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If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Mere Literature and Other Essays - -Author: Woodrow Wilson - -Release Date: August 17, 2021 [eBook #66074] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Charlene Taylor, Charlie Howard, and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The - Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MERE LITERATURE AND OTHER -ESSAYS *** - - - - - -Books by Woodrow Wilson - - - CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT. A Study in American Politics. - 16mo, $1.25. - - MERE LITERATURE, and Other Essays. 12mo, $1.50. - - - HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY - BOSTON AND NEW YORK - - - - - MERE LITERATURE - - _AND OTHER ESSAYS_ - - - BY - WOODROW WILSON - - - [Illustration] - - - BOSTON AND NEW YORK - HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY - The Riverside Press, Cambridge - - - - - Copyright, 1896, - BY WOODROW WILSON - - _All rights reserved._ - - - - - TO - STOCKTON AXSON - - BY EVERY GIFT OF MIND A CRITIC - AND LOVER OF LETTERS - BY EVERY GIFT OF HEART A FRIEND - THIS LITTLE VOLUME - IS AFFECTIONATELY - DEDICATED - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - PAGE - - I. MERE LITERATURE 1 - - II. THE AUTHOR HIMSELF 28 - - III. ON AN AUTHOR’S CHOICE OF COMPANY 50 - - IV. A LITERARY POLITICIAN 69 - - V. THE INTERPRETER OF ENGLISH LIBERTY 104 - - VI. THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER 161 - - VII. A CALENDAR OF GREAT AMERICANS 187 - - VIII. THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 213 - - -⁂ All but one of the essays brought together in this volume have -already been printed, either in the _Atlantic Monthly_, the _Century -Magazine_, or the _Forum_. The essay on Burke appears here for the -first time in print. - - - - -MERE LITERATURE. - - - - -I. - -“MERE LITERATURE.” - - -A singular phrase this, “mere literature,”--the irreverent invention -of a scientific age. Literature we know, but “mere” literature? We are -not to read it as if it meant _sheer_ literature, literature in the -essence, stripped of all accidental or ephemeral elements, and left -with nothing but its immortal charm and power. “Mere literature” is a -serious sneer, conceived in all honesty by the scientific mind, which -despises things that do not fall within the categories of demonstrable -knowledge. It means _nothing but literature_, as who should say, “mere -talk,” “mere fabrication,” “mere pastime.” The scientist, with his -head comfortably and excusably full of knowable things, takes nothing -seriously and with his hat off, except human knowledge. The creations -of the human spirit are, from his point of view, incalculable vagaries, -irresponsible phenomena, to be regarded only as play, and, for the -mind’s good, only as recreation,--to be used to while away the tedium -of a railway journey, or to amuse a period of rest or convalescence; -mere byplay, mere make-believe. - -And so very whimsical things sometimes happen, because of this -scientific and positivist spirit of the age, when the study of the -literature of any language is made part of the curriculum of our -colleges. The more delicate and subtle purposes of the study are -put quite out of countenance, and literature is commanded to assume -the phrases and the methods of science. It would be very painful if -it should turn out that schools and universities were agencies of -Philistinism; but there are some things which should prepare us for -such a discovery. Our present plans for teaching everybody involve -certain unpleasant things quite inevitably. It is obvious that you -cannot have universal education without restricting your teaching -to such things as can be universally understood. It is plain that -you cannot impart “university methods” to thousands, or create -“investigators” by the score, unless you confine your university -education to matters which dull men can investigate, your laboratory -training to tasks which mere plodding diligence and submissive patience -can compass. Yet, if you do so limit and constrain what you teach, you -thrust taste and insight and delicacy of perception out of the schools, -exalt the obvious and the merely useful above the things which are -only imaginatively or spiritually conceived, make education an affair -of tasting and handling and smelling, and so create Philistia, that -country in which they speak of “mere literature.” I suppose that in -Nirvana one would speak in like wise of “mere life.” - -The fear, at any rate, that such things may happen cannot fail to set -us anxiously pondering certain questions about the systematic teaching -of literature in our schools and colleges. How are we to impart -classical writings to the children of the general public? “Beshrew the -general public!” cries Mr. Birrell. “What in the name of the Bodleian -has the general public got to do with literature?” Unfortunately, it -has a great deal to do with it; for are we not complacently forcing the -general public into our universities, and are we not arranging that -all its sons shall be instructed how they may themselves master and -teach our literature? You have nowadays, it is believed, only to heed -the suggestions of pedagogics in order to know how to impart Burke or -Browning, Dryden or Swift. There are certain practical difficulties, -indeed; but there are ways of overcoming them. You must have strength -if you would handle with real mastery the firm fibre of these men; you -must have a heart, moreover, to feel their warmth, an eye to see what -they see, an imagination to keep them company, a pulse to experience -their delights. But if you have none of these things, you may make -shift to do without them. You may count the words they use, instead, -note the changes of phrase they make in successive revisions, put their -rhythm into a scale of feet, run their allusions--particularly their -female allusions--to cover, detect them in their previous reading. -Or, if none of these things please you, or you find the big authors -difficult or dull, you may drag to light all the minor writers of -their time, who are easy to understand. By setting an example in such -methods you render great services in certain directions. You make the -higher degrees of our universities available for the large number of -respectable men who can count, and measure, and search diligently; and -that may prove no small matter. You divert attention from thought, -which is not always easy to get at, and fix attention upon language, -as upon a curious mechanism, which can be perceived with the bodily -eye, and which is worthy to be studied for its own sake, quite apart -from anything it may mean. You encourage the examination of forms, -grammatical and metrical, which can be quite accurately determined and -quite exhaustively catalogued. You bring all the visible phenomena of -writing to light and into ordered system. You go further, and show how -to make careful literal identification of stories somewhere told ill -and without art with the same stories told over again by the masters, -well and with the transfiguring effect of genius. You thus broaden -the area of science; for you rescue the concrete phenomena of the -expression of thought--the necessary syllabification which accompanies -it, the inevitable juxtaposition of words, the constant use of -particles, the habitual display of roots, the inveterate repetition of -names, the recurrent employment of meanings heard or read--from their -confusion with the otherwise unclassifiable manifestations of what had -hitherto been accepted, without critical examination, under the lump -term “literature,” simply for the pleasure and spiritual edification to -be got from it. - -An instructive differentiation ensues. In contrast with the orderly -phenomena of speech and writing, which are amenable to scientific -processes of examination and classification, and which take rank with -the orderly successions of change in nature, we have what, for want -of a more exact term, we call “mere literature,”--the literature -which is not an expression of form, but an expression of spirit. This -is a fugitive and troublesome thing, and perhaps does not belong -in well-conceived plans of universal instruction; for it offers -many embarrassments to pedagogic method. It escapes all scientific -categories. It is not pervious to research. It is too wayward to be -brought under the discipline of exposition. It is an attribute of so -many different substances at one and the same time, that the consistent -scientific man must needs put it forth from his company, as without -responsible connections. By “mere literature” he means mere evanescent -color, wanton trick of phrase, perverse departures from categorical -statement,--something _all_ personal equation, such stuff as dreams are -made of. - -We must not all, however, be impatient of this truant child of fancy. -When the schools cast her out, she will stand in need of friendly -succor, and we must train our spirits for the function. We must -be free-hearted in order to make her happy, for she will accept -entertainment from no sober, prudent fellow who shall counsel her to -mend her ways. She has always made light of hardship, and she has -never loved or obeyed any, save those who were of her own mind,--those -who were indulgent to her humors, responsive to her ways of thought, -attentive to her whims, content with her “mere” charms. She already -has her small following of devotees, like all charming, capricious -mistresses. There are some still who think that to know her is better -than a liberal education. - -There is but one way in which you can take mere literature as an -education, and that is directly, at first hand. Almost any media except -her own language and touch and tone are non-conducting. A descriptive -catalogue of a collection of paintings is no substitute for the little -areas of color and form themselves. You do not want to hear about a -beautiful woman, simply,--how she was dressed, how she bore herself, -how the fine color flowed sweetly here and there upon her cheeks, -how her eyes burned and melted, how her voice thrilled through the -ears of those about her. If you have ever seen a woman, these things -but tantalize and hurt you, if you cannot see her. You want to be in -her presence. You know that only your own eyes can give you direct -knowledge of her. Nothing but her presence contains her life. ’Tis the -same with the authentic products of literature. You can never get their -beauty at second hand, or feel their power except by direct contact -with them. - -It is a strange and occult thing how this quality of “mere literature” -enters into one book, and is absent from another; but no man who -has once felt it can mistake it. I was reading the other day a book -about Canada. It is written in what the reviewers have pronounced to -be an “admirable, spirited style.” By this I take them to mean that -it is grammatical, orderly, and full of strong adjectives. But these -reviewers would have known more about the style in which it is written -if they had noted what happens on page 84. There a quotation from Burke -occurs. “There is,” says Burke, “but one healing, catholic principle of -toleration which ought to find favor in this house. It is wanted not -only in our colonies, but here. The thirsty earth of our own country -is gasping and gaping and crying out for that healing shower from -heaven. The noble lord has told you of the right of those people by -treaty; but I consider the right of conquest so little, and the right -of human nature so much, that the former has very little consideration -with me. I look upon the people of Canada as coming by the dispensation -of God under the British government. I would have us govern it in the -same manner as the all--wise disposition of Providence would govern -it. We know he suffers the sun to shine upon the righteous and the -unrighteous; and we ought to suffer all classes to enjoy equally the -right of worshiping God according to the light he has been pleased -to give them.” The peculiarity of such a passage as that is, that it -needs no context. Its beauty seems almost independent of its subject -matter. It comes on that eighty-fourth page like a burst of music in -the midst of small talk,--a tone of sweet harmony heard amidst a rattle -of phrases. The mild noise was unobjectionable enough until the music -came. There is a breath and stir of life in those sentences of Burke’s -which is to be perceived in nothing else in that volume. Your pulses -catch a quicker movement from them, and are stronger on their account. - -It is so with all essential literature. It has a quality to move you, -and you can never mistake it, if you have any blood in you. And it has -also a power to instruct you which is as effective as it is subtle, -and which no research or systematic method can ever rival. ’Tis a sore -pity if that power cannot be made available in the classroom. It is -not merely that it quickens your thought and fills your imagination -with the images that have illuminated the choicer minds of the race. It -does indeed exercise the faculties in this wise, bringing them into the -best atmosphere, and into the presence of the men of greatest charm and -force; but it does a great deal more than that. It acquaints the mind, -by direct contact, with the forces which really govern and modify -the world from generation to generation. There is more of a nation’s -politics to be got out of its poetry than out of all its systematic -writers upon public affairs and constitutions. Epics are better -mirrors of manners than chronicles; dramas oftentimes let you into the -secrets of statutes; orations stirred by a deep energy of emotion or -resolution, passionate pamphlets that survive their mission because -of the direct action of their style along permanent lines of thought, -contain more history than parliamentary journals. It is not knowledge -that moves the world, but ideals, convictions, the opinions or fancies -that have been held or followed; and whoever studies humanity ought to -study it alive, practice the vivisection of reading literature, and -acquaint himself with something more than anatomies which are no longer -in use by spirits. - -There are some words of Thibaut, the great jurist, which have long -seemed to me singularly penetrative of one of the secrets of the -intellectual life. “I told him,” he says,--he is speaking of an -interview with Niebuhr,--“I told him that I owed my gayety and vigor, -in great part, to my love for the classics of all ages, even those -outside the domain of jurisprudence.” Not only the gayety and vigor -of his hale old age, surely, but also his insight into the meaning -and purpose of laws and institutions. The jurist who does not love -the classics of all ages is like a post-mortem doctor presiding at a -birth, a maker of manikins prescribing for a disease of the blood, a -student of masks setting up for a connoisseur in smiles and kisses. -In narrating history, you are speaking of what was done by men; in -discoursing of laws, you are seeking to show what courses of action, -and what manner of dealing with one another, men have adopted. You -can neither tell the story nor conceive the law till you know how the -men you speak of regarded themselves and one another; and I know of -no way of learning this but by reading the stories they have told of -themselves, the songs they have sung, the heroic adventures they have -applauded. I must know what, if anything, they revered; I must hear -their sneers and gibes; must learn in what accents they spoke love -within the family circle; with what grace they obeyed their superiors -in station; how they conceived it politic to live, and wise to die; -how they esteemed property, and what they deemed privilege; when they -kept holiday, and why; when they were prone to resist oppression, and -wherefore,--I must see things with their eyes, before I can comprehend -their law books. Their jural relationships are not independent of -their way of living, and their way of thinking is the mirror of their -way of living. - -It is doubtless due to the scientific spirit of the age that these -plain, these immemorial truths are in danger of becoming obscured. -Science, under the influence of the conception of evolution, devotes -itself to the study of forms, of specific differences, of the manner -in which the same principle of life manifests itself variously under -the compulsions of changes of environment. It is thus that it has -become “scientific” to set forth the manner in which man’s nature -submits to man’s circumstances; scientific to disclose morbid moods, -and the conditions which produce them; scientific to regard man, not -as the centre or source of power, but as subject to power, a register -of external forces instead of an originative soul, and character as -a product of man’s circumstances rather than a sign of man’s mastery -over circumstance. It is thus that it has become “scientific” to -analyze language as itself a commanding element in man’s life. The -history of word-roots, their modification under the influences of -changes wrought in the vocal organs by habit or by climate, the laws of -phonetic change to which they are obedient, and their persistence under -all disguises of dialect, as if they were full of a self-originated -life, a self-directed energy of influence, is united with the study -of grammatical forms in the construction of scientific conceptions -of the evolution and uses of human speech. The impression is created -that literature is only the chosen vessel of these forms, disclosing -to us their modification in use and structure from age to age. Such -vitality as the masterpieces of genius possess comes to seem only a -dramatization of the fortunes of words. Great writers construct for the -adventures of language their appropriate epics. Or, if it be not the -words themselves that are scrutinized, but the style of their use, that -style becomes, instead of a fine essence of personality, a matter of -cadence merely, or of grammatical and structural relationships. Science -is the study of the forces of the world of matter, the adjustments, the -apparatus, of the universe; and the scientific study of literature has -likewise become a study of apparatus,--of the forms in which men utter -thought, and the forces by which those forms have been and still are -being modified, rather than of thought itself. - -The essences of literature of course remain the same under all forms, -and the true study of literature is the study of these essences,--a -study, not of forms or of differences, but of likenesses,--likenesses -of spirit and intent under whatever varieties of method, running -through all forms of speech like the same music along the chords -of various instruments. There is a sense in which literature is -independent of form, just as there is a sense in which music is -independent of its instrument. It is my cherished belief that Apollo’s -pipe contained as much eloquent music as any modern orchestra. Some -books live; many die: wherein is the secret of immortality? Not -in beauty of form, nor even in force of passion. We might say of -literature what Wordsworth said of poetry, the most easily immortal -part of literature: it is “the impassioned expression which is in the -countenance of all science; it is the breath of the finer spirit of -all knowledge.” Poetry has the easier immortality because it has the -sweeter accent when it speaks, because its phrases linger in our ears -to delight them, because its truths are also melodies. Prose has much -to overcome,--its plainness of visage, its less musical accents, its -homelier turns of phrase. But it also may contain the immortal essence -of truth and seriousness and high thought. It too may clothe conviction -with the beauty that must make it shine forever. Let a man but have -beauty in his heart, and, believing something with his might, put it -forth arrayed as he sees it, the lights and shadows falling upon it on -his page as they fall upon it in his heart, and he may die assured that -that beauty will not pass away out of the world. - -Biographers have often been puzzled by the contrast between certain -men as they lived and as they wrote. Schopenhauer’s case is one of the -most singular. A man of turbulent life, suffering himself to be cut -to exasperation by the petty worries of his lot, he was nevertheless -calm and wise when he wrote, as if the Muse had rebuked him. He wrote -at a still elevation, where small and temporary things did not come -to disturb him. ’Tis a pity that for some men this elevation is so -far to seek. They lose permanency by not finding it. Could there be a -deliberate regimen of life for the author, it is plain enough how he -ought to live, not as seeking fame, but as deserving it. - - “Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy - To those who woo her with too slavish knees; - But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy, - And dotes the more upon a heart at ease. - - * * * * * - - “Ye love-sick bards, repay her scorn with scorn; - Ye love-sick artists, madmen that ye are, - Make your best bow to her and bid adieu; - Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.” - -It behooves all minor authors to realize the possibility of their being -discovered some day, and exposed to the general scrutiny. They ought -to live as if conscious of the risk. They ought to purge their hearts -of everything that is not genuine and capable of lasting the world a -century, at least, if need be. Mere literature is made of spirit. The -difficulties of style are the artist’s difficulties with his tools. The -spirit that is in the eye, in the pose, in mien or gesture, the painter -must find in his color-box; as he must find also the spirit that -nature displays upon the face of the fields or in the hidden places -of the forest. The writer has less obvious means. Word and spirit do -not easily consort. The language which the philologists set out before -us with such curious erudition is of very little use as a vehicle -for the essences of the human spirit. It is too sophisticated and -self-conscious. What you need is, not a critical knowledge of language, -but a quick feeling for it. You must recognize the affinities between -your spirit and its idioms. You must immerse your phrase in your -thought, your thought in your phrase, till each becomes saturated with -the other. Then what you produce is as necessarily fit for permanency -as if it were incarnated spirit. - -And you must produce in color, with the touch of imagination which -lifts what you write away from the dull levels of mere exposition. -Black-and-white sketches may serve some purposes of the artist, -but very little of actual nature is in mere black-and-white. The -imagination never works thus with satisfaction. Nothing is ever -conceived completely when conceived so grayly, without suffusion -of real light. The mind creates, as great Nature does, in colors, -with deep chiaroscuro and burning lights. This is true not only of -poetry and essentially imaginative writing, but also of the writing -which seeks nothing more than to penetrate the meaning of actual -affairs,--the writing of the greatest historians and philosophers, -the utterances of orators and of the great masters of political -exposition. Their narratives, their analyses, their appeals, their -conceptions of principle, are all dipped deep in the colors of the -life they expound. Their minds respond only to realities, their eyes -see only actual circumstance. Their sentences quiver and are quick -with visions of human affairs,--how minds are bent or governed, how -action is shaped or thwarted. The great “constructive” minds, as we -call them, are of this sort. They “construct” by seeing what others -have not imagination enough to see. They do not always know more, but -they always realize more. Let the singular reconstruction of Roman -history and institutions by Theodor Mommsen serve as an illustration. -Safe men distrust this great master. They cannot find what he finds -in the documents. They will draw you truncated figures of the antique -Roman state, and tell you the limbs cannot be found, the features of -the face have nowhere been unearthed. They will cite you fragments such -as remain, and show you how far these can be pieced together toward the -making of a complete description of private life and public function -in those first times when the Roman commonwealth was young; but what -the missing sentences were they can only weakly conjecture. Their eyes -cannot descry those distant days with no other aids than these. Only -the greatest are dissatisfied, and go on to paint that ancient life -with the materials that will render it lifelike,--the materials of the -constructive imagination. They have other sources of information. They -see living men in the old documents. Give them but the torso, and they -will supply head and limbs, bright and animate as they must have been. -If Mommsen does not quite do that, another man, with Mommsen’s eye and -a touch more of color on his brush, might have done it,--may yet do it. - -It is in this way that we get some glimpse of the only relations that -scholarship bears to literature. Literature can do without exact -scholarship, or any scholarship at all, though it may impoverish -itself thereby; but scholarship cannot do without literature. It needs -literature to float it, to set it current, to authenticate it to the -race, to get it out of closets, and into the brains of men who stir -abroad. It will adorn literature, no doubt; literature will be the -richer for its presence; but it will not, it cannot, of itself create -literature. Rich stuffs from the East do not create a king, nor warlike -trappings a conqueror. There is, indeed, a natural antagonism, let it -be frankly said, between the standards of scholarship and the standards -of literature. Exact scholarship values things in direct proportion -as they are verifiable; but literature knows nothing of such tests. -The truths which it seeks are the truths of self-expression. It is a -thing of convictions, of insights, of what is felt and seen and heard -and hoped for. Its meanings lurk behind nature, not in the facts of -its phenomena. It speaks of things as the man who utters it saw them, -not necessarily as God made them. The personality of the speaker runs -throughout all the sentences of real literature. That personality may -not be the personality of a poet: it may be only the personality of -the penetrative seer. It may not have the atmosphere in which visions -are seen, but only that in which men and affairs look keenly cut in -outline, boldly massed in bulk, consummately grouped in detail, to the -reader as to the writer. Sentences of perfectly clarified wisdom may -be literature no less than stanzas of inspired song, or the intense -utterances of impassioned feeling. The personality of the sunlight is -in the keen lines of light that run along the edges of a sword no less -than in the burning splendor of the rose or the radiant kindlings of a -woman’s eye. You may feel the power of one master of thought playing -upon your brain as you may feel that of another playing upon your heart. - -Scholarship gets into literature by becoming part of the originating -individuality of a master of thought. No man is a master of thought -without being also a master of its vehicle and instrument, style, -that subtle medium of all its evasive effects of light and shade. -Scholarship is material; it is not life. It becomes immortal only when -it is worked upon by conviction, by schooled and chastened imagination, -by thought that runs alive out of the inner fountains of individual -insight and purpose. Colorless, or without suffusion of light from some -source of light, it is dead, and will not twice be looked at; but made -part of the life of a great mind, subordinated, absorbed, put forth -with authentic stamp of currency on it, minted at some definite mint -and bearing some sovereign image, it will even outlast the time when -it shall have ceased to deserve the acceptance of scholars,--when it -shall, in fact, have become “mere literature.” - -Scholarship is the realm of nicely adjusted opinion. It is the business -of scholars to assess evidence and test conclusions, to discriminate -values and reckon probabilities. Literature is the realm of conviction -and vision. Its points of view are as various as they are oftentimes -unverifiable. It speaks individual faiths. Its groundwork is not -erudition, but reflection and fancy. Your thoroughgoing scholar dare -not reflect. To reflect is to let himself in on his material; whereas -what he wants is to keep himself apart, and view his materials in -an air that does not color or refract. To reflect is to throw an -atmosphere about what is in your mind,--an atmosphere which holds all -the colors of your life. Reflection summons all associations, and -they so throng and move that they dominate the mind’s stage at once. -The plot is in their hands. Scholars, therefore, do not reflect; -they label, group kind with kind, set forth in schemes, expound -with dispassionate method. Their minds are not stages, but museums; -nothing is done there, but very curious and valuable collections are -kept there. If literature use scholarship, it is only to fill it with -fancies or shape it to new standards, of which of itself it can know -nothing. - -True, there are books reckoned primarily books of science and of -scholarship which have nevertheless won standing as literature; books -of science such as Newton wrote, books of scholarship such as Gibbon’s. -But science was only the vestibule by which such a man as Newton -entered the temple of nature, and the art he practiced was not the art -of exposition, but the art of divination. He was not only a scientist, -but also a seer; and we shall not lose sight of Newton because we value -what he was more than what he knew. If we continue Gibbon in his fame, -it will be for love of his art, not for worship of his scholarship. We -some of us, nowadays, know the period of which he wrote better even -than he did; but which one of us shall build so admirable a monument -to ourselves, as artists, out of what we know? The scholar finds his -immortality in the form he gives to his work. It is a hard saying, but -the truth of it is inexorable: be an artist, or prepare for oblivion. -You may write a chronicle, but you will not serve yourself thereby. You -will only serve some fellow who shall come after you, possessing, what -you did not have, an ear for the words you could not hit upon; an eye -for the colors you could not see; a hand for the strokes you missed. - -Real literature you can always distinguish by its form, and yet it is -not possible to indicate the form it should have. It is easy to say -that it should have a form suitable to its matter; but how suitable? -Suitable to set the matter off, adorn, embellish it, or suitable simply -to bring it directly, quick and potent, to the apprehension of the -reader? This is the question of style, about which many masters have -had many opinions; upon which you can make up no safe generalization -from the practice of those who have unquestionably given to the matter -of their thought immortal form, an accent or a countenance never to be -forgotten. Who shall say how much of Burke’s splendid and impressive -imagery is part and stuff of his thought, or tell why even that part -of Newman’s prose which is devoid of ornament, stripped to its shining -skin, and running bare and lithe and athletic to carry its tidings to -men, should promise to enjoy as certain an immortality? Why should -Lamb go so quaintly and elaborately to work upon his critical essays, -taking care to perfume every sentence, if possible, with the fine -savor of an old phrase, if the same business could be as effectively -done in the plain and even cadences of Mr. Matthew Arnold’s prose? -Why should Gibbon be so formal, so stately, so elaborate, when he -had before his eyes the example of great Tacitus, whose direct, -sententious style had outlived by so many hundred years the very -language in which he wrote? In poetry, who shall measure the varieties -of style lavished upon similar themes? The matter of vital thought -is not separable from the thinker; its forms must suit his handling -as well as fit his conception. Any style is author’s stuff which is -suitable to his purpose and his fancy. He may use rich fabrics with -which to costume his thoughts, or he may use simple stone from which -to sculpture them, and leave them bare. His only limits are those of -art. He may not indulge a taste for the merely curious or fantastic. -The quaint writers have quaint thoughts; their material is suitable. -They do not merely satisfy themselves as virtuosi, with collections of -odd phrases and obsolete meanings. They needed twisted words to fit -the eccentric patterns of their thought. The great writer has always -dignity, restraint, propriety, adequateness; what time he loses these -qualities he ceases to be great. His style neither creaks nor breaks -under his passion, but carries the strain with unshaken strength. It -is not trivial or mean, but speaks what small meanings fall in its way -with simplicity, as conscious of their smallness. Its playfulness is -within bounds; its laugh never bursts too boisterously into a guffaw. -A great style always knows what it would be at, and does the thing -appropriately, with the larger sort of taste. - -This is the condemnation of tricks of phrase, devices to catch the -attention, exaggerations and loud talk to hold it. No writer can afford -to strive after effect, if his striving is to be apparent. For just -and permanent effect is missed altogether unless it be so completely -attained as to seem like some touch of sunlight, perfect, natural, -inevitable, wrought without effort and without deliberate purpose -to be effective. Mere audacity of attempt can, of course, never win -the wished for result; and if the attempt be successful, it is not -audacious. What we call audacity in a great writer has no touch of -temerity, sauciness, or arrogance in it. It is simply high spirit, -a dashing and splendid display of strength. Boldness is ridiculous -unless it be impressive, and it can be impressive only when backed by -solid forces of character and attainment. Your plebeian hack cannot -afford the showy paces; only the full-blooded Arabian has the sinew -and proportion to lend them perfect grace and propriety. The art of -letters eschews the bizarre as rigidly as does every other fine art. It -mixes its colors with brains, and is obedient to great Nature’s sane -standards of right adjustment in all that it attempts. - -You can make no catalogue of these features of great writing; there is -no science of literature. Literature in its essence is mere spirit, and -you must experience it rather than analyze it too formally. It is the -door to nature and to ourselves. It opens our hearts to receive the -experiences of great men and the conceptions of great races. It awakens -us to the significance of action and to the singular power of mental -habit. It airs our souls in the wide atmosphere of contemplation. “In -these bad days, when it is thought more educationally useful to know -the principle of the common pump than Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn,” as -Mr. Birrell says, we cannot afford to let one single precious sentence -of “mere literature” go by us unread or unpraised. If this free people -to which we belong is to keep its fine spirit, its perfect temper -amidst affairs, its high courage in the face of difficulties, its wise -temperateness and wide-eyed hope, it must continue to drink deep and -often from the old wells of English undefiled, quaff the keen tonic of -its best ideals, keep its blood warm with all the great utterances of -exalted purpose and pure principle of which its matchless literature -is full. The great spirits of the past must command us in the tasks of -the future. Mere literature will keep us pure and keep us strong. Even -though it puzzle or altogether escape scientific method, it may keep -our horizon clear for us, and our eyes glad to look bravely forth upon -the world. - - - - -II. - -THE AUTHOR HIMSELF. - - -Who can help wondering, concerning the modern multitude of books, where -all these companions of his reading hours will be buried when they -die; which will have monuments erected to them; which escape the envy -of time and live? It is pathetic to think of the number that must be -forgotten, after having been removed from the good places to make room -for their betters. - -Much the most pathetic thought about books, however, is that excellence -will not save them. Their fates will be as whimsical as those of the -humankind which produces them. Knaves find it as easy to get remembered -as good men. It is not right living or learning or kind offices, simply -and of themselves, but--something else that gives immortality of fame. -Be a book never so scholarly, it may die; be it never so witty, or -never so full of good feeling and of an honest statement of truth, it -may not live. - -When once a book has become immortal, we think that we can see why -it became so. It contained, we perceive, a casting of thought which -could not but arrest and retain men’s attention; it said some things -once and for all because it gave them their best expression. Or else it -spoke with a grace or with a fire of imagination, with a sweet cadence -of phrase and a full harmony of tone, which have made it equally dear -to all generations of those who love the free play of fancy or the -incomparable music of perfected human speech. Or perhaps it uttered -with candor and simplicity some universal sentiment; perchance pictured -something in the tragedy or the comedy of man’s life as it was never -pictured before, and must on that account be read and read again as not -to be superseded. There must be something special, we judge, either -in its form or in its substance, to account for its unwonted fame and -fortune. - -This upon first analysis, taking one book at a time. A look deeper -into the heart of the matter enables us to catch at least a glimpse of -a single and common source of immortality. The world is attracted by -books as each man is attracted by his several friends. You recommend -that capital fellow So-and-So to the acquaintance of others because -of his discriminating and diverting powers of observation: the very -tones and persons--it would seem the very selves--of every type of man -live again in his mimicries and descriptions. He is the dramatist -of your circle; you can never forget him, nor can any one else; his -circle of acquaintances can never grow smaller. Could he live on and -retain perennially that wonderful freshness and vivacity of his, he -must become the most famous guest and favorite of the world. Who that -has known a man quick and shrewd to see dispassionately the inner -history, the reason and the ends, of the combinations of society, -and at the same time eloquent to tell of them, with a hold on the -attention gained by a certain quaint force and sagacity resident in -no other man, can find it difficult to understand why we still resort -to Montesquieu? Possibly there are circles favored of the gods who -have known some fellow of infinite store of miscellaneous and curious -learning, who has greatly diverted both himself and his friends by a -way peculiar to himself of giving it out upon any and all occasions, -item by item, as if it were all homogeneous and of a piece, and by his -odd skill in making unexpected application of it to out-of-the-way, -unpromising subjects, as if there were in his view of things mental no -such disintegrating element as incongruity. Such a circle would esteem -it strange were Burton not beloved of