'- >'liB*ttli 
 
 CLEMENT SHORTER 
 
 ^«-;»*y>«<ai 't^MAiT i« t i i'r»i i Mian>i Mi u f j-Jf ' n
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 IMMORTAL MEMORIES
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 WILLIAM COWPER 
 GEORGE BORROW 
 
 AND 
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 
 
 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 EAST ANGLIA 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF FERDINAND 
 
 LASSALLE 
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 LORD ACTON'S HUNDRED BEST BOOKS
 
 IMMORTAL MEMORIES 
 
 By 
 CLEMENT SHORTER 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 LONDON A/[CMVII
 
 Butler and Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works. Frame, and London.
 
 
 c^ 
 
 PREFATORY 
 
 The following addresses were delivered at the 
 request of various literary societies and com- 
 memorative committees. They amused me to 
 write, and they apparently interested the audi- 
 ences for which they were primarily intended. 
 Perhaps they do not bear an appearance in print. 
 But they are not for my brother-journalists to 
 read nor for the judicious men of letters. I pre- 
 fer to think that they are intended solely for those 
 whom Hazlitt styled " sensible people." Hazlitt 
 said that " the most sensible people to be met 
 with in society are men of business and of the 
 world." I am hoping that these will buy my 
 book and that some of them will like it. 
 
 It is recorded by Sir Henry Taylor of Samuel 
 Rogers that when he wrote that very indifferent 
 poem, Italy, he said, " I will make people buy. 
 Turner shall illustrate my verse." It is of no 
 importance that the biographer of Rogers tells 
 
 ^^dQO*»7
 
 vi PREFATORY 
 
 us that the poet first made the artist known to 
 the world hy these illustrations. Taylor's story is 
 a good one, and the moral worth taking to heart. 
 The late Lord Acton, most learned and most 
 accomplished of men, wrote out a list of the 
 hundred best books as he considered them to be. 
 They were printed in a popular magazine. 
 They naturally excited much interest. I have 
 rescued them from the pages of the Pall Mall 
 Magazine. Those who will not buy my book 
 for its seven other essays may do so on account of 
 Lord Acton's list of books being here first pre- 
 served " between boards." I shall be equally 
 well pleased. 
 
 CLEMENT SHORTER. 
 Great Missenden, 
 Bucks.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 3 
 
 II 
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 31 
 
 III 
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 GEORGE BORROW 61 
 
 IV 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 97 
 vii
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 V 
 
 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 EAST ANGLIA 131 
 
 VI 
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 157 
 
 VII 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 185 
 
 VIII 
 LORD ACTON AND THE HUNDRED BEST 
 
 BOOKS 225
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 
 I.M.
 
 vlii , CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 V 
 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 EAST ANGLIA 131 
 
 VI 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 157 
 
 VII 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 FERDINAND I,ASSALLE 185 
 
 VIII 
 LORD ACTON AND THE HUNDRED BEST 
 
 BOOKS 225
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 
 I.M.
 
 I 
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 
 A toast proposed at the Johnson Birthday Celebration 
 held at the Three Crowns Inn, Lichfield» in Sep- 
 tember, 1906. 
 
 In rising to propose this toast I cannot ignore 
 what must be in many of your minds, the re- 
 collection that last year it was submitted by a very 
 dear friend of my own, who, alas ! has now gone 
 to his rest, I mean Dr. Richard Garnett.^ Many 
 of you who heard him in this place will recall, 
 with kindly memories, that venerable scholar. I 
 am one of those who, in the interval have stood 
 
 1 Richard Garnett (l 835-1906) was son of the philologist 
 of the same name who was for a time priest-vicar of Lichfield 
 Cathedral. He attended the Johnson Celebration on Sept. 18, 
 1905, and proposed " the Immortal Memory of Dr. John- 
 son." He died on the following Good Friday, April 13, 
 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery April 17, 1906.
 
 4 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 beside his open grave ; and I know you will per- 
 mit me to testify here to the fact that rarely has 
 such brilliant scholarship been combined with 
 so kindly a nature, and with so much generosity 
 to other workers in the literary field. One may 
 sigh that it is not possible to perpetuate for all 
 time for the benefit of others the vast mass of 
 learning which such men as Dr. Garnett are able 
 to accumulate. One may lament even more 
 that one is not able to present in some concrete 
 form, as an example to those who follow, his 
 fine qualities of heart and mind — his generous 
 faculty for ' helping lame dogs over stiles.' 
 
 Dr. Garnett had not only a splendid erudition 
 that specially qualified him for proposing this 
 toast, he had also what many of you may think 
 an equally exceptional qualification — he was a 
 native of Lichfield ; he was born in this fine city. 
 As a Londoner — like Boswell when charged with 
 the crime of being a Scotsman I may say that 
 I cannot help it — I suppose I should come to 
 you with hesitating footsteps. Perhaps it was 
 rash of me to come at all, in spite of an invitation 
 so kindly worded. Yet how gladly does any lover, 
 not only of Dr. Johnson, but of all good literature.
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 5 
 
 come to Lichfield. Four cathedral cities of our 
 land stand forth in my mind with a certain mag- 
 netic power to draw even the most humble lover 
 of books towards them — Oxford, Bath, Norwich, 
 Lichfield, these four and no others. Oxford we 
 all love and revere as the nourishing mother of 
 so many famous men. Here we naturally recall 
 Dr. Johnson's love of it — his defence of it 
 against all comers. The glamour of Oxford and 
 the memory of the great men who from age to 
 age have walked its streets and quadrangles, is 
 with us upon every visit. Bath again has noble 
 memories. Upon house after house in that fine 
 city is inscribed the fact that it was at one time 
 the home of a famous man or woman of the past. 
 Through its streets many of our great imagin- 
 ative writers have strolled, and those streets have 
 been immortalized in the pages of several great 
 novelists, notably of Jane Austen and Charles 
 Dickens. 
 
 For the City of Norwich I have a particular 
 affection, as for long the home in quite separate 
 epochs of Sir Thomas Browne and of George 
 Borrow. I recall that in the reign of one of its 
 Bishops — the father of Dean Stanley — there
 
 6 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 was a literary circle of striking character, that 
 men and women of intellect met in the episcopal 
 palace to discuss all ' obstinate questionings.' 
 
 But if he were asked to choose between the 
 golden age of Bath, of Norwich, or of Lichfield, 
 I am sure that any man who knew his books 
 would give the palm to Lichfield, and would 
 recall that period in the life of Lichfield when 
 Dr. Seward resided in the Bishop's Palace, with 
 his two daughters, and when they were 
 there entertaining so many famous friends. 
 I saw the other day the statement that Anna 
 Seward's name was unknown to the present 
 generation. Now I have her works in nine 
 volumes ^ ; I have read them, and I doubt not 
 but that there are many more who have done the 
 same. Sir Walter Scott's friendship would alone 
 preserve her memory if every line she wrote 
 
 1 Anna Seward (i 747-1 809). Her works were published 
 after her death : — The Poetical Works of Anna Seward. With 
 Extracts from her Literary Correspondence. Edited by Walter 
 Scott, Esq. In three volumes — John Ballantyne & Co., 18 10. 
 Letters of Anna Sezvard written between the Tears 1784 and 
 1807. In six volumes. Archibald Constable & Co., 181 1. 
 " Longwinded and florid " one biographer calls her letters, 
 but by the aid of what Scott calls ' the laudable practice of 
 skipping ' they are quite entertaining.
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 7 
 
 deserved to be forgotten as is too readily 
 assumed. Scott, indeed, professed admiration 
 for her verse, and a yet greater poet, Wordsworth, 
 wrote in praise of two fine lines at the close of 
 one of her sonnets, that entitled ' Invitation to 
 a Friend,' lines which I believe present the first 
 appearance in English poetry of the form of 
 blank verse immortalized by Tennyson. 
 
 Come, that I may not hear the winds of night, 
 Nor count the heavy eave-drops as they fall. 
 
 " You have well criticized the poetic powers 
 of this lady," says Wordsworth, " but, after all, 
 her verses please me, with all their faults, better 
 than those of Mrs. Barbauld, who, with much 
 higher powers of mind, was spoiled as a poetess 
 by being a dissenter." 
 
 Less, however, can be said for her poetry to-day 
 than for her capacity as a letter writer. A letter 
 writing faculty has immortalized more than one 
 English author, Horace Walpole for example, 
 who had this in common with Anna Seward, 
 that he had the bad taste not to like Dr. Johnson. 
 
 Sooner or later there will be a reprint of a 
 selection of Anna Seward's correspondence ; 
 you will find in it a picture of country life in the
 
 8 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 middle of the eighteenth century — and by that 
 I mean Lichfield life — that is quite unsurpassed. 
 Anna Seward, her friends and her enemies, 
 stand before us in very marked outline. As 
 with Walpole also, she must have written with 
 an eye to publication. Veracity was not her 
 strong point, but her literary faculty was very 
 marked indeed. Those who have read the letters 
 that treat of her sister's betrothal and death, for 
 example, will not easily forget them. The 
 accepted lover, you remember, was a Mr. Porter, 
 a son of the widow whom Johnson married ; and 
 Sarah Seward, aged only eighteen, died soon 
 after her betrothal to him. That is but one 
 of a thousand episodes in the world into which 
 we are introduced in these pages. ^ 
 
 1 Sir Robert Thomas White-Thomson, K.C.B., wrote to 
 me in reference to this estimate of Miss Seward from Broom- 
 ford Manor, Exbourne, North Devon, and his letter seemed 
 of sufficient importance from a genealogical standpoint for me 
 to ask his permission to make an extract from the letter : 
 " I have read your address in a Lichfield newspaper. Apart 
 from the wider and more important bearings of your 
 words, those which had reference to the Seward family were 
 especially welcome to me. You will understand this when I 
 tell you that, with the exception of the Romney portrait of 
 Anna, and a few other objects left ' away ' by her will, my
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 9 
 
 The Bishop's Palace was the scene of brilliant 
 symposiums. There one might have met Erasmus 
 Darwin of the Botanic Garden^ whose fame 
 has been somewhat dulled by the extra- 
 ordinary genius of his grandson. There also 
 came Richard Edgeworth, the father of Maria, 
 whose Castle Rackrent and The Absentee are 
 still among the most delightful books that we 
 read ; and there were the two young girls, 
 Honora and Elizabeth Sneyd, who were des- 
 tined in succession to become Richard Edge- 
 worth's wives. There, above all, was Thomas 
 Day, the author of Sanford and Merton, a book 
 which delighted many of us when we were 
 
 grandfather, Thomas White, of Lichfield Close, her cousin 
 and residuary legatee, became possessed of all the contents of 
 her house. Some of the books and engravings were sold by 
 auction, but the remainder were taken good care of, and passed 
 to me on my mother's death in i860. As thus, ' in a way ' the 
 representative of the ' Swan of Lichfield,' you can easily see 
 what such an appreciation of her as was yours means to me. Of 
 course I know her weak points, and how the pot of clay must 
 suflFer in trying to ' bump ' the pot of iron in midstream, but I 
 also know that she was no ordinary personage in her day, when 
 the standard of feminine culture was low, and I have resented 
 some things that have been written of her. Mrs. Oliphant 
 treats her kindly in her Literary Hist'^ry of England, and now I 
 have your ' appreciation ' of her, for which I beg to thank you."
 
 lo TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 young, and which I imagine with all its prig- 
 gishness will always survive as a classic for 
 children. There, for a short time, came Major 
 Andre, betrothed to Honora Sneyd, but des- 
 tined to die so tragically in the American 
 War of Independence. It is to Miss Seward's 
 malicious talent as a letter writer that we owe 
 the exceedingly picturesque account of Day's 
 efforts to obtain a wife upon a particular pattern, 
 his selection of Sabrina Sidney, whom he prepared 
 for that high destiny by sending her to a boarding 
 school until she was of the right age — his lessons 
 in stoicism — his disappointment because she 
 screamed when he fired pistols at her petticoats, 
 and yelled when he dropped melted sealing- 
 wax on her bare arms ; it is a tragi-comic picture, 
 and one is glad that Sabrina married some other 
 man than her exacting guardian. But we would 
 not miss Miss Seward's racy stories for any- 
 thing, nor ignore her many letters with their 
 revelation of the glories of old-time Lichfield, 
 and of those ' lunar meetings ' at which the 
 wise ones foregathered. Now and again these 
 worthies burst into sarcasm at one another's 
 expense, as when Darwin satirizes the publica-
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON ii 
 
 tion of Mr. Seward's edition of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, and Dr. Johnson's edition of Shaksfere 
 
 From Lichfield famed two giant critics come, 
 Tremble, ye Poets ! hear them ! Fe, Fo, Fum ! 
 By Seward's arm the mangled Beaumont bled, 
 And Johnson grinds poor Shakspere's bones for bread- 
 
 "But perhaps after all, if we eliminate Dr. 
 Johnson, the lover of letters gives the second 
 place, not to Miss Seward and her circle, but 
 to David Garrick. Lichfield contains more than 
 one memento of that great man. The actor's 
 art is a poor sort of thing as a rule. Johnson, 
 in his tarter moments, expresses this attitude, 
 as when he talked of Garrick as a man who 
 exhibited himself for a shilling, when he called 
 him ' a futile fellow,' and implied that it was 
 very unworthy of Lord Campden to have made 
 much of the actor and to have ignored so dis- 
 tinguished a writer as Goldsmith, when thrown 
 into the company of both. Still undoubtedly 
 Johnson's last word upon Garrick is the best — 
 ' his death has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and 
 diminished the public stock of harmless pleasure.' 
 We who live more than a hundred years later are 
 able to recognize that Garrick has been the one
 
 12 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 great actor from that age to this. As a rule the 
 mummers are mimics and little more, and gener- 
 ations go on, giving them their brief but glorious 
 hour of fame, and then leaving them as mere 
 names in the history of the stage. Garrick was 
 preserved from this fate, not only by the circum- 
 stance that he had an army of distinguished literary 
 friends, but by his interesting personality and 
 by his own writings. Many lines of his plays 
 and prologues have become part of current speech. 
 Moreover his must have been a great personality, 
 as those of us who have met Sir Henry Irving in 
 these latter days have realized that his was also 
 a great personality. It is fitting, therefore, that 
 these two great actors, the most famous of an 
 interesting, if not always an heroic profession, 
 should lie side by side in Westminster Abbey. 
 I now come to my toast " The memory of 
 Dr. Johnson." After all, Johnson was the great- 
 est of all Lichfieldians, and one of the great men 
 of his own and of all ages. We may talk about 
 him and praise him because we shall be the better 
 for so doing, but we shall certainly say nothing 
 new. One or two points, however, seem to me 
 worthy of emphasis in this company of John-
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 13 
 
 sonians. I think we should resent two popular 
 fallacies which you will not hear from literary 
 students, but only from one whom it is con- 
 venient to call " the man in the street." The 
 first is, that we should know nothing about 
 Johnson if it were not for Boswell's famous life, 
 and the second that Johnson the author is 
 dead, and that our great hero only lives as a 
 brilliant conversationalist in the pages of Bos- 
 well and others. Boswell's Life of Johnson is 
 the greatest biography in the English language ; 
 we all admit that. It is crowded with in- 
 cident and anecdote. Neither Walter Scott 
 nor Rousseau, each of whom has had an equal 
 number of pages devoted to his personality, 
 lives so distinctly for future ages as does John- 
 son in the pages of Boswell. Understanding 
 all this, we are entitled to ask ourselves what we 
 should have thought of Dr. Johnson had there 
 been no Boswell ; and to this question I do not 
 hesitate to answer that we should have loved him 
 as much as ever, and that there would still have 
 been a mass of material with the true Boswellian 
 flavour. He would not have made an appeal to 
 so large a public, but some ingenious person
 
 14 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 would have drawn together all the anecdotes, 
 all the epigrams, all the touches of that fine 
 humanity, and given us from these various sources 
 an amalgam of Johnson, that every bookman at 
 least would have desired to read and study. In 
 Fanny Burney's Letters and Diaries the presenta- 
 tion of Johnson is delightful. I wonder very much 
 that all the Johnson fragments that Miss Burney 
 provides have not been published separately. 
 Then Mrs. Thrale has chatted about Johnson 
 copiously in her " Anecdotes," and these pleasant 
 stories have been re-printed again and again for 
 the curious. I recall many other sources of 
 information about the great man and his wonder- 
 ful talk — by Miss Hawkins, Miss Reynolds, Miss 
 Hannah More for example — and many of you who 
 have Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Johnson Miscellanies 
 have these in a pleasantly acceptable form. 
 
 My second point is concerned with Dr. John- 
 son's position apart from all this fund of anecdote, 
 and this brilliant collection of unforgettable 
 epigram in Boswell and elsewhere. As a writer, 
 many will tell you, Dr. Johnson is dead. The 
 thing is absurd on the face of it. There is room 
 for some disagreement as to his position as a poet.
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 15 
 
 On that question of poetry unanimity is ever 
 hard to seek ; so many mistake rhetoric for 
 poetry. Only twice at the most, it seems to me, 
 does Dr. Johnson reach anything in the shape of 
 real inspiration in his many poems, ^ although it 
 must be admitted that earlier generations admired 
 them greatly. To have been praised ardently 
 by Sir Walter Scott, by Byron, and by Tennyson 
 should seem sufficient to demonstrate that he 
 was a poet, were it not that, as I could prove if 
 time allowed, poets are almost invariably bad critics 
 of poetry. Sir Walter Scott read The Vanity 
 of Human JVishes with " a choking sensation in the 
 throat," and declared that he had more pleasure 
 in reading that and Johnson's other long poem, 
 London, than any other poetic compositions he 
 could mention. But then I think it was always 
 the sentiment in verse, and not its quality, that 
 attracted Scott. Byron also declared that The 
 Vanity of Human Wishes was " a great poem." 
 
 1 Once certainly in the lines " On the Death of Mr. Robert 
 Levet " :— 
 
 Well try'd through many a varying year, 
 
 See Levet to the grave descend, 
 Officious, innocent, sincere, 
 
 Of ev'ry friendless name the friend.
 
 1 6 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 Certainly these poems are quotable poems. Who 
 does not recall the line about " surveying man- 
 kind from China to Peru," or think, as Johnson 
 taught us, to : — 
 
 Mark what ills the scholar's life assail, 
 Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail. 
 
 Or remember his epitaph on one who : — 
 
 Left a name at which the world grew pale. 
 To point a moral or adorn a tale. 
 
 One line — " Superfluous lags the veteran on the 
 stage " has done duty again and again. I might 
 quote a hundred such examples to show Johnson, 
 whatever his qualities as a poet, is very much 
 alive indeed in his verse. It is, however, as a 
 great prose writer, that I prefer to consider him. 
 Here he is certainly one of the most permanent 
 forces in our literature. Rasselas, for example, 
 while never ranking with us moderns quite so 
 high as it did with the excellent Miss Jenkins in 
 Crafiford, is a never failing delight. So far from 
 being a dead book, is there a young man or a 
 young woman setting out in the world of to-day, 
 aspiring to an all-round literary cultivation, who
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 17 
 
 is not required to know it ? It has been re-pub- 
 lished continually. What novelist of our time 
 would not give much to have so splendid a 
 public recognition as was provided when Lord 
 Beaconsfield, then Mr. Disraeli, after the Abys- 
 sinian Expedition, pictured in the House of 
 Commons " the elephants of Asia dragging the 
 artillery of Europe over the mountains of 
 Rasselas." 
 
 Equally in evidence are those wonderful Lives 
 of The Poets which Johnson did not complete 
 until he was seventy-two years of age, literary 
 efforts which have always seemed to me to be 
 an encouraging demonstration that we should 
 never allow ourselves to grow old. Many of these 
 ' Lives ' are very beautiful. They are all sugges- 
 tive. Only the other day I read them again in 
 the fine new edition that was prepared by that 
 staunch Johnsonian, Dr. Birkbeck Hill. The 
 greatest English critic of these latter days, Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold, showed his appreciation by 
 making a selection from them for popular use. 
 From age to age every man with the smallest 
 profession of interest in literature will study 
 them. Of how many books can this be said ? 
 
 I.M. o
 
 1 8 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 Greatest of all was Johnson as a writer in 
 his least premeditated work, his Prayers and 
 Meditations. They take rank in my mind with 
 the very best things of their kind, The Medi- 
 tations of Marcus Aurelius, The Confessions of 
 Rousseau, and similar books. They are healthier 
 than any of their rivals. William Cowper, 
 that always fascinating poet and beautiful 
 letter writer, more than once disparaged 
 Johnson in this connexion. Cowper said that 
 he would like to have " dusted Johnson's jacket 
 until his pension rattled in his pocket," for what 
 he had said about Milton. He read some ex- 
 tracts, after Johnson's death, from the Medita- 
 tions, and wrote contemptuously of them.-^ But 
 if Cowper had always possessed, in addition to his 
 
 1 Prayers and Meditations : composed by Samuel Johnson, 
 LL.D., and published from his Manuscripts by George Stra- 
 ham, D.D., Prebendary of Rochester and Vicar of Islington in 
 Middlesex, 1785. Dr. Birkbeck Hill suggests that Johnson 
 could not have contemplated the publication of the work in its 
 entirety, but the world is the better for the self revelation, not- 
 withstanding Cowper's remark in a letter to Newton (August 
 27, 1785), that " the publisher of it is neither much a friend 
 to the cause of religion nor to the author's memory ; for by the 
 specimen of it that has reached us, it seems to contain only such 
 stuff as has a direct tendency to expose both to ridicule."
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 19 
 
 fascinating other-worldliness the healthy world- 
 liness of Dr. Johnson, perhaps we should all 
 have been the happier. To me that collection 
 of Prayers and Meditations seems one of the 
 most helpful books that I have ever read, and I 
 am surprised that it is not constantly re-printed 
 in a handy form.^ It is a valuable inspiration 
 to men to keep up their spirits under adverse 
 conditions, to conquer the weaknesses of their 
 natures ; not in the stifling manner of Thomas 
 a Kempis, but in a breezy, robust way. Yes, 
 I think that these three works, Rasselas, The 
 Lives of the Poets, and the Prayers and Medita- 
 tions, make it quite clear that Johnson still 
 holds his place as one of our greatest writers, 
 even if we were not familiar with his many 
 delightful letters, and had not read his Rambler — 
 which his old enemy. Miss Anna Seward, insisted 
 was far better than Addison's Spectator. 
 
 All this is only to say that we cannot have too 
 much of Dr. Johnson. The advantage of such a 
 gathering as this is that it helps us to keep that 
 
 ^ There is an edition with a brief Introduction by Augustine 
 Birrell, published by Elliot Stock in 1904, and another, with an 
 Introduction by " H. C," was issued by H. R. Allenson in 1906.
 
 20 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 fact alive. Moreover, I feel that it is a good 
 thing if we can hearten those who have devoted 
 themselves to laborious research connected with 
 such matters. Take, for example, the work of 
 Dr. Birkbeck Hill : his many volumes are a 
 delight to the Johnson student. I knew Dr. Hill 
 very well, and I have often felt that his work did 
 not receive half the encouragement that it deserved. 
 We hear sometimes, at least in London, of authors 
 who advertise themselves. I rather fancy that 
 all such advertisement is monopolized by the 
 novelist, and that the newspapers do not trouble 
 themselves very much about literary men who work 
 in other fields than that of fiction. Fiction has 
 much to be said for it, but as a rule it reaps its 
 reward very promptly, both in finance and in 
 fame. No such rewards come to the writer of 
 biography, to the writer of history, to the literary 
 editor. Dr. Hill's beautiful edition of Boswell's 
 Life^ with all its fascinating annotation, did not 
 reach a second edition in his lifetime. I am afraid 
 that the sum that he made out of it, or that his 
 publishers made out of it, would seem a very poor 
 reward indeed when gauged by the results in other 
 fields of labour.
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 21 
 
 Within the past few weeks I have had the 
 privilege of reading a book that continues these 
 researches. Mr. Aleyn Lyell Reade has pub- 
 lished a handsome tome, which he has privately- 
 printed, entitled Dr. Johnson'' s Ancestry : His 
 Kinsfolk and Family Connexions. I am glad to 
 hear that the Johnson Museum has purchased a 
 copy, for such a work deserves every encourage- 
 ment. The author must have spent hundreds 
 of pounds, without the faintest possibility of 
 obtaining either fame or money from the tran- 
 saction. He seems to have employed copyists 
 in every town in Staffordshire, to copy wills, 
 registers of births and deaths, and kindred 
 records from the past. Now Dr. Birkbeck Hill 
 could not have afforded to do this ; he was by 
 no means a rich man. Mr. Reade has clearly 
 been able to spare no expense, with the result 
 that here are many interesting facts corrective 
 of earlier students. The whole is a valuable 
 record of the ancestry of Dr. Johnson. It shows 
 clearly that whereas Dr. Johnson thought very 
 little of his ancestry, and scarcely knew anything 
 of his grandfather on the paternal or the maternal 
 side, he really sprang from a very remarkable
 
 22 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 stock, notably on the maternal side ; and that 
 his mother's family, the Fords, had among 
 their connexions all kinds of fairly prosperous 
 people, clergymen, officials, professional men as 
 well as sturdy yeomen. These ancestors of Dr. 
 Johnson did not help him much to push his way 
 in the world. Of some of them he had scarcely 
 heard. All the same it is of great interest 
 to us to know this ; it in a manner explains 
 him. That before Samuel Johnson was born, 
 one of his family had been Lord Mayor of 
 London, another a Sheriff, that they had been 
 associated in various ways, not only with the 
 city of his birth, but also with the great city 
 which Johnson came to love so much, is to let in 
 a flood of fresh light upon our hero. My time 
 does not permit me to do more than make a 
 passing reference to this book, but I should like 
 to offer here a word of thanks to its author for 
 his marvellous industry, and a word of congratula- 
 tion to him for the extraordinary success that 
 has accrued to his researches. 
 
 I mention Mr. Reade's book because it is full of 
 Lichfield names and Lichfield associations, and 
 it is with Dr. Johnson's life-long connexion with
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 23 
 
 Lichfield that all of us are thinking to-night. 
 Now here I may say, without any danger of being 
 challenged by some visitor who has the misfortune 
 not to be a citizen of Lichfield — you who are will 
 not wish to challenge me — that this city has 
 distinguished itself in quite an unique way. I do 
 not believe that it can be found that any other 
 town or city of England — I will not say of Scot- 
 land or of Ireland — has done honour to a literary 
 son in the same substantial measure that Lich- 
 field has done honour to Samuel Johnson. The 
 peculiar glory of the deed is that it was done to 
 the living Johnson, not coming, as so many 
 honours do, too late for a man to find pleasure 
 in the recognition. We know that — 
 
 Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead, 
 Through which the living Homer begged his bread. 
 
 But I doubt whether in the whole history of 
 literature in England it can be found that any 
 other purely literary man has received in his 
 lifetime so substantial a mark of esteem from 
 the city which gave him birth, as Johnson did 
 when your Corporation, in 1767, " at a common- 
 hall of the bailiffs and citizens, without any
 
 24 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 solicitation," presented him with the ninety- 
 nine years' lease of the house in which he was 
 born. Your citizens not only did that for John- 
 son, but they gave him other marks of their 
 esteem. He writes from Lichfield to Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds to express his pleasure that his portrait 
 has been " much visited and much admired." 
 " Every man," he adds, " has a lurking desire to 
 appear considerable in his native place." Then 
 we all remember Boswell's naive confession that 
 his pleasure at finding his hero so much beloved 
 led him, when the pair arrived at this very 
 hostelry, to imbibe too much of the famous Lich- 
 field ale. If Boswell wished, as he says, to offer 
 incense to the spirit of the place, how much 
 more may we desire to do so to-night, when 
 exactly 125 years have passed, and his hero is 
 now more than ever recognized as a king of men. 
 I do not suggest that we should honour 
 Johnson in quite the same way that Boswell 
 did. This is a more abstemious age. But 
 we must drink to his memory all the same. 
 Think of it. A century and a quarter have 
 passed since that memorable evening at the 
 Three Crowns^ when Johnson and Boswell thus
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 25 
 
 foregathered in this very room. You recall 
 the journey from Birmingham of the two com- 
 panions. " We are getting out of a state 
 of death," the Doctor said with relief, as he 
 approached his native city, feeling all the 
 magic and invigoration that is said to come to 
 those who in later years return to " calf-land." 
 Then how good he was to an old schoolfellow 
 who called upon him here. The fact that this 
 man had failed in the battle of life while Johnson 
 had succeeded, only made the Doctor the kinder. 
 I know of no more human picture than that — 
 " A Mr. Jackson," as he is called by Boswell, " in 
 his coarse grey coat," obviously very poor, and 
 as Boswell suggests, " dull and untaught." The 
 " great Cham of Literature " listens patiently 
 as the worthy Jackson tells his troubles, so much 
 more patiently than he would have listened to 
 one of the famous men of his Club in Lon- 
 don, and the hero-worshipping Boswell drinks 
 his deep potations, but never neglects to take 
 notes the while. Of Boswell one remembers 
 further that Johnson had told Wilkes that he had 
 brought him to Lichfield, " my native city," 
 " that he might see for once real Civility — for
 
 26 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 you know he lives among savages in Scotland, 
 and among rakes in London." All good stories 
 are worth hearing again and again, and so I 
 offer an apology for recalling the picture to 
 your mind at this time and in this place. 
 
 Alas ! I have not the gift of the worldfamed 
 Lord Verulam, who, as Francis Bacon, sat in the 
 House of Commons. The members, we are told, 
 so delighted in his oratory that when he rose to 
 speak they " were fearful lest he should make 
 an end." I am making an end. Johnson then 
 was not only a great writer, a conversationalist 
 so unique that his sayings have passed more into 
 current speech than those of any other English- 
 man, but he was also a great moralist — a superb 
 inspiration to a better life. We should not love 
 Johnson so much were he not presented to us as a 
 man of many weaknesses and faults akin to our 
 own, not a saint by any means, and therefore not 
 so far removed from us as some more ethereal 
 characters of whom we may read. Johnson 
 striving to methodize his life, to fight against 
 sloth and all the minor vices to which he was 
 prone, is the Johnson whom some of us prefer to 
 keep ever in mind. " Here was," I quote
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 27 
 
 Carlyle, " a strong and noble man, one of our 
 great English souls." I love him best in his book 
 called Prayers and Meditations^ where we know 
 him as we know scarcely any other Englishman, 
 for the good, upright fighter in this by no means 
 easy battle of life. It is as such a fighter that we 
 think of him to-night. Reading the account of 
 his battles may help us to fight ours. 
 
 Gentlemen, I give you the toast of the evening. 
 Let us drink in solemn silence, upstanding, " The 
 Immortal Memory of Dr. Samuel Johnson."
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 WILLIAM COWPER
 
 II 
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 WILLIAM COWPER 
 
 An address entitled * The Sanity of Cowper,* delivered at 
 the Centenary Celebration at OIney, Bucks, on the 
 occasion of the Hundredth Anniversary of the 
 Death of the poet William Cowper, April 25, 1900. 
 
 I OWE some apology for coming down to Olney 
 to take part in what I believe is a purely 
 local celebration, in which no other Londoner, 
 as far as I know, has been asked to take part. 
 I am here not because I profess any special 
 qualification to speak about Cowper, in the town 
 with which his name is so pleasantly associated, 
 but because Mr. Mackay,^ the son-in-law of your 
 Vicar, has 'written a book about the Brontes, and 
 I have done likewise, and he asked me to come. 
 
 1 The Rev. Angus Mackay, author of The Brontes In Fact 
 and Fiction. He was Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Dean 
 Bridge, Edinburgh, when he died, aged 54, on New Year's 
 Day, 1907. Earlier in life he had been a Curate at Olney. 
 
 SI
 
 32 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 This common Interest has little, you will say, to do 
 with the Poet of Olney. Between Cowper and 
 Charlotte Bronte there were, however, not a 
 few points of likeness or at least of contrast. Both 
 were the children of country clergymen ; both 
 lived lives of singular and, indeed, unusual 
 strenuousness ; both were the very epitome of a 
 strong Protestantism ; and yet both — such is 
 the inevitable toleration of genius — were drawn 
 in an unusual manner to attachment to friends 
 of the Roman Cathohc Church — Cowper to 
 Lady Throckmorton, who copied out some of 
 his translations from Homer for him, assisted by 
 her father-confessor. Dr. Gregson, and Miss 
 Bronte to her Professor, M. Heger, the man in 
 the whole world whom she most revered. Under 
 circumstances of peculiar depression both these 
 great Protestant writers went further on occasion 
 than their Protestant friends would have approved, 
 Cowper to contemplate — so he assures us in one 
 of his letters — the entering a French monastery, 
 and Miss Bronte actually to kneel in the Confes- 
 sional in a Brussels church. Further, let me 
 remind you that there were moments in the lives 
 of Charlotte Bronte and her sisters, when Cow-
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 33 
 
 per's poem, The Castaway, was their most soul- 
 stirring reading. Then, again, Mary Unwin's 
 only daughter became the wife of a Vicar of 
 Dewsbury, and it was at Dewsbury and to the 
 very next vicar, that Mr. Bronte, the father of 
 Charlotte, was curate when he first went into 
 Yorkshire, Finally, let it be recalled that Cowper 
 and Charlotte Bronte have attracted as much 
 attention by the pathos of their lives as by any- 
 thing that they wrote. Thus far, and no further, 
 can a strained analogy carry us. The most enthu- 
 siastic admirers of the Brontes can only claim for 
 them that they permanently added certain 
 artistic treasures to our literature. Cowper 
 did incomparably more than this. His work 
 marked an epoch. 
 
 But first let me say how interested we who 
 are strangers naturally feel in being in Olney. To 
 every lover of literature Olney is made classic 
 ground by the fact that Cowper spent some 
 twenty years of his life in it — not always with 
 too genial a contemplation of the place and its 
 inhabitants. " The genius of Cowper throws 
 a halo of glory over all the surroundings of Olney 
 and Weston," says Dean Burgon. But Olney 
 
 I.M.
 
 34 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 has claims apart from Cowper. John Newton ^ 
 presents himself to me as an impressive person- 
 ality. There was a time, indeed, of youthful 
 impetuosity when I positively hated him, for 
 Southey, whose biography I read very early in life, 
 certainly endeavours to assist the view that 
 Newton was largely responsible for the poet's 
 periodical attacks of insanity. 
 
 But a careful survey of the facts modifies any 
 such impression. Newton was narrow at times, 
 he was over-concerned as to the letter, often 
 ignoring the spirit of true piety, but the 
 student of the two volumes of his Life and Corre- 
 spondence that we owe to Josiah Bull, will be com- 
 pelled to look at " the old African blasphemer 
 as he called himself, with much of sympathy. 
 That he had a note of tolerance, with which he 
 is not usually credited, we learn from one of his 
 letters, where he says : 
 
 I am willing to be a debtor to the wise and to the un- 
 
 ^ John Newton (i 725-1 807) had been the captain of a slave 
 ship before his ' conversion.' He became Curate of Olney 
 in 1764 and published the famous Olney Hymns with Cowper 
 in 1779. In 1780 Newton became the popular Incumbent of 
 St. Mary Woolnoth, London.
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 35 
 
 wise, to doctors and shoemakers, if I can get a hint from 
 any one without respect of parties. When a house is 
 on fire Churchmen and Dissenters, Methodists and 
 Papists, Moravians and Mystics are all welcome to bring 
 water. At such times nobody asks, " Pray, friend, whom do 
 you hear ? " or " What do you think of the five points ? " 
 
 Even my good friend Canon Benham, who has 
 done so much to sustain the honourable fame of 
 Cowper, and who would have been here to-day 
 but for a long-standing engagement, is scarcely 
 fair to Newton.^ It is not true, as has been 
 suggested, that Cowper always changed his 
 manner into one of painful sobriety when he wrote 
 to Newton. One of his most humorous letters — 
 a rhyming epistle — was addressed to that divine. 
 
 I have writ (he says) in a rhyming fit, what will make 
 you dance, and as you advance, will keep you still, though 
 against your will, dancing away, alert and gay, till you 
 come to an end of what I have penned ; which you may do 
 ere Madam and you are quite worn out with jigging about, 
 I take my leave, and here you receive a bow profound, 
 down to the ground, from your humble me, W. C. 
 
 ^ See the Globe Cozvper, with an Introduction by the Rev. 
 William Benham, the Rector of St. Edmund's, Lombard Street. 
 Canon Benham has written many books, but he has done 
 no better piece of work than this fine Introduction which first 
 appeared in 1870.
 
 36 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 Now, I quote this very familiar passage from 
 the correspondence to remind you that Cowper 
 could only have written it to a man possessed 
 of considerable healthy geniality. 
 
 At any rate, alike as a divine and as the author 
 of the Olney Hymns^ Newton holds an important 
 place in the history of theology, and Olney has 
 a right to be proud of him. An even more 
 important place is held by Thomas Scott, ^ and 
 it seems to me quite a wonderful thing that Olney 
 should sometimes have held at one and the same 
 moment three such remarkable men as Cowper, 
 Newton, and Scott. 
 
 In my boyhood Scott's name was a household 
 word, and many a time have I thumbed the 
 volumes of his Commentaries^ those Commentaries 
 which Sir James Stephen declared to be " the 
 greatest theological performance of our age and 
 country." Of Scott Cardinal Newman in his 
 
 Apologia said, it will be remembered, that " to 
 
 1 Thomas Scott (1747-1821). His commentaries first 
 appeared in weekly parts between 1788 and 1792, and were 
 first issued in ten volumes, 1823-25. He was Rector of Astin 
 Sandford in Buckinghamshire from 1 801 until his death. His 
 Life was published by his son, the Rev. John Scott, in 1822.
 
 WILLIAM COWPER i-] 
 
 him, humanly speaking, I almost owe my soul." 
 Even here our literary associations with Olney 
 and its neighbourhood are not ended, for, it was 
 within five miles of this town — at Easton Maudit 
 — that Bishop Percy ^ lived and prepared those 
 Reliques which have inspired a century of ballad 
 literature. Here the future Bishop of Dromore 
 was visited by Dr. Johnson and others. What 
 a pity that with only five miles separating them 
 Cowper and Johnson should never have met ! 
 Would Cowper have reconsidered the wish made 
 when he read Johnson's biography of Milton in 
 the Lives of the Poets : " Oh ! I could thresh his 
 old jacket till I made his pension jingle in his 
 pocket ! " ? 
 
 But it is with Cowper only that we have here 
 to do, and when we are talking of Cowper the 
 difficulty is solely one of compression. So much 
 has been written about him and his work. The 
 Lives of him form of themselves a most sub- 
 stantial library. He has been made the subject 
 of what is surely the very worst biography in the 
 
 1 Thomas Percy (1729-1811) became Vicar of Easton 
 Maudit, Northamptonshire, in 1753. Johnson visited him here 
 in 1764. In 1765 Percy published his Reliques of Ancient 
 English Poetry. He became Bishop of Dromere in 1782.
 
 38 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 language and of one that is among the very best. 
 The well-meaning Hayley ^ wrote the one, in 
 which the word " tenderness " appears at least 
 twice on every page, and Southey ^ the other. 
 Not less fortunate has the poet been in his critics. 
 Walter Bagehot, James Russell Lowell, Mrs. 
 Oliphant, George Eliot ^ — these are but a few of 
 
 1 William Hayley (1745-1820) was counted a great poet in 
 his day and placed in the same rank with Dryden and Pope. 
 He wrote 'Triumphs of Temper 178 1, Triumphs of Music 1804, 
 and many other works ; but he is of interest here by virtue 
 of his Life and Letters of William Cozvper, Esq., with 
 Remarks on Epistolary Writers, published in 1803. 
 
 2 Robert Southey (i 774-1843), whose Life and Works of 
 Cowper is in fifteen volumes, which were published by 
 Baldwin & Cradock between the years 1835 and 1837. The 
 attractive form in which the works are presented, the many 
 fine steel engravings, and the excellent type make this still the 
 only way for book lovers to approach Cowper. Southey had 
 to suffer the competition of the Rev. T. S. Grimshawe, who 
 produced, through Saunders & Otley, about the same time a 
 reprint of Hayley's biography with much of Cowper's corre- 
 spondence that is not in Southey's volumes. The whole 
 correspondence was collected by Mr. Thomas Wright, and 
 published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1904. 
 
 ' Walter Bagehot (i 826-1 877) in his Literary Studies. James 
 Russell Lowell (1819-1891) in his Essays. Mrs. Oliphant 
 1828-1897) in her Literary History of England; and George 
 Eliot (18 19-1880) in her Essays (Worldliness and Other 
 Worldliness).
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 39 
 
 the names that occur to me as having said some- 
 thing wise and to the point concerning the Poet 
 of Olney. 
 
