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 William Ewart Gladstone.
 
 < 
 
 Companion Classics. 
 
 Arthur Henry Hallam, 
 
 BY 
 
 illiam Ewart Gladstone. 
 
 Reprint from The Youth's Companion, 
 January 6. i8g8. 
 
 Boston . 
 Perry Mason & Company.
 
 
 . H 
 
 ONE of the literary events of the nineteenth 
 century was the publication of Tennyson's 
 "In Memoriam." Critics, however, conceding 
 its nobility as a poem, have questioned whether 
 the poet did not hold an almost mythical 
 estimate of its hero, Arthur Henry Hallam. 
 
 It was eminently fitting, therefore, that "the 
 greatest living Englishman" should revive his 
 memories of the days when he and Hallam 
 were boys together. To Mr. Gladstone's tender 
 and convincing tribute nothing need be added. 
 It will survive, a landmark of literature, side 
 by side with the masterpiece which it justifies 
 and adorns.
 
 Arthur Henry Hallam. 
 
 S&L 
 
 A.R back in the distance of tny early life, 
 and upon a surface not yet ruffled by 
 contention, there lies the memory of a 
 friendship surpassing every other that 
 has ever been enjoyed by one greatly 
 blessed both in the number and in 
 the excellence of his friends. 
 
 It is the simple truth that Arthur Henry 
 Hallam was a spirit so exceptional that every- 
 thing with which he was brought into relation 
 during his shortened passage through this world 
 came to be, through this contact, glorified by a 
 touch of the ideal. Among his contemporaries 
 at Eton, that queen of visible homes for the ideal 
 schoolboy, he stood supreme among all his 
 fellows ; and the long life through which I have 
 since wound my way, and which has brought me 
 into contact with so many men of rich endow- 
 ments, leaves him where he then stood, as 
 to natural gifts, so far as my estimation is 
 concerned. 
 
 But I ought perhaps to note a distinction which 
 it is necessary to draw. Whether he possessed 
 the greatest geuius I have ever known is a 
 question which does not lie upon my path, and 
 which I do not undertake to determine. It is of 
 the man that I speak, and genius does not 
 of itself make the man. When we deal with 
 men, geuius and character must be jointly taken 
 into view ; and the relation between the two, 
 together with the effect upon the aggregate, is
 
 Arthut Henry J hi I lam. 
 
 i ufinj teb variable. The towering position of 
 Shakespeare among poets does not of itself 
 affonl a certain indication that he holds a place 
 equally Inch among men. 
 
 Father and Son. 
 
 Arthur Ilallam undoubtedly enjoyed very great 
 advantages. The fame of his father as an 
 historian still endures, and it is probably not too 
 much to say of him as an author that he belongs 
 to the permanent staff of British literature. 
 His mother, too, was well suited by her remark- 
 able gifts, however their display might be 
 repressed by feminine modesty, to be the mother 
 of so distinguished a son. But the time of course 
 came when nature would assign to Mr. Ilallam 
 the larger share in the training of his sou's 
 mind. From the intimacy with Arthur, which it 
 was my happiness to enjoy at Eton, I had good 
 opportunities of observing the affectionate and 
 sleepless vigilance with which he prosecuted his 
 delightful task. 
 
 The closest correspondence seemed to be 
 maintained between them by an unforced and 
 spontaneous practice; and whatever the fascina- 
 tions of a literary career, than which none in 
 London was more distinguished, the father's eye 
 was incessantly on the work of his son. For him 
 he also secured the advantage of residence as a 
 pupil in the house of Mr. Hawtrey, by far the 
 best among the Eton tutors of that day, and 
 afterward conspicuous for his excellence as 
 head-master of the school, and as provost of the 
 college. He did not, however, hand over his son 
 to Mr. Hawtrey, but constantly and congenially 
 supervised his studies.
 
 Arthur Henry Hallam. g 
 
 Mr. Hallam read with his son and guided his 
 reading. When Arthur had entered into the 
 debating society of the school, there, too, his 
 father followed him. Its subjects of discussion 
 were usually historical, and politics found only 
 an indirect admission, for we were excluded by 
 a rule of needless jealousy and rigidity from 
 touching any matter which had occurred withiu 
 the last preceding fifty years. We were thus a 
 good deal stiuted in our choice of subjects, and 
 occasionally obliged to seek out unusual paths. 
 Once we had in our penury discussed whether 
 mathematics or metaphysics were most beneficial 
 as a discipline of the mind. Arthur had, without 
 doubt, sent to his father a notice of the discussion 
 on this subject, which was exceptional, and yet 
 for us interesting. I remember the summary 
 reply of the historian: "Your debate between 
 mat. and met. is truly ridiculous." 
 
