise gifts of body or intellect. The man + who quite coolly, and with no idea that he is offending + modesty, says that he is kind-hearted, constant, faithful, + sincere, fair, grateful, would not dare to say that + he is quick and clever, that he has fine teeth and a + delicate skin." + +I will say nothing of Rivarol, a caustic wit of the revolutionary +time, nor of Joubert, a writer of sayings of this century, of whom +Mr. Matthew Arnold has said all that needs saying. He is delicate, +refined, acute, but his thoughts were fostered in the hothouse of a +coterie, and have none of the salt and sapid flavour that comes to +more masculine spirits from active contact with the world. + +I should prefer to close this survey in the sunnier moral climate of +Vauvenargues. His own life was a pathetic failure in all the aims of +outer circumstance. The chances of fortune and of health persistently +baulked him, but from each stroke he rose up again, with undimmed +serenity and undaunted spirit. As blow fell upon blow, the sufferer +hold, firmly to his incessant lesson,--Be brave, persevere in the +fight, struggle on, do not let go, think magnanimously of man and +life, for man is good and life is affluent and fruitful. He died a +hundred and forty years ago, leaving a little body of maxims behind +him which, for tenderness, equanimity, cheerfulness, grace, sobriety, +and hope, are not surpassed in prose literature. "One of the noblest +qualities in our nature," he said, "is that we are able so easily to +dispense with greater perfection." + + "Magnanimity owes no account to prudence of its + motives." + + "To do great things a man must live as though he + had never to die." + + "The first days of spring have less grace than the + growing virtue of a young man." + + "You must rouse in men a consciousness of their + own prudence and strength if you would raise their + character." + +Just as Tocqueville said: "He who despises mankind will never get the +best out of either others or himself."[1] + +[Footnote 1: The reader who cares to know more about Vauvenargues will +find a chapter on him in the present writer's _Miscellanies_, vol. +ii.] + +The best known of Vauvenargues' sayings, as it is the deepest and the +broadest, is the far-reaching sentence already quoted, that "Great +thoughts come from the heart." And this is the truth that shines out +as we watch the voyagings of humanity from the "wide, grey, lampless +depths" of time. Those have been greatest in thought who have been +best endowed with faith, hope, sympathy, and the spirit of effort. And +next to them come the great stern, mournful men, like Tacitus, Dante, +Pascal, who, standing as far aloof from the soft poetic dejection +of some of the moods of Shelley or Keats as from the savage fury +of Swift, watch with a prophet's indignation the heedless waste of +faculty and opportunity, the triumph of paltry motive and paltry aim, +as if we were the flies of a summer noon, which do more than any +active malignity to distort the noble lines, and to weaken or to +frustrate the strong and healthy parts, of human nature. For practical +purposes all these complaints of man are of as little avail as Johnson +found the complaint that of the globe so large a space should be +occupied by the uninhabitable ocean, encumbered by naked mountains, +lost under barren sands, scorched by perpetual heat or petrified by +perpetual frost, and so small a space be left for the production of +fruits, the pasture of cattle, and the accommodation of men. + +When we have deducted, said Johnson, all the time that is absorbed +in sleep, or appropriated to the other demands of nature, or the +inevitable requirements of social intercourse, all that is torn from +us by violence of disease, or imperceptibly stolen from us by languor, +we may realise of how small a portion of our time we are truly +masters. And the same consideration of the ceaseless and natural +pre-occupations of men in the daily struggle will reconcile the wise +man to all the disappointments, delays, shortcomings of the world, +without shaking the firmness of his own faith, or the intrepidity of +his own purpose. + + + + +MAINE ON POPULAR GOVERNMENT.[1] + +[Footnote 1: February 1886.] + + +"If the government of the Many," says the distinguished author of the +volume before us, "be really inevitable, one would have thought that +the possibility of discovering some other and newer means of enabling +It to fulfil the ends for which all governments exist would have been +a question exercising all the highest powers of the strongest minds, +particularly in the community which, through the success of its +popular institutions, has paved the way for modern Democracy. Yet +hardly anything worth mentioning has been produced on the subject in +England or on the Continent." To say this, by the way, Is strangely to +ignore three or four very remarkable books that have been published +within the last twenty or five-and-twenty years, that have excited +immense attention and discussion, and that are the work of minds that +even Sir Henry Maine would hardly call weak or inactive. We are no +adherents of any of Mr. Hare's proposals, but there are +important public men who think that his work on the _Election of +Representatives_ is as conspicuous a landmark in politics as the +_Principia_ was in natural philosophy. J.S. Mill's volume on +_Representative Government_, which appeared in 1861, was even a more +memorable contribution towards the solution of the very problem +defined by Sir Henry Maine, than was the older Mill's article on +Government In 1820 to the political difficulties of the eve of the +Reform Bill. Again, Lord Grey's work on Parliamentary Government +failed in making its expected mark on legislation, but it was worth +mentioning because It goes on the lines of the very electoral law in +Belgium which Sir Henry Maine (p. 109) describes as deserving our most +respectful attention--an attention, I suspect, which it is as little +likely to receive from either of our two political parties as Lord +Grey's suggestions. Nor should we neglect Sir G.C. Lewis's little +book, or Mr. Harrison's volume on _Order and Progress_, which abounds +in important criticism and suggestion for the student of the abstract +politics of modern societies. In the United States, too, and In our +own colonies, there have been attempts, not without merit, to state +and to deal with some of the drawbacks of popular government. + +Nothing has been done, however, that makes the appearance in the field +of a mind of so high an order as Sir Henry Maine's either superfluous +or unwelcome. It is hardly possible that he should discuss any subject +within the publicist's range, without bringing into light some of its +less superficial aspects, and adding observations of originality and +value to the stock of political thought. To set people thinking at all +on the more general and abstract truths of that great subject which is +commonly left to be handled lightly, unsystematically, fragmentarily, +in obedience to the transitory necessities of the day, by Ministers, +members of Parliament, journalists, electors, and the whole host who +live intellectually and politically from hand to mouth, is in itself a +service of all but the first order. Service of the very first order is +not merely to propound objections, but to devise working answers, and +this is exactly what Sir Henry Maine abstains from doing. + +No one will think the moment for a serious political inquiry ill +chosen. We have just effected an immense recasting of our system of +parliamentary representation. The whole consequences of the two great +Acts of 1884 and 1885 are assuredly not to be finally gauged by +anything that has happened during the recent election. Yet even this +single election has brought about a crisis of vast importance in +one part of the United Kingdom, by forcing the question of an Irish +constitution to the front. It is pretty clear, also, that the infusion +of a large popular element into the elective House has made more +difficult the maintenance of its old relations with the hereditary +House. Even if there were no others, these two questions alone, and +especially the first of them, will make the severest demands on the +best minds in the country. We shall be very fortunate if the crisis +produces statesmen as sagacious as those American publicists of whom +Sir Henry Maine rightly entertains so exalted an opinion. + +Whether or not we are on the threshold of great legislative changes, +it is in any case certain that the work of government will be carried +on under new parliamentary and social conditions. In meeting this +prospect, we have the aid neither of strong and systematic political +schools, nor powerful and coherent political parties. No one can +pretend, for instance, that there is any body of theoretic opinion so +compact and so well thought out as Benthamism was in its own day +and generation. Again, in practice, there are ominous signs that +Parliament is likely to break up into groups; and the substitution of +groups for parties is certain, if continental experience is to count +for anything, to create new obstacles in the way of firm and stable +government. Weak government throws power to something which usurps +the name of public opinion, and public opinion as expressed by the +ventriloquists of the newspapers is at once more capricious and more +vociferous than it ever was. This was abundantly shown during the last +five years by a variety of unfortunate public adventures. Then, +does the excitement of democracy weaken the stability of national +temperament? By setting up what in physics would be called a highly +increased molecular activity, does it disturb not merely conservative +respect for institutions, but respect for coherence and continuity of +opinion and sentiment in the character of the individual himself? Is +there a fluidity of character in modern democratic societies which +contrasts not altogether favourably with the strong solid types +of old? Are Englishmen becoming less like Romans, and more like +disputatious Greeks? These and many other considerations of the same +kind are enough to secure a ready welcome for any thinker who can +light up the obscurities of the time. + +With profound respect for Sir Henry Maine's attainments, and every +desire to profit by illumination wherever it may be discerned, we +cannot clearly see how the present volume either makes the problems +more intelligible, or points the way to feasible solutions. Though +he tries, in perfect good faith, to be the dispassionate student, he +often comes very close to the polemics of the hour. The truth is +that scientific lawyers have seldom been very favourable to popular +government; and when the scientific lawyer is doubled with the Indian +bureaucrat, we are pretty sure beforehand that in such a tribunal it +will go hard with democracy. That the author extremely dislikes and +suspects the new order, he does not hide either from himself or +us. Intellectual contempt for the idolatries of the forum and the +market-place has infected him with a touch of that chagrin which +came to men like Tacitus from disbelief In the moral government of +a degenerate world. Though he strives, like Tacitus, to take up his +parable _nec amore et sine odio_, the disgust is ill concealed. There +are passages where we almost hear the drone of a dowager in the +Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was said of Tocqueville that he was an +aristocrat who accepted his defeat. Sir Henry Maine in politics is a +bureaucrat who cannot bear to think that democracy will win. He is +dangerously near the frame of mind of Scipio Emilianus, after the +movement of the Gracchi and the opening of the Roman revolution. +Scipio came to the conclusion that with whichever party he took sides, +or whatever measures a disinterested and capable statesman might +devise, he would only aggravate the evil. Sir Henry Maine would seem +to be nearly as despondent. Hence his book is fuller of apprehension +than of guidance, more plausible in alarm than wise or useful in +direction. It is exclusively critical and negative. There Is, indeed, +an admirable account of the constitution of the United States. But on +the one great question on which the constitution of the United States +might have been expected to shed light--the modification of the House +of Lords--Sir Henry Maine explicitly admits (p. 186) that it is very +difficult to obtain from the younger institution, the Senate, any +lessons which can be of use in the reconstruction of the older. At +every turn, the end of the discussion lands us in a philosophical +_cul-de-sac_, and nothing is so depressing as a _cul-de-sac_. The tone +is that of the political valetudinarian, watching with uneasy eye the +ways of rude health. Unreflecting optimism about Popular Government is +sickening, but calculated pessimism is not much better. + +Something, no doubt, may often be gained by the mere cross-examination +of catchwords and the exposure of platitudes. Popular government is +no more free from catchwords and platitudes than any other political, +religious, or social cause which interests a great many people, and is +the subject of much discussion. Even the Historical Method has its own +claptrap. But one must not make too much of these things. "In order +to love mankind," said Helvétius, "one must not expect too much from +them." And fairly to appreciate institutions you must not hold them up +against the light that blazes in Utopia; you must not expect them +to satisfy microscopic analysis, nor judge their working, which is +inevitably rough, awkward, clumsy, and second-best, by the fastidious +standards of closet logic. + +Before saying more as to the substance of the hook, we may be allowed +to notice one or two matters of literary or historical interest in +which Sir Henry Maine is certainly open to criticism. There is an old +question about Burke which was discussed by the present writer a long +time ago. A great disillusion, says Sir Henry Maine, has always seemed +to him to separate the _Thoughts on the Present Discontents_ and the +_Speech on Taxation_ from the magnificent panegyric on the British +Constitution in 1790. "Not many persons in the last century could +have divined from the previous opinions of Edmund Burke the real +substructure of his political creed, or did in fact suspect it till +it was uncovered by the early and comparatively slight miscarriage of +French revolutionary institutions." This is, as a statement of fact, +not at all correct. Lord Chatham detected what he believed to be the +mischievous Conservatism in Burke's constitutional doctrines at the +very outset. So did the Constitutional Society detect it. So did Mrs. +Macaulay, Bishop Watson, and many other people. The story of Burke's +inconsistency is, of course, as old as Sheridan. Hazlitt declared +that the Burke of 1770 and the Burke of 1790 were not merely opposite +persons, but deadly enemies. Mr. Buckle, who is full of veneration for +the early writings, but who dislikes the later ones, gets over the +difficulty by insisting that Burke actually went out of his mind after +1789. We should have expected a subtler judgment from Sir Henry Maine. +Burke belonged from first to last to the great historic and positive +school, of which the founder was Montesquieu. Its whole method, +principle, and sentiment, all animated him with equal force whether he +was defending the secular pomps of Oude or the sanctity of Benares, +the absolutism of Versailles, or the free and ancient Parliament at +Westminster.[1] + +[Footnote 1: It is satisfactory to have the authority of Mr. Lecky on +the same side. _England in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. iii. chap. +ix. p. 209.] + +Versailles reminds us of a singular overstatement by Sir Henry Maine +of the blindness of the privileged classes in France to the approach +of the Revolution. He speaks as if Lord Chesterfield's famous passage +were the only anticipation of the coming danger. There is at least one +utterance of Louis XV. himself, which shows that he did not expect +things to last much beyond his time. D'Argenson, in the very year of +Chesterfield's prophecy, pronounced that a revolution was inevitable, +and he even went so close to the mark as to hint that it would arise +on the first occasion when it should be necessary to convoke the +States General. Rousseau, in a page of the _Confessions_, not only +divined a speedy revolution, but enumerated the operative causes of it +with real precision. There Is a striking prediction In Voltaire, and +another in Mercier de la Rivičre. Other names might be quoted to +the same effect, including Maria Theresa, who described the ruined +condition of the French monarchy, and only hoped that the ruin might +not overtake her daughter. The mischief was not so much that the +privileged classes were blind as that they were selfish, stubborn, +helpless, and reckless. The point is not very important in itself, +but it is characteristic of a very questionable way of reading human +history. Sir Henry Maine's readiness to treat revolutions as due to +erroneous abstract ideas naturally inclines him to take too narrow a +view both of the preparation in circumstances, and of the preparation +in the minds of observant onlookers. + +In passing, by the way, we are curious to know the writer's authority +for what he calls the odd circumstance that the Jacobins generally +borrowed their phrases from the legendary history of the early Roman +Republic, while the Girondins preferred to take metaphors from the +literature of Rousseau (p. 75). There was plenty of nonsense talked +about Brutus and Scaevola by both parties, and It Is not possible +to draw the line with precision. But the received view Is that the +Girondins were Voltairean, and the Jacobins Rousseauite, while Danton +was of the school of the Encyclopaedia, and Hébert and Chaumette were +inspired by Holbach. + +The author seems to us greatly to exaggerate the whole position of +Rousseau, and even in a certain sense to mistake the nature of his +influence. That Jean-Jacques was a far-reaching and important voice +the present writer is not at all likely to deny; but no estimate of +his influence in the world is correct which does not treat him rather +as moralist than publicist. _Emilius_ went deeper into men's minds in +France and in Europe at large, and did more to quicken the democratic +spirit, than the _Social Contract_ Apart from this, Sir Henry Maine +places Rousseau on an isolated eminence which does not really belong +to him. It did not fall within the limited scope of such an essay as +Sir Henry Maine's to trace the leading ideas of the _Social Contract_ +to the various sources from which they had come, but his account +of these sources is, even for its scale, inadequate. Portions of +Rousseau's ideas, he says truly, may be discovered in the speculations +of older writers; and he mentions Hobbes and the French Economists. +But the most characteristic of all the elements in Rousseau's +speculation were drawn from Locke. The theoretic basis of popular +government Is to be found in more or less definite shape in various +authors from Thomas Aquinas downwards. But it was Locke's philosophic +vindication of the Revolution of 1688, in the famous essay on +Civil Government, that directly taught Rousseau the lesson of the +Sovereignty of the People. Such originality as the _Social Contract_ +possesses is due to its remarkable union of the influence of the two +antagonistic English Thinkers. The differences between Hobbes and +Rousseau were striking enough. Rousseau looked on men as good, Hobbes +looked on them as bad. The one described the state of nature as a +state of peace, the other as a state of war. The first believed that +laws and institutions had depraved man, the second that they had +improved him. In spite of these differences the influence of Hobbes +was important, but only important in combination. "The total result +is," as I have said elsewhere, "a curious fusion between the premises +and the temper of Hobbes, and the conclusions of Locke. This fusion +produced that popular absolutism of which the _Social Contract_ was +the theoretical expression, and Jacobin supremacy the practical +manifestation. Rousseau borrowed from Hobbes the true conception of +sovereignty, and from Locke the true conception of the ultimate seat +and original of authority, and of the two together he made the great +image of the Sovereign People. Strike the crowned head from that +monstrous figure which is the frontispiece of the _Leviathan_, and +you have a frontispiece that will do excellently well for the _Social +Contract_."[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Rousseau_, chap. xii.] + +One more word may be said by the way. The very slightest account of +Rousseau is too slight to be tolerable, if it omits to mention Calvin. +Rousseau's whole theory of the Legislator, which produced such +striking results in certain transitory phases of the French +Revolution, grew up in his mind from the constitution which the great +reformer had so predominant a share in framing for the little republic +where Rousseau was born. + +This omission of Locke and Calvin again exemplifies the author's +characteristic tendency to look upon political ideas as if speculative +writers got them out of their own heads, or out of the heads of other +people, apart from the suggestions of events and the requirements of +circumstance, Calvin was the builder of a working government, and +Locke was the defender of a practical revolution. + +Nor does the error stop at the literary sources of political theories. +A point more or less in an estimate of a writer or a book is of +trivial importance compared with what strikes us as Sir Henry +Maine's tendency to impute an unreal influence to writers and books +altogether. There is, no doubt, a vulgar and superficial opinion that +mere speculation is so remote from the real interests of men, that it +is a waste of time for practical people to concern themselves about +speculation. No view could be more foolish, save one; and that one is +the opposite view, that the real interests of men have no influence +on their speculative opinions, and no share either in moulding those +opinions or in causing their adoption. Sir Henry Maine does not push +things quite so far as this. Still he appears to us to attribute +almost exclusive influence to political theories, and almost entirely +to omit what we take to be the much more important reaction upon +theory, both of human nature, and of the experience of human life and +outward affairs. He makes no allowance among innovating agencies for +native rationalism without a formula. His brilliant success in other +applications of the Historic Method has disposed him to see survivals +where other observers will be content with simpler explanations. +The reader is sometimes tempted to recall Edie Ochiltree's rude +interruption of Mr. Oldbuck's enthusiasm over the praetorium of the +Immortal Roman camp at Monkbarns. "Praetorian here, Praetorian there! +I mind the bigging o 't!" + +Sir Henry Maine believes that the air is thick with ideas about +democracy that were conceived _a priori_, and that sprung from the +teaching of Rousseau. A conviction of the advantages of legislative +change, for example, he considers to owe its origin much less to +active and original intelligence, than to "the remote effect of words +and notions derived from broken-down political theories." There are +two great fountains of political theory in our country according to +the author: Rousseau is one, and Bentham is the other. Current +thought and speech Is infested by the floating fragments of these two +systems--by loose phrases, by vague notions, by superstitions, that +enervate the human intellect and endanger social safety. This is the +constant refrain of the pages before us. We should have liked better +evidence. We do not believe that it is a Roman praetorium. Men often +pick up old phrases for new events, even when they are judging events +afresh with independent minds. When a politician of the day speaks of +natural rights, he uses a loose traditional expression for a view of +social equities which has come to him, not from a book, but from a +survey of certain existing social facts. Now the phrase, the literary +description, is the least significant part of the matter. When Mr. +Mill talks of the influence of Bentham's writings, he is careful to +tell us that he does not mean that they caused the Reform Bill or the +Appropriation Clause. "The changes which have been made," says Mill, +"and the greater changes which will be made, in our institutions are +not the work of philosophers, but of the interests and instincts +of large portions of society recently grown into strength" +_(Dissertations_, i. 332). That is the point. It is the action of +these interests and instincts which Sir Henry Maine habitually +overlooks. For is the omission a mere speculative imperfection. It has +an important bearing on the whole practical drift of the book. If he +had made more room for "the common intellect rough-hewing political +truths at the suggestion of common wants and common experience," +he would have viewed existing circumstances with a less lively +apprehension. + +It is easy to find an apposite illustration of what is meant by +saying that this talk of the influence of speculation is enormously +exaggerated and misleading. When Arthur Young was in France in the +autumn of 1787, he noticed a remarkable revolution in manners in two +or three important respects. One of them was a new fashion that had +just come in, of spending some weeks in the country: everybody who had +a country seat went to live there, and such as had none went to visit +those who had. This new custom, observed the admirable Young, is one +of the best that they have taken from England, and "its introduction +was effected the easier being assisted by the magic of Rousseau's +writings." The other and more generally known change was that women +of the first fashion were no longer ashamed of nursing their own +children, and that infants were no longer tightly bound round by +barbarous stays and swaddling clothes. This wholesome change, too, +was assisted by Rousseau's eloquent pleas for simplicity and the life +natural. Of these particular results of his teaching in France a +hundred years ago the evidence is ample, direct, and beyond denial. +But whenever we find gentlemen with a taste for country life, and +ladies with a fancy for nursing their own children, we surely need not +cry out that here is another proof of the extraordinary influence of +the speculations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We need not treat it as a +survival of a broken-down theory. "Great Nature is more wise than I," +says the Poet. Great Nature had much more to do with moulding men and +women to these things than all the books that have ever been printed. + +We are entirely sceptical as to the proposition that "men have at all +times quarrelled more fiercely about phrases and formulas than even +about material interests" (p. 124). There has been a certain amount of +fighting in the world about mere words, as idle as the faction fights +between Caravats and Shanavests, or Two-Year-Olds and Three-Year-Olds +in Ireland. But the more carefully we look into human history, the +more apparent it becomes that underneath the phrase or the formula +there is usually a material or a quasi-material, or a political, or +a national, or an ecclesiastical interest. Few quarrels now seem so +purely verbal as those which for several centuries raged about the +mysteries of the faith in the Western and the Eastern Churches. Yet +these quarrels, apparently as frivolous as they were ferocious, +about the relations of mind and matter, about the composition of +the Trinity, about the Divine nature, turned much less on futile +metaphysics than on the solid competition for ecclesiastical power, or +the conflict of rival nationalities. The most transcendental heresy or +orthodoxy generally had business at the bottom of it. + +In limiting the parentage of Modern English Liberalism of a Radical or +democratic type to Rousseau and Bentham, the author has left out +of sight what is assuredly a much more important factor than any +speculative, literary, or philosophic matter whatever. "Englishmen," +he says truly, "are wont to be content with the rough rule of success +or failure as the test of right or wrong in national undertakings." +The same habit of mind and temper marks the attitude of Englishmen +towards their national institutions. They look to success and failure, +they take the measure of things from results, they consult the +practical working of the machine, they will only go to school with +experience. We cannot find the proof that _a priori_ Radicalism ever +at any time got a real hold of any considerable mass of the people of +this country, or that any of the great innovations in domestic policy +since the end of Lord Liverpool's administration have been inspired +or guided by Rousseauite assumptions. Godwin, whose book on Political +Justice was for a long time the great literary fountain of English +Radicalism, owed quite as much to the utilitarian Helvétius as to the +sentimental Rousseau. Nor can either William Cobbett or Joseph Hume be +said to have dealt largely in _a priori_. What makes the Radical of +the street is mostly mother-wit exercising itself upon the facts of +the time. His weakness is that he does not know enough of the facts of +other times. + +Sir Henry Maine himself points to what has had a far more decisive +influence on English ways of thinking about politics than his two +philosophers, put together. "The American Republic," he says (p. 11), +"has greatly influenced the favour into which popular government grew. +It disproved the once universal assumptions that no Republic could +govern a large territory, and that no strictly Republican government +could be stable." Nothing can be more true. When Burke and Chatham +and Fox persistently declared that the victory of England over the +colonists would prove fatal in the long run to the liberties of +England itself, those great men were even wiser than they knew. +The success of popular government across the Atlantic has been the +strongest incentive to the extension of popular government here. +We need go no further back than the Reform Bill of 1867 to remind +ourselves that the victory of the North over the South, and the +extraordinary clemency and good sense with which that victory +was used, had more to do with the concession of the franchise to +householders in boroughs than all the eloquence of Mr. Gladstone and +all the diplomacies of Mr. Disraeli. + +To the influence of the American Union must be added that of the +British colonies. The success of popular self-government in these +thriving communities is reacting on political opinion at home with a +force that no statesman neglects, and that is every day increasing. +There is even a danger that the influence may go too far. They are +solving some of our problems, but not under our conditions, and not +in presence of the same difficulties. Still the effect of colonial +prosperity--a prosperity alike of admirable achievement and boundless +promise--is irresistible. It imparts a freedom, an elasticity, an +expansiveness, to English political notions, and gives our people a +confidence in free institutions and popular government, which +they would never have drawn from the most eloquent assumptions of +speculative system-mongers, nor from any other source whatever, save +practical experience carefully observed and rationally interpreted. +This native and independent rationality in men is what the jealous +votary of the historic method places far too low. + +In coming closer to the main current of the book, our first +disappointment is that Sir Henry Maine has not been very careful to +do full justice to the views that he criticises. He is not altogether +above lending himself to the hearsay of the partisan. He allows +expressions to slip from him which show that he has not been anxious +to face the problems of popular government as popular government is +understood by those who have best right to speak for it. "The more +the difficulties of multitudinous government are probed," he says (p. +180), "the stronger grows the doubt of the infallibility of popularly +elected legislatures." We do not profess to answer for all that may +have been said by Mr. Bancroft, or Walt Whitman, or all the orators of +all the Fourths of July since American Independence. But we are not +acquainted with any English writer or politician of the very slightest +consideration or responsibility who has committed himself to the +astounding proposition, that popularly elected legislatures are +infallible. Who has ever advanced such a doctrine? Further, "It +requires some attention to facts to see how widely spread is the +misgiving as to the absolute wisdom of popularly elected chambers." We +are not surprised at the misgiving. But after reasonable attention to +facts, we cannot recall any publicist, whom it could be worth while +to spend five minutes in refuting, who has ever said that popularly +elected chambers are absolutely wise. Again, we should like the +evidence for the statement that popularly elected Houses "do not +nowadays appeal to the wise deduction from experience, as old as +Aristotle, which no student of constitutional history will deny, that +the best constitutions are those in which there is a large popular +element. It is a singular proof of the widespread influence of the +speculations of Rousseau that although very few First Chambers really +represent the entire community, nevertheless in Europe they almost +invariably claim to reflect it, and as a consequence they assume an +air of divinity, which if it rightfully belonged to them would be +fatal to all argument for a Second Chamber." That would be very +important If it were true. But is it true that First Chambers assume +an air of divinity? Or is such an expression a "burlesque of the real +argument?" A reasonable familiarity with the course of the controversy +in France, where the discussion has been abundant, and in England, +where it has been comparatively meagre, leaves me, for one, entirely +ignorant that this claim for divinity, or anything like it, is ever +heard in the debate. The most powerful modern champion of popular +government was Gambetta. Did Gambetta consider First Chambers divine? +On the contrary, some of the most strenuous pleas for the necessity of +a Second Chamber are to be found precisely in the speeches of Gambetta +(_e.g._ his speech at Grenoble, in the autumn of 1878, _Discours_ +viii. 270, etc.). Abstract thinking is thinking withdrawn from the +concrete and particular facts. But the abstract thinker should not +withdraw too far. + +Sir Henry Maine speaks (p. 185) of "the saner political theorist, who +holds that in secular matters it is better to walk by sight than by +faith." He allows that a theorist of this kind, as regards popularly +elected chambers, "will be satisfied that experience has shown the +best Constitutions to be those in which the popular element is large, +and he will readily admit that, as the structure of each society of +men slowly alters, it is well to alter and amend the organisation by +which this element makes itself felt." Sir Henry Maine would surely +have done better service in this grave and difficult discussion, if he +had dealt with views which he mistrusts, as they are really held and +expressed by sane theorists, and not by insane theorists out of sight. +In France, a hundred years ago, from causes that are capable of +explanation, the democracy of sentiment swept away the democracy of +utility. In spite of casual phrases in public discussion, and in spite +of the incendiary trash of Red journalists without influence, it is +the democracy of reason, experience, and utility that is now in the +ascendant, both in France and elsewhere. + +The same spirit of what we must call parody is shown in such a +statement as that (p. 78) "an audience composed of roughs or clowns is +boldly told by an educated man that it has more political information +than an equal number of scholars." By "roughs" Sir Henry Maine +explains that he means the artisans of the towns. The designation is +hardly felicitous. It is not even fashionable; for the roughs and +clowns are now by common consent of Tories and Liberals alike +transformed into capable citizens. Such a phrase gives us a painful +glimpse of the accurate knowledge of their countrymen that is +possessed by eminent men who write about them from the dim and distant +seclusion of college libraries and official bureaux. If Sir Henry +Maine could spare a few evenings from dispassionate meditations on +popular government in the abstract, to the inspection of the governing +people in the concrete, he would be the first to see that to dispatch +an audience of skilled artisans as an assembly of roughs is as +unscientific, to use the mildest word, as the habit in a certain +religious world of lumping all the unconverted races of the earth +in every clime and age in the summary phrase, the heathen. A great +meeting of artisans listening to Mr. Arthur Balfour or Sir Henry +Roscoe at Manchester, to Sir Lyon Playfair at Leeds (the modern +democrat, at any rate, does not think the Republic has no need of +chemists), or to anybody else in a great industrial centre anywhere +else, is no more an assemblage of roughs than Convocation or the +House of Lords. Decidedly, an enemy of the unverified assumptions of +democracy ought to be on his guard against the unverified assumptions +of pedantocracy. + +As for the particular bit of sycophancy which educated men wickedly +dangle before roughs and clowns, we should like to be sure that the +proposition is correctly reported. If the educated man tells his +roughs (if that be the right name for the most skilful, industrious, +and effective handicraftsmen in the world) that they have as much +of the information necessary for shaping a sound judgment on the +political issues submitted to them, as an equal number of average +Masters of Arts and Doctors of Laws, then we should say that the +educated man, unless he has been very unlucky with his audience, is +perfectly right. He proves that his education has not confined itself +to books, bureaux, and an exclusive society, but has been carried on +in the bracing air of common life. I will not add anything of my +own on this point, because any candidate or member of Parliament +is suspect, but I will venture to transcribe a page or so from Mr. +Frederic Harrison. Mr. Harrison's intellectual equipment is not +inferior to that of Sir Henry Maine himself; and he has long had close +and responsible contact with the class of men of whom he is speaking, +which cannot be quite a disqualification after all. + + "No worse nonsense is talked than what we are told as to the + requisites for the elective franchise. To listen to some people, + it is almost as solemn a function as to be a trustee of the + British Museum. What you want in a body of electors is a rough, + shrewd eye for men of character, honesty, and purpose. Very plain + men know who wish them well, and the sort of thing which will + bring them good. Electors have not got to govern the country; they + have only to find a set of men who will see that the Government is + just and active.... All things go best by comparison, and a body + of men may be as good voters as their neighbours without basing + the type of the Christian hero. + + "So far from, being the least fit for political influence of all + classes in the community, the best part of the working class forms + the most fit of all others. If any section of the people is to + be the paramount arbiter in public affairs, the only section + competent for this duty is the superior order of workmen. + Governing is one thing; but electors of any class cannot or ought + not to govern. Electing, or the giving an indirect approval + of Government, is another thing, and demands wholly different + qualities. These are moral, not intellectual; practical, not + special gifts--gifts of a very plain and almost universal order. + Such are, firstly, social sympathies and sense of justice; then + openness and plainness of character; lastly, habits of action, and + a practical knowledge of social misery. These are the qualities + which fit men to be the arbiters or ultimate source (though + certainly not the instruments) of political power. These qualities + the best working men possess in a far higher degree than any other + portion of the community; indeed, they are almost the only part of + the community which possesses them in any perceptible degree."[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Order and Progress_, pp. 149-54, and again at p. 174.] + +The worst of it is that, if Sir Henry Maine is right, we have no more +to hope from other classes than from roughs and clowns. He can discern +no blue sky in any quarter. "In politics," he says, "the most +powerful of all causes is the timidity, the listlessness, and the +superficiality of the generality of minds" (p. 73). This is carrying +criticism of democracy into an indictment against human nature. What +is to become of us, thus placed between the devil of mob ignorance +and corruption, and the deep sea of genteel listlessness and +superficiality? After all, Sir Henry Maine is only repeating in more +sober tones the querulous remonstrances with which we are so familiar +on the lips of Ultramontanes and Legitimists. A less timid observer of +contemporary events, certainly in the land that all of us know best +and love best, would judge that, when it comes to a pinch, Liberals +are still passably prudent, and Conservatives quite sufficiently +wide-awake. + +Another of the passages in Sir Henry Maine's book, that savours rather +of the party caricaturist than of the "dispassionate student of +politics," is the following:-- + + "There is some resemblance between the period of political reform + in the nineteenth century and the period of religious reformation + in the sixteenth. Now as then the multitude of followers must be + distinguished from the smaller group of leaders. Now as then + there are a certain number of zealots who desire that truth shall + prevail.... But behind these, now as then, there is a crowd which + has imbibed a delight in change for its own sake, who would reform + the Suffrage, or the House of Lords, or the Land Laws, or the + Union with Ireland, in precisely the same spirit in which the mob + behind the reformers of religion broke the nose of a saint in + stone, made a bonfire of copes and surplices, or shouted for the + government of the Church by presbyteries" (p. 130). + +We should wish to look at this remarkable picture a little more +closely. That there exist Anabaptists in the varied hosts of the +English reformers is true. The feats of the Social Democrats, however, +at the recent election hardly convince us that they have very +formidable multitudes behind them. Nor is it they who concern +themselves with such innovations as those which Sir Henry Maine +specifies. The Social Democrats, even of the least red shade, go a +long way beyond and below such trifles as Suffrage or the Upper House. +To say of the crowd who do concern themselves with reform of the +Suffrage, or the Land Laws, or the House of Lords, or the Union with +Ireland, that they are animated by a delight in change for its own +sake, apart from the respectable desire to apply a practical remedy to +a practical inconvenience, is to show a rather highflying disregard +of easily ascertainable facts. The Crowd listen with interest to talk +about altering the Land Laws, because they suspect the English land +system to have something to do with the unprosperous condition of the +landlord, the farmer, and the labourer; with the depopulation of the +country and the congestion in the towns; with the bad housing of the +poor, and with various other evils which they suppose themselves to +see staring them daily in the face. They may be entirely mistaken +alike In their estimate of mischief and their hope of mitigation. But +they are not moved by delight in change for its own sake. When the +Crowd sympathises with disapproval of the House of Lords, it is +because the legislative performances of that body are believed to have +impeded useful reforms in the past, to be impeding them now, and to be +likely to impede them in the future. This may be a sad misreading +of the history of the last fifty years, and a painfully prejudiced +anticipation of the next fifty. At any rate, it is in intention a +solid and practical appeal to experience and results, and has no +affinity to a restless love of change for the sake of change. No +doubt, in the progress of the controversy, the assailants of the House +of Lords attack the principle of birth. But the principle of birth is +not attacked from the _a priori_ point of view. The whole force of +the attack lies in what is taken to be the attested fact that the +principle of a hereditary chamber supervising an elective chamber has +worked, is working, and will go on working, inconveniently, stupidly, +and dangerously. Finally, there is the question of the Irish Union. Is +it the English or Scottish Crowd that is charged with a wanton desire +to recast the Union? Nobody knows much about the matter who is not +perfectly aware that the English statesman, whoever he may be, who +undertakes the inevitable task of dealing with the demand for Home +Rule, will have to make his case very plain indeed in order to make +the cause popular here. Then is it the Irish Crowd? Sir Henry Maine, +of all men, is not likely to believe that a sentiment which the wisest +people of all parties in Ireland for a hundred years have known to lie +in the depths of the mind of the great bulk of the Irish population, +to whom we have now for the first time given the chance of declaring +their wishes, is no more than a gratuitous and superficial passion for +change for its own sake. The sentiment of Irish nationality may or may +not be able to justify itself in the eye of prudential reason, and +English statesmen may or may not have been wise in inviting it to +explode. Those are different questions. But Sir Henry Maine himself +admits in another connection (p. 83) that "vague and shadowy as are +the recommendations of what is called a Nationality, a State founded +on this principle has generally one real practical advantage, through +its obliteration of small tyrannies and local oppressions." It is not +to be denied that it is exactly the expectation of this very practical +advantage that has given its new vitality to the Irish National +movement which seems now once more, for good or for evil, to have +come to a head. When it is looked into, then, the case against the +multitudes who are as senselessly eager to change institutions as +other multitudes once were to break off the noses of saints in stone, +falls to pieces at every point. + +Among other vices ascribed to democracy, we are told that it is +against science, and that "even in our day vaccination is in the +utmost danger" (p. 98). The instance is for various reasons not a +happy one. It is not even precisely stated. I have never understood +that vaccination is in much danger. Compulsory vaccination is perhaps +in danger. But compulsion, as a matter of fact, was strengthened as +the franchise went lower. It is a comparative novelty in English +legislation (1853), and as a piece of effectively enforced +administration it is more novel still (1871). I admit, however, that +it is not endured in the United States; and only two or three years +ago it was rejected by an overwhelming majority on an appeal to the +popular vote in the Swiss Confederation. Obligatory vaccination may +therefore one day disappear from our statute book, if democracy has +anything to do with it. But then the obligation to practise a medical +rite may be inexpedient, in spite of the virtues of the rite itself. +That is not all. Sir Henry Maine will admit that Mr. Herbert Spencer +is not against science, and he expresses in the present volume his +admiration for Mr. Spencer's work on _Man and the State_. Mr. Spencer +is the resolute opponent of compulsory vaccination, and a resolute +denier, moreover, of the pretension that the evidence for the +advantages of vaccination takes such account of the ulterior effects +in the system as to amount to a scientific demonstration. Therefore, +if science demands compulsory vaccination, democracy in rejecting the +demand, and even if it went further, is at least kept in countenance +by some of those who are of the very household of science. The +illustration is hardly impressive enough for the proposition that it +supports. + +Another and a far more momentous illustration occurs on another page +(37). A very little consideration is enough to show that it will by +no means bear Sir Henry Maine's construction. "There is, in fact," he +says, "just enough evidence to show that even now there is a marked +antagonism between democratic opinion and scientific truth as applied +to human societies. The central seat in all Political Economy was from +the first occupied by the theory of Population. This theory ... has +become the central truth of biological science. Yet it is evidently +disliked by the multitude and those whom the multitude permits to lead +it." + +Sir Henry Maine goes on to say that it has long been intensely +unpopular in France, and this, I confess, is a surprise to me. It has +usually been supposed that a prudential limitation of families is +rooted in the minds and habits of nearly, though not quite, all +classes of the French nation. An excellent work on France, written by +a sound English observer seven or eight years ago, chances to be lying +before me at the moment, and here is a passage taken almost at random. +"The opinions of thoughtful men seem to tend towards the wish to +introduce into France some of that improvidence which allows English +people to bring large families into the world without first securing +the means of keeping them, and which has peopled the continent of +North America and the Australian colonies with an English-speaking +race" (Richardson's _Corn and Cattle Producing Districts of France_, +p. 47, etc.). Surely this is a well-established fact. It is possible +that denunciations of Malthus may occasionally be found both in +Clerical and Socialistic prints, but then there are reasons for that. +It can hardly be made much of a charge against French democracy that +it tolerates unscientific opinion, so long as it cultivates scientific +practice. + +As for our own country, and those whom the multitude permits to lead +it, we cannot forget that by far the most popular and powerful man _in +faece Romuli_--as Sir Henry Maine insists on our putting it in that +polite way--was tried and condemned not many years ago for publishing +a certain pamphlet which made a limitation of population the very +starting-point of social reform. It is not necessary to pronounce an +opinion on the particular counsels of the pamphlet, but the motives +which prompted its circulation (motives admitted to be respectable by +the Chief-Justice who tried the case), and the extraordinary reception +of the pamphlet by the serious portion of the workmen of the towns, +would make a careful writer think twice before feeling sure that +popular bodies will never listen to the truth about population. No +doubt, as Sir Henry Maine says in the same place, certain classes now +resist schemes for relieving distress by emigration. But there is a +pretty obvious reason for that. That reason is not mere aversion +to face the common sense of the relations between population and +subsistence, but a growing suspicion--as to the reasonableness of +which, again, I give no opinion--that emigration is made into an easy +and slovenly substitute for a scientific reform in our system of +holding and using land. In the case of Ireland, other political +considerations must be added. + +Democracy will be against science, we admit, in one contingency: if +it loses the battle with the Ultramontane Church. The worst enemy +of science is also the bitterest enemy of democracy, _c'est le +cléricalisme_. The interests of science and the interests of democracy +are one. Let us take a case. Suppose that popular Government in France +were to succumb, a military or any other more popular Government would +be forced to lean on Ultramontanes. Ultramontanes would gather the +spoils of democratic defeat. Sir Henry Maine is much too well informed +to think that a clerical triumph would be good for science, whatever +else it might be good for. Then are not propositions about democracy +being against science very idle and a little untrue? "Modern +politics," said a wise man (Pattison, _Sermons_, p. 191) "resolve +themselves into the struggle between knowledge and tradition." +Democracy is hardly on the side of tradition. + +We have dwelt on these secondary matters, because they show that +the author hardly brings to the study of modern democracy the ripe +preparation of detail which he gave to ancient law. In the larger +field of his speculation, the value of his thought is seriously +impaired by the absence of anything like a philosophy of society as a +whole. Nobody who has studied Burke, or Comte, or Mill--I am not sure +whether we should not add even De Maistre--can imagine any of them as +setting to work on a general political speculation without reference +to particular social conditions. They would have conducted the inquiry +in strict relation to the stage at which a community happened to be, +in matters lying outside of the direct scope of political government. +So, before all other living thinkers, should we have expected Sir +Henry Maine to do. It is obvious that systems of government, called +by the same name, bearing the same superficial marks, founded and +maintained on the same nominal principles, framed in the same verbal +forms, may yet work with infinite diversity of operation, according +to the variety of social circumstances around them. Yet it is here +inferred that democracy in England must be fragile, difficult, and +sundry other evil things, because out of fourteen Presidents of the +Bolivian Republic thirteen have died assassinated or in exile. If +England and Bolivia were at all akin in history, religion, race, +industry, the fate of Bolivian Presidents would be more instructive to +English Premiers. + +One of the propositions which Sir Henry Maine is most anxious to bring +home to his readers is that Democracy, in the extreme form to which +it tends, is of all kinds of government by far the most difficult. +He even goes so far as to say (p. 87) that, while not denying to +Democracies some portion of the advantage which Bentham claimed for +them, and "putting this advantage at the highest, it is _more than +compensated_ by one great disadvantage," namely, its difficulty. This +generalisation is repeated with an emphasis that surprises us, for two +reasons. In the first place, if the proposition could be proved to be +true, we fail to see that it would be particularly effective in its +practical bearings. Everybody whose opinions are worth consideration, +and everybody who has ever come near the machinery of democratic +government, is only too well aware that whether it be far the most +difficult form of government or not, it is certainly difficult enough +to tax the powers of statesmanship to the very uttermost. Is not that +enough? Is anything gained by pressing us further than that? "Better +be a poor fisherman," said Danton as he walked in the last hours of +his life on the banks of the Aube, "better be a poor fisherman, than +meddle with the governing of men." We wonder whether there has been +a single democratic leader either in France or England who has not +incessantly felt the full force of Danton's ejaculation. There may, +indeed, be simpletons in the political world who dream that if only +the system of government were made still more popular, all would be +plain sailing. But then Sir Henry Maine is not the man to write for +simpletons. + +The first reason, then, for surprise at the immense stress laid by the +author on the proposition about the difficulty of popular government +is that it would not be of the first order of importance if it were +true. Our second reason is that it cannot be shown to be true. +You cannot measure the relative difficulty of diverse systems of +government. Governments are things of far too great complexity for +precise quantification of this sort. Will anybody, for example, read +through the second volume of the excellent work of M. Leroy-Beaulieu +on the Empire of the Czars (1882), and then be prepared to maintain +that democracy is more difficult than autocracy? It would be +interesting, too, to know whether the Prince on whose shoulders +will one day be laid the burden of the German Empire will read the +dissertation on the unparalleled difficulties of democracy with +acquiescence. There are many questions, of which the terms are no +sooner stated than we at once see that a certain and definite answer +to them is impossible. The controversy as to the relative fragility, +or the relative difficulty, of popular government and other forms of +government, appears to be a controversy of this kind. We cannot decide +it until we have weighed, measured, sifted, and tested a great mass of +heterogeneous facts; and then, supposing the process to have been +ever so skilfully and laboriously performed, no proposition could be +established as the outcome, that would be an adequate reward for the +pains of the operation. + +This, we venture to think, must be pronounced a grave drawback to the +value of the author's present speculation. He attaches an altogether +excessive and unscientific importance to form. It would be +unreasonable to deny to a writer on democracy as a form of government +the right of isolating his phenomenon. But it is much more +unreasonable to predicate fragility, difficulty, or anything else of a +particular form of government, without reference to other conditions +which happen to go along with it in a given society at a given time. +None of the properties of popular government are independent of +surrounding circumstances, social, economic, religious, and historic. +All the conditions are bound up together in a closely interdependent +connection, and are not secondary to, or derivative from, the mere +form of government. It is, if not impossible, at least highly unsafe +to draw inferences about forms of government in universals. + +No writer seems to us to approach Machiavelli in the acuteness with +which he pushes behind mere political names, and passes on to the real +differences that may exist in movements and institutions that are +covered by the same designation. Nothing in its own way can be more +admirable, for instance, than his reflections on the differences +between democracy at Florence and democracy in old Rome--how the first +began in great inequality of conditions, and ended in great equality, +while the process was reversed in the second; how at Rome the people +and the nobles shared power and office, while at Florence the victors +crushed and ruined their adversaries; how at Rome the people, by +common service with the nobles, acquired some of their virtues, while +at Florence the nobles were forced down to seem, as well as to be, +like the common people (_Istorie Fiorentine_, bk. iii). + +This is only an example of the distinctions and qualifications which +it is necessary to introduce before we can prudently affirm or deny +anything about political institutions in general terms. Who would +deny that both the stability and the degree of difficulty of popular +government are closely connected in the United States with the +abundance of accessible land? Who would deny that in Great Britain +they are closely connected with the greater or less prosperity of our +commerce and manufactures? To take another kind of illustration +from Mr. Dicey's brilliant and instructive volume on the Law of the +Constitution. The governments of England and of France are both of +them popular in form; but does not a fundamental difference in their +whole spirit and working result from the existence in one country of +the _droit administratif_, and the absolute predominance in the other +of regular law, applied by the ordinary courts, and extending equally +over all classes of citizens? Distinctions and differences of this +order go for nothing in the pages before us; yet they are vital to the +discussion. + +The same fallacious limitation, the same exclusion of the many various +causes that cooperate in the production of political results, is to be +discerned in nearly every argument. The author justly calls attention +to the extraordinary good luck which has befallen us as a nation. He +proceeds to warn us that if the desire for legislative innovation be +allowed to grow upon us at its present pace--pace assumed to be very +headlong indeed--the chances are that our luck will not last. We shall +have a disaster like Sedan, or the loss of Alsace Lorraine (p. 151). +This is a curiously narrow reading of contemporary history. Did +Austria lose Sadowa, or was the French Empire ruined at Sedan, +in consequence of the passion of either of those Governments for +legislative innovations; or must we not rather, in order to +explain these striking events, look to a large array of military, +geographical, financial, diplomatic, and dynastic considerations and +conditions? If so, what becomes of the moral? England is, no doubt, +the one great civilised power that has escaped an organic or +structural change within the last five-and-twenty years. Within that +period, the American Union, after a tremendous war, has revolutionised +the social institutions of the South, and reconstructed the +constitution. The French Empire has foundered, and a French Republic +once more bears the fortunes of a great State over troubled waters. +Germany has undergone a complete transformation; so has the Italian +peninsula. The internal and the external relations alike of the +Austrian Power are utterly different to-day from what they were twenty +years ago. Spain has passed from monarchy to republic, and back to +monarchy again, and gone from dynasty to dynasty. But what share had +legislative innovation in producing these great changes? No share at +all in any one case. What is the logic, then, of the warning that if +we persist in our taste for legislative innovation, we shall lose +our immunity from the violent changes that have overtaken other +States--changes with which legislative innovation had nothing to do? + +In short, modern societies, whether autocratic or democratic, are +passing through a great transformation, social, religious, and +political. The process is full of embarrassments, difficulties, and +perils. These are the dominant marks of our era. To set them all down +to popular government is as narrow, as confused, and as unintelligent +as the imputation in a papal Encyclical of all modern ills to +Liberalism. You cannot isolate government, and judge it apart from the +other and deeper forces of the time. Western civilisation is slowly +entering on a new stage. Form of government is the smallest part of +it. It has been well said that those nations have the best chance of +escaping a catastrophe in the obscure and uncertain march before us, +who find a way of opening the most liberal career to the aspirations +of the present, without too rudely breaking with all the traditions of +the past. This is what popular government, wisely guided, is best able +to do. + +But will wise guidance be endured? Sir Henry Maine seems to think that +it will not. Mill thought that it would. In a singularly luminous +passage in an essay which for some reason or another he never +republished, Mill says-- + + "We are the last persons to undervalue the power of moral + convictions. But the convictions of the mass of mankind run hand + in hand with their interests or their class feelings. _We have a + strong faith, stronger than either politicians or philosophers + generally have, in the influence of reason and virtue over men's + minds_; but it is in that of the reason and virtue of their own + side of the question. We expect few conversions by the mere force + of reason from one creed to the other. Men's intellects and hearts + have a large share in determining what _sort_ of Conservatives or + Liberals they will be; but it is their position (saving individual + exceptions) which makes them Conservatives or Liberals." + +This double truth points to the good grounds that exist why we should +think hopefully of popular government, and why we should be slow to +believe that it has no better foundation to build upon than the unreal +assumptions of some bad philosophers, French or others. + + + + +A FEW WORDS ON FRENCH MODELS.[1] + +[Footnote 1: March 1888.] + + Nunquamne reponam, + Vexatus toties rauci Theseide Codri? + + +Historians are only too fond of insisting on the effect of the French +Revolution in checking English reform. One of the latest of them +dwells on the fatal influence of this great event in our own country, +in checking, blighting, and distorting the natural progress of things. +But for that influence, he says, the closing years of the century +would probably have seen the abolition of the English Slave Trade, the +reform of Parliament, and the repeal of the Test Act.[1] The question +of the precise degree of vitality in sectarian pride, and of tenacity +in a great material interest, a hundred years ago or at any time, is +not very easy to settle. It is quite possible that the Slave Trade +and the Test Act might have died nearly as hard, if there had been +no French Revolution. In any case, it is a curious implication that +underlies all writing in this familiar vein, that France ought to +have gone on with a bad government, in order to secure to England the +advantages of a good one. + +[Footnote 1: Lecky, vi. 297.] + +As to one disservice, however, there can be no doubt. The French +Revolution has furnished the enemies of each successive proposal of +reform with a boundless supply of prejudicial analogies, appalling +parallels, and ugly nicknames, which are all just as conclusive with +the unwise as if they were the aptest arguments. Sydney Smith might +well put "the awful example of a neighbouring nation" among the +standing topics of the Noodle's Oration. The abolition of rotten +boroughs brought down a thousand ominous references to noyades, +fusillades, and guillotines. When Sir Robert Peel took the duty off +corn, Croker warned him with great solemnity that he was breaking up +the old interests, dividing the great families, and beginning exactly +such a castastrophe as did the Noailles and the Montmorencis in 1789. +Cobden and Bright were promiscuously likened to Baboeuf, Chaumette, +and Anacharsis Clootz. Baboeuf, it is true, was for dividing up all +property, and Chaumette was an aggressive atheist; but these were +mere _nuances_, not material to the purposes of obloquy. Robespierre, +Danton, Marat have been mercilessly trotted forth in their sanguinary +shrouds, and treated as the counterparts and precursors of worthies so +obviously and exactly like them as Mr. Beales and Mr. Odger; while +an innocent caucus for the registration of voters recalls to some +well-known writers lurid visions of the Cordeliers and the Jacobin +Club. + +A recent addition has been made to the stock of nicknames drawn from +the terrible melodrama of the last century. The Chancellor of the +Exchequer at Dublin described the present very humble writer as "the +Saint-Just of our Revolution." The description was received with +lively applause. It would be indelicate to wonder how many in a +hundred, even in that audience of the elect, had ever heard of +Saint-Just, how many in five hundred could have spelt his name, and +how many in a thousand could have told any three facts in his career. +But let us muse for a moment upon the portrait. I take down the first +picture of Saint-Just that comes to my hand, M. Taine is the artist:-- + + "Among these energetic nullities we see gradually rising _a young + monster_--with face handsome and tranquil--Saint-Just! A sort of + precocious Sulla, who at five-and-twenty suddenly springs from + the ranks, and _by force of atrocity wins his place!_ Six years + before, he began life by an act of domestic robbery: while on a + visit at his mother's, he ran away in the night with her plate and + jewels; for that he was locked up for six months. On his release, + he employed his leisure in the composition of an odious poem. Then + he flung himself head foremost into the revolution. Blood calcined + by study, a colossal pride, a conscience completely unhinged, + an imagination haunted by the bloody recollections of Rome and + Sparta, an intelligence falsified and twisted until it found + itself most at its ease in the practice of enormous paradox, + barefaced sophism, and murderous lying--all these perilous + ingredients, mixed in a furnace of concentrated ambition, boiled + and fermented long and silently in his breast." + +It is, no doubt, hard to know ourselves. One may entertain demons +unawares, and have calcined blood without being a bit the wiser. +Still, I do not find the likeness striking. It would have done just as +well to call me Nero, Torquemada, Iago, or Bluebeard. + +Whether the present writer does or does not deserve all the +compliments that history has paid to Saint-Just, is a very slight +and trivial question, with which the public will naturally not much +concern itself. But as some use is from time to time made of the +writer's imputed delinquencies to prejudice an important cause, it is +perhaps worth while to try in a page or two to give a better account +of things. It is true that he has written on revolutionists like +Robespierre, and destructive thinkers like Rousseau and Voltaire. It +is true that he believes the two latter to have been on the whole, +when all deductions are made, on the side of human progress. But what +sort of foundation in this for the inference that he "finds his models +in the heroes of the French Revolution," and "looks for his methods +in the Reign of Terror"? It would be equally logical to infer that +because I have written, not without sympathy and appreciation, of +Joseph de Maistre, I therefore find my model in a hero of the Catholic +Reaction, and look for my methods in the revived supremacy of the Holy +See over all secular and temporal authorities. It would be just +as fair to say that because I pointed out, as it was the critic's +business to do, the many admirable merits, and the important moral +influences on the society of that time, of the _New Heloďsa_, +therefore I am bound to think Saint Preux a very fine fellow, +particularly fit to be a model and a hero for young Ireland. Only on +the principle that who drives fat oxen must himself be fat, can it be +held that who writes on Danton must be himself in all circumstances a +Dantonist. + +The most insignificant of literary contributions have a history and +an origin; and the history of these contributions is short and simple +enough. Carlyle with all the force of his humoristic genius had +impressed upon his generation an essentially one-sided view both of +the eighteenth century as a whole, and of the French thinkers of that +century in particular. His essay on Diderot, his lecture on Rousseau, +his chapters on Voltaire, with all their brilliance, penetration, and +incomparable satire, were the high-water mark in this country of the +literary reaction against the French school of Revolution. Everybody +knows the famous diatribes against the Bankrupt Century and all its +men and all its works. Voltaire's furies, Diderot's indigestions, +Rousseau's nauseous amours, and the odd tricks and shifts of the whole +of them and their company, offered ready material for the boisterous +horseplay of the transcendental humourist. Then the tide began to +turn. Mr. Buckle's book on the history of civilisation had something +to do with it. But it was the historical chapters in Comte's +Positive Philosophy that first opened the minds of many of us, who, +five-and-twenty years ago, were young men, to a very different +judgment of the true place of those schools in the literary and social +history of Western Europe. We learnt to perceive that though much in +the thought and the lives of the literary precursors of the Revolution +laid them fairly open to Carlyle's banter, yet banter was not all, and +even grave condemnation was not all. In essays, like mine, written +from this point of view, and with the object of trying to trim the +balance rather more correctly, it may well have been that the better +side of the thinkers concerned was sometimes unduly dwelt upon, and +their worse side unduly left in the background. It may well have been +that an impression of personal adhesion was conveyed which only very +partially existed, or even where it did not exist at all: that is a +risk of misinterpretation which it is always hard for the historical +critic to escape. There may have been a too eager tone; but to be +eager is not a very bad vice at any age under the critical forty. +There were some needlessly aggressive passages, and some sallies which +ought to have been avoided, because they gave pain to good people. +There was perhaps too much of the particular excitement of the time. +It was the date when _Essays and Reviews_ was still thought a terrible +explosive; when Bishop Colenso's arithmetical tests as to the flocks +and herds of the children of Israel were believed to be sapping not +only the inspiration of the Pentateuch but the foundations of the +Faith and the Church; and when Darwin's scientific speculations were +shaking the civilised world. Some excitement was to be pardoned in +days like those, and I am quite sure that one side needed pardon at +least as much as the other. For the substantial soundness of the +general views winch I took of the French revolutionary thinkers at +that time, I feel no apprehension; nor--some possible occasional +phrases or sentences excepted and apart--do I see the smallest reason +to shrink or to depart from any one of them. So far as one particular +reference may serve to illustrate the tenour of the whole body +of criticism, the following lines, which close my chapter on the +"Encyclopaedia," will answer the purpose as well as any others, and I +shall perhaps be excused for transcribing them:-- + + "An urgent social task lay before France and before Europe: it + could not be postponed until the thinkers had worked out a scheme + of philosophic completeness. The thinkers did not seriously make + any effort after this completeness. The Encyclopaedia was the most + serious attempt, and it did not wholly fail. As I replace in my + shelves this mountain of volumes, 'dusky and huge, enlarging on + the sight,' I have a presentiment that their pages will seldom + again be disturbed by me or by others. They served a great purpose + a hundred years ago. They are now a monumental ruin, clothed with + all the profuse associations of history. It is no Ozymandias of + Egypt, king of kings, whose wrecked shape of stone and sterile + memories we contemplate. We think rather of the grey and crumbling + walls of an ancient stronghold, reared by the endeavour of stout + hands and faithful, whence in its own day and generation a band + once went forth against barbarous hordes, to strike a blow for + humanity and truth."[1] + +[Footnote 1: Diderot, i. 247.] + +It is gratifying to find that the same view of the work of these +famous men, and of its relation to the social necessities of the time, +commends itself to Mr. Lecky, who has since gone diligently and with +a candid mind over the same ground.[1] Then where is the literary +Jacobin? + +[Footnote 1: See his vol. vi. 305 _et seq_.] + +Of course, it is easy enough to fish out a sentence or a short passage +here and there which, if taken by itself, may wear a very sinister +look, and carry the most alarming impressions. Not many days ago a +writer addressed a letter to the _Times_ which furnishes a specimen of +this kind of controversy. He gave himself the ambiguous designation of +"Catholicus"; but his style bore traces of the equivocally Catholic +climate of Munich. His aim was the lofty and magnanimous one of +importing theological prejudice into the great political dispute of +the day; in the interest, strange to say, of the Irish party who have +been for ages the relentless oppressors of the Church to which he +belongs, and who even now hate and despise it with all the virulence +of a Parisian Red. This masked assailant conveys to the mind of the +reader that I applaud and sympathise with the events of the winter of +1793, and more particularly with the odious procession of the +Goddess of Reason at Notre Dame. He says, moreover, that I have "the +effrontery to imply that the horrible massacres of the Revolution ... +were 'a very mild story compared with the atrocities of the Jews or +the crimes of Catholicism.'" No really honest and competent disputant +would have hit on "effrontery" as the note of the passage referred to, +if he had had its whole spirit and drift before him. The reader shall, +if he pleases, judge for himself. After the words just quoted, I go on +to say:-- + + "Historical recriminations, however, are not edifying. It is + perfectly fair, when Catholics talk of the atheist Terror, to + rejoin that the retainers of Anjou and Montpensier slew more men + and women on the first day of the Saint Bartholomew, than perished + in Paris through the Years I. and II. But the retort does us no + good beyond the region of dialectic. Some of the opinions of + Chaumette were full of enlightenment and hope. But it would be + far better to share the superstitious opinions of a virtuous and + benignant priest, like the Bishop in Victor Hugo's _Misérables_, + than to hold these good opinions of Chaumette, as he held them, + with a rancorous intolerance, a reckless disregard of the rights + and feelings of others, and a shallow forgetfulness of all that + great and precious part of our nature that lies out of the domain + of the logical understanding.... In every family where a mother + sought to have her child baptised, or where sons and daughters + sought to have the dying spirit of the old consoled by the last + sacrament, there sprang up a bitter enemy to the government which + had closed the churches and proscribed the priests. How could a + society whose spiritual life had been nourished in the solemn + mysticism of the Middle Ages suddenly turn to embrace a gaudy + paganism? The common self-respect of humanity was outraged by + apostate priests ... as they filed before the Convention, led by + the Archbishop of Paris, and accompanied by rude acolytes bearing + piles of the robes and the vessels of silver and gold with which + they had once served their holy office."