 I somehow feel that it is safer for me to refer 
 to the Poet of Olney than to speak of William 
 Cowper, because I am not quite sure how you 
 would wish me to pronounce his name. Cooper, 
 he himself pronounced it, as his family are in 
 the habit of doing. The present Lord Cowper 
 is known to all the world as Lord Cooper. The 
 derivation of the name and the family coat-of- 
 arms justify that pronunciation, and it might 
 be said that a man was, and is, entitled to settle 
 the question of the pronunciation of his own 
 name. And yet I plead for what I am quite 
 willing to allow is the incorrect pronunciation. 
 All pronunciation, even of the simplest words, 
 is settled finally by a consensus of custom. 
 Throughout the English-speaking world the 
 name is now constantly pronounced Cowper, as 
 if that most useful and ornamental animal the 
 cow had given it its origin. Well-read Scotland 
 is peculiarly unanimous in the custom, and well- 
 read America follows suit. William Shakspere, 
 I doubt not, called himself Shaxspere, and we
 
 40 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 decline to imitate him, and so probably many 
 of us will with a light heart go on speaking of 
 William Cowper to the end of the chapter. At 
 any rate Shakspere and Cowper, divergent as 
 were their lives and their work — and one readily 
 recognizes the incomparably greater position of 
 the former — had alike a keen sense of humour, 
 rare among poets it would seem, and hugely 
 would they both have enjoyed such a controversy 
 as this. 
 
 This suggestion of the humour of Cowper 
 brings me to my main point. Humour is so 
 essentially a note of sanity, and it is the sanity of 
 Cowper that I desire to emphasize here. We 
 have heard too much of the insanity of Cowper, 
 of the " maniac's tongue "to which Mrs. Browning 
 referred, of the *' maniacal Calvinist " of whom 
 Byron wrote somewhat scornfully. Only a day 
 or two ago I read in a high-class journal that 
 " one fears that Cowper's despondency and 
 madness are better known to-day than his poetry." 
 That is not to know the secret of Cowper. It is 
 true that there were periods of maniacal de- 
 pression, and these were not always religious 
 ones. Now, it was from sheer nervousness at
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 41 
 
 the prospect of meeting his fellows, now it was 
 from a too logical acceptance of the doctrine of 
 eternal punishment. Had it not been these, it 
 would have been something else. It might have 
 been politics, or a hundred things that now and 
 again give a twist to the mind of the wisest. 
 With Cowper it was generally religion. I am not 
 hereto promote a paradox. I accept the only too 
 well-known story of Cowper's many visitations, 
 but, looking back a century, for the purpose of 
 asking what was Cowper's contribution to the 
 world's happiness and why we meet to speak of our 
 love for him to-day, I insist that these visitations 
 are not essential to our memory of him as a great 
 figure in our literature — the maker of an epoch. 
 
 Cowper lived for some seventy years — sixty- 
 nine, to be exact. Of these years there was a 
 period longer than the full term of Byron's life, 
 of Shelley's or of Keats's, of perfect sanity, and 
 it was in this period that he gave us what is one 
 of the sanest achievements in our literature, 
 view it as we may. 
 
 Let us look backwards over the century — 
 a century which has seen many changes of 
 which Cowper had scarcely any vision — the
 
 42 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 wonders of machinery and of electricity, of com- 
 mercial enterprise, of the newspaper press, of 
 book production. The galloping postboy is the 
 most persistent figure in Cowper's landscape. He 
 has been replaced by the motor car. Nations 
 have arisen and fallen ; a thousand writers have 
 become popular and have ceased to be re- 
 membered. Other writers have sprung up who 
 have made themselves immortal. Burns and 
 Byron, Coleridge and Wordsworth, Scott and 
 Shelley among the poets. 
 
 We ask ourselves, then, what distinctly differen- 
 tiates Cowper's life from that of his brothers in 
 poetry, and I reply — his sanity. He did not 
 indulge in vulgar amours, as did Burns and Byron ; 
 he did not ruin his moral fibre by opium, as did 
 Coleridge ; he did not shock his best friends by 
 an over-weening egotism, as did Wordsworth 
 he did not spoil his life by reckless financial 
 complications, as did Scott ; or by too great an 
 enthusiasm to beat down the world's conventions, 
 as did Shelley. I do not here condemn any one 
 or other of these later poets. Their lives cannot 
 be summed up in the mistakes they made. I 
 only urge that, as it is not good to be at warfare
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 43 
 
 with your fellows, to be burdened with debts 
 that you have to kill yourself to pay, to alienate 
 your friends by distressing mannerisms, to cease 
 to be on speaking terms with your family — there- 
 fore Cowper, who avoided these things, and, out 
 of threescore years and more allotted to him, 
 lived for some forty or fifty years at least a quiet, 
 idyllic life, surrounded by loyal and loving friends, 
 had chosen the saner and safer path. That, 
 it may be granted, was very much a matter of 
 temperament, and for it one does not need to 
 praise him. The appeal to us of Robert Burns 
 to gently scan our brother man will necessarily 
 find a ready acceptance to-day, and a plea on 
 behalf of kindly toleration for any great writer 
 who has inspired his fellows is natural and honour- 
 able. But Cowper does not require any such 
 kindly toleration. His temperament led him to 
 a placid life, where there were few temptations, 
 and that life with its quiet walks, its occasional 
 drives, its simple recreations, has stood for a 
 whole century as our English ideal. It is what, 
 amid the strain of the severest commercialism 
 in our great cities, we look forward to for our 
 declining years as a haven on this side of the grave.
 
 44 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 But I have undertaken to plead for Cowper's 
 sanity. I desire, therefore, to beg you to look not 
 at this or that episode in his life, when, as we know, 
 Cowper was in the clutches of evil spirits, but at 
 his life as a whole — a life of serene contentment 
 in the company of his friends, his hares Puss, 
 Tiny and Bess, his " eight pair of tame pigeons," 
 his correspondents ; and then I ask you to turn 
 to his work, and to note the essential sanity of 
 that work also. 
 
 First there is his poetry. When after the 
 Bastille had fallen Charles James Fox quoted in 
 one of his speeches Cowper's lines — written long 
 years before — praying that that event might 
 occur, he paid an unconscious tribute to the 
 sanity of Cowper's genius.^ Few poets who 
 have let their convictions and aspirations find 
 expression in verse have come so near the mark. 
 
 Wordsworth's verse — that which was written 
 at the same age — is studded with prophecy of 
 evils that never occurred. It was not because 
 of any supermundane intelligence, such as latter- 
 day poets have been pleased to affect and latter- 
 
 1 It has no bearing upon the subject that the horrors of 
 the Bastille at the time of its fall were greatly exaggerated.
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 45 
 
 day critics to assume for them, that Cowper 
 wrote in anticipation of the fall of the Bastille 
 in those thrilling lines, but because his exceedingly 
 sane outlook upon the world showed him that 
 France was riding fast towards revolution. 
 
 We have been told that Cowper's poetry 
 lacked the true note of passion, that there was an 
 absence of the " lyric cry." I protest that I find 
 the note of passion in the " Lines on the Receipt 
 of my Mother's Picture," in his two sets of verses 
 to Mrs. Unwin, in his sonnet to Wilberforce 
 not less marked than I find it in other great poets. 
 I find in The Task and elsewhere in Cowper's works 
 a note of enthusiasm for human brotherhood, for 
 man's responsibility for man, for universal kin- 
 ship, that had scarcely any place in literature 
 before he wrote quietly here at Olney thoughts 
 wiser and saner than he knew. To-day we call 
 ourselves by many names. Conservatives or 
 Liberals, Radicals, or Socialists ; we differ widely 
 as to ways and means ; but we are all practically 
 agreed about one thing — that the art of politics 
 is the art of making the world happier. Each 
 politician who has any aspirations beyond mere 
 ambition desires to leave the world a little better
 
 46 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 than he found it. This is a commonplace of 
 to-day. It was not a commonplace of Cowper's 
 day. Even the great-hearted, lovable Dr. John- 
 son was only concerned with the passing act of 
 kindliness to his fellows ; patriotism he declared 
 to be the last refuge of a scoundrel ; collective 
 aspiration was mere charlatanry in his eyes, and 
 when some one said that he had lost his appetite 
 because of a British defeat, Johnson thought him 
 an impostor, in which Johnson was probably 
 right. There have been plenty of so-called patriots 
 who were scoundrels, there has been plenty of 
 affectation of sentiment which is little better 
 than charlatanry, but we do not consider when 
 we weigh the influence of men whether Rous- 
 seau was morally far inferior to Johnson. We 
 know that he was. But Rousseau, poor an instru- 
 ment as he may have been, helped to break many a 
 chain, to relieve many a weary heart, to bring to 
 whole peoples a new era in which the horrors of 
 the past became as a nightmare, and in which 
 ideals were destined to reign for ever. Cowper, 
 an incomparably better man than Rousseau, 
 helped to permeate England with that collective 
 sentiment, which, while it does not excuse us
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 47 
 
 for neglecting our neighbour, is a good thing for 
 preserving for nations a healthy natural life, a 
 more and more difficult task with the grow- 
 ing complications of commercialism. Cowper 
 here, as I sa)^, unconsciously performed his 
 greatest service to humanity ; and it was per- 
 formed, be it remembered, at Olney. It has been 
 truly said that in Cowper : — 
 
 The poetry of human wrong begins, that long, long 
 cry against oppression and evil done by man to man, 
 against the political, moral, or priestly tyrant, which 
 rings louder and louder through Burns, Coleridge, Shel- 
 ley, and Byron, ever impassioned, ever longing, ever 
 prophetic — never, in the darkest time, quite despairing.^ 
 
 And Cowper achieved this without losing 
 sight for one moment of the essential necessity 
 for personal worth : 
 
 Spend all thy powers 
 Of rant and rhapsody in Virtue's praise. 
 Be most sublimely good, verbosely grand, 
 
 and it profiteth nothing, he said in effect. 
 
 That was not his only service as a citizen. He 
 struck the note of honest patriotism as it had not 
 
 ^ Theology in the English Poets, by Stopford A. Brooke.
 
 48 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 been struck before since Milton, by the familiar 
 lines commencing : 
 
 England, with all thy faults, I love thee still, 
 My country ! 
 
 As also in that stirring ballad " On the Loss of 
 the Royal George : " 
 
 Her timbers yet are sound, 
 
 And she may float again. 
 Full charged with England's thunder. 
 
 And plough the distant main. 
 
 There are two other great claims that might 
 here be made for Cowper did time allow, that he 
 anticipated Wordsworth alike as a lover of nature, 
 as one who had more than a superficial affection 
 for it — the superficial affection of Thomson and 
 Gray — and that he anticipated Wordsworth 
 also as a lover of animal life. Cowper's love of 
 nature was the less effective than Wordsworth's 
 only, surely, in that he had not had Wordsworth's 
 advantage of living amid impressive scenery. 
 His love of animal life was far less platonic than 
 Wordsworth's. To his hares and his pigeons 
 and all dumb creatures he was genuinely devoted. 
 Perhaps it was because he had in him the blood
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 49 
 
 of kings — for, curiously enough, it is no more 
 difficult to trace the genealogical tree of both 
 Cowper and Byron down to William the Con- 
 queror than it is to trace the genealogical tree 
 of Queen Victoria — it was perhaps, I say, this 
 descent from kings which led him to be more 
 tolerant of " sport " than was Wordsworth. At 
 any rate, Cowper's vigorous description of being 
 in at the death of a fox may be contrasted with 
 Wordsworth's " Heart Leap Well," and you 
 will prefer Cowper or Wordsworth, as your 
 tastes are for or against our old-fashioned English 
 sports. But even then, as often, Cowper in his 
 poetry was less tolerant than in his prose, for 
 he writes in The Task of : 
 
 detested sport 
 That owes its pleasures to another's pain, 
 
 We may note in all this the almost entire 
 lack of indebtedness in Cowper to his prede- 
 cessors. One of his most famous phrases, 
 indeed, that on " the cup that cheers, but not 
 inebriates," he borrowed from Berkeley ; but 
 his borrowings were few, far fewer than those of 
 any other great poet, whereas mine would be a 
 long essay were I to produce by the medium of 
 
 I.M. ^
 
 50 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 parallel columns all that other poets have borrowed 
 from him. 
 
 Lastly, among Cowper's many excellencies as a 
 poet let me note his humour. His pathos, his 
 humanity — many fine qualities he has in common 
 with others ; but what shall we say of his humour? 
 If the ubiquitous Scot were present, so far from 
 his native heath — and I daresay we have one or 
 two with us — he might claim that humour was 
 also the prerogative of Robert Burns. He might 
 claim, also, that certain other great characteristics 
 of Cowper were to be found almost simultane- 
 ously in Burns. There is virtue in the almost. 
 Cowper was born in 1731, Burns in 1759. At 
 any rate humour has been a rare product 
 among the greater English poets. It was entirely 
 absent in Wordsworth, in Shelley, in Keats. 
 Byron possessed a gift of satire and wit, but no 
 humour, Tennyson only a suspicion of it in " The 
 Northern Farmer." From Cowper to Browning, 
 who also had it at times, there has been little 
 humour in the greatest English poetry, although 
 plenty of it in the lesser poets — Hood and the 
 rest. But there was in Cowper a great sense 
 of humour, as there was also plenty of what
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 51 
 
 Hazlitt, almost censoriously, calls " elegant 
 trifling." Not only in the imperishable " John 
 Gilpin," but in the " Case Between Nose and 
 Eyes," " The Nightingale and Glow-worm," and 
 other pieces you have examples of humorous verse 
 which will live as long as our language endures. 
 
 Cowper's claims as a poet, then, may be empha- 
 sized under four heads : — 
 
 I. His enthusiasm for humanity. 
 II. His love of nature. 
 
 III. His love of animal life. 
 
 IV. His humour. 
 
 And in three of these, let it be said emphatic- 
 ally, he stands out as the creator of a new era. 
 
 There is another claim I make for him, and 
 with this I close — his position as a master of 
 prose, as well as of poetry. Cowper was the 
 greatest letter-writer in a language which has 
 produced many great letter-writers — Walpole, 
 Gray, Byron, Scott, FitzGerald, and a long list. 
 But nearly all these men were men of affairs, of 
 action. Given a good literary style they could 
 hardly have been other than interesting, they 
 had so much to say that they gained from 
 external sources. Even FitzGerald — the one
 
 52 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 recluse — had all the treasures of literature con- 
 stantly passing into his study. Cowper had but 
 eighteen books altogether during many of his 
 years in Olney, and some of us who have lent our 
 volumes in the past and are still sighing over 
 gaps in our shelves find consolation in the fact that 
 six of Cowper's books had been returned to him 
 after a friend had borrowed for twenty years or so. 
 Now, it is comparatively easy to write good letters 
 with a library around you ; it is marvellous that 
 Cowper could have done this with so little material, 
 and his letters are, from this point of view, the best 
 of all — " divine chit-chat " Coleridge called them. 
 His simple style captivates us. And here let me 
 say — keeping to my text — that it is the sanest 
 of styles, a style with no redundancies, no rhetoric, 
 no straining after effect. The outlook on life 
 is sane — what could be finer than the chase for 
 the lost hare, or the call of the Parliamentary 
 candidate, or the flogging of the thief ? — and the 
 outlook on literature is particularly sane. 
 
 Cowper was well-nigh the only true poet in 
 the first rank in English literature who was at 
 the same time a true critic. Literary history 
 affords a singular revelation of the wild and inco-
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 53 
 
 herent judgments of their fellows on the part 
 of the poets. For praise or blame, there are few 
 literary judgments of Byron, of Shelley, of Words- 
 worth that will stand. Coleridge was a critic 
 first, and his poetry, though good, is small in 
 quantity, and the same may be said of Matthew 
 Arnold. Tennyson discreetly kept away from 
 prose, and his letters, be it remembered, lack 
 distinction as do most letters of the nineteenth 
 century. If, however, as we are really to believe, 
 he it was who really made the first edition 
 of Palgrave's Golden Treasury of Lyric Poetry, 
 he came near to Cowper in his sanity of 
 judgment, and one delights to think that in 
 that precious volume Cowper ranks third — that 
 is, after Shakspere and Wordsworth — in the 
 number of selections that are there given, and 
 rightly given, as imperishable masterpieces of 
 English poetry. Tennyson, also, was at one 
 with Cowper in declaring that an appreciation 
 of Lycidas was a touchstone of taste for poetry. 
 To Tennyson, as to Cowper, Milton was the 
 one great English poet after Shakspere ; and 
 here, also, we revere the saneness of view. 
 More sane too, was Cowper than any of the
 
 54 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 modern critics, in that he did not believe that 
 mere technique was the standpoint from which 
 all poetry must ultimately be judged. 
 
 " Give me," he says, " a manly rough line with a deal 
 of meaning in it, rather than a whole poem full of musical 
 periods, that have nothing in them, only smoothness to 
 recommend them ! " 
 
 And thus he justified Robert Browning and many 
 another singer. 
 
 Let us then dismiss from our minds the one- 
 sided picture of Cowper as a gloomy fanatic, who 
 was always asking himself in Carlylian phrase, 
 " Am I saved ? Am I damned ? " Let us re- 
 member him as staunch to the friends of his 
 youth, sympathetic to his old schoolfellow, 
 Warren Hastings, when the world would make 
 him out too black. Opposed in theory to tobacco, 
 how he delighted to welcome his good friend Mr. 
 Bull. " My greenhouse," he says, " wants only 
 the flavour of your pipe to make it perfectly 
 delightful ! " Naturally tolerant of total absti- 
 nence, he asks one friend to drink to the success 
 of his Homer, and thanks another for a present of 
 bottle-stands. From beginning to end, save in 
 those periods of aberration, there is' no more
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 55 
 
 resemblance to Cowper in the picture that certain 
 narrow-minded people have desired to portray 
 than there is in these same people's conception 
 of Martin Luther. The real Luther, who loved 
 dancing and mirth and the joy of living as much 
 as did any of the men he so courageously opposed, 
 was not more remote from a conception of him 
 once current in this country than was the real 
 Cowper — the frank, genial humorist, who wrote 
 " John Gilpin," who in his youth " giggled and 
 made giggle " with his girl-cousins, and in his 
 maturer years " laughed and made laugh " with 
 Lady Austen and Lady Hesketh. 
 
 To all men there are periods of weariness and 
 depression, side by side with periods of happiness 
 and hopefulness. Cowper, alas ! had more than 
 his share of the tragedy of life, but let us not 
 forget that he had some of its joy, and that joy 
 is reflected for us in a substantial literary achieve- 
 ment, which has lived, and influenced the world, 
 while his more tragic experiences may well be 
 buried in oblivion. This, you may have noted, 
 is not a criticism of Cowper, but an eulogy. I 
 would wish to say, however, that the criticism of 
 Cowper by living writers has been of surpassing
 
 56 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 excellence. For the first fifty or sixty years of 
 the century that we are recalling Cowper was 
 the most popular poet of our country, with Burns 
 and Byron for rivals. He has been largely de- 
 throned by Wordsworth and Shelley, and Tenny- 
 son, not one of whom has been praised too much. 
 But if Cowper has sunk somewhat out of sight of 
 late years, owing to inevitable circumstances, it 
 is during these late years that he has secured the 
 goodwill of the best living critics. Would that 
 Mr. Leslie Stephen^ — who wrote his life in the 
 Dictionary of National Biography — would that 
 Mr. Edmund Gosse — who has so recently published 
 a great biography of Cowper's memorable ances- 
 tor. Dr. Donne — were, one or other of them, 
 here to-day ; or Mr. Austin Dobson, who has 
 visited Olney, and described his impressions ; or 
 Dr. Jessopp, who lives near Cowper's tomb in 
 East Dereham Church. These writers are, alas ! 
 not with us, and some presentment of a poet 
 they love has fallen to less capable hands. 
 
 1 Mr. Leslie Stephen, who became Sir Leslie Stephen, K.C.B., 
 in 1902, was born in 1832 and died in 1904. In addition to the 
 article in the D.N.B.^ this great critic has one on " Cowper and 
 Rousseau " in his Hours in a Library.
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 57 
 
 But not the most brilliant of speeches, not all 
 the enthusiasm of all the critics, can ever restore 
 Cowper to his former immense popularity. We 
 do well, however, to celebrate his centenary, 
 because it is good at certain periods to remember 
 our indebtedness to the great men who have 
 helped us in literature or in life. But that is not 
 to say that we work for the dethronement of later 
 favourites. " Each age must write its own 
 books," says Emerson, and this is particularly the 
 case with the great body of poetry. Cowper, 
 however, will live to all time among students of 
 literature by his longer poems ; he will live to 
 all time among the multitude by his ballads and 
 certain of his lyrics. He will, assuredly, live by 
 his letters, to study which will be a thousand 
 times more helpful to the young writer than many 
 volumes of Addison, to whom we were once ad- 
 vised to devote our days and our nights. Cowper 
 will live, above all, as a profoundly interesting and 
 beautiful personality, as a great and good English- 
 man — the greatest of all the sons of this his 
 adopted town.
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 GEORGE BORROW
 
 Ill 
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 GEORGE BORROW 
 
 An Address delivered in Norwich on the Occasion of 
 the Borrow Centenary, 1903. 
 
 One hundred years ago there was born some 
 two miles from the pleasant little town of East 
 Dereham, in this county, a child who was chris- 
 tened George Henry Borrow. That is why we 
 are assembled here this evening. I count it 
 one of the most interesting coincidences in 
 literary history that only three years earlier there 
 should have left the world in the same little 
 town — a town only known perhaps to those of 
 us who are Norfolk men — a poet who has always 
 seemed to me to be one of the greatest glories 
 of our literature : I mean William Cowper. 
 Cowper died in April, 1800, and Borrow was born 
 in July, 1803, in this same town of East Dereham : 
 and there very much it might be thought, any 
 
 point of likeness or of contrast must surely end. 
 
 01
 
 62 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 Cowper and Borrow do, indeed, come into some 
 trivial kind of kinship at one or two points. In 
 reading Cowper's beautiful letters I have come 
 across two addressed by him to one Richard Phil- 
 lips, a bookseller of that day, who had been in 
 prison for publishing some of ThomasPaine's works. 
 Cowper had been asked by Phillips to write a 
 sympathetic poem denunciatory of the political 
 and religious tyranny that had sent Phillips to 
 jail. Cowper had at first agreed, but was after- 
 wards advised not to have anything more to do 
 with Phillips. Judging by the after career of 
 Phillips, Cowper did wisely; for Phillips was 
 not a good man, although twenty years later he 
 had become a sheriff of London and was knighted. 
 As Sir Richard Phillips he was visited by 
 George Borrow, then a youth at the begin- 
 ning of his career. Borrow came to Phillips armed 
 with an introduction from William Taylor of 
 Norwich, and his reception is most dramatically 
 recorded in the pages of Lavengro. This is, 
 however, to anticipate. Then there is a poem 
 by Cowper to Sir John Fenn ^ the antiquary, the 
 
 1 Sir John Fenn (1739-1794), the antiquary, obtained the 
 originals of the Paston Letters from Thomas Worth, a chemist
 
 GEORGE BORROW 63 
 
 first editor of the famous Paston Letters. In it 
 there is a reference to Fenn's spouse, who, 
 under the pseudonym of " Mrs. Teachwell," wrote 
 many books for children in her day. Now Bor- 
 row could remember this lady — Dame Eleanor 
 Fenn — when he was a boy. He recalled the " Lady 
 Bountiful leaning on her gold-headed cane, 
 while the sleek old footman followed at a respect- 
 ful distance behind." Lady Fenn was forty-six 
 years old when Cowper referred to her. She 
 was sixty-six when the boy Borrow saw her in 
 Dereham streets. At no other points do these 
 great East Dereham writers come upon com- 
 mon ground : Cowper during the greater part 
 of his life was a recluse. He practically fled 
 from the world. In reading the many letters 
 
 of Diss. The following lines were first printed in Cowper's 
 Collected Poems, by Mr. J. C. Bailey in his admirable edition of 
 1906, published by the Methuens : — 
 
 Two omens seem propitious to my fame, 
 Your spouse embalms my verse, and you my name ; 
 A name, which, all self-flattery far apart 
 Belongs to one who venerates in his heart 
 The wise and good, and therefore of the few 
 Known by these titles, sir, both yours and you. 
 
 They were written to please his cousin John Johnson who 
 was to oblige Fenn by giving him an autograph of Cowper's.
 
 64 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 he wrote — and they are among the best letters 
 in the English language — one is struck by the 
 small number of his correspondents. He had 
 few acquaintances and still fewer friends. He 
 had never seen a hill until he was sixty, and 
 then it was only the modest hills of Sussex that 
 seemed to him so supremely glorious. He was 
 never on the Continent. For half a lifetime he 
 did not move out of one county, the least pic- 
 turesque part of Buckinghamshire, the neigh- 
 bourhood of Olney and of Weston. There he 
 wrote the poems that have been a delight to 
 several generations, poems which although they 
 may have gone out of fashion with many are still 
 very dear to some among us ; and there, as I 
 have said, he wrote the incomparable letters 
 that have an equally permanent place in literature. 
 You could not conceive a more extraordinary 
 contrast than the life of this other writer associated 
 with East Dereham, whom we have met to 
 celebrate this evening. George Borrow was the 
 son of a soldier, who had risen from the ranks, 
 and of a mother who had been an actress. Soldier 
 and actress both imply to all of us a restless, 
 wandering life. The soldier was a Cornishman
 
 GEORGE BORROW 65 
 
 hy birth, the actress was of French origin, and 
 so you have blended in this little Norfolk boy — 
 who is a Norfolk boy in spite of it all — every 
 kind of nomadic habit, every kind of fiery, imagin- 
 ative enthusiasm, a temperament not usually 
 characteristic of those of us who claim East 
 Anglia as the land of our birth or of our progenitors. 
 I wish it were possible for me to reconstruct 
 that Norwich world into which young George 
 Borrow entered at thirteen years of age. That 
 it was a Norwich of great intellectual activity 
 is indisputable. In the year of Borrow's birth 
 John Gurney, who died six years later, first 
 became a partner in the Norwich bank. His 
 more famous son, Joseph John Gurney — aged 
 fifteen — left the Earlham home in order to study 
 at Oxford. His sister, the still more famous 
 Elizabeth Fry, was now twenty-three. So that 
 when Borrow, the thirteen year old son of the 
 veteran soldier — who had already been in Ire- 
 land picking up scraps of Irish, and in Scotland 
 adding to his knowledge of Gaelic — settled down 
 for some of his most impressionable years in Nor- 
 wich, Joseph John Gurney was a young man of 
 
 twenty-eight and Elizabeth Fry was thirty-six. 
 i.u.
 
 66 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 Dr. James Martineau was eleven years of age and 
 his sister Harriet was fourteen. Another equally 
 clever woman, not then married to Austin, the 
 famous jurist, was Sarah Taylor, aged twenty- 
 three. This is but to name a few of the crowd 
 of Norwich worthies of that day. Would that 
 some one could produce a picture of the 
 literary life of Norwich of this time and of 
 a quarter of a century onward — a period that 
 includes the famous Bishop Stanley's^ occupancy 
 of the See of Norwich and the visits to this 
 city from all parts of England of a great 
 number of famous literary men. It is my 
 pleasant occupation to-night to endeavour to 
 show that Borrow, the very least of these men 
 and women in public estimation for a good portion 
 of his life, and perhaps the least in popular judg- 
 ment even since his death, was really the greatest, 
 was really the man of all others to whom this 
 beautiful city should do honour if it asks for a 
 name out of its nineteenth century history to 
 crown with local recognition. 
 
 ^ Edward Stanley (i 779-1 849), the father of Arthur Penrhyn 
 Stanley (1815-1881), Dean of Westminster, was Bishop of 
 Norwich from 1837 ^^ ^^^9-
 
 GEORGE BORROW 6^ 
 
 For whatever homage may have fallen to Borrow 
 during the half-century or more since his name 
 first came upon many tongues Norwich, it must 
 be admitted, has given very little of it. No one 
 associated with your city, I repeat, but has heard 
 of the Gurneys and the Martineaus, of the Stan- 
 leys and the Austins, whose life stories have 
 made so large a part of your literary and intellec- 
 tual history during this very period. But I 
 turn in vain to a number of books that I 
 have in my library for any information con- 
 cerning one who is indisputably the greatest 
 among the intellectual children of Norwich. I 
 turn to Mr. Prothero's Lije of Dean Stanley — 
 not one word about Borrow ; to that pleasant 
 Memoir of Sarah Austin and her mother, Mrs, 
 Taylor,called Three Generatiofis of a Norfolk Family 
 — again not one word. I turn to Mr. Braith- 
 waite's biography of Joseph John Gurney, and to 
 Mr. Augustus Hare's book The Gurneys of Earlham 
 — upon these worthy biographers Borrow made 
 no impression whatever, although Joseph John 
 Gurney was personally helpful to him and we 
 read in Lavengro of that pleasant meeting between 
 the pair on the river bank when Mr. Gurney chided
 
 68 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 the boy Borrow or Lavengro for angling. " From 
 that day," he says, "I became less and less a 
 practitioner of that cruel fishing." In Harriet 
 Martineau's Autobiography, which enjoyed its 
 hour of fame when it was published twenty- 
 six years ago, there is a contemptuous reference 
 to the disciple of William Taylor, " this poly- 
 glot gentleman, who went through Spain dis- 
 seminating Bibles." If Miss Martineau were 
 alive now she would hear the works of " this 
 polyglot gentleman " praised on every hand, 
 and would find that a cult had arisen which to 
 her would certainly be quite incomprehensible. 
 In that large, dismal book — the Life of James 
 Martineau, again, there is but one mention of 
 Dr. Martineau's famous schoolfellow whose name 
 has been linked with him only by a silly story. 
 Do not let it be thought that I am complaining 
 of this neglect ; the world will always treat its 
 greatest writers in precisely this fashion. Borrow 
 did not lack for fame of a kind, but he was, as I 
 desire to show, praised in his lifetime for the 
 wrong thing, where he was praised at all. Every- 
 one in the fifties and sixties read The Bible in 
 Spain, as they read a hundred other books of
 
 GEORGE BORROW 69 
 
 that period, now forgotten. Many read it 
 who were deceived by its title. They expected 
 a tract. Many read it as we to-day read the 
 latest novel or biography of the hour. Then 
 a new book arises and the momentary favourite 
 is forgotten. We think for a whole week that 
 we are in contact with a well-nigh immortal 
 work. A little later we concern ourselves not 
 at all whether the book is immortal or not. 
 We go on to something else. The critic is 
 as much to blame as the reader. Not one 
 man in a hundred whose profession it is to come 
 between the author and the public, and to guide 
 the reader to the best in literature, has the least 
 perception of what is good literature. It is easy 
 when a writer has captured the suffrages of the 
 crowd for the critic to tell the world that he is 
 great. That happened to Carlyle, to Tennyson, 
 to many a popular author whose earliest books 
 commanded little attention : but, happily, these 
 writers did not lose heart. They kept on writing. 
 Borrow was otherwise made. He wrote The 
 Bible in Spain — a book of travel of surprising 
 merit. It sold largely on its title. Mr. Augustine 
 Birrell has told us that he knew a boy in a very
 
 70 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 strict household who devoured the narrative on 
 Sunday afternoons, the title being thought to cover 
 a conventional missionary journey. Well, when I 
 was a boy The Bible in Spain had gone out of 
 fashion and the public had not taken up with the 
 author's greater work, Lavengro. Borrow was 
 naturally disappointed. He abused the critics 
 and the public. Perhaps he grew somewhat 
 soured. He did not hesitate in The Romany Rye to 
 talk candidly about those " ill-favoured .dogs . . . 
 the newspaper editors," and he made the gentle- 
 man's gentleman of Lavengro describe how he 
 was excluded from the Servants' Club in Park 
 Lane because his master followed a profession " so 
 mean as literature." In fact as a reaction from 
 the unfriendly reception accorded to the Romany 
 Rye — now one of the most costly of his books in 
 a first edition — he lost heart, and he grew to 
 despise the whole literary and writing class. 
 Hence the various stories presenting him in not 
 very sympathetic guise, the story of Thackeray 
 being snubbed on asking Borrow if he had read 
 the Snoh Papers, of Miss Agnes Strickland re- 
 ceiving an even more forcible rebuff when she 
 offered to send him her Queens of England.
 
 GEORGE BORROW 71 
 
 " For God's sake don't Madame ; I should not 
 know where to put them or what to do with 
 them." These stories are in Gordon Hake's 
 Memoirs of Eighty Tears, but Mr. Francis Hindes 
 Groome has shown us the other side of the picture, 
 and others also to whom I shall refer a little 
 later have done the same. Perhaps the literary 
 class is never the worse for a little plain speaking. 
 The real secret of Borrow is this — that he was a 
 man of action turned into a writer by force of 
 circumstances. 
 
 The life of Borrow, unlike that of most famous 
 men of letters, has not been overwritten. His 
 death in 1881 caused little emotion and attracted 
 but small attention in the newspapers. The 
 Times, then as now so excellent in its biographies 
 as a rule, devoted but twenty lines to him. 
 Here I may be pardoned for being auto- 
 biographical. I was last in Norwich in the 
 early eighties. I had a wild enthusiasm for 
 literature so far as my taste had been directed 
 — that is to say I read every book I came 
 across and had been doing so from my earliest 
 boyhood. But I had never heard of George 
 Borrow or of his works. In my then not in-
 
 72 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 frequent visits to Norwich I cannot recall 
 that his name was ever mentioned, and in 
 my life in London, among men who were, many 
 of them, great readers, I never heard of Bor- 
 row or of his achievement. He died in 1881, 
 and as I do not recall hearing his name at the time 
 of his death or until long afterwards, I must 
 have missed certain articles in the Athenaeum— 
 two of them admirable "appreciations" by Mr. 
 Watts-Dunton — and so my state of benightedness 
 was as I have described. It may be that those 
 who are a year or two older than I am and those 
 who are younger may find this extraordinary. 
 You have always heard of Borrow and of his 
 works, but I think I am entitled to insist that 
 when Borrow sank into his grave, an old, and to 
 many an eccentric and bitter man, he had fallen 
 into the most curious oblivion with the public 
 that has ever come to a man, I will not say of 
 equal distinction, but of any distinction what- 
 ever. Mr. Egmont Hake told the readers of 
 the Athenaeum in a biography that appeared at 
 the time of Sorrow's death that Borrow's works 
 were " forgotten in England " and I find in 
 turning to the biography of Borrow in T^he
 
 GEORGE BORROW 73 
 
 Norvicensian, for 1882 — the organ of the Norwich 
 Grammar School — that the writer of this obituary 
 notice confessed that there were none of Borrow's 
 works in the library of the school of which 
 Borrow had been the most distinguished pupil. 
 
 From that time — in 1881 — until 1899, a 
 period of eighteen years, Borrow had but little 
 biographical recognition. A few introductions 
 to his books, sundry encyclopaedia articles, and 
 one or two magazine essays made up the sum 
 total of information concerning the author of 
 Lavengro untilDr. Knapp's Zz/<? appeared in 1899. 
 That Life has been severely handled by some 
 lovers of Borrow, and lovers of Borrow are now 
 plentiful enough. Dr. Knapp had not the 
 cunning of the really successful biographer. His 
 book still remains in the huge two-volumed form 
 in which it was first issued four years ago, and I 
 do not anticipate that it will ever be a popular 
 book. There is no literary art in it. There is 
 a capacity for amassing facts, but no power of 
 co-ordinating these facts. Moreover Dr. Knapp 
 did a great deal of mischief by very over-zeal. 
 He made too great a research into all the current 
 gossip in Norfolk and Suffolk concerning Borrow.
 
 74 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 If you were to make special research into the 
 life of any friend or acquaintance of the past 
 you would hear much foolish gossip and 
 a great many wrong motives imputed, and 
 possibly you would not have an opportunity 
 of checking the various statements. The whole 
 of Dr. Knapp's book seems to be written upon 
 the principle of " I would if I could " say a good 
 many things, and, indeed, every few months 
 there appears in the Eastern Daily Press, a journal 
 of your city that I have read every day regularly 
 since boyhood, a letter from some one explaining 
 that the less inquiry about this or that point in 
 Sorrow's career the better for Borrow. Take, for 
 example, last Saturday's issue of the journal I 
 have named, where I find the following from a 
 correspondent : — 
 
 Dr. Knapp, from dictates of courtesy, left it unre- 
 vealed, and as he could say nothing to Sorrow's credit, 
 passed the affair over in silence, and on this point all 
 well-wishers of Borrow's reputation would be wise to 
 take their cue from this biographer's example. 
 
 Now there is nothing more damnatory than a 
 sentence of this kind. What does it amount to ? 
 What is the 'it' that is unrevealed by the
 
 GEORGE BORROW 75 
 
 courteous Dr Knapp ? It seems to amount 
 to the charge that Borrow is accused of 
 gibbeting in his books the people he dislikes ; 
 this is what every great imaginative writer has 
 been charged with to the perplexing of dull 
 people. There are many characters in Dickens's 
 novels which are supposed to be a presentation of 
 near relatives or friends. These he ought to have 
 treated with more kindliness. That heroic little 
 woman, Miss Bronte, gave a picture of Madame 
 Heger, who kept a school at Brussels, that 
 conveyed, I doubt not, a very mistaken present- 
 ation of the subject of her satire. Imagina- 
 tive writers have always taken these liberties. 
 When the worst is said it simply amounts to 
 this, that Borrow was a good hater. Dr. John- 
 son said that he loved a good hater, and he 
 might very well have loved Borrow. Dante, 
 whom we all now agree to idolize, treated people 
 even more roughly ; he placed some of his ac- 
 quaintances who had ill-used him in the very 
 lowest circles of hell. May I express a hope, 
 therefore, that this type of letter to the Norwich 
 newspapers about Dr. Knapp's " kindness " to 
 Borrow's reputation may cease. If Dr. Knapp
 
 'je TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 had printed the whole of the facts we should 
 know how to deal with them ; but this is one of 
 his limitations as a biographer. He has not in 
 the least helped to a determination of Borrow's 
 real character. 
 
 Had Borrow possessed a biographer so skilful 
 with her pen as Mrs. Gaskell in her Lije of Char- 
 lotte Bronte, so keen-eyed for the dramatic note 
 as Sir George Trevelyan in his Life of Macaulay, 
 he would have multiplied readers for Lavengro. 
 There are many people who have read the Bronte 
 novels from sheer sympathy with the writers 
 that their biographer, Mrs. Gaskell, had kindled. 
 Let us not, however, be ungrateful to Dr. Knapp. 
 He has furnished those of us who are sufficiently 
 interested in the subject with a fine collection 
 of documents. Here is all the material of bio- 
 graphy in its crude state, but presenting vividly 
 enough the live Borrow to those who have the 
 perception to read it with care and judgment. 
 Still more grateful may we be to Dr. Knapp for 
 his edition of Borrow's works, particularly for 
 those wonderful episodes in Lavengro which 
 he has reproduced from the original manuscript, 
 episodes as dramatic as any other portion of the
 
 GEORGE BORROW -]-] 
 
 text, and making Dr. Knapp's edition of Lavengro 
 the only possible one to possess. 
 
 But to return to the main facts of Borrow's 
 career, which every one here at least is familiar 
 with. You know of his birth at East Dereham, 
 of his life in Ireland and in Scotland, of his school 
 days at Norwich, of his departure from Norwich 
 to London on his father's death, of his dire 
 struggles in the literary whirlpool, and of his 
 wanderings in gipsy land. You know, thanks to 
 Dr. Knapp, more than you could otherwise 
 have learned of his life at St. Petersburg, whither 
 he had been sent by the Bible Society, on the 
 recommendation of Mr. Joseph John Gurney 
 and another patron. Then he has himself told 
 us in picturesque fashion of his life in Portugal 
 and Spain. After this we hear of his marriage 
 to Mary Clarke, his residence from 1840 to 1853 
 at Oulton, in Suffolk, from 1853 to i860 at 
 Yarmouth, from i860 to 1874 in Hereford 
 Square, London, and finally from 1874 to 1881 
 at Oulton, where he died. That is the bare 
 skeleton of Borrow's life, and for half his life, I 
 think, we should be content with a skeleton. 
 For the other half of it we have the best auto-
 
 78 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 biography in the English language. An auto- 
 biography that ranks with Goethe's Truth and 
 Poetry from my Life and Rousseau's Confessions. 
 In four books — in Lavengro, Romany Rye, The 
 Bible in Spain, and Wild Wales we have some 
 delightful glimpses of an interesting personality, 
 and here we may leave the personal side of Borrow. 
 Beyond this we know that he was unquestionably 
 a devoted son, a good husband, a kind father. 
 The literary life has its perils, so far as domesticity 
 is concerned. Sir Walter Scott in his life of 
 Dryden speaks of : — 
 
 Her who had to endure the apparently causeless fluctua- 
 tion of spirits incidental to one compelled to dwell for 
 long periods of time in the fitful realms of the imagination, 
 
 and it is certain that those who dwell in the 
 realms of the imagination are usually very irritable, 
 very difficult to live with. Literary history in 
 its personal side is largely a dismal narrative of 
 the uncomfortable relations of men of genius 
 with their wives and with their families. Your 
 man of genius thinks himself bound to hang up 
 his fiddle in his own house, however merry a 
 fellow he may prove himself to a hundred boon 
 companions outside. George Borrow was perhaps
 
 GEORGE BORROW 79 
 
 the opposite of all this. As a companion and a 
 neighbour he did not always shine, if the impres- 
 sion of many a witness is to be trusted. They 
 tell anecdotes of his lack of cordiality, of his 
 unsociability, and so on. They have told those 
 anecdotes more industriously in Norwich than 
 anywhere else. He himself in an incomparable 
 account of going to church with the gypsies in 
 7he Romany Rye has the following : 
 
 It appeared as if I had fallen asleep in the pew of 
 the old church of pretty Dereham. I had occasionally 
 done so when a child, and had suddenly woke up. Yes, 
 surely, I had been asleep and had woke up ; but no ! if 
 I had been asleep I had been waking In my sleep, strug- 
 gling, striving, learning and unlearning in my sleep. 
 Years had rolled away whilst I had been asleep — ripe 
 fruit had fallen, green fruit had come on whilst I had 
 been asleep — how circumstances had altered, and above 
 all myself whilst I had been asleep. No, I had not been 
 asleep in the old church ! I was in a pew, it is true, but 
 not the pew of black leather, in which I sometimes fell 
 asleep in days of yore, but in a strange pew ; and then 
 my companions, they were no longer those of days of 
 yore. I was no longer with my respectable father and 
 mother, and my dear brother, but with the gypsy cral 
 and his wife, and the gigantic Tawno, the Antinous of 
 the dusky people. And what was I myself ? No longer 
 an innocent child but a moody man, bearing in my face,
 
 8o TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 as I knew well, the marks of my strivings and strugglings ; 
 of what I had learnt and unlearnt. 
 
