>4 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 FREDERIC THOMAS BLANCHARD 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 ENGLISH READING ROOM
 
 y
 
 SK
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 EMINENT MEN
 
 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 anU t\]cx papers. 
 
 By Edwin Percy Whipple. 
 
 With Introduction by John Greenleaf Whittier, 
 to whom the volume is ded.cated. 
 
 i2mo. Gilt top. $1.50. 
 
 This new volume of the great essayist's works contains 
 his famous Centennial articles on American Literature; 
 two articles on Emerson ; a brilliant monograph on 
 Starr King ; and the now classic review of Daniel 
 Webster's oratory, all written with that finished el- 
 egance of style and affluence of incident and anecdote 
 for which Whipple was famed. 
 
 /^or sale by all booksellers- Senl, post-paid, on re- 
 ceipt 0/ the price, by tlte publishers, 
 
 TICKNOR AND COMPANY, Boston.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 EMINENT MEN 
 
 litj) tijer ^aptts 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE 
 
 b 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTION BY REV. C. A. BARTOL, D.D. 
 
 BOSTON 
 TICKNOR AND COMPANY 
 
 211 STremont Street
 
 Copyright, 1886, 
 By TlCKNOR AND Co. 
 
 AU rights reserved. 
 
 FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 nifaereitg ^Jrcss: 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Paqi 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 Some Recollections op Rufus Choate 1 
 
 Recollections op Agassiz 77 
 
 Some Recollections of Ralph Waldo Emerson . . 119 
 
 Motley, the Historian 155 
 
 Recollections of Charles Sumner 204 
 
 George Ticknor 244 
 
 Matthew Arnold 280 
 
 Barry Cornwall and some of his Contemporaries . 305 
 
 Daniel Deronda 344 
 
 George Eliot's Private Life 380
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The writer of these now collected celebrations of 
 literary, political, scientific, and philanthrophic genius 
 has added his own name to the number of the dead, 
 and his own writings thereby become posthumous. 
 As the peer of the subjects of his pen, he would de- 
 serve a portrait from the hand of an artist equal to 
 himself in depicting character, could such an one be 
 found. Had he, like Rubens and Hunt and other 
 painters, sat to himself, what a likeness, in manu- 
 script, from his self-knowledge and curious skill we 
 might have had, but that his singular lowliness would 
 hide the equally rare splendor of his gifts ! A re- 
 markable unconsciousness of his own superiority 
 always made others' estimate of him a sort of shame 
 and surprise to his own mind ; and so, in apprais- 
 ing his peculiar faculties, he would for once have 
 fallen below the mark. To use Jeremy Taylor's 
 figure, he was like the candle casting about it a 
 shadow and a cloud, and shining to all but himself.
 
 X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 beauty, piously wiped away the dust of oblivion, 
 like Walter Scott's reverent covenanter among the 
 tombs, rechiselled the mossy, worn, dim inscriptions, 
 and deepened the images time could not efface ! 
 
 Mr. Whipple was an intellectual sympathy incarnate. 
 He lived to do honor to others, and to forget himself in 
 awarding to everybody else the meed of desert. No 
 dramatic poet, novelist, painter of likenesses on the 
 canvas could be in his subjects and sitters more ab- 
 sorbed, himself unconscious of having any claim or 
 winning a morsel of regard. Death itself, in its ap- 
 proaches to him, seems to have respected this blessed 
 devotion, this privacy so intense, this humility as 
 Monckton Milnes wrote so joyful and dear. 
 
 For some years his health had been failing and 
 infirmity on the increase. But he was not a man 
 to tell, or let us suspect, his troubles. He would 
 communicate only gladness and good cheer; he 
 kept his pain or sorrow to himself. At the de- 
 cease of a beloved daughter, he simply said to me, 
 " It is untalkable." He was meek and lowly like 
 his Master, and the almost more than a woman's 
 delicacy in his robust and manly mind was a sort 
 of continual hint of the Holy Spirit. A strong 
 thinker in a slender frame, he had also the sensi- 
 bility which is not unveiled, and the sentiment which 
 cannot be sentimental or weak. Nobody would enter 
 a more displeased protest against whoever would set
 
 INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 him forth as a model of perfection, in any way. 
 He would not say, with Oliver Cromwell, " Paint 
 me as I am." He would rather, in the spirit of 
 Shakspcare's beautiful sonnet, deprecate any exhibi- 
 tion of mourning remembrance after the tolling of 
 the sullen bell, and beg not to be painted at all. 
 
 This rarely modest disposition was well suited 
 in the custom of his plain and quiet demeanor, in 
 his withdrawal from appearing abroad as his bodily 
 strength abated, and in the peculiarly placid cir- 
 cumstances of his lamented yet cheerful demise. 
 But diminution of his never gigantic frame of flesh 
 was attended with no loss of interior faculty. His 
 analytic power was as searching, his observation as 
 keen, his memory had the same amplitude and grip 
 at the last as at the first. In many recent conver- 
 sations with him under the roof or by the way, I 
 was unable to perceive in him any intellectual loss. 
 But the ties were unambiguously loosening that 
 bound him to this life. Like the aeronaut, he was 
 very evidently getting ready to go up. Cord after 
 cord is cut ; the silken vessel swells with the buoy- 
 ant element penned in ; it sways and flutters to 
 and fro with the passing breeze. At length the 
 only remaining thread is severed that detains it 
 from the sky,- and it soars out of view, and we 
 linger at the rising like those men of Galilee gazing 
 up after that other ascension into heaven.
 
 xii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I do not desire to expose myself to my lifelong 
 friend's rebuke, reaching me though he be dead, by 
 describing him as devoid of any human limitation 
 or fault. But I cannot, through my tears, in my be- 
 loved see errors when their virtues stand in the way ; 
 and his virtues were so great, that all else was but as 
 the chalf the wind blows away as the flail threshes it 
 from the wheat in the autumn field or on the granary 
 floor ; or like an eclipse of the moon, which the sun 
 makes by casting the earth's shadow from his own 
 wondrous blaze. 
 
 He had an eminent magnanimity. Did others 
 crowd and push in the grasp for riches or race for 
 fame? he stood aside, he fell back, he relinquished 
 to those who craved it the prize. I never heard a 
 word of envy from his lips ; I never saw a spark 
 of malice in his eye. He rejoiced in his comrade's 
 superiority and success. He was just to those who 
 were unjust to him. He was, in the language of 
 the hymn, 
 
 "Content and pleased to live unknown." 
 
 Yet as Othello said, " I must be found," and as the 
 great Cajsar, despite hesitation and warning on " the 
 Ides of March," had to go forth and be seen, so all 
 men according to their ability must work with their 
 fellows, to be measured and weighed. "While, like 
 foresters with their tape-lines at the mighty oaks
 
 INTRODUCTION. xiii 
 
 and elms and pines, many of Mr. Whipple's asso- 
 ciates in the Guild of Letters are putting their esti- 
 mates of him in print, my reckoning will be super- 
 fluous but for my own need from an intimate ac- 
 quaintance and as a duty of office over his coffin 
 to set my witness down. Let me, then, in addition 
 to the mention of his freedom from all that is mean 
 or false, note his function as a scholar in the realm 
 of knowledge, and how he fared in that true pros- 
 perity whose conditions he expounded to stimulate 
 so many a younger student's ambition and ennoble 
 his aims. 
 
 Mr. Whipple will be remembered mainly in his 
 function as a critic in the commentary of the coming 
 age. How well he personally illustrated and valued 
 the criticism whose uses he so highly esteemed, and 
 whose business he was one of the first fairly to insti- 
 tute in the land ! In art, of the literary or any other 
 kind, a standard of criticism scarce existed in this 
 country fifty years ago. Even now, in every depart- 
 ment of intelligence, how crude we are in our opin- 
 ions and biassed in our decisions ! How kissing goes 
 by favor in many of the articles admitted for publi- 
 cation in newspapers and magazines ; and how Barab- 
 bas is preferred to Jesus every day ! 
 
 Said James T. Fields to me : "1 could double 
 the merit of the articles in the ' Atlantic Monthly ' 
 and halve my subscription list at the same time."
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In a similar vein of ridicule of the prostitution of 
 journalism to popularity, he wittily laid it down as 
 an obligation in his craft to " pander to the good 
 taste of the public," as Mr. Whipple laughed at what 
 was sour and presuming in authorship, when he 
 talked of " men of wit and displeasure about town." 
 I do not overlook such writers as George Ripley in 
 the "New York Tribune" and many a name of fine 
 repute among the living or the dead. I am not 
 unmindful of them when, not quarrelling with the 
 diverse sincere conclusions in which these guagers 
 of books are variously guaged, I pronounce Edwin 
 P. Whipple the best critic and creator of criticism 
 America has produced. Let me enumerate, briefly 
 in order, some of the marks of excellence on this 
 sort of judicial bench. 
 
 1. The critic's first qualification for his part is 
 what Paul calls " the discerning of spirits " among 
 the gifts in the early Church. Mr. Whipple found the 
 honey in the carcass ; he sucked the marrow from 
 the bones. He had a profound, mierring penetra- 
 tion of an author's meaning, and survey of his scope. 
 Nothing in the contents of a volume could escape 
 that eye so quick and large, so sharp and tender, so 
 clear, yet not dry or malign. He understood every 
 purpose, saw the precise direction, and tasted in the 
 disquisition or poem each particular word. He car- 
 ried his infallible divination of character, in its forms
 
 INTRODUCTION. xv 
 
 in the living book of society, into his inspection and 
 reading of the transcript made by the pen. Sel- 
 dom, if ever, did he understate or overdraw. 
 
 2. He was so apt at distinctions that he could draw 
 the line between his own body and soul. His weapon 
 was too much for its scabbard ; he was all sword and 
 no sheath. He was able to reconstruct a literary com- 
 poser from a sentence, as Agassiz his appreciative 
 friend, near whose ashes his will lie would refashion 
 a fish from a scale. 
 
 3. He was disinterested, too. He did not, like 
 some preachers and reviewers, make his theme a 
 mere text of his own essay or discourse, a me- 
 dium, proxy, or pretence. He treated of his subject, 
 putting himself behind that. He was the crystalline 
 medium, and like a sea of glass, never a mote in 
 his own by turns microscopic and telescopic lens. 
 How minute his examination and extensive his 
 range ! 
 
