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Title: Res Judicatæ
       Papers and Essays

Author: Augustine Birrell

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</pre>


<h1>RES JUDICAT&AElig;</h1>


<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
<img src="images/cover01.jpg" width="320" height="394" alt="" title="" />
</div><hr style="width: 65%;" />

<h2><a name="IN_UNIFORM_BINDING" id="IN_UNIFORM_BINDING"></a><i>IN UNIFORM BINDING</i></h2>



<div class='center'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="cover">
<tr><td align='left'><b>ANDREW LANG</b></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'>Letters to Dead Authors</td><td align='right'>$1 00</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><b>AUGUSTINE BIRRELL</b></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'>Obiter Dicta&mdash;First Series</td><td align='right'>1 00</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'>Obiter Dicta&mdash;Second Series</td><td align='right'>1 00</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'>Res Judicat&aelig;</td><td align='right'>1 00</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><b>W. E. HENLEY</b></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'>Views and Reviews&mdash;Literature</td><td align='right'>1 00</td></tr>
</table></div><hr style="width: 65%;" />

<p class="center">RES JUDICAT&AElig;</p>

<p class="center"><i>PAPERS AND ESSAYS</i></p>

<h3>BY</h3>

<h2>AUGUSTINE BIRRELL</h2>

<p class="center">AUTHOR OF 'OBITER DICTA,' ETC.</p>
<p><br /></p>


<p class="blockquot">
'It need hardly be added that such sentences do not
any more than the records of the superior courts conclude
as to matters which may or may not have been controverted.'&mdash;<i>See</i>
<span class="smcap">Blackham's</span> <i>Case I. Salkeld 290</i>
<br />
<br /></p>
<p class="center">NEW YORK</p>
<p class="center">CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</p>
<p class="center">1892</p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />

<p class="center">COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY</p>

<p class="center">CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.</p>
<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>

<hr style="width: 65%;" />

<h2>PREFACE
</h2>

<p>The first two essays in this volume
were composed as lectures, and are now
printed for the first time; the others have
endured that indignity before. The papers
on 'The Letters of Charles Lamb'
and 'Authors in Court' originally appeared
in <i>Macmillan's Magazine</i>; and the short
essays entitled 'William Cowper' and
'George Borrow' in the <i>Reflector</i>, a lively
sheet which owed its existence to and derived
its inspiration from the energy and
genius of the late Mr. J. K. Stephen, whose
too early death has not only eclipsed the
gaiety of many gatherings, but has robbed
the country of the service of a noble and
truth-loving man.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span></p>

<p>The other papers appeared either in
<i>Scribner's Magazine</i> or in the columns of
the <i>Speaker</i> newspaper.</p>

<p>Although, by the kindness of my present
publishers, I have always been practically
a 'protected article' in the States, I
cannot help expressing my pleasure in
finding myself in the enjoyment of the
same modest rights as an author in the
new home of my people as in the old.</p>

<p>
<span style="margin-left: 17.5em;">A. B.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="smcap">Lincoln's Inn, London.</span><br />
<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>




<h2>CONTENTS
</h2>


<table summary="toc">
<tr><td></td><td></td><td align="right">Page</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">I. </td><td><a href="#SAMUEL_RICHARDSON">SAMUEL RICHARDSON</a></td><td align="right">1</td></tr>

<tr><td align="right">II.</td> <td><a href="#EDWARD_GIBBON">EDWARD GIBBON</a></td><td align="right">39</td></tr>

<tr><td align="right">III. </td><td><a href="#WILLIAM_COWPER">WILLIAM COWPER</a></td><td align="right">84</td></tr>

<tr><td align="right">IV. </td><td><a href="#GEORGE_BORROW">GEORGE BORROW</a></td><td align="right">115</td></tr>

<tr><td align="right">V. </td><td><a href="#CARDINAL_NEWMAN">CARDINAL NEWMAN</a></td><td align="right">140</td></tr>

<tr><td align="right">VI. </td><td><a href="#MATTHEW_ARNOLD">MATTHEW ARNOLD</a></td><td align="right">181</td></tr>

<tr><td align="right">VII. </td><td><a href="#WILLIAM_HAZLITT">WILLIAM HAZLITT</a></td><td align="right">224</td></tr>

<tr><td align="right">VIII. </td><td><a href="#THE_LETTERS_OF_CHARLES_LAMB7">THE LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="right">232</td></tr>

<tr><td align="right">IX. </td><td><a href="#AUTHORS_IN_COURT">AUTHORS IN COURT</a></td><td align="right">253</td></tr>

<tr><td align="right">X. </td><td><a href="#NATIONALITY">NATIONALITY</a></td><td align="right">274</td></tr>

<tr><td align="right">XI. </td><td><a href="#THE_REFORMATION">THE REFORMATION</a></td><td align="right">284</td></tr>

<tr><td align="right">XII. </td><td><a href="#SAINTE-BEUVE">SAINTE-BEUVE</a></td><td align="right">298</td></tr>
</table>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="SAMUEL_RICHARDSON" id="SAMUEL_RICHARDSON"></a>SAMUEL RICHARDSON<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></h2>

<p class="center">A LECTURE</p>


<p>It is difficult to describe mankind either
in a book or in a breath, and none but the
most determined of philosophers or the
most desperate of cynics have attempted
to do so, either in one way or the other.
Neither the philosophers nor the cynics can
be said to have succeeded. The descriptions
of the former are not recognisable and
therefore as descriptions at all events, whatever
may be their other merits, must be
pronounced failures; whilst those of the
cynics describe something which bears to
ordinary human nature only the same sort
of resemblance that chemically polluted
waters bear to the stream as it flows higher
up than the source of contamination, which
in this case is the cynic himself.</p>

<p>But though it is hard to describe mankind,
it is easy to distinguish between peo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>ple.
You may do this in a great many different
ways: for example, and to approach
my subject, there are those who can read
Richardson's novels, and those who cannot.
The inevitable third-class passenger, no
doubt, presents himself and clamours for a
ticket: I mean the man or woman who has
never tried. But even a lecturer should
have courage, and I say boldly that I provide
no accommodation for that person tonight.
If he feels aggrieved, let him seek
his remedy&mdash;elsewhere.</p>

<hr style='width: 45%;' />

<p>Mr. Samuel Richardson, of Salisbury
Court, Fleet Street, printer, was, if you have
only an eye for the outside, a humdrum
person enough. Witlings, writing about
him in the magazines, have often, out of
consideration for their pretty little styles,
and in order to avoid the too frequent repetition
of his highly respectable if unromantic
name, found it convenient to dub
him the 'little printer.'</p>

<p>He undoubtedly was short of stature, and
in later life, obese in figure, but had he
stood seven feet high in his stockings, these
people would never have called him the 'big<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
printer.' Richardson has always been exposed
to a strong under-current of ridicule.
I have known people to smile at the mention
of his name, as if he were a sort of man-milliner&mdash;or,
did the thing exist, as some
day it may do, a male nursery-governess.
It is at first difficult to account for this
strange colouring of the bubble reputation.
Richardson's life, admirable as is Mrs. Barbauld's
sketch, cannot be said to have been
written&mdash;his letters, those I mean, he
wrote in his own name, not the nineteen
volumes he made his characters write, have
not been reprinted for more than eighty
years. He of all men might be suffered to
live only in his works, and when we turn to
those works, what do we find? <i>Pamela</i> and
<i>Clarissa</i> are both terribly realistic; they contain
passages of horror, and are in parts profoundly
pathetic, whilst <i>Clarissa</i> is desperately
courageous. Fielding, with all his
swagger and bounce, gold lace and strong
language, has no more of the boldness than
he has of the sublimity of the historian of
Clarissa Harlowe. But these qualities avail
poor Richardson nothing. The taint of
afternoon tea still clings to him. The facts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>&mdash;the
harmless, nay, I will say the attractive,
facts&mdash;that he preferred the society of
ladies to that of his own sex, and liked to be
surrounded by these, surely not strange
creatures, in his gardens and grottos, first
at North End, Hammersmith, and afterwards
at Parsons Green, are still remembered
against him. Life is indeed full of
pitfalls, if estimates of a man's genius are to
be formed by the garden-parties he gave,
and the tea he consumed a century and a
quarter ago. The real truth I believe to
be this: we are annoyed with Richardson
because he violates a tradition. The proper
place for an eighteenth-century novelist
was either the pot or the sponging house.
He ought to be either disguised in liquor
or confined for debt. Richardson was
never the one or the other. Let us see
how this works: take Dr. Johnson; we all
know how to describe him. He is our great
moralist, the sturdy, the severe, the pious,
the man who, as Carlyle puts it in his striking
way, worshipped at St. Clement Danes
in the era of Voltaire, or, as he again puts
it, was our real primate, the true spiritual
edifier and soul's teacher of all England?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
Well, here is one of his reminiscences: 'I
remember writing to Richardson from a
sponging-house and was so sure of my deliverance
through his kindness and liberality,
that before his reply was brought I
knew I could afford to joke with the rascal
who had me in custody, and did so over
a pint of adulterated wine for which at that
moment I had no money to pay.'</p>

<p>Now, there we have the true, warm-hearted,
literary tradition of the eighteenth
century. It is very amusing, it is full of
good feeling and fellowship, but the morality
of the transaction from the great moralist's
point of view is surely, like his linen,
a trifle dingy. The soul's teacher of all
England, laid by the heels in a sponging-house,
and cracking jokes with a sheriff's
officer over a pint of wine on the chance of
another man paying for it, is a situation
which calls for explanation. It is not my
place to give it. It could, I think, easily
be given. Dr. Johnson was, in my judgment,
all Carlyle declared him to be, and
to have been called upon to set him free
was to be proudly privileged, and, after all,
why make such a fuss about trifles? The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
debt and costs together only amounted to
&pound;5 18s., so that the six guineas Richardson
promptly sent more than sufficed to
get our 'real primate' out of prison, and
to pay for the pint. All I feel concerned
to say here is, that the praise of this anecdote
belongs to the little printer, and not
to the great lexicographer. The hero of
the parable of the Good Samaritan is the
Good Samaritan himself, and not the unfortunate,
and therefore probably foolish,
traveller who must need fall amongst
thieves.</p>

<p>But if you violate traditions, and disturb
people's notions as to what it is becoming
for you to be, to do, or to suffer, you have
to pay for it. An eighteenth-century novelist
who made a fortune first by honest
labour and the practice of frugality, and
wrote his novels afterwards; who was fond
of the society of ladies, and a vegetarian in
later life; who divided his time between
his shop and his villa, and became in due
course master of a city company, is not
what we have a right to expect, and makes
a figure which strongly contrasts with that
of Richardson's great contemporary, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
entirely manly Henry Fielding, whose very
name rings in the true tradition; whilst as
for his books, to take up <i>Tom Jones</i> is like
re-entering in middle life your old college
rooms, where, so at least Mr. Lowell assures
us,</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i12">&#8216;You feel o'er you stealing<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The old, familiar, warm, champagny, brandy-punchy feeling.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>It may safely be said of Richardson that,
after attaining to independence, he did
more good every week of his life&mdash;for he
was a wise and most charitable man&mdash;than
Fielding was ever able to do throughout
the whole of his; but this cannot alter
the case or excuse a violated tradition.</p>

<p>The position, therefore, of Richardson
in our literature is that of a great Nonconformist.
He was not manufactured according
to any established process. If I
may employ a metaphor borrowed from his
own most honourable craft, he was set up
in a new kind of type. He was born in
1689 in a Derbyshire village, the name of
which, for some undiscovered reason, he
would never tell. The son of poor parents&mdash;his
father was a joiner&mdash;he had never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
any but a village school education, nor did
he in later life worry much about learning,
or seek, as so many printers have done, to
acquire foreign tongues. At fourteen years
of age he was bound apprentice to a printer
in Aldersgate Street, and for seven years
toiled after a fashion which would certainly
nowadays be forbidden by Act of Parliament,
were there the least likelihood of
anybody either demanding or performing
drudgery so severe. When out of his apprenticeship,
he worked for eight years as
a compositor, reader, and overseer, and then,
marrying his late master's daughter, set up
for himself, and slowly but steadily grew
prosperous and respected. His first wife
dying, he married again, the daughter of a
bookseller of Bath. At the age of fifty he
published his first novel, <i>Pamela</i>. John
Bunyan's life was not more unlike an Archbishop
of Canterbury's than was Richardson's
unlike the life of an ordinary English
novelist of his period.</p>

<p>This simile to Nonconformity also holds
good a little when we seek to ascertain the
ambit of Richardson's popularity. To do
this we must take wide views. We must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
not confine our attention to what may be
called the high and dry school of literary
orthodoxy. There, no doubt, Richardson
has his admirers, just as Spurgeon's sermons
have been seen peeping out from
under a heap of archidiaconal, and even
episcopal Charges, although the seat of
Spurgeon's popularity is not in bishops'
palaces, but in shop parlours. I do not
mean by this that Richardson is now a
popular novelist, for the fact, I suppose, is
otherwise; but I mean that to take the
measure of his popularity, you must look
over the wide world and not merely at the
clans and the cliques, the noble army of
writers, and the ever lessening body of
readers who together constitute what are
called literary circles. Of Richardson's
great fame on the Continent, it will be
time enough to speak in a few minutes;
for the moment I will stop at home. Mr.
Leslie Stephen, who has been called to be
editor of our first really great Dictionary
of National Biography, and has in that
capacity to sit like a coroner's jury upon
every dead author, and to decide whether
his exploits are to be squeezed into one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
miserable paragraph, or may be allowed
proudly to expand over a page&mdash;he, I say,
pronounces <i>Pamela</i> to be neither moral
nor amusing. Poor Pamela, who through
two mortal volumes thinks of nothing but
her virtue, and how to get married according
to law! to be thus dismissed by her
most recent, most distinguished editor!
But, I repeat, we must take wide views.
We must not be content with the verdict
of the university; we must seek that of
the kitchen: nor is the distance ever great
between these institutions. Two months
ago a cook in a family of my acquaintance,
one Saturday evening, when like old Caspar
'her work was done,' suddenly bethought
herself of <i>Pamela</i>, a book she
had not read since girlhood. Rest was
impossible&mdash;get it forthwith she must.
The housemaid proffered her <i>The Heir of
Redclyffe</i>, and the kitchen-maid, a somewhat
oppressed damsel, timidly produced
<i>Gates Ajar</i>. The cook was not to be
trifled with after any such feeble fashion.
The spell of <i>Pamela</i> was upon her, and
out she sallied, arrayed in her majesty, to
gratify her soul's desire. Had she been a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
victim of what is called 'Higher Education
of Women,' and therefore in the habit of
frequenting orthodox bookshops, she would
doubtless have found the quest at so late
an hour as hopeless as that of the <i>Holy
Grail</i>; but she was not that sort of person,
and the shop she had in her mind,
and whither she straightway bent her
steps, was a small stationer's where are
vended <i>Family Heralds</i> and <i>Ballads</i> and
<i>Pamelas</i>; for the latter, in cheap sixpenny
guise&mdash;and I hope complete, but for this
I cannot vouch&mdash;is a book which is constantly
reprinted for sale amongst the
poor. The cook, having secured her prize,
returned to her home in triumph, where a
dinner worthy of the name was not to be
had until Pamela's virtue was rewarded,
which, as you doubtless remember, it only
was when her master brings her a license
and presses for a day. She desires it may
be on a Thursday, and gives her reasons.
He rallies her agreeably on that head.
The Thursday following is fixed upon.
She reflects seriously on the near prospect
of her important change of condition, and
is diffident of her own worthiness, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
prays for humility that her new condition
may not be a snare to her, and makes up
her mind how to behave herself to the servants,
she herself having been one.</p>

<p>There are well-authenticated instances of
the extraordinary power <i>Pamela</i> possesses
of affecting those who are not much in the
habit of reading. There is a story of its
being read aloud by a blacksmith round his
anvil night after night, to a band of eager
rustics, all dreadfully anxious good Mr.
Richardson would only move on a little
faster, and yet unwilling to miss a single
one of poor Pamela's misadventures; and
of their greeting by hearty rounds of British
cheers, the happy issue out of her afflictions
that awaits her, namely, her marriage with
the cause of every one of them.</p>

<p>There are living writers who have written
some admirable novels, and I have
known people to be glad when they were
finished, but never to the pitch of three
times three.</p>

<p>I am not, of course, recommending anyone
to read <i>Pamela</i>; to do so would be an
impertinence. You have all done so, or
tried to do so. 'I do not remember,' says<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
Charles Lamb, 'a more whimsical surprise
than having been once detected by a familiar
damsel, reclining at my ease upon the
grass on Primrose Hill, reading <i>Pamela</i>.
There was nothing in the book to make a
man seriously ashamed at the exposure;
but as she seated herself down by me, and
seemed determined to read in company, I
could have wished it had been&mdash;any other
book. We read on very socially for a few
pages; and not finding the author much
to her taste, she got up and went away.
Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture
whether the blush (for there was
one between us) was the property of the
nymph or the swain in the dilemma. From
me you shall never learn the secret.'<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>

<p>Miss Pamela Andrews was, to tell the
truth, a vulgar young person. There is
nothing heroic or romantic about her; she
has not a touch or a trace of the moral
sublimity of Jeannie Deans, who though of
the same rank of life, belonged to another
country and had had an entirely different
up-bringing. What a reply was that of
Jeannie's to the Rev. Mr. Staunton, George<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
Robertson's father, when he, entirely misapprehending
the purport of her famous
journey, lets her perceive that he fancies
she is plotting for her own marriage with
his son. Says the father to the son: 'Perhaps
you intend to fill up the cup of disobedience
and profligacy by forming a low
and disgraceful marriage; but let me bid
you beware.' 'If you were feared for sic
a thing happening with me, sir,' said
Jeannie, 'I can only say that not for all
the land that lies between the twa ends of
the rainbow, wad I be the woman that
should wed your son.' 'There is something
very singular in all this,' said the elder
Staunton; and so Pamela would have
thought. She, honest girl that she was,
was always ready to marry anybody's son,
only she must have the marriage lines to
keep in her desk and show to her dear
parents.</p>

<p>The book's origin ought not to be overlooked.
Some London booksellers, knowing
Mr. Richardson to be a grave man of
decorous life, and with a talent for moralising,
desired him to write a series of familiar
letters on the behaviour of young women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
going out to service for the first time; they
never intended a novel: they wanted a
manual of conduct&mdash;that conduct which,
according to a precise Arithmetician is
three-fourths, or some other fraction, of
human life. It was in this spirit that
Richardson sat down to write <i>Pamela</i> and
make himself famous. He had a facile
pen, and the book, as it grew under his
hand, outstripped its design, but never
lost sight of it. It was intended for Pamelas,
and is <i>bourgeois</i> to the very last degree.
The language is simple, but its simplicity
is not the noble, soul-stirring simplicity of
Bunyan, nor is it the manly simplicity of
Cobbett or Hugh Miller: it is the ignoble,
and at times almost the odious, simplicity
of a merely uncultured life. It abounds in
vulgar phrases and vulgar thoughts; still, it
reflects powerfully the scenes it portrays,
and you feel as you read a fine affinity
between the communicating medium, the
language, and the thing communicated, the
story. When people said, in the flush of
their first enthusiasm, as they did say, that
there were but two good books in the world,
the <i>Bible</i>, and <i>Pamela</i>, this is what, perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
unconsciously they were thinking of; otherwise
they were talking nonsense. Pamela
spoke a language still understood of many,
and if she was not romantic or high-flown,
there are others like her. We are always
well pleased, and it is perhaps lucky for the
majority of novelists that it should be so,
to read about people who do not in the
least resemble us; still, anyone who describes
us as we are, 'strikes the electric
chain wherewith we are darkly bound,' and
makes humanity quiver right down the
centuries. Pamela was a vulgar little
thing, and saucy withal: her notions of
honour and dishonour were neither lofty nor
profound; but she had them and stuck to
them in perilous paths along which the
defenceless of her sex are too often called
to tread; and when finally her virtue is rewarded,
and she is driven off in a chariot
drawn by the four long-tailed mares upon
whom she had been cruelly twitted for setting
her affections, I for one am quite prepared
to join with the rustics round the
blacksmith's anvil in loud cheers for Pamela.</p>

<p>Ten years after <i>Pamela</i> came <i>Clarissa</i>.
It is not too much to say that not only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
Great Britain and Ireland, (the latter country
not yet deprived of her liberties by the
Act of Union, and therefore in a position
to pirate popular authors, after the agreeable
fashion of our American cousins,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>) but
also France, Germany, and Holland, simply
gulped <i>Clarissa</i> down; and she was in seven
volumes. It was a kind of gospel, something
good and something new. Its author
was a stout tradesman of sixty, but he was
not in the very least degree what is now
called&mdash;perhaps to the point of nausea&mdash;a
Philistine. By a Philistine I suppose we
must understand someone who lives and
moves and has his being in the realm of ordinary
stock conventional ideas&mdash;a man who
is as blind to the future as he is deaf to the
past. For example, that Dr. Drummond,
Archbishop of York, who just about this
very time told the Rev. Mr. Conyers, one
of his clergy, 'that he would be better employed
preaching the morality of Socrates
than canting about the New Birth,' was a
Philistine&mdash;I doubt not a very amiable one,
but, being a Philistine, he had no chance
of recognising what this nascent methodism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
was, and as for dreaming what it might
become&mdash;had he been capable of this&mdash;he
would not have been a Philistine or,
probably, Archbishop of York!</p>

<p>Richardson on the other hand had his
quiver full of new ideas; he had his face
to the east; he was no mere inheritor, he
was a progenitor. He is, in short, as has
been often said, our Rousseau; his characters
were not stock characters. Think of
Fielding's characters, his Tom Joneses and
Booths, his Amelias and Sophias. They are
stage properties as old as the Plantagenets.
They are quite unidea'd, if I may use a word
which, as applied to girls, has the authority
of Dr. Johnson. Fielding's men are either
good fellows with large appetites, which
they gratify openly, or sneaks with equally
large appetites, which they gratify on the
sly; whilst the characters of his women are
made to hinge solely upon their willingness
or unwillingness to turn a blind eye. If
they are ready to do this, they are angels;
Sophia comes upon the stage in a chapter
headed 'A short hint of what we can do in
the sublime, and a description of Miss
Sophia Western.' Poor neglected Amelia,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
whenever she is forgiving her husband, is
described as 'all one blaze of beauty;' but
if they are not willing to play this <i>r&ocirc;le</i>,
why then they are unsexed and held up to
the ridicule and reprobation of all good fellows
and pretty women. This sort of thing
was abhorrent to the soul of the little
printer; he hated Fielding's boisterous
drunkards with an entire hatred. I believe
he would have hated them almost as
much if Fielding had not been a rival of
his fame. He said he was not able to read
any more than the first volume of <i>Amelia</i>,
and as for <i>Tom Jones</i>, in the year 1750, he
was audacious enough to say that its run
was over. Regarded merely as writers,
there can, I suppose, be no real rivalry
between Fielding and Richardson. The
superiority of Fielding is apparent on every
page. Wit, good-humour, a superb lusty
style which carries you along like a pair of
horses over a level moorland road, incidents,
adventures, inns, and all the glory of motion,
high spirits, huge appetites, pretty
women&mdash;what a catalogue it makes of
things no doubt smacking of this world
and the kingdom thereof, but none the less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
delightful on that account! No wonder
<i>Tom Jones</i> is still running; where, I should
like to know, is the man bold enough to
stop him. But for all this, Richardson was
the more remarkable and really interesting
man of the two; and for the reason that
he was the evangel of the new sentimentalism,
that word which so puzzled one of his
most charming correspondents that she
wrote to ask him what it meant&mdash;this new
word sentimental which was just beginning
to be in everybody's mouth. We have
heard a good deal of it since.</p>

<p><i>Clarissa Harlowe</i> has a place not merely
amongst English novels, but amongst English
women.</p>

<p>It was a new thing for a woman to be
described as being not only in herself but
by herself commendable and altogether
lovely, as triumphing in her own right over
the cruelest dishonour, and rejecting, with
a noble scorn new to literature, the hand
in marriage of the villain who had done her
wrong. The book opened the flood-gates
of human tears. The waters covered the
earth. We cannot weep as they used to
do in 'the brave days of old.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>

<p>Listen to the wife of a Lancashire
baronet: 'I verily believe I have shed a
pint of tears, my heart is still bursting
though they cease not to flow at this
moment, nor will I fear for some time....
Had you seen me I surely should
have moved your pity. When alone in
agonies would I lay down the book, take
it up again, walk about the room, let fall
a flood of tears, wipe my eyes, read again,
perhaps not three lines, throw away the
book, crying out: "Excuse me, good Mr.
Richardson, I cannot go on, it is your
fault, you have done more than I can
bear;" threw myself upon my couch
to compose; again I read, again I acted
the same part, sometimes agreeably interrupted
by my dear man, who was at that
time labouring through the sixth volume
with a heart capable of impressions equal
to my own&mdash;tho' the effects shown in a
more justifiable manner&mdash;which I believe
may be compared to what Mr. Belfort felt
when he found the beauteous sufferer in
her prison-room. Something rose in my
throat, I knew not what, which made me
guggle as it were for speech.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>

<p>Nor did the men escape; a most grave
and learned man writes:</p>

<p>'That <i>Pamela</i> and <i>Clarissa</i> have again
"obtained the <i>honour</i> of my perusal," do
you say, my dear Mr. Richardson. I assure
you I think it an <i>honour</i> to be able
to say I have read, and as long as I have
eyes will read, all your three most excellent
<i>pieces</i> at least once a year, that I am
capable of doing it with increasing pleasure
which is perpetually doubled by the
reflection, that this good man, this charming
author, is <i>my friend</i>. I have been this
day weeping over the seventh volume of
<i>Clarissa</i> as if I had attended her dying
bed and assisted at her funeral procession.
Oh may my latter end be like
hers!'</p>

<p>It is no wonder the author of <i>Clarissa</i>
had soon a great correspondence with ladies,
married and single, young and old, virtuous
and the reverse. Had he not written seven
volumes, all about a girl? had he not made
her beautiful, wise and witty and learned
withal? had he not depicted with extraordinary
skill the character of the fascinating&mdash;the
hitherto resistless Lovelace, who,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
though accomplishing Clarissa's ruin does
thereby but establish her triumph and confound
himself? It is no doubt unhappily
the case that far too many of Richardson's
fair correspondents lacked the splendid
courage of their master, and to his infinite
annoyance fell in love with his arch-scamp,
and prayed his creator that Lovelace might
first be led to see the error of his ways,
and then to the altar with the divine
Clarissa. But the heroic printer was adamant
to their cries, and he was right if
ever man was. As well might <i>King Lear</i>
end happily as <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>.</p>

<p>The seven volumes caused immense talk
and discussion, and it was all Clarissa,
Clarissa, Clarissa. Sophia Western was,
as we have seen, a comely girl enough, but
she was as much like Clarissa as a ship in
dock is like a ship at sea and on fire.
What can you find to say of her or to
her?<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> When you have dug Tom Jones in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
the ribs, and called him a lucky dog, and
wished her happy, you turn away with a
yawn; but Clarissa is immense. Do you
remember Thackeray's account in the
<i>Roundabout Papers</i> of Macaulay's rhapsody
in the Athen&aelig;um Club? 'I spoke to
him once about <i>Clarissa</i>. "Not read <i>Clarissa</i>?"
he cried out. "If you have once
thoroughly entered on <i>Clarissa</i> and are
infected by it, you can't leave off. When
I was in India I passed one hot season
at the hills, and there were the governor-general,
the secretary of government,
the commander-in-chief and their wives.
I had <i>Clarissa</i> with me, and as soon as
they began to read the whole station
was in a passion of excitement about
Miss Harlowe and her misfortunes, and
her scoundrelly Lovelace. The governor's
wife seized the book, and the
secretary waited for it, and the chief
justice could not read it for tears." He
acted the whole scene, he paced up and
down the Athen&aelig;um Library. I dare
say he could have spoken pages of the
book, of that book, and of what countless
piles of others.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>

<p>I must be permitted to observe that lawyers
have been great Richardsonians. The
Rev. Mr. Loftus, writing to our author
from Ireland, says: 'I will tell you a story
about your sweet girl Pamela. Our late
lord chancellor,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> who was a man more
remarkable for the goodness of his heart
than even for the abilities of his head,
which were of the most exalted kind, was
so struck with her history that he sat up
reading it the whole night, although it
was then the middle of term, and declared
to his family he could not find it in his
heart to quit his book, nor imagined it to
be so late by many hours.'</p>

<p>The eminent Sergeant Hill, though
averse to literature, used to set Clarissa's
will before his pupils, and bid them determine
how many of its uses and trusts
could be supported in court. I am sorry
to have to add that in the learned sergeant's
opinion, poor Clarissa, in addition
to all her other misfortunes, died intestate.</p>

<p>All this commotion and excitement and
Clarissa-worship meant that something was
brewing, and that good Mr. Richardson,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
with his fat, round face flushed with the
fire, had his ladle in the pan and was busy
stirring it about. What is called the correspondence
of Samuel Richardson, which
was edited by that admirable woman, Mrs.
Barbauld, and published in six volumes in
1804, is mostly made up, not of letters
from, but to, the author of <i>Clarissa</i>. All
the more effectually on that account does
it let us into the manufactory of his mind.
The letters a man receives are perhaps
more significant of his real character than
those he writes. People did not write to
Mr. Richardson about themselves or about
their business, or about literature, unless
it were to say they did not like <i>Tom
Jones</i>, or about politics, or other sports,
but they wrote to him about himself and
his ideas, his good woman, Clarissa, his
good man, Sir Charles, and the true relation
between the sexes. They are immense
fun, these letters, but they ought
also to be taken seriously; Mr. Richardson
took them as seriously as he always
took himself. There was, perhaps, only
one subject Richardson regarded as of
equal importance with himself, and that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
was the position of woman. This is why
he hated Fielding, the triumphant, orthodox
Fielding, to whom man was a rollicking
sinner, and woman a loving slave. He
pondered on this subject, until the anger
within him imparts to his style a virility
and piquancy not usually belonging to it.
The satire in the following extract from a
letter he wrote to the good lady who shed
a pint of tears over <i>Clarissa</i>, is pungent:
'Man is an animal that must bustle in the
world, go abroad, converse, fight battles,
encounter other dangers of seas, winds,
and I know not what, in order to protect,
provide for, maintain in ease and plenty,
women. Bravery, anger, fierceness are
made familiar to them. They buffet and
are buffeted by the world; are impatient
and uncontrollable; they talk of honour,
run their heads against stone walls to
make good their pretensions to it, and
often quarrel with one another and fight
duels upon any other silly thing that
happens to raise their choler&mdash;their
shadows if you please; while women are
meek, passive, good creatures, who used
to stay at home, set their maids at work,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
and formerly themselves, get their houses
in order to receive, comfort, oblige, give
joy to their fierce, fighting, bustling,
active protectors, providers, maintainers,
divert him with pretty pug's tricks, tell
him soft tales of love, and of who and
who's together, what has been done in
his absence, bring to him little master,
so like his own dear papa, and little pretty
miss, a soft, sweet, smiling soul, with her
sampler in her hand, so like what her
meek mamma was at her years.'</p>

<p>You cannot, indeed, lay hold of many
specific things which Richardson advocated.
Ignorant of the classics himself,
he was by no means disposed to advocate
the teaching of them to women. Clarissa,
indeed, knew Latin, but Harriet Byron
did not. The second Mrs. Richardson
was just a little bit too much for her husband,
and he was consequently led to hold
what may be called 'high doctrine' as to
the duty of wives obeying their husbands.
Though never was man less of a revolutionary
than Richardson, still he was on
the side of the revolution. He had an
ethical system different from that which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
stood beside him. This did not escape
the notice of a keen-witted contemporary,
the great Smollett, whose own Roderick
Randoms and Peregrine Pickles are such
unmitigated, high-coloured ruffians as to
induce Sir Walter Scott to call him the
Rubens of fiction, but who none the less
had an eye for the future; he in his history
speaks in terms of high admiration of
the sublime code of ethics of the author of
<i>Clarissa</i>. Richardson was fierce against
duelling, and also against corporal punishment.
He had the courage to deplore
the evil effects produced by the works of
Homer, 'that fierce, fighting <i>Iliad</i>,' as he
called it. We may be sure his children were
never allowed to play with tin soldiers, at
least, not with their father's consent.</p>

<p>Having written <i>Clarissa</i> it became inevitable
that Richardson should proceed further
and write <i>Grandison</i>. In reading his
correspondence we hail Sir Charles afar
off. Richardson had deeply grieved to
see how many of his ladies had fallen in
love with the scoundrelly Lovelace. It
wounded him to the quick, for he could not
but feel that he was not in the least like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
Lovelace himself. He turns almost savagely
upon some of his fair correspondents
and upbraids them, telling them indeed
plainly that he feared they were no better
than they should be. They had but one
answer: 'Ah, dear Mr. Richardson, in
<i>Clarissa</i> you have shown us the good
woman we all would be. Now show us
the good man we all should love.' And
he set about doing so seriously, aye and
humbly, too. He writes with a sad sincerity
a hundred years cannot hide:</p>

<p>'How shall a man obscurely situated,
never in his life delighting in public entertainments,
nor in his youth able to frequent
them from narrowness of fortune;
one of the most attentive of men to the
calls of business&mdash;his situation for many
years producing little but prospects of a
numerous family&mdash;a business that seldom
called him abroad when he might in the
course of it see and know a little of the
world, as some employments give opportunities
to do&mdash;naturally shy and sheepish,
and wanting more encouragement by
smiles to draw him out than anybody
thought it worth their while to give him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>&mdash;and
blest (in this he will say blest)
with a mind that set him above dependence,
and making an absolute reliance on
Providence and his own endeavours&mdash;how
I say, shall such a man pretend to
describe and enter into characters in
upper life?'</p>

<p>However, he set about it, and in 1754
produced <i>Sir Charles Grandison</i>, or as he
had originally intended to call it, the
<i>Good Man</i>, in six octavo volumes.</p>

<p>I am not going to say he entirely succeeded
with his good man, who I know
has been called an odious prig. I have
read <i>Sir Charles Grandison</i> once&mdash;I cannot
promise ever to read it again, and yet
who knows what may happen? Sir Walter
Scott, in his delightful, good-humoured
fashion, tells a tale of a venerable lady of
his acquaintance, who, when she became
subject to drowsy fits, chose to have <i>Sir
Charles</i> read to her as she sat in her elbow
chair in preference to any other work;
because, said she, 'should I drop asleep in
the course of the reading, I am sure when
I awake I shall have lost none of the story,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
but shall find the party where I left them,
conversing in the cedar-parlour.'</p>

<p>After <i>Sir Charles</i>, Richardson wrote no
more. Indeed, there was nothing to write
about, unless he had taken the advice of a
morose clerical friend who wrote to him:
'I hope you intend to give us a bad woman&mdash;expensive,
imperious, lewd, and, at last,
a drammer. This is a fruitful and necessary
subject which will strike and entertain
to a miracle.' Mr. Richardson replied
jocosely that if the Rev. Mr. Skelton would
only sketch the she-devil for him, he would
find room for her somewhere, and the
subject dropped. The wife of the celebrated
German poet, Klopstock, wrote to
him in her broken English: 'Having finished
your <i>Clarissa</i> (oh, the heavenly
book!) I would prayed you to write the
history of a manly <i>Clarissa</i>, but I had
not courage enough at that time. I
should have it no more to-day, as this is
only my first English letter; but I am now
Klopstock's wife, and then I was only the
single young girl. You have since written
the manly <i>Clarissa</i> without my prayer.
Oh, you have done it to the great joy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
thanks of all your happy readers! Now
you can write no more. You must write
the history of an Angel.'</p>

<p>The poor lady died the following year
under melancholy circumstances, but her
prophecy proved true. Richardson wrote
no more. He died in 1761, seventy-two
years of age. His will, after directing
numerous mourning-rings to be given to
certain friends, proceeds as follows: 'Had
I given rings to all the ladies who have
honoured me with their correspondence,
and whom I sincerely venerate for their
amiable qualities, it would even in this
last solemn act appear like ostentation.'</p>

<p>It now only remains to say two or three
words about Richardson's great popularity
abroad. Until quite recently, he and
Sterne may be said to have been the only
popular English authors abroad; perhaps
Goldsmith should be added to the party.
Foreigners never felt any difficulty about
him or about the tradition he violated.
The celebrated author of <i>Manon Lescaut</i>
translated <i>Clarissa</i> into French, though it
was subsequently better done by a less
famous hand. She was also turned into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
German and Dutch. Foreigners, of course,
could not be expected to appreciate the
hopeless absurdity of a man who lived at
Parson's Green attempting to describe the
upper classes. Horace Walpole when in
Paris did his best to make this plain, but
he failed. Say what he might, <i>Clarissa</i> lay
on the toilet tables of the French Princesses,
and everybody was raving about
her. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was
also very angry. 'Richardson,' says she,
writing to the Countess of Bute, 'has no
idea of the manners of high life. Such
liberties as pass between Mr. Lovelace and
his cousins are not to be excused by the
relation. I should have been much astonished
if Lord Denbigh should have offered
to kiss me; and, I dare swear Lord Trentham
never attempted such impertinence
to you.' To the English reader these
criticisms of Lady Mary's have immense
value; but the French sentimentalist, with
his continental insolence, did not care a
sou what impertinences Lord Denbigh and
Lord Trentham might or might not have
attempted towards their female cousins.
He simply read his <i>Clarissa</i> and lifted up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
his voice and wept: and so, to do her justice,
did Lady Mary herself. 'This Richardson,'
she writes, 'is a strange fellow.
I heartily despise him and eagerly read
him, nay, sob over his works in a most
scandalous manner.'</p>