 An Unequal Friendship. 
 
 While intimacy was at this particular time the 
 most delightful note of the friendship between 
 Arthur Hallam and myself, I am bound to say 
 that it had one other and more peculiar charac- 
 teristic, which was its inequality. Indeed, it was 
 so unequal, as between his mental powers and 
 mine, that I have questioned myself strictly 
 whether I was warranted in supposing it to have 
 been knit with such closeness as I have fondly 
 supposed. Of this, however, I find several 
 decisive marks. One was, that we used to corre- 
 spond together during vacations, a practice not 
 known to me by any other example. Eton 
 friendships were fresh and free, but they found 
 ample food for the whole year during the eight,
 
 io Arthur Henry Hallam. 
 
 or eight and a half, months of term time. 
 Another proof significant from its peculiarity I 
 find in a record more than once supplied by a 
 very arid journal, which at that early period 
 I had begun to keep. It bears witness that I 
 sometimes " sculled Hallam up to the Shallows," 
 a point about two miles up the stream of the 
 Thames from Eton. Working small boats 
 whether skiff, " funny," — such was the name, — 
 or wherry) single-handed was a common practice 
 among Eton boys, and one which I followed 
 rather assiduously ; but to carry a passenger 
 up-stream was another matter, and stands as 
 I think for a proof of setting extraordinary 
 value upon his society. 
 
 "Messing" Together. 
 
 Another recollection more considerable bears 
 in the same direction. Except upon special 
 occasions, the practice was that the boys break- 
 fasted, or " messed," alone, each in his room. 
 Now and then a case might be found in which 
 two, or even three, would club together their 
 rolls and butter (the simple fare of those days, 
 which knew nothing of habitual meat-breakfast), 
 but this only when they lived under the same 
 roof. I had not the advantage of living in 
 Mr. Hawtrey's house, and indeed it was severed 
 from that of my "dame" by nearly the whole 
 length of Eton, as it stood in what was termed 
 Weston's yard, near those glorious and unri- 
 valled "playing-fields" (I speak of a date 
 seventy years back. The stately elms were then 
 in their full glory. I fear that the hand of time 
 has not wholly spared them), whereas my 
 window looked out upon the churchyard, with
 
 Arthur Henry Ha Ham. 1 1 
 
 the mass of school buildings interposed between 
 our dwellings. Notwithstanding this impediment 
 we used, for I forget how many terms, regularly 
 to mess together, and the point of honor or 
 convenience was not allowed to interfere, for the 
 scene of operations shifted, week about, from his 
 room to mine, and vice versa. It was a grief to 
 me, in my posthumous visits to Eton, to be 
 unable to identify his room, consecrated by the 
 fondest memories, for it had been sacrificed to 
 the necessary improvements of an ill-planned 
 but most hospitable residence. 
 
 Habits of Exercise. 
 
 It was probably well for him that he partici- 
 pated in no game or strong bodily exercise,* as I 
 imagine it might have precipitated the effects of 
 that hidden organic malformation which put an 
 end to his life in 1833, when he was but twenty- 
 two years old. But at these meals, and in walks*' 
 often to the monument of Gray, so appropriately 
 placed near the " Churchyard " of the immortal 
 "Elegy," were mainly carried on our conver- 
 sations. It is evident, from notices still 
 remaining, that they partook pretty largely of 
 an argumentative character. On Sunday, May 14, 
 1826, I find this record in my journal: "Stiff 
 arguments with Hallam, as usual on Sundays, 
 about articles, creeds, etc." It is difficult for me 
 now to conceive how during these years he 
 bore with me ; since not only was I inferior to 
 him in knowledge and dialectic ability, but my 
 mind was "cabined, cribbed, confined," by an 
 
 *He performed, however, with his friend Rogers, the 
 exploit of jumping off Windsor Bridge into the River 
 Thames. (Letters of Lord Blachford, p. 3.)
 
 12 Arthur Henry Hallam. 
 
 intolerance which I asm' e to my having 1 
 hrought up in what were then termed Evangelical 
 ideas — ideas, I must add, that in other respects 
 were frequently productive of great and vital 
 good. 
 
 Hallam's Breadth of Mind. 
 