 4. He was broadly impartial. Some, perhaps as 
 able critics as he, were not so just. He wins the 
 commendation, rarely deserved, that his equity could 
 without the least unfairness take in such persons 
 as Mann and Phillips, Sumner and Palfrey, Haw- 
 thorne, Arnold and Emerson, Lincoln and Choate, 
 Dewey and King, Garrison and Webster, at once. 
 He knew and could explain Dickens and Thackeray 
 and George Eliot better than they could comprehend
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and account for themselves. He was in his youth 
 one of the earliest and warmest opponents of slavery, 
 however it may have happened to him, as to some 
 others, to be defamed by some zealot for. not swearing 
 by abolition shibboleths in every method or phrase. 
 When stung by the great Massachusetts senator's rid- 
 icule of the higher law and his 7th of March speech, 
 Emerson denounced him as " a man without char- 
 acter, every drop of blood in him looking down," 
 Whipple could see that Webster had a real conception 
 of America, and, with all his lack of faith and philan- 
 thropy, was loyal to his idea ; had laid or re-laid in his 
 answers to Hayne and Calhoun the foundations of 
 constitutional freedom for the United States, and by 
 his stanch position within the legal lines of his place 
 foiled fresh plots of secession ; pushing with his giant 
 shoulders to postpone the Civil War for ten years, 
 from the time when we should have been beaten, 
 until we might husband our resources and gather 
 strength to prevail, while he foresaw and shud- 
 dered at the Red Sea. Whipple's judgment of 
 Webster was generous ; Emerson's ideal, natural, in- 
 adequate, though loftily severe. Frederic Douglass 
 tells me that a lady at the North having heard him 
 score Webster as cruel, made answer thus : " Mr. 
 Douglass, in many things I agree with you, but in 
 that verdict not. I knew Webster well. Depend 
 upon it, he is a tender-hearted man."
 
 INTRODUCTION. xvii 
 
 Mr. Webster was held to be " Ichabod " and the 
 " lost leader." But in some things he led, and leads 
 still. If he failed us at the pinch, and was called 
 false at any crisis, or by his ambition misled, we can- 
 not afford to be bitter and without thanks. Let the 
 bronze monument yonder stand ! The nation is not 
 so furnished with statesmanship and patriotism as 
 to find any economy in throwing him away. From 
 our exchequer we cannot afford to give him up. I 
 accord with Whipple on this point. 
 
 Macaulay, whom Mr. Whipple lauded, forged his 
 earlier style. But his wit and humor were all his own, 
 the one a flash of lightning, the other a drop of dew. 
 " I know," said one to him, " your idea of a public 
 library, if you had a million dollars." " If I had the 
 million," he answered, " I should nbt have the idea." 
 " You have lost your mind," said a debater to him. 
 " It is plain you have not found it," was, in a solitary 
 case of self-assertion, his reply. " My lecture is a dead 
 failure," he declared. " Never," the Lyceum President 
 answered, " was such a lecture delivered in this town." 
 When I read a friendly notice of my own to him of 
 one of his books, he held his handkerchief over his 
 face. My regret in these remarks, nearly forty years 
 later than my first estimate, is that I cannot command 
 his skill to sketch in sketching him, while, with you, 
 I think gratefully and reverently of his spirit going 
 without pain as a breath of God. 
 
 h
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Let me at least testify of that gentle and gracious 
 nature in him, so undemonstrative and ashamed to ap- 
 pear save unawares. How good and kind and tender 
 it essentially was, unwilling to hurt, incapable of giv- 
 ing or taking offence, and appearing untouched only 
 because every slight or injury was, as it seemed, so 
 instinctively or unconsciously warded or shed ! With 
 his matchless wit we were not wounded, but charmed. 
 It was a razor, to shave close and make us look de- 
 cent, not to draw blood ; or a lancet, to relieve. 
 
 The melancholy Jacques says of all the men and 
 women, that they have their exits and their entrances 
 in the play on this stage of the world. I think, or 
 have a vision, of Fields the poet-publisher, of Gould 
 the sculptor, and of Whipple the writer, in the scene 
 here once together, a band of brothers gone from 
 this theatre of time, leaving behind the mates they 
 loved in this spectacle of earthly space and in the 
 sacred precincts of home. We speak properly of any 
 performance on the boards as " a piece." The whole 
 is unseen, beyond.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 EMINENT MEN. 
 
 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF EUFUS CHOATE. 
 
 RuFUS Choate enjoys a peculiar and exceptional 
 fame among American lawyers, statesmen, and orators, 
 because of his unlikeness to any of his celebrated con- 
 temporaries. One of his friends bluntly remarked, 
 " Webster is like other folks, only there is more of 
 him ; but as to Choate, who ever saw or knew his 
 like ? " He not only idealized but individualized 
 everything he touched ; and the dryest law-case, when 
 he was one of the counsel engaged, was converted 
 into a thrilling tragedy or tragi-comedy founded on 
 an actual event. He was a poet at the heart of liis 
 nature, and instinctively gave a dramatic or epical 
 character to the leading persons concerned in a 
 jury trial. It was once common for legal pedants, 
 possessed of learning minus genius, to denounce as 
 " flummery " the arguments of this advocate, who 
 possessed learning plus genius ; but it is now univer- 
 
 1
 
 2 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 sally conceded that he was profound in the knowledge 
 of the law, that he was both an acute and comprehen- 
 sive reasoner, and that his practical sagacity in the 
 conduct of a case was as marked as the romantic in- 
 terest with which he invested it. It is to be feared, 
 however, that this shining ornament of the legal 
 profession will be hereafter known chiefly by the 
 traditions of his splendid successes. My purpose 
 is simply to record a few memories illustrating the 
 force and flexibility of his genius and the geniality 
 of his nature. 
 
 My admiration of Mr. Choate was formed a long 
 time before I had the honor and pleasure of making 
 his acquaintance. At the period when he was a young 
 lawyer, practising in the courts of Essex County, he 
 " pervaded " if I may use one of his own terms 
 the Salem bookstores in his leisure hours. He was 
 specially attracted to the store of Mr. John M. Ives, 
 and he never entered it without falling into conver- 
 sation with some legal or illegal brother interested in 
 letters ; and he never left it without leaving in the 
 memory of those who listened some one of the golden 
 sentences which dropped as naturally from his mouth 
 as pearls from the lips of the fabled fairy. There 
 was a circulating library connected with Mr. Ives's 
 bookstore, and I have a vivid remembrance when as 
 a boy I was prowling among the books on the shelves, 
 suspending my decision as to taking out a novel of 
 Richardson, or Fielding, or Miss Porter, or Scott, of 
 listening with a certain guilty delight at the chaffing
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 8 
 
 going on among my elders and betters in the front 
 store. I remember perfectly how I was impressed 
 and fascinated by the appearance of Mr. Choate. He 
 was not a Thaddeus of Warsaw, or a hero of the type 
 which Mrs. Radcliffe had stamped on my imagina- 
 tion ; but there was something strange, something 
 " Oriental," in him which suggested the Arabian 
 Nights. In after-years I wondered, as I wondered 
 then, that such a remarkable creature should have 
 dropped down, as it were, into Essex County. There 
 seemed to be no connection between the man and his 
 environment. He flashed his meaning in pointed 
 phrase while his interlocutors were arraying facts and 
 preparing arguments, and darted out of the store with 
 a ringing laugh before they had time to send a cross- 
 bow shaft in reply, or retort to the Parthian arrow 
 he had gayly sped at parting. 
 
 Boy as I was, I learned then what was characteristic 
 of Mr. Choate through life, his horror of common- 
 place. "Why, he seemed to say, argue about a thing 
 which an intelligent human being should detect at 
 the first glance ? He always tried to evade bores, in 
 youth as in age ; and to him the most dreadful of 
 bores were well-meaning men, deficient in quickness 
 of apprehension and directness of insight, who were 
 fond of exercising their powers of disputation in the 
 weary work of placing on a logical foundation the 
 indisputable. Godwin once mentioned to Coleridge 
 that he and Mackintosh had been engaged for three 
 hours in an argument, without arriving at a definite
 
 4 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 conclusion. " If there had been a man of genius in 
 the room," Coleridge retorted, " he would have set- 
 tled the question in five minutes." Choate had this 
 impatience of a man of genius with long-winded 
 controversies. 
 
 I may add, that in my boyish remembrances the 
 beauty of Choate's face and person early caught my 
 fancy. He was an Apollo, though, as he walked the 
 streets of Salem, he was an Apollo with a slouch. He 
 had a way of lifting his shoulders, and an angular 
 swinging of his frame, which were as individual as 
 they were inartistic. Yet he was, on the whole, the 
 most beautiful young man I ever saw. Thought, 
 study, care, the contentions of the bar, the wear and 
 tear of an unreposing life, at last broke up the smooth- 
 est and comeliest of human faces into weird wrinkles, 
 which he often laughed at himself when he surveyed 
 his countenance as depicted by the photographer. 
 Of one of 'these likenesses, in which the sun had not 
 spared a single thought-ploughed mark, he said, " It 
 is as ugly as the devil ; but still I must admit it is 
 like very like." Yet in his youth that face almost 
 realized the ideal of manly beauty. His complexion 
 was brown, but health infused into it a faint red tint 
 which made it singularly charming to the eye. I 
 recollect, as if it were yesterday, one Sunday afternoon 
 when he entered Dr. Brazer's church in Salem just 
 before the services began. He marched up the aisle 
 (I can hit on no better expression than " marched ") 
 and entered a pew just above that in which I was
 
 RUrUS CHOATE. 6 
 
 seated. The sermon was no doubt good, as all the 
 sermons of Dr. Brazer were good, but my attention 
 was fixed on Choate. For an hour I watched his 
 expressive face, noticing every variation of its lines, 
 as they indicated agreement or disa,greement with 
 the eloquent clergyman's Unitarian discourse ; and 
 all I knew of the sermon was gathered from what I 
 considered its effect on the wonderful creature who 
 seemed to my boyish imagination to have strayed 
 into the pew from some region altogether apart from 
 any civilization heretofore known to Salem. There 
 was something mysterious about him. In glancing 
 over the occupants of the other pews, the merchant 
 aristocracy of the town, I was struck by their com- 
 monplace character, as contrasted with this stranger, 
 who appeared to belong to another race, and who 
 might, for all I knew, have been imported by these 
 merchants from Calcutta or Singapore, bringing with 
 him the suggestion of 
 
 " Gums of Paradise and Eastern air." 
 
