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 K. OGDEN 
 
 ei?^©«3ff0^5«S)r-^ 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 \Photo by Messrs. Thotiison, Loniian, 
 
 The Right Hon. Augustine Birrell, K.C.
 
 SELECTED 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 1 884-1 907 
 
 BY 
 
 AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 
 
 THOMAS NELSON & SONS 
 
 LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN 
 AND NEW YORK
 
 PR 
 41/5- 
 
 A. •' - 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 When lately asked by my friend Mr. John Buchan to allow 
 a selection from my Essays (made by him) to be added to 
 this series, I readily assented, for when all is said and done, 
 circulation is an author's life. Whilst an author is read he 
 lives, on ceasing to be read he dies ; and the more copies 
 there are of his works in existence, the better is his chance 
 of being read somewhere and by somebody. 
 
 The other day in a cottage — " a cottage of gentility " — I 
 happened upon a damsel reading Shenstone's Essays, She 
 said she had found them there, and added (defiantly) that 
 she liked them very much. I accounted Shenstone a lucky 
 fellow, considering how slender were his talents, how flimsy 
 are his Essays, and that he died so long ago as February 1763. 
 
 I observe signs and symptoms of a recrudescence of the 
 old claim of authors for perpetual copyright, for property, 
 not privilege, in their writings. It is a dream. In the first 
 place, the essence of property, in things not consumable, is 
 the right of total exclusion. " Keep off the grass," " I want 
 my things for myself" But no author really wants to keep 
 his books to himself. Above everything else, he wants the 
 world to read them. Secondly, perpetual copyright would 
 not add a penny piece to the present value of a manuscript — - 
 poem, or novel, or history, or metaphysical or scientific 
 
 101939#
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 treatise. Publishers are not thinking, and cannot be made 
 to think, of sales a century hence. They know the average 
 life of a book only too well. Thirdly, in the case of those 
 rare authors whom Charles Lamb has called " Great Nature's 
 Stereotypes," posterity will never allow "Paradise Lost "to 
 be the property of Mr. Jacob Tonson and his assigns, or 
 "The Pilgrim's Progress" to belong to Mr. Ponder and his 
 successors in business ; and yet, unless works of genius are 
 to be unsaleable and entailed in strict settlement upon the 
 author and his next heirs for ever, this is what must happen. 
 However, a new discussion about copyright, its duration 
 and conditions, is perhaps overdue. In the meantime, cir- 
 culation is the thing. Yet let no man presume upon it, or 
 rashly believe his books immune from the ordinary fate. 
 Books, once and long "in widest commonalty" spread, 
 disappear, and go no one knows whither. What can have 
 become of all those copies ? Five-and-forty years ago I used 
 to pass an open bookstall almost daily, and knew its varying 
 contents, their outsides at least, pretty well by heart. Rarely 
 was it without, and never was it long without, its Hervey's 
 "Meditations among the Tombs" and its Zimmerman on 
 " Solitude." No books were once oftener exposed for sale. 
 Now, you may look for them almost in vain in catalogue, 
 shop, or stall. Somewhere they must be by the thousand, 
 but their dark hour has come — they have ceased to circulate. 
 As it is with them, so some day must it be with us. 
 
 " But ah, not yet, not yet I " 
 
 A.B. 
 Sheringham, Chrisivias Bay, igo8.
 
 QONTEN 
 
 TS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 MiLTCN 
 
 
 9 
 
 Dr. Johnson . . . 
 
 
 37 
 
 Edward Gibbon . 
 
 
 60 
 
 William Cowper . , 
 
 
 
 85 
 
 John Wesley 
 
 
 
 103 
 
 George Borrow . 
 
 
 
 123 
 
 Carlyle 
 
 
 
 136 
 
 Robert Browning 
 
 
 
 158 
 
 Cardinal Newman 
 
 
 
 177 
 
 Matthew Arnold 
 
 
 
 200 
 
 Walter Bagehot. 
 
 
 
 . 225 
 
 A Rogue's Memoirs 
 
 
 
 . 248 
 
 The Via Media . 
 
 
 
 . 25S 
 
 The Muse of History 
 
 
 267 
 
 Cambridge and the Poets 
 
 
 282 
 
 Is it possible to tell a C 
 
 jOod Book 
 
 
 FROM A Bad One ? 
 
 
 287 
 
 The House of Commons 
 
 
 304
 
 COC^TEC^S Continued. 
 
 Book-buying. 
 
 . 320 
 
 Bookworms . 
 
 . 325 
 
 Confirmed Readers , 
 
 • 331 
 
 First Editions 
 
 . 336 
 
 Old Booksellers 
 
 . 340 
 
 Itineraries . 
 
 . 347 
 
 Epitaphs 
 
 • 355 
 
 Authors in Court 
 
 . 360 
 
 A Connoisseur . 
 
 . .371 
 
 ^{^^
 
 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 I 884- 1 907. 
 
 MILTON. 
 
 IT is now many years ago since Mr. Carlyle took occa- 
 sion to observe, in his Life of Schiller, that, unless 
 it were the Newgate Calendar, there was no more sicken- 
 ing reading than the biographies of authors. 
 
 Allowing for the vivacity of the comparison, and only 
 remarking, with reference to the Newgate Calendar, that 
 -its compilers have usually been ver}' inferior wits, in 
 fact attorneys, it must be owned that great creative 
 and inventive genius, the most brilliant gifts of bright 
 fancy and happy expression, and a glorious imagina- 
 tion, well-nigh seeming as if it must be inspired, have 
 too often been found most unsuitably lodged in ill-living 
 and scandalous mortals. Though few things, even in 
 what is called Literature, are more disgusting than to 
 hear small critics, who earn their bite and sup by acting 
 as the self-appointed showmen of the works of their 
 betters, heaping terms of moral opprobrium upon those 
 whose genius is, if not exactly a lamp unto our feet, 
 at all events a joy to our hearts — still, not even genius 
 can repeal the Decalogue, or re-write the sentence of 
 doom, " He which is filthy, let him be filthy still." It 
 is therefore permissible to wish that some of our great 
 authors had been better men. 
 
 It is possible to dislike J ohn Milton, Men have been
 
 10 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 found able to do so, and women too ; amongst these 
 latter his daughters, or one of them at least, must even 
 be included. But there is nothing sickening about his 
 biography, for it is the life of one who early consecrated 
 himself to the service of the highest Muses, who took 
 labour and intent study as his portion, who aspired 
 himself to be a noble poem, who, Repubhcan though he 
 became, is what Carlyle called him, the moral king of 
 English literature. 
 
 Milton was bom in Bread Street, Cheapside, on the 
 9th of December, 1608. This is most satisfactory, though 
 indeed what might have been expected. There is a 
 notable disposition nowadays, amongst the meaner- 
 minded provincials, to carp and gird at the claims of 
 London to be considered the mother-city of the Anglo- 
 Saxon race, to regret her pre-eminence, and sneer at 
 her fame. In the matters of municipal government, 
 gas, water, fog, and snow, much can be alleged and 
 proved against the English capital ; but in the domain 
 of poetry, which I take to be a nation's best guaranteed 
 stock, it may safely be said that there are but two shrines 
 in England whither it is necessary for the literary pilgrim 
 to carry his cockle hat and shoon — London, the birth- 
 place of Chaucer, Spenser, Ben Jonson, Milton, Herrick, 
 Pope, Gray, Blake, Keats, and BrowTiing, and Stratford- 
 upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakspeare. Of English 
 poets it may be said generally they are either born in 
 London or remote country places. The large provincial 
 towns know them not. Indeed, nothing is more pathetic 
 than the way in which these dim, destitute places hug 
 the memory of any puny whipster of a poet who may 
 have been born within their statutory boundaries. This 
 has its advantages, for it keeps alive in certain localities 
 fames that would otherwise have utterly perished. Par- 
 nassus has forgotten all about poor Henry Kirke White, 
 but the lace manufacturers of Nottingham still name 
 him with whatever degree of reverence they may re- 
 spectively consider to be the due of letters. Manchester,
 
 MILTON. II 
 
 is yet mindful of Dr. John, Byrom. Liverpool clings to 
 Roscoe. 
 
 Milton remained faithful to his birth-city, though, like 
 many another Londoner, when he was persecuted in one 
 house he fled into another. From Bread Street he moved 
 to St. Bride's Churchyard, Fleet Street ; from Fleet 
 Street to Aldersgate Street ; from Aldersgate Street to 
 the Barbican ; from the Barbican to the south side of 
 Holborn ; from the south side of Holbom to what is 
 now called York Street, Westminster ; from York Street, 
 Westminster, to the north side of Holborn ; from the 
 north side of Holbom to Jewin Street ; from Jewin 
 Street to his last abode in Bunhill Fields. These are not 
 vain repetitions if they serve to remind a single reader 
 how all the enchantments of association lie about him. 
 Englishwomen have been found searching about Florence 
 for the street where George Eliot represents Romola as 
 having lived, who have admitted never having been to 
 Jewin Street, where the author of Lycidas and Paradise 
 Lost did in fact live. 
 
 • Milton's father was the right kind of father — amiable, 
 accomplished, and well-to-do. He was by business what 
 was then called a scrivener, a term wliich has received 
 judicial interpretation, and imported a person who 
 arranged loans on mortgage, receiving a commission for 
 so doing. The poet's mother, whose baptismal name 
 was Sarah (his father was, like himself, John), was a 
 lady of good extraction, and approved excellence and 
 virtue. We do not know very much about her, for the 
 poet was one of those rare men of genius who are pre- 
 pared to do justice to their fathers. Though Sarah 
 Milton did not die till 1637, she only knew her son as 
 the author of Conius, though it is surely a duty to believe 
 that no son would have poems like L' Allegro and // 
 Penseroso in his desk, and not at least once produce 
 them and read them aloud to his motlier. These poems, 
 though not published till 1645, were certainly composed 
 in his mother's life. She died before the troubles began,
 
 12 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 the strife and contention in which her well-graced son, 
 the poet, the dreamer of all things beautiful and cultured, 
 the author of the glancing, tripping measure — 
 
 " Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee 
 Jest and youthful jollity " — 
 
 was destined to take a part, so eager and so fierce, and 
 for which he was to sacrifice twenty years of a poet's 
 Hfe. 
 
 The poet was sent to St. Paul's School, where he had 
 excellent teaching of a humane and expanding character, 
 and he early became, what he remained until his sight 
 left him, a strenuous reader and a late student. 
 
 " Or let my lamp at midnight hour 
 Be seen on some high, lonely tower. 
 Where I may oft outwatch the Bear." 
 
 Whether the maid who was told off by the elder Milton 
 to sit up till twelve or one o'clock in the morning for 
 this wonderful Pauline realised that she was a kind of 
 doorkeeper in the house of genius, and blessed accord- 
 ingly, is not known, and may be doubted. When six- 
 teen years old ]\Iilton proceeded to Christ's College, 
 Cambridge, where his memory is still cherished ; and a 
 mulberry-tree, supposed in some way to be his, rather 
 unkindly kept alive. Milton was not a submissive pupil ; 
 in fact, he was never a submissive anything, for there is 
 point in Dr. Johnson's malicious remark, that man in 
 Milton's opinion was born to be a rebel, and woman a 
 slave. 
 
 But in most cases, at all events, the rebel did well to 
 be rebellious, and perhaps he was never so entirely in 
 the right as when he protested against the slavish tradi- 
 tions of Cambridge educational methods in 1625. 
 
 Universities must, however, at all times prove dis- 
 appointing places to the young and ingenuous soul, who 
 goes up to them eager for literature, seeing in every don 
 a devotee to intellectual beauty, and hoping that lee-
 
 MILTON. 13 
 
 tures will, by some occult process — the genius loci — 
 initiate him into the mysteries of taste and the store- 
 houses of culture. And then the improving conversa- 
 tion, the flashing wit, the friction of mind with mind — 
 these are looked for, but hardly found ; and the young 
 scholar groans in spirit, and perhaps does as Milton did — 
 quarrels with his tutor. But if he is wise he will, as 
 Milton also did, make it up again, and get the most that 
 he can from his stony-hearted stepmother before the 
 time comes for him to bid her his Vale vale et cBternum 
 vale. 
 
 Milton remained seven years at Cambridge — from 1625 
 to 1632 — from his seventeenth to his twenty-fourth year. 
 Any intention or thought he ever may have had of 
 taking orders he seems early to have rejected with a 
 characteristic scorn. He considered a state of subscrip- 
 tion to articles a state of slavery, and Milton was always 
 determined, whatever else he was or might become, to 
 be his own man. Though never in sjnnpathy with the 
 governing tone of the place, there is no reason to suppose 
 .that Milton (any more than others) found this lack seri- 
 ously to interfere with a fair amount of good solid en- 
 joyment from day to day. He had friends who courted 
 his society, and pursuits both grave and gay to occupy 
 his hours of study and relaxation. He was called the 
 " Lady " of his college, on account of his personal beauty 
 and the purity and daintiness of his life and conversation . 
 
 After leaving Cambridge Milton began his life, so 
 attractive to one's thoughts, at Horton, in Buckingham- 
 shire, where his father had a house in which his mother 
 was living. Here for live years, from his twenty-fourth 
 to his twenty-ninth year — a period often stormy in the 
 lives of poets — ^he continued his work of self-education. 
 Some of his Cambridge friends appear to have grown a 
 little anxious, on seeing one who had distinction stamped 
 upon his brow, doing what the world calls nothing ; and 
 Milton himself was watchful, and even suspicious. His 
 second sonnet records this state of feeling :
 
 14 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 " How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth. 
 Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year ! 
 My hasting days fly on with full career. 
 But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th." 
 
 And yet no poet had ever a more beautiful springtide, 
 though it was restless, as spring should be, with the 
 promise of greater things and " high midsummer pomps." 
 These latter it was that were postponed almost too long. 
 Milton at Horton made up his mind to be a great 
 poet — neither more nor less ; and with that end in view 
 he toiled unceasingly. A more solemn dedication of a 
 man by himself to the poetical ofhce cannot be imagined. 
 Everything about him became, as it were, pontifical, 
 almost sacramental. A poet's soul must contain the 
 perfect shape of all things good, wise, and just. His 
 body must be spotless and without blemish, his life pure, 
 his thoughts high, his studies intense. There was no 
 drinking at the "Mermaid" for John Milton. His 
 thoughts, like his joys, were not those that 
 
 " are in widest commonalty spread." 
 
 When in his walks he met the Hodge of his period, he is 
 more likely to have thought of a line in Virgil than of 
 stopping to have a chat with the poor fellow. He be- 
 came a student of the Italian language, and writes to a 
 friend : "I who certainly have not merely wetted the 
 tip of my lips in the stream of these (the classical) lan- 
 guages, but in proportion to my years have swallowed 
 the most copious draughts, can yet sometimes retire 
 with avidity and delight to feast on Dante, Petrarch, 
 and many others ; nor has Athens itself been able to 
 confine me to the transparent waves of its Ilissus, nor 
 ancient Rome to the banks of its Tiber, so as to prevent 
 my visiting with delight the streams of the Amo and 
 the hills of Fsesolae." 
 
 Now it was that he, in his often-quoted words written 
 to the young Deodati, doomed to an early death, was 
 meditating " an immortality of fame," letting his wings
 
 MILTON. 15 
 
 grow and preparing to fly. But dreaming though he 
 ever was of things to come, none the less, it was at Horton 
 he composed Comiis, Lycidas, U Allegro, and II Penseroso, 
 poems which enable us half sadly to realise how much 
 went and how much was sacrificed to make the author 
 of Paradise Lost. 
 
 After five 37ears' retirement Milton began to feel the 
 want of a little society, of the kind that is " quiet, wise, 
 and good," and he meditated taking chambers in one 
 of the Inns of Court, where he could have a pleasant 
 and shady walk under " immemorial elms," and also 
 enjoy the advantages of a few choice associates at home 
 and an elegant society abroad. The death of his mother 
 in 1637 gave his thoughts another direction, and he ob- 
 tained his father's permission to travel to Italy, " that 
 woman-country, wooed not wed," which has been the 
 mistress of so many poetical hearts, and was so of John 
 Milton's. His friends and relatives saw but one diffi- 
 culty in the way. John I\Iilton the younger, though not 
 at this time a Nonconformist, was a stern and unbending 
 ♦Protestant, and was as bitter an opponent of His Holiness 
 the Pope as he certainly would have been, had his days 
 been prolonged, of His Majesty the Pretender. 
 
 There is something very characteristic in this almost 
 inflamed hostility in the case of a man with such love 
 of beauty and passion for architecture and music as 
 always abided in Milton, and who could write : 
 
 " But let my due feet never fail 
 To walk the studious cloisters' pale. 
 And love the high embowed roof. 
 With antique pillars massy-proof. 
 And storied windows richly dight, 
 Casting a dim religious light. 
 There let the pealing organ blow 
 To the full-voiced quire below. 
 In service high and anthems clear. 
 As may with sweetness, through mine ear. 
 Dissolve me into ecstasies, 
 And bring all heaven before my eyes." 
 
 Here surely is proof of an aesthetic nature beyond most
 
 16 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 of our modem raptures ; but none the less, and at the 
 very same time, Rome was for Milton the " grim wolf " 
 who, " with privy paw, daily devours apace." It is 
 with a sigh of sad sincerity that Dr. Newman admits 
 that Milton breathes through his pages a hatred of the 
 Catholic Church, and consequently the Cardinal feels 
 free to call him a proud and rebeUious creature of God. 
 That Milton was both proud and rebellious cannot be 
 disputed. Nonconformists need not claim him for their 
 own with much eagerness. What he thought of Pres- 
 byterians we know, and he was never a church member, 
 or indeed a church-goer. Dr. Newman has admitted 
 that the poet Pope was an unsatisfactory Catholic ; 
 Milton was certainly an unsatisfactory Dissenter. Let 
 us be candid in these matters. Milton was therefore 
 bidden by his friends, and by those with whom he took 
 counsel, to hold his peace whilst in Rome about the 
 " grim wolf," and he promised to do so, adding, however, 
 the Miltonic proviso that this was on condition that 
 the Papists did not attack his religion first. " If any- 
 one," he wrote, " in the very city of the Pope attacked 
 the orthodox religion, I defended it most freely." To 
 call the Protestant religion, which had not yet attained 
 to its second century, the orthodox religion under the 
 shadow of the Vatican was to have the courage of his 
 opinions. But Milton was not a man to be frightened 
 of schism. That his religious opinions should be peculiar 
 probably seemed to him to be almost inevitable, and 
 not unbecoming. He would have agreed with Emerson, 
 who declares that would man be great he must be a 
 Nonconformist. 
 
 There is something very fascinating in the records we 
 have of Milton's one visit to the Continent. A more 
 impressive Englishman never left our shores. Sir Philip 
 Sidney perhaps approaches him nearest. Beautiful be- 
 yond praise, and just sufficiently conscious of it to be 
 careful never to appear at a disadvantage, dignified in 
 manners, versed in foreign tongues, yet full of the ancient
 
 MILTON. VJ 
 
 learning — a gentleman, a scholar, a poet, a musician, 
 and a Christian — ^he moved about in a leisurely manner 
 from city to city, writing Latin verses for his hosts and 
 ItaUan sonnets in their ladies' albums, buying books 
 and music, and creating, one cannot doubt, an all too 
 flattering impression of an English Protestant. To travel 
 in Italy with Montaigne or Milton, or Evelyn or Gray, or 
 Shelley, or, pathetic as it is, with the dying Sir Walter, 
 is perhaps more instructive than to go there for yourself 
 with a tourist's ticket. Old Montaigne, who was but 
 forty-seven when he made his journey, and whom there- 
 fore I would not call old had not Pope done so before 
 me, is the most delightful of travelling companions, and 
 as easy as an old shoe. A humaner man than Milton, a 
 wiser man than Evelyn — with none of the constraint of 
 Gray, or the strange, though fascinating, outlandishness 
 of Shelley — he perhaps was more akin to Scott than any 
 of the other travellers ; but Scott went to Italy an over- 
 whelmed man, whose only fear was he might die away 
 from the heather and the murmur of Tweed. However, 
 * Milton is the most improving companion of them all, 
 and amidst the impurities of Italy, " in all the places 
 where vice meets with so little discouragement, and is 
 protected with so little shame," he remained the Milton 
 of Cambridge and Horton, and did nothing to pollute 
 the pure temple of a poet's mind. He visited Paris, 
 Nice, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence, staying in the last city 
 two months, and living on terms of great intimacy with 
 seven young Italians, whose musical names he duly 
 records. These were the months of August and Sep- 
 tember, not nowadays reckoned safe months for English- 
 men to be in Florence — modern lives being raised in 
 price. From Florence he proceeded through Siena to 
 Rome, where he also stayed two months. There he was 
 present at a magnificent entertainment given by the 
 Cardinal Francesco Barberini in his palace, and heard 
 tlie singing of the celebrated Leonora Baroni. It is not 
 for one moment to be supposed that he sought an inter-
 
 i8 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 view with the Pope, as Montaigne had done, who was 
 exhorted by"'His HoHness " to persevere in the devotion 
 he had ever manifested in the cause of the Church ; " 
 and yet perhaps Montaigne by his essays did more to 
 sap the authority of Peter's chair than Milton, however 
 willing, was able to do. 
 
 It has been remarked that IMilton's chief enthusiasm 
 in Italy was not art, but music, which falls in with 
 Coleridge's dictum, that Milton is not so much a pictur- 
 esque as a musical poet — meaning thereby, I suppose, 
 that the effects which he produces and the scenes which 
 he portrays are rather suggested to us by the rhythm 
 of his lines than by actual verbal descriptions. From 
 Rome Milton went to Naples, whence he had intended 
 to go to Sicily and Greece ; but the troubles beginning 
 at home he forewent this pleasure, and consequently 
 never saw Athens, which was surely a great pity. He 
 returned to Rome, where, troubles or no troubles, he 
 stayed another two months. From Rome he went back 
 to Florence, which he found too pleasant to leave under 
 two more months. Then he went to Lucca, and so to 
 Venice, where he was very stem with himself, and only 
 lingered a month. From Venice he went to Milan, and 
 then over the Alps to Geneva, where he had dear friends. 
 He was back in London in August, 1639, after an absence 
 of fifteen months. 
 
 The times were troubled enough. Charles I., whose 
 literary taste was so good that one must regret the mis- 
 chance that placed a crown upon his comely head, was 
 trying hard, at the bidding of a priest, to thrust Episco- 
 pacy down Scottish throats, who would not have it at 
 any price. He was desperately in need of money, and 
 the House of Commons (\yhich had then a raison d'etre) 
 was not prepared to give him any except on terms. 
 Altogether it was an exciting time, but IMilton was in 
 no way specially concerned in it. Milton looms so large 
 in our imagination amongst the figures of the period 
 that, despite Dr. Johnson's sneers, we are apt to forget
 
 MILTON. 19 
 
 his political insignificance, and to fancy him curtailing 
 his tour and returning home to take his place amongst 
 the leaders of the Parliament men. Return home he 
 did, but it was, as another pedagogue has reminded us, 
 to receive boys " to be boarded and instructed." Dr. 
 Johnson tells us that we ought not to allow our venera- 
 tion for Milton to rob us of a joke at the expense of a 
 man " who hastens home because his countrymen are 
 contending for their liberty, and when he reaches the 
 scene of action vapours away his patriotism in a private 
 boarding-school ; " but that this observation was dic- 
 tated by the good Doctor's spleen is made plain by his 
 immediately proceeding to point out, with his accus- 
 tomed good sense, that there is really nothing to laugh 
 at, since it was desirable that Milton, whose father was 
 aUve and could only make him a small allowance, should 
 do something, and there was no shame in his adopting 
 an honest and useful employment. 
 
 To be a Parliament man was no part of the ambition 
 of one who still aspired to be a poet ; who was not yet 
 .blind to the heavenly vision ; who was still meditating 
 what should be his theme, and who in the meantime 
 chastised his sister's sons, unruly lads, who did him no 
 credit and bore him no great love. 
 
 The Long Parliament met in November, 1640, and 
 began its work — brought Strafford to the scaffold, clapped 
 Laud into the Tower, Archbishop though he was, and 
 secured as best they could the permanency of Parlia- 
 mentary institutions. None of these things specially 
 concerned John Milton. But there also uprose the eter- 
 nal Church question, "What sort of Church are we to 
 have ? " The fierce controversy raged, and " its fair 
 enticing fruit," spread round " with liberal hand," proved 
 too much for the father of English epic. 
 
 " He scrupled not to eat 
 Against his better knowledge." 
 
 In other words, he commenced pamphleteer, and between
 
 20 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 May, 1641, and the following March he had written five 
 pamphlets against Episcopacy, and used an intolerable 
 deal of bad language, which, however excusable in a 
 heated controversialist, ill became the author of Conins. 
 
 The war broke out in 1642, but Milton kept house. 
 The " tented field " had no attractions for him. 
 
 In the summer of 1643 he took a sudden journey 
 into the country, and returned home to his boys with 
 a wife, the daughter of an Oxfordshire Cavalier. Mary 
 Powell was but seventeen, her poetic lord was thirty- 
 five. From the country-house of a rollicking squire to 
 Aldersgate Street was somewhat too violent a change. 
 She had left ten brothers and sisters behind her, the 
 eldest twenty-one, the yoimgest four. As one looks 
 upon this picture and on that, there is no need to won- 
 der that the poor girl was unhappy. The poet, though 
 keenly alive to the subtle charm of a woman's person- 
 ality, was unpractised in the arts of daily companion- 
 ship. He expected to find much more than he brought 
 of general good-feUowship. He had an ideal ever in his 
 mind of both bodily and spiritual excellence, and he 
 was almost greedy to realise both, but he knew not 
 how. _ One of his complaints was that his wife was mute 
 and insensate, and sat silent at his board. It must, 
 no doubt, have been deadly duU, that house in Aiders- 
 gate Street. Silence reigned, save when broken by the 
 cries of the younger Phillips sustaining chastisement. 
 MiUon had none of that noble humanitarian spirit 
 which had led Montaigne long years before him to pro- 
 test against the cowardly traditions of the schoolroom. 
 After a month of Aldersgate Street, Mrs. Milton begged 
 to go home. Her wish was granted, and she ran back 
 to her ten brothers and sisters, and when her leave of 
 absence was up refused to return. Her husband was 
 furiously angry ; and in a time so short as almost to 
 enforce the belief that he began the M^ork during the 
 honeymoon, was ready with his celebrated pamphlet, 
 The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce restored to the
 
 MILTON. 21 
 
 good of both sexes. He is even said, with his accustomed 
 courage, to have paid attentions to a Miss Davis, who 
 is described as a very handsome and witty gentlewoman, 
 and therefore not one Ukely to sit silent at his board ; 
 but she was a sensible girl as well, and had no notion 
 of a married suitor. Of Milton's pamphlet it is every- 
 one's duty to speak with profoimd respect. It is a 
 noble and passionate cry for a high ideal of married 
 life, which, so he argued, had by inflexible laws been 
 changed into a drooping and disconsolate household 
 captivity, without refuge or redemption. He shuddered 
 at the thought of a man and woman being condemned, 
 for a mistake of judgment, to be bound together to 
 their unspeakable wearisomeness and despair, for, he says, 
 not to be beloved and yet retained is the greatest injury 
 to a gentle spirit. Our present doctrine of divorce, 
 which sets the household captive free on payment of a 
 broken vow, but on no less ignoble terms, is not founded 
 on the congruous, and is indeed already discredited, if 
 not disgraced. 
 
 • This pamphlet on divorce marks the beginning of 
 Milton's mental isolation. Nobody had a word to say 
 for it. Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Independent 
 held this doctrine in as much abhorrence as did the 
 Catholic, and all alike regarded its author as either an 
 impracticable dreamer or worse. It was written cer- 
 tainly in too great haste, for his errant wife, actuated by 
 what motives cannot now be said, returned to her alle- 
 giance, was mindful of her plighted troth, and, suddenly 
 entering his room, fell at his feet and begged to be for- 
 given. She was only nineteen, and she said it was all 
 her mother's fault. Milton was not a sour man, and 
 though perhaps too apt to insist upon repentance pre- 
 ceding forgiveness, yet when it did so he could forgive 
 divinely. In a very short time the whole family of 
 Powells, whom the war had reduced to low_ estate, 
 were living under his roof in the Barbican, whither he 
 moved on the Aldersgate house proving too small for his
 
 22 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 varied belongings. The poet's father also lived with his 
 son. 
 
 Mrs. Milton had four children, three of. whom, all 
 daughters, lived to grow up. The mother died in child- 
 birth in 1652, being then twenty-six years of age. 
 
 The Areopagitica, a Speech for Unlicensed Printing, 
 followed the divorce pamphlet, but it also fell upon 
 deaf ears. Of all religious sects the Presbyterians, who 
 were then dominant, are perhaps the least hkely to 
 forego the privilege of interference in the affairs of 
 others. Instead of the Archbishop of Canterbury and 
 the Bishop of London, instead of " a lordly Imprimatur, 
 one from Lambeth House, another from the west end 
 of Paul's," there was appointed a commission of twenty 
 Presbyterians to act as State Licensers. Then was 
 Milton's soul stirred within him to a noble rage. His 
 was a threefold protest — as a citizen of a State he fondly 
 hoped had been free, as an author, and as a reader. As 
 a citizen he protested against so unnecessary and im- 
 proper an interference. It is not, he cried, " the un- 
 frocking of a priest, the unmitring of a bishop, that will 
 make us a happy nation," but the practice of virtue, 
 and virtue means freedom to choose. Milton was a 
 manly politician, and detested with his whole soul 
 grandmotherly legislation. " He who is not trusted 
 with his own actions, his drift not being known to be 
 evil, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, 
 has no great argument to think himself reputed in the 
 commonwealth wherein he was born, for other than a 
 fool or a foreigner." " They are not skilful considerers 
 of human things who imagine to remove sin by remov- 
 ing the matter of sin." " And were I the chooser, a 
 dram of well-doing should be preferred before many 
 times as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing." 
 These are texts upon which sermons, not inapplicable 
 to our own day, might be preached. Milton has made 
 our first parent so peculiarly his own, that any observa- 
 tions of his about Adam are interesting. " Many there
 
 MILTON. 23 
 
 be that complain of Divine Providence for suffering 
 Adam to transgress. Foolish tongues ! When God gave 
 him reason He gave him freedom to choose, for reason 
 is but choosing ; he had been else a mere artificial Adam. 
 We ourselves esteem not of that obedience a love or gift 
 which is of force. God therefore left him free, set before 
 him a provoking object ever almost in his eyes ; herein 
 consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the 
 praise of his abstinence." So that according to Milton 
 even Eden was a state of trial. As an author, Milton's 
 protest has great force. "And what if the author shall 
 be one so copious of fancy as to have many things well 
 worth the adding come into his mind after licensing, 
 while the book is yet under the press, which not seldom 
 happens to the best and dihgentest writers,_ and that 
 perhaps a dozen times in one book ? The printer dares 
 not go beyond his licensed copy. So often then must 
 the author trudge to his leave-giver that those his new 
 insertions may be viewed, and many a jaunt will be 
 made ere that licenser — for it must be the same man-— 
 can either be found, or found at leisure ; meanwhile 
 either the press must stand still, which is no small damage, 
 or the author lose his accuratest thoughts, and send forth 
 the book worse than he made it, which to a diligent 
 v/riter is the greatest melancholy and vexation that can 
 befall." 
 
 Milton would have had no licensers. Every book 
 should bear the printer's name, and " mischievous and 
 libellous books " were to be burnt by the common hang- 
 man, • not as an effectual remedy, but as the " most 
 effectual remedy man's prevention can use." 
 
 The noblest pamphlet in " our EngHsh, the language 
 of men ever famous and foremost in the achievements 
 of liberty," accomplished nothing, and its author must 
 akeady have thought himself fallen on evil days. 
 
 In the year 1645, the year of Naseby, as Mr. Pattison 
 remmds us, appeared the first edition of Milton's Poems. 
 Then, for the first timcj were printed L' Allegro and //
 
 24 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Penseroso, the Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, 
 and various of the sonnets. The little volume also con- 
 tained Comus and Lycidas, which had been previously 
 printed. With the exception of three sonnets and a few 
 scraps of translation, Milton had written nothing but 
 pamphlets since his return from Italy. At the beginning 
 of the volume, which is a small octavo, was a portrait 
 of the poet, most villainously executed. He was really 
 thirty-seven, but flattered himself, as men of that age 
 will, that he looked ten years younger ; he was therefore 
 much chagrined to find himself represented as a grim- 
 looking gentleman of at least fifty. The way he revenged 
 himself upon the hapless artist is well known. The 
 volume, with the portrait, is now very scarce, almost 
 rare. 
 
 In 1647 Milton removed from the Barbican, both his 
 father and his father-in-law being dead, to a smaller 
 house in Holborn, backing upon Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
 close to where the Inns of Court Hotel now stands, and 
 not far from the spot which was destined to witness the 
 terrible tragedy which was at once to darken and glorify 
 the life of one of Milton's most fervent lovers, Charles 
 Lamb. About this time he is supposed to have aban- 
 doned pedagogy. The habit of pamphleteering stuck to 
 him ; indeed, it is one seldom thrown off. It is much 
 easier to throw off the pamphlets. 
 
 In 1649 Milton became a pubhc servant, receiving the 
 appointment of Latin Secretary to the Council of Foreign 
 Affairs. He knew some member of the Committee, who 
 obtained his nomination. His duties were purely clerkly. 
 It was his business to translate English despatches into 
 Latin, and foreign despatches into Enghsh. He had 
 nothing whatever to do with the shaping of the foreign 
 policy of the Commonwealth. He was not even em- 
 ployed in translating the most important of the State 
 papers. There is no reason for supposing that he even 
 knew the leading politicians of his time. There is_ a 
 print one sees about, representing Oliver Cromwell die-
 
 MILTON. 25 
 
 tating a foreign despatch to John Milton ; but it is all 
 imagination, nor is there anything to prove that Crom- 
 well and Milton, the body and soul of English Repub- 
 licanism, were ever in the same room together, or ex- 
 changed words with one another. Milton's name does not 
 occur in the great history of Lord Clarendon. White- 
 locke, who was the leading member of the Committee 
 which Milton served, onlj^ mentions him once. Thur- 
 loe spoke of him as a blind man who wrote Latin letters. 
 Richard Baxter, in his folio history of his Life and 
 Times, never mentions Milton at all.* He was just a 
 clerk in the service of the Commonwealth, of a scholarly 
 bent, peculiar habit of thought, and somewhat of an odd 
 temper. He was not the man to cultivate great ac- 
 quaintances, or to fritter away his time waiting the con- 
 venience of other people. When once asked to use his 
 influence to obtain for a friend an appointment, he re- 
 plied he had no influence, " propter paiicissimas familiari- 
 fates meas cum gratiosis, qtii domi fere, idque lihenter, me 
 conlineo." The busy great men of the day would have 
 been more than astonished, they would have been dis- 
 gusted, had they been told that posterity would refer to 
 most of them compendiously, as having lived in the age 
 of Milton. But this need not trouble us. 
 
 On the Continent Milton enjoyed a wider reputation, 
 on account of his controversy with the great European 
 scholar, Salmasius, on the sufficiently important and 
 interesting, and then novel, subject of the execution of 
 Charles L Was it justifiable ? Salmasius, a scholar 
 and a Protestant, though of an easy-going description, 
 was employed, or rather, as he had no wages (Milton's 
 hundred Jacobuses being fictitious), nominated by Charles, 
 afterwards the Second, to indict the regicides at the bar 
 of European opinion, which accordingly he did in the 
 Latin language. The work reached this country in the 
 autumn of 1649, ^.nd it evidently became the duty of 
 somebody to answer it. Two qualifications were neccfv 
 
 * See note to Mitford's Milton, vol. i., clii.
 
 26 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 sary — the replier must be able to read Latin, and to 
 write it after a manner which should escape the ridicule 
 of the scholars of Leyden, Geneva, and Paris. Milton 
 occurred to somebody's mind, and the task was entrusted 
 to him. It is not to be supposed that Cromwell was 
 ever at the pains to read Salmasius for himself, but still 
 it would not have done to have it said that the Defensio 
 Regia of so celebrated a scholar as Salmasius remained 
 unanswered, and so the appointment was confirmed, 
 and Milton, no new hand at a pamphlet, set to work. 
 Li March, 165 1, his first Defence of the English People 
 was in print. In this great pamphlet Milton asserts, as 
 against the doctrine of the divine right of kings, the un- 
 disputed sovereignty of the people ; and he maintains 
 the proposition that, as well by the law of God, as by 
 the law of nations, and the law of England, a king of 
 England may be brought to trial and death, the people 
 being discharged from all obligations of loyalty when a 
 lawful prince becomes a tyrant, or gives himself over to 
 sloth and voluptuousness. This noble argument, alike 
 worthy of the man and the occasion, is doubtless over- 
 clouded and disfigured by personal abuse of Salmasius, 
 whose relations with his wife had surely as little to do 
 with the head of Charles I. as had poor Mr, Dick's me- 
 morial. Salmasius, it appears, was henpecked, and to 
 allow yourself to be henpecked was, in Milton's opinion, 
 a high crime and misdemeanour against humanity, and 
 one which rendered a man infamous, and disqualified 
 him from taking part in debate. 
 
 It has always been reported that Salmasius, who was 
 getting on in years, and had many things to trouble 
 him besides his own wife, perished in the effort of writ- 
 ing a reply to Milton, in which he made use of language 
 quite as bad as any of his opponent's ; but it now 
 appears that this is not so. Indeed, it is generally 
 rash to attribute a man's death to a pamphlet, or an 
 article, either of his own or anybody else's. 
 
 Salmasius, however, died, though from natural causes,
 
 MILTON. 27 
 
 and his reply was not published till after the Restora- 
 tion, when the question had become, what it has ever 
 since remained, academical. 
 
 Other pens were quicker, and to their productions 
 Milton, in 1654, replied with his Second Defence of the 
 English People, a tract containing autobiographical de- 
 tails of immense interest and charm. By this time he 
 was totally blind, though, with a touch of that personal 
 sensitiveness ever characteristic of him, he is careful to 
 tell Europe, in the Second Defence, that externally his 
 eyes were uninjured, and shone with an unclouded light. 
 
 Milton's Defences of the English People are rendered 
 provoking by his extraordinary language concerning his 
 opponents. "Numskull," "beast," "fool," "puppy," 
 " knave," " ass," " mongrel-cur," are but a few of the 
 epithets employed. This is doubtless mere matter of 
 pleading, a rule of the forum where controversies be- 
 tween scholars are conducted ; but for that very reason 
 it makes the pamphlets as provoking to an ordinary 
 reader as an old bill of complaint in Chancery must have 
 i)een to an impatient suitor who wanted his money. 
 The main issues, when cleared of personalities, are im- 
 portant enough, and are stated by Milton with great 
 clearness. " Our king made not us, but we him. Nature 
 has given fathers to us all, but we ourselves appointed 
 our own king ; so that the people is not for the king, 
 but the king for them." It was made a matter of great 
 offence amongst monarchs and monarchical persons that 
 Charles was subject to the indignity of a trial. With 
 murders and poisonings kings were long famiUar. These 
 were part of the perils of the voyage, for which they 
 were prepared, but, as Salmasius put it, "for a king to 
 be arraigned in a court of judicature, to be put to plead 
 for his life, to have sentence of death pronounced against 
 him, and that sentence executed " — oh ! horrible im- 
 piety. To this Milton replies : " Tell me, thou super- 
 lative fool, whether it be not more just, more agreeable 
 to the rules of humanity and the laws of all human
 
 28 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 societies, to bring a criminal, be his offence what it will, 
 before a court of justice, to give him leave to speak 
 for himself, and if the law condemns him, then to put him 
 to death as he has deserved, so as he may have time to 
 repent or to recollect himself ; than presently, as soon 
 as ever he is taken, to butcher him without more ado ? " 
 
 But a king of any spirit would probably answer that 
 he preferred to have his despotism tempered by assassina- 
 tion than by the mercy of a court of John Miltons. To 
 which answer Milton would have rejoined, " Despotism, 
 I know you not, since we are as free as any people under 
 heaven." 
 
 The weakest part in Milton's case is his having to 
 admit that the Parliament was overawed by the army, 
 which he says was wiser than the senators. 
 
 Milton's address to his countrymen, with which he con- 
 cludes the first defence, is veritably in his grand style : 
 
 " He has gloriously delivered you, the first of nations, 
 from the two greatest mischiefs of this life — tyranny and 
 superstition. He has endued you with greatness cf 
 mind to be First of Mankind, who after having confined 
 their own king, and having had him delivered into their 
 hands, have not scrupled to condemn him judicially, 
 and pursuant to that sentence of condemnation to put 
 him to death. After performing so glorious an action 
 as this, you ought to do nothing that's mean and little ; 
 you ought not to think of, much less do, anything but 
 what is great and subhme. ^^'hich to attain to, this is 
 your only way : as you have subdued your enemies in 
 the field, so to make it appear that you of all mankind 
 are best able to subdue Ambition, Avarice, the love of 
 Riches, and can best avoid the corruptions that pros- 
 perity is apt to introduce. These are the only argu- 
 ments by which you will be able to evince that you are 
 not such persons as this fellow represents you, traitors, 
 robbers, murderers, parricides, madmen — that you did 
 not put your king to death out of any ambitious design 
 — ^that it was not an act of fury or madness, but that it
 
 MILTON. 29 
 
 was wholly out of love to your liberty, your religion, to 
 justice, virtue, and your country, that you punished a 
 tyrant. But if it should faU out otherwise (which God 
 forbid), if, as you have been valiant in war, you should 
 grow debauched in peace, and that you should not have 
 learnt, by so eminent, so remarkable an example before 
 your eyes, to fear God, and work righteousness ; for my 
 part I shall easily grant and confess (for I cannot deny 
 it), whatever ill men may speak or think of you, to be 
 very true. And you will find in time that God's dis- 
 pleasure against you will be greater than it has been 
 against your adversaries — greater than His grace and 
 favour have been to yourselves, which you have had 
 larger experience of than any other nation under heaven." 
 
 This controversy naturally excited greater interest 
 abroad, where Latin was familiarly known, than ever 
 it did here at home. Though it cost Milton his sight, 
 or at all events accelerated the hour of his blindness, 
 he appears greatly to have enjoyed conducting a high 
 dispute in the face of Europe. " I am," so he says, 
 ''' spreading abroad amongst the cities, the kingdoms, 
 and nations, the restored culture of civility and freedom 
 of life." We certainly managed in this affair of the exe- 
 cution of Charles to get rid of that note of insularity 
 which renders our politics uninviting to the stranger. 
 
 Milton, despite his blindness, remained in the public 
 service until after the death of Cromwell ; in fact, he 
 did not formally resign until after the Restoration. He 
 played no part, having none to play, in the performances 
 that occurred between those events. He poured forth 
 pamphlets, but there is no reason to believe that they 
 were read otherwise than carelessly and by few. His 
 ideas were his own, and never had a chance of becoming 
 fruitful. There seemed to him to be a ready and an 
 easy way to establish a free Commonwealth, but on 
 the whole it turned out that the easiest thing to do was 
 to invite Charles Stuart to reascend the throne of his 
 ancestors, which he did, and Milton went into hiding.
 
 30 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 It is terrible to think how risky the situation was. Mil- 
 ton was undoubtedly in danger of his life, and Paradise 
 Lost was unwritten. He was for a time under arrest. 
 But after all he was not one of the regicides — he was 
 only a scribe who had defended regicide. Neither was 
 he a man well associated. He was a solitary, and, for 
 the most part, an unpopular thinker, and blind v^'ithal. 
 He was left alone for the rest of his days. He lived 
 first in Jewin Street, off Aldersgate Street, and finally 
 in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields. He had married, four 
 years after his first wife's death, a lady who died within 
 a twelvemonth, though her memory is kept ever fresh, 
 generation after generation, by her husband's sonnet 
 beginning : 
 
 " Methought I saw my late espoused saint." 
 
 Dr. Johnson, it is really worth remembering, called this 
 a poor sonnet. In 1664 Milton married a third and last 
 wife, a lady he had never seen, and who survived her 
 husband for no less a period than fifty-three years, not 
 dying till the year 1727. The poet's household, like his 
 country, never realised any of his ideals. His third wife 
 took decent care of him, and there the matter ended. 
 He did not belong to the category of adored fathers. 
 His daughters did not love him — it seems even probable 
 they disliked him. Mr. Pattison has pointed out that 
 Milton never was on terms even with the scholars of 
 liis age. Political acquaintances he had none. He was, 
 in Puritan language, " unconnected with any place of 
 worship," and had therefore no pastoral visits to re- 
 ceive, or sermons to discuss. The few friends he had 
 were mostly young men who were attracted to him, and 
 were glad to give him their company ; and it is well 
 that he had this pleasure, for he was ever in his wishes 
 a social man — not intended to live alone, and bHndness 
 must have made society little short of a necessity for 
 him. 
 
 Now it was, in the evening of his days, with a Stuart
 
 MILTON. 31 
 
 once more upon the throne, and Episcopacy finally in- 
 stalled, that Milton, a defeated thinker, a baffled pam- 
 phleteer — for had not Salmasius triumphed ? — with 
 Horton and Italy far, far behind him, set himself to 
 keep the promise of his glorious youth, and compose a 
 poem the world should not willingly let die. His manner 
 of life was this. In summer he rose at four, in winter at 
 five. He went to bed at nine. He began the day with 
 having the Hebrew Scriptures read to him. Then he 
 contemplated. At seven his man came to him again, 
 and he read and wrote till an early dinner. For exer- 
 cise he either walked in the garden or swung in a machine. 
 Besides conversation, his only other recreation was 
 music. He played the organ and the bass viol. He 
 would sometimes sing himself. After recreation of this 
 kind he would return to his study to be read to tiU six. 
 After six his friends were admitted, and would sit with 
 him till eight. At eight he had his supper — olives or 
 something light. He was very abstemious. After 
 supper he smoked a pipe of tobacco, drank a glass of 
 water, and went to bed. He found the night a favour- 
 able time for composition, and what he composed at 
 night he dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an 
 elbow chair with his leg thrown over the arm. 
 
 In 1664 Paradise Lost was finished, but as in 1665 
 came the Great Plague, and after the Great Plague the 
 Great Fire, it was long before the MS. found its way 
 into the hands of the licenser. It is interesting to note 
 that the first member of the general public who read 
 Paradise Lost, 1 hope all through, was a clergyman of 
 the name of Tomkyns, the deputy of the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, Dr. Sheldon, The Archbishop was the 
 State Licenser for reUgious books, but of course did not 
 do the work himself. Tomkyns did the work, and was 
 for a good while puzzled what to make of the old Re- 
 publican's poem. At last, and after some singularly 
 futile criticisms, Tomkyns consented to allow the pub- 
 lication of Paradise Lost, which accordingly appeared
 
 32 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 in 1667, admirably printed, and at the price of 3s. 
 copy. The author's agreement with the pubhsher i:l 
 in writing — as Mr. Besant tells us all agreements witl 
 publishers should be — and may be seen in the Britisl 
 Museum. Its terms are clear. The poet was to have 
 ^5 down ; another ^^5 when the first edition, which was 
 not to exceed 1,500 copies, was sold ; a third £^ when a 
 second edition was sold ; and a fourth and last £5 when a 
 third edition was sold. He got his first ^5, also his second, 
 and after his death his widow sold all her rights for ^^3. 
 Consequently £18, which represents perhaps £^0 of our 
 present currency, was Milton's share of all the money 
 that has been made by the sale of his great poem. But 
 the praise is still his. The sale was very considerable. 
 The " general reader " no doubt preferred the poems of 
 Cleaveland and Flatman, but Milton found an audience 
 which was fit and not fewer than ever is the case when 
 noble poetry is first produced. 
 
 Paradise Regained was begun upon the completion of 
 Paradise Lost, and appeared with Samson Agonistes in 
 1671, and here ended Milton's life as a producing poet. 
 He Hved on till Sunday, 8th November, 1674, when the 
 gout, or what was then called gout, struck in and he 
 died, and was buried beside his father in the Church of 
 St. Giles's, Cripplegate. He remained laborious to the 
 last, and imposed upon himself all kinds of drudgery, 
 compiling dictionaries, histories of Britain and Russia. 
 He must have worked not so much from love of his 
 subjects as from dread of idleness. But he had hours 
 of relaxation, of social intercourse, and of music ; and it 
 is pleasant to remember that one pipe of tobacco. It 
 consecrates your own. 
 
 Against Milton's great poem it is sometimes alleged 
 that it is not read ; and yet it must, I think, be admitted 
 that for one person who has read Spenser's Fairy Queen, 
 ten thousand might easily be found who have read 
 Paradise Lost. Its popularity has been widespread. 
 Mr. Mark Pattison and Mr. John Bright measure some
 
 MILTON. 33 
 
 ground between them. No other poem can be mentioned 
 which has so coloured Enghsh thought as Milton's, and 
 yet, according to the French senator, whom Mr. Arnold 
 has introduced to the plain reader, " Paradise Lost is a 
 false poem, a grotesque poem, a tiresome poem." It is 
 not easy for those who have a touch of Milton's temper, 
 though none of his genius, to listen to this foreign criti- 
 cism quite coolly. Milton was very angry with Sal- 
 masius for venturing to find fault with the Long Parlia- 
 ment for having repealed so many laws, and so far 
 forgot himself as to say, " Nam nostra; leges, Ole, quid ad 
 ie ? " But there is nothing municipal about Paradise 
 Lost. All the world has a right to be interested in it 
 and to find fault with it. But the fact that the people 
 for whom primarily it was written have taken it to their 
 hearts and have it on their lips ought to have prevented 
 it being called tiresome by a senator of France. 
 
 But what is the matter with our great epic ? That 
 nobody ever wished it longer is no real accusation. 
 Nobody ever did wish an epic longer. The most popular 
 books in the world are generally accounted too long — 
 Don Quixote, the Pilgrim's Progress, Tom Jones. But, 
 says Mr. Arnold, the whole real interest of the poem 
 depends upon our being able to take it literally ; and 
 again, " Merely as a matter of poetry, the story of the 
 Fall has no special force or effectiveness — its effective- 
 ness for us comes, and can only come, from our taking 
 it all as the literal narrative of what positive^ happened." 
 These bewildering utterances make one rub one's eyes. 
 Carlyle comes to our relief : " All which propositions 
 I for the present content myself with modestly, but 
 peremptorily and irrevocably denying." 
 
 Mr. Pattison surely speaks the language of ordi- 
 nary good sense when he writes : " For the world of 
 Paradise Lost is an ideal, conventional world quite 
 as much as the world of the Arabian Nights, or the 
 world of the chivalious romance, or that of the pastoral 
 novel."
 
 34 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Coleridge, in the twenty-second chapter of the Bio- 
 graphia Literaria, points out that the fable and char- 
 acters of Paradise Lost are not derived from Scripture, 
 as in the Messiah of Klopstock, but merely suggested 
 by it — the illusion on which all poetr}^ is founded being 
 thus never contradicted. The poem proceeds upon a 
 legend, ancient and fascinating, and to call it a com- 
 mentary upon a few texts in Genesis is a marvellous 
 criticism. 
 
 The story of the Fall of Man, as recorded in the 
 Semitic legend, is to me more attractive as a story than 
 the Tale of Troy, and I find the rebellion of Satan and 
 his dire revenge more to my mind tha^n the circles of 
 Dante. Eve is, I think, more interesting than " Heaven- 
 bom Helen, Sparta's queen " — I mean in herself, and as 
 a woman to write poetry about. 
 
 The execution of the poem is another matter. So far 
 as style is concerned its merits have not yet been ques- 
 tioned. As a matter of style and diction, Milton is as 
 safe as Virgil. The handling of the story is more vul- 
 nerable. The long speeches put in the mouth of the 
 Almighty are never pleasing, and seldom effective. The 
 weak point about argument is that it usually admits of 
 being answered. For Milton to essay to justify the ways 
 of God to man was well and pious enough, but to repre- 
 sent God Himself as doing so by argumentative process 
 was not so well, and was to expose the Almighty to 
 possible rebuff. The king is alwa3''s present in his own 
 courts, but as judge, not as advocate ; hence the royal 
 dignity never suffers. 
 
 It is narrated of an eminent barrister, who became a 
 most polished judge, Mr. Knight Bruce, that once, when 
 at the very head of his profession, he was taken in 
 before a Master in Chancery, an office since abolished, 
 and found him.self pitted against a little snip of an 
 attorney's clerk, scarce higher than the table, who, 
 nothing daunted, and by the aid of authorities he cited 
 from a bundle of books as big as himself, succeeded in
 
 MILTON. 35 
 
 worsting Knight Bruce, whom he persisted in calhng 
 over again and again " my learned friend." Mr. Bruce 
 treated the imp with that courtesy which is ahvays an 
 opponent's due, but he never went before the Masters 
 any more. 
 
 The Archangel has not escaped the reproach often 
 brought against affable persons of being a bit of a bore, 
 and though this is to speak unbecomingly, it must be 
 owned that the reader is glad whenever Adam plucks 
 up heart of grace and gets in a word edgeways. Mr. 
 Bagehot has complained of Milton's angels. He says 
 they are silly. But this is, I think, to intellectualise too 
 much. There are some classes who are fairly exempted 
 from all obligation to be intelligent, and these airy 
 messengers are surely amongst that number. The 
 retinue of a prince or of a bride justify their choice if 
 they are well-looking and group nicely. 
 
 But these objections do not touch the main issue. 
 Here is the story of the loss of Eden, told enchantingly, 
 musically, and in the grand style. " Who," says M. 
 Scherer, in a passage quoted by Mr. Arnold, " can read 
 the eleventh and twelfth books without yawning ? " 
 People, of course, are free to yawn when they please, 
 provided they put their hands to their mouths ; but in 
 answer to this insulting question one is glad to be able 
 to remember how Coleridge has singled out Adam's 
 vision of future events contained in these books as 
 especially deserving of attention. But to read them 
 is to repel the charge. 
 
 There was no need for Mr. Arnold, of all men, to 
 express dissatisfaction with Milton : 
 
 " Words which no ear ever to hear in heaven 
 Expected ; least of all from thee, ingrate. 
 In place thyself so high above thy peers." 
 
 The first thing for people to be taught is to enjoy 
 great things greatly. The spots on the sun may be 
 an interesting study, but anyhow the sun is not all
 
 36 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 spots. Indeed, sometimes in the early year, when he 
 breaks forth afresh, 
 
 " And winter, slumbering in the open air, 
 Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring," 
 
 we are apt to forget that he has any spots at all, and, 
 as he shines, are perhaps reminded of the blind, poet 
 sitting in his darkness, in this prosaic city of ours, 
 swinging his leg over the arm of his chair, and dictating 
 the lines : 
 
 " Seasons return, but not to me returns 
 Day, or the sweet approach of even or mora, 
 Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose, 
 Or flocks or herds, or human face divine. 
 But cloud instead, and ever-during dark 
 Surrounds me — from the cheerful ways of men 
 Cut off ; and for the book of loiowledge fair 
 Presented with a universal blank 
 Of nature's works, to me expunged and razed, 
 And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 
 So much the rather. Thou, Celestial Light, 
 Shine inwards, and the mind through all her powers 
 Irradiate — there plant eyes ; all mist from thence 
 Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell 
 Of things invisible to mortal sight." 
 
 Coleridge added a note to his beautiful poem, The 
 Nightingale, lest he should be supposed capable of 
 speaking with levity of a single line in Milton. The 
 note was hardly necessary, but one loves the spirit 
 that prompted him to make it. Sainte-Beuve remarks : 
 " Parler des poetes est toujours une chose bien delicate, 
 et surtout quand on I'a ete un peu soi-meme." But 
 though it does not matter what the httle poets do, 
 great ones should never pass one another without a 
 royal salute.
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 TF we should ever take occasion to say of Dr. John- 
 son's Preface to Shakspeare what he himself said 
 of a similar production of the poet Rowe, " that it does 
 not discover much profundity or penetration," we ought 
 in common fairness always to add that nobody else 
 has ever written about Shakspeare one-half so enter- 
 tainingly. If this statement be questioned, let the 
 doubter, before reviling me, re-read the preface, and if, 
 after he has done so, he still demurs, we shall be content 
 to withdraw the observation, which, indeed, has only 
 been made for the purpose of introducing a quotation 
 from the Preface itself. 
 
 In that document, Dr. Johnson, with his unrivalled 
 «;tateliness, writes as follows :— " The poet of whose 
 works I have undertaken the revision may now begin 
 to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the 
 privilege of established fame and prescriptive venera- 
 tion. He has long outlived his century, the term com- 
 monly fixed as the test of literary merit." 
 
 The whirligig of time has brought in his revenges. The 
 Doctor himself has been dead his century. He died on 
 the 13th of December, 1784. Come, let us criticise him. 
 
 Our qualifications for this high office need not be 
 investigated curiously. 
 
 ■' Criticism," writes Johnson in the 60th Idler, " is a 
 study by which men grow important and formidable 
 at a very small expense. The power of invention has 
 been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of 
 learning those sciences which may by mere labour be 
 obtained, is too great to be willingly endured ; but 
 every man can exert such judgment as he has upon the
 
 38 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 works of others ; and he whom nature has made weak, 
 and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity 
 by the name of a critick." 
 
 To proceed with our task by the method of com- 
 parison is to pursue a course open to grave objection, 
 yet it is forced upon us when we find, as we lately did, 
 a writer in the Times newspaper, in the course of a 
 not very discriminating review of Mr. Frpude's recent 
 volumes, casually remarking, as if it admitted of no 
 more doubt than the day's price of consols, that Carlyle 
 was a greater man than Johnson. It is a good thing 
 to be positive. To be positive in your opinions and 
 selfish in your habits is the best recipe, if not for happi- 
 ness, at all events for that far more attainable com- 
 modity, comfort, with which we are acquainted. " A 
 noisy man," sang Cowper, who could not bear any- 
 thing louder than the hissing of a tea-urn, " a noisy 
 man is always in the right," and a positive man can 
 seldom be proved wrong. Still, in literature it is very 
 desirable to preserve a moderate measure of independ- 
 ence, and we, therefore, make bold to ask whether it 
 is as plain as the " old hill of Howth," that Carlyle 
 was a greater man than Johnson ? Is not the precise 
 contrary the truth ? No abuse of Carlyle need be 
 looked for here or from me. When a man of genius 
 and of letters happens to have any striking virtues, 
 such as purity, temperance, honesty, the novel task 
 of dwelHng on them has such attraction for us, that we 
 are content to leave the elucidation of his faults to his 
 personal friends, and to stem, unbending moralists like 
 Mr. Edmund Yates and the World newspaper.* To 
 love Carlyle is, thanks to Mr. Froude's superhuman 
 ideal of friendship, a task of much heroism, almost 
 meriting a pension ; still, it is quite possible for the 
 candid and truth-loving soul. But a greater than 
 Johnson he most certainly was not. 
 
 * "The late Mr. Carlyle was a brute and a boor."— r//c World, 
 October aqth, 18S4.
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 39 
 
 There is a story in Lockhart's Life of Scott of an 
 ancient beggar-woman, who, whilst asking an ahns of 
 Sir Walter, described herselif, in a lucky moment for 
 her pocket, as "an old struggler." Scott made a note 
 of the phrase in his diary, and thought it deserved to 
 become classical. It certainly clings most tenaciously 
 to the memory — so picturesquely does it body forth 
 the striving attitude of poor battered humanity. John- 
 son was " an old struggler." So, too, in all conscience, 
 was Carlyle. The struggles of Johnson have long been 
 historical ; those of Carlyle have just become so. We 
 are interested in both. To be indifferent would be 
 inhuman. Both men had great endowments, tempestu- 
 ous natures, hard lots. They were not am.ongst Dame 
 Fortune's favourites. They had to fight their way. 
 What they took they took by storm. But — and here 
 is a difference indeed — Johnson came off victorious, 
 Carlyle did not. 
 
 Boswell's book is an arch of triumph, through which, 
 as we read, we see his hero passing into eternal fame, 
 to take up his place with those — 
 
 " Dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule 
 Our spirits from their urns." 
 
 Froude's book is a tomb over which the lovers of Car- 
 lyle's genius will never cease to shed tender but regret- 
 ful tears. 
 
 I doubt whether there is in English literature a 
 more triumphant book than Boswell's. What materials 
 for tragedy are wanting ? Johnson was a man of 
 strong passions, unbending spirit, violent temper, as 
 poor as a church-mouse, and as proud as the proudest 
 of church dignitaries ; endowed with the strength of a 
 coal-heaver, the courage of a lion, and the tongue of 
 Dean Swift, he could knock down booksellers and 
 silence bargees ; he was melancholy almost to madness, 
 " radically wretched," indolent, bhnded, diseased. Pov- 
 erty was long his portion ; not that genteel poverty that
 
 40 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 is sometimes behindhand with its rent, but that hungry 
 poverty that does not know where to look for its dinner. 
 Against all these things had this " old struggler " to 
 contend ; over all these things did this " old struggler " 
 prevail. Over even the fear of death, the giving up of 
 this " intellectual being," which had haunted his gloomy 
 fancy for a lifetime, he seems finally to have prevailed, 
 and to have met his end as a brave man should. 
 
 Carlyle, writing to his wife, says, and truthfully 
 enough, " The more the devil worries me the more I 
 wring him by the nose ; " but then if the devil's was 
 the only nose that was wrung in the transaction, why 
 need Carlyle cry out so loud ? After buffeting one's 
 way through the storm-tossed pages of Froude's Carlyle 
 — in which the universe is stretched upon the rack 
 because food disagrees with man a-nd cocks crow — with 
 what thankfulness and reverence do we read once again 
 the letter in which Johnson tells Mrs. Thrale how he 
 has been called to endure, not dyspepsia or sleepless- 
 ness, but paralysis itself : 
 
 " On Monday I sat for my picture, and walked a 
 considerable way with little inconvenience. In the 
 afternoon and evening I felt myself light and easy, 
 and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to 
 bed, and, in a short time, waked and sat up, as has 
 long been my custom ; when I felt a confusion in my 
 head which lasted, I suppose, about half a minute. I 
 was alarmed, and prayed God that however much He 
 might afflict my body He would spare my understand- 
 ing. . . . Soon after I perceived that I had suffered a 
 paralytic stroke, and that my speech was taken from 
 me. I had no pain, and so little dejection, in this 
 dreadful state, that I wondered at my own apathy, and 
 considered that perhaps death itself, when it should 
 come, would excite less horror than seems now to attend 
 it. In order to rouse the vocal organs I took two 
 drams. ... I then went to bed, and, strange as il 
 may seem, I think, slept. When I saw light it was
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 41 
 
 time I should contrive what I should do. Though God 
 stopped my speech He left me my hand. I enjoyed a 
 mercy which was not granted to my dear friend Law- 
 rence, who now perhaps overlooks me, as I am wTiting, 
 and rejoices that I have what he wanted. My first note 
 was necessarily to my servant, who came in talking, 
 and could not immediately comprehend why he should 
 read what I put into his hands. . . . How this will be 
 received by you I know not. I hope you will sympathise 
 with me ; but perhaps — 
 
 ♦ My mistress, gracious, mild, and good. 
 Cries — Is he dumb ? 'Tis time he shou'd.' 
 
 " I suppose you may wish to know how my disease 
 is treated by the physicians. They put a blister upon 
 my back, and two from my ear to my throat, one on a 
 side. The blister on the back has done little, and those 
 on the throat have not risen. I bulHed and bounced 
 (it sticks to our last sand), and compelled the apothecary 
 to make his salve according to the Edinburgh dispensa- 
 tory, that it might adhere better. I have now two on 
 my own prescription. They hkewise give me salt of 
 hartshorn, which I take with no great confidence ; but 
 I am satisfied that what can be done is done for me. 
 I am almost ashamed of this querulous letter, but now 
 it is written let it go." 
 
 This is indeed tonic and bark for the mind. 
 
 If, irritated by a comparison that ought never to 
 have been thrast upon us, we ask why it is that the 
 reader of Boswell finds it as hard to help loving Johnson 
 as the reader of Froude finds it hard to avoid disliking 
 Carlyle, the answer must be that, whilst the elder man 
 of letters was full to overflowing with the milk of human 
 kindness, the younger one was full to overflowing with 
 something not nearly so nice ; and that whilst Johnson 
 was pre-eminently a reasonable man, reasonable in all 
 his demands and expectations, Carlyle was the most
 
 42 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 unreasonable mortal that ever exhausted the patience 
 of nurse, mother, or wife. 
 
 Of Dr.' Johnson's affectionate nature nobody has 
 written with nobler appreciation than Carlyle himself. 
 " Perhaps it is this Divine feeling of affection, throughout 
 manifested, that principally attracts us to Johnson. A 
 true brother of men is he, and filial lover of the earth." 
 
 The day will come when it will be recognised that 
 Carlyle, as a critic, is to be judged by what he himself 
 corrected for the press, and not by splenetic entries in 
 diaries, or whimsical extravagances in private conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 Of Johnson's reasonableness nothing need be said, 
 except that it is patent everywhere. His wife's judg- 
 ment was a sound one : "He is the most sensible man 
 I ever met." 
 
 As for his brutality, of which at one time we used to 
 hear a great deal, we cannot say of it what Hookham 
 Frere said of Landor's immorality, that it was 
 
 " Mere imaginary classicality 
 Wholly devoid of criminal reality." 
 
 It was nothing of the sort. Dialectically the great 
 Doctor was a great brute. The fact is, he had so accus- 
 tomed himself to wordy warfare, that he lost all sense 
 of moral responsibihty, and cared as little for men's 
 feehngs as a* Napoleon did for their hves. When the 
 battle was over, the Doctor frequently did what no 
 soldier ever did that I have heard tell of— apologised 
 to his victims and drank wine or lemonade with them. 
 It must also be remembered that for the most part his 
 victims sought him out. They came to be tossed and 
 gored. And, after all, are they so much to be pitied ? 
 They have our sympathy, and the Doctor has our ap- 
 plause. I am not prepared to say, with the simpering 
 fellow with weak legs whom David Coppcrfield met at 
 Mr. Waterbrook's dinner-table, that I would sooner be 
 knocked down by a man with blood than picked up by
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 43 
 
 a man without any ; but, argumentatively speaking, I 
 think it would be better for a man's reputation to be 
 knocked down by Dr. Johnson than picked up by Mr. 
 Froude. 
 
 Johnson's claim to be the best of our talkers cannot, 
 on our present materials, be contested. For the most 
 part we have only talk about other talkers. Johnson's 
 is matter of record. Carlyle no doubt was a great talker 
 — no man talked against talk or broke silence to praise 
 it more eloquently than he, but unfortunately none of 
 it is in evidence. All that is given us is a sort of Com- 
 mination Service writ large. We soon weary of it. Man 
 does not live by curses alone. 
 
 An unhappier prediction of a boy's future was surely 
 never made than that of Johnson's by his cousin, Mr. 
 Cornelius Ford, who said to the infant Samuel, " You 
 will make your way the more easily in the world as you 
 are content to dispute no man's claim to conversation 
 excellence, and they will, therefore, more v.dllingly allow 
 your pretensions as a writer." Unfortunate Mr. Ford ! 
 The man never breathed whose claim to conversation 
 excellence Dr. Johnson did not dispute on every possible 
 occasion, whilst, just because he was admittedly so good 
 a talker, his pretensions as a writer have been occa- 
 sionally slighted. 
 
 Johnson's personal character has generally been allowed 
 to stand high. It, however, has not been submitted to 
 recent tests. To be the first to " smell a fault " is the 
 pride of the modern biographer. Boswell's artless pages 
 afford useful hints not lightly to be disregarded. During 
 some portion of Johnson's married life he had lodgings, 
 first at Greenwich, afterwards at Hampstead. But he 
 did not always go home o' nights ; sometimes preferring 
 to roam the streets with that vulgar ruffian Savage, who 
 was certainly no fit company for him. He once actually 
 quarrelled with " Tetty," who, despite her ridiculous 
 name, was a very sensible woman with a very sharp 
 tongue, and for a season, like stars, they dwelt apart.
 
 44 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Of the real merits of this dispute we must resign our- 
 selves to ignorance. The materials for its discussion do 
 not exist ; even Croker could not find them. Neith«^r 
 was our great moralist as sound as one would have liked 
 to see him in the matter of the payment of small debts. 
 When he came to die, he remembered several of these 
 outstanding accounts ; but what assurance have we that 
 he remembered them all ? One sum of ;;^io he sent 
 across to the honest fellow from whom he had borrowed 
 it, with an apology for his delay ; which, since it had 
 extended over a period of twenty years, was not super- 
 fluous. I wonder whether he ever repaid Mr. Dilly the 
 guinea he once borrov/ed of him to give to a very small 
 boy who had just been apprenticed to a printer. If 
 he did not, it was a great shame. That he was indebted 
 to Sir Joshua in a small loan is apparent from the fact 
 that it was one of his three dying requests to that great 
 man that he should release him from it, as, of course, the 
 most amiable of painters did. The other two requests, 
 it will be remembered, were to read his Bible, and not 
 to use his brush on Sundays. The good Sir Joshua gave 
 the desired promises with a full heart, for these two 
 great men loved one another ; but subsequently dis- 
 covered the Sabbatical restriction not a little irksome, 
 and after a while resumed his former practice, arguing 
 with himself that the Doctor really had no business to 
 extract any such promise. The point is a nice one, and 
 perhaps ere this the two friends have met and discussed 
 it in the Elysian fields. If so, I hope the Doctor, grown 
 " angelical," kept his temper with the mild shade of 
 Reynolds better than on the historical occasion when 
 he discussed with him the question of " strong drinks." 
 
 Against Garrick, Johnson undoubtedly cherished a 
 smouldering grudge, which, however, he never allowed 
 anyone but himself to fan into flame. His pique was 
 natural. Garrick had been his pupil at Edial, near 
 Lichfield ; they had come up to town together with an 
 easy united fortune of fourpcnce — " current coin o' the
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 45 
 
 realm." Garrick soon had the world at his feet, and 
 garnered golden grain. Johnson became famous too, 
 but remained poor and dingy. Garrick surrounded him- 
 self with what only money can buy, good pictures and 
 rare books. Johnson cared nothing for pictures — how 
 should he ? he could not see them ; but he did care a 
 great deal about books, and the pernickety little player 
 was chary about lending his splendidly bound rarities to 
 his quondam preceptor. Our sympathies in this matter 
 are entirely with Garrick ; Johnson was one of the best 
 men that ever lived, but not to lend books to. Like 
 Lady Slattern, he had a " most observant thumb." But 
 Garrick had no real cause for complaint. Johnson may 
 have soiled his folios and sneered at his trade, but in life 
 Johnson loved Garrick, and in death embalmed his 
 memory in a sentence which can only die with the English 
 language : "I am disappointed by that stroke of death 
 which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impover- 
 ished the public stock of harmless pleasure." 
 
 Will it be believed that puny critics have been found 
 to quarrel with this colossal compliment on the poor 
 pretext of its falsehood ? Garrick's death, urge these 
 dullards, could not possibly have echpsed the gaiety of 
 nations, since he had retired from the stage months 
 previous to his demise. When will mankind learn that 
 literature is one thing, and sworn testimony another ? 
 
 Johnson's relations with Burke were of a more crucial 
 character. The author of Rasselas and The English Dic- 
 tionary can never have been really jealous of Garrick, or 
 in the very least desirous of " bringing down the house ; " 
 but Burke had done nobler things than that. He had 
 made politics philosophical, and had at least tried to 
 cleanse them from the dust and cobwebs of party. 
 Johnson, though he had never sat in the House of Com- 
 mons, had yet, in his capacity of an unauthorised re- 
 porter, put into the mouths of honourable members 
 much better speeches than ever came out of them, and 
 it is no secret that he would have liked to make a speech
 
 46 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 or two on his own account. Burke had made many 
 Harder still to bear, there were not wanting good judges 
 to say that, in their opinion, Burke was a better talker 
 than the great Samuel himself. To cap it all, was not 
 Burke a " vile Whig " ? The ordeal was an unusually 
 trying one. Johnson emerges triumphant. 
 
 Though by no means disposed to hear men made much 
 of, he always listened to praise of Burke with a boyish 
 delight. He never wearied of it. When any new proof 
 of Burke's intellectual prowess was brought to his notice, 
 he would exclaim exultingly, " Did we not always say 
 he was a great man ? " And yet how admirably did 
 this " poor scholar " preserve his independence and 
 equanimity of mind ! It was not easy to dazzle the 
 Doctor. What a satisfactory story that is of Burke 
 showing Johnson over his fine estate at Beaconsfield, 
 and expatiating in his exuberant style on its " liberties, 
 privileges, easements, rights, and advantages," and of 
 the old Doctor, the tenant of " a two-pair back " some- 
 where off Fleet Street, peering cautiously about, criti- 
 cising everything, and observing with much coolness, — 
 
 " Non equidem invideo, miror magis." 
 
 A friendship like this could be disturbed but by death, 
 and accordingly we read : — 
 
 " Mr. Langton one day during Johnson's last illness 
 found Mr. Burke and four or five more friends sitting 
 with Johnson. Mr. Burke said to him, ' I am afraid, sir, 
 such a number of us may be oppressive to you.' ' No, 
 sir,' said Johnson, ' it is not so ; and I must be in a 
 wretched state indeed when your company would not 
 be a delight to me.' Mr. Burke, in a tremulous voice, 
 expressive of being very tenderly affected, replied, ' My 
 dear sir, you have always been too good to me.' Im- 
 mediately afterwards he went away. This was the last 
 circumstance in the acquaintance of these two eminent 
 men."
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 47 
 
 But this is a well-worn theme, though, like some other 
 well-worn themes, still profitable for edification or rebuke. 
 A hundred years can make no difference to a character 
 like Johnson's, or to a biography hke BoswelFs. We 
 are not to be robbed of our conviction that this man, 
 at ail events, was both great and good. 
 
 Johnson the author is not always fairly treated. 
 Phrases are convenient things to hand about, and it is 
 as little the custom to inquire into their truth as it is 
 to read the letterpress on banknotes. We are content 
 to count banknotes, and to repeat phrases. One of 
 these phrases is, that whilst everybody reads Boswell, 
 nobody reads Johnson. The facts are otherwise. Every- 
 body does not read Boswell, and a great many people 
 do read Johnson. If it be asked, What do the general 
 pubHc know of Johnson's nine volumes octavo ? I 
 reply, Beshj-ew the general public ! What in the name 
 of the Bodleian has the general public got to do with 
 literature ? The general public subscribes to Mudie, 
 and has its intellectual, like its lacteal sustenance, sent 
 round to it in carts. On Saturdays these carts, laden 
 with " recent works in circulation," traverse the Ux- 
 bridge Road ; on Wednesdays they toil up Highgate 
 Hill, and if we may believe the reports of travellers, are 
 occasionally seen rushing through the wilds of Camber- 
 well and bumping over Blackheath. It is not a ques- 
 tion of the general public, but of the lover of letters. 
 Do Mr. Browning, Mr. Arnold, Mr. Lowell, Mr. Trevelyan, 
 Mr. Stephen, Mr. Morley, know their Johnson ? "To 
 doubt would be disloyalty." And what these big men 
 know in their big way hundreds of little men know in 
 their little way. We have no writer with a more genuine 
 literary flavour about him than the great Cham of 
 literature. No man of letters loved letters better than 
 he. He knew literature in all its branches — he had read 
 books, he had written books, he had sold books, he had 
 bought books, and he had borrowed them. Sluggish 
 and inert in all other directions, he pranced through
 
 48 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 libraries. He loved a catalogue ; he delighted in an 
 index. He was, to employ a happy phrase of Dr. Holmes, 
 at home amongst books, as a stable-boy is amongst 
 horses. He cared intensely about the future of literature 
 and the fate of literary men. " I respect Millar," he 
 once exclaimed ; "he has raised the price of literature." 
 Now Millar was a Scotchman. Even Home Tooke was 
 not to stand in the pillory : " No, no, the dog has too 
 much literature for that." The only time the author of 
 Rasselas met the author of the Wealth of Nations wit- 
 nessed a painful scene. The English moralist gave the 
 Scotch one the lie direct, and the Scotch moralist applied 
 to the English one a phrase which would have done 
 discredit to the lips of a costermonger ; * but this not- 
 withstanding, when Boswell reported that Adam Smith 
 preferred rhyme to blank verse, Johnson hailed the news 
 as enthusiastically as did Cedric the Saxon the English 
 origin of the bravest knights in the retinue of the Nor- 
 man king. " Did Adam say that ? " he shouted : " I 
 love him for it. I could hug him ! " Johnson no doubt 
 honestly believed he held George HI. in reverence, but 
 really he did not care a pin's fee for all the crowned 
 heads of Europe. All his reverence was reserved for 
 " poor scholars." When a small boy in a wherry, on 
 whom had devolved the arduous task of rowing Johnson 
 and his biographer across the Thames, said he would give 
 all he had to know about the Argonauts, the Doctor 
 was much pleased, and gave him, or got Boswell to give 
 him, a double fare. He was ever an advocate of the 
 spread of knowledge amongst all classes and both sexes. 
 His devotion to letters has received its fitting reward, 
 the love and respect of all " lettered hearts." 
 
 Considering him a little more in detail, we find it 
 plain that he was a poet of no mean order. His res- 
 onant lines, informed as they often are with the force 
 
 * Anyone who does not wish this story to be true will find good 
 reasons for disbelieving it stated in Mr. Napier's edition of Boswell, 
 vol. iv., p. 385.
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 49 
 
 of their author's character — his strong sense, his forti- 
 tude, his gloom — take possession of the memory, and 
 suffuse themselves through one's entire system of thought. 
 A poet spouting his own verses is usually a figure to be 
 avoided ; but one could be content to be a hundred 
 and thirty next birthday to have heard Johnson recite, 
 in his full sonorous voice, and with his stately elocution. 
 The Vanity of Hnman Wishes. When he came to the 
 following lines, he usually broke down, and who can 
 wonder ? — 
 
 " Proceed, illustrious youth. 
 And virtue guard thee to the throne of truth ! 
 Yet should thy soul indulge the gen'rous heat 
 Till captive science yields her last retreat ; 
 Should reason guide thee with her brightest ray, 
 And pour on misty doubt resistless day ; 
 Should no false kindness lure to loose delight. 
 Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright ; 
 Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain. 
 And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain ; 
 Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart. 
 Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart ; 
 Should no disease thy torpid veins invade. 
 Nor melancholy's phantoms haunt thy shade ; 
 f Yet hope not life from grief or danger free. 
 
 Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee. 
 Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes. 
 And pause awhile from letters to be wise ; 
 There mark what ills the scholar's life assail. 
 Toil, envy, want, the patron and the gaol. 
 See nations, slowly wise and meanly just. 
 To buried merit raise the tardy bust. 
 If dreams yet flatter, once again attend. 
 Hear Lydiat's life, and Galileo's end." 
 
 If this be not poetry, may the name perish ! 
 
 In another style, the stanzas on the young heir's 
 majority have such great merit as to tempt one to say 
 that the author of The Jolly Beggars, Robert Burns 
 himself, might have written them. Here are four of 
 them: 
 
 *' Loosened from the minor's tether. 
 Free to mortgage or to sell ; 
 Wild as wind and light as feather. 
 Bid the sons of thrift farewell.
 
 50 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 " Call the Betseys, Kates, and Jennies, 
 
 All the names that banish care. 
 Lavish of your grandsire's guineas. 
 Show the spirit of an heir. 
 
 *' Wealth, my lad, was made to wander. 
 
 Let it wander as it will ; 
 Call the jockey, call the pander, 
 Bid them come and take their fill. 
 
 " When the bonny blade carouses. 
 Pockets full and spirits high — 
 What are acres ? what are houses ? 
 Only dirt — or wet or dry." 
 
 Johnson's prologues, and his hnes on the death of 
 Robert Levet, are well known. Indeed, it is only fair 
 to say that our respected friend, the General Public, 
 frequently has Johnsonian tags on its tongue : 
 
 " Slow rises worth by poverty depressed." 
 
 " The unconquered lord of pleasure and of pain." 
 
 " He left the name at which the world grew pale 
 To point a moral or adorn a tale." 
 
 " Death, kind nature's signal of retreat." 
 
 *' Panting Time toiled after him in vain." 
 
 All these are Johnson's, who, though he is not, like 
 Gray, whom he hated so, all quotations, is yet oftener 
 in men's mouths than they perhaps wot of. 
 
 Johnson's tragedy, Irene, need not detain us. It is 
 unreadable, and to quote his own sensible words, " It 
 is useless to criticise what nobody reads." It was indeed 
 the expressed opinion of a contemporary called Pot that 
 Irene was the finest tragedy of modern times ; but on 
 this judgment of Pot's being made known to Johnson, 
 he was only heard to mutter, " If Pot says so, Pot lies," 
 as no doubt he did. 
 
 Johnson's Latin Verses have not escaped the con- 
 demnation of scholars. Whose have ? The true mode 
 of critical approach to copies of Latin verse is by the 
 question — How bad are they ? Croker took the opinion 
 of the Marquess Wellesley as to the degree of badness
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 51 
 
 of Johnson's Latin Exercises. Lord Wellesley, as be- 
 came so distinguished an Etonian, felt the solemnity 
 of the occasion, and, after bargaining for secrecy, gave 
 it as his opinion that they were all very bad, but that 
 some perhaps were worse than others. To this judgment 
 I have nothing to add. 
 
 As a writer of English prose, Johnson has always enjoyed 
 a great, albeit a somewhat awful reputation. In childish 
 memories he is constrained to be associated with dust 
 and dictionaries, and those provoking obstacles to a 
 boy's reading — " long words." It would be easy to 
 select from Johnson's writings numerous passages written 
 in that essentially vicious style to which the name 
 Johnsonese has been cruelly given ; but the searcher 
 could not fail to find many passages guiltless of this 
 charge. The characteristics of Johnson's prose style are 
 colossal good sense, though with a strong sceptical bias, 
 good himiour, vigorous language, and movement from 
 point to point, which can only be compared to the 
 measured tread of a well-drilled company of soldiers. 
 Here is a passage from the preface to Shakspeare : 
 
 " Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary 
 evils. Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers 
 of Shakspeare, and who desires to feel the highest 
 pleasure that the drama can give, read every play from 
 the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his 
 commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, 
 let it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his 
 attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn 
 aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him 
 read on, through brightness and obscurity, through in- 
 tegrity and corruption ; let him preserve his compre- 
 hension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. 
 And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him 
 attempt exactness and read the commentators." 
 
 Where are we to find better sense, or much better 
 English ? 
 
 In the pleasant art of chaffing an author Johnson has
 
 52 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 hardly an equal. De Quincey too often overdoes it. 
 Macaulay seldom fails to excite sympathy with his 
 victim. In playfulness Mr. Arnold perhaps surpasses 
 the Doctor, but then the latter's playfulness is always 
 leonine, whilst Mr. Arnold's is surely, sometimes, just 
 a trifle kittenish. An example, no doubt a very good 
 one, of Johnson's humour must be allowed me. Soame 
 Jenyns, in his book on the Origin of Evil, had imagined 
 that, as we have not only animals for food, but choose 
 some for our diversion, the same privilege may be allowed 
 to beings above us, " who may deceive, torment, or 
 destroy us for the ends only of their own pleasure." 
 On this hint writes our merry Doctor as follows : 
 " I cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this 
 analogy, which I think he might have carried further, 
 very much to the advantage of his argument. He might 
 have shown that these ' hunters, whose game is man,' 
 have many sports analogous to our own. As we drown 
 whelps or kittens, they amuse themselves now and then 
 with sinking a ship, and stand round the fields of Blen- 
 heim, or the walls of Prague, as we encircle a cockpit. 
 As we shoot a bird flying, they take a man in the midst 
 of his business or pleasure, and knock him down with 
 an apoplexy. Some of them perhaps are virtuosi, and 
 delight in the operations of an asthma, as a human 
 philosopher in the effects of the air-pump. Many a 
 merry bout have these frolick beings at the vicissitudes 
 of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble 
 with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all 
 this he knows not why. The paroxysms of the gout and 
 stone must undoubtedly make high mirth, especially if 
 the play be a little diversified with the blunders and 
 puzzles of the blind and deaf. . . . One sport the merry 
 malice of these beings has found means of enjoying, to 
 which we have nothing equal or similar. They now 
 and then catch a mortal, proud of his parts, and flattered 
 either by the submission of those who court his kindness, 
 or the notice of those who suffer him to court theirs.
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 53 
 
 A head thus prepared for the reception of false opinions, 
 and the projection of vain designs, they easily fill with 
 idle notions till, in time, they make their plaything an 
 author ; their first diversion commonly begins with an 
 ode or an epistle, then rises perhaps to a political irony, 
 and is at last brought to its height by a treatise of phi* 
 losophy. Then begins the poor animal to entangle him* 
 self in sophisms and to flounder in absurdity." 
 
 The author of the philosophical treatise, A Free Inquiry 
 into the Nature and Origin of Evil, did not at all enjoy 
 this " merry bout " of the " frolick " Johnson. 
 
 The concluding paragraphs of Johnson's Preface to 
 his Dictionary are historical prose, and if we are anxious 
 to find passages fit to compare with them in the melan- 
 choly roU of their cadences and in their grave sincerity 
 and manly emotion, we must, I think, take a flying 
 jump from Dr. Johnson to Dr. Newman. 
 