[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Misc._ i 77-79.] + +Where is the effrontery, the search for methods in the Reign of +Terror, the applause for revolutionary models? Such inexcusable +perversion of a writer's meaning for an evanescent political +object--and a very shabby object too--is enough to make one think that +George III. knew what he was talking about, when he once delivered +himself of the saying that "Politics are a trade for a rascal, not for +a gentleman." + +Let me cite another more grotesque piece of irrelevancy with a similar +drift. Some months ago the present writer chanced to express an +opinion upon Welsh Disestablishment. Wales, at any rate, would seem to +be far enough away from _Emile, Candide_, the Law of Prairial, and the +Committee of Public Safety. The _Times_, however, instantly said[1] +that it would be affectation to express any surprise, because my +unfortunate "theories and principles, drawn from French sources +and framed on French models, all tend to the disintegration of +comprehensive political organisations and the encouragement of +arrangements based on the minor peculiarities of race or dialect." Was +there ever in the world such prodigious nonsense? What French sources, +what French models? If French models point in any one direction rather +than another, it is away from disintegration and straight towards +centralisation. Everybody knows that this is one of the most notorious +facts of French history from the days of Lewis XI. or Cardinal +Richelieu down to Napoleon Bonaparte. So far from French models +encouraging "arrangements based on the minor peculiarities of race and +dialect," France is the first great example in modern history, for +good or for evil, of a persevering process of national unification, +and the firm suppression of all provincial particularismus. This +is not only true of French political leaders in general: it is +particularly true of the Jacobin leaders. Rousseau himself, I admit, +did in one place point in the direction of confederation; but only in +the sense that for freedom on the one hand, and just administration +on the other, the unit should not be too large to admit of the +participation of the persons concerned in the management of their +own public affairs. If the Jacobins had not been overwhelmed by the +necessity of keeping out the invaders, they might have developed the +germ of truth in Rousseau's loose way of stating the expediency of +decentralisation. As it was, above all other French schools, the +Jacobins dealt most sternly with particularist pretensions. Of all +men, these supposed masters, teachers, and models of mine are least +to be called Separatists. To them more than to any other of the +revolutionary parties the great heresy of Federalism was most odious; +and if I were a faithful follower of the Jacobin model, I should +have least patience with nationalist sentiment whether in Ireland, +Scotland, or Wales, and should most rigorously insist on that +cast-iron incorporation which, as it happens, in the case of Ireland +I believe to be equally hopeless and undesirable. This explanation, +therefore, of my favour for Welsh Disestablishment is as absurdly +ignorant as it is far-fetched and irrelevant. + +[Footnote 1: Nov. 3, 1886.] + +The logical process is worth an instant's examination. The position is +no less than this,--that to attempt truly to appreciate the place and +the value in the history of thought and social movements of men who +have been a hundred years in their graves, and to sympathise with +certain sides and certain effects of their activity under the peculiar +circumstances in which French society then found itself, is the same +thing as binding yourself to apply their theories and to imitate their +activity, under an entirely heterogeneous set of circumstances, in +a different country, and in a society with wholly dissimilar +requirements. That is the argument if we straighten it out. The +childishness of any such contention is so obvious, that I should be +ashamed of reproducing it, were it not that this very contention has +made its appearance at my expense several times a month for the last +two years in all sorts of important and respectable prints. + +For instance, it appears that I once said somewhere that Danton +looked on at the doings of his bloodier associates with "sombre +acquiescence." _Argal_, it was promptly pointed out--and I espy the +dark phrase constantly adorning leading articles to this day--the man +who said that Danton sombrely acquiesced in the doings of Billaud, +Collet, and the rest, must of necessity, being of a firm and logical +mind, himself sombrely acquiesce in moonlighting and cattle-houghing +in Ireland. Apart from the curious compulsion of the reasoning, +what is the actual state of the case? Acquiescence is hardly a good +description of the mood of a politician who scorns delights and lives +laborious days in actively fighting for a vigorous policy and an +effective plan which, as he believes, would found order in Ireland +on a new and more hopeful base. He may be wrong, but where is the +acquiescence, whether sombre or serene? + +The equally misplaced name of Fatalism is sometimes substituted for +acquiescence, in criticisms of this stamp. In any such sense anybody +is a fatalist who believes in a relation between cause and effect. +If it is fatalism to assume that, given a certain chain of social or +political antecedents, they will inevitably be followed by a certain +chain of consequences, then every sensible observer of any series of +events is a fatalist. Catholic Emancipation, the extension of the +franchise, and secret ballot, have within the last sixty years +completely shifted the balance of political power in Ireland. Land +legislation has revolutionised the conditions of ownership. These vast +and vital changes in Ireland have been accompanied by the transfer of +decisive power from aristocracy to numbers in Great Britain, and Great +Britain is arbiter. Is it fatalism, or is it common sense, to perceive +that one new effect of new causes so potent must be the necessity +of changing the system of Irish government? To dream that you could +destroy the power of the old masters without finding new, and that +having invited the nation to speak you could continue to ignore the +national sentiment was and is the very height of political folly, and +the longer the dream is persisted in the ruder will be the awakening. +Surely the stupidest fatalism is far more truly to be ascribed to +those who insist that Ireland was eternally predestined to turmoil, +confusion, and torment; that there alone the event defies calculation; +and that, however wisely, carefully and providently you modify or +extinguish causes, in Ireland, though nowhere else, effects will still +survive with shape unaltered and force unabated. + +No author has a right to assume that anybody has read all his books or +any of them, but he may reasonably claim that he shall not be publicly +classified, labelled, catalogued, and placed In the shelves, on the +strength of half of his work, and that half arbitrarily selected. If +it be permitted to me without excess of egotism to name the masters to +whom I went to school in the days of early manhood, so far from being +revolutionists and terrorists, they belonged entirely to the opposite +camp. Austin's _Jurisprudence_ and Mill's _Logic_ and _Utilitarianism_ +were everything, and Rousseau's _Social Contract_ was nothing. To the +best of my knowledge and belief, I never said a word about "Natural +Rights" in any piece of practical public business in all my life; +and when that famous phrase again made its naked appearance on the +platform three or four years ago, it gave me as much surprise and +dismay as if I were this afternoon to meet a Deinotherium shambling +down Parliament Street. Mill was the chief influence for me, as he was +for most of my contemporaries in those days. Experience of life and +independent use of one's mind--which he would have been the most ready +of men to applaud--have since, as is natural, led to many important +corrections and deductions in Mill's political and philosophical +teaching. But then we were disciples, and not critics; and nobody will +suppose that the admirer of Wordsworth, the author of the Essay on +Coleridge, and of the treatise on Representative Government, the +administrator in the most bureaucratic and authoritative of public +services, was a terrorist or an unbridled democrat, or anything else +but the most careful and rationalistic of political theorisers. It +was Mill who first held up for my admiration the illustrious man whom +Austin enthusiastically called the "godlike Turgot," and it was he who +encouraged me to write a study on that great and inspiring character. +I remember the suspicion and the murmurings with which Louis Blanc, +then living in brave and honourable exile in London, and the good +friend of so many of us, and who was really a literary Jacobin to +the tips of his fingers, remonstrated against that piece of what he +thought grievously misplaced glorification. Turgot was, indeed, a very +singular hero with whom to open the career of literary Jacobin. So +was Burke,--the author of those wise sentences that still ring in +our ears: "_The question with me is, not whether you have a right to +render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to +make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what +humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. Nobody shall +persuade me, where a whole people are concerned, that acts of lenity +are not means of conciliation._" Burke, Austin, Mill, Turgot, +Comte--what strange sponsors for the "theories and principles of the +Terror"! + +What these opinions came to, roughly speaking, was something to this +effect: That the power alike of statesmen and of publicists over the +course of affairs is strictly limited; that institutions and movements +are not capable of immediate or indefinite modification by any amount +of mere will; that political truths are always relative, and never +absolute; that the test of practical, political, and social proposals +is not their conformity to abstract ideals, but to convenience, +utility, expediency, and occasion; that for the reformer, +considerations of time and place may be paramount; and finally, as +Mill himself has put it, that government is always either in the +hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the strongest power +in society, and that what this power is, and shall be, depends less on +institutions than institutions depend upon it. If I were pressed for +an illustration of these principles at work, inspiring the minds and +guiding the practice of responsible statesmen in great transactions of +our own day and generation, I should point to the sage, the patient, +the triumphant action of Abraham Lincoln in the emancipation of the +negro slaves. However that may be, contrast a creed of this kind with +the abstract, absolute, geometric, unhistoric, peremptory notions and +reasonings that formed the stock in trade of most, though not quite +all, of the French revolutionists, alike in action and in thought. It +is plain that they are the direct opposite and contradictory of one +another. + +To clench the matter by chapter and verse, I should like to recall +what, I have said of these theories and principles in their most +perfect and most important literary version. How have I described +Rousseau's _Social Contract_? It placed, I said, the centre of social +activity elsewhere than in careful and rational examination of social +conditions, and careful and rational effort to modify them. It +substituted a retrograde aspiration for direction, and emotion for the +discovery of law. It overlooked the crucial difficulty--namely, how to +summon new force, without destroying the sound parts of a structure +which it has taken many generations to erect. Its method was geometric +instead of being historic, and hence its "desperate absurdity." Its +whole theory was constructed with an imperfect consideration of the +qualities of human nature, and with too narrow a view of society. It +ignored the great fact that government is the art of wisely dealing +with huge groups of conflicting interests, of hostile passions, of +hardly reconcilable aims, of vehemently opposed forces. It "gives us +not the least help towards the solution of any of the problems of +actual government." + +Such language as all this is hardly that of a disciple to a master, in +respect of theories and principles which he is making his own for the +use of a lifetime. "There has been no attempt" [in these pages], +I said in winding up, "to palliate either the shallowness or the +practical mischievousness of the _Social Contract_. But there is +another side to its influence. We should be false to our critical +principle, if we do not recognise the historical effect of a +speculation scientifically valueless." Any writer would have stamped +himself as both unfit for the task that I had undertaken, and entirely +below the level of the highest critical standard of the day, if he had +for a moment dreamed of taking any other point of view. + +As for historical hero-worship, after Carlyle's fashion, whether +with Jacobin idols or any other, it is a mood of mind that must be +uncongenial to anybody who had ever been at all under the influence +of Mill. Without being so foolish as to disparage the part played by +great men in great crises, we could have no sympathy with the barbaric +and cynical school, who make greatness identical with violence, force, +and mere iron will. Cromwell said, in vindication of himself, that +England had need of a constable, and it was true. The constable, the +soldier, the daring counsellor at the helm, are often necessities of +the time. It is often a necessity of the time that the energy of a +nation or of a movement should gather itself up in a resolute band +or a resolute chief; as the revolutionary energy of France gathered +itself up in the greater Jacobins, or that of England in Oliver +Cromwell. Goethe says that nature bids us "_Take all, but pay_." +Revolutions and heroes may give us all, but not without price. This is +at the best, and the best is the exception. The grandiose types mostly +fail. In our own day, people talk, for example, with admiration of +Cromwell's government in Ireland,--as if it were a success, instead of +being one of the worst chapters in the whole history of Irish failure. +It was force carried to its utmost. Hundreds were put to the sword, +thousands were banished to be slaves of the planters in the West +Indies, and the remnant were driven miserably off into the desolate +wilds of Connaught. But all this only prepared the way for further +convulsions and deadlier discontent. + +It is irrational to contrast Carlyle's heroes, Cromwell, Mirabeau, +Frederick, Napoleon, with men like Washington or Lincoln. The +circumstances were different. The conditions of public use and of +personal greatness were different. But if we are to talk of ideals, +heroes, and models, I, for one, should hardly look to France at all. +Jefferson was no flatterer of George Washington; but his character of +Washington comes far nearer to the right pattern of a great ruler than +can be found in any of Carlyle's splendid dithyrambs, and it is no +waste of time to recall and to transcribe it:-- + + "His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first + order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a + Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was + ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by + invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common + remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils + of war, where, hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was + best; and certainly no general ever planned his battles more + judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if + any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, + he was slow in a readjustment. He was incapable of fear, meeting + personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest + feature in his character was prudence, never acting until + every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; + refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going through + with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was + most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no + motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, + being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense + of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was + naturally irritable and high toned; but reflection and resolution + had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it." + +In conclusion, the plain truth is that all parallels, analogies, and +similitudes between the French Revolution, or any part or phase of it, +and our affairs in Ireland are moonshine. For the practical politician +his problem is always individual. For his purposes history never +repeats itself. Human nature, doubtless, has a weakness for a +precedent; it is a weakness to be respected. But there is no +such thing as an essential reproduction of social and political +combinations of circumstance. To talk about Robespierre in connection +with Ireland is just as idle as it was in Robespierre to harangue +about Lycurgus and Brutus in Paris. To compare the two is to place +Ireland under a preposterous magnifying-glass of monstrous dimension. +Nor is disparity of scale the only difference, vital as that is. In +no one of the leading characteristics of a community in a state of +ferment, save the odium that surrounds the landlords, and that not +universal, does Ireland to-day really resemble the France of a +hundred years ago. Manners, ideas, beliefs, traditions, crumbling +institutions, rising aspirations, the ordering of castes and classes, +the rivalry of creeds, the relations with the governing power--all +constitute elements of such radical divergence as to make comparison +between modern Ireland and revolutionary France for any more serious +purpose than giving a conventional and familiar point to a sentence, +entirely worthless. + +It is pure dilettantism, again, to seek the moral of Irish commotions +in the insurrection of La Vendée. That, as somebody has said, was like +a rising of the ancient Gauls at the voice of the Druids, and led by +their great chiefs. It will be time enough to compare La Vendée +with Ireland when the peasantry take the field against the British +Government with Beresfords, Fitzgeralds, and Bourkes at their head. If +the Vendéans had risen to drive out the Charettes, the Bonchamps, the +Larochejacquelins, the parallel would have been nearer the mark. The +report of the Devon Commission, the green pamphlet containing an +account of the famous three days' discussion between O'Connell and +Butt in the Dublin Corporation In 1843, or half a dozen of Lord +Clare's speeches between 1793 and 1800, will give a clearer insight +into the Irish problem than a bushel of books about the Vendéan or any +other episode of the Revolution. + +Equally frivolous is it, for any useful purpose of practical +enlightenment, to draw parallels between the action of the Catholic +clergy in Ireland to-day and that of the French clergy on the eve of +the Revolution. There is no sort of force in the argument that because +the French clergy fared ill at the Revolution,[1] therefore the Irish +clergy will fare ill when self-government is bestowed on Ireland. +Such talk is mere ingenious guess-work at best, without any of the +foundations of a true historical analogy. The differences between the +two cases are obvious, and they go to the heart of the matter. For +instance, the men who came to the top of affairs in France were +saturated both with speculative unbelief for one thing, and with +active hatred of the Church for another. In Ireland, on the contrary, +there is no speculative unbelief, as O'Connell used so constantly to +boast; and the Church being poor, voluntary, and intensely national +and popular, has nourished none of those gross and swollen abuses +which provoked the not unreasonable animosity of revolutionary France. +In truth, it is with precisely as much or as little reason that most +of the soothsayers and prognosticators of evil take the directly +opposite line. Instead of France these persons choose, as they have an +equally good right to do, to look for precedents to Spain, Belgium, or +South America. Why not? They assure us, in their jingling phrase, that +Home Rule means Rome Rule, that the priests will be the masters, and +that Irish autonomy is only another name for the reign of bigotry, +superstition, and obscurantism. One of these two mutually destructive +predictions has just as much to say for itself as the other, and no +more. We may leave the prophets to fight it out between them while we +attend to our business, and examine facts and probabilities as +they are, without the aid of capriciously adopted precedents and +fantastical analogies. + +[Footnote 1: The Church did not fare so very ill, after all. The +State, in 1790, undertook the debts of the Church to the tune of +130,000,000 livres, and assured it an annual Budget of rather more +than that amount.--Boiteau's _Etat de la France_, p. 202.] + +Parallels from France, or anywhere else, may supply literary +amusement; they may furnish a weapon in the play of controversy. They +shed no light and do no service as we confront the solid facts of the +business to be done. Lewis the Fourteenth was the author of a very +useful and superior commonplace when he wrote: "No man who is badly +informed can avoid reasoning badly. I believe that whoever is rightly +instructed, and rightly persuaded of _all the facts_, would never do +anything else but what he ought." Another great French ruler, who, +even more than Lewis, had a piercing eye for men and the world +of action, said that the mind of a general ought to be like a +field-glass, and as clear; to see things exactly as they are, _et +jamais se faire des tableaux_,--never to compose the objects before +him into pictures. The same maxim is nearly as good for the man who +has to conquer difficulties in the field of government; and analogies +and parallels are one way of substituting pictures for plans and +charts. Just because the statesman's problem is individual, history +can give him little help. I am not so graceless as to depreciate +history or literature either for public or for private persons. "You +are a man," Napoleon said to Goethe; and there is no reason why +literature should prevent the reader of books from being a man; why it +should blind him to the great practical truths that the end of life +is not to think but to will; that everything in the world has its +decisive moment, which statesmen know and seize; that the genius of +politics, as a great man of letters truly wrote, has not "All or +Nothing" for its motto, but seeks on the contrary to extract the +greatest advantage from situations the most compromised, and never +flings the helve after the hatchet. Like literature the use of history +in politics is to refresh, to open, to make the mind generous and +hospitable; to enrich, to impart flexibility, to quicken and nourish +political imagination and invention, to instruct in the common +difficulties and the various experiences of government; to enable a +statesman to place himself at a general and spacious standpoint. All +this, whether it be worth much or little, and it is surely worth much, +is something wholly distinct from directly aiding a statesman in +the performance of a specific task. In such a case an analogy from +history, if he be not sharply on his guard, is actually more likely +than not to mislead him. I certainly do not mean the history of the +special problem itself. Of that he cannot possibly know too much, nor +master its past course and foregone bearings too thoroughly. Ireland +is a great standing instance. There is no more striking example of +the disastrous results of trying to overcome political difficulties +without knowing how they came into existence, and where they have +their roots. The only history that furnishes a clue in Irish questions +is the history of Ireland and the people who have lived in it or have +been driven out of it. + + + + +ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE.[1] + +[Footnote 1: The annual address to the students of the London Society +for the Extension of University Teaching, delivered at the Mansion +House, February 26th, 1887.] + + +When my friend Mr. Goschen invited me to discharge the duty which +has fallen to me this afternoon I confess that I complied with many +misgivings. He desired me to say something on the literary side of +education. Now, it is almost impossible--and I think those who know +most of literature will be readiest to agree with me--to say anything +new in recommendation of literature in a scheme of education. I have +felt, however, that Mr. Goschen has worked with such zeal and energy +for so many years on behalf of this good cause, that anybody whom he +considered able to render him any co-operation owed it to him in its +fullest extent. The Lord Mayor has been kind enough to say that I am +especially qualified to speak on English literature. I must, however, +remind the Lord Mayor that I have strayed from literature into the +region of politics; and I am not at all sure that such a journey +conduces to the aptness of one's judgment on literary subjects, or +adds much to the force of one's arguments on behalf of literary study. +Politics are a field where action is one long second-best, and where +the choice constantly lies between two blunders. Nothing can be +more unlike in aim, in ideals, in method, and in matter, than are +literature and politics. I have, however, determined to do the best +that I can; and I feel how great an honour it is to be invited to +partake in a movement which I do not hesitate to call one of the most +important of all those now taking place in English society. + +What is the object of the movement? What do the promoters aim at? I +take it that what they design is to bring the very best teaching that +the country can afford, through the hands of the most thoroughly +competent men, within the reach of every class of the community. Their +object is to give to the many that sound, systematic, and methodical +knowledge, which has hitherto been the privilege of the few who can +afford the time and money to go to Oxford and Cambridge; to diffuse +the fertilising waters of intellectual knowledge from their great and +copious fountain-heads at the Universities by a thousand irrigating +channels over the whole length and breadth of our busy, indomitable +land. Gentlemen, this is a most important point. Goethe said that +nothing is more frightful than a teacher who only knows what his +scholars are intended to know. We may depend upon it that the man +who knows his own subject most thoroughly is most likely to excite +interest about it in the minds of other people. We hear, perhaps more +often than we like, that we live in a democratic age. It is true +enough, and I can conceive nothing more democratic than such a +movement as this, nothing which is more calculated to remedy defects +that are incident to democracy, more thoroughly calculated to raise +modern democracy to heights which other forms of government and older +orderings of society have never yet attained. No movement can be more +wisely democratic than one which seeks to give to the northern miner +or the London artisan knowledge as good and as accurate, though he +may not have so much of it, as if he were a student at Oxford or +Cambridge. Something of the same kind may be said of the new frequency +with which scholars of great eminence and consummate accomplishments, +like Jowett, Lang, Myers, Leaf, and others, bring all their +scholarship to bear, in order to provide for those who are not able, +or do not care, to read old classics in the originals, brilliant and +faithful renderings of them in our own tongue. Nothing but good, I am +persuaded, can come of all these attempts to connect learning with the +living forces of society, and to make industrial England a sharer in +the classic tradition of the lettered world. + +I am well aware that there is an apprehension that the present +extraordinary zeal for education in all its forms--elementary, +secondary, and higher--may bear in its train some evils of its own. It +is said that before long nobody in England will be content to practise +a handicraft, and that every one will insist on being at least a +clerk. It is said that the moment is even already at hand when a great +deal of practical distress does and must result from this tendency. I +remember years ago that in the United States I heard something of the +same kind. All I can say is, that this tendency, if it exists, is sure +to right itself. In no case can the spread of so mischievous a notion +as that knowledge and learning ought not to come within reach of +handicraftsmen be attributed to literature. There is a familiar +passage in which Pericles, the great Athenian, describing the glory of +the community of which he was so far-shining a member, says, "We at +Athens are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes; we +cultivate the mind without loss of manliness." But then remember that +after all Athenian society rested on a basis of slavery. Athenian +citizens were able to pursue their love of the beautiful, and their +simplicity, and to cultivate their minds without loss of manliness, +because the drudgery and hard work and rude service of society were +performed by those who had no share in all these good things. With us, +happily, it is very different. We are all more or less upon a level. +Our object is--and it is that which in my opinion raises us infinitely +above the Athenian level--to bring the Periclean ideas of beauty and +simplicity and cultivation of the mind within the reach of those who +do the drudgery and the service and rude work of the world. And it can +be done--do not let us be afraid--it can be done without in the least +degree impairing the skill of our handicraftsmen or the manliness of +our national life. It can be done without blunting or numbing the +practical energies of our people. + +I know they say that if you meddle with literature you are less +qualified to take your part in practical affairs. You run a risk of +being labelled a dreamer and a theorist. But, after all, if we take +the very highest form of all practical energy--the governing of the +country--all this talk is ludicrously untrue. I venture to say that in +the present Government [1887], including the Prime Minister, there are +three men at least who are perfectly capable of earning their bread as +men of letters. In the late Government, besides the Prime Minister, +there were also three men of letters, and I have never heard that +those three were greater simpletons than their neighbours. There is +a Commission now at work on that very important and abstruse +subject--the Currency. I am told that no one there displays so acute +an intelligence of the difficulties that are to be met, and so ready +an apprehension of the important arguments that are brought forward, +and the practical ends to be achieved, as the chairman of the +Commission, who is not what is called a practical man, but a man +of study, literature, theoretical speculation, and university +training.[1] Oh no, gentlemen, some of the best men of business in the +country are men who have had the best collegian's equipment, and are +the most accomplished bookmen. + +[Footnote 1: Mr. Arthur Balfour.] + +It is true that we cannot bring to London, with this movement, the +indefinable charm that haunts the grey and venerable quadrangles of +Oxford and Cambridge. We cannot take you into the stately halls, the +silent and venerable libraries, the solemn chapels, the studious +old-world gardens. We cannot surround you with all those elevated +memorials and sanctifying associations of scholars and poets, of +saints and sages, that march in glorious procession through the ages, +and make of Oxford and Cambridge a dream of music for the inward ear, +and of delight for the contemplative eye. We cannot bring all that to +you; but I hope, and I believe, it is the object of those who are more +intimately connected with the society than I have been, that every +partaker of the benefits of this society will feel himself and herself +in living connection with those two famous centres, and feel conscious +of the links that bind the modern to the older England. One of the +most interesting facts mentioned in your report this year is that last +winter four prizes of Ł10 each were offered in the mining district of +Northumberland, one each to the male and female student in every term +who should take the highest place in the examination, in order to +enable them to spend a month in Cambridge in the long vacation for the +purpose of carrying on in the laboratories and museums the work in +which they had been engaged in the winter at the local centre. That is +not a step taken by our society; but the University of Cambridge has +inspired and worked out the scheme, and I am not without hope that +from London some of those who attend these classes may be able to +realise in person the attractions and the associations of these two +great historic sites. One likes to think how poor scholars three or +four hundred years ago used to flock to Oxford, regardless of cold, +privation, and hardship, so that they might satisfy their hunger and +thirst for knowledge. I like to think of them in connection with this +movement. I like to think of them in connection with students like +those miners in Northumberland, whom I know well, and who are +mentioned in the report of the Cambridge Extension Society as, after +a day's hard work in the pit, walking four or five miles through cold +and darkness and rough roads to hear a lecture, and then walking +back again the same four or five miles. You must look for the same +enthusiasm, the same hunger and thirst for knowledge, that presided +over the foundation of the Universities many centuries ago, to carry +on this work, to strengthen and stimulate men's faith in knowledge, +their hopes from it, and their zeal for it. + +Speaking now of the particular kind of knowledge of which I am going +to say a few words--how does literature fare in these important +operations? Last term, out of fifty-seven courses in the Cambridge +scheme, there were ten on literature: out of thirty-one of our +courses, seven were on literature. I am bound to say I think that +such a position for literature in the scheme is very reasonably +satisfactory. I have made some inquiries, since I knew that I was +going to speak here, in the great popular centres of industry in the +North and in Scotland as to the popularity of literature as a subject +of teaching, I find very much what I should have expected. The +professors all tell very much the same story, and this is, that it +is extremely hard to interest any considerable number of people in +subjects that seem to have no direct bearing upon the practical work +of everyday life. There is a disinclination to study literature for +its own sake, or to study anything which does not seem to have a +visible and direct influence upon the daily work of life. The nearest +approach to a taste for literature is a certain demand for instruction +in history with a little flavour of contemporary politics. In short, +the demand for instruction in literature is strictly moderate. That is +what men of experience tell me, and we have to recognise it, nor ought +we to be at all surprised. Mr. Goschen, when he spoke some years ago, +said there were three motives which might induce people to seek the +higher education. First, to obtain greater knowledge for bread-winning +purposes. From that point of view science would be most likely to feed +the classes. Secondly, the improvement of one's knowledge of political +economy, and history, and facts bearing upon the actual political work +and life of the day. Thirdly, was the desire of knowledge as a luxury +to brighten life and kindle thought. I am very much afraid that, in +the ordinary temper of our people, and the ordinary mode of looking at +life, the last of these motives savours a little of self-indulgence, +and sentimentality, and other objectionable qualities. There is a +great stir in the region of physical science at this moment, and it is +likely, as any one may see, to take a chief and foremost place in the +field of intellectual activity. After the severity with which science +was for so many ages treated by literature, we cannot wonder that +science now retaliates, now mightily exalts herself, and thrusts +literature down into the lower place. I only have to say on the +relative claims of science and literature what Dr Arnold said:--"If +one might wish for impossibilities, I might then wish that my children +might be well versed in physical science, but in due subordination to +the fulness and freshness of their knowledge on moral subjects. This, +however, I believe cannot be; wherefore, rather than have it the +principal thing in my son's mind, I would gladly have him think that +the sun went round the earth, and that the stars were so many spangles +set in the bright blue firmament" (Stanley's _Life of Arnold_, ii. +31). It is satisfactory that one may know something of these matters, +and yet not believe that the sun goes round the earth. But if there +is to be exclusion, I, for one, am not prepared to accept the rather +enormous pretensions that are nowadays sometimes made for physical +science as the be-all and end-all of education. + +Next to this we know that there is a great stir on behalf of technical +and commercial education. The special needs of our time and country +compel us to pay a particular attention to this subject. Here +knowledge is business, and we shall never hold our industrial +pre-eminence, with all that hangs upon that pre-eminence, unless we +push on technical and commercial education with all our might. But +there is a third kind of knowledge, and that too, in its own way, is +business. There is the cultivation of the sympathies and imagination, +the quickening of the moral sensibilities, and the enlargement of the +moral vision. The great need in modern culture, which is scientific +in method, rationalistic in spirit, and utilitarian in purpose, is to +find some effective agency for cherishing within us the ideal. That +is the business and function of literature. Literature alone will not +make a good citizen; it will not make a good man. History affords too +many proofs that scholarship and learning by no means purge men of +acrimony, of vanity, of arrogance, of a murderous tenacity about +trifles. Mere scholarship and learning and the knowledge of books do +not by any means arrest and dissolve all the travelling acids of the +human system. Nor would I pretend for a moment that literature can be +any substitute for life and action. Burke said, "What is the education +of the generality of the world? Reading a parcel of books? No! +Restraint and discipline, examples of virtue and of justice, these are +what form the education of the world." That is profoundly true; it is +life that is the great educator. But the parcel of books, if they are +well chosen, reconcile us to this discipline; they interpret this +virtue and justice; they awaken within us the diviner mind, and rouse +us to a consciousness of what is best in others and ourselves. + +As a matter of rude fact, there is much to make us question whether the +spread of literature, as now understood, does awaken the diviner mind. +The numbers of the books that are taken out from public libraries are +not all that we could wish. I am not going to inflict many figures on +you, but there is one set of these figures that distresses +booklovers,--I mean the enormous place that fiction occupies in the +books that are taken out. In one great town in the North prose fiction +forms 76 per cent of all the books lent. In another great town prose +fiction is 82 per cent; in a third 84 per cent; and in a fourth 67 per +cent. I had the curiosity to see what happens in the libraries of the +United States; and there--supposing the system of cataloguing and +enumeration to be the same--they are a trifle more serious in their +taste than we are; where our average is about 70 per cent, at a place +like Chicago it is only about 60 per cent. In Scotland, too, it ought to +be said that they have a better average in respect to prose fiction. +There is a larger demand for books called serious than in England. And I +suspect, though I do not know, that one reason why there is in Scotland +a greater demand for the more serious classes of literature than +fiction, is that in the Scotch Universities there are what we have not +in England--well-attended chairs of literature, systematically and +methodically studied. Do not let it be supposed that I at all underrate +the value of fiction. On the contrary, when a man has done a hard day's +work, what can he do better than fall to and read the novels of Walter +Scott, or the Brontes, or Mrs. Gaskell, or some of our living writers. I +am rather a voracious reader of fiction myself. I do not, therefore, +point to it as a reproach or as a source of discouragement, that fiction +takes so large a place in the objects of literary interest. I only +suggest that it is much too large, and we should be better pleased if it +sank to about 40 per cent, and what is classified as general literature +rose from 13 to 25 per cent. + +There are other complaints of literature as an object of interest in +this country. I was reading the other day an essay by the late head of +my old college at Oxford, that very learned and remarkable man Mark +Pattison, who was a booklover if ever there was one. He complained +that the bookseller's bill in the ordinary English middle class family +is shamefully small. It appeared to him to be monstrous that a man +who is earning Ł1000 a year should spend less than Ł1 a week on +books--that is to say, less than a shilling in the pound per annum. I +know that Chancellors of the Exchequer take from us 8d. or 6d. in the +pound, and I am not sure that they always use it as wisely as if they +left us to spend it on books. Still, a shilling in the pound to be +spent on books by a clerk who earns a couple of hundred pounds a year, +or by a workman who earns a quarter of that sum, is rather more, I +think, than can be reasonably expected. A man does not really need +to have a great many books. Pattison said that nobody who respected +himself could have less than 1000 volumes. He pointed out that you can +stack 1000 octavo volumes in a bookcase that shall be 13 feet by 10 +feet, and 6 inches deep, and that everybody has that small amount of +space at disposal. Still the point is not that men should have a great +many books, but that they should have the right ones, and that they +should use those that they have. We may all agree in lamenting +that there are so many houses--even some of considerable social +pretension--where you will not find a good atlas, a good dictionary, +or a good cyclopaedia of reference. What is still more lamentable, in +a good many more houses where these books are, they are never referred +to or opened. That is a very discreditable fact, because I defy +anybody to take up a single copy of the _Times_ newspaper and not come +upon something in it, upon which, if their interest in the affairs of +the day were active, intelligent, and alert as it ought to be, they +would consult an atlas, dictionary, or cyclopaedia of reference. + +No sensible person can suppose for a single moment that everybody +is born with the ability for using books, for reading and studying +literature. Certainly not everybody is born with the capacity of being +a great scholar. All people are no more born great scholars like +Gibbon and Bentley, than they are all born great musicians like Handel +and Beethoven. What is much worse than that, many come into the world +with the incapacity of reading, just as they come into it with the +incapacity of distinguishing one tune from another. To them I have +nothing to say. Even the morning paper is too much for them. They can +only skim the surface even of that. I go further, and frankly admit +that the habit and power of reading with reflection, comprehension, +and memory all alert and awake, does not come at once to the +natural man any more than many other sovereign virtues come to that +interesting creature. What I do venture to press upon you is, that +it requires no preterhuman force of will in any young man or +woman--unless household circumstances are more than usually vexatious +and unfavourable--to get at least half an hour out of a solid busy day +for good and disinterested reading. Some will say that this is too +much to expect, and the first persons to say it, I venture to predict, +will be those who waste their time most. At any rate, if I cannot get +half an hour, I will be content with a quarter. Now, in half an hour I +fancy you can read fifteen or twenty pages of Burke; or you can read +one of Wordsworth's masterpieces--say the lines on Tintern; or +say, one-third--if a scholar, in the original, and if not, in a +translation--of a book of the Iliad or the Aeneid. I do not think that +I am filling the half-hour too full. But try for yourselves what you +can read in half an hour. Then multiply the half-hour by 365, and +consider what treasures you might have laid by at the end of the year; +and what happiness, fortitude, and wisdom they would have given you +during all the days of your life. + +I will not take up your time by explaining the various mechanical +contrivances and aids to successful study. They are not to be despised +by those who would extract the most from books, Many people think of +knowledge as of money. They would like knowledge, but cannot face the +perseverance and self-denial that go to the acquisition of it. The +wise student will do most of his reading with a pen or a pencil in his +hand. + +He will not shrink from the useful toil of making abstracts and +summaries of what he is reading. Sir William Hamilton was a strong +advocate for underscoring books of study. "Intelligent underlining," +he said, "gave a kind of abstract of an important work, and by the +use of different coloured inks to mark a difference of contents, +and discriminate the doctrinal from the historical or illustrative +elements of an argument or exposition, the abstract became an analysis +very serviceable for ready reference,"[1] This assumes, as Hamilton +said, that the book to be operated on is your own, and perhaps is +rather too elaborate a counsel of perfection for most of us. Again, +some great men--Gibbon was one, and Daniel Webster was another, and +the great Lord Strafford was a third--always before reading a book +made a short, rough analysis of the questions which they expected to +be answered in it, the additions to be made to their knowledge, and +whither it would take them. + +[Footnote 1: Veitch's _Life of Hamilton_, pp. 314, 392.] + +"After glancing my eye," says Gibbon, "over the design and order of +a new book, I suspended the perusal until I had finished the task of +self-examination; till I had revolved in a solitary walk all that I +knew or believed or had thought on the subject of the whole work or of +some particular chapter: I was then qualified to discern how much the +author added to my original stock; and if I was sometimes satisfied +by the agreement, I was sometimes armed by the opposition, of our +ideas."[1] + +[Footnote 1: Dr. Smith's _Gibbon_, i. 64.] + +I have sometimes tried that way of steadying and guiding attention; +and I commend it to you. I need not tell you that you will find that +most books worth reading once are worth reading twice, and--what +is most important of all--the masterpieces of literature are worth +reading a thousand times. It is a great mistake to think that because +you have read a masterpiece once or twice, or ten times, therefore you +have done with it. Because it is a masterpiece, you ought to live with +it, and make it part of your daily life. Another practice is that of +keeping a commonplace book, and transcribing into it what is striking +and interesting and suggestive. And if you keep it wisely, as Locke +has taught us, you will put every entry under a head, division, or +subdivision.[1] This Is an excellent practice for concentrating your +thought on the passage and making you alive to its real point and +significance. Here, however, the high authority of Gibbon is against +us. He refuses "strenuously to recommend." "The action of the pen," he +says, "will doubtless imprint an idea on the mind as well as on the +paper; but I much question whether the benefits of this laborious +method are adequate to the waste of time; and I must agree with Dr. +Johnson (_Idler_, No. 74) that 'what is twice read is commonly better +remembered than what is transcribed.'"[2] + +[Footnote 1: "If I would put anything in my Common-place Book, I +find out a head to which I may refer it. Each head ought to be some +important and essential word to the matter in hand" (Locke's _Works_, +iii. 308, ed. 1801).] + +[Footnote 2: This is for indexing purposes, but it is worth while to +go further and make a title for the passage extracted, indicating its +pith and purport.] + +Various correspondents have asked me to say something about those +lists of a hundred books that have been circulating through the world +within the last few months. I have examined some of these lists with +considerable care, and whatever else may be said of them--and I speak +of them with deference and reserve, because men for whom one must +have a great regard have compiled them--they do not seem to me to be +calculated either to create or satisfy a wise taste for literature +in any very worthy sense. To fill a man with a hundred parcels of +heterogeneous scraps from the _Mahabharata_, and the _Sheking_, down +to _Pickwick_ and _White's Selborne_, may pass the time, but I cannot +perceive how it would strengthen or instruct or delight. For instance, +it is a mistake to think that every book that has a great name in the +history of books or of thought is worth reading. Some of the most +famous books are least worth reading. Their fame was due to their +doing something that needed in their day to be done. The work done, +the virtue of the book expires. Again, I agree with those who say +that the steady working down one of these lists would end in the +manufacture of that obnoxious product--the prig. A prig has been +defined as an animal that is overfed for its size. I think that these +bewildering miscellanies would lead to an immense quantity of that +kind of overfeeding. The object of reading is not to dip into +everything that even wise men have ever written. In the words of one +of the most winning writers of English that ever existed--Cardinal +Newman--the object of literature in education is to open the mind, to +correct it, to refine it, to enable it to comprehend and digest its +knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, +flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, address, and +expression. These are the objects of that intellectual perfection +which a literary education is destined to give. I will not venture on +a list of a hundred books, but will recommend you instead to one book +well worthy of your attention. Those who are curious as to what they +should read in the region of pure literature will do well to peruse +Mr. Frederic Harrison's admirable, volume, called _The Choice of +Books_. You will find there as much wise thought, eloquently and +brilliantly put, as in any volume of its size and on its subject, +whether it be in the list of a hundred or not. + +Let me pass to another topic. We are often asked whether it is best to +study subjects, or authors, or books. Well, I think that is like most +of the stock questions with which the perverse ingenuity of mankind +torments itself. There is no universal and exclusive answer. My own +answer is a very plain one. It is sometimes best to study books, +sometimes authors, and sometimes subjects; but at all times it is best +to study authors, subjects, and books in connection with one another. +Whether you make your first approach from interest in an author or in +a book, the fruit will be only half gathered if you leave off without +new ideas and clearer lights both on the man and the matter. One of +the noblest masterpieces in the literature of civil and political +wisdom is to be found in Burke's three performances on the American +war--his speech on Taxation in 1774, on Conciliation in 1775, and his +letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol in 1777. I can only repeat to you +what I have been saying in print and out of it for a good many years, +and what I believe more firmly as observation is enlarged by time and +occasion, that these three pieces are the most perfect manual in all +literature for the study of great affairs, whether for the purpose of +knowledge or action. "They are an example," as I have said before +now, "an example without fault of all the qualities which the critic, +whether a theorist or an actor, of great political situations should +strive by night and by day to possess. If their subject were as remote +as the quarrel between the Corinthians and Corcyra, or the war between +Rome and the Allies, instead of a conflict to which the world owes the +opportunity of one of the most important of political experiments, we +should still have everything to learn from the author's treatment; the +vigorous grasp of masses of compressed detail, the wide illumination +from great principles of human experience, the strong and masculine +feeling for the two great political ends of Justice and Freedom, the +large and generous interpretation of expediency, the morality, the +vision, the noble temper." No student worthy of the name will lay +aside these pieces, so admirable in their literary expression, so +important for history, so rich in the lessons of civil wisdom, until +he has found out something from other sources as to the circumstances +from which such writings arose, and as to the man whose resplendent +genius inspired them. There are great personalities like Burke who +march through history with voices like a clarion trumpet and something +like the glitter of swords in their hands. They are as interesting as +their work. Contact with them warms and kindles the mind. You will not +be content, after reading one of these pieces, without knowing the +character and personality of the man who conceived it, and until you +have spent an hour or two--and an hour or two will go a long way with +Burke still fresh in your mind--over other compositions in political +literature, over Bacon's civil pieces, or Machiavelli's _Prince_, and +others in the same order of thought. + +This points to the right answer to another question that is constantly +asked. We are constantly asked whether desultory reading is among +things lawful and permitted. May we browse at large in a library, as +Johnson said, or is it forbidden to open a book without a definite aim +and fixed expectations? I am for a compromise. If a man has once got +his general point of view, if he has striven with success to place +himself at the centre, what follows is of less consequence. If he has +got in his head a good map of the country, he may ramble at large with +impunity. If he has once well and truly laid the foundations of a +methodical, systematic habit of mind, what he reads will find its way +to its proper place. If his intellect is in good order, he will find +in every quarter something to assimilate and something that will +nourish. + +Next I am going to deal with another question, with which perhaps I +ought to have started. What is literature? It has often been defined. +Emerson says it is a record of the best thoughts. "By literature," +says another author, "we mean the written thoughts and feelings of +intelligent men and women arranged in a way that shall give pleasure +to the reader." A third account is that "the aim of a student of +literature is to know the best that has been thought in the world." +Definitions always appear to me in these things to be in the nature +of vanity. I feel that the attempt to be compact in the definition of +literature ends in something that is rather meagre, partial, starved, +and unsatisfactory. I turn to the answer given by a great French +writer to a question not quite the same, viz. "What is a classic?" +Literature consists of a whole body of classics in the true sense of +the word, and a classic, as Sainte-Beuve defines him, is an "author +who has enriched the human mind, who has really added to its treasure, +who has got it to take a step further; who has discovered some +unequivocal moral truth, or penetrated to some eternal passion, +in that heart of man where it seemed as though all were known and +explored, who has produced his thought, or his observation, or his +invention under some form, no matter what, so it be great, large, +acute, and reasonable, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to +all in a style of his own, yet a style which finds itself the style +of everybody,--in a style that Is at once new and antique, and is the +contemporary of all the ages." Another Frenchman, Doudan, who died in +1872, has an excellent passage on the same subject:-- + + "The man of letters properly so called is a rather singular being: + he does not look at things exactly with his own eyes, he has not + impressions of his own, we could not discover the imagination with + which he started. 'Tis a tree on which have been grafted Homer, + Virgil, Milton, Dante, Petrarch; hence have grown peculiar flowers + which are not natural, and yet which are not artificial. Study has + given to the man of letters something of the reverie of René; with + Homer he has looked upon the plain of Troy, and there has remained + in his brain some of the light of the Grecian sky; he has taken a + little of the pensive lustre of Virgil, as he wanders by his side + on the slopes of the Aventine; he sees the world as Milton saw it, + through the grey mists of England, as Dante saw it, through the + clear and glowing light of Italy. Of all these colours he composes + for himself a colour that is unique and his own; from all these + glasses by which his life passes on its journey to the real + world, there is formed a special tint, and that is what makes the + imagination of men of letters." + +At a single hearing you may not take all that in; but if you should +have any opportunity of recurring to it, you will find this a +satisfactory, full, and instructive account of what is a classic, and +will find in it a full and satisfactory account of what those who have +thought most on literature hope to get from it, and most would +desire to confer upon others by it. Literature consists of till the +books--and they are not so many--where moral truth and human passion +are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form. +My notion of the literary student is one who through books explores +the strange voyages of man's moral reason, the impulses of the human +heart, the chances and changes that have overtaken human ideals +of virtue and happiness, of conduct and manners, and the shifting +fortunes of great conceptions of truth and virtue. Poets, dramatists, +humorists, satirists, masters of fiction, the great preachers, +the character-writers, the maxim-writers, the great political +orators--they are all literature in so far as they teach us to know +man and to know human nature. This is what makes literature, rightly +sifted and selected and rightly studied, not the mere elegant trifling +that it is so often and so erroneously supposed to be, but a +proper instrument for a systematic training of the imagination and +sympathies, and of a genial and varied moral sensibility. + +From this point of view let me remind you that books are not the +products of accident and caprice. As Goethe said, if you would +understand an author, you must understand his age. The same thing is +just as true of a book. If you would fully comprehend it, you must +know the age. There is an order; there are causes and relations +between great compositions and the societies in which they have +emerged. Just as the naturalist strives to understand and to explain +the distribution of plants and animals over the surface of the globe, +to connect their presence or their absence with the great geological, +climatic, and oceanic changes, so the student of literature, if he be +wise, undertakes an ordered and connected survey of ideas, of tastes, +of sentiments, of imagination, of humour, of invention, as they affect +and as they are affected by the ever changing experiences of human +nature, and the manifold variations that time and circumstances are +incessantly working in human society. + +Those who are possessed, and desire to see others possessed, by that +conception of literary study must watch with the greatest sympathy and +admiration the efforts of those who are striving so hard, and, I hope, +so successfully, to bring the systematic and methodical study of our +own literature, in connection with other literatures, among subjects +for teaching and examination in the Universities of Oxford and +Cambridge. I regard those efforts with the liveliest interest and +sympathy. Everybody agrees that an educated man ought to have a +general notion of the course of the great outward events of European +history. So, too, an educated man ought to have a general notion of +the course of all those inward thoughts and moods which find their +expression in literature. I think that in cultivating the study of +literature, as I have perhaps too laboriously endeavoured to define +it, you will be cultivating the most important side of history. +Knowledge of it gives stability and substance to character. It +furnishes a view of the ground we stand on. It builds up a solid +backing of precedent and experience. It teaches us where we are. It +protects us against imposture and surprise. + +Before closing I should like to say one word upon the practice of +composition. I have suffered, by the chance of life, many things from +the practice of composition. It has been my lot, I suppose, to read +more unpublished work than any one else in this room. + +There is an idea, and, I venture to think, a very mistaken idea, that +you cannot have a taste for literature unless you are yourself an +author. I make bold entirely to demur to that proposition. It is +practically most mischievous, and leads scores and even hundreds of +people to waste their time in the most unprofitable manner that the +wit of man can devise, on work in which they can no more achieve even +the most moderate excellence than they can compose a Ninth Symphony +or paint a Transfiguration. It Is a terrible error to suppose that +because one is happily able to relish "Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted +idyll, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie," therefore a solemn mission +calls you to run off to write bad verse at the Lakes or the Isle +of Wight. I beseech you not all to turn to authorship. I will even +venture, with all respect to those who are teachers of literature, +to doubt the excellence and utility of the practice of over-much +essay-writing and composition. I have very little faith in rules of +style, though I have an unbounded faith in the virtue of cultivating +direct and precise expression. But you must carry on the operation +inside the mind, and not merely by practising literary deportment on +paper. It is not everybody who can command the mighty rhythm of the +greatest masters of human speech. But every one can make reasonably +sure that he knows what he means, and whether he has found the right +word. These are internal operations, and are not forwarded by writing +for writing's sake. Everybody must be urgent for attention to +expression, if that attention be exercised in the right way. It has +been said a million times that the foundation of right expression in +speech or writing is sincerity. That is as true now as it has ever +been. Right expression is a part of character. As somebody has +said, by learning to speak with precision, you learn to think with +correctness; and the way to firm and vigorous speech lies through the +cultivation of high and noble sentiments. So far as my observation has +gone, men will do better if they seek precision by studying carefully +and with an open mind and a vigilant eye the great models of writing, +than by excessive practice of writing on their own account. + +Much might here be said on what is one of the most important of all +the sides of literary study. I mean its effect as helping to preserve +the dignity and the purity of the English language. That noble +instrument has never been exposed to such dangers as those which +beset it to-day. Domestic slang, scientific slang, pseudo-aesthetic +affectations, hideous importations from American newspapers, all bear +down with horrible force upon the glorious fabric which the genius of +our race has reared. I will say nothing of my own on this pressing +theme, but will read to you a passage of weight and authority from the +greatest master of mighty and beautiful speech. + +"Whoever in a state," said Milton, "knows how wisely to form the +manners of men and to rule them at home and in war with excellent +institutes, him in the first place, above others, I should esteem +worthy of all honour. But next to him the man who strives to establish +in maxims and rules the method and habit of speaking and writing +received from a good age of the nation, and, as it were, to fortify +the same round with a kind of wall, the daring to overleap which let a +law only short of that of Romulus be used to prevent.... The one, as I +believe, supplies noble courage and intrepid counsels against an +enemy invading the territory. The other takes to himself the task of +extirpating and defeating, by means of a learned detective police of +ears, and a light band of good authors, that barbarism which makes +large inroads upon the minds of men, and is a destructive intestine +enemy of genius. Nor is it to be considered of small consequence what +language, pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their customary +degree of propriety in speaking it.... For, let the words of a country +be in part unhandsome and offensive in themselves, in part debased by +wear and wrongly uttered, and what do they declare, but, by no light +indication, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent, +idly-yawning race, with minds already long prepared for any amount of +servility? On the other hand, we have never heard that any empire, any +state, did not at least flourish in a middling degree as long as its +own liking and care for its language lasted."[1] + +[Footnote 1: Letter to Bonmattei, from Florence, 1638.] + +The probabilities are that we are now coming to an epoch of a quieter +style. There have been in our generation three strong masters in the +aft of prose writing. There was, first of all, Carlyle, there was +Macaulay, and there is Mr. Raskin. These are all giants, and they have +the rights of giants. But I do not believe that a greater misfortune +can befall the students who attend classes here, than that they should +strive to write like any one of these three illustrious men. I think +it is the worst thing that can happen to them. They can never attain +to the high mark which they have set before themselves. It Is not +everybody who can bend the bow of Ulysses, and most men only do +themselves a mischief by trying to bend it. If we are now on our way +to a quieter style, I am not sorry for it. Truth is quiet. Milton's +phrase ever lingers in our minds as one of imperishable beauty--where +he regrets that he is drawn by I know not what, from beholding the +bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful +studies. Moderation and judgment are, for most purposes, more than the +flash and the glitter even of the genius. I hope that your professors +of rhetoric will teach you to cultivate that golden art--the steadfast +use of a language in which truth can be told; a speech that is +strong by natural force, and not merely effective by declamation; an +utterance without trick, without affectation, without mannerisms, +without any of that excessive ambition which overleaps itself as +disastrously in prose writing as in so many other things. + +I will detain you no longer. I hope that I have made it clear that we +conceive the end of education on its literary side to be to make a man +and not a cyclopaedia, to make a citizen and not an album of elegant +extracts. Literature does not end with knowledge of forms, with +inventories of books and authors, with finding the key of rhythm, with +the varying measure of the stanza, or the changes from the involved +and sonorous periods of the seventeenth century down to the _staccato_ +of the nineteenth, or all the rest of the technicalities of +scholarship. Do not think I contemn these. They are all good things to +know, but they are not ends in themselves. The intelligent man, says +Plato, will prize those studies which result in his soul getting +soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and he will less value the +others. Literature is one of the instruments, and one of the most +powerful instruments, for forming character for giving us men +and women armed with reason, braced by knowledge, clothed with +steadfastness and courage, and inspired by that public spirit and +public virtue of which it has been well said that they are the +brightest ornaments of the mind of man. Bacon is right, as he +generally is, when he bids us read not to contradict and refute, nor +to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but +to weigh and to consider. Yes, let us read to weigh and to consider. +In the times before us that promise or threaten deep political, +economical, and social controversy, what we need to do is to induce +our people to weigh and consider. We want them to cultivate energy +without impatience, activity without restlessness, inflexibility +without ill-humour. I am not going to preach to you any artificial +stoicism. I am not going to preach to you any indifference to money, +or to the pleasures of social intercourse, or to the esteem and +good-will of our neighbours, or to any other of the consolations and +necessities of life. But, after all, the thing that matters most, both +for happiness and for duty, is that we should strive habitually to +live with wise thoughts and right feelings. Literature helps us more +than other studies to this most blessed companionship of wise thoughts +and right feelings, and so I have taken this opportunity of earnestly +commending it to your interest and care. + + + + +VICTOR HUGO'S "NINETY-THREE." + + +"History has its truth, Legend has its truth. Legendary truth is of +a different nature from historic truth. Legendary truth is invention +with reality for result. For the rest, history and legend have the +same aim--to paint under the man of a day eternal humanity." These +words from his new and latest work (ii. 4) are a repetition of what +Victor Hugo had already said in the introduction to his memorable +_Legend of the Ages_[1]. But the occasion of their application is far +more delicate. Poetry lends itself naturally to the spacious, distant, +vague, highly generalised way of present and real events. A prose +romance, on the other hand, is of necessity abundant in details, in +special circumstances, in particularities of time and place. This +leaves all the more room for historic error, and historic error in +a work of imagination dealing with actual and known occurrences is +obviously fatal, not only to legendary truth, but to legendary beauty +and poetic impressiveness. And then the pitfalls which lie about the +feet of the Frenchman who has to speak of 1793,--the terrible year +of the modern epoch! The delirium of the Terror haunts most of the +revolutionary historians, and the choicest examples in all literature +of bombast, folly, emptiness, political immorality, inhumanity, formal +repudiation of common sense and judgment, are to be found in the +rhapsodies which men of letters, some of them men of eminence, call +histories of the Revolution, or lives of this or that actor in it. + +[Footnote 1: The references are to the "Édition Définitive" in two +volumes.] + +It was hardly a breach, therefore, of one's allegiance to Hugo's +superb imaginative genius, if one had misgivings as to the result of +an attempt, even in his strong hands, to combine legend with truth on +a disastrous field, in which grave writers with academic solemnity had +confounded truth with the falsest kind of legend. The theme was so +likely to emphasise the defects incident to his mighty qualities; so +likely to provoke an exaggeration of those mannerisms of thought no +less than of phrase, which though never ignoble nor paltry, yet now +and then take something from the loftiness and sincerity of the +writer's work. Wisdom, however, is justified of her children, and M. +Hugo's genius has justified his choice of a difficult and perilous +subject. _Quatrevingt-treize_ is a monument of its author's finest +gifts; and while those who are happily endowed with the capacity of +taking delight in nobility and beauty of imaginative work will find +themselves in possession of a new treasure, the lover of historic +truth who hates to see abstractions passed off for actualities and +legend erected in the place of fact escapes with his sensibilities +almost unwounded. + +The historic interlude at the beginning of the second volume is +undoubtedly open to criticism from the political student's point of +view. As a sketch of the Convention, the scene of its sittings, the +stormful dramas that were enacted there one after another for month +after month, the singular men who one after another rode triumphant +upon the whirlwind for a little space, and were then mercilessly in an +instant swept into outer darkness, the commoner men who cowered before +the fury of the storm, and were like "smoke driven hither and thither +by the wind," and laboured hard upon a thousand schemes for human +improvement, some admirable, others mere frenzy, while mobs filed in +and danced mad carmagnoles before them--all this is a magnificent +masterpiece of accurate, full, and vivid description. To the +philosophy of it we venture to demur. The mystic, supernatural view of +the French Revolution, which is so popular among French writers who +object to the supernatural and the mystical everywhere else, is to us +a thing most incredible, most puerile, most mischievous. People talk +of '93, as a Greek tragedian treats the Tale of Troy divine, or the +terrible fortunes of the house of Atreus, as the result of dark +invincible fate, as the unalterable decree of the immortal gods. Even +Victor Hugo's strong spirit does not quite overcome the demoralising +doctrine of a certain revolutionary school, though he has the poet's +excuse. Thus, of the Convention:-- + + "Minds all a prey to the wind. But this wind was a wind of miracle + and portent. To be a member of the Convention was to be a wave + of the ocean. And this was true of its greatest. The force of + impulsion came from on high. There was in the Convention a will, + which was the will of all, and yet was the will of no one. It was + an idea, an idea resistless and without measure, which breathed in + the shadow from the high heavens. We call that the Revolution. As + this idea passed, it threw down one and raised up another; it bore + away this man in the foam, and broke that man to pieces upon the + rocks. The idea knew whither it went, and drove the gulf of waters + before it. To impute the Revolution to men is as one who should + impute the tide to the waves. The revolution is an action of the + Unknown.... It is a form of the abiding phenomenon that shuts us + in on every side and that we call Necessity.... In presence + of these climacteric catastrophes which waste and vivify + civilisation, one is slow to judge detail. To blame or praise men + on account of the result, is as if one should blame or praise the + figures on account of the total. That which must pass passes, the + storm that must rage rages. The eternal serenity does not suffer + from these boisterous winds. Above revolutions truth and justice + abide, as the starry heaven abides above the tempests" (i. + 188-189). + +As a lyric passage, full of the breath of inspiration; as history, +superficial and untrue; as morality, enervating and antinomian. The +author is assuredly far nearer the mark in another place when +he speaks of "_that immense improvisation_ which is the French +Revolution" (ii. 35)--an improvisation of which every step can be +rationally explained. + +After all, this is no more than an interlude. Victor Hugo only surveys +the events of '93 as a field for the growth of types of character. His +instinct as an artist takes him away from the Paris of '93, where the +confusion, uproar, human frenzy, leave him no background of nature, +with nature's fixity, sternness, indifference, sublimity. This he +found in La Vendée, whose vast forests grow under the pencil of this +master of all the more terrible and majestic effects, into a picture +hardly less sombre and mighty in its impressiveness than the memorable +ocean pieces of the _Toilers of the Sea_. If the waves are appalling +in their agitation, their thunders, their sterility, the forest is +appalling in its silence, its dimness, its rest, and the invisibleness +of the thousand kinds of life to which it gives a shelter. If the +violence and calm and mercilessness of the sea penetrated the romance +of eight years ago with transcendent fury, so does the stranger, more +mysterious, and in a sense even the more inhuman life of the forest +penetrate the romance of to-day. From the opening chapter down to the +very close, even while the interlude takes us for a little while to +the Paris café where Danton, Robespierre, and Marat sit in angry +counsel, even while we are on the sea with the royalist Marquis and +Halmalo, the reader is subtly haunted by the great Vendean woods, +their profundity, their mystery, their tragic and sinister beauties. + + "The forest is barbarous. + + "The configuration of the land counsels man in many an act. More + than we suppose, it is his accomplice. In the presence of certain + savage landscapes, you are tempted to exonerate man and blame + creation; you feel a silent challenge and incitement from nature; + the desert is constantly unwholesome for conscience, especially + for a conscience without light. Conscience may be a giant; that + makes a Socrates or a Jesus: it may be a dwarf; that makes an + Atreus or a Judas. The puny conscience soon turns reptile; the + twilight thickets, the brambles, the thorns, the marsh waters + under branches, make for it a fatal haunting place; amid all this + it undergoes the mysterious infiltration of ill suggestions. The + optical illusions, the unexplained images, the scaring hour, + the scaring spot, all throw man into that kind of affright, + half-religious, half-brutal, which in ordinary times engenders + superstition, and in epochs of violence, savagery. Hallucinations + hold the torch that lights the path to murder. There is something + like vertigo in the brigand. Nature with her prodigies has a + double effect; she dazzles great minds, and blinds the duller + soul. When man is ignorant, when the desert offers visions, + the obscurity of the solitude is added to the obscurity of the + intelligence; thence in man comes the opening of abysses. Certain + rocks, certain ravines, certain thickets, certain wild openings + of the evening sky through the trees, drive man towards mad or + monstrous exploits. We might almost call some places criminal" + (ii. 21). + +With La Vendée for background, and some savage incidents of the bloody +Vendean war for external machinery, Victor Hugo has realised his +conception of '93 in three types of character: Lantenac, the royalist +marquis; Cimourdain, the puritan turned Jacobin; and Gauvain, for whom +one can as yet find no short name, he belonging to the millenarian +times. Lantenac, though naturally a less original creation than the +other two, is still an extremely bold and striking figure, drawn with +marked firmness of hand, and presenting a thoroughly distinct and +coherent conception. It is a triumph of the poetic or artistic part +of the author's nature over the merely political part, that he should +have made even his type of the old feudal order which he execrates +so bitterly, a heroic, if ever so little also a diabolic, personage. +There is everything that is cruel, merciless, unflinching, in +Lantenac; there is nothing that is mean or insignificant. A gunner +at sea, by inattention to the lashing of his gun, causes an accident +which breaks the ship to pieces, and then he saves the lives of the +crew by hazarding his own life to secure the wandering monster. +Lantenac decorates him with the cross of Saint Lewis for his +gallantry, and instantly afterwards has him shot for his carelessness. +He burns homesteads and villages, fusillades men and women, and makes +the war a war without quarter or grace. Yet he is no swashbuckler of +the melodramatic stage. There is a fine reserve, a brief gravity, +in the delineation of him, his clear will, his quickness, his +intrepidity, his relentlessness, which make of him the incarnation +of aristocratic coldness, hatred, and pride. You might guillotine +Lantenac with exquisite satisfaction, and yet he does not make us +ashamed of mankind. Into his mouth, as he walks about his dungeon, +impatiently waiting to be led out to execution, Victor Hugo has put +the aristocratic view of the Revolution. Some portions of it (ii. +224-226) would fit amazingly well into M. Renan's notions about the +moral and intellectual reform of France. + +If the Breton aristocrat of '93 was fearless, intrepid, and without +mercy in defence of God and the King--and his qualities were all +shared, the democrat may love to remember, by the Breton peasant, +whether peasant follower or peasant leader--the Jacobin was just as +vigorous, as intrepid, as merciless in defence of his Republic. "Pays, +Patrie," says Victor Hugo, in words which perhaps will serve to +describe many a future passage in French history, "ces deux mots +résument toute la guerre de Vendée; querelle de l'idée locale centre +l'idée universelle; paysans contre patriotes" (ii. 22).[1] Certainly +the Jacobins were the patriots of that era, the deliverers of France +from something like that process of partition which further east was +consummated in this very '93. We do not mean the handful of odious +miscreants who played fool and demon in turns in the insurrectionary +Commune and elsewhere: such men as Collot d'Herbois, or Carrier, +or Panis. The normal Jacobin was a remarkable type. He has been +excellently described by Louis Blanc as something powerful, original, +sombre; half agitator and half statesman; half puritan and half monk +half inquisitor and half tribune. These words of the historian are the +exact prose version of the figure of Cimourdain, the typical Jacobin +of the poet. "Cimourdain was a pure conscience, but sombre. He had in +him the absolute. He had been a priest and that is a serious thing. +Man, like the sky, may have a dark serenity; it is enough that +something should have brought night into his soul. Priesthood had +brought night into Cimourdain. He who has been a priest is one still. +What brings night upon us may leave the stars with us. Cimourdain +was full of virtues, full of truths, but they shone in the midst +of darkness" (i. 123). If the aristocrat had rigidity, so had the +Jacobin. "Cimourdain had the blind certitude of the arrow, which only +sees the mark and makes for it. In revolution, nothing so formidable +as the straight line. Cimourdain strode forward with fatality in his +step. He believed that in social genesis the very extreme point must +always be solid ground, an error peculiar to minds that for reason +substitute logic" (i. 127). And so forth, until the character of the +Jacobin lives for us with a precision, a fulness, a naturalness, such +as neither Carlyle nor Michelet nor Quinet has been able to clothe it +with, though these too have the sacred illumination of genius. Victor +Hugo's Jacobin is a poetic creation, yet the creation only lies in the +vivid completeness with which the imagination of a great master has +realised to itself the traits and life of an actual personality. It is +not that he has any special love for his Jacobin, but that he has the +poet's eye for types, politics apart. He sees how much the aristocrat, +slaying hip and thigh for the King, and the Jacobin, slaying hip and +thigh for the Republic, resembled one another. "Let us confess," +he says, "these two men, the Marquis and the priest [Lantenac and +Cimourdain], were up to a certain point the self-same man. The bronze +mask of civil war has two profiles, one turned towards the past, the +other towards the future, but as tragic the one as the other. Lantenac +was the first of these profiles, Cimourdain was the second; only the +bitter rictus of Lantenac was covered with shadow and night, and on +the fatal brow of Cimourdain was a gleaming of the dawn" (ii. 91). + +[Footnote 1: In corroboration of this view of the Vendean rising as +democratic, see Mortimer-Ternaux, _Hist. de la Terreur_, vol. vi. bk. +30.] + +And let us mark Victor Hugo's signal distinction in his analysis +of character. It is not mere vigour of drawing, nor acuteness of +perception, nor fire of imagination, though he has all these gifts in +a singular degree, and truest of their kind. But then Scott had +them too, and yet we feel in Victor Hugo's work a seriousness, a +significance, a depth of tone, which never touches us in the work of +his famous predecessor in romance, delightful as the best of that work +is. Balfour of Burley is one of Scott's most commanding figures, and +the stern Covenanter is nearly in the same plane of character as the +stern heroic Jacobin. Yet Cimourdain impresses us more profoundly. He +is as natural, as human, as readily conceivable, and yet he produces +something of the subtle depth of effect which belongs to the actor in +a play of Aeschylus. Why is this? Because Hugo makes us conscious of +that tragedy of temperament, that sterner Necessity of character, +that resistless compulsion of circumstance, which is the modern and +positive expression for the old Destiny of the Greeks, and which in +some expression or other is now an essential element in the highest +presentation of human life. Here is not the Unknown. On the contrary, +we are in the very heart of science; tragedy to the modern is +not [Greek: tuchae], but a thing of cause and effect, invariable +antecedent and invariable consequent. It is the presence of this +tragic force underlying action that gives to all Hugo's work its lofty +quality, its breadth, and generality, and fills both it, and us who +read, with pity and gravity and an understanding awe. + +The action is this. Cimourdain had the young Gauvain to train from his +earliest childhood, and the pupil grew up with the same rigid sense +of duty as the master, though temperament modified its form. When the +Revolution came, Gauvain, though a noble, took sides with the people, +but he was not of the same spirit as his teacher. "The Revolution," +says Victor Hugo, "by the side of youthful figures of giants, such as +Danton, Saint-Just, and Robespierre, has young ideal figures, like +Hoche and Marceau. Gauvain was one of these figures" (ii. 34). +Cimourdain has himself named delegate from the Committee of Public +Safety to the expeditionary column of which Gauvain is in command. The +warmth of affection between them was undiminished, but difference in +temperament bred difference in their principles. They represented, as +the author says, with the candour of the poet, the two poles of +the truth; the two sides of the inarticulate, subterranean, fatal +contention of the year of the Terror. Their arguments with one another +make the situation more intelligible to the historic student, as they +make the characters of the speakers more transparent for the purposes +of the romance. + +This is Cimourdain:-- + + "Beware, there are terrible duties in life. Do not accuse what is + not responsible. Since when has the disorder been the fault of the + physician? Yes, what marks this tremendous year is being without + pity. Why? Because it is the great revolutionary year. This year + incarnates the revolution. The revolution has an enemy, the old + world, and to that it is pitiless, just as the surgeon has + an enemy, gangrene, and is pitiless to that. The revolution + extirpates kingship in the king, aristocracy in the noble, + despotism in the soldier, superstition in the priest, barbarity in + the judge, in a word whatever is tyranny in whatever is tyrant. + The operation is frightful, the revolution performs it with a sure + hand. As to the quantity of sound flesh that it requires, ask + Boerhave what he thinks of it. What tumour that has to be cut out + does not involve loss of blood?... The revolution devotes itself + to its fated task. It mutilates but it saves.... It has the past + in its grasp, it will not spare. It makes in civilisation a deep + incision whence shall come the safety of the human race. You + suffer? No doubt. How long will it last? The time needed for the + operation. Then you will live," etc. (ii. 65-66). + +"One day," he adds, "the Revolution will justify the Terror." To which +Gauvain retorts thus:-- + + "Fear lest the Terror be the calumny of the Revolution. Liberty, + Equality, Fraternity, are dogmas of peace and harmony. Why give + them an aspect of alarm? What do we seek? To win nations to the + universal public. Then why inspire fright? Of what avail is + intimidation? It is wrong to do ill in order to do good. You do + not pull down the throne to leave the scaffold standing. Let us + hurl away crowns, let us spare heads. The revolution is concord, + not affright. Mild ideas are ill-served by men who do not know + pity. Amnesty is for me the noblest word in human speech. I will + shed no blood save at hazard of my own.... In the fight let us be + the enemies of our foes, and after the victory their brothers" + (ii. 67). + +These two together, Cimourdain and Gauvain, make an ideal pair of the +revolutionists of '93. Strip each of them of the beauty of character +with which the poet's imagination has endowed them, add instead +passion, violence, envy, egoism, malice; then you understand how in +the very face of the foreign enemy Girondins sharpened the knife +for the men of the Mountain, Hébertists screamed for the lives +of Robespierrists, Robespierre struck off the head of Danton, +Thermidorians crushed Robespierre. + +Victor Hugo has given to this typic historical struggle of '93 the +qualities of nobleness and beauty which art requires in dealing with +real themes. Lantenac falls into the hands of the Blues, headed by +Cimourdain and Gauvain, but he does so in consequence of yielding to a +heroic and self-devoting impulse of humanity. Cimourdain, true to his +temperament, insists on his instant execution. Gauvain, true also to +his temperament, is seized with a thousand misgivings, and there is +no more ample, original, and masterly presentation of a case of +conscience, that in civil war is always common enough, than the +struggle through which Gauvain passes before he can resolve to deliver +Lantenac. This pathetic debate--"the stone of Sisyphus, which is only +the quarrel of man with himself"--turns on the loftiest, broadest, +most generous motives, touching the very bases of character, and +reaching far beyond the issue of '93. The political question is seen +to be no more than a superficial aspect of the deeper moral question. +Lantenac, the representative of the old order, had performed an +exploit of signal devotion. Was it not well that one who had faith in +the new order should show himself equally willing to cast away his +life to save one whom self-sacrifice had transformed from the infernal +Satan into the heavenly Lucifer? + + "Gauvain saw in the shade the sinister smile of the sphinx. The + situation was a sort of dread crossway where the conflicting + truths issued and confronted one another, and where the three + supreme ideas of man stood face to face--humanity, the family, the + fatherland. Each of the voices spoke in turn, and each in turn + declared the truth. How choose? Each in turn seemed to hit the + mark of reason and justice, and said, Do that. Was that the thing + to be done? Yes. No. Reasoning counselled one thing; sentiment + another; the two counsels were contradictory. Reasoning is only + reason; sentiment is often conscience; the one comes from man, + the other from a loftier source. That is why sentiment has less + distinctness, and more might. Yet what strength in the severity + of reason! Gauvain hesitated. His perplexity was so fierce. Two + abysses opened before him: to destroy the marquis, or to save him. + Which of these two gulfs was duty?" + +The whole scene (ii. 206-219) is a masterpiece of dramatic strength, +sustention, and flexibility--only equalled by the dramatic vivacity of +the scene in which Cimourdain, sitting as judge, orders the prisoner +to be brought forward, to his horror sees Gauvain instead of Lantenac, +and then proceeds to condemn the man whom he loves best on earth to be +taken to the guillotine. + + * * * * * + +The tragedy of the story, its sombre tone, the overhanging presence of +death in it, are prevented from being oppressive to us by the variety +of minor situation and subordinate character with which the writer has +surrounded the central figures. No writer living is so consummate a +master of landscape, and besides the forest we here have an elaborate +sea-piece, full of the weird, ineffable, menacing suggestion of the +sea in some of her unnumbered moods; and there is a scene of late +twilight on a high solitary down over the bay of Mont Saint-Michel, to +which a reader blessed with sensibility to the subtler impressions of +landscape will turn again and again, as one visits again and again +some actual prospect where the eye procures for the inner sense +a dream of beauty and the incommensurable. Perhaps the palm for +exquisite workmanship will be popularly given, and justly given, to +the episode humorously headed _The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew_, +at the opening of the third volume. It is the story of three little +children, barely out of infancy, awaking, playing, eating, wondering, +slumbering, in solitude through a summer day in an old tower. As a +rule the attempt to make infancy interesting in literature ends in +maudlin failure. But at length the painters have found an equal, or +more than an equal, in an artist whose medium lends itself less easily +than colour and form to the reproduction of the beauty and life of +childhood. In his poetry Victor Hugo had already shown his passing +sensibility to the pathos of the beginnings of our life; witness such +pieces as _Chose vue un Jour de Printemps, Les Pauvres Gens_, the +well-known pieces in _L'Année Terrible_, and a hundred other lively +touches and fragments of finished loveliness and penetrating sympathy. +In prose it is a more difficult feat to collect the trivial details +which make up the life of the tiny human animal into a whole that +shall be impressive, finished, and beautiful. And prose can only +describe by details enumerated one by one. This most arduous feat +is accomplished in the children's summer day in the tower, and with +enchanting success. Intensely realistic, yet the picture overflows +with emotion--not the emotion of the mother, but of the poet. There +is infinite tenderness, pathos, love, but all heightened at once and +strengthened by the self-control of masculine force. A man writing +about little ones seems able to place himself outside, and thus to +gain more calmness and freedom of vision than the more passionate +interest or yearning of women permits to them in this field of art. +Not a detail is spared, yet the whole is full of delight and pity and +humour. Only one lyric passage is allowed to poetise and accentuate +the realism of the description. Georgette, some twenty months old, +scrambles from her cradle and prattles to the sunbeam. + + "What a bird says in its song, a child says in its prattle. 