 He was then in the perfection of his manly beauty, 
 the beauty of robust physical health combined with 
 that indefinable beauty which comes from the palpa- 
 ble presence of intellect and genius in brow, cheek, 
 eye, lip, and the very pose of the head. I was then 
 about ten years old ; but the kind of admiring wonder 
 I then felt in looking at him affected me, many years 
 afterward, when I had made his personal acquaint- 
 ance. There was always in him something " rich
 
 6 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 and strange," something foreign to our New England 
 " notions," something which distinguished him from 
 all other eminent Americans. A humorous friend of 
 mine once declared that he himself was originally in- 
 tended for an inhabitant of Jupiter, but the Earth 
 caught him in his passage and hauled him in. Mr. 
 Choate, in some such way, always seemed to me to have 
 been arrested by the insolent gravitating power lodged 
 in the Earth, and drawn violently into our prosaic 
 New England while he was joyously speeding on to his 
 appropriate home in some distant Mars or Jupiter. 
 
 As regards Mr. Choate's whole nature, I was im- 
 pressed not so much by any particular faculty as by 
 its central force. He was fundamentally strong at 
 the heart of his nature, strong in personality, strong 
 in will, strong in mental manhood ; and he used his 
 rare powers not merely to please, persuade, astonish, 
 and convince those whom he addressed, but to over- 
 come them. He must have been personally conscious 
 of that grand mood which Wordsworth celebrates : 
 
 " Such animation often do I find, 
 Power in my breast, wings growing in my mind." 
 
 In his diary, July, 1844, he indicates what he 
 considers should be the characteristics of a legislator's 
 speech. These are : " Truth for the staple, good taste 
 the form, persuasion to act for the end." It was the 
 "persuasion to act" that was always in his mind, 
 whether he addressed a popular gathering, a jury, or 
 the Senate of the United States.
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 7 
 
 Indeed, in jury trials his main object was to influ- 
 ence the wills of the twelve men before him. He 
 addressed their understandings ; he fascinated their 
 imaginations ; he stirred their feelings ; but, after all, 
 he used all his powers in subordination to that one 
 primal power which dwelt in his magnetic individual- 
 ity, by which he subdued them, bringing on that part 
 of their being which uttered its reluctant " yes " or 
 " no " the pressure of a stronger nature as well as of 
 a larger mind. As an advocate, he thoroughly under- 
 stood that men in the aggregate are not reasonable 
 beings, but men with the capacity of being occasion- 
 ally made reasonable, if their prejudices are once 
 blown away by a superior force of blended reason 
 and emotion, in other words, by force of being. 
 His triumphs at the bar were due to the fact that he 
 was a powerful man, victorious over other men be- 
 cause he had a stronger manhood, a stronger self- 
 hood, than anybody on the jury he addressed. 
 
 On one occasion I happened to be a witness in a 
 case where a trader was prosecuted for obtaining 
 goods under false pretences. Mr. Choate took the 
 ground that the seeming knavery of the accused was 
 due to the circumstance that he had a deficient busi- 
 ness intelligence, in short, that he unconsciously 
 rated all his geese as swans. He was right in his 
 view. The foreman of the jury, however, was a hard- 
 headed, practical man, a model of business intellect 
 and integrity, but with an incapacity of understanding 
 any intellect or conscience radically differing from his
 
 8 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OE 
 
 own. Mr. Choate's argument, so far as the facts and 
 the law were concerned, was through in an hour. 
 Still he went on speaking. Hour after hour passed, 
 and yet he continued to speak with constantly in- 
 creasing eloquence, repeating and recapitulating, with- 
 out any seeming reason, facts which he had already 
 stated and arguments which he had already urged. 
 The truth was, as I gradually learned, that he was 
 engaged in a hand-to-hand or rather in a brain-to- 
 brain and a heart-to-heart contest with the foreman, 
 whose resistance he was determined to break down, 
 but who confronted him for three hours with defiance 
 observable in every rigid line of his honest counte- 
 nance. " You fool 1 " was the burden of the advo- 
 cate's ingenious argument ; " you rascal !" was the 
 phrase legibly printed on the foreman's incredulous 
 face. But at last the features of the foreman began 
 to relax, and at the end the stern lines melted into 
 acquiescence with the opinion of the advocate, who 
 had been storming at the defences of his mind, his 
 heart, and his conscience for five hours, and had 
 now entered as victor. He compelled the foreman to 
 admit the unpleasant fact that there were existing 
 human beings whose mental and moral constitution 
 differed from his own, and who were yet as honest 
 in intention as he was, but lacked his clear percep- 
 tion and sound judgment. The verdict was, " Not 
 guilty." It was a just verdict ; but it was mercilessly 
 assailed by merchants who had lost money by the 
 prisoner, and who were hounding him down as an
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 9 
 
 enemy to the human race, as another instance of 
 Choate's lack of mental and moral honesty in the 
 defence of persons accused of crime. The fact that 
 the foreman of the jury which returned the verdict 
 belonged to the class that most vehemently attacked 
 Choate was sufficient of itself to disprove such alle- 
 gations. As I listened to Choate's argument in this 
 case, I felt assured that he would go on speaking 
 until he dropped dead on the floor, rather than have 
 relinquished his clutch on the soul of the one man 
 on the jury whom he knew would control the opinion 
 of the others. 
 
 Mr. Choate was well aware of the contemptuous 
 criticism made on the peculiarities of his manner, 
 both in respect to elocution and rhetoric. Having 
 within himself the proud consciousness of unrecog- 
 nized power, he notes in his diary, under the date of 
 September, 1844 : " If I live, all blockheads which 
 are shaken at certain mental peculiarities shall know 
 and feel a reasoner, a lawyer, and a man of business." 
 Now as every blockhead is still entitled to the claim 
 of being " a man and a brother," there is something 
 delicious in this substitution of " which " for " who " 
 in referring to the ceremonious and pompous block- 
 heads of the bar; for, grammatically, this change 
 of the pronoun reduces them from the dignity of 
 persons into " animals and inanimate things." 
 
 Mr. Choate of course possessed the art of conceal- 
 ing the art by which he overcame opposition. In his 
 steady pressure on the wills of the jury he appeared
 
 10 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 to be cosily arguing with them, or lifting them into 
 a region of impassioned sentiment and imagination 
 where he was at home, and where the jury were made 
 to feel that they shared with him all the delights of 
 such a lofty communion with everything beautiful 
 and sublime. In the celebrated Tirrell trial, the in- 
 habitants of Boston constituting themselves into a 
 jury, deciding on the evidence presented in newspaper 
 reports had declared that the accused was guilty of 
 murder, and should be hanged. The judgment of the 
 most eminent representatives of the Bench and the 
 Bar was this, that the verdict of " Not guilty " was 
 legally right and just. But the jury had a hard time 
 of it when they returned to their usual avocations, 
 as all their companions and friends jeered at them 
 for being taken in by Choate's " humbug." One of 
 these jurymen defended himself by a statement which 
 has survived: "Oh!" he declared, "we didn't care 
 a sixpence for that stuff about som-nam-bulism ; but 
 then, you know, we could n't believe the testimony 
 of them abandoned women. Now, could we ? " He 
 had yielded to Choate without knowing it, and had 
 yielded on the point where the Government's case 
 was defective, a point which Choate had specially 
 emphasized. 
 
 During Mr. Choate's contests with the leaders of 
 the Suffolk Bar he was once opposed by an impudent 
 advocate from another State, imported specially to 
 put him down by sheer force of assurance. Choate 
 described him as perverting the law with " an imper-
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 11 
 
 turbable perpendicularity of assertion " which it was 
 difficult to upset. On this occasion the lawyer closed 
 his argument with the remark that he was more con- 
 firmed in his view of the law of the case, because the 
 distinguished counsel opposed to him had taken the 
 same ground in an argument a few days before at 
 Lowell. Instead of denying the false assertion, which 
 most lawyers would have done, Choate quietly replied, 
 " Yes, and was overruled by the Court." It seems 
 to me that this is a wonderful example of his quick- 
 ness in instantly deciding on the right way of meet- 
 ing before a jury a seemingly crushing appeal to 
 popular prejudice. 
 
 On one occasion Mr. Choate was called upon to 
 defend a Roman Catholic priest, who was accused of 
 making what appeared to be the first approaches of 
 a criminal assault on a girl he met in one of the side 
 streets of Boston. The advocate took what was in 
 all probability the true view of the situation, that 
 the priest was returning from his church absorbed in 
 his devotions, had accidentally met the girl in his 
 path, and that the abrupt jostling with the fair prose- 
 cutor was accidental. But the case was prosecuted 
 with all the animosity of Protestant prejudice, and 
 the foreman of the jury was an Orthodox deacon. I 
 remember of the case only this sentence : " I have 
 proved to you, gentlemen, that this collision was 
 purely an accident ; such an accident, Mr. Foreman, 
 as might have happened to you or to me returning 
 from a Union meeting, or a Liberty meeting, or a
 
 12 SOME EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Jenny Lind concert, or, what is infinitely better, a 
 montJdy concert of prayer.^^ If solemnity was ever 
 imaged in a human countenance, it was when Choate, 
 advancing to the deacon, brought his sad, weird, 
 wrinkled face into close proximity with the foreman's, 
 and in low, deep tones uttered that magical form of 
 words by which orthodox Protestants recognize each 
 other all over New England, the " monthly concert 
 of prayer." I think he gained his case by that happy 
 display of sympathy with the absorption in divine 
 things which is supposed to follow such a " concert " 
 in all Congregational churches. 
 
 In one of Mr. Choate's contentions at the Bar, his 
 opponent, a man distinguished for his high moral 
 character, took it into his head that his learned 
 brother had impugned his honesty ; and he made a 
 fervid speech, declaring that such an imputation, 
 during his long professional career, had never been 
 even insinuated before. Mr. Choate, preserving his 
 admirable composure, disclaimed any such imputa- 
 tion, with the preliminary statement that he was 
 quite unprepared " for such a tempestuous outbreak 
 of extraordinary sensibility " on the part of his 
 friend. His power of constructing what may be 
 called architectural sentences like this on the spur 
 of the moment was by no means the least of his 
 gifts. Adjectives, quaint, witty, or resounding, in- 
 stantly came at his call to describe, illustrate, or 
 qualify any substantive that was uppermost in his 
 mind at the time.
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 18 
 
 In an insurance trial in which Mr. Choate was 
 engaged, he spent a day or more in the cross-examina- 
 tion of a witness who swore positively as to the facts 
 in dispute, but who was compelled by the advocate's 
 searching questions to admit his general bad char- 
 acter. The testimony of this scamp had to be broken 
 down, or the case would be lost. In addressing the 
 jury, Mr. Choate gave a vivid presentation of the 
 vices and crimes of the witness, whom he represented 
 as the basest and meanest of mankind ; and then 
 asked, " Do you suppose, gentlemen, that in this vast 
 violation of all the sentiments and virtues that bind 
 men together in civil society, veracity alone would 
 survive in the chaos of such a character ? ' the 
 last rose of summer ' on such a soil ? " The emphasis 
 on " veracity " and " such " was potent enough to 
 kill the witness. The jury disbelieved him, and Mr. 
 Choate gained his case. The rogue may or may not 
 have testified truly as to the point under discussion, 
 but truth could not be reasonably expected from a 
 person who was self-convicted of almost every wicked- 
 ness but perjury. 
 
