diff options
Diffstat (limited to '78449-h/78449-h.htm')
| -rw-r--r-- | 78449-h/78449-h.htm | 19212 |
1 files changed, 19212 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/78449-h/78449-h.htm b/78449-h/78449-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3e6d537 --- /dev/null +++ b/78449-h/78449-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,19212 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Literary Studies, Volume I | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +a { + text-decoration: none; +} + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3,h4 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} + +.nobreak { + page-break-before: avoid; +} + +hr.chap { + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + clear: both; + width: 65%; + margin-left: 17.5%; + margin-right: 17.5%; +} + +hr.tb { + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + clear: both; + width: 25%; + margin-left: 37.5%; + margin-right: 37.5%; +} + +img.w100 { + width: 100%; +} + +div.chapter { + page-break-before: always; +} + +p { + margin-top: 0.5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; + text-indent: 1em; +} + +table { + margin: 1em auto 1em auto; + max-width: 40em; + border-collapse: collapse; +} + +td { + padding-left: 2.25em; + padding-right: 0.25em; + vertical-align: top; + text-indent: -2em; + text-align: justify; +} + +.tdc { + text-align: center; + padding: 0.75em 0.25em 0.5em 0.25em; + text-indent: 0; +} + +.tdr { + text-align: right; +} + +.tdpg { + vertical-align: bottom; + text-align: right; +} + +blockquote { + font-size: 90%; + margin: 1.5em 10%; +} + +.center { + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0; +} + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.footnotes { + margin-top: 1em; + border: dashed 1px; +} + +.footnote { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + font-size: 0.9em; +} + +.footnote .label { + position: absolute; + right: 84%; + text-align: right; +} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none; +} + +.hanging { + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em; +} + +.mid { + font-size: 125%; +} + +.mt2 { + margin-top: 2em; +} + +.larger { + font-size: 150%; +} + +.noindent { + text-indent: 0; +} + +.pagenum { + position: absolute; + right: 4%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; +} + +.poetry-container { + font-size: 90%; + text-align: center; +} + +blockquote .poetry-container { + font-size: 100%; +} + +.poetry { + display: inline-block; + text-align: left; +} + +.poetry .stanza { + margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em; +} + +.poetry .verse { + padding-left: 3em; +} + +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;} +.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: -2.0em;} +.poetry .indent4 {text-indent: -1.0em;} +.poetry .indent6 {text-indent: 0.0em;} +.poetry .indent8 {text-indent: 1.0em;} +.poetry .indent10 {text-indent: 2.0em;} +.poetry .indent12 {text-indent: 3.0em;} +.poetry .indent14 {text-indent: 4.0em;} +.poetry .indent16 {text-indent: 5.0em;} +.poetry .indent18 {text-indent: 6.0em;} +.poetry .indent20 {text-indent: 7.0em;} +.poetry .indent22 {text-indent: 8.0em;} +.poetry .indent26 {text-indent: 10.0em;} +.poetry .indent36 {text-indent: 15.0em;} + +.right { + text-align: right; +} + +.smaller { + font-size: 80%; +} + +.smcap { + font-variant: small-caps; + font-style: normal; +} + +.allsmcap { + font-variant: small-caps; + font-style: normal; + text-transform: lowercase; +} + +.titlepage { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 3em; + text-indent: 0; +} + +.x-ebookmaker img { + max-width: 100%; + width: auto; + height: auto; +} + +.x-ebookmaker .poetry { + display: block; + margin-left: 1.5em; +} + +.x-ebookmaker blockquote { + margin: 1.5em 5%; +} + +/* Illustration classes */ +.illowp45 {width: 45%;} +.x-ebookmaker .illowp45 {width: 100%;} +.illowp100 {width: 100%;} + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78449 ***</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_i">[i]</span></p> + +<p class="titlepage larger">LITERARY STUDIES</p> + +<p class="center">VOL. I.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ii">[ii]</span></p> + +<p class="titlepage smaller">PRINTED BY<br> +SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE<br> +LONDON</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="frontispiece" style="max-width: 26.5625em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/frontispiece.jpg" alt="Photograph of Walter + Bagehot. Credited to “Woodburytype Company.” Below the photo, there is a + handwritten signature/dedication, which reads: “Yours, Walter Bagehot.”"> +</figure> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">[iii]</span></p> + +<p class="titlepage larger">LITERARY STUDIES</p> + +<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY THE LATE</span><br> +<span class="mid">WALTER BAGEHOT</span><br> +<span class="smaller">M.A. AND FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON</span></p> + +<p class="titlepage"><i>WITH A PREFATORY MEMOIR</i></p> + +<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">EDITED BY</span><br> +RICHARD HOLT HUTTON</p> + +<p class="titlepage">IN TWO VOLUMES</p> + +<p class="center mid">VOL. I.</p> + +<p class="titlepage"><i>FOURTH EDITION</i></p> + +<p class="titlepage">LONDON<br> +<span class="mid">LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.</span><br> +<span class="smaller">AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET<br> +1891</span></p> + +<p class="titlepage smaller"><i>All rights reserved</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">[iv]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[v]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="ADVERTISEMENT_TO_THE_FOURTH_EDITION">ADVERTISEMENT<br> +<span class="smaller"><span class="smaller">TO</span><br> +THE FOURTH EDITION.</span></h2> + +</div> + +<p>The only changes that have been made in this edition +are corrections of the press, the need of which has +been discovered since the third edition was issued. +For a few of these I have been indebted to the very +carefully annotated American edition of Mr. Bagehot’s +works brought out at Hartford, Connecticut, by Mr. +Forrest Morgan, of the Travellers’ Insurance Society. +In some cases I think that the American editor has +missed Mr. Bagehot’s meaning, and have not, therefore, +accepted his corrections.</p> + +<p class="right">R. H. H.</p> + +<p class="mt2 smaller"><i>November 1, 1890.</i></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[vi]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="ADVERTISEMENT">ADVERTISEMENT.</h2> + +</div> + +<p>Several of the following Essays were published by +Mr. <span class="smcap">Bagehot</span> himself in a volume which appeared in +1858, entitled ‘Estimates of some Englishmen and +Scotchmen’—a volume which has now long been out +of print. A good many others are republished, now +for the first time, from <i>The National Review</i>, in which +they appeared, while one other,—that on Henry Crabb +Robinson,—is taken, with the kind permission of the +Editor, from <i>The Fortnightly Review</i>; two short metaphysical +papers are from the <i>Contemporary Review</i>, and +three—one biographical and two political—from the +<i>Economist</i>. The Prefatory Memoir is also republished, +with the Editor’s permission, from <i>The Fortnightly +Review</i>. In all cases the date of the first publication +has been appended to each Essay. The Portrait was +taken in photography by Monsieur Adolphe Beau, in +1864. It has been printed by Messrs. Locke & Whitfield +by the Woodbury process.</p> + +<p class="mt2 smaller"><i>November 1878.</i></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[vii]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS<br> +<span class="smaller"><span class="smaller">OF</span><br> +THE FIRST VOLUME.</span></h2> + +</div> + +<table> + <tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td></td> + <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td><span class="smcap">Preliminary Memoir</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#MEMOIR">ix</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr smaller">ESSAY</td> + <td></td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">I.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">The First Edinburgh Reviewers</span> (1855)</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#THE_FIRST_EDINBURGH_REVIEWERS">1</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">II.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Hartley Coleridge</span> (1852)</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#HARTLEY_COLERIDGE">41</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">III.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Percy Bysshe Shelley</span> (1856)</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PERCY_BYSSHE_SHELLEY">75</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">IV.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Shakespeare—the Man</span> (1853)</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#SHAKESPEARE_THE_MAN">126</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">V.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">John Milton</span> (1859)</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#JOHN_MILTON">173</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VI.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Lady Mary Wortley Montagu</span> (1862)</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#LADY_MARY_WORTLEY_MONTAGU">221</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VII.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">William Cowper</span> (1855)</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#WILLIAM_COWPER">255</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdc" colspan="3"><i>APPENDIX.</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">I.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Letters on the French Coup d’État of 1851</span> (1852)</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_I">309</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">II.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Cæsarism as it existed in 1865</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_II">361</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">III.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson</span> (1860)</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_III">367</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[viii]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[ix]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="MEMOIR">MEMOIR<br> +<span class="smaller">BY THE +EDITOR.⁠<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></span></h2> + +</div> + +<p>It is inevitable, I suppose, that the world should judge +of a man chiefly by what it has gained in him, and lost +by his death, even though a very little reflection might +sometimes show that the special qualities which made +him so useful to the world implied others of a yet +higher order, in which, to those who knew him well, +these more conspicuous characteristics must have been +well-nigh merged. And while, of course, it has given +me great pleasure, as it must have given pleasure to all +Bagehot’s friends, to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s +evidently genuine tribute to his financial sagacity +in the Budget speech of 1877, and Lord Granville’s +eloquent acknowledgments of the value of Bagehot’s +political counsels as Editor of the <i>Economist</i>, in the +speech delivered at the London University on May 9, +1877, I have sometimes felt somewhat unreasonably +vexed that those who appreciated so well what I may +almost call the smallest part of him, appeared to know +so little of the essence of him,—of the high-spirited, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[x]</span>buoyant, subtle, speculative nature in which the imaginative +qualities were even more remarkable than the +judgment, and were, indeed, at the root of all that was +strongest in the judgment,—of the gay and dashing +humour which was the life of every conversation in +which he joined,—and of the visionary nature to which +the commonest things often seemed the most marvellous, +and the marvellous things the most intrinsically probable. +To those who hear of Bagehot only as an +original political economist and a lucid political thinker, +a curiously false image of him must be suggested. +If they are among the multitude misled by Carlyle, +who regard all political economists as ‘the dreary +professors of a dismal science,’ they will probably +conjure up an arid disquisitionist on value and cost +of production; and even if assured of Bagehot’s imaginative +power, they may perhaps only understand by +the expression, that capacity for feverish preoccupation +which makes the mention of ‘Peel’s Act’ summon up +to the faces of certain fanatics a hectic glow, or the +rumour of paper currencies blanch others with the +pallor of true passion. The truth, however, is that the +best qualities which Bagehot had, both as economist +and as politician, were of a kind which the majority of +economists and politicians do not specially possess. I +do not mean that it was in any way an accident that he +was an original thinker in either sphere; far from it. +But I do think that what he brought to political and +economical science, he brought in some sense from +<i>outside</i> their normal range,—that the man of business +and the financier in him fell within such sharp and +well-defined limits, that he knew better than most +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[xi]</span>of his class where their special weakness lay, and where +their special functions ended. This, at all events, I am +quite sure of, that so far as his judgment was sounder +than other men’s—and on many subjects it was much +sounder—it was so not in spite of, but in consequence +of, the excursive imagination and vivid humour which +are so often accused of betraying otherwise sober minds +into dangerous aberrations. In him both lucidity and +caution were directly traceable to the force of his +imagination.</p> + +<p>Walter Bagehot was born at Langport on February +3, 1826. Langport is an old-fashioned little town in +the centre of Somersetshire, which in early days returned +two members to Parliament, until the burgesses +petitioned Edward I. to relieve them of the expense of +paying their members,—a quaint piece of economy of +which Bagehot frequently made humorous boast. The +town is still a close corporation, and calls its mayor by +the old Saxon name of Portreeve, and Bagehot himself +became its Deputy-Recorder, as well as a Magistrate +for the County. Situated at the point where the river +Parret ceases to be navigable, Langport has always been +a centre of trade; and here in the last century Mr. +Samuel Stuckey founded the Somersetshire Bank, which +has since spread over the entire county, and is now the +largest private bank of issue in England. Bagehot was +the only surviving child of Mr. Thomas Watson Bagehot, +who was for thirty years Managing Director and Vice-Chairman +of Stuckey’s Banking Company, and was, as +Bagehot was fond of recalling, before he resigned that +position, the oldest joint-stock banker in the United +Kingdom. Bagehot succeeded his father as Vice-Chairman +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[xii]</span>of the Bank, when the latter retired in his old age. +His mother, a Miss Stuckey, was a niece of Mr. Samuel +Stuckey, the founder of the Banking Company, and was +a very pretty and lively woman, who had, by her previous +marriage with a son of Dr. Estlin of Bristol, been +brought at an early age into an intellectual atmosphere +by which she had greatly profited. There is no doubt +that Bagehot was greatly indebted to the constant and +careful sympathy in all his studies that both she and +his father gave him, as well as to a very studious disposition, +for his future success. Dr. Prichard, the well-known +ethnologist, was her brother-in-law, and her +son’s marked taste for science was first awakened in Dr. +Prichard’s house in Park Row, where Bagehot often +spent his half-holidays while he was a schoolboy in +Bristol. To Dr. Prichard’s ‘Races of Man’ may, indeed, +be first traced that keen interest in the speculative side +of ethnological research, the results of which are best +seen in Bagehot’s book on ‘Physics and Politics.’</p> + +<p>I first met Bagehot at University College, London, +when we were neither of us over seventeen. I was +struck by the questions put by a lad with large dark +eyes and florid complexion to the late Professor De +Morgan, who was lecturing to us, as his custom was, +on the great difficulties involved in what we thought +we all understood perfectly—such, for example, as the +meaning of 0, of negative quantities, or the grounds of +probable expectation. Bagehot’s questions showed that +he had both read and thought more on these subjects +than most of us, and I was eager to make his acquaintance, +which soon ripened into an intimate friendship, +in which there was never any intermission between that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</span>time and his death. Some will regret that Bagehot did +not go to Oxford; the reason being that his father, who +was a Unitarian, objected on principle to all doctrinal +tests, and would never have permitted a son of his to +go to either of the older Universities while those tests +were required of the undergraduates. And I am not at +all sure that University College, London, was not at that +time a much more awakening place of education for +young men than almost any Oxford college. Bagehot +himself, I suspect, thought so. Fifteen years later +he wrote, in his essay on Shelley: ‘A distinguished +pupil of the University of Oxford once observed to us, +“The use of the University of Oxford is that no one can +over-read himself there. The appetite for knowledge +is repressed.”’ And whatever may have been defective +in University College, London—and no doubt much was +defective—nothing of the kind could have been said of +it when we were students there. Indeed, in those years +London was a place with plenty of intellectual stimulus +in it for young men, while in University College itself +there was quite enough vivacious and original teaching +to make that stimulus available to the full. It is sometimes +said that it needs the quiet of a country town +remote from the capital, to foster the love of genuine +study in young men. But of this, at least, I am sure, +that Gower Street, and Oxford Street, and the New +Road, and the dreary chain of squares from Euston to +Bloomsbury, were the scenes of discussions as eager and +as abstract as ever were the sedate cloisters or the +flowery river-meadows of Cambridge or Oxford. Once, +I remember, in the vehemence of our argument as to +whether the so-called logical principle of identity (A is A) +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</span>were entitled to rank as ‘a law of thought’ or only as +a postulate of language, Bagehot and I wandered up +and down Regent Street for something like two hours in +the vain attempt to find Oxford Street:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘And yet what days were those, Parmenides,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When we were young, when we could number friends,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In all the Italian cities like ourselves,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When with elated hearts we joined your train,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ye sun-born virgins, on the road of truth!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor outward things were closed and dead to us,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But we received the shock of mighty thoughts</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On single minds with a pure natural joy;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And if the sacred load oppressed our brain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We had the power to feel the pressure eased,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The brow unbound, the thoughts flow free again</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the delightful commerce of the world.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Bagehot has himself described, evidently from his +own experience, the kind of life we lived in those days, +in an article on Oxford Reform: ‘So, too, in youth, the +real plastic energy is not in tutors, or lectures, or in +books “got up,” but in Wordsworth and Shelley, in the +books that all read because all like; in what all talk +of because all are interested; in the argumentative +walk or disputatious lounge; in the impact of young +thought upon young thought, of fresh thought on fresh +thought, of hot thought on hot thought; in mirth and +refutation, in ridicule and laughter; for these are the +free play of the natural mind, and these cannot be got +without a college.’⁠<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>⁠</p> + +<p>The late Professor Sewell, when asked to give his +pupils some clear conception of the old Greek Sophists, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xv">[xv]</span>is said to have replied that he could not do this better +than by referring them to the Professors of University +College, London. I do not think there was much force +in the sarcasm, for though Professor T. Hewitt Key, +whose restless and ingenious mind led him many a wild +dance after etymological Will-of-the-wisps—I remember, +for instance, his cheerfully accepting the suggestion +that ‘better’ and ‘bad’ (<i>melior</i> and <i>malus</i>) came from +the same root, and accounting for it by the probable +disposition of hostile tribes to call everything bad which +their enemies called good, and everything good which +their enemies called bad—may have had in him much +of the brilliance, and something also, perhaps, of the +flightiness, of the old sophist, it would be hard to imagine +men more severe in exposing pretentious conceits +and dispelling dreams of theoretic omniscience, than +Professors De Morgan, Malden, and Long. De Morgan, +who at that time was in the midst of his controversy on +formal logic with Sir William Hamilton, was, indeed, +characterised by the great Edinburgh metaphysician as +‘profound in mathematics, curious in logic, but wholly +deficient in architectonic power;’ yet, for all that, his +lectures on the Theory of Limits were a far better +logical discipline for young men than Sir William +Hamilton’s on the Law of the Unconditioned or the +Quantification of the Predicate. Professor Malden contrived +to imbue us with a love of that fastidious taste +and that exquisite nicety in treating questions of scholarship, +which has, perhaps, been more needed and less +cultivated in Gower Street than any other of the higher +elements of a college education; while Professor Long’s +caustic irony, accurate and almost ostentatiously dry +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</span>learning, and profoundly stoical temperament, were as +antithetic to the temper of the sophist as human qualities +could possibly be.</p> + +<p>The time of our college life was pretty nearly contemporaneous +with the life of the Anti-Corn-Law +League and the great agitation in favour of Free-trade. +To us this was useful rather from the general +impulse it gave to political discussion, and the literary +curiosity it excited in us as to the secret of true eloquence, +than because it anticipated in any considerable +degree the later acquired taste for economical science. +Bagehot and I seldom missed an opportunity of hearing +together the matchless practical disquisitions of Mr. +Cobden—lucid and homely, yet glowing with intense +conviction,—the profound passion and careless, though +artistic, scorn of Mr. Bright, and the artificial and elaborately +ornate periods, and witty, though somewhat +<i>ad captandum</i>, epigrams of Mr. W. J. Fox (afterwards +M.P. for Oldham). Indeed, we scoured London together +to hear any kind of oratory that had gained a reputation +of its own, and compared all we heard with the +declamation of Burke and the rhetoric of Macaulay, +many of whose later essays came out and were eagerly +discussed by us while we were together at college. In +our conversations on these essays, I remember that I +always bitterly attacked, while Bagehot moderately +defended, the glorification of compromise which marks +all Macaulay’s writings. Even in early youth Bagehot +had much of that ‘animated moderation’ which he +praises so highly in his latest work. He was a voracious +reader, especially of history, and had a far truer +appreciation of historical conditions than most young +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</span>thinkers; indeed, the broad historical sense which characterised +him from first to last, made him more alive +than ordinary students to the urgency of circumstance, +and far less disposed to indulge in abstract moral criticism +from a modern point of view. On theology, as on +all other subjects, Bagehot was at this time more Conservative +than myself, he sharing his mother’s orthodoxy, +and I at that time accepting heartily the Unitarianism +of my own people. Theology was, however, I +think, the only subject on which, in later life, we, to +some degree at least, exchanged places, though he never +at any time, however doubtful he may have become on +some of the cardinal issues of historical Christianity, +accepted the Unitarian position. Indeed, within the +last two or three years of his life, he spoke on one +occasion of the Trinitarian doctrine as probably the best +account which human reason could render of the +mystery of the self-existent mind.</p> + +<p>In those early days Bagehot’s manner was often +supercilious. We used to attack him for his intellectual +arrogance—his ὕβρις we called it, in our college +slang—a quality which I believe was not really in him, +though he had then much of its external appearance. +Nevertheless his genuine contempt for what was intellectually +feeble was not accompanied by an even adequate +appreciation of his own powers. At college, +however, his satirical ‘Hear, hear,’ was a formidable +sound in the debating society, and one which took the +heart out of many a younger speaker; and the ironical +‘How much?’ with which in conversation he would +meet an over-eloquent expression, was always of a +nature to reduce a man, as the mathematical phrase +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xviii">[xviii]</span>goes, to his ‘lowest terms.’ In maturer life he became +much gentler and mellower, and often even delicately +considerate for others; but his inner scorn for ineffectual +thought remained, in some degree, though +it was very reticently expressed, to the last. For instance, +I remember his attacking me for my mildness +in criticising a book which, though it professed to rest +on a basis of clear thought, really missed all its points. +‘There is a pale, whitey-brown substance,’ he wrote to +me, ‘in the man’s books, which people who don’t think +take for thought, but it isn’t;’ and he upbraided me +much for not saying plainly that the man was a muff. +In his youth this scorn for anything like the vain beating +of the wings in the attempt to think, was at its +maximum. It was increased, I think, by that which +was one of his greatest qualities, his remarkable ‘detachment’ +of mind—in other words, his comparative +inaccessibility to the contagion of blind sympathy. +Most men, more or less unconsciously, shrink from +even <i>thinking</i> what they feel to be out of sympathy +with the feelings of their neighbours, unless under some +strong incentive to do so; and in this way the sources +of much true and important criticism are dried up, +through the mere diffusion and ascendancy of conventional +but sincere habits of social judgment. And no +doubt for the greater number of us this is much the +best. We are worth more for the purpose of constituting +and strengthening the cohesive power of the +social bond, than we should ever be worth for the +purpose of criticising feebly—and with little effect, +perhaps, except the disorganising effect of seeming ill-nature—the +various incompetences and miscarriages of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xix">[xix]</span>our neighbours’ intelligence. But Bagehot’s intellect +was always far too powerful and original to render him +available for the function of mere social cement; and +full as he was of genuine kindness and hearty personal +affections, he certainly had not in any high degree that +sensitive instinct as to what others would feel, which so +often shapes even the thoughts of men, and still oftener +their speech, into mild and complaisant, but unmeaning +and unfruitful, forms.</p> + +<p>Thus it has been said that in his very amusing +article on Crabb Robinson, published in the <i>Fortnightly +Review</i> for August 1869, he was more than a little +rough in his delineation of that quaint old friend of +our earlier days. And certainly there is something of +the naturalist’s realistic manner of describing the habits +of a new species, in the paper, though there is not a +grain of malice or even depreciatory bias in it, and +though there is a very sincere regard manifested +throughout. But that essay will illustrate admirably +what I mean by saying that Bagehot’s detachment of +mind, and the deficiency in him of any aptitude for +playing the part of mere social cement, tended to give +the impression of an intellectual arrogance which—certainly +in the sense of self-esteem or self-assertion—did +not in the least belong to him. In the essay I have +just mentioned he describes how Crabb Robinson, when +he gave his somewhat famous breakfast-parties, used to +forget to make the tea, then lost his keys, then told a +long story about a bust of Wieland during the extreme +agony of his guests’ appetites, and finally, perhaps, +withheld the cup of tea he had at last poured out, +while he regaled them with a poem of Wordsworth’s +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xx">[xx]</span>or a diatribe against Hazlitt. And Bagehot adds, ‘The +more astute of his guests used to breakfast before they +came, and then there was much interest in seeing a +steady literary man, who did not understand the region, +in agonies at having to hear three stories before +he got his tea, one again between his milk and his +sugar, another between his butter and his toast, and +additional zest in making a stealthy inquiry that was +sure to intercept the coming delicacies by bringing on +Schiller and Goethe.’ The only ‘astute’ person referred +to was, I imagine, Bagehot himself, who confessed to +me, much to my amusement, that this was always his +own precaution before one of Crabb Robinson’s breakfasts. +I doubt if anybody else ever thought of it. It +was very characteristic in him that he should have +not only noticed—for that, of course, anyone might +do—this weak element in Crabb Robinson’s breakfasts, +but should have kept it so distinctly before his +mind as to make it the centre, as it were, of a policy, +and the opportunity of a mischievous stratagem to +try the patience of others. It showed how much of +the social naturalist there was in him. If any race of +animals could understand a naturalist’s account of their +ways and habits, and of the devices he adopted to get +those ways and habits more amusingly or instructively +displayed before him, no doubt they would think that +he was a cynic; and it was this intellectual detachment, +as of a social naturalist, from the society in which he +moved, which made Bagehot’s remarks often seem +somewhat harsh, when, in fact, they were animated not +only by no suspicion of malice, but by the most cordial +and earnest friendliness. Owing to this separateness of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxi">[xxi]</span>mind, he described more strongly and distinctly traits +which, when delineated by a friend, we expect to find +painted in the softened manner of one who is half disposed +to imitate or adopt them.</p> + +<p>Yet, though I have used the word ‘naturalist’ to +denote the keen and solitary observation with which +Bagehot watched society, no word describes him worse, +if we attribute to it any of that coldness and stillness +of curiosity which we are apt to associate with scientific +vigilance. Especially in his youth, buoyancy, vivacity, +velocity of thought, were of the essence of the impression +which he made. He had high spirits and great +capacities for enjoyment, great sympathies indeed with +the old English Cavalier. In his Essay on Macaulay he +paints that character with profound sympathy:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘What historian, indeed,’ he says, ‘has ever estimated the Cavalier +character? There is Clarendon, the grave, rhetorical, decorous, +lawyer—piling words, congealing arguments—very stately, a little +grim. There is Hume, the Scotch metaphysician, who has made out +the best case for such people as never were, for a Charles who never +died, for a Strafford who could never have been attainted, a saving, +calculating North-countryman, fat, impassive, who lived on eightpence +a day. What have these people to do with an enjoying English +gentleman? Talk of the ways of spreading a wholesome Conservatism +throughout the country ... as far as communicating and +establishing your creed is concerned, try a little pleasure. 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 that 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.’⁠<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>⁠</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>And that aptly represents himself. Such arrogance +as he seemed to have in early life was the arrogance as +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxii">[xxii]</span>much of enjoyment as of detachment of mind—the <i>insouciance</i> +of the old Cavalier as much at least as the +calm of a mind not accessible to the contagion of social +feelings. He always talked, in youth, of his spirits as +inconveniently high; and once wrote to me that he did +not think they were quite as ‘boisterous’ as they had +been, and that his fellow-creatures were not sorry for +the abatement; nevertheless, he added, ‘I am quite fat, +gross, and ruddy.’ He was, indeed, excessively fond of +hunting, vaulting, and almost all muscular effort, so +that his life would be wholly misconceived by anyone +who, hearing of his ‘detachment’ of thought, should +picture his mind as a vigilantly observant, far-away +intelligence, such as Hawthorne’s, for example. He +liked to be in the thick of the <i>mêlée</i> when talk grew +warm, though he was never so absorbed in it as not to +keep his mind cool.</p> + +<p>As I said, Bagehot was a Somersetshire man, with +all the richness of nature and love for the external +glow of life which the most characteristic counties of +the South-west of England contrive to give to their +most characteristic sons:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘This north-west corner of Spain,’ he wrote once to a newspaper +from the Pyrenees, ‘is the only place out of England where I should +like to live. It is a sort of better Devonshire; the coast is of the +same kind, the sun is more brilliant, the sea is more brilliant, and +there are mountains in the background. I have seen some more +beautiful places and many grander, but I should not like to live in +them. As Mr. Emerson puts it, “I do not want to go to heaven +before my time.” My English nature by early use and long habit is +tied to a certain kind of scenery, soon feels the want of it, and is apt +to be alarmed as well as pleased at perpetual snow and all sorts of +similar beauties. But here, about San Sebastian, you have the best +England can give you (at least if you hold, as I do, that Devonshire +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxiii">[xxiii]</span>is the finest of our counties), and the charm, the ineffable, indescribable +charm of the South too. Probably the sun has some secret effect +on the nervous system that makes one inclined to be pleased, but the +golden light lies upon everything, and one fancies that one is charmed +only by the outward loveliness.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>The vivacity and warm colouring of the landscapes +of the South of England certainly had their full share +in moulding his tastes, and possibly even his style.</p> + +<p>Bagehot took the mathematical scholarship with +his Bachelor’s degree in the University of London in +1846, and the gold medal in Intellectual and Moral +Philosophy with his Master’s degree in 1848, in reading +for which he mastered for the first time those principles +of political economy which were to receive so much +illustration from his genius in later years. But at this +time philosophy, poetry, and theology had, I think, a +much greater share of his attention than any narrow +and more sharply defined science. Shakespeare, Keats, +Shelley and Wordsworth, Coleridge, Martineau and +John Henry Newman, all in their way exerted a great +influence over his mind, and divided, not unequally, +with the authors whom he was bound to study—that +is, the Greek philosophers, together with Hume, Kant, +J. S. Mill, and Sir William Hamilton—the time at his +disposal. I have no doubt that for seven or eight years +of his life the Roman Catholic Church had a great fascination +for his imagination, though I do not think that +he was ever at all near conversion. He was intimate +with all Dr. Newman’s writings. And of these the +Oxford sermons, and the poems in the <i>Lyra Apostolica</i> +afterwards separately published—partly, I believe, on +account of the high estimate of them which Bagehot had +himself expressed—were always his special favourites. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxiv">[xxiv]</span>The little poetry he wrote—and it is evident that he +never had the kind of instinct for, or command of, +language which is the first condition of genuine poetic +genius—seems to me to have been obviously written +under the spell which Dr. Newman’s own few but +finely-chiselled poems had cast upon him. If I give +one specimen of Bagehot’s poems, it is not that I think +it in any way an adequate expression of his powers, +but for a very different reason, because it will show +those who have inferred from his other writings that his +mind never deeply concerned itself with religion, how +great is their mistake. Nor is there any real poverty of +resource in these lines, except perhaps in the awkward +mechanism of some of them. They were probably +written when he was twenty-three or twenty-four.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="center">‘<span class="smcap">To the Roman Catholic Church.</span></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="center">‘“Casta inceste.”—<i>Lucretius.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Thy lamp of faith is brightly trimmed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy eager eye is not yet dimmed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy stalwart step is yet unstayed,</div> + <div class="verse indent16">Thy words are well obeyed.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Thy proud voice vaunts of strength from heaven,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy proud foes carp, “By hell’s art given:”</div> + <div class="verse indent0">No Titan thou of earth-born bands,</div> + <div class="verse indent16">Strange Church of hundred hands.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Nursed without knowledge, born of night,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With hand of power and thoughts of light,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As Britain seas, far reachingly</div> + <div class="verse indent16">O’er-rul’st thou history.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Wild as La Pucelle in her hour,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O’er prostrate realms with awe-girt power</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou marchest stedfast on thy path</div> + <div class="verse indent16">Through wonder, love, and wrath.</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxv">[xxv]</span> </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘And will thy end be such as hers,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O’erpowered by earthly mail-clad powers,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Condemned for cruel, magic art,</div> + <div class="verse indent16">Though awful, bold of heart?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Through thorn-clad Time’s unending waste</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With ardent step alone thou strayest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As Jewish scape-goats tracked the wild,</div> + <div class="verse indent16">Unholy, consecrate, defiled.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Use not thy truth in manner rude</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To rule for gain the multitude,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or thou wilt see that truth depart,</div> + <div class="verse indent16">To seek some holier heart;</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Then thou wilt watch thy errors lorn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O’erspread by shame, o’erswept by scorn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In lonely want without hope’s smile,</div> + <div class="verse indent16">As Tyre her weed-clad Isle.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Like once thy chief, thou bear’st Christ’s name;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like him thou hast denied his shame,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bold, eager, skilful, confident,</div> + <div class="verse indent16">Oh, now like him repent!’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">That has certainly no sign of the hand of the master +in it, for the language is not moulded and vivified by +the thought, but the thought itself is fine. And there is +still better evidence than these lines would afford, of the +fascination which the Roman Catholic Church had for +Bagehot. A year or two later, in the letters on the +<i>coup d’état</i>, to which I shall soon have to refer, there +occurs the following passage. (He is trying to explain +how the cleverness, the moral restlessness, and intellectual +impatience of the French, all tend to unfit +them for a genuine Parliamentary government):—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘I do not know that I can exhibit the way these qualities of the +French character operate on their opinions better than by telling you +how the Roman Catholic Church deals with them. I have rather +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxvi">[xxvi]</span>attended to it since I came here. It gives sermons almost an interest, +their being in French, and to those curious in intellectual matters, it +is worth observing. In other times, and even now in out-of-the-way +Spain, I suppose it may be true that the Catholic Church has been +opposed to inquiry and reasoning. But it is not so now and here. +Loudly from the pens of a hundred writers, from the tongues of a +thousand pulpits, in every note of thrilling scorn and exulting derision, +she proclaims the contrary. Be she Christ’s workman or +Antichrist’s, she knows her work too well. “Reason, reason, reason!” +exclaims she to the philosophers of this world. “Put in practice +what you teach if you would have others believe it. Be consistent. +Do not prate to us of private judgment, when you are but yourselves +repeating what you heard in the nursery, ill-mumbled remnants of a +Catholic tradition. No; exemplify what you command; inquire +and make search. Seek, and we warn you that ye will never find, +yet do as ye will. Shut yourselves up in a room, make your mind a +blank, go down (as you speak) into the depth of your consciousness, +scrutinise the mental structure, inquire for the elements of belief,—spend +years, your best years, in the occupation,—and at length, when +your eyes are dim, and your brain hot, and your hands unsteady, then +reckon what you have gained. See if you cannot count on your +fingers the certainties you have reached; reflect which of them you +doubted yesterday, which you may disbelieve to-morrow; or rather, +make haste—assume at random some essential <i>credenda</i>,—write down +your inevitable postulates, enumerate your necessary axioms, toil on, +toil on, spin your spider’s web, adore your own soul, or if ye prefer +it, choose some German nostrum; try an intellectual intuition, or +the pure reason, or the intelligible ideas, or the mesmeric clairvoyance, +and when so, or somehow, you have attained your results, +try them on mankind. Don’t go out into the byeways and hedges; +it is unnecessary. Ring a bell, call in the servants, give them a +course of lectures, cite Aristotle, review Descartes, panegyrise Plato, +and see if the bonne will understand you. It is you that say <i>Vox +populi, vox Dei</i>. You see the people reject you. Or, suppose you +succeed,—what you call succeeding. Your books are read; for three +weeks or even a season you are the idol of the <i>salons</i>. Your hard +words are on the lips of women; then a change comes—a new actress +appears at the Théâtre Français or the Opéra; her charms eclipse +your theories; or a great catastrophe occurs; political liberty, it is +said, is annihilated. <i>Il faut se faire mouchard</i>, is the observation of +scoffers. Anyhow you are forgotten. Fifty years may be the gestation +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxvii">[xxvii]</span>of a philosophy, not three its life. Before long, before you go +to your grave, your six disciples leave you for some newer master, or +to set up for themselves. The poorest priest in the remotest region +of the Basses-Alpes has more power over men’s souls than human +cultivation. His ill-mouthed masses move women’s souls—can you? +Ye scoff at Jupiter, yet he at least was believed in, you never have +been. Idol for idol, the <i>de</i>throned is better than the <i>un</i>throned. No, +if you would reason, if you would teach, if you would speculate,—come +to us. We have our premises ready; years upon years before you +were born, intellects whom the best of you delight to magnify, toiled +to systematise the creed of ages. Years upon years after you are +dead, better heads than yours will find new matter there to define, to +divide, to arrange. Consider the hundred volumes of Aquinas. Which +of you desire a higher life than that;—to deduce, to subtilise, discriminate, +systematise, and decide the highest truth, and to be believed? +Yet such was his luck, his enjoyment. He was what you would be. +No, no, <i>credite, credite</i>. Ours is the life of speculation. The cloister +is the home for the student. Philosophy is stationary, Catholicism +progressive. <i>You</i> call. <i>We</i> are heard,” &c. So speaks each preacher, +according to his ability. And when the dust and noise of present +controversies have passed away, and, in the interior of the night, +some grave historian writes out the tale of half-forgotten times, let +him not forget to observe that, profoundly as the mediæval Church +subdued the superstitious cravings of a painful and barbarous age, in +after-years she dealt more discerningly still with the feverish excitement, +the feeble vanities, and the dogmatic impatience of an over-intellectual +generation.’⁠<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>⁠</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>It is obvious, I think, both from the poem, and from +these reflections, that what attracted Bagehot in the +Church of Rome was the historical prestige and social +authority which she had accumulated in believing and +uncritical ages for use in the unbelieving and critical +age in which we live,—while what he condemned and +dreaded in her was her tendency to use her power over +the multitude for purposes of a low ambition.</p> + +<p>And as I am on this subject, this will be, I think, +the best opportunity I shall have to say what I have +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxviii">[xxviii]</span>got to say of Bagehot’s later religious belief, without +returning to it when I have to deal with a period in +which the greatest part of his spare intellectual energy +was given to other subjects. I do not think that the +religious affections were very strong in Bagehot’s mind, +but the primitive religious instincts certainly were. +From childhood he was what he certainly remained to +the last, in spite of the rather antagonistic influence of +the able scientific group of men from whom he learned +so much—a thorough transcendentalist, by which I +mean one who could never doubt that there was a real +foundation of the universe distinct from the outward +show of its superficial qualities, and that the substance is +never exhaustively expressed in these qualities. He often +repeats in his essays Shelley’s fine line, ‘Lift not the +painted veil which those who live call life,’ and the essence +at least of the idea in it haunted him from his very childhood. +In the essay on ‘Hartley Coleridge’—perhaps the +most perfect in style of any of his writings—he describes +most powerfully, and evidently in great measure from +his own experience, the mysterious confusion between +appearances and realities which so bewildered little +Hartley,—the difficulty that he complained of in distinguishing +between the various Hartleys,—‘picture +Hartley,’ ‘shadow Hartley,’ and between Hartley the +subject and Hartley the object, the enigmatic blending +of which last two Hartleys the child expressed by +catching hold of his own arm, and then calling himself +the ‘catch-me-fast Hartley.’ And in dilating on this +bewildering experience of the child’s, Bagehot borrows +from his own recollections:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘All children have a world of their own, as distinct from that of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxix">[xxix]</span>the grown people who gravitate around them, as the dreams of girlhood +from our prosaic life, or the ideas of the kitten that plays with +the falling leaves, from those of her carnivorous mother that catches +mice, and is sedulous in her domestic duties. But generally about +this interior existence children are dumb. You have warlike ideas, +but you cannot say to a sinewy relative, “My dear aunt, I wonder +when the big bush in the garden will begin to walk about; I’m sure +it’s a Crusader, and I was cutting it all the day with my steel sword. +But what do you think, aunt? for I’m puzzled about its legs, because +you see, aunt, it has only <i>one</i> stalk—and besides, aunt, the leaves.” +You cannot remark this in secular life, but you hack at the infelicitous +bush till you do not wholly reject the idea that your small +garden is Palestine, and yourself the most adventurous of knights.’⁠<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>⁠</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>They have a tradition in the family that this is but +a fragment from Bagehot’s own imaginative childhood, +and certainly this visionary element in him was very +vivid to the last. However, the transcendental or intellectual +basis of religious belief was soon strengthened +in him, as readers of his remarkable paper on Bishop +Butler will easily see, by those moral and retributive +instincts which warn us of the meaning and consequences +of guilt:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘The moral principle,’ he wrote in that essay, ‘whatever may be +said to the contrary by complacent thinkers, is really and to most +men a principle of fear.... Conscience is the condemnation of +ourselves; we expect a penalty. As the Greek proverb teaches, +“Where there is shame, there is fear.”... How to be free from +this is the question. How to get loose from this—how to be rid of +the secret tie which binds the strong man and cramps his pride, and +makes him angry at the beauty of the universe, which will not let +him go forth like a great animal, like the king of the forest, in the +glory of his might, but which restrains him with an inner fear and a +secret foreboding that if he do but exalt himself he shall be abased, +if he do but set forth his own dignity he will offend <span class="smcap">One</span> who will +deprive him of it. This, as has often been pointed out, is the source +of the bloody rites of heathendom.’⁠<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>⁠</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxx">[xxx]</span></p> + +<p>And then, after a powerful passage, in which he +describes the sacrificial superstitions of men like +Achilles, he returns, with a flash of his own peculiar +humour, to Bishop Butler, thus:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘Of course it is not this kind of fanaticism that we impute to a +prelate of the English Church; human sacrifices are not respectable, +and Achilles was not rector of Stanhope. But though the costume +and circumstances of life change, the human heart does not; its +feelings remain. The same anxiety, the same consciousness of personal +sin, which lead, in barbarous times, to what has been described, +show themselves in civilised life as well. In this quieter period, their +great manifestation is scrupulosity;’⁠<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>⁠</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p class="noindent">which he goes on to describe as a sort of inexhaustible +anxiety for perfect compliance with the minutest positive +commands which may be made the condition of +forgiveness for the innumerable lapses of moral obligation. +I am not criticising the paper, or I should point +out that Bagehot failed in it to draw out the distinction +between the primitive moral instinct and the corrupt +superstition into which it runs; but I believe that he +recognised the weight of this moral testimony of the +conscience to a divine Judge, as well as the transcendental +testimony of the intellect to an eternal substance +of things, to the end of his life. And certainly in the +reality of human free-will as the condition of all genuine +moral life, he firmly believed. In his ‘Physics and +Politics’—the subtle and original essay upon which, in +conjunction with the essay on the ‘English Constitution,’ +Bagehot’s reputation as a European thinker chiefly rests—he +repeatedly guards himself (for instance, pp. 9, 10) +against being supposed to think that in accepting the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxxi">[xxxi]</span>principle of evolution, he has accepted anything inconsistent +either with spiritual creation, or with the free +will of man. On the latter point he adds,</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘No doubt the modern doctrine of the “conservation of force,” if +applied to decision, is inconsistent with free-will; if you hold that +force is “never lost or gained,” you cannot hold that there is a real +gain, a sort of new creation of it in free volition. But I have nothing +to do here with the universal “conservation of force.” The conception +of the nervous organs as stores of will-made power, does not raise or +need so vast a discussion.’⁠<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>⁠</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>And in the same book he repeatedly uses the expression +‘Providence,’ evidently in its natural meaning, to +express the ultimate force at work behind the march of +‘evolution.’ Indeed, in conversation with me on this +subject, he often said how much higher a conception of +the creative mind, the new Darwinian ideas seemed to +him to have introduced, as compared with those contained +in what is called the argument from contrivance +and design. On the subject of personal immortality, too, +I do not think that Bagehot ever wavered. He often +spoke, and even wrote, of ‘that vague sense of eternal +continuity which is always about the mind, and which +no one could bear to lose,’ and described it as being +much more important to us than it even appears to be, +important as that is; for, he said, ‘when we think we are +thinking of the past, we are only thinking of a future +that is to be like it.’ But with the exception of these +cardinal points, I could hardly say how much Bagehot’s +mind was or was not affected by the great speculative +controversies of later years. Certainly he became much +more doubtful concerning the force of the historical +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxxii">[xxxii]</span>evidence of Christianity than I ever was, and rejected, +I think, entirely, though on what amount of personal +study he had founded his opinion I do not know, the +Apostolic origin of the fourth Gospel. Possibly his mind +may have been latterly in suspense as to miracle altogether, +though I am pretty sure that he had not come +to a negative conclusion. He belonged, in common +with myself, during the last years of his life, to a society +in which these fundamental questions were often discussed; +but he seldom spoke in it, and told me very +shortly before his death that he shrank from such discussions +on religious points, feeling that, in debates of +this kind, they were not and could not be treated with +anything like thoroughness. On the whole, I think, +the cardinal article of his faith would be adequately +represented even in the latest period of his life by the +following passage in his essay on Bishop Butler:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘In every step of religious argument we require the assumption, +the belief, the faith, if the word is better, in an absolutely <i>perfect</i> +Being; in and by whom we are, who is omnipotent as well as most +holy; who moves on the face of the whole world, and ruleth all +things by the word of his power. If we grant this, the difficulty of +the opposition between what is here called the natural and the supernatural +religion is removed; and without granting it, that difficulty +is perhaps insuperable. It follows from the very idea and definition +of an infinitely perfect Being, that he is within us as well as without +us,—ruling the clouds of the air and the fishes of the sea, as well as +the fears and thoughts of men; smiling through the smile of nature +as well as warning with the pain of conscience,—“sine qualitate, +bonum; sine quantitate, magnum; sine indigentiâ, creatorem; sine +situ, præsidentem; sine habitu, omnia continentem; sine loco, ubique +totum; sine tempore, sempiternum; sine ullâ sui mutatione, mutabilia +facientem, nihilque patientem.” If we assume this, life is +simple; without this, all is dark.’⁠<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>⁠</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxxiii">[xxxiii]</span></p> + +<p>Evidently, then, though Bagehot held that the doctrine +of evolution by natural selection gave a higher +conception of the Creator than the old doctrine of +mechanical design, he never took any materialistic view +of evolution. One of his early essays, written while at +college, on some of the many points of the Kantian +philosophy which he then loved to discuss, concluded +with a remarkable sentence, which would probably +have fairly expressed, even at the close of his life, his +profound belief in God, and his partial sympathy with +the agnostic view that we are, in great measure, incapable +of apprehending, more than very dimly, His +mind or purposes:—‘Gazing after the infinite essence, +we are like men watching through the drifting clouds +for a glimpse of the true heavens on a drear November +day; layer after layer passes from our view, but still +the same immovable grey rack remains.’</p> + +<p>After Bagehot had taken his Master’s degree, and +while he was still reading Law in London, and hesitating +between the Bar and the family bank, there came +as Principal to University Hall (which is a hall of residence +in connection with University College, London, +established by the Presbyterians and Unitarians after +the passing of the Dissenters’ Chapel Act), the man +who had, I think, a greater intellectual fascination for +Bagehot than any of his contemporaries—Arthur +Hugh Clough, Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and +author of various poems of great genius, more or less +familiar to the public, though Clough is perhaps better +known as the subject of the exquisite poem written on +his death in 1861, by his friend Matthew Arnold—the +poem to which he gave the name of ‘Thyrsis’—than +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxxiv">[xxxiv]</span>by even the most popular of his own. Bagehot had +subscribed for the erection of University Hall, and took +an active part at one time on its council. Thus he saw +a good deal of Clough, and did what he could to +mediate between that enigma to Presbyterian parents—a +college-head who held himself serenely neutral on +almost all moral and educational subjects interesting to +parents and pupils, except the observance of disciplinary +rules—and the managing body who bewildered +him and were by him bewildered. I don’t think either +Bagehot or Clough’s other friends were very successful +in their mediation, but he at least gained in Clough +a cordial friend, and a theme of profound intellectual +and moral interest to himself which lasted him his life, +and never failed to draw him into animated discussion +long after Clough’s own premature death; and I think +I can trace the effect which some of Clough’s writings +had on Bagehot’s mind to the very end of his career. +There were some points of likeness between Bagehot +and Clough, but many more of difference. Both had +the capacity for boyish spirits in them, and the florid +colour which usually accompanies a good deal of +animal vigour; both were reserved men, with a great +dislike of anything like the appearance of false sentiment, +and both were passionate admirers of Wordsworth’s +poetry; but Clough was slightly lymphatic, +with a great tendency to unexpressed and unacknowledged +discouragement, and to the paralysis of silent +embarrassment when suffering from such feelings, while +Bagehot was keen, and very quickly evacuated embarrassing +positions, and never returned to them. When +however, Clough was happy and at ease, there was a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxxv">[xxxv]</span>calm and silent radiance in his face, and his head was +set with a kind of stateliness on his shoulders, that gave +him almost an Olympian air; but this would sometimes +vanish in a moment into an embarrassed taciturnity +that was quite uncouth. One of his friends declares +that the man who was said to be ‘a cross between a +schoolboy and a bishop,’ must have been like Clough. +There was in Clough, too, a large Chaucerian simplicity +and a flavour of homeliness, so that now and then, +when the light shone into his eyes, there was something, +in spite of the air of fine scholarship and +culture, which reminded one of the best likenesses of +Burns. It was of Clough, I believe, that Emerson was +thinking (though, knowing Clough intimately as he did, +he was of course speaking mainly in joke) when he +described the Oxford of that day thus:—‘“Ah,” says my +languid Oxford gentleman, “nothing new, and nothing +true, and no matter.”’ No saying could misrepresent +Clough’s really buoyant and simple character more +completely than that; but doubtless many of his sayings +and writings, treating, as they did, most of the greater +problems of life as insoluble, and enjoining a self-possessed +composure under the discovery of their insolubility, +conveyed an impression very much like this to +men who came only occasionally in contact with him. +Bagehot, in his article on Crabb Robinson, says that the +latter, who in those days seldom remembered names, +always described Clough as ‘that admirable and accomplished +man—you know whom I mean—the one who +never says anything.’ And certainly Clough was often +taciturn to the last degree, or if he opened his lips, +delighted to open them only to scatter confusion by +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxxvi">[xxxvi]</span>discouraging, in words at least, all that was then called +earnestness—as, for example, by asking, ‘Was it ordained +that twice two should make four, simply for the +intent that boys and girls should be cut to the heart +that they do not make five? Be content; when the +veil is raised, perhaps they will make five! Who +knows?’⁠<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>⁠</p> + +<p>Clough’s chief fascination for Bagehot was, I think, +that he had as a poet in some measure rediscovered, at +all events realised, as few ever realised before, the +enormous difficulty of finding truth—a difficulty which +he somewhat paradoxically held to be enhanced rather +than diminished by the intensity of the truest modern +passion for it. The stronger the desire, he teaches, +the greater is the danger of illegitimately satisfying that +desire by persuading ourselves that what we <i>wish</i> to +believe, is true, and the greater the danger of ignoring +the actual confusions of human things:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Rules baffle instincts, instincts rules,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wise men are bad, and good are fools,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Facts evil, wishes vain appear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We cannot go, why are we here?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Oh, may we, for assurance’ sake,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some arbitrary judgment take,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And wilfully pronounce it clear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For this or that ’tis, we are here?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Or is it right, and will it do</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To pace the sad confusion through,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And say, it does not yet appear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What we shall be—what we are here?’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>This warning to withhold judgment and not cheat +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxxvii">[xxxvii]</span>ourselves into beliefs which our own imperious desire +to believe had alone engendered, is given with every +variety of tone and modulation, and couched in all sorts +of different forms of fancy and apologue, throughout +Clough’s poems. He insists on ‘the <i>ruinous</i> force of +the will’ to persuade us of illusions which please us; +of the tendency of practical life to give us beliefs +which suit that practical life, but are none the truer +for that; and is never weary of warning us that a firm +belief in a falsity can be easily generated:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘<i>Action will furnish belief</i>,—but will that belief be the true one?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This is the point, you know. However, it doesn’t much matter.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What one wants, I suppose, is to predetermine the action,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So as to make it entail, not a chance belief, but the true one.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">This practical preaching, which Clough urges in season +and out of season, met an answering chord in Bagehot’s +mind, not so much in relation to religious belief as in +relation to the over-haste and over-eagerness of human +conduct, and I can trace the effect of it in all his +writings, political and otherwise, to the end of his life. +Indeed, it affected him much more in later days than +in the years immediately following his first friendship +with Clough. With all his boyish dash, there was +something in Bagehot even in youth which dreaded +precipitancy, and not only precipitancy itself, but those +moral situations tending to precipitancy which men +who have no minds of their own to make up, so often +court. In later life he pleased himself by insisting +that, on Darwin’s principle, civilised men, with all +the complex problems of modern life to puzzle them, +suspend their judgment so little, and are so eager for +action, only because they have inherited from the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxxviii">[xxxviii]</span>earlier, simpler, and more violent ages, an excessive +predisposition to action unsuited to our epoch and +dangerous to our future development. But it was +Clough, I think, who first stirred in Bagehot’s mind this +great dread of ‘the ruinous force of the will,’ a phrase +he was never weary of quoting, and which might almost +be taken as the motto of his ‘Physics and Politics,’ the +great conclusion of which is that in the ‘age of discussion,’ +grand policies and high-handed diplomacy and +sensational legislation of all kinds will become rarer +and rarer, because discussion will point out all the difficulties +of such policies in relation to a state of existence +so complex as our own, and will in this way tend +to repress the excess of practical energy handed down +to us by ancestors to whom life was a sharper, simpler, +and more perilous affair.</p> + +<p>But the time for Bagehot’s full adoption of the +suspensive principle in public affairs was not yet. In +1851 he went to Paris, shortly before the <i>coup d’état</i>. +And while all England was assailing Louis Napoleon +(justly enough, as I think) for his perfidy, and his impatience +of the self-willed Assembly he could not +control, Bagehot was preparing a deliberate and very +masterly defence of that bloody and high-handed act. +Even Bagehot would, I think, if pressed judiciously in +later life, have admitted—though I can’t say he ever +<i>did</i>—that the <i>coup d’état</i> was one of the best illustrations +of ‘the ruinous force of the will’ in engendering, +or at least crystallising, a false intellectual conclusion as +to the political possibilities of the future, which recent +history could produce. Certainly he always spoke +somewhat apologetically of these early letters, though I +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxxix">[xxxix]</span>never heard him expressly retract their doctrine. In +1851 a knot of young Unitarians, of whom I was then +one, headed by the late Mr. J. Langton Sanford—afterwards +the historian of the Great Rebellion, who survived +Bagehot barely four months—had engaged to help for +a time in conducting the <i>Inquirer</i>, which then was, and +still is, the chief literary and theological organ of the +Unitarian body. Our <i>régime</i> was, I imagine, a time of +great desolation for the very tolerant and thoughtful constituency +for whom we wrote; and many of them, I am +confident, yearned, and were fully justified in yearning, +for those better days when this tyranny of ours should +be overpast. Sanford and Osler did a good deal to +throw cold water on the rather optimist and philanthropic +politics of the most sanguine, because the most +benevolent and open-hearted of Dissenters. Roscoe +criticised their literary work from the point of view of +a devotee of the Elizabethan poets; and I attempted to +prove to them in distinct heads, first, that their laity +ought to have the protection afforded by a liturgy +against the arbitrary prayers of their ministers; and +next, that at least the great majority of their sermons +ought to be suppressed, and the habit of delivering +them discontinued almost altogether. Only a denomination +of ‘just men’ trained in tolerance for generations, +and in that respect, at least, made all but ‘perfect,’ +would have endured it at all; but I doubt if any of us +caused the Unitarian body so much grief as Bagehot, who +never was a Unitarian, but who contributed a series of +brilliant letters on the <i>coup d’état</i>, in which he trod just +as heavily on the toes of his colleagues as he did on +those of the public by whom the <i>Inquirer</i> was taken. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xl">[xl]</span>In those letters he not only, as I have already shown, +eulogised the Catholic Church, but he supported the +Prince-President’s military violence, attacked the freedom +of the Press in France, maintained that the country +was wholly unfit for true Parliamentary government, +and—worst of all perhaps—insinuated a panegyric on +Louis Napoleon himself, asserting that he had been +far better prepared for the duties of a statesman by +gambling on the turf, than he would have been by +poring over the historical and political dissertations of +the wise and the good. This was Bagehot’s day of +cynicism. The seven letters which he wrote on the +<i>coup d’état</i> were certainly very exasperating, and yet +they were not caricatures of his real thought, for his +private letters at the time were more cynical still. +Crabb Robinson, in speaking of him, used ever afterwards +to describe him to me as ‘that friend of yours—you +know whom I mean, you rascal!—who wrote those +abominable, those most disgraceful letters on the <i>coup +d’état</i>—I did not forgive him for years after.’ Nor do I +wonder, even now, that a sincere friend of constitutional +freedom and intellectual liberty, like Crabb Robinson, +found them difficult to forgive. They were light and +airy, and even flippant on a very grave subject. They +made nothing of the Prince’s perjury; and they took +impertinent liberties with all the dearest prepossessions +of the readers of the <i>Inquirer</i>, and assumed their sympathy +just where Bagehot knew that they would be +most revolted by his opinions. Nevertheless, they had +a vast deal of truth in them, and no end of ability, and I +hope that there will be many to read them with interest +now that they are here republished. There is a good +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xli">[xli]</span>deal of the raw material of history in them, and certainly +I doubt if Bagehot ever again hit the satiric vein of +argument so well. Here is a passage that will bear +taking out of its context, and therefore not so full of +the shrewd malice of these letters as many others, but +which will illustrate their ability. It is one in which +Bagehot maintained for the first time the view (which I +believe he subsequently almost persuaded English politicians +to accept, though in 1852 it was a mere flippant +novelty, a paradox, and a heresy) that free institutions +are apt to succeed with a stupid people, and to founder +with a ready-witted and vivacious one. After broaching +this, he goes on:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘I see you are surprised. You are going to say to me as Socrates +did to Polus, “My young friend, <i>of course</i> you are right, but will +you explain what you mean, as you are not yet intelligible?” I will +do so as well as I can, and endeavour to make good what I say, not +from a prior demonstration of my own, but from the details of the +present and the facts of history. Not to begin by wounding any +present susceptibilities, let me take the Roman character, for, with +one great exception—I need not say to whom I allude—they are the +great political people of history. Now is not a certain dulness their +most visible characteristic? What is the history of their speculative +mind? A blank. What their literature? A copy. They have left +not a single discovery in any abstract science, not a single perfect +or well-formed work of high imagination. The Greeks, the perfection +of human and accomplished genius, bequeathed to mankind the +ideal forms of self-idolising art; the Romans imitated and admired. +The Greeks explained the laws of nature; the Romans wondered and +despised. The Greeks invented a system of numerals second only +to that now in use; the Romans counted to the end of their days +with the clumsy apparatus which we still call by their name. The +Greeks made a capital and scientific calendar; the Romans began +their month when the Pontifex Maximus happened to spy out the +new moon. Throughout Latin literature this is the perpetual puzzle—Why +are we free and they slaves?—we prætors and they barbers? +Why do the stupid people always win and the clever people always +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xlii">[xlii]</span>lose? I need not say that in real sound stupidity the English people +are unrivalled. You’ll have more wit, and better wit, in an Irish +street-row than would keep Westminster Hall in humour for five weeks.... +These valuable truths are no discoveries of mine. They +are familiar enough to people whose business it is to know them. Hear +what a douce and aged attorney says of your peculiarly promising +barrister. “Sharp? Oh! yes, yes: he’s too sharp by half. He +isn’t <i>safe</i>, not a minute, isn’t that young man.” “What style, sir,” +asked of an East India Director some youthful aspirant for literary +renown, “is most to be preferred in the composition of official +despatches?” “My good fellow,” responded the ruler of Hindostan, +“the style <i>as we</i> like, is the Humdrum.”’⁠<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>⁠</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>The permanent value of these papers is due to the +freshness of their impressions of the French capital, and +their true criticisms of Parisian journalism and society; +their perverseness consists in this, that Bagehot steadily +ignored in them the distinction between the duty of +resisting anarchy, and the assumption of the Prince-President +that this could only be done by establishing +his own dynasty, and deferring <i>sine die</i> that great constitutional +experiment which is now once more, no +thanks to him or his Government, on its trial; an experiment +which, for anything we see, had at least as +good a chance then as now, and under a firm and +popular chief of the executive like Prince Louis, would +probably have had a better chance then than it has now +under MacMahon. I need hardly say that in later life +Bagehot was by no means blind to the political shortcomings +of Louis Napoleon’s <i>régime</i>, as the article republished +from the <i>Economist</i>, in the second appendix +to this volume, sufficiently proves. Moreover, he rejoiced +heartily in the moderation of the republican statesmen +during the severe trials of the months which just preceded +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xliii">[xliii]</span>his own death, in 1877, and expressed his sincere +belief—confirmed by the history of the last year and a +half—that the existing Republic has every prospect of +life and growth.</p> + +<p>During that residence in Paris, Bagehot, though, as +I have said, in a somewhat cynical frame of mind, was +full of life and courage, and was beginning to feel his +own genius, which perhaps accounts for the air of +recklessness so foreign to him, which he never adopted +either before or since. During the riots he was a good +deal in the streets, and from a mere love of art helped +the Parisians to construct some of their barricades, +notwithstanding the fact that his own sympathy was +with those who shot down the barricades, not with +those who manned them. He climbed over the rails of +the Palais Royal on the morning of December 2nd to +breakfast, and used to say that he was the only person +who did breakfast there on that day. Victor Hugo is +certainly wrong in asserting that no one expected Louis +Napoleon to use force, and that the streets were as full +as usual when the people were shot down, for the gates +of the Palais Royal were shut quite early in the day. +Bagehot was very much struck by the ferocious look of +the Montagnards.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘Of late,’ he wrote to me, ‘I have been devoting my entire +attention to the science of barricades, which I found amusing. They +have systematised it in a way which is pleasing to the cultivated +intellect. We had only one good day’s fighting, and I naturally kept +out of cannon-shot. But I took a quiet walk over the barricades in +the morning, and superintended the construction of three with as +much keenness as if I had been clerk of the works. You’ve seen +lots, of course, at Berlin, but I should not think those Germans were +up to a real Montagnard, who is the most horrible being to the eye I +ever saw,—sallow, sincere, sour fanaticism, with grizzled moustaches, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xliv">[xliv]</span>and a strong wish to shoot you rather than not. The Montagnards +are a scarce commodity, the real race—only three or four, if so many, +to a barricade. If you want a Satan any odd time, they’ll do; only +I hope that <i>he</i> don’t believe in human brotherhood. It is not possible +to respect any one who does, and I should be loth to confound the +notion of <i>our</i> friend’s solitary grandeur by supposing him to fraternise,’ +&c. ‘I think M. Buonaparte is entitled to great praise. He has +very good heels to his boots, and the French just want treading +down, and nothing else—calm, cruel, business-like oppression, to take +the dogmatic conceit out of their heads. The spirit of generalisation +which, John Mill tells us, honourably distinguishes the French mind, +has come to this, that every Parisian wants his head <i>tapped</i> in order +to get the formulæ and nonsense out of it. And it would pay to +perform the operation, for they are very clever on what is within the +limit of their experience, and all that can be “expanded” in terms of +it, but beyond, it is all generalisation and folly.... So I am for +any carnivorous government.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>And again, in the same letter:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘Till the Revolution came I had no end of trouble to find conversation, +but now they’ll talk against everybody, and against the +President like mad—and they talk immensely well, and the language +is like a razor, capital if you are skilful, but sure to cut you if you +aren’t. A fellow can talk German in crude forms, and I don’t see it +sounds any worse, but this stuff is horrid unless you get it <i>quite</i> right. +A French lady made a striking remark to me:—“<i>C’est une révolution +qui a sauvé la France. Tous mes amis sont mis en prison</i>.” She +was immensely delighted that such a pleasing way of saving her +country had been found.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>Of course the style of these familiar private letters +conveys a gross caricature not only of Bagehot’s maturer +mind, but even of the judgment of the published +letters, and I quote them only to show that at the time +when he composed these letters on the <i>coup d’état</i>, +Bagehot’s mood was that transient mood of reckless +youthful cynicism through which so many men of genius +pass. I do not think he had at any time any keen +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xlv">[xlv]</span>sympathy with the multitude, <i>i.e.</i>, with masses of unknown +men. And that he ever felt what has since then +been termed ‘the enthusiasm of humanity,’ the sympathy +with ‘the toiling millions of men sunk in labour +and pain,’ he himself would strenuously have denied. +Such sympathy, even when men really desire to feel it, +is, indeed, very much oftener coveted than actually felt +by men as a living motive; and I am not quite sure that +Bagehot would have even wished to feel it. Nevertheless, +he had not the faintest trace of real hardness about +him towards people whom he knew and understood. +He could not bear to give pain; and when, in rare +cases by youthful inadvertence, he gave it needlessly, +I have seen how much and what lasting vexation it +caused him. Indeed, he was capable of great sacrifices +to spare his friends but a little suffering.</p> + +<p>It was, I think, during his stay in Paris that Bagehot +finally decided to give up the notion of practising at +the Bar, and to join his father in the Somersetshire +Bank and in his other business as a merchant and ship-owner. +This involved frequent visits to London and +Liverpool, and Bagehot soon began to take a genuine +interest in the larger issues of commerce, and maintained +to the end that ‘business is much more amusing +than pleasure.’ Nevertheless, he could not live without +the intellectual life of London, and never stayed more +than six weeks at a time in the country without finding +some excuse for going to town; and long before his +death he made his home there. Hunting was the only +sport he really cared for. He was a dashing rider, and +a fresh wind was felt blowing through his earlier literary +efforts, as though he had been thinking in the saddle, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xlvi">[xlvi]</span>an effect wanting in his later essays, where you see +chiefly the calm analysis of a lucid observer. But most +of the ordinary amusements of young people he detested. +He used to say that he wished he could think +balls <i>wicked</i>, being so stupid as they were, and all ‘the +little blue and pink girls, so like each other,’—a sentiment +partly due, perhaps, to his extreme shortness of +sight.</p> + +<p>Though Bagehot never doubted the wisdom of his +own decision to give up the law for the life of commerce, +he thoroughly enjoyed his legal studies in his +friend the late Mr. Justice Quain’s chambers, and in +those of the present Vice-Chancellor Sir Charles Hall, +and he learnt there a good deal that was of great use +to him in later life. Moreover, in spite of his large +capacity for finance and commerce, there were small +difficulties in Bagehot’s way as a banker and merchant +which he felt somewhat keenly. He was always absent-minded +about <i>minutiæ</i>. For instance, to the last, he +could not correct a proof well, and was sure to leave a +number of small inaccuracies, harshnesses, and slipshodnesses +in style, uncorrected. He declared at one time +that he was wholly unable to ‘add up,’ and in his +mathematical exercises in college he had habitually +been inaccurate in trifles. I remember Professor Malden, +on returning one of his Greek exercises, saying to him, +with that curiously precise and emphatic articulation +which made every remark of his go so much farther +than that of our other lecturers, ‘Mr. Bagehot, you +wage an internecine war with your aspirates’—not +meaning, of course, that he ever left them out in pronunciation, +but that he neglected to put them in in his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xlvii">[xlvii]</span>written Greek. And to the last, even in his printed +Greek quotations, the slips of this kind were always +numerous. This habitual difficulty—due, I believe, to a +preoccupied imagination—in attending to small details, +made a banker’s duties seem irksome and formidable to +him at first; and even to the last, in his most effective +financial papers, he would generally get some one else +to look after the precise figures for him. But in spite +of all this, and in spite of a real attraction for the study +of law, he was sure that his head would not stand the +hot Courts and heavy wigs which make the hot Courts +hotter, or the night-work of a thriving barrister in case +of success; and he was certainly quite right. Indeed, +had he chosen the Bar, he would have had no leisure +for those two or three remarkable books which have +made his reputation,—books which have been already +translated into all the literary and some of the unliterary +languages of Europe, and two of which are, I believe, +used as text-books in some of the American Colleges.⁠<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> +Moreover, in all probability, his life would have been +much shorter into the bargain. Soon after his return +from Paris he devoted himself in earnest to banking +and commerce, and also began that series of articles, +first for the <i>Prospective</i> and then for the <i>National +Review</i> (which latter periodical he edited in conjunction +with me for several years), the most striking of which +he republished in 1858, under the awkward and almost +forbidding title of ‘Estimates of some Englishmen and +Scotchmen’—a book which never attracted the attention +it deserved, and which has been long out of +print. In republishing most of these essays as I am +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xlviii">[xlviii]</span>now doing,—and a later volume may, I hope, contain +those essays on statesmen and politicians which are for +the present omitted from these,—it is perhaps only fair +to say that Bagehot in later life used to speak ill, much +too ill, of his own early style. He used to declare that +his early style affected him like the ‘jogging of a cart +without springs over a very rough road,’ and no doubt +in his earliest essays something abrupt and spasmodic +may easily be detected. Still, this was all so inextricably +mingled with flashes of insight and humour which could +ill be spared, that I always protested against any notion +of so revising the essays as to pare down their excrescences.</p> + +<p>I have never understood the comparative failure of +this volume of Bagehot’s early essays; and a comparative +failure it was, though I do not deny that, even at +the time, it attracted much attention among the most +accomplished writers of the day, and that I have been +urged to republish it, as I am now doing, by many of +the ablest men of my acquaintance. Obviously, as I +have admitted, there are many faults of workmanship in +it. Now and then the banter is forced. Often enough +the style is embarrassed. Occasionally, perhaps, the +criticism misses its mark, or is over-refined. But taken +as a whole, I hardly know any book that is such good +reading, that has so much lucid vision in it, so much +shrewd and curious knowledge of the world, so sober +a judgment and so dashing a humour combined. Take +this, for instance, out of the paper on ‘The First Edinburgh +Reviewers,’ concerning the judgment passed by +Lord Jeffrey on the poetry of Bagehot’s favourite poet, +Wordsworth:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xlix">[xlix]</span></p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘The world has given judgment. Both Mr. Wordsworth and +Lord Jeffrey have received their rewards. 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 years without +some trace for good or for 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 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 hand-book +of the “Excursion,” it was well for them to be told at once that it +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 notions of the world, of those whom it will not reckon +among the righteous. It said, “This won’t do.” And so in all times +will the lovers of polished Liberalism speak concerning the intense +and lonely “prophet.”’⁠<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>⁠</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>I choose that passage because it illustrates so perfectly +Bagehot’s double vein, his sympathy with the +works of high imagination, and his clear insight into +that busy life which does not and cannot take note of +works of high imagination, and which would not do +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_l">[l]</span>the work it does, if it could. And this is the characteristic +of all the essays. How admirably, for instance, +in his essay on Shakespeare, does he draw out the individuality +of a poet who is generally supposed to be +so completely hidden in his plays; and with how keen +a satisfaction does he discern and display the prosperous +and practical man in Shakespeare—the qualities which +made him a man of substance and a Conservative politician, +as well as the qualities which made him a great +dramatist and a great dreamer. No doubt Bagehot had +a strong personal sympathy with the double life. Somersetshire +probably never believed that the imaginative +student, the omnivorous reader, could prosper as a +banker and a man of business, and it was a satisfaction +to him to show that he understood the world far better +than the world had ever understood him. Again, how +delicate is his delineation of Hartley Coleridge; how +firm and clear his study of ‘Sir Robert Peel;’⁠<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> and how +graphically he paints the literary pageant of Gibbon’s +tame but splendid genius! Certainly the literary taste +of England never made a greater blunder than when it +passed by this remarkable volume of essays with comparatively +little notice.</p> + +<p>In 1858 Bagehot married the eldest daughter of the +Right Honourable James Wilson, who died two years +later in India, whither he had gone as the financial +member of the Indian Council, to reduce to some extent +the financial anarchy which then prevailed there. This +marriage gave Bagehot nineteen years of undisturbed +happiness, and certainly led to the production of his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_li">[li]</span>most popular and original, if not in every respect his +most brilliant books. It connected him with the higher +world of politics, without which he would hardly have +studied and written as he did on the English Constitution; +and by making him the Editor of the <i>Economist</i> +it compelled him to give his whole mind as much to +the theoretic side of commerce and finance, as his own +duties had already compelled him to give it to the +practical side. But when I speak of his marriage as +the last impulse which determined his chief work in +life, I do not forget that he had long been prepared +both for political and for financial speculation by his +early education. His father, a man of firm and deliberate +political convictions, had taken a very keen +interest in the agitation for the great Reform Bill of +1832, and had materially helped to return a Liberal +member for his county after it passed. Probably no one +in all England knew the political history of the country +since the peace more accurately than he. Bagehot +often said that when he wanted any detail concerning +the English political history of the last half-century, he +had only to ask his father, to obtain it. His uncle, +Mr. Vincent Stuckey, too, was a man of the world, and +his house in Langport was a focus of many interests +during Bagehot’s boyhood. Mr. Stuckey had begun life +at the Treasury, and was at one time private secretary +to Mr. Huskisson; and when he gave up that career to +take a leading share in the Somersetshire Bank, he kept +up for a long time his house in London, and his relations +with political society there. He was fond of his +nephew, as was Bagehot of him; and there was always +a large field of interests, and often there were men of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lii">[lii]</span>eminence, to be found in his house. Thus Bagehot had +been early prepared for the wider field of political and +financial thought, to which he gave up so much of his +time after his marriage.</p> + +<p>I need not say nearly as much on this later aspect of +Bagehot’s life as I have done on its early and more +purely literary aspects, because his services in this +direction are already well appreciated by the public. But +this I should like to point out, that he could never have +written as he did on the English Constitution without +having acutely studied living statesmen and their ways +of acting on each other; that his book was essentially +the book of a most realistic, because a most vividly +imaginative, observer of the actual world of politics—the +book of a man who was not blinded by habit and +use to the enormous difficulties in the way of ‘government +by public meeting,’ and to the secret of the +various means by which in practice those difficulties +had been attenuated or surmounted. It is the book of +a meditative man who had mused much on the strange +workings of human instincts, no less than of a quick +observer who had seen much of external life. Had +he not studied the men before he studied the institutions, +had he not concerned himself with individual +statesmen before he turned his attention to the mechanism +of our Parliamentary system, he could never +have written his book on ‘the English Constitution.’</p> + +<p>I think the same may be said of his book on ‘Physics +and Politics,’ a book in which I find new force and depth +every time I take it up afresh. It is true that Bagehot +had a keen sympathy with natural science, that he +devoured all Mr. Darwin’s and Mr. Wallace’s books, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_liii">[liii]</span>and many of a much more technical kind, as, for example, +Professor Huxley’s on the ‘Principles of Physiology,’ +and grasped the leading ideas contained in them +with a firmness and precision that left nothing to be +desired. But after all, ‘Physics and Politics’ could never +have been written without that sort of living insight +into man which was the life of all his earlier essays. +The notion that a ‘cake of custom,’ of rigid, inviolable +law, was the first requisite for a strong human society, +and that the very cause which was thus essential for the +<i>first</i> step of progress—the step towards unity—was the +great danger of the second step—the step out of uniformity—and +was the secret of all arrested and petrified +civilisations, like the Chinese, is an idea which first +germinated in Bagehot’s mind at the time he was +writing his cynical letters from Paris about stupidity +being the first requisite of a political people; though I +admit, of course, that it could not have borne the fruit +it did, without Mr. Darwin’s conception of a natural +selection through conflict, to help it on. Such passages +as the following could evidently never have been written +by a mere student of Darwinian literature, nor without +the trained imagination exhibited in Bagehot’s literary +essays:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘No one will ever comprehend the arrested civilisations unless he +sees the strict dilemma of early society. Either men had no law at +all and lived in confused tribes, hardly hanging together, or they had +to obtain a fixed law by processes of incredible difficulty. Those +who surmounted that difficulty soon destroyed all those that lay in +their way who did not. And then they themselves were caught in +their own yoke. The customary discipline which could only be imposed +on any early men by terrible sanctions, continued with those +sanctions, and killed out of the whole society the propensities to +variation which are the principle of progress. Experience shows +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_liv">[liv]</span>how incredibly difficult it is to get men really to encourage the principle +of originality;’⁠<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a>⁠</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p class="noindent">and, as Bagehot held, for a very good reason, namely, +that without a long accumulated and inherited tendency +to discourage originality, society would never have +gained the cohesion requisite for effective common +action against its external foes. No one, I think, who +had not studied as Bagehot had in actual life, first, the +vast and unreasoning Conservatism of politically strong +societies, like that of rural England, and next, the +perilous mobility and impressibility of politically weak +societies, like that of Paris, would ever have seen as +he did the close connection of these ideas with Mr. +Darwin’s principle of natural selection by conflict. +And here I may mention, by way of illustrating this +point, that Bagehot delighted in observing and expounding +the bovine slowness of rural England in acquiring +a new idea. Somersetshire, he used to boast, +would not subscribe 1,000<i>l.</i> ‘to be represented by an +archangel;’ and in one letter which I received from him +during the Crimean War, he narrated with great gusto +an instance of the tenacity with which a Somersetshire +rustic stuck to his own notion of what was involved in +conquering an enemy. ‘The Somersetshire view,’ he +wrote, ‘of the chance of bringing the war to a successful +conclusion is as follows:—<i>Countryman</i>: “How old, +zir, be the Zar?”—<i>Myself</i>: “About sixty-three.”—<i>Countryman</i>: +“Well, now, I can’t think however they +be to take he. They do tell I that Rooshia is a very +big place, and if he doo goo right into the middle of’n, +you could not take he, not nohow.” I talked till the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lv">[lv]</span>train came (it was at a station), and endeavoured to +show how the war might be finished without capturing +the Czar, but I fear without effect. At last he said, +“Well, zir, I hope, <i>as you do say, zir</i>, we shall take +he,” as I got into the carriage.’ It is clear that the +humorous delight which Bagehot took in this tenacity +and density of rural conceptions, was partly the cause +of the attention which he paid to the subject. No +doubt there was in him a vein of purely instinctive +sympathy with this density, for intellectually he could +not even have understood it. Writing on the intolerable +and fatiguing cleverness of French journals, he +describes in one of his Paris letters the true enjoyment +he felt in reading a thoroughly stupid article in the +<i>Herald</i> (a Tory paper now no more), and I believe he +was quite sincere. It was, I imagine, a real pleasure to +him to be able to preach, in his last general work, that +a ‘cake of custom,’ just sufficiently stiff to make innovation +of any kind very difficult, but not quite stiff +enough to make it impossible, is the true condition of +durable progress.</p> + +<p>The coolness of his judgment, and his power of +seeing both sides of a question, undoubtedly gave +Bagehot’s political opinions considerable weight with +both parties, and I am quite aware that a great majority +of the ablest political thinkers of the time would +disagree with me when I say, that personally I do not +rate Bagehot’s sagacity as a practical politician nearly +so highly as I rate his wise analysis of the growth and +<i>rationale</i> of political institutions. Everything he wrote +on the politics of the day was instructive, but, to my +mind at least, seldom decisive, and, as I thought, often +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lvi">[lvi]</span>not true. He did not feel, and avowed that he did not +feel, much sympathy with the masses, and he attached +far too much relative importance to the refinement +of the governing classes. That, no doubt, is most +desirable, if you can combine it with a genuine consideration +for the interests of ‘the toiling millions of +men sunk in labour and pain.’ But experience, I think, +sufficiently shows that they are often, perhaps even +generally, incompatible; and that democratic governments +of very low tone may consult more adequately +the leading interests of the ‘dim common populations’ +than aristocratic governments of very high calibre. +Bagehot hardly admitted this, and always seemed to +me to think far more of the intellectual and moral +tone of governments, than he did of the intellectual and +moral interests of the people governed.</p> + +<p>Again, those who felt most profoundly Bagehot’s +influence as a political thinker, would probably agree +with me that it was his leading idea in politics to discourage +anything like too much action of any kind, +legislative or administrative, and most of all anything +like an ambitious colonial or foreign policy. This was +not owing to any <i>doctrinaire</i> adhesion to the principle +of <i>laissez-faire</i>. He supported, hesitatingly no doubt, +but in the end decidedly, the Irish Land Bill, and never +belonged to that straitest sect of the Economists who +decry, as contrary to the laws of economy, and little +short of a crime, the intervention of Government in +matters which the conflict of individual self-interests +might possibly be trusted to determine. It was from +a very different point of view that he was so anxious to +deprecate ambitious policies, and curb the practical +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lvii">[lvii]</span>energies of the most energetic of peoples. Next to +Clough, I think that Sir George Cornewall Lewis had +the most powerful influence over him in relation to +political principles. There has been no statesman in +our time whom he liked so much or regretted so +deeply; and he followed him most of all in deprecating +the greater part of what is called political <i>energy</i>. +Bagehot held with Sir George Lewis that men in +modern days do a great deal too much; that half the +public actions, and a great many of the private actions +of men, had better never have been done; that modern +statesmen and modern peoples are far too willing to +burden themselves with responsibilities. He held, too, +that men have not yet sufficiently verified the principles +on which action ought to proceed, and that till +they have done so, it would be better far to act less. +Lord Melbourne’s habitual query, ‘Can’t you let it +alone?’ seemed to him, as regarded all new responsibilities, +the wisest of hints for our time. He would +have been glad to find a fair excuse for giving up India, +for throwing the Colonies on their own resources, and +for persuading the English people to accept deliberately +the place of a fourth or fifth-rate European power—which +was not, in his estimation, a cynical or unpatriotic +wish, but quite the reverse, for he thought that such a +course would result in generally raising the calibre of +the national mind, conscience, and taste. In his ‘Physics +and Politics’ he urges generally, as I have before pointed +out, that the practical energy of existing peoples in the +West is far in advance of the knowledge that would +alone enable them to turn that energy to good account. +He wanted to see the English a more leisurely race, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lviii">[lviii]</span>taking more time to consider all their actions, and +suspending their decisions on all great policies and +enterprises till either these were well matured, or, as he +expected it to be in the great majority of cases, the +opportunity for sensational action was gone by. He +quotes from Clough what really might have been taken +as the motto of his own political creed:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Old things need not be therefore true,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O brother men, nor yet the new;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ah, still awhile, th’ old thought retain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And yet consider it again.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>And in all this, if it were advanced rather as a principle +of education than as a principle of political practice, +there would be great force. But when he applied +this teaching, not to the individual but to the State, not +to encourage the gradual formation of a new type of +character, but to warn the nation back from a multitude +of practical duties of a simple though arduous +kind, such as those, for example, which we have undertaken +in India—duties, the value of which, performed +even as they are, could hardly be overrated, if only +because they involve so few debatable and doubtful +assumptions, and are only the elementary tasks of the +hewers of wood and drawers of water for the civilisation +of the future—I think Bagehot made the mistake +of attaching far too little value to the moral instincts of +a sagacious people, and too much to the refined deductions +of a singularly subtle intellect. I suspect that +the real effect of suddenly stopping the various safety-valves, +by which the spare energy of our nation is +diverted to the useful work of roughly civilising other +lands, would be, not to stimulate the deliberative +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lix">[lix]</span>understanding of the English people, but to stunt its +thinking as well as its acting powers, and render it +more frivolous and more vacant-minded than it is.</p> + +<p>In the field of economy there are so many thinkers +who are far better judges of Bagehot’s invaluable work +than myself, that I will say a very few words indeed +upon it. It is curious, but I believe it to be almost +universally true, that what may be called the primitive +impulse of all economic <i>action</i>, is generally also strong +in great economic <i>thinkers</i> and financiers—I mean the +saving, or at least the anti-spending, instinct. It is very +difficult to see why it should be so, but I think it <i>is</i> so. +No one was more large-minded in his view of finance +than Bagehot. He preached that, in the case of a rich +country like England, efficiency was vastly more important +than the mere reduction of expenditure, and held +that Mr. Gladstone and other great Chancellors of the +Exchequer made a great deal too much of saving for +saving’s sake. None the less he himself had the anti-spending +instinct in some strength, and he was evidently +pleased to note its existence in his favourite economic +thinker, Ricardo. Generous as Bagehot was—and no +one ever hesitated less about giving largely for an +adequate end—he always told me, even in boyhood, +that spending was disagreeable to him, and that it took +something of an effort to pay away money. In a letter +before me, he tells his correspondent of the marriage of +an acquaintance, and adds that the lady is a Dissenter, +‘and therefore probably rich. Dissenters don’t spend, +<i>and quite right too</i>.’ I suppose it takes some feeling of +this kind to give the intellect of a man of high capacity +that impulse towards the study of the laws of the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lx">[lx]</span>increase of wealth, without which men of any imagination +would be more likely to turn in other directions. +Nevertheless, even as an economist, Bagehot’s most +original writing was due less to his deductions from the +fundamental axioms of the modern science, than to that +deep insight into men which he had gained in many +different fields. The essays, published in the <i>Fortnightly +Review</i> for February and May 1876⁠<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a>⁠—in which +he showed so powerfully how few of the conditions of +the science known to us as ‘political economy’ have +ever been really applicable to any large portion of the +globe during the longest periods of human history—furnish +quite an original study in social history and in +human nature. His striking book, ‘Lombard Street,’ is +quite as much a study of bankers and bill-brokers as of +the principles of banking. Take, again, Bagehot’s view +of the intellectual position and value of the capitalist +classes. Every one who knows his writings in the +<i>Economist</i>, knows how he ridiculed the common impression +that the chief service of the capitalist class—that +by which they <i>earn</i> their profits—is merely what the +late Mr. Senior used to call ‘abstinence,’ that is, the +practice of deferring their enjoyment of their savings +in order that those savings may multiply themselves; +and knows too how inadequate he thought it, merely to +add that when capitalists are themselves managers, they +discharge the task of ‘superintending labour’ as well. +Bagehot held that the capitalists of a commercial +country do—not merely the saving, and the work of +foremen in superintending labour, but all the difficult +intellectual work of commerce besides, and are so little +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lxi">[lxi]</span>appreciated as they are, chiefly because they are a +dumb class who are seldom equal to explaining to +others the complex processes by which they estimate +the wants of the community, and conceive how best to +supply them. He maintained that capitalists are the +great generals of commerce, that they plan its whole +strategy, determine its tactics, direct its commissariat, +and incur the danger of great defeats, as well as earn, +if they do not always gain, the credit of great victories.</p> + +<p>Here again is a new illustration of the light which +Bagehot’s keen insight into men, taken in connection +with his own intimate understanding of the commercial +field, brought into his economic studies. He brought +life into these dry subjects from almost every side; for +instance, in writing to the <i>Spectator</i>, many years ago, +about the cliff scenery of Cornwall, and especially +about the petty harbour of Boscastle, with its fierce +sea and its two breakwaters—which leave a mere +‘Temple Bar’ for the ships to get in at—a harbour of +which he says that ‘the principal harbour of Liliput +probably had just this look,’—he goes back in imagination +at once to the condition of the country at the time +when a great number of such petty harbours as these +were essential to such trade as there was, and shows +that at that time the Liverpool and London docks not +only could not have been built for want of money, but +would have been of no use if they had been built, since +the auxiliary facilities which alone make such emporia +useful did not exist. ‘Our old gentry built on their +own estates as they could, and if their estates were +near some wretched little haven, they were much +pleased. The sea was the railway of those days. It +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lxii">[lxii]</span>brought, as it did to Ellangowan, in Dirk Hatteraick’s +time, brandy for the men and pinners for the women, +to the loneliest of coast castles.’ It was by such vivid +illustrations as this of the conditions of a very different +commercial life from our own, that Bagehot lit up the +‘dismal science,’ till in his hands it became both picturesque +and amusing.</p> + +<p>Bagehot made two or three efforts to get into Parliament, +but after an illness which he had in 1868 he +deliberately abandoned the attempt, and held, I believe +rightly, that his political judgment was all the sounder, +as well as his health the better, for a quieter life. Indeed, +he used to say of himself that it would be very +difficult for him to find a borough which would be +willing to elect him its representative, because he was +‘between sizes in politics.’ Nevertheless in 1866 he +was very nearly elected for Bridgewater, but was by no +means pleased that he was so near success, for he stood +to lose, not to win, in the hope that if he and his party +were really quite pure, he might gain the seat on petition. +He did his very best, indeed, to secure purity, +though he failed. As a speaker, he did not often +succeed. His voice had no great compass, and his +manner was somewhat odd to ordinary hearers; but +at Bridgewater he was completely at his ease, and his +canvass and public speeches were decided successes. +His examination, too, before the Commissioners sent +down a year or two later to inquire into the corruption +of Bridgewater was itself a great success. He not only +entirely defeated the somewhat eagerly pressed efforts +of one of the Commissioners, Mr. Anstey, to connect +him with the bribery, but he drew a most amusing +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lxiii">[lxiii]</span>picture of the bribable electors whom he had seen only +to shun. I will quote a little bit from the evidence he +gave in reply to what Mr. Anstey probably regarded as +home-thrusts:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘42,018. (<i>Mr. Anstey.</i>) Speaking from your experience of those +streets, when you went down them canvassing, did any of the people +say anything to you, or in your hearing, about money?—Yes, one I +recollect standing at the door, who said, “I won’t vote for gentlefolks +unless they do something for I. Gentlefolks do not come to I unless +they want something of I, and I won’t do nothing for gentlefolks, +unless they do something for me.” Of course, I immediately retired +out of that house.</p> + +<p>‘42,019. That man did not give you his promise?—I retired +immediately; he stood in the doorway sideways, as these rustics do.</p> + +<p>‘42,020. Were there many such instances?—One or two, I remember. +One suggested that I might have a place. I immediately +retired from him.</p> + +<p>‘42,021. Did anybody of a better class than those voters, privately, +of course, expostulate with you against your resolution to be pure?—No, +nobody ever came to me at all.</p> + +<p>‘42,022. But those about you, did any of them say anything of +this kind: “Mr. Bagehot, you are quite wrong in putting purity of +principles forward. It will not do if the other side bribes?”—I might +have been told that I should be unsuccessful in the stream of conversation; +many people may have told me that; that is how I +gathered that if the other side was impure and we were pure, I +should be beaten.</p> + +<p>‘42,023. Can you remember the names of any who told you that?—No, +I cannot, but I daresay I was told by as many as twenty +people, and we went upon that entire consideration.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>To leave my subject without giving some idea of +Bagehot’s racy conversation would be a sin. He inherited +this gift, I believe, in great measure from his +mother, to whose stimulating teaching in early life he +probably owed also a great deal of his rapidity of +thought. A lady who knew him well, says that one +seldom asked him a question without his answer +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lxiv">[lxiv]</span>making you either think or laugh, or both think and +laugh together. And this is the exact truth. His +habitual phraseology was always vivid. He used to +speak, for instance, of the minor people, the youths or +admirers who collect round a considerable man, as his +‘fringe.’ It was he who invented the phrase ‘padding,’ +to denote the secondary kind of article, not quite of the +first merit, but with interest and value of its own, with +which a judicious editor will fill up perhaps three-quarters +of his review. If you asked him what he +thought on a subject on which he did not happen to +have read or thought at all, he would open his large +eyes and say, ‘My mind is “to let” on that subject, +pray tell me what to think;’ though you soon found +that this might be easier attempted than done. He +used to say banteringly to his mother, by way of putting +her off at a time when she was anxious for him to +marry, ‘A man’s mother is his misfortune, but his wife +is his fault.’ He told me once, at a time when the +<i>Spectator</i> had perhaps been somewhat more eager or +sanguine on political matters than he approved, that he +always got his wife to ‘break’ it to him on the Saturday +morning, as he found it too much for his nerves to +encounter its views without preparation. Then his +familiar antitheses not unfrequently reminded me of +Dickens’s best touches in that line. He writes to a +friend, ‘Tell —— that his policies went down in the +<i>Colombo</i>, but were fished up again. <i>They are dirty, +but valid.</i>’ I remember asking him if he had enjoyed +a particular dinner which he had rather expected to +enjoy, but he replied, ‘No, the sherry was bad; tasted +as if L—— had dropped his h’s into it.’ His practical +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lxv">[lxv]</span>illustrations, too, were full of wit. In his address to +the Bridgewater constituency, on the occasion when he +was defeated by eight votes, he criticised most happily +the sort of bribery which ultimately resulted in the +disfranchisement of the place.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘I can make allowance,’ he said, ‘for the poor voter; he is most +likely ill-educated, certainly ill-off, and a little money is a nice treat +to him. What he does is wrong, but it is intelligible. What I do +not understand is the position of the rich, respectable, virtuous +members of a party which countenances these things. They are like +the man who stole stinking fish; they commit a crime, and they get +no benefit.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>But perhaps the best illustration I can give of +his more sardonic humour was his remark to a friend +who had a church in the grounds near his house:—‘Ah, +you’ve got the church in the grounds! I like +that. It’s well the tenants shouldn’t be <i>quite</i> sure that +the landlord’s power stops with this world.’ And his +more humorous exaggerations were very happy. I +remember his saying of a man who was excessively +fastidious in rejecting under-done meat, that he once +sent away a cinder ‘because it was red;’ and he confided +gravely to an early friend that when he was in +low spirits, it cheered him to go down to the bank, and +dabble his hand in a heap of sovereigns. But his talk +had finer qualities than any of these. One of his most +intimate friends—both in early life, and later in Lincoln’s +Inn—Mr. T. Smith Osler, writes to me of it +thus:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘As an instrument for arriving at truth, I never knew anything +like a talk with Bagehot. It had just the quality which the farmers +desiderated in the claret, of which they complained that though it was +very nice, it brought them “no forrader;” for Bagehot’s conversation +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lxvi">[lxvi]</span>did get you forward, and at a most amazing pace. Several ingredients +went to this; the foremost was his power of getting to the heart of +the subject, taking you miles beyond your starting point in a sentence, +generally by dint of sinking to a deeper stratum. The next was his +instantaneous appreciation of the bearing of everything you yourself +said, making talk with him, as Roscoe once remarked, “like riding a +horse with a perfect mouth.” But most unique of all was his power +of keeping up animation without combat. I never knew a power of +discussion, of co operative investigation of truth, to approach to it. +It was all stimulus, and yet no contest.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>But I must have done; and, indeed, it is next to impossible +to convey, even faintly, the impression of +Bagehot’s vivid and pungent conversation to anyone +who did not know him. It was full of youth, and yet +had all the wisdom of a mature judgment in it. The +last time we met, only five days before his death, I +remarked on the vigour and youthfulness of his look, +and told him he looked less like a contemporary of my +own than one of a younger generation. In a pencil-note, +the last I received from him, written from bed on +the next day but one, he said, ‘I think you must have +had the evil eye when you complimented me on my appearance. +Ever since, I have been sickening, and am +now in bed with a severe attack on the lungs.’ Indeed, +well as he appeared to me, he had long had delicate +health, and heart disease was the immediate cause of +death. In spite of a heavy cold on his chest, he went +down to his father’s for his Easter visit the day after I +last saw him, and he passed away painlessly in sleep on +the 24th March 1877, aged 51. It was at Herds Hill, +the pretty place west of the river Parret, that flows +past Langport, which his grandfather had made some +fifty years before, that he breathed his last. He had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_lxvii">[lxvii]</span>been carried thither as an infant to be present when +the foundation stone was laid of the home which he +was never to inherit; and now very few of his name +survive. Bagehot’s family is believed to be the only +one remaining that has retained the old spelling of the +name, as it appears in Doomsday Book, the modern +form being Bagot. The Gloucestershire family of the +same name, from whose stock they are supposed to +have sprung, died out in the beginning of this century.</p> + +<p>Not very many perhaps, outside Bagehot’s own +inner circle, will carry about with them that hidden +pain, that burden of emptiness, inseparable from an +image which has hitherto been one full of the suggestions +of life and power, when that life and power are +no longer to be found; for he was intimately known +only to the few. But those who do will hardly find +again in this world a store of intellectual sympathy of +so high a stamp, so wide in its range and so full of +original and fresh suggestion, a judgment to lean on so +real and so sincere, or a friend so frank and constant, +with so vivid and tenacious a memory for the happy +associations of a common past, and so generous in +recognising the independent value of divergent convictions +in the less pliant present.</p> + +<p class="right">R. H. H.</p> + +<p class="mt2 smaller"><i>November 1, 1878.</i></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span></p> + +<h1>LITERARY STUDIES.</h1> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" style="max-width: 9.375em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/line.jpg" alt=""> +</figure> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_FIRST_EDINBURGH_REVIEWERS"><i>THE FIRST +EDINBURGH REVIEWERS.</i>⁠<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a><br> +<span class="smaller">(1855.)</span></h2> + +</div> + +<p>It is odd to hear that the Edinburgh Review was once +thought an incendiary publication. A young generation, which +has always regarded the appearance of that periodical as a +grave constitutional event (and been told that its composition +is intrusted to Privy Councillors only), can scarcely believe, +that once grave gentlemen kicked it out of doors—that the +dignified classes murmured at ‘those young men’ starting such +views, abetting such tendencies, using <i>such</i> expressions—that +aged men said, ‘Very clever, but not at all sound.’ Venerable +men too exaggerate. People say the Review was planned in a +garret, but this is incredible. Merely to take such a work into +a garret would be inconsistent with propriety; and the tale +that the original conception, the pure idea to which each number +is a quarterly aspiration, ever was in a garret is the +evident fiction of reminiscent age—striving and failing to +remember.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span></p> + +<p>Review writing is one of the features of modern literature. +Many able men really give themselves up to it. Comments on +ancient writings are scarcely so common as formerly; no great +part of our literary talent is devoted to the illustration of the +ancient masters; but what seems at first sight less dignified, +annotation on modern writings was never so frequent. Hazlitt +started the question, whether it would not be as well to review +works which did not appear, in lieu of those which did—wishing, +as a reviewer, to escape the labour of perusing print, and, as a +man, to save his fellow-creatures from the slow torture of +tedious extracts. But, though approximations may frequently +be noticed—though the neglect of authors and independence of +critics are on the increase—this conception, in its grandeur, +has never been carried out. We are surprised at first sight, +that writers should wish to comment on one another; it appears +a tedious mode of stating opinions, and a needless confusion of +personal facts with abstract arguments; and some, especially +authors who have been censured, say that the cause is laziness—that +it is easier to write a review than a book—and that reviewers +are, as Coleridge declared, a species of maggots, inferior +to bookworms, living on the delicious brains of real genius. +Indeed it <i>would</i> be very nice, but our world is so imperfect. +This idea is wholly false. Doubtless it is easier to write one +review than one book: but not, which is the real case, many +reviews than one book. A deeper cause must be looked for.</p> + +<p>In truth, review-writing but exemplifies the casual character +of modern literature. Everything about it is temporary and +fragmentary. Look at a railway stall; you see books of every +colour—blue, yellow, crimson, ‘ring-streaked, speckled, and +spotted,’ on every subject, in every style, of every opinion, with +every conceivable difference, celestial or sublunary, maleficent, +beneficent—but all small. People take their literature in +morsels, as they take sandwiches on a journey. The volumes +at least, you can see clearly, are not intended to be everlasting. +It may be all very well for a pure essence like poetry to be immortal +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span>in a perishable world; it has no feeling; but paper +cannot endure it, paste cannot bear it, string has no heart for +it. The race has made up its mind to be fugitive, as well as +minute. What a change from the ancient volume!—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘That weight of wood, with leathern coat o’erlaid,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Those ample clasps, of solid metal made;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The close-press’d leaves, unoped for many an age,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The dull red edging of the well-fill’d page;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On the broad back the stubborn ridges roll’d,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where yet the title stands in tarnish’d gold.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>And the change in the appearance of books has been accompanied—has +been caused—by a similar change in readers. +What a transition from the student of former ages!—from a +grave man, with grave cheeks and a considerate eye, who spends +his life in study, has no interest in the outward world, hears +nothing of its din, and cares nothing for its honours, who +would gladly learn and gladly teach, whose whole soul is taken +up with a few books of ‘Aristotle and his Philosophy,’—to the +merchant in the railway, with a head full of sums, an idea that +tallow is ‘up,’ a conviction that teas are ‘lively,’ and a mind +reverting perpetually from the little volume which he reads to +these mundane topics, to the railway, to the shares, to the +buying and bargaining universe. We must not wonder that +the outside of books is so different, when the inner nature of +those for whom they are written is so changed.</p> + +<p>It is indeed a peculiarity of our times, that we must instruct +so many persons. On politics, on religion, on all less important +topics still more, every one thinks himself competent to think,—in +some casual manner does think,—to the best of our means +must be taught to think rightly. Even if we had a profound +and far-seeing statesman, his deep ideas and long-reaching +vision would be useless to us, unless we could impart a confidence +in them to the mass of influential persons, to the unelected +Commons, the unchosen Council, who assist at the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span>deliberations of the nation. In religion the appeal now is not +to the technicalities of scholars, or the fictions of recluse schoolmen, +but to the deep feelings, the sure sentiments, the painful +strivings of all who think and hope. And this appeal to the +many necessarily brings with it a consequence. We must speak +to the many so that they will listen,—that they will like to +listen,—that they will understand. It is of no use addressing +them with the forms of science, or the rigour of accuracy, or +the tedium of exhaustive discussion. The multitude are impatient +of system, desirous of brevity, puzzled by formality. +They agree with Sydney Smith: ‘Political economy has become, +in the hands of Malthus and Ricardo, a school of metaphysics. +All seem agreed what is to be done; the contention is, how the +subject is to be divided and defined. <i>Meddle with no such +matters.</i>’ We are not sneering at ‘the last of the sciences;’ +we are concerned with the essential doctrine, and not with the +particular instance. Such is the taste of mankind.</p> + +<p>We may repeat ourselves.</p> + +<p>There is, as yet, no Act of Parliament compelling a <i>bonâ fide</i> +traveller to read. If you wish him to read, you must make +reading pleasant. You must give him short views, and clear +sentences. It will not answer to explain what all the things +which you describe, are <i>not</i>. You must begin by saying what +they are. There is exactly the difference between the books of +this age, and those of a more laborious age, that we feel between +the lecture of a professor and the talk of the man of the +world—the former profound, systematic, suggesting all arguments, +analysing all difficulties, discussing all doubts,—very +admirable, a little tedious, slowly winding an elaborate way, +the characteristic effort of one who has hived wisdom during +many studious years, agreeable to such as he is, anything but +agreeable to such as he is not: the latter, the talk of the manifold +talker, glancing lightly from topic to topic, suggesting +deep things in a jest, unfolding unanswerable arguments in an +absurd illustration, expounding nothing, completing nothing, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span>exhausting nothing, yet really suggesting the lessons of a wider +experience, embodying the results of a more finely tested philosophy, +passing with a more Shakespearian transition, connecting +topics with a more subtle link, refining on them with an acuter +perception, and what is more to the purpose, pleasing all that +hear him, charming high and low, in season and out of season, +with a word of illustration for each and a touch of humour intelligible +to all,—fragmentary yet imparting what he says, +allusive yet explaining what he intends, disconnected yet impressing +what he maintains. This is the very model of our +modern writing. The man of the modern world is used to +speak what the modern world will hear; the writer of the +modern world must write what that world will indulgently and +pleasantly peruse.</p> + +<p>In this transition from ancient writing to modern, the +review-like essay and the essay-like review fill a large space. +Their small bulk, their slight pretension to systematic completeness, +their avowal, it might be said, of necessary incompleteness, +the facility of changing the subject, of selecting +points to attack, of exposing only the best corner for defence, +are great temptations. Still greater is the advantage of ‘our +limits.’ A real reviewer always spends his first and best pages +on the parts of a subject on which he wishes to write, the easy +comfortable parts which he knows. The formidable difficulties +which he acknowledges, you foresee by a strange fatality that +he will only reach two pages before the end; to his great grief +there is no opportunity for discussing them. As a young +gentleman, at the India House examination, wrote ‘Time up’ +on nine unfinished papers in succession, so you may occasionally +read a whole review, in every article of which the principal +difficulty of each successive question is about to be reached at +the conclusion. Nor can any one deny that this is the suitable +skill, the judicious custom of the craft.</p> + +<p>Some may be inclined to mourn over the old days of systematic +arguments and regular discussion. A ‘field-day’ controversy +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>is a fine thing. These skirmishes have much danger and +no glory. Yet there is one immense advantage. The appeal +now is to the mass of sensible persons. Professed students are +not generally suspected of common sense; and though they +often show acuteness in their peculiar pursuits, they have not +the various experience, the changing imagination, the feeling +nature, the realised detail which are necessary <i>data</i> for a +thousand questions. Whatever we may think on this point, +however, the transition has been made. The Edinburgh Review +was, at its beginning, a material step in the change. Unquestionably, +the <i>Spectator</i> and <i>Tatler</i>, and such-like writings, had +opened a similar vein, but their size was too small. They +could only deal with small fragments, or the extreme essence of +a subject. They could not give a view of what was complicated, +or analyse what was involved. The modern man must +be told what to think—shortly, no doubt—but he <i>must</i> be told +it. The essay-like criticism of modern times is about the +length which he likes. The Edinburgh Review, which began +the system, may be said to be, in this country, the commencement +on large topics of suitable views for sensible persons.</p> + +<p>The circumstances of the time were especially favourable to +such an undertaking. Those years were the commencement of +what is called the Eldonine period. The cold and haughty Pitt +had gone down to the grave in circumstances singularly contrasting +with his prosperous youth, and he had carried along +with him the inner essence of half-liberal principle, which had +clung to a tenacious mind from youthful associations, and was +all that remained to the Tories of abstraction or theory. As +for Lord Eldon, it is the most difficult thing in the world to +believe that there ever was such a man. It only shows how +intense historical evidence is, that no one really doubts it. He +believed in everything which it is impossible to believe in—in +the danger of Parliamentary Reform, the danger of Catholic +Emancipation, the danger of altering the Court of Chancery, +the danger of altering the Courts of Law, the danger of abolishing +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>capital punishment for trivial thefts, the danger of making +landowners pay their debts, the danger of making anything +more, the danger of making anything less. It seems as if he +maturely thought, ‘Now I know the present state of things to +be consistent with the existence of John Lord Eldon; but if we +begin altering that state, I am sure I do not know that it will +be consistent.’ As Sir Robert Walpole was against all committees +of inquiry on the simple ground, ‘If they once begin +that sort of thing, who knows who will be safe?’—so that great +Chancellor (still remembered in his own scene) looked pleasantly +down from the woolsack, and seemed to observe, ‘Well, +it <i>is</i> a queer thing that I should be here, and here I mean to +stay.’ With this idea he employed, for many years, all the +abstract intellect of an accomplished lawyer, all the practical +<i>bonhomie</i> of an accomplished courtier, all the energy of both +professions, all the subtlety acquired in either, in the task of +maintaining John Lord Eldon in the cabinet, and maintaining +a cabinet that would suit John Lord Eldon. No matter what +change or misfortunes happened to the Royal house,—whether +the most important person in court politics was the old King +or the young King, Queen Charlotte or Queen Caroline—whether +it was a question of talking grave business to the +mutton of George the Third, or queer stories beside the champagne +of George the Fourth, there was the same figure. To the +first he was tearfully conscientious, and at the second the old +northern circuit stories (how old, what outlasting tradition shall +ever say?) told with a cheerful <i>bonhomie</i>, and a strong conviction +that they <i>were</i> ludicrous, really seem to have pleased +as well as the more artificial niceties of the professed wits. He +was always agreeable, and always serviceable. No little +peccadillo offended him: the ideal, according to the satirist, of +a ‘good-natured man,’ he cared for nothing until he was himself +hurt. He ever remembered the statute which absolves +obedience to a king <i>de facto</i>. And it was the same in the +political world. There was one man who never changed. No +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>matter what politicians came and went—and a good many, +including several that are now scarcely remembered, did come +and go,—the ‘Cabinet-maker,’ as men called him, still remained. +‘As to Lord Liverpool being Prime Minister,’ continued +Mr. Brougham, ‘he is no more Prime Minister than I +am. I reckon Lord Liverpool as a sort of member of opposition; +and after what has recently passed, if I were required, I +should designate him as “a noble lord with whom I have the +honour to act.” Lord Liverpool may have collateral influence, +but Lord Eldon has all the direct influence of the Prime +Minister. He is Prime Minister to all intents and purposes, +and he stands alone in the full exercise of all the influence of +that high situation. Lord Liverpool has carried measures +against the Lord Chancellor; so have I. If Lord Liverpool +carried the Marriage Act, I carried the Education Bill,’ &c. &c. +And though the general views of Lord Eldon may be described,—though +one can say at least negatively and intelligibly that +he objected to everything proposed, and never proposed anything +himself,—the arguments are such as it would require great +intellectual courage to endeavour at all to explain. What +follows is a favourable specimen. ‘Lord Grey,’ says his +biographer, ‘having introduced a bill for dispensing with the +declarations prescribed by the Acts of 25 and 30 Car. II., against +the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the Invocation of Saints, +moved the second reading of it on the 10th of June, when the +Lord Chancellor again opposed the principle of such a measure, +urging that the law which had been introduced under Charles +II. had been re-enacted in the first Parliament of <i>William III.</i>, +the founder of our civil and religious liberties. It had been +thought necessary for the preservation of these, that papists +should not be allowed to sit in Parliament, and some test was +necessary by which it might be ascertained whether a man was +a Catholic or Protestant. The only possible test for such a +purpose was an oath declaratory of religious belief, and, as <i>Dr. +Paley</i> had observed, it was perfectly just to have a religious test +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span>of a political creed. He entreated the House not to commit +the crime against posterity of transmitting to them in an impaired +and insecure state the civil and religious liberties of +England.’ And this sort of appeal to Paley and King William +is made the ground—one can hardly say the reason—for the +most rigid adherence to all that was established.</p> + +<p>It may be asked, How came the English people to endure +this? They are not naturally illiberal; on the contrary, though +slow and cautious, they are prone to steady improvement, and +not at all disposed to acquiesce in the unlimited perfection of +their rulers. On a certain imaginative side, unquestionably, +there is or was a strong feeling of loyalty, of attachment to +what is old, love for what is ancestral, belief in what has been +tried. But the fond attachment to the past is a very different +idea from a slavish adoration of the present. Nothing is +more removed from the Eldonine idolatry of the <i>status quo</i> +than the old cavalier feeling of deep idolatry for the ancient +realm—that half-mystic idea that consecrated what it touched; +the moonlight, as it were, which</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Silver’d the walls of Cumnor Hall,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And many an oak that grew thereby.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Why, then, did the English endure the everlasting Chancellor?</p> + +<p>The fact is, that Lord Eldon’s rule was maintained a great +deal on the same motives as that of Louis Napoleon. One can +fancy his astonishment at hearing it said, and his cheerful +rejoinder, ‘That whatever he was, and Mr. Brougham was in +the habit of calling him strange names, no one should ever +make him believe that he was a <i>Bonaparte</i>.’ But, in fact, he +was, like the present Emperor, the head of what we call the +party of order. Everybody knows what keeps Louis Napoleon +in his place. It is not attachment to him, but dread of what +he restrains—dread of revolution. The present may not be +good, and having such newspapers,—you might say no +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span>newspapers,—is dreadful; but it is better than no trade, bankrupt +banks, loss of old savings; your mother beheaded on destructive +principles; your eldest son shot on conservative ones. +Very similar was the feeling of Englishmen in the year 1800. +They had no liking at all for the French system. Statesmen +saw its absurdity, holy men were shocked at its impiety, mercantile +men saw its effect on the 5 per cents. Everybody was +revolted by its cruelty. That it came across the Channel was +no great recommendation. A witty writer of our own time +says, that if a still Mussulman, in his flowing robes, wished to +give his son a warning against renouncing his faith, he would +take the completest, smartest, dapperest French dandy out of +the streets of Pera, and say, ‘There, my son, if ever you come +to forget God and the Prophet, you may come to look like +<i>that</i>.’ Exactly similar in old conservative speeches is the use +of the French Revolution. If you proposed to alter anything, +of importance or not of importance, legal or social, religious or +not religious, the same answer was ready: ‘You see what the +French have come to. They made alterations; if we make +alterations, who knows but we may end in the same way?’ It +was not any peculiar bigotry in Lord Eldon that actuated him, +or he would have been powerless; still less was it any affected +feeling which he put forward (though, doubtless, he was aware +of its persuasive potency, and worked on it most skilfully to +his own ends); it was genuine, hearty, craven fear; and he ruled +naturally the common-place Englishman, because he sympathised +in his sentiments, and excelled him in his powers.</p> + +<p>There was, too, another cause beside fear which then inclined, +and which in similar times of miscellaneous revolution +will ever incline, subtle rather than creative intellects to a +narrow conservatism. Such intellects require an exact creed; +they want to be able clearly to distinguish themselves from +those around them, to tell to each man where they differ, and +why they differ; they cannot make assumptions; they cannot, +like the merely practical man, be content with rough and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>obvious axioms; they require a <i>theory</i>. Such a want it is +difficult to satisfy in an age of confusion and tumult, when old +habits are shaken, old views overthrown, ancient assumptions +rudely questioned, ancient inferences utterly denied, when each +man has a different view from his neighbour, when an intellectual +change has set father and son at variance, when a man’s +own household are the special foes of his favourite and self-adopted +creed. A bold and original mind breaks through +these vexations, and forms for itself a theory satisfactory to +its notions, and sufficient for its wants. A weak mind yields +a passive obedience to those among whom it is thrown. But +a mind which is searching without being creative, which is +accurate and logical enough to see defects, without being +combinative or inventive enough to provide remedies,—which, +in the old language, is discriminative rather than discursive,—is +wholly unable, out of the medley of new suggestions, +to provide itself with an adequate belief; and it naturally falls +back on the <i>status quo</i>. This is, at least, clear and simple +and defined; you know at any rate what you propose—where +you end—why you pause;—an argumentative defence +it is, doubtless, difficult to find; but there are arguments on +all sides; the world is a medley of arguments; no one is +agreed in which direction to alter the world; what is proposed +is as liable to objection as what exists; nonsense for nonsense, +the old should keep its ground: and so in times of +convulsion, the philosophic scepticism—the ever-questioning +hesitation of Hume and Montaigne—the subtlest quintessence +of the most restless and refining abstraction—becomes allied to +the stupidest, crudest acquiescence in the present and concrete +world. We read occasionally in conservative literature (the +remark is as true of religion as of politics) alternations of sentences, +the first an appeal to the coarsest prejudice,—the next a +subtle hint to a craving and insatiable scepticism. You may +trace this even in Vesey junior. Lord Eldon never read Hume +or Montaigne, but sometimes, in the interstices of cumbrous +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>law, you may find sentences with their meaning, if not in their +manner; ‘Dumpor’s case always struck me as extraordinary; +but if you depart from Dumpor’s case, what is there to prevent +a departure in every direction?’</p> + +<p>The glory of the Edinburgh Review is that from the first it +steadily set itself to oppose this timorous acquiescence in the +actual system. On domestic subjects the history of the first +thirty years of the nineteenth century is a species of duel +between the Edinburgh Review and Lord Eldon. All the +ancient abuses which he thought it most dangerous to impair, +they thought it most dangerous to retain. ‘To appreciate the +value of the Edinburgh Review,’ says one of the founders, ‘the +state of England at the period when that journal began should +be had in remembrance. The Catholics were not emancipated. +The Corporation and Test Acts were unrepealed. The game-laws +were horribly oppressive; steel-traps and spring-guns were +set all over the country; prisoners tried for their lives could +have no counsel. Lord Eldon and the Court of Chancery pressed +heavily on mankind. Libel was punished by the most cruel +and vindictive imprisonments. The principles of political +economy were little understood. The laws of debt and conspiracy +were on the worst footing. The enormous wickedness +of the slave-trade was tolerated. A thousand evils were in existence +which the talents of good and noble men have since +lessened or removed: and these efforts have been not a little +assisted by the honest boldness of the Edinburgh Review.’ And +even more characteristic than the advocacy of these or any +other partial or particular reforms is the systematic opposition +of the Edinburgh Review to the crude acquiescence in the +<i>status quo</i>; the timorous dislike to change because it was +change; to the optimistic conclusion, ‘that what is, ought to +be;’ the sceptical query, ‘How do you know that what you +say will be any better?’</p> + +<p>In this defence of the principle of innovation, a defence +which it requires great imagination (or, as we suggested, the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>looking across the Channel) to conceive the efficacy of now, +the Edinburgh Review was but the doctrinal organ of the +Whigs. A great deal of philosophy has been expended in endeavouring +to fix and express theoretically the creed of that +party: various forms of abstract doctrine have been drawn out, +in which elaborate sentence follows hard on elaborate sentence, +to be set aside, or at least vigorously questioned by the next +or succeeding inquirers. In truth Whiggism is not a creed, it +is a character. Perhaps as long as there has been a political +history in this country there have been certain men of a cool, +moderate, resolute firmness, not gifted with high imagination, +little prone to enthusiastic sentiment, heedless of large theories +and speculations, careless of dreamy scepticism; with a clear +view of the next step, and a wise intention to take it; a strong +conviction that the elements of knowledge are true, and a +steady belief that the present world can, and should be, quietly +improved.</p> + +<p>These are the Whigs. A tinge of simplicity still clings to +the character; of old it was the Country Party. The limitation +of their imagination is in some sort an advantage to such +men; it confines them to a simple path, prevents their being +drawn aside by various speculations, restricts them to what is +clear and intelligible, and at hand. ‘I cannot,’ said Sir S. +Romilly, ‘be convinced without arguments, and I do not see +that either Burke or Paine advance any.’ He was unable to +see that the most convincing arguments,—and some of those +in the work of Burke, which he alludes to, are certainly sound +enough,—may be expressed imaginatively, and may work a far +firmer persuasion than any neat and abstract statement. Nor +are the intellectual powers of the characteristic element in +this party exactly of the loftiest order; they have no call to +make great discoveries, or pursue unbounded designs, or amaze +the world by some wild dream of empire and renown. That +terrible essence of daring genius, such as we see it in Napoleon, +and can imagine it in some of the conquerors of old time, is +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>utterly removed from their cool and placid judgment. In taste +they are correct,—that is, better appreciating the complete +compliance with explicit and ascertained rules, than the unconscious +exuberance of inexplicable and unforeseen beauties. +In their own writings, they display the defined neatness of the +second order, rather than the aspiring hardihood of the first +excellence. In action they are quiet and reasonable rather +than inventive and overwhelming. Their power indeed is +scarcely intellectual; on the contrary, it resides in what Aristotle +would have called their ἦθος, and we should call their +nature. They are emphatically pure-natured and firm-natured. +Instinctively casting aside the coarse temptations and crude +excitements of a vulgar earth, they pass like a September breeze +across the other air, cool and refreshing, unable, one might +fancy, even to comprehend the many offences with which all +else is fainting and oppressed. So far even as their excellence +is intellectual, it consists less in the supereminent possession +of any single talent or endowment, than in the simultaneous +enjoyment and felicitous adjustment of many or several;—in a +certain balance of the faculties which we call judgment or sense, +which placidly indicates to them what should be done, and +which is not preserved without an equable calm, and a patient, +persistent watchfulness. In such men the moral and intellectual +nature half become one. Whether, according to the +Greek question, manly virtue can be taught or not, assuredly +it has never been taught to them; it seems a native endowment; +it seems a soul—a soul of honour—as we speak, within +the exterior soul; a fine impalpable essence, more exquisite +than the rest of the being; as the thin pillar of the cloud, +more beautiful than the other blue of heaven, governing and +guiding a simple way through the dark wilderness of our +world.</p> + +<p>To descend from such elevations, among <i>people</i> Sir Samuel +Romilly is the best-known type of this character. The admirable +biography of him made public his admirable virtues. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>Yet it is probable that among the aristocratic Whigs, persons +as typical of the character can be found. This species of noble +nature is exactly of the kind which hereditary associations tend +to purify and confirm; just that casual, delicate, placid virtue, +which it is so hard to find, perhaps so sanguine to expect, in a +rough tribune of the people. Defects enough there are in this +character, on which we shall say something; yet it is wonderful +to see what an influence in this sublunary sphere it gains and +preserves. The world makes an oracle of its judgment. There +is a curious living instance of this. You may observe that when +an ancient liberal, Lord John Russell, or any of the essential +sect, has done anything very queer, the last thing you would +imagine anybody would dream of doing, and is attacked for +it, he always answers boldly, ‘Lord Lansdowne said I <i>might</i>;’ +or if it is a ponderous day, the eloquence runs, ‘A noble friend +with whom I have ever had the inestimable advantage of being +associated from the commencement (the infantile period, I +might say) of my political life, and to whose advice,’ &c. &c. +&c.—and a very cheerful existence it must be for ‘my noble +friend’ to be expected to justify—(for they never say it except +they have done something very odd)—and dignify every aberration. +Still it must be a beautiful feeling to have a man like +Lord John, to have a stiff, small man bowing down before you. +And a good judge certainly suggested the conferring of this +authority. ‘Why do they not talk over the virtues and excellences +of Lansdowne? There is no man who performs the +duties of life better, or fills a high station in a more becoming +manner. He is full of knowledge, and eager for its acquisition. +His remarkable politeness is the result of good nature, regulated +by good sense. He looks for talents and qualities among all +ranks of men, and adds them to his stock of society, as a botanist +does his plants; and while other aristocrats are yawning +among stars and garters, Lansdowne is refreshing his soul with +the fancy and genius which he has found in odd places, and +gathered to the marbles and pictures of his palace. Then he +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>is an honest politician, a wise statesman, and has a philosophic +mind,’ &c. &c.⁠<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> Here is devotion for a carping critic; and +who ever heard before of <i>bonhomie</i> in an idol?</p> + +<p>It may strike some that this equable kind of character is +not the most interesting. Many will prefer the bold felicities of +daring genius, the deep plans of latent and searching sagacity, +the hardy triumphs of an overawing and imperious will. Yet +it is not unremarkable that an experienced and erudite Frenchman, +not unalive to artistic effect, has just now selected this +very species of character for the main figure in a large portion +of an elaborate work. The hero of M. Villemain is one to +whom he delights to ascribe such things as <i>bon sens</i>, <i>esprit +juste</i>, <i>cœur excellent</i>. The result, it may be owned, is a little +dull, yet it is not the less characteristic. The instructed +observer has detected the deficiency of his country. If France +had more men of firm will, quiet composure, with a suspicion +of enormous principle and a taste for moderate improvement: +if a Whig party, in a word, were possible in France, France +would be free. And though there are doubtless crises in affairs, +dark and terrible moments, when a more creative intellect is +needful to propose, a more dictatorial will is necessary to carry +out, a sudden and daring resolution; though in times of inextricable +confusion—perhaps the present is one of them⁠<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>⁠—a +more abstruse and disentangling intellect is required to untwist +the ravelled perplexities of a complicated world; yet England +will cease to be the England of our fathers, when a large share +in great affairs is no longer given to the equable sense, the +composed resolution, the homely purity of the characteristic +Whigs.</p> + +<p>It is evident that between such men and Lord Eldon there +could be no peace; and between them and the Edinburgh +Review there was a natural alliance. Not only the kind of +reforms there proposed, the species of views therein maintained, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>but the very manner in which those views and alterations are +put forward and maintained, is just what they would like. The +kind of writing suitable to such minds is not the elaborate, +ambitious, exhaustive discussion of former ages, but the clear, +simple, occasional writing (as we just now described it) of the +present times. The opinions to be expressed are short and +simple; the innovations suggested are natural and evident; +neither one nor the other require more than an intelligible +statement, a distinct exposition to the world; and their reception +would be only impeded and complicated by operose and +cumbrous argumentation. The exact mind which of all others +dislikes the stupid adherence to the <i>status quo</i>, is the keen, +quiet, improving Whig mind; the exact kind of writing most +adapted to express that dislike is the cool, pungent, didactic +essay.</p> + +<p>Equally common to the Whigs and the Edinburgh Review +is the enmity to the sceptical, over-refining Toryism of Hume +and Montaigne. The Whigs, it is true, have a conservatism of +their own, but it instinctively clings to certain practical rules +tried by steady adherence, to appropriate formulæ verified by +the regular application and steady success of many ages. +Political philosophers speak of it as a great step when the idea +of an attachment to an organised code and system of rules and +laws takes the place of the exclusive oriental attachment to the +person of the single monarch. This step is natural, is instinctive +to the Whig mind; that cool impassive intelligence is +little likely to yield to ardent emotions of personal loyalty; +but its chosen ideal is a body or collection of wise rules fitly +applicable to great affairs, pleasing a placid sense by an evident +propriety, gratifying the capacity for business by a constant +and clear applicability. The Whigs are constitutional by +instinct, as the Cavaliers were monarchical by devotion. It has +been a jest at their present leader that he is over familiar with +public forms and parliamentary rites. The first wish of the +Whigs is to retain the constitution; the second—and it is of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>almost equal strength—is to improve it. They think the body +of laws now existing to be, in the main and in its essence, +excellent; but yet that there are exceptional defects which +should be remedied, superficial inconsistencies that should be +corrected. The most opposite creed is that of the sceptic, who +teaches that you are to keep what is because it exists; not from +a conviction of its excellence, but from an uncertainty that +anything better can be obtained. The one is an attachment to +precise rules for specific reasons; the other an acquiescence in +the present on grounds that would be equally applicable to its +very opposite, from a disbelief in the possibility of improvement, +and a conviction of the uncertainty of all things. And +equally adverse to an unlimited scepticism is the nature of +popular writing. It is true that the greatest teachers of that +creed have sometimes, and as it were of set purpose, adopted +that species of writing; yet essentially it is inimical to them. +Its appeal is to the people; as has been shown, it addresses the +<i>élite</i> of common men, sensible in their affairs, intelligent in +their tastes, influential among their neighbours. What is +absolute scepticism to such men?—a dream, a chimera, an +inexplicable absurdity. Tell it to them to-day, and they will +have forgotten it to-morrow. A man of business hates elaborate +trifling. ‘If you do not believe <i>your own</i> senses,’ he will +say, ‘there is no use in <i>my</i> talking to you.’ As to the multiplicity +of arguments and the complexity of questions, he feels +them little. He has a plain, simple, as he would say, practical +way of looking at the matter; and you will never make him +comprehend any other. He knows the world <i>can</i> be improved. +And thus what we may call the middle species of writing—which +is intermediate between the light, frivolous style of +merely amusing literature, and the heavy, conscientious elaborateness +of methodical philosophy—the style of the original +Edinburgh—is, in truth, as opposed to the vague, desponding +conservatism of the sceptic as it is to the stupid conservatism +of the crude and uninstructed; and substantially for the same +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>reason—that it is addressed to men of cool, clear, and practical +understandings.</p> + +<p>It is, indeed, no wonder that the Edinburgh Review should +be agreeable to the Whigs, for the people who founded it were +Whigs. Among these, three stand pre-eminent—Horner, Jeffrey, +and Sydney Smith. Other men of equal ability may have contributed—and +a few did contribute—to its pages; but these +men were, more than any one else, the first Edinburgh Review.</p> + +<p>Francis Horner’s was a short and singular life. He was the +son of an Edinburgh shopkeeper. He died at thirty-nine; and +when he died, from all sides of the usually cold House of +Commons great statesmen and thorough gentlemen got up to +deplore his loss. Tears are rarely parliamentary: all men are +arid towards young Scotchmen; yet it was one of that inclement +nation whom statesmen of the species Castlereagh, +and statesmen of the species Whitbread—with all the many +kinds and species that lie between the two—rose in succession +to lament. The fortunes and superficial aspect of the man +make it more singular. He had no wealth, was a briefless +barrister, never held an office, was a conspicuous member of +the most unpopular of all oppositions—the opposition to a +glorious and successful war. He never had the means of +obliging any one. He was destitute of showy abilities: he had +not the intense eloquence or overwhelming ardour which +enthral and captivate popular assemblies: his powers of administration +were little tried, and may possibly be slightly +questioned. In his youthful reading he was remarkable for +laying down, for a few months of study, enormous plans, such +as many years would scarcely complete; and not especially +remarkable for doing anything wonderful towards accomplishing +those plans. Sir Walter Scott, who, though not illiberal in +his essential intellect, was a keen partisan on superficial +matters, and no lenient critic on actual Edinburgh Whigs, +used to observe, ‘I cannot admire your Horner; he always +reminds me of Obadiah’s bull, who, though he never certainly +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>did produce a calf, nevertheless went about his business with so +much gravity, that he commanded the respect of the whole +parish.’ It is no explanation of the universal regret, that he +was a considerable political economist: no real English gentleman, +in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a +political economist: he is much more likely to be sorry for his +life. There is an idea that he has something to do with +statistics; or, if that be exploded, that he is a person who +writes upon ‘value:’ says that rent is—you cannot very well +make out what; talks excruciating currency; he may be useful +as drying machines are useful;⁠<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> but the notion of crying +about him is absurd. The economical loss might be great, +but it will not explain the mourning for Francis Horner.</p> + +<p>The fact is that Horner is a striking example of the advantage +of keeping an atmosphere. This may sound like nonsense, +and yet it is true. There is around some men a kind of +circle or halo of influences, and traits, and associations, by +which they infallibly leave a distinct and uniform impression on +all their contemporaries. It is very difficult, even for those +who have the best opportunities, to analyse exactly what this +impression consists in, or why it was made—but it <i>is</i> made. +There is a certain undefinable keeping in the traits and +manner, and common speech and characteristic actions of some +men, which inevitably stamps the same mark and image. It is +like a man’s style. There are some writers who can be known +by a few words of their writing; each syllable is instinct with +a certain spirit: put it into the hands of any one chosen at +random, the same impression will be produced by the same +casual and felicitous means. Just so in character, the air and +atmosphere, so to speak, which are around a man, have a delicate +and expressive power, and leave a stamp of unity on the +interpretative faculty of mankind. Death dissolves this association, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>and it becomes a problem for posterity what it was +that contemporaries observed and reverenced. There is Lord +Somers. Does any one know why he had such a reputation? +He was Lord Chancellor, and decided a Bank case, and had an +influence in the Cabinet; but there have been Lord Chancellors, +and Bank cases, and influential Cabinet ministers not a few, +that have never attained to a like reputation. There is little +we can connect specifically with his name. Lord Macaulay, +indeed, says that he spoke for five minutes on the Bishops’ +trial; and that when he sat down, his reputation as an orator +and constitutional lawyer was established. But this must be a +trifle eloquent; hardly any orator could be fast enough to +attain such a reputation in five minutes. The truth is, that +Lord Somers had around him that inexpressible attraction and +influence of which we speak. He left a sure, and if we may +trust the historian, even a momentary impression on those who +saw him. By a species of tact they felt him to be a great +man. The ethical sense—for there is almost such a thing in +simple persons—discriminated the fine and placid oneness of +his nature. It was the same on a smaller scale with Horner. +After he had left Edinburgh several years, his closest and most +confidential associate writes to him:—‘There is no circumstance +in your life, my dear Horner, so enviable as the universal +confidence which your conduct has produced among all +descriptions of men. I do not speak of your friends, who +have been near and close observers; but I have had some occasions +of observing the impression which those who are distant +spectators have had, and I believe there are few instances of +any person of your age possessing the same character for independence +and integrity, qualities for which very little credit is +given in general to young men.’⁠<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> Sydney Smith said, ‘the Ten +Commandments were written on his countenance.’ Of course +he was a very ugly man, but the moral impression in fact conveyed +was equally efficacious; ‘I have often,’ said the same +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>most just observer, ‘told him, that there was not a crime he +might not commit with impunity, as no judge or jury who saw +him would give the smallest credit to any evidence against +him. There was in his look a calm settled love of all that was +honourable and good—an air of wisdom and of sweetness. You +saw at once that he was a great man, whom nature had intended +for a leader of human beings; you ranged yourself +willingly under his banners, and cheerfully submitted to his +sway.’ From the somewhat lengthened description of what we +defined as the essential Whig character, it is evident how +agreeable and suitable such a man was to their quiet, composed, +and aristocratic nature. His tone was agreeable to English +gentlemen: a firm and placid manliness, without effort or pretension, +is what they like best; and therefore it was that the +House of Commons grieved for his loss—unanimously and +without distinction.</p> + +<p>Some friends of Horner’s, in his own time, mildly criticised +him for a tendency to party spirit. The disease in him, if real, +was by no means virulent; but it is worth noticing as one of +the defects to which the proper Whig character is specially +prone. It is evident in the quiet agreement of the men. +Their composed, unimaginative nature is inclined to isolate itself +in a single view; their placid disposition, never prone to +self-distrust, is rather susceptible of friendly influence; their +practical habit is concentrated on what should be done. They +do not wish—they do not like to go forth into various speculation; +to put themselves in the position of opponents; to +weigh in a refining scale the special weight of small objections. +Their fancy is hardly vivid enough to explain to them all the +characters of those whom they oppose; their intellect scarcely +detective enough to discover a meaning for each grain in +opposing arguments. Nor is their temper, it may be, always +prone to be patient with propositions which tease, and persons +who resist them. The wish to call down fire from heaven is +rarely absent in pure zeal for a pure cause.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span></p> + +<p>A good deal of praise has naturally been bestowed upon the +Whigs for adopting such a man as Horner, with Romilly and +others of that time; and much excellent eulogy has been expended +on the close boroughs, which afforded to the Whig +leaders a useful mode of showing their favour. Certainly the +character of Horner was one altogether calculated to ingratiate +itself with the best and most special Whig nature. But as for +the eulogy on the proprietary seats in Parliament, it is certain +that from the position of the Whig party, the nomination system +was then most likely to show its excellences, and to conceal +its defects. Nobody but an honest man would bind himself +thoroughly to the Whigs. It was evident that the reign of +Lord Eldon must be long; the heavy and common Englishman +(after all, the most steady and powerful force in our political +constitution) had been told that Lord Grey was in favour of the +‘Papists,’ and liked Bonaparte; and the consequence was a +long, painful, arduous exile on ‘the other side of the table,’—the +last place any political adventurer would wish to arrive at. +Those who have no bribes will never charm the corrupt; those +who have nothing to give will not please those who desire that +much shall be given them. There is an observation of Niel +Blane, the innkeeper, in ‘Old Mortality.’ ‘“And what are we +to eat ourselves, then, father,” asked Jenny, “when we hae +sent awa the haile meal in the ark and the girnel?” “We +maun gaur wheat flour serve us for a blink,” said Niel, with an +air of resignation. “It is not that ill food, though far frae +being sae hearty and kindly to a Scotchman’s stomach as the +curney aitmeal is: the Englishers live amaist upon it,”’ &c. It +was so with the Whigs; they were obliged to put up with +honest and virtuous men, and they wanted able men to carry on +a keen opposition; and after all, they and the ‘Englishers’ like +such men best.</p> + +<p>In another point of view, too, Horner’s life was characteristic +of those times. It might seem, at first sight, odd that the English +Whigs should go to Scotland to find a literary representative. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>There was no place where Toryism was so intense. +The constitution of Scotland at that time has been described as +the worst constitution in Europe. The nature of the representation +made the entire country a government borough. In the +towns, the franchise belonged to a close and self-electing corporation, +who were always carefully watched: the county +representation, anciently resting on a property qualification, +had become vested in a few titular freeholders, something like +lords of the manor, only that they might have no manor; and +these, even with the addition of the borough freeholders, did +not amount to three thousand. The whole were in the hands +of Lord Eldon’s party, and the entire force, influence, and +patronage of Government were spent to maintain and keep it +so. By inevitable consequence, Liberalism, even of the most +moderate kind, was thought almost a criminal offence. The +mild Horner was considered a man of ‘very violent opinions.’ +Jeffrey’s father, a careful and discerning parent, was so anxious +to shield him from the intellectual taint, as to forbid his +attendance at Stewart’s lectures. This seems an odd place to +find the eruption of a liberal review. Of course the necessary +effect of a close and common-place tyranny was to engender a +strong reaction in searching and vigorous minds. The Liberals +of the north, though far fewer, may perhaps have been stronger +Liberals than those of the south; but this will hardly explain +the phenomenon. The reason is an academical one; the +teaching of Scotland seems to have been designed to teach men +to write essays and articles. There are two kinds of education, +into all the details of which it is not now pleasant to go, but which +may be adequately described as the education of facts, and the +education of speculation. The system of facts is the English +system. The strength of the pedagogue and the agony of the +pupil are designed to engender a good knowledge of two languages; +in the old times, a little arithmetic; now also a knowledge, +more or less, of mathematics and mathematical physics. +The positive tastes and tendencies of the English mind confine +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>its training to ascertained learning and definite science. In +Scotland the case has long been different. The time of a man +like Horner was taken up with speculations like these: ‘I have +long been feeding my ambition with the prospect of accomplishing, +at some future period of my life, a work similar to +that which Sir Francis Bacon executed about two hundred years +ago. It will depend on the sweep and turn of my speculations, +whether they shall be thrown into the form of a discursive commentary +on the “Instauratio Magna” of that great author, or +shall be entitled to an original form, under the title of a “View +of the Limits of Human Knowledge and a System of the +Principles of Philosophical Inquiry.” I shall say nothing at +present of the audacity,’ &c. &c. And this sort of planning, +which is the staple of his youthful biography, was really accompanied +by much application to metaphysics, history, political +economy, and such like studies. It is not at all to our +present purpose to compare this speculative and indeterminate +kind of study with the rigorous accurate education of England. +The fault of the former is sometimes to produce a sort of +lecturer <i>in vacuo</i>, ignorant of exact pursuits, and diffusive of +vague words. The English now and then produce a learned +creature like a thistle, prickly with all facts, and incapable of +all fruit. But passing by this general question, it cannot be +doubted that, as a preparation for the writing of various articles, +the system of Edinburgh is enormously superior to that of Cambridge. +The particular, compact, exclusive learning of England +is inferior in this respect to the general, diversified, omnipresent +information of the North; and what is more, the speculative, +dubious nature of metaphysical and such like pursuits +tends, in a really strong mind, to cultivate habits of independent +thought and original discussion. A bold mind so +trained will even <i>wish</i> to advance its peculiar ideas, on its own +account, in a written and special form; that is, as we said, to +write an article. Such are the excellences in this respect of +the system of which Horner is an example. The defects tend +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>the same way. It tends, as is said, to make a man fancy he +knows everything. ‘Well then, at least,’ it may be answered, +‘I can write an article on everything.’</p> + +<p>The facility and boldness of the habits so produced were +curiously exemplified in Lord Jeffrey. During the first six +years of the Edinburgh Review he wrote as many as seventy-nine +articles; in a like period afterwards he wrote forty. Any +one who should expect to find a pure perfection in these miscellaneous +productions, should remember their bulk. If all his +reviews were reprinted, they would be very many. And all the +while he was a busy lawyer, was editor of the Review, did the +business, corrected the proof sheets; and more than all, what +one would have thought a very strong man’s work, actually +managed Henry Brougham. You must not criticise papers +like these, rapidly written in the hurry of life, as you would the +painful words of an elaborate sage, slowly and with anxious +awfulness instructing mankind. Some things, a few things, +are for eternity; some, and a good many, are for time. We do +not expect the everlastingness of the Pyramids from the vibratory +grandeur of a Tyburnian mansion.</p> + +<p>The truth is, that Lord Jeffrey was something of a Whig +critic. We have hinted, that among the peculiarities of that +character, an excessive partiality for new, arduous, overwhelming, +original excellence, was by no means to be numbered. +Their tendency inclining to the quiet footsteps of custom, they +like to trace the exact fulfilment of admitted rules, a just +accordance with the familiar features of ancient merit. But +they are most averse to mysticism. A clear, precise, discriminating +intellect shrinks at once from the symbolic, the unbounded, +the indefinite. The misfortune is that mysticism is +true. There certainly are kinds of truth, borne in as it were +instinctively on the human intellect, most influential on the +character and the heart, yet hardly capable of stringent statement, +difficult to limit by an elaborate definition. Their course +is shadowy; the mind seems rather to have seen than to see +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>them, more to feel after than definitely apprehend them. They +commonly involve an infinite element, which of course cannot +be stated precisely, or else a first principle—an original tendency—of +our intellectual constitution, which it is impossible +not to feel, and yet which it is hard to extricate in terms and +words. Of this latter kind is what has been called the religion +of nature, or more exactly, perhaps, the religion of the imagination. +This is an interpretation of the world. According to +it the beauty of the universe has a meaning, its grandeur a +soul, its sublimity an expression. As we gaze on the faces of +those whom we love; as we watch the light of life in the +dawning of their eyes, and the play of their features, and the +wildness of their animation; as we trace in changing lineaments +a varying sign; as a charm and a thrill seem to run along the +tone of a voice, to haunt the mind with a mere word; as a tone +seems to roam in the ear; as a trembling fancy hears words +that are unspoken; so in nature the mystical sense finds a +motion in the mountain, and a power in the waves, and a +meaning in the long white line of the shore, and a thought in +the blue of heaven, and a gushing soul in the buoyant light, an +unbounded being in the vast void air, and</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Wakeful watchings in the pointed stars.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">There is a philosophy in this which might be explained, if +explaining were to our purpose. It might be advanced that +there are original sources of expression in the essential grandeur +and sublimity of nature, of an analogous though fainter kind, +to those familiar, inexplicable signs by which we trace in the +very face and outward lineaments of man the existence and +working of the mind within. But be this as it may, it is certain +that Mr. Wordsworth preached this kind of religion, and +that Lord Jeffrey did not believe a word of it. His cool, sharp, +collected mind revolted from its mysticism; his detective intelligence +was absorbed in its apparent fallaciousness; his light +humour made sport with the sublimities of the preacher. His +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>love of perspicuity was vexed by its indefiniteness; the precise +philosopher was amazed at its mystic unintelligibility. Finding +a little fault was doubtless not unpleasant to him. The reviewer’s +pen—φόνος ἡρώεσσιν—has seldom been more poignantly +wielded. ‘If,’ he was told, ‘you could be alarmed into the +semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember +my joke against you’ (Sydney Smith <i>loquitur</i>) ‘about +the moon. D—n the solar system—bad light—planets too +distant—pestered with comets: feeble contrivance; could make +a better with great ease.’ Yet we do not mean that in this +great literary feud, either of the combatants had all the right, +or gained all the victory. 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 portion into the speech of +women; if, when all this is over, some sufficient part of their +writing will ever be 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 +hand-book 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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>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,⁠<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> ‘This won’t do!’ And +so in all time will the lovers of polished Liberalism speak, concerning +the intense and lonely prophet.</p> + +<p>Yet, if Lord Jeffrey had the natural infirmities of a Whig +critic, he certainly had also its extrinsic and political advantages. +Especially at Edinburgh the Whigs wanted a literary +man. The Liberal party in Scotland had long groaned under +political exclusion; they had suffered, with acute mortification, +the heavy sway of Henry Dundas, but they had been compensated +by a literary supremacy; in the book-world they enjoyed +a domination. On a sudden this was rudely threatened. The +fame of Sir Walter Scott was echoed from the southern world, +and appealed to every national sentiment—to the inmost heart +of every Scotchman. And what a ruler! a lame Tory, a jocose +Jacobite, a laugher at Liberalism, a scoffer at metaphysics, an +unbeliever in political economy! What a gothic ruler for the +modern Athens;—was this man to reign over them? It would +not have been like human nature, if a strong and intellectual +party had not soon found a clever and noticeable rival. Poets, +indeed, are not made ‘to order;’ but Byron, speaking the +sentiment of his time and circle, counted reviewers their equals. +If a Tory produced ‘Marmion,’ a Whig wrote the best article +upon it; Scott might, so ran Liberal speech, be the best living +writer of fiction; Jeffrey, clearly, was the most shrewd and +accomplished of literary critics.</p> + +<p>And though this was an absurd delusion, Lord Jeffrey was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>no every-day man. He invented the trade of editorship. Before +him an editor was a bookseller’s drudge; he is now a distinguished +functionary. If Jeffrey was not a great critic, he +had, what very great critics have wanted, the art of writing +what most people would think good criticism. He might not +know his subject, but he knew his readers. People like to read +ideas which they can imagine to have been their own. ‘Why +does Scarlett always persuade the jury?’ asked a rustic gentleman. +‘Because there are twelve Scarletts in the jury-box,’ +replied an envious advocate. What Scarlett was in law, Jeffrey +was in criticism; he could become that which his readers could +not avoid being. He was neither a pathetic writer nor a profound +writer; but he was a quick-eyed, bustling, black-haired, +sagacious, agreeable man of the world. He had his day, and +was entitled to his day; but a gentle oblivion must now cover +his already subsiding reputation.</p> + +<p>Sydney Smith was an after-dinner writer. His words have +a flow, a vigour, an expression, which is not given to hungry +mortals. You seem to read of good wine, of good cheer, of +beaming and buoyant enjoyment. There is little trace of +labour 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 +have many adverbs, ‘usually,’ ‘nearly,’ ‘almost:’ safe men +begin, ‘it may be advanced:’ you never know precisely what +their premises are, nor what their conclusion is; they 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. A practical +topic wants rough vigour and strong exposition. This is the +writing of ‘Sydney Smith.’ It 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. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>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 contact of a +strong, capable, heavy, jaw-like understanding,—pressing its +surface, effacing its intricacies, grinding it down. Yet as we +said, 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.</p> + +<p>The story is, that he liked a bright light; that when he +was a poor parson in the country, he used, not being able to +afford more delicate luminaries, to adorn his drawing-room with +a hundred little lamps of tin metal and mutton fat. When +you know this, you see it in all his writings. There is the same +preference of perspicuity throughout them. Elegance, fine +savour, sweet illustration, are quite secondary. His only question +to an argument was, ‘Will it tell?’ as to an example, +‘Will it exemplify?’ Like what is called ‘push’ in a practical +man, his style goes straight to its object; it is not restrained +by the gentle hindrances, the delicate decorums of refining +natures. There is nothing more characteristic of the Scandinavian +mythology, than that it had a god with a hammer. You +have no better illustration of our English humour, than the +great success of this huge and healthy organisation.</p> + +<p>There is something about this not exactly to the Whig +taste. They do not like such broad fun, and rather dislike +unlimited statement. Lord Melbourne, it is plain, declined to +make him a bishop. In this there might be a vestige of +Canningite prejudice, but on the whole, there was the distinction +between the two men which there is between the loud +wit and the <i>recherché</i> thinker—between the bold controversialist +and the discriminative statesman. A refined <i>noblesse</i> can +hardly respect a humorist; he amuses them, and they like +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>him, but they are puzzled to know whether he does not laugh +at them as well as with them; and the notion of being laughed +at, ever, or on any score, is alien to their shy decorum and +suppressed pride. But in a broader point of view, and taking +a wider range of general character, there was a good deal in +common. More than any one else, Sydney Smith was Liberalism +in life. Somebody has defined Liberalism as the spirit of the +world. It represents its genial enjoyment, its wise sense, its +steady judgment, its preference of the near to the far, of the +seen to the unseen; it represents, too, its shrinking from difficult +dogma, from stern statement, from imperious superstition. +What health is to the animal, Liberalism is to the polity. It +is a principle of fermenting enjoyment, running over all the +nerves, inspiring the frame, happy in its mind, easy in its +place, glad to behold the sun. All this Sydney Smith, as it +were, personified. The biography just published of him will be +very serviceable to his fame. He has been regarded too much +as a fashionable jester, and metropolitan wit of society. We +have now for the first time a description of him as he was,—equally +at home in the crude world of Yorkshire, and amid the +quintessential refinements of Mayfair. It is impossible to +believe that he did not give the epithet to his parish: it is now +called Foston <i>le Clay</i>. It was a ‘mute inglorious’ Sydney of +the district, that invented the name, if it is really older than +the century. The place has an obtuse soil, inhabited by stiff-clayed +Yorkshiremen. There was nobody in the parish to +speak to, only peasants, farmers, and such like (what the clergy +call ‘parishioners’) and an old clerk who thought every one +who came from London a fool, ‘but you I do zee, Mr. Smith, +be no fool.’ This was the sort of life.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘I turned schoolmaster, to educate my son, as I could not afford +to send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned schoolmistress, to educate +my girls, as I could not afford a governess. I turned farmer, as I +could not let my land. A man-servant was too expensive; so I +caught up a little garden-girl, made like a milestone, christened her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler. The +girls taught her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her +morals. Bunch became the best butler in the county.</p> + +<p>‘I had little furniture, so I bought a cart-load of deals; took a +carpenter (who came to me for parish relief, called Jack Robinson) +with a face like a full-moon, into my service; established him in a +barn, and said, “Jack, furnish my house.” You see the result!</p> + +<p>‘At last it was suggested that a carriage was much wanted in the +establishment. After diligent search, I discovered in the back settlements +of a York coach-maker an ancient green chariot, supposed to +have been the earliest invention of the kind. I brought it home in +triumph to my admiring family. Being somewhat dilapidated, the +village tailor lined it, the village blacksmith repaired it; nay, (but +for Mrs. Sydney’s earnest entreaties,) we believe the village painter +would have exercised his genius upon the exterior; it escaped this +danger however, and the result was wonderful. Each year added to +its charms: it grew younger and younger; a new wheel, a new +spring; I christened it the <i>Immortal</i>; it was known all over the +neighbourhood; the village boys cheered it, and the village dogs +barked at it; but “Faber meæ fortunæ” was my motto, and we had +no false shame.</p> + +<p>‘Added to all these domestic cares, I was village parson, village +doctor, village comforter, village magistrate, and Edinburgh Reviewer; +so you see I had not much time left on my hands to regret London.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>It is impossible that this should not at once remind us of the +life of Sir Walter Scott. There is the same strong sense, the +same glowing, natural pleasure, the same power of dealing with +men, the same power of diffusing common happiness. Both +enjoyed as much in a day, as an ordinary man in a month. +The term ‘animal spirits’ peculiarly expresses this bold enjoyment; +it seems to come from a principle intermediate between +the mind and the body; to be hardly intellectual enough for the +soul, and yet too permeating and aspiring for crude matter. +Of course, there is an immense imaginative world in Scott’s +existence to which Sydney Smith had no claim. But they met +upon the present world; they enjoyed the spirit of life; ‘they +loved the world, and the world them;’ they did not pain +themselves with immaterial speculation—roast beef was an +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>admitted fact. A certain, even excessive practical caution +which is ascribed to the Englishman, Scott would have been +the better for. Yet his biography would have been the worse. +There is nothing in the life before us comparable in interest to +the tragic, gradual cracking of the great mind; the overtasking +of the great capital, and the ensuing failure; the spectacle of +heaving genius breaking in the contact with misfortune. The +anticipation of this pain increases the pleasure of the reader; +the commencing threads of coming calamity shade the woof of +pleasure; the proximity of suffering softens the ὕβρις, the terrible, +fatiguing energy of enjoyment.</p> + +<p>A great deal of excellent research has been spent on the +difference between ‘humour’ and ‘wit,’ into which metaphysical +problem ‘our limits,’ of course, forbid us to enter. There is, +however, between them, the distinction of dry sticks and green +sticks; there is in humour a living energy, a diffused potency, +a noble sap; it grows upon the character of the humorist. +Wit is part of the machinery of the intellect; as Madame de +Staël says, ‘<i>La gaieté de l’esprit est facile à tous les hommes +d’esprit</i>.’ We wonder Mr. Babbage does not invent a +punning-engine; it is just as possible as a calculating one. +Sydney Smith’s mirth was essentially humorous; it clings to +the character of the man; as with the sayings of Dr. Johnson, +there is a species of personality attaching to it; the word is +more graphic because Sydney Smith—that man being the +man that he was,—said it, than it would have been if said by +any one else. In a desponding moment, he would have it he was +none the better for the jests which he made, any more than a +bottle for the wine which passed through it: this is a true description +of many a wit, but he was very unjust in attributing +it to himself.</p> + +<p>Sydney Smith is often compared to Swift; but this only +shows with how little thought our common criticism is written. +The two men have really nothing in common, except that they +were both high in the Church, and both wrote amusing letters +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>about Ireland. Of course, to the great constructive and elaborative +power displayed in Swift’s longer works, Sydney Smith +has no pretension; he could not have written ‘Gulliver’s +Travels;’ but so far as the two series of Irish letters goes, it +seems plain that he has the advantage. Plymley’s letters are +true; the treatment may be incomplete—the Catholic religion +may have latent dangers and insidious attractions which are not +there mentioned—but the main principle is sound; the common +sense of religious toleration is hardly susceptible of better +explanation. Drapier’s letters, on the contrary, are essentially +absurd; they are a clever appeal to ridiculous prejudices. +Who cares now for a disputation on the evils to be apprehended +a hundred years ago from adulterated halfpence, especially when +we know that the halfpence were not adulterated, and that if +they had been, those evils would never have arisen? Any one, +too, who wishes to make a collection of currency crotchets, will +find those letters worth his attention. No doubt there is a +clever affectation of common-sense as in all of Swift’s political +writings, and the style has an air of business; yet, on the other +hand, there are no passages which any one would now care to +quote for their manner and their matter; and there are many +in ‘Plymley’ that will be constantly cited, so long as existing +controversies are at all remembered. The whole genius of the +two writers is emphatically opposed. Sydney Smith’s is the +ideal of popular, buoyant, riotous fun; it cries and laughs with +boisterous mirth; it rolls hither and thither like a mob, with +elastic and common-place joy. Swift was a detective in a dean’s +wig; he watched the mob; his whole wit is a kind of dexterous +indication of popular frailties; he hated the crowd; he was a +spy on beaming smiles, and a common informer against genial +enjoyment. His whole essence was a soreness against mortality. +Show him innocent mirth, he would say, How absurd! He was +painfully wretched, no doubt, in himself: perhaps, as they say, +he had no heart; but his mind, his brain had a frightful +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>capacity for secret pain; his sharpness was the sharpness of +disease; his power the sore acumen of morbid wretchedness. +It is impossible to fancy a parallel more proper to show the +excellence, the unspeakable superiority of a buoyant and +bounding writer.</p> + +<p>At the same time, it is impossible to give to Sydney Smith +the highest rank, even as a humorist. Almost all his humour +has reference to the incongruity of special means to special +ends. The notion of Plymley is want of conformity between +the notions of ‘my brother Abraham,’ and the means of which +he makes use; of the quiet clergyman, who was always told he +was a bit of a goose, advocating conversion by muskets, and +stopping Bonaparte by Peruvian bark. The notion of the +letters to Archdeacon Singleton is, a bench of bishops placidly +and pleasantly destroying the Church. It is the same with +most of his writings. Even when there is nothing absolutely +practical in the idea, the subject is from the scenery of +practice, from concrete entities, near institutions, superficial +facts. You might quote a hundred instances. Here is one: +‘A gentleman, in speaking of a nobleman’s wife of great rank +and fortune, lamented very much that she had no children. A +medical gentleman who was present observed, that to have no +children was a great misfortune, but he had often observed it +was <i>hereditary</i> in families.’ This is what we mean by saying +his mirth lies in the superficial relations of phenomena (some +will say we are pompous, like the medical man); in the relation +of one external fact to another external fact; of one +detail of common life to another detail of common life. But +this is not the highest topic of humour. Taken as a whole, +the universe is absurd. There seems an unalterable contradiction +between the human mind and its employments. How can +a <i>soul</i> be a merchant? What relation to an immortal being +have the price of linseed, the fall of butter, the tare on tallow, +or the brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit +‘petty expenses,’ and charge for ‘carriage paid’? All the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>world’s a stage;—‘the satchel, and the shining morning face’—the +‘strange oaths;’—‘the bubble reputation’—the</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Eyes severe and beard of formal cut,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Full of wise saws and modern instances.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Can these things be real? Surely they are acting. What relation +have they to the truth as we see it in theory? What +connection with our certain hopes, our deep desires, our +craving and infinite thought? ‘In respect of itself, it is a +good life; but in respect it is a shepherd’s life, it is nought.’ +The soul ties its shoe; the mind washes its hands in a basin. +All is incongruous.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p><i>Shallow.</i> Certain, ’tis certain; very sure, very sure; death, as the +Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke of +bullocks at Stamford fair?</p> + +<p><i>Silence.</i> Truly, cousin, I was not there.</p> + +<p><i>Shallow.</i> Death is certain.—Is old Double, of your town, living +yet?</p> + +<p><i>Silence.</i> Dead, sir.</p> + +<p><i>Shallow.</i> Dead. See! See! He drew a good bow,—and dead. +He shot a fine shoot. John of Gaunt loved him well, and betted +much money on his head.—Dead! He would have clapped i’ the +clout at fourscore, and carried you a forehandshaft, a fourteen and +fourteen and-a-half, that it would have done a man’s heart good to see.—How +a score of ewes now?</p> + +<p><i>Silence.</i> Thereafter as they be; a score of ewes may be worth ten +pounds.</p> + +<p><i>Shallow.</i> And is Double dead!—</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>It is because Sydney Smith had so little of this Shakespearian +humour, that there is a glare in his pages, and that in +the midst of his best writing, we sigh for the soothing superiority +of quieter writers.</p> + +<p>Sydney Smith was not only the wit of the first Edinburgh, +but likewise the divine. He was, to use his own expression, +the only clergyman who in those days ‘turned out’ to fight the +battles of the Whigs. In some sort this was not so important. +A curious abstinence from religious topics characterises the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>original Review. There is a wonderful omission of this most +natural topic of speculation in the lives of Horner and Jeffrey. +In truth, it would seem that, living in the incessant din of a +Calvinistic country, the best course for thoughtful and serious +men was to be silent—at least they instinctively thought so. +They felt no involuntary call to be theological teachers themselves, +and gently recoiled from the coarse admonition around +them. Even in the present milder time, few cultivated persons +willingly think on the special dogmas of distinct theology. +They do not deny them, but they live apart from them: they +do not disbelieve them, but they are silent when they are +stated. They do not question the existence of Kamschatka, +but they have no call to busy themselves with Kamschatka; +they abstain from peculiar tenets. Nor in truth is this, +though much aggravated by existing facts, a mere accident of +this age. There are some people to whom such a course of +conduct is always natural: there are certain persons who do +not, as it would seem cannot, feel all that others feel; who +have, so to say, no <i>ear</i> for much of religion: who are in some +sort out of its reach. ‘It is impossible,’ says a late divine +of the Church of England, ‘not to observe that innumerable +persons (may we not say the majority of mankind?) who have +a belief in God and immortality, have, nevertheless, scarcely +any consciousness of the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. +They seem to live aloof from them in the world of business or +of pleasure, “the common life of all men,” not without a sense +of right, and a rule of truth and honesty, yet insensible’ to +much which we need not name. ‘They have never in their +whole lives experienced the love of God, the sense of sin, or the +need of forgiveness. Often they are remarkable for the purity +of their morals; many of them have strong and disinterested +attachments and quick human sympathies; sometimes a stoical +feeling of uprightness, or a peculiar sensitiveness to dishonour. +It would be a mistake to say that they are without religion. +They join in its public acts; they are offended at profaneness or +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span>impiety; they are thankful for the blessings of life, and do not +rebel against its misfortunes. Such men meet us at every step. +They are those whom we know and associate with; honest in +their dealings, respectable in their lives, decent in their conversation. +The Scripture speaks to us of two classes, represented +by the church and the world, the wheat and the tares, the sheep +and the goats, the friends and enemies of God. We cannot say +in which of these two divisions we should find a place for them.’ +They believe always a kind of ‘natural religion.’ Now these +are what we may call, in the language of the present, Liberals. +Those who can remember, or who will re-read our delineation of +the Whig character, may observe its conformity. There is the +same purity and delicacy, the same tranquil sense; an equal +want of imagination, of impulsive enthusiasm, of shrinking +fear. You need not speak like the above writer of ‘peculiar +doctrines;’ the phenomenon is no speciality of a particular +creed. Glance over the whole of history. As the classical world +stood beside the Jewish; as Horace beside St. Paul; like the +heavy ark and the buoyant waves, so are men in contrast with +one another. You cannot imagine a classical Isaiah; you +cannot fancy a Whig St. Dominic; there is no such thing as a +Liberal Augustine. The deep sea of mysticism lies opposed to +some natures; in some moods it is a sublime wonder; in others +an ‘impious ocean,’—they will never put forth on it at any +time.</p> + +<p>All this is intelligible, and in a manner beautiful as a character; +but it is not equally excellent as a creed. A certain +class of Liberal divines have endeavoured to petrify into a +theory, a pure and placid disposition. In some respects +Sydney Smith is one of these; his sermons are the least excellent +of his writings; of course they are sensible and well-intentioned, +but they have the defect of his school. With +misdirected energy, these divines have laboured after a plain +religion; they have forgotten that a quiet and definite mind is +confined to a placid and definite world; that religion has its +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>essence in awe, its charm in infinity, its sanction in dread; +that its dominion is an inexplicable dominion; that mystery is +its power. There is a reluctance in all such writers; they +creep away from the unintelligible parts of the subject: they +always seem to have something behind;—not to like to bring +out what they know to be at hand. They are in their nature +apologists; and, as George the Third said, ‘I did not know the +Bible needed an apology.’ As well might the thunder be +ashamed to roll, as religion hesitate to be too awful for mankind. +The invective of Lucretius is truer than the placid +patronage of the divine. Let us admire Liberals in life, but +let us keep no terms with Paleyans in speculation.</p> + +<p>And so we must draw to a conclusion. We have in some +sort given a description of, with one great exception, the most +remarkable men connected at its origin with the Edinburgh +Review. And that exception is a man of too fitful, defective, +and strange greatness to be spoken of now. Henry Brougham +must be left to after-times. Indeed, he would have marred the +unity of our article. He was connected with the Whigs, but +he never was one. His impulsive ardour is the opposite of +their coolness; his irregular, discursive intellect contrasts with +their quiet and perfecting mind. Of those of whom we have +spoken, let us say, that if none of them attained to the highest +rank of abstract intellect; if the disposition of none of them +was ardent or glowing enough to hurry them forward to the extreme +point of daring greatness; if only one can be said to +have a lasting place in real literature, it is clear that they +vanquished a slavish cohort; that they upheld the name of +freemen in a time of bondmen; that they applied themselves +to that which was real, and accomplished much which was very +difficult; that the very critics who question their inimitable +excellence will yet admire their just and scarcely imitable +example.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="HARTLEY_COLERIDGE"><i>HARTLEY +COLERIDGE.</i>⁠<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a><br> +<span class="smaller">(1852.)</span></h2> + +</div> + +<p>Hartley Coleridge was not like the Duke of Wellington.⁠<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> +Children are urged by the example of the great statesman and +warrior just departed—not indeed to neglect ‘their book’ as +he did—but to be industrious and thrifty; to ‘always perform +business,’ to ‘beware of procrastination,’ to ‘<span class="smcap">never</span> fail to do +their best:’ good ideas, as may be ascertained by referring to +the masterly despatches on the Mahratta transactions—‘great +events,’ as the preacher continues, ‘which exemplify the efficacy +of diligence even in regions where the very advent of our religion +is as yet but partially made known.’ But</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘What a wilderness were this sad world,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If man were always man and never child!’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">And it were almost a worse wilderness if there were not some, +to relieve the dull monotony of activity, who are children +through life; who act on wayward impulse, and whose will has +never come; who toil not and who spin not; who always have +‘fair Eden’s simpleness:’ and of such was Hartley Coleridge. +‘Don’t you remember,’ writes Gray to Horace Walpole, when +Lord B. and Sir H. C. and Viscount D., who are now great +statesmen, were little dirty boys playing at cricket? For my +part I do not feel one bit older or wiser now than I did then.’ +For as some apply their minds to what is next them, and labour +ever, and attain to governing the Tower, and entering the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>Trinity House,—to commanding armies, and applauding pilots,—so +there are also some who are ever anxious to-day about +what ought only to be considered to-morrow; who never get +on; whom the earth neglects, and whom tradesmen little +esteem; who are where they were; who cause grief, and are +loved; that are at once a by-word and a blessing; who do not +live in life, and it seems will not die in death: and of such was +Hartley Coleridge.</p> + +<p>A curious instance of poetic anticipation was in this instance +vouchsafed to Wordsworth. When Hartley was six years +old, he addressed to him these verses, perhaps the best ever +written on a real and visible child:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘O thou, whose fancies from afar are brought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And fittest to unutterable thought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou fairy voyager, that dost float</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In such clear water that thy boat</div> + <div class="verse indent0">May rather seem</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To brood on air than on an earthly stream;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O blessed vision, happy child,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou art so exquisitely wild,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I think of thee with many fears</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For what may be thy lot in future years.</div> + <div class="center">...</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O too industrious folly!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O vain and causeless melancholy!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nature will either end thee quite,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Preserve for thee by individual right</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A young lamb’s heart among the full-grown flocks.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>And so it was. As often happens, being very little of a boy +in actual childhood, Hartley preserved into manhood and age +all of boyhood which he had ever possessed—its beaming +imagination and its wayward will. He had none of the natural +roughness of that age. He never played—partly from weakness, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>for he was very small, but more from awkwardness. His +uncle Southey used to say he had two left hands, and might +have added that they were both useless. He could no more +have achieved football, or mastered cricket, or kept in with the +hounds, than he could have followed Charles’s Wain or played +pitch and toss with Jupiter’s satellites. Nor was he very excellent +at school-work. He showed, indeed, no deficiency. +The Coleridge family have inherited from the old scholar of +Ottery St. Mary a certain classical facility which could not +desert the son of Samuel Taylor. But his real strength was in +his own mind. All children have a world of their own, as distinct +from that of the grown people who gravitate around them +as the dreams of girlhood from our prosaic life; as the ideas of +the kitten that plays with the falling leaves, from those of her +carnivorous mother that catches mice and is sedulous in her +domestic duties. But generally about this interior existence, +children are dumb. You have warlike ideas, but you cannot +say to a sinewy relative, ‘My dear aunt, I wonder when the big +bush in the garden will begin to walk about; I’m sure it’s a +crusader, and I was cutting it all the day with my steel sword. +But what do you think, aunt, for I’m puzzled about its legs, +because you see, aunt, it has only <i>one</i> stalk; and besides, aunt, +the leaves.’ You cannot remark this in secular life; but you +hack at the infelicitous bush till you do not altogether reject +the idea that your small garden is Palestine, and yourself the +most adventurous of knights. Hartley had this, of course, like +any other dreamy child, but in his case it was accompanied +with the faculty of speech, and an extraordinary facility in continuous +story-telling. In the very earliest childhood he had +conceived a complete outline of a country like England, +whereof he was king himself, and in which there were many +wars, and rumours of wars, and foreign relations and statesmen, +and rebels and soldiers. ‘My people, Derwent,’ he used to +begin, ‘are giving me much pain; they want to go to war.’ +This faculty, as was natural, showed itself before he went to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>school, but he carried on the habit of fanciful narration even +into that bleak and ungenial region. ‘It was not,’ says his +brother, ‘by a series of tales, but by one continuous tale, regularly +evolved, and possessing a real unity, that he enchained +the attention of his auditors, night after night, as we lay in +bed, for a space of years, and not unfrequently for hours +together.’... ‘There was certainly,’ he adds, ‘a great +variety of persons sharply characterised, who appeared on the +stage in combination and not in succession.’ Connected, in +Hartley, with this premature development of the imagination, +there was a singular deficiency in what may be called the <i>sense</i> +of reality. It is alleged that he hardly knew that Ejuxrea, +which is the name of his kingdom, was not as solid a <i>terra +firma</i> as Keswick or Ambleside. The deficiency showed itself +on other topics. His father used to tell a story of his metaphysical +questioning. When he was about five years old, he +was asked, doubtless by the paternal metaphysician, some question +as to why he was called Hartley. ‘Which Hartley?’ +replied the boy. ‘Why, is there more than one Hartley?’ +‘Yes, there is a deal of Hartleys; there is Picture Hartley +(Hazlitt had painted a picture of him), and Shadow Hartley, +and there’s Echo Hartley, and there’s Catchmefast Hartley,’ +seizing his own arm very eagerly, and as if reflecting on the +‘summject and ommject,’ which is to say, being in hopeless +confusion. We do not hear whether he was puzzled and perplexed +by such difficulties in later life; and the essays which +we are reviewing, though they contain much keen remark on +the detail of human character, are destitute of the Germanic +profundities; they do not discuss how existence is possible, nor +enumerate the pure particulars of the soul itself. But considering +the idle dreaminess of his youth and manhood, we +doubt if Hartley ever got over his preliminary doubts—ever +properly grasped the idea of fact and reality. This is not nonsense. +If you attend acutely, you may observe that in few +things do people differ more than in their perfect and imperfect +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>realisation of this earth. To the Duke of Wellington a coat +was a coat; ‘there was no mistake;’ no reason to disbelieve it; +and he carried to his grave a perfect and indubitable persuasion +that he really did (what was his best exploit), without fluctuation, +<i>shave</i> on the morning of the battle of Waterloo. You +could not have made him doubt it. But to many people who +will never be Field Marshals, there is on such points, not +rational doubt, but instinctive questioning. ‘Who the devil,’ +said Lord Byron, ‘could <i>make</i> such a world? No one, I +believe.’ ‘Cast your thoughts,’ says a very different writer, +‘back on the time when our ancient buildings were first reared. +Consider the churches all around us; how many generations +have passed since stone was put upon stone, till the whole +edifice was finished! The first movers and instruments of its +erection, the minds that planned it, and the limbs that wrought +at it, the pious hands that contributed to it, and the holy lips +that consecrated it, have long, long ago been taken away, yet +we benefit by their good deed. Does it not seem strange that +men should be able, not merely by acting on others, not by a +continued influence carried on through many minds in succession, +but by a single direct act, to come into contact with us, +and, as if with their own hand, to benefit us who live centuries +later?’ Or again, speaking of the lower animals: ‘Can anything +be more marvellous or startling, than that we should have +a race of beings about us, whom we do but see, and as little +know their state, or can describe their interests or their destiny, +as we can tell of the inhabitants of the sun and moon? It is +indeed a very overpowering thought, that we hold intercourse +with creatures who are as much strangers to us, as mysterious +as if they were the fabulous, unearthly beings, more powerful +than man, and yet his slaves, which Eastern superstitions have +invented.... Cast your thoughts abroad on the whole number +of them, large and small, in vast forests, or in the water, or +in the air, and then say whether the presence of such countless +multitudes, so various in their natures, so strange and wild in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>their shapes, is not’ as incredible as anything can be. We go +into a street, and see it thronged with men, and we say, Is it +<i>true</i>, <i>are</i> there these men? We look on a creeping river, till +we say, <i>Is</i> there this river? We enter the law courts: we +watch the patient Chancellor: we hear the droning wigs:—surely +this is not real,—this is a dream,—nobody would do +<i>that</i>,—it is a delusion. We are really, as the sceptics insinuate, +but ‘sensations and impressions,’ in groups or alone, that float +up and down; or, as the poet teaches, phantoms and images, +whose idle stir but mocks the calm reality of the ‘pictures on +the wall.’ All this will be called dreamy; but it is exactly because +it <i>is</i> dreamy that we notice it. Hartley Coleridge was a +dreamer: he began with Ejuxrea, and throughout his years, he +but slumbered and slept. Life was to him a floating haze, a +disputable mirage: you must not treat him like a believer in +stocks and stones—you might as well say he was a man of +business.</p> + +<p>Hartley’s school education is not worth recounting; but +beside and along with it there was another education, on every +side of him, singularly calculated to bring out the peculiar +aptitudes of an imaginative mind, yet exactly, on that very account, +very little likely to bring it down to fact and reality, to +mix it with miry clay, or define its dreams by a daily reference +to the common and necessary earth. He was bred up in the +house of Mr. Southey, where, more than anywhere else in all +England, it was held that literature and poetry are the aim +and object of every true man, and that grocery and other affairs +lie beneath at an wholly immeasurable distance, to be attended +to by the inferior animals. In Hartley’s case the seed fell on +fitting soil. In youth, and even in childhood, he was a not +unintelligent listener to the unspeakable talk of the Lake +poets.</p> + +<p>‘It was so,’ writes his brother, ‘rather than by a regular +course of study, that he was educated; by desultory reading, +by the living voice of Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>Lloyd, Wilson, and De Quincey; and again, by homely familiarity +with townsfolk and countryfolk of every degree; lastly, +by daily recurring hours of solitude—by lonely wanderings with +the murmur of the Brathay in his ear.’</p> + +<p>Thus he lived till the time came that he should go to +Oxford, and naturally enough, it seems, he went up with much +hope and strong excitement; for, quiet and calm as seem those +ancient dormitories, to him, as to many, the going among them +seemed the first entrance into the real world—the end of torpidity—the +beginning of life. He had often stood by the white +Rydal Water, and thought it was coming, and now it was come +in fact. At first his Oxford life was prosperous enough. An +old gentleman, who believes that he too was once an undergraduate, +well remembers how Hartley’s eloquence was admired +at wine parties and breakfast parties. ‘Leaning his head on +one shoulder, turning up his dark bright eyes, and swinging +backwards and forwards in his chair, he would hold forth by +the hour, for no one wished to interrupt him, on whatever subject +might have been started—either of literature, politics, or +religion—with an originality of thought, a force of illustration, +which,’ the narrator doubts, ‘if any man then living, except his +father, could have surpassed.’ The singular gift of continuous +conversation—for singular it is, if in any degree agreeable—seems +to have come to him by nature, and it was through life +the one quality which he relied on for attraction in society. +Its being agreeable is to be accounted for mainly by its singularity; +if one knew any respectable number of declaimers—if +any proportion of one’s acquaintance should receive the gift of +the English language, and ‘improve each shining hour’ with +liquid eloquence, how we should regret their present dumb and +torpid condition! If we are to be dull—which our readers will +admit to be an appointment of providence—surely we will be +dull in silence. Do not sermons exist, and are they not a +warning to mankind?</p> + +<p>In fact, the habit of common and continuous speech is a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing +what is going on in other people’s minds. S. T. Coleridge, it +is well known, talked to everybody, and to everybody alike; +like a Christian divine, he did not regard persons. ‘That is a +fine opera, Mr. Coleridge,’ said a young lady, some fifty years +back. ‘Yes, ma’am; and I remember Kant somewhere makes +a very similar remark for, as <i>we</i> know, the idea of philosophical +infinity—.’ Now, this sort of talk will answer with two sorts +of people—with comfortable, stolid, solid people, who don’t +understand it at all—who don’t feel that they ought to understand +it—who feel that they ought not—that <i>they</i> are to sell +treacle and appreciate figs—but that there <i>is</i> this transcendental +superlunary sphere, which is known to others—which is now +revealed in the spiritual speaker, the unmitigated oracle, the +evidently celestial sound. That the dreamy orator himself has +no more notion what is passing in their minds than they have +what is running through his, is of no consequence at all. If he +did know it, he would be silent; he would be jarred to feel how +utterly he was misunderstood; it would break the flow of his +everlasting words. Much better that he should run on in a +never-pausing stream, and that the wondering rustics should +admire for ever. The basis of the entertainment is that neither +should comprehend the other.—But in a degree yet higher is +the society of an omniscient orator agreeable to a second sort of +people,—generally young men, and particularly—as in Hartley’s +case—clever undergraduates. All young men like what is +theatrical, and by a fine dispensation all clever young men like +notions. They want to hear about opinions, to know about +opinions. The ever-flowing rhetorician gratifies both propensions. +He is a notional <i>spectacle</i>. Like the sophist of old, he +<i>is</i> something and says something. The vagabond speculator +in all ages will take hold on those who wish to reason, and want +premises—who wish to argue, and want theses—who desire +demonstrations, and have but presumptions. And so it was +acceptable enough that Hartley should make the low tones of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>his musical voice glide sweetly and spontaneously through the +cloisters of Merton, debating the old questions, the ‘fate, free-will, +foreknowledge,’—the points that Ockham and Scotus propounded +in these same enclosures—the common riddles, the +everlasting enigmas of mankind. It attracts the scorn of +middle-aged men (who depart πρὸς τὰ ἱερά, and fancy they are +wise), but it is a pleasant thing, that impact of hot thought +upon hot thought, of young thought upon young thought, of +new thought upon new thought. It comes to the fortunate +once, but to no one a second time thereafter for ever.</p> + +<p>Nor was Hartley undistinguished in the regular studies of +the University. A regular, exact, accurate scholar he never +was; but even in his early youth he perhaps knew much more +and understood much more of ancient literature than seven +score of schoolmasters and classmen. He had, probably, in his +mind a picture of the ancient world, or of some of it, while the +dry <i>literati</i> only know the combinations and permutations of +the Greek alphabet. There is a pleasant picture of him at this +epoch, recorded by an eye-witness. ‘My attention,’ he narrates, +‘was at first aroused by seeing from a window a figure flitting +about amongst the trees and shrubs of the garden with quick +and agitated motion. This was Hartley, who, in the ardour of +preparing for his college examination, did not even take his +meals with the family, but snatched a hasty morsel in his own +apartment, and only sought the free air when the fading daylight +prevented him from seeing his books. Having found who +he was that so mysteriously flitted about the garden, I was +determined to lose no time in making his acquaintance, and +through the instrumentality of Mrs. Coleridge I paid Hartley +a visit in what he called his den. This was a room afterwards +converted by Mr. Southey’—as what chink was not?—‘into a +supplementary library, but then appropriated as a study to +Hartley, and presenting a most picturesque and student-like +disorder of scattered pamphlets and folios.’ This is not a +picture of the business-like reading man—one wonders what +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>fraction of his time he did read—but it was probably the +happiest period of his life. There was no coarse prosaic action +there. Much musing, little studying,—fair scholarship, an +atmosphere of the classics, curious fancies, much perusing of +pamphlets, light thoughts on heavy folios—these make the +meditative poet, but not the technical and patient-headed +scholar; yet, after all, he was happy, and obtained a second +class.</p> + +<p>A more suitable exercise, as it would have seemed at first +sight, was supplied by that curious portion of Oxford routine, +the Annual Prize Poem. This, he himself tells us, was, in his +academic years, the real and single object of his ambition. His +reason is, for an autobiographical reason, decidedly simple. ‘A +great poet,’ he says, ‘I should not have imagined myself, for I +knew well enough that the verses were no great things.’ But +he entertained at that period of life—he was twenty-one—a +favourable opinion of young ladies; and he seems to have +ascertained, possibly from actual trial, that verses were not in +themselves a very emphatic attraction. Singular as it may +sound, the ladies selected were not only insensible to what is, +after all, a metaphysical line, the distinction between good +poetry and bad, but were almost indifferent to poetry itself. +Yet the experiment was not quite conclusive. Verses might +fail in common life, and yet succeed in the Sheldonian theatre. +It is plain that they would be <i>read out</i>; it occurred to him, +as he naïvely relates, that if he should appear ‘as a prizeman,’ +‘as an intelligible reciter of poetry,’ he would be an object +of ‘some curiosity to the fair promenaders in Christchurch +Meadow;’ that the young ladies ‘with whom he was on bowing +and speaking terms might have felt a satisfaction in being +known to know me, which they had never experienced before.’ +‘I should,’ he adds, ‘have deemed myself a prodigious lion, and +it was a character I was weak enough to covet more than that +of poet, scholar, or philosopher.’</p> + +<p>In fact, he did not get the prize. The worthy East Indian, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>who imagined that, in leaving a bequest for a prize to poetry, +he should be as sure of possessing poetry for his money as of +eggs, if he had chosen eggs, or of butter, if he had chosen +butter, did not estimate rightly the nature of poetry, or the +nature of the human mind. The mechanical parts of rhythm +and metre are all that a writer can be certain of producing, or +that a purchaser can be sure of obtaining; and these an +industrious person will find in any collection of the Newdegate +poems, together with a fine assortment of similes and sentiments, +respectively invented and enjoined by Shem and Japhet +for and to the use of after generations. And there is a +peculiar reason why a great poet (besides his being, as a man of +genius, rather more likely than another, to find a difficulty in +the preliminary technicalities of art) should not obtain an +academical prize, to be given for excellent verses to people of +about twenty-one. It is a bad season. ‘The imagination,’ +said a great poet of the very age, ‘of a boy is healthy, and +the mature imagination of a man is healthy, but there is a +space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the +character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition +thick-sighted.’⁠<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> And particularly in a real poet, where the +disturbing influences of passion and fancy are most likely to be +in excess, will this unhealthy tinge be most likely to be excessive +and conspicuous. Nothing in the style of Endymion +would have a chance of a prize; there are no complete conceptions, +no continuance of adequate words. What is worse, +there are no defined thoughts, or aged illustrations. The characteristic +of the whole is beauty and novelty, but it is beauty +which is not formed, and novelty which is strange and wavering. +Some of these defects are observable in the copy of verses on +the ‘Horses of Lysippus,’ which Hartley Coleridge contributed +to the list of unsuccessful attempts. It does not contain so +much originality as we might have expected; on such a topic +we anticipated more nonsense; a little, we are glad to say, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>there is, and also that there is an utter want of those even raps, +which are the music of prize poems,—which were the right +rhythm for Pope’s elaborate sense, but are quite unfit for +dreamy classics or contemplative enthusiasm. If Hartley, like +Pope, had been the son of a shopkeeper, he would not have received +the paternal encouragement, but rather a reprimand,—‘Boy, +boy, these be bad rhymes;’ and so, too, believed a +grizzled and cold examiner.</p> + +<p>A much worse failure was at hand. He had been elected to +a Fellowship, in what was at that time the only open foundation +in Oxford, Oriel College: an event which shows more +exact scholarship in Hartley, or more toleration in the +academical authorities for the grammatical delinquencies of a +superior man, than we should have been inclined, <i>a priori</i>, to +attribute to either of them. But it soon became clear that +Hartley was not exactly suited to that place. Decorum is the +essence, pomposity the advantage, of tutors. These Hartley +had not. Beside the serious defects which we shall mention +immediately, he was essentially an absent and musing, and +therefore at times a highly indecorous man; and though not +defective in certain kinds of vanity, there was no tinge in his +manner of scholastic dignity. A schoolmaster should have an +atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed +at being himself. But an excessive sense of the ludicrous +disabled Hartley altogether from the acquisition of this valuable +habit; perhaps he never really attempted to obtain it. +He accordingly never became popular as a tutor, nor was he +ever described as ‘exercising an influence over young persons.’ +Moreover, however excellently suited Hartley’s eloquence might +be to the society of undergraduates, it was out of place at the +Fellows’ table. This is said to be a dull place. The excitement +of early thought has passed away; the excitements of +active manhood are unknown. A certain torpidity seems +natural there. We find too that, probably for something to say, +he was in those years rather fond of exaggerated denunciation +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>of the powers that be. This is not the habit most grateful to +the heads of houses. ‘Sir,’ said a great authority, ‘do you +deny that Lord Derby ought to be Prime Minister? you might +as well say, that I ought not to be Warden of So and So.’ These +habits rendered poor Hartley no favourite with the leading people +of his college, and no great prospective shrewdness was required +to predict that he would fare but ill, if any sufficient occasion +should be found for removing from the place, a person so +excitable and so little likely to be of use in inculcating ‘safe’ +opinions among the surrounding youth.</p> + +<p>Unhappily, the visible morals of Hartley offered an easy +occasion. It is not quite easy to gather from the narrative of +his brother the exact nature or full extent of his moral delinquencies; +but enough is shown to warrant, according to the +rules, the unfavourable judgment of the collegiate authorities. +He describes, probably truly, the commencement of his errors—‘I +verily believe that I should have gone crazy, silly, mad +with vanity, had I obtained the prize for my “Horses of +Lysippus.” It was the only occasion in my life wherein I was +keenly disappointed, for it was the only one upon which I felt +any confident hope. I had made myself very sure of it; and +the intelligence that not I but Macdonald was the lucky man, +absolutely stupefied me; yet I contrived for a time to lose all +sense of my misfortunes in exultation for Burton’s success.... +I sang, I danced, I whistled, I ran from room to room, +announcing the great tidings, and trying to persuade myself +that I cared nothing at all for my own case. But it would not +do. It was bare sands with me the next day. It was not the +mere loss of the prize, but the feeling or phantasy of an adverse +destiny.... I foresaw that all my aims and hopes would +prove frustrate and abortive; and from that time I date my +downward declension, my impotence of will, and my melancholy +recklessness. It was the first time I sought relief in +wine, which, as usual in such cases, produced not so much intoxication +as downright madness.’ Cast in an uncongenial +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>society, requiring to live in an atmosphere of respect and +affection—and surrounded by gravity and distrust—misconstrued +and half tempted to maintain the misconstruction; with +the waywardness of childhood without the innocency of its impulses; +with the passions of manhood without the repressive +vigour of a man’s will,—he lived as a woman lives that is lost +and forsaken, who sins ever and hates herself for sinning, but +who sins, perhaps, more on that very account; because she +requires some relief from the keenness of her own reproach; +because, in her morbid fancy, the idea is ever before her; +because her petty will is unable to cope with the daily craving +and the horrid thought—that she may not lose her own +identity—that she may not give in to the rigid, the distrustful, +and the calm.</p> + +<p>There is just this excuse for Hartley, whatever it may be +worth, that the weakness was hereditary. We do not as yet +know, it seems most likely that we shall never know, the +precise character of his father. But with all the discrepancy +concerning the details, enough for our purpose is certain of the +outline. We know that he lived many and long years a prey +to weaknesses and vice of this very description; and though it +be false and mischievous to speak of hereditary vice, it is most +true and wise to observe the mysterious fact of hereditary +temptation. Doubtless it is strange that the nobler emotions +and the inferior impulses, their peculiar direction or their +proportionate strength, the power of a fixed idea—that the +inner energy of the very will, which seems to issue from the +inmost core of our complex nature, and to typify, if anything +does, the pure essence of the immortal soul—that these and +such as these should be transmitted by material descent, as +though they were an accident of the body, the turn of an eyebrow +or the feebleness of a joint,—if this were not obvious, it +would be as amazing, perhaps more amazing, than any fact +which we know; it looks not only like predestinated, but even +heritable election. But, explicable or inexplicable—to be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>wondered at or not wondered at—the fact is clear; tendencies +and temptations are transmitted even to the fourth generation +both for good and for evil, both in those who serve God and in +those who serve Him not. Indeed, the weakness before us +seems essentially connected—perhaps we may say on a final examination +essentially identical—with the dreaminess of mind, +the inapprehensiveness of reality which we remarked upon +before. Wordsworth used to say, that ‘at a particular stage of +his mental progress he used to be frequently so wrapt into an +unreal transcendental world of ideas, that the external world +seemed no longer to exist in relation to him, and he had to +convince himself of its existence by <i>clasping a tree</i> or something +that happened to be near him.’ But suppose a mind +which did not feel acutely the sense of reality which others +feel, in hard contact with the tangible universe; which was +blind to the distinction between the palpable and the impalpable, +or rather lived in the latter in preference to, and nearly to +the exclusion of, the former. What is to fix such a mind, what +is to strengthen it, to give it a fulcrum? To exert itself, the +will, like the arm, requires to have an obvious and a definite +resistance, to know where it is, why it is, whence it comes, and +whither it goes. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made of,’ +says Prospero. So, too, the difficulty of Shakespeare’s greatest +dreamer, Hamlet, is that he cannot quite believe that his duty +is to be done where it lies, and immediately. Partly from the +natural effect of a vision of a spirit which is not, but more from +native constitution and instinctive bent, he is for ever speculating +on the reality of existence, the truth of the world. ‘How,’ +discusses Kant, ‘is Nature in general possible?’ and so asked +Hamlet too. With this feeling on his mind, persuasion is useless +and argument in vain. Examples gross as earth exhort +him, but they produce no effect; but he thinks and thinks the +more.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent22">‘Now whether it be</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span> <div class="verse indent0">Of thinking too precisely on the event,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A thought which quarter’d hath but one part wisdom</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And ever three parts coward,—I do not know</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Why yet I live to say, “This thing’s to do,”</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sith I have cause and will and strength and means</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To do ’t.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Hartley himself well observes that on such a character the +likelihood of action is inversely as the force of the motive and +the time for deliberation. The stronger the reason, the more +certain the scepticism? <i>Can</i> anything be so certain? Does +not the excess of the evidence alleged make it clear that there +is something behind, something on the other side? Search +then diligently lest anything be overlooked. Reflection +‘puzzles the will,’ Necessity ‘benumbs like a torpedo:’ and so</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent14">‘The native hue of resolution</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And enterprises of great pith and moment</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With this regard, their currents turn awry,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And lose the name of action.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Why should we say any more? We do but ‘chant snatches +of old tunes.’ But in estimating men like the Coleridges—the +son even more than the father—we must take into account this +peculiar difficulty—this dreamy unbelief—this daily scepticism—this +haunting unreality—and imagine that some may not be +quite responsible either for what they do, or for what they do +not—because they are bewildered, and deluded, and perplexed, +and want the faculty as much to comprehend their difficulty as +to subdue it.</p> + +<p>The Oxford life of Hartley is all his life. The failure of his +prospects there, in his brother’s words, ‘deprived him of the +residue of his years.’ The biography afterwards goes to and +fro—one attempt after another failing, some beginning in much +hope, but even the sooner for that reason issuing in utter +despair. His literary powers came early to full perfection. +For some time after his expulsion from Oriel he was resident in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>London, and the poems written there are equal, perhaps are +superior, to any which he afterwards produced. This sonnet +may serve as a specimen:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘In the great city we are met again</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where many souls there are, that breathe and die</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Scarce knowing more of nature’s potency</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than what they learn from heat or cold or rain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sad vicissitude of weary pain:—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For busy man is lord of ear and eye,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And what hath Nature, but the vast, void sky,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the throng’d river toiling to the main?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Oh! say not so, for she shall have her part</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In every smile, in every tear that falls,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And she shall hide her in the secret heart</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where love persuades and sterner duty calls;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But worse it were than death or sorrow’s smart,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To live without a friend within these walls.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>He soon, however, went down to the lakes, and there, except +during one or two short intervals, he lived and died. This exception +was a residence at Leeds, during which he brought out, besides +a volume containing his best poems, the book which stands +at the head of our article—the Lives of Northern Worthies. We +selected the book, we confess, with the view mainly of bringing +a remarkable character before the notice of our readers—but in +itself the work is an excellent one, and of a rare kind.</p> + +<p>Books are for various purposes—tracts to teach, almanacs +to sell, poetry to make pastry, but this is the rarest sort of +book, a book to <i>read</i>. 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. Or is poetry +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>readable? Of course it is rememberable; when you have it in +the mind, it clings; if by heart, it haunts. Imagery comes +from it; songs which lull the ear, heroines that waste the time. +But this Biographia is actually read; a man is glad to take it +up, and slow to lay it down; it is a book which is truly valuable, +for it is truly pleasing; and which a man who has once +had it in his library would miss from his shelves, not only in +the common way, by a physical vacuum, but by a mental deprivation. +This strange quality it owes to a peculiarity of +style. Many people give many theories of literary composition, +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 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; and such, and so great, was in this book the +magnanimity of Hartley.</p> + +<p>As has been said, from his youth onwards, Hartley’s outward +life was a simple blank. Much writing, and much musing, +some intercourse with Wordsworth, some talking to undergraduate +readers or lake ladies, great loneliness, and much +intercourse with the farmers of Cumberland—these pleasures, +simple enough, most of them, were his life. The extreme pleasure +of the peasantry in his conversation, is particularly remarked. +‘Aye, but Mr. Coleridge talks fine,’ observed one. +‘I would go through fire and water for Mr. C.,’ interjected +another. His father, with real wisdom, had provided (in part, +at least) for his necessary wants in the following manner:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘This is a codicil to my last will and testament.</p> + +<p class="right">‘<span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge.</span></p> + +<p>‘Most desirous to secure, as far as in me lies, for my dear son +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>Hartley, the tranquillity essential to any continued and successful +exertion of his literary talents, and which, from the like characters of +our minds in this respect, I know to be especially requisite for his +happiness, and persuaded that he will recognise in this provision that +anxious affection by which it is dictated, I affix this codicil to my last +will and testament.... And I hereby request them (the said +trustees) to hold the sum accruing to Hartley Coleridge from the +equal division of my total bequest between him, his brother Derwent, +and his sister Sara, after his mother’s decease, to dispose of the interests +or proceeds of the same portion to or for the use of my dear +son Hartley Coleridge, at such time or times, in such manner, or under +such conditions, as they, the trustees above named, know to be my +wish, and shall deem conducive to the attainment of my object in +adding the codicil, namely, the anxious wish to ensure for my son the +continued means of a home, in which I comprise board, lodging, and +raiment. Providing that nothing in this codicil shall be so interpreted +as to interfere with my son H. C.’s freedom of choice respecting +his place of residence, or with his power of disposing of his portion by +will after his decease according as his own judgments and affections +may decide.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p class="noindent">An excellent provision, which would not, however, by the English +law, have disabled the ‘said Hartley’ from depriving himself +of ‘the continued means of a home’ by alienating the +principal of the bequest; since the jurisprudence of this country +has no legal definition of ‘prodigality,’ and does not consider +any person incompetent to manage his pecuniary affairs unless +he be quite and certainly insane. Yet there undoubtedly are +persons, and poor Hartley was one of them, who though in +general perfectly sane, and even with superior powers of thought +or fancy, are as completely unable as the most helpless lunatic +to manage any pecuniary transactions, and to whom it would +be a great gain to have perpetual guardians and compulsory +trustees. But such people are rare, and few principles are so +English as the maxim <i>de minimis non curat lex</i>.</p> + +<p>He lived in this way for thirty years or nearly so, but there +is nothing to tell of all that time. He died January 6, 1849, +and was buried in Grasmere churchyard—the quietest place in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>England, ‘by the yews,’ as Arnold says, ‘that Wordsworth +planted, the Rotha with its big silent pools passing by.’ It +was a shining January day when Hartley was borne to the +grave. ‘Keep the ground for us,’ said Mr. Wordsworth to the +sexton; ‘we are old, and it cannot be long.’</p> + +<p>We have described Hartley’s life at length for a peculiar +reason. It is necessary to comprehend his character, to appreciate +his works; and there is no way of delineating character +but by a selection of characteristic sayings and actions. All +poets, as is commonly observed, are delineated in their poems, +but in very different modes. Each minute event in the melancholy +life of Shelley is frequently alluded to in his writings. +The tender and reverential character of Virgil is everywhere +conspicuous in his pages. It is clear that Chaucer was shrewd. +We seem to have talked with Shakespeare, though we have forgotten +the facts of his life; but it is not by minute allusion, or +a tacit influence, or a genial and delightful sympathy, that a +writer like Hartley Coleridge leaves the impress of himself, but +in a more direct manner, which it will take a few words to +describe.</p> + +<p>Poetry begins in Impersonality. Homer is a voice—a fine +voice, a fine eye, and a brain that drew with light; and this is +all we know. The natural subjects of the first art are the +scenes and events in which the first men naturally take an +interest. They don’t care—who does?—for a kind old man; +but they want to hear of the exploits of their ancestors—of the +heroes of their childhood—of them that their fathers saw—of +the founders of their own land—of wars, and rumours of wars—of +great victories boldly won—of heavy defeats firmly borne—of +desperate disasters unsparingly retrieved. So in all countries—Siegfried, +or Charlemagne, or Arthur,—they are but attempts +at an Achilles: the subject is the same—the κλέα ἀνδρῶν +and the death that comes to all. But then the mist of battles +passes away, and the sound of the daily conflict no longer +hurtles in the air, and a generation arises skilled with the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>skill of peace, and refined with the refinement of civilisation, +yet still remembering the old world, still appreciating the old +life, still wondering at the old men, and ready to receive, at the +hand of the poet, a new telling of the old tale—a new idealisation +of the legendary tradition. This is the age of dramatic +art, when men wonder at the big characters of old, as schoolboys +at the words of Æschylus, and try to find in their own breasts +the roots of those monstrous, but artistically developed impersonations. +With civilisation too comes another change: men +wish not only to tell what they have seen, but also to express +what they are conscious of. Barbarians feel only hunger, and +that is not lyrical; but as time runs on, arise gentler emotions +and finer moods and more delicate desires which need expression, +and require from the artist’s fancy the lightest touches +and the most soothing and insinuating words. Lyrical poetry, +too, as we know, is of various kinds. Some, as the war song, +approach to the epic, depict events and stimulate to triumph; +others are love songs to pour out wisdom, others sober to describe +champagne; some passive and still, and expressive of the +higher melancholy, as Gray’s ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard.’ +But with whatever differences of species and class, the essence +of lyrical poetry remains in all identical; it is designed to express, +and when successful does express, some one mood, some +single sentiment, some isolated longing in human nature. It +deals not with man as a whole, but with man piecemeal, with +man in a scenic aspect, with man in a peculiar light. Hence +lyrical poets must not be judged literally from their lyrics: +they are discourses; they require to be reduced into the scale +of ordinary life, to be stripped of the enraptured element, to be +clogged with gravitating prose. Again, moreover, and in course +of time, the advance of ages and the progress of civilisation +appear to produce a new species of poetry which is distinct from +the lyrical, though it grows out of it, and contrasted with the +epic, though in a single respect it exactly resembles it. This +kind may be called the <i>self-delineative</i>, for in it the poet deals +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>not with a particular desire, sentiment, or inclination in his +own mind, not with a special phase of his own character, not +with his love of war, his love of ladies, his melancholy, but with +his mind viewed as a whole, with the entire essence of his own +character. The first requisite of this poetry is truth. It is in +Plato’s phrase the soul ‘itself by itself’ aspiring to view and +take account of the particular notes and marks that distinguish +it from all other souls. The sense of reality is necessary to +excellence; the poet being himself, speaks like one who has +authority; he knows and must not deceive. This species of +poetry, of course, adjoins on the lyrical, out of which it historically +arises. Such a poem as the ‘Elegy’ is, as it were, on the borders +of the two; for while it expresses but a single emotion, +meditative, melancholy, you seem to feel that this sentiment is +not only then and for a moment the uppermost, but (as with +Gray it was) the habitual mood, the pervading emotion of his +whole life. Moreover, in one especial peculiarity, this sort of +poetry is analogous to the narrative or epic. Nothing certainly +can, in a general aspect, be more distantly removed one from +another, the one dealing in external objects and stirring events, +the other with the stillness and repose of the poet’s mind; but +still in a single characteristic the two coincide. They describe +character as the painters say <i>in mass</i>. The defect of the drama +is, that it can delineate only motion. If a thoughtful person +will compare the character of Achilles, as we find it in Homer, +with the more surpassing creations of dramatic invention, say +with Lear or Othello, he will perhaps feel that character in repose, +character on the lonely beach, character in marble, +character in itself, is more clearly and perfectly seen in the epic +narrative, than in the conversational drama. It of course requires +immense skill to make mere talk exhibit a man as he is +ἑτάρων ἄφαρ. Now this quality of epic poetry the self-delineative +precisely shares with it. It describes a character—the +poet’s—alone by itself. And therefore, when the great +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>master in both kinds did not hesitate to turn aside from his +‘high argument’ to say—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘More safe I sing with mortal voice unchanged</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">pedants may prose as they please about the ‘impropriety’ of +‘interspersing’ species of composition which are by nature remote; +but Milton felt more profoundly that in its treatment +of character the egotistical poetry is allied to the epic; that he +was putting together elements which would harmoniously combine; +that he was but exerting the same faculties in either +case—being guided thereto by a sure instinct, the desire of +genius to handle and combine every one of the subjects on +which it is genius.</p> + +<p>Now it is in this self-delineative species of poetry that, in +our judgment, Hartley Coleridge has attained to nearly, if not +quite the highest excellence; it pervades his writings everywhere. +But a few sonnets may be quoted to exemplify it:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘We parted on the mountains, as two streams</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From one clear spring pursue their several ways;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And thy fleet course hath been through many a maze</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In foreign lands, where silvery Padus gleams</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To that delicious sky, whose glowing beams</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Brightened the tresses that old poets praise,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where Petrarch’s patient love and artful lays,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Ariosto’s song of many themes,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Moved the soft air.—But I, a lazy brook,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As close pent up within my native dell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Have crept along from nook to shady nook,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where flow’rets blow and whispering Naiads dwell.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet now we meet that parted were so wide,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For rough and smooth to travel side by side.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Once I was young, and fancy was my all,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">My love, my joy, my grief, my hope, my fear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And ever ready as an infant’s tear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whate’er in Fancy’s kingdom might befall,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span> <div class="verse indent0">Some quaint device had Fancy still at call,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With seemly verse to greet the coming cheer;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Such grief to soothe, such airy hope to rear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To sing the birth-song, or the funeral</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of such light love, it was a pleasant task;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But ill accord the quirks of wayward glee</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That wears affliction for a wanton mask,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With woes that bear not Fancy’s livery;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With Hope that scorns of Fate its fate to ask,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But is itself its own sure destiny.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Too true it is my time of power was spent</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In idly watering weeds of casual growth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That wasted energy to desperate sloth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Declined, and fond self-seeking discontent;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That the huge debt for all that nature lent</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I sought to cancel,—and was nothing loth,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To deem myself an outlaw, severed both</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From duty and from hope,—yea, blindly sent</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Without an errand where I would to stray:—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Too true it is, that knowing now my state,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I weakly mourn the sin I ought to hate,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor love the law I yet would fain obey:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But true it is, above all law and fate</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is Faith, abiding the appointed day.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Long time a child, and still a child when years</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For yet I lived like one not born to die,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">No hope I needed, and I knew no fears.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I waked to sleep no more, at once o’ertaking</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The vanguard of my age, with all arrears</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is grey,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For I have lost the race I never ran;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A rathe December blights my lagging May;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And still I am a child, tho’ I be old,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Time is my debtor for my years untold.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span></p> + +<p>Indeed, the whole series of sonnets with which the earliest +and best work of Hartley began is (with a casual episode on +others), mainly and essentially a series on himself. Perhaps +there is something in the structure of the sonnet rather adapted +to this species of composition. It is too short for narrative, too +artificial for the intense passions, too complex for the simple, +too elaborate for the domestic; but in an impatient world +where there is not a premium on self-describing, who so would +speak of himself must be wise and brief, artful and composed—and +in these respects he will be aided by the concise dignity of +the tranquil sonnet.</p> + +<p>It is remarkable that in this, too, Hartley Coleridge resembled +his father. Turn over the early poems of S. T. Coleridge, +the minor poems (we exclude the ‘Mariner’ and +‘Christabel,’ which are his epics), but the small shreds which +Bristol worshipped and Cottle paid for, and you will be disheartened +by utter dulness. Taken on a decent average, and +perhaps excluding a verse here and there, it really seems to us +that they are inferior to the daily works of the undeserving and +multiplied poets. If any reader will peruse any six of the +several works intituled ‘Poems by a Young Gentleman,’ we +believe he will find the refined anonymity less insipid than the +small productions of Samuel Taylor. There will be less puff +and less ostentation. The reputation of the latter was caused +not by their merit but by their time. Fifty years ago people +believed in metre, and it is plain that Coleridge (Southey may +be added, for that matter) believed in it also; the people in +Bristol said that these two were wonderful men, because they +had written wonderfully small verses;—and such is human +vanity, that both for a time accepted the creed. In Coleridge, +who had large speculative sense, the hallucination was not permanent—there +are many traces that he rated his Juvenilia at +their value; but poor Southey, who lived with domestic women, +actually died in the delusion that his early works were perfect, +except that he tried to ‘amend’ the energy out of Joan of Arc, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>which was the only good thing in it. His wife did not doubt +that he had produced stupendous works. Why, then, should +he? But experience has now shown that a certain metrical +facility, and a pleasure in the metrical expression of certain +sentiments, are in youth extremely common. Many years ago, +Mr. Moore is reported to have remarked to Sir Walter Scott, +that hardly a magazine was then published, which did not contain +verses that would have made a sensation when they were +young men. ‘Confound it, Tom,’ was the reply, ‘what luck it +was <i>we</i> were born before all these fellows.’ And though neither +Moore nor Scott are to be confounded with the nameless and +industrious versifiers of the present day, yet it must be allowed +that they owed to their time and their position—to the small +quantity of rhyme in the market of the moment, and the extravagant +appreciation of their early productions—much of that +popular encouragement which induced them to labour upon +more excellent compositions and to train themselves to write +what they will be remembered by. But, dismissing these considerations, +and returning to the minor poems of S. T. Coleridge, +although we fearlessly assert that it is impossible for +any sane man to set any value on—say the Religious Musings—an +absurd attempt to versify an abstract theory, or the essay +on the Pixies, who had more fun in them than the reader of it +could suspect—it still is indisputable that scattered here and +there through these poems, there are lines about himself (lines, +as he said in later life, ‘in which the subjective object views +itself subjectivo-objectively,’) which rank high in that form of +art. Of this kind are the Tombless Epitaph, for example, or +the lines,—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘To me hath Heaven with bounteous hand assigned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Energic Reason and a shaping mind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The daring ken of truth; the Patriot’s part,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Pity’s sigh, that breathes the gentle heart;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sloth-jaundiced all! and from my graspless hand</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Drop friendship’s priceless pearls, like hour-glass sand.</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span> <div class="verse indent0">I weep, yet stoop not! the faint anguish flows,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A dreamy pang in morning’s fev’rish doze;’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">and so on. In fact, it would appear that the tendency to, and +the faculty for self-delineation are very closely connected with +the dreaminess of disposition and impotence of character which +we spoke of just now. Persons very subject to these can grasp +no external object, comprehend no external being; they can do +no external thing, and therefore they are left to themselves. +Their own character is the only one which they can view as a +whole, or depict as a reality; of every other they may have +glimpses, and acute glimpses, like the vivid truthfulness of +particular dreams; but no settled appreciation, no connected +development, no regular sequence whereby they may be exhibited +on paper or conceived in the imagination. If other +qualities are supposed to be identical, those will be most +egotistical who only know themselves; the people who talk most +of themselves will be those who talk best.</p> + +<p>In the execution of minor verses, we think we could show +that Hartley should have the praise of surpassing his father; +but nevertheless it would be absurd, on a general view, to +compare the two men. Samuel Taylor was so much bigger; +what there was in his son was equally good, perhaps, but then +there was not much of it; outwardly and inwardly he was +essentially little. In poetry, for example, the father has produced +two longish poems, which have worked themselves right +down to the extreme depths of the popular memory, and stay +there very firmly, in part from their strangeness, but in part +from their power. Of Hartley, nothing of this kind is to be +found—he could not write connectedly; he wanted steadiness of +purpose, or efficiency of will, to write so voluntarily; and his +genius did not, involuntarily, and out of its unseen workings, +present him with continuous creations; on the contrary, his +mind teemed with little fancies, and a new one came before the +first had attained any enormous magnitude. As his brother +observed, he wanted ‘back thought.’ ‘On what plan, Mr. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>Coleridge, are you arranging your books?’ inquired a lady. +‘Plan, madam? I have no plan: at first I had a principle; but +then I had another, and now I do not know.’ The same contrast +between the ‘shaping mind’ of the father, and the gentle +and minute genius of the son, is said to have been very plain in +their conversation. That of Samuel was continuous, diffused, +comprehensive.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless motion,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nothing before and nothing behind, but the sky and the ocean.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">‘Great talker, certainly,’ said Hazlitt, ‘<i>if</i> you will let him start +from no <i>data</i>, and come to no conclusion.’ The talk of +Hartley, on the contrary, though continuous in time, was detached +in meaning; stating hints and observations on particular +subjects; glancing lightly from side to side, but throwing no +intense light on any, and exhausting none. It flowed gently +over small doubts and pleasant difficulties, rippling for a +minute sometimes into bombast, but lightly recovering and +falling quietly in ‘melody back.’</p> + +<p>By way, it is likely, of compensation to Hartley for this +great deficiency in what his father imagined to be his own <i>forte</i>,—the +power of conceiving a whole,—Hartley possessed, in a +considerable degree, a species of sensibility to which the former +was nearly a stranger. ‘The mind of S. T. Coleridge,’ says one +who had every means of knowing and observing, ‘was not in the +least under the influence of external objects.’ Except in the +writings written during daily and confidential intimacy with +Wordsworth (an exception that may be obviously accounted for), +no trace can perhaps be found of any new image or metaphor +from natural scenery. There is some story too of his going for +the first time to York, and by the Minster, and never looking +up at it. But Hartley’s poems exhibit a great sensibility to a +certain aspect of exterior nature, and great fanciful power of +presenting that aspect in the most charming and attractive +forms. It is likely that the London boyhood of the elder +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>Coleridge was,—added to a strong abstractedness which was +born with him,—a powerful cause in bringing about the curious +mental fact, that a great poet, so susceptible to every other +species of refining and delightful feeling, should have been +utterly destitute of any perception of beauty in landscape or +nature. We must not forget that S. T. Coleridge was a blue-coat +boy,—what do any of them know about fields? And +similarly, we require in Hartley’s case, before we can quite +estimate his appreciation of nature, to consider his position, +his circumstances, and especially his time.</p> + +<p>Now it came to pass in those days that William Wordsworth +went up into the hills. It has been attempted in recent years +to establish that the object of his life was to teach Anglicanism. +A whole life of him has been written by an official gentleman, +with the apparent view of establishing that the great poet was +a believer in rood-lofts, an idolator of piscinæ. But this is not +capable of rational demonstration. Wordsworth, like Coleridge, +began life as a heretic, and as the shrewd Pope unfallaciously +said, ‘once a heretic, always a heretic.’ Sound men are sound +from the first; safe men are safe from the beginning, and Wordsworth +began wrong. His real reason for going to live in the +mountains was certainly in part sacred, but it was not in the +least Tractarian:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘For he with many feelings, many thoughts,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Made up a meditative joy, and found</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Religious meanings in the forms of nature.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">His whole soul was absorbed in the one idea, the one feeling, the +one thought, of the sacredness of hills.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent14">‘Early had he learned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To reverence the volume that displays</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The mystery, the life which cannot die;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But in the mountains did he <i>feel</i> his faith.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All things responsive to the writing, there</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Breathed immortality, revolving life,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span> <div class="verse indent0">And greatness still revolving; infinite;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There littleness was not.