'Tis + the same hymn; a hymn indistinct, lisping, profound. The child has + what the bird has not, the sombre human destiny in front of it. + Hence the sadness of men as they listen, mingling with the joy of + the little one as it sings. The sublimest canticle to be heard on + earth is the stammering of the human soul on the lips of infancy. + That confused chirruping of a thought, that is as yet no more than + an instinct, has in it one knows not what sort of artless appeal + to the eternal justice; or is it a protest uttered on the + threshold before entering in, a protest meek and poignant? This + ignorance smiling at the Infinite compromises all creation in the + lot that shall fall to the weak defenceless being. Ill, if it + shall come, will be an abuse of confidence. + + "The child's murmuring is more and is less than words; there are + no notes, and yet it is a song; there are no syllables, and yet it + is a language.... This poor stammering is a compound of what the + child said when it was an angel, and of what it will say when + it becomes a man. The cradle has a Yesterday as the grave has a + Morrow; the Morrow and the Yesterday mingle in that strange cooing + their twofold mystery...." + + "Her lips smiled, her eyes smiled, the dimples in her cheeks + smiled. There came forth in this smile a mysterious welcome of the + morning. The soul has faith in the ray. The heavens were blue, + warm was the air. The fragile creature, without knowing anything, + or recognising anything, or understanding anything, softly + floating in musings which are not thought, felt itself in safety + in the midst of nature, among those good trees and that guileless + greenery, in the pure and peaceful landscape, amid the rustle of + nests, of flowing springs, of insects, of leaves, while over all + there glowed the great innocency of the sun" (ii. 104). + +As an eminent man has recently written about Wordsworth's most famous +Ode, there may be some bad philosophy here, but there is assuredly +some noble and touching poetry. + +If the carelessness of infancy is caught with this perfection of +finish, there is a tragic companion piece in the horror and gnawing +anguish of the wretched woman from whom her young have been taken--her +rescue from death, her fierce yearnings for them like the yearnings of +a beast, her brute-like heedlessness of her life and her body in the +cruel search. + +And so the poet conducts us along the strange excursive windings of +the life and passion of humanity. The same hand which draws such noble +figures as Gauvain--and the real Lanjuinais of history was fully as +heroic and as noble as the imaginary Gauvain of fiction--is equally +skilful in drawing the wild Breton beggar who dwells underground among +the branching tree-roots; and the monstrous Imânus, the barbarous +retainer of the Lord of the Seven Forests; and Radoub, the serjeant +from Paris, a man of hearty oaths, hideous, heroic, humoursome, of +a bloody ingenuity in combat. And the same hand which described the +silent sundown on the sandy shore of the bay, and the mysterious +darkness of the forests, and the blameless play of the little ones, +gives us the prodigious animation of the night surprise at Dôl, the +furious conflict at La Tourgue, and, perhaps most powerful of all, the +breaking loose of the gun on the deck of the _Claymore_. You may say +that this is only melodrama; but if we turn to the actual events of +'93, the melodrama of the romancer will seem tame compared with the +melodrama of the faithful chronicler. And so long as the narrative +of melodramatic action is filled with poetry and beauty, there is no +reproach in uncommon situation, in intense passion, in magnanimous or +subtle motives that are not of every day. Of Hugo's art we may say +what Dr. Newman has said of something else: _Such work is always open +to criticism and it is always above it_. + +There is poetry and beauty, no doubt, in the common lives about us, if +we look at them with imaginative and sympathetic eye, and we owe much +to the art that reveals to us the tragedy of the parlour and the +frockcoat, and analyses the bitterness and sorrow and high passion +that may underlie a life of outer smoothness and decorum. Still, +criticism cannot accept this as the final and exclusive limitation of +imaginative work. Art is nothing if not catholic and many-sided, and +it is certainly not exhausted by mere domestic possibilities. Goethe's +fine and luminous feeling for practical life, which has given such +depth of richness and wisdom to his best prose writing, fills us with +a delightful sense of satisfaction and adequateness; and yet why +should it not leave us with a mind eagerly open for the larger and +more inventive romance, in which nature is clothed with some of that +awe and might and silent contemplation of the puny destinies of man, +that used to surround the conception of the supernatural? Victor Hugo +seeks strong and extraordinary effects; he is a master of terrible +image, profound emotion, audacious fancy; but then these are as real, +as natural, as true to fact, as the fairest reproduction of the moral +poverties and meannesses of the world. And let it be added that while +he is without a rival in the dark mysterious heights of imaginative +effect, he is equally a master in strokes of tenderness and the most +delicate human sympathy. His last book seems to contain pieces that +surpass every other book of Hugo's in the latter range of qualities, +and not to fall at all short in the former. And so, in the words of +the man of genius who last wrote on Victor Hugo in these pages,[1] +"As we pity ourselves for the loss of poems and pictures which have +perished, and left of Sappho but a fragment and of Zeuxis but a name, +so are we inclined to pity the dead who died too soon to enjoy the +great works we have enjoyed. At each new glory that 'swims into our +ken,' we surely feel that it is something to have lived to see that +too rise." + +[Footnote 1: Mr. Swinburne.] + + + + +ON "THE RING AND THE BOOK." + + +When the first volume of Mr. Browning's new poem came before the +critical tribunals, public and private, recognised or irresponsible, +there was much lamentation even in quarters where a manlier humour +might have been expected, over the poet's choice of a subject. With +facile largeness of censure, it was pronounced a murky subject, +sordid, unlovely, morally sterile, an ugly leaf out of some ancient +Italian Newgate Calendar. One hinted in vain that wisdom is justified +of her children, that the poet must be trusted to judge of the +capacity of his own theme, and that it is his conception and treatment +of it that ultimately justify or discredit his choice. Now that the +entire work is before the world, this is plain, and it is admitted. +When the second volume, containing _Giuseppe Caponsacchi_, appeared, +men no longer found it sordid or ugly; the third, with _Pompilia_, +convinced them that the subject was not, after all, so incurably +unlovely; and the fourth, with _The Pope_, and the passage from the +Friar's sermon, may well persuade those who needed persuasion, that +moral fruitfulness depends on the master, his eye and hand, his vision +and grasp, more than on this and that in the transaction which has +taken possession of his imagination. + +The truth is, we have for long been so debilitated by pastorals, by +graceful presentation of the Arthurian legend for drawing-rooms, by +idylls, not robust and Theocritean, by verse directly didactic, that a +rude blast of air from the outside welter of human realities is apt +to give a shock, that might well show in what simpleton's paradise +we have been living. The ethics of the rectory parlour set to sweet +music, the respectable aspirations of the sentimental curate married +to exquisite verse, the everlasting glorification of domestic +sentiment in blameless princes and others, as if that were the poet's +single province and the divinely-appointed end of all art, as if +domestic sentiment included and summed up the whole throng of +passions, emotions, strife, and desire; all this might seem to be +making valetudinarians of us all. Our public is beginning to measure +the right and possible in art by the superficial probabilities of life +and manners within a ten-mile radius of Charing Cross. Is it likely, +asks the critic, that Duke Silva would have done this, that Fedalma +would have done that? Who shall suppose it possible that Caponsacchi +acted thus, that Count Guido was possessed by devils so? The poser +is triumphant, because the critic is tacitly appealing to the normal +standard of probabilities in our own day. In the tragedy of Pompilia +we are taken far from the serene and homely region in which some of +our teachers would fain have it that the whole moral universe can be +snugly pent up. We see the black passions of man at their blackest; +hate, so fierce, undiluted, implacable, passionate, as to be hard of +conception by our simpler northern natures; cruelty, so vindictive, +subtle, persistent, deadly, as to fill us with a pain almost too great +for true art to produce; greediness, lust, craft, penetrating a whole +stock and breed, even down to the ancient mother of "that fell house +of hate,"-- + + "The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke, + The hag that gave these three abortions birth, + Unmotherly mother and unwomanly + Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame, + Womanliness to loathing: no one word, + No gesture to curb cruelty a whit + More than the she-pard thwarts her playsome whelps + Trying their milk-teeth on the soft o' the throat + O' the first fawn, flung, with those beseeching eyes, + Flat in the covert! How should she but couch, + Lick the dry lips, unsheathe the blunted claw, + Catch 'twixt her placid eyewinks at what chance + Old bloody half-forgotten dream may flit, + Born when herself was novice to the taste, + The while she lets youth take its pleasure" (iv. 40). + +But, then, if the poet has lighted up for us these grim and appalling +depths, he has not failed to raise us too into the presence of +proportionate loftiness and purity. + + "Tantum vertice in auras + Aetherias quantum radice in Tartara tendit." + +Like the gloomy and umbrageous grove of which the Sibyl spake to the +pious Aeneas, the poem conceals a golden branch and golden leaves. +In the second volume, Guido, servile and false, is followed by +Caponsacchi, as noble alike in conception and execution as anything +that Mr. Browning has ever achieved. In the third volume, the austere +pathos of Pompilia's tale relieves the too oppressive jollity of Don +Giacinto, and the flowery rhetoric of Bottini; while in the fourth, +the deep wisdom, justice, and righteous mind of the Pope, reconcile +us to endure the sulphurous whiff from the pit in the confession of +Guido, now desperate, naked, and satanic. From what at first was sheer +murk, there comes out a long procession of human figures, infinitely +various in form and thought, in character and act; a group of men and +women, eager, passionate, indifferent; tender and ravenous, mean and +noble, humorous and profound, jovial with prosperity or half-dumb with +misery, skirting the central tragedy, or plunged deep into the thick +of it, passers-by who put themselves off with a glance at the surface +of a thing, and another or two who dive to the heart of it. And +they all come out with a certain Shakespearian fulness, vividness, +directness. Above all, they are every one of them men and women, +with free play of human life in limb and feature, as in an antique +sculpture. So much of modern art, in poetry as in painting, runs to +mere drapery. "I grant," said Lessing, "that there is also a beauty in +drapery, but can it be compared with that of the human form? And shall +he who can attain to the greater, rest content with the less? I much +fear that the most perfect master in drapery shows by that very talent +wherein his weakness lies." This was spoken of plastic art, but it has +a yet deeper meaning in poetic criticism. There too, the master is he +who presents the natural shape, the curves, the thews of men, and does +not labour and seek praise for faithful reproduction of the mere moral +drapery of the hour, this or another; who gives you Hercules at strife +with Antaeus, Laocoon writhing in the coils of the divine serpents, +the wrestle with circumstance or passion, with outward destiny or +inner character, in the free outlines of nature and reality. The +capacity which it possesses for this presentation, at once so varied +and so direct, is one reason why the dramatic form ranks as the +highest expression and measure of the creative power of the poet; and +the extraordinary grasp with which Mr. Browning has availed himself of +this double capacity is one reason why we should reckon _The Ring and +the Book_ as one of his masterpieces. + +We may say this, and still not be blind to the faults of the poem. +Many persons agree that they find it too long, and if they find it so, +then for them it is too long. Others, who cannot resist the critic's +temptation of believing that a remark must be true if it only look +acute and specific, vow that the disclosure in the first volume of the +whole plan and plot vitiates subsequent artistic merit. If one +cannot enjoy what comes, for knowing beforehand what is coming, this +objection may be allowed to have a root in human nature; but then two +things might perhaps be urged on the other side,--first, that the +interest of the poem lies in the development and presentation of +character, on the one hand, and in the many sides which a single +transaction offered to as many minds, on the other; and therefore that +this true interest could not be marred by the bare statement what the +transaction was or, baldly looked at, seemed to be; and, second, that +the poem was meant to find its reader in a mood of mental repose, +ready to receive the poet's impressions, undisturbed by any agitating +curiosity as to plot or final outcome. A more valid accusation touches +the many verbal perversities, in which a poet has less right than +another to indulge. The compound Latin and English of Don Giacinto, +notwithstanding the fan of the piece, still grows a burden to the +flesh. Then there are harsh and formless lines, bursts of metrical +chaos, from which a writer's dignity and self-respect ought surely +to be enough to preserve him. Again, there are passages marked by a +coarse violence of expression that is nothing short of barbarous (for +instance, ii. 190, or 245). The only thing to be said is, that the +countrymen of Shakespeare have had to learn to forgive uncouth +outrages on form and beauty to fine creative genius. If only one could +be sure that readers, unschooled as too many are to love the simple +and elevated beauty of such form as Sophocles or as Corneille gives, +would not think the worst fault the chief virtue, and confound the +poet's bluntnesses with his admirable originality. It is certain that +in Shakespeare's case his defects are constantly fastened upon, by +critics who have never seriously studied the forms of dramatic art +except in the literature of England, and extolled as instances of +his characteristic mightiness. It may well be, therefore, that the +grotesque caprices which Mr. Browning unfortunately permits to himself +may find misguided admirers, or, what is worse, even imitators. It +would be most unjust, however, while making due mention of these +things, to pass over the dignity and splendour of the verse in +many places, where the intensity of the writer's mood finds worthy +embodiment in a sustained gravity and vigour and finish of diction not +to be surpassed. The concluding lines of the _Caponsacchi_ (comprising +the last page of the second volume), the appeal of the Greek poet in +_The Pope_, one or two passages in the first _Guido_ (e.g. vol. ii., +p. 156, from line 1957), and the close of the _Pompilia_, ought to be +referred to when one wishes to know what power over the instrument +of his art Mr. Browning might have achieved, if he had chosen to +discipline himself in instrumentation. + +When all is said that can be said about the violences which from +time to time invade the poem, it remains true that the complete work +affects the reader most powerfully with that wide unity of impression +which it is the highest aim of dramatic art, and perhaps of all art, +to produce. After we have listened to all the whimsical dogmatising +about beauty, to all the odious cant about morbid anatomy, to all the +well-deserved reproach for unpardonable perversities of phrase and +outrages on rhythm, there is left to us the consciousness that a +striking human transaction has been seized by a vigorous and profound +imagination, that its many diverse threads have been wrought into a +single, rich, and many-coloured web of art, in which we may see traced +for us the labyrinths of passion and indifference, stupidity and +craft, prejudice and chance, along which truth and justice have to +find a devious and doubtful way. The transaction itself, lurid +and fuliginous, is secondary to the manner of its handling and +presentment. We do not derive our sense of unity from the singleness +and completeness of the horrid tragedy, so much as from the power +with which its own circumstances as they happened, the rumours which +clustered about it from the minds of men without, the many moods, +fancies, dispositions, which it for the moment brought out into light, +playing round the fact, the half-sportive flights with which lawyers, +judges, quidnuncs of the street, darted at conviction and snatched +hap-hazard at truth, are all wrought together into one self-sufficient +and compacted shape. + +But this shape is not beautiful, and the end of art is beauty? Verbal +fanaticism is always perplexing, and, rubbing my eyes, I ask whether +that beauty means anything more than such an arrangement and +disposition of the parts of the work as, first kindling a great +variety of dispersed emotions and thoughts in the mind of the +spectator, finally concentrates them in a single mood of joyous, sad, +meditative, or interested delight. The sculptor, the painter, and the +musician, have each their special means of producing this final +and superlative impression; each is bound by the strictly limited +capability in one direction and another of the medium in which he +works. In poetry it is because they do not perceive how much more +manifold and varied are the means of reaching the end than in the +other expressions of art, that people insist each upon some particular +quiddity which, entering into composition, alone constitutes it +genuinely poetic, beautiful, or artistic. Pressing for definition, you +never get much further than that each given quiddity means a certain +Whatness. This is why poetical criticism is usually so little +catholic. A man remembers that a poem in one style has filled him with +consciousness of beauty and delight. Why conclude that this style +constitutes the one access to the same impression? Why not rather +perceive that, to take contemporaries, the beauty of _Thyrsis_ Is +mainly produced by a fine suffusion of delicately-toned emotion; that +of _Atalanta_ by splendid and barely rivalled music of verse; of _In +Memoriam_ by its ordered and harmonious presentation of a sacred mood; +of the _Spanish Gypsy_, in the parts where it reaches beauty, by +a sublime ethical passion; of the _Earthly Paradise_, by sweet and +simple reproduction of the spirit of the younger-hearted times? There +are poems by Mr. Browning in which it is difficult, or, let us frankly +say, impossible, for most of us at all events and as yet, to discover +the beauty or the shape. But if beauty may not be denied to a work +which, abounding in many-coloured scenes and diverse characters, in +vivid image and portraiture, wide reflection and multiform emotion, +does further, by a broad thread of thought running under all, bind +these impressions into one supreme and elevated conviction, then +assuredly, whatever we may think of this passage or that, that episode +or the other, the first volume or the third, we cannot deny that _The +Ring and the Book_, in its perfection and integrity, fully satisfies +the conditions of artistic triumph. Are we to ignore the grandeur of +a colossal statue, and the nobility of the human conceptions which it +embodies, because here and there we notice a flaw in the marble, a +blemish in its colour, a jagged slip of the chisel? "It is not force +of intellect," as George Eliot has said, "which causes ready repulsion +from the aberration and eccentricities of greatness, any more than it +is force of vision that causes the eye to explore the warts in a +face bright with human expression; it is simply the negation of high +sensibilities." + +Then, it is asked by persons of another and still more rigorous +temper, whether, as the world goes, the subject, or its treatment +either, justifies us in reading some twenty-one thousand and +seventy-five lines, which do not seem to have any direct tendency to +make us better or to improve mankind. This objection is an old enemy +with a new face, and need not detain us, though perhaps the crude +and incessant application of a narrow moral standard, thoroughly +misunderstood, is one of the intellectual dangers of our time. You may +now and again hear a man of really masculine character confess that +though he loves Shakespeare and takes habitual delight in his works, +he cannot see that he was a particularly moral writer. That is to say, +Shakespeare is never directly didactic; you can no more get a system +of morals out of his writings than you can get such a system out +of the writings of the ever-searching Plato. But, if we must be +quantitative, one great creative poet probably exerts a nobler, +deeper, more permanent ethical influence than a dozen generations of +professed moral teachers. It is a commonplace to the wise, and an +everlasting puzzle to the foolish, that direct inculcation of morals +should invariably prove so powerless an instrument, so futile a +method. The truth is that nothing can be more powerfully efficacious +from the moral point of view than the exercise of an exalted creative +art, stirring within the intelligence of the spectator active thought +and curiosity about many types of character and many changeful issues +of conduct and fortune, at once enlarging and elevating the range of +his reflections on mankind, ever kindling his sympathies into the warm +and continuous glow which purifies and strengthens nature, and fills +men with that love of humanity which is the best inspirer of virtue. +Is not this why music, too, is to be counted supreme among moral +agents, soothing disorderly passion by diving down into the hidden +deeps of character where there is no disorder, and touching the +diviner mind? Given a certain rectitude as well as vigour of +intelligence, then whatever stimulates the fancy, expands the +imagination, enlivens meditation upon the great human drama, is +essentially moral. Shakespeare does all this, as if sent Iris-like +from the immortal gods, and _The Ring and the Book_ has a measure of +the same incomparable quality. + +A profound and moving irony subsists in the very structure of the +poem. Any other human transaction that ever was, tragic or comic or +plain prosaic, may be looked at in a like spirit, As the world's talk +bubbled around the dumb anguish of Pompilia, or the cruelty and hate +of Guido, so it does around the hourly tragedies of all times and +places. + + "The instinctive theorizing whence a fact + Looks to the eye as the eye likes the look."-- + "Vibrations in the general mind + At depth of deed already out of reach."-- + "Live fact deadened down, + Talked over, bruited abroad, whispered away:"-- + +if we reflect that these are the conditions which have marked the +formation of all the judgments that we hold by, and which are vivid in +operation and effect at this hour, the deep irony and the impressive +meaning of the poem are both obvious:-- + + "So learn one lesson hence + Of many which whatever lives should teach, + This lesson that our human speech is naught, + Our human testimony false, our fame + And human estimation words and wind" (iv. 234). + +It is characteristic of Mr. Browning that he thus casts the moral of +his piece in an essentially intellectual rather than an emotional +form, appealing to hard judgment rather than to imaginative +sensibility. Another living poet of original genius, of whom we have +much right to complain that he gives us so little, ends a poem in two +or three lines which are worth quoting here for the illustration they +afford of what has just been said about Mr. Browning:-- + + "Ah, what dusty answer gets the soul, + When hot for certainties in this our life!-- + In tragic hints here see what evermore + Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force, + Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse, + To throw that faint thin line upon the shore?"[1] + +[Footnote 1: Mr. George Meredith's _Modern Love_.] + +This is imaginative and sympathetic in thought as well as expression, +and the truth and the image enter the writer's mind together, the one +by the other. The lines convey poetic sentiment rather than reasoned +truth; while Mr. Browning's close would be no unfit epilogue to a +scientific essay on history, or a treatise on the errors of the human +understanding and the inaccuracy of human opinion and judgment. This +is the common note of his highest work; hard thought and reason +illustrating themselves in dramatic circumstance, and the thought +and reason are not wholly fused, they exist apart and irradiate with +far-shooting beams the moral confusion of the tragedy. This is, at any +rate, emphatically true of _The Ring and the Book_. The fulness +and variety of creation, the amplitude of the play and shifting of +characters and motive and mood, are absolutely unforced, absolutely +uninterfered with by the artificial exigencies of ethical or +philosophic purpose. There is the purpose, full-grown, clear in +outline, unmistakeable in significance. But the just proprieties of +place and season are rigorously observed, because Mr. Browning, like +every other poet of his quality, has exuberant and adequate delight in +mere creation, simple presentment, and returns to bethink him of the +meaning of it all only by-and-by. The pictures of Guido, of Pompilia, +of Caponsacchi, of Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, of Pope +Innocent, are each of them full and adequate, as conceptions of +character in active manifestation apart from the truth which the whole +composition is meant to illustrate, and which clothes itself in this +most excellent drama. + +The scientific attitude of the intelligence is almost as markedly +visible in Mr. Browning as the strength of his creative power. The +lesson of _The Ring and the Book_ is perhaps as nearly positive as +anything poetic can be. It is true that ultimately the drama ends in +a vindication of what are called the ways of God to man, if indeed +people are willing to put themselves off with a form of omnipotent +justice which is simply a partial retribution inflicted on the +monster, while torture and butchery fall upon victims more or +less absolutely blameless. As if the fact of punishment at length +overtaking the guilty Franceschini were any vindication of the justice +of that assumed Providence, which had for so long a time awarded +punishment far more harsh to the innocent Pompilia. So far as you +can be content with the vindication of a justice of this less than +equivocal quality, the sight of the monster brought to the + + "Close fetid cell, + Where the hot vapour of an agony, + Struck into drops on the cold wall, runs down + Horrible worms made out of sweat and tears,"-- + +may in a sense prove satisfactory enough. But a man must be very dull +who in reading the poem does not perceive that the very spirit of it +points to the thousand hazards which even this fragment of justice had +to run in saving itself, and bringing about such partially righteous +consummation as destiny permits. True opinion fares yet more +perilously. _Half-Rome_, the _Other Half-Rome_, the _Tertium Quid_, +which is perhaps most masterly and finished of the three, show us +how ill truth sifts itself, to how many it never comes at all, how +blurred, confused, next door to false, it is figured even to those who +seize it by the hem of the garment. We may, perhaps, yawn over the +intermingled Latin and law of Arcangeli, in spite of the humour of +parts of it, as well as over the vapid floweriness of his rival; but +for all that, we are touched keenly by the irony of the methods by +which the two professional truth-sifters darken counsel with words, +and make skilful sport of life and fact. The whole poem is a parable +of the feeble and half-hopeless struggle which truth has to make +against the ways of the world. That in this particular case truth and +justice did win some pale sort of victory does not weaken the force +of the lesson. The victory was such and so won as to stir in us awful +thoughts of fatal risks and certain defeats, of falsehood a thousand +times clasped for truth, of fact a thousand times banished for +fancy:-- + + "Because Pompilia's purity prevails, + Conclude you, all truth triumphs in the end? + So might those old inhabitants of the ark, + Witnessing haply their dove's safe return, + Pronounce there was no danger all the while + O' the deluge, to the creature's counterparts, + Aught that beat wing i' the world, was white or soft, + And that the lark, the thrush, the culver too, + Might equally have traversed air, found earth, + And brought back olive-branch In unharmed bill. + Methinks I hear the Patriarch's warning voice-- + 'Though this one breast, by miracle, return, + No wave rolls by, in all the waste, but bears + Within it some dead dove-like thing as dear, + Beauty made blank and harmlessness destroyed!'" + + (iv. 218). + +Or, to take another simile from the same magnificent passage, in which +the fine dignity of the verse fitly matches the deep truth of the +preacher's monitions:-- + + "Romans! An elder race possessed your land + Long ago, and a false faith lingered still, + As shades do, though the morning-star be out. + Doubtless, some pagan of the twilight day + Has often pointed to a cavern-mouth, + Obnoxious to beholders, hard by Rome, + And said,--nor he a bad man, no, nor fool,-- + Only a man, so, blind like all his mates,-- + 'Here skulk in safety, lurk, defying law, + The devotees to execrable creed, + Adoring--with what culture ... Jove, avert + Thy vengeance from us worshippers of thee!... + What rites obscene--their idol-god, an Ass!' + So went the word forth, so acceptance found, + So century re-echoed century, + Cursed the accursed,--and so, from sire to son, + You Romans cried, 'The offscourings of our race + Corrupt within the depths there: fitly, fiends + Perform a temple-service o'er the dead: + Child, gather garment round thee, pass nor pry!' + So groaned your generations: till the time + Grew ripe, and lightning hath revealed, belike,-- + Thro' crevice peeped into by curious fear,-- + Some object even fear could recognise + I' the place of spectres; on the illumined wall, + To-wit, some nook, tradition talks about, + Narrow and short, a corpse's length, no more: + And by it, in the due receptacle, + The little rude brown lamp of earthenware, + The cruse, was meant for flowers, but held the blood, + The rough-scratched palm-branch, and the legend left + _Pro Christo_. Then the mystery lay clear: + The abhorred one was a martyr all the time, + A saint whereof earth was not worthy. What? + Do you continue in the old belief? + Where blackness bides unbroke, must devils be? + Is it so certain, not another cell + O' the myriad that make up the catacomb, + Contains some saint a second flash would show? + Will you ascend into the light of day + And, having recognised a martyr's shrine, + Go join the votaries that gape around + Each vulgar god that awes the market-place?" + (iv. 219). + +With less impetuosity and a more weightily reasoned argument the Pope +confronts the long perplexity and entanglement of circumstances with +the fatuous optimism which insists that somehow justice and virtue do +rule in the world. Consider all the doings at Arezzo, before and after +the consummation of the tragedy. What of the Aretine archbishop, to +whom Pompilia cried "Protect me from the fiend!"-- + + "No, for thy Guido is one heady, strong, + Dangerous to disquiet; let him bide! + He needs some bone to mumble, help amuse + The darkness of his den with; so, the fawn + Which limps up bleeding to my foot and lies, + --Come to me, daughter,--thus I throw him back!" + +Then the monk to whom she went, imploring him to write to Rome:-- + + "He meets the first cold sprinkle of the world + And shudders to the marrow, 'Save this child? + Oh, my superiors, oh, the Archbishop here! + Who was it dared lay hand upon the ark + His betters saw fall nor put finger forth?'" + +Worst of all, the Convent of the Convertites, women to whom she was +consigned for help, + + "They do help; they are prompt to testify + To her pure life and saintly dying days. + She dies, and lo, who seemed so poor, proves rich! + What does the body that lives through helpfulness + To women for Christ's sake? The kiss turns bite, + The dove's note changes to the crow's cry: judge! + 'Seeing that this our Convent claims of right + What goods belong to those we succour, be + The same proved women of dishonest life,-- + And seeing that this Trial made appear + Pompilia was in such predicament,-- + The Convent hereupon pretends to said + Succession of Pompilia, issues writ, + And takes possession by the Fisc's advice.' + Such is their attestation to the cause + Of Christ, who had one saint at least, they hoped: + But, is a title-deed to filch, a corpse + To slander, and an infant-heir to cheat? + Christ must give up his gains then! They unsay + All the fine speeches,--who was saint is whore." + +It is not wonderful if his review of all the mean and dolorous +circumstance of this cycle of wrong brings the Pope face to face with +the unconquerable problem for the Christian believer, the keystone +of the grim arch of religious doubt and despair, through which the +courageous soul must needs pass to creeds of reason and life. Where is +"the gloriously decisive change, the immeasurable metamorphosis" in +human worth that should in some sort justify the consummate price that +had been paid for man these seventeen hundred years before? + + "Had a mere adept of the Rosy Cross + Spent his life to consummate the Great Work, + Would not we start to see the stuff it touched + Yield not a grain more than the vulgar got + By the old smelting-process years ago? + If this were sad to see in just the sage + Who should profess so much, perform no more, + What is it when suspected in that Power + Who undertook to make and made the world, + Devised and did effect man, body and soul, + Ordained salvation for them both, and yet ... + Well, is the thing we see, salvation?" + +It is certain that by whatever other deficiencies it may be marked +_The Ring and the Book_ is blameless for the most characteristic of +all the shortcomings of contemporary verse, a grievous sterility of +thought. And why? Because sterility of thought is the blight struck +into the minds of men by timorous and halt-footed scepticism, by a +half-hearted dread of what chill thing the truth might prove itself, +by unmanly reluctance or moral incapacity to carry the faculty of +poetic vision over the whole field; and because Mr. Browning's +intelligence, on the other hand, is masculine and courageous, moving +cheerfully on the solid earth of an articulate and defined conviction, +and careful not to omit realities from the conception of the great +drama, merely for being unsightly to the too fastidious eye, +or jarring in the ear, or too bitterly perplexing to faith or +understanding. It is this resolute feeling after and grip of fact +which is at the root of his distinguishing fruitfulness of thought, +and it is exuberance of thought, spontaneous, well-marked, and sapid, +that keeps him out of poetical preaching, on the one hand, and mere +making of music, on the other. Regret as we may the fantastic rudeness +and unscrupulous barbarisms into which Mr. Browning's art too often +falls, and find what fault we may with his method, let us ever +remember how much he has to say, and how effectively he communicates +the shock of new thought which was first imparted to him by the +vivid conception of a large and far-reaching story. The value of the +thought, indeed, is not to be measured by poetic tests; but still the +thought has poetic value, too, for it is this which has stirred in the +writer that keen yet impersonal interest in the actors of his story +and in its situations which is one of the most certain notes of +true dramatic feeling, and which therefore gives the most unfailing +stimulus to the interest of the appreciative reader. + +At first sight _The Ring and the Book_ appears to be absolutely wanting +in that grandeur which, in a composition of such enormous length, +criticism must pronounce to be a fundamental and indispensable element. +In an ordinary way this effect of grandeur is produced either by some +heroic action surrounded by circumstances of worthy stateliness, as in +the finest of the Greek plays; or as in _Paradise Lost_ by the presence +of personages of majestic sublimity of bearing and association; or as in +_Faust_ or _Hamlet_ by the stupendous moral abysses which the poet +discloses fitfully on this side and that. None of these things are to be +found in _The Ring and the Book_ The action of Caponsacchi, though noble +and disinterested, is hardly heroic in the highest dramatic sense, for +it is not much more than the lofty defiance of a conventionality, the +contemplated penalty being only small; not, for example, as if life or +ascertained happiness had been the fixed or even probable price of his +magnanimous enterprise. There was no marching to the stake, no +deliberate encountering of the mightier risks, no voluntary submission +to a lifelong endurance. True, this came in the end, but it was an end +unforeseen, and one, therefore, not to be associated with the first +conception of the original act. Besides, Guido is so saturated with +hateful and ignoble motive as to fill the surrounding air with +influences that preclude heroic association. It has been said of the +great men to whom the Byzantine Empire once or twice gave birth, that +even their fame has a curiously tarnished air, as if that too had been +touched by the evil breath of the times. And in like manner we may say +of Guido Franceschini that even to have touched him in the way of +resistance detracts from pure heroism. Perhaps the same consideration +explains the comparative disappointment which most people seem to have +felt with _Pompilia_ in the third volume. Again, there is nothing which +can be rightly called majesty of character visible in one personage or +another. There is high devotion in Caponsacchi, a large-minded and free +sagacity in Pope Innocent, and around Pompilia the tragic pathos of an +incurable woe, which by its intensity might raise her to grandeur if it +sprang from some more solemn source than the mere malignity and baseness +of an unworthy oppressor. Lastly, there is nothing in _The Ring and the +Book_ of that "certain incommensurableness" which Goethe found in his +own _Faust_. The poem is kept closely concrete and strictly +commensurable by the very framework of its story:-- + + "pure crude fact, + Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard, + And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since." + +It moves from none of the supernatural agencies which give the impulse +to our interest in _Faust_, nor from the sublimer passions and +yearning after things unspeakable alike in _Faust_ and in _Hamlet._ + +Yet, notwithstanding its lack of the accustomed elements of grandeur, +there is a profound impressiveness about _The Ring and the Book_ +which must arise from the presence of some other fine compensating +or equivalent quality. Perhaps one may say that this equivalent for +grandeur is a certain simple touching of our sense of human kinship, +of the large identity of the conditions of the human lot, of the +piteous fatalities which bring the lives of the great multitude of men +to be little more than "grains of sand to be blown by the wind." This +old woe, the poet says, now in the fulness of the days again lives, + + "_If precious be the soul of man to man_." + +This is the deeply implanted sentiment to which his poem makes +successful appeal. Nor is it mocked by mere outpouring of scorn on the +blind and fortuitous groping of men and societies of men after truth +and justice and traces of the watchfulness of "the unlidded eye of +God." Rather it is this inability to see beyond the facts of our +condition to some diviner, ever-present law, which helps to knit us to +our kind, our brethren "whom we have seen." + + "Clouds obscure-- + But for which obscuration all were bright? + Too hastily concluded! Sun-suffused, + A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze,-- + Better the very clarity of heaven: + The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear. + What but the weakness in a faith supplies + The incentive to humanity, no strength + Absolute, irresistible, comports? + How can man love but what he yearns to help + And that which men think weakness within strength + But angels know for strength and stronger get-- + What were it else but the first things made new, + But repetition of the miracle, + The divine instance of self-sacrifice + That never ends and aye begins for man?" + + + + +MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF LETTERS. + + +What are the qualities of a good contributor? What makes a good +Review? Is the best literature produced by the writer who does nothing +else but write, or by the man who tempers literature by affairs? What +are the different recommendations of the rival systems of anonymity +and signature? What kind of change, if any, has passed over periodical +literature since those two great periodicals, the _Edinburgh_ and the +_Quarterly_, held sway? These and a number of other questions in the +same matter--some of them obviously not to be opened with propriety in +these pages--must naturally be often present to the mind of any one +who is concerned in the control of a Review, and a volume has just +been printed which sets such musings once more astir. Mr. Macvey +Napier was the editor of the _Edinburgh Review_ from 1829--when +Jeffrey, after a reign of seven-and-twenty years, resigned it into +his hands--until his death in 1847. A portion of the correspondence +addressed to Mr. Napier during this period is full of personal +interest both to the man of letters and to that more singular being, +the Editor, the impresario of men of letters, the _entrepreneur_ of +the spiritual power. + +To manage an opera-house is usually supposed to tax human powers more +urgently than any position save that of a general in the very heat +and stress of battle. The orchestra, the chorus, the subscribers, +the first tenor, a pair of rival prima donnas, the newspapers, the +box-agents in Bond Street, the army of hangers-on in the flies--all +combine to demand such gifts of tact, resolution, patience, foresight, +tenacity, flexibility, as are only expected from the great ruler +or the great soldier. The editor of a periodical of public +consideration--and the _Edinburgh Review_ in the hands of Mr. Napier +was the avowed organ of the ruling Whig powers--is sorely tested +in the same way. The rival house may bribe his stars. His popular +epigrammatist is sometimes as full of humours as a spoiled soprano. +The favourite pyrotechnist is systematically late and procrastinatory, +or is piqued because his punctuation or his paragraphs have been +meddled with. The contributor whose article would be in excellent +time if it did not appear before the close of the century, or never +appeared at all, pesters you with warnings that a month's delay is a +deadly blow to progress, and stays the great procession of the ages. +The contributor who could profitably fill a sheet, insists on sending +a treatise. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who had charge of the +_Edinburgh_ for a short space, truly described prolixity as the _bęte +noire_ of an editor. "Every contributor," he said, "has some special +reason for wishing to write at length on his own subject." + +_Ah, que de choses dans un menuet!_ cried Marcel, the great +dancing-master, and ah, what things in the type and [Greek: idea] of +an article, cries an editor with the enthusiasm of his calling; such +proportion, measure, comprehension, variety of topics, pithiness of +treatment, all within a space appointed with Procrustean rigour. This +is what the soul of the volunteer contributor is dull to. Of the minor +vexations who can tell? There is one single tribulation dire enough +to poison life--even if there were no other--and this is disorderly +manuscript. Empson, Mr. Napier's well-known contributor, was one of +the worst offenders; he would never even take the trouble to mark his +paragraphs. It is my misfortune to have a manuscript before me at this +moment that would fill thirty of these pages, and yet from beginning +to end there is no indication that it is not to be read at a single +breath. The paragraph ought to be, and in all good writers it is, as +real and as sensible a division as the sentence. It is an organic +member in prose composition, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, +just as a stanza is an organic and definite member in the composition +of an ode, "I fear my manuscript is rather disorderly," says another, +"but I will correct carefully in print." Just so. Because he is too +heedless to do his work in a workmanlike way, he first inflicts +fatigue and vexation on the editor whom he expects to read his paper; +second, he inflicts considerable and quite needless expense on the +publisher; and thirdly, he inflicts a great deal of tedious and +thankless labour on the printers, who are for the most part far more +meritorious persons than fifth-rate authors. It is true that Burke +returned such disordered proofs that the printer usually found it +least troublesome to set the whole afresh, and Miss Martineau tells +a story of a Scotch compositor who fled from Edinburgh to avoid +Carlyle's manuscript, and to his horror was presently confronted with +a piece of the too familiar copy which made him cry, "Lord, have +mercy! Have _you_ got that man to print for!" But most editors will +cheerfully forgive such transgressions to all contributors who will +guarantee that they write as well as Burke or Carlyle. Alas! it is +usually the case that those who have least excuse are the worst +offenders. The slovenliest manuscripts come from persons to whom +the difference between an hour and a minute is of the very smallest +importance. This, however, is a digression, only to be excused partly +by the natural desire to say a word against one's persecutors, and +partly by a hope that some persons of sensitive conscience may be led +to ponder whether there may not be after all some moral obligations +even towards editors and printers. + +Mr. Napier had one famous contributor, who stands out alone in the +history of editors. Lord Brougham's traditional connection with the +Review,--he had begun to write either in its first or third number, +and had written in it ever since--his encyclopaedic ignorance, his +power, his great fame in the country, and the prestige which his +connection reflected on the Review, all made him a personage with whom +it would have been most imprudent to quarrel. Yet the position in +which Mr. Napier was placed after Brougham's breach with the Whigs, +was one of the most difficult in which the conductor of a great organ +could possibly be placed. The Review was the representative, the +champion, and the mouthpiece of the Whig party, and of the Whigs who +were in office. Before William IV. dismissed the Whigs in 1834 as +arbitrarily as his father had dismissed the Whigs in 1784, Brougham +had covered himself with disrepute among his party by a thousand +pranks, and after the dismissal he disgusted them by asking the +new Chancellor to make him Chief Baron of the Exchequer. When Lord +Melbourne returned to power in the following year, this and other +escapades were remembered against him. "If left out," said Lord +Melbourne, "he would indeed be dangerous; but if taken in, he would +simply be destructive." So Brougham was left out, Pepys was made +Chancellor, and the Premier compared himself to a man who has broken +with a termagant mistress and married the best of cooks. Mr. Napier +was not so happy. The termagant was left on his hands. He had to +keep terms with a contributor who hated with deadly hatred the very +government that the Review existed to support. No editor ever had such +a contributor as Brougham in the long history of editorial torment +since the world began. He scolds, he storms, he hectors, he lectures; +he is for ever threatening desertion and prophesying ruin; he exhausts +the vocabulary of opprobrium against his correspondent's best friends; +they are silly slaves, base traitors, a vile clique "whose treatment +of me has been the very _ne plus ultra_ of ingratitude, baseness, and +treachery." He got the Review and its editor into a scrape which shook +the world at the time (1834), by betraying Cabinet secrets to spite +Lord Durham. His cries against his adversaries are as violent as +the threats of Ajax in his tent, and as loud as the bellowings of +Philoctetes at the mouth of his cave. Here is one instance out of a +hundred:-- + + "That is a trifle, and I only mention it to beg of you to pluck up + a little courage, and not be alarmed every time any of the little + knot of threateners annoy you. _They want to break off all kind of + connection between me and the Edinburgh Review_. I have long seen + it. Their fury against the article in the last number knows no + bounds, and they will never cease till they worry you out of your + connection with me, and get the whole control of the Review into + their own hands, by forcing you to resign it yourself. A _party + and a personal_ engine is all they want to make it. What possible + right can any of these silly slaves have to object to my opinion + being--what it truly is--against the Holland House theory of Lord + Chatham's madness? I _know_ that Lord Grenville treated it with + contempt. I know others now living who did so too, and I know that + so stout a Whig as Sir P. Francis was clearly of that opinion, and + he knew Lord Chatham personally. I had every ground to believe + that Horace Walpole, a vile, malignant, and unnatural wretch, + though a very clever writer of Letters, was nine-tenths of the + Holland House authority for the tale. I knew that a baser man in + character, or a meaner in capacity than the first Lord Holland + existed not, even in those days of job and mediocrity. Why, then, + was I bound to take a false view because Lord Holland's family + have inherited his hatred of a great rival?" + +Another instance is as follows:-- + + "I solicit your best attention to the fate which seems hastening + upon the _Edinburgh Review_. The having always been free from the + least control of booksellers is one of its principal distinctions, + and long was peculiarly so--perhaps it still has it _nearly_ to + itself. But if it shall become a _Treasury_ journal, I hardly see + any great advantage in one kind of independence without the + rest. Nay, I doubt if its _literary_ freedom, any more than its + political, will long survive. Books will be treated according as + the Treasury, or their under-strappers, regard the authors.... + But, is it after all possible that the Review should be suffered + to sink into such a state of subserviency that it dares not insert + any discussion upon a general question of politics because it + might give umbrage to the Government of the day? I pass over the + undeniable fact that it is _underlings_ only whom you are scared + by, and that the Ministers themselves have no such inordinate + pretension as to dream of interfering. I say nothing of those + underlings generally, except this, that I well know the race, and + a more despicable, above all, in point of judgment, exists not. + Never mind their threats, they _can_ do no harm. Even if any of + them are contributors, be assured they never will withdraw because + you choose to keep your course free and independent." + +Mr. Napier, who seems to have been one of the most considerate and +high-minded of men, was moved to energetic remonstrance on this +occasion. Lord Brougham explained his strong language away, but he +was incapable of really controlling himself, and the strain was never +lessened until 1843, when the correspondence ceases, and we learn +that there had been a quarrel between him and his too long-suffering +correspondent. Yet John Allen,--that able scholar and conspicuous +figure in the annals of Holland House--wrote of Brougham to Mr. +Napier:--"He is not a malignant or bad-hearted man, but he is an +unscrupulous one, and where his passions are concerned or his vanity +irritated, there is no excess of which he is not capable." Of +Brougham's strong and manly sense, when passion or vanity did not +cloud it, and even of a sort of careful justice, these letters give +more than one instance. The _Quarterly Review_, for instance, had an +article on Romilly's Memoirs, which to Romilly's friends seemed to do +him less than justice. Brougham took a more sensible view. + + "Surely we had no right whatever to expect that they whom Romilly + had all his life so stoutly opposed, and who were treated by him + with great harshness, should treat him as his friends would do, + and at the very moment when a most injudicious act of his family + was bringing out all his secret thoughts against them. Only place + yourself in the same position, and suppose that Canning's private + journals had been published,--the journals he may have kept while + the bitterest enemy of the Whigs, and in every page of which there + must have been some passage offensive to the feelings of the + living and of the friends of the dead. Would any mercy have been + shown to Canning's character and memory by any of the Whig party, + either in society or in Reviews? Would the line have been drawn of + only attacking Canning's executors, who published the papers, and + leaving Canning himself untouched? Clearly and certainly not, + and yet I am putting a very much weaker case, for we had joined + Canning, and all political enmity was at an end: whereas the + Tories and Romilly never had for an hour laid aside their mutual + hostility." + +And if he was capable of equity, Brougham was also capable of hearty +admiration, even of an old friend who had on later occasions gone into +a line which he intensely disliked. It is a relief in the pages of +blusterous anger and raging censure to come upon what he says of +Jeffrey. + + "I can truly say that there never in all my life crossed my mind + one single unkind feeling respecting him, or indeed any feeling + but that of the warmest affection and the most unmingled + admiration of his character, believing and knowing him to be as + excellent and amiable as he is great in the ordinary, and, as I + think, the far less important sense of the word." + +Of the value of Brougham's contributions we cannot now judge. They +will not, in spite of their energy and force, bear re-reading to-day, +and perhaps the same may be said of three-fourths of Jeffrey's once +famous essays. Brougham's self-confidence is heroic. He believed that +he could make a speech for Bolingbroke, but by-and-by he had sense +enough to see that, in order to attempt this, he ought to read +Bolingbroke for a year, and then practise for another year. In 1838 he +thought nothing of undertaking, amid all the demands of active life, +such a bagatelle as a History of the French Revolution. "I have some +little knack of narrative," he says, "the most difficult by far of all +styles, and never yet attained in perfection but by Hume and Livy; +and I bring as much oratory and science to the task as most of my +predecessors." But what sort of science? And what has oratory to do +with it? And how could he deceive himself into thinking that he could +retire to write a history? Nobody that ever lived would have more +speedily found out the truth of Voltaire's saying, "_Le repos est +une bonne chose, mais l'ennui est son frčre_." The truth is that one +learns, after a certain observation of the world, to divide one's +amazement pretty equally between the literary voluptuary or +over-fastidious collegian, on the one hand, who is so impressed by the +size of his subject that he never does more than collect material and +make notes, and the presumptuous politician, on the other hand, who +thinks that he can write a history or settle the issues of philosophy +and theology in odd half-hours. The one is so enfeebled in will and +literary energy after his _viginti annorum lucubrationes_; the other +is so accustomed to be content with the hurry, the unfinishedness, +the rough-and-ready methods of practical affairs, and they both in +different ways measure the worth and seriousness of literature so +wrongly in relation to the rest of human interests. + +The relations between Lord Brougham and Mr. Napier naturally suggest +a good many reflections on the vexed question of the comparative +advantages of the old and the new theory of a periodical. The new +theory is that a periodical should not be an organ but an open pulpit, +and that each writer should sign his name. Without disrespect to ably +conducted and eminent contemporaries of long standing, it may be said +that the tide of opinion and favour is setting in this direction. Yet, +on the whole, experience perhaps leads to a doubt whether the gains of +the system of signature are so very considerable as some of us once +expected. An editor on the new system is no doubt relieved of a +certain measure of responsibility. Lord Cockburn's panegyric on the +first great editor may show what was expected from a man in such a +position as Jeffrey's. "He had to discover, and to train, authors; to +discern what truth and the public mind required; to suggest subjects; +to reject, and, more offensive still, to improve, contributions; to +keep down absurdities; to infuse spirit; to excite the timid; to +repress violence; to soothe jealousies; to quell mutinies; to watch +times; and all this in the morning of the reviewing day, before +experience had taught editors conciliatory firmness, and contributors +reasonable submission. He directed and controlled the elements he +presided over with a master's judgment. There was not one of his +associates who could have even held these elements together for a +single year.... Inferior to these excellences, but still important, +was his dexterity in revising the writings of others. Without altering +the general tone or character of the composition, he had great skill +in leaving out defective ideas or words, and in so aiding the original +by lively or graceful touches, that reasonable authors were surprised +and charmed on seeing how much better they looked than they thought +they would" (Cockburn's _Life of Jeffrey_, i. 301). + +From such toils and dangers as these the editor of a Review with +signed articles is in the main happily free. He has usually +suggestions to make, for his experience has probably given him points +of view as to the effectiveness of this or that feature of an article +for its own purpose, which would not occur to a writer. The writer is +absorbed in his subject, and has been less accustomed to think of the +public. But this exercise of a claim to a general acquiescence in the +judgment and experience of a man who has the best reasons for trying +to judge rightly, is a very different thing from the duty of drilling +contributors and dressing contributions as they were dressed and +drilled by Jeffrey. As Southey said, when groaning under the +mutilations inflicted by Gifford on Iris contributions to the +_Quarterly_, "there must be a power expurgatory in the hands of +the editor; and the misfortune is that editors frequently think it +incumbent on them to use that power merely because they have it" +(Southey's Life, iv. 18). This is probably true on the anonymous +system, where the editor is answerable for every word, and for the +literary form no less than for the substantial soundness or interest +of an article. In a man of weakish literary vanity--Jeffrey was +evidently full of it--there may well be a constant itch to set his +betters right in trifles, as Gifford thought that he could mend +Southey's adjectives. To a vain editor, or a too masterful editor, the +temptation under the anonymous system is no doubt strong. M. Buloz, +it is true, the renowned conductor of the _Revue des deux Mondes_, is +said to have insisted on, and to have freely practised, the fullest +editorial prerogative over articles that were openly signed by the +most eminent names in France. But M. Buloz had no competitor, and +those who did not choose to submit to his Sultanic despotism were +shut out from the only pulpit whence they were sure of addressing the +congregation that they wanted. In England contributors are better +off; and no editor of a signed periodical would feel either bound or +permitted to take such trouble about mere wording of sentences as +Gifford and Jeffrey were in the habit of taking. + +There is, however, another side to this, from an editor's point of +view. With responsibility--not merely for commas and niceties and +literary kickshaws, but in its old sense--disappears also a portion of +the interest of editorial labour. One would suppose it must be more +interesting to command a man-of-war than a trading vessel; it would be +more interesting to lead a regiment than to keep a tilting-yard. But +the times are not ripe for such enterprises. Of literary ability of +a good and serviceable kind there is a hundred or five hundred times +more in the country than there was when Jeffrey, Smith, Brougham, and +Horner devised their Review in a ninth storey in Edinburgh seventy-six +years ago. It is the cohesion of a political creed that is gone, and +the strength and fervour of a political school. The principles that +inspired that group of strong men have been worked out. After their +reforms had been achieved, the next great school was economic, and +though it produced one fine orator, its work was at no time literary. +The Manchester school with all their shortcomings had at least the +signal distinction of attaching their views on special political +questions to a general and presiding conception of the modern phase of +civilisation, as industrial and pacific. The next party of advance, +when it is formed, will certainly borrow from Cobden and Bright their +hatred of war and their hatred of imperialism. After the sagacity and +enlightenment of this school came the school of persiflage. A knot of +vigorous and brilliant men towards 1856 rallied round the late editor +of the _Saturday Review_,--and a strange chief he was for such +a group,--but their flag was that of the Red Rover. They gave +Philistinism many a shrewd blow, but perhaps at the same time helped +to some degree--with other far deeper and stronger forces--to produce +that sceptical and centrifugal state of mind, which now tends to +nullify organised liberalism and paralyse the spirit of improvement. +The Benthamites, led first by James Mill, and afterwards in a +secondary degree by John Mill, had pushed a number of political +improvements in the radical and democratic direction during the +time when the _Edinburgh_ so powerfully represented more orthodox +liberalism. They were the last important group of men who started +together from a set of common principles, accepted a common programme +of practical applications, and set to work in earnest and with due +order and distribution of parts to advocate the common cause. + +At present [1878] there is no similar agreement either among the +younger men in parliament, or among a sufficiently numerous group of +writers outside of parliament. The Edinburgh Reviewers were most +of them students of the university of that city. The Westminster +Reviewers had all sat at the feet of Bentham. Each group had thus a +common doctrine and a positive doctrine. In practical politics it does +not much matter by what different roads men have travelled to a given +position. But in an organ intended to lead public opinion towards +certain changes, or to hold it steadfast against wayward gusts of +passion, its strength would be increased a hundredfold if all the +writers in it were inspired by that thorough unity of conviction which +comes from sincerely accepting a common set of principles to start +from, and reaching practical conclusions by the same route. We are +probably not very far from a time when such a group might form itself, +and its work would for some years lie in the formation of a general +body of opinion, rather than in practical realisation of this or that +measure. The success of the French Republic, the peaceful order of the +United States, perhaps some trouble within our own borders, will lead +men with open minds to such a conception of a high and stable type of +national life as will unite a sufficient number of them in a common +project for pressing with systematic iteration for a complete set of +organic changes. A country with such a land-system, such an electoral +system, such a monarchy, as ours, has a trying time before it. Those +will be doing good service who shall unite to prepare opinion for the +inevitable changes. At the present moment the only motto that can be +inscribed on the flag of a liberal Review is the general device of +Progress, each writer interpreting it in his own sense, and within +such limits as he may set for himself. For such a state of things +signature is the natural condition, and an editor, even of a signed +Review, would hardly decline to accept the account of his function +which we find Jeffrey giving to Mr. Napier:--"There are three +legitimate considerations by which you should be guided in your +conduct as editor generally, and particularly as to the admission or +rejection of important articles of a political sort. 1. The effect of +your decision on the other contributors upon whom you mainly rely; 2. +its effect on the sale and circulation, and on the just authority +of the work with the great body of its readers; and, 3. your own +deliberate opinion as to the safety or danger of the doctrines +maintained in the article under consideration, and its tendency +either to promote or retard the practical adoption of those liberal +principles to which, and _their practical advancement_, you must +always consider the journal as devoted." + +As for discovering and training authors, the editor under the new +system has inducements that lie entirely the other way; namely, +to find as many authors as possible whom the public has already +discovered and accepted for itself. Young unknown writers certainly +have not gained anything by the new system. Neither perhaps can they +be said to have lost, for though of two articles of equal merit +an editor would naturally choose the one which should carry the +additional recommendation of a name of recognised authority, yet any +marked superiority in literary brilliance or effective argument or +originality of view would be only too eagerly welcomed in any Review +in England. So much public interest is now taken in periodical +literature, and the honourable competition in securing variety, +weight, and attractiveness is so active, that there is no risk of +a literary candle remaining long under a bushel. Miss Martineau +says:--"I have always been anxious to extend to young or struggling +authors the sort of aid which would have been so precious to me in +that winter of 1829-30, and I know that, in above twenty years, I have +never succeeded but once." One of the most distinguished editors +in London, who had charge of a periodical for many years, told the +present writer what comes to the same thing, namely, that in no single +case during all these years did a volunteer contributor of real +quality, or with any promise of eminence, present himself or herself. +So many hundreds think themselves called, so few are chosen. It used +to be argued that the writer under the anonymous system was hidden +behind a screen and robbed of his well-earned distinction. In truth, +however, it is impossible for a writer of real distinction to remain +anonymous. If a writer in a periodical interests the public, they are +sure to find out who he is. + +Again, there is folly unfathomable in a periodical affecting an +eternal consistency, and giving itself the airs of continuous +individuality, and being careful not to talk sense on a given question +to-day because its founders talked nonsense upon it fifty years ago. +This is quite true. There is a monstrous charlatanry about the old +editorial We, but perhaps there are some tolerably obvious openings +for charlatanry of a different kind under our own system. The man who +writes in his own name may sometimes be tempted to say what he knows +he is expected from his position or character to say, rather than what +he would have said if his personality were not concerned. As far as +honesty goes, signature perhaps offers as many inducements to one kind +of insincerity, as anonymity offers to another kind. And on the public +it might perhaps be contended that there is an effect of a rather +similar sort. They are in some cases tempted away from serious +discussion of the matter, into frivolous curiosity and gossip about +the man. All this criticism of the principle of which the _Fortnightly +Review_ was the earliest English adherent, will not be taken as the +result in the present writer of Chamfort's _maladie des désabusés_; +that would be both extremely ungrateful and without excuse or reason. +It is merely a fragment of disinterested contribution to the study of +a remarkable change that is passing over a not unimportant department +of literature. One gain alone counterbalances all the drawbacks, and +that is a gain that could hardly have been foreseen or expected; I +mean the freedom with which the great controversies of religion and +theology have been discussed in the new Reviews. The removal of the +mask has led to an outburst of plain speaking on these subjects, which +to Mr. Napier's generation would have seemed simply incredible. The +frank avowal of unpopular beliefs or non-beliefs has raised the whole +level of the discussion, and perhaps has been even more advantageous +to the orthodox in teaching them more humility, than to the heterodox +in teaching them more courage and honesty. + +Let us return to Mr. Napier's volume. We have said that it is +impossible for a great writer to be anonymous. No reader will need to +be told who among Mr. Napier's correspondents is the writer of the +following:-- + + "I have been thinking sometimes, likewise, of a paper on Napoleon, + a man whom, though handled to the extreme of triteness, it will be + long years before we understand. Hitherto in the English tongue, + there is next to nothing that betokens insight into him, or even + sincere belief of such, on the part of the writer. I should like + to study the man with what heartiness I could, and form to myself + some intelligible picture of him, both as a biographical and as + a historical figure, in both of which senses he is our chief + contemporary wonder, and in some sort the epitome of his age. + This, however, were a task of far more difficulty than Byron, and + perhaps not so promising at present." + +And if there is any difficulty in recognising the same hand in the +next proposal, it arises only from the circumstance that it is this +writer above all others who has made Benthamism a term of reproach on +the lips of men less wise than himself:-- + + "A far finer essay were a faithful, loving, and yet critical, and + in part condemnatory, delineation of Jeremy Bentham, and his place + and working in this section of the world's history. Bentham will + not be put down by logic, and should not be put down, for we need + him greatly as a backwoodsman: neither can reconciliation be + effected till the one party understands and is just to the other. + Bentham is a denyer; he denies with a loud and universally + convincing voice; his fault is that he can _affirm_ nothing, + except that money is pleasant in the purse, and food in the + stomach, and that by this simplest of all beliefs he can + reorganise society. He can shatter it in pieces--no thanks to him, + for its old fastenings are quite rotten--but he cannot reorganise + it; this is work for quite others than he. Such an essay on + Bentham, however, were a great task for any one; for me a very + great one, and perhaps rather out of my road." + +Perhaps Carlyle would have agreed that Mr. Mill's famous pair of +essays on Bentham and Coleridge have served the purpose which he had +in his mind, though we may well regret the loss of such a picture of +Bentham's philosophic personality as he would surely have given us. It +is touching to think of him whom we all know as the most honoured name +among living veterans of letters,[1] passing through the vexed ordeal +of the young recruit, and battling for his own against the waywardness +of critics and the blindness of publishers. In 1831 he writes to Mr. +Napier: "All manner of perplexities have occurred in the publishing +of my poor book, which perplexities I could only cut asunder, not +unloose; so the MS. like an unhappy ghost still lingers on the wrong +side of Styx; the Charon of ---- Street durst not risk it in his +_sutilis cymba_, so it leaped ashore again." And three months later: +"I have given up the notion of hawking my little Manuscript Book about +any further; for a long time it has lain quiet in its drawer, waiting +for a better day." And yet this little book was nothing less than the +History of the French Revolution. + +[Footnote 1: Carlyle died on February 5, 1881.] + +It might be a lesson to small men to see the reasonableness, sense, +and patience of these greater men. Macaulay's letters show him to have +been a pattern of good sense and considerateness. Mr. Carlyle seems +indeed to have found Jeffrey's editorial vigour more than could be +endured: + + "My respected friend your predecessor had some difficulty with me + in adjusting the respective prerogatives of Author and Editor, for + though not, as I hope, insensible to fair reason, I used sometimes + to rebel against what I reckoned mere authority, and this partly + perhaps as a matter of literary conscience; being wont to write + nothing without studying it if possible to the bottom, and writing + always with an almost painful feeling of scrupulosity, that light + editorial hacking and hewing to right and left was in general + nowise to my mind." + +But we feel that the fault must have lain with Jeffrey; the +qualifications that Lord Cockburn admired so much were not likely to +be to the taste of a man of Mr. Carlyle's grit. That did not prevent +the most original of Mr. Napier's contributors from being one of the +most just and reasonable. + + "I have, barely within my time, finished that paper + ['Characteristics'], to which you are now heartily welcome, if you + have room for it. The doctrines here set forth have mostly long + been familiar convictions with me; yet it is perhaps only within + the last twelvemonth that the public utterance of some of them + could have seemed a duty. I have striven to express myself with + what guardedness was possible; and, as there will now be no time + for correcting proofs, I must leave it wholly in your editorial + hands. Nay, should it on due consideration appear to you in your + place (for I see that matter dimly, and nothing is clear but my + own mind and the general condition of the world), unadvisable to + print the paper at all, then pray understand, my dear Sir, now and + always, that I am no unreasonable man; but if dogmatic enough (as + Jeffrey used to call it) in my own beliefs, also truly desirous to + be just towards those of others. I shall, in all sincerity, beg of + you to do, without fear of offence (for in _no_ point of view will + there be any), what you yourself see good. A mighty work lies + before the writers of this time." + +It is always interesting, to the man of letters at any rate if not +to his neighbours, to find what was first thought by men of admitted +competence of the beginnings of writers who are now seen to have made +a mark on the world. "When the reputation of authors is made," said +Sainte-Beuve, "it is easy to speak of them _convenablement_: we have +only to guide ourselves by the common opinion. But at the start, at +the moment when they are trying their first flight and are in part +ignorant of themselves, then to judge them with tact, with precision, +not to exaggerate their scope, to predict their flight, or divine +their limits, to put the reasonable objections in the midst of all +due respect--this is the quality of the critic who is born to be a +critic." We have been speaking of Mr. Carlyle. This is what Jeffrey +thought of him in 1832:-- + + "I fear Carlyle will not do, that is, if you do not take the + liberties and the pains with him that I did, by striking out + freely, and writing in occasionally. The misfortune is, that he + is very obstinate, and unluckily in a place like this, he finds + people enough to abet and applaud him, to intercept the operation + of the otherwise infallible remedy of general avoidance and + neglect. It is a great pity, for he is a man of genius and + industry, and with the capacity of being an elegant and impressive + writer" + +The notion of Jeffrey occasionally writing elegantly and impressively +into Carlyle's proof-sheets is rather striking. Some of Jeffrey's +other criticisms sound very curiously in our ear in these days. It +is startling to find Mill's _Logic_ described (1843) as a "great +unreadable book, and its elaborate demonstration of axioms and +truisms." A couple of years later Jeffrey admits, in speaking of Mr. +Mill's paper on Guizot--"Though I have long thought very highly of his +powers as a reasoner, I scarcely gave him credit for such large and +sound views of _realities_ and practical results as are displayed +in this article." Sir James Stephen--the distinguished sire of two +distinguished contributors, who may remind more than one editor of our +generation of the Horatian saying, that + + "Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis, + ... neque imbellera feroces + Progenerant aquilae columbam" + +--this excellent writer took a more just measure of the book which +Jeffrey thought unreadable. + + "My more immediate object in writing is to remind you of John + Mill's book [System of Logic], of which I have lately been reading + a considerable part, and I have done so with the conviction that + it is one of the most remarkable productions of this nineteenth + century. Exceedingly debatable indeed, but most worthy of debate, + are many of his favourite tenets, especially those of the last + two or three chapters. No man is fit to encounter him who is not + thoroughly conversant with the moral sciences which he handles; + and remembering what you told me of your own studies under Dugald + Stewart, I cannot but recommend the affair to your own personal + attention. You will find very few men fit to be trusted with it. + You ought to be aware that, although with great circumspection, + not to say timidity, Mill is an opponent of Religion in the + abstract, not of any particular form of it. That is, he evidently + maintains that superhuman influences on the mind of man are but a + dream, whence the inevitable conclusion that all acts of devotion + and prayer are but a superstition. That such is his real meaning, + however darkly conveyed, is indisputable. You are well aware that + it is in direct conflict with my own deepest and most cherished + convictions. Yet to condemn him for holding, and for calmly + publishing such views, is but to add to the difficulties of fair + and full discussion, and to render truth (or supposed truth), less + certain and valuable than if it had invited, and encountered, + and triumphed over every assault of every honest antagonist. I, + therefore, wish Mill to be treated respectfully and handsomely." + +Few of Mr. Napier's correspondents seem to have been more considerate. +At one period (1844) a long time had passed without any contribution +from Sir James Stephen's pen appearing in the Review. Mr. Senior +wrote a hint on the subject to the editor, and Napier seems to have +communicated with Sir James Stephen, who replied in a model strain. + + "Have you any offer of a paper or papers from my friend John + Austin? If you have, and if you are not aware what manner of man + he is, it may not be amiss that you should be apprised that in + these parts he enjoys, and deservedly, a very high and yet a + peculiar reputation. I have a great attachment to him. He is, in + the best sense of the word, a philosopher, an earnest and humble + lover of wisdom. I know not anywhere a larger minded man, and yet, + eloquent as he is in speech, there is, in his written style, an + involution and a lack of vivacity which renders his writings a + sealed book to almost every one. Whether he will be able to assume + an easier and a lighter manner, I do not know. If not, I rather + fear for him when he stands at your bar. All I ask is, that you + would convey your judgment in measured and (as far as you can + honestly) in courteous terms; for he is, for so considerable a + man, strangely sensitive. You must have an odd story to tell of + your intercourse with the knights of the Order of the Quill." + +And the letter closed with what an editor values more even than +decently Christian treatment, namely the suggestion of a fine subject. +This became the admirable essay on the Clapham Sect. + +The author of one of the two or three most delightful biographies +in all literature has published the letter to Mr. Napier in which +Macaulay speaks pretty plainly what he thought about Brougham and the +extent of his services to the Review. Brougham in turn hated Macaulay, +whom he calls the third or greatest bore in society that he has ever +known. He is furious--and here Brougham was certainly not wrong--over +the "most profligate political morality" of Macaulay's essay on Clive. + + "In my eyes, his defence of Clive, and the audacious ground of + it, merit execration. It is a most serious, and, to me, a painful + subject. No--no--all the sentences a man can turn, even if he made + them in pure taste, and not in Tom's snip-snap taste of the lower + empire,--all won't avail against a rotten morality. The first and + most sacred duty of a public man, and, above all, an author, is + to keep by honest and true doctrine--never to relax--never to + countenance vice--ever to hold fast by virtue. What? Are we + gravely to be told, at this time of day, that a set-off may be + allowed for public, and, therefore, atrocious crimes, though he + admits that a common felon pleads it in vain? Gracious God, where + is this to end! What horrors will it not excuse! Tiberius's great + capacity, his first-rate wit, that which made him the charm of + society, will next, I suppose, be set up to give a splendour to + the inhabitants of Capreae. Why, Olive's address, and his skill, + and his courage are not at all more certain, nor are they + qualities of a different cast. Every great ruffian, who has filled + the world with blood and tears, will be sure of an acquittal, + because of his talents and his success. After I had, and chiefly + in the _Edinburgh Review_, been trying to restore a better, a + purer, a higher standard of morals, and to wean men from the silly + love of military glory, for which they are the first to pay, I + find the _Edinburgh Review_ preaching, not merely the old and + common heresies, but ten thousand times worse, adopting a vile + principle never yet avowed in terms, though too often and too much + taken for a guide, unknown to those who followed it, in forming + their judgments of great and successful criminals." + +Of the essay on Warren Hastings he thought better, "bating some +vulgarity and Macaulay's usual want of all power of reasoning." +Lord Cockburn wrote to Mr. Napier (1844) a word or two on Macaulay. +"Delighting as I do," says Lord Cockburn, "in his thoughts, views, and +knowledge, I feel too often compelled to curse and roar at his words +and the structure of his composition. As a corrupter of style, he is +more dangerous to the young than Gibbon. His seductive powers greater, +his defects worse." All good critics now accept this as true. Jeffrey, +by the way, speaking of the same essay, thinks that Macaulay rates +Chatham too high. "I have always had an impression," he says, "(though +perhaps an ignorant and unjust one), that there was more good luck +than wisdom in his foreign policy, and very little to admire (except +his personal purity) in any part of his domestic administration." + +It is interesting to find a record, in the energetic speech of +contemporary hatred, of the way in which orthodox science regarded a +once famous book of heterodox philosophy. Here is Professor Sedgwick +on the _Vestiges of Creation_:-- + + "I now know the Vestiges well, and I detest the book for its + shallowness, for the intense vulgarity of its philosophy, for its + gross, unblushing materialism, for its silly credulity in catering + out of every fool's dish, for its utter ignorance of what is meant + by induction, for its gross (and I dare to say, filthy) views of + physiology,--most ignorant and most false,--and for Its shameful + shuffling of the facts of geology so as to make them play a + rogue's game. I believe some woman is the author; partly from the + fair dress and agreeable exterior of the Vestiges: and partly from + the utter ignorance the book displays of all sound physical logic. + A _man_ who knew so much of the surface of Physics must, at least + on some one point or other, have taken a deeper plunge; but _all_ + parts of the book are shallow.... From the bottom of my soul, I + loathe and detest the Vestiges. 