 In his arguments for persons who had become 
 complicated in seemingly criminal acts of which they 
 were, at least, not so guilty as they were accused of 
 being, his masterly way of putting himself by imagi- 
 nation in the place of his clients, and exhibiting all 
 the pathos that could be elicited from their embar- 
 rassments and struggles, often drenched his clients 
 themselves in irrepressible tears. They hardly knew
 
 14 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 before what heroes and martyrs they were. They 
 wept at the eloquent recapitulation of what they had 
 suffered and done ; they became poetic personages, 
 worthy of the pen of Scott or Dickens ; indeed, they 
 were so much affected that they considered Lawyer 
 Choate should charge little for presenting them be- 
 fore the community in their true light, and there- 
 fore often forgot or neglected to pay him anything. 
 His dramatic power in exhibiting the interior feelings 
 of the half guilty, the quarter guilty, and the guilty 
 who are perfectly innocent in their own conceit, and 
 therefore regard a prosecution as a persecution, was 
 so wonderful that many of the persons who were 
 acquitted through his exertions never paid him what 
 they would have paid an advocate who had less iden- 
 tified himself with their interests and characters. 
 Indeed, after his work was done he appeared himself 
 to set a modest estimate on its value. The occasions 
 when he obtained large fees were due to his partner, 
 who made the contracts beforehand ; for Mr. Choate 
 generally considered the obstacles in the way of get- 
 ting a verdict for his clients formidable until the case 
 was settled, and was indifferent to the amount of the 
 fee only after he had succeeded. 
 
 But he was not only an accomplished lawyer : he 
 was, at times, an eager politician. I will try to recall 
 some sentences in his popular addresses. In a cam- 
 paign appeal to the Boston Whigs, when Polk, a 
 comparatively unknown man, was the Democratic can- 
 didate for the Presidency, Mr. Choate gave full play
 
 RUFUS CIIOATE. 16 
 
 to his peculiar wit and fancy. " We will," he ex- 
 claimed " return James K. Polk to the Convention 
 that discovered him ! " In depicting Polk's sure de- 
 feat, he declared that he would " disappear like the 
 lost Pleiad, where no telescope could find him ! " In 
 reading an "open letter " of the Free-soil Democrats, 
 " surreptitiously " published in the New York " Even- 
 ing Post," he paused at the end, as if overcome by 
 surprise. " I find, gentlemen, that this letter is 
 marked ' private and confidential,' and such, I trust, 
 you will consider it ! " The idea of confiding a secret 
 of that sort to three thousand persons struck every 
 man in the audience with a sense of its humor, and 
 there was a roar of applause, which for some minutes 
 prevented the orator from proceeding. On another 
 occasion he addressed a Union meeting in Faneuil 
 Hall, composed equally of Whigs and Democrats. I 
 wish types could express the wit of one passage by 
 indicating the rise, culmination, and sudden fall of 
 his voice. " You Wliig ! " he exclaimed, " and you 
 Democrat WHO ARE JUST AS GOOD AS A 
 
 WHIG in your own opinion ! " Thc last claUSO should bC 
 
 printed in the smallest type which thc printer can 
 command. The laughter which succeeded the quali- 
 fication was deafening, and it came from the repre- 
 sentatives of both parties. 
 
 When Mr. Sumner's first election to the Senate of 
 the United States was in doubt, Sumner met Choate 
 as he was entering the Court House. " Ah, Mr. 
 Choate," said Sumner pleasantly, " marching, I sup-
 
 16 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 pose, to another forensic triumph?" Choate had on 
 his old camlet cloak, known to all members of the 
 Bar ; and drawing it melodramatically up over his 
 weird face, and looking like one of the witches in 
 " Macbeth," he mockingly answered, in his deepest 
 tones, " Glamis thou art, and Cawdor ! " and then dis- 
 appeared through the door. Sumner was accused of 
 lacking the perception of humor, but he always told 
 this incident as if he had it in a high degree. 
 
 A distinguished Free-soiler, after the nomination of 
 Taylor for the Presidency, accosted Mr. Choate in the 
 street, and told him that the Free-soil section of the 
 Whig party was determined to oppose the nomina- 
 tion at the polls. " What can you do ? " said Mr. 
 Choate. " Perhaps little," was the reply ; " but at 
 least Massachusetts can fire her gun in the air." 
 " Yes," at once retorted Mr. Choate, " and hit her 
 guardian angel in the eye." 
 
 Wlien Dr. Webster, the murderer of Parkman, was 
 in prison after his conviction, Mr. Choate met in a 
 street car an eminent clergyman, who was inclined 
 to believe that the criminal was innocent, and who 
 visited him frequently. " How do you find the ob- 
 ject of your pastoral care?" asked Mr. Choate. 
 " Well, " was the reply, " 1 always find him m." 
 " And," returned Mr. Choate, " it will be long, I 
 think, before you find him owf." Indeed, in repar- 
 tee he always had the last word. Nobody ever 
 went away from him with the consolation that he 
 had surpassed him in quickness of retort.
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. Iv 
 
 In one of his literary lectures, Mr. Choato referred 
 to the fact that Marie Antoinette, after lier unsuccess- 
 ful attempt to escape with her husband from France, 
 entered on the evening of that day her new prison- 
 house a beautiful woman, and on the next moi-ning 
 emerged from it with her loveliness all gone. He 
 put it in this way : " The beauty of Austria fell from 
 her brow, like a veil, in a single night." Anybody who 
 appreciates the meaning of the word " imagination " 
 cannot fail to note the force of " the beauty of Austria." 
 It was not merely the queen's individual beauty, 
 but the beauty of her mother, Maria Theresa, and 
 of all the- princesses of the Hapsburg House since 
 its foundation, that fell from ?ier brow '^ like a veiV^ 
 in a single night. The hopelessness of the struggle 
 of all rank and beauty against the ghastly uprising 
 of an oppressed people is also indicated in this grand 
 imaginative generalization. The beauty was a mere 
 "veil," that must be dropped when the fierce pas- 
 sions of a famished and enraged populace overturned 
 all the sentiments which sprung from an aristocratic 
 chivalry, based on a worship of beauty nobly born. 
 What was most curious in this utterance was the 
 lowness of the tone of the orator's voice as he de- 
 livered it. I am sure that the words " like a veil " 
 could not have been heard by fifty persons among 
 the three thousand who listened to the lecture. I 
 happened to be very near the speaker, and noted 
 how completely he seemed abstracted from the audi- 
 ence when, in a tone of thrilling, tender sadness, he 
 
 2
 
 18 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 interpolated this statement as a parenthesis between 
 the rush of words which preceded and followed it. 
 
 On one hot summer afternoon, a day or two after 
 he had delivered his address on Kossuth before the 
 literary societies of a Vermont College, an address 
 all ablaze with the characteristics of his resplendent 
 rhetoric, but still with a statesman-like judgment 
 and forecast regulating its impassioned eloquence, 
 I met him at the Boston Athenaeum, and naturally 
 alluded to the splendid success of his oration. 
 " Ah ! " he replied, with an immense yawn, " was it 
 a success ? I thought not. By-the-way, did n't you 
 talk to the same societies last year ? " I was reluc- 
 tantly compelled to admit that I was guilty of the 
 ofience. " Well, the truth is (between ourselves, 
 mind you !) that I found you had so corrupted the 
 young men with your confounded rhetoric, that my 
 plain common-sense had no effect on them what- 
 ever." The impressive seriousness with which this 
 reproof was given was only relieved by a power, 
 which Mr. Choate possessed, of indicating the humor 
 of a remark through a peculiar flash from the white 
 portion of his left eye, while the rest of his coun- 
 tenance remained in immovable and impenetrable 
 gravity. The wink he gave me ! shall I ever 
 forget it ? 
 
 On another of the occasions when I had the pleas- 
 ure of meeting him, the topic was the relative rank 
 of the great generals of the world. " On the whole," 
 lie said, " I think we must take Hannibal as the
 
 RUFUS Clio ATE. 19 
 
 greatest of them all. For just look at the effront- 
 ery of the fellow, scaling the Alps with a lot of 
 Carthaginians ragamuffins, nigyers to fight the 
 Destinij of Rome ! And then, you know, the scamp, 
 with his rascal rout, nearly succeeded in his purpose 
 of overturning the design even of Divine Providence ! 
 You may depend upon it, he is the biggest general 
 of the whole gang of them ! " 
 
 Choate was never tired of eulogizing Cicero and 
 Burke. " The man," he once said to me, " who will 
 write an article adequately describing, comparing, 
 and contrasting those two men of genius will do a 
 great work." " But," I answered, " that is the very 
 thing that all of us are eager for you to do. You can 
 do it better than anybody else." " Oh, of course," 
 he answered, with a shrug of his shoulders ; " you 
 may be sure it shall be done." Of course he never 
 did it. 
 