 This he must have found sorely vexing to 
 his large and expansive- tone of mind, but his 
 charity covered the multitude of my sins. The 
 explanation is to be found in that genuine 
 breadth of his, which was so comprehensive 
 that he could tolerate even the intolerant. 
 It was a smaller feat than this to toierate 
 inferiority. But certainly this was one of the 
 points in which he had anticipated what is 
 usually the fruit of mature age. As life advances, 
 and we become less vigorously productive, so 
 also, by way of partial compensation, even the 
 ordinary mind may become more thrifty in its 
 dealings with men, and we strive, and learn as 
 well as strive, to draw forth from every one 
 all that he is capable of yielding. Again there 
 was a saying, attributed in my day to Whately, 
 about the way in which he could associate 
 with comrades inferior to himself, and make use 
 of their minds as anvils on which to beat out the 
 thoughts engendered in his own. I incline to 
 think that, with his moral kindliness, Arthur 
 Hallam made himself a master in this branch of 
 art. For on looking back to some of his youthful 
 letters, I find that he contrived to draw profit 
 i the commerce also of other inferior minds, 
 nay, of some which were perhaps inferior even 
 to my own. I interject these last words, that 
 they may help to relieve me from the suspicion 
 of an affected humility, which I freely admit
 
 Arthur Henry Ha Ham. 13 
 
 that the strain of my present remarks may be 
 calculated to suggest. 
 
 In a small volume of verse, printed in 1830 (of 
 ■which I still possess a copy presented to me by 
 the author), there is a poem standing as No. 1 of 
 "Meditation Fragments" and addressed to 
 "My bosom friend." Herein are contained lines 
 which seem to imply something like a brother- 
 hood, if not a parity, of genius. No name is 
 given, but internal evidence admits of an 
 identification beyond all reasonable doubt. 
 In this poem we find the following lines, 
 referring to the effect of a lengthened absence : 
 
 Like a bright, singular dream, 
 Is parted from me that strong sense of love, 
 Which as one indivisible glory lay 
 On both our souls, and dwelt in us, so far 
 As we did dwell in it. 
 
 Here is conveyed a conception of personal 
 communion, which appears to be drawn from 
 the very innermost penetralia of our nature. The 
 person to whom the verses are addressed was one 
 possessed of intellectual powers above the vulgar 
 strain, yet by no means remarkable ; but he was 
 endowed with a capacity of tenacious, loyal and 
 warm-hearted friendship such as is rarely met 
 with ; and it is an interesting fact of human 
 psychology that there could be so genuine and 
 close a gluing together of two young hearts 
 where the mental powers lay severed from the 
 very first by a distance really immeasurable. 
 Perhaps it exhibits an interesting form of 
 parasitic life. Clearly it seems to bring into 
 view, by an example of Arthur Hallam, that, as 
 sleep and food are supposed within certain limits 
 occasionally to replace one another, so an unusual
 
 i4 Arthur Henry Hailam. 
 
 wealth in sympathies may be made to abate 
 certain demands of the intellect for mental 
 correspondence, which would otherwise be 
 inexorable. 
 
 School Life and Friends. 
 
 Arthur Hallam's time at Eton lasted from the 
 summer holidays of 1822 to the same period in 
 1827. Next to him, in the Hawtrey house, lived 
 Gerald Wellesley, his senior by two or three 
 years, but bound to him by the gift of a fine 
 scholarship, as well as by the high qualities of 
 heart and head, which in mature and in advanced 
 life, qualified him for so many years as the 
 sagacious personal adviser of Queen Victoria 
 with regard to the ecclesiastical appointments 
 recommended to her by her successive prime 
 ministers. Wellesley could, I have no doubt, 
 have supplied valuable records of Arthur Hailam, 
 but in the ordinary course he left Eton not very 
 long after my own intimacy began, though not 
 before the days of the "mess " in common. 
 
 Noted Contemporaries. 
 
 There were other contemporaries of Hailam, 
 such in their calibre as to mark the period. One 
 of them was George Selwyn, afterward bishop of 
 N'ew Zealand and then of Lichfield, a man 
 whose character is summed up, from alpha to 
 omega, in the single word "noble," and whose 
 high office, in a large measure, it was to 
 reintroduce among the Anglican clergy the pure 
 heroic type. Another was Francis Doyle, whose 
 genial character supplied a most pleasant 
 introduction for his unquestionable poetic genius. 
 This great gift was in him so undeniable that, had
 
 Arthur Henry Hallavi. 15 
 
 he possessed along with it the self-concentrating 
 faculty and commanding will of Tennyson, he 
 could not have failed to take a far higher place 
 among the poets of the age. Internal evidence 
 enables me to say that he was certainly the 
 author of the second of the two remarkable 
 estimates of Arthur Hallam which were printed 
 after his death by his father.* This list of 
 notables might be enlarged, but it is time that I 
 should pass on. 
 
 Debating at Eton. 
 