 For sensible men the world offers no better reading 
 than the Lives of the Poets. They afford an admirable 
 example of the manner of man Johnson was. The sub- 
 ject was suggested to him by the booksellers, whom as 
 a body he never abused. Himself the son of a book- 
 seller, he respected their calling. If they treated him 
 with civility, he responded suitably. If they were rude 
 to him, he knocked them down. These worthies chose 
 their own poets. Johnson remained indifferent. He 
 knew everybody's poetry, and was always ready to 
 write anybody's Life. If he knew the facts of a poet's 
 life — and his knowledge was enormous on such subjects 
 — he found room for them ; if he did not, he supplied 
 their place with his own shrewd reflections and sombre 
 philosophy of life. It thus comes about that Johnson 
 is every bit as interesting when he is writing about 
 Sprat, or Smith, or Fenton, as he is when he has got 
 J\Iilton or Gray in hand. He is also much less provoking. 
 My own. favourite Life is that of Sir Richard Black- 
 more. 
 
 The poorer the poet the kindlier is the treatment he
 
 54 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 receives. Johnson, kept all his rough words for Shak- 
 speare, Milton, and Gray. 
 
 In this trait, surely an amiable one, he was much 
 resembled by that eminent man the late Sir George 
 Jessel, whose civility to a barrister was always in inverse 
 ratio to the barrister's practice ; and whose friendly 
 zeal in helping young and nervous practitioners over the 
 stiles of legal difficulty was only equalled by the fiery 
 enthusiasm with which he thrust back the Attorney 
 and Solicitor General and people of that sort. 
 
 As a political thinker Johnson has not had justice. 
 He has been lightly dismissed as the last of the old- 
 world Tories. He was nothing of the sort. His cast of 
 political thought is shared by thousands to this day. 
 He represents that vast army of electors whom neither 
 canvasser nor caucus has ever yet cajoled or bullied into 
 a polling-booth. Newspapers may scold, platforms may 
 shake ; whatever circulars can do may be done, all 
 that placards can tell may be told ; but the fact remains 
 that one-third of every constituency in the realm shares 
 Dr. Johnson's " narcotic indifference," and stays away. 
 
 It is, of course, impossible to reconcile all Johnson's 
 recorded utterances with any one view of anything. 
 When crossed in conversation or goaded by folly he 
 was capable of anything. But his dominant tone about 
 politics was something of this sort. Provided a man 
 lived in a State which guaranteed him private liberty and 
 secured him public order, he was very much of a knave 
 or altogether a fool if he troubled himself further. To 
 go to bed when you wish, to get up when you like, to 
 eat and drink and read what you clioose, to say across 
 your port or your tea whatever occurs to you at the 
 moment, and to earn your living as best you max^ — 
 this is what Dr. Johnson meant by private liberty. 
 Fleet Street open day and night — this is what he meant 
 by public order. Give a sensible man these, and take 
 all the rest the world goes round. Tyranny was a bug- 
 bear. Either the tyranny was bearable, or it was not.
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 55 
 
 If it was bearable, it did not matter ; and as soon as 
 it became unbearable the mob cut off the tyrant's head, 
 and wise men went home to their dinner. To views of 
 this sort he gave emphatic utterance on the well-known 
 occasion when he gave Sir Adam Ferguson a bit of his 
 mind. Sir Adam had innocently enough observed that 
 the Crown had too much power. Thereupon Johnson : 
 
 " Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this 
 childish jealousy of the power of the Crown ? The 
 Crown has not power enough. When I say that all 
 governments are alike, I consider that in no government 
 power can be abused long ; mankind will not bear it. 
 If a sovereign oppresses his people, they will rise and 
 cut off his head. There is a remedy in human nature 
 against tyranny that will keep us safe under every 
 form of government." 
 
 This is not, and never was, the language of Toryism. 
 It is a much more intellectual " ism." It is indiffer- 
 entism. So, too, in his able pamphlet, The False Alarm, 
 which had reference to Wilkes and the Middlesex election, 
 though he no doubt attempts to deal with the constitu- 
 tional aspect of the question, the real strength of his 
 case is to be found in passages like the following : — 
 
 " The grievance which has produced all this tempest 
 of outrage, the oppression in which all other oppressions 
 are included, the invasion which has left us no property, 
 the alarm that suffers no patriot to sleep in quiet, is 
 comprised in a vote of the House of Commons, by which 
 the freeholders of Middlesex are deprived of a Briton's 
 birthright — representation in Parliament. They have, 
 indeed, received the usual writ of election ; but that 
 writ, alas 1 was malicious mockery ; they were insulted 
 with the form, but denied the reality, for there was one 
 man excepted from their choice. The character of the 
 man, thus fatally excepted, I have no purpose to delineate. 
 Lampoon itself would disdain to speak ill of him of 
 whom no man speaks well. Every lover of liberty 
 stands doubtful of the fate of posterity, because the
 
 56 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 chief county in England cannot take its representative 
 from a gaol." 
 
 Temperament was of course at the bottom of this 
 indifference. Johnson wa,s of melancholy humour and 
 profoundly sceptical. Cynical he was not — he loved 
 his fellow-men ; his days were full of 
 
 " Little, nameless, unremembered acts 
 Of kindness and of love." 
 
 But he was as difficult to rouse to enthusiasm about 
 humanity as is Mr. Justice Stephen. He pitied the poor 
 devils, but he did not believe in them. They were 
 neither happy nor wise, and he saw no reason to believe 
 they would ever become either. " Leave me alone," he 
 cried to the sultry mob, bawling " Wilkes and Liberty." 
 " I at least am not ashamed to own that I care for 
 neither the one nor the other." 
 
 No man, however, resented more fiercely than John- 
 son any unnecessary interference with men who were 
 simply going their own way. The Highlanders only 
 knew Gaelic, yet political wiseacres were to be found 
 objecting to their having the Bible in their own tongue. 
 Johnson flew to arms : he wrote one of his monumental 
 letters ; the opposition was quelled, and the Gael got 
 his Bible. So too the wicked interference with Irish 
 enterprise, so much in vogue during the last century, 
 infuriated him. " Sir," he said to Sir Thomas Robinson, 
 ' ' you talk the language of a savage. What, sir ! would 
 you prevent any people from feeding themselves, if by 
 any honest means the\^ can do so ? " 
 
 Were Johnson to come to life again, total abstainei 
 as he often was, he would, I expect, denounce the prin- 
 ciple involved in " Local Option." I am not at all 
 sure he would not borrow a guinea from a bystander 
 and become a subscriber to the " Property Defence 
 League ; " and though it is notorious that he never 
 read any book all through, and never could be got to 
 believe that anybody else ever did, he would, I think.
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 57 
 
 read a larger fraction of Mr. Spencer's pamphlet, Man 
 versus the State, than of any other " recent work in 
 circulation." The state of the Strand, when two vestries 
 are at work upon it, would, I am sure, drive him into 
 open rebellion. 
 
 As a letter- writer Johnson has great merits. Let no 
 man despise the epistolary art. It is said to be extinct. 
 I doubt it. Good letters were always scarce. It does 
 not follow that, because our grandmothers wrote long 
 letters, they all wrote good ones, or that nobody nowa- 
 days writes good letters because most people write bad 
 ones. Johnson wrote letters in two styles. One was 
 monumental — more suggestive of the chisel than the 
 pen. In the other there are traces of the same style, 
 but, like the old Gothic architecture, it has grown 
 domesticated, and become the fit vehicle of plain tidings 
 of joy and sorrow — of affection, wit, and fancy. The 
 letter to Lord Chesterfield is the most celebrated ex- 
 ample of the monumental style. From the letters to 
 Mrs. Thrale many good examples of the domesticated 
 style might be selected. One must suffice : 
 
 " Queeney has been a good girl, and wrote me a letter. 
 If Burney said she would write, she told j^ou a fib. She 
 writes nothing to me. She can write home fast enough. 
 I have a good mind not to tell her that Dr. Bernard, 
 to whom I had recommended her novel, speaks of 
 it with great commendation, and that the copy which 
 she lent me has been read by Dr. Lawrence three times 
 over. And yet what a gipsy it is. She no more minds 
 me than if I were a Branghton. Pray, speak to Queeney 
 to write again. . . . Now you think yourself the first 
 writer in the world for a letter about nothing. Can you 
 write such a letter as this ? So miscellaneous, with such 
 noble disdain of regularity, like Shakspeare's works ; 
 such graceful negligence of transition, like the ancient 
 enthusiasts. The pure voice of Nature and of Friend- 
 ship. Now, of whom shall I proceed to speak ? of whom 
 but Mrs. Montague ? Having mentioned Shakspeare
 
 58 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 and Nature, does not the name of Montague force itself 
 upon me ? Such were the transitions of the ancients, 
 which now seem abrupt, because the intermediate idea 
 is lost to modern understandings." 
 
 But the extract had better end, for there are (I fear) 
 " modern understandings " who will not perceive the 
 " intermediate idea " between Shakspeare and Mrs. 
 Montague, and to whom even the name of Branghton 
 will suggest no meaning. 
 
 Johnson's literary fame is, in our judgment, as secure 
 as his character. Like the stone which he placed over 
 his father's grave at Lichfield, and which, it is shameful 
 to think, has been removed, it is " too massy and 
 strong " to be ever much affected by the wind and 
 weather of our literary atmosphere. " Never," so he 
 wrote to Mrs. Thrale, " let criticisms operate upon your 
 face or your mind ; it is very rarely that an author is 
 hurt by his critics. The blaze of reputation cannot be 
 blown out ; but it often dies in the socket. From the 
 author of Fitzosborne's Letters I cannot think myself in 
 much danger. I met him only once, about thirty years 
 ago, and in some small dispute soon reduced him to 
 whistle." Dr. Johnson is in no danger from anybody. 
 None but Gargantua could blow him out, and he still 
 bums brightly in his socket. 
 
 How long this may continue who can say ? It is a 
 far cry to 1985. Science may by that time have squeezed 
 out literature, and the author of the Lives of the Poets 
 may be dimly remembered as an odd fellow who lived 
 in the Dark Ages, and had a very creditable fancy for 
 making chemical experiments. On the other hand, the 
 Spiritualists may be in possession, in which case the 
 Cock Lane Ghost will occupy more of public attention 
 than Boswell's hero, who will, perhaps, be reprobated 
 as the profane utterer of these idle words : " Suppose 
 I know a man to be so lame that he is absolutely in- 
 capable to move himself, and I find him in a different 
 room from that in which I left him, shall I puzzle myself
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 59 
 
 with idle conjectures, that perhaps his nerves have by 
 some unknown change all at once become effective ? 
 No, sir, it is clear how he got into a different room — 
 he was carried." 
 
 We here part company with Johnson, bidding him a 
 most affectionate farewell, and leaving him in undis- 
 turbed possession of both place and power. His char- 
 acter will bear investigation, and some of his books 
 perusal. The latter, indeed, may be submitted to his 
 own test, and there is no truer one. A book, he wrote, 
 should help us either to enjoy life or to endure it. His 
 frequently do both.
 
 EDWARD GIBBON. 
 
 "TT was at Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as 
 J- I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, 
 while the bare-footed fryars were singing vespers in the 
 Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the Decline 
 and Fall of the City first started to my mind. 
 
 " It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of 
 June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, 
 that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer- 
 house in my garden. After laying down my pen I 
 took several turns in a herceau, or covered walk of aca- 
 cias, which commands a prospect of the country, th-^ 
 lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the 
 sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected 
 from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not 
 dissemble the first emotions of joy on recovery of my 
 freedom and perhaps of the establishment of my fame. 
 But my pride was soon humbled and a sober melancholy 
 was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken 
 an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, 
 and that wha,tever might be the future fate of my 
 history, the life of the historian must be short and 
 precarious." 
 
 Between these two passages lies the romance of 
 Gibbon's life — a romance which must be looked for, 
 not, indeed, in the volumes, whether the original quartos 
 or the subsequent octavos, of liis history, but in the 
 elements which went to make that history what it is : 
 the noble conception, the shaping intellect, the mastered 
 learning, the stately diction and the daily toil. 
 
 Mr. Bagehot has declared that the way to reverence 
 Gibbon is not to read him at all, but to look at him,
 
 ' EDWARD GIBBON. 6i 
 
 from outside, in the bookcase, and think how much there 
 is within ; what a course of events, what a muster-roll of 
 aames, what a steady solemn sound. All Mr. Bagehot's 
 lokes have a kernel inside them. The supreme merit 
 of Gibbon's history is not to be found in deep thoughts, 
 or in wide views, or in profound knowledge of human 
 nature, or prophetic vision. Seldom was there an his- 
 torian less well-equipped with these fiae things than he. 
 Its glory is its architecture, its structure, its organism. 
 There it is : it is worth looking at, for it is invulnerable, 
 indispensable, immortal. The metaphors which have 
 been showered upon it prove how fond people have 
 been of looking at it from the outside. It • has been 
 called a Bridge, less obviously an Aqueduct, more 
 prosaically a Road. We applaud the design and marvel 
 at the execution. 
 
 There is something mournful in this chorus of ap- 
 probation in which it is not difficult to detect the notes 
 of glad surprise. It tells a tale of infirmity both of life 
 and purpose. A complete thing staggers us. We are 
 accustomed to failure. 
 
 " What act proves all its thought had been ? " 
 
 The will is weak, opportunities are barren, temper un- 
 certain, and life short. 
 
 " I thought all labour, yet no less. 
 Bear up beneath their unsuccess ; 
 Look at the end of work : contrast 
 The petty done — the undone vast." 
 
 It is Gibbon's triumph that he made his thoughts acts. 
 He is not exactly what you call a pious writer, but he is 
 provocative of at least one pious feeling. A Sabbatical 
 calm results from the contemplation of his labours. 
 Succeeding scholars have read his history and pro- 
 nounced it good. It is likewise finished. Hence this 
 feeling of surprise. 
 
 Gibbon's life has the simplicity of an epic. His work
 
 62 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 was to write his history. Nothing else was allowed to 
 rob this idea of its majesty. It brooked no rival near 
 its throne. It dominated his life, for though a man of 
 pleasure, and, to speak plainly, a good bit of a coxcomb, 
 he had always the cadences of the Decline and Fall in 
 his ears. It has been wittily said of him that he came 
 at last to believe that he was the Roman Empire, or, 
 at all events, something equally majestic and imposing. 
 His life had, indeed, its episodes, but so has an. epic. 
 Gibbon's episodes are interesting, abnipt, and always 
 concluded. In his sixteenth year he, without the aid 
 of a priest or the seductions of ritual, read himself into 
 the Church of Rome, and was one fine June morning 
 in 1753 baptized by a Jesuit father. By Christmas, 
 1754, he had read himself out again. Gibbon's con- 
 version was perfectly genuine, and should never be 
 spoken of otherwise than respectfully, but it was entirely 
 a matter of books and reading. " Persons influence 
 us," cries Dr. Newman, " voices melt us, looks subdue 
 us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die 
 upon a dogma ; no man will be a martyr for a con- 
 clusion." It takes- all sorts to make a world, and our 
 plump historian was one of those whose actions are 
 determined in libraries, whose lives are unswayed by 
 personal influences, to whom conclusions may mean a 
 great deal, but dogmas certainly nothing. Whether 
 Gibbon on leaving off his Catholicism ever became a 
 Protestant again, except in the sense that Bayle 
 declared himself one, is doubtful. But all this makes 
 an interesting episode. The second episode is his 
 well-known love affair with Mademoiselle Curchod, 
 afterwards Madame Necker and the mother of that 
 social portent Madame de Stael. Gibbon, of course, 
 behaved badly in this affair. He fell in love, made 
 known his plight, obtained mademoiselle's consent, and 
 then speeded home to tell his father. " Love," said 
 he, " will make me eloquent." The elder Gibbon would 
 not hear of it : the younger tamely acquiesced. His
 
 EDWARD GIBBON. 63 
 
 very acquiescence, like all else about him, has become 
 classical. " I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son." 
 He proceeds : " My wound was insensibly healed by 
 time, absence, and the habits of a new Ufe." It is 
 shocking. Never, sureh% was love so flouted before. 
 Gibbon is charitably supposed by some persons to have 
 regretted Paganism, but it was lucky both for him and 
 for me that the gods had abandoned Olympus, since 
 otherwise it would have required the pen of a Greek 
 dramatist to depict the horrors that must have eventu- 
 ally overtaken him for so impious an outrage ; as it 
 was, he simply grew fatter every day. A very recent 
 French biographer of Madame Necker, who has pub- 
 lished some letters of Gibbon's for the first time, evi- 
 dently expects his readers to get very angry with this 
 perfidious son of Albion. It is much too late to get 
 angry. Of all the many wrongs women suffer at the 
 hands of men, that of not marrying them is the one 
 they ought to find it easiest to forgive ; they generally 
 do forgive. Madame Necker forgave, and if she, why 
 not you and I ? Years after she welcomed Gibbon to 
 her house, and there he used to sit, fat and famous, 
 tapping his snuff-box and arranging his ruffles, and 
 watching with a smile of complacency the infantine, 
 yet, I doubt not, the pronounced gambols of the viva- 
 cious Corinne. After Necker's fall, Gibbon writes to 
 Madame : " Your husband's condition is always worthy 
 of envy : he knows himself, his enemies respect him, 
 Europe admires him, you love him." I decline to be 
 angry with such a man. 
 
 His long residence in Switzerland, an unusual thing in 
 those days, makes a third episode, which, in so far as 
 it led him to commence author in the French language, 
 and to study Pascal as a master of style, was not without 
 its effects on his history, but it never diverted him from 
 his studies or changed their channels. Though he lived 
 fifteen years in Lausanne, he never climbed a mountain 
 < r ever went to the foot of one, for though not wholly
 
 64 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 indifferent to Nature, he loved to see her framed in 
 window. He actually has the audacity, in a note t 
 his fifty-ninth chapter, to sneer at St. Bernard becaus 
 that true lover of nature on one occasion, either becaus 
 his joy in the external world at times interfered wit 
 his devotions, or, as I think, because he was bored b 
 the vulgar rhapsodies of his monkish companions, at 
 stained from looking at the Lake of Geneva. Gibbon' 
 note is characteristic : "To admire or despise St 
 Bernard as he ought, the reader should have befor 
 the windows of his library the beaut}^ of that incom 
 parable landscape." St. Bernard was to Gibbon a 
 Wordsworth to Pope, 
 
 " A forest seer, 
 A minstrel of the natural year, 
 A lover true, who knew by heart 
 Each joy the mountain dales impart." 
 
 He was proud to confess that whatever knowledge h< 
 had of the Scriptures he had acquired chiefly in th( 
 woods and the fields, and that beeches and oaks had beer 
 his best teachers of the Word of God. One cannot fanc) 
 Gibbon in a forest. But if Gibbon had not been fondei 
 of the library than of the lake, though he might have 
 known more than he did of " moral evil and of good," 
 he would hardly have been the author he was. 
 
 But the Decline and Fall was threatened from a 
 quarter more likely to prove dangerous than the " in- 
 comparable landscape." On September loth, 1774, 
 Gibbon writes : 
 
 " Yesterday morning about half-past seven, as I was 
 destroying an army of barbaria.ns, I heard a double 
 rap at the door, and my friend Mr. Eliot was soon intro- 
 duced. After some idle conversation he told me that 
 if I was desirous of being in Parliament he had an 
 independent seat, very much at my service. This is a 
 fine prospect opening upon me, and if next spring I 
 should take my seat and publish my book " — (he meant 
 the first volume only) — " it will be a very memorable
 
 , EDWARD GIBBON. 65 
 
 5ra in my life. I am ignorant whether my borough will 
 be Liskeard or St. Germains." 
 
 Mr. Eliot controlled four boroughs, and it was Lis- 
 keard that became Gibbon's, and for ten years, though 
 not always for Liskeard, he sat in Parliament. Ten 
 most eventful years they were too, both in our national 
 and parliamentary history. This might have been not 
 an episode, but a catastrophe. Mr. Eliot's untimely 
 entrance might not merely have postponed the destruc- 
 tion of a horde of barbarians, but have destroyed the 
 history itself. However, Mr. Gibbon never opened his 
 mouth in the House of Commons. " I assisted," says 
 he, in his magnificent way, " at " (mark the preposition) 
 " at the debates of a free assembly," that is, he supported 
 Lord North. He was not from the first content to be a 
 mute ; he prepared a speech and almost made up his 
 mind to catch Sir Fletcher Norton's eye. The subject, 
 no mean one, was to be the American war ; but his 
 courage oozed away, he did not rise in his place. A 
 month after he writes from Boodle's : "I am still a 
 m\jte ; it is more tremendous than I imagined ; the 
 ^eat speakers fill me with despair, the bad ones with 
 terror.' In 1779 his silent assistance was rewarded with 
 a seat at the Board of Trade, and a salary of between 
 seven and eight hundred a year. Readers of Burke's 
 great speech on Economical Reform will remember the 
 twenty minutes he devoted to this marvellous Board of 
 Trade, with its perpetual virtual adjournment and un- 
 broken sitting vacation. Such was Gibbon's passion for 
 style that he listened to the speech with delight, and 
 gives us the valuable assurance that it was spoken just 
 as it reads, and that nobodj^ enjoyed either hearing or 
 reading it more than he did. What a blessing it is to 
 have a good temper ! But Gibbon's constituency did 
 not approve of his becoming a minister's man, and he 
 lost his seat at the general election of 1783. " Ms, 
 Eliot," this is Gibbon's account of it, " Mr. Eliot was 
 now deeply engaged in the measures of opposition, and 
 
 3
 
 66 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 the electors of Liskeard are commonly of the same 
 opinion as Mr. Eliot." Lord North found him another 
 seat, and for a short time he sat in the new Parliament 
 for the important seaport of Lymington, but his office 
 being abolished in 1784, he bade Parliament and England 
 farewell, and, taking his library with him, departed for 
 Lausanne to conclude his history. 
 
 Gibbon, after completing his history, entertained 
 notions of writing other books, but, as a matter of fact, 
 he had but one thing left him to do in order to discharge 
 his duty to the universe. He had written a magnificent 
 history of the Roman Empire. It remained to write the 
 history of the historian. Accordingly we have the auto- 
 biography. These two immortal works act and react 
 upon one another : the history sends us to the auto- 
 biography, and the autobiography returns us to the 
 history. 
 
 The style of the autobiography is better than that 
 of the history. The awful word " verbose " has been 
 launched against certain pages of the history by a critic, 
 formidable and friendly — the great Porson. There is 
 not a superfluous word in the autobiography. The fact 
 is, in this matter of style. Gibbon took a great deal more 
 pains with himself than he did with the empire. He sent 
 the history, except the first volume, straight to his printer 
 from his first rough copy. He made six different sketches 
 of the autobiography. It is a most studied performance, 
 and may be boldly pronounced perfect. Not to know it 
 almost by heart is to deny yourself a great and wholly 
 innocent pleasure. Of the history it is permissible to 
 say with Mr. Silas Wegg, " I haven't been, not to say 
 right slap through him very lately, having been other- 
 wise employed, Mr. Boffin ; " but the autobiography is 
 no more than a good-sized pamphlet. It has had the 
 reward of shortness. It is not only our best, but our 
 best known autobiography. Almost its first sentence is 
 about the style it is to be in : " The style shall be simple 
 and familiar, but style is the image of character, and the
 
 - . EDWARD GIBBON. 67 
 
 habits of correct writing may produce without labour 
 or design the appearance of art and study." There is 
 nothing artless or unstudied about the autobiography, 
 but is it not sometimes a relief to exchange ^the quips 
 and cranks of some of our modern writers, whose humour 
 it is to be as it were for ever slapping their readers in 
 the face or grinning at them from unexpected corners, 
 for the stately roll of the Gibbonian sentence ? The 
 style settled, he proceeds to say something about the 
 pride of race, but the pride of letters soon conquers it, 
 and as we gJance down the page we see advancing to 
 meet us, curhng its head, as Shakspeare says of billows 
 in a storm, the god-like sentence which makes it for 
 ever certain, not indeed that there will never be a better 
 novel than Tom Jones, for that I suppose is still just 
 possible, but that no novel can ever receive so magnifi- 
 cent a compliment. The sentence is well known but 
 irresistible. 
 
 " Our immortal Fielding was of the younger branch 
 of the Earls of Denbigh, who draw their origin from the 
 Counts of Hapsburg. Far different have been the for- 
 tunes of the English and German divisions of the family. 
 The former, the knights and sheriffs of Leicestershire, 
 have slovdy risen to the dignity of a peerage ; the latter, 
 the Emperors of Germany and Kings of Spain, have 
 threatened the hberty of the old and invaded the trea- 
 sures of the new world. The successors of Charles the 
 Fifth may disdain their brethren of England, but the 
 romance of Tom Jones, that exquisite picture of human 
 manners, will outlive the Palace of the Escurial and the 
 imperial eagle of the House of Austria." 
 
 Well might Thackeray exclaim in his lecture on Field- 
 ing, " There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this 
 great judge. To have your name mentioned by Gibbon 
 is hke having it written on the dome of St. Peter's. 
 Pilgrims from all the world admire and behold it." 
 
 After all this preliminary magnificence Gibbon conde- 
 scends to approach^ his own pedigree. There was not
 
 68 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 much to tell, and the little there was he did not know. 
 A man of letters whose memory is respected by all lovers 
 of old books and EUzabethan lyrics, Sir Egerton Brydges, 
 was a cousin of Gibbon's, and as genealogies were this 
 unfortunate man's consuming passion, he of course 
 knew all that Gibbon ought to have known about the 
 family, and speaks with a herald's contempt of the his- 
 torian's perfunctory investigations. " It is a very un- 
 accountable thing," says Sir Egerton, " that Gibbon was 
 so ignorant of the immediate branch of the family whence 
 he sprang ; " but the truth is that Gibbon was far 
 prouder of his Palace of the Escurial and his imperial 
 eagle of the House of Austria than of his family tree, 
 which was indeed of the most ordinary hedgerow descrip- 
 tion. His grandfather was a South Sea director, and 
 when the bubble burst he was compelled by Act of 
 Parliament to disclose on oath his whole fortune. He 
 returned it at ^106,543, 5s. 6d., exclusive of antecedent 
 settlements. It was all confiscated, and then ^^"10,000 
 was voted the poor man to begin again upon. Such 
 bold oppression, says the grandson, can scarcely be 
 shielded by the omnipotence of Parliament. The old 
 man did not keep his ^10,000 in a napkin, and speedily 
 began, as his grandson puts it, to erect on the ruins of 
 the old the edifice of a new fortune. The ruins must, 
 I think, have been more spacious than the affidavit 
 would suggest, for when only sixteen years afterwards 
 the elder Gibbon died, he was found to be possessed of 
 considerable property in Sussex, Hampshire, Buckingham- 
 shire, and the New River Company, as well as of a spa- 
 cious house with gardens and grounds at Putney. A 
 fractional share of this inheritance secured to our his- 
 torian the liberty of action so necessary for the accom- 
 pUshment of his great design. Large fortunes have 
 their uses. Mr, Milton, the scrivener, Mr. Gibbon, the 
 South Sea director, and Dr. Dai-win of Shrewsbury, had 
 respectively something to do with Paradise Lost, The 
 Decline and Fall, and The Origin of Species.
 
 , EDWARD GIBBON. 69 
 
 The most, indeed the only, interesting fact about the 
 Gibbon entourage is that the greatest of Enghsh mystics, 
 William Law, the inimitable author of A Serious Call 
 to a Devout and Holy Life, adapted to the State and Con- 
 ditions of all Orders of Christians, was long tutor to the 
 historian's father, and in that capacity accompanied the 
 future historian to Emanuel College, Cambridge, and 
 was afterguards, and till the end of his days, spiritual 
 director to Miss Hester Gibbon, the historian's eccentric 
 maiden aunt. 
 
 It is an unpleasing impertinence for anyone to assume 
 that nobody save himself reads any particular book. 
 I read with astonishment the other day that Sir Humphry 
 Daw's Consolations in Travel ; or. The Closing Days of 
 a Philosopher' s Life, was a curious and totally forgotten 
 work. It is, however, always safe to say of a good book 
 that it is not read as much as it ought to be, and of 
 Law's Serious Call you may add, " or as much as it used 
 to be." It is a book with a strange and moving spiritual 
 pedigree. Dr. Johnson, one remembers, took it up care- 
 le$sly at Oxford, expecting to find it a dull book, " as " 
 (the words are his, not mine) " such books generally are ; " 
 but, he proceeds, " I found Law an overmatch for me, 
 and this v/as the first occasion of my thinking in earnest." 
 George Whitfield writes, " Soon after my coming up to 
 the university, seeing a small edition of Mr. Law's Serious 
 Call in a friend's hand, I soon purchased it. God worked 
 powerfully upon my soul by that excellent treatise." 
 The celebrated Thomas Scott, of Aston Sandjord, with 
 the confidence of his school, dates the beginning of his 
 spiritual life from the hour when he " carelessly," as he 
 says, " took up Mr. Law's Serious Call, a book I had 
 hitherto treated with contempt." When we remember 
 how Newman in his Apologia speaks of Thomas Scott 
 as the writer " to whom, humanly speaking, I almost 
 owe my soul," we become lost amidst a mazy dance of 
 strange, spectral influences which flit about the centuries 
 and make us what we are. Splendid achievement though
 
 70 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 the History of the Decline and Fall may be, glorious mon- 
 ument though it is, more lasting than brass, of learning 
 and industry, yet in sundry moods it seems but a poor 
 and barren thing by the side of a book which, like Law's 
 Serious Call, has proved its power 
 
 " To pierce the heart and tame the will." 
 
 But I must put the curb on my enthusiasm, or I shall 
 find myself re-echoing the sentiment of a once celebrated 
 divine who brought down Exeter Hall by proclaiming, 
 at the top of his voice, that he would sooner be the 
 author of The Washerwoman on Salisbury Plain than of 
 Paradise Lost.* 
 
 But Law's Seriates Call, to do it only bare literary 
 justice, is a great deal more like Paradise Lost than The 
 Washerwoman on Salisbury Plain, and deserves better 
 treatment at the hands of religious people than to be 
 reprinted, as it too often is, in a miserable, truncated, 
 witless form which would never have succeeded in arrest- 
 ing the wandering attention of Johnson or in saving the 
 soul of Thomas Scott. The motto of all books of original 
 
 genius is : 
 
 " Love me or leave me alone." 
 
 Gibbon read Law's Serious Call, but it left him where 
 it found him. " Had net," so he writes, " Law's vigor- 
 ous mind been clouded by enthusiasm, he might be 
 ranked with the most agreeable and ingenious writers 
 of his time." 
 
 Upon the death of Law in 1761, it is sad to have to 
 state that Miss Hester Gibbon cast aside the severe rule 
 of female dress which he had expounded in his Serious 
 Call, and she had practised for sixty years of her life. 
 She now appeared, like Malvolio, resplendent in yellow 
 
 * There is no such tract. I have mixed up Miss Hannah Mere's 
 Shepherd of Salisbury Plain with Mr. Thackeray's Washerwoman of 
 Finchley Common (see Vanity Fair). Several correspondents have 
 called my attention to this. I knew what I was doing, but thought 
 it did not matter. It seems it does.
 
 - EDWARD GIBBON. 71 
 
 stockings. Still, it was something to have kept the good 
 lady's feet from straying into such evil garments for so 
 long. Miss Gibbon had a comfortable estate ; and our 
 historian, as her nearest male relative, kept his eye upon 
 the reversion. The fifteenth and sixteenth chapters had 
 created a coolness, but he addressed her a letter in which 
 he assured her that, allowing for differences of expression, 
 he had the satisfaction of f eehng that practically he and 
 she thought alike on the great subject of religion. Whether 
 she believed him or not I cannot say ; but she left him 
 her estate in Sussex. I must stop a moment to con- 
 sider the hard and far different fate of Porson. Gibbon 
 had taken occasion to refer to the seventh verse of the 
 fifth chapter of the First Epistle of St. John as spurious. 
 It has now disappeared from our Bibles, without leaving 
 a trace even in the margin. So judicious a writer as 
 Dean Alford long ago, in his Greek Testament, observed, 
 " There is not a shadow of a reason for supposing it 
 genuine." An archdeacon of Gibbon's period thought 
 otherwise, and asserted the genuineness of the text, 
 whereupon Porson wrote a book and proved it to be 
 no portion of the inspired text. On this a female rela- 
 tive who had Porson down in her will for a comfortable 
 annuity of ^^300, revoked that part of her testamentary 
 disposition, and substituted a paltry bequest of /30 : 
 " for," said she, " I hear he has been writing against the 
 Holy Scriptures." As Porson only got ;^i6 for writing 
 the book, it certainly cost him dear. But the book 
 remains a monument of his learning and wit. Thelast 
 quarter of the annuity must long since have been paid. 
 
 Gibbon, the only one of a family of five who managed 
 to grow up at all, had no school life ; for though a short 
 time at Westminster, his feeble health prevented regu- 
 larity of attendance. His father never won his respect, 
 nor his mother (who died when he was ten) his affec- 
 tion. " I am tempted," he says, " to enter my pro- 
 test against the trite and lavish praise of the happiness 
 of our boyish years which is echoed with so much affec-
 
 72 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 tation in the world. That happiness I have never 
 known." Upon this passage Sainte-Beuve characteristic- 
 ally remarks " that it is those who have been deprived 
 of a mother's solicitude, of the down and flower of tender 
 affection, of the vague yet penetrating charm of da^\^l- 
 ing impressions, who are most easily denuded of the 
 sentiment of rehgion." 
 
 Gibbon was, however, born free of the V fair brother- 
 hood " Macaulay so exquisitely described in his famous 
 poem, written after the Edinburgh election. Reading 
 became his sole employment. He enjoyed all the ad- 
 vantages of the most irregular o.f educations, and in his 
 fifteenth year arrived at Oxford, to use his celebrated 
 words, though for that matter almost every word in the 
 Aiitohiography is celebrated, with a stock of erudition 
 that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of igno- 
 rance of which a schoolboy would have been ashamed — 
 for example, he did not know the Greek alphabet, nor 
 is there any reason to suppose that he would have been 
 taught it at Oxford. 
 
 I do not propose to refer to what he says about his 
 university. I hate giving pain, besides which there have 
 been new statutes since 1752. In Gibbon's time there 
 were no public examinations at all, and no class-lists — 
 a Saturnian reign which I understand it is now sought 
 to restore. Had Gibbon followed his father's example 
 and gone to Cambridge, he would have found the Mathe- 
 matical Tripos fairly started on its beneficent career, 
 and might have taken as good a place in it as Dr. Dodd 
 had just done, a divine who is still year after year referred 
 to in the University Calendar as the author of Thoughts 
 in Prison, the circumstance that the thinker was later on 
 taken from prison, and hung by the neck until he was 
 dead, being no less wisely than kindly omitted from a 
 publication, one of the objects of which is to inspire 
 youth with confidence that the path of mathematics is 
 the way to glory. 
 On his profession of Catholicism, Gibbon, ipso facto.
 
 - EDWARD GIBBON. 73 
 
 ceased to be a member of the university, and his father, 
 with a sudden accession of good sense, packed off the 
 young pervert, who at that time had a very big head 
 and a very small body, and was just as full of contro- 
 versial theology as he could hold, to a Protestant pastor's 
 at Lausanne, where in an uncomfortable house, with an 
 ill-supplied table and a scarcity of pocket-money, the 
 ex-fellow-commoner of Magdalen was condemned to live 
 from his sixteenth to his twenty-first year. His time 
 was mainly spent in reading. Here he learnt Greek ; 
 here also he fell in love with Mademoiselle Curchod. In 
 the spring of 1758 he came home. He was at first very 
 shy, and went out but little, pursuing his studies even 
 in lodgings in Bond Street. But he was shortly to be 
 shaken out of his dumps, and made an Englishman and 
 a soldier. 
 
 If anything could provoke Gibbon's placid shade, it 
 would be the light and airy way his military experiences 
 are often spoken of, as if, like a modern volunteer, he 
 had but attended an Easter Monday review. I do not 
 believe the history of literature affords an equally strik- 
 ing example of self-sacrifice. He was the most sedentary 
 of men. He hated exercise, and rarely took any. Once 
 after spending some weeks in the summer at Lord Shef- 
 field's country place, when about to go, his hat was miss- 
 ing. " ^\^len," he was asked, " did you last see it ? " 
 " On my arrival," he replied. " I left it on the hall- 
 table ; I have had no occasion for it since." Lord 
 Sheffield's guests always knew that they would find 
 Mr. Gibbon in the library and meet him at the dinner- 
 table. He abhorred a horse. His one vocation, and 
 his only avocation, was reading, not lazy glancing and 
 skipping, but downright savage reading — geography, 
 chronology, and aU the tougher sides of history. What 
 glorious, what martial times, indeed, must those have been 
 that made Mr. Gibbon leap into the saddle, desert his 
 books, and for two mortal years and a half live in camps I 
 He was two months at Blandford, three months at Cran-
 
 74 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 brook, six months at Dover, four months at Devizes, as 
 many at Salisbury, and six more at Southampton, where 
 the troops were disbanded. During all this time Cap- 
 tain Gibbon was energetically employed. He dictated 
 the orders and exercised the battalion. It did him a 
 world of good. What a pity Carlyle could not have 
 been subjected to the same discipline ! The cessation, 
 too, of his habit of continued reading gave him time for 
 a httle thinking, and when he returned to_ his father's 
 house, in Hampshire, he had become fixed in his deter- 
 mination to write a history, though of what was still 
 undecided. 
 
 I am rather afraid to say it, for no two men could well 
 be more unhke one another, but Gibbon always reminds 
 me in an odd inverted way of Milton. I suppose it is 
 because as the one is our grandest author, so the other 
 is our most grandiose. Both are self-conscious and make 
 no apology — Milton magnificently self-conscious. Gibbon 
 splendidly so. Everyone knows the great passages in 
 which Milton, m 1642, asked the readers of his pamphlet 
 on the reason of Church government urged against prel- 
 acy, to go on trust with him for some years for his great 
 unwritten poem, as " being a work not to be raised from 
 the heat of youth or the vapour of wine, like that which 
 flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist or 
 the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be ob- 
 tained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her seven 
 daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit 
 who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and 
 sends out His seraphim with the hallowed fire of His 
 Altar to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases : 
 to this must be added industrious and select reading, 
 study, observation, and insight into all seemly opinions, 
 arts, and affairs." Different men, different minds. 
 There are things terrestrial as well as things celestial. 
 Certainly Gibbon's Autohiography^ contains no passages 
 like those which are to be found in Milton's pamphlets ; 
 but for all that he, in his mundane way, consecrated
 
 • EDWARD CtIBBON. 75 
 
 himself for his self-imposed task, and spared no toil 
 to equip himself for it. He, too, no less than Milton, 
 had his high hope and his hard attempting. He tells 
 us in his stateliest way how he first thought of one sub- 
 ject and then another, and what progress he had made 
 in his different schemes before he abandoned them, and 
 what reasons 'induced him so to do. Providence watched 
 over the future historian of the Roman Empire as surely 
 as it did over the future author of Paradise Lost, as 
 surely as it does over everyone who has it in him to do 
 anything really great. Milton, we know, in early life 
 was enamoured of King Arthur, and had it in his niind 
 to make that blameless king the hero of his promised 
 epic, but 
 
 " What resounds 
 In fable or romance of Uther's son, 
 Begirt with British and Armoric knights," 
 
 can brook a moment's comparison with the bafBed hero 
 of Paradise Lost ; so, too, what a mercy that Gibbon 
 did not fritter away his splendid energy, as he once con- 
 templated doing, on Sir Walter Raleigh, or squander his 
 talents on a history of Switzerland or even of Florence ! 
 
 After the disbanding of the militia Gibbon obtained 
 his father's consent to spend the money it was originally 
 proposed to lay out in buying him a seat in Parhament, 
 upon foreign travel, and early in 1763 he reached Paris, 
 where he abode three months. An accomplished scholar, 
 whose too early death all who knew him can never cease 
 to deplore, Mr. Cotter Morrison, whose sketch of Gibbon 
 is, by general consent, admitted to be one of the most 
 valuable books of a delightful series, does his best, wdth 
 but partial success, to conceal his annoyance at Gib- 
 bon's stupidly placid enjoyment of Paris and French 
 cookery. " He does not seem to be aware," says Mr. 
 Morrison, " that he was witnessing one of the most 
 singular social phases which have ever yet been pre- 
 sented in the history of man." Mr. Morrison does not, 
 indeed, blame Gibbon for this, but having, as he had, the
 
 76 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 most intimate acquaintance with this period of French 
 history, and knowing the tremendous issues involved in 
 it, he could not but be chagrined to notice how Gibbon 
 remained callous and impervious. And, indeed, when 
 the Revolution came it took no one more by surprise 
 than it did the man who had written the Decline and 
 Fall of the Roman Empire. Wiiting, in 1792, to Lord 
 Sheffield, Gibbon says, " Remember the proud fabric of 
 the French monarchy : not four years ago it stood 
 founded, and might it not seem on the rock of time, 
 force, and opinion, supported by the triple authority of 
 the Church, the Nobility, and the Parliament ? " But 
 the Revolution came for all that; and what, when it 
 did come, did it teach Mr. Gibbon ? " Do not, I be- 
 seech you, tamper with parliamentary representation. 
 If 3^ou begin to improve the Constitution, you may be 
 driven step by step from the disfranchisement of Old 
 Sarum to the King in Newgate ; the Lords voted use- 
 less, the bishops abolished, the House of Commons sans 
 culottes." The importance of shutting off the steam and 
 sitting on the safety-valve was what the French Revolu- 
 tion taught Mr. Gibbon. Mr. Bagehot says : " Gibbon's 
 horror of the French Revolution was derived from the 
 fact that he had arrived at the conclusion that he was 
 the sort of person a populace invariably kills." An ex- 
 cellent reason, in my opinion, for hating revolution, but 
 not for misunderstanding it. 
 
 After leaving Paris Gibbon lived nearly a year in 
 Lausanne, reading hard to prepare himself for Italy. 
 He made his own handbook. At last he felt himself fit 
 to cross the Alps, which he did seated in an osier basket 
 planted on a man's shoulders. He did not envy Hanni- 
 bal his elephant. He lingered four months in Florence, 
 and then entered Rom.e in a spirit of the most genuine 
 and romantic enthusiasm. His zeal made him posi- 
 tively active, though it is impossible to resist a smile at 
 the picture he draws of himself " treading with a lofty 
 step the ruins of the Forum." He was in Rome eighteen
 
 ♦ EDWARD GIBBON. 77 
 
 weeks ; there he had, as we saw at the beginning, his 
 heavenly vision, to which he was 'not disobedient. He 
 paid a visit of six weeks' duration to Naples, and then 
 returned home more rapidly. " The spectacle of Venice," 
 he says, " afforded some hours of astonishment." Gib- 
 bon has sometimes been called " long-winded," but when 
 he chooses nobod}' can be shorter with either a city or 
 a century. 
 
 He returned to England in 1765, and for five rather 
 dull years lived in his father's house in the country or 
 in London lodgings. In 1770 his father died, and in 
 1772 Gibbon took a house in Bentinck Street, Man- 
 chester Square, filled it with books — for in those days 
 it must not be forgotten there was no public library of 
 any kind in London — and worked hard at his first vol- 
 ume, which appeared in February, 1775. It made him 
 famous, also infamous, since it concluded with the fif- 
 teenth and sixteenth chapters on Christianity. In 1781 
 two more volumes appeared. In 1783 he gave up Par- 
 liament and London, and rolled over Westminster 
 Bi'idge in a postchaise, on his way to Lausanne, where 
 he had his home for the rest of his days. In May, 1788, 
 the three last volumes appeared. He died in St. James's 
 Street whilst on a visit to London, on the 15th of Jan- 
 uary, 1794, of a complaint of a most pronounced char- 
 acter, which he had with characteristic and almost crim- 
 inal indolence totally neglected for thirty years. He was 
 buried in Fletching Churchyard, Sussex, in the family 
 burial-place of his faithful friend and model editor, the 
 first Lord Sheffield. He had not completed his fifty- 
 eighth year. 
 
 Before concluding with a few very humble observa- 
 tions on Gibbon's writings, something ought to be said 
 about him as a social being. In this aspect he had dis- 
 tinguished merit, though his fondness of and fitness for 
 society came late. He had no school days, no coUege 
 days, no gilded youth. From sixteen to twenty-one he
 
 78 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 lived poorly in Lausanne, and came home more Swiss 
 than English. Nor was his father of any use to him. 
 Ittook him a long time to rub off his shyness ; but the 
 militia, Paris, and Rome, and, above all, the proud con- 
 sciousness of a noble design, made a man of him, and 
 after 1772 he became a well-known figure in London 
 society. He was a man of fashion as well as of letters. 
 In this respect, and, indeed, in all others, except their 
 common love of learning, he differed from Dr. Johnson. 
 Lords and ladies, remarked that high authority, don't 
 like having their mouths shut. Gibbon never shut any- 
 body's mouth, and in Johnson's presence rarely opened 
 his own. Johnson's dishke of Gibbon does not seem to 
 have been based upon his heterodoxy, but his ugliness. 
 " He is such an amazing ugly fellow," said that Adonis. 
 Boswell follows suit, and, with still less claim to be 
 critical, complains loudly of Gibbon's ugliness. He also 
 hated him very sincerely. " The feUow poisons the 
 whole club to me," he cries. I feel sorry for Boswell, 
 who has deserved well of the human race. Ironical 
 people like Gibbon are rarely tolerant of brilliant folly. 
 Gibbon, no doubt, was ugly. We get a glance at him 
 in one of Horace Walpole's letters, which, sparkling as it 
 does with vanity, spite, and humour, is always pleasant. 
 He is writing to Mr. Mason. 
 
 " You will be diverted to hear that Mr. Gibbon has 
 quarrelled with me. He lent me his second volume in 
 the middle of November ; I returned it with a most civil 
 panegyric. He came for more incense. I gave it, but, 
 alas ! with too much sincerity ; I added : ' Mr. Gibbon, 
 I am sorry you should have pitched on so disgusting a 
 subject as the Constantinopolitan history. There is 
 so much of the Arians and Eunomians and semi-Pela- 
 gians ; and there is such a strange contrast betv/een 
 Roman and Gothic manners, that, though you have 
 written the story as well as it could be written, I fear 
 few will have patience to read it.' He coloured, all his 
 round features squeezed themselves into sharp angles ;
 
 , EDWARD GIBBON. 79 
 
 he screv/ed up his button-mouth, and rapping his snuff- 
 box, said, ' It had never been put together before ' — 
 so well he meant to add, but gulped it. He meant so 
 well, certainly, for Tillemont, whom he quotes in every 
 page, has done the very thing. Well, from that hour 
 to this, I have never seen him, though he used to call 
 once or twice a week ; nor has he sent me the third 
 volume, as he promised. I well knew his vanity, even 
 about his ridiculous face and person, but thought he 
 had too much sense to avow it so palpably." " So much," 
 adds Walpole, with sublime nescience of the verdict of 
 posterity upon his own most amusing self, " so much for 
 literature and its fops." 
 
 Male ugliness is an endearing quality, and in a man 
 of great talents it assists his reputation. It mollifies our 
 inferiority to be able to add to our honest admiration 
 of anyone's great intellectual merit, " But did you ever 
 see such a chin ! " 
 
 Nobody except Johnson, who was morbid on the 
 subject of looks, liked Gibbon the less for having a 
 button -mouth and a ridiculous nose. He was, Johnson 
 and Boswell apart, a popular member of the club. Sir 
 Joshua and he were, in particular, great cronies, and 
 went about to all kinds of places, and mixed in every 
 sort of society. In May, June, and July, 1779, Gibbon 
 sat for his picture — that famous portrait to be found 
 at the beginning of every edition of the History. Sir 
 Joshua notes in his Diar}'' : " No new sitters — ^hard at 
 work lepainting the 'Nativity,' and busy with sittings 
 of Gibbon." 
 
 If we are to believe contemporary gossip, this was 
 not the first time Reynolds had depicted the historian. 
 Some years earlier the great painter had executed a 
 celebrated portrait of Dr. Beattie, still pleasingly re- 
 membered by the lovers of old-fashioned poetry as the 
 poet of The Minstrel, but who, in 1773, was better 
 known as the author of an Essay on Truth. This 
 personage, who in later life, it is melancholy to relate.
 
 8o SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 k)ok to drinking, is represented in Re3niolds's picture 
 in his Oxford gown of Doctor of Laws, with his famous 
 essay under his arm, while beside him is Truth, habited 
 as an angel, holding in one hand a pair of scales, and 
 with the other thrusting down three frightful figures 
 emblematic of Sophistry, Scepticism, and Infidelity 
 That Voltaire and Hume stood for two of these figures 
 was no secret, but it was whispered Gibbon was the 
 third. Even if so, an incident so trifling was not likely 
 to ruffle the composure, or prevent the intimacy, of two 
 such good-tempered men as Reynolds and Gibbon. The 
 latter was immensely proud of Reynolds's portrait — the 
 authorised portrait, of course — the one for which he had 
 paid. He had it hanging up in his library at Lausanne, 
 and, if we may believe Charles Fox, was fonder of looking 
 at it than out of the window upon that incomparable 
 landscape, with indifference to which he had twitted 
 St. Bernard. 
 
 But, as I have said. Gibbon was a man of fashion as 
 weU as a man of letters. In another volume of Walpole 
 we have a glimpse of him playing a rubber of whist. His 
 opponents were Horace himself and Lady Beck. His 
 partner was a lady whom Walpole irreverently calls the 
 Archbishopess of Canterbury.* At Brooks's, White's, 
 and Boodle's, Gibbon was a prime favourite. His quiet 
 manner, ironical humour, and perpetual good temper 
 made him excellent company. He is, indeed, reported 
 once, at Brooks's, to have expressed a desire to see the 
 heads of Lord North and half a dozen ministers on the 
 table ; but as this was only a few days before he accepted 
 a seat at the Board of Trade at their hands, his wrath 
 was evidently of the kind that does not allow the sun 
 to go down upon it. His moods were usually mild. 
 
 " Soon as to Brooks's thence thy footsteps bend. 
 What gratulations thy approach attend ! 
 
 * By which title he refers to Mrs. Cornwallis, a lively lady who used 
 to get her right reverend lord, himself a capital hand at whist, into 
 great trouble by persisting in giving routs on Sunday.
 
 . EDWARD GIBBON. 8i 
 
 See Gibbon rap his box, auspicious sign 
 That classic wit and compliment combine." 
 
 To praise Gibbon heartily, you must speak in low 
 tones. " His cheek," says Mr. Morrison, " rarely flushes 
 in enthusiasm for a good cause." He was, indeed, not 
 obviously on the side of the angels. But he was a dutiful 
 son to a trying father, an affectionate and thoughtful 
 stepson to a stepmother who survived him, and the most 
 faithful and v/arm-hearted of friends. In this article of 
 friendship he not only approaches, but reaches, the 
 romantic. While in his teens he made friends with a 
 Swiss of his own age. A quarter of a century later on, 
 we find the boyish companions chumming together, under 
 the same roof at Lausanne, and delighting in each other's 
 society. His attachment to Lord Sheffield is a beautiful 
 thing. It is impossible to read Gibbon's letters without 
 responding to the feehng which breathes through Lord 
 Sheffield's preface to the miscellaneous writings : 
 
 " The letters will prove how pleasant, friendly, and 
 amiable Mr. Gibbon was in private Hfe ; and if in pub- 
 kshing letters so flattering to myself I incur the imputa- 
 tion of vanity, I meet the charge with a frank confession 
 that I am indeed highly vain of having enjoyed for so 
 many years the esteem, the confidence, and the affec- 
 tion of a man whose social qualities endeared him to 
 the most accomplished society, whose talents, great as 
 they were, must be acknowledged to have been fully 
 equalled by the sincerity of his friendship." 
 
 To have been pleasant, friendly, amiable, and sincere 
 in friendship, to have written the Decline and Fall of 
 the Roman Empire, and the Autobiography, must be 
 Gibbon's excuse for his unflushing cheek. 
 
 To praise Gibbon is not wholly superfluous ; to 
 commend his history would be so. It is now well 
 on in its second century. Time has not told upon 
 it. It stands unaltered, and with its authority unim- 
 paired. It would be invidious to name the histories it 
 has seen born and die. Its shortcomings have been
 
 82 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 pointed out — it is well ; its inequalities exposed — that 
 is fair ; its style criticised — that is just. But it is still 
 read. " Whatever else is read," says Professor Freeman, 
 " Gibbon must be." 
 
 The tone he thought fit to adopt towards Christianity 
 was, quite apart from aU particular considerations, a 
 mistaken one. No man is big enough to speak slight- 
 ingly of the constructions his fellow-men have from time 
 to time put upon the Infinite. And conduct which in 
 a philosopher is ill-judged, is in a historian ridiculous. 
 Gibbon's sneers could not alter the fact that his History, 
 which he elected to style the Decline and Fall of the Roman 
 Empire, might equaUy well, as Dean Stanley has ob- 
 served, have been called the " Rise and Progress of the 
 Christian Church." This tone of Gibbon's was the more 
 unfortunate because he was not of those men who are, 
 by the order of their minds, incapable of theology. He 
 was an admirable theologian, and, even as it is, we have 
 Cardinal Newman's authority for the assertion that 
 Gibbon is the only Church historian worthy of the name 
 who has written in English. 
 
 Gibbon's love of the unseemly may also be deprecated. 
 His is not the boisterous impropriety which may some- 
 times be observed staggering across the pages of Mr. 
 Carlyle, but the more offensive variety which is over- 
 heard sniggering in the notes. 
 
 The importance, the final value of Gibbon's History 
 has been assailed in high quarters. Coleridge, in a weU- 
 known passage in his Table Talk — too long to be quoted 
 — said Gibbon was a man of immense reading ; but he 
 had no philosophy. " I protest," he adds, " I do not 
 remember a single philosophical attempt made through- 
 out the work to fathom the ultimate causes of the decline 
 and fall of the empire." This spoiled Gibbon for Cole- 
 ridge, who has told us that " though he had read all 
 the famous histories, and he believed some history of 
 every country or nation, that is or ever existed, he had 
 never done so for the story itself — the only thing inter-
 
 - EDWARD GIBBON. 83 
 
 esting to him being the principles to be evolved from 
 and illustrated by the facts." 
 
 I am not going to insult the majestic though thickly- 
 veiled figure of the Philosophy of History. Every sensible 
 man, though he might blush to be called a philosopher, 
 must wish to be the wiser for his reading ; but it may, 
 I think, be fairly said that the first business of a historian 
 is to tell his story, nobly and splendidly, \\dth vivacity 
 and vigour. Then I do not see why we children of a 
 larger growth may not be interested in the annals of 
 mankind simply as a story, without worr5dng every 
 moment to evolve principles from each part of it. If I 
 choose to be interested in the colour of Mary Queen of 
 Scots' eyes, or the authorship of the Letters of Junius, 
 I claim the right to be so. Of course, if I imagine either 
 of these subjects to be matters of importance — if I devote 
 my life to their elucidation, if I bore my friends with 
 presentation pamphlets about them — why, then, I am 
 either a feeble fribble or an industrious "fool ; but if I 
 do none of these things I ought to be left in peace, and 
 not ridiculed by those who seem to regard the noble 
 stream of events much as Brindley did rivers — mainly 
 as something which fills their ugly canals of dreary and 
 frequently false comment. 
 
 But, thirdly, whilst yielding the first place to philos- 
 ophy, divine philosophy, as I suppose, when one comes 
 to die, one will be glad to have done, it is desirable that 
 the text and the comment should be kept separate and 
 apart. The historian who loads his frail craft with that 
 perilous and shifting freight, philosophy, adds im- 
 mensely to the dangers of his voyage across the ocean 
 of Time. Gibbon was no fool, yet it is as certain as any- 
 thing can be, that had he put much of his philosophy 
 into his history, both would have gone to the bottom 
 long ago. For even better philosophy than Gibbon's 
 would have been is apt to grow mouldy in a quarter of 
 a century, and to need three new coats of good oily 
 rhetoric to make it presentable to each new generation.
 
 84 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Gibbon was neither a great thinker nor a great man. 
 He had neither Hght nor warmth. This is what, doubt- 
 less, prompted Sir James ]\Iackintosh's famous exclama- 
 tion, that you might scoop Gibbon's mind out of Burke's 
 without missing it. But hence, I say, the fitness of 
 things that chained Gibbon to his library chair, and set 
 him as his task to write the history of the Roman Em- 
 pire, whilst leaving Burke at large to illuminate the 
 problems of his own time. 
 
 Gibbon avowedly wrote for fame. He built his His- 
 tory meaning it to last. He got £6,000 for writing it. 
 The bookseUers netted ;^6o,ooo by printing it. Gibbon 
 did not mind. He knew it would be the volumes of his 
 History, and not the banking books of his publishers, 
 who no doubt ran their trade risks, which would keep 
 their place upon men's shelves. He did an honest piece 
 of work, and he has had a noble reward. Had he 
 attempted to know the ultimate causes of the decline 
 and fall of the Roman Empire, he must have failed, 
 egregiously, childishly. He abated his pretensions as a 
 philosopher, was content to attempt some picture of the 
 thing acted — of the great pageant of history — and suc- 
 ceeded.
 
 WILLIAM COWPER. 
 
 THE large a.nd weighty family of Gradgrinds may, 
 from their various well-cushioned coigns of advan- 
 tage, give forcible utterance to their opinions as to what 
 are the really important things in this life ; but the 
 fact remains, distasteful as it may be to those of us who 
 have accomplished the disciplinary end of vexing our 
 fathers' souls by other means than " penning stanzas," 
 that the lives of poets, even of people who have passed 
 for poets, eclipse in general and permanent interest the 
 lives of other men. Whilst above the sod, these poets 
 were often miserable enough. But charm hangs over 
 their graves. The sternest pedestrian, even he who is 
 most bent on making his inn by the precise path he 
 Ras, with much study of the map, previously prescribed 
 for himself, will yet often veer to the right or to the left 
 to visit the lonely churchyard where, as he hears by 
 the way, lie the ashes of some brother of the tuneful 
 quill. It may well be that this brother's verses are not 
 frequently on our lips. It is not the lot of every bard 
 to make quotations. It may sometimes happen to you, 
 as you stand mournfully surveying the little heap, to 
 rack your brains unavailingly for so much as a single 
 couplet ; nay, so treacherous is memory, the very title 
 of his best-known poem may, for the moment, have 
 slipped you. But your heart is melted all the same, and 
 you feel it would indeed have been a churlish thing to 
 go on your original way, unmindful of the fact that 
 
 " In yonder grave a Druid lies ! " 
 
 And you have your reward. When you have reached 
 your desired haven, and are sitting alone after dinner
 
 86 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 in the coffee-room, neat-handed Phyllis (were you not 
 fresh from a poet's grave, a homelier name might have 
 served her turn) having administered to your final wants, 
 and disappeared with a pretty flounce, the ruby-coloured 
 wine the dead poet loved, the bottled sunshine of a by- 
 gone summer, glows the warmer in your cup as you muse 
 over minstrels now no more, whether 
 
 " Of mighty poets in their misery dead," 
 
 or of such a one as he whose neglected grave you have 
 just visited. 
 
 It was a pious act, you feel, to visit that grave. You 
 commend yourself for doing so. As the night draws 
 on, this very simple excursion down a rutty lane and 
 across a meadow begins to wear the hues of devotion 
 and of love ; and unless you are very stern with your- 
 self, the chances are that by the time you light your 
 farthing dip, and are proceeding on your dim and perilous 
 way to your bedroom at the end of a creaking passage, 
 you will more than half believe you were that poet's 
 only unselfish friend, and that he died saying so. 
 
 All this is due to the charm of poetry. Port has noth- 
 ing to do with it. Indeed, as a plain matter of fact, 
 who would drink port at a village inn ? Nobody feels a 
 bit like this after visiting the tombs of soldiers, lawyers, 
 statesmen, or divines. These pompous places, viewed 
 through the haze of one's recollections of the " careers " 
 of the men whose names they vainly try to perpetuate, 
 seem but, if I may slightly alter some words of Cowley's, 
 " An ill show after a sorry sight." 
 
 It would be quite impossible to enumerate one half 
 of the reasons which make poets so interesting. I will 
 mention one, and then pass on to the subject-matter. 
 They often serve to tell you the age of men and books. 
 This is most interesting. There is Mr. Matthew Arnold. 
 How impossible it would be to hazard even a wide 
 solution of the problem of his age, but for the way he 
 has of writing about Lord Bjnron ! Then we loiow.
 
 . WILLIAM COWPER. S7 
 
 " The thought of Byron, of his cry 
 Stormily sweet, his Titan agony." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " What boots it now that Byron bore. 
 
 With haughty scorn which mocked the smart, 
 Through Europe to the .Etolian shore. 
 The pageant of his bleeding heart ? " 
 
 Ask any man born in the fifties, or even the later forties, 
 what he tliinks of Byron's Titan agony, and his features 
 will probably wear a smile. Insist upon his giving his 
 opinion about the pageant of the Childe's bleeding heart, 
 and more likely than not he will laugh outright. But, I 
 repeat, how interesting to be able to tell the age of one 
 distinguished poet from his way of writing of another ! 
 
 So, too, with books. Miss Austen's novels are dateless 
 things. Nobody in his senses would speak of them as 
 " old novels." John Inglesant is an old novel, so is 
 Ginx's Baby. But Emma is quite new, and, like a wise 
 woman, affords few clues as to her age. But when, 
 taking up Sense and Sensibility, we read Marianne Dash- 
 wood's account of her sister's lover — 
 
 " And besides cdl this, I am afraid, mamma, he has no 
 real taste. Music seems scarcely to attract him, and 
 though he admires Elinor's drawings very much, it is 
 not the admiration of a person who can understand their 
 worth. He admires as a lover, and not as a connoisseur. 
 Oh, mamma I how spiritless, how tame was Edward's 
 manner in reading last night ! I felt for my sister most 
 severely. I could hardly keep my seat to hear those 
 beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me 
 wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such 
 dreadful indifference ! " " He would certainly " (says 
 Mrs. Dash wood) " have done more justice to simple and 
 elegant prose. I thought so, at the time, but you would 
 give him Cowper." " Nay, mamma, if he is not to be 
 animated by Cowper ! " — when we read this, we know 
 pretty well when Miss Austen was born. It is surely 
 pleasant to be reminded of a time when sentimental girls
 
 88 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 used Cowper as a test of a lover's sensibility. One of 
 our modern swains is no more likely to be condemned 
 as a Philistine for not reading The Task with unction, 
 than he is to be hung for sheep-stealing, or whipped at 
 the cart's tail for speaking evil of constituted authorities ; 
 but the position probably still has its perils, and the 
 Marianne Dashwoods of the hour are quite capable of 
 putting their admirers on to Rose Mary, or The Blessed 
 Damosel, and then flouting their insensibility. The fact, 
 of course, is, that each generation has a way of its own, 
 and poets are interesting because they are the mirrors 
 in which their generation saw its own face ; and what 
 is more, they are magic mirrors, since they retain the 
 power of reflecting the image long after what was pleased 
 to call itself the substance has disappeared into thin air. 
 There is no more interesting poet than Cowper, and 
 hardly one the area of whose influence was greater. No 
 man, it is unnecessary to say, courted popularity less, 
 yet he threw a very wide net, and caught a great shoal 
 of readers. For twenty years after the publication of 
 The Task in 1785, his general popularity never flagged, 
 and even when in the eyes of the world it was eclipsed, 
 when Cowper became, in the opinion of fierce Byronians 
 and moss-trooping Northerners, " a coddled Pope," and 
 a milksop, our great, sober, Puritan middle-class took 
 him to their warm firesides for two generations more. 
 Some amongst these were not, it must be owned, lovers 
 of poetry at all ; they liked Cowper because he is full 
 of a peculiar kind of religious phraseology, just as some 
 of Burns 's countrymen love Bums because he is full of 
 a peculiar kind of strong drink called whisky. This was 
 bad taste ; but it made Cowper all the more interesting, 
 as he thus became, by a kind of compulsion, the favourite 
 because the only poet of all these people's children ; 
 and the children of the righteous do not wither like the 
 green herb, neither do they beg their bread from door 
 to door, but they live in slated houses and are known to 
 read at times. No doubt, by the time it came to these
 
 - WILLIAM COWPER. 89 
 
 children's children the spell was broken, and Cowper 
 went out of fashion when Sunday travelling and play- 
 going came in again. But his was a long run, and under 
 peculiar conditions. Signs and tokens are now abroad, 
 whereby the judicious are beginning to infer that there 
 is a renewed disposition to read Cowper and to love him, 
 not for his faults, but for his great merits, his observing 
 eye, his playful wit, his personal charm. 
 
 Hayley's Life of Cowper is now obsolete, though since 
 it is adorned with vignettes by Blake it is prized by the 
 curious. Hayley was a kind friend to Cowper, but he 
 possessed, in a highly developed state, that aversion to 
 the actual facts of a case which is unhappily so char- 
 acteristic of the British biographer. Southey's Life is 
 horribly long-winded and stuffed out ; still, Hke Homer's 
 Iliad, it remains the best. It was long excluded from 
 strict circles because of its worldly tone, and also because 
 it more than hinted that the Rev. John Newton was to 
 blame for his mode of treating the poet's delusions. Its 
 place was filled by the Rev. Mr. Grimshaw's Life of the 
 poet, which is not a nice book. Mr. Benham's recent 
 Life, to be found in the cheap Globe edition of Cowpefs 
 Poems, is marvellously good and compressed. Mr. Gold- 
 win Smith's account of the poet in Mr. Morley's series 
 could not fail to be interesting, though it created in the 
 minds of some readers a curious sensation of immense 
 distance from the object described. Mr. Smith seemed 
 to discern Cowper clearly enough, but as somebody very 
 far off. This, however, may be fancy. 
 
 The wise man will not troul^le the biographers. He 
 wiU make for himself a short list of dates, so that he may 
 know where he is at any particular time, and then, poking 
 the fire and (his author notwithstanding) lighting his 
 pipe— 
 
 " Oh, pernicious weed, whose scent the fair annoys " — 
 
 he win read Cowper's letters. There are five volumes 
 of them in Southey's edition. It would be to exaggerate
 
 90 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 to say you wish there were fifty, but you are, at all 
 events, well content there should be five. In the course 
 of them Cowper will tell you the story of his own life, 
 as it ought to be told, as it alone can be told, in the 
 purest of English and with the sweetest of smiles. For 
 a combination of delightful qualities, Cowper's letters 
 have no rivals. They are playful, witty, loving, sensible, 
 ironical, and, above all, as easy as an old shoe. So 
 easy, indeed, that after you have read half a volume or 
 so, you begin to think their merits have been exaggerated, 
 and that anybody could WTite letters as good as Cowper's. 
 Even so the man who never played billiards, and who 
 sees Mr. Roberts play that game, might hastily opine that 
 he, too, could go and do likewise. 
 
 To form anything Uke a fair estimate of Cowper, it is 
 wise to ignore as much as possible his mental disease, 
 and always to bear in mind the manner of man he 
 naturally was. He belonged essentially to the order of 
 wags. He was, it is easy to see, a lover of trifling things, 
 elegantly finished. He hated noise, contention, and the 
 pubHc gaze, but society he ever insisted upon. 
 
 " I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd 
 How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude ! 
 But grant me still a friend in my retreat, 
 Whom I may whisper — ' solitude is sweet.' " 
 
 He loved a jest, a barrel of oysters, and a bottle of 
 wine. His well-known riddle on a kiss is Cowper from 
 top to toe : 
 
 " I am just two and two ; I am warm, I am cold. 
 And the parent of numbers that cannot be told. 
 I am lawful, unlawful, a duty, a fault, 
 I am often sold dear, good for nothing when bought. 
 An extraordinary boon, and a matter of course, 
 And yielded with pleasure when taken by force." 
 
 Why, it is a perfect dictionary of kisses in six lines ! 
 
 Had Cowper not gone mad in his thirty-second yesLV, 
 and been frightened out of the world of trifles, we should 
 have had another Prior, a wittier Gay, an earlier Praed,
 
 . WILLIAIM COWPER. 91 
 
 an English La Fontaine. We do better with The Task 
 and the Lines to Mary, but he had a Ught touch. 
 
 " 'Tis not that I design to rob 
 Thee of thy birthright, gentle Bob, 
 For thou art born sole heir and single 
 Of dear Mat Prior's easy jingle. 
 Not that I mean while thus I Imit 
 My threadbare sentiments together. 
 To show my genius or my wit. 
 When God and you know I have neither. 
 Or such as might be better shown 
 By letting poetry alone." 
 
 This lightness of touch, this love of trifling, never de- 
 serted Cowper, not even when the pains of hell gat hold 
 of him, and he believed himself the especially accursed 
 of God. In 1791, when things were very black, we find 
 him writing to his good Dissenting friend, the Rev. 
 Wilham Bull (" Carissime Taurorum "), as follows : 
 " Homer, I say, has all my time, except a Httle that I 
 give every day to no very cheering prospects of futurity. 
 I would I were a Hottentot, or even a Dissenter, so that 
 nuy views of an hereafter were more comfortable. But 
 such as I am, Hope, if it please God, may visit even me. 
 Should we ever meet again, possibly we may part no 
 more. Then, if Presbyterians ever find their way to 
 heaven, you and I may know each other in that better 
 world, and rejoice in the recital of the terrible things 
 that we endured in this. I will wager sixpence with 
 you now, that when that day comes you shall acknow- 
 ledge my story a more wonderful one than yours ; only 
 order your executors to put sixpence in your mouth 
 when they bury you, that you may have wherewithal 
 to pay me." 
 
 Whilst living in the Temple, which he did for twelve 
 years, chiefly, it would appear, on his capital, he associ- 
 ated with a race of men, of whom report has reached us, 
 called " wits." He belonged to the Nonsense Club ; he 
 wrote articles for magazines. He went to balls, to 
 Brighton, to the play. He went once, at all events, to
 
 92 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 the gallery of the House of Commons, where he witnessed 
 an altercation between a placeman and an alderman — 
 two well-known types still in our midst. The placeman 
 had misquoted Terence, and the alderman had corrected 
 him ; whereupon the ready placeman thanked the worthy 
 alderman for teaching him Latin, and volunteered in 
 exchange to teach the alderman English. Cowper must 
 at this time have been a considerable reader, for all 
 through life he is to be found quoting his authors, poets, 
 and playwrights, with an easy appositeness, all the more 
 obviously genuine because he had no books in the country 
 to refer to. " I have no English History," he writes, 
 " except Baker's Chronicle, and that I borrowed three 
 years ago from Mr. Throckmorton." This was wrong, 
 but Baker's Chronicle (Sir Roger de Coverley's favourite 
 Sunday reading) is not a book to be returned in a month. 
 
 After this easy fashion Cowper acquired what never 
 left him—the style and manner of an accomplished 
 worldling. 
 
 The story of the poet's life does not need telling ; 
 but as Owen Meredith says, probably not even for the 
 second time, " after all, old things are best." Cowper 
 was born in the rectory at Great Berkhampstead in 
 1735. His mother dying when he was six years old, he 
 was despatched to a country academy, where he was 
 horribly bullied by one of the boys, the reality of whose 
 persecution is proved by one terrible touch in his vic- 
 tim's account of it : "I had such a dread of him, that I 
 did not dare lift my eyes to his face. I knew him best by 
 his shoe-buckle." The odious brute ! Cowper goes on to 
 say he had forgiven him, which I can believe ; but when 
 he proceeds to ejaculate a wish to meet his persecutor 
 again in heaven, doubt creeps in. When ten years old 
 he was sent to Westminster, where there is nothing to 
 show that he was otherwise than fairly happy ; he took 
 to his classics very kindly, and (so he says) excelled 
 in cricket and football. This is evidence, but as Dr. 
 Johnson once confessed about the evidence for the
 
 . WILLIAM COWPER. 93 
 
 immortality of the soul, " one would like more." He 
 was for some time in the class of Vincent Bourne, who, 
 though bom in 1695, and a Fellow of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, ranks high amongst the Latin poets. Whether 
 Cowper was bullied at Westminster is a matter of con- 
 troversy. Bourne was bullied. About that there can 
 be no doubt. Cowper loved him, and relates with 
 delight how on one occasion the Duke of Richmond 
 (Burke's Duke, I suppose) set fire to the greasy locks 
 of this latter-day Catullus, and then, alarmed at the 
 spread of the conflagration, boxed his master's ears to 
 put it out. At eighteen Cowper left Westminster, and 
 after doing nothing (at v/hich he greatly excelled) for 
 nine months in the country, returned to town, and 
 was articled to an attorney in Ely Place, Holbom, for 
 three years. At the same time, being intended for the 
 Bar, he was entered at the Middle, though he subsequently 
 migrated to the Inner Temple. These three years in Ely 
 Place Cowper fribbled away agreeably enough. He had 
 as his desk-companion Edward Thurlow, the most 
 tcemendous of men. Hard by Ely Place is South- 
 ampton Row, and in Southampton Row lived Ashley 
 Cowper, the poet's uncle, with a trio of affable daughters, 
 Theodora Jane, Harriet, afterwards Lady Hesketh, and 
 a third, who became the wife of Sir Archer Croft. Ac- 
 cording to Cowper, a great deal of giggling went on in 
 Southampton Row. He fell in love with Theodora, 
 and Theodora fell in love with him. He wrote her 
 verses enough to fill a volume. She was called Delia in 
 his lays. In 1752, his articles having expired, he took 
 chambers in the Temple, and in 1754 was called to the 
 Bar. Ashley Cowper, a very little man, who used to 
 wear a white hat lined with yellow silk, and was on 
 that account likened by his nephew to a mushroom, 
 would not hear of his daughter marrying her cousin ; 
 and being a determined little man, he had his own way, 
 and the lovers were parted and saw one another no more. 
 Theodora Cowper wore the willow all the rest of her long
 
 94 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 life. Her interest in her cousin never abated. Through 
 her sister, Lady Hesketh, she contributed in later years 
 generously to his support. He took the money and 
 knew where it came from, but they never wrote to one 
 another, nor does her name ever appear in Cowper's 
 correspondence. She became, so it is said, morbid on 
 the subject during her latter days, and dying twenty- 
 four years after her lover, she bequeathed to a nephew 
 a mysterious packet she was known to cherish. It was 
 found to contain Cowper's love-verses. 
 
 Li 1756 Cowper's father died, and the poet's patrimony 
 proved to be a very small one. He was made a Com- 
 missioner of Bankrupts. The salary was £60 a year. 
 He knew one solicitor, but whether he ever had a brief 
 is not known. He lived alone in his chambers till 1763, 
 when, under well-known circumstances, he went raving 
 mad, and attempted to hang himself in his bedroom, 
 and very nearly succeeded. He was removed to Dr. 
 Cotton's asyhim, where he remained a year. This 
 madness, which in its origin had no more to do with 
 religion than it had with the Binomial Theorem, ulti- 
 mately took the turn of believing that it was the will 
 of God that he should kill himself, and that as he had 
 failed to do so he was damned everlastingly. In this 
 faith, diversified by doubt, Cowper must be said hence- 
 forth to have lived and died. 
 
 On leaving St. Albans, the poet, in order to be near 
 his only brother, the Rev. John Cowper, Fellow of 
 Corpus, Cambridge, and a most delightful man, had 
 lodgings in Huntingdon ; and there, one eventful 
 Tuesday in 1765, he made the acquaintance of Mary 
 Unwin. Mrs. Unwin's husband, a most scandalously 
 non-resident clergyman — whom, however, Cowper com- 
 posedly calls a veritable Parson Adams — was living at 
 this time, not in his Norfolk rectory of Grimston, but 
 contentedly enough in Huntingdon, where he took 
 pupils. Cowper became a lodger in the family, which 
 consisted of the rector and his wife, a son at Cambridge,
 
 - WILLIAM COWPER. 95 
 
 and a daughter, also one or two pupils. In 1767 Mr. 
 Unwin was thrown from his horse and fractured his 
 skull. Church-reformers pointed out, at the time, that 
 had the rector of Grimston been resident, this accident 
 could not have occurred in Huntingdon. They then 
 went on to say, but less convincingly, that Mr. tJnwin's 
 death was the judgment of Heaven upon him. Mr. 
 Unwin dead, the poet and the widow moved to Olney, 
 where they lived together for nineteen years in a 
 tumble-down house, and on very slender means. Their 
 attraction to Olney was in the fact that John Newton 
 was curate-in-charge. Olney was not an ideal place by 
 any means. Cowper and Mrs. Unwin lived in no fools' 
 paradise, for they visited the poor and knew the manner 
 of their lives. The inhabitants were mostly engaged in 
 lace-making and straw-plaiting ; they were miserably 
 poor, immoral, and drunken. There is no idyllic nonsense 
 in Cowper's poetry. 
 
 In 1773 he had another most violent attack of suicidal 
 mania, and attempted his life more than once. Writing 
 in. 1786 to Lady Hesketh, Cowper gives her an account 
 of his illness, of which at the time she knew nothing, 
 as her acquaintance with her cousin was not renewed 
 till 1785 : 
 
 " Know then, that in the year '73, the same scene 
 that was acted at St. Albans opened upon me again at 
 Olney, only covered with a still deeper shade of melan- 
 choly, and ordained to be of much longer duration. I 
 believed that everybody hated me, and that Mrs. Unwin 
 hated me most of all ; was convinced that all my food 
 was poisoned, together with ten thousand megrims of 
 the same stamp. Dr. Cotton was consulted. He replied 
 that he could do no more for me than might be done 
 at Olney, but recommended particular vigilance, lest I 
 should attempt my life ; a caution for which there was 
 the greatest occasion. At the same time that I was 
 convinced of Mrs. Unwin's aversion to me I could 
 endure no other companion. The whole management
 
 96 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 of me consequently devolved upon her, and a terrible 
 task she had ; she performed it, however, with a cheer- 
 fulness hardly ever equalled on such an occasion, and I 
 have often heard her say that if ever she praised God 
 in her life, it was when she found she was to have all 
 the labour. She performed it accordingly, but, as I hinted 
 once before, very much to the hurt of her own con- 
 stitution." 
 
 Just before this outbreak, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin 
 had agreed to marry, but after it they felt the subject 
 was not to be approached, and so the poor things spoke 
 of it no more. Still, it was well they had spoken out. 
 " Love me, and tell me so," is a wise maxim of behaviour. 
 
 Stupid people, themselves leading, one is glad to 
 believe, far duller lives than Cowper and Mary Unwin, 
 have been known to make dull, ponderous jokes about 
 this menage at Olney — its country walks, its hymn 
 tunes, its religious exercises. But it is pleasant to note 
 how quick Sainte-Beuve, whose three papers on Cowper 
 are amongst the glories of the Causeries du Lundi, is to 
 recognise how much happiness and pleasantness was 
 to be got out of this semi-monastic life and close social 
 relation. Cowper was indeed the very man for it. One 
 can apply to him his own well-known lines about the 
 winter season, and crown him 
 
 " King of intimate delights, 
 Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness." 
 
 No doubt he went mad at times. It was a terrible 
 affliction. But how many men have complaints of the 
 liver, and are as cheerful to live with as the Black Death, 
 or Young's Night Thoughts. Cowper had a famous 
 constitution. Not even Dr. James's powder, or the 
 murderous practices of the faculty, could undermine it. 
 Sadness is not dulness. 
 
 " Dear saints, it is not sorrow, as I hear. 
 Nor suffering that shuts up eye and ear
 
 . .WILLIAM COWPER. 97 
 
 To all which has delighted them before. 
 
 And lets us be what we were once no more I 
 
 No I we may suffer deeply, yet retain 
 
 Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain, 
 
 By what of old pleased us, and will again. 
 
 No ! 'tis the gradual furnace of the world. 
 
 In whose hot air our spirits are upcurled 
 
 Until they crumble, or else grow like steel. 
 
 Which kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring, 
 
 Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel. 
 
 But takes away the power — this can avail. 
 
 By drying up our joy in everything, 
 
 To make our fornier pleasures all seem stale." 
 
 I can think of no one to whom these beautiful lines 
 )f Mr. Arnold's are so exquisitely appropriate as to 
 lowper. Nothing could knock the humanity out of 
 lim. Solitude, sorrow, madness found him out, threw 
 lim down and tore him, as did the devils their victims 
 n the days of old ; but when they left him for a season, 
 le rose from his misery as sweet and as human, as inter- 
 :sted and as interesting as ever. His descriptions of 
 xatural scenery and countryside doings are amongst his 
 )est things. He moralises enough, heaven knows ! but 
 le keeps his morality out of his descriptions. This is 
 ather a relief after overdoses of Wordsworth's pantheism 
 md Keats' paganism. Cowper's Nature is plain county 
 Bucks. 
 
 " The sheepfold here 
 Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe. 
 At first progressive as a stream, they seek 
 The middle field ; but scattered by degrees, 
 Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land." 
 
 The man who wrote that had his eye on the object ; 
 3ut lest the quotation be thought too woolly by a 
 generation which has a passion for fine things, I will 
 illow myself another : 
 
 " Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds. 
 Exhilarate tlie spirit and restore 
 The tone of languid nature, mighty winds 
 That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood 
 Of ancient growth, make music not unlike 
 The dash of ocean on his winding shore 
 
 4
 
 98 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 of rills that slip 
 
 Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall 
 Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length 
 In matted grass, that with a livelier green 
 Betrays the secret of their silent course." 
 
 In 178 1 began the episode of Lady Austen. That 
 lady was domg some small shopping in Olney, in com- 
 pany with her sister, the wife of a neighbouring clergy- 
 man, when our poet first beheld her. She pleased his 
 eye. Whether in the words of one of his early poems 
 he made free to comment on her shape I cannot say ; 
 but he hurried home and made Mrs. Unwin ask her to 
 tea. She came. Cowi3er was seized with a fit of shy- 
 ness, and very nearly would not go into the room. 
 He conquered the fit, went in, and swore eternal friend- 
 ship. To the very end of her days Mrs. Unwin ad- 
 dressed the poet, her true lover though he was, as " Mr. 
 Cowper." In a week, Lady Austen and he were " Sister 
 Ann " and " William " one to another. Sister Ann had 
 a furnished house in London. She gave it up. She 
 came to live in Olney, next door. She was pretty, she 
 was witty, she played, she sang. She told Cowper the 
 story of John Gilpin, she inspired his Wreck of the Royal 
 George. The Task was written at her bidding. Day in 
 and day out, Cowper and Lady Austen and Mrs. Unwin 
 were together. One turns instinctively to see what 
 Sainte-Beuve has to say about Lady Austen. " C'etait 
 Lady Austen, veuve d'un baronet. Cette rare per- 
 sonne etait douee des plus heureux dons ; elle n'etait 
 plus tres-jeune ni dans la fleur de beaute ; elle avait 
 ce qui est mieux, une puissance d'attraction et d'en- 
 chantement qui tenait a la transparence de I'ame, une 
 faculte de reconnaissance, de sensibilite emue jusqu'aux 
 larmes pour toute marque de bienveillance dont elle 
 etait I'objet. Tout en elle expriraait une vivacite pure, 
 innocente et tendre. C'etait une creature sympathiqiie, 
 et elle devait tout-a-fait justifier dans le cas present ce 
 mot de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre : ' II y a dans la
 
 .willia:\i COWPER. 99 
 
 temme une gaiete legere qui dissipe la tristesse de 
 .'homme.' " 
 
 That odd personage, Alexander Knox, who had what 
 ised to be called a " primitive," that is, a fourth-century 
 nind, and on whom the Tracta,rian movement has been 
 plausibly grandfathered, and who was (incongruously) 
 employed by Lord Castlereagh to help through the Act 
 )f Union with Ireland, of which we have lately heard, 
 3ut who remained all the time primitively unaware that 
 my corruption was going on around him — this odd 
 Derson, I say, was exercised in his mind about Lady 
 ;\usten, of whom he had been reading in Hayley's Life. 
 [n October, 1806, he writes to Bishop J ebb in a solemn 
 strain : "I have rather a severer idea of Lady A. than 
 [ should wish to put into writing for publication. I 
 ilmost suspect she was a very artful woman. But I 
 leed not enlarge." He puts it rather differently from 
 Sainte-Beuve, but I dare say they both meant much 
 ;he same thing. If Knox meant more it would be 
 accessary to get angry with him. That Lady Austen 
 :ell in love with Cowper aod would have liked to marry 
 iim, but found Mrs. Unwin in the way, is probable 
 mougli ; but where was the artfulness ? Poor Cowper 
 ^'as no catch. The grandfather of Tractarianism would 
 lave been better employed in unmasking the corruption 
 imongst which he had lived, than in darkly suspecting 
 X lively lady of designs upon a penniless poet, living in 
 :he utmost obscurity, on the charity of his relatives. * 
 
 But this state of things at Olney did not last very 
 
 * lu the fourth volume of Knox's Remains, in a note on page 539, 
 s to be found Lord Castlcreagh's very strange letter urging Knox to 
 jecome the historian and apologist of the Union. " And I really think 
 t would come with great advantage before tlie world in your name, 
 is you are known to be incapable of stating wliat you do not believe 
 :o be true." " But," says Knox himself, " though I was well acquainted 
 .vith the spirit and intention which actuated Lord C. at that time (and 
 [ may truly say all the persons in power), yet the evidciicc 1 could bear 
 -vould be limited to my own honest impressions, for of the details of 
 neasures or exigencies I could from memory state nothing." But 
 .0 get a nervous saint to puff the Union was a good idea.
 