 On a transient meeting with him, the conversation 
 turned on the charge that Burke's seeming apostasy 
 to the cause of liberty in his works on the French 
 Revolution was caused by a desire for power and 
 a pension. I alluded to the impossibility that char- 
 acter and passion could be subsidized as well as 
 imagination and genius ; that Burke must have been 
 morally honest in writing the works that incident- 
 ally gave him some fifteen thousand dollars a year, 
 and that those writers who accused him of being 
 bought by the English court grossly misapprehended 
 him. " Misapprehended him ! " exclaimed Choate ;
 
 20 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " they were beasts I beasts ! " The way he rose from 
 his chair and strode about the room as he uttered 
 this opinion convinced me, at least, that his own 
 political course could never have been influenced by 
 the desire cither of power or money. Indeed, every- 
 body who knew Choate knew that there was nothing 
 in the power of the people of the United States to 
 give in the way of political preferment that he re- 
 garded as worth striving for as a matter of political 
 ambition. He had been a Representative and a 
 Senator in Congress ; but as he grew old he disliked 
 everything in politics which drew him away from his 
 library during the brief hours of leisure which his 
 professional engagements enabled him to enjoy. He 
 spoke for his political party and his political convic- 
 tions when he was called upon to do so, but the 
 ordinary details of politics were abliorrent to him. 
 They were a bore. The only assaults on his politi- 
 cal integrity were made during the later years of 
 his life. Those who opposed his opinions and I 
 ranked among them must have known that it was 
 a real sentiment of patriotism, however misdirected, 
 and not any paltry love of lucre or place, that in- 
 spired the thrilling addresses with which he bravely 
 confronted the dominant sentiment of Massachusetts 
 after 1850. It is curious that those who accuse him 
 of cowardice and time-serving at this period forget 
 that only obloquy could result from the position he 
 took. The coward and the time-server are seen in 
 the wake of the reformer, when the reformer has the
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 21 
 
 vote of the State with him. Choate withstood an 
 impulse so strong that any sagacity much less keen 
 than his must have known that it was more politic 
 to follow than to withstand the movement; but he 
 deliberately chose the unpopular side, and cheerfully 
 submitted to be lampooned by hundreds of politicians 
 who would have hailed him as the noblest and most 
 eloquent of men if he had only drifted with the 
 stream instead of manfully breasting it. His opinions 
 were so opposed to mine, that it is a delight to re- 
 cord this testimony to his political honesty. He had 
 nothing to gain by the course he pursued, and he 
 had much to lose. Now that the passions of that 
 time have subsided, all Republicans can afford to do 
 justice to Choate. He was not on their side ; but 
 had he been on their side, they would have forced 
 honors upon him. He never, by-the-way, during his 
 political career had any need to solicit office ; it was 
 always freely urged upon him as a testimony of his 
 fellow-citizens to his genius and capacity. 
 
 But to return to my recollections of him. It Avas 
 impossible to meet him for even half a minute, as he 
 was striding from his dwelling to his daily business, 
 without eliciting from his ever-active mind some 
 quaint remark. A friend of mine greeted him one 
 day just as he was turning from Washington Street 
 into a narrow lane leading to the Court House. Mr. 
 Choate answered the salutation, and, as he turned 
 to go down the narrow passage said, Avith much 
 mock gravity, " Convenient, though ignominious ! "
 
 22 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 He was once engaged in the great legal controversy 
 between the different owners of water-power on the 
 Blackstone River. The case was one which really 
 rested on nice mathematical computations, and was 
 finally settled by mathematicians. Choate was puz- 
 zled by the intricacy of the case, and meeting Mr. 
 Folsom, the librarian of the Boston Athenaeum, one 
 morning in a book-store, he said to him : " Pray, 
 Mr. Folsom, have we in the Athenaeum any books 
 relating to the flow of water, the turning of it back, 
 and playing the devil with it generally ? " 
 
 There was so much intensity in Mr. Choate's nature 
 that I often wondered how he could help tormenting 
 himself in thinkhig over the cases he lost, where the 
 verdict should have been for the side on which he 
 was engaged. One afternoon, after he had made an 
 address to the Legislature, or a committee of the 
 Legislature, of one of the New England States, and 
 had plainly failed of success through a political pre- 
 judice excited against him by the opposing counsel, 
 I met him calmly exploring the alcoves of the Athe- 
 nffium in search of some book. In alluding to the 
 palpable injustice of the reception of his legal argu- 
 ment the day before, I expressed my astonishment 
 that he should seem so careless about the result. 
 " Oh ! " he answered, " when I have once argued a 
 case, and it is settled, I am done with it. I cast it 
 forcibly out of my mind, and never allow it to trouble 
 my peace. I should go mad," he added, with a 
 sudden lift of his hand through his abundant locks.
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 23 
 
 " if I allowed it to abide in my thoughts. What, 
 by-the-way, do you think of this curious Life of Shel- 
 ley, written by a fellow who calls himself a Jefferson 
 somebody Hogg ? " In an instant the conversation 
 was thus changed to Shelley and his latest biogra- 
 pher. I never met a man whose genius was as sen- 
 sitive as his, who had such a complete control of his 
 mind and sensibility. He was the absolute autocrat 
 of all the thoughts and fancies teeming in his fertile 
 mind, exercised over them a tyrannous dominion, 
 and never allowed them to possess liim, but always 
 possessed them. 
 
 One of the charms of Mr. Choate's conversation 
 was his habit of exaggeration. To attend the per- 
 formance of Mozart's " Don Giovanni " was like listen- 
 ing, he said, to ten thousand forests of birds. He 
 knew that no exaggeration in mere words could 
 adequately express the delight which a sympathetic 
 mind feels in coming into vital acquaintance with 
 a work of transcendent genius in any department 
 of literature and the fine arts. Ten thousand birds 
 would be a small testimony to the melodies of 
 Mozart ; but ten thousand forests of birds is a com- 
 parison which indicates the rapture of wonder and 
 admiration that Mozart's masterpiece excites in all 
 souls capable of feeling its beauty. With this ten- 
 dency to verbal exaggeration, Choate had that instan- 
 taneous humorous recoil from extravagant assertion 
 characteristic of ardent natures whose sense of the 
 ludicrous is as quick as their sense of the beautiful
 
 24 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OE 
 
 and the sublime. " Interpret to me the libretto," 
 he said to his daughter, " lest I dilate at the wrong 
 emotion." Sydney Smith never said anything better 
 than that ! 
 
 Nobody at the Bar ever equalled him in paying 
 ironical compliments to the judges who blocked his 
 way to the hearts and understandings of juries. 
 Judge Shaw was specially noted for the gruff way 
 in which he interposed such obstacles, and Shaw's 
 depth of legal learning was not more conspicuous 
 than his force of character. " 'Tis n't so, Mr. Choate," 
 was a frequent interruption, when Shaw was on the 
 Bench and Choate was arguing a case before him. 
 Choate's side remarks on the judge have passed into 
 the stereotyped jokes of the Bar, and are now some- 
 what venerable. One is, I think, not commonly 
 stated in the exact words. " I always approach Judge 
 Shaw," he said, " as a savage approaches his fetich, 
 knowing that he is ugly, but feeling that he is great." 
 Of Judge Story he once remarked : " I never heard 
 him pronounce a judgment in which he did not argue 
 the case better than the counsel on cither side ; and 
 for which," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, " he 
 might very properly have been impeached." He de- 
 liglited in gravely joking with a judge. Thus he 
 once asked that a case might be postponed, owing to 
 his engagement in another court. The judge replied 
 that the case was one in which he might .write out 
 his argument. With a mock solemnity, which it 
 always seemed to me no other human countenance
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 26 
 
 could so readily assume, he replied, " I write well, 
 your Honor, but slowly^ As his handwriting resem- 
 bled the tracks of wildcats, with their claws dipped 
 in ink, madly dashing over the surface of a folio 
 sheet of white paper, the assembled Bar could not 
 restrain their laughter. Indeed, it is affirmed that 
 he could not decipher his own handwriting after a 
 case was concluded, and had to call in experts to 
 explain it to himself. He congratulated himself on 
 the fact that if he failed to get a living at the Bar, 
 he could still go to China and support himself by his 
 pen ; that is, by decorating tea-chests. 
 
 On one occasion he was employed by a half-crazed 
 litigant to carry a case, dismissed by the court below, 
 to the Supreme Court of the State. It was a case 
 resembling the one immortalized by Scott, that 
 of Peter Peebles versus Plainstaincs ; but the Peter 
 Peebles in this controversy was as rich as he was 
 litigious. Choate frankly told him that the excep- 
 tions his counsel had taken were of no account in 
 law; but the client insisted that he should present 
 them to the assembled judges, and was indifferent as 
 to the fee. There never was a more solemn face pre- 
 sented to a bench of jurists than the face of Choate, as 
 he argued point after point of this hopeless ease ; but 
 it was observed that every time he made a new point 
 he introduced it with a sly wink to some one of the 
 lawyers in attendance. The Bench and the lawyers 
 were tormented with the agony which comes from 
 laughter decorously suppressed, while the advocate,
 
 26 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 except his occasional winks to his brother lawyers, 
 was the very personification of legal gravity. 
 
 At dinner parties he was the most delightful of 
 companions. " That," he remarked of some Ash- 
 burton sherry, which was rather strong than deli- 
 cate, " that is a very good Faneuil-Hallish drink ! " 
 His talk on books was always delightful and discrimi- 
 nating, with an occasional eccentric deviation from 
 the general judgment on an author, which made it 
 all the more fascinating. The world of books, in- 
 deed, was that " real world " in which he lived 
 whenever the pauses of his professional engagements 
 enabled him to indulge in the luxury ; and he adroitly 
 dodged every social invitation in order to devote to 
 Bacon, Shakspeare, Milton, and Burke his favorite 
 English authors the hours which others lose in 
 what is ironically called " Society." In fact, few 
 persons in Boston could converse with him unless 
 they met him in his daily walk around the Common, 
 or in the Athenaeum, or as he went from his resi- 
 dence to the Court House. Yet no Bostonian seemed 
 more open to conversation, and certainly no one ever 
 left, in his chance meetings with acquaintances of 
 all grades and pursuits, such an impression of good- 
 nature and brilliancy. Boston swarms to-day with 
 admirers of Choate who only met him accidentally, 
 as I did. In a minute's conversation he condensed 
 what could have been obtained from no other celeb- 
 rities of the city in an hour's discourse. He ap- 
 peared, flashed on you a remark, and then disappeared
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 27 
 
 to his work. Yet more persons knew him and talked 
 about liim than knew or talked about any other 
 eminent Bostonian. 
 