 The common bond among all the boys of auy 
 considerable promise at Eton was the association 
 for debating all unforbidden subjects, which has 
 already been named and which was known as 
 "The Society." Such institutions are now very 
 widely spread ; but at the date when this one 
 was founded, in the year 1811, it might claim the 
 honors of a discovery, for it was in exclusive 
 possession of the field. During its career of 
 above fourscore years it has supplied the British 
 Empire with no less than four prime ministers. 
 It fluctuated in efficiency as the touch of time 
 and change passed over it ; but during the period 
 of Arthur Hallam's membership it was regen- 
 erated by the introduction of that rare and most 
 often precious character, an enthusiast, by name 
 James Milnes Gaskell. 
 
 This youth had a political faculty, which 
 probably suffered in the end from an absorbing 
 and exclusive predominance in mind and life 
 such as to check his general development of 
 mental character, yet which in its precocious 
 
 * Remains of Arthur Henry Hallam (privately printed). 
 Preface, p. 26.
 
 1 6 "thut ffeittj Hallam. 
 
 ripeness secured for him QOt the notice only, but 
 what might also be called the close friendship 
 of Mr. Canning, that commanding luminary of 
 the twenties, doomed to die at Chiswick in 1827 
 in the very chamber in which Mr. I-'ox had 
 breathed his last only twenty-one years before. 
 
 A Debating Club Revived. 
 
 Gaskell found our Society, if not at the point, 
 yet afflicted with a premonitory lethargy, almost 
 of death; but he breathed life by his assiduity 
 and energy into every artery and vein of the 
 , ; and gave to Arthur Ilallam a worthy field 
 for the training of his eloquence and the 
 exhibition of his always temperate but yet vivid 
 and enlightened ideas, stamped with traditional 
 Whiggism, yet incapable of being permanently 
 trammelled by any artificial restraint. 
 
 I have mentioned that we were inhibited f; 
 debating any events not more than fifty years 
 old, anil I recollect the growling of our famous 
 Doctor Keats when we fished out from the Indian 
 administration of Warren Hastings a que- 
 lying very close upon the line. But Gaskell 
 equal to the occasion. He had a small but 
 pleasant apartment in a private house, which his 
 private tutor was privileged to occupy. In this 
 room four or five of us would meet and debate 
 without restraint the questions of modern 
 politics. Here we revelled in the controversies 
 between Pitt and Fox. I think we were mostly, 
 if not all, friendly to Roman Catholic Emanci- 
 pation, and to those initial measures of free trade 
 which Iluskisson, supported by Mr. Canning, 
 devised with skill, and supported with courage, 
 in the face of a bitterness of hatred from the
 
 me Bust bt Cm*-- 
 
 Arthur Henry Hallam.
 
 Arthur Henry Hallam. 17 
 
 "harassed interests," which I think underwent 
 at least mitigation in the later stages of the 
 controversv- 
 
 His Happy School Life. 
 
 Arthur Hallam's life at Eton was certainly 
 a very happy life. He enjoyed work, he enjoyed 
 society, and games, which he did not enjoy, he 
 contentedly left aside. His temper was as sweet 
 as his manners were winning. His conduct was 
 without a spot or even a speck. He was that rare 
 and blessed creature, anima naturalitis Chris- 
 tiana. All this time his faculties were in course 
 of rapid, yet not too rapid, development. He 
 read largely, and though not superficially, yet 
 with an extraordinary speed. He had no high, 
 ungenial or exclusive ways, but heartily 
 acknowledged and habitually conformed to the 
 republican equality long and happily established 
 in the life of our English public schools. 
 
 Democracy of the School 
 
 It was an equality so rigid that, though we 
 had among us abundance of boys with titled 
 appendages in one form or another to their 
 names, yet woe be to any one of them, aye, had 
 he been a duke, if he had sought to add to these 
 distinctions any other form or shred of privilege. 
 We sometimes said among ourselves that they 
 were a little favored by Doctor Keats, the 
 head-master ; but I think none of us seriously 
 believed it. Happy the time and place, had all 
 of us been like Arthur Hallam. Yet he bore 
 upon him, even at this period, one mark, 
 significant if slight, of the coming doom. On 
 these occasions he would have to spend in his
 
 i8 Arthur Henry HaUam, 
 
 room, probably in the production of an exercise 
 in prose or verse, those hours between the 
 severed school-times dispersed over the day, 
 which were more ordinarily devoted to recreation. 
 I have sometimes seen him at the conclusion of 
 one of these intervals; and it was always with a 
 delicate but deep rosy flush upon his cheeks, 
 reaching to the eyes. 
 
 Hallam at Cambridge. 
 