the world. And so of those, if -any there be, who have known men of simple, calm, transparent natures, -untouched by storm or perplexity, whose talk was full of such serious, -placid reflection as seemed to mirror their own reverent hearts,--talk -often prosy, but more often touchingly beautiful, because of its -nearness to nature and the solemn truth of life. There may be those, -also, who have felt the thrill of personal contact with some stormy -peasant nature full of strenuous, unsparing speech concerning men and -affairs. These have known why a Wordsworth or a Carlyle must be read by -all generations of those who love words of first-hand inspiration. In -short, in every case of literary immortality originative personality is -present. Not origination simply,--that may be mere invention, which in -literature has nothing immortal about it; but origination which takes -its stamp and character from the originator, which is his spirit given -to the world, which is himself outspoken. - -Individuality does not consist in the use of the very personal pronoun, -_I_: it consists in tone, in method, in attitude, in point of view; -it consists in saying things in such a way that you will yourself be -recognized as a force in saying them. Do we not at once know Lamb -when he speaks? And even more formal Addison, does not his speech -bewray and endear him to us? His personal charm is less distinct, much -less fascinating, than that which goes with what Lamb speaks, but a -charm he has sufficient for immortality. In Steele the matter is more -impersonal, more mortal. Some of Dr. Johnson’s essays, you feel, might -have been written by a dictionary. It is impersonal matter that is dead -matter. Are you asked who fathered a certain brilliant, poignant bit -of political analysis? You say, Why, only Bagehot could have written -that. Does a wittily turned verse make you hesitate between laughter at -its hit and grave thought because of its deeper, covert meaning? Do you -not know that only Lowell could do that? Do you catch a strain of pure -Elizabethan music and doubt whether to attribute it to Shakespeare or -to another? Do you not _know_ the authors who still live? - -Now, the noteworthy thing about such individuality is that it will not -develop under every star, or in one place just as well as in another; -there is an atmosphere which kills it, and there is an atmosphere -which fosters it. The atmosphere which kills it is the atmosphere of -sophistication, where cleverness and fashion and knowingness thrive: -cleverness, which is froth, not strong drink; fashion, which is a thing -assumed, not a thing of nature; and knowingness, which is naught. - -Of course there are born, now and again, as tokens of some rare mood -of Nature, men of so intense and individual a cast that circumstance -and surroundings affect them little more than friction affects an -express train. They command their own development without even -the consciousness that to command costs strength. These cannot be -sophisticated; for sophistication is subordination to the ways of your -world. But these are the very greatest and the very rarest; and it -is not the greatest and the rarest alone who shape the world and its -thought. That is done also by the great and the merely extraordinary. -There is a rank and file in literature, even in the literature of -immortality, and these must go much to school to the people about them. - -It is by the number and charm of the individualities which it contains -that the literature of any country gains distinction. We turn -anywhither to know men. The best way to foster literature, if it may be -fostered, is to cultivate the author himself,--a plant of such delicate -and precarious growth that special soils are needed to produce it in -its full perfection. The conditions which foster individuality are -those which foster simplicity, thought and action which are direct, -naturalness, spontaneity. What are these conditions? - -In the first place, a certain helpful ignorance. It is best for the -author to be born away from literary centres, or to be excluded from -their ruling set if he be born in them. It is best that he start out -with his thinking, not knowing how much has been thought and said about -everything. A certain amount of ignorance will insure his sincerity, -will increase his boldness and shelter his genuineness, which is his -hope of power. Not ignorance of life, but life may be learned in any -neighborhood;--not ignorance of the greater laws which govern human -affairs, but they may be learned without a library of historians -and commentators, by imaginative sense, by seeing better than by -reading;--not ignorance of the infinitudes of human circumstance, but -these may be perceived without the intervention of universities;--not -ignorance of one’s self and of one’s neighbor; but innocence of the -sophistications of learning, its research without love, its knowledge -without inspiration, its method without grace; freedom from its shame -at trying to know many things as well as from its pride of trying to -know but one thing; ignorance of that faith in small confounding facts -which is contempt for large reassuring principles. - -Our present problem is not how to clarify our reasonings and perfect -our analyses, but how to reënrich and reënergize our literature. That -literature is suffering, not from ignorance, but from sophistication -and self-consciousness; and it is suffering hardly less from excess -of logical method. Ratiocination does not keep us pure, render us -earnest, or make us individual and specific forces in the world. Those -inestimable results are accomplished by whatever implants principle -and conviction, whatever quickens with inspiration, fills with purpose -and courage, gives outlook, and makes character. Reasoned thinking -does indeed clear the mind’s atmospheres and lay open to its view -fields of action; but it is loving and believing, sometimes hating and -distrusting, often prejudice and passion, always the many things which -we call the one thing, character, which create and shape our acting. -Life quite overtowers logic. Thinking and erudition alone will not -equip for the great tasks and triumphs of life and literature: the -persuading of other men’s purposes, the entrance into other men’s minds -to possess them forever. Culture broadens and sweetens literature, -but native sentiment and unmarred individuality create it. Not all of -mental power lies in the processes of thinking. There is power also -in passion, in personality, in simple, native, uncritical conviction, -in unschooled feeling. The power of science, of system, is executive, -not stimulative. I do not find that I derive inspiration, but only -information, from the learned historians and analysts of liberty; but -from the sonneteers, the poets, who, speak its spirit and its exalted -purpose,--who, recking nothing of the historical method, obey only the -high method of their own hearts,--what may a man not gain of courage -and confidence in the right way of politics? - -It is your direct, unhesitating, intent, headlong man, who has his -sources in the mountains, who digs deep channels for himself in the -soil of his times and expands into the mighty river, to become a -landmark forever; and not your “broad” man, sprung from the schools, -who spreads his shallow, extended waters over the wide surfaces of -learning, to leave rich deposits, it may be, for other men’s crops to -grow in, but to be himself dried up by a few score summer noons. The -man thrown early upon his own resources, and already become a conqueror -of success before being thrown with the literary talkers; the man grown -to giant’s stature in some rural library, and become exercised there -in a giant’s prerogatives before ever he has been laughingly told, to -his heart’s confusion, of scores of other giants dead and forgotten -long ago; the man grounded in hope and settled in conviction ere he has -discovered how many hopes time has seen buried, how many convictions -cruelly given the lie direct by fate; the man who has carried his youth -into middle age before going into the chill atmosphere of _blasé_ -sentiment; the quiet, stern man who has cultivated literature on a -little oatmeal before thrusting himself upon the great world as a -prophet and seer; the man who pronounces new eloquence in the rich -dialect in which he was bred; the man come up to the capital from the -provinces,--these are the men who people the world’s mind with new -creations, and give to the sophisticated learned of the next generation -new names to conjure with. - -If you have a candid and well-informed friend among city lawyers, ask -him where the best masters of his profession are bred,--in the city or -in the country. He will reply without hesitation, “In the country.” -You will hardly need to have him state the reason. The country lawyer -has been obliged to study all parts of the law alike, and he has known -no reason why he should not do so. He has not had the chance to make -himself a specialist in any one branch of the law, as is the fashion -among city practitioners, and he has not coveted the opportunity to -do it. There would not have been enough special cases to occupy or -remunerate him if he had coveted it. He has dared attempt the task -of knowing the whole law, and yet without any sense of daring, but as -a matter of course. In his own little town, in the midst of his own -small library of authorities, it has not seemed to him an impossible -task to explore all the topics that engage his profession; the guiding -principles, at any rate, of all branches of the great subject were -open to him in a few books. And so it often happens that when he has -found his sea legs on the sequestered inlets at home, and ventures, -as he sometimes will, upon the great, troublous, and much-frequented -waters of city practice in search of more work and larger fees, the -country lawyer will once and again confound his city-bred brethren by -discovering to them the fact that the law is a many-sided thing of -principles, and not altogether a one-sided thing of technical rule and -arbitrary precedent. - -It would seem to be necessary that the author who is to stand as a -distinct and imperative individual among the company of those who -express the world’s thought should come to a hard crystallization -before subjecting himself to the tense strain of cities, the corrosive -acids of critical circles. The ability to see for one’s self is -attainable, not by mixing with crowds and ascertaining how they look -at things, but by a certain aloofness and self-containment. The -solitariness of some genius is not accidental; it is characteristic -and essential. To the constructive imagination there are some immortal -feats which are possible only in seclusion. The man must heed first and -most of all the suggestions of his own spirit; and the world can be -seen from windows overlooking the street better than from the street -itself. - -Literature grows rich, various, full-voiced largely through the -re-discovery of truth, by thinking re-thought, by stories re-told, by -songs re-sung. The song of human experience grows richer and richer -in its harmonies, and must grow until the full accord and melody are -come. If too soon subjected to the tense strain of the city, a man -cannot expand; he is beaten out of his natural shape by the incessant -impact and press of men and affairs. It will often turn out that the -unsophisticated man will display not only more force, but more literary -skill even, than the trained _littérateur_. For one thing, he will -probably have enjoyed a fresher contact with old literature. He reads -not for the sake of a critical acquaintance with this or that author, -with no thought of going through all his writings and “working him up,” -but as he would ride a spirited horse, for love of the life and motion -of it. - -A general impression seems to have gained currency that the last of -the bullying, omniscient critics was buried in the grave of Francis -Jeffrey; and it is becoming important to correct the misapprehension. -There never was a time when there was more superior knowledge, more -specialist omniscience, among reviewers than there is to-day; not -pretended superior knowledge, but real. Jeffrey’s was very real of -its kind. For those who write books, one of the special, inestimable -advantages of lacking a too intimate knowledge of the “world of -letters” consists in not knowing all that is known by those who review -books, in ignorance of the fashions among those who construct canons -of taste. The modern critic is a leader of fashion. He carries with -him the air of a literary worldliness. If your book be a novel, your -reviewer will know all previous plots, all former, all possible, -motives and situations. You cannot write anything absolutely new for -him, and why should you desire to do again what has been done already? -If it be a poem, the reviewer’s head already rings with the whole gamut -of the world’s metrical music; he can recognize any simile, recall all -turns of phrase, match every sentiment; why seek to please him anew -with old things? If it concern itself with the philosophy of politics, -he can and will set himself to test it by the whole history of its -kind from Plato down to Benjamin Kidd. How can it but spoil your -sincerity to know that your critic will know everything? Will you not -be tempted of the devil to anticipate his judgment or his pretensions -by pretending to know as much as he? - -The literature of creation naturally falls into two kinds: that which -interprets nature or human action, and that which interprets self. Both -of these may have the flavor of immortality, but neither unless it be -free from self-consciousness. No man, therefore, can create after the -best manner in either of these kinds who is an _habitué_ of the circles -made so delightful by those interesting men, the modern _literati_, -sophisticated in all the fashions, ready in all the catches of the -knowing literary world which centres in the city and the university. He -cannot always be simple and straightforward. He cannot be always and -without pretension himself, bound by no other man’s canons of taste in -speech or conduct. In the judgment of such circles there is but one -thing for you to do if you would gain distinction: you must “beat the -record;” you must do certain definite literary feats better than they -have yet been done. You are pitted against the literary “field.” You -are hastened into the paralysis of comparing yourself with others, -and thus away from the health of unhesitating self-expression and -directness of first-hand vision. - -It would be not a little profitable if we could make correct analysis -of the proper relations of learning--learning of the critical, accurate -sort--to origination, of learning’s place in literature. Although -learning is never the real parent of literature, but only sometimes its -foster-father, and although the native promptings of soul and sense are -its best and freshest sources, there is always the danger that learning -will claim, in every court of taste which pretends to jurisdiction, -exclusive and preëminent rights as the guardian and preceptor of -authors. An effort is constantly being made to create and maintain -standards of literary worldliness, if I may coin such a phrase. The -thorough man of the world affects to despise natural feeling; does at -any rate actually despise all displays of it. He has an eye always -on his world’s best manners, whether native or imported, and is at -continual pains to be master of the conventions of society; he will -mortify the natural man as much as need be in order to be in good form. -What learned criticism essays to do is to create a similar literary -worldliness, to establish fashions and conventions in letters. - -I have an odd friend in one of the northern counties of Georgia,--a -county set off by itself among the mountains, but early found out by -refined people in search of summer refuge from the unhealthful air of -the southern coast. He belongs to an excellent family of no little -culture, but he was surprised in the midst of his early schooling by -the coming on of the war; and education given pause in such wise seldom -begins again in the schools. He was left, therefore, to “finish” his -mind as best he might in the companionship of the books in his uncle’s -library. These books were of the old sober sort: histories, volumes of -travels, treatises on laws and constitutions, theologies, philosophies -more fanciful than the romances encased in neighbor volumes on another -shelf. But they were books which were used to being taken down and -read; they had been daily companions to the rest of the family, and -they became familiar companions to my friend’s boyhood. He went to -them day after day, because theirs was the only society offered him in -the lonely days when uncle and brothers were at the war, and the women -were busy about the tasks of the home. How literally did he make those -delightful old volumes his familiars, his cronies! He never dreamed the -while, however, that he was becoming learned; it never seemed to occur -to him that everybody else did not read just as he did, in just such -a library. He found out afterwards, of course, that he had kept much -more of such company than had the men with whom he loved to chat at -the post-office or around the fire in the village shops, the habitual -resorts of all who were socially inclined; but he attributed that to -lack of time on their part, or to accident, and has gone on thinking -until now that all the books that come within his reach are the natural -intimates of man. And so you shall hear him, in his daily familiar -talk with his neighbors, draw upon his singular stores of wise, quaint -learning with the quiet colloquial assurance, “They tell me,” as if -books contained current rumor; and quote the poets with the easy -unaffectedness with which others cite a common maxim of the street! He -has been heard to refer to Dr. Arnold of Rugby as “that school teacher -over there in England.” - -Surely one may treasure the image of this simple, genuine man of -learning as the image of a sort of masterpiece of Nature in her own -type of erudition, a perfect sample of the kind of learning that might -beget the very highest sort of literature; the literature, namely, of -authentic individuality. It is only under one of two conditions that -learning will not dull the edge of individuality: first, if one never -suspect that it is creditable and a matter of pride to be learned, and -so never become learned for the sake of becoming so; or, second, if -it never suggest to one that investigation is better than reflection. -Learned investigation leads to many good things, but one of these is -not great literature, because learned investigation commands, as the -first condition of its success, the repression of individuality. - -His mind is a great comfort to every man who has one; but a heart is -not often to be so conveniently possessed. Hearts frequently give -trouble; they are straightforward and impulsive, and can seldom be -induced to be prudent. They must be schooled before they will become -insensible; they must be coached before they can be made to care first -and most for themselves: and in all cases the mind must be their -schoolmaster and coach. They are irregular forces; but the mind may -be trained to observe all points of circumstance and all motives of -occasion. - -No doubt it is considerations of this nature that must be taken to -explain the fact that our universities are erected entirely for the -service of the tractable mind, while the heart’s only education must be -gotten from association with its neighbor heart, and in the ordinary -courses of the world. Life is its only university. Mind is monarch, -whose laws claim supremacy in those lands which boast the movements -of civilization, and it must command all the instrumentalities of -education. At least such is the theory of the constitution of the -modern world. It is to be suspected that, as a matter of fact, mind -is one of those modern monarchs who reign, but do not govern. That -old House of Commons, that popular chamber in which the passions, the -prejudices, the inborn, unthinking affections long ago repudiated by -mind, have their full representation, controls much the greater part -of the actual conduct of affairs. To come out of the figure, reasoned -thought is, though perhaps the presiding, not yet the regnant force in -the world. In life and in literature it is subordinate. The future may -belong to it; but the present and past do not. Faith and virtue do not -wear its livery; friendship, loyalty, patriotism, do not derive their -motives from it. It does not furnish the material for those masses of -habit, of unquestioned tradition, and of treasured belief which are -the ballast of every steady ship of state, enabling it to spread its -sails safely to the breezes of progress, and even to stand before the -storms of revolution. And this is a fact which has its reflection in -literature. There is a literature of reasoned thought; but by far the -greater part of those writings which we reckon worthy of that great -name is the product, not of reasoned thought, but of the imagination -and of the spiritual vision of those who see,--writings winged, not -with knowledge, but with sympathy, with sentiment, with heartiness. -Even the literature of reasoned thought gets its life, not from its -logic, but from the spirit, the insight, and the inspiration which -are the vehicle of its logic. Thought presides, but sentiment has the -executive powers; the motive functions belong to feeling. - -“Many people give many theories of literary composition,” says the most -natural and stimulating of English critics, “and Dr. Blair, whom we -will read, is sometimes said to have exhausted the subject; but, unless -he has proved the contrary, we believe that the knack in style is to -write like a human being. Some think they must be wise, some elaborate, -some concise; Tacitus wrote like a pair of stays; some startle us, as -Thomas Carlyle, or a comet, inscribing with his tail. But legibility -is given to those who neglect these notions, and are willing to be -themselves, to write their own thoughts in their own words, in the -simplest words, in the words wherein they were thought.... Books are -for various purposes,--tracts to teach, almanacs to sell, poetry to -make pastry; but this is the rarest sort of a book,--a book to read. As -Dr. Johnson said, ‘Sir, a good book is one you can hold in your hand, -and take to the fire.’ Now there are extremely few books which can, -with any propriety, be so treated. When a great author, as Grote or -Gibbon, has devoted a whole life of horrid industry to the composition -of a large history, one feels one ought not to touch it with a mere -hand,--it is not respectful. The idea of slavery hovers over the -Decline and Fall. Fancy a stiffly dressed gentleman, in a stiff chair, -slowly writing that stiff compilation in a stiff hand; it is enough to -stiffen you for life.” - -It is devoutly to be wished that we might learn to prepare the best -soils for mind, the best associations and companionships, the least -possible sophistication. We are busy enough nowadays finding out -the best ways of fertilizing and stimulating mind; but that is not -quite the same thing as discovering the best soils for it, and the -best atmospheres. Our culture is, by erroneous preference, of the -reasoning faculty, as if that were all of us. Is it not the instinctive -discontent of readers seeking stimulating contact with authors that -has given us the present almost passionately spoken dissent from the -standards set themselves by the realists in fiction, dissatisfaction -with mere recording or observation? And is not realism working out upon -itself the revenge its enemies would fain compass? Must not all April -Hopes exclude from their number the hope of immortality? - -The rule for every man is, not to depend on the education which other -men prepare for him,--not even to consent to it; but to strive to -see things as they are, and to be himself as he is. Defeat lies in -self-surrender. - - - - -III. - -ON AN AUTHOR’S CHOICE OF COMPANY. - - -Once and again, it would seem, a man is born into the world belated. -Strayed out of a past age, he comes among us like an alien, lives -removed and singular, and dies a stranger. There was a touch of this -strangeness in Charles Lamb. Much as he was loved and befriended, he -was not much understood; for he drew aloof in his studies, affected a -“self-pleasing quaintness” in his style, took no pains to hit the taste -of his day, wandered at sweet liberty in an age which could scarcely -have bred such another. “Hang the age!” he cried. “I will write for -antiquity.” And he did. He wrote as if it were still Shakespeare’s day; -made the authors of that spacious time his constant companions and -study; and deliberately became himself “the last of the Elizabethans.” -When a new book came out, he said, he always read an old one. - -The case ought, surely, to put us occasionally upon reflecting. May an -author not, in some degree, by choosing his literary company, choose -also his literary character, and so, when he comes to write, write -himself back to his masters? May he not, by examining his own tastes -and yielding himself obedient to his natural affinities, join what -congenial group of writers he will? The question can be argued very -strongly in the affirmative, and that not alone because of Charles -Lamb’s case. It might be said that Lamb was antique only in the forms -of his speech; that he managed very cleverly to hit the taste of his -age in the substance of what he wrote, for all the phraseology had so -strong a flavor of quaintness and was not at all in the mode of the -day. It would not be easy to prove that; but it really does not matter. -In his tastes, certainly, Lamb was an old author, not a new one; a -“modern antique,” as Hood called him. He wrote for his own age, of -course, because there was no other age at hand to write for, and the -age he liked best was past and gone; but he wrote what he fancied the -great generations gone by would have liked, and what, as it has turned -out in the generosity of fortune, subsequent ages have warmly loved and -reverently canonized him for writing; as if there were a casual taste -that belongs to a day and generation, and also a permanent taste which -is without date, and he had hit the latter. - -Great authors are not often men of fashion. Fashion is always a -harness and restraint, whether it be fashion in dress or fashion -in vice or fashion in literary art; and a man who is bound by it is -caught and formed in a fleeting mode. The great writers are always -innovators; for they are always frank, natural, and downright, and -frankness and naturalness always disturb, when they do not wholly break -down, the fixed and complacent order of fashion. No genuine man can -be deliberately in the fashion, indeed, in what he says, if he have -any movement of thought or individuality in him. He remembers what -Aristotle says, or if he does not, his own pride and manliness fill -him with the thought instead. The very same action that is noble if -done for the satisfaction of one’s own sense of right or purpose of -self-development, said the Stagirite, may, if done to satisfy others, -become menial and slavish. “It is the object of any action or study -that is all-important,” and if the author’s chief object be to please -he is condemned already. The true spirit of authorship is a spirit of -liberty which scorns the slave’s trick of imitation. It is a masterful -spirit of conquest within the sphere of ideas and of artistic form,--an -impulse of empire and origination. - -Of course a man may choose, if he will, to be less than a free -author. He may become a reporter; for there is such a thing as -reporting for books as well as reporting for newspapers, and there -have been reporters so amazingly clever that their very aptness and -wit constitute them a sort of immortals. You have proof of this in -Horace Walpole, at whose hands gossip and compliment receive a sort -of apotheosis. Such men hold the secret of a kind of alchemy by which -things trivial and temporary may be transmuted into literature. But -they are only inspired reporters, after all; and while a man was -wishing, he might wish to be more, and climb to better company. - -Every man must, of course, whether he will or not, feel the spirit -of the age in which he lives and thinks and does his work; and the -mere contact will direct and form him more or less. But to wish to -serve the spirit of the age at any sacrifice of individual naturalness -or conviction, however small, is to harbor the germ of a destroying -disease. Every man who writes ought to write for immortality, even -though he be of the multitude that die at their graves; and the -standards of immortality are of no single age. There are many qualities -and causes that give permanency to a book, but universal vogue during -the author’s lifetime is not one of them. Many authors now immortal -have enjoyed the applause of their own generations; many authors now -universally admired will, let us hope, pass on to an easy immortality. -The praise of your own day is no absolute disqualification; but it may -be if it be given for qualities which your friends are the first to -admire, for ’tis likely they will also be the last. There is a greater -thing than the spirit of the age, and that is the spirit of the ages. -It is present in your own day; it is even dominant then, with a sort of -accumulated power and mastery. If you can strike it, you will strike, -as it were, into the upper air of your own time, where the forces are -which run from age to age. Lower down, where you breathe, is the more -inconstant air of opinion, inhaled, exhaled, from day to day,--the -variant currents, the forces that will carry you, not forward, but -hither and thither. - -We write nowadays a great deal with our eyes circumspectly upon the -tastes of our neighbors, but very little with our attention bent upon -our own natural, self-speaking thoughts and the very truth of the -matter whereof we are discoursing. Now and again, it is true, we are -startled to find how the age relishes still an old-fashioned romance, -if written with a new-fashioned vigor and directness; how quaint and -simple and lovely things, as well as what is altogether modern and -analytic and painful, bring our most judicious friends crowding, -purses in hand, to the book-stalls; and for a while we are puzzled to -see worn-out styles and past modes revived. But we do not let these -things seriously disturb our study of prevailing fashions. These books -of adventure are not at all, we assure ourselves, in the true spirit of -the age, with its realistic knowledge of what men really do think and -purpose, and the taste for them must be only for the moment or in jest. -We need not let our surprise at occasional flurries and variations in -the literary market cloud or discredit our analysis of the real taste -of the day, or suffer ourselves to be betrayed into writing romances, -however much we might rejoice to be delivered from the drudgery of -sociological study, and made free to go afield with our imaginations -upon a joyous search for hidden treasure or knightly adventure. - -And yet it is quite likely, after all, that the present age is -transient. Past ages have been. It is probable that the objects and -interests now so near us, looming dominant in all the foreground of our -day, will sometime be shifted and lose their place in the perspective. -That has happened with the near objects and exaggerated interests of -other days, so violently sometimes as to submerge and thrust out of -sight whole libraries of books. It will not do to reckon upon the -persistence of new things. ’Twere best to give them time to make trial -of the seasons. The old things of art and taste and thought are the -permanent things. We know that they are because they have lasted long -enough to grow old; and we deem it safe to assess the spirit of the age -by the same test. No age adds a great deal to what it received from -the age that went before it; no time gets an air all its own. The same -atmosphere holds from age to age; it is only the little movements of -the air that are new. In the intervals when the trades do not blow, -fleeting cross-winds venture abroad, the which if a man wait for he may -lose his voyage. - -No man who has anything to say need stop and bethink himself whom he -may please or displease in the saying of it. He has but one day to -write in, and that is his own. He need not fear that he will too much -ignore it. He will address the men he knows when he writes, whether he -be conscious of it or not; he may dismiss all fear on that score and -use his liberty to the utmost. There are some things that can have no -antiquity and must ever be without date, and genuineness and spirit -are of their number. A man who has these must ever be “timely,” and -at the same time fit to last, if he can get his qualities into what -he writes. He may freely read, too, what he will that is congenial, -and form himself by companionships that are chosen simply because -they are to his taste; that is, if he be genuine and in very truth a -man of independent spirit. Lamb would have written “for antiquity” -with a vengeance had his taste for the quaint writers of an elder day -been an affectation, or the authors he liked men themselves affected -and ephemeral. No age this side antiquity would ever have vouchsafed -him a glance or a thought. But it was not an affectation, and the men -he preferred were as genuine and as spirited as he was. He was simply -obeying an affinity and taking cheer after his own kind. A man born -into the real patriciate of letters may take his pleasure in what -company he will without taint or loss of caste; may go confidently -abroad in the free world of books and choose his comradeships without -fear of offense. - -More than that, there is no other way in which he can form himself, if -he would have his power transcend a single age. He belittles himself -who takes from the world no more than he can get from the speech of his -own generation. The only advantage of books over speech is that they -may hold from generation to generation, and reach, not a small group -merely, but a multitude of men; and a man who writes without being a -man of letters is curtailed of his heritage. It is in this world of -old and new that he must form himself if he would in the end belong to -it and increase its bulk of treasure. If he has conned the new theories -of society, but knows nothing of Burke; the new notions about fiction, -and has not read his Scott and his Richardson; the new criminology, and -wots nothing of the old human nature; the new religions, and has never -felt the power and sanctity of the old, it is much the same as if he -had read Ibsen and Maeterlinck, and had never opened Shakespeare. How -is he to know wholesome air from foul, good company from bad, visions -from nightmares? He has framed himself for the great art and handicraft -of letters only when he has taken all the human parts of literature as -if they were without date, and schooled himself in a catholic sanity of -taste and judgment. - -Then he may very safely choose what company his own work shall be done -in,--in what manner, and under what masters. He cannot choose amiss -for himself or for his generation if he choose like a man, without -light whim or weak affectation; not like one who chooses a costume, -but like one who chooses a character. What is it, let him ask himself, -that renders a bit of writing a “piece of literature”? It is reality. -A “wood-note wild,” sung unpremeditated and out of the heart; a -description written as if with an undimmed and seeing eye upon the very -object described; an exposition that lays bare the very soul of the -matter; a motive truly revealed; anger that is righteous and justly -spoken; mirth that has its sources pure; phrases to find the heart -of a thing, and a heart seen in things for the phrases to find; an -unaffected meaning set out in language that is its own,--such are the -realities of literature. Nothing else is of the kin. Phrases used for -their own sake; borrowed meanings which the borrower does not truly -care for; an affected manner; an acquired style; a hollow reason; words -that are not fit; things which do not live when spoken,--these are its -falsities, which die in the handling. - -The very top breed of what is unreal is begotten by imitation. -Imitators succeed sometimes, and flourish, even while a breath may -last; but “imitate and be damned” is the inexorable threat and prophecy -of fate with regard to the permanent fortunes of literature. That has -been notorious this long time past. It is more worth noting, lest some -should not have observed it, that there are other and subtler ways of -producing what is unreal. There are the mixed kinds of writing, for -example. Argument is real if it come vital from the mind; narrative -is real if the thing told have life and the narrator unaffectedly -see it while he speaks; but to narrate and argue in the same breath -is naught. Take, for instance, the familiar example of the early -history of Rome. Make up your mind what was the truth of the matter, -and then, out of the facts as you have disentangled them, construct -a firmly touched narrative, and the thing you create is real, has -the confidence and consistency of life. But mix the narrative with -critical comment upon other writers and their variant versions of the -tale, show by a nice elaboration of argument the whole conjectural -basis of the story, set your reader the double task of doubting and -accepting, rejecting and constructing, and at once you have touched -the whole matter with unreality. The narrative by itself might have -had an objective validity; the argument by itself an intellectual -firmness, sagacity, vigor, that would have sufficed to make and keep -it potent; but together they confound each other, destroy each other’s -atmosphere, make a double miscarriage. The story is rendered unlikely, -and the argument obscure. This is the taint which has touched all our -recent historical writing. The critical discussion and assessment of -the sources of information, which used to be a thing for the private -mind of the writer, now so encroach upon the open text that the story, -for the sake of which we would believe the whole thing was undertaken, -is oftentimes fain to sink away into the foot-notes. The process has -ceased to be either pure exegesis or straightforward narrative, and -history has ceased to be literature. - -Nor is this our only sort of mixed writing. Our novels have become -sociological studies, our poems vehicles of criticism, our sermons -political manifestos. We have confounded all processes in a common use, -and do not know what we would be at. We can find no better use for -Pegasus than to carry our vulgar burdens, no higher key for song than -questionings and complainings. Fancy pulls in harness with intellectual -doubt; enthusiasm walks apologetically alongside science. We try to -make our very dreams engines of social reform. It is a parlous state -of things for literature, and it is high time authors should take -heed what company they keep. The trouble is, they all want to be “in -society,” overwhelmed with invitations from the publishers, well known -and talked about at the clubs, named every day in the newspapers, -photographed for the news-stalls; and it is so hard to distinguish -between fashion and form, costume and substance, convention and truth, -the things that show well and the things that last well; so hard to -draw away from the writers that are new and talked about and note