 Mr. Choate greedily devoured every book relating 
 to ancient Greece, even the most ephemeral. Of one 
 of these he said : " The author seems to know a good 
 deal, but he is too confident as to those mysterious 
 Pelasgians at the bottom of the whole history ; he 
 JPelasgizes too much." The Englisli historians of 
 Greece, even Thirlwall and Grote, he thought were 
 more or less biassed by party feelings. In writing 
 about ancient Greece, " they were consciously or un- 
 consciously influenced," he said, " by their opinions 
 as to the personal and political character of Charles 
 James Fox," As to his own method of learning the 
 history of Greece, it may be affirmed that he studied 
 the works of the Greek orators, philosophers, and 
 historians in order to become mentally a citizen of 
 Greece, and thus to look at Greek life through a 
 Greek's eyes. By his realizing imagination he in- 
 stantly nullified the hard conditions of Time; sent 
 his mind and heart back two thousand or twenty-five 
 hundred years to contemplate a civilization entirely 
 different from ours ; and often, while he was strid- 
 ing around Boston Common in the age of Buchanan, 
 lie was really making himself a contemporary of 
 Pericles. His imagination was in ancient Athens, 
 while his body was in what is ironically called 
 " the modern Athens." As he pushed rapidly along 
 in his favorite afternoon walk, it was plain that
 
 28 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 he was not regarding the objects before his bodily 
 eyes, but those before his mental vision; that he 
 was attending, perhaps, the performance of a tragedy 
 of Sophocles or a comedy of Aristophanes ; or was in- 
 dulging in a pleasant game of chaffing with Socrates, 
 in some Athenian mechanic's shop, on the transcen- 
 dental " good and fair," as contrasted with the de- 
 scendental bad and mean ; or was contesting with 
 Demosthenes a cause before the " fierce democracy " 
 of Athens ; or was exhibiting, in a visit to Aspasia, 
 that exquisite courtesy to women in which he excelled 
 all other gentlemen of his time. If I ever crossed 
 him in his walks, and saw the weird eyes gazing into 
 distant time and space, I made it a point of honor 
 not to interrupt his meditations, but to pass on with 
 a simple bow of recognition. Why should I, for the 
 sake of five minutes' delightful conversation, inter- 
 rupt this hard-worked man of genius in his glorious 
 imaginative communion with the great of old ? The 
 temptation was strong, but I always overcame it. 
 When he was in Boston, I ventured to accost him ; 
 when he was in Athens, I very properly considered 
 that he was in much better company than any which 
 Boston could afford ; and as an humble denizen of 
 the place, I thought it judicious not to obtrude my- 
 self into a select circle of immortals to which I was 
 not invited. 
 
 To obtain a complete idea of Mr. Choate's various 
 talents and accomplisliments, the reader is referred
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 29 
 
 to the edition of his Works, in two octavo volumes, 
 published in Boston in 1862, and edited by Professor 
 S. G. Brown, who also contributed a long and excel- 
 lent biography. The biography includes copious ex- 
 tracts from Mr. Choatc's private journals and familiar 
 correspondence. These enable us to penetrate to the 
 inmost heart of the man, and prove how false wxre 
 many of the rash judgments passed upon him while 
 he lived. It also contains a number of communica- 
 tions from his legal and political associates and oppo- 
 nents, who, whether they agreed or disagreed with 
 him, preserved a vivid impression of the force and 
 fertility of his mind, and the manliness and kindli- 
 ness of his nature. But its great merit consists in 
 vindicating Mr. Choate from the vulgar imputations 
 on his legal and political integrity ; that is, on his 
 intellectual conscientiousness. It shows conclusively 
 that he considered the exercise of his powers in jury 
 trials as an " office " and not a " trade ; " that he 
 was convinced that his part in the determination of 
 a cause was as much provided for in the law of the 
 land as the parts assigned to the judge, to the oppos- 
 ing counsel, and to the jury ; and that as an " offi- 
 cial " in the administration of justice, it would be 
 scandalous for him to spare time, labor, knowledge, 
 eloquence, in defence of his particular client. That 
 course was decreed by the whole theory of English 
 and American law. He felt the obligation imposed 
 upon him so keenly, that in his early private memo- 
 randa, when a cause was decided adversely to his
 
 30 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 view, he reproached himself for not having done more 
 for his client ; in other words, for not having fulfilled 
 his duties as an official in the administration of the law 
 with more address, ability, and command of the law. 
 It was onlj by degrees that he surmounted this seK- 
 distrust, and became able to dismiss from his mind 
 at once a case when it had been finally settled. 
 
 The volumes edited by Professor Brown contain 
 also Mr. Choate's most valuable literary and patriotic 
 addresses, and his best speeches while he was a Sena- 
 tor of the United States. Whatever may be the criti- 
 cisms on his political career, there can be no doubt 
 that he never had, like the elder brother mentioned in 
 Scripture, any " ulterior views on the fatted calf." 
 He was almost forced by his party into every high 
 political position he occupied. He was not without 
 political ambition, but it was an ambition disconnected 
 from any possibility of personal emolument, and in- 
 deed sadly interfering with his professional business, 
 and with his natural desire to provide a modest com- 
 petence for his family. Everything mean and base 
 in politics he absolutely loathed. To him " machine 
 politics" were equally a bore and a blunder. But 
 when great national interests were at stake he was 
 willing to sacrifice what few hours he could steal 
 from his professional engagements, from his study 
 of the poets, historians, and philosophers of Greece 
 and Rom^, from his delightful communion with the 
 spirits of Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, and Burke, to 
 the preparation of orations designed to influence the
 
 RUFUS CIIOATE. 81 
 
 legislative or popular mind at periods where what is 
 called a " crisis " threatens the interests of a nation. 
 The editor has demonstrated that whether Mr. Choate 
 was right or wrong in the varying aspects of his politi- 
 cal creed, he was pure from all forms of avarice, the 
 insidious avarice of fame, no less than the more open 
 avarice of money and office. In short, he was at heart 
 a patriot, even when the course he took disappointed 
 many of his best friends and admirers. 
 
 What Professor Brown does not notice probably 
 as beneath the dignity of biography are some of 
 the peculiar relations of Choate with Webster. They 
 were strong personal and political friends. When 
 Webster desired to raise money, he sometimes got 
 Choate to indorse his note ; when Webster ventured 
 on a daring political move, he got Choate to indorse 
 his policy, and the result was that in either case the 
 indorsement entailed on Choate pecuniary embarrass- 
 ment or popular obloquy. If one should consult the 
 archives of the Boston Merchants' Bank, there would 
 doubtless appear sufficient reasons why Choate should 
 himself have been occasionally troubled with a want 
 of money, on account of heedlessly affixing the hiero- 
 glyphic which passed for his name on the back of a 
 " promise to pay " which bore the more flowing and 
 familiar signature of Daniel Webster ; and whenever 
 his immense popularity as an orator was at all abated, 
 it was generally found that what he lost in popular 
 estimation was due to his honest and cordial indorse- 
 ment of his friend's political conduct.
 
 82 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 The only occasion on which Choate was ever 
 charged with showing the white feather was in his 
 contest with Clay during the early days of Tyler's 
 Administration. Clay was the champion of a bill for 
 the establishment of a United States Bank, The bill 
 was sure to pass both Houses of Congress. Choate 
 had probably been informed by Webster that the 
 President would veto it unless certain clauses were 
 omitted, and he eagerly urged that such omissions be 
 made, in order to insure its becoming a law. Clay in- 
 stantly detected that some communication had passed 
 from the Secretary of State to the Senator of Massa- 
 chusetts, and pitilessly forced Choate into a corner, 
 whence it was impossible for him to escape. " Why 
 are you so confident that the bill will be vetoed ? 
 What right have you to suggest to the Senate of the 
 United States, a co-ordinate branch of the govern- 
 ment, that the Executive is opposed to a bill, before 
 it has been presented to him for his signature ? 
 What are your private means of information ? Tell 
 us the name of the man from whom you received 
 such information." What could be done by dex- 
 terity in evading the real point in issue Choate did 
 marvellously well ; but his friend Webster had got 
 him into a " fix," from which neither courage nor in- 
 genuity could get liim out. Clay Avas insolent and 
 overbearing, for he was attacked by one of his peri- 
 odical fits of hatred against his great rival for the 
 prize of the Presidency, who was then Secretary of 
 State, and he lavished on Choate the wrath he in-
 
 KUFUS CHOATE. 88 
 
 tended to fall on Webster. It was sounded all over 
 the country that Choate had quailed before Clay. 
 Even in the State he represented, Choate was long 
 considered to have lacked in this instance that in- 
 trepidity which he had never before failed to show 
 in any contest at the Bar or in the Senate. The 
 truth is that Clay on the next meeting of the Senate 
 magnanimously apologized for the rudeness of his 
 assault, and shook hands with Choate with all the 
 cordiality that can be expected from a statesman 
 who is immeasurably ambitious. So far as Choate 
 was wrong in this conflict it was owing to his friend- 
 ship for Webster ; and that there was not a taint of 
 cowardice in his nature was soon after shown in his 
 contest with the great fire-eater of the South, the re- 
 doubtable Senator M'Duffie, of South Carolina. His 
 reply to M'Duffie's violent and insolent assault on his 
 tariff speech is a masterpiece of argument, edged 
 with every appliance of scorn, sarcasm, and invective 
 which his wit and fancy could command. There was 
 no question as to his courage in that encounter. 
 M'Duffie was a duellist debater, whose body was rid- 
 dled with bullets received in many a quarrel which 
 his effrontery had provoked ; but he submitted to 
 Choate's " punishment " without a thought of sending 
 him a challenge. It is doubtful if his contentious and 
 belligerent temper ever before quietly endured such a 
 series of polished insults as Choate heaped upon him. 
 
 Still it must be admitted that Choate, in his politi- 
 cal connection with Webster, seemed to submit to the 
 
 3
 
 34 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 control of a master-mind. No two men could be more 
 widely contrasted in their characters, in their mental 
 processes, in their style of expression. They were 
 often brought into conflict in the trial of causes ; at 
 times it appeared as if they were mortal enemies, so 
 strenuous was each in supporting his particular side ; 
 and as an advocate Choate grappled with Webster 
 mind with mind, and man with man with an intrepid 
 pertinacity which left no doubt on the court and jury 
 that his respect for him did not control the vehement 
 logic and still more vehement rhetoric with which he 
 urged, against Webster's arguments and eloquence, 
 the strong points of the case he was employed to state 
 and defend. On one occasion, while Webster sat 
 gravely listening to the impassioned eloquence of his 
 opponent, he turned to one of the junior counsel and 
 remarked : " Some of our technical brethren of the 
 Bar would call all that flimsy humbug ; if it be so, 
 which I deny, it is still humbug which stirs men's 
 souls to their inmost depths. It is reason impelled 
 by passion, sustained by legal learning, and adorned 
 by fancy." There were few advocates that Webster 
 feared more than Ghoate, when there was a trial of 
 strength between them. On such occasions it was ob- 
 served that he studiously refrained from any attempt 
 to rival his opponent in eloquence. He adopted a dry, 
 hard, sensible tone of statement and argument. He 
 ironically complimented the learned counsel opposed 
 to him for his impassioned flights of eloquence, which 
 as poetry he had himself enjoyed as much as he sup-
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 36 
 
 posed tlio twelve honest and practical men who were 
 to decide on the case had doubtless enjoyed them. 
 Nothing could be better, if questions of fact and law 
 were to be influenced by beautiful displays of wit and 
 imagination, than his learned brother's argument. 
 "But, gentlemen," and here Webster assumed all the 
 weight and consequence which his imposing form and 
 penetrating voice naturally gave him, " this is a 
 question not of poetry, but of fact. It is purely a mat- 
 ter of commonplace, every-day occurrence. There are 
 no heroes and no heroines in it, no tragedy and no com- 
 edy, but plain people like you and me mere Smiths 
 and Robinsons; and you are called upon to decide 
 between them, as you would decide a dispute between 
 your own friends and neighbors." He would then pro- 
 ceed to reduce all the circumstances of the case to the 
 low level of actual life, pitilessly ridicule Choatc's high- 
 wrought rhetoric, and exhibit the bare skeleton facts, 
 stripped of all their coverings, in connection with the 
 law that applied to them, confident that there were 
 twelve solid and sensible "Websters in the jury-box who 
 would sustain him in his judgment of the case. He 
 sometimes succeeded, sometimes failed, in this pro- 
 cess of disenchantment ; but at any rate he rarely in 
 his legal contests with Choate availed himself of his 
 latent power of overwhelming declamation, in which 
 his logic was made thoroughly red-hot with passion, and, 
 so to speak, burned its way into the minds of the jury. 
 Thus in the famous " Smith-will " case, in Northamp- 
 ton, Choate was opposed to Webster, and made one of
 