 100 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 long. " Of course not," cackle a chorus of cynics. " It 
 could not ! " The Historical Muse, ever averse to theory, 
 is content to say, " It did not," but as she writes the 
 words she smiles. The episode began in 1781, it ended 
 in 1784. It became necessary to part. Cowper may 
 have had his qualms, but he concealed them manfully 
 and remained faithful to Mrs. Unwin — 
 
 " The patieat flower 
 Who possessed his darker hour." 
 
 Lady Austen flew away, and afterwards, as if to prove 
 her levity incurable, married a Frenchman. She died 
 in 1802. English literature owes her a debt of grati- 
 tude. Her name is writ large over much that is best 
 in Cowper's poetry. Not, indeed, over the very best ; 
 that bears the inscription To Mary. And it was right 
 that it should be so, for Mrs. Unwin had to put up 
 with a good deal. 
 
 The Task and John Gilpin were published together 
 in 1785, and some of Cowper's old friends (notably Lady 
 Hesketh) rallied round the now known poet once more. 
 Lady Hesketh soon begins to fill the chair vacated by 
 Lady Austen, and Cowper's letters to her are amongst 
 his most delightful. Her visits to Olney were eagerly 
 expected, and it was she who persuaded the pair to 
 leave the place for good and all, and move to Weston, 
 which they did in 1786. The foUowing year Cowper 
 went mad again, and made another most desperate 
 attempt upon his life. Again Mary Unwin stood by 
 the poor maniac's side, and again she stood alone. He 
 got better, and worked away at his translation of Homer 
 as hard and wrote letters as charming as ever. But 
 Mrs. Unwin was well-nigh worn out. Cowper published 
 his Homer by subscription, and must be pronounced 
 an adept in the somewhat ignoble art of collecting sub- 
 scribers. I am not sure that he could not have given 
 Pope points. Pope had a great acquaintance, but he 
 had barely six hundred subscnbers. Cowper scraped
 
 • .WILLIAM COWPER. loi 
 
 ;ogether upwards of five hundred. As a beggar he 
 ,vas unabashed. He quotes in one of his letters, and 
 ipplies to himself patly enough, Ranger's observation 
 n the Suspicious Husband : " There is a degree of 
 issurance in you modest men that we impudent fellows 
 :an never arrive at ! " The University of Oxford was, 
 lowever, too much for him. He beat her portals in 
 .-ain. She had but one answer, " We subscribe to 
 lothing." Cowper was very angry, and called her " a 
 ich old vixen." She did not mind. The book appeared 
 n 1791. It has many merits, and remains unrtacl. 
 
 The clouds now gathered heavily over the biography 
 )f Cowper. Mrs. Unwin had two paralytic strokes ; 
 he old friends began to torture one another. She was 
 iilent save when she was irritable, indifferent except 
 vhen exacting. At last, not a day too soon. Lady 
 ^esketh came to Weston. They were moved into Nor- 
 blk — but why prolong the tale ? ]Mrs. Unwin died at 
 iast Dereham on the 17th of December. 1796. Thirty- 
 )ne years had gone since the poet and she first met 
 :)y chance in Huntingdon. Cowper himself died in 
 \pril, 1800. His last days were made physically com- 
 ortable by the kindness of some Norfolk cousins, and 
 ;he devotion of a Miss Perowne. But he died in wretch- 
 edness and gloom. 
 
 The Castaway was his last original poem : 
 
 " I therefore purpose not or dream 
 
 Descanting on his fate, 
 To give the melancholy theme 
 
 A more enduring date ; 
 But misery still delights to trace 
 Its seoiblance in another's case." 
 
 Everybody interested in Cowper has of course to 
 uake out, as best he may, a picture of the Doet for 
 lis own use. It is curious how sometimes little scraps 
 )f things serve to do this better than deliberate efforts. 
 [n 1800, the year of Cowper's death, his relative, a 
 Dr. Johnson, wrote a letter to John Newton, sending
 
 102 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 good wishes to the old gentleman, and to his niece, 
 Miss Catlett ; and added : " Poor dear Mr. Cowper, 
 oh that he were as tolerable as he was, even in those 
 days, when, dining at his house in Buckinghamshire 
 with you and that lady, I could not help smiling to see 
 his pleasant face when he said, * Miss Catlett, shall I 
 give you a piece of cutlet ? ' " It was a very small 
 joke indeed, and it is a very humble little quotation, 
 but for me it has long served, in the mind's eye, for a 
 vignette of the poet, doomed yet debonnaire. Romney's 
 picture, with that frightful nightcap and eyes gleaming 
 with madness, is a pestilent thing one would forget if 
 one could. Cowper's pleasant face when he said, " Miss 
 Catlett, shall I give you a piece of cutlet ? " is a much 
 more agreeable picture to hnd a small comer for in one's 
 memory.
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 SOME ASPECTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 IT was a fortunate thing for historians, morahsts, 
 philosophers, and every other kind of bookmaker 
 when it became the habit to chop up the annals of 
 mankind into centuries. It is a meaningless division 
 save for the purpose of counting, and yet such is our 
 passion for generalisation, so fond are we of distinguish- 
 ing and differentiating, that we all of us have long ago 
 endowed each one of the nineteen Christian centu- 
 ries (to wander back no farther) with its own charac- 
 teristics and attributes. These arbitrary divisions of 
 tin^e have thus become sober realities ; they stalk ma- 
 jestically across the stage of m.emory, they tread the 
 boards each in its own garb, making appropriate ges- 
 tures and uttering familiar catch-words. Lord Claren- 
 don's history is not more unlike Gibbon's, Bishop Ken 
 is not more unlike Bishop Hoadly, Prince Rupert is not 
 more unlike John Churchill, than is the seventeenth 
 century as we choose to depict it unlike the eighteenth. 
 And yet full well do we know in the bottom of our hearts 
 those unpleasing depths where we seldom dredge for 
 fear of the consequences, how impossible it is to com- 
 press into the lines of a single figure, however animated 
 its countenance or mobile its features, the vast tide of 
 human existence as it flows gigantically along regardless 
 of methods of counting' time. 
 
 The eighteenth century in England does not lack its 
 historians and painters who have treated their great 
 subject sometimes after a Pre-RaDliaehte fashion, and
 
 104 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 sometimes after the manner of the impressionists. It 
 has been loaded with abuse by picturesque historians 
 and high-flying divines and romantic poets. Its pohtical 
 franchise was certainly restricted, while its civil list was 
 unduly extended. It whitewashed its churches., and 
 even sought to rationalise its religion. No less emanci- 
 pated an intelligence than Mark Pattison's pronounced 
 the first half of the eighteenth century to be " an age 
 destitute of faith and earnestness — an age whose poetry 
 was without romance, whose philosophy was without 
 insight, and whose public men were without character." 
 Harsh words indeed, but not lightly written. 
 
 Yet when abandoning generalities and dwelling on the 
 details of the time as it was then spent in England, it 
 is difficult to reconcile aU one's reading with any very 
 sweeping assertions. It was a brutal age, no doubt — 
 an age of the press-gang, of the whipping-post, of gaol- 
 fever, and all the horrors of the criminal code ; an 
 ignorant age, when the population, lords and louts alike, 
 drank with great freedom and reckoned cock-fighting 
 among the more innocent joj^s of life ; when education 
 of the kind called popular, or, more correctly, primary — 
 for popular it is not and never will be — was hardly 
 thought of ; a corrupt age, when offices and votes were 
 bought and sold, and bishops owed their sees to the 
 King's women. 
 
 Brutal, ignorant, and corrupt. That the eighteenth 
 century in England was all this, is it not written in the 
 storied page of Hogarth ? Charles Lamb quotes with 
 critical approval the answer of the man who, when 
 asked to name his favourite author, replied : " Next to 
 Shakspeare, Hogarth." We all love a crowded gallery 
 — people coming, going, incidents, emotions, passions, 
 evil as well as good, for there is nothing we cannot for- 
 give humanity — and Hogarth's gallery teems with the 
 life of the eighteenth century ; catches, as only great 
 painters can, its most evanescent glances, and records 
 its desperate efforts to amuse itself or forget itself be-
 
 - JOHN WESLEY. 105 
 
 tween two eternities. And though so true a humourist 
 could not be oblivious of the kindly side of life or be 
 without some gracious touches and affectionate por- 
 trayals, still, roughly speaking, the great historian of 
 the eighteenth century in England affirms the brutal 
 view of it, its cruelty, its horror. How people can frame 
 Hogarth's prints and hang them up in their rooms is 
 more than I can say. 
 
 But there are other authorities, other aspects, other 
 books. Two of the catchwords of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury are sentimentality and enthusiasm. The first of the 
 two is supposed to have been invented by the famous 
 author of the History of Clarissa Harlowe, a Series of 
 Letters. He it was, that little printer and warden of a 
 city company, who first opened the rusty floodgates of 
 English tears and taught the South Briton how to weep 
 as he had never wept before. But it is with enthusiasm 
 I would deal to-day. During the eighteenth century 
 enthusiasm is a word of almost as frequent occurrence 
 as either wit or parts. It has been pointed out by an 
 ingenious friend of my own that Pope, in his Essay on 
 Criticism, employs the word " wit " fort3^-seven times 
 and in at least seven different senses ; * and as for 
 " parts," though the word may be found in Sidney and 
 Spenser, the eighteenth century made it peculiarly its 
 own. But " enthusiasm " is also a very frequent word. 
 Lord Shaftesbury, the third Earl and the author of the 
 Characteristicks, before the century was in its teens, wrote 
 his famous Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, in which he 
 is supposed to have said : " Ridicule is the test of truth." 
 He never said so anywhere in so many words, but he 
 gets very near it in this letter in which he describes 
 enthusiasm as one of the dangers of the age, a terrible 
 distemper, almost as bad as the small-pox. In the 
 opinion of my lord enthusiasm is a modification of the 
 
 * Pope's Essay on Criticism, edited by A. S. West. Cambridge 
 University Press, 1896.
 
 io6 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 spleen, having its centre in an ill-regulated religion. 
 True religion, in the opinion of that third Lord Shaftes- 
 bury, is based on good humour. He observes in his 
 fashionable way : " 'Tis in adversity chiefly or in ill- 
 health, under affliction or disturbance of mind or dis- 
 composure of temper, that we have recourse to religion, 
 though in reality we are never so unfit to think of it 
 as at such a dark and heavy hour. We can never be 
 fit to contemplate anything above us when we are in 
 no condition to look into ourselves and calmly examine 
 the temper of our own minds and passions, for then it is 
 we see wrath and fury and revenge and terror in the 
 Deity when we are full of disturbances and fears within, 
 and have by suffering and anxiety lost so much of the 
 natural calm and easiness of our temper." 
 
 Thus did the infant century at the very outset of its 
 journey meet, in the shape of this elegant peer, its Mr. 
 Worldly-Wiseman, who, you will remember, in reply to 
 Christian's distracted " I know what I would obtain ; 
 it is ease for my heavy burden," observes in the same 
 sense as Shaftesbury, though in homelier language : 
 " But why wilt thou seek for ease in this way, seeing so 
 many dangers attend it, especially since (hadst thou but 
 patience to hear me) I could direct thee to the obtaining 
 of what thou desirest, without the dangers that thou 
 in this way wilt run thyself into — yea, and the remedy 
 is at hand ? Besides, I will add that instead of those 
 dangers, thou shaft meet with much safety, friendship, 
 and content." 
 
 Why wilt thou seek for ease in this way when if you 
 wiU only be good-humoured, sensible, and let the world 
 wag, you will meet with much safety, friendship, and 
 content ? 
 
 All through the eighteenth century, from Lord Shaftes- 
 bury at the beginning to Bishop Lavington nearer its 
 close, enthusiasm continued the hide noire of all those 
 decent people who tliink that as God made the world 
 He should be left alone to mend it. The inherent ab-
 
 - JOHN WESLEY. 107 
 
 surdity of enthusiasm seldom failed to illuminate the 
 good-natured countenance of David Hume with a smile 
 half a philosopher's and half a man of the world's, while 
 it provoked a not ill-natured sneer from Gibbon, who, 
 though he wrote the history of the fall of the Roman 
 Empire, was taken quite by surprise, and, indeed, ter- 
 ribly put out, by the fall of the French monarchy in 
 his own day. He, while referring to the author of A 
 Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, one of the most 
 characteristic books of the eighteenth century, observes 
 in that way of his so suggestive of a snug corner and a 
 library chair : " Had not Law's vigorous mind been 
 clouded by enthusiasm, he might be ranked with the 
 most agreeable and ingenious writers of his time." De- 
 voutness, holiness, the inward life, the flight from wrath 
 to come, the horror of sin, the inspiration of the Holy 
 Spirit, raptures, transports, fancies, visions, voices — all 
 these things and more are included in that word " en- 
 thusiasm," which is for ever cropping up in this eight- 
 eenth century, the reason being that the century was 
 full of it, and during its years countless thousands of 
 pilgrims not only played the fool in Vanity Fair and 
 made beasts of themselves in Gin Lane, but with groans 
 and trembling passed through the Valley of the Shadow 
 of Death, and caught glimpses of the towers and palaces 
 of the city of God. 
 
 We have too few books which bring home to us in 
 concrete form the lives and thoughts of our forefathers. 
 Historians we know, good, bad, and indifferent, the 
 learned but dull, the dull but conscientious, the pictur- 
 esque but false ; the liistorian who writes his history 
 because he has a grudge against the Church of England, 
 whose Orders he has renounced ; his Anglican rival, who 
 writes his because he resents as a personal affront the 
 attitude of the Church of Rome to the English branch ; 
 the Nonconformist historian, who has his quarrel both 
 with the Vatican and Lambeth, and is better read in 
 his Calamy's Noficonformist Memorial than in his Walker's
 
 io8 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Sufferings of the Clergy. They all have their value, these 
 historians, and their vogue. Gladly do I give them place. 
 But they none of them supply us with what we want. 
 Suppose, for example, I want to be infected with the 
 learning and the leisure of the eighteenth century : the 
 generalisations of the regular historian are of no use to 
 me. Their pages contain no microbes, distil no per- 
 fumes. If Mr. Austin Dobson's poems are by my side 
 or his prose studies, they will for a brief season lay me 
 low ; but a resurrectionary tour de force has never the 
 reposeful air of Nature. For such a purpose as I have just 
 indicated there is nothing quite so good as the seventeen 
 volumes of Nichols's Anecdotes and Literary History of 
 the Eighteenth Century. In a sense, and a very real 
 sense, too, these portly tomes may be called utterly in- 
 significant. They rarely recall a name of first-class 
 importance or record a fact in itself worth mentioning. 
 The}' force you to spend your time in the company of 
 historians, not of empires, but of counties, of typographers, 
 antiquaries, classical scholars, lettered divines, librarians 
 at great houses, learned tradesmen (for such freaks 
 existed in the eighteenth century) ; they tell you of 
 lives wasted in colleges and country rectories ; the}' 
 remind you of forgotten controversies and foolish per- 
 sonal enmities ; they are full of Latin epitaphs. And 
 every now and again in your country wanderings the 
 originals of these epitaphs will stare at you from some 
 snug transept corner, or meet your eye as you wander 
 westward down the nave of an abbey church or other 
 old world burying-place. You will not be troubled with 
 enthusiasm in ]\Ir. Nichols's collections, but to read them 
 is to live in the eighteenth century. In sundry moods 
 they will serve your turn well enough, but the reaction 
 must come, when you will grow impatient of all this 
 trifling, and demand to be quit of tiresome coteries and 
 tenth-rate literature, and to be admitted into the life 
 of the nation. Then, if you are wise, you will carefully 
 replace Mr. Nichols on the shelf (for it is childish to knock
 
 . , JOHN WESLEY. 109 
 
 books about, and the mood will recur), and take down 
 The Journal of the Reverend John Wesley, A.M., sometime 
 Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. 
 
 John Weslej^, born as he was in 1703, and dying as he 
 did in 1791, covers as nearly as mortal man may the 
 whole of the eighteenth century, of which he was one 
 of the most typical figures, and certainly the most 
 strenuous. He began liis published Journal on October 
 14, 1735, and its last entry is under date Sunday, Octo- 
 ber 24, 1790, when in the morning he explained to a 
 numerous congregation in Spitalfields Church " The 
 Whole Armour of God," and in the afternoon enforced 
 to a still larger audience in St. Paul's, Shadwell, the great 
 truth, " One thing is needful," the last words of the 
 Journal being : "I hope many even then resolved to 
 choose the better part." 
 
 Between those two Octobers there lies the most amaz- 
 ing record of human exertion ever penned or endured. I 
 do not know whether I am likely to have among my 
 readers anyone who has ever contested an English or 
 Scotch county in a Parliamentary Election since house- 
 hold suffrage. If I have, that tired soul will know how 
 severe is the strain of its three weeks, and how im- 
 possible it seemed at the end of the first week that you 
 should be able to keep it going for another fortnight, 
 and how when the last night arrived you felt that had 
 the strife been accidentally prolonged another seven 
 days you must have perished by the wayside. Well, 
 John Wesley contested the three kingdoms in the cause 
 of Christ during a campaign which lasted forty years. 
 He did it for the most part on horseback. He paid more 
 turnpikes than any man who ever bestrode a beast. 
 Eight thousand miles was his annual record for many a 
 long year, during each of which he seldom preached less 
 frequently than a thousand times. Had he but pre- 
 served his scores at all the inns where he lodged, they 
 would have made by themselves a history of prices.
 
 no SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 And throughout it all he never knew what depression 
 of spirits meant, though he had much to try him — suits 
 in Chancery and a jealous wife. 
 
 In the course of this unparalleled contest Wesley visited 
 again and again the most out-of-the-way districts, the 
 remotest corners of England— places which to-day lie 
 far removed even from the searcher after the picturesque. 
 Even now, when the map of England looks like a 
 gridiron of railways, none but the sturdiest of pedes- 
 trians, the most determined of cyclists, can retrace the 
 steps of Wesley and liis horse and stand by the rocks 
 and the natural amphitheatres in Cornwall and North- 
 umberland, in Lancashire and Berkshire, where he 
 preached his Gospel to the heathen. Exertion so pro- 
 longed, enthusiasm so sustained, argues a remarkable 
 man, while the organisation he created, the system he 
 founded, the view of life he promulgated, is still a great 
 fact among us. No other name than Wesle5^'s lies em- 
 balmed as his does. Yet he is not a popular figure. 
 Our standard historians — save, indeed, Mr. Lecky — have 
 dismissed him curtly. The fact is, Wesley puts your 
 ordinary historian out of conceit with himself. How 
 much easier to weave into your page the gossip of Horace 
 Walpole, to enliven it with a heartless jest of George 
 Selwyn's, to make it blush with sad stories of the ex- 
 travagance of Fox, to embroider it with the rhetoric of 
 Burke, to humanise it with the talk of Johnson, to dis- 
 cuss the rise and fall of administrations, the growth 
 and decay of the constitution, than to follow John 
 Wesley into the streets of Bristol or on to the bleak 
 moors near Burslem, where he met face to face in all 
 their violence, all their ignorance, and all their gener- 
 osity the living men, women, and children who made 
 up the nation ! 
 
 It has perhaps also to be admitted that to found great 
 organisations is to build your tomb. A splendid tomb 
 it may be, a veritable sarcophagus, but none the less a 
 tomb. John Wesley's chapels lie a little heavily on
 
 - JOHN WESLEY. iii 
 
 John Wesley. Even so do the glories of Rome make 
 us forgetful of the grave in Syria. 
 
 It has been said ^ that Wesley's character lacks charm, 
 that mighty antiseptic. It is not easy to define charm, 
 which is not a catalogue of qualities, but a mixture. 
 Let no one deny charm to Wesle}^ who has not read his 
 Journal. Southey's Life is a dull, almost a stupid, book, 
 which happily there is no need to read. Read the 
 Journal, which is a book fuU of plots and plays and 
 novels, which quivers with life, and is crammed full of 
 character. 
 
 John Wesley came of a stock which had been much 
 harassed and put about by our unhappy religious diffi- 
 culties. Politics, business, and religion are the three 
 things Englishmen are said to worry themselves about. 
 The Wesleys early took up with rehgion. John Wesley's 
 great-grandfather and grandfather were both ejected 
 from their livings in 1662, and the grandfather was so 
 bullied and oppressed by the Five Mile Act that he early 
 gave up the ghost, whereupon his remains were refused 
 what is called Christian burial, though a holier and more 
 primitive man never drew breath. This poor persecuted 
 spirit left two sons according to the flesh, Matthew and 
 Samuel ; and Samuel it was who in his turn became the 
 father of John and Charles Wesley. 
 
 Samuel Wesley, though minded to share the lot, hard 
 though that lot was, of his progenitors, had the modera- 
 tion of mind, the Christian conservatism, perhaps even 
 the disposition to Toryism, which marked the family, 
 and being sent to a Dissenting college, became disgusted 
 with the ferocity and bigotry he happened there to en- 
 counter. Those were the days of the Calf's Head Club 
 and feastings on the 29th of January, graceless meals for 
 which Samuel Wesley had no stomach. His turn was for 
 the things that are " quiet, wise, and good." He departed 
 from the Dissenting seminary, and in 1685 entered him- 
 self as a poor scholar at Exeter College, Oxford. He 
 brought £2, 6s. with him, and as for prospects, he had
 
 112 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 none, Exeter received him. During the eighteenth 
 century our two Universities, famous despite their 
 faults, were always open to the poor scholar who was 
 ready to subscribe, not to boat clubs or cricket clubs, 
 but to the Thirty-nine Articles. Three Archbishops of 
 Canterbury during the eighteenth century were the sons 
 of small tradesmen. There was, in fact, much less snob- 
 bery and money-worship during the century when the 
 British Empire was being won than during the century 
 when it is being talked about. Samuel Wesley was 
 allowed to remain at Oxford, where he supported himself 
 by devices known to his tribe, and when he left the 
 University to be ordained he had clear in his pouch, 
 after discharging his few debts, ;^io, 15s. He had thus 
 made £8, 9s. out of his University, and had his educa- 
 tion, as it were, thrown in for nothing. He soon ob- 
 tained a curacy in London, and married a daughter of 
 the well-known ejected clergyman. Dr. Annesley, about 
 whom you may read in another eighteenth-century book, 
 The Life and Errors of John Dunton. 
 
 The mother of the Wesleys was a remarkable woman, 
 though cast in a mould not much to our minds now- 
 adays. She had nineteen children, and greatly prided 
 herself on having taught them, one after another, by 
 frequent chastisements, to — what do you think ? — cry 
 softly. She had theories of education, and strength of 
 will and of arm, too, to carry them out. She knew 
 Latin and Greek, and though a stern, forbidding, almost 
 an unfeeling parent, she was successful in winning and 
 retaining, not only the respect, but the affection of such 
 of her huge family as lived to grow up. But out of the 
 nineteen thirteen early succumbed. Infant mortality 
 was one of the great facts of the eighteenth century, 
 whose Rachels had to learn to cry softly over their dead 
 babes. The mother of the Wesleys thought more of 
 her children's souls than of their bodies. 
 
 The revolution of 1688 threatened to disturb the early 
 married life of Samuel Wesley and his spouse. The
 
 . JOHN WESLEY. 113 
 
 husband ^vTote a pamphlet in which he defended revolu- 
 lion principles, but the wife secretly adhered to the old 
 cause ; nor was it until a year before Dutch William's 
 death that the Rector made the discovery that the 
 wife of his bosom, who had sworn to obey him and 
 regard him as her overlord, was not in the habit of 
 saying " Amen " to his fervent prayers on behalf of 
 his suffering Sovereign. An explanation was demanded 
 and the truth extracted, namely, that in the opinion of 
 the Rector's wife her true King lived over the water. 
 The Rector at once refused to live with Mrs. Wesley any 
 longer until she recanted. This she refused to do, and 
 for a twelvemonth the couple dwelt apart, when William 
 III. having the good sense to die, a reconciliation became 
 possible. If John Wesley was occasionaUy a little pig- 
 headed, need one wonder ? The story of the fire at 
 Epworth Rectory and the miraculous escape of the infant 
 John was once a tale as well known as Alfred in the 
 neat-herd's hut, and pictures of it still hang up in many 
 a collier's home. 
 
 John Wesley received a sound classical education at 
 Charterhouse and Christ Church, and remained all his 
 hfe very much the scholar and the gentleman. No com- 
 pany was too good for John Wesley, and nobody knew 
 better than he did that had he cared to carry his powerful 
 intelligence, his flawless constitution, and his infinite 
 .capacity for taking pains into any of the markets of 
 the world, he must have earned for himself place, fame, 
 and fortune. 
 
 Coming, however, as he did of a theological stock, 
 having a saint for a father and a notable devout woman 
 for a mother, Wesley from his early days learned to 
 regard religion as the business of his hfe, just as the 
 younger Pitt came to regard the House of Commons as 
 the future theatre of his actions. After a good deal of 
 heart-searching and theological talk with his mother, 
 Wesley was ordained a deacon by the excellent Potter, 
 afterward Primate, but then (1725) Bishop of Oxford.
 
 114 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 In the following year Wesley was elected a Fellow of 
 Lincoln, to the great delight of his father. " Whatever 
 I am," said the good old man, " my Jack is Fellow of 
 Lincoln." 
 
 In trying to form even a glimmering idea of the state 
 of the Church of England in 1725, when Wesley took 
 Orders, there are some incidents in its past history which 
 must not be overlooked. I mean its repeated purgings. 
 Evictions are, of course, of frequent occurrence in all 
 Church histories, but the Church of England has been 
 pecuHarly unlucky in this respect. Let me, in a handful 
 of sentences, recall the facts. I pass over the puzzling 
 and unedifying events of King Henry VIII. 's time, the 
 Protestant rule of his short-lived son, the fra,nk Romanism 
 of his eldest daughter, and begin with Elizabeth, who 
 succeeded in November, 1558. Crowned though she was 
 according to the Cathohc ceremonial, including the 
 unction and the Pontifical Mass, it appears to have been 
 well understood by those in high place that England, 
 having got a new master, must be prepared once more 
 for new men and new measures. They were indeed 
 strange times. Can it be that the country did not care 
 about the continuity of its Church ? The Act of Suprem- 
 acy soon made its appearance, annexing to the Crown 
 all jurisdictions, spiritual and ecclesiastical, for the 
 visitation and reformation of the ecclesiastical state and 
 persons, and of all errors, heresies, and schisms. The 
 inevitable oath was directed to be taken under the usual 
 penalties — first, loss of property, then loss of life. When 
 Queen Mary died there were but fifteen Anglican bishops 
 alive. Of these, fourteen refused the oath, and were 
 turned neck-and-crop out of their sees. They went away 
 quickly enough, and disappeared into obscurity. Ehza- 
 beth called them a lazy set of scamps. We have no 
 evidence that they were anything of the kind. Hard- 
 ships and indignities were heaped upon them. Some 
 died in prison, others in retirement ; one or two escaped 
 abroad. It seems to be the fact that they all died in
 
 . JOHN WESLEY. 115 
 
 their beds. They had no mind either to burn or hang. 
 Jeremy ColHer gives us, in addition to those fourteen 
 prelates, a Hst of three bishops-elect, one abbot, one 
 abbess, four priors, twelve deans, fourteen archdeacons, 
 sixty canons, one hundred priests, all well preferred, 
 fifteen heads of colleges, and about twenty doctors of 
 both faculties — all what one may call stationary people 
 hard to move, who were at this same time deprived 
 of their places, profits, and dignities. It does not 
 seem a great many out of the nine thousand spiritual 
 places in England. Still, to lose its whole hierarchy 
 (except the Bishop of Llandaff) at one blow was a 
 shrewd knock, nor, we may be sure, did the bishops- 
 elect, the deans, the archdeacons and canons, the heads 
 of houses and doctors of divinity, and the one hundred 
 well-preferred priests go out without rendings of the 
 heart and bitter reflections. There were no newspapers 
 to record their emotions or to summarise their losses 
 under the heading " Crisis in the Church ; " but we 
 may be sure they were pious men, sick of shuffles and 
 crowned heads, while of those who remained, who can 
 tell with what uneasiness of mind, with what pangs 
 of conscience, they did so ? 
 
 This is Purge No. i, and it got rid of the old Roman 
 pietist ; and let no man deny to the Church of Rome 
 one of the notes of a true Church — the capacity to breed 
 saints. 
 
 Purge No. 2 was numerically more important. Charles I. 
 got into those difficulties which brought his comely head 
 to the scaffold, and the beneficed clergy were made sub- 
 ject to visitation by order of the House of Commons 
 and in large numbers turned adrift. That many of these 
 clergy were illiterate and unfit for their office is true 
 enough, but in the teeth of the protests made by the 
 best men among the Puritan party, other tests than those 
 of learning and piety were imposed and enforced. Loy- 
 alty to the dead King, or malignancy as it was termed, 
 was counted to be a disqualification for a country par-
 
 ii6 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 son ; a sour observance of Sunday was reckoned as 
 piety, and many a good man who had earned and de- 
 served the love of his parishioners was evicted to make 
 way for a Presbyterian. How many parsons were turned 
 out during the Commonwealth it is hard to say, but 
 many hundreds there certainly were, and among them 
 were numbered some of the very choicest spirits of the age. 
 
 Purge No. 3 is the one best known in Nonconformist 
 circles. It occurred after the restoration of the Stuarts, 
 when two thousand of the clergy, including a large num- 
 ber of the intruders of the Commonwealth, were turned 
 out of their livings for refusing to take the oath required 
 by the Act of Uniformity. The celebrated Richard 
 Baxter (who refused a bishopric) tells us in his Life, 
 which is one of the best books in existence, how these 
 evicted tenants were made up. The passage is too long 
 to be here quoted, and it is enough to say that by this 
 purge the Church of England lost a host of her clergy 
 who had no objection to Bishops or to a Liturgy, who 
 had never signed the Solemn League and Covenant, who 
 had been against the Civil War, but who were unwilling, 
 because unable, to give their unfeigned assent and con- 
 sent to all and everything contained in the Book of 
 Common Prayer. But they had to go. They were de- 
 vout, they were learned, they were peaceful, they were 
 sensible. It mattered not ; out they went like Wesley's 
 own grandfather, and were hunted from place to place 
 like wolves. 
 
 Purge No. 4 has still to be endured. The Stuarts ran 
 their destined course. The blessed restoration was in 
 less than thirty years succeeded by the glorious revolu- 
 tion, and a fresh oath had, of course, to be invented as 
 a burden upon the conscience of the established clergy. 
 It was in form simple enough : " I, A. B., do sincerely 
 promise and swear to bear true allegiance to their Majes- 
 ties King William and Queen Mary." But to appre- 
 ciate its horrid significance, we must remember that the 
 now mouldy doctrines of " Divine right " and " passive
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 117 
 
 obedience " were then as much the talk of the clergy of 
 the Church of England as incense, lights, and the sacra- 
 mental theory are to-day. The books and pamphlets 
 on these subjects may still be counted, though hardly 
 read, in thousands. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. 
 Bancroft) and five of his brethren, including Bishop Ken, 
 were deprived of their sees, and at least four hundred 
 divines followed them into exile. These were the non- 
 jurors, men of fabulous learning and primitive piety, 
 who added evangelical fervour and simplicity to High 
 Church doctrine. To read the lives of these men is to 
 live among the saints and doctors, and their expulsion 
 from the Church they alone loved and they alone could 
 properly defend diverted into alien channels the very 
 qualities we find so sorely lacking in the Anglican Church 
 of the eighteenth century. How absurd to grumble at 
 the Hoadlys and Watsons, the Hurds and the Warbur- 
 tons ! They were all that was left. Faith and fervour, 
 primitive piety, Puritan zeal, Catholic devotion — each 
 in its turn had been decimated and cast out. What a 
 History it is ! Whether you read it in the Roman page 
 of Lingard and Dodd and Morris, or in the Anglican 
 record of Collier, or turn over the biographies to be 
 found in our old friends Walker and Calamy, what can 
 you do but hold up your hands in horror and amaze- 
 ment ? Wherever and whenever there was goodness, 
 piety, faith, devotion, out it had to go. It was indeed 
 as into a dungeon, stripped, swept, and bare, that the 
 Church of England stepped at the revolution, and in 
 that dungeon she lay for a hundred years. Since then 
 many things have happened. There has been a revival 
 of faith and fervour in the Church of England, so much 
 so that Purge No. 5 may shortly be expected. 
 
 The reason why I have dwelt at great length on these 
 facts of Church history is because we should have them 
 in mind if we are to understand what may be caUed 
 the status quo ante bellum John Wesley waged with the 
 Devil in Great Britain.
 
 ii8 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Wesley's motive never eludes us. In his early man- 
 hood, after being greatly affected by Jeremy Taylor's 
 Holy Living and Dying and the Imitatio Christi, and 
 by Law's Serious Call and Christian Perfection, he met 
 " a serious man," who said to him : " Sir, you wish 
 to serve God and go to heaven. Remember, you can- 
 not serve Him alone. You must therefore find com- 
 panions or make them. The Bible knows nothing of 
 solitary religion." He was very confident, this serious 
 man, and Wesley never forgot his message : " You 
 must find companions or make them. The Bible knows 
 nothing of solitary religion." These words for ever 
 sounded in Wesley's ears, determining his theology, 
 which rejected the stem individualism of Calvin, and 
 fashioning his whole polity, his famous class meetings, 
 and generally gregarious methods. 
 
 " Therefore to him it was givea 
 Many to save with himself." 
 
 We may continue the quotation and apply to Wesley 
 the words of Mr. Arnold's memorial to his father : 
 
 " Languor was not in his heart. 
 Weakness not in his word. 
 Weariness not on his brow." 
 
 If you ask what is the impression left upon the reader 
 of the Journals as to the condition of England question, 
 the answer will vary very much with the tenderness of 
 the reader's conscience and with the extent of his ac- 
 quaintance with the general behaviour of mankind at 
 all times and in all places. Wesley himself is no alarmist, 
 no sentimentalist ; he never gushes, seldom exaggerates, 
 and always writes on an easy level. Naturally enough 
 he clings to the supernatural, and is always disposed to 
 believe in the bona fides of ghosts and the diabolical 
 origin of strange noises ; but outside this realm of 
 speculation Wesley describes things as he saw them. 
 In the first pubUshed words of his friend Dr. Johnson,
 
 " ' JOHN WESLEY. 119 
 
 " he meets with no basilisks that destroy with their 
 eyes, his crocodiles devour their prey without tears, 
 and his cataracts fall from the rocks without deafening 
 the neighbouring inhabitants." 
 
 Wesley's humour is of the species donnish, and his 
 modes and methods quietly persistent. 
 
 " On Thursday, the 20th May (1742), I set out. The 
 next afternoon I stopped a little at Newport -Pagnell, 
 and then rode on till I overtook a serious man, with 
 whom I immediately fell into conversation. He pres- 
 ently gave me to know what his opinions were, therefore 
 I said nothing to contradict them. But that did not 
 content him. He was quite uneasy to know ' whether 
 I held the doctrines of the decrees as he did ; ' but I 
 told him over and over : ' We had better keep to prac- 
 tical things, lest we should be angry at one another.' 
 And so we did for two miles, till he caught me unawares, 
 and dragged me into the dispute before I knew where 
 I was. He then grew warmer and warmer ; told me I 
 was rotten at heart, and supposed I was one of John 
 Wesley's followers. I told him ' No. I am John Wesley 
 himself.' Upon which 
 
 ' Iraprovisum aspris Veluti qui sentibus anguem 
 Presset ' 
 
 he would gladly have run away outright, but being the 
 better mounted of the two I kept close to his side, and 
 endeavoured to show him his heart till we came into 
 the street of Northampton." 
 
 What a picture have we here of a fine May morning 
 in 1742, the unhappy Calvinist trying to shake off the 
 Arminian Wesley ! But he cannot do it. John Wesley 
 is the better mounted of the two, and so they scamper to- 
 gether into Nortliampton. 
 
 The England described in the Journal is an England 
 still full of theology. All kinds of queer folk abound ; 
 strange subjects are discussed in odd places. There was 
 drunkenness and cock-fighting, no doubt, but there were
 
 120 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 also Deists, Mystics, Swedenborgians, Antinomians, Ne- 
 cessitarians, Anabaptists, Quakers, nascent heresies, and 
 slow-dying delusions. Villages were divided into rival 
 groups, which fiercely argued the nicest points in the 
 aptest language. Nowadays in one's rambles a man is 
 as likely to encounter a gray badger as a black Calvinist. 
 
 The clergy of the Established Church were jealous of 
 Wesley's interference in their parishes, nor was this un- 
 natural ; he was not a Nonconformist, but a brother 
 Churchman. WHiat right had he to be so peripatetic ? 
 But Wesley seldom records any instance of gross clerical, 
 misconduct. Of one drunken parson he does indeed tell 
 us, and he speaks disapprovingly of another whom he 
 found one very hot day consuming a pot of beer in a 
 lone ale-house. I am bound to confess I have never had 
 any but kindly feelings toward that thirsty ecclesiastic, 
 \Vhat, I wonder, was he thinking of as Wesley rode by ? 
 Meditations Libres d'un Solitaire Inconnu — unpublished ! 
 
 When Wesley, with that dauntless courage of his — 
 a courage which never forsook him, which he wore on 
 every occasion with the delightful ease of a soldier — 
 pushed his way into fierce districts, amid rough miners 
 dwelling in their own village communities almost out- 
 side the law, what most strikes one with admiration, not 
 less in Wesley's Journal than in George Fox's (a kindred 
 though earlier volume), is the essential fitness for free- 
 dom of our rudest populations. They were coarse and 
 brutal and savage, but rarely did they fail to recognise 
 the high character and lofty motives of the dignified 
 mortal who had travelled so far to speak to them. Wes- 
 ley was occasionally hustled, and once or twice pelted 
 with mud and stones, but at no time were his sufferings 
 at the hands of the mob to be compared with the indig- 
 nities it was long the fashion to heap upon the heads of 
 Parliamentary candidates. The mob knew and appre- 
 ciated the difference between a Bubb Dodington and a 
 John Wesley. 
 
 I do not think any ordina.ry Englishman will be much
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 121 
 
 horrified at the demeanour of the populace. If there 
 was disturbance it was usually quelled. At Norwich 
 two soldiers who disturbed a congregation were seized 
 and carried before their commanding officer, who ordered 
 them to be soundly whipped. In Wesley's opinion they 
 richly desei-ved all they got. He was no sentimentahst, 
 although an enthusiast. 
 
 \Miere the reader of the Journal will be shocked is 
 when his attention is called to the public side of the 
 country— to the state of the gaols, to Newgate, to Beth- 
 lehem, to the criminal code, to the brutality of so many 
 of the judges and the harshness of the magistrates, to 
 the-supineness of the bishops, to the extinction in high 
 places of the missionary spirit — in short, to the heavy 
 slumber of humanity. 
 
 Wesley was full of compassion — of a compassion wholly 
 free from hysterics and credulity. In public affairs his 
 was the composed zeal of a Howard. His efforts to 
 penetrate the dark places were long in vain. He says 
 m his dry way : " They won't let me go to Bedlam be- 
 d^use they say I make the inmates mad, or into New- 
 gate because I make them wicked." The reader of the 
 Journal will be at no loss to see what these sapient 
 magistrates meant. Wesley was a terribly exciting 
 preacher, quiet though his manner was. He pushed 
 matters home without flinching. He made people cry 
 out and fall down, nor did it surprise him that they 
 should. You will find some strange biographies in the 
 Journal. Consider that of John Lancaster for a moment. 
 He was a young fellow who fell into bad company, stole 
 some velvet, and was sentenced to death, and lay for 
 awhile in Newgate awaiting his hour. A good Methodist 
 woman, Sarah Peters, obtained permission to visit him, 
 though the fever was raging in the prison at the time. 
 Lancaster had no difficulty in collecting six or seven 
 other prisoners, all like himself waiting to be strangled, 
 and Sarah Peters prayed with them and sang hymns, 
 the clergy of the diocese being othenvise occupied.
 
 122 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 When the eve of their execution arrived, the poor crea- 
 tures begged that Sarah Peters might be allowed to 
 remain with them to continue her exhortations ; but 
 this could not be. In her absence, however, they con- 
 trived to console one another, for that devilish device 
 of a later age, solitary confinement, was then unknown. 
 When the bellman came round at midnight to tell them, 
 " Remember you are to die to-day," they cried out : 
 " Welcome news — welcome news ! " How they met 
 their deaths you can read for yourselves in the Journal, 
 which concludes the narrative with a true eighteenth 
 century touch : " John Lancaster's body was carried 
 away by a company hired by the surgeons, but a crew 
 of sailors pursued them, took it from them by force, 
 and delivered it to his mother, by which means it was 
 decently interred in the presence of many who praised 
 God on his behalf." 
 
 If you want to get into the last century, to feel its 
 pulses throb beneath your finger, be content sometimes 
 to leave the letters of Horace Walpole unturned, resist 
 the drowsy temptation to waste your time over the 
 learned triflers who sleep in the seventeen volumes of 
 Nichols — nay, even deny yourself your annual reading 
 of Boswell or your biennial retreat with Sterne, and 
 ride up and down the country with the greatest force 
 of the eighteenth century in England. 
 
 No man lived nearer the centre than John Wesley, 
 neither Give nor Pitt, neither Mansfield nor Johnson. 
 You cannot cut him out of our national life. No single 
 figure influenced so many minds, no single voice touched 
 so many hearts. No other man did such a life's work 
 for England. As a writer he has not achieved distinc- 
 tion. He was no Athanasius, no Augustine. He was 
 ever a preacher and an organiser, a labourer in the service 
 of humanity ; but, happily for us, his Journals remain, 
 and from them we can learn better than from anywhere 
 else what manner of man he was, and the character of the 
 times during which he lived and moved and had his being.
 
 GEORGE BORROW. 
 
 /JR. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, in his delight- 
 ^ -»■ ful Memories and Portraits, takes occasion to tell 
 us, amongst a good many other things of the sort, that 
 he has a great fancy for The Bible in Spain, by Mr. George 
 Borrow. He has not, indeed, read it quite so often as 
 he has Mr. George Meredith's Egoist, but still he is very 
 fond of it. It is interesting to know this, interesting, 
 that is, to the great Clan Stevenson who owe suit ancl 
 service to their liege lord ; but so far as Borrow is con- 
 cerned, it does not matter, to speak frankly, two straws. 
 The author of Lavengro, The Romany Rye,' The Bible in 
 Spain, and Wild V/ales is one of those kings of literature 
 who never need to number their tribe. His personality 
 will always secure him an attendant company, who, 
 when he pipes, must dance. A queer company it is too, 
 even as was the company he kept himself, composed as 
 it is of saints and sinners, gentle and simple, master 
 and man, mistresses and maids ; of those who, learned 
 in the tongues, have read everything else, and of those 
 who have read nothing else and do not want to. People 
 there are for whom Borrow's books play the same part 
 as did horses and dogs for the gentleman in the tall 
 white hat whom David Copperfield met on the top of 
 the Canterbury coach. " 'Orses and dorgs," said that 
 gentleman, " is some men's fancy. They are wittles and 
 drink to me, lodging, wife and children, reading, writing, 
 and 'rithmetic, snuft", tobacker, and sleep." 
 
 Nothing, indeed, is more disagreeable, even offensive, 
 than to have anybody else's favourite author thrust 
 down your throat. " Love me, love my dog," is a maxim 
 of behaviour which deserves all the odium Charles Lamb
 
 124 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 has heaped upon it. Still, it would be hard to go through 
 life arm-in-arm with anyone who had stuck in the middle 
 of Gtiy Manncring, or had bidden a final farewell to 
 Jeannie Deans in the barn with the robbers near Gun- 
 nerly Hill in Lincolnshire. But, oddly enough, Borrow 
 excites no such feelings. It is quite possible to live 
 amicably in the same house with a person who has stuck 
 hopelessly in the middle of Wild Wales, and who braves 
 it out (what impudence !) by the assertion that the book 
 is full of things like this : " Nothing worthy of com- 
 memoration took place during the two following days, 
 save that myself and family took an evening walk on 
 the Wednesday up the side of the Berwyn, for the pur- 
 pose of botanising, in which we were attended by John 
 Jones. There, amongst other plants, we found a curi- 
 ous moss which our good friend said was called in Welsh 
 Corn Carw, or deer's horn, and which he said the deer were 
 very fond of. On the Thursday he and I started on an 
 expedition on foot to Ruthyn, distant about fourteen 
 miles, proposing to return in the evening." 
 
 The book is full of things like this, and must be pro- 
 nounced as arrant a bit of book-making as ever was. 
 But judgment is not always followed by execution, and 
 a more mirth-provoking error can hardly be imagined 
 than, for anyone to suppose that the admission of the 
 fact — sometimes doubtless a damaging fact — namely, 
 book-making, will for one moment shake the faithful in 
 their certitude that Wild Wales is a delightful book ; 
 not so delightful, indeed, as Lavengro, The Romany Rye, 
 or The Bible in Spain, but still delightful because issuing 
 from the same mint as they, stamped with the same physi- 
 ognomy, and bearing the same bewitching inscription. 
 
 It is a mercy the people we love do not know how 
 much we must forgive them. Oh the liberties they 
 would take, the things they would do, were it to be 
 revealed to them that their roots have gone far too deep 
 into our soil for us to disturb them under any provoca- 
 tion whatsoever !
 
 * GEORGE BORROW. 125 
 
 George Borrow has to be forgiven a great deal. The 
 Appendix to Tlie Romany Rye contains an assault upon 
 the memory of Sir Walter Scott, of which every word is 
 a blow. It is savage, cruel, unjustifiable. There is just 
 enough of what base men call tiuth in it to make it one 
 of the most powerful bits of devil's advocacy ever penned. 
 Had another than Borrow written thus of the good Sir 
 Walter, som.e men would travel far to spit upon his 
 tomb. Quick and easy would have been his descent 
 to the Avernus of oblivion. His books, torn from the 
 shelf, should have long stood neglected in the shop of 
 the second-hand, till the hour came for them to seek 
 the stall, where, exposed to wind and weather, they 
 should dolefully await the sack of the paper- merchant, 
 whose holy ofhce it should be to mash them into eternal 
 pulp. But what rhodomontade is this ! No books are 
 more, in the vile phrase of the craft, " esteemed " than 
 Borrow's. The prices demanded for the early editions 
 already impinge upon the absurd, and are steadily rising. 
 The fact is, there is no use blinking it, mankind cannot 
 afford to quarrel with George Borrow, and will not do so. 
 It is bad enough what he did, but when we remember 
 that whatever he had done, we must have forgiven him 
 all the same, it is just possible to thank Heaven (feebly) 
 that it was no worse. He might have robbed a church ! 
 
 Borrow is indeed one of those lucky men who, in Bage- 
 hot's happy phrase, " keep their own atmosphere," and 
 as a consequence, when in the destined hour the born 
 BoiTOvian — for men are born Borrovians, not made — 
 takes up a volume of him, in ten minutes (unless it be 
 Wild Wales, and then twenty must be allowed) the 
 victory is won ; down tumbles the standard of Respecta- 
 bility which through a virtuous and perhaps long life has 
 braved the battle and the breeze ; up flutters the law- 
 less pennon of the Romany Chal, and away skims the 
 reader's craft over seas, hitherto untravcUed, in search 
 of adventures, manifold and marvellous, nor in vain. 
 
 If one was in search of a single epithet most properly
 
 126 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 descriptive of Borrow's effect upon his reader, perhaps 
 it would best be found in the word " contagious." He is 
 one of the most " catching " of our authors. The most 
 inconsistent of men, he compels those who are born 
 subject to his charm to share his inconsistencies. He 
 was an agent of the Bible Society, and his extraordinary 
 adventures in Spain were encountered, so at least his 
 title-page would have us belie\'e, in an attempt to circu- 
 late the Scriptures in the Peninsula. He was a sound 
 Churchman, and would have nothing to do with Dissent, 
 even in Wild Wales, but he had also a passion for the 
 ring. Mark his devastations. It is as bad as the pesti- 
 lence. A gentle lady, bred amongst the Quakers, a 
 hater of physical force, v/ith eyes brimful of mercy, was 
 lately heard to say, in heightened tones, at a dinner-table, 
 where the subject of momentary conversation was a late 
 prize-fight : " Oh ! pity was it that ever corruption 
 should have crept in amongst them." " Amongst 
 whom ? " inquired her immediate neighbour. " Amongst 
 the bruisers of England," was the terrific rejoinder. 
 Deep were her blushes — and yet how easy to forgive 
 her ! The gentle lady spoke as one does in dreams ; 
 for, you must know, she was born a Borrovian, and only 
 that afternoon had read for the first time the famous 
 twenty-fifth chapter of Lavengro : 
 
 " But what a bold and vigorous aspect pugilism wore 
 at that time ! ■ And the great battle was just then 
 coming off ; the day had been decided upon, and the 
 spot — a convenient distance from the old town (Nor- 
 wich) ; and to the old town were now flocking the 
 bruisers of England, men of tremendous renown. Let 
 no one sneer at the bruisers of England ; what were 
 the gladiators of Home, or the bull-fighters of Spain, 
 in its palmiest days, compared to England's bruisers ? 
 Pity that ever corruption should have crept in amongst 
 them — but of that I wish not to talk. There they 
 come, the bruisers from far London, or from wherever 
 else they might chance to be at the time, to the great
 
 . GEORGE BORROW. 127 
 
 rendezvous in the old city ; some came one way, some 
 another : some of tip-top reputation came with peers 
 in their chariots, for glory and fame are such fair things 
 that even peers are proud to have those invested there- 
 with by their sides ; others came in their own gigs, 
 driving their own bits of blood ; and I heard one say : 
 ' I have driven through at a heat the whole hundred 
 and eleven miles, and only stopped to bait twice ! ' 
 Oh ! the blood horses of old England ! but they too 
 have had their day — for everything beneath the sun 
 there is a season and a time. ... So the bruisers of 
 England are come to be present at the grand fight 
 speedily coming off ; there they are met in the precincts 
 of the old tov/n, near the field of the chapel, planted 
 with tender saplings at the restoration of sporting 
 Charles, which are now become venerable elms, as high 
 as many a steeple ; there they are met at a fitting 
 rendezvous, where a retired coachman with one leg 
 keeps an hotel and a bowling-green. I think I now 
 see them upon the bowling-green, the men of renown, 
 amidst hundreds of people with no renown at all, who 
 gaze upon them with timid wonder. Fame, after all, is 
 a glorious thing, though it lasts only for a day. There's 
 Cribb, the champion of England, and perhaps the best 
 man in England — there he is, with his huge, massive 
 figure, and face wonderfully like that of a Hon. There 
 is Belcher the younger — not the mighty one, who is 
 gone to his place, but the Teucer Belcher, the most 
 scientific pugilist that ever entered a ring, only wanting 
 strength to be — I won't say what. , . . But how shall 
 I name them all ? They were there by dozens, and all 
 tremendous in their way. There was Bulldog Hudson 
 and fearless Scroggins, who beat the conqueror of Sam 
 the Jew. There was Black Richmond — no, he was not 
 there, but I knew him well. He was the most dangerous 
 of blacks, even with a broken thigh. There was Purcell, 
 who could never conquer till all seemed over with him. 
 There was — what ! shall I name thee last ? Ay, why
 
 128 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 not ? I believe that thou art the last of all that strong 
 family still above the sod, where may'st thou long con- 
 tinue — true piece of English stuff, Tom of Bedford, 
 sharp as Winter, kind as Spring ! " 
 
 No wonder the gentle lady was undone. It is as 
 good as Homer. 
 
 Diderot, it will be remembered, once wrote a cele- 
 brated eulogium on Richardson, which some have 
 thought exaggerated, because he says in it that, on the 
 happening of certain events, in themselves improbable, 
 he would keep Clarissa and Sir Charles on the same 
 shelf with the writings of Moses, Homer, Euripides, 
 and Sophocles. Why a literary man should not be 
 allowed to arrange his library as he chooses, without 
 being exposed to so awful a charge as that of exaggera- 
 tion, it is hard to say. But no doubt the whole eulogium 
 is pitched in too high a key for modern ears ; still, it 
 contains sensible remarks, amongst them this one : that 
 he had observed that in a company where the writings 
 of Richardson were being read, either privately or 
 aloud, the conversation became at once interesting and 
 animated. Books cannot be subjected to a truer test. 
 Will they bear talking about ? A parcel of friends can 
 talk about Sorrow's books for ever. The death of his 
 father, as told in the last chapter of Lavengro. Is there 
 anything of the kind more affecting in the library ? 
 Somebody is almost sure to say, " Yes, the death of 
 Le Fevre in Tristram Shandy." A third, who always 
 (provoking creature) likes best what she read last, will 
 wax eloquent over the death of the little princess in 
 Tolstoi's great book. The character-sketch of Borrow's 
 elder brother, the self-abnegating artist who declined 
 to paint the portrait of the Mayor of Norwich because 
 he thought a friend of his could do it better, suggests 
 De Quincey's marvellous sketch of his elder brother. 
 And then, what about Benedict ]\Ioll, Joey the dog- 
 fancier of Westminster, and that odious wretch the 
 London publisher ? You had need to be a deaf mute
 
 - ' GEORGE BORROW. 129 
 
 to avoid taking part in a conversation like this. Who 
 was Mary Fiilcher ? All the clocks in the parish will 
 have struck midnight before that question has been 
 answered. It is not to take a gloomy view of the world 
 to say that there are few pleasanter things in it than 
 a good talk about George Borrow. 
 
 For invalids and delicate persons leading retired 
 lives, there are no books like Borrow's. Lassitude and 
 Languor, horrid hags, simply pick up their trailing 
 skirts and scuttle out of any room into which he enters. 
 They cannot abide him. A single chapter of Borrow 
 is air and exercise ; and, indeed, the exercise is not 
 always gentle. " I feel," said an in^•alid, laying down 
 The Bible in Spain, as she spoke, upon the counterpane, 
 "'as if I had been gesticulating violently for the space 
 of two hours." She then sank into deep sleep, and 
 is now hale and hearty. Miss Martineau, in her Life 
 in the Sick Room, invokes a blessing upon the head of 
 Christopher Korth. But there were always those who 
 refused to believe in INIiss Martineau's illness, and cer- 
 tainly her avowed preference for the man whom Mac- 
 aulay in his wrath, writing to Napier in Edinburgh, 
 called " your grog-drinking, cock-fighting, cudgel-playing 
 Professor of Moral Philosophy," is calculated to give 
 countenance to this unworthy suspicion. It was an 
 odd taste for an invalid who, whilst craving for vigour, 
 must necessarily hate noise. Borrow is a vigorous 
 writer, Wilson a noisy one. It was, however, his 
 Recreations, and not the Noctes AmhrosiancB, that Miss 
 Martineau aftected. Still the Recreations are noisy too, 
 and Miss IMartineau must find her best excuse, and I 
 am determined to find an excuse for her — for did she 
 not write the Feats on the Fiord ? — in the fact that when 
 she wrote her Lije in the Sick Room (a pleasant little 
 book to read when in rude health), Borrow had pub- 
 lished nothing of note. Had he done so, she would 
 have been of my way of thinking. 
 
 How much of Borrow is true and how much is false 
 
 5
 
 130 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 is one of those questions which might easily set all 
 mankind by the ears, but for the pleasing circumstance 
 that it does not matter a dump. Few things are more 
 comical than to hear some douce body, unread in Borrow, 
 gravely inquiring how far his word may be relied upon. 
 The sole possible response takes the exceptionable shape 
 of loud peals of laughter. And yet, surely, it is a most 
 reasonable question, or query, as the Scotch say. So 
 it is ; but after you have read your author you won't 
 ask it — you won't want to. The reader can believe 
 what he likes, and as much as he likes. In the old 
 woman on London Bridge and her convict son, in the 
 man in black (how unlike Goldsmith's !), in the Flaming 
 Tinman, in Ursula, the wife of Sylvester. There is but 
 one person in whom 3''ou must believe, every hour of 
 the day and of the night, else are you indeed unworthy 
 — you must believe in Isopel Berners. A stranger and 
 more pathetic figure than she is not to be seen flitting 
 about in the great shadow-dance men call their life. 
 Born and bred though she was in a workhouse, where 
 she learnt to read and sew, fear God, and take her own 
 part, a nobler, more lovable woman never crossed man's 
 path. Her introduction to her historian was quaint. 
 " Before I could put myself on my guard, she struck me 
 a blow on the face, which had nearly brought me to the 
 ground." Alas, poor Isopel ! Borrow returned the blow, 
 a deadlier, fiercer blow, aimed not at the face but at 
 the heart. Of their life in the Dingle let no man speak ; 
 it must be read in the last chapters of Lavengro, and the 
 early ones of The Romany Rye. Borrow was "ertainly 
 irritating. One longs to shake him. He was what 
 children call " a tease." He teased poor Isopel with 
 his confounded philology. Whether he simply made a 
 mistake, or whether the girl was right in her final sur- 
 mise, that he was " at the root mad," who can say ? 
 He offered her his hand, but at too late a stage in the 
 proceedings. Isopel Berners left the Dingle to go to 
 America, and we hear of her no more. That she lived
 
 - GEORGE BORROW. 131 
 
 to become a happy " house-mother," and to start a 
 hne of brave men and chaste women, must be the 
 prayer of all who know what it is to love a woman they 
 have never seen. Of the strange love-making that went 
 on in the Dingle no idea can or ought to be given save 
 from the original, 
 
 " Thereupon I descended into the Dingle. Belle was 
 sitting before the fire, at which the kettle was boiling. 
 ' Were you waiting for me ? ' I inquired. ' Yes,' said 
 Belle, ' I thought you would come, and I waited for 
 you.' ' That was very kind,' said I. ' Not half so 
 kind,' said she, ' as it was of you to get everything 
 ready for me in the dead of last night, when there was 
 scarcely a chance of my coming.' The tea-things were 
 brought forward, and we sat down. ' Have you been 
 far ? ' said Belle. ' Merely to that public-house,' said I, 
 ' to which you directed me on the second day of our 
 acquaintance.' ' Young men should not make a habit 
 of visiting pubhc-houses,' .said Belle ; ' they are bad 
 places.' * They may be so to some people,' said I, 
 ' but I do not think the worst public-house in England 
 could do me any harm.' ' Perhaps you are so bad 
 already,' said Belle with a smile, ' that it would be 
 impossible to spoil you.' ' How dare you catch at my 
 words ? ' said I ; ' come, I will make you pay for doing 
 so — you shall have this evening the longest lesson in 
 Armenian which I have yet inflicted upon you.' ' You 
 may well say inflicted,' said Belle, ' but pray spare 
 me. I do not wish to hear an>i:hing about Armenian, 
 especially this evening.' ' Why this evening ? ' said I. 
 Belle made no answer. ' I will not spare you,' said I ; 
 ' this evening I intend to make vou conjugate an Ar- 
 menian verb.' ' Well, be it so,'^ said Belle, ' for this 
 evening you shall command.' ' To command is hramah- 
 yel,' said I. ' Ram her ill indeed,' said Belle, ' I do not 
 wish to begin \\ith that.' ' No/ said I, ' as we have 
 come to the verbs we will begin regularly : hramahyel 
 is a verb of the second conjugation. We will begin with
 
 132 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 tlie first.' ' First of all, tell me,' said Belle, ' what a 
 verb is.' ' A part of speech,' said I, ' which, according 
 to the dictionary, signifies some action or passion ; for 
 example, " I command yon, or I hate you." ' ' I have 
 given you no cause to hate me,' said Belle, looking me 
 sorrowfully in the face. 
 
 " ' I was merely giving two examples,' said I, * and 
 neither was directed at you. In those examples, to 
 command and hate are verbs. Belle, in Armenian there 
 are four conjugations of verbs ; the first ends in al, 
 the second in yel, the third in oul, and the fourth in 
 il. Now, have you understood me ? ' 
 
 " ' 1 am afraid, indeed, it will all end ill,' said Belle. 
 ' Hold your tongue ! ' said I, * or you will make me lose 
 my patience.' ' You have already made me nearly lose 
 mine,' said Belle. ' Let us have no unprofitable in- 
 terruptions,' said I. * The conjugations of the Armenian 
 verbs are neither so numerous nor so difficult as the 
 declensions of the nouns. Hear that and rejoice. Come, 
 we will begin with the verb hntal, a verb of the first 
 conjugation, which signifies to rejoice. Come along : 
 hntam, I rejoice ; hntas, thou rejoicest. Why don't 
 you follow, Belle ? ' 
 
 " ' I am sure I don't rejoice, whatever you may do,' 
 said Belle. ' The chief difficulty. Belle,' said I, ' that 
 I find in teaching you the Armenian grammar proceeds 
 from your applying to yourself and me every example 
 I give. Rejoice, in this instance, is merely an example 
 of an Armenian verb of the first conjugation, and has 
 no more to do with your rejoicing than lal, which is 
 also a verb of the first conjugation, and which signifies 
 to weep, would have to do with your weeping, provided 
 I made you conjugate it. Come along : hntam, I 
 rejoice ; hntas, thou rejoicest ; hnta, he rejoices ; 
 hntamk, we rejoice. Now repeat those words.' ' I 
 can't bear this much longer,' said Belle. ' Keep your- 
 self quiet,' said I. * I wish to be gentle with you, and 
 to convince you, we will skip hntal, and also, for the
 
 • GEORGE BORROW. 133 
 
 present, verbs of the first conjugation, and proceed to 
 the second. Belle, I will now select for you to con- 
 jugate the prettiest verb in Armenian, not only of tne 
 second, but also of all the four conjugations. That 
 verb is siriel. Here is the present tense : siriem, siries, 
 sire, siriemk, sirek, sirien. Come on. Belle, and say 
 siriem.' Belle hesitated. ' Pray oblige me, Belle, by 
 saying siriem.' Belle still appeared to hesitate. * You 
 must admit. Belle, that it is softer than hntam.' ' It is 
 'so,' said Belle, ' and to oblige you I will say siriem.' 
 ' Very well indeed. Belle,' said I ; ' and now to show 
 you how verbs act upon pronouns in Armenian, I will 
 say siriem zkiez. Please to repeat siriem zkiez.' ' Siriem 
 zkiez,' said Belle ; ' that last word is very hard to say.' 
 ' Sorry that you think so. Belle,' said I. ' Now, please 
 to say siria zis.' Belle did so. ' Exceedingly well,' said I 
 ' Now say girani the sireir zis.' ' Girane the sireir zis, 
 said Belle. ' Capital ! ' said I. ' You have now said, I 
 love you — love me. Ah ! would that you would love me 1 
 " ' And I have said all these things ? ' said Belle 
 ' Yes,' said I. ' You have said them in Armenian.' ' I 
 would have said them in no language that I understood, 
 said Belle. ' And it was very wrong of you to take advan 
 tage of my ignorance, and make me say such things! 
 ' \VIiy so ?' said I. ' If you said them, I said them too." 
 
 " Was ever woman in this humour wooed ? " 
 
 It is, I believe, the opinion of the best critics that 
 Tlie Bible in Spain is Borrow's masterpiece. It very 
 likely is so. At the present moment I feel myself even 
 more than usually disqualified for so grave a considera- 
 tion", by my overpowering delight in its dear deluding 
 title. A quarter of a century ago, in all decent homes, 
 a boy's reading was, by the stern decree of his elders, 
 divided rigorously, though at the same time it must 
 be admitted crudely, into Sunday books and week-day 
 books. " What have you got there ? " has before now 
 been an inquiry addressed on a Sunday afternoon to
 
 134 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 some youngster, suspiciously engrossed in a book. 
 " Oh, The Bible in Spain," would be the reply. " It is 
 written by a Mr. Borrow, you know, and it is all about " 
 — (then the title-page would come in useful) " his at- 
 tempts ' to circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula ! ' " 
 " Indeed ! Sounds most suitable," answers the gulled 
 authority, some foolish sisters'-govemess or the like 
 illiterate, and moves off. And then the happy boy 
 would wriggle in his chair, and, as if thirsting to taste 
 the first fruits of his wile, hastily seek out a streaky 
 page, and there read, for perhaps the hundredth time, 
 the memorable words : 
 
 " ' Good are the horses of the Moslems,' said my old 
 friend ; ' where will you find such ? They will descend 
 rocky mountains at full speed, and neither trip nor 
 fall ; but you must be cautious with the horses of the 
 Moslems, and treat them with kindness, for the horses 
 of the Moslems are proud, and they like not being slaves. 
 "WTien they are young and first mounted, jerk not their 
 mouths with your bit, for be sure if you do, they will 
 kill you ; sooner or later, you will perish beneath their 
 feet. Good are our horses, and good our riders. Yea, 
 very good are the Moslems at mounting the horse ; who 
 are like them ? I once saw a Frank rider compete with 
 a Moslem on this beach, and at first the Frank rider 
 had it all his owti way and he passed the Moslem, but 
 the course was long, very long, and the horse of the 
 Frank rider, which was a Frank horse also, panted ; 
 but the horse of the Moslem panted not, for he was a 
 Moslem also, and the Moslem rider at last gave a cry, 
 and the horse sprang forward and he overtook the 
 Frank horse, and then the Moslem rider stood up in his 
 saddle. How did he stand ? Truly he stood on liis 
 head, and these eyes saw him ; he stood on his head in 
 the saddle as he passed the Frank rider ; and he cried 
 ha ! ha I as he passed the Frank rider ; and the Moslem 
 horse cried ha ! ha ! as he passed the Frank breed, and 
 the Frank lost by a far distance. Good are the Franks,
 
 GEORGE BORROW. 135 
 
 good their horses ; but better are the Moslems, and 
 better the horses of the Moslems.' " 
 
 That boy, as he lay curled up in his chair, doting over 
 the enchanted page, knew full well, else had he been no 
 Christian boy, that it was not a Sunday book which was 
 making his eyes start out of his head ; yet, reckless, he 
 cried, " ha ! ha ! " and read on, and as he read he blessed 
 the madcap Borrow for having called his romance by the 
 sober-sounding, propitiatory title of The Bible in Spain ! 
 
 " Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth \vho!e." 
 
 In a world of dust and ashes it is a foolish thing to 
 prophesy immortality, or even a long term of years, 
 for any fe! low-mortal. Good luck does not usually 
 pursue such predictions. England can boast few keener, 
 better-qualified critics than that admirable woman, Mrs. 
 Barbauld, or, not to dock her of her accustomed sizings, 
 Mrs. Anna Laetitia Barbauld. And yet what do we find 
 her saying ? " The young may melt into tears at Julia 
 Mandeville, and The Man of Feeling, the romantic will 
 shudder at Udolpho, but those of mature age who know 
 what human nature is will take up again and again 
 Dr. Moore's Zeluco." One hates to contradict a lady hke 
 Mrs. Barbauld, or to speak in terms of depreciation of any 
 work of Mrs. Radcliffe's, whose namiC is still as a pleasant 
 savour in the nostrils ; therefore I will let Udolpho 
 alone. As lor Henry Mackenzie's Man of Feeling, what 
 was good enough for Sir Walter Scott ought surely to 
 be good enough for us, most days. I am no longer 
 young, and cannot therefore be expected to melt into 
 tears at Julia Mandeville, but here my toleration is 
 exhausted. Dr. Moore's Zeluco is too much ; maturity 
 has many ills to bear, but repeated perusals of this 
 work cannot fairly be included amongst them. 
 
 Still, though prediction is to be avoided, it is im- 
 possible to feel otherwise than very cheerful about 
 George Bor'-ow. His is a good life. Anyhow, he will 
 outlive most people, and that at all events is a comfort.
 
 CARLYLE. 
 
 THE accomplishments of our race have of late be- 
 come so varied, that it is often no easy task to 
 assign him whom we would judge to his proper station 
 among men ; and yet, until this has been done, the 
 guns of our criticism cannot be accurately levelled, and 
 as a consequence the greater part of our fire must remain 
 futile. He, for example, who would essay to take 
 account of Mr. Gladstone, must read much else besides 
 Hansard ; he must brush up his Homer, and set himself 
 to acquire some theology. The place of Greece in the 
 providential order of the world, and of laymen in the 
 Church of England, must be considered, together with a 
 host of other subjects of much apparent irrelevance to 
 a statesman's life. So too in the case of his distinguished 
 rival, whose death eclipsed the gaiety of politics and 
 banished epigram from Parliament : keen must be the 
 critical faculty which can nicely discern where the novelist 
 ended and the statesman began in Benjamin Disraeli. 
 
 Happily, no such difficulty is now before us. Thomas 
 Carlyle was a writer of books, and he was nothing else. 
 Beneath this judgment he would have winced, but have 
 remained silent, for the facts are so. 
 
 Little men sometimes, though not perhaps so often as 
 is taken for granted, complain of their destiny, and think 
 they have been hardly treated, in that they have been 
 allowed to remain so undeniably small ; but great men, 
 with hardly an exception, nauseate their greatness, for 
 not being of the particular sort they most fancy. The 
 poet Gray was passionately fond, so his biographers tell 
 us, of military history ; but he took no Quebec. General 
 Wolfe took Quebec, and whilst he was taking it, recorded
 
 CARLYLE. 137 
 
 the fact that he would sooner have written Gray's Elegy ; 
 and so Carlyle — who panted for action, who hated elo- 
 quence, whose heroes were Cromwell and Wellington, 
 Arlavright and the " rugged Brindley," who beheld with 
 pride and no ignoble envy the bridge at Auldgarth his 
 masOn-father had helped to build half a century before, 
 and then exclaimed, " A noble craft, that of a mason ; 
 a good building will last longer than most books — than 
 one book in a million ; " vs^ho despised men of letters, 
 and abhorred the " reading pubhc ; " whose gospel was 
 Silence and Action — spent his life in talking and writing ; 
 and his legacy to the world is thirty-four volumes octavo. 
 
 There is a familiar melancholy in this ; but the critic 
 has no need to grow sentimental. We must have men 
 of thought as well as men of action : poets as much as 
 generals ; authors no less than artisans ; libraries at 
 least as much as militia ; and therefore we may accept 
 and proceed critically to examine Carlyle's thirty-four 
 volumes, rem.aining somev\^hat indifferent to the fact 
 'tjiat, had he had the fashioning of his own destin}^ we 
 should have had at his hands blows instead of books. 
 
 Taking him, then, as he was — a man of letters — perhaps 
 the best type of such since Dr. Johnson died in Fleet 
 Street, what are we to say of his thirty-four volumes ? 
 
 In them are to be found criticism, biography, history, 
 'pohtics, poetry, and religion. I mention this variety 
 because of a foohsh notion, at one time often found 
 suitably lodged in heads otherwise empty, that Carlyle 
 was a passionate old man, dominated by two or three 
 extravagant ideas, to which he was for ever giving 
 utterance in language of equal extravagance. The thirty- 
 four volumes octavo render this opinion untenable by 
 those who can read. Carlyle cannot be killed by an 
 epigram, nor can the many influences that moulded him 
 be referred to any single source. The rich banquet his 
 genius has spread for us is of many courses. The fire 
 and fury of the Latter-Day pamphlets may be disregarded 
 by the peaceful soul, and the preference given to the
 
 138 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 " Past " of Past and Present, which, with its intense and 
 sympathetic medigevahsm, might have been written by 
 a Tractarian. The Life of Sterling is the favourite book 
 of many who would sooner pick oakum than read Frederick 
 the Great all through ; whilst the mere student of belles 
 lettres may attach importance to the essays on Johnson, 
 Bums, and Scott, on Voltaire and Diderot, on Goethe 
 and Novalis, and yet remain blankly indifferent to Sartor 
 Resartus and the French Revolution. 
 
 But true as this is, it is none the less true that, except- 
 ing possibly the Life of Schiller, Carlyle wrote nothmg 
 not clearly recognisable as his. All his books are his 
 very own — bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. They 
 are not stolen goods, nor elegant exhibitions of recently 
 and hastily acquired wares. 
 
 This being so, it may be as well if, before proceeding 
 any further, I attempt, with a scrupulous regard to 
 brevity, to state what I take to be the invariable indica- 
 tions of Mr. Carlyle's literary handiwork — the tokens 
 of his presence — " Thomas Carlyle, his mark." 
 
 First of all, it may be stated, without a shadow of a 
 doubt, that he is one of those who would sooner be 
 wrong with Plato than right with Aristotle ; in one word, 
 he is a mystic. What he says of Novalis may with equal 
 truth be said of himself : " He belongs to that class of 
 persons who do not recognise the syllogistic method as 
 the chief organ for investigating truth, or feel them- 
 selves bound at all times to stop short where its light 
 fails them. Many of his opinions he would despair of 
 proving in the most patient court of law, and would 
 remain well content that they should be disbelieved 
 there." In philosophy we shall not be very far wrong 
 if we rank Carlyle as a follower of Bishop Berkeley ; for 
 an idealist he undoubtedly was. " Matter," says he, 
 " exists only spiritually, and to represent some idea, and 
 body it forth. Heaven and Earth are but the time- 
 vesture of the Eternal. The Universe is but one vast 
 symbol of God ; nay, if thou wilt have it, what is man
 
 CARLYLE. 139 
 
 himself but a symbol of God ? Is not all that he does 
 symbolical, a revelation to sense of the mystic God- 
 given force that is in him ? — a gospel of Freedom, which 
 he, the ' Messias of Nature,' preaches as he can by act 
 and word." '* Yes, Friends," he elsewhere observes, 
 " not our logical mensurative faculty, but our imagina- 
 tive one, is King over us, I might say Priest and Prophet, 
 to lead us heavenward, or magician and wizard to lead 
 us hellwa,rd. The understanding is indeed thy window 
 — too clear thou canst not make it ; but phantasy is thy 
 eye, with its colour-giving retina, healthy or diseased." 
 It would be easy to multiply instances of this, the most 
 obvious and interesting trait of Mr. Carlyle's writing ; 
 but I must bring my remarks upon it to a close by 
 reminding you of his two favourite quotations, which 
 have both significance. One from Shakspeare's Tem- 
 pest : 
 
 " We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made of, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep ; " 
 
 the other, the exclamation of the Earth-spirit, in Goethe's 
 
 Faust : 
 
 " 'Tis thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply. 
 And weave for God the garment thou scest Flim by." 
 
 But this is but one side of Carlyle, There is another as 
 strongly marked, which is his second note ; and that 
 is what he somewhere calls " his stubborn realism." 
 The combination of the two is as charming as it is rare. 
 No one at all acquainted with his writings can fail to 
 •("emember his almost excessive love of detail ; his lively 
 taste for facts, simply as facts. Imaginary joys and 
 sorrows may extort from him nothing but grunts and 
 snorts ; but let him only worry out for himself, from 
 that great dust-heap called " history," some undoubted 
 fact of human and tender interest, and, however small 
 it may be, relating possibly to some one hardly known, 
 and playing but a small part in the events he is recording.
 
 140 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 and he will wax amazingly sentimental, and perhaps 
 shed as many real tears as Sterne or Dickens do sham 
 ones over their figments. This realism of Carlyle's gives 
 a great charm to his histories and biographies. The 
 amount he tells you is something astonishing — no plati- 
 tudes, no rigmarole, no common-form, articles which 
 are the staple of most biography, but, instead of them., 
 all the facts and features of the case — pedigree, birth, 
 father and mother, brothers and sisters, education, 
 physiognomy, personal habits, dress, mode of speech ; 
 nothing escapes him. It was a characteristic criticism 
 of his, on one of Miss Martineau's American books, that 
 the story of the way Daniel Webster used to stand before 
 the fire with his hands in his pockets was worth all the 
 politics, philosophy, political economy, and sociology to 
 be found in other portions of the good lady's writings. 
 Carlyle's eye was indeed a terrible organ : he saw every- 
 thing. Em.erson, writing to him, sa3/s : " I think you 
 see as pictures every street, church, Parliament-house, 
 barracks, baker's shop, mutton-^tall, forge, wharf, and 
 ship, and whatever stands, creeps, rolls, or swims there- 
 about, and make all your owm." He crosses over, one 
 rough day, to Dublin ; and he jots down, in his diary 
 the personal apj^earance of some unhappy creatures he 
 never saw before or expected to see again ; how men 
 laughed, cried, swore, were all of huge interest to Carlyle* 
 Give him a fact, he loaded j^ou with thanks ; propounc 
 a theory, you were rewarded with the most vivid abuse. 
 This intense love for, and faculty of perceiving, what 
 one may call the " concrete picturesque," accounts for 
 his many hard sayings about fiction and poetry. He 
 could not understand people being at the trouble of 
 inventing characters and situations when history was 
 full of men and women ; when streets were crowded 
 and continents were being peopled under their very 
 noses, Emerson's sphynx-like utterances irritated him 
 at times, as they well might ; his orations and the like. 
 " I long," he fays, " to see some concrete iking, some
 
 CARLYLE. 141 
 
 Event — Man's Life, American Forest, or piece of Creation 
 which this Emerson loves and wonders at, well Emer- 
 sonised, depicted by Emerson — filled with the life of 
 Emerson, and cast forth from him then to live by itself." * 
 But Carlyle forgot the sluggishness of the ordinary 
 imagination, and, for the moment, the stupendous dul- 
 ness of the ordinarj^ historian. It cannot be matter for 
 surprise that people prefer Smollett's Humphrey Clinker 
 to his History of England. 
 
 The third and last mark to which I call attention is 
 ills humour. Nowhere, surely, in the whole field of 
 English literature, Shakspeare excepted, do you come 
 upon a more abundant vein of humour than Carlyle's, 
 though I admit that the quality of the ore is not of the 
 finest. His every production is bathed in humour. 
 This must never be, though it often has been, forgotten. 
 He is not to be taken literally. He is always a humourist, 
 not unfrequently a writer of burlesque, and occasionally a 
 buffoon. 
 
 Although the spectacle of Mr. Swinburne taking Mr. 
 Carlyle to task, as he recently did, for indelicacy, has 
 an oddity all its own, so far as I am concerned I cannot 
 but concur with this critic in thinking that Carlyle has 
 laid himself open, particularly in his Frederick the Great, 
 to the charge one usually associates with the great and 
 terrible name of Dean Swift ; but it is the Dean with a 
 difference, and the difference is all in Carlyle's favour. 
 The former deliberately pelts you with dirt, as did in 
 
 * One need scarcely add, nothing of the sort ever proceeded from 
 Emerson. How should it ? Where was it to come from ? When, to 
 employ language of Mr. Arnold's own, " any poor child of nature " 
 overhears the author of Essays in Criticism telling two worlds that 
 Emerson's Essays are the most valuable prose contributions to the 
 literature of the century, his soul is indeed filled " witli an unutterable 
 sense of lamentation and mourning and woe." Mr. Arnold's silence 
 was once felt to be provoking. Wordsworth's lines kept occurring to 
 one's mind — 
 
 " Poor Matthew, all his frolics o'er. 
 Is silent as a standing pool." 
 
 But it vvas better so.
 
 142 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 old days gentlemen electors their parliamentary candi- 
 dates ; the latter only occasionally splashes you, as does 
 a public vehicle pursuing on a wet day its uproarious 
 course. 
 
 These, then, I take to be Carlyle's three principal 
 marks or notes : mysticism in thought, realism in de- 
 scription, and humour in both. 
 
 To proceed now to his actual literary work. 
 
 First, then, I would record the fact that he was a 
 great critic, and this at a time when our literary criticism 
 was a scandal. He more than any other has purged 
 our vision and widened our horizons in this great matter. 
 He taught us there was no sort of finality, but only non- 
 sense, in that kind of criticism which was content with 
 laying down some foreign masterpiece with the observa- 
 tion that it was not suited for the English taste. He 
 was, if not the first, almost the first critic, who pursued 
 in his criticism the historical method, and sought to make 
 us understand what we were required to judge. It has 
 been said that Carlyle's criticisms are not final, and that 
 he has not said the last word about Voltaire, Diderot, 
 Richter, and Goethe. I can well believe it. But re- 
 serving " last words " for the use of the last man (to 
 whom they would appear to belong), it is surely some- 
 thing to have said the first sensible words uttered in 
 English on these important subjects. We ought not to 
 forget the early days of the Foreign and Quarterly Review. 
 We have critics now, quieter, more reposeful souls, tak- 
 ing their ease on Zion, who have entered upon a world 
 ready to welcome them, whose keen rapiers may cut 
 velvet better than did the two-handed broadsword of 
 Carlyle, and whose later date may enable them to dis- 
 cern what their forerunner failed to perceive ; but when 
 the critics of this century come to be criticised by the 
 critics of the next, an honourable, if not the highest 
 place will be awarded to Carlyle. 
 
 Turn we now to the historian and biographer. History 
 and biography much resemble one another in the pages
 
 CARLYLE. 143 
 
 0! Carlyle, and occupy more than half his thirty-four 
 volumes ; nor is this to be wondered at, since they afford 
 him fullest scope for his three strong points — his love of 
 the wonderful ; his love of telling a story, as the children 
 say, " from the very beginning ; " and his humour. 
 His view of history is sufficiently lofty. History, says 
 he, is the true epic poem, a universal divine scripture 
 whose plenary inspiration no one out of Bedlam shall 
 bring into question. Nor is he quite at one with the 
 ordinary historian as to the true historical method. 
 " The time seems coming when he who sees no world 
 but that of courts and camps, and writes only how soldiers 
 were drilled and shot, and how this ministerial conjurer 
 out-conjured that other, and then guided, or at least 
 held, something which he called the rudder of Govern- 
 ment, but which was rather the spigot of Taxation, 
 wherewith in place of steering he could tax, will pass for 
 a more or less instructive Gazetteer, but will no longer 
 be called an Historian." 
 
 Nor does the philosophical method of writing history 
 please him any better : 
 
 " Truly if History is Philosophy teaching by examples, 
 the writer fitted to compose history is hitherto an un- 
 known man. Better were it that mere earthly historians 
 should lovrer such pretensions, more suitable for omnis- 
 cience than for human science, and aiming only at some 
 picture of the things acted, which picture itself will be 
 a poor approximxation, leave the inscrutable purport of 
 them an acknowledged secret — or at most, in reverent 
 faith, pause over the mysterious vestiges of Him whose 
 path is in the great deep of Time, whom History indeed 
 reveals, but only all History and in Eternity will clearl}- 
 reveal." 
 