<p>The effect produced upon Rousseau by
Richardson is historical. Without <i>Clarissa</i>
there would have been no <i>Nouvelle Helo&iuml;se</i>,
and had there been no <i>Nouvelle Helo&iuml;se</i>
everyone of us would have been somewhat
different from what we are.</p>

<p>The elaborate eulogy of Diderot is well-known,
and though extravagant in parts is
full of true criticism. One sentence only
I will quote: 'I have observed,' he says,
'that in a company where the works of
Richardson were reading either privately
or aloud the conversation at once became
more interesting and animating.' This,
surely, is a legitimate test to which to
submit a novel. You sometimes hear people
say of a book, 'Oh, it is not worth
talking about! I was only reading it.'</p>

<p>The great Napoleon was a true Richardsonian.
Only once did he ever seem to
take any interest in an Englishman. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
was whilst he was first consul and when
he was introduced to an officer called
Lovelace, 'Why,' he exclaimed with emotion,
'that is the name of the man in
<i>Clarissa</i>!' When our own great critic,
Hazlitt, heard of this incident he fell in
love with Napoleon on the spot, and subsequently
wrote his life in numerous volumes.</p>

<p>In Germany <i>Clarissa</i> had a great sale, and
those of you who are acquainted with German
sentiment, will have no difficulty in
tracing a good deal of it to its original
fountain in Fleet Street.</p>

<p>As a man, Richardson had perhaps only
two faults. He was very nervous on the
subject of his health and he was very vain.
His first fault gave a great deal of trouble
to his wives and families, his second
afforded nobody anything but pleasure.
The vanity of a distinguished man, if at
the same time he happens to be a good
man, is a quality so agreeable in its manifestations
that to look for it and not to
find it would be to miss a pleasure.
When the French poet Boileau was invited
to Versailles by Louis Quatorze, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
was much annoyed by the vanity of that
monarch. 'Whenever,' said he, 'the conversation
left the king's doings'&mdash;and,
let us guess, just approached the poet's
verses&mdash;'his majesty always had a yawning-fit,
or suggested a walk on the terrace.'
The fact is, it is not vanity, but
contending vanities, that give pain.</p>

<p>As for those of you who cannot read
Richardson's nineteen volumes, it can
only be said you are a large and intelligent
class of persons. You number
amongst you poets like Byron&mdash;for I
presume Byron is still among the poets&mdash;and
philosophers like d'Alembert, who,
when asked whether Richardson was not
right in imitating Nature, replied, 'Yes,
but not to the point of ennui.' We must
not bear you malice or blacken your private
characters. On the other hand, you
must not sneer at us or call us milksops.
There is nothing to be proud of, I can
assure you, in not being able to read <i>Clarissa
Harlowe</i>, or to appreciate the genius
which created Lovelace.</p>

<p>A French critic, M. Scherer, has had the
audacity to doubt whether <i>Tristram Shandy</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
is much read in England, and it is commonly
asserted in France that <i>Clarissa</i> is
too good for us. Tristram may be left to
his sworn admirers who could at any moment
take the field with all the pomp and
circumstance of war, but with Clarissa it is
different. Her bodyguard is small and
often in need of recruits. This indeed is
my apology for the trouble I have put you
to.</p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="EDWARD_GIBBON" id="EDWARD_GIBBON"></a>EDWARD GIBBON<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></h2>

<p class="center">A LECTURE</p>


<p>'It was at Rome, on the 15th of October,
1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of
the Capitol, while the bare-footed fryars
were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter
that the idea of writing the Decline
and Fall of the City first started to my
mind.</p>

<p>'It was on the day, or rather night, of
the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours
of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last
lines of the last page, in a summer-house
in my garden. After laying down my pen
I took several turns in a <i>berceau</i>, or covered
walk of acacias, which commands a prospect
of the country, the lake and the mountains.
The air was temperate, the sky was
serene, the silver orb of the moon was
reflected from the waters and all nature
was silent. I will not dissemble the first
emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
and perhaps of the establishment of my
fame. But my pride was soon humbled
and a sober melancholy was spread over
my mind by the idea that I had taken an
everlasting leave of an old and agreeable
companion, and that whatever might be
the future date of my history, the life of
the historian must be short and precarious.'</p>

<p>Between these two passages lies the romance
of Gibbon's life&mdash;a romance which
must be looked for, not, indeed, in the volumes,
whether the original quartos or the
subsequent octavos, of his history&mdash;but in
the elements which went to make that history
what it is: the noble conception, the
shaping intellect, the mastered learning, the
stately diction and the daily toil.</p>

<p>Mr. Bagehot has declared that the way
to reverence Gibbon is not to read him at
all, but to look at him, from outside, in
the bookcase, and think how much there is
within; what a course of events, what a
muster-roll of names, what a steady solemn
sound. All Mr. Bagehot's jokes have a
kernel inside them. The supreme merit of
Gibbon's history is not to be found in deep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
thoughts, or in wide views, or in profound
knowledge of human nature, or prophetic
vision. Seldom was there an historian less
well-equipped with these fine things than he.
Its glory is its architecture, its structure, its
organism. There it is, it is worth looking
at, for it is invulnerable, indispensable, immortal.
The metaphors which have been
showered upon it, prove how fond people
have been of looking at it from outside.
It has been called a Bridge, less obviously
an Aqueduct, more prosaically a Road.
We applaud the design and marvel at the
execution.</p>

<p>There is something mournful in this
chorus of approbation in which it is not
difficult to detect the notes of surprise. It
tells a tale of infirmity both of life and purpose.
A complete thing staggers us. We
are accustomed to failure.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;What act proves all its thought had been?&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>The will is weak, opportunities are barren,
temper uncertain and life short.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;I thought all labour, yet no less,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Bear up beneath their unsuccess;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Look at the end of work: contrast<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The petty done&mdash;the undone vast.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>
<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
<p>It is Gibbon's triumph that he made his
thoughts acts. He is not exactly what
you call a pious writer, but he is provocative
of at least one pious feeling. A sabbatical
calm results from the contemplation
of his labours. Succeeding scholars have
read his history and pronounced it good.
It is likewise finished. Hence this feeling
of surprise.</p>

<p>Gibbon's life has the simplicity of an
epic. His work was to write his history.
Nothing else was allowed to rob this idea of
its majesty. It brooked no rival near its
throne. It dominated his life, for though
a man of pleasure, and, to speak plainly, a
good bit of a coxcomb, he had always the
cadences of the <i>Decline and Fall</i> in his
ears. It has been wittily said of him, that
he came at last to believe that he was the
Roman Empire, or, at all events, something
equally majestic and imposing. His life
had, indeed, its episodes, but so has an epic.
Gibbon's episodes are interesting, abrupt,
and always concluded. In his sixteenth
year he, without the aid of a priest or the
seductions of ritual, read himself into the
Church of Rome, and was one fine June<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
morning in 1753 baptized by a Jesuit father.
By Christmas, 1754, he had read himself
out again. Gibbon's conversion was perfectly
genuine and should never be spoken
of otherwise than respectfully, but it was
entirely a matter of books and reading.
'Persons influence us,' cries Dr. Newman,
'voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds
inflame us. Many a man will live and die
upon a dogma; no man will be a martyr
for a conclusion.' It takes all sorts to
make a world, and our plump historian was
one of those whose actions are determined
in libraries, whose lives are unswayed by
personal influences, to whom conclusions
may mean a great deal, but dogmas certainly
nothing. Whether Gibbon on leaving
off his Catholicism ever became a Protestant
again, except in the sense that
Bayle declared himself one, is doubtful.
But all this makes an interesting episode.
The second episode is his well-known love
affair with Mademoiselle Curchod, afterwards
Madame Neckar and the mother of
that social portent, Madame de Stael.
Gibbon, of course, behaved badly in this
affair. He fell in love, made known his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
plight, obtained mademoiselle's consent,
and then speeded home to tell his father.
'Love,' said he, 'will make me eloquent.'
The elder Gibbon would not hear of it:
the younger tamely acquiesced. His very
acquiescence, like all else about him, has
become classical. 'I sighed as a lover,
I obeyed as a son.' He proceeds: 'My
wound was insensibly healed by time, absence
and the habits of a new life.' It
is shocking. Never, surely, was love so
flouted before. Gibbon is charitably supposed
by some persons to have regretted
Paganism, but it was lucky for both him
and for me that the gods had abandoned
Olympus, since otherwise it would have
required the pen of a Greek dramatist to
depict the horrors that must have eventually
overtaken him for so impious an outrage;
as it was, he simply grew fatter
every day. A very recent French biographer
of Madame Neckar, who has published
some letters of Gibbon's for the
first time, evidently expects his readers to
get very angry with this perfidious son of
Albion. It is much too late to get angry.
Of all the many wrongs women suffer at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
the hands of men, that of not marrying
them, is the one they ought to find it easiest
to forgive; they generally do forgive.
Madame Neckar forgave, and if she, why
not you and I? Years after she welcomed
Gibbon to her house, and there he used to
sit, fat and famous, tapping his snuff-box
and arranging his ruffles, and watching
with a smile of complacency the infantine,
yet I doubt not, the pronounced gambols
of the vivacious Corinne. After Neckar's
fall, Gibbon writes to Madame: 'Your husband's
condition is always worthy of envy,
he knows himself, his enemies respect
him, Europe admires him, <i>you</i> love him.'
I decline to be angry with such a man.</p>

<p>His long residence in Switzerland, an
unusual thing in those days, makes a third
episode, which, in so far as it led him to
commence author in the French language,
and to study Pascal as a master of style, was
not without its effects on his history, but
it never diverted him from his studies or
changed their channels. Though he lived
fifteen years in Lausanne, he never climbed
a mountain or ever went to the foot of one,
for though not wholly indifferent to Na<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>ture,
he loved to see her framed in a window.
He actually has the audacity, in a
note to his fifty-ninth chapter, to sneer at
St. Bernard because that true lover of nature
on one occasion, either because his
joy in the external world at times interfered
with his devotions, or, as I think,
because he was bored by the vulgar rhapsodies
of his monkish companions, abstained
from looking at the lake of Geneva. Gibbon's
note is characteristic, 'To admire
or despise St. Bernard as he ought, the
reader should have before the windows of
his library the beauty of that incomparable
landscape.' St. Bernard was to Gibbon,
as Wordsworth to Pope,</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">&#8216;A forest seer,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">A minstrel of the natural year,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">A lover true who knew by heart<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Each joy the mountain dales impart.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>He was proud to confess that whatever
knowledge he had of the scriptures he
had acquired chiefly in the woods and the
fields, and that beeches and oaks had been
his best teachers of the Word of God.
One cannot fancy Gibbon in a forest. But
if Gibbon had not been fonder of the library<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
than of the lake, though he might have
known more than he did of 'moral evil and
of good,' he would hardly have been the
author he was.</p>

<p>But the <i>Decline and Fall</i> was threatened
from a quarter more likely to prove dangerous
than the 'incomparable landscape.'
On September 10th, 1774, Gibbon writes:</p>

<p>'Yesterday morning about half-past
seven, as I was destroying an army of
barbarians, I heard a double rap at the
door and my friend Mr. Eliot was soon
introduced. After some idle conversation
he told me that if I was desirous of
being in parliament he had an <i>independent</i>
seat, very much at my service. This
is a fine prospect opening upon me, and
if next spring I should take my seat and
publish my book&mdash;(he meant the first
volume only)&mdash;it will be a very memorable
era in my life. I am ignorant whether
my borough will be Liskeard or St. Germains.'</p>

<p>Mr. Eliot controlled four boroughs and
it was Liskeard that became Gibbon's,
and for ten years, though not always for
Liskeard, he sat in parliament. Ten most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
eventful years they were too, both in our
national and parliamentary history. This
might have been not an episode, but a
catastrophe. Mr. Eliot's untimely entrance
might not merely have postponed the
destruction of a horde of barbarians, but
have destroyed the history itself. However
Mr. Gibbon never opened his mouth in
the House of Commons; 'I assisted,' says
he, in his magnificent way, 'at,' (mark the
preposition,) 'at the debates of a free assembly,'
that is, he supported Lord North. He
was not from the first content to be a mute;
he prepared a speech and almost made up
his mind to catch Sir Fletcher Norton's
eye. The subject, no mean one, was to be
the American war; but his courage oozed
away, he did not rise in his place. A month
after he writes from Boodle's: 'I am still
a mute, it is more tremendous than I
imagined; the great speakers fill me with
despair, the bad ones with terror.' In 1779
his silent assistance was rewarded with a
seat at the Board of Trade, and a salary of
between seven and eight hundred a year.
Readers of Burke's great speech on Economical
Reform will remember the twenty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
minutes he devoted to this marvellous Board
of Trade, with its perpetual virtual adjournment
and unbroken sitting vacation. Such
was Gibbon's passion for style that he
listened to the speech with delight, and
gives us the valuable assurance that it
was spoken just as it reads, and that nobody
enjoyed either hearing or reading it
more than he did. What a blessing it is
to have a good temper! But Gibbon's
constituency did not approve of his becoming
a minister's man, and he lost his seat
at the general election of 1783. 'Mr.
Eliot,' this is Gibbon's account of it, 'Mr.
Eliot was now deeply engaged in the
measures of opposition and the electors
of Liskeard are commonly of the same
opinion as Mr. Eliot.' Lord North found
him another seat, and for a short time he
sat in the new parliament for the important
seaport of Lymington, but his office being
abolished in 1784, he bade parliament and
England farewell, and, taking his library
with him, departed for Lausanne to conclude
his history.</p>

<p>Gibbon, after completing his history, entertained
notions of writing other books,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
but, as a matter of fact, he had but one
thing left him to do in order to discharge
his duty to the universe. He had written
a magnificent history of the Roman Empire.
It remained to write the history of
the historian. Accordingly we have the
autobiography. These two immortal works
act and react upon one another; the history
sends us to the autobiography, and
the autobiography returns us to the history.</p>

<p>The style of the autobiography is better
than that of the history. The awful word
'verbose' has been launched against certain
pages of the history by a critic, formidable
and friendly&mdash;the great Porson.
There is not a superfluous word in the
autobiography. The fact is, in this matter
of style, Gibbon took a great deal more
pains with himself than he did with the
empire. He sent the history, except the
first volume, straight to his printer from
his first rough copy. He made six different
sketches of the autobiography. It is
a most studied performance, and may be
boldly pronounced perfect. Not to know
it almost by heart is to deny yourself a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
great and wholly innocent pleasure. Of
the history it is permissible to say with
Mr. Silas Wegg, 'I haven't been, not to
say right slap through him very lately,
having been otherwise employed, Mr.
Boffin;' but the autobiography is no
more than a good-sized pamphlet. It has
had the reward of shortness. It is not
only our best, but our best known autobiography.
Almost its first sentence is
about the style it is to be in: 'The style
shall be simple and familiar, but style is
the image of character, and the habits
of correct writing may produce without
labour or design the appearance of art
and study.' There is nothing artless or
unstudied about the autobiography, but is
it not sometimes a relief to exchange the
quips and cranks of some of our modern
writers, whose humour it is to be as it
were for ever slapping their readers in
the face or grinning at them from unexpected
corners, for the stately roll of the
Gibbonian sentence? The style settled,
he proceeds to say something about the
pride of race, but the pride of letters soon
conquers it, and as we glance down the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
page we see advancing to meet us, curling
its head, as Shakespeare says of billows in
a storm, the god-like sentence which makes
it for ever certain, not indeed that there
will never be a better novel than <i>Tom
Jones</i>, for that I suppose is still just possible,
but that no novel can ever receive so
magnificent a compliment. The sentence
is well known but irresistible.</p>

<p>'Our immortal Fielding was of the
younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh
who draw their origin from the Counts of
Hapsburg. Far different have been the
fortunes of the English and German divisions
of the family. The former, the
knights and sheriffs of Leicestershire,
have slowly risen to the dignity of a
peerage, the latter, the Emperors of
Germany and Kings of Spain, have threatened
the liberty of the old and invaded
the treasures of the new world. The
successors of Charles the Fifth may
disdain their brethren of England, but
the romance of <i>Tom Jones</i>, that exquisite
picture of human manners, will outlive the
Palace of the Escurial, and the imperial
eagle of the House of Austria.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>

<p>Well might Thackeray exclaim in his
lecture on Fielding, 'There can be no
gainsaying the sentence of this great
judge. To have your name mentioned
by Gibbon is like having it written on the
dome of St. Peter's. Pilgrims from all
the world admire and behold it.'</p>

<p>After all this preliminary magnificence
Gibbon condescends to approach his own
pedigree. There was not much to tell,
and the little there was he did not know.
A man of letters whose memory is respected
by all lovers of old books and
Elizabethan lyrics, Sir Egerton Brydges,
was a cousin of Gibbon's, and as genealogies
were this unfortunate man's consuming
passion, he of course knew all that
Gibbon ought to have known about the
family, and speaks with a herald's contempt
of the historian's perfunctory investigations.
'It is a very unaccountable
thing,' says Sir Egerton, 'that Gibbon
was so ignorant of the immediate branch
of the family whence he sprang'; but the
truth is that Gibbon was far prouder of
his Palace of the Escurial, and his imperial
eagle of the House of Austria, than of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
family tree, which was indeed of the most
ordinary hedge-row description. His grandfather
was a South Sea director, and when
the bubble burst he was compelled by act
of parliament to disclose on oath his whole
fortune. He returned it at &pound;106,543 5s.
6d., exclusive of antecedent settlements.
It was all confiscated, and then &pound;10,000
was voted the poor man to begin again
upon. Such bold oppression, says the
grandson, can scarcely be shielded by the
omnipotence of parliament. The old man
did not keep his &pound;10,000 in a napkin,
and speedily began, as his grandson puts
it, to erect on the ruins of the old, the
edifice of a new fortune. The ruins must,
I think, have been more spacious than the
affidavit would suggest, for when only
sixteen years afterwards, the elder Gibbon
died he was found to be possessed of
considerable property in Sussex, Hampshire,
Buckinghamshire, and the New
River Company, as well as of a spacious
house with gardens and grounds at Putney.
A fractional share of this inheritance secured
to our historian the liberty of action
so necessary for the accomplishment of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
great design. Large fortunes have their
uses. Mr. Milton, the scrivener, Mr. Gibbon,
the South Sea director, and Dr.
Darwin of Shrewsbury had respectively
something to do with <i>Paradise Lost</i>, <i>The
Decline and Fall</i>, and <i>The Origin of Species</i>.</p>

<p>The most, indeed the only, interesting
fact about the Gibbon <i>entourage</i> is that
the greatest of English mystics, William
Law, the inimitable author of <i>A Serious
Call to a Devout and Holy Life, adapted to
the State and Conditions of all Orders of
Christians</i>, was long tutor to the historian's
father, and in that capacity accompanied
the future historian to Emanuel
College, Cambridge, and was afterwards,
and till the end of his days, spiritual director
to Miss Hester Gibbon, the historian's
eccentric maiden aunt.</p>

<p>It is an unpleasing impertinence for
anyone to assume that nobody save himself
reads any particular book. I read
with astonishment the other day that Sir
Humphry Davy's <i>Consolations in Travel;
or, The Closing Days of a Philosopher's
Life</i>, was a curious and totally forgotten
work. It is, however, always safe to say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
of a good book that it is not read as much
as it ought to be, and of Law's <i>Serious
Call</i> you may add, 'or as much as it used
to be.' It is a book with a strange and
moving spiritual pedigree. Dr. Johnson,
one remembers, took it up carelessly at
Oxford, expecting to find it a dull book,
'as,' (the words are his, not mine,) 'such
books generally are; but,' he proceeds, 'I
found Law an overmatch for me, and this
was the first occasion of my thinking in
earnest.' George Whitfield writes, 'Soon
after my coming up to the university,
seeing a small edition of Mr. Law's <i>Serious
Call</i> in a friend's hand, I soon purchased
it. God worked powerfully upon
my soul by that excellent treatise.' The
celebrated Thomas Scott, of Aston Sandford,
with the confidence of his school,
dates the beginning of his spiritual life
from the hour when he 'carelessly,' as he
says, 'took up Mr. Law's <i>Serious Call</i>, a
book I had hitherto treated with contempt.'
When we remember how Newman
in his <i>Apologia</i> speaks of Thomas
Scott as the writer 'to whom, humanly
speaking, I almost owe my soul,' we be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>come
lost amidst a mazy dance of strange,
spectral influences which flit about the
centuries and make us what we are.
Splendid achievement though the <i>History
of the Decline and Fall</i> may be, glorious
monument though it is, more lasting
than brass, of learning and industry, yet
in sundry moods it seems but a poor and
barren thing by the side of a book which,
like Law's <i>Serious Call</i>, has proved its
power</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;To pierce the heart and tame the will.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>But I must put the curb on my enthusiasm,
or I shall find myself re-echoing the sentiment
of a once celebrated divine who
brought down Exeter Hall by proclaiming,
at the top of his voice, that he would sooner
be the author of <i>The Washerwoman on
Salisbury Plain</i> than of <i>Paradise Lost</i>.</p>

<p>But Law's <i>Serious Call</i>, to do it only
bare literary justice, is a great deal more
like <i>Paradise Lost</i> than <i>The Washerwoman
on Salisbury Plain</i>, and deserves better
treatment at the hands of religious people
than to be reprinted, as it too often is, in
a miserable, truncated, witless form which
would never have succeeded in arresting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
the wandering attention of Johnson or in
saving the soul of Thomas Scott. The
motto of all books of original genius is:</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Love me or leave me alone.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>Gibbon read Law's <i>Serious Call</i>, but it
left him where it found him. 'Had not,'
so he writes, 'Law's vigorous mind been
clouded by enthusiasm, he might be ranked
with the most agreeable and ingenious
writers of his time.'</p>

<p>Upon the death of Law in 1761, it is sad
to have to state that Miss Hester Gibbon
cast aside the severe rule of female dress
which he had expounded in his <i>Serious Call</i>,
and she had practised for sixty years of her
life. She now appeared like Malvolio, resplendent
in yellow stockings. Still, it was
something to have kept the good lady's
feet from straying into such evil garments
for so long. Miss Gibbon had a comfortable
estate; and our historian, as her nearest
male relative, kept his eye upon the
reversion. The fifteenth and sixteenth
chapters had created a coolness, but he
addressed her a letter in which he assured
her that, allowing for differences of expres<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>sion,
he had the satisfaction of feeling that
practically he and she thought alike on the
great subject of religion. Whether she
believed him or not I cannot say; but she
left him her estate in Sussex. I must stop
a moment to consider the hard and far different
fate of Porson. Gibbon had taken
occasion to refer to the seventh verse of
the fifth chapter of the First Epistle of St.
John as spurious. It has now disappeared
from our Bibles, without leaving a trace
even in the margin. So judicious a writer
as Dean Alford long ago, in his Greek Testament,
observed, 'There is not a shadow
of a reason for supposing it genuine.'
An archdeacon of Gibbon's period thought
otherwise, and asserted the genuineness of
the text, whereupon Porson wrote a book
and proved it to be no portion of the inspired
text. On this a female relative who
had Porson down in her will for a comfortable
annuity of &pound;300, revoked that part
of her testamentary disposition, and substituted
a paltry bequest of &pound;30: 'for,'
said she, 'I hear he has been writing
against the Holy Scriptures.' As Porson
only got &pound;16 for writing the book, it cer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>tainly
cost him dear. But the book remains
a monument of his learning and wit. The
last quarter of the annuity must long since
have been paid.</p>

<p>Gibbon, the only one of a family of five
who managed to grow up at all, had no
school life; for though a short time at
Westminster, his feeble health prevented
regularity of attendance. His father never
won his respect, nor his mother (who died
when he was ten) his affection. 'I am
tempted,' he says, 'to enter my protest
against the trite and lavish praise of the
happiness of our boyish years which is
echoed with so much affectation in the
world. That happiness I have never
known.' Upon which passage Ste.
Beuve characteristically remarks 'that it
is those who have been deprived of a
mother's solicitude, of the down and
flower of tender affection, of the vague
yet penetrating charm of dawning impressions,
who are most easily denuded
of the sentiment of religion.'</p>

<p>Gibbon was, however, born free of the
'fair brotherhood' Macaulay so exquisitely
described in his famous poem, written<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
after the Edinburgh election. Reading
became his sole employment. He enjoyed
all the advantages of the most irregular of
educations, and in his fifteenth year arrived
at Oxford, to use his celebrated words,
though for that matter almost every word
in the <i>Autobiography</i> is celebrated, with a
stock of erudition that might have puzzled
a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of
which a schoolboy would have been ashamed&mdash;for
example, he did not know the Greek
alphabet, nor is there any reason to suppose
that he would have been taught it at
Oxford.</p>

<p>I do not propose to refer to what he
says about his university. I hate giving
pain, besides which there have been new
statutes since 1752. In Gibbon's time
there were no public examinations at all,
and no class-lists&mdash;a Saturnian reign
which I understand it is now sought to
restore. Had Gibbon followed his father's
example and gone to Cambridge, he would
have found the Mathematical Tripos
fairly started on its beneficent career, and
might have taken as good a place in it
as Dr. Dodd had just done, a divine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
who is still year after year referred to in
the University Calendar as the author of
<i>Thoughts in Prison</i>, the circumstance that
the thinker was later on taken from prison,
and hung by the neck until he was dead
being no less wisely than kindly omitted
from a publication, one of the objects of
which is to inspire youth with confidence
that the path of mathematics is the way
to glory.</p>

<p>On his profession of Catholicism, Gibbon,
<i>ipso facto</i> ceased to be a member of
the university, and his father, with a sudden
accession of good sense, packed off
the young pervert, who at that time had
a very big head and a very small body,
and was just as full of controversial theology
as he could hold, to a Protestant
pastor's at Lausanne, where in an uncomfortable
house, with an ill-supplied table
and a scarcity of pocket-money, the ex-fellow-commoner
of Magdalen was condemned
to live from his sixteenth to his
twenty-first year. His time was mainly
spent in reading. Here he learnt Greek;
here also he fell in love with Mademoiselle
Curchod. In the spring of 1758 he came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
home. He was at first very shy, and went
out but little, pursuing his studies even in
lodgings in Bond Street. But he was
shortly to be shaken out of his dumps, and
made an Englishman and a soldier.</p>

<p>If anything could provoke Gibbon's
placid shade, it would be the light and
airy way his military experiences are often
spoken of, as if, like a modern volunteer,
he had but attended an Easter Monday
review. I do not believe the history of
literature affords an equally striking example
of self-sacrifice. He was the most
sedentary of men. He hated exercise,
and rarely took any. Once after spending
some weeks in the summer at Lord Sheffield's
country place, when about to go,
his hat was missing. 'When,' he was
asked, 'did you last see it?' 'On my arrival,'
he replied. 'I left it on the hall-table;
I have had no occasion for it since.'
Lord Sheffield's guests always knew that
they would find Mr. Gibbon in the library,
and meet him at the dinner-table. He
abhorred a horse. His one vocation, and
his only avocation, was reading, not lazy
glancing and skipping, but downright sav<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>age
reading&mdash;geography, chronology, and
all the tougher sides of history. What
glorious, what martial times, indeed, must
those have been that made Mr. Gibbon
leap into the saddle, desert his books, and
for two mortal years and a half live in
camps! He was two months at Blandford,
three months at Cranbrook, six
months at Dover, four months at Devizes,
as many at Salisbury, and six more at
Southampton, where the troops were disbanded.
During all this time Captain
Gibbon was energetically employed. He
dictated the orders and exercised the battalion.
It did him a world of good. What
a pity Carlyle could not have been subjected
to the same discipline! The cessation,
too, of his habit of continued reading,
gave him time for a little thinking, and
when he returned to his father's house, in
Hampshire, he had become fixed in his
determination to write a history, though
of what was still undecided.</p>

<p>I am rather afraid to say it, for no two
men could well be more unlike one another,
but Gibbon always reminds me in an odd
inverted way of Milton. I suppose it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
because as the one is our grandest author,
so the other is our most grandiose. Both
are self-conscious and make no apology&mdash;Milton
magnificently self-conscious, Gibbon
splendidly so. Everyone knows the great
passages in which Milton, in 1642, asked
the readers of his pamphlet on the reason
of Church government urged against prelacy,
to go on trust with him for some years
for his great unwritten poem, as 'being a
work not to be raised from the heat of
youth or the vapour of wine, like that
which flows at waste from the pen of some
vulgar amorist or the trencher fury of a
rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by
the invocation of Dame Memory and her
seven daughters, but by devout prayer to
that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with
all utterance and knowledge, and sends
out His seraphim with the hallow'd fire
of His Altar to touch and purify the lips
of whom He pleases: to this must be
added industrious and select reading,
study, observation and insight into all
seemly opinions, arts, and affairs.' Different
men, different minds. There are
things terrestrial as well as things celes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>tial.
Certainly Gibbon's <i>Autobiography</i>
contains no passages like those which are
to be found in Milton's pamphlets; but
for all that he, in his mundane way, consecrated
himself for his self-imposed task,
and spared no toil to equip himself for it.
He, too, no less than Milton, had his high
hope and his hard attempting. He tells
us in his stateliest way how he first
thought of one subject, and then another,
and what progress he had made in his
different schemes before he abandoned
them, and what reasons induced him so to
do. Providence watched over the future
historian of the Roman Empire as surely
as it did over the future author of <i>Paradise
Lost</i>, as surely as it does over everyone
who has it in him to do anything really
great. Milton, we know, in early life was
enamoured of King Arthur, and had it in
his mind to make that blameless king the
hero of his promised epic, but</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">&#8216;What resounds<br /></span>
<span class="i0">In fable or romance of Uther's son,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Begirt with British and Amoric knights,&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>can brook a moment's comparison with
the baffled hero of <i>Paradise Lost</i>; so too,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
what a mercy that Gibbon did not fritter
away his splendid energy, as he once contemplated
doing, on Sir Walter Raleigh,
or squander his talents on a history of
Switzerland or even of Florence!</p>

<p>After the disbanding of the militia Gibbon
obtained his father's consent to spend
the money it was originally proposed to lay
out in buying him a seat in Parliament,
upon foreign travel, and early in 1763
he reached Paris, where he abode three
months. An accomplished scholar whose
too early death all who knew him can
never cease to deplore, Mr. Cotter Morison,
whose sketch of Gibbon is, by general
consent, admitted to be one of the
most valuable books of a delightful series,
does his best, with but partial success, to
conceal his annoyance at Gibbon's stupidly
placid enjoyment of Paris and French
cookery. 'He does not seem to be aware,'
says Mr. Morison, 'that he was witnessing
one of the most singular social phases
which have ever yet been presented in
the history of man.' Mr. Morison does
not, indeed, blame Gibbon for this, but
having, as he had, the most intimate ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>quaintance
with this period of French history,
and knowing the tremendous issues
involved in it, he could not but be chagrined
to notice how Gibbon remained
callous and impervious. And, indeed,
when the Revolution came it took no one
more by surprise than it did the man who
had written the <i>Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire</i>. Writing, in 1792, to
Lord Sheffield, Gibbon says, 'Remember
the proud fabric of the French monarchy:
not four years ago it stood founded, and
might it not seem on the rock of time,
force, and opinion, supported by the
triple authority of the Church, the Nobility,
and the Parliament?' But the
Revolution came for all that; and what,
when it did come, did it teach Mr. Gibbon?
'Do not, I beseech you, tamper with Parliamentary
representation. If you begin
to improve the Constitution, you may be
driven step by step from the disfranchisement
of Old Sarum to the King in Newgate;
the Lords voted useless, the bishops
abolished, the House of Commons
<i>sans culottes</i>.' The importance of shutting
off the steam and sitting on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
safety-valve was what the French Revolution
taught Mr. Gibbon. Mr. Bagehot
says: 'Gibbon's horror of the French
Revolution was derived from the fact
that he had arrived at the conclusion that
he was the sort of person a populace invariably
kills.' An excellent reason, in
my opinion, for hating revolution, but not
for misunderstanding it.</p>

<p>After leaving Paris Gibbon lived nearly
a year in Lausanne, reading hard to prepare
himself for Italy. He made his own
handbook. At last he felt himself fit to
cross the Alps, which he did seated in an
osier basket planted on a man's shoulders.
He did not envy Hannibal his elephant.
He lingered four months in Florence, and
then entered Rome in a spirit of the most
genuine and romantic enthusiasm. His
zeal made him positively active, though it
is impossible to resist a smile at the picture
he draws of himself 'treading with a
lofty step the ruins of the Forum.' He
was in Rome eighteen weeks; there he
had, as we saw at the beginning, his heavenly
vision, to which he was not disobedient.
He paid a visit of six weeks' duration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
to Naples, and then returned home more
rapidly. 'The spectacle of Venice,' he says,
'afforded some hours of astonishment.'
Gibbon has sometimes been called 'long-winded,'
but when he chooses, nobody
can be shorter with either a city or a
century.</p>

<p>He returned to England in 1765, and
for five rather dull years lived in his
father's house in the country or in London
lodgings. In 1770 his father died,
and in 1772 Gibbon took a house in Bentinck
Street, Manchester Square, filled it
with books&mdash;for in those days it must not
be forgotten there was no public library of
any kind in London&mdash;and worked hard at
his first volume, which appeared in February,
1775. It made him famous, also infamous,
since it concluded with the fifteenth
and sixteenth chapters on Christianity. In
1781 two more volumes appeared. In 1783
he gave up Parliament and London, and
rolled over Westminster Bridge in a post-chaise,
on his way to Lausanne, where he
had his home for the rest of his days. In
May, 1788, the three last volumes appeared.
He died in St. James's Street whilst on a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
visit to London, on the 15th of January,
1794, of a complaint of a most pronounced
character, which he had with characteristic
and almost criminal indolence totally neglected
for thirty years. He was buried in
Fletching Churchyard, Sussex, in the family
burial-place of his faithful friend and
model editor, the first Lord Sheffield. He
had not completed his fifty-eighth year.</p>

<hr style='width: 45%;' />

<p>Before concluding with a few very humble
observations on Gibbon's writings, something
ought to be said about him as a social
being. In this aspect he had distinguished
merit, though his fondness of, and fitness
for, society came late. He had no schooldays,
no college days, no gilded youth.
From sixteen to twenty-one he lived poorly
in Lausanne, and came home more Swiss
than English. Nor was his father of any
use to him. It took him a long time to rub
off his shyness; but the militia, Paris, and
Rome, and, above all, the proud consciousness
of a noble design, made a man of him,
and after 1772, he became a well-known
figure in London society. He was a man
of fashion as well as of letters. In this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
respect, and, indeed, in all others, except
their common love of learning, he differed
from Dr. Johnson. Lords and ladies, remarked
that high authority, don't like having
their mouths shut. Gibbon never shut
anybody's mouth, and in Johnson's presence
rarely opened his own. Johnson's
dislike of Gibbon does not seem to have
been based upon his heterodoxy, but his
ugliness. 'He is such an amazing ugly
fellow,' said that Adonis. Boswell follows
suit, and, with still less claim to be critical,
complains loudly of Gibbon's ugliness. He
also hated him very sincerely. 'The fellow
poisons the whole club to me,' he cries. I
feel sorry for Boswell, who has deserved
well of the human race. Ironical people
like Gibbon are rarely tolerant of brilliant
folly. Gibbon, no doubt, was ugly. We
get a glance at him in one of Horace
Walpole's letters, which, sparkling as it
does with vanity, spite, and humour, is
always pleasant. He is writing to Mr.
Mason:</p>

<p>'You will be diverted to hear that Mr.
Gibbon has quarrelled with me. He lent
me his second volume in the middle of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
November; I returned it with a most civil
panegyric. He came for more incense.
I gave it, but, alas! with too much sincerity;
I added: "Mr. Gibbon, I am sorry
<i>you</i> should have pitched on so disgusting
a subject as the Constantinopolitan
history. There is so much of the Arians
and Eunomians and semi-Pelagians; and
there is such a strange contrast between
Roman and Gothic manners, that, though
you have written the story as well as it
could be written, I fear few will have
patience to read it." He coloured, all
his round features squeezed themselves
into sharp angles; he screwed up his button-mouth,
and rapping his snuff-box, said,
"It had never been put together before"&mdash;so
<i>well</i> he meant to add, but gulped it.
He meant so <i>well</i>, certainly, for Tillemont,
whom he quotes in every page, has done
the very thing. Well, from that hour to
this, I have never seen him, though he
used to call once or twice a week; nor
has he sent me the third volume, as he
promised. I well knew his vanity, even
about his ridiculous face and person, but
thought he had too much sense to avow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
it so palpably.' 'So much,' adds Walpole,
with sublime nescience of the verdict of
posterity upon his own most amusing self,
'so much for literature and its fops.'</p>

<p>Male ugliness is an endearing quality,
and in a man of great talents it assists his
reputation. It mollifies our inferiority to
be able to add to our honest admiration of
anyone's great intellectual merit, 'But did
you ever see such a chin!'</p>