 But this " moody man," let it be always 
 remembered, was a good husband and father. ■ 
 His wife was devoted to him, his step-daughter 
 carries now to an old age a profound reverence 
 and affection for his memory. Grieved beyond 
 all words was she — the Henrietta or " Hen " of 
 all his books — at what is maintained to be the 
 utterly fictitious narrative of Sorrow's described 
 deathbed that Professor Knapp presented from 
 the ill-considered gossip that he picked up while 
 staying in the neighbourhood.^ Borrow has him- 
 self something to say concerning his family in 
 Wild Wales :— 
 
 Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon 
 of wives — can make puddings and sweets and treacle 
 posset, and is the best woman of business in East Anglia : 
 of my step-daughter, for such she is though I generally 
 call her daughter, and with good reason seeing that she 
 
 * Borrow's step-daughter, Henrietta Clarke, married James 
 McOubrey, an Irish doctor. She outlived Borrow for many 
 years, dying at Great Yarmouth in 1904. All her literary 
 effects, including many interesting manuscripts, have been 
 passed on to me by her executor, Mr. Hubert Smith, and 
 these will be used in my forthcoming biography of Borrow.
 
 GEORGE BORROW 8i 
 
 has always shown herself a daughter to me, that she has 
 all kinds of good qualities and several accomplishments, 
 knowing something of conchology, more of botany, 
 drawing capitally in the Dutch style, and playing remark- 
 ably well on the guitar. 
 
 Yes, I am not quite sure but that Borrow was 
 really a good fellow all round, as well as being a 
 good husband and father. He hated, the literary 
 class, it is true. He considered that the " con- 
 temptible trade of author," as he called it, was 
 less creditable than that of a jockey. He avoided 
 as much as possible the writers of books, and 
 particularly the blue-stocking, and when they 
 came in his way he was not always very polite, 
 sometimes much the reverse. Only the other 
 day a letter was published from the late Professor 
 Cowell describing a visit to Borrow and his not 
 very friendly reception. Well, Borrow was here 
 as elsewhere a man of insight. The literary class 
 is usually a very narrow class. It can talk about 
 no trade but its own. Things have grown worse 
 since Borrow's day, I am sure, but they were bad 
 enough then. Borrow was a man of very varied 
 tastes. He took interest in gypsies and horses 
 and prize fighters and a hundred other enter- 
 
 I.H. 6
 
 82 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 taining matters, and so he despised the literary- 
 class, which cared for none of these things. 
 But unhappily for his fame the literary class has 
 had the final word ; it has revealed all the 
 gossip of a gossiping peasantry, and it has done 
 its best to present the recluse of Oulton in a 
 disagreeable light. Fortunately for Borrow, who 
 kept the bores at bay and contented himself 
 with but few friends, there were at least two 
 who survived him to bear testimony to the 
 effect that he was " a singularly steadfast and 
 loyal friend." One of these was Mr. Watts- 
 Dunton, who tells us in one of his essays that : 
 
 George Borrow was a good man, a most winsome and 
 a most charming companion, an English gentleman, 
 straightforward, honest, and brave as the very best 
 examplars of that fine old type. 
 
 I have dwelt longer on this aspect of my sub- 
 ject than I should have done had I been addressing 
 any other audience than a Norwich one. But 
 the fact is that all the gossip and backbiting and 
 censoriousness that has gathered round Borrow 
 for a hundred years has come out of this very 
 city, commencing with the " bursts of laughter " 
 that, according to Miss Martineau, greeted Bor-
 
 GEORGE BORROW 83 
 
 row's travels in Spain for the Bible Society. 
 Borrow was twenty-one years of age when he 
 left Norwich to make his way in the world. 
 During the next twenty years he may have under- 
 gone many changes of intellectual view, as most 
 of us do, as Miss Martineau notably did, and 
 Miss Martineau and her laughing friends were 
 diabolically uncharitable. That lack of charity 
 followed Borrow throughout his life. He was 
 libelled by many, by Miss Frances Power Cobbe 
 most of all. However, the great city of Norwich 
 will make up for it in the future, and she will 
 love Borrow as Borrow indisputably loved her. 
 How he praised her fine cathedral, her lordly 
 castle, her Mousehold Heath, her meadows in 
 which he once saw a prize fight, her pleasant 
 scenery — no city, not even glorious Oxford, 
 has been so well and adequately praised, and I 
 desire to show that that praise is not for an age 
 but for all time. 
 
 If George Borrow has not been happy in his 
 biographer, and if, as is true, he has received 
 but inadequate treatment on this account — such 
 series of little books as ^he English Men of 
 Letters and the Great Writers quite ignoring
 
 84 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 him — he has been equally unfortunate in his 
 critics. There are hardly any good and dis- 
 tinctive appreciations in print of Borrow's works. 
 While other great names in the great literature 
 of the Victorian Period have been praised by 
 a hundred pens, there has scarcely been any 
 notable and worthy praise of Borrow, and if I were 
 in an audience that was at all sceptical as to Bor- 
 row's supreme merits, which happily I am not ; 
 if I were among those who declared that they 
 could see but small merit in Borrow themselves, 
 but were prepared to accept him if only I could 
 bring good authority that he was a very great 
 writer, I should be hardly put to to comply with 
 the demand. I can only name Mr. Theodore 
 Watts-Dunton and Mr. Augustine Birrell as 
 critics of considerable status who have praised 
 Borrow well. " The delightful, the bewitching, 
 the never sufficiently-to-be-praised George Bor- 
 row," says Mr. Birrell in one of the essays he has 
 written on the subject ; ^ while Mr. Theodore 
 
 1 I ventured to ask my friend Mr. Birrell for a line to read 
 to my Norwich audience and he sent me the following charac- 
 teristic letter dated December 8, 1903 : — 
 
 ". . . For my part I should leave George Borrow alone, to take 
 his own part even as Isopel Berners learnt to take hers in the
 
 GEORGE BORROW 85 
 
 Watts-Dunton, has written no less than four 
 papers on one whom he knew and admires per- 
 sonally, and of whom he insists that " his idealiz- 
 ing powers, his romantic cast of mind, his force, 
 his originality, give him a title to a permanent 
 place high in the ranks of English prose writers." 
 All this is very interesting, but in literature 
 as in life we have got to work out our own des- 
 
 great house ' at Long Melford. He has an appealing voice 
 which no sooner falls on the ear of the born Borrovian, than 
 up the lucky fellow must get and follow his master to the end 
 of the chapter. 
 
 " However, if you will insist upon going out into the high- 
 ways and hedges and compelling the wayfaring man — though 
 a fool — to come in and take a seat at the Lavengro feast, no- 
 body can stop you. 
 
 " The great thing is to get people to read the Borrow books 
 there is nothing else to be done. If, after having read them, 
 some enthusiasts go on to learn Romany and seek to trace 
 authorities on Gypsies and Gypsy lore — why, let them. They 
 may soon know more about Gypsies than Borrow ever did — 
 but they will never write about them as he did. 
 
 " The essence of the matter is to enjoy Borrow's books for 
 themselves alone. As for Borrow's biography, it appears to 
 me either that he has already written it, or it is not worth 
 writing. Anyhow, place the books in the forefront , reprint 
 things as often as you dare without note or conunent or even 
 -prefatory appreciation, and you cannot but earn the gratitude 
 of every true Borrovian who in consequence of your efforts 
 come upon the Borrow books for the first time."
 
 86 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 tinies. We have not got to accept Borrow because 
 this or that critic tells us he is good. I have 
 therefore no quarrel with any one present who 
 does not share my view that Borrow was one of 
 the greater glories of English literature. I only 
 desire to state my case for him. 
 
 To be a lover of Borrow, a Borrovian, in fact, 
 it is not necessary to know all his books. You 
 may never have seen copies of the Romantic 
 Ballads or of Faustus, of Tdrgum or of The Turk- 
 ish Jester, of Borrow's translation of The Talis- 
 man of Pushkin. Your state may be none the 
 less gracious. To possess these books is largely 
 a collector's hobby. They are interesting, but 
 they would not have made for the author an 
 undying reputation. Further, you may not care 
 for The Bible in Spain, you may be untouched 
 by the Gypsies in Spain and Wild Wales, and 
 even then I will not deny to you the title of a 
 good Borrovian, if only you pronounce Lavengro 
 and The Romany Rye to be among the greatest 
 books you know. I can admire the Gypsies in Spain 
 and Wild Wales. I can read The Bible in Spain 
 with something of the enthusiasm with which 
 our fathers read it. It is a stirring narrative of
 
 GEORGE BORROW 87 
 
 travel and much more. Robert Louis Stevenson 
 did, indeed, rank it among his " dear acquaint- 
 ances " in bookland, " the Pilgrim''s Progress in 
 the first rank, The Bible in Spain not far behind," 
 he says. All the same, it has not, none of these 
 three books has, the distinctive mark of first 
 class genius that belongs to the other two in the 
 five-volumed edition of Sorrow's Collected Works 
 that many of us have read through more than 
 once. Not all clever people have thought Laven- 
 gro and The Romany Rye to be thus great. A 
 critic in the Athenaeum declared Lavengro when 
 it was published in 1851 to be " balderdash," 
 while a critic writing just fifty years afterwards 
 and writing from Norfolk, alas ! insisted that 
 the author of this book " was absolutely wanting 
 in the power of invention " that he (Borrow) 
 could " only have drawn upon his memory," that 
 he had " no sense of humour." If all this were 
 true, if half of it were true. Borrow was not the 
 great man, the great writer that I take him to 
 be. But it is not true. Lavengro with its con- 
 tinuation The Romany Rye, is a great work of 
 imagination, of invention ; it is in no sense a 
 photograph, a memory picture, and it abounds
 
 88 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 in humour as it abounds in many other 
 great characteristics. What makes an author 
 supremely great ? Surely a certain quality 
 which we call genius, as distinct from the 
 mere intellectual power of some less brilliant 
 writer : — 
 
 True genius is the ray that flings 
 A novel light o'er common things 
 
 and here it is that Borrow shines supreme. He 
 has invested with quite novel light a hundred 
 commonplace aspects of life. Not an inventor ! 
 not imaginative ! Why, one of the indictments 
 against him is that philologists decry his philology 
 and gyptologists his gypsy learning. If, then, 
 his philology and his gypsy lore were imperfect, 
 as I believe they were, how much the greater an 
 imaginative writer he was. To say that Laven- 
 gro merely indicates keen observation is absurd. 
 Not the keenest observation will crowd so many 
 adventures, adventures as fresh and as novel as 
 those of Gil Bias or Robinson Crusoe, into a few 
 months' experience. " I felt some desire," says 
 Lavengro, " to meet with one of those adven- 
 tures which upon the roads of England are gener- 
 ally as plentiful as blackberries in autumn." I
 
 GEORGE BORROW 89 
 
 think that most of us will wander along the roads 
 of England for a very long time before we meet 
 an Isopel Berners, before we have such an adven- 
 ture as that of the blacksmith and his horse, or 
 of the apple woman whose favourite reading 
 was Moll Flanders. These and a hundred other 
 adventures, the fight with the Flaming Tinman, 
 the poisoning of Lavengro by the gypsy woman, 
 the discourse with Ursula under the hedge, when 
 once read are fixed upon the memory for ever. 
 And yet you may turn to them again and again, 
 and with ever increasing zest. The story 
 of Isopel Berners is a piece of imaginative 
 writing that certainly has no superior in the 
 literature of the last century. It was assuredly 
 no photographic experience. Isopel Berners is 
 herself a creation ranking among the fine creations 
 of womanhood of the finest writers. I doubt 
 not but that it was inspired by some actual 
 memory of Borrow — the memory of some early 
 love affair in which the distractions of his mania 
 for word-learning — the Armenian and other lan- 
 guages — led him to pass by some opportunity of 
 his life, losing the substance for the shadow. But 
 . whether there were ever a real Isopel we shall
 
 90 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 never know. We do know that Borrow has pre- 
 sented his fictitious one with infinite poetry and 
 fine imaginative power. We do know, moreover, 
 that it is not right to describe Isopel Berners as a 
 marvellous episode in a narrative of other texture. 
 Lavengro is full of marvellous episodes. Some 
 one has ventured to comment upon Borrow's 
 style — to imply that it is not always on a high 
 plane. What does that matter ? Style is not 
 the quality that makes a book live, but the 
 novelty of the ideas. Stevenson was a splendid 
 stylist, and his admirers have deluded themselves 
 into believing that he was, therefore, among the 
 immortals. But Stevenson had nothing new to 
 tell the world, and he was not, he is not, therefore 
 of the immortals. Borrow is of the immortals, 
 not by virtue of a style, but by virtue of having 
 something new to say. He is with Dickens and 
 with Carlyle as one of the three great British 
 prose writers of the age we call Victorian, who 
 in quite different ways have presented a new 
 note for their own time and for long after. It 
 is the distinction of Borrow that he has invested 
 the common life of the road, of the highway, 
 the path through the meadow, the gypsy encamp-
 
 GEORGE BORROW 91 
 
 ment, the country fair, the very apple stall and 
 
 wayside inn with an air of romance that can 
 
 never leave those of us who have once come under 
 
 the magnificent spell of Lavengro and the Romany 
 
 Rye. Perhaps Borrow is pre-eminently the writer 
 
 for those who sit in armchairs and dream of 
 
 adventures they will never undertake. Perhaps 
 
 he will never be the favourite author of the 
 
 really adventurous spirit, who wants the real 
 
 thing, the latest book of actual travel. But to 
 
 be the favourite author of those who sit in 
 
 arm-chairs is no small thing, and, as I have said 
 
 already, Borrow stands with Carlyle and Dickens 
 
 in our century, by which I mean the nineteenth 
 
 century ; with Defoe and Goldsmith in the 
 
 eighteenth century, as one of the really great 
 
 and imperishable masters of our tongue. 
 
 What then will Norwich do for George Bor- 
 row ? I ask this question, although it would, 
 perhaps, be an impertinence to ask it were I not 
 a Norwich man. If you have read Dr. Knapp's 
 Life of Borrow, you will have seen more than one 
 reference to Mrs. Borrow's landlord, " old King," 
 " Tom King the carpenter," and so on, who 
 owned the house in Willow Lane in which Bor-
 
 92 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 row spent his boyhood. That ' old King the 
 carpenter ' — I believe he called himself a builder, 
 but perhaps this was when he grew more pros- 
 perous — was my great-great-uncle. One of his 
 sons became physician to Prince Talleyrand and 
 married a sister of John Stuart Mill. One of 
 his great-nieces was my grandmother, and her 
 mother's family, the Parkers, had lived in Nor- 
 wich for many generations. So on the strength 
 of this little piece of genealogy let me claim, not 
 only to be a good Borrovian, but also a good 
 Norvicensian. Grant me then a right to plead 
 for a practical recognition of Borrow in the 
 city that he loved most, although he sometimes 
 scolded it as it often scolded him. I should 
 like to see a statue, or some similar memorial. 
 If you pass through the cities of the Con- 
 tinent — French, German, or Belgian — you will 
 find in well-nigh every town a memorial to 
 this or that worthy connected with its literary 
 or artistic fame. How many memorials has 
 Norwich to the people connected with its 
 literary or artistic fame ? Nay, I am not rash 
 and impetuous. I would beg any one of my 
 hearers who thinks that Borrow might well have
 
 GEORGE BORROW 93 
 
 a memorial in marble or bronze in your city to 
 wait a while. You are busy with a statue 
 to Sir Thomas Browne — a most commendable 
 scheme. To attempt to raise one to Borrow 
 at this moment would probably be to court 
 disaster. Nor do I advocate a memorial by 
 private subscription. Observation has shown 
 me what that means : failure or half failure 
 in nearly every case. The memorial when it 
 comes must be initiated by the City Fathers 
 in council assembled. That time is perhaps far 
 distant. But let us all do everything we can to 
 make secure the high and honourable achieve- 
 ment of George Borrow, to kindle an interest in 
 him and his writings, to extend a taste for the 
 undoubted beauties of his works among all classes 
 of his fellow-citizens — that is to secure Borrow 
 the best of all monuments. More durable than 
 brass will be the memorial that is contained in 
 the assurance that he possesses the reverence and 
 the homage of all true Norfolk hearts.
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 GEORGE CRABBE
 
 IV 
 
 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 GEORGE CRABBE 
 
 An Address delivered at the Crabbe Celebration at 
 Aldeburgh in Suffolk on the i6th of September, 
 1905* 
 
 I HAVE been asked to say something in praise of 
 George Crabbe. The task would be an easier 
 one were it not for the presence of the dis- 
 tinguished critic from the University of Nancy 
 who is with us to-day. M. Huchon^ has 
 devoted to the subject a singleminded zeal 
 to which one whose profession is primarily 
 that of a journalist can make no claim. More- 
 over it has been well said that the judgment 
 of foreigners is the judgme?it of posterity, and I 
 fully believe that where a writer has secured the 
 suffrages of men of another nation than his own, 
 he has done more for his ultimate fame than the 
 
 1 M. Rene Huchon, who addressed the visitors at the Crabbe 
 Celebration, published his George Crabbe and his 7imes : A 
 Critical and Biographical Study, through Mr. John Murray, 
 early in the present year, 1907. 
 
 I.M. 97 /7
 
 98 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 passing and fickle favour of his countrymen can 
 secure for him. In any case Crabbe has been 
 praised more eloquently than almost any other 
 modern, and this in spite of the fact that he was 
 not read by the generation succeeding his death, 
 nor is he read much in our own time. 
 
 If you want to read Crabbe to-day in his en- 
 tirety, you must become possessed of a huge and 
 clumsy volume of sombre appearance, small type 
 and repellant double columns. For fully seventy 
 years it has not paid a publisher to reprint Crabbe's 
 poems properly.^ When this was achieved in 
 1834, the edition in eight volumes was compara- 
 tively a failure, and the promised two volumes 
 of essays and sermons were not forthcoming in 
 consequence. Selections from Crabbe have been 
 many, but when all is said he has been the least 
 read for the past sixty or seventy years of all the 
 authors who have claims to be considered classics. 
 The least read but perhaps the best praised — 
 that is one point of certainty. The praise began 
 
 ■"■ This reproach has since been removed by the appearance 
 of the Complete Works of George Crabbe in three volumes of the 
 Cambridge English Classics Series, published by the Cambridge 
 University Press, and edited by Dr. A. W. Ward, the Master of 
 Peterhouse.
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 99 
 
 with the politicians — with the two greatest 
 political leaders of their age. The eloquent and 
 noble Edmund Burke, the great-hearted Charles 
 James Fox. Burke " made " George Crabbe as 
 no poet was ever made before or since. To me 
 there is no picture in all literature more unflag- 
 gingly interesting than that of the great man, 
 whose life was so full of affairs, taking the poor 
 young stranger by the hand, reading through his 
 abundant manuscripts, and therefrom selecting — 
 as the poet was quite unable to select — The 
 Library and The Village as the most suitable for 
 publication, helping him to a publisher, intro- 
 ducing him to friends, and proving himself quite 
 untiring on his behalf. There is a letter of 
 Burke's printed in a little known book — The 
 Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, Speaker of 
 the House of Commons — in which Burke takes 
 the trouble to defend Crabbe's moral character 
 and to press his claims for being admitted to holy 
 orders. " Dudley North tells me," he continues, 
 " that he has the best character possible among 
 those with whom he has always lived, that he is 
 now working hard to qualify, and has not only 
 Latin, but some smattering of Greek." It had
 
 100 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 its gracious amenities, that eighteenth century, 
 for I do not believe that there is a man in the 
 ranks of the present Government, or of the present 
 Opposition, who would take all this trouble for 
 a poor unknown who had appealed to him merely 
 by two or three long letters recounting his career. 
 Nay, Cabinet Ministers are less punctilious than 
 formerly, and the newest type, I understand, 
 leaves letters unanswered. I can imagine the 
 attitude of one of our modern statesmen in the 
 face of two quite bulky packages of many 
 sheets from a young author. He would request 
 his secretary to see what they were all about, 
 and then would follow the curt answer — " I 
 am directed by Dash to say that he cannot 
 comply with your request." Burke not only 
 wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons, 
 but enclosed Crabbe's letter to him, a quite 
 wonderful piece of autobiography.^ All Crabbe's 
 admirers should read that letter. Crabbe apolo- 
 gizes for writing again, and refers to " these 
 repeated attacks on your patience." " My 
 
 1 The original letter is in the possession of Mr. A. M. Broad- 
 ley, of Bridport. It is reprinted from the Hanmer Corre- 
 spondence in an appendix to M. Huchon's biography.
 
 GEORGE CRABBE loi 
 
 father," he said, " had a place In the Custom 
 House at Aldeburgh. He had a large family, 
 a little income and no economy," and then the 
 story of his life up to that time is told to Burke 
 in fullest detail. 
 
 Again, there is that other statesman-admirer 
 of Crabbe, Charles James Fox. Fox gave to 
 Crabbe's work an admiration which never faltered, 
 and on his death-bed requested that the pathetic 
 story of Phoebe Dawson in The Parish Register 
 should be read to him — it was, we are told, " the 
 last piece of poetry that soothed his dying ear." 
 
 In Lord Holland's Memoirs of the Whig Party 
 there is a statement by his nephew which no 
 biographer so far has quoted : — 
 
 I read over to him the whole of Crabbe's Parish 
 Register in manuscript. Some parts he made me read 
 twice ; he remarked several passages as exquisitely beau- 
 tiful, and objected to some few which I mentioned to 
 the author and which he, in almost every instance, altered 
 before publication. Mr. Fox repeated once or twice 
 that it was a very pretty poem, that Crabbe's condition 
 in the world had improved since he wrote The Village^ 
 and his view of life, likewise The Parish Register, bore 
 marks of considerably more indulgence to our species ; 
 though not so many as he could have wished, especially
 
 102 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 as the few touches of that nature were beautiful in the 
 extreme. He was particularly struck with the descrip- 
 tion of the substantial happiness of a farmer's wife. 
 
 From great novelists the tributes are not less 
 noteworthy than from great statesmen, jane 
 Austen, whose personality perhaps has more real 
 womanly attractiveness than that of any sister 
 novelist of the first rank, declared playfully that 
 if she could have been persuaded to change her 
 state it would have been to become Mrs. Crabbe ; 
 and who can forget Sir Walter Scott's request 
 in his last illness : " Read me some amusing 
 thing — read me a bit of Crabbe." They read 
 to him from The Borough, and we all remember 
 his comment, " Capital — excellent — very good." 
 Yet at this time — in 1832 — any popularity that 
 Crabbe had once enjoyed was already on the 
 wane. Other idols had caught the popular taste, 
 and from that day to this there was to be no 
 real revival of appreciation for these poems. 
 There were to be no lack of admirers, however 
 of the audience " fit though few." Byron's 
 praise has been too often quoted for repetition. 
 Wordsworth, who rarely praised his contempora- 
 ries in poetry, declared of Crabbe that his works
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 103 
 
 " would last from their combined merit as poetry 
 and truth." Macaulay writes of " that in- 
 comparable passage in Crabbe's Borough which 
 has made many a rough and cynical reader cry 
 like a child " — the passage in which the con- 
 demned felon 
 
 Takes his tasteless food, and when 'tis done, '^ 
 
 Counts up his meals, now lessen'd by that one, — 
 
 a story which Macaulay bluntly charges Robert 
 Montgomery with stealing. Lord Tennyson, 
 again, at a much later date, admitted that 
 " Crabbe has a world of his own." 
 
 Not less impressive surely is the attitude of 
 the two writers as far as the poles asunder in 
 their outlook upon life and its mysteries — Car- 
 dinal Newman and Edward FitzGerald. The 
 famous theologian, we learn from the Letters and 
 Correspondefice collected by Anne Mozley, writes 
 in 1820 of his "excessive fondness" for The 
 Tales of the Hall, and thirty years later in one of 
 his Discourses he says of Crabbe's poems that 
 they are among " the most touching in our 
 language." Still another twenty years, and the 
 aged cardinal reread Crabbe to find that he
 
 104 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 was more delighted than ever with our poet. 
 That great nineteenth century pagan, on the 
 other hand, that prince of letter-writers and 
 wonderful poet of whom Suffolk has also reason 
 to be proud, Edward FitzGerald, was even 
 more ardent. Praise of Crabbe is scattered 
 freely throughout the many volumes of his 
 correspondence, and he edited, as we all know, 
 a book of Selections, which I want to see 
 reprinted. It contains a preface that, it may 
 be admitted, is not really worthy of Fitz- 
 Gerald, so lacking is it in the force and 
 vigour of his correspondence. But this also 
 was in fact yet another death-bed tribute, for it 
 was, I think, one of the last things FitzGerald 
 wrote. FitzGerald, however, has done more 
 for Crabbe among the moderns than any other 
 man. His keen literary judgment must have 
 brought new converts to that limited brotherhood 
 of the elect, of which this gathering forms no 
 inconsiderable portion. 
 
 We have one advantage in speaking about 
 George Crabbe that does not obtain with any 
 other poet of great eminence ; that is to say, that 
 his life story has not been hackneyed by repetition.
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 105 
 
 With almost any other writer there is some stand- 
 ing biography which is widely familiar. The 
 Life of George Crabbe, written by his son, although 
 it is one of the very best biographies that I have 
 ever read, is little known. It was quite out of 
 print for years, and it has never been reprinted 
 separately from the poems. It is an admirable 
 biography, and it offers a contradiction of the 
 view occasionally urged that a man's life should 
 not be written by a member of his own family ; 
 for George Crabbe the second would seem not 
 only to have been an exceedingly able man, but 
 possessed of a frankness of disposition in criti- 
 cizing his father which sons are often prone to 
 show in real life, but which, I imagine, they 
 rarely show in print. His book is a model 
 of candid statement, treating of Crabbe's little 
 weaknesses — and who of us has not his little 
 weaknesses — in the most cheery possible manner. 
 It is perhaps a small matter to tell us in one place 
 of his father's want of " taste," his insensibility 
 to the beauty of order in his composition — that 
 had been done by the critics before him ; but he 
 even has something to say about the philandering 
 which characterized the old gentleman in the
 
 io6 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 last years of his life, his apparent anxiety to get 
 married again. ^ The only thing that he all but 
 ignores is Crabbe's opium habit — a habit that 
 came to him as a sedative from a painful com- 
 plaint and inspired, as was the case with Coleridge, 
 his more melodious utterances. Taken altogether 
 the picture is as pleasant as it is capable and 
 exhaustive. We see his early boyhood at Alde- 
 burgh, his schooldays : his first period of unhappi- 
 ness at Slaughden Quay, his apprenticeship near 
 Bury St. Edmunds, where we seem to hear his 
 master's daughters, when he reached the door, 
 exclaim with laughter, " La ! Here's our new 
 'prentice." We follow him a little higher, to 
 the house of the Woodbridge surgeon, then 
 through his prolonged courtship of Sarah Elmy, 
 then to those dreary, uncongenial duties of piling 
 up butter casks on Slaughden Quay. A brief period 
 of starvation in London, and we find him again in 
 a chemist's shop in Aldeburgh. Lastly comes 
 his most important journey to London upon 
 the borrowed sum of ^5, only three of which he 
 
 ^ But M. Huchon makes it clear in George Crabbe and his 
 Times that Crabbe declined at the last moment to marry Miss 
 Charlotte Ridout, who seems to have been really in love with 
 him.
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 107 
 
 carried in hard cash. His hand to mouth exist- 
 ence in London for some months is among the 
 most interesting things in literature. Chatter- 
 ton's tragic fate might have been his, but, more 
 fortunate than Chatterton, he had friends at 
 Beccles who helped him, and he was even able 
 to publish a poem, The Candidate. Although 
 this poem contained only thirty-four pages, one 
 is not quite sure but that it helped to ruin its 
 publisher. In any case that publisher went 
 bankrupt soon after. 
 
 Crabbe has been reproached for having 
 continually attempted to secure a "patron" 
 at this time, and it has been hinted by Sir Leslie 
 Stephen that he ought to have recognized that 
 the patron was out of date, killed by Dr. John- 
 son's sturdy defiance. I do not agree with this 
 view. Dr. Johnson, in spite of his famous epi- 
 gram, was always more or less assisted by the 
 patron, although his personality was strong 
 enough to enable him to turn the tables at the 
 end. When one comes to think of it, Thrale the 
 brewer was a patron of Johnson, so was Strahan 
 the printer. And does he not say in his famous 
 letter to Lord Chesterfield that " Seven years, my
 
 io8 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 lord, have now passed since I waited in your 
 outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door," 
 clearly implying that if Chesterfield was not 
 Johnson's patron it was not the great Doctor's 
 fault ? In any case the patron must always 
 exist for the poor man of letters in every age. 
 Now, he is frequently a collective personality 
 rather than an individual. He is represented for 
 the author who has tried and failed by the Royal 
 Literary Fund, by such bounty as is awarded by 
 the Society of Authors, or by the Civil List Grant. 
 For the author in embryo he is assisted above 
 all by the literary log-roller who flourishes so 
 much in our day. If he is not this " collective 
 personality," or one of the others I have named, 
 then he is something much worse — that is, a 
 capitalist publisher. We can none of us who 
 have to earn a living run away from the patronage 
 of capital, and when Sir Leslie Stephen was being 
 paid a salary by the late Mr. George Smith for 
 editing the Dictionary of National Biography^ and 
 was told, as we remember that he frequently 
 was, that it was not a remunerative venture and 
 that, as Mr. Smith was fond of saying, his pub- 
 lishing business did not pay for his vineries. Sir
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 109 
 
 Leslie Stephen was experiencing a patronage, if 
 he had known it, not less melancholy than 
 anything Crabbe suffered from Edmund Burke 
 or the Duke of Rutland. 
 
 When one meets a writer who desires to walk 
 on high stilts and to talk of the indepen- 
 dence of literature, one is entitled to ask him if 
 it was a greater indignity for Lord Tennyson 
 in his younger days to have received ^200 
 a year from the Civil List than for Crabbe 
 to have received the same sum as the Duke 
 of Rutland's chaplain ; in fact, Crabbe earned 
 the money, and Tennyson did not. There are, as 
 I have said, some most wonderful and pathetic 
 touches in the account of Crabbe's attempt to 
 conquer London. There are his letters to his 
 sweetheart, for example, his " dearest Mira," in 
 one of which he says that he is possessed of 6fd. 
 in the world. In another he relates that he has 
 Sold his surgical instruments in order to pay his 
 bills. Nevertheless, we find him standing at a 
 bookstall where he sees Dryden's works in three 
 volumes, octavo, for five shillings, and of his 
 few shillings he ventures to offer 31. 6d. — and 
 carries home the Dryden. What bibliophile but
 
 no TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 must love such a story as that, even though 
 a day or two afterwards its hero writes, " My 
 last shilling became ^d. yesterday." But what 
 a good investment withal. Dryden made him 
 a much better poet. Then comes the famous 
 letter to Burke, and the less known second letter 
 to which I have referred, and Burke's splendid 
 reception of the writer. Nothing, I repeat, in 
 the life of any great man is more beautiful than 
 that. As Crabbe's son finely says : " He went in 
 Burke's room a poor young adventurer, spurned 
 by the opulent and rejected by the publishers, 
 his last shilling gone, and his last hope with it. 
 He came out virtually secure of almost all the 
 good fortune that by successive stages afterwards 
 fell to his lot." The success that comes to most 
 men is built up on such chances, on the kind 
 help of some one or other individual. 
 
 Finally there came — for I am hastily recapitu- 
 lating Crabbe's story — the years of prosperity, 
 curacies, rectories, the praise of great contempo- 
 raries, but nothing surely more edifying than 
 the burning of piles of manuscripts so extensive 
 that no fireplace would hold them. The son's 
 account of his assisting at these conflagrations is
 
 GEORGE CRABBE in 
 
 not the least interesting part of his biography, 
 the merits of which I desire to emphasize. 
 
 People who make jokes about that most succu- 
 lent edible, the crab, when the poet Crabbe is 
 mentioned in their presence — and who can resist 
 an obvious pun — are not really far astray. There 
 can be little doubt but that a remote ancestor of 
 George Crabbe took his name from the " shell- 
 fish," as we all persist, in spite of the naturalist^ 
 in calling it ; and the poet did not hesitate to 
 attribute it to the vanity of an ancestor that his 
 name had had two letters added. Nor when we 
 hear of Cromer crabs, or crabs from some other 
 part of Norfolk as distinct from what I am sure 
 is equally palatable, the crustacean as it may be 
 found in Aldeburgh, are we remote from the 
 story of our poet's life. For there cannot be a 
 doubt but that Norfolk shares with Suffolk 
 the glory of his origin. His family, it is clear, 
 came first from Norfolk. The Crabbes of Nor- 
 folk were farmers, the Crabbes of Suffolk always 
 favoured the seacoast, and all the glory that sur- 
 rounds the name of the poet to whom we do 
 honour to-day is reflected in the town in which 
 he was born and bred. Aldeburgh is Crabbe's
 
 112 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 own town, and it is an interesting fact that no 
 other poet can be identified with one particular 
 spot in the way in which Crabbe can be identified 
 with this beautiful watering-place in which we 
 are now assembled. Shakspere was more of a 
 Londoner "than a Stratfordian ; nearly all his 
 best work was written in London, and many of 
 the most receptive years of his life were spent in 
 that city. Milton's honoured name is identified 
 with many places, apart from London, the city 
 of his birth. Shelley, Byron and Keats were 
 essentially cosmopolitans in their writings as in 
 their lives. Wordsworth was closely identified 
 with Grasmere, although born in a neighbouring 
 county ; but he went to many and varied scenes, 
 and to more than one country, for some of his 
 most inspired verses Then Cowper, the poet 
 of whom one most often thinks when one is 
 recalling the achievement of Crabbe, is a poet of 
 some half-dozen places other than Olney, and 
 perhaps his best verses were written at Weston- 
 Underwood. Now George Crabbe in the years 
 of his success was identified with many places 
 other than Aldeburgh : with Belvoir Castle, with 
 Muston, and with Trowbridge, where he died,
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 113 
 
 and some of his admirers have even identified 
 him with Bath. When all this is allowed, it is 
 upon Aldeburgh that the whole of his writings 
 turned, the place where he was born, where he 
 spent his boyhood, and the earlier years of a 
 perhaps too sordid manhood, whither he returned 
 twice, as a chemist's assistant and as curate. It 
 is the place that primarily inspired all his verses. 
 Aldeburgh stands outVividly before us in each suc- 
 ceeding poem — in ^he Village^ The Borough^ The 
 Parish Register, The Tales, and even in those 
 Tales of the Hall, composed in later life in far- 
 away Trowbridge. Crabbe's vivid observations 
 indeed come home tc every one who has studied 
 his works when they have visited not only Alde- 
 burgh but its vicinity. Every reach of the river 
 Aid recalls some striking line by him : the scenery 
 in The Lover^s Journey we know is a description 
 of the road betweenj Aldeburgh and Beccles, and all 
 who have sailed along the river to Orford have 
 recognized that no stream has been so perfectly 
 portrayed by a poet's pen. Here in his writings 
 you may have a suggestion of Muston, here of 
 Allington, and here again of Trowbridge ; but 
 in the main it is the Suffolk scenery that most
 
 114 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 of us here know so well that was ever in his 
 mind. 
 
 When an attempt was once made to stir 
 up the Great Eastern Railway to identify 
 this district with the name of Crabbe as 
 the English Lakes were identified with the 
 name of Wordsworth, and the Scots Lakes 
 with that of Sir Walter Scott, a high 
 official of the railway made the statement that 
 up to that moment he had never even heard 
 the name of Crabbe. Well, all that is going to 
 be changed. I do not at all approve of the 
 phrase beloved of certain book-makers and of 
 railway companies that implies that any county 
 or district is the monopoly of one man, be he 
 ever so great a writer. Yet I venture to say 
 that within the next ten years the " Crabbe 
 Country " will sound as familiar to the officials 
 of the Great Eastern as the " Wordsworth Coun- 
 try " does to those of the Midland or the North 
 Western. It is true that once in the bitterness 
 of his heart the poet referred to Aldeburgh as 
 " a little venal borough in Suffolk " and that he 
 more than once alluded to his unkind reception 
 upon his reappearance as a curate, when he had
 
 GEORGE CRABBE T15 
 
 previously failed at other callings. " In my 
 own village they think nothing of me," he 
 once said. But who does not know how the 
 heart turns with the years to the places associated ---' 
 with childhood and youth, and Crabbe was a 
 remarkable exemplification of this. A well-known 
 literary journal stated only last week that 
 " Crabbe's connexion with Aldeburgh was not 
 very protracted." So far from this being true 
 it would be no exaggeration to say that it extended 
 over the whole of his seventy-eight years of life. 
 It included the first five-and-twenty years almost 
 entirely. It included also the brief curacy, the 
 prolonged residence at Parham and Glenham, 
 frequent visits for holidays in after years, and 
 who but a lover of his native place would have 
 done as his son pictures him doing when at 
 Stathern — riding alone to the coast of Lincoln- 
 shire, sixty miles from where he was living, only 
 to dip in the waves that also washed the beach of 
 Aldeburgh and returned immediately to his home. 
 " There is no sea like the Aldeburgh sea," said 
 Edward FitzGerald, and we may be sure that 
 was Crabbe's opinion also, for revisiting it in J^ 
 later life he wrote ; —
 
 ii6 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 There once again, my native place I come 
 Thee to salute, my earliest, latest home. 
 
 One picture in Crabbe's life stands out vividly 
 to us all — the long years of devotion given by 
 him to Sarah Elmy, and the reciprocal devotion 
 of the very capable woman who finally became 
 his wife. Crabbe's courtship and marriage affords 
 a pleasant contrast to the usual unhappy relations 
 of poets with their wives. Shakspere, Milton, 
 Dryden, Byron, Shelley, and many another poet 
 was less happy in this respect, and I am not sure 
 how far the belief in Crabbe's powers as a poet 
 has been affected by the fact that he lived on 
 the whole a happy, humdrum married life. The 
 public has so long been accustomed to expect a 
 different state of things. 
 