 To be the son of Mr. Hallam, the historian, 
 was in itself a great distinction. Few men have 
 cultivated the historic or literary muse with a 
 more inflexible integrity, or held the judicial 
 balance with a firmer hand when pronouncing 
 upon controverted matters. Yet there were two 
 questions, at least, which may be raised upon 
 the direction that this wise and good man gave to 
 the life of his son. Himself a most distinguished 
 alumnus of Oxford, he sent his son to Cambridge. 
 The mathematical studies of that great university 
 were at the time founded upon the geometrical 
 method, soon after abandoned for the analytical, 
 perhaps not without some loss in point of 
 genuine educative power. This great study was 
 pursued under conditions, long since abandoned, 
 which were somewhat tyrannic as toward other 
 branches of mental exertion ; for undergraduates 
 were not allowed to compete for the principal 
 honors of classical studies, unless after reaching 
 a certain point upon the scale of mathematical 
 distinctions, which was such as to certify a 
 decidedly respectable proficiency. Mr. Hallam, 
 in writing of his son's mental powers,* expresses 
 regret "that he never paid the least attention to 
 
 • I'reface, p
 
 Arthur Henry Hallatn. 19 
 
 mathematical studies," and a certainty that he 
 had capacity to master the principles of 
 geometrical reasoning. And indeed it would 
 be audacious to assert as to Arthur Hallam any 
 incapacity with reference to anything whatever 
 that lay in the region of mind. Yet my faith 
 in his sincerity and self-knowledge almost 
 compels me in this one particular, which after 
 all is in itself of narrow compass, to question at 
 least his practical competency. 
 
 For in his letters to me, written during and 
 after the Etonian period, I find complaints, 
 which are really touching, of the difficulties, 
 almost the agony, which he encountered in 
 dealing, for instance, with trigonometry ; and 
 his sincerity was of that rare kind which never 
 fails to carry with it freedom from exaggeration. 
 He adverts repeatedly to the subject ; but I will 
 only quote from one letter of July 25, 1828, when 
 he says: "I have been tormenting myself with 
 Euclid for the last five years at intervals, and get 
 on like the snail of arithmetical celebrity, who 
 got up his wall, you know how." 
 
 His Distaste for Mathematics. 
 
 I cannot but suppose, then, that the mathe- 
 matical impediment was that which mainly 
 prevented him from giving himself heartily to 
 the studies of the university, and left him 
 without a place in its distinctions. In the 
 Oxford of that day, on the other hand, I can 
 confidently say he would have had every motive, 
 and every inducement, to apply himself to them 
 with a whole-hearted devotion. For in the 
 usages of that period at Cambridge, next to 
 mathematics the pure refinements of scholarship 
 were far more in fashion than the closer study of
 
 *hur Henry Hallam. 
 
 the great masterpieces of antiquity in their 
 substance and spirit. This feature of the system 
 was some years later pointed out an<l condemned 
 by two most distinguished witnesses, one of 
 them Doctor Whewell, with his wide attainmi 
 and stock of comprehensive power, and the 
 other Lord Lyttelton, who Btands in the very 
 first rank of Cambridge scholars of his times. 
 
 The Classics at Oxford. 
 
 The final classical examination at Oxford, on 
 the other hand, apart from divinity (in which 
 honors were not then given I, may be considered 
 as divided into three elastic departments of 
 scholarship and poetry, history, and philosophy. 
 As among these, the second somewhat outw eighed 
 the first, and the third the second. In each case, 
 the examination turned upon the substance 
 more than the vehicle, and the influence of 
 Butler, which would have been so propitious to 
 the mind of Arthur Hallam, was at its climax. 
 I regard it as certain that, if he had been at 
 Oxford, he would, by taking the highest classical 
 honors, and by a thoroughly congenial develop- 
 ment of philosophic power, have illustrated the 
 annals of the university. 
 
 I do not pretend that these remarks conclude 
 the whole case. Had he gone to Oxford, he 
 would not, or would not at that period and in 
 that manner, have known Tennyson ; and the 
 world might not have been in possession of 
 "In Memoriam," surely the noblest monument 
 (not excepting Lycidas) that ever was erected by 
 one human being to another. 
 
 Nor is this all. He was estranged indeed at 
 Cambridge from academical pursuits. Nothing
 
 Arthur Henry Hallam. 21 
 
 could be more gloorny than his first impressions 
 of the "odious" place, in the early days, when 
 he came face to face with the facts which showed 
 him that he would have to abandon the idea of a 
 really academical career. The clouds then 
 gathered thickly round him; but he soared 
 above and beyond them. His pinion was so 
 strong that there was no elevation which he was 
 not capable of reaching, no ether too fine and 
 subtle for him to float in it. 
 