'Tis a rank pill of asafoetida and + arsenic, covered with gold leaf. I do, therefore, trust that your + contributor has stamped with an iron heel upon the head of the + filthy abortion, and put an end to its crawlings. There is not one + subject the author handles bearing on life, of which he does not + take a degrading view." + +Mr. Napier seems to have asked him to write on the book, and +Sedgwick's article, the first he ever wrote for a review, eventually +appeared (1845),--without, it is to be hoped, too much of the raging +contempt of the above and other letters. "I do feel contempt, and, +I hope, I shall express it. Eats hatched by the incubations of a +goose--dogs playing dominos--monkeys breeding men and women--all +distinctions between natural and moral done away--the Bible proved +all a lie, and mental philosophy one mass of folly, all of it to be +pounded down, and done over again in the cooking vessels of Gall and +Spurzheim!" This was the beginning of a long campaign, which is just +now drawing near its close. Let us at least be glad that orthodoxy, +whether scientific or religious, has mended his temper. One among +other causes of the improvement, as we have already said, is probably +to be found in the greater self-restraint which comes from the fact of +the writer appearing in his own proper person. + + + + +VALEDICTORY.[1] + +[Footnote 1: On the writer's retirement from the editorship of the +_Fortnightly Review_, in 1882.] + + +The present number of the Review marks the close of a task which was +confided to me no less than fifteen years ago--_grande mortalis cevi +spatium_, a long span of one's mortal days. Fifteen years are enough +to bring a man from youth to middle age, to test the working value of +convictions, to measure the advance of principles and beliefs, and, +alas! to cut off many early associates and to extinguish many lights. +It is hardly possible that a Review should have been conducted for so +considerable a time without the commission of some mistakes; articles +admitted which might as well have been left out, opinions expressed +which have a crudish look in the mellow light of years, phrases +dropped in the heat or hurry of the moment which one would fain +obliterate. Many a regret must rise in men's minds on any occasion +that compels them to look back over a long reach of years. The +disparity between aim and performance, the unfulfilled promise, the +wrong turnings taken at critical points--as an accident of the hour +draws us to take stock of a complete period of our lives, all these +things rise up in private and internal judgment against anybody who is +not either too stupid or too fatuously complacent to recognise facts +when he sees them. But the mood passes. Time, happily, is merciful, +and men's memories are benignly short. + +More painful is the recollection of those earlier contributors of ours +who have vanished from the world. Periodical literature is like the +manna in the wilderness; it quickly loses its freshness, and to turn +over thirty volumes of old Reviews can hardly be exhilarating at the +best: least of all so, when it recalls friends and coadjutors who +can give their help no more. George Henry Lewes, the founder of the +Review, and always cordially interested in its fortunes, has not +survived to see the end of the reign of his successor, His vivacious +intelligence had probably done as much as he was competent to do for +his generation, but there were other important contributors, now gone, +of whom this could not be said. In the region of political theory, the +loss of J.E. Cairnes was truly lamentable and untimely. He had, as +Mill said of him, "that rare qualification among writers on political +and social subjects--a genuine scientific intellect." Not a month +passes in which one does not feel how great an advantage it would have +been to be able to go down to Blackheath, and discuss the perplexities +of the time in that genial and manly companionship, where facts were +weighed with so much care, where conclusions were measured with such +breadth and comprehension, and where even the great stolid idols of +the Cave and the Market Place were never too rudely buffeted. Of +a very different order of mind from Cairnes, but not less to be +permanently regretted by all of us who knew him, was Mr. Bagehot, +whose books on the English Constitution, on Physics and Politics, +and the fragment on the Postulates of Political Economy, were all +published in these pages. He wrote, in fact, the first article in +the first number. Though himself extremely cool and sceptical about +political improvement of every sort, he took abundant interest in more +ardent friends. Perhaps it was that they amused him; in return his +good-natured ironies put them wholesomely on their mettle. As has been +well said of him, he had a unique power of animation without combat; +it was all stimulus and yet no contest; his talk was full of youth, +yet had all the wisdom of mature judgment _(R.H. Hutton)_. Those who +were least willing to assent to Bagehot's practical maxims in judging +current affairs, yet were well aware how much they profited by his +Socratic objections, and knew, too, what real acquaintance with men +and business, what honest sympathy and friendliness, and what serious +judgment and interest all lay under his playful and racy humour. + +More untimely, in one sense, than any other was the death of Professor +Clifford, whose articles in this Review attracted so much attention, +and I fear that I may add, gave for a season so much offence six or +seven years ago. Cairnes was scarcely fifty when he died, and Bagehot +was fifty-one, but Clifford was only four-and-thirty. Yet in this +brief space he had not merely won a reputation as a mathematician of +the first order, but had made a real mark on his time, both by the +substance of his speculations in science, religion, and ethics, and +by the curious audacity with which he proclaimed at the pitch of his +voice on the housetops religious opinions that had hitherto been kept +among the family secrets of the _domus Socratica_. It is melancholy +to think that exciting work, done under pressure of time of his own +imposing, should have been the chief cause of his premature decline. +How intense that pressure was the reader may measure by the fact that +a paper of his on _The Unseen Universe_, which filled eighteen pages +of the Review, was composed at a single sitting that lasted from a +quarter to ten in the evening till nine o'clock the following morning. +As one revolves these and other names of eminent men who actively +helped to make the Review what it has been, it would be impossible to +omit the most eminent of them all. Time has done something to impair +the philosophical reputation and the political celebrity of J.S. Mill; +but it cannot alter the affectionate memory in which some of us must +always hold his wisdom and goodness, his rare union of moral ardour +with a calm and settled mind. He took the warmest interest In this +Review from the moment when I took it up, partly from the friendship +with which he honoured me, but much more because he wished to +encourage what was then--though it is now happily no longer--the only +attempt to conduct a periodical on the principles of free discussion +and personal responsibility. While recalling these and others who are +no more, it was naturally impossible for me to forget the constant +and valuable help that has been so freely given to me, often at much +sacrifice of their own convenience, by those friends and contributors +who are still with us. No conductor ever laid down his _bâton_ with a +more cordial and sincere sense of gratitude to those who took their +several parts in his performance. + +One chief experiment which the Review was established to try was that +of signed articles. When Mr. Lewes wrote his Farewell Causerie, as I +am doing now, he said: "That we have been enabled to bring together +men so various in opinion and so distinguished in power has been +mainly owing to the principle adopted of allowing each writer perfect +freedom; which could only have been allowed under the condition of +personal responsibility. The question of signing articles had long +been debated; it has now been tested. The arguments in favour of +it were mainly of a moral order; the arguments against it, while +admitting the morality, mainly asserted its inexpediency. The question +of expediency has, I venture to say, been materially enlightened +by the success of the Review." The success of other periodicals, +conducted still more rigorously on the principle that every article +ought to bear its writer's signature, leaves no further doubt on the +subject; so that it is now almost impossible to realise that only +fifteen or sixteen years ago scarcely anybody of the class called +practical could believe that the sacred principle of the Anonymous was +doomed. One of the shrewdest publishers in Edinburgh, and also himself +the editor of a famous magazine, once said to me while Mr. Lewes was +still editor of this Review, that he had always thought highly of our +friend's judgment "until he had taken up the senseless notion of +a magazine with signed articles and open to both sides of every +question." Nobody will call the notion senseless any longer. The +question is rather how long the exclusively anonymous periodicals will +resist the innovation. + +Personally I have attached less stern importance to signature as an +unvarying rule than did my predecessor; though, even he was compelled +by obvious considerations of convenience to make his chronique of +current affairs anonymous. Our practice has been signature as the +standing rule, occasionally suspended in favour of anonymity when +there seemed to be sufficient reason. On the whole it may be said that +the change from anonymous to signed articles has followed the course +of most changes. It has not led to one-half either of the evils or of +the advantages that its advocates and its opponents foretold. That +it has produced some charlatanry, can hardly be denied. Readers are +tempted to postpone serious and persistent interest in subjects, to a +semi-personal curiosity about the casual and unconnected deliverances +of the literary or social star of the hour. That this conception has +been worked out with signal ability in more cases than one; that it +has made periodical literature full of actuality; that it has tickled +and delighted the palate--is all most true. The obvious danger is lest +we should be tempted to think more of the man who speaks than of the +precise value of what he says. + +One indirect effect that is not unworthy of notice in the new system +is its tendency to narrow the openings for the writer by profession. +If an article is to be signed, the editor will naturally seek the name +of an expert of special weight and competence on the matter in hand. A +reviewer on the staff of a famous journal once received for his week's +task, _General Hamley on the Art of War_, a three-volume novel, a work +on dainty dishes, and a translation of Pindar. This was perhaps taxing +versatility and omniscience over-much, and it may be taken for granted +that the writer made no serious contribution to tactics, cookery, +or scholarship. But being a man of a certain intelligence, passably +honest, and reasonably painstaking, probably he produced reviews +sufficiently useful and just to answer their purpose. On the new +system we should have an article on General Hamley's work by Sir +Garnet Wolseley, and one on the cookery-book from M. Trompette. It is +not certain that this is all pure gain. There is a something to be +said for the writer by profession, who, without being an expert, will +take trouble to work up his subject, to learn what is said and thought +about it, to penetrate to the real points, to get the same mastery +over it as an advocate or a judge does over a patent case or a suit +about rubrics and vestments. He is at least as likely as the expert to +tell the reader all that he wants to know, and at least as likely to +be free from bias and injurious prepossession. + +Nor does experience, so far as it has yet gone, quite bear out Mr. +Lewes's train of argument that the "first condition of all writing is +sincerity, and that one means of securing sincerity is to insist on +personal responsibility," and that this personal responsibility +can only be secured by signing articles. The old talk of "literary +bravoes," "men in masks," "anonymous assassins," and so forth, is out +of date. Longer experience has only confirmed the present writer's +opinion, expressed here from the very beginning: "Everybody who knows +the composition of any respectable journal in London knows very well +that the articles which those of our own way of thinking dislike +most intensely are written by men whom to call bravoes in any sense +whatever would be simply monstrous. Let us say, as loudly as we +choose, if we see good reason, that they are half informed about some +of the things which they so authoritatively discuss; that they are +under strong class feeling; that they have not mastered the doctrines +which they are opposing; that they have not sufficiently meditated +their subject; that they have not given themselves time to do justice +even to their scanty knowledge. Journalists are open to charges of +this kind; but to think of them as a shameless body, thirsting for the +blood of better men than themselves, or ready to act as an editor's +instrument for money, involves a thoroughly unjust misconception." + +As to the comparative effects of the two systems on literary quality, +no prudent observer with adequate experience will lay down an +unalterable rule. Habit no doubt counts for a great deal, but +apart from habit there are differences of temperament and peculiar +sensibilities. Some men write best when they sign what they write; +they find impersonality a mystification and an incumbrance; anonymity +makes them stiff, pompous, and over-magisterial. With others, +however, the effect is just the reverse. If they sign, they become +self-conscious, stilted, and even pretentious; it is only when they +are anonymous that they recover simplicity and ease. It is as if an +actor who is the soul of what is natural under the disguises of his +part, should become extremely artificial if he were compelled to come +upon the stage in his own proper clothes and speaking only in his +ordinary voice. + +The newspaper press has not yet followed the example of the new +Reviews, but we are probably not far from the time when here, too, the +practice of signature will make its way. There was a silly cry at one +time for making the disuse of anonymity compulsory by law. But we +shall no more see this than we shall see legal penalties imposed +for publishing a book without an index, though that also has been +suggested. The same end will be reached by other ways. Within the last +few years a truly surprising shock has been given to the idea of a +newspaper, "as a sort of impersonal thing, coming from nobody knows +where, the readers never thinking of the writer, nor caring whether +he thinks what he writes, so long as _they_ think what he writes." +Of course it is still true, and will most likely always remain true, +that, like the Athenian Sophist, great newspapers will teach the +conventional prejudices of those who pay for it. A writer will long +be able to say that, like the Sophist, the newspaper reflects the +morality, the intelligence, the tone of sentiment, of its public, and +if the latter is vicious, so is the former. But there is infinitely +less of this than there used to be. The press is more and more taking +the tone of a man speaking to a man. The childish imposture of +the editorial We is already thoroughly exploded. The names of all +important journalists are now coming to be as publicly known as the +names of important members of parliament. There is even something over +and above this. More than one editor has boldly aspired to create +and educate a public of his own, and he has succeeded. The press is +growing to be much more personal, in the sense that its most important +directors are taking to themselves the right of pursuing an individual +line of their own, with far less respect than of old to the supposed +exigencies of party or the _communiqués_ of political leaders. The +editor of a Review of great eminence said to the present writer (who, +for his own part, took a slightly more modest view) that he regarded +himself as equal in importance to seventy-five Members of Parliament. +It is not altogether easy to weigh and measure with this degree of +precision. But what is certain is that there are journalists on both +sides in politics to whom the public looks for original suggestion, +and from whom leading politicians seek not merely such mechanical +support as they expect from their adherents in the House of Commons, +nor merely the uses of the vane to show which way the wind blows, but +ideas, guidance, and counsel, as from persons of co-equal authority +with themselves. England is still a long way from the point at which +French journalism has arrived in this matter. We cannot count an +effective host of Girardins, Lemoinnes, Abouts, or even Cassagnacs and +Rocheforts, each recognised as the exponent of his own opinions, and +each read because the opinions written are known to be his own. But +there is a distinctly nearer approach to this as the general state of +English journalism than there was twenty years ago. + +Of course nobody of sense supposes that any journalist, however +independent and however possessed by the spirit of his personal +responsibility, tries to form his opinions out of his own head, +without reference to the view of the men practically engaged in public +affairs, the temper of Parliament and the feeling of constituencies, +and so forth. All these are part of the elements that go to the +formation of his own judgment, and he will certainly not neglect to +find out as much about them as he possibly can. Nor, again, does the +increase of the personal sentiment about our public prints lessen the +general working fidelity of their conductors to a party. It is their +duty, no doubt, to discuss the merits of measures as they arise. In +this respect any one can see how radically they differ from the Member +of Parliament, whose business is not only to discuss but to act. The +Member of Parliament must look at the effect of his vote in more +lights than one. Besides the merits of the given measure, it is his +duty to think of the wishes of those who chose him to represent them; +and if, moreover, the effect of voting against a measure of which +he disapproves would be to overthrow a whole Ministry of which he +strongly approves, then, unless some very vital principle indeed were +involved, to give such a vote would be to prefer a small object to +a great one, and would indicate a very queasy monkish sort of +conscience. The journalist is not in the same position. He is an +observer and a critic, and can afford, and is bound, to speak the +truth. But even in his case, the disagreement, as Burke said, "will +be only enough to indulge freedom, without violating concord or +disturbing arrangement." There is a certain "partiality which becomes +a well-chosen friendship." "Men thinking freely will, in particular +instances, think differently. But still as the greater part of the +measures which arise in the course of public business are related to, +or dependent on, some great leading general principles in government, +a man must be peculiarly unfortunate in the choice of his political +company if he does not agree with them at least nine times in ten." +The doctrine that was good enough for Burke in this matter may be +counted good enough for most of us. Some of the current talk about +political independence is mere hypocrisy; some of it is mere vanity. +For the new priest of Literature is quite as liable to the defects of +spiritual pride and ambition as the old priest of the Church, and it +is quite as well for him that he should be on his guard against these +scarlet and high-crested sins. + +The success of Reviews, of which our own was the first English type, +marks a very considerable revolution in the intellectual habits of the +time. They have brought abstract discussion from the library down to +the parlour, and from the serious student down to the first man in +the street. We have passed through a perfect cyclone of religious +polemics. The popularity of such Reviews means that really large +audiences, _le gros public_, are eagerly interested In the radical +discussion of propositions which twenty years ago were only publicly +maintained, and then in their crudest, least true, and most repulsive +form, in obscure debating societies and little secularist clubs. +Everybody, male or female, who reads anything serious at all, now +reads a dozen essays a year to show, with infinite varieties of +approach and of demonstration, that we can never know whether there be +a Supreme Being or not, whether the soul survives the body, or whether +mind is more and other than a mere function of matter. No article +that has appeared in any periodical for a generation back excited so +profound a sensation as Mr. Huxley's memorable paper On the Physical +Basis of Life, published in this Review in February 1869. It created +just the same kind of stir that, in a political epoch, was made by +such a pamphlet as the _Conduct of the Allies_ or the _Reflections on +the French Revolution_. This excitement was a sign that controversies +which had hitherto been confined to books and treatises were now to be +admitted to popular periodicals, and that the common man of the world +would now listen and have an opinion of his own on the bases of +belief, just as he listens and judges in politics or art, or letters. +The clergy no longer have the pulpit to themselves, for the new +Reviews became more powerful pulpits, in which heretics were at least +as welcome as orthodox. Speculation has become entirely democratised. +This is a tremendous change to have come about in little more than a +dozen years. How far it goes, let us not be too sure. It is no new +discovery that what looks like complete tolerance may be in reality +only complete indifference. Intellectual fairness is often only +another name for indolence and inconclusiveness of mind, just as love +of truth is sometimes a fine phrase for temper. To be piquant counts +for much, and the interest of seeing on the drawing-room tables of +devout Catholics and high-flying Anglicans article after article, +sending divinities, creeds, and Churches all headlong into limbo, was +indeed piquant. Much of all this elegant dabbling in infidelity has +been a caprice of fashion. The Agnostic has had his day with the fine +ladies, like the black footboy of other times, or the spirit-rapper +and table-turner of our own. What we have been watching, after all, +was perhaps a tournament, not a battle. + +It would not be very easy for us now, and perhaps it would not be +particularly becoming at any time, to analyse the position that has +been assigned to this Review in common esteem. Those who have watched +it from without can judge better than those who have worked within. +Though it has been open, so far as editorial goodwill was concerned, +to opinions from many sides, the Review has unquestionably gathered +round it some of the associations of sect. What that sect is, people +have found it difficult to describe with anything like precision. For +a long time it was the fashion to label the Review as Comtist, and +it would be singularly ungrateful to deny that it has had no more +effective contributors than some of the best-known disciples of Comte. +By-and-by it was felt that this was too narrow. It was nearer the +truth to call it the organ of Positivists in the wider sense of that +designation. But even this would not cover many directly political +articles that have appeared in our pages, and made a mark in their +time. The memorable programme of Free Labour, Free Land, Free Schools, +Free Church had nothing at all Positivist about it. Nor could that +programme and many besides from the same pen and others be compressed +under the nickname of Academic Liberalism. There was too strong a +flavour of action for the academic and the philosophic. This passion +for a label, after all, is an infirmity. Yet people justly perceived +that there seemed to be a certain undefinable concurrence among +writers coming from different schools and handling very different +subjects. Perhaps the instinct was right which fancied that it +discerned some common drift, a certain pervading atmosphere, and +scented a subtle connection between speculations on the Physical Basis +of Life and the Unseen Universe, and articles on Trades Unions and +National Education. + +So far as the Review has been more specially identified with one set +of opinions than another, it has been due to the fact that a certain +dissent from received theologies has been found in company with new +ideas of social and political reform. This suspicious combination at +one time aroused considerable anger. The notion of anything like an +intervention of the literary and scientific class in political affairs +touched a certain jealousy which is always to be looked for in the +positive and practical man. They think as Napoleon thought of men of +letters and savans:--"Ce sont des coquettes avec lesquelles il faut +entretenir un commerce de galanterie, et dont il ne faut jamais songer +ŕ faire ni sa femme ni son ministre." Men will listen to your views +about the Unknowable with a composure that instantly disappears if +your argument comes too near to the Rates and Taxes. It is amusing, as +we read the newspapers to-day, to think that Mr. Harrison's powerful +defence of Trades Unions fifteen years ago caused the Review to be +regarded as an incendiary publication. Some papers that appeared here +on National Education were thought to indicate a deliberate plot for +suppressing the Holy Scriptures in the land. Extravagant misjudgment +of this kind has passed away. But it was far from being a mistake to +suppose that the line taken here by many writers did mean that there +was a new Radicalism in the air, which went a good deal deeper than +fidgeting about an estimate or the amount of the Queen's contribution +to her own taxes. Time has verified what was serious in those early +apprehensions. Principles and aims are coming into prominence in the +social activity of to-day which would hardly have found a hearing +twenty years ago, and it would be sufficient justification for the +past of our Review if some writers in it have been instrumental in the +process of showing how such principles and aims meet the requirements +of the new time. Reformers must always be open to the taunt that they +find nothing in the world good enough for them. "You write," said a +popular novelist to one of this unthanked tribe, "as if you believed +that everything is bad." "Nay," said the other, "but I do believe that +everything might be better." Such a belief naturally breeds a spirit +which the easy-goers of the world resent as a spirit of ceaseless +complaint and scolding. Hence our Liberalism here has often been +taxed with being ungenial, discontented, and even querulous. But such +Liberals will wrap themselves in their own virtue, remembering the +cheering apophthegm that "those who are dissatisfied are the sole +benefactors of the world." + +This will not be found, I think, too lofty, or too thrasonical an +estimate of what has been attempted. A certain number of people have +been persuaded to share opinions that fifteen years ago were more +unpopular than they are now. A certain resistance has been offered to +the stubborn influence of prejudice and use and wont. The original +scheme of the Review, even if there had been no other obstacle, +prevented it from being the organ of a systematic and constructive +policy. There is not, in fact, a body of systematic political thought +at work in our own day. The Liberals of the Benthamite school surveyed +society and institutions as a whole; they connected their advocacy of +political and legal changes with carefully formed theories of human +nature; they considered the great art of Government in connection with +the character of man, his proper education, his potential capacities. +Yet, as we then said, it cannot be pretended that we are less in need +of systematic politics than our fathers were sixty years since, or +that general principles are now more generally settled even among +members of the same party than they were then. The perplexities of +to-day are as embarrassing as any in our history, and they may prove +even more dangerous. The renovation of Parliamentary government; the +transformation of the conditions of the ownership and occupation of +land; the relations between the Government at home and our adventurers +abroad in contact with inferior races; the limitations on free +contract and the rights of majorities to restrict the private acts +of minorities; these are only some of the questions that time and +circumstances are pressing upon us. These are in the political and +legislative sphere alone. In Education, in Economics, the problems are +as many. Yet ideas are hardly ripe for realisation. We shall need +to see great schools before we can make sure of powerful parties. +Meanwhile, whatever gives freedom and variety to thought, and +earnestness to men's interest in the world, must contribute to a good +end. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in Literature, by John Morley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN LITERATURE *** + +***** This file should be named 12001-8.txt or 12001-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/0/0/12001/ + +Produced by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Studies in Literature + +Author: John Morley + +Release Date: April 12, 2004 [EBook #12001] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + +STUDIES IN LITERATURE + +BY + +JOHN MORLEY + + +1907 + + + + +NOTE. + +The contents of the present collection have all been in print before, +either in the _Nineteenth Century_ and _Fortnightly Review_, or +in some other shape. I have to thank the proprietors of the two +periodicals named for sanctioning the reproduction of my articles +here. + +J.M. + +_October_ 1890. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +WORDSWORTH +APHORISMS +MAINE ON POPULAR GOVERNMENT +A FEW WORDS ON FRENCH MODELS +ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE +VICTOR HUGO'S _NINETY-THREE_ +ON _THE RING AND THE BOOK_ +MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF LETTERS +VALEDICTORY + + + + +WORDSWORTH.[1] + +[Footnote 1: Originally published as an Introduction to the new +edition of Wordsworth's _Complete Poetical Works_ (1888).] + + +The poet whose works are contained in the present volume was born in +the little town of Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7, 1770. He +died at Rydal Mount, in the neighbouring county of Westmoreland, on +April 23, 1850. In this long span of mortal years, events of vast and +enduring moment shook the world. A handful of scattered and dependent +colonies in the northern continent of America made themselves into one +of the most powerful and beneficent of states. The ancient monarchy of +France, and all the old ordering of which the monarchy had been the +keystone, was overthrown, and it was not until after many a violent +shock of arms, after terrible slaughter of men, after strange +diplomatic combinations, after many social convulsions, after many +portentous mutations of empire, that Europe once more settled down for +a season into established order and system. In England almost alone, +after the loss of her great possessions across the Atlantic Ocean, +the fabric of the State stood fast and firm. Yet here, too, in these +eighty years, an old order slowly gave place to new. The restoration +of peace, after a war conducted with extraordinary tenacity and +fortitude, led to a still more wonderful display of ingenuity, +industry, and enterprise, in the more fruitful field of commerce +and of manufactures. Wealth, in spite of occasional vicissitudes, +increased with amazing rapidity. The population of England and Wales +grew from being seven and a half millions in 1770, to nearly eighteen +millions in 1850. Political power was partially transferred from a +territorial aristocracy to the middle and trading classes. Laws were +made at once more equal and more humane. During all the tumult of the +great war which for so many years bathed Europe in fire, through all +the throes and agitations in which peace brought forth the new time, +Wordsworth for half a century (1799-1850) dwelt sequestered in +unbroken composure and steadfastness in his chosen home amid the +mountains and lakes of his native region, working out his own ideal of +the high office of the Poet. + +The interpretation of life in books and the development of imagination +underwent changes of its own. Most of the great lights of the +eighteenth century were still burning, though burning low, when +Wordsworth came into the world. Pope, indeed, had been dead for six +and twenty years, and all the rest of the Queen Anne men had gone. +But Gray only died in 1771, and Goldsmith in 1774. Ten years later +Johnson's pious and manly heart ceased to beat. Voltaire and Rousseau, +those two diverse oracles of their age, both died in 1778. Hume had +passed away two years before. Cowper was forty years older than +Wordsworth, but Cowper's most delightful work was not produced until +1783. Crabbe, who anticipated Wordsworth's choice of themes from rural +life, while treating them with a sterner realism, was virtually his +contemporary, having been born in 1754, and dying in 1832. The two +great names of his own date were Scott and Coleridge, the first born +in 1771, and the second a year afterwards. Then a generation later +came another new and illustrious group. Byron was born in 1788, +Shelley in 1792, and Keats in 1795. Wordsworth was destined to see one +more orb of the first purity and brilliance rise to its place in the +poetic firmament. Tennyson's earliest volume of poems was published in +1830, and _In Memoriam_, one of his two masterpieces, in 1830. Any one +who realises for how much these famous names will always stand in +the history of human genius, may measure the great transition that +Wordsworth's eighty years witnessed in some of men's deepest feelings +about art and life and "the speaking face of earth and heaven." + +Here, too, Wordsworth stood isolated and apart. Scott and Southey were +valued friends, but, as has been truly said, he thought little of +Scott's poetry, and less of Southey's. Of Blake's _Songs of Innocence +and Experience_ he said, "There is something in the madness of this +man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter +Scott." Coleridge was the only member of the shining company with whom +he ever had any real intimacy of mind, for whom he ever nourished real +deference and admiration as one "unrelentingly possessed by thirst of +greatness, love, and beauty," and in whose intellectual power, as the +noble lines in the Sixth Book of the _Prelude_ so gorgeously attest, +he took the passionate interest of a man at once master, disciple, and +friend. It is true to say, as Emerson says, that Wordsworth's genius +was the great exceptional fact of the literature of his period. But he +had no teachers nor inspirers save nature and solitude. + +Wordsworth was the son of a solicitor, and all his early circumstances +were homely, unpretentious, and rather straitened. His mother died +when he was eight years old, and when his father followed her five +years later, two of his uncles provided means for continuing +at Cambridge the education which had been begun in the rural +grammar-school of Hawkshead. It was in 1787 that he went up to St. +John's College. He took his Bachelor's degree at the beginning of +1791, and there his connection with the university ended. + +For some years after leaving Cambridge, Wordsworth let himself drift. +He did not feel good enough for the Church; he shrank from the law; +fancying that he had talents for command, he thought of being a +soldier. Meanwhile, he passed a short time desultorily in London. +Towards the end of 1791, through Paris, he passed on to Orleans +and Blois, where he made some friends and spent most of a year. He +returned to Paris in October 1792. France was no longer standing on +the top of golden hours. The September massacres filled the sky with +a lurid flame. Wordsworth still retained his ardent faith in the +Revolution, and was even ready, though no better than "a landsman on +the deck of a ship struggling with a hideous storm," to make common +cause with the Girondists. But the prudence of friends at home forced +him back to England before the beginning of the terrible year of '93. +With his return closed that first survey of its inheritance, which +most serious souls are wont to make in the fervid prime of early +manhood. + +It would be idle to attempt any commentary on the bare facts that we +have just recapitulated; for Wordsworth himself has clothed them with +their full force and meaning in the _Prelude_. This record of the +growth of a poet's mind, told by the poet himself with all the +sincerity of which he was capable, is never likely to be popular. Of +that, as of so much more of his poetry, we must say that, as a whole, +it has not the musical, harmonious, sympathetic quality which seizes +us in even the prose of such a book as Rousseau's _Confessions_. +Macaulay thought the _Prelude_ a poorer and more tiresome _Excursion_, +with the old flimsy philosophy about the effect of scenery on the +mind, the old crazy mystical metaphysics, and the endless wilderness +of twaddle; still he admits that there are some fine descriptions and +energetic declamations. All Macaulay's tastes and habits of mind made +him a poor judge of such a poet as Wordsworth. He valued spirit, +energy, pomp, stateliness of form and diction, and actually thought +Dryden's fine lines about to-morrow being falser than the former clay +equal to any eight lines in Lucretius. But his words truly express +the effect of the _Prelude_ on more vulgar minds than his own. George +Eliot, on the other hand, who had the inward eye that was not among +Macaulay's gifts, found the _Prelude_ full of material for a daily +liturgy, and it is easy to imagine how she fondly lingered, as she +did, over such a thought as this-- + + "There is + One great society alone on earth: + The noble Living and the noble Dead." + +There is, too, as may be found imbedded even in Wordsworth's dullest +work, many a line of the truest poetical quality, such as that on +Newton's statue in the silent Chapel of Trinity College-- + + "The marble index of a mind for ever + Voyaging through strange seas of Thought alone." + +Apart, however, from beautiful lines like this, and from many noble +passages of high reflection set to sonorous verse, this remarkable +poem is in its whole effect unique in impressive power, as a picture +of the advance of an elect and serious spirit from childhood and +school-time, through the ordeal of adolescence, through close contact +with stirring and enormous events, to that decisive stage when it has +found the sources of its strength, and is fully and finally prepared +to put its temper to the proof. + +The three Books that describe the poet's residence in France have a +special and a striking value of their own. Their presentation of the +phases of good men's minds as the successive scenes of the Revolution +unfolded themselves has real historic interest. More than this, it +is an abiding lesson to brave men how to bear themselves in hours of +public stress. It portrays exactly that mixture of persevering faith +and hope with firm and reasoned judgment, with which I like to think +that Turgot, if he had lived, would have confronted the workings +of the Revolutionary power. Great masters in many kinds have been +inspired by the French Revolution. Human genius might seem to have +exhausted itself in the burning political passion of Burke, in the +glowing melodrama of fire and tears of Carlyle, Michelet, Hugo; but +the ninth, tenth, and eleventh Books of the _Prelude_, by their +strenuous simplicity, their deep truthfulness, their slowfooted and +inexorable transition from ardent hope to dark imaginations, sense of +woes to come, sorrow for human kind, and pain of heart, breathe the +very spirit of the great catastrophe. There is none of the ephemeral +glow of the political exhortation, none of the tiresome falsity of the +dithyramb in history. Wordsworth might well wish that some dramatic +tale, endued with livelier shapes and flinging out less guarded words, +might set forth the lessons of his experience. The material was +fitting. The story of these three Books has something of the severity, +the self-control, the inexorable necessity of classic tragedy, and +like classic tragedy it has a noble end. The dregs and sour sediment +that reaction from exaggerated hope is so apt to stir in poor natures +had no place here. The French Revolution made the one crisis in +Wordsworth's mental history, the one heavy assault on his continence +of soul, and when he emerged from it all his greatness remained to +him. After a long spell of depression, bewilderment, mortification, +and sore disappointment, the old faith in new shapes was given back. + + "Nature's self, + By all varieties of human love + Assisted, led me back through opening day + To those sweet counsels between head and heart + Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace, + Which, through the later sinkings of this cause, + Hath still upheld me and upholds me now." + +It was six years after his return from France before Wordsworth +finally settled down in the scenes with which his name and the power +of his genius were to be for ever associated. During this interval it +was that two great sources of personal influence were opened to him. +He entered upon that close and beloved companionship with his sister, +which remained unbroken to the end of their days; and he first made +the acquaintance of Coleridge. The character of Dorothy Wordsworth has +long taken its place in the gallery of admirable and devoted women who +have inspired the work and the thoughts of great men. "She is a woman, +indeed," said Coleridge, "in mind I mean, and heart; for her person is +such that if you expected to see a pretty woman, you would think her +rather ordinary; if you expected to see an ordinary woman, you would +think her pretty." To the solidity, sense, and strong intelligence +of the Wordsworth stock she added a grace, a warmth, a liveliness +peculiarly her own. Her nature shines transparent in her letters, in +her truly admirable journal, and in every report that we have of her. +Wordsworth's own feelings for her, and his sense of the debt that +he owed to her faithful affection and eager mind, he has placed on +lasting record. + +The intimacy with Coleridge was, as has been said, Wordsworth's one +strong friendship, and must be counted among the highest examples of +that generous relation between great writers. Unlike in the quality +of their genius, and unlike in force of character and the fortunes of +life, they remained bound to one another by sympathies that neither +time nor harsh trial ever extinguished. Coleridge had left Cambridge +in 1794, had married, had started various unsuccessful projects for +combining the improvement of mankind with the earning of an income, +and was now settled in a small cottage at Nether Stowey, in +Somersetshire, with an acre and a half of land, from which he hoped to +raise corn and vegetables enough to support himself and his wife, as +well as to feed a couple of pigs on the refuse. Wordsworth and his +sister were settled at Racedown, near Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire. +In 1797 they moved to Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, their principal +inducement to the change being Coleridge's society. The friendship +bore fruit in the production of _Lyrical Ballads_ in 1798, mainly the +work of Wordsworth, but containing no less notable a contribution from +Coleridge than the _Ancient Mariner_. The two poets only received +thirty guineas for their work, and the publisher lost his money. +The taste of the country was not yet ripe for Wordsworth's poetic +experiment. + +Immediately after the publication of the _Lyrical Ballads_, the +two Wordsworths and Coleridge started from Yarmouth for Hamburg. +Coleridge's account in Satyrane's Letters, published In the +_Biographia Literaria_, of the voyage and of the conversation between +the two English poets and Klopstock, is worth turning to. The pastor +told them that Klopstock was the German Milton. "A very German Milton +indeed," they thought. The Wordsworths remained for four wintry months +at Goslar, in Saxony, while Coleridge went on to Ratzeburg, Goettingen, +and other places, mastering German, and "delving in the unwholesome +quicksilver mines of metaphysic depths." Wordsworth made little way +with the language, but worked diligently at his own verse. + +When they came back to England, Wordsworth and his sister found their +hearts turning with irresistible attraction to their own familiar +countryside. They at last made their way to Grasmere. The opening book +of the _Recluse_, which is published for the first time in the present +volume, describes in fine verse the emotions and the scene. The face +of this delicious vale is not quite what it was when + + "Cottages of mountain stone + Clustered like stars some few, but single most, + And lurking dimly in their shy retreats, + Or glancing at each other cheerful looks + Like separated stars with clouds between." + +But it is foolish to let ourselves be fretted by the villa, the hotel, +and the tourist. We may well be above all this in a scene that is +haunted by a great poetic shade. The substantial features and elements +of beauty still remain, the crags and woody steeps, the lake, "its one +green island and its winding shores; the multitude of little rocky +hills." Wordsworth was not the first poet to feel its fascination. +Gray visited the Lakes in the autumn of 1769, and coming into the vale +of Grasmere from the north-west, declared it to be one of the sweetest +landscapes that art ever attempted to imitate, an unsuspected paradise +of peace and rusticity. We cannot indeed compare the little crystal +mere, set like a gem in the verdant circle of the hills, with the +grandeur and glory of Lucerne, or the radiant gladness and expanse of +Como: yet it has an inspiration of its own, to delight, to soothe, to +fortify, and to refresh. + + "What want we? have we not perpetual streams, + Warm woods, and sunny hills, and fresh green fields, + And mountains not less green, and flocks and herds, + And thickets full of songsters, and the voice + Of lordly birds, an unexpected sound + Heard now and then from morn to latest eve, + Admonishing the man who walks below + Of solitude and silence in the sky. + These have we, and a thousand nooks of earth + Have also these, but nowhere else is found, + Nowhere (or is it fancy?) can be found + The one sensation that is here;...'tis the sense + Of majesty, and beauty, and repose, + A blended holiness of earth and sky, + Something that makes this individual spot, + This small abiding-place of many men, + A termination, and a last retreat, + A centre, come from wheresoe'er you will, + A whole without dependence or defect, + Made for itself, and happy in itself, + Perfect contentment, Unity entire." + +In the Grasmere vale Wordsworth lived for half a century, first in a +little cottage at the northern corner of the lake, and then (1813) in +a more commodious house at Rydal Mount at the southern end, on the +road to Ambleside. In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, of Penrith, and +this completed the circle of his felicity. Mary, he once said, was to +his ear the most musical and most truly English in sound of all the +names we have. The name was of harmonious omen. The two beautiful +sonnets that he wrote on his wife's portrait long years after, when +"morning into noon had passed, noon into eve," show how much her large +heart and humble mind had done for the blessedness of his home. + +Their life was almost more simple than that of the dalesmen their +neighbours. "It is my opinion," ran one of his oracular sayings to Sir +George Beaumont, "that a man of letters, and indeed all public men +of every pursuit, should be severely frugal." Means were found for +supporting the modest home out of two or three small windfalls +bequeathed by friends or relatives, and by the time that children had +begun to come Wordsworth was raised to affluence by obtaining the post +of distributor of stamps for Westmoreland and part of Cumberland. His +life was happily devoid of striking external incident. Its essential +part lay in meditation and composition. + +He was surrounded by friends. Southey had made a home for himself +and his beloved library a few miles over the hills, at Keswick. De +Quincey, with his clever brains and shallow character, took up his +abode in the cottage which Wordsworth had first lived in at Grasmere. +Coleridge, born the most golden genius of them all, came to and fro +in those fruitless unhappy wanderings which consumed a life that once +promised to be so rich in blessing and in glory. In later years Dr. +Arnold built a house at Fox How, attracted by the Wordsworths and the +scenery; and other lesser lights came into the neighbourhood. "Our +intercourse with the Wordsworths," Arnold wrote on the occasion of his +first visit in 1832, "was one of the brightest spots of all; nothing +could exceed their friendliness, and my almost daily walks with him +were things not to be forgotten. Once and once only we had a good +fight about the Reform Bill during a walk up Greenhead Ghyll to see +the unfinished sheep-fold, recorded in _Michael_. But I am sure that +our political disagreement did not at all interfere with our enjoyment +of each other's society; for I think that in the great principles of +things we agreed very entirely." It ought to be possible, for that +matter, for magnanimous men, even if they do not agree in the great +principles of things, to keep pleasant terms with one another for more +than one afternoon's walk. Many pilgrims came, and the poet seems to +have received them with cheerful equanimity. Emerson called upon him +in 1833, and found him plain, elderly, whitehaired, not prepossessing. +"He led me out into his garden, and showed me the gravel walk in +which thousands of his lines were composed. He had just returned from +Staffa, and within three days had made three sonnets on Fingal's Cave, +and was composing a fourth when he was called in to see me. He said, +'If you are interested in my verses, perhaps you will like to hear +these lines.' I gladly assented, and he recollected himself for a few +moments, and then stood forth and repeated, one after the other, the +three entire sonnets with great animation. This recitation was so +unlooked for and surprising--he, the old Wordsworth, standing apart, +and reciting to me in a garden-walk, like a schoolboy declaiming--that +I at first was near to laugh; but recollecting myself, that I had come +thus far to see a poet, and he was chanting poems to me, I saw that he +was right and I was wrong, and gladly gave myself up to hear. He never +was in haste to publish; partly because he corrected a good deal.... +He preferred such of his poems as touched the affections to any +others; for whatever is didactic--what theories of society, and so +on--might perish quickly, but whatever combined a truth with an +affection was good to-day and good for ever" (_English Traits_, ch. +i.). + +Wordsworth was far too wise to encourage the pilgrims to turn into +abiding sojourners in his chosen land. Clough has described how, when +he was a lad of eighteen (1837), with a mild surprise he heard the +venerable poet correct the tendency to exaggerate the importance of +flowers and fields, lakes, waterfalls, and scenery. "People come to +the Lakes," said Wordsworth, "and are charmed with a particular spot, +and build a house, and find themselves discontented, forgetting that +these things are only the sauce and garnish of life." + +In spite of a certain hardness and stiffness, Wordsworth must have +been an admirable companion for anybody capable of true elevation +of mind. The unfortunate Haydon says, with his usual accent of +enthusiasm, after a saunter at Hampstead, "Never did any man so +beguile the time as Wordsworth. His purity of heart, his kindness, +his soundness of principle, his information, his knowledge, and the +intense and eager feelings with which he pours forth all he knows, +affect, interest, and enchant one" (_Autobiog._ i. 298, 384). The +diary of Crabb Robinson, the correspondence of Charles Lamb, the +delightful autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher, and much less delightfully +the autobiography of Harriet Martineau, all help us to realise by many +a trait Wordsworth's daily walk and conversation. Of all the glimpses +that we get, from these and many other sources, none are more pleasing +than those of the intercourse between Wordsworth and Scott. They were +the two manliest and most wholesome men of genius of their time. They +held different theories of poetic art, but their affection and esteem +for one another never varied, from the early days when Scott and his +young wife visited Wordsworth in his cottage at Grasmere, down to that +sorrowful autumn evening (1831) when Wordsworth and his daughter went +to Abbotsford to bid farewell to the wondrous potentate, then just +about to start on his vain search for new life, followed by "the might +of the whole earth's good wishes." + +Of Wordsworth's demeanour and physical presence, De Quincey's account, +silly, coxcombical, and vulgar, is the worst; Carlyle's, as might be +expected from his magical gift of portraiture, is the best. Carlyle +cared little for Wordsworth's poetry, had a real respect for the +antique greatness of his devotion to Poverty and Peasanthood, +recognised his strong intellectual powers and strong character, but +thought him rather dull, bad-tempered, unproductive, and almost +wearisome, and found his divine reflections and unfathomabilities +stinted, scanty, uncertain, palish. From these and many other +disparagements, one gladly passes to the picture of the poet as he was +in the flesh at a breakfast-party given by Henry Taylor, at a +tavern in St. James's Street, in 1840. The subject of the talk was +Literature, its laws, practices, and observances:--"He talked well in +his way; with veracity, easy brevity and force; as a wise tradesman +would of his tools and workshop, and as no unwise one could. His voice +was good, frank, and sonorous, though practically clear, distinct, +and forcible, rather than melodious; the tone of him business-like, +sedately confident; no discourtesy, yet no anxiety about being +courteous: a fine wholesome rusticity, fresh as his mountain breezes, +sat well on the stalwart veteran, and on all he said and did. You +would have said he was a usually taciturn man, glad to unlock himself +to audience sympathetic and intelligent, when such offered itself. His +face bore marks of much, not always peaceful, meditation; the look of +it not bland or benevolent, so much as close, impregnable, and hard; +a man _multa tacere loquive paratus_, in a world where he had +experienced no lack of contradictions as he strode along! The eyes +were not very brilliant, but they had a quiet clearness; there +was enough of brow, and well shaped; rather too much of cheek +('horse-face,' I have heard satirists say), face of squarish shape and +decidedly longish, as I think the head itself was (its 'length' going +horizontal); he was large-boned, lean, but still firm-knit, tall, and +strong-looking when he stood; a right good old steel-gray figure, with +rustic simplicity and dignity about him, and a vivacious _strength_ +looking through him which might have suited one of those old +steel-gray _Markgrafs_ [Graf = _Grau_,'Steel-gray'] whom Henry the +Fowler set up to ward the 'marches,' and do battle with the intrusive +heathen, in a stalwart and judicious manner." + +Whoever might be his friends within an easy walk, or dwelling afar, +the poet knew how to live his own life. The three fine sonnets headed +_Personal Talk_, so well known, so warmly accepted in our better +hours, so easily forgotten in hours not so good between pleasant +levities and grinding preoccupations, show us how little his +neighbours had to do with the poet's genial seasons of "smooth +passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought." + +For those days Wordsworth was a considerable traveller. Between 1820 +and 1837 he made long tours abroad, to Switzerland, to Holland, to +Belgium, to Italy. In other years he visited Wales, Scotland, +and Ireland. He was no mechanical tourist, admiring to order and +marvelling by regulation; and he confessed to Mrs. Fletcher that he +fell asleep before the Venus de Medici at Florence. But the product of +these wanderings is to be seen in some of his best sonnets, such as +the first on Calais Beach, the famous one on Westminster Bridge, the +second of the two on Bruges, where "the Spirit of Antiquity mounts to +the seat of grace within the mind--a deeper peace than that in deserts +found"--and in some other fine pieces. + +In weightier matters than mere travel, Wordsworth showed himself no +mere recluse. He watched the great affairs then being transacted in +Europe with the ardent interest of his youth, and his sonnets to +Liberty, commemorating the attack by France upon the Swiss, the fate +of Venice, the struggle of Hofer, the resistance of Spain, give no +unworthy expression to some of the best of the many and varied motives +that animated England in her long struggle with Bonaparte. The sonnet +to Toussaint l'Ouverture concludes with some of the noblest lines in +the English language. The strong verses on the expected death of Mr. +Fox are alive with a magnanimous public spirit that goes deeper than +the accidents of political opinion. In his young days he had sent Fox +a copy of the _Lyrical Ballads_, with a long letter indicating his +sense of Fox's great and generous qualities. Pitt he admits that he +could never regard with complacency. "I believe him, however," he +said, "to have been as disinterested a man, and as true a lover of his +country, as it was possible for so ambitious a man to be. His first +wish (though probably unknown to himself) was that his country should +prosper under his administration; his next that it should prosper. +Could the order of these wishes have been reversed, Mr. Pitt would +have avoided many of the grievous mistakes into which, I think, he +fell." "You always went away from Burke," he once told Haydon, "with +your mind filled; from Fox with your feelings excited; and from Pitt +with wonder at his having had the power to make the worse appear the +better reason." + +Of the poems composed under the influence of that best kind of +patriotism which ennobles local attachments by associating them with +the lasting elements of moral grandeur and heroism it is needless to +speak. They have long taken their place as something higher even than +literary classics. As years began to dull the old penetration of a +mind which had once approached, like other youths, the shield of human +nature from the golden side, and had been eager to "clear a passage +for just government," Wordsworth lost his interest in progress. +Waterloo may be taken for the date at which his social grasp began to +fail, and with it his poetic glow. He opposed Catholic emancipation as +stubbornly as Eldon, and the Reform Bill as bitterly as Croker. For +the practical reforms of his day, even in education, for which he +had always spoken up, Wordsworth was not a force. His heart clung to +England as he found it. "This concrete attachment to the scenes about +him," says Mr. Myers, "had always formed an important element In his +character. Ideal politics, whether in Church or State, had never +occupied his mind, which sought rather to find its informing +principles embodied in the England of his own day." This flowed, we +may suppose, from Burke. In a passage in the seventh Book of the +_Prelude_, he describes, in lines a little prosaic but quite true, +how he sat, saw, and heard, not unthankful nor uninspired, the great +orator + + "While he forewarns, denounces, launches forth + Against all systems built on abstract rights." + +The Church, as conceived by the spirit of Laud, and described by +Hooker's voice, was the great symbol of the union of high and stable +institution with thought, faith, right living, and "sacred religion, +mother of form and fear." As might be expected from such a point of +view, the church pieces, to which Wordsworth gave so much thought, +are, with few exceptions, such as the sonnet on _Seathwaite Chapel_, +formal, hard, and very thinly enriched with spiritual graces or +unction. They are ecclesiastical, not religious. In religious +poetry, the Church of England finds her most affecting voice, not in +Wordsworth, but in the _Lyra Innocentium_ and the _Christian Year_. +Wordsworth abounds in the true devotional cast of mind, but less than +anywhere else does it show in his properly ecclesiastical verse. + +It was perhaps natural that when events no longer inspired him, +Wordsworth should have turned with new feelings towards the classic, +and discovered a virtue in classic form to which his own method had +hitherto made him a little blind. Towards the date of Waterloo, he +read over again some of the Latin writers, in attempting to prepare +his son for college. He even at a later date set about a translation +of the _Aeneid_ of Virgil, but the one permanent result of the classic +movement in his mind is _Laodamia_. Earlier in life he had translated +some books of Ariosto at the rate of a hundred lines a day, and he +even attempted fifteen of the sonnets of Michael Angelo, but so much +meaning is compressed into so little room in those pieces that he +found the difficulty insurmountable. He had a high opinion of the +resources of the Italian language. The poetry of Dante and of Michael +Angelo, he said, proves that if there be little majesty and strength +in Italian verse, the fault is in the authors and not in the tongue. + +Our last glimpse of Wordsworth in the full and peculiar power of his +genius is the Ode _Composed on an evening of extraordinary splendour +and beauty_. It is the one exception to the critical dictum that all +his good work was done in the decade between 1798 and 1808. He lived +for more than thirty years after this fine composition. But he added +nothing more of value to the work that he had already done. The public +appreciation of it was very slow. The most influential among the +critics were for long hostile and contemptuous. Never at any time did +Wordsworth come near to such popularity as that of Scott or of Byron. +Nor was this all. For many years most readers of poetry thought more +even of _Lalla Rookh_ than of the _Excursion_. While Scott, Byron, and +Moore were receiving thousands of pounds, Wordsworth received nothing. +Between 1830 and 1840 the current turned in Wordsworth's direction, +and when he received the honour of a doctor's degree at the Oxford +Commemoration in 1839, the Sheldonian theatre made him the hero of the +day. In the spring of 1843 Southey died, and Sir Robert Peel pressed +Wordsworth to succeed him in the office of Poet-Laureate. "It is a +tribute of respect," said the Minister, "justly due to the first +of living poets." But almost immediately the light of his common +popularity was eclipsed by Tennyson, as it had earlier been eclipsed +by Scott, by Byron, and in some degree by Shelley. Yet his fame among +those who know, among competent critics with a right to judge, to-day +stands higher than it ever stood. Only two writers have contributed so +many lines of daily popularity and application. In the handbooks of +familiar quotations Wordsworth fills more space than anybody save +Shakespeare and Pope. He exerted commanding influence over great minds +that have powerfully affected our generation. "I never before," said +George Eliot in the days when her character was forming itself (1839), +"met with so many of my own feelings expressed just as I should like +them," and her reverence for Wordsworth remained to the end. J.S. Mill +has described how important an event in his life was his first reading +of Wordsworth. "What made his poems a medicine for my state of mind +was that they expressed not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling +and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. I +needed to be made to feel that there was real permanent happiness in +tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without +turning away from, but with greatly increased interest in the common +feelings and common destiny of human beings" _(Autobiog_., 148). This +effect of Wordsworth on Mill is the very illustration of the phrase +of a later poet of our own day, one of the most eminent and by his +friends best beloved of all those whom Wordsworth had known, and on +whom he poured out a generous portion of his own best spirit:-- + + Time may restore us in his course + Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force. + But where will Europe's latter hour + Again find Wordsworth's healing power? + +It is the power for which Matthew Arnold found this happy designation +that compensates us for that absence of excitement of which the +heedless complain in Wordsworth's verse--excitement so often meaning +mental fever, hysterics, distorted passion, or other fitful agitation +of the soul. + +Pretensions are sometimes advanced as to Wordsworth's historic +position, which involve a mistaken view of literary history. Thus, we +are gravely told by the too zealous Wordsworthian that the so-called +poets of the eighteenth century were simply men of letters; they had +various accomplishments and great general ability, but their thoughts +were expressed in prose, or in mere metrical diction, which passed +current as poetry without being so. Yet Burns belonged wholly to +the eighteenth century (1759-96), and no verse-writer is so little +literary as Burns, so little prosaic; no writer more truly poetic in +melody, diction, thought, feeling, and spontaneous song. It was Burns +who showed Wordsworth's own youth "How verse may build a princely +throne on humble truth." Nor can we understand how Cowper is to be set +down as simply a man of letters. We may, too, if we please, deny the +name of poetry to Collins's tender and pensive _Ode to Evening_; +but we can only do this on critical principles, which would end in +classing the author of _Lycidas_ and _Comus_, of the _Allegro_ and +_Penseroso_, as a writer of various accomplishments and great general +ability, but at bottom simply a man of letters and by no means a +poet. It is to Gray, however, that we must turn for the distinctive +character of the best poetry of the eighteenth century. With +reluctance we will surrender the Pindaric Odes, though not without +risking the observation that some of Wordsworth's own criticism on +Gray is as narrow and as much beside the mark as Jeffrey's on the +_Excursion_. But the _Ode on Eton College_ is not to have grudged to +it the noble name and true quality of poetry, merely because, as +one of Johnson's most unfortunate criticisms expresses it, the ode +suggests nothing to Gray which every beholder does not equally think +and feel. To find beautiful and pathetic language, set to harmonious +numbers, for the common impressions of meditative minds, is no small +part of the poet's task. That part has never been achieved by any poet +in any tongue with more complete perfection and success than in the +immortal _Elegy_, of which we may truly say that it has for nearly +a century and a half given to greater multitudes of men more of the +exquisite pleasure of poetry than any other single piece in all the +glorious treasury of English verse. It abounds, as Johnson says, "with +images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which +every bosom returns an echo." These moving commonplaces of the human +lot Gray approached through books and studious contemplation; not, as +Wordsworth approached them, by daily contact with the lives and habit +of men and the forces and magical apparitions of external nature. But +it is a narrow view to suppose that the men of the eighteenth century +did not look through the literary conventions of the day to the truths +of life and nature behind them. The conventions have gone, or are +changed, and we are all glad of it. Wordsworth effected a +wholesome deliverance when he attacked the artificial diction, the +personifications, the allegories, the antitheses, the barren rhymes +and monotonous metres, which the reigning taste had approved. But +while welcoming the new freshness, sincerity, and direct and fertile +return on nature, that is a very bad reason why we should disparage +poetry so genial, so simple, so humane, and so perpetually pleasing, +as the best verse of the rationalistic century. + +What Wordsworth did was to deal with themes that had been partially +handled by precursors and contemporaries, in a larger and more +devoted spirit, with wider amplitude of illustration, and with the +steadfastness and persistency of a religious teacher. "Every great +poet is a teacher," he said; "I wish to be considered as a teacher or +as nothing." It may be doubted whether his general proposition is at +all true, and whether it is any more the essential business of a poet +to be a teacher than it was the business of Handel, Beethoven, or +Mozart. They attune the soul to high states of feeling; the direct +lesson is often as nought. But of himself no view could be more sound. +He is a teacher, or he is nothing. "To console the afflicted; to add +sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the +young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and +therefore to become more actively and sincerely virtuous"--that was +his vocation; to show that the mutual adaptation of the external +world and the inner mind is able to shape a paradise from the "simple +produce of the common day"--that was his high argument. + +Simplification was, as I have said elsewhere, the keynote of the +revolutionary time. Wordsworth was its purest exponent, but he had one +remarkable peculiarity, which made him, in England at least, not only +its purest but its greatest. While leading men to pierce below the +artificial and conventional to the natural man and natural life, as +Rousseau did, Wordsworth still cherished the symbols, the traditions, +and the great institutes of social order. Simplification of life and +thought and feeling was to be accomplished without summoning up the +dangerous spirit of destruction and revolt. Wordsworth lived with +nature, yet waged no angry railing war against society. The chief +opposing force to Wordsworth in literature was Byron. Whatever he was +in his heart, Byron in his work was drawn by all the forces of his +character, genius, and circumstances to the side of violent social +change, and hence the extraordinary popularity of Byron in the +continental camp of emancipation. Communion with nature is in +Wordsworth's doctrine the school of duty. With Byron nature is the +mighty consoler and the vindicator of the rebel. + +A curious thing, which we may note in passing, is that Wordsworth, who +clung fervently to the historic foundations of society as it stands, +was wholly indifferent to history; while Byron, on the contrary, as +the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_ is enough to show, had at least +the sentiment of history in as great a degree as any poet that ever +lived, and has given to it by far the most magnificent expression. No +doubt, it was history on its romantic, rather than its philosophic or +its political side. + +On Wordsworth's exact position in the hierarchy of sovereign poets, +a deep difference of estimate still divides even the most excellent +judges. Nobody now dreams of placing him so low as the _Edinburgh +Reviewers_ did, nor so high as Southey placed him when he wrote to +the author of _Philip van Artevelde_ in 1829 that a greater poet than +Wordsworth there never has been nor ever will be. An extravagance of +this kind was only the outburst of generous friendship. Coleridge +deliberately placed Wordsworth "nearest of all modern writers to +Shakespeare and Milton, yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and his +own." Arnold, himself a poet of rare and memorable quality, declares +his firm belief that the poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after +that of Shakespeare and Milton, undoubtedly the most considerable in +our language from the Elizabethan age to the present time. Dryden, +Pope, Gray, Cowper, Goldsmith, Burns, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, +Keats--"Wordsworth's name deserves to stand, and will finally stand, +above them all." Mr. Myers, also a poet, and the author of a volume on +Wordsworth as much distinguished by insight as by admirable literary +grace and power, talks of "a Plato, a Dante, a Wordsworth," all three +in a breath, as stars of equal magnitude in the great spiritual +firmament. To Mr. Swinburne, on the contrary, all these panegyrical +estimates savour of monstrous and intolerable exaggeration. Amid these +contentions of celestial minds it will be safest to content ourselves +with one or two plain observations in the humble positive degree, +without hurrying into high and final comparatives and superlatives. + +One admission is generally made at the outset. Whatever definition +of poetry we fix upon, whether that it is the language of passion or +imagination formed into regular numbers; or, with Milton, that it +should be "simple, sensuous, impassioned;" in any case there are great +tracts in Wordsworth which, by no definition and on no terms, can be +called poetry. If we say with Shelley, that poetry is what redeems +from decay the visitations of the divinity in man, and is the record +of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds, then +are we bound to agree that Wordsworth records too many moments that +are not specially good or happy, that he redeems from decay frequent +visitations that are not from any particular divinity in man, and +treats them all as very much on a level. Mr. Arnold is undoubtedly +right in his view that, to be receivable as a classic, Wordsworth must +be relieved of a great deal of the poetical baggage that now encumbers +him. + +The faults and hindrances in Wordsworth's poetry are obvious to every +reader. For one thing, the intention to instruct, to improve the +occasion, is too deliberate and too hardly pressed. "We hate poetry," +said Keats, "that has a palpable design upon us. Poetry should be +great and unobtrusive." Charles Lamb's friendly remonstrance on one of +Wordsworth's poems is applicable to more of them: "The instructions +conveyed in it are too direct; they don't slide into the mind of the +reader while he is imagining no such matter." + +Then, except the sonnets and half a score of the pieces where he +reaches his topmost height, there are few of his poems that are not +too long, and it often happens even that no degree of reverence for +the teacher prevents one from finding passages of almost unbearable +prolixity. A defence was once made by a great artist for what, to the +unregenerate mind, seemed the merciless tardiness of movement in one +of Goethe's romances, that it was meant to impress on his readers the +slow march and the tedium of events in human life. The lenient reader +may give Wordsworth the advantage of the same ingenious explanation. +We may venture on a counsel which is more to the point, in warning the +student that not seldom in these blocks of afflicting prose, suddenly +we come upon some of the profoundest and most beautiful passages that +the poet ever wrote. In deserts of preaching we find, almost within +sight of one another, delightful oases of purest poetry. Besides being +prolix, Wordsworth is often cumbrous; has often no flight; is not +liquid, is not musical. He is heavy and self-conscious with the burden +of his message. How much at his best he is, when, as in the admirable +and truly Wordsworthian poem of _Michael_, he spares us a sermon and +leaves us the story. Then, he is apt to wear a somewhat stiff-cut +garment of solemnity, when not solemnity, but either sternness or +sadness, which are so different things, would seem the fitter mood. In +truth Wordsworth hardly knows how to be stern, as Dante or Milton was +stern; nor has he the note of plangent sadness which strikes the ear +in men as morally inferior to him as Rousseau, Keats, Shelley, or +Coleridge; nor has he the Olympian air with which Goethe delivered +sage oracles. This mere solemnity is specially oppressive in some +parts of the _Excursion_--the performance where we best see the whole +poet, and where the poet most absolutely identifies himself with his +subject. Yet, even in the midst of these solemn discoursings, he +suddenly introduces an episode in which his peculiar power is at its +height. There is no better instance of this than the passage in the +second Book of the _Excursion_, where he describes with a fidelity, at +once realistic and poetic, the worn-out almsman, his patient life and +sorry death, and then the unimaginable vision in the skies, as they +brought the ancient man down through dull mists from the mountain +ridge to die. These hundred and seventy lines are like the landscape +in which they were composed; you can no more appreciate the beauty of +the one by a single or a second perusal, than you can the other in a +scamper through the vale on the box of the coach. But any lover of +poetry who will submit himself with leisure and meditation to the +impressions of the story, the pity of it, the naturalness of it, the +glory and the mystic splendours of the indifferent heavens, will feel +that here indeed is the true strength which out of the trivial raises +expression for the pathetic and the sublime. + +Apart, however, from excess of prolixity and of solemnity, can it be +really contended that in purely poetic quality--in aerial freedom and +space, in radiant purity of light or depth and variety of colour, in +penetrating and subtle sweetness of music, in supple mastery of the +instrument, in vivid spontaneity of imagination, in clean-cut sureness +of touch--Wordsworth is not surpassed by men who were below him in +weight and greatness? Even in his own field of the simple and the +pastoral has he touched so sweet and spontaneous a note as Burns's +_Daisy_, or the _Mouse_? When men seek immersion or absorption in the +atmosphere of pure poesy, without lesson or moral, or anything but +delight of fancy and stir of imagination, they will find him less +congenial to their mood than poets not worthy to loose the latchet of +his shoe in the greater elements of his art. In all these comparisons, +it is not merely Wordsworth's theme and motive and dominant note that +are different; the skill of hand is different, and the musical ear and +the imaginative eye. + +To maintain or to admit so much as this, however, is not to say the +last word. The question is whether Wordsworth, however unequal to +Shelley in lyric quality, to Coleridge or to Keats in imaginative +quality, to Burns in tenderness, warmth, and that humour which is so +nearly akin to pathos, to Byron in vividness and energy, yet possesses +excellences of his own which place him in other respects above +these master-spirits of his time. If the question is to be answered +affirmatively, it is clear that only in one direction must we look. +The trait that really places Wordsworth on an eminence above his +poetic contemporaries, and ranks him, as the ages are likely to rank +him, on a line just short of the greatest of all time, is his direct +appeal to will and conduct. "There is volition and self-government in +every line of his poetry, and his best thoughts come from his steady +resistance to the ebb and flow of ordinary desires and regrets. He +contests the ground inch by inch with all despondent and indolent +humours, and often, too, with movements of inconsiderate and wasteful +joy" (_R.H. Hutton_). That would seem to be his true distinction and +superiority over men to whom more had been given of fire, passion, and +ravishing music. Those who deem the end of poetry to be intoxication, +fever, or rainbow dreams, can care little for Wordsworth. If its +end be not intoxication, but on the contrary a search from the wide +regions of imagination and feeling for elements of composure deep and +pure, and of self-government in a far loftier sense than the merely +prudential, then Wordsworth has a gift of his own in which he was +approached by no poet of his time. Scott's sane and humane genius, +with much the same aims, yet worked with different methods. He once +remonstrated with Lockhart for being too apt to measure things by some +reference to literature. "I have read books enough," said Scott, +"and observed and conversed with enough of eminent and splendidly +cultivated minds; but I assure you, I have heard higher sentiments +from the lips of poor uneducated men and women, when exerting +the spirit of severe yet gentle heroism under difficulties and +afflictions, or speaking their simple thoughts as to circumstances in +the lot of friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the +pages of the Bible. We shall never learn to respect our real calling +and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as +moonshine compared with the education of the heart." This admirable +deliverance of Scott's is, so far as it goes, eminently Wordsworthian; +but Wordsworth went higher and further, striving not only to move the +sympathies of the heart, but to enlarge the understanding, and exalt +and widen the spiritual vision, all with the aim of leading us towards +firmer and austerer self-control. + +Certain favourers of Wordsworth answer our question with a triumphant +affirmative, on the strength of some ethical, or metaphysical, or +theological system which they believe themselves to find in him. But +is it credible that poets can permanently live by systems? Or is not +system, whether ethical, theological, or philosophical, the heavy lead +of poetry? Lucretius is indisputably one of the mighty poets of the +world, but Epicureanism is not the soul of that majestic muse. So with +Wordsworth. Thought is, on the whole, predominant over feeling in his +verse, but a prevailing atmosphere of deep and solemn reflection does +not make a system. His theology and his ethics, and his so-called +Platonical metaphysics, have as little to do with the power of his +poetry over us, as the imputed Arianism or any other aspect of the +theology of _Paradise Lost_ has to do with the strength and the +sublimity of Milton, and his claim to a high perpetual place in the +hearts of men. It is best to be entirely sceptical as to the existence +of system and ordered philosophy in Wordsworth. When he tells us that +"one impulse from a vernal wood may teach you more of man, of moral +evil and of good, than all the sages can," such a proposition cannot +be seriously taken as more than a half-playful sally for the benefit +of some too bookish friend. No impulse from a vernal wood can teach us +anything at all of moral evil and of good. When he says that it is his +faith, "that every flower enjoys the air it breathes," and that +when the budding twigs spread out their fan to catch the air, he is +compelled to think "that there was pleasure there," he expresses a +charming poetic fancy and no more, and it is idle to pretend to see +in it the fountain of a system of philosophy. In the famous _Ode on +Intimations of Immortality_, the poet doubtless does point to a set of +philosophic ideas, more or less complete; but the thought from which +he sets out, that our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, and that +we are less and less able to perceive the visionary gleam, less and +less alive to the glory and the dream of external nature, as infancy +recedes further from us, is, with all respect for the declaration of +Mr. Ruskin to the contrary, contrary to notorious fact, experience, +and truth. It is a beggarly conception, no doubt, to judge as if +poetry should always be capable of a prose rendering; but it is at +least fatal to the philosophic pretension of a line or a stanza if, +when it is fairly reduced to prose, the prose discloses that it is +nonsense, and there is at least one stanza of the great _Ode_ that +this doom would assuredly await. Wordsworth's claim, his special gift, +his lasting contribution, lies in the extraordinary strenuousness, +sincerity, and insight with which he first idealises and glorifies the +vast universe around us, and then makes of it, not a theatre on which +men play their parts, but an animate presence, intermingling with +our works, pouring its companionable spirit about us, and "breathing +grandeur upon the very humblest face of human life." This twofold and +conjoint performance, consciously and expressly--perhaps only too +consciously--undertaken by a man of strong inborn sensibility to +natural impressions, and systematically carried out in a lifetime +of brooding meditation and active composition, is Wordsworth's +distinguishing title to fame and gratitude. In "words that speak of +nothing more than what we are," he revealed new faces of nature; he +dwelt on men as they are, men themselves; he strove to do that which +has been declared to be the true secret of force in art, to make the +trivial serve the expression of the sublime. "Wordsworth's distinctive +work," Mr. Ruskin has justly said (_Modern Painters_, iii. 293), "was +a war with pomp and pretence, and a display of the majesty of simple +feelings and humble hearts, together with high reflective truth in his +analysis of the courses of politics and ways of men; without these, +his love of nature would have been comparatively worthless." + +Yet let us not forget that he possessed the gift which to an artist is +the very root of the matter. He saw Nature truly, he saw her as she +is, and with his own eyes. The critic whom I have just quoted boldly +pronounces him "the keenest eyed of all modern poets for what is deep +and essential in nature." When he describes the daisy, casting the +beauty of its star-shaped shadow on the smooth stone, or the boundless +depth of the abysses of the sky, or the clouds made vivid as fire by +the rays of light, every touch is true, not the copying of a literary +phrase, but the result of direct observation. + +It is true that Nature has sides to which Wordsworth was not +energetically alive--Nature "red in tooth and claw." He was not +energetically alive to the blind and remorseless cruelties of life +and the world. When in early spring he heard the blended notes of the +birds, and saw the budding twigs and primrose tufts, it grieved him, +amid such fair works of nature, to think "what man has made of man." +As if nature itself, excluding the conscious doings of that portion of +nature which is the human race, and excluding also nature's own share +in the making of poor Man, did not abound in raking cruelties and +horrors of her own. "_Edel sei der Mensch_," sang Goethe in a noble +psalm, "_Hulfreich und gut, Denn das allein unterscheidet ihn, Von +allen Wesen die wir kennen._" "_Let man be noble, helpful, and good, +for that alone distinguishes him from all beings that we know. No +feeling has nature: to good and bad gives the sun his light, and for +the evildoer as for the best shine moon and stars_." That the +laws which nature has fixed for our lives are mighty and eternal, +Wordsworth comprehended as fully as Goethe, but not that they are +laws pitiless as iron. Wordsworth had not rooted in him the sense of +Fate--of the inexorable sequences of things, of the terrible chain +that so often binds an awful end to some slight and trivial beginning. + +This optimism or complacency in Wordsworth will be understood if we +compare his spirit and treatment with that of the illustrious French +painter whose subjects and whose life were in some ways akin to his +own. Millet, like Wordsworth, went to the realities of humble life for +his inspiration. The peasant of the great French plains and the forest +was to him what the Cumbrian dalesman was to Wordsworth. But he saw +the peasant differently. "You watch figures in the fields," said +Millet, "digging and delving with spade or pick. You see one of them +from time to time straightening his loins, and wiping his face with +the back of his hand. Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy +brow. Is that the gay lively labour in which some people would have +you believe? Yet it is there that for me you must seek true humanity +and great poetry. They say that I deny the charm of the country; I +find in it far more than charms, I find infinite splendours. I see +in it, just as they do, the little flowers of which Christ said that +Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of them. I see +clearly enough the sun as he spreads his splendour amid the clouds. +None the less do I see on the plain, all smoking, the horses at the +plough. I see in some stony corner a man all worn out, whose _han han_ +have been heard ever since daybreak--trying to straighten himself a +moment to get breath." The hardness, the weariness, the sadness, the +ugliness, out of which Millet's consummate skill made pictures that +affect us like strange music, were to Wordsworth not the real part of +the thing. They were all absorbed in the thought of nature as a whole, +wonderful, mighty, harmonious, and benign. + +We are not called upon to place great men of his stamp as if they were +collegians in a class-list. It is best to take with thankfulness and +admiration from each man what he has to give. What Wordsworth does +is to assuage, to reconcile, to fortify. He has not Shakespeare's +richness and vast compass, nor Milton's sublime and unflagging +strength, nor Dante's severe, vivid, ardent force of vision. Probably +he is too deficient in clear beauty of form and in concentrated power +to be classed by the ages among these great giants. We cannot be sure. +We may leave it to the ages to decide. But Wordsworth, at any rate, by +his secret of bringing the infinite into common life, as he evokes +it out of common life, has the skill to lead us, so long as we yield +ourselves to his influence, into inner moods of settled peace, +to touch "the depth and not the tumult of the soul," to give us +quietness, strength, steadfastness, and purpose, whether to do or to +endure. All art or poetry that has the effect of breathing into men's +hearts, even if it be only for a space, these moods of settled +peace, and strongly confirming their judgment and their will for +good,--whatever limitations may be found besides, however prosaic may +be some or much of the detail,--is great art and noble poetry, and the +creator of it will always hold, as Wordsworth holds, a sovereign title +to the reverence and gratitude of mankind. + + + + +APHORISMS.[1] + +[Footnote 1: An Address delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical +Institution, _November_ 11, 1887.] + + +Since I accepted the honour of the invitation to deliver the opening +address of your course, I have found no small difficulty in settling +down on an appropriate subject. I half wrote a discourse on modern +democracy,--how the rule of numbers is to be reconciled with the rule +of sage judgment, and the passion for liberty and equality is to be +reconciled with sovereign regard for law, authority, and order; and +how our hopes for the future are to be linked to wise reverence for +tradition and the past. But your secretary had emphatically warned me +off all politics, and I feared that however carefully I might be on my +guard against every reference to the burning questions of the hour, +yet the clever eyes of political charity would be sure to spy out +party innuendoes in the most innocent deliverances of purely abstract +philosophy. Then for a day or two I lingered over a subject in a +little personal incident. One Saturday night last summer I found +myself dining with an illustrious statesman on the Welsh border, and +on the Monday following I was seated under the acacias by the shore of +the Lake of Geneva, where Gibbon, a hundred years ago almost to the +day, had, according to his own famous words, laid down his pen after +writing the last lines of his last page, and there under a serene sky, +with the silver orb of the moon reflected from the waters, and amid +the silence of nature, felt his joy at the completion of an immortal +task, dashed by melancholy that he had taken everlasting leave of an +old and agreeable companion. It was natural that I should meditate on +the contrast that might be drawn between great literary performance +and great political performance, between the making of history and the +writing of it,--a contrast containing matter enough not only for one, +but for a whole series of edifying and instructive discourses. But +there were difficulties here too, and the edifying discourse remains, +like many another, incomplete. + +So I am going to ask you after all to pass a tranquil hour with me in +pondering a quiet chapter in the history of books. There is a loud cry +in these days for clues that shall guide the plain man through the +vast bewildering labyrinth of printed volumes. Everybody calls for +hints what to read, and what to look out for in reading. Like all the +rest of us, I have often been asked for a list of the hundred best +books, and the other day a gentleman wrote to me to give him by return +of post that far more difficult thing--list of the three best books in +the world. Both the hundred and the three are a task far too high for +me; but perhaps you will let me try to indicate what, among so much +else, is one of the things best worth hunting for in books, and one +of the quarters of the library where you may get on the scent. Though +tranquil, it will be my fault if you find the hour dull, for this +particular literary chapter concerns life, manners, society, conduct, +human nature, our aims, our ideals, and all besides that is most +animated and most interesting in man's busy chase after happiness and +wisdom. + +What is wisdom? That sovereign word, as has often been pointed out, is +used for two different things. It may stand for knowledge, learning, +science, systematic reasoning; or it may mean, as Coleridge has +defined it, common sense in an uncommon degree; that is to say, the +unsystematic truths that come to shrewd, penetrating, and observant +minds, from their own experience of life and their daily commerce with +the world, and that is called the wisdom of life, or the wisdom of the +world, or the wisdom of time and the ages. The Greeks had two words +for these two kinds of wisdom: one for the wise who scaled the heights +of thought and knowledge; another for those who, without logical +method, technical phraseology, or any of the parade of the Schools, +whether "Academics old and new, Cynic, Peripatetic, the sect +Epicurean, or Stoic severe," held up the mirror to human nature, and +took good counsel as to the ordering of character and of life. + +Mill, in his little fragment on Aphorisms, has said that in the first +kind of wisdom every age in which science flourishes ought to surpass +the ages that have gone before. In knowledge and methods of science +each generation starts from the point at which its predecessor left +off; but in the wisdom of life, in the maxims of good sense applied to +public and to private conduct, there is, said Mill, a pretty nearly +equal amount in all ages. + +If this seem doubtful to any one, let him think how many of the +shrewdest moralities of human nature are to be found in writings as +ancient as the apocryphal Book of the Wisdom of Solomon and of Jesus +the Son of Sirach; as _Aesop's Fables_; as the oracular sentences that +are to be found in Homer and the Greek dramatists and orators; as +all that immense host of wise and pithy saws which, to the number +of between four and five thousand, were collected from all ancient +literature by the industry of Erasmus in his great folio of Adages. As +we turn over these pages of old time, we almost feel that those are +right who tell us that everything has been said, that the thing that +has been is the thing that shall be, and there is no new thing under +the sun. Even so, we are happily not bound to Schopenhauer's gloomy +conclusion (_Werke_, v. 332), that "The wise men of all times have +always said the same, and the fools, that is the immense majority, of +all times have always done the same, that is to say, the opposite of +what the wise have said; and that is why Voltaire tells us that we +shall leave this world just as stupid and as bad as we found it when +we came here." + +It is natural that this second kind of wisdom, being detached and +unsystematic, should embody itself in the short and pregnant form of +proverb, sentence, maxim, and aphorism. The essence of aphorism is the +compression of a mass of thought and observation into a single +saying. It is the very opposite of dissertation and declamation; its +distinction is not so much ingenuity, as good sense brought to a +point; it ought to be neither enigmatical nor flat, neither a truism +on the one hand, nor a riddle on the other. These wise sayings, said +Bacon, the author of some of the wisest of them, are not only for +ornament, but for action and business, having a point or edge, whereby +knots in business are pierced and discovered. And he applauds Cicero's +description of such sayings as saltpits,--that you may extract salt +out of them, and sprinkle it where you will. They are the guiding +oracles which man has found out for himself in that great business +of ours, of learning how to be, to do, to do without, and to depart. +Their range extends from prudential kitchen maxims, such as Franklin +set forth in the sayings of Poor Richard about thrift in time and +money, up to such great and high moralities of life as are the prose +maxims of Goethe,--just as Bacon's Essays extend from precepts as to +building and planting, up to solemn reflections on truth, death, and +the vicissitudes of things. They cover the whole field of man as he +is, and life as it is, not of either as they ought to be; friendship, +ambition, money, studies, business, public duty, in all their actual +laws and conditions as they are, and not as the ideal moralist may +wish that they were. + +The substance of the wisdom of life must be commonplace, for the best +of it is the result of the common experience of the world. Its most +universal and important propositions must in a certain sense be +truisms. The road has been so broadly trodden by the hosts who have +travelled along it, that the main rules of the journey are clear +enough, and we all know that the secret of breakdown and wreck is +seldom so much an insufficient knowledge of the route, as imperfect +discipline of the will. The truism, however, and the commonplace may +be stated in a form so fresh, pungent, and free from triviality, as +to have all the force of new discovery. Hence the need for a caution, +that few maxims are to be taken without qualification. They seek +sharpness of impression by excluding one side of the matter and +exaggerating another, and most aphorisms are to be read as subject to +all sorts of limits, conditions, and corrections. + +It has been said that the order of our knowledge is this: that we know +best, first, what we have divined by native instinct; second, what +we have learned by experience of men and things; third, what we have +learned not in books, but by books--that is, by the reflections that +they suggest; fourth, last and lowest, what we have learned in books +or with masters. The virtue of an aphorism comes under the third of +these heads: it conveys a portion of a truth with such point as to set +us thinking on what remains. Montaigne, who delighted in Plutarch, +and kept him ever on his table, praises him in that besides his long +discourses, "there are a thousand others, which he has only touched +and glanced upon, where he only points with his finger to direct us +which way we may go if we will, and contents himself sometimes with +only giving one brisk hit in the nicest article of the question, +from whence we are to grope out the rest." And this is what Plutarch +himself is driving at, when he warns young men that it is well to go +for a light to another man's fire, but by no means to tarry by it, +instead of kindling a torch of their own. + +Grammarians draw a distinction between a maxim and an aphorism, and +tell us that while an aphorism only states some broad truth of general +bearing, a maxim, besides stating the truth, enjoins a rule of conduct +as its consequence. For instance, to say that "There are some men with +just imagination enough to spoil their judgment" is an aphorism. But +there is action as well as thought in such sayings as this: "'Tis a +great sign of mediocrity to be always reserved in praise"; or in this +of M. Aurelius, "When thou wishest to give thyself delight, think of +the excellences of those who live with thee; for instance, of the +energy of one, the modesty of another, the liberal kindness of a +third." Again, according to this distinction of the word, we are +to give the name of aphorism to Pascal's saying that "Most of the +mischief in the world would never happen, if men would only be content +to sit still in their parlours."[1] But we should give the name of +maxim to the profound and admirably humane counsel of a philosopher of +a very different school, that "If you would love mankind, you should +not expect too much from them." + +[Footnote 1: La Bruyere also says:--"All mischief comes from our +not being able to be alone; hence play, luxury, dissipation, wine, +ignorance, calumny, envy, forgetfulness of one's self and of God."] + +But the distinction is one without much difference; we need not labour +it nor pay it further attention. Aphorism or maxim, let us remember +that this wisdom of life is the true salt of literature; that those +books, at least in prose, are most nourishing which are most richly +stored with it; and that it is one of the main objects, apart from the +mere acquisition of knowledge, which men ought to seek in the reading +of books. + +A living painter has said, that the longer he works, the more does be +realise how very little anybody except the trained artist actually +perceives in the natural objects constantly before him; how blind men +are to impressions of colour and light and form, which would be full +of interest and delight, if people only knew how to see them. Are not +most of us just as blind to the thousand lights and shades in the +men and women around us? We live in the world as we live among +fellow-inmates in a hotel, or fellow-revellers at a masquerade. Yet +this, to bring knowledge of ourselves and others "home to our business +and our bosoms," is one of the most important parts of culture. + +Some prejudice is attached in generous minds to this wisdom of the +world as being egotistical, poor, unimaginative, of the earth earthy. +Since the great literary reaction at the end of the last century, men +have been apt to pitch criticism of life in the high poetic key. They +have felt with Wordsworth:-- + + "The human nature unto which I felt + That I belonged, and reverenced with love, + Was not a punctual presence, but a spirit + Diffused through time and space, with aid derived + Of evidence from monuments, erect, + Prostrate, or leaning towards their common rest + In earth, the widely-scattered wreck sublime + Of vanished nations." + +Then again, there is another cause for the passing eclipse of interest +in wisdom of the world. Extraordinary advances have been made in +ordered knowledge of the various stages of the long prehistoric +dawn of human civilisation. The man of the flint implement and the +fire-drill, who could only count up to five, and who was content to +live in a hut like a beehive, has drawn interest away from the man of +the market and the parlour. The literary passion for primitive times +and the raw material of man has thrust polished man, the manufactured +article, into a secondary place. All this is in the order of things. +It is fitting enough that we should pierce into the origins of human +nature. It is right, too, that the poets, the ideal interpreters of +life, should be dearer to us than those who stop short with mere +deciphering of what is real and actual. The poet has his own sphere +of the beautiful and the sublime. But it is no less true that the +enduring weight of historian, moralist, political orator, or preacher +depends on the amount of the wisdom of life that is hived in his +pages. They may be admirable by virtue of other qualities, by +learning, by grasp, by majesty of flight; but it is his moral +sentences on mankind or the State that rank the prose writer among the +sages. These show that he has an eye for the large truths of action, +for the permanent bearings of conduct, and for things that are for the +guidance of all generations. What is it that makes Plutarch's Lives +"the pasture of great souls," as they were called by one who was +herself a great soul? Because his aim was much less to tell a story +than, as he says, "to decipher the man and his nature"; and in +deciphering the man, to strike out pregnant and fruitful thoughts on +all men. Why was it worth while for Mr. Jowett, the other day, to give +us a new translation of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War? +And why is it worth your while, at least to dip in a serious spirit +into its pages? Partly, because the gravity and concision of +Thucydides are of specially wholesome example in these days of +over-coloured and over-voluminous narrative; partly, because he knows +how to invest the wreck and overthrow of those small states with the +pathos and dignity of mighty imperial fall; but most of all, for the +sake of the wise sentences that are sown with apt but not unsparing +hand through the progress of the story. Well might Gray ask his friend +whether Thucydides' description of the final destruction of the +Athenian host at Syracuse was not the finest thing he ever read in +his life; and assuredly the man who can read that stern tale without +admiration, pity, and awe may be certain that he has no taste for +noble composition, and no feeling for the deepest tragedy of mortal +things. But it is the sagacious sentences in the speeches of +Athenians, Corinthians, Lacedaemonians, that do most of all to give +to the historian his perpetuity of interest to every reader with the +rudiments of a political instinct, and make Thucydides as modern as if +he had written yesterday. + +Tacitus belongs to a different class among the great writers of the +world. He had, beyond almost any author of the front rank that has +ever lived, the art of condensing his thought and driving it home +to the mind of the reader with a flash. Beyond almost anybody, he +suffered from what a famous writer of aphorisms in our time has +described as "the cursed ambition to put a whole book into a page, a +whole page into a phrase, and the phrase into a word." But the moral +thought itself in Tacitus mostly belongs less to the practical wisdom +of life, than to sombre poetic indignation, like that of Dante, +against the perversities of men and the blindness of fortune. + +Horace's Epistles are a mine of genial, friendly, humane observation. +Then there is none of the ancient moralists to whom the modern, from +Montaigne, Charron, Ralegh, Bacon, downwards, owe more than to Seneca. +Seneca has no spark of the kindly warmth of Horace; he has not the +animation of Plutarch; he abounds too much in the artificial and +extravagant paradoxes of the Stoics. But, for all that, he touches the +great and eternal commonplaces of human occasion--friendship, health, +bereavement, riches, poverty, death--with a hand that places him high +among the wise masters of life. All through the ages men tossed in the +beating waves of circumstance have found more abundantly in the essays +and letters of Seneca than in any other secular writer words of good +counsel and comfort. And let this fact not pass, without notice of the +light that it sheds on the fact of the unity of literature, and of +the absurdity of setting a wide gulf between ancient or classical +literature and modern, as if under all dialects the partakers in +Graeco-Roman civilisation, whether in Athens, Rome, Paris, Weimar, +Edinburgh, London, Dublin, were not the heirs of a great common stock +of thought as well as of speech. + +I certainly do not mean anything so absurd as that the moralities, +whether major or minor, whether affecting the foundation of conduct or +the surface of manners, remain fixed. On the contrary, one of the most +interesting things in literature is to mark the shifts and changes in +men's standards. For instance, Boswell tells a curious story of the +first occasion on which Johnson met Sir Joshua Reynolds. Two ladies of +the company were regretting the death of a friend to whom they owed +great obligations. Reynolds observed that they had at any rate the +comfort of being relieved from a debt of gratitude. The ladies were +naturally shocked at this singular alleviation of their grief, but +Johnson defended it in his clear and forcible manner, and, says +Boswell, "was much pleased with the mind, the fair view of human +nature, that it exhibited, like some of the reflections of +Rochefoucauld." On the strength of it he went home with Reynolds, +supped with him, and was his friend for life. No moralist with a +reputation to lose would like to back Reynolds's remark in the +nineteenth century. + +Our own generation in Great Britain has been singularly unfortunate +in the literature of aphorism. One too famous volume of proverbial +philosophy had immense vogue, but it is so vapid, so wordy, so futile, +as to have a place among the books that dispense with parody. Then, +rather earlier in the century, a clergyman, who ruined himself by +gambling, ran away from his debts to America, and at last blew his +brains out, felt peculiarly qualified to lecture mankind on moral +prudence. He wrote a little book in 1820; called _Lacon; or Many +Things in Few Words, addressed to those who think_. It is an awful +example to anybody who is tempted to try his hand at an aphorism. +Thus, "Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than +the dinner." I had made some other extracts from this unhappy sage, +but you will thank me for having thrown them into the fire. Finally, a +great authoress of our time was urged by a friend to fill up a gap in +our literature by composing a volume of Thoughts: the result was that +least felicitous of performances, _Theophrastus Such_. One living +writer of genius has given us a little sheaf of subtly-pointed maxims +in the _Ordeal of Richard Feverel_, and perhaps he will one day +divulge to the world the whole contents of Sir Austin Feverel's +unpublished volume, _The Pilgrim's Scrip_. + +Yet the wisdom of life has its full part in our literature. Keen +insight into peculiarities of individual motive, and concentrated +interest in the play of character, shine not merely in Shakespeare, +whose mighty soul, as Hallam says, was saturated with moral +observation, nor in the brilliant verse of Pope. For those who love +meditative reading on the ways and destinies of men, we have Burton +and Fuller and Sir Thomas Browne in one age, and Addison, Johnson, +and the rest of the Essayists, in another. Sir Thomas Overbury's +_Characters_, written in the Baconian age, are found delightful +by some; but for my own part, though I have striven to follow the +critic's golden rule, to have preferences but no exclusions, Overbury +has for me no savour. In the great art of painting moral portraits, +or character-writing, the characters in Clarendon, or in Burnet's +_History of His Own Time_, are full of life, vigour, and coherency, +and are intensely attractive to read. I cannot agree with those who +put either Clarendon or Burnet on a level with the characters in St. +Simon or the Cardinal de Retz: there is a subtlety of analysis, a +searching penetration, a breadth of moral comprehension, in the +Frenchmen, which I do not find, nor, in truth, much desire to find, +in our countrymen. A homelier hand does well enough for homelier men. +Nevertheless, such characters as those of Falkland, or Chillingworth, +by Clarendon, or Burnet's very different Lauderdale, are worth a +thousand battle-pieces, cabinet plots, or parliamentary combinations, +of which we never can be sure that the narrator either knew or has +told the whole story. It is true that these characters have not the +strange quality which some one imputed to the writing of Tacitus, that +it seems to put the reader himself and the secrets of his own heart +into the confessional. It is in the novel that, in this country, the +faculty of observing social man and his peculiarities has found its +most popular instrument. The great novel, not of romance or adventure, +but of character and manners, from the mighty Fielding, down, at a +long interval, to Thackeray, covers the field that in France is held, +and successfully held, against all comers, by her maxim-writers, like +La Rochefoucauld, and her character-writers, like La Bruyere. But the +literature of aphorism contains one English name of magnificent and +immortal lustre--the name of Francis Bacon. Bacon's essays are the +unique masterpiece in our literature of this oracular wisdom of life, +applied to the scattered occasions of men's existence. The Essays are +known to all the world; but there is another and perhaps a weightier +performance of Bacon's which is less known, or not known at all, +except to students here and there. I mean the second chapter of the +eighth book of his famous treatise, _De Augmentis_. It has been +translated into pithy English, and is to be found in the fifth volume +of the great edition of Bacon, by Spedding and Ellis. + +In this chapter, among other things, he composes comments on between +thirty and forty of what he calls the Aphorisms or Proverbs of +Solomon, which he truly describes as containing, besides those of +a theological character, "not a few excellent civil precepts and +cautions, springing from the inmost recesses of wisdom, and extending +to much variety of occasions." I know not where else to find more of +the salt of common sense in an uncommon degree than in Bacon's terse +comments on the Wise King's terse sentences, and in the keen, +sagacious, shrewd wisdom of the world, lighted up by such brilliance +of wit and affluence of illustration, in the pages that come after +them. + +This sort of wisdom was in the taste of the time; witness Ralegh's +_Instructions to his Son_, and that curious collection "of political +and polemical aphorisms grounded on authority and experience," +which he called by the name of the _Cabinet Council_. Harrington's +_Political Aphorisms_, which came a generation later, are not moral +sentences; they are a string of propositions in political theory, +breathing a noble spirit of liberty, though too abstract for practical +guidance through the troubles of the day. But Bacon's admonitions +have a depth and copiousness that are all his own. He says that the +knowledge of advancement in life, though abundantly practised, had +not been sufficiently handled in books, and so he here lays down +the precepts for what he calls the _Architecture of Fortune_. They +constitute the description of a man who is politic for his own +fortune, and show how he may best shape a character that will attain +the ends of fortune. + +_First_, A man should accustom his mind to judge of the proportion and +value of all things as they conduce to his fortune and ends. + +_Second_, Not to undertake things beyond his strength, nor to row +against the stream. + +_Third_, Not to wait for occasions always, but sometimes to challenge +and induce them, according to that saying of Demosthenes: "In the same +manner as it is a received principle that the general should lead the +army, so should wise men lead affairs," causing things to be done +which they think good, and not themselves waiting upon events. + +_Fourth_, Not to take up anything which of necessity forestalls a +great quantity of time, but to have this sound ever ringing in our +ears: "Time is flying--time that can never be retrieved." + +_Fifth_, Not to engage one's-self too peremptorily in anything, but +ever to have either a window open to fly out at, or a secret way to +retire by. + +_Sixth_, To follow that ancient precept, not construed to any point +of perfidiousness, but only to caution and moderation, that we are to +treat our friend as if he might one day be a foe, and our foe as if he +should one day be friend. + +All these Bacon called the good arts, as distinguished from the evil +arts that had been described years before by Machiavelli in his +famous book _The Prince_, and also in his _Discourses_. Bacon called +Machiavelli's sayings depraved and pernicious, and a corrupt wisdom, +as indeed they are. He was conscious that his own maxims, too, stood +in some need of elevation and of correction, for he winds up with +wise warnings against being carried away by a whirlwind or tempest +of ambition; by the general reminder that all things are vanity and +vexation of spirit, and the particular reminder that, "Being without +well-being is a curse, and the greater being, the greater curse," and +that "all virtue is most rewarded, and all wickedness most punished in +itself"; by the question, whether this incessant, restless, and, as it +were, Sabbathless pursuit of fortune, leaves time for holier duties, +and what advantage it is to have a face erected towards heaven, with a +spirit perpetually grovelling upon earth, eating dust like a serpent; +and finally, he says that it will not be amiss for men, in this eager +and excited chase of fortune, to cool themselves a little with that +conceit of Charles V. in his instructions to his son, that "Fortune +hath somewhat of the nature of a woman, who, if she be too closely +wooed, is commonly the further off." + +There is Baconian humour as well as a curious shrewdness in such an +admonition as that which I will here transcribe, and there are many +like it:-- + + "It is therefore no unimportant attribute of prudence in a man to + be able to set forth to advantage before others, with grace and + skill, his virtues, fortunes, and merits (which may be done + without arrogance or breeding disgust); and again, to cover + artificially his weaknesses, defects, misfortunes, and disgraces; + dwelling upon the former and turning them to the light, sliding + from the latter or explaining them away by apt interpretations and + the like. Tacitus says of Mucianus, the wisest and most active + politician of his time, 'That he had a certain art of setting + forth to advantage everything he said or did.' And it requires + indeed some art, lest it become wearisome and contemptible; but + yet it is true that ostentation, though carried to the first + degree of vanity, is rather a vice in morals than in policy. For + as it is said of calumny, 'Calumniate boldly, for some of it + will stick,' so it may be said of ostentation (except it be in a + ridiculous degree of deformity), 'Boldly sound your own praises, + and some of them will stick.' It will stick with the more ignorant + and the populace, though men of wisdom may smile at it; and the + reputation won with many will amply countervail the disdain of a + few.... And surely no small number of those who are of a solid + nature, and who, from the want of this ventosity, cannot spread + all sail in pursuit of their own honour, suffer some prejudice and + lose dignity by their moderation." + +Nobody need go to such writings as these for moral dignity or moral +energy. They have no place in that nobler literature, from Epictetus +and Marcus Aurelius downwards, which lights up the young soul with +generous aims, and fires it with the love of all excellence. Yet the +most heroic cannot do without a dose of circumspection. The counsels +of old Polonius to Laertes are less sublime than Hamlet's soliloquy, +but they have their place. Bacon's chapters are a manual of +circumspection, whether we choose to give to circumspection a high or +a low rank in the list of virtues. Bacon knew of the famous city which +had three gates, and on the first the horseman read inscribed, "Be +bold"; and on the second gate yet again, "Be bold, and evermore be +bold"; and on the third it was written, "Be not too bold." + +This cautious tone had been brought about by the circumstances of +the time. Government was strict; dissent from current opinions was +dangerous; there was no indifference and hardly any tolerance; +authority was suspicious and it was vindictive. When the splendid +genius of Burke rose like a new sun into the sky, the times were +happier, and nowhere in our literature does a noble prudence wear +statelier robes than in the majestic compositions of Burke. + +Those who are curious to follow the literature of aphorism into +Germany, will, with the mighty exceptions of Goethe and Schiller, find +but a parched and scanty harvest. The Germans too often justify the +unfriendly definition of an aphorism as a form of speech, that wraps +up something quite plain in words that turn it into something very +obscure. As old Fuller says, the writers have a hair hanging to the +nib of their pen. Their shortness does not prevent them from being +tiresome. They recall the French wit to whom a friend showed a +distich: "Excellent," he said; "but isn't it rather spun out?" + +Lichtenberg, a professor of physics, who was also a considerable hand +at satire a hundred years ago, composed a collection of sayings, not +without some wheat amid much chaff. A later German writer, of whom +I will speak in a moment or two, Schopenhauer, has some excellent +remarks on Self-reflection, and on the difference between those who +think for themselves and those who think for other people; between +genuine Philosophers, who look at things first hand for their own +sake, and Sophists, who look at words and books for the sake of making +an appearance before the world, and seek their happiness in what +they hope to get from others: he takes Herder for an example of the +Sophist, and Lichtenberg for the true Philosopher. It is true that we +hear the voice of the Self-thinker, and not the mere Book-philosopher, +if we may use for once those uncouth compounds, in such sayings as +these:-- + + "People who never have any time are the people + who do least." + + "The utmost that a weak head can get out of experience + is an extra readiness to find out the weaknesses + of other people." + + "Over-anxiously to feel and think what one could + have done, is the very worst thing one can do." + + "He who has less than he desires, should know that + he has more than he deserves." + + "Enthusiasts without capacity are the really dangerous + people." + +This last, by the way, recalls a saying of the great French +reactionary, De Bonald, which is never quite out of date: "Follies +committed by the sensible, extravagances uttered by the clever, crimes +perpetrated by the good,--there is what makes revolutions." + +Radowitz was a Prussian soldier and statesman, who died in 1853, +after doing enough to convince men since that the revolution of 1848 +produced no finer mind. He left among other things two or three +volumes of short fragmentary pieces on politics, religion, literature, +and art. They are intelligent and elevated, but contain hardly +anything to our point to-night, unless it be this,--that what is +called Stupidity springs not at all from mere want of understanding, +but from the fact that the free use of a man's understanding is +hindered by some definite vice: Frivolity, Envy, Dissipation, +Covetousness, all these darling vices of fallen man,--these are at the +bottom of what we name Stupidity. This is true enough, but it is not +so much to the point as the saying of a highly judicious aphorist of +my own acquaintance, that "Excessive anger against human stupidity is +itself one of the most provoking of all forms of stupidity." + +Another author of aphorisms of the Goethe period was Klinger, a +playwriter, who led a curious and varied life in camps and cities, who +began with a vehement enthusiasm for the sentimentalism of Rousseau, +and ended, as such men often end, with a hard and stubborn cynicism. +He wrote _Thoughts on different Subjects of the World and Literature_, +which are intelligent and masculine, if they are not particularly +pungent in expression. One of them runs--"He who will write +interestingly must be able to keep heart and reason in close and +friendliest connection. The heart must warm the reason, and reason +must in turn blow on the embers if they are to burst into flame." This +illustrates what an aphorism should not be. Contrast its clumsiness +with the brevity of the famous and admirable saying of Vauvenargues, +that "great thoughts come from the heart." + +Schopenhauer gave to one of his minor works the name of _Aphorismen zu +Lebens-Weisheit_, "Aphorisms for the Wisdom of Life," and he put to +it, by way of motto, Chamfort's saying, "Happiness is no easy matter; +'tis very hard to find it within ourselves, and impossible to find it +anywhere else." Schopenhauer was so well read in European literature, +he had such natural alertness of mind, and his style is so pointed, +direct, and wide-awake, that these detached discussions are +interesting and most readable; but for the most part discussions they +are, and not aphorisms. Thus, in the saying that "The perfect man of +the world should be he who never sticks fast in indecision, nor ever +falls into overhaste," the force of it lies in what goes before and +what follows after. The whole collection, winding up with the chapter +of Counsels and Maxims, is in the main an unsystematic enforcement of +those peculiar views of human happiness and its narrow limits which +proved to be the most important part of Schopenhauer's system. "The +sovereign rule in the wisdom of life," he said, "I see in Aristotle's +proposition (_Eth. Nic_. vii. 12), [Greek: ho phronimos to alupon +diokei, ou to haedu]: Not pleasure but freedom from pain is what +the sensible man goes after." The second volume, of Detached though +systematically Ordered Thoughts on Various Circumstances, is +miscellaneous in its range of topics, and is full of suggestion; but +the thoughts are mainly philosophical and literary, and do not come +very close to practical wisdom. In truth, so negative a view of +happiness, such pale hopes and middling expectations, could not guide +a man far on the path of active prudence, where we naturally take for +granted that the goal is really something substantial, serious, solid, +and positive.[1] + +[Footnote 1: Burke says on the point raised above: "I am satisfied the +ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the +part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made +to suffer are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than +any pleasures which the most learned voluptuary could suggest. Nay, +I am in great doubt whether any man could be found, who would earn a +life of the most perfect satisfaction at the price of ending it in +the torments which justice inflicted in a few hours on the late +unfortunate regicide in France" (_Sublime and Beautiful_, pt. I. sec. +vii.). The reference is, of course, to Damien.] + +Nobody cared less than Schopenhauer for the wisdom that is drawn from +books, or has said such hard things of mere reading. In the short +piece to which I have already referred (p. 80), he works out the +difference between the Scholar who has read in books, and the +Thinkers, the Geniuses, the Lights of the World, and Furtherers of +the human race, who have read directly from the world's own pages. +Reading, he says, is only a _succedaneum_ for one's own thinking. +Reading is thinking with a strange head instead of one's own. People +who get their wisdom out of books are like those who have got their +knowledge of a country from the descriptions of travellers. Truth that +has been picked up from books only sticks to us like an artificial +limb, or a false tooth, or a rhinoplastic nose; the truth we have +acquired by our own thinking is like the natural member. At least, as +Goethe puts it in his verse, + + Was du ererbt von deinen Vaetern hast, + Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen. + + _What from thy fathers thou dost inherit, be sure thou + earn it, that so it may become thine own_. + +It is only Goethe and Schiller, and especially Goethe, "the strong, +much-toiling sage, with spirit free from mists, and sane and clear," +who combine the higher and the lower wisdom, and have skill to put +moral truths into forms of words that fix themselves with stings in +the reader's mind. All Goethe's work, whether poetry or prose, his +plays, his novels, his letters, his conversations, are richly bestrewn +with the luminous sentences of a keen-eyed, steadfast, patient, +indefatigable watcher of human life. He deals gravely and sincerely +with men. He has none of that shallow irony by which small men who +have got wrong with the world seek a shabby revenge. He tells us the +whole truth. He is not of those second-rate sages who keep their own +secrets, externally complying with all the conventions of speech and +demeanour, while privately nourishing unbridled freedom of opinion +in the inner sanctuary of the mind. He handles soberly, faithfully, +laboriously, cheerfully, every motive and all conduct. He marks +himself the friend, the well-wisher, and the helper. I will not begin +to quote from Goethe, for I should never end. The volume of _Spruche_, +or aphorisms in rhyme and prose in his collected works, is accessible +to everybody, but some of his wisest and finest are to be found in the +plays, like the well-known one in his _Tasso_, "In stillness Talent +forms itself, but Character in the great current of the world." + +But here is a concentrated admonition from the volume that I have +named, that will do as well as any other for an example of his +temper-- + + "Wouldst fashion for thyself a seemly life?-- + Then fret not over what is past and gone; + And spite of all thou mayst have lost behind, + Yet act as if thy life were just begun. + What each day wills, enough for thee to know; + What each day wills, the day itself will tell. + Do thine own task, and be therewith content; + What others do, that shalt thou fairly judge; + Be sure that thou no brother-mortal hate, + Then all besides leave to the Master Power." + +If any of you should be bitten with an unhappy passion for the +composition of aphorisms, let me warn such an one that the power of +observing life is rare, the power of drawing new lessons from it is +rarer still, and the power of condensing the lesson in a pointed +sentence is rarest of all. Beware of cultivating this delicate art. +The effort is only too likely to add one more to that perverse +class described by Gibbon, who strangle a thought in the hope of +strengthening it, and applaud their own skill when they have shown +in a few absurd words the fourth part of an idea. Let me warmly urge +anybody with so mistaken an ambition, instead of painfully distilling +poor platitudes of his own, to translate the shrewd saws of the wise +browed Goethe. + +Some have found light in the sayings of Balthasar Gracian, a Spaniard, +who flourished at the end of the seventeenth century, whose maxims +were translated into English at the very beginning of the eighteenth, +and who was introduced to the modern public in an excellent article +by Sir M.E. Grant Duff a few years ago. The English title is +attractive,--_The Art of Prudence, or a Companion for a Man of Sense_. +I do not myself find Gracian much of a companion, though some of his +aphorisms give a neat turn to a commonplace. Thus:-- + + "The pillow is a dumb sibyl. To sleep upon a thing + that is to be done, is better than to be wakened up by + one already done." + + "To equal a predecessor one must have twice his + worth." + + "What is easy ought to be entered upon as though + it were difficult, and what is difficult as though it were + easy." + + "Those things are generally best remembered which + ought most to be forgot. Not seldom the surest remedy + of the evil consists in forgetting it." + +It is France that excels in the form no less than in the matter of +aphorism, and for the good reason that in France the arts of polished +society were relatively at an early date the objects of a serious and +deliberate cultivation, such as was and perhaps remains unknown in the +rest of Europe. Conversation became a fine art. "I hate war," said +one; "it spoils conversation." The leisured classes found their +keenest relish in delicate irony, in piquancy, in contained vivacity, +in the study of niceties of observation and finish of phrase. You have +a picture of it in such a play as Moliere's _Misanthropist_, where we +see a section of the polished life of the time--men and women making +and receiving compliments, discoursing on affairs with easy lightness, +flitting backwards and forwards with a thousand petty hurries, and +among them one singular figure, hoarse, rough, sombre, moving with a +chilling reality in the midst of frolicking shadows. But the shadows +were all in all to one another. Not a point of conduct, not a subtlety +of social motive, escaped detection and remark. + +Dugald Stewart has pointed to the richness of the French tongue +in appropriate and discriminating expressions for varieties of +intellectual turn and shade. How many of us, who claim to a reasonable +knowledge of French, will undertake easily to find English +equivalents for such distinctions as are expressed in the following +phrases--Esprit juste, esprit etendu, esprit fin, esprit delie, esprit +de lumiere. These numerous distinctions are the evidence, as Stewart +says, of the attention paid by the cultivated classes to delicate +shades of mind and feeling. Compare with them the colloquial use of +our terribly overworked word "clever." Society and conversation have +never been among us the school of reflection, the spring of literary +inspiration, that they have been in France. The English rule has +rather been like that of the ancient Persians, that the great thing is +to learn to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the truth. There +is much in it. But it has been more favourable to strength than to +either subtlety or finish. + +One of the most commonly known of all books of maxims, after the +Proverbs of Solomon, are the Moral Reflections of La Rochefoucauld. +The author lived at court, himself practised all the virtues which +he seemed to disparage, and took so much trouble to make sure of the +right expression that many of these short sentences were more than +thirty times revised. They were given to the world in the last half +of the seventeenth century in a little volume which Frenchmen used +to know by heart, which gave a new turn to the literary taste of the +nation, and which has been translated into every civilised tongue. It +paints men as they would be if self-love were the one great mainspring +of human action, and it makes magnanimity itself no better than +self-interest in disguise. + + "Interest," he says, "speaks all sorts of tongues and + plays all sorts of parts, even the part of the disinterested." + + "Gratitude is with most people only a strong desire + for greater benefits to come." + + "Love of justice is with most of us nothing but the + fear of suffering injustice." + + "Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of + interests, a mutual exchange of good offices; it is a + species of commerce out of which self-love always + intends to make something." + + "We have all strength enough to endure the troubles + of other people." + + "Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we + have done, as fear of the ill that may come to us in + consequence." + +And everybody here knows the saying that "In the adversity of our best +friends we often find something that is not exactly displeasing." + +We cannot wonder that in spite of their piquancy of form, such +sentences as these have aroused in many minds an invincible repugnance +for what would be so tremendous a calumny on human nature, if the +book were meant to be a picture of human nature as a whole. "I count +Rochefoucauld's _Maxims_," says one critic, "a bad book. As I am +reading it, I feel discomfort; I have a sense of suffering which I +cannot define. Such thoughts tarnish the brightness of the soul; +they degrade the heart." Yet as a faithful presentation of human +selfishness, and of you and me in so far as we happen to be mainly +selfish, the odious mirror has its uses by showing us what manner of +man we are or may become. Let us not forget either that not quite all +is selfishness in La Rochefoucauld. Everybody knows his saying that +hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. There is a subtle +truth in this, too,--that to be in too great a hurry to discharge an +obligation is itself a kind of ingratitude. Nor is there any harm in +the reflection that no fool is so troublesome as the clever fool; nor +in this, that only great men have any business with great defects; +nor, finally, in the consolatory saying, that we are never either so +happy or so unhappy as we imagine. + +No more important name is associated with the literature of aphorism +than that of Pascal; but the Thoughts of Pascal concern the deeper +things of speculative philosophy and religion, rather than the wisdom +of daily life, and, besides, though aphoristic in form, they are in +substance systematic. "I blame equally," he said, "those who take +sides for praising man, those who are for blaming him, and those +who amuse themselves with him: the only wise part is search for +truth--search with many sighs." On man, as he exists in society, he +said little; and what he said does not make us hopeful. He saw the +darker side. "If everybody knew what one says of the other, there +would not be four friends left in the world." "Would you have men +think well of you, then do not speak well of yourself." And so forth. +If you wish to know Pascal's theory you may find it set out in +brilliant verse in the opening lines of the second book of Pope's +_Essay on Man_. "What a chimera is Man!" said Pascal. "What a confused +chaos! What a subject of contradiction! A professed judge of all +things, and yet a feeble worm of the earth; the great depository and +guardian of truth, and yet a mere huddle of uncertainty; the glory and +the scandal of the universe." Shakespeare was wiser and deeper when, +under this quintessence of dust, he discerned what a piece of work is +man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving +how express and admirable. That serene and radiant faith is the +secret, added to matchless gifts of imagination and music, why +Shakespeare is the greatest of men. + +There is a smart, spurious wisdom of the world which has the +bitterness not of the salutary tonic but of mortal poison; and of this +kind the master is Chamfort, who died during the French Revolution +(and for that matter died of it), and whose little volume of thoughts +is often extremely witty, always pointed, but not seldom cynical and +false. "If you live among men," he said, "the heart must either break +or turn to brass." "The public, the public," he cried; "how many fools +does it take to make a public!" "What is celebrity? The advantage of +being known to people who don't know you." + +All literatures might be ransacked in vain for a more repulsive saying +than this, that "A man must swallow a toad every morning if he wishes +to be quite sure of finding nothing still more disgusting before the +day is over." We cannot be surprised to hear of the lady who said that +a conversation with Chamfort in the morning made her melancholy until +bedtime. Yet Chamfort is the author of the not unwholesome saying that +"The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed." +One of his maxims lets us into the secret of his misanthropy. +"Whoever," he said, "is not a misanthropist at forty can never have +loved mankind." It is easy to know what this means. Of course if a man +is so superfine that he will not love mankind any longer than he can +believe them to be demigods and angels, it is true that at forty he +may have discovered that they are neither. Beginning by looking for +men to be more perfect than they can be, he ends by thinking them +worse than they are, and then he secretly plumes himself on his +superior cleverness in having found humanity out. For the deadliest +of all wet blankets give me a middle-aged man who has been most of a +visionary in his youth. + +To correct all this, let us recall Helvetius's saying that I have +already quoted, which made so deep an impression on Jeremy Bentham: +"In order to love mankind, we must not expect too much from them." And +let us remember that Fenelon, one of the most saintly men that ever +lived, and whose very countenance bore such a mark of goodness that +when he was in a room men found they could not desist from looking at +him, wrote to a friend the year before he died, "I ask little from +most men; I try to render them much, and to expect nothing in return, +and I get very well out of the bargain." + +Chamfort I will leave, with his sensible distinction between Pride and +Vanity. "A man," he says, "has advanced far in the study of morals who +has mastered the difference between pride and vanity. The first is +lofty, calm, immovable; the second is uncertain, capricious, unquiet. +The one adds to a man's stature; the other only puffs him out. The one +is the source of a thousand virtues; the other is that of nearly all +vices and all perversities. There is a kind of pride in which are +included all the commandments of God; and a kind of vanity which +contains the seven mortal sins." + +I will say little of La Bruyere, by far the greatest, broadest, +strongest, of French character-writers, because his is not one of the +houses of which you can judge by a brick or two taken at random. For +those in whom the excitements of modern literature have not burnt up +the faculty of sober meditation on social man, La Bruyere must always +be one of the foremost names. Macaulay somewhere calls him thin. But +Macaulay has less ethical depth, and less perception of ethical depth, +than any writer that ever lived with equally brilliant gifts in other +ways; and _thin_ is the very last word that describes this admirable +master. If one seeks to measure how far removed the great classic +moralists are from thinness, let him turn from La Bruyere to the inane +subtleties and meaningless conundrums, not worth answering, that do +duty for analysis of character in some modern American literature. +We feel that La Bruyere, though retiring, studious, meditative, and +self-contained, has complied with the essential condition of looking +at life and men themselves, and with his own eyes. His aphoristic +sayings are the least important part of him, but here are one or two +examples:-- + + "Eminent posts make great men greater, and little + men less." + + "There is in some men a certain mediocrity of mind + that helps to make them wise." + + "The flatterer has not a sufficiently good opinion + either of himself or of others." + + "People from the provinces and fools are always + ready to take offence, and to suppose that you are + laughing at them: we should never risk a pleasantry, + except with well-bred people, and people with brains. + + "All confidence is dangerous, unless it is complete, + there are few circumstances in which it is not best + either to hide all or to tell all." + + "When the people is in a state of agitation, we do + not see how quiet is to return; and when it is tranquil, + we do not see how the quiet is to be disturbed." + + "Men count for almost nothing the virtues of the + heart, and idolise gifts of body or intellect. The man + who quite coolly, and with no idea that he is offending + modesty, says that he is kind-hearted, constant, faithful, + sincere, fair, grateful, would not dare to say that + he is quick and clever, that he has fine teeth and a + delicate skin." + +I will say nothing of Rivarol, a caustic wit of the revolutionary +time, nor of Joubert, a writer of sayings of this century, of whom +Mr. Matthew Arnold has said all that needs saying. He is delicate, +refined, acute, but his thoughts were fostered in the hothouse of a +coterie, and have none of the salt and sapid flavour that comes to +more masculine spirits from active contact with the world. + +I should prefer to close this survey in the sunnier moral climate of +Vauvenargues. His own life was a pathetic failure in all the aims of +outer circumstance. The chances of fortune and of health persistently +baulked him, but from each stroke he rose up again, with undimmed +serenity and undaunted spirit. As blow fell upon blow, the sufferer +hold, firmly to his incessant lesson,--Be brave, persevere in the +fight, struggle on, do not let go, think magnanimously of man and +life, for man is good and life is affluent and fruitful. He died a +hundred and forty years ago, leaving a little body of maxims behind +him which, for tenderness, equanimity, cheerfulness, grace, sobriety, +and hope, are not surpassed in prose literature. "One of the noblest +qualities in our nature," he said, "is that we are able so easily to +dispense with greater perfection." + + "Magnanimity owes no account to prudence of its + motives." + + "To do great things a man must live as though he + had never to die." + + "The first days of spring have less grace than the + growing virtue of a young man." + + "You must rouse in men a consciousness of their + own prudence and strength if you would raise their + character." + +Just as Tocqueville said: "He who despises mankind will never get the +best out of either others or himself."[1] + +[Footnote 1: The reader who cares to know more about Vauvenargues will +find a chapter on him in the present writer's _Miscellanies_, vol. +ii.] + +The best known of Vauvenargues' sayings, as it is the deepest and the +broadest, is the far-reaching sentence already quoted, that "Great +thoughts come from the heart." And this is the truth that shines out +as we watch the voyagings of humanity from the "wide, grey, lampless +depths" of time. Those have been greatest in thought who have been +best endowed with faith, hope, sympathy, and the spirit of effort. And +next to them come the great stern, mournful men, like Tacitus, Dante, +Pascal, who, standing as far aloof from the soft poetic dejection +of some of the moods of Shelley or Keats as from the savage fury +of Swift, watch with a prophet's indignation the heedless waste of +faculty and opportunity, the triumph of paltry motive and paltry aim, +as if we were the flies of a summer noon, which do more than any +active malignity to distort the noble lines, and to weaken or to +frustrate the strong and healthy parts, of human nature. For practical +purposes all these complaints of man are of as little avail as Johnson +found the complaint that of the globe so large a space should be +occupied by the uninhabitable ocean, encumbered by naked mountains, +lost under barren sands, scorched by perpetual heat or petrified by +perpetual frost, and so small a space be left for the production of +fruits, the pasture of cattle, and the accommodation of men. + +When we have deducted, said Johnson, all the time that is absorbed +in sleep, or appropriated to the other demands of nature, or the +inevitable requirements of social intercourse, all that is torn from +us by violence of disease, or imperceptibly stolen from us by languor, +we may realise of how small a portion of our time we are truly +masters. And the same consideration of the ceaseless and natural +pre-occupations of men in the daily struggle will reconcile the wise +man to all the disappointments, delays, shortcomings of the world, +without shaking the firmness of his own faith, or the intrepidity of +his own purpose. + + + + +MAINE ON POPULAR GOVERNMENT.[1] + +[Footnote 1: February 1886.] + + +"If the government of the Many," says the distinguished author of the +volume before us, "be really inevitable, one would have thought that +the possibility of discovering some other and newer means of enabling +It to fulfil the ends for which all governments exist would have been +a question exercising all the highest powers of the strongest minds, +particularly in the community which, through the success of its +popular institutions, has paved the way for modern Democracy. Yet +hardly anything worth mentioning has been produced on the subject in +England or on the Continent." To say this, by the way, Is strangely to +ignore three or four very remarkable books that have been published +within the last twenty or five-and-twenty years, that have excited +immense attention and discussion, and that are the work of minds that +even Sir Henry Maine would hardly call weak or inactive. We are no +adherents of any of Mr. Hare's proposals, but there are +important public men who think that his work on the _Election of +Representatives_ is as conspicuous a landmark in politics as the +_Principia_ was in natural philosophy. J.S. Mill's volume on +_Representative Government_, which appeared in 1861, was even a more +memorable contribution towards the solution of the very problem +defined by Sir Henry Maine, than was the older Mill's article on +Government In 1820 to the political difficulties of the eve of the +Reform Bill. Again, Lord Grey's work on Parliamentary Government +failed in making its expected mark on legislation, but it was worth +mentioning because It goes on the lines of the very electoral law in +Belgium which Sir Henry Maine (p. 109) describes as deserving our most +respectful attention--an attention, I suspect, which it is as little +likely to receive from either of our two political parties as Lord +Grey's suggestions. Nor should we neglect Sir G.C. Lewis's little +book, or Mr. Harrison's volume on _Order and Progress_, which abounds +in important criticism and suggestion for the student of the abstract +politics of modern societies. In the United States, too, and In our +own colonies, there have been attempts, not without merit, to state +and to deal with some of the drawbacks of popular government. + +Nothing has been done, however, that makes the appearance in the field +of a mind of so high an order as Sir Henry Maine's either superfluous +or unwelcome. It is hardly possible that he should discuss any subject +within the publicist's range, without bringing into light some of its +less superficial aspects, and adding observations of originality and +value to the stock of political thought. To set people thinking at all +on the more general and abstract truths of that great subject which is +commonly left to be handled lightly, unsystematically, fragmentarily, +in obedience to the transitory necessities of the day, by Ministers, +members of Parliament, journalists, electors, and the whole host who +live intellectually and politically from hand to mouth, is in itself a +service of all but the first order. Service of the very first order is +not merely to propound objections, but to devise working answers, and +this is exactly what Sir Henry Maine abstains from doing. + +No one will think the moment for a serious political inquiry ill +chosen. We have just effected an immense recasting of our system of +parliamentary representation. The whole consequences of the two great +Acts of 1884 and 1885 are assuredly not to be finally gauged by +anything that has happened during the recent election. Yet even this +single election has brought about a crisis of vast importance in +one part of the United Kingdom, by forcing the question of an Irish +constitution to the front. It is pretty clear, also, that the infusion +of a large popular element into the elective House has made more +difficult the maintenance of its old relations with the hereditary +House. Even if there were no others, these two questions alone, and +especially the first of them, will make the severest demands on the +best minds in the country. We shall be very fortunate if the crisis +produces statesmen as sagacious as those American publicists of whom +Sir Henry Maine rightly entertains so exalted an opinion. + +Whether or not we are on the threshold of great legislative changes, +it is in any case certain that the work of government will be carried +on under new parliamentary and social conditions. In meeting this +prospect, we have the aid neither of strong and systematic political +schools, nor powerful and coherent political parties. No one can +pretend, for instance, that there is any body of theoretic opinion so +compact and so well thought out as Benthamism was in its own day +and generation. Again, in practice, there are ominous signs that +Parliament is likely to break up into groups; and the substitution of +groups for parties is certain, if continental experience is to count +for anything, to create new obstacles in the way of firm and stable +government. Weak government throws power to something which usurps +the name of public opinion, and public opinion as expressed by the +ventriloquists of the newspapers is at once more capricious and more +vociferous than it ever was. This was abundantly shown during the last +five years by a variety of unfortunate public adventures. Then, +does the excitement of democracy weaken the stability of national +temperament? By setting up what in physics would be called a highly +increased molecular activity, does it disturb not merely conservative +respect for institutions, but respect for coherence and continuity of +opinion and sentiment in the character of the individual himself? Is +there a fluidity of character in modern democratic societies which +contrasts not altogether favourably with the strong solid types +of old? Are Englishmen becoming less like Romans, and more like +disputatious Greeks? These and many other considerations of the same +kind are enough to secure a ready welcome for any thinker who can +light up the obscurities of the time. + +With profound respect for Sir Henry Maine's attainments, and every +desire to profit by illumination wherever it may be discerned, we +cannot clearly see how the present volume either makes the problems +more intelligible, or points the way to feasible solutions. Though +he tries, in perfect good faith, to be the dispassionate student, he +often comes very close to the polemics of the hour. The truth is +that scientific lawyers have seldom been very favourable to popular +government; and when the scientific lawyer is doubled with the Indian +bureaucrat, we are pretty sure beforehand that in such a tribunal it +will go hard with democracy. That the author extremely dislikes and +suspects the new order, he does not hide either from himself or +us. Intellectual contempt for the idolatries of the forum and the +market-place has infected him with a touch of that chagrin which +came to men like Tacitus from disbelief In the moral government of +a degenerate world. Though he strives, like Tacitus, to take up his +parable _nec amore et sine odio_, the disgust is ill concealed. There +are passages where we almost hear the drone of a dowager in the +Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was said of Tocqueville that he was an +aristocrat who accepted his defeat. Sir Henry Maine in politics is a +bureaucrat who cannot bear to think that democracy will win. He is +dangerously near the frame of mind of Scipio Emilianus, after the +movement of the Gracchi and the opening of the Roman revolution. +Scipio came to the conclusion that with whichever party he took sides, +or whatever measures a disinterested and capable statesman might +devise, he would only aggravate the evil. Sir Henry Maine would seem +to be nearly as despondent. Hence his book is fuller of apprehension +than of guidance, more plausible in alarm than wise or useful in +direction. It is exclusively critical and negative. There Is, indeed, +an admirable account of the constitution of the United States. But on +the one great question on which the constitution of the United States +might have been expected to shed light--the modification of the House +of Lords--Sir Henry Maine explicitly admits (p. 186) that it is very +difficult to obtain from the younger institution, the Senate, any +lessons which can be of use in the reconstruction of the older. At +every turn, the end of the discussion lands us in a philosophical +_cul-de-sac_, and nothing is so depressing as a _cul-de-sac_. The tone +is that of the political valetudinarian, watching with uneasy eye the +ways of rude health. Unreflecting optimism about Popular Government is +sickening, but calculated pessimism is not much better. + +Something, no doubt, may often be gained by the mere cross-examination +of catchwords and the exposure of platitudes. Popular government is +no more free from catchwords and platitudes than any other political, +religious, or social cause which interests a great many people, and is +the subject of much discussion. Even the Historical Method has its own +claptrap. But one must not make too much of these things. "In order +to love mankind," said Helvetius, "one must not expect too much from +them." And fairly to appreciate institutions you must not hold them up +against the light that blazes in Utopia; you must not expect them +to satisfy microscopic analysis, nor judge their working, which is +inevitably rough, awkward, clumsy, and second-best, by the fastidious +standards of closet logic. + +Before saying more as to the substance of the hook, we may be allowed +to notice one or two matters of literary or historical interest in +which Sir Henry Maine is certainly open to criticism. There is an old +question about Burke which was discussed by the present writer a long +time ago. A great disillusion, says Sir Henry Maine, has always seemed +to him to separate the _Thoughts on the Present Discontents_ and the +_Speech on Taxation_ from the magnificent panegyric on the British +Constitution in 1790. "Not many persons in the last century could +have divined from the previous opinions of Edmund Burke the real +substructure of his political creed, or did in fact suspect it till +it was uncovered by the early and comparatively slight miscarriage of +French revolutionary institutions." This is, as a statement of fact, +not at all correct. Lord Chatham detected what he believed to be the +mischievous Conservatism in Burke's constitutional doctrines at the +very outset. So did the Constitutional Society detect it. So did Mrs. +Macaulay, Bishop Watson, and many other people. The story of Burke's +inconsistency is, of course, as old as Sheridan. Hazlitt declared +that the Burke of 1770 and the Burke of 1790 were not merely opposite +persons, but deadly enemies. Mr. Buckle, who is full of veneration for +the early writings, but who dislikes the later ones, gets over the +difficulty by insisting that Burke actually went out of his mind after +1789. We should have expected a subtler judgment from Sir Henry Maine. +Burke belonged from first to last to the great historic and positive +school, of which the founder was Montesquieu. Its whole method, +principle, and sentiment, all animated him with equal force whether he +was defending the secular pomps of Oude or the sanctity of Benares, +the absolutism of Versailles, or the free and ancient Parliament at +Westminster.[1] + +[Footnote 1: It is satisfactory to have the authority of Mr. Lecky on +the same side. _England in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. iii. chap. +ix. p. 209.] + +Versailles reminds us of a singular overstatement by Sir Henry Maine +of the blindness of the privileged classes in France to the approach +of the Revolution. He speaks as if Lord Chesterfield's famous passage +were the only anticipation of the coming danger. There is at least one +utterance of Louis XV. himself, which shows that he did not expect +things to last much beyond his time. D'Argenson, in the very year of +Chesterfield's prophecy, pronounced that a revolution was inevitable, +and he even went so close to the mark as to hint that it would arise +on the first occasion when it should be necessary to convoke the +States General. Rousseau, in a page of the _Confessions_, not only +divined a speedy revolution, but enumerated the operative causes of it +with real precision. There Is a striking prediction In Voltaire, and +another in Mercier de la Riviere. Other names might be quoted to +the same effect, including Maria Theresa, who described the ruined +condition of the French monarchy, and only hoped that the ruin might +not overtake her daughter. The mischief was not so much that the +privileged classes were blind as that they were selfish, stubborn, +helpless, and reckless. The point is not very important in itself, +but it is characteristic of a very questionable way of reading human +history. Sir Henry Maine's readiness to treat revolutions as due to +erroneous abstract ideas naturally inclines him to take too narrow a +view both of the preparation in circumstances, and of the preparation +in the minds of observant onlookers. + +In passing, by the way, we are curious to know the writer's authority +for what he calls the odd circumstance that the Jacobins generally +borrowed their phrases from the legendary history of the early Roman +Republic, while the Girondins preferred to take metaphors from the +literature of Rousseau (p. 75). There was plenty of nonsense talked +about Brutus and Scaevola by both parties, and It Is not possible +to draw the line with precision. But the received view Is that the +Girondins were Voltairean, and the Jacobins Rousseauite, while Danton +was of the school of the Encyclopaedia, and Hebert and Chaumette were +inspired by Holbach. + +The author seems to us greatly to exaggerate the whole position of +Rousseau, and even in a certain sense to mistake the nature of his +influence. That Jean-Jacques was a far-reaching and important voice +the present writer is not at all likely to deny; but no estimate of +his influence in the world is correct which does not treat him rather +as moralist than publicist. _Emilius_ went deeper into men's minds in +France and in Europe at large, and did more to quicken the democratic +spirit, than the _Social Contract_ Apart from this, Sir Henry Maine +places Rousseau on an isolated eminence which does not really belong +to him. It did not fall within the limited scope of such an essay as +Sir Henry Maine's to trace the leading ideas of the _Social Contract_ +to the various sources from which they had come, but his account +of these sources is, even for its scale, inadequate. Portions of +Rousseau's ideas, he says truly, may be discovered in the speculations +of older writers; and he mentions Hobbes and the French Economists. +But the most characteristic of all the elements in Rousseau's +speculation were drawn from Locke. The theoretic basis of popular +government Is to be found in more or less definite shape in various +authors from Thomas Aquinas downwards. But it was Locke's philosophic +vindication of the Revolution of 1688, in the famous essay on +Civil Government, that directly taught Rousseau the lesson of the +Sovereignty of the People. Such originality as the _Social Contract_ +possesses is due to its remarkable union of the influence of the two +antagonistic English Thinkers. The differences between Hobbes and +Rousseau were striking enough. Rousseau looked on men as good, Hobbes +looked on them as bad. The one described the state of nature as a +state of peace, the other as a state of war. The first believed that +laws and institutions had depraved man, the second that they had +improved him. In spite of these differences the influence of Hobbes +was important, but only important in combination. "The total result +is," as I have said elsewhere, "a curious fusion between the premises +and the temper of Hobbes, and the conclusions of Locke. This fusion +produced that popular absolutism of which the _Social Contract_ was +the theoretical expression, and Jacobin supremacy the practical +manifestation. Rousseau borrowed from Hobbes the true conception of +sovereignty, and from Locke the true conception of the ultimate seat +and original of authority, and of the two together he made the great +image of the Sovereign People. Strike the crowned head from that +monstrous figure which is the frontispiece of the _Leviathan_, and +you have a frontispiece that will do excellently well for the _Social +Contract_."