 I have given thus much time to Crabbe's life 
 story because it interests me, and I do not believe 
 that it is possible nowadays to kindle a very 
 profound interest in any writer without a definite 
 presentation of his personality. Apart from his 
 biography — his three biographies by George 
 Crabbe the second, Mr. T. E. Kebbel, and Canon 
 Ainger, there are the seven volumes of his works' 
 Now I do not imagine that any great accession will
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 117 
 
 be made to the ranks of Crabbe's admirers by ask- 
 ing people to take down these seven volumes and 
 read them right through — a thing I have myself 
 done twice, and many here also I doubt not. 
 Rather would I plead for a reprint of Edmund 
 FitzGerald's Selections, or failing that I would 
 ask you to look at the volume of Selections made 
 by Mr. Bernard Holland, or that other admirable 
 selection by the Rev. Anthony Deane. " I 
 must think my old Crabbe will come up again, 
 though never to be popular," wrote FitzGerald 
 to Archbishop Trench. Well, perhaps the "large 
 still books" of the older writers are never destined 
 to be popular again, but they will always main- 
 tain with genuine book lovers their place in 
 English Literature, and if the adequate praise 
 they have received from many good judges is 
 well kept to the front there will be constant 
 accessions to the ranks, and readers will want the 
 whole of Crabbe's works in which to dig for 
 themselves. Crabbe's place in English Literature 
 needed not such a gathering as this to make it 
 secure, but we want celebrations of our literary 
 heroes to keep alive enthusiasm, and to en- 
 courage the faint-hearted.
 
 ii8 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 In the glorious tradition of English Literature, 
 then, Crabbe comes after Cowper and before 
 Wordsworth. There is a lineal descent as clear 
 and well-defined as any set forth in the peerages 
 of " Burke " or " Debrett." We read in vain 
 if we do not fully grasp the continuity of creative 
 work. Cowper was born in 1731, Crabbe in 
 1754, and Cowper was called to the Bar in the 
 year that Crabbe was born. In spite of this 
 disparity of years they started upon their liter- 
 ary careers almost at the same time. The 
 Village was published in 1783, and The Task 
 in 1785, yet Cowper is in every sense the elder 
 poet, inheriting more closely the traditions of 
 Pope and Dryden, coming less near to humanity 
 than Crabbe, and being more emphatically a 
 child of the eighteenth century in its artificial 
 aspects. It is impossible to indict a whole 
 century with all its varied accomplishments, and 
 the century that produced Swift and Cowper 
 and Crabbe had no lack of the finer instincts of 
 brotherhood. Yet the century was essentially 
 a cruel one. Take as an example the attitude of 
 naturally kindly men to the hanging of Dr. Dodd 
 for forgery. Even Samuel Johnson, who did
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 119 
 
 what he could for Dodd, did not find, as he should 
 have done, his whole soul revolted by such a 
 punishment for a crime against property. Cow- 
 per has immense claim upon our regard. He 
 is one of the truest of poets, and one of the 
 most interesting figures in all English literature, 
 although no small share of his one-time popularity- 
 was due to his identification with Evangelicalism 
 in religion. Cowper had humour and other 
 qualities which enabled him to make the uni- 
 versal appeal to all hearts which is the test of the 
 greatest literature — the appeal of "John Gilpin," 
 the " Lines " to his Mother's Portrait, and his 
 verses on " The loss of the Royal George^ Crabbe 
 made no such appeal, and he has not the 
 adventitious assistance that association with a 
 religious sect affords. Hence the popularity he 
 once enjoyed was more entirely on his merits than 
 was that of Cowper. He was the first of the eight- 
 eenth century poets who was able to see things 
 as they really are. Therein lies his strength. 
 Were they poets at all — those earlier eighteenth 
 century writers ? It sounds like rank blasphemy 
 to question it, but what is poetry ? Surely it 
 is the expression artistically in rhythmic form — ■ 
 
 ^
 
 I20 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 or even without it — of the sincerest emotions 
 concerning nature and life. The greatest poet 
 is not the one who is most sincere — a very bad 
 poet can be that — but the poet who expresses that 
 sincerity with the most perfect art. From this 
 point of view the poets before Cowper and Crabbe, 
 Pope, Goldsmith, Johnson and others were 
 scarcely poets at all. Masters of language every 
 one of them, able to command a fine rhetoric, 
 but not poets. Gray in two or three pieces 
 was a poet, but for Johnson that claim can 
 scarcely be made. Cowper was the first to 
 emancipate himself from the conventionality of 
 his age, and Crabbe emancipated himself still 
 further. He had boundless sincerity, and he 
 is really a very great poet even if he has not 
 the perfection of art of some later poets. Many 
 know Crabbe only by the parody of his manner 
 in Rejected Addresses: 
 
 John Richard William Alexander Dwyer 
 Was footman to Justinian Stubbs Esquire ; 
 But when John Dwyer listed in the blues, 
 Emanuel Jennings polished Stubbs's shoes. 
 
 and it must be admitted that there are plenty 
 of lines like these in Crabbe, as for example : —
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 121 
 
 Grave Jonas Kindred, Sybil Kindred's sire 
 Was six feet high, and looked six inches higher. 
 
 or this : — 
 
 The church he view'd as liberal minds will view 
 And there he fixed his principles and pew. 
 
 Banalities of this kind are scattered through his 
 pages as they are scattered through those of 
 Wordsworth. Nevertheless he was a great poet, ^ 
 bringing us before Wordsworth out of the ruck 
 of artificiality and insincerity. Does any one 
 suppose that Pope in his Essay on Man, that 
 Johnson in his London or that Goldsmith in his 
 Deserted Village had any idea other than the pro- 
 duction of splendid phrases. Each and all of them 
 were brilliant men of letters. Crabbe was not a 
 brilliant man of letters, but he was a fine and a 
 genuine poet. You will look in vain in his truest 
 work for the lyrical and musical gift that we 
 associate with poets who came after : — Shelley, 
 Keats, Tennyson — poets who made Crabbe's 
 work quite distasteful for some three generations. 
 Crabbe it has been claimed had that gift also, to 
 be found in "Sir Eustace Grey " and other verses 
 written under the inspiration of opium, as much
 
 122 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 of Coleridge's best work was written — but it 
 is not in these that his admirers will seek to 
 emphasize his achievement — it is in his work 
 which treats of 
 
 The simple annals of my parish poor. 
 
 The Village, The Parish Register, The Borough, 
 and many of the Tales bear witness to a clear 
 vision of life as it is lived by the majority of people 
 born into this world. I have seen criticism of 
 Crabbe which calls him the poet who took the 
 middle classes for his subj ects, criticism which com- 
 pared him with George Eliot. All this is quite 
 beside the mark. Crabbe is pre-eminently the 
 poet of the poor, with a lesson for to-day as much 
 as for a century ago. Villages are not now what 
 they were then, we are told. But I fully believe 
 that there are all the conditions of life to-day 
 hidden beneath the surface as Crabbe's close 
 observations pictured them. " The altered posi- 
 tion of the poor," says Mr. Courthope, " has 
 fortunately deprived his poems of much of the 
 reality they once possessed." I do not believe it. 
 The closely packed towns, the herding together 
 of families, the squalor are still to be found
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 123 
 
 in our midst. Crabbe has his message for our 
 time as well as for his own. How he tore the 
 veil from the conventional language of his 
 day, the picture of the ideal village where the 
 happy peasantry passed through life so joyously. 
 Contrast such pictures with his sad declaration — 
 
 I've seldom known, though I have often read 
 Of happy peasants on their dying-bed. 
 
 Solution Crabbe offers none for the tragedy of 
 poverty. He was no politician. He signed the 
 nomination paper for John Wilson Croker the 
 Tory in his native Aldeburgh, and he supported 
 a Whig at the same election at Trowbridge. His 
 politics were summed up in backing his friends 
 of both parties. But he did see, as politicians 
 are only beginning to see to-day, that the ultimate 
 solution was a social one and not a mere question 
 of political parties. Generations have passed 
 away since he lived, and men are still shouting 
 themselves hoarse to prove that in this Shibboleth 
 or in that may be found the salvation of the coun- 
 try, yet we have still our thousands on the verge 
 of starvation, we have still the very poor in our 
 midst, and the problem seems as far from solution
 
 124 TO THE IMA/[ORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 as ever. But it would be all the better for the 
 State if we could keep the questions raised by 
 Crabbe in his wonderful pictures more continually 
 in view, — lacking in taste as they may sometimes 
 seem to weak stomachs, coarse, unvarnished 
 narratives though they be of a life which is really 
 almost entirely sordid. 
 
 Then let us turn to Crabbe's gallery of pictures. 
 Phoebe Dawson, and the equally pathetic Ruth, 
 Blaney and Clelia, Peter Grimes and many 
 another. They are as clearly defined a set of 
 entirely human beings as any Master has given 
 us. It is not assuredly in George Eliot, as 
 Canon Ainger suggests, that I find an affinity to 
 Crabbe among the moderns, but in two much 
 greater writers of quite different texture, Balzac 
 and Dickens. Had Crabbe not been bounded 
 and restrained by the conventions of his cloth, 
 he might have become one of the most popular 
 story-tellers in our literature — the English 
 Balzac. At a hundred points Charles Dickens 
 is an entire contrast to Crabbe — in his buoyant 
 humour, his gaiety of heart, in the glamour that 
 he throws over the life of the poor, a glamour 
 that was more present in the early Victorian
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 125 
 
 era than in our own, but Crabbe is with Balzac 
 and with Dickens in that he presents as no other 
 moderns have done living pictures of suffering 
 human lives. 
 
 There is yet one other literary force, powerful 
 in our day, that has been largely influenced by 
 Crabbe. Those who love the novels of Mr. 
 Thomas Hardy, whom we rejoice to see with us 
 at this Celebration, — his JVoodlanders, The Return 
 of the Native, Far from the Madding Crozud, 
 and many another book that touches the very 
 heart of things in nature and human life, 
 will rejoice to hear that this great writer has 
 admitted George Crabbe to be the most 
 potent influence that has affected his work. I 
 have heard him declare many times how much 
 he was inspired by Crabbe, whereas the later 
 French realists had no influence upon him what- 
 ever. " Crabbe was our first great English 
 realist " Mr. Hardy would tell you if only we 
 could persuade him to speak from this plat- 
 form, as unfortunately he will not. 
 
 Lastly let us take Crabbe as a great story-teller. 
 He has many more ideas than most of the novel- 
 ists. That is why we do well to recall the hint
 
 126 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 of the writer who said that when a new work 
 came out we should take down an old one from 
 our shelves. Instead of the " un-idead " novels, 
 that come out by the dozen and are so popular. 
 I wish we could agree to read Crabbe's novels in 
 verse. Unhappily their form is against them in 
 the present age. But it would not be at all a 
 misfortune if we could make Crabbe's Tales once 
 more the vogue. They are good stories, ab- 
 sorbingly interesting. They leave a very vivid 
 impression on the mind. Once read they are 
 unforgettable. 
 
 I have seen it stated that these stories are old- 
 fashioned both in manner and in substance. In 
 manner they may be, but in substance I maintain 
 they are intensely modern, alive with the spirit 
 of our time. Any latter-day novelist might 
 envy Crabbe his power of developing a story. 
 It is this essential modernity that is to make 
 Crabbe's place in English literature secure for 
 generations yet to come. 
 
 "" Finally, Crabbe's place in English literature 
 is as the bridge between the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth century. With him begins that 
 *' enthusiasm of humanity "which the eighteenth
 
 GEORGE CRABBE 127 
 
 century so imperfectly understood. Byron and 
 Wordsworth, disliking each other cordially, did 
 well to praise him, for he was their forerunner. 
 A master of pathos, you may find in his work 
 incentive to tears and laughter, although some- 
 times the humour, as in The Learned Boy^ is 
 sadly unconscious. 
 
 But I must bring these rambling remarks 
 to a close, and in doing so I must once again 
 quote that other Suffolk worthy to whom 
 many of us are very much attached, I mean 
 Edward FitzGerald. When Sir Leslie Stephen 
 wrote what is to my mind a singularly infelici- 
 tous essay on Crabbe in the Cornhill, he quoted 
 the remark, which seemed to be new to Fitz- 
 Gerald, as to Crabbe being a "pope in worsted 
 stockings " — a remark made by Horace Smith of 
 Rejected Addresses, although I have seen it ascribed 
 to Byron and others. " Pope in worsted stock- 
 ings," exclaimed FitzGerald, " why I could 
 cite whole paragraphs of as fine a texture as 
 Moliere ; ' incapable of epigram,' the jackanapes 
 says — why, I could find fifty of the very best 
 epigrams in five minutes," and later, in another 
 letter he writes —
 
 128 GEORGE CRABBE 
 
 I am positively looking over my everlasting Crabbe 
 again ; he naturally comes in about the fall of the year. 
 
 Here surely is an appropriate quotation, a 
 little prophetic perhaps, for our gathering — 
 the " everlasting Crabbe." We cannot all love 
 Crabbe as much as FitzGerald loved him, but 
 this gathering will not be vain if after this 
 we handle his volumes more lovingly, read 
 his poems more sympathetically, and continue 
 with more zeal than ever before to be proud 
 of the man who, born in Aldeburgh a century 
 and a half ago, is closely identified with this 
 county of Suffolk as I believe no other great 
 writer is closely identified with any county in 
 England. An Aldeburgh man- — a Suffolk man 
 he was — yet even more in the future than in the 
 past, he is destined to gain the whole world foi 
 his parish. He is the everlasting Crabbe !
 
 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS 
 OF EAST ANGLIA 
 
 I.M.
 
 V 
 
 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 EAST ANGLIA 
 
 An address to the East Anglian Society on the occasion 
 of a dinner to Mr. William Dutt, author of 
 ** Highways and Byways in East Anglia/* March 
 25, 1901. 
 
 I APPRECIATE the privilege of being allowed to 
 speak this evening for a few minutes upon the 
 literary associations of East Anglia, of being per- 
 mitted to ask you, while doing honour to a well- 
 known East Anglian writer of to-day, to cast a 
 glance back upon the literature of the past so far 
 as it affects that portion of the British Empire 
 with which we nearly all of us here are proud to 
 be associated. There is necessarily some differ- 
 ence of opinion as to what constitutes East Anglia. 
 I find that our guest of to-night tells us that it 
 is " Norfolk, Suffolk and portions of Essex, Cam- 
 bridgeshire and Lincolnshire." Dr. Knapp, the 
 biographer of Borrow, says that it is Norfolk, 
 
 131
 
 132 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 Suffolk and Cambridgeshire ; personally I am 
 content with that classification, because, al- 
 though I was born in London, I claim, apart 
 from schoolboy days at Downham Market, a 
 pretty lengthy ancestry from Norwich on one 
 side — which is indisputably East Anglia — and 
 from Welney, near Wisbeach, on another side, 
 and Welney and Wisbeach are, I affirm, just 
 as much East Anglia as Norwich and Ipswich. 
 With reference to those other counties and por- 
 tions of counties, I think that the inhabitants 
 must be allowed to decide for themselves. I 
 imagine that they will give every possible stretch 
 to the imagination in order to allow themselves 
 the honour of being incorporated in East Anglia, 
 a name that one never pronounces without recall- 
 ing that fine old-world compliment of St. Augus- 
 tine of Canterbury to our ancestors, that they 
 ought to be called not " Angles " but " Angels." 
 Every one in particular who loves books must 
 be proud to partake of our great literary tra- 
 dition. If it is difficult to decide precisely what 
 East Anglia is, it is perhaps equally difficult to 
 speak for a few minutes on so colossal a theme 
 as the literature of East Anglia. It would be
 
 EAST ANGLIA 133 
 
 easy to recapitulate what every biographical 
 dictionary will provide, a long list of famous 
 names associated with our counties; to remind 
 you that we have produced two poet-laureates 
 — John Skelton, of Diss, the author of Colyn 
 Cloute, and Thomas Shadwell, of Broomhill, the 
 playwright — the latter perhaps not entirely a 
 subject for pride ; two very rough and ready 
 political philosophers, Thomas Paine, born at 
 Thetford, and William Godwin, born at Wis- 
 beach ; a very popular novelist in Bulwer Lytton, 
 and a very popular theologian in Dr. Samuel 
 Clarke ; as also the famous brother and sister 
 whose works appealed to totally different minds, 
 James and Harriet Martineau. Then there was 
 that pathetic creature and indifferent poet, 
 Robert Bloomfield, whose Farmer^s Boy once 
 appeared in the luxurious glories of an expen- 
 sive quarto. Finally, one recalls that two of 
 the most popular women writers of an earlier 
 generation, Clara Reeve, the novelist, and Agnes 
 Strickland, the historian, were Suffolk women. 
 
 But I am not concerned to give you a recapitu- 
 lation of all the East Anglian writers, whose names, 
 as I have said, can be found in any biographical
 
 134 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 dictionary, and the quality of whose work would 
 rather suggest that East Anglia, from a literary 
 point of view, is a land of extinct volcanoes. I 
 am naturally rather anxious to make use of the 
 golden opportunity that has been afforded me 
 to emphasize my own literary sympathies, and 
 to say in what I think lies the glory of East Anglia, 
 at least so far as the creation of books is concerned. 
 Here I make an interesting claim for East Anglia, 
 that it has given us in Captain Marryat perhaps 
 the very greatest prose writer of the nineteenth 
 century who has been a delight to youth, and two 
 of the very greatest prose writers of all times for 
 the inspiration of middle-age. Sir Thomas Browne 
 and George Borrow. It has given us in Sarah 
 Austin an example of a learned woman who was 
 also a fascinating woman ; it has given us again 
 the most remarkable letter-writers in the Eng- 
 lish language — Margaret Paston, Horace Walpole 
 and Edward FitzGerald. To these there were 
 only three serious rivals as letter-writers — William 
 Cowper, Thomas Grey and Charles Lamb ; 
 and the first found a final home and a last rest- 
 ing-place in our midst. It has given us that 
 remarkable novelist and entertaining diarist,
 
 EAST ANGLIA 15S 
 
 Fanny Burney. Finally, it has given us in 
 that same William Cowper — who rests in East 
 Dereham Church, and for whom we claim on 
 that and for other reasons some share and parti- 
 cipation in his genius — a great and much loved 
 poet. It has given us indeed in William Cowper 
 and George Crabbe the two most natural and 
 the two most human poets in the English litera- 
 ture of two centuries, only excepting the favourite 
 poet of Scotland — Robert Burns It is to these 
 of all writers that I would pin my faith in talking 
 of East Anglia and its literature ; it is their names 
 that I would have you keep in your mind when 
 you call up memories of the literature which 
 has most inspired our East Anglian life. 
 
 In connexion with many writers a point of 
 importance will occur to us. Only occasionally 
 has a great English author a special claim on one 
 particular portion of England. He has not been 
 the lesser or the greater for that, it has merely 
 been an accident of his birth and of his career. 
 The greatest of all writers, the one of whom all 
 Englishmen are naturally the most proud, Shaks- 
 pere, has, it is true, an abundant association with 
 Warwickshire, but Shakspere stands almost alone
 
 136 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 in this, as in many things. Chaucer, Spenser, 
 Milton, Byron and Keats were born in London ; 
 they travelled widely, they lived in many different 
 counties or countries, and cannot be said to have 
 adorned any distinctively local tradition. Shelley 
 was born in Sussex, but a hundred cities, including 
 Rome, where his ashes rest, may claim some par- 
 ticipation in his fine spirit. Wordsworth, on 
 the other hand, who was born in Cumberland, 
 certainly obtained the greater part of his inspira- 
 tion from the neighbouring county of Westmor- 
 land, where his life was passed. But when we come 
 to East Anglia we are face to face with a body of 
 writers who belong to the very soil, upon whom 
 the particular character of the landscape has had 
 a permanent effect, who are not only very great 
 Englishmen and Englishwomen, but are great 
 East Anglians as well. 
 
 I have said that Captain Marryat was an East 
 Anglian, and have we not a right to be proud of 
 Marryat's breezy stories of the sea ? Our youth 
 has found such plentiful stimulus in Peter Simple^ 
 Frank Mildmay, and Mr. Midshipman Easy ; 
 generations of boys have read them with delight, 
 generations of boys will read them. And not
 
 EAST ANGLIA 137 
 
 only boys, but men. One recalls that Carlyle, 
 in one of his deepest fits of depression, took refuge 
 in Marryat's novels with infinite advantage to 
 his peace of mind. Speaking of Captain Marryat 
 and books for boys, a quite minor kind of litera- 
 ture perhaps some of you may think, I must 
 recall that an earlier and still more famous story 
 for children had an East Anglian origin. Did 
 not The Babes in the Wood come out of Norfolk ? 
 Was it not their estate in that county that, as we 
 learn from Percy's Reliques, their wicked uncle 
 coveted, and were not the last hours of those 
 unfortunate children, in this most picturesque 
 and pathetic of stories, solaced by East Anglian 
 robins and their poor bodies covered by East 
 Anglian vegetation ? 
 
 Let me pass, however, to what may be counted 
 more serious literature. What can one say of 
 Sir Thomas Browne unless indeed one has an 
 hour in which to say it. Every page of that great 
 writer's Religio Medici and Um Burial is quotable 
 — full of worldly wisdom and of an inspiration 
 that is not of the world. Browne was born in 
 London, and not until he was thirty-two years 
 of age did he settle in Norwich, where he was
 
 138 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 " much resorted to for his skill in physic," and 
 where he lived for forty-five years, when the fine 
 church of St. Peter Mancroft, received his ashes 
 — a church in which, let me add, with pardon- 
 able pride, my own grandfather and grand- 
 mother were married. I am glad that Norwich 
 is shortly to commemorate by a fitting monu- 
 ment not the least great of her sons, one who 
 has been aptly called " the English Montaigne." ^ 
 Perhaps there are those who would dispute my 
 claim for Marryat and for Sir Thomas Browne that 
 they were East Anglians — both were only East 
 Anglians by adoption. There are even those 
 who dispute the claim for one whom I must 
 count well-nigh the greatest of East Anglian men 
 of letters — George Borrow. Borrow, I main- 
 tain, was an East Anglian if ever there was 
 one, although this has been questioned by 
 Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton. Now I have 
 the greatest possible regard for Mr. Watts- 
 Dunton. He is distinguished alike as a critic, a 
 poet, and a romancer. But I must join issue 
 
 ^ This monument, a fine statue facing the house which 
 replaces the one in which Sir Thomas Browne lived, was un- 
 veiled in October, 1905.
 
 EAST ANGLIA 139 
 
 with him here, and you, I know, will forgive me 
 for taking up your time with the matter ; for if 
 Mr. Watts-Dunton were right, one of the chief 
 glories would be shorn from our East Anglian 
 traditions. He denies in the Introduction to a 
 new edition of The Romany Rye, just published, 
 the claim of Borrow to be an East Anglian, 
 although Borrow himself insisted that he was one. 
 
 One might as well call Charlotte Bronte a Yorkshire 
 woman as call Borrow an East Anglian. He was no 
 more an East Anglian than an Irishman born in London 
 is an Englishman. His father was a Cornishman and his 
 mother of French extraction. Not one drop of East 
 Anglian blood was in the veins of Borrow's father, and 
 very little in the veins of his mother. Borrow's ancestry 
 was pure Cornish on one side, and on the other mainly 
 French. But such was the egotism of Borrow that the 
 fact of his having been born in East Anglia made him 
 look upon that part of the world as the very hub of the 
 universe. 
 
 Well, I am not prepared to question the sug- 
 gestion that East Anglia is the hub of the uni- 
 verse, only to question Mr. Watts-Dunton's 
 position. There is virtue in that qualification 
 of his that there was " very little " East Anglian 
 blood in the veins of Borrow's mother, and that
 
 140 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 she was " mainly " French. As a matter of fact 
 she was, of course, partly East Anglian ; that is to 
 say, she must have had two or three generations 
 of East Anglian blood in her, seeing that it was 
 her great-grandfather who settled in Norfolk 
 from France, and he and his children and grand- 
 children intermarried with the race. But I 
 do not pin my claim for Borrow upon that fact 
 — the fact of three generations of his mother's 
 family at Dumpling Green — or even on the fact 
 that he was born near East Dereham. There is 
 nothing more certain than that we are all of us 
 influenced greatly by our environment, and that 
 it is this, quite as much as birth or ancestry, that 
 gives us what characteristics we possess. It is the 
 custom, for example, to call Swift an Irishman, 
 whereas Swift came of English parentage and 
 lived for many of his most impressionable years in 
 England. Nevertheless, he may be justly claimed 
 by the sister-island, for during a long sojourn in 
 that country he became permeated with the 
 subtle influence of the Irish race, and in many 
 things he thought and felt as an Irishman. It 
 is the custom to speak of Maria Edgeworth as an 
 Irish novelist, yet Miss Edgeworth was born in
 
 EAST ANGLIA 141 
 
 England of English parentage. Nevertheless, 
 she was quite as much an Irish novelist as Charles 
 Lever and Samuel Lover, for all her life was spent 
 in direct communion with the Irish race, and her 
 books were Irish books. It is, on the other hand, 
 quite unreasonable to deny that Charlotte Bronte 
 was a Yorkshire woman. Only once at the end 
 of her life did she visit Ireland for a few weeks. 
 Her Irish father and her Cornish mother doubt- 
 less influenced her nature in many ways, but not 
 less certain was the influence of those wonderful 
 moors around Haworth, and the people among 
 whom she lived. Neither Ireland nor Cornwall 
 has as much right to claim her as Yorkshire. I 
 am the last to disclaim the influence of what is 
 sometimes called " Celticism " upon English 
 literature ; upon this point I am certain that 
 Matthew Arnold has said almost the last word. 
 The Celts — not necessarily the Irish, as there 
 are three or four races of Celts in addition to the 
 Irish — have in the main given English literature 
 its fine imaginative quality, and even where he 
 cannot trace a Celtic origin to an English writer 
 we may fairly assume that there is Celtic blood 
 somewhere in an earlier generation.
 
 142 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 Nevertheless, the impressions, as I have said, 
 derived from environment are of the utmost 
 vitality, and assuredly Borrow was an East Anglian, 
 as Sir Thomas Browne was an East Anglian. In 
 each writer you can trace the influence of our 
 soil in a peculiar degree, and particularly in Bor- 
 row. Borrow was proud of being an East Anglian, 
 and we are proud of him. In Lavengro, I 
 venture to assert, we have the greatest example 
 of prose style in our modern literature, and I 
 rejoice to see a growing Borrow cult, a cult that 
 is based not on an acceptance of the narrower 
 side of Borrow — his furious ultra-Protestantism, 
 for example — as was the popularity that he once 
 enjoyed, but upon the fact that he was a magnifi- 
 cent artist in words. No artist in words but is 
 influenced by environment. Charles Kingsley, 
 for example, who came from quite different 
 surroundings, was profoundly influenced by the 
 East Anglian fen-country : — 
 
 " They have a beauty of their own, those great fens," 
 he said, " a beauty of the sea, of boundless expanse and 
 freedom. Overhead the arch of heaven spreads more 
 ample than elsewhere, and that vastness gives such cloud- 
 lands, such sunrises, such sunsets, as can be seen nowhere 
 else within these isles."
 
 EAST ANGLIA 143 
 
 But I must hasten on, although I would fain 
 tarry long over George Borrow and his works. I 
 have said that East Anglia is the country of great 
 letter writers. First, there was Margaret Paston. 
 There is no such contribution to a remote period 
 of English history as that contained in the Pas- 
 ton Letters, and I think we must associate them 
 with the name of a woman — Margaret Paston. 
 Margaret's husband, John Paston ; her son, Sir 
 John Paston ; and her second son, who, strangely 
 enough, was also a John, and called himself 
 " John Paston the Youngest," come frequently 
 before us in the correspondence, but Margaret 
 Paston is the central figure. 
 
 It may not be without interest to some of my 
 hearers who are married to recall that Margaret 
 Paston addresses her husband not as " Dear 
 John," or " My dear John," as I imagine a 
 a wife of to-day would do, but as " Right Rever- 
 end and Worshipful Husband." Nowhere is 
 there such a vivid picture of a bygone age as 
 that contained in these Paston Letters. We who 
 sit quietly by the hearth in the reign of King 
 Edward VII may read what it meant to live by the 
 hearth in the reign of King Edward IV. It is
 
 144 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 curious that the most humane documents of far-off 
 times in our history should all come from East 
 Anglia, not only those Pasto?i Letters, brimful of 
 the most vital interest concerning the reigns of 
 Henry VI and Edward IV, but also an even earlier 
 period — the life, or at least the monastic life in 
 the time of the first Richard and of King John 
 is in a most extraordinarily human fashion mirrored 
 for us in that Chronicle of St. Edmund's Bury 
 Monastery known as the Jocelyn Chronicle, pub- 
 lished by the Camden Society, which Carlyle 
 has vitalized so superbly for us in Past and Present. 
 But I was speaking of the great letter writers, 
 commencing with Margaret Paston. Who are 
 our greatest letter writers ? Undoubtedly they 
 are Horace Walpole, William Cowper and Edward 
 FitzGerald. You know what a superb picture 
 of eighteenth century life has been presented to 
 us in the nine volumes of correspondence we 
 have by Horace Walpole. ^ Walpole was to all 
 practical purposes an East Anglian, although he 
 
 ^ For every student Cunningham's nine volumes have been 
 superseded since this Address was delivered by the sixteen 
 volumes of the Letters of Horace Walpole, edited by Mrs. 
 Paget Toynbee for the Clarendon Press.
 
 EAST ANGLIA 145 
 
 happened to be born in London. His father, 
 the great Sir Robert Walpole, was a notable East 
 Anglian, and he had the closest ties of birth and 
 association with East Anglia. Many of his 
 letters were written from the family mansion o^ 
 Houghton. 1 
 
 Next in order comes William Cowper. I be- 
 lieve that more than one literary historian has 
 claimed Cowper as a Norfolk man. Cowper 
 was born in Hertfordshire ; he lived for a very 
 great deal of his life in Olney, in Bucking- 
 hamshire, in London and in Huntingdon, but 
 if ever there was a man who took on the texture 
 of East Anglian scenery and East Anglian life it 
 was Cowper. That beautiful river, the Ouse, 
 which empties itself into the Wash, was a peculiar 
 inspiration to Cowper, and those who know the 
 scenery of Olney know that it has conditions exactly 
 
 ^ The other side of the picture may, however, be presented. 
 Horace, says Cunningham (Walpole's Letters, vol. i.), hated 
 Norfolk, the native country of his father, and delighted in Kent, 
 the native country of his mother. " He did not care for Norfolk 
 ale, Norfolk turnips, Norfolk dumplings and Norfolk turkeys. 
 Its flat, sandy aguish scenery was not to his taste." He dearly 
 liked what he calls most happily, " the rich, blue prospects 
 of Kent." 
 
 I.M. jq"
 
 146 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 analogous in every way to those of East Anglia. 
 One of Cowper's most beautiful poems is entitled 
 " On Receipt of my Mother's Portrait out of 
 Norfolk," and he himself, as I have said, found 
 his last resting-place on East Anglian soil — at East 
 Dereham. 
 
 If there may be some doubt about Cowper, 
 there can be none whatever about Edward Fitz- 
 Gerald, the greatest letter-writer of recent times. 
 In mentioning the name of FitzGerald I am a 
 little difiident. It is like introducing " King 
 Charles's head " into this gathering ; for was he 
 not the author of the poem known to all of us 
 as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam^ and there is 
 no small tendency to smile to-day whenever 
 the name of Omar Khayyam is mentioned and 
 to call the cult a " lunacy." It is perhaps un- 
 fortunate that FitzGerald gave that somewhat 
 formidable title to his paraphrase, or translation, 
 of the old Persian poet. It is not the fault of 
 those who admire that poem exceedingly that 
 it gives them a suspicion of affecting a scholarship 
 that they do not in most cases possess. What 
 many of us admire is not Omar Khayyam the 
 Persian^ nor have we any desire to see or to know
 
 EAST ANGLIA 147 
 
 any other translation of that poet. We simply 
 admit to an honest appreciation of the poem by 
 Edward FitzGerald, the Suffolk squire, the poem 
 that Tennyson describes as " the one thing done 
 divinely well." That poem by FitzGerald will 
 live as long as the English language, and let it 
 never be forgotten that it is the work of an East 
 Anglian, an East Anglian who, like Borrow, 
 possessed a marked Celtic quality, the outcome 
 of a famous Irish ancestry, nevertheless of an East 
 Anglian who loved its soil, its rivers and its sea. 
 Then I come to another phase of East Anglian 
 literary traditions. It is astonishing what a zest 
 for learning its women have displayed ; I might 
 give you quite a long list of distinguished women 
 who have come out of East Anglia. Crabbe must 
 have had one in mind when he wrote of Arabella 
 in one of his Tales : — 
 
 This reasoning maid, above her sex's dread 
 Had dared to read, and dared to say she read, 
 Not the last novel, not the new born play, 
 Not the mere trash and scandal of the day ; 
 But (though her young companions felt the shock) 
 She studied Berkeley, Bacon, Hobbes and Locke. 
 
 The one who perhaps made herself most
 
 148 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 notorious was Harriet Martineau, and in spite 
 of her disagreeable egotism it is still a pleasure 
 to read some of her less controversial writings. 
 Her Feats on the Fiord, for example, is really a 
 classic. But I can never quite forgive Harriet 
 Martineau in that she spoke contemptuously of 
 East Anglian scenery, scenery which in its way 
 has charms as great as any part of Europe can 
 offer. No, in this roll of famous women, the 
 two I am most inclined to praise are Sarah 
 Austin and Fanny Burney. Mrs. Austin was, 
 you will remember, one of the Taylors of Nor- 
 wich, married to John Austin, the famous jurist. 
 She was one of the first to demonstrate that her 
 sex might have other gifts than a gift for writing 
 fiction, and that it was possible to be a good, 
 quiet, domestic woman, and at the same time an 
 exceedingly learned one. Even before Carlyle 
 she gave a vogue to the study of German literature 
 in this country ; she wrote many books, many 
 articles, and made some translations, notably 
 what is still the best translation of von Ranke's 
 History of the Popes. In the muster-roll of East 
 Anglian worthies let us never forget this singu- 
 larly good woman, this correspondent of all the
 
 EAST ANGLIA 149 
 
 most famous men of her day, of Guizot, of Grote, 
 of Gladstone, and one who also, as a letter- 
 writer, showed that she possessed the faculty 
 that seems, as I have said, to be peculiar to the 
 soil of East Anglia. Still less must we forget 
 Fanny Burney, who, born in King's Lynn, lived 
 to delight her own generation by Evelina and by 
 the fascinating Diary that gives so pleasant a 
 picture of Dr. Johnson and many another of her 
 contemporaries. Evelina and the Diary are two 
 of my favourite books, but I practise self-restraint 
 and will say no more of them here. 
 
 I now come to my ninth, and last, name 
 among those East Anglian worthies whom I 
 feel that we have a particular right to canonize — 
 George Crabbe — " though Nature's sternest 
 painter yet the best," as Byron described him. 
 Now it may be frankly admitted that few of us 
 read Crabbe to-day. He has an acknowledged 
 place in the history of literature, but there pretty 
 well even well-read people are content to leave 
 him. " What have our literary critics been 
 about that they have suffered such a writer to 
 drop into neglect and oblivion ? " asks a recent 
 Quarterly Reviewer. He does not live as Cowper
 
 I50 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 does by a few lyrics and ballads and by incompar- 
 able letters. Scarcely a line of Crabbe survives 
 in current conversation. If you turn to one 
 of those handy volumes of reference — Diction- 
 aries of Quotation, as they are called — from 
 which we who are journalists are supposed to 
 obtain most of the literary knowledge that we 
 are able to display on occasion, you will 
 scarcely find a dozen lines of Crabbe. And yet 
 I venture to affirm that Crabbe has a great 
 and permanent place in literature, and that as he 
 has been a favourite in the past, he will become 
 a favourite in the future. Crabbe can never lose 
 his place in the history of literature, a place as the 
 forerunner of Wordsworth and even of Cowper, 
 but it would be a tragedy were he to drop out 
 of the category of poets that are read. A 
 dainty little edition in eight volumes is among 
 my most treasured possessions. I have read it 
 not as we read some so-called literature, from a 
 Sense of duty, but with unqualified interest. 
 We have had much pure realism in these latter 
 days ; why not let us return to the most realistic 
 of the poets. He was beloved by all the greatest 
 among his contemporaries. Scott and Words-
 
 EAST ANGLIA 151 
 
 worth were devoted to his work, and so also was 
 Jane Austen. At a later date Tennyson praised 
 him. We have heard quite recently the story 
 of Mr. James Russell Lowell in his last illness 
 finding comfort in reading Scott's Roh Roy. Let 
 us turn to Scott's own last illness and see what 
 was the book he most enjoyed, almost on his 
 deathbed : — 
 
 " Read me some amusing thing," said Sir Walter, 
 " read me a bit of Crabbe." " I brought out the first 
 volumes of his old favourite that I could lay hand on," 
 says Lockhart, " and turned to what I remembered was 
 one of his favourite passages in it. He listened with 
 great interest. Every now and then he exclaimed, 
 " Capital, excellent, excellent, very good." 
 
 Cardinal Newman and Edward FitzGerald 
 at the opposite poles, as it were, of religious im- 
 pressions, agree in a devotion to Crabbe's poetry. 
 Cardinal Newman speaks of Tales of the Hall as 
 " a poem whether in conception or in execution 
 one of the most touching in our language," and 
 in a footnote to his Idea of a University he tells 
 us that he had read the poem thirty years earlier 
 with extreme delight, " and have never lost my
 
 152 THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF 
 
 love of it," and he goes on to plead that it is an 
 absolute classic. 
 
 Not to have read Crabbe, therefore, is not to 
 know one of the most individual in the glorious 
 muster-roll of English poets, and Crabbe was pre- 
 eminently an East Anglian, born and bred in 
 East Anglia, and taking in a peculiar degree the 
 whole character of his environment, as only 
 Shakspere, Cowper and Wordsworth among our 
 great poets, have done. 
 
 In conclusion, let me recapitulate that the 
 names of Marryat, Sir Thomas Browne, George 
 Borrow, Margaret Paston, Horace Walpole, Sarah 
 Austin, Fanny Burney, Edward FitzGerald, and 
 George Crabbe are those that I prefer to associate 
 with East Anghan Literature. We are well aware 
 that literature is but an aspect of our many claims 
 on the gratitude of those Englishmen who have 
 not the good fortune to be East Anglians. We 
 have given to the Empire a great scholar in Porson, 
 a great statesman in Sir Robert Walpole, a great 
 lawyer in Sir Edward Coke, great ecclesiastics 
 in Cardinal Wolsey and Archbishop Parker, great 
 artists in Gainsborough, Constable and Crome, 
 and perhaps above all great sailors in Sir Cloudes-
 
 EAST ANGLIA 153 
 
 ley Shovel and the ever memorable Lord Nelson. 
 Personally I admire a certain rebel, Kett the 
 Tanner, as much as any of those I have named. 
 Of all these East Anglian worthies the praise 
 has often been sung, but let me be pardoned if, 
 on an occasion like this, I have dwelt rather 
 at length on the less familiar association of 
 East Anglia v/ith letters. That I have but 
 touched the fringe of the subject is obvious. 
 What might not be said, for example, concerning 
 Norwich as a literary centre under Bishop 
 Stanley — the Norwich of the Taylors and the 
 Gurneys, possessed of as much real intellectual 
 life as London can boast of to-day. What, 
 again, might not be said of the influence upon 
 writers from afar. Read Kingsley's Herezvard 
 the Wake, Mr. Swinburne's Midsummer Holiday, 
 Charles Dickens' description of Yarmouth and 
 Goldsmith's poetical description in his Deserted 
 Village, where clearly Houghton was intended.^ 
 
 ^ Goldsmith doubtless had more than one experience in 
 his mind when he wrote of : — 
 
 Sweet Auburn ! loveliest village of the plain. 
 
 Lissoy, near Ballymahon, Ireland, served to provide many 
 concrete features of the picture, but that the author drew upon
 
 t54 EAST ANGLIA 
 
 These, and a host of other memories touch the 
 heart of all good East Anglians, but that East 
 Anglians do not forget the living in doing honour 
 to the dead is indicated by this gathering to- 
 night. We are grateful to Dr. Augustus Jessopp, 
 to Mr. Walter Rye, to Mr. Edward Clodd, and 
 to our guest of this evening, Mr. William Dutt, 
 for keeping alive the folk-lore, the literary history, 
 the historical tradition of that portion of the 
 British Isles to which we feel the most profound 
 attachment by ties of residence or of kinship. 
 
 his experiences of Houghton is believed by his principal bio- 
 grapher, John Forster, by Professor Masson and others, and on 
 no other assumption than that of an English village can the 
 lines be explained : — 
 
 A time there was, ere England's griefs began, 
 When every rood of ground maintained its man.
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY
 
 VI 
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 A paper read before the members of the Johnson Club 
 of London at Simpson's Restaurant in the Strand. 
 
 There is, I believe, a definite understanding 
 among our members that we, the Brethren of 
 the Johnson Club, have each and all of us read 
 every line about Dr. Johnson that is in print, to 
 say nothing of his works. It is particularly accep- 
 ted that the thirteen volumes in which our late 
 brother, Dr. Birkbeck Hill, enshrined his own 
 appreciation of our Great Man, are as familiar 
 to us all as are the Bible and the Book of Common 
 Prayer. For my part, with a deep sense of the 
 responsibility that must belong to any one who 
 has rashly undertaken to read a paper before 
 the Club, I admit to having supplemented 
 these thirteen volumes by a reperusal of the 
 little book entitled Johnson Club Papers^ by 
 Various Hands, issued in 1899 by Brother 
 Fisher Unwin. I feel as I reread these addresses 
 that there were indeed giants in those days, 
 
 157
 
 158 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 although my admiration was moderated a little 
 when I came across the statement of one Brother 
 that Johnson's proposal for an edition of Shak- 
 spere " came to nothing " ; and the statement 
 of another that " Goldsmith's failings were almost 
 as great and as ridiculous as Boswell's ; " while 
 my bibliographical ire was awakened by the 
 extraordinary declaration in an article on "Dr. 
 Johnson's Library," that a first folio edition of 
 Shakspere might have realized ;^250 in the year 
 1785. Still, I recognize the talent that illumi- 
 nated the Club in those closing years of the 
 last century. Happily for us, who love good 
 comradeship, most of the giants of those days 
 are still in evidence with their polished armour 
 and formidable spears. 
 