<p>Nobody except Johnson, who was morbid
on the subject of looks, liked Gibbon
the less for having a button-mouth and a
ridiculous nose. He was, Johnson and Boswell
apart, a popular member of the club.
Sir Joshua and he were, in particular, great
cronies, and went about to all kinds of
places, and mixed in every sort of society.
In May, June, and July, 1779, Gibbon sat
for his picture&mdash;that famous portrait to be
found at the beginning of every edition of
the History. Sir Joshua notes in his Diary:
'No new sitters&mdash;hard at work repainting
the "Nativity," and busy with sittings of
Gibbon.'</p>

<p>If we are to believe contemporary gossip,
this was not the first time Reynolds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
had depicted the historian. Some years
earlier the great painter had executed a
celebrated portrait of Dr. Beattie, still
pleasingly remembered by the lovers of
old-fashioned poetry as the poet of <i>The
Minstrel</i>, but who, in 1773, was better
known as the author of an <i>Essay on
Truth</i>. This personage, who in later life,
it is melancholy to relate, took to drinking,
is represented in Reynolds's picture in
his Oxford gown of Doctor of Laws, with
his famous essay under his arm, while beside
him is Truth, habited as an angel,
holding in one hand a pair of scales, and
with the other thrusting down three frightful
figures emblematic of Sophistry, Scepticism,
and Infidelity. That Voltaire and
Hume stood for two of these figures was
no secret, but it was whispered Gibbon
was the third. Even if so, an incident so
trifling was not likely to ruffle the composure,
or prevent the intimacy, of two such
good-tempered men as Reynolds and Gibbon.
The latter was immensely proud of
Reynolds's portrait&mdash;the authorised portrait,
of course&mdash;the one for which he
had paid. He had it hanging up in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
library at Lausanne, and, if we may believe
Charles Fox, was fonder of looking
at it than out of the window upon that
incomparable landscape, with indifference
to which he had twitted St. Bernard.</p>

<p>But, as I have said, Gibbon was a man
of fashion as well as a man of letters. In
another volume of Walpole we have a
glimpse of him playing a rubber of whist.
His opponents were Horace himself, and
Lady Beck. His partner was a lady whom
Walpole irreverently calls the Archbishopess
of Canterbury.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> At Brooks's, White's,
and Boodle's, Gibbon was a prime favourite.
His quiet manner, ironical humour,
and perpetual good temper made him
excellent company. He is, indeed, reported
once, at Brooks's, to have expressed
a desire to see the heads of Lord North
and half a dozen ministers on the table;
but as this was only a few days before he
accepted a seat at the Board of Trade at
their hands, his wrath was evidently of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
the kind that does not allow the sun to go
down upon it. His moods were usually
mild:</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Soon as to Brooks's thence thy footsteps bend,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">What gratulations thy approach attend!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">See Gibbon rap his box, auspicious sign<br /></span>
<span class="i0">That classic wit and compliment combine.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>To praise Gibbon heartily, you must
speak in low tones. 'His cheek,' says
Mr. Morison, 'rarely flushes in enthusiasm
for a good cause.' He was, indeed, not
obviously on the side of the angels. But
he was a dutiful son to a trying father, an
affectionate and thoughtful stepson to a
stepmother who survived him, and the
most faithful and warm-hearted of friends.
In this article of friendship he not only
approaches, but reaches, the romantic.
While in his teens he made friends with
a Swiss of his own age. A quarter of a
century later on, we find the boyish companions
chumming together, under the
same roof at Lausanne, and delighting
in each other's society. His attachment
to Lord Sheffield is a beautiful thing. It
is impossible to read Gibbon's letters without
responding to the feeling which breathes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
through Lord Sheffield's preface to the miscellaneous
writings:</p>

<p>'The letters will prove how pleasant,
friendly, and amiable Mr. Gibbon was in
private life; and if in publishing letters
so flattering to myself I incur the imputation
of vanity, I meet the charge with a
frank confession that I am indeed highly
vain of having enjoyed for so many years
the esteem, the confidence, and the affection
of a man whose social qualities endeared
him to the most accomplished
society, whose talents, great as they were,
must be acknowledged to have been fully
equalled by the sincerity of his friendship.'</p>

<p>To have been pleasant, friendly, amiable
and sincere in friendship, to have written
the <i>Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</i>,
and the <i>Autobiography</i>, must be Gibbon's
excuse for his unflushing cheek.</p>

<p>To praise Gibbon is not wholly superfluous;
to commend his history would be
so. In May, 1888, it attained, as a whole,
its hundredth year. Time has not told
upon it. It stands unaltered, and with its
authority unimpaired. It would be invidious
to name the histories it has seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
born and die. Its shortcomings have been
pointed out&mdash;it is well; its inequalities
exposed&mdash;that is fair; its style criticised&mdash;that
is just. But it is still read. 'Whatever
else is read,' says Professor Freeman,
'Gibbon must be.'</p>

<p>The tone he thought fit to adopt towards
Christianity was, quite apart from all particular
considerations, a mistaken one. No
man is big enough to speak slightingly of
the constructions his fellow-men have from
time to time put upon the Infinite. And
conduct which in a philosopher is ill-judged,
is in an historian ridiculous. Gibbon's
sneers could not alter the fact that his
History, which he elected to style the
<i>Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</i>,
might equally well, as Dean Stanley has
observed, have been called the 'Rise and
Progress of the Christian Church.' This
tone of Gibbon's was the more unfortunate
because he was not of those men who are
by the order of their minds incapable of
theology. He was an admirable theologian,
and, even as it is, we have Cardinal
Newman's authority for the assertion,
that Gibbon is the only Church historian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
worthy of the name who has written in
English.</p>

<p>Gibbon's love of the unseemly may also
be deprecated. His is not the boisterous
impropriety which may sometimes be observed
staggering across the pages of Mr.
Carlyle, but the more offensive variety
which is overheard sniggering in the notes.</p>

<p>The importance, the final value, of Gibbon's
History has been assailed in high
quarters. Coleridge, in a well-known passage
in his <i>Table Talk</i>&mdash;too long to be
quoted&mdash;said Gibbon was a man of immense
reading; but he had no philosophy.
'I protest,' he adds, 'I do not remember
a single philosophical attempt
made throughout the work to fathom the
ultimate causes of the decline and fall of
the empire.' This spoiled Gibbon for
Coleridge, who has told us that 'though
he had read all the famous histories, and
he believed some history of every country
or nation, that is or ever existed, he had
never done so for the story itself&mdash;the
only thing interesting to him being the
principles to be evolved from and illustrated
by the facts.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>

<p>I am not going to insult the majestic
though thickly-veiled figure of the Philosophy
of History. Every sensible man,
though he might blush to be called a philosopher,
must wish to be the wiser for his
reading; but it may, I think, be fairly said
that the first business of an historian is to
tell his story, nobly and splendidly, with
vivacity and vigour. Then I do not see
why we children of a larger growth may
not be interested in the annals of mankind
simply as a story, without worrying every
moment to evolve principles from each
part of it. If I choose to be interested
in the colour of Mary Queen of Scots'
eyes, or the authorship of the <i>Letters of
Junius</i>, I claim the right to be so. Of
course, if I imagine either of these subjects
to be matters of importance&mdash;if I
devote my life to their elucidation, if I
bore my friends with presentation pamphlets
about them&mdash;why, then, I am
either a feeble fribble or an industrious
fool; but if I do none of these things I
ought to be left in peace, and not ridiculed
by those who seem to regard the noble
stream of events much as Brindley did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
rivers&mdash;mainly as something which fills
their ugly canals of dreary and frequently
false comment.</p>

<p>But, thirdly, whilst yielding the first
place to philosophy, divine philosophy, as
I suppose, when one comes to die, one will
be glad to have done, it is desirable that
the text and the comment should be kept
separate and apart. The historian who
loads his frail craft with that perilous
and shifting freight, philosophy, adds immensely
to the dangers of his voyage
across the ocean of Time. Gibbon was
no fool, yet it is as certain as anything
can be, that had he put much of his philosophy
into his history, both would have
gone to the bottom long ago. And even
better philosophy than Gibbon's would
have been, is apt to grow mouldy in a
quarter of a century, and to need three
new coats of good oily rhetoric, to make
it presentable to each new generation.</p>

<p>Gibbon was neither a great thinker nor
a great man. He had neither light nor
warmth. This is what, doubtless, prompted
Sir James Mackintosh's famous exclamation,
that you might scoop Gibbon's mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
out of Burke's without missing it. But
hence, I say, the fitness of things that
chained Gibbon to his library chair, and
set him as his task, to write the history of
the Roman Empire, whilst leaving Burke
at large to illuminate the problems of his
own time.</p>

<p>Gibbon avowedly wrote for fame. He
built his History meaning it to last. He
got &pound;6,000 for writing it. The booksellers
netted &pound;60,000 by printing it. Gibbon
did not mind. He knew it would be the
volumes of his History, and not the banking
books of his publishers, who no doubt
ran their trade risks, which would keep
their place upon men's shelves. He did
an honest piece of work, and he has had a
noble reward. Had he attempted to know
the ultimate causes of the decline and fall
of the Roman Empire, he must have failed,
egregiously, childishly. He abated his pretensions
as a philosopher, was content to
attempt some picture of the thing acted&mdash;of
the great pageant of history&mdash;and
succeeded.</p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="WILLIAM_COWPER" id="WILLIAM_COWPER"></a>WILLIAM COWPER<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></h2>


<p>The large and weighty family of Gradgrinds
may, from their various well-cushioned
coigns of advantage, give forcible
utterance to their opinions as to what are
the really important things in this life; but
the fact remains, distasteful as it may be
to those of us who accomplish the disciplinary
end of vexing our fathers' souls by
other means than 'penning stanzas,' that
the lives of poets, even of people who have
passed for poets, eclipse in general and
permanent interest the lives of other men.
Whilst above the sod, these poets were
often miserable enough. But charm hangs
over their graves. The sternest pedestrian,
even he who is most bent on making his
inn by the precise path he has, with much
study of the map, previously prescribed for
himself, will yet often veer to the right or
to the left, to visit the lonely churchyard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
where, as he hears by the way, lie the
ashes of some brother of the tuneful quill.
It may well be that this brother's verses
are not frequently on our lips. It is not
the lot of every bard to make quotations.
It may sometimes happen to you, as you
stand mournfully surveying the little heap,
to rack your brains unavailingly for so
much as a single couplet; nay, so treacherous
is memory, the very title of his best-known
poem may, for the moment, have
slipped you. But your heart is melted all
the same, and you feel it would indeed
have been a churlish thing to go on your
original way, unmindful of the fact that</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;In yonder grave a Druid lies!&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>And you have your reward. When you
have reached your desired haven, and are
sitting alone after dinner in the coffee-room,
neat-handed Phyllis (were you not
fresh from a poet's grave, a homelier name
might have served her turn) having administered
to your final wants, and disappeared
with a pretty flounce, the ruby-coloured
wine the dead poet loved, the bottled sunshine
of a bygone summer, glows the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
warmer in your cup as you muse over minstrels
now no more, whether</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Of mighty poets in their misery dead,&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>or of such a one as he whose neglected
grave you have just visited.</p>

<p>It was a pious act, you feel, to visit that
grave. You commend yourself for doing
so. As the night draws on, this very simple
excursion down a rutty lane and across
a meadow, begins to wear the hues of devotion
and of love; and unless you are
very stern with yourself, the chances are
that by the time you light your farthing
dip, and are proceeding on your dim and
perilous way to your bedroom at the end
of a creaking passage, you will more than
half believe you were that poet's only unselfish
friend, and that he died saying so.</p>

<p>All this is due to the charm of poetry.
Port has nothing to do with it. Indeed, as
a plain matter of fact, who would drink
port at a village inn? Nobody feels a bit
like this after visiting the tombs of soldiers,
lawyers, statesmen, or divines. These pompous
places, viewed through the haze of
one's recollections of the 'careers' of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
men whose names they vainly try to perpetuate,
seem but, if I may slightly alter
some words of old Cowley's, 'An ill show
after a sorry sight.'</p>

<p>It would be quite impossible, to enumerate
one half of the reasons which make
poets so interesting. I will mention one,
and then pass on to the subject-matter.
They often serve to tell you the age of
men and books. This is most interesting.
There is Mr. Matthew Arnold. How impossible
it would be to hazard even a wide
solution of the problem of his age, but for
the way he has of writing about Lord
Byron! Then we know</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;The thought of Byron, of his cry<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Stormily, sweet, his Titan agony.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>And again:</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;What boots it now that Byron bore,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">With haughty scorn which mocked the smart,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Through Europe to the &AElig;tolian shore,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The pageant of his bleeding heart?&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>Ask any man born in the fifties, or even
the later forties, what he thinks of Byron's
Titan agony, and his features will probably
wear a smile. Insist upon his giving his
opinion about the pageant of the Childe's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
bleeding heart, and more likely than not
he will laugh outright. But, I repeat, how
interesting to be able to tell the age of
one distinguished poet from his way of
writing of another!</p>

<p>So, too, with books. Miss Austen's
novels are dateless things. Nobody in
his senses would speak of them as 'old
novels.' <i>John Inglesant</i> is an old novel,
so is <i>Ginx's Baby</i>. But <i>Emma</i> is quite
new, and, like a wise woman, affords few
clues as to her age. But when, taking up
<i>Sense and Sensibility</i>, we read Marianne
Dashwood's account of her sister's lover&mdash;</p>

<p>'And besides all this, I am afraid, mamma,
he has no real taste. Music seems
scarcely to attract him, and though he
admires Elinor's drawings very much, it
is not the admiration of a person who can
understand their worth. He admires as
a lover, and not as a connoisseur. Oh,
mamma! how spiritless, how tame was
Edward's manner in reading last night!
I felt for my sister most severely. I
could hardly keep my seat to hear those
beautiful lines which have frequently almost
driven me wild, pronounced with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful
indifference!' 'He would certainly
[says Mrs. Dashwood] have done more
justice to simple and elegant prose. I
thought so, at the time, but you <i>would</i>
give him Cowper.' 'Nay, mamma, if he
is not to be animated by Cowper!'&mdash;when
we read this, we know pretty well
when Miss Austen was born. It is surely
pleasant to be reminded of a time when
sentimental girls used Cowper as a test of
a lover's sensibility. One of our modern
swains is no more likely to be condemned
as a Philistine for not reading <i>The Task</i>
with unction, than he is to be hung for
sheep-stealing, or whipped at the cart's
tail for speaking evil of constituted authorities;
but the position probably still has
its perils, and the Marianne Dashwoods
of the hour are quite capable of putting
their admirers on to <i>Rose Mary</i>, or <i>The
Blessed Damosel</i>, and then flouting their
insensibility. The fact, of course, is, that
each generation has a way of its own, and
poets are interesting because they are the
mirrors in which their generation saw its
own face; and what is more, they are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
magic mirrors, since they retain the power
of reflecting the image long after what
was pleased to call itself the substance
has disappeared into thin air.</p>

<p>There is no more interesting poet than
Cowper, and hardly one the area of whose
influence was greater. No man, it is unnecessary
to say, courted popularity less,
yet he threw a very wide net, and caught a
great shoal of readers. For twenty years
after the publication of <i>The Task</i> in 1785,
his general popularity never flagged, and
even when in the eyes of the world it was
eclipsed, when Cowper became in the
opinion of fierce Byronians and moss-trooping
Northerners, 'a coddled Pope' and a
milksop, our great, sober, Puritan middle-class
took him to their warm firesides for
two generations more. Some amongst
these were not, it must be owned, lovers
of poetry at all; they liked Cowper because
he is full of a peculiar kind of religious
phraseology, just as some of Burns' countrymen
love Burns because he is full of a
peculiar kind of strong drink called whisky.
This was bad taste; but it made Cowper
all the more interesting, since he thus be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>came,
by a kind of compulsion, the favourite
because the only poet, of all these people's
children; and the children of the righteous
do not wither like the green herb, neither
do they beg their bread from door to door,
but they live in slated houses and are
known to read at times. No doubt, by the
time it came to these children's children
the spell was broken, and Cowper went
out of fashion when Sunday travelling and
play-going came in again. But his was a
long run, and under peculiar conditions.
Signs and tokens are now abroad, whereby
the judicious are beginning to infer that
there is a renewed disposition to read Cowper,
and to love him, not for his faults, but
for his great merits, his observing eye, his
playful wit, his personal charm.</p>

<p>Hayley's <i>Life of Cowper</i> is now obsolete,
though since it is adorned with vignettes by
Blake it is prized by the curious. Hayley
was a kind friend to Cowper, but he possessed,
in a highly developed state, that
aversion to the actual facts of a case which
is unhappily so characteristic of the British
biographer. Southey's <i>Life</i> is horribly
long-winded and stuffed out; still, like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
Homer's <i>Iliad</i>, it remains the best. It
was long excluded from strict circles because
of its worldly tone, and also because
it more than hinted that the Rev. John
Newton was to blame for his mode of
treating the poet's delusions. Its place
was filled by the Rev. Mr. Grimshaw's
<i>Life</i> of the poet, which is not a nice book.
Mr. Benham's recent <i>Life</i>, prefixed to the
cheap Globe edition of <i>Cowper's Poems</i>, is
marvellously good and compressed. Mr.
Goldwin Smith's account of the poet in
Mr. Morley's series could not fail to be interesting,
though it created in the minds
of some readers a curious sensation of immense
distance from the object described.
Mr. Smith seemed to discern Cowper
clearly enough, but as somebody very far
off. This, however, may be fancy.</p>

<p>The wise man will not trouble the biographers.
He will make for himself a short
list of dates, so that he may know where
he is at any particular time, and then, poking
the fire and (his author notwithstanding)
lighting his pipe&mdash;</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Oh, pernicious weed, whose scent the fair annoys&mdash;&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>
<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
<p>he will read Cowper's letters. There are
five volumes of them in Southey's edition.
It would be to exaggerate to say you wish
there were fifty, but you are, at all events,
well content there should be five. In the
course of them Cowper will tell you the
story of his own life, as it ought to be told,
as it alone can be told, in the purest of
English and with the sweetest of smiles.
For a combination of delightful qualities,
Cowper's letters have no rivals. They are
playful, witty, loving, sensible, ironical, and,
above all, as easy as an old shoe. So easy,
indeed, that after you have read half a
volume or so, you begin to think their merits
have been exaggerated, and that anybody
could write letters as good as Cowper's.
Even so the man who never played billiards,
and who sees Mr. Roberts play that game,
might hastily opine that he, too, could go
and do likewise.</p>

<p>To form anything like a fair estimate of
Cowper, it is wise to ignore as much as
possible his mental disease, and always to
bear in mind the manner of man he naturally
was. He belonged essentially to the
order of wags. He was, it is easy to see,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
a lover of trifling things, elegantly finished.
He hated noise, contention, and
the public gaze, but society he ever insisted
upon.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">But grant me still a friend in my retreat,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Whom I may whisper&mdash;&#8220;solitude is sweet.&#8221;&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>He loved a jest, a barrel of oysters, and
a bottle of wine. His well-known riddle
on a kiss is Cowper from top to toe:</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;I am just two and two; I am warm, I am cold,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And the parent of numbers that cannot be told.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I am lawful, unlawful, a duty, a fault,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I am often sold dear, good for nothing when bought,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">An extraordinary boon, and a matter of course,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And yielded with pleasure when taken by force.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>Why, it is a perfect dictionary of kisses in
six lines!</p>

<p>Had Cowper not gone mad in his thirty-second
year, and been frightened out of
the world of trifles, we should have had
another Prior, a wittier Gay, an earlier
Praed, an English La Fontaine. We do
better with <i>The Task</i> and the <i>Lines to
Mary</i>, but he had a light touch.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;&#8217;Tis not that I design to rob<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Thee of thy birthright, gentle Bob,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">For thou art born sole heir and single<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Of dear Mat Prior's easy jingle.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Not that I mean while thus I knit<br /></span>
<span class="i0">My threadbare sentiments together,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To show my genius or my wit,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">When God and you know I have neither,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Or such as might be better shown<br /></span>
<span class="i0">By letting poetry alone.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>This lightness of touch, this love of trifling,
never deserted Cowper, not even
when the pains of hell got hold of him,
and he believed himself the especially
accursed of God. In 1791, when things
were very black, we find him writing to his
good Dissenting friend, the Rev. William
Bull ('Charissime Taurorum'), as follows:</p>

<p>'Homer, I say, has all my time, except a
little that I give every day to no very
cheering prospects of futurity. I would I
were a Hottentot, or even a Dissenter, so
that my views of an hereafter were more
comfortable. But such as I am, Hope, if
it please God, may visit even me. Should
we ever meet again, possibly we may part
no more. Then, if Presbyterians ever
find their way to heaven, you and I may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
know each other in that better world, and
rejoice in the recital of the terrible things
that we endured in this. I will wager sixpence
with you now, that when that day
comes you shall acknowledge my story a
more wonderful one than yours; only
order your executors to put sixpence in
your mouth when they bury you, that you
may have wherewithal to pay me.'</p>

<p>Whilst living in the Temple, which he
did for twelve years, chiefly it would appear
on his capital, he associated with a race of
men, of whom report has reached us, called
'wits.' He belonged to the Nonsense
Club; he wrote articles for magazines.
He went to balls, to Brighton, to the play.
He went once, at all events, to the gallery
of the House of Commons, where he witnessed
an altercation between a placeman
and an alderman&mdash;two well-known types
still in our midst. The placeman had
misquoted Terence, and the alderman had
corrected him; whereupon the ready placeman
thanked the worthy alderman for
teaching him Latin, and volunteered in
exchange to teach the alderman English.
Cowper must at this time have been a con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>siderable
reader, for all through life he is
to be found quoting his authors, poets, and
playwrights, with an easy appositeness, all
the more obviously genuine because he
had no books in the country to refer to.
'I have no English History,' he writes,
'except Baker's <i>Chronicle</i>, and that I borrowed
three years ago from Mr. Throckmorton.'
This was wrong, but Baker's
<i>Chronicle</i> (Sir Roger de Coverley's favourite
Sunday reading) is not a book to be returned
in a month.</p>

<p>After this easy fashion Cowper acquired
what never left him&mdash;the style and manner
of an accomplished worldling.</p>

<p>The story of the poet's life does not
need telling; but as Owen Meredith says,
probably not even for the second time,
'after all, old things are best.' Cowper
was born in the rectory at Great Berkhampstead,
in 1735. His mother dying when
he was six years old, he was despatched to
a country academy, where he was horribly
bullied by one of the boys, the reality of
whose persecution is proved by one terrible
touch in his victim's account of it: 'I had
such a dread of him, that I did not dare<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
lift my eyes to his face. I knew him best
by his shoe-buckle.' The odious brute!
Cowper goes on to say he had forgiven
him, which I can believe, but when he proceeds
to ejaculate a wish to meet his persecutor
again in heaven, doubt creeps in.
When ten years old he was sent to Westminster,
where there is nothing to show
that he was otherwise than fairly happy;
he took to his classics very kindly, and (so
he says) excelled in cricket and football.
This is evidence, but as Dr. Johnson once
confessed about the evidence for the immortality
of the soul, 'one would like
more.' He was for some time in the
class of Vincent Bourne, who, though
born in 1695, and a Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge, ranks high amongst
the Latin poets. Whether Cowper was
bullied at Westminster is a matter of controversy.
Bourne was bullied. About
that there can be no doubt. Cowper loved
him, and relates with delight how on one
occasion the Duke of Richmond (Burke's
Duke, I suppose) set fire to the greasy
locks of this latter-day Catullus, and then,
alarmed at the spread of the conflagration,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
boxed his master's ears to put it out. At
eighteen Cowper left Westminster, and
after doing nothing (at which he greatly
excelled) for nine months in the country,
returned to town, and was articled to an
attorney in Ely Place, Holborn, for three
years. At the same time, being intended
for the Bar, he was entered at the Middle,
though he subsequently migrated to the
Inner Temple. These three years in Ely
Place Cowper fribbled away agreeably
enough. He had as his desk-companion
Edward Thurlow, the most tremendous of
men. Hard by Ely Place is Southampton
Row, and in Southampton Row lived Ashley
Cowper, the poet's uncle, with a trio of
affable daughters, Theodora Jane, Harriet,
afterwards Lady Hesketh, and a third,
who became the wife of Sir Archer Croft.
According to Cowper, a great deal of giggling
went on in Southampton Row. He
fell in love with Theodora, and Theodora
fell in love with him. He wrote her verses
enough to fill a volume. She was called
Delia in his lays. In 1752, his articles
having expired, he took chambers in the
Temple, and in 1754 was called to the Bar.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>

<p>Ashley Cowper, a very little man, who
used to wear a white hat lined with yellow
silk, and was on that account likened by
his nephew to a mushroom, would not hear
of his daughter marrying her cousin; and
being a determined little man, he had his
own way, and the lovers were parted and
saw one another no more. Theodora Cowper
wore the willow all the rest of her long
life. Her interest in her cousin never
abated. Through her sister, Lady Hesketh,
she contributed in later years generously
to his support. He took the money
and knew where it came from, but they
never wrote to one another, nor does her
name ever appear in Cowper's correspondence.
She became, so it is said, morbid
on the subject during her latter days, and
dying twenty-four years after her lover,
she bequeathed to a nephew a mysterious
packet she was known to cherish. It was
found to contain Cowper's love-verses.</p>

<p>In 1756 Cowper's father died, and the
poet's patrimony proved to be a very small
one. He was made a Commissioner of
Bankrupts. The salary was &pound;60 a year.
He knew one solicitor, but whether he ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
had a brief is not known. He lived alone
in his chambers till 1763, when, under well-known
circumstances, he went raving mad,
and attempted to hang himself in his bedroom,
and very nearly succeeded. He was
removed to Dr. Cotton's asylum, where he
remained a year. This madness, which in
its origin had no more to do with religion
than it had with the Binomial Theorem,
ultimately took the turn of believing that
it was the will of God that he should kill
himself, and that as he had failed to do so
he was damned everlastingly. In this
faith, diversified by doubt, Cowper must be
said henceforth to have lived and died.</p>

<p>On leaving St. Albans, the poet, in order
to be near his only brother, the Rev. John
Cowper, Fellow of Corpus, Cambridge, and
a most delightful man, had lodgings in
Huntingdon; and there, one eventful Tuesday
in 1765, he made the acquaintance of
Mary Unwin. Mrs. Unwin's husband, a
most scandalously non-resident clergyman&mdash;whom,
however, Cowper composedly
calls a veritable Parson Adams&mdash;was living
at this time, not in his Norfolk rectory
of Grimston, but contentedly enough in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
Huntingdon, where he took pupils. Cowper
became a lodger in the family, which
consisted of the rector and his wife, a son
at Cambridge, and a daughter, also one
or two pupils. In 1767 Mr. Unwin was
thrown from his horse and fractured his
skull. Church-reformers pointed out, at
the time, that had the Rector of Grimston
been resident, this accident could not have
occurred in Huntingdon. They then went
on to say, but less convincingly, that Mr.
Unwin's death was the judgment of Heaven
upon him. Mr. Unwin dead, the poet
and the widow moved to Olney, where they
lived together for nineteen years in a tumble-down
house, and on very slender means.
Their attraction to Olney was in the fact
that John Newton was curate-in-charge.
Olney was not an ideal place by any means.
Cowper and Mrs. Unwin lived in no fools'
paradise, for they visited the poor and knew
the manner of their lives. The inhabitants
were mostly engaged in lace-making and
straw-plaiting; they were miserably poor,
immoral, and drunken. There is no idyllic
nonsense in Cowper's poetry.</p>

<p>In 1773 he had another most violent at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>tack
of suicidal mania, and attempted his
life more than once. Writing in 1786
to Lady Hesketh, Cowper gives her an account
of his illness, of which at the time
she knew nothing, as her acquaintance with
her cousin was not renewed till 1785:</p>

<p>'Know then, that in the year '73, the
same scene that was acted at St. Albans
opened upon me again at Olney, only
covered with a still deeper shade of melancholy,
and ordained to be of much
longer duration. I believed that everybody
hated me, and that Mrs. Unwin hated
me most of all; was convinced that all
my food was poisoned, together with ten
thousand megrims of the same stamp.
Dr. Cotton was consulted. He replied
that he could do no more for me than
might be done at Olney, but recommended
particular vigilance, lest I should attempt
my life; a caution for which there was the
greatest occasion. At the same time that
I was convinced of Mrs. Unwin's aversion
to me, I could endure no other companion.
The whole management of me consequently
devolved upon her, and a terrible
task she had; she performed it, however,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
with a cheerfulness hardly ever equalled
on such an occasion, and I have often
heard her say that if ever she praised God
in her life, it was when she found she was
to have all the labour. She performed it
accordingly, but as I hinted once before,
very much to the hurt of her own constitution.'</p>

<p>Just before this outbreak, Cowper and
Mrs. Unwin had agreed to marry, but after
it they felt the subject was not to be approached,
and so the poor things spoke of
it no more. Still, it was well they had
spoken out. 'Love me, and tell me so,' is
a wise maxim of behaviour.</p>

<p>Stupid people, themselves leading, one is
glad to believe, far duller lives than Cowper
and Mary Unwin, have been known to
make dull, ponderous jokes about this
<i>m&eacute;nage</i> at Olney&mdash;its country walks, its
hymn tunes, its religious exercises. But it
is pleasant to note how quick Sainte Beuve,
whose three papers on Cowper are amongst
the glories of the <i>Causeries du Lundi</i>, is to
recognise how much happiness and pleasantness
was to be got out of this semi-monastic
life and close social relation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>

<p>Cowper was indeed the very man for it.
One can apply to him his own well-known
lines about the winter season, and crown
him</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">&#8216;The King of intimate delights,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Fireside enjoyments, and homeborn happiness.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>No doubt he went mad at times. It was
a terrible affliction. But how many men
have complaints of the liver, and are as
cheerful to live with as the Black Death,
or Young's <i>Night Thoughts</i>. Cowper had
a famous constitution. Not even Dr.
James's powder, or the murderous practices
of the faculty, could undermine it.
Sadness is not dulness.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Dear saints, it is not sorrow, as I hear,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Nor suffering that shuts up eye and ear<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To all which has delighted them before,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And lets us be what we were once no more!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">No! we may suffer deeply, yet retain<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">By what of old pleased us, and will again.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">No! 'tis the gradual furnace of the world,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">In whose hot air our spirits are upcurled<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Until they crumble, or else grow like steel,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Which kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">But takes away the power&mdash;this can avail<br /></span>
<span class="i0">By drying up our joy in everything,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To make our former pleasures all seem stale.&#8217;<br /></span>
<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></div></div>

<p>I can think of no one to whom these
beautiful lines of Mr. Arnold's are so exquisitely
appropriate as to Cowper. Nothing
could knock the humanity out of him.
Solitude, sorrow, madness, found him out,
threw him down and tore him, as did the
devils their victims in the days of old; but
when they left him for a season, he rose
from his misery as sweet and as human, as
interested and as interesting as ever. His
descriptions of natural scenery and country-side
doings are amongst his best things.
He moralises enough, heaven knows! but
he keeps his morality out of his descriptions.
This is rather a relief after overdoses
of Wordsworth's pantheism and
Keats's paganism. Cowper's Nature is
plain county Bucks.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">&#8216;The sheepfold here<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">At first progressive as a stream, they seek<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The middle field; but scattered by degrees,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>The man who wrote that had his eye
on the object; but lest the quotation be
thought too woolly by a generation which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
has a passion for fine things, I will allow
myself another:</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Exhilarate the spirit and restore<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The tone of languid nature, mighty winds<br /></span>
<span class="i0">That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Of ancient growth, make music not unlike<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The dash of ocean on his winding shore<br /></span>
<span class="i0">. . . . . . . . . . . . . .<br /></span>
<span class="i0">. . . . . . . . . of rills that slip<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length<br /></span>
<span class="i0">In matted grass, that with a livelier green<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Betrays the secret of their silent course.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>In 1781 began the episode of Lady Austen.
That lady was doing some small shopping
in Olney, in company with her sister,
the wife of a neighbouring clergyman, when
our poet first beheld her. She pleased his
eye. Whether in the words of one of his
early poems he made free to comment on
her shape I cannot say; but he hurried
home and made Mrs. Unwin ask her to tea.
She came. Cowper was seized with a fit
of shyness, and very nearly would not go
into the room. He conquered the fit, went
in and swore eternal friendship. To the
very end of her days Mrs. Unwin addressed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
the poet, her true lover though he was, as
'Mr. Cowper.' In a week, Lady Austen
and he were 'Sister Ann' and 'William'
one to another. Sister Ann had a furnished
house in London. She gave it up. She
came to live in Olney, next door. She was
pretty, she was witty, she played, she sang.
She told Cowper the story of John Gilpin,
she inspired his <i>Wreck of the Royal George</i>.
<i>The Task</i> was written at her bidding. Day
in and day out, Cowper and Lady Austen
and Mrs. Unwin were together. One turns
instinctively to see what Sainte Beuve has
to say about Lady Austen. 'C'&eacute;tait Lady
Austen, veuve d'un baronet. Cette rare
personne &eacute;tait dou&eacute;e des plus heureux
dons; elle n'&eacute;tait plus tr&egrave;s-jeune ni dans
la fleur de beaut&eacute;; elle avait ce qui est
mieux, une puissance d'attraction et d'enchantement
qui tenait &agrave; la transparence
de l'&acirc;me, une facult&eacute; de reconnaissance,
de sensibilit&eacute; &eacute;mue jusqu'aux larmes pour
toute marque de bienveillance dont elle
&eacute;tait l'objet. Tout en elle exprimait une
vivacit&eacute; pure, innocente et tendre. C'&eacute;tait
une cr&eacute;ature <i>sympathique</i>, et elle devait
tout-&agrave;-fait justifier dans le cas pr&eacute;sent ce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
mot de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: "Il y
a dans la femme une gaiet&eacute; l&eacute;g&egrave;re qui
dissipe la tristesse de l'homme."'</p>

<p>That odd personage, Alexander Knox,
who had what used to be called a 'primitive,'
that is, a fourth-century mind, and on
whom the Tractarian movement has been
plausibly grandfathered, and who was (incongruously)
employed by Lord Castlereagh
to help through the Act of Union with Ireland,
of which we have lately heard, but
who remained all the time primitively unaware
that any corruption was going on
around him&mdash;this odd person, I say, was
exercised in his mind about Lady Austen,
of whom he had been reading in Hayley's
<i>Life</i>. In October, 1806, he writes to
Bishop Jebb in a solemn strain: 'I have
rather a severer idea of Lady A. than I
should wish to put into writing for publication.
I almost suspect she was a very
artful woman. But I need not enlarge.'
He puts it rather differently from Sainte
Beuve, but I dare say they both meant
much the same thing. If Knox meant
more it would be necessary to get angry
with him. That Lady Austen fell in love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
with Cowper and would have liked to marry
him, but found Mrs. Unwin in the way, is
probable enough; but where was the artfulness?
Poor Cowper was no catch. The
grandfather of Tractarianism would have
been better employed in unmasking the
corruption amongst which he had lived, than
in darkly suspecting a lively lady of designs
upon a penniless poet, living in the utmost
obscurity, on the charity of his relatives.</p>

<p>But this state of things at Olney did not
last very long. 'Of course not,' cackle a
chorus of cynics. 'It could not!' The
Historical Muse, ever averse to theory, is
content to say, 'It did not,' but as she
writes the words she smiles. The episode
began in 1781, it ended in 1784. It became
necessary to part. Cowper may have
had his qualms, but he concealed them
manfully and remained faithful to Mrs.
Unwin&mdash;</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i4">&#8216;The patient flower<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Who possessed his darker hour.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>Lady Austen flew away, and afterwards,
as if to prove her levity incurable, married
a Frenchman. She died in 1802. English
literature owes her a debt of gratitude.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
Her name is writ large over much that is
best in Cowper's poetry. Not indeed over
the very best; <i>that</i> bears the inscription
<i>To Mary</i>. And it was right that it should
be so, for Mrs. Unwin had to put up with
a good deal.</p>

<p><i>The Task</i> and <i>John Gilpin</i> were published
together in 1785, and some of Cowper's
old friends (notably Lady Hesketh) rallied
round the now known poet once more.
Lady Hesketh soon begins to fill the chair
vacated by Lady Austen, and Cowper's
letters to her are amongst his most delightful.
Her visits to Olney were eagerly
expected, and it was she who persuaded
the pair to leave the place for good and all,
and move to Weston, which they did in
1786. The following year Cowper went
mad again, and made another most desperate
attempt upon his life. Again Mary
Unwin stood by the poor maniac's side,
and again she stood alone. He got better,
and worked away at his translation of
Homer as hard and wrote letters as charming
as ever. But Mrs. Unwin was pretty
well done for. Cowper published his
Homer by subscription, and must be pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>nounced
a dab hand in the somewhat
ignoble art of collecting subscribers. I
am not sure that he could not have given
Pope points. Pope had a great acquaintance,
but he had barely six hundred subscribers.
Cowper scraped together upwards
of five hundred. As a beggar he was
unabashed. He quotes in one of his letters,
and applies to himself patly enough,
Ranger's observation in the <i>Suspicious
Husband</i>, 'There is a degree of assurance
in you modest men, that we impudent
fellows can never arrive at!' The University
of Oxford was, however, too much
for him. He beat her portals in vain.
She had but one answer, 'We subscribe
to nothing.' Cowper was very angry, and
called her 'a rich old vixen.' She did not
mind. The book appeared in 1791. It
has many merits, and remains unread.</p>