</div> + <div class="center">...</div> + <div class="verse indent18">—In the after-day</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And ’mid the hollow depths of naked crags,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He sate, and e’en in their fixed lineaments</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or from the power of a peculiar eye,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or by creative feeling overborne,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or by predominance of thought oppressed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">E’en in their fixed and steady lineaments</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Expression ever varying!</div> + <div class="center">...</div> + <div class="verse indent18">A sense sublime</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of something far more deeply interfused,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the round ocean and the living air</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A motion and a spirit that impels</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All thinking things, all objects of all thought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And rolls through all things.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>The defect of this religion is, that it is too abstract for the +practical, and too bare for the musing. The worship of sensuous +beauty—the southern religion—is of all sentiments the one +most deficient in his writings. His poetry hardly even gives +the charm, the entire charm, of the scenery in which he lived. +The lighter parts are little noticed: the rugged parts protrude. +The bare waste, the folding hill, the rough lake, Helvellyn with +a brooding mist, Ulswater in a grey day: these are his subjects. +He took a personal interest in the corners of the universe. +There is a print of Rembrandt said to represent a piece of the +Campagna, a mere waste, with a stump and a man, and under +is written ‘Tacet et loquitur;’ and thousands will pass the old +print-shop where it hangs, and yet have a taste for paintings, +and colours, and oils: but some fanciful students, some lonely +stragglers, some long-haired enthusiasts, by chance will come, +one by one, and look, and look, and be hardly able to take their +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>eyes from the fascination, so massive is the shade, so still the +conception, so firm the execution. Thus is it with Wordsworth +and his poetry. <i>Tacet et loquitur.</i> Fashion apart, the million +won’t read it. Why should they?—they could not understand it. +Don’t put them out,—let them buy, and sell, and die;—but idle +students, and enthusiastic wanderers, and solitary thinkers, will +read, and read, and read, while their lives and their occupations +hold. In truth, his works are the Scriptures of the intellectual +life; for that same searching, and finding, and penetrating power +which the real Scripture exercises on those engaged, as are the +mass of men, in practical occupations and domestic ties, do his +works exercise on the meditative, the solitary, and the young.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘His daily teachers had been woods and rills,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The silence that is in the starry sky,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sleep that is among the lonely hills.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>And he had more than others,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent16">‘That blessed mood,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In which the burthen of the mystery,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In which the heavy and the weary weight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of all this unintelligible world</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is lightened: that serene and blessed mood</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In which the affections gently lead us on,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Until the breath of this corporeal frame,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And even the motion of our human blood</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Almost suspended, we are laid asleep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In body, and become a living soul;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While with an eye made quiet by the power</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We see into the life of things.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>And therefore he has had a whole host of sacred imitators. +Mr. Keble, for example, has translated him for women. He +has himself told us that he owed to Wordsworth the tendency +<i>ad sanctiora</i>, which is the mark of his own writings; and in +fact he has but adapted the tone and habit of reverence, which +his master applied to common objects and the course of the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>seasons, to sacred objects and the course of the ecclesiastical +year,—diffusing a mist of sentiment and devotion altogether +delicious to a gentle and timid devotee. Hartley Coleridge is +another translator. He has applied to the sensuous beauties +and seductive parts of external nature the same <i>cultus</i> which +Wordsworth applied to the bare and the abstract. It is—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘That fair beauty which no eye can see,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of that sweet music which no ear can measure.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>It is, as it were, female beauty in wood and water; it is +Rydal Water on a shining day; it is the gloss of the world with +the knowledge that it is gloss: the sense of beauty, as in some +women, with the feeling that yet it is hardly theirs:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘The vale of Tempe had in vain been fair,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Green Ida never deemed the nurse of Jove,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each fabled stream, beneath its covert grove,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Had idly murmured to the idle air;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The shaggy wolf had kept his horrid lair</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In Delphi’s cell and old Trophonius’ cave,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the wild wailing of the Ionian wave</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Had never blended with the sweet despair</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of Sappho’s death-song,—if the sight inspired</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Saw only what the visual organs show;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If heaven-born phantasy no more required</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than what within the sphere of sense may grow.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The beauty to perceive of earthly things,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The mounting soul must heavenward prune her wings.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">And he knew it himself: he has sketched the essence of his +works:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Whither is gone the wisdom and the power,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That ancient sages scattered with the notes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of thought-suggesting lyres? The music floats</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the void air; e’en at this breathing hour,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In every cell and every blooming bower,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sweetness of old lays is hovering still;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But the strong soul, the self-constraining will,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The rugged root that bare the winsome flower,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span> <div class="verse indent0">Is weak and withered. Were we like the Fays</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That sweetly nestle in the fox-glove bells,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or lurk and murmur in the rose-lipped shells,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which Neptune to the earth for quit-rent pays;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then might our pretty modern Philomels</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sustain our spirits with their roundelays.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>We had more to say of Hartley: we were to show that his +Prometheus was defective; that its style had no Greek severity, +no defined outline; that he was a critic as well as a poet, though +in a small detached way, and what is odd enough, that he could +criticise in rhyme. We were to make plain how his heart was +in the right place, how his love affairs were hopeless, how he was +misled by his friends; but our time is done and our space is +full, and these topics must ‘go without day’ of returning. We +may end as we began. There are some that are bold and strong +and incessant and energetic and hard, and to these is the world’s +glory; and some are timid and meek and impotent and cowardly +and rejected and obscure. ‘One man esteemeth one day above +another, another esteemeth every day alike.’ And so of Hartley, +whom few regarded; he had a resource, the stillness of thought, +the gentleness of musing, the peace of nature.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘To his side the fallow deer</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Came and rested without fear;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The eagle, lord of land and sea,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Stooped down to pay him fealty;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And both the undying fish that swim,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In Bowscale-tarn did wait on him;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The pair were servants of his eye,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In their immortality;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And glancing, gleaming, dark or bright,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Moved to and fro for his delight.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He knew the rocks which Angels haunt</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon the mountains visitant.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He hath kenned them taking wing,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And into caves where Fairies sing</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He hath entered; and been told</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By voices how men lived of old.</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span> <div class="verse indent0">Among the heavens his eye can see</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The face of thing that is to be,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And if that men report him right</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His tongue could whisper words of might.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">—Now another day is come,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fitter hope and nobler doom,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He hath thrown aside his crook,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And hath buried deep his book.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘And now the streams may sing for others’ pleasure,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The hills sleep on in their eternity.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">He is gone from among them.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PERCY_BYSSHE_SHELLEY"><i>PERCY +BYSSHE SHELLEY.</i>⁠<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a><br> +<span class="smaller">(1856.)</span></h2> + +</div> + +<p>After the long biography of Moore, it is half a comfort to +think of a poet as to whom our information is but scanty. +The few intimates of Shelley seem inclined to go to their +graves without telling in accurate detail the curious circumstances +of his life. We are left to be content with vain +‘prefaces’ and the circumstantial details of a remarkable +blunderer. We know something, however;—we know enough +to check our inferences from his writings; in some moods it +is pleasant not to have them disturbed by long volumes of +memoirs and anecdotes.</p> + +<p>One peculiarity of Shelley’s writing makes it natural that +at times we should not care to have, that at times we should +wish for, a full biography. No writer has left so clear an +image of himself in his writings; when we remember them as +a whole, we seem to want no more. No writer, on the other +hand, has left so many little allusions which we should be glad +to have explained, which the patient patriarch would not perhaps +have endured that anyone should comprehend while he did +not. The reason is, that Shelley has combined the use of the +two great modes by which writers leave with their readers the +image of themselves. There is the art of self-delineation. +Some authors try in imagination to get outside themselves—to +contemplate their character as a fact, and to describe it and the +movement of their own actions as external forms and images. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>Scarcely any one has done this as often as Shelley. There is +hardly one of his longer works which does not contain a +finished picture of himself in some point or under some +circumstances. Again, some writers, almost or quite unconsciously, +by a special instinct of style, give an idea of +themselves. This is not peculiar to literary men; it is quite as +remarkable among men of action. There are people in the +world who cannot write the commonest letter on the commonest +affair of business without giving a just idea of themselves. +The Duke of Wellington is an example which at once occurs of +this. You may read a despatch of his about bullocks and +horseshoe-nails; and yet you will feel an interest—a great +interest, because somehow among the words seems to lurk the +mind of a great general. Shelley has this peculiarity also. +Every line of his has a personal impress, an unconscious inimitable +manner. And the two modes in which he gives an +idea of himself concur. In every delineation we see the same +simple intense being. As mythology found a Naiad in the +course of every limpid stream, so through each eager line our +fancy sees the same panting image of sculptured purity.</p> + +<p>Shelley is probably the most remarkable instance of the +pure impulsive character,—to comprehend which requires a +little detail. Some men are born under the law: their whole +life is a continued struggle between the lower principles of +their nature and the higher. These are what are called men of +principle; each of their best actions is a distinct choice +between conflicting motives. One propension would bear them +here; another there; a third would hold them still: into the +midst the living will goes forth in its power, and selects whichever +it holds to be best. The habitual supremacy of conscience +in such men gives them an idea that they only exert their will +when they do right; when they do wrong they seem to ‘let +their nature go;’ they say that ‘they are hurried away:’ but, +in fact, there is commonly an act of will in both cases;—only +it is weaker when they act ill, because in passably good men, if +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>the better principles are reasonably strong, they conquer; it is +only when very faint that they are vanquished. Yet the case is +evidently not always so; sometimes the wrong principle is of +itself and of set purpose definitely chosen: the better one is +consciously put down. The very existence of divided natures +is a conflict. This is no new description of human nature. +For eighteen hundred years Christendom has been amazed at +the description in St. Paul of the law of his members warring +against the law of his mind. Expressions most unlike in +language, but not dissimilar in meaning, are to be found in +some of the most familiar passages of Aristotle.</p> + +<p>In extreme contrast to this is the nature which has no +struggle. It is possible to conceive a character in which but +one impulse is ever felt—in which the whole being, as with a +single breeze, is carried in a single direction. The only exercise +of the will in such a being is in aiding and carrying out +the dictates of the single propensity. And this is something. +There are many of our powers and faculties only in a subordinate +degree under the control of the emotions; the intellect +itself in many moments requires to be bent to defined attention +by compulsion of the will; no mere intensity of desire will +thrust it on its tasks. But of what in most men is the characteristic +action of the will—namely, self-control—such +natures are hardly in want. An ultimate case could be imagined +in which they would not need it at all. They have no +lower desires to pull down, for they have no higher ones which +come into collision with them; the very words ‘lower’ and +‘higher,’ involving the contemporaneous action and collision of +two impulses, are inapplicable to them; there is no strife; all +their soul impels them in a single line. This may be a quality +of the highest character: indeed in the highest character it will +certainly be found; no one will question that the whole nature +of the holiest being tends to what is holy without let, struggle, +or strife—it would be impiety to doubt it. Yet this same +quality may certainly be found in a lower—a much lower—mind +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>than the highest. A level may be of any elevation; the +absence of intestine commotion may arise from a sluggish +dulness to eager aspirations; the one impulse which is felt +may be any impulse whatever. If the idea were completely +exemplified, one would instinctively say, that a being with so +single a mind could hardly belong to human nature. Temptation +is the mark of our life; we can hardly divest ourselves of +the idea that it is indivisible from our character. As it was +said of solitude, so it may be said of the sole dominion of a +single impulse, ‘Whoso is devoted to it would seem to be +either a beast or a god.’</p> + +<p>Completely realised on earth this idea will never be; but +approximations may be found, and one of the closest of those +approximations is Shelley. We fancy his mind placed in the +light of thought, with pure subtle fancies playing to and fro. +On a sudden an impulse arises; it is alone, and has nothing to +contend with; it cramps the intellect, pushes aside the fancies, +constrains the nature; it bolts forward into action. Such a +character is an extreme puzzle to external observers. From the +occasionality of its impulses it will often seem silly; from their +singularity, strange; from their intensity, fanatical. It is +absurdest in the more trifling matters. There is a legend of +Shelley, during an early visit to London, flying along the street, +catching sight of a new microscope, buying it in a moment; +pawning it the instant afterwards to relieve some one in the +same street in distress. The trait may be exaggerated, but it is +characteristic. It shows the sudden irruption of his impulses, +their abrupt force and curious purity.</p> + +<p>The predominant impulse in Shelley from a very early age +was ‘a passion for reforming mankind.’ Mr. Newman has told +us in his Letters from the East how much he and his half-missionary +associates were annoyed at being called ‘young +people trying to convert the world.’ In a strange land, ignorant +of the language, beside a recognised religion, in the midst of an +immemorial society, the aim, though in a sense theirs, seemed +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>ridiculous when ascribed to them. Shelley would not have felt +this at all. No society, however organised, would have been too +strong for him to attack. He would not have paused. The +impulse was upon him. He would have been ready to preach +that mankind were to be ‘free, equal, pure, and wise,’—in +favour of ‘justice, and truth, and time, and the world’s natural +sphere,’—in the Ottoman Empire, or to the Czar, or to +George III. Such truths were independent of time and place +and circumstance; some time or other, something, or somebody +(his faith was a little vague), would most certainly intervene to +establish them. It was this placid undoubting confidence which +irritated the positive and sceptical mind of Hazlitt. ‘The +author of the “Prometheus Unbound,”’ he tells us, ‘has a fire +in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic +flutter in his speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic. +He is sanguine-complexioned and shrill-voiced. As is often +observable in the case of religious enthusiasts, there is a slenderness +of constitutional stamina, which renders the flesh no match +for the spirit. His bending, flexible form appears to take no +strong hold of things, does not grapple with the world about +him, but slides from it like a river—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘And in its liquid texture mortal wound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Receives no more than can the fluid air.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">The shock of accident, the weight of authority, make no impression +on his opinions, which retire like a feather, or rise from the +encounter unhurt, through their own buoyancy. He is clogged +by no dull system of realities, no earth-bound feelings, no rooted +prejudices, by nothing that belongs to the mighty trunk and +hard husk of nature and habit; but is drawn up by irresistible +levity to the regions of mere speculation and fancy, to the +sphere of air and fire, where his delighted spirit floats in ‘seas +of pearl and clouds of amber.’ There is no <i>caput mortuum</i> +of worn-out threadbare experience to serve as ballast to his +mind; it is all volatile, intellectual salt-of-tartar, that refuses +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>to combine its evanescent, inflammable essence with anything +solid or anything lasting. Bubbles are to him the only +realities:—touch them, and they vanish. Curiosity is the only +proper category of his mind; and though a man in knowledge, +he is a child in feeling.’ And so on with vituperation. No +two characters could, indeed, be found more opposite than the +open, eager, buoyant poet, and the dark, threatening, unbelieving +critic.</p> + +<p>It is difficult to say how far such a tendency under some +circumstances might not have carried Shelley into positions +most alien to an essential benevolence. It is most dangerous +to be possessed with an idea. Dr. Arnold used to say that he +had studied the life of Robespierre with the greatest personal +benefit. No personal purity is a protection against insatiable +zeal; it almost acts in the opposite direction. The less a man +is conscious of inferior motives, the more likely is he to fancy +that he is doing God service. There is no difficulty in imagining +Shelley cast by the accident of fortune into the Paris of the +Revolution; hurried on by its ideas, undoubting in its hopes, +wild with its excitement, going forth in the name of freedom +conquering and to conquer;—and who can think that he would +have been scrupulous how he attained such an end? It was in +him to have walked towards it over seas of blood. One could +almost identify him with St. Just, the ‘fair-haired republican.’</p> + +<p>On another and a more generally interesting topic, Shelley +advanced a theory which amounts to a deification of impulse. +‘Love,’ he tells us, ‘is inevitably consequent upon the perception +of loveliness. Love withers under constraint; its very +essence is liberty; it is compatible neither with obedience, +jealousy, nor fear; it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, +where its votaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve.... +A husband and wife ought to continue united only so +long as they love each other. Any law which should bind them +to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection +would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>toleration. How odious an usurpation of the right of private +judgment should that law be considered, which should make +the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the +inconstancy, the fallibility, of the human mind! And by so +much would the fetters of love be heavier and more unendurable +than those of friendship, as love is more vehement and +capricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of +imagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible +merits of the object.’ This passage, no doubt, is from an early +and crude essay, one of the notes to ‘Queen Mab;’ and there +are many indications, in his latter years, that though he might +hold in theory that ‘constancy has nothing virtuous in itself,’ +yet in practice he shrank from breaking a tie hallowed by years +of fidelity and sympathy. But, though his conduct was doubtless +higher than his creed, there is no evidence that his creed +was ever changed. The whole tone of his works is on the other +side. The ‘Epipsychidion’ could not have been written by a +man who attached a moral value to constancy of mind. And the +whole doctrine is most expressive of his character. A quivering +sensibility endured only the essence of the most refined love. It +is intelligible, that one who bowed in a moment to every desire +should have attached a kind of consecration to the most pure +and eager of human passions.</p> + +<p>The evidence of Shelley’s poems confirms this impression of +him. The characters which he delineates have all this same +kind of pure impulse. The reforming impulse is especially +felt. In almost every one of his works there is some character, +of whom all we know is, that he or she had this passionate +disposition to reform mankind. We know nothing else about +them, and they are all the same. Laon, in the ‘Revolt of Islam,’ +does not differ at all from Lionel, in ‘Rosalind and Helen.’ +Laon differs from Cythna, in the former poem, only as male +from female. Lionel is delineated, though not with Shelley’s +greatest felicity, in a single passage:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Yet through those dungeon-walls there came</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy thrilling light, O liberty!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And as the meteor’s midnight flame</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Startles the dreamer, sunlight truth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Flashed on his visionary youth,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And filled him, not with love, but faith,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And hope, and courage, mute in death;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For love and life in him were twins,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Born at one birth: in every other</div> + <div class="verse indent0">First life, then love its course begins,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Though they be children of one mother:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And so through this dark world they fleet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Divided, till in death they meet.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But he loved all things ever. Then</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He passed amid the strife of men,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And stood at the throne of armed power</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pleading for a world of woe:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Secure as one on a rock-built tower</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O’er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Mid the passions wild of human-kind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He stood, like a spirit calming them;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For, it was said, his words could bind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like music the lulled crowd, and stem</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That torrent of unquiet dream</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which mortals truth and reason deem,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But is revenge, and fear, and pride.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Joyous he was, and hope and peace</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On all who heard him did abide,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Raining like dew from his sweet talk,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As, where the evening star may walk</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Along the brink of the gloomy seas,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Liquid mists of splendour quiver.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Such is the description of all his reformers in calm. In times +of excitement, they all burst forth—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or the priests of the bloody faith;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They stand on the brink of that mighty river</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose waves they have tainted with death;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Around them it foams, and rages, and swells:</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span> <div class="verse indent0">And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like wrecks in the surge of eternity.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">In his more didactic poems it is the same. All the world is +evil, and will be evil, until some unknown conqueror shall +appear—a teacher by rhapsody and a conqueror by words—who +shall at once reform all evil. Mathematicians place great +reliance on the unknown symbol, great X. Shelley did more; +he expected it would take life and reform our race. Such +impersonations are, of course, not real men; they are mere +incarnations of a desire. Another passion, which no man has +ever felt more strongly than Shelley—the desire to penetrate +the mysteries of existence (by Hazlitt profanely called curiosity)—is +depicted in ‘Alastor’ as the sole passion of the only person +in the poem:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘By solemn vision and bright silver dream</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His infancy was nurtured. Every sight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sound from the vast earth and ambient air</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The fountains of divine philosophy</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fled not his thirsting lips; and all of great,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In truth or fable consecrates, he felt</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And knew. When early youth had past, he left</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His cold fireside and alienated home</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His rest and food.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">He is cheered on his way by a beautiful dream, and the search +to find it again mingles with the shadowy quest. It is remarkable +how great is the superiority of the personification in +‘Alastor,’ though one of his earliest writings, over the reforming +abstractions of his other works. The reason is, its far +greater closeness to reality. The one is a description of what +he was; the other of what he desired to be. Shelley had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>nothing of the magic influence, the large insight, the bold +strength, the permeating eloquence, which fit a man for a +practical reformer: but he had, in perhaps an unequalled and +unfortunate measure, the famine of the intellect—the daily +insatiable craving after the highest truth which is the passion +of ‘Alastor.’ So completely did he feel it, that the introductory +lines of the poem almost seem to identify him with the hero; +at least they express sentiments which would have been exactly +dramatic in his mouth:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Mother of this unfathomable world!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Favour my solemn song; for I have loved</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And my heart ever gazes on the depth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In charnels and on coffins, where black Death</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Keeps records of the trophies won from thee,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hoping to still these obstinate questionings</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy messenger, to render up the tale</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like an inspired and desperate alchymist,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Staking his very life on some dark hope,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With my most innocent love; until strange tears,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Uniting with those breathless kisses, made</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Such magic as compels the charmed night</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To render up thy charge ... and though ne’er yet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Enough from incommunicable dream,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And twilight phantasms and deep noonday thought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Has shone within me, that serenely now,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And moveless (as a long-forgotten lyre,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Suspended in the solitary dome</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of some mysterious and deserted fane),</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">May modulate with murmurs of the air,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And motions of the forests and the sea,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span> <div class="verse indent0">And voice of living beings, and woven hymns</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">The accompaniments are fanciful; but the essential passion was +his own.</p> + +<p>These two forms of abstract personification exhaust all +which can be considered characters among Shelley’s poems—one +poem excepted. Of course, all his works contain ‘Spirits,’ +‘Phantasms,’ ‘Dream No. 1,’ and ‘Fairy No. 3;’ but these do +not belong to this world. The higher air seems never to have +been favourable to the production of marked character; with +almost all poets the inhabitants of it are prone to a shadowy +thinness: in Shelley, the habit of frequenting mountain-tops +has reduced them to evanescent mists of lyrical energy. One +poem of Shelley’s, however, has two beings of another order; +creations which, if not absolutely dramatic characters of the +first class—not beings whom we know better than we know +ourselves—are nevertheless very high specimens of the second; +persons who seem like vivid recollections from our intimate +experience. In this case the dramatic execution is so good, +that it is difficult to say why the results are not quite of the +first rank. One reason of this is, perhaps, their extreme simplicity. +Our imaginations, warned by consciousness and outward +experience of the wonderful complexity of human nature, +refuse to credit the existence of beings, all whose actions are +unmodified consequences of a single principle. These two +characters are Beatrice Cenci and her father Count Cenci. In +most of Shelley’s poems—he died under thirty—there is an +extreme suspicion of aged persons. In actual life he had +plainly encountered many old gentlemen who had no belief in +the complete and philosophical reformation of mankind. There +is, indeed, an old hermit in the ‘Revolt of Islam’ who is +praised (Captain Medwin identifies him with a Dr. Some-one +who was kind to Shelley at Eton); but in general the old +persons in his poems are persons whose authority it is desirable +to disprove:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent8">‘Old age, with its gray hair</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And wrinkled legends of unworthy things</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And icy sneers, is naught.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">The less its influence, he evidently believes, the better. Not +unnaturally, therefore, he selected for a tragedy a horrible subject +from Italian story, in which an old man, accomplished in +this world’s learning, renowned for the ‘cynic sneer of o’er +experienced sin,’ is the principal evil agent. The character of +Count Cenci is that of a man who of set principle does evil for +evil’s sake. He loves ‘the sight of agony:’</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘All men delight in sensual luxury;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All men enjoy revenge; and most exult</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over the tortures they can never feel,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Flattering their secret peace with others’ pain:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But I delight in nothing else.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">If he regrets his age, it is from the failing ability to do evil:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘True, I was happier than I am while yet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Manhood remained to act the thing I thought;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While lust was sweeter than revenge: and now</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Invention palls.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">It is this that makes him contemplate the violation of his +daughter:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent8">‘There yet remains a deed to act,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose horror might make sharp an appetite</div> + <div class="verse indent0">More dull than mine.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Shelley, though an habitual student of Plato—the greatest +modern writer who has taken great pleasure in his writings—never +seems to have read any treatise of Aristotle; otherwise +he would certainly seem to have derived from that great writer +the idea of the ἀκόλαστος; yet in reality the idea is as natural +to Shelley as any man—more likely to occur to him than to +most. Children think that everybody who is bad is very bad. +Their simple eager disposition only understands the doing what +they wish to do; they do not refine: if they hear of a man +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>doing evil, they think he wishes to do it,—that he has a special +impulse to do evil, as they have to do what they do. Something +like this was the case with Shelley. His mind, impulsive and +childlike, could not imagine the struggling kind of character—either +those which struggle with their lower nature and conquer, +or those which struggle and are vanquished—either the +ἐγκρατής or the ἀκρατής of the old thinker; but he could comprehend +that which is in reality far worse than either, the being +who wishes to commit sin because it is sin, who is as it were +possessed with a demon hurrying him out, hot and passionate, +to vice and crime. The innocent child is whirled away by one +impulse; the passionate reformer by another; the essential +criminal, if such a being be possible, by a third. They are all +beings, according to one division, of the same class. An imaginative +mind like Shelley’s, belonging to the second of these +types, naturally is prone in some moods to embody itself under +the forms of the third. It is, as it were, the antithesis to +itself.—Equally simple is the other character—that of Beatrice. +Even before her violation, by a graphic touch of art, she is +described as absorbed, or beginning to be absorbed, in the consciousness +of her wrongs;</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent2">‘<i>Beatrice.</i> As I have said, speak to me not of love.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Had you a dispensation, I have not;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor will I leave this home of misery</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To whom I owe life and these virtuous thoughts,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Must suffer what I still have strength to share.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Alas, Orsino! all the love that once</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I felt for you is turned to bitter pain.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ours was a youthful contract, which you first</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Broke by assuming vows no Pope will loose:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And yet I love you still, but holily,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Even as a sister or a spirit might;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And so I swear a cold fidelity.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">After her violation, her whole being is absorbed by one thought,—how +and by what subtle vengeance she can expiate the memory +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>of her shame. These are all the characters in Shelley; an impulsive +unity is of the essence of them all.</p> + +<p>The same characteristic of Shelley’s temperament produced +also most marked effects on his speculative opinions. The +peculiarity of his creed early brought him into opposition to +the world. His education seems to have been principally +directed by his father, of whom the only description which has +reached us is not favourable. Sir Timothy Shelley, according +to Captain Medwin, was an illiterate country gentleman of an +extinct race; he had been at Oxford, where he learned nothing, +had made the grand tour, from which he brought back ‘a +smattering of bad French and a bad picture of an eruption at +Vesuvius.’ He had the air of the old school, and the habit of +throwing it off which distinguished that school. Lord Chesterfield +himself was not easier on matters of morality. He used +to tell his son that he would provide for natural children <i>ad +infinitum</i>, but would never forgive his making a <i>mésalliance</i>. +On religion his opinions were very lax. He, indeed, ‘required +his servants,’ we are told, ‘to attend church,’ and even on rare +occasions, with superhuman virtue, attended himself; but there, +as with others of that generation, his religion ended. He +doubtless did not feel that any more could be required of him. +He was not consciously insincere; but he did not in the least +realise the opposition between the religion which he professed +and the conduct which he pursued. Such a person was not +likely to influence a morbidly sincere imaginative nature in +favour of the doctrines of the Church of England. Shelley went +from Eton, where he had been singular, to Oxford, where he was +more so. He was a fair classical scholar. But his real mind +was given to out-of-school knowledge. He had written a novel; +he had studied chemistry; when pressed in argument, he used +to ask, ‘What, then, does Condorcet say upon the subject?’ +This was not exactly the youth for the University of Oxford in +the year 1810. A distinguished pupil of that University once +observed to us, ‘The use of the University of Oxford is, that no +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>one can over-read themselves there. The appetite for knowledge +is repressed. A blight is thrown over the ingenuous mind, +&c.’ And possibly it may be so; considering how small a space +literary knowledge fills in the busy English world, it may not +be without its advantages that any mind prone to bookish enthusiasm +should be taught by the dryness of its appointed +studies, the want of sympathy of its teachers, and a rough contact +with average English youth, that studious enthusiasm must +be its own reward; that in this country it will meet with little +other; that it will not be encouraged in high places. Such +discipline may, however, be carried too far. A very enthusiastic +mind may possibly by it be turned in upon itself. This +was the case with Shelley. When he first came up to Oxford +physics were his favourite pursuit. On chemistry, especially, +he used to be eloquent. ‘The galvanic battery,’ said he, ‘is a +new engine. It has been used hitherto to an insignificant extent: +yet it has worked wonders already. What will not an +extraordinary combination of troughs of colossal magnitude, +a well-arranged system of hundreds of metallic plates, effect?’ +Nature, however, like the world, discourages a wild enthusiasm. +‘His chemical operations seemed to an unskilful observer to +promise nothing but disasters. He had blown himself up at +Eton. He had inadvertently swallowed some mineral poison, +which he declared had seriously injured his health, and from +the effects of which he should never recover. His hands, his +clothes, his books, and his furniture, were stained and covered +by medical acids,’ and so on. Disgusted with these and other +failures, he abandoned physics for metaphysics. He rushed +head-long into the form of philosophy then popular. It is not +likely that he ever read Locke; and it is easy to imagine the +dismay with which the philosopher would have regarded so +‘heady and skittish’ a disciple: but he continually invoked +Locke as an authority, and was really guided by the French +expositions of him then popular. Hume, of course, was not +without his influence. With such teachers only to control him, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>an excitable poet rushed in a moment to materialism, and +thence to atheism. Deriving any instruction from the University, +was, according to him, absurd; he wished to convert the +University. He issued a kind of thesis, stating by way of interrogatory +all the difficulties of the subject; called it the +‘necessity of atheism,’ and sent it to the professors, heads of +houses, and several bishops. The theistic belief of his college +was equal to the occasion. ‘It was a fine spring morning on +Lady Day in the year 1811, when,’ says a fellow-student, ‘I went +to Shelley’s rooms. He was absent; but before I had collected +our books, he rushed in. He was terribly agitated. I anxiously +inquired what had happened. “I am expelled.” He then explained +that he had been summoned before the Master and some +of the Fellows; that as he was unable to deny the authorship +of the essay, he had been expelled and ordered to quit the +college the next morning at latest.’ He had wished to be put +on his trial more regularly, and stated to the Master that +England was ‘a free country;’ but without effect. He was +obliged to leave Oxford: his father was very angry; ‘if he had +broken the Master’s windows, one could have understood it:’ +but to be expelled for publishing a <i>book</i> seemed an error incorrigible, +because incomprehensible.</p> + +<p>These details at once illustrate Shelley’s temperament, and +enable us to show that the peculiarity of his opinions arose +out of that temperament. He was placed in circumstances +which left his eager mind quite free. Of his father we have +already spoken: there was no one else to exercise a subduing or +guiding influence over him; nor would his mind have naturally +been one extremely easy to influence. Through life he followed +very much his own bent and his own thoughts. His most intimate +associates exercised very little control over his belief. He +followed his nature; and that nature was in a singular degree +destitute of certain elements which most materially guide +ordinary men. It seems most likely that a person prone to +isolated impulse will be defective in the sensation of conscience. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>There is scarcely room for it. When, as in common conflicting +characters, the whole nature is daily and hourly in a perpetual +struggle, the faculty which decides what elements in that +nature are to have the supremacy is daily and hourly appealed +to. Passions are contending; life is a discipline; there is a +reference every moment to the directory of the discipline—the +order-book of the passions. In temperaments not exposed to +the ordinary struggle there is no such necessity. Their impulse +guides them; they have little temptation; are scarcely +under the law; have hardly occasion to consult the statute-book. +In consequence, simple and beautiful as such minds +often are, they are deficient in the sensation of duty; have no +haunting idea of right or wrong; show an easy <i>abandon</i> in +place of a severe self-scrutiny. At first it might seem that +such minds lose little; they are exempted from the consciousness +of a code to whose provisions they need little access. But +such would be the conclusion only from a superficial view of +human nature. The whole of our inmost faith is a series of +intuitions; and experience seems to show that the intuitions +of conscience are the beginning of that series. Childhood has +little which can be called a religion; the shows of this world, +the play of its lights and shadows, suffice. It is in the collision +of our nature, which occurs in youth, that the first real sensation +of faith is felt. Conscience is often then morbidly acute; +a flush passes over the youthful mind; the guiding instinct is +keen and strong, like the passions with which it contends. At +the first struggle of our nature commences our religion. Childhood +will utter the words; in early manhood, when we become +half-unwilling to utter them, they begin to have a meaning. +The result of history is similar. The whole of religion rests on +a faith that the universe is solely ruled by an almighty and all-perfect +Being. This strengthens with the moral cultivation, +and grows with the improvement of mankind. It is the +assumed axiom of the creed of Christendom; and all that is +really highest in our race may have the degree of its excellence +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span>tested by the degree of the belief in it. But experience shows +that the belief only grows very gradually. We see at various +times, and now, vast outlying nations in whom the conviction +of morality—the consciousness of a law—is but weak; and +there the belief in an all-perfect God is half-forgotten, faint, +and meagre. It exists as something between a tradition and a +speculation; but it does not come forth on the solid earth; it +has no place in the business and bosoms of men; it is thrust +out of view even when we look upwards by fancied idols and +dreams of the stars in their courses. Consider the state of the +Jewish, as compared with the better part of the Pagan world of +old. On the one side we see civilisation, commerce, the arts, a +great excellence in all the exterior of man’s life; a sort of +morality sound and sensible, placing the good of man in a +balanced moderation within and good looks without;—in a +combination of considerate good sense, with the <i>air</i> of aristocratic, +or, as it was said, ‘godlike’ refinement. We see, in a +word, civilisation, and the ethics of civilisation; the first +polished, the other elaborated and perfected. But this is all; +we do not see faith. We see in some quarters rather a horror +of the <i>curiosus deus</i> interfering, controlling, watching,—never +letting things alone,—disturbing the quiet of the world with +punishment and the fear of punishment. The Jewish side of +the picture is different. We see a people who have perhaps an +inaptitude for independent civilisation, who in secular pursuits +have only been assistants and attendants on other nations +during the whole history of mankind. These have no equable, +beautiful morality like the others; but instead a gnawing, +abiding, depressing—one might say, a slavish—ceremonial, +excessive sense of law and duty. This nation has faith. By a +link not logical, but ethical, this intense, eating, abiding +supremacy of conscience is connected with a deep daily sense of +a watchful, governing, and jealous God. And from the people +of the law arises the gospel. The sense of duty, when +awakened, awakens not only the religion of the law, but in the +end the other religious intuitions which lie round about it. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>The faith of Christendom has arisen not from a great people, +but from ‘the least of all people,’—from the people whose +anxious legalism was a noted contrast to the easy, impulsive +life of pagan nations. In modern language, conscience is the +<i>converting</i> intuition,—that which turns men from the world +without to that within,—from the things which are seen to the +realities which are not seen. In a character like Shelley’s, +where this haunting, abiding, oppressive moral feeling is wanting +or defective, the religious belief in an Almighty God which +springs out of it is likely to be defective likewise.</p> + +<p>In Shelley’s case this deficiency was aggravated by what +may be called the abstract character of his intellect. We have +shown that no character except his own, and characters most +strictly allied to his own, are delineated in his works. The +tendency of his mind was rather to personify isolated qualities +or impulses—equality, liberty, revenge, and so on—than to +create out of separate parts or passions the single conception of +an entire character. This is, properly speaking, the mythological +tendency. All early nations show this marked disposition +to conceive of separate forces and qualities as a kind of +semi-persons; that is, not true actual persons with distinct +characters, but beings who guide certain influences, and of +whom all we know is that they guide those influences. Shelley +evinces a remarkable tendency to deal with mythology in this +simple and elementary form. Other poets have breathed into +mythology a modern life; have been attracted by those parts +which seem to have a religious meaning, and have enlarged +that meaning while studying to embody it. With Shelley it is +otherwise; the parts of mythology by which he is attracted +are the bare parts—the simple stories which Dr. Johnson found +so tedious:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent4">‘Arethusa arose</div> + <div class="verse indent4">From her couch of snows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the Acroceraunian mountains.</div> + <div class="verse indent4">From cloud and from crag,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">With many a jag,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shepherding her bright fountains,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span> <div class="verse indent4">She leapt down the rocks</div> + <div class="verse indent4">With her rainbow locks</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Streaming among the streams;</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Her steps paved with green</div> + <div class="verse indent4">The downward ravine,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which slopes to the western gleams;</div> + <div class="verse indent4">And gliding and springing,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">She went ever singing,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In murmurs as soft as sleep;</div> + <div class="verse indent4">The earth seemed to love her,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">And heaven smiled above her,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As she lingered towards the deep.</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Then Alpheus bold,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">On his glacier cold,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With his trident the mountains strook,’</div> + <div class="verse indent8">&c. &c.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Arethusa and Alpheus are not characters: they are only the +spirits of the fountain and the stream. When not writing on +topics connected with ancient mythology, Shelley shows the +same bent. ‘The Cloud,’ and the ‘Skylark,’ are more like +mythology—have more of the impulse by which the populace, +if we may so say, of the external world was first fancied into +existence—than any other modern poems. There is, indeed, no +habit of mind more remote from our solid and matter-of-fact +existence; none which was once powerful, of which the present +traces are so rare. In truth, Shelley’s imagination achieved all +it could with the materials before it. The materials for the +creative faculty must be provided by the receptive faculty. +Before a man can imagine what will seem to be realities, he +must be familiar with what are realities. The memory of +Shelley had no heaped-up ‘store of life,’ no vast accumulation +of familiar characters. His intellect did not tend to the strong +grasp of realities; its taste was rather for the subtle refining of +theories, the distilling of exquisite abstractions. His imagination +personified what his understanding presented to it. It +had nothing else to do. He displayed the same tendency of +mind—sometimes negatively and sometimes positively—in his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>professedly religious inquiries. His belief went through three +stages—first, materialism, then a sort of Nihilism, then a sort +of Platonism. In neither of them is the rule of the universe +ascribed to a character: in the first and last it is ascribed to +animated abstractions; in the second there is no universe at all. +In neither of them is there any strong grasp of fact. The +writings of the first period are clearly influenced by, and +modelled on, Lucretius. He held the same abstract theory of +nature—sometimes of half-personified atoms, moving hither +and thither of themselves—at other times of a general pervading +spirit of nature, holding the same relation to nature, as a +visible object, that Arethusa the goddess bears to Arethusa the +stream:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent6">‘The magic car moved on.</div> + <div class="verse indent6">As they approached their goal</div> + <div class="verse indent2">The coursers seemed to gather speed:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sea no longer was distinguished; earth</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere:</div> + <div class="verse indent6">The sun’s unclouded orb</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Rolled through the black concave;</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Its rays of rapid light</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Parted around the chariot’s swifter course,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And fell like ocean’s feathery spray</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Dashed from the boiling surge</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Before a vessel’s prow.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent6">The magic car moved on.</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Earth’s distant orb appeared</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens:</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Whilst round the chariot’s way</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Innumerable systems rolled,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">And countless spheres diffused</div> + <div class="verse indent4">An ever-varying glory.</div> + <div class="verse indent2">It was a sight of wonder: some</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Were horned like the crescent moon;</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Some shed a mild and silver beam</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Like Hesperus o’er the western sea;</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Some dash’d athwart with trains of flame,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Like worlds to death and ruin driven;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some shone like stars, and, as the chariot passed,</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Bedimmed all other light.</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span> </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent6">Spirit of Nature! here,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">In this interminable wilderness</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Of worlds, at whose immensity</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Even soaring fancy staggers,—</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Here is thy fitting temple.</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Yet not the lightest leaf</div> + <div class="verse indent2">That quivers to the passing breeze</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Is less instinct with thee:</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Yet not the meanest worm</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Less shares thy eternal breath.</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Spirit of Nature! thou,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Imperishable as this glorious scene,—</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Here is thy fitting temple.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">And he copied not only the opinions of Lucretius, but also his +tone. Nothing is more remarkable than that two poets of the +first rank should have felt a bounding joy in the possession of +opinions which, if true, ought, one would think, to move an +excitable nature to the keenest and deepest melancholy. That +this life is all; that there is no God, but only atoms and a +moulding breath; are singular doctrines to be accepted with +joy: they only could have been so accepted by wild minds +bursting with imperious energy, knowing of no law, ‘wreaking +thoughts upon expression’ of which they knew neither the +meaning nor the result. From this stage Shelley’s mind passed +to another; but not immediately to one of greater belief. On +the contrary, it was the doctrine of Hume which was called in +to expel the doctrine of Epicurus. His previous teachers had +taught him that there was nothing except matter: the Scotch +sceptic met him at that point with the question—Is matter +certain? Hume, as is well known, adopted the negative part +from the theory of materialism and the theory of immaterialism, +but rejected the positive side of both. He held, or professed +to hold, that there was no substantial thing, either matter or +mind; but only ‘sensations and impressions’ flying about the +universe, inhering in nothing and going nowhere. These, he +said, were the only subjects of consciousness; all you felt was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>your feeling, and all your thought was your thought; the rest +was only hypothesis. The notion that there was any ‘<i>you</i>’ at +all was a theory generally current among mankind, but not, +unless proved, to be accepted by the philosopher. This doctrine, +though little agreeable to the world in general, has an excellence +in the eyes of youthful disputants; it is a doctrine which no +one will admit, and which no one can disprove. Shelley +accordingly accepted it; indeed it was a better description of +his universe than of most people’s; his mind was filled with +a swarm of ideas, fancies, thoughts, streaming on without his +volition, without plan or order. He might be pardoned +for fancying that they were all; he could not see the outward +world for them; their giddy passage occupied him +till he forgot himself. He has put down the theory in its +barest form: ‘The most refined abstractions of logic conduct +to a view of life which, though startling to the apprehension, +is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated +combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, +the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess +that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent +to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that +nothing exists but as it is perceived.’ And again: ‘The +view of life presented by the most refined deductions of +the intellectual philosophy is that of unity. Nothing exists +but as it is perceived. The difference is merely nominal +between those two classes of thought which are vulgarly distinguished +by the names of ideas and of external objects. +Pursuing the same thread of reasoning, the existence of +distinct individual minds, similar to that which is employed +in now questioning its own nature, is likewise found to be a +delusion. The words, <i>I</i>, <i>you</i>, <i>they</i>, are not signs of any actual +difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts thus +indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the +different modifications of the one mind. Let it not be supposed +that this doctrine conducts to the monstrous presumption +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>that I, the person who now write and think, am that one mind. +I am but a portion of it. The words, <i>I</i>, and <i>you</i>, and <i>they</i>, +are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement, and +totally devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually +attached to them. It is difficult to find terms adequate to +express so subtle a conception as that to which the intellectual +philosophy has conducted us. We are on that verge where +words abandon us; and what wonder if we grow dizzy to look +down the dark abyss of how little we know!’ On his wild +nerves these speculations produced a great effect. Their +thin acuteness excited his intellect; their blank result appalled +his imagination. He was obliged to pause in the last fragment +of one of his metaphysical papers, ‘dizzy from thrilling +horror.’ In this state of mind he began to study Plato; and +it is probable that in the whole library of philosophy there +is no writer so suitable to such a reader. A common modern +author, believing in mind and matter, he would have put aside +at once as loose and popular. He was attracted by a writer +who, like himself, in some sense did not believe in either—who +supplied him with subtle realities different from either, +at once to be extracted by his intellect and to be glorified by +his imagination. The theory of Plato, that the all-apparent +phenomena were unreal, he believed already; he had a craving +to believe in something noble, beautiful, and difficult to understand; +he was ready, therefore, to accept the rest of that +theory, and to believe that these passing phenomena were +imperfect types and resemblances—imperfect incarnations, so +to speak—of certain immovable, eternal, archetypal realities. +All his later writings are coloured by that theory, though in +some passages the remains of the philosophy of the senses with +which he commenced appear in odd proximity to the philosophy +of abstractions with which he concluded. There is, perhaps, +no allusion in Shelley to the <i>Phædrus</i>; but no one can doubt +which of Plato’s ideas would be most attractive to the nature +we have described. The most valuable part of Plato he did +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span>not comprehend. There is in Shelley none of that unceasing +reference to ethical consciousness and ethical religion which +has for centuries placed Plato first among the preparatory preceptors +of Christianity. The general doctrine is that</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘The one remains, the many change and pass;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Heaven’s light for ever shines, earth’s shadows fly;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Stains the white radiance of eternity,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Until death tramples it to fragments.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">The particular worship of the poet is paid to that one spirit +whose</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent26">‘Plastic stress</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All new successions to the forms they wear;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Torturing th’ unwilling dross that checks its flight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And bursting in its beauty and its might</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From trees, and beasts, and men, into the heaven’s light.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">It is evident that not even in this, the highest form of creed +to which he ever clearly attained, is there any such distinct +conception of a character as is essential to a real religion. The +conception of God is not to be framed out of a single attribute. +Shelley has changed the ‘idea’ of beauty into a spirit, and this +probably for the purposes of poetry; he has given it life and +animal motion; but he has done no more; the ‘spirit’ has no +will, and no virtue: it is animated, but unholy; alive, but unmoral: +it is an object of intense admiration; it is not an object +of worship.</p> + +<p>We have ascribed this quality of Shelley’s writings to an +abstract intellect; and in part, no doubt, correctly. Shelley had, +probably by nature, such an intellect; it was self-enclosed, self-absorbed, +teeming with singular ideas, remote from character +and life; but so involved is human nature, that this tendency to +abstraction, which we have spoken of as aggravating the consequences +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>of his simple impulsive temperament, was itself aggravated +by that temperament. It is a received opinion in metaphysics, +that the idea of personality is identical with the idea of +will. A distinguished French writer has accurately expressed this: +‘Le pouvoir,’ says M. Jouffroy, ‘que l’homme a de s’emparer de +ses capacités naturelles et de les diriger fait de lui une <i>personne</i>; +et c’est parce que les <i>choses</i> n’exercent pas ce pouvoir en +elles-mêmes, qu’elles ne sont que des choses. Telle est la +véritable différence qui distingue les choses des personnes. +Toutes les natures possibles sont douées de certaines capacités; +mais les unes out reçu par-dessus les autres le privilège de se +saisir d’elles-mêmes et de se gouverner: celles-là sont les personnes. +Les autres en ont été privées, en sorte qu’elles n’ont +point de part à ce qui se fait en elles: celles-là sont les choses. +Leurs capacités ne s’en développent pas moins, mais c’est +exclusivement selon les lois auxquelles Dieu les a soumises. +C’est Dieu qui gouverne en elles; il est la personne des choses, +comme l’ouvrier est la personne de la montre. Ici la personne +est hors de l’être; dans le sein même des choses, comme dans +le sein de la montre, la personne ne se rencontre pas; on ne +trouve qu’une série de capacités qui se meuvent aveuglément, +sans que la nature qui en est douée sache même ce qu’elles font. +Aussi ne peut-on demander compte aux choses de ce qui se fait +en elles; il faut s’adresser à Dieu: comme on s’adresse à l’ouvrier +et non à la montre, quand la montre va mal.’ And if +this theory be true—and doubtless it is an approximation to +the truth—it is evident that a mind ordinarily moved by simple +impulse will have little distinct consciousness of personality. +While thrust forward by such impulse, it is a mere instrument. +Outward things set it in motion. It goes where they bid; it +exerts no will upon them; it is, to speak expressively, a mere +conducting thing. When such a mind is free from such impulse, +there is even less will; thoughts, feelings, ideas, emotions, +pass before it in a sort of dream. For the time it is a mere +perceiving thing. In neither case is there a trace of voluntary +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>character. If we want a reason for anything, ‘il faut s’adresser +à Dieu.’</p> + +<p>Shelley’s political opinions were likewise the effervescence +of his peculiar nature. The love of liberty is peculiarly natural +to the simple impulsive mind. It feels irritated at the idea of +a law; it fancies it does not need it: it really needs it less than +other minds. Government seems absurd—society an incubus. +It has hardly patience to estimate particular institutions: it +wants to begin again—to make a <i>tabula rasa</i> of all which men +have created or devised; for they seem to have been constructed +on a false system, for an object it does not understand. +On this <i>tabula rasa</i> Shelley’s abstract imagination proceeded +to set up arbitrary monstrosities of ‘equality’ and ‘love,’ which +never will be realised among the children of men.</p> + +<p>Such a mind is clearly driven to self-delineation. Nature, +no doubt, in some sense remains to it. A dreamy mind—a +mind occupied intensely with its own thoughts—will often have +a peculiarly intense apprehension of anything which by the +hard collision of the world it has been forced to observe. The +scene stands out alone in the memory; is a refreshment from +hot thoughts; grows with the distance of years. A mind like +Shelley’s, deeply susceptible to all things beautiful, has many +pictures and images shining in its recollection which it recurs +to, and which it is ever striving to delineate. Indeed, in such +minds it is rather the picture in their mind which they describe +than the original object; the ‘ideation,’ as some harsh metaphysicians +call it, rather than the reality. A certain dream-light +is diffused over it; a wavering touch, as of interfering +fancy or fading recollection. The landscape has not the hues +of the real world; it is modified in the <i>camera obscura</i> of the +self-enclosed intelligence. Nor can such a mind long endure +the cold process of external delineation. Its own hot thoughts +rush in; its favourite topic is itself and them. Shelley, indeed, +as we observed before, carries this to an extent which no poet +probably ever equalled. He described not only his character +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>but his circumstances. We know that this is so in a large +number of passages; if his poems were commented on by some +one thoroughly familiar with the events of his life, we should +doubtless find that it was so in many more. On one strange +and painful scene his fancy was continually dwelling. In a +gentle moment we have a dirge—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,</div> + <div class="verse indent16">And the year</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On the earth her deathbed, in a shroud of leaves, dead</div> + <div class="verse indent16">Is lying.</div> + <div class="verse indent12">Come months, come away,</div> + <div class="verse indent12">From November to May,</div> + <div class="verse indent12">In your saddest array;</div> + <div class="verse indent12">Follow the bier</div> + <div class="verse indent12">Of the dead cold year,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling;</div> + <div class="verse indent16">For the year;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone</div> + <div class="verse indent16">To his dwelling.</div> + <div class="verse indent12">Come, months, come away;</div> + <div class="verse indent12">Put on white, black, and gray;</div> + <div class="verse indent12">Let your light sisters play—</div> + <div class="verse indent12">Ye, follow the bier</div> + <div class="verse indent12">Of the dead cold year,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And make her grave green with tear on tear.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">In a frenzied mood he breaks forth into wildness:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘She is still, she is cold</div> + <div class="verse indent8">On the bridal couch;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One step to the white deathbed,</div> + <div class="verse indent8">And one to the bier,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And one to the charnel—and one, O, where?</div> + <div class="verse indent8">The dark arrow fled</div> + <div class="verse indent8">In the noon.</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span> <div class="verse indent0">Ere the sun through heaven once more has roll’d,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The rats in her heart</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Will have made their nest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the worms be alive in her golden hair;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While the spirit that guides the sun</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sits throned in his flaming chair,</div> + <div class="verse indent8">She shall sleep.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>There is no doubt that these and a hundred other similar +passages allude to the death of his first wife; as melancholy a +story as ever shivered the nerves of an excitable being. The +facts are hardly known to us, but they are something like +these: In very early youth Shelley had formed a half-fanciful +attachment to a cousin, a Miss Harriet Grove, who is said to +have been attractive, and to whom, certainly, his fancy often +went back in later and distant years. How deep the feeling +was on either side we do not know; she seems to have taken an +interest in the hot singular dreams which occupied his mind—except +only where her image might intrude—from which one +might conjecture that she took unusual interest in him; she +even wrote some chapters, or parts of some, in one of his boyish +novels, and her parents doubtless thought the ‘Rosicrucian’ +could be endured, as Shelley was the heir to land and a +baronetcy. His expulsion from Oxford altered all this. Probably +he had always among his friends been thought ‘a singular +young man,’ and they had waited in perplexity to see if the +oddness would turn to unusual good or unusual evil. His +atheistic treatise and its results seemed to show clearly the +latter, and all communication with Miss Grove was instantly +forbidden him. What she felt on the subject is not told us; +probably some theistic and undreaming lover intervened, for +she married in a short time. The despair of an excitable +poet at being deprived of his mistress at the same moment that +he was abandoned by his family, and in a measure by society, +may be fancied, though it cannot be known. Captain Medwin +observes: ‘Shelley, on this trying occasion, had the courage to +live, in order that he might labour for one great object—the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>advancement of the human race, and the amelioration of society; +and strengthened himself in a resolution to devote his energies +to this ultimate end, being prepared to endure every obloquy, +to make every sacrifice for its accomplishment: and would,’ +such is the Captain’s English, ‘if necessary, have died in the +cause.’ It does not appear, however, that disappointed love +took solely the very unusual form of philanthropy. By chance, +whether with or without leave does not appear, he went to see +his second sister, who was at school at a place called Balham +Hill, near London; and, while walking in the garden with her, +‘a Miss Westbrook passed them.’ She was a ‘handsome blonde +young lady, nearly sixteen;’ and Shelley was much struck. He +found out that her name was ‘Harriett,’—as he, after his +marriage, anxiously expresses it, with two t’s, ‘Harriett;’ and +he fell in love at once. She had the name of his first love; +‘fairer, though yet the same.’ After his manner, he wrote to +her immediately. He was in the habit of doing this to people +who interested him, either in his own or under an assumed +name: and once, Captain Medwin says, carried on a long correspondence +with Mrs. Hemans, then Miss Browne, under his +(the captain’s) name; but which he, the deponent, was not +permitted to peruse. In Miss Westbrook’s case the correspondence +had a more serious consequence. Of her character we +can only guess a little. She was, we think, an ordinary +blooming young lady of sixteen. Shelley was an extraordinary +young man of nineteen, rather handsome, very animated, and +expressing his admiration a little intensely. He was doubtless +much the most aristocratic person she had ever spoken to; for +her father was a retired innkeeper, and Shelley had always +the air of a man of birth. There is a vision, too, of an elder +sister, who made ‘Harriett dear’ very uncomfortable. On the +whole, the result may be guessed. At the end of August 1811, +we do not know the precise day, they were married at Gretna +Green. Jests may be made on it; but it was no laughing matter +in the life of the wife or the husband. Of the lady’s disposition +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span>and mind we know nothing, except from Shelley; a medium +which must, under the circumstances, be thought a distorting one. +We should conclude that she was capable of making many +people happy, though not of making Shelley happy. There +is an ordinance of nature at which men of genius are perpetually +fretting, but which does more good than many laws of the +universe which they praise: it is, that ordinary women ordinarily +prefer ordinary men. ‘Genius,’ as Hazlitt would have +said, ‘puts them out.’ It is so strange; it does not come into +the room as usual; it says ‘such things:’ once it forgot to +brush its hair. The common female mind prefers usual tastes, +settled manners, customary conversation, defined and practical +pursuits. And it is a great good that it should be so. Nature +has no wiser instinct. The average woman suits the average +man; good health, easy cheerfulness, common charms, suffice. +If Miss Westbrook had married an every-day person—a gentleman, +suppose, in the tallow line—she would have been happy, +and have made him happy. Her mind could have understood +his life; her society would have been a gentle relief from unodoriferous +pursuits. She had nothing in common with Shelley. +His mind was full of eager thoughts, wild dreams, singular +aspirations. The most delicate tact would probably have often +failed, the nicest sensibility would have been jarred, affection +would have erred, in dealing with such a being. A very peculiar +character was required, to enter into such a rare union of +curious qualities. Some eccentric men of genius have, indeed, +felt in the habitual tact and serene nothingness of ordinary +women, a kind of trust and calm. They have admired an +instinct of the world which they had not—a repose of mind +they could not share. But this is commonly in later years. A +boy of twenty thinks he knows the world; he is too proud and +happy in his own eager and shifting thoughts, to wish to contrast +them with repose. The commonplaceness of life goads +him: placid society irritates him. Bread is an incumbrance; +upholstery tedious: he craves excitement; he wishes to reform +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>mankind. You cannot convince him it is right to sew, in a +world so full of sorrow and evil. Shelley was in this state; he +hurried to and fro over England, pursuing theories, and absorbed +in plans. He was deep in metaphysics; had subtle disproofs +of all religion; wrote several poems, which would have been a +puzzle to a very clever young lady. There were pecuniary difficulties +besides: neither of the families had approved of the +match, and neither were inclined to support the household. +Altogether, no one can be surprised that in less than three years +the hasty union ended in a ‘separation by mutual consent.’ +The wonder is that it lasted so long.—What her conduct was +after the separation, is not very clear: there were ‘reports’ +about her at Bath—perhaps a loquacious place. She was not +twenty, probably handsome, and not improbably giddy: being +quite without evidence, we cannot judge what was rumour and +what was truth. Shelley has not left us in similar doubt. After +a year or two he travelled abroad with Mary, afterwards the +second Mrs. Shelley, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and +William Godwin—names most celebrated in those times, and +even now known for their anti-matrimonial speculations. Of +their ‘six weeks’ tour’ abroad, in the year 1816, a record remains, +and should be read by any persons who wish to learn +what travelling was in its infancy. It was the year when the +Continent was first thrown open to English travellers; and few +probably adopted such singular means of locomotion as Shelley +and his companions. First they tried walking, and had a very +small ass to carry their portmanteau; then they tried a mule; +then a <i>fiacre</i>, which drove away from them; afterwards they +came to a raft. It was not, however, an unamusing journey. +At an ugly and out-of-the-way château, near Brunen, Shelley +began a novel, to be called ‘The Assassins,’ which he never +finished—probably never continued—after his return; but +which still remains, and is one of the most curious and characteristic +specimens of his prose style. It was a refreshing +intellectual tour; one of the most pleasant rambles of his life. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>On his return he was met by painful intelligence. His wife had +destroyed herself. Of her state of mind we have again no +evidence. She is said to have been deeply affected by the +‘reports’ to which we have alluded; but whatever it was, Shelley +felt himself greatly to blame. He had been instrumental in +first dividing her from her family; had connected himself with +her in a wild contract, from which neither could ever be set +free; if he had not crossed her path, she might have been +happy in her own way and in her own sphere. All this preyed +upon his mind, and it is said he became mad; and whether or +not his horror and pain went the length of actual frenzy, they +doubtless approached that border-line of suffering excitement +which divides the most melancholy form of sanity from the +most melancholy form of insanity. In several poems he seems +to delineate himself in the guise of a maniac:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent26">‘“Of his sad history</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I know but this,” said Maddalo; “he came</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To Venice a dejected man, and fame</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Said he was wealthy, or he had been so.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But he was ever talking in such sort</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As you do,—but more sadly: he seem’d hurt,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Even as a man with his peculiar wrong,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To hear but of the oppression of the strong,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or those absurd deceits (I think with you</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In some respects, you know) which carry through</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The excellent impostors of this earth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When they outface detection. He had worth,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Poor fellow! but a humourist in his way.”—</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">—“Alas, what drove him mad?”</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent26">“I cannot say:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A lady came with him from France; and when</div> + <div class="verse indent0">She left him and returned, he wander’d then</div> + <div class="verse indent0">About yon lonely isles of desert sand</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Till he grew wild. He had no cash nor land</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span> <div class="verse indent0">Remaining:—the police had brought him here—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some fancy took him, and he would not bear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Removal; so I fitted up for him</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sent him busts, and books, and urns for flowers,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which had adorned his life in happier hours,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And instruments of music. You may guess,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A stranger could do little more or less</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For one so gentle and unfortunate—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And those are his sweet strains, which charm the weight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From madmen’s chains, and make this hell appear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear.”</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent4">“Nay, this was kind of you,—he had no claim,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As the world says.”</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent20">“None but the very same,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which I on all mankind, were I, as he,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fall’n to such deep reverse. His melody</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is interrupted; now we hear the din</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Let us now visit him: after this strain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He ever communes with himself again,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sees and hears not any.”</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent36">Having said</div> + <div class="verse indent0">These words, we called the keeper: and he led</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To an apartment opening on the sea—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Near a piano, his pale fingers twined</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One with the other; and the ooze and wind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rushed through an open casement, and did sway</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His head was leaning on a music-book,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And he was muttering; and his lean limbs shook;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His lips were pressed against a folded leaf,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In hue too beautiful for health, and grief</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Smiled in their motions as they lay apart,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As one who wrought from his own fervid heart</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The eloquence of passion: soon he raised</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His sad meek face, and eyes lustrous and glazed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And spoke,—sometimes as one who wrote and thought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His words might move some heart that heeded not,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span> <div class="verse indent0">If sent to distant lands;—and then as one</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Reproaching deeds never to be undone,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With wondering self-compassion; then his speech</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Was lost in grief, and then his words came each</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unmodulated and expressionless,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But that from one jarred accent you might guess</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It was despair made them so uniform:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all the while the loud and gusty storm</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hissed through the window; and we stood behind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Stealing his accents from the envious wind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unseen. I yet remember what he said</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Distinctly—such impression his words made.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">And casual illustrations—unconscious metaphors, showing a +terrible familiarity—are borrowed from insanity in his subsequent +works.</p> + +<p>This strange story is in various ways deeply illustrative of +his character. It shows how the impulsive temperament, not +definitely intending evil, is hurried forward, so to say, <i>over</i> +actions and crimes which would seem to indicate deep depravity—which +would do so in ordinary human nature, but which do +not indicate in it anything like the same degree of guilt. +Driven by singular passion across a tainted region, it retains no +taint; on a sudden it passes through evil, but preserves its +purity. So curious is this character, that a record of its actions +may read like a libel on its life.</p> + +<p>To some the story may also suggest whether Shelley’s nature +was one of those most adapted for love in its highest form. It +is impossible to deny that he loved with a great intensity; yet +it was with a certain narrowness, and therefore a certain fitfulness. +Possibly a somewhat wider nature, taking hold of other +characters at more points,—fascinated as intensely, but more +variously.—stirred as deeply, but through more complicated +emotions,—is requisite for the highest and most lasting feeling. +Passion, to be enduring, must be many-sided. Eager and narrow +emotions urge like the gadfly of the poet: but they pass away; +they are single; there is nothing to revive them. Various as +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>human nature must be the passion which absorbs that nature +into itself. Shelley’s mode of delineating women has a corresponding +peculiarity. They are well described; but they are +described under only one aspect. Every one of his poems almost +has a lady whose arms are white, whose mind is sympathising, +and whose soul is beautiful. She has many names—Cythna, +Asia, Emily; but these are only external disguises; she is indubitably +the same person, for her character never varies. No +character can be simpler. She is described as the ideal object +of love in its most simple and elemental form; the pure object +of the essential passion. She is a being to be loved in a single +moment, with eager eyes and gasping breath; but you feel that +in that moment you have seen the whole. There is nothing to +come to afterwards. The fascination is intense, but uniform. +There is not the ever-varying grace, the ever-changing expression +of the unchanging charm, that alone can attract for all +time the shifting moods of a various and mutable nature.</p> + +<p>The works of Shelley lie in a confused state, like the <i>disjecta +membra</i> of the poet of our boyhood. They are in the strictest +sense ‘remains.’ It is absurd to expect from a man who died +at thirty a long work of perfected excellence. All which at so +early an age can be expected are fine fragments, casual expressions +of single inspirations. Of these Shelley has written some +that are nearly, and one or two perhaps that are quite, perfect. +But he has not done more. It would have been better if he had +not attempted so much. He would have done well to have +heeded Goethe’s caution to Eckerman: ‘Beware of attempting +a large work. If you have a great work in your head, nothing +else thrives near it, all other thoughts are repelled, and the +pleasantness of life itself is for the time lost. What exertion +and expenditure of mental force are required to arrange and +round off a great whole; and then what powers, and what a +tranquil undisturbed situation in life, to express it with the +proper fluency! If you have erred as to the whole, all your toil +is lost; and further, if, in treating so extensive a subject, you +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>are not perfectly master of your material in the details, the +whole will be defective, and censure will be incurred.’ Shelley +did not know this. He was ever labouring at long poems: but +he has scarcely left one which, as a whole, is worthy of him; you +can point to none and say, This is Shelley. Even had he lived +to an age of riper capacity, it may be doubted if a being so discontinuous, +so easily hurried to and fro, would have possessed +the settled, undeviating self-devotion that are necessary to a +long and perfect composition. He had not, like Goethe, the +cool shrewdness to watch for inspiration.</p> + +<p>His success, as we have said, is in fragments; and the best +of those fragments are lyrical. The very same isolation and +suddenness of impulse which rendered him unfit for the composition +of great works, rendered him peculiarly fit to pour +forth on a sudden the intense essence of peculiar feeling ‘in +profuse strains of unpremeditated art.’ Lord Macaulay has said +that the words ‘bard’ and ‘inspiration,’ generally so meaningless +when applied to modern poets, have a meaning when +applied to Shelley. An idea, an emotion grew upon his brain +his breast heaved, his frame shook, his nerves quivered with the +‘harmonious madness’ of imaginative concentration. ‘Poetry,’ +he himself tells us, ‘is not, like reasoning, a power to be exerted +according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, +“I will compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; +for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible +influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory +brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a +flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious +portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its approach +or its departure.... Poetry is the record of the +best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. +We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling +sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes +regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen +and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>all expression: so that even in the desire and the regret they +leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in +the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpenetration +of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like +those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and +whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves +it.’ In verse, Shelley has compared the skylark to a poet; we +may turn back the description on his own art and his own +mind:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent6">‘Keen as are the arrows</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Of that silver sphere,</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Whose intense lamp narrows</div> + <div class="verse indent8">In the white dawn clear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent6">All the earth and air</div> + <div class="verse indent8">With thy voice is loud,</div> + <div class="verse indent6">As, when night is bare,</div> + <div class="verse indent8">From one lonely cloud</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent6">What thou art we know not;</div> + <div class="verse indent8">What is most like thee?</div> + <div class="verse indent6">From rainbow-clouds there flow not</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Drops so bright to see,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="center">...</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent6">Like a high-born maiden</div> + <div class="verse indent8">In a palace-tower,</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Soothing her love-laden</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Soul in secret hour</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent6">Like a glow-worm golden</div> + <div class="verse indent8">In a dell of dew,</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Scattering unbeholden</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Its aërial hue</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view.</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span> </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent6">Like a rose embowered</div> + <div class="verse indent8">In its own green leaves,</div> + <div class="verse indent6">By warm winds deflowered,</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Till the scent it gives</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent6">Sound of vernal showers</div> + <div class="verse indent8">On the twinkling grass,</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Rain-awakened flowers,</div> + <div class="verse indent8">All that ever was</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">In most poets unearthly beings are introduced to express +peculiar removed essences of lyrical rapture; but they are +generally failures. Lord Byron tried this kind of composition +in ‘Manfred,’ and the result is an evident failure. In Shelley, +such singing solitary beings are almost uniformly successful; +while writing, his mind really for the moment was in the state +in which theirs is supposed always to be. He loved attenuated +ideas and abstracted excitement. In expressing their nature he +had but to set free his own.</p> + +<p>Human nature is not, however, long equal to this sustained +effort of remote excitement. The impulse fails, imagination +fades, inspiration dies away. With the skylark it is well:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent6">‘With thy clear keen joyance</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Languor cannot be:</div> + <div class="verse indent6">Shadow of annoyance</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Never came near thee:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou lovest; but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">But in unsoaring human nature languor comes, fatigue palls, +melancholy oppresses, melody dies away. The universe is not +all blue sky; there is the thick fog and the heavy earth. ‘The +world,’ says Mr. Emerson, ‘is mundane.’ A creeping sense of +weight is part of the most aspiring nature. To the most +thrilling rapture succeeds despondency, perhaps pain. To +Shelley this was peculiarly natural. His dreams of reform, of +a world which was to be, called up the imaginative ecstasy: his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>soul bounded forward into the future; but it is not possible +even to the most abstracted and excited mind to place its +happiness in the expected realisation of impossible schemes, +and yet not occasionally be uncertain of those schemes. The +rigid frame of society, the heavy heap of traditional institutions, +the solid slowness of ordinary humanity, depress the +aspiring fancy. ‘Since our fathers fell asleep, all things continue +as they were from the beginning.’ Occasionally we +must think of our fathers. No man can always dream of ever +altering all which is. It is characteristic of Shelley, that at +the end of his most rapturous and sanguine lyrics there intrudes +the cold consciousness of this world. So with his Grecian +dreams:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘A brighter Hellas rears its mountains</div> + <div class="verse indent2">From waves serener far;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A new Peneus rolls its fountains</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Against the morning-star.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">A loftier Argo cleaves the main,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Fraught with a later prize;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Another Orpheus sings again,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And loves, and weeps, and dies:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A new Ulysses leaves once more</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Calypso for his native shore.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">But he ends:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘O, cease! must hate and death return?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Cease! must men kill and die?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Of bitter prophecy.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The world is weary of the past—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O, might it die or rest at last!’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">In many of his poems the failing of the feeling is as beautiful +as its short moment of hope and buoyancy.</p> + +<p>The excellence of Shelley does not, however, extend equally +over the whole domain of lyrical poetry. That species of art +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>may be divided—not perhaps with the accuracy of science, but +with enough for the rough purposes of popular criticism—into +the human and the abstract. The sphere of the former is of +course the actual life, passions, and actions of real men,—such +are the war-songs of rude nations especially; in that early age +there is no subject for art but natural life and primitive passion. +At a later time, when from the deposit of the <i>débris</i> of a +hundred philosophies, a large number of half-personified abstractions +are part of the familiar thoughts and language of all +mankind, there are new objects to excite the feelings,—we +might even say there are new feelings to be excited; the rough +substance of original passion is sublimated and attenuated till +we hardly recognise its identity. Ordinarily and in most minds +the emotion loses in this process its intensity or much of it; +but this is not universal. In some peculiar minds it is possible +to find an almost dizzy intensity of excitement called forth by +some fancied abstraction, remote altogether from the eyes and +senses of men. The love-lyric in its simplest form is probably +the most intense expression of primitive passion; yet not in +those lyrics where such intensity is the greatest,—in those of +Burns, for example,—is the passion so dizzy, bewildering, and +bewildered, as in the ‘Epipsychidion’ of Shelley, the passion of +which never came into the real world at all, was only a fiction +founded on fact, and was wholly—and even Shelley felt it—inconsistent +with the inevitable conditions of ordinary existence. +In this point of view, and especially also taking account of his +peculiar religious opinions, it is remarkable that Shelley should +have taken extreme delight in the Bible as a composition. He +is the least biblical of poets. The whole, inevitable, essential +conditions of real life—the whole of its plain, natural joys and +sorrows—are described in the Jewish literature as they are +described nowhere else. Very often they are assumed rather +than delineated; and the brief assumption is more effective +than the most elaborate description. There is none of the +delicate sentiment and enhancing sympathy which a modern +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>writer would think necessary; the inexorable facts are dwelt on +with a stern humanity, which recognises human feeling though +intent on something above it. Of all modern poets, Wordsworth +shares the most in this peculiarity; perhaps he is the +only recent one who has it at all. He knew the hills beneath +whose shade ‘the generations are prepared:’</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent12">‘Much did he see of men,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their passions and their feelings: chiefly those</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Essential and eternal in the heart,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That mid the simple form of rural life</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Exist more simple in their elements,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And speak a plainer language.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Shelley has nothing of this. The essential feelings he hoped +to change; the eternal facts he struggled to remove. Nothing +in human life to him was inevitable or fixed; he fancied he +could alter it all. His sphere is the ‘unconditioned;’ he +floats away into an imaginary Elysium or an expected Utopia; +beautiful and excellent, of course, but having nothing in +common with the absolute laws of the present world. Even in +the description of mere nature the difference may be noted. +Wordsworth describes the earth as we know it, with all its +peculiarities; where there are moors and hills, where the +lichen grows, where the slate-rock juts out. Shelley describes +the universe. He rushes away among the stars; this earth is +an assortment of imagery, he uses it to deck some unknown +planet. He scorns ‘the smallest light that twinkles in the +heavens.’ His theme is the vast, the infinite, the immeasurable. +He is not of our home, nor homely; he describes not +our world, but that which is common to all worlds—the +Platonic idea of a world. Where it can, his genius soars from +the concrete and real into the unknown, the indefinite, and +the void.</p> + +<p>Shelley’s success in the abstract lyric would prepare us for +expecting that he would fail in attempts at eloquence. The +mind which bursts forward of itself into the inane, is not +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>likely to be eminent in the composed adjustments of measured +persuasion. A voluntary self-control is necessary to the orator: +even when he declaims, he must only let himself go; a keen +will must be ready, a wakeful attention at hand, to see that he +does not say a word by which his audience will not be touched. +The eloquence of ‘Queen Mab’ is of that unpersuasive kind +which is admired in the earliest youth, when things and life +are unknown, when all that is intelligible is the sound of +words.</p> + +<p>Lord Macaulay, in a passage to which we have referred +already, speaks of Shelley as having, more than any other poet, +many of the qualities of the great old masters; two of these he +has especially. In the first place, his imagination is classical +rather than romantic,—we should, perhaps, apologise for using +words which have been used so often, but which hardly convey +even now a clear and distinct meaning; yet they seem the best +for conveying a distinction of this sort. When we attempt to +distinguish the imagination from the fancy, we find that they +are often related as a beginning to an ending. On a sudden +we do not know how a new image, form, idea, occurs to our +minds; sometimes it is borne in upon us with a flash, sometimes +we seem unawares to stumble upon it, and find it as if it +had long been there: in either case the involuntary, unanticipated +appearance of this new thought or image is a primitive +fact which we cannot analyse or account for. We say it originated +in our imagination or creative faculty: but this is a +mere expression of the completeness of our ignorance; we +could only define the imagination as the faculty which produces +such effects; we know nothing of it or its constitution. Again, +on this original idea a large number of accessory and auxiliary +ideas seem to grow or accumulate insensibly, casually, and +without our intentional effort; the bare primitive form attracts +a clothing of delicate materials—an adornment not altering its +essences, but enhancing its effect. This we call the work of the +fancy. An exquisite delicacy in appropriating fitting accessories +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>is as much the characteristic excellence of a fanciful +mind, as the possession of large, simple, bold ideas is of an +imaginative one. The last is immediate; the first comes +minute by minute. The distinction is like what one fancies +between sculpture and painting. If we look at a delicate +statue—a Venus or Juno—it does not suggest any slow elaborate +process by which its expression was chiselled and its limbs +refined; it seems a simple fact; we look, and require no +account of it; it exists. The greatest painting suggests, not +only a creative act, but a decorative process: day by day there +was something new; we could watch the tints laid on, the +dresses tinged, the perspective growing and growing. There is +something statuesque about the imagination; there is the +gradual complexity of painting in the most exquisite productions +of the fancy. When we speak of this distinction, we +seem almost to be speaking of the distinction between ancient +and modern literature. The characteristic of the classical +literature is the simplicity with which the imagination appears +in it; that of modern literature is the profusion with which +the most various adornments of the accessory fancy are thrown +and lavished upon it. Perhaps nowhere is this more conspicuous +than in the modern treatment of antique subjects. +One of the most essentially modern of recent poets—Keats,—has +an ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn:’ it begins—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness!</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sylvan historian! who canst thus express</div> + <div class="verse indent2">A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Of deities or mortals, or of both,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?</div> + <div class="verse indent2">What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?</div> + <div class="verse indent2">What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy!’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">No ancient poet would have dreamed of writing thus. There +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>would have been no indistinct shadowy warmth, no breath of +surrounding beauty: his delineation would have been cold, +distinct, chiselled like the urn itself. The use which such a +poet as Keats makes of ancient mythology is exactly similar. +He owes his fame to the inexplicable art with which he has +breathed a soft tint over the marble forms of gods and +goddesses, enhancing their beauty without impairing their +chasteness. The naked kind of imagination is not peculiar to +a mythological age. The growth of civilisation, at least in +Greece, rather increased than diminished the imaginative +bareness of the poetical art. It seems to attain its height in +Sophocles. If we examine any of his greater passages, a +principal beauty is their reserved simplicity. A modern reader +almost necessarily uses them as materials for fancy: we are too +used to little circumstance to be able to do without it. Take +the passage in which Œdipus contrasts the conduct of his sons +with that of his daughters:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">ὦ πάντ’ ἐκείνω τοῖς ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ νόμοις</div> + <div class="verse indent0">φύσιν κατεικασθέντε καὶ βίου τροφάς.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">ἐκεῖ γὰρ οἱ μὲν ἄρσενες κατὰ στέγας</div> + <div class="verse indent0">θακοῦσιν ἱστουργοῦντες, αἱ δὲ σύννομοι</div> + <div class="verse indent0">τἄξω βίου τροφεῖα πορσύνουσ’ ἀεί.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">σφῷν δ’, ὦ τέκν’, οὓς μὲν εἰκὸς ἦν πονεῖν τάδε,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">κατ’ οἶκον οἰκουροῦσιν ὥστε παρθένοι,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">σφὼ δ’ ἀντ’ ἐκείνων τἀμὰ δυστήνου κακὰ</div> + <div class="verse indent0">ὑπερπονεῖτον. ἡ μέν ἐξ ὅτου νέας</div> + <div class="verse indent0">τροφῆς ἔληξε καὶ κατίσχυσεν δέμας,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">ἀεὶ μεθ’ ἡμῶν δύσμορος πλανωμένη</div> + <div class="verse indent0">γερονταγωγεῖ, πολλὰ μὲν κατ’ ἀγρίαν</div> + <div class="verse indent0">ὕλην ἄσιτος νηλίπους τ’ ἀλωμένη,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">πολλοῖσι δ’ ὄμβροις ἡλίου τε καύμασι</div> + <div class="verse indent0">μοχθοῦσα τλήμων, δεύτερ’ ἡγεῖται τὰ τῆς</div> + <div class="verse indent0">οἴκοι διαίτης, εἰ πατὴρ τροφὴν ἔχοι.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">What a contrast to the ravings of Lear! What a world of +detail Shakespeare would have put into the passage! What +talk of ‘sulphurous and thought-executing fires,’ ‘simulars +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>of virtue,’ ‘pent-up guilts,’ and ‘the thick rotundity of the +world!’ Decorum is the principal thing in Sophocles. The +conception of Œdipus is not</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With harlocks, hemlock, nettle, and cuckoo-flowers.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">There are no ‘idle weeds’ among the ‘sustaining corn.’ The +conception of Lear is that of an old gnarled oak, gaunt and +quivering in the stormy sky, with old leaves and withered +branches tossing in the air, and all the complex growth of a +hundred years creaking and nodding to its fall. That of +Œdipus is the peak of Teneriffe, as we fancied it in our childhood, +by itself and snowy, above among the stormy clouds, +heedless of the angry winds and the desolate waves,—single, +ascending, and alone. Or, to change the metaphor to one +derived from an art where the same qualities of mind have +produced kindred effects, ancient poetry is like a Grecian +temple, with pure form and rising columns,—created, one +fancies, by a single effort of an originative nature: modern +literature seems to have sprung from the involved brain of a +Gothic architect, and resembles a huge cathedral—the work of +the perpetual industry of centuries—complicated and infinite +in details; but by their choice and elaboration producing an +effect of unity which is not inferior to that of the other, and is +heightened by the multiplicity through which it is conveyed. +And it is this warmth of circumstance—this profusion of +interesting detail—which has caused the name ‘romantic’ to +be perseveringly applied to modern literature.</p> + +<p>We need only to open Shelley, to show how essentially +classical in its highest efforts his art is. Indeed, although +nothing can be further removed from the staple topics of the +classical writers than the abstract lyric, yet their treatment +is nearly essential to it. We have said, its sphere is in what +the Germans call the unconditioned—in the unknown, immeasurable, +and untrodden. It follows from this that we +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>cannot know much about it. We cannot know detail in tracts +we have never visited; the infinite has no form; the immeasurable +no outline: that which is common to all worlds +is simple. There is therefore no scope for the accessory fancy. +With a single soaring effort imagination may reach her end; +if she fail, no fancy can help her; if she succeed, there will be +no petty accumulations of insensible circumstance in a region +far above all things. Shelley’s excellence in the abstract lyric +is almost another phrase for the simplicity of his impulsive +imagination.—He shows it on other subjects also. We have +spoken of his bare treatment of the ancient mythology. It is +the same with his treatment of nature. In the description +of the celestial regions quoted before—one of the most characteristic +passages in his writings—the details are few, the air +thin, the lights distinct. We are conscious of an essential +difference if we compare the ‘Ode to the Nightingale,’ in +Keats, for instance—such verses as</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Wherewith the seasonable month endows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves,</div> + <div class="verse indent10">And mid-May’s eldest child,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Darkling I listen; and for many a time</div> + <div class="verse indent2">I have been half in love with easeful Death,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">To take into the air my quiet breath:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Now more than ever seems it rich to die,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">To cease upon the midnight with no pain,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad</div> + <div class="verse indent10">In such an ecstasy.</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—</div> + <div class="verse indent4">To thy high requiem become a sod.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span></p> + +<p class="noindent">—with the conclusion of the ode ‘To a Skylark’—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent8">‘Yet if we could scorn</div> + <div class="verse indent10">Hate, and pride, and fear;</div> + <div class="verse indent8">If we were things born</div> + <div class="verse indent10">Not to shed a tear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent8">Better than all measures</div> + <div class="verse indent10">Of delightful sound,</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Better than all treasures</div> + <div class="verse indent10">That in books are found,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent8">Teach me half the gladness</div> + <div class="verse indent10">That thy brain must know;</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Such harmonious madness</div> + <div class="verse indent10">From my lips would flow,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The world should listen then, as I am listening now.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">We can hear that the poetry of Keats is a rich, composite, +voluptuous harmony; that of Shelley a clear single ring of +penetrating melody.</p> + +<p>Of course, however, this criticism requires limitation. +There is an obvious sense in which Shelley is a fanciful, as +contra-distinguished from an imaginative poet. These words, +being invented for the popular expression of differences which +can be remarked without narrow inspection, are apt to mislead +us when we apply them to the exact results of a near and +critical analysis. Besides the use of the word ‘fancy’ to denote +the power which adorns and amplifies the product of the +primitive imagination, we also employ it to denote the weaker +exercise of the faculty which itself creates those elementary +products. We use the word ‘imaginative’ only for strong, +vast, imposing, interesting conceptions: we use the word ‘fanciful’ +when we have to speak of smaller and weaker creations, +which amaze us less at the moment and affect us more slightly +afterwards. Of course, metaphysically speaking, it is not +likely that there will be found to be any distinction; the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>faculty which creates the most attractive ideas is doubtless the +same as that which creates the less attractive. Common language +marks the distinction, because common people are +impressed by the contrast between what affects them much +and what affects them little; but it is no evidence of the entire +difference of the latent agencies. Speech, as usual, refers to +sensations, and not to occult causes. Of fancies of this sort +Shelley is full: whole poems—as the ‘Witch of Atlas’—are +composed of nothing else. Living a good deal in, and writing +a great deal about, the abstract world, it was inevitable that +he should often deal in fine subtleties, affecting very little the +concrete hearts of real men. Many pages of his are, in consequence, +nearly unintelligible, even to good critics of common +poetry. The air is too rarefied for hardy and healthy lungs: +these like, as Lord Bacon expressed it, ‘to work upon stuff.’ +From his habitual choice of slight and airy subjects, Shelley +may be called a fanciful, as opposed to an imaginative, poet; +from his bare delineations of great objects, his keen expression +of distinct impulses, he should be termed an imaginative, +rather than a fanciful one.</p> + +<p>Some of this odd combination of qualities Shelley doubtless +owed to the structure of his senses. By one of those singular +results which constantly meet us in metaphysical inquiry, the +imagination and fancy are singularly influenced by the bodily +sensibility. One might have fancied that the faculty by which +the soul soars into the infinite, and sees what it cannot see with +the eye of the body, would have been peculiarly independent of +that body. But the reverse is the case. Vividness of sensation +seems required to awaken, delicacy to define, copiousness to +enrich, the visionary faculty. A large experience proves that a +being who is blind to this world will be blind to the other; +that a coarse expectation of what is not seen will follow from +a coarse perception of what is seen. Shelley’s sensibility was +vivid but peculiar. Hazlitt used to say, ‘he had seen him; +and did not like his looks.’ He had the thin keen excitement +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>of the fanatic student; not the broad, natural, energy which +Hazlitt expected from a poet. The diffused life of genial +enjoyment which was common to Scott and to Shakespeare, was +quite out of his way. Like Mr. Emerson, he would have +wondered they could be content with a ‘mean and jocular life.’ +In consequence, there is no varied imagery from human life in +his poetry. He was an abstract student, anxious about deep +philosophies; and he had not that settled, contemplative, allotted +acquaintance with external nature which is so curious in Milton, +the greatest of studious poets. The exact opposite, however, to +Shelley, in the nature of his sensibility, is Keats. That great +poet used to pepper his tongue, ‘to enjoy in all its grandeur +the cool flavour of delicious claret.’ When you know it, you +seem to read it in his poetry. There is the same luxurious +sentiment; the same poise on fine sensation. Shelley was the +reverse of this; he was a waterdrinker; his verse runs quick and +chill, like a pure crystal stream. The sensibility of Keats was +attracted too by the spectacle of the universe; he could not +keep his eye from seeing, or his ears from hearing, the glories +of it. All the beautiful objects of nature reappear by name in +his poetry. On the other hand, the abstract idea of beauty is +for ever celebrated in Shelley; it haunted his soul. But it was +independent of special things; it was the general surface of +beauty which lies upon all things. It was the smile of the +universe and the expression of the world; it was not the vision +of a land of corn and wine. The nerves of Shelley quivered at +the idea of loveliness; but no coarse sensation obtruded particular +objects upon him. He was left to himself with books +and reflection.</p> + +<p>So far, indeed, from Shelley having a peculiar tendency to +dwell on and prolong the sensation of pleasure, he has a perverse +tendency to draw out into lingering keenness the torture +of agony. Of his common recurrence to the dizzy pain of mania +we have formerly spoken; but this is not the only pain. The +nightshade is commoner in his poems than the daisy. The +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>nerve is ever laid bare; as often as it touches the open air of +the real world, it quivers with subtle pain. The high intellectual +impulses which animated him are too incorporeal for +human nature; they begin in buoyant joy, they end in eager +suffering.</p> + +<p>In style, said Mr. Wordsworth—in workmanship, we think +his expression was—Shelley is one of the best of us. This too, +we think, was the second of the peculiarities to which Lord +Macaulay referred when he said that Shelley had, more than +any recent poet, some of the qualities of the great old masters. +The peculiarity of his style is its intellectuality; and this +strikes us the more from its contrast with his impulsiveness. +He had something of this in life. Hurried away by sudden +desires, as he was in his choice of ends, we are struck with a +certain comparative measure and adjustment in his choice of +means. So in his writings; over the most intense excitement, +the grandest objects, the keenest agony, the most buoyant joy, he +throws an air of subtle mind. His language is minutely and +acutely searching; at the dizziest height of meaning the keenness +of the words is greatest. As in mania, so in his descriptions +of it, the acuteness of the mind seems to survive the mind itself. +It was from Plato and Sophocles, doubtless, that he gained the +last perfection in preserving the accuracy of the intellect when +treating of the objects of the imagination; but in its essence +it was a peculiarity of his own nature. As it was the instinct of +Byron to give in glaring words the gross phenomena of evident +objects, so it was that of Shelley to refine the most inscrutable +with the curious nicety of an attenuating metaphysician. In +the wildest of ecstasies his self-anatomising intellect is equal to +itself.</p> + +<p>There is much more which might be said, and which ought +to be said, of Shelley; but our limits are reached. We have +not attempted a complete criticism; we have only aimed to +show how some of the peculiarities of his works and life may be +traced to the peculiarity of his nature.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="SHAKESPEARE_THE_MAN"><i>SHAKESPEARE—THE +MAN.</i>⁠<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a><br> +<span class="smaller">(1853.)</span></h2> + +</div> + +<p>The greatest of English poets, it is often said, is but a +name. ‘No letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, +no character of him drawn with any fulness by a contemporary,’ +have been extracted by antiquaries from the piles of rubbish +which they have sifted. Yet of no person is there a clearer +picture in the popular fancy. You seem to have known +Shakespeare—to have seen Shakespeare—to have been friends +with Shakespeare. We would attempt a slight delineation of +the popular idea which has been formed, not from loose tradition +or remote research; not from what some one says some one +else said that the poet said, but from data, which are at least +undoubted, from the sure testimony of his certain works.</p> + +<p>Some extreme sceptics, we know, doubt whether it is possible +to deduce anything as to an author’s character from his +works. Yet surely people do not keep a tame steam-engine +to write their books; and if those books were really written +by a man, he must have been a man who could write them; +he must have had the thoughts which they express, have +acquired the knowledge they contain, have possessed the style +in which we read them. The difficulty is a defect of the critics. +A person who knows nothing of an author he has read, will not +know much of an author whom he has seen.</p> + +<p>First of all, it may be said, that Shakespeare’s works could +only be produced by a first-rate imagination working on a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span>first-rate experience. It is often difficult to make out whether +the author of a poetic creation is drawing from fancy, or drawing +from experience; but for art on a certain scale, the two +must concur. Out of nothing, nothing can be created. Some +plastic power is required, however great may be the material. +And when such a work as ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Othello,’ still more, +when both of them and others not unequal have been created +by a single mind, it may be fairly said, that not only a great +imagination, but a full conversancy with the world was necessary +to their production. The whole powers of man under the most +favourable circumstances, are not too great for such an effort. +We may assume that Shakespeare had a great experience.</p> + +<p>To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing +nature. It is not enough to have opportunity, it is +essential to feel it. Some occasions come to all men; but to +many they are of little use, and to some they are none. What, +for example, has experience done for the distinguished Frenchman, +the name of whose essay is prefixed to this paper. +M. Guizot is the same man that he was in 1820, or, we believe +as he was in 1814. Take up one of his lectures, published +before he was a practical statesman; you will be struck with +the width of view, the amplitude and the solidity of the +reflections; you will be amazed that a mere literary teacher +could produce anything so wise; but take up afterwards an +essay published since his fall—and you will be amazed to find +no more. Napoleon the First is come and gone—the Bourbons +of the old <i>régime</i> have come and gone—the Bourbons of the +new <i>régime</i> have had their turn. M. Guizot has been first +minister of a citizen king; he has led a great party; he has +pronounced many a great <i>discours</i> that was well received by +the second elective assembly in the world. But there is no +trace of this in his writings. No one would guess from them +that their author had ever left the professor’s chair. It is the +same, we are told, with small matters: when M. Guizot walks +the street, he seems to see nothing; the head is thrown back, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>the eye fixed, and the mouth working. His mind is no doubt +at work, but it is not stirred by what is external. Perhaps it +is the internal activity of mind that overmasters the perceptive +power. Anyhow there might have been an <i>émeute</i> in the +street and he would not have known it; there have been +revolutions in his life and he is scarcely the wiser. Among +the most frivolous and fickle of civilised nations he is alone. +They pass from the game of war to the game of peace, from +the game of science to the game of art, from the game of +liberty to the game of slavery, from the game of slavery to the +game of licence; he stands like a schoolmaster in the play-ground, +without sport and without pleasure, firm and sullen, +slow and awful.</p> + +<p>A man of this sort is a curious mental phenomenon. He +appears to get early—perhaps to be born with, a kind of dry +schedule or catalogue of the universe; he has a ledger in his +head, and has a title to which he can refer any transaction; +nothing puzzles him, nothing comes amiss to him, but he is +not in the least the wiser for anything. Like the book-keeper, +he has his heads of account, and he knows them, but he is no +wiser for the particular items. After a busy day, and after +a slow day, after a few entries, and after many, his knowledge +is exactly the same: take his opinion of Baron Rothschild, he +will say, ‘Yes, he keeps an account with us;’ of Humphrey +Brown, ‘Yes, we have that account, too.’ Just so with the +class of minds which we are speaking of, and in greater matters. +Very early in life they come to a certain and considerable +acquaintance with the world; they learn very quickly all they +can learn, and naturally they never, in any way, learn any more. +Mr. Pitt is, in this country, the type of the character. Mr. +Alison, in a well-known passage, makes it a matter of wonder +that he was fit to be a Chancellor of the Exchequer at twenty-three, +and it <i>is</i> a great wonder. But it is to be remembered +that he was no more fit at forty-three. As somebody said, he +did not grow, he was cast. Experience taught him nothing, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span>and he did not believe that he had anything to learn. The +habit of mind in smaller degrees is not very rare, and might +be illustrated without end. Hazlitt tells a story of West, the +painter, that is in point: When some one asked him if he +had ever been to Greece, he answered, ‘No, I have read a +descriptive catalogue of the principal objects in that country, +and I believe I am as well conversant with them as if I had +visited it.’ No doubt he was just as well conversant, and so +would be any <i>doctrinaire</i>.</p> + +<p>But Shakespeare was not a man of this sort. If he walked +down a street, he knew what was in that street. His mind did +not form in early life a classified list of all the objects in the +universe, and learn no more about the universe ever after. +From a certain fine sensibility of nature, it is plain that he +took a keen interest not only in the general and coarse outlines +of objects, but in their minutest particulars and gentlest gradations. +You may open Shakespeare and find the clearest proofs +of this; take the following:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘When last the young Orlando parted from you,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He left a promise to return again</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Within an hour; and, pacing through the forest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lo, what befel! he threw his eye aside,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And, mark, what object did present itself!