 This same transcendental way of looking at things 
 is very noticeable in the following view of Biography : 
 " For, as the highest gospel was a Biography, so is the 
 life of every good man still an indubitable gospel, and 
 preaches to the eye and heart and whole man, so that
 
 144 SELECTED ESSAYS. , 
 
 devils even must I^elieve and tremble, these gladdest 
 tidings. Man is heaven-born — not the thrall of circum- 
 stances, of necessity, but the victorious subduer thereof." 
 These, then, being his views, wliat are we to say of his 
 works ? His three principal historical works are, as 
 every one knows, Cromwell, The French Revolution, and 
 Frederick the Great, though there is a very considerable 
 amount of other historical writing scattered up and down 
 his works. But what are we to say of these three ? If 
 he, hy virtue of them, entitled to the rank and influence 
 of a great liistorian ? What have we a right to demand 
 of an historian ? First, surely, stern veracity, which 
 implies not merely knowledge but honesty. An historian 
 stands in a fiduciary position towards his readers, and 
 if he withholds from them important facts likely to 
 influence their judgment, he is guilty of fraud, and, when 
 justice is done in this world, will be condemned to refund 
 all moneys he has made by his ^alse professions, with 
 compound interest. This sort of fraud is unknown to 
 the law, but to nobody else. " Let me know the facts ! " 
 may well be the agonised cry of the student who finds 
 himself floating down what Arnold has called " the vast 
 Mississippi of falsehood, History." Secondly comes _ a 
 catholic tenujer and way of looking at things. The his- 
 torian should be a gentleman and possess a moral breadth 
 of temperament. There should be no bitter protesting 
 spirit about him. He should remember the world he 
 has taken upon himself to write about is a large place, 
 and that nobody set him up over us. Thirdly, he must 
 be a born story-teller. If he is not this, he has mistaken 
 his vocation. He may be a great philosopher, a useful 
 editor, a profound scholar, and anything else his friends 
 like to call him, except a great historian. How does 
 Carlyle meet these requirements ? His veracity, that is, 
 his laborious accuracy, is admitted by the only persons 
 competent to form an opinion, namely, independent in- 
 vestigators who have followed in his track ; but what 
 may be called the internal evidence of the case also
 
 CARLYLE. 145 
 
 supplies a strong proof of it. Carlyle was, as every one 
 knows, a hero-worshipper. It is part of his mysticism. 
 With him man, as well as God, is a spirit, either of good 
 or evil, and as such should be either worshipped or 
 reviled. He is never himself till he has discovered 01 
 invented a hero ; and, when he has got him, he tosses 
 and dandles him as a mother her babe. This is a terrible 
 temptation to put in the way of an historian, and few 
 there be who are found able to resist it. How easy to 
 keep back an ugly fact, sure to be a stumbling-block 
 in the way of weak brethren ! Carlyle is above suspicion 
 in this respect. He knows no reticence. Nothing re- 
 strains him ; not even the so-called proprieties of history. 
 He may, after his boisterous fashion, pour scorn upon 
 you for looking grave, as j'ou' read in his vivid pages of 
 the reckless manner in which too many of his heroes 
 drove coaches-and-six through the Ten Commandments. 
 As likel}' as not he will call you a blockhead, and tell 
 you to close your wide mouth and cease shrieking. But, 
 dear me ! hard words break no bones, and it is an amaz- 
 ing comfort to know the facts. Is he writing of Crom- 
 well ? — down goes everything— letters, speeches, as they 
 were written, as they were delivered. Few great men 
 are edited after this fashion. Were they to be so — 
 Luther, for example — man}' eyes would be opened very 
 wide. Nor does Carlj'le fail in comment. If the Pro- 
 tector makes a somewhat distant allusion to the Bar- 
 badoes, Carlyle is at your elbow to tell you it means his 
 selling people to work as slaves in the West Indies. As 
 for Mirabeau, " our wild Gabriel Honore," well ! we are 
 told all about him ; nor is Frederick let off a single 
 absurdity or atrocity. But when we have admitted the 
 veracity, what are we to say of the catholic temper, 
 the breadth of temperament, the wide Shakspearian 
 tolerance ? Carlyle ought to have them all. By nature 
 he was tolerant enough ; so true a humourist could never 
 be a bigot. When his war-paint is not on, a child might 
 lead him. His judgments are gracious, chivalrous, tinged
 
 146 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 with a kindly melancholy and divine pity. But this 
 mood is never for long. Some gadfly stings him : he 
 seizes his tomahawk and is off on the trail. It must 
 sorrowfully be admitted that a long life of opposition 
 and indigestion, of fierce warfare with cooks and Philis- 
 tines, spoilt his temper, never of the best, and made him 
 too often contemptuous, savage, unjust. His language 
 then becomes unreasonable, unbearable, bad. Litera- 
 ture takes care of herself. You disobey her rules : well 
 and good, she shuts her door in your face ; you plead 
 your genius : she replies, " Your temper," and bolts it. 
 Carlyle has deliberately destroyed, by his own wilful- 
 ness, the value of a great deal he has written. It can 
 never become classical. Alas ! that this should be true 
 of too many eminent Englishmen of our time. Language 
 such as was, at one time, almost habitual with Mr. Ruskin, 
 is a national humiliation, giving point to the French- 
 man's sneer as to our distinguishing literary character- 
 istic being " la hyutalite." In Carlyle's case much must 
 be allowed for his rhetoric and humour. In slang phrase, 
 he always " piles it on." Does a bookseller misdirect a 
 parcel, he exclaims, " My malison on all Blockheadisms 
 and Torpid Infidelities of which this world is full." 
 Still, all allowances made, it is a thousand pities ; and 
 one's thoughts turn away from this stormy old man 
 and take refuge in the quiet haven of the Oratory at 
 Birmingham, with his great Protagonist, who, through- 
 out an equally long life spent in painful controversy, 
 and wielding weapons as terrible as Carlyle's own, has 
 rarely forgotten to be urbane, and whose every sen- 
 tence is a " thing of beauty." It must, then, be owned 
 that too many of Carlyle's literary achievements 
 " lack a gracious somewhat." By force of his genius 
 he " smites the rock and spreads the water ; " but 
 then, like Moses, " he desecrates, belike, the deed in 
 doing." 
 
 Our third requirement was, it may be remembered, 
 the gift of the story-teller. Here one is on firm ground.
 
 CARLYLE. 147 
 
 Where is the equal of the man who has told us the story 
 of The Diamond Necklace ? 
 
 It is the vogue, nowadays, to sneer at picturesque 
 writing. Professor Seeley, for reasons of his own, appears 
 to think that whilst politics, and, I presume, religion, 
 may be made as interesting as j^ou please, history should 
 be as dull as possible. This, surely, is a jaundiced view. 
 If there is one thing it is legitimate to make more interest- 
 ing than another, it is the varied record of man's life 
 upon earth. So long as we have human hearts and 
 await human destinies, so long as we are alive to the 
 pathos, the dignity, the comedy of human life, so long 
 shall we continue to rank above the philosopher, higher 
 than the politician, the great artist, be he called drama- 
 tist or historian, who makes us conscious of the divine 
 movement of events, and of our fathers who were before 
 us. Of course we assume accuracy and labour in our 
 animated historian ; though, for that matter, other 
 •things being equal, I prefer a lively har to a dull one. 
 
 Carlyle is sometimes as irresistible as " The Campbells 
 afe Coming," or " Auld Lang Syne." He has described 
 some men and some events once and for all, and so takes 
 his place with Thucydides, Tacitus and Gibbon. Pedants 
 may try hard to forget this, and may in their laboured 
 nothings seek to ignore the author of Cromwell and The 
 French Revolution ; but as well might the pedestrian in 
 Cumberland or Inverness seek to ignore Helvellyn or 
 Ben Nevis. Carlyle is there, and will remain there, when 
 the peda,nt of to-day has been superseded by the pedant 
 of to-morrow. 
 
 _ Remembering all this, we are apt to forget his faults, 
 his eccentricities, and vagaries, his buffooneries, his too- 
 outrageous cynicisms and his too-intrusive egotisms, and 
 to ask ourselves — if it be not this man, who is it then 
 to be ? Macaulay, answer some ; and Macaulay's claims 
 are not of the sort to go unrecognised in a world which 
 loves clearness of expression and of view only too well. 
 Macaulay's position never admitted of doubt. We know
 
 148 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 what to expect, and we always get it. It is like the old 
 days of W. G. Grace's cricket. We went to see the 
 leviathan slog for six, and we saw it. We expected 
 him to do it, and he did it. So with Macaulay — the 
 good Whig, as he takes up the History, settles himself 
 dowii in his chair, and knows it is going to be a bad time 
 for the Tories. Macaulaj^'s style — his much-praised 
 style — is ineffectual for the purpose of telling the truth 
 about anything. It is splendid, but splendvde mendax, 
 and in Macaulay's case the style was the man. He had 
 enormous knowledge, and a noble spirit ; his knowledge 
 enriched his style and his spirit consecrated it to the 
 service of Liberty. We do well to be proud of Macaulay ; 
 but we must add that, great as was his knowledge, great 
 also was his ignorance, which was none the less igno- 
 rance because it was wilful ; noble as was his spirit, the 
 range of subject over which it energised was painfully 
 restricted. He looked out upon the v/orld, but, behold, 
 only the Whigs were good. Luther and Loyola, Crom- 
 well and Clave rhouse, Carlyle and Newman — they moved 
 him not ; their enthusiasms were delusions, and their 
 politics demonstrable errors. Whereas, of Lord Somers 
 and Charles first Earl Grey it is impossible to speak 
 without emotion. But the world does not belong to 
 the Whigs ; and a great historian must be capable of 
 sympathising both with delusions and demonstrable 
 errors. Mr. Gladstone has commented with force upon 
 what he calls Macaulay's invincil)le ignorance, and fur- 
 ther says that to certain aspects of a case (particularly 
 those aspects most pleasing to Mr. Gladstone) Macaulay's 
 mind was hermetically sealed. It is difficult to resist 
 these conclusions ; and it would appear no rash infer- 
 ence from them, that a man in a state of invincible 
 ignorance and with a mind hermetically sealed, whatever 
 else he may be — orator, advocate, statesman, journalist, 
 man of letters — can never be a great historian. But, 
 indeed, when one remembers Macaulay's limited range 
 of ideas : the commonplaceness of his morality, and of
 
 CARLYLE. 149 
 
 his descriptions ; his absence of humour, and of pathos — 
 for though Miss Martineau says she found one pathetic 
 passage in the History, I have often searched for it in 
 vain ; and then turns to Carlyle — to his ahnost bewilder- 
 ing affluence of thought, fancy, feehng, humour, pathos 
 — his biting pen, his scorching criticism, his world-wide 
 sjTupathy (save in certain moods) with everything but 
 the smug commonplace — ^to prefer Macaulay to him, is 
 like giving the preference to Birket Foster over Salvator 
 Rosa. But if it is not Macaulay, who is it to be ? Mr. 
 Hepworth Dixon or Mr. Froude ? Of Bishop Stubbs and 
 Professor Freeman it behoves every ignoramus to speak 
 with respect. Homy-handed sons of toil, they are worthy 
 of their wage. Carlyle has somewhere struck a distinction 
 between the historical artist and the historical artisan. 
 The bishop and the professor arehistorical artisans; artists 
 they are not — and the great historian is a great artist. 
 
 England boasts two such artists : Edward Gibbon 
 and Thomas Carlyle. The elder historian may be com- 
 pared to one of the great Alpine roadways — sublime in 
 its conception, heroic in its execution, superb in its 
 magnificent uniformity of good workmanship. The 
 younger resembles one of his native streams, pent in at 
 times between huge rocks, and toiTnented into foam, and 
 then effecting its escape down sonie precii)ice, and spread- 
 ing into cool expanses l^elow ; but however varied may be 
 its fortunes — however startling its changes— always in 
 motion, alwajs in harmony with the scene around. Is 
 it gloomy ? It is with the gloom of the thunder-cloud. 
 Is it bright ? It is with the radiance of the sun. 
 
 It is with some consternation that I approach the 
 subject of Carlyle's politics. One handles them as does 
 an inspector of police a parcel reported to contain dyna- 
 mite. The Latter Day Pamphlets might not unfitly be 
 labelled " Dangerous Explosives." 
 
 In this matter of politics there were two Carlyles ; 
 and, as generally happens in such cases, his last state 
 was worse than his first. Up to 1843, he not unfairly
 
 150 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 might be called a Liberal — of uncertain vote it may be 
 — a man difficult to work with, and impatient of disci- 
 pline, but still aglow with generous heat ; full of large- 
 hearted sympathy with the poor and oppressed, and of 
 intense hatred of the cruel and shallow sophistries that 
 then passed for maxims, almost for axioms, of govern- 
 ment. In the year i8ig, when the yeomanry round 
 Glasgow was called out to keep down some dreadful 
 monsters called " Radicals," Carlyle describes how he 
 met an advocate of his acquaintance hurrying along, 
 musket in hand, to his drill on the Links. " You should 
 have the like of this," said he, cheerily patting his gun. 
 " Yes," was the reply, " but I haven't yet quite settled 
 on which side." And when he did make his choice, on 
 the whole he chose rightly. The author of that noble 
 pamphlet " Chartism," published in 184a, was at least 
 once a Liberal. Let me quote a passage that has stirred 
 to effort many a generous heart now cold in death : 
 " Who would suppose that Education were a thing which 
 had to be advocated on the ground of local expediency, 
 or indeed on any ground ? As if it stood not on the basis 
 of an everlasting duty, as a prime necessity of man ! 
 It is a thing that should need no advocating ; much as 
 it does actually need. To impart the gift of thinking to 
 those who cannot think, and yet who could in that case 
 think : this, one would imagine, was the first function 
 a government had to set about discharging. Were it 
 not a cruel thing to see, in any province of an empire, 
 the inhabitants living all mutilated in their limbs, each 
 strong man with his right arm lamed ? How much 
 crueller to find the strong soul v/ith its eyes still sealed 
 — its eyes extinct, so that it sees not ! Light has come 
 into the world ; but to this poor peasant it has come in 
 vain. For six thousand years the sons of Adam, in 
 sleepless effort, have been devising, doing, discovering ; 
 in mysterious, infinite, indissoluble communion, warring, 
 a little band of brothers, against the black empire ol 
 necessity and night ; they have accomplished such a
 
 CARLYLE. 
 
 151 
 
 conquest and conquests ; and to this man it is all as if 
 it had not been. The four-and-twenty letters of the 
 alphabet are still runic enigmas to him. He passes by 
 on the other side ; and that great spiritual kingdom, 
 the toil-won conquest of his own brothers, all that his 
 brothers have conquered, is a thing not extant for him. 
 An invisible empire ; he knows it not — suspects it not. 
 And is not this his withal ; the conquest of his own 
 brothers, the lawfully acquired possession of all men ? 
 Baleful enchantment lies over him, from generation to 
 generation ; he knows not that such an empire is his — 
 that such an empire is his at all. . . . Heavier wrong is 
 not done under the sun. It lasts from year to year, 
 from century to century ; the blinded sire slaves him- 
 self out, and leaves a blinded son : and men, made in 
 the image of God, continue as two-legged beasts of labour : 
 and in the largest empire of the world it is a debate 
 whether a small fraction of the revenue of one day shall, 
 after thirteen centuries, be laid out on it, or not laid 
 oi^t on it. Have we governors ? Have we teachers ? 
 Have we had a Church these thirteen hundred years ? 
 What is an overseer of souls, an archoverseer, archie- 
 piscopus ? Is he something ? If so, let him lay his 
 hand on his heart and say what thing ! " 
 
 Nor was the man who in 1843 wrote as follows alto- 
 gether at sea in politics : 
 
 " Of Time Bill, Factory Bill, and other such Bills, the 
 present editor has no authority to speak. He knows not, 
 it is for others than he to know, in what specific ways it 
 may be feasible to interfere with legislation betvv^een the 
 workers and the master-workers — knows only and sees 
 that legislative interference, and interferences not a few, 
 are indispensable. Nay. interference has begun ; there 
 are already factory inspectors. Perhaps there might be 
 mine inspectors too. JMight there not be furrow-field 
 inspectors withal, to ascertain how, on 7s. 6d. a week, 
 a human family does live ? Again, are not sanitary 
 regulations jwssible for a legislature ? Baths, free air, a
 
 152 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 wholesome temperature, ceilings twenty feet high, might 
 be ordained by Act of Parliament in all establishments 
 licensed as m.ills. There are such mills already extant- 
 honour to the builders of them. The legislature can say 
 to others, ' Go you and do likewise — better if you can.' " 
 
 By no means a bad programme for 1843 ; and a good 
 part of it has been carried out, but with next to no aid 
 from Carlyle. 
 
 The Radical party has struggled on as best it might, 
 without thed.uthoroiCharfism andThe French Revolution — 
 
 "They have marched prospering, not through his presence ; " 
 
 and it is no party spirit that leads one to regret the change 
 of mind which prevented the later public life of this 
 great m.an, and now the memory of it, from being en- 
 riched with something better than a five-pound note for 
 Governor Eyre. 
 
 But it could not be helped. What brought about 
 the rupture was his losing faith in the ultimate destiny 
 of man upon earth. No more terrible loss can be sus- 
 tained. It is of both heart and hope. He fell back 
 upon heated visions of heaven-sent heroes, devoting their 
 early days for the most part to hoodwinking the people, 
 and their latter ones, more heroicalh^, to shooting them. 
 
 But it is foolish to quarrel with results, and we may 
 learn something even from the later Carlyle. We lay 
 down John Bright's Reform Speeches, and take up Car- 
 lyle and light upon a passage like this ; " Inexpressibly 
 delirious seems to me the puddle of Parliament and 
 public upon what it calls the Reform Measure, that is 
 to say, the calling in of new supplies of blockheadism, 
 gullibihty, bribability, amenability to beer and balder- 
 dash, by way of amending the woes we have had from 
 previous supplies of that bad article." This v^iew must 
 be accounted for as well as Mr. Bright's. We shall do 
 well to rem.ember, with Carlyle, that the best of all Re- 
 form Bills is that which each citizen passes in his own 
 breast, where it is pretty sure to meet with strenuous
 
 CARLYLE. 153 
 
 opposition. The reform of ourselves is no doubt an 
 heroic measure never to be overlooked, and, in the face 
 of accusations of gullibihty, bribability, amenability to 
 beer and balderdash, our poor humanity can only stand 
 abashed, and feebly demur to the bad English in which 
 the charges are conve3^ed. But we can't all lose hope. 
 We remember Sir David Ramsay's reply to Lord Rea, 
 once quoted by Carlyle himself. Then said his lordship : 
 " Well, God mend all." " Nay, by God, Donald, we 
 must help Him to mend it ! " It is idle to stand gaping 
 at the heavens, waiting to feel the thorg of some hero 
 of questionable m-orals and robust conscience ; and 
 therefore, unless Reform Bills can be shown to have 
 checked purity of electior, to have increased the stupidity 
 of electors, and generally to have promoted corruption — 
 which notoriously they have not — we may allow Car- 
 lyle to make his exit " swearing," and regard their pres- 
 ence in the Statute Book, if not with rapture, at least 
 with equanimity. 
 
 ^.But it must not be forgotten that the battle is still 
 raging — the issue is still uncertain. Mr. Froude is still 
 free to assert that the " ■post-mortem " wiU prove Car- 
 lyle was right. His political sagacity no reader of 
 Frederick can deny ; his insight into hidden causes 
 and far-away effects w^s keen beyond precedent — noth- 
 ing he ever said deserves contempt, though it may merit 
 anger. If we would escape his conclusion, we must not 
 altogether disregard his premises. Bankruptcy and 
 death are the final heirs of imposture and make-believes. 
 The old faiths and forms arc worn too threadbare by a 
 thousand disputations to bear the burden of the new 
 democracy, which, if it is not merely to win the battle 
 but to hold the country, must be ready with new faiths 
 and forms of her own. They are within her reach if 
 she but knew it ; they lie to her hand : surely they will 
 not escape her grasp ! If they do not, then, m the glad 
 day when worship is once more restored to man, he will 
 with becoming generosity forget much that Carlyle has
 
 154 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 written, and remembering more, rank him amongst the 
 prophets of humanity. 
 
 Carlyle's poetry can only be exhibited in long extracts, 
 which would be here out of place, and might excite con- 
 troversy as to the meaning of words, and draw down 
 upon me the measureless malice of the metricists. There 
 are, however, passages in Sartor Resartus and The French 
 Revolution which have long appeared to me to be the 
 sublimest poetry of the century ; and it was therefore 
 with great pleasure that I found Mr. Justice Stephen, 
 in his book on Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, intro- 
 ducing a quotation from the 8th chapter of the 3rd book 
 of Sartor Resartus, with the remark that " it is perhaps the 
 most memorable utterance of the greatest poet of the age." 
 
 As for Carlyle's religion, it may be said he had none, 
 inasmuch as he expounded no creed and put his name 
 to no confession. This is the pedantry of the schools. 
 He taught us religion, as cold water and fresh air teach 
 us health, by rendering the conditions of disease weU 
 nigh impossible. For more than half a century, with 
 superhuman energy, he struggled to establish the basis 
 of aU religions, " reverence and godly fear." " Love 
 not pleasure, love God ; this is the everlasting Yea." 
 
 One's remarks might here naturally come to an end, 
 with a word or two of hearty praise of the brave couise 
 of life led by the man who awhile back stood the acknow- 
 ledged head of English letters. But the present time is 
 not the happiest for a panegyric on Carlyle. It would 
 be in vain to deny that the brightness of his reputation 
 underwent an eclipse, visible everywhere, by the publica- 
 tion of his Reminiscences. They surprised most of us, 
 pained not a few, and hugely delighted that ghastly 
 crew, the wreckers of humanity, who are never so happy 
 as when employed in pulling down great reputations to 
 their own miserable levels. When these " baleful crea- 
 tures," as Carlyle would have called them, have lit upon 
 any passage indicative of conceit or jealousy or spite, 
 they have fastened upon it and screamed over it, with
 
 CARLYLE. 155 
 
 a pleasure but ill-concealed and with a horror but ill- 
 feigned. " Behold," they exclaim, " your hero robbed 
 of the nimbus his inflated style cast around him — this 
 preacher and fault-finder reduced to his principal parts : 
 and lo ! the main ingredient is most unmistakably ' bile ! ' " 
 
 The critic, however, has nought to do either with the 
 sighs of the sorrowful, " mourning when a hero falls," 
 or with the scorn of the malicious, rejoicing, as did Bun- 
 yan's Juryman, Mr. Live-loose, when Faithful was con- 
 demned to die : "I could never endure him, for he 
 would always be condemning my way." 
 
 The critic's task is to consider the book itself, i.e., the 
 nature of its contents, and hov; it came to be written at all. 
 
 When this has been done, there will not be found 
 much demanding moral censure ; whilst the reader will 
 note with delight, applied to the trifling concerns of life, 
 those extraordinary gifts of observation and apprehen- 
 sion which have so often charmed him in the pages of 
 history and biography. 
 
 These peccant volumes contain but four sketches : 
 oAe of his father, written in 1832 ; the other three, of 
 Edward Irving, Lord Jeffrey, and Mrs. Carlyle, all 
 written after the death of the last-named, in 1866. 
 
 The only fault that has been found with the first 
 sketch is, that in it Carlyle hazards the assertion that 
 Scotland does not now contain his father's like. It ought 
 surely to be possible to dispute this opinion without 
 exhibiting emotion. To think well of their forbears is 
 one of the few weaknesses of Scotchmen. This sketch, 
 as a whole, must be carried to Carlyle 's credit. It is 
 pious, after the high Roman fashion. It satisfies our 
 finest sense of the fit and proper. Just exactly so 
 should a hterate son write of an iUiterate peasant father. 
 How immeasurable seems the distance between the man 
 from whom proceeded the thirty-four volumes we have 
 been writing about and the Calvinistic mason who didn't 
 even know his Burns ! — and yet here we find the whole 
 distance spanned by filial love.
 
 156 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 The sketch of Lord Jeffrey is inimitable. One was 
 getting tired of Jeffrey, and prepared to give him the 
 go-by, when Carlyle creates him afresh, and, for the 
 first time, we see the bright Httle man bewitching us by 
 what he is, disappointing us by what he is not. The 
 spiteful remarks the sketch contains may be considered 
 along with those of the same nature to be found only too 
 plentifully in the remaining two papers. 
 
 After careful consideration of the worst of these re- 
 marks, Mrs. Oliphant's explanation seems the true one ; 
 they are most of them sparkling bits of Mrs. Carlyle's 
 conversation. She, happily for herself, had a lively wit, 
 and, perhaps not so happily, a biting tongue, and was, 
 as Carlyle tells us, accustomed to make him Iraigh, as 
 they drove home together from London crushes, by 
 far from genial observations on her fellow-creatures, 
 little recking — ^how should she ? — that what was so 
 Ughtly uttered was being engraven on the tablets of the 
 most marvellous of memories, and was destined long 
 afterwards to be written down in grim earnest by a 
 half-frenzied old man, and printed, in cold blood, b> 
 an English gentleman. 
 
 The horrible description of Mrs. Irving's personal ap- 
 pearance, and the other stories of the same connection, 
 are recognised by Mrs. Oliphant as in substance Mrs. 
 Carlyle's ; whilst the malicious account of Mrs. Basil 
 Montague's head-dress is attributed by Carlyle himself 
 to his wife. Still, after dividing the total, there is a 
 good helping for each, and blame would justly be 
 Carlyle's due if we did not remember, as we are bound 
 to do, that, interesting as these three sketches are, their 
 interest is pathological, and ought never to have been 
 given us. Mr. Froude should have read them in tears, 
 and burnt them in fire. There is nothing surprising in 
 the state of mind which produced them. They are easily 
 accounted for by our sorrow-laden experience. It is a 
 familiar feeling which prompts a man, suddenly bereft 
 of one whom he alone really knew and loved, to turn
 
 CARLYLE. 157 
 
 in his fierce indignation upon the world, and deride its 
 idols whom all are praising, and which yet to him seem 
 ugly by the side of one of whom no one speaks. To be 
 angry with such a sentence as " scribbling Sands and 
 Eliots, not fit to compare with my incomparable Jeannie," 
 is at once inhuman and ridiculous. This is the language 
 of the heart, not of the head. It is no more criticism 
 than is the tmmpeting of a wounded elephant zoology. 
 * Happy is the man who at such a time holds both peace 
 and pen ; but unhappiest of all is he who, having dipped 
 his sorrow into ink, entrusts the manuscript to a romantic 
 historian. 
 
 The two volumes of the Life, and the three volumes 
 of Mrs. Carlyle's Correspondence, unfortunately, did not 
 pour oil upon the troubled waters. The partisanship 
 they evoked was positively indecent. Mrs. Carlyle had 
 her troubles and her sorrows, as have most women who 
 live under the same roof with a man of creative genius ; 
 but of one thing we may be quite sure, that she would 
 h^ve been the first, to use her own expressive language, 
 to require God " particularly to damn " her impertinent 
 sympathisers. As for Mr. Froude, he may yet disco \-er 
 his Nemesis in the spirit of an angry woman whose 
 privacy he has invaded, and whose diary he has most 
 wantonly published. 
 
 These dark clouds are ephemeral. They will roll away, 
 and we shall once more gladly recognise the lineaments 
 of an essentially lofty character, of one who, though a 
 man of genius and of letters, neither outraged society 
 nor stooped to it ; was neither a rebel nor a slave ; who 
 in poverty scorned wealth ; who never mistook popu- 
 larity for fame ; but from the first assumed, and through- 
 out maintained, the proud attitude of one whose duty 
 it was to teach and not to tickle mankind. 
 
 Brother-dunces, lend me your ears ! not to crop, but 
 that I may whisper into their furry depths : " Do not 
 quarrel with genius. We have none ourselves, and yet 
 are so constituted that we cannot live without it."
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 " nPHE sanity of true genius " was a happy phrase of 
 -^ Charles Lamb's. Our greatest poets were our 
 sanest men. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, 
 and Wordsworth might have defied even a mad doctor 
 to prove his worst. 
 
 To extol sanity ought to be unnecessary in an age 
 which boasts its realism ; but yet it may be doubted 
 whether, if the author of the phrase just quoted were to 
 be allowed once more to visit the world he loved so well 
 and left so reluctantly, and could be induced to for- 
 swear his Elizabethans and devote himself to the litera- 
 ture of the day, he would find many books which his fine 
 critical faculty would allow him to pronounce " healthy," 
 as he once pronounced John Biincle to be in the presence 
 of a Scotchman, who could not for the life of him under- 
 stand how a book could properly be said to enjoy either 
 good or bad health. 
 
 But, however this may be, this much is certain, that 
 lucidity is one of the chief characteristics of sanity. A 
 sane man ought not to be unintelligible. Lucidity is 
 good everyvv'here, for all time and in all things, in a 
 letter, in a speech, in a book, in a poem. Lucidity is 
 not simplicity. A lucid poem is not necessarily an easy 
 one. A great poet may tax our brains, but he ought not 
 to puzzle our wits. We may often have to ask in humil- 
 ity, What does he mean ? but not in despair. What can 
 he mean ? 
 
 Dreamy and inconclusive the poet sometimes, nay, 
 often, cannot help being, for dreaminess and inconclu- 
 siveness are conditions of thought when dwelling on the 
 very subjects that most demand poetical treatment.
 
 ■ I^OBERT BROWNING. 159 
 
 Misty, therefore, the poet has our kind permission 
 sometimes to be ; but muddy, never ! A great poet, 
 like a great peak, must sometim.es be allowed to have 
 his head in the clouds, and to disappoint us of the wide 
 prospect we had hoped to gain ; but the clouds which 
 envelop him must be attracted to, and not made by him. 
 
 In a sentence, though the poet may give expression 
 to what Wordsworth has called " the heavy and the 
 weary weight of all this unintelligible world," we, the 
 much-enduring public who have to read his poems, are 
 entitled to demand that the unintelligibility of which 
 we are made to feel the weight, should be all of it the 
 world's, and none of it merely the poet's. 
 
 W'e should not have ventured to introduce our sub- 
 ject with such very general and undeniable observa- 
 tions, had not experience taught us that the best way 
 of introducing any subject is by a string of platitudes, 
 delivered after an oracular fa.shion. They arouse atten- 
 tion, without exhausting it, and afford the pleasant 
 sensation of thinking, without any of the trouble of 
 thbught. But, the subject once introduced, it becomes 
 necessary to proceed with it. 
 
 In considering whether a poet is intelligible and lucid, 
 we ought not to grope and grub about his work in search 
 of obscurities and oddities, but should, in the first instance 
 at all events, attempt to regard his whole scope and 
 range ; to form som.e estimate, if we can, of his general 
 purport and effect, asking ourselves, for this purpose, 
 such questions as these : How are we the better for 
 him. ? Has he quickened any passion, lightened any 
 burden, purified any taste ? Does he play any real part 
 in our lives ? When we are in love, do we whisper him 
 in our lady's ear ? When we sorrow, does he ease our 
 pain ? Can he calm the strife of mental conflict ? Has 
 he had anything to say, which wasn't twaddle, on those 
 subjects which, elude analysis as they may, and defy 
 demonstration as they do, are yet alone of perennial 
 interest —
 
 i6o SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 " On man, on nature, and on human life," 
 
 on the pathos of our situation, looking back on to the 
 irrevocable and forward to the unknown ? If a poet 
 has said, or done, or been any of these things to an 
 appreciable extent, to charge him with obscurity is both 
 folly and ingratitude. 
 
 But the subject may be pursued further, and one may 
 be called upon to investigate this charge with reference 
 to particular books or poems. In Browning's case this 
 fairly may be done ; and then another crop of questions 
 arises, such as : What is the book about, i.e., with what 
 subject does it deal, and what method of deahng does 
 it employ ? Is it didactical, anal3^tical, or purely narra- 
 tive ? Is it content to describe, or does it aspire to 
 explain ? In common fairness these questions must be 
 asked and answered, before we heave our critical half- 
 bricks at strange poets. One task is of necessity more 
 difficult than another. Students of geometry, who have 
 pushed their researches into that fascinating science so 
 far as the fifth proposition of the first book, commonly 
 called the Pons Asinorum (though now that so many 
 ladies read Euclid, it ought, in common justice to them, 
 to be at least sometimes called the Pons Asinarum), 
 will agree that though it may be more difficult to prove 
 that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle arc 
 equal, and that if the equal sides be produced, the angles 
 on the other side of the base shall be equal, than it was 
 to describe an equilateral triangle on a given finite 
 straight line ; yet no one but an ass would say that the 
 fifth proposition was one whit less intelligible than the 
 first. When we consider Mr. Browning in his later 
 writings, it will be useful to bear this distinction in mind. 
 
 Our first duty, then, is to consider Mr. Browning in 
 his whole scope and range, or, in a word, generally. This 
 is a task of such dimensions and difficulty as, in the 
 language of joint-stock prospectuses, " to transcend 
 individual enterprise," and consequently, as we all 
 know, a company has been recently floated, or a society
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. i6i 
 
 established, having Mr. Browning for its principal object. 
 It has a president, two secretaries, male and female, and 
 a treasurer. You pay a guinea, and you become a 
 member. A suitable reduction is, I believe, made in 
 the unlikely event of all the members of one family 
 flocking to be enrolled. The existence of this society 
 is a great relief, for it enables us to deal with our un- 
 wieldy theme in a light-hearted manner, and to refer 
 those who have a passion for solid information and pro- 
 found philosophy to the printed transactions of this 
 [earned society, which, lest we should forget all about 
 it, we at once do. 
 
 When you are viewing a poet generally, as is our 
 present plight, the first question is : When was he born ? 
 rhe second, When did he (to use a favourite phrase of 
 the last century, now in disuse) — When did he commence 
 luthor ? The third. How long did he keep at it ? The 
 [ourth, How much has he written ? And the fifth may 
 perhaps be best expressed in the words of Southey's 
 
 ittle Peterkin : 
 
 «■ 
 
 " ' What good came of it all at last ? ' 
 Quoth little Peterkin." 
 
 Mr. Browning was born in 1812 ; he commenced 
 luthor with the fragment called Pauline, published in 
 18^3. He is still writing,* and his works, as they stand 
 ipon my shelves — for editions vary — number twenty- 
 :hree volumes. Little Peterkin's question is not so easily 
 mswered ; but, postponing it for a moment, the answers 
 ;o the other four show that we have to deal with a poet, 
 nore than seventy years old, who has been writing for 
 lalf a century, and who has filled twenty-three volumes, 
 fhe Browning Society at all events has assets. The 
 vay I propose to deal with this literary mass is to divide 
 t in two, taking the year 1864 as the line of cleavage, 
 n that year the volume called Dramatis Personce was 
 
 ♦-Written in 1884. 

 
 i62 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 published, and then nothing happened till the year 
 1868, when our poet presented the astonished English 
 language with four volumes and the 21,116 lines called 
 The Ring and the Book, a poem which it may be stated, 
 for the benefit of that large, increasing, and highly 
 interesting class of persons who prefer statistics to 
 poetry, is longer than Pope's Homer's Iliad by exactly 
 2,171 lines. We thus begin with Pauline in 1833, ^.nd 
 end with Dramatis Persona in 1864. We then begin 
 again with The Ring and the Book, in 1868 ; but when or 
 where we shall end cannot be stated.* Sordello, pub- 
 lished in 1840, is better treated apart, and is therefore 
 excepted from the first period, to which chronologically 
 it belongs. 
 
 Looking then at the first period, we find in its front 
 eight plays : 
 
 1. Strafford, written in 1836, when its author was 
 twenty-four years old, and put upon the boards of 
 Covent Garden Theatre on the ist of May, 1837, Mac- 
 ready playing Strafford, and Miss Helen Faucit Lady 
 Carlisle. It was received by all who saw it with en- 
 thusiasm ; but the Company, for reasons unconnected 
 with the play, was rebeUious ; and after running five 
 nights, the man who played Pym threw up his part, 
 and the theatre was closed. 
 
 2. Pippa Passes. ^ 
 
 3. King Victor and King Charles. " 
 
 4. The Return of the Druses. 
 
 5. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. 
 
 This beautiful and pathetic play was put on the stage 
 of Drury Lane on the nth of February, 1843, with Phelps 
 as Lord Tresham, Miss Helen Faucit as Mildred Tresham, 
 and Mrs. Stirling as Guendolen. It was a brilliant suc- 
 cess. Mr. Browning was in the stage-box ; and if it is 
 any satisfaction for a poet to hear a crowded house cry 
 " Author, author ! " that satisfaction has belonged to Mr. 
 
 * It can now, with Asolando, in 1S89.
 
 "ROBERT BROWNING. 163 
 
 Browning. The play ran at Dmry Lane till the 3rd of 
 June, 1843, and was subsequently revived by Mr. Phelps 
 during his "memorable management" of Sadlers' Wells. 
 
 6. Colombe's Birthday. 
 
 Miss Helen Faucit put this upon the stage in 1852, 
 when it was reckoned a success. 
 
 7. Luria. 
 
 8. A Soul's Tragedy. 
 
 To call any of these plays unintelligible is ridiculous ; 
 and nobody who has ever read them ever did, and why 
 people who have not read them should abuse them is 
 hard to see. Were society put upon its oath, we should 
 be surprised to find how many people in high places 
 have not read All's Well that Ends Well, or Timon of 
 Athens ; but they don't go about saying these plays 
 are unintelligible. Like wise folk, they pretend to have 
 read them, and say nothing. In Browning's case they 
 are spared the hypocrisy. No one need pretend to have 
 read A Soul's Tragedy ; and it seems, therefore, inex- 
 cusable for anyone to assert that one of the plainest, 
 most pointed, and piquant bits of writing in the lan- 
 guage is unintelligible. But surely something more may 
 be truthfully said of these plays than that they are 
 comprehensible. First of all, they are plays, and not 
 works — like the dropsical dramas of Sir Henry Taylor 
 and Mr. Swinburne. Some of them have stood the 
 ordeal of actual representation ; and though it would 
 be absurd to pretend that they met with that over- 
 whelming measure of success our critical age has re- 
 served for such dramatists as the late Lord Lytton, the 
 author of Money, the late Tom Taylor, the author of 
 The Overland Route, the late Mr. Robertson, the author 
 of Caste, Mr. H. Byron, the author of Our Boys, Mr. Wills, 
 the author of Charles I., Mr. Bumand, the author of 
 The Colonel, and Mr. Gilbert, the author of so much 
 that is great and glorious in our national drama ; at all 
 events they proved themselves able to arrest and retain
 
 i64 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 the attention of very ordinary audiences. But who can 
 deny dignity and even grandeur to Luria, or withhold 
 the meed of a nielodious tear from Mildred Tresham ? 
 What action of what play is more happily conceived or 
 better rendered than that of Pippa Passes ? — where 
 innocence and its reverse, tender love and violent pas- 
 sion, are presented with emphasis, and yet blended into 
 a dramatic unity and a poetic perfection, entitling the 
 author to the very first place amongst those dramatists 
 of the century who have laboured under the enormous 
 disadvantage of being poets to start with. 
 
 Passing from the plays, we are next attracted by a 
 number of splendid poems, on whose base the structure 
 of Mr. Browning's fame perhaps rests most surely — his 
 dramatic pieces — poems which give utterance to the 
 thoughts and feelings of persons other than himself, or, 
 as he puts it, when dedicating a number of them to his 
 wife : 
 
 " Love, you saw me gather men and women. 
 Live or dead, or fashioned by my fancy, 
 Enter each and all, and use their service, 
 Speak from every mouth the speech — a poem ; " 
 
 or, again, in Sordello : 
 
 " By making speak, myself kept out of view 
 The very man, as he was wont to do." 
 
 At a rough calculation, there must be at least sixty 
 of these pieces. Let me run over the names of a very 
 few of them. Saul, a poem beloved by all true women ; 
 Caliban, which the men, not unnaturally perhaps, often 
 prefer. The Two Bishops ; the sixteenth century one 
 ordering his tomb of jasper and basalt in St. Praxed's 
 Church, and his nineteenth century successor rolling out 
 his post -prandial Apologia. My Last Duchess, the Solil- 
 oquy in a Spanish Cloister, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Lippo 
 Lippi, Rabbi Ben Ezra, Cleon, A Death in the Desert, The 
 Italian in England, and The Englishman in Italy. 
 
 It is plain truth to say that no other English poet.
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 165 
 
 living or dead, Shakspeare excepted, has so heaped up 
 human interest for his readers as has Robert Browning. 
 
 Fancy stepping into a room and finding it full of Shak- 
 speare's principal characters ! What a babel of tongues I 
 What a jostling of wits 1 How eagerly one's eye would 
 go in search of Hamlet and Sir John Falstaff, but droop 
 shudderingly at the thought of encountering the dis- 
 traught gaze of Lady Macbeth I We should have no 
 difficulty in recognising Beatrice in the central figure of 
 that lively group of laughing courtiers ; whilst did we 
 seek Juliet, it would, of course, be by appointment on 
 the balcony. To fancy yourself in such company is 
 pleasant matter for a midsummer's night's dream. No 
 poet has such a gallery as Shakspeare, but of our modem 
 poets Browning comes nearest him. 
 
 Against these dramatic pieces the charge of unin- 
 telligibility fails as completely as it does against the 
 plays. They are all perfectly intelligible ; but — and here 
 is the rub — they are not easy reading, like the estimable 
 writings of the late Mrs. Hemans. They require the same 
 honest attention as it is the fashion to give to a lecture 
 of Professor Huxley's or a sermon of Canon Liddon's: 
 and this is just what too many persons will not give 
 to poetry. They 
 
 " Love to hear 
 A soft pulsation in their easy ear ; 
 To turn the page, and let their senses drink 
 A lay that shall not trouble them to think." 
 
 It is no great wonder it should be so. After dinner, 
 when disposed to sleep, but afraid of spoiling our night's 
 rest, behold the witching hour reserved by the nine- 
 teenth century for the study of poetry ! This treatment 
 of the muse deserves to be held up to everlasting scorn 
 and infamy in a passage of Miltonic strength and splen- 
 dour. We, alas I must be content with the observation, 
 that such an opinion of the true place of poetry in the 
 life of a man excites, in the breasts of the rightminded, 
 feehngs akin to those which Charles Lamb ascribes to the
 
 i66 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 immortal Sarah Battle, when a young gentleman of a 
 literary turn, on taking a hand in her favourite game of 
 whist, declared that he saw no harm in unbending the 
 mind, now and then, after serious studies, in recreations 
 of that kind. She could not bear, so Elia proceeds, " to 
 have her noble occupation, to which she wound up her 
 faculties, considered in that light. It was her business, 
 her duty — the thing she came into the world to do — and 
 she did it : she unbent her mind, afterwards, over a 
 book ! " And so the lover of poetry and Browning, after 
 winding-up his faculties over Comus or Paracelsus, over 
 Julius Ccesar or Strafford, may afterwards, if he is so 
 minded, unbend himself over the Origin of Species, or 
 that still more fascinating record which tells us how 
 little curly worms, only give them time enough, will 
 cover with earth even the larger kind of stones. 
 
 Next to these dramatic pieces come what we may be 
 content to caU simply poems : some lyrical, some narra- 
 tive. The latter are straightforward enough, and, as a 
 rule, full of spirit and humour ; but this is more than 
 can always be said of the lyrical pieces. Now, for the 
 first time, in dealing with this first period, excluding 
 Sordello, we strike difficulty. The Chinese puzzle comes 
 in. We wonder whether it all turns on the punctuation. 
 And the awkward thing for Mr. Browning's reputation 
 is this, that these bewildering poems are, for the most 
 part, very short. We say awkward, for it is not more 
 certain that Sarah Gamp liked her beer drawn mild, 
 than it is that your Englishman likes his poetry cut short ; 
 and so, accordingly, it often happens that some estimable 
 paterfamilias takes up an odd volume of Brown ing^his 
 volatile son or moonstruck daughter has left lying about, 
 pishes and pshaws ! and then, with an air of much 
 condescension and amazing candour, remarks that he 
 will give the fellow another chance, and not condemn 
 him unread. So saying, he opens the book, and care- 
 fully selects the very shortest poem he can find ; and 
 in a moment, without sign or signal, note or warning,
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 167 
 
 the unhappy man is floundering up to his neck in Hnes 
 like these, which are the third and final stanza of a poem 
 called Another Way of Love : 
 
 " And after, for pastime 
 
 If June be refulgent 
 
 With flowers in completeness. 
 
 All petals, no prickles, 
 
 Delicious as trickles 
 « Of wine poured at mass-time. 
 
 And choose One indulgent 
 
 To redness and sweetness ; 
 Or if with experience of man and of spider, 
 Slie use my June lightning, the strong insect -ridder 
 To stop the fresh spinning, — why June will consider." 
 
 Jie comes up gasping, and more than ever persuaded 
 that Browning's poetry is a mass of inconglomerate non- 
 sense, which nobody understands — least of all members 
 of the Browning Society. 
 
 We need be at no pains to find a meaning for every- 
 thing I\Ir. Browning has written. But when all is said 
 an^ done — when these few freaks of a crowded brain 
 are thrown overboard to the sharks of verbal criticism 
 who feed on such things — Mr. Browning and his great 
 poetical achievement remain behind to be dealt with 
 and accounted for. We do not get rid of Tennyson by 
 quoting : 
 
 " O darling room, ray heart's delight 1 
 Dear room, the apple of my sight. 
 With thy two couches soft ?nd white, 
 There is no room so exquisite — 
 No little room so warm and bright 
 Wherein to read, wherein to write ; " 
 
 or of Wordsworth by quoting : 
 
 " At this, my boy hung down his head : 
 He blushed with shame, nor made reply. 
 And five times to the cliild I said, 
 
 ' Why, Edward ? tell me why ? ' "— 
 
 or of Keats by remembering that he once addressed a 
 young lady as follows :
 
 i68 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 " O come, Georgiana ! the rose is full blown, 
 The riches of Flora are lavishly strown : 
 The air is all softness and crystal the streams. 
 The west is resplendently clothed in beams." 
 
 The strength of a rope may be but "the strength of its 
 weakest part ; but poets are to be judged iu their hap- 
 piest hours, and in their greatest works. 
 
 Taking, then, this first period of Mr. Browning's poetry 
 as a whole, and asking ourselves if we are the richer for 
 it, how can there be any doubt as to the reply ? What 
 points of human interest has he left untouched ? With 
 what phase of life, character, or study does he fail to 
 sympathise ? So far from being the rough-he^^'n block 
 " dull fools " have supposed him, he is the most dilettante 
 of great poets. Do you dabble in art and perambulate 
 picture-galleries ? Browning must be your favourite 
 poet : he is art's historian. Are you devoted to music ? 
 So is he : and alone of our poets has sought to fathom 
 in verse the deep mysteries of sound. Do you find it 
 impossible to keep off theology ? Browning has more 
 theology than most bishops — could puzzle Gamaliel and 
 delight Aquinas. Are you in love ? Read A Last Ride 
 Together, Youth and Art, A Portrait, Christine, In a 
 Gondola, By the Fireside, Love amongst the Ruins, Time's 
 Revenges, The Worst of It, and a host of others, being 
 careful always to end with A Madhouse Cell; and we 
 are much mistaken if you do not put Browning at 
 the very head and front of the interpreters of passion. 
 The many moods of sorrow are reflected in his verse, 
 whilst mirth, movement, and a rollicking humour abound 
 everywhere. 
 
 I will venture upon but three quotations, for it is late 
 in the day to be quoting Browning. The first shall be 
 a well-known bit of blank verse about art from Fra 
 Lippo Lippi : 
 
 " For, don't you mark, we're made so that we love 
 
 First when we see them painted, things we have passed 
 Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see : 
 And so they are better painted — better to us.
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 169 
 
 Which is the same thing. Art was given for that — 
 God uses us to help each other so. 
 Lending our minds out. Have you noticed now 
 Your cullion's hanging face ? A bit of chalk, 
 And, trust me, but you should though. How much more 
 If I drew higher things with the same truth ! 
 That were to take the prior's pulpit-place — 
 Interpret God to all of you 1 Oh, oh ! 
 It makes me mad to see what men shall do. 
 And we in our graves ! This world's no blot for us, 
 Nor blank : it means intensely, and means good. 
 • To find its meaning is my meat and drink." 
 
 The second is some rhymed rhetoric from Holy Cross 
 Day — the testimony of the dying Jew in Rome : 
 
 " This world has been harsh and strange, 
 Z Something is wrong : there needeth a change. 
 
 But what or where ? at the last or first ? 
 In one point only we sinned at worst. 
 
 " The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet, 
 And again in his border see Israel set. 
 When Judah beholds Jerusalem, 
 The stranger seed shall be joined to them : 
 f To Jacob's house shall the Gentiles cleave : 
 
 So the prophet saith, and his sons believe. 
 
 " Ay, the children of the chosen race 
 Shall carry and bring them to their place ; 
 In the land of the Lord shall lead the same. 
 Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame 
 When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o'er 
 The oppressor triumph for evermore ? 
 
 " God spoke, and gave us the word to keep : 
 Bade never fold the hands, nor sleep 
 'Mid a faithless world, at watch and ward. 
 Till the Christ at the end relieve our guard. 
 By His servant Moses the watch was set : 
 Though near upon cockcrow, we keep it yet. 
 
 " Thou 1 if Thou wast He, who at mid-watch came. 
 By the starlight naming a dubious Name ; 
 And if we were too heavy with sleep, too rash 
 With fear — O Thou, if that mart>T-gash 
 Fell on Thee, coming to take Thine own. 
 And we gave the Cross, when we owed the tlirone : 
 
 " Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus. 
 But, the Judgment over, join sides witli us 1
 
 170 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Thine, too, is the cause ! and not more Thine 
 Than ours is the work of these dogs and swine. 
 Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed. 
 Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Tliee in deed. 
 
 " We withstood Christ then ? Be mindful how 
 At least we withstand Barabbas now ! 
 Was our outrage sore ? But the worst we spared 
 To have called these — Christians — had we dared 
 Let defiance to them pay mistrust of Thee, 
 And Rome make amends for Calvary ! 
 
 "By the torture, prolonged from age to age ; 
 By the infamy, Israel's heritage ; 
 By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace. 
 By the badge of shame, by the felon's place. 
 By the branding-tool, the bloody whip. 
 And the summons to Christian fellowship, 
 
 " We boast our proof, that at least the Jew 
 Would wrest Christ's name from the devil's crew." 
 
 The last qi*,otation shall be from the \'eritable Brown- 
 ing — of one. of those poetical audacities none ever dared 
 but the Danton of modern poetr}^ Audacious in its 
 familiar realism, in its total disregard of poetical environ- 
 ment, in its rugged abruptness : but supremely success- 
 ful, and alive with emotion : 
 
 " What is he buzzing in my ears ? 
 Now that I come to die. 
 Do I view the world as a vale of tears ? 
 Ah, reverend sir, not 1. 
 
 " What I viewed there once, what I view again 
 Where the physic bottles stand 
 On the table's edge, is a suburb lane. 
 With a wall to my bedside hand. 
 
 " That lane sloped, much as the bottles do. 
 From a house you could descry 
 O'er the garden-wall. Is the curtain blue 
 Or green to a healthy eye ? 
 
 " To mine, it serves for the old June weather. 
 Blue above lane and wall ; 
 Ajid that farthest bottle, labelled ' Ether,' 
 Is the house o'ertopping all. 
 
 " At a terrace somewhat near its stopper. 
 There watched for me, one June,
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 171 
 
 A girl — I know, sir, it's improper : 
 My poor mind's out of tune. 
 
 " Only there was a way — you crept 
 Close by the side, to dodge 
 Eyes in the house — two eyes except. 
 They styled their house ' The Lodge.' 
 
 " ^A^at right had a lounger up their lane ? 
 But by creeping very close, 
 With the good wall's help their eyes might strain 
 * And stretch themselves to oes, 
 
 " Yet never catch her and me together. 
 As she left the attic — there, 
 Dy the rim of the bottle labelled ' Ether '— 
 .\nd stole from stair to stair, 
 
 / " /\nd stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas ! 
 
 We loved, sir ; used to meet. 
 How sad and bad and mad it was ! 
 But then, how it was sweet ! " 
 
 The second period of Mr. Browning's poetry demands 
 a different line of argument ; for it is, in my judgment, 
 folly to deny that he has of late years written a great 
 deal which makes very difficult reading indeed. No 
 doubt you may meet people who tell you that they read 
 The Ring and the Book for the first time without much 
 mental effort ; but you will do well not to believe them. 
 These poems are difficult — they cannot help being so. 
 What is The Ring and the Book ? A huge novel in 20,000 
 lines — told after the method not of Scott but of Balzac ; 
 it tears the hearts out of a dozen characters ; it tells the 
 same story from ten different points of view. It is 
 loaded with detail of every kind and description : you 
 are let off nothing. As with a schoolboy's life at a large 
 school, if he is to enjoy it at all, he must fling himself 
 into it, and care intensely about everything — so the reader 
 of The Ring and the Book must be interested in everybody 
 and everything, down to the fact that the eldest son of 
 the counsel for the defence of Guido is eight years old 
 on the very day he is writing his speech, and that he 
 is going to have fried liver and parsley for his supper.
 
 172 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 If you are prepared for this, you will have your reward ; 
 for the style, though rugged and involved, is throughout, 
 with the exception of the speeches of counsel, eloc^uent, 
 and at times superb ; and as for the matter, if your inter- 
 est in human nature is keen, curious, almost professional 
 — if nothing man, woman, or child has been, done, or 
 suffered, or conceivably can be, do, or suffer, is without 
 interest for you ; if you are fond of analysis, and do not 
 shrink from dissection — you will prize The Ring and 
 the Bvok as the surgeon prizes the last great contribu- 
 tion to comparative anatomj/ or pathology. 
 
 But this sort of work tells upon style. Browning has, 
 I think, fared better than some writers. To me, at all 
 events, the step from A Blot in the 'Scutcheon to The 
 Ring and the Book is not so marked as is the mauvais 
 pes that lies between Amos Barton and Daniel Derondc. 
 But difficulty is not obscurity. One task is more diffi- 
 cult than another. The angles at the base of the isos- 
 celes triangles are apt to get mixed, and to confuse us 
 all — man and woman alike. Prince Hohenstiel some- 
 thing or another is a very difficult poem, not only to 
 pronounce but to read ; but if a poet chooses as his 
 subject Napoleon III. — in whom the cad, the coward, 
 the idealist, and the sensualist were inextricably mixed 
 —and purports to make him unbosom himself over a 
 bottle of Gladstone claret in a tavern in Leicester Square, 
 you cannot expect that the product should belong to 
 the same class of poetry as Mr. Coventry Patmore's 
 admirable Angel in the House. 
 
 It is the method that is difficult. Take the husband 
 in The Ring and the Book. Mr. Browning remorselessly 
 hunts him down, tracks him to the last recesses of his 
 mind, and there bids him stand and deliver. He describes 
 love, not only broken but breaking ; hate in its germ ; 
 doubt at its birth. These are difficult things to do either 
 in poetry or prose, and people with easj^, flowing Addi- 
 sonian or Tennysonian styles cannot do them. 
 
 I seem to overhear a still, small voice asking, But are
 
 Robert browning. 173 
 
 they worth doing ? or at all events is it the province 
 of art to do them ? The question ought not to be 
 asked. It is heretical, being contrary to the whole 
 direction of the latter half of this century. The chains 
 binding us to the rocks of realism are faster riveted every 
 day ; and the Perseus who is destined to cut them is, 
 I expect, some mischievous little boy at a Board-school. 
 But as the question has been asked, I will own that 
 sometimes, even when deepest in works of this, the now 
 orthodox school, I have been harassed by distressing 
 doubts whether, after all, this enormous labour is not 
 in vain ; and, wearied by the effort, overloaded by the 
 detail, bewildered by the argument, and sickened by 
 the pitiless dissection of character and motive, have 
 been tempted to cry aloud, quoting — or rather, in the 
 agony of the moment, misquoting — Coleridge : 
 
 " Simplicity — 
 Thou better name than all the family of Fame." 
 
 JBut this ebullition of feeling is childish and even sinful. 
 We must take our poets as we do our meals — as they 
 are served up to us. Indeed, you may, if full of courage, 
 give a cook notice, but not the time-spirit who makes 
 our poets. We may be sure — to appropriate an idea 
 of the late Sir James Stephen — that if Robert Browning 
 had lived in the sixteenth century, he would not have 
 written a poem like The Ring and the Book ; and if 
 Edmund Spenser had lived in the nineteenth century he 
 would not have written a poem like the Faerie Queen. 
 
 It is therefore idle to arraign Mr. Browning's later 
 method and style for possessing difficulties and intri- 
 cacies which are inherent to it. The method, at all 
 events, has an interest of its own, a strength of its own, 
 a grandeur of its own. If you do not like it, you must 
 leave it alone. You are fond, you say, of romantic 
 poetry ; well, then, take down your Spenser and qualify 
 yourself to join " the small transfigured band " of those 
 who are able to take their Bible-oaths they have read
 
 174 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 their Faerie Queen all through. The company, though 
 small, is delightful, and you will have plenty to talk 
 about without abusing Browning, who probably knows 
 his Spenser better than you do. Realism will not for 
 ever dominate the world of letters and art — the fashion 
 of all things passeth away — but it has already earned a 
 great place : it has written books, composed poems, 
 painted pictures, all stamped with that" " greatness " 
 which, despite fluctuations, nay, even reversals of taste 
 and opinion, means immortality. 
 
 But against Mr. Browning's later poems it is some- 
 times alleged that their meaning is obscure because their 
 grammar is bad. A cynic was once heard to observe 
 with reference to that noble poem The Grammarian's 
 Funeral, that it was a pity the talented author had 
 ever since allowed himself to remain under the delusion 
 that he had not only buried the grammarian, but his 
 grammar also. It is doubtless true that Mr. Browning 
 has some provoking ways, and is something too much 
 of a verbal acrobat. Also, as his witty parodist, the pet 
 poet of six generations of Cambridge undergraduates, 
 reminds us : 
 
 " He loves to dock the smaller parts of speech, 
 As we curtail the already curtailed cur." 
 
 It is perhaps permissible to weary a little of his ^''s and 
 o's, but we believe we cannot be corrected when we say 
 that Browning is a poet whose grammar will bear scho- 
 lastic investigation better than that of most of Apollo's 
 children. 
 
 A word about Sordello. One half of Sordello, and 
 that, with Mr. Browning's usual ill-luck, the first half, 
 is undoubtedly obscure. It is as difficult to read as 
 Endymion or the Revolt of Islam, and for the same 
 reason — the author's lack of experience in the art of 
 composition. We have all heard of the young archi- 
 tect who forgot to put a staircase in his house, which 
 contained fine rooms, but no way of getting into them.
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. I75 
 
 Sordello is a poem without a staircase. The author, stUl 
 in his twenties, essayed a high thing. For his subject — 
 
 " He singled out 
 Sordello compassed murkily about 
 With ravage of six long sad hundred years." 
 
 He partially failed ; and the British public, with its 
 accustomed generosity, and in order, I suppose, to en- 
 courage the others, has never ceased girding at him, 
 because in 1840 he published, at his own charges, a 
 little book of two hundred and fifty pages, which even 
 such of them as were then able to read could not under- 
 stand. 
 
 Poetry should be vital — either stirring our blood by 
 its divine movement, or snatching our breath by its 
 divine perfection. To do both is supreme glory ; to 
 do either is enduring fame. 
 
 There is a great deal of beautiful poetical writing to 
 be had nowadays from the booksellers. It is interest- 
 ing reading, but as one reads one trembles. It smells of 
 mortality. It would seem as if, at the very birth of 
 most of our modern poems, 
 
 " The conscious ParcsB threw 
 Upon their roseate lips a Stygian hue." 
 
 That their lives may be prolonged is my pious prayer. 
 In these bad days, when it is thought more educationally 
 useful to know the principle of the common pump than 
 Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, one cannot afford to let 
 any good poetry die. 
 
 But when we take do\vn Browning, we cannot think 
 of him and the " wormy bed " together. He is so un- 
 mistakably and deliciously alive. Die, indeed 1 when 
 one recalls the ideal characters he has invested with 
 reality ; how he has described love and joy, pain and 
 sorrow, art and music ; as poems like Childe Roland, 
 Abt Vogler, Evelyn Hope, The Worst of It, Pictor Ignotus, 
 The Lost Leader, Home Thoughts from A broad. Old Pic- 
 tures in Florence, Herve Kiel, A Householder, Fears and
 
 176 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Scruples, come tumbling into one's memory, one over 
 another — we are tempted to employ the language of 
 hyperbole, and to answer the question " Will Brownfng 
 die ? " by exclaiming, " Yes ; when Niagara stops." In 
 him indeed we can 
 
 " Discern 
 Infinite passion and the pain 
 Of finite hearts that yearn." . 
 
 But love of Mr. Browning's poetry is no exclusive cult. 
 
 Of Lord Tennyson it is needless to speak. Even forty 
 years of popularity and mimicry cannot rob his verse 
 of distinction. 
 
 Mr. Arnold may have a hmited poetical range and a 
 restricted style, but within that range and in that style, 
 surely we must exclaim : 
 
 " Whence that completed form of all completeness ? 
 Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness ? " 
 
 Rossetti's luscious lines seldom fail to cast a spell by 
 which 
 
 " In sundry moods 'tis pastime to be bound." 
 
 William Morris has a sunny slope of Parnassus all to 
 himself, and Mr. Swinburne has written some verses 
 over which the world will long love to linger. 
 
 Dull must he be of soul who can take up Cardinal 
 Newman's Verses on Various Occasions, or Miss Christina 
 Rossetti's poems, and lay them down without recognising 
 their diverse charm. 
 
 Let us be Catholics in this great matter, and burn 
 our candles at many shrines. In the pleasant realms of 
 poesy, no liveries are worn, no paths prescribed ; you 
 may wander where you will, stop where you like, and 
 worship whom you love. Nothing is demanded of you, 
 save this, that in all your wanderings and worships, 
 you keep two objects steadily in view — two, and two 
 only, truth and beauty.
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN. 
 
 ''[''HERE are some men whose names are inseparably 
 ^ and exclusively associated with movements ; there 
 are others who are for ever united in human memories 
 with places ; it is the happy fortune of the distinguished 
 man whose nam^e is at the top of this page to be able 
 to make good both titles to an estate in our minds and 
 hearts ; for whilst his fierce intellectual energy made 
 him the leader of a great movement, his rare and ex- 
 quisite tenderness has married his name to a lovely 
 place. Whenever men's thoughts dwell upon the revival 
 of Church authority in England and America during the 
 mneteenth century, they will recall the Vicar of St. Mary's, 
 Oxford, who lived to become a Cardinal of Rome, and 
 whenever the lover of all things that are quiet and gentle 
 and true in life and literature visits Oxford, he will find 
 himself wondering whether snap-dragon still grows out- 
 side the windows of the rooms in Trinity where once 
 lived the author of the Apologia. 
 
 The Rev. John Wesley was a distinguished man, if 
 ever there was one, and his name is associated with a 
 movement certainly as remarkable as, and a great deal 
 more useful than, the one connected with the name of 
 Newman. Wesley's great missionary tours in Devon 
 and CornwaU, and the wild, remote parts of Lancashire, 
 lack no single element of sublimity. To this day the 
 memories of those apostolic journeys are green and 
 precious, and a source of strength and joy : the portrait 
 of the eager preacher hangs up in almost every miner's 
 cottage, whilst his name is pronounced with reverence 
 by a hundred thousand lips. " You seem a very tern-
 
 178 SELECTED ESSAYS. / 
 
 perate people here," once observed a thirsty pedestrian 
 (who was, indeed, none other than the present writer) 
 to a Cornish miner ; " how did it happen ? " He rephed 
 solemnly, raising his cap, " There came a man amongst 
 us once, and his name was John Wesley." Wesiey 
 was an Oxford man, but he is not much in men's thoughts 
 as they visit that city of enchantment. Why is this ? 
 It is because, great as Wesley was, he lacked charm. 
 As we read his diaries and letters, we are interested, we 
 are moved, but we are not pleased. Now, Oxford pleases 
 and charms. Therefore it is, that when we allow our- 
 selves a day in her quadrangles we find ourselves thinking 
 of Dr. Newman and his Trinity snap-dragon, and how 
 the Rev. William James, " some time in the year 1823," 
 taught him the doctrine of Apostolic Succession in the 
 course of a walk round Christchurch Meadow, rather 
 than of Wesley and his prayer-meetings at Lincoln, 
 which weie proclaimed by the authorities as savouring 
 of sedition. 
 
 A strong personal attachment of the kind which 
 springs up from reading an author, which is distilled 
 through his pages, and turns his foibles, even his follies, 
 into pleasant things we would not for the world have 
 altered, is apt to cause the reader who is thus affected 
 to exaggerate the importance of any intellectual move- 
 ment with which the author happened to be associated. 
 There are, I know, people who think this is notably so 
 in Dr. Newman's case. Crusty men are to be met with, 
 who rudely say they have heard enough of the Oxford 
 movement, and that the time is over for penning ecstatic 
 paragraphs about Dr. Newman's personal appearance in 
 the pulpit at St. Mary's. I think these crusty people 
 are wTong. The movement was no doubt an odd one 
 in some of its aspects — it wore a very academic air in- 
 deed ; and to be academic is to be ridiculous, in the 
 opinion of many. Our great Northern towns lived Ineir 
 grimy lives, amidst the whirl of their machinery, quite 
 indifferent to the movement. Our huge Nonconformist
 
 'CARDINAL NEWMAN. 179 
 
 bodies knew no more of the University of Oxford in 
 those days than they did of the University of Tiibingen. 
 This movement sent no missionaries to the miners, and 
 its tracts were not of the kind that are served suddenly 
 upon you in the streets hke legal process, but were, in 
 fact, bulky treatises stuffed full of the dead languages. 
 London, of course, heard about the movement, and, so 
 far as she was not tickled by the comicality of the notion 
 of anything really important happening outside her 
 cab-radius, was in-itated by it. Mr. Henry Rogers poked 
 heavy fun at it in the Edinburgh Revieie. Mr. Isaac 
 Taylor wrote two volumes to prove that ancient Chris- 
 tianity was a drivelling and childish superstition, and 
 in the opinion of some pious Churchmen succeeded in 
 doing so. But for the most part people left the move- 
 ment alone, unless they happened to be Bishops or 
 very clerically connected. " The bishops," says Dr. 
 Newman, " began charging against us." But bishops' 
 charges are amongst the many seemingly important 
 flings that do not count in England. It is said to be 
 flie duty of an archdeacon to read his bishop's charge, 
 but it is undoubted law that a mandamus will not be 
 granted to compel him to do so. 
 
 But notwithstanding this aspect of the case, it was 
 a genuine thought-movement in propagating which these 
 long-coated parsons, with their dry jokes, strange smiles, 
 and queer notions, were engaged. They used to drive 
 about the country in gigs, from one parsonage to an- 
 other, and leave their tracts behind them. They were 
 not concerned with the flocks — their message was to 
 the shepherds. As for the Dissenters, they had nothing 
 to say to them, except that their very presence in a 
 parish was a plenary argument for the necessity of the 
 movement. 
 
 The Tractarians met with the usual fortune of those 
 who peddle new ideas. Some rectors did not want to 
 be primitive — more did not know what it meant ; but 
 enough were found pathetically anxious to read a mean-
 
 i8o SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 ing into their services and offices, to make it plain that 
 the Tracts really were " for " and not " against " the 
 times. 
 
 The great plot, plan, or purpose, call it what you will, 
 of the Tractarian movement was to make Churchmen 
 believe with a personal conviction that the Church of 
 England was not a mere National Institution, like the 
 House of Commons or the game of cricket, but a living 
 branch of that Catholic Church which God had, from 
 the beginning, endowed with sacramental gifts and 
 graces, with a Priesthood apostolically descended, with 
 a Creed, precise and specific, which it was the Church's 
 duty to teach and man's to believe, and with a ritual 
 and discipline to be practised and maintained with daily 
 piety and entire submission. 
 
 These were new ideas in 1833. Wlien Dr. Newman 
 was ordained in 1824, he has told us, he did not look 
 on ordination as a sacramental rite, nor did he ascribe 
 to baptism any supernatural virtue. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the Tractarians had their 
 work before them. But they had forces on their side. 
 
 It is always pleasant to rediscover the meaning of 
 words and forms which have been dulled by long usage. 
 This is why etymology is so fascinating. By the natural 
 bent of our minds we are lovers of whatever things are 
 true and real. We hanker after facts. To get a grip 
 of reality is a pleasure so keen — most of our faith is so 
 desperate a " make-believe," that it is not to be wondered 
 at that pious folk should have been found who i^ejoiced 
 to be told that what they had been saying and doing 
 all the years of their lives really had a meaning and a 
 history of its own. One would have to be very un- 
 sympathetic not to perceive that the time we are speak- 
 ing of must have been a very happy one for many a 
 devout soul. The dry bones lived — formal devotions 
 were turned into joyous acts of faith and piety. The 
 Church became a Living Witness to the Truth. She 
 could be interrogated — she could answer. The old
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN. i8i 
 
 calendar was revived, and Saint's Day followed Saint's 
 Day, and season season, in the sweet procession of the 
 Christian Year. Pretty girls got up early, made the 
 sign of the Cross, and, unscared by devils, tripped across 
 the dewy meadows to Communion. Grave men read the 
 Fathers, and found themselves at home in the Fourth 
 Century. 
 
 A great writer had, so it appears, all unconsciously 
 prepared the way for this Neo-Catholicism. Dr. Newman 
 has never forgotten to pay tribute to Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 Sir Walter's work has proved to be of so permanent 
 a characterj his insight into all things Scotch so deep 
 and true, and his human worth and excellence so rare 
 and noble, that it has hardly been worth while to re- 
 member the froth and effervescence he at first^ occa- 
 sioned ; but that he did create a movement in the 
 Oxford direction is certain. He made the old Catholic 
 times interesting. He was not indeed, like the Tracta- 
 rians, a man of " primitive " mind ; but he was romantic, 
 and it all told. For this we have the evidence not only 
 of Dr. Newman (a very nice observer), but also of the 
 d 'lightful, the bewitching, the never sufficiently-to-be- 
 praised George Borrow — Borrow, the Friend of Man, at 
 whose bidding lassitude and languor strike their tents 
 and flee ; and health and spirits, adventure and human 
 comradeship, take up the reins of life, whistle to the 
 horses, and away you go ! 
 
 Borrow has indeed, in the Appendix to The Romany 
 Rye, written of Sir Walter after a fashion for which I 
 hope he has been forgiven. A piece of invective more 
 terrible, more ungenerous, more savagely and exultingly 
 cruel, is nowhere to be found. I shudder when I think 
 of it. Had another written it, nothing he ever wrote 
 should be in the same room with the Heart of Midlothian, 
 Redgaunilet, and The Antiquary. I am not going to get 
 angry with George Borrow. I say at once — I cannot 
 afford it. But neither am I going to quote from the 
 Appendix. God forbid ! I can find elsewhere what
 
 i82 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 will suit my purpose just as well. Readers of Lavengro 
 will remember the Man in Black. It is hard to forget 
 him, the scandalous creature, or his story of the iron- 
 monger's daughter at Birmingham " who screeches to 
 the piano the Lady of the Lake's hymn to the Virgin 
 Mary, always weeps when Mary Queen of Scots is 
 mentioned, and fasts on the anniversary of the death 
 of that very wise martyr, Charles I. Why, said the 
 Man in Black, I would engage to convert such an idiot 
 to popery in a week, were it worth my trouble. 
 Cavaliere Gualtereo, avete fatto molto in favore della 
 Santa Sede." 
 
 Another precursor was Coleridge, who (amongst other 
 things) called attention to the writings of the earlier 
 Anglican divines — some of whom were men of primitive 
 tempers and Catholic aspirations. Andrews and Laud, 
 Jackson, Bull, Hammond, and Thomdyke — sound divines 
 to a man — found the dust brushed off them. The second- 
 hand booksellers, a wily and observant race, became alive 
 to the fact that though Paley and Warburton, Horsley 
 and Hoadley, were not worth the brown paper they came 
 wrapped up in, seventeenth-century theology would bear 
 being marked high. 
 
 Thus was the long Polar Winter that had befallen 
 Anglican theology broken up, and the icebergs began 
 m.oving about after a haphazard and even dangerous 
 fashion— but motion is always something. 
 
 What has come to the Movement ? It is hard to say. 
 Its great leader has written a book of fascinating in- 
 terest to prove that it was not a germine Anglican move- 
 ment at all ; that it was foreign to the National Church, 
 and that neither was its life derived from, nor was its 
 course in the direction of, the National Church. But 
 this was after he himself had joined the Church of 
 Rome. Nobody, however, ventured 'to contradict him, 
 nor is this surprising when we remember the profusion 
 of argument and imagery with which he supported his 
 case.
 
 'CARDINAL NEWMAN. 183 
 
 A point was reached, and then things were allowed to 
 drop. The Church of Rome received some distinguished 
 converts with her usual well-bred composure, and gave 
 them little things to do in their new places. The Tracts 
 for the Times, neatly bound, repose on many shelves. 
 Tract No. 90, that fierce bomb-shell which once scattered 
 confusion through clerical circles, is perhaps the only 
 bit of Dr. Newman's writing one does not, on thinking 
 • of, wish to sit down at once to re-read. The fact is that 
 the movement, as a movement with a terminus ad quern, 
 was fairly beaten by a power fit to be matched with 
 Rome herself — John Bullism. John Bull could not be 
 got to assume a Catholic demeanour. When his judges 
 denied that the grace of Baptism was a dogma of his 
 faith. Bull, instead of behaving as did the people of 
 Milan when Ambrose was persecuted by an Arian 
 Government, was hugely pleased, clapped his thigh, 
 and exclaimed, through the mouth of Lord John Russell, 
 that the ruling was " sure to give general satisfaction," 
 2^ indeed it did. 
 
 The work of the movement can still be seen in the 
 new spirit that has descended upon the Church of 
 England and in the general heightening of Church 
 principles ; but the movement itself is no longer to be 
 seen, or much of the temper or modes of thought of the 
 Tractarians. The High Church clergyman of to-day is 
 no Theologian — he is an Opportunist. The Tractarian 
 took his stand upon Antiquity — he laboured his points, 
 he was always ready to prove his Rule of Faith and to 
 define his position. His successor, though he has ap- 
 propriated the results of the struggle, does not trouble 
 to go on waging it. He is as a rule no great reader — 
 you may often search his scanty library in vain for the 
 works of Dean Jackson. Were you to ask for them, 
 it is quite possible he would not know to what dean 
 of that name you were referring. He is as hazy about 
 the Hypostatic Union as are many laymen about the 
 Pragmatic Sanction. He is all for the People and for
 
 i84 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 filling his Church. The devouring claims of the Church 
 of Rome do not disturb his peace of mind. He thinks 
 it very rude of her to dispute the validity of his orders 
 — but, then, foreigners are rude ! And so he goes on 
 his hard-working way, with his high doctrines and his 
 early services, and has neither time nor inclination for 
 those studies that lend support to his priestly pre- 
 tensions. 
 
 This temper of mind has given us peace in our time, 
 and has undoubtedly promoted the cause of Temper- 
 ance and other good works ; but some day or another 
 the old questions will have to be gone into again, and 
 the Anglican claim to be a Church, Visible, Continuous, 
 Catholic, and Gifted, investigated — probably for the 
 last time. 
 
 Cynics may declare that it will be but a storm in a 
 teacup — a dispute in which none but " women, priests, 
 and peers " will be called upon to take part — but it is 
 not an obviously wise policy to be totally indifferent 
 to what other people are thinking about — simply because 
 your own thoughts are running in other directions. 
 
 But all this is really no concern of mine. My object 
 is to call attention to Dr. Newman's writings from a 
 purely literary point of view. 
 
 The charm of Dr. Newman's style necessarily baffles 
 description : as well might one seek to analyse the 
 fragrance of a flower, or to expound in words the jump- 
 ing of one's heart when a beloved friend unexpectedly 
 enters the room. It is hard to describe charm. Mr, 
 Matthew Arnold, who is a poet, gets near it : 
 
 " And what but gentleness untired, 
 .And what but noble feeling warm. 
 Wherever seen, howe'er inspired, 
 Is grace, is charm ? " 
 
 One can, of course, heap on words. Dr. Newman's style 
 is pellucid, it is animated, it is varied ; at times icy 
 cold, it oftener glows with a fervent heat ; it employs
 
 CARDINAL NE\^n\IAN. 185 
 
 as its obedient aud well-trained servant a vast vocabu- 
 lary, and it does so always with the ease of the educated 
 gentleman, who by a sure instinct ever avoids alike the 
 ugly pedantry of the book-worm, the forbidding accents 
 of the lawyer, and the stiff conceit of the man of scientific 
 theory. Dr. Newman's sentences sometimes fall upon 
 the ear like well-considered and final judgments, each 
 word being weighed and counted out with dignity and 
 precision ; but at other times the demeanour and lan- 
 guage of the judge are hastily abandoned, and, substi- 
 tuted for them, we encounter the impetuous torrent — 
 the captivating rhetoric, the brilliant imagery, the 
 frequent examples, the repetition of the same idea in 
 different words, of the eager and accomplished advocate 
 addressing men of like passions with himself. 
 
 Dr. Newman always aims at effect, and never misses 
 it. He writes as an orator speaks, straight at you. His 
 object is to convince, and to convince by engaging your 
 attention, exciting your interest, enlivening your fancy. 
 U is not his general practice to address the pure reason. 
 He knows (he well may) how little reason has to do 
 with men's convictions, " I do not want," he says, " to 
 be converted by a smart syllogism." In another place he 
 observes : " The heart is commonly reached not through 
 the reason — but through the imagination by means of 
 direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, 
 by history and by description. Persons iulluence us, 
 voices melt us, books subdue us, deeds inflame us." 
 I have elsewhere ventured upon a comparison between 
 Burke and Newman. Both men, despite their subtlety 
 and learning and super-refinement, their love of fine 
 points and their splendid capacity for stating them 
 in language so apt as to make one's admiration 
 breathless, took very broad, common-sense, matter-of- 
 fact views of humanity, and ever had the ordinary 
 man and woman in mind as they spoke and wrote. 
 Pontics and Religion existed, in their opinion, 
 for the benefit of plain folk, for Richard and for
 
 i86 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Jane, or, in other words, for living bundles of hopes 
 and fears, doubts and certainties, prejudices and pas- 
 sions. Anarchy and iVtheism are in their opinion the 
 two great enemies of the Human Race. How are they 
 to be frustrated and confounded, men and women being 
 what they are ? Dr. Newman, recluse though he is, 
 has always got the world stretched out -before him ; 
 its unceasing roar sounds in his ear as does the murmur 
 of ocean in the far inland shell. In one of his Catholic 
 Sermons, the sixth of his Discourses to Mixed Congrega- 
 tions, there is a gorgeous piece of rhetoric in which he 
 describes the people looking in at the shop-windows 
 and reading advertisements in the newspapers. Many 
 of his pages positively glow with light and heat and 
 colour. One is at times reminded of Fielding. And all 
 this comparing, and distinguishing, and illustrating, and 
 appealing, and describing, is done with the practised 
 hand of a consummate writer and orator. He is as 
 subtle as Gladstone, and as moving as Erskine ; but 
 whereas Gladstone is occasionally clumsy, and Erskine 
 was frequently crude, Newman is never clumsy, Newman 
 is never crude, but always graceful, always mellowed. 
 
 Humour he possesses in a marked degree. A quiet 
 humour, of course, as befits his sober profession and the 
 gravity of the subjects on which he loves to discourse. 
 It is not the humour that is founded on a lively sense 
 of the incongruous. This kind, though the most de- 
 lightful of all, is apt, save in the hands of the great 
 masters, the men whom you can count upon your fingers, 
 to wear a slightly professional aspect. It happens un- 
 expectedly, but all the same we expect it to happen, 
 and we have got our laughter ready. Newman's quiet 
 humour ahvays takes us unawares, and is accepted grate- 
 fully, partly on account of its intrinsic excellence, and 
 partly because we are glad to find that the 
 
 " Pilgrim pale with Paul's sad girdle bound " 
 
 has room for mirth in his heart.
 
 'CARDINAL NEWMAN. 187 
 
 In sarcasm Dr. Newman, is pre-eminent. Here his 
 extraordinary powers of compression, which are httle 
 short of marvellous in one who has also such a talent 
 for expansion, come to his aid and enable him to squeeze 
 into a couple of sentences pleadings, argument, judg- 
 ment, and execution. Had he led the secular life, and 
 adopted a Parliamentary career, he would have been 
 simply terrific, for his weapons of offence are both numer- 
 ous and deadly. His sentences stab — his invective de- 
 stroys. The pompous high-placed imbecile mouthing his 
 platitudes, the wordy sophister with his oven full of 
 half-baked thoughts, the ill-bred rhetorician with his 
 tawdry aphorisms, the heartless hate-producing satirist, 
 would have gone down before his sword and spear. 
 But God was merciful to these sinners : Newman became 
 a Priest and they Privy Councillors. 
 
 And lastly, all these striking qualities and gifts float 
 about in a pleasant atmosphere. As there are some 
 days even in England when merely to go out and breathe 
 the common air is joy, and when, in consequence, that 
 grim tyrant, our bosom's lord, 
 
 " Sits lightly in his throne," 
 
 so, to take up almost any one of Dr. Newman's books, 
 and they are happily numerous — between twenty and 
 thirty volumes — is to be led away from " evil tongues," 
 and the " sneers of selfish men," from the mud and 
 the mire, the shoving and pushing that gather and 
 grow round the pig-troughs of life, into a diviner ether, 
 a purer air, and is to spend your time in the company 
 of one who, though he may sometimes astonish, yet 
 never fails to make you feel (to use Carlyle's words 
 about a very different author) " that you have passed 
 your evening well and nobly, as in a temple of wisdom, 
 not ill and disgracefully as in brawling tavern supper- 
 rooms with fools and noisy persons." 
 
 The tendency to be egotistical noticeable in some 
 persons who are free from the faintest taint of egotism
 
 i88 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 is a tendency hard to account for — but delightful to 
 watch. 
 
 " Anything," says glorious John Dryden, " though 
 ever so little, which a man speaks of himself — in my 
 opinion, is still too much." A sound opinion most 
 surely, and yet how interesting are the personal touches 
 we find scattered up and down Dryden's noble pre- 
 faces. So with Newman — his dignity, his self-restraint, 
 his taste, are all the greatest stickler for a stiff upper 
 lip and the consumption of your own smoke could 
 desire, and yet the personal note is frequently sounded. 
 He is never afraid to strike it when the perfect harmony 
 that exists between his character and his style demands 
 its sound, and so it has come about that we love what he 
 has written because he wrote it, and we love him who 
 wrote it because of what he has written. 
 
 I now approach by far the pleasantest part of my 
 task, namely, the selection of two or three passages from 
 Dr. Newinan's books by way of illustrating what I have 
 taken the Jiberty to say are notable characteristics of 
 his style. 
 
 Let me begin with a chance specimen of the precision 
 of his language. The passage is from the prefatory 
 notice the Cardinal prefixed to the Rev. William Palmer's 
 Notes of a Visit to the Russian Church in the Years 1840, 
 1841. It is dated 1882, and is consequently the writing 
 of a man over eighty years of age : " William Palmer 
 was one of those earnest-minded and devout men, forty 
 years since, who, deeply convinced of the great truth 
 that our Lord had instituted, and still acknowledges 
 and protects, a Visible Church — one, individual, and 
 integral ; Catholic, as spread over the earth. Apostolic, 
 as coeval with the Apostles of Christ, and Holy, as being 
 the dispenser of His Word and Sacraments — considered 
 it at present to exist in three main branches, or rather 
 in a triple presence, the Latin, the Greek, and the 
 Anglican, these three being one and the same Church 
 distinguishable from each other by secondary, fortuitous,
 
 " ' CARDINAL NEWMAN. 189 
 
 and local, though important characteristics. And 
 whereas the whole Chufch in its fulness was, as they 
 believed, at once and severally Anglican, Greek, and 
 Latin, so in turn each one of those three was the whole 
 Church ; whence it followed that, whenever any one of 
 the three was present, the other two, by the nature of 
 the case, were absent, and therefore the three could not 
 have direct relations with each other, as if they were 
 three substantive bodies, there being no real difference 
 between them except the external accident of place. 
 Moreover, since, as has been said, on a given territory 
 there could not he more than one of the three, it followed 
 that Christians generally, wherever they were, were 
 bound to recognise, and liad a claim to be recognised 
 by, that one ; ceasing to belong to the Anglican Church, 
 as Anglican, when they were at Rome, and ignoring 
 Rome, as Rome, when they found themselves at Moscow. 
 Lastly, not to acknowledge this inevitable outcome of 
 the initial idea of the Church, viz., that it was both 
 every\vhere and one, was bad logic, and to act in oppo- 
 sition to it was nothing short of setting up altar against 
 altar, that is the hideous sin of schism, and a sacrilege. 
 This I conceive to be the formal teaching of Anglicanism." 
 
 The most carefully considered judgments of Lord 
 Westbury or Lord Cairns may be searched in vain for 
 finer examples of stem accuracy and beautiful aptness 
 of language. 
 
 For examples of what may be called Newman's 
 oratorical rush, one has not far to look — though when 
 torn from their context and deprived of their conclu- 
 sion they are robbed of three-fourths of their power. 
 Here is a passage from his second lecture addressed to 
 the Anglican Party of 1833. It is on the Life of the 
 National Church of England. 
 
 " Doubtless the National religion is alive. It is a 
 great power in the midst of us, it wields an enormous 
 influence ; it represses a hundred foes ; it conducts a 
 hundred undertakings ; it attracts men to it, uses them,
 
 IQO SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 rewards them ; it has thousands of beautiful homes up 
 and down the country where quiet men may do its 
 work and benefit its people ; it collects vast sums in 
 the shape of voluntary offerings, and with them it 
 builds churches, prints and distributes innumerable 
 Bibles, books, and tracts, and sustains missionaries in 
 all parts of the earth. In all parts of the earth it 
 opposes the Catholic Church, denounces her as anti- 
 christian, bribes the v^^orld against her, obstructs her 
 influence, apes her authority, and confuses her evidence. 
 In all parts of the world it is the religion of gentlemen, 
 of scholars, of men of substance, and men of no personal 
 faith at all. If this be hfe, if it be life to impart a tone 
 to thq Court and Houses of Parliament, to Ministers 
 of State, to law and literature, to universities and schools, 
 and to society, if it be life to be a principle of order 
 in the population, and an organ of benevolence and 
 almsgiving towards the poor, if it be life to make men 
 decent, respectable, and sensible, to embellish and 
 reform the family circle, to deprive vice of its grossness 
 and to shed a glow over avarice and ambition ; if, indeed, 
 it is the life of religion to be the first jewel in the Queen's 
 crown, and the highest step of her throne, then doubt- 
 less the National Church is replete, it overflows with 
 life ; but the question has still to be answered : life 
 of what kind ? " , 
 
 For a delightful example of Dr. Newman's humour, 
 which is largely, if not entirely, a playful humour, I 
 will remind the reader of the celebrated imaginary 
 speech against the British Constitution attributed to 
 " a member of the junior branch of the Potemkin family," 
 and supposed to have been delivered at Moscow in the 
 year 1850. It is too long for quotation, but will be 
 found in the first of the Lectures on the Present Position 
 of Catholics in England. The whole book is one of the 
 best humoured books in the English language. 
 
 Of his sarcasm, the following example, well-known 
 as it is, must be given. It occurs in the Essay on the
 
 •CARDINAL NEWMAN. 191 
 
 Prospects of the Anglican Church, which is reprinted frorn 
 the British Critic in the first volume of the Essays Critical 
 and Historical. 
 