<p>The clouds now gathered heavily over
the biography of Cowper. Mrs. Unwin
had two paralytic strokes, the old friends
began to torture one another. She was
silent save when she was irritable, indifferent
except when exacting. At last, not a
day too soon, Lady Hesketh came to Wes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>ton.
They were moved into Norfolk&mdash;but
why prolong the tale? Mrs. Unwin died
at East Dereham on the 17th of December,
1796. Thirty-one years had gone since
the poet and she first met by chance in
Huntingdon. Cowper himself died in
April, 1800. His last days were made physically
comfortable by the kindness of some
Norfolk cousins, and the devotion of a
Miss Perowne. But he died in wretchedness
and gloom.</p>

<p>The <i>Castaway</i> was his last original
poem:</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;I therefore purpose not or dream<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Descanting on his fate,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To give the melancholy theme<br /></span>
<span class="i0">A more enduring date;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">But misery still delights to trace<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Its semblance in another's case.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>Everybody interested in Cowper has of
course to make out, as best he may, a picture
of the poet for his own use. It is
curious how sometimes little scraps of
things serve to do this better than deliberate
efforts. In 1800, the year of Cowper's
death, his relative, a Dr. Johnson,
wrote a letter to John Newton, sending<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
good wishes to the old gentleman, and to
his niece, Miss Catlett; and added: 'Poor
dear Mr. Cowper, oh that he were as
tolerable as he was, even in those days
when, dining at his house in Buckinghamshire
with you and that lady, I could
not help smiling to see his pleasant face
when he said, "Miss Catlett, shall I give
you a piece of cutlet?"' It was a very
small joke indeed, and it is a very humble
little quotation, but for me it has long
served, in the mind's eye, for a vignette
of the poet, doomed yet <i>debonnaire</i>. Romney's
picture, with that frightful nightcap
and eyes gleaming with madness, is a pestilent
thing one would forget if one could.
Cowper's pleasant face when he said, 'Miss
Catlett, shall I give you a piece of cutlet?'
is a much more agreeable picture to find a
small corner for in one's memory.</p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="GEORGE_BORROW" id="GEORGE_BORROW"></a>GEORGE BORROW<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></h2>


<p>Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his
delightful <i>Memories and Portraits</i>, takes
occasion to tell us, amongst a good many
other things of the sort, that he has a
great fancy for <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, by Mr.
George Borrow. He has not, indeed, read
it quite so often as he has Mr. George
Meredith's <i>Egoist</i>, but still he is very fond
of it. It is interesting to know this, interesting,
that is, to the great Clan Stevenson
who owe suit and service to their liege
lord; but so far as Borrow is concerned,
it does not matter, to speak frankly, two
straws. The author of <i>Lavengro</i>, <i>The
Romany Rye</i>, <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, and
<i>Wild Wales</i> is one of those kings of literature
who never need to number their
tribe. His personality will always secure
him an attendant company, who, when he
pipes, must dance. A queer company it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
is too, even as was the company he kept
himself, composed as it is of saints and
sinners, gentle and simple, master and
man, mistresses and maids; of those who,
learned in the tongues, have read everything
else, and of those who have read
nothing else and do not want to. People
there are for whom Borrow's books play
the same part as did horses and dogs for
the gentleman in the tall white hat, whom
David Copperfield met on the top of the
Canterbury coach. ''Orses and dorgs,'
said that gentleman, 'is some men's fancy.
They are wittles and drink to me, lodging,
wife and children, reading, writing, and
'rithmetic, snuff, tobacker, and sleep.'</p>

<p>Nothing, indeed, is more disagreeable,
even offensive, than to have anybody
else's favourite author thrust down your
throat. 'Love me, love my dog,' is a
maxim of behaviour which deserves all the
odium Charles Lamb has heaped upon it.
Still, it would be hard to go through life
arm-in-arm with anyone who had stuck in
the middle of <i>Guy Mannering</i>, or had bidden
a final farewell to Jeannie Deans in
the barn with the robbers near Gunnerly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
Hill in Lincolnshire. But, oddly enough,
Borrow excites no such feelings. It is
quite possible to live amicably in the same
house with a person who has stuck hopelessly
in the middle of <i>Wild Wales</i>, and
who braves it out (what impudence!) by
the assertion that the book is full of things
like this: 'Nothing worthy of commemoration
took place during the two following
days, save that myself and family took an
evening walk on the Wednesday up the side
of the Berwyn, for the purpose of botanising,
in which we were attended by John
Jones. There, amongst other plants, we
found a curious moss which our good
friend said was called in Welsh Corn
Carw, or deer's horn, and which he said
the deer were very fond of. On the
Thursday he and I started on an expedition
on foot to Ruthyn, distant about
fourteen miles, proposing to return in
the evening.'</p>

<p>The book <i>is</i> full of things like this, and
must be pronounced as arrant a bit of
book-making as ever was. But judgment
is not always followed by execution, and
a more mirth-provoking error can hardly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
be imagined than for anyone to suppose
that the admission of the fact&mdash;sometimes
doubtless a damaging fact&mdash;namely, book-making,
will for one moment shake the
faithful in their certitude that <i>Wild Wales</i>
is a delightful book; not so delightful, indeed,
as <i>Lavengro</i>, <i>The Romany</i>, or <i>The
Bible in Spain</i>, but still delightful because
issuing from the same mint as they, stamped
with the same physiognomy, and bearing
the same bewitching inscription.</p>

<p>It is a mercy the people we love do not
know how much we must forgive them.
Oh the liberties they would take, the
things they would do, were it to be revealed
to them that their roots have gone
far too deep into our soil for us to disturb
them under any provocation whatsoever!</p>

<p>George Borrow has to be forgiven a
great deal. The Appendix to <i>The Romany
Rye</i> contains an assault upon the memory
of Sir Walter Scott, of which every word
is a blow. It is savage, cruel, unjustifiable.
There is just enough of what base
men call truth in it, to make it one of the
most powerful bits of devil's advocacy ever
penned. Had another than Borrow writ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>ten
thus of the good Sir Walter, some
men would travel far to spit upon his
tomb. Quick and easy would have been
his descent to the Avernus of oblivion.
His books, torn from the shelf, should
have long stood neglected in the shop of
the second-hand, till the hour came for
them to seek the stall, where, exposed to
wind and weather, they should dolefully
await the sack of the paper-merchant,
whose holy office it should be to mash
them into eternal pulp. But what rhodomontade
is this! No books are more, in
the vile phrase of the craft, 'esteemed'
than Borrow's. The prices demanded for
the early editions already impinge upon
the absurd, and are steadily rising. The
fact is, there is no use blinking it, mankind
cannot afford to quarrel with George Borrow,
and will not do so. It is bad enough
what he did, but when we remember that
whatever he had done, we must have forgiven
him all the same, it is just possible
to thank Heaven (feebly) that it was no
worse. He might have robbed a church!</p>

<p>Borrow is indeed one of those lucky
men who, in Bagehot's happy phrase,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
'keep their own atmosphere,' and as a consequence,
when in the destined hour the
born Borrovian&mdash;for men are born Borrovians,
not made&mdash;takes up a volume of
him, in ten minutes (unless it be <i>Wild
Wales</i>, and then twenty must be allowed)
the victory is won; down tumbles the
standard of Respectability which through
a virtuous and perhaps long life has braved
the battle and the breeze; up flutters the
lawless pennon of the Romany Chal, and
away skims the reader's craft over seas,
hitherto untravelled, in search of adventures,
manifold and marvellous, nor in
vain.</p>

<p>If one was in search of a single epithet
most properly descriptive of Borrow's
effect upon his reader, perhaps it would
best be found in the word 'contagious.'
He is one of the most 'catching' of our
authors. The most inconsistent of men,
he compels those who are born subject to
his charm to share his inconsistencies.
He was an agent of the Bible Society,
and his extraordinary adventures in Spain
were encountered, so at least his title-page
would have us believe, in an attempt to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula.
He was a sound Churchman, and would
have nothing to do with Dissent, even in
Wild Wales, but he had also a passion for
the ring. Mark his devastations. It is as
bad as the pestilence. A gentle lady, bred
amongst the Quakers, a hater of physical
force, with eyes brimful of mercy, was
lately heard to say, in heightened tones,
at a dinner-table, where the subject of
momentary conversation was a late prize-fight:
'Oh! pity was it that ever corruption
should have crept in amongst them.'
'Amongst whom?' inquired her immediate
neighbour. 'Amongst the bruisers of
England,' was the terrific rejoinder. Deep
were her blushes&mdash;and yet how easy to
forgive her! The gentle lady spoke as
one does in dreams; for, you must know,
she was born a Borrovian, and only that
afternoon had read for the first time the
famous twenty-fifth chapter of <i>Lavengro</i>:</p>

<p>'But what a bold and vigorous aspect
pugilism wore at that time! And the
great battle was just then coming off;
the day had been decided upon, and the
spot&mdash;a convenient distance from the old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
town (Norwich); and to the old town were
now flocking the bruisers of England, men
of tremendous renown. Let no one sneer
at the bruisers of England; what were the
gladiators of Rome, or the bull-fighters of
Spain, in its palmiest days, compared to
England's bruisers? Pity that ever corruption
should have crept in amongst
them&mdash;but of that I wish not to talk.
There they come, the bruisers from far
London, or from wherever else they might
chance to be at the time, to the great rendezvous
in the old city; some came one
way, some another: some of tip-top reputation
came with peers in their chariots,
for glory and fame are such fair things
that even peers are proud to have those
invested therewith by their sides; others
came in their own gigs, driving their own
bits of blood; and I heard one say: "I
have driven through at a heat the whole
hundred and eleven miles, and only
stopped to bait twice!" Oh! the blood
horses of old England! but they too have
had their day&mdash;for everything beneath
the sun there is a season and a time....
So the bruisers of England are come to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
be present at the grand fight speedily
coming off; there they are met in the
precincts of the old town, near the field
of the chapel, planted with tender saplings
at the restoration of sporting Charles,
which are now become venerable elms,
as high as many a steeple; there they
are met at a fitting rendezvous, where a
retired coachman with one leg keeps an
hotel and a bowling-green. I think I now
see them upon the bowling-green, the men
of renown, amidst hundreds of people with
no renown at all, who gaze upon them
with timid wonder. Fame, after all, is a
glorious thing, though it lasts only for a
day. There's Cribb, the champion of
England, and perhaps the best man in
England&mdash;there he is, with his huge,
massive figure, and face wonderfully like
that of a lion. There is Belcher the
younger&mdash;not the mighty one, who is
gone to his place, but the Teucer Belcher,
the most scientific pugilist that ever entered
a ring, only wanting strength to be&mdash;I
won't say what.... But how shall
I name them all? They were there by
dozens, and all tremendous in their way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
There was Bulldog Hudson and fearless
Scroggins, who beat the conqueror of
Sam the Jew. There was Black Richmond&mdash;no,
he was not there, but I knew
him well. He was the most dangerous
of blacks, even with a broken thigh.
There was Purcell, who could never conquer
till all seemed over with him. There
was&mdash;what! shall I name thee last? Ay,
why not? I believe that thou art the last
of all that strong family still above the
sod, where may'st thou long continue&mdash;true
piece of English stuff, Tom of Bedford,
sharp as Winter, kind as Spring!'</p>

<p>No wonder the gentle lady was undone.
It is as good as Homer.</p>

<p>Diderot, it will be remembered, once
wrote a celebrated eulogium on Richardson,
which some have thought exaggerated,
because he says in it that, on the
happening of certain events, in themselves
improbable, he would keep <i>Clarissa</i> and
<i>Sir Charles</i> on the same shelf with the
writings of Moses, Homer, Euripides, and
Sophocles. Why a literary man should
not be allowed to arrange his library as he
chooses, without being exposed to so awful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
a charge as that of exaggeration, it is hard
to say. But no doubt the whole eulogium
is pitched in too high a key for modern
ears; still, it contains sensible remarks,
amongst them this one: that he had observed
that in a company where the writings
of Richardson were being read, either
privately or aloud, the conversation became
at once interesting and animated. Books
cannot be subjected to a truer test. Will
they bear talking about? A parcel of
friends can talk about Borrow's books for
ever. The death of his father, as told in
the last chapter of <i>Lavengro</i>. Is there
anything of the kind more affecting in the
library? Somebody is almost sure to say,
'Yes, the death of Le Fevre in <i>Tristram
Shandy</i>.' A third, who always (provoking
creature) likes best what she read last, will
wax eloquent over the death of the little
princess in Tolstoi's great book. The
character-sketch of Borrow's elder brother,
the self-abnegating artist who declined to
paint the portrait of the Mayor of Norwich
because he thought a friend of his
could do it better, suggests De Quincey's
marvellous sketch of his elder brother.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
And then, what about Benedict Moll, Joey
the dog-fancier of Westminster, and that
odious wretch the London publisher? You
had need to be a deaf mute to avoid taking
part in a conversation like this. Who was
Mary Fulcher? All the clocks in the parish
will have struck midnight before that
question has been answered. It is not to
take a gloomy view of the world to say
that there are few pleasanter things in it
than a good talk about George Borrow.</p>

<p>For invalids and delicate persons leading
retired lives, there are no books like
Borrow's. Lassitude and Languor, horrid
hags, simply pick up their trailing skirts
and scuttle out of any room into which he
enters. They cannot abide him. A single
chapter of Borrow is air and exercise;
and, indeed, the exercise is not always gentle.
'I feel,' said an invalid, laying down
<i>The Bible in Spain</i>, as she spoke, upon the
counterpane, 'as if I had been gesticulating
violently for the space of two hours.'
She then sank into deep sleep, and is now
hale and hearty. Miss Martineau, in her
<i>Life in the Sick Room</i>, invokes a blessing
upon the head of Christopher North. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
there were always those who refused to
believe in Miss Martineau's illness, and
certainly her avowed preference for the
man whom Macaulay in his wrath, writing
to Napier in Edinburgh, called 'your
grog-drinking, cock-fighting, cudgel-playing
Professor of Moral Philosophy,' is
calculated to give countenance to this unworthy
suspicion. It was an odd taste for
an invalid who, whilst craving for vigour,
must necessarily hate noise. Borrow is a
vigorous writer, Wilson a noisy one. It
was, however, his <i>Recreations</i> and not the
<i>Noctes Ambrosian&#230;</i>, that Miss Martineau
affected. Still the <i>Recreations</i> are noisy
too, and Miss Martineau must find her best
excuse, and I am determined to find an
excuse for her&mdash;for did she not write the
<i>Feats on the Fiord</i>?&mdash;in the fact, that
when she wrote her <i>Life in the Sick Room</i>
(a dear little book to read when in rude
health), Borrow had published nothing of
note. Had he done so, she would have
been of my way of thinking.</p>

<p>How much of Borrow is true and how
much is false, is one of those questions
which might easily set all mankind by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
ears, but for the pleasing circumstance
that it does not matter a dump. Few
things are more comical than to hear some
douce body, unread in Borrow, gravely inquiring
how far his word may be relied
upon. The sole possible response takes
the exceptionable shape of loud peals of
laughter. And yet, surely, it is a most
reasonable question, or query, as the
Scotch say. So it is; but after you have
read your author you won't ask it&mdash;you
won't want to. The reader can believe
what he likes, and as much as he likes.
In the old woman on London Bridge and
her convict son, in the man in black (how
unlike Goldsmith's!), in the <i>Flaming Tinman</i>,
in Ursula, the wife of Sylvester.
There is but one person in whom you
must believe, every hour of the day and of
the night, else are you indeed unworthy&mdash;you
must believe in Isopel Berners. A
stranger and more pathetic figure than she
is not to be seen flitting about in the great
shadow-dance men call their life. Born
and bred though she was in a workhouse,
where she learnt to read and sew, fear
God, and take her own part, a nobler, more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
lovable woman never crossed man's path.
Her introduction to her historian was
quaint. 'Before I could put myself on
my guard, she struck me a blow on the
face, which had nearly brought me to the
ground.' Alas, poor Isopel! Borrow returned
the blow, a deadlier, fiercer blow,
aimed not at the face but at the heart.
Of their life in the Dingle let no man
speak; it must be read in the last chapters
of <i>Lavengro</i>, and the early ones of
<i>The Romany Rye</i>. Borrow was certainly
irritating. One longs to shake him. He
was what children call 'a tease.' He
teased poor Isopel with his confounded
philology. Whether he simply made a mistake,
or whether the girl was right in her
final surmise, that he was 'at the root mad,'
who can say? He offered her his hand,
but at too late a stage in the proceedings.
Isopel Berners left the Dingle to go to
America, and we hear of her no more.
That she lived to become a happy 'housemother,'
and to start a line of brave men
and chaste women, must be the prayer of
all who know what it is to love a woman
they have never seen. Of the strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
love-making that went on in the Dingle
no idea can or ought to be given save
from the original.</p>

<p>'Thereupon I descended into the Dingle.
Belle was sitting before the fire, at which
the kettle was boiling. "Were you waiting
for me?" I inquired. "Yes," said
Belle, "I thought you would come, and
I waited for you." "That was very
kind," said I. "Not half so kind," said
she, "as it was of you to get everything
ready for me in the dead of last night,
when there was scarcely a chance of my
coming." The tea-things were brought
forward, and we sat down. "Have you
been far?" said Belle. "Merely to
that public-house," said I, "to which
you directed me on the second day of
our acquaintance." "Young men should
not make a habit of visiting public-houses,"
said Belle; "they are bad
places." "They may be so to some
people," said I, "but I do not think the
worst public-house in England could do
me any harm." "Perhaps you are so
bad already," said Belle with a smile,
"that it would be impossible to spoil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
you." "How dare you catch at my
words?" said I; "come, I will make
you pay for doing so&mdash;you shall have
this evening the longest lesson in
Armenian which I have yet inflicted
upon you." "You may well say inflicted,"
said Belle, "but pray spare
me. I do not wish to hear anything
about Armenian, especially this evening."
"Why this evening?" said I.
Belle made no answer. "I will not spare
you," said I; "this evening I intend to
make you conjugate an Armenian verb."
"Well, be it so," said Belle, "for this
evening you shall command." "To
command is hramahyel," said I. "Ram
her ill indeed," said Belle, "I do not
wish to begin with that." "No," said
I, "as we have come to the verbs we will
begin regularly: hramahyel is a verb of
the second conjugation. We will begin
with the first." "First of all, tell me,"
said Belle, "what a verb is?" "A part
of speech," said I, "which, according to
the dictionary, signifies some action or
passion; for example, 'I command you,
or I hate you.'" "I have given you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
no cause to hate me," said Belle, looking
me sorrowfully in the face.</p>

<p>'"I was merely giving two examples,"
said I, "and neither was directed at you.
In those examples, to command and
hate are verbs. Belle, in Armenian
there are four conjugations of verbs;
the first ends in al, the second in yel,
the third in oul, and the fourth in il.
Now, have you understood me?"</p>

<p>'"I am afraid, indeed, it will all end ill,"
said Belle. "Hold your tongue!" said
I, "or you will make me lose my patience."
"You have already made me
nearly lose mine," said Belle. "Let us
have no unprofitable interruptions," said
I. "The conjugations of the Armenian
verbs are neither so numerous nor so
difficult as the declensions of the nouns.
Hear that and rejoice. Come, we will
begin with the verb hntal, a verb of the
first conjugation, which signifies to rejoice.
Come along: hntam, I rejoice;
hyntas, thou rejoicest. Why don't you
follow, Belle?"</p>

<p>'"I am sure I don't rejoice, whatever
you may do," said Belle. "The chief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
difficulty, Belle," said I, "that I find in
teaching you the Armenian grammar
proceeds from your applying to yourself
and me every example I give. Rejoice,
in this instance, is merely an
example of an Armenian verb of the
first conjugation, and has no more to
do with your rejoicing than lal, which is
also a verb of the first conjugation, and
which signifies to weep, would have to
do with your weeping, provided I made
you conjugate it. Come along: hntam,
I rejoice; hntas, thou rejoicest; hnta,
he rejoices; hntamk, we rejoice. Now
repeat those words." "I can't bear
this much longer," said Belle. "Keep
yourself quiet," said I. "I wish to be
gentle with you, and to convince you,
we will skip hntal, and also, for the
present, verbs of the first conjugation,
and proceed to the second. Belle, I
will now select for you to conjugate the
prettiest verb in Armenian, not only of
the second, but also of all the four conjugations.
That verb is siriel. Here
is the present tense: siriem, siries,
sire, siriemk, sir&egrave;k, sirien. Come on,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
Belle, and say siriem." Belle hesitated.
"Pray oblige me, Belle, by saying
siriem." Belle still appeared to
hesitate. "You must admit, Belle, that
it is softer than hntam." "It is so,"
said Belle, "and to oblige you I will say
siriem." "Very well indeed, Belle,"
said I, "and now to show you how
verbs act upon pronouns in Armenian,
I will say siriem zkiez. Please to repeat
siriem zkiez." "Siriem zkiez," said
Belle; "that last word is very hard to
say." "Sorry that you think so, Belle,"
said I. "Now, please to say siri&aacute; zis."
Belle did so. "Exceedingly well," said
I. "Now say girani th&egrave; sireir zis."
"Girane th&egrave; sireir zis," said Belle. "Capital!"
said I. "You have now said I
love you&mdash;love me. Ah! would that
you would love me!"</p>

<p>'"And I have said all these things?"
said Belle. "Yes," said I. "You have
said them in Armenian." "I would
have said them in no language that I
understood," said Belle. "And it was
very wrong of you to take advantage of
my ignorance, and make me say such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
things!" "Why so?" said I. "If you
said them, I said them too."'</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Was ever woman in this humour wooed?&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>It is, I believe, the opinion of the best
critics that <i>The Bible in Spain</i> is Borrow's
masterpiece. It very likely is so. At the
present moment I feel myself even more
than usually disqualified for so grave a consideration
by my over-powering delight in
its dear, deluding title. A quarter of a
century ago, in all decent homes, a boy's
reading was, by the stern decree of his
elders, divided rigorously, though at the
same time it must be admitted crudely,
into Sunday books and week-day books.
'What have you got there?' has before
now been an inquiry addressed on a Sunday
afternoon to some youngster, suspiciously
engrossed in a book. 'Oh, <i>The
Bible in Spain</i>,' would be the reply. 'It
is written by a Mr. Borrow, you know, and
it is all about'&mdash;(then the title-page would
serve its turn) 'his attempts "to circulate
the Scriptures in the Peninsula!"' 'Indeed!
Sounds most suitable,' answers
the gulled authority, some foolish sisters'-governess<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>

<p>or the like illiterate, and moves
off. And then the happy boy would wriggle
in his chair, and, as if thirsting to taste the
first fruits of his wile, hastily seek out a
streaky page, and there read, for perhaps
the hundredth time, the memorable words:</p>

<p>'"Good are the horses of the Moslems,"
said my old friend; "where will you find
such? They will descend rocky mountains
at full speed, and neither trip nor
fall; but you must be cautious with the
horses of the Moslems, and treat them
with kindness, for the horses of the Moslems
are proud, and they like not being
slaves. When they are young and first
mounted, jerk not their mouths with
your bit, for be sure if you do, they will
kill you; sooner or later, you will perish
beneath their feet. Good are our horses,
and good our riders. Yea, very good
are the Moslems at mounting the horse;
who are like them? I once saw a Frank
rider compete with a Moslem on this
beach, and at first the Frank rider had
it all his own way and he passed the
Moslem, but the course was long, very
long, and the horse of the Frank rider,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
which was a Frank horse also, panted;
but the horse of the Moslem panted not,
for he was a Moslem also, and the Moslem
rider at last gave a cry, and the
horse sprang forward and he overtook
the Frank horse, and then the Moslem
rider stood up in his saddle. How did
he stand? Truly he stood on his head,
and these eyes saw him; he stood on his
head in the saddle as he passed the Frank
rider; and he cried ha! ha! as he passed
the Frank rider; and the Moslem horse
cried ha! ha! as he passed the Frank
breed, and the Frank lost by a far distance.
Good are the Franks, good their
horses; but better are the Moslems, and
better the horses of the Moslems."'</p>

<p>That boy, as he lay curled up in his
chair, doting over the enchanted page,
knew full well, else had he been no Christian
boy, that it was not a Sunday book
which was making his eyes start out of
his head; yet, reckless, he cried, 'ha! ha!'
and read on, and as he read he blessed the
madcap Borrow for having called his romance
by the sober-sounding, propitiatory
title of <i>The Bible in Spain</i>!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>In a world of dust and ashes it is a
foolish thing to prophesy immortality, or
even a long term of years, for any fellow-mortal.
Good luck does not usually pursue
such predictions. England can boast
few keener, better-qualified critics than
that admirable woman, Mrs. Barbauld, or,
not to dock her of her accustomed sizings,
Mrs. Anna L&aelig;titia Barbauld. And yet
what do we find her saying? 'The young
may melt into tears at <i>Julia Mandeville</i>,
and <i>The Man of Feeling</i>, the romantic
will shudder at <i>Udolpho</i>, but those of
mature age who know what human nature
is, will take up again and again Dr.
Moore's <i>Zeluco</i>.' One hates to contradict
a lady like Mrs. Barbauld, or to speak in
terms of depreciation of any work of Mrs.
Radcliffe's, whose name is still as a pleasant
savour in the nostrils; therefore I will
let <i>Udolpho</i> alone. As for Henry Mackenzie's
<i>Man of Feeling</i>, what was good
enough for Sir Walter Scott ought surely
to be good enough for us, most days. I
am no longer young, and cannot therefore
be expected to melt into tears at <i>Julia</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
<i>Mandeville</i>, but here my toleration is exhausted.
Dr. Moore's <i>Zeluco</i> is too much;
maturity has many ills to bear, but repeated
perusals of this work cannot fairly
be included amongst them.</p>

<p>Still, though prediction is to be avoided,
it is impossible to feel otherwise than very
cheerful about George Borrow. His is a
good life. Anyhow, he will outlive most
people, and that at all events is a comfort.</p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="CARDINAL_NEWMAN" id="CARDINAL_NEWMAN"></a>CARDINAL NEWMAN<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></h2>

<p class="center">I</p>


<p>There are some men whose names are
inseparably and exclusively associated with
movements; there are others who are for
ever united in human memories with places;
it is the happy fortune of the distinguished
man whose name is at the top of this page
to be able to make good both titles to an
estate in our minds and hearts; for whilst
his fierce intellectual energy made him
the leader of a great movement, his rare
and exquisite tenderness has married his
name to a lovely place. Whenever men's
thoughts dwell upon the revival of Church
authority in England and America during
this century, they will recall the Vicar of
St. Mary's, Oxford, who lived to become a
Cardinal of Rome, and whenever the lover
of all things that are quiet, and gentle, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
true in life, and literature, visits Oxford he
will find himself wondering whether snap-dragon
still grows outside the windows of
the rooms in Trinity, where once lived the
author of the <i>Apologia</i>.</p>

<p>The Rev. John Wesley was a distinguished
man, if ever there was one, and his
name is associated with a movement certainly
as remarkable as, and a great deal
more useful than, the one connected with
the name of Newman. Wesley's great
missionary tours in Devon and Cornwall,
and the wild, remote parts of Lancashire,
lack no single element of sublimity. To
this day the memories of those apostolic
journeys are green and precious, and a
source of strength and joy: the portrait
of the eager preacher hangs up in almost
every miner's cottage, whilst his name is
pronounced with reverence by a hundred
thousand lips. 'You seem a very temperate
people here,' once observed a thirsty pedestrian
(who was, indeed, none other than the
present writer) to a Cornish miner, 'how
did it happen?' He replied solemnly,
raising his cap, 'There came a man amongst
us once, and his name was John Wesley.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
Wesley was an Oxford man, but he is not
much in men's thoughts as they visit that
city of enchantment. Why is this? It is
because, great as Wesley was, he lacked
charm. As we read his diaries and letters,
we are interested, we are moved, but we
are not pleased. Now, Oxford pleases and
charms. Therefore it is, that when we
allow ourselves a day in her quadrangles
we find ourselves thinking of Dr. Newman,
and his Trinity snap-dragon, and how the
Rev. William James, 'some time in the year
1823,' taught him the doctrine of Apostolic
Succession in the course of a walk
round Christchurch Meadow, rather than
of Wesley and his prayer-meetings at Lincoln,
which were proclaimed by the authorities
as savouring of sedition.</p>

<p>A strong personal attachment of the kind
which springs up from reading an author,
which is distilled through his pages, and
turns his foibles, even his follies, into pleasant
things we would not for the world have
altered, is apt to cause the reader, who is
thus affected, to exaggerate the importance
of any intellectual movement with which
the author happened to be associated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
There are, I know, people who think this
is notably so in Dr. Newman's case. Crusty
men are to be met with, who rudely say they
have heard enough of the Oxford movement,
and that the time is over for penning ecstatic
paragraphs about Dr. Newman's personal
appearance in the pulpit at St. Mary's. I
think these crusty people are wrong. The
movement was no doubt an odd one in
some of its aspects&mdash;it wore a very academic
air indeed; and to be academic is to
be ridiculous, in the opinion of many. Our
great Northern towns lived their grimy
lives amidst the whirl of their machinery,
quite indifferent to the movement. Our
huge Nonconformist bodies knew no more
of the University of Oxford in those days,
than they did of the University of T&uuml;bingen.
This movement sent no missionaries
to the miners, and its tracts were not of
the kind that are served suddenly upon you
in the streets like legal process, but were,
in fact, bulky treatises stuffed full of the
dead languages. London, of course, heard
about the movement, and, so far as she was
not tickled by the comicality of the notion
of anything really important happening<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
outside her cab-radius, was irritated by it.
Mr. Henry Rogers poked heavy fun at it
in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. Mr. Isaac Taylor
wrote two volumes to prove that ancient
Christianity was a drivelling and childish superstition,
and in the opinion of some pious
Churchmen succeeded in doing so. But
for the most part people left the movement
alone, unless they happened to be Bishops
or very clerically connected. 'The bishops,'
says Dr. Newman, 'began charging against
us.' But bishops' charges are amongst the
many seemingly important things that do
not count in England. It is said to be the
duty of an archdeacon to read his bishop's
charge, but it is undoubted law that a mandamus
will not be granted to compel him to
do so.</p>

<p>But notwithstanding this aspect of the
case, it was a genuine thought-movement
in propagating which these long-coated
parsons, with their dry jokes, strange
smiles, and queer notions were engaged.
They used to drive about the country in
gigs, from one parsonage to another, and
leave their tracts behind them. They were
not concerned with the flocks&mdash;their message
was to the shepherds. As for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
Dissenters, they had nothing to say to
them, except that their very presence in
a parish was a plenary argument for the
necessity of the movement.</p>

<p>The Tractarians met with the usual fortune
of those who peddle new ideas. Some
rectors did not want to be primitive&mdash;more
did not know what it meant; but enough
were found pathetically anxious to read a
meaning into their services and offices, to
make it plain that the Tracts really were
'for' and not 'against' the times.</p>

<p>The great plot, plan, or purpose, call it
what you will, of the Tractarian movement
was to make Churchmen believe with a personal
conviction that the Church of England
was not a mere National Institution, like the
House of Commons or the game of cricket,
but a living branch of that Catholic Church
which God had from the beginning, endowed
with sacramental gifts and graces,
with a Priesthood apostolically descended,
with a Creed, precise and specific, which it
was the Church's duty to teach, and man's
to believe, and with a ritual and discipline
to be practised and maintained, with daily
piety and entire submission.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>

<p>These were new ideas in 1833. When
Dr. Newman was ordained in 1824, he has
told us, he did not look on ordination as a
sacramental rite, nor did he ascribe to baptism
any supernatural virtue.</p>

<p>It cannot be denied that the Tractarians
had their work before them. But they had
forces on their side.</p>

<p>It is always pleasant to rediscover the
meaning of words and forms which have
been dulled by long usage. This is why
etymology is so fascinating. By the natural
bent of our minds we are lovers of whatever
things are true and real. We hanker
after facts. To get a grip of reality is a
pleasure so keen&mdash;most of our faith is so
desperate a 'make-believe,' that it is not to
be wondered at that pious folk should have
been found who rejoiced to be told that
what they had been saying and doing all
the years of their lives really had a meaning
and a history of its own. One would have
to be very unsympathetic not to perceive
that the time we are speaking of must have
been a very happy one for many a devout
soul. The dry bones lived&mdash;formal devotions
were turned into joyous acts of faith<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
and piety. The Church became a Living
Witness to the Truth. She could be interrogated&mdash;she
could answer. The old
calendar was revived, and Saint's Day followed
Saint's Day, and season season, in
the sweet procession of the Christian Year.
Pretty girls got up early, made the sign of
the Cross, and, unscared by devils, tripped
across the dewy meadows to Communion.
Grave men read the Fathers, and found
themselves at home in the Fourth Century.</p>

<p>A great writer had, so it appears, all
unconsciously prepared the way for this
Neo-Catholicism. Dr. Newman has never
forgotten to pay tribute to Sir Walter
Scott.</p>

<p>Sir Walter's work has proved to be of so
permanent a character, his insight into all
things Scotch so deep and true, and his
human worth and excellence so rare and
noble, that it has hardly been worth while
to remember the froth and effervescence
he at first occasioned; but that he did
create a movement in the Oxford direction
is certain. He made the old Catholic
times interesting. He was not indeed, like
the Tractarians, a man of 'primitive' mind;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
but he was romantic, and it all told. For
this we have the evidence not only of Dr.
Newman (a very nice observer), but also
of the delightful, the bewitching, the never
sufficiently-to-be-praised George Borrow&mdash;Borrow,
the Friend of Man, at whose bidding
lassitude and languor strike their
tents and flee; and health and spirits, adventure
and human comradeship, take up
the reins of life, whistle to the horses, and
away you go!</p>

<p>Borrow has indeed, in the Appendix to
the <i>Romany Rye</i>, written of Sir Walter
after a fashion for which I hope he has
been forgiven. A piece of invective more
terrible, more ungenerous, more savagely
and exultingly cruel, is nowhere to be
found. I shudder when I think of it. Had
another written it, nothing he ever wrote
should be in the same room with the
<i>Heart of Midlothian</i>, <i>Redgauntlet</i>, and
<i>The Antiquary</i>. I am not going to get
angry with George Borrow. I say at once&mdash;I
cannot afford it. But neither am I
going to quote from the Appendix. God
forbid! I can find elsewhere what will
suit my purpose just as well. Readers of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
<i>Lavengro</i> will remember the Man in
Black. It is hard to forget him, the scandalous
creature, or his story of the ironmonger's
daughter at Birmingham 'who
screeches to the piano the Lady of the
Lake's hymn to the Virgin Mary, always
weeps when Mary Queen of Scots is mentioned,
and fasts on the anniversary of
the death of that very wise martyr,
Charles I. Why, said the Man in Black,
I would engage to convert such an idiot
to popery in a week, were it worth my
trouble. O Cavaliere Gualtereo, avete
fatto molto in favore della Santa Sede.'</p>

<p>Another precursor was Coleridge, who
(amongst other things) called attention to
the writings of the earlier Anglican divines&mdash;some
of whom were men of primitive
tempers and Catholic aspirations. Andrews
and Laud, Jackson, Bull, Hammond
and Thorndyke&mdash;sound divines to a man&mdash;found
the dust brushed off them. The
second-hand booksellers, a wily and observant
race, became alive to the fact that
though Paley and Warburton, Horsley and
Hoadley, were not worth the brown paper
they came wrapped up in, seventeenth-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>century
theology would bear being marked
high.</p>

<p>Thus was the long Polar Winter that had
befallen Anglican theology broken up, and
the icebergs began moving about after a
haphazard and even dangerous fashion&mdash;but
motion is always something.</p>

<p>What has come to the Movement? It
is hard to say. Its great leader has written
a book of fascinating interest to prove that
it was not a genuine Anglican movement
at all; that it was foreign to the National
Church, and that neither was its life derived
from, nor was its course in the direction of,
the National Church. But this
was after he himself had joined the Church
of Rome. Nobody, however, ventured to
contradict him, nor is this surprising when
we remember the profusion of argument
and imagery with which he supported his
case.</p>

<p>A point was reached, and then things
were allowed to drop. The Church of
Rome received some distinguished converts
with her usual well-bred composure, and
gave them little things to do in their new
places. The Tracts for the Times, neatly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
bound, repose on many shelves. Tract
No. 90, that fierce bomb-shell which once
scattered confusion through clerical circles,
is perhaps the only bit of Dr. Newman's
writing one does not, on thinking of, wish
to sit down at once to re-read. The fact
is that the movement, as a movement with
a terminus <i>ad quem</i>, was fairly beaten by a
power fit to be matched with Rome herself&mdash;John
Bullism. John Bull could not be
got to assume a Catholic demeanour. When
his judges denied that the grace of Baptism
was a dogma of his faith, Bull, instead of
behaving as did the people of Milan when
Ambrose was persecuted by an Arian Government,
was hugely pleased, clapped his
thigh, and exclaimed, through the mouth of
Lord John Russell, that the ruling was
'sure to give general satisfaction,' as indeed
it did.</p>