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Under an oak, whose boughs were moss’d with age,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And high top bald with dry antiquity,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A wretched ragged man, o’ergrown with hair,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lay sleeping on his back: about his neck</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A green and gilded snake had wreath’d itself,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who with her head, nimble in threats, approach’d</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The opening of his mouth; but suddenly</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Seeing Orlando, it unlink’d itself,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And with indented glides did slip away</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into a bush: under which bush’s shade</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lay crouching, head on ground, with cat-like watch,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span> <div class="verse indent0">When that the sleeping man should stir; for ’tis</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The royal disposition of that beast,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This seen,’ &c. &c.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Or the more celebrated description of the hunt:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How he outruns the wind, and with what care</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The many musits through the which he goes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Sometimes he runs among a flock of sheep,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear:</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘For there his smell with others being mingled,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With much ado, the cold fault cleanly out;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As if another chase were in the skies.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘By this, poor Wat, far off, upon a hill,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To hearken if his foes pursue him still;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And now his grief may be compared well</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To one sore sick that hears the passing bell.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Then thou shalt see the dew-bedabbled wretch</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Turn and return, indenting with the way;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For misery is trodden on by many,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And being low, never relieved by any.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span></p> + +<p>It is absurd, by the way, to say we know <i>nothing</i> about the +man who wrote that; we know that he had been after a hare. +It is idle to allege that mere imagination would tell him that a +hare is apt to run among a flock of sheep, or that its so doing +disconcerts the scent of hounds. But no single citation really +represents the power of the argument. Set descriptions may be +manufactured to order, and it does not follow that even the +most accurate or successful of them was really the result of a +thorough and habitual knowledge of the object. A man who +knows little of Nature may write one excellent delineation, as +a poor man may have one bright guinea. Real opulence consists +in having many. What truly indicates excellent knowledge, +is the habit of constant, sudden, and almost unconscious +allusion, which implies familiarity, for it can arise from that +alone,—and this very species of incidental, casual, and perpetual +reference to ‘the mighty world of eye and ear,’ is the +particular characteristic of Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>In this respect Shakespeare had the advantage of one whom, +in many points, he much resembled—Sir Walter Scott. For a +great poet, the organisation of the latter was very blunt; he +had no sense of smell, little sense of taste, almost no ear for +music (he knew a few, perhaps three, Scotch tunes, which he +avowed that he had learnt in sixty years, by hard labour and +mental association), and not much turn for the minutiæ of +nature in any way. The effect of this may be seen in some of +the best descriptive passages of his poetry, and we will not +deny that it does (although proceeding from a sensuous defect), +in a certain degree, add to their popularity. He deals with the +main outlines and great points of nature, never attends to any +others, and in this respect he suits the comprehension and +knowledge of many who know only those essential and considerable +outlines. Young people, especially, who like big +things, are taken with Scott, and bored by Wordsworth, who +knew too much. And after all, the two poets are in proper +harmony, each with his own scenery. Of all beautiful scenery +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>the Scotch is the roughest and barest, as the English is the +most complex and cultivated. What a difference is there +between the minute and finished delicacy of Rydal Water and +the rough simplicity of Loch Katrine. It is the beauty of +civilisation beside the beauty of barbarism. Scott has himself +pointed out the effect of this on arts and artists.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Or see yon weather-beaten hind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose sluggish herds before him wind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose tattered plaid and rugged cheek</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His Northern clime and kindred speak;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Through England’s laughing meads he goes,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And England’s wealth around him flows;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ask if it would content him well,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">At ease in those gay plains to dwell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where hedgerows spread a verdant screen,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And spires and forests intervene,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the neat cottage peeps between?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">No, not for these would he exchange</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His dark Lochaber’s boundless range,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not for fair Devon’s meads forsake</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ben Nevis grey and Garry’s lake.’</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Thus while I ape the measures wild</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of tales that charmed me yet a child,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rude though they be, still, with the chime,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Return the thoughts of early time;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And feelings roused in life’s first day,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Glow in the line and prompt the lay.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then rise those crags, that mountain tower,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which charmed my fancy’s wakening hour.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Though no broad river swept along,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To claim perchance heroic song;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Though sighed no groves in summer gale,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To prompt of love a softer tale;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Though scarce a puny streamlet’s speed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Claimed homage from a shepherd’s reed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet was poetic impulse given</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By the green hill and clear blue heaven.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It was a barren scene and wild,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where naked cliffs were rudely piled,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span> <div class="verse indent0">But ever and anon between,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And well the lonely infant knew</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Recesses where the wallflower grew,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And honeysuckle loved to crawl</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Up the low crag and ruined wall.</div> + <div class="center">...</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The classic poet’s well-conned task?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nay, Erskine, nay—On the wild hill</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Let the wild heathbell flourish still;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Cherish the tulip, prune the vine,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But freely let the woodbine twine,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And leave untrimmed the eglantine.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nay, my friend, nay—Since oft thy praise</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hath given fresh vigour to my lays,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Since oft thy judgment could refine</div> + <div class="verse indent0">My flattened thought or cumbrous line,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Still kind, as is thy wont, attend,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And in the minstrel spare the friend.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my tale.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">And this is wise, for there is beauty in the North as well as +in the South. Only it is to be remembered that the beauty of +the Trosachs is the result of but a few elements—say birch and +brushwood, rough hills and narrow dells, much heather and +many stones—while the beauty of England is one thing in one +district and one in another; is here the combination of one set of +qualities, and there the harmony of opposite ones, and is everywhere +made up of many details and delicate refinements; all +which require an exquisite delicacy of perceptive organisation, a +seeing eye, a minutely hearing ear. Scott’s is the strong admiration +of a rough mind; Shakespeare’s, the nice minuteness of a +susceptible one.</p> + +<p>A perfectly poetic appreciation of nature contains two elements,—a +knowledge of facts, and a sensibility to charms. +Everybody who may have to speak to some naturalists will be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>well aware how widely the two may be separated. He will have +seen that a man may study butterflies and forget that they are +beautiful, or be perfect in the ‘Lunar theory’ without knowing +what most people mean by the moon. Generally such people +prefer the stupid parts of nature—worms and Cochin-China +fowls. But Shakespeare was not obtuse. The lines—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent16">‘Daffodils</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That come before the swallow dares, and take</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or Cytherea’s breath,’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">seem to show that he knew those feelings of youth, to which +beauty is more than a religion.</p> + +<p>In his mode of delineating natural objects Shakespeare is +curiously opposed to Milton. The latter, who was still by +temperament, and a schoolmaster by trade, selects a beautiful +object, puts it straight out before him and his readers, and +accumulates upon it all the learned imagery of a thousand +years; Shakespeare glances at it and says something of his own. +It is not our intention to say that, as a describer of the external +world, Milton is inferior; in <i>set</i> description we rather think +that he is the better. We only wish to contrast the mode in +which the delineation is effected. The one is like an artist who +dashes off any number of picturesque sketches at any moment; +the other like a man who has lived at Rome, has undergone a +thorough training, and by deliberate and conscious effort, after +a long study of the best masters, can produce a few great +pictures. Milton, accordingly, as has been often remarked, is +careful in the choice of his subjects; he knows too well the +value of his labour to be very ready to squander it; Shakespeare, +on the contrary, describes anything that comes to hand, +for he is prepared for it whatever it may be, and what he paints +he paints without effort. Compare any passage from Shakespeare—for +example, those quoted before—and the following +passage from Milton:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Southward through Eden went a river large,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor changed its course, but through the shaggy hill</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Passed underneath ingulfed; for God had thrown</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That mountain as his garden mould, high raised</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon the rapid current, which through veins</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of porous earth, with kindly thirst up-drawn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Watered the garden; thence united fell</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which from its darksome passage now appears:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And now divided into four main streams</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And country, whereof here needs no account;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But rather to tell how,—if art could tell,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How from that sapphire fount the crispèd brooks,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With mazy error under pendant shades</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ran nectar, visiting each plant; and fed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In beds and curious knots, but nature boon</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Both where the morning sun first warmly smote</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The open field, and where the unpierced shade</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Imbrowned the noontide bowers. Thus was this place</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A happy rural seat of various view;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hung amiable (Hesperian fables true,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If true, here only), and of delicious taste:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Grazing the tender herb, were interposed:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of some irriguous valley spread her store;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Why, you could draw a map of it. It is <i>not</i> ‘Nature boon,’ +but ‘nice art in beds and curious knots;’ it is exactly the old +(and excellent) style of artificial gardening, by which any place +can be turned into trim hedgerows, and stiff borders, and comfortable +shades; but there are no straight lines in nature or +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>Shakespeare. Perhaps the contrast may be accounted for by +the way in which the two poets acquired their knowledge of +scenes and scenery. We think we demonstrated before that +Shakespeare was a sportsman, but if there be still a sceptic or a +dissentient, let him read the following remarks on dogs:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So flewed, so sanded; and their heads are hung</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With ears that sweep away the morning dew,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Crook-kneed and dewlapped like Thessalian bulls;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each under each. A cry more tunable</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Was never holloa’d to nor cheered with horn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>‘Judge when you hear.’ It is evident that the man who +wrote this was a judge of dogs, was an out-of-door sporting +man, full of natural sensibility, not defective in ‘daintiness of +ear,’ and above all things, apt to cast on Nature random, +sportive, half-boyish glances, which reveal so much, and +bequeath such abiding knowledge. Milton, on the contrary, +went out to see nature. He left a narrow cell, and the intense +study which was his ‘portion in this life,’ to take a slow, careful, +and reflective walk. In his treatise on education he has +given us his notion of the way in which young people should +be familiarised with natural objects. ‘But,’ he remarks, ‘to +return to our institute; besides these constant exercises at +home, there is another opportunity of gaining pleasure from +pleasure itself abroad; in those vernal seasons of the year when +the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness +against nature, not to go out and see her riches and partake in +her rejoicing in heaven and earth. I should not therefore be a +persuader to them of studying much in these, after two or three +years, that they have well laid their grounds, but to ride out in +companies, with prudent and staid guides, to all quarters of the +land; learning and observing all places of strength, all commodities +of building and of soil, for towns and tillage, harbours +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span>and ports of trade. Sometimes taking sea as far as our navy, +to learn there also what they can in the practical knowledge of +sailing and of sea-fight.’ Fancy ‘the prudent and staid guides.’ +What a machinery for making pedants. Perhaps Shakespeare +would have known that the conversation would be in this sort:—‘I +say, Shallow, that mare is going in the knees. She has +never been the same since you larked her over the fivebar, while +Moleyes was talking clay and agriculture. I do not hate Latin +so much, but I hate “argillaceous earth;” and what use is <i>that</i> +to a fellow in the Guards, <i>I</i> should like to know?’ Shakespeare +had himself this sort of boyish buoyancy. He was not +‘one of the staid guides.’ We might further illustrate it. +Yet this would be tedious enough, and we prefer to go on and +show what we mean by an experiencing nature in relation to +men and women, just as we have striven to indicate what it is +in relation to horses and hares.</p> + +<p>The reason why so few good books are written, is that so +few people that can write know anything. In general an +author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated +science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of +the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own +eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His +life is a vacuum. The mental habits of Robert Southey, which +about a year ago were so extensively praised in the public +journals, are the type of literary existence, just as the praise +bestowed on them shows the admiration excited by them +among literary people. He wrote poetry (as if anybody could) +before breakfast; he read during breakfast. He wrote history +until dinner; he corrected proof sheets between dinner and +tea; he wrote an essay for the ‘Quarterly’ afterwards; and after +supper by way of relaxation composed the ‘Doctor’—a lengthy +and elaborate jest. Now, what can anyone think of such a life—except +how clearly it shows that the habits best fitted for communicating +information, formed with the best care, and daily +regulated by the best motives, are exactly the habits which are +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>likely to afford a man the least information to communicate. +Southey had no events, no experiences. His wife kept house +and allowed him pocket-money, just as if he had been a German +professor devoted to accents, tobacco, and the dates of Horace’s +amours. And it is pitiable to think that so meritorious a life +was only made endurable by a painful delusion. He thought +that day by day, and hour by hour, he was accumulating stores +for the instruction and entertainment of a long posterity. His +epics were to be in the hands of all men, and his history of +Brazil the ‘Herodotus of the South American Republics.’ As +if his epics were not already dead, and as if the people who now +cheat at Valparaiso care a <i>real</i> who it was that cheated those +before them. Yet it was only by a conviction like this that an +industrious and caligraphic man (for such was Robert Southey), +who might have earned money as a clerk, worked all his days +for half a clerk’s wages, at occupation much duller and more +laborious. The critic in the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ lays down +that you should <i>always</i> say that the picture would have been +better if the painter had taken more pains; but in the case of +the practised literary man, you should often enough say that +the writings would have been much better if the writer had +taken less pains. He says he has devoted his life to the subject—the +reply is, ‘Then you have taken the best way to prevent +your making anything of it.’ Instead of reading studiously +what Burgersdicius and Ænœsidemus said men were, you +should have gone out yourself, and seen (if you can see) what +they are.</p> + +<p>After all, the original way of writing books may turn out to +be the best. The first author, it is plain, could not have taken +anything from books, since there were no books for him to +copy from; he looked at things for himself. Anyhow the +modern system fails, for where are the amusing books from +voracious students and habitual writers? Not that we mean exactly +to say that an author’s hard reading is the cause of his +writing that which is hard to read. This would be near the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span>truth, but not quite the truth. The two are concomitant +effects of a certain defective nature. Slow men read well, but +write ill. The abstracted habit, the want of keen exterior +interests, the aloofness of mind from what is next it, all tend to +make a man feel an exciting curiosity and interest about +remote literary events, the toils of scholastic logicians, and the +petty feuds of Argos and Lacedæmon; but they also tend to +make a man very unable to explain and elucidate those exploits +for the benefit of his fellows. What separates the author from +his readers, will make it proportionably difficult for him to explain +himself to them. Secluded habits do not tend to eloquence; +and the indifferent apathy which is so common in +studious persons is exceedingly unfavourable to the liveliness of +narration and illustration which is needed for excellence in even +the simpler sorts of writing. Moreover, in general, it will perhaps +be found, that persons devoted to mere literature commonly +become devoted to mere idleness. They wish to produce a +great work, but they find they cannot. Having relinquished +everything to devote themselves to this, they conclude on trial +that this is impossible. They wish to write, but nothing occurs +to them. Therefore they write nothing, and they do nothing. +As has been said, they have nothing to do. Their life has no +events, unless they are very poor. With any decent means of +subsistence, they have nothing to rouse them from an indolent +and musing dream. A merchant must meet his bills, or he is +civilly dead and uncivilly remembered. But a student may +know nothing of time and be too lazy to wind up his watch. In +the retired citizen’s journal in Addison’s <i>Spectator</i>, we have the +type of this way of spending the time:—Mem. Morning 8 to 9, +‘Went into the parlour and tied on my shoe-buckles.’ This is +the sort of life for which studious men commonly relinquish +the pursuits of business and the society of their fellows.</p> + +<p>Yet all literary men are not tedious, neither are they all +slow. One great example even these most tedious times have +luckily given us, to show us what may be done by a really great +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>man even now, the same who before served as an illustration—Sir +Walter Scott. In his lifetime people denied he was a poet, +but nobody said that he was not ‘the best fellow’ in Scotland—perhaps +that was not much—or that he had not more wise +joviality, more living talk, more graphic humour, than any man +in Great Britain. ‘Wherever we went,’ said Mr. Wordsworth, +‘we found his name acted as an <i>open sesame</i>, and I believe +that in the character of the <i>sheriff’s</i> friends, we might have +counted on a hearty welcome under any roof in the border +country.’ Never neglect to talk to people with whom you are +casually thrown, was his precept, and he exemplified the maxim +himself. ‘I believe,’ observes his biographer, ‘that Scott has +somewhere expressed in print his satisfaction, that amid all the +changes of our manners, the ancient freedom of personal intercourse +may still be indulged between a master and an <i>out-of-door</i> +servant; but in truth he kept by the old fashion, even +with domestic servants, to an extent which I have hardly ever +seen practised by any other gentleman. He conversed with his +coachman if he sat by him, as he often did, on the box—with +his footman, if he chanced to be in the rumble. Indeed, he did +not confine his humanity to his own people; any steady-going +servant of a friend of his was soon considered as a sort of friend +too, and was sure to have a kind little colloquy to himself at +coming or going.’ ‘Sir Walter speaks to every man as if he +was his blood relation,’ was the expressive comment of one of +these dependents. It was in this way that he acquired the +great knowledge of various kinds of men, which is so clear and +conspicuous in his writings; nor could that knowledge have +been acquired on easier terms, or in any other way. No man +could describe the character of Dandie Dinmont, without +having been in Lidderdale. Whatever has been once in a book +may be put into a book again; but an original character, taken +at first hand from the sheepwalks and from nature, must be +seen in order to be known. A man, to be able to describe—indeed, +to be able to know—various people in life, must be able +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>at sight to comprehend their essential features, to know how +they shade one into another, to see how they diversify the +common uniformity of civilised life. Nor does this involve +simply intellectual or even imaginative prerequisites, still less +will it be facilitated by exquisite senses or subtle fancy. What +is wanted is, to be able to appreciate mere clay—which mere +mind never will. If you will describe the people,—nay, if you +will write for the people, you must be one of the people. You +must have led their life, and must wish to lead their life. +However strong in any poet may be the higher qualities of +abstract thought or conceiving fancy, unless he can actually +sympathise with those around him, he can never describe those +around him. Any attempt to produce a likeness of what is not +really <i>liked</i> by the person who is describing it, will end in the +creation of what may be correct, but is not living—of what +may be artistic, but is likewise artificial.</p> + +<p>Perhaps this is the defect of the works of the greatest +dramatic genius of recent times—Goethe. His works are +too much in the nature of literary studies; the mind is often +deeply impressed by them, but one doubts if the author was. +He saw them as he saw the houses of Weimar and the plants +in the act of metamorphosis. He had a clear perception of +their fixed condition and their successive transitions, but he did +not really (if we may so speak) comprehend their motive power. +So to say, he appreciated their life, but not their liveliness. +Niebuhr, as is well known, compared the most elaborate of +Goethe’s works—the novel of Wilhelm Meister—to a menagerie +of tame animals, meaning thereby, as we believe, to express +much the same distinction. He felt that there was a deficiency +in mere vigour and rude energy. We have a long train and no +engine—a great accumulation of excellent matter, arranged and +ordered with masterly skill, but not animated with over-buoyant +and unbounded play. And we trace this not to a defect in +imaginative power, a defect which it would be a simple absurdity +to impute to Goethe, but to the tone of his character and the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span>habits of his mind. He moved hither and thither through life, +but he was always a man apart. He mixed with unnumbered +kinds of men, with courts and academies, students and women, +camps and artists, but everywhere he was with them yet not of +them. In every scene he was there, and he made it clear that +he was there with a reserve and as a stranger. He went there +<i>to experience</i>. As a man of universal culture and well skilled +in the order and classification of human life, the fact of any +one class or order being beyond his reach or comprehension +seemed an absurdity, and it was an absurdity. He thought +that he was equal to moving in any description of society, and +he was equal to it; but then on that exact account he was +absorbed in none. There were none of surpassing and immeasurably +preponderating captivation. No scene and no subject +were to him what Scotland and Scotch nature were to Sir Walter +Scott. ‘If I did not see the heather once a year, I should die,’ +said the latter; but Goethe would have lived without it, and it +would not have cost him much trouble. In every one of Scott’s +novels there is always the spirit of the old moss trooper—the +flavour of the ancient border; there is the intense sympathy +which enters into the most living moments of the most living +characters—the lively energy which <i>becomes</i> the energy of the +most vigorous persons delineated. Marmion was ‘written’ +while he was galloping on horseback. It reads as if it were so.</p> + +<p>Now it appears that Shakespeare not only had that various +commerce with, and experience of men, which was common +both to Goethe and to Scott, but also that he agrees with the +latter rather than with the former in the kind and species of +that experience. He was not merely with men, but of men; he +was not a ‘thing apart,’ with a clear intuition of what was in +those around him; he had in his own nature the germs and +tendencies of the very elements that he described. He knew +what was in man, for he felt it in himself. Throughout all his +writings you see an amazing sympathy with common people, +rather an excessive tendency to dwell on the common features +of ordinary lives. You feel that common people could have +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>been cut out of him, but not without his feeling it; for it would +have deprived him of a very favourite subject—of a portion of +his ideas to which he habitually recurred.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘<i>Leon.</i> What would you with me, honest neighbour?</p> + +<p><i>Dog.</i> Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you, that +decerns you nearly.</p> + +<p><i>Leon.</i> Brief, I pray you; for you see ’tis a busy time with me.</p> + +<p><i>Dog.</i> Marry, this it is, sir.</p> + +<p><i>Verg.</i> Yes, in truth it is, sir.</p> + +<p><i>Leon.</i> What is it, my good friends?</p> + +<p><i>Dog.</i> Goodman Verges, sir, speaks a little off the matter: an old +man, sir, and his wits are not so blunt, as, God help, I would desire +they were; but, in faith, honest as the skin between his brows.</p> + +<p><i>Verg.</i> Yes, I thank God, I am as honest as any man living, that +is an old man, and no honester than I.</p> + +<p><i>Dog.</i> Comparisons are odorous:—<i>palabras</i>, neighbour Verges.</p> + +<p><i>Leon.</i> Neighbours, you are tedious.</p> + +<p><i>Dog.</i> It pleases your worship to say so, but we are the poor duke’s +officers; but, truly, for mine own part, if I were as tedious as a king, +I could find in my heart to bestow it all of your worship.</p> + +<p>...</p> + +<p><i>Leon.</i> I would fain know what you have to say.</p> + +<p><i>Verg.</i> Marry, sir, our watch to-night, excepting your worship’s +presence, have ta’en a couple of as arrant knaves as any in Messina.</p> + +<p><i>Dog.</i> A good old man, sir; he will be talking; as they say, When +the age is in, the wit is out; God help us! it is a world to see!—Well +said, i’faith, neighbour Verges:—well, God’s a good man; an two men +ride of a horse, one must ride behind:—An honest soul, i’faith, sir; +by my troth he is, as ever broke bread; but God is to be worshipped: +All men are not alike; alas, good neighbour!</p> + +<p><i>Leon.</i> Indeed, neighbour, he comes too far short of you.</p> + +<p><i>Dog.</i> Gifts that God gives,’—&c. &c.</p> + +</blockquote> + +<blockquote> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘<i>Stafford.</i> Ay, sir.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cade.</i> By her he had two children at one birth.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Staff.</i> That’s false.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cade.</i> Ay, there’s the question; but, I say,’tis true:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The elder of them, being put to nurse,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Was by a beggar-woman stol’n away:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And, ignorant of his birth and parentage,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span> <div class="verse indent0">Became a bricklayer, when he came to age;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His son am I; deny it, if you can.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Dick.</i> Nay, ’tis too true; therefore he shall be king.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><i>Smith.</i> Sir, he made a chimney in my father’s house, and the +bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore, deny it not.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>Shakespeare was too wise not to know that for most of the +purposes of human life stupidity is a most valuable element. He +had nothing of the impatience which sharp logical narrow minds +habitually feel when they come across those who do not apprehend +their quick and precise deductions. No doubt he talked +to the stupid players, to the stupid door-keeper, to the property +man, who considers paste jewels ‘very preferable, besides the +expense’—talked with the stupid apprentices of stupid Fleet +Street, and had much pleasure in ascertaining what was their +notion of ‘King Lear.’ In his comprehensive mind it was enough +if every man hitched well into his own place in human life. If +every one were logical and literary, how would there be scavengers, +or watchmen, or caulkers, or coopers? Narrow minds will be +subdued to what they ‘work in.’ The ‘dyer’s hand’ will not +more clearly carry off its tint, nor will what is moulded more +precisely indicate the confines of the mould. 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?</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘<i>Hol.</i> <i>Via</i>, Goodman Dull; thou hast spoken no word all this +while.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span></p> + +<p><i>Dull.</i> Nor understood none neither, sir.</p> + +<p><i>Hol.</i> <i>Allons</i>, we will employ thee.</p> + +<p><i>Dull.</i> I’ll make one in a dance or so, or I will play on the tabor +to the worthies, and let them dance the hay.</p> + +<p><i>Hol.</i> Most dull, honest Dull, to our sport away.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p class="noindent">And such, we believe, was the notion of Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>S. T. Coleridge has a nice criticism which bears on this +point. He observes that in the narrations of uneducated people +in Shakespeare, just as in real life, there is a want of prospectiveness +and a superfluous amount of regressiveness. People +of this sort are unable to look a long way in front of them, +and they wander from the right path. They get on too fast +with one half, and then the other hopelessly lags. They can +tell a story exactly as it is told to them (as an animal can go +step by step where it has been before), but they can’t calculate +its bearings beforehand, or see how it is to be adapted to those +to whom they are speaking, nor do they know how much they +have thoroughly told and how much they have not. ‘I went +up the street, then I went down the street; no, first went down +and then—but you do not follow me; I go before you, sir.’ +Thence arises the complex style usually adopted by persons not +used to narration. They tumble into a story and get on as +they can. This is scarcely the sort of thing which a man could +foresee. Of course a metaphysician can account for it, and +like Coleridge, assure you that if he had not observed it, he +could have predicted it in a moment; but, nevertheless, it is +too refined a conclusion to be made out from known premises +by common reasoning. Doubtless there is some reason why +negroes have woolly hair (and if you look into a philosophical +treatise, you will find that the author could have made out that +it would be so, if he had not, by a mysterious misfortune, +known from infancy that it was the fact),—still one could +never have supposed it oneself. And in the same manner, +though the profounder critics may explain in a satisfactory and +refined manner, how the confused and undulating style of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>narration is peculiarly incident to the mere multitude, yet it +is most likely that Shakespeare derived his acquaintance with +it from the fact, from actual hearing, and not from what may be +the surer, but is the slower process of metaphysical deduction. +The best passage to illustrate this is that in which the nurse +gives a statement of Juliet’s age; but it will not exactly suit +our pages. The following of Mrs. Quickly will suffice:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘Tilly-fally, Sir John, never tell me; your ancient swaggerer +comes not in my doors. I was before Master Tizzick, the Deputy, +the other day; and, as he said to me,—it was no longer ago than +Wednesday last,—Neighbour Quickly, says he;—Master Dumb, our +minister, was by then;—Neighbour Quickly, says he, receive those +that are civil; for, saith he, you are in an ill name:—now, he said +so, I can tell you whereupon; for, says he, you are an honest woman, +and well thought on; therefore take heed to what guests you receive: +Deceive, says he, no swaggering companions.—There comes none +here;—you would bless you to hear what he said:—no, I’ll no +swaggerers.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>Now, it is quite impossible that this, any more than the +political reasoning on the parentage of Cade, which was cited +before, should have been written by one not habitually and +sympathisingly conversant with the talk of the illogical classes. +Shakespeare felt, if we may say so, the force of the bad reasoning. +He did not, like a sharp logician, angrily detect a flaw, +and set it down as a fallacy of reference or a fallacy of +amphibology. This is not the English way, though Dr. +Whately’s logic has been published so long (and, as he says +himself, must now be deemed to be irrefutable, since no one +has ever offered any refutation of it). Yet still people in this +country do not like to be committed to distinct premises. They +like a Chancellor of the Exchequer to say, ‘It has during very +many years been maintained by the honourable member for +Montrose that two and two make four, and I am free to say, +that I think there is a great deal to be said in favour of that +opinion; but, without committing her Majesty’s Government +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>to that proposition as an abstract sentiment, I will go so far +as to assume two and two are not sufficient to make five, which, +with the permission of the House, will be a sufficient basis for +all the operations which I propose to enter upon during the +present year.’ We have no doubt Shakespeare reasoned in that +way himself. Like any other Englishman, when he had a clear +course before him, he rather liked to shuffle over little hitches +in the argument, and on that account he had a great sympathy +with those who did so too. He would never have interrupted +Mrs. Quickly; he saw that her mind was going to and fro over +the subject; he saw that it was coming right, and this was +enough for him, and will be also enough of this topic for +our readers.</p> + +<p>We think we have proved that Shakespeare had an enormous +specific acquaintance with the common people; that this +can only be obtained by sympathy. It likewise has a further +condition.</p> + +<p>In spiritedness, the style of Shakespeare is very like to that +of Scott. The description of a charge of cavalry in Scott reads, +as was said before, as if it was written on horseback. A play +by Shakespeare reads as if it were written in a playhouse. The +great critics assure you, that a theatrical audience must be kept +awake, but Shakespeare knew this of his own knowledge. +When you read him, you feel a sensation of motion, a conviction +that there is something ‘up,’ a notion that not only is +something being talked about, but also that something is being +done. We do not imagine that Shakespeare owed this quality +to his being a player, but rather that he became a player because +he possessed this quality of mind. For after, and notwithstanding +everything which has, or may be said against the +theatrical profession, it certainly does require from those who +pursue it a certain quickness and liveliness of mind. Mimics +are commonly an elastic sort of persons, and it takes a little +levity of disposition to enact even the ‘heavy fathers.’ If a +boy joins a company of strolling players, you may be sure that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>he is not a ‘good boy;’ he may be a trifle foolish, or a thought +romantic, but certainly he is not slow. And this was in truth +the case with Shakespeare. They say, too, that in the beginning +he was a first-rate link-boy; and the tradition is affecting, +though we fear it is not quite certain. Anyhow you feel about +Shakespeare that he could have been a link-boy. In the same +way you feel he may have been a player. You are sure at once +that he could not have followed any sedentary kind of life. But +wheresoever there was anything <i>acted</i> in earnest or in jest, by +way of mock representation or by way of serious reality, there +he found matter for his mind. If anybody could have any +doubt about the liveliness of Shakespeare, let them consider +the character of Falstaff. When a man has created <i>that</i> without +a capacity for laughter, then a blind man may succeed in +describing colours. Intense animal spirits are the single sentiment +(if they be a sentiment) of the entire character. If most +men were to save up all the gaiety of their whole lives, it would +come about to the gaiety of one speech in Falstaff. A morose +man might have amassed many jokes, might have observed +many details of jovial society, might have conceived a Sir John, +marked by rotundity of body, but could hardly have imagined +what we call his rotundity of mind. We mean that the animal +spirits of Falstaff give him an easy, vague, diffusive sagacity +which is peculiar to him. A morose man, Iago, for example, +may know anything, and is apt to know a good deal; but what +he knows is generally all in corners. He knows number 1, +number 2, number 3, and so on, but there is not anything continuous, +or smooth, or fluent in his knowledge. Persons conversant +with the works of Hazlitt will know in a minute what +we mean. Everything which he observed he seemed to observe +from a certain soreness of mind; he looked at people because +they offended him; he had the same vivid notion of them that +a man has of objects which grate on a wound in his body. But +there is nothing at all of this in Falstaff; on the contrary, +everything pleases him, and everything is food for a joke. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span>Cheerfulness and prosperity give an easy abounding sagacity of +mind which nothing else does give. Prosperous people bound +easily over all the surface of things which their lives present to +them; very likely they keep to the surface; there are things +beneath or above to which they may not penetrate or attain, +but what is on any part of the surface, that they know well. +‘Lift not the painted veil which those who live call life,’ and +they do not lift it. What is sublime or awful above, what is +‘sightless and drear’ beneath,—these they may not dream of. +Nor is any one piece or corner of life so well impressed on them +as on minds less happily constituted. It is only people who +have had a tooth out, that really know the dentist’s waiting-room. +Yet such people, for the time at least, know nothing +but that and their tooth. The easy and sympathising friend +who accompanies them knows everything; hints gently at the +contents of the <i>Times</i>, and would cheer you with Lord Palmerston’s +replies. So, on a greater scale, the man of painful +experience knows but too well what has hurt him, and where +and why; but the happy have a vague and rounded view of the +round world, and such was the knowledge of Falstaff.</p> + +<p>It is to be observed that these high spirits are not a mere +excrescence or superficial point in an experiencing nature; on +the contrary, they seem to be essential, if not to its idea or +existence, at least to its exercise and employment. How are +you to know people without talking to them, but how are you +to talk to them without tiring yourself? A common man is +exhausted in half an hour; Scott or Shakespeare could have +gone on for a whole day. This is, perhaps, peculiarly necessary +for a painter of English life. The basis of our national +character seems to be a certain energetic humour, which may +be found in full vigour in old Chaucer’s time, and in great perfection +in at least one of the popular writers of this age, and +which is, perhaps, most easily described by the name of our +greatest painter—Hogarth. It is amusing to see how entirely +the efforts of critics and artists fail to naturalise in England +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span>any other sort of painting. Their efforts are fruitless; for the +people painted are not English people: they may be Italians, +or Greeks, or Jews, but it is quite certain that they are +foreigners. We should not fancy that modern art ought to +resemble the Mediæval. So long as artists attempt the same +class of paintings as Raphael, they will not only be inferior to +Raphael, but they will never please, as they might please, the +English people. What we want is what Hogarth gave us—a +representation of ourselves. It may be that we are wrong, that +we ought to prefer something of the old world, some scene in +Rome or Athens, some tale from Carmel or Jerusalem; but, +after all, we do not. These places are, we think, abroad, and +had their greatness in former times; we wish a copy of what +now exists, and of what we have seen. London we know, and +Manchester we know, but where are all these? It is the same +with literature, Milton excepted, and even Milton can hardly +be called a popular writer: all great English writers describe +English people, and in describing them, they give, as they +must give, a large comic element; and, speaking generally, +this is scarcely possible, except in the case of cheerful and +easy-living men. There is, no doubt, a biting satire, like that +of Swift, which has for its essence misanthropy. There is the +mockery of Voltaire, which is based on intellectual contempt; +but this is not our English humour—it is not that of Shakespeare +and Falstaff; ours is the humour of a man who laughs +when he speaks, of flowing enjoyment, of an experiencing nature.</p> + +<p>Yet it would be a great error if we gave anything like an +exclusive prominence to this aspect of Shakespeare. Thus he +appeared to those around him—in some degree they knew that +he was a cheerful, and humorous, and happy man; but of his +higher gift they knew less than we. A great painter of men +must (as has been said) have a faculty of conversing, but he +must also have a capacity for solitude. There is much of mankind +that a man can only learn from himself. Behind every +man’s external life, which he leads in company, there is another +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We +see but one aspect of our neighbour, as we see but one side of +the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown +to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a +room to himself. And if we would study the internal lives of +others, it seems essential that we should begin with our own. +If we study this our <i>datum</i>, if we attain to see and feel how +this influences and evolves itself in our social and (so to say) +public life, then it is possible that we may find in the lives of +others the same or analogous features; and if we do not, then +at least we may suspect that those who want them are deficient +likewise in the secret agencies which we feel produce them in +ourselves. The metaphysicians assert, that people originally +picked up the idea of the existence of other people in this way. +It is orthodox doctrine that a baby says: ‘I have a mouth, +mamma has a mouth: therefore I’m the same species as +mamma. I have a nose, papa has a nose, therefore papa is the +same genus as me.’ But whether or not this ingenious idea +really does or does not represent the actual process by which +we originally obtain an acquaintance with the existence of +minds analogous to our own, it gives unquestionably the process +by which we obtain our notion of that part of those minds +which they never exhibit consciously to others, and which only +becomes predominant in secresy and solitude and to themselves. +Now, that Shakespeare has this insight into the musing life of +man, as well as into his social life, is easy to prove; take, for +instance, the following passages:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘This battle fares like to the morning’s war,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When dying clouds contend with growing light;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Can neither call it perfect day nor night.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Forc’d by the tide to combat with the wind;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Now sways it that way, like the self-same sea</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Forc’d to retire by fury of the wind:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sometime, the flood prevails; and then, the wind:</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span> <div class="verse indent0">Now, one the better; then, another best;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet neither conqueror, nor conquered;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So is the equal poise of this fell war.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Here on this molehill will I sit me down.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To whom God will, there be the victory!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For Margaret my queen, and Clifford too,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Have chid me from the battle; swearing both</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They prosper best of all when I am thence.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Would I were dead! if God’s good will were so;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For what is in this world but grief and woe?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Oh God! methinks it were a happy life,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To be no better than a homely swain:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To sit upon a hill, as I do now,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thereby to see the minutes how they run:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How many make the hour full complete,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How many hours bring about the day,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How many days will finish up the year,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How many years a mortal man may live.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When this is known, then to divide the time:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So many hours must I tend my flock;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So many hours must I take my rest;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So many hours must I contemplate;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So many hours must I sport myself;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So many days my ewes have been with young;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So many years ere I shall shear the fleece;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pass’d over to the end they were created,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than doth a rich embroider’d canopy</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To kings, that fear their subjects’ treachery?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O yes, it doth; a thousand-fold it doth.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And to conclude,—the shepherd’s homely curds,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span> <div class="verse indent0">Is far beyond a prince’s delicates,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His viands sparkling in a golden cup,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His body couchèd in a curious bed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him.’</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘A fool, a fool!—I met a fool i’ the forest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A motley fool!—a miserable world;—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As I do live by food, I met a fool;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who laid him down and basked him in the sun,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And railed on lady Fortune in good terms,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In good set terms,—and yet a motley fool.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">“Good-morrow, fool,” quoth I: “No, sir,” quoth he,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">“Call me not fool, till heaven hath sent me fortune:”</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And then he drew a dial from his poke,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And looking on it with lack-lustre eye,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Says, very wisely, “It is ten o’clock:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thus may we see,” quoth he, “how the world wags;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Tis but an hour ago since it was nine;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And after an hour more,’twill be eleven;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And thereby hangs a tale.” When I did hear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The motley fool thus moral on the time,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That fools should be so deep-contemplative;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And I did laugh, sans intermission,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">An hour by his dial.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>No slight versatility of mind and pliancy of fancy could +pass at will from scenes such as these to the ward of Eastcheap +and the society which heard the chimes at midnight. +One of the reasons of the rarity of great imaginative works is +that in very few cases is this capacity for musing solitude combined +with that of observing mankind. A certain constitutional +though latent melancholy is essential to such a nature. This is +the exceptional characteristic in Shakespeare. All through his +works you feel you are reading the popular author, the successful +man; but through them all there is a certain tinge of musing +sadness pervading, and, as it were, softening their gaiety. Not +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>a trace can be found of ‘eating cares’ or narrow and mind-contracting +toil, but everywhere there is, in addition to shrewd +sagacity and buoyant wisdom, a refining element of chastening +sensibility, which prevents sagacity from being rough, and +shrewdness from becoming cold. He had an eye for either sort +of life:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Why, let the stricken deer go weep,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">The hart ungallèd play;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For some must watch, and some must sleep,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Thus runs the world away.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>In another point also Shakespeare, as he was, must be carefully +contrasted with the estimate that would be formed of him +from such delineations as that of Falstaff, and that was doubtless +frequently made by casual though only by casual frequenters +of the Mermaid. It has been said that the mind of Shakespeare +contained within it the mind of Scott; it remains to be observed +that it contained also the mind of Keats. For, beside the delineation +of human life, and beside also the delineation of nature, +there remains also for the poet a third subject—the delineation +of <i>fancies</i>. Of course, these, be they what they may, are like +to, and were originally borrowed either from man or from nature—from +one or from both together. We know but two things in +the simple way of direct experience, and whatever else we know +must be in some mode or manner compacted out of them. Yet +‘books are a substantial world, both pure and good,’ and so are +fancies too. In all countries men have devised to themselves a +whole series of half-divine creations—mythologies Greek and +Roman, fairies, angels, beings who may be, for aught we know, +but with whom, in the meantime, we can attain to no conversation. +The most known of these mythologies are the Greek, and +what is, we suppose, the second epoch of the Gothic, the fairies; +and it so happens that Shakespeare has dealt with them both +and in a remarkable manner. We are not, indeed, of those +critics who profess simple and unqualified admiration for the +poem of ‘Venus and Adonis.’ It seems intrinsically, as we +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>know it from external testimony to have been, a juvenile production, +written when Shakespeare’s nature might be well +expected to be crude and unripened. Power is shown, and +power of a remarkable kind; but it is not displayed in a manner +that will please or does please the mass of men. In spite of the +name of its author, the poem has never been popular—and +surely this is sufficient. Nevertheless, it is remarkable as a +literary exercise, and as a treatment of a singular, though unpleasant +subject. The fanciful class of poems differ from others +in being laid, so far as their scene goes, in a perfectly unseen +world. The type of such productions is Keats’s ‘Endymion.’ +We mean that it is the type, not as giving the abstract perfection +of this sort of art, but because it shows and embodies both +its excellences and defects in a very marked and prominent +manner. In that poem there are no passions and no actions, +there is no art and no life; but there is beauty, and that is +meant to be enough, and to a reader of one-and-twenty it +is enough and more. What are exploits or speeches? What +is Cæsar or Coriolanus? What is a tragedy like Lear, or +a real view of human life in any kind whatever, to people who +do not know and do not care what human life is? In early +youth it is, perhaps, not true that the passions, taken generally, +are particularly violent, or that the imagination is in any remarkable +degree powerful; but it is certain that the fancy +(which though it be, in the last resort, but a weak stroke of that +same faculty, which, when it strikes hard, we call imagination, +may yet for this purpose be looked on as distinct) is particularly +wakeful, and that the gentler species of passions are more absurd +than they are afterwards. And the literature of this period of +human life runs naturally away from the real world; away from +the less ideal portion of it, from stocks and stones, and aunts +and uncles, and rests on mere half-embodied sentiments, which +in the hands of great poets assume a kind of semi-personality, +and are, to the distinction between things and persons, ‘as +moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.’ The ‘Sonnets’ +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>of Shakespeare belong exactly to the same school of poetry. +They are not the sort of verses to take any particular hold upon +the mind permanently and for ever, but at a certain period they +take too much. For a young man to read in the spring of the +year among green fields and in gentle air, they are the ideal. +As first of April poetry they are perfect.</p> + +<p>The ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is of another order. If +the question were to be decided by ‘Venus and Adonis,’ in spite +of the unmeasured panegyrics of many writers, we should be +obliged in equity to hold, that as a poet of mere fancy Shakespeare +was much inferior to the late Mr. Keats and even to +meaner men. Moreover, we should have been prepared with +some refined reasonings to show that it was unlikely that a poet +with so much hold on reality, in life and nature, both in solitude +and in society, should have also a similar command over unreality: +should possess a command not only of flesh and blood, +but of the imaginary entities which the self-inworking fancy +brings forth—impalpable conceptions of mere mind: <i>quædam +simulacra miris pallentia modis</i> thin ideas, which come we +know not whence, and are given us we know not why. But, +unfortunately for this ingenious, if not profound suggestion, +Shakespeare in fact possessed the very faculty which it tends to +prove that he would not possess. He could paint Poins and +Falstaff, but he excelled also in fairy legends. He had such</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent16">‘Seething brains;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Such shaping fantasies as apprehend</div> + <div class="verse indent0">More than cool reason ever comprehends.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">As, for example, the idea of Puck, or Queen Mab, of Ariel, or +such a passage as the following:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘<i>Puck.</i> How now, spirit! whither wander you?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Fai.</i> Over hill, over dale,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Thorough bush, thorough briar,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Over park, over pale,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Thorough flood, thorough fire,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">I do wander everywhere,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Swifter than the moones sphere;</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span> <div class="verse indent2">And I serve the fairy queen,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">To dew her orbs upon the green:</div> + <div class="verse indent2">The cowslips tall her pensioners be;</div> + <div class="verse indent2">In their gold coats spots you see;</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Those be rubies, fairy favours,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">In those freckles live their savours:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I must go seek some dew-drops here,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I’ll be gone;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our queen and all our elves come here anon.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Puck.</i> The king doth keep his revels here to-night;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Take heed the queen come not within his sight.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Because that she, as her attendant, hath</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">She never had so sweet a changeling:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And jealous Oberon would have the child</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But she, perforce, withholds the lovèd boy,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And now they never meet in grove, or green,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By fountain clear, or spangled star-light sheen,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Creep into acorn-cups, and hide them there.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Fai.</i> Either I mistake your shape and making quite,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Call’d Robin Good-fellow: are you not he</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That fright the maidens of the villagery;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sometimes make the drink to bear no barm;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">You do their work, and they shall have good luck:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Are not you he?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Puck.</i> Thou speak’st aright;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I am that merry wanderer of the night.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I jest to Oberon, and make him smile,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span> <div class="verse indent0">In very likeness of a roasted crab;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And on her wither’d dew-lap pour the ale.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then slip I from beneath, down topples she,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And <i>tailor</i> cries, and falls into a cough;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And then the whole quire hold their hips, and loffe;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And waxen in their mirth, and neeze and swear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A merrier hour was never wasted there.—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But room, Fairy, here comes Oberon.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Fai.</i> And here my mistress:—Would that he were gone!’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Probably he believed in these things. Why not? Everybody +else believed in them then. They suit our climate. As the +Greek mythology suits the keen Attic sky, the fairies, indistinct +and half-defined, suit a land of mild mists and gentle airs. +They confuse the ‘maidens of the villagery;’ they are the paganism +of the South of England.</p> + +<p>Can it be made out what were Shakespeare’s political views? +We think it certainly can, and that without difficulty. From +the English historical plays, it distinctly appears that he accepted, +like everybody then, the Constitution of his country. +His lot was not cast in an age of political controversy, nor of +reform. What was, was from of old. The Wars of the Roses +had made it very evident how much room there was for the evils +incident to an hereditary monarchy, for instance, those of a controverted +succession, and the evils incident to an aristocracy, as +want of public spirit and audacious selfishness, to arise and +continue within the realm of England. Yet they had not repelled, +and had barely disconcerted our conservative ancestors. +They had not become Jacobins; they did not concur—and +history, except in Shakespeare, hardly does justice to them—in +Jack Cade’s notion that the laws should come out of his mouth, +or that the commonwealth was to be reformed by interlocutors +in this scene.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span></p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘<i>Geo.</i> I tell thee, Jack Cade the clothier means to dress the +Commonwealth, and turn it, and set a new nap on it.</p> + +<p><i>John.</i> So he had need, for ’tis threadbare. Well, I say it was never +a merry world in England since gentlemen came up.</p> + +<p><i>Geo.</i> O miserable age! Virtue is not regarded in handycraftsmen.</p> + +<p><i>John.</i> The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons.</p> + +<p><i>Geo.</i> Nay more: the king’s council are no good workmen.</p> + +<p><i>John.</i> True; and yet it is said, Labour in thy vocation; which is +as much as to say, as let the magistrates be labouring men, and therefore +should we be magistrates.</p> + +<p><i>Geo.</i> Thou hast hit it, for there is no better sign of a brave mind +than a hard hand.</p> + +<p><i>John.</i> I see them! I see them!’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>The English people did see them, and know them, and +therefore have rejected them. An audience which, <i>bonâ fide</i>, +entered into the merit of this scene, would never believe in +everybody’s suffrage. They would know that there is such a +thing as nonsense, and when a man has once attained to that +deep conception, you may be sure of him ever after. And +though it would be absurd to say that Shakespeare originated +this idea, or that the disbelief in simple democracy is owing to +his teaching or suggestions, yet it may, nevertheless, be truly +said, that he shared in the peculiar knowledge of men—and +also possessed the peculiar constitution of mind—which engender +this effect. The author of Coriolanus never believed in a mob, +and did something towards preventing anybody else from doing +so. But this political idea was not exactly the strongest in +Shakespeare’s mind. We think he had two other stronger, or as +strong. First, the feeling of loyalty to the ancient polity of this +country—not because it was good, but because it existed. In +his time, people no more thought of the origin of the monarchy +than they did of the origin of the Mendip Hills. The one had +always been there, and so had the other. God (such was the +common notion) had made both, and one as much as the other. +Everywhere, in that age, the common modes of political speech +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span>assumed the existence of certain utterly national institutions, +and would have been worthless and nonsensical except on that +assumption. This national habit appears as it ought to appear +in our national dramatist. A great divine tells us that the +Thirty-nine Articles are ‘forms of thought;’ inevitable conditions +of the religious understanding: in politics, ‘kings, lords, +and commons’ are, no doubt, ‘forms of thought,’ to the great +majority of Englishmen; in these, they live, and beyond these, +they never move. You can’t reason on the removal (such is the +notion) of the English Channel, nor St. George’s Channel, nor +can you of the English Constitution in like manner. It is to +most of us, and to the happiest of us, a thing immutable, and +such, no doubt, it was to Shakespeare, which, if any one would +have proved, let him refer at random to any page of the historical +English plays.</p> + +<p>The second peculiar tenet which we ascribe to his political +creed, is a disbelief in the middle classes. We fear he had no +opinion of traders. In this age, we know, it is held that the +keeping of a shop is equivalent to a political education. Occasionally, +in country villages, where the trader sells everything, +he is thought to know nothing, and has no vote; but in a town +where he is a householder (as, indeed, he is in the country), and +sells only one thing—there we assume that he knows everything. +And this assumption is in the opinion of some observers confirmed +by the fact. Sir Walter Scott used to relate, that when, +after a trip to London, he returned to Tweedside, he always +found the people in that district knew more of politics than the +Cabinet. And so it is with the mercantile community in +modern times. If you are a Chancellor of the Exchequer, it is +possible that you may be acquainted with finance; but if you +sell figs it is certain that you will. Now we nowhere find this +laid down in Shakespeare. On the contrary, you will generally +find that when a ‘citizen’ is mentioned, he generally does or +says something absurd. Shakespeare had a clear perception +that it is possible to bribe a class as well as an individual, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span>that personal obscurity is but an insecure guarantee for political +disinterestedness.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His private arbours and new-planted orchards</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On this side Tiber; he hath left them you,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And to your heirs for ever: common pleasures,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To walk abroad and recreate yourselves.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Here was a Cæsar! when comes such another?’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">He everywhere speaks in praise of a tempered and ordered and +qualified polity, in which the pecuniary classes have a certain +influence, but no more, and shows in every page a keen sensibility +to the large views, and high-souled energies, the gentle +refinements and disinterested desires in which those classes are +likely to be especially deficient. He is particularly the poet of +personal nobility, though, throughout his writings, there is a +sense of freedom, just as Milton is the poet of freedom, though +with an underlying reference to personal nobility; indeed, we +might well expect our two poets to combine the appreciation of +a rude and generous liberty with that of a delicate and refined +nobleness, since it is the union of these two elements that characterises +our society and their experience.</p> + +<p>There are two things—good-tempered sense and ill-tempered +sense. In our remarks on the character of Falstaff, we +hope we have made it very clear that Shakespeare had the +former; we think it nearly as certain that he possessed the +latter also. An instance of this might be taken from that contempt +for the perspicacity of the <i>bourgeoisie</i> which we have +just been mentioning. It is within the limits of what may be +called malevolent sense, to take extreme and habitual pleasure +in remarking the foolish opinions, the narrow notions, and +fallacious deductions which seem to cling to the pompous and +prosperous man of business. Ask him his opinion of the currency +question, and he puts ‘bills’ and ‘bullion’ together in a +sentence, and he does not seem to care what he puts between +them. But a more proper instance of (what has an odd sound), +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>the malevolence of Shakespeare is to be found in the play of +‘Measure for Measure.’ We agree with Hazlitt, that this play +seems to be written, perhaps more than any other, <i>con amore</i>, +and with a relish; and this seems to be the reason why, notwithstanding +the unpleasant nature of its plot, and the absence of +any very attractive character, it is yet one of the plays which +take hold on the mind most easily and most powerfully. Now +the entire character of Angelo, which is the expressive feature +of the piece, is nothing but a successful embodiment of the +pleasure, the malevolent pleasure, which a warm-blooded and +expansive man takes in watching the rare, the dangerous and +inanimate excesses of the constrained and cold-blooded. One +seems to see Shakespeare, with his bright eyes and his large lips +and buoyant face, watching with a pleasant excitement the +excesses of his thin-lipped and calculating creation, as though +they were the excesses of a real person. It is the complete +picture of a natural hypocrite, who does not consciously disguise +strong impulses, but whose very passions seem of their +own accord to have disguised themselves and retreated into the +recesses of the character, yet only to recur even more dangerously +when their proper period is expired, when the will is +cheated into security by their absence, and the world (and, it +may be, the ‘judicious person’ himself) is impressed with a +sure reliance in his chilling and remarkable rectitude.</p> + +<p>It has, we believe, been doubted whether Shakespeare was +a man much conversant with the intimate society of women. +Of course no one denies that he possessed a great knowledge +of them—a capital acquaintance with their excellences, faults, +and foibles; but it has been thought that this was the result +rather of imagination than of society, of creative fancy rather +than of perceptive experience. Now that Shakespeare possessed, +among other singular qualities, a remarkable imaginative +knowledge of women, is quite certain, for he was acquainted +with the soliloquies of women. A woman we suppose, like a +man, must be alone, in order to speak a soliloquy. After the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>greatest possible intimacy and experience, it must still be +imagination, or fancy at least, which tells any man what a +woman thinks of herself and to herself. There will still—get +as near the limits of confidence or observation as you can—be +a space which must be filled up from other means. Men can +only divine the truth—reserve, indeed, is a part of its charm. +Seeing, therefore, that Shakespeare had done what necessarily +and certainly must be done without experience, we were in +some doubt whether he might not have dispensed with it altogether. +A grave reviewer cannot know these things. We +thought indeed of reasoning that since the delineations of +women in Shakespeare were admitted to be first-rate, it should +follow,—at least there was a fair presumption,—that no means +or aid had been wanting to their production, and that +consequently we ought, in the absence of distinct evidence, to +assume that personal intimacy as well as solitary imagination had +been concerned in their production. And we meant to cite the +‘questions about Octavia,’ which Lord Byron, who thought he +had the means of knowing, declared to be ‘women all over.’</p> + +<p>But all doubt was removed and all conjecture set to rest by +the coming in of an ably-dressed friend from the external world, +who mentioned that the language of Shakespeare’s women was +essentially female language; that there were certain points +and peculiarities in the English of cultivated English women, +which made it a language of itself, which must be heard +familiarly in order to be known. And he added, ‘except a +greater use of words of Latin derivation, as was natural in an +age when ladies received a learned education, a few words not +now proper, a few conceits that were the fashion of the time, +and there is the very same English in the women’s speeches in +Shakespeare.’ He quoted—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Think not I love him, though I ask for him;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Tis but a peevish boy:—yet he talks well;—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But what care I for words? yet words do well,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span> <div class="verse indent0">It is a pretty youth:—not very pretty:—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But, sure, he’s proud; and yet his pride becomes him;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He’ll make a proper man: The best thing in him</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Did make offence, his eye did heal it up.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He is not tall; yet for his years he’s tall:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His leg is but so so: and yet ’tis well.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There was a pretty redness in his lip;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A little riper and more lusty red</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than that mix’d in his cheek; ’twas just the difference</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Betwixt the constant red, and mingled damask.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There be some women, Silvius, had they mark’d him</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In parcels as I did, would have gone near</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To fall in love with him: but, for my part,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I have more cause to hate him than to love him:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For what had he to do to chide at me?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He said, my eyes were black, and my hair black,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And, now I am remember’d, scorn’d at me:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I marvel, why I answer’d not again;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But that’s all one;’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">and the passage of Perdita’s cited before about the daffodils +that—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent20">‘take</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or Cytherea’s breath;’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">and said that these were conclusive. But we have not, ourselves, +heard young ladies converse in that manner.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it is in his power of delineating women, that +Shakespeare contrasts most strikingly with the greatest master +of the art of dialogue in antiquity—we mean Plato. It will, +no doubt, be said that the delineation of women did not fall +within Plato’s plan; that men’s life was in that age so separate +and predominant that it could be delineated by itself and +apart; and no doubt these remarks are very true. But what +led Plato to form that plan? What led him to select that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span>peculiar argumentative aspect of life, in which the masculine +element is in so high a degree superior? We believe that he +did it because he felt that he could paint that kind of scene +much better than he could paint any other. If a person will +consider the sort of conversation that was held in the cool +summer morning, when Socrates was knocked up early to talk +definitions and philosophy with Protagoras, he will feel, not only +that women would fancy such dialogues to be certainly stupid, +and very possibly to be without meaning, but also that the side of +character which is there presented is one from which not only +the feminine but even the epicene element is nearly if not +perfectly excluded. It is the intellect surveying and delineating +intellectual characteristics. We have a dialogue of thinking +faculties; the character of every man is delineated by showing +us, not his mode of action or feeling, but his mode of thinking, +alone and by itself. The pure mind, purged of all passion and +affection, strives to view and describe others in like manner; +and the singularity is, that the likenesses so taken are so good,—that +the accurate copying of the merely intellectual effects +and indications of character gives so true and so firm an impression +of the whole character,—that a daguerreotype of the +mind should almost seem to be a delineation of the life. But +though in the hand of a consummate artist, such a way of +representation may in some sense succeed in the case of men, it +would certainly seem sure to fail in the case of women. The +mere intellect of a woman is a mere nothing. It originates +nothing, it transmits nothing, it retains nothing; it has little +life of its own, and therefore it can hardly be expected to attain +any vigour. Of the lofty Platonic world of the ideas, which the +soul in the old doctrine was to arrive at by pure and continuous +reasoning, women were never expected to know anything. Plato +(though Mr. Grote denies that he was a practical man) was +much too practical for that; he reserved his teaching for people +whose belief was regulated and induced in some measure by +abstract investigations; who had an interest in the pure and (as +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span>it were) geometrical truth itself; who had an intellectual character +(apart from and accessory to their other character) +capable of being viewed as a large and substantial existence, +Shakespeare’s being, like a woman’s, worked as a whole. He was +capable of intellectual abstractedness, but commonly he was +touched with the sense of earth. One thinks of him as firmly +set on our coarse world of common clay, but from it he could +paint the moving essence of thoughtful feeling—which is the +best refinement of the best women. Imogen or Juliet would +have thought little of the conversation of Gorgias.</p> + +<p>On few subjects has more nonsense been written than on the +learning of Shakespeare. In former times, the established tenet +was, that he was acquainted with the entire range of the Greek +and Latin classics, and familiarly resorted to Sophocles and +Æschylus as guides and models. This creed reposed not so +much on any painful or elaborate criticism of Shakespeare’s +plays, as on one of the <i>à priori</i> assumptions permitted to the +indolence of the wise old world. It was then considered clear, +by all critics, that no one could write good English who could +not also write bad Latin. Questioning scepticism has rejected +this axiom, and refuted with contemptuous facility the slight +attempt which had been made to verify this case of it from the +evidence of the plays themselves. But the new school, not +content with showing that Shakespeare was no formed or +elaborate scholar, propounded the idea that he was quite ignorant, +just as Mr. Croker ‘demonstrates’ that Napoleon Bonaparte +could scarcely write or read. The answer is, that Shakespeare +wrote his plays, and that those plays show not only a very +powerful, but also a very cultivated mind. A hard student +Shakespeare was not, yet he was a happy and pleased reader of +interesting books. He was a natural reader; when a book was +dull he put it down, when it looked fascinating he took it +up, and the consequence is, that he remembered and mastered +what he read. Lively books, read with lively interest, leave +strong and living recollections; the instructors, no doubt, say +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>that they ought not to do so, and inculcate the necessity of +dry reading. Yet the good sense of a busy public has practically +discovered that what is read easily is recollected easily, and +what is read with difficulty is remembered with more. It is +certain that Shakespeare read the novels of his time, for he has +founded on them the stories of his plays; he read Plutarch, for +his words still live in the dialogue of the ‘proud Roman’ plays; +and it is remarkable that Montaigne is the only philosopher that +Shakespeare can be proved to have read, because he deals more +than any other philosopher with the first impressions of things +which exist. On the other hand, it may be doubted if Shakespeare +would have perused his commentators. Certainly, he +would have never read a page of this review, and we go so far as +to doubt whether he would have been pleased with the admirable +discourses of M. Guizot, which we ourselves, though ardent +admirers of his style and ideas, still find it a little difficult to +<i>read</i>—and what would he have thought of the following speculations +of an anonymous individual, whose notes have been +recently published in a fine octavo by Mr. Collier, and, according +to the periodical essayists, ‘contribute valuable suggestions +to the illustration of the immortal bard’?</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p class="center">‘<span class="smcap">The Two Gentlemen of Verona.</span></p> + +<p class="center">‘<span class="smcap">Act I. Scene I.</span></p> + +<p>‘P. 92. The reading of the subsequent line has hitherto been</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“’Tis true; for you are over boots in love;”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">but the manuscript corrector of the Folio, 1632, has changed it to</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“’Tis true; <i>but</i> you are over boots in love,”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">which seems more consistent with the course of the dialogue; for +Proteus, remarking that Leander had been “more than over shoes +in love,” with Hero, Valentine answers, that Proteus was even more +deeply in love than Leander. Proteus observes of the fable of Hero +and Leander—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“That’s a deep story of a deeper love,</div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>For</i> he was more than over shoes in love.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span></p> + +<p class="noindent">Valentine retorts—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“’Tis true; <i>but</i> you are over boots in love.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent"><i>For</i> instead of <i>but</i> was perhaps caught by the compositor from the +preceding line.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>It is difficult to fancy Shakespeare perusing a volume of +such annotations, though we allow that we admire them ourselves. +As to the controversy on his school learning, we have +only to say, that though the alleged imitations of the Greek +tragedians are mere nonsense, yet there is clear evidence that +Shakespeare received the ordinary grammar school education +of his time, and that he had derived from the pain and suffering +of several years, not exactly an acquaintance with Greek or +Latin, but, like Eton boys, a firm conviction that there are such +languages.</p> + +<p>Another controversy has been raised as to whether Shakespeare +was religious. In the old editions it is commonly enough +laid down that, when writing his plays, he had no desire to fill +the Globe Theatre, but that his intentions were of the following +description. ‘In this play,’ Cymbeline, ‘Shakespeare has +strongly depicted the frailties of our nature, and the effect of +vicious passions on the human mind. In the fate of the Queen +we behold the adept in perfidy justly sacrificed by the arts she +had, with unnatural ambition, prepared for others; and in +reviewing her death and that of Cloten, we may easily call to +mind the words of Scripture,’ &c. And of King Lear it is +observed with great confidence, that Shakespeare, ‘<i>no doubt</i>, +intended to mark particularly the afflicting character of children’s +ingratitude to their parents, and the conduct of Goneril +and Regan to each other; <i>especially</i> in the former’s poisoning +the latter, and laying hands on <i>herself</i>, we are taught that those +who want gratitude towards their parents (who gave them their +being, fed them, nurtured them to <i>man’s</i> estate) will not +scruple to commit more barbarous crimes, and easily to forget +that, by destroying their body, they destroy their soul also.’ +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>And Dr. Ulrici, a very learned and illegible writer, has discovered +that in every one of his plays Shakespeare had in view +the inculcation of the peculiar sentiments and doctrines of the +Christian religion, and considers the ‘Midsummer Night’s +Dream’ to be a specimen of the lay or amateur sermon. This +is what Dr. Ulrici thinks of Shakespeare; but what would +Shakespeare have thought of Dr. Ulrici? We believe that +‘<i>Via</i>, goodman Dull,’ is nearly the remark which the learned +professor would have received from the poet to whom his very +careful treatise is devoted. And yet, without prying into the +Teutonic mysteries, a gentleman of missionary aptitudes might +be tempted to remark that in many points Shakespeare is +qualified to administer a rebuke to people of the prevalent religion. +Meeting a certain religionist is like striking the corner +of a wall. He is possessed of a firm and rigid persuasion that +you must leave off this and that, stop, cry, be anxious, be advised, +and, above all things, refrain from doing what you like, +for nothing is so bad for any one as that. And in quite another +quarter of the religious hemisphere, we occasionally encounter +gentlemen who have most likely studied at the feet of Dr. +Ulrici, or at least of an equivalent Gamaliel, and who, when we, +or such as we, speaking the language of mortality, remark of a +pleasing friend, ‘Nice fellow, so and so! Good fellow as ever +lived!’ reply sternly, upon an unsuspecting reviewer, with—‘Sir, +is he an <i>earnest</i> man?’ To which, in some cases, we are +unable to return a sufficient answer. Yet Shakespeare, differing, +in that respect at least, from the disciples of Carlyle, had, +we suspect, an objection to grim people, and we fear would have +liked the society of Mercutio better than that of a dreary +divine, and preferred Ophelia or ‘that Juliet’ to a female +philanthropist of sinewy aspect. And, seriously, if this world +is not all evil, he who has understood and painted it best must +probably have some good. If the underlying and almighty +essence of this world be good, then it is likely that the writer +who most deeply approached to that essence will be himself +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span>good. There is a religion of week-days as well as of Sundays, +of ‘cakes and ale’ as well as of pews and altar cloths. This +England lay before Shakespeare as it lies before us all, with its +green fields, and its long hedgerows, and its many trees, and its +great towns, and its endless hamlets, and its motley society, +and its long history, and its bold exploits, and its gathering +power, and he saw that they were good. To him, perhaps, more +than to any one else, has it been given to see that they were a +great unity, a great religious object; that if you could only +descend to the inner life, to the deep things, to the secret +principles of its noble vigour, to the essence of character, to +what we know of Hamlet and seem to fancy of Ophelia, we +might, so far as we are capable of so doing, understand the +nature which God has made. Let us, then, think of him not +as a teacher of dry dogmas, or a sayer of hard sayings, but as</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent10">‘A priest to us all,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the wonder and bloom of the world’—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">a teacher of the hearts of men and women; one from whom +may be learned something of that inmost principle that ever +modulates</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent18">‘With murmurs of the air,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And motions of the forests and the sea,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And voice of living beings, and woven hymns</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of night and day and the deep heart of man.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>We must pause, lest our readers reject us, as the Bishop +of Durham the poor curate, because he was ‘mystical and confused.’</p> + +<p>Yet it must be allowed that Shakespeare was worldly, and +the proof of it is, that he succeeded in the world. Possibly +this is the point on which we are most richly indebted to tradition. +We see generally indeed in Shakespeare’s works the +popular author, the successful dramatist; there is a life and +play in his writings rarely to be found, except in those who +have had habitual good luck, and who, by the tact of experience, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span>feel the minds of their readers at every word, as a good rider +feels the mouth of his horse. But it would have been difficult +quite to make out whether the profits so accruing had been +profitably invested—whether the genius to create such illusions +was accompanied with the care and judgment necessary to put +out their proceeds properly in actual life. We could only have +said that there was a general impression of entire calmness +and equability in his principal works, rarely to be found where +there is much pain, which usually makes gaps in the work and +dislocates the balance of the mind. But happily here, and here +almost alone, we are on sure historical ground. The reverential +nature of Englishmen has carefully preserved what they thought +the great excellence of their poet—that he made a fortune.⁠<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> +It is certain that Shakespeare was proprietor of the Globe +Theatre—that he made money there, and invested the same +in land at Stratford-on-Avon, and probably no circumstance +in his life ever gave him so much pleasure. It was a great +thing that he, the son of the wool-comber, the poacher, the +good-for-nothing, the vagabond (for so we fear the phrase went +in Shakespeare’s youth), should return upon the old scene a substantial +man, a person of capital, a freeholder, a gentleman to +be respected, and over whom even a burgess could not affect +the least superiority. The great pleasure in life is doing what +people say you cannot do. Why did Mr. Disraeli take the +duties of the Exchequer with so much relish? Because people +said he was a novelist, an <i>ad captandum</i> man, and—<i>monstrum +horrendum!</i>—a Jew, that could not add up. No doubt it pleased +his inmost soul to do the work of the red-tape people better +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span>than those who could do nothing else. And so with Shakespeare: +it pleased him to be respected by those whom he had +respected with boyish reverence, but who had rejected the imaginative +man—on their own ground and in their own subject, +by the only title which they would regard—in a word, as a +moneyed man. We seem to see him eying the burgesses with +good-humoured fellowship and genial (though suppressed and +half-unconscious) contempt, drawing out their old stories, and +acquiescing in their foolish notions, with everything in his +head and easy sayings upon his tongue,—a full mind and a deep +dark eye, that played upon an easy scene—now in fanciful solitude, +now in cheerful society; now occupied with deep thoughts, +now, and equally so, with trivial recreations, forgetting the dramatist +in the man of substance, and the poet in the happy companion; +beloved and even respected, with a hope for every one +and a smile for all.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="JOHN_MILTON"><i>JOHN +MILTON.</i>⁠<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a><br> +<span class="smaller">(1859.)</span></h2> + +</div> + +<p>The ‘Life of Milton,’ by Professor Masson, is a difficulty for the +critics. It is very laborious, very learned, and in the main, we +believe, very accurate. It is exceedingly long,—there are 780 +pages in this volume, and there are to be two volumes more: +it touches on very many subjects, and each of these has been +investigated to the very best of the author’s ability. No one +can wish to speak with censure of a book on which so much +genuine labour has been expended; and yet we are bound, as +true critics, to say that we think it has been composed upon a +principle that is utterly erroneous. In justice to ourselves we +must explain our meaning.</p> + +<p>There are two methods on which biography may consistently +be written. The first of these is what we may call the exhaustive +method. Every fact which is known about the hero +may be told us; every thing which he did, every thing which +he would not do, every thing which other people did to him, +every thing which other people would not do to him,—may be +narrated at full length. We may have a complete picture of +all the events of his life; of all which he underwent, and all +which he achieved. We may, as Mr. Carlyle expresses it, have +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>a complete account ‘of his effect upon the universe, and of the +effect of the universe upon him.’ We admit that biographies +of this species would be very long and generally very tedious, +we know that the world could not contain very many of them; +but nevertheless the principle on which they may be written is +intelligible.</p> + +<p>The second method on which the life of a man may be +written is the selective. Instead of telling everything, we may +choose what we will tell. We may select out of the numberless +events, from among the innumerable actions of his life, those +events and those actions which exemplify his true character, +which prove to us what were the true limits of his talents, what +was the degree of his deficiencies, which were his defects, which +his vices,—in a word, we may select the traits and the particulars +which seem to give us the best idea of the man as he lived +and as he was. On this side the flood, as Sydney Smith would +have said, we should have fancied that this was the only practicable +principle on which biographies can be written about +persons of whom many details are recorded. For ancient heroes +the exhaustive method is possible. All that can be known of +them is contained in a few short passages of Greek and Latin, +and it is quite possible to say whatever can be said about every +one of these: the result would not be unreasonably bulky, though +it might be dull. But in the case of men who have lived in the +thick of the crowded modern world, no such course is admissible; +overmuch <i>may</i> be said, and we must choose what we will say. +Biographers, however, are rarely bold enough to adopt the selective +method consistently. They have, we suspect, the fear +of the critics before their eyes. They do not like that it should +be said that ‘the work of the learned gentleman contains serious +omissions: the events of 1562 are not mentioned; those of October +1579 are narrated but very cursorily:’ and we fear that +in any case such remarks will be made. Very learned people +are pleased to show that they know what is <i>not</i> in the book; +sometimes they may hint that perhaps the author did not know +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>it, or surely he would have mentioned it. But a biographer +who wishes to write what most people of cultivation will be +pleased to read must be courageous enough to face the pain of +such censures. He must choose, as we have explained, the +characteristic parts of his subject; and all that he has to take +care of besides, is so to narrate them that their characteristic +elements shall be shown: to give such an account of the general +career as may make it clear what these chosen events really +were; to show their respective bearings to one another; to +delineate what is expressive in such a manner as to make it +expressive.</p> + +<p>This plan of biography is, however, by no means that of +Mr. Masson. He has no dread of overgrown bulk and overwhelming +copiousness. He finds, indeed, what we have called +the exhaustive method insufficient. He not only wishes to +narrate in full the life of Milton, but to add those of his contemporaries +likewise: he seems to wish to tell us not only what +Milton did, but also what every one else did in Great Britain +during his lifetime. He intends his book to be not ‘merely a +biography of Milton, but also in some sort a continuous history +of his time.... The suggestions of Milton’s life have indeed +determined the tracks of these historical researches and expositions, +sometimes through the literature of the period, sometimes +through its civil and ecclesiastical politics; but the extent to +which I have pursued them, and the space which I have assigned +to them, have been determined by my desire to present, by their +combination, something like a connected historical view of +British thought and British society in general prior to the Revolution.’ +We need not do more than observe that this union +of heterogeneous aims must always end, as it has in this case, in +the production of a work at once overgrown and incomplete. A +great deal which has only a slight bearing on the character of +Milton is inserted; much that is necessary to a true history of +‘British thought and British society’ is of necessity left out. +The period of Milton’s life which is included in the published +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span>volume makes the absurdity especially apparent. In middle +life Milton was a great controversialist on contemporary topics; +and though it would not be proper for a biographer to load his +pages with a full account of all such controversies, yet some +notice of the most characteristic of them would be expected +from him. In this part of Milton’s life some reference to +public events would be necessary; and we should not severely +censure a biographer, if the great interest of those events induced +him to stray a little from his topic. But the first thirty +years of Milton’s life require a very different treatment. He +passed those years in the ordinary musings of a studious and +meditative youth; it was the period of ‘Lycidas’ and of ‘Comus;’ +he then dreamed the</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Sights which youthful poets dream</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On summer eve by haunted stream.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">We do not wish to have this part of his life disturbed, to a +greater extent than may be necessary, with the harshness of public +affairs. Nor is it necessary that it should be so disturbed. +A life of poetic retirement requires but little reference to anything +except itself. In a biography of Mr. Tennyson we should +not expect to hear of the Reform Bill, or the Corn Laws. Mr. +Masson is, however, of a different opinion. He thinks it necessary +to tell us, not only all which Milton did, but every thing +also that he might have heard of.</p> + +<p>The biography of Mr. Keightley is on a very different scale. +He tells the story of Milton’s career in about half a small volume. +Probably this is a little too concise, and the narrative +is somewhat dry and bare. It is often, however, acute, and is +always clear; and even were its defects greater than they are, +we should think it unseemly to criticise the last work of one +who has performed so many useful services to literature with +extreme severity.</p> + +<p>The bare outline of Milton’s life is very well known. We +have all heard that he was born in the latter years of King James, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span>just when Puritanism was collecting its strength for the approaching +struggle; that his father and mother were quiet good +people, inclined, but not immoderately, to that persuasion; that +he went up to Cambridge early, and had some kind of dissension +with the authorities there; that the course of his youth was in +a singular degree pure and staid; that in boyhood he was a +devourer of books, and that he early became, and always remained, +a severely studious man; that he married, and had difficulties +of a peculiar character with his first wife; that he wrote +on Divorce; that after the death of his first wife, he married a +second time a lady who died very soon, and a third time a person +who survived him more than fifty years; that he wrote early +poems of singular beauty, which we still read; that he travelled +in Italy, and exhibited his learning in the academies there; that +he plunged deep in the theological and political controversies of +his time; that he kept a school, or rather, in our more modern +phrase, took pupils; that he was a republican of a peculiar kind, +and of ‘no church,’ which Dr. Johnson thought dangerous; +that he was Secretary for Foreign Languages under the Long +Parliament, and retained that office after the coup-d’état of Cromwell; +that he defended the death of Charles the First, and became +blind from writing a book in haste upon that subject; that +after the Restoration he was naturally in a position of some +danger and much difficulty; that in the midst of that difficulty +he wrote ‘Paradise Lost;’ that he did not fail in heart or hope, +but lived for fourteen years after the destruction of all for which +he had laboured, in serene retirement, ‘though fallen on evil +days, though fallen on evil times;’—all this we have heard from +our boyhood. How much is wanting to complete the picture—how +many traits, both noble and painful, might be recovered +from the past—we shall never know, till some biographer skilled +in interpreting the details of human nature shall select this subject +for his art.</p> + +<p>All that we can hope to do in an essay like this is, to throw +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span>together some miscellaneous remarks on the character of the +Puritan poet, and on the peculiarities of his works; and if in +any part of them we may seem to make unusual criticisms, +and to be over-ready with depreciation or objection, our excuse +must be that we wish to paint a likeness, and that the harsher +features of the subject should have a prominence, even in an +outline.</p> + +<p>There are two kinds of goodness conspicuous in the world, +and often made the subject of contrast there; for which, however, +we seem to want exact words, and which we are obliged to +describe rather vaguely and incompletely. These characters +may in one aspect be called the sensuous and the ascetic. The +character of the first is that which is almost personified in the +poet-king of Israel, whose actions and whose history have been +‘improved’ so often by various writers, that it now seems trite +even to allude to them. Nevertheless, the particular virtues and +the particular career of David seem to embody the idea of what +may be called sensuous goodness far more completely than a +living being in general comes near to an abstract idea. There +may have been shades in the actual man which would have +modified the resemblance; but in the portrait which has been +handed down to us, the traits are perfect and the approximation +exact. The principle of this character is its sensibility to outward +stimulus; it is moved by all which occurs, stirred by all +which happens, open to the influences of whatever it sees, hears, +or meets with. The certain consequence of this mental constitution +is a peculiar liability to temptation. Men are, according +to the divine, ‘put upon their trial through the senses.’ It is +through the constant suggestions of the outer world that our +minds are stimulated, that our will has the chance of a choice, +that moral life becomes possible. The sensibility to this external +stimulus brings with it, when men have it to excess, an unusual +access of moral difficulty. Everything acts on them, and everything +has a chance of turning them aside; the most tempting +things act upon them very deeply, and their influence, in consequence, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>is extreme. Naturally, therefore, the errors of such men +are great. We need not point the moral—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Dizzied faith and guilt and woe,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Loftiest aims by earth defiled,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gleams of wisdom sin-beguiled,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sated power’s tyrannic mood,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Counsels shared with men of blood,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sad success, parental tears,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And a dreary gift of years.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">But, on the other hand, the excellence of such men has a charm, +a kind of sensuous sweetness, that is its own. Being conscious +of frailty, they are tender to the imperfect; being sensitive to +this world, they sympathise with the world; being familiar with +all the moral incidents of life, their goodness has a richness and +a complication: they fascinate their own age, and in their deaths +they are ‘not divided’ from the love of others. Their peculiar +sensibility gives a depth to their religion; it is at once deeper +and more human than that of other men. As their sympathetic +knowledge of those whom they have seen is great, so it is with +their knowledge of Him whom they have not seen; and as is +their knowledge, so is their love; it is deep, from their nature; +rich and intimate, from the variety of their experience; chastened +by the ever-present sense of their weakness and of its +consequences.</p> + +<p>In extreme opposition to this is the ascetic species of goodness. +This is not, as is sometimes believed, a self-produced +ideal—a simply voluntary result of discipline and restraint. +Some men have by nature what others have to elaborate by +effort. Some men have a repulsion from the world. All of us +have, in some degree, a protective instinct; an impulse, that is +to say, to start back from what may trouble us, to shun what +may fascinate us, to avoid what may tempt us. On the moral +side of human nature this preventive check is occasionally imperious; +it holds the whole man under its control,—makes him +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span>recoil from the world, be offended at its amusements, be repelled +by its occupations, be scared by its sins. The consequences of this +tendency, when it is thus in excess, upon the character are very +great and very singular. It secludes a man in a sort of natural +monastery; he lives in a kind of moral solitude; and the effects of +his isolation for good and for evil on his disposition are very many. +The best result is a singular capacity for meditative religion. +Being aloof from what is earthly, such persons are shut up with +what is spiritual; being unstirred by the incidents of time, they +are alone with the eternal; rejecting this life, they are alone +with what is beyond. According to the measure of their minds, +men of this removed and secluded excellence become eminent +for a settled and brooding piety, for a strong and predominant +religion. In human life too, in a thousand ways, their isolated +excellence is apparent. They walk through the whole of it with +an abstinence from sense, a zeal of morality, a purity of ideal, +which other men have not. Their religion has an imaginative +grandeur, and their life something of an unusual impeccability. +And these are obviously singular excellences. But the deficiencies +to which the same character tends are equally singular. +In the first place, their isolation gives them a certain pride in +themselves, and an inevitable ignorance of others. They are +secluded by their constitutional δαίμων from life; they are repelled +from the pursuits which others care for; they are alarmed +at the amusements which others enjoy. In consequence, they trust +in their own thoughts; they come to magnify both them and +themselves—for being able to think and to retain them. The +greater the nature of the man, the greater is this temptation. His +thoughts are greater, and, in consequence, the greater is his +tendency to prize them, the more extreme is his tendency to +overrate them. This pride, too, goes side by side with a want of +sympathy. Being aloof from others, such a mind is unlike others; +and it feels, and sometimes it feels bitterly, its own unlikeness. +Generally, however, it is too wrapt up in its own exalted thoughts +to be sensible of the pain of moral isolation; it stands apart from +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span>others, unknowing and unknown. It is deprived of moral experience +in two ways,—it is not tempted itself, and it does not +comprehend the temptations of others. And this defect of moral +experience is almost certain to produce two effects, one practical +and the other speculative. When such a man is wrong, he will +be apt to believe that he is right. If his own judgment err, he +will not have the habit of checking it by the judgment of others; +he will be accustomed to think most men wrong; differing from +them would be no proof of error, agreeing with them would +rather be a basis for suspicion. He may, too, be very wrong, for +the conscience of no man is perfect on all sides. The strangeness +of secluded excellence will be sometimes deeply shaded by +very strange errors. To be commonly above others, still more +to think yourself above others, is to be below them every now +and then, and sometimes much below. Again, on the speculative +side, this defect of moral experience penetrates into the distinguishing +excellence of the character,—its brooding and meditative +religion. Those who see life under only one aspect, can +see religion under only one likewise. This world is needful to +interpret what is beyond; the seen must explain the unseen. +It is from a tried and a varied and a troubled moral life that the +deepest and truest idea of God arises. The ascetic character +wants these; therefore in its religion there will be a harshness +of outline, a bareness, so to say, as well as a grandeur. In life +we may look for a singular purity; but also, and with equal +probability, for singular self-confidence, a certain unsympathising +straitness, and perhaps a few singular errors.</p> + +<p>The character of the ascetic, or austere species of goodness, +is almost exactly embodied in Milton. Men, indeed, are formed +on no ideal type. Human nature has tendencies too various, +and circumstances too complex. All men’s characters have sides +and aspects not to be comprehended in a single definition; but +in this case, the extent to which the character of the man, +as we find it delineated, approaches to the moral abstraction +which we sketch from theory, is remarkable. The whole being +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>of Milton may, in some sort, be summed up in the great commandment +of the austere character, ‘Reverence thyself.’ We +find it expressed in almost every one of his singular descriptions +of himself,—of those striking passages which are scattered +through all his works, and which add to whatever interest may +intrinsically belong to them one of the rarest of artistic charms, +that of magnanimous autobiography. They have been quoted a +thousand times, but one of them may perhaps be quoted again. +‘I had my time, readers, as others have, who have good learning +bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places, where the +opinion was it might be soonest attained; and as the manner is, +was not unstudied in those authors which are most commended; +whereof some were grave orators and historians, whose matter +methought I loved indeed, but as my age then was, so I understood +them; others were the smooth elegiac poets, whereof the +schools are not scarce, whom both for the pleasing sound of +their numerous writing, which in imitation I found most easy, +and most agreeable to nature’s part in me, and for their matter, +which what it is, there be few who know not, I was so allured +to read, that no recreation came to me better welcome: for that +it was then those years with me which are excused, though they +be least severe, I may be saved the labour to remember ye. +Whence having observed them to account it the chief glory of +their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, to praise, and by +that could esteem themselves worthiest to love those high perfections, +which under one or other name they took to celebrate, +I thought with myself by every instinct and presage of nature, +which is not wont to be false, that what emboldened them to +this task, might with such diligence as they used embolden me; +and that what judgment, wit, or elegance was my share, would +herein best appear, and best value itself, by how much more +wisely, and with more love of virtue I should choose (let rude +ears be absent) the object of not unlike praises: for albeit these +thoughts to some will seem virtuous and commendable, to others +only pardonable, to a third sort perhaps idle; yet the mentioning +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span>of them now will end in serious. Nor blame it, readers, +in those years to propose to themselves such a reward, as the +noblest dispositions above other things in this life have sometimes +preferred: whereof not to be sensible when good and fair +in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, +and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For by the firm +settling of these persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so +much a proficient, that if I found those authors any where speaking +unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names +which before they had extolled, this effect it wrought with me, +from that time forward their art I still applauded, but the men +I deplored; and above them all, preferred the two famous renowners +of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but honour +of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime +and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not +after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would +not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable +things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition +and pattern of the best and honourablest things; not presuming +to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he +have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which +is praiseworthy.’</p> + +<p>It may be fanciful to add, and we may be laughed at, but we +believe that the self-reverencing propensity was a little aided by +his singular personal beauty. All the describers of his youth +concur in telling us that this was very remarkable. Mr. Masson +has the following account of it:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘When Milton left Cambridge in July 1632, he was twenty-three +years and eight months old. In stature, therefore, at least, he was +already whatever he was to be. “In stature,” he says himself at a latter +period, when driven to speak on the subject, “I confess I am not tall, +but still of what is nearer to middle height than to little: and what if +I were of little; of which stature have often been very great men both +in peace and war—though why should that be called little which is +great enough for virtue?” (“<i>Staturâ, fateor, non sum procerâ, sed quæ +mediocri tamen quàm parvæ propior sit; sed quid si parvâ, quâ et +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>summi sæpe tum pace tum bello viri fuere—quanquam parva cur +dicitur, quæ ad virtutem satis magna est?</i>”) This is precise enough; +but we have Aubrey’s words to the same effect: “He was scarce so +tall as I am,” says Aubrey; to which, to make it more intelligible, he +appends the marginal note:—“<i>Qu.</i> <i>Quot</i> feet I am high? <i>Resp.</i> Of +middle stature;”—i.e. Milton was a little under middle height. “He +had light brown hair,” continues Aubrey,—putting the word “abrown” +(“auburn”) in the margin by way of synonym for “light brown;”—“his +complexion exceeding fair; oval face; his eye a dark gray.”’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>We are far from accusing Milton of personal vanity. His +character was too enormous, if we may be allowed so to say, for +a fault so petty. But a little tinge of excessive self-respect will +cling to those who can admire themselves. Ugly men are and +ought to be ashamed of their existence. Milton was not so.</p> + +<p>The peculiarities of the austere type of character stand out +in Milton more remarkably than in other men who partake of it, +because of the extreme strength of his nature. In reading him +this is the first thing that strikes us. We seem to have left the +little world of ordinary writers. The words of some authors are +said to have ‘hands and feet;’ they seem, that is, to have a +vigour and animation which only belong to things which live +and move. Milton’s words have not this animal life. There is +no rude energy about them. But, on the other hand, they have, +or seem to have, a soul, a spirit which other words have not. He +was early aware that what he wrote, ‘by certain vital signs it +had,’ was such as the world would not ‘willingly let die.’ After +two centuries we feel the same. There is a solemn and firm +music in the lines; a brooding sublimity haunts them; the spirit +of the great writer moves over the face of the page. In life +there seems to have been the same peculiar strength that his +works suggest to us. His moral tenacity is amazing. He took +his own course, and he kept his own course; and we may trace +in his defects the same characteristics. ‘Energy and ill-temper,’ +some say, ‘are the same thing;’ and though this is a strong exaggeration, +yet there is a basis of truth in it. People who labour +much will be cross if they do not obtain that for which they +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>labour; those who desire vehemently will be vexed if they do +not obtain that which they desire. As is the strength of the +impelling tendency, so, other things being equal, is the pain +which it will experience if it be baffled. Those, too, who are +set on what is high will be proportionately offended by the intrusion +of what is low. Accordingly, Milton is described by +those who knew him as a ‘harsh and choleric man.’ ‘He had,’ +we are told, ‘a gravity in his temper, not melancholy, or not till +the latter part of his life,—not sour, not morose, not ill-natured; +but a certain severity of mind, not condescending to little +things;’—and this, although his daughter remembered that he +was delightful company, the life of conversation, and that he was +so ‘on account of a flow of subjects and an unaffected cheerfulness +and civility.’ Doubtless this may have been so when he +was at ease, and at home. But there are unmistakable traces +of the harsher tendency in almost all his works.</p> + +<p>Some of the peculiarities of the ascetic character were likewise +augmented by his studious disposition. This began very +early in life, and continued till the end. ‘My father,’ he says, +‘destined me to the study of polite literature, which I embraced +with such avidity, that from the twelfth year of my age I hardly +ever retired to rest from my studies till midnight; which was +the first source of injury to my eyes, to the natural weakness of +which were added frequent headaches: all of which not retarding +my eagerness after knowledge, he took care to have me instructed,’ +&c. Every page of his works shows the result of this +education. In spite of the occupations of manhood, and the +blindness and melancholy of old age, he still continued to have +his principal pleasure in that ‘studious and select’ reading, +which, though often curiously transmuted, is perpetually involved +in the very texture of his works. We need not stay to +observe how a habit in itself so austere conduces to the development +of an austere character. Deep study, especially deep study +which haunts and rules the imagination, necessarily removes men +from life, absorbs them in themselves; purifies their conduct, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>with some risk of isolating their sympathies; developes that +loftiness of mood which is gifted with deep inspirations and indulged +with great ideas, but which tends in its excess to engender +a contempt for others, and a self-appreciation which is even +more displeasing to them.</p> + +<p>These same tendencies were aggravated also by two defects +which are exceedingly rare in great English authors, and which +perhaps Milton alone amongst those of the highest class is in a +remarkable degree chargeable with. We mean a deficiency in +humour, and a deficiency in a knowledge of plain human nature. +Probably when, after the lapse of ages, English literature is +looked at in its larger features only, and in comparison with +other literatures which have preceded or which may follow it, +the critics will lay down that its most striking characteristic as +a whole is its involution, so to say, in life; the degree to which +its book-life resembles real life; the extent to which the motives, +dispositions, and actions of common busy persons are +represented in a medium which would seem likely to give us +peculiarly the ideas of secluded, and the tendencies of meditative +men. It is but an aspect of this fact, that English literature +abounds,—some critics will say abounds excessively,—with +humour. This is in some sense the imaginative element of +ordinary life,—the relieving charm, partaking at once of contrast +and similitude, which gives a human and an intellectual +interest to the world of clowns and cottages, of fields and +farmers. The degree to which Milton is deficient in this element +is conspicuous in every page of his writings where its occurrence +could be looked for; and if we do not always look for it, +this is because the subjects of his most remarkable works are on +a removed elevation, where ordinary life, the world of ‘cakes +and ale,’ is never thought of and never expected. It is in his +dramas, as we should expect, that Milton shows this deficiency +the most. ‘Citizens’ never talk in his pages, as they do in +Shakespeare. We feel instinctively that Milton’s eye had never +rested with the same easy pleasure on the easy, ordinary, shop-keeping +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span>world. Perhaps, such is the complication of art, that it +is on the most tragic occasions that we feel this want the most. +It may seem an odd theory, and yet we believe it to be a true +principle, that catastrophes require a comic element. We appear +to feel the same principle in life. We may read solemn descriptions +of great events in history,—say of Lord Strafford’s trial, and +of his marvellous speech, and his appeal to his ‘saint in heaven;’ +but we comprehend the whole transaction much better when we +learn from Mr. Baillie, the eye-witness, that people ate nuts and +apples, and talked, and laughed, and betted on the great question +of acquittal and condemnation. Nor is it difficult to understand +why this should be so. It seems to be a law of the imagination, +at least in most men, that it will not bear concentration. It is +essentially a glancing faculty. It goes and comes, and comes +and goes, and we hardly know whence or why. But we most +of us know that when we try to fix it, in a moment it passes +away. Accordingly, the proper procedure of art is to let it go +in such a manner as to ensure its coming back again. The +force of artistic contrasts effects exactly this result. Skilfully-disposed +opposites suggest the notion of each other. We realise +more perfectly and easily the great idea, the tragic conception, +when we are familiarised with its effects on the minds of little +people,—with the petty consequences which it causes, as well as +with the enormous forces from which it comes. The catastrophe +of Samson Agonistes discloses Milton’s imperfect mastery of this +element of effect. If ever there was an occasion which admitted +its perfect employment, it was this. The kind of catastrophe is +exactly that which is sure to strike, and strike forcibly, the minds +of common persons. If their observations on the occasion were +really given to us, we could scarcely avoid something rather +comic. The eccentricity, so to speak, of ordinary persons, shows +itself peculiarly at such times, and they say the queerest things. +Shakespeare has exemplified this principle most skilfully on +various occasions: it is the sort of art which is just in his way. His +imagination always seems to be floating between the contrasts +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span>of things; and if his mind had a resting-place that it liked, it +was this ordinary view of extraordinary events. Milton was under +the great obligation to use this relieving principle of art in +the catastrophe of Samson, because he has made every effort to +heighten the strictly tragic element, which requires that relief. +His art, always serious, was never more serious. His Samson is +not the incarnation of physical strength which the popular fancy +embodies in the character; nor is it the simple and romantic +character of the Old Testament. On the contrary, Samson has +become a Puritan: the observations he makes would have done +much credit to a religious pikeman in Cromwell’s army. In +consequence, his death requires some lightening touches to +make it a properly artistic event. The pomp of seriousness +becomes too oppressive.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘At length for intermission sake they led him</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Between the pillars; he his guide requested</div> + <div class="verse indent0">(For so from such as nearer stood we heard),</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As over-tired, to let him lean a while</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With both his arms on those two massy pillars</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That to the arched roof gave main support.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He unsuspicious led him; which when Samson</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Felt in his arms, with head a while inclined,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And eyes fast fix’d, he stood, as one who pray’d,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or some great matter in his mind revolved:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">At last with head erect thus cry’d aloud,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">“Hitherto, lords, what your commands imposed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I have perform’d, as reason was, obeying,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not without wonder or delight beheld:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Now of my own accord such other trial</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I mean to show you of my strength, yet greater,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As with amaze shall strike all who behold.”</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This utter’d, straining all his nerves he bow’d,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As with the force of winds and waters pent</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When mountains tremble, those two massy pillars</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With horrible convulsion to and fro.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He tugg’d, he shook, till down they came, and drew</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon the heads of all who sat beneath,—Lords,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span> <div class="verse indent0">ladies, captains, counsellors, or priests,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their choice nobility and flower, not only</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of this, but each Philistian city round,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Met from all parts to solemnise this feast.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Samson with these immix’d, inevitably</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pull’d down the same destruction on himself;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The vulgar only ’scaped who stood without.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Chor.</i> O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Living or dying thou hast fulfill’d</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The work for which thou wast foretold</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To Israel, and now ly’st victorious</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Among thy slain self-kill’d,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not willingly, but tangled in the fold</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoin’d</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thee with thy slaughter’d foes, in number more</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than all thy life hath slain before.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">This is grave and fine; but Shakespeare would have done it +differently and better.</p> + +<p>We need not pause to observe how certainly this deficiency +in humour and in the delineation of ordinary human feeling is +connected with a recluse, a solitary, and to some extent an unsympathising +life. If we combine a certain natural aloofness +from common men with literary habits and an incessantly +studious musing, we shall at once see how powerful a force is +brought to bear on an instinctively austere character, and how +sure it will be to develope the peculiar tendencies of it, both +good and evil. It was to no purpose that Milton seems to have +practised a sort of professional study of life. No man could +rank more highly the importance to a poet of an intellectual +insight into all-important pursuits and ‘seemly arts.’ But it is +not by the mere intellect that we can take in the daily occupations +of mankind; we must sympathise with them, and see them +in their human relations. A chimney-sweeper, <i>quâ</i> chimney-sweeper, +is not very sentimental; it is in himself that he is so +interesting.</p> + +<p>Milton’s austere character is in some sort the more evident, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>because he possessed in large measure a certain relieving element, +in which those who are eminent in that character are very deficient. +Generally such persons have but obtuse senses. We are +prone to attribute the purity of their conduct to the dullness of +their sensations. Milton had no such obtuseness. He had every +opportunity for knowing the world of eye and ear. You cannot +open his works without seeing how much he did know of it. The +austerity of his nature was not caused by the deficiency of his +senses, but by an excess of the warning instinct. Even when he +professed to delineate the world of sensuous delight, this instinct +shows itself. Dr. Johnson thought he could discern melancholy +in ‘L’Allegro.’ If he had said solitariness, it would have been +correct.</p> + +<p>The peculiar nature of Milton’s character is very conspicuous +in the events of his domestic life, and in the views which +he took of the great public revolutions of his age. We can +spare only a very brief space for the examination of either of +these; but we will endeavour to say a few words upon each of +them.</p> + +<p>The circumstances of Milton’s first marriage are as singular +as any in the strange series of the loves of the poets. The +scene opens with an affair of business. Milton’s father, as is +well known, was a scrivener—a kind of professional money-lender, +then well known in London; and having been early +connected with the vicinity of Oxford, continued afterwards to +have pecuniary transactions of a certain nature with country +gentlemen of that neighbourhood. In the course of these he +advanced 500<i>l.</i> to a certain Mr. Richard Powell, a squire of fair +landed estate, residing at Forest Hill, which is about four miles +from the city of Oxford. The money was lent on the 11th of +June 1627; and a few months afterwards Mr. Milton the elder +gave 312<i>l.</i> of it to his son the poet, who was then a youth at +college, and made a formal memorandum of the same in the form +then usual, which still exists. The debt was never wholly discharged; +for in 1651 we find Milton declaring on oath that he had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span>never received more than 180<i>l.</i>, ‘in part satisfaction of his said +just and principal debt, with damages for the same and his costs +of suit.’ Mr. Keightley supposes him to have ‘taken many a ride +over to Forest Hill’ after he left Cambridge and was living at +Horton, which is not very far distant; but of course this is only +conjecture. We only know that about 1643 ‘he took,’ as his +nephew relates, ‘a journey into the country, nobody about him +certainly knowing the reason, or that it was more than a journey +of recreation. After a month’s stay he returns a married man, +who set out a bachelor; his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter +of Mr. Richard Powell, then a justice of the peace’ for the +county of Oxford. The suddenness of the event is rather striking; +but Philips was at the time one of Milton’s pupils, and it +is possible that some pains may have been taken to conceal the +love-affair from the ‘young gentlemen.’ Still, as Philips was +Milton’s nephew, he was likely to hear such intelligence tolerably +early; and as he does not seem to have done so, the <i>dénouement</i> +was probably rather prompt. At any rate, he was certainly +married at that time, and took his bride home to his house in +Aldersgate Street; and there was feasting and gaiety according +to the usual custom of such events. A few weeks after, the +lady went home to her friends, in which there was of course +nothing remarkable; but it is singular that when the natural +limit of her visit at home was come, she absolutely refused to +return to her husband. The grounds of so strange a resolution +are very difficult to ascertain. Political feeling ran very high: +old Mr. Powell adhered to the side of the king, and Milton to +that of the parliament; and this might be fancied to have +caused an estrangement. But on the other hand, these circumstances +must have been well known three months before. +Nothing had happened in that quarter of a year to change very +materially the position of the two parties in the State. Some +other cause for Mrs. Milton’s conduct must be looked for. She +herself is said to have stated that she did not like her husband’s +‘spare diet and hard study.’ No doubt, too, she found it dull +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span>in London; she had probably always lived in the country, and +must have been quite unaccustomed to the not very pleasant +scene in which she found herself. Still, many young ladies have +married schoolmasters, and many young ladies have gone from +Oxfordshire to London; and nevertheless, no such dissolution of +matrimonial harmony is known to have occurred.</p> + +<p>The fact we believe to be, that the bride took a dislike to +her husband. We cannot but have a suspicion that she did +not like him before marriage, and that pecuniary reasons had +their influence. If, however, Mr. Powell exerted his paternal +influence, it may be admitted that he had unusual considerations +to advance in favour of the alliance he proposed. It is +not every father whose creditors are handsome young gentlemen +with fair incomes. Perhaps it seemed no extreme tyranny to +press the young lady a little to do that which some others might +have done without pressing. Still, all this is but hypothesis; our +evidence as to the love-affairs of the time of King Charles I. is +but meagre. But, whatever the feelings of Miss Powell may have +been, those of Mrs. Milton are exceedingly certain. She would +not return to her husband; she did not answer his letters; and a +messenger whom he sent to bring her back was handled rather +roughly. Unquestionably, she was deeply to blame, by far the +most to blame of the two. Whatever may be alleged against +him, is as nothing compared with her offence in leaving him. To +defend so startling a course, we must adopt views of divorce even +more extreme than those which Milton was himself driven to +inculcate; and whatever Mrs. Milton’s practice may have been, +it may be fairly conjectured that her principles were strictly +orthodox. Yet, if she could be examined by a commission to the +ghosts, she would probably have some palliating circumstances +to allege in mitigation of judgment. There were, perhaps, peculiarities +in Milton’s character which a young lady might not improperly +dislike. The austere and ascetic character is of course +far less agreeable to women than the sensuous and susceptible. +The self-occupation, the pride, the abstraction of the former are +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span>to the female mind disagreeable; studious habits and unusual +self-denial seem to it purposeless; lofty enthusiasm, public spirit, +the solitary pursuit of an elevated ideal, are quite out of its way: +they rest too little on the visible world to be intelligible, they +are too little suggested by the daily occurrences of life to seem +possible. The poet in search of an imaginary phantom has +never been successful with women; there are innumerable proofs +of that; and the ascetic moralist is even less interesting. A +character combined out of the two—and this to some extent +was Milton’s—is singularly likely to meet with painful failure; +with a failure the more painful, that it could never anticipate +or explain it. Possibly he was absorbed in an austere self-conscious +excellence; it may never have occurred to him that a +lady might prefer the trivial detail of daily happiness.</p> + +<p>Milton’s own view of the matter he has explained to us in +his book on divorce; and it is a very odd one. His complaint +was that his wife would not talk. What he wished in marriage +was an ‘intimate and speaking help;’ he encountered a ‘mute +and spiritless mate.’ One of his principal incitements to the +‘pious necessity of divorcing,’ was an unusual deficiency in +household conversation. A certain loquacity in their wives has +been the complaint of various eminent men; but his domestic +affliction was a different one. The ‘ready and reviving associate,’ +whom he had hoped to have found, appeared to be a ‘co-inhabiting +mischief,’ who was sullen, and perhaps seemed bored +and tired. And at times he is disposed to cast the blame of his +misfortune on the uninstructive nature of youthful virtue. The +‘soberest and best-governed men,’ he says, are least practised in +such affairs, are not very well aware that ‘the bashful muteness’ +of a young lady ‘may oft-times hide the unliveliness and natural +sloth which is really unfit for conversation;’ and are rather in +too great haste to light the nuptial torch: whereas those ‘who +have lived most loosely, by reason of their bold accustoming, +prove most successful in their matches; because their wild +affections, unsettling at will, have been as so many divorces to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span>teach them experience.’ And he rather wishes to infer that the +virtuous man should, in case of mischance, have his resource of +divorce likewise.</p> + +<p>In truth, Milton’s book on divorce—though only containing +principles which he continued to believe long after he had any +personal reasons for wishing to do so—were clearly suggested at +first by the unusual phenomena of his first marriage. His wife +began by not speaking to him, and finished by running away +from him. Accordingly, like most books which spring out of +personal circumstances, his treatises on this subject have a frankness, +and a mastery of detail, which others on the same topic +sometimes want. He is remarkably free from one peculiarity of +modern writers on such matters. Several considerate gentlemen +are extremely anxious for the ‘rights of woman.’ They think +that women will benefit by removing the bulwarks which the +misguided experience of ages has erected for their protection. +A migratory system of domestic existence might suit Madame +Dudevant, and a few cases of singular exception; but we cannot +fancy that it would be, after all, so much to the taste of +most ladies as the present more permanent system. We have +some reminiscence of the stories of the wolf and the lamb, +when we hear amiable men addressing a female auditory (in +books, of course) on the advantages of a freer ‘development.’ +We are perhaps wrong, but we cherish an indistinct suspicion +that an indefinite extension of the power of selection would +rather tend to the advantage of the sex which more usually +chooses. But we have no occasion to avow such opinions now. +Milton had no such modern views. He is frankly and honestly +anxious for the rights of the man. Of the doctrine that divorce +is only permitted for the help of wives, he exclaims, ‘Palpably +uxorious! who can be ignorant, that a woman was created for +man, and not man for woman? What an injury is it after +wedlock to be slighted! what to be contended with in point of +house-rule who shall be the head; not for any parity of wisdom, +for that were something reasonable, but out of a female pride! +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span>“I suffer not,” saith St. Paul, “the woman to usurp authority +over the man.” If the Apostle could not suffer it,’ he naturally +remarks, ‘into what mould is he mortified that can?’ He had +a sincere desire to preserve men from the society of unsocial +and unsympathising women; and that was his principal idea.</p> + +<p>His theory, to a certain extent, partakes of the same +notion. The following passage contains a perspicuous exposition +of it: ‘Moses, Deut. xxiv. 1, established a grave and +prudent law, full of moral equity, full of due consideration +towards nature, that cannot be resisted, a law consenting with +the wisest men and civilest nations; that when a man hath +married a wife, if it come to pass that he cannot love her by +reason of some displeasing natural quality or unfitness in her, +let him write her a bill of divorce. The intent of which law +undoubtedly was this, that if any good and peaceable man +should discover some helpless disagreement or dislike, either of +mind or body, whereby he could not cheerfully perform the +duty of a husband without the perpetual dissembling of +offence and disturbance to his spirit; rather than to live uncomfortably +and unhappily both to himself and to his wife; +rather than to continue undertaking a duty, which he could not +possibly discharge, he might dismiss her, whom he could not +tolerably, and so not conscionably, retain. And this law the +Spirit of God by the mouth of Solomon, Prov. xxx. 21, 23, +testifies to be a good and a necessary law, by granting it that +“a hated woman” (for so the Hebrew word signifies, rather than +“odious,” though it come all to one), that “a hated woman, +when she is married, is a thing that the earth cannot bear.”’ +And he complains that the civil law of modern states interferes +with the ‘domestical prerogative of the husband.’</p> + +<p>His notion would seem to have been that a husband was +bound not to dismiss his wife, except for a reason really +sufficient; such as a thoroughly incompatible temper, an incorrigible +‘muteness,’ and a desertion like that of Mrs. Milton. +But he scarcely liked to admit that, in the use of this power, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>he should be subject to the correction of human tribunals. He +thought that the circumstances of each case depended upon +‘utterless facts;’ and that it was practically impossible for a +civil court to decide on a subject so delicate in its essence, and +so imperceptible in its data. But though amiable men doubtless +suffer much from the deficiencies of their wives, we should +hardly like to intrust them, in their own cases, with a jurisdiction +so prompt and summary.</p> + +<p>We are far from being concerned, however, just now with +the doctrine of divorce on its intrinsic merits: we were only +intending to give such an account of Milton’s opinions upon it +as might serve to illustrate his character. We think we have +shown that it is possible there may have been, in his domestic +relations, a little overweening pride; a tendency to overrate the +true extent of masculine rights, and to dwell on his wife’s duty +to be social towards him rather than on his duty to be social +towards her,—to be rather sullen whenever she was not quite +cheerful. Still, we are not defending a lady for leaving her +husband for defects of such inferior magnitude. Few households +would be kept together, if the right of transition were +exercised on such trifling occasions. We are but suggesting +that she may share the excuse which our great satirist has suggested +for another unreliable lady: ‘My mother was an angel; +but angels are not always <i>commodes à vivre</i>.’</p> + +<p>This is not a pleasant part of our subject, and we must +leave it. It is more agreeable to relate that on no occasion of +his life was the substantial excellence of Milton’s character +more conclusively shown, than in his conduct at the last stage +of this curious transaction. After a very considerable interval, +and after the publication of his book on divorce, Mrs. Milton +showed a disposition to return to her husband; and, in spite of +his theories, he received her with open arms. With great +Christian patience, he received her relations too. The Parliamentary +party was then victorious; and old Mr. Powell, who +had suffered very much in the cause of the king, lived until his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span>death untroubled, and ‘wholly to his devotion,’ as we are informed, +in the house of his son-in-law.</p> + +<p>Of the other occurrences of Milton’s domestic life we have +left ourselves no room to speak; we must turn to our second +source of illustration for his character,—his opinions on the +great public events of his time. It may seem odd, but we +believe that a man of austere character naturally tends <i>both</i> to +an excessive party spirit and to an extreme isolation. Of course, +the circumstances which develope the one must be different +from those which are necessary to call out the other: party-spirit +requires companionship; isolation, if we may be pardoned +so original a remark, excludes it. But though, as we have +shown, this species of character is prone to mental solitude, +tends to an intellectual isolation where it is possible and as +soon as it can, yet when invincible circumstances throw it into +mental companionship, when it is driven into earnest association +with earnest men on interesting topics, its zeal becomes +excessive. Such a man’s mind is at home only with its own +enthusiasm; it is cooped up within the narrow limits of its +own ideas, and it can make no allowance for those who differ +from or oppose them. We may see something of this excessive +party-zeal in Burke. No one’s reasons are more philosophical; +yet no one who acted with a party went further in aid of it or +was more violent in support of it. He forgot what could be +said for the tenets of the enemy; his imagination made that +enemy an abstract incarnation of his tenets. A man, too, who +knows that he formed his opinions originally by a genuine and +intellectual process, is but little aware of the undue energy +those ideas may obtain from the concurrence of those around. +Persons who first acquired their ideas at second-hand are more +open to a knowledge of their own weakness, and better acquainted +with the strange force which there is in the sympathy +of others. The isolated mind, when it acts with the popular +feeling, is apt to exaggerate that feeling for the most part by +an almost inevitable consequence of the feelings which render +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>it isolated. Milton is an example of this remark. In the +commencement of the struggle between Charles I. and the Parliament, +he sympathised strongly with the popular movement, +and carried to what seems now a strange extreme his partisanship. +No one could imagine that the first literary Englishman +of his time could write the following passage on Charles I.:</p> + +<p>‘Who can with patience hear this filthy, rascally Fool speak +so irreverently of Persons eminent both in Greatness and Piety? +Dare you compare King <i>David</i> with King <i>Charles</i>; a most +Religious King and Prophet, with a Superstitious Prince, and +who was but a Novice in the Christian Religion; a most prudent, +wise Prince with a weak one; a valiant Prince with a +cowardly one; finally, a most just Prince with a most unjust +one? Have you the impudence to commend his Chastity and +Sobriety, who is known to have committed all manner of +Leudness in company with his Confident the Duke of <i>Buckingham</i>? +It were to no purpose to inquire into the private +Actions of his Life, who publickly at Plays would embrace and +kiss the Ladies.’</p> + +<p>Whatever may be the faults of that ill-fated monarch—and +they assuredly were not small—no one would now think this +absurd invective to be even an excusable exaggeration. It +misses the true mark altogether, and is the expression of a +strongly imaginative mind, which has seen something that it +did not like, and is unable in consequence to see anything that +has any relation to it distinctly or correctly. But with the +supremacy of the Long Parliament Milton’s attachment to +their cause ceased. No one has drawn a more unfavourable +picture of the rule which they established. Years after their +supremacy had passed away, and the restoration of the +monarchy had covered with a new and strange scene the old +actors and the old world, he thrust into a most unlikely part of +his <i>History of England</i> the following attack on them:—</p> + +<p>‘But when once the superficiall zeal and popular fumes that +acted their New Magistracy were cool’d and spent in them, strait +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>every one betook himself (setting the Commonwealth behind, +his privat ends before) to doe as his own profit or ambition +ledd him. Then was justice delay’d, and soon after deni’d: +spight and favour determin’d all: hence faction, thence treachery, +both at home and in the field: ev’ry where wrong, and +oppression: foull and horrid deeds committed daily, or maintain’d, +in secret, or in open. Som who had bin call’d from +shops and warehouses, without other merit, to sit in Supreme +Councills and Committees as thir breeding was, fell to huckster +the Commonwealth. Others did therafter as men could soothe +and humour them best; so hee who would give most, or, under +covert of hypocriticall zeale, insinuat basest, enjoy’d unworthily +the rewards of lerning and fidelity; or escap’d the punishment +of his crimes and misdeeds. Thir Votes and Ordinances, which +men looked should have contain’d the repealing of bad laws, +and the immediat constitution of better, resounded with +nothing els, but new Impositions, Taxes, Excises; yeerly, +monthly, weekly. Not to reckon the Offices, Gifts, and Preferments +bestow’d and shar’d among themselvs.’</p> + +<p>His dislike of this system of committees, and of the +generally dull and unemphatic administration of the Commonwealth, +attached him to the Puritan army and to Cromwell; +but in the continuation of the passage we have referred to, he +expresses, with something, let it be said, of a schoolmaster +feeling, an unfavourable judgment on their career.</p> + +<p>‘For <i>Britan</i>, to speak a truth not oft’n spok’n, as it is a +Land fruitful enough of men stout and courageous in warr, soe +it is naturally not over-fertill of men able to govern justly and +prudently in peace, trusting onely in thir Motherwit; who consider +not justly, that civility, prudence, love of the Publick +good, more then of money or vaine honour, are to this soile in a +manner outlandish; grow not here, but in mindes well implanted +with solid and elaborat breeding, too impolitic els and +rude, if not headstrong and intractable to the industry and +vertue either of executing or understanding true Civill Government. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>Valiant indeed, and prosperous to win a field; but to +know the end and reason of winning, unjudicious, and unwise: +in good or bad succes, alike unteachable. For the Sun, which +wee want, ripens wits as well as fruits; and as Wine and Oil +are imported to us from abroad, soe must ripe understanding, +and many Civill Vertues, be imported into our mindes from +Foren Writings, and examples of best Ages; we shall els miscarry +still, and com short in the attempts of any great enterprize. +Hence did thir Victories prove as fruitles, as thir Losses +dang’rous; and left them still conq’ring under the same greevances, +that Men suffer conquer’d: which was indeed unlikely to +goe otherwise, unles Men more then vulgar bred up, as few of +them were, in the knowledg of antient and illustrious deeds, +invincible against many and vaine Titles, impartial to Freindships +and Relations, had conducted thir Affairs: but then from +the Chapman to the Retailer, many whose ignorance was more +audacious then the rest, were admitted with all thir sordid +Rudiments to bear no meane sway among them, both in Church +and State.’</p> + +<p>We need not speak of Milton’s disapprobation of the Restoration. +Between him and the world of Charles II. the opposition +was inevitable and infinite. Therefore the general fact +remains, that except in the early struggles, when he exaggerated +the popular feeling, he remained solitary in opinion, and had +very little sympathy with any of the prevailing parties of his +time.</p> + +<p>Milton’s own theory of government is to be learned from +his works. He advocated a free commonwealth, without rule of +a single person, or House of Lords: but the form of his projected +commonwealth was peculiar. He thought that a certain +perpetual council, which should be elected by the nation once +for all, and the number of which should be filled up as vacancies +might occur, was the best possible machine of government. +He did not confine his advocacy to abstract theory, but proposed +the immediate establishment of such a council in this +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>country. We need not go into an elaborate discussion to show +the errors of this conclusion. Hardly any one, then or since, has +probably adopted it. The interest of the theoretical parts of +Milton’s political works is entirely historical. The tenets +advocated are not of great value, and the arguments by which +he supports them are perhaps of less; but their relation to the +times in which they were written gives them a very singular +interest. The time of the Commonwealth was the only period +in English history in which the fundamental questions of +government have been thrown open for popular discussion in +this country. We read in French literature discussions on the +advisability of establishing a monarchy, on the advisability of +establishing a republic, on the advisability of establishing an +empire; and, before we proceed to examine the arguments, we +cannot help being struck at the strange contrast which this +multiplicity of open questions presents to our own uninquiring +acquiescence in the hereditary polity which has descended to us. +‘King, Lords, and Commons’ are, we think, ordinances of +nature. Yet Milton’s political writings embody the reflections +of a period when, for a few years, the government of England +was nearly as much a subject of fundamental discussion as that +of France was in 1851. An ‘invitation to thinkers,’ to borrow +the phrase of Neckar, was given by the circumstances of the +time; and, with the habitual facility of philosophical speculation, +it was accepted, and used to the utmost.</p> + +<p>Such are not the kind of speculations in which we expect +assistance from Milton. It is not in its transactions with others, +in its dealings with the manifold world, that the isolated and +austere mind shows itself to the most advantage. Its strength +lies in itself. It has ‘a calm and pleasing solitariness.’ It hears +thoughts which others cannot hear. It enjoys the quiet and +still air of delightful studies; and is ever conscious of such +musing and poetry ‘as is not to be obtained by the invocation +of Dame Memory and her twin daughters, but by devout +prayer to that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span>and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed +fire of His altar.’</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Descend from Heav’n, Urania, by that name</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If rightly thou art call’d, whose voice divine</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Following, above th’ Olympian hill I soar,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Above the flight of Pegaséan wing.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The meaning, not the name, I call; for thou</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of old Olympus dwell’st, but heav’nly born:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Before the hills appear’d, or fountain flow’d,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In presence of th’ Almighty Father, pleased</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With thy celestial song. Up led by Thee</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into the Heav’n of Heav’ns I have presumed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy temp’ring. With like safety guided down,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Return me to my native element;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lest from this flying steed, unrein’d (as once</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bellerophon, though from a lower clime),</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dismounted, on th’ Aleian field I fall</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Erroneous there to wander and forlorn.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Within the visible diurnal sphere;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To hoarse or mute, though fall’n on evil days,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In darkness, and with dangers compass’d round,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And solitude; yet not alone, while thou</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Visit’st my slumbers nightly, or when morn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Purples the east: still govern thou my song,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Urania, and fit audience find, though few;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But drive far off the barb’rous dissonance</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To rapture, till the savage clamour drown’d</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For thou art heav’nly, she an empty dream.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span></p> + +<p>‘An ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found +John Milton in a small chamber hung with rusty green, sitting +in an elbow-chair, and dressed neatly in black: pale, but not +cadaverous.’ ‘He used also to sit in a gray coarse cloth coat at +the door of his house near Bunhill Fields, in warm, sunny +weather;’ and the common people said he was inspired.</p> + +<p>If from the man we turn to his works, we are struck at +once with two singular contrasts. The first of them is this. +The distinction between ancient and modern art is sometimes +said, and perhaps truly, to consist in the simple bareness of the +imaginative conceptions which we find in ancient art, and the +comparatively complex clothing in which all modern creations +are embodied. If we adopt this distinction, Milton seems in +some sort ancient, and in some sort modern. Nothing is so +simple as the subject-matter of his works. The two greatest of +his creations, the character of Satan and the character of Eve, +are two of the simplest—the latter probably the very +simplest—in the whole field of literature. On this side +Milton’s art is classical. On the other hand, in no writer is +the imagery more profuse, the illustrations more various, the +dress altogether more splendid. And in this respect the style +of his art seems romantic and modern. In real truth, however, +it is only ancient art in a modern disguise. The dress is a +mere dress, and can be stripped off when we will. We all of +us do perhaps in memory strip it off for ourselves. Notwithstanding +the lavish adornments with which her image is presented, +the character of Eve is still the simplest sort of feminine +essence—the pure embodiment of that inner nature, which we +believe and hope that women have. The character of Satan, +though it is not so easily described, has nearly as few elements +in it. The most purely modern conceptions will not bear to be +unclothed in this matter. Their romantic garment clings inseparably +to them. Hamlet and Lear are not to be thought of +except as complex characters, with very involved and complicated +embodiments. They are as difficult to draw out in words +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span>as the common characters of life are; that of Hamlet, perhaps, +is more so. If we make it, as perhaps we should, the characteristic +of modern and romantic art that it presents us with +creations which we cannot think of or delineate except as very +varied, and, so to say, circumstantial, we must not rank Milton +among the masters of romantic art. And without involving +the subject in the troubled sea of an old controversy, we may +say that the most striking of the poetical peculiarities of Milton +is the bare simplicity of his ideas, and the rich abundance of +his illustrations.</p> + +<p>Another of his peculiarities is equally striking. There +seems to be such a thing as second-hand poetry. Some poets, +musing on the poetry of other men, have unconsciously shaped +it into something of their own: the new conception is like the +original, it would never probably have existed had not the original +existed previously; still it is sufficiently different from +the original to be a new thing, not a copy or a plagiarism; it +is a creation, though, so to say, a suggested creation. Gray is +as good an example as can be found of a poet whose works +abound in this species of semi-original conceptions. Industrious +critics track his best lines back, and find others like them +which doubtless lingered near his fancy while he was writing +them. The same critics have been equally busy with the +works of Milton, and equally successful. They find traces of +his reading in half his works; not, which any reader could do, +in overt similes and distinct illustrations, but also in the very +texture of the thought and the expression. In many cases, +doubtless, they discover more than he himself knew. A mind +like his, which has an immense store of imaginative recollections, +can never know which of his own imaginations is exactly +suggested by which recollection. Men awake with their best +ideas; it is seldom worth while to investigate very curiously +whence they came. Our proper business is to adapt, and mould, +and act upon them. Of poets perhaps this is true even more +remarkably than of other men; their ideas are suggested in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span>modes, and according to laws, which are even more impossible +to specify than the ideas of the rest of the world. Second-hand +poetry, so to say, often seems quite original to the poet himself; +he frequently does not know that he derived it from an old +memory; years afterwards it may strike him as it does others. +Still, in general, such inferior species of creation is not so +likely to be found in minds of singular originality as in those of +less. A brooding, placid, cultivated mind, like that of Gray, is +the place where we should expect to meet with it. Great originality +disturbs the adaptive process, removes the mind of the +poet from the thoughts of other men, and occupies it with its +own heated and flashing thoughts. Poetry of the second degree +is like the secondary rocks of modern geology—a still, +gentle, alluvial formation; the igneous glow of primary genius +brings forth ideas like the primeval granite, simple, astounding, +and alone. Milton’s case is an exception to this rule. His +mind has marked originality, probably as much of it as any in +literature; but it has as much of moulded recollection as any +mind too. His poetry in consequence is like an artificial park, +green, and soft, and beautiful, yet with outlines bold, distinct, +and firm, and the eternal rock ever jutting out; or, better still, +it is like our own lake scenery, where nature has herself the +same combination—where we have Rydal-water side by side +with the everlasting upheaved mountain. Milton has the same +union of softened beauty with unimpaired grandeur; and it is +his peculiarity.</p> + +<p>These are the two contrasts which puzzle us at first in +Milton, and which distinguish him from other poets in our +remembrance afterwards. We have a superficial complexity in +illustration, and imagery, and metaphor; and in contrast with +it we observe a latent simplicity of idea, an almost rude +strength of conception. The underlying thoughts are few, +though the flowers on the surface are so many. We have likewise +the perpetual contrast of the soft poetry of the memory, +and the firm, as it were fused, and glowing poetry of the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span>imagination. His words, we may half fancifully say, are like +his character. There is the same austerity in the real essence, +the same exquisiteness of sense, the same delicacy of form +which we know that he had, the same music which we imagine +there was in his voice. In both his character and his poetry +there was an ascetic nature in a sheath of beauty.</p> + +<p>No book perhaps which has ever been written is more +difficult to criticise than <i>Paradise Lost</i>. The only way to +criticise a work of the imagination, is to describe its effect +upon the mind of the reader—at any rate, of the critic; and +this can only be adequately delineated by strong illustrations, +apt similes, and perhaps a little exaggeration. The task is in +its very nature not an easy one; the poet paints a picture on +the fancy of the critic, and the critic has in some sort to copy +it on the paper. He must say what it is before he can make +remarks upon it. But in the case of <i>Paradise Lost</i> we hardly +like to use illustrations. The subject is one which the imagination +rather shrinks from. At any rate, it requires courage, +and an effort to compel the mind to view such a subject as distinctly +and vividly as it views other subjects. Another peculiarity +of <i>Paradise Lost</i> makes the difficulty even greater. It +does not profess to be a mere work of art; or rather, it claims +to be by no means that, and that only. It starts with a dogmatic +aim; it avowedly intends to</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent8">‘assert eternal Providence,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And justify the ways of God to man.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">In this point of view we have always had a sympathy with the +Cambridge mathematician who has been so much abused. He +said, ‘After all, <i>Paradise Lost</i> proves nothing;’ and various +persons of poetical tastes and temperament have been very +severe on the prosaic observation. Yet, ‘after all,’ he was +right. Milton professed to prove something. He was too profound +a critic—rather, he had too profound an instinct of those +eternal principles of art which criticism tries to state—not to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span>know that on such a subject he must prove something. He +professed to deal with the great problem of human destiny; to +show why man was created, in what kind of universe he lives, +whence he came, and whither he goes. He dealt of necessity +with the greatest of subjects. He had to sketch the greatest +of objects. He was concerned with infinity and eternity even +more than with time and sense; he undertook to delineate the +ways, and consequently the character of Providence, as well as +the conduct and the tendencies of man. The essence of success +in such an attempt is to satisfy the religious sense of man; to +bring home to our hearts what we know to be true; to teach +us what we have not seen; to awaken us to what we have forgotten; +to remove the ‘covering’ from all people, and ‘the +veil’ that is spread over all nations; to give us, in a word, such +a conception of things divine and human as we can accept, +believe, and trust. The true doctrine of criticism demands +what Milton invites—an examination of the degree in which +the great epic attains this aim. And if, in examining it, we +find it necessary to use unusual illustrations, and plainer words +than are customary, it must be our excuse that we do not think +the subject can be made clear without them.</p> + +<p>The defect of <i>Paradise Lost</i> is that, after all, it is founded +on a <i>political</i> transaction. The scene is in heaven very early in +the history of the universe, before the creation of man or the +fall of Satan. We have a description of a court. The angels,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘By imperial summons called,’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">appear</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Under their hierarchs in orders bright:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Standards and gonfalons ’twixt van and rear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Stream in the air, and for distinction serve</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of hierarchies, and orders, and degrees.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">To this assemblage ‘th’ Omnipotent’ speaks:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Hear, all ye Angels, progeny of light,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Pow’rs,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span> <div class="verse indent0">Hear my decree, which unrevoked shall stand:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This day I have begot whom I declare</div> + <div class="verse indent0">My only Son; and on this holy hill</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Him have anointed, whom ye now behold</div> + <div class="verse indent0">At my right hand; your Head I him appoint;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And by myself have sworn, to him shall bow</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All knees in Heav’n, and shall confess him Lord:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Under his great vicegerent reign abide</div> + <div class="verse indent0">United as one individual soul</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For ever happy. Him who disobeys,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Int’ utter darkness, deep ingulph’d, his place</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ordain’d without redemption, without end.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>This act of patronage was not popular at court; and why +should it have been? The religious sense is against it. The +worship which sinful men owe to God is not transferable to +lieutenants and vicegerents. The whole scene of the court jars +upon a true feeling. We seem to be reading about some emperor +of history, who admits his son to a share in the empire, +who confers on him a considerable jurisdiction, and requires +officials, with ‘standards and gonfalons,’ to bow before him. +The orthodoxy of Milton is quite as questionable as his +accuracy. The old Athanasian creed was not made by persons +who would allow such a picture as that of Milton to stand +before their imaginations. The generation of the Son was to +them a fact ‘before all time;’ an eternal fact. There was no +question in their minds of patronage or promotion. The Son +was the Son before all time, just as the Father was the Father +before all time. Milton had in such matters a bold but not +very sensitive imagination. He accepted the inevitable materialism +of biblical, and, to some extent, of all religious +language as distinct revelation. He certainly believed, in contradiction +to the old creed, that God had both ‘parts and +passions.’ He imagined that earth</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Is but the shadow of heaven and things therein,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each to other like more than on earth is thought.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span></p> + +<p class="noindent">From some passages it would seem that he actually thought of +God as having ‘the members and form’ of a man. Naturally, +therefore, he would have no toleration for the mysterious notions +of time and eternity which are involved in the traditional +doctrine. We are not, however, now concerned with Milton’s +belief, but with his representation of his creed—his picture, so +to say, of it in <i>Paradise Lost</i>; still, as we cannot but think, +that picture is almost irreligious, and certainly different from +that which has been generally accepted in Christendom. Such +phrases as ‘before all time,’ ‘eternal generation,’ are doubtless +very vaguely interpreted by the mass of men; nevertheless, no +sensitively orthodox man <i>could</i> have drawn the picture of a +generation, not to say an exaltation, <i>in</i> time.</p> + +<p>We shall see this more clearly by reading what follows in +the poem:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘All seemed well pleased; all seemed, but were not all.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">One of the archangels, whose name can be guessed, decidedly +disapproved, and calls a meeting, at which he explains that</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent14">‘orders and degrees</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Jar not with liberty, but well consist;’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">but still, that the promotion of a new person, on grounds of +relationship merely, above, even infinitely above, the old +angels, with imperial titles, was ‘a new law,’ and rather +tyrannical. Abdiel,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent8">‘than whom none with more zeal adored</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Deity, and with divine commands obeyed,’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">attempts a defence:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent10">‘Grant it thee unjust,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That equal over equals monarch reign:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thyself, though great and glorious, dost thou count,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or all angelic nature join’d in one,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Equal to him begotten Son? by whom</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As by his Word the mighty Father made</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All things, ev’n thee; and all the Spirits of Heav’n</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span> <div class="verse indent0">By him created in their bright degrees,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Crown’d them with glory, and to their glory named</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Pow’rs,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Essential Pow’rs; nor by his reign obscured,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But more illustrious made; since he the Head,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One of our number thus reduced becomes;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His laws our laws; all honour to him done</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Returns our own. Cease then this impious rage,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And tempt not these; but hasten to appease</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Th’ incensed Father and th’ incensed Son,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While pardon may be found, in time besought.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Yet though Abdiel’s intentions were undeniably good, his argument +is rather specious. Acting as an instrument in the +process of creation would scarcely give a valid claim to the +obedience of the created being. Power may be shown in the +act, no doubt; but mere power gives no true claim to +the obedience of moral beings. It is a kind of principle of +all manner of idolatries and false religions to believe that it +does so. Satan, besides, takes issue on the fact:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘That we were formed then, say’st thou? and the work</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of secondary hands, by task transferr’d</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From Father to his Son? Strange point and new!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Doctrine which we would know whence learned.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">And we must say that the speech in which the new ruler is introduced +to the ‘thrones, dominations, princedoms, powers,’ is +hard to reconcile with Abdiel’s exposition. ‘<i>This day</i>’ he +seems to have come into existence, and could hardly have +assisted at the creation of the angels, who are not young, and +who converse with one another like old acquaintances.</p> + +<p>We have gone into this part of the subject at length, +because it is the source of the great error which pervades +<i>Paradise Lost</i>. Satan is made <i>interesting</i>. This has been +the charge of a thousand orthodox and even heterodox writers +against Milton. Shelley, on the other hand, has gloried in it; +and fancied, if we remember rightly, that Milton intentionally +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span>ranged himself on the Satanic side of the universe, just as +Shelley himself would have done, and that he wished to show +the falsity of the ordinary theology. But Milton was born an +age too early for such aims, and was far too sincere to have +advocated any doctrine in a form so indirect. He believed +every word he said. He was not conscious of the effect his +teaching would produce in an age like this, when scepticism is +in the air, and when it is not possible to help looking coolly on +his delineations. Probably in our boyhood we can recollect a +period when any solemn description of celestial events would +have commanded our respect; we should not have dared to +read it intelligently, to canvass its details and see what it +meant: it was a religious book; it sounded reverential, and +that would have sufficed. Something like this was the state of +mind of the seventeenth century. Even Milton probably +shared in a vague reverence for religious language. He hardly +felt the moral effect of the pictures he was drawing. His +artistic instinct too, often hurries him away. His Satan was +to him, as to us, the hero of his poem. Having commenced by +making him resist on an occasion which in an earthly kingdom +would have been excusable and proper, he probably a little +sympathised with him, just as his readers do.</p> + +<p>The interest of Satan’s character is at its height in the first +two books. Coleridge justly compared it to that of Napoleon. +There is the same pride, the same satanic ability, the same will, +the same egotism. His character seems to grow with his position. +He is far finer after his fall, in misery and suffering, with +scarcely any resource except in himself, than he was originally +in heaven; at least, if Raphael’s description of him can be +trusted. No portrait which imagination or history has drawn +of a revolutionary anarch is nearly so perfect; there is all the +grandeur of the greatest human mind, and a certain infinitude +in his circumstances which humanity must ever want. Few +Englishmen feel a profound reverence for Napoleon I. There +was no French alliance in <i>his</i> time; we have most of us some +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span>tradition of antipathy to him. Yet hardly any Englishman +can read the account of the campaign of 1814 without feeling +his interest in the Emperor to be strong, and without perhaps +being conscious of a latent wish that he may succeed. Our +opinion is against him, our serious wish is of course for England; +but the imagination has a sympathy of its own, and will not +give place. We read about the great general—never greater +than in that last emergency—showing resources of genius that +seem almost infinite, and that assuredly have never been +surpassed, yet vanquished, yielding to the power of circumstances, +to the combined force of adversaries, each of whom +singly he outmatches in strength, and all of whom together he +surpasses in majesty and in mind. Something of the same sort +of interest belongs to the Satan of the first two books of +<i>Paradise Lost</i>. We know that he will be vanquished; his +name is not a recommendation. Still we do not imagine distinctly +the minds by which he is to be vanquished; we do not +take the same interest in them that we do in him; our sympathies, +our fancy, are on his side.</p> + +<p>Perhaps much of this was inevitable; yet what a defect it +is! especially what a defect in Milton’s own view, and looked at +with the stern realism with which he regarded it! Suppose that +the author of evil in the universe were the most attractive being +in it; suppose that the source of all sin were the origin of all +interest to us! We need not dwell upon this.</p> + +<p>As we have said, much of this was difficult to avoid, if indeed +it could be avoided in dealing with such a theme. Even +Milton shrank, in some measure, from delineating the Divine +character. His imagination evidently halts when it is required +to perform that task. The more delicate imagination of our +modern world would shrink still more. Any person who will +consider what such an attempt must end in, will find his nerves +quiver. But by a curiously fatal error, Milton has selected for +delineation exactly that part of the Divine nature which is most +beyond the reach of the human faculties, and which is also, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span>when we try to describe our fancy of it, the least effective to our +minds. He has made God <i>argue</i>. Now the procedure of the +Divine mind from truth to truth must ever be incomprehensible +to us; the notion, indeed, of His proceeding at all, is a contradiction: +to some extent, at least, it is inevitable that we +should use such language, but we know it is in reality inapplicable. +A long train of reasoning in such a connection is so out +of place as to be painful; and yet Milton has many. He relates +a series of family prayers in heaven, with sermons afterwards, +which are very tedious. Even Pope was shocked at the notion +of Providence talking like ‘a school-divine.’ And there is the +still worse error, that if you once attribute reasoning to Him, +subsequent logicians may discover that He does not reason +very well.</p> + +<p>Another way in which Milton has contrived to strengthen +our interest in Satan, is the number and insipidity of the good +angels. There are old rules as to the necessity of a supernatural +machinery for an epic poem, worth some fraction of the paper +on which they are written, and derived from the practice of +Homer, who believed his gods and goddesses to be real beings, +and would have been rather harsh with a critic who called them +machinery. These rules had probably an influence with Milton, +and induced him to manipulate these serious angels more than +he would have done otherwise. They appear to be excellent +administrators with very little to do; a kind of grand chamberlains +with wings, who fly down to earth and communicate information +to Adam and Eve. They have no character; they are +essentially messengers, merely conductors, so to say, of the providential +will: no one fancies that they have an independent +power of action; they seem scarcely to have minds of their own. +No effect can be more unfortunate. If the struggle of Satan +had been with Deity directly, the natural instincts of religion +would have been awakened; but when an angel possessed of +mind is contrasted with angels possessed only of wings, we +sympathise with the former.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span></p> + +<p>In the first two books, therefore, our sympathy with Milton’s +Satan is great; we had almost said unqualified. The speeches +he delivers are of well-known excellence. Lord Brougham, no +contemptible judge of emphatic oratory, has laid down, that if +a person had not an opportunity of access to the great Attic +master-pieces, he had better choose these for a model. What is +to be regretted about the orator is, that he scarcely acts up to +his sentiments. ‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,’ +is, at any rate, an audacious declaration. But he has no room +for exhibiting similar audacity in action. His offensive career +is limited. In the nature of the subject there was scarcely any +opportunity for the fallen archangel to display in the detail of +his operations the surpassing intellect with which Milton has +endowed him. He goes across chaos, gets into a few physical +difficulties; but these are not much. His grand aim is the conquest +of our first parents; and we are at once struck with the +enormous inequality of the conflict. Two beings just created, +without experience, without guile, without knowledge of good +and evil, are expected to contend with a being on the delineation +of whose powers every resource of art and imagination, every +subtle suggestion, every emphatic simile, has been lavished. The +idea in every reader’s mind is, and must be, not surprise that +our first parents should yield, but wonder that Satan should +not think it beneath him to attack them. It is as if an army +should invest a cottage.</p> + +<p>We have spoken more of theology than we intended; and +we need not say how much the monstrous inequalities attributed +to the combatants affect our estimate of the results of the conflict. +The state of man is what it is, because the defenceless +Adam and Eve of Milton’s imagination yielded to the nearly all-powerful +Satan whom he has delineated. Milton has in some +sense invented this difficulty; for in the book of Genesis there +is no such inequality. The serpent may be subtler than any +beast of the field; but he is not necessarily subtler or cleverer +than man. So far from Milton having justified the ways of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span>God to man, he has loaded the common theology with a new +encumbrance.</p> + +<p>We may need refreshment after this discussion; and we +cannot find it better than in reading a few remarks of Eve.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘That day I oft remember, when from sleep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I first awaked, and found myself reposed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Under a shade on flow’rs, much wond’ring where</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And what I was, whence thither brought, and how.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not distant far from thence a murm’ring sound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of waters issued from a cave, and spread</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pure as th’ expanse of Heav’n.... I thither went</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With unexperienced thought, and laid me down</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On the green bank, to look into the clear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Smooth lake, that to me seem’d another sky.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As I bent down to look, just opposite</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A shape within the wat’ry gleam appear’d,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bending to look on me. I started back;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It started back: but pleased I soon return’d;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pleased it return’d as soon with answ’ring looks</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of sympathy and love: there I had fix’d</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Had not a voice thus warn’d me. What thou seest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What there thou seest, fair Creature, is thyself;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With thee it came and goes: but follow me,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And I will bring thee where no shadow stays</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy coming, and thy soft embraces, he</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose image thou art; him thou shalt enjoy</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Inseparably thine: to him shalt bear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Multitudes like thyself, and thence be call’d</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mother of Human Race. What could I do</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But follow straight, invisibly thus led?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Till I espy’d thee, fair indeed and tall</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Under a platan; yet methought less fair,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Less winning soft, less amiably mild,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than that smooth wat’ry image. Back I turn’d:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou following cry’dst aloud, Return, fair Eve;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whom fly’st thou?’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Eve’s character, indeed, is one of the most wonderful efforts of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>the human imagination. She is a kind of abstract woman; +essentially a typical being; an official ‘mother of all living.’ +Yet she is a real interesting woman, not only full of delicacy +and sweetness, but with all the undefinable fascination, the +charm of personality, which such typical characters hardly ever +have. By what consummate miracle of wit this charm of individuality +is preserved, without impairing the general idea which +is ever present to us, we cannot explain, for we do not know.</p> + +<p>Adam is far less successful. He has good hair,—‘hyacinthine +locks’ that ‘from his parted forelock manly hung;’ a +‘fair large front’ and ‘eye sublime;’ but he has little else that +we care for. There is, in truth, no opportunity of displaying +manly virtues, even if he possessed them. He has only to yield +to his wife’s solicitations, which he does. Nor are we sure that +he does it well. He is very tedious; he indulges in sermons +which are good; but most men cannot but fear that so delightful +a being as Eve must have found him tiresome. She +steps away, however, and goes to sleep at some of the worst +points.</p> + +<p>Dr. Johnson remarked, that, after all, <i>Paradise Lost</i> was +one of the books which no one wished longer: we fear, in this +irreverent generation, some wish it shorter. Hardly any reader +would be sorry if some portions of the later books had been +spared him. Coleridge, indeed, discovered profound mysteries +in the last; but in what could not Coleridge find a mystery +if he wished? Dryden more wisely remarked that Milton +became tedious when he entered upon a ‘tract of Scripture.’ +Nor is it surprising that such is the case. The style of many +parts of Scripture is such that it will not bear addition or subtraction. +A word less, or an idea more, and the effect upon the +mind is the same no longer. Nothing can be more tiresome +than a sermonic amplification of such passages. It is almost +too much when, as from the pulpit, a paraphrastic commentary +is prepared for our spiritual improvement. In deference to the +intention we bear it, but we bear it unwillingly; and we cannot +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span>endure it at all when, as in poems, the object is to awaken +our fancy rather than to improve our conduct. The account +of the creation in the book of Genesis is one of the compositions +from which no sensitive imagination would subtract an iota, to +which it could not bear to add a word. Milton’s paraphrase is +alike copious and ineffective. The universe is, in railway +phrase, ‘opened,’ but not created; no green earth springs in a +moment from the indefinite void. Instead, too, of the simple +loneliness of the Old Testament, several angelic officials are in +attendance, who help in nothing, but indicate that heaven must +be plentifully supplied with tame creatures.</p> + +<p>There is no difficulty in writing such criticisms, and, indeed, +other unfavourable criticisms on <i>Paradise Lost</i>. There +is scarcely any book in the world which is open to a greater +number, or which a reader who allows plain words to produce a +due effect will be less satisfied with. Yet what book is really +greater? In the best parts the words have a magic in them; +even in the inferior passages you are hardly sensible of their +inferiority till you translate them into your own language. +Perhaps no style ever written by man expressed so adequately +the conceptions of a mind so strong and so peculiar; a manly +strength, a haunting atmosphere of enhancing suggestions, a +firm continuous music, are only some of its excellences. To +comprehend the whole of the others, you must take the volume +down and read it,—the best defence of Milton, as has been said +most truly, against all objections.</p> + +<p>Probably no book shows the transition which our theology +has made since the middle of the seventeenth century, at once +so plainly and so fully. We do not now compose long narratives +to ‘justify the ways of God to man.’ The more orthodox we +are, the more we shrink from it; the more we hesitate at such +a task, the more we allege that we have no powers for it. Our +most celebrated defences of established tenets are in the style +of Butler, not in that of Milton. They do not profess to show +a satisfactory explanation of human destiny; on the contrary, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span>they hint that probably we could not understand such an explanation +if it were given us; at any rate, they allow that it is not +given us. Their course is palliative. They suggest an ‘analogy +of difficulties.’ If our minds were greater, so they reason, we +should comprehend these doctrines: now we cannot explain +analogous facts which we see and know. No style can be more +opposite to the bold argument, the boastful exposition of Milton. +The teaching of the eighteenth century is in the very atmosphere +we breathe. We read it in the teachings of Oxford; +we hear it from the missionaries of the Vatican. The air of the +theology is clarified. We know our difficulties, at least; we +are rather prone to exaggerate the weight of some than to deny +the reality of any.</p> + +<p>We cannot continue a line of thought which would draw us +on too far for the patience of our readers. We must, however, +make one more remark, and we shall have finished our criticism +on <i>Paradise Lost</i>. It is analogous to that which we have just +made. The scheme of the poem is based on an offence against +positive morality. The offence of Adam was not against nature +or conscience, nor against any thing of which we can see the +reason, or conceive the obligation, but against an unexplained +injunction of the Supreme Will. The rebellion in heaven, as +Milton describes it, was a rebellion, not against known ethics, +or immutable spiritual laws, but against an arbitrary selection +and an unexplained edict. We do not say that there is no such +thing as positive morality: we do not think so; even if we did, +we should not insert a proposition so startling at the conclusion +of a literary criticism. But we are sure that wherever a positive +moral edict is promulgated, it is no subject, except perhaps +under a very peculiar treatment, for literary art. By the very +nature of it, it cannot satisfy the heart and conscience. It is +a difficulty; we need not attempt to explain it away. There +are mysteries enough which will never be explained away. But +it is contrary to every principle of criticism to state the difficulty +as if it were not one; to bring forward the puzzle, yet +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>leave it to itself; to publish so strange a problem, and give only +an untrue solution of it: and yet such, in its bare statement, is +all that Milton has done.</p> + +<p>Of Milton’s other writings we have left ourselves no room to +speak; and though every one of them, or almost every one of +them, would well repay a careful criticism, yet few of them +seem to throw much additional light on his character, or add +much to our essential notion of his genius, though they may +exemplify and enhance it. <i>Comus</i> is the poem which does so +the most. Literature has become so much lighter than it used +to be, that we can scarcely realise the position it occupied in +the light literature of our forefathers. We have now in our +own language many poems that are pleasanter in their subject, +more graceful in their execution, more flowing in their outline, +more easy to read. Dr. Johnson, though perhaps no very excellent +authority on the more intangible graces of literature, +was disposed to deny to Milton the capacity of creating the +lighter literature: ‘Milton, madam, was a genius that could +cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon +cherry-stones.’ And it would not be surprising if this generation, +which has access to the almost indefinite quantity of +lighter compositions which have been produced since Johnson’s +time, were to echo his sentence. In some degree, perhaps, the +popular taste does so. <i>Comus</i> has no longer the peculiar exceptional +popularity which it used to have. We can talk without +general odium of its defects. Its characters are nothing, +its sentiments are tedious, its story is not interesting. But it +is only when we have realised the magnitude of its deficiencies +that we comprehend the peculiarity of its greatness. Its +power is in its style. A grave and firm music pervades it: it is +soft, without a thought of weakness; harmonious and yet +strong; impressive, as few such poems are, yet covered with a +bloom of beauty and a complexity of charm that few poems +have either. We have, perhaps, light literature in itself +better, that we read oftener and more easily, that lingers more +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span>in our memories; but we have not any, we question if there +ever will be any, which gives so true a conception of the +capacity and the dignity of the mind by which it was produced. +The breath of solemnity which hovers round the music +attaches us to the writer. Every line, here as elsewhere, in +Milton excites the idea of indefinite power.</p> + +<p>And so we must draw to a close. The subject is an infinite +one, and if we pursued it, we should lose ourselves in miscellaneous +commentary, and run on far beyond the patience of our +readers. What we have said has at least a defined intention. +We have wished to state the impression which the character of +Milton and the greatest of Milton’s works are likely to produce +on readers of the present generation—a generation different +from his own almost more than any other.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="LADY_MARY_WORTLEY_MONTAGU"><i>LADY +MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.</i>⁠<a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a><br> +<span class="smaller">(1862.)</span></h2> + +</div> + +<p>Nothing is so transitory as second-class fame. The name of +Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is hardly now known to the +great mass of ordinary English readers. A generation has +arisen which has had time to forget her. Yet only a few years +since, an allusion to the ‘Lady Mary’ would have been easily +understood by every well-informed person; young ladies were +enjoined to form their style upon hers; and no one could have +anticipated that her letters would seem in 1862 as different +from what a lady of rank would then write or publish as if +they had been written in the times of paganism. The very +change, however, of popular taste and popular morality gives +these letters now a kind of interest. The farther and the +more rapidly we have drifted from where we once lay, the +more do we wish to learn what kind of port it was. We venture, +therefore, to recommend the letters of Lady Mary Wortley +Montagu as an instructive and profitable study, not indeed +to the youngest of young ladies, but to those maturer persons +of either sex ‘who have taken all knowledge to be their province,’ +and who have commenced their readings in ‘universality’ +by an assiduous perusal of Parisian fiction.</p> + +<p>It is, we admit, true that these letters are not at the present +day very agreeable reading. What our grandfathers and +grandmothers thought of them it is not so easy to say. But it +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span>now seems clear that Lady Mary was that most miserable +of human beings, an ambitious and wasted woman; that she +brought a very cultivated intellect into a very cultivated +society; that she gave to that society what it was most anxious +to receive, and received from it all which it had to bestow;—and +yet that this all was to her as nothing. The high intellectual +world of England has never been so compact, so visible +in a certain sense, so enjoyable, as it was in her time. She had +a mind to understand it, beauty to adorn it, and wit to amuse +it; but she chose to pass a great part of her life in exile, and +returned at last to die at home among a new generation, whose +name she hardly knew, and to whom she herself was but a +spectacle and a wonder.</p> + +<p>Lady Mary Pierrepont—for that was by birth her name—belonged +to a family which had a traditional reputation for +ability and cultivation. The <i>Memoirs of Lucy Hutchinson</i>—(almost +the only legacy that remains to us from the first generation +of refined Puritans, the only book, at any rate, which +effectually brings home to us how different they were in taste +and in temper from their more vulgar and feeble successors)—contains +a curious panegyric on <i>wise William</i> Pierrepont, to +whom the Parliamentary party resorted as an oracle of judgment, +and whom Cromwell himself, if tradition may be trusted, +at times condescended to consult and court. He did not, however, +transmit much of his discretion to his grandson, Lady +Mary’s father. This nobleman, for he inherited from an elder +branch of the family both the marquisate of Dorchester and +the dukedom of Kingston, was a mere man ‘about town,’ as the +homely phrase then went, who passed a long life of fashionable +idleness interspersed with political intrigue, and who signalised +his old age by marrying a young beauty of fewer years than +his youngest daughter, who, as he very likely knew, cared +nothing for him and much for another person. He had the +‘grand air,’ however, and he expected his children, when he +visited them, to kneel down immediately and ask his blessing, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span>which, if his character was what is said, must have been <i>very</i> +valuable. The only attention he ever (that we know of) bestowed +upon Lady Mary was a sort of theatrical outrage, pleasant +enough to her at the time, but scarcely in accordance +with the educational theories in which we now believe. He +was a member of the Kit-Cat, a great Whig club, the Brooks’s +of Queen Anne’s time, which, like Brooks’s, appears not to +have been purely political, but to have found time for occasional +relaxation and for somewhat unbusiness-like discussions. +They held annually a formal meeting to arrange the female +toasts for that year; and we are told that a whim seized her +father to nominate Lady Mary, ‘then not eight years old, a +candidate; alleging that she was far prettier than any lady on +their list.’ The other members demurred, because the rules +of the club forbade them to elect a beauty whom they had +never seen. ‘Then you shall see her,’ cried he; and in the +gaiety of the moment sent orders home to have her finely +dressed and brought to him at the tavern, where she was received +with acclamations, her claim unanimously allowed, her +health drunk by every one present, and her name engraved in +due form upon a drinking-glass. The company consisting of +some of the most eminent men in England, she went from the +lap of one poet, or patriot, or statesman, to the arms of +another, was feasted with sweetmeats, overwhelmed with +caresses, and what perhaps already pleased her better than +either, heard her wit and beauty loudly extolled on every side. +Pleasure, she said, was too poor a word to express her sensations; +they amounted to ecstasy: never again, throughout +her whole future life, did she pass so happy a day. Nor, indeed, +could she; for the love of admiration, which this scene +was calculated to excite or increase, could never again be so +fully gratified; there is always some alloying ingredient in the +cup, some drawback upon the triumphs, of grown people. Her +father carried on the frolic, and we may conclude, confirmed +the taste, by having her picture painted for the club-room, that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span>she might be enrolled a regular toast. Perhaps some young +ladies of more than eight years old would not much object to +have lived in those times. Fathers may be wiser now than +they were then, but they rarely make themselves so thoroughly +agreeable to their children.</p> + +<p>This stimulating education would leave a weak and vain +girl still more vain and weak; but it had not that effect on +Lady Mary. Vain she probably was, and her father’s boastfulness +perhaps made her vainer; but her vanity took an intellectual +turn. She read vaguely and widely; she managed to +acquire some knowledge—how much is not clear—of Greek and +Latin, and certainly learned with sufficient thoroughness +French and Italian. She used to say that she had the worst +education in the world, and that it was only by the ‘help of an +uncommon memory and indefatigable labour’ that she had acquired +her remarkable attainments. Her father certainly seems to +have been capable of any degree of inattention and neglect; but +we should not perhaps credit too entirely all the legends which +an old lady recounted to her grandchildren of the intellectual +difficulties of her youth.</p> + +<p>She seems to have been encouraged by her grandmother, +one of the celebrated Evelyn family, whose memory is thus +enigmatically but still expressively enshrined in the diary of +the author of <i>Sylva</i>:—‘Under this date,’ we are informed, ‘of +the 2d of July 1649, he records a day spent at Godstone, +where Sir John’ (this lady’s father) ‘was on a visit with his +daughter;’ and he adds, ‘Mem. The prodigious memory of +Sir John of Wilts’s daughter, since married to Mr. W. Pierrepont.’ +The lady who was thus formidable in her youth deigned +in her old age to write frequently, as we should now say,—to +open a ‘regular commerce’ of letters, as was said in that age—with +Lady Mary when quite a girl, which she always believed +to have been beneficial to her, and probably believed rightly; +for she was intelligent enough to comprehend what was said to +her, and the old lady had watched many changes in many things.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span></p> + +<p>Her greatest intellectual guide, at least so in after life she +used to relate, was Mr. Wortley, whom she afterwards married. +‘When I was young,’ she said, ‘I was a great admirer of +Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses</i>, and that was one of the chief reasons +that set me upon the thoughts of stealing the Latin language. +Mr. Wortley was the only person to whom I communicated my +design, and he encouraged me in it. I used to study five or +six hours a day for two years in my father’s library; and so got +that language, whilst everybody else thought I was reading +nothing but novels and romances.’ She perused, however, +some fiction also; for she possessed, till her death, the whole +library of Mrs. Lennox’s <i>Female Quixote</i>, a ponderous series +of novels in folio, in one of which she had written, in her +fairest youthful hand, the names and characteristic qualities of +‘the beautiful Diana, the volatile Clemene, the melancholy +Doris, Celadon the faithful, Adamas the wise, and so on, forming +two columns.’</p> + +<p>Of Mr. Wortley’s character it is not difficult, from the +materials before us, to decipher the features; he was a slow +man, with a taste for quick companions. Swift’s diary to Stella +mentions an evening spent over a bottle of old wine with Mr. +Wortley and Mr. Addison. Mr. Wortley was a rigid Whig, and +Swift’s transition to Toryism soon broke short that friendship. +But with Addison he maintained an intimacy which lasted +during their joint lives, and survived the marriages of both. +With Steele likewise he was upon the closest terms, is said to +have written some papers in the <i>Tatler</i> and <i>Spectator</i>; and the +second volume of the former is certainly dedicated to him in +affectionate and respectful terms.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding, however, these conspicuous testimonials +to high ability, Mr. Wortley was an orderly and dull person. +Every letter received by him from his wife during five-and-twenty +years of absence, was found, at his death, carefully +endorsed with the date of its arrival, and with a <i>synopsis</i> of +its contents. ‘He represented,’ we are told, ‘at various times, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span>Huntingdon, Westminster, and Peterborough in Parliament, +and appears to have been a member of that class who win +respectful attention by sober and business-like qualities; and +his name is constantly found in the drier and more formal part +of the politics of the time.’ He answered to the description given +more recently of a similar person: ‘Is not,’ it was asked, ‘Sir +John —— a very methodical person?’ ‘Certainly he is,’ was +the reply, ‘he files his invitations to dinner.’ The Wortley +papers, according to the description of those who have inspected +them, seem to contain the accumulations of similar +documents during many years. He hoarded money, however, +to more purpose, for he died one of the richest commoners +in England; and a considerable part of the now marvellous +wealth of the Bute family seems at first to have been derived +from him.</p> + +<p>Whatever good qualities Addison and Steele discovered in +Mr. Wortley, they were certainly not those of a good writer. +We have from his pen and from that of Lady Mary a description +of the state of English politics during the three first years +of George III., and any one who wishes to understand how +much readability depends upon good writing would do well to +compare the two. Lady Mary’s is a clear and bright description +of all the superficial circumstances of the time; Mr. +Wortley’s is equally superficial, often unintelligible and always +lumbering, and scarcely succeeds in telling us more than that +the writer was wholly unsuccessful in all which he tried to do. +As to Mr. Wortley’s contributions to the periodicals of his time, +we may suspect that the jottings preserved at Loudon are all +which he ever wrote of them, and that the style and arrangement +were supplied by more skilful writers. Even a county +member might furnish headings for the <i>Saturday Review</i>. He +might say: ‘Trent British vessel—Americans always intrusive—Support +Government—Kill all that is necessary.’</p> + +<p>What Lady Mary discovered in Mr. Wortley it is easier to +say and shorter, for he was very handsome. If his portrait can +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span>be trusted, there was a placid and business-like repose about +him, which might easily be attractive to a rather excitable +and wild young lady, especially when combined with imposing +features and a quiet sweet expression. He attended <i>to her</i> also. +When she was a girl of fourteen, he met her at a party, and +evinced his admiration. And a little while later, it is not difficult +to fancy that a literary young lady might be much pleased +with a good-looking gentleman not uncomfortably older than +herself, yet having a place in the world, and well known to the +literary men of the age. He was acquainted with the classics +too, or was supposed to be so; and whether it was a consequence +of or a preliminary to their affections, Lady Mary wished to +know the classics also.</p> + +<p>Bishop Burnet was so kind as to superintend the singular +studies—for such they were clearly thought—of this aristocratic +young lady; and the translation of the <i>Enchiridion</i> of +Epictetus, which he revised, is printed in this edition of her +works. But even so grave an undertaking could not wholly +withdraw her from more congenial pursuits. She commenced +a correspondence with Miss Wortley, Mr. Wortley’s unmarried +sister, which still remains, though Miss Wortley’s letters are +hardly to be called hers, for her brother composed, and she +merely copied them. The correspondence is scarcely in the +sort of English or in the tone which young ladies, we understand, +now use.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘It is as impossible,’ says Miss Wortley, ‘for my dearest Lady +Mary to utter thought that can seem dull as to put on a look that is +not beautiful. Want of wit is a fault that those who envy you most +would not be able to find in your kind compliments. To me they +seem perfect, since repeated assurances of your kindness forbid me to +question their sincerity. You have often found that the most angry, +nay, the most neglectful air you can assume, has made as deep a +wound as the kindest; and these lines of yours, that you tax with +dulness (perhaps because they were writ when you was not in a right +humour, or when your thoughts were elsewhere employed), are so far +from deserving the imputation, that the very turn of your expression, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span>had I forgot the rest of your charms, would be sufficient to make me +lament the only fault you have—your inconstancy.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>To which the reply is:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘I am infinitely obliged to you, my dear Mrs. Wortley, for the +wit, beauty, and other fine qualities, you so generously bestow upon +me. Next to receiving them from Heaven, you are the person from +whom I would choose to receive gifts and graces: I am very well +satisfied to owe them to your own delicacy of imagination, which +represents to you the idea of a fine lady, and you have good nature +enough to fancy I am she. All this is mighty well, but you do not +stop there; imagination is boundless. After giving me imaginary wit +and beauty, you give me imaginary passions, and you tell me I’m in +love: if I am, ’tis a perfect sin of ignorance, for I don’t so much as +know the man’s name: I have been studying these three hours, and +cannot guess who you mean. I passed the days of Nottingham races +[at] Thoresby without seeing, or even wishing to see, one of the sex. +Now, if I am in love, I have very hard fortune to conceal it so industriously +from my own knowledge, and yet discover it so much to +other people. ’Tis against all form to have such a passion as that, +without giving one sigh for the matter. Pray tell me the name of +him I love, that I may (according to the laudable custom of lovers) +sigh to the woods and groves hereabouts, and teach it to the echo.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>After some time Miss Wortley unfortunately died, and there +was an obvious difficulty in continuing the correspondence +without the aid of an appropriate sisterly screen. Mr. Wortley +seems to have been tranquil and condescending; perhaps he +thought placid tactics would be most effective, for Lady Mary +was not so calm. He sent her some <i>Tatlers</i>, and received, by +way of thanks, the following tolerably encouraging letter:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p class="center">‘<i>To Mr. Wortley Montagu.</i></p> + +<p>‘I am surprised at one of the <i>Tatlers</i> you send me; is it +possible to have any sort of esteem for a person one believes +capable of having such trifling inclinations? Mr. Bickerstaff +has very wrong notions of our sex. I can say there are some of +us that despise charms of show, and all the pageantry of greatness, +perhaps with more ease than any of the philosophers. In +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span>contemning the world, they seem to take pains to contemn it; +we despise it, without taking the pains to read lessons of +morality to make us do it. At least I know I have always +looked upon it with contempt, without being at the expense of +one serious reflection to oblige me to it. I carry the matter +yet farther; was I to choose of two thousand pounds a year or +twenty thousand, the first would be my choice. There is something +of an unavoidable <i>embarras</i> in making what is called a +great figure in the world; [it] takes off from the happiness of +life; I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great estates +and titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to +be given to fools, for ’tis only to them that they are blessings. +The pretty fellows you speak of, I own entertain me sometimes; +but is it impossible to be diverted with what one despises? I +can laugh at a puppet-show; at the same time I know there is +nothing in it worth my attention or regard. General notions +are generally wrong. Ignorance and folly are thought the best +foundations for virtue, as if not knowing what a good wife is +was necessary to make one so. I confess that can never be my +way of reasoning; as I always forgive an <i>injury</i> when I think +it not done out of malice, I can never think myself <i>obliged</i> by +what is done without design. Give me leave to say it (I know +it sounds vain), I know how to make a man of sense happy; +but then that man must resolve to contribute something towards +it himself. I have so much esteem for you, I should be +very sorry to hear you was unhappy; but for the world I would +not be the instrument of making you so; which (of the humour +you are) is hardly to be avoided if I am your wife. You distrust +me—I can neither be easy, nor loved, where I am distrusted. +Nor do I believe your passion for me is what you +pretend it; at least I am sure was I in love I could not talk as +you do. Few women would have spoke so plainly as I have +done; but to dissemble is among the things I never do. I take +more pains to approve my conduct to myself than to the world; +and would not have to accuse myself of a minute’s deceit. I +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span>wish I loved you enough to devote myself to be for ever miserable, +for the pleasure of a day or two’s happiness. I cannot +resolve upon it. You must think otherwise of me, or not all.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t enjoin you to burn this letter. I know you will. +’Tis the first I ever writ to one of your sex, and shall be the +last. You must never expect another. I resolve against all +correspondence of the kind; my resolutions are seldom made, +and never broken.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>Mr. Wortley, however, still grumbled. He seems to have +expected a young lady to do something even more decisive +than ask him to marry her. He continued to hesitate and +pause. The lady in the comedy says, ‘What right has a man to +intend unless he states his intentions?’ and Lady Mary’s biographers +are entirely of that opinion. They think her exceedingly +ill-used, and Mr. Wortley exceedingly to blame. And so +it may have been; certainly a love-correspondence is rarely +found where activity and intrepidity on the lady’s side so much +contrasts with quiescence and timidity on the gentleman’s. If, +however, we could summon him before us, probably Mr. +Wortley would have something to answer on his own behalf. +It is tolerably plain that he thought Lady Mary too excitable. +‘Certainly,’ he doubtless reasoned, ‘she is a handsome young +lady, and very witty; but beauty and wit are dangerous as well +as attractive. Vivacity is delightful; but my esteemed friend +Mr. Addison has observed that excessive quickness of parts is +not unfrequently the cause of extreme rapidity in action. +Lady Mary makes love to me before marriage, and I like it; +but may she not make love also to some one else after marriage, +and then I shall not like it.’ Accordingly he writes to her timorously +as to her love of pleasure, her love of romantic reading, +her occasional toleration of younger gentlemen and quicker +admirers. At last, however, he proposed; and, as far as the +lady was concerned, there was no objection.</p> + +<p>We might have expected, from a superficial view of the +facts, that there would have been no difficulty either on the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span>side of her father. Mr. Wortley died one of the richest commoners +in England; was of the first standing in society, of +good family, and he had apparently, therefore, money to settle +and station to offer to his bride. And he did offer both. He +was ready to settle an ample sum on Lady Mary, both as his +wife and as his widow, and was anxious that, if they married, +they should live in a manner suitable to her rank and his +prospects. But nevertheless there was a difficulty. The <i>Tatler</i> +had recently favoured its readers with dissertations upon social +ethics not altogether dissimilar to those with which the <i>Saturday +Review</i> frequently instructs its readers. One of these dissertations +contained an elaborate exposure of the folly of +settling your estate upon your unborn children. The arguments +were of a sort very easily imaginable. ‘Why,’ it was +said, ‘should you give away that which you have to a person +whom you do not know; whom you may never see; whom you +may not like when you do see; who may be undutiful, unpleasant, +or idiotic? Why, too, should each generation surrender +its due control over the next? When the family estate is +settled, men of the world know that the father’s control is +gone, for disinterested filial affection is an unfrequent though +doubtless possible virtue; but so long as <i>property</i> is in suspense, +all expectants will be attentive to those who have it in +their power to give or not to give it.’ These arguments had converted +Mr. Wortley, who is said even to have contributed notes +for the article, and they seem to have converted Lady Mary +also. She was to have her money, and the most plain-spoken +young ladies do not commonly care to argue much about the +future provision for their possible children; the subject is +always delicate and a little frightful, and on the whole, must be +left to themselves. But Lord Dorchester, her father, felt it his +duty to be firm. It is an old saying, that ‘you never know +where a man’s conscience may turn up,’ and the advent of +ethical feeling was in this case even unusually beyond calculation. +Lord Dorchester had never been an anxious father, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>was not now going to be a liberal father. He had never cared +much about Lady Mary, except in so far as he could himself +gain <i>éclat</i> by exhibiting her youthful beauty, and he was not now +at her marriage about to do at all more than was necessary and +decent in his station. It was not therefore apparently probable +that he would be irritatingly obstinate respecting the income of +his daughter’s children. He was so, however. He deemed it a +duty to see that ‘<i>his</i> grandchild never should be a beggar,’ +and, for what reason does not so clearly appear, wished that his +eldest male grandchild should be immensely richer than all his +other grandchildren. The old feudal aristocrat, often in modern +Europe so curiously disguised in the indifferent exterior of a +careless man of the world, was, as became him, dictatorial and +unalterable upon the duty of founding a family. Though he +did not care much for his daughter, he cared much for the +position of his daughter’s eldest son. He had probably +stumbled on the fundamental truth that ‘girls were girls, and +boys were boys,’ and was disinclined to disregard the rule of +primogeniture by which he had obtained his marquisate, and +from which he expected a dukedom.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wortley, however, was through life a man, if eminent +in nothing else, eminent at least in obstinacy. He would not +give up the doctrine of the <i>Tatler</i> even to obtain Lady Mary. +The match was accordingly abandoned, and Lord Dorchester +looked out for and found another gentleman whom he proposed +to make his son-in-law; for he believed, according to the old +morality, ‘that it was the duty of the parents to find a husband +for a daughter, and that when he was found, it was the +daughter’s duty to marry him.’ It was as wrong in her to attempt +to choose as in him to neglect to seek. Lady Mary was, +however, by no means disposed to accept this passive theory of +female obligation. She <i>had</i> sought and chosen; and to her +choice she intended to adhere. The conduct of Mr. Wortley +would have offended some ladies, but it rather augmented her +admiration. She had exactly that sort of irritable intellect +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span>which sets an undue value on new theories of society and +morality, and is pleased when others do so too. She thought +Mr. Wortley was quite right not to ‘defraud himself for a +possible infant,’ and admired his constancy and firmness. She +determined to risk a step, as she herself said, unjustifiable to +her own relatives, but which she nevertheless believed that she +could justify to herself. She decided on eloping with Mr. +Wortley.</p> + +<p>Before, however, taking this audacious leap, she looked a +little. Though she did not object to the sacrifice of the customary +inheritance of her contingent son, she by no means +approved of sacrificing the settlement which Mr. Wortley had +undertaken at a prior period of the negotiation to make upon +herself. And, according to common sense, she was undoubtedly +judicious. She was going from her father, and foregoing the +money which he had promised her; and therefore it was not +reasonable that, by going <i>to</i> her lover, she should forfeit also +the money which <i>he</i> had promised her. And there is nothing +offensive in her mode of expression. ‘’Tis something odd for +a woman that brings nothing to expect anything; but after the +way of my education, I dare not pretend to live but in some +degree suitable to it. I had rather die than return to a +dependency upon relations I have disobliged. Save me from +that fear, if you love me. If you cannot, or think I ought not +to expect it, be sincere and tell me so. ’Tis better I should not +be yours at all, than, for a short happiness, involve myself in +ages of misery. I hope there will never be occasion for this +precaution; but, however, ’tis necessary to make it.’ But true +and rational as all this seems, perhaps it is still truer and still +more rational to say, that if a woman has not sufficient confidence +in her lover to elope with him without a previous promise +of a good settlement, she had better not elope with him at all. +After all, if he declines to make the stipulated settlement, the +lady will have either to return to her friends or to marry without +it, and she would have the full choice between these satisfactory +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span>alternatives, even if she asked no previous promise from +her lover. At any rate, the intrusion of coarse money among +the refined materials of romance is, in this case, even more +curious and remarkable than usual.</p> + +<p>After some unsuccessful attempts, Lady Mary and Mr. +Wortley did elope and did marry, and, after a certain interval, +of course, Lord Dorchester received them, notwithstanding +their contempt of his authority, into some sort of favour and +countenance. They had probably saved him money by their +irregularity, and economical frailties are rarely judged severely +by men of fashion who are benefited by them. Lady Mary, +however, was long a little mistrusted by her own relations, and +never seems to have acquired much family influence; but her +marriage was not her only peculiarity, or the only one which +impartial relations might dislike.</p> + +<p>The pair appear to have been for a little while tolerably +happy. Lady Mary was excitable, and wanted letters when +absent, and attention when present: Mr. Wortley was heavy +and slow; could not write letters when away, and seemed +torpid in her society when at home. Still, these are common +troubles. Common, too, is the matrimonial correspondence +upon baby’s deficiency in health, and on Mrs. Behn’s opinion +that ‘the cold bath is the best medicine for weak children.’ It +seems an odd end to a deferential perusal of Latin authors in +girlhood, and to a spirited elopement with the preceptor in +after years; but the transition is only part of the usual irony of +human life.</p> + +<p>The world, both social and political, into which Lady Mary +was introduced by her marriage was singularly calculated to +awaken the faculties, to stimulate the intellect, to sharpen the +wit, and to harden the heart of an intelligent, witty, and hard-headed +woman. The world of London—even the higher world—is +now too large to be easily seen, or to be pithily described. +The elements are so many, their position is so confused, the +display of their mutual counteraction is so involved, that many +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span>years must pass away before even a very clever woman can +thoroughly comprehend it all. She will cease to be young and +handsome long ere she does comprehend it. And when she at +last understands it, it does not seem a fit subject for concise +and summary wit. Its evident complexity refuses to be condensed +into pithy sayings and brilliant <i>bons-mots</i>. It has fallen +into the hands of philosophers, with less brains perhaps than +the satirists of our fathers, but with more anxiety to tell the +whole truth, more toleration for the many-sidedness of the +world, with less of sharp conciseness, but, perhaps, with more +of useful completeness. As are the books, so are the readers. +People do not wish to read satire nowadays. The epigrams +even of Pope would fall dull and dead upon this serious and +investigating time. The folly of the last age affected levity; +the folly of this, as we all know, encases itself in ponderous +volumes which defy refutation, in elaborate arguments which +prove nothing, in theories which confuse the uninstructed, and +which irritate the well-informed. The folly of a hundred years +since was at least the folly of Vivien, but ours is the folly of +Merlin:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘<i>You</i> read the book, my pretty Vivien,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And none can read the text, not even I,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And none can read the comments but myself—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Oh, the results are simple!’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Perhaps people did not know then as much as they know now: +indisputably they knew nothing like so much in a superficial +way <i>about</i> so many things; but they knew far more correctly +where their knowledge began and where it stopped; what they +thought and why they thought it: they had readier illustrations +and more summary phrases; they could say at once what +it <i>came to</i>, and to what action it should lead.</p> + +<p>The London of the eighteenth century was an aristocratic +world, which lived to itself, which displayed the virtues and +developed the vices of an aristocracy which was under little fear +of external control or check; which had emancipated itself from +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span>the control of the crown; which had not fallen under the control +of the <i>bourgeoisie</i>; which saw its own life, and saw that, +according to its own maxims, it was good. Public opinion now +rules, and it is an opinion which constrains the conduct, and +narrows the experience, and dwarfs the violence, and minimises +the frankness of the highest classes, while it diminishes their +vices, supports their conscience, and precludes their grossness. +There was nothing like this in the last century, especially in the +early part of it. The aristocracy came to town from their remote +estates,—where they were uncontrolled by any opinion or +by any equal society, and where the eccentricities and personalities +of each character were fostered and exaggerated,—to a +London which was like a large county town, in which everybody +of rank knew everybody of rank, where the eccentricities of +each rural potentate came into picturesque collision with the +eccentricities of other rural potentates, where the most minute +allusions to the peculiarities and the career of the principal +persons were instantly understood, where squibs were on every +table, and where satire was in the air. No finer field of social +observation could be found for an intelligent and witty woman. +Lady Mary understood it at once.</p> + +<p>Nor was the political life of the last century so unfavourable +to the influence and so opposed to the characteristic comprehension +of women as our present life. We are now ruled by +political discussion and by a popular assembly, by leading articles, +and by the House of Commons. But women can scarcely +ever compose leaders, and no woman sits in our representative +chamber. The whole tide of abstract discussion, which fills our +mouths and deafens our ears, the whole complex accumulation +of facts and figures to which we refer every thing, and which +we apply to every thing, is quite unfemale. A lady has an +insight into what she sees; but how will this help her with the +case of the <i>Trent</i>, with the proper structure of a representative +chamber, with Indian finance or parliamentary reform? Women +are clever, but cleverness of itself is nothing at present. A +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span>sharp Irish writer described himself ‘as bothered intirely by +the want of preliminary information;’ women are in the same +difficulty now. Their nature may hereafter change, as some +sanguine advocates suggest. But the visible species certainly +have not the intellectual providence to acquire the vast stores +of dry information which alone can enable them to judge +adequately of our present controversies. We are ruled by a +machinery of oratory and discussion, in which women have no +share, and which they hardly comprehend: we are engaged on +subjects which need an arduous learning, to which they have +no pretensions.</p> + +<p>In the last century much of this was very different. The +Court still counted for much in English politics. The House +of Commons was the strongest power in the State machine, but +it was not so immeasurably the strongest power as now. It +was absolutely supreme within its sphere, but that sphere was +limited. It could absolutely control the money, and thereby +the policy of the State. Whether there should be peace or +war, excise or no excise, it could and did despotically determine. +It was supreme in its choice of <i>measures</i>. But, on +the other hand, it had only a secondary influence in the choice +of <i>persons</i>. Who the Prime Minister was to be, was a question +not only theoretically determinable, but in fact determined +by the Sovereign. The House of Commons could +despotically impose two conditions: first, that the Prime +Minister should be a man of sufficient natural ability, and +sufficient parliamentary experience, to conduct the business of +his day; secondly, that he should adopt the policy which the +nation wished. But, subject to a conformity with these prerequisites, +the selection of the king was nearly uncontrolled. +Sir Robert Walpole was the greatest master of parliamentary +tactics and political business in his generation; he was a statesman +of wide views and consummate dexterity; but these intellectual +gifts, even joined to immense parliamentary experience, +were not alone sufficient to make him and to keep him +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span>Prime Minister of England. He also maintained, during two +reigns, a complete system of court-strategy. During the reign +of George II. he kept a <i>queen-watcher</i>. Lord Hervey, one of +the cleverest men in England, the keenest observer, perhaps, +in England, was induced, by very dexterous management, to +remain at court during many years—to observe the queen, to +hint to the queen, to remove wrong impressions from the +queen, to confirm the Walpolese predilections of the queen, to +report every incident to Sir Robert. The records of politics +tell us few stranger tales than that it should have been necessary +for the Sir Robert Peel of the age to hire a subordinate +as safe as Eldon, and as witty as Canning, for the sole purpose +of managing a clever German woman, to whom the selection of +a Prime Minister was practically intrusted. Nor was this the +only court-campaign which Sir Robert had to conduct, or in +which he was successful. Lady Mary, who hated him much, +has satirically described the foundation upon which his court +favour rested during the reign of George I.:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘The new Court with all their train was arrived before I left the +country. The Duke of Marlborough was returned in a sort of +triumph, with the apparent merit of having suffered for his fidelity +to the succession, and was reinstated in his office of general, &c. In +short, all people who had suffered any hardship or disgrace during the +late ministry would have it believed that it was occasioned by their +attachment to the House of Hanover. Even Mr. Walpole, who had +been sent to the Tower for a piece of bribery proved upon him, was +called a confessor to the cause. But he had another piece of good +luck that yet more contributed to his advancement; he had a very +handsome sister, whose folly had lost her reputation in London; but +the yet greater folly of Lord Townshend, who happened to be a neighbour +in Norfolk to Mr. Walpole, had occasioned his being drawn in +to marry her some months before the queen died.</p> + +<p>‘Lord Townshend had that sort of understanding which commonly +makes men honest in the first part of their lives; they follow +the instructions of their tutor, and, till somebody thinks it worth +their while to show them a new path, go regularly on in the road +where they are set. Lord Townshend had then been many years an +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span>excellent husband to a sober wife, a kind master to all his servants +and dependents, a serviceable relation wherever it was in his power, +and followed the instinct of nature in being fond of his children. +Such a sort of behaviour without any glaring absurdity, either in +prodigality or avarice, always gains a man the reputation of reasonable +and honest; and this was his character when the Earl of Godolphin +sent him envoy to the States, not doubting but he would be +faithful to his orders, without giving himself the trouble of criticising +on them, which is what all ministers wish in an envoy. Robotun, +a French refugee (secretary to Bernstoff, one of the Elector of Hanover’s +ministers), happened then to be at the Hague, and was civilly +received at Lord Townshend’s, who treated him at his table with the +English hospitality, and he was charmed with a reception which his +birth and education did not entitle him to. Lord Townshend was +recalled when the queen changed her ministry; his wife died, and he +retired into the country, where (as I have said before) Walpole had +art enough to make him marry his sister Dolly. At that time, I +believe, he did not propose much more advantage by the match than +to get rid of a girl that lay heavy on his hands.</p> + +<p>‘When King George ascended the throne, he was surrounded by +all his German ministers and playfellows, male and female. Baron +Goritz was the most considerable among them both for birth and fortune. +He had managed the king’s treasury thirty years with the +utmost fidelity and economy; and had the true German honesty, +being a plain, sincere, and unambitious man. Bernstoff, the secretary, +was of a different turn. He was avaricious, artful, and designing; +and had got his share in the king’s councils by bribing his +women. Robotun was employed in these matters, and had the sanguine +ambition of a Frenchman. He resolved there should be an +English ministry of his choosing; and, knowing none of them personally +but Townshend, he had not failed to recommend him to his +master, and his master to the king, as the only proper person for the +important post of Secretary of State; and he entered upon that +office with universal applause, having at that time a very popular +character, which he might possibly have retained for ever if he had +not been entirely governed by his wife and her brother R. Walpole, +whom he immediately advanced to be paymaster, esteemed a post of +exceeding profit, and very necessary for his indebted estate.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>And it is indisputable that Lord Townshend, who thought +he was a very great statesman, and who began as the patron of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span>Sir Robert Walpole, nevertheless was only his Court-agent—the +manager on his behalf of the king and of the king’s mistresses.</p> + +<p>We need not point out at length, for the passage we have +cited of itself indicates how well suited this sort of politics is +to the comprehension and to the pen of a keen-sighted and +witty woman.</p> + +<p>Nor was the Court the principal improver of the London +society of the age. The House of Commons was then a part of +society. This separate, isolated, aristocratic world, of which +we have spoken, had an almost undisputed command of both +Houses in the Legislature. The letter of the constitution did +not give it them, and no law appointed that it should be so. +But the aristocratic class were by far the most educated, by far +the most respected, by far the most <i>eligible</i> part of the nation. +Even in the boroughs, where there was universal suffrage, or +something near it, they were the favourites. Accordingly, +they gave the tone to the House of Commons; they required +the small community of members who did not belong to their +order to conform as far as they could to their usages, and to +guide themselves by their code of morality and of taste. In +the main the House of Commons obeyed these injunctions, +and it was repaid by being incorporated within the aristocratic +world: it became not only the council of the nation, but the +debating-club of fashion. That which was ‘received’ modified +the recipient. The remains of the aristocratic society, wherever +we find them, are penetrated not only with an aristocratic but +with a political spirit. They breathe a sort of atmosphere of +politics. In the London of the present day, the vast miscellaneous +<i>bourgeois</i> London, we all know that this is not +so. ‘In the country,’ said a splenetic observer, ‘people talk +politics; at London dinners you talk nothing; between two +pillars of crinoline you eat and are resigned.’ A hundred and +fifty years ago, as far as our rather ample materials inform +us, people in London talked politics just as they now talk +politics in Worcestershire; and being on the spot, and cooped +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span>up with politicians in a small social world, their talk was commonly +better. They knew the people of whom they spoke, +even if they did not know the subjects with which they were +concerned.</p> + +<p>No element is better fitted to counteract the characteristic +evil of an aristocratic society. The defect of such societies in +all times has been frivolity. All talk has tended to become +gossip; it has ceased to deal with important subjects, and has +devoted itself entirely to unimportant incidents. Whether the +Duc de —— has more or less prevailed with the Marquise +de —— is a sort of common form into which any details may +be fitted, and any names inserted. The frivolities of gallantry—never +very important save to some woman who has long been +dead—fill the records of all aristocracies who lived under a +despotism, who had no political authority, no daily political +cares. The aristocracy of England in the last century was, at +any rate, exempt from <i>this</i> reproach. There is in the records +of it not only an intellectuality, which would prove little,—for +every clever describer, by the subtleties of his language and +the arrangement of his composition, gives a sort of intellectuality +even to matters which have no pretension to it themselves,—but +likewise a pervading medium of political discussion. +The very language in which they are written is the language +of political business. Horace Walpole was certainly by nature +no politician and no orator; yet no discerning critic can read +a page of his voluminous remains without feeling that the +writer has through life lived with politicians and talked with +politicians. A keen observant mind, not naturally political, +but capable of comprehending and viewing any subject which +was brought before it, has chanced to have this particular +subject—politics—presented to it for a lifetime; and all its +delineations, all its efforts, all its thoughts, reflect it, and are +coloured by it. In all the records of the eighteenth century +the tonic of business is seen to combat the relaxing effect of +habitual luxury.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span></p> + +<p>This element, too, is favourable to a clever woman. The +more you can put before such a person the greater she will be; +the less her world, the less she is. If you place the most keen-sighted +lady in the midst of the pure futilities and unmitigated +flirtations of an aristocracy, she will sink to the level of those +elements, and will scarcely seem to wish for anything more, +or to be competent for anything higher. But if she is placed +in an intellectual atmosphere, in which political or other important +subjects are currently passing, you will probably find +that she can talk better upon them than you can, without your +being able to explain whence she derived either her information +or her talent.</p> + +<p>The subjects, too, which were discussed in the political +society of the last age were not so inscrutable to women as +our present subjects; and even when there were great difficulties +they were more on a level with men in the discussion +of them than they now are. It was no disgrace to be destitute +of preliminary information at a time in which there were no accumulated +stores from which such information could be derived. +A lightening element of female influence is therefore to be +found through much of the politics of the eighteenth century.</p> + +<p>Lady Mary entered easily into all this world, both social +and political. She had beauty for the fashionable, satire for +the witty, knowledge for the learned, and intelligence for the +politician. She was not too refined to shrink from what we +now consider the coarseness of that time. Many of her verses +themselves are scarcely adapted for our decorous pages. Perhaps +the following give no unfair idea of her ordinary state +of mind:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="center">‘TOWN ECLOGUES.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="center allsmcap">‘ROXANA; OR, THE DRAWING-ROOM.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Roxana, from the Court retiring late,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sigh’d her soft sorrows at St. James’s gate.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Such heavy thoughts lay brooding in her breast,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not her own chairmen with more weight oppress’d;</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span> <div class="verse indent0">They groan the cruel load they’re doom’d to bear;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">She in these gentle sounds express’d her care.</div> + <div class="verse indent2">“Was it for this that I these roses wear?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For this new-set the jewels for my hair?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ah! Princess! with what zeal have I pursued!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Almost forgot the duty of a prude.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thinking I never could attend too soon,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I’ve miss’d my prayers, to get me dress’d by noon.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For thee, ah! what for thee did I resign!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">My pleasures, passions, all that e’er was mine.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I sacrific’d both modesty and ease,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Left operas and went to filthy plays;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Double-entendres shock my tender ear;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet even this for thee I choose to bear.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In glowing youth, when nature bids be gay,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And every joy of life before me lay,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By honour prompted, and by pride restrain’d,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The pleasures of the young my soul disdain’d:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sermons I sought, and with a mien severe</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Censur’d my neighbours, and said daily prayer.</div> + <div class="verse indent2">“Alas! how chang’d—with the same sermon-mien</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That once I pray’d, the <i>What d’ye call’t</i> I’ve seen.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ah! cruel Princess, for thy sake I’ve lost</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That reputation which so dear had cost:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I, who avoided every public place,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When bloom and beauty bade me show my face,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Now near thee constant every night abide</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With never-failing duty by thy side;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Myself and daughters standing on a row,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To all the foreigners a goodly show!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Oft had your drawing-room been sadly thin,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And merchants’ wives close by the chair been seen,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Had not I amply filled the empty space,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And saved your highness from the dire disgrace.</div> + <div class="verse indent2">“Yet Coquetilla’s artifice prevails,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When all my merit and my duty fails;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That Coquetilla, whose deluding airs</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Corrupt our virgins, still our youth ensnares;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So sunk her character, so lost her fame,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Scarce visited before your highness came:</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span> <div class="verse indent0">Yet for the bed-chamber ’tis her you choose,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When zeal and fame and virtue you refuse.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ah! worthy choice! not one of all your train</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whom censure blasts not, and dishonours stain!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Let the nice hind now suckle dirty pigs,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the proud pea-hen hatch the cuckoo’s eggs!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Let Iris leave her paint and own her age,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And grave Suffolka wed a giddy page!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A greater miracle is daily view’d,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A virtuous Princess with a Court so lewd.</div> + <div class="verse indent2">“I know thee, Court! with all thy treach’rous wiles,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy false caresses and undoing smiles!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ah! Princess, learn’d in all the courtly arts,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To cheat our hopes, and yet to gain our hearts!</div> + <div class="verse indent2">“Large lovely bribes are the great statesman’s aim;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the neglected patriot follows fame.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Prince is ogled; some the king pursue;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But your Roxana only follows you.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Despis’d Roxana, cease, and try to find</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some other, since the Princess proves unkind:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Perhaps it is not hard to find at Court,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If not a greater, a more firm support.”’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>There was every kind of rumour as to Lady Mary’s own +conduct, and we have no means of saying whether any of +these rumours were true. There is no evidence against her +which is worthy of the name. So far as can be proved, she +was simply a gay, witty, bold-spoken, handsome woman, who +made many enemies by unscrupulous speech, and many friends +by unscrupulous flirtation. We may believe, but we cannot +prove, that she found her husband tedious, and was dissatisfied +that his slow, methodical, <i>borné</i> mind made so little progress +in the political world, and understood so little of what really +passed there. Unquestionably she must have much preferred +talking to Lord Hervey to talking with Mr. Montagu. But we +must not credit the idle scandals of a hundred years since, +because they may have been true, or because they appear not +inconsistent with the characters of those to whom they relate. +There were legends against every attractive and fashionable +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span>woman in that age, and most of the legends were doubtless +exaggerations and inventions. We cannot know the truth of +such matters now, and it would hardly be worth searching +into if we could; but the important fact is certain, Lady Mary +lived in a world in which the worst rumours were greedily told, +and often believed, about her and others; and the moral refinement +of a woman must always be impaired by such a contact.</p> + +<p>Lady Mary was so unfortunate as to incur the partial dislike +of one of the great recorders of that age, and the bitter +hostility of the other. She was no favourite with Horace Walpole, +and the bitter enemy of Pope. The first is easily explicable. +Horace Walpole never loved his father, but recompensed +himself by hating his father’s enemies. No one connected with +the opposition to Sir Robert is spared by his son, if there be a +fair opportunity for unfavourable insinuation. Mr. Wortley +Montagu was the very man for a grave mistake. He made the +very worst that could be made in that age. He joined the +party of constitutional exiles on the Opposition bench, who +had no real objection to the policy of Sir Robert Walpole; +who, when they had a chance, adopted that policy themselves; +who were discontented because they had no power, and he +had all the power. Probably too, being a man eminently respectable, +Mr. Montagu was frightened at Sir Robert’s unscrupulous +talk and not very scrupulous actions. At any rate, +he opposed Sir Robert; and thence many a little observation +of Horace Walpole’s against Lady Mary.</p> + +<p>Why Pope and Lady Mary quarrelled is a question on +which much discussion has been expended, and on which a +judicious German professor might even now compose an interesting +and exhaustive monograph. A curt English critic will +be more apt to ask, ‘Why they should <i>not</i> have quarrelled?’ +We know that Pope quarrelled with almost every one; we know +that Lady Mary quarrelled or half quarrelled with most of her +acquaintances. Why, then, should they not have quarrelled +with one another?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span></p> + +<p>It is certain that they were very intimate at one time; for +Pope wrote to her some of the most pompous letters of compliment +in the language. And the more intimate they were to +begin with, the more sure they were to be enemies in the end. +Human nature will not endure that sort of proximity. An +irritable, vain poet, who always fancies that people are trying +to hurt him, whom no argument could convince that every +one is not perpetually thinking about him, cannot long be +friendly with a witty woman of unscrupulous tongue, who +spares no one, who could sacrifice a good friend for a bad <i>bon-mot</i>, +who thinks of the person whom she is addressing, not of +those about whom she is speaking. The natural relation of +the two is that of victim and torturer, and no other will long +continue. There appear also to have been some money matters +(of all things in the world) between the two. Lady Mary was +intrusted by Pope with some money to use in speculation during +the highly fashionable panic which derives its name from the +South-Sea Bubble,—and as of course it was lost, Pope was very +angry. Another story goes, that Pope made serious love to +Lady Mary, and that she laughed at him; upon which a very +personal, and not always very correct, controversy has arisen as +to the probability or improbability of Pope’s exciting a lady’s +feelings. Lord Byron took part in it with his usual acuteness +and incisiveness, and did not leave the discussion more decent +than he found it. Pope doubtless was deformed, and had not +the large red health that uncivilised women admire; yet a +clever lady might have taken a fancy to him, for the little +creature knew what he was saying. There is, however, no evidence +that Lady Mary did so. We only know that there was a +sudden coolness or quarrel between them, and that it was the +beginning of a long and bitter hatred.</p> + +<p>In their own times Pope’s sensitive disposition probably +gave Lady Mary a great advantage. Her tongue perhaps gave +him more pain than his pen gave her. But in later times she +has fared the worse. What between Pope’s sarcasms and Horace +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span>Walpole’s anecdotes, Lady Mary’s reputation has suffered very +considerably. As we have said, her offences are <i>non proven</i>; +there is no evidence to convict her; but she is likely to be condemned +upon the general doctrine that a person who is accused +of much is probably guilty of something.</p> + +<p>During many years Lady Mary continued to live a distinguished +fashionable and social life, with a single remarkable +break. This interval was her journey to Constantinople. The +powers that then were, thought fit to send Mr. Wortley as +ambassador to Constantinople, and his wife accompanied him. +During that visit she kept a journal, and wrote sundry real +letters, out of which, after her return, she composed a series of +unreal letters as to all she saw and did in Turkey, and on the +journey there and back, which were published, and which are +still amusing, if not always select, reading. The Sultan was +not then the ‘dying man’; he was the ‘Grand Turk.’ He was +not simply a potentate to be counted with, but a power to be +feared. The appearance of a Turkish army on the Danube had +in that age much the same effect as the appearance of a Russian +army now. It was an object of terror and dread. A mission +at Constantinople was not then a <i>bureau</i> for interference in +Turkey, but a serious office for transacting business with a great +European power. A European ambassador at Constantinople +now presses on the Government there impracticable reforms; he +then asked for useful aid. Lady Mary was evidently impressed +by the power of the country in which she sojourned; and we +observe in her letters evident traces of the notion that the Turk +was the dread of Christendom,—which is singular now, when +the Turk is its <i>protégé</i>.</p> + +<p>Lady Mary had another advantage too. Many sorts of +books make steady progress; a scientific treatise published now +is sure to be fuller and better than one on the same subject +written long ago. But with books of travel in a stationary +country the presumption is the contrary. In that case the old +book is probably the better book. The first traveller writes out +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span>a plain, straightforward description of the most striking objects +with which he meets; he believes that his readers know nothing +of the country of which he is writing, for till he visited it he +probably knew nothing himself; and, if he is sensible, he +describes simply and clearly all which most impresses him. +He has no motive for not dwelling upon the principal things, +and most likely will do so, as they are probably the most conspicuous. +The second traveller is not so fortunate. He is +always in terror of the traveller who went before. He fears the +criticism,—‘this is all very well, <i>but</i> we knew the whole of it +before. No. 1 said that at page 103.’ In consequence he is +timid. He picks and skips. He fancies that you are acquainted +with all which is great and important, and he dwells, for your +good and to your pain, upon that which is small and unimportant. +For ordinary readers no result can be more fatal. +They perhaps never read,—they certainly do not remember +anything upon the subject. The curious <i>minutiæ</i> so elaborately +set forth, are quite useless, for they have not the general +framework in which to store them. Not knowing much of the +first traveller’s work, that of the second is a supplement to a +treatise with which they are unacquainted. In consequence +they do not read it. Lady Mary made good use of her position +in the front of the herd of tourists. She told us what she saw +in Turkey,—all the best of what she saw, and all the most +remarkable things,—and told it very well.</p> + +<p>Nor was this work the only fruit of her Turkish travels; +she brought home the notion of inoculation. Like most improvers, +she was roughly spoken to. Medical men were angry +because the practice was not in their books, and conservative +men were cross at the agony of a new idea. Religious people +considered it wicked to have a disease which Providence did +not think fit to send you; and simple people ‘did not like to +make themselves ill of their own accord.’ She triumphed, however, +over all obstacles; inoculation, being really found to +lengthen life and save complexions, before long became general.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span></p> + +<p>One of the first patients upon whom Lady Mary tried the +novelty was her own son, and many considerate people thought +it ‘worthy of observation’ that he turned out a scamp. When +he ran away from school, the mark of inoculation, then rare, +was used to describe him, and after he was recovered, he never +did anything which was good. His case seems to have been +the common one in which nature (as we speak) requites herself +for the strongheadedness of several generations by the weakness +of one. His father’s and his mother’s family had been rather +able for some generations; the latter remarkably so. But +this boy had always a sort of practical imbecility. He was +not stupid, but he never did anything right. He exemplified +another curious trait of nature’s practice. Mr. Montagu was +obstinate, though sensible; Lady Mary was flighty, though +clever. Nature combined the defects. Young Edward Montagu +was both obstinate and flighty. The only pleasure he can +ever have given his parents was the pleasure of <i>feeling</i> their +own wisdom. He showed that they were right before marriage +in not settling the paternal property upon him, for he ran +through every shilling he possessed. He was not sensible enough +to keep his property, and just not fool enough for the law to +take it from him.</p> + +<p>After her return from Constantinople, Lady Mary continued +to lead the same half-gay and half-literary life as before; but +at last she did not like it. Various ingenious inquirers into +antiquated minutiæ have endeavoured, without success, to discover +reasons of detail which might explain her dissatisfaction. +They have suggested that some irregular love-affair was unprosperous, +and hinted that she and her husband were not on +good terms. The love-affair, however, when looked for, cannot +be found; and though she and her husband would appear to +have been but distantly related, they never had any great +quarrel which we know of. Neither seems to have been fitted +to give the other much pleasure, and each had the fault of +which the other was most impatient. Before marriage Lady +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span>Mary had charmed Mr. Montagu, but she had also frightened +him; after marriage she frightened, but did not charm him. +He was formal and composed; she was flighty and <i>outrée</i>. +‘What <i>will</i> she do next?’ was doubtless the poor man’s daily +feeling; and ‘Will he ever do anything?’ was probably also +hers. Torpid business, which is always going on, but which +never seems to come to anything, is simply aggravating to a +clever woman. Even the least impatient lady can hardly endure +a perpetual process for which there is little visible and +nothing theatrical to show; and Lady Mary was by no means +the least impatient. But there was no abrupt quarrel between +the two; and a husband and wife who have lived together more +than twenty years can generally manage to continue to live +together during a second twenty years. These reasons of detail +are scarcely the reasons for Lady Mary’s wishing to break +away from the life to which she had so long been used. Yet +there was clearly some reason, for Lady Mary went abroad, and +stayed there during many years.</p> + +<p>We believe that the cause was not special and peculiar +to the case, but general, and due to the invariable principles +of human nature, at all times and everywhere. If historical +experience proves anything, it proves that the earth is not +adapted for a life of mere intellectual pleasure. The life of a +brute on earth, though bad, is possible. It is not even difficult +to many persons to destroy the higher part of their nature by +a continual excess in sensual pleasure. It is even more easy +and possible to dull all the soul and most of the mind by a +vapid accumulation of torpid comfort. Many of the middle +classes spend their whole lives in a constant series of petty +pleasures, and an undeviating pursuit of small material objects. +The gross pursuit of pleasure, and the tiresome pursuit of +petty comfort, are quite suitable to such ‘a being as man in +such a world as the present one.’ What is not possible is, to +combine the pursuit of pleasure and the enjoyment of comfort +with the characteristic pleasures of a strong mind. If you +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span>wish for luxury, you must not nourish the inquisitive instinct. +The great problems of human life are in the air; they are without +us in the life we see, within us in the life we feel. A quick +intellect feels them in a moment. It says, ‘Why am I here? +What is pleasure, that I desire it? What is comfort, that I +seek it? What are carpets and tables? What is the lust of the +eye? What is the pride of life, that they should satisfy <i>me</i>? I +was not made for such things. I hate them, because I have liked +them; I loathe them, because it seems that there is nothing +else for me.’ An impatient woman’s intellect comes to this point +in a moment; it says, ‘Society is good, but I have seen society. +What is the use of talking, or hearing <i>bon-mots</i>? I have done +both till I am tired of doing either. I have laughed till I +have no wish to laugh again, and made others laugh till I have +hated them for being such fools. As for instruction, I have +seen the men of genius of my time; and they tell me nothing,—nothing +of what I want to know. They are choked with +intellectual frivolities. They cannot say “whence I came, and +whither I go.” What do they know of themselves? It is not +from literary people that we can learn anything; more likely, +they will copy, or try to copy, the manners of lords, and make +ugly love, in bad imitation of those who despise them.’ Lady +Mary felt this, as we believe. She had seen all the world of England, +and it did not <i>satisfy</i>. She turned abroad, not in pursuit +of definite good, nor from fear of particular evil, but from a +vague wish for some great change—from a wish to escape from +a life which harassed the soul, but did not calm it; which +awakened the intellect without answering its questions.</p> + +<p>She lived abroad for more than twenty years, at Avignon +and Venice and elsewhere; and, during that absence, she +wrote the letters which compose the greater part of her works. +And there is no denying that they are good letters. The art of +note-writing may become classical—it is for the present age to +provide models of that sort of composition—but letters have +perished. Nobody but a bore now takes pains enough to make +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span>them pleasant; and the only result of a bore’s pains is to make +them unpleasant. The correspondence of the present day is a +continual labour without any visible achievement. The dying +penny-a-liner said with emphasis, ‘That which I have written +has perished.’ We might all say so of the mass of petty +letters we write. They are a heap of small atoms, each with +some interest individually, but with no interest as a whole; +all the items concern us, but they all add up to nothing. +In the last century, cultivated people who sat down to write +a letter took pains to have something to say, and took pains +to say it. The postage was perhaps ninepence; and it would +be impudent to make a correspondent pay ninepence for +nothing. Still more impudent was it, <i>after</i> having made him +pay ninepence, to give him the additional pain of making out +what was half expressed. People, too, wrote to one another +then, not unfrequently, who had long been separated, and who +required much explanation and many details to make the life +of each intelligible to the other. The correspondence of the +nineteenth century is like a series of telegrams with amplified +headings. There is not more than one idea; and that idea +comes soon, and is soon over. The best correspondence of the +last age is rather like a good light article,—in which the +points are studiously made,—in which the effort to make them +is studiously concealed,—in which a series of selected circumstances +is set forth,—in which you feel, but are not told, that +the principle of the writer’s selection was to make his composition +pleasant.</p> + +<p>In letter-writing of this kind Lady Mary was very skilful. +She has the highest merit of letter-writing—she is concise +without being affected. Fluency, which a great orator pronounced +to be the curse of orators, is at least equally the curse +of writers. There are many people, many ladies especially, +who can write letters at any length, in any number, and at +any time. We may be quite sure that the letters so written +are not good letters. Composition of any sort implies consideration; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span>you must see where you are going before you can +go straight, or can pick your steps as you go. On the other +hand, too much consideration is unfavourable to the ease of +letter-writing, and perhaps of all writing. A letter too much +studied wants flow; it is a museum of hoarded sentences. +Each sentence sounds effective; but the whole composition +wants vitality. It was written with the memory instead of +the mind; and every reader feels the effect, though only the +critical reader can detect the cause. Lady Mary understood +all this. She said what she had to say in words that were +always graphic and always sufficiently good, but she avoided +curious felicity. Her expressions seem choice, but not chosen.</p> + +<p>At the end of her life Lady Mary pointed a subordinate +but not a useless moral. The masters of mundane ethics +observe that ‘you should stay in the world, or stay out of the +world.’ Lady Mary did neither. She went out and tried to +return. Horace Walpole thus describes the result: ‘Lady +Mary Wortley is arrived; I have seen her; I think her avarice, +her art, and her vivacity are all increased. Her dress, like her +language, is a <i>galimatias</i> of several countries; the groundwork +rags, and the embroidery nastiness. She needs no cap, no +handkerchief, no gown, no petticoat, and no shoes. An old +black laced hood represents the first; the fur of a horseman’s +coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second; a dimity +petticoat is deputy and officiates for the fourth; and slippers +act the part of the last. When I was at Florence, and she +was expected there, we were drawing <i>sortes Virgilianas</i> for +her; we literally drew</p> + +<p class="center">“Insanam vatem aspicies.”</p> + +<p class="noindent">It would have been a stranger prophecy now even than it was +then.’ There is a description of what the favourite of society +becomes after leaving it for years, and after indulging eccentricities +for years! There is a commentary on the blunder of +exposing yourself in your old age to young people, to whom +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span>you have always been a tradition and a name! Horace Walpole +doubtless painted up a few trivialities a little. But one +of the traits is true. Lady Mary lived before the age in which +people waste half their lives in washing the whole of their +persons.</p> + +<p>Lady Mary did not live long after her return to England. +Horace Walpole’s letter is written on the 2nd February 1762, +and she died on the 21st August in the same year. Her husband +had died just before her return, and perhaps, after so many +years, she would not have returned unless he had done so. +<i>Requiescat in pace</i>; for she quarrelled all her life.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="WILLIAM_COWPER"><i>WILLIAM +COWPER.</i>⁠<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a><br> +<span class="smaller">(1855.)</span></h2> + +</div> + +<p>For the English, after all, the best literature is the English. +We understand the language; the manners are familiar to us; +the scene at home: the associations our own. Of course, a +man who has not read Homer is like a man who has not seen +the ocean. There is a great object of which he has no idea. +But we cannot be always seeing the ocean. Its face is always +large; its smile is bright; the ever-sounding shore sounds on. +Yet we have no property in them. We stop and gaze; we +pause and draw our breath; we look and wonder at the +grandeur of the other world; but we live on shore. We fancy +associations of unknown things and distant climes, of strange +men and strange manners. But we are ourselves. Foreigners +do not behave as we should, nor do the Greeks. What a +strength of imagination, what a long practice, what a facility +in the details of fancy is required to picture their past and +unknown world! They are deceased. They are said to be +immortal, because they have written a good epitaph; but they +are gone. Their life and their manners have passed away. +We read with interest in the catalogue of the ships—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘The men of Argos and Tyrintha next,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And of Hermione, that stands retired</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With Asine, within her spacious bay;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of Epidaurus, crowned with purple vines,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span> <div class="verse indent0">And of Træzena, with the Achaian youth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of sea-begirt Ægina, and with thine</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Maseta, and the dwellers on thy coast,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Waveworn Eïonæ; ...</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And from Caristus and from Styra came</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their warlike multitudes, in front of whom</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Elphenor marched, Calchodon’s mighty son.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With foreheads shorn and wavy locks behind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They followed, and alike were eager all</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To split the hauberk with the shortened spear.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">But they are dead. ‘“So am not I,” said the foolish fat scullion.’ +We are the English of the present day. We have cows and +calves, corn and cotton; we hate the Russians; we know where +the Crimea is; we believe in Manchester the great. A large +expanse is around us; a fertile land of corn and orchards, and +pleasant hedgerows, and rising trees, and noble prospects, and +large black woods, and old church towers. The din of +great cities comes mellowed from afar. The green fields, the +half-hidden hamlets, the gentle leaves, soothe us with ‘a sweet +inland murmur.’ We have before us a vast seat of interest, and +toil, and beauty, and power, and this our own. Here is our +home. The use of foreign literature is like the use of foreign +travel. It imprints in early and susceptible years a deep +impression of great, and strange, and noble objects; but we +cannot live with these. They do not resemble our familiar life; +they do not bind themselves to our intimate affection; they are +picturesque and striking, like strangers and wayfarers, but they +are not of our home, or homely; they cannot speak to our +‘business and bosoms’; they cannot touch the hearth of the +soul. It would be better to have no outlandish literature in the +mind than to have it the principal thing. We should be like +accomplished vagabonds without a country, like men with a +hundred acquaintances and no friends. We need an intellectual +possession analogous to our own life; which reflects, embodies, +improves it; on which we can repose; which will recur to us in +the placid moments—which will be a latent principle even in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span>the acute crises of our life. Let us be thankful if our researches +in foreign literature enable us, as rightly used they will enable +us, better to comprehend our own. Let us venerate what is old, +and marvel at what is far. Let us read our own books. Let us +understand ourselves.</p> + +<p>With these principles, if such they may be called, in our +minds, we gladly devote these early pages of our journal⁠<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> to +the new edition of Cowper, with which Mr. Bell has favoured +us. There is no writer more exclusively English. There is no +one—or hardly one, perhaps—whose excellences are more +natural to our soil, and seem so little able to bear transplantation. +We do not remember to have seen his name in any continental +book. Professed histories of English literature, we dare +say, name him; but we cannot recall any such familiar and +cursory mention as would evince a real knowledge and hearty +appreciation of his writings.</p> + +<p>The edition itself is a good one. The life of Cowper, which +is prefixed to it, though not striking, is sensible. The notes +are clear, explanatory, and, so far as we know, accurate. The +special introductions to each of the poems are short and +judicious, and bring to the mind at the proper moment the +passages in Cowper’s letters most clearly relating to the work +in hand. The typography is not very elegant, but it is plain +and business-like. There is no affectation of cheap ornament.</p> + +<p>The little book which stands second on our list belongs +to a class of narratives written for a peculiar public, inculcating +peculiar doctrines, and adapted, at least in part, to +a peculiar taste. We dissent from many of these tenets, and +believe that they derive no support, but rather the contrary, +from the life of Cowper. In previous publications, written +for the same persons, these opinions have been applied to +that melancholy story in a manner which it requires strong +writing to describe. In this little volume they are more +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span>rarely expressed, and when they are it is with diffidence, +tact, and judgment.</p> + +<p>Only a most pedantic critic would attempt to separate +the criticism on Cowper’s works from a narrative of his +life. Indeed, such an attempt would be scarcely intelligible. +Cowper’s poems are almost as much connected with his +personal circumstances as his letters, and his letters are as +purely autobiographical as those of any man can be. If +all information concerning him had perished save what his +poems contain, the attention of critics would be diverted +from the examination of their interior characteristics to a +conjectural dissertation on the personal fortunes of the +author. The Germans would have much to say. It would be +debated in Tübingen who were the Three Hares, why ‘The +Sofa’ was written, why John Gilpin was not called William. +Halle would show with great clearness that there was no +reason why he <i>should</i> be called William; that it appeared +by the bills of mortality that several other persons born about +the same period had also been called John; and the ablest +of all the professors would finish the subject with a monograph +showing that there was a special fitness in the name +John, and that any one with the æsthetic sense who (like the +professor) had devoted many years exclusively to the perusal +of the poem, would be certain that any other name would be +quite ‘paralogistic, and in every manner impossible and inappropriate.’ +It would take a German to write upon the Hares.</p> + +<p>William Cowper, the poet, was born on November 26, +1731, at his father’s parsonage, at Berkhampstead. Of his +father, who was chaplain to the king, we know nothing of +importance. Of his mother, who had been named Donne, +and was a Norfolk lady, he has often made mention, and it +appears that he regarded the faint recollection which he retained +of her—for she died early—with peculiar tenderness. +In later life, and when his sun was going down in gloom and +sorrow, he recurred eagerly to opportunities of intimacy with +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span>her most distant relatives, and wished to keep alive the idea +of her in his mind. That idea was not of course very definite; +indeed, as described in his poems, it is rather the abstract idea +of what a mother should be, than anything else; but he was +able to recognise her picture, and there is a suggestion of +cakes and sugar-plums, which gives a life and vividness to the +rest. Soon after her death he was sent to a school kept by a +man named Pitman, at which he always described himself as +having suffered exceedingly from the cruelty of one of the boys. +He could never see him, or think of him, he has told us, without +trembling. And there must have been some solid reason for +this terror, since—even in those days, when τύπτω meant ‘I +strike,’ and ‘boy’ denoted a thing to be beaten—this juvenile +inflicter of secret stripes was actually expelled. From Mr. +Pitman, Cowper, on account of a weakness in the eyes, which +remained with him through life, was transferred to the care +of an oculist,—a dreadful fate even for the most cheerful boy, +and certainly not likely to cure one with any disposition to +melancholy; hardly indeed can the boldest mind, in its +toughest hour of manly fortitude, endure to be domesticated +with an operation chair. Thence he went to Westminster, of +which he has left us discrepant notices, according to the feeling +for the time being uppermost in his mind. From several +parts of the ‘Tirocinium,’ it would certainly seem that he regarded +the whole system of public school teaching not only +with speculative disapproval, but with the painful hatred of a +painful experience. A thousand genial passages in his private +letters, however, really prove the contrary; and in a changing +mood of mind, the very poem which was expressly written to +‘recommend private tuition at home’ gives some idea of school +happiness.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We love the play-place of our early days;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The scene is touching, and the heart is stone</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That feels not at that sight, and feels at none.</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span> <div class="verse indent0">The wall on which we tried our graving skill,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The very name we carved subsisting still,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The bench on which we sat while deep employed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Though mangled, hacked, and hewed, not yet destroyed;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The little ones unbuttoned, glowing hot,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Playing our games, and on the very spot,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As happy as we once, to kneel and draw</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The chalky ring, and knuckle down at taw;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To pitch the ball into the grounded hat,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or drive it devious with a dextrous pat;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The pleasing spectacle at once excites</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Such recollections of our own delights,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That viewing it, we seem almost t’ obtain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our innocent sweet simple years again.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This fond attachment to the well-known place,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whence first we started into life’s long race,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We feel it e’en in age, and at our latest day.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Probably we pursue an insoluble problem in seeking a +suitable education for a morbidly melancholy mind. At first +it seems a dreadful thing to place a gentle and sensitive nature +in contact, in familiarity, and even under the rule of coarse +and strong buoyant natures. Nor should this be in general +attempted. The certain result is present suffering, and the +expected good is remote and disputable. Nevertheless, it is +no artificial difficulty which we here encounter—none which +we can hope by educational contrivances to meet or vanquish. +The difficulty is in truth the existence of the world. It is the +fact, that by the constitution of society the bold, the vigorous, +and the buoyant, rise and rule; and that the weak, the shrinking, +and the timid, fall and serve. In after-life, in the actual +commerce of men, even too in those quiet and tranquil pursuits +in which a still and gentle mind should seem to be under +the least disadvantage, in philosophy and speculation, the +strong and active, who have confidence in themselves and their +ideas, acquire and keep dominion. It is idle to expect that +this will not give great pain—that the shrinking and timid, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span>who are often just as ambitious as others, will not repine—that +the rough and strong will not often consciously inflict grievous +oppression—will not still more often, without knowing it, cause +to more tremulous minds a refined suffering which their coarser +texture could never experience, which it does not sympathise +with, nor comprehend. Some time in life—it is but a question +of a very few years at most—this trial must be undergone. +There may be a short time, more or less, of gentle protection +and affectionate care, but the leveret grows old—the world +waits at the gate—the hounds are ready, and the huntsman +too, and there is need of strength, and pluck, and speed. +Cowper indeed, himself, as we have remarked, does not, on an +attentive examination, seem to have suffered exceedingly. In +subsequent years, when a dark cloud had passed over him, he +was apt at times to exaggerate isolated days of melancholy +and pain, and fancy that the dislike which he entertained for +the system of schools, by way of speculative principle, was in +fact the result of a personal and suffering experience. But, as +we shall have (though we shall not, in fact, perhaps use them +all) a thousand occasions to observe, he had, side by side with +a morbid and melancholy humour, an easy nature, which was +easily satisfied with the world as he found it, was pleased with +the gaiety of others, and liked the sight of, and sympathy +with, the more active enjoyments which he did not care to engage +in or to share. Besides, there is every evidence that +cricket and marbles (though he sometimes in his narratives +suppresses the fact, in condescension to those of his associates +who believed them to be the idols of wood and stone which are +spoken of in the prophets) really exercised a laudable and +healthy supremacy over his mind. The animation of the +scene—the gay alertness which Gray looked back on so fondly +in long years of soothing and delicate musing, exerted, as the +passage which we cited shows, a great influence over a genius +superior to Gray’s in facility and freedom, though inferior in +the ‘little footsteps’ of the finest fancy,—in the rare and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span>carefully-hoarded felicities, unequalled save in the immeasurable +abundance of the greatest writers. Of course Cowper was unhappy +at school, as he was unhappy always; and of course too +we are speaking of Westminster only. For Dr. Pitman and the +oculist there is nothing to say.</p> + +<p>In scholarship Cowper seems to have succeeded. He was +not, indeed, at all the sort of man to attain to that bold, +strong-brained, confident scholarship which Bentley carried to +such an extreme, and which, in almost every generation since, +some Englishman has been found of hard head and stiff-clayed +memory to keep up and perpetuate. His friend Thurlow was +the man for this pursuit, and the man to prolong the just +notion that those who attain early proficiency in it are likely +men to become Lord Chancellors. Cowper’s scholarship was +simply the general and delicate <i>impression</i> which the early +study of the classics invariably leaves on a nice and susceptible +mind. In point of information it was strictly of a common +nature. It is clear that his real knowledge was mostly confined +to the poets, especially the ordinary Latin poets and Homer, and +that he never bestowed any regular attention on the historians, or +orators, or philosophers of antiquity, either at school or in after +years. Nor indeed would such a course of study have in reality +been very beneficial to him. The strong, analytic, comprehensive, +reason-giving powers which are required in these dry and +rational pursuits were utterly foreign to his mind. All that +was congenial to him, he acquired in the easy intervals of apparent +idleness. The friends whom he made at Westminster, and +who continued for many years to be attached to him, preserved +the probable tradition that he was a gentle and gradual, rather +than a forcible or rigorous learner.</p> + +<p>The last hundred years have doubtless seen a vast change in +the common education of the common boy. The small and +pomivorous animal which we so call is now subjected to a +treatment very elaborate and careful,—that contrasts much +with the simple alternation of classics and cuffs which was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span>formerly so fashionable. But it may be doubted whether for a +peculiar mind such as Cowper’s, on the intellectual side at least, +the tolerant and corpuscular theory of the last century was not +preferable to the intolerant and never-resting moral influence +that has succeeded to it. Some minds learn most when they +seem to learn least. A certain, placid, unconscious, equable +in-taking of knowledge suits them, and alone suits them. To +succeed in forcing such men to attain great learning is simply +impossible; for you cannot put the fawn into the ‘Land Transport.’ +The only resource is to allow them to acquire gently +and casually in their own way; and in that way they will often +imbibe, as if by the mere force of existence, much pleasant and +well-fancied knowledge.</p> + +<p>From Westminster Cowper went at once into a solicitor’s +office. Of the next few years (he was then about eighteen) we +do not know much. His attention to legal pursuits was, according +to his own account, not very profound; yet it could not +have been wholly contemptible, for his evangelical friend, Mr. +Newton, who, whatever may be the worth of his religious +theories, had certainly a sound, rough judgment on topics +terrestrial, used in after years to have no mean opinion of the +value of his legal counsel. In truth, though nothing could be +more out of Cowper’s way than abstract and recondite jurisprudence, +an easy and sensible mind like his would find a great +deal which was very congenial to it in the well-known and perfectly +settled maxims which regulate and rule the daily life of +common men. No strain of capacity or stress of speculative +intellect is necessary for the apprehension of these. A fair and +easy mind, which is placed within their reach, will find it has +learnt them, without knowing when or how.</p> + +<p>After some years of legal instruction, Cowper chose to be +called to the bar, and took chambers in the Temple accordingly. +He never, however, even pretended to practise. He passed his +time in literary society, in light study, in tranquil negligence. +He was intimate with Colman, Lloyd, and other wits of those +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span>times. He wrote an essay in the <i>Connoisseur</i>, the kind of +composition then most fashionable, especially with such literary +gentlemen as were most careful not to be confounded with the +professed authors. In a word, he did ‘nothing,’ as that word is +understood among the vigorous, aspiring, and trenchant part of +mankind. Nobody could seem less likely to attain eminence. +Every one must have agreed that there was no harm in him, +and few could have named any particular good which it was +likely that he would achieve. In after days he drew up a +memoir of his life, in which he speaks of those years with deep +self-reproach. It was not indeed the secular indolence of the +time which excited his disapproval. The course of life had +not made him more desirous of worldly honours, but less; and +nothing could be further from his tone of feeling than regret +for not having strenuously striven to attain them. He spoke +of those years in the Puritan manner, using words which literally +express the grossest kind of active Atheism in a vague and +vacant way; leaving us to gather from external sources whether +they are to be understood in their plain and literal signification, +or in that out-of-the-way and technical sense in which they +hardly have a meaning. In this case the external evidence is so +clear that there is no difficulty. The regrets of Cowper had +reference to offences which the healthy and sober consciences +of mankind will not consider to deserve them. A vague, +literary, omnitolerant idleness was perhaps their worst feature. +He was himself obliged to own that he had always been considered +‘as one religiously inclined, if not actually religious,’ +and the applicable testimony, as well as the whole form and +nature of his character, forbid us to ascribe to him the slightest +act of licence or grossness. A reverend biographer has called +his life at this time, ‘an unhappy compound of guilt and +wretchedness.’ But unless the estimable gentleman thinks it +sinful to be a barrister and wretched to live in the Temple, it +is not easy to make out what he would mean. In point of +intellectual cultivation, and with a view to preparing himself +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span>for writing his subsequent works, it is not possible he should +have spent his time better. He then acquired that easy, +familiar knowledge of terrestrial things—the vague and general +information of the superficies of all existence—the acquaintance +with life, business, hubbub, and rustling matter of fact, which +seem odd in the recluse of Olney—and enliven so effectually +the cucumbers of the ‘Task.’ It has been said that at times +every man wishes to be a man of the world, and even the most +rigid critic must concede it to be nearly essential to a writer on +real life and actual manners. If a man has not seen his brother, +how can he describe him? As this world calls happiness and +blamelessness, it is not easy to fancy a life more happy—at +least with more of the common elements of happiness,—or +more blameless than those years of Cowper. An easy temper, +light fancies,—hardly as yet broken by shades of melancholy +brooding;—an enjoying habit, rich humour, literary, but not +pedantic companions, a large scene of life and observation, +polished acquaintance and attached friends: these were his, and +what has a light life more? A rough hero Cowper was not and +never became, but he was then, as ever, a quiet and tranquil +gentleman. If De Béranger’s doctrine were true, ‘<i>Le bonheur +tient au savoir-vivre</i>,’ there were the materials of existence here. +What, indeed, would not De Béranger have made of them?</p> + +<p>One not unnatural result or accompaniment of such a life +was that Cowper fell in love. There were in those days two +young ladies, cousins of Cowper, residents in London, to one +of whom, the Lady Hesketh of after years, he once wrote:—‘My +dear Cousin,—I wonder how it happened, that much as +I love you, I was never in love with you.’ No similar providence +protected his intimacy with her sister. Theodora Cowper, +‘One of the cousins with whom Thurlow used to giggle and +make giggle in Southampton-row,’ was a handsome and vigorous +damsel. ‘What!’ said her father, ‘What will you do if +you marry William Cowper?’ meaning, in the true parental +spirit, to intrude mere pecuniary ideas. ‘Do, sir!’ she replied, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span>‘Wash all day, and ride out on the great dog all night!’ a +spirited combination of domestic industry and exterior excitement. +It is doubtful, however, whether either of these species +of pastime and occupation would have been exactly congenial +to Cowper. A gentle and refined indolence must have made +him an inferior washerman, and perhaps to accompany the +canine excursions of a wife ‘which clear-starched,’ would have +hardly seemed enough to satisfy his accomplished and placid +ambition. At any rate, it certainly does seem that he was not +a very vigorous lover. The young lady was, as he himself +oddly said:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent2">‘Through tedious years of doubt and pain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fixed in her choice and faithful ... <i>but in vain</i>.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>The poet does indeed partly allude to the parental scruples +of Mr. Cowper, her father; but house-rent would not be so +high as it is, if fathers had their way. The profits of builders +are eminently dependent on the uncontrollable nature of the +best affections; and that intelligent class of men have had a +table compiled from trustworthy data, in which the chances of +parental victory are rated at ·0000000001, and those of the +young people themselves at ·999999999,—in fact, as many +nines as you can imagine. ‘It has been represented to me,’ +says the actuary, ‘that few young people ever marry without +some objection, more or less slight, on the part of their parents; +and from a most laborious calculation, from data collected in +quarters both within and exterior to the bills of mortality, I +am led to believe that the above figures represent the state of +the case accurately enough to form a safe guide for the pecuniary +investments of the gentlemen, &c. &c.’ It is not likely +that Theodora Cowper understood decimals, but she had a strong +opinion in favour of her cousin, and a great idea, if we rightly +read the now obscure annals of old times, that her father’s +objections might pretty easily have been got over. In fact, +we think so even now, without any prejudice of affection, in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span>our cool and mature judgment. Mr. Cowper the aged had +nothing to say, except that the parties were cousins—a valuable +remark, which has been frequently repeated in similar cases, +but which has not been found to prevent a mass of matches +both then and since. Probably the old gentleman thought +the young gentleman by no means a working man, and objected—believing +that a small income can only be made more +by unremitting industry,—and the young gentleman admitting +this horrid and abstract fact, and agreeing, though perhaps +tacitly, in his uncle’s estimate of his personal predilections, +did not object to being objected to. The nature of Cowper was +not, indeed, passionate. He required beyond almost any man +the daily society of amiable and cultivated women. It is clear +that he preferred such gentle excitement to the rough and +argumentative pleasures of more masculine companionship. +His easy and humorous nature loved and learned from female +detail. But he had no overwhelming partiality for a particular +individual. One refined lady, the first moments of +shyness over, was nearly as pleasing as another refined lady. +Disappointment sits easy on such a mind. Perhaps, too, he +feared the anxious duties, the rather contentious tenderness of +matrimonial existence. At any rate, he acquiesced. Theodora +never married. Love did not, however, kill her—at least, if it +did, it was a long time at the task, as she survived these events +more than sixty years. She never, seemingly, forgot the past.</p> + +<p>But a dark cloud was at hand. If there be any truly painful +fact about the world now tolerably well established by +ample experience and ample records, it is that an intellectual +and indolent happiness is wholly denied to the children of men. +That most valuable author, Lucretius, who has supplied us and +others with an inexhaustible supply of metaphors on this topic, +ever dwells on the life of his gods with a sad and melancholy +feeling that no such life was possible on a crude and cumbersome +earth. In general, the two opposing agencies are marriage +and money; either of these breaks the lot of literary and refined +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span>inaction at once and for ever. The first of these, as we +have seen, Cowper had escaped. His reserved and negligent +reveries were still free, at least from the invasion of affection. +To this invasion, indeed, there is commonly requisite the acquiescence +or connivance of mortality; but all men are born, +not free and equal, as the Americans maintain, but, in the +old world at least, basely subjected to the yoke of coin. It is +in vain that in this hemisphere we endeavour after impecuniary +fancies. In bold and eager youth we go out on our travels. +We visit Baalbec, and Paphos, and Tadmor, and Cythera,—ancient +shrines and ancient empires, seats of eager love or +gentle inspiration. We wander far and long. We have nothing +to do with our fellow-men. What are we, indeed, to diggers +and counters? We wander far; we dream to wander for ever, +but we dream in vain. A surer force than the subtlest fascination +of fancy is in operation. The purse-strings tie us to our +kind. Our travel-coin runs low, and we must return, away +from Tadmor and Baalbec back to our steady, tedious industry +and dull work, to ‘<i>la vieille Europe</i> (as Napoleon said) <i>qui +m’ennuie</i>.’ It is the same in thought. In vain we seclude ourselves +in elegant chambers, in fascinating fancies, in refined +reflections. ‘By this time,’ says Cowper, ‘my patrimony being +nearly all spent, and there being no appearance that I should +ever repair the damage by a fortune of my own getting, I +began to be a little apprehensive of approaching want.’ However +little one is fit for it, it is necessary to attack some +drudgery. The vigorous and sturdy rouse themselves to the +work. They find in its regular occupation, clear decisions, +and stern perplexities, a bold and rude compensation for the +necessary loss or diminution of light fancies and delicate +musings,—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘The sights which youthful poets dream,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On summer eve by haunted stream.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">But it was not so with Cowper. A peculiar and slight nature +unfitted him for so rough and harsh a resolution. The lion +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span>may eat straw like the ox, and the child put his head on the +cockatrice’ den; but will even then the light antelope be equal +to the heavy plough? Will the gentle gazelle, even in those +days, pull the slow waggon of ordinary occupation?</p> + +<p>The outward position of Cowper was, indeed, singularly +fortunate. Instead of having to meet the long labours of an +open profession, or the anxious decisions of a personal business, +he had the choice among several lucrative and quiet public +offices, in which very ordinary abilities would suffice, and scarcely +any degree of incapacity would entail dismissal, or reprimand, +or degradation. It seemed at first scarcely possible that even +the least strenuous of men should be found unequal to duties so +little arduous or exciting. He has himself said—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Lucrative offices are seldom lost</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For want of powers proportioned to the post;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Give e’en a dunce the employment he desires,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And he soon finds the talents it requires;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A business with an income at its heels,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Furnishes always oil for its own wheels.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">The place he chose was called the Clerkship of the Journals of +the House of Lords, one of the many quiet haunts which then +slumbered under the imposing shade of parliamentary and aristocratic +privilege. Yet the idea of it was more than he could +bear.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘In the beginning,’ he writes, ‘a strong opposition to my friend’s +right of nomination began to show itself. A powerful party was +formed among the Lords to thwart it, in favour of an old enemy of +the family, though one much indebted to its bounty; and it appeared +plain that, if we succeeded at last, it would only be by fighting our +ground by inches. Every advantage, as I was told, would be sought +for, and eagerly seized, to disconcert us. I was bid to expect an +examination at the bar of the House, touching my sufficiency for the +post I had taken. Being necessarily ignorant of the nature of that +business, it became expedient that I should visit the office daily, in +order to qualify myself for the strictest scrutiny. All the horror of +my fears and perplexities now returned. A thunderbolt would have +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span>been as welcome to me as this intelligence. I knew, to demonstration, +that upon these terms the clerkship of the journals was no place +for me. To require my attendance at the bar of the House, that I +might there publicly entitle myself to the office, was, in effect, to +exclude me from it. In the meantime, the interest of my friend, +the honour of his choice, my own reputation and circumstances, all +urged me forward; all pressed me to undertake that which I saw to +be impracticable. They whose spirits are formed like mine, to +whom <i>a public exhibition of themselves, on any occasion, is mortal +poison</i>, may have some idea of the horrors of my situation; others +can have none.</p> + +<p>‘My continual misery at length brought on a nervous fever: quiet +forsook me by day, and peace by night; a finger raised against me +was more than I could stand against. In this posture of mind, I +attended regularly at the office; where, instead of a soul upon the +rack, the most active spirits were essentially necessary for my +purpose. I expected no assistance from anybody there, all the inferior +clerks being under the influence of my opponent; and accordingly I +received none. The journal books were indeed thrown open to me—a +thing which could not be refused; and from which, perhaps, a +man in health, and with a head turned to business, might have +gained all the information he wanted; but it was not so with me. +I read without perception, and was so distressed, that, had every +clerk in the office been my friend, it could have availed me little; +for I was not in a condition to receive instruction, much less to elicit +it out of manuscripts, without direction. Many months went over +me thus employed; constant in the use of means, despairing as to +the issue.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>As the time of trial drew near, his excitement rapidly increased. +A short excursion into the country was attended +with momentary benefit; but as soon as he returned to town +he became immediately unfit for occupation, and as unsettled +as ever. He grew first to wish to become mad, next to believe +that he should become so, and only to be afraid that the expected +delirium might not come on soon enough to prevent +his appearance for examination before the lords,—a fear, the +bare existence of which shows how slight a barrier remained +between him and the insanity which he fancied that he longed +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span>for. He then began to contemplate suicide, and not unnaturally +called to mind a curious circumstance:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘I well recollect, too,’ he writes, ‘that when I was about eleven +years of age, my father desired me to read a vindication of self-murder, +and give him my sentiments upon the question: I did so, +and argued against it. My father heard my reasons, and was silent, +neither approving nor disapproving; from whence I inferred that +he sided with the author against me; though all the time, I believe, +the true motive for his conduct was, that he wanted, if he could, to +think favourably of the state of a departed friend, who had some +years before destroyed himself, and whose death had struck him +with the deepest affliction. But this solution of the matter never +once occurred to me, and the circumstance now weighed mightily +with me.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>And he made several attempts to execute his purpose, all which +are related in a ‘Narrative,’ which he drew up after his recovery; +and of which the elaborate detail shows a strange and +most painful tendency to revive the slightest circumstances of +delusions which it would have been most safe and most wholesome +never to recall. The curiously careful style, indeed, of +the narration, as elegant as that of the most flowing and felicitous +letter, reminds one of nothing so much as the studiously +beautiful and compact handwriting in which Rousseau used to +narrate and describe the most incoherent and indefinite of his +personal delusions. On the whole, nevertheless—for a long +time, at least—it does not seem that the life of Cowper was in +real danger. The hesitation and indeterminateness of nerve +which rendered him liable to these fancies, and unequal to +ordinary action, also prevented his carrying out these terrible +visitations to their rigorous and fearful consequences. At last, +however, there seems to have been possible, if not actual +danger:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘Not one hesitating thought now remained, but I fell greedily to +the execution of my purpose. My garter was made of a broad +piece of scarlet binding, with a sliding buckle, being sewn together +at the ends; by the help of the buckle I formed a noose, and fixed +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span>it about my neck, straining it so tight that I hardly left a passage +for my breath, or for the blood to circulate; the tongue of the +buckle held it fast. At each corner of the bed was placed a wreath +of carved work, fastened by an iron pin, which passed up through +the midst of it: the other part of the garter, which made a loop, I +slipped over one of these, and hung by it some seconds, drawing +up my feet under me, that they might not touch the floor; but the +iron bent, and the carved work slipped off, and the garter with it. +I then fastened it to the frame of the tester, winding it round, and +tying it in a strong knot. The frame broke short, and let me down +again.</p> + +<p>‘The third effort was more likely to succeed. I set the door +open, which reached within a foot of the ceiling; by the help of a +chair I could command the top of it, and the loop being large +enough to admit a large angle of the door, was easily fixed so as not +to slip off again. I pushed away the chair with my feet, and hung +at my whole length. While I hung there, I distinctly heard a voice +say three times, “<i>’Tis over!</i>” Though I am sure of the fact, and was +so at the time, yet it did not at all alarm me, or affect my resolution. +I hung so long that I lost all sense, all consciousness of existence.</p> + +<p>‘When I came to myself again, I thought myself in hell; the +sound of my own dreadful groans was all that I heard, and a feeling +like that produced by a flash of lightning just beginning to seize +upon me, passed over my whole body. In a few seconds I found +myself fallen on my face to the floor. In about half a minute I recovered +my feet: and, reeling and staggering, tumbled into bed again.</p> + +<p>‘By the blessed providence of God, the garter which had held +me till the bitterness of temporal death was past, broke just before +eternal death had taken place upon me. The stagnation of the +blood under one eye, in a broad crimson spot, and a red circle +round my neck, showed plainly that I had been on the brink of +eternity. The latter, indeed, might have been occasioned by the +pressure of the garter, but the former was certainly the effect of +strangulation; for it was not attended with the sensation of a bruise, +as it must have been, had I, in my fall, received one in so tender +a part. And I rather think the circle round my neck was owing to +the same cause; for the part was not excoriated, not at all in pain.</p> + +<p>‘Soon after I got into bed, I was surprised to hear a noise in +the dining-room, where the laundress was lighting a fire; she had +found the door unbolted, notwithstanding my design to fasten it, +and must have passed the bed-chamber door while I was hanging +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span>on it, and yet never perceived me. She heard me fall, and presently +came to ask me if I was well; adding, she feared I had been in a fit.</p> + +<p>‘I sent her to a friend, to whom I related the whole affair, and +dispatched him to my kinsman at the coffee-house. As soon as the +latter arrived, I pointed to the broken garter, which lay in the +middle of the room, and apprised him also of the attempt I had been +making. His words were, “My dear Mr. Cowper, you terrify me! +To be sure you cannot hold the office at this rate,—where is the +deputation?” I gave him the key of the drawer where it was deposited; +and his business requiring his immediate attendance, he +took it away with him; and thus ended all my connection with the +Parliament office.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>It must have been a strange scene; for, so far as appears, +the outward manners of Cowper had undergone no remarkable +change. There was always a mild composure about them, which +would have deceived any but the most experienced observer; +and it is probable that Major Cowper, his ‘kinsman’ and intimate +friend, had very little or no suspicion of the conflict which +was raging beneath his tranquil and accomplished exterior. +What a contrast is the ‘broad piece of scarlet binding’ and the +red circle, ‘showing plainly that I had been on the brink of +eternity,’ to the daily life of the easy gentleman ‘who contributed +some essays to the “St. James’s Magazine,” and more +than one to the “St. James’s Chronicle,”’ living ‘soft years’ +on a smooth superficies of existence, away from the dark realities +which are, as it were, the skeleton of our life,—which +seem to haunt us like a death’s head throughout the narrative +that has been quoted!</p> + +<p>It was doubtless the notion of Cowper’s friends, that when +all idea of an examination before the Lords was removed, by +the abandonment of his nomination to the office in question, +the excitement which that idea had called forth would very soon +pass away. But that notion was an error. A far more complicated +state of mind ensued. If we may advance a theory +on a most difficult as well as painful topic, we would say that +religion is very rarely the proximate or impulsive cause of madness. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[274]</span>The real and ultimate cause (as we speak) is of course +that unknown something which we variously call predisposition, +or malady, or defect. But the critical and exciting cause +seems generally to be some comparatively trivial external occasion, +which falls within the necessary lot and life of the +person who becomes mad. The inherent excitability is usually +awakened by some petty casual stimulant, which looks +positively not worth a thought—certainly a terribly slight +agent for the wreck and havoc which it makes. The constitution +of the human mind is such, that the great general +questions, problems, and difficulties of our state of being are +not commonly capable of producing that result. They appear +to lie too far in the distance, to require too great a stretch of +imagination, to be too apt (for the very weakness of our minds’ +sake, perhaps) to be thrust out of view by the trivial occurrences +of this desultory world,—to be too impersonal, in truth, to +cause the exclusive, anxious, aching occupation which is the +common prelude and occasion of insanity. Afterwards, on the +other hand, when the wound is once struck, when the petty +circumstance has been allowed to work its awful consequence, +religion very frequently becomes the predominating topic of +delusion. It would seem as if, when the mind was once set +apart by the natural consequences of the disease, and secluded +from the usual occupations of, and customary contact with, +other minds, it searched about through all the universe for +causes of trouble and anguish. A certain pain probably exists; +and even in insanity, man is so far a rational being that he +seeks and craves at least the outside and semblance of a reason +for a suffering, which is really and truly without reason. Something +must be found to justify its anguish to itself. And +naturally the great difficulties inherent in the very position of +man in this world, and trying so deeply the faith and firmness +of the wariest and wisest minds, are ever ready to present +plausible justifications or causeless depression. An anxious +melancholy is not without very perplexing sophisms and very +painful illustrations, with which a morbid mind can obtain not +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span>only a fair logical position, but even apparent argumentative +victories, on many points, over the more hardy part of mankind. +The acuteness of madness soon uses these in its own wretched +and terrible justification. No originality of mind is necessary +for so doing. Great and terrible systems of divinity and +philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a +wise man mad—which read like professed exculpations of a +contemplated insanity.</p> + +<p>‘To this moment,’ writes Cowper, immediately after the +passage which has been quoted, ‘I had felt no concern of a +spiritual kind.’ But now a conviction fell upon him that he +was eternally lost. ‘All my worldly sorrows,’ he says, ‘seemed +as if they had never been; the terrors which succeeded them +seemed so great and so much more afflicting. One moment I +thought myself expressly excluded by one chapter; next by +another.’ He thought the curse of the barren fig-tree was pronounced +with an especial and designed reference to him. All day +long these thoughts followed him. He lived nearly alone, and +his friends were either unaware of the extreme degree to which +his mind was excited, or unalive to the possible alleviation with +which new scenes and cheerful society might have been attended. +He fancied the people in the street stared at and despised him—that +ballads were made in ridicule of him—that the voice of +his conscience was eternally audible. He then bethought him +of a Mr. Madan, an evangelical minister, at that time held in +much estimation, but who afterwards fell into disrepute by the +publication of a work on marriage and its obligations (or rather +its <i>non</i>-obligations), which Cowper has commented on in a controversial +poem. That gentleman visited Cowper at his request, +and began to explain to him the gospel.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘He spoke,’ says Cowper, ‘of original sin, and the corruption of +every man born into the world, whereby every one is a child of wrath. +I perceived something like hope dawning in my heart. This doctrine +set me more on a level with the rest of mankind, and made my condition +appear less desperate.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span></p> + +<p>‘Next he insisted on the all-atoning efficacy of the blood of Jesus, +and His righteousness, for our justification. While I heard this part +of his discourse, and the Scriptures on which he founded it, my heart +began to burn within me; my soul was pierced with a sense of my +bitter ingratitude to so merciful a Saviour; and those tears, which I +thought impossible, burst forth freely. I saw clearly that my case required +such a remedy, and had not the least doubt within me but that +this was the gospel of salvation.</p> + +<p>‘Lastly, he urged the necessity of a lively faith in Jesus Christ; +not an assent only of the understanding, but a faith of application, an +actually laying hold of it, and embracing it as a salvation wrought out +for me personally. Here I failed, and deplored my want of such a +faith. He told me it was the gift of God, which he trusted He would +bestow upon me. I could only reply, “I wish He would:” a very +irreverent petition, but a very sincere one, and such as the blessed +God, in His due time, was pleased to answer.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>It does not appear that previous to this conversation he had +ever distinctly realised the tenets which were afterwards to have +so much influence over him. For the moment they produced a +good effect, but in a few hours their novelty was over—the +dark hour returned, and he awoke from slumber with a ‘stronger +alienation from God than ever.’ The tenacity with which the +mind in moments of excitement appropriates and retains very +abstract tenets, that bear even in a slight degree on the topic of +its excitement, is as remarkable as the facility and accuracy with +which it apprehends them in the midst of so great a tumult. +Many changes and many years rolled over Cowper—years of +black and dark depression, years of tranquil society, of genial +labour, of literary fame, but never in the lightest or darkest +hour was he wholly unconscious of the abstract creed of Martin +Madan. At the time indeed, the body had its rights, and maintained +them.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘While I traversed the apartment, expecting every moment that +the earth would open her mouth and swallow me, my conscience +scaring me, and the city of refuge out of reach and out of sight, a +strange and horrible darkness fell upon me. If it were possible that +a heavy blow could light on the brain without touching the skull, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span>such was the sensation I felt. I clapped my hand to my forehead, +and cried aloud, through the pain it gave me. At every stroke my +thoughts and expressions became more wild and incoherent; all that +remained clear was the sense of sin, and the expectation of punishment. +These kept undisturbed possession all through my illness, +without interruption or abatement.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>It is idle to follow details further. The deep waters had +passed over him, and it was long before the face of his mind was +dry or green again.</p> + +<p>He was placed in a lunatic asylum, where he continued +many months, and which he left apparently cured. After some +changes of no moment, but which by his own account evinced +many traces of dangerous excitement, he took up his abode at +Huntingdon, with the family of Unwin; and it is remarkable how +soon the taste for easy and simple, yet not wholly unintellectual +society, which had formerly characterised him, revived again. +The delineation cannot be given in any terms but his own:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘We breakfast commonly between eight and nine; till eleven, we +read either the Scripture, or the sermons of some faithful preacher of +these holy mysteries; at eleven we attend divine service, which is +performed here twice every day; and from twelve to three we separate, +and amuse ourselves as we please. During that interval, I either read, +in my own apartment, or walk, or ride, or work in the garden. We +seldom sit an hour after dinner, but if the weather permits, adjourn +to the garden, where, with Mrs. Unwin and her son, I have generally +the pleasure of religious conversation till tea-time. If it rains, or is +too windy for walking, we either converse within doors, or sing some +hymns of Martin’s collection, and by the help of Mrs. Unwin’s harpsichord, +make up a tolerable concert, in which our hearts, I hope, are +the best and most musical performers. After tea we sally forth to +walk in good earnest. Mrs. Unwin is a good walker, and we have +generally travelled about four miles before we see home again. When +the days are short, we make this excursion in the former part of the +day, between church time and dinner. At night we read, and converse, +as before, till supper, and commonly finish the evening either +with hymns, or a sermon, and last of all the family are called to +prayers. I need not tell <i>you</i>, that such a life as this is consistent with +the utmost cheerfulness; accordingly we are all happy, and dwell together +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span>in unity as brethren. Mrs. Unwin has almost a maternal +affection for me, and I have something very like a filial one for her, +and her son and I are brothers. Blessed be the God of our salvation +for such companions, and for such a life—above all, for a heart to like it.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>The scene was not however to last as it was. Mr. Unwin, +the husband of Mrs. Unwin, was suddenly killed soon after, +and Cowper removed with Mrs. Unwin to Olney, where a new +epoch of his life begins.</p> + +<p>The curate of Olney at this time was John Newton, a man +of great energy of mind, and well known in his generation for +several vigorous books, and still more for a very remarkable +life. He had been captain of a Liverpool slave ship—an occupation +in which he had quite energy enough to have succeeded, +but was deeply influenced by serious motives, and became one +of the strongest and most active of the Low Church clergymen +of that day. He was one of those men who seem intended to +make excellence disagreeable. He was a converting engine. +The whole of his own enormous vigour of body—the whole +steady intensity of a pushing, impelling, compelling, unoriginal +mind—all the mental or corporeal exertion he could exact from +the weak or elicit from the strong, were devoted to one sole +purpose—the effectual impact of the Calvinistic tenets on the +parishioners of Olney. Nor would we hint that his exertions +were at all useless. There is no denying that there is a certain +stiff, tough, agricultural, clayish English nature, on which the +aggressive divine produces a visible and good effect. The hardest +and heaviest hammering seems required to stir and warm that +close and coarse matter. To impress any sense of the supernatural +on so secular a substance is a great good, though that +sense be expressed in false or irritating theories. It is unpleasant, +no doubt, to hear the hammering; the bystanders are in +an evil case; you might as well live near an iron-ship yard. +Still the blows do not hurt the iron. Something of the sort is +necessary to beat the coarse ore into a shining and useful shape; +certainly that does so beat it. But the case is different when +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[279]</span>the hundred-handed divine desires to hit others. The very +system which, on account of its hard blows, is adapted to the +tough and ungentle, is by that very reason unfit for the tremulous +and tender. The nature of many men and many women is +such that it will not bear the daily and incessant repetition of +some certain and indisputable truths. The universe has of +course its dark aspect. Many tremendous facts and difficulties +can be found which often haunt the timid and sometimes incapacitate +the feeble. To be continually insisting on these, and +these only, will simply render both more and more unfit for the +duties to which they were born. And if this is the case with +certain fact and clear truth, how much more with uncertain +error and mystic exaggeration! Mr. Newton was alive to the +consequence of his system: ‘I believe my name is up about the +country for preaching people mad; for whether it is owing to +the sedentary life women lead here, &c. &c., I suppose we have +near a dozen in different degrees disordered in their heads, and +most of them, I believe, <i>truly gracious people</i>.’ He perhaps +found his peculiar views more generally appreciated among this +class of young ladies than among more healthy and rational +people, and clearly did not wholly condemn the delivering them, +even at this cost, from the tyranny of the ‘carnal reason.’</p> + +<p>No more dangerous adviser, if this world had been searched +over, could have been found for Cowper. What the latter +required was prompt encouragement to cheerful occupation, +quiet amusement, gentle and unexhausting society. Mr. Newton +thought otherwise. His favourite motto was <i>Perimus in +licitis</i>. The simple round of daily pleasures and genial employments +which give instinctive happiness to the happiest natures, +and best cheer the common life of common men, was studiously +watched and scrutinised with the energy of a Puritan and the +watchfulness of an inquisitor. Mr. Newton had all the tastes and +habits which go to form what in the Catholic system is called +a spiritual director. Of late years it is well known that the +institution, or rather practice of confession, has expanded into +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span>a more potent and more imperious organisation. You are expected +by the priests of the Roman Church not only to confess +to them what you have done, but to take their advice as to what +you shall do. The future is under their direction, as the past +was beneath their scrutiny. This was exactly the view which +Mr. Newton took of his relation to Cowper. A natural aptitude +for dictation—a steady, strong, compelling decision,—great +self-command, and a sharp perception of all impressible points +in the characters of others,—made the task of guiding ‘weaker +brethren’ a natural and pleasant pursuit. To suppose a shrinking, +a wounded, and tremulous mind, like that of Cowper’s, +would rise against such bold dogmatism, such hard volition, such +animal nerve, is to fancy that the beaten slave will dare the lash +which his very eyes instinctively fear and shun. Mr. Newton’s +great idea was that Cowper ought to be of some use. There +was a great deal of excellent hammering hammered in the +parish, and it was sinful that a man with nothing to do should +sit tranquil. Several persons in the street had done what they +ought not; football was not unknown; cards were played; +flirtation was not conducted ‘improvingly.’ It was clearly +Cowper’s duty to put a stop to such things. Accordingly he +made him a parochial implement; he set him to visit painful +cases, to attend at prayer meetings, to compose melancholy +hymns, even to conduct or share in conducting public services +himself. It never seems to have occurred to him that so fragile +a mind would be unequal to the burden—that a bruised reed +does often break; or rather if it did occur to him, he regarded +it as a subterranean suggestion, and expected a supernatural +interference to counteract the events at which it hinted. Yet +there are certain rules and principles in this world which seem +earthly, but which the most excellent may not on that account +venture to disregard. The consequence of placing Cowper in +exciting situations was a return of his excitement. It is painful +to observe, that though the attack resembled in all its main +features his former one, several months passed before Mr. Newton +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[281]</span>would permit any proper physical remedies to be applied, +and then it was too late. We need not again recount details. +Many months of dark despondency were to be passed before he +returned to a simple and rational mind.</p> + +<p>The truth is, that independently of the personal activity +and dauntless energy which made Mr. Newton so little likely to +sympathise with such a mind as Cowper’s, the former lay under +a still more dangerous disqualification for Cowper’s predominant +adviser, viz., an erroneous view of his case. His opinion exactly +coincided with that which Cowper first heard from Mr. Madan +during his first illness in London. This view is in substance +that the depression which Cowper originally suffered from was +exactly what almost all mankind, if they had been rightly aware +of their true condition, would have suffered also. They were +‘children of wrath,’ just as he was; and the only difference +between them was, that he appreciated his state and they did +not,—showing, in fact, that Cowper was not, as common persons +imagined, on the extreme verge of insanity, but, on the contrary, +a particularly rational and right-seeing man. So far, Cowper +says, with one of the painful smiles which make his ‘Narrative’ +so melancholy, ‘my condition was less desperate.’ That is, his +counsellors had persuaded him that his malady was rational, +and his sufferings befitting his true position,—no difficult task, +for they had the poignancy of pain and the pertinacity of madness +on their side: the efficacy of their arguments was less +when they endeavoured to make known the sources of consolation. +We have seen the immediate effect of the first +exposition of the evangelical theory of faith. When +applied to the case of the morbidly-despairing sinner, that +theory has one argumentative imperfection which the logical +sharpness of madness will soon discover and point out. The +simple reply is, ‘I do not feel the faith which you describe. I +wish I could feel it; but it is no use trying to conceal the fact, +I am conscious of nothing like it.’ And this was substantially +Cowper’s reply on his first interview with Mr. Madan. It was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[282]</span>a simple denial of a fact solely accessible to his personal consciousness; +and, as such, unanswerable. And in this intellectual +position (if such it can be called) his mind long rested. At +the commencement of his residence at Olney, however, there +was a decided change. Whether it were that he mistook the +glow of physical recovery for the peace of spiritual renovation, +or that some subtler and deeper agency was, as he supposed, +at work, the outward sign is certain; and there is no +question but that during the first months of his residence at +Olney, and his daily intercourse with Mr. Newton, he did feel, +or supposed himself to feel, the faith which he was instructed +to deem desirable, and he lent himself with natural pleasure to +the diffusion of it among those around him. But this theory +of salvation requires a metaphysical postulate, which to many +minds is simply impossible. A prolonged meditation on unseen +realities is sufficiently difficult, and seems scarcely the occupation +for which common human nature was intended; but more +than this is said to be essential. The meditation must be successful +in exciting certain feelings of a kind peculiarly delicate, +subtle, and (so to speak) unstable. The wind bloweth where it +listeth; but it is scarcely more partial, more quick, more unaccountable, +than the glow of an emotion excited by a supernatural +and unseen object. This depends on the vigour of imagination +which has to conceive that object—on the vivacity of feeling +which has to be quickened by it—on the physical energy +which has to support it. The very watchfulness, the scrupulous +anxiety to find and retain the feeling, are exactly the most unfavourable +to it. In a delicate disposition like that of Cowper, +such feelings revolt from the inquisition of others, and shrink +from the stare of the mind itself. But even this was not the +worst. The mind of Cowper was, so to speak, naturally terrestrial. +If a man wishes for a nice appreciation of the details +of time and sense, let him consult Cowper’s miscellaneous letters. +Each simple event of every day—each petty object of external +observation or inward suggestion, is there chronicled with a fine +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[283]</span>and female fondness, a wise and happy faculty, let us say, of +deriving a gentle happiness from the tranquil and passing hour. +The fortunes of the hares—Bess who died young, and Tiney +who lived to be nine years old—the miller who engaged their +affections at once, his powdered coat having charms that were +irresistible—the knitting-needles of Mrs. Unwin—the qualities +of his friend Hill, who managed his money transactions—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘An honest man, close buttoned to the chin,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within’—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">live in his pages, and were the natural, insensible, unbiassed +occupants of his fancy. It is easy for a firm and hard mind +to despise the minutiæ of life, and to pore and brood over +an abstract proposition. It may be possible for the highest, +the strongest, the most arduous imagination to live aloof from +common things—alone with the unseen world, as some have +lived their whole lives in memory with a world which has passed +away. But it seems hardly possible that an imagination such +as Cowper’s—which was rather a detective fancy, perceiving the +charm and essence of things which are seen, than an eager, +actuating, conceptive power, embodying, enlivening, empowering +those which are not seen—should leave its own home—the +<i>domus et tellus</i>—the sweet fields and rare orchards which +it loved,—and go out alone apart from all flesh into the trackless +and fearful and unknown Infinite. Of course, his timid +mind shrank from it at once, and returned to its own fireside. +After a little, the idea that he had a true faith faded away. +Mr. Newton, with misdirected zeal, sought to revive it by inciting +him to devotional composition; but the only result was +the volume of ‘Olney Hymns’—a very painful record, of which +the burden is</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘My former hopes are fled,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">My terror now begins;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I feel, alas! that I am dead</div> + <div class="verse indent2">In trespasses and sins.</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[284]</span> </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Ah, whither shall I fly?</div> + <div class="verse indent2">I hear the thunder roar;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The law proclaims destruction nigh,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And vengeance at the door.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">‘The Preacher’ himself did not conceive such a store of +melancholy forebodings.</p> + +<p>The truth is, that there are two remarkable species of minds +on which the doctrine of Calvinism acts as a deadly and fatal +poison. One is the natural, vigorous, bold, defiant, hero-like +character, abounding in generosity, in valour, in vigour, and +abounding also in self-will, and pride, and scorn. This is the +temperament which supplies the world with ardent hopes and +keen fancies, with springing energies, and bold plans, and noble +exploits; but yet, under another aspect and in other times, is +equally prompt in desperate deeds, awful machinations, deep +and daring crimes. It one day is ready by its innate heroism +to deliver the world from any tyranny; the next it ‘hungers +to become a tyrant’ in its turn. Yet the words of the poet +are ever true and are ever good, as a defence against the cold +narrators who mingle its misdeeds and exploits, and profess to +believe that each is a set-off and compensation for the other. +You can ever say—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent22">‘Still he retained,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Mid much abasement, what he had received</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From Nature, an intense and glowing mind.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>It is idle to tell such a mind that, by an arbitrary irrespective +election, it is chosen to happiness or doomed to perdition. +The evil and the good in it equally revolt at such terms. It +thinks, ‘Well, if the universe be a tyranny, if one man is +doomed to misery for no fault, and the next is chosen to +pleasure for no merit—if the favouritism of time be copied +into eternity—if the highest heaven be indeed like the meanest +earth,—then, as the heathen say, it is better to suffer injustice +than to inflict it, better to be the victims of the eternal despotism +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[285]</span>than its ministers, better to curse in hell than serve in +heaven.’ And the whole burning soul breaks away into what +is well called Satanism—into wildness, and bitterness, and +contempt.</p> + +<p>Cowper had as little in common with this proud, Titanic, +aspiring genius as any man has or can have, but his mind was +equally injured by the same system. On a timid, lounging, +gentle, acquiescent mind, the effect is precisely the contrary—singularly +contrasted, but equally calamitous. ‘I am doomed, +you tell me, already. One way or other the matter is already +settled. It can be no better, and it is as bad as it can be. Let +me alone; do not trouble me at least these few years. Let me +at least sit sadly and bewail myself. Action is useless. I will +brood upon my melancholy and be at rest;’ the soul sinks into +‘passionless calm and silence unreproved,’ flinging away ‘the +passionate tumult of a clinging hope,’ which is the allotted +boon and happiness of mortality. It was, as we believe, straight +towards this terrible state that Mr. Newton directed Cowper. +He kept him occupied with subjects which were too great for +him; he kept him away from his natural life; he presented to +him views and opinions but too well justifying his deep and +dark insanity; he convinced him that he ought to experience +emotions which were foreign to his nature; he had nothing to +add by way of comfort, when told that those emotions did not +and could not exist. Cowper seems to have felt this. His +second illness commenced with a strong dislike to his spiritual +adviser, and it may be doubted if there ever was again the +same cordiality between them. Mr. Newton, too, as was natural, +was vexed at Cowper’s calamity. His reputation in the +‘religious world’ was deeply pledged to conducting this most +‘interesting case’ to a favourable termination. A failure was +not to be contemplated, and yet it was obviously coming and +coming. It was to no purpose that Cowper acquired fame and +secular glory in the literary world. This was rather adding gall +to bitterness. The unbelievers in evangelical religion would be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[286]</span>able to point to one at least, and that the best known among +its proselytes, to whom it had not brought peace—whom it had +rather confirmed in wretchedness. His literary fame, too, took +Cowper away into a larger circle, out of the rigid decrees and +narrow ordinances of his father-confessor, and of course the +latter remonstrated. Altogether there was not a cessation, but +a decline and diminution of intercourse. But better, according +to the saying, had they never met or never parted. If a +man is to have a father-confessor, let him at least choose a +sensible one. The dominion of Mr. Newton had been exercised, +not indeed with mildness, or wisdom, or discrimination, but, +nevertheless, with strong judgment and coarse acumen—with a +bad choice of ends, but at least a vigorous selection of means. +Afterwards it was otherwise. In the village of Olney there was +a schoolmaster, whose name often occurs in Cowper’s letters,—a +foolish, vain, worthy sort of man: what the people of the +west call a ‘scholard,’ that is, a man of more knowledge and +less sense than those about him. He sometimes came to +Cowper to beg old clothes, sometimes to instruct him with +literary criticisms, and is known in the ‘Correspondence’ as +‘Mr. Teedon, who reads the “Monthly Review,”’ ‘Mr. Teedon, +whose smile is fame.’ Yet to this man, whose harmless follies +his humour had played with a thousand times, Cowper, in his +later years, and when the dominion of Mr. Newton had so far +ceased as to leave him, after many years, the use of his own +judgment, resorted for counsel and guidance. And the man +had visions, and dreams, and revelations!! But enough of such +matters.</p> + +<p>The peculiarity of Cowper’s life is its division into marked +periods. From his birth to his first illness he may be said to +have lived in one world, and for some twenty years afterwards, +from his thirty-second to about his fiftieth year, in a wholly +distinct one. Much of the latter time was spent in hopeless +despondency. His principal companions during that period +were Mr. Newton, about whom we have been writing, and Mrs. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[287]</span>Unwin, who may be said to have broken the charmed circle of +seclusion in which they lived by inciting Cowper to continuous +literary composition. Of Mrs. Unwin herself ample memorials +remain. She was, in truth, a most excellent person—in mind +and years much older than the poet—as it were by profession +elderly, able in every species of preserve, profound in salts, and +pans, and jellies; culinary by taste; by tact and instinct +motherly and housewifish. She was not, however, without +some less larderiferous qualities. Lady Hesketh and Lady +Austen, neither of them very favourably-prejudiced critics, decided +so. The former has written, ‘She is very far from grave; +on the contrary, she is cheerful and gay, and laughs <i>de bon cœur</i> +upon the smallest provocation. Amidst all the little puritanical +words which fall from her <i>de tems en tems</i>, she seems to +have by nature a great fund of gaiety.... I must say, too, +that she seems to be very well read in the English poets, as +appears by several little quotations which she makes from time +to time, and has a true taste for what is excellent in that way.’ +This she showed by persuading Cowper to the composition of +his first volume.</p> + +<p>As a poet, Cowper belongs, though with some differences, +to the school of Pope. Great question, as is well known, has +been raised whether that very accomplished writer was a poet at +all; and a secondary and equally debated question runs side by +side, whether, if a poet, he were a great one. With the +peculiar genius and personal rank of Pope we have in this +article nothing to do. But this much may be safely said, that +according to the definition which has been ventured of the poetical +art, by the greatest and most accomplished master of the +other school, his works are delicately-finished specimens of +artistic excellence in one branch of it. ‘Poetry,’ says Shelley, +who was surely a good judge, ‘is the expression of the imagination,’ +by which he meant of course not only the expression of +the interior sensations accompanying the faculty’s employment, +but likewise, and more emphatically, the exercise of it in the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[288]</span>delineation of objects which attract it. Now society, viewed as +a whole, is clearly one of those objects. There is a vast assemblage +of human beings, of all nations, tongues, and languages, +each with ideas, and a personality and a cleaving mark of its +own, yet each having somewhat that resembles something of all, +much that resembles a part of many—a motley regiment, of +various forms, of a million impulses, passions, thoughts, fancies, +motives, actions; a ‘many-headed monstered thing;’ a Bashi +Bazouk array; a clown to be laughed at; a hydra to be spoken +evil of; yet, in fine, our all—the very people of the whole +earth. There is nothing in nature more attractive to the fancy +than this great spectacle and congregation. Since Herodotus +went to and fro to the best of his ability over all the earth, the +spectacle of civilisation has ever drawn to itself the quick eyes +and quick tongues of seeing and roving men. Not only, says +Goethe, is man ever interesting to man, but ‘properly there is +nothing else interesting.’ There is a distinct subject for poetry—at +least according to Shelley’s definition—in selecting and +working out, in idealising, in combining, in purifying, in intensifying +the great features and peculiarities which make society, +as a whole, interesting, remarkable, fancy-taking. No doubt it +is not the object of poetry to versify the works of the eminent +narrators, ‘to prose,’ according to a disrespectful description, +‘o’er books of travelled seamen,’ to chill you with didactic +icebergs, to heat you with torrid sonnets. The difficulty of +reading such local narratives is now great—so great that a +gentleman in the reviewing department once wished ‘one man +would go everywhere and say everything,’ in order that the +limit of his labour at least might be settled and defined. And +it would certainly be much worse if palm trees were of course to +be in rhyme, and the dinner of the migrator only recountable in +blank verse. We do not wish this. We only maintain that +there are certain principles, causes, passions, affections, acting +on and influencing communities at large, permeating their life, +ruling their principles, directing their history, working as a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[289]</span>subtle and wandering principle over all their existence. These +have a somewhat abstract character, as compared with the soft +ideals and passionate incarnations of purely individual character, +and seem dull beside the stirring lays of eventful times in +which the earlier and bolder poets delight. Another cause cooperates. +The tendency of civilisation is to pare away the +oddness and licence of personal character, and to leave a monotonous +agreeableness as the sole trait and comfort of mankind. +This obviously tends to increase the efficacy of general principles, +to bring to view the daily efficacy of constant causes, to +suggest the hidden agency of subtle abstractions. Accordingly, +as civilisation augments and philosophy grows, we commonly +find a school of ‘common-sense poets,’ as they may be called, +arise and develop, who proceed to depict what they see around +them, to describe its <i>natura naturans</i>, to delineate its <i>natura +naturata</i>, to evolve productive agencies, to teach subtle ramifications. +Complete, as the most characteristic specimen of this +class of poets, stands Pope. He was, some one we think has +said, the sort of person we cannot even conceive existing in a +barbarous age. His subject was not life at large, but fashionable +life. He described the society in which he was thrown—the +people among whom he lived. His mind was a hoard of small +maxims, a quintessence of petty observations. When he described +character, he described it, not dramatically, nor as it is +in itself; but observantly and from without, calling up in the +mind not so much a vivid conception of the man, of the real, +corporeal, substantial being, as an idea of the idea which a +metaphysical bystander might refine and excruciate concerning +him. Society in Pope is scarcely a society of people, but of +pretty little atoms, coloured and painted with hoops or in coats—a +miniature of metaphysics, a puppet-show of sylphs. He +elucidates the doctrine, that the tendency of civilised poetry is +towards an analytic sketch of the existing civilisation. Nor is +the effect diminished by the pervading character of keen judgment +and minute intrusive sagacity; for no great painter of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[290]</span>English life can be without a rough sizing of strong sense, or he +would fail from want of sympathy with his subject. Pope +exemplifies the class and type of ‘common-sense’ poets who +substitute an animated ‘<i>catalogue raisonné</i>’ of working thoughts +and operative principles—a sketch of the then present society, +as a whole and as an object, for the κλέα ἀνδρῶν, the tale of +which is one subject of early verse, and the stage effect of living, +loving, passionate, impetuous men and women, which is the +special topic of another.</p> + +<p>What Pope is to our fashionable and town life, Cowper is to +our domestic and rural life. This is perhaps the reason why he +is so national. It has been said no foreigner can live in the +country. We doubt whether any people, who felt their whole +heart and entire exclusive breath of their existence to be +concentrated in a great capital, could or would appreciate such +intensely provincial pictures as are the entire scope of Cowper’s +delineation. A good many imaginative persons are really +plagued with him. Everything is so comfortable; the tea-urn +hisses so plainly, the toast is so warm, the breakfast so neat, the +food so edible, that one turns away, in excitable moments, a +little angrily from anything so quiet, tame, and sober. Have +we not always hated this life? What can be worse than regular +meals, clock-moving servants, a time for everything, and everything +then done, a place for everything, without the Irish alleviation—‘Sure, +and I’m rejiced to say, that’s jist and exactly +where it isn’t,’ a common gardener, a slow parson, a heavy assortment +of near relations, a placid house flowing with milk and +sugar—all that the fates can stuff together of substantial comfort, +and fed and fatted monotony? Aspiring and excitable +youth stoutly maintains it can endure anything much better +than the ‘gross fog Bœotian’—the torpid, in-door, tea-tabular +felicity. Still a great deal of tea is really consumed in the +English nation. A settled and practical people are distinctly +in favour of heavy relaxations, placid prolixities, slow comforts. +A state between the mind and the body, something intermediate, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[291]</span>half-way from the newspaper to a nap—this is what we may call +the middle-life theory of the influential English gentleman—the +true aspiration of the ruler of the world.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘’Tis then the understanding takes repose</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In indolent vacuity of thought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sleeps and is refreshed. Meanwhile the face</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Conceals the mood lethargic with a mask</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of deep deliberation.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>It is these in-door scenes, this common world, this gentle +round of ‘calm delights,’ the trivial course of slowly-moving +pleasures, the petty detail of quiet relaxation, that Cowper +excels in. The post-boy, the winter’s evening, the newspaper, +the knitting needles, the stockings, the waggon—these are his +subjects. His sure popularity arises from his having held up +to the English people exact delineations of what they really +prefer. Perhaps one person in four hundred understands Wordsworth, +about one in eight thousand may appreciate Shelley, but +there is no expressing the small fraction who do not love dulness, +who do not enter into</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent18">‘Homeborn happiness,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fireside enjoyments, intimate delights,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all the comforts that the lowly roof</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of long uninterrupted evening know.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>His objection to the more exciting and fashionable pleasures +was perhaps, in an extreme analysis, that they put him out. +They were too great a task for his energies—asked too much for +his spirits. His comments on them rather remind us of Mr. +Rushworth—Miss Austen’s heavy hero’s remark on the theatre, +‘I think we went on much better by ourselves before this was +thought of, doing, doing, doing <i>nothing</i>.’</p> + +<p>The subject of these pictures, in point of interest, may be +what we choose to think it, but there is no denying great +merit to the execution. The sketches have the highest merit—suitableness +of style. It would be absurd to describe a post-boy +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[292]</span>as sonneteers their mistress—to cover his plain face with +fine similes—to put forward the ‘brow of Egypt’—to stick metaphors +upon him, as the Americans upon General Washington. +The only merit such topics have room for is an easy and dextrous +plainness—a sober suit of well-fitting expressions—a free, working, +flowing, picturesque garb of words adapted to the solid +conduct of a sound and serious world, and this merit Cowper’s +style has. On the other hand, it entirely wants the higher and +rarer excellences of poetical expression. There is none of the +choice art which has studiously selected the words of one class +of great poets, or the rare, untaught, unteachable felicity which +has vivified those of others. No one, in reading Cowper, stops +as if to draw his breath more deeply over words which do not +so much express or clothe poetical ideas, as seem to intertwine, +coalesce, and be blended with the very essence of poetry itself.</p> + +<p>Of course a poet could not deal in any measure with such +subjects as Cowper dealt with, and not become inevitably, to a +certain extent, satirical. The ludicrous is in some sort the +imagination of common life. The ‘dreary intercourse’ of which +Wordsworth makes mention, would be dreary, unless some people +possessed more than he did the faculty of making fun. A +universe in which Dignity No. I. conversed decorously with +Dignity No. II. on topics befitting their state, would be perhaps +a levee of great intellects and a tea-table of enormous thoughts; +but it would want the best charm of this earth—the medley of +great things and little, of things mundane and things celestial, +things low and things awful, of things eternal and things of half +a minute. It is in this contrast that humour and satire have +their place—pointing out the intense unspeakable incongruity +of the groups and juxtapositions of our world. To all of these +which fell under his own eye, Cowper was alive. A gentle sense +of propriety and consistency in daily things was evidently +characteristic of him; and if he fail of the highest success in +this species of art, it is not from an imperfect treatment of the +scenes and conceptions which he touched, but from the fact that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[293]</span>the follies with which he deals are not the greatest follies—that +there are deeper absurdities in human life than John Gilpin +touches upon—that the superficial occurrences of ludicrous life +do not exhaust, or even deeply test, the mirthful resources of +our minds and fortunes.</p> + +<p>As a scold, we think Cowper failed. He had a great idea of +the use of railing, and there are many pages of laudable invective +against various vices which we feel no call whatever to +defend. But a great vituperator had need to be a great hater; and +of any real rage, any such gall and bitterness as great and irritable +satirists have in other ages let loose upon men, of any thorough, +brooding, burning, abiding detestation, he was as incapable as +a tame hare. His vituperation reads like the mild man’s whose +wife ate up his dinner, ‘Really, Sir, I feel quite <i>angry</i>!’ Nor +has his language any of the sharp intrusive acumen which +divides in sunder both soul and spirit, and makes fierce and +unforgettable reviling.</p> + +<p>Some people may be surprised, notwithstanding our lengthy +explanation, at hearing Cowper treated as of the school of Pope. +It has been customary, at least with some critics, to speak of +him as one of those who recoiled from the artificiality of that +great writer, and at least commenced a return to a simple +delineation of outward nature. And of course there is considerable +truth in this idea. The poetry (if such it is) of Pope +would be just as true if all the trees were yellow and all the +grass flesh-colour. He did not care for ‘snowy scalps,’ or ‘rolling +streams,’ or ‘icy halls,’ or ‘precipice’s gloom.’ Nor, for that +matter, did Cowper either. He, as Hazlitt most justly said, +was as much afraid of a shower of rain as any man that ever +lived. At the same time, the fashionable life described by Pope +has no reference whatever to the beauties of the material universe, +never regards them, could go on just as well in the soft, +sloppy, gelatinous existence which Dr. Whewell (who knows) +says is alone possible in Jupiter and Saturn. But the rural life +of Cowper’s poetry has a constant and necessary reference to the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[294]</span>country, is identified with its features, cannot be separated +from it even in fancy. Green fields and a slow river seem all the +material of beauty Cowper had given him. But what was more +to the purpose, his attention was well concentrated upon them. +As he himself said, he did not go more than thirteen miles from +home for twenty years, and very seldom as far. He was, therefore, +well able to find out all that was charming in Olney and +its neighbourhood, and as it presented nothing which is not to +be found in any of the fresh rural parts of England, what he +has left us is really a delicate description and appreciative delineation +of the simple essential English country.</p> + +<p>However, it is to be remarked that the description of nature +in Cowper differs altogether from the peculiar delineation of the +same subject, which has been so influential in more recent +times, and which bears, after its greatest master, the name +Wordsworthian. To Cowper nature is simply a background, a +beautiful background no doubt, but still essentially a <i>locus in +quo</i>—a space in which the work and mirth of life pass and are +performed. A more professedly formal delineation does not +occur than the following:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent2">‘O Winter! ruler of the inverted year,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy scattered hair with sleet-like ashes filled,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fringed with a beard made white with other snows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than those of age, thy forehead wrapped in clouds,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But urged by storms along its slippery way;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I love thee, all unlovely as thou seemest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And dreaded as thou art. Thou holdest the sun</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A prisoner in the yet undawning east,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shortening his journey between morn and noon,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And hurrying him, impatient of his stay,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Down to the rosy west; but kindly still</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Compensating his loss with added hours</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of social converse and instructive ease,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And gathering, at short notice, in one group</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[295]</span> <div class="verse indent0">The family dispersed, and fixing thought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I crown thee King of intimate delights,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all the comforts that the lowly roof</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of long uninterrupted evening know.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">No rattling wheels stop short before these gates.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">After a very few lines he returns within doors to the occupation +of man and woman—to human tasks and human +pastimes. To Wordsworth, on the contrary, nature is a religion. +So far from being unwilling to treat her as a special object of +study, he hardly thought any other equal or comparable. He +was so far from holding the doctrine that the earth was made +for men to live in, that it would rather seem as if he thought +men were created to see the earth. The whole aspect of nature +was to him a special revelation of an immanent and abiding +power—a breath of the pervading art—a smile of the Eternal +Mind—according to the lines which every one knows,—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent20">‘A sense sublime</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of something far more deeply interfused;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the round ocean, and the living air,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A motion and a spirit, that impels</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All thinking things, all objects of all thought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And rolls through all things.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Of this haunting, supernatural, mystical view of nature Cowper +never heard. Like the strong old lady who said, ‘<i>She</i> was born +before nerves were invented,’ he may be said to have lived +before the awakening of the detective sensibility which reveals +this deep and obscure doctrine.</p> + +<p>In another point of view, also, Cowper is curiously contrasted +with Wordsworth, as a delineator of nature. The +delineation of Cowper is a simple delineation. He makes a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[296]</span>sketch of the object before him, and there he leaves it. Wordsworth, +on the contrary, is not satisfied unless he describe not +only the bare outward object which others see, but likewise the +reflected high-wrought feelings which that object excites in a +brooding, self-conscious mind. His subject was not so much +nature, as nature reflected by Wordsworth. Years of deep +musing and long introspection had made him familiar with +every shade and shadow in the many-coloured impression which +the universe makes on meditative genius and observant sensibility. +Now these feelings Cowper did not describe, because, +to all appearance, he did not perceive them. He had a great +pleasure in watching the common changes and common aspects +of outward things, but he was not invincibly prone to brood +and pore over their reflex effects upon his own mind:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘A primrose by the river’s brim,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A yellow primrose was to him,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And it was nothing more.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">According to the account which Cowper at first gave of his +literary occupations, his entire design was to communicate the +religious views to which he was then a convert. He fancied +that the vehicle of verse might bring many to listen to truths +which they would be disinclined to have stated to them in +simple prose. And however tedious the recurrence of these +theological tenets may be to the common reader, it is certain +that a considerable portion of Cowper’s peculiar popularity may +be traced to their expression. He is the one poet of a class +which have no poets. In that once large and still considerable +portion of the English world, which regards the exercise of +the fancy and the imagination as dangerous—snares, as they +speak—distracting the soul from an intense consideration of +abstract doctrine, Cowper’s strenuous inculcation of those doctrines +has obtained for him a certain toleration. Of course +all verse is perilous. The use of single words is harmless, but +the employment of two, in such a manner as to form a rhyme—the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[297]</span>regularities of interval and studied recurrence of the same +sound, evince an attention to time, and a partiality to things of +sense. Most poets must be prohibited; the exercise of the +fancy requires watching. But Cowper is a ticket-of-leave man. +He has the chaplain’s certificate. He has expressed himself +‘with the utmost propriety.’ The other imaginative criminals +must be left to the fates, but he may be admitted to the sacred +drawing-room, though with constant care and scrupulous <i>surveillance</i>. +Perhaps, however, taken in connection with his +diseased and peculiar melancholy, these tenets really add to the +artistic effect of Cowper’s writings. The free discussion of +daily matters, the delicate delineation of domestic detail, the +passing narrative of fugitive occurrences, would seem light and +transitory, if it were not broken by the interruption of a +terrible earnestness, and relieved by the dark background of a +deep and foreboding sadness. It is scarcely artistic to describe +the ‘painted veil which those who live call life,’ and leave wholly +out of view and undescribed ‘the chasm sightless and drear,’ +which lies always beneath and around it.</p> + +<p>It is of the <i>Task</i> more than of Cowper’s earlier volume +of poems that a critic of his poetry must more peculiarly be +understood to speak. All the best qualities of his genius are +there concentrated, and the alloy is less than elsewhere. He was +fond of citing the saying of Dryden, that the rhyme had often +helped him to a thought—a great but very perilous truth. +The difficulty is, that the rhyme so frequently helps to the +wrong thought—that the stress of the mind is recalled from the +main thread of the poem, from the narrative, or sentiment, or +delineation, to some wayside remark or fancy, which the casual +resemblance of final sound suggests. This is fatal, unless either +a poet’s imagination be so hot and determined as to bear down +upon its objects, and to be unwilling to hear the voice of any +charmer who might distract it, or else the nature of the poem +itself should be of so desultory a character that it does not +much matter about the sequence of the thought—at least +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[298]</span>within great and ample limits, as in some of Swift’s casual +rhymes, where the sound is in fact the connecting link of unity. +Now Cowper is not often in either of these positions; he always +has a thread of argument on which he is hanging his +illustrations, and yet he has not the exclusive interest or the +undeviating energetic downrightness of mind which would ensure +his going through it without idling or turning aside; +consequently the thoughts which the rhyme suggests are constantly +breaking in upon the main matter, destroying the +emphatic unity which is essential to rhythmical delineation. +His blank verse of course is exempt from this defect, and there +is moreover something in the nature of the metre which fits it +for the expression of studious and quiet reflection. The <i>Task</i> +too was composed at the healthiest period of Cowper’s later +life, in the full vigour of his faculties, and with the spur the +semi-recognition of his first volume had made it a common +subject of literary discussion, whether he was a poet or not. +Many men could endure—as indeed all but about ten do +actually in every generation endure—to be without this distinction; +but few could have an idea that it was a frequent point +of argument whether they were duly entitled to possess it or +not, without at least a strong desire to settle the question by +some work of decisive excellence. This the <i>Task</i> achieved +for Cowper. Since its publication his name has been a household +word—a particularly household word in English literature. +The story of its composition is connected with one of the most +curious incidents in Cowper’s later life, and has given occasion +to a good deal of writing.</p> + +<p>In the summer of 1781 it happened that two ladies called +at a shop exactly opposite the house at Olney where Cowper and +Mrs. Unwin resided. One of these was a familiar and perhaps +tame object,—a Mrs. Jones,—the wife of a neighbouring parson; +the other, however, was so striking, that Cowper, one of +the shyest and least demonstrative of men, immediately asked +Mrs. Unwin to invite her to tea. This was a great event, as it +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[299]</span>would appear that few or no social interruptions, casual or contemplated, +then varied what Cowper called the ‘duality of his +existence.’ This favoured individual was Lady Austen, a person +of what Mr. Hayley terms ‘colloquial talents;’ in truth an +energetic, vivacious, amusing, and rather handsome lady of the +world. She had been much in France, and is said to have +caught the facility of manner and love of easy society, which +is the unchanging characteristic of that land of change. She +was a fascinating person in the great world, and it is not difficult +to imagine she must have been an excitement indeed at +Olney. She was, however, most gracious; fell in love, as +Cowper says, not only with him but with Mrs. Unwin; was +called ‘Sister Ann,’ laughed and made laugh, was every way +so great an acquisition that his seeing her appeared to him +to show ‘strong marks of providential interposition.’ He +thought her superior to the curate’s wife, who was a ‘valuable +person,’ but had a family, &c. &c. The new acquaintance had +much to contribute to the Olney conversation. She had seen +much of the world, and probably seen it well, and had at least +a good deal to narrate concerning it. Among other interesting +matters, she one day recounted to Cowper the story of John +Gilpin, as one which she had heard in childhood, and in a short +time the poet sent her the ballad, which every one has liked +ever since. It was written, he says, no doubt truly, in order +to relieve a fit of terrible and uncommon despondency; but +altogether, for a few months after the introduction of this new +companion, he was more happy and animated than at any other +time after his first illness. Clouds, nevertheless, began to show +themselves soon. The circumstances are of the minute and +female kind, which it would require a good deal of writing to +describe, even if we knew them perfectly. The original cause +of misconstruction was a rather romantic letter of Lady Austen, +drawing a sublime picture of what she expected from Cowper’s +friendship. Mr. Scott, the clergyman at Olney, who had taken +the place of Mr. Newton, and who is described as a dry and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[300]</span>sensible man, gave a short account of what he thought was the +real embroilment. ‘Who,’ said he, ‘can be surprised that two +women should be daily in the society of one man and then +quarrel with <i>one another</i>?’ Cowper’s own description shows +how likely this was.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘From a scene of the most uninterrupted retirement,’ he says +to Mr. Unwin, ‘we have passed at once into a state of constant +engagement. Not that our society is much multiplied; the addition +of an individual has made all this difference. Lady Austen and +we pass our days alternately at each other’s <i>château</i>. In the morning +I walk with one or other of the ladies, and in the afternoon wind +thread. Thus did Hercules, and thus probably did Samson, and +thus do I; and were both those heroes living, I should not fear to +challenge them to a trial of skill in that business, or doubt to beat +them both. As to killing lions and other amusements of that kind, +with which they were so delighted, I should be their humble servant +and beg to be excused.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>Things were in this state when she suggested to him the +composition of a new poem of some length in blank verse, +and on being asked to suggest a subject, said, Well, write upon +that ‘sofa,’ whence is the title of the first book of the <i>Task</i>. +According to Cowper’s own account, it was this poem which +was the cause of the ensuing dissension.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘On her first settlement in our neighbourhood, I made it my +own particular business (for at that time I was not employed in +writing, having published my first volume, and not begun my +second) to pay my devoirs to her ladyship every morning at eleven. +Customs very soon become laws. I began the <i>Task</i>; for she was +the lady who gave me the Sofa for a subject. Being once engaged +in the work, I began to feel the inconvenience of my morning +attendance. We had seldom breakfasted ourselves till ten: and +the intervening hour was all the time that I could find in the whole +day for writing; and occasionally it would happen that the half of +that hour was all that I could secure for the purpose. But there +was no remedy. Long usage had made that which at first was +optional, a point of good manners, and consequently of necessity, +and I was forced to neglect the <i>Task</i>, to attend upon the Muse who +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[301]</span>had inspired the subject. But she had ill health, and before I had +quite finished the work was obliged to repair to Bristol.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>And it is possible that this is the true account of the +matter. Yet we fancy there is a kind of awkwardness and constraint +in the manner in which it is spoken of. Of course, +the plain and literal portion of mankind have set it down at +once that Cowper was in love with Lady Austen, just as they +married him over and over again to Mrs. Unwin. But of a strong +passionate love, as we have before explained, we do not think +Cowper capable, and there are certainly no signs of it in this +case. There is, however, one odd circumstance. Years after, +when no longer capable of original composition, he was fond +of hearing all his poems read to him except ‘John Gilpin.’ +There were recollections, he said, connected with those verses +which were too painful. Did he mean, the worm that dieth +not—the reminiscence of the animated narratress of that not +intrinsically melancholy legend?</p> + +<p>The literary success of Cowper opened to him a far larger +circle of acquaintance, and connected him in close bonds with +many of his relations, who had looked with an unfavourable eye +at the peculiar tenets which he had adopted, and the peculiar +and recluse life which he had been advised to lead. It is to +these friends and acquaintance that we owe that copious correspondence +on which so much of Cowper’s fame at present rests. +The complete letter-writer is now an unknown animal. In the +last century, when communications were difficult, and epistles +rare, there were a great many valuable people who devoted a +good deal of time to writing elaborate letters. You wrote letters +to a man whom you knew nineteen years and a half ago, and +told him what you had for dinner, and what your second cousin +said, and how the crops got on. Every detail of life was described +and dwelt on, and improved. The art of writing, at least of +writing easily, was comparatively rare, which kept the number +of such compositions within narrow limits. Sir Walter Scott +says he knew a man who remembered that the London post-bag +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[302]</span>once came to Edinburgh with only one letter in it. +One can fancy the solemn conscientious elaborateness with +which a person would write, with the notion that his letter +would have a whole coach and a whole bag to itself, and travel +two hundred miles alone, the exclusive object of a red guard’s +care. The only thing like it now—the deferential minuteness +with which one public office writes to another, conscious +that the letter will travel on her Majesty’s service three doors +down the passage—sinks by comparison into cursory brevity. No +administrative reform will be able to bring even the official mind +of these days into the grave inch-an-hour conscientiousness with +which a confidential correspondent of a century ago related the +growth of apples, the manufacture of jams, the appearance of +flirtations, and other such things. All the ordinary incidents +of an easy life were made the most of; a party was epistolary +capital, a race a mine of wealth. So deeply sentimental was +this intercourse, that it was much argued whether the affections +were created for the sake of the ink, or ink for the sake of the +affections. Thus it continued for many years, and the fruits +thereof are written in the volumes of family papers, which +daily appear, are praised as ‘materials for the historian,’ and +consigned, as the case may be, to posterity or oblivion. All +this has now passed away. Sir Rowland Hill is entitled to the +credit, not only of introducing stamps, but also of destroying +letters. The amount of annotations which will be required to +make the notes of this day intelligible to posterity is a +wonderful idea, and no quantity of comment will make them +readable. You might as well publish a collection of telegraphs. +The careful detail, the studious minuteness, the circumstantial +statement of a former time, is exchanged for a curt brevity or +only half-intelligible narration. In old times, letters were +written for people who knew nothing and required to be told +everything. Now they are written for people who know +everything except the one thing which the letter is designed to +explain to them. It is impossible in some respects not to regret +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[303]</span>the old practice. It is well that each age should write for itself +a faithful account of its habitual existence. We do this to a +certain extent in novels, but novels are difficult materials for +an historian. They raise a cause and a controversy as to how +far they are really faithful delineations. Lord Macaulay is even +now under criticism for his use of the plays of the seventeenth +century. Letters are generally true on certain points. The +least veracious man will tell truly the colour of his coat, the +hour of his dinner, the materials of his shoes. The unconscious +delineation of a recurring and familiar life is beyond the reach +of a fraudulent fancy. Horace Walpole was not a very scrupulous +narrator; yet it was too much trouble even for him to tell lies +on many things. His set stories and conspicuous scandals are +no doubt often unfounded, but there is a gentle undercurrent of +daily unremarkable life and manners which he evidently assumed +as a datum for his historical imagination. Whence posterity +will derive this for the times of Queen Victoria it is difficult to +fancy. Even memoirs are no resource; they generally leave +out the common life, and try at least to bring out the uncommon +events.</p> + +<p>It is evident that this species of composition exactly harmonised +with the temperament and genius of Cowper. Detail +was his forte and quietness his element. Accordingly, his delicate +humour plays over perhaps a million letters, mostly descriptive +of events which no one else would have thought worth +narrating, and yet which, when narrated, show to us, and will +show to persons to whom it will be yet more strange, the familiar, +placid, easy, ruminating, provincial existence of our great grandfathers. +Slow, Olney might be,—indescribable, it certainly was +not. We seem to have lived there ourselves.</p> + +<p>The most copious subject of Cowper’s correspondence is his +translation of Homer. This was published by subscription, and +it is pleasant to observe the healthy facility with which one of the +shyest men in the world set himself to extract guineas from every +one he had ever heard of. In several cases he was very successful. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[304]</span>The University of Oxford, he tells us, declined, as of course it +would, to recognise the principle of subscribing towards literary +publications; but other public bodies and many private persons +were more generous. It is to be wished that their aid had contributed +to the production of a more pleasing work. The fact +is, Cowper was not like Agamemnon. The most conspicuous +feature in the Greek heroes is a certain brisk, decisive activity, +which always strikes and always likes to strike. This quality is +faithfully represented in the poet himself. Homer is the briskest +of men. The Germans have denied that there was any +such person; but they have never questioned his extreme +activity. ‘From what you tell me, sir,’ said an American, ‘I +should like to have read Homer. I should say he was a go-ahead +party.’ Now this is exactly what Cowper was not. His genius +was domestic, and tranquil, and calm. He had no sympathy, +or little sympathy, even with the common, half-asleep activities +of a refined society; an evening party was too much for him; +a day’s hunt a preposterous excitement. It is absurd to expect +a man like this to sympathise with the stern stimulants of a +barbaric age, with a race who fought because they liked it, and +a poet who sang of fighting because he thought their taste +judicious. As if to make matters worse, Cowper selected a +metre in which it would be scarcely possible for any one, however +gifted, to translate Homer. The two kinds of metrical composition +most essentially opposed to one another are ballad poetry +and blank verse. The very nature of the former requires a +marked pause and striking rhythm. Every line should have +a distinct end and a clear beginning. It is like martial music, +there should be a tramp in the very versification of it:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Armour rusting in his halls</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On the blood of Clifford calls;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">“Quell the Scot,” exclaims the lance,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bear me to the heart of France,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is the longing of the shield:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Tell thy name, thou trembling field,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[305]</span> <div class="verse indent0">Field of death, where’er thou be,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Groan thou with our victory.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">And this is the tone of Homer. The grandest of human +tongues marches forward with its proudest steps: the clearest +tones call forward—the most marked of metres carries him +on:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Like a reappearing star,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like a glory from afar—’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">he ever heads, and will head, ‘the flock of war.’ Now blank +verse is the exact opposite of all this. Dr. Johnson laid down +that it was verse only to the eye, which was a bold dictum. +But without going this length it will be safe to say, that of all +considerable metres in our language it has the least distinct +conclusion, least decisive repetition, the least trumpet-like +rhythm; and it is this of which Cowper made choice. He had +an idea that extreme literalness was an unequalled advantage, +and logically reasoned that it was easier to do this in that metre +than in any other. He did not quite hold with Mr. Cobbett +that the ‘gewgaw fetters of rhyme were invented by the monks +to enslave the people;’ but as a man who had due experience +of both, he was aware that it is easier to write two lines of different +endings than two lines of the same ending, and supposed +that by taking advantage of this to preserve the exact grammatical +meaning of his author, he was indisputably approximating +to a good translation. ‘Whether,’ he writes, ‘a translation +of Homer may be best executed in blank verse or in rhyme is a +question in the decision of which no man finds difficulty who +has ever duly considered what translation ought to be, or who +is in any degree practically acquainted with those kinds of versification.... +No human ingenuity can be equal to the +task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing +at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense, of +the original.’ And if the true object of translation were to save +the labour and dictionaries of construing schoolboys, there is +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[306]</span>no question but this slavish adherence to the original would be +the most likely to gain the approbation of those diminutive but +sure judges. But if the object is to convey an idea of the +general tone, scope, and artistic effect of the original, the mechanical +copying of the details is as likely to end in a good +result as a careful cast from a dead man’s features to produce a +living and speaking being. On the whole, therefore, the condemnation +remains, that Homer is not dull, and Cowper is.</p> + +<p>With the translation of Homer terminated all the brightest +period of Cowper’s life. There is little else to say. He undertook +an edition of Milton—a most difficult task, involving the +greatest and most accurate learning, in theology, in classics, in +Italian—in a word, in all ante-Miltonic literature. By far the +greater portion of this lay quite out of Cowper’s path. He had +never been a hard student, and his evident incapacity for the +task troubled and vexed him. A man who had never been able +to assume any real responsibility was not likely to feel comfortable +under the weight of a task which very few men would +be able to accomplish. Mrs. Unwin too fell into a state of +helplessness and despondency; and instead of relying on her +for cheerfulness and management, he was obliged to manage +for her, and cheer her. His mind was unequal to the task. +Gradually the dark cloud of melancholy, which had hung about +him so long, grew and grew, and extended itself day by day. +In vain Lord Thurlow, who was a likely man to know, assured +him that his spiritual despondency was without ground; he +smiled sadly, but seemed to think that at any rate he was not +going into Chancery. In vain Hayley, a rival poet, but a good-natured, +blundering, well-intentioned, incoherent man, went +to and fro, getting the Lord Chief Justice and other dignitaries +to attest, under their hands, that they concurred in Thurlow’s +opinion. In vain, with far wiser kindness, his relatives, especially +many of his mother’s family, from whom he had been +long divided, but who gradually drew nearer to him as they +were wanted, endeavoured to divert his mind to healthful labour +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[307]</span>and tranquil society. The day of these things had passed +away—the summer was ended. He became quite unequal to +original composition, and his greatest pleasure was hearing his +own writings read to him. After a long period of hopeless +despondency he died on April 25, in the first year of this +century; and if he needs an epitaph, let us say, that not in +vain was he Nature’s favourite. As a higher poet sings:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘And all day long I number yet,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All seasons through, another debt,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which I, wherever thou art met,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">To thee am owing;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">An instinct call it, a blind sense,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A happy, genial influence,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Coming one knows not how nor whence,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Nor whither going.’</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="center">...</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘If stately passions in me burn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And one chance look to thee should turn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I drink out of an humbler urn,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">A lowlier pleasure;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The homely sympathy that heeds</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The common life our nature breeds;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A wisdom fitted to the needs</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Of hearts at leisure.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[308]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[309]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX">APPENDIX.</h2> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_I">LETTERS ON THE FRENCH COUP D’ÉTAT OF 1851.<br> +<span class="smaller">(<i>Addressed to the Editor of ‘<span class="smcap">The Inquirer</span>.’</i>)</span></h3> + +</div> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Letter I.</span><br> +<i>THE DICTATORSHIP.</i></h4> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Paris</span>: Jan. 8, 1852.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—You have asked me to tell you what I think of French +affairs. I shall be pleased to do so; but I ought perhaps to begin +by cautioning you against believing, or too much heeding, what I +say. However, I do not imagine that I need do so; for with your +experience of the public journals, you will be quite aware that it is +not difficult to be an ‘occasional correspondent.’ Have your boots +polished in a blacking-shop, and call the interesting officiator an ‘intelligent +<i>ouvrier</i>;’ be shaved, and cite the <i>coiffeur</i> as ‘a person in +rather a superior station;’ call your best acquaintance ‘a well-informed +person,’ and all others ‘persons whom I have found to be +occasionally not in error,’ and—abroad, at least—you will soon have +matter for a newspaper letter. I should quite deceive you if I professed +to have made these profound researches; nor, like Sir Francis +Head, ‘do I no longer know where I am,’ because the French President +has asked me to accompany him in his ride. My perception of +personal locality has not as yet been so tried. I only know what a +person who is in a foreign country during an important political +catastrophe cannot avoid knowing, what he runs against, what is +beaten into him, what he can hardly help hearing, seeing, and reflecting.</p> + +<p>That Louis Napoleon has gone to Notre Dame to return thanks +to God for the seven millions and odd suffrages of the French people—that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[310]</span>he has taken up his abode at the Tuileries, and that he has +had new napoleons coined in his name—that he has broken up the +trees of liberty for firewood—that he has erased, or is erasing (for +they are many), <i>Liberté</i>, <i>Egalité</i>, and <i>Fraternité</i> from the National +buildings,—all these things are so easy and so un-English, that I +am pretty sure, with you, they will be thought signs of pompous +impotence, and I suppose many people will be inclined to believe +the best comment to be the one which I heard—‘<i>Mon Dieu, il a +sauvé la France: la rue du Coq s’appelle maintenant la rue de +l’Aigle!</i>’⁠<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a>⁠</p> + +<p>I am inclined, however, to imagine that this idea would be utterly +erroneous; that, on the contrary, the President is just now, at least, +really strong and really popular; that the act of December 2nd did +succeed and is succeeding; that many, that most, of the inferior people +do really and sincerely pray <i>Domine Salvum fac Napoleonem</i>.</p> + +<p>In what I have seen of the comments of the English press upon +recent events here, two things are not quite enough kept apart—I +mean the temporary dictatorship of Louis Napoleon to meet and cope +with the expected crisis of ’52, and the continuance of that dictatorship +hereafter,—the new, or as it is called, the <i>Bas</i>-Empire—in a +word, the coming Constitution and questionable political machinery +with which ‘the nephew of my uncle’ is now proposing to endow +France. Of course, in reality these two things <i>are</i> separate. It is +one thing to hold that a military rule is required to meet an urgent +and temporary difficulty: another, to advocate the continuance of such +a system, when so critical a necessity no longer exists.</p> + +<p>It seems to me, or would seem, if I did not know that I was contradicted +both by much English writing and opinion, and also by +many most competent judges here, that the first point, the temporary +dictatorship, is a tolerably clear case; that it is not to be complicated +with the perplexing inquiry what form of government will permanently +suit the French people;—that the President was, under the +actual facts of the case, quite justified in assuming the responsibility, +though of course I allow that responsibility to be tremendous. My +reasons for so believing I shall in this letter endeavour to explain, +except that I shall not, I fancy, have room to say much on the moral +defensibility or indefensibility of the <i>coup d’état</i>; nor do I imagine +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[311]</span>that you want from me any ethical speculation—that is manufactured +in Printing-house Square; but I shall give the best account +I can of the matter-of-fact consequences and antecedents of the New +Revolution, of which, in some sense, a resident in France may feel +without presumption that he knows something hardly so well known +to those at home.</p> + +<p>The political justification of Louis Napoleon is, as I apprehend, +to be found in the state of the public mind which immediately preceded +the <i>coup d’état</i>. It is very rarely that a country expects a +revolution at a given time; indeed, it is perhaps not common for +ordinary persons in any country to anticipate a revolution at all; +though profound people may speculate, the mass will ever expect to-morrow +to be as this day at least, if not more abundant. But once +name the day, and all this is quite altered. As a general rule the +very people who would be most likely to neglect general anticipation +are exactly those most likely to exaggerate the proximate consequences +of a certain impending event. At any rate, in France five +weeks ago, the tradespeople talked of May, ’52, as if it were the +end of the world. Civilisation and Socialism might probably endure, +but buying and selling would surely come to an end; in fact, they +anticipated a worse era than February, ’48, when trade was at a +standstill so long that it has hardly yet recovered, and when the +Government stocks fell 40 per cent. It is hardly to be imagined +upon what petty details the dread of political dissolution at a fixed +and not distant time will condescend to intrude itself. I was present +when a huge <i>Flamande</i>, in appearance so intrepid that I respectfully +pitied her husband, came to ask the character of a <i>bonne</i>. I was +amazed to hear her say, ‘I hope the girl is strong, for when the revolution +comes next May, and I have to turn off my helper, she will +have enough to do.’ It seemed to me that a political apprehension +must be pretty general, when it affected that most non-speculative of +speculations, the <i>reckoning</i> of a housewife. With this feeling, everybody +saved their money: who would spend in luxuries that which +might so soon be necessary and invaluable! This economy made +commerce,—especially the peculiarly Parisian trade, which is almost +wholly in articles that <i>can</i> be spared—worse and worse; the more +depressed trade became, the more the traders feared, and the more +they feared, the worse all trade inevitably grew.</p> + +<p>I apprehend that this feeling extended very generally among all +the classes who do not find or make a livelihood by literature or by +politics. Among the clever people, who understood the subject, very +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[312]</span>likely the expectation was extremely different; but among the stupid +ones who mind their business, and have a business to mind, there was +a universal and excessive tremor. The only notion of ’52 was +‘<i>on se battra dans la rue</i>.’ Their dread was especially of Socialism; +they expected that the followers of M. Proudhon, who advisedly and +expressly maintains ‘anarchy’ to be the best form of Government, +would attempt to carry out their theories in action, and that the +division between the Legislative and Executive power would so +cripple the party of order as to make their means of resistance for +the moment feeble and difficult to use. The more sensible did not, I +own, expect the annihilation of mankind: civilisation dies hard; the +organised sense in all countries is strong; but they expected vaguely +and crudely that the party which in ’93 ruled for many months, +and which in June ’48 fought so fanatically against the infant +republic, would certainly make a desperate attack,—<i>might</i> for some +time obtain the upper hand. Of course, it is now matter of mere +argument whether the danger was real or unreal, and it is in some +quarters rather the fashion to quiz the past fear, and to deny that any +Socialists anywhere exist. In spite of the literary exertions of +Proudhon and Louis Blanc, in spite of the prison quarrels of Blanqui +and Barbès—there are certainly found people who question whether +anybody buys the books of the two former, or cares for the incarcerated +dissensions of the two latter. But however this may be, it is +certain that two days after the <i>coup d’état</i> a mass of persons thought +it worth while to erect some dozen barricades, and among these, and +superintending and directing their every movement, there certainly +were, for I saw them myself, men whose physiognomy and accoutrements +exactly resembled the traditional Montagnard, sallow, stern, +compressed, with much marked features, which expressed but resisted +suffering, and brooding one-ideaed thought, men who from their youth +upward had for ever imagined, like Jonah, that they did well—immensely +well—to be angry, men armed to the teeth, and ready, like the +soldiers of the first Republic, to use their arms savagely and well in +defence of theories broached by a Robespierre, a Blanqui, or a Barbès, +gloomy fanatics, over-principled ruffians. I may perhaps be mistaken +in reading in their features the characters of such men, but I know +that when one of them disturbed my superintendence of barricade-making +with a stern <i>allez vous-en</i>, it was not too slowly that I departed, +for I <i>felt</i> that he would rather shoot me than not. Having +seen these people, I conceive that they exist. But supposing that +they were all simply fabulous, it would not less be certain that they +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[313]</span>were <i>believed</i> to be, and to be active; nor would it impair the fact +that the quiet classes awaited their onslaught in morbid apprehension, +with miserable and craven, and I fear we ought to say, <i>commercial</i> +disquietude.</p> + +<p>You will not be misled by any highflown speculations about +liberty or equality. You will, I imagine, concede to me that the first +duty of a government is to ensure the security of that industry +which is the condition of social life and civilised cultivation; that +especially in so excitable a country as France it is necessary that the +dangerous classes should be saved from the strong temptation +of long idleness; and that no danger could be more formidable than +six months’ beggary among the revolutionary <i>ouvriers</i>, immediately +preceding the exact period fixed by European as well as French +opinion for an apprehended convulsion. It is from this state of +things, whether by fair means or foul, that Louis Napoleon has delivered +France. The effect was magical. Like people who have +nearly died because it was prophesied they would die at a specified +time, and instantly recovered when they found or thought that the +time was gone and past, so France, timorously anticipating the fated +revolution, in a moment revived when she found or fancied that it was +come and over. Commerce instantly improved; New Year’s Day, +when all the Boulevards are one continued fair, has not (as I am told) +been for some years so gay and splendid; people began to buy, and +consequently to sell; for though it is quite possible, or even probable, +that new misfortunes and convulsions may be in store for the French +people, yet no one can say when they will be, and to wait till revolutions +be exhausted is but the best Parisian for our old acquaintance +<i>Rusticus expectat</i>. Clever people may now prove that the dreaded +peril was a simple chimera, but they can’t deny that the fear of it +was very real and painful, nor can they dispute that in a week +after the <i>coup d’état</i> it had at once, and apparently for ever, passed +away.</p> + +<p>I fear it must be said that no legal or constitutional act could +have given an equal confidence. What was wanted was the assurance +of an audacious Government, which would stop at nothing, +scruple at nothing, to secure its own power and the tranquillity of the +country. That assurance all now have; a man who will in this +manner dare to dissolve an assembly constitutionally his superiors, +then prevent their meeting by armed force; so well and so sternly +repress the first beginning of an outbreak, with so little misgiving +assume and exercise sole power,—may have enormous other defects, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[314]</span>but is certainly a bold ruler—most probably an unscrupulous one—little +likely to flinch from any inferior trial.</p> + +<p>Of Louis Napoleon, whose personal qualities are, for the moment, +so important, I cannot now speak at length. But I may say that, with +whatever other deficiencies he may have, he has one excellent advantage +over other French statesmen—he has never been a professor, nor a +journalist, nor a promising barrister, nor, by taste, a <i>littérateur</i>. He +has not confused himself with history; he does not think in leading +articles, in long speeches, or in agreeable essays. But he is capable of +observing facts rightly, of reflecting on them simply, and acting +on them discreetly. And his motto is Danton’s, <i>De l’audace et +toujours de l’audace</i>, and this you know, according to Bacon, in +time of revolution, will carry a man far, perhaps even to ultimate +victory, and that ever-future millennium ‘<i>la consolidation de la +France</i>.’</p> + +<p>But on these distant questions I must not touch. I have endeavoured +to show you what was the crisis, how strong the remedy, +and what the need of a dictatorship. I hope to have convinced you +that the first was imminent, the second effectual, and the last expedient. +I remain yours,</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Amicus</span>.</p> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Letter II.</span><br> +<i>THE MORALITY OF THE COUP D’ÉTAT.</i></h4> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Paris</span>: Jan. 15, 1852.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I know quite well what will be said about, or in answer +to, my last letter. It will be alleged that I think everything in +France is to be postponed to the Parisian commerce—that a Constitution, +Equality, Liberty, a Representative Government, are all to be +set aside if they interfere even for a moment with the sale of <i>étrennes</i> +or the manufacture of gimcracks.</p> + +<p>I, as you know, hold no such opinions: it would not be necessary +for me to undeceive you, who would, I rather hope, never suspect me +of <i>that</i> sort of folly. But as St. Athanasius aptly observes, ‘for the +sake of the women who may be led astray, I will this very instant +explain my sentiments.’</p> + +<p>Contrary to Sheridan’s rule, I commence by a concession. I certainly +admit, indeed I would, upon occasion, maintain, <i>bonbons</i> and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[315]</span>bracelets to be things less important than common law and Constitutional +action. A <i>coup d’état</i> would, I may allow, be mischievously +supererogatory if it only promoted the enjoyment of what a lady in the +highest circles is said to call ‘bigotry and virtue.’ But the real question +is not to be so disposed of. The Parisian trade, the jewellery, +the baubles, the silks, the luxuries, which the Exhibition showed +us to be the characteristic industry of France, are very dust in the +balance if weighed against the hands and arms which their manufacture +employs—the industrial habits which their regular sale rewards—the +hunger and idle weariness which the certain demand for them +prevents. For this is the odd peculiarity of commercial civilisation. +The life, the welfare, the existence of thousands depend on their +being paid for doing what seems nothing when done. That +gorgeous dandies should wear gorgeous studs—that pretty girls +should be prettily dressed—that pleasant drawing-rooms should +be pleasantly attired—may seem, to people of our age, sad trifling. +But grave as we are, we must become graver still when we reflect on +the horrid suffering which the sudden cessation of large luxurious consumption +would certainly create, if we imagine such a city as Lyons to +be, without warning, turned out of work, and the population feelingly +told ‘to cry in the streets when no man regardeth.’</p> + +<p>The first duty of society is the preservation of society. By the +sound work of old-fashioned generations—by the singular painstaking +of the slumberers in churchyards—by dull care—by stupid +industry, a certain social fabric somehow exists; people contrive to +go out to their work, and to find work to employ them actually until +the evening, body and soul are kept together, and this is what mankind +have to show for their six thousand years of toil and trouble.</p> + +<p>To keep up this system we must sacrifice everything. Parliaments, +liberty, leading articles, essays, eloquence,—all are good, but they are +secondary; at all hazards, and if we can, mankind must be kept +alive. And observe, as time goes on, this fabric becomes a tenderer +and a tenderer thing. Civilisation can’t bivouac; dangers, hardships, +sufferings, lightly borne by the coarse muscle of earlier times, are +soon fatal to noble and cultivated organisation. Women in early ages +are masculine, and, as a return match, the men of late years are becoming +women. The strong apprehension of a Napoleonic invasion +has, perhaps, just now caused more substantial misery in England +than once the wars of the Roses.</p> + +<p>To apply this ‘screed of doctrine’ to the condition of France. I +do not at all say that, but for the late <i>coup d’état</i>, French civilisation +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[316]</span>would certainly have soon come to a final end. <i>Some</i> people might +have continued to take their meals. Even Socialism would hardly +abolish <i>eau sucrée</i>. But I do assert that, according to the common +belief of the common people, their common comforts were in considerable +danger. The debasing torture of acute apprehension was eating +into the crude pleasure of stupid lives. No man liked to take a long +bill: no one could imagine to himself what was coming. Fear was +paralysing life and labour, and as I said at length, in my last, fear, so +intense, whether at first reasonable or unreasonable, will, ere long, invincibly +justify itself. May 1852 would, in all likelihood, have been +an evil and bloody time, if it had been preceded by six months’ famine +among the starvable classes.</p> + +<p>At present all is changed. Six weeks ago society was living from +hand to mouth: now she feels sure of her next meal. And this, in a +dozen words, is the real case—the political excuse for Prince Louis Napoleon. +You ask me, or I should not do so, to say a word or two on +the moral question and the oath. You are aware how limited my +means of doing so are. I have forgotten Paley, and have never read +the Casuists. But it certainly does not seem to me proved or clear, +that a man who has sworn, even in the most solemn manner, to see +another drown, is therefore quite bound, or even at liberty, to stand +placidly on the bank. What ethical philosopher has demonstrated +this? Coleridge said it was difficult to advance a new error in morals,—yet +this, I think, would be one; and the keeping of oaths is peculiarly +a point of mere science, for Christianity, in terms at least, only +forbids them all. And supposing I am right, such certainly was the +exact position of Louis Napoleon. He saw society, I will not say +dying or perishing—for I hate unnecessarily to overstate my point,—in +danger of incurring extreme and perhaps lasting calamities, +likely not only to impair the happiness, but moreover to debase +the character of the French nation, and these calamities he could +prevent. Now who has shown that ethics require of him to have +held his hand?</p> + +<p>The severity with which the riot was put down on the first Thursday +in December has, I observe, produced an extreme effect in England; +and with our happy exemption from martial bloodshed, it must, of +course, do so. But better one <i>émeute</i> now than many in May, be it +ever remembered. There are things more demoralising than death, +and among these is the sickly-apprehensive suffering for long months +of an entire people.</p> + +<p>Of course you understand that I am not holding up Louis Napoleon +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[317]</span>as a complete standard either of ethical scrupulosity or disinterested +devotedness; veracity has never been the family failing—for the great +Emperor was a still greater liar. And Prince Louis has been long +playing what, morality apart, is the greatest political misfortune to any +statesman—a visibly selfish game. Very likely, too, the very high +heroes of history—a Washington, an Aristides, by Carlyle profanely +called ‘favourites of Dryasdust,’ would have extricated the country more +easily, and perhaps more completely from its scrape. Their ennobling +rectitude would have kept M. de Girardin consistent, and induced M. +Thiers to vote for the Revision of the Constitution; and even though, +as of old, the Mountain were deafer than the uncharmed adder, a sufficient +number of self-seeking Conservatives might have been induced +by perfect confidence in a perfect President, to mend a crotchety performance, +that was visibly ruining, what the poet calls, ‘The ever-ought-to-be-conserved-thing,’ +their country.</p> + +<p>I remember reading, several years ago, an article in the <i>Westminster +Review</i>, on the lamented Armand Carrel, in which the author, +well known to be one of our most distinguished philosphers, took +occasion to observe that what the French most wanted was, ‘<i>un homme +de caractère</i>.’ Everybody is aware—for all except myself know French +quite perfectly—that this expression is not by any means equivalent +to our common phrase, a ‘man of character,’ or ‘respectable individual,’ +it does not at all refer to mere goodness: it is more like what we +sometimes say of an eccentric country gentleman, ‘He is a character;’ +for it denotes a singular preponderance of peculiar qualities, an accomplished +obstinacy, an inveterate fixedness of resolution and idea that +enables him to get done what he undertakes. The Duke of Wellington +is, ‘<i>par excellence, homme de caractère</i>;’ Lord Palmerston rather so; +Mr. Cobden a little; Lord John Russell not at all. Now exactly this, +beyond the immense majority of educated men, Louis Napoleon is, as +a pointed writer describes him:—‘The President is a superior man, +but his superiority is of the sort that is hidden under a dubious exterior: +his life is entirely internal; his speech does not betray his inspiration; +his gesture does not copy his audacity; his look does not +reflect his ardour; his step does not reveal his resolution; his whole +mental nature is in some sort repressed by his physical: he thinks +and does not discuss; he decides and does not deliberate; he acts +without agitation; he speaks, and assigns no reason; his best friends +are unacquainted with him; he obtains their confidence, but never +asks it.’ Also his whole nature is, and has been, absorbed in the task +which he has undertaken. For many months, his habitual expression +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[318]</span>has been exactly that of a gambler who is playing for his highest and +last stake; in society it is said to be the same—a general and diffusive +politeness, but an ever-ready reflection and a constant reserve. +His great qualities are rather peculiar. He is not, like his uncle, a +creative genius, who will leave behind him social institutions such as +those which nearly alone, in this changeful country, seem to be always +exempt from every change; he will suggest little; he has hardly an +organising mind; but he will coolly estimate his own position and +that of France; he will observe all dangers and compute all chances. +He can act—he can be idle: he may work what is; he may administer +the country. Any how <i>il fera son possible</i>, and you know, in the nineteenth +century, how much and how rare that is.</p> + +<p>I see many people are advancing beautiful but untrue ethics about +his private character. Thus I may quote as follows from a very estimable +writer:—‘On the 15th of October, he requested his passports +and left Aremberg for London. In this capital he remained from the +end of 1838 to the month of August 1840. In these twenty months, +instead of learning to command armies and govern empires, his days +and nights, when not given to frivolous pleasures, were passed on the +turf, in the betting-room, or in clubs where high play and desperate +stakes roused the jaded energy of the <i>blasé</i> gambler.’—(A. V. Kirwan, +Esq., Barrister-at-Law, in <i>Fraser’s Magazine</i>.)</p> + +<p>The notion of this gentleman clearly is, that a betting man can’t in +nature be a good statesman; that horse-racing is providentially opposed +to political excellence; that ‘by an interesting illustration of +the argument from design, we notice an antithesis alike marvellous +and inevitable,’ between turf and tariffs. But, setting Paley for a moment +apart, how is a man, by circumstances excluded from military +and political life, and by birth from commercial pursuits, really and +effectually to learn administration? Mr. Kirwan imagines that he +should read all through Burke, common-place Tacitus, collate Cicero, +and annotate Montesquieu. Yet take an analogous case. Suppose a +man, shut out from trading life, is to qualify himself for the practical +management of a counting-house. Do you fancy he will do it ‘by a +judicious study of the principles of political economy,’ and by elaborately +re-reading Adam Smith and John Mill? He had better be at +Newmarket, and devote his <i>heures perdues</i> to the Oaks and the St. +Leger. He may learn there what he will never acquire from literary +study—the instinctive habit of applied calculation, which is essential +to a merchant and extremely useful to a statesman. Where, too, did +Sir Robert Walpole learn business, or Charles Fox, or anybody in the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[319]</span>eighteenth century? And after all, M. Michel de Bourges gave the +real solution of the matter. ‘Louis Napoleon,’ said the best orator of +the Mountain, ‘may have had rather a stormy youth (laughter). But +don’t suppose that any one in all France imagines you, you <i>Messieurs</i>, +of the immaculate majority, to be the least better (sensation). I am +not speaking to saints’ (uproar). If compared with contemporary +French statesmen, and the practical choice is between him and +them, the President will not seem what he appears when measured +by the notions of a people who exact at least from inferior functionaries +<i>a rigid decorum in the pettiest details of their private +morals</i>.</p> + +<p>I have but one last point to make about this <i>coup d’état</i>, and +then I will release you from my writing. I do not know whether +you in England rightly realise the French Socialism. Take, for +instance, M. Proudhon, who is perhaps their ideal and perfect +type. He was <i>représentant de la Seine</i> in the late Assembly, elected, +which is not unimportant, after the publication of his books and on +account of his opinions. In his ‘<i>Confessions d’un Révolutionnaire</i>,’ +a very curious book—for he writes extremely well—after maintaining +that our well-known but, as we imagine, advanced friends, +Ledru Rollin, and Louis Blanc, and Barbès, and Blanqui are all <i>réactionnaires</i>, +and clearly showing, to the grief of mankind, that once +the legislator of the Luxembourg wished to preserve ‘equilibrium,’ +and the author of the provincial circulars to maintain the ‘tranquillity,’ +he gives the following <i>bonâ fide</i> and amusing account of his own investigations:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘I commenced my task of solitary conspiracy by the study of the socialisms +of antiquity, necessary, in my judgment, to determine the law, whether +practical or theoretical, of progress. These socialisms I found in the Bible. +A memoir on the institution of the Sabbath—considered with regard to +morals, to health, and in its relation to the family and the city—procured +for me a bronze medal from my academy. From the faith in which I had +been reared, I had precipitated myself head-long, head-foremost, into pure +reason, and already, what was wonderful and a good omen, when I made +Moses a philosopher and a socialist, I was greeted with applause. If I am +now in error, the fault is not merely mine. Was there ever a similar +seduction?</p> + +<p>‘But I studied, above all, with a view to action. I cared little for academical +laurels. I had no leisure to become <i>savant</i>, still less a <i>littérateur</i> or an +archæologist. I began immediately upon political economy.</p> + +<p>‘I had assumed as the rule of my investigations that every principle +which, pushed to its consequences, should end in a contradiction, must be +considered false and null; and that if this principle had been developed into +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[320]</span>an institution, the institution itself must be considered as factitious, as +utopian.</p> + +<p>‘Furnished with this criterion, I chose for the subject of investigation +what I found in society the most ancient, the most respectable, the most +universal, the least controverted,—property. Everybody knows what happened; +after a long, a minute, and, above all, an impartial analysis, I arrived, +as an algebraist guided by his equations, to this surprising conclusion. Property, +consider it as you will,—refer it to what principle you may, is a contradictory +idea; and as the denial of property carries with it of necessity +that of authority, I deduced immediately from my first axiom also this corollary, +not less paradoxical, the true form of government is <i>anarchy</i>. Lastly, +finding by a mathematical demonstration that no amelioration in the economy +of society could be arrived at by its natural constitution, or without the concurrence +and reflective adhesion of its members; observing, also, that there +is a definite epoch in the life of societies, in which their progress, at first +unreflecting, requires the intervention of the free reason of man, I concluded +that this spontaneous and impulsive force (<i>cette force d’impulsion spontanée</i>), +which we call Providence, is not everything in the affairs of this world: +from that moment, without being an Atheist, I ceased to worship God. He’ll +get on without your so doing, said to me one day the <i>Constitutionnel</i>. Well: +perhaps he may.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>These theories have been expanded into many and weary volumes, +and condensed into the famous phrase, ‘<i>La Propriété c’est le vol</i>;’ +and have procured their author, in his own sect, reputation and +authority.</p> + +<p>The <i>Constitutionnel</i> had another hit against M. Proudhon, a day or +two ago. They presented their readers with two decrees in due official +form (the walls were at the moment covered with those of the 2nd of +December), as the last ideal of what the straightest sect of the +Socialists particularly desire. It was as follows:—‘Nothing any +longer exists. Nobody is charged with the execution of the aforesaid +decree. Signed, Vacuum.’</p> + +<p>Such is the speculation of the new reformers—what their practices +would be I can hardly tell you. My feeble income does not +allow me to travel to the Basses Alpes and really investigate the +subject; but if one quarter of the stories in circulation are in the +least to be believed (we are quite dependent on oral information, for +the Government papers deal in asterisks and ‘details unfit for +publication,’ and the rest are devoted to the state of the navy and +say nothing), the atrocities rival the nauseous corruption of what our +liberal essayist calls ‘Jacobin carrion,’ the old days of Carrier and +Barère. This is what people here are afraid of; and that is why I +write such things,—and not to horrify you, or amuse you, or bore you—anything +rather than that; and they think themselves happy in finding +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[321]</span>a man who, with or without whatever other qualities or defects, +will keep them from the vaunted Millennium and much-expected +<i>Jacquerie</i>. I hope you think so, too—and that I am not, as they +say in my native Tipperary, ‘Whistling jigs to a milestone.’ I am, +sir, yours truly,</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Amicus</span>.</p> + +<p>P.S.—You will perhaps wish me to say something on the great +event of this week, the exile of the more dangerous members of the +late Assembly, and the transportation of the Socialists to Cayenne. +Both measures were here expected; though I think that both lists +are more numerous than was anticipated: but no one really knew +what would be done by this silent Government. You will laugh at +me when I tell you that both measures have been well received: but +properly limited and understood, I am persuaded that the fact is so.</p> + +<p>Of course, among the friends of exiled <i>représentants</i>, among the +<i>littérateurs</i> throughout whose ranks these measures are intended to +‘strike terror and inspire respect,’ you would hear that there never +was such tyranny since the beginning of mankind. But among the +mass of the industrious classes—between whom and the politicians +there is internecine war—I fancy that on turning the conversation +to either of the most recent events, you would hear something of +this sort:—‘<i>Ça ne m’occupe pas</i>.’ ‘What is that <i>to me</i>?’ ‘<i>Je suis pour +la tranquillité, moi.</i>’ ‘I sold four brooches yesterday.’ The Socialists +who have been removed from prison to the colony, it is agreed +were ‘pestilent fellows perverting the nation,’ and forbidding to pay +tribute to M. Bonaparte. Indeed, they can hardly expect commercial +sympathy. ‘Our national honour rose—our stocks fell,’ is Louis +Blanc’s perpetual comment on his favourite events, and it is difficult +to say which of its two clauses he dwells upon with the intenser relish. +It is generally thought by those who think about the matter, that +both the transportation, and in all cases, certainly, the exile will +only be a temporary measure, and that the great mass of the people +in both lists will be allowed to return to their homes when the +present season of extreme excitement has passed over. Still, I am not +prepared to defend the <i>number</i> of the transportations. That strong +measures of the sort were necessary, I make no doubt. If Socialism +exist, and the fear of it exist, something must be done to re-assure +the people. You will understand that it is not a judicial proceeding +either in essence or in form; it is not to be considered as a punishment +for what men have done, but as a perfect precaution against +what they may do. Certainly, it is to be regretted that the cause +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[322]</span>of order is so weak as to need such measures; but if it <i>is</i> so weak, +the Government must no doubt take them. Of course, however, ‘our +brethren,’ who are retained in such numbers to write down Prince +Louis, are quite right to use without stint or stopping this most +un-English proceeding; it is their case, and you and I from old +misdeeds know pretty well how it is to be managed. There will be +no imputation of reasonable or humane motives to the Government, +and no examination of the existing state of France:—let both these +come from the other side—but elegiac eloquence is inexhaustibly +exuded—the cruel corners of history are ransacked for petrifying +precedents—and I observe much excellent weeping on the Cromwellian +deportations and the ten years’ exile of Madame de Staël. But +after all they have missed the tempting parallel—I mean the ‘rather +long’ proscription list which Octavius—‘<i>l’ancien neveu de l’ancien +oncle</i>’—concocted with Mark Antony in the marshes of Bononia, +and whereby they thoroughly purged old Rome of its turbulent +and revolutionary elements. I suspect our estimable contemporaries +regret to remember of how much good order, long tranquillity, ‘<i>beata +pleno copia cornu</i>’ and other many ‘little comforts’ to the civilised +world that very ‘strong’ proceeding, whether in ethics justifiable or +not, certainly was in fact the beginning and foundation.</p> + +<p>The fate of the African generals is much to be regretted, and +the Government will incur much odium if the exile of General +Changarnier is prolonged any length of time. He is doubtless +‘dangerous’ for the moment, for his popularity with the army is +considerable, and he divides the party of order; he is also a practical +man and an unpleasant enemy, but he is much respected and little +likely (I fancy) to attempt anything against any settled Government.</p> + +<p>As for M. Thiers and M. Emile de Girardin—the ablest of the +exiles—I have heard no one pity them; they have played a selfish +game—they have encountered a better player—they have been +beaten—and this is the whole matter. You will remember that it +was the adhesion of these two men that procured for M. Bonaparte +a large part of his <i>first</i> six millions. M. de Girardin, whom +General Cavaignac had discreetly imprisoned and indiscreetly set +free, wrote up the ‘opposition candidate’ daily, in the <i>Presse</i> (he +has since often and often tried to write him down,) and M. Thiers +was his Privy Councillor. ‘<i>Mon cher Prince</i>,’ they say, said the +latter, ‘your address to the people won’t do at all. I’ll get one +of the <i>rédacteurs of the Constitutionnel</i> to draw you up something +tolerable.’ You remember the easy patronage with which Cicero +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[323]</span>speaks in his letter of the ‘boy’ that was outwitting him all +the while. But, however, observe I do not at all, notwithstanding +my Latin, insinuate or assert that Louis Napoleon, though a +considerable man, is exactly equal to keep the footsteps of Augustus. +A feeble parody may suffice for an inferior stage and not too gigantic +generation. Now I really <i>have</i> done.</p> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Letter III.</span><br> +<i>ON THE NEW CONSTITUTION OF FRANCE, AND THE +APTITUDE OF THE FRENCH CHARACTER FOR +NATIONAL FREEDOM.</i></h4> + +<p class="right">Paris: January 20, 1852.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—We have now got our Constitution. The Napoleonic era +has commenced; the term of the dictatorship is fixed and the consolidation +of France is begun. You will perhaps anticipate from the +conclusion of the last letter, that <i>à propos</i> of this great event, I should +gratify you with bright anticipations of an Augustan age, and a +quick revival of Catonic virtue, with an assurance that the night is +surely passed and the day altogether come, with a solemn invocation +to the rising luminary, and an original panegyric on the ‘golden +throned morning.’</p> + +<p>I must always regret to disappoint any one; but I feel obliged to +entertain you instead with torpid philosophy, constitutional details, +and a dull disquisition on national character.</p> + +<p>The details of the new institutions you will have long ago learnt +from the daily papers. I believe they may be fairly and nearly +accurately described as the Constitution of the Consulate, <i>minus</i> the +ideas of the man who made it. You will remember that, besides the +First Magistrate, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the +Council of State (which we may call, in legal language, the ‘common +form’ of continental constitution), the ingenious Abbé Sièyes had +devised some four principal peculiarities, which were to be remembered +to all time as master-pieces of political invention. These were the +utter inaction of the First Magistrate, copied, as I believe, from the +English Constitution—the subordination to him of two Consuls, one +to administer peace and the other war, who were intended to be the +real hands and arms of the Government—the silence of the Senate—the +double and very peculiar election of the House of Representatives. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[324]</span>Napoleon the Great, as we are now to speak, struck out the first of +these, being at the moment working some fifteen hours a day at the +reorganisation of France. He said plainly and rather sternly that he +had no intention of doing nothing—the <i>idéologue</i> went to the wall—the +‘excellent idea’ put forth in happy forgetfulness of real facts and +real people was instantly abandoned—for the Grand Elector was substituted +a First Consul, who, so far from being nothing, was very soon +the whole Government. Napoleon the Little, as I fear the Parisian +multitude may learn to call him, has effaced the other three ‘strokes +of statesmanship.’ The new Constitution of France is exactly the +‘common form’ of political conveyancing, <i>plus</i> the <i>Idée Napoléonienne</i> +of an all-suggesting and all-administering mind.</p> + +<p>I have extremely little to tell you about its reception; it has +made no ‘sensation,’ not so much as even the ‘fortified camps’ +which his Grace is said to be devising for the defence of our own +London. Indeed, ‘<i>Il a peur</i>’ is a very common remark (conceivable +to everybody who knows ‘the Duke,’) and it would seem even a +refreshing alleviation of their domestic sorrows. In fact, home +politics are now <i>the</i> topic; geography and the state of foreign institutions +are not, indeed, the true Parisian line—but it has, in fine, +been distinctly discovered that there are no <i>salons</i> in Cayenne, which, +once certain, the logical genius of the nation, with incredible swiftness, +deduced the clear conclusion that it was better not to go there. +Seriously, I fancy—for I have no data on which to found real +knowledge of so delicate a point—the new Constitution is regarded +merely as what Father Newman would call a ‘preservative addition’ +or a ‘necessary development,’ essential to the ‘chronic continuance’ +of the Napoleonic system; for the moment the mass of the people +wish the President to govern them, but they don’t seem to me +to care how. The political people, I suppose, hate it, because for +some time it will enable him, if not shot, to govern effectually. I +say, if not shot—for people are habitually recounting under their +breath some new story of an attempt at assassination, which the +papers suppress. I am inclined to think that these rumours are +pure lies; but they show the feeling. You know, according to +the Constitution of 1848, the President would now be a mere outlaw, +and whoever finds him may slay him, if he can. It is true that the +elaborate masterpiece of M. Marrast is already fallen into utter +oblivion (it is no more remembered than yesterday’s <i>Times</i>, or the +political institutions of Saxon Mercia); but nevertheless such, according +to the antediluvian <i>régime</i>, would be the law, and it is +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[325]</span>possible that a mindful Montagnard may upon occasion recall even +so insignificant a circumstance.</p> + +<p>I have a word to say on the Prologue of the President. When I +first began to talk politics with French people, I was much impressed +by the fact to which he has there drawn attention. You know that +all such conversation, when one of the interlocutors is a foreigner, +speaking slowly and but imperfectly the language of the country in +which he is residing, is pretty much in the style of that excellent work +which was the terror of our childhood—Joyce’s ‘Scientific Dialogues’—wherein, +as you may remember, an accomplished tutor, with a +singular gift of scholastic improvisation, instructs a youthful pupil +exceedingly given to feeble questions and auscultatory repose. Now, +when I began in Parisian society thus to enact the <i>rôle</i> of ‘George’ +or ‘Caroline,’ I was, I repeat, much struck with the fact that the +Emperor had done everything: to whatever subject my diminutive +inquiry related, the answer was nearly universally the same—an elegy +on Napoleon. Nor is this exactly absurd; for whether or not ‘the +nephew’ is right in calling the uncle the greatest of modern statesmen, +he is indisputably the modern statesman who has founded the greatest +number of existing institutions. In the pride of philosophy and in +the madness of an hour, the Constituent Assembly and the Convention +swept away not only the monstrous abuses of the old <i>régime</i>, but that +<i>régime</i> itself—its essence and its mechanism, utterly and entirely. +They destroyed whatever they could lay their hands on. The consequence +was certain—when they tried to construct they found they had +no materials. They left a vacuum. No greater benefit could have +been conferred on politicians gifted with the creative genius of Napoleon. +It was like the fire of London to Sir Christopher Wren. With +a fertility of invention and an obstinacy in execution, equalling, if +not surpassing, those of Cæsar and Charlemagne, he had before him +an open stage, more clear and more vast than in historical times +fortune has ever offered to any statesman. He was nearly in the +position of the imagined legislator of the Greek legends and the Greek +philosophers—he could enact any law, and rescind any law. Accordingly, +the educational system, the banking system, the financial +system, the municipal system, the administrative system, the civil +legislation, the penal legislation, the commercial legislation (besides +all manner of secondary creations—public buildings and public +institutions without number), all date from the time, and are more +or less deeply inscribed with the genius, the firm will, and unresting +energies of Napoleon. And this, which is the great strength +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[326]</span>of the present President, is the great difficulty—I fear the insurmountable +difficulty—in the way of Henry the Fifth. The first revolution +is to the French what the deluge is to the rest of mankind; +the whole system then underwent an entire change. A French +politician will no more cite as authority the domestic policy of Colbert +or Louvois than we should think of going for ethics and æsthetics to +the bigamy of Lamech, or the musical accomplishments of Tubal +Cain. If the Comte de Chambord be (as it is quite on the cards that +he may be), within a few years restored, he must govern by the +instrumentality of laws and systems, devised by the politicians whom +he execrates and denounces, and devised, moreover, often enough, +especially to keep out him and his. It is difficult to imagine that a +strong Government can be composed of materials so inharmonious. +Meanwhile, to the popular imagination, ‘the Emperor’ is the past; +the House of Bourbon is as historical as the House of Valois; a +peasant is little oftener reminded of the ‘third dynasty’ than of the +long-haired kings.</p> + +<p>In discussing any Constitution, there are two ideas to be first got +rid of. The first is the idea of our barbarous ancestors—now happily +banished from all civilised society, but still prevailing in old manor-houses, +in rural parsonages, and other curious repositories of mouldering +ignorance, and which in such arid solitudes is thus expressed: +‘Why can’t they have Kings, Lords and Commons, <i>like we have</i>? +What fools foreigners are.’ The second pernicious mistake is, like the +former, seldom now held upon system, but so many hold it in bits and +fragments, and without system, that it is still rather formidable. I +allude to the old idea which still here creeps out in conversation, and +sometimes in writing,—that politics are simply a subdivision of immutable +ethics; that there are certain rights of men in all places and +all times, which are the sole and sufficient foundation of all government, +and that accordingly a single stereotype Government is to make +the tour of the world—that you have no more right to deprive a Dyak +of his vote in a ‘possible’ Polynesian Parliament, than you have to +steal his mat.</p> + +<p>Burke first taught the world at large, in opposition to both, and +especially to the latter of these notions, that politics are made of time +and place—that institutions are shifting things, to be tried by and +adjusted to the shifting conditions of a mutable world—that, in fact, +politics are but a piece of business—to be determined in every case by +the exact exigencies of that case; in plain English—by sense and +circumstances.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[327]</span></p> + +<p>This was a great step in political philosophy—though it <i>now</i> +seems the events of 1848 have taught thinking persons (I fancy) +further. They have enabled us to say that of all these circumstances +so affecting political problems, by far and out of all question the most +important is <i>national character</i>. In that year the same experiment—the +experiment, as its friends say, of Liberal and Constitutional +Government—as its enemies say, of Anarchy and Revolution—was +tried in every nation of Europe—with what varying futures and +differing results! The effect has been to teach men—not only speculatively +to know, but practically to feel, that no absurdity is so great +as to imagine the same species of institutions suitable or possible for +Scotchmen and Sicilians, for Germans and Frenchmen, for the English +and the Neapolitans. With a well-balanced national character (we now +know) liberty is a stable thing. A really practical people will work +in political business, as in private business, almost the absurdest, the +feeblest, the most inconsistent set of imaginable regulations. Similarly, +or rather reversely, the best institutions will not keep right a nation +that <i>will</i> go wrong. Paper is but paper, and no virtue is to be discovered +in it to retain within due boundaries the undisciplined +passions of those who have never set themselves seriously to restrain +them. In a word—as people of ‘large roundabout common-sense’ +will (as a rule) somehow get on in life—(no matter what their +circumstances or their fortune)—so a nation which applies good judgment, +forbearance, a rational and compromising habit to the management +of free institutions, will certainly succeed; while the more +eminently gifted national character will but be a source and germ of +endless and disastrous failure, if, with whatever other eminent +qualities, it be deficient in these plain, solid, and essential requisites.</p> + +<p>The formation of <i>this</i> character is one of the most secret of +marvellous mysteries. Why nations have the character we see them +to have is, speaking generally, as little explicable to our shallow perspicacity, +as why individuals, our friends or our enemies, for good or +for evil, have the character which they have; why one man is stupid +and another clever—why another volatile and a fourth consistent—this +man by instinct generous, that man by instinct niggardly. I am +not speaking of actions, you observe, but of tendencies and temptations. +These and other similar problems daily crowd on our observation +in millions and millions, and only do not puzzle us because we are +too familiar with their difficulty to dream of attempting their solution. +Only this much is most certain,—all men and all nations have a +character, and that character, when once taken, is, I do not say +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[328]</span>unchangeable—religion modifies it, catastrophe annihilates it—but +the least changeable thing in this ever-varying and changeful world. +Take the soft mind of the boy, and (strong and exceptional aptitudes +and tendencies excepted) you may make him merchant, barrister, +butcher, baker, surgeon, or apothecary. But once make him an apothecary, +and he will never afterwards bake wholesome bread—make +him a butcher, and he will kill too extensively, even for a surgeon—make +him a barrister, and he will be dim on double entry, and crass +on bills of lading. Once conclusively form him to one thing, and no +art and no science will ever twist him to another. Nature, says the +philosopher, has no Delphic daggers!—no men or maids of all work—she +keeps one being to one pursuit—to each is a single choice afforded, +but no more again thereafter for ever. And it is the same with +nations. The Jews of to-day are the Jews in face and form of the +Egyptian sculptures; in character they are the Jews of Moses—the +negro is the negro of a thousand years—the Chinese, by his own +account, is the mummy of a million. ‘Races and their varieties,’ says +the historian, ‘seem to have been created with an inward <i>nisus</i> +diminishing with the age of the world.’ The people of the South are +yet the people of the South, fierce and angry as their summer sun—the +people of the North are still cold and stubborn like their own +North wind—the people of the East ‘mark not, but are still’—the +people of the West ‘are going through the ends of the earth, and +walking up and down in it.’ The fact is certain, the cause beyond us. +The subtle system of obscure causes, whereby sons and daughters +resemble not only their fathers and mothers, but even their great-great-grandfathers +and their great-great-grandmothers, may very likely +be destined to be very inscrutable. But as the fact is so, so moreover, +in history, nations have one character, one set of talents, one list of +temptations, and one duty—to use the one and get the better of the +other. There are breeds in the animal man just as in the animal dog. +When you hunt with greyhounds and course with beagles, then, and +not till then, may you expect the inbred habits of a thousand years +to pass away, that Hindoos can be free, or that Englishmen will be +slaves.</p> + +<p>I need not prove to you that the French <i>have</i> a national character. +Nor need I try your patience with a likeness of it. I have only to +examine whether it be a fit basis for national freedom. I fear you +will laugh when I tell you what I conceive to be about the most +essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, +permanent, and on a large scale; it is much <i>stupidity</i>. I see +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[329]</span>you are surprised—you are going to say to me, as Socrates did to +Polus, ‘My young friend, <i>of course</i>, you are right; but will you explain +what you mean?—as yet you are not intelligible.’ I will do so as well +as I can, or endeavour to make good what I say—not by an <i>à priori</i> +demonstration of my own, but from the details of the present, and the +facts of history. Not to begin by wounding any present susceptibilities, +let me take the Roman character—for, with one great exception—I +need not say to whom I allude—they are the great political +people of history. Now, is not a certain dullness their most visible +characteristic? What is the history of their speculative mind?—a +blank. What their literature?—a copy. They have left not a single +discovery in any abstract science; not a single perfect or well-formed +work of high imagination. The Greeks, the perfection of narrow and +accomplished genius, bequeathed to mankind the ideal forms of self-idolising +art—the Romans imitated and admired; the Greeks explained +the laws of nature—the Romans wondered and despised; the Greeks +invented a system of numerals second only to that now in use—the +Romans counted to the end of their days with the clumsy apparatus +which we still call by their name; the Greeks made a capital and +scientific calendar—the Romans began their month when the Pontifex +Maximus happened to spy out the new moon. Throughout Latin +literature, this is the perpetual puzzle—Why are we free and they +slaves? we prætors and they barbers? Why do the stupid people +always win, and the clever people always lose? I need not say that, +in real sound stupidity, the English are unrivalled. You’ll hear more +wit, and better wit, in an Irish street row than would keep Westminster +Hall in humour for five weeks. Or take Sir Robert Peel—our +last great statesman, the greatest Member of Parliament that ever +lived, an absolutely perfect transacter of public business—the type of +the nineteenth century Englishman, as Sir R. Walpole was of the +eighteenth. Was there ever such a dull man? Can any one, without +horror, foresee the reading of his memoirs? A <i>clairvoyante</i>, with the +book shut, may get on; but who now, in the flesh, will ever endure +the open <i>vision</i> of endless recapitulation of interminable Hansard. +Or take Mr. Tennyson’s inimitable description:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘No little lily-handed Baronet he,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A great broad-shouldered genial Englishman,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A lord of fat prize oxen and of sheep,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A raiser of huge melons and of pine,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A patron of some thirty charities,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A pamphleteer on guano and on grain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A quarter sessions chairman, abler none.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[330]</span></p> + +<p class="noindent">Whose company so soporific? His talk is of truisms and bullocks; +his head replete with rustic visions of mutton and turnips, and a +cerebral edition of Burn’s ‘Justice!’ Notwithstanding, he is the salt +of the earth, the best of the English breed. Who is like him for +sound sense? But I must restrain my enthusiasm. You don’t want +me to tell you that a Frenchman—a real Frenchman—can’t be stupid; +<i>esprit</i> is his essence, wit is to him as water, <i>bons-mots</i> as <i>bonbons</i>. He +reads and he learns by reading; levity and literature are essentially +his line. Observe the consequence. The outbreak of 1848 was +accepted in every province in France; the decrees of the Parisian mob +were received and registered in all the municipalities of a hundred +cities; the Revolution ran like the fluid of the telegraph down the +<i>Chemin de fer du Nord</i>; it stopped at the Belgian frontier. Once +brought into contact with the dull phlegm of the stupid Fleming, the +poison was powerless. You remember what the Norman butler said +to Wilkin Flammock, of the fulling mills, at the castle of the Garde +Douloureuse: ‘that draught which will but warm your Flemish hearts, +will put wildfire into Norman brains; and what may only encourage +your countrymen to man the walls, will make ours fly over the battlements.’ +<i>Les braves Belges</i>, I make no doubt, were quite pleased to +observe what folly was being exhibited by those very clever French, +whose tongue they want to speak, and whose literature they try to +imitate. In fact, what we opprobriously call stupidity, though not +an enlivening quality in common society, is nature’s favourite resource +for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion. It +enforces concentration; people who learn slowly, learn only what +they must. The best security for people’s doing their duty is, that +they should not know anything else to do; the best security for +fixedness of opinion is, that people should be incapable of comprehending +what is to be said on the other side. These valuable truths are +no discoveries of mine. They are familiar enough to people whose +business it is to know them. Hear what a dense and aged attorney +says of your peculiarly promising barrister:—‘Sharp! oh yes, yes! +he’s too sharp by half. He is not <i>safe</i>; not a minute, isn’t that young +man.’ ‘What style, sir,’ asked of an East India Director some youthful +aspirant for literary renown, ‘is most to be preferred in the +composition of official despatches?’ ‘My good fellow,’ responded the +ruler of Hindostan, ‘the style <i>as we</i> like is the Humdrum.’ I extend +this, and advisedly maintain that nations, just as individuals, may be +too clever to be practical, and not dull enough to be free.</p> + +<p>How far this is true of the French, and how far the gross deficiency +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[331]</span>I have indicated is modified by their many excellent qualities, I hope +at a future time to inquire.</p> + +<p class="center">I am, sir, yours truly,</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Amicus</span>.</p> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Letter IV.</span><br> +<i>ON THE APTITUDE OF THE FRENCH CHARACTER +FOR NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT.</i></h4> + +<p class="right">Paris: Jan. 29, 1852.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—There is a simple view of the subject on which I wrote to +you last week, that I wish to bring under your notice. The experiment +(as it is called) of establishing political freedom in France is now +sixty years old; and the best that we can say of it is, that it is an +experiment still. There have been perhaps half-a-dozen new beginnings—half-a-dozen +complete failures. I am aware that each of these +failures can be excellently explained—each beginning shown to be +quite necessary. But there are certain reasonings which, though +outwardly irrefragable, the crude human mind is always most unwilling +to accept. Among these are different and subtle explications +of several apparently similar facts. Thus, to choose an example +suited to the dignity of my subject, if a gentleman from town +takes a day’s shooting in the country, and should chance (as has happened) +at first going off, to miss some six times running, how luminously +soever he may ‘explain’ each failure as it occurs, however +‘expanded a view’ he may take of the whole series, whatever popular +illustrations of projectile philosophy he may propound to the bird-slaying +agriculturists—the impression on the crass intelligence of +the gamekeeper will quite clearly be ‘He beint noo shot homsoever—aint +thickeer.’ Similarly, to compare small things with great, +when I myself read in Thiers and the many other philosophic historians +of this literary country, various and excellent explanations of +their many mischances;—of the failure of the constitution of 1791—of +the constitution of the year 3—of the constitution of the year +5—of the <i>charte</i>—of the system of 1830—and now we may add, +of the second republic—the annotated constitution of M. Dupin,—I +can’t help feeling a suspicion lingering in my crude and uncultivated +intellect—that some common principle is at work in all and +each of these several cases—that over and above all odd mischances, +so many bankruptcies a little suggest an unfitness for the trade; that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[332]</span>besides the ingenious reasons of ingenious gentlemen, there is some +lurking quality, or want of a quality, in the national character of +the French nation which renders them but poorly adapted for the +form of freedom and constitution which they have so often, with +such zeal and so vainly, attempted to establish.</p> + +<p>In my last letter I suggested that this might be what I ventured +to call a ‘want of stupidity.’ I will now try to describe what +I mean in more accurate, though not, perhaps, more intelligible +words.</p> + +<p>I believe that I am but speaking what is agreed on by competent +observers, when I say that the essence of the French character is a +certain mobility; that is, as it has been defined, a certain ‘excessive +sensibility to <i>present</i> impressions,’ which is sometimes ‘levity,’—for +it issues in a postponement of seemingly fixed principles to a momentary +temptation or a transient whim; sometimes ‘impatience’—as +leading to an exaggerated sense of existing evils; often excitement,’—a +total absorption in existing emotion; oftener ‘inconsistency’—the +sacrifice of old habits to present emergencies; and yet +other unfavourable qualities. But it has also its favourable side. +The same man who is drawn aside from old principles by small +pleasures, who can’t bear pain, who forgets his old friends when he +ceases to see them, who is liable in time of excitement to be a one-idea +being, with no conception of anything but the one exciting +object, yet who nevertheless is apt to have one idea to-day and quite +another to-morrow (and this, and more than this, may I fancy be said +of the ideal Frenchman) may and will have the subtlest perception +of existing niceties, the finest susceptibility to social pleasure, the +keenest tact in social politeness, the most consummate skilfulness in +the details of action and administration,—may, in short, be the best +companion, the neatest man of business, the lightest <i>homme de salon</i>, +the acutest diplomat of the existing world.</p> + +<p>It is curious to observe how this reflects itself in their literature. +‘I will believe,’ remarks Montaigne, ‘in anything rather than in any +man’s consistency.’ What observer of English habits—what person +inwardly conscious of our dull and unsusceptible English nature, +would ever say so. Rather in our country obstinacy is the commonest +of the vices, and perseverance the cheapest of the virtues. Again, +when they attempt history, the principal peculiarity (a few exceptions +being allowed for) is an utter incapacity to describe graphically a +long-passed state of society. Take, for instance—assuredly no unfavourable +example—M. Guizot. His books, I need not say, are +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[333]</span>nearly unrivalled for eloquence, for philosophy and knowledge; you +read there, how in the middle age there were many ‘principles:’ the +principle of Legitimacy, the principle of Feudalism, the principle of +Democracy; and you come to know how one grew, and another declined, +and a third crept slowly on; and the mind is immensely +edified, when perhaps at the 315th page a proper name occurs, and +you mutter, ‘Dear me, why, if there were not <i>people</i> in the time of +Charlemagne! Who would have thought that?’ But in return for +this utter incapacity to describe the people of past times, a Frenchman +has the gift of perfectly describing the people of his own. No +one knows so well—no one can tell so well—the facts of his own life. +The French memoirs, the French letters are, and have been, the admiration +of Europe. Is not now Jules Janin unrivalled at pageants +and <i>prima donnas</i>?</p> + +<p>It is the same in poetry. As a recent writer excellently remarks, +‘A French Dante, or Michael Angelo, or Cervantes, or Murillo, or +Goethe, or Shakespeare, or Milton, we at once perceive to be a mere +anomaly; a supposition which may indeed be proposed in terms, but +which in reality is inconceivable and impossible.’ Yet, in requital as +it were of this great deficiency, they have a wonderful capacity for +expressing and delineating the poetical and voluptuous element of +every-day life. We know the biography of De Béranger. The young +ladies whom he has admired—the wine that he has preferred—the +fly that buzzed on the ceiling, and interrupted his delicious and dreaming +solitude, are as well known to us as the recollections of our own +lives. As in their common furniture, so in their best poetry. The +materials are nothing; reckon up what you have been reading, and +it seems a <i>congeries</i> of stupid trifles; begin to read,—the skill of the +workmanship is so consummate, the art so high and so latent, that +while time flows silently on, our fancies are enchanted and our +memories indelibly impressed. How often, asks Mr. Thackeray, +have we read De Béranger—how often Milton? Certainly, since +Horace, there has been no such manual of the philosophy of this +world.</p> + +<p>I will not say that the quality which I have been trying to delineate +is exactly the same thing as ‘cleverness.’ But I do allege that +it is sufficiently near it for the rough purposes of popular writing. +For this <i>quickness</i> in taking in—so to speak—the present, gives a +corresponding celerity of intellectual apprehension, an amazing readiness +in catching new ideas and maintaining new theories, a versatility +of mind which enters into and comprehends everything as it passes, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[334]</span>a concentration in what occurs, so as to use it for every purpose of +illustration, and consequently (if it happen to be combined with the +least fancy), quick repartee on the subject of the moment, and <i>bons-mots</i> +also without stint and without end—and these qualities are +rather like what we style cleverness. And what I call a proper stupidity +keeps a man from all the defects of this character; it chains the +gifted possessor mainly to his old ideas; it takes him seven weeks to +comprehend an atom of a new one; it keeps him from being led +away by new theories—for there is nothing which bores him so +much; it restrains him within his old pursuits, his well-known habits, +his tried expedients, his verified conclusions, his traditional beliefs. +He is not tempted to ‘levity,’ or ‘impatience,’ for he does not see the +joke, and is thick-skinned to present evils. Inconsistency puts him +out,—‘What I says is this here, as I was a saying yesterday,’ is his +notion of historical eloquence and habitual discretion. He is very +slow indeed to be ‘excited,’—his passions, his feelings, and his +affections are dull and tardy strong things, falling in a certain known +direction, fixing on certain known objects, and for the most part acting +in a moderate degree, and at a sluggish pace. You always know +where to find his mind.</p> + +<p>Now this is exactly what, in politics at least, you do not know +about a Frenchman. I like—I have heard a good judge say—to hear +a Frenchman talk. He strikes a light, but what light he will strike +it is impossible to predict. I think he doesn’t know himself. Now, +I know you see at once how this would operate on a Parliamentary +Government, but I give you a gentle illustration. All England +knows Mr. Disraeli, the witty orator, the exceedingly clever <i>littérateur</i>, +the versatile politician; and all England has made up its mind +that the stupidest country gentleman would be a better Home +Secretary than the accomplished descendant of the ‘Caucasian race.’ +Now suppose, if you only can, a House of Commons all Disraelis, +and do you imagine that Parliament would work? It would be +what M. Proudhon said of some French assemblies, ‘a box of +matches.’</p> + +<p>The same quality acts in another way, and produces to English +ideas a most marvellous puzzle, both in the philosophical literature +and the political discussion of the French. I mean their passion +for logical deduction. The habitual mode of argument is to get +hold of some large principle; to begin to deduce immediately; and +to reason down from it to the most trivial details of common +action. <i>Il faut être conséquent avec soi-même</i>—is their fundamental +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[335]</span>maxim; and in a world the essence of which is compromise, they +could not well have a worse. I hold, metaphysically perhaps, that +this is a consequence of that same impatience of disposition to which +I have before alluded. Nothing is such a bore as looking for your +principles—nothing so pleasant as working them out. People who +have thought, know that inquiry is suffering. A child a stumbling +timidly in the dark is not more different from the same child playing +on a sunny lawn, than is the philosopher groping, hesitating, doubting +and blundering about his primitive postulates, from the same +philosopher proudly deducing and commenting on the certain consequences +of his established convictions. On this account Mathematics +have been called the paradise of the mind. In Euclid at +least, you have your principles, and all that is required is acuteness +in working them out. The long annals of science are one continued +commentary on this text. Read in Bacon, the beginner of intellectual +philosophy in England, and every page of the ‘Advancement +of Learning’ is but a continued warning against the tendency of the +human mind to start at once to the last generalities from a few and +imperfectly observed particulars. Read in the ‘Meditations’ of +Descartes, the beginner of intellectual philosophy in France, and in +every page (once I read five) you will find nothing but the strictest, +the best, the most lucid, the most logical deduction of all things +actual and possible, from a few principles obtained without evidence, +and retained in defiance of probability. Deduction is a game, and +induction a grievance. Besides, clever impatient people want not +only to learn, but to teach. And instruction expresses at least the +alleged possession of knowledge. The obvious way is to shorten the +painful, the slow, the tedious, the wearisome process of preliminary +inquiry—to assume something pretty—to establish its consequences—discuss +their beauty—exemplify their importance—extenuate their +absurdities. A little vanity helps all this. Life is short—art is long—truth +lies deep—take some side—found your school—open your +lecture-rooms—tuition is dignified—learning is low.</p> + +<p>I do not know that I can exhibit the way these qualities of the +French character operate on their opinions, better than by telling you +how the Roman Catholic Church deals with them. I have rather attended +to it since I came here; it gives sermons almost an interest, +their being in French—and to those curious in intellectual matters +it is worth observing. In other times, and even now in out-of-the-way +Spain, I suppose it may be so, the Catholic Church was +opposed to inquiry and reasoning. But it is not so now, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[336]</span>here. Loudly—from the pens of a hundred writers—from the +tongues of a thousand pulpits—in every note of thrilling scorn and +exulting derision, she proclaims the contrary. Be she Christ’s workman, +or Antichrist’s, she knows her work too well.—‘Reason, +Reason, Reason!’—exclaims she to the philosophers of this world—‘Put +in practice what you teach, if you would have others believe +it; be consistent; do not prate to us of private judgment when you +are but yourselves repeating what you heard in the nursery—ill-mumbled +remnants of a Catholic tradition. No! exemplify what +you command, inquire and make search—seek, though we warn you +that ye will never find—yet do as ye will. Shut yourself up in a +room—make your mind a blank—go down (as ye speak) into the +“depths of your consciousness”—scrutinise the mental structure—inquire +for the elements of belief—spend years, your best years, in +the occupation; and at length—when your eyes are dim, and your +brain hot, and your hand unsteady—then reckon what you have +gained: see if you cannot count on your fingers the certainties you +have reached: reflect which of them you doubted yesterday, which +you may disbelieve to-morrow; or rather, make haste—assume +at random some essential <i>credenda</i>—write down your inevitable +postulates—enumerate your necessary axioms—toil on, toil on—spin +your spider’s web—adore your own souls—or, if you prefer it, choose +some German nostrum—try the intellectual intuition, or the “pure +reason,” or the “intelligible” ideas, or the mesmeric <i>clairvoyance</i>—and +when so or somehow you have attained your results, try them +on mankind. Don’t go out into the highways and hedges—it’s unnecessary. +Ring the bell—call in the servants—give them a course +of lectures—cite Aristotle—review Descartes—panegyrise Plato—and +see if the bonne will understand you. It is you that say “<i>Vox +populi—Vox Dei</i>;” but you see the people reject you. Or, suppose +you succeed—what you call succeeding—your books are read; for +three weeks, or even a season, you are the idol of the <i>salons</i>; your +hard words are on the lips of women; then a change comes—a new +actress appears at the Théâtre Français or the Opéra—her charms +eclipse your theories; or a great catastrophe occurs—political liberty +(it is said) is annihilated—<i>il faut se faire mouchard</i>, is the observation +of scoffers. Any how, <i>you</i> are forgotten—fifty years may be +the gestation of a philosophy, not three its life—before long, before +you go to your grave, your six disciples leave you for some newer +master, or to set up for themselves. The poorest priest in the remote +region of the <i>Basses Alpes</i> has more power over men’s souls +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[337]</span>than human cultivation; his ill-mouthed masses move women’s souls—can +you? Ye scoff at Jupiter. Yet he at least was believed in—you +never have been; idol for idol, the <i>de</i>throned is better than the +<i>un</i>throned. No, if you would reason—if you would teach—if you +would speculate, come to us. We have our <i>premises</i> ready; years +upon years before you were born, intellects whom the best of you delight +to magnify, toiled to systematise the creed of ages; years upon +years after you are dead, better heads than yours will find new matter +there to define, to divide, to arrange. Consider the hundred volumes +of Aquinas—which of you desire a higher life than that? To deduce, +to subtilise, discriminate, systematise, and decide the highest truth, +and to be believed. Yet such was his luck, his enjoyment. He was +what you would be. No, no—<i>Credite, credite</i>. Ours is the life of +speculation—the cloister is the home for the student. Philosophy +is stationary—Catholicism progressive. You call—we are heard,’ +&c., &c., &c. So speaks each preacher according to his ability. +And when the dust and noise of present controversies have passed +away, and in the silence of the night, some grave historian writes +out the tale of half-forgotten times, let him not forget to observe +that skilfully as the mediæval church subdued the superstitious +cravings of a painful and barbarous age—in after years she dealt +more discerningly still with the feverish excitement, the feeble +vanities, and the dogmatic impatience of an over-intellectual +generation.</p> + +<p>And as in religion—so in politics, we find the same desire to teach +rather than to learn—the same morbid appetite for exhaustive and +original theories. It is as necessary for a public writer to have a system +as it is for him to have a pen. His course is obvious; he assumes +some grand principle—the principle of Legitimacy, or the principle of +Equality, or the principle of Fraternity—and thence he reasons down +without fear or favour to the details of every-day politics. Events +are judged of, not by their relation to simple causes, but by their +bearing on a remote axiom. Nor are these speculations mere +exercises of philosophic ingenuity. Four months ago, hundreds of +able writers were debating with the keenest ability and the most +ample array of generalities, whether the country should be governed +by a Legitimate Monarchy, or an illegitimate; by a Social, or an +old-fashioned Republic; by a two-chambered Constitution, or a one-chambered +Constitution; on ‘Revision,’ or Non-revision; on the +claims of Louis Napoleon, or the divine right of the national +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[338]</span>representation. Can any intellectual food be conceived more dangerous +or more stimulating for an over-excitable population? It is the +same in Parliament. The description of the Church of Corinth may +stand for a description of the late Assembly: every one had a psalm, +had a doctrine, had a tongue, had a revelation, had an interpretation. +Each member of the Mountain had his scheme for the regeneration +of mankind; each member of the vaunted majority had +his scheme for newly consolidating the Government; Orleanist hated +Legitimist, Legitimist Orleanist; moderate Republican detested undiluted +Republican; scheme was set against scheme, and theory +against theory. No two Conservatives would agree what to conserve; +no Socialist could practically associate with any other. No +deliberative assembly can exist with every member wishing to lead, +and no one wishing to follow. Not the meanest Act of Parliament +could be carried without more compromise than even the best French +statesmen were willing to use on the most important and critical +affairs of their country. Rigorous reasoning would not manage a +parish-vestry, much less a great nation. In England, to carry half +your own crotchets, you must be always and everywhere willing to +carry half another man’s. Practical men must submit as well as +rule, concede as well as assume. Popular government has many +forms, a thousand good modes of procedure; but no one of those +modes can be worked, no one of those forms will endure, unless by +the continual application of sensible heads and pliable judgments to +the systematic criticism of stiff axioms, rigid principles, and incarnated +propositions. I am, &c.,</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Amicus.</span></p> + +<p>P.S.—I was in hopes that I should have been able to tell you +of the withdrawal of the decree relative to the property of the +Orleans family. The withdrawal was announced in the <i>Constitutionnel</i> +of yesterday; but I regret to add was contradicted in the +<i>Patrie</i> last evening. I need not observe to you that it is an act for +which there is no defence, moral or political. It has immensely +weakened the Government.</p> + +<p>The change of Ministry is also a great misfortune to Louis +Napoleon. M. de Morny, said to be a son of Queen Hortense (if +you believe the people in the <i>salons</i>, the President is not the son +of his father, and everybody else is the son of his mother), was a +statesman of the class best exemplified in England by the late Lord +Melbourne—an acute, witty, fashionable man, acquainted with Parisian +persons and things, and a consummate judge of public opinion. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[339]</span>M. Persigny was in exile with the President, is said to be much +attached to him, to repeat his sentiments and exaggerate his prejudices. +I need not point out which of the two is just now the +sounder counsellor.</p> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Letter V.</span><br> +<i>ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE PRINCE-PRESIDENT.</i></h4> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—The many failures of the French in the attempt to establish +a predominantly Parliamentary Government have a strong +family likeness. Speaking a little roughly, I shall be right in saying +that the Constitutions of France have perished, both lately and +formerly, either in a street-row or under the violence of a military +power, aided and abetted by a diffused dread of impending street-rows, +and a painful experience of the effects of past ones. Thus +the Constitution of 1791 (the first of the old series) perished on +August 10, amid the exultation of the brewer Santerre. The last +of the old series fell on the 18 Brumaire, under the hands of Napoleon, +when the 5 per cents. were at 12, the whole country in +disorder, and all ruinable persons ruined. The Monarchy of 1830 +began in the riot of the three days, and ended in the riot of February +24; the Republic of February perished but yesterday, mainly from +terror that Paris might again see such days as the ‘days of June.’</p> + +<p>I think all sensible Englishmen who review this history (the +history of more than sixty years) will not be slow to divine a conclusion +peculiarly agreeable to our orderly national habits, viz., that +the first want of the French is somebody or something able and +willing to keep down street-rows, to repress the frightful elements +of revolution and disorder which, every now and then, astonish +Europe; capable of maintaining, and desirous to maintain, the order +and tranquillity which are (all agree) the essential and primary prerequisites +of industry and civilisation. If any one seriously and +calmly doubts this, I am afraid nothing that I can further say will +go far in convincing him. But let him read the account of any +scene in any French revolution, old or new, or, better, let him come +here and learn how people look back to the time I have mentioned +(to June, 1848), when the Socialists,—not under speculative philosophers +like Proudhon or Louis Blanc, but under practical rascals +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[340]</span>and energetic murderers, like Sobrier and Caussidière—made their +last and final stand, and against them, on the other side, the National +Guard (mostly solid shopkeepers, three-parts ruined by the events +of February) fought (I will not say bravely or valiantly, but) furiously, +frantically, savagely, as one reads in old books that half-starved +burgesses in beleaguered towns have sometimes fought for the food of +their children; let any sceptic hear of the atrocities of the friends +of order and the atrocities of the advocates of disorder, and he will, +I imagine, no longer be sceptical on two points,—he will hope that if +he ever have to fight it will not be with a fanatic Socialist, nor against +a demi-bankrupt fighting for ‘his shop;’ and he will admit, that in +a country subject to collisions between two such excited and excitable +combatants, no earthly blessing is in any degree comparable to a +power which will stave off, long delay, or permanently prevent the +actual advent and ever-ready apprehension of such bloodshed. I +therefore assume that the first condition of good government in this +country is a really strong, a reputedly strong, a continually strong +Executive power.</p> + +<p>Now, on the face of matters, it is certainly true that such a power +is perfectly consistent with the most perfect, the most ideal type of +Parliamentary government. Rather I should say, such and so strong +an executive is a certain consequence of the existence of that ideal +and rarely found type. If there is among the people, and among +their representatives, a strong, a decided, an unflinching preference for +particular Ministers, or a particular course of policy, that course of +policy can be carried out, and will be carried out, as certainly as by +the Czar Nicholas, whose Ministers can do exactly what they will. +There was something very like this in the old days of King George III., +of Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Perceval. In those times, I have been told, the +great Treasury official of the day, Mr. George Rose (still known to the +readers of Sydney Smith) had a habit of observing, upon occasion of +anything utterly devoid of decent defence, ‘Well, well, this is a +little too bad; we must apply our <i>majority</i> to this difficulty.’ The +effect is very plain; while Mr. George Rose and his betters respected +certain prejudices and opinions, then all but universal in Parliament, +they in all other matters might do precisely what they would; and in +all out of the way matters, in anything that Sir John could not +understand, on a point of cotton-spinning or dissent, be as absolute as +the Emperor Napoleon. But the case is (as we know by experience +of what passes under our daily observation) immensely altered, when +there is no longer this strong, compact, irrefragable, ‘following;’ no +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[341]</span>distinctly divided, definite faction, no regular opposition to be daily +beaten, no regular official party to be always victorious—but, instead, +a mere aggregate of ‘independent members,’ each thinking for himself, +propounding, as the case may be, his own sense or his own nonsense—one, +profound ideas applicable to all time; another, something meritorious +from the Eton Latin grammar, and a mangled republication of +the morning’s newspaper; some exceedingly philosophical, others only +crotchetty, but, what is my point, each acting on his own head, +assuming not Mr. Pitt’s infallibility, but his own. Again, divide a +political assembly into three parties, any two of which are greater +than the third, and it will be always possible for an adroit and dexterous +intriguer (M. Thiers has his type in most assemblies) to combine, +three or four times a fortnight, the two opposition parties into a majority +on some interesting question—on some matter of importance. +The best government possible under the existing circumstances will be +continually and, in a hazardous state of society, even desperately and +fatally weakened. We have had in our own sensible House of Commons—aye, +and among the most stupid and sensible portion of it, the +country gentlemen—within these few years, a striking example of how +far party zeal, the heat of disputation, and a strong desire for a deep +revenge will carry the best intentioned politicians in destroying the +executive efficiency of an obnoxious Government. I mean the division +of the House of Commons on the Irish Army Bill, which ended in the +resignation of Sir Robert Peel. You remember on that occasion the +country party, under the guidance of Lord G. Bentinck, in the teeth +of the Irish policy which they had been advocating and supporting all +their lives, and which they would advocate and support again now, +in the teeth of their previous votes, and (I am not exaggerating +the history) almost of their avowed present convictions, defeated a +Government, not on a question of speculative policy or recondite +importance, but upon the precautionary measures necessary (according +to every idea that a Tory esquire is capable of entertaining) for preventing +a rebellion, the occurrence of which they were told (and as the +event proved, told truly) might be speedy, hourly, and immediate. +Of course I am not giving any opinion of my own about the merits +of the question. The Whigs may be right; it may be good to have +shown the world how little terrible is the bluster of Irish agitation. +But I cite the event as a striking example of an essential evil in a +three-sided Parliamentary system, as practically showing that a +generally well-meaning opposition will, in defiance of their own +habitual principles, cripple an odious executive, even in a matter of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[342]</span>street-rows and rebellions. I won’t weary you with tediously pointing +the moral. If such things are done in the green tree, what may be +done in the dry? If party zeal and disputation excitement so hurry +men away in our own grave, business-like experienced country—what +may we expect from a vain, a volatile, an ever-changing race?</p> + +<p>Nor am I drawing a French Assembly from mere history, or +from my own imagination. In the late Chamber, the great subject +of the very last <i>Annual Register</i>, there were not only three parties +but four. There was a perpetually shifting element of 200 members, +calling itself the Mountain, which had in its hands the real casting +vote between the President’s Government and the Constitutional +opposition. In the very last days of the Constitution they voted +against, and thereby negatived, the proposition of the questors for +arming the Assembly; partly because they disliked General Changarnier, +and detested General Cavaignac; partly because, being extreme +Socialists, they would not arm anybody who was likely to use +his arms against their friends on the barricades. The same party was +preparing to vote for the Bill on the Responsibility of the President, +actually, and according to the design of its promoters, in the nature of +a bill of indictment against him, because they feared his rigour and +efficiency in repressing the anticipated convulsion. The question, the +critical question, <i>Who</i> shall prevent a new revolution? was thus +actually, and owing to the lamentable divisions of the friends of +order, in the hands of the Parliamentary representatives of the very +men who wished to effect that revolution, was determined, I may say, +ultimately, and in the last resort by the party of disorder.</p> + +<p>Nor on lesser questions was there any steady majority, any distinctive +deciding faction, any administering phalanx, anybody regularly +voting with anybody else, often enough, or in number enough, to +make the legislative decision regular, consistent, or respectable. Their +very debates were unseemly. On anything not pleasing to them, the +Mountain (as I said) a yellow and fanatical generation—had (I am +told) an engaging knack of rising <i>en masse</i> and screaming until they +were tired. It will be the same, I do not say in degree (for the +Mountain would certainly lose several votes now, and the numbers of +the late Chamber were unreasonably and injudiciously large), but, in +a measure, you will be always subject to the same disorder—a fluctuating +majority, and a minority, often a ruling minority, favourable +to rebellion. The cause, as I believe, is to be sought in the peculiarities +of the French character, on which I dwelt, prolixly, I fear, and <i>ad +nauseam</i>, in my last two letters. If you have to deal with a <i>mobile</i>, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[343]</span>a clever, a versatile, an intellectual, a dogmatic nation, inevitably, and +by necessary consequence, you will have conflicting systems—every +man speaking his own words, and always giving his own suffrage to +what seems good in his own eyes—many holding to-day what they +will regret to-morrow—a crowd of crotchetty theories and a heavy +percentage of philosophical nonsense—a great opportunity for subtle +stratagem and intriguing selfishness—a miserable division among the +friends of tranquillity, and a great power thrown into the hands of +those who, though often with the very best intentions, are practically, +and in matter of fact, opposed both to society and civilisation. And, +moreover, beside minor inconveniences and lesser hardships, you will +indisputably have periodically—say three or four times in fifty years—a +great crisis; the public mind much excited, the people in the +streets swaying to and fro with the breath of every breeze, the discontented +<i>ouvriers</i> meeting in a hundred knots, discussing their real +sufferings and their imagined grievances, with lean features and angry +gesticulations; the Parliament, all the while in permanence, very ably +and eloquently expounding the whole subject, one man proposing this +scheme, and another that; the Opposition expecting to oust the Ministers, +and ride in on the popular commotion; the Ministers fearing to +take the odium of severe or adequate repressive measures, lest they +should lose their salary, their places and their majority: finally, a +great crash, a disgusted people, overwhelmed by revolutionary violence, +or seeking a precarious, a pernicious, but after all a precious protection +from the bayonets of military despotism. Louis Philippe met +these dangers and difficulties in a thoroughly characteristic manner. +He bought his majority. Being a practical and not over sentimental +public functionary, he went into the market and purchased a sufficient +number of constituencies and members. Of course the <i>convenances</i> +were carefully preserved; grossness of any kind is too jarring for +French susceptibility; the purchase money was not mere coin (which +indeed the buyers had not to offer), but a more gentlemanly commodity—the +patronage of the Government. The electoral colleges +were extremely small, the number of public functionaries is enormous; +so that a very respectable body of electors could always be expected +to have, like a four-year old barrister (since the County Courts), +an immense prejudice for the existing Government. One man hoped +to be <i>Maire</i>, another wanted his son got into St. Cyr or the Polytechnic +School, and this could be got, and was daily got (I am writing +what is hardly denied) by voting for the Government candidate. In +a word, a sufficient proportion of the returns of the electoral colleges +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[344]</span>resembled the returns from Harwich or Devonport, only that the +Government was the only bidder; for there are not, I fancy, in any +country but England, people able and willing to spend, election after +election, great sums of money for procuring the honour of a seat in a +representative assembly. In fact, to copy the well-known phrase, just +as in the time of Burke, certain gentlemen had the expressive nickname +of the King’s friends, so these constituencies may aptly be +called the King’s constituencies. Of course, on the face of it, this +system worked, as far as business went, excellently well. For eighteen +years the tranquillity was maintained. France, it may be, has never +enjoyed so much calm civilisation, so much private happiness; and +yet, after all such and so long blessings, it fell in a mere riot—it fell +unregretted. It is a system which no wise man can wish to see +restored; it was a system of regulated corruption.</p> + +<p>But it does not at all follow, nor I am sure will you be apt so to +deduce, that because I imagine that France is unfit for a Government +in which a House of Commons is, as with us, the sovereign power in +the State, I therefore believe that it is fit for no freedom at all. Our +own constitutional history is the completest answer to any such idea. +For centuries, the House of Commons was habitually, we know, but a +third-rate power in the State. First the Crown, then the House of +Lords, enjoyed the ordinary and supreme dominion; and down almost +to our own times the Crown and House of Lords, taken together, were +much more than a sufficient match for the people’s House; but yet we +do not cease to proclaim, daily and hourly, in season and out of season, +that the English people never have been slaves. It may, therefore, +well be that our own country having been free under a Constitution in +which the representative element was but third-rate in power and +dignity, France and other nations may contrive to enjoy the advantage +from institutions in which it is only second-rate.</p> + +<p>Now, of this sort is the Constitution of Louis Napoleon. I am +not going now, after prefacing so much, to discuss its details; indeed, +I do not feel competent to do so. What should we say to a Frenchman’s +notion of a 5<i>l.</i> householder, or the fourth and fifth clauses of the +New Reform Bill? and I quite admit that a paper building of this +sort can hardly be safely criticised till it is carried out on <i>terra firma</i>, +till we see not only the theoretic ground-plan, but the actual inhabited +structure. The life of a constitution is in the spirit and disposition of +those who work it; and we can’t yet say in the least what that, in +this case, will be; but so far as the constitution shows its meaning on +the face of it, it clearly belongs to the class which I have named. The +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[345]</span><i>Corps Législatif</i> is not the administering body, it is not even what +perhaps it might with advantage have been, a petitioning and remonstrating +body; but it possesses the Legislative veto, and the power +of stopping <i>en masse</i> the supplies. It is not a working, a ruling, +or an initiative, or supremely decisive, but an immense checking +power. It will be unable to change Ministers, or aggravate the +course of revolutions; but it could arrest an unpopular war—it +could reject an unpopular law—it is, at least in theory, a powerful +and important drag-chain. Out of the mouths of its adversaries this +system possesses what I have proved, or conjectured, or assumed to +be the prime want of the French nation—a strong executive. The +objection to it is that the objectors find nothing else in it. We confess +there is no doubt now of a power adequate to repress street-rows +and revolutions.</p> + +<p>At the same time, I guard myself against intimating any opinion +on the particular minutiæ of this last effort of institutional invention. +I do not know enough to form a judgment; I sedulously, at +present, confine myself to this one remark, that the new Government +of France belongs, in theory at least, to the right class of +Constitutions—the class that is most exactly suited to French habits, +French nature, French social advantages, French social dangers—the +class I mean, in which the representative body has a consultative, +a deliberative, a checking and a minatory—not as with us a +supreme, nearly an omnipotent, and exclusively initiatory function.</p> + +<p class="center">I am, yours, &c.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Amicus.</span></p> + +<p>P.S.—You may like five words on a French invasion. I can’t +myself imagine, and what is more to the point, I do not observe +that anybody here has any notion of, any such inroad into England +as was contemplated and proposed by General Changarnier. No one +in the actual conduct of affairs, with actual responsibility for affairs, +not, as the event proved, even Ledru Rollin, could, according to me, +encounter the risk and odium of such a hateful and horribly dangerous +attempt. But, I regret to add, there is a contingency which +sensible people here (so far as I have had the means of judging) +do not seem to regard as at all beyond the limits of rational probability, +by which a war between England and France would most +likely be superinduced; that is, a French invasion of Belgium. I +do not mean to assure you that this week or next the Prince-President +will make a razzia in Brussels. But I do mean that it is +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[346]</span>thought not improbable that somehow or other, on some wolf-and-the-lamb +pretext, he may pick a quarrel with King Leopold, and +endeavour to restore to the French the ‘natural limit’ of the Rhine. +Now, I have never seen the terms of the guarantee which the shrewd +and cautious Leopold exacted from England before he would take +the throne of Belgium; but as the only real risk was a French +aggression upon this tempting territory, I do not make any doubt +but that the expressions of that instrument bind us to go to war +in defence of the country whose limits and independence we have +guaranteed. And in this case, an invasion of England would be as +admissible a military movement as an invasion of France. I hope, +therefore, you will use your best rhetoric to induce people to put our +pleasant country in a state of adequate and tolerable defence.</p> + +<p>I see by the invaluable <i>Galignani</i>, that some excellent people at +Manchester are indulging in a little arithmetic. ‘Suppose,’ say they, +‘all the French got safe, and each took away 50<i>l.</i>, now how much do +you fancy it would come to (40,000 men by 50<i>l.</i>, nought’s nought is +nought, nought and carry two)—compared to the <i>existing</i> burden of +the National Debt?’ Was there ever such amiable infatuation! It +is not what the French could carry off, but what they would leave +behind them, which is in the reasonable apprehension of reasonable +persons. The funds at 50—broken banks—the <i>Gazette</i> telling you +who had <i>not</i> failed—Downing-street <i>vide</i> Wales—destitute families, +dishonoured daughters, one-legged fathers—the mourning shops utterly +sacked—the customers in tears—a pale widow in a green bonnet—the +Exchange in ruins—five notches on St. Paul’s—and a big hole in the +Bank of England;—these, though but a few of the certain consequences +of a French visit to London, are quite enough to terrify even +an adamantine editor and a rather reckless correspondent.</p> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Letter VI.</span><br> +<i>THE FRENCH NEWSPAPER PRESS.</i></h4> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Paris</span>: Feb. 10.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—We learn from an Oriental narrative in considerable circulation, +that the ancient Athenians were fond of news. Of course +they were. It is in the nature of a mass of clever and intellectual +people living together to want something to talk about. Old ideas—common +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[347]</span>ascertained truths—are good things enough to live by, +but are very rare, and soon sufficiently discussed. Something +else—true or false, rational or nonsensical—is quite essential; and, +therefore, in the old literary world men gathered round the travelling +sophist, to learn from him some thought, crotchet, or speculation. +And what the vagabond speculators were once, that, pretty +exactly, is the newspaper now. To it the people of this intellectual +capital look for that daily mental bread, which is as essential to +them as the less ethereal sustenance of ordinary mortals. With the +spread of education this habit travels downward. Not the literary +man only, but the <i>ouvrier</i> and the <i>bourgeois</i>, live on the same food. +This day’s <i>Siècle</i> is discussed not only in gorgeous drawing-rooms, +but in humble reading-rooms, and still humbler workshops. According +to the printed notions of us journalists, this is a matter +of pure rejoicing. The influence of the Press, if you believe writers +and printers, is the one sufficient condition of social well-being. Yet +there are many considerations which make very much against this +idea: I can’t go into several of them now, but those that I shall +mention are suggested at once by matters before me. First, newspaper +people are the only traders that thrive upon convulsion. In +quiet times, who cares for the paper? In times of tumult, who does +not? Commonly, the <i>Patrie</i> (the <i>Globe</i> of this country) sells, I +think, for three sous: on the evening of the <i>coup d’état</i>, itinerant +ladies were crying under my window, ‘<i>Demandez la</i> Patrie—<i>Journal +du soir—trente sous—Journal du soir</i>;’ and I remember witnessing, +even in our sober London, in February 1848, how bald fathers of +families paid large sums, and encountered bare-headed the unknown +inclemencies of the night air, that they might learn the last news +of Louis Philippe, and, if possible, be in at the death of the revolutionary +Parisians. ‘Happy,’ says the sage, ‘are the people whose +annals are vacant;’ but ‘woe! woe! woe!’ he might add, ‘to the +wretched journalists that have to compose and sell leading articles +therein.’</p> + +<p>I am constrained to say that, even in England, this is not without +its unfavourable influence on literary morals. Take in the <i>Times</i>, +and you will see it assumed that every year ought to be an era. +‘The Government does nothing,’ is the indignant cry, and simple +people in the country don’t know that this is merely a civilised <i>façon +de parler</i> for ‘I have nothing to say.’ Lord John Russell must +alter the suffrage, that we may have something pleasant in our +columns.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[348]</span></p> + +<p>I am afraid matters are worse here. The leading French journalist +is, as you know, the celebrated Emile de Girardin, and, so far +as I can learn anything about him, he is one of the most fickle +politicians in existence. Since I have read the <i>Presse</i> regularly, +it has veered from every point of the compass well-nigh to every +other—now for, now against, the revision of the constitution,—now +lauding Louis Napoleon to the skies—now calling him plain +M. Bonaparte, and insinuating that he had not two ideas, and was +incapable of moral self-government—now connected with the Red +party, now praising the majority; but all and each of these veerings +and shiftings determined by one most simple and certain principle—to +keep up the popular excitement, to maintain the gifted M. de +Girardin at the head of it. Now a man who spends his life in stimulating +excitement and convulsion is really a political incendiary; and +however innocent and laudable his brother exiles may be, the old +editor and founder of the <i>Presse</i> is, as I believe, now only paying +the legitimate penalty of systematic political <i>arson</i>.</p> + +<p>When a foreigner—at least an Englishman—begins to read the +French papers, his first idea is ‘How well these fellows write! Why, +every one of them has a style, and a good style too. Really, how +clear, how acute, how clever, how perspicuous; I wish our journalists +would learn to write like this;’ but a little experience will modify +this idea—at least I have found it so. I read for a considerable time +these witty periodicals with pleasure and admiration; after a little +while I felt somehow that I took them up with an effort, but I +fancied, knowing my disposition, that this was laziness; when on a +sudden, in the waste of <i>Galignani</i>, I came across an article of the +<i>Morning Herald</i>. Now you’ll laugh at me, if I tell you it was a +real enjoyment. There was no toil, no sharp theory, no pointed expression, +no fatiguing brilliancy, in fact, what the man in Lord +Byron desired, ‘no nothing,’ but a dull, creeping, satisfactory +sensation that now, at least, there was nothing to admire. As +long walking in picture galleries makes you appreciate a mere wall, +so I felt that I understood for the first time that really dulness +had its interest. I found a pure refreshment in coming across +what possibly might be latent sense, but was certainly superficial +stupidity.</p> + +<p>I think there is nothing we English hate like a clever but prolonged +controversy. Now this is the life and soul of the Parisian +press. Everybody writes against everybody. It is not mere sly hate +or solemn invective, nothing like what we occasionally indulge in, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[349]</span>about the misdemeanours of a morning contemporary. But they +take the other side’s article piece by piece, and comment on him, and, +as they say in libel cases, <i>innuendo</i> him, and satisfactorily show that, +according to his arithmetic, two and two make five; useful knowledge +that. It is really good for us to know that some fellow (you never +heard of him) it rather seems can’t add up. But it interests people +here—<i>c’est logique</i> they tell you, and if you are trustful enough to +answer ‘<i>Mon Dieu, c’est ennuyeux, je n’en sais rien</i>,’ they look as if +you sneered at the Parthenon.</p> + +<p>It is out of these controversies that M. de Girardin has attained +his power and his fame. His articles (according to me, at least) have +no facts and no sense. He gives one all pure reasoning—little +scrappy syllogisms; as some one said most unjustly of old Hazlitt, +he ‘writes pimples.’ But let an unfortunate writer in the <i>Assemblée +Nationale</i>, or anywhere else, make a little refreshing blunder in his +logic, and next morning small punning sentences (one to each paragraph +like an equation) come rattling down on him: it is clear as +noonday that somebody said ‘something followed,’ and it does not +follow, and it is so agreed in all the million <i>cabinets de lecture</i> +after due gesticulation; and, moreover, that M. de Girardin is the +man to expose it, and what clever fellows they are to appreciate +him; but what the truth is, who cares? The subject is forgotten.</p> + +<p>Now all this, to my notion, does great harm. Nothing destroys +common-place like the habit of arguing for arguing’s sake; nothing +is so bad for public matters as that they should be treated, not as +the data for the careful formation of a sound judgment, but as a +topic or background for displaying the shining qualities of public +writers. It is no light thing this. M. de Girardin for many years +has gained more power, more reputation, more money than any of +his rivals; not because he shows more knowledge—he shows much +less; not because he has a wiser judgment—he has no fixed judgment +at all; but because he has a more pointed, sharp way of exposing +blunders, intrinsically paltry, obvious to all educated men; and does +not care enough for any subject to be diverted from this logical +trifling by a serious desire to convince anybody of anything.</p> + +<p>Don’t think I wish to be hard on this accomplished gentleman. +I am not going to require of hack-writers to write only on what +they understand—if that were the law, what a life for the sub-editor; +I should not be writing these letters, and how seldom and how +timidly would the morning journals creep into the world. Nor do I +expect, though I may still, in sentimental moods, desire, middle-aged +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[350]</span>journalists to be buoyed up by chimerical visions of improving +mankind.</p> + +<p>You know what our eminent <i>chef</i> (by Thackeray profanely called +Jupiter Jeames) has been heard to say over his gin and water, in an +easy and voluptuous moment: ‘Enlightenment be ——, I want the +fat fool of a thick-headed reader to say, “Just <i>my own</i> views,” +else he ain’t pleased, and may be he stops the paper.’ I am not +going to require supernatural excellence from writers. Yet there are +limits. If I were a chemist, I should not mind, I suppose, selling +now and then, a deleterious drug on a due affidavit of rats, then +and there filed before me; yet I don’t feel as if I could live comfortably +on the sale of mere arsenic. I fancy I should like to sell +something wholesome occasionally. So, though one might, upon occasion, +egg on a riot, or excite to a breach of the peace, I should not +like to be every day feeding on revolutionary excitement. Nor +should I like to be exclusively selling diminutive, acute, quibbling +leaders (what they call in the Temple special demurrers), certain to +occupy people with small fallacies, and lead away their minds from +the great questions actually at issue.</p> + +<p>Sometimes I might like to feel as if I understood what I wrote +on, but of course with me this indulgence must be very rare. You +know in France journalism is not only an occupation, it is a career. As +in far-off Newcastle a coalfitter’s son looks wistfully to the bar, in +the notion that he too may emulate the fame and fortune of Lord +Eldon or Lord Stowell, so in fair Provence, a pale young aspirant +packs up his little bundle in the hope of rivalling the luck and fame +of M. Thiers; he comes to Paris—he begins, like the great historian, +by dining for thirty sous in the Palais Royal, in the hope that after +long years of labour and jealousy he, too, may end by sleeping amid +curtains of white muslin lined with pink damask. Just consider for +a moment what a difference this one fact shows between France +and England. Here a man who begins life by writing in the newspapers, +has an appreciable chance of arriving to be Minister of +Foreign Affairs. The class of public writers is the class from +which the equivalent of Lord Aberdeen, Lord Palmerston, or Lord +Granville will most likely be chosen. Well, well, under that <i>régime</i> +you and I might have been important people; we might have +handled a red box, we might have known what it was to have a +reception, to dine with the Queen, to be respectfully mystified by +the <i>corps diplomatique</i>. But angry Jove forbade—of course we can +hardly deny that he was wrong,—and yet if the revolutions of 1848 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[351]</span>have clearly brought out any fact, it is the utter failure of newspaper +statesmen. Everywhere they have been tried: everywhere +they have shown great talents for intrigue, eloquence, and agitation—how +rarely have they shown even fair aptitude for ordinary administration; +how frequently have they gained a disreputable renown +by a laxity of principle surpassing the laxity of their aristocratic +and courtly adversaries! Such being my imperfect account of my imperfect +notions of the French press, I can’t altogether sympathise +in the extreme despondency of many excellent persons at its temporary +silence since the <i>coup d’état</i>. I might even rejoice at it, if +I thought that the Parisian public could in any manner be broken +of their dependence on the morning’s article. But I have no such +hope; the taste has got down too deep into the habits of the people; +some new thing will still be necessary; and every Government +will find some of its most formidable difficulties in their taste for +political disputation and controversial excitement. The ban must +sooner or later be taken off; the President sooner or later must +submit to censure and ridicule, and whatever laws he may propose +about the press, there is none which scores of ingenious men—now +animated by the keenest hatred, will not try every hazard to evade. +What he may do to avoid this is as yet unknown. One thing, however, +I suppose is pretty sure, and I fancy quite wise. The press +will be restrained from discussing the principles of the Government. +Socialists will not be allowed to advocate a Democratic Republic. +Legitimists will not be allowed to advocate the cause of Henri +Cinq, nor Orleanists the cause of the Comte de Paris. Such indulgence +might be tolerable in more temperate countries, but experience +shows that it is not safe now and here.</p> + +<p>A really sensible press, arguing temperately after a clear and +satisfactory exposition of the facts, is a great blessing in any country. +It would be still more a blessing in a country where, as I +tried to explain formerly, the representative element must play (if +the public security is to be maintained) a rather secondary part. +It would then be a real stimulus to deliberate inquiry and rational +judgment upon public affairs; to the formation of common-sense +views upon the great outlines of public business; to the cultivation +of sound moral opinions and convictions on the internal and +international duties of the State. Even the actual press which we +may expect to see here, may not be pernicious. It will doubtless +stimulate to many factious proceedings, and many interruptions of +the public prosperity; it may very likely conduce to drive the President +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[352]</span>(contrary, if not to his inclination, at least to his personal +interest) into foreign hostilities and international aggression; but it +may be, notwithstanding, useful in preventing private tyranny, in +exposing wanton oppression, in checking long suffering revenge; it +may prevent acts of spoliation like what they call here <i>le premier +vol de l’aigle</i>—the seizure of the Orleans property;—in a word, being +certain to oppose the executive, where the latter is unjust its enemy +will be just.</p> + +<p>I had hopes that this letter would be the last with which I should +tease you; but I find I must ask you to be so kind as to find room +for one, and only for one more.</p> + +<p class="center">I am, yours, &c.,</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Amicus</span>.</p> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Letter VII.</span><br> +<i>CONCLUDING LETTER.</i></h4> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Paris</span>: Feb. 19, 1852.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—There is a story of some Swedish Abbé, in the last century, +who wrote an elaborate work to prove the then constitution of his +country to be immortal and indestructible. While he was correcting +the proof sheets, a friend brought him word that—behold! the +King had already destroyed the said polity. ‘Sir,’ replied the +gratified author, ‘our Sovereign, the illustrious Gustavus, may certainly +overthrow the Constitution, but never <i>my book</i>.’ I beg to +parody this sensible remark; for I wish to observe to you, that even +though Louis Napoleon should turn out a bad and mischievous ruler, +he won’t in the least refute these letters.</p> + +<p>What I mean is as follows. Above all things, I have designed to +prove to you that the French are by character unfit for a solely and +predominantly Parliamentary government; that so many and so +great elements of convulsion exist here, that it will be clearly necessary +that a strong, vigorous, anti-barricade executive should, at +whatever risk and cost, be established and maintained; that such an +Assembly as the last is irreconcileable with this; in a word, that +riots and revolutions must, if possible, come to an end, and only such +a degree of liberty and democracy be granted to the French nation, +as is consistent with the consolidated existence of the order and +tranquillity which are equally essential to rational freedom and civilised +society.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[353]</span></p> + +<p>In order to combine the maintenance of order and tranquillity +with the maximum of possible liberty, I hope that it may in the +end be found possible to admit into a political system a representative +and sufficiently democratic Assembly, without that Assembly assuming +and arrogating to itself those nearly omnipotent powers, which +in our country it properly and rightfully possesses, but which in the +history of the last sixty years, we have, as it seems to me, so many +and so cogent illustrations that a French Chamber is, by genius and +constitution, radically incapable to hold and exercise. I hope that +some checking, Consultative, petitioning Assembly—some βουλή, in +the real sense of the term,—some <i>Council</i>, some provision by which +all grave and deliberate public opinion (I do not speak more definitely, +because an elaborate Constitution, from a foreigner, must be an +absurdity) may organise and express itself—yet at the same time, +without utterly hampering and directing—and directing amiss—those +more simple elements of national polity on which we must, +after all, rely for the prompt and steady repression of barricade-making +and bloodshed.</p> + +<p>I earnestly desire to believe that some such system as this may be +found in practice possible; for otherwise, unless I quite misread history, +and altogether mistake what is under my eyes, after many more +calamities, many more changes, many more great Assemblies abounding +in Vergniauds and Berryers, the essential deficiencies of debating +Girondin statesmen will become manifest, the uncompact, unpractical, +over volatile, over logical, indecisive, ineffectual rule of Gallican +Parliaments will be unequivocally manifest (it is <i>now</i> plain, I +imagine, but a truth so humiliating must be written large in letters +of blood before those that run will read it), and no medium being +held or conceived to be possible, the nation will sink back, not contented +but discontented, not trustfully but distrustfully, under the +rule of a military despot; and if they yield to this, it will be +from no faith, no loyalty, no credulity; it will be from a sense—a +hated sense—of unqualified failure, a miserable scepticism in the +probable success and the possible advantages of long-tried and ill-tried +rebellion.</p> + +<p>Now, whether the Constitution of Louis Napoleon is calculated to +realise this ideal and intermediate system, is, till we see it at work, +doubtful and disputable. It is not the question so much of what it +may be at this moment, as of what it may become in a brief period, +when things have begun to assume a more normal state, and the public +mind shall be relaxed from its present and painful tension. However, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[354]</span>I should be deceiving you, if I did not inform you that the state +of men’s minds towards the Prince-President is not, so far as I can +make it out, what it was the day after the <i>coup d’état</i>. The measures +taken against the Socialists are felt to have been several degrees too +severe, the list of exiles too numerous; the confiscation of the Orleans’ +property could not but be attended with the worst effect: the law +announced by the Government organs respecting or rather against the +Press, is justly (though you know from my last letter I have no partiality +for French newspapers) considered to be absurdly severe, and +likely to countenance much tyranny and gross injustice; above all, +instead of maintaining mere calm and order, the excessive rigour, and +sometimes the injustice, of the President’s measures, have produced a +breathless pause (if I may so speak) in public opinion; political +conversation is a whispered question, what will he do next? Firstly, +the Government is dull, and the French want to be amused; secondly, +it is going to spoil the journals (depreciate newspapers to a Frenchman, +disparage nuts to a monkey); thirdly, it is producing (I do not +say it has yet produced, but it has made a beginning in producing) +a habit of apprehension;—in fact, I believe the French opinion of the +Prince-President is near about that of the interesting damsel in +George Sand’s comedy, concerning her uninteresting <i>prétendu</i>: ‘<i>Vous +l’aimez? n’est-ce pas?’ ‘Oui, oui, oui, certainement je l’aime. Oui, +oui, mille fois, oui, Je dis que oui. Je vous assure. <span class="smcap">Au moins</span> je fais +mon possible à l’aimer</i>:’ the first attachment is not extinct, but +people have begun—awful symptom—to add the withering and final +saving clause. Yet it is, I imagine, a great mistake to suppose that +the present Constitution, if it work at all, will permanently work as a +despotism, or that the <i>Corps Législatif</i> will be without a measure of +popular influence; the much more helpless <i>Tribunal</i> was not so in +the much more troublesome times of the Consulate. And the source +of such influence and the manner of its operation may be, I imagine, +well enough traced in the nature of the forces whereby Louis +Napoleon holds his power.</p> + +<p>A truly estimable writer says, I know, ‘that the Legislative body +cannot have, by possibility, any analogy with the consultative and +petitioning senate of the Plantagenets,’ nor can any one deny that the +likeness is extremely faint (no illustration ever yet ran on all fours), +the practical differences clear and convincing. But yet, according +to the light which is given me now, I affirm that for one vital purpose,—the +resisting and criticising any highly unpopular acts of a highly +unpopular Government,—the <i>Corps Législatif</i> of Louis Napoleon +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[355]</span>must, and will, inevitably possess a power compared with which the +forty-day followers of the feudal <i>noblesse</i> seem as impotent as a +congregation of Quakers; a force the peculiarity of which is that you +can’t imprison, can’t dissolve, can’t annihilate it—I mean, of course, +the moral power of civilised opinion. You may put down newspapers, +dissolve Parliaments, imprison agitators, almost stop conversation, +but you can’t stop thought. You can’t prevent the silent, +slow, creeping, stealthy progress of hatred, and scorn, and shame. +You can’t attenuate easily the stern justice of a retarded retaliation. +These influences affect the great reservoir of physical force—they act +on the army. A body of men enlisted daily from the people take to +the barracks the notions of the people; in spite of new associations, +the first impressions are apt to be retained; you overlay them, but +they remain. What is believed elsewhere and out of doors gives +them weight. Each soldier has relations, friends, a family—he knows +what they think. Much more with the officers. These are men +moving in Parisian society, accessible to its influences, responsible to +its opinion, apt to imbibe its sentiments. Certainly <i>esprit de corps</i>—the +habit of obedience, the instinct of discipline, are strong, and will +carry men far; but certainly, also, they have natural limits. Men +won’t stand being cut, being ridiculed, being detested, being despised, +daily and for ever, and that for measures which their own understandings +disapprove of. Remember there is not here any question +of barbarous bands overawing a civilised and imperial city; no +question of ugly Croats keeping down cultivated Italians; it is but a +question of French gentlemen and French peasantry in uniform acting +in opposition to other French gentlemen and other French peasants +without uniform. Already there has been talk (I do not say well-founded, +but still the matter was named) of breaking two or three +hundred officers, for speaking against the Orleans decrees. Do you +fancy that can be done every day? Do you imagine that a Parliament, +whatever its nominal functions may be (remember those of +the old <i>régime</i>), speaking the sense of the people about the question of +the day, in a time of convulsion, and in a critical hour, would not be +attended to, or at any rate thought of and considered, by an army +taken from the people—commanded by men selected from and every +day mixing with common society and very ordinary mankind. The +2nd of December showed how readily such troops will support a +decided and popular President against an intriguing, divided, impotent +Chamber. But such hard blows won’t bear repetition. Soldiers—French +soldiers, I take it especially, from their quickness and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[356]</span>intelligence, are neither deaf nor blind. If there be truth in history +or speculation, national forces can’t long be used against the nation: +they are unmerciful, and often cruel to feeble minorities; they are +ready now for a terrible onslaught on mere Socialists, just as of old +they turned out cheerfully for awful dragonnades on the ill-starred +Protestants; but once let them know and feel that everybody is +against them—that they are alone, that their acts are contemned and +their persons despised,—and gradually, or all at once, discipline and +habit surely fail, men murmur or desert, officers hesitate or disobey, +one regiment is dismissed to the Cabyles, another relegated to rural +solitudes; at last, most likely in the decisive moment of the whole +history, the rulers, who relied only on their troops, are afraid to call +them out; they hesitate, send spies and commissioners to inquire. +‘<i>Vive le Gouvernement Provisoire!</i>’—the black and roaring multitude +rises and comes on; but two seconds, and the obnoxious institutions +are lost in the flood; nothing is heard but the cry of the hour, sounding +shrill and angry over the waste of Revolution—‘<i>Vive le Diable!</i>’ +With such a force behind them, a French Parliament, of whatever +nature, with whatever written duties, is, if at the head of the movement, +in the critical hour, apt to be stronger than the strongest of +the Barons.</p> + +<p>Nor do I concur with those who censure the President for +‘recommending’ avowedly the candidates he approves. It is a part +of the great question, How is universal suffrage to be worked successfully +in such a country as France? The peasant proprietors have +but one political idea that they wish the Prince to govern them;—they +wish to vote for the candidate most acceptable to him, and +they wish nothing else. Why is he wrong in telling them which +candidate that is?</p> + +<p>Still, no doubt, the reins are now strained a great deal too tight. +It is possible, quite possible, that a majority in this Parliament may +be packed, but what I would impress on you is that it can’t always +be packed. Sooner or later constituencies who wish to oppose the +Government will, in spite of <i>maires</i> and <i>préfets</i>, elect the opposition +candidate: it is in the nature of any, even the least vigorous system +of popular election, to struggle forwards and progressively attain to +some fair and reasonable correspondence with the substantial views +and opinions of the constituent people.</p> + +<p>I therefore fall back on what I told you before—my essential +view or crotchet about the mental aptitudes and deficiencies of the +French people. The French, said Napoleon, are <i>des machines nerveuses</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_357">[357]</span></p> + +<p>The point is, can their excitable, volatile, superficial, over-logical, +uncompromising character be managed and manipulated as to fit them +for entering on a practically uncontrolled system of Parliamentary +Government? Will not any large and omnipotent Assembly resemble +the stormy Constituent and the late Chamber, rather than the +business-like, formal, ennui-diffusing Parliament to which in our free +and dull country we are felicitously accustomed? Can one be so improved +as to keep down a riot? I foresee a single and but a single +objection. I fancy, indeed I know, that there is a school of political +thinkers not yet in possession of any great influence, but, perhaps, +a little on the way thereto, which has improved or invented a capital +panacea, whereby all nations are, within very moderate limits of +time, to be surely and certainly fitted for political freedom; and that +no matter how formed—how seemingly stable—how long ago cast +and constructed, be the type of popular character to which the said +remedy is sought to be applied. This panacea is the foundation or +restoration of provincial municipalities. Now, I am myself prepared +to go a considerable length with the school in question. I do myself +think, that a due and regular consideration of the knotty points of +paving and lighting, and the deciding in the last resort upon them, +is a valuable discipline of national character. It exercises people’s +minds on points they know, in things of which there is a test. +Very few people are good judges of a good Constitution; but everybody’s +eyes are excellent judges of good light; every man’s feet are +profound in the theory of agreeable stones. Yet I can’t altogether +admit, nevertheless, that municipalities are the sufficient and sole, +though they may be very likely an essential prerequisite of political +freedom. There is the great instance of Hindostan to the contrary. +The whole old and national system of that remarkable country—a +system in all probability as ancient as the era of Alexander, is a +village system; and one so curious, elaborate, I fancy I might say so +profound, that the best European observers—Sir Thomas Munro, +and that sort of people—are most strenuous for its being retained +unimpaired. According to them, the village hardly heard of the +Imperial Government, except for the purpose of Imperial taxation. +The business of life through that whole vast territory has always +been practically determined by potails and parish-vestries, and yet +nevertheless and in spite of this capital and immemorial municipal +system, our subjects, the Hindoos, are still slaves and still likely to +be slaves; still essentially slavish, and likely, I much fear, very long +indeed to remain so. It is therefore quite certain that rural and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_358">[358]</span>provincial institutions won’t so alter and adapt all national characters, +as to fit all nations for a Parliamentary Constitution; consequently, +the <i>onus probandi</i> is on those who assert that it will so alter and +mould the French. Again, I assure you that the French do think of +paving and lighting; not enough, perhaps, but still they have begun. +The country is, as you know, divided into departments, arrondissements, +and communes; in each of these there is a council, variously +elected, but, in all cases, popularly and from the district, which has +the sole control over the expenditure of the particular locality for +every special and local purpose, and which, if I am rightly informed, +has, in theory at least, the sole initiative in every local improvement. +The defect, I fancy, is that in the exercise of these, considerable +bodies are hampered and controlled by the veto and supervision +of the central authority. The rural councils discuss and +decide what in their judgment should be then done and what money +should be so spent; the better sort of the agricultural population +have much more voice in the latter than have the corresponding +class in England, in the determination and imposition of our own +county rate; but it is the central authority which decides whether +such proposals and recommendations shall in fact be carried out. +In a word, the provinces have to <i>ask leave</i> of the Parisian Ministry +of the Interior. Now I admit this is an abuse. I should maintain +that elderly gentlemen with bald heads and local influence ought +to feel that they, in the final resort, settle and determine all truly +local matters. Human nature likes its own road, its own bridge, +its own lapidary obstacles, its own deceptive luminosity. But I ask +again, can you fancy that these luxuries, to whatever degree indulged +in, alter and modify in any essential particular, the levity and +volatility of the French character? How much light to how much +logic? How many paving stones to how much mobility? I can’t +foresee any such change. And even if so, what in the meantime?</p> + +<p>We are left then, I think, to deal with the French character +pretty much as we find it. What stealthy, secret, unknown, excellent +forces may, in the wisdom of Providence, be even now +modifying this most curious intellectual fabric, neither you nor I +can know or tell. Let us hope they may be many. But if we indulge, +and from the immense records of revolutionary history, I +think, with due distrust, we may legitimately and even beneficially +indulge, in system-building and speculation, we must take the <i>data</i> +which we have, and not those which we desire or imagine. Louis +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_359">[359]</span>Napoleon has proposed a system: English writers by the thousand (if +I was in harness instead of holiday-making I should be most likely +among them) proclaim his system an evil one. What then? Do +you know what Father Newman says to the religious reformers, +rather sharply, but still well, ‘Make out first of all where you stand—draw +up your creed—write down your catechism.’ So I answer to +the English eloquence, ‘State first of all what you would have—draw +up your novel system for the French Government—write down +your political Constitution.’ Don’t criticise but produce; do not find +fault but propose—and when you have proposed upon theory and +have created upon paper, let us see whether the system be such a +one as will work, in fact, and be accepted by a wilful nation in +reality—otherwise your work is nought.</p> + +<p>And mind, too, that the system to be sketched out must be fit +to protect the hearths and homes of men. It is easy to compose +polities if you do but neglect this one essential condition. Four +years ago, Europe was in a ferment with the newest ideas, the best +theories, the most elaborate, the most artistic Constitutions. There +was the labour, and toil, and trouble, of a million intellects, as +good, taken on the whole, perhaps, as the world is likely to see,—of +old statesmen, and literary gentlemen, and youthful enthusiasts, +all over Europe, from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean, from the +frontiers of Russia to the Atlantic Ocean. Well, what have we +gained? A Parliament in Sardinia! Surely this is a lesson against +proposing politics which won’t work, convening assemblies that can’t +legislate, constructing executives that aren’t able to keep the peace, +founding Constitutions inaugurated with tears and eloquence, soon +abandoned with tears and shame; beginning a course of fair auguries +and liberal hopes, but one from whose real dangers and actual sufferings +a frightened and terrified people, in the end, flee for a temporary, +or may be a permanent, refuge under a military and absolute ruler.</p> + +<p>Mazzini sneers at the selfishness of shopkeepers—I am for the +shopkeepers against him. There are people who think because they +are Republican there shall be no more ‘cakes and ale.’ Aye, verily, +but there will though; or else stiffish ginger will be hot in the +mouth. Legislative Assemblies, leading articles, essay eloquence—such +are good—very good,—useful—very useful. Yet they can be +done without. We can want them. Not so with all things. The +selling of figs, the cobbling of shoes, the manufacturing of nails,—these +are the essence of life. And let whoso frameth a Constitution +of his country think on these things.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_360">[360]</span></p> + +<p>I conclude, as I ought, with my best thanks for the insertion of +these letters; otherwise I was so full of the subject that I might +have committed what Disraeli calls ‘the extreme act of human +fatuity,’ I might have published a pamphlet: from this your kindness +has preserved me, and I am proportionally grateful.</p> + +<p class="center">I am, yours,</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Amicus</span>.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_361">[361]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_II">II.<br> +<span class="smaller"><i>CÆSARISM AS IT EXISTED IN 1865.</i></span></h3> + +</div> + +<blockquote> + +<p class="hanging">[Lest the preceding letters should be supposed to express Mr. Bagehot’s +complete and final judgment on the character of the imperial <i>régime</i> of +Louis Napoleon, it has been thought well to publish a paper which he +contributed to the <i>Economist</i> after a visit to France in 1865, of a nature +to correct the misapprehensions to which the somewhat youthful essays +which precede might give rise. It appeared soon after the publication +of the Emperor’s Life of Julius Cæsar.]</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>That the French Emperor should have spare leisure and unoccupied +reflection to write a biography, is astonishing, but if he wished to +write a biography, his choice of a subject is very natural. Julius +Cæsar was the first who tried on an imperial scale the characteristic +principles of the French Empire,—as the first Napoleon revived +them, as the third Napoleon has consolidated them. The notion +of a demagogue ruler, both of a fighting demagogue and a talking +demagogue, was indeed familiar to the Greek Republics; but their +size was small, and their history unemphatic. On the big page of +universal history, Julius Cæsar is the first instance of a democratic +despot. He overthrew an aristocracy—a corrupt, and perhaps effete +aristocracy, it is true, but still an aristocracy—by the help of the +people, of the unorganised people. He said to the numerical majority +of Roman citizens, ‘I am your advocate and your leader: make +me supreme, and I will govern for your good, and in your name.’ +This is exactly the principle of the French Empire. No one will ever +make an approach to understanding it, who does not separate it altogether, +and on principle, from the despotisms of feudal origin and +legitimate pretensions. The old Monarchies claim the obedience of +the people upon grounds of duty. They say they have consecrated +claims to the loyalty of mankind. They appeal to conscience, even +to religion. But Louis Napoleon is a Benthamite despot. He is for +the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number.’ He says, ‘I am +where I am, because I know better than any one else what is good +for the French people, and they know that I know better.’ He is +not the Lord’s anointed; he is the people’s agent.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_362">[362]</span></p> + +<p>We cannot here discuss what the effect of this system was in +ancient times. These columns are not the best place for an historical +dissertation; but we may set down very briefly the results of some +close and recent observation of the system as it now exists, as it is at +work in France. Part of its effects are well understood in England, +but a part of them are, we think, but mistily seen and imperfectly +apprehended.</p> + +<p>In the first place, the French Empire is really the <i>best finished</i> +democracy which the world has ever seen. What the many at the +moment desire is embodied with a readiness, and efficiency, and a +completeness which has no parallel, either in past history or present +experience. An absolute Government with a popular instinct has the +unimpeded command of a people renowned for orderly dexterity. A +Frenchman will have arranged an administrative organisation really +and effectually, while an Englishman is still bungling, and a German +still reflecting. An American is certainly as rapid, and in some measure +as efficient, but his speed is a little head-long, and his execution is +very rough; he tumbles through much, but he only tumbles. A +Frenchman will not hurry; he has a deliberate perfection in detail, +which may always be relied on, for it is never delayed. The French +Emperor knows well how to use these powers. His bureaucracy is +not only endurable, but pleasant. An idle man who wants his politics +done for him, has them done for him. The welfare of the masses—the +present good of the present multitude—is felt to be the object of +the Government and the law of the polity. The Empire gives to the +French the full gratification of their main wishes, and the almost +artistic culture of an admirable workmanship, of an administration +finished as only Frenchmen can finish it, and as it never was finished +before.