those -who are old and walk apart, to distinguish the tones which are merely -loud from the tones that are genuine, to get far enough away from the -press and the hubbub to see and judge the movements of the crowd! - -Some will do it. Choice spirits will arise and make conquest of us, -not “in society,” but with what will seem a sort of outlawry. The -great growths of literature spring up in the open, where the air is -free and they can be a law unto themselves. The law of life, here as -elsewhere, is the law of nourishment: with what was the earth laden, -and the atmosphere? Literatures are renewed, as they are originated, -by uncontrived impulses of nature, as if the sap moved unbidden in the -mind. Once conceive the matter so, and Lamb’s quaint saying assumes a -sort of gentle majesty. A man should “write for antiquity” as a tree -grows into the ancient air,--this old air that has moved upon the face -of the world ever since the day of creation, which has set the law of -life to all things, which has nurtured the forests and won the flowers -to their perfection, which has fed men’s lungs with life, sped their -craft upon the seas, borne abroad their songs and their cries, blown -their forges to flame, and buoyed up whatever they have contrived. ’Tis -a common medium, though a various life; and the figure may serve the -author for instruction. - -The breeding of authors is no doubt a very occult thing, and no man can -set the rules of it; but at least the sort of “ampler ether” in which -they are best brought to maturity is known. Writers have liked to speak -of the Republic of Letters, as if to mark their freedom and equality; -but there is a better phrase, namely, the Community of Letters; for -that means intercourse and comradeship and a life in common. Some take -up their abode in it as if they had made no search for a place to dwell -in, but had come into the freedom of it by blood and birthright. Others -buy the freedom with a great price, and seek out all the sights and -privileges of the place with an eager thoroughness and curiosity. Still -others win their way into it with a certain grace and aptitude, next -best to the ease and dignity of being born to the right. But for all it -is a bonny place to be. Its comradeships are a liberal education. Some, -indeed, even there, live apart; but most run always in the market-place -to know what all the rest have said. Some keep special company, while -others keep none at all. But all feel the atmosphere and life of the -place in their several degrees. - -No doubt there are national groups, and Shakespeare is king among -the English, as Homer is among the Greeks, and sober Dante among his -gay countrymen. But their thoughts all have in common, though speech -divide them; and sovereignty does not exclude comradeship or embarrass -freedom. No doubt there is many a willful, ungoverned fellow endured -there without question, and many a churlish cynic, because he possesses -that patent of genuineness or of a wit which strikes for the heart of -things, which, without further test, secures citizenship in that free -company. What a gift of tongues is there, and of prophecy! What strains -of good talk, what counsel of good judgment, what cheer of good tales, -what sanctity of silent thought! The sight-seers who pass through from -day to day, the press of voluble men at the gates, the affectation of -citizenship by mere sojourners, the folly of those who bring new styles -or affect old ones, the procession of the generations, disturb the calm -of that serene community not a whit. They will entertain a man a whole -decade, if he happen to stay so long, though they know all the while he -can have no permanent place among them. - -’T would be a vast gain to have the laws of that community better -known than they are. Even the first principles of its constitution -are singularly unfamiliar. It is not a community of writers, but a -community of letters. One gets admission, not because he writes,--write -he never so cleverly, like a gentleman and a man of wit,--but because -he is literate, a true initiate into the secret craft and mystery of -letters. What that secret is a man may know, even though he cannot -practice or appropriate it. If a man can see the permanent element -in things,--the true sources of laughter, the real fountains of -tears, the motives that strike along the main lines of conduct, the -acts which display the veritable characters of men, the trifles that -are significant, the details that make the mass,--if he know these -things, and can also choose words with a like knowledge of their power -to illuminate and reveal, give color to the eye and passion to the -thought, the secret is his, and an entrance to that immortal communion. - -It may be that some learn the mystery of that insight without tutors; -but most must put themselves under governors and earn their initiation. -While a man lives, at any rate, he can keep the company of the -masters whose words contain the mystery and open it to those who can -see, almost with every accent; and in such company it may at last be -revealed to him,--so plainly that he may, if he will, still linger in -such comradeship when he is dead. - -It would seem that there are two tests which admit to that company, and -that they are conclusive. The one is, Are you individual? the other, -Are you conversable? “I beg pardon,” said a grave wag, coming face -to face with a small person of most consequential air, and putting -glass to eye in calm scrutiny--“I beg pardon; but are you anybody -in particular?” Such is very much the form of initiation into the -permanent communion of the realm of letters. Tell them, No, but that -you have done much better--you have caught the tone of a great age, -studied taste, divined opportunity, courted and won a vast public, -been most timely and most famous; and you shall be pained to find them -laughing in your face. Tell them you are earnest, sincere, consecrate -to a cause, an apostle and reformer, and they will still ask you, “But -are you anybody in particular?” They will mean, “Were you your own man -in what you thought, and not a puppet? Did you speak with an individual -note and distinction that marked you able to think as well as to -speak,--to be yourself in thoughts and in words also?” “Very well, -then; you are welcome enough.” - -“That is, if you be also conversable.” It is plain enough what they -mean by that, too. They mean, if you have spoken in such speech and -spirit as can be understood from age to age, and not in the pet terms -and separate spirit of a single day and generation. Can the old authors -understand you, that you would associate with them? Will men be able to -take your meaning in the differing days to come? Or is it perishable -matter of the day that you deal in--little controversies that carry no -lasting principle at their heart; experimental theories of life and -science, put forth for their novelty and with no test of their worth; -pictures in which fashion looms very large, but human nature shows very -small; things that please everybody, but instruct no one; mere fancies -that are an end in themselves? Be you never so clever an artist in -words and in ideas, if they be not the words that wear and mean the -same thing, and that a thing intelligible, from age to age, the ideas -that shall hold valid and luminous in whatever day or company, you may -clamor at the gate till your lungs fail and get never an answer. - -For that to what you seek admission is a veritable “community.” In it -you must be able to be, and to remain, conversable. How are you to test -your preparation meanwhile, unless you look to your comradeships now -while yet it is time to learn? Frequent the company in which you may -learn the speech and the manner which are fit to last. Take to heart -the admirable example you shall see set you there of using speech and -manner to speak your real thought and be genuinely and simply yourself. - - - - -IV. - -A LITERARY POLITICIAN. - - -“Literary politician” is not a label much in vogue, and may need first -of all a justification, lest even the man of whom I am about to speak -should decline it from his very urn. I do not mean a politician who -affects literature; who seems to appreciate the solemn moral purpose -of Wordsworth’s Happy Warrior, and yet is opposed to ballot reform. -Neither do I mean a literary man who affects politics; who earns his -victories through the publishers, and his defeats at the hands of the -men who control the primaries. I mean the man who has the genius to see -deep into affairs, and the discretion to keep out of them,--the man to -whom, by reason of knowledge and imagination and sympathetic insight, -governments and policies are as open books, but who, instead of trying -to put haphazard characters of his own into those books, wisely prefers -to read their pages aloud to others. A man this who knows polities, and -yet does not handle policies. - -There is, no doubt, a very widespread skepticism as to the existence of -such a man. Many people would ask you to prove him as well as define -him; and that, as they assume, upon a very obvious principle. It is -a rule of universal acceptance in theatrical circles that no one can -write a good play who has no practical acquaintance with the stage. -A knowledge of greenroom possibilities and of stage machinery, it is -held, must go before all successful attempts to put either passion -or humor into action on the boards, if pit and gallery are to get a -sense of reality from the performance. No wonder that Sheridan’s plays -were effective, for Sheridan was both author and actor; but abundant -wonder that simple Goldsmith succeeded with his exquisite “She Stoops -to Conquer,”--unless we are to suppose that an Irishman of the last -century, like the Irishman of this, had some sixth sense which enabled -him to understand other people’s business better than his own; for poor -Goldsmith could not act (even off the stage), and his only connection -with the theatre seems to have been his acquaintance with Garrick. -Lytton, we know, had Macready constantly at his elbow, to give and -enforce suggestions calculated to render plays playable. And in our -own day, the authors of what we indulgently call “dramatic literature” -find themselves constantly obliged to turn tragedies into comedies, -comedies into farces, to satisfy the managers; for managers know the -stage, and pretend to know all possible audiences also. The writer for -the stage must be playwright first, author second. - -Similar principles of criticism are not a little affected by those -who play the parts, great and small, on the stage of politics. There -is on that stage, too, it is said, a complex machinery of action and -scene-shifting, a greenroom tradition and practice as to costume and -make-up, as to entry and exit, necessities of concession to footlights -and of appeal to the pit, quite as rigorous and quite as proper for -study as are the concomitants of that other art which we frankly call -acting. This is an idea, indeed, accepted in some quarters outside -the political playhouse as well as within it. Mr. Sydney Colvin, for -example, declares very rightly that:-- - -“Men of letters and of thought are habitually too much given to -declaiming at their ease against the delinquencies of men of action -and affairs. The inevitable friction of practical politics,” he -argues, “generates heat enough already, and the office of the thinker -and critic should be to supply not heat, but light. The difficulties -which attend his own unmolested task--the task of seeking after and -proclaiming salutary truths--should teach him to make allowance for -the far more urgent difficulties which beset the politician; the man -obliged, amidst the clash of interests and temptations, to practice -from hand to mouth, and at his peril, the most uncertain and at the -same time the most indispensable of the experimental arts.” - -Mr. Colvin is himself of the class of men of letters and of thought; he -accordingly puts the case against his class much more mildly than the -practical politician would desire to see it put. Practical politicians -are wont to regard closeted writers upon politics with a certain -condescension, dashed with slight traces of uneasy concern. “Literary -men can say strong things of their age,” observes Mr. Bagehot, “for no -one expects that they will go out and act on them. They are a kind of -ticket-of-leave lunatics, from whom no harm is for the moment expected; -who seem quiet, but on whose vagaries a practical public must have its -eye.” I suppose that the really serious, practical man in politics -would see nothing of satirical humor in such a description. He would -have you note that, although traced with a sharp point of wit, the -picture is nevertheless true. He can cite you a score of instances -illustrative of the danger of putting faith in the political judgments -of those who are not politicians bred in the shrewd and moving world of -political management. - -The genuine practical politician, such as (even our enemies being the -witnesses) we must be acknowledged to produce in great numbers and -perfection in this country, reserves his acidest contempt for the -literary man who assumes to utter judgments touching public affairs -and political institutions. If he be a reading man, as will sometimes -happen, he is able to point you, in illustration of what you are to -expect in such cases, to the very remarkable essays of the late Mr. -Matthew Arnold on parliamentary policy and the Irish question. If he -be not a reading man, as sometimes happens, he is able to ask, much to -your confusion, “What does a fellow who lives inside a library know -about politics, anyhow?” You have to admit, if you are candid, that -most fellows who live in libraries know little enough. You remember -Macaulay, and acknowledge that, although he made admirable speeches in -Parliament, held high political office, and knew all the considerable -public men of his time, he did imagine the creation to have been made -in accordance with Whig notions; did hope to find the judgments of -Lord Somers some day answering mankind as standards for all possible -times and circumstances. You recall Gibbon, and allow, to your own -thought at least, that, had he not remained silent in his seat, a -very few of his sentences would probably have sufficed to freeze the -House of Commons stiff. The ordinary literary man, even though he be -an eminent historian, is ill enough fitted to be a mentor in affairs -of government. For, it must be admitted, things are for the most part -very simple in books, and in practical life very complex. Not all the -bindings of a library inclose the various world of circumstance. - -But the practical politician should discriminate. Let him find a -man with an imagination which, though it stands aloof, is yet quick -to conceive the very things in the thick of which the politician -struggles. To that man he should resort for instruction. And that there -is occasionally such a man we have proof in Bagehot, the man who first -clearly distinguished the facts of the English constitution from its -theory. - -Walter Bagehot is a name known to not a few of those who have a zest -for the juiciest things of literature, for the wit that illuminates -and the knowledge that refreshes. But his fame is still singularly -disproportioned to his charm; and one feels once and again like -publishing him, at least to all spirits of his own kind. It would be -a most agreeable good fortune to introduce Bagehot to men who have -not read him! To ask your friend to know Bagehot is like inviting him -to seek pleasure. Occasionally, a man is born into the world whose -mission it evidently is to clarify the thought of his generation, -and to vivify it; to give it speed where it is slow, vision where it -is blind, balance where it is out of poise, saving humor where it is -dry,--and such a man was Walter Bagehot. When he wrote of history, he -made it seem human and probable; when he wrote of political economy, -he made it seem credible, entertaining,--nay, engaging even; when he -wrote criticism, he wrote sense. You have in him a man who can jest to -your instruction, who will beguile you into being informed beyond your -wont and wise beyond your birthright. Full of manly, straightforward -meaning, earnest to find the facts that guide and strengthen conduct, a -lover of good men and seers, full of knowledge and a consuming desire -for it, he is yet genial withal, with the geniality of a man of wit, -and alive in every fibre of him, with a life he can communicate to -you. One is constrained to agree, almost, with the verdict of a witty -countryman of his, who happily still lives to cheer us, that when -Bagehot died he “carried away into the next world more originality of -thought than is now to be found in the three Estates of the Realm.” - -An epitome of Bagehot’s life can be given very briefly. He was born in -February, 1826, and died in March, 1877,--the month in which one would -prefer to die. Between those two dates he had much quaint experience as -a boy, and much sober business experience as a man. He wrote essays on -poets, prose writers, statesmen, whom he would, with abundant insight, -but without too much respect of persons; also books on banking, on -the early development of society, and on English politics, kindling a -flame of interest with these dry materials such as made men stare who -had often described the facts of society themselves, but who had never -dreamed of applying fire to them, as Bagehot did, to make them give -forth light and wholesome heat. He set the minds of a few fortunate -friends aglow with the delights of the very wonderful tongue which -nature had given him through his mother. And then he died, while his -power was yet young. Not a life of event or adventure, but a life -of deep interest, none the less, because a life in which those two -things of our modern life, commonly deemed incompatible, business and -literature, namely, were combined without detriment to either; and from -which, more interesting still, politics gained a profound expounder in -one who was no politician and no party man, but, as he himself said, -“between sizes in politics.” - -Mr. Bagehot was born in the centre of Somersetshire, that southwestern -county of old England whose coast towns look across Bristol Channel to -the highlands of Wales: a county of small farms, and pastures that keep -their promise of fatness to many generous milkers; a county broken into -abrupt hills, and sodden moors hardly kept from the inroads of the sea, -as well as rural valleys open to the sun; a county visited by mists -from the sea, and bathed in a fine soft atmosphere all its own; visited -also by people of fashion, for it contains Bath; visited now also by -those who have read Lorna Doone, for within it lies part of that Exmoor -Forest in which stalwart John Ridd lived and wrought his mighty deeds -of strength and love: a land which the Celts kept for long against both -Saxon and Roman, but which Christianity easily conquered, building -Wells Cathedral and the monastery at Glastonbury. Nowhere else, in days -of travel, could Bagehot find a land of so great delight save in the -northwest corner of Spain, where a golden light lay upon everything, -where the sea shone with a rare, soft lustre, and where there was a -like varied coast-line to that he knew and loved at home. He called it -“a sort of better Devonshire:” and Devonshire is Somersetshire,--only -more so! The atmospheric effects of his county certainly entered the -boy Bagehot, and colored the nature of the man. He had its glow, its -variety, its richness, and its imaginative depth. - -But better than a fair county is a good parentage, and that, too, -Bagehot had; just the parentage one would wish to have who desired -to be a force in the world’s thought. His father, Thomas Watson -Bagehot, was for thirty years managing director and vice-president of -Stuckey’s Banking Company, one of the oldest and best of those sturdy -joint-stock companies which have for so many years stood stoutly up -alongside the Bank of England as managers of the vast English fortune. -But he was something more than a banker. He was a man of mind, of -strong liberal convictions in politics, and of an abundant knowledge -of English history wherewith to back up his opinions. He was one of -the men who think, and who think in straight lines; who see, and -see things. His mother was a Miss Stuckey, a niece of the founder -of the banking company. But it was not her connection with bankers -that made her an invaluable mother. She had, besides beauty, a most -lively and stimulating wit; such a mind as we most desire to see in -a woman,--a mind that stirs without irritating you, that rouses but -does not belabor, amuses and yet subtly instructs. She could preside -over the young life of her son in such a way as at once to awaken his -curiosity and set him in the way of satisfying it. She was brilliant -company for a boy, and rewarding for a man. She had suggestive people, -besides, among her kinsmen, into whose companionship she could bring -her son. Bagehot had that for which no university can ever offer an -equivalent,--the constant and intelligent sympathy of both his parents -in his studies, and their companionship in his tastes. To his father’s -strength his mother added vivacity. He would have been wise, perhaps, -without her; but he would not have been wise so delightfully. - -Bagehot got his schooling in Bristol, his university training in -London. In Bristol lived Dr. Prichard, his mother’s brother-in-law, -and author of a notable book on the Physical History of Men. From him -Bagehot unquestionably got his bent towards the study of race origins -and development. In London, Cobden and Bright were carrying on an -important part of their great agitation for the repeal of the corn -laws, and were making such speeches as it stirred and bettered young -men to hear. Bagehot had gone to University Hall, London, rather than -to Oxford or Cambridge, because his father was a Unitarian, and would -not have his son submit to the religious tests then required at the -great universities. But there can be no doubt that there was more to be -had at University Hall in that day than at either Oxford or Cambridge. -Oxford and Cambridge were still dragging the very heavy chains of a -hindering tradition; the faculty of University Hall contained many -thorough and some eminent scholars; what was more, University Hall was -in London, and London itself was a quickening and inspiring teacher for -a lad in love with both books and affairs, as Bagehot was. He could -ask penetrating questions of his professors, and he could also ask -questions of London, seek out her secrets of history, and so experience -to the full the charm of her abounding life. In after years, though -he loved Somersetshire and clung to it with a strong home-keeping -affection, he could never stay away from London for more than six weeks -at a time. Eventually he made it his place of permanent residence. - -His university career over, Bagehot did what so many thousands of -young graduates before him had done,--he studied for the bar; and -then, having prepared himself to practice law, followed another large -body of young men in deciding to abandon it. He joined his father in -his business as ship-owner and banker in Somersetshire, and in due -time took his place among the directors of Stuckey’s Company. For the -rest of his life, this man, whom the world knows as a man of letters, -was first of all a man of business. In his later years, however, -he identified himself with what may be called the literary side of -business by becoming editor of that great financial authority, the -“London Economist.” He had, so to say, married into this position. -His wife was the daughter of the Rt. Hon. James Wilson, who was -the mind and manager, as well as the founder of the “Economist.” -Wilson’s death seemed to leave the great financial weekly by natural -succession to Bagehot; and certainly natural selection never made a -better choice. It was under Bagehot that the “Economist” became a -sort of financial providence for business men on both sides of the -Atlantic. Its sagacious prescience constituted Bagehot himself a sort -of supplementary chancellor of the exchequer, the chancellors of -both parties resorting to him with equal confidence and solicitude. -His constant contact with London, and with the leaders of politics -and opinion there, of course materially assisted him also to those -penetrating judgments touching the structure and working of English -institutions which have made his volume on the English Constitution and -his essays on Bolingbroke and Brougham and Peel, on Mr. Gladstone and -Sir George Cornewall Lewis, the admiration and despair of all who read -them. - -Those who know Bagehot only as the writer of some of the most -delightful and suggestive literary criticisms in the language wonder -that he should have been an authority on practical politics; those who -used to regard the “London Economist” as omniscient, and who knew him -only as the editor of it, marvel that he dabbled in literary criticism, -and incline to ask themselves, when they learn of his vagaries in that -direction, whether he can have been so safe a guide as they deemed him, -after all; those who know him through his political writings alone -venture upon the perusal of his miscellaneous essays with not a little -surprise and misgiving that their master should wander so far afield. -And yet the whole Bagehot is the only Bagehot. Each part of the man -is incomplete, not only, but a trifle incomprehensible, also, without -the other parts. What delights us most in his literary essays is their -broad practical sagacity, so uniquely married as it is with pure taste -and the style of a rapid artist in words. What makes his financial and -political writings whole and sound is the scope of his mind outside -finance and politics, the validity of his observation all around the -circle of thought and affairs. He was the better critic for being a -competent man of business and a trusted financial authority. He was the -more sure-footed in his political judgments because of his play of mind -in other and supplementary spheres of human activity. - -The very appearance of the man was a sort of outer index to the -singular variety of capacity that has made him so notable a figure in -the literary annals of England. A mass of black, wavy hair; a dark eye, -with depths full of slumberous, playful fire; a ruddy skin that bespoke -active blood, quick in its rounds; the lithe figure of an excellent -horseman; a nostril full, delicate, quivering, like that of a blooded -racer,--such were the fitting outward marks of a man in whom life and -thought and fancy abounded; the aspect of a man of unflagging vivacity, -of wholesome, hearty humor, of a ready intellectual sympathy, of wide -and penetrative observation. It is no narrow, logical shrewdness or -cold penetration that looks forth at you through that face, even if a -bit of mockery does lurk in the privatest corner of the eye. Among the -qualities which he seeks out for special praise in Shakespeare is a -broad tolerance and sympathy for illogical and common minds. It seems -to him an evidence of size in Shakespeare that he was not vexed with -smallness, but was patient, nay, sympathetic even, in his portrayal -of it. “If every one were logical and literary,” he exclaims, “how -would there be scavengers, or watchmen, or caulkers, or coopers? A -patient sympathy, a kindly fellow-feeling for the narrow intelligence -necessarily induced by narrow circumstances,--a narrowness which, in -some degrees, seems to be inevitable, and is perhaps more serviceable -than most things to the wise conduct of life,--this, though quick and -half-bred minds may despise it, seems to be a necessary constituent -in the composition of manifold genius. ‘How shall the world be -served?’ asks the host in Chaucer. We must have cart-horses as well as -race-horses, draymen as well as poets. It is no bad thing, after all, -to be a slow man and to have one idea a year. You don’t make a figure, -perhaps, in argumentative society, which requires a quicker species of -thought, but is that the worse?” - -One of the things which strike us most in Bagehot himself is his -capacity to understand inferior minds; and there can be no better test -of sound genius. He stood in the midst of affairs, and knew the dull -duty and humdrum fidelity which make up the equipment of the ordinary -mind for business, for the business which keeps the world steady in its -grooves and makes it fit for habitation. He perceived quite calmly, -though with an odd, sober amusement, that the world is under the -dominion, in most things, of the average man, and the average man he -knows. He is, he explains, with his characteristic covert humor, “a -cool, common person, with a considerate air, with figures in his mind, -with his own business to attend to, with a set of ordinary opinions -arising from and suited to ordinary life. He can’t bear novelty or -originalities. He says, ‘Sir, I never heard such a thing before in my -life;’ and he thinks this a _reductio ad absurdum_. You may see his -taste by the reading of which he approves. Is there a more splendid -monument of talent and industry than the ‘Times’? No wonder that -the average man--that any one--believes in it.... But did you ever -see anything there you had never seen before?... Where are the deep -theories, and the wise axioms, and the everlasting sentiments which the -writers of the most influential publication in the world have been the -first to communicate to an ignorant species? Such writers are far too -shrewd.... The purchaser desires an article which he can appreciate -at sight, which he can lay down and say, ‘An excellent article, very -excellent; exactly my own sentiments.’ Original theories give trouble; -besides, a grave man on the Coal Exchange does not desire to be an -apostle of novelties among the contemporaneous dealers in fuel; he -wants to be provided with remarks he can make on the topics of the -day which will not be known not to be his, that are not too profound, -which he can fancy the paper only reminded him of. And just in the -same way,”--thus he proceeds with the sagacious moral,--“precisely as -the most popular political paper is not that which is abstractedly the -best or most instructive, but that which most exactly takes up the -minds of men where it finds them, catches the floating sentiment of -society, puts it in such a form as society can fancy would convince -another society which did not believe, so the most influential of -constitutional statesmen is the one who most felicitously expresses -the creed of the moment, who administers it, who embodies it in laws -and institutions, who gives it the highest life it is capable of, who -induces the average man to think, ‘I could not have done it any better -if I had had time myself.’” - -See how his knowledge of politics proceeds out of his knowledge of men. -“You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius,” he exclaims, “but -the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor. What law is -so cruel as the law of doing what he does? What yoke is so galling as -the necessity of being like him? What espionage of despotism comes to -your door so effectually as the eye of the man who lives at your door? -Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to -itself; it requires us to think other men’s thoughts, to speak other -men’s words, to follow other men’s habits. Of course, if we do not, no -formal ban issues, no corporeal pain, the coarse penalty of a barbarous -society, is inflicted on the offender, but we are called ‘eccentric;’ -there is a gentle murmur of ‘most unfortunate ideas,’ ‘singular young -man,’ ‘well intentioned, I dare say, but unsafe, sir, quite unsafe.’ -The prudent, of course, conform.” - -There is, no doubt, a touch of mockery in all this, but there is -unquestionable insight in it, too, and a sane knowledge also of the -fact that dull, common judgments are, after all, the cement of society. -It is Bagehot who says somewhere that it is only dull nations, like the -Romans and the English, who can become or remain for any length of time -self-governing nations, because it is only among them that duty is done -through lack of knowledge sufficient or imagination enough to suggest -anything else to do: only among them that the stability of slow habit -can be had. - -It would be superficial criticism to put forward Bagehot’s political -opinions as themselves the proof of his extraordinary power as a -student and analyst of institutions. His life, his broad range of -study, his quick versatility, his shrewd appreciation of common -men, his excursions through all the fields that men traverse in -their thought of one another and in their contact with the world’s -business,--these are the soil out of which his political judgments -spring, from which they get their sap and bloom. In order to know -institutions, you must know men; you must be able to imagine histories, -to appreciate characters radically unlike your own, to see into -the heart of society and assess its notions, great and small. Your -average critic, it must be acknowledged, would be the worst possible -commentator on affairs. He has all the movements of intelligence -without any of its reality. But a man who sees authors with a -Chaucerian insight into them as men, who knows literature as a realm of -vital thought conceived by real men, of actual motive felt by concrete -persons, this is a man whose opinions you may confidently ask, if not -on current politics, at any rate on all that concerns the permanent -relations of men in society. - -It is for such reasons that one must first make known the most masterly -of the critics of English political institutions as a man of catholic -tastes and attainments, shrewdly observant of many kinds of men and -affairs. Know him once in this way, and his mastery in political -thought is explained. If I were to make choice, therefore, of extracts -from his works with a view to recommend him as a politician, I should -choose those passages which show him a man of infinite capacity to -see and understand men of all kinds, past and present. By showing in -his case the equipment of a mind open on all sides to the life and -thought of society, and penetrative of human secrets of many sorts, I -should authenticate his credentials as a writer upon politics, which is -nothing else than the public and organic life of society. - -Examples may be taken almost at random. There is the passage on Sydney -Smith, in the essay on the First Edinburgh Reviewers. We have all -laughed with that great-hearted clerical wit; but it is questionable -whether we have all appreciated him as a man who wrote and wrought -wisdom. Indeed, Sydney Smith may be made a very delicate test of sound -judgment, the which to apply to friends of whom you are suspicious. -There was a man beneath those excellent witticisms, a big, wholesome, -thinking man; but none save men of like wholesome natures can see and -value his manhood and his mind at their real worth. - -“Sydney Smith was an after-dinner writer. His words have a flow, a -vigor, an expression, which is not given to hungry mortals.... There -is little trace of labor in his composition; it is poured forth like an -unceasing torrent, rejoicing daily to run its course. And what courage -there is in it! There is as much variety of pluck in writing across a -sheet as in riding across a country. Cautious men ... go tremulously, -like a timid rider; they turn hither and thither; they do not go -straight across a subject, like a masterly mind. A few sentences are -enough for a master of sentences. The writing of Sydney Smith is suited -to the broader kind of important questions. For anything requiring fine -nicety of speculation, long elaborateness of deduction, evanescent -sharpness of distinction, neither his style nor his mind was fit. He -had no patience for long argument, no acuteness for delicate precision, -no fangs for recondite research. Writers, like teeth, are divided into -incisors and grinders. Sydney Smith was a molar. He did not run a long, -sharp argument into the interior of a question; he did not, in the -common phrase, go deeply into it; but he kept it steadily under the -contract of a strong, capable, jawlike understanding,--pressing its -surface, effacing its intricacies, grinding it down. Yet this is done -without toil. The play of the molar is instinctive and placid; he could -not help it; it would seem that he had an enjoyment in it.” - -One reads this with a feeling that Bagehot both knows and likes -Sydney Smith, and heartily appreciates him as an engine of Whig -thought; and with the conviction that Bagehot himself, knowing thus -and enjoying Smith’s freehand method of writing, could have done the -like himself,--could himself have made English ring to all the old -Whig tunes, like an anvil under the hammer. And yet you have only to -turn back a page in the same essay to find quite another Bagehot,--a -Bagehot such as Sydney Smith could not have been. He is speaking of -that other militant Edinburgh reviewer, Lord Jeffrey, and is recalling, -as every one recalls, Jeffrey’s review of Wordsworth’s “Excursion.” -The first words of that review, as everybody remembers, were, “This -will never do;” and there followed upon those words, though not a -little praise of the poetical beauties of the poem, a thoroughly -meant condemnation of the school of poets of which Wordsworth was the -greatest representative. Very celebrated in the world of literature is -the leading case of Jeffrey _v._ Wordsworth. It is in summing up this -case that Bagehot gives us a very different taste of his quality:-- - -“The world has given judgment. Both Mr. Wordsworth and Lord Jeffrey -have received their reward. The one had his own generation, the -laughter of men, the applause of drawing-rooms, the concurrence of -the crowd; the other a succeeding age, the fond enthusiasm of secret -students, the lonely rapture of lonely minds. And each has received -according to his kind. If all cultivated men speak differently because -of the existence of Wordsworth and Coleridge; if not a thoughtful -English book has appeared for forty years without some trace for good -or evil of their influence; if sermon-writers subsist upon their -thoughts; if ‘sacred poets’ thrive by translating their weaker portions -into the speech of women; if, when all this is over, some sufficient -part of their writing will ever be found fitting food for wild musing -and solitary meditation, surely this is because they possessed the -inner nature,--‘an intense and glowing mind,’ ‘the vision and the -faculty divine.’ But if, perchance, in their weaker moments, the great -authors of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ did ever imagine that the world was -to pause because of their verses, that ‘Peter Bell’ would be popular -in drawing-rooms, that ‘Christabel’ would be perused in the city, that -people of fashion would make a handbook of ‘The Excursion,’ it was well -for them to be told at once that this was not so. Nature ingeniously -prepared a shrill artificial voice, which spoke in season and out of -season, enough and more than enough, what will ever be the idea of -the cities of the plain concerning those who live alone among the -mountains, of the frivolous concerning the grave, of the gregarious -concerning the recluse, of those who laugh concerning those who laugh -not, of the common concerning the uncommon, of those who lend on usury -concerning those who lend not; the notion of the world of those whom it -will not reckon among the righteous,--it said, ‘This won’t do!’ And so -in all time will the lovers of polished Liberalism speak concerning the -intense and lonely prophet.” - -This is no longer the Bagehot who could “write across a sheet” with -Sydney Smith. It is now a Bagehot whose heart is turned away from the -cudgeling Whigs to see such things as are hidden from the bearers of -cudgels, and revealed only to those who can await in the sanctuary of a -quiet mind the coming of the vision. - -Single specimens of such a man’s writing do not suffice, of course, -even as specimens. They need their context to show their appositeness, -the full body of the writing from which they are taken to show the mass -and system of the thought. Even separated pieces of his matter prepare -us, nevertheless, for finding in Bagehot keener, juster estimates of -difficult historical and political characters than it is given the -merely exact historian, with his head full of facts and his heart -purged of all imagination, to speak. There is his estimate of the -cavalier, for example: “A cavalier is always young. The buoyant life -arises before us, rich in hope, strong in vigor, irregular in action: -men young and ardent, ‘framed in the prodigality of nature;’ open -to every enjoyment, alive to every passion, eager, impulsive; brave -without discipline, noble without principle; prizing luxury, despising -danger; capable of high sentiment, but in each of whom the - - ‘addiction was to courses vain; - His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow; - His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports, - And never noted in him any study, - Any retirement, any sequestration - From open haunts and popularity.’ - -The political sentiment is part of the character; the essence of -Toryism is enjoyment.... The way to keep up old customs is to enjoy old -customs; the way to be satisfied with the present state of things is to -enjoy the present state of things. Over the cavalier mind this world -passes with a thrill of delight; there is an exultation in a daily -event, zest in the ‘regular thing,’ joy at an old feast.” - -Is it not most natural that the writer of a passage like that should -have been a consummate critic of politics, seeing institutions through -men, the only natural way? It was as necessary that he should be able -to enjoy Sydney Smith and recognize the seer in Wordsworth as that he -should be able to conceive the cavalier life and point of view; and -in each perception there is the same power. He is as little at fault -in understanding men of his own day. What would you wish better than -his celebrated character of a “constitutional statesman,” for example? -“A constitutional statesman is a man of common opinions and uncommon -abilities.” Peel is his example. “His opinions resembled the daily -accumulating insensible deposits of a rich alluvial soil. The great -stream of time flows on with all things on its surface; and slowly, -grain by grain, a mould of wise experience is unconsciously left on the -still, extended intellect.... The stealthy accumulating words of Peel -seem like the quiet leavings of some outward tendency, which brought -these, but might as well have brought others. There is no peculiar -stamp, either, on the ideas. They might have been any one’s ideas. They -belong to the general diffused stock of observations which are to be -found in the civilized world.... He insensibly takes in and imbibes the -ideas of those around him. If he were left in a vacuum, he would have -no ideas.” - -What strikes one most, perhaps, in all these passages, is the realizing -imagination which illuminates them. And it is an imagination with a -practical character all its own. It is not a creating, but a conceiving -imagination; not the imagination of the fancy, but the imagination -of the understanding. Conceiving imaginations, however, are of two -kinds. For the one kind the understanding serves as a lamp of guidance; -upon the other the understanding acts as an electric excitant, a -keen irritant. Bagehot’s was evidently of the first kind; Carlyle’s, -conspicuously of the second. There is something in common between the -minds of these two men as they conceive society. Both have a capital -grip upon the actual; both can conceive without confusion the complex -phenomena of society; both send humorous glances of searching insight -into the hearts of men. But it is the difference between them that most -arrests our attention. Bagehot has the scientific imagination, Carlyle -the passionate. Bagehot is the embodiment of witty common sense; all -the movements of his mind illustrate that vivacious sanity which he -has himself called “animated moderation.” Carlyle, on the other hand, -conceives men and their motives too often with a hot intolerance; -there is heat in his imagination,--a heat that sometimes scorches -and consumes. Life is for him dramatic, full of fierce, imperative -forces. Even when the world rings with laughter, it is laughter which, -in his ears, is succeeded by an echo of mockery; laughter which is -but a defiance of tears. The actual which you touch in Bagehot is the -practical, operative actual of a world of workshops and parliaments,--a -world of which workshops and parliaments are the natural and desirable -products. Carlyle flouts at modern legislative assemblies as “talking -shops,” and yearns for action such as is commanded by masters of -action; preaches the doctrine of work and silence in some thirty -volumes octavo. Bagehot points out that prompt, crude action is the -instinct and practice of the savage; that talk, the deliberation of -assemblies, the slow concert of masses of men, is the cultivated fruit -of civilization, nourishing to all the powers of right action in a -society which is not simple and primitive, but advanced and complex. -He is no more imposed upon by parliamentary debates than Carlyle is. -He knows that they are stupid, and, so far as wise utterance goes, in -large part futile, too. But he is not irritated, as Carlyle is, for, -to say the fact, he sees more than Carlyle sees. He sees the force -and value of the stupidity. He is wise, along with Burke, in regarding -prejudice as the cement of society. He knows that slow thought is -the ballast of a self-governing state. Stanch, knitted timbers are -as necessary to the ship as sails. Unless the hull is conservative -in holding stubbornly together in the face of every argument of sea -weather, there’ll be lives and fortunes lost. Bagehot can laugh at -unreasoning bias. It brings a merry twinkle into his eye to undertake -the good sport of dissecting stolid stupidity. But he would not for the -world abolish bias and stupidity. He would much rather have society -hold together; much rather see it grow than undertake to reconstruct -it. “You remember my joke against you about the moon,” writes Sydney -Smith to Jeffrey; “d--n the solar system--bad light--planets too -distant--pestered with comets--feeble contrivance; could make a better -with great ease.” There was nothing of this in Bagehot. He was inclined -to be quite tolerant of the solar system. He understood that society -was more quickly bettered by sympathy than by antagonism. - -Bagehot’s limitations, though they do not obtrude themselves upon -your attention as his excellencies do, are in truth as sharp-cut and -clear as his thought itself. It would not be just the truth to say -that his power is that of critical analysis only, for he can and does -construct thought concerning antique and obscure systems of political -life and social action. But it is true that he does not construct for -the future. You receive stimulation from him and a certain feeling of -elation. There is a fresh air stirring in all his utterances that is -unspeakably refreshing. You open your mind to the fine influence, and -feel younger for having been in such an atmosphere. It is an atmosphere -clarified and bracing almost beyond example elsewhere. But you know -what you lack in Bagehot if you have read Burke. You miss the deep -eloquence which awakens purpose. You are not in contact with systems of -thought or with principles that dictate action, but only with a perfect -explanation. - -You would go to Burke, not to Bagehot, for inspiration in the infinite -tasks of self-government; though you would, if you were wise, go to -Bagehot rather than to Burke if you wished to realize just what were -the practical daily conditions under which those tasks were to be -worked out. - -Moreover, there is a deeper lack in Bagehot. He has no sympathy with -the voiceless body of the people, with the “mass of unknown men.” He -conceives the work of government to be a work which is possible only -to the instructed few. He would have the mass served, and served with -devotion, but he would trouble to see them attempt to serve themselves. -He has not the stout fibre and the unquestioning faith in the right -and capacity of inorganic majorities which make the democrat. He has -none of the heroic boldness necessary for faith in wholesale political -aptitude and capacity. He takes democracy in detail in his thought, and -to take it in detail makes it look very awkward indeed. - -And yet surely it would not occur to the veriest democrat that ever -vociferated the “sovereignty of the people” to take umbrage at anything -Bagehot might chance to say in dissection of democracy. What he says is -seldom provokingly true. There is something in it all that is better -than a “saving clause,” and that is a saving humor. Humor ever keeps -the whole of his matter sound; it is an excellent salt that keeps sweet -the sharpest of his sayings. Indeed, Bagehot’s wit is so prominent -among his gifts that I am tempted here to enter a general plea for -wit as fit company for high thoughts and weighty subjects. Wit does -not make a subject light; it simply beats it into shape to be handled -readily. For my part, I make free acknowledgment that no man seems -to me master of his subject who cannot take liberties with it; who -cannot slap his propositions on the back and be hail-fellow well met -with them. Suspect a man of shallowness who always takes himself and -all that he thinks seriously. For light on a dark subject commend me -to a ray of wit. Most of your solemn explanations are mere farthing -candles in the great expanse of a difficult question. Wit is not, I -admit, a steady light, but ah! its flashes give you sudden glimpses of -unsuspected things such as you will never see without it. It is the -summer lightning, which will bring more to your startled eye in an -instant, out of the hiding of the night, than you will ever be at the -pains to observe in the full blaze of noon. - -Wit is movement, is play of mind; and the mind cannot get play without -a sufficient playground. Without movement outside the world of books, -it is impossible a man should see aught but the very neatly arranged -phenomena of that world. But it is possible for a man’s thought to be -instructed by the world of affairs without the man himself becoming a -part of it. Indeed, it is exceedingly hard for one who is in and of -it to hold the world of affairs off at arm’s length and observe it. -He has no vantage-ground. He had better for a while seek the distance -of books, and get his perspective. The literary politician, let it be -distinctly said, is a very fine, a very superior species of the man -thoughtful. He reads books as he would listen to men talk. He stands -apart, and looks on, with humorous, sympathetic smile, at the play of -policies. He will tell you for the asking what the players are thinking -about. He divines at once how the parts are cast. He knows beforehand -what each act is to discover. He might readily guess what the dialogue -is to contain. Were you short of scene-shifters, he could serve you -admirably in an emergency. And he is a better critic of the play than -the players. - -Had I command of the culture of men, I should wish to raise up for -the instruction and stimulation of my nation more than one sane, -sagacious, penetrative critic of men and affairs like Walter Bagehot. -But that, of course. The proper thesis to draw from his singular -genius is this: It is not the constitutional lawyer, nor the student -of the mere machinery and legal structure of institutions, nor the -politician, a mere handler of that machinery, who is competent to -understand and expound government; but the man who finds the materials -for his thought far and wide, in everything that reveals character and -circumstance and motive. It is necessary to stand with the poets as -well as with lawgivers; with the fathers of the race as well as with -your neighbor of to-day; with those who toil and are sick at heart as -well as with those who prosper and laugh and take their pleasure; with -the merchant and the manufacturer as well as with the closeted student; -with the schoolmaster and with those whose only school is life; with -the orator and with the men who have wrought always in silence; in the -midst of thought and also in the midst of affairs, if you would really -comprehend those great wholes of history and of character which are the -vital substance of politics. - - - - -V. - -THE INTERPRETER OF ENGLISH LIBERTY. - - -In the middle of the last century two Irish adventurers crossed over -into England in search of their fortunes. Rare fellows they were, -bringing treasure with them; but finding it somehow hard to get upon -the market: traders with a curious cargo, offering edification in -exchange for a living, and concealing the best of English under a rich -brogue. They were Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith. - -They did not cross over together: ’twas no joint venture. They had -been fellow students at Trinity College, Dublin; but they had not, -so far as we can learn, known each other there. Each went his own -way till they became comrades in the reign of Samuel Johnson at the -Turk’s Head Tavern. Burke stepped very boldly forth into the exposed -paths of public life; Goldsmith plunged into the secret ways about -Grub Street. The one gave us essays upon public questions incomparable -for their reach of view and their splendid power of expression; the -other gave us writings so exquisite for their delicacy, purity, and -finish as to incline us to love him almost as much as those who knew -him loved him. We could not easily have forgiven Ireland if she had -_not_ given us these men. The one had grave faults of temper; the other -was a reckless, roystering fellow, with a most irrepressible Irish -disposition; but how much less we should have known without Burke, how -much less we should have enjoyed without Goldsmith! They have conquered -places for themselves in English literature from which we neither can -nor would dislodge them. For their sakes alone we can afford to forgive -Ireland all the trouble she has caused us. - -There is no man anywhere to be found in the annals of Parliament who -seems more thoroughly to belong to England than does Edmund Burke, -indubitable Irishman though he was. His words, now that they have cast -off their brogue, ring out the authentic voice of the best political -thought of the English race. “If any man ask me,” he cries, “what a -free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is -what the people think so,--and that they, and not I, are the natural, -lawful, and competent judges of the matter.” “Abstract liberty, like -other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty adheres in -some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some -favorite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of -their happiness.” These sentences, taken from his writings on American -affairs, might serve as a sort of motto of the practical spirit of our -race in affairs of government. Look further, and you shall see how his -imagination presently illuminates and suffuses his maxims of practical -sagacity with a fine blaze of insight, a keen glow of feeling, in which -you recognize that other masterful quality of the race, its intense -and elevated conviction. “My hold on the colonies,” he declares, “is -in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred -blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are the -ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let -the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with -your government,--they will cling and grapple to you, and no force -under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But -let it once be understood that your government may be one thing and -their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any -mutual relation,--and the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and -everything hastens to decay and dissolution. So long as you have the -wisdom to keep the sovereign power of this country as the sanctuary of -liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever -the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn -their faces towards you.” “We cannot, I fear,” he says proudly of the -colonies, “we cannot falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and -persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins -the blood of freedom circulates. The language in which they would hear -you tell them this tale would detect the imposition; your speech would -betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue -another Englishman into slavery.” Does not your blood stir at these -passages? And is it not because, besides loving what is nobly written, -you feel that every word strikes towards the heart of the things that -have made your blood what it has proved to be in the history of our -race? - -These passages, it should be remembered, are taken from a speech in -Parliament and from a letter written by Burke to his constituents -in Bristol. He had no thought to make them permanent sentences of -political philosophy. They were meant only to serve an immediate -purpose in the advancement of contemporaneous policy. They were framed -for the circumstances of the time. They speak out spontaneously amidst -matter of the moment: and they could be matched everywhere throughout -his pamphlets and public utterances. No other similar productions that -I know of have this singular, and as it were inevitable, quality of -permanency. They have emerged from the mass of political writings put -forth in their time with their freshness untouched, their significance -unobscured, their splendid vigor unabated. It is this that we marvel -at, that they should remain modern and timely, purged of every element -and seed of decay. The man who could do this must needs arrest our -attention and challenge our inquiry. We wish to account for him as we -should wish to penetrate the secrets of the human spirit and know the -springs of genius. - -Of the public life of Burke we know all that we could wish. He became -so prominent a figure in the great affairs of his day that even the -casual observer cannot fail to discern the main facts of his career; -while the close student can follow him year by year through every -step of his service. But his private life was withdrawn from general -scrutiny in an unusual degree. He manifested always a marked reserve -about his individual and domestic affairs, deliberately, it would seem, -shielding them from impertinent inquiry. He loved the privacy of life -in a great city, where one may escape notice in the crowd and enjoy -a grateful “freedom from remark and petty censure.” “Though I have -the honor to represent Bristol,” he said to Boswell, “I should not -like to live there; I should be obliged to be _so much upon my good -behavior_. In London a man may live in splendid society at one time, -and in frugal retirement at another, without animadversion. There, and -there alone, a man’s house is truly his _castle_, in which he can be -in perfect safety from intrusion whenever he pleases. I never shall -forget how well this was expressed to me one day by Mr. Meynell: ‘The -chief advantage of London,’ he said, ‘is, that a man is always _so -near his burrow_.’” Burke took to his burrow often enough to pique -our curiosity sorely. This singular, high-minded adventurer had some -queer companions, we know: questionable fellows, whose life he shared, -perhaps with a certain Bohemian relish, without sharing their morals -or their works. It seems as incongruous that such wisdom and public -spirit as breathe through his writings should have come to his thought -in such company as that an exquisite idyll like Goldsmith’s “Vicar of -Wakefield” should have been conceived and written in squalid garrets. -But neither Burke nor Goldsmith had been born into such comradeships -or such surroundings. Doubtless, as sometimes happens, their minds -kept their first freshness, taking no taint from the world that touched -them on every hand in their manhood, after their minds had been -formed. Goldsmith, as everybody knows, remained an innocent all his -life, a naïf and pettish boy amidst sophisticated men; and Burke too, -notwithstanding his dignity and commanding intellectual habit, shows -sometimes a touch of the same simplicity, a like habit of unguarded -self-revelation. ’Twas their form, no doubt, of that impulsive and -ingenuous quality which we observe in all Irishmen, and which we often -mistake for simplicity. ’Twas a flavor of their native soil. It was -also something more and better than that, however. Not every Irishman -displays such hospitality for direct and simple images of truth as -these men showed, for that is characteristic only of the open and -unsophisticated mind,--the mind that has kept pure and open eyes. Not -that Burke always sees the truth; he is even deeply prejudiced often, -and there are some things that he cannot see. But the passion that -dominates him when he is wrong, as when he is right, is a natural -passion, born with him, not acquired from a disingenuous world that -mistakes interest for justice. His nature tells in everything. It is -stock of his character which he contributes to the subjects his mind -handles. He is trading always with the original treasure he brought -over with him at the first. He has never impaired his genuineness, or -damaged his principles. - -Just where Burke got his generous constitution and predisposition to -enlightened ways of thinking it is not easy to see. Certainly Richard -Burke, his brother, the only other member of the family whose character -we discern distinctly, had a quite opposite bent. The father was a -steady Dublin attorney, a Protestant, and a man, so far as we know, of -solid but not brilliant parts. The mother had been a Miss Nagle, of -a Roman Catholic family, which had multiplied exceedingly in County -Cork. Of the home and its life we know singularly little. We are told -that many children were born to the good attorney, but we hear of only -four of them that grew to maturity, Garret, Edmund, Richard, and a -sister best known to Edmund’s biographers as Mrs. French. Edmund, the -second son, was born on the twelfth of January, 1729, in the second -year of the reign of George II., Robert Walpole being chief minister -of the Crown. How he fared or what sort of lad he was for the first -twelve years of his life we have no idea. We only know that in the -year 1741, being then twelve years old, he was sent with his brothers -Garret and Richard to the school of one Abraham Shackleton, a most -capable and exemplary Quaker, at Ballytore, County Kildare, to get, in -some two years’ time, what he himself always accounted the best part -of his education. The character of the good master at Ballytore told -upon the sensitive boy, who all his life through had an eye for such -elevation and calm force of quiet rectitude as are to be seen in the -best Quakers; and with Richard Shackleton, the master’s son, he formed -a friendship from which no vicissitude of his subsequent career ever -loosened his heart a whit. All his life long the ardent, imaginative -statesman, deeply stirred as he was by the momentous agitation of -affairs,--swept away as he was from other friends,--retained his love -for the grave, retired, almost austere, but generous and constant man -who had been his favorite schoolfellow. It is but another evidence of -his unfailing regard for whatever was steady, genuine, and open to the -day in character and conduct. - -At fourteen he left Ballytore and was entered at Trinity College, -Dublin. Those were days when youths went to college tender, before they -had become too tough to take impressions readily. But Burke, even at -that callow age, cannot be said to have been teachable. He learned a -vast deal, indeed, but he did not learn much of it from his nominal -masters at Trinity. Apparently Master Shackleton, at Ballytore, had -enabled him to find his own mind. His four years at college were years -of wide and eager reading, but not years of systematic and disciplinary -study. With singular, if not exemplary, self-confidence, he took his -education into his own hands. He got at the heart of books through -their spirit, it would seem, rather than through their grammar. He -sought them out for what they could yield him in thought, rather than -for what they could yield him in the way of exact scholarship. That -this boy should have had such an appetite for the world’s literature, -old and new, need not surprise us. Other lads before and since have -found big libraries all too small for them. What should arrest our -attention is, the law of mind disclosed in the habits of such lads: -the quick and various curiosity of original minds, and particularly -of imaginative minds. They long for matter to expand themselves upon: -they will climb any dizzy height from which an exciting prospect is -promised: it is their joy by some means to see the world of men and -affairs. Burke set out as a boy to see the world that is contained -in books; and in his journeyings he met a man after his own heart in -Cicero, the copious orator and versatile man of affairs,--the only man -at all like Burke for richness, expansiveness, and variety of mind in -all the ancient world. Cicero he conned as his master and model. And -then, having had his fill for the time of discursive study and having -completed also his four years of routine, he was graduated, taking his -degree in the spring of 1748. - -His father had entered him as a student at the Middle Temple in 1747, -meaning that he should seek the prizes of his profession in England -rather than in the little world at home; but he did not take up his -residence in London until 1750, by which time he had attained his -majority. What he did with the intervening two years, his biographers -do not at all know, and it is idle to speculate, being confident, as we -must, that he quite certainly did whatever he pleased. He did the same -when he went up to London to live his terms at the Temple. “The law,” -he declared to Parliament more than twenty years afterwards, “is, in -my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences,--a science -which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than all -other kinds of learning put together; but it is not apt, except in -persons very happily born, to open and to liberalize the mind exactly -in the same proportion;” and, although himself a person “very happily -born” in respect of all natural powers, he felt that the life of a -lawyer would inevitably confine his roving mind within intolerably -narrow limits. He learned the law, as he learned everything else, with -an eye to discovering its points of contact with affairs, its intimate -connections with the structure and functions of human society; and, -studying it thus, he made his way to so many of its secrets, won so -firm a mastery of its central principles, as always to command the -respect and even the admiration of lawyers. But the good attorney in -Dublin was sorely disappointed. This was not what he had wanted. The -son in whom he had centred his hopes preferred the life of the town -to systematic study in his chambers; wrote for the papers instead of -devoting himself to the special profession he had been sent to master. -“Of his leisure time,” said the “Annual Register” just after his death, -“of his leisure time much was spent in the company of Mrs. Woffington, -a celebrated actress, whose conversation was not less sought by men of -wit and genius than by men of pleasure.” - -We know very little about the life of Burke for the ten years, -1750–60, his first ten years in England,--except that he did _not_ -diligently apply himself to his nominal business, the study of the -law; and between the years 1752 and 1757 his biographers can show -hardly one authentic trace of his real life. They know neither his -whereabouts nor his employments. Only one scrap of his correspondence -remains from those years to give us any hint of the time. Even Richard -Shackleton, his invariable confidant and bosom friend, hears never a -word from him during that period, and is told afterwards only that -his correspondent has been “sometimes in London, sometimes in remote -parts of the country, sometimes in France,” and will “shortly, please -God, be in America.” He disappears a poor law student, under suspicion -of his father for systematic neglect of duty; when he reappears he is -married to the daughter of a worthy physician and is author of two -philosophical works which are attracting a great deal of attention. We -have reason to believe that, in the mean time, he did as much writing -as they would take for the booksellers; we know that he frequented the -London theatres and several of the innumerable debating clubs with -which nether London abounded, whetting his faculties, it is said, upon -those of a certain redoubtable baker. He haunted the galleries and -lobbies of the House of Commons. His health showed signs of breaking, -and Dr. Nugent took him from his lodgings in the Temple to his own -house and allowed him to fall in love with his daughter. Partly for -the sake of his health, perhaps, but more particularly, no doubt, for -the sake of satisfying an eager mind and a restless habit, he wandered -off to “remote parts of the country” and to France, with one William -Burke for company, a man either related to him or not related to him, -he did not himself know which. In 1755, a long-suffering patience at -length exhausted, his father shut the home treasury against him; and -then,--’twas the next year,--he published two philosophical works and -married Miss Nugent. - -One might say, no doubt, that this is an intelligible enough account of -a young fellow’s life between twenty and thirty: and that we can fill -in the particulars for ourselves. We have known other young Irishmen -of restless and volatile natures, and need make no mystery of this -one. Goldsmith, too, disappeared, we remember, in that same decade, -making show of studying medicine in Edinburgh, but not really studying -it, and then wandering off to the Continent, and going it afoot in -light-hearted, happy-go-lucky fashion through the haunts both of the -gay Latin races and the sad Teutonic, greatly to the delectation, no -doubt, of the natives,--for all the world loves an innocent Irishman, -with his heart upon his sleeve. ’Twould all be very plain indeed if -we found in Burke that light-hearted vein. But we do not. The fellow -is sober and strenuous from the first, studying the things he was not -sent to study with even too intent application, to the damage of his -health, and looking through the pleasures of the town to the heart of -the nation’s affairs. He was a grave youth, evidently, gratifying his -mind rather than his senses in the pleasures he sought; and when he -emerges from obscurity it is first to give us a touch of his quality in -the matter of intellectual amusement, and then to turn at once to the -serious business of the discussion of affairs to which the rest of his -life was to be devoted. - -The two books which he gave the world in 1756 were “A Vindication of -Natural Society,” a satirical piece in the manner of Bolingbroke, -and “A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the -Sublime and Beautiful,” which he had begun when he was nineteen and -had since reconsidered and revised. Bolingbroke, not finding revealed -religion to his taste, had written a “Vindication of Natural Religion” -which his vigorous and elevated style and skillful dialectic had -done much to make plausible. Burke put forth his “Vindication of -Natural Society” as a posthumous work of the late noble lord, and so -skillfully veiled the satirical character of the imitation as wholly -to deceive some very grave critics, who thought they could discern -Bolingbroke’s flavor upon the tasting. For the style, too, they took to -be unmistakably Bolingbroke’s own. It had all his grandeur and air of -distinction: it had his vocabulary and formal outline of phrase. The -imitation was perfect. And yet if you will scrutinize it, the style -is not Bolingbroke’s, except in a trick or two, but Burke’s. It seems -Bolingbroke’s rather because it is cold and without Burke’s usual moral -fervor than because it is rich and majestic and various. There is no -great formal difference between Burke’s style and Bolingbroke’s: but -there is a great moral and intellectual difference. When Burke is not -in earnest there is perhaps no important difference at all. And in the -“Vindication of Natural Society” Burke is not in earnest. The book is -not, indeed, a parody, and its satirical quality is much too covert -to make it a successful satire. Much that Burke urges against civil -society he could urge in good faith, and his mind works soberly upon -it. It is only the main thesis that he does not seriously mean. The -rest he might have meant as Bolingbroke would have meant it. - -The essay on The Sublime and Beautiful, though much admired by so great -a master as Lessing, has not worn very well as philosophy. It is full, -however, of acute and interesting observations, and is adorned in -parts with touches of rich color put on with the authentic strokes of a -master. We preserve it, perhaps, only because Burke wrote it; and yet -when we read it we feel inclined to pronounce it worth keeping for its -own sake. - -Both these essays were apprentice work. Burke was trying his hand. They -make us the more curious about the conditions of what must have been -a notable apprenticeship. Young Burke must have gone to school to the -world in a way worth knowing. But we cannot know, and that’s the end on -’t. Probably even William Burke, Edmund’s companion, could give us no -very satisfactory account of the matter. The explanation lay in what he -thought and not in what he did as he knocked about the world. - -The company Burke kept was as singular as his talents, though scarcely -so eminent. _We_ speak of “Burke,” but the London of his day spoke of -“the Burkes,” meaning William, who may or may not have been Edmund’s -kinsman, Edmund himself, and Richard, Edmund’s younger brother, who -had followed him to London to become, to say truth, an adventurer -emphatically not of the elevated sort. Edmund was destined to become -the leader of England’s thought in more than one great matter of -policy, and has remained a master among all who think profoundly -upon public affairs; but William was for long the leader and master -of “the Burkes.” He was English born; had been in Westminster School; -and had probably just come out from Christ Church, Oxford, when he -became the companion of Edmund’s wanderings. He was a man of intellect -and literary power enough to be deemed the possible author of the -“Letters of Junius;” he was born moreover with an eye for the ways of -the world, and could push his own fortunes with an unhesitating hand. -It was he who first got public office, and it was he who formed the -influential connections which got Edmund into Parliament. He himself -entered the House at the same time, and remained there, a useful party -member, for some eight years. He made those from whom he sought favors -dislike him for his audacity in demanding the utmost, and more than -the utmost, that he could possibly hope to get; but he seems to have -made those whom he served love him with a very earnest attachment. He -was self-seeking; but he was capable of generosity, to the point of -self-sacrifice even, when he wished to help his friend. He early formed -a partnership with Richard Burke in immense stock-jobbing speculations -in the securities of the East India Company; but he also formed a -literary partnership with Edmund in the preparation of a sketch of the -European settlements in America, and made himself respected as a strong -party writer in various pamphlets on questions of the day. He could -unite the two brothers by speculating with the one and thinking with -the other. - -Such were “the Burkes.” Edmund’s home was always the home also of the -other two, whenever they wished to make it so; the strongest personal -affection, avowed always by Edmund with his characteristic generous -warmth, bound the three men together; their purses they had in common. -Edmund was not expected, apparently, to take part in the speculations -which held William and Richard together; something held him aloof to -which they consented,--some natural separateness of mind and character -which they evidently accepted and respected. There can hardly be said -to have been any aloofness of _disposition_ on Edmund’s part. There -is something in an Irishman,--even in an Irishman who holds himself -to the strictest code of upright conduct,--which forbids his acting -as moral censor upon others. He can love a man none the less for -generous and manly qualities because that man does what he himself -would not do. Burke, moreover, had an easy standard all his life -about accepting money favors. He seems to have felt somehow that his -intense and whole-hearted devotion to his friends justified gifts and -forgiven loans of money from them. He shared the prosperity of his -kinsmen without compunction, using what he got most liberally for the -assistance of others; and when their fortunes came to a sudden ruin, -he helped them with what he had. We ought long ago to have learned -that the purest motives and the most elevated standards of conduct -may go along with a singular laxness of moral detail in some men; and -that such characters will often constrain us to love them to the point -of justifying everything that they ever did. Edmund Burke’s close -union with William and Richard does not present the least obstacle to -our admiration for the noble qualities of mind and heart which he so -conspicuously possessed, or make us for a moment doubt the thorough -disinterestedness of his great career. - -Burke’s marriage was a very happy one. Mrs. Burke’s thoroughly sweet -temperament acted as a very grateful and potent charm to soothe her -husband’s mind when shaken by the agitations of public affairs; her -quiet capacity for domestic management relieved him of many small cares -which might have added to his burdens. Her affection satisfied his -ardent nature. He speaks of her in his will as “my entirely beloved -and incomparable wife,” and every glimpse we get of their home life -confirms the estimate. After his marriage the most serious part of -his intellectual life begins; the commanding passion of his mind is -disclosed. He turns away from philosophical amusements to public -affairs. In 1757 appeared “An Account of the European Settlements in -America,” which William Burke had doubtless written, but which Edmund -had almost certainly radically revised; and Edmund himself published -the first part of “An Abridgment of the History of England” which -he never completed. In 1758, he proposed to Dodsley, the publisher, -a yearly volume, to be known as the “Annual Register,” which should -chronicle and discuss the affairs of England and the Continent. It was -the period of the Seven Years’ War, which meant for England a sharp and -glorious contest with France for the possession of America. Burke was -willing to write the annals of the critical year 1758 for a hundred -pounds; and so, in 1759, the first volume of the “Annual Register” -appeared; and the plan then so wisely conceived has yielded its annual -volume to the present day. Burke never acknowledged his connection -with this great work,--he never publicly recognized anything he had -done upon contract for the publishers,--but it is quite certain that -for very many years his was the presiding and planning mind in the -production of the “Register.” For the first few years of its life he -probably wrote the whole of the record of events with his own hand. -It was a more useful apprenticeship than that in philosophy. It gave -him an intimate acquaintance with affairs which must have served as a -direct preparation for the great contributions he was destined to make -to the mind and policy of the Whig party. - -But this, even in addition to other hack work for the booksellers, did -not keep Burke out of pecuniary straits. He sought, but failed to get, -an appointment as consul at Madrid, using the interest of Dr. Markham, -William’s master at Westminster School; and then he engaged himself as -a sort of private secretary or literary attendant to William Gerard -Hamilton, whom he served, apparently to the almost entire exclusion of -all other employments, for some four years, going with him for a season -to Ireland, where Hamilton for a time held the appointment of Secretary -to the Lord Lieutenant. Hamilton is described by one of Burke’s friends -as “a sullen, vain, proud, selfish, cankered-hearted, envious reptile,” -and Mr. Morley says that there is “not a word too many nor too strong -in the description.” At any rate, Burke’s proud spirit presently -revolted from further service, and he threw up a pension of three -hundred pounds which Hamilton had obtained for him rather than retain -any connection with the man, or remain under any sort of obligation to -him. In the mean time, however, his relations with Hamilton had put him -in the way of meeting many public men of weight and influence, and he -had gotten his first direct introduction to the world of affairs. - -It was 1764 when he shook himself free from this connection. 