 What can I possibly say that has not already 
 been said by one or other of the Brethren ? Well, 
 I have put together these few remarks in the 
 hopes that no one of you has seen two books 
 that are in my hands, the first. The Reades of 
 Blackwood Hill, with Some Account of Dr. John- 
 sotCs Ancestry, by Aleyn Lyell Reade ; the other, 
 The Life and Letters of Dr. Birkbeck Hill, by 
 his daughter Mrs. Crump. The first of these
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 159 
 
 is privately printed, although it may be bought 
 by any one of the Brethren for a couple of guineas. 
 As far as I am able to learn, Brother Augustine 
 Birrell is the only one of the Brethren who has 
 as yet purchased a copy. The other book, our 
 Brother Birkbeck Hill's biography, is to be issued 
 next week by Mr. Edward Arnold, who has 
 kindly placed an early copy at my disposal. In 
 both these volumes there is much food for reflec- 
 tion for all good Johnsonians. Dr. Johnson's 
 ancestry, it may be, makes little appeal to the 
 crowd, but it will to the Brethren. There is 
 no more favourite subject for satire than the 
 tendency to minute study of an author and his 
 antecedents. But the lover of that author knows 
 the fascination of the topic. He can forgive 
 any amount of zeal. I confess that personally 
 I stand amazed at the variety and interest of 
 Mr. Reade's researches. Let me take a sample 
 case of his method before coming to the main 
 issue. In the opening pages of Boswell's Johnson 
 there is some account of Mr. Michael Johnson, 
 the father. The most picturesque anecdote 
 told of Johnson Senior is that concerning a 
 young woman of Leek in Staffordshire, who
 
 i6o DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 while he served his apprenticeship there con- 
 ceived a passion for him, which he . did not 
 return. She followed him to Lichfield, where 
 she took lodgings opposite to the house in which 
 he lived, and indulged her hopeless flame. Ulti- 
 mately she died of love and was buried in the 
 Cathedral at Lichfield, when Michael Johnson 
 put a stone over her grave. This pathetic 
 romance has gone unchallenged by all Boswell's 
 editors, even including our prince of editors, 
 Dr. Birkbeck Hill. Mr. Reade, it seems to me, 
 has completely shattered the story, which, as 
 all Johnsonian students know, was obtained 
 by Boswell from Miss Anna Seward. Mr. 
 Reade is able to show that Michael Johnson had 
 been settled in Lichfield for at least eleven years 
 before the death of Elizabeth Blaney, that 
 for five years she had been the much appre- 
 ciated domestic in a household in that city. 
 Her will indicates moreover a great affection 
 for her mistress and for that mistress's son ; 
 she leaves the boy a gold watch and his mother 
 the rest of her belongings. The only connexion 
 that Michael Johnson would seem to have had 
 with the woman was that he and his brother were
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY i6i 
 
 called in after her decease to make an inventory 
 of her little property. I think that these little 
 facts about Mistress Blaney, her five years' resi- 
 dence at Lichfield apparently in a most comfort- 
 able position, her omission of Michael Johnson 
 from her will, and the fact that he had been in 
 Lichfield at least six months before she arrived, 
 are conclusive. 
 
 There is another picturesque fact about 
 Michael Johnson that Mr. Reade has brought to 
 light. It would seem that twenty years before his 
 marriage to Sarah Ford, he had been on the eve 
 of marriage to a young woman at Derby, Mary 
 Neyld ; but the marriage did not take place, 
 although the marriage bond was drawn out. 
 Mary was the daughter of Luke Neyld, a promi- 
 nent tradesman of Derby ; she was twenty-three 
 years of age at the time and Michael twenty-nine. 
 Even Mr. Reade's industry has not been able to 
 discover for us why at the very last moment the 
 marriage was broken off. It explains, how- 
 ever, why Michael Johnson married late in 
 life and his melancholia. The human romance 
 that Mr. Reade has unveiled has surely a cer- 
 tain interest for Johnsonians, for had Michael 
 
 I.M. II
 
 i62 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 Johnson brought his first love affair to a happy 
 conclusion, we should not have had the man 
 described twenty years later as " possessed of a 
 vile melancholy," who, when his wife's tongue 
 wagged too much, got upon his horse and rode 
 away. There would have been no Samuel 
 Johnson, and there would have been no Johnson 
 Club — a catastrophe which the human mind 
 finds it hard to conceive of. Two years after 
 the breaking off of her engagement with Michael 
 Johnson, I may add, Mary Neyld married one 
 James Warner. 
 
 Mr. Reade also calls in question another 
 statement of Boswell's, that Michael Johnson 
 was really apprenticed at Leek in Stafford- 
 shire ; our only authority for this also is the 
 excellent Anna Seward. Further, it is suffi- 
 ciently curious that the names of two Samuel 
 Johnsons are recorded as being buried in one of 
 the churches at Lichfield, one before our Samuel 
 came into the world, the other three years later : 
 of these, one died in 1654, '^^^ other in 17 12. 
 But these points, although of a certain interest, 
 have nothing to do with Dr. Johnson's ancestry. 
 
 Now before we left our homes this evening.
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 163 
 
 each member of the Johnson Brotherhood, as 
 is his custom, turned up Brother Birkbeck Hill's 
 invaluable index to see what Johnson had to say 
 upon the subject of ancestry. We know that 
 the Doctor was very keen upon the founding of 
 a family ; that when Mr. Thrale lost his only 
 son Johnson's sympathies went out to him in a 
 double way, and perhaps in the greater degree 
 because as he said to Boswell, " Sir, don't you 
 know how you yourself think ? Sir, he wished 
 to propagate his name." Johnson himself, Bos- 
 well tells us, had no pretensions to blood. " I 
 here may say," he said, " that I have great 
 merit in being zealous for subordination and 
 the honours of birth ; for I can hardly tell 
 who was my grandfather." Johnson further 
 informed Mrs. Thrale that he did not delight 
 in talking much of his family : " There is little 
 pleasure," he says, " in relating the anecdotes of 
 beggary." He constantly deprecated his origin. 
 According to Miss Seward, he told his wife before 
 he married her that he was of mean extraction ; 
 but the letter in which Miss Seward gives her 
 version of Johnson's courtship is worth recalling, 
 although I do not believe a single word of it : —
 
 i64 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 The rustic prettiness and artless manners of her 
 daughter, the present Mrs. Lucy Porter, had won John- 
 son's youthful heart, when she was upon a visit at my 
 grandfather's in Johnson's school-days. Disgusted by 
 his unsightly form, she had a personal aversion to him, 
 nor could the beautiful verses he addressed to her teach 
 her to endure him. The nymph at length returned to 
 her parents at Birmingham, and was soon forgotten. 
 Business taking Johnson to Birmingham on the death of 
 his own father, and calling upon his coy mistress there, 
 he found her father dying. He passed all his leisure 
 hours at Mr. Porter's, attending his sick bed, and in a 
 few months after his death, asked Mrs. Johnson's con- 
 sent to marry the old widow. After expressing her sur- 
 prise at a request so extraordinary — " No, Sam, my will- 
 ing consent you will never have to so preposterous a 
 union. You are not twenty-five, and she is turned 
 fifty. If she had any prudence, this request had never 
 been made to me. Where are your means of subsist- 
 ence ? Porter has died poor, in consequence of his 
 wife's expensive habits. You have great talents, but, 
 as yet, have turned them into no profitable channel." 
 " Mother, I have not deceived Mrs. Porter : I have 
 told her the worst of me ; that I am of mean extrac- 
 tion ; that I have no money, and that I have had an 
 uncle hanged. She replied, that she valued no one 
 more or less for his descent ; that she had no more 
 money than myself ; and that, although she had not 
 had a relation hanged, she had fifty who deserved hang- 
 mg.
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 165 
 
 Now why did Dr. Johnson take this attitude 
 about his ancestry, so contrary to the spirit that 
 guided him where other people's genealogical 
 trees were concerned ? It was certainly not 
 indifference to family ties, because Brother Birk- 
 beck Hill publishes many interesting letters 
 written by Johnson in old age, when finding that 
 he had a certain sum of money to bequeath, he 
 looked around to see if there were any of his own 
 kin living. The number of letters the old man 
 wrote, inquiring for this or that kinsman, are 
 quite pathetic. It seems to me that it was 
 really due to an ignorant vagueness as to his 
 family history. During his early years his family 
 had passed from affluence to penury. They 
 were of a type very common in England, but 
 very rare in Scotland and Ireland, that take no 
 interest whatever in pedigrees, and never discuss 
 any but their immediate relations, with whom, 
 in the case of the Johnsons, very friendly terms 
 did not prevail. I think we should be astonished 
 if we were to go into some shops in London of 
 sturdy prosperous tradesmen in quite as good a 
 position as old Michael Johnson, and were to 
 try and draw out one or other individual upon
 
 i66 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 his ancestry. We should promptly come against 
 a blank wall. 
 
 What then do we know of Johnson's father 
 from the ordinary sources ? That he was a 
 bookseller at Lichfield, and that he was Sheriff 
 of that city in the year that his son Samuel was 
 born ; that he feasted the citizens, as Johnson 
 tells us, in his Aiinals, with " uncommon magnifi- 
 cence." He is described by Johnson as " a foolish 
 old man," because he talked with too fond a 
 pride of his children and their precocious ways. 
 He was a zealous High Churchman and Jacobite. 
 We are told by Boswell further, on the authority 
 of Mr. Hector of Birmingham, that he opened a 
 bookstall once a week in that city, but lost mon'^y 
 by setting up as a maker of parchment. " A 
 pious and most worthy man," Mrs. Piozzi tells 
 us of him, " but wrong-headed, positive and 
 affected with melancholia." " I inherited a 
 vile melancholy from my father," Johnson tells 
 us, " which has made me mad all my life." When 
 he died in 1731 ^his effects were estimated at 
 ^20. " My mother had no value for his rela- 
 tions," Johnson tells us. " Those we knew were 
 much lower than hers." Of Michael Johnson's
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 167 
 
 brother, Andrew, Johnson's uncle, we know still 
 less. From the various Johnson books we only 
 cull the story mentioned in Mrs. Piozzi's 
 Anecdotes. She relates that Johnson, after telling 
 her of the prowess of his uncle, Cornelius Ford, 
 at jumping, went on to say that he had another 
 uncle, Andrew — " my father's brother, who kept 
 the ring at Smithfield for a whole year, and was 
 never thrown or conquered. Here are uncles 
 for you, Mistress, if that is the way to your heart." 
 Mr. Reade has supplemented this by showing 
 us that not only was Andrew Johnson a skilful 
 wrestler, but that he was a very good bookseller. 
 For a time he assisted his brother in the conduct 
 of the business at Lichfield. Later, however, 
 he settled as a bookseller at Birmingham, which 
 was to be his home until his death over thirty 
 years later. Here he published some interesting 
 books ; the title-pages of some of these are given 
 by Mr. Reade, who reproduces of course his will. 
 He had a son named Thomas who fell on evil 
 days. You will find certain letters to Thomas in 
 Birkbeck Hill's edition ; Dr. Johnson frequently 
 helped him with money. 
 
 Of more interest, however, than Andrew
 
 i68 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 Johnson was Catherine, the one sister of Michael 
 and Andrew, an aunt of Samuel's, who was 
 evidently for some unknown reason ignored by 
 her two brothers. Here we are not on abso- 
 lutely firm ground, but it seems to me clear 
 that Catherine Johnson married into a position 
 far above her brothers. A fortnight before his 
 death Dr. Johnson wrote to the Rev. William 
 Vyse, Rector of Lambeth ; a letter in which 
 he asked him to find out " whether Charles 
 Skrymsher " — he misspelt it " Scrimshaw " — " of 
 Woodseaves " — he misspelt it " Woodease " — " in 
 your neighbourhood, be now alive," and whether 
 he could be found without delay. He added 
 that " it will be an act of great kindness to me," 
 Charles Skrymsher being " very nearly related." 
 Charles Skrymsher was not found, and Johnson 
 told Dr. Vyse that he was disappointed in the 
 inquiries that he had made for his relations. 
 This particular relation, indeed, had been twenty- 
 two years dead when Dr. Johnson, probably with 
 the desire of leaving him something in his will, 
 made these inquiries. His mother, Mrs. Gerald 
 Skrymsher, was Michael Johnson's sister. One 
 of her daughters became the wife of Thomas
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 169 
 
 Boothby. Boothby was twice married, and his 
 two wives were cousins, the first, Elizabeth, being 
 the daughter of one Sir Charles Skrymsher, the 
 second, Hester, as I have said, of Gerald Skrym- 
 sher, Dr. Johnson's uncle. Hence Johnson 
 had a cousin by marriage who was a potentate 
 in his day, for it is told of Thomas Boothby of 
 Tooley Park, grand-nephew of a powerful and 
 wealthy baronet, that he was one of the fathers 
 of English sport. An issue of The Field news- 
 paper for 1875 contains an engraving of a hunting 
 horn then in the possession of the late Master of 
 the Cheshire Hounds, and upon the horn is the 
 inscription : " Thomas Boothby, Esq., Tooley 
 Park, Leicester. With this horn he hunted the 
 first pack of fox hounds then in England fifty- 
 five years." He died in 1752. His eldest son 
 took the maternal name of Skrymsher, and under 
 the title of Thomas Boothby Skrymsher became 
 M.P. for Leicester, and an important person in 
 his day. His wife was Anne, daughter of Sir 
 Hugh Clopton of New Place, Stratford-on-Avon. 
 Admirers of Mrs. Gaskell will remember the 
 Clopton legend told by her in Howett's Visits to 
 Remarkable Places.
 
 170 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 I wish that I had time to follow Mr. Reade 
 through all the ramifications of an interesting 
 family history, but I venture to think that there 
 is something pathetic in Dr. Johnson's inquiries 
 a fortnight before his death as to cousins of whose 
 life story he knew nothing, whose well-known 
 family home of Woodseaves he — the great Lexico- 
 grapher — could not spell correctly, and of whose 
 very name he was imperfectly informed. Yet 
 he, the lover of family trees and of ancestral 
 associations, was all his life in ignorance of these 
 wealthy connexions and their many substantial 
 intermarriages. 
 
 Before Mr. Reade it was known that Johnson's 
 father was a manufacturer of parchment as well 
 as a bookseller ; but it was supposed that only in 
 his last few years or so of life did he undertake 
 this occupation which ruined him. Mr. Reade 
 shows that he had been for thirty years engaged 
 in this trade in parchment. Brother Birkbeck 
 Hill quotes Croker, who hinted that Johnson's 
 famous definition of Excise as " a hateful tax 
 levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by 
 the Common Judge of Property but by wretches 
 hired by those to whom Excise is paid," was
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 171 
 
 inspired by recollections of his father's constant 
 disputes with the Excise officers. Mr. Reade 
 has unearthed documents concerning the crisis 
 of this quarrel, when Michael Johnson in 171 8 
 was indicted " for useing ye Trade of a Tanner." 
 The indictment, which is here printed in full, 
 charges him, " one Michael Johnson, bookseller," 
 " that he did in the third year of the reign of 
 our Lord George by the Grace of God now King 
 of Great Britain, for his own proper gain, get up, 
 use and exercise the art, mystery or manual occu- 
 pation of a Byrseus, in English a Tanner, in which 
 art, mystery or manual occupation of a Tanner 
 the said Michael Johnson was not brought up 
 or apprenticed for the space of seven years, an 
 evil example of all others offending in such like 
 case." Michael's defence was that he was " tanned 
 for " and did not tan himself, he being only " a 
 merchant in skins tradeing to Ireland, Scotland 
 and the furthermost parts of England." The 
 only known example of Michael Johnson's hand- 
 writing is this defence. Michael was committed 
 for trial but acquitted. It is probable, however, 
 that this prosecution laid the foundation of his 
 ruin.
 
 172 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 But I must pass on to the other branch : the 
 family of Dr. Johnson's mother. Here Dr. 
 Johnson did himself a great injustice, for he had 
 a genuine right to count his mother's " an old 
 family," although the term is in any case relative. 
 At any rate he could carry his pedigree back to 
 1620. " In the morning," says Boswell, " we had 
 talked of old families, and the respect due to 
 them. Johnson said — 
 
 " ' Sir, you have a right to that kind of respect, and 
 are arguing for yourself. I am for supporting the prin- 
 ciple, and I am disinterested in doing it, as I have no 
 such right.' " 
 
 Nevertheless, Boswell, in this opening chapter, 
 refers to the mother as " Sarah Ford, descended 
 of an ancient race of substantial yeomanry in 
 Warwickshire," and Johnson's epitaph upon 
 his mother's tomb describes her as " of the 
 ancient family of Ford." Thus one is consider- 
 ably bewildered in attempting to reconcile John- 
 son's attitude. The only one of his family for 
 whom he seems to have had a good word was 
 Cornelius Harrison, of whom, writing to Mrs. 
 Thrale, he said that he was " perhaps the only 
 one of my relations who ever rose in fortune
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 173 
 
 above penury or in character above neglect." 
 This Cornelius was the son of John Harrison, 
 who had married Johnson's aunt, Phoebe Ford. 
 Johnson's account of Uncle John in his Annals 
 is not flattering, but he was the son of a Rector 
 of Pilborough, whose father was Sir Richard 
 Harrison, one of the gentlemen of the King's 
 Bedchamber, and a personality of a kind. Corne- 
 lius, the reputable cousin, died in 1748, but his 
 descendants seem to have been a poor lot, what- 
 ever his ancestors may have been. Mr. Reade 
 traces their history with all the relentlessness of 
 the genealogist. 
 
 Johnson's great-grandfather was one Henry 
 Ford, a yeoman in Birmingham. One of his 
 sons, Henry, Johnson's grand-uncle, was born 
 in 1628. He owned property at West Brom- 
 wich and elsewhere, and was a fellow of 
 Clifford's Inn, London. Then we come to 
 Cornelius Ford — " Cornelius Ford, gentleman," 
 he is styled in his marriage settlement. Cornelius 
 died four months before Samuel Johnson was 
 born. Cornelius had a sister Mary, who married 
 one Jesson, and their only son, I may mention 
 incidentally, entered at Pembroke College in 1666.
 
 174 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 sixty years before his second-cousin, our Samuel, 
 entered the same college. Another cousin by 
 marriage was a Mrs. Harriots, to whom Johnson 
 refers in his Annals, and also in his Prayers and 
 Meditations. The only one of Cornelius Ford's 
 family referred to in the biographies is Joseph 
 Ford, the father of the notorious Parson Ford, 
 Johnson's cousin, of whom he several times speaks. 
 Joseph was a physician of eminence who settled 
 at Stourbridge. He married a wealthy widow, 
 Mrs. Hickman. He was a witness to the marriage 
 of his sister Sarah to Michael Johnson. There 
 can be no doubt but that the presence of Dr. 
 Ford and his family at Stourbridge accounts for 
 Johnson being sent there to school in 1725. He 
 stayed in the house of his cousin Cornelius Ford, 
 not as Boswell says his uncle Cornelius, at Ped- 
 more, about a mile from Stourbridge. He walked 
 in every day to the Grammar School. A con- 
 nexion of the boy, Gregory Hickman, was residing 
 next to the Grammar School. A kinsman of 
 Johnson and a descendant of Hickman, Dr. Freer, 
 still lives in the house. I met him at Lichfield 
 recently, and he has sent me a photograph 
 of the very house, which stands to-day much
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 175 
 
 as it did when Johnson visited it, and wrote 
 at twenty-two, a sonnet to Dorothy Hickman 
 " playing at the Spinet." Dorothy was one of 
 Johnson's three early loves, with Ann Hector 
 and Olivia Lloyd. Dorothy married Dr. John 
 Turtin and had an only child, Dr. Turtin, the 
 celebrated physician who attended Goldsmith in 
 his last illness. 
 
 I have not time to go through the record of all 
 Dr. Johnson's uncles on the maternal side, and 
 do full justice to Mr. Reade's industry and 
 mastery of detail. I may, however, mention inci- 
 dentally that the uncle who was hanged, if one 
 was, must have been one of his father's brothers, 
 for to the Fords that distinction does not seem 
 to have belonged. Much that is entertaining 
 is related of the cousin Parson Ford, who, after 
 sharing with the famous Earl of Chesterfield in 
 many of his profligacies, received from his lord- 
 ship the Rectory of South Luffenham. There 
 is no evidence, however, that Chesterfield ever 
 knew that his at one time chaplain and boon com- 
 panion was cousin of the man who wrote him 
 the most famous of letters. 
 
 The mother of Cornelius Ford was a Crowley,
 
 176 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 and this brings Johnson into relationship with 
 London city worthies, for Mrs. Ford's brother was 
 Sir Ambrose Crowley, Kt., Alderman, of London, 
 the original of Addison's Jack Anvil. One of Sir 
 Ambrose Crowley's daughters married Humphrey 
 Parsons, sometime M.P. for London and twice 
 Lord Mayor. Thus we see that during the 
 very years of Johnson's most painful struggle 
 in London one of his distant cousins or con- 
 nexions was Chief Magistrate of this City. 
 Another connexion, Elizabeth Crowley, was 
 married in 1724 at Westminster Abbey to 
 John, tenth Lord St. John of Bletsoe. " Here 
 are ancestors for you, Mistress," Dr. Johnson 
 might have said to Mrs. Thrale if he had only 
 known — if he had had a genealogist at his elbow 
 as well as a pushful biographer. 
 
 Mr. Reade prints the whole of the marriage 
 settlement upon the union of Johnson's mother 
 and father. It is a very elaborate document, 
 and suggests the undoubted prosperity of the 
 parties at the time. The husband was fifty, 
 the bride thirty-seven. Samuel was not born 
 until three years and three months after the 
 marriage. The pair frequently in early married
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 177 
 
 life received assistance by convenient deaths as 
 the following extracts from wills indicate : — 
 
 Cornelius Ford of Packioood in the Co. of Warwick. 
 
 I give and bequeath unto my son-in-law Michael! 
 Johnson the sum of five pounds, and to his wife my 
 daughter five and twenty pounds. 
 
 Proved May i, 1709. 
 
 Jane Ford of Old Turnford, zvidozv of Joseph Ford. 
 
 I do will and appoint that my son Cornelius Ford 
 do and shall pay to my brother-in-law, Mr. Michael 
 Johnson and his wife and their trustees, the sum of 
 200 pounds which is directed by his late father's Will 
 to be paid to me and in lieu of so much moneys which 
 my said late husband received in trust for my said 
 brother Johnson and his wife. 
 
 Proved at Worcester, October 2, 1722. 
 
 Then " good cousin Harriotts" does not forget 
 them : — 
 
 I give and bequeath to my cousin Sarah the wife of 
 Michael Johnson the like sum of 40 pounds for her own 
 separate use, and one pair of my best flaxen sheets and 
 pillow coats, a large pewter dish and a dozen of pewter 
 plates, provided that her husband doth at the same 
 time give the like bond to my executor to permit his 
 wife to dispose of the same at her will and pleasure. 
 
 Elizabeth Harriotts of Trysail in Staff., 
 
 October 23, 1726. 
 i.M. 12
 
 1 78 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 But I must leave this fascinating volume. 
 I cannot find time to tell you all it has to say- 
 about the Porter family. Mr. Reade is as in- 
 formative when treating of the Porters, of Mrs. 
 Johnson and her daughter Lucy, as he is with 
 the family trees of which I have spoken. 
 
 I hasten on to Dr. Hill's Life, with which 
 I am only concerned here at the point where 
 it is affected by Mr. Reade's book. The re- 
 flection inevitably arises that it is well-nigh 
 impossible efficiently to do work involving re- 
 search unless one has an income derived 
 from other sources. Your historian in pro- 
 portion to the value of his work must be a 
 rich man, and so must the biographer. Good 
 as Brother Birkbeck Hill's work was, it would 
 have been better if he had had more money. 
 He might have had many of these wills and other 
 documents copied, upon the securing of which 
 Mr. Reade must have expended such very large 
 sums. Dr. Hill was fully alive to this. " If I 
 had not some private means," he wrote to a friend 
 in 1897, " I could never edit Johnson and Bos- 
 well ; but I do not get so well paid as a carpenter." 
 As a matter of fact, I find that he lost exactly £i
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 179 
 
 by publishing Dr. Johnson : his Friends and 
 his Critics. He made ;/^320 by the first four 
 years' sale of the " Boswell." This ;£320, including 
 American rights, made the bulk of his payments 
 for his many years' work, and the book has not 
 yet gone into a second edition. I think 2,000 
 were printed. There were between 40,000 and 
 50,000 copies of Croker's editions sold, so that 
 we must not be too boastful as to the improved 
 taste of the present age. j^32ois a mere bagatelle 
 to numbers of our present writers of utterly 
 foolish fiction. Several of them have been known 
 to spend double that sum on a single motor-car. 
 In connexion with this matter I cannot refrain 
 from giving one passage from a letter of Brother 
 Hill's :— 
 
 My old friend D lamented that the two new 
 
 volumes (of my Johnson Miscellanies) are so dear as to 
 be above his reach. The net price is a guinea. On Sun- 
 day he had eight glasses of hollands and seltzer — a shilling 
 each, a pint of stout and some cider, besides half a 
 dozen cigars or so. Two days' abstinence from cigars 
 and liquor would have paid for my book." 
 
 Mrs. Crump, who writes her father's life, has 
 expressed regret to me that there is so little in
 
 i8o DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 the book concerning the Johnson Club to which 
 Brother Hill was so devoted. She had asked 
 me for letters, but I felt that all in my pos- 
 session were unsuited for publication, dealing 
 rather freely with living persons. Brother Hill was 
 impatient of the mere bookmaker — the literary 
 charlatan who wrote without reading suffi- 
 ciently. There are two pleasant glimpses of our 
 Club in the volume ; I quote one. It was of 
 the night that we discussed Dr. Johnson as a 
 Radical : — 
 
 I wish that you and Lucy could have been present 
 last night and witnessed my scene of triumph. I was 
 indeed most nobly welcomed. The scribe told me with 
 sympathetic pride that the correspondent of the New 
 Tork Herald had asked leave to attend, as he wished to 
 telegraph my paper out to America ! ! ! as well as the 
 discussion. There were some very good speeches made 
 in the discussion that followed, especially by a Mr. 
 Whale, a solicitor, who spoke remarkably well and with 
 great knowledge of his Boswell. He said that he pre- 
 ferred to call it, not Johnson's radical side, but his humani- 
 tarian side. Mr. Birrell, the Obiter Dicta man, also spoke 
 very well. He is a clever fellow. He was equally com- 
 plimentary. He maintained in opposition to Mr. Whale 
 that radical was the right term, and in fact that radi- 
 calism and humanitarianism were the same. Many of
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY i8i 
 
 them said what a light the paper had thrown on Johnson's 
 character. One gentleman came up and congratulated 
 me on the very delicate way in which I had handled so 
 difficult a subject, and had not given offence to the 
 Liberal Unionists and Tories present. Edmund Gosse, 
 by whom I sat, was most friendly, and called the paper 
 a wonderful tour de force^ referring to the way in which 
 I had linked Johnson's sayings. He asked me to visit 
 him some day at Trinity College, Cambridge, and assured 
 me of a hearty welcome. It is no wonder that what 
 with the supper and the smoke I did not get to sleep till 
 after two. Among the guests was the great Bonner, 
 the Australian cricketer, whose health had been drunk 
 with that of the other visitors, and his praise sounded at 
 having hit some balls over the pavilion at Lord's. With 
 great simplicity he said that after seeing the way in 
 which Johnson's memory was revered, he would much 
 rather have been such a man than have gained his own 
 greatest triumphs at cricket. He did not say it jocularly 
 at all. 
 
 Another letter from Dr. Hill describes how 
 he found himself at Ashbourne in Derbyshire 
 with the Club, or rather with a fragment of it. 
 He wrote from the Green Man there concerning 
 his adventures. 
 
 I have far exceeded my time, but I would like 
 in conclusion to say how admirably his daughter 
 has written this book on our Brother Birkbeck
 
 1 82 DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY 
 
 Hill. What a pleasant picture it presents of a 
 genuine lover of literature. His was not an 
 analytical mind nor was he a great critic. His 
 views on Dante and Newman will not be shared 
 by any of us. But, what is far more important 
 than analysis or criticism, he had an entirely 
 lovable personality and was a most clubbable 
 man. He was moreover the ideal editor of Bos- 
 well. What more could be said in praise of a 
 beloved Brother of the Johnson Club !
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE
 
 VII 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE^ 
 
 Ich habe die Inventur meines Lebens gemacht. 
 Es war gross, brav, wacker, tapfer und glanzend genug. 
 Eine kiinftige Zeit wird mir gerecht zu werden wissen. 
 — Ferdinand Lassalle, August 9, 1864. 
 
 I The Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt. 
 
 Ferdinand Lassalle was born at Breslau on 
 April II, 1825. His parents were of Jewish race, 
 his father a successful silk merchant. From 
 boyhood he was now the tyrant, now the slave 
 of a mother whom he loved and by whom he was 
 adored. Heymann Lassal — his son changed the 
 
 ^ Originally written to serve as an Introduction to an edition 
 of Mr. George Meredith's Tragic Comedians, of which book 
 Lassalle is the hero. That edition was published by Messrs. 
 Ward Lock & Bowden, who afterwards transferred all rights 
 in it to Messrs. Archibald Constable & Co., by whose courtesy 
 the paper is included here. 
 
 185
 
 1 86 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 spelling during his Paris sojourn — appears to 
 have been irritable and tyrannical ; and there 
 are some graphic instances in the recently pub- 
 lished " Diary " ^ of the differences between 
 them, ending on one occasion in the boy rushing 
 to the river, where his terrified father finds him 
 hesitating on the brink, and becomes reconciled. 
 A more attractive picture of the old man is that 
 told of his visit to his son-in-law, Friedland, who 
 had married Lassalle's sister. Friedland was 
 ashamed of his Jewish origin, and old Lassalle 
 startled the guests at dinner by rising and frankly 
 stating that he was a Jew, that his daughter was 
 a Jewess, and that her husband was of the same 
 race. The guests cheered, but the host never 
 forgave his too frank father-in-law, 
 
 Lassalle was a student at Breslau University, and 
 later at Berlin, where he Jaid the foundation of 
 those Hegelian studies to which he owed his 
 political philosophy. In 1845 he went to Paris, 
 and there secured the friendship of Heine, being 
 included with George Sand in the interesting 
 circle around the " mattress grave " of the sick 
 poet. 
 
 ^ Lassalle's Tagebuch, edited by Paul Lindau, 1 891.
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 187 
 
 Among Heine's letters ^ there are four ad- 
 dressed to Lassalle, now as " Dear and best 
 beloved friend," now as " Dearest brother-in- 
 arms." " Be assured," he says, " that I love you 
 beyond measure. I have never before felt so 
 much confidence in any one." " I have found 
 in no one," he says again, " so much passion and 
 clearness of intellect united in action. You have 
 good right to be audacious — we others only 
 usurp this Divine right, this heavenly privilege." 
 And to Varnhagen von Ense he writes : — 
 
 My friend, Herr Lassalle, who brings you this letter 
 is a young man of the most remarkable intellectual gifts. 
 With the most thorough erudition, with the widest 
 learning, with the greatest penetration that I have ever 
 known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he com- 
 bines an energy of will and a capacity for action which 
 astonish me. ... In no one have I found united so 
 much enthusiasm and practical intelligence. 
 
 " In every line," says Brandes, " this letter 
 shows the far-seeing student of life, indeed, the 
 prophet ! " 
 
 Lassalle is not backward in reciprocating the 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 ^ Heinrich Heine^s sdmmtliche JVerke, vol. xxii., pp. 84-99.
 
 1 88 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 " I love Heine," he declares ; " he is my second self. 
 What audacity ! what crushing eloquence ! He knows 
 how to whisper like a zephyr when it kisses rose-blooms, 
 how to breathe like fire when it rages and destroys ; 
 he calls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then 
 all that is fiercest and most daring. He has the com- 
 mand of all the range of feeling." 
 
 Lassalle's sympathy with Heine never lessened. 
 It was Heine who lost grasp of the intrinsically 
 higher nature of his countryman and co-religionist, 
 and an acute difference occurred, as we shall see, 
 when Lassalle interfered in the affairs of the 
 Countess von Hatzfeldt. Introduced to the 
 Countess by his friend Dr. Mendelssohn, in 1846, 
 Lassalle felt that here in concrete form was scope 
 for all his enthusiasm of humanity, and he deter- 
 mined to devote his life to championing the 
 cause of the oppressed lady.^ The Countess 
 
 1 The most concise account of the affair is contained in 
 the story of Sophie Solutzeff, entitled, Eine Liebes-episode 
 aus dem Leben Ferdinand Lassalle^s. This booklet, which is 
 published in German, French, and Russian, professes to be an 
 account of Lassalle's love for a young Russian lady, Sophie 
 Solutzeff, some two years before he met Helene von Donniges. 
 He is represented as being himself in a frenzy of passion ; the 
 lady, howevei, rejecting as a lover the man she had been pre- 
 pared to worship as a teacher. There can be little doubt that
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 189 
 
 was the wife of a wealthy and powerful nobleman, 
 who ill-treated her shamefully. He imprisoned 
 her in his castles, refused her doctors and medicine 
 in sickness, and carried off her children. Her 
 own family, as powerful as the Count, had often 
 intervened, and the Count's repentances were 
 many but short-lived. In 1846 matters reached 
 a crisis. The Count wrote to his second son, 
 
 the whole story is a fabrication, in which the Countess von 
 Hatzfeldt had a considerable part. The Countess was rightly 
 judged by popular opinion to have played a discreditable r61e 
 in the love passages between Lassalle and Helene ; and Helene's 
 own account of the matter in her Reminiscences was an additional 
 blow at the pseudo-friend who might have helped the lovers 
 so much. What more natural than that the Countess should 
 be anxious to break the force of Helene's indictment, by en- 
 dorsing the popular, and indeed accurate judgment, that 
 Lassalle was very inflammable where women were concerned. 
 This she could do by depicting him, a little earlier, in precisely 
 similar bondage to that which he had professed to Helene. 
 That the Countess wrote, or assisted to write, the compilation 
 of letters and diaries, does not, however, destroy its value as a 
 record of Lassalle's struggle on her behalf. That account, 
 if not written by Lassalle, was written or inspired by the other 
 great actor in the Hatzfeldt drama, and may therefore be 
 considered a fairly safe guide in recounting the story. Mr. 
 Israel Zangwill, since the above was viritten, has published an 
 article on Lassalle in his Dreamers of the Ghetto. He accepts 
 Sophie Solutzeff's story as genuine, but that is merely thf 
 credulity of an accomplished romancer.
 
 I90 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 Paul, asking him to leave his mother. The boy 
 carried this letter to the Countess ; and Lassalle 
 relates that, finding the lady in tears, he per- 
 suaded her to a full disclosure of the facts. He 
 pledged himself to save her, and for nine years 
 carried on the struggle, with ultimate victory, 
 but with considerable loss of reputation. He 
 first told the story to Mendelssohn and Oppen- 
 heim, two friends of great wealth, the latter a 
 Judge of one of the superior courts in Prussia. 
 They agreed to help him ; for then, as always, 
 Lassalle's persuasive powers were irresistible. 
 They went with him from Berlin to Diisseldorf, 
 the Count being in that neighbourhood. Von 
 Hatzfeldt was at Aix-la-Chapelle, caught in the 
 toils of a new mistress, the Baroness Meyendorff. 
 Lassalle discovered that she had obtained from 
 the Count a deed assigning to her some pro- 
 perty which should in the ordinary course have 
 come to the boy Paul. The Countess, hearing 
 of the disaster which seemed likely to befall her 
 favourite son, made her way into her husband's 
 presence, and in the scene which followed secured 
 a promise that the document should be revoked — 
 destroyed. But no sooner had she left him than
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 191 
 
 the Count returned to the Meyendorff influence, 
 and refused to see his wife again. Soon after- 
 wards it was discovered that the woman had set 
 out for Cologne. Lassalle begged his friends 
 Oppenheim and Mendelssohn, to follow her 
 and, if possible, to ascertain whether the momen- 
 tous document had actually been destroyed. 
 They obeyed, and reached the hotel at Cologne 
 about the same time as the Baroness. Here they 
 were guilty of an indiscretion, if of nothing worse, 
 for which Lassalle can surely in no way be blamed, 
 but which was used for many a year to tarnish 
 his name. Oppenheim, on his way upstairs, 
 observed a servant with the luggage of the 
 Baroness ; among other things a desk or casket 
 of a kind commonly used to carry valuable papers. 
 Thinking only of the fact that it was desirable to 
 obtain a certain document from the brutal 
 Count, he pounced upon the casket when the 
 servant's back was turned. But he had no 
 luggage with him in which to conceal it, and so 
 handed it to Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn, al- 
 though fully sensible of the blunder that had been 
 committed, could not desert his friend, and placed 
 the casket in his trunk.
 
 192 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 The whole hotel was in an uproar when the 
 Baroness discovered her loss. The friends fled 
 panic-stricken in opposite directions. Suspicion 
 immediately fell upon Dr. Mendelssohn, because 
 his room was seen to have been left in confusion. 
 He was pursued, but succeeded in escaping from a 
 railway carriage and fleeing to Paris, leaving his 
 luggage in the hands of the police. In his box 
 some papers were found which incriminated 
 Oppenheim ; and Oppenheim, a Judge of one of 
 the superior courts, and the son of a millionaire, 
 was arrested and imprisoned for theft ! 
 
 Lassalle visited Oppenheim in prison, and 
 extracted from him a promise of silence as to the 
 motive for his conduct. He then threw himself 
 vigorously into the struggle, both in the press 
 and in the law courts. Here he seems to have 
 parted company with Heine, because, as he tells 
 us, " the Baroness Meyendorff was a friend of the 
 Princess de Lieven, and the Princess de Lieven 
 was the mistress of Guizot, and Heine received a 
 pension from Guizot." 
 
 Oppenheim was acquitted in 1846, and Men- 
 delssohn, who was really innocent of the actual 
 robbery, naturally thought it safe to return to
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 193 
 
 Germany. He was, however, tried before the 
 assize court of Cologne, and sentenced to five 
 years' imprisonment. Alexander von Humboldt 
 obtained a reduction of the sentence to one year, 
 but on condition that Mendelssohn should leave 
 Europe. He went, after his release from prison, 
 to Constantinople, and when the Crimean war 
 broke out joined the Turkish army, dying on the 
 march in 1854, 
 
 Meanwhile Germany rang for many years 
 with the story of the so-called robbery, and 
 Lassalle's name was even more associated there- 
 with than were those of his more culpable friends. 
 And this was not unnatural, because he was 
 engaged year after year in continuous warfare 
 with Count Hatzfeldt. At length, in 1854, about 
 the time that the unfortunate Dr. Mendelssohn 
 died in the East, he secured for the Countess 
 complete separation and an ample provi- 
 sion. 
 
 Lassalle's friendship with this lady inevitably 
 gave rise to scandal. But never surely was scandal 
 so little justified. She was twenty years his senior, 
 and the relation was clearly that of mother and 
 son. In her letters he is always " my dear child," 
 
 13
 
 194 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 anc. in his she is the confidante of the innumerable 
 troubles of mind and of heart of which so impres- 
 sionable a man as Ferdinand Lassalle had more 
 than his share. 
 
 " You are without reason and judgment where 
 women are concerned," she tells him, when he 
 confides to her his passion for Helene von Donni- 
 ges ; and the remark opens out a vista of con- 
 fidences of which the world happily knows but 
 little. From the assize court of Diisseldorf, of 
 all places, we have a very definite glimpse of a 
 good-looking man, likely to be a favourite in the 
 society of the opposite sex : — 
 
 " Ferdinand Lassalle," runs the official document, 
 " aged twenty-three, a civilian, born at Breslau, and 
 dwelling recently at Berlin. Stands five feet six inches 
 in height, has brown curly hair, open forehead, brown 
 eyebrows, dark blue eyes, well proportioned nose and 
 mouth, and rounded chin." 
 
 He was indeed a favourite in Berlin drawing- 
 rooms, pronounced a " Wunderkind " by Hum- 
 boldt, and enthusiastically admired on all sides. 
 But, assuming the story of Sophie Solutzeff to 
 be mythical, there is no evidence that Lassalle
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 195 
 
 had ever had any very serious romance in his life 
 until he met Helene von Donniges. 
 
 Es ist eine alte Geschichtf, 
 
 Doch bleibt sie immer neu. — Heine. 
 
 II. Helene von Donniges 
 
 Helene von Donniges has told us the story in 
 fullest detail — the story of that tragic love which 
 was to send Lassalle to his too early death. She 
 was the daughter of a Bavarian diplomatist who 
 had held appointments in Italy, and later in 
 Switzerland. She was betrothed as a child of 
 twelve to an Italian of forty years of age. At 
 a time when, as she says, her thoughts should 
 have been concentrated upon her studies, they 
 were distracted by speculations on marriage and 
 the marriage tie. A young Wallachian student 
 named Yanko Racowitza crossed her path. His 
 loneliness — he was far from home and friends — 
 kindled her sympathy. Dark and ugly, she com- 
 pared him to Othello, and called him her " Moor." 
 In spite of some parental opposition she insisted 
 upon plighting her troth to him, and the Italian 
 lover was scornfully dismissed. Then comes
 
 196 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 the opening scene of the present story. It was 
 in Berlin, whither Helen — we will adopt the 
 English spelling of the name — had travelled with 
 her grandmother in 1862, that she was asked at 
 a ball the momentous question, " Do you know 
 Lassalle ? " She had never heard his name. 
 Her questioner was Baron Korff, a son-in-law 
 of Meyerbeer, who, charmed by her originality, 
 remarked that she and Lassalle were made for 
 one another. Two weeks later her curiosity 
 was further excited, when Dr. Karl Oldenberg 
 let fall some similar remark as to her intellectual 
 kinship with the mysterious Lassalle. She asked 
 her grandmother about him, and was told that 
 he was a " shameless demagogue." Then she 
 turned to her lover, who promised to inquire. 
 Racowitza brought her information about the 
 Countess, the casket, and other " sensations " 
 — only to excite her curiosity the more. Finally 
 a friend, Frau Hirsemenzel, undertook to intro- 
 duce her to the notorious Socialist. The intro- 
 duction took place at a party, and if her account 
 is to be trusted, no romance could be more 
 dramatic than the actuality. They loved one 
 another at2first sight, conversed with freedom, 
 
 i
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 197 
 
 and he called her by an endearing name as he 
 offered her his arm to escort her home. 
 