[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Rousseau_, chap. xii.] + +One more word may be said by the way. The very slightest account of +Rousseau is too slight to be tolerable, if it omits to mention Calvin. +Rousseau's whole theory of the Legislator, which produced such +striking results in certain transitory phases of the French +Revolution, grew up in his mind from the constitution which the great +reformer had so predominant a share in framing for the little republic +where Rousseau was born. + +This omission of Locke and Calvin again exemplifies the author's +characteristic tendency to look upon political ideas as if speculative +writers got them out of their own heads, or out of the heads of other +people, apart from the suggestions of events and the requirements of +circumstance, Calvin was the builder of a working government, and +Locke was the defender of a practical revolution. + +Nor does the error stop at the literary sources of political theories. +A point more or less in an estimate of a writer or a book is of +trivial importance compared with what strikes us as Sir Henry +Maine's tendency to impute an unreal influence to writers and books +altogether. There is, no doubt, a vulgar and superficial opinion that +mere speculation is so remote from the real interests of men, that it +is a waste of time for practical people to concern themselves about +speculation. No view could be more foolish, save one; and that one is +the opposite view, that the real interests of men have no influence +on their speculative opinions, and no share either in moulding those +opinions or in causing their adoption. Sir Henry Maine does not push +things quite so far as this. Still he appears to us to attribute +almost exclusive influence to political theories, and almost entirely +to omit what we take to be the much more important reaction upon +theory, both of human nature, and of the experience of human life and +outward affairs. He makes no allowance among innovating agencies for +native rationalism without a formula. His brilliant success in other +applications of the Historic Method has disposed him to see survivals +where other observers will be content with simpler explanations. +The reader is sometimes tempted to recall Edie Ochiltree's rude +interruption of Mr. Oldbuck's enthusiasm over the praetorium of the +Immortal Roman camp at Monkbarns. "Praetorian here, Praetorian there! +I mind the bigging o 't!" + +Sir Henry Maine believes that the air is thick with ideas about +democracy that were conceived _a priori_, and that sprung from the +teaching of Rousseau. A conviction of the advantages of legislative +change, for example, he considers to owe its origin much less to +active and original intelligence, than to "the remote effect of words +and notions derived from broken-down political theories." There are +two great fountains of political theory in our country according to +the author: Rousseau is one, and Bentham is the other. Current +thought and speech Is infested by the floating fragments of these two +systems--by loose phrases, by vague notions, by superstitions, that +enervate the human intellect and endanger social safety. This is the +constant refrain of the pages before us. We should have liked better +evidence. We do not believe that it is a Roman praetorium. Men often +pick up old phrases for new events, even when they are judging events +afresh with independent minds. When a politician of the day speaks of +natural rights, he uses a loose traditional expression for a view of +social equities which has come to him, not from a book, but from a +survey of certain existing social facts. Now the phrase, the literary +description, is the least significant part of the matter. When Mr. +Mill talks of the influence of Bentham's writings, he is careful to +tell us that he does not mean that they caused the Reform Bill or the +Appropriation Clause. "The changes which have been made," says Mill, +"and the greater changes which will be made, in our institutions are +not the work of philosophers, but of the interests and instincts +of large portions of society recently grown into strength" +_(Dissertations_, i. 332). That is the point. It is the action of +these interests and instincts which Sir Henry Maine habitually +overlooks. For is the omission a mere speculative imperfection. It has +an important bearing on the whole practical drift of the book. If he +had made more room for "the common intellect rough-hewing political +truths at the suggestion of common wants and common experience," +he would have viewed existing circumstances with a less lively +apprehension. + +It is easy to find an apposite illustration of what is meant by +saying that this talk of the influence of speculation is enormously +exaggerated and misleading. When Arthur Young was in France in the +autumn of 1787, he noticed a remarkable revolution in manners in two +or three important respects. One of them was a new fashion that had +just come in, of spending some weeks in the country: everybody who had +a country seat went to live there, and such as had none went to visit +those who had. This new custom, observed the admirable Young, is one +of the best that they have taken from England, and "its introduction +was effected the easier being assisted by the magic of Rousseau's +writings." The other and more generally known change was that women +of the first fashion were no longer ashamed of nursing their own +children, and that infants were no longer tightly bound round by +barbarous stays and swaddling clothes. This wholesome change, too, +was assisted by Rousseau's eloquent pleas for simplicity and the life +natural. Of these particular results of his teaching in France a +hundred years ago the evidence is ample, direct, and beyond denial. +But whenever we find gentlemen with a taste for country life, and +ladies with a fancy for nursing their own children, we surely need not +cry out that here is another proof of the extraordinary influence of +the speculations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We need not treat it as a +survival of a broken-down theory. "Great Nature is more wise than I," +says the Poet. Great Nature had much more to do with moulding men and +women to these things than all the books that have ever been printed. + +We are entirely sceptical as to the proposition that "men have at all +times quarrelled more fiercely about phrases and formulas than even +about material interests" (p. 124). There has been a certain amount of +fighting in the world about mere words, as idle as the faction fights +between Caravats and Shanavests, or Two-Year-Olds and Three-Year-Olds +in Ireland. But the more carefully we look into human history, the +more apparent it becomes that underneath the phrase or the formula +there is usually a material or a quasi-material, or a political, or +a national, or an ecclesiastical interest. Few quarrels now seem so +purely verbal as those which for several centuries raged about the +mysteries of the faith in the Western and the Eastern Churches. Yet +these quarrels, apparently as frivolous as they were ferocious, +about the relations of mind and matter, about the composition of +the Trinity, about the Divine nature, turned much less on futile +metaphysics than on the solid competition for ecclesiastical power, or +the conflict of rival nationalities. The most transcendental heresy or +orthodoxy generally had business at the bottom of it. + +In limiting the parentage of Modern English Liberalism of a Radical or +democratic type to Rousseau and Bentham, the author has left out +of sight what is assuredly a much more important factor than any +speculative, literary, or philosophic matter whatever. "Englishmen," +he says truly, "are wont to be content with the rough rule of success +or failure as the test of right or wrong in national undertakings." +The same habit of mind and temper marks the attitude of Englishmen +towards their national institutions. They look to success and failure, +they take the measure of things from results, they consult the +practical working of the machine, they will only go to school with +experience. We cannot find the proof that _a priori_ Radicalism ever +at any time got a real hold of any considerable mass of the people of +this country, or that any of the great innovations in domestic policy +since the end of Lord Liverpool's administration have been inspired +or guided by Rousseauite assumptions. Godwin, whose book on Political +Justice was for a long time the great literary fountain of English +Radicalism, owed quite as much to the utilitarian Helvetius as to the +sentimental Rousseau. Nor can either William Cobbett or Joseph Hume be +said to have dealt largely in _a priori_. What makes the Radical of +the street is mostly mother-wit exercising itself upon the facts of +the time. His weakness is that he does not know enough of the facts of +other times. + +Sir Henry Maine himself points to what has had a far more decisive +influence on English ways of thinking about politics than his two +philosophers, put together. "The American Republic," he says (p. 11), +"has greatly influenced the favour into which popular government grew. +It disproved the once universal assumptions that no Republic could +govern a large territory, and that no strictly Republican government +could be stable." Nothing can be more true. When Burke and Chatham +and Fox persistently declared that the victory of England over the +colonists would prove fatal in the long run to the liberties of +England itself, those great men were even wiser than they knew. +The success of popular government across the Atlantic has been the +strongest incentive to the extension of popular government here. +We need go no further back than the Reform Bill of 1867 to remind +ourselves that the victory of the North over the South, and the +extraordinary clemency and good sense with which that victory +was used, had more to do with the concession of the franchise to +householders in boroughs than all the eloquence of Mr. Gladstone and +all the diplomacies of Mr. Disraeli. + +To the influence of the American Union must be added that of the +British colonies. The success of popular self-government in these +thriving communities is reacting on political opinion at home with a +force that no statesman neglects, and that is every day increasing. +There is even a danger that the influence may go too far. They are +solving some of our problems, but not under our conditions, and not +in presence of the same difficulties. Still the effect of colonial +prosperity--a prosperity alike of admirable achievement and boundless +promise--is irresistible. It imparts a freedom, an elasticity, an +expansiveness, to English political notions, and gives our people a +confidence in free institutions and popular government, which +they would never have drawn from the most eloquent assumptions of +speculative system-mongers, nor from any other source whatever, save +practical experience carefully observed and rationally interpreted. +This native and independent rationality in men is what the jealous +votary of the historic method places far too low. + +In coming closer to the main current of the book, our first +disappointment is that Sir Henry Maine has not been very careful to +do full justice to the views that he criticises. He is not altogether +above lending himself to the hearsay of the partisan. He allows +expressions to slip from him which show that he has not been anxious +to face the problems of popular government as popular government is +understood by those who have best right to speak for it. "The more +the difficulties of multitudinous government are probed," he says (p. +180), "the stronger grows the doubt of the infallibility of popularly +elected legislatures." We do not profess to answer for all that may +have been said by Mr. Bancroft, or Walt Whitman, or all the orators of +all the Fourths of July since American Independence. But we are not +acquainted with any English writer or politician of the very slightest +consideration or responsibility who has committed himself to the +astounding proposition, that popularly elected legislatures are +infallible. Who has ever advanced such a doctrine? Further, "It +requires some attention to facts to see how widely spread is the +misgiving as to the absolute wisdom of popularly elected chambers." We +are not surprised at the misgiving. But after reasonable attention to +facts, we cannot recall any publicist, whom it could be worth while +to spend five minutes in refuting, who has ever said that popularly +elected chambers are absolutely wise. Again, we should like the +evidence for the statement that popularly elected Houses "do not +nowadays appeal to the wise deduction from experience, as old as +Aristotle, which no student of constitutional history will deny, that +the best constitutions are those in which there is a large popular +element. It is a singular proof of the widespread influence of the +speculations of Rousseau that although very few First Chambers really +represent the entire community, nevertheless in Europe they almost +invariably claim to reflect it, and as a consequence they assume an +air of divinity, which if it rightfully belonged to them would be +fatal to all argument for a Second Chamber." That would be very +important If it were true. But is it true that First Chambers assume +an air of divinity? Or is such an expression a "burlesque of the real +argument?" A reasonable familiarity with the course of the controversy +in France, where the discussion has been abundant, and in England, +where it has been comparatively meagre, leaves me, for one, entirely +ignorant that this claim for divinity, or anything like it, is ever +heard in the debate. The most powerful modern champion of popular +government was Gambetta. Did Gambetta consider First Chambers divine? +On the contrary, some of the most strenuous pleas for the necessity of +a Second Chamber are to be found precisely in the speeches of Gambetta +(_e.g._ his speech at Grenoble, in the autumn of 1878, _Discours_ +viii. 270, etc.). Abstract thinking is thinking withdrawn from the +concrete and particular facts. But the abstract thinker should not +withdraw too far. + +Sir Henry Maine speaks (p. 185) of "the saner political theorist, who +holds that in secular matters it is better to walk by sight than by +faith." He allows that a theorist of this kind, as regards popularly +elected chambers, "will be satisfied that experience has shown the +best Constitutions to be those in which the popular element is large, +and he will readily admit that, as the structure of each society of +men slowly alters, it is well to alter and amend the organisation by +which this element makes itself felt." Sir Henry Maine would surely +have done better service in this grave and difficult discussion, if he +had dealt with views which he mistrusts, as they are really held and +expressed by sane theorists, and not by insane theorists out of sight. +In France, a hundred years ago, from causes that are capable of +explanation, the democracy of sentiment swept away the democracy of +utility. In spite of casual phrases in public discussion, and in spite +of the incendiary trash of Red journalists without influence, it is +the democracy of reason, experience, and utility that is now in the +ascendant, both in France and elsewhere. + +The same spirit of what we must call parody is shown in such a +statement as that (p. 78) "an audience composed of roughs or clowns is +boldly told by an educated man that it has more political information +than an equal number of scholars." By "roughs" Sir Henry Maine +explains that he means the artisans of the towns. The designation is +hardly felicitous. It is not even fashionable; for the roughs and +clowns are now by common consent of Tories and Liberals alike +transformed into capable citizens. Such a phrase gives us a painful +glimpse of the accurate knowledge of their countrymen that is +possessed by eminent men who write about them from the dim and distant +seclusion of college libraries and official bureaux. If Sir Henry +Maine could spare a few evenings from dispassionate meditations on +popular government in the abstract, to the inspection of the governing +people in the concrete, he would be the first to see that to dispatch +an audience of skilled artisans as an assembly of roughs is as +unscientific, to use the mildest word, as the habit in a certain +religious world of lumping all the unconverted races of the earth +in every clime and age in the summary phrase, the heathen. A great +meeting of artisans listening to Mr. Arthur Balfour or Sir Henry +Roscoe at Manchester, to Sir Lyon Playfair at Leeds (the modern +democrat, at any rate, does not think the Republic has no need of +chemists), or to anybody else in a great industrial centre anywhere +else, is no more an assemblage of roughs than Convocation or the +House of Lords. Decidedly, an enemy of the unverified assumptions of +democracy ought to be on his guard against the unverified assumptions +of pedantocracy. + +As for the particular bit of sycophancy which educated men wickedly +dangle before roughs and clowns, we should like to be sure that the +proposition is correctly reported. If the educated man tells his +roughs (if that be the right name for the most skilful, industrious, +and effective handicraftsmen in the world) that they have as much +of the information necessary for shaping a sound judgment on the +political issues submitted to them, as an equal number of average +Masters of Arts and Doctors of Laws, then we should say that the +educated man, unless he has been very unlucky with his audience, is +perfectly right. He proves that his education has not confined itself +to books, bureaux, and an exclusive society, but has been carried on +in the bracing air of common life. I will not add anything of my +own on this point, because any candidate or member of Parliament +is suspect, but I will venture to transcribe a page or so from Mr. +Frederic Harrison. Mr. Harrison's intellectual equipment is not +inferior to that of Sir Henry Maine himself; and he has long had close +and responsible contact with the class of men of whom he is speaking, +which cannot be quite a disqualification after all. + + "No worse nonsense is talked than what we are told as to the + requisites for the elective franchise. To listen to some people, + it is almost as solemn a function as to be a trustee of the + British Museum. What you want in a body of electors is a rough, + shrewd eye for men of character, honesty, and purpose. Very plain + men know who wish them well, and the sort of thing which will + bring them good. Electors have not got to govern the country; they + have only to find a set of men who will see that the Government is + just and active.... All things go best by comparison, and a body + of men may be as good voters as their neighbours without basing + the type of the Christian hero. + + "So far from, being the least fit for political influence of all + classes in the community, the best part of the working class forms + the most fit of all others. If any section of the people is to + be the paramount arbiter in public affairs, the only section + competent for this duty is the superior order of workmen. + Governing is one thing; but electors of any class cannot or ought + not to govern. Electing, or the giving an indirect approval + of Government, is another thing, and demands wholly different + qualities. These are moral, not intellectual; practical, not + special gifts--gifts of a very plain and almost universal order. + Such are, firstly, social sympathies and sense of justice; then + openness and plainness of character; lastly, habits of action, and + a practical knowledge of social misery. These are the qualities + which fit men to be the arbiters or ultimate source (though + certainly not the instruments) of political power. These qualities + the best working men possess in a far higher degree than any other + portion of the community; indeed, they are almost the only part of + the community which possesses them in any perceptible degree."[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Order and Progress_, pp. 149-54, and again at p. 174.] + +The worst of it is that, if Sir Henry Maine is right, we have no more +to hope from other classes than from roughs and clowns. He can discern +no blue sky in any quarter. "In politics," he says, "the most +powerful of all causes is the timidity, the listlessness, and the +superficiality of the generality of minds" (p. 73). This is carrying +criticism of democracy into an indictment against human nature. What +is to become of us, thus placed between the devil of mob ignorance +and corruption, and the deep sea of genteel listlessness and +superficiality? After all, Sir Henry Maine is only repeating in more +sober tones the querulous remonstrances with which we are so familiar +on the lips of Ultramontanes and Legitimists. A less timid observer of +contemporary events, certainly in the land that all of us know best +and love best, would judge that, when it comes to a pinch, Liberals +are still passably prudent, and Conservatives quite sufficiently +wide-awake. + +Another of the passages in Sir Henry Maine's book, that savours rather +of the party caricaturist than of the "dispassionate student of +politics," is the following:-- + + "There is some resemblance between the period of political reform + in the nineteenth century and the period of religious reformation + in the sixteenth. Now as then the multitude of followers must be + distinguished from the smaller group of leaders. Now as then + there are a certain number of zealots who desire that truth shall + prevail.... But behind these, now as then, there is a crowd which + has imbibed a delight in change for its own sake, who would reform + the Suffrage, or the House of Lords, or the Land Laws, or the + Union with Ireland, in precisely the same spirit in which the mob + behind the reformers of religion broke the nose of a saint in + stone, made a bonfire of copes and surplices, or shouted for the + government of the Church by presbyteries" (p. 130). + +We should wish to look at this remarkable picture a little more +closely. That there exist Anabaptists in the varied hosts of the +English reformers is true. The feats of the Social Democrats, however, +at the recent election hardly convince us that they have very +formidable multitudes behind them. Nor is it they who concern +themselves with such innovations as those which Sir Henry Maine +specifies. The Social Democrats, even of the least red shade, go a +long way beyond and below such trifles as Suffrage or the Upper House. +To say of the crowd who do concern themselves with reform of the +Suffrage, or the Land Laws, or the House of Lords, or the Union with +Ireland, that they are animated by a delight in change for its own +sake, apart from the respectable desire to apply a practical remedy to +a practical inconvenience, is to show a rather highflying disregard +of easily ascertainable facts. The Crowd listen with interest to talk +about altering the Land Laws, because they suspect the English land +system to have something to do with the unprosperous condition of the +landlord, the farmer, and the labourer; with the depopulation of the +country and the congestion in the towns; with the bad housing of the +poor, and with various other evils which they suppose themselves to +see staring them daily in the face. They may be entirely mistaken +alike In their estimate of mischief and their hope of mitigation. But +they are not moved by delight in change for its own sake. When the +Crowd sympathises with disapproval of the House of Lords, it is +because the legislative performances of that body are believed to have +impeded useful reforms in the past, to be impeding them now, and to be +likely to impede them in the future. This may be a sad misreading +of the history of the last fifty years, and a painfully prejudiced +anticipation of the next fifty. At any rate, it is in intention a +solid and practical appeal to experience and results, and has no +affinity to a restless love of change for the sake of change. No +doubt, in the progress of the controversy, the assailants of the House +of Lords attack the principle of birth. But the principle of birth is +not attacked from the _a priori_ point of view. The whole force of +the attack lies in what is taken to be the attested fact that the +principle of a hereditary chamber supervising an elective chamber has +worked, is working, and will go on working, inconveniently, stupidly, +and dangerously. Finally, there is the question of the Irish Union. Is +it the English or Scottish Crowd that is charged with a wanton desire +to recast the Union? Nobody knows much about the matter who is not +perfectly aware that the English statesman, whoever he may be, who +undertakes the inevitable task of dealing with the demand for Home +Rule, will have to make his case very plain indeed in order to make +the cause popular here. Then is it the Irish Crowd? Sir Henry Maine, +of all men, is not likely to believe that a sentiment which the wisest +people of all parties in Ireland for a hundred years have known to lie +in the depths of the mind of the great bulk of the Irish population, +to whom we have now for the first time given the chance of declaring +their wishes, is no more than a gratuitous and superficial passion for +change for its own sake. The sentiment of Irish nationality may or may +not be able to justify itself in the eye of prudential reason, and +English statesmen may or may not have been wise in inviting it to +explode. Those are different questions. But Sir Henry Maine himself +admits in another connection (p. 83) that "vague and shadowy as are +the recommendations of what is called a Nationality, a State founded +on this principle has generally one real practical advantage, through +its obliteration of small tyrannies and local oppressions." It is not +to be denied that it is exactly the expectation of this very practical +advantage that has given its new vitality to the Irish National +movement which seems now once more, for good or for evil, to have +come to a head. When it is looked into, then, the case against the +multitudes who are as senselessly eager to change institutions as +other multitudes once were to break off the noses of saints in stone, +falls to pieces at every point. + +Among other vices ascribed to democracy, we are told that it is +against science, and that "even in our day vaccination is in the +utmost danger" (p. 98). The instance is for various reasons not a +happy one. It is not even precisely stated. I have never understood +that vaccination is in much danger. Compulsory vaccination is perhaps +in danger. But compulsion, as a matter of fact, was strengthened as +the franchise went lower. It is a comparative novelty in English +legislation (1853), and as a piece of effectively enforced +administration it is more novel still (1871). I admit, however, that +it is not endured in the United States; and only two or three years +ago it was rejected by an overwhelming majority on an appeal to the +popular vote in the Swiss Confederation. Obligatory vaccination may +therefore one day disappear from our statute book, if democracy has +anything to do with it. But then the obligation to practise a medical +rite may be inexpedient, in spite of the virtues of the rite itself. +That is not all. Sir Henry Maine will admit that Mr. Herbert Spencer +is not against science, and he expresses in the present volume his +admiration for Mr. Spencer's work on _Man and the State_. Mr. Spencer +is the resolute opponent of compulsory vaccination, and a resolute +denier, moreover, of the pretension that the evidence for the +advantages of vaccination takes such account of the ulterior effects +in the system as to amount to a scientific demonstration. Therefore, +if science demands compulsory vaccination, democracy in rejecting the +demand, and even if it went further, is at least kept in countenance +by some of those who are of the very household of science. The +illustration is hardly impressive enough for the proposition that it +supports. + +Another and a far more momentous illustration occurs on another page +(37). A very little consideration is enough to show that it will by +no means bear Sir Henry Maine's construction. "There is, in fact," he +says, "just enough evidence to show that even now there is a marked +antagonism between democratic opinion and scientific truth as applied +to human societies. The central seat in all Political Economy was from +the first occupied by the theory of Population. This theory ... has +become the central truth of biological science. Yet it is evidently +disliked by the multitude and those whom the multitude permits to lead +it." + +Sir Henry Maine goes on to say that it has long been intensely +unpopular in France, and this, I confess, is a surprise to me. It has +usually been supposed that a prudential limitation of families is +rooted in the minds and habits of nearly, though not quite, all +classes of the French nation. An excellent work on France, written by +a sound English observer seven or eight years ago, chances to be lying +before me at the moment, and here is a passage taken almost at random. +"The opinions of thoughtful men seem to tend towards the wish to +introduce into France some of that improvidence which allows English +people to bring large families into the world without first securing +the means of keeping them, and which has peopled the continent of +North America and the Australian colonies with an English-speaking +race" (Richardson's _Corn and Cattle Producing Districts of France_, +p. 47, etc.). Surely this is a well-established fact. It is possible +that denunciations of Malthus may occasionally be found both in +Clerical and Socialistic prints, but then there are reasons for that. +It can hardly be made much of a charge against French democracy that +it tolerates unscientific opinion, so long as it cultivates scientific +practice. + +As for our own country, and those whom the multitude permits to lead +it, we cannot forget that by far the most popular and powerful man _in +faece Romuli_--as Sir Henry Maine insists on our putting it in that +polite way--was tried and condemned not many years ago for publishing +a certain pamphlet which made a limitation of population the very +starting-point of social reform. It is not necessary to pronounce an +opinion on the particular counsels of the pamphlet, but the motives +which prompted its circulation (motives admitted to be respectable by +the Chief-Justice who tried the case), and the extraordinary reception +of the pamphlet by the serious portion of the workmen of the towns, +would make a careful writer think twice before feeling sure that +popular bodies will never listen to the truth about population. No +doubt, as Sir Henry Maine says in the same place, certain classes now +resist schemes for relieving distress by emigration. But there is a +pretty obvious reason for that. That reason is not mere aversion +to face the common sense of the relations between population and +subsistence, but a growing suspicion--as to the reasonableness of +which, again, I give no opinion--that emigration is made into an easy +and slovenly substitute for a scientific reform in our system of +holding and using land. In the case of Ireland, other political +considerations must be added. + +Democracy will be against science, we admit, in one contingency: if +it loses the battle with the Ultramontane Church. The worst enemy +of science is also the bitterest enemy of democracy, _c'est le +clericalisme_. The interests of science and the interests of democracy +are one. Let us take a case. Suppose that popular Government in France +were to succumb, a military or any other more popular Government would +be forced to lean on Ultramontanes. Ultramontanes would gather the +spoils of democratic defeat. Sir Henry Maine is much too well informed +to think that a clerical triumph would be good for science, whatever +else it might be good for. Then are not propositions about democracy +being against science very idle and a little untrue? "Modern +politics," said a wise man (Pattison, _Sermons_, p. 191) "resolve +themselves into the struggle between knowledge and tradition." +Democracy is hardly on the side of tradition. + +We have dwelt on these secondary matters, because they show that +the author hardly brings to the study of modern democracy the ripe +preparation of detail which he gave to ancient law. In the larger +field of his speculation, the value of his thought is seriously +impaired by the absence of anything like a philosophy of society as a +whole. Nobody who has studied Burke, or Comte, or Mill--I am not sure +whether we should not add even De Maistre--can imagine any of them as +setting to work on a general political speculation without reference +to particular social conditions. They would have conducted the inquiry +in strict relation to the stage at which a community happened to be, +in matters lying outside of the direct scope of political government. +So, before all other living thinkers, should we have expected Sir +Henry Maine to do. It is obvious that systems of government, called +by the same name, bearing the same superficial marks, founded and +maintained on the same nominal principles, framed in the same verbal +forms, may yet work with infinite diversity of operation, according +to the variety of social circumstances around them. Yet it is here +inferred that democracy in England must be fragile, difficult, and +sundry other evil things, because out of fourteen Presidents of the +Bolivian Republic thirteen have died assassinated or in exile. If +England and Bolivia were at all akin in history, religion, race, +industry, the fate of Bolivian Presidents would be more instructive to +English Premiers. + +One of the propositions which Sir Henry Maine is most anxious to bring +home to his readers is that Democracy, in the extreme form to which +it tends, is of all kinds of government by far the most difficult. +He even goes so far as to say (p. 87) that, while not denying to +Democracies some portion of the advantage which Bentham claimed for +them, and "putting this advantage at the highest, it is _more than +compensated_ by one great disadvantage," namely, its difficulty. This +generalisation is repeated with an emphasis that surprises us, for two +reasons. In the first place, if the proposition could be proved to be +true, we fail to see that it would be particularly effective in its +practical bearings. Everybody whose opinions are worth consideration, +and everybody who has ever come near the machinery of democratic +government, is only too well aware that whether it be far the most +difficult form of government or not, it is certainly difficult enough +to tax the powers of statesmanship to the very uttermost. Is not that +enough? Is anything gained by pressing us further than that? "Better +be a poor fisherman," said Danton as he walked in the last hours of +his life on the banks of the Aube, "better be a poor fisherman, than +meddle with the governing of men." We wonder whether there has been +a single democratic leader either in France or England who has not +incessantly felt the full force of Danton's ejaculation. There may, +indeed, be simpletons in the political world who dream that if only +the system of government were made still more popular, all would be +plain sailing. But then Sir Henry Maine is not the man to write for +simpletons. + +The first reason, then, for surprise at the immense stress laid by the +author on the proposition about the difficulty of popular government +is that it would not be of the first order of importance if it were +true. Our second reason is that it cannot be shown to be true. +You cannot measure the relative difficulty of diverse systems of +government. Governments are things of far too great complexity for +precise quantification of this sort. Will anybody, for example, read +through the second volume of the excellent work of M. Leroy-Beaulieu +on the Empire of the Czars (1882), and then be prepared to maintain +that democracy is more difficult than autocracy? It would be +interesting, too, to know whether the Prince on whose shoulders +will one day be laid the burden of the German Empire will read the +dissertation on the unparalleled difficulties of democracy with +acquiescence. There are many questions, of which the terms are no +sooner stated than we at once see that a certain and definite answer +to them is impossible. The controversy as to the relative fragility, +or the relative difficulty, of popular government and other forms of +government, appears to be a controversy of this kind. We cannot decide +it until we have weighed, measured, sifted, and tested a great mass of +heterogeneous facts; and then, supposing the process to have been +ever so skilfully and laboriously performed, no proposition could be +established as the outcome, that would be an adequate reward for the +pains of the operation. + +This, we venture to think, must be pronounced a grave drawback to the +value of the author's present speculation. He attaches an altogether +excessive and unscientific importance to form. It would be +unreasonable to deny to a writer on democracy as a form of government +the right of isolating his phenomenon. But it is much more +unreasonable to predicate fragility, difficulty, or anything else of a +particular form of government, without reference to other conditions +which happen to go along with it in a given society at a given time. +None of the properties of popular government are independent of +surrounding circumstances, social, economic, religious, and historic. +All the conditions are bound up together in a closely interdependent +connection, and are not secondary to, or derivative from, the mere +form of government. It is, if not impossible, at least highly unsafe +to draw inferences about forms of government in universals. + +No writer seems to us to approach Machiavelli in the acuteness with +which he pushes behind mere political names, and passes on to the real +differences that may exist in movements and institutions that are +covered by the same designation. Nothing in its own way can be more +admirable, for instance, than his reflections on the differences +between democracy at Florence and democracy in old Rome--how the first +began in great inequality of conditions, and ended in great equality, +while the process was reversed in the second; how at Rome the people +and the nobles shared power and office, while at Florence the victors +crushed and ruined their adversaries; how at Rome the people, by +common service with the nobles, acquired some of their virtues, while +at Florence the nobles were forced down to seem, as well as to be, +like the common people (_Istorie Fiorentine_, bk. iii). + +This is only an example of the distinctions and qualifications which +it is necessary to introduce before we can prudently affirm or deny +anything about political institutions in general terms. Who would +deny that both the stability and the degree of difficulty of popular +government are closely connected in the United States with the +abundance of accessible land? Who would deny that in Great Britain +they are closely connected with the greater or less prosperity of our +commerce and manufactures? To take another kind of illustration +from Mr. Dicey's brilliant and instructive volume on the Law of the +Constitution. The governments of England and of France are both of +them popular in form; but does not a fundamental difference in their +whole spirit and working result from the existence in one country of +the _droit administratif_, and the absolute predominance in the other +of regular law, applied by the ordinary courts, and extending equally +over all classes of citizens? Distinctions and differences of this +order go for nothing in the pages before us; yet they are vital to the +discussion. + +The same fallacious limitation, the same exclusion of the many various +causes that cooperate in the production of political results, is to be +discerned in nearly every argument. The author justly calls attention +to the extraordinary good luck which has befallen us as a nation. He +proceeds to warn us that if the desire for legislative innovation be +allowed to grow upon us at its present pace--pace assumed to be very +headlong indeed--the chances are that our luck will not last. We shall +have a disaster like Sedan, or the loss of Alsace Lorraine (p. 151). +This is a curiously narrow reading of contemporary history. Did +Austria lose Sadowa, or was the French Empire ruined at Sedan, +in consequence of the passion of either of those Governments for +legislative innovations; or must we not rather, in order to +explain these striking events, look to a large array of military, +geographical, financial, diplomatic, and dynastic considerations and +conditions? If so, what becomes of the moral? England is, no doubt, +the one great civilised power that has escaped an organic or +structural change within the last five-and-twenty years. Within that +period, the American Union, after a tremendous war, has revolutionised +the social institutions of the South, and reconstructed the +constitution. The French Empire has foundered, and a French Republic +once more bears the fortunes of a great State over troubled waters. +Germany has undergone a complete transformation; so has the Italian +peninsula. The internal and the external relations alike of the +Austrian Power are utterly different to-day from what they were twenty +years ago. Spain has passed from monarchy to republic, and back to +monarchy again, and gone from dynasty to dynasty. But what share had +legislative innovation in producing these great changes? No share at +all in any one case. What is the logic, then, of the warning that if +we persist in our taste for legislative innovation, we shall lose +our immunity from the violent changes that have overtaken other +States--changes with which legislative innovation had nothing to do? + +In short, modern societies, whether autocratic or democratic, are +passing through a great transformation, social, religious, and +political. The process is full of embarrassments, difficulties, and +perils. These are the dominant marks of our era. To set them all down +to popular government is as narrow, as confused, and as unintelligent +as the imputation in a papal Encyclical of all modern ills to +Liberalism. You cannot isolate government, and judge it apart from the +other and deeper forces of the time. Western civilisation is slowly +entering on a new stage. Form of government is the smallest part of +it. It has been well said that those nations have the best chance of +escaping a catastrophe in the obscure and uncertain march before us, +who find a way of opening the most liberal career to the aspirations +of the present, without too rudely breaking with all the traditions of +the past. This is what popular government, wisely guided, is best able +to do. + +But will wise guidance be endured? Sir Henry Maine seems to think that +it will not. Mill thought that it would. In a singularly luminous +passage in an essay which for some reason or another he never +republished, Mill says-- + + "We are the last persons to undervalue the power of moral + convictions. But the convictions of the mass of mankind run hand + in hand with their interests or their class feelings. _We have a + strong faith, stronger than either politicians or philosophers + generally have, in the influence of reason and virtue over men's + minds_; but it is in that of the reason and virtue of their own + side of the question. We expect few conversions by the mere force + of reason from one creed to the other. Men's intellects and hearts + have a large share in determining what _sort_ of Conservatives or + Liberals they will be; but it is their position (saving individual + exceptions) which makes them Conservatives or Liberals." + +This double truth points to the good grounds that exist why we should +think hopefully of popular government, and why we should be slow to +believe that it has no better foundation to build upon than the unreal +assumptions of some bad philosophers, French or others. + + + + +A FEW WORDS ON FRENCH MODELS.[1] + +[Footnote 1: March 1888.] + + Nunquamne reponam, + Vexatus toties rauci Theseide Codri? + + +Historians are only too fond of insisting on the effect of the French +Revolution in checking English reform. One of the latest of them +dwells on the fatal influence of this great event in our own country, +in checking, blighting, and distorting the natural progress of things. +But for that influence, he says, the closing years of the century +would probably have seen the abolition of the English Slave Trade, the +reform of Parliament, and the repeal of the Test Act.[1] The question +of the precise degree of vitality in sectarian pride, and of tenacity +in a great material interest, a hundred years ago or at any time, is +not very easy to settle. It is quite possible that the Slave Trade +and the Test Act might have died nearly as hard, if there had been +no French Revolution. In any case, it is a curious implication that +underlies all writing in this familiar vein, that France ought to +have gone on with a bad government, in order to secure to England the +advantages of a good one. + +[Footnote 1: Lecky, vi. 297.] + +As to one disservice, however, there can be no doubt. The French +Revolution has furnished the enemies of each successive proposal of +reform with a boundless supply of prejudicial analogies, appalling +parallels, and ugly nicknames, which are all just as conclusive with +the unwise as if they were the aptest arguments. Sydney Smith might +well put "the awful example of a neighbouring nation" among the +standing topics of the Noodle's Oration. The abolition of rotten +boroughs brought down a thousand ominous references to noyades, +fusillades, and guillotines. When Sir Robert Peel took the duty off +corn, Croker warned him with great solemnity that he was breaking up +the old interests, dividing the great families, and beginning exactly +such a castastrophe as did the Noailles and the Montmorencis in 1789. +Cobden and Bright were promiscuously likened to Baboeuf, Chaumette, +and Anacharsis Clootz. Baboeuf, it is true, was for dividing up all +property, and Chaumette was an aggressive atheist; but these were +mere _nuances_, not material to the purposes of obloquy. Robespierre, +Danton, Marat have been mercilessly trotted forth in their sanguinary +shrouds, and treated as the counterparts and precursors of worthies so +obviously and exactly like them as Mr. Beales and Mr. Odger; while +an innocent caucus for the registration of voters recalls to some +well-known writers lurid visions of the Cordeliers and the Jacobin +Club. + +A recent addition has been made to the stock of nicknames drawn from +the terrible melodrama of the last century. The Chancellor of the +Exchequer at Dublin described the present very humble writer as "the +Saint-Just of our Revolution." The description was received with +lively applause. It would be indelicate to wonder how many in a +hundred, even in that audience of the elect, had ever heard of +Saint-Just, how many in five hundred could have spelt his name, and +how many in a thousand could have told any three facts in his career. +But let us muse for a moment upon the portrait. I take down the first +picture of Saint-Just that comes to my hand, M. Taine is the artist:-- + + "Among these energetic nullities we see gradually rising _a young + monster_--with face handsome and tranquil--Saint-Just! A sort of + precocious Sulla, who at five-and-twenty suddenly springs from + the ranks, and _by force of atrocity wins his place!_ Six years + before, he began life by an act of domestic robbery: while on a + visit at his mother's, he ran away in the night with her plate and + jewels; for that he was locked up for six months. On his release, + he employed his leisure in the composition of an odious poem. Then + he flung himself head foremost into the revolution. Blood calcined + by study, a colossal pride, a conscience completely unhinged, + an imagination haunted by the bloody recollections of Rome and + Sparta, an intelligence falsified and twisted until it found + itself most at its ease in the practice of enormous paradox, + barefaced sophism, and murderous lying--all these perilous + ingredients, mixed in a furnace of concentrated ambition, boiled + and fermented long and silently in his breast." + +It is, no doubt, hard to know ourselves. One may entertain demons +unawares, and have calcined blood without being a bit the wiser. +Still, I do not find the likeness striking. It would have done just as +well to call me Nero, Torquemada, Iago, or Bluebeard. + +Whether the present writer does or does not deserve all the +compliments that history has paid to Saint-Just, is a very slight +and trivial question, with which the public will naturally not much +concern itself. But as some use is from time to time made of the +writer's imputed delinquencies to prejudice an important cause, it is +perhaps worth while to try in a page or two to give a better account +of things. It is true that he has written on revolutionists like +Robespierre, and destructive thinkers like Rousseau and Voltaire. It +is true that he believes the two latter to have been on the whole, +when all deductions are made, on the side of human progress. But what +sort of foundation in this for the inference that he "finds his models +in the heroes of the French Revolution," and "looks for his methods +in the Reign of Terror"? It would be equally logical to infer that +because I have written, not without sympathy and appreciation, of +Joseph de Maistre, I therefore find my model in a hero of the Catholic +Reaction, and look for my methods in the revived supremacy of the Holy +See over all secular and temporal authorities. It would be just +as fair to say that because I pointed out, as it was the critic's +business to do, the many admirable merits, and the important moral +influences on the society of that time, of the _New Heloisa_, +therefore I am bound to think Saint Preux a very fine fellow, +particularly fit to be a model and a hero for young Ireland. Only on +the principle that who drives fat oxen must himself be fat, can it be +held that who writes on Danton must be himself in all circumstances a +Dantonist. + +The most insignificant of literary contributions have a history and +an origin; and the history of these contributions is short and simple +enough. Carlyle with all the force of his humoristic genius had +impressed upon his generation an essentially one-sided view both of +the eighteenth century as a whole, and of the French thinkers of that +century in particular. His essay on Diderot, his lecture on Rousseau, +his chapters on Voltaire, with all their brilliance, penetration, and +incomparable satire, were the high-water mark in this country of the +literary reaction against the French school of Revolution. Everybody +knows the famous diatribes against the Bankrupt Century and all its +men and all its works. Voltaire's furies, Diderot's indigestions, +Rousseau's nauseous amours, and the odd tricks and shifts of the whole +of them and their company, offered ready material for the boisterous +horseplay of the transcendental humourist. Then the tide began to +turn. Mr. Buckle's book on the history of civilisation had something +to do with it. But it was the historical chapters in Comte's +Positive Philosophy that first opened the minds of many of us, who, +five-and-twenty years ago, were young men, to a very different +judgment of the true place of those schools in the literary and social +history of Western Europe. We learnt to perceive that though much in +the thought and the lives of the literary precursors of the Revolution +laid them fairly open to Carlyle's banter, yet banter was not all, and +even grave condemnation was not all. In essays, like mine, written +from this point of view, and with the object of trying to trim the +balance rather more correctly, it may well have been that the better +side of the thinkers concerned was sometimes unduly dwelt upon, and +their worse side unduly left in the background. It may well have been +that an impression of personal adhesion was conveyed which only very +partially existed, or even where it did not exist at all: that is a +risk of misinterpretation which it is always hard for the historical +critic to escape. There may have been a too eager tone; but to be +eager is not a very bad vice at any age under the critical forty. +There were some needlessly aggressive passages, and some sallies which +ought to have been avoided, because they gave pain to good people. +There was perhaps too much of the particular excitement of the time. +It was the date when _Essays and Reviews_ was still thought a terrible +explosive; when Bishop Colenso's arithmetical tests as to the flocks +and herds of the children of Israel were believed to be sapping not +only the inspiration of the Pentateuch but the foundations of the +Faith and the Church; and when Darwin's scientific speculations were +shaking the civilised world. Some excitement was to be pardoned in +days like those, and I am quite sure that one side needed pardon at +least as much as the other. For the substantial soundness of the +general views winch I took of the French revolutionary thinkers at +that time, I feel no apprehension; nor--some possible occasional +phrases or sentences excepted and apart--do I see the smallest reason +to shrink or to depart from any one of them. So far as one particular +reference may serve to illustrate the tenour of the whole body +of criticism, the following lines, which close my chapter on the +"Encyclopaedia," will answer the purpose as well as any others, and I +shall perhaps be excused for transcribing them:-- + + "An urgent social task lay before France and before Europe: it + could not be postponed until the thinkers had worked out a scheme + of philosophic completeness. The thinkers did not seriously make + any effort after this completeness. The Encyclopaedia was the most + serious attempt, and it did not wholly fail. As I replace in my + shelves this mountain of volumes, 'dusky and huge, enlarging on + the sight,' I have a presentiment that their pages will seldom + again be disturbed by me or by others. They served a great purpose + a hundred years ago. They are now a monumental ruin, clothed with + all the profuse associations of history. It is no Ozymandias of + Egypt, king of kings, whose wrecked shape of stone and sterile + memories we contemplate. We think rather of the grey and crumbling + walls of an ancient stronghold, reared by the endeavour of stout + hands and faithful, whence in its own day and generation a band + once went forth against barbarous hordes, to strike a blow for + humanity and truth."[1] + +[Footnote 1: Diderot, i. 247.] + +It is gratifying to find that the same view of the work of these +famous men, and of its relation to the social necessities of the time, +commends itself to Mr. Lecky, who has since gone diligently and with +a candid mind over the same ground.[1] Then where is the literary +Jacobin? + +[Footnote 1: See his vol. vi. 305 _et seq_.] + +Of course, it is easy enough to fish out a sentence or a short passage +here and there which, if taken by itself, may wear a very sinister +look, and carry the most alarming impressions. Not many days ago a +writer addressed a letter to the _Times_ which furnishes a specimen of +this kind of controversy. He gave himself the ambiguous designation of +"Catholicus"; but his style bore traces of the equivocally Catholic +climate of Munich. His aim was the lofty and magnanimous one of +importing theological prejudice into the great political dispute of +the day; in the interest, strange to say, of the Irish party who have +been for ages the relentless oppressors of the Church to which he +belongs, and who even now hate and despise it with all the virulence +of a Parisian Red. This masked assailant conveys to the mind of the +reader that I applaud and sympathise with the events of the winter of +1793, and more particularly with the odious procession of the +Goddess of Reason at Notre Dame. He says, moreover, that I have "the +effrontery to imply that the horrible massacres of the Revolution ... +were 'a very mild story compared with the atrocities of the Jews or +the crimes of Catholicism.'" No really honest and competent disputant +would have hit on "effrontery" as the note of the passage referred to, +if he had had its whole spirit and drift before him. The reader shall, +if he pleases, judge for himself. After the words just quoted, I go on +to say:-- + + "Historical recriminations, however, are not edifying. It is + perfectly fair, when Catholics talk of the atheist Terror, to + rejoin that the retainers of Anjou and Montpensier slew more men + and women on the first day of the Saint Bartholomew, than perished + in Paris through the Years I. and II. But the retort does us no + good beyond the region of dialectic. Some of the opinions of + Chaumette were full of enlightenment and hope. But it would be + far better to share the superstitious opinions of a virtuous and + benignant priest, like the Bishop in Victor Hugo's _Miserables_, + than to hold these good opinions of Chaumette, as he held them, + with a rancorous intolerance, a reckless disregard of the rights + and feelings of others, and a shallow forgetfulness of all that + great and precious part of our nature that lies out of the domain + of the logical understanding.... In every family where a mother + sought to have her child baptised, or where sons and daughters + sought to have the dying spirit of the old consoled by the last + sacrament, there sprang up a bitter enemy to the government which + had closed the churches and proscribed the priests. How could a + society whose spiritual life had been nourished in the solemn + mysticism of the Middle Ages suddenly turn to embrace a gaudy + paganism? The common self-respect of humanity was outraged by + apostate priests ... as they filed before the Convention, led by + the Archbishop of Paris, and accompanied by rude acolytes bearing + piles of the robes and the vessels of silver and gold with which + they had once served their holy office."[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Misc._ i 77-79.] + +Where is the effrontery, the search for methods in the Reign of +Terror, the applause for revolutionary models? Such inexcusable +perversion of a writer's meaning for an evanescent political +object--and a very shabby object too--is enough to make one think that +George III. knew what he was talking about, when he once delivered +himself of the saying that "Politics are a trade for a rascal, not for +a gentleman." + +Let me cite another more grotesque piece of irrelevancy with a similar +drift. Some months ago the present writer chanced to express an +opinion upon Welsh Disestablishment. Wales, at any rate, would seem to +be far enough away from _Emile, Candide_, the Law of Prairial, and the +Committee of Public Safety. The _Times_, however, instantly said[1] +that it would be affectation to express any surprise, because my +unfortunate "theories and principles, drawn from French sources +and framed on French models, all tend to the disintegration of +comprehensive political organisations and the encouragement of +arrangements based on the minor peculiarities of race or dialect." Was +there ever in the world such prodigious nonsense? What French sources, +what French models? If French models point in any one direction rather +than another, it is away from disintegration and straight towards +centralisation. Everybody knows that this is one of the most notorious +facts of French history from the days of Lewis XI. or Cardinal +Richelieu down to Napoleon Bonaparte. So far from French models +encouraging "arrangements based on the minor peculiarities of race and +dialect," France is the first great example in modern history, for +good or for evil, of a persevering process of national unification, +and the firm suppression of all provincial particularismus. This +is not only true of French political leaders in general: it is +particularly true of the Jacobin leaders. Rousseau himself, I admit, +did in one place point in the direction of confederation; but only in +the sense that for freedom on the one hand, and just administration +on the other, the unit should not be too large to admit of the +participation of the persons concerned in the management of their +own public affairs. If the Jacobins had not been overwhelmed by the +necessity of keeping out the invaders, they might have developed the +germ of truth in Rousseau's loose way of stating the expediency of +decentralisation. As it was, above all other French schools, the +Jacobins dealt most sternly with particularist pretensions. Of all +men, these supposed masters, teachers, and models of mine are least +to be called Separatists. To them more than to any other of the +revolutionary parties the great heresy of Federalism was most odious; +and if I were a faithful follower of the Jacobin model, I should +have least patience with nationalist sentiment whether in Ireland, +Scotland, or Wales, and should most rigorously insist on that +cast-iron incorporation which, as it happens, in the case of Ireland +I believe to be equally hopeless and undesirable. This explanation, +therefore, of my favour for Welsh Disestablishment is as absurdly +ignorant as it is far-fetched and irrelevant. + +[Footnote 1: Nov. 3, 1886.] + +The logical process is worth an instant's examination. The position is +no less than this,--that to attempt truly to appreciate the place and +the value in the history of thought and social movements of men who +have been a hundred years in their graves, and to sympathise with +certain sides and certain effects of their activity under the peculiar +circumstances in which French society then found itself, is the same +thing as binding yourself to apply their theories and to imitate their +activity, under an entirely heterogeneous set of circumstances, in +a different country, and in a society with wholly dissimilar +requirements. That is the argument if we straighten it out. The +childishness of any such contention is so obvious, that I should be +ashamed of reproducing it, were it not that this very contention has +made its appearance at my expense several times a month for the last +two years in all sorts of important and respectable prints. + +For instance, it appears that I once said somewhere that Danton +looked on at the doings of his bloodier associates with "sombre +acquiescence." _Argal_, it was promptly pointed out--and I espy the +dark phrase constantly adorning leading articles to this day--the man +who said that Danton sombrely acquiesced in the doings of Billaud, +Collet, and the rest, must of necessity, being of a firm and logical +mind, himself sombrely acquiesce in moonlighting and cattle-houghing +in Ireland. Apart from the curious compulsion of the reasoning, +what is the actual state of the case? Acquiescence is hardly a good +description of the mood of a politician who scorns delights and lives +laborious days in actively fighting for a vigorous policy and an +effective plan which, as he believes, would found order in Ireland +on a new and more hopeful base. He may be wrong, but where is the +acquiescence, whether sombre or serene? + +The equally misplaced name of Fatalism is sometimes substituted for +acquiescence, in criticisms of this stamp. In any such sense anybody +is a fatalist who believes in a relation between cause and effect. +If it is fatalism to assume that, given a certain chain of social or +political antecedents, they will inevitably be followed by a certain +chain of consequences, then every sensible observer of any series of +events is a fatalist. Catholic Emancipation, the extension of the +franchise, and secret ballot, have within the last sixty years +completely shifted the balance of political power in Ireland. Land +legislation has revolutionised the conditions of ownership. These vast +and vital changes in Ireland have been accompanied by the transfer of +decisive power from aristocracy to numbers in Great Britain, and Great +Britain is arbiter. Is it fatalism, or is it common sense, to perceive +that one new effect of new causes so potent must be the necessity +of changing the system of Irish government? To dream that you could +destroy the power of the old masters without finding new, and that +having invited the nation to speak you could continue to ignore the +national sentiment was and is the very height of political folly, and +the longer the dream is persisted in the ruder will be the awakening. +Surely the stupidest fatalism is far more truly to be ascribed to +those who insist that Ireland was eternally predestined to turmoil, +confusion, and torment; that there alone the event defies calculation; +and that, however wisely, carefully and providently you modify or +extinguish causes, in Ireland, though nowhere else, effects will still +survive with shape unaltered and force unabated. + +No author has a right to assume that anybody has read all his books or +any of them, but he may reasonably claim that he shall not be publicly +classified, labelled, catalogued, and placed In the shelves, on the +strength of half of his work, and that half arbitrarily selected. If +it be permitted to me without excess of egotism to name the masters to +whom I went to school in the days of early manhood, so far from being +revolutionists and terrorists, they belonged entirely to the opposite +camp. Austin's _Jurisprudence_ and Mill's _Logic_ and _Utilitarianism_ +were everything, and Rousseau's _Social Contract_ was nothing. To the +best of my knowledge and belief, I never said a word about "Natural +Rights" in any piece of practical public business in all my life; +and when that famous phrase again made its naked appearance on the +platform three or four years ago, it gave me as much surprise and +dismay as if I were this afternoon to meet a Deinotherium shambling +down Parliament Street. Mill was the chief influence for me, as he was +for most of my contemporaries in those days. Experience of life and +independent use of one's mind--which he would have been the most ready +of men to applaud--have since, as is natural, led to many important +corrections and deductions in Mill's political and philosophical +teaching. But then we were disciples, and not critics; and nobody will +suppose that the admirer of Wordsworth, the author of the Essay on +Coleridge, and of the treatise on Representative Government, the +administrator in the most bureaucratic and authoritative of public +services, was a terrorist or an unbridled democrat, or anything else +but the most careful and rationalistic of political theorisers. It +was Mill who first held up for my admiration the illustrious man whom +Austin enthusiastically called the "godlike Turgot," and it was he who +encouraged me to write a study on that great and inspiring character. +I remember the suspicion and the murmurings with which Louis Blanc, +then living in brave and honourable exile in London, and the good +friend of so many of us, and who was really a literary Jacobin to +the tips of his fingers, remonstrated against that piece of what he +thought grievously misplaced glorification. Turgot was, indeed, a very +singular hero with whom to open the career of literary Jacobin. So +was Burke,--the author of those wise sentences that still ring in +our ears: "_The question with me is, not whether you have a right to +render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to +make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what +humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. Nobody shall +persuade me, where a whole people are concerned, that acts of lenity +are not means of conciliation._" Burke, Austin, Mill, Turgot, +Comte--what strange sponsors for the "theories and principles of the +Terror"! + +What these opinions came to, roughly speaking, was something to this +effect: That the power alike of statesmen and of publicists over the +course of affairs is strictly limited; that institutions and movements +are not capable of immediate or indefinite modification by any amount +of mere will; that political truths are always relative, and never +absolute; that the test of practical, political, and social proposals +is not their conformity to abstract ideals, but to convenience, +utility, expediency, and occasion; that for the reformer, +considerations of time and place may be paramount; and finally, as +Mill himself has put it, that government is always either in the +hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the strongest power +in society, and that what this power is, and shall be, depends less on +institutions than institutions depend upon it. If I were pressed for +an illustration of these principles at work, inspiring the minds and +guiding the practice of responsible statesmen in great transactions of +our own day and generation, I should point to the sage, the patient, +the triumphant action of Abraham Lincoln in the emancipation of the +negro slaves. However that may be, contrast a creed of this kind with +the abstract, absolute, geometric, unhistoric, peremptory notions and +reasonings that formed the stock in trade of most, though not quite +all, of the French revolutionists, alike in action and in thought. It +is plain that they are the direct opposite and contradictory of one +another. + +To clench the matter by chapter and verse, I should like to recall +what, I have said of these theories and principles in their most +perfect and most important literary version. How have I described +Rousseau's _Social Contract_? It placed, I said, the centre of social +activity elsewhere than in careful and rational examination of social +conditions, and careful and rational effort to modify them. It +substituted a retrograde aspiration for direction, and emotion for the +discovery of law. It overlooked the crucial difficulty--namely, how to +summon new force, without destroying the sound parts of a structure +which it has taken many generations to erect. Its method was geometric +instead of being historic, and hence its "desperate absurdity." Its +whole theory was constructed with an imperfect consideration of the +qualities of human nature, and with too narrow a view of society. It +ignored the great fact that government is the art of wisely dealing +with huge groups of conflicting interests, of hostile passions, of +hardly reconcilable aims, of vehemently opposed forces. It "gives us +not the least help towards the solution of any of the problems of +actual government." + +Such language as all this is hardly that of a disciple to a master, in +respect of theories and principles which he is making his own for the +use of a lifetime. "There has been no attempt" [in these pages], +I said in winding up, "to palliate either the shallowness or the +practical mischievousness of the _Social Contract_. But there is +another side to its influence. We should be false to our critical +principle, if we do not recognise the historical effect of a +speculation scientifically valueless." Any writer would have stamped +himself as both unfit for the task that I had undertaken, and entirely +below the level of the highest critical standard of the day, if he had +for a moment dreamed of taking any other point of view. + +As for historical hero-worship, after Carlyle's fashion, whether +with Jacobin idols or any other, it is a mood of mind that must be +uncongenial to anybody who had ever been at all under the influence +of Mill. Without being so foolish as to disparage the part played by +great men in great crises, we could have no sympathy with the barbaric +and cynical school, who make greatness identical with violence, force, +and mere iron will. Cromwell said, in vindication of himself, that +England had need of a constable, and it was true. The constable, the +soldier, the daring counsellor at the helm, are often necessities of +the time. It is often a necessity of the time that the energy of a +nation or of a movement should gather itself up in a resolute band +or a resolute chief; as the revolutionary energy of France gathered +itself up in the greater Jacobins, or that of England in Oliver +Cromwell. Goethe says that nature bids us "_Take all, but pay_." +Revolutions and heroes may give us all, but not without price. This is +at the best, and the best is the exception. The grandiose types mostly +fail. In our own day, people talk, for example, with admiration of +Cromwell's government in Ireland,--as if it were a success, instead of +being one of the worst chapters in the whole history of Irish failure. +It was force carried to its utmost. Hundreds were put to the sword, +thousands were banished to be slaves of the planters in the West +Indies, and the remnant were driven miserably off into the desolate +wilds of Connaught. But all this only prepared the way for further +convulsions and deadlier discontent. + +It is irrational to contrast Carlyle's heroes, Cromwell, Mirabeau, +Frederick, Napoleon, with men like Washington or Lincoln. The +circumstances were different. The conditions of public use and of +personal greatness were different. But if we are to talk of ideals, +heroes, and models, I, for one, should hardly look to France at all. +Jefferson was no flatterer of George Washington; but his character of +Washington comes far nearer to the right pattern of a great ruler than +can be found in any of Carlyle's splendid dithyrambs, and it is no +waste of time to recall and to transcribe it:-- + + "His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first + order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a + Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was + ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by + invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common + remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils + of war, where, hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was + best; and certainly no general ever planned his battles more + judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if + any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, + he was slow in a readjustment. He was incapable of fear, meeting + personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest + feature in his character was prudence, never acting until + every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; + refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going through + with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was + most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no + motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, + being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense + of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was + naturally irritable and high toned; but reflection and resolution + had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it." + +In conclusion, the plain truth is that all parallels, analogies, and +similitudes between the French Revolution, or any part or phase of it, +and our affairs in Ireland are moonshine. For the practical politician +his problem is always individual. For his purposes history never +repeats itself. Human nature, doubtless, has a weakness for a +precedent; it is a weakness to be respected. But there is no +such thing as an essential reproduction of social and political +combinations of circumstance. To talk about Robespierre in connection +with Ireland is just as idle as it was in Robespierre to harangue +about Lycurgus and Brutus in Paris. To compare the two is to place +Ireland under a preposterous magnifying-glass of monstrous dimension. +Nor is disparity of scale the only difference, vital as that is. In +no one of the leading characteristics of a community in a state of +ferment, save the odium that surrounds the landlords, and that not +universal, does Ireland to-day really resemble the France of a +hundred years ago. Manners, ideas, beliefs, traditions, crumbling +institutions, rising aspirations, the ordering of castes and classes, +the rivalry of creeds, the relations with the governing power--all +constitute elements of such radical divergence as to make comparison +between modern Ireland and revolutionary France for any more serious +purpose than giving a conventional and familiar point to a sentence, +entirely worthless. + +It is pure dilettantism, again, to seek the moral of Irish commotions +in the insurrection of La Vendee. That, as somebody has said, was like +a rising of the ancient Gauls at the voice of the Druids, and led by +their great chiefs. It will be time enough to compare La Vendee +with Ireland when the peasantry take the field against the British +Government with Beresfords, Fitzgeralds, and Bourkes at their head. If +the Vendeans had risen to drive out the Charettes, the Bonchamps, the +Larochejacquelins, the parallel would have been nearer the mark. The +report of the Devon Commission, the green pamphlet containing an +account of the famous three days' discussion between O'Connell and +Butt in the Dublin Corporation In 1843, or half a dozen of Lord +Clare's speeches between 1793 and 1800, will give a clearer insight +into the Irish problem than a bushel of books about the Vendean or any +other episode of the Revolution. + +Equally frivolous is it, for any useful purpose of practical +enlightenment, to draw parallels between the action of the Catholic +clergy in Ireland to-day and that of the French clergy on the eve of +the Revolution. There is no sort of force in the argument that because +the French clergy fared ill at the Revolution,[1] therefore the Irish +clergy will fare ill when self-government is bestowed on Ireland. +Such talk is mere ingenious guess-work at best, without any of the +foundations of a true historical analogy. The differences between the +two cases are obvious, and they go to the heart of the matter. For +instance, the men who came to the top of affairs in France were +saturated both with speculative unbelief for one thing, and with +active hatred of the Church for another. In Ireland, on the contrary, +there is no speculative unbelief, as O'Connell used so constantly to +boast; and the Church being poor, voluntary, and intensely national +and popular, has nourished none of those gross and swollen abuses +which provoked the not unreasonable animosity of revolutionary France. +In truth, it is with precisely as much or as little reason that most +of the soothsayers and prognosticators of evil take the directly +opposite line. Instead of France these persons choose, as they have an +equally good right to do, to look for precedents to Spain, Belgium, or +South America. Why not? They assure us, in their jingling phrase, that +Home Rule means Rome Rule, that the priests will be the masters, and +that Irish autonomy is only another name for the reign of bigotry, +superstition, and obscurantism. One of these two mutually destructive +predictions has just as much to say for itself as the other, and no +more. We may leave the prophets to fight it out between them while we +attend to our business, and examine facts and probabilities as +they are, without the aid of capriciously adopted precedents and +fantastical analogies. + +[Footnote 1: The Church did not fare so very ill, after all. The +State, in 1790, undertook the debts of the Church to the tune of +130,000,000 livres, and assured it an annual Budget of rather more +than that amount.--Boiteau's _Etat de la France_, p. 202.] + +Parallels from France, or anywhere else, may supply literary +amusement; they may furnish a weapon in the play of controversy. They +shed no light and do no service as we confront the solid facts of the +business to be done. Lewis the Fourteenth was the author of a very +useful and superior commonplace when he wrote: "No man who is badly +informed can avoid reasoning badly. I believe that whoever is rightly +instructed, and rightly persuaded of _all the facts_, would never do +anything else but what he ought." Another great French ruler, who, +even more than Lewis, had a piercing eye for men and the world +of action, said that the mind of a general ought to be like a +field-glass, and as clear; to see things exactly as they are, _et +jamais se faire des tableaux_,--never to compose the objects before +him into pictures. The same maxim is nearly as good for the man who +has to conquer difficulties in the field of government; and analogies +and parallels are one way of substituting pictures for plans and +charts. Just because the statesman's problem is individual, history +can give him little help. I am not so graceless as to depreciate +history or literature either for public or for private persons. "You +are a man," Napoleon said to Goethe; and there is no reason why +literature should prevent the reader of books from being a man; why it +should blind him to the great practical truths that the end of life +is not to think but to will; that everything in the world has its +decisive moment, which statesmen know and seize; that the genius of +politics, as a great man of letters truly wrote, has not "All or +Nothing" for its motto, but seeks on the contrary to extract the +greatest advantage from situations the most compromised, and never +flings the helve after the hatchet. Like literature the use of history +in politics is to refresh, to open, to make the mind generous and +hospitable; to enrich, to impart flexibility, to quicken and nourish +political imagination and invention, to instruct in the common +difficulties and the various experiences of government; to enable a +statesman to place himself at a general and spacious standpoint. All +this, whether it be worth much or little, and it is surely worth much, +is something wholly distinct from directly aiding a statesman in +the performance of a specific task. In such a case an analogy from +history, if he be not sharply on his guard, is actually more likely +than not to mislead him. I certainly do not mean the history of the +special problem itself. Of that he cannot possibly know too much, nor +master its past course and foregone bearings too thoroughly. Ireland +is a great standing instance. There is no more striking example of +the disastrous results of trying to overcome political difficulties +without knowing how they came into existence, and where they have +their roots. The only history that furnishes a clue in Irish questions +is the history of Ireland and the people who have lived in it or have +been driven out of it. + + + + +ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE.[1] + +[Footnote 1: The annual address to the students of the London Society +for the Extension of University Teaching, delivered at the Mansion +House, February 26th, 1887.] + + +When my friend Mr. Goschen invited me to discharge the duty which +has fallen to me this afternoon I confess that I complied with many +misgivings. He desired me to say something on the literary side of +education. Now, it is almost impossible--and I think those who know +most of literature will be readiest to agree with me--to say anything +new in recommendation of literature in a scheme of education. I have +felt, however, that Mr. Goschen has worked with such zeal and energy +for so many years on behalf of this good cause, that anybody whom he +considered able to render him any co-operation owed it to him in its +fullest extent. The Lord Mayor has been kind enough to say that I am +especially qualified to speak on English literature. I must, however, +remind the Lord Mayor that I have strayed from literature into the +region of politics; and I am not at all sure that such a journey +conduces to the aptness of one's judgment on literary subjects, or +adds much to the force of one's arguments on behalf of literary study. +Politics are a field where action is one long second-best, and where +the choice constantly lies between two blunders. Nothing can be +more unlike in aim, in ideals, in method, and in matter, than are +literature and politics. I have, however, determined to do the best +that I can; and I feel how great an honour it is to be invited to +partake in a movement which I do not hesitate to call one of the most +important of all those now taking place in English society. + +What is the object of the movement? What do the promoters aim at? I +take it that what they design is to bring the very best teaching that +the country can afford, through the hands of the most thoroughly +competent men, within the reach of every class of the community. Their +object is to give to the many that sound, systematic, and methodical +knowledge, which has hitherto been the privilege of the few who can +afford the time and money to go to Oxford and Cambridge; to diffuse +the fertilising waters of intellectual knowledge from their great and +copious fountain-heads at the Universities by a thousand irrigating +channels over the whole length and breadth of our busy, indomitable +land. Gentlemen, this is a most important point. Goethe said that +nothing is more frightful than a teacher who only knows what his +scholars are intended to know. We may depend upon it that the man +who knows his own subject most thoroughly is most likely to excite +interest about it in the minds of other people. We hear, perhaps more +often than we like, that we live in a democratic age. It is true +enough, and I can conceive nothing more democratic than such a +movement as this, nothing which is more calculated to remedy defects +that are incident to democracy, more thoroughly calculated to raise +modern democracy to heights which other forms of government and older +orderings of society have never yet attained. No movement can be more +wisely democratic than one which seeks to give to the northern miner +or the London artisan knowledge as good and as accurate, though he +may not have so much of it, as if he were a student at Oxford or +Cambridge. Something of the same kind may be said of the new frequency +with which scholars of great eminence and consummate accomplishments, +like Jowett, Lang, Myers, Leaf, and others, bring all their +scholarship to bear, in order to provide for those who are not able, +or do not care, to read old classics in the originals, brilliant and +faithful renderings of them in our own tongue. Nothing but good, I am +persuaded, can come of all these attempts to connect learning with the +living forces of society, and to make industrial England a sharer in +the classic tradition of the lettered world. + +I am well aware that there is an apprehension that the present +extraordinary zeal for education in all its forms--elementary, +secondary, and higher--may bear in its train some evils of its own. It +is said that before long nobody in England will be content to practise +a handicraft, and that every one will insist on being at least a +clerk. It is said that the moment is even already at hand when a great +deal of practical distress does and must result from this tendency. I +remember years ago that in the United States I heard something of the +same kind. All I can say is, that this tendency, if it exists, is sure +to right itself. In no case can the spread of so mischievous a notion +as that knowledge and learning ought not to come within reach of +handicraftsmen be attributed to literature. There is a familiar +passage in which Pericles, the great Athenian, describing the glory of +the community of which he was so far-shining a member, says, "We at +Athens are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes; we +cultivate the mind without loss of manliness." But then remember that +after all Athenian society rested on a basis of slavery. Athenian +citizens were able to pursue their love of the beautiful, and their +simplicity, and to cultivate their minds without loss of manliness, +because the drudgery and hard work and rude service of society were +performed by those who had no share in all these good things. With us, +happily, it is very different. We are all more or less upon a level. +Our object is--and it is that which in my opinion raises us infinitely +above the Athenian level--to bring the Periclean ideas of beauty and +simplicity and cultivation of the mind within the reach of those who +do the drudgery and the service and rude work of the world. And it can +be done--do not let us be afraid--it can be done without in the least +degree impairing the skill of our handicraftsmen or the manliness of +our national life. It can be done without blunting or numbing the +practical energies of our people. + +I know they say that if you meddle with literature you are less +qualified to take your part in practical affairs. You run a risk of +being labelled a dreamer and a theorist. But, after all, if we take +the very highest form of all practical energy--the governing of the +country--all this talk is ludicrously untrue. I venture to say that in +the present Government [1887], including the Prime Minister, there are +three men at least who are perfectly capable of earning their bread as +men of letters. In the late Government, besides the Prime Minister, +there were also three men of letters, and I have never heard that +those three were greater simpletons than their neighbours. There is +a Commission now at work on that very important and abstruse +subject--the Currency. I am told that no one there displays so acute +an intelligence of the difficulties that are to be met, and so ready +an apprehension of the important arguments that are brought forward, +and the practical ends to be achieved, as the chairman of the +Commission, who is not what is called a practical man, but a man +of study, literature, theoretical speculation, and university +training.