1764 is -a year to be marked in English literary annals. It was in the spring -of that year that that most celebrated of literary clubs was formed at -the Turk’s Head Tavern, Gerrard Street, Soho, by notable good company: -Dr. Johnson, Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Gibbon, -Dr. Barnard, Beauclerk, Langton,--we know them all; for has not Boswell -given us the freedom of the Club and made us delighted participants in -its conversations and diversions? Into this company Burke was taken at -once. His writings had immediately attracted the attention of such men -as these, and had promptly procured him an introduction into literary -society. His powers told nowhere more brilliantly than in conversation. -“It is when you come close to a man in conversation,” said Dr. Johnson, -“that you discover what his real abilities are. To make a speech in -an assembly is a sort of knack. Now I honor Thurlow; Thurlow is a fine -fellow, he fairly puts his mind to yours.” There can be no disputing -the dictum of the greatest master of conversation: and the admirer of -Burke must be willing to accept it, at any rate for the nonce, for -Johnson admitted that Burke invariably put him on his mettle. “That -fellow,” he exclaimed, “calls forth all my powers!” “Burke’s talk,” he -said, “is the ebullition of his mind; he does not talk from a desire -of distinction, but because his mind is full; he is never humdrum, -never unwilling to talk, nor in haste to leave off.” The redoubtable -doctor loved a worthy antagonist in the great game of conversation, -and he always gave Burke his ungrudging admiration. When he lay dying, -Burke visited his bedside, and, finding Johnson very weak, anxiously -expressed the hope that his presence cost him no inconvenience. “I must -be in a wretched state indeed,” cried the great-hearted old man, “when -your company would not be a delight to me.” It was short work for Burke -to get the admiration of the company at the Turk’s Head. But he did -much more than that: he won their devoted affection. Goldsmith said -that Burke wound his way into a subject like a serpent; but he made his -way straight into the hearts of his friends. His powers are all of a -piece: his heart is inextricably mixed up with his mind: his opinions -are immediately transmuted into convictions: he does not talk for -distinction, because he does not use his mind for the mere intellectual -pleasure of it, but because he also deeply feels what he thinks. He -speaks without calculation, almost impulsively. - -That is the reason why we can be so sure of the essential purity of -his nature from the character of his writings. They are not purely -intellectual productions: there is no page of abstract reasoning to be -found in Burke. His mind works upon concrete objects, and he speaks -always with a certain passion, as if his affections were involved. He -is irritated by opposition, because opposition in the field of affairs, -in which his mind operates, touches some interest that is dear to him. -Noble generalizations, it is true, everywhere broaden his matter: there -is no more philosophical writer in English in the field of politics -than Burke. But look, and you shall see that his generalizations are -never derived from abstract premises. The reasoning is upon familiar -matter of to-day. He is simply taking questions of the moment to the -light, holding them up to be seen where great principles of conduct -may shine upon them from the general experience of the race. He is -not constructing systems of thought, but simply stripping thought of -its accidental features. He is even deeply impatient of abstractions -in political reasoning, so passionately is he devoted to what is -practicable, and fit for wise men to do. To know such a man is to -experience all the warmer forces of the mind, to feel the generous and -cheering heat of character; and all noble natures will love such a -man, because of kinship of quality. All noble natures that came close -to Burke did love him and cherish their knowledge of him. They loaned -him money without stint, and then forgave him the loans, as if it were -a privilege to help him, and no way unnatural that he should never -return what he received, finding his spirit made for fraternal, not for -commercial relations. - -It is pleasing, as it is also a little touching, to see how his -companions thus freely accorded to Burke the immunities and -prerogatives of a prince amongst them. No one failed to perceive how -large and imperial he was, alike in natural gifts and in the wonderful -range of his varied acquirements. Sir James Mackintosh, though he -very earnestly combated some of Burke’s views, intensely admired his -greatness. He declared that Gibbon “might have been taken from a -corner of Burke’s mind without ever being missed.” “A wit said, of -Gibbon’s ‘Autobiography’ that he did not know the difference between -himself and the Roman Empire. He has narrated his ‘progressions from -London to Buriton and from Buriton to London’ in the same monotonous, -majestic periods that he recorded the fall of states and empires.” -And we certainly feel a sense of incongruity: the two subjects, we -perceive, are hardly commensurable. Perhaps in Burke’s case we should -have felt differently,--we _do_ feel differently. In that extraordinary -“Letter to a Noble Lord,” in which he defends his pension so proudly -against the animadversions of the Duke of Bedford, how magnificently -he speaks of his services to the country; how proud and majestic a -piece of autobiography it is! How insignificant does the ancient house -of Bedford seem, with all its long generations, as compared with this -single and now lonely man, without distinguished ancestry or hope of -posterity! He speaks grandly about himself, as about everything; and -yet I see no disparity between the subject and the manner! - -Outside the small circle of those who knew and loved him, his -generation did not wholly perceive this. There seemed a touch of -pretension in this proud tone taken by a man who had never held high -office or exercised great power. He had made great speeches, indeed, -no one denied that; he had written great party pamphlets,--that -everybody knew; his had been the intellectual force within the group of -Whigs that followed Lord Rockingham,--that, too, the world in general -perceived and acknowledged; and when he died, England knew the man who -had gone to be a great man. But, for all that, his tone must, in his -generation, have seemed disproportioned to the part he had played. His -great authority is over us rather than over the men of his own day. - -Burke had the thoughts of a great statesman, and uttered them with -unapproachable nobility; but he never wielded the power of a great -statesman. He was kept always in the background in active politics, -in minor posts, and employed upon subordinate functions. This would -be a singular circumstance, if there were any novelty in it; but -the practice of keeping men of insignificant birth out of the great -offices was a practice which had “broadened down from precedent to -precedent” until it had become too strong for even Burke to breast or -stem. Perhaps, too, there were faults of temper which rendered Burke -unfit to exercise authority in directing the details, and determining -the practical measures, of public policy:--but we shall look into that -presently. - -In July, 1765, the Marquis of Rockingham became prime minister -of England, and Burke became his private secretary. He owed his -introduction to Lord Rockingham, as usual, to the good offices of -William Burke, who seems to have found means of knowing everybody -it was to the interest of “the Burkes” to know. A more fortunate -connection could hardly have been made. Lord Rockingham, though not -a man of original powers, was a man of the greatest simplicity and -nobleness of character, and, like most upright men, knew how to trust -other men. He gave Burke immediate proof of his manly qualities. The -scheming old Duke of Newcastle, who ought to have been a connoisseur -in low men, mistook Burke for one. Shocked that this obscurely born -and unknown fellow should be accorded confidential relations by Lord -Rockingham, he hurried to his lordship with an assortment of hastily -selected slanders against Burke. His real name, he reported, was -O’Bourke; he was an Irish adventurer without character, and a rank -Papist to boot; it would ruin the administration to have such a man -connected with the First Lord of the Treasury. Rockingham, with great -good sense and frankness, took the whole matter at once to Burke; was -entirely satisfied by Burke’s denials; and admitted him immediately to -intimate relations of warm personal friendship which only death broke -off. William Burke obtained for himself an Undersecretaryship of State -and arranged with Lord Verney, at that time his partner in East India -speculations, that two of his lordship’s parliamentary boroughs should -be put at his and Edmund’s disposal. Edmund Burke, accordingly, entered -Parliament for the borough of Wendover on the 14th of January, 1766, at -the age of thirty-seven, and in the first vigor of his powers. - -“Now we who know Burke,” announced Dr. Johnson, “know that he will -be one of the first men in the country.” Burke promptly fulfilled -the prediction. He made a speech before he had been in the House two -weeks; a speech that made him at once a marked man. His health was -now firmly established; he had a commanding physique; his figure was -tall and muscular, and his bearing full of a dignity which had a touch -almost of haughtiness in it. Although his action was angular and -awkward, his extraordinary richness and fluency of utterance drew the -attention away from what he was doing to what he was saying. His voice -was harsh, and did not harmonize with the melodious measures in which -his words poured forth; but it was of unusual compass, and carried -in it a sense of confidence and power. His utterance was too rapid, -his thought bore him too impulsively forward, but the pregnant matter -he spoke “filled the town with wonder.” The House was excited by new -sensations. Members were astonished to recognize a broad philosophy -of politics running through this ardent man’s speeches. They felt the -refreshment of the wide outlook he gave them, and were conscious of -catching glimpses of excellent matter for reflection at every turn of -his hurrying thought. They wearied of it, indeed, after a while: the -pace was too hard for most of his hearers, and they finally gave over -following him when the novelty and first excitement of the exercise had -worn off. He too easily lost sight of his audience in his search for -principles, and they resented his neglect of them, his indifference -to their tastes. They felt his lofty style of reasoning as a sort of -rebuke, and deemed his discursive wisdom out of place amidst their own -thoughts of imperative personal and party interest. He had, before -very long, to accustom himself, therefore, to speak to an empty House -and subsequent generations. His opponents never, indeed, managed to -feel quite easy under his attacks: his arrows sought out their weak -places to the quick, and they winced even when they coughed or seemed -indifferent; but they comforted themselves with the thought that the -orator was also tedious and irritating to his own friends, teasing them -too with keen rebukes and vexatious admonitions. The high and wise sort -of speaking must always cause uneasiness in a political assembly. The -more equal and balanced it is, the more must both parties be threatened -with reproof. - -I would not be understood as saying that Burke’s speeches were -impartial. They were not. He had preferences which amounted to -prejudices. He was always an intense party man. But then he was a -party man with a difference. He believed that the interests of England -were bound up with the fortunes of the Rockingham Wings; but he did -not separate the interests of his party and the interests of his -country. He cherished party connections because he conceived them to be -absolutely necessary for effective public service. “Where men are not -acquainted with each other’s principles,” he said, “nor experienced in -each other’s talents, nor at all practiced in their mutual habitudes -or dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, -no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is -evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, -perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable -man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his -use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the -public.” “When bad men combine, the good must associate.” “It is not -enough in a situation of trust in the commonwealth, that a man means -well to his country; it is not enough that in his single person he -never did an evil act, but always voted according to his conscience, -and even harangued against every design which he apprehended to be -prejudicial to the interests of his country.... Duty demands and -requires, that what is right should not only be made known, but made -prevalent; that what is evil should not only be detected, but defeated. -When the public man omits to put himself in a situation of doing his -duty with effect, it is an omission that frustrates the purposes of -his trust almost as much as if he had formally betrayed it.” Burke -believed the Rockingham Whigs to be a combination of good men, and he -felt that he ought to sacrifice something to keep himself in their -connection. He regarded them as men who “believed private honor to -be the foundation of public trust; that friendship was no mean step -towards patriotism; that he who, in the common intercourse of life, -showed he regarded somebody besides himself, when he came to act in -a public situation, might probably consult some other interest than -his own.” He admitted that such confederacies had often “a narrow, -bigoted, and prescriptive spirit;” “but, where duty renders a critical -situation a necessary one,” he said, “it is our business to keep free -from the evils attendant upon it; and not to fly from the situation -itself. If a fortress is seated in an unwholesome air, an officer of -the garrison is obliged to be attentive to his health, but he must -not desert his station.” “A party,” he declared, “is a body of men -united for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest -upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.” “Men -thinking freely, will,” he very well knew, “in particular instances, -think differently. But still as the greater part of the measures which -arise in the course of public business are related to, or dependent on, -some great, _leading, general principles in government_, a man must be -peculiarly unfortunate in the choice of his political company, if he -does not agree with them at least nine times in ten. If he does not -concur in these general principles upon which the party is founded, -and which necessarily draw on a concurrence in their application, he -ought from the beginning to have chosen some other, more conformable to -his opinions. When the question is in its nature doubtful, or not very -material, the modesty which becomes an individual, and that partiality -which becomes a well-chosen friendship, will frequently bring on an -acquiescence in the general sentiment. Thus the disagreement will -naturally be rare; it will be only enough to indulge freedom, without -violating concord, or disturbing arrangement.” - -Certainly there were no party prizes for Burke. During much the greater -part of his career the party to which he adhered was in opposition; and -even when in office it had only small favors for him. Even his best -friends advised against his appointment to any of the great offices -of state, deeming him too intemperate and unpractical. And yet the -intensity of his devotion to his party never abated a jot. Assuredly -there was never a less selfish allegiance. His devotion was for the -principles of his party, as he conceived and constructed them. It was -a moral and intellectual devotion. He had embarked all his spirit’s -fortunes in the enterprise. Faults he unquestionably had, which seemed -very grave. He was passionate sometimes beyond all bounds: he seriously -frightened cautious and practical men by his haste and vehemence in -pressing his views for acceptance. He was capable of falling, upon -occasion, into a very frenzy of excitement in the midst of debate, when -he would often shock moderate men by the ungoverned license of his -language. But his friends were as much to blame for these outbreaks as -he was. They cut him to the quick by the way in which they criticised -and misunderstood him. His heart was maddened by the pain of their -neglect of his just claims to their confidence. They seemed often to -use him without trusting him, and their slights were intolerable to his -proud spirit. Practically, and upon a narrow scale of expediency, they -may have been right: perhaps he was _not_ circumspect enough to be made -a responsible head of administration. Unquestionably, too, they loved -him and meant him no unkindness. But it was none the less tragical to -treat such a man in such a fashion. They may possibly have temporarily -served their country by denying to Burke full public acknowledgment of -his great services; but they cruelly wounded a great spirit, and they -hardly served mankind. - -They did Burke an injustice, moreover. They greatly underrated his -practical powers. In such offices as he was permitted to hold he showed -in actual administration the same extraordinary mastery of masses -of detail which was the foundation of his unapproachable mastery of -general principles in his thinking. His thought was always immersed -in matter, and concrete detail did not confuse him when he touched -it any more than it did when he meditated upon it. Immediate contact -with affairs always steadied his judgment. He was habitually temperate -in the conduct of business. It was only in speech and when debating -matters that stirred the depths of his nature that he gave way to -uncalculating fervor. He was intemperate in his emotions, but seldom -in his actions. He could, and did, write calm state papers in the very -midst and heat of parliamentary affairs that subjected him to the -fiercest excitements. He was eminently capable of counsel as well as of -invective. - -He served his party in no servile fashion, for all he adhered to it -with such devotion. He sacrificed his intellectual independence as -little as his personality in taking intimate part in its counsels. He -gave it principles, indeed, quite as often as he accepted principles -from it. In the final efforts of his life, when he engaged every -faculty of his mind in the contest that he waged with such magnificent -wrath against the French revolutionary spirit, he gave tone to all -English thought, and direction to many of the graver issues of -international policy. Rejected oftentimes by his party, he has at -length been accepted by the world. - -His habitual identification with opposition rather than with the -government gave him a certain advantage. It relaxed party discipline -and indulged his independence. It gave leave, too, to the better -efforts of his genius: for in opposition it is principles that tell, -and Burke was first and last a master of principles. Government -is a matter of practical detail, as well as of general measures; -but the criticism of government very naturally becomes a matter of -the application of general principles, as standards rather than as -practical means of policy. - -Four questions absorbed the energies of Burke’s life and must always -be associated with his fame. These were, the American war for -independence; administrative reform in the English home government; -reform in the government of India; and the profound political -agitations which attended the French Revolution. Other questions he -studied, deeply pondered, and greatly illuminated, but upon these -four he expended the full strength of his magnificent powers. There -is in his treatment of these subjects a singular consistency, a very -admirable simplicity of standard. It has been said, and it is true, -that Burke had no system of political philosophy. He was afraid of -abstract system in political thought, for he perceived that questions -of government are moral questions, and that questions of morals cannot -always be squared with the rules of logic, but run through as many -ranges of variety as the circumstances of life itself. “Man acts -from adequate motives relative to his interest,” he said, “and not on -metaphysical speculations. Aristotle, the great master of reasoning, -cautions us, and with great weight and propriety, against this species -of delusive geometrical accuracy in moral arguments, as the most -fallacious of all sophistry.” And yet Burke unquestionably had a very -definite and determinable system of thought, which was none the less a -system for being based upon concrete, and not upon abstract premises. -It is said by some writers (even by so eminent a writer as Buckle) -that in his later years Burke’s mind lost its balance and that he -reasoned as if he were insane; and the proof assigned is, that he, a -man who loved liberty, violently condemned, not the terrors only,--that -of course,--but the very principles of the French Revolution. But to -reason thus is to convict one’s self of an utter lack of comprehension -of Burke’s mind and motives: as a very brief examination of his course -upon the four great questions I have mentioned will show. - -From first to last Burke’s thought is conservative. Let his attitude -with regard to America serve as an example. He took his stand, as -everybody knows, with the colonies, against the mother country; but -his object was not revolutionary. He did not deny the legal right -of England to tax the colonies (_we_ no longer deny it ourselves), -but he wished to preserve the empire, and he saw that to insist upon -the right of taxation would be irrevocably to break up the empire, -when dealing with such a people as the Americans. He pointed out the -strong and increasing numbers of the colonists, their high spirit in -enterprise, their jealous love of liberty, and the indulgence England -had hitherto accorded them in the matter of self-government, permitting -them in effect to become an independent people in respect of all their -internal affairs; and he declared the result matter for just pride. -“Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold -them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson’s Bay and -Davis’s Straits,” he exclaimed, in a famous passage of his incomparable -speech on Conciliation with America, “whilst we are looking for them -beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the -opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and -engaged under the frozen serpent of the South. Falkland Island, which -seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national -ambition, is but a stage and resting place in the progress of their -victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging -to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that -whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast -of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game -along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. -No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance -of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm -sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of -hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent -people,--a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and -not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these -things,--when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing -to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy -form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but -that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been -suffered to take her own way to perfection,--when I reflect upon these -effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the -pride of power sink, and all the presumption in the wisdom of human -contrivances melt and die away within me,--my rigor relents,--I pardon -something to the spirit of liberty.” - -“I think it necessary,” he insisted, “to consider distinctly the true -nature and the peculiar circumstances of the object we have before -us: because, after all our struggle, whether we will or not, we must -govern America according to that nature and those circumstances, and -not according to our own imaginations, not according to abstract ideas -of right, by no means according to mere general theories of government, -the resort to which appears to me, in our present situation, no -better than arrant trifling.” To attempt to force such a people would -be a course of idle folly. Force, he declared, would not only be an -odious “but a feeble instrument, for preserving a people so numerous, -so active, so growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and -subordinate connection with” England. - -“First, Sir,” he cried, “permit me to observe, that the use of force -alone is but _temporary_. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not -remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed -which is perpetually to be conquered. - -“My next objection is its _uncertainty_. Terror is not always the -effect of force, and an armament is not a victory. If you do not -succeed, you are without resource: for, conciliation failing, force -remains; but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. -Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness; but they can -never be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence. - -“A further objection to force is, that you _impair the object_ by your -very endeavors to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the -thing you recover, but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the -contest. Nothing less will content me than _whole America_. I do not -choose to consume its strength along with our own; for in all parts it -is the British strength I consume.... Let me add, that I do not choose -wholly to break the American spirit; because it is the spirit that has -made the country. - -“Lastly, we have no sort of _experience_ in favor of force as an -instrument in the rule of our colonies. Their growth and their utility -has been owing to methods altogether different. Our ancient indulgence -has been said to be pursued to a fault. It may be so; but we know, if -feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than our attempt -to mend it, and our sin far more salutary than our penitence.” - -“Obedience is what makes government,” “freedom, and not servitude, is -the cure of anarchy,” and you cannot insist upon one rule of obedience -for Englishmen in America while you jealously maintain another for -Englishmen in England. “For, in order to prove that the Americans have -no right to their liberties, we are every day endeavoring to subvert -the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of our own. To prove that -the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the -value of freedom itself; and we never seem to gain a paltry advantage -over them in debate, without attacking some of those principles, or -deriding some of those feelings, for which our ancestors have shed -their blood.” “The question with me is, not whether you have a right -to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest -to make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I _may_ do, but -what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I _ought_ to do.... Such -is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity of keeping up the -concord of this empire by a unity of spirit, though in a diversity -of operations, that, if I were sure that the colonists had, at their -leaving this country, sealed a regular compact of servitude, that they -had solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens, that they had made a -vow to renounce all ideas of liberty for them and their posterity to -all generations, yet I should hold myself obliged to conform to the -temper I found universally prevalent in my own day, and to govern two -million of men, impatient of servitude, on the principles of freedom. -I am not determining a point of law; I am restoring tranquillity: and -the general character and situation of a people must determine what -sort of government is fitted for them. That point nothing else can or -ought to determine.” “All government, indeed every human benefit and -enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise -and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some -rights, that we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy -citizens than subtle disputants.” “Magnanimity in politics is not -seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill -together.” - -Here you have the whole spirit of the man, and in part a view of his -eminently practical system of thought. The view is completed when you -advance with him to other subjects of policy. He pressed with all his -energy for radical reforms in administration, but he earnestly opposed -every change that might touch the structure of the constitution itself. -He sought to secure the integrity of Parliament, not by changing the -system of representation, but by cutting out all roots of corruption. -He pressed forward with the most ardent in all plans of just reform, -but he held back with the most conservative from all propositions of -radical change. “To innovate is not to reform,” he declared, and there -is “a marked distinction between change and reformation. The former -alters the substance of the objects themselves, and gets rid of all -their essential good as well as of all the accidental evil annexed to -them. Change is novelty; and whether it is to operate any one of the -effects of reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict the -very principle upon which reformation is desired, cannot certainly -be known beforehand. Reform is not a change in the substance or in -the primary modification of the object, but a direct application of a -remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as that is removed, all -is sure. It stops there; and if it fails, the substance which underwent -the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was.” This is the -governing motive of his immense labors to accomplish radical economical -reform in the administration of the government. He was not seeking -economy merely; to husband the resources of the country was no more -than a means to an end, and that end was, to preserve the constitution -in its purity. He believed that Parliament was not truly representative -of the people because so many place-men found seats in it, and because -so many members who might have been independent were bought by the too -abundant favors of the Court. Cleanse Parliament of this corruption, -and it would be restored to something like its pristine excellence as -an instrument of liberty. - -He dreaded to see the franchise extended and the House of Commons -radically made over in its constitution. It had never been intended -to be merely the people’s House. It had been intended to hold all -the elements of the state that were not to be found in the House of -Lords or the Court. He conceived it to be the essential object of the -constitution to establish a balanced and just intercourse between -the several forces of an ancient society, and it was well that that -balance should be preserved even in the House of Commons, rather than -give perilous sweep to a single set of interests. “These opposed -and conflicting interests,” he said to his French correspondent, -“which you considered as so great a blemish in your old and in our -present Constitution, interpose a salutary check to all precipitate -resolutions. They render deliberation a matter, not of choice, but -of necessity; they make all change a subject of _compromise_, which -naturally begets moderation; they produce _temperaments_, preventing -the sore evil of harsh, crude, unqualified reformations, and rendering -all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in the few or in the -many, forever impracticable. Through that diversity of members and -interests, general liberty had as many securities as there are separate -views in the several orders; whilst by pressing down the whole by -the weight of a real monarchy, the separate parts would have been -prevented from warping and starting from their allotted places.” “_We_ -wish,” he said, “to derive all we possess _as an inheritance from our -forefathers_. Upon that body and stock of experience we have taken -care not to inoculate any scion alien to the nature of the original -plant.” “This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of -habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost -inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers -of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. -It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and -illustrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. -It has its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its -records, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our civil -institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere -individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from -whom they are descended.” - -“When the useful parts of an old establishment are kept, and what -is superadded is to be fitted to what is retained, a vigorous mind, -steady, persevering attention, various powers of comparison and -combination, and the resources of an understanding fruitful in -expedients are to be exercised; they are to be exercised in a continued -conflict with the combined force of opposite vices, with the obstinacy -that rejects all improvement, and the levity that is fatigued and -disgusted with everything of which it is in possession.... Political -arrangement, as it is a work for social ends, is to be only wrought -by social means. There mind must conspire with mind. Time is required -to produce that union of minds which alone can produce all the good -we aim at. Our patience will achieve more than our force. If I might -venture to appeal to what is so much out of fashion in Paris,--I mean -to experience,--I should tell you that in my course I have known, and, -according to my measure, have coöperated with great men; and I have -never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations -of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took -the lead in the business. By a slow, but well sustained progress, the -effect of each step is watched; the good or ill success of the first -gives light to us in the second; and so, from light to light, we are -conducted with safety, through the whole series.... We are enabled to -unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contending -principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men. From hence -arises, not an excellence in simplicity, but one far superior, an -excellence in composition. Where the great interests of mankind are -concerned through a long succession of generations, that succession -ought to be admitted into some share in the counsels which are so -deeply to affect them.” - -It is not possible to escape deep conviction of the wisdom of these -reflections. They penetrate to the heart of all practicable methods of -reform. Burke was doubtless too timid, and in practical judgment often -mistaken. Measures which in reality would operate only as salutary and -needed reformations he feared because of the element of change that -was in them. He erred when he supposed that progress can in all its -stages be made without changes which seem to go even to the substance. -But, right or wrong, his philosophy did not come to him of a sudden and -only at the end of his life, when he found France desolated and England -threatened with madness for love of revolutionary principles of change. -It is the key to his thought everywhere, and through all his life. - -It is the key (which many of his critics have never found) to his -position with regard to the revolution in France. He was roused to that -fierce energy of opposition in which so many have thought that they -detected madness, not so much because of his deep disgust to see brutal -and ignorant men madly despoil an ancient and honorable monarchy, as -because he saw the spirit of these men cross the Channel and find -lodgment in England, even among statesmen like Fox, who had been his -own close friends and companions in thought and policy; not so much -because he loved France as because he feared for England. For England -he had Shakespeare’s love: - - “That fortress built by nature for herself - _Against infection and the hand of war_; - That happy breed of men, that little world, - That precious stone set in the silver sea, - Which serves it in the office of a wall, - Or as a moat defensive to a house, - _Against the envy of less happier lands_; - That blessed plot, that earth, that realm, that England.” - -’T was to keep out infection and to preserve such precious stores -of manly tradition as had made that little world “the envy of less -happier lands” that Burke sounded so effectually that extraordinary -alarm against the revolutionary spirit that was racking France from -throne to cottage. Let us admit, if you will, that with reference -to France herself he was mistaken. Let us say that when he admired -the institutions which she was then sweeping away he was yielding to -sentiment, and imagining France as perfect as the beauty of the sweet -queen he had seen in her radiant youth. Let us concede that he did -not understand the condition of France, and therefore did not see how -inevitable that terrible revolution was: that in this case, too, the -wages of sin was death. He was not defending France, if you look to -the bottom of it; he was defending England:--and the things he hated -are truly hateful. He hated the French revolutionary philosophy and -deemed it unfit for free men. And that philosophy is in fact radically -evil and corrupting. No state can ever be conducted on its principles. -For it holds that government is a matter of contract and deliberate -arrangement, whereas in fact it is an institute of habit, bound -together by innumerable threads of association, scarcely one of which -has been deliberately placed. It holds that the object of government -is liberty, whereas the true object of government is justice; not -the advantage of one class, even though that class constitute the -majority, but right equity in the adjustment of the interests of all -classes. It assumes that government can be made over at will, but -assumes it without the slightest historical foundation. For governments -have never been successfully and permanently changed except by slow -modification operating from generation to generation. It contradicted -every principle that had been so laboriously brought to light in the -slow stages of the growth of liberty in the only land in which liberty -had then grown to great proportions. The history of England is a -continuous thesis against revolution; and Burke would have been no true -Englishman, had he not roused himself, even fanatically, if there were -need, to keep such puerile doctrine out. - -If you think his fierceness was madness, look how he conducted the -trial against Warren Hastings during those same years: with what -patience, with what steadiness in business, with what temper, with -what sane and balanced attention to detail, with what statesmanlike -purpose! Note, likewise, that his thesis is the same in the one -undertaking as in the other. He was applying the same principles to -the case of France and to the case of India that he had applied to the -case of the colonies. He meant to save the empire, not by changing -its constitution, as was the method in France, and so shaking every -foundation in order to dislodge an abuse, but by administering it -uprightly and in a liberal spirit. He was persuaded “that government -was a practical thing, made for the happiness of mankind, and not -to furnish out a spectacle of uniformity to gratify the schemes of -visionary politicians. Our business,” he said, “was to rule, not to -wrangle; and it would be a poor compensation that we had triumphed in a -dispute, whilst we had lost an empire.” The monarchy must be saved and -the constitution vindicated by keeping the empire pure in all parts, -even in the remotest provinces. Hastings must be crushed in order -that the world might know that no English governor could afford to be -unjust. Good government, like all virtue, he deemed to be a practical -habit of conduct, and not a matter of constitutional structure. It is a -great ideal, a thoroughly English ideal; and it constitutes the leading -thought of all Burke’s career. - -In short, as I began by saying, this man, an Irishman, speaks the -best English thought upon the essential questions of politics. He is -thoroughly, characteristically, and to the bottom English in all his -flunking. He is more liberal than Englishmen in his treatment of Irish -questions, of course; for he understands them, as no Englishman of his -generation did. But for all that he remains the chief spokesman for -England in the utterance of the fundamental ideals which have governed -the action of Englishmen in politics. “All the ancient, honest, -juridical principles and institutions of England,” such was his idea, -“are so many clogs to check and retard the headlong course of violence -and oppression. They were invented for this one good purpose, that what -was not _just_ should not be _convenient_.” This is fundamental English -doctrine. English liberty has consisted in making it unpleasant for -those who were unjust, and thus getting them in the habit of being just -for the sake of a _modus vivendi_. Burke is the apostle of the great -English gospel of Expediency. - -The politics of English-speaking peoples has never been speculative; -it has always been profoundly practical and utilitarian. Speculative -politics treats men and situations as they are supposed to be; -practical politics treats them (upon no general plan, but in detail) as -they are found to be at the moment of actual contact. With reference -to America Burke argues: No matter what your legal right in the case, -it is not _expedient_ to treat America as you propose: a numerous and -spirited people like the colonists will not submit; and your experiment -will cost you your colonies. In the case of administrative reform, -again, it is the higher sort of expediency he urges: If you wish to -keep your government from revolution, keep it from corruption, and by -making it pure render it permanent. To the French he says, It is not -_expedient_ to destroy thus recklessly these ancient parts of your -constitution. How will you replace them? How will you conduct affairs -at all after you shall have deprived yourselves of all balance and of -all old counsel? It is both better and easier to reform than to tear -down and reconstruct. - -This is unquestionably the message of Englishmen to the world, and -Burke utters it with incomparable eloquence. A man of sensitive -imagination and elevated moral sense, of a wide knowledge and capacity -for affairs, he stood in the midst of the English nation speaking -its moral judgments upon affairs, its character in political action, -its purposes of freedom, equity, wide and equal progress. It is the -immortal charm of his speech and manner that gives permanence to -his works. Though his life was devoted to affairs with a constant -and unalterable passion, the radical features of Burke’s mind were -literary. He was a man of books, without being under the dominance -of what others had written. He got knowledge out of books and the -abundance of matter his mind craved to work its constructive and -imaginative effects upon. It is singular how devoid of all direct -references to books his writings are. The materials of his thought -never reappear in the same form in which he obtained them. They -have been smelted and recoined. They have come under the drill and -inspiration of a great constructive mind, have caught life and taken -structure from it. Burke is not literary because he takes from books, -but because he makes books, transmuting what he writes upon into -literature. It is this inevitable literary quality, this sure mastery -of style, that mark the man, as much as his thought itself. He is a -master in the use of the great style. Every sentence, too, is steeped -in the colors of an extraordinary imagination. The movement takes your -breath and quickens your pulses. The glow and power of the matter -rejuvenate your faculties. - -And yet the thought, too, is quite as imperishable as its incomparable -vehicle. - - “The deepest, plainest, highest, clearest pen; - The voice most echoed by consenting men; - The soul which answered best to all well said - By others, and which most requital made; - Tuned to the highest key of ancient Rome, - Returning all her music with his own; - In whom, with nature, study claimed a part, - And yet who to himself owed all his art.” - - - - -VI. - -THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER. - - -“Give us the facts, and nothing but the facts,” is the sharp injunction -of our age to its historians. Upon the face of it, an eminently -reasonable requirement. To tell the truth simply, openly, without -reservation, is the unimpeachable first principle of all right dealing; -and historians have no license to be quit of it. Unquestionably they -must tell us the truth, or else get themselves enrolled among a very -undesirable class of persons, not often frankly named in polite -society. But the thing is by no means so easy as it looks. The truth -of history is a very complex and very occult matter. It consists of -things which are invisible as well as of things which are visible. It -is full of secret motives, and of a chance interplay of trivial and yet -determining circumstances; it is shot through with transient passions, -and broken athwart here and there by what seem cruel accidents; it -cannot all be reduced to statistics or newspaper items or official -recorded statements. And so it turns out, when the actual test of -experiment is made, that the historian must have something more than a -good conscience, must be something more than a good man. He must have -an eye to see the truth; and nothing but a very catholic imagination -will serve to illuminate his matter for him: nothing less than keen -and steady insight will make even illumination yield him the truth -of what he looks upon. Even when he has seen the truth, only half -his work is done, and that not the more difficult half. He must then -make others see it just as he does: only when he has done that has he -told the truth. What an art of penetrative phrase and just selection -must he have to take others into the light in which he stands! Their -dullness, their ignorance, their prepossessions, are to be overcome -and driven in, like a routed troop, upon the truth. The thing is -infinitely difficult. The skill and strategy of it cannot be taught. -And so historians take another way, which is easier: they tell part of -the truth,--the part most to their taste, or most suitable to their -talents,--and obtain readers to their liking among those of similar -tastes and talents to their own. - -We have our individual preferences in history, as in every other sort -of literature. And there are histories to every taste: histories full -of the piquant details of personal biography, histories that blaze -with the splendors of courts and resound with drum and trumpet, and -histories that run upon the humbler but greater levels of the life -of the people; colorless histories, so passionless and so lacking -in distinctive mark or motive that they might have been set up out -of a dictionary without the intervention of an author, and partisan -histories, so warped and violent in every judgment that no reader not -of the historian’s own party can stomach them; histories of economic -development, and histories that speak only of politics; those that tell -nothing but what it is pleasant and interesting to know, and those that -tell nothing at all that one cares to remember. One must be of a new -and unheard of taste not to be suited among them all. - -The trouble is, after all, that men do not invariably find the truth -to their taste, and will often deny it when they hear it; and the -historian has to do much more than keep his own eyes clear: he has -also to catch and hold the eye of his reader. ’Tis a nice art, as much -intellectual as moral. How shall he take the palate of his reader at -unawares, and get the unpalatable facts down his throat along with the -palatable? Is there no way in which all the truth may be made to hold -together in a narrative so strongly knit and so harmoniously colored -that no reader will have either the wish or the skill to tear its -patterns asunder, and men will take it all, unmarred and as it stands, -rather than miss the zest of it? - -It is evident the thing cannot be done by the “dispassionate” annalist. -The old chroniclers, whom we relish, were not dispassionate. We love -some of them for their sweet quaintness, some for their childlike -credulity, some for their delicious inconsequentiality. But our modern -chroniclers are not so. They are, above all things else, knowing, -thoroughly informed, subtly sophisticated. They would not for the world -contribute any spice of their own to the narrative; and they are much -too watchful, circumspect, and dutiful in their care to keep their -method pure and untouched by any thought of theirs to let us catch so -much as a glimpse of the chronicler underneath the chronicle. Their -purpose is to give simply the facts, eschewing art, and substituting a -sort of monumental index and table of the world’s events. - -The trouble is that men refuse to be made any wiser by such means. -Though they will readily enough let their eyes linger upon a monument -of art, they will heedlessly pass by a mere monument of industry. It -suggests nothing to them. The materials may be suitable enough, but -the handling of them leaves them dead and commonplace. An interesting -circumstance thus comes to light. It is nothing less than this, that -the facts do not of themselves constitute the truth. The truth is -abstract, not concrete. It is the just idea, the right revelation of -what things mean. It is evoked only by such arrangements and orderings -of facts as suggest interpretations. The chronological arrangement -of events, for example, may or may not be the arrangement which most -surely brings the truth of the narrative to light; and the best -arrangement is always that which displays, not the facts themselves, -but the subtle and else invisible forces that lurk in the events and -in the minds of men,--forces for which events serve only as lasting -and dramatic words of utterance. Take an instance. How are you to -enable men to know the truth with regard to a period of revolution? -Will you give them simply a calm statement of recorded events, simply -a quiet, unaccentuated narrative of what actually happened, written -in a monotone, and verified by quotations from authentic documents of -the time? You may save yourself the trouble. As well make a pencil -sketch in outline of a raging conflagration; write upon one portion -of it “flame,” upon another “smoke;” here “town hall, where the fire -started,” and there “spot where fireman was killed.” It is a chart, not -a picture. Even if you made a veritable picture of it, you could give -only part of the truth so long as you confined yourself to black and -white. Where would be all the wild and terrible colors of the scene: -the red and tawny flame; the masses of smoke, carrying the dull glare -of the fire to the very skies, like a great signal banner thrown to -the winds; the hot and frightened faces of the crowd; the crimsoned -gables down the street, with the faint light of a lamp here and there -gleaming white from some hastily opened casement? Without the colors -your picture is not true. No inventory of items will even represent -the truth: the fuller and more minute you make your inventory, the -more will the truth be obscured. The little details will take up as -much space in the statement as the great totals into which they are -summed up; and, the proportions being false, the whole is false. Truth, -fortunately, takes its own revenge. No one is deceived. The reader -of the chronicle lays it aside. It lacks verisimilitude. He cannot -realize how any of the things spoken of can have happened. He goes -elsewhere to find, if he may, a real picture of the time, and perhaps -finds one that is wholly fictitious. No wonder the grave and monk-like -chronicler sighs. He of course wrote to be read, and not merely for the -manual exercise of it; and when he sees readers turn away his heart -misgives him for his fellow-men. Is it as it always was, that they do -not wish to know the truth? Alas! good eremite, men do not seek the -truth as they should; but do you know what the truth is? It is a thing -ideal, displayed by the just proportion of events, revealed in form and -color, dumb till facts be set in syllables, articulated into words, -put together into sentences, swung with proper tone and cadence. It is -not revolutions only that have color. Nothing in human life is without -it. In a monochrome you can depict nothing but a single incident; in a -monotone you cannot often carry truth beyond a single sentence. Only by -art in all its variety can you depict as it is the various face of life. - -Yes; but what sort of art? There is here a wide field of choice. Shall -we go back to the art of which Macaulay was so great a master? We could -do worse. It must be a great art that can make men lay aside the novel -and take up the history, to find there, in very fact, the movement and -drama of life. What Macaulay does well he does incomparably. Who else -can mass the details as he does, and yet not mar or obscure, but only -heighten, the effect of the picture as a whole? Who else can bring -so amazing a profusion of knowledge within the strait limits of a -simple plan, nowhere encumbered, everywhere free and obvious in its -movement? How sure the strokes, and how bold and vivid the result! Yet -when we have laid the book aside, when the charm and the excitement -of the telling narrative have worn off, when we have lost step with -the swinging gait at which the style goes, when the details have faded -from our recollection, and we sit removed and thoughtful, with only the -greater outlines of the story sharp upon our minds, a deep misgiving -and dissatisfaction take possession of us. We are no longer young, and -we are chagrined that we should have been so pleased and taken with the -glitter and color and mere life of the picture. Let boys be cajoled by -rhetoric, we cry; men must look deeper. What of the judgment of this -facile and eloquent man? Can we agree with him, when he is not talking -and the charm is gone? What shall we say of his assessment of men and -measures? Is he just? Is he himself in possession of the whole truth? -Does he open the matter to us as it was? Does he not, rather, ride us -like an advocate, and make himself master of our judgments? - -Then it is that we become aware that there were two Macaulays: Macaulay -the artist, with an exquisite gift for telling a story, filling his -pages with little vignettes it is impossible to forget, fixing these -with an inimitable art upon the surface of a narrative that did not -need the ornament they gave it, so strong and large and adequate was -it; and Macaulay the Whig, subtly turning narrative into argument, and -making history the vindication of a party. The mighty narrative is a -great engine of proof. It is not told for its own sake. It is evidence -summed up in order to justify a judgment. We detect the tone of the -advocate, and though if we are just we must deem him honest, we cannot -deem him safe. The great story-teller is discredited; and, willingly or -unwillingly, we reject the guide who takes it upon himself to determine -for us what we shall see. That, we feel sure, cannot be true which -makes of so complex a history so simple a thesis for the judgment. -There is art here; but it is the art of special pleading, misleading -even to the pleader. - -If not Macaulay, what master shall we follow? Shall our historian not -have his convictions, and enforce them? Shall he not be our guide, and -speak, if he can, to our spirits as well as to our understandings? -Readers are a poor jury. They need enlightenment as well as -information; the matter must be interpreted to them as well as related. -There are moral facts as well as material, and the one sort must be as -plainly told as the other. Of what service is it that the historian -should have insight if we are not to know how the matter stands in his -view? If he refrain from judgment, he may deceive us as much as he -would were his judgment wrong; for we must have enlightenment,--that -is his function. We would not set him up merely to tell us tales, but -also to display to us characters, to open to us the moral and intent of -the matter. Were the men sincere? Was the policy righteous? We have but -just now seen that the “facts” lie deeper than the mere visible things -that took place, that they involve the moral and motive of the play. -Shall not these, too, be brought to light? - -Unquestionably every sentence of true history must hold a judgment -in solution. All cannot be told. If it were possible to tell all, it -would take as long to write history as to enact it, and we should have -to postpone the reading of it to the leisure of the next world. A few -facts must be selected for the narrative, the great majority left -unnoted. But the selection--for what purpose it is to be made? For the -purpose of conveying _an impression_ of the truth. Where shall you -find a more radical process of judgment? The “essential” facts taken, -the “unessential” left out! Why, you may make the picture what you -will, and in any case it must be the express image of the historian’s -fundamental judgments. It is his purpose, or should be, to give a -true impression of his theme as a whole,--to show it, not lying upon -his page in an open and dispersed analysis, but set close in intimate -synthesis, every line, every stroke, every bulk even, omitted which -does not enter of very necessity into a single and unified image of the -truth. - -It is in this that the writing of history differs, and differs very -radically, from the statement of the results of original research. The -writing of history must be based upon original research and authentic -record, but it can no more be directly constructed by the piecing -together of bits of original research than by the mere reprinting -together of state documents. Individual research furnishes us, as it -were, with the private documents and intimate records without which the -public archives are incomplete and unintelligible. But by themselves -these are wholly out of perspective. It is the consolation of those -who produce them to make them so. They would lose heart were they -forbidden to regard all facts as of equal importance. It is facts they -are after, and only facts,--facts for their own sake, and without -regard to their several importance. These are their ore,--very precious -ore,--which they are concerned to get out, not to refine. They have -no direct concern with what may afterwards be done at the mint or in -the goldsmith’s shop. They will even boast that they care not for the -beauty of the ore, and are indifferent how, or in what shape, it may -become an article of commerce. Much of it is thrown away in the nice -processes of manufacture, and you shall not distinguish the product of -the several mines in the coin, or the cup, or the salver. - -The historian must, indeed, himself be an investigator. He must know -good ore from bad; must distinguish fineness, quality, genuineness; -must stop to get out of the records for himself what he lacks for the -perfection of his work. But for all that, he must know and stand ready -to do every part of his task like a master workman, recognizing and -testing every bit of stuff he uses. Standing sure, a man of science as -well as an artist, he must take and use all of his equipment for the -sake of his art,--not to display his materials, but to subordinate and -transform them in his effort to make, by every touch and cunning of -hand and tool, the perfect image of what he sees, the very truth of his -seer’s vision of the world. The true historian works always for the -whole impression, the truth with unmarred proportions, unexaggerated -parts, undistorted visage. He has no favorite parts of the story which -he boasts are bits of his own, but loves only the whole of it, the full -and unspoiled image of the day of which he writes, the crowded and -yet consistent details which carry, without obtrusion of themselves, -the large features of the time. Any exaggeration of the parts makes -all the picture false, and the work is to do over. “Test every bit of -material,” runs the artist’s rule, “and then forget the material;” -forget its origin and the dross from which it has been freed, and think -only and always of the great thing you would make of it, the pattern -and form in which you would lose and merge it. That is its only high -use. - -’Tis a pity to see how even the greatest minds will often lack the -broad and catholic vision with which the just historian must look upon -men and affairs. There is Carlyle, with his shrewd and seeing eye, -his unmatched capacity to assess strong men and set the scenery for -tragedy or intrigue, his breathless ardor for great events, his amazing -flashes of insight, and his unlooked-for steady light of occasional -narrative. The whole matter of what he writes is too dramatic. Surely -history was not all enacted so hotly, or with so passionate a rush of -men upon the stage. Its quiet scenes must have been longer, not mere -pauses and interludes while the tragic parts were being made up. There -is not often ordinary sunlight upon the page. The lights burn now wan, -now lurid. Men are seen disquieted and turbulent, and may be heard in -husky cries or rude, untimely jests. We do not recognize our own world, -but seem to see another such as ours might become if peopled by like -uneasy Titans. Incomparable to tell of days of storm and revolution, -speaking like an oracle and familiar of destiny and fate, searching the -hearts of statesmen and conquerors with an easy insight in every day of -action, this peasant seer cannot give us the note of piping times of -peace, or catch the tone of slow industry; watches ships come and go at -the docks, hears freight-vans thunder along the iron highways of the -modern world, and loaded trucks lumber heavily through the crowded city -streets, with a hot disdain of commerce, prices current, the haggling -of the market, the smug ease of material comfort bred in a trading -age. There is here no broad and catholic vision, no wise tolerance, no -various power to know, to sympathize, to interpret. The great seeing -imagination of the man lacks that pure radiance in which things are -seen steadily and seen whole. - -It is not easy, to say truth, to find actual examples when you are -constructing the ideal historian, the man with the vision and the -faculty divine to see affairs justly and tell of them completely. If -you are not satisfied with this passionate and intolerant seer of -Chelsea, whom will you choose? Shall it be Gibbon, whom all praise, -but so few read? He, at any rate, is passionless, it would appear. But -who could write epochal history with passion? All hot humors of the -mind must, assuredly, cool when spread at large upon so vast a surface. -One must feel like a sort of minor providence in traversing that great -tract of world history, and catch in spite of one’s self the gait and -manner of a god. This stately procession of generations moves on remote -from the ordinary levels of our human sympathy. ’Tis a wide view of -nations and peoples and dynasties, and a world shaken by the travail of -new births. There is here no scale by which to measure the historian -of the sort we must look to see handle the ordinary matter of national -history. The “Decline and Fall” stands impersonal, like a monument. We -shall reverence it, but we shall not imitate it. - -If we look away from Gibbon, exclude Carlyle, and question Macaulay; -if we put the investigators on one side as not yet historians, and -the deliberately picturesque and entertaining _raconteurs_ as not yet -investigators, we naturally turn, I suppose, to such a man as John -Richard Green, at once the patient scholar,--who shall adequately say -how nobly patient?--and the rare artist, working so like a master in -the difficult stuffs of a long national history. The very life of the -man is as beautiful as the moving sentences he wrote with so subtle -a music in the cadence. We know whence the fine moral elevation of -tone came that sounds through all the text of his great narrative. -True, not everybody is satisfied with our _doctor angelicus_. Some -doubt he is too ornate. Others are troubled that he should sometimes -be inaccurate. Some are willing to use his history as a manual; while -others cannot deem him satisfactory for didactic uses, hesitate -how they shall characterize him, and quit the matter vaguely with -saying that what he wrote is “at any rate literature.” Can there be -something lacking in Green, too, notwithstanding he was impartial, and -looked with purged and open eyes upon the whole unbroken life of his -people,--notwithstanding he saw the truth and had the art and mastery -to make others see it as he did, in all its breadth and multiplicity? - -Perhaps even this great master of narrative lacks variety--as who does -not? His method, whatever the topic, is ever the same. His sentences, -his paragraphs, his chapters are pitched one and all in the same key. -It is a very fine and moving key. Many an elevated strain and rich -harmony commend it alike to the ear and to the imagination. It is -employed with an easy mastery, and is made to serve to admiration a -wide range of themes. But it is always the same key, and some themes it -will not serve. An infinite variety plays through all history. Every -scene has its own air and singularity. Incidents cannot all be rightly -set in the narrative if all be set alike. As the scene shifts, the tone -of the narrative must change: the narrator’s choice of incident and his -choice of words; the speed and method of his sentence; his own thought, -even, and point of view. Surely his battle pages must resound with the -tramp of armies and the fearful din and rush of war. In peace he must -catch by turns the hum of industry, the bustle of the street, the calm -of the country-side, the tone of parliamentary debate, the fancy, the -ardor, the argument of poets and seers and quiet students. Snatches of -song run along with sober purpose and strenuous endeavor through every -nation’s story. Coarse men and refined, mobs and ordered assemblies, -science and mad impulse, storm and calm, are all alike ingredients of -the various life. It is not all epic. There is rough comedy and brutal -violence. The drama can scarce be given any strict, unbroken harmony -of incident, any close logical sequence of act or nice unity of scene. -To pitch it all in one key, therefore, is to mistake the significance -of the infinite play of varied circumstance that makes up the yearly -movement of a people’s life. - -It would be less than just to say that Green’s pages do not reveal -the variety of English life the centuries through. It is his glory, -indeed, as all the world knows, to have broadened and diversified the -whole scale of English history. Nowhere else within the compass of -a single book can one find so many sides of the great English story -displayed with so deep and just an appreciation of them all, or of the -part of each in making up the whole. Green is the one man among English -historians who has restored the great fabric of the nation’s history -where its architecture was obscure, and its details were likely to be -lost or forgotten. Once more, because of him, the vast Gothic structure -stands complete, its majesty and firm grace enhanced at every point by -the fine tracery of its restored details. - -Where so much is done, it is no doubt unreasonable to ask for more. But -the very architectural symmetry of this great book imposes a limitation -upon it. It is full of a certain sort of variety; but it is only the -variety of a great plan’s detail, not the variety of English life. The -noble structure obeys its own laws rather than the laws of a people’s -fortunes. It is a monument conceived and reared by a consummate -artist, and it wears upon its every line some part of the image it was -meant to bear, of a great, complex, aspiring national existence. But, -though it symbolizes, it does not contain that life. It has none of -the irregularity of the actual experiences of men and communities. It -explains, but it does not contain, their variety. The history of every -nation has certainly a plan which the historian must see and reproduce; -but he must reconstruct the people’s life, not merely expound it. The -scope of his method must be as great as the variety of his subject; it -must change with each change of mood, respond to each varying impulse -in the great process of events. No rigor of a stately style must be -suffered to exclude the lively touches of humor or the rude sallies of -strength that mark it everywhere. The plan of the telling must answer -to the plan of the fact,--must be as elastic as the topics are mobile. -The matter should rule the plan, not the plan the matter. - -The ideal is infinitely difficult, if, indeed, it be possible to any -man not Shakespearean; but the difficulty of attaining it is often -unnecessarily enhanced. Ordinarily the historian’s preparation for -his task is such as to make it unlikely he will perform it naturally. -He goes first, with infinite and admirable labor, through all the -labyrinth of document and detail that lies up and down his subject; -collects masses of matter great and small, for substance, verification, -illustration; piles his notes volumes high; reads far and wide upon -the tracks of his matter, and makes page upon page of references; and -then, thoroughly stuffed and sophisticated, turns back and begins his -narrative. ’Tis impossible then that he should begin naturally. He sees -the end from the beginning, and all the intermediate way from beginning -to end; he has made up his mind about too many things; uses his details -with a too free and familiar mastery, not like one who tells a story -so much as like one who dissects a cadaver. Having swept his details -together beforehand, like so much scientific material, he discourses -upon them like a demonstrator,--thinks too little in subjection to -them. They no longer make a fresh impression upon him. They are his -tools, not his objects of vision. - -It is not by such a process that a narrative is made vital and true. -It does not do to lose the point of view of the first listener to -the tale, or to rearrange the matter too much out of the order of -nature. You must instruct your reader as the events themselves would -have instructed him, had he been able to note them as they passed. The -historian must not lose his own fresh view of the scene as it passed -and changed more and more from year to year and from age to age. He -must keep with the generation of which he writes, not be too quick to -be wiser than they were or look back upon them in his narrative with -head over shoulder. He must write of them always in the atmosphere they -themselves breathed, not hastening to judge them, but striving only to -realize them at every turn of the story, to make their thoughts his -own, and call their lives back again, rebuilding the very stage upon -which they played their parts. Bring the end of your story to mind -while you set about telling its beginning, and it seems to have no -parts: beginning, middle, end, are all as one,--are merely like parts -of a pattern which you see as a single thing stamped upon the stuff -under your hand. - -Try the method with the history of our own land and people. How -will you begin? Will you start with a modern map and a careful -topographical description of the continent? And then, having made -your nineteenth-century framework for the narrative, will you ask -your reader to turn back and see the seventeenth century, and those -lonely ships coming in at the capes of the Chesapeake? He will never -see them so long as you compel him to stand here at the end of the -nineteenth century and look at them as if through a long retrospect. -The attention both of the narrator and of the reader, if history is -to be seen aright, must look forward, not backward. It must see with -a contemporaneous eye. Let the historian, if he be wise, know no more -of the history as he writes than might have been known in the age and -day of which he is writing. A trifle too much knowledge will undo him. -It will break the spell for his imagination. It will spoil the magic -by which he may raise again the image of days that are gone. He must -of course know the large lines of his story; it must lie as a whole -in his mind. His very art demands that, in order that he may know and -keep its proportions. But the details, the passing incidents of day and -year, must come fresh into his mind, unreasoned upon as yet, untouched -by theory, with their first look upon them. It is here that original -documents and fresh research will serve him. He must look far and wide -upon every detail of the time, see it at first hand, and paint as he -looks; selecting, as the artist must, but selecting while the vision -is fresh, and not from old sketches laid away in his notes,--selecting -from the life itself. - -Let him remember that his task is radically different from the task of -the investigator. The investigator must display his materials, but the -historian must convey his impressions. He must stand in the presence -of life, and reproduce it in his narrative; must recover a past age; -make dead generations live again and breathe their own air; show them -native and at home upon his page. To do this, his own impressions must -be as fresh as those of an unlearned reader, his own curiosity as keen -and young at every stage. It may easily be so as his reading thickens, -and the atmosphere of the age comes stealthily into his thought, if -only he take care to push forward the actual writing of his narrative -at an equal pace with his reading, painting thus always direct from -the image itself. His knowledge of the great outlines and bulks of the -picture will be his sufficient guide and restraint the while, will give -proportion to the individual strokes of his work. But it will not check -his zest, or sophisticate his fresh recovery of the life that is in the -crowding colors of the canvas. - -A nineteenth-century plan laid like a standard and measure upon a -seventeenth-century narrative will infallibly twist it and make it -false. Lay a modern map before the first settlers at Jamestown and -Plymouth, and then bid them discover and occupy the continent. With how -superior a nineteenth-century wonder and pity will you see them grope, -and stumble, and falter! How like children they will seem to you, and -how simple their age, and ignorant! As stalwart men as you they were -in fact; mayhap wiser and braver too; as fit to occupy a continent as -you are to draw it upon paper. If you would know them, go back to their -age; breed yourself a pioneer and woodsman; look to find the South Sea -up the nearest northwest branch of the spreading river at your feet; -discover and occupy the wilderness with them; dream what may be beyond -the near hills, and long all day to see a sail upon the silent sea; go -back to them and see them in their habit as they lived. - -The picturesque writers of history have all along been right in -theory: they have been wrong only in practice. It is a picture of the -past we want--its express image and feature; but we want the true -picture and not simply the theatrical matter,--the manner of Rembrandt -rather than of Rubens. All life may be pictured, but not all of -life is picturesque. No great, no true historian would put false or -adventitious colors into his narrative, or let a glamour rest where in -fact it never was. The writers who select an incident merely because -it is striking or dramatic are shallow fellows. They see only with the -eye’s retina, not with that deep vision whose images lie where thought -and reason sit. The real drama of life is disclosed only with the whole -picture; and that only the deep and fervid student will see, whose mind -goes daily fresh to the details, whose narrative runs always in the -authentic colors of nature, whose art it is to see, and to paint what -he sees. - -It is thus and only thus we shall have the truth of the matter: by -art,--by the most difficult of all arts; by fresh study and first-hand -vision; at the mouths of men who stand in the midst of old letters and -dusty documents and neglected records, not like antiquarians, but like -those who see a distant country and a far-away people before their very -eyes, as real, as full of life