 A Great Experiment. 
 
 This brings me to my second essay of timid 
 criticism. To interpose eight months or more of 
 Italy between Eton and Cambridge was, in the 
 case of any capable and susceptible youth, a 
 great experiment. The agencies of locomotion 
 have within the last seventy years been not only 
 multiplied but transformed. We then crept into 
 and about countries ; we now fly through them. 
 When Arthur Hallam went with his family to 
 Italy there was not so much as a guide-book. 
 It was shortly afterward that Mrs. Starke, under 
 the auspices of Murray, founded that branch of 
 literature, and within the compass of one very 
 moderate volume she undertook to expound in 
 every particular the whole continent of Europe. 
 
 A Visit to Italy. 
 
 But this is only touching the outside of the 
 case. A visit to Italy was then the summit of 
 a young man's aspirations ; it now supplies some 
 half-dozen rapid stages in larger tours, where we 
 run much risk of losing in discipline and mental 
 stimulus what we gain in mileage. When it
 
 22 Arthur Henry Hallam. 
 
 took sixteen or eighteen days to poet to Rome, 
 each change of horses was an event. The young 
 
 traveller could not hut try to make the most of 
 
 what he had bought so dear. Scene, history ami 
 
 language now flash before the eye; then, they 
 soaked into the soul. Men were then steeped in 
 the experiences of Italy ; they are now sprinkled 
 with the spray. Its scenery, its art, its language, 
 which it was a delight and luxury to learn ; it- 
 splendid literature, its roll of great men, an 
 whom Dante himself might serve to build up the 
 entire fame of a nation, and its place in history, 
 which alone connects together the great stages 
 of human civilization ; all these constitute 
 many-sided power, which was brought to bear 
 almost in a moment on the mind of Arthur 
 Hallam. I knew it, for I suffered by it. The 
 interval between his progress and my own, 
 always wide, became such that there was no 
 joining hands across it. I was plodding on the 
 beaten and dusty path, while he \ 
 
 Where the lost lark wildly sings, 
 Hard by the sun.* 
 
 He was himself sensible of the masterful, 
 abnormal power which Italy had exercised upon 
 him, for he wrote me on July 3, 1828, in t 
 terms : 
 
 "I have been, I believe, somewhat changed 
 since I last saw you. I have snatched rather 
 eagerly a draught from the cup of life, with its 
 strange mingling of sweet and bitter. All this 
 should rather have come after my three years of 
 college than before ; but nothing can cancel it 
 now, and I must on in the path that has been 
 
 * Rarry Cornwall.
 
 Arthur Henry Hallam. 23 
 
 chalked out for me. I have no aversion to study, 
 I trust, quite the contrary ; though my ideas of 
 the essential do not precisely square with those 
 of the worshipful dons of Cambridge." 
 
 I have not attempted to reproduce or formally 
 condense from the admirable obituary essay of 
 1834, by his father, the short and simple annals 
 of the life of Arthur Hallam. It should be 
 allowed to remain inviolate. It would have 
 been yet more culpable on my part to cover the 
 thinness of my own recollections from the stores 
 of noble verse presented by "In Memoriam," 
 and long ago enshrined among the literary 
 treasures of our race. I am aware that the one 
 slender hope I may presume to entertain is that 
 of casting a few faint side-lights upon a character 
 profoundly beautiful. The strong sentiments 
 that I entertain on the wonderful nature of his 
 gifts in the region of thought, when combined 
 with the qualities of his character, carry with 
 them at least this one attestation, that they have 
 stood the wear and tear of those years, now 
 outnumbering threescore, which have passed 
 away since his death. 
 
 His Power and Charm. 
 
 It would be hazardous to attempt additions to 
 those accounts of his extraordinary powers, both 
 in construction and in criticism, and of his 
 immeasurable charm and profound affections 
 which have been furnished by Mr. Hallam in 
 his memoir, or incorporated there from the pens 
 of friends, who were themselves men of genius. 
 But a very few words may be ventured in 
 summing up the subject. 
 
 As a learner, he bears in regard to the most 
 tangible tests of excellence the severest scrutiny.
 