 86 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OE 
 
 the most learned, ingenious, powerful, and impassioned 
 arguments ever addressed to a Massachusetts court. 
 Webster replied by a simple statement of tlie case, 
 and studiously avoided any rivalry with Choate in 
 respect to eloquence. Webster obtained the verdict, 
 not so much by the force of his argument as by the 
 singular felicity with which he conducted the exami- 
 nation of the principal witness in the case, who was 
 afflicted with a nervous timidity which in a jury trial 
 might have been converted into an indication of in- 
 sanity, had not Webster extended to him his powerful 
 protection, and prevented the other side from cross- 
 examining him into delirium. As the case really 
 depended on the sanity of this witness, Choate's 
 magnificent argument proved of no avail. It is a 
 pity, however, that his subtile analysis of morbid 
 states of mind which are ever on the point of top- 
 pling over into insanity has not been preserved. 
 
 But while as an advocate Choate boldly confronted 
 Webster in the trial of causes, and at the Bar was ever 
 ready to put his individuality as well as his intellect 
 and legal learning into opposition to Webster's, he 
 showed, as has been previously stated, an unmistaka- 
 ble sense of inferiority to him in statesmanship, and 
 in questions of public policy almost always followed 
 his lead. He did it in his own peculiar way, but every- 
 body more or less felt that he was a follower and not 
 a leader in matters of the higher politics of the coun- 
 try. There were several occasions notably that after 
 Webster had made his speech of the 7th of March,
 
 RUrUS CHOATE. 87 
 
 1850 when Choate might easily have assumed the 
 leadership in Massachusetts of the party whicli ten 
 years later obtained the control of the whole political 
 administration of the country ; but he preferred, 
 against all temptations that could be presented to 
 his ambition, to stand by the man whom he had de- 
 liberately elected as his chief. Tliere was no servility 
 in this choice ; it was rather owing to an inward feel- 
 ing that in political experience and sagacity he was 
 no match for the great lawyer he had fearlessly enough 
 encountered at the Bar. 
 
 Perhaps the weight and power of Webster's char- 
 acter were due as much to the hours he spent in 
 the woods and fields and on the ocean, chatting with 
 farmers or sailors as he was engaged in hunting or 
 fishing, as to the hours he spent in his study. He 
 was essentially an out-of-doors man, devoting a full 
 third of the year to the pursuits or sports of a coun- 
 try gentleman ; often, indeed, following out the trains 
 of a logical argument while he was tramping along 
 through muddy forests rifle in hand, eager for an 
 opportunity to get a good shot at game, or framing 
 sonorous periods as his boat swayed up and down on 
 the waves of the Atlantic, while he was eagerly watch- 
 ing an opportunity to liook a large cod or a giant 
 halibut. It is reported that the celebrated passage, 
 which every school-boy in the land knows by heart, 
 " Venerable men ! you have come down to us from a 
 former generation," was both conceived and audibly 
 uttered as he was exultingly hauling in a huge fish ;
 
 88 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 and the dying cod or halibut, however sad might be 
 his condition in respect to a more important matter, 
 than listening to eloquence, had at least the advan-* 
 tage of being the first living thing that heard that 
 immortal apostrophe to the survivors of the Revo- 
 lutionary war. Now, such communion with Nature, 
 both passive and active, gave to Webster's logic 
 and eloquence an objective character. The breath 
 of the pine-woods of New England, the exhilarating 
 ocean breeze, in some mysterious way stole into his 
 profoundest arguments addressed to the Senate or 
 the Supreme Court, while his intimate knowledge of 
 ordinary men in their ordinary occupations recom- 
 mended what he said as conformable to the plain 
 good sense of average mankind. " He is one of our 
 folks," was the general judgment pronounced at 
 thousands of New England village firesides when one 
 of his great speeches in the Senate was read aloud 
 to the assembled family ; and they thoughtfully pon- 
 dered on it the next day, when they were urging re- 
 luctant oxen through miry roads, or were ploughing 
 their fields. 
 
 Now Choate, superior to Webster in quickness of 
 apprehension and imagination, was an in-doors man. 
 The larger portion of his mature life was passed in 
 the stifling atmosphere of the courts, or in what 
 Milton calls "the still air of delightful studies," 
 that is, in his library. He of course was not so foolish 
 as to neglect exercise ; but his exercise was com- 
 monly confined to long walks through the streets or
 
 RUrUS CHOATE. 39 
 
 around the Common of Boston. No one ever enjoyed 
 Nature more intensely ; but he never sojourned with 
 her. His friend Charles G. Loring, one of his com- 
 petitors for the leadership of the Suffolk Bar, once 
 invited him to pass a summer day at his beautiful 
 residence on the Beverly shore. Mr. Choate was full 
 of enthusiasm as he walked among the woodland 
 paths, or gazed at the varying aspects of sky and 
 ocean ; he doubtless stored up in his mind images of 
 natural beauty which flashed out afterward in many a 
 popular speech or legal argument. But in half-a-dozen 
 hours he exhausted the capacity of the place to feed 
 his eye and imagination. " My dear Loring," he said, 
 in parting, "there has not been a twentieth part 
 of a minute since I entered this terrestrial paradise 
 that I have not enjoyed to the top of my bent ; but 
 let me tell you that should you confine me here for 
 a week, apart from my work and books, I know that 
 I should die from utter ennui. You are fortunate in 
 being able serenely to delight in it day after day." 
 Now, this did not indicate any incapacity in Mr. 
 Choate to take into his mind all that ocean and 
 woodland scenery suggests, but simply his incapacity 
 to dwell long upon what other less active and rest- 
 less minds find to be a perpetual source of tranquil 
 delight. In the fourth canto of " Childe Harold " 
 Byron describes in immortal verse the architecture, 
 the statues, the paintings, which make Rome a holy 
 city to the artist and the poet. The stanzas devoted 
 to St. Peter's Church, the Apollo Belvedere, the Yenus
 
 40 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 de Medici, the Dying Gladiator, not to mention others, 
 are in the memories of all who visit Rome ; still, it is 
 not remembered that Byron stayed in Rome only a few- 
 days, though in that brief period he did more than an 
 ordinary man of talent could have done by residing 
 there for years. Choate, in the same swift way, rap- 
 idly assimilated what he saw in a novel scene, and 
 with a similar restlessness of brain hurried away to 
 some new experience. He honored Webster as much 
 as he could honor any man of his time ; still, if he 
 had been asked to pass a fortnight with Webster at 
 Marshfield or at his New Hampshire farm, and had 
 accompanied him day after day in his shooting or fish- 
 ing expeditions, not even Webster's conversation could 
 have saved him from being devoured with an impa- 
 tient desire to escape from the monotony of such an 
 existence. All the eccentric originals of the neigh- 
 borhood, whom Webster delighted in year after year, 
 Choate would have delighted in for a day, and then 
 dismissed them from his mind as intolerable bores ; 
 the mountain or ocean scenery might have enthralled 
 him for a few days more ; but the shooting and fish- 
 ing, in which Webster took such pleasure, would 
 have seemed to Choate a scandalous waste of time, 
 which might have been more profitably bestowed on 
 ^schylus and Aristophanes, on Thucydides and 
 Tacitus, on Hooker and Jeremy Taylor, on Bacon and 
 Burke, on Shakspeare and Milton. By the necessity 
 of his mental constitution he could find no repose 
 except in varying the direction of his intellectual
 
 EUrUS OHOATE. 41 
 
 activity. The serenity of mind which comes from 
 the calm contemplation or indolent enjoyment of 
 Nature and country life he never obtained, while to 
 Webster it was an habitual mood. Webster had lead- 
 ing and fixed ideas, which were inseparable from his 
 individuality ; through the mind of Choate a throng 
 of ideas was constantly passing, pressing, and some- 
 times trampling on each other, but on account of 
 their number and variety disturbing the process by 
 which ideas settle into convictions and dominate will. 
 It is hardly fanciful to assert that the permanent im- 
 pression which Webster's ideas and rhetoric left on 
 the politics and literature of the country was, in a 
 considerable measure, due to his out-of-doors life and 
 his talks with " uncultivated " natural men. 
 