</p> + +<p>It belongs to such a Government to care much for material +prosperity, and it does care. It makes the people as comfortable as +they will permit. If they are not more comfortable, it is their own +fault. The Government would give them free trade, and consequent +diffused comfort, if it could. No former French Government has done +as much for free trade as this Government. No Government has +striven to promote railways, and roads, and industry, like this +Government. France is much changed in twelve years. Not exactly +by the mere merit of the Empire, for it entered into a great inheritance; +it succeeded to the silent work of the free monarchy which +revolution had destroyed and impeded. There were fruitful and +vigorous germs of improvement ready to be elicited—ready to start +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_363">[363]</span>forth—but under an unintelligent Government they would not have +started forth; they would have lain idle and dead, but under the +adroit culture of the present Government, they have grown so as to +amaze Europe and France itself.</p> + +<p>If, indeed, as is often laid down, the <i>present happiness</i> of the +greatest number was the characteristic object of the Government, it +would be difficult to make out that any probable French Government +would be better, or indeed nearly so good, as the present. The intelligence +of the Emperor on economical subjects—on the bread and +meat of the people—is really better than that of the classes opposed +to him. He gives the present race of Frenchmen more that is good +than any one else would give them, and he gives it them in their own +name. They have as much as they like of all that is good for them. +But if not the present happiness of the greatest number, but <i>their +future elevation</i>, be, as it is, the true aim and end of Government, our +estimate of the Empire will be strangely altered. It is an admirable +Government for present and coarse purposes, but a detestable +Government for future and refined purposes.</p> + +<p>In the first place, it stops the <i>teaching apparatus</i>, it stops the +effectual inculcation of important thought upon the mass of mankind. +All other mental effort but this, the Empire not only permits but +encourages. The high intellect of Paris is as active, as well represented, +as that of London, and it is even more keen. Intellect +still gives there, and has always given, a distinctive position. To +be a <i>Membre de l’Institut</i> is a recognised place in France; but +in London, it is an ambiguous distinction to be a ‘clever fellow.’ +The higher kinds of thought are better discussed in Parisian society +than in London society, and better argued in the <i>Revue des Deux +Mondes</i> than in any English periodical. The speculative thought of +France has not been killed by the Empire; it is as quick, as rigorous, +as keen as ever. But though still alive, it is no longer powerful; it +cannot teach the mass. The <i>Revue</i> is permitted, but newspapers—effectual +newspapers—are forbidden. A real course of free lectures on +popular subjects would be impossible in Paris. <i>Agitation</i> is forbidden, +and it is agitation, and agitation alone, which teaches. The crude +mass of men bear easily philosophical treatises, refined articles, elegant +literature; there are but two instruments penetrative enough to reach +their opaque minds—the newspaper article and the popular speech, +and both of these are forbidden.</p> + +<p>In London the reverse is true. We may say that only the loudest +sort of expression is permitted to attain its due effect. The popular +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_364">[364]</span>organs of literature so fill men’s minds with incomplete thoughts, +that deliberate treatment, that careful inquiry, that quiet thought have +no hearing. People are so deafened with the loud reiteration of +many half truths, that they have neither curiosity nor energy for elaborate +investigation. The very word ‘elaborate’ is become a reproach: +elaboration produces something which the mass of men do not like, +because it is above them,—which is tiresome, because it needs industry,—difficult, +because it wants attention,—complicated, because it +is true. On the whole, perhaps, English thought has rarely been so +unfinished, so piecemeal, so <i>ragged</i> as it is now. We have so many +little discussions, that we get no full discussion; we eat so many sandwiches, +that we spoil our dinner. And on the Continent, accordingly, +the speculative thought of England is despised. It is believed to be +meagre, uncultivated, and immature. We have only a single compensation. +Our thought may be poor and rough and fragmentary, +but it is effectual. With our newspapers and our speeches—with our +clamorous multitudes of indifferent tongues—we beat the ideas of the +few into the minds of the many. The head of France is a better +head than ours, but it does not move her limbs. The head of England +is in comparison a coarse and crude thing, but rules her various frame +and regulates her whole life.</p> + +<p>France, <i>as it is</i>, may be happier because of the Empire, but France +<i>in the future</i> will be more ignorant because of the Empire. The daily +play of the higher mind upon the lower mind is arrested. The present +Government has given an instalment of free trade, but it could +not endure an agitation for free trade. A democratic despotism is +like a theocracy; it assumes its own correctness. It says, ‘I am the +representative of the people; I am here because I know what they +wish, because I know what they should have.’ As Cavaignac once said, +‘A Government which permits its principles to be questioned is a lost +Government.’ All popular discussion whatever which aspires to teach +the Government is radically at issue with the hypothesis of the Empire. +It says that the Cæsar, the omniscient representative, is a mistaken +representative, that he is not fit to be Cæsar.</p> + +<p>The deterioration of the future is one inseparable defect of the imperial +organisation, but it is not the only one,—for the moment, it is +not the greatest. The greatest is the corruption of the present. A +greater burden is imposed by it upon human nature than human +nature will bear. Everything requires the support, aid, countenance +of the central Government, and yet that Government is expected to +keep itself pure. Concessions of railways, concessions of the privilege +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_365">[365]</span>of limited liability,—on a hundred subjects, legal permission, +administrative help, are necessary to money-making. You concentrate +upon a small body of leading official men the power of making men’s +fortunes, and it is simple to believe they will not make their own +fortunes. The very principle of the system is to concentrate power, +and power is money. Sir Robert Walpole used to say, ‘No honest +man could be a “Minister;”’ and in France the temptations would +conquer all men’s honesty. The system requires angels to work it, +and perhaps it has not been so fortunate as to find angels. The nod +of a minister on the Bourse is a fortune, and somehow or other +ministers make fortunes. The Bourse of Paris is still so small, that +a leading capitalist may produce a great impression on it, and a leading +capitalist working with a great minister, a vast impression. +Accordingly, all that goes with sudden wealth; all that follows from +the misuse of the two temptations of civilisation, money and women, +is concentrated round the Imperial court. The Emperor would cure +much of it if he could, but what can he do? They say he has said +that he will not change his men. He will not substitute fleas that +are hungry for fleas which at least are partially satisfied. He is right. +The defect belongs to the system, to these men; an enormous concentration +of power in an industrial system ensures an accumulation of +pecuniary temptation.</p> + +<p>These are the two main disadvantages which France suffers from +her present Government; the greater part of the price which she has +to pay for her present happiness. She endures the daily presence of +an efficient immorality; she sacrifices the educating apparatus which +would elevate Frenchmen yet to be born. But these two disadvantages +are not the only ones.</p> + +<p>France gains the material present, but she does not gain the +material future. All that secures present industry, her Government +confers; in whatever needs confidence in the future she is powerless. +<i>Credit</i> in France, to an Englishman’s eye, has almost to be created. +The <i>country</i> deposits in the Bank of France are only 1,000,000<i>l.</i> +sterling; that bank has fifty-nine branches, is immeasurably the +greatest country bank in France. All discussions on the currency +come back to the <i>cours forcé</i>, to the inevitable necessity of making +inconvertible notes an irrefusable tender during a revolution. If +you propose the simplest operations of credit to a French banker, he +says, ‘You do not remember 1848; I do.’ And what is the answer? +The present Government avowedly depends on, is ostentatiously concentrated +in, the existing Cæsar. Its existence depends on the permanent +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_366">[366]</span>occupation of the Tuileries by an extraordinary man. The +democratic despot—the representative despot—must have the sagacity +to divine the people’s will and the sagacity to execute it. What is the +likelihood that these will be hereditary? Can they be expected in +the next heirs—a child for Emperor, and a woman for Regent? The +present happiness of France is happiness on a short life-lease; it may +end with the life of a man who is not young, who has not spared himself, +who has always thought, who has always <i>lived</i>.</p> + +<p>Such are the characteristics of the Empire as it is. Such is the +nature of Cæsar’s Government as we know it at the present. We +scarcely expect that even the singular ability of Napoleon III. will be +able to modify, by an historical retrospect, the painful impressions left +by actual contact with a living reality.⁠<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>⁠</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_367">[367]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_III">III.<br> +<span class="smaller"><i>MEMOIR OF THE RIGHT HON. +JAMES WILSON.</i>⁠<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></span></h3> + +</div> + +<p>Perhaps some of the subscribers to the <i>Economist</i> would not be +unwilling to read a brief memoir of Mr. Wilson, even if the events +narrated were in no respect peculiar. They might possibly be interested +in the biography of an author of whose writings they have +read so many, even if the narrative related no marked transitions +and no characteristic events. But there were in Mr. Wilson’s life +several striking changes. The scene shifts from the manufactory +of a small Scotch hatter in a small Scotch town, to London—to +the Imperial Parliament—to the English Treasury—to the Council +Board of India. Such a biography may be fairly expected to have +some interest. The life perhaps of no <i>Political Economist</i> has been +more eventful.</p> + +<p>James Wilson was born at Hawick, in Roxburghshire, on June +3, 1805. His father, of whose memory he always spoke with marked +respect, was a thriving man of business, extensively engaged in the +woollen manufacture of that place. He was the fourth son in a +family of fifteen children, of whom, however, only ten reached maturity. +Of his mother, who died when he was very young, he +scarcely retained any remembrance in after life. As to his early +years little is now recollected, except that he was a very mild and +serious boy, usually successful during school hours, but not usually +successful in the play-ground.</p> + +<p>As Mr. Wilson’s father was an influential Quaker, he was sent +when ten years old to a Quaker school at Ackworth, where he continued +for four years. At that time—it may surprise some of those +who knew him in later life to be told—he was so extremely fond +of books as to wish to be a teacher; and as his father allowed his +sons to choose their line in life, he was sent to a seminary at Earl’s +Colne in Essex, to qualify himself for that occupation. But the taste +did not last long. As we might expect, the natural activity of his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_368">[368]</span>disposition soon induced him to regret his choice of a sedentary life. +He wrote to Hawick, ‘I would rather be the most menial servant +in my father’s mill than be a teacher;’ and he was permitted to +return home at once.</p> + +<p>Many years later he often narrated that, after leaving Earlscome, +he had much wished to study for the Scottish bar, but the rules of +the Society of Friends, as then understood, would not allow his father +to consent to the plan. He was sometimes inclined half to regret +that he had not been able to indulge this taste, and he was much +pleased at being told by a great living advocate that ‘if he had gone +to the bar he would have been very successful.’ But at the time +there was no alternative, and at sixteen he accordingly commenced a +life of business. He did not, however, lose at once his studious +predilections. For some years at least he was in the habit of reading +a good deal, very often till late in the night. It was indeed then that +he acquired almost all the knowledge of books which he ever possessed. +In later life he was much too busy to be a regular reader, and he +never acquired the habit of catching easily the contents of books or +even of articles in the interstices of other occupations. Whatever he +did, he did thoroughly. He would not read even an article in a +newspaper if he could well help doing so; but if he read it at all, it +was with as much slow, deliberate attention as if he were perusing a +Treasury minute.</p> + +<p>At the early age we have mentioned he commenced his business +life by being apprenticed to a small hat manufacturer at Hawick; +and it is still remembered that he showed remarkable care and +diligence in mastering all the minutiæ of the trade. There was, +indeed, nothing of the <i>amateur</i> man of business about him at any +time. After a brief interval, his father purchased his master’s business +for him and for an elder brother, named William, and the two +brothers in conjunction continued to carry it on at Hawick during +two or three years with much energy. So small a town, however, +as Hawick then was, afforded no scope for enterprise in this branch +of manufacture, and they resolved to transfer themselves to London.</p> + +<p>Accordingly, in 1824, Mr. Wilson commenced a mercantile life in +London (the name of the firm being Wilson, Irwin, & Wilson), and +was very prosperous and successful for many years. His pecuniary +gains were considerable, and to the practical instruction which he +then obtained he always ascribed his success as an economist and a +financier. ‘Before I was twenty years of age,’ he said at Devonport +in 1859, ‘I was a partner in a firm in London, and I can only say +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_369">[369]</span>if there is in my life one event which I regard with satisfaction +more than another, it is that I had then an opportunity of obtaining +experience by observation which has contributed in the main to +what little public utility I have since been to my country. During +these few years I became acquainted—well acquainted—with the +middle classes of this country. I also became acquainted in some +degree with the working classes; and also, to a great extent, with +the foreign commerce of this country in pretty nearly all parts of the +world; and I can only say the information and the experience I +thus derived have been to me in my political career of greater +benefit than I can now describe.’</p> + +<p>In 1831, the firm of Wilson, Irwin, & Wilson was dissolved +by mutual consent. But Mr. Wilson (under the firm of James +Wilson & Co.) continued to carry on the same kind of business, and +continued to obtain the same success. He began in 1824 with +2,000<i>l.</i>, the gift of his father, and in 1837 was worth nearly 25,000<i>l.</i>—a +fair result for so short a period, and evincing a steady business-like +capacity and judgment; for it was the fruit not of sudden +success in casual speculation, but of regular attention during several +years to one business. From circumstances which we shall presently +state, he was very anxious that this part of his career should be very +clearly understood.</p> + +<p>During these years Mr. Wilson led the usual life of a prosperous +and intellectual man of business. He married,⁠<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> and formed +an establishment suitable to his means, first near his manufactory +in London, and afterwards at Dulwich. He took great pleasure in +such intellectual society as he could obtain; was specially fond of +conversing on political economy, politics, statistics, and the other +subjects with which he was subsequently so busily occupied.⁠<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> +Through life it was one of his remarkable peculiarities to be a <i>very +animated</i> man, talking by preference and by habit on <i>inanimate</i> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_370">[370]</span>subjects. All the <i>verve</i>, vigour, and life which lively people put into +exciting pursuits, he put into topics which are usually thought very +dry. He discussed the Currency or the Corn Laws with a relish and +energy which made them interesting to almost every one. ‘How +pleasant it is,’ he used to say, ‘to talk a subject out,’ and he frequently +suggested theories in the excitement of conversation upon +his favourite topics which he had never thought of before, but to +which he ever afterwards attached, as was natural, much importance. +The instructiveness of his conversation was greatly increased as his +mind progressed and his experience accumulated. But his genial +liveliness and animated vigour were the same during his early years +of business life as they were afterwards when he filled important +offices of state in England and in Calcutta. Few men can have +led a more continuously prosperous and happy life than he did during +those years. Unfortunately it was not to continue.</p> + +<p>In 1836, or thereabouts, Mr. Wilson was unfortunately induced +to commence a speculation in indigo, in conjunction with a gentleman +in Scotland. It was expected that indigo would be scarce, and +that the price would rise rapidly in consequence. Such would indeed +appear to have been the case for a short period, since the first purchases +in which Mr. Wilson took part yielded a profit. In consequence +of this success, he was induced to try a larger venture,—indeed +to embark most of his disposable capital. Unfortunately, the +severe crisis of 1837 disturbed the usual course of all trades, and +from its effect or from some other cause, indigo, instead of rising +rapidly, fell rapidly. The effect on Mr. Wilson’s position may be +easily guessed. A very great capitalist would have been able to +hold till better times, but he was not. ‘On January 1,’ he said +at Devonport, ‘in a given year, my capital was nearer 25,000<i>l.</i>, than +24,000<i>l.</i>, and it was all lost.’ Numerous stories were long circulated +most of them exaggerated, and the remainder wholly untrue, as to +this period of misfortune in Mr. Wilson’s life; but the truth is very +simple. As is usual in such cases, various arrangements were proposed +and agreed to, were afterwards abandoned, and others substituted +for them. A large bundle of papers carefully preserved by him +records with the utmost accuracy the whole of the history. The final +result will be best described in his own words at Devonport, which +precisely correspond with the balance sheets and other documents +still in existence. They are part of a speech in answer to a calumnious +rumour that had been circulated in the town:—</p> + +<p>‘Now, how did I act on this occasion? and this is what this +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_371">[371]</span>placard has reference to. By my own means alone, I was enabled at +once to satisfy in full all claims against me individually, and to +provide for the early payment of one-half of the whole of the demands +against the firm, consisting of myself and three partners. I +was further enabled, or the firm was enabled, at once to assign property +of sufficient value, as was supposed, to the full satisfaction of +the whole of the remainder of the liabilities. An absolute agreement +was made, an absolute release was given to all the partners; +there was neither a bankruptcy nor insolvency, neither was the business +stopped for one day. The business was continued under the new +firm, with which I remained a partner, and from which I ultimately +retired in good circumstances. Some years afterwards it turned out +that the foreign property which was assigned for the remaining half +of the debts of the old firm, of which I was formerly a partner, +proved insufficient to discharge them. The legal liability was, as +you know, all gone; the arrangement had been accepted—an arrangement +calculated and believed by all parties to be sufficient to +satisfy all claims in full; but when the affairs of the whole concern +were fully wound up, finding that the foreign property had not +realised what was anticipated, I had it, I am glad to say, in my power +to place at my banker’s, having ascertained the amount, a sum of +money to discharge all the remainder of that debt, which I considered +morally, though not legally, due. This I did without any kind of +solicitation—the thing was not named to me, and I am quite sure +never were the gentlemen more taken by surprise than when a friend +of mine waited on them privately in London, and presented each +of them with a cheque for the balance due to them. Now, perhaps, +I have myself to blame for this anonymous attack. I probably +brought it on myself, for I always felt that if this matter were made +public, it might look like an act of ostentatious obtrusion on my part, +and therefore, when I put aside the sum of money necessary for the +purpose, I made a request, in the letter I wrote to my bankers, desiring +them as an especial favour that they would instruct their clerks +to mention the matter to no one; and in order that it should be +perfectly private, I employed a personal friend of my own in the city +of London, in whose care I placed the whole of the cheques, to wait +on those gentlemen and present each of them with a cheque, and +I obtained from him a promise, and he from them, not to name the +circumstance to any one.’ The secrecy thus enjoined was well preserved. +Many of the most intimate friends of Mr. Wilson, and his +family also, were entirely unacquainted with what he had done, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_372">[372]</span>learnt it only through, the accidental medium of an electioneering +speech. It may be added, too, that some of those who knew the +circumstances, and who have watched Mr. Wilson’s subsequent +career, believe that at no part of his life did he show greater business +ability, self command, and energy, than at the crisis of his +mercantile misfortunes.</p> + +<p>It is remarkable that the preface to Mr. Wilson’s first pamphlet, on +the ‘Influences of the Corn Laws,’ is dated March 1, 1839, the +precise time at which he was negotiating with his creditors for a +proper arrangement of his affairs; and to those who have had an +opportunity of observing how completely pecuniary misfortune unnerves +and unmans men—mercantile men, perhaps, more than any +others—it will not seem unworthy of remark that a careful pamphlet, +with elaborate figures, instinct in every line with vigour and energy, +should emanate from a man struggling with extreme pecuniary calamity, +and daily harrassed with the painful details of it.</p> + +<p>After 1839 Mr. Wilson continued in business for several years, +and with very fair success, considering that his capital was much +diminished, and that the hat manufacture was in a state of transition. +He finally retired in 1844, and invested most of his capital in the +foundation and extension of the <i>Economist</i>.</p> + +<p>These facts prove, as we believe, the conclusion which he was very +desirous to make clear—that, though unfortunate on a particular +occasion, Mr. Wilson was by no means, as a rule, unsuccessful in +business. He did not at all like to have it said that he was fit to lay +down the rules and the theory of business, but not fit to transact +business itself. And the whole of his life, on the contrary, proves +that he possessed an unusual capacity for affairs—an extraordinary +<i>transacting</i> ability.</p> + +<p>It may, however, be admitted that Mr. Wilson was in several +respects by no means an unlikely man to meet, especially in early life, +with occasional misfortune. To the last hour of his life he was always +sanguine. He naturally looked at everything in a bright and cheerful +aspect; his tendency was always to form a somewhat too favourable +judgment both of things and men. One proof of this may be sufficient: +he was five years Secretary of the Treasury, and he did not +leave it a suspicious man.</p> + +<p>Moreover, Mr. Wilson’s temperament was very active and his +mind was very fertile. And though in many parts of business these +gifts are very advantageous, in many also they are very dangerous, if +not absolutely disadvantageous. Frequently they are temptations. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_373">[373]</span>Capital is always limited; often it is <i>very</i> limited; and therefore a +man of business, who is managing his own capital, has only defined +resources, and can engage only in a certain number of undertakings. +But a person of active temperament and fertile mind will soon chafe +at that restriction. His inventiveness will show him many ways in +which money might easily be made, and he cannot but feel that with +his energies he would like to make it. If he have besides a sanguine +temperament, he will believe that he can make it. The records of +unfortunate commerce abound in instances of men who have been +unsuccessful because they had great mind, great energy, and great +hope, but had not money in proportion. Some part of this description +was, perhaps, applicable to Mr. Wilson in 1839, but exactly how +much cannot, after the lapse of so many years, be now known with +any accuracy.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson’s position in middle life was by no means unsuitable +to a writer on the subjects in which he afterwards attained eminence. +He had acquired a great knowledge of business through a long course +of industrious years; he had proved by habitual success in business +that his habitual judgment on it was sound and good. If he had +been a man of only ordinary energy and only ordinary ability, he +would probably have continued to grow regularly richer and richer. +But by a single error natural to a very sanguine temperament and a +very active mind, he had destroyed a great part of the results of his +industry. He had a new career to seek. He was willing to expend +on it the whole of his great energies. He was ready to take all the +pains which were necessary to fit himself for success. When he wrote +his first pamphlet he used to say that he thought ‘the sentences never +would come right.’ In later life he considered three leading articles +in the <i>Economist</i>, full of facts and figures, an easy morning’s work, +which would not prevent his doing a good deal else too. Mr. Wilson +was a finished man of business obliged by necessity to become a writer +on business. Perhaps no previous education and no temporary circumstances +could be conceived more likely to train a great financial +writer and to stimulate his powers.</p> + +<p>In 1839, Mr. Wilson published his ‘Influences of the Corn Laws;’ +in 1840, the ‘Fluctuations of Currency, Commerce, and Manufactures;’ +in 1841, ‘The Revenue; or, What should the Chancellor do?’ in +September, 1843, he established the ‘Economist.’ The origin of the +latter may be interesting to our readers, Mr. Wilson proposed to the +editor of the <i>Examiner</i> that he should furnish gratuitously a certain +amount of writing to that journal on economical and financial subjects; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_374">[374]</span>but the offer was declined, though with some regret, on account +of the expense of type and paper. A special paper was, therefore, +established, which proved in the end as important as the <i>Examiner</i> +itself. From the first, Mr. Wilson was the sole proprietor of the +<i>Economist</i>, though he obtained pecuniary assistance—especially from +the kindness of Lord Radnor. He embarked some capital of his own +in it from the first, and afterwards repaid all loans made to him for +the purpose of establishing it.</p> + +<p>It would not be suitable to the design of this memoir to give any +criticism of Mr. Wilson’s pamphlets, still less would it become the +<i>Economist</i> to pronounce in any manner a judgment on itself. Nevertheless, +it is a part of the melancholy duty we have undertaken to give +some account of Mr. Wilson’s characteristic position as a writer on +Political Economy, and of the somewhat peculiar mode in which he +dealt with that subject.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson dealt with Political Economy like a practical man. +Persons more familiar with the literature of science might very easily +be found. Mr. Wilson’s faculty of reading was small, nor had he any +taste for the more refined abstractions in which the more specially +scientific political economists had involved themselves. ‘Political +Economy,’ said Sydney Smith, ‘is become, in the hands of Malthus +and Ricardo, a school of metaphysics. All seem to agree what is to +be done; the contention is how the subject is to be divided and defined. +<i>Meddle with no such matters.</i>’ We are far from alleging that this +saying is just; nor would Mr. Wilson have by any means assented +to it. But though he would have disavowed it in theory, it nevertheless +embodies his instinctive feeling and characteristic practice. He +‘meddled with no such matters;’ though he did not deny the utility of +theoretical refinements, he habitually and steadily avoided them.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson’s predominating power was what may be called a +business-imagination. He had a great power of conceiving transactions. +Political economy was to him the science of buying and +selling, and of the ordinary bargains of men he had a very steady and +distinct conception. In explaining such subjects he did not begin, +as political economists have been wittily said to do, with ‘Suppose a +a man upon an island,’ but ‘What they do in the city is this.’ ‘The real +course of business is so and so.’ Most men of business will think this +characteristic a great merit, and even a theoretical economist should +not consider it a defect. The <i>practical</i> value of the science of political +economy (the observation is an old one as to <i>all</i> sciences) lies in +its ‘middle principles.’ The extreme abstractions from which such +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_375">[375]</span>intermediate maxims are scientifically deduced lie at some distance +from ordinary experience, and are not easily made intelligible to most +persons, and when they <i>are</i> made intelligible, most persons do not +know how to use them. But the intermediate maxims themselves are +not so difficult; they are easily comprehended and easily used. They +have in them a practical life, and come home at once to the ‘business’ +and the ‘bosoms’ of men. It was in these that Mr. Wilson excelled. +His ‘business-imagination’ enabled him to see ‘what men did,’ and +‘why they did it;’ ‘why they ought to do it,’ and ‘why they ought +not to do it.’ His very clear insight into the real nature of mercantile +transactions made him a great and almost an instinctive master of +<i>statistical selection</i>. He could not help picking out of a mass of figures +those which would tell most. He saw which were really material; he +put them prominently and plainly forward, and he left the rest alone. +Even now if a student of Parliamentary papers should alight on a +return ‘moved for by Mr. Wilson,’ he will do well to give to it a more +than ordinary attention, for it will be sure to contain something +attainable, intelligible, and distinct.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson’s habit of always beginning with the facts, always +arguing from the facts, and always ending with a result applicable to +the facts, obtained for his writings an influence and a currency more +extensive than would have been anticipated for any writings on +political economy. It is not for the <i>Economist</i> to speak of the +<i>Economist</i>; but we may observe that through the pages of this +journal certain doctrines, whether true or false, have been diffused, +far more widely than they ever were in England before—far more +widely than from their somewhat abstract nature we could expect +them to be diffused—far more widely than they are diffused in any +other country but this. The business-like method and vigorous +simplicity of Mr. Wilson’s arguments converted very many ordinary +men of business, who would have distrusted any theoretical and +abstruse disquisition, and would not have appreciated any elaborate +refinements. Nor was this special influence confined to mercantile +men. It penetrated where it could not be expected to penetrate. +The Duke of Wellington was, perhaps, more likely to be prejudiced +against a theoretical political economist than any eminent man of +his day; he belonged to the ‘prescientific period;’ he had much of +the impatient practicality incident to military insight; he was not +likely to be very partial to the ‘doctrines of Mr. Huskisson’;—nevertheless, +the Duke early pointed out Mr. Wilson’s writings to +Lord Brougham as possessing especial practical value; and when the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_376">[376]</span>Duke at a much later period was disposed to object to the repeal of +the Navigation Laws, Mr. Wilson had a special interview to convince +him of its expediency.</p> + +<p>Nor is this faculty of exposition by any means a trifling power. +On many subjects it is a common saying ‘that he only discovers who +proves;’ but in practical politics we may almost say that he only +discovers who convinces. It is of no use to have practical truths +received by extraordinary men, unless they are also accepted by +ordinary men. Whether Mr. Wilson was exactly a great writer, we +will not discuss: but he was a great <i>belief producer</i>; he had upon his +own subjects a singular gift of <i>efficient</i> argument—a peculiar power +of bringing home his opinions by convincing reasonings to convincible +persons.</p> + +<p>The time at which Mr. Wilson commenced his career as an +economical writer was a singularly happy one. An economical century +has elapsed since 1839. The Corn Laws were then in full force, +and seemed likely to continue so; the agriculturists believed in them, +and other classes acquiesced in them; the tentative reforms of Mr. +Huskisson were half forgotten; our tariff perhaps contained some +specimen of every defect—it certainly contained many specimens of +most defects; duties abounded which cramped trade, which contributed +nothing to the exchequer, which were maintained that a +minority might believe they profited at the expense of the majority; +all the now settled principles of commercial policy were unsettled; +the ‘currency’ was under discussion; the Bank of England had been +reduced to accept a loan from the Bank of France; capitalists were +disheartened and operatives disaffected; the industrial energies, which +have since multiplied our foreign commerce, were then effectually +impeded by legislative fetters and financial restraints. On almost all +of these restraints Mr. Wilson had much to say.</p> + +<p>Upon the Corn Laws, Mr. Wilson developed a theory which was +rare when he first stated it, but which was generally adopted afterwards, +and which subsequent experience has confirmed. He was +fond of narrating an anecdote which shows his exact position in 1839. +There had just been a meeting of the Anti-Corn Law League at +Manchester, and some speakers had maintained, with more or less +vehemence, that the coming struggle was to be one of class against +class, inasmuch as the Corn Laws were beneficial to the agriculturists, +though they were injurious to manufacturers. The tendency of the +argument was to set one part of the nation against another part. +Mr. Wilson was travelling in the North, and was writing in a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_377">[377]</span>railway carriage part of the ‘Influences of the Corn Laws.’ By +chance a distinguished member of the League, whom Mr. Wilson did +not know, happened to travel with him, and asked him what he was +about. ‘I am writing on the Corn Laws,’ said Mr. Wilson, ‘something +in answer to the rubbish they have been talking at Manchester.’ +‘You are a bold man,’ was the reply; ‘Protection is a difficult +doctrine to support by argument.’ But it soon appeared that Mr. +Wilson was the better Free trader of the two. He held that the Corn +Laws were injurious to all classes; that the agriculturists suffered +from them as much as the manufacturers; that, in consequence, it +was ‘rubbish’ to raise a class enmity on the subject, for the interest +of all classes was the same. ‘We cannot too much lament,’ he says +in his ‘Influences of the Corn Laws,’ ‘and deprecate the spirit of +violence and exaggeration with which this subject has always been +approached by each party, which no doubt has been the chief cause +why so little of real truth or benefit has resulted from the efforts of +either; the arguments on either side have been supported by such +absurd and magnified statements of the influences of those prohibitory +laws on their separate interests, as only to furnish each other with a +good handle to turn the whole argument into ridicule. It therefore +appears to be necessary to a just settlement of this great question, +that these two parties should be first reconciled to a correct view of +the real influences thus exerted over their interests, and the interests +of the country at large; to a conviction that the imaginary fears of +change on the one hand, and the exaggerated advantages expected on +the other hand, are equally without foundation; that there are in +reality no differences in the solid interests of either party; and that +<i>individuals</i>, <i>communities</i>, or <i>countries</i> can only be prosperous in +proportion to the prosperity of the whole.’ And he proposed to prove +‘that the agricultural interest has derived no benefit, but great +injury, from the existing laws; and that the fears and apprehensions +entertained of the ruinous consequences which would result to this +interest by the adoption of a free and liberal policy with respect to +the trade in corn, are without any foundation; that the value of this +property, instead of being depreciated, in the aggregate, would be +rather enhanced, and the general interests of the owners most decidedly +enhanced thereby;’ and, ‘that while incalculable benefit would +arise to the manufacturing interest and the working population generally, +in common with all classes of the community, from the +adoption of such policy, nothing can be more erroneous than the +belief that the price of provisions or labour would on the average be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_378">[378]</span>thereby cheapened, but that, on the contrary, the tendency would +rather be to produce, by a state of generally increased prosperity, a +higher average rate of each.’</p> + +<p>Whatever might be thought in 1839, in 1860 we can on one +point have no doubt whatever. The repeal of the Corn Laws has +been followed by the exact effect which Mr. Wilson anticipated. +Whether his argument was right or wrong, the result has corresponded +with his anticipation. The agriculturists have prospered +more—the manufacturers, the merchants, the operatives, all classes +in a word, have prospered more since the Corn Laws were repealed, +than they ever did before. As to abstract questions of politics there +will always be many controversies; but upon a patent contemporaneous +fact of this magnitude there cannot be a controversy.</p> + +<p>It is indisputable also that, for the purposes of the Anti-Corn +Law agitation, Mr. Wilson’s view was exceedingly opportune. Mr. +Cobden said not long ago (we quote the substance correctly even if +the words are wrong), ‘I never made any progress with the Corn +Law question while it was stated as a question of class against class.’ +And a careful inquirer will find that such is the real moral of the +whole struggle. If it had continued to be considered solely or +mainly as a manufacturer’s question, it might not have been settled +to this hour. In support of this opinion, Mr. Wilson made many +speeches at the meetings of the Anti-Corn Law League, though he +had little taste for the task of agitation.</p> + +<p>We cannot give even an analysis of Mr. Wilson’s arguments—our +space is too brief—but we will enumerate one or two of the +principal points.</p> + +<p>He maintained that, under our protective laws, the agriculturists +never had the benefit of a high price, and always suffered the evil of +a low price. When our crop was scanty, it was necessary to sell the +small quantity at a high price, or the farmer could not be remunerated. +But exactly at that moment foreign corn was permitted by +law to be imported. In consequence, during bad years the farmer +was exposed to difficulty and disaster, which were greater because, in +expectation of an English demand, large stocks were often hoarded on +the Continent, and at once poured in to prevent the home-grower +compensating himself for a bad harvest by an equivalent rise of +price.</p> + +<p>Nor was the farmer better off in very plentiful years. There +was a surplus in this country, and that surplus could not be exported, +for the price of wheat was always lower abroad than here. The +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_379">[379]</span>effect is evident. As corn is an article of the first necessity, a certain +quantity of it will always be consumed, but more than that quantity +will not be readily consumed. A slight surplus is, therefore, invariably +found to lower the price of such articles excessively. In very +good years the farmer had to sell his crop at an unremuneratingly +low price, while in very bad years he was prevented from obtaining +the high price which alone could compensate him for his outlay. +Between the effects of the two sorts of years his condition was deplorable, +and Parliamentary committees were constantly appointed to +investigate it.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson also explained how much these fluctuations in price +contracted the home demand for agricultural produce. The manufacturing +districts were, he showed, subjected by the Corn Laws to +alternate periods of great excitement and great depression. When +corn was very cheap, the mass of the community had much to spend +on other things; when corn was very dear, they had very little to +spend on those things. In consequence, the producers of ‘other +things’ were sometimes stimulated by a great demand, and at other +times deadened by utter slackness. The labouring classes in the +manufacturing districts acquired in periods of plenty a certain taste +for what to them were luxuries, and in periods of scarcity were +naturally soured at being deprived of them. The manufacturers were +frequently induced to invest additional capital by sudden augmentations +of demand, and were often ruined by its sudden cessation. It +was therefore impossible that the manufacturing classes could be steady +customers of the agriculturists, for their own condition was fluctuating +and unsteady.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson also showed that if the landed interest was injured +by the effects of the Corn Laws, this was of itself enough to injure +the manufacturing interests.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘The connection,’ he wrote, ‘between the manufacturer and the landed +interest in this country is much closer than is generally admitted or believed; +not only is the manufacturer dependent on the landed interest for the large +portion of his goods which they immediately consume, but also for a very +large portion of what he exports to the most distant countries. All commerce +is, either directly or indirectly, a simple exchange of the surplus products of +one country for those of another. It is therefore a first essential that we +should be able to take the cotton of America, the sugar and coffee of India, +the silk and teas of China, before they can take our manufactures; and if +this be necessary, then must it follow that in proportion to the extent to +which we can take their produce, will they be enabled to take our manufactures. +Therefore, whatever portion of these products is consumed in this +country by the landed interest, must to that extent enable the manufacturer +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_380">[380]</span>to export his goods in return; and thus any causes which increase this ability +on the part of the landed interest to consume, must give a corresponding +additional ability to the manufacturers to export. Every pound of coffee or +sugar, every ounce of tea, every article of luxury, the produce of foreign +climes, whether consumed within the castles and halls of our wealthiest +landowners, or in the humble cottages of our lowliest peasantry, alike represent +some portion of the exports of this country. On the other hand, the +dependence of the landowner is no less twofold on the manufacturer and +merchant. He is not only dependent upon them for their own immediate +consumption, but also for the consumption of whatever food enters into the +cost price of their goods. Although the English farmer does not export his +corn or his other produce in the exact shape and form in which he produces +them, they constitute not the less on that account a distinct portion of the +exports of this country, and that in the best of all possible forms. Just as +much as the manufacturer exports the wool or the silk which enters into the +fabrics of those materials, does he export the corn which paid for the labour +of spinning and weaving them. It would be an utter impossibility that this +country could consume its agricultural produce but for our extensive manufacturing +population; or that the value of what would be consumed could +be near its present rate. If without this aid our agricultural produce were +as great as it now is, a large portion would have to seek a market in distant +countries: it would then have to be exported in the exact form in which it +is produced; the expenses of which being so large would reduce very greatly +from its value and net price, and the landed interest would be immediately +affected thereby. But, as it is, the produce of the land is exported in the +condensed form of manufactured goods, at a comparatively trifling expense, +which secures a high value to it here. Thus, for example, a few bales of +silk or woollen goods may contain as much wheat in their value as would +freight a whole ship. To this advantage the landed interest is indebted, +exclusively, for the very superior value of property and produce in this +country to any other; because, by our great manufacturing superiority, a +market is found for our produce over the whole world, conveyed in the +cheapest and most condensed form. While the Chinese, or Indians, buy our +cottons, our silks, or our woollens, they buy a portion of the grain and other +produce of the land of this country; and therefore the producer here, while +indulging in the delicacies or luxuries of Oriental climes, may only be consuming +a portion of the golden heads of wheat which had gracefully waved +in his own fields at a former day. Is it not, therefore, sufficiently clear that +no circumstance whatever can either improve or injure one of these interests +without immediately in the same way affecting the other? The connection +is so close that it is impossible to separate or distinguish them. Any circumstance +which limits our commerce must limit our market for agricultural +produce; and any possible circumstance which deteriorates the condition of +our agriculturists must deteriorate our commerce, by limiting our imports, +and consequently our exports. These are general principles, and are capable +of extension to the whole world, in all places, and at all times; and the same +principle as is thus shown to connect and combine the different interests of +any one country, just as certainly operates in producing a similar effect between +different countries; and we ardently hope, ere long, to find not only +the petty jealousies between different portions of the same community entirely +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_381">[381]</span>removed, but that all countries will learn that a free and unrestricted +co-operation with each other in matters of commerce can only tend to the +general benefit and welfare of all.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>We do not say that these propositions were exactly discoveries +of Mr. Wilson. During the exciting discussion of a great public +question, the most important truths which relate to it are ‘in the +air’ of the age; many persons see them, or half-see them; and it is +impossible to trace the precise parentage of any of them. But we +do say that these opinions were exactly suited to the broad and practical +understanding of Mr. Wilson; that they were very effectively +illustrated by him—more effectively probably than by any other +writer; that he thought them out for himself with but little knowledge +of previous theories; that they, principally, raised Free Trade +from a class question to a national question; that to them, whether +advocated by Mr. Wilson or by others, the success of the Anti-Corn +Law agitation was in a great measure owing; that whatever doubt +may formerly have been felt, an ample trial has now proved them to +be true.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson’s pamphlet entitled ‘The Revenue; or, What should +the Chancellor do?’ which attracted considerable attention when it +was published in 1841, is worth reading now, though dated so many +years ago; for it contains an outline of the financial policy which Sir +Robert Peel commenced, and which Mr. Gladstone has now almost +completed. This pamphlet, which is not very short (it has 27 +moderate pages), was begun as an article for the <i>Morning Chronicle</i>, +but proved too long for that purpose. It was written with almost +inconceivable rapidity—nearly all, we believe, in a single night—though +its principles and its many figures will bear a critical scrutiny +even now.</p> + +<p>In the briefest memoir of Mr. Wilson it is necessary to say something +of the currency; but it will not be advisable to say very much. +If, however, we could rely on the patience of our readers, we should +say a good deal. On no subject, perhaps, did Mr. Wilson take up a +more characteristic position. He saw certain broad principles distinctly +and steadily, and to these he firmly adhered, no matter what +refined theories were suggested, or what the opinion of others +might be.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson was a stern bullionist. He held that a five-pound +note was a promise to pay five pounds. He answered Sir R. Peel’s +question, ‘What is a pound?’ with Sir Robert’s own answer. He +said it was a certain specified quantity of gold metal. He held that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_382">[382]</span>all devices for aiding industry by issuing inconvertible notes were +certainly foolish, and might perhaps be mischievous. He held that +industry could only be really aided by additional <i>capital</i>—by new +machines, new instruments, new raw material; that an addition to a +paper <i>currency</i> was as useless to aid deficient capital as it was to feed +a hungry population.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson held, secondly, that the <i>sine quâ non</i>, the great prerequisite +to a good paper currency, was the maintenance of an adequate +reserve by the issuer. He believed that a banker should look at his +liabilities as a whole—the notes which he has in circulation and the +deposits he has in his ledger taken together; and should retain a +sufficient portion of them (say one-third) in cash, or in something +equivalent to cash, in daily readiness to pay them at once. Mr. +Wilson considered that bankers might be trusted to keep such a +reserve, as they would be ruined, sooner or later, if they did not; and +if the notes issued by them were always convertible at the pleasure of +the holder, he believed that the currency would never be depreciated.</p> + +<p>He thought, however, that, as bank-notes must pass from hand to +hand in the market, and as in practice most persons—most traders, +especially—must take them in payment whether they wish to do so +or not, some special security might properly be required for their +payment. He would have allowed any one who liked to issue bank-notes +on depositing Consols to a sufficient amount—the amount, that +is, of the notes issued, and an adequate percentage in addition.</p> + +<p>Lastly, Mr. Wilson believed that the bank-note circulation exercised +quite a secondary and unimportant influence upon prices and +upon transactions, in comparison with the auxiliary currency of +cheques and credits, which has indefinitely augmented during the last +thirty years. So far from regarding the public as constantly ready +for an unlimited supply of bank-notes, he thought that it was only +in times of extreme panic, when this auxiliary currency is diminished +and disturbed, that the bank-notes in the hands of the public either +could or would be augmented. He believed that the public only +kept in their hands as many notes as they wanted for their own convenience, +and that all others were in the present day paid back to +the banker immediately and necessarily.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, however, the currency is not discussed in England +with very exact reference to abstract principles. The popular +question of every thinker is, ‘Are you in favour of Peel’s Bill, or +are you against it?’ And this mode of discussing the subject always +placed Mr. Wilson in a position of some difficulty. He concurred in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_383">[383]</span>the aim of Sir R. Peel, but objected to his procedure. He wished to +secure the convertibility of the bank-note. He believed that the Act +of 1844 indirectly induced the Bank Directors to keep more bullion +than they would keep otherwise, and in so far he thought it beneficial; +but he also thought that the advantages obtained by it were +purchased at a needless price; that they might have been obtained +much more cheaply; that the machinery of the Act aggravated every +panic; that it tended to fix the attention of the public on bank-notes, +and so fostered the mischievous delusion that the augmented issue of +paper currency would strengthen industry; that it neglected to take +account of other forms of credit which are equally important with +bank-notes; that, ‘<i>for one week in ten years</i>’—the week of panic—it +created needless and intense apprehension, and so tended to cause +the ruin of some solvent commercial men. In brief, though he fully +believed the professed object of Sir R. Peel—the convertibility of the +bank-note—to be beneficial and inestimable, he as fully believed the +special means selected by him to be inconvenient and pernicious.</p> + +<p>Opinions akin to Mr. Wilson’s, if not identical with them, are +very commonly now entertained, both by practical men of business +and by professional economists. The younger school of thinkers who +have had before them the working of the Act of 1844 and the events +of 1847 and 1857, and are not committed by any of the older controversies, +are especially inclined to them. Yet from peculiar causes +they have not been so popular as Mr. Wilson’s other opinions. His +views of finance and of the effect of Free Trade, which were half +heresies when he announced them, have now become almost axioms. +But the truth of his currency theory is still warmly controverted. +The reason is this:—Sir R. Peel’s Act is a sort of compromise which +is suited to the English people. It was probably intended by its +author as a preliminary step; it undoubtedly suits no strict theory; +it certainly has great marks of incompleteness; but, ‘it works tolerably +well;’ if it produces evils at a crisis, ‘crises come but seldom;’ +in ordinary times commerce ‘goes on very fairly.’ The pressure of +practical evil upon the English people has never yet been so great as +to induce them to face the unpleasant difficulties of the abstract +currency question. Mr. Wilson’s opinions have, therefore, never +been considered by practical men for a practical object, and it is +only when so considered that any opinions of his can be duly estimated. +Their essentially moderate character, too, is unfavourable +to them—not, indeed, among careful inquirers, but in the hubbub of +public controversy. The only great party which has as yet attacked +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_384">[384]</span>Sir Robert Peel’s Bill is that which desires an extensive issue of +inconvertible currency; but to them Mr. Wilson was as much +opposed as Sir Robert Peel himself. The two watchwords of the +controversy are ‘caution’ and ‘expansion:’ the advocates of the +Act of 1844 have seized on the former, the Birmingham school on +the latter; the intermediate, and, as we think, juster opinions of Mr. +Wilson have had no party cry to aid them, and they have not as yet +therefore obtained the practical influence which he never ceased to +anticipate and to hope for them. No more need be said upon the +currency question—perhaps we have already said too much; but to +those who knew Mr. Wilson well, no subject is more connected with +his memory: he was so fond of expounding it, that its very technicalities +are, in the minds of some, associated with his voice and +image.</p> + +<p>But it was not by mere correctness of economical speculation that +Mr. Wilson was to rise to eminence. A very accurate knowledge of +even the more practical aspects of economical science is not of itself +a productive source of income. By the foundation of the <i>Economist</i> +Mr. Wilson secured for himself, during the rest of his life, competence +and comfort, but it was not solely or simply by writing good political +economy in it. The organisation of a first-rate commercial paper in +1843 required a great inventiveness and also a great discretion. +Nothing of the kind then existed; it was not known what the public +most wished to know on business interests; the best shape of communicating +information had to be invented in detail. The labour of +creating such a paper and of administering it during its early stages +is very great; and might well deter most men even of superior ability +from attempting it. At this period of his life Mr. Wilson used to +superintend the whole of the <i>Economist</i>; to write all the important +leaders, nearly all of the unimportant ones; to make himself master +of every commercial question as it arose; to give practical details as +to the practical aspects of it; to be on the watch for every kind of +new commercial information; to spend hours in adapting it to the +daily wants of commercial men. He often worked till far into the +morning, and impressed all about him with wonder at the anxiety, +labour, and exhaustion he was able to undergo. As has been stated, +for some months after the commencement of the <i>Economist</i> he was +still engaged in his former business; and after he relinquished that, +he used to write the City article and also leaders for the <i>Morning +Chronicle</i>, at the very time that he was doing on his own paper far +more than most men would have had endurance of mind or strength +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_385">[385]</span>of body for. Long afterwards he used to speak of this period as far +more exhausting than the most exhausting part of a laborious public +life. ‘Our public men,’ he once said, ‘do not know what anxiety +means; they have never known what it is to have their own position +dependent on their own exertions.’ In 1843, and for some time +afterwards, he had himself to bear extreme labour and great anxiety +together; and even his iron frame was worn and tired by the +conjunction.</p> + +<p>Within seven years from the foundation of the <i>Economist</i>, Mr. +Wilson dealt effectively and thoroughly with three first-rate subjects—the +railway mania, the famine in Ireland, and the panic of 1847, in +addition to the entire question of Free Trade, which was naturally +the main topic of economical teaching in those years. On all these +three topics he explained somewhat original opinions, which were +novelties, if not paradoxes then, though they are very generally believed +now. To his writings on the railway mania he was especially +fond of recurring, since he believed that by his warnings, very effectively +brought out and very constantly reiterated, he had ‘saved +several men their fortunes’ at that time.</p> + +<p>The success of the <i>Economist</i>, and the advantage which the proprietor +of it would derive from a first-hand acquaintance with political +life, naturally led him to think of gaining a seat in Parliament, and an +accidental conversation at Lord Radnor’s table fixed his attention on +the borough of Westbury. After receiving a requisition, he visited +the place, explained his political sentiments at much length ‘from an +old cart,’ and believed that he saw sufficient chances of success to +induce him to take a house there. He showed considerable abilities +in electioneering, and a close observer once said of him, ‘Mr. Wilson +may or may not be the best political economist in England, but +depend upon it he is the <i>only</i> political economist who would ever +come in for the borough of Westbury.’ Though nominally a borough, +the constituency is half a rural one, much under the influence of +certain Conservative squires. The Liberal party were in 1847 only +endeavouring to emancipate themselves from a yoke to which they +have now again succumbed. Except for Mr. Wilson’s constant watchfulness, +his animated geniality, his residence on the spot, his knowledge +of every voter by sight, the Liberal party might never have +been successful there. A certain expansive frankness of manner and +a wonderful lucidity in explaining his opinions almost to any one, +gave Mr. Wilson great advantages as a popular candidate; and it was +very remarkable to find these qualities connected with a strong taste +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_386">[386]</span>for treating very dry subjects upon professedly abstract principles. +So peculiar a combination had the success which it merited. In the +summer of 1847 he was elected to serve in Parliament for Westbury.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson made his first speech in the House of Commons on the +motion for a Committee to inquire into the commercial distress at +that time prevalent. And it was considered an act of intellectual +boldness for a new member to explain his opinions on so difficult a +subject as the currency, especially as they were definitely opposed to a +measure supported by such overwhelming Parliamentary authority as +the Act of 1844 then was. Judging from the report in ‘Hansard,’ +and from the recollections of some who heard it, the speech was a +successful one. It is very clear and distinct, and its tone is very +emphatic, without ever ceasing to be considerate and candid. It contains +a sufficient account of Mr. Wilson’s tenets on the currency—so +good an account, indeed, that when he read it ten years later, in the +panic of 1857, he acknowledged that he did not think he could add +a word to it. At the time, however, the test of its Parliamentary +success was not the absolute correctness of its abstract principles, but, +to use appropriate and technical language, ‘its getting a rise out of +Peel.’ Sir Robert had used some certainly inconclusive arguments in +favour of his favourite measure, and Mr. Wilson made that inconclusiveness +so very clear that he thought it necessary to rise ‘and +explain,’ which, on such a subject, was deemed at the moment a great +triumph for a first speech.</p> + +<p>As might be expected from so favourable a commencement, Mr. +Wilson soon established a Parliamentary reputation. He was not a +formal orator, and did not profess to be so. But he had great powers +of exposition, singular command of telling details upon his own subjects, +a very pleasing voice, a grave but by no means inanimate manner—qualities +which are amply sufficient to gain the respectful attention +of the House of Commons. And Mr. Wilson did gain it. But +speaking is but half, and in the great majority of cases by far the +smaller half, of the duties of a member of Parliament. Mr. Wilson +was fond of quoting a saying of Sir R. Peel’s, ‘That the way to get +on in the House of Commons was to take a place and sit there.’ +He adopted this rule himself, was constant in his attendance at the +House, a good listener to other men, and always ready to take trouble +with troublesome matters. These plain and business-like qualities, +added to his acknowledged ability and admitted acquaintance with +a large class of subjects upon which knowledge is rare, gave Mr. +Wilson a substantial influence in the House of Commons in an unusually +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_387">[387]</span>short time. The Corn Laws had been repealed, the pitched +battle of Free Trade had been fought and won, but much yet remained +to be done in carrying out its principles with effective precision, +in applying them to articles other than corn, in exposing the +fallacies still abundantly current, and in answering the exceptional +case, which every trade in succession set up for an exceptional +protection. These were painful and complex matters of detail, +wearisome to very many persons, and rewarding with no <i>éclat</i> those +who took the trouble to master and explain them. But Mr. Wilson +shrank from no detail. For several years before he had a seat in the +House, he had been used to explain such topics in countless conversations +with the most prominent Free-traders and in the <i>Economist</i>. +He now did so in the House of Commons, and his influence correspondingly +increased. He was able to do an important work better +than any one else could do it; and, in English public life, real work +rightly done at the right season scarcely ever fails to meet with a +real reward.</p> + +<p>That Mr. Wilson early acquired considerable Parliamentary reputation +is evinced by the best of all proofs. He was offered office +before he had been six months in the House of Commons, though he +had, as the preceding sketch will have made evident, no aristocratic +connections—though he was believed to be a poorer man than he +really was—though writing political articles for newspapers has never +been in England the sure introduction to political power which it +formerly was in France—though, on the contrary, it has in general +been found a hindrance. In a case like Mr. Wilson’s, the prize of +office was a sure proof of evident prowess in the Parliamentary arena.</p> + +<p>The office which was offered to Mr. Wilson was one of the Secretaryships +of the Board of Control. Mr. Wilson related at Hawick +his reluctance to accept it, and his reason. Never having given any +special attention to Indian topics, he thought it would be absurd and +ridiculous in him to accept an office which seemed to require much +special knowledge. But Lord John Russell, with ‘that knowledge of +public affairs which long experience ensures,’ at once explained to +him that a statesman, under our Parliamentary system, must be prepared +to serve the Queen ‘whenever he may be called on;’ and accordingly +that he must be ready to take any office which he can fill, +without at all considering whether it is that which he can best fill. +After some deliberation, Mr. Wilson acknowledged the wisdom of +this advice, and accepted the office offered him. Long afterwards, +in the speech at Hawick to which we have alluded, he said that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_388">[388]</span>without the preliminary knowledge of India which he acquired at +the Board of Control, he should never have been able to undertake +the regulation of her finances.</p> + +<p>When once installed in his office, he devoted himself to it with +his usual unwearied industry. And at least on one occasion he had +to deal with a congenial topic. The introduction of railways into +India was opposed on many grounds, most of which are now forgotten—such +as ‘the effect upon the native mind,’ ‘the impossibility +of inducing the Hindoos to travel in that manner,’ and the like; and +more serious difficulties occurred in considering the exact position +which the Government should assume with regard to such great +undertakings in such singular circumstances—the necessity on the +one hand, in an Asiatic country where the State is the sole motive +power, of the Government’s doing something—and the danger, on the +other hand, of interfering with private enterprise, by its doing, or +attempting to do, too much. Mr. Wilson applied himself vigorously +to all these difficulties; he exercised the whole of his personal influence, +and the whole of that which was given to him by his situation, +in dissipating the fanciful obstacles which were alleged to be +latent in the unknown tendencies of the Oriental mind; while he +certainly elaborated—and he believed that he originally suggested—the +peculiar form of State guarantee upon the faith of which so many +millions of English capital have been sent to develop the industry of +India.</p> + +<p>Besides discharging the duties of his office, Mr. Wilson represented +the Government of the day on several Committees connected +with his peculiar topics, and especially on one which fully investigated +the Sugar question. Of the latter, indeed, he became so fully master +that some people fancied he must have been in the trade; so complete +was the familiarity which he displayed with ‘brown muscovado,’ +‘white clayed,’ and all other technical terms which are generally inscrutably +puzzling to Parliamentary statesmen. On a Parliamentary +Committee Mr. Wilson appeared to great advantage. Though sufficiently +confident of the truth of his own opinions, he had essentially +a fair mind; he always had the greatest confidence that if the facts +were probed the correctness of what he believed would be established, +and, <i>therefore</i>, he was always ready to probe the facts to the bottom. +He was likewise a great master of the Socratic art of inquiry; he +was able to frame a series of consecutive questions which gradually +brought an unwilling or a hostile witness to conclusions at which he +by no means wished to arrive. His examination-in-chief, too, was as +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_389">[389]</span>good as his cross-examination, and the animated interest which he +evinced in the subject relieved the dreariness which a rehearsed +extraction of premeditated answers commonly involves. The examination +of Lord Overstone before the Committee of 1848 on Commercial +Distress, that of Mr. Weguelin before the Committee on the +Bank Acts in 1857, and several of the examinations before the Committee +on Life Insurance, of which he was the Chairman, may be +consulted as models in their respective kinds. And it should be +stated that no man could be less overbearing in examination or cross-examination; +much was often extracted from a witness which he did +not wish to state, but it was always extracted fairly, quietly, and by +seemingly inevitable sequence.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson continued at the Board of Control till the resignation +of Lord John Russell’s Cabinet in the spring of 1852. He took part +in the opposition of the Liberal party to Lord Derby’s Government, +and was very deeply interested in the final settlement of the Free +Trade question which was effected by the accession of the Protectionist +party to office. After a very severe contest he was re-elected for +Westbury in July 1852, and on the formation of the Aberdeen +Government he accepted the office of Financial Secretary to the +Treasury, which he continued to hold for five years, until the dissolution +of Lord Palmerston’s administration in the spring of 1857, and +upon his efficiency in which his remarkable reputation as an official +administrator was mainly based.</p> + +<p>The Financial Secretaryship of the Treasury is by no means one +of the most conspicuous offices in the Government, and but few +persons who have not observed political life closely are at all aware +either of its difficulty or of its importance. The office is, indeed, a +curious example of the half grotesque way in which the abstract +theory of our historical Constitution contrasts with its practical +working. In the theory of the Constitution—a theory which may +still be found in popular compendiums—there is an officer called the +Lord High Treasurer, who is to advise the Crown and be responsible +to the country for all public moneys. In practice, there is no such +functionary: by law his office is ‘in commission.’ Certain Lords +Commissioners are supposed to form a Board at which financial +subjects are discussed, and which is responsible for their due administration. +In practice, there is no such discussion and no such responsibility. +The functions of the Junior Lords of the Treasury, though +not entirely nominal, are but slight. The practical administration of +our expenditure is vested in the First Lord of the Treasury, the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_390">[390]</span>Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Financial Secretary of the +Treasury. And of these three the constitutional rule is, that the +First Lord of the Treasury is only officially responsible for decisions +in detail when he chooses to interfere in those decisions. Accordingly, +when a First Lord, as was the case with Sir R. Peel, takes a great +interest in financial questions, the Chancellor of the Exchequer does +the usual work of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Secretary of +the Treasury has in comparison nothing to do. But when, as was the +case in the Governments of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston, the +Prime Minister takes no special interest in finance, the Chancellor of +the Exchequer is very fully employed in the transaction of his own +proper business, and an enormous mass of work, some of it of extreme +importance, falls to the Secretary of the Treasury. Of late years, +the growth of the miscellaneous civil expenditure of the country has +greatly augmented that work, great as it was before. In general, it +may be said that the whole of the financial detail of our national +expenditure is more or less controlled by the Secretary of the +Treasury; that much of it is very closely controlled by him; and +that he has vast powers of practical discretion, if only he be a man of +ability, industry, and courage.</p> + +<p>For such an office as this Mr. Wilson had very peculiar qualifications. +He was perfectly sure to be right in a plain case; and by +far the larger part of the ordinary business of the Government, as +of individuals, consists of plain cases. A man who is thoroughly sure +to decide effectually and correctly the entire mass of easy, obvious +cases, is a safer master of practical life than one eminently skilled in +difficult cases, but deficient in the more rudimentary qualification. +Nor is the power of certainly deciding plain cases rightly, by any +means very common, especially among very intellectual men. A +certain taint of subtlety, a certain tendency to be wise above the +case in hand, mars the practical efficiency of many men whose conversation +and whose powers would induce us to expect that they +would be very efficient. Mr. Wilson had not a particle of these +defects. He struck off each case with a certain sledge-hammer +efficiency, and every plain case at least with infallible accuracy.</p> + +<p>It might seem overstrained eulogy—a eulogy which he would not +have wished—to claim for Mr. Wilson an equally infallible power of +deciding complicated cases. As to such cases there will always be +a doubt. Plain matters speak for themselves: they do not require a +dissertation to elucidate them: every man of business, as soon as he +hears the right decision of them, knows that it is the right decision. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_391">[391]</span>But with more refined matters it is not so; as to points involving an +abstract theory, like that of the currency, there will and must be +differences of judgment to the end of time. We would not, therefore, +whatever may be our own opinion, claim for Mr. Wilson as infallible +a power of deciding difficult questions as he certainly possessed of +deciding plain questions. But we do claim for him even in such +matters the greatest secondary excellence, if, indeed, a secondary +excellence it be. Mr. Wilson was perfectly certain to be <i>intelligible +in the most difficult case</i>. Whether he did right or did wrong, must, +as we have said, be from the nature of the subject-matter very arguable. +But <i>what</i> he did and <i>why</i> he did it, was never in doubt for a +moment. The archives of the Treasury contain countless minutes +from his pen, many of them written with what most men would call +rapidity, just while the matter was waiting for decision, and on all +sorts of subjects, many of them very complicated ones—yet it may +be doubted whether any one of those minutes contains a single sentence +not thoroughly and conspicuously clear. The same excellence +which has been shown in countless articles in the <i>Economist</i> appears +in his business-like documents. Wherever his leading articles were +written and under whatever circumstances—and some of the most +elaborate of them were written under rather strange circumstances +(for he could catch up a pen and begin to write on the most involved +topic, at any time, in any place, and, as a casual observer would +think, without any premeditation)—but wherever and however +these articles might be written, it may be safely asserted that they +do not contain a sentence which a man of business need read twice +over, or which he would not find easily and certainly intelligible. At +the Treasury it was the same. However complicated or involved the +matter to be decided might be—however much it might be loaded +with detail or perplexed by previous controversy—Mr. Wilson never +failed to make immediately clear the exact opinion he formed upon it, +the exact grounds upon which he formed it, and the exact course of +action which he thought should be adopted upon it. Many persons +well acquainted with practical life will be disposed to doubt whether +extreme accuracy of decision is not almost a secondary merit as +compared with a perfect intelligibility. In many cases it may be +better to have a decision which every one can understand, though +with some percentage of error, than an elaborately accurate decision +of which the grounds and reasons are not easily grasped, and a plan +of action which, from its refined complexity, is an inevitable mystery +to the greater number of practical persons. But, putting aside this +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_392">[392]</span>abstract discussion, we say without fear of contradiction or of doubt, +that Mr. Wilson added to his almost infallible power of deciding +plain cases, an infallible certainty of being entirely intelligible in +complicated cases. Men of business will be able to imagine the +administrative capacity certain to be produced by the union of extreme +excellence in both qualities.</p> + +<p>One subsidiary faculty that Mr. Wilson possessed, which was very +useful to him in the multifarious business of the Treasury, was an +extraordinary memory. On his own subjects and upon transactions +in which he had taken a decisive part, he seemed to recollect anything +and everything. He was able to answer questions as to business +transacted at the Treasury after the lapse of months and even of years +without referring to the papers, and with a perfect certainty of substantial +accuracy. He would say, without the slightest effort and +without the slightest idea that he was doing anything extraordinary: +‘Such and such a person came to me at the Treasury, and said so and +so, and this is what I said to him.’ And it is quite possible that he +might remember the precise sums of money which were the subject of +conversation. A more useful memory for the purposes of life was +perhaps never possessed by any one. In the case of great literary +memories, such as that of Lord Macaulay and of others, the fortunate +possessor has a continued source of pleasurable and constantly recurring +recollections; he has a full mind constantly occupied with its +own contents, recurring to its long loved passages from its favourite +authors constantly and habitually. But Mr. Wilson never recurred +to the transactions in which he had been engaged except when he was +asked about them; he lived as little in the past perhaps as is possible +for an intellectual person; but the moment the spring was touched by +a question or by some external necessity, all the details of the past +transaction started into his memory completely, vividly, and perfectly. +He had thus the advantage of always remembering his business, and +also the advantage of never being burdened by it. Very few persons +can ever have had in equal measure the two merits of a fresh judgment +and a full mind.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson’s memory was likewise assisted by a very even judgment. +It was easier to him to remember what he had done, because, +if he had to do the same thing again, he would be sure to do it in +precisely the same way. He was not an intolerant person, but the +qualities he tolerated least easily were flightiness and inconsistency of +purpose. He had furnished his mind, so to say, with fixed principles, +and he hated the notion of a mind which was unfurnished.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_393">[393]</span></p> + +<p>All these mental qualities taken together go far to make up the +complete idea of a perfect administrator of miscellaneous financial +business, such as that of the English Treasury now is. And Mr. Wilson +had the physical qualities also. An iron constitution which feared +no labour, and was very rarely incapacitated even for an hour by any +illness, enabled him to accomplish with ease and unconsciously an +amount of work which few men would not have shrunk from. In +the country, where his habits were necessarily more obvious, he +habitually spent the whole day from eleven till eight, with some +slight interval for a short ride in the middle of the day, over his +Treasury bag; and as such was his notion of a holiday, it may be +easily conceived that in London, when he had still more to do in a +morning, and had to spend almost every evening in the House of +Commons, his work was greater than an ordinary constitution could +have borne. And it was work of a rather peculiar kind. Some men +of routine habits spend many hours over their work, but do not labour +very intensely at one time; other men of more excitable natures work +impulsively, and clear off everything they do by eager efforts in a +short time. But Mr. Wilson in some sense did both. Although his +hours of labour were so very protracted, yet if a casual observer happened +to enter his library at any moment, he would find him with his +blind down to exclude all objects of external interest, his brow working +eagerly, his eye fixed intently on the figures before him, and, very +likely, his rapid pen passing fluently over the paper. He had all the +labour of the chronic worker, and all the labour of the impulsive +worker too. And those admitted to his intimacy used to wonder +that he was never tired. He came out of his library in an evening +more ready for vigorous conversation—more alive to all subjects of +daily interest—more quick to gain new information—more ready to +expound complicated topics, than others who had only passed an easy +day of idleness or ordinary exertion.</p> + +<p>By the aid of this varied combination of powers, Mr. Wilson was +able to grapple with the miscellaneous financial business of the +country with very unusual efficiency. Most men would have found +the office work of the Secretary of the Treasury quite enough, but +he was always ready rather to take away labour and responsibilities +from other departments than to throw off any upon them. Nor was +his efficiency confined to the labours of his office. The Financial +Secretary of the Treasury has a large part of the financial business of +the House of Commons under his control, and is responsible for its +accurate arrangement. The passing a measure through the House of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_394">[394]</span>Commons is a matter of detail; and in the case of the financial +measures of the Government, a large part of this—the dullest part, +and the most unenvied—falls to the Secretary of the Treasury. He +is expected to be the right hand of the Chancellor of the Exchequer +in all the most wearisome part of the financial business of the House +of Commons; and we have the best authority for stating that, under +two Chancellors of the Exchequer very different from one another in +many respects, Mr. Wilson performed this part of his duties with +singular efficiency, zeal, and judgment.</p> + +<p>The Financial Secretary of the Treasury is likewise expected to +answer all questions asked in the House as to the civil estimates—a +most miscellaneous collection of figures, as any one may satisfy +himself by glancing at them. Mr. Wilson’s astonishing memory and +great power of lucid exposition enabled him to fulfil this part of his +duty with very remarkable efficiency. He gave the dates and the +figures without any note, and his exposition was uniformly simple, +emphatic, and intelligible, even on the most complicated subjects. The +great rule, he used to say, was to answer exactly the exact question; if +you attempted an elaborate exposition, collateral issues were necessarily +raised, a debate ensued, and the time of the House was lost.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson’s mercantile knowledge and mercantile sympathies +were found to be of much use in the consolidation of the Customs in +1853, and he took great interest in settling a scheme for the payment +of the duties in cheques instead of bank-notes, by which the circulation +has been largely economised and traders greatly benefited. +During the autumn of 1857, his long study of the currency question, +and his first-hand conversancy with the business of the City, were +valuable aids to the Administration of the day in the anxious responsibilities +and rapidly shifting scenes of an extreme commercial +crisis. It would be impossible to notice the number of measures in +which he took part as Secretary of the Treasury, and equally impossible +to trace his precise share in them. That office ensures to +its holder substantial power, but can rarely give him legislative fame.</p> + +<p>On two occasions during his tenure of office at the Treasury, Mr. +Wilson was offered a different post. In the autumn of 1856 he was +offered the Chairmanship of Inland Revenue, a permanent office of +considerable value then vacant, which he declined because he did not +consider the income necessary, and because (what some people would +think odd) it did not afford sufficient occupation. It was a ‘good +pillow,’ he said, ‘but he did not wish to lie down.’ The second +office offered him was the Vice-Presidency of the Board of Trade in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_395">[395]</span>1855, which would have been a step to him in official rank, but +which would have entailed a new election, and he did not feel quite +secure that the electors of Westbury would again return him. He +did not, however, by any means wish for the change, as the Vice-Presidency +of the Board of Trade, though nominally superior, is in +real power far inferior to the Secretaryship of the Treasury.</p> + +<p>In the general election of 1857, Mr. Wilson was returned for +Devonport, for which place he continued to sit till his departure for +India. He went out of office on the dissolution of Lord Palmerston’s +Administration in the spring of 1858, and took an active part in the +Liberal opposition to Lord Derby’s Government, though it may be +remarked that he carefully abstained from using the opportunities +afforded him by his long experience at the Treasury, of harassing his +less experienced successors in financial office by needless and petty +difficulties.</p> + +<p>On the return of the Liberal party to power, Mr. Wilson was +asked to resume his post at the Treasury, but he declined, as, after +five years of laborious service, he wished to have an office of which +the details were less absorbing. He accepted, however, the Vice-Presidency +of the Board of Trade—an office which is not in itself +attractive, but which gives its possessor a sort of claim to be President +of the Board at the next vacancy. The office of President is frequently +accompanied by a seat in the Cabinet, and Mr. Wilson’s +reputation on all subjects connected with trade was so firmly established +that in his case it would have been practically impossible to +pass him over, even if it had been wished. He had, however, secured +so firm a position in official circles by his real efficiency, that the +dispensers of patronage were, as he believed, likely to give him +whatever he desired as soon as the exigencies of party enabled them +to do so.</p> + +<p>He had not been long in office before he had good reason for +thinking that he would be offered by the Government the office of +Financial Member of the Council of India under very peculiar circumstances. +There had never before been such an officer. One +member of Council had since 1833 been always sent out from +England, but he had always been a lawyer, and his functions were +those of a jurist and a regulative administrator, not those of a +financier. The mutiny of the Sepoys in 1857 had, however, left +behind it a deficit with which the financiers of India did not <i>seem</i> to +be able to cope, and which a cumbrous financial system did not give +them the best means of vanquishing. There was a general impression +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_396">[396]</span>that some one with an English training and English habits of business +would have a better chance of overcoming the most pressing difficulty +of India than any one on the spot. And there was an equally +general impression that if any one were to be sent from England to +India with such an object, Mr. Wilson was the right person. He +united high financial reputation, considerable knowledge of India +acquired at the Board of Control, tried habits of business, long +experience at the English Treasury, to the sagacious readiness in +dealing with new situations which self-made men commonly have, +but which is commonly wanting in others.</p> + +<p>On personal grounds Mr. Wilson was disinclined to accept the +office. He was on the threshold of the Cabinet here; he was entitled +by his long tenure of office at the Treasury to a pension which would +merge in the salary of Indian Councillor; the emoluments of the +latter office were not necessary to him; his life was very heavily +insured for the benefit of his family; though he had never during his +tenure of office at the Treasury been connected directly or indirectly +with any kind of commercial undertaking (the <i>Economist</i> alone excepted), +some investments which he made in land and securities, +entirely beyond the range of politics, had been very fortunate; since +the year 1844 everything of a pecuniary kind in which he had been +concerned had not only prospered, but remarkably prospered; he felt +himself sufficiently rich to pursue the career of prosperous usefulness +and satisfied ambition that seemed to be before him here. There was +no consideration of private interest which could induce him to undertake +anxious and dangerous duties in India; he even ran some +pecuniary risk in leaving this country, as it was possible that in the +vicissitudes of newspaper property the <i>Economist</i> might again need the +attention of its proprietor and founder. On public grounds, however, +he believed that it was his duty to accept the office; he took a keen +interest in Indian finance; believed that the difficulties of it might be +conquered, and thought that in even <i>attempting</i> to conquer them he +would be doing the greatest and most lasting public service that it +was in <i>his</i> power to accomplish.</p> + +<p>He accordingly accepted the office of Financial Member of the +Council of India, and proceeded to make somewhat melancholy arrangements +for leaving this country. He broke up his establishment +here, bade farewell to his constituents at Devonport and to the inhabitants +of his native place, attended some influential public meetings +in towns deeply interested in the commerce of India, and on October +20, 1859, left England, as it proved, for ever.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_397">[397]</span></p> + +<p>Of Mr. Wilson’s policy in India it would not be proper to give +more than a very brief sketch here. That policy is still fresh in the +memory of the public; it has been very frequently explained and +discussed in the <i>Economist</i>; it is still being tried; and, though he was +fully persuaded of the expediency of his measures, he would not have +wished for too warm a eulogy of them while they are as yet untested +by the event. In almost the last letter which the present writer +received from him, there was a sort of reprimand for permitting this +journal to draw too great an attention to his plans, and to ascribe the +merit of them too exclusively to him, and too little to the Government +of which he was a member.</p> + +<p>On his arrival in India he found that the Governor-General was +on a tour in the Upper Provinces of India, and before doing any +business of importance at Calcutta he travelled thither. This journey +he thought very advantageous, because it gave him a great insight +into the nature of the country, and enabled him to consult the most +experienced revenue officers of many large districts on their respective +resources, and on the safest mode of making those resources available +to the public. He was much struck with the capabilities of the +country, and wrote to England in almost so many words ‘that it was +a fine country to <i>tax</i>.’ On the other hand, however, he was well +aware of the difficulty of his task. The only two possible modes of +taxation are direct and indirect, and in the case of India there is a +difficulty in adopting either. If we select indirect taxation and +impose duties on consumable commodities, the natives of India meet +us by declining to consume. Their wants are few, and they will +forego most of them if a tax can be evaded thereby. On the other +hand, if we adopt in India a direct tax on property or income, there +is great difficulty in finding out what each man’s property or income +is. In England we trust each person to tell us the amount of his +income, but even here the results are not wholly satisfactory; and it +would be absurd to fancy that we can place as much reliance upon +the veracity of Orientals as upon that of Englishmen.</p> + +<p>These difficulties, however, Mr. Wilson was prepared to meet. On +February 18, 1860, he proposed his Budget to the Legislative Council +at Calcutta, and the reception given to it by all classes was remarkably +favourable. He announced, indeed, a scheme of heavy taxation, but +the Indian public had been living for a considerable time under a sentence +of indefinite taxation, and they were glad to know the worst. +Anything distinct was better than vague suspense, and, as usual, Mr. +Wilson contrived to make his meaning <i>very</i> distinct. His bearing also +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_398">[398]</span>exercised a great influence over the Anglo-Indian public. In England +he had been remarkable among official men for his constant animation +and thorough naturalness of manner: in his office he was as much +himself as at a dinner-table or in the House of Commons: he had no +tinge of supercilious politeness or artificial blandness. In any new +scene of action—especially in such a scene as British India—these +qualities were sure to tell beneficially. Plain directness and emphatic +simplicity were the external qualities most likely to be useful at +Calcutta, and these were Mr. Wilson’s most remarkable qualities.</p> + +<p>The principal feature of Mr. Wilson’s Budget was the Income +Tax, which he avowedly framed after the English fashion. It is true +that but little reliance can, perhaps, be placed on the statements of +Orientals as to their wealth. It is very possible that the complicated +machinery of forms and notices which is in use here may not be +applicable in India. All this Mr. Wilson well knew. But he +thought that our Indian subjects should have an opportunity of +stating their income before they were taxed upon it. If they should +state it untruly, or should decline to state it, it might be necessary to +tax them arbitrarily. But he did not think, it would be decent—that +it would be civilised—to begin with an arbitrary assessment. +By the Income Tax Act which he framed, it is enacted that other +modes may be substituted if in any instance the English mode of +assessment should prove inapplicable. In other words, if our Oriental +fellow-subjects will not tell us the truth when they are asked, we +must tax them as best we can, and they cannot justly complain of +unfairness and inequality. <i>We</i> would have been mathematically just, +if <i>they</i> had given us the means.</p> + +<p>The reception of Mr. Wilson’s Budget was universally favourable +until the publication of the minute of Sir C. Trevelyan, which, as +was inevitable, produced a serious reaction. Heavy taxation can +never be very pleasant, and in the Presidency of Madras Sir Charles +gave the sanction of the Government—of the highest authority the +people saw—to the hope that they would not be taxed. The prompt +recall of Sir Charles, however, did much to convince the natives of +the firm determination of the English Government, and Mr. Wilson +hoped that the ordeal of criticism through which his measures had to +pass would ultimately be favourable to them. It certainly secured +them from the accusation of being prepared in haste, but it purchased +this benefit at the loss to the public of much precious time, and to +Mr. Wilson of precious health. Of the substance of this minute it +is sufficient to say that its fundamental theory that additional taxation +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_399">[399]</span>of any sort was unnecessary in India, has scarcely been believed by +any one except its author. Almost every one has deemed it too +satisfactory to be true.</p> + +<p>On another point Mr. Wilson’s Budget has been criticised in +England, though not in India. It has been considered to be a protective +Budget. The mistake has arisen from not attending to what +that Budget is. The changes made by Mr. Wilson in the import +duties were two. ‘The first was a reduction from twenty to ten per +cent. upon a long list of articles, including haberdashery, millinery, +and hosiery, all part of the cotton trade; the second was an increase +in the duty upon cotton yarn from five to ten per cent., thus creating +a uniform tariff of ten per cent.’⁠<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> Of these two, it is plain the +reduction from twenty per cent. to ten was not a change that would +operate as a protection to Indian industry; and the increase of the +duty on yarn has a contrary tendency. Yarn is an earlier, cloth a +later, stage of manufacture, and in Mr. Wilson’s own words, ‘it is a +low duty on yarn and a high duty on cloth that encourages native +weaving.’ For the effect of the general system of high Customs +duties in India Mr. Wilson is not responsible, but his predecessors. +What <i>he</i> did has no protective tendency.</p> + +<p>If the Income Tax should, as may be fairly hoped, become a permanent +part of the financial system of India, it will serve for a considerable +period to keep Mr. Wilson’s name alive there. So efficient +an expedient must always attract the notice of the public, and must +in some degree preserve the remembrance of the Minister by whom +it was proposed. Mr. Wilson, however, undertook two other +measures of very great importance. One of these has been frequently +described as the introduction into India of the English system of +public accounts. But it would be more truly described as the introduction +of a rational system of public accounts. There are three +natural steps in national finance, which are certainly clearly marked +in our English system, but which have a necessary existence independent +of that recognition. These three are—first, the estimate of +future expenditure; secondly, what we call the Budget, that is the +official calculation of the income by which the coming expenditure is +to be defrayed; thirdly, the audit which shows what the expenditure +has been and how it has been met. The system of finance which Mr. +Wilson found in India neglected these fundamental distinctions. +There were no satisfactory estimates of future expenditure, and no +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_400">[400]</span>satisfactory calculation of future income. In consequence, the calculations +of the official departments have been wrong by millions +sterling, and English statesmen have felt great difficulty not only in +saying how the deficit was to be removed, but likewise in ascertaining +what the amount of the deficit was. At the time of his death, Mr. +Wilson was eagerly occupied in endeavouring to introduce a better +system.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson will likewise be remembered as the first Minister +who endeavoured to introduce into India a Government paper currency. +On March 3, 1860, he introduced into the Legislative Council +an elaborate plan for this purpose, which, with a slight modification +by Sir C. Wood—curious in the theory of the currency, but practically +not very important—will speedily, it is probable, be the fundamental +currency law—the ‘Peel’s Act’ of British India.</p> + +<p>The exact mode in which Mr. Wilson regarded these great objects, +will perhaps be better explained by two extracts from his latest +letters than by any other means. On July 4, he wrote to a friend:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘Firmness and justice are the only policy for India: no vacillation, +or you are gone. They like to be governed; and respect an iron hand, +if it be but equal and just. I have, I think, more confidence than ever +that the taxes will be established and collected, and without disturbance. +But the task is still an enormous one. I must retrench yet at least three +and a half millions, and get the same sum from my new taxes to make both +ends meet. I am putting the screw on very strongly, but rather by an improved +policy in army and police than in reductions of salaries and establishments, +which cannot be made. I have set myself <i>five</i> great points of +policy to introduce and carry out.</p> + +<p>‘1. To extend a system of sound taxation to the great trading classes, +who hitherto have been exempted, though chiefly benefited by our enormously +increased civil expenditure.</p> + +<p>‘2. To establish a paper currency.</p> + +<p>‘3. To reform and remodel our financial system, by a plan of annual +budgets and estimates, with a Pay Department to check issues, and keep +them within the authorised limits,—and an effective audit.</p> + +<p>‘4. A great police system of semi-military organisation, but usually of +purely civil application, which, dear though it be, will be cheaper by half a +million than our present wretched and expensive system,—and by which we +shall be able to reduce our native army to at least one-third;—and by which +alone we can utilise the natives as an arm of defence without the danger of +congregating idle organised masses.</p> + +<p>‘5. Public works and roads, with a view to increased production of cotton, +flax, wool, and European raw materials.</p> + +<p>‘The four first I have made great progress in: the latter must follow. +But you will call it “a large order.” However, you have no idea of the increased +capacity of the mind for undertaking a special service of this kind +when removed to a new scene of action, and when one throws off all the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_401">[401]</span>cares of engagements less or more trivial by which one is surrounded in +ordinary life, and throws one’s whole soul into such a special service, and particularly +when one feels assured of having the power to carry it out. I cannot +tell you with what ease one determines the largest and gravest question +here compared with in England; and I am certain that the more one can +exercise real power, there is by far the greater tendency to moderation, care, +and prudence.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>In a second letter, dated July 19, he wrote to the same friend +from Barrackpore:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>‘The Indian Exchequer is a huge machine. The English Treasury is +nothing to it for complexity, diversity, and remoteness of the points of +action. Our great enemies are time and distance; and with all our frontier +territories there is scarcely a day passes that we have not an account of some +row or inroad. It is a most unwieldy Empire to be governed on the principle +of forcing civilisation at every point of it. One day it is the frontier +of Scinde and a quarrel with our native chiefs, which our Resident must +check; another, it is an intrigue between Heraut and Cabul, with a report +of Russian forces in the background; the next, there is a raid upon our +Punjab frontiers to be chastised; then come some accounts of coolness, or +misunderstanding, or unreasonable demands from our ally in Nepaul; then +follow some inroads from the savage tribes which inhabit the mountains to +the rear of Assam and up the Burrampootra; then we have reported brawls +in Burmah and Pegu, and disputes among the hill tribes whose relations to +the British and the Burmah Governments are ill defined; then we have +Central India, with our loyal chiefs Scindiah and Holkar, independent princes +with most turbulent populations, which could not be kept in order a day +without the presence of British troops and of the Governor-General’s Agent. +Besides all these, we have among ourselves a thousand questions of internal +administration, rendered more difficult by the ill-defined relations between +the Supreme and the Subordinate Governments—the latter always striving +to encroach, the former to hold its own. Hence, questions do not come before +us simply on their merits, but often as involving these doubtful rights. +Then we have Courts of Justice to reform, as well as all other institutions of +a domestic kind not to reform alone, but to extend to new territories. Then +we have a deficit of 7,000,000<i>l.</i>, and had a Government teaching the people +that all could be done without new taxes. But unfortunately all, except the +taxes, are a present certainty—<i>they</i> are a future contingency. What will +they yield? I have no precise knowledge. I think from three to four millions +a year when in full bloom: this financial year not more than a million.</p> + +<p>‘I have now got a Military Finance Commission in full swing; a Civil +Finance Commission also going: I am reorganising the Finance, Pay, and +Accountant-General’s Department, in order to get all the advantage of the +English system of estimates, Pay Office, and Audit:—and this with as little +disturbance of existing plans as possible. The latter is a point I have especially +aimed at. On the whole, and almost without an exception, I have +willing allies in all the existing Offices. No attempt that I see is anywhere +made to thwart or impede.</p> + +<p>‘You can well understand, then, how full my hands are, if to all these +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_402">[402]</span>you add the new currency arrangements; you will not then wonder that my +health has rendered it necessary to come down here for a day or two to get +some fresh air.’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>It will be observed that in the last extract Mr. Wilson alludes to +his impaired health. For some time after his arrival in India he +seemed scarcely to feel the climate. He certainly did not feel it as +much as might have been anticipated. He worked extremely hard; +scarcely wrote a private letter, but devoted the whole of his great +energies to the business around him. His letters for a considerable +time abound with such expressions as ‘Notwithstanding all my hard +work, my health is excellent.’ From the commencement of the rainy +season at Calcutta, however, he ceased to be equally well, his state +began to arouse the apprehensions of experienced observers, and he +was warned that he should retire for a short time to a better climate. +He would not, however, do so until his financial measures had advanced +sufficiently far for him to leave them. His position was a +very peculiar one. In general, if one administrator leaves his post, +another is found to fill it up. But Mr. Wilson was a unique man at +Calcutta. He was sent there because he had certain special qualifications, +which no one there possessed; and, accordingly, he had no one +to rely on in his peculiar functions save himself. His presence on the +spot was likewise very important. The administration of a department +can be frequently transacted by letter, but the organisation of +new departments and new schemes requires the unremitting attention +of the organiser—the impulse of his energy. The interest, too, which +Mr. Wilson took in public business was exceptionally great, and no +one who knew him well would suppose that <i>he</i> would leave Calcutta +while necessary work, or what he deemed so, was to be done there.</p> + +<p>Nor was labour the sole trial to which his constitution was exposed. +The success of measures so extensive as his, must ever be a +matter of anxious doubt until the event decides; and in his case there +were some momentary considerations to aggravate that anxiety. There +was no experience of such taxation as he had proposed, and the effect +of it must therefore be difficult to foresee. Moreover, for a brief +period, a famine seemed to be imminent in Upper India, which must +have disturbed the whole operation of his financial schemes. In his +debilitated state of health this last source of anxiety seemed much to +weigh upon him.</p> + +<p>About the middle of July he went for a week to Barrackpore, +near Calcutta. The change was, however, too slight, and, as might +be expected, he returned to Calcutta without any material benefit. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_403">[403]</span>From that time the disease gradually augmented, and on the evening +of August 2, he went to bed never to rise from it again. For many +days he continued to be very ill, and his family experienced the usual +alternations of hope and fear. He was quite aware of his critical +state, and made all necessary arrangements with his habitual deliberation +and calmness.</p> + +<p>Lord Canning saw him on the 9th for the last time, and was +much struck with the change which illness had made in him. He +believed that he saw death in his face, and was deeply impressed with +the vivid interest which, even in the last stage of weakness, he took +in public affairs, with his keen desire for the success of his plans, and +with the little merit which he was disposed to claim for his own share +in them.</p> + +<p>It was hoped that he would be strong enough to bear removal, and +it was intended to delay the mail steamer for a few hours to take him +to sea—the usual remedy at Calcutta for diseases of the climate. But +when the time came there was no chance that his strength would be +adequate to the effort. During the whole of the 11th he sank rapidly, +and at half past six in the evening he breathed his last.</p> + +<p>The mourning in Calcutta was more universal than had ever +been remembered. He had not been long in India, but while he had +been there he filled a conspicuous and great part; he had done so +much, that there were necessarily doubts in the minds of some as to +the expediency of part of it. No such doubts, however, were thought +of now. ‘That he should have come out to die here!’—‘That he +should have left a great English career <i>for this</i>!’—were the phrases in +every one’s mouth. The funeral was the largest ever known at +Calcutta. It was attended by almost the entire population, from the +Governor-General downwards, and not a single voice, on any ground +whatever, dissented from the general grief.</p> + +<p>Very little now remains to be said. A few scattered details, some +of them perhaps trivial, must complete this sketch.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson’s face was striking, though not handsome. His features +were irregular, but had a peculiar look of mind and energy, while a +strongly marked brow and very large eyebrows gave to all who saw +him an unfailing impression of massive power and firm determination.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson’s moral character in its general features resembled his +intellectual. He was not a man of elaborate scruples and difficult +doubts, and he did not much like those who were. His conscientiousness +was of a plain, but very practical kind; he had a single-minded +rectitude which went straight to the pith of a moral difficulty—which +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_404">[404]</span>showed him what he ought to do. On such subjects he was somewhat +intolerant of speculative reasoning. ‘The common sense is so +and so,’ he used to say, and he did not wish to be plagued with anything +else.</p> + +<p>In one respect his manner did not uniformly give a true impression +of him. He always succeeded in conveying his meaning, in stating +what he wished to have done and why he wished it; he never failed +to convince any one of his inexhaustible vigour and his substantial +ability; but he sometimes did fail in giving a true expression to his +latent generosity and real kindliness. He shrank almost nervously +from the display of feeling, and sometimes was thought by casual +observers to feel nothing, when in reality he was much more sensitive +than they were. Another peculiarity which few persons would have +attributed to him aided this mistake. It may seem strange in a +practised Secretary of the Treasury, but he used to say that through +life he had suffered far more from shyness than from anything else. +Only very close observers could have discovered this, for his manner +was habitually impressive and unfaltering. But common acquaintances, +sometimes even persons who saw him on business, erroneously +imputed to unthinking curtness, that which was due in truth to nervous +hesitation.</p> + +<p>With his subordinates in office he was, however, very cordial. +He discussed matters of business with them, listened carefully to their +suggestions or objections, and very frequently was guided by their +recommendations. He had no paltry desire to monopolise the whole +credit of what might be done. He probably worked harder than any +Secretary of the Treasury before or since; but so far from depressing +those below him, he encouraged their exertions, co-operated with +them, and was ever ready to bear hearty testimony to the tried merit +of efficient public servants. He was also quite willing to forget the +temporary misunderstandings which are so apt to occur among earnest +men who take different views of public affairs. He was eminently +tolerant. Though he had almost always a strong conviction of his +own, he never felt the least wish to silence discussion. Believing +that his own opinions were true, he was only the more confident that +the more the subject was discussed, the more true they would be found +to be. Few men ever transacted so much important business with so +little of the pettiness of personal feeling.</p> + +<p>In the foregoing sketch Mr. Wilson has of necessity been regarded +almost exclusively as a public man, but his private life has +many remarkable features, if it were proper to enlarge on them. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_405">[405]</span>His enjoyment of simple pleasures, of society, of scenery, of his home, +was very vivid. No one who saw him in his unemployed moments +would have believed that he was one of the busiest public men of his +time. He never looked worn or jaded, and always contributed more +than his share of geniality and vivacity to the scene around him. +Like Sir Walter Scott, he loved a bright light; and the pleasantest +society to him was that of the cheerful and the young.</p> + +<p>The universal regret which has been expressed at Mr. Wilson’s +death is the best tribute to his memory. It has been universally felt +that on his special subjects and for his peculiar usefulness he was ‘a +finished man,’ and in these respects he has left few such behind him. +The qualities which he had the opportunity of displaying were those +of an administrator and a financier. But some of those who knew +him best, believed that he only wanted an adequate opportunity to +show that he had also many of the higher qualities of a statesman; +and it was the feeling that he would perhaps have such an opportunity +which reconciled them to his departure for India. As will have +been evident from this narrative, he was placed in many changing +circumstances, and in the gradual ascent of life was tried by many +increasing difficulties. But at every step his mind grew with the +occasion. We at least believe that he had a great sagacity and a +great equanimity, which might have been fitly exercised on the very +greatest affairs. But it was not so to be.</p> + +<p>The intelligence of Mr. Wilson’s death was formally communicated +by the Indian to the Home Government in the following despatch:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p class="center">‘To the Right Honourable Sir Charles Wood, Bart., G.C.B., Secretary of State +for India.</p> + +<p>‘<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—The painful task is imposed upon us of announcing to Her Majesty’s +Government the death of our colleague, the Right Honourable James Wilson.</p> + +<p>‘2. This lamentable event took place on the evening of Saturday, the 11th, +after an illness of a few days.</p> + +<p>‘3. We enclose a copy of the notification by which we yesterday communicated +the mournful intelligence to the public. The funeral took place at the +time mentioned in the notification; and the great respect in which our +lamented colleague was held was evinced by a very large attendance of the +general community, in addition to the public officers, civil and military.</p> + +<p>‘4. We are unable adequately to express our sense of the great loss which +the public interests have sustained in Mr. Wilson’s death. We do not doubt, +however, that this will be as fully appreciated by Her Majesty’s Government, +as it is by ourselves, and as we have every reason to believe it will be by the +community generally throughout India.</p> + +<p>‘5. But we should not satisfy our feelings in communicating this sad +occurrence to Her Majesty’s Government, if we did not state our belief that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_406">[406]</span>the fatal disease which has removed Mr. Wilson from amongst us was in a +great degree the consequence of his laborious application to the duties of his +high position, and of his conscientious determination not to cease from the +prosecution of the important measures of which he had charge, until their +success was ensured. Actuated by a self-denying devotion to the objects for +which he came out to this country, Mr. Wilson continued to labour indefatigably +long after the general state of his health had become such as to cause +anxiety to the physician who attended him, and it was within a few days +only after the Income Tax had become law, and when, at the earnest request +of his medical adviser, he was preparing to remove from Calcutta for the +remainder of the rainy season, that he was seized with the illness that has +carried him off.</p> + +<p>‘6. It is our sincere conviction that this eminent public servant sacrificed +his life in the discharge of his duty.—We have, &c.,</p> + +<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 2.25em;">‘<span class="smcap">Canning</span>.</span><br> +‘<span class="smcap">H. B. E. Frere</span>.<br> +<span style="margin-right: 1.5em;">‘<span class="smcap">C. Beadon</span>.</span></p> + +<p>‘<span class="smcap">Fort William</span>, <i>August 13.</i>’</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p class="titlepage">END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.</p> + +<p class="center smaller">PRINTED BY<br> +SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE<br> +LONDON</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES">FOOTNOTES</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> This essay appeared in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i> for October 1877, and is +now republished, with slight alterations, by the kind permission of the editor +and proprietors of that Review. In most of the alterations now made, as +well as in a great part of the original essay, I have been greatly assisted by +the help of Mrs. Walter Bagehot.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> <i>Prospective Review</i>, No. 31, for August 1852, a paper too strictly temporary +and practical in its aim for republication now.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> See <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/78450/78450-h/78450-h.htm#Page_232">volume ii., page 232</a>, of this work.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> See Appendix to this volume, <a href="#Page_335">page 335</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> See <a href="#Page_43">vol. i. p. 43</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> See <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/78450/78450-h/78450-h.htm#Page_66">vol. ii. p. 66</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> See <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/78450/78450-h/78450-h.htm#Page_67">vol. ii. p. 67</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> <i>Physics and Politics</i>, p. 10.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/78450/78450-h/78450-h.htm#Page_71">Volume ii. p. 71</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> <i>Poems and Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough</i>, vol. i. p. 175.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> See Appendix to this volume, <a href="#Page_329">page 329</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> Since the first edition of this work was published, the Oxford Board of +Studies have made a text-book of Mr. Bagehot’s <i>English Constitution</i> for that +University.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> See <a href="#Page_28">vol. i. p. 28</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> This essay I hope to republish with others on English Statesmen in a +future volume of Studies in Political Biography.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> <i>Physics and Politics</i>, p. 57.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> <i>The Postulates of Political Economy.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> <i>A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith.</i> By his Daughter, Lady Holland. +With a Selection from his Letters. Edited by Mrs. Austin. 2 vols. Longmans.</p> + +<p><i>Lord Jeffrey’s Contributions to the Edinburgh Review.</i> A new Edition in +one volume. Longmans.</p> + +<p><i>Lord Brougham’s Collected Works.</i> Vols. I. II. III. <i>Lives of Philosophers +of the Reign of George III.</i> <i>Lives of Men of Letters of the Reign of George +III.</i> <i>Historical Sketches of the Statesmen who flourished in the Reign of George +III.</i> Griffin.</p> + +<p><i>The Rev. Sydney Smith’s Miscellaneous Works. Including his Contributions +to the Edinburgh Review.</i> Longmans.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> Sydney Smith, Memoirs, vol. i. p. 489.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> This was published in October, 1855.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> ‘Horner is ill. He was desired to read amusing books: upon searching +his library, it appeared he had no amusing books; the nearest approach to a +work of that description being the <i>Indian Trader’s Complete Guide</i>.’—<i>Sydney +Smith’s Letter to Lady Holland.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> Letter from Lord Murray.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a> The first words of Jeffrey’s review of The Excursion are, ‘This will +never do.’</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a> <i>Hartley Coleridge’s Lives of the Northern Worthies.</i> A new Edition. +3 vols. Moxon.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a> This essay was published immediately after the death of the Duke of +Wellington.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">[25]</a> Keats in the Preface to Endymion.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="label">[26]</a> <i>The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.</i> Edited by Mrs. Shelley. 1853.</p> + +<p><i>Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations, and Fragments.</i> By Percy +Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. 1854.</p> + +<p><i>The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley.</i> By Captain Thomas Medwin. 1847.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="label">[27]</a> <i>Shakespeare et son Temps: Étude Littéraire</i>. Par M. Guizot. Paris. 1852.</p> + +<p><i>Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare’s Plays from early +Manuscript Corrections in a Copy of the Folio, 1632, in the possession of R. +Payne Collier, Esq., F.S.A.</i> London. 1853.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="label">[28]</a> The only antiquarian thing which can be fairly called an anecdote of +Shakespeare is, that Mrs. Alleyne, a shrewd woman in those times, and +married to Mr. Alleyne, the founder of Dulwich Hospital, was one day, in the +absence of her husband, applied to on some matter by a player who gave a +reference to Mr. Hemmings (the ‘notorious’ Mr. Hemmings, the commentators +say) and to Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe, and that the latter, when referred +to, said, ‘Yes, certainly, he knew him, and he was a rascal and good-for-nothing.’ +The proper speech of a substantial man, such as it is worth +while to give a reference to.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="label">[29]</a> <i>The Life of John Milton, narrated in connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical, +and Literary History of his time.</i> By David Masson, M.A., Professor +of English Literature in University College, London. Cambridge: Macmillan.</p> + +<p><i>An Account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton.</i> By Thomas +Keightley; with an Introduction to Paradise Lost. London: Chapman and +Hall.</p> + +<p><i>The Poems of Milton</i>, with Notes by Thomas Keightley. London: Chapman +and Hall.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="label">[30]</a> <i>The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.</i> Edited by her +Great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe. Third edition, with Additions and Corrections +derived from the original Manuscripts, illustrative Notes, and a New +Memoir. By W. Moy Thomas. In two volumes. London: Henry Bohn.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="label">[31]</a> <i>Poetical Works of William Cowper.</i> Edited by Robert Bell. J. W. +Parker and Son.</p> + +<p><i>The Life of William Cowper, with Selections from his Correspondence.</i> +Being Volume I. of the Library of Christian Biography, superintended by +the Rev. Robert Bickersteth. Seeley, Jackson, and Co.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="label">[32]</a> This was the second article in the first number of the <i>National +Review</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="label">[33]</a> The general reader may not before have read, that the Rue du Coq +l’Honoré is an old and well-known street in Paris, and that notwithstanding +the substitution of the eagle for cock as a military emblem, there is no +thought of changing its name.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="label">[34]</a> [As a curious illustration of Mr. Bagehot’s estimate of the character of +the third Empire, I may mention that all the earlier part of this paper, all +that which dwelt on the good side of the imperial <i>régime</i> in relation to +matters of material prosperity, was reproduced in the French official journals, +while all the equally true and even more useful criticism on its moral deficiencies, +was carefully omitted.—<span class="smcap">Editor.</span>]</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="label">[35]</a> This was published as a supplement to the <i>Economist</i>, soon after Mr. +Wilson’s death in 1860.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="label">[36]</a> He was married on January 5, 1832, to Miss Elizabeth Preston, of Newcastle, +and this has given rise to a statement that he was once in business at +Newcastle. This is, however, an entire mistake. He was never in business +anywhere except at Hawick and London. It may be added, that on the occasion +of his marriage he voluntarily ceased to be a member of the Society +of Friends, for whom he always, however, retained a high respect. During +the rest of his life he was a member of the Church of England.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="label">[37]</a> Among his friends of this period should be especially mentioned Mr. G. +R. Porter, of the Board of Trade, the author of <i>The Progress of the Nation</i>, +whose mind he described twenty years later as the most accurate he had ever +known.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="label">[38]</a> <i>Economist</i> of Sept. 8, 1860, p. 977.</p></div> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="nobreak">WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">London: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER, & CO. Limited.</span></p> + +</div> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="center smaller"><i>Uniform with ‘Literary Studies.’</i></p> + +<p class="center smaller">8vo. price 10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p class="center larger">ECONOMIC STUDIES:</p> + +<p class="center">IN ILLUSTRATION OF THE PRESENT CONDITION AND THE +GRADUAL GROWTH OF THE SCIENCE OF +POLITICAL ECONOMY.</p> + +<p class="center"><i>A POSTHUMOUS WORK.</i></p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="center smaller"><i>Uniform with the above.</i></p> + +<p class="center smaller">8vo. price 12<i>s.</i></p> + +<p class="center larger">BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES.</p> + +<p class="center">Edited by RICHARD HOLT HUTTON.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="center smaller">Crown 8vo. price 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p class="center">A PRACTICAL PLAN FOR<br> +<span class="mid">ASSIMILATING THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN MONEY,</span><br> +AS A STEP TOWARDS A UNIVERSAL MONEY.</p> + +<p class="center smaller"><i>Reprinted from <span class="smcap">The Economist</span>.</i></p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="center smaller">Crown 8vo. price 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p class="center larger">THE POSTULATES OF ENGLISH +POLITICAL ECONOMY.</p> + +<p class="center">London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="center smaller">NINTH EDITION.</p> + +<p class="center smaller">1 vol. crown 8vo. price 7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p class="center larger">LOMBARD STREET:<br> +<span class="smaller">A DESCRIPTION OF THE MONEY MARKET.</span></p> + +<p>‘The subject is one, it is almost needless to say, on which Mr. Bagehot writes +with the authority of a man who combines practical experience with scientific +study.’</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Saturday Review.</span></p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="center smaller">FIFTH EDITION, Revised and Corrected.</p> + +<p class="center smaller">1 vol. crown 8vo. price 7<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p class="center larger">THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION.</p> + +<p class="center">WITH AN INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON RECENT +CHANGES AND EVENTS.</p> + +<p>‘No writer before Mr. Bagehot had set out so clearly what the efficient part +of the English Constitution really is.’</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Pall Mall Gazette.</span></p> + +<p>‘A pleasing and clever study in the department of higher politics.’</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Guardian.</span></p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="center smaller">EIGHTH EDITION.</p> + +<p class="center smaller">1 vol. crown 8vo. price 4<i>s.</i></p> + +<p class="center larger">PHYSICS AND POLITICS:<br> +<span class="smaller">THOUGHTS ON THE APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF ‘NATURAL +SELECTION’ AND ‘INHERITANCE’ TO POLITICAL SOCIETY.</span></p> + +<p>‘Full of shrewd suggestions and argumentative subtleties.’</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">British Quarterly Review.</span></p> + +<p>‘No one will be able to turn over its pages without having his mind stirred by +many of the most interesting subjects of human thought.’</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Examiner.</span></p> + +<p>‘Mr. Bagehot writes in a graceful style, and has much to say upon political +topics that is well worth attention. We can recommend the book as well +deserving to be read by thoughtful students of politics.’</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Saturday Review.</span></p> + +<p>‘A work of really original and interesting speculation.’</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Guardian.</span></p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="center smaller">8vo. price 5<i>s.</i></p> + +<p class="center larger">SOME ARTICLES<br> +<span class="smaller">ON THE</span><br> +DEPRECIATION OF SILVER<br> +<span class="smaller">AND</span><br> +TOPICS CONNECTED WITH IT.</p> + +<p class="center">The Articles are those contributed to the <i>Economist</i> on the Silver Question, by +Mr. Bagehot, with a Preface written by himself, shortly before his death, +in view of this publication.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="center smaller">1 vol. crown 8vo. price 5<i>s.</i></p> + +<p class="center larger">ESSAYS<br> +<span class="smaller">ON</span><br> +PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.</p> + +<p class="center">REPUBLISHED 1883, by<br> +<span class="smcap">KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER, & CO. Limited</span>, London.</p> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78449 ***</div> +</body> +</html> |