<p>The work of the movement can still be
seen in the new spirit that has descended
upon the Church of England and in the
general heightening of Church principles;
but the movement itself is no longer to be
seen, or much of the temper or modes of
thought of the Tractarians. The High<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
Church clergyman of to-day is no Theologian&mdash;he
is an Opportunist. The Tractarian
took his stand upon Antiquity&mdash;he
laboured his points, he was always ready to
prove his Rule of Faith and to define his
position. His successor, though he has
appropriated the results of the struggle,
does not trouble to go on waging it. He
is as a rule no great reader&mdash;you may often
search his scanty library in vain for the
works of Bishop Jackson. Were you to
ask for them, it is quite possible he would
not know to what bishop of that name you
were referring. He is as hazy about the
Hypostatic Union as are many laymen
about the Pragmatic Sanction. He is all
for the People and for filling his Church.
The devouring claims of the Church of
Rome do not disturb his peace of mind.
He thinks it very rude of her to dispute
the validity of his orders&mdash;but, then,
foreigners are rude! And so he goes on
his hard-working way, with his high doctrines
and his early services, and has neither
time nor inclination for those studies that
lend support to his priestly pretensions.</p>

<p>This temper of mind has given us peace<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
in our time, and has undoubtedly promoted
the cause of Temperance and other good
works; but some day or another the old
questions will have to be gone into again,
and the Anglican claim to be a Church,
Visible, Continuous, Catholic, and Gifted,
investigated&mdash;probably for the last time.</p>

<p>Cynics may declare that it will be but a
storm in a teacup&mdash;a dispute in which
none but 'women, priests, and peers' will
be called upon to take part&mdash;but it is not
an obviously wise policy to be totally indifferent
to what other people are thinking
about&mdash;simply because your own thoughts
are running in other directions.</p>

<p>But all this is really no concern of mine.
My object is to call attention to Dr. Newman's
writings from a purely literary point
of view.</p>

<p>The charm of Dr. Newman's style necessarily
baffles description: as well might
one seek to analyse the fragrance of a
flower, or to expound in words the jumping
of one's heart when a beloved friend unexpectedly
enters the room. It is hard to
describe charm. Mr. Matthew Arnold,
who is a poet, gets near it:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;And what but gentleness untired,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And what but noble feeling warm,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Wherever seen, howe'er inspired,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Is grace, is charm?&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>One can of course heap on words. Dr. Newman's
style is pellucid, it is animated, it is
varied; at times icy cold, it oftener glows
with a fervent heat; it employs as its obedient
and well-trained servant, a vast vocabulary,
and it does so always with the ease
of the educated gentleman, who by a sure
instinct ever avoids alike the ugly pedantry
of the book-worm, the forbidding accents
of the lawyer, and the stiff conceit of the
man of scientific theory. Dr. Newman's
sentences sometimes fall upon the ear like
well-considered and final judgments, each
word being weighed and counted out with
dignity and precision; but at other times
the demeanour and language of the judge
are hastily abandoned, and, substituted for
them, we encounter the impetuous torrent&mdash;the
captivating rhetoric, the brilliant
imagery, the frequent examples, the repetition
of the same idea in different words, of
the eager and accomplished advocate addressing
men of like passions with himself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>

<p>Dr. Newman always aims at effect, and
never misses it. He writes as an orator
speaks, straight at you. His object is to convince,
and to convince by engaging your attention,
exciting your interest, enlivening
your fancy. It is not his general practice to
address the pure reason. He knows (he well
may) how little reason has to do with men's
convictions. 'I do not want,' he says, 'to
be converted by a smart syllogism.' In
another place he observes: 'The heart is
commonly reached not through the reason&mdash;but
through the imagination by means
of direct impressions, by the testimony of
facts and events, by history and by description.
Persons influence us, voices
melt us, books subdue us, deeds inflame
us.' I have elsewhere ventured upon a
comparison between Burke and Newman.
Both men, despite their subtlety and learning
and super-refinement, their love of fine
points and their splendid capacity for stating
them in language so apt as to make
one's admiration breathless, took very
broad, common-sense, matter-of-fact views
of humanity, and ever had the ordinary
man and woman in mind as they spoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
and wrote. Politics and Religion existed
in their opinion, for the benefit of plain
folk, for Richard and for Jane, or, in other
words, for living bundles of hopes and
fears, doubts and certainties, prejudices and
passions. Anarchy and Atheism are in
their opinion the two great enemies of the
Human Race. How are they to be frustrated
and confounded, men and women
being what they are? Dr. Newman, recluse
though he is, has always got the world
stretched out before him; its unceasing
roar sounds in his ear as does the murmur
of ocean in the far inland shell. In one of
his Catholic Sermons, the sixth of his Discourses
to Mixed Congregations, there is a
gorgeous piece of rhetoric in which he describes
the people looking in at the shop-windows
and reading advertisements in the
newspapers. Many of his pages positively
glow with light and heat and colour. One
is at times reminded of Fielding. And all
this comparing, and distinguishing, and illustrating,
and appealing, and describing,
is done with the practised hand of a consummate
writer and orator. He is as
subtle as Gladstone, and as moving as Ers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>kine;
but whereas Gladstone is occasionally
clumsy and Erskine is frequently
crude, Newman is never clumsy, Newman
is never crude, but always graceful, always
mellowed.</p>

<p>Humour he possesses in a marked degree.
A quiet humour, of course, as befits
his sober profession and the gravity of the
subjects on which he loves to discourse.
It is not the humour that is founded on
a lively sense of the incongruous. This
kind, though the most delightful of all, is
apt, save in the hands of the great masters,
the men whom you can count upon your
fingers, to wear a slightly professional
aspect. It happens unexpectedly, but all
the same we expect it to happen, and we
have got our laughter ready. Newman's
quiet humour always takes us unawares,
and is accepted gratefully, partly on account
of its intrinsic excellence, and partly
because we are glad to find that the</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Pilgrim pale with Paul's sad girdle bound&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>has room for mirth in his heart.</p>

<p>In sarcasm Dr. Newman is pre-eminent.
Here his extraordinary powers of compres<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>sion,
which are little short of marvellous
in one who has also such a talent for
expansion, come to his aid and enable him
to squeeze into a couple of sentences,
pleadings, argument, judgment, and execution.
Had he led the secular life, and
adopted a Parliamentary career, he would
have been simply terrific, for his weapons
of offence are both numerous and deadly.
His sentences stab&mdash;his invective destroys.
The pompous high-placed imbecile
mouthing his platitudes, the wordy sophister
with his oven full of half-baked
thoughts, the ill-bred rhetorician with his
tawdry aphorisms, the heartless hate-producing
satirist, would have gone down
before his sword and spear. But God was
merciful to these sinners: Newman became
a Priest and they Privy Councillors.</p>

<p>And lastly, all these striking qualities
and gifts float about in a pleasant atmosphere.
As there are some days even in
England when merely to go out and breathe
the common air is joy, and when, in consequence,
that grim tyrant, our bosom's
lord</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Sits lightly in his throne,&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>
<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
<p>so, to take up almost any one of Dr. Newman's
books, and they are happily numerous&mdash;between
twenty and thirty volumes&mdash;is
to be led away from 'evil tongues,'
and the 'sneers of selfish men,' from the
mud and the mire, the shoving and pushing
that gather and grow round the pig-troughs
of life, into a diviner ether, a purer
air, and is to spend your time in the company
of one who, though he may sometimes
astonish, yet never fails to make
you feel (to use Carlyle's words about a
very different author), 'that you have
passed your evening well and nobly, as
in a temple of wisdom, not ill and disgracefully
as in brawling tavern supper-rooms
with fools and noisy persons.'</p>

<p>The tendency to be egotistical noticeable
in some persons who are free from the
faintest taint of egotism is a tendency hard
to account for&mdash;but delightful to watch.</p>

<p>'Anything,' says glorious John Dryden,
'though ever so little, which a man speaks
of himself&mdash;in my opinion, is still too
much.' A sound opinion most surely,
and yet how interesting are the personal
touches we find scattered up and down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
Dryden's noble prefaces. So with Newman&mdash;his
dignity, his self-restraint, his
taste, are all the greatest stickler for a stiff
upper lip and the consumption of your own
smoke could desire, and yet the personal
note is frequently sounded. He is never
afraid to strike it when the perfect harmony
that exists between his character
and his style demands its sound, and so it
has come about that we love what he has
written because he wrote it, and we love
him who wrote it because of what he has
written.</p>

<p>I now approach by far the pleasantest
part of my task, namely, the selection of
two or three passages from Dr. Newman's
books by way of illustrating what I have
taken the liberty to say are notable characteristics
of his style.</p>

<p>Let me begin with a chance specimen
of the precision of his language. The passage
is from the prefatory notice the Cardinal
prefixed to the Rev. William Palmer's
<i>Notes of a Visit to the Russian Church in
the Years 1840, 1841</i>. It is dated 1882,
and is consequently the writing of a man
over eighty years of age: 'William Palmer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
was one of those earnest-minded and devout
men, forty years since, who, deeply
convinced of the great truth that our
Lord had instituted, and still acknowledges
and protects, a Visible Church&mdash;one,
individual, and integral; Catholic,
as spread over the earth, Apostolic, as
coeval with the Apostles of Christ, and
Holy, as being the dispenser of His Word
and Sacraments&mdash;considered it at present
to exist in three main branches, or
rather in a triple presence, the Latin, the
Greek, and the Anglican, these three
being one and the same Church distinguishable
from each other by secondary,
fortuitous, and local, though important
characteristics. And whereas the whole
Church in its fulness was, as they believed,
at once and severally Anglican,
Greek, and Latin, so in turn each one
of those three was the whole Church;
whence it followed that, whenever any
one of the three was present, the other
two, by the nature of the case, was absent,
and therefore the three could not have
direct relations with each other, as if they
were three substantive bodies, there being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
no real difference between them except
the external accident of place. Moreover,
since, as has been said, on a given
territory there could not be more than
one of the three, it followed that Christians
generally, wherever they were, were
bound to recognise, and had a claim to be
recognised by that one; ceasing to belong
to the Anglican Church, as Anglican,
when they were at Rome, and ignoring
Rome, as Rome, when they found themselves
at Moscow. Lastly, not to acknowledge
this inevitable outcome of the
initial idea of the Church, viz., that it was
both everywhere and one, was bad logic,
and to act in opposition to it was nothing
short of setting up altar against altar,
that is, the hideous sin of schism, and a
sacrilege. This I conceive to be the formal
teaching of Anglicanism.'</p>

<p>The most carefully considered judgments
of Lord Westbury or Lord Cairns
may be searched in vain for finer examples
of stern accuracy and beautiful aptness of
language.</p>

<p>For examples of what may be called
Newman's oratorical rush, one has not far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
to look&mdash;though when torn from their
context and deprived of their conclusion
they are robbed of three-fourths of their
power. Here is a passage from his second
lecture addressed to the Anglican Party
of 1833. It is on the Life of the National
Church of England.</p>

<p>'Doubtless the National religion is alive.
It is a great power in the midst of us, it
wields an enormous influence; it represses
a hundred foes; it conducts a
hundred undertakings; it attracts men to
it, uses them, rewards them; it has thousands
of beautiful homes up and down
the country where quiet men may do its
work and benefit its people; it collects
vast sums in the shape of voluntary offerings,
and with them it builds Churches,
prints and distributes innumerable Bibles,
books, and tracts, and sustains missionaries
in all parts of the earth. In all
parts of the earth it opposes the Catholic
Church, denounces her as anti-christian,
bribes the world against her, obstructs
her influence, apes her authority, and
confuses her evidence. In all parts of
the world it is the religion of gentlemen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
of scholars, of men of substance, and
men of no personal faith at all. If this
be life, if it be life to impart a tone to
the Court and Houses of Parliament, to
Ministers of State, to law and literature,
to universities and schools, and to society,
if it be life to be a principle of order
in the population, and an organ of benevolence
and almsgiving towards the poor,
if it be life to make men decent, respectable,
and sensible, to embellish and reform
the family circle, to deprive vice of
its grossness and to shed a glow over
avarice and ambition; if, indeed, it is the
life of religion to be the first jewel in the
Queen's crown, and the highest step of
her throne, then doubtless the National
Church is replete, it overflows with life;
but the question has still to be answered:
life of what kind?'</p>

<p>For a delightful example of Dr. Newman's
humour, which is largely, if not entirely,
a playful humour, I will remind the
reader of the celebrated imaginary speech
against the British Constitution attributed
to 'a member of the junior branch of the
Potemkin family,' and supposed to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
been delivered at Moscow in the year 1850.
It is too long for quotation, but will be
found in the first of the <i>Lectures on the
Present Position of Catholics in England</i>.
The whole book is one of the best humoured
books in the English language.</p>

<p>Of his sarcasm, the following example,
well-known as it is, must be given. It
occurs in the <i>Essay on the Prospects of the
Anglican Church</i>, which is reprinted from
the <i>British Critic</i> in the first volume of
the <i>Essays Critical and Historical</i>.</p>

<p>'In the present day mistiness is the
mother of wisdom. A man who can set
down half a dozen general propositions,
which escape from destroying one another
only by being diluted into truisms, who
can hold the balance between opposites
so skilfully as to do without fulcrum or
beam, who never enunciates a truth without
guarding himself from being supposed
to exclude the contradictory, who holds
that Scripture is the only authority&mdash;yet
that the Church is to be deferred to, that
faith only justifies, yet that it does not
justify without works, that grace does not
depend on the sacraments, yet is not given<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
without them, that bishops are a divine
ordinance&mdash;yet those who have them
not are in the same religious condition as
those who have&mdash;this is your safe man
and the hope of the Church; this is what
the Church is said to want, not party
men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging
persons to guide it through the
channel of No-meaning, between the Scylla
and Charybdis of Aye and No. But,
alas! reading sets men thinking. They
will not keep standing in that very attitude,
which you please to call sound
Church-of-Englandism or orthodox Protestantism.
It tires them, it is so very
awkward, and for the life of them&mdash;they
cannot continue in it long together, where
there is neither article nor canon to lean
against&mdash;they cannot go on for ever standing
on one leg, or sitting without a chair,
or walking with their legs tied, or grazing
like Tityrus's stags on the air. Promises
imply conclusions&mdash;germs lead to developments;
principles have issues; doctrines
lead to action.'</p>

<p>Of the personal note to which I have
made reference&mdash;no examples need or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
should be given. Such things must not
be transplanted from their own homes.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;The delicate shells lay on the shore;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The bubbles of the latest wave<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Fresh pearl to their enamel gave;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And the bellowing of the savage sea<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Greeted their safe escape to me.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I wiped away the weeds and foam<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And brought my sea-born treasures home:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">But the poor, unsightly noisome things<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Had left their beauty on the shore,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>If I may suppose this paper read by
someone who is not yet acquainted with
Newman's writings I would advise him,
unless he is bent on theology, to begin not
with the <i>Sermons</i>, not even with the <i>Apologia</i>,
but with the <i>Lectures on the Present
Position of Catholics in England</i>. Then
let him take up the <i>Lectures on the Idea
of an University</i>, and on <i>University Subjects</i>.
These may be followed by <i>Discussions
and Arguments</i>, after which he will
be well disposed to read the <i>Lectures on
the Difficulties felt by Anglicans</i>. If after
he has despatched these volumes he is not
infected with what one of those charging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
Bishops called 'Newmania,' he is possessed
of a devil of obtuseness no wit of man can
expel.</p>

<p>Of the strength of Dr. Newman's philosophical
position, which he has explained
in his <i>Grammar of Assent</i>, it would ill become
me to speak. He there strikes the
shield of John Locke. <i>Non nostrum est
tantas componere lites.</i> But it is difficult
for the most ignorant of us not to have shy
notions and lurking suspicions even about
such big subjects and great men. Locke
maintained that a man's belief in a proposition
really depended upon and bore a relation
to the weight of evidence forthcoming
in its favour. Dr. Newman asserts that
certainty is a quality of propositions, and
he has discovered in man 'an illative sense'
whereby conclusions are converted into
dogmas and a measured concurrence into
an unlimited and absolute assurance. This
illative sense is hardly a thing (if I may use
an expression for ever associated with Lord
Macaulay) to be cocksure about. Wedges,
said the medi&aelig;val mechanic to his pupils,
split wood by virtue of a wood-splitting
quality in wedges&mdash;but now we are indis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>posed
to endow wedges with qualities, and
if not wedges, why propositions? But the
<i>Grammar of Assent</i> is a beautiful book, and
with a quotation from it I will close my
quotations: 'Thus it is that Christianity
is the fulfilment of the promise made to
Abraham and of the Mosaic revelations;
this is how it has been able from the first
to occupy the world, and gain a hold on
every class of human society to which its
preachers reached; this is why the Roman
power and the multitude of religions which
it embraced could not stand against it;
this is the secret of its sustained energy,
and its never-flagging martyrdoms; this is
how at present it is so mysteriously potent,
in spite of the new and fearful adversaries
which beset its path. It has with it that
gift of stanching and healing the one deep
wound of human nature, which avails more
for its success than a full encyclop&aelig;dia of
scientific knowledge and a whole library
of controversy, and therefore it must last
while human nature lasts.'</p>

<p>It is fitting that our last quotation should
be one which leaves the Cardinal face to
face with his faith.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p>

<p>Dr. Newman's poetry cannot be passed
over without a word, though I am ill-fitted
to do it justice. <i>Lead, Kindly Light</i> has
forced its way into every hymn-book and
heart. Those who go, and those who do
not go to church, the fervent believer and
the tired-out sceptic here meet on common
ground. The language of the verses in
their intense sincerity seems to reduce all
human feelings, whether fed on dogmas
and holy rites or on man's own sad heart,
to a common denominator.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;The night is dark, and I am far from home,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Lead Thou me on.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>The believer can often say no more. The
unbeliever will never willingly say less.</p>

<p>Amongst Dr. Newman's <i>Verses on Various
Occasions</i>&mdash;though in some cases the
earlier versions to be met with in the <i>Lyra
Apostolica</i> are to be preferred to the later&mdash;poems
will be found by those who seek,
conveying sure and certain evidence of the
possession by the poet of the true lyrical
gift&mdash;though almost cruelly controlled by
the course of the poet's thoughts and the
nature of his subjects. One is sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
constrained to cry, 'Oh, if he could only
get out into the wild blowing airs, how
his pinions would sweep the skies!' but
such thoughts are unlicensed and unseemly.
That we have two such religious poets as
Cardinal Newman and Miss Christina Rossetti
is or ought to be matter for sincere
rejoicing.</p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<p class="center">II</p>


<p>To the inveterate truth-hunter there has
been much of melancholy in the very numerous
estimates, hasty estimates no doubt,
but all manifestly sincere, which the death
of Cardinal Newman has occasioned.</p>

<p>The nobility of the pursuit after truth
wherever the pursuit may lead has been
abundantly recognised. Nobody has been
base enough or cynical enough to venture
upon a sneer. It has been marvellous to
notice what a hold an unpopular thinker,
dwelling very far apart from the trodden
paths of English life and thought, had
obtained upon men's imaginations. The
'man in the street' was to be heard declaring
that the dead Cardinal was a fine
fellow. The newspaper-makers were as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>tonished
at the interest displayed by their
readers. How many of these honest
mourners, asked the <i>Globe</i>, have read a
page of Newman's writings? It is a vain
inquiry. Newman's books have long had
a large and increasing sale. They stand
on all sorts of shelves, and wherever they
go a still, small voice accompanies them.
They are speaking books; an air breathes
from their pages.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Again I saw and I confess'd<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Thy speech was rare and high,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And yet it vex'd my burden'd breast,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And scared I knew not why.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>It is a strange criticism that recently
declared Newman's style to lack individuality.
Oddity it lacked, and mannerisms,
but not, so it seems to me, individuality.</p>

<p>But this wide recognition of Newman's
charm both of character and style cannot
conceal from the anxious truth-hunter that
there has been an almost equally wide
recognition of the futility of Newman's
method and position.</p>

<p>Method and position? These were sacred
words with the Cardinal. But a few
days ago he seemed securely posed before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
the world. It cannot surely have been his
unrivalled dialectics only that made men
keep civil tongues in their heads or hesitate
to try conclusions with him. It was
rather, we presume, that there was no especial
occasion to speak of him otherwise
than with the respect and affection due to
honoured age. But when he is dead&mdash;it
is different. It is necessary then to gauge
his method and to estimate his influence,
not as a living man, but as a dead one.</p>

<p>And what has that estimate been? The
saintly life, the mysterious presence, are
admitted, and well-nigh nothing else. All
sorts of reasons are named, some plausible,
all cunningly contrived, to account for
Newman's quarrel with the Church of his
baptism. A writer in the <i>Guardian</i> suggests
one, a writer in the <i>Times</i> another,
a writer in the <i>Saturday Review</i> a third,
and so on.</p>

<p>However much these reasons may differ
one from another, they all agree in this,
that of necessity they have ceased to operate.
They were personal reasons, and
perished with the man whose faith and
actions they controlled. Nobody else, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
has been throughout assumed, will become
a Romanist for the same reasons as John
Henry Newman. If he had not been
brought up an Evangelical, if he had learnt
German, if he had married, if he had been
made an archdeacon, all would have been
different.</p>

<p>There is something positively terrible in
this natural history of opinion. All the passion
and the pleading of a life, the thought,
and the labour, the sustained argument,
the library of books, reduced to what?&mdash;a
series of accidents!</p>

<p>Newman himself well knew this aspect of
affairs. No one's plummet since Pascal's
had taken deeper soundings of the infirmity&mdash;the
oceanic infirmity&mdash;of the intellect.
What actuary, he asks contemptuously, can
appraise the value of a man's opinions? In
how many a superb passage does he exhibit
the absurd, the haphazard fashion in which
men and women collect the odds and ends,
the bits and scraps they are pleased to place
in the museum of their minds, and label, in
all good faith, their convictions! Newman
almost revels in such subjects. The solemn
pomposity which so frequently digni<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>fies
with the name of research or inquiry
feeble scratchings amongst heaps of verbosity
had no more determined foe than the
Cardinal.</p>

<p>But now the same measure is being meted
out to him, and we are told of a thinker's
life&mdash;it is nought.</p>

<p>He thought he had constructed a way of
escape from the City of Destruction for
himself and his followers across the bridge
of that illative sense which turns conclusions
into assents, and opinions into faiths&mdash;but
the bridge seems no longer standing.</p>

<p>The writer in the <i>Guardian</i>, who attributes
Newman's restlessness in the English
Church to the smug and comfortable life
of many of its clergy rather than to any
especial craving after authority, no doubt
wrote with knowledge.</p>

<p>A married clergy seemed always to annoy
Newman. Readers of <i>Loss and Gain</i>
are not likely to forget the famous 'pork
chop' passage, which describes a young parson
and his bride bustling into a stationer's
shop to buy hymnals and tracts. What was
once only annoyance at some of the ways<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
of John Bull on his knees, soon ripened
into something not very unlike hatred.
Never was any invention less <i>ben trovato</i>
than that which used to describe Newman
as pining after the 'incomparable liturgy'
or the 'cultured society' of the Church of
England. He hated <i>ex animo</i> all those aspects
of Anglicanism which best recommend
it to Erastian minds. A church of
which sanctity is <i>not</i> a note is sure to have
many friends.</p>

<p>The <i>Saturday Review</i> struck up a fine
national tune:</p>

<p>'An intense but narrow conception of
personal holiness, and personal satisfaction
with dogma, ate him (Newman) up&mdash;the
natural legacy of the Evangelical
school in which he had been nursed, the
great tradition of Tory churchmanship,
<i>of pride in the Church of England, as
such</i>, of determination to stand shoulder
to shoulder in resisting the foreigner,
whether he came from Rome or from
Geneva, from T&uuml;bingen, or from Saint
Sulpice, of the union of all social and
intellectual culture with theological learning&mdash;the
idea which, alone of all such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
ideas, has made education patriotic, and
orthodoxy generous, made insufficient appeal
to him, and for want of it he himself
made shipwreck.'</p>

<p>Here is John Bullism, bold and erect.
If the Ark of Peter won't hoist the Union
Jack, John Bull must have an Ark of his
own, with patriotic clergy of his own manufacture
tugging at the oar, and with
nothing foreign in the hold save some
sound old port. 'It will always be remembered
to Newman's credit,' says this same
reviewer, 'that he knew good wine if he
did not drink much.' Mark the 'If';
there is much virtue in it.</p>

<p>We are now provided with two causes
of Newman's discomfort in the Church of
England&mdash;its too comfortable clergy, and
its too frequent introduction of the lion
and the unicorn amongst the symbols of
religion&mdash;both effective causes, as may be
proved by many passages; but to say that
either or both availed to drive him out,
and compelled him to seek shelter at the
hands of one whom he had long regarded
as a foe, is to go very far indeed.</p>

<p>It should not be overlooked that these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
minimisers of Newman's influence are all
firmly attached for different reasons to
the institution Newman left. Their judgments
therefore cannot be allowed to pass
unchallenged. What Disraeli meant when
he said that Newman's secession had dealt
the Church of England a blow under which
it still reeled, was that by this act Newman
expressed before the whole world his
profound conviction that our so-called National
Church was not a branch of the
Church Catholic. And this really is the
point of weakness upon which Newman
hurled himself. This is the damage he
did to the Church of this island. Throughout
all his writings, in a hundred places, in
jests and sarcasms as well as in papers and
arguments, there crops up this settled
conviction that England is not a Catholic
country, and that John Bull is not a member
of the Catholic Church.</p>

<p>This may not matter much to the British
electorate; but to those who care about
such things, who rely upon the validity of
orders and the efficacy of sacraments, who
need a pedigree for their faith, who do not
agree with Emerson that if a man would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
be great he must be a Nonconformist&mdash;over
these people it would be rash to assume
that Newman's influence is spent.
The general effect of his writings, the demands
they awaken, the spirit they breathe,
are all hostile to Anglicanism. They create
a profound dissatisfaction with, a distaste
for, the Church of England as by law established.
Those who are affected by this
spirit will no longer be able comfortably to
enjoy the maimed rites and practices of
their Church. They will feel their place
is elsewhere, and sooner or later they will
pack up and go. It is far too early in the
day to leave Newman out of sight.</p>

<p>But to end where we began. There has
been scant recognition in the Cardinal's
case of the usefulness of devoting life to
anxious inquiries after truth. It is very
noble to do so, and when you come to die,
the newspapers, from the <i>Times</i> to the
<i>Sporting Life</i>, will first point out, after
their superior fashion, how much better was
this pure-minded and unworldly thinker
than the soiled politician, full of opportunism
and inconsistency, trying hard to
drown the echoes of his past with his loud<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
vociferations, and then proceed in a few
short sentences to establish how out of
date is this Thinker's thought, how false
his reasoning, how impossible his conclusions,
and lastly, how dead his influence.</p>

<p>It is very puzzling and difficult, and drives
some men to collect butterflies and beetles.
Thinkers are not, however, to be disposed
of by scratches of the pen. A Cardinal of
the Roman Church is not, to say the least
of it, more obviously a shipwreck than a
dean or even a bishop of the English establishment.
Character, too, counts for
something. Of Newman it may be said:</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Fate gave what chance shall not control,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">His sad lucidity of soul.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>But the truth-hunter is still unsatisfied.</p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="MATTHEW_ARNOLD" id="MATTHEW_ARNOLD"></a>MATTHEW ARNOLD<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></h2>

<p class="center">I</p>


<p>The news of Mr. Arnold's sudden death
at Liverpool struck a chill into many hearts,
for although a somewhat constrained writer
(despite his playfulness) and certainly the
least boisterous of men, he was yet most
distinctly on the side of human enjoyment.
He conspired and contrived to make things
pleasant. Pedantry he abhorred. He was
a man of this life and this world. A
severe critic of the world he indeed was,
but finding himself in it and not precisely
knowing what is beyond it, like a brave
and true-hearted man he set himself to
make the best of it. Its sight and sounds
were dear to him. The 'uncrumpling
fern,' the eternal moon-lit snow, 'Sweet
William with its homely cottage-smell,'
'the red grouse springing at our sound,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
the tinkling bells of the 'high-pasturing
kine,' the vagaries of men, women, and
dogs, their odd ways and tricks, whether
of mind or manner, all delighted, amused,
tickled him. Human loves, joys, sorrows,
human relationships, ordinary ties interested
him:</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i2">&#8216;The help in strife,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The thousand sweet still joys of such<br /></span>
<span class="i0">As hand in hand face earthly life.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>In a sense of the words which is noble and
blessed, he was of the Earth Earthy.</p>

<p>In his earlier days Mr. Arnold was much
misunderstood. That rowdy Philistine the
<i>Daily Telegraph</i> called him 'a prophet of
the kid-glove persuasion,' and his own
too frequent iteration of the somewhat
dandiacal phrase 'sweetness and light'
helped to promote the notion that he was
a fanciful, finikin Oxonian,</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;A fine puss gentleman that's all perfume,&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>quite unfit for the most ordinary wear and
tear of life. He was in reality nothing of
the kind, though his literary style was a
little in keeping with this false conception.
His mind was based on the plainest possi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>ble
things. What he hated most was the
fantastic&mdash;the far-fetched, all elaborated
fancies, and strained interpretations. He
stuck to the beaten track of human experience,
and the broader the better. He was
a plain-sailing man. This is his true note.
In his much criticised, but as I think admirable
introduction to the selection he made
from Wordsworth's poems, he admits that
the famous <i>Ode on Intimations of Immortality
from Recollections in Early Childhood</i>
is not one of his prime favourites,
and in that connection he quotes from
Thucydides the following judgment on the
early exploits of the Greek Race and
applies it to these intimations of immortality
in babies. 'It is impossible to speak
with certainty of what is so remote, but
from all that we can really investigate
I should say that they were no very great
things.'</p>

<p>This quotation is in Mr. Arnold's own
vein. His readers will have no difficulty
in calling to mind numerous instances in
which his dislike of everything not broadly
based on the generally admitted facts of
sane experience manifests itself. Though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
fond&mdash;perhaps exceptionally fond&mdash;of
pretty things and sayings, he had a severe
taste, and hated whatever struck him as
being in the least degree sickly, or silly, or
over-heated. No doubt he may often have
considered that to be sickly or silly which
in the opinion of others was pious and becoming.
It may be that he was over-impatient
of men's flirtations with futurity.
As his paper on Professor Dowden's Life
of Shelley shows, he disapproved of 'irregular
relations.' He considered we were all
married to plain Fact, and objected to our
carrying on a flirtation with mystic maybe's
and calling it Religion. Had it been
a man's duty to believe in a specific revelation
it would have been God's duty to
make that revelation credible. Such, at
all events, would appear to have been the
opinion of this remarkable man, who
though he had even more than his share of
an Oxonian's reverence for the great
Bishop of Durham, was unable to admit
the force of the main argument of <i>The
Analogy</i>. Mr. Arnold was indeed too fond
of parading his inability for hard reasoning.
I am not, he keeps saying, like the Arch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>bishop
of York, or the Bishop of Gloucester
and Bristol. There was affectation
about this, for his professed inferiority did
not prevent him from making it almost
excruciatingly clear that in his opinion
those gifted prelates were, whilst exercising
their extraordinary powers, only beating
the air, or in plainer words busily
engaged in talking nonsense. But I must
not wander from my point, which simply is
that Arnold's dislike of anything recondite
or remote was intense, genuine, and characteristic.</p>

<p>He always asserted himself to be a good
Liberal. So in truth he was. A better
Liberal than many a one whose claim to
that title it would be thought absurd to
dispute. He did not indeed care very
much about some of the articles of the
Liberal creed as now professed. He had
taken a great dislike to the Deceased
Wife's Sister Bill. He wished the Church
and the State to continue to recognise each
other. He had not that jealousy of State
interference in England which used to be
(it is so no longer) a note of political
Liberalism. He sympathised with Italian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
national aspirations because he thought it
wrong to expect a country with such a
past as Italy to cast in her lot with Austria.
He did not sympathise with Irish
national aspirations because he thought
Ireland ought to be willing to admit that
she was relatively to England an inferior
and less interesting country, and therefore
one which had no moral claim for national
institutions. He may have been right or
wrong on these points without affecting
his claim to be considered a Liberal. Liberalism
is not a creed, but a frame of mind.
Mr. Arnold's frame of mind was Liberal.
No living man is more deeply permeated
with the grand doctrine of Equality than
was he. He wished to see his countrymen
and countrywomen all equal: Jack
as good as his master, and Jack's master
as good as Jack; and neither taking claptrap.
He had a hearty un-English dislike
of anomalies and absurdities. He fully
appreciated the French Revolution and
was consequently a Democrat. He was
not a democrat from irresistible impulse,
or from love of mischief, or from hatred
of priests, or like the average British work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>man
from a not unnatural desire to get
something on account of his share of the
family inheritance&mdash;but all roads lead to
Rome, and Mr. Arnold was a democrat
from a sober and partly sorrowful conviction
that no other form of government was
possible. He was an Educationalist, and
Education is the true Leveller. His almost
passionate cry for better middle-class
education arose from his annoyance
at the exclusion of large numbers of this
great class from the best education the
country afforded. It was a ticklish job
telling this great, wealthy, middle class&mdash;which
according to the newspapers had
made England what she is and what
everybody else wishes to be&mdash;that it
was, from an educational point of view,
beneath contempt. 'I hear with surprise,'
said Sir Thomas Bazley at Manchester,
'that the education of our great middle
class requires improvement.' But Mr.
Arnold had courage. Indeed he carried
one kind of courage to an heroic pitch. I
mean the courage of repeating yourself
over and over again. It is a sound forensic
maxim: Tell a judge twice whatever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
you want him to hear. Tell a special jury
thrice, and a common jury half-a-dozen
times the view of a case you wish them to
entertain. Mr. Arnold treated the middle
class as a common jury and hammered
away at them remorselessly and with the
most unblushing iteration. They groaned
under him, they snorted, and they sniffed&mdash;but
they listened, and, what was more
to the purpose, their children listened, and
with filial frankness told their heavy sires
that Mr. Arnold was quite right, and that
their lives were dull, and hideous, and arid,
even as he described them as being. Mr.
Arnold's work as a School Inspector gave
him great opportunities of going about
amongst all classes of the people. Though
not exactly apostolic in manner or method,
he had something to say both to and of
everybody. The aristocracy were polite
and had ways he admired, but they were
impotent of ideas and had a dangerous
tendency to become studiously frivolous.
Consequently the Future did not belong
to them. Get ideas and study gravity, was
the substance of his discourse to the Barbarians,
as, with that trick of his of mis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>calling
God's creatures, he had the effrontery
to dub our adorable nobility. But it
was the middle class upon whom fell the
full weight of his discourse. His sermons
to them would fill a volume. Their great
need was culture, which he declared to
be <i>a study of perfection</i>, the sentiment
for beauty and sweetness, the sentiment
against hideousness and rawness. The
middle class, he protested, needed to know
all the best things that have been said and
done in the world since it began, and to be
thereby lifted out of their holes and corners,
private academies and chapels in side
streets, above their tenth-rate books and
miserable preferences, into the main stream
of national existence. The lower orders
he judged to be a mere rabble, and thought
it was as yet impossible to predict whether
or not they would hereafter display any
aptitude for Ideas, or passion for Perfection.
But in the meantime he bade them
learn to cohere, and to read and write, and
above all he conjured them not to imitate
the middle classes.</p>

<p>It is not easy to know everything about
everybody, and it may be doubted whether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
Mr. Arnold did not over-rate the degree
of acquaintance with his countrymen his
peregrinations among them had conferred
upon him. In certain circles he was supposed
to have made the completest possible
diagnosis of dissent, and was credited with
being able, after five minutes' conversation
with any individual Nonconformist, unerringly
to assign him to his particular chapel,
Independent, Baptist, Primitive Methodist,
Unitarian, or whatever else it might be,
and this though they had only been talking
about the weather. To people who know
nothing about dissenters, Mr. Arnold might
well seem to know everything. However,
he did know a great deal, and used his
knowledge with great cunning and effect,
and a fine instinctive sense of the whereabouts
of the weakest points. Mr. Arnold's
sense for equality and solidarity was not
impeded by any exclusive tastes or hobbies.
Your collector, even though it be but of
butterflies, is rarely a democrat. One of
Arnold's favourite lines in Wordsworth
was&mdash;</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Joy that is in widest commonalty spread.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>The collector's joys are not of that kind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
Mr. Arnold was not, I believe, a collector
of anything. He certainly was not of
books. I once told him I had been reading
a pamphlet, written by him in 1859, on
the Italian Question. He inquired how I
came across it. I said I had picked it up
in a shop. 'Oh, yes,' said he, 'some old
curiosity shop, I suppose.' Nor was he
joking. He seemed quite to suppose that
old books, and old clothes, and old chairs
were huddled together for sale in the same
resort of the curious. He did not care
about such things. The prices given for
the early editions of his own poems seemed
to tease him. His literary taste was
broadly democratic. He had no mind for
fished-up authors, nor did he ever indulge
in swaggering rhapsodies over second-rate
poets. The best was good enough for
him. 'The best poetry' was what he
wanted, 'a clearer, deeper sense of the best
in poetry, and of the strength and joy to
be drawn from it.' So he wrote in his
general introduction to Mr. Ward's <i>Selections
from the English Poets</i>. The best of
everything for everybody. This was his
gospel and his prayer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>