 " In the present day mistiness is the mother of wisdom. 
 A man who can set down half a dozen general proposi- 
 tions, which escape from destroying one another only 
 by being diluted into truisms, who can hold the balance 
 between opposites so skilfully as to do without fulcrum 
 -or beam, who never enunciates a truth without guard- 
 ing himself from being supposed to exclude the con- 
 tradictory, who holds that Scripture is the only au- 
 thorit}/, yet that the Church is to be deferred to, that 
 faith only justifies, yet that it does not justify without 
 works, that grace does not depend on the sacraments, 
 yet is not given without them, that bishops are a divine 
 ordinance, yet those who have them not are in the 
 same religious condition as those who have — this is 
 your safe man and the hope of the Church ; this is 
 what the Church is said to want, not party men, but 
 sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons to guide 
 it through the channel of No-meaning, between the 
 Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and No. But, alas ! 
 reading sets men thinking. They will not keep standing 
 in that very attitude, which you please to call sound 
 Church-of-Englandism or orthodox Protestantism. It 
 tires them, it is so very awkward, and for the life of them 
 they cannot continue in it long together, where there 
 is neither article nor canon to lean against — they cannot 
 go on for ever standing on one leg, or sitting without a 
 chair, or walking with their legs tied, or grazing like 
 Tityrus's stags on the air. Premises imply conclusions 
 — germs lead to developments ; principles have issues ; 
 doctrines lead to action." 
 
 Of the personal note to which I have made reference, 
 no examples need or should be given. Such things must 
 not be transplanted from their own homes. 
 
 " The delicate shells lay on the shore ; 
 The bubbles of the latest wave
 
 192 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Fresh pearl to their enamel gave ; 
 
 And the bellowing of the savage sea 
 
 Greeted their safe escape to me. 
 
 I wiped away the weeds and foam 
 
 And brought my sea-born treasures home : 
 
 But the poor, unsightly noisome things 
 
 Had left their beauty on the shore, 
 
 With the sun and the sand and the wild* uproar." 
 
 If I may suppose this paper read by someone who is 
 not yet acquainted with Newman's writings, I would 
 advise him, unless he is bent on theology, to begin not 
 with the Sermons, not even with the Apologia, but with 
 the Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in Eng- 
 land. Then let him take up the Lectures on the Idea 
 of a University, and on University Subjects. These may 
 be followed by Discussions and Arguments, after which 
 he will be well disposed to read the Lectures on the 
 Difficulties felt by Anglicans. If after he has despatched 
 these vohnnes he is not infected with what one of those 
 charging Bishops called " Newmania," he is possessed 
 of a devil of obtuseness no wit of man can expel. 
 
 Of the strength of Dr. Newman's philosophical posi- 
 tion, which he has explained in his Grammar of Assent, 
 it would ill become me to speak. He there strikes the 
 shield of John Locke. Nan nostrum est tanfas coni- 
 ponere Hies. But it is difficult for the most ignorant 
 of us not to have shy notions and lurking suspicions 
 even about such big subjects and great men. Locke 
 maintained that a man's belief in a proposition really 
 depended upon and bore a relation to the weight of 
 evidence forthcoming in its favour. Dr. Newman 
 asserts that certainty is a quality of propositions, and 
 he has discovered in man " an illative sense " whereby 
 conclusions are converted into dogmas and a measured 
 concurrence into an unlimited and absolute assurance. 
 This illative sense is hardly a thing (if I may use an 
 expression for ever associated with Lord Macaulay) to 
 be cocksure about. Wedges, said the mediaeval mechanic 
 to his pupils, split wood by virtue of a wood-splitting
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN. 193 
 
 quality in wedges — but now we are indisposed to endow 
 wedges with qualities, and if not wedges, why pro- 
 positions ? But the Grammar of Assent is a beautiful 
 book, and with a quotation from it I will close my 
 quotations : " Thus it is that Christianity is the fulfil- 
 ment of the promise made to Abraham and of the Mosaic 
 revelations ; this is how it has been able from the first 
 to occupy the world, and gain a hold on every class of 
 human society to which its preachers reached ; this 
 is why the Roman power and the multitude of religions 
 which it embraced could not stand against it ; this is 
 the secret of its sustained energy, and its never-flagging 
 martyrdoms ; this is how at present it is so mysteriously 
 potent, in spite of the new and fearful adversaries which 
 beset its path. It has with it that gift of stanching and 
 healing the one deep wound of human nature, which 
 avails more for its success than a full encyclopaedia 
 of scientific knowledge and a whole library of con- 
 troversy, and therefore it must last while human nature 
 lasts." 
 
 "T-t is fitting that our last quotation should be one 
 which leaves the Cardinal face to face with his faith. 
 
 Dr. Newman's poetry cannot be passed over without 
 a word, though I am ill-fitted to do it justice. " Lead, 
 kindly light " has forced its way into every hymn-book 
 and heart. Those who go, and those who do not go to 
 church, the fervent believer and the tired-out sceptic, 
 here meet on common ground. The language of the 
 verses in their intense sincerity seems to reduce all 
 human feelings, whether fed on dogmas and holy rites 
 or on man's own sad heart, to a common denominator. 
 
 " The night is dark, and I am far from home. 
 Lead Thou ine on." 
 
 The believer can often say no more. The unbeliever 
 will never willingly say less. 
 
 Amongst Dr. Newman's Verses on Various Occasions 
 — though in some cases the earlier versions to be met 
 
 7
 
 194 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 with in the Lyra Aposiolica are to be preferred to the 
 later — poems will be found by those who seek, con- 
 veying sure and certain evidence of the possession by 
 the poet of the true lyrical gift — though almost cruelly 
 controlled by the course of the poet's thoughts and the 
 nature of his subjects. One is sometimes constrained 
 to cry, " Oh, if he could only get out into the wild 
 blowing airs, how his pinions would sweep the skies ! " 
 but such thoughts are unlicensed and unseemly. That 
 we have two such religious poets as Cardinal Newman 
 and Miss Christina Rossetti is or ought to be matter 
 for sincere rejoicing. 
 
 II. 
 
 To the inveterate truth-hunter there has been much of 
 melancholy in the very numerous estimates, hasty 
 estimates no doubt, but all manifestly sincere, which 
 the death of Cardinal Newman has occasioned. 
 
 The nobihty of the pursuit after truth wherever the 
 pursuit may lead has been abundantly recognised. 
 Nobody has been base enough or cynical enough to 
 venture upon a sneer. It has been marvellous to notice 
 what a hold an unpopular thinker, dwelling very far 
 apart from the trodden paths of English life and thought, 
 had obtained upon men's imaginations. The " man in 
 the street " was to be heard declaring that the dead 
 Cardinal was a fine fellow. The newspaper-makers 
 were astonished at the interest displayed by their 
 readers. How many of these honest mourners, asked 
 the Globe, have read a page of Newman's writings ? 
 It is a vain inquiry. Newman's books have long had 
 a large and increasing sale. They stand on all sorts of 
 shelves, and wherever they go a still, small voice accom- 
 panies them. They are speaking books ; an air breathes 
 from their pages. 
 
 " Again I saw and I confess'd 
 Thy speech was rare and high, 
 And yet it vex'd my burden'd breast, 
 And scared I knew not why."
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN. 195 
 
 It is a strange criticism that recently declared New- 
 man's style to lack individuality. Oddity it lacked, 
 and mannerisms, but not, so it seems to us, individuality. 
 
 But this wide recognition of Newman's charm both 
 of character and style cannot conceal from the anxious 
 truth-hunter that there has been an almost equall}^ wide 
 recognition of the futility of Newman's method and 
 position. 
 
 Method and position ? These were sacred words 
 with the Cardinal. But a few days ago he seemed 
 securely posed before the world. It cannot surely 
 have been his unrivalled dialectics only that made men 
 keep civil tongues in their heads or hesitate to try 
 conclusions with him. It was rather, we presume, that 
 there was no especial occasion to speak of him otherwise 
 than with the respect and affection due to honoured 
 age. But when he is dead — it is different. It is neces- 
 sary then to gauge his method and to estimate his 
 influence, not as a living man, but as a dead one. 
 
 'And what has that estimate been ? The saintly life, 
 the mysterious presence, are admitted, and well-nigh 
 nothing else. All sorts of reasons are named, some 
 plausible, all cunningly contrived, to account for New- 
 man's quarrel with the Church of his baptism. A 
 writer in the Guardian suggests one, a writer in the 
 Times another, a writer in the Saturday Review a third, 
 and so on. 
 
 However much these reasons may differ one from 
 another, they all agree in this, that of necessity the}^ 
 have ceased to operate. They were personal reasons, 
 and perished with the man whose faith and actions they 
 controlled. Nobody else, it has been throughout as- 
 sumed, will become a Romanist for the same reasons 
 as John Henry Newman. If he had not been brought 
 up an Evangelical, if he had learnt German, if he had 
 married, if he had been made an archdeacon, all would 
 have been different. 
 
 There is something positively terrible in this natural
 
 iq6 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 liistory of opinion. All the passion and the pleading 
 of a life, the thought and the labour, the sustained 
 argument, the library of books, reduced to what ? — a. 
 series of accidents ! 
 
 Newman himself well knew this aspect of affairs. 
 No one's plummet since Pascal's had taken deeper 
 soundings of the infirmity — the oceanic infirmity — of 
 the intellect. What actuary, he asks contemptuously, 
 can appraise the value of a man's opinions ? In how 
 many a superb passage does he exhibit the absurd, 
 the haphazard fashion in which men and women collect 
 the odds and ends, the bits and scraps they are pleased 
 to place in the museum of their minds, and label, in all 
 good faith, their convictions ! Newman almost revels 
 in such subjects. The solemn pomposity which so 
 frequently dignifies vv^ith the name of research or inquiry 
 feeble scratchings amongst heaps of verbosity had no 
 more determined foe than the Cardinal. 
 
 But now the same measure is being meted out to 
 him, and we are told of a thinker's life — it is nought. 
 
 He thought he had constmcted a way of escape from 
 the City of Destruction for himself and his followers 
 across the bridge of that illative sense which turns 
 conclusions into assents, and opinions into faiths — but 
 the bridge seems no longer standing. 
 
 The writer in the Guardian, who attributes Newman's 
 restlessness in the English Church to the smug and 
 comfortable life of many of its clergy rather than to 
 any especial craving after authority, no doubt wrote 
 with knowledge. 
 
 A married clergy seemed always to annoy Newman. 
 Readers of Loss and Gain are not likely to forget the 
 famous " pork chop " passage, which describes a young 
 parson and his bride bustling into a stationer's shop 
 to buy hymnals and tracts. What was once only annoy- 
 ance at some of the ways of John Bull on his knees, 
 soon ripened into something not very unlike hatred. 
 Never was any invention less hen trovato than that
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN. 197 
 
 which used to describe Newman as pining after the 
 " incomparable Hturgy " or the " cultm-ed society " of 
 the Church of England. He hated ex ammo all those 
 aspects of Anglicanism which best recommend it to 
 Erastian minds. A church of which sanctity is not a 
 note is sure to have many friends. 
 
 The Saturday Revieiv struck up a fine, national tune : 
 
 " An intense but narrow conception of personal holi- 
 ness, and personal satisfaction with dogma, ate him 
 (Newman) up — the natural legacy of the Evangelical 
 school in which he had been nursed, the great tradition 
 of Tory Churchmanship, of pride in the Church of Eng- 
 land, as siich, of determination to stand shoulder to 
 shoulder in resisting the foreigner, whether he camxC from 
 Rome or from Geneva, from Tubingen or from Saint 
 Sulpice, of the union of all social and intellectual cul- 
 ture with theological learning — the idea which, alone of 
 all such ideas, has made education patriotic, and ortho- 
 doxy generous, made insufficient appeal to him, and for 
 want of it he himself made shipwreck." 
 
 Here is John Bullism, bold and erect. If the Ark of 
 Peter won't hoist the Union Jack, John Bull must have 
 an ark to himself, with patriotic clergy of his own man- 
 ufacture tugging at the oar, and with nothing foreigri 
 in the hold save some sound old port. " It will always 
 be remembered to Newman's credit," says this same 
 reviewer, " that he knew good wine if he did not drink 
 much." Mark the " If ; " there is much virtue in it. 
 
 We are now provided with two causes of Newman's 
 discomfort in the Church of England — its too com- 
 fortable clergy, and its too frequent introduction of the 
 lion and the unicorn amongst the symbols of religion — 
 both effective causes, as ma}^ be proved b}' many pas- 
 sages ; but to say that either or both availed to drive 
 him out, and compelled him to seek shelter at the hands 
 of one whom he had long regarded as a foe, is to go very 
 far indeed. 
 
 It should not be overlooked that these minimisers of
 
 igS SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Newman's influence are all firmly attached for different 
 reasons to the institution Newman left. Their judg- 
 ments therefore cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. 
 ^^^lat Disraeli meant when he said that Newman's seces- 
 sion had dealt the Church of England a blow under 
 which it still reeled, was that by this act Newman ex- 
 pressed before the whole world his profound conviction 
 that our so-called National Church was not a branch of 
 the Church Catholic. And this really is the point of 
 w^eakness upon which Newman hurled himself. This is 
 the damage he did to the Church of this island. Through- 
 out all his writings, in a hundred places, in jests and 
 sarcasms as well as in papers and arguments, there crops 
 up this settled conviction that England is not a Catholic 
 country, and that John Bull is not a member of the 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 This may not matter much to the British electorate ; 
 but to those who care about such things, who rely upon 
 the validity of orders and the efficacy of sacraments, who 
 need a pedigree for their faith, who do not agree with 
 Emerson that if a man would be great he must be a 
 Nonconformist — over these people it would be rash to 
 assume that Newman's influence is spent. The general 
 effect of his writings, the demands they awaken, the 
 spirit they breathe, are all hostile to Anglicanism. They 
 create a profound dissatisfaction with, a distaste for, the 
 Church of Engiand as by law established. Those who 
 are affected by this spirit will no longer be able com- 
 fortably to enjoy the maimed rites and practices of their 
 Church. They will feel their place is elsewhere, and 
 sooner or later they will pack up and go. It is far too 
 early in the day to leave Newman out of sight. 
 
 But to end where we began. There has been scant 
 recognition in the Cr.'-dinal's case of the usefulness of 
 devoting life to anxious inquiries after truth. It is very 
 noble to do so, and when you come to die, the news- 
 papers, from the Times to the Sporting Life, will, in the 
 first place, point out, after their superior fashion, how
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN. 199 
 
 much, better was this pure-minded and unworldly thinker 
 than the soiled politician, full of opportunism and in- 
 consistency, trying hard to drown the echoes of his past 
 with his loud vociferations, and then proceed in a few 
 short sentences to establish how out of date is this 
 Thinker's thought, how false his reasoning, how im- 
 possible his conclusions, and lastly, how dead his influ- 
 ence. 
 
 It is very puzzling and difficult, and drives some men to 
 collect butterflies and beetles. Thinkers are not, how- 
 ever, to be disposed of by scratches of the pen. A 
 Cardinal of the Roman Church is not, to say the least 
 of it, more obviously a shipwreck than a dean or even 
 a bishop of the English establishment. Character, too, 
 counts for something. Of Newman it may be said : 
 
 " Fate gave what chance shall not control, 
 His sad lucidity of soul." 
 
 But the truth-hunter is still unsatisfied.
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 THE news of Mr. Arnold's sudden death at Liverpool 
 struck a chill into many hearts, for although a 
 somewhat constrained writer (despite his playfulness) 
 and certainly the least boisterous of men, he was yet 
 most distinctly on the side of human enjoyment. He 
 conspired and contrived to make things pleasant. Ped- 
 antry he abhorred. He was a man of this life and 
 this world. A severe critic of the world he indeed was, 
 but finding himself in it and not precisely knowing 
 what is beyond it, like a brave and true-hearted man 
 he set himself to make the best of it. Its sight and 
 sounds were dear to him. The " uncrumpling fern," the 
 eternal moonlit snow, " Sweet William with its homely 
 cottage-smell," " the red grouse springing at our sound," 
 the tinkling bells of the " high-pasturing kine," the 
 vagaries of men, women, and dogs, their odd ways and 
 tricks, whether of mind or manner, all delighted, amused, 
 tickled him. Human loves, joj^s, sorrows, human rela- 
 tionships, ordinary ties interested him : 
 
 " The help in strife, 
 The thousand sweet still joys of such 
 As hand in hand face earthly life." 
 
 In a sense of the words which is noble and blessed, he 
 was of the Earth Earthy. 
 
 In his earlier days Mr. Arnold was much misunder- 
 stood. That rowdy Philistine the Daily Telegraph 
 called him " a prophet of the kid-glove persuasion," 
 and his own too frequent iteration of the somewhat
 
 " 'MATTHEW ARNOLD. 201 
 
 dandiacal phrase " sweetness and light " helped to pro- 
 mote the notion that he was a fanciful, finikin Oxonian, 
 
 " A fine puss gentleman that's all perfume," 
 
 quite unfit for the most ordinary wear and tear of life. 
 He was in reahty nothing of the kind, though his literary 
 style was a little in keeping with this false conception. 
 His mind was based on the plainest possible things. 
 What he hated most was the fantastic — the far-fetched, 
 all elaborated fancies, and strained interpretations. He 
 stuck to the beaten track of human experience, and the 
 broader the better. He was a plain -sailing man. This 
 is his true note. In his much-criticised, but as I think 
 admirable introduction to the selection he made from 
 Wordsworth's poems, he admits that the famous Ode 
 on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections in 
 Early Childhood is not one of his prime favourites, 
 and in that connection he quotes from Thucydides the 
 following judgment on the early exploits of the Greek 
 R^ce and applies it to these intimations of immortahty 
 in babies: "It is impossible to speak with certainty 
 of what is so remote, but from all that we can really 
 investigate I should say that they were no very great 
 things." 
 
 This quotation is in Mr. Arnold's own vein. His 
 readers will have no difficulty in calling to mind numer- 
 ous instances in which his dishke of everything not 
 broadly based on the generally admitted facts of sane 
 experience manifests itself. Though fond- — perhaps ex- 
 ceptionally fond — of pretty things and sayings, he had 
 a severe taste, and hated whatever struck him as being 
 in the least degree sickly, or silly, or over-heated. No 
 doubt he may often have considered that to be sickly 
 or silly which in the opinion of others was pious and 
 becoming. It may be that he was over-impatient of 
 men's flirtations with futurity. As his paper on Pro- 
 fessor Dowden's Life of Shelley shows, he disapproved 
 of " irregular relations." He considered we were all
 
 202 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 married to plain Fact, and objected to our carrying on 
 a flirtation with mystic maybe's and calling it Religion. 
 Had it been a man's duty to believe in a specific revela- 
 tion it would have been God's duty to make that reve- 
 lation credible. Such, at all events, would appear to 
 have been the opinion of this remarkable man, who, 
 though he had even more than his share of an Oxonian's 
 reverence for the great Bishop of Durham, was unable to 
 admit the force of the main argument of The Analogy. 
 Mr. Arnold was indeed too fond of parading his inability 
 for hard reasoning. I am not, he keeps saying, like the 
 Archbishop of York, or the Bishop of Gloucester and 
 Bristol. There was affectation about this, for his pro- 
 fessed inferiority did not prevent him from making it 
 almost excruciatingly clear that in his opinion those 
 gifted prelates were, whilst exercising their extraordinary 
 powers, only beating the air, or in plainer words busily 
 engaged in talking nonsense. But I must not wander 
 from my point, which simply is that Arnold's dislike of 
 anything recondite or remote was intense, genuine, and 
 characteristic. 
 
 He always asserted himself to be a good Liberal. So 
 in truth he was. A better Liberal than many a one 
 whose claim to that title it would be thought absurd to 
 dispute. He did not indeed care very much about some 
 of the articles of the Liberal creed as now professed. 
 He had taken a great dislike to the Deceased Wife's 
 Sister Bill. He wished the Church and the State to 
 continue to recognise each other. He had not that 
 jealousy of State interference in England which used to 
 be (it is so no longer) a note of pohtical Liberalism. 
 He sympathised with Italian national aspirations be- 
 cause he thought it wrong to expect a country with 
 such a past as Italy to cast in her lot \vith Austria. He 
 did not sympathise with Irish national aspirations be- 
 cause he thought Ireland ought to be willing to admit 
 that she was relatively to England an inferior and less 
 interesting country, and therefore one which had no
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 203 
 
 moral claim for national institutions. He may have 
 been right or wrong on these points without affecting 
 his claim to be considered a Liberal. Liberalism is not 
 a creed, but a frame of mind. Mr. Arnold's frame of 
 mind was Liberal. No living man is more deeply per- 
 meated with the grand doctrine of Equality than was he. 
 He wished to see his countrymen and countrywomen all 
 equal : Jack as good as his master, and Jack's master 
 as good as Jack ; and neither talking clap-trap. He had 
 a hearty un-Enghsh dislike of anomalies and absurdities. 
 He fully appreciated the French Revolution and was 
 consequently a Democrat. He was not a Democrat 
 from irresistible impulse, or from love of mischief, or from 
 hatred of priests, or, hke the average Bi-itish workman, 
 from a not unnatural desire to get something on account 
 of his share of the family inheritance — but all roads 
 lead to Rome, and Mr. Arnold was a Democrat from a 
 sober and partly sorrowful conviction that no other 
 form of government was possible. He was an Educa- 
 tionahst, and Education is the true Leveller. His almost 
 passionate cry for better middle-class education arose 
 from his annoyance at the exclusion of large numbers 
 of this great class from the best education the country 
 afforded. It was a ticklish job telling this great, wealthy 
 middle class — which according to the newspapers had 
 made England what she is and what everybody else 
 wished to be — that it was, from an educational point of 
 view, beneath contempt. " I hear with surprise," said 
 Sir Thomas Bazley at Manchester, " that the education 
 of our great middle class requires improvement." But 
 Mr. Arnold had courage. Indeed, he carried one kind 
 of courage to a heroic pitch. I mean the courage of 
 repeating yourself over and over again. It is a sound 
 forensic maxim : Tell a judge twice whatever you want 
 him to hear. Tell a special jury thrice, and a common 
 jury half-a-dozen times the view of a case you wish 
 them to entertain. Mr. Arnold treated the middle class 
 as a common jury, and hammered away at them remorse-
 
 204 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 lessly and with the most unbkishing iteration. They 
 groaned under him, they snorted, and they sniffed— 
 but they hstened, and, what was more to the purpose, 
 their children hstened, and with fihal frankness told 
 their heavy sires that Mr. Arnold was quite right, and 
 that their lives were dull, and hideous, and arid, even 
 as he described them as being. Mr. Arnold's work as 
 a School Inspector gave him great opportunities of go- 
 ing about amongst all classes of the people. Though 
 not exactly apostohc in manner or method, he had 
 something to say both to and of everybody. The aris- 
 tocracy were polite and had ways he admired, but they 
 were impotent of ideas and had a dangerous tendency 
 to become studiously frivolous. Consequently the 
 Future did not belong to them. Get ideas and study 
 gravity was the substance of his discourse to the Bar- 
 barians, as, with that trick of his of miscalling God's 
 creatures, he had the effrontery to dub our adorable 
 nobihty. But it was the middle class upon whom fell 
 the full weight of his discourse. His sermons to them 
 would fill a volume. Their great need was culture, 
 which he declared to be a study of perfection, the senti- 
 ment for beauty and sweetness, the sentiment against 
 hideousness and rawness. The middle class, he pro- 
 tested, needed to know all the best things that have 
 been said and done in the world since it began, and to 
 be thereby lifted out of their holes and corners, private 
 academies and chapels in side streets, above their tenth- 
 rate books and miserable preferences, into the main 
 stream of national existence. The lower orders he 
 judged to be a mere rabble, and thought it was as yet 
 impossible to predict whether or not they would here- 
 after display any aptitude for Ideas, or passion for Per- 
 fection. But in the meantime he bade them learn to 
 cohere, and to read and wi-ite, and above all he con- 
 jured them not to imitate the middle classes. 
 
 It is not easy to know everything about everybody, 
 and it may be doubted whether Mr. Arnold did not over-
 
 •MATTHEW ARNOLD. 205 
 
 rate the degree of acquaintance with his countr3^men 
 that his peregrinations among them had conferred upon 
 him. In certain circles he was supposed to have made 
 the completest possible diagnosis of dissent, and was 
 credited with being able, after five minutes' conversation 
 with any indiAddual Nonconformist, unerringly to assign 
 him to his particular chapel. Independent, Baptist, 
 Primitive Methodist, Unitarian, or whatever else it 
 might be, and this though they had only been talking 
 about the weather. To people who know nothing about 
 Dissenters, Mr. Arnold might well seem to know every- 
 thing. However, he did know a great deal, and used 
 his Icnowledge with great cunning and effect, and a fine 
 instinctive sense of the whereabouts of the v/eakest 
 points. Mr. Arnold's sense for equality and sohdarity 
 was not impeded by any exclusive tastes or hobbies. 
 Your collector, even though it be but of butterflies, is 
 rarely a democrat. One of Arnold's favourite lines in 
 Wordsworth was — 
 
 ^ " Joy that is in widest commonalty spread." 
 
 The collector's joys are not of that kind. Mr. Arnold 
 was not, I believe, a collector of anything. He cer- 
 tainly was not of books. I once told him I had been 
 reading a pamphlet, written by him in 1859, on the 
 Italian Question. He inquired how I came across it. 
 I said I had picked it up in a shop. " Oh yes," said he, 
 " some old curiosity shop, I suppose." Nor was he 
 joking. He seemed quite to suppose that old books, 
 and old clothes, and old chairs were huddled together 
 for sale m the same resort of the curious. He chd not 
 care about such things. The prices given for the early 
 editions of his own poems seemed to tease him. His 
 literary taste was broadly democratic. He had no 
 mind for fished-up authors, nor did he ever indulge in 
 swaggering rhapsodies over second-rate poets. The best 
 was good enough for him. " The best poetry " was 
 what he wanted, " a clearer, deeper sense of the best
 
 2o6 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 in poetry, and of the strength and joy to be drawn from 
 it." So he wrote in his general introduction to Mr. 
 Ward's Selections from the English Poets. The best df 
 everything for everybody. This was his gospel and his 
 prayer. 
 
 Approaching Mr. Arnold's writings more nearly, it 
 seems inevitable to divide them into three classes: his 
 poems, his theological excursions, and his criticism, 
 using the last word in a wide sense as including a criti- 
 cism of life and of politics as well as of books and style. 
 
 Of Mr. Arnold's poetry it is hard for anyone who has 
 felt it to the full during the most impressionable period 
 of life to speak without emotion overcoming reason. 
 
 " Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, 
 Hopes and fears, belief and unbelieving." 
 
 It is easy to admit, in general terms, its limitations. 
 Mr. Arnold is the last man in the world anybody would 
 wish to shove out of his place. A poet at all points, 
 armed cap-a-pie against criticism, like Lord Tennyson, 
 he certainly was not. Nor had his verse any share of 
 the boundless vitahty, the fierce pulsation, so nobly 
 characteristic of Mr. Browning. But these admissions 
 made, we decline to parley any further with the enemy. 
 We cast him behind us. Mr. Arnold, to those who cared 
 for him at all, was the most usejitl poet of his day. He 
 lived much nearer us than poets of his distinction usually 
 do. He was neither a prophet nor a recluse. He lived 
 neither above us, nor away from us. There are two 
 ways of being a recluse — a poet may live remote from 
 men, or he may live in a crowded street but remote 
 from their thoughts. Mr. Arnold did neither, and con- 
 sequently his verse tells and tingles. None of it is 
 thrown away. His readers feel that he bore the same 
 yoke as themselves. Theirs is a common bondage with 
 his. Beautiful, surpassingly beautiful some of Mr. 
 Arnold's poetry is, but we seize upon the thought first 
 and delight in the form afterwards. No doubt the form
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 207 
 
 IS an extraordinary comfort, for the thoughts are often, 
 as thoughts so widely spread could not fail to be, the 
 very thoughts that are too frequently expressed rudely, 
 crudely, indelicately. To open Mr. Arnold's poems is 
 to escape from a heated atmosphere and a company not 
 wholly free from offence even though composed of those 
 who share our opinions — from loud-mouthed random 
 talking men into a well-shaded retreat which seems able 
 to impart, even to our feverish persuasions and crude 
 conclusions, something of the coolness of falling water, 
 something of the music of rustling trees. This union 
 of thought, substantive thought, with beauty of form 
 — of strength with elegance — is rare. I doubt very much 
 whether Mr. Arnold ever realised the devotedness his 
 verse inspired in the minds of thousands of his country- 
 men and countrywomen, both in the old world and the 
 new. He is not a bulky poet. Three volumes contain 
 him. But hardl}' a page can be opened without the 
 eye hghting on verse which at one time or another has 
 been, either to you or to some one dear to you, strength 
 or joy. The Biiried Life, A Southern Night, Dover 
 Beach, A Wanderer is Man from his Birth, Rugby Chapel, 
 Resignation. How easy to prolong the list, and what a 
 list it is ! Their very names are dear to us, even as are 
 the names of Mother Churches and Holy Places to the 
 Votaries of the old Religion. I read the other day in 
 the Spectator newspaper an assertion that Mr. Arnold's 
 poetry had never consoled anybody. A falser statement 
 was never made innocently. It may never have con- 
 soled the writer in the Spectator, but because the stomach 
 of a dram-drinker rejects cold water is no kind of reason 
 for a sober man abandoning his morning tumbler of the 
 pure element. Mr. Arnold's poetry has been found 
 full of consolation. It would be strange if it had not 
 been. It is 
 
 " No stretched metre of an antique song," 
 but quick and to the point. There are finer sonnets in
 
 2o8 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 the English language than the two following, but there 
 are no better sermons. And if it be said that sermons 
 may be found in stones, but ought not to be in sonnets, 
 I fall back upon the fact which Mr. Arnold himself so 
 cheerfully admitted, that the middle classes, who in 
 England, at all events, are Mr. Arnold's chief readers, 
 are serious, and love sermons. Some day perhaps they 
 will be content with metrical exercises, ballades, and 
 roundels. 
 
 East London. 
 " 'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead 
 Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, 
 And the pale weaver, through his \vindows seen 
 In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited. 
 
 " I met a preacher there I knew, and said : 
 ' 111 and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene ? ' 
 ' Bravely ! ' said he ; ' for I of late have been 
 Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the livhig bread.'' 
 
 " O human soul I as long as thou canst so 
 Set up a mark of everlasting light. 
 Above the howling senses' ebb and flow. 
 To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam- 
 Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night I 
 Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home." 
 
 The Better Part. 
 " Long fed on boundless hopes, O race of man, 
 ^ How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare 1 
 ' Christ,' some one says, ' was human as we are ; 
 No judge eyes us from Heaven, our sin to scan ; 
 
 " • We live no more, when we have done our span.' — 
 ' Well, then, for Christ,' thou answerest, ' who can care ? 
 From Sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear ? 
 Live we like brutes our life without a plan ! ' 
 
 " So answerest thou ; but why not rather say : 
 ' Hath man no second life ? — Pitch this one high I 
 Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see ? 
 
 •■ ' More strictly, then, the inward judge obey 1 
 Was Christ a man like us ? — Ah I let us try 
 If we then, too, can be such men as he /' " 
 
 Mr. Arnold's love of Nature, and poetic treatment of 
 Nature, was to many a vexed soul a great joy and an
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 209 
 
 intense relief. Mr. Arnold was a genuine Wordsworthian 
 — being able to read everything Wordsworth ever wrote 
 except Vatidracottr and Julia. The influence of Words- 
 worth upon him was immense, but he was enabled, by 
 the order of his mind, to reject with the heartiest good- 
 will the cloudy pantheism which robs so much of Words- 
 worth's best verse of the heightened charm of reahty, 
 for, after all, poetry, like religion, must be true, or it 
 is nothing. This strong aversion to the unreal also 
 prevented Mr. Arnold, despite his love of the classical 
 forms, from a nonsensical neo-paganism. His was a 
 manlier attitude. He had no desire to keep tugging 
 at the dry breasts of an outworn creed, nor any disposi- 
 tion to go down on his knees, or hunkers * as the Scotch 
 more humorously call them, before plaster casts of 
 Venus, or even of " Proteus rising from the sea." There 
 was something very refreshing about this. In the long 
 run even a gloomy truth is better company than a 
 cheerful falsehood. The perpetual strain of living down 
 to a lie, the depressing atmosphere of a circumscribed 
 intelHgence, tell upon the system, and the cheerful 
 falsehood soon begins to look puffy and dissipated. 
 
 The Youth of Nature. 
 
 " For, oh ! is it you, is it you, 
 Moonlight, and shadow, and lake. 
 And mountains, that fill us with joy. 
 Or the poet who sings you so well ? 
 
 More than the singer are these 
 
 Yourselves and your fellows ye know not ; and me. 
 The mateless, the one, will ye know ? 
 Will ye scan nae, and read me, and tell 
 
 * Hunkers is not Scotch for knees, but it signifies an attitude put 
 in Scotland to devotional use. Canon Ainger told me that when in 
 Scotland in charge of an Episcopalian Chapel he was followed by 
 urchins singing, 
 
 " 'Pisky 1 'Pisky ! say Amen, 
 Down on your hunkers and up again."
 
 210 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Of the thoughts that ferment in my breast, 
 
 My longing, my sadness, my joy ? 
 
 Will ye claim for your great ones the gift 
 
 To have rendered the gleam of my skies, 
 
 To have echoed the moan of my seas, 
 
 Uttered the voice of my hills ? 
 
 When your great ones depart, will ye say : 
 
 All things have suffered a loss. 
 
 Nature is hid in their grave ? » 
 
 " Race after race, man after man. 
 Have thought that my secret was theirs, 
 Have dreamed that I lived but for them. 
 That they were my glory and joy. 
 They are dust, they are changed, they are gone ! 
 I remain." 
 
 When a poet is dead we turn to his verse with quick- 
 ened feehngs. He rests from his labours. We still 
 
 " Stem across the sea of life by night," 
 
 and the voice, once the voice of the living, of one who 
 stood by our side, has for a while an unfamiliar accent, 
 coming to us as it does no longer from our friendly 
 earth but from the strange cold caverns of death. 
 
 " Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows 
 Like the wave. 
 Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. 
 Love lends life a little grace, 
 A few sad smiles ; and then. 
 Both are laid in one cold place. 
 In the grave. 
 
 " Dreams dawn and fly, friends smile and die 
 Like spring flowers ; 
 Our vaunted life is one long funeral. 
 Men dig graves with bitter tears 
 For their dead hopes ; and all, 
 Mazed with doubts and sick with fears, 
 Count the hours. 
 
 " We count the hours ! These dreams of ours. 
 False and hollow. 
 Do we go hence and find they are not dead ? 
 Joys we dimly apprehend. 
 Faces that smiled and fled, 
 Hopes born here, and born to end, 
 Shall we follow ? " 
 
 J
 
 ' 'MATTHEW ARNOLD. 211 
 
 In a poem like this Mr. Arnold is seen at his best ; 
 he fairly forces himself into the very front ranks. In 
 form almost equal to Shelley, or at any rate not so very 
 far behind him, whilst of com'se in reahty, in whole- 
 some thought, in the pleasures that are afforded by 
 thinking, it is of incomparable excellence. 
 
 We die as we do, not as we would. Yet on reading 
 again Mr. Arnold's Wish, we feel that the manner of 
 his death was much to his mind. 
 
 A Wish. 
 
 " I ask not that my bed of death 
 
 From bands of greedy heirs be free : 
 For these besiege the latest breath 
 / Of fortune's favoured sons, not me. 
 
 " I ask not each kind soul to keep 
 
 Tearless, when of my death he hears. 
 Let those who will, if any — weep ! 
 There are worse plagues on earth than tears. 
 
 " I ask but that my death may find 
 » The freedom to my life denied ; 
 
 Ask but the folly of mankind 
 Then — then at last to quit my side. 
 
 " Spare me the whispering, crowded room. 
 The friends who come, and gape, and go ; 
 The ceremonious air of gloom — 
 All which makes death a hideous show ! 
 
 " Nor bring to see me cease to live 
 
 Some doctor full of phrase and fame. 
 To shake his sapient head and give 
 The ill he cannot cure a name. 
 
 " Nor fetch to take the accustomed toll 
 Of the poor sinner bound for death 
 His brother doctor of the soul 
 To canvass with official breath 
 
 " The future and its viewless things — 
 That undiscovered mystery 
 Which one who feels death's winnowing wings 
 Must needs read clearer, sure, than he ! 
 
 Bring none of these ; but let me be, 
 Whil^ all around in silence lies.
 
 212 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Moved to the window near, and see 
 Once more before my dying eyes, 
 
 ** Bathed in the sacred dews of morn, 
 The wide aerial landscape spread — 
 The world which was ere I was born, 
 The world which lasts when I am dead i 
 
 •' Which never was the friend of one, 
 Nor promised love it could not give, 
 But lit for all its generous sun. 
 And lived itself and made us livct 
 
 " Then let me gaze — till I become 
 
 In soul, with what I gaze on, wed I 
 To feel the universe my home ; 
 To have before my mind — instead 
 
 " Of the sick room, the mortal strife, 
 The turmoil for a little breath — 
 The pure eternal course of life, 
 
 Not human combatings with death I 
 
 " Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow 
 
 Composed, refreshed, ennobled, clear — 
 Then willing let my spirit go 
 To work or wait, elsewhere or here t " 
 
 To turn from Arnold's poetry to his theological writ- 
 ings — if so grim a name can be given to these produc- 
 tions — from Rugby Chapel to Literature and Dogma, from 
 Ohermann to God and the Bible, from Enipedocles on 
 Etna to St. Paid and Protestantism, is to descend from 
 the lofty table-lands, 
 
 " From the dragon -wardered fountains 
 Where the springs of knowledge are. 
 From the watchers on the mountains 
 And the bright and morning star," 
 
 to the dusty highroad. It cannot, I think, be asserted 
 that either the plan or the style of these books was in 
 keeping with their subjects. It was characteristic of 
 Mr. Arnold, and like his practical turn of mind, to begin 
 Literature and Dogma in the Cornhill Magazine. A 
 book rarely shakes off the first draft — Literature and 
 Dogma never did. It is full of repetitions and weari-
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 213 
 
 some recapitulations, well enough in a magazine, where 
 each issue is sure to be read by many who will never 
 see another number, but which disfigure a book. The 
 style is likewise too jaunty. Bantering the Trinity is 
 not yet a recognised Enghsh pastime. Bishop-baiting 
 is, but this notwithstanding, most readers of Literature 
 mid Dogma grew tired of the Bishop of Gloucester and 
 Bristol and of his alleged desire to do something for the 
 honour of the Godhead long before Mr. Arnold showed 
 any signs of weariness. But making all these abate- 
 ments, and fully admitting that Literature and Dogma 
 is not likely to prove permanently interesting to the 
 English reader, it must be pronounced a most valuable 
 and useful book, and one to which the professional 
 critics and philosophers never did justice. The object 
 of Literature and Dogma was no less than the restoration 
 of the use of the Bible to the sceptical laity. It was a 
 noble object, and it was in a great measure, as thousands 
 of quiet people could testify, attained. It was not a 
 philosophical treatise. In its own way it was the same 
 kind of thing as many of Cardinal Newman's writings. 
 It started with an assumption, namely, that it is im- 
 possible to believe in the miracles recorded in the Old 
 and New Testaments. There is no laborious attempt 
 to distinguish between one miracle and another, or to 
 lighten the burden of faith in any particular. Nor is 
 any serious attempt made to disprove miracles. Mr. 
 Arnold did not write for those who find no difficulty 
 in believing in the first chapter of St. Luke's gospel, 
 or the sixteenth chapter of St. Mark's, but for those 
 who simply cannot believe a word of either the one 
 chapter or the other. Mr. Arnold knew well that this 
 inability to believe is apt to generate in the mind of 
 the unbeliever an almost physical repulsion to open 
 books which are full of supernatural events. Mr. 
 Arnold knew this and lamented it. His own love of 
 the Bible was genuine and intense. He could read even 
 Jeremiah and Habakkuk. As he loved Homer with one
 
 214 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 side of him, so he loved the Bible with the other. He 
 saw how men were crippled and maimed through growing 
 up in ignorance of it, and living all the days of their 
 lives outside its influence. He longed to restore it to 
 them, to satisfy them that its place in the mind of man 
 — that its educational and moral power — was not due 
 to the miracles it records nor to the dogm.as that Catho- 
 lics have developed or Calvinists extracted from its 
 pages, but to its literary excellence and to the glow 
 and enthusiasm it has shed over conduct, self-sacrifice, 
 humanity, and holy living. It was at all events a 
 worthy object and a most courageous task. It exposed 
 him to a heavy cross-fire. The Orthodox fell upon his 
 book and abused it, unrestrainedly abused it, for its 
 famihar handling of their sacred books. They almost 
 grudged Mr. Arnold his great acquaintance with the 
 Bible, just as an Englishman might be annoyed at find- 
 ing Moltke acquainted with all the roads from Dover 
 to London. This feeling was natural, and on the whole 
 I think it creditable to the orthodox party that a book 
 so needlessly pain-giving as Literature and Dogma did 
 not goad them into any personal abuse of its author. 
 But they could not away with the book. Nor did 
 the philosophical sceptic like it much better. The 
 philosophical sceptic is too apt to hate the Bible, even 
 as the devil was reported to hate hol}^ water. Its 
 spirit condemns him. Its devout, heart-stirring, noble 
 language creates an atmosphere which is deadly for 
 pragmatic egotism. To make men once more careful 
 students of the Bible was to deal a blow at materialism, 
 and consequently was not easily forgiven. " Why 
 can't you leave the Bible alone ? " they grumbled. 
 " What have we to do with it ? " But Pharisees and 
 Sadducees do not exhaust mankind, and Mr. Arnold's 
 contributions to the religious controversies of his time 
 were very far from the barren things that are most 
 contributions, and indeed most controversies on such 
 subjects. I beheve I am right when I say that he 
 
 \
 
 ' MATTHEW ARNOLD. 215 
 
 induced a very large number of persons to take up 
 again and make a daily study of the books both of the 
 Old and the New Testament. 
 
 As a literary critic Mr. Arnold had at one time a 
 great vogue. His Essays in Criticism, first published 
 in 1S65, made him known to a larger public than his 
 poems or his delightful lectures on translating Homer 
 had succeeded in doing. He had the happy knack of 
 starting interesting subjects and saying all sorts of 
 interesting things by the way. There was the French 
 Academy. Would it be a good thing to have an English 
 Academy ? He started the question himself and answered 
 it in the negative. The public took it out of his mouth 
 and proceeded to discuss it for itself, always on the 
 assumption that he had answered it in the affirmative. 
 But that is the way with the public. No sensible man 
 minds it. To set something going is the most anybody 
 can hope to do in this world. Where it will go to, and 
 what sort of moss it will gather as it goes, for despite 
 the proverb there is nothing incompatible between 
 rhoss and motion, no one can say. In this volume, too, 
 he struck the note, so frequently and usefully repeated, 
 of self-dissatisfaction. To make us dissatisfied with our- 
 selves, alive to our own inferiority — not absolute, but 
 in important respects ; to check the chorus, then so 
 loud, of self-approval of our majestic selves ; to make 
 us understand why nobody who is not an Englishman 
 wants to be one — this was another of the tasks of this 
 militant man. We all remember how Wragg * is in 
 custody. The papers on Heine and Spinoza and Marcus 
 Aurelius were read with eagerness, with an enjoyment, 
 with a sense of widening horizons too rare to be easily 
 forgotten. They were light and graceful, but it would, 
 I think, be unjust to call them slender. They were not 
 written for specialists or even for students, but for 
 ordinary men and women, particularly for young men 
 and women, who carried away with them from the 
 * See Essays in Criticism, p. 23.
 
 2i6 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 reading of Essays in Criticism something they could 
 not have found anywhere else, and which remained 
 with them for the rest of their days, namely, a way of 
 looking at things. A perfectly safe critic Mr. Arnold 
 hardly was. Even in this volume he fusses too much 
 about the De Guerins. To some later judgments of his 
 it would be unkind to refer. It was said of the late 
 Lord Justice Hellish by Lord Cairns that he went right 
 instinctively. That is, he did not flounder into truth. 
 Mr. Arnold never floundered, but he sometimes fell. A 
 more delightful critic of literature we have not had for 
 long. What pleasant reading are his Lectures on Trans- 
 lating Homer, which ought to be at once reprinted. 
 How full of good things ! Not perhaps fit to be torn 
 from their contexts, or paraded in a commonplace book, 
 but of the kind which give a reader joy — which make 
 hterature tempting; — which revive, even in dull middle- 
 age, something of the enthusiasm of the love-stricken 
 boy. Then, too, his Study of Celtic Literature. It does 
 not matter much whether you can bring yourself to 
 believe in the Eisteddfod or not. In fact Mr. Arnold 
 did not believe in it. He knew perfectly well that 
 better poetry is to be found every week in the poet's 
 corner of every county newspaper in England than is 
 produced annually at the Eisteddfod. You need not 
 even share Mr. Arnold's opinion as to the inherent 
 value of Celtic Literature, though this is of course a 
 grave question, worthy of all consideration — but his 
 Study is good enough to be read for love. It is fuU of 
 charming criticism. Most critics are such savages — or, 
 if they are not savages, they are full of fantasies — and 
 are capable at any moment of calling Tom Jones dull, or 
 Sydney Smith a bore. Mr. Arnold was not a savage, 
 and could no more have called Tom Jones dull or Sydney 
 Smith a bore, than Homer heavy or Milton vulgar. 
 He was no gloomy specialist. He knew it took all sorts 
 to make a world. He was alive to life. Its great 
 movement fascinated him, even as it had done Burke,
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 217 
 
 even as it did Cardinal Newman. He watched the 
 rushing stream, the " stir of existence," the good and the 
 bad, the false and the true, with an interest that never 
 flagged. In his last words on translating Homer he 
 says : " And thus false tendency as well as true, vain 
 effort as well as fruitful, go together to produce that 
 great movement of life, to present that immense and 
 magic spectacle of human affairs, which from boyhood 
 to old age fascinates the gaze of every man of imagina- 
 tion, and which would be his terror if it were not at the 
 same time his delight." 
 
 Mr. Arnold never succeeded in getting his country- 
 men to take him seriously as a practical politician. He 
 was regarded as an unauthorized practitioner whose 
 prescriptions no respectable chemist would consent to 
 make up. He had not the diploma of Parliament, nor 
 was he able, like the Secretary of an Early Closing 
 Association, to assure any political aspirant that he 
 commanded enough votes to turn an election. When 
 Mr. John Morley took occasion after Mr. Arnold's death 
 to refer to him in Parliament, the name was received 
 respectfully but coldly. And yet he was eager about 
 politics, and had much to say about political questions. 
 His work in these respects was far from futile. What 
 he said was never inept. It coloured men's thoughts, 
 and contributed to the formation of their opinions far 
 more than even public meetings. His introduction to 
 his Report on Popular Education in France, published in 
 1861, is as instructive a piece of writing as is to be 
 found in any historical disquisition of the last three 
 decades. The paper on " My Countrymen " in that 
 most amusing book Friendship' s Garland is full of point. 
 
 But it is time to stop. It is only possible to stop 
 where we began. Matthew Arnold is dead. He would 
 have been the last man to expect anyone to grow 
 hysterical over the circumstance, and the first to de- 
 nounce any strained emotion. // n'y a pas d'honime
 
 2i8 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 nc'cessaire. No one ever grasped this great, this com- 
 forting, this coohng, this self-destroying truth more 
 cordially than he did. As I write the words, I remem- 
 ber how he employed them in his preface to the second 
 edition of Essays in Criticism, where he records a con- 
 versation, I doubt not an imaginary one, between him- 
 self and a portly jeweller from Cheapside — his fellow- 
 traveller on the Woodford branch of the Great Eastern 
 Une. The traveller was greatly perturbed in his mind 
 by the murder then lately perpetrated in a railway 
 carriage by the notorious Miiller. Mr. Arnold plied him 
 with consolation. " Suppose the worst to happen," I 
 said, " suppose even yourself to be the victim — il n'y a 
 pas d'homme n/cessaire — we should miss you for a day 
 or two on the Woodford Branch, but the great mundane 
 movement would stiU go on, the gravel walks of your 
 villa would still be rolled, dividends would still be paid 
 at the bank, omnibuses would still run, there would still 
 be the old crush at the corner of Fenchurch Street." 
 
 And so it proves for all — for portly jewellers and 
 lovely poets. 
 
 " The Pillar still broods o'er the fields 
 Which border Ennerdale Lake, 
 And Egremont sleeps by the sea — 
 Nature is fresh as of old. 
 Is lovely ; a mortal is dead." 
 
 IL 
 
 Lord Byron's antipathies were, as a rule, founded on 
 some sound human basis, and it may well be that he 
 was quite right for hating an author who was all author 
 and nothing else. He could not have hated Matthew 
 Arnold on that score, at all events, though perhaps he 
 might have found some other ground for gratifying a 
 feeling very dear to his heart. Mr. Arnold was many 
 other things as well as a poet, so many other things that 
 we need sometimes to be reminded that he was a poet. 
 He allowed himself to be distracted in a variety of 
 ways, he poured himself out in many strifes ; though
 
 'MATTHEW ARNOLD. 2ig 
 
 not exactly eager, he was certainly active. He dis- 
 coursed on numberless themes, and was interested in 
 many things of the kind usually called " topics." 
 
 Personally, we cannot force ourselves to bewail his 
 agility, this leaping from bough to bough of the tree 
 of talk and discussion. It argues an interest in things, 
 a wide-eyed curiosity. If you find yourself in a village 
 fair you -do well to examine the booths, and when you 
 *bring your purchases home, the domestic authority will 
 be wise not to scan too severely the trivial wares never 
 meant to please a critical taste or to last a lifetime. 
 Mr. Arnold certainly brought home some very queer 
 things from his village fair, and was perhaps too fond 
 of taking them for the texts of his occasional discourses. 
 But others must find fault, we cannot. There is a 
 pleasant ripple of life through Mr. Arnold's prose writ- 
 ings. His judgments are human judgments. He did 
 not care for strange, out-of-the-way things ; he had 
 no odd tastes. He drank wine, so he once said, because 
 he liked it — good wine, that is. And it was the same 
 with poetry and books. He liked to understand what 
 he admired, and the longer it took him to understand 
 anything the less disposed he was to like it. Plain things 
 suited him best. What he hated most was the far- 
 fetched. He had the greatest respect for Mr. Browning, 
 and was a sincere admirer of much of his poetry, but 
 he never made the faintest attempt to read any of the 
 poet's later volumes. The reason probably was that he 
 could not be bothered. Hazlitt, in a fine passage 
 descriptive of the character of a scholar, says : " Such 
 a one lives all his life in a dream of learning, and has 
 never once had his sleep broken by a real sense of things." 
 Mr. Arnold had a real sense of things. The writings of 
 such a man could hardly fail to be interesting, whatever 
 they might be about, even the burial of Dissenters or 
 the cock of a nobleman's hat. 
 
 But for all that we are of those who, when we name 
 the name of Arnold, mean neither the headmaster of
 
 220 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Rugby nor the author of Culture and Anarchy and 
 Literature and Dogma, but the poet who sung, not, 
 indeed, with Wordsworth, " The wonder and bloom of 
 the world," but a severer, still more truthful strain, a 
 life whose secret is not joy, but peace. 
 
 Standing on this high breezy ground, we are not 
 disposed to concede anything to the enemy, unless, 
 indeed, it be one somewhat ill-defended outpost con- 
 nected with metre. The poet's ear might have been a 
 little nicer. Had it been so, he would have spared his 
 readers an occasional jar and a panegyric on Lord 
 Byron's poetry. There are, we know, those who regard 
 this outpost we have so lightly abandoned as the citadel. 
 These rhyming gentry scout what Arnold called the 
 terrible sentence passed on a French poet — il dit tout 
 ce qu'il veut, mais malheureuscment il n'a rien a dire. 
 They see nothing terrible in a sentence which does but 
 condemn them to nakedness. Thought is cumbersome. 
 You skip best with nothing on. But the sober-minded 
 English people are not the countrymen of Milton and 
 Cowper, of Crabbe and Wordsworth, for nothing. They 
 like poetry to be serious. We are fond of sermons. 
 We may quarrel with the vicar's five-and-twenty min- 
 utes, but we let Carlyle go on for twice as many years, 
 and until he had filled thirty-four octavo volumes. 
 
 The fact is that, though Arnold was fond of girding 
 at the Hebrew in us, and used to quote his own Christian 
 name with humorous resignation as only an instance 
 of the sort of thing he had to put up with, he was a 
 Puritan at heart, and would have been as ill at ease 
 at a Greek festival as Newman at a Spanish auto da ji. 
 
 What gives Arnold's verse its especial charm is his 
 grave and manly sincerity. He is a poet without artifice 
 or sham. He does not pretend to find all sorts of mean- 
 ings in all sorts of things. He does not manipulate the 
 universe and present his readers with any bottled elixir. 
 This has been cast up against him as a reproach. His 
 poetry, so we have been told, has no consolation in it.
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 221 
 
 Here is a doctor, it is said, who makes up no drugs, 
 a poet who does not proclaim that he sees God in the 
 avalanche or hears Him in the thunder. The world will 
 not, so we are assured, hang upon the lips of one who 
 bids them not to be too sure that the winds are wailing 
 man's secret to the complaining sea, or that nature is 
 nothing but a theme for poets. These people may be 
 right. In any event it is unwise to prophesy. What 
 will be, will be. Nobody can wish to be proved wrong. 
 It is best to be on the side of truth, whatever the truth 
 may be. The real atheism is to say, as men are found 
 to do, that they would sooner be convicted of error they 
 think pleasing, than have recognised an unwelcome 
 truth a moment earlier than its final demonstration, if, 
 indeed, such a moment should ever arrive for souls so 
 craven. In the meantime, this much is plain, that 
 there is no consolation in non-coincidence with fact, 
 and no sweetness which does not chime with experience. 
 Therefore, those who have derived consolation from 
 Mr. Arnold's noble verse may take comfort. Religion, 
 after all, observes Bishop Butler in his tremendous way, 
 is nothing if it is not true. The same may be said of 
 the poetry of consolation. 
 
 The pleasure it is lawful to take in the truthfulness 
 of Mr. Arnold's poetry should not be allowed to lead 
 his lovers into the pleasant paths of exaggeration. The 
 Muses dealt him out their gifts with a somewhat niggardly 
 hand. He had to cultivate his Sparta. No one of his 
 admirers can assert that in Arnold 
 
 " The force of energy is found, 
 And the sense rises on the wings of sound." 
 
 He is no builder of the lofty rhyme. This he was well 
 aware of. But neither had he any ample measure of 
 those " winged fancies " which wander at will through 
 the pages of Apollo's favourite children. His strange 
 indifference to Shelley, his severity towards Keats, his 
 lively sense of the wantonness of Shakspcare and the
 
 222 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Elizabethans, incline us to the belief that he was not 
 quite sensible of the advantages of a fruitful as com- 
 pared with a barren soil. His own crop took a good deal 
 of raising, and he was perhaps somewhat disposed to 
 regard luxuriant growths with disfavour. 
 
 But though severe and restricted, and without either 
 grandeur or fancy, Arnold's poetry is most companion- 
 able. It never teases you — there he has the better of 
 Shelley — or surfeits you — there he prevails over Keats. 
 As a poet, we would never dare or wish to class him with 
 either Shelley or Keats, but as a companion to slip in 
 your pocket before starting to spend the day amid 
 
 " The cheerful silence of the fells," 
 
 you may search far before you find anything better than 
 either of the two volumes of Mr. Arnold's poems. 
 
 His own enjoyment of the open air is made plain in 
 his poetry. It is no borrowed rapture, no mere bookish 
 man's clumsy joy in escaping from his library, but an 
 enjoyment as hearty and honest as Izaak Walton's. He 
 has a quick eye for things, and rests upon them with a 
 quiet satisfaction. No need to give instances ; they 
 will occur to all. Sights and sounds alike pleased him 
 well. So obviously genuine, so real, though so quiet, 
 was his pleasure in our English lanes and dells, that 
 it is still difficult to reahze that his feet can no longer 
 stir the cowslips or his ear hear the cuckoo's parting cry. 
 
 Amidst the melancholy of his verse, we detect deep 
 human enjoyment and an honest human endeavour to 
 do the best he could whilst here below. The best he 
 could do was, in our opinion, his verse, and it is a com- 
 fort, amidst the wreckage of life, to believe he made 
 the most of his gift, cultivating it wisely and well, and 
 enriching man's life with some sober, serious, and beau- 
 tiful poetry. The times are ripening for his poetry, 
 which is full of foretastes of the morrow. As we read 
 we are not carried back by the reflection, " so men 
 once thought," but rather forward along the paths, dim
 
 'MATTHEW ARNOLD. 223 
 
 and perilous it may be, but still the paths mankind 
 is destined to tread. Truthful, sober, severe, with a 
 capacity for deep, if placid, enjoyment of the pageant 
 of the world, and a quick eye for its varied sights 
 and an eager ear for its delightful sounds, Matthew 
 Arnold is a poet whose limitations we may admit with- 
 out denying his right. Our passion for him is a loyal 
 passion for a most temperate king. There is an effort 
 on his brow, we must admit it. It would never do to 
 mistake his poetry for what he called the best, and 
 which he was ever urging upon a sluggish populace. 
 It intellectualises far too much ; its method is a known 
 method, not a magical one. But though effort may be 
 on his brow, it is a noble effort and has had a noble 
 result. 
 
 " For most men in a brazen prison live. 
 Where in the sun's hot eye, 
 With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly 
 Their lives to some unmeaning task-v\ork give. 
 Dreaming of nought beyond their prison wall. 
 And as, year after year, 
 f Fresh products of their barren labour fall 
 
 From their tired hands, and rest 
 Never yet comes more near. 
 Gloom settles slowly down over their breast ; 
 And wliile they try to stem 
 
 The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest. 
 Death in their prison reaches them 
 Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest." 
 
 Or if not a slave he is a madman, sailing where he will 
 on the wild ocean of life. 
 
 " And then the tempest strikes him, and between 
 The lightning bursts is seen 
 Only a driving wreck. 
 
 And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck. 
 With anguished face and flying hair, 
 Grasping the rudder hard. 
 
 Still bent to make some port he knows not where, 
 Still standing for some false impossible shore ; 
 And sterner comes the roar 
 
 Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom 
 Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom. 
 And he tocJ disappears and comes no more."
 
 224 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 To be neither a rebel nor a slave is the burden of 
 much of Mr, Arnold's verse — his song we cannot call it. 
 It will be long before men cease to read their Arnold ; 
 even the rebel or the slave will occasionally find a 
 moment for so doing, and when he does it may be written 
 of him : 
 
 " And then arrives a lull in the hot race 
 Wherein he doth for ever chase 
 That flying and illusive shadow Rest. 
 An air of coolness plays upon his face, 
 And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. 
 And then he thinks he knows 
 The hills where his life rose 
 And the sea where it goes."
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT LEIGHTON HOUSE, 
 5TH MARCH, I9OI. 
 
 AT the very outset it is proper I should state I never 
 •TY saw Mr. Bagehot. I know him, if I do know 
 him, through his books alone. There are in this room 
 those who knew and loved the living man. His modes 
 of speech, his manners and customs, his ways and habits, 
 how he talked and laughed and held his peace, how he 
 entered a room, how he sat at meat — all the countless 
 pleasant things, the admirable strengths, the agreeable 
 weaknesses that went to make up his personality, they 
 know, and I do not. What a warning to be silent ! 
 To put myself even for a few minutes in competition 
 with such memories, such knowledge, seems ridiculous, 
 and yet perhaps it is not so very ridiculous after all. 
 Unless an English author has had his portrait painted 
 by Reynolds or his life written by Boswell, he has small 
 chance of being remembered (apart from the recollec- 
 tions of a small and ever-dwindling group of friends), 
 save by his books. They are, indeed, his only chance. 
 I do not say it is a good chance. I have fallen asleep 
 over too many books to say that. What I do say is, 
 it is his only chance. 
 
 You can know a man from his books, and if he is a 
 writer of good faith and has the knack, you may know 
 him very well ; better it well may be than did his co- 
 directors or his partners in business, or even — for I am 
 here to tell the truth — his own flesh and blood. It is 
 easier for an author to take in his brother than a really 
 astute well-seasoned reader. I am not disposed to think 
 
 8
 
 226 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 overmuch of the insight of relations. Joseph Bonaparte 
 has left on record his opinion of his famous brother. 
 " He was," so said this sapient though not hereditary 
 monarch — " he was not so much what I should call a 
 great, as a good man." 
 
 It is amazing what things your coniirmed author will 
 say in print. The shyest of men when under the literary 
 impulse will tear down the veils behind which men are 
 usually only too well content to live. Mr. Bagehot has 
 himself said in his own picturesque way, " We all come 
 down to dinner, but each has a room to himself." In his 
 books an author will often take you into this solitary 
 chamber. 
 
 I have enjoyed on rare occasions the conversation of 
 two distinguished poets, Mr. Browning and Mr. Arnold. 
 To both I felt myself under a huge personal obligation. 
 I longed to hear them even distantly approach the sub- 
 ject-matter of Christmas Eve or Rugby Chapel ; they 
 never did in my hearing. " Hardly," saj's Browning, 
 " will a man tell his joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, 
 beliefs and unbelievings." No ! a man will not tell these 
 things, but if he is a true author he will print them. 
 
 However, everyone who has read Mr. Bagehot's books 
 will agree at once that he is an author who can be known 
 from his books. 
 
 I suppose the only classification of authors of first-rate 
 importance is into good authors and bad ones — a literary, 
 not a moral distinction. But otlier classifications have 
 their use. There are, for example, personal authors and 
 impersonal ones. A personal author is not necessarily 
 one who babbles to his readers about himself and his 
 belongings, his likes and dislikes, but he is one whose 
 spirit hovers and broods over his own page ; with whose 
 treatise is bound up a living thing. Take an author 
 about whom Mr. Bagehot has written with deep feeling 
 and great acumen, the sombre spirit who composed the 
 Analogy of Religion and preached the Fifteen Sermons. 
 As Mr. Bagehot has observed, there is no positive direct
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT. 227 
 
 evidence that Bishop Butler ever spoke to anybody all 
 his life through, except on two occasions to Queen Caro- 
 line. You cannot guess what books he had in his library, 
 for he hardly ever makes a quotation. " No man," 
 says Mr. Bagehot, " would ever guess from Butler's writ- 
 ings that he ever had the disposal of five pounds. It is 
 odd to think what he did with the mining profits and 
 landed property, the royalties and rectories, coal-dues 
 and curacies, that he must have heard of from morning 
 to night." And yet this reticence and deep shadow 
 of seclusiveness has not availed to hide from the sym- 
 pathetic reader — despite, too, the clouded difficult style ; 
 for, again to quote Bagehot, " Butler, so far from having 
 the pleasures of eloquence, had not even the comfort of 
 perspicuity " — a strong, permanent, personal impression 
 of an entirely honest thinker. I feel far more certain 
 that I know what manner of man Butler was, than I do 
 about Saint Augustine, for all his fine Confessions. 
 
 Mr. Bagehot was a personal author, though he tells 
 Vi% very little directly about himself. 
 
 Now, I am going to begin quoting in real earnest. 
 
 In the year 1853 Bagehot, who was then twenty-seven 
 years of age, had the courage, for his was a dauntless 
 spirit, to write an essay on Shakspeare ; not on his 
 plays, nor on his characters, nor on his sonnets, nor on 
 his investments, but on himself — on Shakspeare. To 
 be able to write a good essay on Shakspeare is in my 
 opinion the best possible test of an English man of 
 letters. Had we an Academy and an examination for 
 admission, no other demand need be made. But who 
 should be the examiners ? 
 
 Mr. Bagehot began his essay by boldly asserting that 
 it is quite possible to know Shakspeare, and then pro- 
 ceeds : 
 
 " Some extreme sceptics, we know, doubt if it is pos- 
 sible to deduce anything as to an author's character 
 from his works. Yet surely people do not keep a tame 
 steam-engine to write their books, and if these books
 
 228 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 were really written by a man, he must have been a man 
 who could write them ; he must have had the thoughts 
 which they express, have acquired the knowledge they 
 contain, have possessed the style in which we read them. 
 The difficulty is a defect of the critics. A person who 
 knows nothing of an author he has read will not know 
 much of an author he has seen. 
 
 " First of all, it may be said that Shakspeare's works 
 could only be produced by a first-rate imagination work- 
 ing on a first-rate experience. It is often difficult to 
 make out whether the author of a poetic creation is 
 drawing from fancy or drawing from experience ; but 
 for art on a certain scale the two must concur. Out 
 of nothing nothing can be created. Some plastic power 
 is required, however great may be the material. And 
 when such a work as Hamlet or Othello, still more when 
 both of them and others not unequal have been created 
 by a single mind, it may be fairly said that not only a 
 great imagination, but a full conversancy with the world, 
 was necessary to their production. The whole powers 
 of man under the most favourable circumstances are not 
 too great for such an effort. We may assume that 
 Shakspeare had a great experience. 
 
 "To a great experience one thing is essential, an 
 experiencing nature. It is not enough to have oppor- 
 tunity, it is essential to feel it. Some occasions come 
 to all men ; but to many they are of little use, and to 
 some they are none. What, for example, has experience 
 done for the distinguished Frenchman, the name of 
 whose essay is prefixed to this paper ? M. Guizot is the 
 same man that he was in 1820, or, we believe, as he was 
 in 1 8 14. Take up one of his lectures, published before 
 he was a practical statesman ; you will be struck with 
 the width of view, the amplitude and the solidity of the 
 reflections ; you will be amazed that a mere literary 
 teacher could produce anything so wise. But take up 
 afterwards an essay published since his fall, and you 
 will be amazed to find no more. Napoleon the First is
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT. 229 
 
 come and gone, the Bourbons of the old regime have 
 come and gone, the Bourbons of the new regime have 
 Ixad their turn. M. Guizot has been first minister of a 
 citizen king ; he has led a great party ; he has pro- 
 nounced many a great discours that was well received by 
 the second elective assembly in the world. But there 
 is no trace of this in his writings. No one would guess 
 from them that their author had ever left the professor's 
 ' chair. It is the same, we are told, with small matters : 
 when M. Guizot walks the street he seems to see nothing ; 
 the h( ad is thrown back, the eye fixed, and the mouth 
 working. His mind is no doubt at work, but it is not 
 stirred by what is external. Perhaps it is the internal 
 activity of mind that overmasters the perceptive power. 
 Anyhow, there might have been an emeute in the street 
 and he would not have known it ; there have been rev- 
 olutions in his life, and he is scarcely the wiser. Among 
 the most frivolous and fickle of civilised nations he is 
 alone. They pass from the game of war to the game 
 c^ peace, from the game of science to the game of art, 
 from the game of liberty to the game of slavery, from 
 the game of slavery to the game of license. He stands 
 like a schoolmaster in the playground, without sport 
 and without pleasure, firm and sullen, slow and awful " 
 [Literary Studies, i. 126-128). 
 
 From this quotation we take away the notion of an 
 experiencing nature. Shakspeare had what Guizot (it 
 appears) had not, an experiencing nature. 
 
 I will now take up Bagehot's essay on Macaulay, 
 written in 1856, when the great history was volume by 
 volume taking the town by storm. It is easier to write 
 well about Macaulay than about Shakspeare, but per- 
 haps it is not so very easy, though it is no longer person- 
 ally dangerous. I need not premise that Bagehot had 
 an enormous admiration for Macaulay, who supplied 
 him with what a few men love better than their dinner, 
 intellectual entertainment. But Bagehot was a critic, and 
 he writes :
 
 230 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 " Macaulay has exhibited many high attainments, 
 many dazzUng talents, much singular and well-trained 
 power ; but the quality which would most strike the 
 observers of the interior man is what may be called his 
 inexperiencing nature. Men of genius are in general 
 distinguished by their extreme susceptibility to external 
 experience. Finer and softer than other men, every 
 exertion of their will, every incident of their lives, influ- 
 ences them more deeply than it would others. Their 
 essence is at once finer and more impressible ; it receives 
 a distincter mark, and receives it more easily than the 
 souls of the herd. From a peculiar sensibility the man 
 of genius bears the stamp of life commonly more clearly 
 than his fellows ; even casual associations make a deep 
 impression on him : examine his mind, and you may 
 discern his fortunes. INIacaulay has nothing of this. 
 You could not tell what he has been. His mind shows 
 no trace of change. What he is, he v/as ; and what he 
 was, he is. He early attained a high development, but 
 he has not increased it since ; years have come, but 
 they have whispered little ; as was said of the second 
 Pitt, ' He never grew, he was cast.' The volume of 
 speeches which he has published place the proof of this 
 in every man's hand. Flis first speeches are as good as 
 his last, his last scarcely richer than his first. He came 
 into public life at an exciting season ; he shared, of 
 course, in that excitement, and the same excitement still 
 quivers in his mind. He delivered marvellous rhetorical 
 exercises on the Reform Bill when it passed ; he speaks 
 of it with rhetorical interest even now. He is still the 
 man of '32. From that era he looks on the past. . . . 
 
 " All this was very natural at the moment. Nothing 
 could be more probable than that a young man of the 
 greatest talents, entering at once into important life at 
 a conspicuous opportunity, should exaggerate its impor- 
 tance ; he would fanc}' it was the ' crowning achieve- 
 ment,' the greatest ' in the tide of time.' But the singu- 
 larity is, that he should retain the idea now ; that years
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT. 231 
 
 have brought no influence, experience no change. The 
 events of twenty years have been full of rich instruction 
 on the events of twenty years ago, but they have not 
 instructed him. His creed is a fixture. It is the same 
 on his peculiar topic — on India. Before he went there 
 he made a speech on the subject ; Lord Canterbury, 
 who must have heard a million speeches, said it was the 
 best he had ever heard. It is difficult to fancy that so 
 much vivid knowledge could be gained from books, from 
 horrible Indian treatises, that such imaginative mastery 
 should be possible without actual experience. Not for- 
 getting, or excepting, the orations of Burke, it was per- 
 haps as remarkable a speech as was ever made on India 
 by an Englishman who had not been in India. Now he 
 has been there he speaks no better, rather worse ; he 
 spoke excellently without experience, he speaks no better 
 with it ; if anything, it rather puts him out. His speech 
 on the Indian charter a year or two ago was not 
 finer than that on the charter of 1833. Before he went 
 t6 India he recommended that writers should be ex- 
 amined in the classics ; after being in India he recom- 
 mended that they should be examined in the same way. 
 He did not say that he had seen the place in the mean- 
 time ; he did not think that had anything to do with it. 
 You could never tell from any difference in his style 
 what he had seen, or what he had not seen. He is so 
 insensible to passing objects that they leave no distinc- 
 tive mark, no intimate peculiar trace. 
 
 " Such a man would naturally think literature more 
 instructive than life. Hazlitt said of Mackintosh, ' He 
 might like to read an account of India ; but India itself, 
 with its burning shining face, was a mere blank, an end- 
 less waste to him. Persons of this class have no more 
 to say to a plain matter of fact staring them in the 
 face, than they have to say to a hippopotamus.' This 
 was a keen criticism on Sir James, savouring of the 
 splenetic mind from which it came. As a complete 
 estimate it would be a most unjust one of Macaulay,
 
 232 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 I 
 
 but we know that there is a whole class of minds which ~ 
 
 prefers the hterary dehneation of objects to the actual 
 eyesight of them " {Literary Studies, ii. 224-226). ji 
 
 I do not stop to ask whether we ought to agree with 
 this criticism or not, for I have only made use of it to 
 emphasise my earlier quotations, and to make plainer 
 what I mean when, borrowing, as I am now able to do, 
 Bagehot's own words, I say of him, that he most surely 
 had an experiencing nature, and impressed the stamp 
 of life on everything he wrote. 
 
 This is the reason why Mr. Bagehot is so great a 
 favourite with literary men. Most authors who write 
 books in their libraries cherish at the bottom of their 
 hearts, if not a dislike, at least a gloomy suspicion, of 
 books and bookishness ; they hanker after life — after 
 the hippopotamus. I once took a very considerable 
 author into a police-court ; I thought it might chance 
 to amuse him. He stood entranced whilst some poor 
 ragamuffui's misdemeanours and improprieties were 
 brought home to him, a short sentence passed, and the 
 prisoner led away to a too familiar doom. Then we 
 went out, and no sooner were we in the street than my 
 author smote his staff upon the pavement and bitterly 
 bewailed the hard fate that had prevented his being 
 called to the Bar and becoming a " Beak." I gently 
 reminded him of his books, quite a comely row upon the 
 shelf. " Hang my books ! " he cried, waving his stick 
 in the direction of the magistrate's chair. " When that 
 fellow sends a poor devil to prison for six weeks, to prison 
 he goes ; but when I publish a book, nothing happens." 
 
 Mr. Bagehot's books are full of actuality. His pages 
 are so animated that something seems to happen in 
 almost every one of them. The hippopotamus sticks 
 out his head, as does the ox with that wonderful wet 
 nose in the foreground of Rubens' Nativity in the Ant- 
 werp Gallery. 
 
 "The reason why so few good books are written is
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT. 233 
 
 that so few people who can write know anything. In 
 general, an author has always lived in a room, has read 
 books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the 
 style and sentiment of the best authors, but he is out 
 of the way of employing his o^\^l eyes and ears. He 
 has nothing to hear and nothing to see ; his life is a 
 vacuum. The mental habits of Robert Southey, which 
 about a year ago were so extensively praised in the 
 public journals, is the type of literary existence, just as 
 the praise bestowed on it shows the admiration excited 
 by it among literary people. He wrote ])oetry (as if 
 anybody could) before breakfast ; he read during break- 
 fast ; he wrote history until dinner ; he corrected proof- 
 sheets between dinner and tea ; he wrote an essay for 
 the Quarterly afterwards, and after supper, by way of 
 relaxation, composed the Doctor, a lengthy and elabo- 
 rate jest. Now, what can anj^one think of such a life, 
 except how clearly it shows that the habits best fitted 
 for communicating information, formed with the best 
 c^re and daily regulated by the best motives, are exactly 
 the habits which are likely to afford a man the least 
 information to communicate ? Southey had no events, 
 no experiences. His wife kept house and allowed him 
 pocket-money, just as if he had been a German professor 
 devoted to accents, tobacco, and the dates of Horace's 
 amours. And it is pitiable to think that so meritorious 
 a life was only made endurable by a painful delusion. 
 He thought that day by day and hour by hour he was 
 accumulating stores for the instruction and entertain- 
 ment of a long posterity. His epics were to be in the 
 hands of all men, and his history of Brazil the ' Herodotus 
 of the South American Republics.' As if his epics were 
 not already dead, and as if the people who now cheat 
 at Valparaiso care a real who it was that cheated those 
 before them ! Yet it was only by a conviction like this 
 that an industrious and calligraphic man (for such was 
 Robert Southey), who might have earned money as a 
 clerk, worked all his days for half a clerk's wages at
 
 234 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 occupation much duller and more laborious " {Literary 
 Studies, i. 137). 
 
 But not only is Mr. Bagehot a great favourite with 
 those dignified beings who write books at their leisure 
 in the library, but his works are invariably to be found 
 on the tables of editors, journalists, reviewers — the whole 
 fraternity of ready writers, and this for another set of 
 reasons. He is one of those extraordinary men whose 
 remarks are made for the first time. Most of our sayings 
 have been hacked about long before they get into print ; 
 an air of staleness clings to them. True it is there is 
 always somebody — may God bless him ! — in every 
 audience vv^ho may be relied upon never to have heard 
 anything, but for all that, originality is a great quality. 
 Nor does it stop quite there. Mr. Bagehot is not only 
 an original writer, but he presents you with his thoughts 
 and fancies in an unworked state. He is not an artist ; 
 he does not stop to elaborate and dress up his material ; 
 but having said something which is worth saying and 
 has not been said before, this strange writer is content 
 to pass hurriedly on to say something else. There is 
 more meat on Mr. Bagehot' s bones for the critics than 
 on almost anybody else's ; hence his extreme utility to 
 the nimble-witted and light-hearted gentry aforemen- 
 tioned. Bagehot crops up all over the country. His 
 mind is lent out ; his thoughts toss on all waters ; his 
 brew, mixed with a humbler element, may be tapped 
 everywhere ; he has made a hundred small reputations. 
 Nothing would have pleased him better ; his fate would 
 have jumped with his ironical humour. 
 
 Thus far we have found Mr. Bagehot to possess an 
 experiencing nature, the stamp of life, a vivida vis of 
 description, and an observation of mankind, not from 
 the study window or from a club window, but from places 
 where real business is done. 
 
 Mr, Bagehot was a mathematician, a moral philoso- 
 pher, a political economist, a trained, though not a 
 practising, lawyer, a banker, a shipo^vner, and fron?
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT. 235 
 
 i860 till his too early death in 1877 the editor and 
 manager of the Economist. In addition to all this, he 
 was a reader and critic of books. 
 
 One of his best known works is a description of the 
 money market he characteristically called Lombard 
 Street, because, says he, "I wish to deal and to show 
 that I mean to deal with concrete realities." The bank- 
 , rate was no more of a mystery to him than is the Cabinet 
 to Lord Salisbury ; he was quite at home with Foreign 
 Exchanges ; he writes as familiarly about the direful 
 suspension of Overend and Gurney as any of you m-ight 
 do about the French Revolution, or the Renaissance, or 
 the Greek drama ; he had mastered the niceties of Con- 
 ■(--eyancing in the chambers of Sir Charles Hall, and the 
 mj'steries of Special Pleading in those of Mr. Justice 
 Ouain ; and no sooner had he mastered these niceties 
 and mysteries than they were all abolished by Acts of 
 Parlianient. Attorneys, he somewhere remarks, are of 
 the world, and the world is for attorneys. The prowling 
 faculties, he thinks, will have their way. In many of 
 his moods Mr. Bagehot was certainly a most mundane 
 person ; he had no fine Lucretian contempt for the thou- 
 sand and one laborious nothings men nickname duties 
 or for the pursuits of the average man. I cannot say 
 he revered business as did that delightful Mr. Garth in 
 Middleniarch, for reverence was a plant of slow growth 
 in Mr. Bagehot's breast ; but he aWays speaks of it, as 
 of all the other concerns of Englishmen, including the 
 House of Lords, with respect tempered by amusement. 
 
 The hum of affairs sounds through all his writings. 
 How best is business to be transacted here on this planet, 
 in this country, and to-day ? You may know men by 
 their favourite quotations, and a prime favourite with 
 Br.gehot is Bishop Butler's " To such a being as man, 
 in such a world as the present." His famous book oii 
 the Constitution, though it may require bringing down 
 to date— for the British Constitution has not stood still 
 during the quarter of a century that has slipped away
 
 236 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 since Mr. Bagehot's lamented death — is full of his char- 
 acteristics, his lively insight into the actual workings of 
 political machinery, his sense both of the imperfections 
 and of the importance of a working machine, of the 
 advantage of accustoming people to go on doing the 
 same thing in the same way, not because it is the best 
 of all possible ways — tliat it never is — but because " to 
 such a being as man, in such a world as this," a habit 
 and a rule are of the utmost importance. 
 
 In all this Mr. Bagehot is mundane — very mundane. 
 He has been called cynical, and if I knew what that 
 word means in our modern usage, I might agree that 
 cynical he was. 
 
 But he had another side. 
 
 Mr. R. H. Hutton, Mr. Bagehot's great ally, and 
 custodian of his fame, wrote the life of his friend that 
 appears in the second volume of the Dictionary of Na- 
 tional Biography, a splendid series of volumes that has 
 struck a blov/ at one of our oldest native industries — 
 that of the miscellaneous writer, who, until the com- 
 pletion of this publication, could always turn an honest 
 penny by collecting stray information, from this quarter 
 and from that, about more or less obscure notabilities 
 in our history, and printing it in a magazine, and after- 
 wards, it may be, including it with other trifles in a 
 neat little volume destined to flutter its hour. These 
 great combinations are fatal to the small trader. In 
 the course of this short memoir, Mr. Hutton refers to 
 Mr. Bagehot's obligations to his eai'ly friends and teachers 
 — Dr. Prichard, Professor de Morgan, and that fine 
 scholar and stoic Mr. George Long. Their influence, of 
 course, I have no means of tracing. Influences are 
 subtle things, and even in one's own case 
 
 " Who can point as with a wand, 
 And say this portion of the river of my mind 
 Came from that fountain ? " 
 
 There are, however, two men whose influence over
 
 * WALTER BAGEHOT. 237 
 
 Mr. Bagehot's powerful and original mind was all-per- 
 vading, Wordsworth and Newman. He did not becorne 
 a disciple of either ; his was not a disciple's mind. He 
 paid these two great writers a truer compliment than he 
 would have done had he sunk his individuality into 
 theirs, for he allowed their individualities to colour 
 and temper his owti. 
 
 I will give an example of the Wordsworth influence. 
 Mr. Bagehot wrote an essay on the First Edinburgh 
 Revieivers. He is sympathetic. There was a good deal 
 of the old Whig about him. He occupies some thirteen 
 pages in friendly description of Lord Jeffrey and his 
 fiends — "men," so he writes, "of a cool, moderate, 
 resolute firmness, not gifted with high imagination, little 
 prone to enthusiastic sentiment, heedless of large the- 
 ories and speculations, careless of dreamy scepticism, 
 with a clear view of the next step, and a wise intention 
 to take it, a strong con\nction that the elements of 
 knowledge are true, and a steady belief that the present 
 world can and should be quietly improved." 
 
 What nice people ! I hope there are a great many 
 of them in the new London County Council. 
 
 But after thirteen pages in praise of the Whigs, Mr. 
 Bagehot grows restive. The sympathetic reader hears 
 afar off the roar of the distant breakers ; the tide of 
 the reaction has set in, for, so it appears, the Whigs 
 hated mysticism. " Yes," says Mr. Bagehot. 
 
 " A clear, precise, discriminating intellect shrinks at 
 once from the symbolic, the unbounded, the indefinite. 
 The misfortune is that mysticism is tnie. There certainly 
 are kinds of truth, borne in, as it were, instinctively on 
 the human intellect, most influential on the character 
 and the heart, yet hardly capable of stringent statement, 
 difficult to limit by an elaborate definition. Their course 
 is shadowy ; the mind seems rather to have seen than 
 to see them, more to feel after than definitely apprehend 
 them They commonly involve an infinite element, 
 which, of course, cannot be stated precisely, or else a
 
 238 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 first principle — an original tendency — of our intellectual 
 constitution, which it is impossible not to feel, and yet 
 which it is hard to extricate in terms and words. Of 
 this latter kind is what has been called the religion of 
 nature, or, most exactly, perhaps, the religion of the 
 imagination. This is an interpretation of the world. 
 According to it the beauty of the universe has a mean- 
 ing, its grandeur a soul, its sublimity an expression. 
 As we gaze on the faces of those whom we love ... as 
 a charm and a thrill seem to run along the tone of a 
 voice, to haunt the mind with a mere word ; so in nature 
 the mystical sense finds a motion in the mountain, and 
 a power in the waves, and a meaning in the long white 
 line of the shore, and a thought in the blue of heaven, 
 an unbounded being in the vast, void air, and 
 
 ' Wakeful watchings in the pointed stars." 
 
 There is a philosophy in this which might be explained, 
 if explaining were to our purpose. But be this as it 
 may, it is certain that Mr. Wordsworth preached this 
 kind of religion and that Lord Jeffrey did not believe 
 a word of it. His cool, sharp, collected mind revolted 
 from its mysticism ; his detective intelligence was 
 absorbed in its apparent fallaciousness ; his light humour 
 made sport with the sublimities of the preacher ; his 
 love of perspicuity was vexed by its indefiniteness ; the 
 precise philosopher was amazed at its mystic unintelli- 
 gibility. Yet we do not mean that in this great literary 
 feud either of the combatants had all the right or gained 
 all the victory. The world has given judgment. Both 
 Mr. Wordsworth and Lord Jeffrey have received their 
 reward. The one had his own generation, the laughter 
 of men, the applause of drawing-rooms, the concur- 
 rence of the crowd ; the other a succeeding age, the 
 fond enthusiasm of secret students, the lonely rapture 
 of lonely minds. And each has received according to 
 his kind. If all cultivated men speak differently because 
 of the existence of Wordsworth and Coleridge, if not a
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT. 239 
 
 thoughtful EngUsh book has appeared for forty years 
 without some trace for good or evil of their influence, 
 if sermon-writers subsist upon their thoughts, if ' sacred 
 poets ' thrive by translating their weaker portion into 
 the speech of women, if, when all this is over, some 
 sufficient part of their writing will ever be fitting 
 food for wild musing and soUtary meditation, surely 
 this is because they possessed the inner nature ^ — 
 * an intense and glowing mind,' ' the vision and the 
 faculty divine.' But if, perchance, in their weaker 
 moments the great authors of the Lyrical Ballads did 
 ever imagine that the world was to pause because of 
 their verses, that Peter Bell would be popular in draw- 
 ing-rooms, that Christabel would be perused in the 
 City, that people of fashion would make a handbook of 
 the Excursion, it was well for them to be told at once 
 that this was not so. Nature ingeniously prepared a 
 shrill, artificial voice, which spoke in season and out 
 of season, enough, and more than enough, what will ever 
 be the idea of the cities of the plain concerning those 
 who live alone among the mountains ; of the frivolous 
 concerning the grave ; of the gregarious concerning the 
 recluse ; of those who laugh concerning those who 
 laugh not ; of the common concerning the imcommon ; 
 of those who lend on usury concerning those who lend 
 not ; the notion of the world of those whom it will not 
 reckon among the righteous. It said, ' This won't do ! ' 
 And so in all time will the lovers of polished Liberalism 
 speak concerning the intense and lonely prophet " 
 {Literary Studies, i. 26). 
 