 " Somehow it did not seem at all remarkable," 
 she says, " that a stranger should thus call me 
 ' Du ' on first acquaintance. We seemed to fit 
 to one another so perfectly." 
 
 She was in her nineteenth year, Lassalle in his 
 thirty-ninth. The pair did not see one another 
 again for some months, not in fact until Helen 
 visited Berlin as the guest of a certain lawyer 
 Holthoff. Here she met Lassalle at a concert, 
 and the friendly lawyer connived at their being 
 more than once together. At a ball, on one 
 occasion, Lassalle asked her what she would do 
 if he were sentenced to death, and she beheld 
 him ascending the scaffold. 
 
 " I should wait till your head was severed," 
 was her answer, " in order that you might look 
 upon your beloved to the last, and then — I 
 should take poison." 
 
 He was pleased with her reply, but declared 
 that there was no fear — his star was in the ascend- 
 ant ! And so it seemed ; for although young 
 Racowitza even then accosted him in the ball- 
 room, the friendly Holthoff soon arranged an
 
 198 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 informal betrothal ; and Lassalle was on the eve 
 of a great public triumph which seemed more 
 likely to take him to the throne than to the scaf- 
 fold. 
 
 To many this will seem an exaggeration. Yet 
 hear Prince Bismarck in the Reichstag seventeen 
 years after Lassalle's death : — 
 
 He was one of the most intellectual and gifted men 
 with whom I have ever had intercourse, a man who was 
 ambitious in high style, but who was by no means 
 Republican : he had very decided national and monarch- 
 ical sympathies, and the idea which he strove to realize 
 was the German Empire, and therein we had a point of 
 contact. Lassalle was extremely ambitious, and it was 
 perhaps a matter of doubt to him whether the German 
 Empire would close with the HohenzoUern dynasty or 
 the Lassalle dynasty ; but he was monarchical through 
 and through. Lassalle was an energetic and very intel- 
 lectual man, to talk with whom was very instructive. 
 Our conversations lasted for hours, and I was always 
 sorry when they came to an end.^ 
 
 The year 1864, which was to close so tragic- 
 ally, opened indeed with extraordinary promise. 
 Lassalle left Berlin in May — Helen had gone 
 
 ^ Debate in the German Reichstag, April 2, 1881. Quoted 
 bv VV H Dawson.
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 199 
 
 back to Geneva two or three months earlier — 
 travelling by Leipzig and Cologne through the 
 Rhenish provinces, and holding a " glorious 
 review " the while. 
 
 " I have never seen anything like it," he writes to the 
 Countess von Hatzfeldt. " The entire population in- 
 dulged in indescribable jubilation. The impression 
 made upon me was that such scenes must have attended 
 the founding of new religions." 
 
 And it appeared possible that Heine's des- 
 cription of Lassalle as the Messiah of the nine- 
 teenth century was to be realized. The Bishop of 
 Mayence was on his side, and the King of Prussia 
 sympathetic. As he passed from town to town 
 the whole population turned out to do him 
 honour. Countless thousands met him at the 
 stations : the routes were ornamented with 
 triumphal arches, the houses decorated with 
 wreaths, and flowers were thrown upon him as 
 he passed. As the cavalcade approached the 
 town of Ronsdorf, for example, it was easy to see 
 that the people were on tip-toe with expecta- 
 tion. At the entrance an arch bore the inscrip- 
 tion : —
 
 200 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 Willkommen dem Dr. Ferdinand Lassalle 
 Viel tausendmal im Ronsdorfer Thai ! 
 
 Under arches and garlands, smothered with 
 flowers thrown by young work-girls, whose 
 fathers, husbands, brothers, cheered again and 
 again, Lassalle and his friends entered the town, 
 while a vast multitude followed in procession. 
 It was at Ronsdorf that Lassalle made the speech 
 which had in it something of fateful presenti- 
 ment : — 
 
 " I have not grasped this banner," he said, " without 
 knowing quite clearly that I myself may fall. The feel- 
 ings which fill me at the thought that I may be removed 
 cannot be better expressed than in the words of the 
 Roman poet : 
 
 ' Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossihus ultor ! ' 
 
 or in German, ' Moge, wenn ich beseitigt werde, irgend 
 ein Rdcher u?id Nachjolger aus meinen Gebeinen auferste- 
 hen ! ' May this great and national movement of 
 civilization not fall with my person, but may the con- 
 flagration which I have kindled spread farther and 
 farther, so long as one of you still breathes. Promise 
 me that, and in token raise your right hands." 
 
 All hands were raised in silence, and the impress- 
 ive scene closed with a storm of acclamation.
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 201 
 
 But Lassalle was worn out, and he fled for a 
 time from the storm and conflict to Switzerland. 
 Helen at Geneva heard of his sojourn at Righi- 
 Kaltbad, and she made an excursion thither with 
 two or three friends, and thus on July 25 (1864) 
 the lovers met again. An account of their 
 romantic interview comes to us in Helen's own 
 diary and in the letter which Lassalle wrote to 
 the Countess Hatzfeldt two days later. Helen 
 tells how they climbed the Kulm together, dis- 
 cussing by the way the question of their marriage 
 and the possibility of opposition. 
 
 " What have your parents against me ? " asked 
 Lassalle ; and was told that only once had she 
 mentioned his name before them, and that their 
 horror of the Jew agitator had ever since closed 
 her mouth. So the conversation sped. The 
 next morning their hope of " a sunrise " was 
 destroyed by a fog, " How often," says Helen, 
 " when in later years I have stood upon the 
 summit of the Righi and seen the day break in 
 all its splendour, have I recalled this foggy, damp 
 morning", and Lassalle's disappointment ! " 
 
 As he looked upon her, so pale and trembling, 
 he abused the climate, and promised that he
 
 202 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 would give up politics, devote himself to science 
 and literature, and take her to Egypt or India. 
 He talked to her of the Countess, " who will 
 think only of my happiness," and he talked of 
 religion. Was his Jewish faith against him in 
 her eyes ? Mahommedanism and Judaism, it 
 was all one to her, was the answer, but paganism 
 by preference ! They parted, to correspond 
 immediately, and Lassalle to write to the aston- 
 ished, and in this affair, unsympathetic Countess, 
 of the meeting with his beloved. With the utmost 
 friendliness, however, he endeavoured to keep 
 the elder lady at a distance for a time. 
 
 On July 20 Helen writes to him, repeating her 
 promise to become his wife. 
 
 You said to me yesterday : " Say but a sensible and 
 decided ' Yes ' — et je me charge du resteP Good ; I 
 say " Yes " — chargez-vous done du reste. I only require 
 that we first do all in our power to win my parents to a 
 friendly attitude. To me belongs, however, a painful 
 task. I must slay in cold blood the true heart of Yanko 
 von Racowitza, who has given me the purest love, the 
 noblest devotion. With heartless egotism I must des- 
 troy the day-dream of a noble youth. But for your 
 sake I will even do what is wrong. 
 
 Meanwhile Lassalle's unhappy attempts to
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 203 
 
 conciliate the Countess continue. He writes of 
 Helen's sympathy and dwells upon her entire 
 freedom from jealousy. He tells Frau von Hatz- 
 feldt how much Helen is longing to see his old 
 friend. In conclusion, as though not to show him- 
 self too blind a lover, he remarks that Helen's 
 one failing is a total lack of will. " When, how- 
 ever, we are man and wife," he adds, " then shall 
 I have ' will ' enough for both, and she will be as 
 clay in the hands of the potter." The Countess 
 continues obdurate, and in a further letter 
 (Aug. 2) Lassalle says : — 
 
 It is really a piece of extraordinary good fortune 
 that, at the age of thirty-nine and a half, I should be 
 able to find a wife so beautiful, so sympathetic, who 
 loves me so much, and who — an indispensable require- 
 ment — is so entirely absorbed in my personality. 
 
 At Lassalle's request, Helen herself wrote thus 
 to the Baroness von Hatzfeldt : — 
 
 Dear and Beloved Countess, — 
 
 Armed with an introduction from my lord and 
 master, I, his affianced wife, come to you — unhappily 
 only in writing — le cceuret la main ouverte^ and beg of 
 you a little of that friendship which you have given to 
 him so abundantly. How deeply do I regret that your
 
 204 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 illness separates us, that I cannot tell you face to face 
 how much I love and honour him, how ardently I long 
 for your help and advice as to how I can best make my 
 beautiful and noble eagle happy. This my first letter 
 must necessarily seem somewhat constrained to you ; for 
 I am an insignificant, unimportant being, who can do 
 nothing but love and honour him, and strive to make 
 him happy. I would fain dance and sing like a child, 
 and drive away all care from him. My one desire is to 
 understand his great and noble nature, and in good for- 
 tune and in bad to stand faithful and true by his side. 
 
 Then followed a further appeal for the love 
 and help of this friend of Lassalle's early years. 
 It was all in vain. Instead of a letter, Helen 
 received from the Countess what she called " a 
 scrawl," and Lassalle a long homily on his lack 
 of judgment and foresight. Lassalle defended 
 himself, and so the not too pleasing correspond- 
 ence went on. 
 
 Yet these days in Berne were the happiest in 
 the lives of Lassalle and his betrothed. Helen 
 was staying with a Madame Aarson, and was 
 constantly visited by her lover. It was agreed 
 between them that Lassalle should follow her to 
 Geneva, and see her parents. But no sooner 
 had he entered his room at the Pension Leovet,
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 205 
 
 in the neighbourhood of the house of Herr von 
 Donniges, than a servant handed him a letter 
 from Helen. It told how on her arrival she had 
 found the whole house excited by the betrothal 
 of her sister Margaret to Count von Keyserling. 
 Her mother's delight in the engagement had 
 tempted her (contrary to Lassalle's express wish) 
 to confidences, and she had told of her love for 
 the arch-agitator. Her mother had turned upon 
 her with loathing, execrated Lassalle without 
 stint, spoken scornfully of the Countess, the 
 casket robbery, and kindred matters. " It is 
 quite impossible," urged the frantic woman, 
 " that Count Keyserling will unite himself to a 
 family with a connexion of this kind." The 
 father joined in the upbraiding, the disowning of 
 an undutiful daughter. One has but to remem- 
 ber the vulgar, tradesman instinct, which then, 
 as now, guides the marriage ideals of a certain 
 class, to take in the whole situation at a glance. 
 
 Lassalle had hardly begun to read the letter 
 when Helen appeared before him, and begged 
 him to take her away immediately — to France — 
 anywhere ! Her father's violence, her mother's 
 abuse, had driven her to despair.
 
 2o6 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 Lassalle was indignant with her. Why had she 
 not obeyed him ? He would speak to her father. 
 All would yet be well. But — she was compro- 
 mised there — at his hotel. Had she a friend in 
 the neighbourhood ? 
 
 At this moment her maid came in to say that 
 there was a carriage ready to take them to the 
 station. A train would start for Paris in a quar- 
 ter of an hour. Helen renewed her entreaty, 
 but Lassalle remained resolute. He would only 
 receive her from her father. To what friend 
 could he take her ? Helen named Madame Caro- 
 line Rognon, who beheld them with astonishment. 
 
 A few minutes later Frau von Donniges and 
 her daughter Margaret entered the house. Then 
 followed a disagreeable scene between Lassalle 
 and the mother, ending, after many scornful 
 words thrown at the ever self-restrained lover, in 
 Helen being carried off before his eyes — indeed, 
 by his wish. Lassalle had shown dignity and 
 self-restraint, but he had killed the girl's love — 
 until it was too late. 
 
 Diihring speaks of Lassalle's " inconceivable 
 stupidity," and there is a great temptation at 
 this date, with all the circumstances before us,
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 207 
 
 to look at the matter with Diihring's eyes. But 
 to one whom Heine had called a Messiah, whom 
 Humboldt had termed a " Wunderkind," and 
 Bismarck had greeted as among the greatest men 
 of the age, it may well have seemed flatly incon- 
 ceivable that this insignificant little Swiss diploma- 
 tist could long refuse the alliance he proposed. 
 Yet stronger and more potent may have been the 
 feeling — although of this there is no positive 
 evidence extant — that the social movement 
 which he had so much at heart could not well 
 endure a further scandal. The Hatzfeldt story 
 had been used against him frequently enough. 
 An elopement — so sweetly romantic under some 
 circumstances — would have been the ruin of 
 his great political reputation. 
 
 Lassalle speedily regretted his course of action 
 — what man in love would not have done so ? — 
 but his first impulse was consistent with the life 
 of strenuous effort for the cause he had embraced. 
 To a romantic girl, however, his conduct could 
 but seem brutal and treacherous. Helen had 
 done more than enough. She had compromised 
 herself irretrievably, and an immediate mar- 
 riage was imperatively demanded by the con-
 
 2o8 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 ventionalities. She was, however, seized by a 
 brutal father and confined to her room, until she 
 understood that Lassalle had left Geneva. Then 
 the entreaties of her family, the representation 
 that her sister's marriage, even her father's 
 position, were in jeopardy, caused her to declare 
 that she would abandon Lassalle. 
 
 At this point the story is conflicting. Helen 
 herself says that she never saw Lassalle again after 
 he had handed her over to her mother, and that 
 after a long period of ill-usage and petty perse- 
 cution, she was hurried one night across the lake. 
 Becker, however, declares that as Lassalle and 
 his friend Riistow were walking in Geneva a car- 
 riage passed them on the way to the station 
 containing Helen and another lady, and that 
 Helen acknowledged their salute. Anyway, it is 
 clear that Helen went to Bex on August 9, and 
 that Lassalle left Geneva on the 13th. Letter 
 after letter was sent by Lassalle to Helen — one 
 from Karlsruhe on the 15th, and one from 
 Munich on the 19th, but no answer. In Karls- 
 ruhe, according to von Hofstetten, Lassalle wept 
 like a child. His correspondence with the Coun- 
 tess and with Colonel Riistow becomes forcible
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 209 
 
 in its demands for assistance. Writing to Riistow, 
 he tells of a two hours' conversation with the 
 Bavarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Baron 
 von Schrenk, who assures him of his sympathy, 
 says that he cannot understand the objections 
 of von Donniges, and that in similar circum- 
 stances he would be proud of the alliance, al- 
 though he deprecated the political views of 
 Lassalle. Finally this accommodating Minister 
 of State — here, at least, the tragi-comedy is but 
 too apparent — engages to send a lawyer. Dr. 
 Haenle, as an official commissioner to negotiate 
 with the obdurate father and refractory am- 
 bassador. 
 
 Richard Wagner, the great composer, the 
 Bishop of Mayence, and noblemen, generals, and 
 scholars without number were also pressed into 
 the service, but in vain. The treachery of inti- 
 mate friends more than counterbalanced all that 
 could be achieved by well-meaning strangers. 
 If Helen is to be believed — and the charge is 
 not denied — Lassalle's friend Holthoff, sent to 
 negotiate in his favour, entreated her to abandon 
 Lassalle, and to comply with her parents' wishes. 
 
 Lassalle, he declared, was not in any way a suitable 
 i.M. 14
 
 2IO THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 husband, and her father had decided wisely. 
 The poor girl lived in a constant atmosphere of 
 petty persecution. Her father, she was told, 
 might lose his post in the Bavarian service if she 
 married this Socialist, her brother would have 
 absolutely no career open to him, her sisters could 
 not marry in their own rank of life ; in fact, 
 the whole family were alleged to be entirely 
 unhappy and miserable through her stubbornness. 
 The following letter — obviously dictated — was 
 the not unnatural outcome : — 
 
 To Herr Lassalle. 
 Sir, — 
 
 I have again become reconciled to my betrothed 
 bridegroom, Herr Yanko von Racowitza, whose love I 
 have regained, and I deeply repent my earlier action. 
 I have given notice of this to your legal representative, 
 Herr Holthoff, and I now declare to you of my own free 
 will and firm conviction, that there never can be any 
 further question of a marriage between us, and that I 
 hold myself in all respects to be released from such an 
 engagement. I am now firmly resolved to devote to 
 my aforesaid betrothed bridegroom my eternal love and 
 fidelity. 
 
 Helene von Donniges. 
 
 This letter came through Riistow, and Las-
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 211 
 
 salle addressed the following reply to Helen, 
 which, however, she never received — it came in 
 fact into the possession of the Countess — a suffi- 
 cient commentary on the duplicity and the false 
 friendship not only of Holthoff, but of Colonel 
 Riistow and the Countess Hatzfeldt in this sad 
 affair. 
 
 Munich, Aug. 20, 1864. 
 Helen, — 
 
 My heart is breaking ! Riistow's letter will kill me. 
 That you have betrayed me seems impossible ! Even 
 now I cannot believe in such shamelessness, in such 
 frightful treachery. It is only for a moment that some 
 one has overridden your will and obliterated your true 
 self. It is inconceivable that this can be your real, your 
 abiding determination. You cannot have thrown aside 
 all shame, all love, all fidelity, all truth. If you did, 
 you would dishonour and disfigure humanity. There 
 can be no truth left in the world if you are false, if you 
 are capable of descending to this depth of abandonment, 
 of breaking such holy oaths, of crushing my heart. Then 
 there is nothing more under the sun in which a man can 
 still believe. 
 
 Have you not filled me with a longing to possess 
 you ? Have you not implored me to exhaust all proper 
 measures, before carrying you away from Wabern ? 
 Have you not by your own lips and by your letters, sworn 
 to me the most sacred oaths .? Have you not declared
 
 212 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 to me, even in your last letters, that you were nothing 
 nothing but my loving wife, and that no power on earth 
 should stay your resolution ? And now, after you have 
 bound this true heart of mine to yourself so strongly, 
 this heart which when once it gives itself away gives itself 
 for ever ; now, when the battle has scarcely begun, do you 
 cast me off ? Do you betray me ? Do you destroy 
 me ? If so, you succeed in doing what else no fate can 
 do ; you will have crushed and shattered one of the 
 hardest of men, who could withstand unflinchingly all 
 outward storms. No, I can never survive such treachery. 
 It will kill me inwardly and outwardly. It is not possible 
 that you are so dishonourable, so shameless, so reckless 
 of duty, so utterly unworthy and infamous. If you were, 
 you would deserve of me the most deadly hatred. You 
 would deserve the contempt of the world. Helen, it is 
 not your own resolution which you have communicated 
 to Riistow. Some one has fastened it upon you by a 
 coercion of your better feelings. Listen to me. If 
 you abide by this resolution, you will lament it as long 
 as you live. 
 
 " Helen, true to my words, " Je me charge du reste^'' I 
 shall stay here, and shall take all possible steps to break 
 down your father's opposition. I have already excellent 
 means in my hand, which will certainly not remain 
 unused, and if they do not succeed, I shall still possess 
 thousands of other means, and I will grind all hindrances 
 to dust if you will but remain true to me. If you remain 
 true, there is no limit to my strength or to my love of 
 you, 'Je me charge toujours du reste I The battle is
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 213 
 
 hardly begun, you cowardly girl. But can it be, that 
 while I sit here, and have already achieved what seemed 
 impossible, you are betraying me, and listening to the 
 flattering words of another man ? Helen, my fate is in 
 your hands ! But if you destroy me by this wicked 
 treachery, from which I cannot recover, then may evil 
 fall upon you, and my curse follow you to the grave ! 
 This is the curse of a true heart, of a heart that you 
 wantonly break, and with which you have cruelly trifled. 
 Yes, this curse of mine will surely strike you. 
 
 According to Riistow's message, you want your 
 letters to be returned to you. In any case, you will 
 never receive them otherwise than from me — after a 
 personal interview. For I must and will speak to you 
 personally, and to you alone. I must and will hear my 
 death-doom from your own lips. It is only thus that I 
 can believe what otherwise seems impossible to me. 
 
 I am continuing here to take further steps to win 
 you, and when I have done all that is possible, I shall 
 come to Geneva. Helen, our destinies are entwined ! 
 
 F. Lassalle.i 
 
 It is pitiable to realize the amount of false or 
 imperfect friendship which led Lassalle on to 
 his ruin. Riistow was false, and Holthoff was 
 false, if it were not rather that both looked upon 
 Lassalle's affection for this girl, half his age, as a 
 
 • Becker's Enthiillungen, 1868.
 
 214 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 mad freak to be cured and forgotten. More 
 might have been expected from the Countess, 
 to whom Lassalle had given so much pure and 
 disinterested devotion ; but here again, a sense 
 of maternal ow^nership in Lassalle was sufficient 
 to justify, in such a woman, any means to keep 
 him apart from this fancy of the hour. To the 
 Countess, however, Helen had turned for help, 
 and had received a note which had but enraged 
 her, and made the breach between her and Las- 
 salle yet wider. In the after years, Helen pub- 
 lished one letter and the Countess another as 
 the actual reply of the Countess to Helen's ap- 
 peal, and the truth will now never be known. 
 Meanwhile Dr. Arndt, a nephew of von Don- 
 niges, had gone to Berlin to fetch Yanko von 
 Racowitza. Of Yanko Helen has herself given 
 us a pleasant picture, as the one man for whom 
 she really cared until the overwhelming presence 
 of Lassalle appeared upon the scene, as her one 
 friend during her persecution. Absent from 
 Lassalle's influence, it was not strange that the 
 delicate Wallachian — even younger than herself 
 and the slave of her every whim — should have an 
 influence in her life. Had LassaUe, however, had
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 215 
 
 yet another personal interview with her, there 
 can scarcely be a doubt that she would have been 
 as he had once said, " as clay in the hands of the 
 potter " — but this was not to be. Lassalle came 
 back to Geneva on August 23, and immediately 
 wrote an earnest letter to Herr von Donniges, 
 begging for an interview, and stating that he 
 had not the least enmity towards him for what 
 had happened. With the fear of the Foreign 
 Minister at Munich before his eyes Helen's 
 father could not well refuse again, and the inter- 
 view took place. Lassalle, according to von 
 Donniges, demanded that Yanko von Racowitza 
 should be forbidden the house, while he himself 
 should have ready access to Helen. He further 
 charged von Donniges with cruelty to his daughter, 
 and was called a liar to his face, while even the 
 cook was called upon the scene to give her evi- 
 dence as to the domestic ethics of this family 
 circle. The letter of von Donniges to Dr. 
 Haenle was clearly meant to be shown to the 
 Foreign Minister, and the wily diplomatist 
 naturally took the opportunity both to justify 
 himself and to vilify Lassalle. Then began a 
 painful dispute as to whether Herr von Donniges
 
 2i6 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 had ill-used his daughter ; the overwhelming 
 evidence, which includes the testimony of that 
 daughter, written long after her father's death, 
 tending to prove the truth of Lassalle's allega- 
 tion. Lassalle meanwhile found no opportunity 
 of approaching Helen, and having every reason 
 to believe that she was entirely faithless, gave up 
 the struggle. He referred to the girl in language 
 characteristic of a despairing and jilted lover, 
 and sent von Donniges a challenge, although 
 many years before, in a political controversy, he 
 had declined to fight — on principle. His seconds 
 were to be General Becker and Colonel Riistow, 
 and the latter has left us a long account of the 
 affair. 
 
 On the appointed day, August 22, Riistow 
 went everywhere to look for Herr von Donniges, 
 but the minister had fled to Berne. Riistow 
 then saw Lassalle at the rooms of the Countess 
 von Hatzfeldt. Lassalle mentioned that he had 
 that morning had his challenge accepted by von 
 Racowitza, whose seconds w^ere Count Keyserling 
 and Dr. Arndt. Riistow insisted, both to Las- 
 salle and to Racowitza's friends, that von Don- 
 niges should have priority, but was overruled ;
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 217 
 
 and it was agreed that the duel should be fought 
 that very evening. Riistow protested that he 
 could not find another second in so short a time 
 — General Becker does not seem to have been 
 available — but at length it was arranged that 
 General Bethlem should be asked to fill the office, 
 and that the duel should take place on the fol- 
 lowing morning, August 28. There seems to 
 have been considerable difficulty in finding 
 suitable pistols, and at the last moment General 
 Bethlem declined to be a second, and Herr von 
 Hofstetten consented to act. Riistow called upon 
 Lassalle at the Victoria Hotel at five o'clock. At 
 half-past six the party started for Carouge, a 
 village in the neighbourhood of Geneva, which 
 they reached an hour later. Lassalle was quite 
 cheerful, and perfectly confident that he would 
 come unharmed out of the conflict. The op- 
 ponents faced one another and Racowitza wounded 
 Lassalle, who was carried by Riistow and Dr. 
 Seller to a coach, and thence to the Victoria 
 Hotel, Geneva. He suffered dreadfully both 
 then and afterwards, and was only relieved by a 
 plentiful use of opium. Three days later, on 
 Wednesday, August 31, 1864, he died.
 
 2i8 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 Was it the chance shot of a delicate boy that 
 killed one of the most remarkable men of the 
 nineteenth century, or was it a planned attack 
 upon one who loved the people ? This last view 
 was taken and is still taken by many of his fol- 
 lowers ; but it is needless to say that it has no 
 foundation in fact. Lassalle was killed by a 
 chance shot, and killed in a duel which had not 
 even the doubtful justification of hatred of his 
 opponent. " Count me no longer as a rival ; 
 for you I have nothing but friendship," were the 
 words written to Racowitza at the moment that 
 he challenged von Donniges, and he declared on 
 his death-bed that he died by his own hand. 
 
 The revolutionists of all lands assembled around 
 his dead body, which was embalmed by order of 
 the Countess. This woman talked loudly of 
 vengeance, called not only von Racowitza but 
 Helen a murderer,^ little thinking that posterity 
 would judge her more hardly than Helen. She 
 proposed to take the corpse in solemn procession 
 through Germany ; but an order from the Prus- 
 sian Government disturbed her plans, and at 
 Breslau, Lassalle's native town, it was allowed 
 1 Brief e an Hans von Billow, 1885.
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 219 
 
 to rest. Lassalle is' buried in the family vault 
 in the Jewish Cemetery, and a simple monument 
 bears the inscription : 
 
 HERE RESTS WHAT IS MORTAL 
 OF 
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE, 
 
 THE 
 
 Thinker and the Fighter. 
 
 To understand the whole tragedy and to 
 justify its great victim is to feel something of the 
 strain which comes to every thinker and fighter 
 who, like Lassalle, writes and speaks persistently 
 to vast audiences, often against great odds, and 
 always with the prospect of a prison before him. 
 That his nerves were utterly unstrung, that he 
 was not his real self in those last days, is but too 
 evident. Armed, as he claimed, with the entire 
 culture of his century, a maker of history if ever 
 there was one, he became the victim of a love 
 drama which I suppose that Mr. Matthew Arnold 
 would describe as of the surgeon's apprentice 
 order : but which, apart from his political 
 creed, will always endear him to men and women 
 who have " lived and loved."
 
 220 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 
 And what shall we say of Helen von Don- 
 niges ? Her own stoiy is surely one of the most 
 romantic ever written. In My Relation to Ferdi- 
 nand Lassalle, she tells how Yanko broke to her 
 the news that he was going to fight Lassalle, and 
 how much she grieved. " Lassalle will inevitably 
 kill Yanko," she thought ; and she pitied him, 
 but her pity was not without calculation. " When 
 Yanko is dead and they bring his body here, 
 there will be a stir in the house," she said, " and 
 I can then fly to Lassalle." But the hours flew 
 by, and finally Yanko came to tell her that he 
 had wounded his opponent. For the moment, 
 and indeed until after Lassalle's death, she hated 
 her successful lover ; but a little later his un- 
 doubted goodness, his tenderness and patience, 
 won her heart. They were married, but he died 
 within a year, of consumption. Being disowned 
 by her relations, Helen then settled in Berlin, 
 and studied for the stage. She herself relates 
 how at Breslau on one occasion, when acting a 
 boy's part in one of Moser's comedies, som.e of 
 Lassalle's oldest friends being present remarked 
 upon her likeness to Lassalle in his youth, a re- 
 semblance on which she and Lassalle had more
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 221 
 
 than once prided themselves. At a later date 
 Frau von Racowitza married a Russian Social- 
 ist, S. E. Shevitch, then resident in America. 
 M. Shevitch returned to Russia a few years after 
 this and lived with his wife at Riga. Those who 
 have seen Madame Shevitch describe her as one 
 of the most fascinating women they have ever 
 met. She and her husband were very happy 
 in their married life. Madame Shevitch is now 
 living in Munich. Our great novelist and poet 
 George Meredith has immortalized her in his 
 Tragic Comedians.
 
 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF THE 
 HUNDRED BEST BOOKS
 
 VIII 
 
 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF THE 
 HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 
 
 Every one has heard of Lord Avcbury's (Sir John 
 Lubbock's) Hundred Best Books, not every one 
 of Lord Acton's. It is the privilege of the Pall 
 Mall Magazine ^ to publish this latter list, the 
 final impression as to reading of one of the most 
 scholarly men that England has known in our 
 time. The list in question is, as it were, an 
 omitted chapter of a book that was one of the 
 successes of its year — The Letters of Lord Acton 
 to Miss Mary Gladstone — published by Mr. 
 George Allen. That series of letters made very 
 pleasant reading. They showed Lord Acton 
 not as a Dryasdust, but as a very human personage 
 indeed, with sympathies invariably in the right 
 place. 
 
 ^ Reprinted with alterations from the Pall Mall Magazme 
 of July, 1905, by kind permission of the proprietor and editor ; 
 and of Miss Mary Gladstone (Mrs. Drew) to whom the list 
 of books was sent in a letter. 
 
 I.M. 225 jtf
 
 226 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 Nor can his literary interests be said to have 
 been restricted, for he read history and biography 
 with avidity, and probably knew more of theology 
 than any other layman of modern times. In 
 imaginative literature, however, his critical in- 
 stinct was perhaps less keen. He called Heine 
 " a bad second to Schiller in poetry," which is 
 absurd ; and he thought George Eliot the greatest 
 of modern novelists. In arriving at the latter 
 judgment he had the excuse of personal friend- 
 ship and admiration for a woman whose splendid 
 intellectual gifts were undeniable. 
 
 In one letter we find Lord Acton discussing 
 with Miss Gladstone the eternal question of the 
 hundred best books. Sir John Lubbock had 
 complained to her of the lack of a guide or supreme 
 authority on the choice of books. Lord Acton 
 had replied that, " although he had something to 
 learn on the graver side of human knowledge," 
 Sir John would execute his own scheme better 
 than almost anybody. We all know that Sir 
 John Lubbock attempted this at a lecture de- 
 livered at the Great Ormond Street Working 
 Men's College ; that that lecture has been re- 
 printed again and again in a book entitled The
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 227 
 
 Pleasures of Life, and that the publishers have sold 
 more than two hundred thousand copies — a kind 
 of success that might almost make some of our 
 popular novelists turn green with envy. Later 
 on in the correspondence Lord Acton quoted 
 one of the popes, who said that " fifty books would 
 include every good idea in the world." " But," 
 continued Lord Acton, " literature has doubled 
 since then, and it would be hard to do without a 
 hundred." 
 
 Lord Acton was possessed of the happy thought 
 that he would like some of his friends and 
 acquaintances each to name his ideal hundred 
 best books — as for example Bishop Lightfoot, Dean 
 Church, Dean Stanley, Canon Liddon, Professor 
 Max Muller, A/[r. J. R. Lowell, Professor E. A. 
 Freeman, Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, Mr. John Morley, 
 Sir Henry Maine, the Duke of Argyll, Lord 
 Tennyson, Cardinal Newman, Mr. Gladstone, 
 Matthew Arnold, Professor Goldwin Smith, 
 Mr. R. H. Hutton, Mr. Mark Pattison, and Mr. 
 J. A. Symonds. Strange to say, he thought there 
 would be a surprising agreement between these 
 writers as to which were the hundred best 
 books. I am all but certain, however, that
 
 228 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 there would not have been more than twenty 
 books in common between rival schools of 
 thought — the secular and the ecclesiastical — 
 between, let us say, Mr. John Morley and Car- 
 dinal Newman. But it is probable that not one 
 of these eminent men would have furnished a 
 list with any similarity whatever to the remainder. 
 Each would have written down his own hundred 
 favourites, and herein may be admitted is an 
 evidence of the futility of all such attempts. The 
 best books are the books that have helped us most 
 to see life in all its complex bearings, and each indi- 
 vidual needs a particular kind of mental food quite 
 unlike the diet that best stimulates his neighbour. 
 Writing more than a year later. Lord Acton 
 said that he had just drawn out a list of recom- 
 mended authors for his son, as being the company 
 he would like him to keep ; but this list is not 
 available — it is not the one before me. That 
 was compiled yet another twelve months after- 
 wards, when we find Lord Acton sending to 
 Miss Mary Gladstone (Mrs. Drew) his own 
 ideal " hundred best books." This list is now 
 printed for the first time. Evidently Miss Glad- 
 stone remonstrated with her friend over the
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 229 
 
 character of the list ; but Lord Acton defended 
 it as being in his judgment really the hundred 
 best books, apart from works on physical science — 
 that it treated of principles that every thoughtful 
 man ought to understand, and was calculated, 
 in fact, to give one a clear view of the various 
 forces that make history. " We are not con- 
 sidering," he adds, " what will suit an untutored 
 savage or an illiterate peasant woman, who would 
 never come to an end of the Imitation^ 
 
 However, here is Lord Acton's list, which Mrs. 
 Drew has been kind enough to place in the hands 
 of the Editor of the Pall Mall Magazine. I give 
 also Lord Acton's comment with which it opens, 
 and I add in footnotes one or two facts about 
 each of the authors : 
 
 " In answer to the question : Which are the hundred 
 " best books in the world ? 
 
 " Supposing any English youth, whose education is 
 " finished, who knows common things, and is not train- 
 " ing for a profession. 
 
 "To perfect his mind and open windows in every 
 " direction, to raise him to the level of his age so that he 
 " may know the (20 or 30) forces that have made our world 
 " what it is and still reign over it, to guard him against sur- 
 " prises and against the constant sources of error within,
 
 230 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 " to supply him both with the strongest stimulants and 
 " the surest guides, to give force and fullness and clearness 
 " and sincerity and independence and elevation and 
 "generosity and serenity to his mind, that he may 
 "know the method and law of the process by which 
 " error is conquered and truth is won, discerning know- 
 " ledge from probability and prejudice from belief, 
 " that he may learn to master what he rejects as fully 
 "as what he adopts, that he may understand the 
 " origin as well as the strength and vitality of systems 
 " and the better motive of men who are wrong, to 
 " steel him against the charm of literary beauty and 
 " talent ; so that each book, thoroughly taken in, shall 
 " be the beginning of a new life, and shall make a new 
 "man of him — this list is submitted": — 
 
 1. Plato — Laws — Steinhart's Introduction} 
 
 2. Aristotle — Politics — Susemihl's Commentary.^ 
 
 3. Epictetus — Encheiridion — Commentary of Simplicius.^ 
 
 4. St, Augustine — Letters} 
 
 ^ Plato, (b.c. 427-347) Dr. Jowett has translated the Laws. 
 See 7he Dialogues of Plato With Analysis and Introductions by 
 Benjamin Jowett. In Five Volumes. Vol. V. The Clarendon Press. 
 
 * Aristotle (b.c 384-322). Dr. Jowett has translated the 
 Po/jita into English. Two volumes. The Clarendon Press. 
 
 3 Epictetus (born a.d. 50, died in Rome, but date un- 
 known). His Encheiridion, a collection of Maxims, was made 
 by his pupil Arrian. The best translation into English is that 
 by George Long, first published in 1877. (George Bell.) 
 
 * St. Augustine (a.d. 353-430). See a translation of his 
 Letters edited by Mary Allies, pubhshed in 1890.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 231 
 
 5. St. Vincent's Comvionitorium} 
 
 6. Hugo of S. Victor — De Sacramentis.^ 
 
 7. St. Bonaventura — Breviloquium.^ 
 
 8. St. Thomas Aquinas — Summa contra Gentiles.'^ 
 
 1 St. Vincent of Lerins — Vincentius Lirinensis, Native 
 of Gaul. Monk in monastery of Lerinat, opposite Cannes. 
 Died about 450. In 434 wrote Commonitorium adversus pro- 
 fanus omnium heretiecrum novitates. It contains the famous 
 threefold text of orthodoxy — " quod ubique, quod semper, 
 quod ad omnibus creditum est." Printed at Paris, 1663 and 
 later. Also in Mignes, Patrologia Latina, Vol. 50. Hallam 
 calls the text " the celebrated rule." It is all now remembered 
 of St. V. by most educated men. It is shown to be of no practical 
 value in an able criticism by Sir G. C. Lewis, Influence of 
 Authority in Matters of Opinion, 2nd ed., 1875, p. 57. Mr 
 Gladstone reviewed this work of Lewis, Nineteenth Century 
 March, 1877. 
 
 2 Hugo of St. Victor (1097-1141), a celebrated Mystic born 
 at Ypres in Flanders. His collected works first appeared at 
 Rouen in 1648. 
 
 ^ St. Bonaventura (a.d. 1221-1274). Born at Bagnarea, near 
 Orvieto, in Tuscany, became a Franciscan monk and afterwards 
 a Professor of Theology at Paris, where he gained the title 
 of the " Seraphic Doctor." Made a Cardinal by Pope Gregory 
 X, who sent him as his Legate to the Council at Lyons, 
 where he died. In 1482 he was canonized. His writings 
 appeared at Rome in 1588-96. 
 
 4 St. Thomas Aquinas (a.d. 1225-1274). The Angelic 
 Doctor was born at the castle of Rocca-Secca near Aquino, 
 between Rome and Naples. Entered the Dominican Order 
 in 1243. Went to Paris in 1252 and attained great distinction
 
 232 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 9. Dante — Divina Commedia.^ 
 
 10. Raymund of Sabunde — Theologia Naturalis? 
 
 11. Nicholas of Cusa — Concordantia Catholica.^ 
 
 12. Edward Reuss — The Bible. '^ 
 
 as a theologian. His Sumtna Theologize was followed by his 
 Stimma contra Gentiles. His works were first collected in 17 
 volumes in 1570. Aquinas was canonized in 1323. 
 
 ^ Dante (a.d. 1265-1321). The Divina Commedia has been 
 translated into English by many scholars. The best known 
 version is the poetical renderings of H. F. Cary (i 772-1 844) 
 and W. W. Longfellow (i 807-1 882) and the prose translations 
 (the " Inferno " only) of John Carlyle (1801-79) ^^<^ ^- J- 
 Butler in whose three volumes of the " Purgatory," " Para- 
 dise " and " Inferno " the original Italian may be studied 
 side by side with the translation. 
 
 2 Raymund of Sabunde, a physician of Toulouse of the 
 fifteenth century. He published his Theologia naturalis at 
 Strassburg in 1496. " I found the concerts of the author to 
 be excellent, the contexture of his works well followed, and 
 his project full of pietie " writes Montaigne in telling us of 
 his father's request that he should translate Sabunde's Theo- 
 logia naturalis. Florio's Translation. Book II, Ch. XII. 
 
 3 Nicholas of Cusa (a.d. 1401-1464) was born at Kues on 
 the Moselle. His De Concordantia Catholica was a treatise in 
 favour of the Councils of the ChurcJi and against the authority 
 of the Pope. He was made a Cardinal by Pope Nicholas V. 
 
 * Edward Reuss (1804-1891), a professor of Theology, who 
 was born at Strassburg. Published his History of the Netv 
 Testament in 1842 and his History of the Old Testament in 188 1. 
 The Bible, a new translation with Introduction and Commentaries, 
 appeared in 19 volumes between 1874 ^^'^ 1881.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 233 
 
 13. Pascal's Pensees — Havel's Edition.'^ 
 
 14. Malebranche, De la Recherche de la Verite.^ 
 
 15. Baader — Speculative Dogmatik? 
 
 16. Molitor — Philosophie der Geschichte.^ 
 
 17. Astie — Esprit de Vinet.^ 
 
 1 Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662). Born at Clermont-Ferrand 
 in Auvergne. His Letters to a Provincial, written in 1656-7, 
 made his fame by their attack on the Jesuists. His Pensees 
 appeared after his death, in 1669, and they have reappeared in 
 many forms, " edited " by many schools of thought. The 
 edition edited by Ernest Havet (18 13-1889) was published in 
 1852. 
 
 2 Malebranche, Nicolas (1638-1715). Born in Paris. The 
 works of Descartes drew him to philosophy. The famous dictum, 
 " Malebranche saw all things in God," had reference to his 
 treatise, De la Recherche de la Verite, first published in 1674. 
 
 3 Baader, Franz (i 765-1 841). A speculative philosopher 
 and theologian, born at Munich, who endeavoured to reconcile 
 the tenets of the Church of Rome with philosophy. Of his 
 many works his Vorlesungen iiber Spekulative Dogmatik is here 
 selected. It appeared between 1828 and 1838 in five parts. 
 
 ^ Molitor, Franz Joseph (i 779-1 860). A philosophical 
 writer, born near Frankfurt. His Philosophie der Geschichte, 
 oder iiber Tradition was published in 4 volumes between 1827 
 and 1853. 
 