[1] Oh no, gentlemen, some of the best men of business in the +country are men who have had the best collegian's equipment, and are +the most accomplished bookmen. + +[Footnote 1: Mr. Arthur Balfour.] + +It is true that we cannot bring to London, with this movement, the +indefinable charm that haunts the grey and venerable quadrangles of +Oxford and Cambridge. We cannot take you into the stately halls, the +silent and venerable libraries, the solemn chapels, the studious +old-world gardens. We cannot surround you with all those elevated +memorials and sanctifying associations of scholars and poets, of +saints and sages, that march in glorious procession through the ages, +and make of Oxford and Cambridge a dream of music for the inward ear, +and of delight for the contemplative eye. We cannot bring all that to +you; but I hope, and I believe, it is the object of those who are more +intimately connected with the society than I have been, that every +partaker of the benefits of this society will feel himself and herself +in living connection with those two famous centres, and feel conscious +of the links that bind the modern to the older England. One of the +most interesting facts mentioned in your report this year is that last +winter four prizes of L10 each were offered in the mining district of +Northumberland, one each to the male and female student in every term +who should take the highest place in the examination, in order to +enable them to spend a month in Cambridge in the long vacation for the +purpose of carrying on in the laboratories and museums the work in +which they had been engaged in the winter at the local centre. That is +not a step taken by our society; but the University of Cambridge has +inspired and worked out the scheme, and I am not without hope that +from London some of those who attend these classes may be able to +realise in person the attractions and the associations of these two +great historic sites. One likes to think how poor scholars three or +four hundred years ago used to flock to Oxford, regardless of cold, +privation, and hardship, so that they might satisfy their hunger and +thirst for knowledge. I like to think of them in connection with this +movement. I like to think of them in connection with students like +those miners in Northumberland, whom I know well, and who are +mentioned in the report of the Cambridge Extension Society as, after +a day's hard work in the pit, walking four or five miles through cold +and darkness and rough roads to hear a lecture, and then walking +back again the same four or five miles. You must look for the same +enthusiasm, the same hunger and thirst for knowledge, that presided +over the foundation of the Universities many centuries ago, to carry +on this work, to strengthen and stimulate men's faith in knowledge, +their hopes from it, and their zeal for it. + +Speaking now of the particular kind of knowledge of which I am going +to say a few words--how does literature fare in these important +operations? Last term, out of fifty-seven courses in the Cambridge +scheme, there were ten on literature: out of thirty-one of our +courses, seven were on literature. I am bound to say I think that +such a position for literature in the scheme is very reasonably +satisfactory. I have made some inquiries, since I knew that I was +going to speak here, in the great popular centres of industry in the +North and in Scotland as to the popularity of literature as a subject +of teaching, I find very much what I should have expected. The +professors all tell very much the same story, and this is, that it +is extremely hard to interest any considerable number of people in +subjects that seem to have no direct bearing upon the practical work +of everyday life. There is a disinclination to study literature for +its own sake, or to study anything which does not seem to have a +visible and direct influence upon the daily work of life. The nearest +approach to a taste for literature is a certain demand for instruction +in history with a little flavour of contemporary politics. In short, +the demand for instruction in literature is strictly moderate. That is +what men of experience tell me, and we have to recognise it, nor ought +we to be at all surprised. Mr. Goschen, when he spoke some years ago, +said there were three motives which might induce people to seek the +higher education. First, to obtain greater knowledge for bread-winning +purposes. From that point of view science would be most likely to feed +the classes. Secondly, the improvement of one's knowledge of political +economy, and history, and facts bearing upon the actual political work +and life of the day. Thirdly, was the desire of knowledge as a luxury +to brighten life and kindle thought. I am very much afraid that, in +the ordinary temper of our people, and the ordinary mode of looking at +life, the last of these motives savours a little of self-indulgence, +and sentimentality, and other objectionable qualities. There is a +great stir in the region of physical science at this moment, and it is +likely, as any one may see, to take a chief and foremost place in the +field of intellectual activity. After the severity with which science +was for so many ages treated by literature, we cannot wonder that +science now retaliates, now mightily exalts herself, and thrusts +literature down into the lower place. I only have to say on the +relative claims of science and literature what Dr Arnold said:--"If +one might wish for impossibilities, I might then wish that my children +might be well versed in physical science, but in due subordination to +the fulness and freshness of their knowledge on moral subjects. This, +however, I believe cannot be; wherefore, rather than have it the +principal thing in my son's mind, I would gladly have him think that +the sun went round the earth, and that the stars were so many spangles +set in the bright blue firmament" (Stanley's _Life of Arnold_, ii. +31). It is satisfactory that one may know something of these matters, +and yet not believe that the sun goes round the earth. But if there +is to be exclusion, I, for one, am not prepared to accept the rather +enormous pretensions that are nowadays sometimes made for physical +science as the be-all and end-all of education. + +Next to this we know that there is a great stir on behalf of technical +and commercial education. The special needs of our time and country +compel us to pay a particular attention to this subject. Here +knowledge is business, and we shall never hold our industrial +pre-eminence, with all that hangs upon that pre-eminence, unless we +push on technical and commercial education with all our might. But +there is a third kind of knowledge, and that too, in its own way, is +business. There is the cultivation of the sympathies and imagination, +the quickening of the moral sensibilities, and the enlargement of the +moral vision. The great need in modern culture, which is scientific +in method, rationalistic in spirit, and utilitarian in purpose, is to +find some effective agency for cherishing within us the ideal. That +is the business and function of literature. Literature alone will not +make a good citizen; it will not make a good man. History affords too +many proofs that scholarship and learning by no means purge men of +acrimony, of vanity, of arrogance, of a murderous tenacity about +trifles. Mere scholarship and learning and the knowledge of books do +not by any means arrest and dissolve all the travelling acids of the +human system. Nor would I pretend for a moment that literature can be +any substitute for life and action. Burke said, "What is the education +of the generality of the world? Reading a parcel of books? No! +Restraint and discipline, examples of virtue and of justice, these are +what form the education of the world." That is profoundly true; it is +life that is the great educator. But the parcel of books, if they are +well chosen, reconcile us to this discipline; they interpret this +virtue and justice; they awaken within us the diviner mind, and rouse +us to a consciousness of what is best in others and ourselves. + +As a matter of rude fact, there is much to make us question whether the +spread of literature, as now understood, does awaken the diviner mind. +The numbers of the books that are taken out from public libraries are +not all that we could wish. I am not going to inflict many figures on +you, but there is one set of these figures that distresses +booklovers,--I mean the enormous place that fiction occupies in the +books that are taken out. In one great town in the North prose fiction +forms 76 per cent of all the books lent. In another great town prose +fiction is 82 per cent; in a third 84 per cent; and in a fourth 67 per +cent. I had the curiosity to see what happens in the libraries of the +United States; and there--supposing the system of cataloguing and +enumeration to be the same--they are a trifle more serious in their +taste than we are; where our average is about 70 per cent, at a place +like Chicago it is only about 60 per cent. In Scotland, too, it ought to +be said that they have a better average in respect to prose fiction. +There is a larger demand for books called serious than in England. And I +suspect, though I do not know, that one reason why there is in Scotland +a greater demand for the more serious classes of literature than +fiction, is that in the Scotch Universities there are what we have not +in England--well-attended chairs of literature, systematically and +methodically studied. Do not let it be supposed that I at all underrate +the value of fiction. On the contrary, when a man has done a hard day's +work, what can he do better than fall to and read the novels of Walter +Scott, or the Brontes, or Mrs. Gaskell, or some of our living writers. I +am rather a voracious reader of fiction myself. I do not, therefore, +point to it as a reproach or as a source of discouragement, that fiction +takes so large a place in the objects of literary interest. I only +suggest that it is much too large, and we should be better pleased if it +sank to about 40 per cent, and what is classified as general literature +rose from 13 to 25 per cent. + +There are other complaints of literature as an object of interest in +this country. I was reading the other day an essay by the late head of +my old college at Oxford, that very learned and remarkable man Mark +Pattison, who was a booklover if ever there was one. He complained +that the bookseller's bill in the ordinary English middle class family +is shamefully small. It appeared to him to be monstrous that a man +who is earning L1000 a year should spend less than L1 a week on +books--that is to say, less than a shilling in the pound per annum. I +know that Chancellors of the Exchequer take from us 8d. or 6d. in the +pound, and I am not sure that they always use it as wisely as if they +left us to spend it on books. Still, a shilling in the pound to be +spent on books by a clerk who earns a couple of hundred pounds a year, +or by a workman who earns a quarter of that sum, is rather more, I +think, than can be reasonably expected. A man does not really need +to have a great many books. Pattison said that nobody who respected +himself could have less than 1000 volumes. He pointed out that you can +stack 1000 octavo volumes in a bookcase that shall be 13 feet by 10 +feet, and 6 inches deep, and that everybody has that small amount of +space at disposal. Still the point is not that men should have a great +many books, but that they should have the right ones, and that they +should use those that they have. We may all agree in lamenting +that there are so many houses--even some of considerable social +pretension--where you will not find a good atlas, a good dictionary, +or a good cyclopaedia of reference. What is still more lamentable, in +a good many more houses where these books are, they are never referred +to or opened. That is a very discreditable fact, because I defy +anybody to take up a single copy of the _Times_ newspaper and not come +upon something in it, upon which, if their interest in the affairs of +the day were active, intelligent, and alert as it ought to be, they +would consult an atlas, dictionary, or cyclopaedia of reference. + +No sensible person can suppose for a single moment that everybody +is born with the ability for using books, for reading and studying +literature. Certainly not everybody is born with the capacity of being +a great scholar. All people are no more born great scholars like +Gibbon and Bentley, than they are all born great musicians like Handel +and Beethoven. What is much worse than that, many come into the world +with the incapacity of reading, just as they come into it with the +incapacity of distinguishing one tune from another. To them I have +nothing to say. Even the morning paper is too much for them. They can +only skim the surface even of that. I go further, and frankly admit +that the habit and power of reading with reflection, comprehension, +and memory all alert and awake, does not come at once to the +natural man any more than many other sovereign virtues come to that +interesting creature. What I do venture to press upon you is, that +it requires no preterhuman force of will in any young man or +woman--unless household circumstances are more than usually vexatious +and unfavourable--to get at least half an hour out of a solid busy day +for good and disinterested reading. Some will say that this is too +much to expect, and the first persons to say it, I venture to predict, +will be those who waste their time most. At any rate, if I cannot get +half an hour, I will be content with a quarter. Now, in half an hour I +fancy you can read fifteen or twenty pages of Burke; or you can read +one of Wordsworth's masterpieces--say the lines on Tintern; or +say, one-third--if a scholar, in the original, and if not, in a +translation--of a book of the Iliad or the Aeneid. I do not think that +I am filling the half-hour too full. But try for yourselves what you +can read in half an hour. Then multiply the half-hour by 365, and +consider what treasures you might have laid by at the end of the year; +and what happiness, fortitude, and wisdom they would have given you +during all the days of your life. + +I will not take up your time by explaining the various mechanical +contrivances and aids to successful study. They are not to be despised +by those who would extract the most from books, Many people think of +knowledge as of money. They would like knowledge, but cannot face the +perseverance and self-denial that go to the acquisition of it. The +wise student will do most of his reading with a pen or a pencil in his +hand. + +He will not shrink from the useful toil of making abstracts and +summaries of what he is reading. Sir William Hamilton was a strong +advocate for underscoring books of study. "Intelligent underlining," +he said, "gave a kind of abstract of an important work, and by the +use of different coloured inks to mark a difference of contents, +and discriminate the doctrinal from the historical or illustrative +elements of an argument or exposition, the abstract became an analysis +very serviceable for ready reference,"[1] This assumes, as Hamilton +said, that the book to be operated on is your own, and perhaps is +rather too elaborate a counsel of perfection for most of us. Again, +some great men--Gibbon was one, and Daniel Webster was another, and +the great Lord Strafford was a third--always before reading a book +made a short, rough analysis of the questions which they expected to +be answered in it, the additions to be made to their knowledge, and +whither it would take them. + +[Footnote 1: Veitch's _Life of Hamilton_, pp. 314, 392.] + +"After glancing my eye," says Gibbon, "over the design and order of +a new book, I suspended the perusal until I had finished the task of +self-examination; till I had revolved in a solitary walk all that I +knew or believed or had thought on the subject of the whole work or of +some particular chapter: I was then qualified to discern how much the +author added to my original stock; and if I was sometimes satisfied +by the agreement, I was sometimes armed by the opposition, of our +ideas."[1] + +[Footnote 1: Dr. Smith's _Gibbon_, i. 64.] + +I have sometimes tried that way of steadying and guiding attention; +and I commend it to you. I need not tell you that you will find that +most books worth reading once are worth reading twice, and--what +is most important of all--the masterpieces of literature are worth +reading a thousand times. It is a great mistake to think that because +you have read a masterpiece once or twice, or ten times, therefore you +have done with it. Because it is a masterpiece, you ought to live with +it, and make it part of your daily life. Another practice is that of +keeping a commonplace book, and transcribing into it what is striking +and interesting and suggestive. And if you keep it wisely, as Locke +has taught us, you will put every entry under a head, division, or +subdivision.[1] This Is an excellent practice for concentrating your +thought on the passage and making you alive to its real point and +significance. Here, however, the high authority of Gibbon is against +us. He refuses "strenuously to recommend." "The action of the pen," he +says, "will doubtless imprint an idea on the mind as well as on the +paper; but I much question whether the benefits of this laborious +method are adequate to the waste of time; and I must agree with Dr. +Johnson (_Idler_, No. 74) that 'what is twice read is commonly better +remembered than what is transcribed.'"[2] + +[Footnote 1: "If I would put anything in my Common-place Book, I +find out a head to which I may refer it. Each head ought to be some +important and essential word to the matter in hand" (Locke's _Works_, +iii. 308, ed. 1801).] + +[Footnote 2: This is for indexing purposes, but it is worth while to +go further and make a title for the passage extracted, indicating its +pith and purport.] + +Various correspondents have asked me to say something about those +lists of a hundred books that have been circulating through the world +within the last few months. I have examined some of these lists with +considerable care, and whatever else may be said of them--and I speak +of them with deference and reserve, because men for whom one must +have a great regard have compiled them--they do not seem to me to be +calculated either to create or satisfy a wise taste for literature +in any very worthy sense. To fill a man with a hundred parcels of +heterogeneous scraps from the _Mahabharata_, and the _Sheking_, down +to _Pickwick_ and _White's Selborne_, may pass the time, but I cannot +perceive how it would strengthen or instruct or delight. For instance, +it is a mistake to think that every book that has a great name in the +history of books or of thought is worth reading. Some of the most +famous books are least worth reading. Their fame was due to their +doing something that needed in their day to be done. The work done, +the virtue of the book expires. Again, I agree with those who say +that the steady working down one of these lists would end in the +manufacture of that obnoxious product--the prig. A prig has been +defined as an animal that is overfed for its size. I think that these +bewildering miscellanies would lead to an immense quantity of that +kind of overfeeding. The object of reading is not to dip into +everything that even wise men have ever written. In the words of one +of the most winning writers of English that ever existed--Cardinal +Newman--the object of literature in education is to open the mind, to +correct it, to refine it, to enable it to comprehend and digest its +knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, +flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, address, and +expression. These are the objects of that intellectual perfection +which a literary education is destined to give. I will not venture on +a list of a hundred books, but will recommend you instead to one book +well worthy of your attention. Those who are curious as to what they +should read in the region of pure literature will do well to peruse +Mr. Frederic Harrison's admirable, volume, called _The Choice of +Books_. You will find there as much wise thought, eloquently and +brilliantly put, as in any volume of its size and on its subject, +whether it be in the list of a hundred or not. + +Let me pass to another topic. We are often asked whether it is best to +study subjects, or authors, or books. Well, I think that is like most +of the stock questions with which the perverse ingenuity of mankind +torments itself. There is no universal and exclusive answer. My own +answer is a very plain one. It is sometimes best to study books, +sometimes authors, and sometimes subjects; but at all times it is best +to study authors, subjects, and books in connection with one another. +Whether you make your first approach from interest in an author or in +a book, the fruit will be only half gathered if you leave off without +new ideas and clearer lights both on the man and the matter. One of +the noblest masterpieces in the literature of civil and political +wisdom is to be found in Burke's three performances on the American +war--his speech on Taxation in 1774, on Conciliation in 1775, and his +letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol in 1777. I can only repeat to you +what I have been saying in print and out of it for a good many years, +and what I believe more firmly as observation is enlarged by time and +occasion, that these three pieces are the most perfect manual in all +literature for the study of great affairs, whether for the purpose of +knowledge or action. "They are an example," as I have said before +now, "an example without fault of all the qualities which the critic, +whether a theorist or an actor, of great political situations should +strive by night and by day to possess. If their subject were as remote +as the quarrel between the Corinthians and Corcyra, or the war between +Rome and the Allies, instead of a conflict to which the world owes the +opportunity of one of the most important of political experiments, we +should still have everything to learn from the author's treatment; the +vigorous grasp of masses of compressed detail, the wide illumination +from great principles of human experience, the strong and masculine +feeling for the two great political ends of Justice and Freedom, the +large and generous interpretation of expediency, the morality, the +vision, the noble temper." No student worthy of the name will lay +aside these pieces, so admirable in their literary expression, so +important for history, so rich in the lessons of civil wisdom, until +he has found out something from other sources as to the circumstances +from which such writings arose, and as to the man whose resplendent +genius inspired them. There are great personalities like Burke who +march through history with voices like a clarion trumpet and something +like the glitter of swords in their hands. They are as interesting as +their work. Contact with them warms and kindles the mind. You will not +be content, after reading one of these pieces, without knowing the +character and personality of the man who conceived it, and until you +have spent an hour or two--and an hour or two will go a long way with +Burke still fresh in your mind--over other compositions in political +literature, over Bacon's civil pieces, or Machiavelli's _Prince_, and +others in the same order of thought. + +This points to the right answer to another question that is constantly +asked. We are constantly asked whether desultory reading is among +things lawful and permitted. May we browse at large in a library, as +Johnson said, or is it forbidden to open a book without a definite aim +and fixed expectations? I am for a compromise. If a man has once got +his general point of view, if he has striven with success to place +himself at the centre, what follows is of less consequence. If he has +got in his head a good map of the country, he may ramble at large with +impunity. If he has once well and truly laid the foundations of a +methodical, systematic habit of mind, what he reads will find its way +to its proper place. If his intellect is in good order, he will find +in every quarter something to assimilate and something that will +nourish. + +Next I am going to deal with another question, with which perhaps I +ought to have started. What is literature? It has often been defined. +Emerson says it is a record of the best thoughts. "By literature," +says another author, "we mean the written thoughts and feelings of +intelligent men and women arranged in a way that shall give pleasure +to the reader." A third account is that "the aim of a student of +literature is to know the best that has been thought in the world." +Definitions always appear to me in these things to be in the nature +of vanity. I feel that the attempt to be compact in the definition of +literature ends in something that is rather meagre, partial, starved, +and unsatisfactory. I turn to the answer given by a great French +writer to a question not quite the same, viz. "What is a classic?" +Literature consists of a whole body of classics in the true sense of +the word, and a classic, as Sainte-Beuve defines him, is an "author +who has enriched the human mind, who has really added to its treasure, +who has got it to take a step further; who has discovered some +unequivocal moral truth, or penetrated to some eternal passion, +in that heart of man where it seemed as though all were known and +explored, who has produced his thought, or his observation, or his +invention under some form, no matter what, so it be great, large, +acute, and reasonable, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to +all in a style of his own, yet a style which finds itself the style +of everybody,--in a style that Is at once new and antique, and is the +contemporary of all the ages." Another Frenchman, Doudan, who died in +1872, has an excellent passage on the same subject:-- + + "The man of letters properly so called is a rather singular being: + he does not look at things exactly with his own eyes, he has not + impressions of his own, we could not discover the imagination with + which he started. 'Tis a tree on which have been grafted Homer, + Virgil, Milton, Dante, Petrarch; hence have grown peculiar flowers + which are not natural, and yet which are not artificial. Study has + given to the man of letters something of the reverie of Rene; with + Homer he has looked upon the plain of Troy, and there has remained + in his brain some of the light of the Grecian sky; he has taken a + little of the pensive lustre of Virgil, as he wanders by his side + on the slopes of the Aventine; he sees the world as Milton saw it, + through the grey mists of England, as Dante saw it, through the + clear and glowing light of Italy. Of all these colours he composes + for himself a colour that is unique and his own; from all these + glasses by which his life passes on its journey to the real + world, there is formed a special tint, and that is what makes the + imagination of men of letters." + +At a single hearing you may not take all that in; but if you should +have any opportunity of recurring to it, you will find this a +satisfactory, full, and instructive account of what is a classic, and +will find in it a full and satisfactory account of what those who have +thought most on literature hope to get from it, and most would +desire to confer upon others by it. Literature consists of till the +books--and they are not so many--where moral truth and human passion +are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form. +My notion of the literary student is one who through books explores +the strange voyages of man's moral reason, the impulses of the human +heart, the chances and changes that have overtaken human ideals +of virtue and happiness, of conduct and manners, and the shifting +fortunes of great conceptions of truth and virtue. Poets, dramatists, +humorists, satirists, masters of fiction, the great preachers, +the character-writers, the maxim-writers, the great political +orators--they are all literature in so far as they teach us to know +man and to know human nature. This is what makes literature, rightly +sifted and selected and rightly studied, not the mere elegant trifling +that it is so often and so erroneously supposed to be, but a +proper instrument for a systematic training of the imagination and +sympathies, and of a genial and varied moral sensibility. + +From this point of view let me remind you that books are not the +products of accident and caprice. As Goethe said, if you would +understand an author, you must understand his age. The same thing is +just as true of a book. If you would fully comprehend it, you must +know the age. There is an order; there are causes and relations +between great compositions and the societies in which they have +emerged. Just as the naturalist strives to understand and to explain +the distribution of plants and animals over the surface of the globe, +to connect their presence or their absence with the great geological, +climatic, and oceanic changes, so the student of literature, if he be +wise, undertakes an ordered and connected survey of ideas, of tastes, +of sentiments, of imagination, of humour, of invention, as they affect +and as they are affected by the ever changing experiences of human +nature, and the manifold variations that time and circumstances are +incessantly working in human society. + +Those who are possessed, and desire to see others possessed, by that +conception of literary study must watch with the greatest sympathy and +admiration the efforts of those who are striving so hard, and, I hope, +so successfully, to bring the systematic and methodical study of our +own literature, in connection with other literatures, among subjects +for teaching and examination in the Universities of Oxford and +Cambridge. I regard those efforts with the liveliest interest and +sympathy. Everybody agrees that an educated man ought to have a +general notion of the course of the great outward events of European +history. So, too, an educated man ought to have a general notion of +the course of all those inward thoughts and moods which find their +expression in literature. I think that in cultivating the study of +literature, as I have perhaps too laboriously endeavoured to define +it, you will be cultivating the most important side of history. +Knowledge of it gives stability and substance to character. It +furnishes a view of the ground we stand on. It builds up a solid +backing of precedent and experience. It teaches us where we are. It +protects us against imposture and surprise. + +Before closing I should like to say one word upon the practice of +composition. I have suffered, by the chance of life, many things from +the practice of composition. It has been my lot, I suppose, to read +more unpublished work than any one else in this room. + +There is an idea, and, I venture to think, a very mistaken idea, that +you cannot have a taste for literature unless you are yourself an +author. I make bold entirely to demur to that proposition. It is +practically most mischievous, and leads scores and even hundreds of +people to waste their time in the most unprofitable manner that the +wit of man can devise, on work in which they can no more achieve even +the most moderate excellence than they can compose a Ninth Symphony +or paint a Transfiguration. It Is a terrible error to suppose that +because one is happily able to relish "Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted +idyll, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie," therefore a solemn mission +calls you to run off to write bad verse at the Lakes or the Isle +of Wight. I beseech you not all to turn to authorship. I will even +venture, with all respect to those who are teachers of literature, +to doubt the excellence and utility of the practice of over-much +essay-writing and composition. I have very little faith in rules of +style, though I have an unbounded faith in the virtue of cultivating +direct and precise expression. But you must carry on the operation +inside the mind, and not merely by practising literary deportment on +paper. It is not everybody who can command the mighty rhythm of the +greatest masters of human speech. But every one can make reasonably +sure that he knows what he means, and whether he has found the right +word. These are internal operations, and are not forwarded by writing +for writing's sake. Everybody must be urgent for attention to +expression, if that attention be exercised in the right way. It has +been said a million times that the foundation of right expression in +speech or writing is sincerity. That is as true now as it has ever +been. Right expression is a part of character. As somebody has +said, by learning to speak with precision, you learn to think with +correctness; and the way to firm and vigorous speech lies through the +cultivation of high and noble sentiments. So far as my observation has +gone, men will do better if they seek precision by studying carefully +and with an open mind and a vigilant eye the great models of writing, +than by excessive practice of writing on their own account. + +Much might here be said on what is one of the most important of all +the sides of literary study. I mean its effect as helping to preserve +the dignity and the purity of the English language. That noble +instrument has never been exposed to such dangers as those which +beset it to-day. Domestic slang, scientific slang, pseudo-aesthetic +affectations, hideous importations from American newspapers, all bear +down with horrible force upon the glorious fabric which the genius of +our race has reared. I will say nothing of my own on this pressing +theme, but will read to you a passage of weight and authority from the +greatest master of mighty and beautiful speech. + +"Whoever in a state," said Milton, "knows how wisely to form the +manners of men and to rule them at home and in war with excellent +institutes, him in the first place, above others, I should esteem +worthy of all honour. But next to him the man who strives to establish +in maxims and rules the method and habit of speaking and writing +received from a good age of the nation, and, as it were, to fortify +the same round with a kind of wall, the daring to overleap which let a +law only short of that of Romulus be used to prevent.... The one, as I +believe, supplies noble courage and intrepid counsels against an +enemy invading the territory. The other takes to himself the task of +extirpating and defeating, by means of a learned detective police of +ears, and a light band of good authors, that barbarism which makes +large inroads upon the minds of men, and is a destructive intestine +enemy of genius. Nor is it to be considered of small consequence what +language, pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their customary +degree of propriety in speaking it.... For, let the words of a country +be in part unhandsome and offensive in themselves, in part debased by +wear and wrongly uttered, and what do they declare, but, by no light +indication, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent, +idly-yawning race, with minds already long prepared for any amount of +servility? On the other hand, we have never heard that any empire, any +state, did not at least flourish in a middling degree as long as its +own liking and care for its language lasted."[1] + +[Footnote 1: Letter to Bonmattei, from Florence, 1638.] + +The probabilities are that we are now coming to an epoch of a quieter +style. There have been in our generation three strong masters in the +aft of prose writing. There was, first of all, Carlyle, there was +Macaulay, and there is Mr. Raskin. These are all giants, and they have +the rights of giants. But I do not believe that a greater misfortune +can befall the students who attend classes here, than that they should +strive to write like any one of these three illustrious men. I think +it is the worst thing that can happen to them. They can never attain +to the high mark which they have set before themselves. It Is not +everybody who can bend the bow of Ulysses, and most men only do +themselves a mischief by trying to bend it. If we are now on our way +to a quieter style, I am not sorry for it. Truth is quiet. Milton's +phrase ever lingers in our minds as one of imperishable beauty--where +he regrets that he is drawn by I know not what, from beholding the +bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful +studies. Moderation and judgment are, for most purposes, more than the +flash and the glitter even of the genius. I hope that your professors +of rhetoric will teach you to cultivate that golden art--the steadfast +use of a language in which truth can be told; a speech that is +strong by natural force, and not merely effective by declamation; an +utterance without trick, without affectation, without mannerisms, +without any of that excessive ambition which overleaps itself as +disastrously in prose writing as in so many other things. + +I will detain you no longer. I hope that I have made it clear that we +conceive the end of education on its literary side to be to make a man +and not a cyclopaedia, to make a citizen and not an album of elegant +extracts. Literature does not end with knowledge of forms, with +inventories of books and authors, with finding the key of rhythm, with +the varying measure of the stanza, or the changes from the involved +and sonorous periods of the seventeenth century down to the _staccato_ +of the nineteenth, or all the rest of the technicalities of +scholarship. Do not think I contemn these. They are all good things to +know, but they are not ends in themselves. The intelligent man, says +Plato, will prize those studies which result in his soul getting +soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and he will less value the +others. Literature is one of the instruments, and one of the most +powerful instruments, for forming character for giving us men +and women armed with reason, braced by knowledge, clothed with +steadfastness and courage, and inspired by that public spirit and +public virtue of which it has been well said that they are the +brightest ornaments of the mind of man. Bacon is right, as he +generally is, when he bids us read not to contradict and refute, nor +to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but +to weigh and to consider. Yes, let us read to weigh and to consider. +In the times before us that promise or threaten deep political, +economical, and social controversy, what we need to do is to induce +our people to weigh and consider. We want them to cultivate energy +without impatience, activity without restlessness, inflexibility +without ill-humour. I am not going to preach to you any artificial +stoicism. I am not going to preach to you any indifference to money, +or to the pleasures of social intercourse, or to the esteem and +good-will of our neighbours, or to any other of the consolations and +necessities of life. But, after all, the thing that matters most, both +for happiness and for duty, is that we should strive habitually to +live with wise thoughts and right feelings. Literature helps us more +than other studies to this most blessed companionship of wise thoughts +and right feelings, and so I have taken this opportunity of earnestly +commending it to your interest and care. + + + + +VICTOR HUGO'S "NINETY-THREE." + + +"History has its truth, Legend has its truth. Legendary truth is of +a different nature from historic truth. Legendary truth is invention +with reality for result. For the rest, history and legend have the +same aim--to paint under the man of a day eternal humanity." These +words from his new and latest work (ii. 4) are a repetition of what +Victor Hugo had already said in the introduction to his memorable +_Legend of the Ages_[1]. But the occasion of their application is far +more delicate. Poetry lends itself naturally to the spacious, distant, +vague, highly generalised way of present and real events. A prose +romance, on the other hand, is of necessity abundant in details, in +special circumstances, in particularities of time and place. This +leaves all the more room for historic error, and historic error in +a work of imagination dealing with actual and known occurrences is +obviously fatal, not only to legendary truth, but to legendary beauty +and poetic impressiveness. And then the pitfalls which lie about the +feet of the Frenchman who has to speak of 1793,--the terrible year +of the modern epoch! The delirium of the Terror haunts most of the +revolutionary historians, and the choicest examples in all literature +of bombast, folly, emptiness, political immorality, inhumanity, formal +repudiation of common sense and judgment, are to be found in the +rhapsodies which men of letters, some of them men of eminence, call +histories of the Revolution, or lives of this or that actor in it. + +[Footnote 1: The references are to the "Edition Definitive" in two +volumes.] + +It was hardly a breach, therefore, of one's allegiance to Hugo's +superb imaginative genius, if one had misgivings as to the result of +an attempt, even in his strong hands, to combine legend with truth on +a disastrous field, in which grave writers with academic solemnity had +confounded truth with the falsest kind of legend. The theme was so +likely to emphasise the defects incident to his mighty qualities; so +likely to provoke an exaggeration of those mannerisms of thought no +less than of phrase, which though never ignoble nor paltry, yet now +and then take something from the loftiness and sincerity of the +writer's work. Wisdom, however, is justified of her children, and M. +Hugo's genius has justified his choice of a difficult and perilous +subject. _Quatrevingt-treize_ is a monument of its author's finest +gifts; and while those who are happily endowed with the capacity of +taking delight in nobility and beauty of imaginative work will find +themselves in possession of a new treasure, the lover of historic +truth who hates to see abstractions passed off for actualities and +legend erected in the place of fact escapes with his sensibilities +almost unwounded. + +The historic interlude at the beginning of the second volume is +undoubtedly open to criticism from the political student's point of +view. As a sketch of the Convention, the scene of its sittings, the +stormful dramas that were enacted there one after another for month +after month, the singular men who one after another rode triumphant +upon the whirlwind for a little space, and were then mercilessly in an +instant swept into outer darkness, the commoner men who cowered before +the fury of the storm, and were like "smoke driven hither and thither +by the wind," and laboured hard upon a thousand schemes for human +improvement, some admirable, others mere frenzy, while mobs filed in +and danced mad carmagnoles before them--all this is a magnificent +masterpiece of accurate, full, and vivid description. To the +philosophy of it we venture to demur. The mystic, supernatural view of +the French Revolution, which is so popular among French writers who +object to the supernatural and the mystical everywhere else, is to us +a thing most incredible, most puerile, most mischievous. People talk +of '93, as a Greek tragedian treats the Tale of Troy divine, or the +terrible fortunes of the house of Atreus, as the result of dark +invincible fate, as the unalterable decree of the immortal gods. Even +Victor Hugo's strong spirit does not quite overcome the demoralising +doctrine of a certain revolutionary school, though he has the poet's +excuse. Thus, of the Convention:-- + + "Minds all a prey to the wind. But this wind was a wind of miracle + and portent. To be a member of the Convention was to be a wave + of the ocean. And this was true of its greatest. The force of + impulsion came from on high. There was in the Convention a will, + which was the will of all, and yet was the will of no one. It was + an idea, an idea resistless and without measure, which breathed in + the shadow from the high heavens. We call that the Revolution. As + this idea passed, it threw down one and raised up another; it bore + away this man in the foam, and broke that man to pieces upon the + rocks. The idea knew whither it went, and drove the gulf of waters + before it. To impute the Revolution to men is as one who should + impute the tide to the waves. The revolution is an action of the + Unknown.... It is a form of the abiding phenomenon that shuts us + in on every side and that we call Necessity.... In presence + of these climacteric catastrophes which waste and vivify + civilisation, one is slow to judge detail. To blame or praise men + on account of the result, is as if one should blame or praise the + figures on account of the total. That which must pass passes, the + storm that must rage rages. The eternal serenity does not suffer + from these boisterous winds. Above revolutions truth and justice + abide, as the starry heaven abides above the tempests" (i. + 188-189). + +As a lyric passage, full of the breath of inspiration; as history, +superficial and untrue; as morality, enervating and antinomian. The +author is assuredly far nearer the mark in another place when +he speaks of "_that immense improvisation_ which is the French +Revolution" (ii. 35)--an improvisation of which every step can be +rationally explained. + +After all, this is no more than an interlude. Victor Hugo only surveys +the events of '93 as a field for the growth of types of character. His +instinct as an artist takes him away from the Paris of '93, where the +confusion, uproar, human frenzy, leave him no background of nature, +with nature's fixity, sternness, indifference, sublimity. This he +found in La Vendee, whose vast forests grow under the pencil of this +master of all the more terrible and majestic effects, into a picture +hardly less sombre and mighty in its impressiveness than the memorable +ocean pieces of the _Toilers of the Sea_. If the waves are appalling +in their agitation, their thunders, their sterility, the forest is +appalling in its silence, its dimness, its rest, and the invisibleness +of the thousand kinds of life to which it gives a shelter. If the +violence and calm and mercilessness of the sea penetrated the romance +of eight years ago with transcendent fury, so does the stranger, more +mysterious, and in a sense even the more inhuman life of the forest +penetrate the romance of to-day. From the opening chapter down to the +very close, even while the interlude takes us for a little while to +the Paris cafe where Danton, Robespierre, and Marat sit in angry +counsel, even while we are on the sea with the royalist Marquis and +Halmalo, the reader is subtly haunted by the great Vendean woods, +their profundity, their mystery, their tragic and sinister beauties. + + "The forest is barbarous. + + "The configuration of the land counsels man in many an act. More + than we suppose, it is his accomplice. In the presence of certain + savage landscapes, you are tempted to exonerate man and blame + creation; you feel a silent challenge and incitement from nature; + the desert is constantly unwholesome for conscience, especially + for a conscience without light. Conscience may be a giant; that + makes a Socrates or a Jesus: it may be a dwarf; that makes an + Atreus or a Judas. The puny conscience soon turns reptile; the + twilight thickets, the brambles, the thorns, the marsh waters + under branches, make for it a fatal haunting place; amid all this + it undergoes the mysterious infiltration of ill suggestions. The + optical illusions, the unexplained images, the scaring hour, + the scaring spot, all throw man into that kind of affright, + half-religious, half-brutal, which in ordinary times engenders + superstition, and in epochs of violence, savagery. Hallucinations + hold the torch that lights the path to murder. There is something + like vertigo in the brigand. Nature with her prodigies has a + double effect; she dazzles great minds, and blinds the duller + soul. When man is ignorant, when the desert offers visions, + the obscurity of the solitude is added to the obscurity of the + intelligence; thence in man comes the opening of abysses. Certain + rocks, certain ravines, certain thickets, certain wild openings + of the evening sky through the trees, drive man towards mad or + monstrous exploits. We might almost call some places criminal" + (ii. 21). + +With La Vendee for background, and some savage incidents of the bloody +Vendean war for external machinery, Victor Hugo has realised his +conception of '93 in three types of character: Lantenac, the royalist +marquis; Cimourdain, the puritan turned Jacobin; and Gauvain, for whom +one can as yet find no short name, he belonging to the millenarian +times. Lantenac, though naturally a less original creation than the +other two, is still an extremely bold and striking figure, drawn with +marked firmness of hand, and presenting a thoroughly distinct and +coherent conception. It is a triumph of the poetic or artistic part +of the author's nature over the merely political part, that he should +have made even his type of the old feudal order which he execrates +so bitterly, a heroic, if ever so little also a diabolic, personage. +There is everything that is cruel, merciless, unflinching, in +Lantenac; there is nothing that is mean or insignificant. A gunner +at sea, by inattention to the lashing of his gun, causes an accident +which breaks the ship to pieces, and then he saves the lives of the +crew by hazarding his own life to secure the wandering monster. +Lantenac decorates him with the cross of Saint Lewis for his +gallantry, and instantly afterwards has him shot for his carelessness. +He burns homesteads and villages, fusillades men and women, and makes +the war a war without quarter or grace. Yet he is no swashbuckler of +the melodramatic stage. There is a fine reserve, a brief gravity, +in the delineation of him, his clear will, his quickness, his +intrepidity, his relentlessness, which make of him the incarnation +of aristocratic coldness, hatred, and pride. You might guillotine +Lantenac with exquisite satisfaction, and yet he does not make us +ashamed of mankind. Into his mouth, as he walks about his dungeon, +impatiently waiting to be led out to execution, Victor Hugo has put +the aristocratic view of the Revolution. Some portions of it (ii. +224-226) would fit amazingly well into M. Renan's notions about the +moral and intellectual reform of France. + +If the Breton aristocrat of '93 was fearless, intrepid, and without +mercy in defence of God and the King--and his qualities were all +shared, the democrat may love to remember, by the Breton peasant, +whether peasant follower or peasant leader--the Jacobin was just as +vigorous, as intrepid, as merciless in defence of his Republic. "Pays, +Patrie," says Victor Hugo, in words which perhaps will serve to +describe many a future passage in French history, "ces deux mots +resument toute la guerre de Vendee; querelle de l'idee locale centre +l'idee universelle; paysans contre patriotes" (ii. 22).[1] Certainly +the Jacobins were the patriots of that era, the deliverers of France +from something like that process of partition which further east was +consummated in this very '93. We do not mean the handful of odious +miscreants who played fool and demon in turns in the insurrectionary +Commune and elsewhere: such men as Collot d'Herbois, or Carrier, +or Panis. The normal Jacobin was a remarkable type. He has been +excellently described by Louis Blanc as something powerful, original, +sombre; half agitator and half statesman; half puritan and half monk +half inquisitor and half tribune. These words of the historian are the +exact prose version of the figure of Cimourdain, the typical Jacobin +of the poet. "Cimourdain was a pure conscience, but sombre. He had in +him the absolute. He had been a priest and that is a serious thing. +Man, like the sky, may have a dark serenity; it is enough that +something should have brought night into his soul. Priesthood had +brought night into Cimourdain. He who has been a priest is one still. +What brings night upon us may leave the stars with us. Cimourdain +was full of virtues, full of truths, but they shone in the midst +of darkness" (i. 123). If the aristocrat had rigidity, so had the +Jacobin. "Cimourdain had the blind certitude of the arrow, which only +sees the mark and makes for it. In revolution, nothing so formidable +as the straight line. Cimourdain strode forward with fatality in his +step. He believed that in social genesis the very extreme point must +always be solid ground, an error peculiar to minds that for reason +substitute logic" (i. 127). And so forth, until the character of the +Jacobin lives for us with a precision, a fulness, a naturalness, such +as neither Carlyle nor Michelet nor Quinet has been able to clothe it +with, though these too have the sacred illumination of genius. Victor +Hugo's Jacobin is a poetic creation, yet the creation only lies in the +vivid completeness with which the imagination of a great master has +realised to itself the traits and life of an actual personality. It is +not that he has any special love for his Jacobin, but that he has the +poet's eye for types, politics apart. He sees how much the aristocrat, +slaying hip and thigh for the King, and the Jacobin, slaying hip and +thigh for the Republic, resembled one another. "Let us confess," +he says, "these two men, the Marquis and the priest [Lantenac and +Cimourdain], were up to a certain point the self-same man. The bronze +mask of civil war has two profiles, one turned towards the past, the +other towards the future, but as tragic the one as the other. Lantenac +was the first of these profiles, Cimourdain was the second; only the +bitter rictus of Lantenac was covered with shadow and night, and on +the fatal brow of Cimourdain was a gleaming of the dawn" (ii. 91). + +[Footnote 1: In corroboration of this view of the Vendean rising as +democratic, see Mortimer-Ternaux, _Hist. de la Terreur_, vol. vi. bk. +30.] + +And let us mark Victor Hugo's signal distinction in his analysis +of character. It is not mere vigour of drawing, nor acuteness of +perception, nor fire of imagination, though he has all these gifts in +a singular degree, and truest of their kind. But then Scott had +them too, and yet we feel in Victor Hugo's work a seriousness, a +significance, a depth of tone, which never touches us in the work of +his famous predecessor in romance, delightful as the best of that work +is. Balfour of Burley is one of Scott's most commanding figures, and +the stern Covenanter is nearly in the same plane of character as the +stern heroic Jacobin. Yet Cimourdain impresses us more profoundly. He +is as natural, as human, as readily conceivable, and yet he produces +something of the subtle depth of effect which belongs to the actor in +a play of Aeschylus. Why is this? Because Hugo makes us conscious of +that tragedy of temperament, that sterner Necessity of character, +that resistless compulsion of circumstance, which is the modern and +positive expression for the old Destiny of the Greeks, and which in +some expression or other is now an essential element in the highest +presentation of human life. Here is not the Unknown. On the contrary, +we are in the very heart of science; tragedy to the modern is +not [Greek: tuchae], but a thing of cause and effect, invariable +antecedent and invariable consequent. It is the presence of this +tragic force underlying action that gives to all Hugo's work its lofty +quality, its breadth, and generality, and fills both it, and us who +read, with pity and gravity and an understanding awe. + +The action is this. Cimourdain had the young Gauvain to train from his +earliest childhood, and the pupil grew up with the same rigid sense +of duty as the master, though temperament modified its form. When the +Revolution came, Gauvain, though a noble, took sides with the people, +but he was not of the same spirit as his teacher. "The Revolution," +says Victor Hugo, "by the side of youthful figures of giants, such as +Danton, Saint-Just, and Robespierre, has young ideal figures, like +Hoche and Marceau. Gauvain was one of these figures" (ii. 34). +Cimourdain has himself named delegate from the Committee of Public +Safety to the expeditionary column of which Gauvain is in command. The +warmth of affection between them was undiminished, but difference in +temperament bred difference in their principles. They represented, as +the author says, with the candour of the poet, the two poles of +the truth; the two sides of the inarticulate, subterranean, fatal +contention of the year of the Terror. Their arguments with one another +make the situation more intelligible to the historic student, as they +make the characters of the speakers more transparent for the purposes +of the romance. + +This is Cimourdain:-- + + "Beware, there are terrible duties in life. Do not accuse what is + not responsible. Since when has the disorder been the fault of the + physician? Yes, what marks this tremendous year is being without + pity. Why? Because it is the great revolutionary year. This year + incarnates the revolution. The revolution has an enemy, the old + world, and to that it is pitiless, just as the surgeon has + an enemy, gangrene, and is pitiless to that. The revolution + extirpates kingship in the king, aristocracy in the noble, + despotism in the soldier, superstition in the priest, barbarity in + the judge, in a word whatever is tyranny in whatever is tyrant. + The operation is frightful, the revolution performs it with a sure + hand. As to the quantity of sound flesh that it requires, ask + Boerhave what he thinks of it. What tumour that has to be cut out + does not involve loss of blood?... The revolution devotes itself + to its fated task. It mutilates but it saves.... It has the past + in its grasp, it will not spare. It makes in civilisation a deep + incision whence shall come the safety of the human race. You + suffer? No doubt. How long will it last? The time needed for the + operation. Then you will live," etc. (ii. 65-66). + +"One day," he adds, "the Revolution will justify the Terror." To which +Gauvain retorts thus:-- + + "Fear lest the Terror be the calumny of the Revolution. Liberty, + Equality, Fraternity, are dogmas of peace and harmony. Why give + them an aspect of alarm? What do we seek? To win nations to the + universal public. Then why inspire fright? Of what avail is + intimidation? It is wrong to do ill in order to do good. You do + not pull down the throne to leave the scaffold standing. Let us + hurl away crowns, let us spare heads. The revolution is concord, + not affright. Mild ideas are ill-served by men who do not know + pity. Amnesty is for me the noblest word in human speech. I will + shed no blood save at hazard of my own.... In the fight let us be + the enemies of our foes, and after the victory their brothers" + (ii. 67). + +These two together, Cimourdain and Gauvain, make an ideal pair of the +revolutionists of '93. Strip each of them of the beauty of character +with which the poet's imagination has endowed them, add instead +passion, violence, envy, egoism, malice; then you understand how in +the very face of the foreign enemy Girondins sharpened the knife +for the men of the Mountain, Hebertists screamed for the lives +of Robespierrists, Robespierre struck off the head of Danton, +Thermidorians crushed Robespierre. + +Victor Hugo has given to this typic historical struggle of '93 the +qualities of nobleness and beauty which art requires in dealing with +real themes. Lantenac falls into the hands of the Blues, headed by +Cimourdain and Gauvain, but he does so in consequence of yielding to a +heroic and self-devoting impulse of humanity. Cimourdain, true to his +temperament, insists on his instant execution. Gauvain, true also to +his temperament, is seized with a thousand misgivings, and there is +no more ample, original, and masterly presentation of a case of +conscience, that in civil war is always common enough, than the +struggle through which Gauvain passes before he can resolve to deliver +Lantenac. This pathetic debate--"the stone of Sisyphus, which is only +the quarrel of man with himself"--turns on the loftiest, broadest, +most generous motives, touching the very bases of character, and +reaching far beyond the issue of '93. The political question is seen +to be no more than a superficial aspect of the deeper moral question. +Lantenac, the representative of the old order, had performed an +exploit of signal devotion. Was it not well that one who had faith in +the new order should show himself equally willing to cast away his +life to save one whom self-sacrifice had transformed from the infernal +Satan into the heavenly Lucifer? + + "Gauvain saw in the shade the sinister smile of the sphinx. The + situation was a sort of dread crossway where the conflicting + truths issued and confronted one another, and where the three + supreme ideas of man stood face to face--humanity, the family, the + fatherland. Each of the voices spoke in turn, and each in turn + declared the truth. How choose? Each in turn seemed to hit the + mark of reason and justice, and said, Do that. Was that the thing + to be done? Yes. No. Reasoning counselled one thing; sentiment + another; the two counsels were contradictory. Reasoning is only + reason; sentiment is often conscience; the one comes from man, + the other from a loftier source. That is why sentiment has less + distinctness, and more might. Yet what strength in the severity + of reason! Gauvain hesitated. His perplexity was so fierce. Two + abysses opened before him: to destroy the marquis, or to save him. + Which of these two gulfs was duty?" + +The whole scene (ii. 206-219) is a masterpiece of dramatic strength, +sustention, and flexibility--only equalled by the dramatic vivacity of +the scene in which Cimourdain, sitting as judge, orders the prisoner +to be brought forward, to his horror sees Gauvain instead of Lantenac, +and then proceeds to condemn the man whom he loves best on earth to be +taken to the guillotine. + + * * * * * + +The tragedy of the story, its sombre tone, the overhanging presence of +death in it, are prevented from being oppressive to us by the variety +of minor situation and subordinate character with which the writer has +surrounded the central figures. No writer living is so consummate a +master of landscape, and besides the forest we here have an elaborate +sea-piece, full of the weird, ineffable, menacing suggestion of the +sea in some of her unnumbered moods; and there is a scene of late +twilight on a high solitary down over the bay of Mont Saint-Michel, to +which a reader blessed with sensibility to the subtler impressions of +landscape will turn again and again, as one visits again and again +some actual prospect where the eye procures for the inner sense +a dream of beauty and the incommensurable. Perhaps the palm for +exquisite workmanship will be popularly given, and justly given, to +the episode humorously headed _The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew_, +at the opening of the third volume. It is the story of three little +children, barely out of infancy, awaking, playing, eating, wondering, +slumbering, in solitude through a summer day in an old tower. As a +rule the attempt to make infancy interesting in literature ends in +maudlin failure. But at length the painters have found an equal, or +more than an equal, in an artist whose medium lends itself less easily +than colour and form to the reproduction of the beauty and life of +childhood. In his poetry Victor Hugo had already shown his passing +sensibility to the pathos of the beginnings of our life; witness such +pieces as _Chose vue un Jour de Printemps, Les Pauvres Gens_, the +well-known pieces in _L'Annee Terrible_, and a hundred other lively +touches and fragments of finished loveliness and penetrating sympathy. +In prose it is a more difficult feat to collect the trivial details +which make up the life of the tiny human animal into a whole that +shall be impressive, finished, and beautiful. And prose can only +describe by details enumerated one by one. This most arduous feat +is accomplished in the children's summer day in the tower, and with +enchanting success. Intensely realistic, yet the picture overflows +with emotion--not the emotion of the mother, but of the poet. There +is infinite tenderness, pathos, love, but all heightened at once and +strengthened by the self-control of masculine force. A man writing +about little ones seems able to place himself outside, and thus to +gain more calmness and freedom of vision than the more passionate +interest or yearning of women permits to them in this field of art. +Not a detail is spared, yet the whole is full of delight and pity and +humour. Only one lyric passage is allowed to poetise and accentuate +the realism of the description. Georgette, some twenty months old, +scrambles from her cradle and prattles to the sunbeam. + + "What a bird says in its song, a child says in its prattle. 'Tis + the same hymn; a hymn indistinct, lisping, profound. The child has + what the bird has not, the sombre human destiny in front of it. + Hence the sadness of men as they listen, mingling with the joy of + the little one as it sings. The sublimest canticle to be heard on + earth is the stammering of the human soul on the lips of infancy. + That confused chirruping of a thought, that is as yet no more than + an instinct, has in it one knows not what sort of artless appeal + to the eternal justice; or is it a protest uttered on the + threshold before entering in, a protest meek and poignant? This + ignorance smiling at the Infinite compromises all creation in the + lot that shall fall to the weak defenceless being. Ill, if it + shall come, will be an abuse of confidence. + + "The child's murmuring is more and is less than words; there are + no notes, and yet it is a song; there are no syllables, and yet it + is a language.... This poor stammering is a compound of what the + child said when it was an angel, and of what it will say when + it becomes a man. The cradle has a Yesterday as the grave has a + Morrow; the Morrow and the Yesterday mingle in that strange cooing + their twofold mystery...." + + "Her lips smiled, her eyes smiled, the dimples in her cheeks + smiled. There came forth in this smile a mysterious welcome of the + morning. The soul has faith in the ray. The heavens were blue, + warm was the air. The fragile creature, without knowing anything, + or recognising anything, or understanding anything, softly + floating in musings which are not thought, felt itself in safety + in the midst of nature, among those good trees and that guileless + greenery, in the pure and peaceful landscape, amid the rustle of + nests, of flowing springs, of insects, of leaves, while over all + there glowed the great innocency of the sun" (ii. 104). + +As an eminent man has recently written about Wordsworth's most famous +Ode, there may be some bad philosophy here, but there is assuredly +some noble and touching poetry. + +If the carelessness of infancy is caught with this perfection of +finish, there is a tragic companion piece in the horror and gnawing +anguish of the wretched woman from whom her young have been taken--her +rescue from death, her fierce yearnings for them like the yearnings of +a beast, her brute-like heedlessness of her life and her body in the +cruel search. + +And so the poet conducts us along the strange excursive windings of +the life and passion of humanity. The same hand which draws such noble +figures as Gauvain--and the real Lanjuinais of history was fully as +heroic and as noble as the imaginary Gauvain of fiction--is equally +skilful in drawing the wild Breton beggar who dwells underground among +the branching tree-roots; and the monstrous Imanus, the barbarous +retainer of the Lord of the Seven Forests; and Radoub, the serjeant +from Paris, a man of hearty oaths, hideous, heroic, humoursome, of +a bloody ingenuity in combat. And the same hand which described the +silent sundown on the sandy shore of the bay, and the mysterious +darkness of the forests, and the blameless play of the little ones, +gives us the prodigious animation of the night surprise at Dol, the +furious conflict at La Tourgue, and, perhaps most powerful of all, the +breaking loose of the gun on the deck of the _Claymore_. You may say +that this is only melodrama; but if we turn to the actual events of +'93, the melodrama of the romancer will seem tame compared with the +melodrama of the faithful chronicler. And so long as the narrative +of melodramatic action is filled with poetry and beauty, there is no +reproach in uncommon situation, in intense passion, in magnanimous or +subtle motives that are not of every day. Of Hugo's art we may say +what Dr. Newman has said of something else: _Such work is always open +to criticism and it is always above it_. + +There is poetry and beauty, no doubt, in the common lives about us, if +we look at them with imaginative and sympathetic eye, and we owe much +to the art that reveals to us the tragedy of the parlour and the +frockcoat, and analyses the bitterness and sorrow and high passion +that may underlie a life of outer smoothness and decorum. Still, +criticism cannot accept this as the final and exclusive limitation of +imaginative work. Art is nothing if not catholic and many-sided, and +it is certainly not exhausted by mere domestic possibilities. Goethe's +fine and luminous feeling for practical life, which has given such +depth of richness and wisdom to his best prose writing, fills us with +a delightful sense of satisfaction and adequateness; and yet why +should it not leave us with a mind eagerly open for the larger and +more inventive romance, in which nature is clothed with some of that +awe and might and silent contemplation of the puny destinies of man, +that used to surround the conception of the supernatural? Victor Hugo +seeks strong and extraordinary effects; he is a master of terrible +image, profound emotion, audacious fancy; but then these are as real, +as natural, as true to fact, as the fairest reproduction of the moral +poverties and meannesses of the world. And let it be added that while +he is without a rival in the dark mysterious heights of imaginative +effect, he is equally a master in strokes of tenderness and the most +delicate human sympathy. His last book seems to contain pieces that +surpass every other book of Hugo's in the latter range of qualities, +and not to fall at all short in the former. And so, in the words of +the man of genius who last wrote on Victor Hugo in these pages,[1] +"As we pity ourselves for the loss of poems and pictures which have +perished, and left of Sappho but a fragment and of Zeuxis but a name, +so are we inclined to pity the dead who died too soon to enjoy the +great works we have enjoyed. At each new glory that 'swims into our +ken,' we surely feel that it is something to have lived to see that +too rise." + +[Footnote 1: Mr. Swinburne.] + + + + +ON "THE RING AND THE BOOK." + + +When the first volume of Mr. Browning's new poem came before the +critical tribunals, public and private, recognised or irresponsible, +there was much lamentation even in quarters where a manlier humour +might have been expected, over the poet's choice of a subject. With +facile largeness of censure, it was pronounced a murky subject, +sordid, unlovely, morally sterile, an ugly leaf out of some ancient +Italian Newgate Calendar. One hinted in vain that wisdom is justified +of her children, that the poet must be trusted to judge of the +capacity of his own theme, and that it is his conception and treatment +of it that ultimately justify or discredit his choice. Now that the +entire work is before the world, this is plain, and it is admitted. +When the second volume, containing _Giuseppe Caponsacchi_, appeared, +men no longer found it sordid or ugly; the third, with _Pompilia_, +convinced them that the subject was not, after all, so incurably +unlovely; and the fourth, with _The Pope_, and the passage from the +Friar's sermon, may well persuade those who needed persuasion, that +moral fruitfulness depends on the master, his eye and hand, his vision +and grasp, more than on this and that in the transaction which has +taken possession of his imagination. + +The truth is, we have for long been so debilitated by pastorals, by +graceful presentation of the Arthurian legend for drawing-rooms, by +idylls, not robust and Theocritean, by verse directly didactic, that a +rude blast of air from the outside welter of human realities is apt +to give a shock, that might well show in what simpleton's paradise +we have been living. The ethics of the rectory parlour set to sweet +music, the respectable aspirations of the sentimental curate married +to exquisite verse, the everlasting glorification of domestic +sentiment in blameless princes and others, as if that were the poet's +single province and the divinely-appointed end of all art, as if +domestic sentiment included and summed up the whole throng of +passions, emotions, strife, and desire; all this might seem to be +making valetudinarians of us all. Our public is beginning to measure +the right and possible in art by the superficial probabilities of life +and manners within a ten-mile radius of Charing Cross. Is it likely, +asks the critic, that Duke Silva would have done this, that Fedalma +would have done that? Who shall suppose it possible that Caponsacchi +acted thus, that Count Guido was possessed by devils so? The poser +is triumphant, because the critic is tacitly appealing to the normal +standard of probabilities in our own day. In the tragedy of Pompilia +we are taken far from the serene and homely region in which some of +our teachers would fain have it that the whole moral universe can be +snugly pent up. We see the black passions of man at their blackest; +hate, so fierce, undiluted, implacable, passionate, as to be hard of +conception by our simpler northern natures; cruelty, so vindictive, +subtle, persistent, deadly, as to fill us with a pain almost too great +for true art to produce; greediness, lust, craft, penetrating a whole +stock and breed, even down to the ancient mother of "that fell house +of hate,"-- + + "The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke, + The hag that gave these three abortions birth, + Unmotherly mother and unwomanly + Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame, + Womanliness to loathing: no one word, + No gesture to curb cruelty a whit + More than the she-pard thwarts her playsome whelps + Trying their milk-teeth on the soft o' the throat + O' the first fawn, flung, with those beseeching eyes, + Flat in the covert! How should she but couch, + Lick the dry lips, unsheathe the blunted claw, + Catch 'twixt her placid eyewinks at what chance + Old bloody half-forgotten dream may flit, + Born when herself was novice to the taste, + The while she lets youth take its pleasure" (iv. 40). + +But, then, if the poet has lighted up for us these grim and appalling +depths, he has not failed to raise us too into the presence of +proportionate loftiness and purity. + + "Tantum vertice in auras + Aetherias quantum radice in Tartara tendit." + +Like the gloomy and umbrageous grove of which the Sibyl spake to the +pious Aeneas, the poem conceals a golden branch and golden leaves. +In the second volume, Guido, servile and false, is followed by +Caponsacchi, as noble alike in conception and execution as anything +that Mr. Browning has ever achieved. In the third volume, the austere +pathos of Pompilia's tale relieves the too oppressive jollity of Don +Giacinto, and the flowery rhetoric of Bottini; while in the fourth, +the deep wisdom, justice, and righteous mind of the Pope, reconcile +us to endure the sulphurous whiff from the pit in the confession of +Guido, now desperate, naked, and satanic. From what at first was sheer +murk, there comes out a long procession of human figures, infinitely +various in form and thought, in character and act; a group of men and +women, eager, passionate, indifferent; tender and ravenous, mean and +noble, humorous and profound, jovial with prosperity or half-dumb with +misery, skirting the central tragedy, or plunged deep into the thick +of it, passers-by who put themselves off with a glance at the surface +of a thing, and another or two who dive to the heart of it. And +they all come out with a certain Shakespearian fulness, vividness, +directness. Above all, they are every one of them men and women, +with free play of human life in limb and feature, as in an antique +sculpture. So much of modern art, in poetry as in painting, runs to +mere drapery. "I grant," said Lessing, "that there is also a beauty in +drapery, but can it be compared with that of the human form? And shall +he who can attain to the greater, rest content with the less? I much +fear that the most perfect master in drapery shows by that very talent +wherein his weakness lies." This was spoken of plastic art, but it has +a yet deeper meaning in poetic criticism. There too, the master is he +who presents the natural shape, the curves, the thews of men, and does +not labour and seek praise for faithful reproduction of the mere moral +drapery of the hour, this or another; who gives you Hercules at strife +with Antaeus, Laocoon writhing in the coils of the divine serpents, +the wrestle with circumstance or passion, with outward destiny or +inner character, in the free outlines of nature and reality. The +capacity which it possesses for this presentation, at once so varied +and so direct, is one reason why the dramatic form ranks as the +highest expression and measure of the creative power of the poet; and +the extraordinary grasp with which Mr. Browning has availed himself of +this double capacity is one reason why we should reckon _The Ring and +the Book_ as one of his masterpieces. + +We may say this, and still not be blind to the faults of the poem. +Many persons agree that they find it too long, and if they find it so, +then for them it is too long. Others, who cannot resist the critic's +temptation of believing that a remark must be true if it only look +acute and specific, vow that the disclosure in the first volume of the +whole plan and plot vitiates subsequent artistic merit. If one +cannot enjoy what comes, for knowing beforehand what is coming, this +objection may be allowed to have a root in human nature; but then two +things might perhaps be urged on the other side,--first, that the +interest of the poem lies in the development and presentation of +character, on the one hand, and in the many sides which a single +transaction offered to as many minds, on the other; and therefore that +this true interest could not be marred by the bare statement what the +transaction was or, baldly looked at, seemed to be; and, second, that +the poem was meant to find its reader in a mood of mental repose, +ready to receive the poet's impressions, undisturbed by any agitating +curiosity as to plot or final outcome. A more valid accusation touches +the many verbal perversities, in which a poet has less right than +another to indulge. The compound Latin and English of Don Giacinto, +notwithstanding the fan of the piece, still grows a burden to the +flesh. Then there are harsh and formless lines, bursts of metrical +chaos, from which a writer's dignity and self-respect ought surely +to be enough to preserve him. Again, there are passages marked by a +coarse violence of expression that is nothing short of barbarous (for +instance, ii. 190, or 245). The only thing to be said is, that the +countrymen of Shakespeare have had to learn to forgive uncouth +outrages on form and beauty to fine creative genius. If only one could +be sure that readers, unschooled as too many are to love the simple +and elevated beauty of such form as Sophocles or as Corneille gives, +would not think the worst fault the chief virtue, and confound the +poet's bluntnesses with his admirable originality. It is certain that +in Shakespeare's case his defects are constantly fastened upon, by +critics who have never seriously studied the forms of dramatic art +except in the literature of England, and extolled as instances of +his characteristic mightiness. It may well be, therefore, that the +grotesque caprices which Mr. Browning unfortunately permits to himself +may find misguided admirers, or, what is worse, even imitators. It +would be most unjust, however, while making due mention of these +things, to pass over the dignity and splendour of the verse in +many places, where the intensity of the writer's mood finds worthy +embodiment in a sustained gravity and vigour and finish of diction not +to be surpassed. The concluding lines of the _Caponsacchi_ (comprising +the last page of the second volume), the appeal of the Greek poet in +_The Pope_, one or two passages in the first _Guido_ (e.g. vol. ii., +p. 156, from line 1957), and the close of the _Pompilia_, ought to be +referred to when one wishes to know what power over the instrument +of his art Mr. Browning might have achieved, if he had chosen to +discipline himself in instrumentation. + +When all is said that can be said about the violences which from +time to time invade the poem, it remains true that the complete work +affects the reader most powerfully with that wide unity of impression +which it is the highest aim of dramatic art, and perhaps of all art, +to produce. After we have listened to all the whimsical dogmatising +about beauty, to all the odious cant about morbid anatomy, to all the +well-deserved reproach for unpardonable perversities of phrase and +outrages on rhythm, there is left to us the consciousness that a +striking human transaction has been seized by a vigorous and profound +imagination, that its many diverse threads have been wrought into a +single, rich, and many-coloured web of art, in which we may see traced +for us the labyrinths of passion and indifference, stupidity and +craft, prejudice and chance, along which truth and justice have to +find a devious and doubtful way. The transaction itself, lurid +and fuliginous, is secondary to the manner of its handling and +presentment. We do not derive our sense of unity from the singleness +and completeness of the horrid tragedy, so much as from the power +with which its own circumstances as they happened, the rumours which +clustered about it from the minds of men without, the many moods, +fancies, dispositions, which it for the moment brought out into light, +playing round the fact, the half-sportive flights with which lawyers, +judges, quidnuncs of the street, darted at conviction and snatched +hap-hazard at truth, are all wrought together into one self-sufficient +and compacted shape. + +But this shape is not beautiful, and the end of art is beauty? Verbal +fanaticism is always perplexing, and, rubbing my eyes, I ask whether +that beauty means anything more than such an arrangement and +disposition of the parts of the work as, first kindling a great +variety of dispersed emotions and thoughts in the mind of the +spectator, finally concentrates them in a single mood of joyous, sad, +meditative, or interested delight. The sculptor, the painter, and the +musician, have each their special means of producing this final +and superlative impression; each is bound by the strictly limited +capability in one direction and another of the medium in which he +works. In poetry it is because they do not perceive how much more +manifold and varied are the means of reaching the end than in the +other expressions of art, that people insist each upon some particular +quiddity which, entering into composition, alone constitutes it +genuinely poetic, beautiful, or artistic. Pressing for definition, you +never get much further than that each given quiddity means a certain +Whatness. This is why poetical criticism is usually so little +catholic. A man remembers that a poem in one style has filled him with +consciousness of beauty and delight. Why conclude that this style +constitutes the one access to the same impression? Why not rather +perceive that, to take contemporaries, the beauty of _Thyrsis_ Is +mainly produced by a fine suffusion of delicately-toned emotion; that +of _Atalanta_ by splendid and barely rivalled music of verse; of _In +Memoriam_ by its ordered and harmonious presentation of a sacred mood; +of the _Spanish Gypsy_, in the parts where it reaches beauty, by +a sublime ethical passion; of the _Earthly Paradise_, by sweet and +simple reproduction of the spirit of the younger-hearted times? There +are poems by Mr. Browning in which it is difficult, or, let us frankly +say, impossible, for most of us at all events and as yet, to discover +the beauty or the shape. But if beauty may not be denied to a work +which, abounding in many-coloured scenes and diverse characters, in +vivid image and portraiture, wide reflection and multiform emotion, +does further, by a broad thread of thought running under all, bind +these impressions into one supreme and elevated conviction, then +assuredly, whatever we may think of this passage or that, that episode +or the other, the first volume or the third, we cannot deny that _The +Ring and the Book_, in its perfection and integrity, fully satisfies +the conditions of artistic triumph. Are we to ignore the grandeur of +a colossal statue, and the nobility of the human conceptions which it +embodies, because here and there we notice a flaw in the marble, a +blemish in its colour, a jagged slip of the chisel? "It is not force +of intellect," as George Eliot has said, "which causes ready repulsion +from the aberration and eccentricities of greatness, any more than it +is force of vision that causes the eye to explore the warts in a +face bright with human expression; it is simply the negation of high +sensibilities." + +Then, it is asked by persons of another and still more rigorous +temper, whether, as the world goes, the subject, or its treatment +either, justifies us in reading some twenty-one thousand and +seventy-five lines, which do not seem to have any direct tendency to +make us better or to improve mankind. This objection is an old enemy +with a new face, and need not detain us, though perhaps the crude +and incessant application of a narrow moral standard, thoroughly +misunderstood, is one of the intellectual dangers of our time. You may +now and again hear a man of really masculine character confess that +though he loves Shakespeare and takes habitual delight in his works, +he cannot see that he was a particularly moral writer. That is to say, +Shakespeare is never directly didactic; you can no more get a system +of morals out of his writings than you can get such a system out +of the writings of the ever-searching Plato. But, if we must be +quantitative, one great creative poet probably exerts a nobler, +deeper, more permanent ethical influence than a dozen generations of +professed moral teachers. It is a commonplace to the wise, and an +everlasting puzzle to the foolish, that direct inculcation of morals +should invariably prove so powerless an instrument, so futile a +method. The truth is that nothing can be more powerfully efficacious +from the moral point of view than the exercise of an exalted creative +art, stirring within the intelligence of the spectator active thought +and curiosity about many types of character and many changeful issues +of conduct and fortune, at once enlarging and elevating the range of +his reflections on mankind, ever kindling his sympathies into the warm +and continuous glow which purifies and strengthens nature, and fills +men with that love of humanity which is the best inspirer of virtue. +Is not this why music, too, is to be counted supreme among moral +agents, soothing disorderly passion by diving down into the hidden +deeps of character where there is no disorder, and touching the +diviner mind? Given a certain rectitude as well as vigour of +intelligence, then whatever stimulates the fancy, expands the +imagination, enlivens meditation upon the great human drama, is +essentially moral. Shakespeare does all this, as if sent Iris-like +from the immortal gods, and _The Ring and the Book_ has a measure of +the same incomparable quality. + +A profound and moving irony subsists in the very structure of the +poem. Any other human transaction that ever was, tragic or comic or +plain prosaic, may be looked at in a like spirit, As the world's talk +bubbled around the dumb anguish of Pompilia, or the cruelty and hate +of Guido, so it does around the hourly tragedies of all times and +places. + + "The instinctive theorizing whence a fact + Looks to the eye as the eye likes the look."-- + "Vibrations in the general mind + At depth of deed already out of reach."-- + "Live fact deadened down, + Talked over, bruited abroad, whispered away:"-- + +if we reflect that these are the conditions which have marked the +formation of all the judgments that we hold by, and which are vivid in +operation and effect at this hour, the deep irony and the impressive +meaning of the poem are both obvious:-- + + "So learn one lesson hence + Of many which whatever lives should teach, + This lesson that our human speech is naught, + Our human testimony false, our fame + And human estimation words and wind" (iv. 234). + +It is characteristic of Mr. Browning that he thus casts the moral of +his piece in an essentially intellectual rather than an emotional +form, appealing to hard judgment rather than to imaginative +sensibility. Another living poet of original genius, of whom we have +much right to complain that he gives us so little, ends a poem in two +or three lines which are worth quoting here for the illustration they +afford of what has just been said about Mr. Browning:-- + + "Ah, what dusty answer gets the soul, + When hot for certainties in this our life!-- + In tragic hints here see what evermore + Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force, + Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse, + To throw that faint thin line upon the shore?"[1] + +[Footnote 1: Mr. George Meredith's _Modern Love_.] + +This is imaginative and sympathetic in thought as well as expression, +and the truth and the image enter the writer's mind together, the one +by the other. The lines convey poetic sentiment rather than reasoned +truth; while Mr. Browning's close would be no unfit epilogue to a +scientific essay on history, or a treatise on the errors of the human +understanding and the inaccuracy of human opinion and judgment. This +is the common note of his highest work; hard thought and reason +illustrating themselves in dramatic circumstance, and the thought +and reason are not wholly fused, they exist apart and irradiate with +far-shooting beams the moral confusion of the tragedy. This is, at any +rate, emphatically true of _The Ring and the Book_. The fulness +and variety of creation, the amplitude of the play and shifting of +characters and motive and mood, are absolutely unforced, absolutely +uninterfered with by the artificial exigencies of ethical or +philosophic purpose. There is the purpose, full-grown, clear in +outline, unmistakeable in significance. But the just proprieties of +place and season are rigorously observed, because Mr. Browning, like +every other poet of his quality, has exuberant and adequate delight in +mere creation, simple presentment, and returns to bethink him of the +meaning of it all only by-and-by. The pictures of Guido, of Pompilia, +of Caponsacchi, of Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, of Pope +Innocent, are each of them full and adequate, as conceptions of +character in active manifestation apart from the truth which the whole +composition is meant to illustrate, and which clothes itself in this +most excellent drama. + +The scientific attitude of the intelligence is almost as markedly +visible in Mr. Browning as the strength of his creative power. The +lesson of _The Ring and the Book_ is perhaps as nearly positive as +anything poetic can be. It is true that ultimately the drama ends in +a vindication of what are called the ways of God to man, if indeed +people are willing to put themselves off with a form of omnipotent +justice which is simply a partial retribution inflicted on the +monster, while torture and butchery fall upon victims more or +less absolutely blameless. As if the fact of punishment at length +overtaking the guilty Franceschini were any vindication of the justice +of that assumed Providence, which had for so long a time awarded +punishment far more harsh to the innocent Pompilia. So far as you +can be content with the vindication of a justice of this less than +equivocal quality, the sight of the monster brought to the + + "Close fetid cell, + Where the hot vapour of an agony, + Struck into drops on the cold wall, runs down + Horrible worms made out of sweat and tears,"-- + +may in a sense prove satisfactory enough. But a man must be very dull +who in reading the poem does not perceive that the very spirit of it +points to the thousand hazards which even this fragment of justice had +to run in saving itself, and bringing about such partially righteous +consummation as destiny permits. True opinion fares yet more +perilously. _Half-Rome_, the _Other Half-Rome_, the _Tertium Quid_, +which is perhaps most masterly and finished of the three, show us +how ill truth sifts itself, to how many it never comes at all, how +blurred, confused, next door to false, it is figured even to those who +seize it by the hem of the garment. We may, perhaps, yawn over the +intermingled Latin and law of Arcangeli, in spite of the humour of +parts of it, as well as over the vapid floweriness of his rival; but +for all that, we are touched keenly by the irony of the methods by +which the two professional truth-sifters darken counsel with words, +and make skilful sport of life and fact. The whole poem is a parable +of the feeble and half-hopeless struggle which truth has to make +against the ways of the world. That in this particular case truth and +justice did win some pale sort of victory does not weaken the force +of the lesson. The victory was such and so won as to stir in us awful +thoughts of fatal risks and certain defeats, of falsehood a thousand +times clasped for truth, of fact a thousand times banished for +fancy:-- + + "Because Pompilia's purity prevails, + Conclude you, all truth triumphs in the end? + So might those old inhabitants of the ark, + Witnessing haply their dove's safe return, + Pronounce there was no danger all the while + O' the deluge, to the creature's counterparts, + Aught that beat wing i' the world, was white or soft, + And that the lark, the thrush, the culver too, + Might equally have traversed air, found earth, + And brought back olive-branch In unharmed bill. + Methinks I hear the Patriarch's warning voice-- + 'Though this one breast, by miracle, return, + No wave rolls by, in all the waste, but bears + Within it some dead dove-like thing as dear, + Beauty made blank and harmlessness destroyed!'" + + (iv. 218). + +Or, to take another simile from the same magnificent passage, in which +the fine dignity of the verse fitly matches the deep truth of the +preacher's monitions:-- + + "Romans! An elder race possessed your land + Long ago, and a false faith lingered still, + As shades do, though the morning-star be out. + Doubtless, some pagan of the twilight day + Has often pointed to a cavern-mouth, + Obnoxious to beholders, hard by Rome, + And said,--nor he a bad man, no, nor fool,-- + Only a man, so, blind like all his mates,-- + 'Here skulk in safety, lurk, defying law, + The devotees to execrable creed, + Adoring--with what culture ... Jove, avert + Thy vengeance from us worshippers of thee!... + What rites obscene--their idol-god, an Ass!' + So went the word forth, so acceptance found, + So century re-echoed century, + Cursed the accursed,--and so, from sire to son, + You Romans cried, 'The offscourings of our race + Corrupt within the depths there: fitly, fiends + Perform a temple-service o'er the dead: + Child, gather garment round thee, pass nor pry!' + So groaned your generations: till the time + Grew ripe, and lightning hath revealed, belike,-- + Thro' crevice peeped into by curious fear,-- + Some object even fear could recognise + I' the place of spectres; on the illumined wall, + To-wit, some nook, tradition talks about, + Narrow and short, a corpse's length, no more: + And by it, in the due receptacle, + The little rude brown lamp of earthenware, + The cruse, was meant for flowers, but held the blood, + The rough-scratched palm-branch, and the legend left + _Pro Christo_. Then the mystery lay clear: + The abhorred one was a martyr all the time, + A saint whereof earth was not worthy. What? + Do you continue in the old belief? + Where blackness bides unbroke, must devils be? + Is it so certain, not another cell + O' the myriad that make up the catacomb, + Contains some saint a second flash would show? + Will you ascend into the light of day + And, having recognised a martyr's shrine, + Go join the votaries that gape around + Each vulgar god that awes the market-place?" + (iv. 219). + +With less impetuosity and a more weightily reasoned argument the Pope +confronts the long perplexity and entanglement of circumstances with +the fatuous optimism which insists that somehow justice and virtue do +rule in the world. Consider all the doings at Arezzo, before and after +the consummation of the tragedy. What of the Aretine archbishop, to +whom Pompilia cried "Protect me from the fiend!"