<p>Approaching Mr. Arnold's writings more
nearly, it seems inevitable to divide them
into three classes. His poems, his theological
excursions, and his criticism, using
the last word in a wide sense as including
a criticism of life and of politics as well as
of books and style.</p>

<p>Of Mr. Arnold's poetry it is hard for anyone
who has felt it to the full during the
most impressionable period of life to speak
without emotion overcoming reason.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Hopes and fears, belief and unbelieving.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>It is easy to admit, in general terms, its
limitations. Mr. Arnold is the last man in
the world anybody would wish to shove out
of his place. A poet at all points, armed
cap-a-pie against criticism, like Lord Tennyson,
he certainly was not. Nor had his
verse any share of the boundless vitality,
the fierce pulsation so nobly characteristic
of Mr. Browning. But these admissions
made, we decline to parley any further with
the enemy. We cast him behind us. Mr.
Arnold, to those who cared for him at all,
was the most <i>useful</i> poet of his day. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
lived much nearer us than poets of his distinction
usually do. He was neither a
prophet nor a recluse. He lived neither
above us, nor away from us. There are
two ways of being a recluse&mdash;a poet may
live remote from men, or he may live in
a crowded street but remote from their
thoughts. Mr. Arnold did neither, and
consequently his verse tells and tingles.
None of it is thrown away. His readers
feel that he bore the same yoke as themselves.
Theirs is a common bondage with
his. Beautiful, surpassingly beautiful some
of Mr. Arnold's poetry is, but we seize
upon the <i>thought</i> first and delight in the
<i>form</i> afterwards. No doubt the form is an
extraordinary comfort, for the thoughts are
often, as thoughts so widely spread could
not fail to be, the very thoughts that are
too frequently expressed rudely, crudely,
indelicately. To open Mr. Arnold's poems
is to escape from a heated atmosphere and
a company not wholly free from offence
even though composed of those who share
our opinions&mdash;from loud-mouthed random
talking men into a well-shaded retreat which
seems able to impart, even to our feverish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
persuasions and crude conclusions, something
of the coolness of falling water, something
of the music of rustling trees. This
union of thought, substantive thought, with
beauty of form&mdash;of strength with elegance,
is rare. I doubt very much whether Mr.
Arnold ever realised the devotedness his
verse inspired in the minds of thousands
of his countrymen and countrywomen, both
in the old world and the new. He is not
a bulky poet. Three volumes contain him.
But hardly a page can be opened without
the eye lighting on verse which at one time
or another has been, either to you or to
someone dear to you, strength or joy.
<i>The Buried Life</i>, <i>A Southern Night</i>, <i>Dover
Beach</i>, <i>A Wanderer is Man from his Birth</i>,
<i>Rugby Chapel</i>, <i>Resignation</i>. How easy to
prolong the list, and what a list it is! Their
very names are dear to us even as are the
names of Mother Churches and Holy
Places to the Votaries of the old Religion.
I read the other day in the <i>Spectator</i> newspaper,
an assertion that Mr. Arnold's poetry
had never consoled anybody. A falser
statement was never made innocently. It
may never have consoled the writer in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
<i>Spectator</i>, but because the stomach of a
dram-drinker rejects cold water is no kind
of reason for a sober man abandoning his
morning tumbler of the pure element. Mr.
Arnold's poetry has been found full of
consolation. It would be strange if it had
not been. It is</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;No stretched metre of an antique song,&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>but quick and to the point. There are
finer sonnets in the English language
than the two following, but there are no
better sermons. And if it be said that
sermons may be found in stones, but
ought not to be in sonnets, I fall back
upon the fact which Mr. Arnold himself
so cheerfully admitted, that the middle
classes, who in England, at all events, are
Mr. Arnold's chief readers, are serious, and
love sermons. Some day perhaps they
will be content with metrical exercises,
ballades, and roundels.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">&#8216;<span class="smcap">East London</span><br /></span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;&#8217;Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And the pale weaver, through his windows seen<br /></span>
<span class="i0">In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span><br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;I met a preacher there I knew, and said:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">&#8220;Ill and o'erwork'd, how fare you in this scene?&#8221;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">&#8220;Bravely!&#8221; said he; "for I of late have been<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, <i>the living bread</i>.&#8221;<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;O human soul! as long as thou canst so<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Set up a mark of everlasting light,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Above the howling senses&#8217; ebb and flow,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam&mdash;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>


<p><br /></p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">&#8216;<span class="smcap">The Better Part</span><br /></span>
<span class="i0">&#8216;Long fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">&#8220;Christ,&#8221; some one says, &#8220;was human as we are;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">No judge eyes us from Heaven, our sin to scan;<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;&#8220;We live no more, when we have done our span.&#8221;&mdash;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">&#8220;Well, then, for Christ,&#8221; thou answerest, &#8220;who can care?<br /></span>
<span class="i0">From Sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear?<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Live we like brutes our life without a plan!&#8221;<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;So answerest thou; but why not rather say:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">&#8220;Hath man no second life?&mdash;<i>Pitch this one high!</i><br /></span>
<span class="i0">Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see?<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;&#8220;<i>More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!</i><br /></span>
<span class="i0">Was Christ a man like us?&mdash;<i>Ah! let us try</i><br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>If we then, too, can be such men as he!</i>&#8221;&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>Mr. Arnold's love of nature, and poetic
treatment of nature, was to many a vexed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
soul a great joy and an intense relief. Mr.
Arnold was a genuine Wordsworthian&mdash;being
able to read everything Wordsworth
ever wrote except <i>Vaudracour and Julia</i>.
The influence of Wordsworth upon him
was immense, but he was enabled, by the
order of his mind, to reject with the heartiest
goodwill the cloudy pantheism which
robs so much of Wordsworth's best verse
of the heightened charm of reality, for,
after all, poetry, like religion, must be true,
or it is nothing. This strong aversion to
the unreal also prevented Mr. Arnold, despite
his love of the classical forms, from
a nonsensical neo-paganism. His was a
manlier attitude. He had no desire to keep
tugging at the dry breasts of an outworn
creed, nor any disposition to go down on
his knees, or <i>hunkers</i> as the Scotch more
humorously call them, before plaster casts
of Venus, or even of 'Proteus rising from
the sea.' There was something very refreshing
about this. In the long run even
a gloomy truth is better company than a
cheerful falsehood. The perpetual strain
of living down to a lie, the depressing atmosphere
of a circumscribed intelligence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
tell upon the system, and the cheerful
falsehood soon begins to look puffy and
dissipated.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">&#8216;<span class="smcap">The Youth of Nature.</span><br /></span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;For, oh! is it you, is it you,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Moonlight, and shadow, and lake,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And mountains, that fill us with joy,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Or the poet who sings you so well?<br /></span>
<span class="i0">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
<span class="i0">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
<span class="i0">More than the singer are these<br /></span>
<span class="i0">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
<span class="i0">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Yourselves and your fellows ye know not; and me,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The mateless, the one, will ye know?<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Will ye scan me, and read me, and tell<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Of the thoughts that ferment in my breast,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">My longing, my sadness, my joy?<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Will ye claim for your great ones the gift<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To have rendered the gleam of my skies,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To have echoed the moan of my seas,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Uttered the voice of my hills?<br /></span>
<span class="i0">When your great ones depart, will ye say:<br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>All things have suffered a loss,</i><br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>Nature is hid in their grave?</i><br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Race after race, man after man,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Have thought that my secret was theirs,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Have dream'd that I lived but for them,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">That they were my glory and joy.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">They are dust, they are changed, they are gone!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I remain.&#8217;<br /></span>
<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></div></div>

<p>When a poet is dead we turn to his
verse with quickened feelings. He rests
from his labours. We still</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Stem across the sea of life by night,&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>and the voice, once the voice of the living,
of one who stood by our side, has for a
while an unfamiliar accent, coming to us as
it does no longer from our friendly earth
but from the strange cold caverns of
death.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows<br /></span>
<span class="i4">Like the wave,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Love lends life a little grace,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">A few sad smiles; and then,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Both are laid in one cold place,<br /></span>
<span class="i4">In the grave.<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Dreams dawn and fly, friends smile and die<br /></span>
<span class="i4">Like spring flowers;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Our vaunted life is one long funeral.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Men dig graves with bitter tears<br /></span>
<span class="i0">For their dead hopes; and all,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Mazed with doubts and sick with fears,<br /></span>
<span class="i4">Count the hours.<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;We count the hours! These dreams of ours,<br /></span>
<span class="i4">False and hollow,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Do we go hence and find they are not dead?<br /></span>
<span class="i4">Joys we dimly apprehend,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Faces that smiled and fled,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Hopes born here, and born to end,<br /></span>
<span class="i4">Shall we follow?&#8217;<br /></span>
<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></div></div>

<p>In a poem like this Mr. Arnold is seen
at his best; he fairly forces himself into
the very front ranks. In form almost
equal to Shelley, or at any rate not so
very far behind him, whilst of course in
reality, in wholesome thought, in the
pleasures that are afforded by thinking, it
is of incomparable excellence.</p>

<p>We die as we do, not as we would. Yet
on reading again Mr. Arnold's <i>Wish</i>, we
feel that the manner of his death was much
to his mind.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">&#8216;<span class="smcap">A Wish.</span><br /></span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;I ask not that my bed of death<br /></span>
<span class="i0">From bands of greedy heirs be free:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">For these besiege the latest breath<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Of fortune's favoured sons, not me.<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;I ask not each kind soul to keep<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Tearless, when of my death he hears.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Let those who will, if any&mdash;weep!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">There are worse plagues on earth than tears.<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;I ask but that my death may find<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The freedom to my life denied;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Ask but the folly of mankind<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Then&mdash;then at last to quit my side.<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Spare me the whispering, crowded room,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The friends who come, and gape, and go;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The ceremonious air of gloom&mdash;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">All, which makes death a hideous show!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span><br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Nor bring to see me cease to live<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Some doctor full of phrase and fame<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To shake his sapient head and give<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The ill he cannot cure a name.<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Nor fetch to take the accustom'd toll<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Of the poor sinner bound for death<br /></span>
<span class="i0">His brother-doctor of the soul<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To canvass with official breath<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;The future and its viewless things&mdash;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">That undiscover'd mystery<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Which one who feels death's winnowing wings<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Must needs read clearer, sure, than he!<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Bring none of these; but let me be<br /></span>
<span class="i0">While all around in silence lies,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Moved to the window near, and see<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Once more before my dying eyes,<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Bathed in the sacred dews of morn<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The wide aerial landscape spread&mdash;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The world which was ere I was born,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The world which lasts when I am dead.<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Which never was the friend of <i>one</i>,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Nor promised love it could not give,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">But lit for all its generous sun<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And lived itself and made us live.<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Then let me gaze&mdash;till I become<br /></span>
<span class="i0">In soul, with what I gaze on, wed!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To feel the universe my home;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To have before my mind&mdash;instead<br /></span>
</div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Of the sick room, the mortal strife,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The turmoil for a little breath&mdash;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The pure eternal course of life,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Not human combatings with death!<br /></span>
<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></div><br /><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Composed, refresh'd, ennobled, clear&mdash;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Then willing let my spirit go<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To work or wait, elsewhere or here!&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>To turn from Arnold's poetry to his
theological writings&mdash;if so grim a name
can be given to these productions&mdash;from
<i>Rugby Chapel</i> to <i>Literature and Dogma</i>,
from <i>Obermann</i> to <i>God and the Bible</i>, from
<i>Empedocles on Etna</i> to <i>St. Paul and Protestantism</i>,
is to descend from the lofty
table-lands,</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;From the dragon-warder'd fountains<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Where the springs of knowledge are,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">From the watchers on the mountains<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And the bright and morning star,&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>to the dusty highroad. It cannot, I think,
be asserted that either the plan or the
style of these books was in keeping with
their subjects. It was characteristic of
Mr. Arnold, and like his practical turn of
mind, to begin <i>Literature and Dogma</i> in
the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>. A book rarely
shakes off the first draft&mdash;<i>Literature and
Dogma</i> never did. It is full of repetitions
and wearisome recapitulations, well enough
in a magazine where each issue is sure to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
be read by many who will never see another
number, but which disfigure a book. The
style is likewise too jaunty. Bantering
the Trinity is not yet a recognised English
pastime. Bishop-baiting is, but this notwithstanding,
most readers of <i>Literature
and Dogma</i> grew tired of the Bishop of
Gloucester and Bristol and of his alleged
desire to do something for the honour of
the Godhead, long before Mr. Arnold
showed any signs of weariness. But making
all these abatements, and fully admitting
that <i>Literature and Dogma</i> is not
likely to prove permanently interesting to
the English reader, it must be pronounced
a most valuable and useful book, and one
to which the professional critics and philosophers
never did justice. The object of
<i>Literature and Dogma</i> was no less than
the restoration of the use of the Bible to
the sceptical laity. It was a noble object,
and it was in a great measure, as thousands
of quiet people could testify, attained.
It was not a philosophical treatise. In its
own way it was the same kind of thing as
many of Cardinal Newman's writings. It
started with an assumption, namely, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
it is impossible to believe in the miracles
recorded in the Old and New Testaments.
There is no laborious attempt to distinguish
between one miracle and another, or
to lighten the burden of faith in any particular.
Nor is any serious attempt made
to disprove miracles. Mr. Arnold did not
write for those who find no difficulty in
believing in the first chapter of St. Luke's
gospel, or the sixteenth chapter of St.
Mark's, but for those who simply cannot
believe a word of either the one chapter or
the other. Mr. Arnold knew well that
this inability to believe is apt to generate
in the mind of the unbeliever an almost
physical repulsion to open books which are
full of supernatural events. Mr. Arnold
knew this and lamented it. His own love
of the Bible was genuine and intense. He
could read even Jeremiah and Habakkuk.
As he loved Homer with one side of him,
so he loved the Bible with the other. He
saw how men were crippled and maimed
through growing up in ignorance of it, and
living all the days of their lives outside
its influence. He longed to restore it to
them, to satisfy them that its place in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
mind of man&mdash;that its educational and
moral power was not due to the miracles
it records nor to the dogmas that Catholics
have developed or Calvanists extracted from
its pages, but to its literary excellence and
to the glow and enthusiasm it has shed
over conduct, self-sacrifice, humanity, and
holy living. It was at all events a worthy
object and a most courageous task. It
exposed him to a heavy cross-fire. The
Orthodox fell upon his book and abused
it, unrestrainedly abused it for its familiar
handling of their sacred books. They
almost grudged Mr. Arnold his great acquaintance
with the Bible, just as an
Englishman might be annoyed at finding
Moltke acquainted with all the roads from
Dover to London. This feeling was natural,
and on the whole I think it creditable
to the orthodox party that a book so needlessly
pain-giving as <i>Literature and Dogma</i>
did not goad them into any personal
abuse of its author. But they could not
away with the book. Nor did the philosophical
sceptic like it much better. The
philosophical sceptic is too apt to hate the
Bible, even as the devil was reported to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
hate holy water. Its spirit condemns him.
Its devout, heart-stirring, noble language
creates an atmosphere which is deadly for
pragmatic egotism. To make men once more
careful students of the Bible was to deal a
blow at materialism, and consequently was
not easily forgiven. 'Why can't you leave
the Bible alone?' they grumbled&mdash;'What
have we to do with it?' But Pharisees
and Sadducees do not exhaust mankind,
and Mr. Arnold's contributions to the religious
controversies of his time were very
far from the barren things that are most
contributions, and indeed most controversies
on such subjects. I believe I am
right when I say that he induced a very
large number of persons to take up again
and make a daily study of the books both
of the Old and the New Testament.</p>

<p>As a literary critic Mr. Arnold had at
one time a great vogue. His <i>Essays in
Criticism</i>, first published in 1865, made him
known to a larger public than his poems
or his delightful lectures on translating
Homer had succeeded in doing. He had
the happy knack of starting interesting
subjects and saying all sorts of interesting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
things by the way. There was the French
Academy. Would it be a good thing to
have an English Academy? He started
the question himself and answered it in the
negative. The public took it out of his
mouth and proceeded to discuss it for itself,
always on the assumption that he had answered
it in the affirmative. But that is
the way with the public. No sensible man
minds it. To set something going is the
most anybody can hope to do in this world.
Where it will go to, and what sort of moss
it will gather as it goes, for despite the
proverb there is nothing incompatible between
moss and motion, no one can say.
In this volume, too, he struck the note, so
frequently and usefully repeated, of self-dissatisfaction.
To make us dissatisfied
with ourselves, alive to our own inferiority,
not absolute but in important respects, to
check the chorus, then so loud, of self-approval
of our majestic selves&mdash;to make
us understand why nobody who is not an
Englishman wants to be one, this was
another of the tasks of this militant man.
We all remember how <i>Wragg<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> is in custody</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
The papers on Heine and Spinoza
and Marcus Aurelius were read with eagerness,
with an enjoyment, with a sense of
widening horizons too rare to be easily forgotten.
They were light and graceful, but
it would I think be unjust to call them
slender. They were not written for specialists
or even for students, but for ordinary
men and women, particularly for young
men and women, who carried away with
them from the reading of <i>Essays in Criticism</i>
something they could not have found
anywhere else and which remained with
them for the rest of their days, namely, a
way of looking at things. A perfectly safe
critic Mr. Arnold hardly was. Even in
this volume he fusses too much about the
De Gu&eacute;rins. To some later judgments of
his it would be unkind to refer. It was
said of the late Lord Justice Mellish by
Lord Cairns that he went right instinctively.
That is, he did not flounder into
truth. Mr. Arnold never floundered, but
he sometimes fell. A more delightful
critic of literature we have not had for
long. What pleasant reading are his
<i>Lectures on Translating Homer</i>, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
ought to be at once reprinted. How full
of good things! Not perhaps fit to be
torn from their contexts, or paraded in a
commonplace book, but of the kind which
give a reader joy&mdash;which make literature
tempting&mdash;which revive, even in dull middle-age,
something of the enthusiasm of
the love-stricken boy. Then, too, his
<i>Study of Celtic Literature</i>. It does not
matter much whether you can bring yourself
to believe in the <i>Eisteddfod</i> or not.
In fact Mr. Arnold did not believe in it.
He knew perfectly well that better poetry
is to be found every week in the poet's
corner of every county newspaper in England
than is produced annually at the
<i>Eisteddfod</i>. You need not even share
Mr. Arnold's opinion as to the inherent
value of Celtic Literature, though this is
of course a grave question, worthy of all
consideration&mdash;but his <i>Study</i> is good
enough to be read for love. It is full of
charming criticism. Most critics are such
savages&mdash;or if they are not savages, they
are full of fantasies, and are capable at
any moment of calling <i>Tom Jones</i> dull, or
Sydney Smith a bore. Mr. Arnold was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
not a savage, and could no more have called
<i>Tom Jones</i> dull or Sydney Smith a bore,
than Homer heavy or Milton vulgar. He
was no gloomy specialist. He knew it
took all sorts to make a world. He was
alive to life. Its great movement fascinated
him, even as it had done Burke, even
as it did Cardinal Newman. He watched
the rushing stream, the 'stir of existence,'
the good and the bad, the false and the
true, with an interest that never flagged.
In his last words on translating Homer he
says: 'And thus false tendency as well
as true, vain effort as well as fruitful, go
together to produce that great movement
of life, to present that immense and
magic spectacle of human affairs, which
from boyhood to old age fascinates the
gaze of every man of imagination, and
which would be his terror if it were not
at the same time his delight.'</p>

<p>Mr. Arnold never succeeded in getting
his countrymen to take him seriously as a
practical politician. He was regarded as
an unauthorised practitioner whose prescriptions
no respectable chemist would
consent to make up. He had not the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
diploma of Parliament, nor was he able,
like the Secretary of an Early Closing
Association, to assure any political aspirant
that he commanded enough votes to
turn an election. When Mr. John Morley
took occasion after Mr. Arnold's death to
refer to him in Parliament, the name was
received respectfully but coldly. And yet
he was eager about politics, and had much
to say about political questions. His work
in these respects was far from futile. What
he said was never inept. It coloured men's
thoughts, and contributed to the formation
of their opinions far more than even public
meetings. His introduction to his <i>Report
on Popular Education in France</i>, published
in 1861, is as instructive a piece of writing
as is to be found in any historical disquisition
of the last three decades. The paper
on 'My Countrymen' in that most amusing
book <i>Friendship's Garland</i> (which ought
also to be at once reprinted) is full of point.</p>

<hr style='width: 45%;' />

<p>But it is time to stop. It is only possible
to stop where we began. Matthew
Arnold is dead. He would have been the
last man to expect anyone to grow hysteri<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>cal
over the circumstance, and the first
to denounce any strained emotion. <i>Il n'y
a pas d'homme n&eacute;cessaire.</i> No one ever
grasped this great, this comforting, this
cooling, this self-destroying truth more
cordially than he did. As I write the
words, I remember how he employed them
in his preface to the second edition of
<i>Essays in Criticism</i>, where he records a
conversation, I doubt not an imaginary
one, between himself and a portly jeweller
from Cheapside&mdash;his fellow-traveller on
the Woodford branch of the Great Eastern
line. The traveller was greatly perturbed
in his mind by the murder then lately
perpetrated in a railway carriage by the
notorious M&uuml;ller. Mr. Arnold plied him
with consolation. 'Suppose the worst to
happen,' I said, 'suppose even yourself to
be the victim&mdash;<i>il n'y a pas d'homme
n&eacute;cessaire</i>&mdash;we should miss you for a day
or two on the Woodford Branch, but the
great mundane movement would still go
on, the gravel walks of your villa would
still be rolled, dividends would still be
paid at the bank, omnibuses would still
run, there would still be the old crush at
the corner of Fenchurch Street.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p>

<p>And so it proves for all&mdash;for portly
jewellers and lovely poets.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;The Pillar still broods o&#8217;er the fields<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Which border Ennerdale Lake,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And Egremont sleeps by the sea&mdash;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Nature is fresh as of old,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Is lovely; a mortal is dead.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<p class="center">II</p>


<p>Lord Byron's antipathies were, as a rule,
founded on some sound human basis, and
it may well be that he was quite right for
hating an author who was all author and
nothing else. He could not have hated
Matthew Arnold on that score, at all
events, though perhaps he might have
found some other ground for gratifying a
feeling very dear to his heart. Mr. Arnold
was many other things as well as a poet, so
many other things that we need sometimes
to be reminded that he was a poet. He
allowed himself to be distracted in a variety
of ways, he poured himself out in many
strifes; though not exactly eager, he was
certainly active. He discoursed on numberless
themes, and was interested in many
things of the kind usually called 'topics.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>

<p>Personally, we cannot force ourselves to
bewail his agility, this leaping from bough
to bough of the tree of talk and discussion.
It argues an interest in things, a wide-eyed
curiosity. If you find yourself in a village
fair you do well to examine the booths, and
when you bring your purchases home, the
domestic authority will be wise not to scan
too severely the trivial wares never meant
to please a critical taste or to last a lifetime.
Mr. Arnold certainly brought home some
very queer things from his village fair, and
was perhaps too fond of taking them for
the texts of his occasional discourses. But
others must find fault, we cannot. There
is a pleasant ripple of life through Mr. Arnold's
prose writings. His judgments are
human judgments. He did not care for
strange, out-of-the-way things; he had no
odd tastes. He drank wine, so he once
said, because he liked it&mdash;good wine, that
is. And it was the same with poetry and
books. He liked to understand what he
admired, and the longer it took him to understand
anything the less disposed he was
to like it. Plain things suited him best.
What he hated most was the far-fetched. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
had the greatest respect for Mr. Browning,
and was a sincere admirer of much of his
poetry, but he never made the faintest attempt
to read any of the poet's later volumes.
The reason probably was that he
could not be bothered. Hazlitt, in a fine
passage descriptive of the character of a
scholar, says: 'Such a one lives all his life
in a dream of learning, and has never once
had his sleep broken by a real sense of
things.' Mr. Arnold had a real sense of
things. The writings of such a man could
hardly fail to be interesting, whatever they
might be about, even the burial of Dissenters
or the cock of a nobleman's hat.</p>

<p>But for all that we are of those who,
when we name the name of Arnold, mean
neither the head-master of Rugby nor the
author of <i>Culture and Anarchy</i> and <i>Literature
and Dogma</i>, but the poet who sang,
not, indeed, with Wordsworth, 'The wonder
and bloom of the world,' but a severer, still
more truthful strain, a life whose secret is
not joy, but peace.</p>

<p>Standing on this high breezy ground, we
are not disposed to concede anything to
the enemy, unless, indeed, it be one some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>what
ill-defended outpost connected with
metre. The poet's ear might have been a
little nicer. Had it been so, he would have
spared his readers an occasional jar and a
panegyric on Lord Byron's poetry. There
are, we know, those who regard this outpost
we have so lightly abandoned as the
citadel. These rhyming gentry scout what
Arnold called the terrible sentence passed
on a French poet&mdash;<i>il dit tout ce qu'il veut</i>,
<i>mais malheureusement il n'a rien &agrave; dire</i>.
They see nothing terrible in a sentence
which does but condemn them to nakedness.
Thought is cumbersome. You skip
best with nothing on. But the sober-minded
English people are not the countrymen
of Milton and Cowper, of Crabbe and
Wordsworth, for nothing. They like poetry
to be serious. We are fond of sermons.
We may quarrel with the vicar's five-and-twenty
minutes, but we let Carlyle go on
for twice as many years, and until he had
filled thirty-four octavo volumes.</p>

<p>The fact is that, though Arnold was fond
of girding at the Hebrew in us, and used to
quote his own Christian name with humorous
resignation as only an instance of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
sort of thing he had to put up with, he was
a Puritan at heart, and would have been as
ill at ease at a Greek festival as Newman
at a Spanish <i>auto da f&eacute;</i>.</p>

<p>What gives Arnold's verse its especial
charm is his grave and manly sincerity.
He is a poet without artifice or sham. He
does not pretend to find all sorts of meanings
in all sorts of things. He does not
manipulate the universe and present his
readers with any bottled elixir. This has
been cast up against him as a reproach.
His poetry, so we have been told, has no
consolation in it. Here is a doctor, it is
said, who makes up no drugs, a poet who
does not proclaim that he sees God in the
avalanche or hears Him in the thunder.
The world will not, so we are assured, hang
upon the lips of one who bids them not to
be too sure that the winds are wailing man's
secret to the complaining sea, or that nature
is nothing but a theme for poets.
These people may be right. In any event
it is unwise to prophesy. What will be, will
be. Nobody can wish to be proved wrong.
It is best to be on the side of truth, whatever
the truth may be. The real atheism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
is to say, as men are found to do, that they
would sooner be convicted of error they
think pleasing, than have recognised an unwelcome
truth a moment earlier than its
final demonstration, if, indeed, such a moment
should ever arrive for souls so craven.
In the meantime, this much is plain, that
there is no consolation in non-coincidence
with fact, and no sweetness which does not
chime with experience. Therefore, those
who have derived consolation from Mr.
Arnold's noble verse may take comfort.
Religion, after all, observes Bishop Butler
in his tremendous way, is nothing if it is
not true. The same may be said of the
poetry of consolation.</p>

<p>The pleasure it is lawful to take in the
truthfulness of Mr. Arnold's poetry should
not be allowed to lead his lovers into the
pleasant paths of exaggeration. The Muses
dealt him out their gifts with a somewhat
niggardly hand. He had to cultivate his
Sparta. No one of his admirers can assert
that in Arnold</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i2">&#8216;The force of energy is found,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And the sense rises on the wings of sound.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>He is no builder of the lofty rhyme. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
he was well aware of. But neither had he
any ample measure of those 'winged fancies'
which wander at will through the
pages of Apollo's favourite children. His
strange indifference to Shelley, his severity
towards Keats, his lively sense of the wantonness
of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans,
incline us to the belief that he
was not quite sensible of the advantages
of a fruitful as compared with a barren
soil. His own crop took a good deal of
raising, and he was perhaps somewhat disposed
to regard luxuriant growths with disfavour.</p>

<p>But though severe and restricted, and
without either grandeur or fancy, Arnold's
poetry is most companionable. It never
teases you&mdash;there he has the better of
Shelley&mdash;or surfeits you&mdash;there he prevails
over Keats. As a poet, we would
never dare or wish to class him with either
Shelley or Keats, but as a companion to
slip in your pocket before starting to spend
the day amid</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;The cheerful silence of the fells,&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>you may search far before you find any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>thing
better than either of the two volumes
of Mr. Arnold's poems.</p>

<p>His own enjoyment of the open air is
made plain in his poetry. It is no borrowed
rapture, no mere bookish man's
clumsy joy in escaping from his library,
but an enjoyment as hearty and honest as
Izaak Walton's. He has a quick eye for
things, and rests upon them with a quiet
satisfaction. No need to give instances;
they will occur to all. Sights and sounds
alike pleased him well. So obviously genuine,
so real, though so quiet, was his
pleasure in our English lanes and dells,
that it is still difficult to realise that his
feet can no longer stir the cowslips or his
ear hear the cuckoo's parting cry.</p>

<p>Amidst the melancholy of his verse, we
detect deep human enjoyment and an honest
human endeavour to do the best he
could whilst here below. The best he
could do was, in our opinion, his verse,
and it is a comfort, amidst the wreckage
of life, to believe he made the most of his
gift, cultivating it wisely and well, and
enriching man's life with some sober, serious,
and beautiful poetry. We are, indeed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
glad to notice that there is to be a new
edition of Mr. Arnold's poems in one volume.
It will, we are afraid, be too stout
for the pocket, but most of its contents
will be well worth lodgment in the head.
This new edition will, we have no doubt
whatever, immensely increase the number
of men and women who own the charm of
Arnold. The times are ripening for his
poetry, which is full of foretastes of the
morrow. As we read we are not carried
back by the reflection, 'so men once
thought,' but rather forward along the
paths, dim and perilous it may be, but
still the paths mankind is destined to
tread. Truthful, sober, severe, with a capacity
for deep, if placid, enjoyment of the
pageant of the world, and a quick eye for
its varied sights and an eager ear for its delightful
sounds, Matthew Arnold is a poet
whose limitations we may admit without
denying his right. Our passion for him is
a loyal passion for a most temperate king.
There is an effort on his brow, we must
admit it. It would never do to mistake
his poetry for what he called the best, and
which he was ever urging upon a sluggish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
populace. It intellectualises far too much;
its method is a known method, not a magical
one. But though effort may be on his
brow, it is a noble effort and has had a
noble result.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i2">&#8216;For most men in a brazen prison live,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Where in the sun&#8217;s hot eye,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Their lives to some unmeaning task-work give,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Dreaming of nought beyond their prison wall.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And as, year after year,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Fresh products of their barren labour fall<br /></span>
<span class="i0">From their tired hands, and rest<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Never yet comes more near,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Gloom settles slowly down over their breast;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And while they try to stem<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Death in their prison reaches them<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>Or if not a slave he is a madman, sailing
where he will on the wild ocean of life.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;And then the tempest strikes him, and between<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The lightning bursts is seen<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Only a driving wreck.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">With anguished face and flying hair,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Grasping the rudder hard,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Still bent to make some port he knows not where,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Still standing for some false impossible shore;<br /></span>
<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
<span class="i0">And sterner comes the roar<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And he too disappears and comes no more.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>To be neither a rebel nor a slave is the
burden of much of Mr. Arnold's verse&mdash;his
song we cannot call it. It will be long
before men cease to read their Arnold;
even the rebel or the slave will occasionally
find a moment for so doing, and when
he does it may be written of him:</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;And then arrives a lull in the hot race<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Wherein he doth for ever chase<br /></span>
<span class="i0">That flying and illusive shadow Rest.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">An air of coolness plays upon his face,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And an unwonted calm pervades his breast,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And then he thinks he knows<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The hills where his life rose<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And the sea where it goes.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="WILLIAM_HAZLITT" id="WILLIAM_HAZLITT"></a>WILLIAM HAZLITT<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></h2>


<p>For an author to fare better dead than
alive is good proof of his literary vivacity
and charm. The rare merit of Hazlitt's
writing was recognised in his lifetime by
good judges, but his fame was obscured
by the unpopularity of many of his opinions,
and the venom he was too apt to
instil into his personal reminiscences. He
was not a safe man to confide in. He had
a forked crest which he sometimes lifted.
Because they both wrote essays and were
fond of the Elizabethans, it became the
fashion to link Hazlitt's name with Lamb's.
To be compared with the incomparable is
hard fortune. Hazlitt suffered by the
comparison, and consequently his admirers,
usually in those early days men of keen
wits and sharp tongues, grew angry, and
infused into their just eulogiums too much
of Hazlitt's personal bitterness, and too
little of his wide literary sympathies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>

<p>But this period of obscurity is now over.
No really good thing once come into existence
and remaining so is ever lost to the
world. This is most comfortable doctrine,
and true, besides. In the long run the
world's taste is infallible. All it requires
is time. How easy it is to give it that!
Is substantial injustice at this moment
done to a single English writer of prose
or verse who died prior to the 1st of January,
1801? Is there a single bad author
of this same class who is now read? Both
questions may be truthfully answered by
a joyful shout of, No! This fact ought to
make the most unpopular of living authors
the sweetest-tempered of men. The sight
of your rival clinging to the cob he has
purchased and maintains out of the profits
of the trashiest of novels should be pleasant
owing to the reflection that both rival
and cob are trotting to the same pit of
oblivion.</p>

<p>But humorous as is the prospect of the
coming occultation of personally disagreeable
authors, the final establishment of the
fame of a dead one is a nobler spectacle.</p>

<p>William Hazlitt had to take a thrashing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
from life. He took it standing up like a
man, not lying down like a cur; but take
it he had to do. He died on September
18, 1830, tired out, discomfited, defeated.
Nobody reviewing the facts of his life can
say that it was well spent. There is nothing
in it of encouragement. He reaped
what he sowed, and it proved a sorry
harvest. When he lay dying he wanted
his mother brought to his side, but she
was at a great distance, and eighty-four
years of age, and could not come. Carlyle
in his old age, grim, worn, and scornful,
said once, sorrowfully enough, 'What I
want is a mother.' It is indeed an excellent
relationship.</p>

<p>But though Hazlitt got the worst of it in
his personal encounter with the universe, he
nevertheless managed to fling down before
he died what will suffice to keep his name
alive. You cannot kill merit. We are all
too busily engaged struggling with dulness,
our own and other people's, and with ennui;
we are far too much surrounded by
would-be wits and abortive thinkers, ever to
forget what a weapon against weariness lies
to our hand in the works of Hazlitt, who is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
as refreshing as cold water, as grateful as
shade.</p>

<p>His great charm consists in his hearty
reality. Life may be a game, and all its
enjoyments counters, but Hazlitt, as we
find him in his writings&mdash;and there is now
no need to look for him anywhere else&mdash;played
the game and dealt out the counters
like a man bent on winning. He cared
greatly about many things. His admiration
was not extravagant, but his force is
great; in fact, one may say of him as he
said of John Cavanagh, the famous fives
player, 'His service was tremendous.' Indeed,
Hazlitt's whole description of Cavanagh's
play reminds one of his own literary
method:</p>

<p>'His style of play was as remarkable as
his power of execution. He had no affectation,
no trifling. He did not throw away
the game to show off an attitude or try an
experiment. He was a fine, sensible,
manly player, who did what he could, but
that was more than anyone else could
even affect to do. His blows were not
undecided and ineffectual, lumbering like
Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry, nor waver<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>ing
like Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose, nor
short of the mark like Mr. Brougham's
speeches, nor wide of it like Mr. Canning's
wit, nor foul like the <i>Quarterly</i>,
nor <i>let</i> balls like the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>.'</p>

<p>Wordsworth, Coleridge, Brougham, Canning!
was ever a fives player so described
before? What splendid reading it makes!
but we quote it for the purpose of applying
its sense to Hazlitt himself. As Cavanagh
played, so Hazlitt wrote.</p>

<p>He is always interesting, and always
writes about really interesting things. His
talk is of poets and players, of Shakespeare
and Kean, of Fielding and Scott, of Burke
and Cobbett, of prize fights and Indian
jugglers. When he condescends to the
abstract, his subjects bring an appetite
with them. The Shyness of Scholars, the
Fear of Death, the Identity of an Author
with his Books, Effeminacy of Character,
the Conversation of Lords, On Reading
New Books: the very titles make you lick
your lips.</p>

<p>Hazlitt may have been an unhappy man,
but he was above the vile affectation of
pretending to see nothing in life. Had he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
not seen Mrs. Siddons, had he not read
Rousseau, had he not worshipped Titian
in the Louvre?</p>

<p>No English writer better pays the debt
of gratitude always owing to great poets,
painters, and authors than Hazlitt; but his
is a manly, not a maudlin, gratitude. No
other writer has such gusto as he. The
glowing passage in which he describes
Titian's St. Peter Martyr almost recalls
the canvas uninjured from the flames which
have since destroyed it. We seem to see
the landscape background, 'with that cold
convent spire rising in the distance amidst
the blue sapphire mountains and the golden
sky.' His essay on Sir Walter Scott and
the <i>Waverley Novels</i> is the very best that
has ever been written on that magnificent
subject.</p>