 ^ Astie, Jean Frederic (i 822-1 894). A French Protesant 
 theologian, who held a Chair of Theology in New York from 
 1848 to 1853. In 1856 became a Professor in Switzerland. 
 He published his Esprit d'' Alexandre Vinet at Paris in 1861. 
 In 1882 appeared his Le Vinet de la legende et celui de 
 Vhistoire.
 
 234 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 1 8. Piinjer — Geschichte der Religions- fhilosophie} 
 
 19. Rothe — Theologische Ethik? 
 
 20. Martensen — Die Christliche Ethik.^ 
 
 21. Oettingen — Moralstatistik.* 
 
 22. Hartmann — Phanomenologie des sittlichen Bezousst- 
 seins.^ 
 
 1 Piinjer, Bernard (i 850-1 884). A theologian whose 
 Geschichte der Religiotis-philosophie was much the vogue with 
 theological students at the time of its publication in 1880. 
 It was reissued in 1887 in an English translation by W. Hastie, 
 under the title, History of the Christian Philosophy of Religion 
 from the Reformation to Kant. Piinjer also wrote Die Religions- 
 lehre Kant's, published at Jena in 1874. 
 
 2 Rothe, Richard (i 799-1 867). A Protestant theologian. 
 Was for a time preacher to the Prussian Embassy in Rome, and 
 afterwards in succession Professor of Theology at Wittenberg, 
 at Heidelberg, and at Bonn. His Theologische Ethik appeared 
 at Wittenberg in 3 volumes between 1845 and 1848. 
 
 3 Martensen, Hans Lassen (1808-1884). A Danish theo- 
 logian, born at Fleusburg and died at Copenhagen, where he 
 was long a Professor of Theology. He became Bishop of 
 Zeeland. Die Christliche Ethik was one of many works by 
 him. He also wrote Die Christliche Dogmatik, Die Christliche 
 Taufe, and a Life of Jakob Bohme. 
 
 4 Oettingen, Alexander von (l 827-1905). A theologian 
 and statistician principally associated with Dorpat in Livonia, 
 where he studied from 1845 to 1849. He became Professor of 
 Theology at its famous University. His principal book is 
 entitled. Die Moralstatistik in ihrer Bedeutungfiir eine Sozial- 
 ethik. 
 
 5 Hartmann, Karl Robert Eduard von (1842-1906). Born
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 235 
 
 23. Leibniz — Letters edited by Klopp.^ 
 
 24. Brandis — Geschichte der Philosofhie."^ 
 
 25. Fischer — Franz Bacon.^ 
 
 26. Zeller — Neuere Deutsche Philosophies 
 
 in Berlin, the son of General Robert von Hartmann, and served 
 for some time in the Artillery of the German Army. He has 
 written many philosophical works. His Phdnomenologie des 
 sittlichlen Beivusstseins was published in Berlin in 1879. 
 
 1 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716). Born at 
 Leipzig and died at Hanover. Visited Paris and London, and 
 became acquainted with Boyle and Newton. In 1676 appointed 
 to a librarianship at Hanover. His philosophical views are 
 mainly derived from his letters. The edition of the Letters, 
 edited by Ouno Klopp (i 822-1903), appeared at Hanover 
 between 1862 and 1884 in 1 1 volumes. 
 
 2 Brandis, Christian August (i 790-1 867). A philosopher 
 and philologist, born in Hildesheim, studied in Gottingen 
 and Kiel. Accompanied Niebuhr as Secretary to the Em- 
 bassy to Rome in 1816. In 1822 became Professor of Philosophy 
 in Bonn. His Hatidbuch der Geschichte der griechischromischen 
 Philosophie, doubtless here referred to by Lord Acton, was 
 published in BerHn at long intervals (1835-66) in 3 volumes. 
 
 ^ Fischer, Kuno (l 824-1907). Born at Sandewalde in Silesia. 
 Deprived of his professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg by 
 the Baden Government in 1853 on account of charge of Pan- 
 theism, but recalled to Heidelberg in 1872. His principal 
 book is Geschichte der Neuern Philosophie (1852-1903). His 
 Franz Baco von Verulam appeared in 1856, and Francis Bacon 
 und seine Schule made the loth volume of his Geschichte. 
 
 ^ Zeller, Eduard (18 14- still living). Theologian and 
 historian of philosophy. Studied at Tubingen and BerUn, 
 became Professor of Theology at Berne, afterwards held chairs
 
 236 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 27. Bartholomess — Doctrines Religieuses de la Philosophie 
 Moderne. ^ 
 
 28. Guyon — Morale Anglais e? 
 
 29. Ritschl — Entstehung der Altkatholischen Kirche.^ 
 
 30. Loening — Geschichte des Kirchenrechts.^ 
 
 successively at Heidelberg and Berlin. His many works 
 include The Philosophy of Ancient Greece, Platonic Studies 
 and ZwingWs Theological System. 
 
 1 Bartholomess, Christian (18 15-1856). A French philo- 
 sopher, born at Geiselbronn in Alsace. From 1853 Professor 
 of Philosophy at Strassburg. Died at Nuremberg. Wrote a Life 
 of Giordano Bruno, and Philosophical History of the Prussian 
 Academy, particularly under Frederick the Great, as weU as the 
 Histoire critique des doctrines religieuses de la philosophie moderne, 
 published in 2 volumes in 1855. 
 
 2 Madame Guyon (1648-1717) was born at Montargis in 
 France, and her maiden name was Jeanne Marie Bouvieres de la 
 Mothe. She married at 16 years of age Jacques Guyon. 
 Left a widow, she devoted herself to a religious mysticism which 
 raised up endless controversies during the succeeding years. 
 She was compelled to leave Geneva because her doctrines 
 were declared to be heretical. She was imprisoned in the Bastile 
 from 1695 to 1702. Her works are contained in 39 volumes. 
 
 ^ Ritschl, Albrecht (1822-1889). Professor of Theology, 
 born in Berlin, died in Gottingen. Became Professor of 
 Theology in Bonn and later in Gottingen. He wrote many 
 books. His Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche first 
 appeared in 1850. 
 
 * Loening, Edgar (1843- still living), was born in Paris. 
 Has held professorial chairs at Strassburg, Dorpat, Rostock, 
 and at Halle. His Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenrechts first 
 appeared in 1878.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 237 
 
 31. Baur — Vorlesungen ilber Dogmengeschichte.^ 
 
 32. Fenelon — Correspondence?' 
 
 33. Newman's Theory of Development.^ 
 
 34. Mozley's University Sermo?is^ 
 
 ^ Baur, Ferdinand Christian (1792-1860). Born at Schmiden, 
 near Kannstatt. Held various theological chairs before that 
 of Tubingen, which he occupied from 1826 until his death. 
 He wrote a great number of theological works, of which his 
 V orlesunge7i iiber die christliche Dogmengeschichte was published 
 in Leipzig in 3 volumes between 1865 and 1867. 
 
 2 Fenelon, Frangois de Salignac de la Mothe (1651-1715). 
 Born in Perigord in France, and famous alike as a divine and 
 as a man of letters, his Telemaque living in literature. His 
 controversy over Madame Guyon is well known. Louis XIV 
 made him preceptor to his grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, 
 and later Archbishop of Cambrai. His Correspondence was 
 published between 1727 and 1729 in 1 1 volumes. 
 
 2 Newman, John Henry (i 801-1890). A famous Cardinal 
 of the Church of Rome ; born in London, educated at Trinity 
 College, Oxford ; first Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford ; took part 
 in the Tractarian Movement with some of the Tracts for the 
 Times. His Apologia pro Vita Sua appeared in 1864, his Dream 
 of Gerontiusm 1865. There is no Theory of Development by 
 Newman. His Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine 
 appeared in 1845, and was replied to by the Rev. J. B. Mozley 
 in a volume bearing the title The Theory of Developmtnt. 
 
 4 Mozley, James Bowling (18 1 3-1 878). A Church of England 
 divine ; born at Gainsborough, educated at Oriel College, Oxford ; 
 became Vicar of Old Shoreham, Canon of Worcester, and, in 
 1871, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. His Oxford 
 University Sermons appeared in 1876.
 
 238 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 35. Schneckenburger — Vergleichende Darstellung.^ 
 
 36. Hundeshagen — Kirchenvorjassungsgeschichte? 
 
 37. Schweizer — Protestantische Centraldog?nen.^ 
 
 38. Gass — Geschichte der Lutherischen Dogmatik^ 
 
 39. Cart — Histoire du Mouvement Religieux dans le 
 
 Canton de Vaud.^ 
 
 1 Schneckenburger, Matthias (1804-1848). A Protestant 
 theologian ; born at Thalheim and died in Berne, where he was 
 for a time Professor of Theology at the newly founded Uni- 
 versity. His Vergleichende Darstellung des lutherischen und 
 reformierten Lehrbegri-ffs was published in Stuttgart in 2 volumes 
 in 1855. 
 
 2 Hundeshagen, Karl Bernhard (18 10-1872). A Protestant 
 theologian who held a professorship in Berne, later in 
 Heidelberg and finally in Bonn, where he died. His many 
 works included one upon the Conflict between the Lutheran, 
 the Calvinistic, and the Zwinglian Churches. His Beitrdge 
 zur Kirchenverfassungsgeschichte und Kirchenpolitik insbesondere 
 des Protestantismus was published at Wiesbaden in 1864 in 
 I volume. 
 
 ^ Schweizer, Alexander (i 808-1 888). A theologian and 
 preacher who studied in Zurich and Berlin. He wrote his ^«^o- 
 biography which, was published in Zurich the year after his death. 
 His book. Die frotestantischen Centraldogmen innerhalb der 
 rejormierten Kirche, appeared in Zurich in 2 volumes in 1854 
 and 1856. 
 
 ^ Gass, \Vilhelm(i8l3-l889). A Protestant theologian ; born 
 at Breslau and died in Heidelberg, where he held a theological 
 chair. His best-known book is his Geschichte der protestantischen 
 Dogmatik, published in Berlin between 1854 ''^^'^ ^^^7 ^" 4 
 volumes, and to this Lord Acton doubtless refers. 
 
 ^ Cart, Jacques Louis (1826- probably still living). A Swiss
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 239 
 
 40. Blondel — De la Primaute.^ 
 
 41. Le Blanc de Beaulieu — Theses? 
 
 42. Thiersch — Vorlesungen ilber Katholizismus.^ 
 
 43. Mohler — Neue Untersuchungen^ 
 
 pastor ; born in Geneva ; the author of many books, of which 
 the one named by Lord Ac ton is fully entitled, //wiow du mouve- 
 ment religieux et ecclesiastique dans le canton de Vaud pendafit 
 la premiere moitie du XIX^ Steele. It appeared between 
 1871 and 1880 in 6 volumes. 
 
 1 Blondel, David (1590-1655). Born at Chalons-sur-Marne 
 in France ; a learned theologian and historian who defended the 
 Protestant position against the Catholics. Was Professor of 
 History at Amsterdam. His De la prirnatite de PEglise appeared 
 in 1641. 
 
 2 Le Blanc de Beaulieu, Louis (1614-1675). A French 
 Protestant theologian who enjoyed the consideration of both 
 parties and was approached by Turenne with a view to a 
 reunion of the churches. His position was sustained before 
 the Protestant Academy at Sedan with certain theses pub- 
 lished under the title of Theses Sedanenzes in 1683. 
 
 3 Thiersch, Heinrich Wilhelm Josias (1817-1885). Born 
 in Munich and died in Basle ; held for a time a Professorship 
 of Theology in Marburg, then became the principal pastor of 
 the Irvingite Church in Germany, preaching in many cities. 
 He wrote many books. His Vorlesimgeii iiher Katholizismus 
 mid Protestantismus appeared first in 1846. 
 
 4 Mohler, Johann Adam (1796-1838). Born in Igersheim 
 and died in Munich. A Catholic theologian and Professor 
 of Theology at Tubingen. His Neue Untersuchungen der Lehr- 
 gegensdtze zwischen den Katholiken und Protestanten was first 
 published in Mainz in 1834.
 
 240 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 44. Scherer — Melanges de Critique Religieuse} 
 
 45. Hooker — Ecclesiastical Polity.^ 
 
 46. Weingarten — Revolutionskirchen E?iglands.^ 
 
 47. Kliefoth — Jcht Biicher von der Kirche.'^ 
 
 48. Laurent — Etudes de PHistoire de rHumanite} 
 
 1 Scherer, Edmond (1815-1889). A French theologian; 
 born in Paris, died at Versailles. Was for a time in England, 
 then Professor of Exegesis in Geneva. Was for many years a 
 leader of the French Protestant Church. His Melanges de 
 critique religieuse appeared in Paris in i860. 
 
 2 Hooker, Richard (1554-1600). Born in Exeter. In 1584 
 was Rector of Drayton-Beauchamp, near Tring, and the follow- 
 ing year became Master of the Temple. In 1 591 became Vicar 
 of Boscombe and sub-Dean of Salisbury. His Laws of Ecclesias- 
 tical Polity was published in 1594. In 1595 he removed to 
 Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, where he died. 
 
 3 Weingarten, Hermann (i 834-1 892). Protestant ecclesi- 
 astical historian, born in Berlin, where in 1868 he became a 
 professor, later held chairs successively at Marberg and Breslau. 
 His book Die Revolutionskirchen Englands appeared in 1868. 
 
 ^ Kliefoth, Theodor Friedrich (18 10-1895). A Lutheran 
 theologian ; born at Kirchow in Mecklenburg, and died at 
 Schwerin, where he was for a time instructor to the Grand 
 Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and held various offices 
 in connexion with that state. He wrote many theological 
 works. His Acht Biicher von der Kirche was published at 
 Schwerin in i volume in 1854. 
 
 ^ Laurent, Frangois (1810-1887). Born in Luxemburg and 
 died in Gent, where he long held a professorship. His principal 
 work. Etudes sur Vhistoire de Vhumanite, Histoire du droit des gens 
 was published in Brussels in 18 volumes between i860 and 1870.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 241 
 
 49. Ferrari — Revolutions de Vltalie} 
 
 50. Lange — Geschichte des Materialismus.^ 
 
 51. Guicciardini— ^zVor^/ PoUtici? 
 
 52. Duperron — Ambassades^ 
 
 1 Ferrari, Guiseppe (i 8 12-1876) was born in Milan, and died 
 in Rome. Achieved fame as a philosophical historian. Held a 
 chair at Turin and afterwards at Milan. As member of the 
 Parliament of Piedmont he was an opponent of Cavour's policy 
 of a United Italy. His principal book is entitled Histoire des 
 revolutions de Vltalie, ou Guelfes et Gibelins, published in 
 Paris in four volumes between 1856 and 1858. 
 
 2 Lange, Friedrich Albert (i 828-1 875). Philosopher and 
 economic writer, born at Wald bei Solingen, died at Marburg. 
 Held a professorial chair at Zurich and later at Marburg. His 
 most famous book, the Geschichte des Materialisnms und Kritik 
 seiner Bedentung in der Gegenwart, first appeared in 1866. It was 
 published in England in 1878-81 by Trubner in three volumes. 
 
 3 Guicciardini, Francesco (1483-1540), the Italian historian 
 and statesman, was born at Florence. Undertook in 15 12 an 
 embassy from Florence to the Court of Ferdinand the Catholic, 
 and learned diplomacy in Spain. In 15 15 he entered the service 
 of Pope Leo X. His principal book is his History of Italy. 
 The Istoria d'ltalia appeared in Florence in ten volumes between 
 1 561 and 1564. His Recordi Politici consists of some 400 
 aphorisms on political and social topics and has been described 
 by an Italian critic as " ItaHan corruption codified and ele- 
 vated to a rule of life." 
 
 * Duperron, Jacques Davy (1556-1618), a Cardinal of the 
 Church, born at Saint L6. He was a Court preacher under 
 Henry III of France and denounced Elizabeth of England in 
 a funeral sermon on Mary Stuart. It is told of him that he 
 
 l.M, 16
 
 242 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 53. Richelieu — Testament Politique ^ 
 
 54. Harrington's Writings.^ 
 
 55. Mignet — Negotiations de la Succession (TEspagne.^ 
 
 once demonstrated before the king the existence of God, and 
 being complimented upon his irrefutable arguments, replied 
 that he was prepared to bring equally good arguments to prove 
 that God did not exist. He became Bishop of Evreux in 
 1591. 
 
 ^ Richelieu, Cardinal — (Armand-Jean Du Plessis) — (1585- 
 1642). The famous minister of Louis XIII ; born in Paris, 
 of a noble family of Poitou. Was made Bishop of Lugon by 
 Henry IV at the age of twenty-two. Became Almoner to 
 Marie de Medici, the Regent of France. Was elected a Cardinal 
 in 1622. He wrote many books, including theological works, 
 tragedies, and his own Memoirs. The authenticity of his 
 Testament politique was disputed by Voltaire. 
 
 ^ Harrington, James (1611-1677) '^^^ born at Upton, 
 Northamptonshire ; was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 He travelled on the Continent, but was back in England at the 
 time of the Civil War, in which, however, he took no part. 
 He published his Oceana in 1656. He is buried in St. Margaret's 
 Church, Westminster, next to the tomb of Sir Walter Raleigh. 
 His Writings in an edition issued in 1737 by Millar contained 
 twenty separate treatises in addition to Oceana, but concerned 
 with that book. 
 
 2 Mignet, FrangoisAuguste Marie (1796-1884). The historian ; 
 was born at Aix and died in Paris. PubHshed his History of the 
 French Revolution in 1 824. His Negociations relatives a la succession 
 (VEspagne appeared in 4 volumes between 1836 and 1842. He 
 also wrote a Life of Franklin, a History of Mary Stuart, and 
 many other work?,
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 243 
 
 56. Rousseau — Considerations sur la Pologne.^ 
 
 57. Foncin — Ministere de TurgotJ^ 
 
 58. Burke's Correspondence.^ 
 
 59. Las Cases — Memorial de Ste. Helene.* 
 
 ^ Rousseau, Jean Jacques (1712-1778), the famous writer, 
 was born in Geneva and died at Ermenonville. Much of his 
 life story has been told in his incomparable Confessions. In 
 1759 he published Nouvelle Helo'ise ; in 1762, UEmile ou de 
 VEducation. His Considerations sur la Pologne was written by 
 Rousseau in 1769 in response to an application to apply his 
 own theories to a scheme for the renovation of the government 
 of Poland, in which land anarchy was then at its height. Mr. 
 John Morley {Rousseau, Vol. II) dismisses the pamphlet with 
 a contemptuous line. 
 
 2 Foncin, Pierre (1841- still living). A French Professor of 
 History ; born at Limoges, and has long held important official 
 positions in connexion with education. He has written many 
 books, including an Atlas Historique. His Essai sur le ministere 
 Turgot appeared in 1 876, and obtained a prize from the French 
 Academy. 
 
 ^ Burke, Edmund (1729-1797), the famous statesman, was 
 born in Dublin and died at Beaconsfield, Bucks, where he was 
 buried. His F indication of Natural Society appeared in 1756. 
 Burke entered Parliament for Wendover in 1765, sat for 
 Bristol, 1774-80, and Malton, 1780-94. His Collected Works first 
 appeared in 1792-1827 in 8 volumes, the first three of which 
 were issued in his lifetime ; his Collected Works and Correspond- 
 ence wsii published in 8 volumes in 1852, but the Correspondence 
 had appeared separately in 4 volumes in 1844. 
 
 * Las Cases, Emmanuel Augustine Dieudonne Marir 
 Joseph (1766-1842). Educated at the Military School in Paris
 
 244 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 60. Holtzendorff — Systematische Rechtsenzyklofddie.^ 
 
 61. Jhering — Geist des Romischen Rechts.^ 
 
 62. Geib — Strajrecht.^ 
 
 but entered the French navy ; emigrated at the Revolution ; 
 fought at Quiberon ; taught French in London ; published 
 in 1802 his Atlas historique et geographique under the pseu- 
 donym of " Le Sage." On his return to France he came under 
 the notice of Napoleon, who made him a Count of the Empire 
 and sent him upon several important missions. During the 
 Emperor's exile in Elba he again went to England. He returned 
 during the Hundred Days and accompanied Napoleon to St. 
 Helena. Here he recorded day by day the conversations of 
 the great exile. At the end of eighteen months he was exiled 
 by Sir Hudson Lowe to the Cape of Good Hope. He returned 
 to France after the death of Napoleon and became a Deputy 
 under Louis Philippe. His Memorial de Sainte-Helene, 
 published in 1823-1824, secured a great success. 
 
 ^ Holtzendorff, Franz von (i 829-1 889), was Professor of Juris- 
 prudence first at Berlin and afterwards at Munich, where he 
 died. He wrote many books concerned with crime and its 
 punishment, with the prison systems of the world, etc. His 
 Enzyklopddie der Rechtsivissenschaft in systematischer und alpha- 
 betise her Bearbeitung was first published at Leipzig in 1870 
 and 1871. 
 
 * Jhering, Rudolph von (18 1 8-1 892), was for a time pro- 
 fessor at Basle, Rostock, Kiel and Vienna. His Geist des 
 romischen Rechts auf den verschiedenen Stiifen seiner Entwicke- 
 lung appeared in Leipzig between 1852 and 1865, and is counted 
 a classic in jurisprudence. 
 
 ^ Geib, Karl Gustav (l 808-1 864). An eminent criminologist. 
 Wss a Professor of Zurich and afterwards of Tubingen, where
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 245 
 
 63. Maine — Ancient Law?- 
 
 64. Gierke — Genossenschaftsrecht.'^ 
 
 65. Stahl — Philosophie des Rechts.^ 
 
 he died. Wrote many books, of which the most important 
 was his Geschichte des romischen Kriminalprozesses bis zum 
 Tode Justitiians in 1842. His Lehrbuch des deutschen Strafrechts 
 appeared in 1861 and 1862, but was never completed. 
 
 ^ Maine, Sir Henry James Sumner (1822-1888). Jurist; born 
 in Kelso, Scotland ; educated at Christ's Hospital, London, and 
 at Pembroke College, Cambridge ; was Regius Professor of 
 Civil Law at Cambridge, 1 847-54. In 1862 he became a 
 legal member of Council in India and held the oihce for seven 
 years. In 1871 he became a K. C.S.I, and had a seat on the 
 Indian Council. In 1877 he was elected Master of Trinity 
 Hall, Cambridge, and in 1887 became Whewell Professor of 
 International Law at Cambridge. He died at Cannes. His 
 principal work is his Ancient Law : its Connexion ivith the Early 
 History of Society and its Relation to Modern Ideas, first published 
 in 1861. 
 
 ^ Gierke, Otto Friedrich (1841- still living), was born 
 in Stettin; was Professor of Law in Breslau, Heidelberg and 
 Berlin successively. Served in the Franco-German War of 
 1870. His principal work. Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, 
 appeared in 3 volumes in Berlin, the first in 1868, the 
 third in 188 1. 
 
 ^ Stahl, Friedrich Julius (1802-1861), was born in Munich 
 of Jewish parents, died in Briickenau. Held chairs of law and 
 jurisprudence in Berlin and other cities, and wrote many 
 books. His Die Philosophie des Rcchts mid geschichtlicher 
 Ansicht appeared at Heidelberg in 2 volumes in 1830 and 
 
 1837-
 
 246 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 66. Gentz — Briefwechsel mit Adam Miiller^ 
 6'j. Yd\\.gvn^—Polignosie? 
 
 68. Frantz — Kritik oiler Parteien.^ 
 
 69. De Maistre — Considerations sur la France.'^ 
 
 1 Gentz, Friedrich von (1764-1832). A distinguished 
 publicist and statesman ; born in Breslau, died at Weinhaus, 
 near Vienna ; studed Jurisprudence in Konigsberg. One of 
 his earliest literary efforts was a translation of Burke's Reflections 
 upon the French Revolution. Played a very considerable part 
 in the combination of the powers of Europe against Napoleon 
 in 1809-15. He was the author of many books. His Brief e- 
 wechsel mit Adam Miiller W3iS published in Stuttgart in 1857 — 
 long after his death. 
 
 2 VoUgraff, Karl Friedrich (l 794-1 863), was for a time 
 Professor of Jurisprudence at Marburg, where he died. His 
 two most important books were : (i) Der Systeme der praktiscken 
 Politik im Abendlande ; (2) Erster Versuch einer Begriindung der 
 allgemeinen Ethnologie durch die Anthropologie und der Staats 
 und Rechts Philosophie durch die Ethnologie oder N ationalitdt 
 der Folker, published in 4 volumes in 1851 to 1855. It is in 
 this last volume that a section is devoted to Polignosie. 
 
 ' Frantz, Konstantin (1817-1891). Distinguished publicist; 
 born at Halberstadt and died at Blasewitz, near Dresden, where 
 he made his home for many years. Was for a time German 
 Consul in Spain. His great doctrine laid down in his Die 
 fVeltpolitik, 1883, was the union of Central Europe against 
 the growing power of Russia and the United States of America. 
 His Kritik aller Parteien was published in Berlin in 1862. 
 
 * Maistre, Joseph Marie Comte de (175 3-1 821). A distin- 
 guished French publicist; born at Chambery; studied at the 
 University of Turin. Lived for some years at Lausanne, where
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 247 
 
 70. Donoso Cortes — Ecrits Politiques.^ 
 
 yi. Perin — De la Richesse dans les Societes Chrhiennes.'^ 
 
 72. Le Play — La Reforme Sociale.^ 
 
 73. Riehl — Die Burgerliche Sociale.^ 
 
 he published in 1796 his Considerations sur la Revolution fran- 
 (aise. 
 
 ^ Donoso Cortes, Jean Francois (1809-185 3). A famous 
 Spanish publicist ; born in Estremadura ; played a considerable 
 part in Spanish afltairs under Marie-Christine and Queen 
 Isabella. Was for a time Spanish Ambassador to Berlin, and 
 later to France, where he died in Paris. He wrote much upon 
 such questions as the Catholic Church and Socialism. 
 
 2 Perin, Henri Charles Xavier (18 1 5- ), a Belgium 
 economist, born at Mons ; became an advocate at Brussels and 
 also Professor of Political Economy in that city. His book De 
 la Richesse dans les Societes Chretiennes appeared in Paris in 
 2 volumes in 1861. 
 
 ^ Le Play, Pierre Guillaume Frederic (i 806-1 882). Born 
 at Honfleur. He directed the organization of the Paris Inter- 
 national Exhibitions of 1855 and 1867. He wrote many books. 
 His La reforme sociale en France deduite de V observation comparee 
 des peuples Europeens was published in two volumes in 1864. 
 
 * Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich (1823-1897). A well-known 
 author; born at Biebrich-am-Rhein, died in Munich. He 
 was associated with several German newspapers, and edited 
 from 1848 to 1 85 1 the Nassauische Allgemeine Zeitung, from 
 1 85 1 to 1853 the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, and afterwards 
 became a Professor of Literature at Munich. In 1885 he became 
 the director of the Bavarian National Museum. He wrote 
 many books, the one referred to by Lord Acton having been 
 published in 1851 under the title oi Die burgerliche Gesellschaft.
 
 248 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 74. Sismondi — Etudes sur les Constitutions des Peuples 
 Libres.^ 
 
 75. Rossi — Cours du Droit Constitutionnel? 
 j6. Barante — Vie de Royer Collard.^ 
 
 ^ Sismondi, Jean Charles Leonard Sismonde de (1773-1842), 
 the distinguished historian of the Italian republics, was born 
 at Geneva of an Italian family originally from Pisa. He 
 resided for a time in England. His famous book the Histoire 
 des Republiques Italiennes de Moyen-Age appeared between 
 1807 and 1818 in 16 volumes. His Etudes sur les Constitutions 
 des Peuples Libres, was one of many other books 
 
 2 Rossi, Pellegrino Luigi Odoardo (1787-1848). An Italian 
 publicist ; born at Carrara. Keenly sympathized with the 
 French Revolution and served under Murat in the Hundred 
 Days, after which he fled to Geneva. In later years he became 
 a nationalized Frenchman, occupied a Chair of Constitutional 
 Law, and finally became a peer. As Comte Rossi he went on 
 a special embassy to Rome. He was assassinated in that city 
 during the troubles of 1848. His Traite du Droit Constitutionnel 
 appeared in 2 volumes. 
 
 3 Barante, Aimable Guillaume Prosper Brugiere, baron de 
 (1782-1868), historian and politician, was born at Riom. He 
 was made a Counciller of State by Louis XVIII in 1815, and 
 a peer of France in 1 819. He was elected a member of the 
 French Academy in 1828. Under Louis Philippe he became 
 Ambassador first at Turin and afterwards at St. Petersburg. 
 After the revolution of 1848 he devoted himself entirely to 
 literature. He wrote many historical and hterary studies, and 
 translated the works of Schiller into French. His Fie politique 
 de Royer-Collard has several times been reprinted.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 249 
 
 "J"]. Duvergier de Hauranne — Histoire du Gouvernement 
 Parlementaire} 
 
 78. Madison — Debates of the Congress of Confederation.- 
 
 79. Hamilton — The Federalist.^ 
 
 80. Calhoun — Essay on Government.^ 
 
 1 Duvergier de Hauranne, Prosper (i 798-1881), was a 
 distinguished French pubUcist, born at Rouen. He was 
 parliamentary deputy for Sancerre in 1 83 1 and took part in 
 most of the poHtical struggles of the following twenty years. 
 He was exiled from France at the time of the Coup d'Etat, but 
 returned during the reign of Napoleon III. Henceforth he 
 devoted himself exclusively to historical studies. His Histoire 
 du gouvernement farlementaire en France, published in 1870, 
 secured his election to the French Academy. 
 
 2 Madison, James (1751-1836). The fourth President of 
 the United States ; born at Port Conway, Virginia. Acted 
 with Jay and Hamilton in the Convention which framed the 
 Constitution and wrote with them Fhe Federalist. He had 
 two terms of office — between 1809 and 1817 — as President. 
 He died at Montpelier, Virginia. His Debates of the Congress 
 of Confederation was published in EUiot's " Debates on the 
 State Conventions," 4 vols., Philadelphia, 1861. 
 
 3 Hamilton, Alexander (1757-1804). A great American 
 statesman, who served in Washington's army, and after the 
 war became eminent as a lawyer in New Yorlc. He wrote fifty-one 
 out of the eighty-five essays of The Federalist. He was appointed 
 Secretary of the Treasury to the United States in 1789. He 
 was mortally wounded in a duel by Aaron Burr in 1804. His 
 influence upon the American Constitution gives him a great 
 place in the annals of the Republic. 
 
 ^ Calhoun, John Campbell (1782-1850). An American
 
 250 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 8i. Dumont — Sophistries Anarchiques.^ 
 
 82. Quinet — La Revolution Frangaise? 
 
 83. Stein — Sozialismus in Frankreich.^ 
 
 statesman ; born in Abbeville County, South Carolina and 
 studied at Yale. As a Member of Congress he supported the 
 war with Great Britain in 181 2-1 5. He was twice Vice- 
 President of the United States. He died at Washington. 
 A Disquisition on Government and a Discourse on the Con- 
 titution and Government of the United States were written in 
 the last months of his life. His Collected Works appeared in 
 
 1853-4- 
 
 1 Dumont, Pierre Etienne Louis (1759-1829). A great 
 
 publicist ; born in Geneva, and principally known in England 
 by his association with Bentham, to whom he acted as an editor 
 and interpreter. Lived much in Paris, St. Petersburg, and, 
 above all, in London, where he knew Fox, Sheridan, and other 
 famous men, and taught the children of Lord Shelburne. 
 Dumont's Sophismes Anarchiques appears in Bentham's Collected 
 Works as Anarchical Fallacies. 
 
 2 Quinet, Edgar (i 803-1 875). French historian and philo- 
 sopher ; born at Borg and died in Paris. His epic poem of 
 Ahasuerus was placed upon the Index. Of his many books 
 his La Revolution Frangaise is the best known. It was written 
 in Switzerland, where he was an exile during the reign of 
 Napoleon III. He returned to France in 1870. 
 
 3 Stein, Lorenz von (1815-1890). Writer on economics, 
 studied in Kiel and in Jena. In 1855 he became Professor of 
 International Law in Vienna. He wrote books on statecraft 
 and international law. His work entitled Der Sozialismus 
 und Kommunismus des heutigen Frankreich appeared in Leipzig 
 in 1843.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 25 1 
 
 84. Lassalle — System der Erworhenen Rechte? 
 
 85. Tlionissen — Le Socialisme depuis VAntiquite? 
 
 86. Considerant — Destinee Sociale? 
 
 87. Roscher — N ationalokonomik.^ 
 89. Mill — System of Logic.^ 
 
 1 Lassalle, Ferdinand (1825-1864), the famous social demo- 
 crat, was of Jewish birth ; born at Breslau. He took part 
 in the revolution of 1848 and received six months' imprison- 
 ment. He was wounded in a duel at Geneva over a love affair 
 and died two days later. His System der Erworhenen Rechte 
 appeared in 1861. 
 
 2 Thonissen, Jean Joseph (1817-1891). A distinguished 
 jurist ; born in Belgium. He studied at Liege and in Paris ; 
 became a Professor of the Catholic University of Louvain ; 
 afterwards became a Minister of State. Of his many works his 
 Socialisme depuis I'antiquite jusqu'd la constitution iran^aise 
 de 1852 is best known. 
 
 3 Considerant, Victor (1808-1894). Born at Sahns, and, 
 after the Revolution of 1848, entered the Chamber of Deputies. 
 He crossed to America to found a colony in Texas, but ruined 
 himself by the experiment. He returned to France in 1869. 
 He was the author of many socialistic treatises. 
 
 * Roscher, Wilhelm (18 17-1894), economist, was born in 
 Hanover. Held a chair first in Gottingen and afterwards in 
 Leipzig, where he died. His Geschichte der Nationalokonomik 
 in Deutschland appeared in Munich in 1874. 
 
 ^ Mill, John Stuart (1806-187 3), the famous publicist and 
 author, was born in London, and educated by his father, James 
 Mill (1773-1836). He served in the India Office, 1823-58 ; he 
 was M.P. for Westminster, 1865-68. His works include 
 the Principles of Political Economy, 1848 ; the Essay on Liberty, 
 1859, and the System of Logic, which first appeared in 1843.
 
 252 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 90. Coleridge — Aids to Reflection.'^ 
 
 91. Radowitz — Fragmenter' 
 
 92. Gioberti — Pensieri.^ 
 
 1 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834), poet and critic, 
 was born at Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire; educated at Christ's 
 Hospital, London, and at Jesus College, Cambridge. In the 
 volume of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth of 1798 Coleridge 
 contributed the Ancient Mariner, and he was to make his greatest 
 reputation by this and other poems. His best prose work 
 was his Biographia Literaria (1817). His Aids to Reflection 
 was first published in 1825. 
 
 2 Radowitz, Joseph Maria von (1797-1853). A Prussian 
 general and statesman ; born in Blankenberg and died in Berlin. 
 Fought in the Napoleonic wars and was wounded at the battle 
 of Leipzig. Afterwards served as Ambassador to various German 
 Courts. He wrote several treatises bearing upon current 
 affairs, and his Fragmente form Vols. IV and V of his Collected 
 Works in 5 volumes, which were issued in Berlin in 1852- 
 
 53- 
 
 ^ Gioberti, Vincent (1801-1852). An Italian statesman 
 
 and philosopher ; born in Turin, where he afterwards became 
 Professor of Theology. Was for a time Court Chaplain, but 
 his liberal views led to exile, and he retired first to Paris, then 
 to Brussels. Afterwards became famous as a neo-Catholic 
 with his attempt to combine faith with science and art, and 
 urged the independence and the unity of Italy. His Jesuite 
 moderne, pubHshed in 1847, created a sensation. After some 
 years of home poHtics he was appointed by King Victor Em- 
 manuel as Ambassador to Paris. It is noteworthy in the light 
 of Lord Acton's recommendation of his Pensieri that his works 
 have been placed on the Index.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 253 
 
 93. Humboldt — Kosmos.^ 
 
 94. De Candolle — Histoire des Sciences et des Savantsr 
 
 95. Darwin — Origin of Species.^ 
 
 96. Littre — Fragments de Philosophie.'^ 
 
 97. Cournot — Enchavnements des Idees jondamentales.^ 
 
 1 Humboldt, Friedrich Heinrich Alexander Baron von 
 (1769-1859), the great naturalist, was born and died in Berlin, 
 and studied at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, Berlin and Gottingen ; 
 he spent five years (1799-1804) in exploring South America, 
 and in 1829 travelled through Central Asia. His Kosmos 
 appeared between 1845 and 1858 in 4 volumes. 
 
 2 De Candolle, Alphonse de (1806-1893). The son of the 
 celebrated botanist, Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, and was 
 himself a professor of that science at Geneva. His Histoire 
 des sciences et des savants depuis deux siecles appeared in 1873. 
 
 3 Darwin, Charles Robert (i 809-1 882), the great naturalist 
 and discoverer of natural selection, was born at Shrewsbury, 
 where he was educated at the Grammar School, at Edinburgh 
 University, and at Christ's College, Cambridge. His most 
 famous book. The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, 
 was first published in 1859. 
 
 * Littre, Maximilien Paul Emile (i 801-1884), the famous 
 lexicographer whose Dictionnaire de la langue fran^aise gave 
 him a world-wide reputation. He was born in Paris. He 
 associated himself with Auguste Comte and the Positive Philo- 
 sophy, and contributed many volumes in support of Comte's 
 standpoint. 
 
 ^ Cournot, Antoine Augustin (1801-1877). Born at 
 Gray in Savoy ; wrote many mathematical treatises. His 
 Traite de renchatnement des idees fondamentales dans les sciences 
 et dans I'histoire was published in 2 volumes.
 
 254 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 98. Monatschriften der wissenschajtlichen Vereine^. 
 
 This list, written in 1883 in Miss Gladstone's 
 (Mrs. Drew's) Diary, must always have an interest 
 in the history of the human mind. 
 
 But my readers will, I imagine, for the most 
 part, agree with me that there are others besides 
 untutored savages and illiterate peasant women 
 to whom such a list is entirely impracticable. It 
 indicates the enormous preference which on the 
 whole Lord Acton gave to the Literature of 
 Knowledge over the Literature of Power, to use 
 De Quincey's famous distinction. With the 
 exception of Dante's Divine Comedy there is 
 practically not a single book that has any title 
 whatever to a place in the Literature of Power, 
 a literature which many of us think the only 
 thing in the world of books worth consideration. 
 Great philosophy is here, and high thought. 
 
 ^ This was a most comprehensive addition, and fully makes 
 up for the abrupt termination of the list of the hundred best 
 books with two omissions. The omission of the book num- 
 bered 88 will also have been remarked. There are probably a 
 hundred " Monatschriften der Wissenschaftlichen Vereine " or 
 magazines of scientific societies issued in Germany. Sperling's 
 Zeitschriften-Adressbuch gives more than two columns of these.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 255 
 
 Who would for a moment wish to disparage St. 
 Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor, or Aquinas 
 the Angelic ? Plato and Pascal, Malebranche and 
 Fenelon, Bossuet and Machiavelli are all among 
 the world's immortals. Yet now and again we 
 are bewildered hy finding the least important 
 book of a well-known author — as for example 
 Rousseau's Poland instead of the Confessions 
 and Coleridge's Jids to Reflection instead of the 
 Poems or the Biographia Literaria. Think of an 
 historian whose ideal of historical work was so 
 high that he despised all who worked only from 
 printed documents, selecting the Memorial of 
 St. Helena of Las Casas in preference not only to 
 a hundred-and-one similar compilations con- 
 cerning Napoleon's exile, but in preference to 
 Thucydides, Herodotus and Gibbon. 
 
 Sometimes Lord Acton names a theologian 
 who is absolutely out-of-date, at others a philoso- 
 pher who is in the same case. But on the whole 
 it is a fascinating list as an index to what a well- 
 trained mind thought the noblest mental equip- 
 ment for life's work. At the best, it is true, it 
 would represent but one half of life. But then 
 Lord Acton recognized this when he asked that
 
 256 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 men should be " steeled against the charm of 
 literary beauty and talent," and he was assuming 
 in any case that all the books in aesthetic liter- 
 ature, the best poetry and the best history had 
 already been read, as he undoubtedly had read 
 them. 
 
 " The charm of literary beauty and talent ! " 
 There is the whole question. Nothing really 
 matters for the average man, so far as books are 
 concerned, but this charm, and I am criticizing 
 Lord Acton's list for the average man. The 
 student who has got beyond it need not worry 
 himself about classified lists. He may read his 
 Plato and Aristotle, his Pascal and Newman, 
 his Christian apologists and German theolo- 
 gians, as he wills ; or he may read in some other 
 quite different direction. Guidance is impossible 
 to a mind at such a stage of cultivation as Lord 
 Acton had in view. 
 