 As for Newman, Mr. Bagehot must have had the 
 Parochial Sermons by heart. Two of the most famous, 
 entitled, The Invisible World and the Greatness and 
 Littleness of Human Life, seem to have become incor- 
 porate with Mr. Bagehot's innennost nature. They are 
 not obviously congruous with his pursuits. What have 
 bankers to do with the invisible world ? One has 
 heard of the Divine Economy, but that is something
 
 240 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 different from the Economist. However, there these 
 sermons are, underneath his mundaneness, his humorous 
 treatment of things, his aloofness from all ecclesiasti- 
 cisms. He wrote about Lombard Street like a lover, 
 about the British Constitution like a polished Member 
 of Parliament, about the gaiety of Sir John Falstaff like 
 a humorist. " If," says he, " most men were to save 
 up all the gaiety of their whole lives, it would come 
 about to the gaiety of one speech of Falstaff." There's 
 a banker's balance for you ! But amidst it all, ever 
 and anon 
 
 " From the soul's subterranean depths upborne. 
 As from an infinitely distant land. 
 Come airs and floating echoes " 
 
 of the Invisible World and the Greatness and Littleness 
 of Human Life. 
 
 For example, all of a sudden, in the middle of an 
 article on that most charming, touching, sincere poet 
 Beranger, we come upon this : 
 
 " This shrewd sense gives a solidity to the verses of 
 Beranger which the social and amusing sort of poetry 
 commonly wants, but nothing can redeem it from the 
 reproach of wanting back thought. This is inevitable 
 in such literature ; as it professes to delineate for us 
 the light essence of a fugitive world, it cannot be ex- 
 pected to dwell on those deep and eternal principles on 
 which that world is based. It ignores them, as light 
 talk ignores them. The most opposite thing to the 
 poetry of Society is the poetry of inspiration. There 
 exists, of course, a kind of imagination which detects 
 the secrets of the universe — which fills us sometimes 
 with dread, sometimes with hope — ^which awakens the 
 soul, which makes pure the feelings, which explains 
 Nature, reveals what is above Nature, chastens ' the 
 deep heart of man.' Our senses teach us what the world 
 is, our intuitions where it is. We see the blue and gold 
 of the world, its hvely amusements, its gorgeous if 
 superficial splendour, its currents of men ; we feel its
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT. 241 
 
 light spirits, we enjoy its happiness ; we enjoy it ; and 
 we are puzzled. What is the object of all this ? Why 
 do we do all this ? What is the universe for ? Such a 
 book as Beranger's suggests this difficulty in its strongest 
 forni. It embodies the essence of all that pleasure- 
 loving, pleasure-giving, unaccountable world in which 
 rnen spend their lives ; which they are compelled to live 
 in, but which the moment you get out of it seems so 
 odd, that you can hardly believe it is real. On this 
 account, as we were saying before, there is no book the 
 impression of which varies so much in different moods 
 of mind. Sometimes no reading is so pleasant, at 
 others you half despise and half hate the idea of it ; 
 it seems to sum up and make clear the littleness of 
 your own nature " {Literary Studies, ii. 294). 
 
 I always thought this bit of Newmanism singularly 
 out of place in an essay on Beranger, whose view of 
 the strange world and bewildering events he was con- 
 demned to live in and among was quite free from frivolity; 
 feut Bagehot was too much of a moral and political 
 philosopher, too much also of a banker, to be perfect 
 as a critic of literature. It is very delightful to have 
 a man of affairs writing about books. It is most refresh- 
 ing and invigorating as well as unusual, but, of course, 
 qualities have their defects. Mr. Bagehot is too much 
 alive to the risks of the social structure, far too anxious 
 lest any convention on which it seems to rest should 
 be injured in the handling, to be quite at his ease on 
 the pleasant slopes of Parnassus. For example, he 
 never cared for Tristram Shandy, which he thought 
 should be read in extracts. He calls it an indecent 
 novel written by a clergyman. Had Sterne been in the 
 diocese of Barchester in Mrs. Proudie's time, that would 
 have been her view of Tristram Shandy. I can see her 
 now wagging a forefinger, and hear her saying : " Surely, 
 surely ! " And she would have been quite right in say- 
 ing what she said. But Mr. Bagehot will have it that 
 Tristram is not a first-class book, and hurls at its head
 
 242 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 an epithet that has now lost all its terrors ; he calls it 
 " provincial." 
 
 I am not here to defend Tristram Shandy. It is in- 
 decent, but " surely, surely " Archdeacon Paley was 
 no more an indecent man than Archdeacon Grantley, 
 and the author of the Evidences of Christianity declared 
 that the smnmum bonum of human existence was to 
 sit still and read Tristram Shandy. I shelter myself 
 behind Archdeacon Paley. 
 
 A strain of very severe morality runs through all 
 Mr. Bagehot's literary criticism. It is noticeable in his 
 reviews of Thackeray and Dickens. I have no quarrel 
 with it. 
 
 I have heard Mr. Bagehot called a paradoxical writer. 
 This is absurd. A paradoxical talker he may have been. 
 Conversation without paradox is apt to be dull as still 
 champagne, but in his considered writings, after he had 
 outgrown his boyish v/Spt<i, a love of the truth is con- 
 spicuous throughout. He is pre-eminently a sensible, 
 truthful man. But, there is the rub ; he hated dulness, 
 apathy, pomposity, the time-worn phrase, the greasy 
 platitude. His writings are an armoury of offensive 
 weapons against pompous fools. The revenge taken 
 by these paltry, meaningless persons is to hiss paradox 
 whenever the name of their tormentor is mentioned. 
 
 Mr. Bagehot, in fact, possessed in large measure a 
 quality he greatly admired, and with his usual happy 
 gift of nomenclature called animated moderation. In 
 his little book Physics and Politics he writes : 
 
 " If anyone were asked to describe what it is which 
 distinguishes the writings of a man of genius, who is 
 also a great man of the world, from all other writings, 
 I think he would use the words, * animated moderation.' 
 He would say that such writings are never slow, are 
 never expansive, are never exaggerated ; that they are 
 always instinct with judgment, and yet that judgment 
 is never a dull judgment ; that they have as much 
 spirit in them as would go to make a wild writer, and
 
 - WALTER BAGEHOT. 243 
 
 yet that every line of them is the product of a sane 
 and sound writer. The best and almost perfect instance 
 of this in English is Scott. Homer was perfect in it, 
 as far as we can judge. Shakspeare is often perfect in it 
 for long together ; though, then, from the defects of a 
 bad education and a vicious age, he loses himself in 
 excesses. Still, Homer and Shakspeare at his best, and 
 Scott, though in other respects so unequal to them, 
 have this remarkable quality in common : this union 
 of life with measure, of spirit with reasonableness." 
 
 Without stopping to compare Bagehot's books with 
 the Iliad, with Shakspeare or with Scott, I may safely 
 add their author to the list of " animated moderators." 
 He is vivacious, witty, full of comparisons and ex- 
 amples, all colloquial, familiar ; but he is never a wild 
 writer, always sober however convivial, and a sensible 
 man, whose definition of style was to write like a human 
 being. 
 
 A most agreeable trait of his writings is his free- 
 handedness. He practises no small economies, he makes 
 f ou free of his house and table ; he does not, as do some 
 mercantile authors, hand you things across a counter. 
 I have already referred to this characteristic, but I 
 return to it because it is so agreeable. He writes like 
 a gentleman. And not only is Mr. Bagehot freehanded, 
 he is also full of pleasant surprises and delectable specu- 
 lations. He leads you into a pleasant country, and 
 delights you with a variegated landscape. Thus, in the 
 book just mentioned. Physics and Politics, you suddenly 
 encounter a most agreeable speculation as to how it 
 happens that different styles of writing are fashionable 
 at different times. 
 
 " The true explanation is, I think, something like 
 this. One considerable writer gets a sort of start, be- 
 cause what he writes is somewhat more — only a little 
 more very often, as I believe — congenial to the minds 
 around him than any other sort. This writer is very 
 often not the one whom posterity remembers, not the
 
 244 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 one who carries the style of the age farthest towards its 
 ideal type, and gives it its charm and its perfection. 
 It was not Addison who began the essay-writing of 
 Queen Anne's time, but Steele ; it was the vigorous 
 forward man who struck out the rough notion, though 
 it was the wise and meditative man who improved upon 
 it and elaborated it, and whom posterity reads. Some 
 strong writer, or group of writers, thus seize on the 
 public mind, and a curious process soon assimilates 
 other writers in appearance to them. To some extent, 
 no doubt, this assimilation is effected bj^ a process most 
 inteUigible and not at all curious, the process of con- 
 scious imitation. A sees that B's st^de of writing an- 
 swers, and he imitates it. But definitely-aimed mimicry 
 like this is always rare ; original men who like their 
 own thoughts do not willingly clothe them in words 
 they feel they borrow. No man, indeed, can think to 
 much purpose when he is studying to write a style not 
 his own. After all, very few men are at all equal to the 
 steady labour, the stupid and m.istaken labour mostly, 
 of making a style. Most men catch the words that are 
 in the air, and the rhythm which comes to them they 
 do not know from whence ; an unconscious imitation 
 determines their words, and makes them say what of 
 themselves they would never have thought of sa3ing. 
 
 " Everyone who has written in more than one news- 
 paper knows how invariably his style catches the tone 
 of another, when in turn he begins to write for that. 
 He probably would rather write the traditional style 
 to which the readers of the journal are used, but he 
 does not set himself to copy it ; he would have to force 
 him r if in order not to write it, if that was what he 
 wanted. Exactly in this way, just as a writer for a 
 journal without a distinctly framed purpose gives the 
 readers of the journal the sort of words and the sort of 
 thoughts they are used to, so on a larger scale, the 
 writers of an age, without thinking of it, give to the 
 readers of the age the sort of words and the sort of
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT. 245 
 
 thoughts — the special literature, in fact — which those 
 readers like and prize. And not only does the writer, 
 without thinking, choose the sort of style and meaning 
 which are most in vogue, but the writer is himself chosen. 
 A writer does not begin to write in the traditional rhythm 
 of an age unless he feels, or fancies he feels, a sort of 
 aptitude for writing it ; any more than a writer tries 
 to write in a journal in which the style is uncongenial 
 or impossible to him. Indeed, if he mistakes, he is soon 
 weeded out ; the editor rejects, the age will not read, 
 his compositions. How painfully this traditional style 
 cram.ps great writers whom it happens not to suit is 
 curiously seen in Wordsworth, who was bold enough to 
 l)reak through it, and, at the risk of contemporary 
 neglect, to frame a style of his own. But he did so 
 knowingly, and he did so with an effort." 
 
 As Mr. Bagehot's life advanced ill-health came to live 
 with him ; and to a man of his vivacity, adaptability, 
 and undying curiosity, it must have been hard whilst 
 still in the middle passage of life to scent the night 
 air ; but there are few traces of despondency to be 
 found in his writings. I can call to mind but one ; 
 it occurs in Physics and Politics, where he says : " What 
 writers are expected to write they write, or else they 
 do not write at all, but, like the writer of these lines, 
 stop discouraged, live disheartened, and die, leaving 
 fragments which their friends treasure, but a rushing 
 world never heeds." 
 
 Die Mr. Bagehot did in his fifty-first year, and it is 
 easy to understand how a man of his grasp and scope 
 would be disposed to cast an almost contemptuous 
 glance upon his actual intellectual output. Well can I 
 lancy his saying, " Call you thai a life's work ? " " The 
 })etty done, the undone vast " form a contrast Mr. 
 Bagehot was the last man in the world to forget. But 
 books, like their authors, have strange fates, and Mr. 
 Bagehot's books have a destiny yet unfulfilled. 
 
 His first volume of collected essays, published in
 
 246 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 1858 under the odd title Estimates of some Englishmen 
 and Scotchmen, attracted the attention of a very few ; 
 but the same essays, when reprinted after his death 
 with additions in two vokimes and called Literary 
 Studies, reached a large number of readers, many of 
 whom belonged to the predatory classes, who read 
 books to make use of them. All Mr. Basrehot's other 
 books had, considering their subjects, a really great 
 sale. My copy of Lombard Street is, I notice, in the 
 eighth edition. In the United States a large Insurance 
 Company presented all their policy-holders with a com- 
 plete set of Mr. Bagehot's works, printed and carefully 
 revised (he was a somewhat careless writer) for the 
 occasion. This I have been told on high authority. 
 The special edition I have never seen. The example 
 is one to be commended. 
 
 It can therefore hardly be said that the rushing world 
 has paid no heed to what Mr. Bagehot humbly called 
 his fragments. His friends still treasure them, but the 
 popular judgment is likely to prove on their side. It 
 is not wise to despise the popular judgment. Mr. Bage- 
 hot writes of John Austin : " Mr. Austin was always 
 talking of the formidable commimity of fools." He had 
 no popularity, little wish for popularity, little respect 
 for popular judgment. This is a great error. The 
 world is often wiser than any philosopher. " There is 
 someone," said a great man of the world, " wiser than 
 Voltaire and wiser than Napoleon ; c'est tout le monde." 
 
 Give the world time and it will be right, and the 
 last person it will willingly forget is a writer like Mr. 
 Bagehot, who loved life better than books. 
 
 Doubtless Mr. Bagehot's delight !u] humoursomeness 
 has a little interfered with his reputation as a philosopher, 
 moral and political. It is a great shame, but one always 
 remembers the playfulness of a writer — some purely 
 human touch of his — so much better than one does his 
 philosophy or history. Mr. Bagehot in his essay on 
 Lord Althorp has said some really excellent things
 
 ' WALTER BAGEHOT. 247 
 
 about the great Reform Bill — things any man is the 
 better for remembering ; but the thing I always re- 
 member is the reason he gives for Lord Althorp's leaving 
 off hunting after his wife's death, a loss he felt with 
 terrible keenness. " He gave up," says Mr. Bagehot, 
 " not only society, which was no great trial, but also 
 hunting, not because he believed it to be wrong, but 
 because he did not think it seemly or suitable that a 
 man after such a loss should be so very happy as he 
 knew hunting would make him." 
 
 No one but Bagehot could have given this sentence 
 the peculiar twist it now possesses. 
 
 How admirable, too, is his well-known jest, " A man's 
 mother is his misfortune ; his wife is his fault ; " yet 
 in a philosopher and economist such merriment is 
 dangerous. But humour — particularly when it is good- 
 humour — though it may sometimes get in a man's way, 
 is never a permanent obstacle to his fame. 
 
 My time is up, and I have said very little. My 
 object was not to give a precis of Mr. Bagehot's books 
 —that must have been dull — or to assign him his true 
 place in the providential order of the world — that would 
 have been impertinent — but merely to shake the tree, 
 so that you might see for yourselves, as the fruit fell 
 from it, what a splendid crop it bears. 
 
 To know Walter Bagehot through his books is one 
 of the good things of life.
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 
 
 ONE is often tempted of the devil to forswear the 
 study of history altogether as the pursuit of the 
 Unknowable. " How is it possible," he whispers in 
 our ear, as we stand gloomily regarding the portly calf- 
 bound volumes without which no gentleman's library 
 is complete, " how is it possible to suppose that you 
 have there, on your shelves, the actual facts of history 
 —a true record of what men, dead long ago, felt and 
 thought ? " Yet, if we have not, I for one, though of 
 a literary turn, would sooner spend my leisure playing 
 skittles with boors than in reading sonorous lies in stout 
 volumes. 
 
 " It is not so much," wilily insinuates the Tempter, 
 " that these renowned authors lack knowledge. Their 
 habit of giving an occasional reference (though the 
 verification of these is usually left to the mialignancy 
 of a rival and less popular historian) argues at least some 
 reading. No ; what is wanting is ignorance, carefully 
 acquired and studiously maintained. This is no para- 
 dox. To carry the truisms, theories, laws, language of 
 to-day, along with you in your historical pursuits, is to 
 turn the muse of history upside down — a most dis- 
 respectful proceeding ; and yet to ignore them — to for- 
 get all about them — to hang them up with your hat 
 and coat in the hall, to remain there whilst you sit in 
 the library composing your immortal work, which is so 
 happily to combine all that is best in Gibbon and Mac- 
 aulay — a sneerless Gibbon and an impartial Macaulay — 
 is a task which, if it be not impossible, is, at all events, 
 of huge difficulty. 
 
 " Another blemish in English historical work has
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 249 
 
 been noticed by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, and may 
 therefore be referred to by me without offence. Your 
 standard historians, having no imnatural regard for 
 their most indefatigable readers, the wives and daughters 
 of England, feel it incumbent upon them to pass over, 
 as unfit for dainty ears and dulcet tones, facts, and 
 nimours of facts, which none the less often determined 
 events by stirring the strong feelings of your ancestors, 
 whose conduct, unless explained by this light, must 
 remain enigmatical. 
 
 " When, to these anachronisms of thought and omis- 
 sions of fact, you have added the dishonesty of the 
 partisan historian and the false glamour of the pictur- 
 esque one, you will be so good as to proceed to find the 
 present value of history ! " 
 
 Thus far the Enemy of Mankind. 
 
 An admirable lady orator is reported lately to have 
 " brought down " Exeter Hall by observing, "in a low 
 but penetrating voice," that the devil was a very stupid 
 person. It is true that Ben Jonson is on the side of 
 the lady, but I am far too orthodox to entertain any 
 such opinion ; and though I have, in this instance of 
 history, so far resisted him as to have refrained from 
 sending my standard historians to the auction mart — 
 where, indeed, with the almost single exception of Mr. 
 Grote's History of Greece (the octavo edition in twelve 
 volumes), prices rule so low as to make cartage a con- 
 sideration — I have still of late found myself turning off 
 the turnpike of history to loiter down the primrose 
 paths of men's memoirs of themselves and their times. 
 
 Here at least, so we argue, we are comparatively safe. 
 Anachronisms of thought are impossible ; omissions out 
 of regard for female posterity unlikely, and as for party 
 spirit, if found, it forms part of what lawyers call the 
 res gestce, and has therefore a value of its own. Against 
 the perils of the picturesque, who will insure us ? 
 
 But when we have said all this, and, sick of prosing, 
 would begin reading, the number of really readable
 
 250 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 memoirs is soon found to be but few. This is, indeed, 
 unfortunate ; for it launches us off on another prose- 
 journey by provoking the question, What makes mem- 
 oirs interesting ? 
 
 Is it necessary that they should be the record of a 
 noble character ? Certainly not. We remember Pepys, 
 who — well, never mind what he does. We call to mind 
 Cellini ; he runs behind a fellow-creature, and with 
 " admirable address " sticks a dagger in the nape of 
 his neck, and long afterwards records the fact, almost 
 with reverence, in his life's story. Can anything be 
 more revolting than some portions of the revelation 
 Benjamin Franklin was pleased to make of himself in 
 writing ? And what about Rousseau ? Yet, when we 
 have pleaded guilty for these men, a modem Savonarola, 
 who had persuaded us to make a bonfire of their works, 
 would do well to keep a sharp look-out, lest at the last 
 moment we should be found substituting Pearson on 
 the Creed for Pepys, Coleridge's Friend for Cellini, John 
 Foster's Essays for Franklin, and Roget's Bridgewater 
 Treatise for Rousseau. 
 
 Neither will it do to suppose that the interest of a 
 memoir depends on its writer having been concerned in 
 great affairs, or lived in stirring times. The dullest 
 memoirs written even in English, and not excepting 
 those maimed records of life known as " religious biog- 
 raphy," are the work of men of the " attache " order, 
 who, having been mixed up in events which the 
 newspapers of the day chronicled as " Important In- 
 telligence," were not unnaturally led to cherish the 
 belief that people would like to have from their pens 
 full, true, and particular accounts of all that then hap- 
 pened, or, as they, if moderns, would probably prefer 
 to say, transpired. But the World, whatever an over- 
 bold Exeter Hall may say of her old associate the Devil, 
 is not a stupid person, and declines to be taken in twice ; 
 and turning a deaf ear to the most painstaking and 
 trustworthy accounts of deceased Cabinets and silenced
 
 . ' A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 251 
 
 Conferences, goes journeying along her broad way, 
 chuckling over some old joke in Boswell, and reading 
 with fresh delight the all-about-nothing letters of Cowper 
 and Lamb. 
 
 How then does a man — be he good or bad — big or 
 little — a philosopher or a fribble— St. Paul or Horace 
 Walpole — make his memoirs interesting ? 
 
 To say that the one thing needful is individuality 
 is not quite enough. To be an individual is the in- 
 evitable, and in most cases the unenviable, lot of every 
 child of Adam. Each one of us has, like a tin soldier, 
 a stand of his own. To have an individuality is no sort 
 of distinction, but to be able to make it felt in writing 
 is not only distinction but under favouring circumstances 
 immortality. 
 
 Have we not all some correspondents, though prob- 
 ably but few, from whom we never receive a letter with- 
 out feeling sure that we shall find inside the envelope 
 something written that will make us either glow with the 
 >varmth or shiver with the cold of our correspondent's 
 life ? But how many other people are to be found, 
 good, honest people, too, who no sooner take pen in 
 hand than they stamp imreality on every word they 
 write. It is a hard fate, but they cannot escape it. 
 They may be as literal as the late Earl Stanhope, as 
 painstaking as Bishop Stubbs, as much in earnest as 
 Mr. Gladstone — their lives may be noble, their aims 
 high, but no sooner do they seek to narrate to us their 
 story than we find it is not to be. To hearken to them 
 is past praying for. We turn from them as from a 
 guest who has outstayed his welcome. Their writing 
 wearies, irritates, disgusts. 
 
 Here then, at last, we have the two classes of memoir 
 writers^those who manage to make themselves felt, 
 and those who do not. Of the latter, a very little is a 
 great deal too much ; of the former we can never have 
 enough. 
 
 What a liar was Benvenuto Cellini ! — who can believe
 
 252 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 a word he says ? To hang a dog on his oath would be 
 a judicial murder. Yet when we lay down his memoirs 
 and let our thoughts travel back to those far-off days 
 he tells us of, there we see him standing, in bold relief, 
 against the black sky of the past, the very man he was. 
 Not more surely did he, with that rare skill of his, stamp 
 the image of Clement A'^II. on the papal currency than 
 he did the impress of his own singular personality upon 
 every word he spoke and every sentence he wrote. 
 
 We ought, of course, to hate him, but do we ? A 
 murderer he has written himself down. A liar he 
 stands self-convicted of being. Were anyone in the 
 nether world bold enough to call him thief, it may be 
 doubted whether Rhadamanthus would award him the 
 damages for which we may be certain he would loudly 
 clamour. Why do we not hate him ? Listen to him ! 
 
 " Upon my uttering these words, there was a general 
 outcry, the noblemen affirming that I promised too 
 much. But one of them, who was a great philosopher, 
 said in my favour, ' From the admirable symmetry of 
 shape and happy physiognomy of this young man, I ven- 
 ture to engage that he will perform all he promises, and 
 more.' The Pope replied, ' I am of the same opinion ; ' 
 then calling Trajano, his gentleman of the bedchamber, 
 he ordered him to fetch me five hundred ducats." 
 
 And so it always ended ; suspicions, aroused most 
 reasonably, allaj^ed most unreasonably, and then — 
 ducats. He deserved hanging, but he died in his bed. 
 He wrote his own memoirs after a fashion that ought to 
 have brought posthumous justice upon him, and made 
 them a literary gibbet, on which he should swing, a 
 creaking horror, for all time ; but nothing of the sort 
 has happened. The rascal is so symmetrical, and his 
 physiognomy, as it gleams upon us through the centuries, 
 so happy, that we cannot withhold our ducats, though 
 we may accompany the gift with a shower of abuse. 
 
 This only proves the profundity of an observation 
 made by Mr. Bagehot — a man who carried away into
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 253 
 
 the next world more originality of thought than is now 
 to be found in the Three Estates of the Realm. Whilst 
 remarking upon the extraordinary reputation of the late 
 Francis Horner and the trifling cost he was put to in 
 supporting it, ;Mr. Bagehot said that it proved the 
 advantage of " keeping an atmosphere." 
 
 The common air of heaven sharpens men's judg- 
 ments. Poor Horner, but for that kept atmosphere of 
 his, always surrounding him, would have been bluntly 
 asked, " What he had done since he was breeched," 
 and in reply he could only have muttered something 
 about the currency. As for our especial rogue Cellini, 
 the question would probably have assumed this shape : 
 " Rascal, name the crime you have not committed, and 
 account for the omission." 
 
 But these awkward questions are not put to the 
 lucky people who keep their own atmospheres. The 
 critics, before they can get at them, have to step out of 
 the everyday air, where only achievements count and 
 the Decalogue still goes for something, into the kept 
 atmosphere, which they have no sooner breathed than 
 they begin to see things differently, and to measure the 
 object thus surrounded with a tape of its own manu- 
 facture. Horner — poor, ugly, a man neither of words 
 nor deeds— becomes one of our great men ; a nation 
 mourns his loss and erects his statue in the Abbey. Mr. 
 Bagehot gives several instances of the same kind, but 
 he does not mention Cellini, who is, however, in his 
 own way, an admirable example. 
 
 You open his book — a Pharisee of the Pharisees. 
 Lying indeed ! Why, you hate prevarication. As for 
 murder, your friends know you too well to mention the 
 subject in your hearing, except in immediate connection 
 with capital punishment. You are, of course, willing 
 to make some allowance for Cellini's time and place — 
 the first half of the sixteenth century and Italy. " Yes," 
 you remark, " CeUini shall have strict justice at my 
 hands." So you say as you settle yourself in your
 
 254 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 chair and begin to read. We seem to hear the rascal 
 laughing in his grave. His spirit breathes upon you 
 from his book — peeps at you roguishly as you turn the 
 pages. His atmosphere surrounds you ; you smile 
 when you ought to frown, chuckle when you should 
 groan, and — O final triumph ! — laugh aloud when, if 
 you had a rag of principle left, you would fling the 
 book into the fire. Your poor moral sense turns away 
 with a sigh, and patiently awaits the conclusion of the 
 second volume. 
 
 How cautiously does he begin, how gently does he 
 win your ear by his seductive piety ! I quote from 
 Mr. Roscoe's translation : — 
 
 " It is a duty incumbent on upright and credible men 
 of all ranks, who have performed anything noble or 
 praiseworthy, to record, in their own writing, the events 
 of their lives ; yet they should not commence this 
 honourable task before thev have oassed their fortieth 
 
 V J. 
 
 year. Such, at least, is my opinion, now that I have 
 completed my fifty-eighth year, and am settled in 
 Florence, where, considering the numerous ills that 
 constantly attend human life, I perceive that I have 
 never before been so free from vexations and calamities, 
 or possessed of so great a share of content and health 
 as at this period. Looking back on some delightful 
 and happ3^ events of my life, and on many ^misfortunes 
 so truly overwhelming that the appalling retrospect 
 makes me wonder how I have reached this age in vigour 
 and prosperity, through God's goodness I have resolved 
 to publish an account of my life ; and ... I must, in 
 commencing my narrative, satisfy the public on some 
 few points to which its curiosity is usually directed; 
 the first of which is to ascertain whether a man is 
 descended from a virtuous and ancient family. ... I 
 shall therefore now proceed to inform tlie reader how 
 it pleased God that I should come into the world." 
 
 So you read on page i ; what you read on page 191 
 is this : —
 
 - A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 255 
 
 " Just after sunset, about eight o'clock, as this musque- 
 teer stood at his door with his sword in his hand, when 
 he had done supper, I with great address came close up 
 to him with a long dagger, and gave him a violent back- 
 handed stroke, which I aimed at his neck. He instantly 
 turned round, and the blow, falling directly upon his left 
 shoulder, broke the whole bone of it ; upon which he 
 dropped his sword, quite overcome by the pain, and 
 took to his heels. I pursued, and in four steps came up 
 with him, when, raising the dagger over his head, which 
 he lowered down, I hit him exactly upon the nape of 
 the neck. The weapon penetrated so deep that, though 
 I made a great effort to recover it again, I found it 
 impossible." 
 
 So much for murder. Now for manslaughter, or rather 
 Cellini's notion of manslaughter. 
 
 " Pompeo entered an apothecary's shop at the corner 
 of the Chiavica, about some business, and stayed there 
 for some time. I was told he had boasted of having 
 bullied me, but it turned out a fatal adventure to him. 
 Just as I arrived at that quarter he was coming out of 
 the shop, and his bravoes, ha\ang made an opening, 
 formed a circle round him. I thereupon clapped my 
 hand to a sharp dagger, and having forced my way through 
 the file of ruffians, laid hold of him by the throat, so 
 quickly and with such presence of mind, that there was 
 not one of his friends could defend him. I pulled him 
 towards me to give him a blow in front, but he turned 
 his face about through excess of terror, so that I wounded 
 him exactly under the ear ; and upon repeating my blow, 
 he fell down dead. It had never been my intention to 
 kill him, but blows are not always under command." 
 
 We must all feel that it would never have done to 
 have begun with these passages, but long before the 
 igist page has been reached Cellini has retreated into 
 his own atmosphere, and the scales of justice have been 
 hopelessly tampered with. 
 
 That such a man as this encountered suffering in the
 
 256 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 course of his life, should be matter for satisfaction to 
 every well-regulated mind ; but, somehow or another, 
 you find yourself pitying the fellow as he narrates the 
 hardships he endured in the Castle of S. Angelo. He is 
 so symmetrical a rascal ! Just hear him ! listen to what 
 he saj^s well on in the second volume, after the httle 
 incidents already quoted : 
 
 " Having at length recovered my strength and vigour, 
 after I had composed myself and resumed my cheerful- 
 ness of mind, I continued to read my Bible, and so 
 accustomed my eyes to that darkness, that though I 
 was at first able to read only an hour and a half, I could 
 at length read three hours. I then reflected on the 
 wonderful power of the Almighty upon the hearts of 
 simple men, who had carried their enthusiasm so far as 
 to believe firmly that God would indulge them in all 
 they wished for ; and I promised myself the assistance 
 of the Most High, as well through His mercy as on 
 account of my innocence. Thus turning constantly to 
 the Supreme Being, sometimes in prayer, sometimes in 
 silent meditation on the divine goodness, I was totally 
 engrossed by these heavenly reflections, and came to 
 take such delight in pious meditations that I no longer 
 thought of past misfortunes. On the contrary, I was 
 all day long singing psalms and many other compositions 
 of mine, in which I celebrated and praised the Deity." 
 
 Thus torn from their context, these passages may seem 
 to supply the best possible falsification of the previous 
 statement that CelUni told the truth about himself. 
 Judged by these passages alone, he may appear a hypo- 
 crite of an unusually odious description. But it is only 
 necessary to read his book to dispel that notion. He 
 tells lies about other people ; he repeats long conversa- 
 tions, sounding his own praises, during which, as his 
 own narrative shows, he was not present ; he exagger- 
 ates his own exploits, his sufferings — even, it may be, 
 his crimes ; but when we lay down his book, we ieel 
 we are saying good-bye to a man whom we know.
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 257 
 
 He has introduced himself to us, and thougli doubt- 
 less we prefer saints to sinners, we may be forgiven for 
 hking the company of a hve rogue better than that of 
 the lay-figures and empty clock-cases labelled with dis- 
 tinguished names, who are to be found doing duty for 
 men in the works of our standard historians. Wliat 
 would we not give to know Julius Caesar one half as well 
 as we know this outrageous rascal ? The saints of the 
 earth, too, how shadowy they are ! ^Vhich of them do 
 we really know ? Excepting one or two ancient and 
 modern Quietists, there is hardly one amongst the whole 
 number who being dead yet speaketh. Their memoirs 
 far too often only reveal to us a hazy something, cer- 
 tainly not recognisable as a man. This is generally the 
 fault of their editors, who, though men themselves, con- 
 fine their editorial duties to going up and down the 
 diaries and papers of the departed saint, and obliterating 
 all human touches. This they do for the " better pre- 
 vention of scandals ; " and one cannot deny that they 
 attain their end, though they pay dearly for it. 
 
 I shall never forget the start I gave when, on reading 
 some old book about India, I came across an after- 
 dinner jest of Henry Martyn's. The thought of Henry 
 Martyn laughing over the walnuts and the wine was 
 almost, as Robert Browning's unknown painter says, 
 " too wildly dear : " and to this day I cannot help think- 
 ing that there must be a mistake somewhere. 
 
 To return to Cellini, and to conclude. On laying 
 down his " Memoirs," let us be careful to recall our 
 banished moral sense, and make peace with her, by 
 passing a final judgment on this desperate sinner, which 
 perhaps, after all, we cannot do better than by employ- 
 ing language of his own concerning a monk, a fellow- 
 prisoner of his, who never, so far as appears, murdered 
 anybody, but of whom Cellini none the less felt himself 
 entitled to say : 
 
 " I admired his shining qualities, but his odious vices 
 I freely censured and held in abhorrence." 
 
 9
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 
 
 THE world is governed by logic. Truth as well as 
 Providence is always on the side of the strongest 
 battalions. An illogical opinion only requires rope enough 
 to hang itself. 
 
 Middle men may often seem to be earning for them- 
 selves a place in Universal Biography, and middle posi- 
 tions frequently seem to afford the final solution of vexed 
 questions ; but this double delusion seldom outlives a 
 generation. The world wearies of the men, for, attrac- 
 tive as their characters may be, they are for ever telling 
 us, generally at great length, how it comes about that 
 they stand just where they do, and we soon tire of 
 explanations and forget apologists. The positions, too, 
 once hailed with such acclaim, so eagerly recognised as 
 the true refuges for poor mortals anxious to avoid being 
 run over by fast-driving logicians, how untenable do 
 they soon appear ! how quickly do they grow antiquated ! 
 how completely they are forgotten ! 
 
 The Via Media, alluring as is its direction, imposing 
 as are its portals, is, after all, only what Londoners call 
 a blind alley, leading nowhere. 
 
 " Ratiocination," says one of the most eloquent and 
 yet exact of modern writers,* " is the great principle of 
 order in thinking : it reduces a chaos into harmony, 
 it catalogues the accumulations of knowledge ; it maps 
 out for us the relations of its separate departments. It 
 enables the independent intellects of many acting and 
 reacting on each other to bring their collective force 
 to bear upon the same subject-matter. If language is 
 an inestimable gift to man, the logical faculty prepares 
 * Dr. Newman in the Grammar of Assent.
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 259 
 
 it for our use. Though it does not go so far as to 
 ascertain truth, still, it teaches us the direction in which 
 truth lies, and how propositions lie towards each other. 
 Nor is it a slight benefit to know what is needed for the 
 proof of a point, what is wanting in a theory, how a 
 theory hangs together, and what will follow if it he ad- 
 mitted." 
 
 This great principle of order in thinking is what we 
 are too apt to forget. " Give us," cry many, " safety 
 in our opinions, and let who will be logical. An English- 
 man's creed is compromise ; his bete noire extravagance. 
 We are not saved by syllogism." Possibly not ; but 
 yet there can be no safety in an illogical position, and 
 one's chances of snug quarters in eternity cannot surely 
 he. bettered by our believing at one and the same moment 
 of time self -contradictory propositions. 
 
 But, talk as we may, for the bulk of mankind it will 
 doubtless always remain true that a truth does not ex- 
 clude its contradictory. Darwin and Moses are both 
 right. Between the Gospel according to Matthew and 
 the Gospel according to Matthew Arnold there is no 
 difference. 
 
 If the too apparent absurdity of this is pressed home, 
 the baffled illogician, persecuted in one position, flees 
 into another, and may be heard assuring his tormentor 
 that in a period like the present, which is so notoriously 
 transitional, a logician is as much out of place as a bull 
 in a china shop, and that unless he is quiet, and keeps 
 his tail well wrapped round his legs, the mischief he will 
 do to his neighbours' china creeds and delicate porcelain 
 opinions is shocking to contemplate. But this excuse is 
 no longer admissible. The age has remained transitional 
 so unconscionably long, that we cannot consent to forego 
 the use of logic any longer. For a decade or two it was 
 all well enough, but when it comes to fourscore years 
 one's patience gets exhausted. Carlyle's celebrated 
 Essay, Characteristics^ in which this transitional 
 period is diagnosed wth unrivalled acumen, is half a
 
 26o SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 century old. Men have been born in it — have grown 
 old in it — have died in it. It has outUved the old Court 
 of Chancery. It is high time the spurs of logic were 
 applied to its broken-winded sides. 
 
 Notwithstanding the obstinate preference the " bulk 
 of mankind " alwa3^s show for demonstrable errors over 
 undeniable truths, the number of persons is daily increas- 
 ing who have begun to put a value upon mental coherency 
 and to appreciate the charm of a logical position. 
 
 It was common talk at one time to express astonish- 
 ment at the extending influence of the Church of Rome, 
 and to wonder how people who went about unaccom- 
 panied by keepers could submit their reason to the 
 Papacy, with her open rupture with science and her evil 
 historical reputation. From astonishment to contempt 
 is but a step. We first open wide our eyes and then 
 our mouths. 
 
 " Lord So-and-so, his coat bedropt with wax. 
 All Peter's chains about his waist, his back 
 Brave with the needlework of Noodledom, 
 Believes, — ^who wonders and who cares ? " 
 
 It used to be thought a sufficient explanation to say 
 either that the man was an ass or that it was all those 
 Ritualists. But gradually it became apparent that the 
 pervert was not always an ass, and that the Ritualists 
 had nothing whatever to do with it. If a man's tastes 
 run in the direction of Gothic Architecture, free seats, 
 daily services, frequent communions, lighted candles, and 
 Church millinery, they can all be gratified, not to say 
 glutted, in the Church of his baptism. 
 
 It is not the Roman ritual, however splendid, nor her 
 ceremonial, however spiritually significant, nor her system 
 of doctrine, as well arranged as Roman law and as subtle 
 as Greek philosophy, that makes Romanists nowadays. 
 
 It is when a person of religious spirit and strong con- 
 victions as to the truth and importance of certain dogmas 
 — few in number it may be ; perhaps only one, the 
 Being of God — first becomes fully alive to the tendency
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 261 
 
 and direction of the most active opinions of the day ; 
 when, his alarm quickening his insight, he reads as it 
 were between the hnes of books, magazines, and news- 
 papers ; when, struck with a sudden trepidation, he 
 asks, " Where is this to stop ? how can I, to the extent 
 of a poor abihty, help to stem this tide of opinion which 
 daily increases its vohime and floods new territory ? " — 
 then it is that the Church of Rome stretches out her 
 arms and seems to say, " Quarrel not with your destiny, 
 which is to become a Catholic. You may see difficulties 
 and you may have doubts. They abound everywhere. 
 You will never get rid of them. But I, and I alone, 
 have never coquetted with the spirit of the age. I, 
 and I alone, have never submitted my creeds to be over- 
 hauled by infidels. Join me, acknowledge my authority, 
 and you need dread no side attack and fear no charge 
 of inconsistency. Succeed finally I must, but even were 
 I to fail, yours would be the satisfaction of knowing 
 that you had never held an opinion, used an argument, 
 or said a word, that could fairly have served the pur- 
 pose of your triumphant enemy." 
 
 At such a crisis as this in a man's life, he does not 
 ask himself. How little can I believe ? With how few 
 miracles can I get off ? — he demands sound armour, 
 sharp weapons, and, above all, firm ground to stand 
 on — a good footing for his faith — and these he is apt 
 to fancy he can get from Rome alone. 
 
 No doubt he has to pay for them, but the charm of 
 the Church of Rome is this : when you have paid her 
 price you get your goods — a neat assortment of coherent, 
 interdependent, logical opinions. 
 
 It is not much use, under such circumstances, to call 
 the convert a coward, and facetiously to inquire of him 
 what he really thinks about St. Januarius. Nobody ever 
 began with Januarius. I have no doubt a good many 
 Romanists would be glad to be quit of him. He is part 
 of the price they have to pay in order that their title 
 to the possession of other miracles may be quieted. If
 
 262 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 you can convince the convert that he can disbelieve 
 Januarius of Naples without losing his grip of Paul of 
 Tarsus, you will be well employed ; but if you begin 
 with merry gibes, and end with contemptuously demand- 
 ing that he should have done with such nonsense and 
 fling the rubbish overboard, he will draw in his horns, 
 and perhaps, if he knows his Browning, murmur to 
 himself : — 
 
 " To such a process I discern no end. 
 Cutting off one excrescence to see two ; 
 Tliere is ever a next in size, now grown as big. 
 That meets the knife. I cut and cut again : 
 First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last 
 But Fichte's clever cut at God Himself ? " 
 
 To suppose that no person is logically entitled to fear 
 God and to ridicule Januarius at the same time is doubt- 
 less extravagant, but to do so requires care. There is 
 an " order in thinking. We must consider how proposi- 
 tions lie towards each other — how a theory hangs to- 
 gether, and what will follow if it be admitted." 
 
 It is eminently desirable that we should consider the 
 logical termini of our opinions. Travelling up to town 
 last month from the West, a gentleman got into my 
 carriage at Swindon, who, as we moved oft and began 
 to rush through the country, became unable to restrain 
 his delight at our speed. His face shone with pride, as 
 if he vs^ere pulling us himself. " What a charming 
 train ! " he exclaimed. " This is the pace I like to travel 
 at." I indicated assent. Shortly afterwards, when our 
 windows rattled as we rushed through Reading, he let 
 one of them down in a hurry, and cried out in consterna- 
 tion, " WTiy, I want to get out here." " Charming 
 train," I observed. " Just the pace I like to travel at ; 
 but it is awkward if you want to go anywhere except 
 Paddington." My companion made no reply ; his face 
 ceased to shine, and as he sat whizzing past his dinner, 
 I mentally compared his recent exultation with that of 
 those who in the present day extol much of its spirit, 
 use many of its arguments, and partake in most of its
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 263 
 
 triumphs, in utter ignorance as to whitherwards it is 
 all tending as surely as the Great Western rails run into 
 Paddington. " Poor victims ! " said a distinguished 
 divine, addressing the Evangelicals, then rejoicing over 
 their one legal victory, the " Gorham Case ; " "do you 
 dream that the spirit of the age is working for you, or 
 are you secretly prepared to go further than you avow ? " 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold's friends, the Nonconformists, are, 
 as a rule, nowadays, bad logicians. What Dr. Newman 
 has said of the Tractarians is (with but a verbal altera- 
 tion) also true of a great many Nonconformists : " More- 
 over, there are those among them who have very little 
 grasp of principle, even from the natural temper of their 
 minds. They see this thing is beautiful, and that is 
 in the Fathers, and a third is expedient, and a fourth 
 pious ; but of their connection one with another, their 
 hidden essence and their life, and the bearing of external 
 matters upon each and upon all, they have no perception 
 01: even suspicion. They do not look at things as part 
 01 a whole, and often will sacrifice the most important 
 and precious portions of their creed, or make irremediable 
 concessions in word or in deed, from mere simplicity and 
 want of apprehension." 
 
 We have heard of grown-up Baptists asked to become, 
 and actually becoming, godfathers and godmothers to 
 Episcopalian babies ! What terrible confusion is here ! 
 A point is thought to be of sufficient importance to 
 justify separation on account of it from the whole Chris- 
 tian Church, and yet not to be of importance enough 
 to debar the separatist from taking part in a ceremony 
 whose sole significance is that it gives the lie direct to 
 the point of separation. 
 
 But we all of us— Churchmen and Dissenters alike — 
 select our opinions far too much in the same fashion as 
 ladies are reported, I dare say quite falsely, to do their 
 afternoon's shopping — this thing because it is so pretty, 
 and that thing because it is so cheap. We pick and 
 choose, take and leave, approbate and reprobate in a
 
 264 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 breath. A familiar anecdote is never out of place. An 
 English captain, anxious to conciliate a savage king, 
 sent him on shore, for his own royal wear, an entire 
 dress suit. His majesty was graciously pleased to accept 
 the gift, and as it never occurred to the royal mind that 
 he could, by any possibility, wear all the things himself, 
 with kingly generosity he distributed what he did not 
 want amongst his Court. This done, he sent for the donor 
 to thank him in person. As the captain walked up the 
 beach, his majesty advanced to meet him, looking every 
 inch a king in the sober dignity of a dress-coat. The 
 waistcoat imparted an air of pensive melancholy that 
 mightily became the Prime Minister, whilst the Lord 
 Chamberlain, as he skipped to and fro in his white gloves, 
 looked a courtier indeed. The trousers had become the 
 subject of an unfortunate dispute, in the course of which 
 they had sustained such injuries as to be hardly recog- 
 nisable. The captain was convulsed with laughter. 
 
 But, in truth, the mental toilet of most of us is as 
 defective and almost as risible as was that of this savage 
 Court. We take on our opinions without paying heed to 
 conclusions, and the result is absurd. Better be without 
 any opinions at all. A naked savage is not necessarily 
 an undignified object ; but a savage in a dress-coat and 
 nothing else is, and must ever remain, a mockery and a 
 show. There is a great relativity about a dress-suit. 
 In the language of the logicians, the name of each article 
 not only denotes that particular, but connotes all the 
 rest. Hence it came about that that which, when worn 
 in its entirety, is so dull and decorous, became so pro- 
 vocative of Homeric laughter when distributed amongst 
 several wearers. 
 
 No person with the least tincture of taste can ever 
 weary of Dr. Newman, and no apology is therefore 
 offered for another quotation from his pages. In his 
 story. Loss and Gain, he makes one of his characters, 
 who has just become a Catholic, thus refer to the stock 
 Anglican divines, a class of writers who are, at all events,
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 265 
 
 immensely superior to the Ellicotts and Farrars of these 
 latter days : "I am embracing that creed which upholds 
 the divinity of tradition with Laud, consent of Fathers 
 with Beve]"idge, a visible Church with Bramhall, dogma 
 with Bull, the authority of the Pope with Thorndyke, 
 penance with Taylor, prayers for the dead with Ussher, 
 celibacy, asceticism, ecclesiastical discipline with Bing- 
 ham." What is this to say but that, according to the 
 Cardinal, our great English divines have divided the 
 Roman dress-suit amongst themselves ? 
 
 This particular charge may perhaps be untrue, but 
 with that I am not concerned. If it is not tiTie of them, 
 it is true of somebody else. " That is satisfactory so far 
 as Mr. Lydgate is concerned," says Mrs. Farebrother in 
 Middlemarch, with an air of precision ; " but as to 
 Bulstrode, the report may be true of some other son." 
 
 We must all be acquainted with the reckless way in 
 which people pluck opinions like flowers — a bud here, 
 and a leaf there. The bouquet is pretty to-day, but 
 yen must look for it to-morrow in the oven. 
 
 There is a sense in which it is quite true what our other 
 Cardinal has said about Ultramontanes, Anglicans, and 
 Orthodox Dissenters all being in the same boat. They 
 all of them enthrone Opinion, holding it to be, when 
 encased in certain dogmas. Truth Absolute. Conse- 
 quently they have all their martyrologies — the bright 
 roll-call of those who have defied Caesar even unto death, 
 or at all events gaol. They all, therefore, put something 
 above the State, and apply tests other than those recog- 
 nised in our law courts. 
 
 The precise way by which they come at their opinions 
 is only detail. Be it an infallible Church, an infallible 
 Book, or an inward spiritual grace, the outcome is the 
 same. The Romanist, of course, has to bear the first 
 brunt, and is the most obnoxious to the State ; but he 
 must be slow of comprehension and void of imagination 
 who cannot conceive of circumstances arising in this 
 country when the State should assert it to be its duty to
 
 266 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 violate what even Protestants believe to be the moral 
 law of God. Therefore, in opposing Ultramontanism, 
 as it surely ought to be opposed, care ought to be taken 
 by those who are not prepared to go all lengths with 
 Caesar, to select their weapons of attack, not from his 
 armoury, but from their own. 
 
 How ridiculous it is to see some estiniable man who 
 subscribes to the Bible Society, and takes what he calls 
 " a warm interest " in the heathen, chuckling over some 
 scoffing article in a newspaper — say about a Church 
 Congress — and never perceiving, so unaccustomed is he 
 to examine directions, that he is all the time laughing at 
 his own folly ! Aunt Nesbit, in Dred, considered Gibbon 
 a very pious writer. ' ' I am sure, ' ' says she, ' ' he makes the 
 most religious reflections all along. I liked him particu- 
 larly on that account." This poor lady had some excuse. 
 A vein of irony like Gibbon's is not struck upon every 
 day ; but readers of newspapers, when they laugh, ought 
 to be able to perceive what it is they are laughing at. 
 
 Logic is the prime necessity of the hour. Decom- 
 position and transformation is going on all around us, 
 but far too slowly. Some opinions, bold and erect as 
 they may still stand, are in reality but empty shells. 
 One shove would be fatal. Why is it not given ? 
 
 The world is full of doleful creatures, who move about 
 demanding our sympathy. I have nothing to offer them 
 but doses of logic, and stern commands to move on or 
 fall back. Catholics in distress about Infallibility ; 
 Protestants devoting themselves to the dismal task of 
 paring down the dimensions of this miracle, and reduc- 
 ing the credibility of that one — as if any appreciable 
 relief from the burden of faith could be so obtained ; 
 sentimental sceptics, who, after labouring to demolish 
 what they call the chimera of superstition, fall to weeping 
 as they remember they have now no lies to teach their 
 children ; democrats who are frightened at the rough voice 
 of the people and aristocrats flirting with democracy. Lo- 
 gic, if it cannot cure, might at least silence these gentry.
 
 THE MUSE OF HISTORY. 
 
 TWO distinguished men of letters, each an admirable 
 representative of his University — Mr. John Morley 
 and Professor Seeley — have published opinions on the 
 subject of history, which, though very likely to prove 
 right, deserve to be carefully considered before assent is 
 bestowed upon them. 
 
 Mr. Morley, when President of the Midland Institute, 
 and speaking in the Town Hall of Birmingham, said : 
 " I do not in the least want to know what happened in 
 the past, except as it enables me to see my way more 
 clearly through what is happening to-day," and this 
 same indifference is professed, though certainly nowhere 
 displayed, in other parts of Mr. Morley 's writings.* 
 
 Professor Seeley never makes his point quite so sharp 
 as this, and probably would hesitate to do so, but in 
 the Expansion of England he expounds a theory of his- 
 tory largely based upon an indifference like that which 
 Mr. Morley professed at Birmingham. His book opens 
 thus : " It is a favourite maxim of mine that history, 
 while it should be scientific in its method, should pur- 
 sue a practical object — that is, it should not merely 
 gratify the reader's curiosity about the past, but modify 
 his view of the present and his forecast of the future. 
 Now, if this maxim be sound, the history of England ought 
 to end with something that might be called a moral." 
 
 This, it must be admitted, is a large order. The task 
 of the historian, as here explained, is not merely to tell 
 us the story of the past, and thus gratify our curiosity, 
 but, pursuing a practical object, to seek to modify our 
 views of the present and help us in our forecasts of the 
 
 * Critical Miscellanies, vol. iii., p. 9.
 
 268 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 future, and this the historian is to do, not unconsciously 
 and incidentally, but deliberately and of set purpose. One 
 can well understand how history, so written, will usually 
 begin with a maxim, and invariably end with a moral. 
 
 What we are afterwards told in the same book follows 
 in logical sequence upon our first quotation — namely, 
 that " history fades into mere literature (the italics are 
 ours) when it loses sight of its relation to practical 
 politics." In this grim sentence we read the dethrone- 
 ment of Clio. The poor thing must forswear her father's 
 house, her tuneful sisters, the invocation of the poet, 
 the worship of the dramatist, and keep her terms at the 
 Universit}/, where, if she is really studious and steady, 
 and avoids literary companions (which ought not to be 
 difficult), she may hope some day to be received into the 
 Royal Society as a second-rate science. The people who 
 do not usually go to the Royal Society will miss their 
 old playmate from her accustomed slopes, but, even were 
 they to succeed in tracing her to her new home, access 
 would be denied them ; for Professor Seeley, that stern 
 custodian, has his answer ready for all such seekers. "If 
 you want recreation, you must find it in Poetry, particu- 
 larly Lyrical Poetry. Try Shelley. We can no longer 
 allow you to disport yourselves in the Fields of History 
 as if they were a mere playground. Clio is enclosed." 
 
 At present, however, this is not quite the case ; for 
 the old literary traditions are still alive, and prove 
 somewhat irritating to Professor Seeley, who, though 
 one of the most even-tempered of writers, is to be 
 found almost angry with Thackeray, a charming person, 
 who, as we all know, had, after his lazy literary fashion, 
 made an especial study of Queen Anne's time, and who 
 cherished the pleasant fancy that a man might lie in 
 the heather with a pipe in his mouth, and yet, if he had 
 only an odd volume of the Spectator or the Tatler in his 
 hand, be learning history all the time. " As we read 
 in these delightful pages," says the author of Esmond, 
 " the past age returns ; the England of our ancestors is
 
 THE MUSE OF HISTORY. 269 
 
 revivified ; the Maypole rises in the Strand ; the beaux 
 are gathering in the coffee-houses ; " and so on, in the 
 style we all know and love so well, and none better, we 
 may rest assured, than Professor Seeley himself, if only 
 he were not tortured by the thought that people were 
 taking this to be a specimen of the science of which he 
 is a Regius Professor. His comment on this passage 
 of Thackeray's is almost a groan. " What is this but 
 the old literary groove, leading to no trustworthy know- 
 ledge ? " and certainly no one of us, from letting his 
 fancy gaze on the Maypole in the Strand, could ever 
 have foretold the Griffin. On the same page he cries : 
 " Break the drowsy spell of narrative. Ask yourself 
 questions, set yourself problems ; your mind will at 
 once take up a new attitude. Now, modern English 
 history breaks up into two grand problems — the problem 
 of the Colonies and the problem of India." The Cam- 
 bridge School of History with a vengeance ! 
 
 In a paper read at the South Kensington Museum in 
 1^84, Professor Seeley observes : " The essential point 
 is this, that we should recognise that to study history 
 is to study not merely a narrative, but at the same time 
 certain theoretical studies." He then proceeds to name 
 them : — Political philosophy, the comparative study of 
 legal institutions, political economy, and international law. 
 
 These passages are, I think, adequate to give a fair 
 view of Professor Seeley's position. History is a science, 
 to be written scientifically and to be studied scientifically 
 in conjunction with other studies. It should pursue a 
 practical object and be read with dkect reference to 
 practical politics — using the latter word, no doubt, in 
 an enlightened sense. History is not a narrative of all 
 sorts of facts — biographical, moral, political — but of such 
 facts as a scientific diagnosis has ascertained to be his- 
 torically interesting. In fine, history, if her study is to 
 be profitable and not a mere pastime, less exhausting 
 than skittles and cheaper than horse exercise, must be 
 dominated by some theory capable of verification by
 
 270 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 reference to certain ascertained facts belonging to a 
 ])articular class. 
 
 Is this the right way of looking upon history ? The 
 dictionaries tell us that history and story are the same 
 word, and are derived from a Greek source, signifying 
 information obtained by inquiry. The natural defini- 
 tion of history, therefore, surely is the story of man upon 
 earth, and the historian is he who tells us any chapter 
 or fragment of that story. All things that on earth do 
 dwell have, no doubt, their history as well as man ; but 
 when a member, however humble, of the human race 
 speaks of history without any explanatory context, he 
 may be presumed to be alluding to his own family rec- 
 ords, to the story of humanity during its passage across 
 the earth's surface. 
 
 " A talent for history " — I am quoting from an author 
 whose style, let those mock at it who may, will reveal 
 him — "may be said to be born with us as our chief inherit- 
 ance. History has been written with quipo-threads, 
 with feather pictures, with wampum belts, still oftener 
 with earth-mounds and monumental stone-heaps, whether 
 as pyramid or cairn ; for the Celt and the Copt, the red 
 man as well as the white, lives between two eternities, 
 and warring against oblivion, he would fain unite him- 
 self in clear, conscious relation, as in dim, unconscious 
 relation he is already united, with the whole future and 
 the whole past." 
 
 To keep* the past alive for us is the pious function of 
 the historian. Our curiosity is endless, his the task of 
 gratifying it. We want to know what happened long 
 ago. Performance of this task is only proximately pos- 
 sible ; but none the less it must be attempted, for the 
 demand for it is born afresh with every infant's cry. 
 History is a pageant, and not a philosophy. 
 
 Poets, no less than professors, occasionally say good 
 things even in prose, and the following oracular utterance 
 of Shelley is not pure nonsense : — " History is the cyclic 
 poem written by Time upon the memories of men. The
 
 THE MUSE OF HISTORY. 271 
 
 past, like an inspired rhapsodist, fills the theatre of ever- 
 lasting generations with her harmony." 
 
 If this be thought a little too fanciful, let me adorn 
 these pages with a passage from one of the great masters 
 of English prose — Walter Savage Landor. Would that 
 the pious labour of transcription could confer the tiniest 
 measure of the gift ! In that bundle of imaginary letters 
 Landor called Pericles and Aspasia, we find Aspasia 
 writing to her friend Cleone as follows : 
 
 " To-day there came to visit us a writer who is not yet 
 an author ; his name is Thucydides. We understand 
 that he has been these several years engaged in prepara- 
 tion for a history. Pericles invited him to meet Herod- 
 otus, when that wonderful man had returned to our 
 country, and was about to sail from Athens. Until 
 then it was believed by the intimate friends of Thucyd- 
 ides that he would devote his life to poetry, and, such 
 is his vigour both of thought and expression, that he 
 would have been the rival of Pindar. Even now he is 
 f(feder of talking on poetry than any other subject, and 
 blushed when history was mentioned. By degrees, how- 
 ever, he warmed, and listened with deep interest to the 
 discourse of Pericles on the duties of a historian. 
 
 " ' May our first Athenian historian not be the greatest,' 
 said he, ' as the first of our dramatists has been, in the 
 opinion of many. We are growing too loquacious, both 
 on the stage and off. We make disquisitions which 
 render us only more and more dim-sighted, and excur- 
 sions that only consume our stores. If some among us 
 who have acquired celebrity by their compositions, calm, 
 candid, contemplative men, were to undertake the his- 
 tory of Athens from the invasion of Xerxes, I should 
 expect a fair and full criticism on the orations of Anti- 
 phon, and experience no disappointment at their for- 
 getting the battle of Salamis. History, when she has 
 lost her Muse, will lose her dignity, her occupation, her 
 character, her name. She will wander about the Agora ; 
 she will start, she will stop, she will look wild, she will
 
 272 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 look stupid, she will take languidly to her bosom doubts, 
 queries, essays, dissertations, some of which ought to 
 go before her, some to follow, and all to stand apart. 
 The field of history should not merely be well tilled, but 
 well peopled. None is delightful to me or interesting 
 in which I find not as many illustrious names as have a 
 right to enter it. We might as well in a drama place 
 the actors behind the scenes, and listen to the dialogue 
 there, as in a history push valiant men back and pro- 
 trude ourselves with husky disputations. Show me rather 
 how great projects were executed, great advantages 
 gained, and great calamities averted. Show me the 
 generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I 
 may bend to them in reverence ; tell me their names, 
 that I may repeat them to my children. Teach me 
 whence laws were introduced, upon what foundation 
 laid, by what custody guarded, in what inner keep pre- 
 served. Let the books of the treasury lie closed as 
 religiously as the Sibyl's ; leave weights and measures 
 in the market-place. Commerce in the harbour, the Arts 
 in the light they love, Philosophy in the shade ; place 
 History on her rightful throne, and at the sides of her 
 Eloquence and War.' " 
 
 This is, doubtless, a somewhat fuU-dress view of his- 
 tory. Landor was not one of our modern dressing-gown- 
 and-shppers kind of authors. He always took pains to 
 be splendid, and preferred stately magnificence to 
 chatty familiarity. But, after allowing for this, is not 
 the passage I have quoted infused with a great deal 
 of the true spirit which should animate the historian, 
 and does it not seem to take us by the hand and lead 
 us very far away from Professor vSeeley's maxims and 
 morals, his theoretical studies, his political philosophy, 
 his political economy, and his desire to break the drowsy 
 spell of narrative, and to set us all problems ? I ask 
 this question in no spirit of enmity towards these 
 theoretical studies, nor do I doubt for one moment that 
 the student of history proper, who has a turn in their
 
 THE MUSE OF HISTORY. 273 
 
 directions, will find his pursuit made only the more 
 fascinating the more he studies them — just as a little 
 botany is said to add to the charm of a country walk ; 
 but — and surely the assertion is not necessarily para- 
 doxical — these studies ought not to be allowed to dis- 
 figure the free-flowing outline of the historical Muse, 
 or to thicken her clear utterance, which in her higher 
 moods chants an epic, and in her ordinary moods recites 
 a narrative which need not be drowsy. 
 
 As for maxims, we all of us have our " little hoard 
 of maxims " wherewith to preach down our hearts and 
 justify anything shabby we may have done ; but the 
 less we import their cheap wisdom into history the 
 better. The author of the Expansion of England will 
 probably agree with Burke in thinking that " a great 
 empire and little minds go ill together," and so, surely, 
 a fortiori, must a mighty universe and any possible 
 maxim. There have been plenty of brave historical 
 maxims before Professor Seeley's, though only Lord 
 Bolingbroke's has had the good luck to become itself 
 historical.* And as for theories, Professor Flint, a very 
 learned writer, has been at the pains to enumerate four- 
 teen French and thirteen German philosophies of his- 
 tory current (though some, I expect, never ran either 
 fast or far) since the revival of learning. 
 
 We are (are we not ?) in these days in no little danger 
 of being philosophy-ridden, and of losing our love for 
 facts simply as facts. So long as Carlyle lived the 
 concrete had a representative, the strength of whose 
 epithets sufficed, if not to keep the philosophers in awe, 
 at least to supply their opponents with stones. But 
 now it is different. Carlyle is no more a model histo- 
 rian than is Shakspeare a model dramatist. The merest 
 tyro can count the faults of either on his clumsy fingers. 
 
 * " I will answer you by quoting what I have read somewhere or 
 other, in Dionysius Halicarnassensis I think, that history is philosophy 
 teaching by examples." See Lord Bolingbroke's Second Letter on the 
 Study and Use of History.
 
 274 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 That bom critic, the late Sir George Lewis, had barely 
 completed his tenth year before he was able, in a letter 
 to his mother, to point out to her the essentially faulty 
 structure of Hamlet, and many a duller wit, a decade 
 or two later in his existence, has come to the conclusion 
 that Frederick the Great is far too long. But whatever 
 were Carlyle's faults, his historical method was superbly 
 naturalistic. Have we a historian left us so honestly 
 possessed as he was with the genuine historical instinct, 
 the true enthusiasm to know what happened ; or one 
 half so fond of a story for its own sake, or so in love 
 with things, not for what they were, but simply because 
 they were ? " What wonderful things are events ! " 
 wrote Lord Beaconsfield in Coningsby ; " the least are 
 of greater importance than the most sublime and com- 
 prehensive speculations." To say this is to go per- 
 haps too far ; certainly it is to go farther than Carlyle, 
 who none the less was in sympathy with the remark ; 
 for he also worshipped events, beheving as he did that 
 but for the breath of God's mouth they never would 
 have been events at all. We thus find him always 
 treating: even comparatively insignificant facts with a 
 measure of reverence, and handling them lovingly, as 
 does a book-hunter the shabbiest pamplilet in his col- 
 lection. We have only to think of Carlyle's essay onthe 
 Diamond Necklace to fill our minds with his quahfications 
 for the proud office of the historian. Were that inirnit- 
 able piece of workmanship to be submitted to the criti- 
 cisms of the new scientific school, we doubt whether it 
 would be so much as classed, whilst the celebrated 
 description of the night before the battle of Dunbar in 
 Cromwell, or any hundred scenes from The French Revolu- 
 tion, would, we expect, be catalogued as good examples 
 of that degrading process whereby liistory fades into 
 mere literature. 
 
 This is not a question, be it observed, of style. What 
 is called a picturesque style is generally a great trial. 
 Who was it who called Professor Masson's style Carlyle
 
 TllE MUSE OF HISTORY. 275 
 
 on wooden legs ? What can be drearier than when a 
 plain matter-of-fact \mter attempts to be animated, 
 and tries to make his characters live by the easy but 
 futile expedient of writing about them in the present 
 tense ? What is wanted is a passion for facts ; the 
 st3ie may be left to take care of itself. Let me name 
 a historian who detested fine writing, and who never 
 said to himself, " Go to, I will make a description," and 
 'v/ho yet was dominated by a love for facts, whose one 
 desire always was to know what happened, to dispel 
 illusion, and establish the true account — Dr. S. R. Mait- 
 land, of the Lambeth Library, whose volumes entitled 
 The Dark Ages and The Reformation are to history what 
 Milton's Lycidas is said to be to poetry : if they do not 
 interest you, your tastes are not historical. 
 
 The difference, we repeat, is not of style, but of aim. 
 Is history a pageant or a philosophy ? That eminent 
 historian. Lord Macaulay, whose passion for letters and 
 for " mere literature " ennobled his whole life, has ex- 
 pressed himself in some places, I need scarcely add in 
 a most forcible manner, in the same sense as Mr. Morley. 
 In his well-known essay on history, contributed to the 
 Edinburgh Review in 1828, we find him writing as follows : 
 " Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the 
 abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies 
 latent amongst them like gold in the ore, that the mass 
 derives its whole value." And again : " No past event 
 has any intrinsic importance. The knowledge of it is 
 valuable only as it leads us to form just calculations 
 with respect to the future." These are strong passages ; 
 but Lord Macaulay was a royal eclectic, and was quite 
 out of sympathy with the majority of that brotherhood 
 who are content to tone down their contradictories to 
 the dull level of ineptitudes. Macaulay never toned 
 down his contradictories, but, heightening everything 
 all round, went on his sublime way, rejoicing like a 
 strong man to run a race, and well knowing that he 
 could give anybody five yards in fifty and win easily.
 
 \ 
 
 276 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 It is, therefore, no surprise to find him, in the very 
 essay in which he speaks so contemptuously of facts, 
 laying on with his vigorous brush a celebrated purple 
 patch I would gladly transfer to my own dull page 
 were it not too long and too well known. A line or 
 two taken at random will give its purport. 
 
 " A truly great historian would reclaim those materials 
 the novelist has appropriated. We should not then have 
 to look for the wars and votes of the Puritans in Claren- 
 don and for their phraseology in Old Mortality, for one 
 half of King James in Hume and for the other half in 
 the Fortunes of Nigel. . . . Society would be shown 
 from the highest to the lowest, from the royal cloth 
 of state to the den of the outlaw, from the throne of 
 the legate to the chimney-corner where the begging | 
 friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaders, the " 
 stately monastery with the good cheer in its refec- 
 tory, and the tournament with the heralds and ladies, 
 the trumpets and the cloth of gold, would give truth 
 and life to the representation." It is difficult to see 
 what abstract truth interpenetrates the cheer of the 
 refectory, or what just calculations with respect to the 
 future even an upholsterer could draw from a cloth, 
 either of state or of gold ; whilst most people will admit 
 that, when the brilliant essayist a few years later set 
 himself to compose his own magnificent history, so far as 
 he interpenetrated it with the abstract truths of Whig- 
 gism, and calculated that the future would be satisfied 
 with the first Reform Bill, he did ill and guessed wrong. 
 
 To reconcile Macaulay's utterances on this subject is 
 beyond my powers, but of two things I am satisfied : 
 the first is that, were he to come to life again, a good 
 many of us would be more careful than we are how we 
 write about him ; and the second is that, on the hap- 
 pening of the same event, he would be found protest- 
 ing against the threatened domination of aU things by 
 scientific theory. A Western American, who was once 
 compelled to spend some days in Boston, was accus-
 
 THE MUSE OF HISTORY. 277 
 
 tomed in after-life to describe that seat of polite learning 
 to his horrified companions in California as a city in 
 whose streets Respectability stalked unchecked. This 
 is just what philosophical theories are doing amongst 
 us, and a decent person can hardly venture abroad 
 without one, though it does not much matter which one. 
 Everybody is expected to have " a system of philosophy 
 with principles coherent, interdependent, subordinate, 
 and derivative," and to be able to account for every- 
 thing, even for things it used not to be thought sensible 
 to believe in, hke ghosts and haunted houses. Keats 
 remarks in one of his letters with great admiration upon 
 what he christens Shakspeare's " negative capability," 
 meaning thereby Shakspeare's habit of complaisant ob- 
 servation from outside of theory, and his keen enjoy- 
 ment of the unexplained facts of life. He did not pour 
 himself out in every strife. We have but little of this 
 negative capability. The ruddy qualities of delightful- 
 ness, of pleasantness, are all " sicklied o'er with the 
 pale cast of thought." The varied elements of hfe — the 
 
 " Murmur of living, 
 Stir of existence, 
 Soul of the world "— 
 
 seem to be fading from literature. Pure literary en- 
 thusiasm sheds but few rays. To be hvely is to be 
 flippant, and epigram is dubbed paradox. 
 
 That many people appear to like a drab-colourcd 
 world hung round with dusky shreds of philosophy is 
 sufficiently obvious. These persons fmd any relaxation 
 they may require from a too severe course of theories, 
 religious, political, social, or now, alas ! historical, in 
 the novels of Mr. W. D. Howells, an American gentleman 
 who has not been allowed to forget that he once asserted 
 of fiction what Professor Seeley would be glad to be 
 able to assert of history, that the drowsy spell of narra- 
 tive has been broken. We are to look for no more Sir 
 Walters, no more Thackerays, no more Dickens. The
 
 278 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 stories have all been told. Plots are exploded. Inci- 
 dent is over. In moods of dejection these dark sayings 
 seemed only too true. Shakspeare's saddest of sad 
 lines rose to one's lips : — 
 
 " My grief lies onward and my joy behind." 
 
 Behind us are Ivanhoe and Guy Mannering, Pendennis 
 and The Virginians, Pecksniff and Micawber. In front 
 of us stretch a never-ending series, a dreary vista of 
 Foregone Conclusions, Counterfeit Presentments, and Un- 
 discovered Countries. But the darkest watch of the 
 night is the one before the dawn, and relief is often 
 nearest us when we least expect it. All this gloomy 
 nonsense was suddenly dispelled, and the fact that 
 reaUy and truly, and behind this philosophical arras, we 
 were all inwardly ravening for stories was most satis- 
 factorily established by the incontinent manner in v/hich 
 we flung ourselves into the arms of Mr. Robert Louis 
 Stevenson, to whom we could almost have raised a statue 
 in the market-place for having written Treasure Island. 
 
 But to return to history. The interests of our poor 
 human life, which seems to become duller every day, 
 require that the fields of history should be kept for ever 
 unenclosed, and be a free breathing-place for a palHd 
 population well-nigh stifled with the fumes of philosophy. 
 
 Were we, imaginatively, to propel ourselves forward 
 to the middle of the next century, and to fancy a well- 
 equipped historian armed with the digested learning of 
 Gibbon, endowed with the eye of Carlyle, and say one- 
 fifteenth of his humour (even then a dangerous allotment 
 in a dull world), the moral gravity of Dr. Arnold, the 
 critical sympathy of Sainte-Beuve, and the style of Dr. 
 Newman, approaching the period through which we have 
 lived, should we desire this talented mortal to encumber 
 himself with a theory into which to thrust all our doings 
 as we toss clothes into a portmanteau ; to set himself 
 to extract the essence of some new political philosophy, 
 capable of being applied to the practical politics of his
 
 THE MUSE OF HISTORY. 279 
 
 own day, or to busy himself with problems or economics ? 
 To us personally, of course, it is a matter of indifference 
 how the historians of the twentieth century conduct 
 themselves ; but ought not our altruism to bear the strain 
 of a hope that at least one of the band may avoid all 
 these things, and, leaving political philosophy to the 
 political philosopher and political economy to the polit- 
 ical economist, remember that the first, if not the last, 
 duty of the historian is to narrate, to supply the text 
 not the comment, the subject not the sermon, and 
 proceed to tell our grandchildren and remoter issue the 
 story of our lives ? The clash of arms will resound 
 through his pages as musically as ever it does through 
 those of the elder historians as he teUs of the encounter 
 between the Northern and Southern States of America, 
 in which Right and Might, those great twin-brethren, 
 fought side by side ; but Romance, that ancient para- 
 site, clung affectionately with her tendril-hands to the 
 mouldering walls of an ancient wrong, thus enabling 
 t^xe historian, whilst awarding the victor's palm to 
 General Grant, to write kindly of the lost cause, dear 
 to the heart of a nobler and more chivalrous man, General 
 Lee, of the Virginian army. And again, is it not almost 
 possible to envy the historian to whom wiU belong the 
 task of writing with full information, and all the advan- 
 tage of the true historic distance, the history of that 
 series of struggles and heroisms, of plots and counter- 
 plots, of crimes and counter-crimes, resulting in the 
 freedom of Italy, and of telling to a world, eager to 
 listen, the life-story of Joseph Mazzini ? 
 
 " Of God nor man was ever this thing said. 
 
 That he could give 
 Life back to her who gave him, whence his dead 
 
 Mother might live. 
 But this man found his mother dead and slain. 
 
 With fast-sealed eyes, 
 And bade the dead rise up and live again. 
 
 And she did rise." 
 
 Nor will our imaginary historian be unmindful of Cavour,
 
 28o SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 or fail to thrill his readers by telling them how, when the 
 great Italian statesman, with many sins upon his con- 
 science, lay in the very grasp of death, he interrupted 
 the priests, busy at their work of intercession, almost 
 roughly, with the exclamation, " Pra}^ not for me. 
 Pray for Italy ! " whilst if he be one who has a turn 
 for that ironical pastime, the dissection of a king, the 
 curious character, and muddle of motives, calling itself 
 Carlo Alberto, will afford him material for at least two 
 paragraphs of subtle interest. Lasth/, if our historian 
 is ambitious of a larger canvas and of deeper colours, 
 what is there to prevent him, bracing himself to the task, 
 
 " As when some mighty painter dips 
 His pencil in the hues of earthquake and eclipse," 
 
 from writing the epitaph of the Napoleonic legend ? 
 
 But all this time I hear Professor Seeley whispering 
 in my ear, " What is this but the old literary groove 
 leading to no trustworthy knowledge ? " If by trust- 
 worthy knowledge is meant demonstrable conclusions, 
 capable of being expressed in terms at once exact and 
 final, trustworthy knowledge is not to be gained from 
 the witness of history, whose testimony none the less 
 must be received, weighed, and taken into account. 
 Truly observes Carlyle : "If history is philosophy 
 teaching by examples, the writer fitted to compose 
 history is hitherto an unknown man. Better were it 
 that mere earthly historians should lower such pre- 
 tensions, and, aiming only at some picture of the thing 
 acted, which picture itself will be but a poor approxima- 
 tion, leave the inscrutable purport of them an acknow- 
 ledged secret." " Some picture of the thing acted." 
 Here we behold the task of the historian ; nor is it an 
 idle, fruitless task. Science is not the only or the chief 
 source of knowledge. The Iliad, Shakspeare's plays, 
 have taught the world more than the Politics of Aristotle 
 or the Novum Organum of Bacon. 
 
 Facts are not the dross of history, but the true metal.
 
 THE MUSE OF HISTORY. 281 
 
 and the historian is a worker in that metal. He has 
 nothing to do with abstract truth, or with practical 
 politics, or with forecasts of the future. A worker in 
 metal he is, and has certainly plenty of what Lord 
 Bacon used to call " stuff " to work upon ; but if he is 
 to be a great historian, and not a mere chronicler, he 
 must be an artist as well as an artisan, and have some- 
 thing of the spirit which animated such a man as Fran- 
 cesco Francia of Bologna, now only famous as a painter, 
 but in his own day equally celebrated as a worker in 
 gold, and whose practice it was to sign his pictures with 
 the word Goldsmith after his name, whilst he engrave J 
 Painter on his golden crucifixes. 
 
 The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a 
 true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts, select 
 facts, and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles will 
 differ. Nobody ever does anything exactly like anybody 
 else ; but the end in view is generally the same, and 
 the historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he 
 V^ill have, if he is wise, never a one ; and as for a moral, 
 if he tell his story well, it will need none ; if he tell it 
 ill, it will deserve none. 
 
 The stream of narrative flowing swiftly, as it does, 
 over the jagged rocks of human destiny, must often be 
 turbulent and tossed ; it is, therefore, all the more the 
 duty of every good citizen to keep it as undefiled as 
 possible, and to do what in him lies to prevent peri- 
 patetic philosophers on the banks from throwing their 
 theories into it, either dead ones to decay, or living ones 
 to drown. Let the philosophers ventilate their theories, 
 construct their blow-holes, extract their essences, dis- 
 cuss their maxims, and point their morals as much as 
 they will ; but let them do so apart. History must 
 not lose her muse, or " take to her bosom doubts, queries, 
 essays, dissertations, some of which ought to go before 
 her, some to follow, and all to stand apart." Let us 
 at all events secure our narrative first — sermons and 
 philosophy the day after.
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND THE POETS. 
 
 WHY all the English poets, with a barely decent 
 number of exceptions, have been Cambridge men 
 has always struck me, as did the abstinence of the Greeks 
 from malt Mr. Calverley, " as extremely curious." But 
 in this age of detail, one must, however reluctantly, 
 submit to prove one's facts, and I, therefore, propose 
 to institute a " Modest Inquiry " into this subject. 
 Imaginatively, I shall don proctorial robes, and armed 
 with a duster, saunter up and down the library, putting 
 to each poet as I meet him the once dreaded question, 
 " Sir, are you a member of this University ? " 
 
 But whilst I am arranging myself for this function, 
 let me utilise the time by making two preliminary' obser- 
 vations — the first one being that, as to-day is Sunday, 
 only such free libraries are open as may happen to be 
 attached to pubHc-houses, and I am consequently con- 
 fined to my owTi poor shelves, and must be forgiven even 
 though I rnake some palpable omissions. The second is 
 that I exclude from my survey living authors. I must do 
 so ; their very names would excite controversy about a 
 subject which, when wisely handled, admits of none. 
 
 I now pursue my inquiry. That Chaucer was a Cam- 
 bridge man cannot be proved. It is the better opinion 
 that he was (how else should he have known anything 
 about the Trumpington Road ?), but it is only an opin- 
 ion, and as no one has ever been found reckless enough 
 to assert that he was an Oxford man, he must be con- 
 tent to " sit out " this inquiry along with Shakspeare, 
 Webster, Ford, Pope, Cowper, Burns, and Keats, no 
 one of whom ever kept his terms at either University. 
 Spender is, of course, the glory of the Cambridge Pem-
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND THE POETS. 283 
 
 broke, though were the fellowships of that college made 
 to depend upon passing a yearly examination in the 
 Faerie Queen, to be conducted by Dean Church, there 
 would be wailing and lamentation within her rubicund 
 walls. Sir Thomas Wyatt was at St. John's, Fulke 
 Greville Lord Brooke at Jesus, Giles and Phineas Fletcher 
 were at King's, Herrick was first at St. John's, but 
 migrated to the Hall, where he is still reckoned very 
 pretty reading, even by boating men. Cowley, most 
 precocious of poets, and Suckling were a.t Trinity, Waller 
 at King's, Francis Quarles was of Christ's. The Her- 
 bert family were divided, some going to Oxford and 
 some to Cambridge, George, of course, falling to the lot 
 of Cambridge. John Milton's name alone would deify 
 the University where he pursued his almost sacred 
 studies. Andrew Marvell, a pleasant poet and savage 
 satirist, was of Trinity. The author of Hudibras is 
 frequently attributed to Cambridge, but, on being in- 
 terrogated, he declined to name his college — always a 
 ST^spicious circumstance. 
 
 I must not forget Richard Crashaw, of Peterhouse. 
 Willingly would I relieve the intolerable tedium of this 
 dry inquiry by transcribing the few hnes of his now 
 beneath my eye. But I forbear, and " steer right on." 
 
 Of dramatists we find Marlowe (untimelier death than 
 his was never any) at Corpus ; Greene (I do not 
 lay much stress on Greene) was both at St. John's 
 and Clare. Ben Jonson was at St. John's, so was 
 Nash. John Fletcher (whose claims to be considered 
 the senior partner in his well-known firm are simply 
 paramount) was at Corpus. James Shirley, the author 
 of The Maid's Revenge and of the beautiful lyric begin- 
 ning " The glories of our birth and state," in the inno- 
 cence of his heart first went to St. John's College, Ox- 
 ford, from whence he was speedily sent down, for reasons 
 which the delightful author of AtliencB Oxonienses must 
 really be allowed to state for himself. " At the same 
 time (1612) Dr. William Laud presiding at that house.
 
 284 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 he had a very great affection for Shirley, especially for 
 the pregnant parts that were visible in him, but then, 
 having a broad or large mole upon his left cheek, which 
 some esteemed a deformity, that worthy doctor would 
 often tell him that he was an unfit person to take the 
 sacred function upon him, and should never have his 
 consent to do so." Thus treated, Shirley left Oxford, 
 that " home of lost causes," but not apparently of large 
 moles, and came to Cambridge, and entered at St. 
 Catharine's Hall, where, either because the authorities 
 were not amongst those who esteemed a broad or large 
 mole upon the left cheek to be a deformity, or because 
 a mole, more or less, made no sort of difference in the 
 personal appearance of the college, or for other good 
 and sufficient reasons, Shirley was allowed without, I 
 trust, being often told of his mole, to proceed to his 
 degree and to Holy Orders. 
 
 Starting off again, we find John Dryden, whose very 
 name is a tower of strength (were he to come to life again 
 he would, like Mr. Brown of Calaveras, " clean out half 
 the town "), at Trinity. In this poet's later life he said 
 he liked Oxford better. His lines on this subject are 
 well known : 
 
 " Oxford to him a dearer name shall be 
 
 Than, his own Mother University. 
 
 Thebes did his rude, unknowing youth engage. 
 
 He chooses Athens in his riper age." 
 
 But idle preferences of this sort are beyond the scope of 
 my present inquiry. After Dryden we find Garth at 
 Peterhouse and charming Matthew Prior at John's. 
 Then comes the great name of Gray. Perhaps I ought 
 not to mention Christopher Smart, who was a Fellow 
 of Pembroke ; and yet the author of David, under 
 happier circumstances, might have conferred additional 
 poetic lustre even upon the college of Spenser.* 
 
 * This passage was written before Mr. Browning's Parleyings had 
 appeared. Christopher is now " a person of importance," and needs 
 no apology.
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND THE POETS. 285 
 
 Between the years 1790 and 1805 we find Byron and 
 his bear at Trinity, Coleridge at Jesus, and Wordsworth 
 at St. John's. The last-named poet was fully alive to 
 the honour of belonging to the same University as 
 Milton. In language not unworthy of Mr. Trumbull, 
 the well-known auctioneer in Middlemarch, he has re- 
 corded as follows : 
 
 » 
 
 " Among the band of my compeers was one 
 Whom chance had stationed in the very room 
 Honoured by Milton's name. temperate Bard, 
 Be it confest that for the first time seated 
 Within thy innocent lodge and oratory, 
 One of a festive circle, I poured out 
 Libations, to thy memory drank, till pride 
 *' And gratitude grew dizzy in a brain 
 
 Never excited by the fumes of wine 
 Before that hour or since." * 
 
 I know of no more amiable trait in the character of 
 Cambridge men than their willingness to admit having 
 been drunk once. 
 
 * After the great name of Wordsworth any other must 
 seem small, but I must, before concluchiig. place on 
 record Pracd, Macaulay, Kingsley, and Calverley. 
 
 A glorious Roll-call indeed ! 
 
 " Earth shows to Heaven the names by thousands told 
 That crown her fame." 
 
 So may Cambridge. 
 
 Oxford leads off with one I could find it in my heart 
 to grudge her, beautiful as she is — Sir Philip Sidney. 
 Why, I wonder, did he not accompany his friend and 
 future biographer, Fulke Greville, to Cambridge ? As 
 Dr. Johnson once said to Boswell, " Sir, you may won- 
 der ! " Sidney most indisputably was at Christchurch. 
 Old George Chapman, who I suppose was young once, 
 was (I believe) at Oxford, though I have known Cam- 
 bridge to claim him. Lodge and Peele were at Oxford, 
 so were Francis Beaumont and his brother Sir John. 
 
 * The Prelude, p. 55.
 
 286 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Philip Massinger, Shakerley Marmion, and John Marston 
 are of Oxford, also Watson and Warner. Henry Vaughan 
 the Silurist, Sir John Davies, George Sandys, Samuel 
 Daniel, Dr. Donne, Lovelace, and Wither belong to the 
 sister IJniversity, so did Dr. Brady ; but Oxford must 
 not claim all the merit of the metrical version of the 
 Psalms, for Brady's colleague, Dr. Nahum Tate, was a 
 Dublin man. Otway and Collins, Young, Johnson, 
 Charles Wesley, Soulhey, Landor, Hartley Coleridge, 
 Beddoes, Keble, Isaac Williams, Faber, and Clough are 
 names of which their University may well be proud. 
 But surely, when compared with the Cambridge list, a 
 falling-off must be admitted. 
 