and hope and incident, as the day in -which they themselves live. Let us have done with humbug and come to -plain speech. The historian needs an imagination quite as much as he -needs scholarship, and consummate literary art as much as candor and -common honesty. Histories are written in order that the bulk of men may -read and realize; and it is as bad to bungle the telling of the story -as to lie, as fatal to lack a vocabulary as to lack knowledge. In no -case can you do more than convey an impression, so various and complex -is the matter. If you convey a false impression, what difference -does it make how you convey it? In the whole process there is a nice -adjustment of means to ends which only the artist can manage. There -is an art of lying;--there is equally an art,--an infinitely more -difficult art,--of telling the truth. - - - - -VII. - -A CALENDAR OF GREAT AMERICANS. - - -Before a calendar of great Americans can be made out, a valid canon -of Americanism must first be established. Not every great man born -and bred in America was a great “American.” Some of the notable men -born among us were simply great Englishmen; others had in all the -habits of their thought and life the strong flavor of a peculiar -region, and were great New Englanders or great Southerners; others, -masters in the fields of science or of pure thought, showed nothing -either distinctively national or characteristically provincial, and -were simply great men; while a few displayed odd cross-strains of -blood or breeding. The great Englishmen bred in America, like Hamilton -and Madison; the great provincials, like John Adams and Calhoun; the -authors of such thought as might have been native to any clime, like -Asa Gray and Emerson; and the men of mixed breed, like Jefferson and -Benton,--must be excluded from our present list. We must pick out men -who have created or exemplified a distinctively American standard and -type of greatness. - -To make such a selection is not to create an artificial standard of -greatness, or to claim that greatness is in any case hallowed or -exalted merely because it is American. It is simply to recognize a -peculiar stamp of character, a special make-up of mind and faculties, -as the specific product of our national life, not displacing or -eclipsing talents of a different kind, but supplementing them, and -so adding to the world’s variety. There is an American type of man, -and those who have exhibited this type with a certain unmistakable -distinction and perfection have been great “Americans.” It has required -the utmost variety of character and energy to establish a great nation, -with a polity at once free and firm, upon this continent, and no sound -type of manliness could have been dispensed with in the effort. We -could no more have done without our great Englishmen, to keep the past -steadily in mind and make every change conservative of principle, than -we could have done without the men whose whole impulse was forward, -whose whole genius was for origination, natural masters of the art of -subduing a wilderness. - -Certainly one of the greatest figures in our history is the figure of -Alexander Hamilton. American historians, though compelled always to -admire him, often in spite of themselves, have been inclined, like the -mass of men in his own day, to look at him askance. They hint, when -they do not plainly say, that he was not “American.” He rejected, if -he did not despise, democratic principles; advocated a government as -strong, almost, as a monarchy; and defended the government which was -actually set up, like the skilled advocate he was, only because it was -the strongest that could be had under the circumstances. He believed -in authority, and he had no faith in the aggregate wisdom of masses of -men. He had, it is true, that deep and passionate love of liberty, and -that steadfast purpose in the maintenance of it, that mark the best -Englishmen everywhere; but his ideas of government stuck fast in the -old-world politics, and his statesmanship was of Europe rather than of -America. And yet the genius and the steadfast spirit of this man were -absolutely indispensable to us. No one less masterful, no one less -resolute than he to drill the minority, if necessary, to have their way -against the majority, could have done the great work of organization by -which he established the national credit, and with the national credit -the national government itself. A pliant, popular, optimistic man would -have failed utterly in the task. A great radical mind in his place -would have brought disaster upon us: only a great conservative genius -could have succeeded. It is safe to say that, without men of Hamilton’s -cast of mind, building the past into the future with a deep passion -for order and old wisdom, our national life would have miscarried at -the very first. This tried English talent for conservation gave to our -fibre at the very outset the stiffness of maturity. - -James Madison, too, we may be said to have inherited. His invaluable -gifts of counsel were of the sort so happily imparted to us with our -English blood at the first planting of the States which formed the -Union. A grave and prudent man, and yet brave withal when new counsel -was to be taken, he stands at the beginning of our national history, -even in his young manhood, as he faced and led the constitutional -convention, a type of the slow and thoughtful English genius for -affairs. He held old and tested convictions of the uses of liberty; -he was competently read in the history of government; processes of -revolution were in his thought no more than processes of adaptation: -exigencies were to be met by modification, not by experiment. His -reasonable spirit runs through all the proceedings of the great -convention that gave us the Constitution, and that noble instrument -seems the product of character like his. For all it is so American -in its content, it is in its method a thoroughly English production, -so full is it of old principles, so conservative of experience, so -carefully compounded of compromises, of concessions made and accepted. -Such men are of a stock so fine as to need no titles to make it noble, -and yet so old and so distinguished as actually to bear the chief -titles of English liberty. Madison came of the long line of English -constitutional statesmen. - -There is a type of genius which closely approaches this in character, -but which is, nevertheless, distinctively American. It is to be seen -in John Marshall and in Daniel Webster. In these men a new set of -ideas find expression, ideas which all the world has received as -American. Webster was not an English but an American constitutional -statesman. For the English statesman constitutional issues are issues -of policy rather than issues of law. He constantly handles questions -of change: his constitution is always a-making. He must at every -turn construct, and he is deemed conservative if only his rule be -consistency and continuity with the past. He will search diligently -for precedent, but he is content if the precedent contain only a germ -of the policy he proposes. His standards are set him, not by law, but -by opinion: his constitution is an ideal of cautious and orderly -change. Its fixed element is the conception of political liberty: a -conception which, though steeped in history, must ever be added to -and altered by social change. The American constitutional statesman, -on the contrary, constructs policies like a lawyer. The standard with -which he must square his conduct is set him by a document upon whose -definite sentences the whole structure of the government directly -rests. That document, moreover, is the concrete embodiment of a -peculiar theory of government. That theory is, that definitive laws, -selected by a power outside the government, are the structural iron -of the entire fabric of politics, and that nothing which cannot be -constructed upon this stiff framework is a safe or legitimate part of -policy. Law is, in his conception, creative of states, and they live -only by such permissions as they can extract from it. The functions -of the judge and the functions of the man of affairs have, therefore, -been very closely related in our history, and John Marshall, scarcely -less than Daniel Webster, was a constitutional statesman. With all -Madison’s conservative temper and wide-eyed prudence in counsel, the -subject-matter of thought for both of these men was not English liberty -or the experience of men everywhere in self-government, but the -meaning stored up in the explicit sentences of a written fundamental -law. They taught men the new--the American--art of extracting life -out of the letter, not of statutes merely (that art was not new), but -of statute-built institutions and documented governments: the art of -saturating politics with law without grossly discoloring law with -politics. Other nations have had written constitutions, but no other -nation has ever filled a written constitution with this singularly -compounded content, of a sound legal conscience and a strong national -purpose. It would have been easy to deal with our Constitution like -subtle dialecticians; but Webster and Marshall did much more and -much better than that. They viewed the fundamental law as a great -organic product, a vehicle of life as well as a charter of authority; -in disclosing its life they did not damage its tissue; and in thus -expanding the law without impairing its structure or authority they -made great contributions alike to statesmanship and to jurisprudence. -Our notable literature of decision and commentary in the field of -constitutional law is America’s distinctive gift to the history and -the science of law. John Marshall wrought out much of its substance; -Webster diffused its great body of principles throughout national -policy, mediating between the law and affairs. The figures of the two -men must hold the eye of the world as the figures of two great national -representatives, as the figures of two great Americans. - -The representative national greatness and function of these men appear -more clearly still when they are contrasted with men like John Adams -and John C. Calhoun, whose greatness was not national. John Adams -represented one element of our national character, and represented it -nobly, with a singular force and greatness. He was an eminent Puritan -statesman, and the Puritan ingredient has colored all our national -life. We have got strength and persistency and some part of our steady -moral purpose from it. But in the quick growth and exuberant expansion -of the nation it has been only one element among many. The Puritan -blood has mixed with many another strain. The stiff Puritan character -has been mellowed by many a transfusion of gentler and more hopeful -elements. So soon as the Adams fashion of man became more narrow, -intense, acidulous, intractable, according to the tendencies of its -nature, in the person of John Quincy Adams, it lost the sympathy, lost -even the tolerance, of the country, and the national choice took its -reckless leap from a Puritan President to Andrew Jackson, a man cast -in the rough original pattern of American life at the heart of the -continent. John Adams had not himself been a very acceptable President. -He had none of the national optimism, and could not understand those -who did have it. He had none of the characteristic adaptability of the -delocalized American, and was just a bit ridiculous in his stiffness at -the Court of St. James, for all he was so honorable and so imposing. -His type,--be it said without disrespect,--was provincial. Unmistakably -a great man, his greatness was of the commonwealth, not of the empire. - -Calhoun, too, was a great provincial. Although a giant, he had no heart -to use his great strength for national purposes. In his youth, it is -true, he did catch some of the generous ardor for national enterprise -which filled the air in his day; and all his life through, with a truly -pathetic earnestness, he retained his affection for his first ideal. -But when the rights and interests of his section were made to appear -incompatible with a liberal and boldly constructive interpretation of -the Constitution, he fell out of national counsels and devoted all the -strength of his extraordinary mind to holding the nation’s thought and -power back within the strait limits of a literal construction of the -law. In powers of reasoning his mind deserves to rank with Webster’s -and Marshall’s: he handled questions of law like a master, as they did. -He had, moreover, a keen insight into the essential principles and -character of liberty. His thought moved eloquently along some of the -oldest and safest lines of English thought in the field of government. -He made substantive contributions to the permanent philosophy of -politics. His reasoning has been discredited, not so much because it -was not theoretically sound within its limits, as because its practical -outcome was a negation which embarrassed the whole movement of national -affairs. He would have held the nation still, in an old equipoise, -at one time normal enough, but impossible to maintain. Webster and -Marshall gave leave to the energy of change inherent in all the -national life, making law a rule, but not an interdict; a living guide, -but not a blind and rigid discipline. Calhoun sought to fix law as a -barrier across the path of policy, commanding the life of the nation -to stand still. The strength displayed in the effort, the intellectual -power and address, abundantly entitle him to be called great; but his -purpose was not national. It regarded only a section of the country, -and marked him,--again be it said with all respect,--a great provincial. - -Jefferson was not a thorough American because of the strain of French -philosophy that permeated and weakened all his thought. Benton was -altogether American so far as the natural strain of his blood was -concerned, but he had encumbered his natural parts and inclinations -with a mass of undigested and shapeless learning. Bred in the West, -where everything was new, he had filled his head with the thought -of books (evidently very poor books) which exhibited the ideals of -communities in which everything was old. He thought of the Roman Senate -when he sat in the Senate of the United States. He paraded classical -figures whenever he spoke, upon a stage where both their costume and -their action seemed grotesque. A pedantic frontiersman, he was a living -and a pompous antinomy. Meant by nature to be an American, he spoiled -the plan by applying a most unsuitable gloss of shallow and irrelevant -learning. Jefferson was of course an almost immeasurably greater man -than Benton, but he was un-American in somewhat the same way. He -brought a foreign product of thought to a market where no natural or -wholesome demand for it could exist. There were not two incompatible -parts in him, as in Benton’s case: he was a philosophical radical by -nature as well as by acquirement; his reading and his temperament went -suitably together. The man is homogeneous throughout. The American -shows in him very plainly, too, notwithstanding the strong and inherent -dash of what was foreign in his make-up. He was a natural leader and -manager of men, not because he was imperative or masterful, but because -of a native shrewdness, tact, and sagacity, an inborn art and aptness -for combination, such as no Frenchman ever displayed in the management -of common men. Jefferson had just a touch of rusticity about him, -besides; and it was not pretense on his part or merely a love of power -that made him democratic. His indiscriminate hospitality, his almost -passionate love for the simple equality of country life, his steady -devotion to what he deemed to be the cause of the people, all mark him -a genuine democrat, a nature native to America. It is his speculative -philosophy that is exotic, and that runs like a false and artificial -note through all his thought. It was un-American in being abstract, -sentimental, rationalistic, rather than practical. That he held it -sincerely need not be doubted; but the more sincerely he accepted it so -much the more thoroughly was he un-American. His writings lack hard and -practical sense. Liberty, among us, is not a sentiment, but a product -of experience; its derivation is not rationalistic, but practical. -It is a hard-headed spirit of independence, not the conclusion of a -syllogism. The very aërated quality of Jefferson’s principles gives -them an air of insincerity, which attaches to them rather because they -do not suit the climate of the country and the practical aspect of -affairs than because they do not suit the character of Jefferson’s mind -and the atmosphere of abstract philosophy. It is because both they and -the philosophical system of which they form a part do seem suitable to -his mind and character, that we must pronounce him, though a great man, -not a great American. - -It is by the frank consideration of such concrete cases that we -may construct, both negatively and affirmatively, our canons of -Americanism. The American spirit is something more than the old, the -immemorial Saxon spirit of liberty from which it sprung. It has been -bred by the conditions attending the great task which we have all the -century been carrying forward: the task, at once material and ideal, -of subduing a wilderness and covering all the wide stretches of a vast -continent with a single free and stable polity. It is, accordingly, -above all things, a hopeful and confident spirit. It is progressive, -optimistically progressive, and ambitious of objects of national -scope and advantage. It is unpedantic, unprovincial, unspeculative, -unfastidious; regardful of law, but as using it, not as being used -by it or dominated by any formalism whatever; in a sense unrefined, -because full of rude force; but prompted by large and generous motives, -and often as tolerant as it is resolute. No one man, unless it be -Lincoln, has ever proved big or various enough to embody this active -and full-hearted spirit in all its qualities; and the men who have been -too narrow or too speculative or too pedantic to represent it have, -nevertheless, added to the strong and stirring variety of our national -life, making it fuller and richer in motive and energy; but its several -aspects are none the less noteworthy as they separately appear in -different men. - -One of the first men to exhibit this American spirit with an -unmistakable touch of greatness and distinction was Benjamin Franklin. -It was characteristic of America that this self-made man should become -a philosopher, a founder of philosophical societies, an authoritative -man of science; that his philosophy of life should be so homely and so -practical in its maxims, and uttered with so shrewd a wit; that one -region should be his birthplace and another his home; that he should -favor effective political union among the colonies from the first, and -should play a sage and active part in the establishment of national -independence and the planning of a national organization; and that -he should represent his countrymen in diplomacy abroad. They could -have had no spokesman who represented more sides of their character. -Franklin was a sort of multiple American. He was versatile without -lacking solidity; he was a practical statesman without ceasing to be a -sagacious philosopher. He came of the people, and was democratic; but -he had raised himself out of the general mass of unnamed men, and so -stood for the democratic law, not of equality, but of self-selection -in endeavor. One can feel sure that Franklin would have succeeded -in any part of the national life that it might have fallen to his -lot to take part in. He will stand the final and characteristic -test of Americanism: he would unquestionably have made a successful -frontiersman, capable at once of wielding the axe and of administering -justice from the fallen trunk. - -Washington hardly seems an American, as most of his biographers depict -him. He is too colorless, too cold, too prudent. He seems more like -a wise and dispassionate Mr. Alworthy, advising a nation as he would -a parish, than like a man building states and marshaling a nation in -a wilderness. But the real Washington was as thoroughly an American -as Jackson or Lincoln. What we take for lack of passion in him was -but the reserve and self-mastery natural to a man of his class and -breeding in Virginia. He was no parlor politician, either. He had seen -the frontier, and far beyond it where the French forts lay. He knew -the rough life of the country as few other men could. His thoughts -did not live at Mount Vernon. He knew difficulty as intimately and -faced it always with as quiet a mastery as William the Silent. This -calm, straightforward, high-spirited man, making charts of the western -country, noting the natural land and water routes into the heart of -the continent, marking how the French power lay, conceiving the policy -which should dispossess it, and the engineering achievements which -should make the utmost resources of the land our own; counseling -Braddock how to enter the forest, but not deserting him because he -would not take advice; planning step by step, by patient correspondence -with influential men everywhere, the meetings, conferences, common -resolves which were finally to bring the great constitutional -convention together; planning, too, always for the country as well -as for Virginia; and presiding at last over the establishment and -organization of the government of the Union: he certainly--the most -suitable instrument of the national life at every moment of crisis--is -a great American. Those noble words which he uttered amidst the first -doubtings of the constitutional convention might serve as a motto for -the best efforts of liberty wherever free men strive: “Let us raise a -standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the -hand of God.” - -In Henry Clay we have an American of a most authentic pattern. There -was no man of his generation who represented more of America than -he did. The singular, almost irresistible attraction he had for men -of every class and every temperament came, not from the arts of -the politician, but from the instant sympathy established between -him and every fellow-countryman of his. He does not seem to have -exercised the same fascination upon foreigners. They felt toward him -as some New Englanders did: he seemed to them plausible merely, too -indiscriminately open and cordial to be sincere,--a bit of a charlatan. -No man who really takes the trouble to understand Henry Clay, or who -has quick enough parts to sympathize with him, can deem him false. It -is the odd combination of two different elements in him that makes -him seem irregular and inconstant. His nature was of the West, blown -through with quick winds of ardor and aggression, a bit reckless and -defiant; but his art was of the East, ready with soft and placating -phrases, reminiscent of old and reverenced ideals, thoughtful of -compromise and accommodation. He had all the address of the trained -and sophisticated politician, bred in an old and sensitive society; -but his purposes ran free of cautious restraints, and his real ideals -were those of the somewhat bumptious Americanism which was pushing -the frontier forward in the West, which believed itself capable -of doing anything it might put its hand to, despised conventional -restraints, and followed a vague but resplendent “manifest destiny” -with lusty hurrahs. His purposes were sincere, even if often crude -and uninstructed; it was only because the subtle arts of politics -seemed inconsistent with the direct dash and bold spirit of the man -that they sat upon him like an insincerity. He thoroughly, and by mere -unconscious sympathy, represented the double America of his day, made -up of a West which hurried and gave bold strokes, and of an East which -held back, fearing the pace, thoughtful and mindful of the instructive -past. The one part had to be served without offending the other: and -that was Clay’s mediatorial function. - -Andrew Jackson was altogether of the West. Of his sincerity nobody -has ever had any real doubt; and his Americanism is now at any rate -equally unimpeachable. He was like Clay with the social imagination of -the orator and the art and sophistication of the Eastern politician -left out. He came into our national politics like a cyclone from off -the Western prairies. Americans of the present day perceptibly shudder -at the very recollection of Jackson. He seems to them a great Vandal, -playing fast and loose alike with institutions and with tested and -established policy, debauching politics like a modern spoilsman. -But whether we would accept him as a type of ourselves or not, the -men of his own day accepted him with enthusiasm. He did not need to -be explained to them. They crowded to his standard like men free at -last, after long and tedious restraint, to make their own choice, -follow their own man. There can be no mistaking the spontaneity of the -thoroughgoing support he received. His was the new type of energy and -self-confidence bred by life outside the States that had been colonies. -It was a terrible energy, threatening sheer destruction to many a -carefully wrought arrangement handed on to us from the past; it was -a perilous self-confidence, founded in sheer strength rather than in -wisdom. The government did not pass through the throes of that signal -awakening of the new national spirit without serious rack and damage. -But it was no disease. It was only an incautious, abounding, madcap -strength which proved so dangerous in its readiness for every rash -endeavor. It was necessary that the West should be let into the play: -it was even necessary that she should assert her right to the leading -rôle. It was done without good taste, but that does not condemn it. We -have no doubt refined and schooled the hoyden influences of that crude -time, and they are vastly safer now than then, when they first came -bounding in; but they mightily stirred and enriched our blood from the -first. Now that we have thoroughly suffered this Jackson change and it -is over, we are ready to recognize it as quite as radically American as -anything in all our history. - -Lincoln, nevertheless, rather than Jackson, was the supreme American -of our history. In Clay, East and West were mixed without being fused -or harmonized: he seems like two men. In Jackson there was not even -a mixture; he was all of a piece, and altogether unacceptable to -some parts of the country,--a frontier statesman. But in Lincoln the -elements were combined and harmonized. The most singular thing about -the wonderful career of the man is the way in which he steadily grew -into a national stature. He began an amorphous, unlicked cub, bred -in the rudest of human lairs; but, as he grew, everything formed, -informed, transformed him. The process was slow but unbroken. He was -not fit to be President until he actually became President. He was fit -then because, learning everything as he went, he had found out how much -there was to learn, and had still an infinite capacity for learning. -The quiet voices of sentiment and murmurs of resolution that went -whispering through the land, his ear always caught, when others could -hear nothing but their own words. He never ceased to be a common man: -that was his source of strength. But he was a common man with genius, -a genius for things American, for insight into the common thought, for -mastery of the fundamental things of politics that inhere in human -nature and cast hardly more than their shadows on constitutions; for -the practical niceties of affairs; for judging men and assessing -arguments. Jackson had no social imagination: no unfamiliar community -made any impression on him. His whole fibre stiffened young, and -nothing afterward could modify or even deeply affect it. But Lincoln -was always a-making; he would have died unfinished if the terrible -storms of the war had not stung him to learn in those four years -what no other twenty could have taught him. And, as he stands there -in his complete manhood, at the most perilous helm in Christendom, -what a marvelous composite figure he is! The whole country is summed -up in him: the rude Western strength, tempered with shrewdness and a -broad and humane wit; the Eastern conservatism, regardful of law and -devoted to fixed standards of duty. He even understood the South, as -no other Northern man of his generation did. He respected, because he -comprehended, though he could not hold, its view of the Constitution; -he appreciated the inexorable compulsions of its past in respect of -slavery; he would have secured it once more, and speedily if possible, -in its right to self-government, when the fight was fought out. To the -Eastern politicians he seemed like an accident; but to history he must -seem like a providence. - -Grant was Lincoln’s suitable instrument, a great American general, -the appropriate product of West Point. A Western man, he had no -thought of commonwealths politically separate, and was instinctively -for the Union; a man of the common people, he deemed himself always -an instrument, never a master, and did his work, though ruthlessly, -without malice; a sturdy, hard-willed, taciturn man, a sort of -Lincoln the Silent in thought and spirit. He does not appeal to the -imagination very deeply; there is a sort of common greatness about -him, great gifts combined singularly with a great mediocrity; but such -peculiarities seem to make him all the more American,--national in -spirit, thoroughgoing in method, masterful in purpose. - -And yet it is no contradiction to say that Robert E. Lee also was a -great American. He fought on the opposite side, but he fought in the -same spirit, and for a principle which is in a sense scarcely less -American than the principle of Union. He represented the idea of the -inherent--the essential--separateness of self-government. This was -not the principle of secession: that principle involved the separate -right of the several self-governing units of the federal system to -judge of national questions independently, and as a check upon the -federal government,--to adjudge the very objects of the Union. Lee did -not believe in secession, but he did believe in the local rootage of -all government. This is at the bottom, no doubt, an English idea; but -it has had a characteristic American development. It is the reverse -side of the shield which bears upon its obverse the devices of the -Union, a side too much overlooked and obscured since the war. It -conceives the individual State a community united by the most intimate -associations, the first home and foster-mother of every man born into -the citizenship of the nation. Lee considered himself a member of one -of these great families; he could not conceive of the nation apart from -the State: above all, he could not live in the nation divorced from his -neighbors. His own community should decide his political destiny and -duty. - -This was also the spirit of Patrick Henry and of Sam Houston,--men -much alike in the cardinal principle of their natures. Patrick Henry -resisted the formation of the Union only because he feared to disturb -the local rootage of self-government, to disperse power so widely -that neighbors could not control it. It was not a disloyal or a -separatist spirit, but only a jealous spirit of liberty. Sam Houston, -too, deemed the character a community should give itself so great a -matter that the community, once made, ought itself to judge of the -national associations most conducive to its liberty and progress. -Without liberty of this intensive character there could have been no -vital national liberty; and Sam Houston, Patrick Henry, and Robert E. -Lee are none the less great Americans because they represented only -one cardinal principle of the national life. Self-government has its -intrinsic antinomies as well as its harmonies. - -Among men of letters Lowell is doubtless most typically American, -though Curtis must find an eligible place in the list. Lowell was -self-conscious, though the truest greatness is not; he was a trifle too -“smart,” besides, and there is no “smartness” in great literature. But -both the self-consciousness and the smartness must be admitted to be -American; and Lowell was so versatile, so urbane, of so large a spirit, -and so admirable in the scope of his sympathies, that he must certainly -go on the calendar. - -There need be no fear that we shall be obliged to stop with Lowell in -literature, or with any of the men who have been named in the field -of achievement. We shall not in the future have to take one type -of Americanism at a time. The frontier is gone: it has reached the -Pacific. The country grows rapidly homogeneous. With the same pace it -grows various, and multiform in all its life. The man of the simple or -local type cannot any longer deal in the great manner with any national -problem. The great men of our future must be of the composite type -of greatness: sound-hearted, hopeful, confident of the validity of -liberty, tenacious of the deeper principles of American institutions, -but with the old rashness schooled and sobered, and instinct tempered -by instruction. They must be wise with an adult, not with an -adolescent wisdom. Some day we shall be of one mind, our ideals fixed, -our purposes harmonized, our nationality complete and consentaneous: -then will come our great literature and our greatest men. - - - - -VIII. - -THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY.[1] - - [1] An address delivered before the New Jersey Historical Society. - - -In the field of history, learning should be deemed to stand among the -people and in the midst of life. Its function there is not one of -pride merely: to make complaisant record of deeds honorably done and -plans nobly executed in the past. It has also a function of guidance: -to build high places whereon to plant the clear and flaming lights of -experience, that they may shine alike upon the roads already traveled -and upon the paths not yet attempted. The historian is also a sort -of prophet. Our memories direct us. They give us knowledge of our -character, alike in its strength and in its weakness: and it is so we -get our standards for endeavor,--our warnings and our gleams of hope. -It is thus we learn what manner of nation we are of, and divine what -manner of people we should be. - -And this is not in national records merely. Local history is the -ultimate substance of national history. There could be no epics were -pastorals not also true,--no patriotism, were there no homes, no -neighbors, no quiet round of civic duty; and I, for my part, do not -wonder that scholarly men have been found not a few who, though they -might have shone upon a larger field, where all eyes would have seen -them win their fame, yet chose to pore all their lives long upon the -blurred and scattered records of a country-side, where there was -nothing but an old church or an ancient village. The history of a -nation is only the history of its villages written large. I only marvel -that these local historians have not seen more in the stories they -have sought to tell. Surely here, in these old hamlets that antedate -the cities, in these little communities that stand apart and yet give -their young life to the nation, is to be found the very authentic stuff -of romance for the mere looking. There is love and courtship and eager -life and high devotion up and down all the lines of every genealogy. -What strength, too, and bold endeavor in the cutting down of forests -to make the clearings; what breath of hope and discovery in scaling -for the first time the nearest mountains; what longings ended or begun -upon the coming in of ships into the harbor; what pride of earth in the -rivalries of the village; what thoughts of heaven in the quiet of the -rural church! What forces of slow and steadfast endeavor there were -in the building of a great city upon the foundations of a hamlet: and -how the plot broadens and thickens and grows dramatic as communities -widen into states! Here, surely, sunk deep in the very fibre of the -stuff, are the colors of the great story of men,--the lively touches of -reality and the striking images of life. - -It must be admitted, I know, that local history can be made deadly dull -in the telling. The men who reconstruct it seem usually to build with -kiln-dried stuff,--as if with a purpose it should last. But that is -not the fault of the subject. National history may be written almost -as ill, if due pains be taken to dry it out. It is a trifle more -difficult: because merely to speak of national affairs is to give hint -of great forces and of movements blown upon by all the airs of the wide -continent. The mere largeness of the scale lends to the narrative a -certain dignity and spirit. But some men will manage to be dull though -they should speak of creation. In writing of local history the thing -is fatally easy. For there is some neighborhood history that lacks any -large significance, which is without horizon or outlook. There are -details in the history of every community which it concerns no man to -know again when once they are past and decently buried in the records: -and these are the very details, no doubt, which it is easiest to find -upon a casual search. It is easier to make out a list of county clerks -than to extract the social history of the county from the records -they have kept,--though it is not so important: and it is easier to -make a catalogue of anything than to say what of life and purpose the -catalogue stands for. This is called collecting facts “for the sake of -the facts themselves;” but if I wished to do aught for the sake of the -facts themselves I think I should serve them better by giving their -true biographies than by merely displaying their faces. - -The right and vital sort of local history is the sort which may be -written with lifted eyes,--the sort which has an horizon and an outlook -upon the world. Sometimes it may happen, indeed, that the annals of a -neighborhood disclose some singular adventure which had its beginning -and its ending there: some unwonted bit of fortune which stands unique -and lonely amidst the myriad transactions of the world of affairs, -and deserves to be told singly and for its own sake. But usually the -significance of local history is, that it is part of a greater whole. A -spot of local history is like an inn upon a highway: it is a stage upon -a far journey: it is a place the national history has passed through. -There mankind has stopped and lodged by the way. Local history is thus -less than national history only as the part is less than the whole. The -whole could not dispense with the part, would not exist without it, -could not be understood unless the part also were understood. Local -history is subordinate to national only in the sense in which each -leaf of a book is subordinate to the volume itself. Upon no single -page will the whole theme of the book be found; but each page holds -a part of the theme. Even were the history of each locality exactly -like the history of every other (which it cannot be), it would deserve -to be written,--if only to corroborate the history of the rest, and -verify it as an authentic part of the record of the race and nation. -The common elements of a nation’s life are the great elements of its -life, the warp and woof of the fabric. They cannot be too much or too -substantially verified and explicated. It is so that history is made -solid and fit for use and wear. - -Our national history, of course, has its own great and spreading -pattern, which can be seen in its full form and completeness only when -the stuff of our national life is laid before us in broad surfaces and -upon an ample