 Only minds at a more primitive stage of cul- 
 ture than this most learned and most accom- 
 plished man seemed able to conceive of, could 
 be bettered by advice as to reading. Given, 
 indeed, contact with some superior mind, which 
 out of its rich equipment of culture should advise
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 257 
 
 as to the books that might be most profitably 
 read, I could imagine advice being helpful. It 
 would be of no value, it is true, to an untutored 
 savage or illiterate peasant, but to a youth fresh 
 from school-books and much modern fiction, to 
 a young girl about to enter upon life in its more 
 serious aspects, it would be immensely serviceable. 
 It was of such as these that Mr. Ruskin thought 
 when he wrote of " King's Treasures " in Sesame 
 and Lilies, and the same idea was doubtless 
 in Sir John Lubbock's mind when he lectured 
 on the " Hundred Best Books." But Lord 
 Avebury's list had its limitations, it seems to 
 me, for any one who has an interest in good 
 literature and guidance to the reading thereof. 
 To give " Scott " as one book and " Shakspere " 
 as another was I suggest to shirk much responsi- 
 bility of selection. Scott is a whole library, 
 Shakspere is yet another. One may give 
 "Keats" or '^ Shelley " because they are more 
 limited in quantity. Even to name novels by . 
 Charles Kingsley and Bulwer Lytton in this 
 select hundred was to demonstrate to men of 
 this generation that Lord Avebury being of an 
 earlier one had a bias in favour of the books 
 
 I.M. j^
 
 258 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 that we are all outgrowing. To include Mill's 
 Logic is to ignore the Time Spirit acting on 
 philosophy ; to include Tennyson's Idylls its 
 action on poetry. Mill and Tennyson will al- 
 ways live in literature but not I think by these 
 books. 
 
 But the fact is that there is no possibility of 
 naming the hundred best books. No one could 
 quarrel with Lord Avebury if he had named 
 these as his hundred own favourites among the 
 books of the world. Still, it might have been his 
 hundred ; it could not possibly have been any 
 one else's hundred because every man of education 
 must make his own choice. No ! the naming 
 of the hundred best books for any large, general 
 audience is quite impossible. All that is possible 
 in such a connexion is to state emphatically 
 that there are very few books that are equally 
 suitable to every kind of intellect. Temperament 
 as well as intellectual endowment make for so 
 much in reading. Take, for example, the Imita- 
 tion of Christ. George Eliot, although not a 
 Christian, found it soul-satisfying. Thackeray, 
 as I think a more robust intellect, found it well 
 nigh as mischievous as did Eugene Sue, whose
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 259 
 
 anathematizations in his novel The JVafidertng 
 Jew are remembered by all. Other books 
 that have been the outcome of piety of 
 mind leave less room for difference of opinion. 
 Surely Dante's Divine Comedy, and Bunyan's 
 Pilgrim's Progress, make an universal appeal. 
 That universal appeal is the point at which alone 
 guidance is possible. There are great books that 
 can be read only by the few, but surely the very 
 greatest appeal alike to the educated and the 
 illiterate, to the man of rich intellectual endow- 
 ment and to the man to whom all processes of 
 reasoning are incomprehensible. Hamlet is a 
 wonderful test of this quality. It " holds the 
 boards " at the small provincial theatre, it is 
 enacted by Mr. Crummies to an illiterate peas- 
 antry, and it is performed by^the greatest actor to 
 the most select city audience. It is made the 
 subject of study by learned commentators. It 
 is world-embracing. 
 
 Are there in the English language, including 
 translations, a hundred books that stand the test 
 as Hamlet stands it ? No two men would make 
 the same list of books that answer to this demand 
 of an universal appeal, and obviously each nation
 
 26o LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 must make its own list. Mine is for English 
 boys and girls just growing into manhood and 
 womanhood, or for those who have had no educa- 
 tional advantages in early years. I exclude living 
 writers, and I give the hundred in four groups. 
 
 POETRY. 
 
 1. The Bible.i 
 
 2. The Odyssey, translated by Butcher and Lang.^ 
 
 3. The Iliad, translated by Lang, Leaf and Myers .^ 
 
 ^ The Bible can be best read in paragraph form from the 
 Eversley edition, published by the Macmillans, or from the 
 Temple Bible, issued by J. M. Dent — the latter an edition for the 
 pocket. The translation of 1610 is literature and has made 
 literature. The revised translation of our own day has neither 
 characteristic. Something can be said for the Douay Bible in 
 this connexion. It was published in Douay in the same year 
 as the Protestant version appeared — 1610. Certain words from 
 it, such as " Threnes " for " Lamentations " as the Threnes of 
 Jeremiah, have a poetical quality that deserved survival. 
 
 2-3 I'j^g Iliad may be read in a hundred verse translations 
 of which those by Pope and Cowper are the best known. Both 
 these may be found in Bohn's Libraries (G. Bell & Sons) ; but 
 the prose translation for which Mr. Lang and his friends are 
 responsible (Macmillan) is for our generation far and away the 
 best introduction to Homer for the non-Grecian.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 261 
 
 4. Aeschylus, translated by George Warr.^ 
 
 5. Sophocles, translated by J. S. Phillimore.^ 
 
 6. Euripides, translated by Gilbert Murray.' 
 
 7. Virgil, translated by Dryden.* 
 
 8. Catullus, translated by Theodore Martin.^ 
 
 9. Horace, translated by Theodore Martin.* 
 
 1-2-3 Under the title of " The Athenian Drama," George 
 Allen has published three fine volumes of the works of the Greek 
 dramatists. 
 
 4 Dryden's translation of Virgil has been followed by many 
 others both in prose and verse. There was one good prose 
 version by C. Davidson recently issued in Laurie's Classical 
 Library. An interesting translation of Virgil's Georgics 
 into English verse was recently made by Lord Burghclere and 
 published by John Murray. The young student, however, will 
 do well to approach Virgil through Dryden. He will find the 
 book in the Chandos Classics, or superbly printed in Professor 
 Saintsbury's edition of Dryden^s Works, Vol. XIV, 
 
 •* There have been many translations of Catullus. One, by 
 Sir Richard Burton, was issued by Leonard Smithers in 1894. 
 In Bohn's Library there is a prose translation by Walter K. Kelly. 
 Professor Robinson Ellis made a verse translation that has been 
 widely praised. Grant Allen translated the Attis in 1892. 
 On the whole, the English verse translation by Sir Theodore 
 Martin made in 1 861 (Blackwood & Son) is far and away the 
 best suited for a first acquaintance with this the ' tenderest 
 of Roman Poets.' 
 
 * Horace has been made the subject of many translations. 
 Perhaps there are fifty now available. John Conington's 
 edition of his complete works, twi volumes (Bell), is well known. 
 The best introduction to Horace for the young student is in
 
 262 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 10. Dante, translated by Cary.^ 
 
 11. Shakspere, Hamlet.^ 
 
 12. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales.^ 
 
 Sir Theodore Martin's translation, two volumes (Blackwood), 
 and a volume by the same author entitled Horace in " Ancient 
 Classics for English Readers " (Blackwood) is a charming little 
 book. 
 
 1 Dante's Divine Comedy as translated by Henry Francis 
 Cary (1772-1844) has been described by Mr. Ruskin as better 
 reading than Milton's " Paradise Lost." James Russell Lowell, 
 with true patriotism, declared that his countrymen Longfellow's 
 translation (Routledge) was the best. Something may be said 
 for the prose translation by Dr. John Carlyle of the Inferno 
 (Bell) and for Mr. A. J. Butler's prose translation of the whole 
 of the Divine Comedy in three volumes (Macmillan). Other 
 translations which have had a great vogue are by Wright and 
 Dean Plumptre. The best books on Dante are those by Dr. 
 Edward Moore (Clarendon Press). Cary's translation can be 
 obtained in one volume in Bohn's Library (Bell) or in the 
 Chandos Classics (Warne). 
 
 - I contend that while most of the poets are self-contained in 
 a single volume, Shakspere's plays are best enjoyed as separate 
 entities. Certainly each of them has a library attached to it, 
 and it is quite profitable to read Hamlet in Mr. Horace 
 Howard Furness's edition (Lippincott) with a multitude of 
 criticisms of the play bound up with the text of Hamlet. 
 But Hamlet should be read first in the Temple Shakspere 
 (Dent) or in the Arden Shakspere (Methuen). To this last 
 there is an admirable introduction by Professor Dowden. 
 
 ^ Chaucer's Canterbury Tales should be read in Mr. Alfred W 
 Pollard's edition, which forms two volumes of the " Everslcy
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 263 
 
 13. FitzGerald, Omar Khayyam.'^ 
 
 14. Goethe, Faust? 
 
 15. Shelley.^ 
 
 16. Byron.^ 
 
 Library " (Macmillan). The " Tales " may be obtained in 
 cheaper form in the Chaucer of the Aldine Poets (Bell), of 
 which I have grateful memories, having first read "Chaucer "in 
 these little volumes. The enthusiast will obtain the Complete 
 Works of Chaucer edited for the Clarendon Press by Professor 
 W. W. Skeat. 
 
 ^ FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam can be obtained in its four 
 versions, each of which has its merits, only from the Mac- 
 millans, who publish it in many forms. The edition in the 
 Golden Treasury Series may be particularly commended. The 
 present writer has written an introduction to a sixpenny 
 edition of the first version. It is published by William Heine- 
 mann. 
 
 2 Goethe's Faust has been translated in many forms. Cer- 
 tainly Anster's version (Sampson Low) is the most vivacious. 
 Anna Swanwick, Sir Theodore Martin and Bayard Taylor's 
 translations have about equal merit. 
 
 ^ Shelley's Poetical Works should be read in the one volume 
 issued in green cloth by the Macmillans, with an introduction 
 by Edward Dowden, or in the Oxford Poets (Henry Froude), 
 with an introduction by H. Buxton Forman, but perhaps the 
 best edition is that of the Clarendon Press with an introduction 
 by Thomas Hutchinson. Mr. Forman's Hbrary edition of 
 Shelley^s Complete Works is the desire of all collectors. 
 
 ^ Byrori's Poetical Works, edited by Ernest Coleridge, form 
 seven volumes of John Murray's edition of Byron's Works 
 in thirteen volumes. There is not a good one- volume Byron.
 
 264 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 17- 
 
 Wordsworth.^ 
 
 18. 
 
 Keats.2 
 
 19. 
 
 Burns.2 
 
 20. 
 
 Coleridge.^ 
 
 21. 
 
 Cowper.^ 
 
 I particularly commend the three-volume edition (George 
 Newnes.) 
 
 ^ Wordsworth may be read in his entirety in the sixteen 
 volumes of Prose and Poetry edited by William Knight in 
 the Eversley Library (Macmillan). The same publisher issues an 
 admirable Wordsworth in one volume, edited, with an 
 introduction by John Morley. But the first approach to 
 Wordsworth's verse should be made through Matthew Arnold's 
 Select Poems in the Golden Treasury Series (Macmillan). 
 
 2 Keats^s Works are issued in one volume in the Oxford 
 Poets (Froude), and in five shilling volumes by Gowans and 
 Gray of Glasgow. Mr. Buxton Forman's annotations to this 
 cheap edition exceed in value those attached to his more 
 expensive " Library Edition," which, however, as with the 
 Shelley, in eight volumes, is out of print. 
 
 2 The four volumes of Burns, with an introduction by W. E. 
 Henley, are pleasant to read. They are published by 
 Jack, of Edinburgh. The best single-volume Burns is 
 that in the Globe Library (Macmillan), with an introduction 
 by Alexander Smith. 
 
 * There is no rival to the one-volume edition of Coleridge's 
 Poems, with an introduction by J. Dykes Campbell, pubHshed 
 by Macmillan. Mr. Dykes Campbell's biography of Coleridge 
 should also be read. The prose works of Coleridge are obtain- 
 able in Bohn's Library. The fortunate book lover has many in 
 Pickering editions. 
 
 ^ Cowper's Complete Works are acquired for a modest sum
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 265 
 
 22. Crabbe.i 
 
 23. Tennyson. 2 
 
 24. Browning.^ 
 
 25. Milton.^ 
 
 of the second-hand bookseller in Southey's sixteen-volume 
 edition. The two best one-volume issues of the Poems are the 
 Globe Library Edition with an introduction by Canon Benham 
 (Macmillan), and Cozope/s Complete Poems with an introduction 
 by J. C. Bailey (Methuen). The best of the letters are con- 
 tained in a volume in the Golden Treasury Series, with an 
 introduction by Mrs. Oliphant. The Complete Letters of 
 Cozvper, edited by Thomas Wright, have been published by 
 Hodder & Stoughton in four volumes. 
 
 1 Crabbe's Works, in eight volumes, with biography by his 
 son, may be obtained very cheaply from the second-hand book- 
 seller. With all the merits of both Works and Life they have 
 not been reprinted satisfactorily. The only good modern 
 edition of Crabbe's Poems is in three volumes published by the 
 Cambridge University Press, edited by A. W. Ward. 
 
 2 The best one-volume Tennyson is issued by the Macmillans, 
 who still hold certain copyrights. The Library Edition of 
 Tennyson, with the Biography included in the twelve volumes, 
 is a desirable acquisition. 
 
 3 Not all the sixteen volumes of the Library Edition of 
 Browning pay for perusal. The most convenient form is that 
 of the two-volume edition (Smith, Elder & Co.), with notes by 
 Augustine Birrell. 
 
 ^ Milton's Poetical Works as annotated by David Masson 
 (Macmillan) make the standard library edition, and the same 
 publishers have given us the best one-volume Milton in the 
 Globe Library, with an introduction by Professor Masson, 
 Milton's one effective biographer.
 
 266 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 FICTION. 
 
 1. The Arabian Nights Entertainment.^ 
 
 2. Don Quixote, by Cervantes.^ 
 
 3. Pilgrim'' s Progress, by Bunyan.^ 
 
 4. Robinson Crusoe, by Defoe."* 
 
 ^ The Arabian Nights'' Entertainments is first introduced to 
 us all as a children's story-book. Tennyson has placed on record 
 his own early memories : — 
 
 " In sooth it was a goodly time, 
 For it was in the golden prime 
 Of good Haroun Alraschid." 
 
 But the collector of the hundred best books will do well to read 
 the Arabian Nights in the translation by Edward William 
 Lane, edited by Stanley Lane Poole, in 4 volumes, for George 
 Bell & Sons. 
 
 2 The most satisfactory translation of Cervantes's great 
 romance is that made by John Ormesby, revised and edited by 
 James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, published by Gowans & Gray in 
 4 shilling volumes. 
 
 ^ The Pilgrim^s Progress is presented in a hundred forms. 
 The present writer first read it in a penny edition. It should 
 be possessed by the book-lover in a volume of the Cambridge 
 English Classics, in which Grace Abounding and The Pilgrim^s 
 Progress are given together, edited by Dr. John Brown, and 
 published by the Cambridge University Press. 
 
 * Schoolboys, notwithstanding Macaulay, usually know but 
 few good books, but every schoolboy knows Defoe's Robinson 
 Crusoe in one form or another. The maker of a library will 
 prefer it as a Volume of Defoe's Works (J. M. Dent), or as
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 267 
 
 5. Gulliver's Travels^ by Swift. ^ 
 
 6. Clarissa, by Richardson. ^ 
 
 7. Tom Jones, by Fielding.^ 
 
 8. Rasselas, by Johnson.* 
 
 Volume VII of Defoe's Novels and Miscellaneous Works (Bell 
 & Sons). There are many good shilling editions of the book 
 by itself, but Defoe should be read in many of his works and 
 particularly in Moll Flanders. 
 
 ^ As with Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver^s Travels can be obtained 
 in many cheap forms, but it is well that it should be obtained 
 as Volume VIII of Swift's Prose Works, published in Bohn's 
 Libraries by George Bell & Sons. There has not been a really 
 good edition of Swift's works since Scott's monumental book. 
 
 2 Clarissa should be read in nine of the twenty volumes of 
 Richardson's Novels, published by Chapman & Hall — a very 
 dainty well-printed book. " I love these large, still books," 
 said Lord Tennyson. 
 
 3 The greatest of all novels, Tom Jones, is obtainable in 
 several Library Editions of Fielding's Works. A cheap well- 
 printed form is that of the Works of Henry Fielding in 12 
 volumes, published by Gay & Bird. Here The Story of Tom 
 Jones a Foundling is in 4 volumes. The book is in 2 
 volumes in Bohn's Library — an excellent edition. 
 
 * Johnson's Rasselas has frequently been reprinted, but there 
 is no edition for a book-lover at present in the bookshops. It 
 is included in Classic Tales in a volume of Bohn's Standard 
 Library. The wise course is to look out for one of the 
 earlier editions with copper plates that are constantly to be 
 found on second-hand bookstalls. But Johnson's Works should 
 be bought in a fine octavo edition.
 
 268 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 9. Vicar of Wakefield, by Goldsmith.^ 
 
 10. Sentimental Journey, by Sterne.^ 
 
 11. Nightmare Abbey, by Peacock.^ 
 
 12. Kenilworth, by Walter Scott.'* 
 
 13. Pere Goriot, by Balzac.^ 
 
 ^ Goldsmith's Ficar of Wakefield should be possessed in the 
 edition which Mr. Hugh Thomson has illustrated and Mr. 
 Austin Dobson has edited for the Macmillans. There is a 
 good edition of Goldsmith's Works in Bohn's Library. 
 
 2 Sterne's Sentimental Journey is also a volume for the 
 second-hand bookstall, although that and the equally fine 
 Tristram Shandy may be obtained in many pretty forms. I 
 have two editions of Sterne's books, but they are both fine old 
 copies. 
 
 •^ There are two very good editions of Peacock's delightful 
 romances. Nightmare Abbey forms a volume of J. M. Dent's 
 edition in 9 volumes, edited by Dr. Garnett ; and the whole 
 of Peacock's remarkable stories are contained in a single 
 volume of Newnes' " Thin Paper Classics." 
 
 * Sir Walter Scott's novels are available in many forms 
 equally worthy of a good library. The best is the edition pub- 
 lished by Jack of Edinburgh. The Temple Library of Scott 
 (J. M. Dent) may be commended for those who desire pocket 
 volumes, while Mr. Andrew Lang's Introductions give an 
 added value to an edition published by the Macmillans, 
 Scott's twenty-eight novels are indispensable to every good 
 library, and every reader will have his own favourite. 
 
 ^ Balzac's novels are obtainable in a good translation by 
 Ellen Marriage, edited by George Saintsbury, published in 
 New York by the Macmillan Company and in London by J. M. 
 Dent.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 269 
 
 14. 7he Three Musketeers, by Dumas.^ 
 
 15. Vanity Fair, by Thackeray ,2 
 
 16. Fillette, by Charlotte Bronte.^ 
 
 17. David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens.^ 
 
 18. Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope.^ 
 
 19. Boccaccio's Decameron.^ 
 
 ^ A translation of Dumas' novels in 48 volumes is 
 published by Dent. The Three Musketeers is in 2 volumes. 
 There are many cheap one volume editions. 
 
 2 Thackeray's Vanity Fair is pleasantly read in the edition 
 of his novels published by J. M. Dent. His original publishers, 
 Smith, Elder & Co., issue his works in many forms. 
 
 ^ The best edition of Charlotte Bronte's Fillette is that in 
 the " Haworth Edition," published by Smith, Elder & Co., 
 vfith. an Introduction by Mrs. Humphry Ward. 
 
 * Charles Dickens' novels, of which David Copperfield is 
 generally pronounced to be the best, should be obtained in the 
 " Oxford India Paper Dickens " (Chapman & Hall and Henry 
 Frowde). A serviceable edition is that published by the Mac- 
 millans, with Introductions by Charles Dickens's son, but that 
 edition still fails of Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of 
 Edwin Drood, of which the copyright is not yet exhausted. 
 
 ^ Anthony Trollope's novels are being reissued, in England 
 by John Lane and George Bell & Sons, and in America in a 
 most attractive form by Dodd, Mead & Co. All three pub- 
 lishers have a good edition of Barchester Tozvers, Trollope's 
 best novel. 
 
 ^ Boccaccio's Decameron is in my library in many forms — in 
 3 volumes of the Villon Society's publications, translated by 
 John Payne ; in 2 handsome volumes issued by Laurence & 
 Bullen ; and in the Extra Volumes of Bohn's Library. There
 
 270 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 20. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte.^ 
 
 21. The Cloister mid the Hearth, by Charles Reade.^ 
 
 22. Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo.^ 
 
 23. Cranford, by Mrs. Gaskell.* 
 
 24. Consuelo, by George Sand.^ 
 
 25. Charles O^M alley, by Charles Lever.^ 
 
 is a pretty edition available published by Gibbons in 3 
 volumes. 
 
 ^ Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights forms a volume of the 
 Haworth Edition of the Bronte novels, published by Smith, 
 Elder & Co. It has an introduction by Mrs. Humphry Ward. 
 
 2 Charles Reade's Cloister and the Hearth is available in 
 many forms. The pleasantest is in 4 volumes issued by 
 Chatto & Windus, with an Introduction by Sir Walter Besant. 
 There is a remarkable shilling edition issued by Collins of 
 Glasgow. 
 
 ^ Victor Hugo's Les Miserables may be most pleasantly read 
 in the 10 volumes, translated by M. Jules Gray, published by 
 J. M. Dent & Co. 
 
 * Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford can be obtained in the six volume 
 edition of that writer's works published by Smith, Elder & Co., 
 with Introductions by Dr. A. W. Ward ; in a volume illustrated 
 by Hugh Thomson, with an Introduction by Mrs. Ritchie, 
 published by the Macmillans, or in the World's Classics 
 (Henry Frowde), where there is an additional chapter en- 
 titled, " The Cage at Cranford." 
 
 ^ The translation of George Sand's Consuelo in my library is 
 by Frank H. Potter, 4 volumes, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. 
 * Lever's Charles CMalley I have as volumes of the Com- 
 plete Works published by Downey. There is a pleasant edition 
 in Nelson's " Pocket Library."
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 271 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 History, Essays, etc. 
 
 1. Macaulay, History of England.^ 
 
 2. Carlyle, Past and Present.^ 
 
 3. Motley, Dutch Republic.^ 
 
 4. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 Macaulay's History of England is available in many attrac- 
 tive forms from the original publishers, the Longmans. There 
 is a neat thin paper edition for the pocket in 5 volumes issued 
 by Chatto & Windus. 
 
 2 For Carlyle's Past and Present I recommend the Centenary 
 Edition of Carlyle's Works, published by Chapman & Hall. 
 There is an annotated edition of Sartor Resartus by J. A. S. 
 Barrett (A. & C. Black), two annotated editions of The French 
 Revolution, one by Dr. Holland Rose (G. Bell & Sons), and an- 
 other by C. R. L. Fletcher, 3 volumes (Methuen), and an 
 annotated edition of The Cromwell Letters, edited by S. C. 
 Lomax, 3 volumes (Methuen). No publisher has yet 
 attempted an annotated edition of Past and Present, but Sir 
 Ernest Clarke's translation of Jocelyn of Bragelond (Chatto & 
 Windus) may be commended as supplemental to Carlyle's most 
 delightful book. 
 
 2 Motley's Works are available in 9 volumes of a Library 
 Edition published by John Murray. A cheaper issue of the 
 Dutch Re-public is that in 3 volumes of the World's Classics, to 
 which I have contributed a biographical introduction. 
 
 ^ For many years the one standard edition of Gibbon was that 
 published by John Murray, in 8 volumes, with notes by Dean 
 Milman and others. It has been superseded by Professor 
 Bury's annotated edition in 7 volumes (Methuen).
 
 272 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 5. Plutarch's Lives. ^ 
 
 6. Montaigne's Essays.^ 
 
 7. Richard Steele, Essays.'^ 
 
 8. Lamb, Essays of Elia.* 
 
 9. De Quincey, Opium Eater.^ 
 
 ^ Plutarch's Lives, translated by A. Stewart and George 
 Long, form 4 volumes of Bohn's Standard Library. There 
 is a handy volume for the pocket in Dent's Temple Classics in 
 10 volumes, translated by Sir Thomas North. 
 
 2 Montaigne's Essays I have in three forms ; in the Tudor 
 Translations (David Nutt), where there is an Introduction to 
 the 6 volumes of Sir Thomas North's translation by the Rt. Hon. 
 George Wyndham ; in Dent's Temple Classics, where John 
 Florio's translation is given in 5 volumes. A much valued 
 edition is that in 3 volumes, the translation by Charles 
 Cotton, pubHshed by Reeves & Turner in 1877. 
 
 ^ Steele's essays were written for the Tatler and the Spectator 
 side by side with those of Addison. The best edition of The 
 Spectator is that published in 8 volumes, edited by George 
 A. Aitken for Nimmo, and of The Tatler that published in 4 
 volumes, edited also by Mr. Aitken for Duckworth & Co. 
 
 * Lamb's Essays of Elia can be read in a volume of the 
 Eversley Library (Macmillan), edited by Canon Ainger. The 
 standard edition of Lamb's Works is that edited by Mr. E. V. 
 Lucas, in 7 volumes, for Methuen. Mr. Lucas's biography of 
 Lamb has superseded all others. 
 
 ^ Thomas de Quincey's Opium Eater may be obtained as a 
 volume of Newnes's Thin Paper Classics, in the World's 
 Classics, or in Dent's Everyman's Library. But the Complete 
 Works of De Quincey, in 16 volumes, edited by David Mason 
 and published by A. & C. Black, should be in every library.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 273 
 
 10. Hazlitt, Essays?- 
 
 11. Borrow, Lavengro.^ 
 
 12. Emerson, Representative Men.^ 
 
 13. Landor, Imaginary Conversations.*' 
 
 14. Arnold, Essays in Criticism.^ 
 
 15. Herodotus, Macaulay^s Translation.^ 
 
 ^ William Hazlitt never received the treatment he deserved 
 until Mr. J. M. Dent issued in 1903 his Collected Works, in 13 
 volumes, edited by A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover. Of 
 cheap reprints of Hazlitt I commend The Spirit of the Age, 
 Winterslow and Sketches and Essays, three separate volumes of 
 the World's Classics (Frow^de). 
 
 2 George Borrow's Lavengro should only be read in Mr. 
 John Murray's edition, as it there contains certain additional 
 and valuable matter gathered from the original manuscript by 
 William I. Knapp. The Library Edition of Borrow, in 6 
 volumes (Murray), may be particularly commended. 
 
 ^ Emerson's Complete Works are published by the Rout- 
 ledges in 4 volumes, in which Representative Men may be 
 found in Vol. H. Some may prefer the Eversley Library 
 Emerson, which has an Introduction by John Morley. 
 There are many cheap editions of about equal value. 
 
 ^ Landor's Imaginary Conversations form six volumes of the 
 complete Landor, edited by Charles G. Crump, and published 
 in 10 volumes by J. M. Dent. 
 
 ^ Matthew Arnold's Essays in Criticism is published by 
 Macmillan. It also forms Vol. Ill of the Library Edition of 
 his Works in 15 volumes. A "Second Series" has less 
 significance. 
 
 ® The Works of Herodotus, published by the Macmillans, 
 translated by George C. Macaulay, is the best edition for the 
 
 I.M. 18
 
 274 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 1 6. Howell's Familiar Letters ?- 
 
 ij. Buckle's History of Civilization? 
 
 1 8. Tacitus, Church and Brodribb's Translation.^ 
 
 19. Mitford's Our Village.'^ 
 
 20. Green's Short History of the English People.^ 
 
 general reader. Canon Rawlinson's Herodotus, published by 
 John Murray, has had a longer life, but is now only published 
 in an abridged form. 
 
 ^ James Howell's Familiar Letters, or Epistolae Ho Elianae, 
 should be read in the edition published in 2 volumes by 
 David Nutt, with an Introduction by Joseph Jacobs. 
 
 2 The History of Civilization, by Henry Thomas Buckle, is 
 in my library in the original 2 volumes published by Parker 
 in 1857. It is now issued in 3 volumes in Longman's Silver 
 Library, and in 3 volumes in the World's Classics. 
 
 3 The History of Tacitus should be read in the translation 
 by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodripp. It 
 is published by the Macmillans. 
 
 4 Our Village, by Mary Russell Mitford, is a collection of 
 essays which in their completest form may be obtained in two 
 volumes of Bohn's Library (Bell). The essential essays should 
 be possessed in the edition published by the Macmillans — Our 
 Village, by Mary Russell Mitford, with an Introduction by 
 Anne Thackeray Ritchie, and one hundred illustrations by 
 Hugh Thomson. 
 
 ^ Green's Short History of the English People is published by 
 the Macmillans in i volume, or illustrated in 4 volumes. 
 The book was enlarged, but disimproved, under the title of 
 A History of the English People, in 4 volumes, uniform with 
 the Conquest of England and the Making of England by the 
 same author.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 275 
 
 21. Taine, Ancient Regime.^ 
 11. Bourrienne, Napoleonr 
 
 23. Tocqueville, Democracy in America? 
 
 24. Walton, Compleat Angler.^ 
 
 1 Talne's Ancient Regime is a good introduction to the 
 conditions which made the French Revolution, It forms the 
 first volume of Les Origines de la France Contemporaine, and 
 may be read in a translation by John Durand, published by 
 Dalby, Isbister & Co. in 1877. 
 
 2 The Life of Napoleon has been written by many pens, in 
 our own day most competently by Dr. Holland Rose (2 vols. 
 Bell) ; but a good account of the Emperor, indispensable for 
 some particulars and an undoubted classic, is that by de 
 Bourrienne, Napoleon's private secretary, published in an 
 English translation, in 4 volumes, by Bentley in 1836. 
 
 ^ Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville, may be 
 had in a translation by Henry Reeve, published in 2 volumes 
 by the Longmans. Read also A History of the United States by 
 C. Benjamin Andrews, 2 volumes (Smith, Elder), and above all 
 the American Commonwealth, by James Bryce, 2 volumes 
 (Macmillan). 
 
 * The Compleat Angler of Isaac Walton may be purchased in 
 many forms. I have a fine library edition edited by that prince 
 of living anglers, Mr. R. B. Marston, called The Lea and Dove 
 Edition, this being the looth edition of the book (Sampson 
 Low, 1888). I have also an edition edited by George A. B. 
 Dewar, with an Introduction by Sir Edward Grey and Etchings 
 by William Strang and D. Y. Cameron, 2 volumes (Free- 
 mantle), and a i volume edition published by Ingram & 
 Cooke in the Illustrated Library.
 
 276 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 25 White, Natural History of Selbournt.^ 
 
 Biographical and Autobiographical. 
 
 1. Boswell's Johnson.^ 
 
 2. Lockhart's Scott.^ ^^ ,. 
 
 3. Pepys's Diary .^ 
 
 1 There are many editions of Gilbert White's Natural 
 History of Selbourne to be commended. Three that are in my 
 library are (i) edited with an Introduction and Notes by L. C. 
 Miall and W. Warde Fowler (Methuen) ; (2) edited with Notes 
 by Grant Allen, illustrated by Edmund H. New (John Lane) ; 
 (3) rearranged and classified under subjects by Charles Mosley 
 (Elliot Stock). 
 
 2 Of BostveWs Life of Johnson there are innumerable editions. 
 The special enthusiast will not be happy until he possesses Dr. 
 Birkbeck Hill's edition in 6 volumes (Clarendon Press). The 
 most satisfactory i volume edition is that published on thin 
 paper by Henry Frowde. I have in my library also a copy 
 of the first edition of Boswell in 2 volumes. It was pub- 
 lished by Henry Baldwin in 1791. 
 
 3 The best edition of Lockhart's Life of Scott is that published 
 in 10 volumes by Jack of Edinburgh. Readers should beware 
 of abridgments, although one of these was made by Lockhart 
 himself. The whole eighty-five chapters are worth reading, 
 even in the l volume edition published by A. & C Black. 
 
 4 Pepys''s Diary can be obtained in Bohn's Library or in 
 Newnes' Thin Paper Classics, but Pepys should only be read 
 under Mr. H. B. Wheatley's guidance. A cheap edition of
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 277 
 
 4. Walpole's Letters.^ 
 
 5. The Memoirs of Count de Gramont.^ 
 
 6. Gray's Letters.^ 
 
 7. Southey's Nelson.* 
 
 8. Moore's Byron.^ 
 
 his book, in 8 volumes, has recently been published by 
 George Bell & Sons. I have No. 2 of the large paper edition of 
 this book. No. I having gone to Pepys's own college of Braze- 
 nose, where the Pepys cypher is preserved. 
 
 ^ Until recently one knew Walpole's Letters only through 
 Peter Cunningham's edition, in 9 volumes (Bentley), and this 
 has still exclusive matter for the enthusiast, Cunningham's 
 Introduction to wit ; but the Clarendon Press has now pub- 
 lished Walpole's Letters, edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee, in 
 16 volumes, or in 8. Here are to be found more letters than 
 in any previous edition. 
 
 2 7he Memoirs of Count de Gramoni, by Anthony, Count 
 Hamilton, can be obtained in splendid type, unannotated,inan 
 edition published by Arthur L. Humphreys. A well-illustrated 
 and well-edited edition is that published by Bickers of London 
 and Scribner of New York, edited by Allan Fea. 
 
 2 Gray's Letters, with poems and life, form 4 volumes in 
 Macmillan's Eversley Library, edited by Edmund Gosse. 
 
 * You can obtain Southey's Nelson, originally written for 
 Murray's Pocket Library as a publisher's commission, in one 
 well-printed volume, with Introduction by David Hannay, 
 published by William Heinemann. It should, however, be 
 supplemented in the Life by Captain Mahan (2 volumes, 
 Sampson Low & Co.), or by Professor Laughton's Nelson and 
 His Companion in Arms (George AUen). 
 
 * Moore's Life and Letters of Byron is published by John
 
 278 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 9. Hogg's Shelley.^ 
 
 10. Rousseau's Confessions.^ 
 
 11. Froude's Carlyle.'^ 
 
 Murray in 6 volumes. It is best purchased second-hand in an 
 old set. Moore's book must be supplemented by the 6 volumes 
 of Correspondence edited by Rowland Prothero for Mr. Murray. 
 ^ Sir George Trevelyan says in his Early History of Charles 
 James Fox that Hogg's Life of Shelley is " perhaps the most 
 interesting book in our language that has never been repub- 
 lished." The reproach has been in some slight measure removed 
 by a cheap reprint in small type issued by the Routledges in 
 1906. The reader should, however, secure a copy of the first 
 edition, 2 volumes, 1857. Professor Dowden, in his Life of 
 Shelley, 1886, uses the book freely. 
 
 2 " What is the best book you have ever read .? " Emerson 
 is said to have asked George Eliot when she was about twenty- 
 two years of age and residing, unknown, near Coventry. "Rous- 
 seau's Confessions" was the reply. " I agree with you," 
 Emerson answered. But the book should not be read in a 
 translation. The completest translation is one in 2 volumes 
 published by NichoUs. There is a more abridged translation 
 by Gibbons in 4 volumes. 
 
 3 The Life of Carlyle, by James Anthony Froude, which 
 created so much controversy upon its publication, is worthy of 
 a cheap edition, which does not, however, seem to be forth- 
 coming. The book appeared in 4 volumes. The First Forty 
 Tears in 1882 and Life in London in 1884. It had been preceded 
 by Reminiscences in 1881. Every one should read the Letters 
 and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, 3 volumes, 1883. All 
 the 9 volumes are published by the Longmans.
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 279 
 
 12. Rogers's Table Talk.^ 
 
 13. Confessions of St. Augustine.^ 
 
 14. Amiel's Journal.^ 
 
 15. Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.^ 
 
 16. Lewes's Life of Goethe.^ 
 
 ^ Samuel Rogers' Table Talk has been given us in two 
 forms, first as Recollections of the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers, 
 edited by Alexander Dyce, 1856, and second as Reminiscences of 
 Samuel Rogers, 1859. The Recollections were reprinted in 
 handsome form by H. A. Rogers, of New Southgate, in 1887, 
 and the material was combined in a single volume in 1903 by 
 G. H. Powell (R. Brimley Johnson). I have the four books, 
 and delight in the many good stories they contain. 
 
 2 The Confessions of St. Augustine may be commended in 
 many small and handy editions. One, with an Introduction 
 by Alice Meynell, was published in 1900. The most beauti- 
 fully printed modern edition is that issued by Arthur Hum- 
 phreys in his Classical Series. 
 
 ^ Amiel's Journal is a fine piece of introspection. A trans- 
 lation by Mrs. Humphry Ward is published in 2 volumes 
 by the Macmillans. De Senancour's Oberniann, translated by 
 A. E. Waite (Wellby), should be read in this connexion. 
 
 ^ The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, translated by George 
 Long, appears as a volume of Bohn's Library, and more beau- 
 tifully printed in the Library of Arthur Humphreys. There 
 are many other good translations — one by John Jackson, 
 issued in 1906 by the Clarendon Press, has great merit. 
 
 ^ George Henry Lewes's Life of Goethe has gone through 
 many editions and remains a fascinating book, although it may 
 be supplemented by the translation of Duntzer's Life of
 
 28o LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 17. Sime's Life of Le3sing.^ 
 
 1 8. Franklin's Autobiography.^ 
 
 19. Greville's Memoirs.^ 
 
 20. Forster's Life of Dickens^ 
 
 21. Madame D'Arblay's Diary .* 
 
 Goethe, 2 volumes, Macmillan, and Bielschowsky's Life of 
 Goethe, Vols. I and II (Putnams). 
 
 ^ The Life of Lessing, by James Sime, is not a great 
 biography, but it is an interesting and most profitable study of 
 a noble man. Lessing will be an inspiration greater almost than 
 any other of the moderns for those who are brought in contact 
 with his fine personality. The book is in 2 volumes, published 
 by the Triibners. 
 
 2 You can read Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography in I 
 volume (Dent), or in his Collected Works — Memoirs of the Life 
 and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, edited by his grandson, 
 WiUiam Temple Franklin, 6 volumes (Colburn), 1 819. There 
 have been at least two expensive reprints of his Works of 
 late years. 
 
 ^ The Greville Memoirs were published in large octavo form 
 in the first place. Much scandal was omitted from the second 
 edition. They are now obtainable in 8 volumes of Long- 
 mans' Silver Library. They form an interesting glimpse into 
 the Court life of the later Guelphs. 
 
 * It has been complained of John Forster's Life of Charles 
 Dickens that there is too much Forster and not enough Dickens. 
 Yet it is the only guide to the life-story of the greatest of 
 the Victorian novelists. Is most pleasant to read in the 2 
 volumes of the Gadshill Edition, published by Chapman & 
 Hall. 
 
 * The Early Diary of Frances Burney, afterwards Madame
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 281 
 
 22. Newman's Apologia.^ 
 
 23. The Paston Letters. ^ 
 
 24. Cellini's Autobiography.^ ^.;, 
 
 25. Browne's Religio Medici.* 
 
 My readers for the most part have read every 
 one of these books. I throw out this list as a 
 
 D'Arblay, edited by Annie Raine Ellis, has just been reprinted 
 in two volumes of Bohn's Library (Bell). We owe also to Mr. 
 Austen Dobson a fine reprint of the later and more important 
 Diaries, which he has edited in 6 volumes for the Macmillans. 
 
 1 The Apologia pro Vita Sua of John Henry Newman is one 
 of the volumes of Cardinal Newman's Collected Works issued 
 by the Longmans. It is the most interesting, and is perhaps 
 the most destined to survive, of all the books of theological 
 controversy of the nineteenth century. 
 
 2 There is practically but one edition of the Paston Letters, 
 that edited by James Gairdner, of the Public Record Office, 
 and published by the firm of Archibald Constable. The 
 luxurious Library Edition issued by Chatto & Windus in 6 
 volumes should be acquired if possible. 
 
 ^ The Autobiography of Benvemito Cellini is best known in 
 the translation of Thomas Roscoe in Bohn's Library. Mr. J. 
 Addington Symonds, however, made a new translation, issued 
 in two fine volumes by Nimmo. 
 
 * The Religio Medici of Sir Thomas Browne can be obtained 
 in many forms, although the well-to-do collector will be satis- 
 fied only with the edition edited by Simon Wilkin. The book 
 it admirably edited by W. A. Greenhill for the " Golden 
 Treasury Series."
 
 282 LORD ACTON'S LIST OF 
 
 tentative effort in the direction of suggesting a 
 hundred books with which to start a library. The 
 young student will find much to amuse, and cer- 
 tainly nothing here to bore him. These books 
 will not make him a prig, as Mr. James Payn 
 said that Lord Avebury's list would make him a 
 prig. They will make the dull man less dull, the 
 bright man brighter. Here is good, cheerful, 
 robust reading for boy and girl, for man and 
 woman. There are many sins of omission, but 
 none of commission. Our young friend will add 
 to this list fast enough, but there is nothing in 
 it that he may not read with profit. These 
 books, I repeat, make an universal appeal. The 
 learned man may enjoy them, the unlearned may 
 enjoy them also. They are, as Hamlet is, of 
 universal interest. Devotion to science will not 
 impair a taste for them, nor will zest for abstract 
 speculations. Not even those who are " better 
 skilled in grammar than in poetry " can fail to 
 appreciate. These hundred books will in the 
 main be the hundred best books of many of my 
 readers who are quite capable of selecting for 
 themselves. One last word of advice. Let not 
 the young reader buy large quantities of books
 
 THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS 283 
 
 at once or be beguiled into subscribing for 
 some cheap series which will save him the 
 trouble of selecting. He may buy many books 
 from such cheap series afterwards, but not his 
 first hundred, I think. These should be ac- 
 quired through much saving, and purchased 
 with great thought and deliberation. The 
 purchase of a book should become to the young 
 booklover a most solemn function. 
 
 l,^;u ./ lanner, Thi te!wi.Ki r>i.:tiit^ Works, t roii.e , ai,.. Lv:..:on
 
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