 A poet indeed once came into residence at University 
 College, whose single name — for, after all, poets must 
 be weighed and not counted — ^would have gone far to 
 right the balance, but is Oxford bold enough to claim 
 Shelley as her own ? She sent him down, not for riotous 
 living, for no purer soul than his ever haunted her courts, 
 but for wanting to discuss with those whose business it 
 was to teach him questions of high philosophy. Had 
 Shelley only gone to Trinity in 1810, I feel sure wise 
 and witty old Dr. Mansel would never have sent him 
 down. Spenser, Milton, and Shelley ! What a triad 
 of immortal fames they would have made. As it is, 
 we expect Oxford, with her accustomed composure, will 
 insist upon adding Shelley to her score ; but even when 
 she has been allowed to do so, she must own herself 
 beaten both in men and metal. 
 
 But this being so — why was it so ? It is now my 
 turn to own myself defeated. I cannot for the life of 
 me tell how it happened.
 
 IS IT POSSIBLE TO TELL A GOOD 
 BOOK FROM A BAD ONE? 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH ON 
 NOVEMBER 3, 1899. 
 
 DURING the last few months a saying of Voltaire's 
 has been sounding uncomfortably in my ears. 
 It occurs in one of his amusing letters from England. 
 He remarks : " The necessity of saying something, the 
 perplexity of having nothing to say, and a desire of 
 being witty are three circumstances which alone are 
 capable of making even the greatest writer ridiculous." 
 A hasty assent to an ill-considered request has placed me 
 wjiere I am to-night. The popularity of Lord Rosebery 
 has filled this hall, and I feel the direful necessity of 
 saying something, whilst, at the same time, a rigorously 
 conducted self-examination has made plain to me what 
 is the perplexity of having nothing to say. As for the 
 desire of being witty, there was a time, I frankly con- 
 fess, when I was consumed by it ; I am so no longer. 
 This desire of being witty, sneered at as it always is, 
 has in most cases an honourable because a humane 
 origin. It springs from pity for the audience. It is 
 given but to half a dozen men in a century really to 
 teach their grown-up contemporaries, whilst to inflame 
 them by oratory is happily the province of a very few, 
 but to bore them well-nigh to extinction is within the 
 scope of most men's powers. This desire to amuse just 
 a little ought not, therefore, to be so very contemptible, 
 springing as it does from the pity that is akin to love. 
 But now, to me, at all events, it matters not to whom 
 this desire is related or by whom it was begot. I have
 
 288 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 done with it. Ten years in the House of Commons and 
 on the poUtical platform have cured me of a weakness 
 I now feel to be unmanly. 1 no longer pity my audiences ; 
 I punish them. 
 
 Having made this point clear, I pass on. 
 
 There is something truly audacious in my talking to 
 Edinburgh people on a question of Taste ; indeed, it 
 is not only an audacious, but an eerie thing to do. I 
 remember. Lord Rosebery, how you were affected, so 
 you have told us, the first time you addressed the society 
 of which you are now president, by the air of old-world 
 wisdom that hung about Lord Colonsay. But, at all 
 events, that venerable lawyer was then in the flesh. 
 To-night I seem surrounded by ghosts in wigs, the ghosts 
 of Edinburgh men all famous in their day, some famous 
 for all days, who, at the very sound of the word Taste 
 uttered after all this lapse of years in this hall, have 
 hurried hither this wet and stormj' night, full of doubts 
 and suspicions, to hear how a theme once their very 
 own may come to be handled by a stranger at the end 
 of a century not their own. 
 
 " What else should tempt them back to taste our air 
 Except to see how their successors fare ? " 
 
 I shall say nothing to offend these courtly shades. 
 I am far too much in doubt about the Present, far too 
 perturbed about the Future, to be othervvise than pro- 
 foundly reverential towards the Past. Besides, as they 
 cannot speak, it would be ill-bred even to poke a little 
 fun at them. I wish it were otherwise. I wish — how 
 I wish ! — that Lord Rosebery could now call upon Dr. 
 Blair to address you — the great Dr. Blair, whose Lec- 
 tures on Taste may still be had of the Edinburgh second- 
 hand booksellers for a sum it would be ungenerous to 
 state in figures. After all, the best books are the cheap- 
 est. Mr, Home, the author of Douglas, would, I dare 
 say, conquer the shyness that pursued him through life 
 and say a few words in response to a call ; " Jupiter "
 
 A GOOD BOOK AND A BAD ONE. 289 
 
 Carlyle would, probably prefer to reserve till supper- 
 time (the meal when mostly truth is spoken) his trenchant 
 criticisms. It would be honouring the occasion too 
 much to suppose that the great Adam Smith would care 
 to attend, or a greater than Adam Smith, David Hume, 
 a man who, though the twentieth century may shp his 
 collar, has more than any other single thinker dominated 
 the nineteenth, from its tremendous beginnings to its 
 sombre close. Da\nd Hume is, of all others, the Edin- 
 burgh man I should most like to hear on the Standard 
 of Taste. One hundred and fifty-seven years have gone 
 by since he published an essay on this very subject, to 
 which I shall refer in a minute. 
 
 I have raised the subject of taste and a standard of 
 taste by asking the question, " Is it possible to tell a 
 good book from a bad one ? " This almost involves an 
 affirmative reply. A well-known Nonconformist divine 
 wrote a short treatise which he entitled, Is it Possible 
 to make the Best of Both Worlds ? But this world, at all 
 e^jents, always persisted (much to the author's annoy- 
 ance) in calling the book How to make the Best of Both 
 Worlds, whilst in the trade the volume was always 
 referred to (curtly enough) as Binney's Best. 
 
 The world is a vulgar place, but it has the knack, the 
 vulgar knack, of hitting nails on the head. Unless, in 
 the opinion of the author, it was possible to make the 
 best of both worlds, there was small probability of a 
 prosperous Protestant divine asking the question at all : 
 and in the same way, unless I am prepared to answer 
 my own query with a blunt negative and to sit down, 
 it becomes necessaiy to drop a hint or two as to how 
 a good book may be known from a bad one. 
 
 Firstly, it is a very difficult thing to do, but difficulty 
 is no excuse. Are there not treatises extant which in- 
 struct their readers how to tell a good horse from a 
 bad one, and even, so overreaching is the ambition of 
 man, how to boil a potato ?— both feats of great skill 
 and infrequent achievement. 
 
 10
 
 290 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Secondly, not only is the task difficult, but the neces- 
 sity for mastering it is urgent. The matter really 
 presses. 
 
 It is, I know, usual when a man like myself, far gone 
 in middle life, finds himself addressing a company con- 
 taining many young people, to profess great sorrow for 
 his own plight and to heap congratulations on the 
 youthful portion of his audience. I am in no mood 
 to-night for any such pohte foolery. When I think of 
 the ever-increasing activitj^ of the press, home, foreign, 
 and colonial — the rush of money into the magazine 
 market, the grov/th of what is called education, the ex 
 tension of the copyright laws, and the spread of what 
 Goethe somewhere calls " the noxious mist, the drop- 
 ping poison of half culture " — so far from congratulat-! 
 ing those of you who are likely to be alive fifty years 
 hence, I feel far more disposed to offer these unlucky 
 youths and maidens my sincerest condolences, and to 
 reserve all my congratulations for myself. 
 
 The output of books is astounding. Their numbers 
 destroy their reputation. A great crowd of books is 
 as destructive of the literary instinct, which is a highly 
 delicate thing, as is a London evening party of the social 
 instinct. Novel succeeds novel, speculative treatise 
 speculative treatise, in breathless haste, each treading 
 upon the heels of its predecessor, and followed by a 
 noisy crowd of critics bellowing and shouting praise 
 or blame. Newspaper paragraphs about the books that 
 are to be rub the bloom oS these peaches long before 
 they lie upon our tables. The other day I read this 
 announcement : " The Memoir of Dr. Berry, of Wolver- 
 hampton, will bear the simple title, Life of the Rev. C. 
 A. Berry, D.D." Heavens ! what other title could it 
 bear ? These paragraphs are usually inspired by the 
 publisher, for nowhere is competition more fie.rce than 
 among publishers, who puff their own productions and 
 extol the often secret charms of their kept authors with 
 an impetuosity almost indelicate. In the wake of the
 
 A GOOD BOOK AND A BAD ONE. 291 
 
 publisher and the critic there sidles by a subtler shape, 
 the literary interviewer, one of the choicest products of 
 the age, who, playing with deft fingers on that most 
 responsive of all instruments, human vanity, supplies 
 the newspapers with columns of confessions taken down 
 from the lips of authors themselves, who seem to be 
 glad to tell us how they came to be the great creatures 
 advertisement has made them, how their first books got 
 themselves written, and which of their creations they 
 themselves love the best. Let us never be tempted to 
 underrate the labours of the interviewer. There is apt 
 to be far more of that delicious compound human nature 
 in the writings of the interviewer than in the works of 
 the interviewed. If those authors only knew it, by far 
 their most interesting character is their own. 
 
 But not only is the output enormous, and what may 
 be called the undergrowth rank, but the treatment is 
 too frequently crude. Penmen, as bookwriters are now 
 pleasingly caUed, in their great haste to carry their 
 gdods early to market, are too apt to gobble up what 
 they take to be the results of scientific investigation ; 
 and stripping them bare of the conditions and qualifica- 
 tions properly belonging to scientific methods, to pre- 
 sent them to the world as staple truths, fit matter for 
 aesthetic treatment. There is something half comic, 
 half tragic in the almost headlong apprehension of half- 
 born truths by half-educated minds. Whilst the serious 
 investigator is carefully " sounding his dim and perilous 
 way," making good his ground as he goes, 
 
 " Till captive Science yields her last retreati" 
 
 these half-inspired dabblers, these ready-reckoners, are 
 abready hawking the discovery about the streets, making 
 it the motif of their jejune stage-plays and the text of 
 their blatant discourses. 
 
 To stay this Niagara, to limit this output, is, of 
 course, impossible. Nothing can stop it. Agricultural 
 depression did not hit it. Declining trade never affected
 
 292 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 it. It is confidently anticipated that the millionaires 
 of the future will be the writers of really successful 
 shUling shockers and farces that take the town. Charley's 
 Aunt has made more money than would be represented 
 by the entire fortunes of Sir Walter Scott, Thackeray, 
 and Dickens all added together. 
 
 Our concern to-night is with none of these fine folks. 
 I, for one, am always ready to prostrate myself at the 
 feet of Genius. Nothing will ever induce me to quarrel 
 with genius. Without it there would be no rapture in 
 reading, and small joy in life. Talent must be a very 
 delightful thing both to possess and to exercise. Learn- 
 ing is for ever honourable ; industry is always respect- 
 able. To be a successful impostor, a really fraudulent 
 author, to live in luxury by the bad taste of your con- 
 temporaries, to splash with the mud from the wheels of 
 your fast-driven curricle the blind Miltons and angry 
 Carlyles of your own day as they painfully pedestrianise 
 the pavement, must have an element of fun about it 
 — but it is not for us. I am assuming that we do not 
 belong to the many who write, or to the many who 
 criticise in print what is written, but to the few who 
 read. How are ive to tell a good book from a bad one ? 
 Not for the purpose of making money out of the process, 
 but for the solace of our own souls, for the education of 
 our own powers, for the increase of our own joys. It 
 is done by the exercise of a discriminative faculty called 
 Taste. If you ask that amusing figment the man in 
 the street what Taste is, the only answers you are likely 
 to get are that " Tastes differ," or " Wliat is one man's 
 meat is another man's poison," or " All is grist that 
 comes to my mill," or '' De gustibus non est dis- 
 putandum;" most discouraging replies every one of 
 them. Nor would it be wise to attempt to minimise 
 these differences of Taste ; they are most real. Hume, 
 in the Essay I promised to quote from, says only too 
 truthfully : 
 
 " Every voice is united in applauding elegance, pro-
 
 A GOOD BOOK AND A BAD ONE. 293 
 
 priety, simplicity, spirit in writing ; and in Warning 
 fustian, affectation, coldness, and a false brilliancy. But 
 when critics come to particulars this seeming unanimity 
 vanishes, and it is found they had affixed a very different 
 meaning to their expressions. In all matters of opinion 
 in science the case is opposite. The difference among 
 men is there oftener found to lie in generals than in 
 particulars, and to be less in reality than in appearance. 
 *An explanation of the terms commonly ends the con- 
 troversy, and the disputants are surprised to find that 
 they had been quarrelling while, at bottom, they agreed 
 in their judgment." 
 
 The truth of this is obvious. We all hate fustian and 
 affectation ; but were I to have such bad taste as to 
 inquire whether that popular novelist Mr. A. B. ever 
 writes anything but fustian, or whether the exquisite 
 style of Mr. C. D. has not a strong savour of affectation 
 about it, I should excite angry passions. 
 
 But as it is Hume's contention that there is a standard 
 oi Taste, he necessarily proceeds to say, " that though 
 this axiom (namely, that tastes differ) , by passing into a 
 proverb, seems to have attained the sanction of common- 
 sense, there is certainly a species of common-sense which 
 opposes it." Having said this, Hume determined to 
 give his readers an illustration of this standard, and in 
 order to do so, he adopted the common and useful device 
 of selecting extreme instances. He took two authors 
 so good that all, he thought, must acknowledge their 
 goodness, and two authors so bad that all, he thought, 
 must acknowledge their badness. " Wliuever," he 
 writes, " would assert an equahty of genius and elegance 
 between Ogilby and Milton, or Bunyan and Addison, 
 would be thought to defend no less an extravagance 
 than if he had maintained a molehill to be as high as 
 Teneriffe or a pond as extensive as the ocean. Though 
 there may be found persons who give the preference to 
 the former authors, no one pays attention to such a 
 taste, and we pronounce without scruple the sentiment
 
 294 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 of these pretended critics to be absurd and ridicu- 
 lous." 
 
 Hume's first illustration will pass muster. In the 
 case of Ogilby v. Milton, the pursuer has long since been 
 dismissed with expenses ; but otherwise with Bunyan 
 V. Addison, for dearly as we may love Sir Roger de 
 Coverley, and fond though we may be of taking a turn 
 among the tombs in Westminster Abbey with Mr. 
 Spectator, Bunyan's Christian and Faithful, his Mr. 
 Worldly-Wiseman, Giant Despair, Vanity Fair, and In- 
 terpreter's House have established for themselves a 
 homestead in the minds and memories of the English- 
 speaking race, from which they can only be evicted 
 along with Moses in the Bulrushes, Daniel in the Lions' 
 Den, the Canterbury Pilgrims, Rosalind in the Forest 
 of Arden, and Jeannie Deans in the Robber's Cave, 
 near Gunnersley Hill, in Lincolnshire. 
 
 So difficult is it to be a critic ! The good-natured 
 ghost of St. David will pardon a reference only made 
 for the purpose of remarking how, if he made a bad shot 
 in 1742. it is more than probable — nay, it is certain — 
 that the critics of 1899 do not always hit the target. 
 
 The fact is, and we may as well recognise it frankly, 
 all critical judgments are and must ever remain liable 
 to two sources of variation, to both of which Hume 
 refers. The one is the different humours of particular 
 men, the other is the particular manners and opinions 
 of our age and country. There is no escaping from 
 these, and this being so, it is idle to expect the aboUtion 
 of differences of opinion in matters of taste. How Hume 
 came to go wrong — for I assume he did go wrong — 
 about John Bunyan we can see from his use of the word 
 elegance in conjunction with gennis ; " an equality of 
 genius and elegance," he wrote. Elegance was one of 
 the catch-words of the eighteenth century. It was, at 
 all events, a sensible catch-word, though, like all catch- 
 words, sure occasionally to mislead. 
 
 The upshot of all this is depressing and discouraging
 
 A GOOD BOOK AND A BAD ONE. 295 
 
 to the very last degree. In the realm of morals we may 
 believe with the great Bishop Butler that there is in 
 every man a superior principle of reflection or conscience 
 which passes judgment upon himself, which, without 
 being consulted, without being advised with, magisteri- 
 all}^ exerts itself and approves or condemns accordingly. 
 In the region of the exact sciences, among a thousand 
 different opinions which different men may entertain 
 of the same subject, there is one, and but one, that is 
 just and true. But who will dare so to lay down the 
 law about the life of a book, or the future of a picture, 
 or the reputation of a building ; and yet who can doubt 
 that in the realm of beauty there is a reign of law, a 
 superior principle of reflection, passing judgment and 
 magisterially asserting itself on every fit occasion ? 
 
 Butler's theory of the conscience has been called 
 " the pope in your bosom theory." What happiness to 
 have an sesthetic pope, a prisoner in the Vatican of 
 your own breast ! 
 
 ^Speaking for myself, I could wish for nothing better, 
 apart from moral worth, than to be the owner of a taste 
 at once manly, refined, and unaffected, which should 
 enable me to appreciate real excellence in literature and 
 art, and to depreciate bad intentions and feeble execu- 
 tion wherever I saw them. To be for ever alive to 
 merit in poem or in picture, in statue or in bust ; to be 
 able to distinguish between the grand, the grandiose, 
 and the merely bumptious ; to perceive the boundar}^ 
 between the simplicity which is divine and that which 
 is ridiculous, between gorgeous rhetoric and vulgar orna- 
 mentation, between pure and manly English meant to 
 be spoken or read, and sugared phrases, which seem 
 intended, like loUipops, for suction ; to feel yourself 
 going out in joyful admiration for whatever is noble 
 and permanent, and freezing inwardly against whatever 
 is pretentious, wire-drawn and temporary — this, indeed, 
 is to taste of the fruit of the tree, once forbidden, of the 
 knowledge of good and evil.
 
 296 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 But this is simply to extol what has not yet been 
 proved to be attainable. What is " good taste " ? My 
 kingdom for a definition. I think the best is Burke's, 
 given by him in that treatise on the Sublime and Beauti- 
 ful, which he wrote before he handed over to Lord 
 Rockingham and the Duke of Richmond and Lord John 
 Cavendish what was meant for mankind. " I mean 
 by the word taste no more than that faculty or those 
 faculties of the mind which are affected with or form 
 a judgment of the works of imagination and the elegant 
 arts. The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment, 
 and this may arise from a natural weakness of the 
 understanding, or, which is much more commonly the 
 case, it may arise from a want of proper and well-directed 
 exercise which alone can make it strong and ready. . . . 
 It is known that the taste is improved, exactly as we 
 improve our judgment by extending our knowledge, by 
 a steady attention to our object, and by frequent exer- 
 cise ; they who have not taken these methods, if their 
 taste decides quickly, it is always uncertainly, and their 
 quickness is owing to their presumption and rashness, 
 and not to any hidden irradiation that in a moment 
 dispels all darkness from their minds," 
 
 " The cause of a wrong taste," says Burke, " is a 
 defect of judgment ; " and here I must add on my own 
 account that nobody comes into this world with a ripe 
 judgment. You are as likely to be bom with a silk 
 hat on your head as with good taste implanted in your 
 breast. To go wrong is natural, to go right is discipline. 
 Generation after generation of boys go to schools and 
 universities to be taught to play cricket, to row, and 
 nowadays how to play golf. Each generation repro- 
 duces with startling fidelity to the iypQ the same old 
 familiar, deep-rooted faults. No generation escapes 
 them, but each in its turn has painfully to be taught to 
 leave undone the things that naturally they would do, 
 and do those things which, if left to themselves, they 
 would most certainly leave undone. With oaths and
 
 A GOOD BOOK AND A BAD ONE. 297 
 
 revilings are they adjured to abandon nature and to 
 practise art, to dig up the faults they were born with, 
 and to adopt in their place methods which time has 
 approved and discipline estabUshed. Success is very 
 partial, but sometimes it does happen that a patient 
 teacher finds an apt scholar, and then, when, after 
 weary months, it maj' be years of practice, something 
 like perfection is attained, and we see before us a finished 
 oarsman, a faultless bat, a brilliant golfer, we exclaim 
 with admiration as we watch the movements so graceful, 
 so easy, so effective, of this careful product of artifice, 
 " How naturally he does it ! " 
 
 Gentlemen, if you want to find the natural man at 
 work, you must look for him in the bunkers of life. There 
 you wiU find crowds of them trying to get out and 
 upbraiding the ill-luck that (as they think) got them 
 in. Their actions are animated, their language is strong, 
 but neither actions nor language are in good taste. 
 
 If, then, we would possess good taste we must take 
 pains about it. We must study models, -we must follow 
 examples, we must compare methods, and (above any- 
 thing else) we must crucify the natural man. If there 
 is one thing to be dreaded in these matters, it is what 
 is called the unaided intelligence of the masses. A 
 crudely-coloured oleograph of the Albert Memorial may 
 give pleasure to an unaided intelligence, but is that 
 pleasure to be compared in depth of satisfaction with 
 that which is afforded when the educated eye feasts 
 upon the nature-interpreting canvas of a great artist ? 
 
 All, I think, are agreed about the study of the models ; 
 of the things which are attested, the things which, as 
 St. Augustine says, " sana mens omnium hominum at- 
 tesiatur." The elegant Addison agrees. " Literary 
 taste," says he, " is the faculty which discerns the 
 beauties of an author with pleasure and the imperfec- 
 tions with dislike. If a man would know whether he 
 is possessed of this faculty, I would have him read over 
 the celebrated works of antiquity, which have stood the
 
 298 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 test of so many different ages and countries." Hume 
 says the same thing. So does Goethe, who said to 
 Eckermann, " Taste is only to be educated by con- 
 templation not of the tolerably good, but of the truly 
 excellent. I therefore show you only the best works, 
 and when you are grounded in these you will have a 
 standard for the rest, which you will know how to value 
 without overrating them. And I show you the best 
 in each class, that you may perceive that no class is to 
 be despised, but that each gives delight when a man of 
 genius attains the highest point." Mr. Matthew Arnold 
 strongly held the same view, and recommended us all 
 to carry in our heads scraps of Homer and Virgil, of 
 Dante and Shakspeare, of Milton and Keats, and when- 
 ever we are required, as we so often are, to admire the 
 worthless and extol the commonplace, to murmur these 
 passages under our breath as a kind of taste-tonic. 
 Somewhat in the same way the excellent John Howard 
 used in his prison visitations to secrete small weighing 
 scales about his person, and after asking to see a pris- 
 oner's ration of food would whip out his machine and 
 convict the gaoler before his face of trying to palm off 
 one pound for two. Mr. Arnold's pocket scales for test- 
 ing poets have been ridiculed, but I recommend their use 
 unhesitatingly. 
 
 We may then, I think, assume that the best way of 
 teUing a good book from a bad one is to make yourself 
 as weU acquainted as you can with some of the great 
 literary models. Do not be frightened of them. They 
 afford the widest choice ; they are for all moods. There 
 is no need to like them all alike. The language diffi- 
 culty presses heavily upon some, but, as we are seeking 
 only our own good, and not aspiring to instruct the 
 world, we need not postpone our own critical education 
 until we can read Sophocles for fun. No doubt it would 
 be well if we all could, but just as it is better to spend 
 three days in Rome or three hours in Athens than 
 never to see those cities, so it is better to read the An-
 
 A GOOD BOOK AND A BAD ONE. 299 
 
 iigone in the translation of ^Ir. J ebb than not to read 
 it at all. It is all very well for scholars to turn up 
 their noses at translations, but plain Britons, whose 
 greatest book is a translation by divers hands, and 
 whose daily prayers have been done into English for 
 them from the Latin, may be well content, if they do 
 not happen to be masters of the languages of antiquity, 
 or of all the tongues of the modern world, to gain 
 through the medium of the best translations some in- 
 sight into the ways of thought and modes of expression 
 Bi the sovereigns of literature, the lords of human 
 smiles and tears. But, indeed, with the Golden Treas^lry 
 0/ Songs and Lyrics in your pocket, and such volumes 
 as Chambers's Encyclopcedia of Literature on your shelf, 
 the man who has only his own English at command has 
 ample room and verge enough within which to cultivate 
 a taste which ought to be sufficiently sound to prevent 
 him from wallowing among the potsherds, or, decked 
 out with vulgar fairings, from following some charlatan 
 in his twenty-eighth edition. 
 
 We begin, then, with tradition — with tradition, which 
 plays so great a part in religion, in law, in life. Genius 
 may occasionally flout it, but I am assuming we have 
 no genius. We shall do well to pay tradition reverence. 
 It would be a nice inquiry whether it is better for a 
 man's morale to be a rebel or a slave ; but I am not 
 concerned with it to-night. Veneration for the models 
 does not involve servility. 
 
 It is a tremendous saying of Landor's, " We admire 
 by tradition and we criticise by caprice." 
 
 To admire by tradition is a poor thing. Far better 
 really to admire Miss Gabblegoose's novels than pretend 
 to admire Miss Austen's. Nothing is more alien to the 
 spirit of pure enjoyment than simulated rapture, bor- 
 rowed emotion. If after giving a classic a fair chance 
 you really cannot abide him, or remain hermetically 
 sealed against his charm, it is perhaps wisest to say 
 nothing about it, though if you do pluck up heart of
 
 300 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 grace and hit him a critical rap over his classical costard 
 it will not hurt him, and it may do you good. But let 
 the rap succeed and not precede a careful study, for 
 depend upon it it is no easy matter to become a classic, 
 A thousand snares beset the path to immortality, as 
 we are pleased to call a few centuries of fame. Rocks, 
 snows, avalanches, bogs — you may climb too high for 
 your head, you may sink too low for your soul ; you 
 may be too clever by half or too dull for endurance, you 
 may be too fashionable or too outrageous ; there are 
 a hundred ways to the pit of oblivion. Therefore?, 
 when a writer has by general consent escaped his age, 
 when he has survived his environment, it is madness 
 and folly for us, the children of a brief hour, to despise 
 the great literary tradition which has put him where he 
 is. But, I repeat, to respect tradition is not to admire 
 traditionally. 
 
 Tradition is the most trustworthy advertisement and 
 the wisest advice. Ah, advertisement ! there, indeed, 
 is a word to make one blush. Ruskin has somewhere 
 told us that we are not to buy our books by adver- 
 tisement, but by advice. It is very difficult nowadays 
 to distinguish between the two. Into how many homes 
 has the Times succeeded in thrusting the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica and the Century Dictionary ? The Daily 
 News has its own edition of Dickens, whilst the Standard 
 daily trumpets the astounding merits of an Anglo- 
 American compound which compresses into twenty vol- 
 umes the best of everything. These newspapers advise 
 us in their advertisement columns to buy books in the 
 sale of which their proprietors are personally interested. 
 Is their advice advertisement, or is their advertisement 
 advice ? 
 
 The advice given you by literary tradition is, at all 
 events, absolutely independent. I therefore say, be shy 
 of quarrelling with tradition, but by all means seek to 
 satisfy yourselves that the particular tradition is sound. 
 We criticise by caprice ; this is the other half of Lander's
 
 A GOOD BOOK AND A BAD ONE. 301 
 
 saying. The history of criticism is a melancholy one. 
 WTiat are we to say to the blank indifference of our 
 fathers to Sartor Resartus, to Bells and Pomegranates, 
 to the early poems of Tennyson and Matthew Arnold 
 and William Morris, to The Ordeal of Richard Feverel ? 
 Are we likely to be wiser than our fathers ? All we can do 
 is to keep hard at it crucifying the natural man. This 
 is best done, as Burke said, by extending our knowledge, 
 by a steady attention to our object, and by frequent exercise. 
 
 In extending our knowledge we must keep our eye 
 on the models, be they books or pictures, marbles or 
 bricks. We must, as far as possible, widen our horizons, 
 and be always exercising our wits by constant com- 
 parisons. Above all must we ever be on our guard 
 against prejudice, nor should we allow paradox to go 
 about unchained. 
 
 I go back to Hume. " Strong sense united to delicate 
 sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by com- 
 parison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle 
 cf-itics to be judges of the fine arts ; " and again he says, 
 "'it is rare to meet with a man who has a just taste 
 without a sound understanding." 
 
 Go get thee understanding, become possessed of 
 strong sense, if thou wouldst know how to tell a good 
 book from a bad one. You may have — though it is 
 not likely — Homer by heart, Virgil at your fingers' ends, 
 all the great models of dignity, propriety and splendour 
 may be on your shelves, and yet if you are without 
 understanding, without the happy mixture of strong 
 sense and delicacy of sentiment, you will fail to discern 
 amid the crowd and crush of authors the difference 
 between the good and the bad ; you will belong to the 
 class who preferred Cleveland to Milton, Montgomery 
 to Keats, Moore to Wordsworth, Tupper to Tennyson, 
 
 Understanding may be got. By taking thought we 
 can add to our intellectual stature. Dehcacy may be 
 acquired. Good taste is worth striving after, it adds 
 to the joy of the world.
 
 302 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 " For most men in a brazen prison live, 
 Where in the sun's hot eye. 
 With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly 
 Their lives to some unmeaning task-work give. 
 Dreaming of nought beyond their prison wall ; 
 And as year after year 
 Fresh products of their barren labour fall 
 From their tired hands, and rest 
 Never yet comes more near. 
 Gloom settles slowly down over their breast. 
 And while they try to stem 
 
 The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest. 
 Death in their prison reaches them, 
 Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest." 
 
 From this brazen prison, from this barren toil, from 
 this deadl\^ gloom, who would not make his escape if 
 he could ? A cultivated taste, an educated eye, a pure 
 enthusiasm for literature, are keys which may let us out 
 if we like. But even here one must be on one's guard 
 against mere connoisseiirship. " Taste," said Carlyle — 
 and I am glad to quote that great name before I have 
 done — " if it means anything but a paltry connoisseur- 
 ship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and 
 nobleness, a sense to discern and a heart to love and 
 reverence all beauty, order, and goodness, wheresoever 
 or in whatsoever forms and accomplishments they are 
 to be seen." 
 
 Wordsworth's shepherd, Michael, who 
 
 " Had been alone . 
 Amid the heart of many thousand mists 
 That came to him and left him on the heights," 
 
 had doubtless a greater susceptibility to truth and 
 nobleness than many an Edinburgh or Quarterly re- 
 viewer ; but his love, as Wordsworth tells us, was a 
 blind love, and his books, other than his Bible, were 
 the green vaUeys and the streams and brooks. 
 
 There is no harm in talking about books, still less in 
 reading them, but it is folly to pretend to worship them. 
 
 " Deign on the passing world to turn your eyes, 
 And pause awhile from letters to be wise."
 
 A GOOD BOOK AND A BAD ONE. 303 
 
 To tell a good book from a bad one is, then, a trouble- 
 some job, demanding, first, a strong understanding ; 
 second, knowledge, the result of study and comparison ; 
 third, a dehcate sentiment. If you have some measure 
 of these gifts, which, though in part the gift of the gods, 
 may also be acquired, and can always be improved, and 
 can avoid prejudice — political prejudice, social prejudice, 
 religious prejudice, irrehgious prejudice, the prejudices 
 of the place where you could not help being born, the 
 prefudices of the university whither chance sent you, 
 all the prejudices that came to you by way of inherit- 
 ance, and aU the prejudices you have picked up on your 
 own account as you went along — if you can give all 
 these the shp and manage to live just a little above 
 the clouds and mists of your own generation, why then, 
 with luck, you may be right nine times out of ten in 
 your judgment of a dead author, and ought not to be 
 wrong more frequently than perhaps three times out 
 of seven in the case of a living author ; for it is, I repeat, 
 a very difficult thing to tell a good book from a bad one.
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE COWDENBEATH 
 (FIFESHIRE) literary society on OCTOBER I5, 1896. 
 
 THERE is a story told of an ancient dandy in London 
 who, taking, one sunny afternoon, his accustomed 
 stroll down Bond Street, met an acquaintance hurrying 
 in the direction of Westminster. ' ' Whither away so 
 fast this hot day ? " murmured the dandy. " To the 
 House of Commons," cried his strenuous friend, brushing 
 past him. " What ! " said the dandy, with a yawn, 
 " does that go on still ? " Yes ; the House of Commons 
 still goes on, still attracts an enormous, some think an 
 inordinate, amount of public attention. What are called 
 " politics " occupy in Great Britain a curiously promi- 
 nent place. Literature, art, science, are avenues to a 
 fame more enduring, more agreeable, more personally 
 attractive than that which awaits at the end of his 
 career the once prominent party politician. Yet with 
 us a party leader looms more largely in the public mind, 
 excites more curiosity, than almost any other descrip- 
 tion of mortal. He often appears where he would not 
 seem to have any particular business. If a bust is to be 
 unveiled of a man of letters, if a public eulogium is to 
 be pronounced on a man of science, if the health is to 
 be proposed of a painter or an actor, or if some distin- 
 guished foreigner is to be feasted, the astute managers 
 of the function, anxious to draw a crowd, and to make 
 the thing a success, try, in the first instance, at all 
 events, to secure the presence of Mr. Balfour, or Lord 
 Rosebery, or Lord Salisbury, or Mr. Chamberlain, rather 
 than of Lord Kelvin or Mr. Leslie Stephen. The fact is
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 305 . 
 
 that politicians, and particularly the heroes of the House 
 of Commons, the gladiators of politics, share in the 
 country some of the popularity which naturally belongs 
 to famous jockeys, which once belonged to the heroes of 
 the prize ring. It is more difficult to explain this than 
 to understand it. Our party strife, our Parliamentary 
 contests, have long presented many of the features of a 
 sport. When Mr. Gladstone declared in the House of 
 Commons, with an irresistible twinkle of the eye, that he 
 was an " old Parliamentary hand," the House was con- 
 vulsed with laughter, and the next morning the whole 
 country chuckled with delight. We all liked to think 
 that our leading statesman was not only full of enthusiasm 
 and zeal, but also a wily old fellow, who knew a thing or 
 two better than his neighbours. I have always thought 
 the instantaneous popularity of this remark of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's illustrates very well the curiously mixed feelings 
 we entertain towards those great Parliamentary chief- 
 tains who have made their reputations on the floor of 
 the House of Commons. There is nothing noble or 
 exalted in the history of the House of Commons. In- 
 deed, a devil's advocate, had he the requisite talent, 
 could easily deliver an oration as long and as eloquent 
 as any of Burke's or Sheridan's, taking as his subject 
 the stupidity, cowardice, and, until quite recent times, 
 the corruption of the House of Commons. I confess I 
 cannot call to mind a single occasion in its long and 
 remarkable history when the House of Commons, as a 
 whole, played a part either obviously heroic or conspicu- 
 ously wise ; but we all of us can recall hundreds of occa- 
 sions when, heroism and wisdom being greatly needed, 
 the House of Commons exhibited either selfish indiffer- 
 ence, crass ignorance, or the vulgarest passion. Nor can 
 it honestly be said that our Parliamentary heroes have 
 been the noblest of our race. Among great Ministers, 
 Sir Robert Walpole had good sense ; Lord North, a 
 kind heart ; the elder Pitt, a high spirit ; his son, a 
 lofty nature ; Peel, a sense of duty ; Lord John Russell,
 
 3o6 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 a dauntless courage ; Disraeli, patience to wait ; but 
 for no one of these distinguished men is it possible to 
 have any very warm personal regard. If you turn to 
 men who have never been powerful Ministers, the lan- 
 . guage of eulogy is perhaps a little easier. Edmund 
 Burke, alone of Parliamentary orators, lives on in his 
 speeches, full as they are of v/isdom and humanity ; 
 through the too fierce argumentations of Charles James 
 Fox, that great man with a marred career, there always 
 glowed a furious something which warms my heart to 
 its innermost depth. John Bright is a great Parlia- 
 mentary figure, though many of his speeches lack a 
 " gracious somewhat." Richard Cobden's oratory pos- 
 sessed one unique quality : it almost persuaded his 
 political opponents that he was right and they were 
 wrong. Among the many brilliant lawyers who have, 
 like birds of passage, flitted through the House of Com- 
 mons, usually on their way to what they thought to be 
 better things, I know but one of whom I could honestly 
 say, " May my soul be with his ! " I refer to Sir Samuel 
 Romilly, the very perfection in my eyes of a lawyer, 
 a gentleman, and a member of Parliament, whose pure 
 figure stands out in the frieze of our Parliamentary his- 
 tory like the figure of Apollo amongst a herd of satyrs 
 and goats. And he, in a fit of depression, made an end 
 of himself. 
 
 No, the charm — the undeniable charm ; the strength 
 — the unquestioned strength ; the utility — of the House 
 of Commons do not depend upon the nobility of the 
 characters of either its leaders or its rank and file ; nor 
 on its insight into affairs — its capacity to read the signs 
 of the times, its moral force, still less its spiritual depth ; 
 but because it has always, somehow or other, both before 
 Reform Bills and after Reform Bills, represented truth- 
 fully and forcefully, not the best sense of the wisest 
 people, not the loftiest aspirations of the noblest people, 
 but the primary instincts, the rooted habits of a mixed 
 race of men and women destined in the strange provi-
 
 tht: house of commons. 307 
 
 dence of God to pla^' a great part in the history of the 
 world. A zealous philanthropy may well turn pale at 
 the history of the House of Commons which, all through 
 the eighteenth century, tolerated with fearful composure 
 the infamies of the slave trade, the horrors of our gaols, 
 the barbarity of our criminal code, the savagery of the 
 press-gang, the heathenism of the multitude, the condi- 
 tion of things in our mines. The eager reformer must 
 blush as he reads of our Parliamentary representation 
 — of rotten boroughs, of deserted villages with two 
 members, and of Manchester with none. The financial 
 purist must shudder as he studies the Civil List, and pon- 
 ders over the pensions and sinecures which spread corrup- 
 tion broadcast through the land. It is true enough, and 
 yet the fact remains, that all th'is time the British nation 
 was stumbling and groaning along the path which has 
 floated the Union Jack in every quarter of the globe. 
 I do not know that it can be said the House of Commons 
 did much to assist the action of this drama ; but, at all 
 events, it did not succeed in frustrating it. 
 
 However, my object to-night is to say something 
 about the House of Commons as it exists at present, and 
 as it strikes the humble individual who has sat in it for 
 seven years as your representative. Well, first of all 
 I am a Scottish member, and as a Scottish member 
 one's attitude to the House of Commons is not a little 
 that of an outsider. Scotland has nothing to do with 
 the early history of the English Parliament. Until 1707 
 you had a Parliament of your own, with Lords and 
 Commons sitting all together cheek by jowl. A great 
 economy of time, for, as Andrew Pairservice in Rob Roy 
 puts it, there was no need then for Lords and Commons 
 to have their havers twice over. There is no need to 
 be ashamed of the old Scots Parliament. It passed laws 
 of unrivalled brevity and perfect intelligibility, a now 
 lost art. Scotland owes more to its old Parliament than 
 it yet does to the United Parliament. If you seek a record 
 of its labours, you will find one in an essay penned sixty
 
 I 
 
 308 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 years ago by a Scotch Tory, the very man who wrote 
 a history of Europe in twenty volumes, to prove that 
 Heaven was always on the side of the Tories.* 
 
 The old Scots Parliament met for the last time on 
 March 25, 1707. Unions are never popular. The Union 
 of England and Scotland was undoubtedly most un- 
 popular. One member for Fifeshire voted for it, and 
 two against it. I wonder which way I should have 
 voted. Cupar, Burntisland, Kinghorn, Dunfermline, 
 Inverkeithing, and Queensferry voted Aye ; but St. 
 Andrews, Dysart, Kirkcaldy, Pittenweem, voted No. 
 The first article of the Treaty for Union, which involved 
 the rest, was carried by 116 votes against 83 ; and then, 
 as Lord Seafield said, " There was the end of an auld 
 sang ; " but some day-^who knows ? — the auld sang 
 may be set to a new tune. But this much is certain — 
 the new tune will in no way affect the loyalty of Scots- 
 men to the Union of the two countries. But for that 
 Union Scotland would not stand where she does in the 
 eyes of the world. WTiat Scotland wanted, what Scot- 
 land standing alone could never have had, was a theatre 
 wide enough for the energy of her sons. A country so 
 small, so barren, could never have supplied such a theatre. 
 Scotsmen must have taken service abroad, and spent 
 their lives fighting other men's battles, or building up 
 other men's fortunes. United with South Britain she 
 has been able to play a glorious part both at home and 
 abroad, and this she has done without losing either her 
 Scottish character or her Scottish accent. Still, the 
 fact remains that the seventy-two members from Scot- 
 land preserve a character of their own among the 590 
 representatives from England, Wales, and Ireland. This 
 must be so. Scotch law is very different from English 
 law. We have in Scotland our own laws and our own 
 judicature. A Scotsman cannot be sued in an English 
 court unless he is snapped with a writ whilst sojourning 
 in that strange land. Scotland has her own religion ; 
 
 * Alison's Essays, vol. i.
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 309 
 
 for, though I am far from saying that traces of a common 
 Christianity may not be found lurking both in Presby- 
 terianism and Episcopacy, still, speaking as a Parliament 
 man, the religions of the two countries may be con- 
 sidered as distinct. In England, those who do not be- 
 lieve in the Divine authority of Episcopacy, who deny 
 either the validity of the orders of the Episcopalian 
 clergy or that there are such things as holy orders at all, 
 who repudiate the Sacramentarian system, and hate the 
 pretensions of a priesthood, are engaged in a daily, 
 bitter strife with the Church party, with which Scotland 
 has as yet no concern. The educational system is dif- 
 ferent. Here you have universal School Boards, and 
 pay an allegiance — sometimes real, sometimes formal — 
 to a Catechism which, though often supposed to be the 
 most Scotch thing in existence, was, as a matter of fact, 
 compiled in England by Englishmen. In England School 
 Boards are far from universal, and clerically conducted 
 schools provide the education of half the school-going 
 population. The Scottish system of local government 
 is different in important respects from the English. For 
 example, your Parish Councils administer the Poor Law ; 
 in England they do not. Your rating system is different. 
 Here the rate"^ is divided between the owner and the 
 occupier ; in England the occupier pays the whole rate. 
 All these differences invite different treatment— there 
 have to be English Bills and Scotch Bills ; and though 
 some Scotch members may honestly try to understand 
 English Bills, I never knew an English member, unless 
 he was by birth a Scotsman, who ever took, or pretended 
 to take, the least trouble to understand a Scotch Bill. 
 They vote if they happen to be in the House while 
 Scotch business is being discussed, but they vote as they 
 are told by their party managers. It follows, as I say, 
 from this that a Scotch member surveys the House of 
 Commons somewhat as an outsider. 
 
 The great characteristic of the House of Commons is 
 that it is a deliberative and consultative chamber, meet-
 
 310 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 ing together for the purposes of framing laws (if it con- 
 siders any new laws necessary) which are to bind thei 
 whole nation, and of criticising the Executive. It does 
 not meet for the purpose of oratory, or to strengthen 
 party organisation, but to frame laws of universal obliga- 
 tion and to find fault with or support Ministers. This 
 at once gets rid of the platform orator," and establishes 
 the difference between public meetings and the House of 
 Commons. It is no discredit to the public meeting or 
 to the House of Commons to say that what will find 
 favour with the one excites the disgust of the other, 
 for the two have little in common. The object of a 
 speaker at a public meeting is to excite enthusiasm and 
 to spread his faith ; but in the House of Commons his 
 object is to remove objections, to state propositions in 
 a way least likely to make reply easy, to show that a 
 scheme is practicable and free from particular injustices, 
 to handle figures with dexterity, and to avoid empty 
 phraseology. There is nothing the House of Commons 
 hates more than to be reminded of the purgatorial flames 
 through which each member has had to pass in order to 
 take his seat by the side of the Speaker ; and therefore 
 it is that the utterance in all innocence, by some new 
 member of either party, of the cries and watchwords 
 with which he was accustomed to enliven his electioneer- 
 ing speeches never fails to excite the angry groans of 
 his opponents and the sarcastic smiles of his friends. 
 Nor is there anything dishonest in this. There is a time 
 for all things, and the House of Commons is before every- 
 thing a deliberative and consultative assembly. An- 
 other marked characteristic of the House of Commons 
 is its total indifference to outside reputations or great 
 fortunes. Local magnates, manufacturers whose chim- 
 neys blacken a whole countryside, merchants whose 
 ships plough the broad and narrow seas, speculators in 
 cotton and in sugar, mayors and provosts whose por- 
 traits adorn town halls, whose names are household 
 words in their own districts, lawyers so eminent that
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 311 
 
 they will not open their mouths in the courts for less than 
 a hundred guineas, need not hope to be received by the 
 House of Commons otherwise than with languid indiffer- 
 ence. If they prove to be bores, so much the worse ; 
 if they prove not to be bores, so much the better. If 
 they push themselves to the front, it will be by Parlia- 
 mentary methods ; if they remain insignificant, it is 
 only what was to be expected. Never was an assembly 
 so free from all taint of mercenariness as the House of 
 Commons. It does not care a snap of its fingers whether 
 the income of a new member is £100,000 a year or £3 a 
 week — whether his father was a duke or a blacksmith ; 
 its only concern with him is that, if he has anything to 
 say, he may say it, and that if he has nothing to say, 
 he will say nothing. 
 
 The House of Commons is often said to be a place of 
 great good-fellowship. Within certain necessarily re- 
 stricted limits it is. It is difficult to maintain aloofness. 
 You may find yourself serving on a Committee alongside 
 soKie one whose public utterances or party intrigues you 
 have always regarded with aversion ; but it may easily 
 be that you agree with him, not, it may be, as to the 
 Government of Ireland or the sacred principles of Free 
 Trade, but as to the prudence or folly of a particular 
 line of railway, or the necessity of a new water-supply 
 for some large town. You hob-a-nob at luncheon, you 
 grumble together over your dinner, you lament the 
 spread of football clubs and brass bands in your respec- 
 tive constituencies ; you criticise your leaders, and are 
 soon quite at home in the society of the very man you 
 thought you detested. There is nothing like a common 
 topic to break the ice, and two members of Parliament 
 have always something to talk about. But further Lhan 
 this it is hard to go. The House is too large. Amongst 
 an assembly of 670 men well on in life the hand of Death 
 is always busy. Vacancies occur with startling regularity. 
 The only uncertainty is, who is to drop out of the ranks. 
 " Death of a Member of Parliament " is a common
 
 312 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 announcement on the placards of the evening papers ; 
 and then the thriftiest of Scotch members fumbles for 
 his bawbee, buys the paper, stops under the next lamp- 
 post to see who it is who has gone, whose figure will no 
 more be seen in the Tea-room and the Lobby. Who- 
 ever it is, big man or little, a silent member or a talka- 
 tive one, a wise man or a fool, his place will soon be 
 filled up, and his party Whip will be heard moving for a 
 new writ to issue for the Borough of Small-Talk in the 
 place of Jeremiah Jones, deceased. " Poor Jones ! " 
 we all say ; " not a bad fellow, Jones ; I suppose Brown 
 will get the seat this time." 
 
 I know no place where the great truth that no man 
 is necessary is brought home to the mind so remorse- 
 lessly, and yet so refreshingly, as the House of Commons. 
 Over even the greatest reputations it closes with barely 
 a bubble. And yet the vanity of politicians is enormous. 
 Lord Melbourne, you will remember, when asked his 
 opinion of men, replied, with his accustomed expletive, 
 which I omit as unfit for the polite ear of Cowdenbeath, 
 " Good fellows, very good fellows, but vain, very vain." 
 
 There is a great deal of vanit}^ both expressed and 
 concealed, in the House of Commons. I often wonder 
 why, for I cannot imagine a place where men so habitually 
 disregard each other's feelings, so openly trample on 
 each other's egotisms. You rise to address the House. 
 The Speaker calls on you by name. You begin your 
 speech. Hardly are you through with the first sentence 
 when your oldest friend, your college chum, the man 
 you have appointed guardian of your infant children, 
 rises in his place, gives you a stony stare, and, seizing 
 his hat in his hand, ostentatiously walks out of the 
 House, as much as to say, " I can stand many things, 
 but not this." 
 
 Whilst speaking in the House I have never failed to 
 notice one man, at all events, who was pajang me the 
 compliment of the closest attention, who never took his 
 eyes off me, who hung upon my words, on whom every-
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 313 
 
 thing I was saying seemed to be making the greatest 
 impression. In my early days I used to address myself 
 to this man, and try my best to make my discourse 
 worthy of his attention ; but sad experience has taught 
 me that this soUtary auditor is not in the least inter- 
 ested either in me or in my speech, and that the only 
 reason why he listens so intently and eyes me so closely 
 is because he has made up his mind to follow me, and 
 is eager to leap to his feet, in the hope of catching the 
 Speaker's eye, the very moment I sit down. Yet, for 
 all this, vanity thrives in the House — though what it 
 feeds on I cannot say. We are all anxious to exaggerate 
 our own importance, and desperately anxious to make 
 reputations for ourselves and to have our names asso- 
 ciated with some subject — to pose as its patron and 
 friend. On great Parliamentary nights these vanities, 
 from which even our leaders are not wholly exempt, 
 are very conspicuous. On such occasions the House of 
 Commons has reminded me of a great drying-ground, 
 where all the clothes of a neighbourhood may be seen 
 fluttering in a gale of wind. There are night-gowns and 
 shirts and petticoats so distended and distorted by the 
 breeze as to seem the garments of a race of giants, rather 
 than of poor mortal man ; even the stockings of some 
 slim maiden, when puffed out by the lawless wind, 
 assume dropsical proportions. But the wind sinks, 
 having done its task, and then the matter-of-fact washer- 
 woman unpegs the garments, sprinkles them with water, 
 and ruthlessly passes over them her flat-irons, and, lo 
 and behold ! these giant's robes are reduced to their 
 familiar, domestic, and insignificant proportions. 
 
 A marked characteristic of the House of Commons is 
 its generosity. We have heard far too much lately of 
 contending jealousies. The only thing the House is 
 really jealous of is its own reputation. If a member, 
 no matter who he is, or where he sits, or what he says, 
 makes a good speech and creates a powerful impression, 
 nobody is more delighted, more expansively and effu-
 
 314 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 sively delighted, than Sir Wihiam Harcourt. On sucKj 
 occasions he glov/s with generosity. And this is equally i 
 true of Mr. Balfour, and indeed of the whole House,] 
 which invariably welcomes talent and rejoices over] 
 growing reputations. ': 
 
 Members of Parliament may be divided into two 
 classes — Front Bench men and Back Bench men. The 
 former are those who fill or have filled posts in an Ad- 
 ministration, and they sit either on the Government 
 Bench or on the Front Opposition Bench. These per- 
 sonages enjoy certain privileges, and the most obvious 
 of these privileges is that they speak with a table in 
 front of them, whereby they are enabled cunningly to 
 conceal their notes. Now, the private or Back Bench 
 member has no place in which to conceal his notes, save 
 his hat, a structure ill fitted for the purpose. Another 
 of the privileges of a Front Bench man is that he has, 
 or is supposed to have, a right of intervention in debate 
 just when he chooses. This is an enormous advantage. 
 Just consider the unhappy fate of a private member who 
 is anxious to speak during an important debate. He 
 prepares his speech, and comes down to the House with 
 it concealed about his person. He bides his time ; an 
 excellent opportunit5r occurs ; nobody has as yet said 
 what he is going to say ; he rises in his place ; but, 
 alas ! fifteen other members with fifteen other speeches 
 in their pockets rise too, and the Speaker calls on one 
 of them, and down falls our unhappy member, to wait 
 another opportunity. This may happen frequently, and 
 often does happen fifteen or sixteen times. He has to 
 sit still and hear other men mangle his arguments, quote 
 his quotations. Night follows night, and the speech 
 remains undelivered, festering in his brain, polluting his 
 mind. At last he gets his chance — the Speaker calls 
 out his name ; but by this time he has got sick of the 
 subject — it has grown weary, stale, flat, and unprofit- 
 able. He has lost his interest, and soon loses the 
 thread of his discourse ; he flounders and flops, has
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 315 
 
 recourse to his hat, repeats himself, grows hot and un- 
 comfortable, forgets his best points, and finaUy sits 
 down dejected, discouraged, disappointed. And all the 
 time his wife is in the Ladies' Gahery gnashing her teeth 
 at the poor figure he is cutting ! No wonder he hates 
 the Front Bench man. But there are gradations in the 
 Front Bench. Between the leaders of the House, who 
 bag all the best moments, and the hum.ble Under Secre- 
 tary or Civil Lord there is a great gulf fixed. These 
 latter gentry are not allowed to speak at all, except on 
 matters relating to their departments, or when they are 
 told off to speak by the leader. Nothing is more amusing 
 than to notice the entire eclipse of some notorious chat- 
 terbox who has been given some minor post in an Ad- 
 ministration. Before he took office he was chirping on 
 every bough ; hardly a night passed but his sweet voice 
 was to be heard. After he has taken office he frequently 
 has to hold his tongue for a whole session. Poor fellow ! 
 he will sometimes buttonhole you in the Lobby, and 
 almost tearfully complain of the irksomeness of office, 
 and. tell you how he longs for the hour of emancipation, 
 when once more his voice, like that of the turtle, shall 
 be heard in the land. If you gently remind him of 
 the salary he draws, and hint that it may be some con- 
 solation even for silence, ten to one he walks away in a 
 huff, and attributes your innocent remarks to jealousy. 
 Between the Front Bench and the Back Bench there 
 has always been a feud. Front Bench men of the first 
 rank are too apt, so it is said, to regard the House of 
 Commons as a show run for their benefit, to look upon 
 themselves as a race of actor-managers who arrange 
 the play-bill, and divide all the best parts among them- 
 selves. The traditions of Parliament foster this idea. 
 But the Back Bench men are not always in the mood 
 to submit to be for ever either the audience or the super- 
 numeraries, and whenever they get the chance of assert- 
 ing themselves against their leaders they take it. But 
 in public they seldom get the chance, so they have to
 
 3i6 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 content themselves with being as disagreeable in private 
 as they possibly can. What I think is a just complaint, 
 frequently made by Back Benchers, relates to the habit 
 Parliamentary leaders of late have greatly indulged in, 
 of occupying an enormous amount of time abusing one 
 another for past inconsistencies of conduct. These 
 amenities, sometimes called lu quoques, or " You are 
 another," are infinitely wearisome, and, proceed upon 
 the mistaken assumption that the Hoase of Commons 
 greatly concerns itself with the political reputation of 
 its leaders. It does nothing of the sort. What it wants 
 is leaders who can make business go, who will show 
 sport, and lead their hounds across a good line of country. 
 As a Back Benchman, the only real complaint I have 
 to make is of the woeful waste of time. One goes down 
 to the House every day — Saturdays and Wednesdays 
 excepted — at 4 o'clock, and you are supposed to remain 
 there till midnight. On Wednesdays the House meets 
 at 12 and adjourns at 5.30. What do we do all this 
 time ? To be interested in everything that is going on 
 is flatly impossible. A quantity of the business is of 
 a local character, dealing with places and schemes of 
 which we know and can know nothing. Then there are 
 terribly protracted debates on the second readings of Bills, 
 occasionally interesting, but necessarily full of repetitions. 
 I do not well see how this is to be prevented ; but it 
 is a shocking infliction. The Committee stage of a Bill 
 you have really mastered is interesting and instructive, 
 but even this stage is too protracted ; and then comes a 
 later stage — the report stage — when a great deal is said 
 all over again ; and even this is frequently followed by 
 a debate on the third reading. Of course, you are not in 
 the House all the time. There are the Library, the Tea- 
 room, and the Smoking-room, where you may play chess 
 and draughts, but no other game whatsoever. But no- 
 body does anything vehemently. An air of languor 
 pervades the whole place. Listlessness abounds. Mem- 
 bers stroll from one room to another, turn over the
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 317 
 
 newspapers, and yawn in each other's faces. In the 
 summer months, the Terrace by the riverside has been 
 recently converted into a kind of watering-plate. From 
 five o'clock to seven it is crowded with fine ladies and 
 country cousins, drinking tea and devouring straw- 
 berries. Occasionally some Parliamentary person of 
 importance will choose to stalk by, and even — such is 
 the affability of true greatness — have a cup of tea with 
 a party of friends. A poorer way of killing time has 
 not, I think, yet been discovered; but it is a convin- 
 cing proof of the ennui of Parliamentary life. 
 
 The great problem of Ministers is the reform of the 
 rules of the House of Commons — how to make the House 
 at once a deliberative and yet a business-like assembly. 
 
 And yet men do not willingly strike off the chains of 
 this slavery, A private member of Parliament nowa- 
 days gets nothing, neither pudding nor praise, in ex- 
 change for his time and his money. Patronage he has 
 absolutely none — not a single place, even in the Post- 
 Office, to give away. Nor has he a single privilege that 
 I am aware of. His routine duties on committees are 
 onerous, nor are his opportunities of making speeches, 
 if he wishes to do so, otherwise than few and far between. 
 His leaders treat him with frigid civility, and nobody 
 cares for a letter from him unless it encloses a postal 
 order for at least ten shillings. And yet the labour of 
 winning a seat and of retaining a seat is very great ; 
 nor is the expense insignificant. 
 
 When one thinks of all the different ways of spending 
 i'joo, a Parliamentary election does not obviously strike 
 you as being one of the most delightful. It may be 
 said you have the opportunity of legislating on your 
 own account. You may bring in a Bill of your own, 
 and have the satisfaction of hearing it read a third time. 
 Hardly is this true. In former days some of the most 
 useful laws in the Statute Book were pioneered through 
 the House by private members. But now, so greedy 
 have Governments become, that they take nearly all
 
 I 
 
 318 . SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 the time available for legislative purposes, and, unless^ 
 the private member gets the first place in the ballot,' 
 he has not a chance of carrying any measure through 
 if it excites the least opposition. But when all is said 
 and done, the House of Commons is a fascinating place. 
 It has one great passion, one genuine feeling, and that 
 is, to represent and give practical expression to the 
 mind of the whole nation. It has no prejudices in 
 this matter, for it has no existence independent of its 
 creators. It has nothing to do with the choice of its^ 
 component parts. The constituencies may send up 
 whom they choose, but these persons, when they do come 
 up, must not expect to be hailed as " Saviours of So-' 
 ciety." No ; they must be content to be parts of a 
 whole, to give and take, to hear their pet creeds, faiths,' 
 and fancies rudely questioned, tested, and weighed. A 
 great nation will never consent to be dominated either 
 by a sect or by an interest. And yet, if the House oi 
 Commons has a leaning to any particular class of member 
 — which by rights it ought not to have — it is for an 
 increased direct representation of the wage-earning com- 
 munity. I hope such representativ^es may be forth- 
 coming in greater numbers as time goes on. But if 
 they are to do any good in the House of Commons, they 
 must go there, not as conquering heroes to whom the 
 unknown future belongs, but as Britons anxious to con- 
 tribute out of their special knowledge, from their hived 
 experience, to the collective wisdom of the nation ; they 
 must be willing to learn as well as to teach, to increase 
 the stock of their information, to acknowledge mistakes, 
 to widen their views ; and, above all, must they recog- 
 nise that the mighty river of our national existence, if 
 it is to continue to flow as triumplnmtly as before, must 
 continue to be fed by many tributary streams. 
 
 There are, I know, those who affect to believe that 
 representative assembhes do not stand where they did, 
 and that the day of their doom is not far distant. I 
 see no reason to believe anything of the kind, for, scan
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 319 
 
 the horizon as you may, you cannot discover what there 
 is to take their place. We have no mind for mihtary 
 despotisms, even if we had a mihtary hero. Nor are 
 we disposed to beHeve in the superior wisdom of that 
 30-called statesmanship which is manufactured in Gov- 
 ernment offices. Better by far the occasional mistakes 
 of a free people and a popular assembly than the deadly 
 and persistent errors of diplomatists and hereditary 
 statesmen. The House of Commons will, I cannot doubt, 
 be still going on when the twentieth century breathes its 
 last. Change it will know, and reform ; but, founded 
 as it is upon a rational and manly system of represen- 
 tation, why should it not always continue to reflect, 
 cautiously but truthfully, the mind and will of the 
 British people ?
 
 BOOK-BUYING. 
 
 A MOST distinguished Englishman, who, great as he 
 was in many directions, was perhaps inherently 
 more a man of letters than anything else, has been 
 overheard mournfully to declare that there were more 
 booksellers' shops in his native town long years ago, 
 when he was a boy in it, than are to-day to be found 
 within its boundaries. And yet the place " all un- 
 abashed " now boasts its bookless self a city ! 
 
 Mr. Gladstone was, of course, referring to second- 
 hand bookshops. Neither he nor any other sensible man 
 puts himself out about new books. When a new book 
 is published, read an old one, was the advice of a sound 
 though surly critic. It is one of the boasts of letters 
 to have glorified the term " second-hand," which other 
 crafts have " soiled to all ignoble use." But why it has 
 been able to do this is obvious. All the best books are 
 necessarily second-hand. The writers of to-day need 
 not grumble. Let them " bide a wee." If their books 
 are worth anything, they, too, one day will be second- 
 hand. If their books are not worth anything, there are 
 ancient trades still in full operation amongst us— the 
 pastrycooks and the trunkmakers — who must have paper. 
 But is there any substance in the plaint that nobody 
 now buys books, meaning thereby second-hand books ? 
 The late Mark Pattison, who had 16,000 volumes, and 
 whose hghtest word has therefore weight, once stated 
 that he had been informed, and verily believed, that 
 there were men of his own University of Oxford who, 
 being in uncontrolled possession of annual incomes of; 
 not less than ;(500, thought they were doing the thing 
 handsomely if they expended ^:50 a year upon then-
 
 BOOK-BUYING. 321 
 
 ibraries. But we are not bound to believe this unless 
 Ne like. There was a touch of morosity about the late 
 Rector of Lincoln which led him to take gloomy views 
 Df men, particularly Oxford men. 
 
 No doubt arguments a priori may readily be found 
 [o support the contention that the habit of book-buying 
 Is on the decline. I confess to knowing one or two men. 
 not Oxford men either, but Cambridge men (and the pas- 
 sion of Cambridge for literature is a byword), who, on 
 the plea of being pressed with business, or because they 
 were going to a funeral, have passed a bookshop in a 
 strange town without so much as stepping inside "just 
 to see whether the fellow had anything." But painful 
 as facts of this sort necessarily are, any damaging in- 
 ference we might feel disposed to draw from them is 
 dispelled by a comparison of price-lists. Compare a 
 bookseller's catalogue of 1862 with one of the present 
 year, and your pessimism is washed away by the tears 
 which unrestrainedly flow as you see what bonnes fortunes 
 you have lost. A young book-buyer might well turn 
 out upon Primrose Hill and bemoan his youth, after 
 comparing old catalogues with new. 
 
 Nothing but American competition, grumble some old 
 stagers. 
 
 Well ! why not ? This new battle for the books is 
 a free fight, not a private one, and Columbia has " joined 
 in." Lower price's are not to be looked for. The book- 
 buyer of 1950 will be glad to buy at to-day's prices. I 
 take pleasure in thinking he will not be able to do so. 
 Good finds grow scarcer and scarcer. True it is that 
 but a few short weeks ago I picked up (such is the happy 
 phrase, most apt to describe what was indeed a '' street 
 casualty ") a copy of the original edition of Endymion 
 (Keats's poem — subscriber to Mudie's !— not Lord 
 Beaconsfield's novel) for the easy equivalent of half a 
 crown ; but then that was one of my lucky days. The 
 enormous increase of booksellers' catalogues and their 
 wide circulation amongst the trade has already produced 
 
 XI
 
 322 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 a hateful uniformity of prices. Go where you will it is 
 all the same to the odd sixpence. Time was when you 
 could map out the country for yourself with some hope- 
 fulness of plunder. There were districts where the 
 Elizabethan dramatists were but slenderly protected. 
 A raid into the " bonnie North Countrie " sent you 
 home again cheered with chap-books and weighted with 
 old pamphlets of curious interests ; whilst the West of 
 England seldom failed to yield a crop of novels. I 
 remember getting a complete set of the Bronte books in 
 the original issues at Torquay, I may say, for nothing. 
 Those days are over. Your country bookseller is, in 
 fact, more likely, such tales does he hear of London 
 auctions, and such catalogues does he receive by every 
 post, to exaggerate the value of his wares than to part 
 with them pleasantly, and as a country bookseller 
 should, " just to clear my shelves, you know, and give 
 me a bit of room." The only compensation for this is 
 the catalogues themselves. You get them, at least, for 
 nothing, and it cannot be denied that they make mighty 
 pretty reading. 
 
 These high prices tell their own tale, and force upon 
 us the conviction that there never were so many private 
 libraries in course of growth as there are to-day. 
 
 Libraries are not made ; they grow. Your first two 
 thousand volumes present no difficulty, and cost aston- 
 ishingly little money. Given /400 and five years, and 
 an ordinary man can in the ordinary course, without 
 undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste^ 
 surround himself with this number of books, all in his 
 own language, and thenceforward have at least one 
 place in the world in which it is possible to be happy. 
 But pride is still out of the question. To be proud of 
 having two thousand books would be absurd. You 
 might as well be proud of having two top-coats. After 
 your first two thousand difficulty begins, but until you 
 have ten thousand volumes the less you say about your 
 library the better. Then you may begin to speak.
 
 BOOK-BUYING. 323 
 
 It is no doubt a pleasant thing to have a hbrary left 
 you. The present writer will disclaim no such legacy, 
 but herebj'' undertakes to accept it, however dusty. 
 But good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect 
 one. Each volume then, however lightly a stranger's 
 eye may roam from shelf to shelf, has its own individu- 
 ality, a history of its own. You remember where you 
 got it, and how much you gave for it ; and your word 
 may safely be taken for the first of these facts, but not 
 for the second. 
 
 The man who has a librar}^ of his own collection is 
 able to contemplate himself objectively, and is justified 
 in believing in his own existence. No other man but 
 he would have made precisely such a combination as 
 his. Had he been in any single respect different from 
 what he is, his library, as it exists, never would have 
 existed. Therefore, surely he may exclaim, as in the 
 gloaming he contemplates the backs of his loved ones, 
 " They are mine, and I am theirs." 
 » But the eternal note of sadness will find its way even 
 through the keyhole of a library. You turn some familiar 
 page, of Shakspeare it may be, and his " iniinite variety," 
 his "multitudinous mind," suggests some new thought, 
 and as you are wondering over it you think of Lycidas, 
 your friend, and promise yourself the pleasure of having 
 his opinion of your discovery the very next time when 
 by the fire you two " help waste a sullen day." Or it 
 is, perhaps, some quainter, tenderer fancy that engages 
 your solitary attention, something in Sir Philip Sidney 
 or Henry Vaughan, and then you turn to look for Phyllis, 
 ever the best interpi^eter of love, human or divine. Alas ! 
 the printed page grows hazy beneath a filmy eye as you 
 suddenly remember that Lycidas is dead — " dead eri' 
 his prime " — and that the pale cheek of Phyllis will 
 never again be relumined by the white light of her pure 
 enthusiasm. And then you fall to thinking of the in- 
 evitable, and perhaps, in your present mood, not un- 
 welcome hour, when the " ancient peace " of your old
 
 324 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 friends will be disturbed, when rude hands will dislodge 
 them from their accustomed nooks and break up their 
 goodly company. 
 
 " Death bursts amongst them like a shell. 
 And strews them over half the to\TO." 
 
 They will form new combinations, lighten other men's 
 toil, and soothe another's sorrow. Fool that I was to 
 call anything mine !
 
 BOOKWORMS. 
 
 GREAT is bookisimess and the charm of books. No 
 doubt there are times and seasons in the Hves 
 of most reading men when they rebel against the dnst 
 of libraries and kick against the pricks of these mon- 
 strously accumulated heaps of words. We all know 
 " the dark hour " when the vanity of learning and the 
 childishness of merely literary things are brought home 
 to us in such a way as almost to avail to put the pale 
 student out of conceit with his books, and to make him 
 turn from his best-loved authors as from a friend who 
 has outstayed his welcome, whose carriage we wish were 
 at the door. In these unhappy moments we are apt to 
 call to mind the shrewd men we have laiown, who have 
 fceen our blithe companions on breezy fells, heathery 
 moor, and by the stream side, who could neither read 
 nor write, or who, at all events, but rarely practised those 
 Cadmean arts. Yet they could tell the time of day by 
 the sun, and steer through the silent night by the stars ; 
 and each of them had — as Emerson, a very bookish 
 person, has said — a dial in his mind for the whole bright 
 calendar of the year. How racy was their talk ; how 
 wise their judgments on men and things ; how well they 
 did all that at the moment seemed worth doing ; how 
 universally useful was their garnered experience — their 
 acquired learning ! How wily were these illiterates in 
 the pursuit of game — ^how ready in an emergency ! 
 What a charm there is about out-of-door company ! 
 Who would not sooner have spent a summer's day with 
 Sir Walter's humble friend, Tom Purday, than with Mr. 
 William Wordsworth of Rydal Mount ! It is, we can 
 only suppose, reflections such as these that make country
 
 326 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 gentlemen and farmers the sworn foes they are of educa- 
 tion and the enemies of School Boards. 
 
 I only indicate this line of thought to condemn it. 
 Such temptations come from below. Great, we repeat, 
 is bookishness and the charm of books. Even the 
 writings, the ponderous writings, of that portentous 
 parson, the Rev. T. F. Dibdin, with all their lumbering 
 gaiety and dust-choked rapture over first editions, are 
 not hastily to be sent packing to the auction-room. 
 Much red gold did they cost us, these portly tomes, in 
 bygone days, and on our shelves they shall remain till 
 the end of our time, unless our creditors intervene — 
 were it only to remind us of years when our enthusiasms 
 were pure though our tastes may have been crude. 
 
 Some years ago Mr. Blades, the famous printer and 
 Caxtonist, published in vellum covers a small volume 
 which he christened The Enemies of Books. It made 
 many friends, and now a revised and enlarged version 
 in comely form, adorned with pictures, and with a few 
 prefatory words by Dr. Garnett, has made its appear- 
 ance. Mr. Blades himself has left this world for a better 
 one, where — so piety bids us believe — neither fire nor 
 water nor worm can despoil or destroy the pages of 
 heavenly wisdom. But the book-collector must not be 
 caught nursing mere sublunary hopes. There is every 
 reason to believe that in the realms of the blessed the 
 library, like that of Major Ponto, will be small though 
 well selected. Mr. Blades had, as his friend Dr. Garnett 
 observes, a debonair spirit — there was nothing fiery or 
 controversial about him. His attitude towards the 
 human race and its treatment of rare books was rather 
 mournful than angry. For example, imder the head of 
 " Fire," he has occasion to refer to that great destruc- 
 tion of books of magic which took place at Ephesus, to 
 which St. Luke has called attention in his Acts of the 
 Apostles. Mr. Blades describes this holocaust as right- 
 eous, and only permits himself to say in a kind of under- 
 tone that he feels a certain mental disquietude and un-
 
 BOOKWORMS. 327 
 
 easiness at the thought of the loss of more than £18,000 
 worth of books, which could not but have thrown much 
 light (had they been preserved) on many curious ques- 
 tions of folk-lore. Personally, I am dead against the 
 burning of books. A far worse, because a corrupt, pro- 
 ceeding, was the scandalously horrid fate that befell the 
 monastic libraries at our disgustingly conducted, even 
 if generally beneficent. Reformation. The greedy nobles 
 and landed gentry, who grabbed the ancient foundations 
 of the old religion, cared nothing for the books they 
 found cumbering the walls, and either devoted them to 
 vile domestic uses or sold them in shiploads across the 
 seas. It may well be that the monks — fine, lusty fel- 
 lows ! — cared more for the contents of their fish-ponds 
 than of their libraries ; but, at all events, they left the 
 books alone to take their chance — they did not rub 
 their boots with them or sell them at the price of old 
 paper. A man need have a very debonair spirit who 
 does not lose his temper over our blessed Reformation. 
 Mr. Blades, on the whole, managed to keep his. 
 
 Passing from fire, Mr. Blades has a good deal to say 
 about water, and the harm it has been allowed to do 
 in our collegiate and cathedral libraries. With really 
 creditable composure he writes : " Few old libraries in 
 England are now so thoroughly neglected as they were 
 thirty years ago. The state of many of our collegiate 
 and cathedral libraries was at that time simply appalling. 
 I could mention many instances — one especially— where, 
 a window having been left broken for a long time, the 
 ivy had pushed through and crept over a row of books, 
 each of which was worth hundreds of pounds. In rainy 
 weather the water was conducted as by a pipe along the 
 tops of the books, and soaked through the whole." Ours 
 is indeed a learned Church. Fancy the mingled amaze- 
 ment and dismay of the Dean and Chapter when they 
 were informed that all this mouldering literary trash 
 had " boodle " in it. " In another and a smaller collec- 
 tion the rain came through on to a bookcase througli a
 
 328 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 skylight, saturating continually the top shelf, containing 
 Caxtons and other English books, one of which, although 
 rotten, was sold soon after by permission of the Charity 
 Commissioners for £200." Oh, those scoundrelly Charity 
 Commissioners ! How impertinent has been their inter- 
 ference with the loving care and guardianship of the 
 Lord's property by His lawfully consecrated ministers ! 
 By the side of these anthropoid apes, the genuine book- 
 worm, the paper-eating insect, ravenous as he once was, 
 has done comparatively little mischief. Very little seems 
 known of the creature, though the purchaser of Mr. 
 Blades's book becomes the owner of a life-size portrait 
 of the miscreant in one, at all events, of his many shapes. 
 Mr. Birdsall, of Northampton, sent Mr. Blades, in 1879, 
 by post, a fat little worm he had found in an old volume. 
 Mr. Blades did all, and more than all, that could be 
 expected of a humane man to keep the creature alive, 
 actually feeding him with fragments of Caxtons and 
 seventeenth-century literature ; but it availed not, for 
 in three weeks the thing died, and as the result of a 
 post-mortem was declared to be Mcophera pseudopretella. 
 Some years later Dr. Gamett, who has spent a long life 
 obliging men of letters, sent Mr. Blades two Athenian 
 worms which had travelled to this country in a Hebrew 
 Commentary ; but, lovely and pleasant in their lives, in 
 their deaths they were not far divided. Mr. Blades, at 
 least, mourned their loss. The energy of book-worms, 
 like that of men, greatly varies. Some go much farther 
 than others. However fair they may start on the same 
 folio, they end very differently. Once upon a time 212 
 worms began to eat their way through a stout folio 
 printed in the year 1477, by Peter Schoeffer, of Mentz. 
 It was an ungodly race they ran, but let me trace their 
 progress. By the time the sixty-first page was reached 
 all but four had given in, either slinking back the way 
 they came, or perishing en route. By the time the eighty- 
 sixth page had been reached but one was left, and he 
 evidently on his last legs, for he failed to pierce his way
 
 BOOKWORMS. 329 
 
 through page 87. At the other end of the same book 
 another lot of worms began to bore, hoping, I pre- 
 sume, to meet in the middle, like the makers of sub- 
 marine tunnels, but the last survivor of this gang only 
 reached the sixty-ninth page from the end. Mr. Blades 
 was of opinion that all these worms belonged to the 
 Anohium pertinax. Worms have fallen upon evil days, 
 for, whether modern books are readable or not, they 
 have long since ceased to be edible. The worm's instinct 
 forbids him to " eat the china clay, the bleaches, the 
 plaster of Paris, the sulphate of barytes, the scores of 
 adulterants now used to mix with the fibre." Alas, poor 
 worm ! Alas, poor author ! Neglected by the Anobiimi 
 pertinax, what chance is there of anyone, man or beast, 
 a hundred years hence reaching his eighty-seventh page !^ 
 
 Time fails me to refer to bookbinders, frontispiece 
 collectors, servants and children, and other enemies of 
 books ; but the volume I refer to is to be had of the 
 booksellers, and is a pleasant volume, worthy of all com- 
 mendation. Its last words set me thinking ; they are : 
 
 " Even a millionaire will ease his toils, lengthen his 
 life, and add 100 per cent, to his daily pleasures, if he 
 becomes a bibliophile ; while to the man of business 
 with a taste for books, who through the day has struggled 
 in the battle of life, with all its irritating rebuffs and 
 anxieties, what a blessed season of pleasurable repose 
 opens upon him as he enters his sanctum, where every 
 article wafts him a welcome and every book is a personal 
 friend ! " 
 
 As for the millionaire, I frankly say I have no desire 
 his life should be lengthened, and care nothing about 
 adding 100 per cent, to his daily pleasures. He is a 
 nuisance, for he has raised prices nearly 100 per cent. 
 We curse the day when he was told it was the thing to 
 buy old books ; and, if he must buy old books, why is 
 he not content with the works of Gibbon, Plume, and 
 Robertson, and Flavins Josephus, that learned Jew ? 
 But it is not the millionaire who set me thinking ; it is
 
 330 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 the harassed man of business ; and what I am wondering 
 is, whether, in sober truth and earnestness, it is possible 
 for him, as he shuts his library door and finds himself 
 inside, to forget his rebuffs and anxieties — his maturing 
 bills and overdue argosies — and to lose himself over a 
 favourite volume. The " article " that wafts him wel- 
 come I take to be his pipe. That he will put the " article " 
 into his mouth and smoke it I have no manner of doubt ; 
 my dread is lest, in ten minutes' time, the book should 
 have dropt into his lap and the man's eyes be staring 
 into the fire. But for a' that, and a' that— great is 
 bookishness and the charm of books.
 
 CONFIRMED READERS. 
 
 DR. JOHNSON is perhaps our best example of a 
 confirmed reader. Malone once found him sit- 
 ting in his room roasting apples and reading a history 
 of Birmingham. This staggered even Malone, who was 
 himself a somewhat far-gone reader. 
 
 " Don't you find it rather dull ? " he ventured to 
 inquire. 
 
 " Yes," replied the Sage, " it is dull." 
 
 Malone 's eyes then rested on the apples, and he re- 
 marked he supposed they were for medicine. 
 
 " Why, no," said Johnson ; " I believe they are only 
 there because I wanted something to do. I have been 
 confined to the house for a week, aud so you find me 
 roasting apples and reading the history of Birmingham." 
 
 This anecdote pleasingly illustrates the habits of the 
 confirmed reader. Nor let the worldling sneer. Happy 
 is the man who, in the hours of solitude and depression, 
 can read a history of Birmingham. How terrible is the 
 story Welbore Ellis told of Robert Walpole in his mag- 
 nificent library, trying book after book, and at last, with 
 tears in his eyes, exclaimine", " It is all in vain : I carmot 
 read ! " 
 
 Edmund Malone, the Shakspearian commentator and 
 first editor of Boswell's Johnson, was as confirmed a 
 reader as it is possible for a book-collector to be. His 
 own life, by Sir James Prior, is full of good things, and 
 is not so well known as it should be. It smacks of 
 books and bookishness. 
 
 Malone, who was an Irishman, was once, so he would 
 have us believe, deeply engaged in politics ; but he then 
 fell in love, and the affair, for some unknown reason,
 
 332 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 ending unhappily, his interest ceased in everything, and 
 he was driven as a last resource to books and writings. 
 Thus are commentators made. They learn in suffering 
 what they observe in the margin. Malone may have 
 been driven to his pursuits, but he took to them kindly, 
 and became a vigorous and skilful book-buyer, operating 
 in the market both on his own behalf and on that of his 
 Irish friends with great success. 
 
 His good fortune was enormous, and this although 
 he had a severely restricted notion as to price. He was 
 no reckless bidder, like Mr. Harris, late of Covent Garden, 
 who, just because David Garrick had a fine library of 
 old plays, was determined to have one himself at what- 
 ever cost. In Malone's opinion half a guinea was a big 
 price for a book. As he grew older he became less 
 careful, and in 1805, which was seven years before his 
 death, he gave Ford, a Manchester bookseller, £25 for 
 the Editio Princeps of Venus and Adonis. He already 
 had the edition of 1596 — a friend had given it him — 
 bound up with Constable's and Daniel's Sonnets and 
 other rarities, but he very naturally yearned after the 
 edition of 1593. He fondly imagined Ford's copy to 
 be unique : there he was wrong, but as he died in that 
 belief, and only gave £2'^ for his treasure, who dare pity 
 him ? His copy now reposes in the Bodleian. He 
 secured Shakspeare's Sonnets (1609) and the first edition 
 of the Rape of Lucrece for two guineas, and accounted 
 half a crown a fair average price for quarto copies of 
 Elizabethan plays. 
 
 Malone was a truly amiable man, of private fortune 
 and endearing habits. He lived on terms of intimacy 
 with his brother book-collectors, and when they died 
 attended the sale of their libraries and bid for his favourite 
 lots, grumbUng greatly if they were not knocked down 
 to him. At Topham Beauclerk's sale in 1781, which 
 lasted nine days, Malone bought for Lord Charlemont 
 " the pleasauntest workes of George Gascoigne, Esquire, 
 with the princely pleasures at Kenilworth Castle, 1587."
 
 CONFIRMED READERS. 333 
 
 He got it cheap {£1, 7s.), as it wanted a few leaves, which 
 M alone thought he had ; but to his horror, when it came 
 to be examined, it was found to want eleven more leaves 
 than he had supposed. " Poor Mr, Beauclerk," he 
 writes, " seems never to have had his books examined 
 or collated, otherwise he would have found out the im- 
 perfections." M alone was far too good a book-collector 
 to suggest a third method of discovering a book's imper- 
 fections — namely, reading it. Beauclerk's library only 
 realised £5,011, and as the Duke of Marlborough had a 
 mortgage upon it of £5,000, there must have been after 
 payment of the auctioneer's charges a considerable deficit. 
 
 But Malone was more than a book-buyer, more even 
 than a commentator : he was a member of the Literary 
 Club, and the friend of Johnson, Reynolds, and Burke. 
 On July 28, 1789, he went to Burke's place, the Gregories, 
 near Beaconsfield, with Sir Joshua, Wyndham, and Mr. 
 Courtenay, and spent three very agreeable days. The 
 following extract from the recently published Charle- 
 mont papers has interest : 
 
 ' " As I walked out before breakfast with Mr. Burke, 
 I proposed to him to revise and enlarge his admirable 
 book on the Sublime and Beautiful, which the experience, 
 reading, and observation of thirty years could not but 
 enable him to improve considerably. But he said the 
 train of his thoughts had gone another way, and the 
 whole bent of his mind turned from such subjects, and 
 that he was much fitter for such speculations at the 
 time he published that book than now." 
 
 Between the Burke of 1758 and the Burke of 1789 
 there was a difference indeed, but the forcible expres- 
 sions, " the train of my thoughts " and "the whole bent 
 of my mind," serve to create a new impression of the 
 tremendous energy and fertile vigour of this amazing 
 man. The next day the party went over to Amersham 
 and admired Mr. Drake's trees, and listened to Sir 
 Joshua's criticisms of Mr. Drake's pictures. This was 
 a fortnight after the taking of the Bastille. Burke's
 
 334 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 hopes were still high. The Revolution had not yet 
 spoilt his temper. 
 
 Amongst the Charlemont papers is an amusing tale 
 I do not remember having ever seen before of young 
 Philip Stanhope, the recipient of Lord Chesterfield's 
 famous letters : 
 
 " When at Berne, where he passed some of his boy- 
 hood in company with Harte and the excellent Mr., 
 now Lord, Eliott {Heathfield of Gibraltar), he was one 
 evening invited to a party where, together with some 
 ladies, there happened to be a considerable number ot 
 Bernese senators, a dignified set of elderly gentlemen, 
 aristocratically proud, and perfect strangers to fun. 
 These most potent, grave, and reverend signors were 
 set down to whist, and were so studiously attentive to 
 the game, that the unlucky brat found little difficulty 
 in fastening to the backs of their chairs the flowing tails 
 of their ample periwigs, and in cutting, unobserved by 
 them, the tj^es of their breeches. This done, he left the 
 room, and presently re-entered crying out, ' Fire ! Fire ! ' 
 The affrighted burgomasters suddenly bounced up, and 
 exhibited to the amazed spectators their senatorial heads 
 and backs totally deprived of ornament or covering." 
 
 Young Stanhope was no ordinary child. There is a 
 completeness about this jest which proclaims it a master- 
 piece. One or other of its points miglit have occurred 
 to anyone, but to accomplish both at once was to show 
 real distinction. 
 
 Sir William Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's brother, felt 
 no surprise at his nephew's failure to acquire the graces. 
 " What," said he, " could Chesterfield expect,? His 
 mother was Dutch, he was educated at Leipsic, and his 
 tutor was a pedant from Oxford." 
 
 Papers which contain anecdotes of this kind carrj/ 
 with them their own recommendation. We hear on 
 all sides complaints — and I hold them to be just com- 
 plaints — of the abominable high prices of English books. 
 Thirty shillings, thirty-six shillings, are common prices.
 
 CONFIRMED READERS. 335 
 
 The thing is too barefaced. His Majesty's Stationery 
 Office set an excellent example. They sell an octavo 
 volume of 460 closely but well-printed pages, provided 
 with an excellent index, for one shilling and elevenpence. 
 There is not much editing, but the quality of it is good. 
 If anyone is confined to his room, even as Johnson 
 was when Malone found him roasting apples and read- 
 ing a history of Birmingham, he cannot do better than 
 surround himself with the publications of the Historical 
 Manuscripts Commission ; they will cost him next to 
 nothing, tell him something new on every page, revive 
 a host of old memories and scores of half -forgotten names, 
 and perhaps tempt him to become a confirmed reader.
 
 FIRST EDITIONS. 
 