<p>As a companion at the Feast of Wits
commend us to Hazlitt, and as a companion
for a fortnight's holiday commend us to the
admirable selection recently made from his
works, which are numerous&mdash;some twenty
volumes&mdash;by Mr. Ireland, and published
at a cheap price by Messrs. F. Warne and
Co. The task of selection is usually a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
thankless one. It involves of necessity
omission and frequently curtailment. It is
annoying to look in vain for some favourite
passage, and your annoyance prompts the
criticism that a really sound judgment
would have made room for what you miss.
We lodge no complaint against Mr. Ireland.
Like a wise man, he has allowed to himself
ample space, and he has compiled a volume
of 510 closely though well-printed pages,
which has only to be read in order to make
the reader well acquainted with an author
whom not to know is a severe mental deprivation.</p>

<p>Mr. Ireland's book is a library in itself,
and a marvellous tribute to the genius of
his author. It seems almost incredible
that one man should have said so many
good things. It is true he does not go
very deep as a critic, he does not see into
the soul of the matter as Lamb and Coleridge
occasionally do&mdash;but he holds you
very tight&mdash;he grasps the subject, he enjoys
it himself and makes you do so. Perhaps
he does say too many good things.
His sparkling sentences follow so quickly
one upon another that the reader's appreci<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>ation
soon becomes a breathless appreciation.
There is something almost uncanny
in such sustained cleverness. This impression,
however, must not be allowed to remain
as a final impression. In Hazlitt the
reader will find trains of sober thought pursued
with deep feeling and melancholy.
Turn to the essays, <i>On Living to One's
Self</i>, <i>On Going a Journey</i>, <i>On the Feeling
of Immortality in Youth</i>, and read them
over again. When you have done so you
will be indisposed to consider their author
as a mere sayer of good things. He was
much more than that. One smiles when,
on reading the first Lord Lytton's <i>Thoughts
on the Genius of Hazlitt</i>, the author of
<i>Eugene Aram</i>, is found declaring that
Hazlitt 'had a keen sense of the Beautiful
and the Subtle; and what is more, he was
deeply imbued with sympathies for the
Humane'; but when Lord Lytton proceeds,
'Posterity will do him justice,' we
cease to smile, and handling Mr. Ireland's
book, observe with deep satisfaction, 'It
has.'</p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="THE_LETTERS_OF_CHARLES_LAMB7" id="THE_LETTERS_OF_CHARLES_LAMB7"></a>THE LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></h2>


<p>Four hundred and seventeen letters of
Charles Lamb's, some of them never before
published, in two well-printed but handy
volumes, edited, with notes illustrative,
explanatory, and biographical, by Canon
Ainger, and supplied with an admirable
index, are surely things to be thankful for
and to be desired. No doubt the price is
prohibitory. They will cost you in cash,
these two volumes, full as they are from
title-page to colophon with the sweetness
and nobility, the mirth and the melancholy
of their author's life, touched as every
page of them is with traces of a hard fate
bravely borne, seven shillings and sixpence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
None but American millionaires and foolish
book-collectors can bear such a strain
upon their purses. It is the cab-fare to
and from a couple of dull dinner-parties.
But Mudie is in our midst, ever ready to
supply our very modest intellectual wants
at so much a quarter, and ward off the
catastrophe so dreaded by all dust-hating
housewives, the accumulation of those
'nasty books,' for which indeed but slender
accommodation is provided in our upholstered
homes. Yet these volumes, however
acquired, whether by purchase, and
therefore destined to remain by your side
ready to be handled whenever the mood
seizes you, or borrowed from a library to
be returned at the week's end along with
the last new novel people are painfully talking
about, cannot fail to excite the interest
and stir the emotions of all lovers of sound
literature and true men.</p>

<p>But first of all, Canon Ainger is to be
congratulated on the completion of his
task. He told us he was going to edit
<i>Lamb's Works and Letters</i>, and naturally
one believed him; but in this world there
is nothing so satisfactory as performance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
To see a good work well planned, well
executed, and entirely finished by the
same hand that penned, and the same
mind that conceived the original scheme,
has something about it which is surprisingly
gratifying to the soul of man, accustomed
as he is to the wreckage of projects
and the failure of hopes.</p>

<p>Canon Ainger's edition of <i>Lamb's Works
and Letters</i> stands complete in six volumes.
Were one in search of sentiment, one might
perhaps find it in the intimate association
existing between the editor and the old
church by the side of which Lamb was
born, and which he ever loved and accounted
peculiarly his own. Elia was born
a Templar.</p>

<p>'I was born and passed the first seven
years of my life in the Temple. Its
church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain,
its river, I had almost said&mdash;for in those
young years, what was this king of rivers
to me but a stream that watered our pleasant
places?&mdash;these are my oldest recollections.'</p>

<p>Thus begins the celebrated essay on
'The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
As a humble member of that honourable
Society, I rejoice that its Reader should
be the man who has, as a labour of love
and by virtue of qualifications which cannot
be questioned, placed upon the library
shelf so complete and choice an edition
of the works of one whose memory is perhaps
the pleasantest thing about the whole
place.</p>

<p>So far as these two volumes of letters
are concerned the course adopted by the
editor has been, if I may make bold to say
so, the right one. He has simply edited
them carefully and added notes and an
index. He has not attempted to tell
Lamb's life between times. He has already
told the story of that life in a separate
volume. I wish the practice could be
revived of giving us a man's correspondence
all by itself in consecutive volumes, as we
have the letters of Horace Walpole, of
Burke, of Richardson, of Cowper, and many
others. It is astonishing what interesting
and varied reading such volumes make.
They never tire you. You do not stop to
be tired. Something of interest is always
occurring. Some reference to a place you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
have visited; to a house you have stayed
at; to a book you have read; to a man or
woman you wish to hear about. As compared
with the measured malice of a set
biography, where you feel yourself in the
iron grasp, not of the man whose life is
being professedly written, but of the man
(whom naturally you dislike) who has taken
upon himself to write the life, these volumes
of correspondence have all the ease and
grace and truthfulness of nature. There
is about as much resemblance between
reading them and your ordinary biography,
as between a turn on the treadmill and a
saunter into Hertfordshire in search of
Mackery End. I hope when we get hold
of the biographies of Lord Beaconsfield,
and Dean Stanley, we shall not find ourselves
defrauded of our dues. But it is of
the essence of letters that we should have
the whole of each. I think it wrong to
omit even the merely formal parts. They
all hang together. The method employed
in the biography of George Eliot was, in
my opinion&mdash;I can but state it&mdash;a vicious
method. To serve up letters in solid slabs
cut out of longer letters is distressing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
Every letter a man writes is an incriminating
document. It tells a tale about him.
Let the whole be read or none.</p>

<p>Canon Ainger has adopted the right
course. He has indeed omitted a few
oaths&mdash;on the principle that 'damns have
had their day.' For my part, I think I
should have been disposed to leave them
alone.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;The rough bur-thistle spreading wide<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Amang the bearded bear,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I turn&#8217;d my weeding-clips aside<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And spared the symbol dear.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>But this is not a question to discuss with
a dignitary of the Church. Leaving out
the oaths and, it may perhaps be, here and
there a passage where the reckless humour
of the writer led him to transcend the limits
of becoming mirth, and mere notelets, we
have in these two volumes Lamb's letters
just as they were written, save in an
instance or two where the originals have
been partially destroyed. The first is to
Coleridge, and is dated May 27, 1796; the
last is to Mrs. Dyer, and was written on
December 22, 1834. Who, I wonder, ever
managed to squeeze into a correspondence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
of forty years truer humour, madder nonsense,
sounder sense, or more tender sympathy!
They do not indeed (these letters)
prate about first principles, but they contain
many things conducive to a good life
here below.</p>

<p>The earlier letters strike the more solemn
notes. As a young man Lamb was deeply
religious, and for a time the appalling
tragedy of his life, the death of his mother
by his sister's hand, deepened these feelings.
His letters to Coleridge in September
and October, 1769, might very well
appear in the early chapters of a saint's
life. They exhibit the rare union of a
colossal strength, entire truthfulness, (no
single emotion being ever exaggerated,)
with the tenderest and most refined feelings.
Some of his sentences remind one
of Johnson, others of Rousseau. How
people reading these letters can ever have
the impudence to introduce into the tones
of their voices when they are referring to
Lamb the faintest suspicion of condescension,
as if they were speaking of one
weaker than themselves, must always re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>main
an unsolved problem of human conceit.</p>

<p>These elevated feelings passed away.
He refers to this in a letter written in
1801 to Walter Wilson.</p>

<p>'I have had a time of seriousness, and
I have known the importance and reality
of a religious belief. Latterly, I acknowledge,
much of my seriousness has gone
off, whether from new company or some
other new associations, but I still retain
at bottom a conviction of the truth and a
certainty of the usefulness of religion.'</p>

<p>The fact, I suspect, was that the strain
of religious thoughts was proving too
great for a brain which had once succumbed
to madness. Religion sits very
lightly on some minds. She could not
have done so on Lamb's. He took refuge
in trivialities seriously, and played the
fool in order to remain sane.</p>

<p>These letters are of the same material
as the <i>Essays of Elia</i>. The germs, nay,
the very phrases, of the latter are frequently
to be found in the former. This
does not offend in Lamb's case, though as
a rule a good letter ought not forcibly to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
remind us of a good essay by the same
hand. Admirable as are Thackeray's lately
published letters, the parts I like best
are those which remind me least of a
<i>Roundabout Paper</i>. The author is always
apt to steal in, and the author is the very
last person you wish to see in a letter.
But as you read Lamb's letters you never
think of the author: his personality carries
you over everything. He manages&mdash;I
will not say skilfully, for it was the
natural result of his delightful character,
always to address his letter to his correspondent&mdash;to
make it a thing which, apart
from the correspondent, his habits and
idiosyncrasies, could not possibly have existed
in the shape it does. One sometimes
comes across things called letters,
which might have been addressed to anybody.
But these things are not letters:
they are extracts from journals or circulars,
and are usually either offensive or
dull.</p>

<p>Lamb's letters are not indeed model
letters like Cowper's. Though natural to
Lamb, they cannot be called easy. 'Divine
chit-chat' is not the epithet to de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>scribe
them. His notes are all high. He
is sublime, heartrending, excruciatingly
funny, outrageously ridiculous, sometimes
possibly an inch or two overdrawn. He
carries the charm of incongruity and total
unexpectedness to the highest pitch imaginable.
John Sterling used to chuckle
over the sudden way in which you turn up
Adam in the following passage from a
letter to Bernard Barton:</p>

<p>'<span class="smcap">Dear B. B.</span>&mdash;You may know my letters
by the paper and the folding. For
the former I live on scraps obtained in
charity from an old friend, whose stationery
is a permanent perquisite; for folding
I shall do it neatly when I learn to tie my
neckcloths. I surprise most of my friends
by writing to them on ruled paper, as if
I had not got past pot-hooks and hangers.
Sealing-wax I have none in my establishment;
wafers of the coarsest bran supply
its place. When my epistles come to be
weighed with Pliny's, however superior to
them in Roman delicate irony, judicious
reflections, etc., his gilt post will bribe
over the judges to him. All the time I
was at the E. I. H. I never mended a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
pen. I now cut 'em to the stumps, marring
rather than mending the primitive
goose-quill. I cannot bear to pay for
articles I used to get for nothing. When
Adam laid out his first penny upon nonpareils
at some stall in Mesopotamos, I
think it went hard with him, reflecting
upon his old goodly orchard where he had
so many for nothing.'</p>

<p>There are not many better pastimes for
a middle-aged man who does not care for
first principles or modern novels than to
hunt George Dyer up-and-down Charles
Lamb. Lamb created Dyer as surely as
did Cervantes Don Quixote, Sterne Toby
Shandy, or Charles Dickens Sam Weller.
Outside Lamb George Dyer is the deadest
of dead authors. Inside Lamb he is one
of the quaintest, queerest, most humorously
felicitous of living characters. Pursue
this sport through Canon Ainger's first
volume and you will have added to your
gallery of whimsicalities the picture of
George Dyer by a master-hand.</p>

<p>Lamb's relations towards Coleridge and
Wordsworth are exceedingly interesting.
He loved them both as only Lamb could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
love his friends. He admired them both
immensely as poets. He recognised what
he considered their great intellectual superiority
over himself. He considered
their friendship the crowning glory of his
life. For Coleridge his affection reached
devotion. The news of his death was a
shock he never got over. He would keep
repeating to himself, 'Coleridge is dead!'
But with what a noble, independent, manly
mind did he love his friends! How deep,
how shrewd was his insight into their
manifold infirmities! His masculine nature
and absolute freedom from that curse
of literature, coterieship, stand revealed
on every page of the history of Lamb's
friendships.</p>

<p>On page 327 of Canon Ainger's first
volume there is a letter of Lamb's, never
before printed, addressed to his friend Manning,
which is delightful reading. The
editor did not get it in time to put it in the
text, so the careless reader might overlook
it, lurking as it does amongst the notes.
It is too long for quotation, but a morsel
must be allowed me:</p>

<p>'I lately received from Wordsworth a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
copy of the second volume, accompanied
by an acknowledgment of having received
from me many months since a copy of a
certain tragedy with excuses for not having
made any acknowledgment sooner, it
being owing to an almost insurmountable
aversion from letter-writing. This
letter I answered in due form and time,
and enumerated several of the passages
which had most affected me, adding, unfortunately,
that no single piece had moved
me so forcibly as the <i>Ancient Mariner</i>,
<i>The Mad Mother</i>, or the <i>Lines at Tintern
Abbey</i>. The Post did not sleep a
moment. I received almost instantaneously
a long letter of four sweating pages
from my Reluctant Letter-Writer, the purport
of which was, he was sorry his second
volume had not given me more pleasure
(Devil a hint did I give that it had not
pleased me), and was compelled to wish
that my range of sensibility was more extended,
being obliged to believe that I
should receive large influxes of happiness
and happy thoughts (I suppose from the
<i>Lyrical Ballads</i>). With a deal of stuff
about a certain union of Tenderness and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
Imagination, which in the sense he used
Imagination was not the characteristic of
Shakespeare, but which Milton possessed
in a degree far exceeding other Poets,
which union, as the highest species of
Poetry and chiefly deserving that name
"he was most proud to aspire to"; then
illustrating the said union by two quotations
from his own second volume which
I had been so unfortunate as to miss.'</p>

<p>But my quotation must stop. It has
been long enough to prove what I was saying
about the independence of Lamb's
judgment even of his best friends. No
wonder such a man did not like being
called 'gentle-hearted' even by S. T. C, to
whom he writes:</p>

<p>'In the next edition of the <i>Anthology</i>
(which Ph&#339;bus avert, those nine other
wandering maids also!) please to blot out
"gentle-hearted," and substitute drunken
dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed,
stuttering, or any other epithet which
truly and properly belongs to the gentleman
in question.'</p>

<p>Of downright fun and fooling of the
highest intellectual calibre fine examples<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
abound on all sides. The 'Dick Hopkins'
letter ranks very high. Manning had sent
Lamb from Cambridge a piece of brawn,
and Lamb takes into his head, so teeming
with whimsical fancies, to pretend that it
had been sent him by an imaginary Dick
Hopkins, 'the swearing scullion of Caius,'
who 'by industry and agility has thrust
himself into the important situation (no
sinecure, believe me) of cook to Trinity
Hall'; and accordingly he writes the real
donor a long letter, singing the praises of
this figment of his fancy, and concludes:</p>

<p>'Do me the favour to leave off the business
which you may be at present upon,
and go immediately to the kitchens of
Trinity and Caius and make my most respectful
compliments to Mr. Richard
Hopkins and assure him that his brawn
is most excellent: and that I am moreover
obliged to him for his innuendo about
salt water and bran, which I shall not fail
to improve. I leave it to you whether
you shall choose to pay him the civility of
asking him to dinner while you stay in
Cambridge, or in whatever other way you
may best like to show your gratitude to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
<i>my friend</i>. Richard Hopkins considered
in many points of view is a very extraordinary
character. Adieu. I hope to see
you to supper in London soon, where we
will taste Richard's brawn, and drink his
health in a cheerful but moderate cup.
We have not many such men in any rank
of life as Mr. R. Hopkins. Crisp, the
barber of St. Mary's, was just such another.
I wonder <i>he</i> never sent me any
little token, some chestnuts or a puff, or
two pound of hair; just to remember him
by.'</p>

<p>We have little such elaborate jesting
nowadays. I suppose we think it is not
worth the trouble. The Tartary letter to
Manning and the rheumatism letters to
Crabb Robinson are almost distractingly
provocative of deep internal laughter. The
letter to Cary apologising for the writer's
getting drunk in the British Museum has
its sad side; but if one may parody the
remark, made by 'the young lady of quality,'
to Dr. Johnson, which he was so fond
of getting Boswell to repeat, though it was
to the effect that had he (our great moralist)
been born out of wedlock his genius<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
would have been his mother's excuse, it
may be said that such a letter as Lamb's
was ample atonement for his single frailty.</p>

<p>Lamb does not greatly indulge in sarcasm,
though nobody could say more thoroughly
ill-natured things than he if he
chose to do so. George Dawe, the Royal
Academician, is roughly used by him. The
account he gives of Miss Berger&mdash;Benjay
he calls her&mdash;is not lacking in spleen. But
as a rule if Lamb disliked a person he
damned him and passed on. He did not
stop to elaborate his dislikes, or to toss his
hatreds up and down, as he does his loves
and humorous fancies. He hated the second
Mrs. Godwin with an entire hatred.
In a letter written to Manning when in
China he says:</p>

<p>'Mrs. Godwin grows every day in disfavour
with me. I will be buried with
this inscription over me: "Here lies C. L.,
the woman hater": I mean that
hated one woman; for the rest God bless
them! How do you like the Mandarinesses?
Are you on some little footing
with any of them?'</p>

<p>Scattered up and down these letters are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
to be found golden sentences, criticisms
both of life and of books, to rival which
one would have far to go. He has not the
glitter of Hazlitt&mdash;a writer whom it is a
shame to depreciate; nor does he ever
make the least pretence of aspiring to the
chair of Coleridge. He lived all his life
through conscious of a great weakness, and
therein indeed lay the foundation of the
tower of his strength. 'You do not know,'
he writes to Godwin, 'how sore and weak
a brain I have, or you would allow for
many things in me which you set down
for whims.' Lamb apologising for himself
to Godwin is indeed a thing at which
the imagination boggles. But his humility
must not blind us to the fact that there are
few men from whom we can learn more.</p>

<p>The most striking note of Lamb's literary
criticism is its veracity. He is perhaps
never mistaken. His judgments are apt to
be somewhat too much coloured with his
own idiosyncrasy to be what the judicious
persons of the period call final and classical,
but when did he ever go utterly wrong
either in praise or in dispraise? When did
he like a book which was not a good book?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
When did either the glamour of antiquity
or the glare of novelty lead him astray?
How free he was from that silly chatter
about books now so abundant! When did
he ever pronounce wire-drawn twaddle or
sickly fancies, simply reeking of their impending
dissolution, to be enduring and
noble workmanship?</p>

<p>But it must be owned Lamb was not a
great reader of new books. That task devolved
upon his sister. He preferred Burnet's
<i>History of his Own Times</i>, to any
novel, even to a 'Waverley.'</p>

<p>'Did you ever read,' he wrote to Manning,
'that garrulous, pleasant history?
He tells his story like an old man past
political service, bragging to his sons on
winter evenings of the part he took in public
transactions, when his "old cap was
new." Full of scandal, which all true history
is. No palliatives; but all the stark
wickedness, that actually gives the <i>momentum</i>
to national actors. Quite the prattle
of age and outlived importance. Truth
and sincerity staring out upon you in
<i>alto relievo</i>. Himself a party man, he
makes you a party man. None of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
cursed, philosophical, Humeian indifference,
so cold and unnatural and inhuman.
None of the cursed Gibbonian fine writing
so fine, and composite! None of Dr.
Robertson's periods with three members.
None of Mr. Roscoe's sage remarks, all so
apposite and coming in so clever, lest the
reader should have had the trouble of drawing
an inference.'</p>

<p>On the subject of children's books Lamb
held strong opinions, as indeed he was entitled
to do. What married pair with their
quiver full ever wrote such tales for children
as did this old bachelor and his maiden
sister?</p>

<p>'I am glad the snuff and Pipos books
please. <i>Goody Two Shoes</i> is almost out
of print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished
all the old classics of the nursery,
and the shop-man at Newberry's hardly
deigned to reach them off an old exploded
corner of a shelf when Mary asked for
them. Mrs. Barbauld's and Mrs. Trimmer's
nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge
insignificant and vapid as Mrs. Barbauld's
books convey, it seems must come
to a child in the <i>shape of knowledge</i>, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
his empty noddle must be turned with conceit
of his own powers when he has learnt
that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better
than a horse, and such like&mdash;instead
of that beautiful interest in wild tales which
made the child a man, while all the time he
suspected himself to be no bigger than a
child.'</p>

<p>Canon Ainger's six volumes are not very
big. They take up but little room. They
demand no great leisure. But they cannot
fail to give immense pleasure to generations
to come, to purify tastes, to soften
hearts, to sweeten discourse.</p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="AUTHORS_IN_COURT" id="AUTHORS_IN_COURT"></a>AUTHORS IN COURT<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></h2>


<p>There is always something a little ludicrous
about the spectacle of an author in
pursuit of his legal remedies. It is hard
to say why, but like a sailor on horseback,
or a Quaker at the play, it suggests that
incongruity which is the soul of things
humorous. The courts are of course as
much open to authors as to the really
deserving members of the community;
and, to do the writing fraternity justice,
they have seldom shown any indisposition
to enter into them&mdash;though if they have
done so joyfully, it must be attributed to
their natural temperament, which (so we
read) is easy, rather than to the mirthful
character of legal process.</p>

<p>To write a history of the litigations in
which great authors have been engaged
would indeed be <i>renovare dolorem</i>, and is
no intention of mine; though the subject<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
is not destitute of human interest&mdash;indeed,
quite the opposite.</p>

<p>Great books have naturally enough,
being longer lived, come into court even
more frequently than great authors. <i>Paradise
Lost</i>, <i>The Whole Duty of Man</i>, <i>The
Pilgrim's Progress</i>, <i>Thomson's Seasons</i>,
<i>Rasselas</i>, all have a legal as well as a literary
history. Nay, Holy Writ herself has
raised some nice points. The king's exclusive
prerogative to print the authorised
version has been based by some lawyers
on the commercial circumstance that King
James paid for it out of his own pocket.
Hence, argued they, cunningly enough, it
became his, and is now his successor's.
Others have contended more strikingly
that the right of multiplying copies of the
Scriptures necessarily belongs to the king
as head of the Church. A few have been
found to question the right altogether, and
to call it a job. As her present gracious
Majesty has been pleased to abandon the
prerogative, and has left all her subjects
free (though at their own charges) to publish
the version of her learned predecessor,
the Bible does not now come into court on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
its own account. But whilst the prerogative
was enforced, the king's printers were
frequently to be found seeking injunctions
to restrain the vending of the Word of
God by (to use Carlyle's language) 'Mr.
Thomas Teggs and other extraneous persons.'
Nor did the judges, on proper
proof, hesitate to grant what was sought.
It is perhaps interesting to observe that the
king never claimed more than the text. It
was always open to anybody to publish even
King James's version, if he added notes
of his own. But how shamefully was this
royal indulgence abused! Knavish booksellers,
anxious to turn a dishonest penny
out of the very Bible, were known to publish
Bibles with so-called notes, which upon
examination turned out not to be <i>bon&acirc;-fide</i>
notes at all, but sometimes mere indications
of assent with what was stated in the text,
and sometimes simple ejaculations. And
as people as a rule preferred to be without
notes of this character they used to be
thoughtfully printed at the very edge of
the sheet, so that the scissors of the binder
should cut them off and prevent them
annoying the reader. But one can fancy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
the question, 'What is a <i>bon&acirc;-fide</i> note?'
exercising the legal mind.</p>

<p>Our great lawyers on the bench have
always treated literature in the abstract
with the utmost respect. They have in
many cases felt that they too, but for the
grace of God, might have been authors.
Like Charles Lamb's solemn Quaker, 'they
had been wits in their youth.' Lord Mansfield
never forgot that, according to Mr.
Pope, he was a lost Ovid. Before ideas in
their divine essence the judges have bowed
down. 'A literary composition,' it has
been said by them, 'so long as it lies dormant
in the author's mind, is absolutely
in his own possession.' Even Mr. Horatio
Sparkins, of whose brilliant table-talk
this observation reminds us, could not
more willingly have recognised an obvious
truth.</p>

<p>But they have gone much further than
this. Not only is the repose of the dormant
idea left undisturbed, but the manuscript
to which it, on ceasing to be dormant,
has been communicated, is hedged
round with divinity. It would be most
unfair to the delicacy of the legal mind to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
attribute this to the fact, no doubt notorious,
that whilst it is easy (after, say, three
years in a pleader's chambers) to draw
an indictment against a man for stealing
paper, it is not easy to do so if he has only
stolen the ideas and used his own paper.
There are some quibbling observations in
the second book of Justinian's <i>Institutes</i>,
and a few remarks of Lord Coke's which
might lead the thoughtless to suppose that
in their protection of an author's manuscripts
the courts were thinking more of
the paper than of the words put upon it;
but that this is not so clearly appears from
our law as it is administered in the Bankruptcy
branch of the High Court.</p>

<p>Suppose a popular novelist were to become
a bankrupt&mdash;a supposition which,
owing to the immense sums these gentlemen
are now known to make, is robbed of
all painfulness by its impossibility&mdash;and
his effects were found to consist of the
three following items: first, his wearing
apparel; second, a copy of <i>Whitaker's
Almanack</i> for the current year; and third,
the manuscript of a complete and hitherto
unpublished novel, worth in the Row, let<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
us say, one thousand pounds. These are
the days of cash payments, so we must not
state the author's debts at more than fifteen
hundred pounds. It would have been difficult
for him to owe more without incurring
the charge of imprudence. Now, how will
the law deal with the effects of this bankrupt?
Ever averse to exposing anyone to
criminal proceedings, it will return to him
his clothing, provided its cash value does
not exceed twenty pounds, which, as authors
have left off wearing bloom-coloured garments
even as they have left off writing
<i>Vicars of Wakefield</i>, it is not likely to do.
This humane rule disposes of item number
one. As to <i>Whitaker's Almanack</i>, it would
probably be found necessary to take the
opinion of the court; since, if it be a tool
of the author's trade, it will not vest in the
official receiver and be divisible amongst
the creditors, but, like the first item, will
remain the property of the bankrupt&mdash;but
otherwise, if not such a tool. On a
point like this the court would probably
wish to hear the evidence of an expert&mdash;of
some man like Mr. George Augustus
Sala, who knows the literary life to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
backbone. This point disposed of, or
standing over for argument, there remains
the manuscript novel, which, as we have
said, would, if sold in the Row, produce a
sum not only sufficient to pay the costs of
the argument about the <i>Almanack</i> and of
all parties properly appearing in the bankruptcy,
but also, if judiciously handled, a
small dividend to the creditors. But here
our law steps in with its chivalrous, almost
religious respect for ideas, and declares
that the manuscript shall not be taken
from the bankrupt and published without
his consent. In ordinary cases everything
a bankrupt has, save the clothes for his
back and the tools of his trade, is ruthlessly
torn from him. Be it in possession,
reversion, or remainder, it all goes. His
incomes for life, his reversionary hopes, are
knocked down to the speculator. In vulgar
phrase, he is 'cleaned out.' But the
manuscripts of the bankrupt author, albeit
they may be worth thousands, are not recognised
as property; they are not yet dedicated
to the public. The precious papers,
despite all their writer's misfortunes, remain
his&mdash;his to croon and to dream over,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
his to alter and re-transcribe, his to withhold,
ay, his to destroy, if he should deem
them, either in calm judgment, or in a
despairing hour, unhappy in their expression
or unworthy of his name.</p>

<p>There is something positively tender in
this view. The law may be an ass, but it
is also a gentleman.</p>

<p>Of course, in my imaginary case, if the
bankrupt were to withhold his consent to
publication, his creditors, even though it
were held that the <i>Almanack</i> was theirs,
would get nothing. I can imagine them
grumbling, and saying (what will not creditors
say?): 'We fed this gentleman whilst
he was writing this precious manuscript.
Our joints sustained him, our bread filled
him, our wine made him merry. Without
our goods he must have perished. By all
legal analogies we ought to have a lien
upon that manuscript. We are wholly
indifferent to the writer's reputation. It
may be blasted for all we care. It was
not as an author but as a customer
that we supplied his very regular wants.
It is now our turn to have wants. We
want to be paid.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>

<p>These amusing, though familiar, cries of
distress need not disturb our equanimity or
interfere with our admiration for the sublime
views as to the sanctity of unpublished
ideas entertained by the Court sitting in
Bankruptcy.</p>

<p>We have thus found, so far as we have
gone, the profoundest respect shown by the
law both for the dormant ideas and the
manuscripts of the author. Let us now
push boldly on, and inquire what happens
when the author withdraws his interdict,
takes the world into his confidence, and
publishes his book.</p>

<p>Our old Common Law was clear enough.
Subject only to laws or customs about
licensing and against profane books and
the like, the right of publishing and selling
any book belonged exclusively to the author
and persons claiming through him.
Books were as much the subjects of property-rights
as lands in Kent or money in
the bank. The term of enjoyment knew
no period. Fine fantastic ideas about
genius endowing the world and transcending
the narrow bounds of property were not
countenanced by our Common Law. Bun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>yan's
<i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>, in the year 1680,
belonged to Mr. Ponder: <i>Paradise Lost</i>, in
the year 1739, was the property of Mr.
Jacob Tonson. Mr. Ponder and Mr. Tonson
had acquired these works by purchase.
Property-rights of this description seem
strange to us, even absurd. But that is
one of the provoking ways of property-rights.
Views vary. Perhaps this time
next century it will seem as absurd that
Ben Mac Dhui should ever have been
private property as it now does that in
1739 Mr. Tonson should have been the
owner 'of man's first disobedience and the
fruit of that forbidden tree.' This is not
said with any covered meaning, but is
thrown out gloomily with the intention of
contributing to the general depreciation of
property.</p>

<p>If it be asked how came it about that
authors and booksellers allowed themselves
to be deprived of valuable and well-assured
rights&mdash;to be in fact disinherited,
without so much as an expostulatory ode
or a single epigram&mdash;it must be answered,
strange as it may sound, it hap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>pened
accidentally and through tampering
with the Common Law.</p>

<p>Authors are indeed a luckless race. To
be deprived of your property by Act of
Parliament is a familiar process, calling
for no remarks save of an objurgatory
character; but to petition Parliament to
take away your property&mdash;to get up an
agitation against yourself, to promote the
passage through both Houses of the Act
of spoliation, is unusual; so unusual indeed
that I make bold to say that none
but authors would do such things. That
they did these very things is certain. It
is also certain that they did not mean to
do them. They did not understand the
effect of their own Act of Parliament. In
exchange for a term of either fourteen or
twenty-one years, they gave up not only
for themselves, but for all before and after
them, the whole of time. Oh! miserable
men! No enemy did this; no hungry
mob clamoured for cheap books; no owner
of copyrights so much as weltered in his
gore. The rights were unquestioned: no
one found fault with them. The authors
accomplished their own ruin. Never,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
surely, since the well-nigh incredible folly
of our first parents lost us Eden and put
us to the necessity of earning our living,
was so fine a property&mdash;perpetual copyright&mdash;bartered
away for so paltry an
equivalent.</p>

<p>This is how it happened. Before the
Revolution of 1688 printing operations
were looked after, first by the Court of
Star Chamber, which was not always engaged,
as the perusal of constitutional history
might lead one to believe, in torturing
the unlucky, and afterwards by the Stationers'
Company. Both these jurisdictions
revelled in what is called summary
process, which lawyers sometimes describe
as <i>brevi manu</i>, and suitors as 'short
shrift.' They hailed before them the
Mr. Thomas Teggs of the period, and
fined them heavily and confiscated their
stolen editions. Authors and their assignees
liked this. But then came Dutch
William and the glorious Revolution. The
press was left free; and authors and their
assignees were reduced to the dull level of
unlettered persons; that is to say, if their
rights were interfered with, they were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
compelled to bring an action, of the kind
called 'trespass on the case,' and to employ
astute counsel to draw pleadings with
a pitfall in each paragraph, and also to
incur costs; and in most cases, even when
they triumphed over their enemy, it was
only to find him a pauper from whom it
was impossible to recover a penny. Nor
had the law power to fine the offender or
to confiscate the pirated edition; or if it
had this last power, it was not accustomed
to exercise it, deeming it unfamiliar and
savouring of the Inquisition. Grub Street
grew excited. A noise went up 'most
musical, most melancholy,</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;As of cats that wail in chorus.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>It was the Augustan age of literature.
Authors were listened to. They petitioned
Parliament, and their prayer was
heard. In the eighth year of good Queen
Anne the first copyright statute was
passed which, 'for the encouragement of
learned men to compose and write useful
books,' provided that the authors of books
already printed who had not transferred
their rights, and the booksellers or other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
persons who had purchased the copy of
any books in order to print or reprint the
same, should have the sole right of printing
them for a term of twenty-one years
from the tenth of April, 1710, and no
longer; and that authors of books not
then printed, should have the sole right of
printing for fourteen years, and no longer.
Then followed, what the authors really
wanted the Act for, special penalties for
infringement. And there was peace in
Grub Street for the space of twenty-one
years. But at the expiration of this period
the fateful question was stirred&mdash;what
had happened to the old Common Law
right in perpetuity? Did it survive this
peddling Act, or had it died, ingloriously
smothered by a statute? That fine old
book&mdash;once on every settle&mdash;<i>The Whole
Duty of Man</i>, first raised the point. Its
date of publication was 1657, so it had had
its term of twenty-one years. That term
having expired, what then? The proceedings
throw no light upon the vexed
question of the book's authorship. Sir
Joseph Jekyll was content with the evidence
before him that, in 1735 at all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
events, <i>The Whole Duty of Man</i> was, or
would have been but for the statute, the
property of one Mr. Eyre. He granted
an injunction, thus in effect deciding that
the old Common Law had survived the
statute. Nor did the defendant appeal,
but sat down under the affront, and left
<i>The Whole Duty of Man</i> alone for the
future.</p>

<p>Four years later there came into Lord
Hardwicke's court 'silver-tongued Murray,'
afterwards Lord Mansfield, then Solicitor-General,
and on behalf of Mr. Jacob Tonson
moved for an injunction to restrain
the publication of an edition of <i>Paradise
Lost</i>. Tonson's case was, that <i>Paradise
Lost</i> belonged to him, just as the celebrated
ewer by Benvenuto Cellini once
belonged to the late Mr. Beresford Hope.
He proved his title by divers mesne assignments
and other acts in the law, from Mrs.
Milton&mdash;the poet's third wife, who exhibited
such skill in the art of widowhood,
surviving her husband as she did for fifty-three
years. Lord Hardwicke granted the
injunction. It looked well for the Common
Law. Thomson's <i>Seasons</i> next took<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
up the wondrous tale. This delightful
author, now perhaps better remembered
by his charming habit of eating peaches
off the wall with both hands in his pockets,
than by his great work, had sold the book
to Andrew Millar, the bookseller whom
Johnson respected because, said he, 'he
has raised the price of literature.' If so,
it must have been but low before, for he
only gave Thomson a hundred guineas
for 'Summer,' 'Autumn,' and 'Winter,' and
some other pieces. The 'Spring' he bought
separately, along with the ill-fated tragedy,
<i>Sophonisba</i>, for one hundred and thirty-seven
pounds ten shillings. A knave
called Robert Taylor pirated Millar's Thomson's
<i>Seasons</i>; and on the morrow of All
Souls in Michaelmas, in the seventh year
of King George the Third, Andrew Millar
brought his plea of trespass on the case
against Robert Taylor, and gave pledges
of prosecution, to wit, John Doe and
Richard Roe. The case was recognised
to be of great importance, and was argued
at becoming length in the King's Bench.
Lord Mansfield and Justices Willes and
Aston upheld the Common Law. It was,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
they declared, unaffected by the statute.
Mr. Justice Yates dissented, and in the
course of a judgment occupying nearly
three hours, gave some of his reasons. It
was the first time the court had ever finally
differed since Mansfield presided over it.
Men felt the matter could not rest there.
Nor did it. Millar died, and went to his
own place. His executors put up Thomson's
<i>Poems</i> for sale by public auction, and
one Beckett bought them for five hundred
and five pounds. When we remember
that Millar only gave two hundred and
forty-two pounds ten shillings for them in
1729, and had therefore enjoyed more than
forty years' exclusive monopoly, we realise
not only that Millar had made a good thing
out of his brother Scot, but what great
interests were at stake. Thomson's <i>Seasons</i>,
erst Millar's, now became Beckett's;
and when one Donaldson of Edinburgh
brought out an edition of the poems, it
became the duty of Beckett to take proceedings,
which he did by filing a bill in
the Court of Chancery.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>