 24 Arthur Hair) Hallam. 
 
 This may be Been by hi* translating, at fourteen, 
 tin.- Ugolino of Dante into Greek iambics; and 
 
 again at a later time, 1>ut when he was not yet 
 eighteen, by his production of Italian Bonnets, 
 which Sir Anthony Panizzi, a consummate judge, 
 
 declared that he could not distinguish, so finis] 
 were the compositions, from the productions of 
 
 native authors. The system of his day at Eton 
 did not apply those stimulants to emulation 
 which are now, perhaps in testimony of our 
 degeneracy and decline from the standard of 
 disinterested love, necessarily and universally 
 employed in England. But any competent 
 witness would at once have declared him the 
 best scholar (in any but the very narrowest 
 sense) of the whole school with its five hundred 
 pupils. I have glanced at the causes which 
 confined his exertions of Cambridge to the 
 production of such poetry and prose as was not 
 available for the high honors of the university. 
 But in this world there is one unfailing test of 
 the highest excellence. It is that the man should 
 be felt to be greater than his works. And in the 
 case of Arthur Hallam. all that knew him knew 
 that the work was transcended by the man. 
 
 Studying for the Law. 
 
 After leaving the university, he betook himself, 
 at his father's desire, to preparation for the 
 law. In geometry there is no interest attaching 
 to the result of dividing space this way or that ; 
 everything lies in the process of attainment and 
 its healthy, bracing force. This was not enough 
 for him. It may be that from causes partially 
 analogous to those which had operated upon him 
 at the university, law would not have satisfied or
 
 Arthur Henry Hallam. 25 
 
 allayed the hunger of his soul. His essential 
 and invariable concern was with human, not 
 with abstract interests. If he loved metaphysics, 
 it was on their moral side. He was the 
 indefatigable satellite of Truth and Beauty ; and 
 to this service he was sworn, because Truth 
 and Beauty, Truth the first and Beauty the 
 handmaid or relElcxJcns of Truth, are the divinely 
 appointed sustenance of the human soul. 
 Religion (possibly after a brief period of 
 wrestling) had, nay, could have, no difficulties, 
 or none below the surface, for him ; he was 
 marked from the first by a warm and reverent 
 piety. 
 
 A Great Light Extinguished. 
 
 And this remark brings me almost to my 
 conclusion. When the appalling intelligence of 
 his sudden death at Vienna in the early autumn 
 of 1833, during a holiday tour taken with his 
 father, reached us in England, I felt not only 
 that a dear friend had been lost, but that a great 
 light had been extinguished, and one which was 
 eminently required by the coming necessities 
 of the country and the age. Those who will 
 read the " Theodiccza Novissima," printed 
 among the remains of Arthur Hallam, will be 
 able to surmise the grounds on which my 
 anticipation rested. But I think that of all the 
 characteristics of his mind, perhaps the most 
 peculiar was its moral maturity. What treasures 
 he carried away with him to the grave ! How 
 much he had to impart ! Something, perhaps, 
 even to the poet and friend who has reared over 
 him the memorial more durable than bronze 
 or stone. 
 
 It was one, I think, well warranted by the
 
 w. Arthur Henry Jlallam. 
 
 character of our wonderful century, such as it 
 has been developed before our eyes. It 
 been an age, at least in Arthur Hallam's country, 
 of characteristics so copious, so varied and BO 
 conflicting that it is difficult to sum then: 
 under any one common and connecting phi 
 But on the whole it has had for its prevailing 
 note the abandonment and removal of restraints ; 
 and very largely, no doubt, of restraints which 
 were injurious. The motto of the race has been, 
 '•Unhand me." Emancipation and enfranchise- 
 ment have been at work in all directions. It has 
 had vast developments of energy outward, 
 sometimes constructive, sometimes not without 
 consuming processes of disintegration from 
 within. We have been set free from unlawful 
 and (sometimes) from lawful, from arbitrary and 
 (sometimes) from salutary control. I beg no 
 question here. But as there is an undeniable 
 relation between the freedom of the will and the 
 partial devastation of the moral world arising 
 from its abuse, so it is evident that the great and 
 sudden augmentation of liberty in a thousand 
 forms places under an aggravated strain the 
 balance, which governs humanity both in thought 
 and conduct. 
 
 A Needed Personality. 
 
 And upon my heightened retrospect, I must 
 advisedly declare that I have never, in the 
 actual experience of life, known a man who 
 seemed to me to. possess all the numerous 
 and varied qualifications required in order to 
 meet this growing demand, and even its fullest 
 breadth, in anything like the measure in which 
 Arthur Ilallam exhibited these budding, nay, 
 already flowering, gifts. It was to be a sensitive,
 
 Arthur Henry Hallam. 27 
 
 an exacting, a self-asserting age. To deal with 
 it, to find effectual access to its confidence and 
 the key to its affections, required the combination 
 of breadth with courage, and of firmness with 
 tenderness. 
 
 The Need of the Age. 
 