 THIS is an age of great publicity. Not only are oui 
 streets well lighted, but also our lives. The cosy 
 nooks and comers, crannies, and dark places where, in 
 old-fashioned days, men hugged their private vices with- 
 out shamefacedness have been swept away as ruthlessly 
 as Seven Dials. All the questionable pursuits, fancies, 
 foibles of silly, childish man are discussed grimly and at 
 length in the newspapers and magazines. Our poor 
 hobby-horses are dragged out of the stable, and made to 
 show their shambling paces before the mob of gentle- 
 men who read with ease. There has been much prate 
 lately of as innocent a foible as ever served to make men 
 self-forgetful for a few seconds of time — the collecting 
 of first editions. Somebody hard up for " copy " de- 
 nounced this pastime, and made merry over a virtuoso's 
 whim. Somebody else — Mr. Slater, I think it was — 
 thought fit to put in a defence, and thereupon a dispute 
 arose as to why men bought first editions dear when they 
 could buy last editions cheap. Brutal, domineering 
 fellows bellowed their complete indifference to Shak- 
 speare's Quartos till timid dilettanti turned pale and fled. 
 The fact, of course, is that in such a dispute as this 
 there is but one thing to do — namely, to persuade the 
 Attorney-General of the day to enter up a nolle prosequi, 
 and for him who collects first editions to go on collect- 
 ing. There is nothing to be serious about in the matter. 
 It is not hterature. Some of the greatest lovers of letters 
 who have ever lived — Dr. Johnson, for example, and 
 Thomas de Quincey and Carlyle — have cared no more 
 for first editions than I do for Brussels sprouts. You 
 may love Moliere with a love surpassing your love of
 
 FIRST EDITIONS. 337 
 
 woman without any desire to beggar yourself in Paris 
 by purchasing early copies of the plays. You may be 
 perfectly content to read Walton's Lives in an edition 
 of 1905, if there is one ; and as for Robinson Crusoe 
 and Gulliver and the Vicar of Wakefield — are they not 
 eternal favourites, and just as tickling to the fancy in 
 their nineteenth-century dress as in their eighteenth ? 
 The whole thing is but a hobby — but a paragraph in 
 one chapter of the vast, but most agreeable, history of 
 human folly. If John Doe is blankly indifferent to 
 Richard Roe's Elizabethan dramatists, it is only fair to 
 remember how sublime is Richard's contempt for John's 
 collection of old musical instruments. If these gentle- 
 
 , men are wise they will discuss, when they meet, the 
 weather, or the Death Duties, or some other extraneous 
 subject, and leave their respective hobbies in the stable. 
 Never mind what your hobby is — books, prints, draw- 
 ings, china, scarabaei, lepidoptera — keep it to yourself 
 and for those like-minded with you. Sweet indeed is 
 
 ^the community of interest, dehghtful the intercourse 
 which a common foible begets ; but correspondingly 
 bitter and distressful is the forced union of nervous 
 zeal and pitiless indifference. Spare us the so-called 
 friends who come and gape and stare and go ! What 
 is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur as 
 it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus ! Collecting 
 is a secret sin — the great pushing public must be kept 
 out. It is sheer madness to puff and praise your hobby, 
 and to invite Dick, Tom, and Harry to inspect your 
 stable : such conduct is to invite rebuff, to expose your- 
 self to just animadversion. Keep the beast in its box. 
 This is my first advice to the hobby-hunter. 
 
 My second piece of advice is equally important, par- 
 ticularly at the present time, when the world is too much 
 with us, and it is this— never convert a taste into a trade. 
 The moment you become a tradesman you cease to be 
 a hobbyist. When the love of money comes in at the 
 window the love of books runs out at the door. There has
 
 338 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 been of late years a good deal of sham book-collecting. 
 The morals of the Stock Exchange have corrupted even 
 the library. Sordid souls have been induced by wily 
 second-hand booksellers to buy books for no other 
 reason than because the price demanded was a high 
 one. This is the very worst possible reason for buying 
 a book. Whether it is ever wise to buy a book, as Aulus 
 Gellius used to do, simply because it is cheap, and re- 
 gardless of its condition, is a debatable point, but to buy 
 one dear at the mere bidding of a bookseller is to debase 
 yourself. The result of this ungodly traffic has been to 
 enlarge for the moment the circle of book-buyers by 
 including in it men with commercial instincts, sham 
 hobbyists. But these impostors have been lately 
 punished in the only way they could be punished — 
 namely, in their pockets — by a heavy fall of prices. 
 The stuff they were induced to buy has not, and could 
 not, maintain its price, and the shops are now full of 
 the volumes which, seven or ten years ago, fetched 
 fancy sums. 
 
 If a 5^oung book-collector does but bear in mind the 
 two bits of advice I have proffered him, he may safely 
 be bidden godspeed and congratulated on his choice of 
 a hobby, for it is, without a shadow of a doubt, the 
 cheapest he could have chosen. Even without means 
 to acquire the treasures of a Quaritch or a Pickering, he 
 may yet derive infinite delight from the perusal of the 
 many hundreds of catalogues that now weekly issue 
 from the second-hand booksellers in town and country. 
 He may write an imaginary letter, ordering the books 
 he has previously selected from the catalogue, and then 
 he has only to forget to post it to avoid all disagreeable 
 consequences. 
 
 The constant turnover of old books is amazing. 
 There seems no rest in this world even for folios and 
 quartos. The first edition of old Burton's Anatomy, 
 printed at Oxford in a small quarto in 162 1, rises to the 
 surface as a rule no less than four times a year ; so,
 
 FIRST EDITIONS. 339 
 
 too, does Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five 
 months' travels in France, Savoy, Italy, Germany, etc., 
 161 1. What a seething, restless place this world is, to 
 be sure ! The constant recurrence of copies of the same 
 books is almost startling. Hardly a year passes but 
 every book of first-rate importance and interest is 
 knocked down to the highest bidder. No doubt there 
 are still old libraries where, buried in dust and cobwebs, 
 the folios and quartos lie undisturbed ; but to turn the 
 pages or examine the index of Book Prices Current 
 is to have a vision before your eyes of whole regiments 
 of books passing and repassing across the stage amidst 
 the loud cries of auctioneers and the bidding of book- 
 sellers. 
 
 In the auction-mart taste is pretty steady. The old 
 favourites hold their own. Every now and again an 
 immortal joins their ranks. Puffing and pretension may 
 win the ear of the outside public, and extort praise from 
 the press but inside the rooms of a Sotheby, a Puttick, 
 or a Hodgson, these foolish persons count for nothing, 
 and their names are seldom heard. Were an author to 
 turn the pages of Book Prices Current, he could hardly 
 fail, as he there read the names of famous men of old. 
 to breathe the prayer, " May my books some day be 
 found forming part of this great tidal wave of literatm-e 
 which is for ever breaking on Earth's human shores ! " 
 But the vanity of authors is endless, and their prayers 
 are apt to be but empty things.
 
 OLD BOOKSELLERS. 
 
 'INHERE has just been a small flutter amongst those 
 -*- who used to be called stationers or text-writers in 
 the good old days, before printing was, and when even 
 Peers of the Realm (now so highly educated) could not 
 sign their names, or, at all events, preferred not to do 
 so— booksellers they are now styled — and the question 
 which agitates them is discount. Having mentioned 
 this, one naturally passes on. 
 
 No great trade has an obscurer history than the book 
 trade. It seems to lie choked in mountains ol dust 
 which it would be suicidal to disturb. Men have lived 
 from time to time of hterary skill — Dr. Johnson was 
 one of them — who had knowledge, extensive and 
 peculiar, of the traditions and practices of " the trade," 
 as it is proudly styled by its votaries ; but nobody has 
 ever thought it worth his while to make record of his 
 knowledge, which accordingly perished with him, and 
 is now irrecoverably lost. 
 
 In old days booksellers were also publishers, fre- 
 quently printers, and sometimes paper-makers. Jacob 
 Tonson not only owned Milton's Paradise Lost — for all 
 time, as he fondly thought, for httle did he dream of 
 the fierce construction the House of Lords was to put 
 upon the Copyright Act of Queen Anne — not only was 
 Dryden's publisher, but also kept shop in Chancery 
 Lane, and sold books across the counter. He allowed 
 no discount, but, so we are told, " spoke his mind upon all 
 .occasions, and flattered no one," not even glorious John. 
 
 For a long time past the trades of bookselling and 
 book-pubhshing have been carried on apart. This has 
 doubtless rid bookseflers of all the unpopularity which
 
 OLD BOOKSELLERS. 341 
 
 formerly belonged to them in their other capacity. 
 This unpopularity is now heaped as a whole upon 
 the publishers, who certainly need not dread the doom 
 awaiting those of whom the world speaks weU. 
 
 A tendency of the two trades to grow together again 
 is perhaps noticeable. For my part, I wish they would. 
 Some publishers are already booksellers, but the books 
 they sell are usually only new books. Now it is obvious 
 that the true bookseller sells books both old and new. 
 Some booksellers are occasional publishers. May each 
 usurp — or, rather, reassume — the business of the other, 
 whilst retaining his own ! 
 
 The world, it must be admitted, owes a great deal of 
 ' whatever information it possesses about the professions, 
 trades, and occupations practised and carried on in its 
 midst to those who have failed in them. Prosperous 
 men talk " shop," but seldom write it. The book that 
 tells us most about bookseUers and bookseUing in 
 bygone days is the work of a crack-brained fellow who 
 * published and sold in the reigns of Queen Anne and 
 George I., and died in 1733 in great poverty and 
 obscurity. I refer to John Dunton, whose Life and 
 Errors in the edition in two volumes edited by J. B. 
 Nichols, and published in 1818, is a common book 
 enough in the second-hand shops, and one which may 
 be safely recommended to everyone, except, indeed, 
 to the unfortunate man or woman who is not an adept 
 in the art, craft, or mystery of skipping. 
 
 The book will strangely remind the reader of Amory's 
 Life of John Buncle — those queer volumes to which 
 many a reader has been sent by Hazlitt's intoxicating 
 description of them in his Round Table, and a few 
 perhaps by a shy allusion contained in one of the essays 
 of Elia. The real John Dunton has not the boundless 
 spirits of the fictitious John Buncle ; but in their 
 religious fervour, their passion for flirtation, their tire- 
 less egotism, and their love of character-sketching, they 
 greatly resemble one another.
 
 342 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 It is this last characteristic that imparts real value to 
 Dunton's book, and makes it, despite its verbiage and 
 tortuosity, throb with human interest. For example, 
 he gives us a short sketch of no less than 135 then 
 hving London booksellers in this style : " Mr. Newton 
 is full of kindness and good-nature. He is affable and 
 courteous in trade, and is none of those- men of forty 
 whose religion is yet to chuse, for his mind (like his 
 looks) is serious and grave ; and his neighbours tell me 
 his understanding does not improve too fast for his 
 practice, for he is not religious by start or sally, but is 
 Vs-eU fixed in the faith and practice of a Church of 
 England man — and has a handsome wife into the 
 bargain." 
 
 Most of the 135 booksellers were good men, accord- 
 ing to Dunton, but not aU. " Mr. Lee in Lombard 
 Street. Such a pirate, such a cormorant was never 
 before. Copies, books, men, shops, all was one. He 
 held no propriety right or wrong, good or bad, till at 
 last he began to be known ; and the booksellers, not 
 enduring so iU a man among them, spewed him out, 
 and off he marched to Ireland, where he acted as 
 felonious Lee as he did in London. And as Lee lived 
 a thief, so he died a hypocrite ; for being asked on his 
 death-bed if he would forgive Mr. C. (that had formerly 
 wronged him), ' Yes,' said Lee, * if I die, I forgive him ; 
 but if I happen to live, I am resolved to be revenged 
 on him.' " 
 
 The Act of Union destroyed the trade of these pirates, 
 but their felonious editions of eighteenth-century authors 
 still abound. Mr. Gladstone, I need scarcely say, was 
 careful in his Home Rule Bill (which was denounced by 
 thousands who never read a line of it) to withdraw 
 (^opyright from the scope of action of his proposed 
 Dublin Parhament. 
 
 There are nearly eleven hundred brief character- 
 sketches in Dunton's book, of all sorts and kinds, but 
 with a preference for bookish people, divines, both of
 
 OLD BOOKSELLERS. 343 
 
 the Establishment and out of it, printers and authors. 
 Sometimes, indeed, the description is short enough, 
 and tells one very little. To many readers, references 
 so curt to people of whom they never heard, and whose 
 names are recorded nowhere else, save on their mould- 
 ering grave-stones, may seem tedious and trivial, but 
 for others they will have a strange fascination. Here 
 are a few examples : 
 
 " Affable Wiggins. His conversation is general but 
 never impertinent. 
 
 " The kind and golden V enables. He is so good a 
 man, and so truly charitable, he that will write of him 
 must still \M-ite more. 
 
 " Mr. Biiry — my old neighbour in Redcross Street. 
 He is a plain honest man, sells the best coffee in all 
 the neighbourhood, and lives in this world like a 
 spiritual stranger and pilgrim in a foreign country. 
 
 " Anabaptist (alias Elephant) Smith. He was a man 
 of great sincerity and happy contentment in all cir- 
 ^cumstances of life." 
 
 If an affection for passages of this kind be condemned 
 as trivial, and akin to the sentimentalism of the man 
 in Calverley's poem who wept over a box labelled " This 
 side up," I will shelter myself behind Carlyle, who was 
 evidently deeply moved, as his review of Boswell's 
 Johnson proves, by the life-history of Mr. F. Lewis, 
 "of whose birth, death, and whole terrestrial res gestcB 
 this only, and, strange enough, this actuaDy, survives — 
 ' Sir, he lived in London, and hung loose upon society. 
 Siaf Par VI hominis umbra.' " On that peg Carlyle's 
 imagination hung a whole biography. 
 
 Dunton, who was the son of the Rector of Aston 
 Chnton, was apprenticed, about 1675, to a London 
 bookseller. He had from the beginning a great turn 
 both for religion and love. He, to use his own phrase, 
 " sat under the powerful ministry of Mr. Doolittle." 
 " One Lord's day, and I remember it with sorrow, I 
 was to hear the* Rev. Mr. Doolittle, and it was then
 
 344 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 and there the beautiful Rachel Seaton gave me that 
 fatal wound." 
 
 The first book Dunton ever printed was by the Rev. 
 Mr. Doolittle, and was of an eminently rehgious char- 
 acter. 
 
 " One Lord's Day (and I am very sensible of the sin) 
 I was strolling about just as my fancy led me, and, 
 stepping into Dr. Annesley's meeting-place — where, 
 instead of engaging my attention to what the Doctor 
 said, I suffered both my mind and eyes to run at random 
 — I soon singled out a young lady that almost charmed 
 me dead ; but, having made my inquiries, I found to 
 my sorrow she was pre-engaged." However, Dunton 
 was content with the elder sister, one of the three 
 daughters of Dr. Annesley. The one he first saw became 
 the wife of the Reverend Samuel Wesley, and the 
 mother of John and Charles. The third daughter is 
 said to have been married to Daniel De Foe. 
 
 As soon as he was out of his apprenticeship, Dunton 
 set up business as a publisher and bookseller. He says 
 grimly enough : 
 
 " A man should be well furnished with an honest 
 policy if he intends to set out to the world nowadays. 
 And this is no less necessary in a bookseller than in 
 any other tradesman, for in that way there are plots 
 and counter-plots, and a whole army of hackney authors 
 that keep their grinders moving by the travail of their 
 pens. These gormandisers wiU eat you the very life 
 out of a copy so soon as ever it appears, for as the times 
 go. Original and Abridgement are almost reckoned as 
 necessary as man and wife." 
 
 The mischief to which Dunton refers was permitted 
 by the stupidity of the judges, who refused to consider 
 an abridgment of a book any interference with its copy- 
 right. Some learned judges have, indeed, held that an 
 abridger is a benefactor, but as his benefactions are not 
 his own, but another's, a shorter name might be found 
 for him. The law on the subject is still uncertain.
 
 ' OLD BOOKSELLERS. 345 
 
 Dunton proceeds : " Printing was now the uppermos.t 
 in my thoughts, and hackney authors began to ply me 
 with specimens as earnestly and with as much passion 
 and concern as the watermen do passengers with Oars 
 and Scullers. I had some acquaintance with this 
 generation in my apprenticeship, and had never any 
 warm affection for them, in regard I always thought 
 their great concern lay more in how much a sheet, than 
 in any generous respect they bore to the Commonwealth 
 of Learning ; and indeed the learning itself of these 
 gentlemen lies very often in as little room as their 
 honesty, though they will pretend to have studied for 
 six or seven years in the Bodleian Library, to have 
 turned over the Fathers, and to have read and digested 
 the whole compass both of human and ecclesiastic 
 history, when, alas ! they have never been able to 
 understand a single page of St. Cyprian, and cannot 
 tell you whether the Fathers lived before or after 
 Christ." 
 ^ Yet of one of this hateful tribe Dunton is able to 
 speak weU. He declares Mr. Bradshaw to have been 
 the best accomplished hackney author he ever met 
 with. He pronounces his style incomparably fine. He 
 had quarrelled with him, but none the less he writes : 
 " If Mr. Bradshaw is yet alive, I here declare to the 
 world and to him that I freely forgive him what he 
 owes, both in money and books, if he will only be so 
 kind as to make me a visit. But I am afraid the 
 worthy gentleman is dead, for he was wretchedly over- 
 run with melancholy, and the very blackness of it 
 reigned in his countenance. He had certainly per- 
 formed wonders with his pen, had not his proverty 
 pursued him and almost laid the necessity upon him 
 to be unjust." 
 
 All hackney authors were not poor. Some of the 
 compilers and abridgers made what even now would 
 be considered by popular novelists large sums. Scots- 
 men were very good at it. Gordon and Campbell
 
 346 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 became wealthy men. If authors had a turn for poHtics, 
 Sir Robert Walpole was an excellent paymaster. Amall, 
 who was bred an attorney, is stated to have been paid 
 £ii,ooo in four years by the Government for his 
 pamphlets. 
 
 " Come, then, I'll comply. 
 Spirit of Arnall, aid me while I lie ! " 
 
 It cannot have been pleasant to read this, but then 
 Pope belonged to the opposition, and was a friend of 
 Xord Bolingbroke, and would consequently say any- 
 thing. 
 
 There is not a more interesting and artless autobiog- 
 raphy to be read than William Hutton's, the famous 
 bookseUer and historian of Birmingham. Hutton has 
 been somewhat absurdly called the English Franklin. 
 He is not in the least like Franklin. He has none of 
 Franklin's supreme literary skill, and he was a loving, 
 generous, and tender-hearted man, which Franklin cer- 
 tainly was not. Hutton's first visit to London was 
 paid in 1749. He walked up from Nottingham, spent 
 three days in London, and then walked back to Not- 
 tingham. The jaunt, if such an expression is apphcable, 
 cost him eleven shillings less fourpence. Yet he paid 
 his way. The only money he spent to gain admission 
 to public places was a penny to see Bedlam. 
 
 Interesting, however, as is Hutton's book, it tells us 
 next to nothing about book-selling, except that in his 
 hands It was a prosperous undertaking.
 
 ITINERARIES. 
 
 ANYONE who is teased by the notion that it would 
 »- be pleasant to be remembered, in the sense of 
 being read, after death, cannot do better to secure 
 that end than com.pose an Itinerary and leave it behind 
 him in manuscript, with his name legibly inscribed 
 thereon. If an honest bit of work, noting distances, 
 detaihng expenses, naming landmarks, moors, moun- 
 tains, harbours, docks, buildings — indeed, anything 
 which, as lawyers say, savours of realty — and but 
 scantily interspersed with reflections, and with no 
 quotations, why, then, such a piece of work, however 
 long publication may be delayed — and a century or 
 two wiU not matter in the least— cannot fail, whenever 
 *it is printed, to attract attention, to excite general 
 interest and secure a permanent hold in every decent 
 library in the kingdom. 
 
 Time cannot stale an Itinerary. Iter, Via, Actus are 
 words of pith and moment. Stage-coaches, express 
 trains, motor-cars, have written, or are now writing, 
 their eventful histories over the face of these islands ; 
 but, whatever changes they have made or are destined 
 to make, they have left untouched the mystery of the 
 road, although for the moment the latest comer may 
 seem injuriously to have affected its majesty. 
 
 The Itinerist alone among authors is always sure of 
 an audience. No matter where, no matter when, he 
 has but to tell us how he footed it and what he saw by 
 the wayside, and we must listen. How can we help 
 it ? Two hundred years ago, it may be, this Itinerist 
 came through our village, passed by the waU of our 
 nomestead, climbjed our familiar hill, and went on his
 
 348 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 way ; it is perhaps but two lines and a half he can 
 afford to give us, but what lines they are ! How 
 different with sermons, poems, and novels ! On each 
 of these is the stamp of the author's age ; sentiments, 
 fashions, thoughts, faiths, phraseology, all worn out— 
 a cold, dirty grate, where once there was a blazing fire. 
 Cheerlessness personified ! Leland's anti-Papal treatise 
 in forty-five chapters remains in learned custody— a 
 manuscript ; a publisher it will never find. We still 
 have Papists and anti-Papists ; in this case the fire 
 still blazes, but the grates are of an entirely different 
 construction. Leland's treatise is out of date. But 
 his Itinerary in nine volumes, a favourite book through- 
 out the eighteenth century, which has graced many a 
 bookseller's catalogue for the last hundred years, and 
 seldom without eliciting a purchaser — Leland's Itinerary 
 is to-day being reprinted under the most able editor- 
 ship. The charm of the road is irresistible. The Vicar 
 of Wakefield is a delightful book, with a great tradition 
 behind it and a future still before it ; but it has not 
 escaped the ravages of time, and I would, now, at all 
 events, gladly exchange it for Oliver Goldsmith's 
 Itinerary through Germany with a Flute I 
 
 Vain authors, pubhsher's men, may write as they like 
 about Shakspeare's country, or Scott's country, or Car- 
 lyle's country, or Crockett's country, but — 
 
 " Oh, good gigantic smile of the brown old earth ! " 
 
 the land laughs at the delusions of the men who hur- 
 riedly cross its surface. 
 
 " Rydal and Fairfield are there, — 
 In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead. 
 So it is, so it will be for aye, 
 Nature is fresh as of old. 
 Is lovely, a mortal is dead." 
 
 These reflections, which by themselves would be 
 enough to sink even an Itinerary, seemed forced upon
 
 ITINERARIES. 349 
 
 me by the publication of A Journey to Edenborotigh in 
 Scotland by Joseph Taylor, Late of the Imier Temple, 
 Esquire. This journey was made two hundred years ago 
 in the Long Vacation of 1705, but has just been printed 
 from the original manuscript, under the editorship of 
 Mr. William Cowan, by the well-known Edinburgh book- 
 seller, Mr. Brown, of Princes Street, to whom all lovers 
 of things Scottish already owe much. 
 
 Nobody can hope to be less known than this our 
 latest Itinerist, for not only is he not in the Dictionary 
 of National Biography, but it is at present impossible to 
 say which of two Joseph Taylors he was. The House 
 of the Winged Horse has ever had Taylors on its roU, 
 
 ' the sign of the Middle Temple, a very fleecy sheep, be- 
 ing perhaps unattractive to the clan, and in 1705^ it so 
 happened that not only were there two Taylors', but 
 two Joseph Taylors, entitled to write themselves " of 
 the Inner Temple, Esquire," Which was the Itinerist ? 
 Mr. Cowan, going by age, thinks that the Itinerist can 
 
 ^ hardly have been the Joseph Taylor who was admitted 
 to the Inn in 1663, as in that case he must have been 
 at least fifty-eight when he travelled to Edinburgh. 
 For my part, I see nothing in the Itinerary to pre- 
 clude the possibility of its author having attained that 
 age at the date of its composition. I observe in the 
 Itinerary references which point to the Itinerist being 
 a Kentish man, and he mentions more than once his 
 " Cousin D'aeth." Research among the papers of the 
 D'aeths of Knowlton Court, near Dover, might result in 
 the discovery which of these two Taylors really was the 
 Itinerist. As nothing else is at present known about 
 either, the investigation could probably be made with- 
 out passion or party or even religious bias. It might 
 be best begun by Mr. Cowan telling us in whose cus- 
 tody he found the manuscript, and how it came there. 
 These statements should always be made when old 
 manuscripts are first printed. 
 
 The journey began on August 2, 1705. The party
 
 350 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 consisted of Mr. Taylor and his two friends, Mr. Harri- 
 son and Mr. Sloman. They travelled on horseback, 
 and often had difficulties with the poor beast that 
 carried their luggage. They reached Edinburgh in 
 the evening of August 31, and left it on their return 
 journey on September 8, and got home on the 25th of 
 the same month. The Itinerary concludes as follows : 
 
 " Thus we spent almost 3 months in a Journy of 
 many 100 miles, sometimes thro' very charming Coun- 
 tryes, and at other times over desolate and Barren 
 Mountaines, and yet met with no particular misfortune 
 in all the Time." 
 
 I may say at once of these three Itinerists — Mr. 
 Taylor, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Sloman — that they 
 appear to have been thoroughly commonplace, well 
 behaved, occasionally hilarious Englishmen, ready to 
 endure whatever befell them, if unavoidable ; accus- 
 tomed to take their ease in their inn and to turn round 
 and look at any pretty woman they might chance to 
 meet On their travels. Their first experience of what 
 the Itinerist calls " the prodigies of Nature," " at once 
 an occasion both of Horrour and Admiration," was in 
 the Peak Country " described in poetry by the ingenious 
 Mr. Cotton." This part of the world they " did " with 
 something of the earnestness of the modern tourist.. 
 But I hardly think they enjoyed themselves. The 
 " prodigious " caverns and strange petrifactions shocked 
 them ; " nothing can be more terrible or shocking to 
 Nature." Mam Tor, with its 1,710 feet, proved very 
 impressive, " a vast high mountain reaching to the very 
 clouds." This gloom of the Derbyshire hills and stony 
 valleys was partially dispelled for our travellers by a 
 certain " fair Gloriana " they met at Buxton, with 
 whom they had great fun, " so much the greater, be- 
 cause we never expected such heavenly enjoyments in 
 so desolate a country." If it be on susceptibilities of 
 this nature that Mr. Cowan rests his case for thinking 
 that the Itinerist can hardly have attained " the blasted
 
 ITINERARIES. 351 
 
 antiquity " of fifty-eight, we must think Mr, Cowan a 
 trifle hasty, or a very young man, perhaps under forty, 
 which is young for an editor. 
 
 After describing, somewhat too much like an auc- 
 tioneer, the splendours of Chatsworth, " a Paradise in 
 the deserts of Arabia," the Itinerist proceeds on his 
 way north through Nottingham to Belvoir Castle, where 
 " my Lord Rosses Gentleman (to whom Mr. Harrison was 
 recommended) entertained us by his Lordship's com- 
 mand with good wine and the best of malt liquors which 
 the cellar abounds with ; " the pictures in the Long 
 Gallery were shown them by " my Lord himself." At 
 Doncaster, " a neat market -town which consists only 
 in one long street," they had some superlative salmon 
 just taken out of the river. By Knaresborough Spaw, 
 where they drank the waters and had icy cold baths, 
 and dined at the ordinary with a parson whose conver- 
 sation startled the propriety of the Templar, the trav- 
 ellers made their way to York, and for the first and 
 last time a few pages of Gidde Book are improperly 
 introduced. Then on to Scarborough. 
 
 " The next morning early we left Scarborough and 
 travelled through a dismall road, particularly near 
 Robins Hood Bay ; we were obliged to lead our horses, 
 and had much ado to get down a vast craggy moun- 
 tain which lyes within a quarter of a mile of it. The 
 Bay is about a mile broad, and inhabited by poor fisher- 
 men. We stopt to taste some of their liquor and discourse 
 with them. They told us the French privateers came 
 into the Very Bay and took 2 of their Vessels but the 
 day before, which were ransom'd lor £2$ a piece. We 
 saw a great many vessels lying upon the Shore, the 
 masters not daring to venture out to sea for fear of 
 undergoing the same fate." 
 
 We boast too readily of our inviolate shores. 
 
 A curious description is given of the Duke of Buck- 
 mgham's alum works near Whitby. The travellers 
 then procured a guide, and traversed " the vast moors
 
 352 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 which lye between Whitby and Gisborough." The civic 
 magnificence of Newcastle greatly struck our travellersj 
 who, happier than their modern successors, were able 
 to see the town miles off. The Itinerist quotes with 
 gusto the civic proverb that the men of Newcastle pay 
 nothing for the Way, the Word, or the Water, " for the 
 Ministers of Religion are maintained, the streets paved, 
 and the Conduits kept up at the publick charge." A 
 disagreeable account is given of the brutishness of the 
 people employed in the salt works at Tynemouth. At 
 Berwick the travellers got into trouble with the sentry, 
 but the mistake was rectified with the captain of the 
 guard over " 2 bowles of punch, there being no wine 
 in the town." 
 
 Scotland was now in sight, and the travellers became 
 grave, as befitted the occasion. They were told that 
 the journey that lay before them was extremely dan- 
 gerous, that 'twould be difficult to escape with their 
 lives, much less (ominous words) without " the dis- 
 temper of the country." But Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, 
 and Mr. Sloman were as brave as Mr. Pickwick, and 
 they would on. " Yet notwithstanding all these sad 
 representations, we resolv'd to proceed and stand by 
 one another to the last." 
 
 What the Itinerists thought of Scotland when they 
 got there is not for me to say. I was once a Scottish 
 member. 
 
 They arrived in Edinburgh at a great crisis in Scottish 
 history. They saw the Duke of Argyll, as Queen Anne's 
 Lord High Commissioner, go to the Parliament House 
 in this manner : 
 
 " First a coach and six Horses for his Gentlemen, 
 then a Trumpet, then his own coach with six white 
 horses, which were very fine, being those presented 
 by King William to the Duke of Queensbury, and by 
 him sold to the Duke of Argyle for ^^300 ; next goes 
 a troop of Horse Guards, cloathed hke my Lord of 
 Oxford's Regiment, but the horses are of several colours ;
 
 ITINERARIES. 353 
 
 and the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State, 
 and the Lord Chief Justice Clerk, and other officers of 
 State close the cavalcade in coaches and six horses. 
 Thus the Commissioner goes and returns every day." 
 
 The Itinerists followed the Duke and his procession 
 into the Parliament House, and heard debated the 
 great question — the greatest of all possible questions 
 for Scotland — whether this magnificence should cease, 
 whether there should be an end of an auld sang — in 
 short, w'hether the proposed Act of Union should be 
 proceeded with. By special favour, our Itinerists had 
 leave to stand upon the steps of the throne, and wit- 
 nessed a famous fiery and prolonged debate, the Duke 
 once turning to them and saying, sotto voce, " It is now 
 deciding whether England and Scotland shall go to- 
 gether by the ears." How it was decided we all know, 
 and that it was wisely decided no one doubts ; yet, 
 when we read our Itinerist's account of the Duke's 
 coach and horses, and the cavalcade that followed him, 
 and remember that this was what happened every day 
 during the sitting of the Parhament, and must not be 
 confounded with the greater glories of the first day of a 
 Parliament, when every member, be he peer, knight of 
 the shire, or burgh member, had to ride on horseback 
 in the procession, it is impossible not to feel the force 
 of Miss Grisel Dalmahoy's appeal in the Heart of Mid- 
 lothian, she being an ancient sempstress, to Mr. Saddle- 
 tree, the harness-maker : 
 
 " And as for the Lords of States ye suld mind the 
 riding o' the Parliament in the gudc auld time before 
 the Union. A year's rent o' mony a gudc estate gaed 
 for horse-graith and harnessing, forby broidcred robes 
 and foot-mantles that wad hae stude by their lane with 
 gold and brocade, and that were mucklc- in my ain 
 line." 
 
 The graphic account of a famous debate given by 
 Taylor is worth comparing with the Lockhart Papers 
 and Hill Burton. The date is a little troublesome. 
 
 12
 
 354 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 According to our Itinerist, he heard the discussion as to 
 whether the Queen or the Scottish ParHament should 
 nominate the Commissioners. Now, according to the 
 histories, this ah-important discussion began and ended 
 on September i, but our Itinerist had only arrived in 
 Edinburgh the night before the first, and gives us to 
 understand that he owed his in%ntation to, be present to 
 the fact that whilst in Edinburgh he and his friends 
 had had the honour to have several lords and members 
 of Parliament to dine, and that these guests informed 
 him " of the grand day when the Act was to be passed 
 or rejected." The Itinerist's account is too particular 
 — for he gives the result of the voting — to admit of any 
 possibility of a mistake, and he describes how several 
 of the members came afterwards to his lodgings, and, 
 so he writes, " embraced us with all the outward marks 
 of love and kindness, and seemed mightily pleased at 
 what was done, and told us we should now be no more 
 EngHsh and Scotch, but Brittons." In the matter of 
 nomenclature, at all events, the promises of the Union 
 have not been carried out. 
 
 After September i the Parliament did not meet tiU 
 the 4th, when an Address was passed to the Queen, 
 but apparently without any repetition of debate. So it 
 really is a little difficult to reconcile the dates. Perhaps 
 Itinerists are best advised to keep off public events. 
 
 How our travellers escaped the " national distemper " 
 and journeyed home by Ecclefechan, Carlisle, Shap Fell, 
 Liverpool, Chester, Coventry, and Warwick must be 
 read in the Journey itself, which, though it only occu- 
 pies 182 small pages, is full of matter and even merri- 
 ment ; in fact, it is an excellent itinerary.
 
 EPITAPHS. 
 
 EPITAPHS, if in rhyme, are the real literature of 
 the masses. They need no commendation and 
 are beyond all criticism. A Cambridge don, a London 
 bus-driver, will own their charm in equal measure. 
 Strange indeed is the fascination of rhyme. A com- 
 monplace hitched into verse instantly takes rank with 
 Holy Scripture. This passion for poetry, as it is some- 
 times called, is manifested on every side ; even trades- 
 men share it, and as the advertisements in our news- 
 papers show, are willing to pay small sums to poets who 
 commend their wares in verse. The widow bereft of 
 her life's companion, the mother bending over an empty 
 cradle, find solace in thinking what doleful little scrag 
 of verse shall be graven on the tombstone of the dead 
 From the earliest times men have sought to squeeze 
 their loves and joys, their sorrows and hatreds, into 
 distichs and quatrains, and to inscribe them some- 
 where, on walls or windows, on sepulchral urns and 
 gravestones, as memorials of their pleasure or their pain. 
 
 " Hark ! how chimes the passing bell — 
 There's no music to a Imell ; 
 All the other sounds we hear 
 Flatter and but cheat our ear." 
 
 So wrote Shirley the dramatist, and so does he 
 truthfully explain the popularity of the epitaph as 
 distinguished from the epigram. Who ever wearies of 
 Martial's " Erotion " ?— 
 
 " Hie festinata requiescit Erotion umbra, 
 Crimine quam fati sexta peremit hiems. 
 Quisquis eris nostri post me rcgnator agelli 
 Manibus exiguis annua justa date.
 
 356 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Sic lare perpetuo, sic turba sospite, solus 
 Flebilis in terra sit lapis iste tua " — 
 
 SO prettily Englished by Leigh Hunt : 
 
 " Underneath this greedy stone 
 Lies little sweet Erotion, 
 Whom the Fates with hearts as cold 
 Nipped away at six years old. 
 Those, whoever thou may'st be, 
 That hast this small field after lue. 
 Let the yearly rites be paid 
 To her little slender shade ; 
 So shall no disease or jar 
 Hurt thy house or chill thy Lar, 
 But this tomb be here alone 
 The only melancholy stone." 
 
 Our Enghsh epitaphs are to be found scattered up 
 and down our country churchyards — " uncouth rhymes," 
 as Gray calls them, yet full of the sombre philosophy 
 of life. They are fast becoming illegible, worn out by 
 the rain that raineth every day, and our prim, present- 
 day parsons do not look with favour upon them, besides 
 which — to use a clumsy phrase — besides which most of 
 our churchyards are now closed against burials, and 
 without texts there can be no sermons : 
 
 " I'll stay and read my sermon here. 
 
 And skulls and bones shall be my text. 
 « * * * ♦ 
 
 Here learn that glor)^ and disgrace, 
 
 Wisdom and Folly, pass away, 
 That mirth hath its appointed space. 
 
 That sorrow is but for a day ; 
 That all we love and all we hate. 
 
 That all we hope and all we fear, 
 Each mood of mind, each turn of fate. 
 
 Must end in dust and silence here." 
 
 The best epitaphs are the grim ones. Designed, as 
 epitaphs are, to arrest and hold in their momentary 
 grasp the wandering attention and languid interest of 
 the passer-by, they must hit him hard and at once, and 
 this they can only do by striking some very responsive
 
 EPITAPHS. 357 
 
 chord, and no chords are so immediately responsive as 
 those which relate to death, and, it may be, judgment 
 to come. 
 
 Mr. Aubrey Stewart, in his interesting Selection oj 
 English Epigrams and Epitaphs, published by Chapman 
 and Hall, quotes an epitaph from a Norfolk churchyard 
 which I have seen in other parts of the country. The 
 last time I saw it was in the Forest of Dean. It is 
 admirably suited for the gravestone of any child of very 
 tender years, say four : 
 
 " When the Archangel's trump shall blow 
 And souls to bodies join, 
 Many will wish their lives below 
 Had been as short as mine." 
 
 It is uncouth, but it is warranted to grip. 
 
 Frequently, too, have I noticed how constantly the 
 attention is arrested by Pope's well-known lines from 
 his magnificent " Verses to the Memory of an Unfor- 
 t tunate Lady," which are often to be found on tomb- 
 stones : 
 
 " So peaceful rests without a stone and name 
 What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. 
 How loved, how honoured once avails thee not. 
 To whom related or by whom begot. 
 A heap of dust alone remains of thee ; 
 'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be." 
 
 I wish our modern poetasters who deny Pope's claim 
 to be a poet no worse fate than to lie under stones which 
 have engraved upon them the lint^s just quoted, for they 
 will then secure in death what in life was denied them 
 — the ear of the public. 
 
 Next to the grim epitaph, I should be disposed to 
 rank those which remind the passer-by of his transitory 
 estate. In different parts of the country — in Cumber- 
 land and Cornwall, in Croyland Abbey, in Llangollen 
 Churchyard, in Melton Mowbray — are to be found lines 
 more or less resembling the following :
 
 358 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 " Man's lilc is like unto a winter's day. 
 Some break their fast and so depart away. 
 Others stay dinner then depart full fed, 
 The longest age but sups and goes to bed. 
 
 O reader, there behold and see 
 
 As we are now, so thou must be." 
 
 The complimentary epitaph seldom pleases. To lie 
 like a tombstone has become a proverb. Pope's famous 
 epitaph on Newton : 
 
 " Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, 
 God said, Let Newton be ! and all was light," 
 
 is hyperbolical and out of character with the great man 
 it seeks to honour. It was intended for Westminster 
 Abbey. I rejoice at the preference given to prose 
 Latinity. 
 
 The tender and emotional epitaphs have a tendency 
 to become either insipid or silly. But Herrick has 
 shown us how to rival Martial : 
 
 Upon a Child that Died. 
 
 " Here she lies a pretty bud 
 Lately made of flesh and blood ; 
 Who as soon fell fast asleep 
 As her little eyes did peep. 
 Give her strewings, but not stir 
 The earth that lightly covers her." 
 
 Mr. Dodd, the editor of the admirable volume called 
 The Epigrammatists, published in Bohn's Standard 
 Library, calls these lines a model of simplicity and 
 elegance. So they are, but they are very vague. But 
 then the child was very young. Erotion, one must 
 remember, was six years old. Ben Jonson's beautiful 
 epitaph on S. P., a child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, 
 beginning, 
 
 " Weep with me all you that read 
 This little story ; 
 And know for whom the tear you shed 
 Death's self is sorry," 
 
 is fine poetry, but it -is not life or death as plain people
 
 EPITAPHS. 359 
 
 know those sober realities. The flippant epitaph is 
 always abominable. Gay's, for exaniple : 
 
 " Life is a jest, and all things show it. 
 I thought so once, but now I know it." 
 
 But does he know it ? Ay, there's the rub ! The note 
 of Christianity is seldom struck in epitaphs. There is 
 a deep-rooted paganism in the English people which is 
 for ever bubbling up and asserting itself in the oddest 
 of ways. Coleridge's epitaph for himself is a striking 
 exception : 
 
 " Stop, Christian passer-by ! stop, child of God, 
 And read with gentle breast, Beneath this sod 
 A poet lies, or that which once seemed he. 
 O lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C, 
 That he who many a year with toil of breath 
 Found death in life, may here find life in death ! 
 Mercy for praise — to be forgiven for fame. 
 He ask'd and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same."
 
 AUTHORS IN COURT. 
 
 THERE is always something a little ludicrous about 
 the spectacle of an author in pursuit of his legal 
 remedies. It is hard to say why, but like a sailor on 
 horseback, or a Quaker at the play, it suggests that in- 
 congruity which is the soul of things humorous. The 
 courts are of course as much open to authors as to the 
 really deserving members of the community ; and, to 
 do the writing fraternity justice, they have seldom shown 
 any indisposition to enter into them — though if they have 
 done so joyfully, it must be attributed to their natural 
 temperament, which (so we read) is easy, rather than 
 to the mirthful character of legal process. 
 
 To write a history of the litigations in which great 
 authors have been engaged would indeed be renovare 
 dolorem, and is no intention of mine ; though the subject 
 is not destitute of human interest — indeed, quite the 
 opposite. 
 
 Great books have naturally enough, being longer lived, 
 come into court even more frequently than great authors. 
 Paradise Lost, The Whole Duly of Man, The Pilgrim's 
 Progress, Thomson's Seasons, Rasselas, all have a legal 
 as well as a literary history. Nay, Holy Writ herself has 
 raised some nice points. The king's exclusive preroga- 
 tive to print the authorised version has been based by 
 some lawyers on the commercial circumstance that King 
 James paid for it out of his own pocket. Hence, argued 
 they, cunningly enough, it became his, and is now his 
 successor's. Others have contended more strikingly 
 that the right of multiplying copies of the Scriptures 
 necessarily belongs to the king as head of the Church. 
 A few have been found to question the right alto-
 
 AUTHORS IN COURT. 361 
 
 gether, and to call it a job. As her late Majesty was 
 pleased to abandon the prerogative, and has left all her 
 subjects free (though at their own charges) to publish 
 the version of her learned predecessor, the Bible does 
 not now come into court on its own account. But 
 whilst the prerogative was enforced, the king's printers 
 were frequently to be found seeking injunctions to re- 
 strain the vending of the Word of God by (to use Car- 
 lyle's language) '' Mr. Thomas Teggs and other extraneous 
 persons." Nor did the judges, on proper proof, hesitate 
 to grant what was sought. It is perhaps interesting 
 to observe that the king never claimed more than the 
 text. It was always open to anybody to publish even 
 King James's version, if he added notes of his own. 
 But how shamefully was this royal indulgence abused ! 
 Knavish booksellers, anxious to turn a dishonest penny 
 out of the very Bible, were known to publish Bibles with 
 so-called notes, which upon examination turned out not 
 to be bona-fide notes at all, but sometimes mere indica- 
 tions of assent with what was stated in the text, and 
 sometimes simple ejaculations. And as people as a rule 
 preferred to be without notes of this character they 
 used to be thoughtfully printed at the very edge of the 
 sheet, so that the scissors of the binder should cut them 
 off and prevent them annoying the reader. But one can 
 fancy the question, " What is a bona-fide note ? " exer- 
 cising the legal mind. 
 
 Our great lawyers on the bench have always treated 
 literature in the abstract with the utmost respect. They 
 have in many cases felt that they too, but for the grace 
 of God, miglit have been authors. Like Charles Lamb's 
 solemn Quaker, " they had been wits in their youth." 
 Lord Mansfield never forgot that, according to Mr. Pope, 
 he was a lost Ovid. Before ideas in their divine essence 
 the judges have bowed down. " A literary composition," 
 it has been said by them, " so long as it lies dormant in 
 the author's mind, is absolutely in his own possession." 
 Even Mr. Horatio Sparkins, of whoso brilliant table-
 
 362 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 talk this observation reminds us, could not more willingly 
 have recognised an obvious truth. 
 
 But they have gone much further than this. Not 
 only is the repose of the dormant idea left undisturbed, 
 but the manuscript to which it, on ceasing to be dor- 
 mant, has been communicated, is hedged round with 
 divinity. It would be most unfair to the delicacy of 
 the legal mind to attribute this to the fact, no doubt 
 notorious, that whilst it is easy (after, say, three years 
 in a pleader's chambers) to draw an indictment against 
 a man for stealing paper, it is not easy to do so if he 
 has only stolen the ideas and used his own paper. There 
 are some quibbling observations in the second book of 
 Justinian's Institutes, and a few remarks of Lord Coke's 
 which might lead the thoughtless to suppose that in 
 their protection of an author's manuscripts the courts 
 were thinking more of the paper than of the words put 
 upon it ; but that this is not so clearly appears from 
 our law as it is administered in the Bankruptcy branch 
 of the High Court. 
 
 Suppose a popular novelist were to become a bank- 
 rupt — a supposition which, owing to the immense sums 
 these gentlemen are now known to make, is robbed of all 
 painfulness by its impossibility — and his effects were 
 found to consist of the three following items : first, his 
 wearing apparel ; second, a copy of Whitaker's Almanack 
 for the current year ; and third, the manuscript of a 
 complete and hitherto unpublished novel, worth in the 
 Row, let us say, one thousand pounds. These are the 
 days of cash payments, so we must not state the author's 
 debts at more than fifteen hundred pounds. It would 
 have been difficult for him to owe more without incurring 
 the charge of imprudence. Now, how will the law deal 
 with the effects of this bankrupt ? Ever averse to ex- 
 posing any one to criminal proceedings, it will return to 
 him his clothing, provided its cash \'alue does not exceed 
 twenty pounds, which, as authors have left off wearing 
 bloom-coloured garments even as they have left off
 
 AUTHORS IN COURT. 363 
 
 v^Titing Vicars of Wakefield, it is not likely to do. This 
 humane rule disposes of item number one. As to 
 W hi faker's Almanack, it would probably be found neces- 
 sary to take the opinion of the court ; since, if it be 
 a tool of the author's trade, it will not vest in the official 
 receiver and be divisible amongst the creditors, but, like 
 the first item, will remain the property of the bankrupt 
 — but otherwise, if not such a tool. On a point like this 
 the court would probably wish to hear the evidence of 
 an expert — of some man like Mr. George Augustus Sala, 
 who knows the literary life to the back-tsone. This point 
 disposed of, or standing over for argument, there remains 
 the manuscript novel, which, as we have said, would, 
 if sold in the Row, produce a sum not only sufficient to 
 pay the costs of the argument about the Almanack and 
 of all parties properly appearing in the bankruptcy, but 
 also, if judiciously handled, a small dividend to the 
 creditors. But here our law steps in with its chivalrous, 
 almost religious respect for ideas, and declares that the 
 manuscript shall not be taken from the bankrupt and 
 published without his consent. In ordinary cases every- 
 thing a bankrupt has, save the clothes for his back and 
 the tools of his trade, is ruthlessly torn from him. Be it 
 in possession, reversion, or remainder, it all goes. His 
 incomes for life, his reversionary hopes, are knocked 
 down to the speculator. In vulgar phrase, he is " cleaned 
 out." But the manuscripts of the bankrupt author, 
 albeit they may be worth thousands, are not recognised 
 as property ; they are not yet dedicate to the public. 
 The precious papers, despite all their writer's misfortunes, 
 remain his — his to croon and to dream over, his to alter 
 and re-transcribe, his to withhold, ay, his to destroy, if 
 he should deem them, either in calm judgment, or in a 
 despairing houi-, unhappy in their expression or unworthy 
 of his name. 
 
 There is something positively tender in this view. 
 The law may be an ass, but it is also a gentleman. 
 
 Of course, in my imaginary case, if the bankrupt were
 
 364 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 to withhold his consent to pubhcation, his creditors, 
 even though it were held that the Almanack was theirs, 
 would get nothing. I can imagine them grumbling, and 
 saying (what will not creditors say ?) : " We fed this 
 gentleman whilst he was writing this precious manu- 
 script. Our joints sustained him, our bread filled him, 
 our wine made him merry. Without our goods he must 
 have perished. By all legal analogies we ought to have 
 a lien upon that manuscript. We are wholly indifferent 
 to the writer's reputation. It may be blasted for all we 
 care. It was not as an author but as a customer that we 
 supplied his very regular wants. It is now our turn to 
 have wants. We want to be paid." 
 
 These amusing, though familiar, cries of distress need 
 not disturb our equanimity or interfere with our ad- 
 miration for the sublime views as to the sanctity of 
 unpubhshed ideas entertained by the Court of Bank- 
 ruptcy. 
 
 We have thus found, so far as we have gone, the pro- 
 foundest respect shown by the law both for the dormant 
 ideas and the manuscripts of the author. Let us now 
 push boldly on, and inquire what happens when the 
 author withdraws his interdict, takes the world into his 
 confidence, and publishes his book. 
 
 Our old Common Law was clear enough. Subject 
 only to laws or customs about licensing and against pro- 
 fane books and the like, the right of publishing and 
 selling any book belonged exclusively to the author and 
 persons claiming through him. Books were as much 
 the subjects of property-rights as lands in Kent or money 
 in the bank. The term of enjoyment knew no period. 
 Fine fantastic ideas about genius endowing the world 
 and transcending the narrow bounds of property were 
 not countenanced by our Common Law. Bunyan's 
 Pilgrim's Progress, in the year 1680, belonged to Mr. 
 Ponder ; Paradise Lost, in the year 1739, was the pro- 
 perty of Mr. Jacob Tonson. Mr. Ponder and Mr. Tonson 
 had acquired these works by purchase. Property-rights
 
 AUTHORS IN COURT. 365 
 
 of this description seem strange to us, even absurd. 
 But that is one of the provoking ways of property-rights. 
 Views vary. Perhaps this time next century it will 
 seem as absurd that Ben Mac Dhui should ever have been 
 private property as it now does that in 1739 Mr. Tonson 
 should have been the owner " of man's first disobedience 
 and the fruit of that forbidden tree." This is not said 
 with any covered meaning, but is thrown out gloomily 
 with the intention of contributing to the general deprecia- 
 tion of property. 
 
 If it be asked how came it about that authors and 
 booksellers allowed themselves to be deprived of valuable 
 and well-assured rights — to be in fact disinherited, with- 
 out so much as an expostulatory ode or a single epigram 
 — it must be answered, strange as it may sound, it hap- 
 pened accidentally and through tampering with the 
 Common Law. 
 
 Authors are indeed a luckless race. To be deprived 
 of your property by Act of Parliament is a familiar 
 process, calling for no remarks save of an objurgatory 
 character ; but to petition Parliament to take away 
 your property — to get up an agitation against yourself, 
 to promote the passage through both Houses of the 
 Act of spoliation, is unusual ; so unusual indeed that I 
 make bold to say that none but authors would do such 
 things. That they did these very things is certain. It 
 is also certain that they did not mean to do them. They 
 did not understand the effect of their own Act of 
 Parliament. In exchange for a term of either fourteen 
 or twenty-one years, they gave up not only for them- 
 selves, but for all before and after them, the whole of 
 time. Oh ! miserable men ! No enemy did this ; no 
 hungry mob clamoured for cheap books ; no owner of 
 copyrights so much as weltered in his gore. The rights 
 were unquestioned : no one found fault with them. The 
 authors accomplished their own ruin. Never, surely, 
 since the well-nigh incredible folly of our first parents 
 lost us Eden and put us to the necessity of earning our
 
 366 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 living, was so line a property — perpetual copyright- 
 bartered away for so paltry an equivalent. 
 
 This is how it happened. Before the Revolution of 
 1688 printing operations were looked after, first by the 
 Court of Star Chamber, which was not always engaged, 
 as the perusal of constitutional history might lead one 
 to beheve, in torturing the unlucky, and afterwards by 
 the Stationers' Company. Both these jurisdictions rev- 
 elled in what is called summary process, which lawyers 
 sometimes describe as hrevi manu, and suitors as " short 
 shrift." They hailed before them the Mr. Thomas Teggs 
 of the period, and fined them heavily and confiscated 
 their stolen editions. Authors and their assignees liked 
 this. But then came Dutch Wilham and the glorious 
 Revolution. The press was left free ; and authors and 
 their assignees were reduced to the dull level of unlettered 
 persons ; that is to say, if their rights were interfered 
 with, they were compelled to bring an action, of the 
 kind called " trespass on the case," and to employ astute 
 counsel to draw pleadings with a pitfall in each para- 
 graph, and also to incur costs ; and in most cases, even 
 when they triumphed over their enemy, it was only to 
 find him a pauper from whom it was impossible to recover 
 a penny. Nor had the law power to fine the offender 
 or to confiscate the pirated edition; or if it had this 
 last power, it was not accustomed to exercise it, deeming 
 it unfamihar and savouring of the Inquisition. Grub 
 Street grew excited. A noise went up " most musical, 
 most melancholy, 
 
 " As of cats that wail in chorus." 
 
 It was the Augustan age of literature. Authors were 
 listened to. They petitioned Parliament, and their 
 prayer was heard. In the eighth year of good Queen 
 Anne the first copyright statute was passed, which, " for 
 the encouragement of learned men to compose and write 
 useful books," provided that the authors of books already 
 printed who had not transferred their rights, and the
 
 ■ ' AUTHORS IN COURT. 367 
 
 booksellers or other persons who had purchased the copy 
 of any books in order to print or reprint the same, should 
 have the sole right of printing them for a term of twenty- 
 one years from the tenth of April, 1710, and no longer ; 
 and that authors of books not then printed should have 
 the sole right of printing for fourteen years, and no 
 longer. Then followed, what the authors really wanted 
 the Act for, special penalties for infringement. And 
 there was peace in Grub Street for the space of twenty- 
 one years. But at the expiration of this period the 
 fateful question was stirred — what had happened to the 
 old Common Law right in perpetuity ? Did it survive 
 this peddhng Act, or had it died, ingloriously smothered 
 by a statute ? That fine old book — once on every settle 
 — The Whole Duty of Man, first raised the point. Its 
 date of publication was 1657, so it had had its term of 
 twenty-one years. That term having expired, what 
 then ? The proceedings throw no light upon the vexed 
 question of the book's authorship. Sir Joseph Jekyll 
 was content with the evidence before him that, in 1735 
 ■ at all events. The Whole Duty of Man was, or would have 
 been but for the statute, the property of one Mr. Eyre. 
 He granted an injunction, thus in effect deciding that 
 the old Common Law had survived the statute. Nor 
 did the defendant appeal, but sat down under the affront, 
 and left The Whole Duty of Man alone for the future. 
 
 Four years later there came into Lord Hardwicke's 
 court " silver-tongued Murray," afterwards Lord Mans- 
 field, then Solicitor-General, and on behalf of Mr. Jacob 
 Tonson moved for an injunction to restrain the publica- 
 tion of an edition of Paradise Lost. Tonson's case was, 
 that Paradise Lost belonged to him, just as the celebrated 
 ewer by Benvenuto Cellini once belonged to the late 
 Mr. Beresford Hope. He proved his title by divers 
 mesne assignments and other acts in the law, from Mrs. 
 Milton — the poet's third wife, who exhibited such skill 
 in the art of widowhood, surviving her husband as she 
 did for fifty-three years. Lord Hardwicke granted the
 
 o 
 
 68 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 injunction. It looked well for the Common Law, Thom- 
 son's Seasons next took up the wondrous tale. This 
 delightful author, now perhaps better remembered by 
 his charming habit of eating peaches off the wall with 
 both hands in his pockets, than by his great work, had 
 sold the book to Andrew Millar, the bookseller whom 
 Johnson respected because, said he, " he has raised the 
 price of literature." If so, it must have been but low 
 before, for he only gave Thomson a hundred guineas for 
 " Summer," " Autumn," and " Winter," and some other 
 pieces. The " Spring " he bought separately, along with 
 the ill-fated tragedy, Sophonisba, for one hundred and 
 thirty-seven pounds ten shillings. A knave called Robert 
 Taylor pirated Millar's Thomson's Seasons ; and on the 
 morrow of All Souls in Michaelmas, in the seventh 
 year of King George the Third, Andrew MiUar brought 
 his plea of trespass on the case against Robert Taylor, 
 and gave pledges of prosecution, to wit, John Doe and 
 Richard Roe. The case was recognised to be of great 
 importance, and was argued at becoming length in the 
 King's Bench. Lord Mansfield and Justices Willes and 
 Aston upheld the Common Law. It was, they declared, 
 unaffected by the statute. Mr. Justice Yates dissented, 
 and in the course of a judgment occupying nearly three 
 hours, gave some of his reasons. It was the first time 
 the Court had ever finally differed since Mansfield pre- 
 sided over it. Men felt the matter could not rest there. 
 Nor did it. MiUar died, and went to his own place. 
 His executors put up Thomson's Poems for sale by public 
 auction, and one Beckett bought them for five hundred 
 and five pounds. When we remember that Millar only 
 gave two hundred and forty-two pounds ten shillings 
 for them in 1729, and had therefore enjoyed more than 
 forty years' exclusive monopoly, we reahse not only 
 that MiUar had made a good thing out of his brother 
 Scot, but what great interests were at stake. Thomson's 
 Seasons, erst MiUar's, now became Beckett's ; and when 
 one Donaldson of Edinburgh brought out an edition of
 
 ' ' AUTHORS IN COURT. 369 
 
 the poems, it became the duty of Beckett to take pro- 
 ceedings, which he did by filing a bill in the Court of 
 Chancery.* 
 
 These proceedings found their way, as all decent 
 proceedings do, to the House of Lords — farther than 
 which you cannot go, though ever so minded. It was 
 now high time to settle this question, and their lordships 
 accordingly, as was their proud practice in great cases, 
 summoned the judges of the land before their bar, and 
 put to them five carefully-worded questions, all going 
 to the points— what was the old Common Law right, 
 and has it survived the statute ? Eleven judges at- 
 tended, heard the questions, bowed, and retired to con- 
 sider their answers. On the fifteenth of February, 
 1774, they reappeared, and it being announced that 
 they differed, instead of being locked up without meat, 
 drink, or firing until they agreed, they were requested 
 to deliver their opinions with their reasons, which they 
 straightway proceeded to do. The result may be stated 
 with tolerable accuracy thus : by ten to one they were 
 of opinion that the old Common Law recognized per- 
 petual copyright. By six to five they were of opinion 
 that the statute of Queen Anne had destroyed this right. 
 The House of Lords adopted the opinion of the majority, 
 reversed the decree of the Court below, and thus Thom- 
 son's Seasons became your Seasons, my Seasons, any- 
 body's Seasons. But by how slender a majority ! To 
 make it even more exciting, it was notorious that the 
 most eminent judge on the Bench (Lord Mansfield) 
 agreed with the minority ; but owing to the combined 
 circumstances of his having already, in a case practically 
 between the sa,me parties and relating to the same 
 matter, expressed his opinion, and of his being not 
 
 * Donaldson was a well-loiown man in Edinburgh. He was Boswell's 
 first publisher, and on one occasion gave that gentleman a dinner con- 
 sisting mainly of pig. Johnson's view of his larcenous proceedings is 
 stated in the Life. Thurlow was his counsel in this litigation. Donald- 
 son's Hospital in Edinburgh represents the fortune made by this 
 publisher.
 
 370 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 merely a judge but a peer, he was prevented (by eti- 
 quette) from taking any part, either as a judge or as a 
 peer, in the proceedings. Had he not been prevented 
 (by etiquette), who can say what the result might have 
 been ? 
 
 Here ends the story of how authors and their assignees 
 were disinherited by mistake, and forced to content 
 themselves with such beggarly terms of enjoyment as a 
 hostile legislature doles out to them. 
 
 As the law now stands, they may enjoy their own 
 during the period of the author's life, plus seven years, 
 or the period of forty-two years, whichever may chance 
 to prove the longer. 
 
 So strangely and so quickly does the law colour men's 
 notions of what is inherently decent, that even authors 
 have forgotten how fearfully they have been abused 
 and how cruelly robbed. Then thoughts are turned 
 in quite other directions. I do not suppose they will 
 care for these old-world memories. Their great minds 
 are tossing on the ocean w^hich pants dumbly-passionate 
 with dreams of royalties. If they could only shame 
 the English-reading population of the United States 
 to pay for their literature, all would be well. Whether 
 they ever will, depends upon themselves. If English 
 authors *wiU publish their books cheap. Brother Sam 
 may, and probably will, pay them a penny a copy, or 
 some such sum. If they will not, he will go on stealing. 
 It is wrong, but he wiU do it. " He says," observes an 
 American writer, " that he was born of poor but honest 
 parents. / say, ' Bah ! ' " * 
 
 * Copyright ia the United States has siace been conceded on certain 
 terms.
 
 A CONNOISSEUR. 
 
 IT must always be rash to speak positively about 
 humau nature, whose various types of character 
 are singularly tough, and endure, if not for ever, for 
 a very long time ; yet some types do seem to show 
 signs of wearing out. The connoisseur, for example, 
 here in England is hardly what he was. He has 
 speciahsed, and behind him there is now the bottomless 
 purse of the multi-millionaire, who buys as he is bidden, 
 and has no sense of prices. If the multi-millionaire 
 wants a thing, why should he not have it ? The 
 gaping mob, penniless but appreciative, looks on and 
 cheers his pluck. 
 
 Mr. Frederick Locker, about whom I wish to write a 
 few lines, was an old-world connoisseur, the shy recesses of 
 whose soul Addison might have penetrated in the page of 
 a Spectator — and a delicate operation it would have been. 
 
 My father-in-law was only once in the witness-box. 
 I had the felicity to see him there. It was a dispute 
 about the price of a picture, and in the course of his 
 very short evidence he hazarded the opinion that the 
 grouping of the figures (they were portraits) was in bad 
 taste. The Judge, the late Mr. Justice Cave, an excel- 
 lent lawyer of the old school, snarled out, " Do you 
 think you could explain to me what is taste ? " Mr. 
 Locker surveyed the Judge through the eyeglass which 
 seemed almost part of his being, with a glance modest, 
 deferential, deprecatory, as if suggesting " Who am / 
 to explain anything to you ? " but at the same time 
 critical, ironical, and humorous. It was but for one 
 brief moment ; the eyeglass dropped, and there came 
 the mournful answer, as from a man baffled at all
 
 372 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 ]:)oints : " No, my lord ; I should find it impossible ! " 
 The Judge grunted a ready, almost a cheerful, assent. 
 
 Properly to describe Mr. Locker, you ought to be 
 a.ble to explain both to judge and jury what you mean 
 by taste. He sometimes seemed to me to be all taste. 
 Whatever subject he approached — was it the mystery of 
 religion, or the moralities of life, a poem. or a print, a 
 bit of old china or a human being — whatever it might 
 be, it was along the avenue of taste that he gently made 
 his way up to it. His favourite word of commendation 
 was pleasing, and if he ever brought himself to say (and 
 he was not a man who scattered his judgments, rather 
 was he extremely reticent of them) of a man, and still 
 more of a woman, that he or she was unpleasing, you 
 almost shuddered at the fierceness of the condemna- 
 tion, knowing, as all Locker's intimate friends could not 
 help doing, what the word meant to him. " Attractive " 
 was another of his critical instruments. He meets Lord 
 Palmerston, and does not find him " attractive " {My 
 Confidences, p. 155). 
 
 This is a temperament which when cultivated, as it 
 v/as in Mr. Locker's case, b\- a life-long familiarity 
 with beautiful things in all the arts and crafts, is apt 
 to make its owner very susceptible to what some 
 stirring folk may not unjustlj^ consider the trifles of 
 life. Sometimes Locker might seem to overlook the 
 dominant features, the main object of the existence 
 either of a man or of some piece of man's work, in his 
 sensitively keen perception of the beauty, or the lapse 
 from beauty, of some trait of character or bit of work- 
 manship. This may have been so. Mr. Locker was 
 more at home, more entirely his own delightiful self, 
 when he was calling your attention to some humorous 
 touch in one of Bewick's tail-pieces, or to some plump 
 figure in a group by his favourite Stothard, than when 
 handling a Michael Angelo drawing or an amazing 
 Blake. Yet, had it been his humour, he could have 
 played the showman to Michael Angelo and Blake at
 
 A CONNOISSEUR. 373 
 
 least as well as to Bewick, Stothard, or Chodowiecki. 
 But a modesty, marvellously mingled with irony, was 
 of the very essence of his nature. No man expatiated 
 less. He never expounded anything in his born days ; 
 he very soon wearied of those he called " strong " 
 talkers. His critical method was in a conversational 
 manner to direct your attention to something in a 
 ipoem or a picture, to make a brief suggestion or two, 
 ])erhaps to apply an epithet, and it was all over, but 
 your eyes were opened. Rapture he never professed, 
 ills tones were never loud enough to express enthusiasm, 
 but his enjoyment of what he considered good, wherever 
 he found it — and he was regardless of the set judgments 
 of the critics — was most intense and intimate. His 
 feeling for anything he liked was fibrous : he clung to 
 it. For all his rare books and prints, if he liked a thing 
 he was very tolerant of its format. He would cut a 
 drawing out of a newspaper, frame it, hang it up, and 
 be just as tender towards it as if it were an impression 
 ^ with the unique remarque. 
 
 Mr. Locker had probably inherited his virtuoso's 
 whim from his ancestors. His great-grandfather was 
 certified by Johnson in his life of Addison to be a 
 gentleman " eminent for curiosity and literature," and 
 though his grandfather, the Commodore, who lives for 
 ever in our history as the man who taught Nelson the 
 lesson that saved an Empire — " Lay a Frenchman close, 
 and you will beat him "■ — -was no collector, his father, 
 Edward Hawke Locker, though also a naval man, was 
 not only the friend of Sir Walter Scott, but a most 
 judicious buyer of pictures, prints, and old furniture. 
 
 Frederick Locker was bom in 1821, in Greenwich 
 Hospital, where Edward Hawke Locker was Civil 
 Commissioner. His mother was the daughter of one 
 of the greatest book-buyers of his time, a man whose 
 library it took nine days to disperse — the Rev. Jonathan 
 Boucher, the friend and opponent of George Washington, 
 an ecclesiastic who might have been first Bishop of
 
 374 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Edinburgh, but who died a better thing, the Vicar of 
 
 Epsom. 
 
 Frederick Locker grew up among pretty things in the 
 famous hospital. Water-colours by Lawrence, Prout. 
 Girtin, Turner, Chinnery, Paul Sandby, Cipriani, and 
 other masters ; casts after Canova ; mezzotints after 
 Sir Joshua ; Hogarth's famous picture of David Garrick 
 and his wife, now well hung in Windsor Castle, were 
 about him, and early attracted his observant eye. Yet 
 the same things were about his elder brother Arthur, 
 an exceedingly clever fellow, who remained quite 
 curiously impervious to the impressiveness of pretty 
 things all his days. 
 
 Locker began collecting on his own account after 
 his marriage, in 1850, to a daughter of Lord Byron's 
 enemy, the Lord Elgin who brought the marbles from 
 Athens to Bloomsbury. His first object, at least so he 
 thought, was to make his rooms pretty. From the 
 beginning of his life as a connoisseur he spared himself 
 no pains, often trudging miles, when not wanted at the 
 Admiralty Office, in search of his prey. If any mer- 
 cantile-minded friend ever inquired what anything had 
 cost, he would be answered with a rueful smile, " Much 
 shoe leather." He began with old furniture, china, 
 and bric-a-brac, which ere long somewhat inconven- 
 iently filled his small rooms. Prices rose, and means 
 in those days were as small as the rooms. No more 
 purchases of Louis Seize and blue majolica and Palissy 
 ware could be made. Drawings by the old masters and 
 small pictures were the next objects of the chase. Here 
 again the long purses were soon on his track, and the 
 pursuit had to be abandoned, but not till many treasures 
 had been garnered. Last of all he became a book- 
 hunter, beginning with little volumes of poetry and the 
 drama from 1590 to 1610 ; and as time went on the bound- 
 aries expanded, but never so as to include black letter. 
 
 I dare not say Mr. Locker had all the characteristics of 
 a great collector, or that he was entirely free from the
 
 A CONNOISSEUR. 375 
 
 whimsicalities of the tribe of connoisseurs, but he was 
 certainly endowed with the chief qualifications for the 
 pursuit of rarities, and remained clear of the unpleasant 
 vices that so often mar men's most innocent avocations. 
 Mr. Locker always knew what he wanted and what he 
 did not want, and never could be persuaded to take the 
 one for the other ; he did not grow excited in the 
 presence of the quarry ; he had patience to wait, and 
 to go on waiting, and he seldom lacked courage to buy. 
 
 He rode his own hobby-horse, never employing 
 experts as buyers. For quantity he had no stomach. 
 He shrank from numbers. He was not a Bodleian 
 man ; he had not the sinews to grapple with libraries. 
 He was the connoisseur throughout. Of the huge 
 acquisitiveness of a Heber or a Huth he had not a 
 trace. He hated a crowd, of whatsoever it was com- 
 posed. He was apt to apologise for his possessions, 
 and to depreciate his tastes. As for boasting of a 
 treasure, he could as easily have eaten beef at breakfast. 
 
 So delicate a spirit, armed as it was for purposes of 
 defence with a rare gift of irony and a very shrewd 
 insight into the weaknesses and noisy falsettos of life, 
 was sure to be misunderstood. The dull and coarse 
 witted found Locker hard to make out. He struck 
 them as artificial and elaborate, perhaps as frivolous, 
 and yet they felt uneasy in his company lest there 
 should be a lurking ridicule behind his quiet, humble 
 demeanour. There was, indeed, always an element of 
 mockery in Locker's humility. 
 
 An exceedingly spiteful account of him, in which it 
 is asserted that " most of his rarest books are miserable 
 copies " (how book-collectors can hate one another !), 
 ends with the reluctant admission : "He was eminently 
 a gentleman, however, and his manners were even 
 courtly, yet virile." Such extorted praise is valuable. 
 
 I can see him now before me, with a nicely graduated 
 foot-rule in his delicate hand, measuring with grave 
 precision the height to a hair of his copy of Robinson
 
 376 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 Crusoe (1719), for the purpose of ascertaining whether 
 it was taller or shorter than one being vaunted for sale 
 in a bookseller's catalogue just to hand. His face, one 
 of much refinement, was a study, exhibiting alike a 
 fixed determination to discover the exact truth about 
 the copy and a humorous realisation of the inherent 
 triviality of the whole business. Locker was a philos- 
 opher as well as a connoisseur. 
 
 The Rowfant Library has disappeared. Great pos- 
 sessions are great cares. " But ships are but boards, 
 sailors but men ; there be land-rats, water-thieves, and 
 land-thieves — I mean pirates ; and then there is the 
 peril of v/aters, winds, and rocks." To this list the 
 nervous owner of rare books must add fire, that dread 
 enemy of all the arts. It is often difficult to provide 
 stabling for dead men's hobby-horses. It were perhaps 
 absurd in a world like this to grow sentimental over a 
 parcel of old books. Death, the great unbinder, must 
 always make a difference. 
 
 Mr. Locker's poetry now forms a volume of the 
 Golden Treasury Series. The London Lyrics are what 
 they are. They have been well praised by good critics, 
 and have themselves been made the subject of good verse. 
 
 " Apollo made one April day 
 A new thing in the rhyming way ; 
 Its turn was neat, its wit was clear, 
 It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear. 
 Then Momiis gave a touch satiric. 
 And it became a London Lyric." 
 
 Austin Dobson. 
 
 In another copy of verses Mr. Dobson adds : 
 
 " Or where discern a verse so neat. 
 So well-bred and so witty — 
 So finished in its least conceit. 
 So mixed of mirth and pity ? " 
 
 " Pope taught him rhythm. Prior ease, 
 Praed buoyancy and banter ; 
 What modern bard would learn from these ? 
 Ah, tempora mutantur ! "
 
 A CONNOISSEUR. 377 
 
 Nothing can usefully be added to criticism so just, so 
 searching, and so happily expressed. 
 
 Some of the London Lyrics have, I think, achieved 
 what we poor mortals call immortality — a strange word 
 to apply to the piping of so slender a reed, to so slight 
 a strain — yet 
 
 " In small proportions we just beauties see." 
 
 It is the simplest strain that lodges longest in the 
 heart. Mr. Locker's strains are never precisely simple. 
 The gay enchantment of the world and the sense of 
 its bitter disappointments murmur through all of them, 
 and are fatal to their being simple, but the unpre- 
 tentiousness of a London Lyric is akin to simplicity. 
 
 His relation to his own poetry was somewhat peculiar. 
 A critic in every fibre, he judged his own verses with a 
 severity he would have shrunk from applying to those 
 of any other rhyming man. He was deeply dissatis- 
 fied, almost on bad terms, with himself, yet for all 
 that he was convinced that he had written some very 
 good verses indeed. His poetry meant a great deal to him, 
 and he stood in need of sympathy and of allies against 
 his own despondency. He did not get much sympathy, 
 being a man hard to praise, for unless he agreed with 
 your praise it gave him more pain than pleasure. 
 
 I am not sure that Mr. Dobson agrees with me, but 
 I am very fond of Locker's paraphrase of one of Clement 
 Marot's Epigrammes ; and as the lines are redolent of 
 his delicate connoisseurship, I will quote both the 
 original (dated 1544) and the paraphrase : 
 
 Du Rys de Madame D'Allebret. 
 
 " Ella a trts bien ceste gorge d'albastre, 
 Ce doulx parler, ce cler tainct, ces beau.\ yeulx : 
 Mais cu effect, ce petit rys follastre, 
 C'cst a mon gre ce qui lui sied Ic mieulx ; 
 EUe en pourroit Ics cheinins et les lieux 
 Oti elle passe i plaisir inciter ; 
 Et si ennuy ine venoit contrister 
 Tant qu^ par mort fust ina vie abbatue.
 
 378 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 II me fauldroit pour me resusciter 
 Que ce rys la duguel elle me tue." 
 
 " How fair those locks which now the light wind stirs ! 
 
 What eyes she has, and what a perfect arm ! 
 And yet methinks that little laugh of hers— 
 
 That little laugh — is still her crowning charm. 
 Where'er she passes, countryside or town, 
 
 The streets make festa and the fields rejoice. 
 Should sorrow come, as 'twill, to cast me down. 
 
 Or Death, as come he must, to hush my voice. 
 Her laugh would wake me just as now it thrills me — 
 That little, giddy laugh wherewith she kills me." 
 
 'Tis the very laugh of Millamant in The Way of the 
 World ! " I would rather," cried Hazlitt, " have seen 
 Mrs. Abington's Millamant than any Rosahnd that 
 ever appeared on the stage." Such wishes are idle. 
 Hazlitt never saw Mrs. Abington's Millamant. I have 
 seen Miss Ethel Irving's Millamant, didce ridenteni, and 
 it was that little giddy laugh of hers that reminded me 
 of Marot's Epigram and of Frederick Locker's para- 
 phrase. So do womanly charms endure from generation 
 to generation, and it is one of the duties of poets to 
 record them. 
 
 In 1867 Mr. Locker published his Lyra Elegantiarum, 
 A Collection of Some of the Best Specimens of Vers de 
 Socicte and Vers d'Occasion in the English Languages 
 hy Deceased Authors. In his preface Locker gave what 
 may now be fairly called the " classical " definition of 
 the verses he was collecting. " Vers de socide and vers 
 d' occasion should " (so he wrote) " be short, elegant, 
 refined, and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by 
 heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone 
 should not be pitched high ; it should be idiomatic and 
 rather in the conversational key ; the rhythm should be 
 crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never 
 forced, while the entire poem should be marked by 
 tasteful moderation, high finish, and completeness ; 
 for however trivial the subject-matter may be — indeed, 
 rather in proportion to its triviality, subordination to 
 the rules of composition and perfection of execution
 
 A CONNOISSEUR. 379 
 
 should be strictly enforced. The definition may be 
 further illustrated by a few examples of pieces, which, 
 from the absence of some of the foregoing qualities, 
 or from the excess of others, cannot be properly re- 
 garded as vers de socie'ie, though they may bear a certain 
 generic resemblance to that species of poetry. The 
 ballad of ' John Gilpin,' for example, is too broadly 
 and simply ludicrous ; Swft's ' Lines on the Death 
 of Marlborough,' and Byron's ' Windsor Poetics,' are 
 too savage and truculent ; Cowper's ' My Mary ' is far 
 too pathetic ; Herrick's lyrics to ' Blossoms ' and 
 'Daffodils' are too elevated; 'Sally in our Alley ' is 
 too homely and too entirely simple and natural ; while 
 the ' Rape of the Lock,' which would otherwise be one 
 of the finest specimens of vers de societc in any language, 
 must be excluded on account of its length, which renders 
 it much too important." 
 
 I have made this long quotation because it is an 
 excellent example of Mr. Locker's way of talking about 
 poets and poetry, and of his intimate, searching, and 
 unaffected criticism. 
 
 Lyra Elegantiarum is a real, not a bookseller's collec- 
 tion. Mr. Locker was a great student of verse. There 
 was hardly a stanza of any English poet, unless it was 
 Spenser, for whom he had no great affection, which he 
 had not pondered over and clearly considered as does a 
 lawyer his cases. He delighted in a complete success, 
 and grieved over any lapse from the fold of metrical 
 virtue, over any ill-sounding rhyme or unhappy ex- 
 pression. The circulation of Lyra Elegantiarum was 
 somewhat interfered with by a " copyright " question. 
 Mr. Locker had a great admiration for Landor's short 
 poems, and included no less than forty-one of them, 
 which he chose with the utmost care. Publishers are 
 slow to perceive that the best chance of getting rid of 
 their poetical wares (and Landor was not popular) is to 
 have attention called to the artificer who produced 
 them. The Landorian publisher objected, and the Lyra
 
 38o SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 had to be " suppressed " — a fine word full of hidden 
 meanings. The second-hand booksellers, a wily race, 
 were quick to perceive the significance of this, and have 
 for more than thirty years obtained inflated prices for 
 their early copies, being able to vend them as possess- 
 ing the Suppressed Verses. There is a great deal of 
 Locker in this collection. To turn its pages is to renew 
 intercourse with its editor. 
 
 In 1879 another little volume instinct with his per- 
 sonality came into existence and made friends for itself. 
 He called it Patchwork, and to have given it any other 
 name would have severely taxed his inventiveness. It is a 
 collection of stories, of ana, of quotations in verse and 
 prose, of original matter, of character-sketches, of small 
 adventures, of table-talk, and of other things besides, 
 if other things, indeed, there be. If you know Patch- 
 work by heart you are well equipped. It is intensely 
 original throughout, and never more original than when 
 its matter is borrowed. Readers of Patchu'ork had heard 
 of Mr. Creevey long before Sir Herbert Maxwell once 
 again let that politician loose upon an unlettered society. 
 
 The book had no great sale, but copies evidently fell 
 into the hands of the more judicious of the pressmen, 
 who kept it by their sides, and every now and again 
 
 " Waled a portion with judicious care " 
 
 for quotation in their columns. The Patchwork stories 
 thus got into circulation one by one. Kind friends 
 of Mr. Locker's, who had been told, or had discovered 
 for themselves, that he was somewhat of a wag, would 
 frequently regale him with bits of his own Patchwork, 
 introducing them to his notice as something they had 
 just heard, which they thought he would like — mur- 
 dering his own stories to give him pleasure. His coun- 
 tenance on such occasions was a rendezvous of contend- 
 ing emotions, a battlefield of rival forces. Politeness 
 ever prevailed, but it took all his irony and sad philos- 
 ophy to hide his pain. Patchwork is such a good col lee-
 
 A CONNOISSEUR. 381 
 
 tion of the kind of story he Hked best that it was really 
 difficult to avoid telling him a story that was not in it. 
 I made the blunder once myself with a Voltairean anec- 
 dote. Here it is as told in Patchwork : " Voltaire was 
 one day listening to a dramatic author reading his 
 comedy, and who said, ' Ici le chevalier rit ! ' He 
 exclaimed : ' Le chevalier est bien heureux ! ' " I hope 
 I told it fairly well. He smiled sadly, and said nothing, 
 not even Et tit, Brute ! 
 
 In 1886 j\Ir. Locker printed for presentation a cata- 
 logue of his printed books, manuscripts, autograph 
 letters, drawings, and pictures. Nothing of his own 
 figures in this catalogue, and yet in a very real sense 
 the whole is his. Most of the books are dispersed, but 
 the catalogue remains, not merely as a record of rari- 
 ties and bibliographical details, dear to the collector's 
 heart, but as a token of taste. Just as there is, so 
 Wordsworth reminds us, " a spirit in the woods," so 
 is there still, brooding over and haunting the pages of 
 ^ the " Rowfant Catalogue," the spirit of true connoisseur- 
 ship. In the slender lists of Locker's " Works " this book 
 must always have a place. 
 
 Frederick Locker died at Rowfant on May 30, 1895, 
 leaving behind him, carefully prepared for the press, a 
 volume he had christened My Confidences : An Auto- 
 graphical Sketch addressed to My Descendants. 
 
 In due course the book appeared, and was misunder- 
 stood at first by many. It cut a strange, outlandish 
 figure among the crowd of casual reminiscences it ex- 
 ternally resembled. Glancing over the pages of My 
 Confidences, the careless library subscriber encountered 
 the usual number of names of well-known personages, 
 whose appearance is supposed by publishers to add 
 sufficient zest to reminiscences to secure for them a 
 sale large enough, at any rate, to recoup the cost of 
 publication. Yet, despite these names, Mr. Locker's 
 book is completely unlike the modern memoir. Be- 
 neath a carefully-constructed, and perhaps slightly
 
 382 SELECTED ESSAYS. 
 
 artificially maintained, frivolity of tone, the book is 
 written in deadly earnest. Not for nothing did its 
 author choose as one of the mottoes for its title-page, 
 " Ce ne sont mes gestes que j 'eerie ; c'est moy." It 
 may be said of this book, as of Senancour's Oberman : 
 
 " A fever in these pages burns ; 
 
 Beneath the calm they feign, * 
 A wounded human spirit turns 
 Here on its bed of pain.". 
 
 The still small voice of its author whispers through 
 My Confidences. Like Montaigne's Essays, the book is 
 one of entire good faith, and strangely uncovers a per- 
 sonality. 
 
 As a tiny child Locker was thought by his parents to 
 be very like Sir Joshua Reynolds's picture of Puck, an 
 engraving of which was in the home at Greenwich Hos- 
 pital, and certainly Locker carried to his grave more 
 than a suspicion of what is called Puckishness. In My 
 Confidences there are traces of this quality. 
 
 Clearly enough the author of London Lyrics, the editor 
 of Lyra Elegantiarmn, of Paichwork, and the whimsical 
 but sincere compiler of My Confidences was more than a 
 mere connoisseur, however much connoisseurship entered 
 into a character in which taste played so dominant a part. 
 
 Stronger even than taste was his almost laborious 
 love of kindness. He really took too much pains about 
 it, exposing himself to rebuffs and misunderstandings ; 
 but he was not without his rewards. All down-hearted 
 folk, sorrowful, disappointed people, the unlucky, the 
 ill-considered, the mesestimrs — those who found them- 
 selves condemned to discharge uncongenial duties in 
 unsympathetic society, turned instinctively to Mr. 
 Locker for a consolation, so softly administered that 
 it was hard to say it was intended. He had friends 
 everywhere, in all ranks of life, who found in him an 
 infinity of solace, and for his friends there was nothing 
 he would not do. It seemed as if he could not spare
 
 A CONNOISSEUR. 383 
 
 himself, I remember his calling at my chambers one 
 hot day in July, when he happened to have with him 
 some presents he was in course of delivering. Among 
 them I noticed a bust of Voltaire and an unusually lively 
 tortoise, generally half-way out of a paper bag. Wher- 
 ever he went he found occasion for kindness, and his 
 whimsical adventures would fill a volume. I some- 
 times thought it M^ould really be worth while to leave 
 off the struggle for existence, and gently to subside into 
 one of Lord Rowton's homes in order to have the pleasure 
 of receiving in my new quarters a first visit from Mr. 
 Locker. How pleasantly would he have mounted the 
 stair, laden with who knows what small gifts ? — a box 
 of mignonette for the window-sill, an old book or two, 
 as likely as not a live kitten, for indeed there was never 
 an end to the variety or ingenuity of his offerings 1 
 How felicitous would have been his greeting ! How 
 cordial his compliments ! How abiding the sense of 
 his unpatronizing friendliness ! But it was not to be. 
 One can seldom choose one's pleasures. 
 
 In his Patchwork Mr. Locker quotes Gibbon's en- 
 comium on Charles James Fox. Anyone less like Fox 
 than Frederick Locker it might be hard to discover, 
 but fine qualities are alike wherever they are found 
 lodged ; and if Fox was as much entitled as Locker to the 
 full benefit of Gibbon's praise, he was indeed a good 
 fellow. 
 
 " In his tour to Switzerland Mr. Fox gave me two 
 days of free and private society. He seemed to feel 
 and even to envy the happiness of my situation, while 
 I admired the powers of a superior man as they are 
 blended in his character with the softness and simplicity 
 of a child. Perhaps no human being was ever more per- 
 fectly exempted from the taint of malevolence, vanity, and 
 falsehood." 
 
 THE END.
 
 Works by the Right Honourable 
 
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