scale. But the detail of the pattern, the individual -threads of the great fabric, are to be found only in local history. -There is all the intricate weaving, all the delicate shading, all -the nice refinement of the pattern,--gold thread mixed with fustian, -fine thread laid upon coarse, shade combined with shade. Assuredly -it is this that gives to local history its life and importance. The -idea, moreover, furnishes a nice criterion of interest. The life of -some localities is, obviously, more completely and intimately a part -of the national pattern than the life of other localities, which are -more separate and, as it were, put upon the border of the fabric. To -come at once and very candidly to examples, the local history of the -Middle States,--New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania,--is much more -structurally a part of the characteristic life of the nation as a whole -than is the history of the New England communities or of the several -States and regions of the South. I know that such a heresy will sound -very rank in the ears of some: for I am speaking against accepted -doctrine. But acceptance, be it never so general, does not make a -doctrine true. - -Our national history has been written for the most part by New England -men. All honor to them! Their scholarship and their characters alike -have given them an honorable enrollment amongst the great names of our -literary history; and no just man would say aught to detract, were it -never so little, from their well-earned fame. They have written our -history, nevertheless, from but a single point of view. From where they -sit, the whole of the great development looks like an Expansion of New -England. Other elements but play along the sides of the great process -by which the Puritan has worked out the development of nation and -polity. It is he who has gone out and possessed the land: the man of -destiny, the type and impersonation of a chosen people. To the Southern -writer, too, the story looks much the same, if it be but followed to -its culmination,--to its final storm and stress and tragedy in the -great war. It is the history of the Suppression of the South. Spite of -all her splendid contributions to the steadfast accomplishment of the -great task of building the nation; spite of the long leadership of her -statesmen in the national counsels; spite of her joint achievements in -the conquest and occupation of the West, the South was at last turned -upon on every hand, rebuked, proscribed, defeated. The history of the -United States, we have learned, was, from the settlement at Jamestown -to the surrender at Appomattox, a long-drawn contest for mastery -between New England and the South,--and the end of the contest we -know. All along the parallels of latitude ran the rivalry, in those -heroical days of toil and adventure during which population crossed -the continent, like an army advancing its encampments. Up and down the -great river of the continent, too, and beyond, up the slow incline of -the vast steppes that lift themselves toward the crowning towers of the -Rockies,--beyond that, again, in the gold-fields and upon the green -plains of California, the race for ascendency struggled on,--till at -length there was a final coming face to face, and the masterful folk -who had come from the loins of New England won their consummate victory. - -It is a very dramatic form for the story. One almost wishes it were -true. How fine a unity it would give our epic! But perhaps, after all, -the real truth is more interesting. The life of the nation cannot -be reduced to these so simple terms. These two great forces, of the -North and of the South, unquestionably existed,--were unquestionably -projected in their operation out upon the great plane of the continent, -there to combine or repel, as circumstances might determine. But -the people that went out from the North were not an unmixed people; -they came from the great Middle States as well as from New England. -Their transplantation into the West was no more a reproduction of New -England or New York or Pennsylvania or New Jersey than Massachusetts -was a reproduction of old England, or New Netherland a reproduction -of Holland. The Southern people, too, whom they met by the western -rivers and upon the open prairies, were transformed, as they themselves -were, by the rough fortunes of the frontier. A mixture of peoples, -a modification of mind and habit, a new round of experiment and -adjustment amidst the novel life of the baked and unfilled plain, and -the far valleys with the virgin forests still thick upon them: a new -temper, a new spirit of adventure, a new impatience of restraint, a new -license of life,--these are the characteristic notes and measures of -the time when the nation spread itself at large upon the continent, and -was transformed from a group of colonies into a family of States. - -The passes of these eastern mountains were the arteries of the -nation’s life. The real breath of our growth and manhood came into our -nostrils when first, like Governor Spotswood and that gallant company -of Virginian gentlemen that rode with him in the far year 1716, the -Knights of the Order of the Golden Horseshoe, our pioneers stood upon -the ridges of the eastern hills and looked down upon those reaches of -the continent where lay the untrodden paths of the westward migration. -There, upon the courses of the distant rivers that gleamed before them -in the sun, down the farther slopes of the hills beyond, out upon the -broad fields that lay upon the fertile banks of the “Father of Waters,” -up the long tilt of the continent to the vast hills that looked out -upon the Pacific--there were the regions in which, joining with people -from every race and clime under the sun, they were to make the great -compounded nation whose liberty and mighty works of peace were to -cause all the world to stand at gaze. Thither were to come Frenchmen, -Scandinavians, Celts, Dutch, Slavs,--men of the Latin races and of the -races of the Orient, as well as men, a great host, of the first stock -of the settlements: English, Scots, Scots-Irish,--like New England men, -but touched with the salt of humor, hard, and yet neighborly too. For -this great process of growth by grafting, of modification no less than -of expansion, the colonies,--the original thirteen States,--were only -preliminary studies and first experiments. But the experiments that -most resembled the great methods by which we peopled the continent -from side to side and knit a single polity across all its length and -breadth, were surely the experiments made from the very first in the -Middle States of our Atlantic seaboard. - -Here from the first were mixture of population, variety of element, -combination of type, as if of the nation itself in small. Here was -never a simple body, a people of but a single blood and extraction, a -polity and a practice brought straight from one motherland. The life of -these States was from the beginning like the life of the country: they -have always shown the national pattern. In New England and the South it -was very different. There some of the great elements of the national -life were long in preparation: but separately and with an individual -distinction; without mixture,--for long almost without movement. That -the elements thus separately prepared were of the greatest importance, -and run everywhere like chief threads of the pattern through all our -subsequent life, who can doubt? They give color and tone to every part -of the figure. The very fact that they are so distinct and separately -evident throughout, the very emphasis of individuality they carry with -them, but proves their distinct origin. The other elements of our life, -various though they be, and of the very fibre, giving toughness and -consistency to the fabric, are merged in its texture, united, confused, -almost indistinguishable, so thoroughly are they mixed, intertwined, -interwoven, like the essential strands of the stuff itself: but these -of the Puritan and the Southerner, though they run everywhere with the -rest and seem upon a superficial view themselves the body of the cloth, -in fact modify rather than make it. - -What in fact has been the course of American history? How is it to be -distinguished from European history? What features has it of its own, -which give it its distinctive plan and movement? We have suffered, it -is to be feared, a very serious limitation of view until recent years -by having all our history written in the East. It has smacked strongly -of a local flavor. It has concerned itself too exclusively with the -origins and Old-World derivations of our story. Our historians have -made their march from the sea with their heads over shoulder, their -gaze always backward upon the landing-places and homes of the first -settlers. In spite of the steady immigration, with its persistent tide -of foreign blood, they have chosen to speak often and to think always -of our people as sprung after all from a common stock, bearing a family -likeness in every branch, and following all the while old, familiar, -family ways. The view is the more misleading because it is so large a -part of the truth without being all of it. The common British stock -did first make the country, and has always set the pace. There were -common institutions up and down the coast; and these had formed and -hardened for a persistent growth before the great westward migration -began which was to re-shape and modify every element of our life. The -national government itself was set up and made strong by success while -yet we lingered for the most part upon the eastern coast and feared a -too distant frontier. - -But, the beginnings once safely made, change set in apace. Not only -so: there had been slow change from the first. We have no frontier -now, we are told,--except a broken fragment, it may be, here and there -in some barren corner of the western lands, where some inhospitable -mountain still shoulders us out, or where men are still lacking to -break the baked surface of the plains and occupy them in the very teeth -of hostile nature. But at first it was all frontier,--a mere strip of -settlements stretched precariously upon the sea-edge of the wilds: an -untouched continent in front of them, and behind them an unfrequented -sea that almost never showed so much as the momentary gleam of a sail. -Every step in the slow process of settlement was but a step of the -same kind as the first, an advance to a new frontier like the old. For -long we lacked, it is true, that new breed of frontiersmen born in -after years beyond the mountains. Those first frontiersmen had still -a touch of the timidity of the Old World in their blood: they lacked -the frontier heart. They were “Pilgrims” in very fact,--exiled, not at -home. Fine courage they had: and a steadfastness in their bold design -which it does a faint-hearted age good to look back upon. There was -no thought of drawing back. Steadily, almost calmly, they extended -their seats. They built homes, and deemed it certain their children -would live there after them. But they did not love the rough, uneasy -life for its own sake. How long did they keep, if they could, within -sight of the sea! The wilderness was their refuge; but how long before -it became their joy and hope! Here was their destiny cast; but their -hearts lingered and held back. It was only as generations passed and -the work widened about them that their thought also changed, and a new -thrill sped along their blood. Their life had been new and strange -from their first landing in the wilderness. Their houses, their food, -their clothing, their neighborhood dealings were all such as only the -frontier brings. Insensibly they were themselves changed. The strange -life became familiar; their adjustment to it was at length unconscious -and without effort; they had no plans which were not inseparably a part -and a product of it. But, until they had turned their backs once for -all upon the sea; until they saw their western borders cleared of the -French; until the mountain passes had grown familiar, and the lands -beyond the central and constant theme of their hope, the goal and dream -of their young men, they did not become an American people. - -When they did, the great determining movement of our history began. The -very visages of the people changed. That alert movement of the eye, -that openness to every thought of enterprise or adventure, that nomadic -habit which knows no fixed home and has plans ready to be carried any -whither,--all the marks of the authentic type of the “American” as we -know him came into our life. The crack of the whip and the song of the -teamster, the heaving chorus of boatmen poling their heavy rafts upon -the rivers, the laughter of the camp, the sound of bodies of men in the -still forests, became the characteristic notes in our air. A roughened -race, embrowned in the sun, hardened in manner by a coarse life of -change and danger, loving the rude woods and the crack of the rifle, -living to begin something new every day, striking with the broad and -open hand, delicate in nothing but the touch of the trigger, leaving -cities in its track as if by accident rather than design, settling -again to the steady ways of a fixed life only when it must: such was -the American people whose achievement it was to be to take possession -of their continent from end to end ere their national government was -a single century old. The picture is a very singular one! Settled -life and wild side by side: civilization frayed at the edges,--taken -forward in rough and ready fashion, with a song and a swagger,--not by -statesmen, but by woodsmen and drovers, with axes and whips and rifles -in their hands, clad in buckskin, like huntsmen. - -It has been said that we have here repeated some of the first processes -of history; that the life and methods of our frontiersmen take us -back to the fortunes and hopes of the men who crossed Europe when her -forests, too, were still thick upon her. But the difference is really -very fundamental, and much more worthy of remark than the likeness. -Those shadowy masses of men whom we see moving upon the face of the -earth in the far-away, questionable days when states were forming: even -those stalwart figures we see so well as they emerge from the deep -forests of Germany, to displace the Roman in all his western provinces -and set up the states we know and marvel upon at this day, show us -men working their new work at their own level. They do not turn back -a long cycle of years from the old and settled states, the ordered -cities, the tilled fields, and the elaborated governments of an ancient -civilization, to begin as it were once more at the beginning. They -carry alike their homes and their states with them in the camp and upon -the ordered march of the host. They are men of the forest, or else -men hardened always to take the sea in open boats. They live no more -roughly in the new lands than in the old. The world has been frontier -for them from the first. They may go forward with their life in these -new seats from where they left off in the old. How different the -circumstances of our first settlement and the building of new states on -this side the sea! Englishmen, bred in law and ordered government ever -since the Norman lawyers were followed a long five hundred years ago -across the narrow seas by those masterful administrators of the strong -Plantagenet race, leave an ancient realm and come into a wilderness -where states have never been; leave a land of art and letters, which -saw but yesterday “the spacious times of great Elizabeth,” where -Shakespeare still lives in the gracious leisure of his closing days at -Stratford, where cities teem with trade and men go bravely dight in -cloth of gold, and turn back six centuries,--nay, a thousand years and -more,--to the first work of building states in a wilderness! They bring -the steadied habits and sobered thoughts of an ancient realm into the -wild air of an untouched continent. The weary stretches of a vast sea -lie, like a full thousand years of time, between them and the life -in which till now all their thought was bred. Here they stand, as it -were, with all their tools left behind, centuries struck out of their -reckoning, driven back upon the long dormant instincts and forgotten -craft of their race, not used this long age. Look how singular a -thing: the work of a primitive race, the thought of a civilized! Hence -the strange, almost grotesque groupings of thought and affairs in -that first day of our history. Subtle politicians speak the phrases -and practice the arts of intricate diplomacy from council chambers -placed within log huts within a clearing. Men in ruffs and lace and -polished shoe-buckles thread the lonely glades of primeval forests. -The microscopical distinctions of the schools, the thin notes of a -metaphysical theology are woven in and out through the labyrinths of -grave sermons that run hours long upon the still air of the wilderness. -Belief in dim refinements of dogma is made the test for man or woman -who seeks admission to a company of pioneers. When went there by an -age since the great flood when so singular a thing was seen as this: -thousands of civilized men suddenly rusticated and bade do the work of -primitive peoples,--Europe _frontiered_! - -Of course there was a deep change wrought, if not in these men, at any -rate in their children; and every generation saw the change deepen. It -must seem to every thoughtful man a notable thing how, while the change -was wrought, the simplest of things complex were revealed in the clear -air of the New World: how all accidentals seemed to fall away from the -structure of government, and the simple first principles were laid bare -that abide always; how social distinctions were stripped off, shown -to be the mere cloaks and masks they were, and every man brought once -again to a clear realization of his actual relations to his fellows! -It was as if trained and sophisticated men had been rid of a sudden -of their sophistication and of all the theory of their life, and left -with nothing but their discipline of faculty, a schooled and sobered -instinct. And the fact that we kept always, for close upon three -hundred years, a like element in our life, a frontier people always in -our van, is, so far, the central and determining fact of our national -history. “East” and “West,” an ever-changing line, but an unvarying -experience and a constant leaven of change working always within -the body of our folk. Our political, our economic, our social life -has felt this potent influence from the wild border all our history -through. The “West” is the great word of our history. The “Westerner” -has been the type and master of our American life. Now at length, as I -have said, we have lost our frontier: our front lies almost unbroken -along all the great coast line of the western sea. The Westerner, in -some day soon to come, will pass out of our life, as he so long ago -passed out of the life of the Old World. Then a new epoch will open for -us. Perhaps it has opened already. Slowly we shall grow old, compact -our people, study the delicate adjustments of an intricate society, -and ponder the niceties, as we have hitherto pondered the bulks and -structural framework, of government. Have we not, indeed, already come -to these things? But the past we know. We can “see it steady and see it -whole;” and its central movement and motive are gross and obvious to -the eye. - -Till the first century of the Constitution is rounded out we stand all -the while in the presence of that stupendous westward movement which -has filled the continent: so vast, so various, at times so tragical, so -swept by passion. Through all the long time there has been a line of -rude settlements along our front wherein the same tests of power and -of institutions were still being made that were made first upon the -sloping banks of the rivers of old Virginia and within the long sweep -of the Bay of Massachusetts. The new life of the West has reacted all -the while--who shall say how powerfully?--upon the older life of the -East; and yet the East has moulded the West as if she sent forward to -it through every decade of the long process the chosen impulses and -suggestions of history. The West has taken strength, thought, training, -selected aptitudes out of the old treasures of the East,--as if out -of a new Orient; while the East has itself been kept fresh, vital, -alert, originative by the West, her blood quickened all the while, her -youth through every age renewed. Who can say in a word, in a sentence, -in a volume, what destinies have been variously wrought, with what -new examples of growth and energy, while, upon this unexampled scale, -community has passed beyond community across the vast reaches of this -great continent! - -The great process is the more significant because it has been -distinctively a national process. Until the Union was formed and we -had consciously set out upon a separate national career, we moved -but timidly across the nearer hills. Our most remote settlements lay -upon the rivers and in the open glades of Tennessee and Kentucky. It -was in the years that immediately succeeded the war of 1812 that -the movement into the West began to be a mighty migration. Till then -our eyes had been more often in the East than in the West. Not only -were foreign questions to be settled and our standing among the -nations to be made good, but we still remained acutely conscious -and deliberately conservative of our Old-World connections. For all -we were so new a people and lived so simple and separate a life, we -had still the sobriety and the circumspect fashions of action that -belong to an old society. We were, in government and manners, but a -disconnected part of the world beyond the seas. Its thought and habit -still set us our standards of speech and action. And this, not because -of imitation, but because of actual and long abiding political and -social connection with the mother country. Our statesmen,--strike but -the names of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry from the list, together -with all like untutored spirits, who stood for the new, unreverencing -ardor of a young democracy,--our statesmen were such men as might -have taken their places in the House of Commons or in the Cabinet at -home as naturally and with as easy an adjustment to their place and -task as in the Continental Congress or in the immortal Constitutional -Convention. Think of the stately ways and the grand air and the -authoritative social understandings of the generation that set the new -government afoot,--the generation of Washington and John Adams. Think, -too, of the conservative tradition that guided all the early history -of that government: that early line of gentlemen Presidents: that -steady “cabinet succession to the Presidency” which came at length to -seem almost like an oligarchy to the impatient men who were shut out -from it. The line ended, with a sort of chill, in stiff John Quincy -Adams, too cold a man to be a people’s prince after the old order of -Presidents; and the year 1829, which saw Jackson come in, saw the old -order go out. - -The date is significant. Since the war of 1812, undertaken as if to -set us free to move westward, seven States had been admitted to the -Union: and the whole number of States was advanced to twenty-four. -Eleven new States had come into partnership with the old thirteen. The -voice of the West rang through all our counsels; and, in Jackson, the -new partners took possession of the Government. It is worth while to -remember how men stood amazed at the change: how startled, chagrined, -dismayed the conservative States of the East were at the revolution -they saw effected, the riot of change they saw set in; and no man who -has once read the singular story can forget how the eight years Jackson -reigned saw the Government, and politics themselves, transformed. For -long,--the story being written in the regions where the shock and -surprise of the change was greatest,--the period of this momentous -revolution was spoken of amongst us as a period of degeneration, the -birth-time of a deep and permanent demoralization in our politics. -But we see it differently now. Whether we have any taste or stomach -for that rough age or not, however much we may wish that the old -order might have stood, the generation of Madison and Adams have been -prolonged, and the good tradition of the early days handed on unbroken -and unsullied, we now know that what the nation underwent in that day -of change was not degeneration, great and perilous as were the errors -of the time, but regeneration. The old order was changed, once and for -all. A new nation stepped, with a touch of swagger, upon the stage,--a -nation which had broken alike with the traditions and with the wisely -wrought experience of the Old World, and which, with all the haste and -rashness of youth, was minded to work out a separate policy and destiny -of its own. It was a day of hazards, but there was nothing sinister -at the heart of the new plan. It was a wasteful experiment, to fling -out, without wise guides, upon untried ways; but an abounding continent -afforded enough and to spare even for the wasteful. It was sure to -be so with a nation that came out of the secluded vales of a virgin -continent. It was the bold frontier voice of the West sounding in -affairs. The timid shivered, but the robust waxed strong and rejoiced, -in the tonic air of the new day. - -It was then we swung out into the main paths of our history. The new -voices that called us were first silvery, like the voice of Henry -Clay, and spoke old familiar words of eloquence. The first spokesmen -of the West even tried to con the classics, and spoke incongruously -in the phrases of politics long dead and gone to dust, as Benton did. -But presently the tone changed, and it was the truculent and masterful -accents of the real frontiersman that rang dominant above the rest, -harsh, impatient, and with an evident dash of temper. The East slowly -accustomed itself to the change; caught the movement, though it -grumbled and even trembled at the pace; and managed most of the time -to keep in the running. But it was always henceforth to be the West -that set the pace. There is no mistaking the questions that have ruled -our spirits as a nation during the present century. The public land -question, the tariff question, and the question of slavery,--these -dominate from first to last. It was the West that made each one of -these the question that it was. Without the free lands to which every -man who chose might go, there would not have been that easy prosperity -of life and that high standard of abundance which seemed to render -it necessary that, if we were to have manufactures and a diversified -industry at all, we should foster new undertakings by a system of -protection which would make the profits of the factory as certain and -as abundant as the profits of the farm. It was the constant movement -of the population, the constant march of wagon trains into the West, -that made it so cardinal a matter of policy whether the great national -domain should _be_ free land or not: and that was the land question. -It was the settlement of the West that transformed slavery from an -accepted institution into passionate matter of controversy. - -Slavery within the States of the Union stood sufficiently protected -by every solemn sanction the Constitution could afford. No man could -touch it there, think, or hope, or purpose what he might. But where new -States were to be made it was not so. There at every step choice must -be made: slavery or no slavery?--a new choice for every new State: a -fresh act of origination to go with every fresh act of organization. -Had there been no Territories, there could have been no slavery -question, except by revolution and contempt of fundamental law. But -with a continent to be peopled, the choice thrust itself insistently -forward at every step and upon every hand. This was the slavery -question: not what should be done to reverse the past, but what should -be done to redeem the future. It was so men of that day saw it,--and -so also must historians see it. We must not mistake the programme of -the Anti-Slavery Society for the platform of the Republican party, or -forget that the very war itself was begun ere any purpose of abolition -took shape amongst those who were statesmen and in authority. It was -a question, not of freeing men, but of preserving a Free Soil. Kansas -showed us what the problem was, not South Carolina: and it was the -Supreme Court, not the slave-owners, who formulated the matter for our -thought and purpose. - -And so, upon every hand and throughout every national question, was -the commerce between East and West made up: that commerce and exchange -of ideas, inclinations, purposes, and principles which has constituted -the moving force of our life as a nation. Men illustrate the operation -of these singular forces better than questions can: and no man -illustrates it better than Abraham Lincoln. - - “Great captains with their guns and drums - Disturb our judgment for the hour; - But at last silence comes: - These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, - Our children shall behold his fame, - The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, - Sagacious, patient, dreading praise not blame, - New birth of our new soil, the first American.” - -It is a poet’s verdict; but it rings in the authentic tone of the -seer. It must be also the verdict of history. He would be a rash man -who should say he understood Abraham Lincoln. No doubt natures deep -as his, and various almost to the point of self-contradiction, can -be sounded only by the judgment of men of a like sort,--if any such -there be. But some things we all may see and judge concerning him. -You have in him the type and flower of our growth. It is as if Nature -had made a typical American, and then had added with liberal hand the -royal quality of genius, to show us what the type could be. Lincoln -owed nothing to his birth, everything to his growth: had no training -save what he gave himself; no nurture, but only a wild and native -strength. His life was his schooling, and every day of it gave to his -character a new touch of development. His manhood not only, but his -perception also, expanded with his life. His eyes, as they looked more -and more abroad, beheld the national life, and comprehended it: and -the lad who had been so rough-cut a provincial became, when grown to -manhood, the one leader in all the nation who held the whole people -singly in his heart:--held even the Southern people there, and would -have won them back. And so we have in him what we must call the perfect -development of native strength, the rounding out and nationalization of -the provincial. Andrew Jackson was a type, not of the nation, but of -the West. For all the tenderness there was in the stormy heart of the -masterful man, and staunch and simple loyalty to all who loved him, he -learned nothing in the East; kept always the flavor of the rough school -in which he had been bred; was never more than a frontier soldier and -gentleman. Lincoln differed from Jackson by all the length of his -unmatched capacity to learn. Jackson could understand only men of his -own kind; Lincoln could understand men of all sorts and from every -region of the land: seemed himself, indeed, to be all men by turns, as -mood succeeded mood in his strange nature. He never ceased to stand, in -his bony angles, the express image of the ungainly frontiersman. His -mind never lost the vein of coarseness that had marked him grossly -when a youth. And yet how he grew and strengthened in the real stuff -of dignity and greatness: how nobly he could bear himself without the -aid of grace! He kept always the shrewd and seeing eye of the woodsman -and the hunter, and the flavor of wild life never left him: and yet -how easily his view widened to great affairs; how surely he perceived -the value and the significance of whatever touched him and made him -neighbor to itself! - -Lincoln’s marvelous capacity to extend his comprehension to the measure -of what he had in hand is the one distinguishing mark of the man: and -to study the development of that capacity in him is little less than to -study, where it is as it were perfectly registered, the national life -itself. This boy lived his youth in Illinois when it was a frontier -State. The youth of the State was coincident with his own: and man -and State kept equal pace in their striding advance to maturity. The -frontier population was an intensely political population. It felt -to the quick the throb of the nation’s life,--for the nation’s life -ran through it, going its eager way to the westward. The West was not -separate from the East. Its communities were every day receiving fresh -members from the East, and the fresh impulse of direct suggestion. -Their blood flowed to them straight from the warmest veins of the -older communities. More than that, elements which were separated in the -East were mingled in the West: which displayed to the eye as it were a -sort of epitome of the most active and permanent forces of the national -life. In such communities as these Lincoln mixed daily from the first -with men of every sort and from every quarter of the country. With them -he discussed neighborhood politics, the politics of the State, the -politics of the nation,--and his mind became traveled as he talked. -How plainly amongst such neighbors, there in Illinois, must it have -become evident that national questions were centring more and more in -the West as the years went by: coming as it were to meet them. Lincoln -went twice down the Mississippi, upon the slow rafts that carried wares -to its mouth, and saw with his own eyes, so used to look directly and -point-blank upon men and affairs, characteristic regions of the South. -He worked his way slowly and sagaciously, with that larger sort of -sagacity which so marked him all his life, into the active business -of state politics; sat twice in the state legislature, and then for a -term in Congress,--his sensitive and seeing mind open all the while to -every turn of fortune and every touch of nature in the moving affairs -he looked upon. All the while, too, he continued to canvass, piece -by piece, every item of politics, as of old, with his neighbors, -familiarly around the stove, or upon the corners of the street, or -more formally upon the stump; and kept always in direct contact with -the ordinary views of ordinary men. Meanwhile he read, as nobody else -around him read, and sought to gain a complete mastery over speech, -with the conscious purpose to prevail in its use; derived zest from the -curious study of mathematical proof, and amusement as well as strength -from the practice of clean and naked statements of truth. It was all -irregularly done, but strenuously, with the same instinct throughout, -and with a steady access of facility and power. There was no sudden -leap for this man, any more than for other men, from crudeness to -finished power, from an understanding of the people of Illinois to an -understanding of the people of the United States. And thus he came -at last, with infinite pains and a wonder of endurance, to his great -national task with a self-trained capacity which no man could match, -and made upon a scale as liberal as the life of the people. You could -not then set this athlete a pace in learning or in perceiving that was -too hard for him. He knew the people and their life as no other man did -or could: and now stands in his place singular in all the annals of -mankind, the “brave, sagacious, foreseeing, patient man” of the people, -“new birth of our new soil, the first American.” - -We have here a national man presiding over sectional men. Lincoln -understood the East better than the East understood him or the -people from whom he sprung: and this is every way a very noteworthy -circumstance. For my part, I read a lesson in the singular career of -this great man. Is it possible the East remains sectional while the -West broadens to a wider view? - - “Be strong-backed, brown-handed, upright as your pines; - By the scale of a hemisphere shape your designs,” - -is an inspiring programme for the woodsman and the pioneer; but how -are you to be brown-handed in a city office? What if you never see -the upright pines? How are you to have so big a purpose on so small a -part of the hemisphere? As it has grown old, unquestionably, the East -has grown sectional. There is no suggestion of the prairie in its city -streets, or of the embrowned ranchman and farmer in its well-dressed -men. Its ports teem with shipping from Europe and the Indies. Its -newspapers run upon the themes of an Old World. It hears of the great -plains of the continent as of foreign parts, which it may never think -to see except from a car window. Its life is self-centred and selfish. -The West, save where special interests centre (as in those pockets of -silver where men’s eyes catch as it were an eager gleam from the very -ore itself): the West is in less danger of sectionalization. Who shall -say in that wide country where one region ends and another begins, or, -in that free and changing society, where one class ends and another -begins? - -This, surely, is the moral of our history. The East has spent and been -spent for the West: has given forth her energy, her young men and -her substance, for the new regions that have been a-making all the -century through. But has she learned as much as she has taught, or -taken as much as she has given? Look what it is that has now at last -taken place. The westward march has stopped, upon the final slopes of -the Pacific; and now the plot thickens. Populations turn upon their -old paths; fill in the spaces they passed by neglected in their first -journey in search of a land of promise; settle to a life such as the -East knows as well as the West,--nay, much better. With the change, the -pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face -to face, to know each other and be known: and the time has come for the -East to learn in her turn; to broaden her understanding of political -and economic conditions to the scale of a hemisphere, as her own poet -bade. Let us be sure that we get the national temperament; send our -minds abroad upon the continent, become neighbors to all the people -that live upon it, and lovers of them all, as Lincoln was. - -Read but your history aright, and you shall not find the task too -hard. Your own local history, look but deep enough, tells the tale -you must take to heart. Here upon our own seaboard, as truly as ever -in the West, was once a national frontier, with an elder East beyond -the seas. Here, too, various peoples combined, and elements separated -elsewhere effected a tolerant and wholesome mixture. Here, too, the -national stream flowed full and strong, bearing a thousand things upon -its currents. Let us resume and keep the vision of that time; know -ourselves, our neighbors, our destiny, with lifted and open eyes; see -our history truly, in its great proportions; be ourselves liberal as -the great principles we profess; and so be the people who might have -again the heroic adventures and do again the heroic work of the past. -’Tis thus we shall renew our youth and secure our age against decay. - - - - -Transcriber’s Notes - - -Simple typographical errors were corrected. - -Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a -predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they -were not changed. - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MERE LITERATURE AND OTHER -ESSAYS *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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