 The treatment that it needed could only be 
 supplied by one who united an unbounded 
 wealth in vivid sympathies with the keenest 
 intellectual insight, and the sure tact which 
 discerns and separates the precious from the vile. 
 His death was, then, a grievous and, humanly 
 speaking, an irreparable bereavement. But He 
 who took him made him, and He who made him 
 can replace him. 
 
 I marked him 
 As a far Alp ; and loved to watch the sunrise 
 Dawn on his ample brow.* 
 
 Death of Hallam's Brother. 
 
 Such is the vision which has lost with the 
 lapse of years none of its force, its fulness, or 
 its freshness. May I add to it in conclusion a 
 brief, but touching supplement. Mr. Hallam's 
 eldest son was, we have seen, removed from his 
 sight, at a moment's notice, during a holiday 
 tour in Germany in the autumn of 1833. But, 
 besides Arthur, he had a second son named 
 Henry, junior by about fourteen or fifteen years. 
 While he did not wholly reproduce the elder 
 brother in the qualities which carried him so 
 nearly into the ideal, yet he stood in the very 
 
 * De Vere's " Mary Tudor."
 
 28 Arthur Henry //<///<; w. 
 
 first ranks of distinction as it was an>! 
 commonly understood at Eton, and in our 
 
 ordinary speech. Indeed, he had reached a point 
 of advancement such as is not usually attained. 
 In 1840 he was one of some twenty or thirty 1" 
 the flower of the school, who were examined by 
 my brother-in-law, Lord Lyttelton, and m; 
 for the Newcastle scholarship, the highest 
 distinction which the school has to offer, lie 
 was, I believe, the very youngest of the whole 
 band. On the decision of the contest, he proved 
 to be the second in merit; and he was carried 
 home in triumph, on the announcement, by the 
 generous enthusiasm of his schoolfellow-. 
 
 In 1850 he had attained an age exceeding only 
 by some four years the limit of his brother's 
 life. During that autumn I was travelling post 
 between Turin and Genoa, upon my road to 
 Naples, on account of a young daughter's health. 
 A family coach met us on the road, and the 
 glance of a moment at the inside showed me 
 the familiar face of Mr. Ilallam. I immediately 
 stopped my carriage, descended and ran after 
 
 A Sad Meeting. 
 
 On overtaking it, I found the dark clouds 
 accumulated on his brow, and learned, with 
 indescribable pain, that he was on his way home 
 from Florence, where he had just lost his second 
 and only remaining son from an attack corre- 
 sponding in its suddenness and its devastating 
 rapidity with that which had struck down his 
 eldest born seventeen years before. It was 
 terrible for him thus to have lost what he had 
 loved, but it was a rare election and high
 
 Arthur He7iry Hallam. 29 
 
 privilege to have reared two such sons for this 
 world and for the nest. 
 
 Tennyson's Tribute. 
 
 These pages had been written before the recent 
 issue from the press of the memoirs of Lord 
 Tennyson. That remarkable work must by this 
 time have convinced the reading world that the 
 great poet of his age was likewise full of greatness 
 as a man. In the early portion of the work, as 
 might have been expected, Arthur Hallam 
 frequently appears. The simplicity, the direct- 
 ness, the depth, the integrity, so to speak, of the 
 hold which he took upon Tennyson, patent as it 
 is upon every page of "In Memoriam," receives 
 an altogether fresh and independent attestation 
 from these biographical records. 
 
 In Tennyson's estimate of Arthur Hallam's 
 great faculties there is but one reserve. He 
 thinks that his friend would have attained the 
 highest summits of excellence, but that it would 
 not have been done in the character of a great 
 poet. It is almost an act of arrogance if I 
 presume to agree to this judgment; but at any 
 rate, I may say that I accept it. Yet not in the 
 sense of affirming that Arthur Hallam, had he 
 lived, would have been less than a great poet, 
 but that the bent and bias of his powers lay in a 
 different, though an allied, direction. 
 
 A Final Estimate. 
 
 I pass on to, and conclude with, a second 
 observation. The evidence supplied by the 
 biography as to the powers and promise of 
 Arthur Hallam is copious and of great authority ;
 
 30 Arthur Henry Hallam. 
 
 Borne of it supplemental to what is furnished in 
 the work by the greatest of all oracles, Alfred 
 Tennyson himself . It all sets toward one and 
 the same upshot. So far as I may presume to 
 judge, it convinces me that the strong langu 
 I have been impelled to use in describing 
 Arthur Hallam has not been too strong. It is 
 a true case of OStendent trrris hunc tautitm fata . 
 he resembled a passing emanation from - 
 other and less darkly checkered world.
 
 3. /j 
 

 
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