-- + + "No, for thy Guido is one heady, strong, + Dangerous to disquiet; let him bide! + He needs some bone to mumble, help amuse + The darkness of his den with; so, the fawn + Which limps up bleeding to my foot and lies, + --Come to me, daughter,--thus I throw him back!" + +Then the monk to whom she went, imploring him to write to Rome:-- + + "He meets the first cold sprinkle of the world + And shudders to the marrow, 'Save this child? + Oh, my superiors, oh, the Archbishop here! + Who was it dared lay hand upon the ark + His betters saw fall nor put finger forth?'" + +Worst of all, the Convent of the Convertites, women to whom she was +consigned for help, + + "They do help; they are prompt to testify + To her pure life and saintly dying days. + She dies, and lo, who seemed so poor, proves rich! + What does the body that lives through helpfulness + To women for Christ's sake? The kiss turns bite, + The dove's note changes to the crow's cry: judge! + 'Seeing that this our Convent claims of right + What goods belong to those we succour, be + The same proved women of dishonest life,-- + And seeing that this Trial made appear + Pompilia was in such predicament,-- + The Convent hereupon pretends to said + Succession of Pompilia, issues writ, + And takes possession by the Fisc's advice.' + Such is their attestation to the cause + Of Christ, who had one saint at least, they hoped: + But, is a title-deed to filch, a corpse + To slander, and an infant-heir to cheat? + Christ must give up his gains then! They unsay + All the fine speeches,--who was saint is whore." + +It is not wonderful if his review of all the mean and dolorous +circumstance of this cycle of wrong brings the Pope face to face with +the unconquerable problem for the Christian believer, the keystone +of the grim arch of religious doubt and despair, through which the +courageous soul must needs pass to creeds of reason and life. Where is +"the gloriously decisive change, the immeasurable metamorphosis" in +human worth that should in some sort justify the consummate price that +had been paid for man these seventeen hundred years before? + + "Had a mere adept of the Rosy Cross + Spent his life to consummate the Great Work, + Would not we start to see the stuff it touched + Yield not a grain more than the vulgar got + By the old smelting-process years ago? + If this were sad to see in just the sage + Who should profess so much, perform no more, + What is it when suspected in that Power + Who undertook to make and made the world, + Devised and did effect man, body and soul, + Ordained salvation for them both, and yet ... + Well, is the thing we see, salvation?" + +It is certain that by whatever other deficiencies it may be marked +_The Ring and the Book_ is blameless for the most characteristic of +all the shortcomings of contemporary verse, a grievous sterility of +thought. And why? Because sterility of thought is the blight struck +into the minds of men by timorous and halt-footed scepticism, by a +half-hearted dread of what chill thing the truth might prove itself, +by unmanly reluctance or moral incapacity to carry the faculty of +poetic vision over the whole field; and because Mr. Browning's +intelligence, on the other hand, is masculine and courageous, moving +cheerfully on the solid earth of an articulate and defined conviction, +and careful not to omit realities from the conception of the great +drama, merely for being unsightly to the too fastidious eye, +or jarring in the ear, or too bitterly perplexing to faith or +understanding. It is this resolute feeling after and grip of fact +which is at the root of his distinguishing fruitfulness of thought, +and it is exuberance of thought, spontaneous, well-marked, and sapid, +that keeps him out of poetical preaching, on the one hand, and mere +making of music, on the other. Regret as we may the fantastic rudeness +and unscrupulous barbarisms into which Mr. Browning's art too often +falls, and find what fault we may with his method, let us ever +remember how much he has to say, and how effectively he communicates +the shock of new thought which was first imparted to him by the +vivid conception of a large and far-reaching story. The value of the +thought, indeed, is not to be measured by poetic tests; but still the +thought has poetic value, too, for it is this which has stirred in the +writer that keen yet impersonal interest in the actors of his story +and in its situations which is one of the most certain notes of +true dramatic feeling, and which therefore gives the most unfailing +stimulus to the interest of the appreciative reader. + +At first sight _The Ring and the Book_ appears to be absolutely wanting +in that grandeur which, in a composition of such enormous length, +criticism must pronounce to be a fundamental and indispensable element. +In an ordinary way this effect of grandeur is produced either by some +heroic action surrounded by circumstances of worthy stateliness, as in +the finest of the Greek plays; or as in _Paradise Lost_ by the presence +of personages of majestic sublimity of bearing and association; or as in +_Faust_ or _Hamlet_ by the stupendous moral abysses which the poet +discloses fitfully on this side and that. None of these things are to be +found in _The Ring and the Book_ The action of Caponsacchi, though noble +and disinterested, is hardly heroic in the highest dramatic sense, for +it is not much more than the lofty defiance of a conventionality, the +contemplated penalty being only small; not, for example, as if life or +ascertained happiness had been the fixed or even probable price of his +magnanimous enterprise. There was no marching to the stake, no +deliberate encountering of the mightier risks, no voluntary submission +to a lifelong endurance. True, this came in the end, but it was an end +unforeseen, and one, therefore, not to be associated with the first +conception of the original act. Besides, Guido is so saturated with +hateful and ignoble motive as to fill the surrounding air with +influences that preclude heroic association. It has been said of the +great men to whom the Byzantine Empire once or twice gave birth, that +even their fame has a curiously tarnished air, as if that too had been +touched by the evil breath of the times. And in like manner we may say +of Guido Franceschini that even to have touched him in the way of +resistance detracts from pure heroism. Perhaps the same consideration +explains the comparative disappointment which most people seem to have +felt with _Pompilia_ in the third volume. Again, there is nothing which +can be rightly called majesty of character visible in one personage or +another. There is high devotion in Caponsacchi, a large-minded and free +sagacity in Pope Innocent, and around Pompilia the tragic pathos of an +incurable woe, which by its intensity might raise her to grandeur if it +sprang from some more solemn source than the mere malignity and baseness +of an unworthy oppressor. Lastly, there is nothing in _The Ring and the +Book_ of that "certain incommensurableness" which Goethe found in his +own _Faust_. The poem is kept closely concrete and strictly +commensurable by the very framework of its story:-- + + "pure crude fact, + Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard, + And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since." + +It moves from none of the supernatural agencies which give the impulse +to our interest in _Faust_, nor from the sublimer passions and +yearning after things unspeakable alike in _Faust_ and in _Hamlet._ + +Yet, notwithstanding its lack of the accustomed elements of grandeur, +there is a profound impressiveness about _The Ring and the Book_ +which must arise from the presence of some other fine compensating +or equivalent quality. Perhaps one may say that this equivalent for +grandeur is a certain simple touching of our sense of human kinship, +of the large identity of the conditions of the human lot, of the +piteous fatalities which bring the lives of the great multitude of men +to be little more than "grains of sand to be blown by the wind." This +old woe, the poet says, now in the fulness of the days again lives, + + "_If precious be the soul of man to man_." + +This is the deeply implanted sentiment to which his poem makes +successful appeal. Nor is it mocked by mere outpouring of scorn on the +blind and fortuitous groping of men and societies of men after truth +and justice and traces of the watchfulness of "the unlidded eye of +God." Rather it is this inability to see beyond the facts of our +condition to some diviner, ever-present law, which helps to knit us to +our kind, our brethren "whom we have seen." + + "Clouds obscure-- + But for which obscuration all were bright? + Too hastily concluded! Sun-suffused, + A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze,-- + Better the very clarity of heaven: + The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear. + What but the weakness in a faith supplies + The incentive to humanity, no strength + Absolute, irresistible, comports? + How can man love but what he yearns to help + And that which men think weakness within strength + But angels know for strength and stronger get-- + What were it else but the first things made new, + But repetition of the miracle, + The divine instance of self-sacrifice + That never ends and aye begins for man?" + + + + +MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF LETTERS. + + +What are the qualities of a good contributor? What makes a good +Review? Is the best literature produced by the writer who does nothing +else but write, or by the man who tempers literature by affairs? What +are the different recommendations of the rival systems of anonymity +and signature? What kind of change, if any, has passed over periodical +literature since those two great periodicals, the _Edinburgh_ and the +_Quarterly_, held sway? These and a number of other questions in the +same matter--some of them obviously not to be opened with propriety in +these pages--must naturally be often present to the mind of any one +who is concerned in the control of a Review, and a volume has just +been printed which sets such musings once more astir. Mr. Macvey +Napier was the editor of the _Edinburgh Review_ from 1829--when +Jeffrey, after a reign of seven-and-twenty years, resigned it into +his hands--until his death in 1847. A portion of the correspondence +addressed to Mr. Napier during this period is full of personal +interest both to the man of letters and to that more singular being, +the Editor, the impresario of men of letters, the _entrepreneur_ of +the spiritual power. + +To manage an opera-house is usually supposed to tax human powers more +urgently than any position save that of a general in the very heat +and stress of battle. The orchestra, the chorus, the subscribers, +the first tenor, a pair of rival prima donnas, the newspapers, the +box-agents in Bond Street, the army of hangers-on in the flies--all +combine to demand such gifts of tact, resolution, patience, foresight, +tenacity, flexibility, as are only expected from the great ruler +or the great soldier. The editor of a periodical of public +consideration--and the _Edinburgh Review_ in the hands of Mr. Napier +was the avowed organ of the ruling Whig powers--is sorely tested +in the same way. The rival house may bribe his stars. His popular +epigrammatist is sometimes as full of humours as a spoiled soprano. +The favourite pyrotechnist is systematically late and procrastinatory, +or is piqued because his punctuation or his paragraphs have been +meddled with. The contributor whose article would be in excellent +time if it did not appear before the close of the century, or never +appeared at all, pesters you with warnings that a month's delay is a +deadly blow to progress, and stays the great procession of the ages. +The contributor who could profitably fill a sheet, insists on sending +a treatise. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who had charge of the +_Edinburgh_ for a short space, truly described prolixity as the _bete +noire_ of an editor. "Every contributor," he said, "has some special +reason for wishing to write at length on his own subject." + +_Ah, que de choses dans un menuet!_ cried Marcel, the great +dancing-master, and ah, what things in the type and [Greek: idea] of +an article, cries an editor with the enthusiasm of his calling; such +proportion, measure, comprehension, variety of topics, pithiness of +treatment, all within a space appointed with Procrustean rigour. This +is what the soul of the volunteer contributor is dull to. Of the minor +vexations who can tell? There is one single tribulation dire enough +to poison life--even if there were no other--and this is disorderly +manuscript. Empson, Mr. Napier's well-known contributor, was one of +the worst offenders; he would never even take the trouble to mark his +paragraphs. It is my misfortune to have a manuscript before me at this +moment that would fill thirty of these pages, and yet from beginning +to end there is no indication that it is not to be read at a single +breath. The paragraph ought to be, and in all good writers it is, as +real and as sensible a division as the sentence. It is an organic +member in prose composition, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, +just as a stanza is an organic and definite member in the composition +of an ode, "I fear my manuscript is rather disorderly," says another, +"but I will correct carefully in print." Just so. Because he is too +heedless to do his work in a workmanlike way, he first inflicts +fatigue and vexation on the editor whom he expects to read his paper; +second, he inflicts considerable and quite needless expense on the +publisher; and thirdly, he inflicts a great deal of tedious and +thankless labour on the printers, who are for the most part far more +meritorious persons than fifth-rate authors. It is true that Burke +returned such disordered proofs that the printer usually found it +least troublesome to set the whole afresh, and Miss Martineau tells +a story of a Scotch compositor who fled from Edinburgh to avoid +Carlyle's manuscript, and to his horror was presently confronted with +a piece of the too familiar copy which made him cry, "Lord, have +mercy! Have _you_ got that man to print for!" But most editors will +cheerfully forgive such transgressions to all contributors who will +guarantee that they write as well as Burke or Carlyle. Alas! it is +usually the case that those who have least excuse are the worst +offenders. The slovenliest manuscripts come from persons to whom +the difference between an hour and a minute is of the very smallest +importance. This, however, is a digression, only to be excused partly +by the natural desire to say a word against one's persecutors, and +partly by a hope that some persons of sensitive conscience may be led +to ponder whether there may not be after all some moral obligations +even towards editors and printers. + +Mr. Napier had one famous contributor, who stands out alone in the +history of editors. Lord Brougham's traditional connection with the +Review,--he had begun to write either in its first or third number, +and had written in it ever since--his encyclopaedic ignorance, his +power, his great fame in the country, and the prestige which his +connection reflected on the Review, all made him a personage with whom +it would have been most imprudent to quarrel. Yet the position in +which Mr. Napier was placed after Brougham's breach with the Whigs, +was one of the most difficult in which the conductor of a great organ +could possibly be placed. The Review was the representative, the +champion, and the mouthpiece of the Whig party, and of the Whigs who +were in office. Before William IV. dismissed the Whigs in 1834 as +arbitrarily as his father had dismissed the Whigs in 1784, Brougham +had covered himself with disrepute among his party by a thousand +pranks, and after the dismissal he disgusted them by asking the +new Chancellor to make him Chief Baron of the Exchequer. When Lord +Melbourne returned to power in the following year, this and other +escapades were remembered against him. "If left out," said Lord +Melbourne, "he would indeed be dangerous; but if taken in, he would +simply be destructive." So Brougham was left out, Pepys was made +Chancellor, and the Premier compared himself to a man who has broken +with a termagant mistress and married the best of cooks. Mr. Napier +was not so happy. The termagant was left on his hands. He had to +keep terms with a contributor who hated with deadly hatred the very +government that the Review existed to support. No editor ever had such +a contributor as Brougham in the long history of editorial torment +since the world began. He scolds, he storms, he hectors, he lectures; +he is for ever threatening desertion and prophesying ruin; he exhausts +the vocabulary of opprobrium against his correspondent's best friends; +they are silly slaves, base traitors, a vile clique "whose treatment +of me has been the very _ne plus ultra_ of ingratitude, baseness, and +treachery." He got the Review and its editor into a scrape which shook +the world at the time (1834), by betraying Cabinet secrets to spite +Lord Durham. His cries against his adversaries are as violent as +the threats of Ajax in his tent, and as loud as the bellowings of +Philoctetes at the mouth of his cave. Here is one instance out of a +hundred:-- + + "That is a trifle, and I only mention it to beg of you to pluck up + a little courage, and not be alarmed every time any of the little + knot of threateners annoy you. _They want to break off all kind of + connection between me and the Edinburgh Review_. I have long seen + it. Their fury against the article in the last number knows no + bounds, and they will never cease till they worry you out of your + connection with me, and get the whole control of the Review into + their own hands, by forcing you to resign it yourself. A _party + and a personal_ engine is all they want to make it. What possible + right can any of these silly slaves have to object to my opinion + being--what it truly is--against the Holland House theory of Lord + Chatham's madness? I _know_ that Lord Grenville treated it with + contempt. I know others now living who did so too, and I know that + so stout a Whig as Sir P. Francis was clearly of that opinion, and + he knew Lord Chatham personally. I had every ground to believe + that Horace Walpole, a vile, malignant, and unnatural wretch, + though a very clever writer of Letters, was nine-tenths of the + Holland House authority for the tale. I knew that a baser man in + character, or a meaner in capacity than the first Lord Holland + existed not, even in those days of job and mediocrity. Why, then, + was I bound to take a false view because Lord Holland's family + have inherited his hatred of a great rival?" + +Another instance is as follows:-- + + "I solicit your best attention to the fate which seems hastening + upon the _Edinburgh Review_. The having always been free from the + least control of booksellers is one of its principal distinctions, + and long was peculiarly so--perhaps it still has it _nearly_ to + itself. But if it shall become a _Treasury_ journal, I hardly see + any great advantage in one kind of independence without the + rest. Nay, I doubt if its _literary_ freedom, any more than its + political, will long survive. Books will be treated according as + the Treasury, or their under-strappers, regard the authors.... + But, is it after all possible that the Review should be suffered + to sink into such a state of subserviency that it dares not insert + any discussion upon a general question of politics because it + might give umbrage to the Government of the day? I pass over the + undeniable fact that it is _underlings_ only whom you are scared + by, and that the Ministers themselves have no such inordinate + pretension as to dream of interfering. I say nothing of those + underlings generally, except this, that I well know the race, and + a more despicable, above all, in point of judgment, exists not. + Never mind their threats, they _can_ do no harm. Even if any of + them are contributors, be assured they never will withdraw because + you choose to keep your course free and independent." + +Mr. Napier, who seems to have been one of the most considerate and +high-minded of men, was moved to energetic remonstrance on this +occasion. Lord Brougham explained his strong language away, but he +was incapable of really controlling himself, and the strain was never +lessened until 1843, when the correspondence ceases, and we learn +that there had been a quarrel between him and his too long-suffering +correspondent. Yet John Allen,--that able scholar and conspicuous +figure in the annals of Holland House--wrote of Brougham to Mr. +Napier:--"He is not a malignant or bad-hearted man, but he is an +unscrupulous one, and where his passions are concerned or his vanity +irritated, there is no excess of which he is not capable." Of +Brougham's strong and manly sense, when passion or vanity did not +cloud it, and even of a sort of careful justice, these letters give +more than one instance. The _Quarterly Review_, for instance, had an +article on Romilly's Memoirs, which to Romilly's friends seemed to do +him less than justice. Brougham took a more sensible view. + + "Surely we had no right whatever to expect that they whom Romilly + had all his life so stoutly opposed, and who were treated by him + with great harshness, should treat him as his friends would do, + and at the very moment when a most injudicious act of his family + was bringing out all his secret thoughts against them. Only place + yourself in the same position, and suppose that Canning's private + journals had been published,--the journals he may have kept while + the bitterest enemy of the Whigs, and in every page of which there + must have been some passage offensive to the feelings of the + living and of the friends of the dead. Would any mercy have been + shown to Canning's character and memory by any of the Whig party, + either in society or in Reviews? Would the line have been drawn of + only attacking Canning's executors, who published the papers, and + leaving Canning himself untouched? Clearly and certainly not, + and yet I am putting a very much weaker case, for we had joined + Canning, and all political enmity was at an end: whereas the + Tories and Romilly never had for an hour laid aside their mutual + hostility." + +And if he was capable of equity, Brougham was also capable of hearty +admiration, even of an old friend who had on later occasions gone into +a line which he intensely disliked. It is a relief in the pages of +blusterous anger and raging censure to come upon what he says of +Jeffrey. + + "I can truly say that there never in all my life crossed my mind + one single unkind feeling respecting him, or indeed any feeling + but that of the warmest affection and the most unmingled + admiration of his character, believing and knowing him to be as + excellent and amiable as he is great in the ordinary, and, as I + think, the far less important sense of the word." + +Of the value of Brougham's contributions we cannot now judge. They +will not, in spite of their energy and force, bear re-reading to-day, +and perhaps the same may be said of three-fourths of Jeffrey's once +famous essays. Brougham's self-confidence is heroic. He believed that +he could make a speech for Bolingbroke, but by-and-by he had sense +enough to see that, in order to attempt this, he ought to read +Bolingbroke for a year, and then practise for another year. In 1838 he +thought nothing of undertaking, amid all the demands of active life, +such a bagatelle as a History of the French Revolution. "I have some +little knack of narrative," he says, "the most difficult by far of all +styles, and never yet attained in perfection but by Hume and Livy; +and I bring as much oratory and science to the task as most of my +predecessors." But what sort of science? And what has oratory to do +with it? And how could he deceive himself into thinking that he could +retire to write a history? Nobody that ever lived would have more +speedily found out the truth of Voltaire's saying, "_Le repos est +une bonne chose, mais l'ennui est son frere_." The truth is that one +learns, after a certain observation of the world, to divide one's +amazement pretty equally between the literary voluptuary or +over-fastidious collegian, on the one hand, who is so impressed by the +size of his subject that he never does more than collect material and +make notes, and the presumptuous politician, on the other hand, who +thinks that he can write a history or settle the issues of philosophy +and theology in odd half-hours. The one is so enfeebled in will and +literary energy after his _viginti annorum lucubrationes_; the other +is so accustomed to be content with the hurry, the unfinishedness, +the rough-and-ready methods of practical affairs, and they both in +different ways measure the worth and seriousness of literature so +wrongly in relation to the rest of human interests. + +The relations between Lord Brougham and Mr. Napier naturally suggest +a good many reflections on the vexed question of the comparative +advantages of the old and the new theory of a periodical. The new +theory is that a periodical should not be an organ but an open pulpit, +and that each writer should sign his name. Without disrespect to ably +conducted and eminent contemporaries of long standing, it may be said +that the tide of opinion and favour is setting in this direction. Yet, +on the whole, experience perhaps leads to a doubt whether the gains of +the system of signature are so very considerable as some of us once +expected. An editor on the new system is no doubt relieved of a +certain measure of responsibility. Lord Cockburn's panegyric on the +first great editor may show what was expected from a man in such a +position as Jeffrey's. "He had to discover, and to train, authors; to +discern what truth and the public mind required; to suggest subjects; +to reject, and, more offensive still, to improve, contributions; to +keep down absurdities; to infuse spirit; to excite the timid; to +repress violence; to soothe jealousies; to quell mutinies; to watch +times; and all this in the morning of the reviewing day, before +experience had taught editors conciliatory firmness, and contributors +reasonable submission. He directed and controlled the elements he +presided over with a master's judgment. There was not one of his +associates who could have even held these elements together for a +single year.... Inferior to these excellences, but still important, +was his dexterity in revising the writings of others. Without altering +the general tone or character of the composition, he had great skill +in leaving out defective ideas or words, and in so aiding the original +by lively or graceful touches, that reasonable authors were surprised +and charmed on seeing how much better they looked than they thought +they would" (Cockburn's _Life of Jeffrey_, i. 301). + +From such toils and dangers as these the editor of a Review with +signed articles is in the main happily free. He has usually +suggestions to make, for his experience has probably given him points +of view as to the effectiveness of this or that feature of an article +for its own purpose, which would not occur to a writer. The writer is +absorbed in his subject, and has been less accustomed to think of the +public. But this exercise of a claim to a general acquiescence in the +judgment and experience of a man who has the best reasons for trying +to judge rightly, is a very different thing from the duty of drilling +contributors and dressing contributions as they were dressed and +drilled by Jeffrey. As Southey said, when groaning under the +mutilations inflicted by Gifford on Iris contributions to the +_Quarterly_, "there must be a power expurgatory in the hands of +the editor; and the misfortune is that editors frequently think it +incumbent on them to use that power merely because they have it" +(Southey's Life, iv. 18). This is probably true on the anonymous +system, where the editor is answerable for every word, and for the +literary form no less than for the substantial soundness or interest +of an article. In a man of weakish literary vanity--Jeffrey was +evidently full of it--there may well be a constant itch to set his +betters right in trifles, as Gifford thought that he could mend +Southey's adjectives. To a vain editor, or a too masterful editor, the +temptation under the anonymous system is no doubt strong. M. Buloz, +it is true, the renowned conductor of the _Revue des deux Mondes_, is +said to have insisted on, and to have freely practised, the fullest +editorial prerogative over articles that were openly signed by the +most eminent names in France. But M. Buloz had no competitor, and +those who did not choose to submit to his Sultanic despotism were +shut out from the only pulpit whence they were sure of addressing the +congregation that they wanted. In England contributors are better +off; and no editor of a signed periodical would feel either bound or +permitted to take such trouble about mere wording of sentences as +Gifford and Jeffrey were in the habit of taking. + +There is, however, another side to this, from an editor's point of +view. With responsibility--not merely for commas and niceties and +literary kickshaws, but in its old sense--disappears also a portion of +the interest of editorial labour. One would suppose it must be more +interesting to command a man-of-war than a trading vessel; it would be +more interesting to lead a regiment than to keep a tilting-yard. But +the times are not ripe for such enterprises. Of literary ability of +a good and serviceable kind there is a hundred or five hundred times +more in the country than there was when Jeffrey, Smith, Brougham, and +Horner devised their Review in a ninth storey in Edinburgh seventy-six +years ago. It is the cohesion of a political creed that is gone, and +the strength and fervour of a political school. The principles that +inspired that group of strong men have been worked out. After their +reforms had been achieved, the next great school was economic, and +though it produced one fine orator, its work was at no time literary. +The Manchester school with all their shortcomings had at least the +signal distinction of attaching their views on special political +questions to a general and presiding conception of the modern phase of +civilisation, as industrial and pacific. The next party of advance, +when it is formed, will certainly borrow from Cobden and Bright their +hatred of war and their hatred of imperialism. After the sagacity and +enlightenment of this school came the school of persiflage. A knot of +vigorous and brilliant men towards 1856 rallied round the late editor +of the _Saturday Review_,--and a strange chief he was for such +a group,--but their flag was that of the Red Rover. They gave +Philistinism many a shrewd blow, but perhaps at the same time helped +to some degree--with other far deeper and stronger forces--to produce +that sceptical and centrifugal state of mind, which now tends to +nullify organised liberalism and paralyse the spirit of improvement. +The Benthamites, led first by James Mill, and afterwards in a +secondary degree by John Mill, had pushed a number of political +improvements in the radical and democratic direction during the +time when the _Edinburgh_ so powerfully represented more orthodox +liberalism. They were the last important group of men who started +together from a set of common principles, accepted a common programme +of practical applications, and set to work in earnest and with due +order and distribution of parts to advocate the common cause. + +At present [1878] there is no similar agreement either among the +younger men in parliament, or among a sufficiently numerous group of +writers outside of parliament. The Edinburgh Reviewers were most +of them students of the university of that city. The Westminster +Reviewers had all sat at the feet of Bentham. Each group had thus a +common doctrine and a positive doctrine. In practical politics it does +not much matter by what different roads men have travelled to a given +position. But in an organ intended to lead public opinion towards +certain changes, or to hold it steadfast against wayward gusts of +passion, its strength would be increased a hundredfold if all the +writers in it were inspired by that thorough unity of conviction which +comes from sincerely accepting a common set of principles to start +from, and reaching practical conclusions by the same route. We are +probably not very far from a time when such a group might form itself, +and its work would for some years lie in the formation of a general +body of opinion, rather than in practical realisation of this or that +measure. The success of the French Republic, the peaceful order of the +United States, perhaps some trouble within our own borders, will lead +men with open minds to such a conception of a high and stable type of +national life as will unite a sufficient number of them in a common +project for pressing with systematic iteration for a complete set of +organic changes. A country with such a land-system, such an electoral +system, such a monarchy, as ours, has a trying time before it. Those +will be doing good service who shall unite to prepare opinion for the +inevitable changes. At the present moment the only motto that can be +inscribed on the flag of a liberal Review is the general device of +Progress, each writer interpreting it in his own sense, and within +such limits as he may set for himself. For such a state of things +signature is the natural condition, and an editor, even of a signed +Review, would hardly decline to accept the account of his function +which we find Jeffrey giving to Mr. Napier:--"There are three +legitimate considerations by which you should be guided in your +conduct as editor generally, and particularly as to the admission or +rejection of important articles of a political sort. 1. The effect of +your decision on the other contributors upon whom you mainly rely; 2. +its effect on the sale and circulation, and on the just authority +of the work with the great body of its readers; and, 3. your own +deliberate opinion as to the safety or danger of the doctrines +maintained in the article under consideration, and its tendency +either to promote or retard the practical adoption of those liberal +principles to which, and _their practical advancement_, you must +always consider the journal as devoted." + +As for discovering and training authors, the editor under the new +system has inducements that lie entirely the other way; namely, +to find as many authors as possible whom the public has already +discovered and accepted for itself. Young unknown writers certainly +have not gained anything by the new system. Neither perhaps can they +be said to have lost, for though of two articles of equal merit +an editor would naturally choose the one which should carry the +additional recommendation of a name of recognised authority, yet any +marked superiority in literary brilliance or effective argument or +originality of view would be only too eagerly welcomed in any Review +in England. So much public interest is now taken in periodical +literature, and the honourable competition in securing variety, +weight, and attractiveness is so active, that there is no risk of +a literary candle remaining long under a bushel. Miss Martineau +says:--"I have always been anxious to extend to young or struggling +authors the sort of aid which would have been so precious to me in +that winter of 1829-30, and I know that, in above twenty years, I have +never succeeded but once." One of the most distinguished editors +in London, who had charge of a periodical for many years, told the +present writer what comes to the same thing, namely, that in no single +case during all these years did a volunteer contributor of real +quality, or with any promise of eminence, present himself or herself. +So many hundreds think themselves called, so few are chosen. It used +to be argued that the writer under the anonymous system was hidden +behind a screen and robbed of his well-earned distinction. In truth, +however, it is impossible for a writer of real distinction to remain +anonymous. If a writer in a periodical interests the public, they are +sure to find out who he is. + +Again, there is folly unfathomable in a periodical affecting an +eternal consistency, and giving itself the airs of continuous +individuality, and being careful not to talk sense on a given question +to-day because its founders talked nonsense upon it fifty years ago. +This is quite true. There is a monstrous charlatanry about the old +editorial We, but perhaps there are some tolerably obvious openings +for charlatanry of a different kind under our own system. The man who +writes in his own name may sometimes be tempted to say what he knows +he is expected from his position or character to say, rather than what +he would have said if his personality were not concerned. As far as +honesty goes, signature perhaps offers as many inducements to one kind +of insincerity, as anonymity offers to another kind. And on the public +it might perhaps be contended that there is an effect of a rather +similar sort. They are in some cases tempted away from serious +discussion of the matter, into frivolous curiosity and gossip about +the man. All this criticism of the principle of which the _Fortnightly +Review_ was the earliest English adherent, will not be taken as the +result in the present writer of Chamfort's _maladie des desabuses_; +that would be both extremely ungrateful and without excuse or reason. +It is merely a fragment of disinterested contribution to the study of +a remarkable change that is passing over a not unimportant department +of literature. One gain alone counterbalances all the drawbacks, and +that is a gain that could hardly have been foreseen or expected; I +mean the freedom with which the great controversies of religion and +theology have been discussed in the new Reviews. The removal of the +mask has led to an outburst of plain speaking on these subjects, which +to Mr. Napier's generation would have seemed simply incredible. The +frank avowal of unpopular beliefs or non-beliefs has raised the whole +level of the discussion, and perhaps has been even more advantageous +to the orthodox in teaching them more humility, than to the heterodox +in teaching them more courage and honesty. + +Let us return to Mr. Napier's volume. We have said that it is +impossible for a great writer to be anonymous. No reader will need to +be told who among Mr. Napier's correspondents is the writer of the +following:-- + + "I have been thinking sometimes, likewise, of a paper on Napoleon, + a man whom, though handled to the extreme of triteness, it will be + long years before we understand. Hitherto in the English tongue, + there is next to nothing that betokens insight into him, or even + sincere belief of such, on the part of the writer. I should like + to study the man with what heartiness I could, and form to myself + some intelligible picture of him, both as a biographical and as + a historical figure, in both of which senses he is our chief + contemporary wonder, and in some sort the epitome of his age. + This, however, were a task of far more difficulty than Byron, and + perhaps not so promising at present." + +And if there is any difficulty in recognising the same hand in the +next proposal, it arises only from the circumstance that it is this +writer above all others who has made Benthamism a term of reproach on +the lips of men less wise than himself:-- + + "A far finer essay were a faithful, loving, and yet critical, and + in part condemnatory, delineation of Jeremy Bentham, and his place + and working in this section of the world's history. Bentham will + not be put down by logic, and should not be put down, for we need + him greatly as a backwoodsman: neither can reconciliation be + effected till the one party understands and is just to the other. + Bentham is a denyer; he denies with a loud and universally + convincing voice; his fault is that he can _affirm_ nothing, + except that money is pleasant in the purse, and food in the + stomach, and that by this simplest of all beliefs he can + reorganise society. He can shatter it in pieces--no thanks to him, + for its old fastenings are quite rotten--but he cannot reorganise + it; this is work for quite others than he. Such an essay on + Bentham, however, were a great task for any one; for me a very + great one, and perhaps rather out of my road." + +Perhaps Carlyle would have agreed that Mr. Mill's famous pair of +essays on Bentham and Coleridge have served the purpose which he had +in his mind, though we may well regret the loss of such a picture of +Bentham's philosophic personality as he would surely have given us. It +is touching to think of him whom we all know as the most honoured name +among living veterans of letters,[1] passing through the vexed ordeal +of the young recruit, and battling for his own against the waywardness +of critics and the blindness of publishers. In 1831 he writes to Mr. +Napier: "All manner of perplexities have occurred in the publishing +of my poor book, which perplexities I could only cut asunder, not +unloose; so the MS. like an unhappy ghost still lingers on the wrong +side of Styx; the Charon of ---- Street durst not risk it in his +_sutilis cymba_, so it leaped ashore again." And three months later: +"I have given up the notion of hawking my little Manuscript Book about +any further; for a long time it has lain quiet in its drawer, waiting +for a better day." And yet this little book was nothing less than the +History of the French Revolution. + +[Footnote 1: Carlyle died on February 5, 1881.] + +It might be a lesson to small men to see the reasonableness, sense, +and patience of these greater men. Macaulay's letters show him to have +been a pattern of good sense and considerateness. Mr. Carlyle seems +indeed to have found Jeffrey's editorial vigour more than could be +endured: + + "My respected friend your predecessor had some difficulty with me + in adjusting the respective prerogatives of Author and Editor, for + though not, as I hope, insensible to fair reason, I used sometimes + to rebel against what I reckoned mere authority, and this partly + perhaps as a matter of literary conscience; being wont to write + nothing without studying it if possible to the bottom, and writing + always with an almost painful feeling of scrupulosity, that light + editorial hacking and hewing to right and left was in general + nowise to my mind." + +But we feel that the fault must have lain with Jeffrey; the +qualifications that Lord Cockburn admired so much were not likely to +be to the taste of a man of Mr. Carlyle's grit. That did not prevent +the most original of Mr. Napier's contributors from being one of the +most just and reasonable. + + "I have, barely within my time, finished that paper + ['Characteristics'], to which you are now heartily welcome, if you + have room for it. The doctrines here set forth have mostly long + been familiar convictions with me; yet it is perhaps only within + the last twelvemonth that the public utterance of some of them + could have seemed a duty. I have striven to express myself with + what guardedness was possible; and, as there will now be no time + for correcting proofs, I must leave it wholly in your editorial + hands. Nay, should it on due consideration appear to you in your + place (for I see that matter dimly, and nothing is clear but my + own mind and the general condition of the world), unadvisable to + print the paper at all, then pray understand, my dear Sir, now and + always, that I am no unreasonable man; but if dogmatic enough (as + Jeffrey used to call it) in my own beliefs, also truly desirous to + be just towards those of others. I shall, in all sincerity, beg of + you to do, without fear of offence (for in _no_ point of view will + there be any), what you yourself see good. A mighty work lies + before the writers of this time." + +It is always interesting, to the man of letters at any rate if not +to his neighbours, to find what was first thought by men of admitted +competence of the beginnings of writers who are now seen to have made +a mark on the world. "When the reputation of authors is made," said +Sainte-Beuve, "it is easy to speak of them _convenablement_: we have +only to guide ourselves by the common opinion. But at the start, at +the moment when they are trying their first flight and are in part +ignorant of themselves, then to judge them with tact, with precision, +not to exaggerate their scope, to predict their flight, or divine +their limits, to put the reasonable objections in the midst of all +due respect--this is the quality of the critic who is born to be a +critic." We have been speaking of Mr. Carlyle. This is what Jeffrey +thought of him in 1832:-- + + "I fear Carlyle will not do, that is, if you do not take the + liberties and the pains with him that I did, by striking out + freely, and writing in occasionally. The misfortune is, that he + is very obstinate, and unluckily in a place like this, he finds + people enough to abet and applaud him, to intercept the operation + of the otherwise infallible remedy of general avoidance and + neglect. It is a great pity, for he is a man of genius and + industry, and with the capacity of being an elegant and impressive + writer" + +The notion of Jeffrey occasionally writing elegantly and impressively +into Carlyle's proof-sheets is rather striking. Some of Jeffrey's +other criticisms sound very curiously in our ear in these days. It +is startling to find Mill's _Logic_ described (1843) as a "great +unreadable book, and its elaborate demonstration of axioms and +truisms." A couple of years later Jeffrey admits, in speaking of Mr. +Mill's paper on Guizot--"Though I have long thought very highly of his +powers as a reasoner, I scarcely gave him credit for such large and +sound views of _realities_ and practical results as are displayed +in this article." Sir James Stephen--the distinguished sire of two +distinguished contributors, who may remind more than one editor of our +generation of the Horatian saying, that + + "Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis, + ... neque imbellera feroces + Progenerant aquilae columbam" + +--this excellent writer took a more just measure of the book which +Jeffrey thought unreadable. + + "My more immediate object in writing is to remind you of John + Mill's book [System of Logic], of which I have lately been reading + a considerable part, and I have done so with the conviction that + it is one of the most remarkable productions of this nineteenth + century. Exceedingly debatable indeed, but most worthy of debate, + are many of his favourite tenets, especially those of the last + two or three chapters. No man is fit to encounter him who is not + thoroughly conversant with the moral sciences which he handles; + and remembering what you told me of your own studies under Dugald + Stewart, I cannot but recommend the affair to your own personal + attention. You will find very few men fit to be trusted with it. + You ought to be aware that, although with great circumspection, + not to say timidity, Mill is an opponent of Religion in the + abstract, not of any particular form of it. That is, he evidently + maintains that superhuman influences on the mind of man are but a + dream, whence the inevitable conclusion that all acts of devotion + and prayer are but a superstition. That such is his real meaning, + however darkly conveyed, is indisputable. You are well aware that + it is in direct conflict with my own deepest and most cherished + convictions. Yet to condemn him for holding, and for calmly + publishing such views, is but to add to the difficulties of fair + and full discussion, and to render truth (or supposed truth), less + certain and valuable than if it had invited, and encountered, + and triumphed over every assault of every honest antagonist. I, + therefore, wish Mill to be treated respectfully and handsomely." + +Few of Mr. Napier's correspondents seem to have been more considerate. +At one period (1844) a long time had passed without any contribution +from Sir James Stephen's pen appearing in the Review. Mr. Senior +wrote a hint on the subject to the editor, and Napier seems to have +communicated with Sir James Stephen, who replied in a model strain. + + "Have you any offer of a paper or papers from my friend John + Austin? If you have, and if you are not aware what manner of man + he is, it may not be amiss that you should be apprised that in + these parts he enjoys, and deservedly, a very high and yet a + peculiar reputation. I have a great attachment to him. He is, in + the best sense of the word, a philosopher, an earnest and humble + lover of wisdom. I know not anywhere a larger minded man, and yet, + eloquent as he is in speech, there is, in his written style, an + involution and a lack of vivacity which renders his writings a + sealed book to almost every one. Whether he will be able to assume + an easier and a lighter manner, I do not know. If not, I rather + fear for him when he stands at your bar. All I ask is, that you + would convey your judgment in measured and (as far as you can + honestly) in courteous terms; for he is, for so considerable a + man, strangely sensitive. You must have an odd story to tell of + your intercourse with the knights of the Order of the Quill." + +And the letter closed with what an editor values more even than +decently Christian treatment, namely the suggestion of a fine subject. +This became the admirable essay on the Clapham Sect. + +The author of one of the two or three most delightful biographies +in all literature has published the letter to Mr. Napier in which +Macaulay speaks pretty plainly what he thought about Brougham and the +extent of his services to the Review. Brougham in turn hated Macaulay, +whom he calls the third or greatest bore in society that he has ever +known. He is furious--and here Brougham was certainly not wrong--over +the "most profligate political morality" of Macaulay's essay on Clive. + + "In my eyes, his defence of Clive, and the audacious ground of + it, merit execration. It is a most serious, and, to me, a painful + subject. No--no--all the sentences a man can turn, even if he made + them in pure taste, and not in Tom's snip-snap taste of the lower + empire,--all won't avail against a rotten morality. The first and + most sacred duty of a public man, and, above all, an author, is + to keep by honest and true doctrine--never to relax--never to + countenance vice--ever to hold fast by virtue. What? Are we + gravely to be told, at this time of day, that a set-off may be + allowed for public, and, therefore, atrocious crimes, though he + admits that a common felon pleads it in vain? Gracious God, where + is this to end! What horrors will it not excuse! Tiberius's great + capacity, his first-rate wit, that which made him the charm of + society, will next, I suppose, be set up to give a splendour to + the inhabitants of Capreae. Why, Olive's address, and his skill, + and his courage are not at all more certain, nor are they + qualities of a different cast. Every great ruffian, who has filled + the world with blood and tears, will be sure of an acquittal, + because of his talents and his success. After I had, and chiefly + in the _Edinburgh Review_, been trying to restore a better, a + purer, a higher standard of morals, and to wean men from the silly + love of military glory, for which they are the first to pay, I + find the _Edinburgh Review_ preaching, not merely the old and + common heresies, but ten thousand times worse, adopting a vile + principle never yet avowed in terms, though too often and too much + taken for a guide, unknown to those who followed it, in forming + their judgments of great and successful criminals." + +Of the essay on Warren Hastings he thought better, "bating some +vulgarity and Macaulay's usual want of all power of reasoning." +Lord Cockburn wrote to Mr. Napier (1844) a word or two on Macaulay. +"Delighting as I do," says Lord Cockburn, "in his thoughts, views, and +knowledge, I feel too often compelled to curse and roar at his words +and the structure of his composition. As a corrupter of style, he is +more dangerous to the young than Gibbon. His seductive powers greater, +his defects worse." All good critics now accept this as true. Jeffrey, +by the way, speaking of the same essay, thinks that Macaulay rates +Chatham too high. "I have always had an impression," he says, "(though +perhaps an ignorant and unjust one), that there was more good luck +than wisdom in his foreign policy, and very little to admire (except +his personal purity) in any part of his domestic administration." + +It is interesting to find a record, in the energetic speech of +contemporary hatred, of the way in which orthodox science regarded a +once famous book of heterodox philosophy. Here is Professor Sedgwick +on the _Vestiges of Creation_:-- + + "I now know the Vestiges well, and I detest the book for its + shallowness, for the intense vulgarity of its philosophy, for its + gross, unblushing materialism, for its silly credulity in catering + out of every fool's dish, for its utter ignorance of what is meant + by induction, for its gross (and I dare to say, filthy) views of + physiology,--most ignorant and most false,--and for Its shameful + shuffling of the facts of geology so as to make them play a + rogue's game. I believe some woman is the author; partly from the + fair dress and agreeable exterior of the Vestiges: and partly from + the utter ignorance the book displays of all sound physical logic. + A _man_ who knew so much of the surface of Physics must, at least + on some one point or other, have taken a deeper plunge; but _all_ + parts of the book are shallow.... From the bottom of my soul, I + loathe and detest the Vestiges. 'Tis a rank pill of asafoetida and + arsenic, covered with gold leaf. I do, therefore, trust that your + contributor has stamped with an iron heel upon the head of the + filthy abortion, and put an end to its crawlings. There is not one + subject the author handles bearing on life, of which he does not + take a degrading view." + +Mr. Napier seems to have asked him to write on the book, and +Sedgwick's article, the first he ever wrote for a review, eventually +appeared (1845),--without, it is to be hoped, too much of the raging +contempt of the above and other letters. "I do feel contempt, and, +I hope, I shall express it. Eats hatched by the incubations of a +goose--dogs playing dominos--monkeys breeding men and women--all +distinctions between natural and moral done away--the Bible proved +all a lie, and mental philosophy one mass of folly, all of it to be +pounded down, and done over again in the cooking vessels of Gall and +Spurzheim!" This was the beginning of a long campaign, which is just +now drawing near its close. Let us at least be glad that orthodoxy, +whether scientific or religious, has mended his temper. One among +other causes of the improvement, as we have already said, is probably +to be found in the greater self-restraint which comes from the fact of +the writer appearing in his own proper person. + + + + +VALEDICTORY.[1] + +[Footnote 1: On the writer's retirement from the editorship of the +_Fortnightly Review_, in 1882.] + + +The present number of the Review marks the close of a task which was +confided to me no less than fifteen years ago--_grande mortalis cevi +spatium_, a long span of one's mortal days. Fifteen years are enough +to bring a man from youth to middle age, to test the working value of +convictions, to measure the advance of principles and beliefs, and, +alas! to cut off many early associates and to extinguish many lights. +It is hardly possible that a Review should have been conducted for so +considerable a time without the commission of some mistakes; articles +admitted which might as well have been left out, opinions expressed +which have a crudish look in the mellow light of years, phrases +dropped in the heat or hurry of the moment which one would fain +obliterate. Many a regret must rise in men's minds on any occasion +that compels them to look back over a long reach of years. The +disparity between aim and performance, the unfulfilled promise, the +wrong turnings taken at critical points--as an accident of the hour +draws us to take stock of a complete period of our lives, all these +things rise up in private and internal judgment against anybody who is +not either too stupid or too fatuously complacent to recognise facts +when he sees them. But the mood passes. Time, happily, is merciful, +and men's memories are benignly short. + +More painful is the recollection of those earlier contributors of ours +who have vanished from the world. Periodical literature is like the +manna in the wilderness; it quickly loses its freshness, and to turn +over thirty volumes of old Reviews can hardly be exhilarating at the +best: least of all so, when it recalls friends and coadjutors who +can give their help no more. George Henry Lewes, the founder of the +Review, and always cordially interested in its fortunes, has not +survived to see the end of the reign of his successor, His vivacious +intelligence had probably done as much as he was competent to do for +his generation, but there were other important contributors, now gone, +of whom this could not be said. In the region of political theory, the +loss of J.E. Cairnes was truly lamentable and untimely. He had, as +Mill said of him, "that rare qualification among writers on political +and social subjects--a genuine scientific intellect." Not a month +passes in which one does not feel how great an advantage it would have +been to be able to go down to Blackheath, and discuss the perplexities +of the time in that genial and manly companionship, where facts were +weighed with so much care, where conclusions were measured with such +breadth and comprehension, and where even the great stolid idols of +the Cave and the Market Place were never too rudely buffeted. Of +a very different order of mind from Cairnes, but not less to be +permanently regretted by all of us who knew him, was Mr. Bagehot, +whose books on the English Constitution, on Physics and Politics, +and the fragment on the Postulates of Political Economy, were all +published in these pages. He wrote, in fact, the first article in +the first number. Though himself extremely cool and sceptical about +political improvement of every sort, he took abundant interest in more +ardent friends. Perhaps it was that they amused him; in return his +good-natured ironies put them wholesomely on their mettle. As has been +well said of him, he had a unique power of animation without combat; +it was all stimulus and yet no contest; his talk was full of youth, +yet had all the wisdom of mature judgment _(R.H. Hutton)_. Those who +were least willing to assent to Bagehot's practical maxims in judging +current affairs, yet were well aware how much they profited by his +Socratic objections, and knew, too, what real acquaintance with men +and business, what honest sympathy and friendliness, and what serious +judgment and interest all lay under his playful and racy humour. + +More untimely, in one sense, than any other was the death of Professor +Clifford, whose articles in this Review attracted so much attention, +and I fear that I may add, gave for a season so much offence six or +seven years ago. Cairnes was scarcely fifty when he died, and Bagehot +was fifty-one, but Clifford was only four-and-thirty. Yet in this +brief space he had not merely won a reputation as a mathematician of +the first order, but had made a real mark on his time, both by the +substance of his speculations in science, religion, and ethics, and +by the curious audacity with which he proclaimed at the pitch of his +voice on the housetops religious opinions that had hitherto been kept +among the family secrets of the _domus Socratica_. It is melancholy +to think that exciting work, done under pressure of time of his own +imposing, should have been the chief cause of his premature decline. +How intense that pressure was the reader may measure by the fact that +a paper of his on _The Unseen Universe_, which filled eighteen pages +of the Review, was composed at a single sitting that lasted from a +quarter to ten in the evening till nine o'clock the following morning. +As one revolves these and other names of eminent men who actively +helped to make the Review what it has been, it would be impossible to +omit the most eminent of them all. Time has done something to impair +the philosophical reputation and the political celebrity of J.S. Mill; +but it cannot alter the affectionate memory in which some of us must +always hold his wisdom and goodness, his rare union of moral ardour +with a calm and settled mind. He took the warmest interest In this +Review from the moment when I took it up, partly from the friendship +with which he honoured me, but much more because he wished to +encourage what was then--though it is now happily no longer--the only +attempt to conduct a periodical on the principles of free discussion +and personal responsibility. While recalling these and others who are +no more, it was naturally impossible for me to forget the constant +and valuable help that has been so freely given to me, often at much +sacrifice of their own convenience, by those friends and contributors +who are still with us. No conductor ever laid down his _baton_ with a +more cordial and sincere sense of gratitude to those who took their +several parts in his performance. + +One chief experiment which the Review was established to try was that +of signed articles. When Mr. Lewes wrote his Farewell Causerie, as I +am doing now, he said: "That we have been enabled to bring together +men so various in opinion and so distinguished in power has been +mainly owing to the principle adopted of allowing each writer perfect +freedom; which could only have been allowed under the condition of +personal responsibility. The question of signing articles had long +been debated; it has now been tested. The arguments in favour of +it were mainly of a moral order; the arguments against it, while +admitting the morality, mainly asserted its inexpediency. The question +of expediency has, I venture to say, been materially enlightened +by the success of the Review." The success of other periodicals, +conducted still more rigorously on the principle that every article +ought to bear its writer's signature, leaves no further doubt on the +subject; so that it is now almost impossible to realise that only +fifteen or sixteen years ago scarcely anybody of the class called +practical could believe that the sacred principle of the Anonymous was +doomed. One of the shrewdest publishers in Edinburgh, and also himself +the editor of a famous magazine, once said to me while Mr. Lewes was +still editor of this Review, that he had always thought highly of our +friend's judgment "until he had taken up the senseless notion of +a magazine with signed articles and open to both sides of every +question." Nobody will call the notion senseless any longer. The +question is rather how long the exclusively anonymous periodicals will +resist the innovation. + +Personally I have attached less stern importance to signature as an +unvarying rule than did my predecessor; though, even he was compelled +by obvious considerations of convenience to make his chronique of +current affairs anonymous. Our practice has been signature as the +standing rule, occasionally suspended in favour of anonymity when +there seemed to be sufficient reason. On the whole it may be said that +the change from anonymous to signed articles has followed the course +of most changes. It has not led to one-half either of the evils or of +the advantages that its advocates and its opponents foretold. That +it has produced some charlatanry, can hardly be denied. Readers are +tempted to postpone serious and persistent interest in subjects, to a +semi-personal curiosity about the casual and unconnected deliverances +of the literary or social star of the hour. That this conception has +been worked out with signal ability in more cases than one; that it +has made periodical literature full of actuality; that it has tickled +and delighted the palate--is all most true. The obvious danger is lest +we should be tempted to think more of the man who speaks than of the +precise value of what he says. + +One indirect effect that is not unworthy of notice in the new system +is its tendency to narrow the openings for the writer by profession. +If an article is to be signed, the editor will naturally seek the name +of an expert of special weight and competence on the matter in hand. A +reviewer on the staff of a famous journal once received for his week's +task, _General Hamley on the Art of War_, a three-volume novel, a work +on dainty dishes, and a translation of Pindar. This was perhaps taxing +versatility and omniscience over-much, and it may be taken for granted +that the writer made no serious contribution to tactics, cookery, +or scholarship. But being a man of a certain intelligence, passably +honest, and reasonably painstaking, probably he produced reviews +sufficiently useful and just to answer their purpose. On the new +system we should have an article on General Hamley's work by Sir +Garnet Wolseley, and one on the cookery-book from M. Trompette. It is +not certain that this is all pure gain. There is a something to be +said for the writer by profession, who, without being an expert, will +take trouble to work up his subject, to learn what is said and thought +about it, to penetrate to the real points, to get the same mastery +over it as an advocate or a judge does over a patent case or a suit +about rubrics and vestments. He is at least as likely as the expert to +tell the reader all that he wants to know, and at least as likely to +be free from bias and injurious prepossession. + +Nor does experience, so far as it has yet gone, quite bear out Mr. +Lewes's train of argument that the "first condition of all writing is +sincerity, and that one means of securing sincerity is to insist on +personal responsibility," and that this personal responsibility +can only be secured by signing articles. The old talk of "literary +bravoes," "men in masks," "anonymous assassins," and so forth, is out +of date. Longer experience has only confirmed the present writer's +opinion, expressed here from the very beginning: "Everybody who knows +the composition of any respectable journal in London knows very well +that the articles which those of our own way of thinking dislike +most intensely are written by men whom to call bravoes in any sense +whatever would be simply monstrous. Let us say, as loudly as we +choose, if we see good reason, that they are half informed about some +of the things which they so authoritatively discuss; that they are +under strong class feeling; that they have not mastered the doctrines +which they are opposing; that they have not sufficiently meditated +their subject; that they have not given themselves time to do justice +even to their scanty knowledge. Journalists are open to charges of +this kind; but to think of them as a shameless body, thirsting for the +blood of better men than themselves, or ready to act as an editor's +instrument for money, involves a thoroughly unjust misconception." + +As to the comparative effects of the two systems on literary quality, +no prudent observer with adequate experience will lay down an +unalterable rule. Habit no doubt counts for a great deal, but +apart from habit there are differences of temperament and peculiar +sensibilities. Some men write best when they sign what they write; +they find impersonality a mystification and an incumbrance; anonymity +makes them stiff, pompous, and over-magisterial. With others, +however, the effect is just the reverse. If they sign, they become +self-conscious, stilted, and even pretentious; it is only when they +are anonymous that they recover simplicity and ease. It is as if an +actor who is the soul of what is natural under the disguises of his +part, should become extremely artificial if he were compelled to come +upon the stage in his own proper clothes and speaking only in his +ordinary voice. + +The newspaper press has not yet followed the example of the new +Reviews, but we are probably not far from the time when here, too, the +practice of signature will make its way. There was a silly cry at one +time for making the disuse of anonymity compulsory by law. But we +shall no more see this than we shall see legal penalties imposed +for publishing a book without an index, though that also has been +suggested. The same end will be reached by other ways. Within the last +few years a truly surprising shock has been given to the idea of a +newspaper, "as a sort of impersonal thing, coming from nobody knows +where, the readers never thinking of the writer, nor caring whether +he thinks what he writes, so long as _they_ think what he writes." +Of course it is still true, and will most likely always remain true, +that, like the Athenian Sophist, great newspapers will teach the +conventional prejudices of those who pay for it. A writer will long +be able to say that, like the Sophist, the newspaper reflects the +morality, the intelligence, the tone of sentiment, of its public, and +if the latter is vicious, so is the former. But there is infinitely +less of this than there used to be. The press is more and more taking +the tone of a man speaking to a man. The childish imposture of +the editorial We is already thoroughly exploded. The names of all +important journalists are now coming to be as publicly known as the +names of important members of parliament. There is even something over +and above this. More than one editor has boldly aspired to create +and educate a public of his own, and he has succeeded. The press is +growing to be much more personal, in the sense that its most important +directors are taking to themselves the right of pursuing an individual +line of their own, with far less respect than of old to the supposed +exigencies of party or the _communiques_ of political leaders. The +editor of a Review of great eminence said to the present writer (who, +for his own part, took a slightly more modest view) that he regarded +himself as equal in importance to seventy-five Members of Parliament. +It is not altogether easy to weigh and measure with this degree of +precision. But what is certain is that there are journalists on both +sides in politics to whom the public looks for original suggestion, +and from whom leading politicians seek not merely such mechanical +support as they expect from their adherents in the House of Commons, +nor merely the uses of the vane to show which way the wind blows, but +ideas, guidance, and counsel, as from persons of co-equal authority +with themselves. England is still a long way from the point at which +French journalism has arrived in this matter. We cannot count an +effective host of Girardins, Lemoinnes, Abouts, or even Cassagnacs and +Rocheforts, each recognised as the exponent of his own opinions, and +each read because the opinions written are known to be his own. But +there is a distinctly nearer approach to this as the general state of +English journalism than there was twenty years ago. + +Of course nobody of sense supposes that any journalist, however +independent and however possessed by the spirit of his personal +responsibility, tries to form his opinions out of his own head, +without reference to the view of the men practically engaged in public +affairs, the temper of Parliament and the feeling of constituencies, +and so forth. All these are part of the elements that go to the +formation of his own judgment, and he will certainly not neglect to +find out as much about them as he possibly can. Nor, again, does the +increase of the personal sentiment about our public prints lessen the +general working fidelity of their conductors to a party. It is their +duty, no doubt, to discuss the merits of measures as they arise. In +this respect any one can see how radically they differ from the Member +of Parliament, whose business is not only to discuss but to act. The +Member of Parliament must look at the effect of his vote in more +lights than one. Besides the merits of the given measure, it is his +duty to think of the wishes of those who chose him to represent them; +and if, moreover, the effect of voting against a measure of which +he disapproves would be to overthrow a whole Ministry of which he +strongly approves, then, unless some very vital principle indeed were +involved, to give such a vote would be to prefer a small object to +a great one, and would indicate a very queasy monkish sort of +conscience. The journalist is not in the same position. He is an +observer and a critic, and can afford, and is bound, to speak the +truth. But even in his case, the disagreement, as Burke said, "will +be only enough to indulge freedom, without violating concord or +disturbing arrangement." There is a certain "partiality which becomes +a well-chosen friendship." "Men thinking freely will, in particular +instances, think differently. But still as the greater part of the +measures which arise in the course of public business are related to, +or dependent on, some great leading general principles in government, +a man must be peculiarly unfortunate in the choice of his political +company if he does not agree with them at least nine times in ten." +The doctrine that was good enough for Burke in this matter may be +counted good enough for most of us. Some of the current talk about +political independence is mere hypocrisy; some of it is mere vanity. +For the new priest of Literature is quite as liable to the defects of +spiritual pride and ambition as the old priest of the Church, and it +is quite as well for him that he should be on his guard against these +scarlet and high-crested sins. + +The success of Reviews, of which our own was the first English type, +marks a very considerable revolution in the intellectual habits of the +time. They have brought abstract discussion from the library down to +the parlour, and from the serious student down to the first man in +the street. We have passed through a perfect cyclone of religious +polemics. The popularity of such Reviews means that really large +audiences, _le gros public_, are eagerly interested In the radical +discussion of propositions which twenty years ago were only publicly +maintained, and then in their crudest, least true, and most repulsive +form, in obscure debating societies and little secularist clubs. +Everybody, male or female, who reads anything serious at all, now +reads a dozen essays a year to show, with infinite varieties of +approach and of demonstration, that we can never know whether there be +a Supreme Being or not, whether the soul survives the body, or whether +mind is more and other than a mere function of matter. No article +that has appeared in any periodical for a generation back excited so +profound a sensation as Mr. Huxley's memorable paper On the Physical +Basis of Life, published in this Review in February 1869. It created +just the same kind of stir that, in a political epoch, was made by +such a pamphlet as the _Conduct of the Allies_ or the _Reflections on +the French Revolution_. This excitement was a sign that controversies +which had hitherto been confined to books and treatises were now to be +admitted to popular periodicals, and that the common man of the world +would now listen and have an opinion of his own on the bases of +belief, just as he listens and judges in politics or art, or letters. +The clergy no longer have the pulpit to themselves, for the new +Reviews became more powerful pulpits, in which heretics were at least +as welcome as orthodox. Speculation has become entirely democratised. +This is a tremendous change to have come about in little more than a +dozen years. How far it goes, let us not be too sure. It is no new +discovery that what looks like complete tolerance may be in reality +only complete indifference. Intellectual fairness is often only +another name for indolence and inconclusiveness of mind, just as love +of truth is sometimes a fine phrase for temper. To be piquant counts +for much, and the interest of seeing on the drawing-room tables of +devout Catholics and high-flying Anglicans article after article, +sending divinities, creeds, and Churches all headlong into limbo, was +indeed piquant. Much of all this elegant dabbling in infidelity has +been a caprice of fashion. The Agnostic has had his day with the fine +ladies, like the black footboy of other times, or the spirit-rapper +and table-turner of our own. What we have been watching, after all, +was perhaps a tournament, not a battle. + +It would not be very easy for us now, and perhaps it would not be +particularly becoming at any time, to analyse the position that has +been assigned to this Review in common esteem. Those who have watched +it from without can judge better than those who have worked within. +Though it has been open, so far as editorial goodwill was concerned, +to opinions from many sides, the Review has unquestionably gathered +round it some of the associations of sect. What that sect is, people +have found it difficult to describe with anything like precision. For +a long time it was the fashion to label the Review as Comtist, and +it would be singularly ungrateful to deny that it has had no more +effective contributors than some of the best-known disciples of Comte. +By-and-by it was felt that this was too narrow. It was nearer the +truth to call it the organ of Positivists in the wider sense of that +designation. But even this would not cover many directly political +articles that have appeared in our pages, and made a mark in their +time. The memorable programme of Free Labour, Free Land, Free Schools, +Free Church had nothing at all Positivist about it. Nor could that +programme and many besides from the same pen and others be compressed +under the nickname of Academic Liberalism. There was too strong a +flavour of action for the academic and the philosophic. This passion +for a label, after all, is an infirmity. Yet people justly perceived +that there seemed to be a certain undefinable concurrence among +writers coming from different schools and handling very different +subjects. Perhaps the instinct was right which fancied that it +discerned some common drift, a certain pervading atmosphere, and +scented a subtle connection between speculations on the Physical Basis +of Life and the Unseen Universe, and articles on Trades Unions and +National Education. + +So far as the Review has been more specially identified with one set +of opinions than another, it has been due to the fact that a certain +dissent from received theologies has been found in company with new +ideas of social and political reform. This suspicious combination at +one time aroused considerable anger. The notion of anything like an +intervention of the literary and scientific class in political affairs +touched a certain jealousy which is always to be looked for in the +positive and practical man. They think as Napoleon thought of men of +letters and savans:--"Ce sont des coquettes avec lesquelles il faut +entretenir un commerce de galanterie, et dont il ne faut jamais songer +a faire ni sa femme ni son ministre." Men will listen to your views +about the Unknowable with a composure that instantly disappears if +your argument comes too near to the Rates and Taxes. It is amusing, as +we read the newspapers to-day, to think that Mr. Harrison's powerful +defence of Trades Unions fifteen years ago caused the Review to be +regarded as an incendiary publication. Some papers that appeared here +on National Education were thought to indicate a deliberate plot for +suppressing the Holy Scriptures in the land. Extravagant misjudgment +of this kind has passed away. But it was far from being a mistake to +suppose that the line taken here by many writers did mean that there +was a new Radicalism in the air, which went a good deal deeper than +fidgeting about an estimate or the amount of the Queen's contribution +to her own taxes. Time has verified what was serious in those early +apprehensions. Principles and aims are coming into prominence in the +social activity of to-day which would hardly have found a hearing +twenty years ago, and it would be sufficient justification for the +past of our Review if some writers in it have been instrumental in the +process of showing how such principles and aims meet the requirements +of the new time. Reformers must always be open to the taunt that they +find nothing in the world good enough for them. "You write," said a +popular novelist to one of this unthanked tribe, "as if you believed +that everything is bad." "Nay," said the other, "but I do believe that +everything might be better." Such a belief naturally breeds a spirit +which the easy-goers of the world resent as a spirit of ceaseless +complaint and scolding. Hence our Liberalism here has often been +taxed with being ungenial, discontented, and even querulous. But such +Liberals will wrap themselves in their own virtue, remembering the +cheering apophthegm that "those who are dissatisfied are the sole +benefactors of the world." + +This will not be found, I think, too lofty, or too thrasonical an +estimate of what has been attempted. A certain number of people have +been persuaded to share opinions that fifteen years ago were more +unpopular than they are now. A certain resistance has been offered to +the stubborn influence of prejudice and use and wont. The original +scheme of the Review, even if there had been no other obstacle, +prevented it from being the organ of a systematic and constructive +policy. There is not, in fact, a body of systematic political thought +at work in our own day. The Liberals of the Benthamite school surveyed +society and institutions as a whole; they connected their advocacy of +political and legal changes with carefully formed theories of human +nature; they considered the great art of Government in connection with +the character of man, his proper education, his potential capacities. +Yet, as we then said, it cannot be pretended that we are less in need +of systematic politics than our fathers were sixty years since, or +that general principles are now more generally settled even among +members of the same party than they were then. The perplexities of +to-day are as embarrassing as any in our history, and they may prove +even more dangerous. The renovation of Parliamentary government; the +transformation of the conditions of the ownership and occupation of +land; the relations between the Government at home and our adventurers +abroad in contact with inferior races; the limitations on free +contract and the rights of majorities to restrict the private acts +of minorities; these are only some of the questions that time and +circumstances are pressing upon us. These are in the political and +legislative sphere alone. In Education, in Economics, the problems are +as many. Yet ideas are hardly ripe for realisation. We shall need +to see great schools before we can make sure of powerful parties. +Meanwhile, whatever gives freedom and variety to thought, and +earnestness to men's interest in the world, must contribute to a good +end. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in Literature, by John Morley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN LITERATURE *** + +***** This file should be named 12001.txt or 12001.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/0/0/12001/ + +Produced by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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