<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p>
<p>These proceedings found their way, as
all decent proceedings do, to the House of
Lords&mdash;farther than which you cannot go,
though ever so minded. It was now high
time to settle this question, and their lordships
accordingly, as was their proud practice
in great cases, summoned the judges
of the land before their bar, and put to
them five carefully-worded questions, all
going to the points&mdash;what was the old
Common Law right, and has it survived
the statute? Eleven judges attended,
heard the questions, bowed and retired to
consider their answers. On the fifteenth
of February, 1774, they reappeared, and it
being announced that they differed, instead
of being locked up without meat, drink, or
firing until they agreed, they were requested
to deliver their opinions with their
reasons, which they straightway proceeded
to do. The result may be stated with tolerable
accuracy thus: by ten to one they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
were of opinion that the old Common Law
recognised perpetual copyright. By six to
five they were of opinion that the statute
of Queen Anne had destroyed this right.
The House of Lords adopted the opinion
of the majority, reversed the decree of the
Court below, and thus Thomson's <i>Seasons</i>
became your <i>Seasons</i>, my <i>Seasons</i>, anybody's
<i>Seasons</i>. But by how slender a
majority! To make it even more exciting,
it was notorious that the most eminent
judge on the Bench (Lord Mansfield) agreed
with the minority; but owing to the combined
circumstances of his having already,
in a case practically between the same
parties and relating to the same matter,
expressed his opinion, and of his being
not merely a judge but a peer, he was prevented
(by etiquette) from taking any part,
either as a judge or as a peer, in the proceedings.
Had he not been prevented (by
etiquette), who can say what the result
might have been?</p>

<p>Here ends the story of how authors and
their assignees were disinherited by mistake,
and forced to content themselves with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
such beggarly terms of enjoyment as a hostile
legislature doles out to them.</p>

<p>As the law now stands, they may enjoy
their own during the period of the
author's life, <i>plus</i> seven years, or the period
of forty-two years, whichever may chance
to prove the longer.</p>

<p>So strangely and so quickly does the
law colour men's notions of what is inherently
decent, that even authors have forgotten
how fearfully they have been abused
and how cruelly robbed. Their thoughts
are turned in quite other directions. I do
not suppose they will care for these old-world
memories. Their great minds are
tossing on the ocean which pants dumbly-passionate
with dreams of royalties. If
they could only shame the English-reading
population of the United States to pay
for their literature, all would be well.
Whether they ever will, depends upon
themselves. If English authors will publish
their books cheap, Brother Sam may,
and probably will, pay them a penny a
copy, or some such sum. If they will not,
he will go on stealing. It is wrong, but
he will do it. 'He says,' observes an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
American writer, 'that he was born of
poor but honest parents, <i>I</i> say, "Bah!"'<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="NATIONALITY" id="NATIONALITY"></a>NATIONALITY<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></h2>


<p>Nothing can well be more offensive
than the abrupt asking of questions, unless
indeed it be the glib assurance which
professes to be able to answer them without
a moment's doubt or consideration.
It is hard to forgive Sir Robert Peel for
having once asked, 'What is a pound?'
Cobden's celebrated question, 'What next?
And next?' was perhaps less objectionable,
being vast and vague, and to employ
Sir Thomas Browne's well-known phrase,
capable of a wide solution.</p>

<p>But in these disagreeable days we must
be content to be disagreeable. We must
even accept being so as our province. It
seems now recognised that he is the best
Parliamentary debater who is most disagreeable.
It is not so easy as some people
imagine to be disagreeable. The gift requires
cultivation. It is easier, no doubt,
for some than for others.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>

<p>What is a nation&mdash;socially and politically,
and as a unit to be dealt with by
practical politicians? It is not a great
many things. It is not blood, it is not
birth, it is not breeding. A man may
have been born at Surat and educated at
Lausanne, one of his four great-grandfathers
may have been a Dutchman, one of
his four great-grandmothers a French refugee,
and yet he himself may remain from
his cradle in Surat to his grave at Singapore,
a true-born Englishman, with all an
Englishman's fine contempt for mixed races
and struggling nationalities.</p>

<p>Where the English came from is still a
matter of controversy, but where they have
gone to is writ large over the earth's surface.
Yet their nationality has suffered
no eclipse. Caviare is not so good in London
as in Moscow, but it is caviare all the
same. No foreigner needs to ask the
nationality of the man who treads on his
corns, smiles at his religion, and does not
want to know anything about his aspirations.</p>

<p>England has all the notes of a nation.
She has a National Church, based upon a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
view of history peculiarly her own. She
has a National Oath, which, without any
undue pride, may be pronounced adequate
for ordinary occasions. She has a Constitution,
the admiration of the world, and of
which a fresh account has to be written
every twenty years. She has a History,
glorious in individual feats, and splendid in
accomplished facts; she has a Literature
which makes the poorest of her children,
if only he has been taught to read, rich
beyond the dreams of avarice. As for the
national character, it may be said of an
Englishman, what has been truly said of
the great English poet Wordsworth&mdash;take
him at his best and he need own no superior.
He cannot always be at his best;
and when he is at his worst the world
shudders.</p>

<p>But what about Scotland and Ireland?
Are they nations? If they are not, it is
not because their separate characteristics
have been absorbed by John Bullism.
Scotland and Ireland are no more England
than Holland or Belgium. It may be
doubted whether, if the three countries
had never been politically united, their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
existing unlikeness would have been any
greater than it is. It is a most accentuated
unlikeness. Scotland has her own prevailing
religion. Mr. Arnold recognised
this when he observed, in that manner of
his which did not always give pleasure,
that Dr. Chalmers reminded him of a
Scotch thistle valorously trying to look as
much like the rose of Sharon as possible.
This distorted view of Mr. Arnold's at all
events recognises a fact. Then there is
Scotch law. If there is one legal proposition
which John Bull&mdash;poor attorney-ridden
John Bull&mdash;has grasped for himself,
it is that a promise made without a monetary
or otherwise valuable consideration, is
in its legal aspect a thing of nought, which
may be safely disregarded. Bull's views
about the necessity of writing and sixpenny
stamps are vague, but he is quite sound
and certain about promises going for nothing
unless something passed between the
parties. Thus, if an Englishman, moved,
let us say, by the death of his father, says
hastily to a maiden aunt who has made the
last days of his progenitor easy, 'I will give
you fifty pounds a year,' and then repents<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
him of his promise, he is under no legal
obligation to make it good. If he is a gentleman
he will send her a ten-pound note
at Christmas and a fat goose at Michaelmas,
and the matter drops as being
but the babble of the sick-room. But in
Scotland the maiden aunt, provided she
can prove her promise, can secure her annuity
and live merrily in Peebles for the
rest of a voluptuous life. Here is a difference
indeed!</p>

<p>Then, Scotland has a history of her own.
The late Dr. Hill Burton wrote it in nine
comfortable volumes. She has a thousand
traditions, foreign connections, feelings to
which the English breast must always
remain an absolute stranger. Scottish fields
are different from English fields; her farms,
roads, walls, buildings, flowers, are different;
her schools, universities, churches,
household ways, songs, foods, drinks, are
all as different as may be. Boswell's Johnson,
Lockhart's Scott! What a host of
dissimilarities, what an Iliad of unlikenesses,
do the two names of Johnson and
Scott call up from the vasty deep of
national differences!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p>

<p>One great note of a nation is possessed
to the full by Scotland. I mean the power
of blending into one state of national feeling
all those who call what is contained
within her geographical boundaries by the
sacred name of 'Home.' The Lowlander
from Dumfries is more at home at Inverness
than in York. Why is this? Because
Scotland is a nation. The great Smollett,
who challenges Dickens for the foremost
place amongst British comic writers, had
no Celtic blood in his veins. He was
neither a Papist nor a Jacobite, yet how
did his Scottish blood boil whilst listening
in London to the cowardly exultations of
the cockneys over the brutalities that followed
the English victory at Colloden! and
how bitterly&mdash;almost savagely&mdash;did he
contrast that cowardly exultation with the
depression and alarm that had prevailed in
London when but a little while before the
Scotch had reached Derby.</p>

<p>What patriotic feeling breathes through
Smollett's noble lines, <i>The Tears of Caledonia</i>,
and with what delightful enthusiasm,
with what affectionate admiration,
does Sir Walter Scott tell us how the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
last stanza came to be written! 'He
(Smollett) accordingly read them the
first sketch of the <i>Tears of Scotland</i>
consisting only of six stanzas, and on
their remarking that the termination of
the poem, being too strongly expressed,
might give offence to persons whose
political opinions were different, he sat
down without reply, and with an air of
great indignation, subjoined the concluding
stanza:</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;&#8220;While the warm blood bedews my veins,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And unimpaired remembrance reigns,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Resentment of my country's fate<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Within my filial breast shall beat.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Yes, spite of thine insulting foe,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">My sympathising verse shall flow,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Mourn, hopeless Caledonia, mourn,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn.&#8221;&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>In the same sense is the story told by
Mr. R. L. Stevenson, how, when the famous
Celtic regiment, the Black Watch,
which then drew its recruits from the now
unpeopled glens of Ross-shire and Sutherland,
returned to Scotland after years of
foreign service, veterans leaped out of the
boats and kissed the shore of Galloway.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p>

<p>The notes of Irish nationality have been,
by conquest and ill-usage, driven deeper in.
Her laws were taken from her, and her
religion brutally proscribed. In the great
matter of national education she has not
been allowed her natural and proper development.
Her children have been driven
abroad to foreign seminaries to get the
religious education Protestant England
denied them at home. Her nationality
has thus been checked and mutilated, but
that it exists in spirit and in fact can
hardly be questioned by any impartial traveller.
Englishmen have many gifts, but
one gift they have not&mdash;that of making
Scotsmen and Irishmen forget their native
land.</p>

<p>The attitude of some Englishmen towards
Scotch and Irish national feelings requires
correction. The Scotsman's feelings are
laughed at. The Irishman's insulted. So
far as the laughter is concerned, it must be
admitted that it is good-humoured. Burns,
Scott, and Carlyle, Scotch moors and Scotch
whisky, the royal game of golf, all have
mollified and beautified English feelings.
In candour, too, it must be admitted that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
Scotsmen are not conciliatory. They do
not meet people half-way. I do not think
the laughter does much harm. Insults are
different....</p>

<p>Mr. Arnold, in a now scarce pamphlet
published in 1859, on the Italian Question,
with the motto prefixed, '<i>Sed nondum est
finis</i>,' makes the following interesting observations:&mdash;</p>

<p>'Let an Englishman or a Frenchman,
who respectively represent the two greatest
nationalities of modern Europe, sincerely
ask himself what it is that makes
him take pride in his nationality, what it
is which would make it intolerable to his
feelings to pass, or to see any part of his
country pass, under foreign dominion.
He will find that it is the sense of self-esteem
generated by knowing the figure
which his nation makes in history; by
considering the achievements of his nation
in war, government, arts, literature, or industry.
It is the sense that his people,
which have done such great things, merits
to exist in freedom and dignity, and to enjoy
the luxury of self-respect.'</p>

<p>This is admirable, but not, nor does it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
pretend to be, exhaustive. The love of
country is something a little more than
mere <i>amour propre</i>. You may love your
mother, and wish to make a home for her,
even though she never dwelt in kings'
palaces, and is clad in rags. The children
of misery and misfortune are not all illegitimate.
Sometimes you may discern
amongst them high hope and pious endeavour.
There may be, indeed, there is, a
Niobe amongst the nations, but tears are
not always of despair.</p>

<p>'The luxury of self-respect.' It is a wise
phrase. To make Ireland and Irishmen
self-respectful is the task of statesmen.</p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="THE_REFORMATION" id="THE_REFORMATION"></a>THE REFORMATION<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></h2>


<p>Long ago an eminent Professor of International
Law, at the University of Cambridge,
lecturing his class, spoke somewhat
disparagingly of the Reformation as compared
with the Renaissance, and regretted
there was no adequate history of the
glorious events called by the latter name.
So keenly indeed did the Professor feel this
gap in his library, that he proceeded to say
that inconvenient as it had been to him to
lecture at Cambridge that afternoon, still
if what he had said should induce any
member of the class to write a history of
the Renaissance worthy to be mentioned
with the masterpiece of Gibbon, he (the
Professor) would never again think it right
to refer to the inconvenience he had
personally been put to in the matter.</p>

<p>It must be twenty years since these
words were uttered. The class to whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
they were addressed is scattered far and
wide, even as the household referred to in
the touching poem of Mrs. Hemans. No
one of them has written a history of the
Renaissance. It is now well-nigh certain
no one of them ever will. Looking back
over those twenty years it seems a pity it
was never attempted. As Owen Meredith
sweetly sings&mdash;</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;And it all seems now in the waste of life<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Such a very little thing.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>But it has remained undone. Regrets are
vain.</p>

<p>For my part, I will make bold to say
that the Professor was all wrong. Professors
do not stand where they did. They
have been blown upon. The ugliest gap
in an Englishman's library is in the shelf
which ought to contain, but does not, a
history of the Reformation of Religion in
his own country. It is a subject made for
an Englishman's hand. At present it is
but (to employ some old-fashioned words)
a hotch-potch, a gallimaufry, a confused
mingle-mangle of divers things jumbled or
put together. Puritan and Papist, Anglican<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
and Erastian, pull out what they choose,
and drop whatever they do not like with a
grimace of humorous disgust. What faces
the early Tractarians used to pull over
Bishop Jewel! How Dr. Maitland delighted
in exhibiting the boundless vulgarity
of the Puritan party! Lord Macaulay
had only a paragraph or two to spare for
the Reformation; but as we note amongst
the contents of his first chapter the following
heads: 'The Reformation and its
Effects,' 'Origin of the Church of England,'
'Her Peculiar Character,' we do not need
to be further reminded of the views of that
arch-Erastian.</p>

<p>It is time someone put a stop to this
'help yourself' procedure. What is needed
to do this is a long, luminous, leisurely history,
written by somebody who, though
wholly engrossed by his subject, is yet
absolutely indifferent to it.</p>

<p>The great want at present is of common
knowledge; common, that is, to all parties.
The Catholic tells his story, which is much
the most interesting one, sure of his audience.
The Protestant falls back upon his
Fox, and relights the fires of Smithfield<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
with entire self-satisfaction. The Erastian
flourishes his Acts of Parliament in the
face of the Anglican, who burrows like a
cony in the rolls of Convocation. Each is
familiar with one set of facts, and shrinks
nervously from the honour of an introduction
to a totally new set. We are not going
to change our old '<i>mumpsimus</i>' for anybody's
new '<i>sumpsimus</i>.' But we must
some day, and we shall when this new
history gets itself written.</p>

<p>The subject cannot be said to lack charm.
Border lands, marshes, passes are always
romantic. No bagman can cross the Tweed
without emotion. The wanderer on the
Malvern Hills soon learns to turn his eyes
from the dull eastward plain to where they
can be feasted on the dim outlines of wild
Wales. Border periods of history have
something of the same charm. How the
old thing ceased to be? How the new
thing became what it is? How the old
colours faded, and the old learning disappeared,
and the Church of Edward the
Confessor, and St. Thomas of Canterbury,
and William of Wykeham, became the
Church of George the Third, Archbishop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
Tait, and Dean Stanley? There is surely
a tale to be told. Something must have
happened at the Reformation. Somebody
was dispossessed. The common people no
longer heard 'the blessed mutter of the
mass,' nor saw 'God made and eaten all
day long.' Ancient services ceased, old
customs were disregarded, familiar words
began to go out of fashion. The Reformation
meant something. On these points
the Catholics entertain no kind of doubt.
That they suffered ejectment they tearfully
admit. Nor, to do them justice, have they
ever acquiesced in the wrong they allege
was then done them, or exhibited the faintest
admiration for the intruder.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">&#8216;Have ye beheld the young God of the Seas,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">My dispossessor? Have ye seen his face?<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Have ye beheld his chariot foam'd along<br /></span>
<span class="i0">By noble wing'd creatures he hath made?<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I saw him on the calmed waters scud,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">With such a glow of beauty in his eyes<br /></span>
<span class="i0">That it enforced me to bid sad farewell<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To all my empire.&#8217;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>This has never been the attitude or the
language of the Roman Church towards
the Anglican. 'Canterbury has gone its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
way, and York is gone, and Durham is
gone, and Winchester is gone. It was
sore to part with them.' So spoke Dr.
Newman on a memorable occasion. His
distress would have been no greater had
the venerable buildings to which he alluded
been in the possession of the Baptists.</p>

<p>But against this view must be set the
one represented by the somewhat boisterous
Church of Englandism of Dean Hook,
who ever maintained that all the Church
did at the Reformation was to wash her
dirty face, and that consequently she underwent
only an external and not a corporate
change during the process.</p>

<p>There are thousands of pious souls to
whom the question, What happened at the
Reformation? is of supreme importance;
and yet there is no history of the period
written by a 'kinless loon,' whose own personal
indifference to Church Authority
shall be as great as his passion for facts,
his love of adventures and biography, and
his taste for theology.</p>

<p>In the meantime, and pending the production
of the immortal work, it is pleasant
to notice that annually the historian's task<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
is being made easier. Books are being published,
and old manuscripts edited and
printed, which will greatly assist the good
man, and enable him to write his book by
his own fireside. The Catholics have been
very active of late years. They have shaken
off their shyness and reserve, and however
reluctant they still may be to allow their
creeds to be overhauled and their rites curtailed
by strangers, they have at least come
with their histories in their hands and invited
criticism. The labours of Father
Morris of the Society of Jesus, and of the
late Father Knox of the London Oratory,
greatly lighten and adorn the path of the
student who loves to be told what happened
long ago, not in order that he may know
how to cast his vote at the next election,
but simply because it so happened, and for
no other reason whatsoever.</p>

<p>Father Knox's name has just been
brought before the world, not, it is to be
hoped, for the last time, by the publication
of a small book, partly his, but chiefly the
work of the Rev. T. E. Bridgett, entitled
<i>The True Story of the Catholic Hierarchy
deposed by Queen Elizabeth, with Fuller<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
Memoirs of its Two Last Survivors</i> (Burns
and Oates).</p>

<p>The book was much wanted. When
Queen Mary died, on the 17th of November,
1558, the dioceses of Oxford, Salisbury,
Bangor, Gloucester, and Hereford
were vacant. The Archbishop of Canterbury,
Reginald Pole, died a few hours
after his royal relative; and the Bishops
of Rochester, Norwich, Chichester, and
Bristol did not long survive her. It thus
happened that at the opening of 1559
there were only sixteen bishops on the
bench. What became of them? The
book I have just mentioned answers this
deeply interesting question.</p>

<p>One of them, Oglethorpe of Carlisle,
was induced to crown the Queen, which
service was, however, performed according
to the Roman ceremonial, and included
the Unction, the Pontifical Mass, and the
Communion; but when the oath prescribed
by the Act of Supremacy was
tendered to the bishops, they all, with one
exception, Kitchen of Llandaff, declined
to take it, and their depositions followed
in due course, though at different dates,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
during the year 1559. They were, in
plain English, turned out, and their places
given to others.</p>

<p>A whole hierarchy turned a-begging like
this might have been a very startling thing&mdash;but
it does not seem to have been so.
There was no Ambrose amongst the bishops.
The mob showed no disposition to
rescue Bonner from the Marshalsea. The
Queen called them 'a set of lazy scamps.'
This was hard measure. The reverend
authors of the book before me call them
'confessors,' which they certainly were.
But there is something disappointing and
non-apostolic about them. They none of
them came to violent ends. What did
happen to them?</p>

<p>The classical passage recording their
fortunes occurs in Lord Burghley's <i>Execution
of Justice in England</i>, which appeared
in 1583. His lordship in a good-tempered
vein runs through the list of the deposed
bishops one by one, and says in substance,
and in a style not unlike Lord Russell's,
that the only hardship put upon them was
their removal 'from their ecclesiastical
offices, which they would not exercise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
according to law.' For the rest, they were
'for a great time retained in bishops' houses
in very civil and courteous manner, without
charge to themselves or their friends,
until the time the Pope began, by his Bulls
and messages, to offer trouble to the realm
by stirring of rebellion;' then Burghley
admits, some of them were removed to
more quiet places, but still without being
'called to any capital or bloody question.'</p>

<p>In this view historians have pretty generally
acquiesced. Camden speaks of Tunstall
of Durham dying at Lambeth 'in
free custody'&mdash;a happy phrase which
may be recommended to those of Her
Majesty's subjects in Ireland who find
themselves in prison under a statute of
Edward III., not for doing anything, but
for refusing to say they will not do it
again. Even that most erudite and delightful
of English Catholics, Charles Butler,
who is one of the pleasantest memories of
Lincoln's Inn, made but little of the sufferings
of these bishops, whilst some Protestant
writers have thought it quite amazing
they were not all burnt as heretics. 'There
were no retaliatory burnings,' says Canon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>
Perry regretfully. But this surely is carrying
Anglican assurance to an extraordinary
pitch. What were they to be burnt for?
You are burnt for heresy. That is right
enough. No one would complain of that.
But who in the year 1559 would have been
bold enough to declare that the Archbishop
of York was a heretic for refusing an oath
prescribed by an Act of the Queen of the
same year? Why, even now, after three
centuries and a quarter of possession, I
suppose Lord Selborne would hesitate
before burning the Archbishop of Westminster
as a heretic. Hanging is a different
matter. It is very easy to get hung&mdash;but
to be burnt requires a combination of
circumstances not always forthcoming.
Canon Perry should have remembered
this.</p>

<p>These deposed bishops were neither
burnt nor hung. The aged Tunstall of
Durham, who had played a very shabby
part in Henry's time, died, where he was
bound to die, in his bed, very shortly after
his deposition; so also did the Bishops of
Lichfield and Coventry, St. David's, Carlisle,
and Winchester. Dr. Scott of Ches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>ter,
after four years in the Fleet prison,
managed to escape to Belgium, where he
died in 1565. Dr. Pate of Worcester, who
was a Council of Trent man, spent three
years in the Tower, and then contrived to
slip away unobserved. Dr. Poole of Peterborough
was never in prison at all, but was
allowed to live in retirement in the neighbourhood
of London till his death in 1568.
Bishop Bonner was kept a close prisoner
in the Marshalsea till his death in 1569.
He was not popular in London. As he
had burnt about one hundred and twenty
persons, this need not surprise us. Bishop
Bourne of Bath and Wells was lodged in
the Tower from June, 1560, to the autumn
of 1563, when the plague breaking out, he
was quartered on the new Bishop of Lincoln,
who had to provide him with bed and
board till May, 1566, after which date the
ex-bishop was allowed to be at large till his
death in 1569. The Bishop of Exeter was
kept in the Tower for three years. What
subsequently became of him is not known.
He is supposed to have lived in the country.
Bishop Thirlby of Ely, after three
years in the Tower, lived for eleven years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
with Archbishop Parker, uncomfortably
enough, without confession or mass. Then
he died. It is not to be supposed that
Parker ever told his prisoner that they both
belonged to the same Church. Dr. Heath,
the Archbishop of York, survived his deprivation
twenty years, three only of which
were spent in prison. He was a man of
more mark than most of his brethren, and
had defended the Papal supremacy with
power and dignity in his place in Parliament.
The Queen, who had a liking for
him, was very anxious to secure his presence
at some of the new offices, but he
would never go, summing up his objections
thus:&mdash;'Whatever is contrary to the
Catholic faith is heresy, whatever is contrary
to Unity is schism.' On getting out
of the Tower, Dr. Heath, who had a private
estate, lived upon it till his death.
Dr. Watson of Lincoln was the most learned
and the worst treated of the deposed bishops.
He was in the Tower and the Marshalsea,
with short intervals, from 1559 to
1577, when he was handed over to the
custody of the Bishop of Winchester, who
passed him on, after eighteen months, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
his brother of Rochester, from whose charge
he was removed to join other prisoners in
Wisbeach Castle, where very queer things
happened. Watson died at Wisbeach in
1584. There was now but one bishop left,
the by no means heroic Goldwell of St.
Asaph's, who in June, 1559, proceeded in
disguise to the sea-coast, and crossed over
to the Continent without being recognised.
He continued to live abroad for the rest of
his days, which ended on the 3rd of April,
1585. With him the ancient hierarchy
ceased to exist. That, at least, is the
assertion of the reverend authors of the
book referred to. There are those who
maintain the contrary.</p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="SAINTE-BEUVE" id="SAINTE-BEUVE"></a>SAINTE-BEUVE<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></h2>


<p>The vivacious, the in fact far too vivacious,
Abb&eacute; Galiani, writing to Madame
d'&Eacute;pinay, observes with unwonted seriousness:
'Je remarque que le caract&egrave;re dominant
des Fran&ccedil;ais perce toujours. Ils sont
causeurs, raisonneurs, badins par essence;
un mauvais tableau enfante une bonne
brochure; ainsi, vous parlerez mieux des
arts que vous n'en ferez jamais. Il se
trouvera, au bout du compte, dans quelques
si&egrave;cles, que vous aurez le mieux
raisonn&eacute;, le mieux discut&eacute; ce que toutes
les autres nations auront fait de mieux.'
To affect to foretell the final balance of an
account which is not to be closed for centuries
demands either celestial assurance
or Neapolitan impudence; but, regarded as
a guess, the Abb&eacute;'s was a shrewd one. The
<i>post-mortem</i> may prove him wrong, but can
hardly prove him absurdly wrong.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p>

<p>We owe much to the French&mdash;enlightenment,
pleasure, variety, surprise; they
have helped us in a great many ways:
amongst others, to play an occasional game
of hide-and-seek with Puritanism, a distraction
in which there is no manner of
harm; unless, indeed, the demure damsel
were to turn huffy, and after we had hidden
ourselves, refuse to find us again.
Then, indeed&mdash;to use a colloquial expression&mdash;there
would be the devil to pay.</p>

<p>But nowhere have the French been so
helpful, in nothing else has the change
from the native to the foreign article been
so delightful, as in this very matter of criticism
upon which the Abb&eacute; Galiani had
seized more than a hundred years ago. Mr.
David Stott has lately published two small
volumes of translations from the writings of
Sainte-Beuve, the famous critic, who so long
has been accepted as the type of all that
is excellent in French criticism. French
turned into English is always a woful spectacle&mdash;the
pale, smileless corpse of what
was once rare and radiant; but it is a
thousand times better to read Sainte-Beuve
or any other good foreign author<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
in English than not to read him at all.
Everybody has not time to emulate the
poet Rowe, who learned Spanish in order
to qualify himself, as he fondly thought,
for a snug berth at Madrid, only to be told
by his scholarly patron that now he could
read <i>Don Quixote</i> in the original.</p>

<p>We hope these two volumes may be
widely read, as they deserve to be, and that
they may set their readers thinking what
it is that makes Sainte-Beuve so famous a
critic and so delightful a writer. His volumes
are very numerous. 'All Balzac's
novels occupy a shelf,' says Browning's
Bishop; Sainte-Beuve's criticisms take up
quite as much room. The <i>Causeries du
Lundi</i> and the <i>Nouveaux Lundis</i> fill some
twenty-eight tomes. <i>&Agrave; priori</i>, one would
be disposed to mutter, 'This is too much.'
Can any man turned fifty truthfully declare
that he wishes De Quincey had left thirty
volumes behind him instead of fifteen?
Great is De Quincey, but so elaborate are
his movements, so tremendous his literary
contortions, that when you have done with
him you feel it would be cruelty to keep
him stretched upon the rack of his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
style for a moment longer. Sainte-Beuve
is as easy as may be. Never before or
since has there been an author so well content
with his subject, whatever it might
chance to be; so willing to be bound within
its confines, and not to travel beyond it.
In this excellent 'stay-at-home' quality, he
reminds the English reader more of Addison
than of any of our later critics and essayists.
These latter are too anxious to
please, far too disposed to believe that,
apart from themselves and their flashing
wits, their readers can have no possible interest
in the subject they have in hand.
They are ever seeking to adorn their theme
instead of exploring it. They are always
prancing, seldom willing to take a brisk
constitutional along an honest, turnpike
road. Even so admirable, so sensible a
writer as Mr. Lowell is apt to worry us with
his Elizabethan profusion of imagery, epithet,
and wit. 'Something too much of
this,' we cry out before we are half-way
through. William Hazlitt, again, is really
too witty. It is uncanny. Sainte-Beuve
never teases his readers this way. You
often catch yourself wondering, so matter-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>of-fact
is his narrative, why it is you are
interested. The dates of the births and
deaths of his authors, the facts as to their
parentage and education, are placed before
you with stern simplicity, and without a
single one of those quips and cranks which
Carlyle ('God rest his soul!&mdash;he was a
merry man') scattered with full hands over
his explosive pages. But yet if you are interested,
as for the most part you are, what
a triumph for sobriety and good sense!
A noisy author is as bad as a barrel-organ;
a quiet one is as refreshing as a long pause
in a foolish sermon.</p>

<p>Sainte-Beuve covered an enormous range
in his criticism; he took the Whole Literature
as his province. It is an amusing
trait of many living authors whose odd craze
it is to take themselves and what they are
fond of calling their 'work'&mdash;by which, if
you please, they mean their rhymes and
stories&mdash;very seriously indeed, to believe
that critics exist for the purpose of calling
attention to them&mdash;these living solemnities&mdash;and
pointing out their varied excellences,
or promise of excellence, to an eager book-buying
public. To detect in some infant's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
squall the rich futurity of a George Eliot,
to predict a glorious career for Gus Hoskins&mdash;this
it is to be a true critic. For
my part, I think a critic better occupied,
though he be destitute of the genius of
Lamb or Coleridge, in calling attention to
the real greatnesses or shortcomings of
dead authors than in dictating to his neighbours
what they ought to think about living
ones. If you teach me or help me to think
aright about Milton, you can leave me to
deal with <i>The Light of Asia</i> on my own account.
Addison was better employed expounding
the beauties of <i>Paradise Lost</i> to
an unappreciative age than when he was
puffing Philips and belittling Pope, or even
than he would have been had he puffed
Pope and belittled Philips.</p>

<p>Sainte-Beuve was certainly happier snuffing
the 'parfums du pass&eacute;e' than when
ranging amongst the celebrities of his
own day. His admiration for Victor
Hugo, which so notoriously grew cool, is
supposed to have been by no means
remotely connected with an admiration for
Victor Hugo's wife. These things cannot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
be helped, but if you confine yourself to
the past they cannot happen.</p>

<p>The method pursued by this distinguished
critic during the years he was
producing his weekly <i>Causerie</i>, was to
shut himself up alone with his selected
author&mdash;that is, with his author's writings,
letters, and cognate works&mdash;for five days
in the week. This was his period of immersion,
of saturation. On the sixth day
he wrote his criticism. On the seventh
he did no manner of work. The following
day the <i>Causerie</i> appeared, and
its author shut himself up again with another
set of books to produce another criticism.
This was a workmanlike method.
Sainte-Beuve had a genuine zeal to be a
good workman in his own trade&mdash;the true
instinct of the craftsman, always honoured
in France, not so honoured as it deserves
to be in England.</p>

<p>Sainte-Beuve's most careless reader cannot
fail to observe his contentment with
his subject, his restraint, and his good
sense&mdash;all workmanlike qualities: but a
more careful study of his writings fully
warrants his title to the possession of other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
qualities it would be rash to rank higher,
but which, here in England, we are accustomed
to reward with more lavish
praise&mdash;namely, insight, sympathy, and
feeling.</p>

<p>To begin with, he was endlessly curious
about people, without being in the least
bit a gossip or a tattler. His interest never
fails him, yet never leads him astray. His
skill in collecting the salient facts and in
emphasising the important ones is marvellous.
How unerring was his instinct in
these matters the English reader is best
able to judge by his handling of English
authors, so diverse and so difficult as
Cowper, Gibbon, and Chesterfield. He
never so much as stumbles. He understands
Olney as well as Lausanne, Lady
Austen and Mrs. Unwin as well as Madame
Neckar or the Hampshire Militia.
One feels sure that he could have written
a better paper on John Bunyan than
Macaulay did, a wiser on John Wesley
than anybody has ever done.</p>

<p>Next to his curiosity must be ranked his
sympathy, a sympathy all the more contagious
because so quietly expressed, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
never purporting to be based on intellectual
accord. He handles mankind tenderly
though firmly. His interest in them
is not merely scientific&mdash;his methods are
scientific, but his heart is human. Read
his three papers on Cowper over again, and
you will agree with me. How thoroughly
he appreciates the charm of Cowper's happy
hours&mdash;his pleasant humour&mdash;his scholar-like
fancies&mdash;his witty verse! No clumsy
jesting about old women and balls of
worsted. It is the mixture of insight
with sympathy that is so peculiarly delightful.</p>

<p>Sainte-Beuve's feeling is displayed doubtless
in many ways, but to me it is always
most apparent when he is upholding modesty
and grace and wisdom against their
loud-mouthed opposites. When he is doing
this, his words seem to quiver with emotion&mdash;the
critic almost becomes the preacher.
I gladly take an example from one of the
volumes already referred to. It occurs at
the close of a paper on Camille Desmoulins,
of whom Sainte-Beuve does his best
to speak kindly, but the reaction comes&mdash;powerful,
overwhelming, sweeping all before
it:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>

<p>'What a longing we feel after reading
these pages, encrusted with mire and
blood&mdash;pages which are the living image
of the disorder in the souls and morals of
those times! What a need we experience
of taking up some wise book, where common-sense
predominates, and in which
the good language is but the reflection
of a delicate and honest soul, reared in
habits of honour and virtue! We exclaim:
Oh! for the style of honest men&mdash;of
men who have revered everything
worthy of respect; whose innate feelings
have ever been governed by the principles
of good taste! Oh! for the polished,
pure, and moderate writers! Oh!
for Nicole's Essays, for D'Aguesseau
writing the Life of his Father. Oh!
Vauvenargues! Oh! Pellisson!'</p>

<p>I have quoted from one volume; let me
now quote from the other. I will take a
passage from the paper on Madame de
Souza:&mdash;</p>

<p>'In stirring times, in moments of incoherent
and confused imagination like the
present, it is natural to make for the most
important point, to busy one's self with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
the general working, and everywhere, even
in literature, to strike boldly, aim high,
and shout through trumpets and speaking-tubes.
The modest graces will perhaps
come back after a while, and come with an
expression appropriate to their new surroundings.
I would fain believe it; but
while hoping for the best, I feel sure that
it will not be to-morrow that their sentiments
and their speech will once more
prevail.'</p>

<p>But I must conclude with a sentence
from Sainte-Beuve's own pen. Of Joubert
he says: 'Il a une mani&egrave;re qui fait qu'il ne
dit rien, absolument rien comme un autre.
Cela est sensible dans les lettres qu'il &eacute;crit,
et ne laisse pas de fatiguer &agrave; la longue.'
Of such a judgment, one can only scribble
in the margin, 'How true!' Sainte-Beuve
was always willing to write like another
man. Joubert was not. And yet, strange
paradox! there will be always more men
able to write in the strained style of Joubert
than in the natural style of Sainte-Beuve.
It is easier to be odd, intense,
over-wise, enigmatic, than to be sensible,
simple, and to see the plain truth about
things.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p>




<div class="footnotes"><h2>FOOTNOTES:</h2></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Last Essays of Elia</i>, 52.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Since abandoned, <i>Laus Deo!</i></p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Richardson in a letter says this of her, 'the weak,
the insipid, the runaway, the inn-frequenting Sophia;'
and calls her lover 'her illegitimate Tom.' But nobody
else need say this of Sophia, and as for Tom he was declared
to be a foundling from the first.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Jocelyn, founder of the Roden peerage.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> By which title he refers to Mrs. Cornwallis, a lively
lady who used to get her right reverend lord, himself a
capital hand at whist, into great trouble by persisting in
giving routs on Sunday.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> See <i>Essays in Criticism</i>, p. 23.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>Letters of Charles Lamb.</i> Newly arranged, with
additions; and a New Portrait. Edited, with Introduction
and Notes, by the Rev. Alfred Ainger, M.A., Canon
of Bristol. 2 vols. London, 1888.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Donaldson was a well-known man in Edinburgh.
He was Boswell's first publisher, and on one occasion
gave that gentleman a dinner consisting mainly of pig.
Johnson's view of his larcenous proceedings is stated in
the Life. Thurlow was his counsel in this litigation.
Donaldson's Hospital in Edinburgh represents the fortune
made by this publisher.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> I was wrong, and this very volume is protected by
law in the United States of America&mdash;but it still remains
pleasingly uncertain whether the book-buying
public across the water who were willing to buy <i>Obiter
Dicta</i> for twelve cents will give a dollar for <i>Res Judicata</i>.</p></div>

<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="Transcribers_Notes" id="Transcribers_Notes"></a>Transcriber's Notes:</h2>

<p>Typographical errors have been corrected as follows:</p>

<p>Page 14-"series of familiar letter" replaced with "series of familiar letters"</p>

<p>Page 24 - Question mark added: "Do you
remember Thackeray's account in the
<i>Roundabout Papers</i> of Macaulay's rhapsody
in the Athenæum Club?"</p>

<p>Page 95 - "pains of hell gat hold" replaced with "pains of hell got hold"</p>

<p>Page 108 - "jusqu aux" replaced with "jusqu'aux"</p>

<p>Page 127 - "perference" replaced with "preference"</p>

<p>Page 127 - "inbecile" replaced with "imbecile"</p>

<p>Page 196 - Correct single-double quotes before "We live no more" and
"More strictly, then"</p>

<p>Page 224 - "vemon" replaced with "venom"</p>

<p>Page 253 - "ligitations" replaced with "litigations"</p>

<p>Page 282 - "his people, which has" replaced with "his people, which have"</p>

<p>Page 287 - "marches" replaced with "marshes"</p>










<pre>





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