 In one particular Choate excelled Webster, that 
 of constant, high-bred courtesy to men and women of 
 all ranks. While pouring forth the treasures of his 
 mind, he always had the art of disguising his own 
 superiority by graceful subterfuges of expression, in- 
 dicating that he was only recalling to the attention 
 of his companion things, events, and thoughts which 
 were in the memory of both. " You remember that 
 fine passage in Southey;" "I need not remind you 
 that Burke, on this point, says;" "You, of course, 
 recollect Cicero's statement as to the problem in 
 question ; " " You have doubtless often felt the force 
 of De Quincey's remark ; " " You need not be re- 
 minded of that grand sentence in Hooker," such 
 were his ordinary ways of introducing allusions to
 
 42 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 authors of note, whose works were lodged as se- 
 curely in his brain as they were on the shelves of 
 his library; and he always gave you new informa- 
 tion by thus amiably intimating that you were al- 
 ready in possession of it. In familiar conversation 
 he never put on the airs of a " superior intelligence ; '* 
 he had a comic dislike of the grave, portentous, 
 superserviceable bore who approached him with the 
 notion that he was "the great Mr. Choate," and 
 never appeared more happy than when his compan- 
 ions of a lower intellectual grade thought they were 
 communicating knowledge to him, though they were 
 in fact receiving it. Such entire absence of dogma- 
 tism and pretension, such tenderness for the feelings 
 and respect for the opinions of others, I never wit- 
 nessed in any other man of equal talents and accom- 
 plishments. Webster was generally charming when 
 among his intimate friends, and ponderously conde- 
 scending to comparative strangers, if he happened 
 to be in good health and spirits ; but in case he was 
 sick or " disgruntled," or had his autumnal " hay 
 fever," he put on a boorish " God-Almightiness," 
 which had all the offensiveness of dignity without 
 any of its majesty, and made him personally hate- 
 ful to many politicians who were willing to admit 
 the essential grandeur of his genius and character. 
 Choate, on the other hand, whether in health or out 
 of it, was always courteous ; and I do not believe 
 that any man ever met him in the street, in his 
 house, or in his office, without being impressed by
 
 RUrUS CHOATE. 48 
 
 the sweetness and serenity of his temper, and by 
 that graciousness of manner which was the farthest 
 possible remove from the insolent affability character- 
 istic of the eminent " personage " who condescends 
 to treat with elaborate politeness the humbler crea- 
 ture whom he admits, for the moment, to be a human 
 being. Nothing could abate Choate's chivalric cour- 
 tesy, not even his horror of bores. On one occasion 
 I was present when a good man propounded to him 
 a self-evident proposition, and, to support it, pro- 
 ceeded to state a considerable number of irrelevant 
 facts, on which he founded a series of inconclusive 
 arguments. The thermometer was 90 in the shade ; 
 Choate was physically exhausted by the labors of the 
 forenoon, and required some more stimulating dis- 
 course to rouse him into attention ; but he listened 
 patiently to the end, and bowed his acquiescence to 
 the foregone conclusion arrived at by an illogical 
 process. When the bore departed, thankful that he 
 had deposited an important truth which would bear 
 fruit in his listener's mind, Mr. Choate turned to 
 me, and remarked : " What an excellent person A. 
 Y. Z. is ! but don't you think he would be much 
 better than he is if he could tell in a quarter of half 
 a minute what he has consumed fifteen minutes in 
 telling ? " That remark was the only revenge he 
 took for being robbed of his precious time. Webster 
 would have growled the talker into silence at the end 
 of his first sentence, or have contemptuously turned on 
 his heel and left him to talk to himself. Choate was
 
 44 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 incapable of offending the self-love of a benevolent ego- 
 tist by any disrespect, even the disrespect of inattention 
 to his tedious discourse. It is difficult to determine 
 how many influential enemies Webster made by his 
 surliness, especially when he had one of his attacks 
 of the " hay fever." I remember one occasion when 
 he came down from Boston to deliver a lecture on 
 
 the framers of the Constitution to a city in 
 
 County, the leading personages of which were dis- 
 posed to think of themselves as among the elect the 
 Slite, perhaps the effete of the earth. In the ante- 
 room of the hall the mayor was busy in introducing 
 the distinguished citizens of the place to the great 
 man, who had an ominous thunder-cloud on his brow, 
 and who shook hands with each prominent citizen 
 as he came forward with a savage expression in his 
 countenance, indicating that he would rather use 
 his hands to inflict mortal injury on each of these 
 persons than to clasp theirs in a spirit of amity 
 and brotherhood. The cloud on his brow grew 
 blacker and blacker, and the bolt flashed out just as 
 a political opponent, of the reptile race of local poli- 
 ticians, came cringing and smiling toward him to 
 say, " I am glad to see you, Mr. Webster." Webster 
 contemptuously turned on his heel, and with his 
 back to the purring, crawling, poisonous sycophant, 
 gruffly exclaimed, " Enough of this, Mr. Mayor ! let 
 us go into the hall." Those who witnessed the 
 rebuff can never forget the instant change in the 
 face of the man who was thus disappointed in hav-
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 46 
 
 ing the honor to shake hands with the " Defender 
 of the Constitution," the " godlike Dan." Mortifica- 
 tion and rage were blended in the tones with which 
 he whispered to another political opponent of Mr. 
 Webster by his side : " Damn him ! I always said, 
 you know, that he was an enemy to his country ! " 
 Choate could never, under any circumstances, have 
 been provoked into such an incivility. It may be 
 added that Webster further expressed his sense of 
 intolerable boredom by saying to the gentleman who 
 was to follow his speech with the recitation of an 
 original poem, " Are you familiar with this city ? 
 In my opinion 't is the dullest place on God's earth." 
 It is plain that this is not the way by which a promi- 
 nent statesman can acquire friends or conciliate ene- 
 mies. Webster himself could never have been guilty 
 of such manners to a farmer, or fisherman, or body- 
 servant; but in his ugly moods he was capable of 
 heaping any insult on a politician. 
 
 Mr. Choate, as the great Whig orator of Boston, 
 was always called upon to address the monster meet- 
 ings of the Boston Whigs when an important election 
 was pending. Unless inflamed with the passion of 
 the time, unless the question up for settlement was 
 one which spontaneously inspired him, he considered 
 this demand on the little leisure which his profes- 
 sional engagements allowed him an intolerable bore. 
 On one occasion, when he was suiffering from one 
 of his attacks of bilious headache, he was almost 
 dragged out of his bed and practically forced to go
 
 46 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 down to Faneuil Hall and make a speech. I was 
 among the crowd, and noticed, as he pressed through 
 the seething, sweltering mass of citizens which ob- 
 structed his way to his allotted position on the plat- 
 form, that his face looked weary and haggard, and 
 that a strong odor of camphor followed him in his 
 progress ; but I also noticed, as he passed, that there 
 was a humorously wicked look in his eyes, which 
 indicated that he intended mischief to the chairman 
 of the meeting, who had invaded the privacy of his 
 chamber and insisted on his making a speech though 
 he was palpably suffering from physical pain. My 
 anticipation proved true. Nothing could be more 
 splendid and inspiring than the oration as a whole ; 
 but he took every opportunity, in the pauses of his 
 declamatory argument, to give a sly thrust at the 
 chairman. The first sentence apprised all who were 
 familiar with Choate's moods that mischief was 
 brewing. " You, Mr. Chairman," he began, " called 
 upon me last Thursday, and demanded that I should 
 address the Whigs of Boston to-night. I respect- 
 fully informed you that, owing to ill-health and the 
 pressure of my professional engagements, it was 
 utterly impossible for me to be present on this occa- 
 sion, and accordingly here I amP This delicious non 
 sequitur elicited roars of laughter and applause from 
 three or four thousand people, and prepared them 
 for what was to follow. Choate was determined to 
 punish the chairman one of the ablest men of 
 business that Boston ever produced, but who knew
 
 RUFU3 GEO ATE. 47 
 
 as little of Latin as of Cherokee for forcing him 
 into his irksome position. With this end in view, 
 he took a malicious delight in hurling every now 
 and then at the chairman long resounding sentences 
 from Cicero, always prefacing them with an inimi- 
 table mock deference to the good merchant in the 
 chair, as though, in familiarity with Latin learning, 
 the able business man was infinitely superior to such 
 a poor scholar as himself. The chairman had to 
 smile blandly and nod his head in approval as every 
 quotation from Cicero was shot at him in the most 
 penetrating tones of the orator's magnetic voice. 
 The mass of the audience did not at first take the 
 joke. Indeed, the most ignorant people like to hear 
 Latin, as the father of Charles, in Fletcher's play of 
 " The Elder Brother," liked to hear Greek, for, he said, 
 " It comes so thundering as 't would waken devils." 
 The mere noise of the unintelligible language has 
 an effect on the ear, though it conveys no sense to 
 the mind ; and Choate's citations from Cicero passed 
 muster for about fifteen minutes before his pushing, 
 swaying, clamorous, and delighted mob of auditors 
 became aware of the exquisite pleasantry of prefac- 
 ing every rolling, resounding Latin sentence with 
 such remarks as these : " As you, Mr. Chairman, 
 will remember ; " " As you, Mr. Chairman, cannot 
 forget ; " " As you, Mr. Chairman, must have often 
 recalled to your memory in the present strife of 
 irreconcilable factions in this terrible crisis of our 
 countrv ; " but at last the full malicious fun of the
 
 48 SOKE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 orator they "were applauding became evident to their 
 sense of humor. They knew that the chairman was 
 as ignorant of the language of Cicero as they were, 
 and they delighted in seeing him helplessly bending 
 under the pitiless peltings of this linguistic storm. 
 The shouts and acclamations with which they wel- 
 comed every point which Mr. Choate made in the 
 English tongue were redoubled on every occasion 
 when he solemnly turned to the chairman and capped 
 his climax in magnificent Ciceronian Latin. The fun 
 waxed more and more fast and furious ; and when 
 Mr. Choate, utterly exhausted, sat down, it seemed 
 as if Faneuil Hall would rock to its foundations 
 with the clappings of hands and the stampings of 
 feet. The orator who had raised all this uproarious 
 hubbub, declining all compliments, proceeded quietly 
 to do what he always did after making a great effort, 
 that is, to invest his throat and lungs with volumi- 
 nous wrappings, in order to protect them against the 
 night air, and then stalked out at a rapid pace to 
 the peaceful chamber from which he had been un- 
 warrantably drawn to serve a transient purpose of 
 his party. The chairman of the meeting doubtless 
 never afterward compelled Mr. Choate to make a 
 speech against his will, unless he had previously 
 devoted days and nights to the study of Cicero in 
 Cicero's native tongue. 
 
 Perhaps the most notable of Mr. Choate's popular 
 addresses was one delivered before the Democrats of 
 Lowell, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1856, after
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 49 
 
 he had concluded to come out for Mr. Buchanan, the 
 Democratic candidate for the Presidency. There were 
 four or five thousand persons present eager to applaud 
 the great Whig orator, who had been constrained to 
 accept their candidate because he thought the Demo- 
 cratic party then stood, more emphatically than the 
 party he left, for " the Union." The floor of the im- 
 mense hall began to sink before the orator began to 
 speak. It sank more and more as he proceeded in his 
 discourse, and at the end of half an hour a sound was 
 heard calculated to frighten the audience into a stam- 
 pede for the doors, a course which would have re- 
 sulted in their destruction. Mr. B. F. Butler, who 
 presided, told the audience to remain perfectly quiet 
 while he went to discover if there were any cause for 
 alarm. He found that the condition of the supports 
 of the floor was such that the sliglitest demonstra- 
 tion of applause would be likely to bring the floor, 
 the roof, and the walls of the building itself to the 
 ground, and bury the audience in the ruins. He 
 calmly returned to the platform, and as he passed 
 Choate he whispered hoarsely in his ear, " We shall all 
 
 be in in five minutes." Then, with admirable 
 
 aplomb^ he told the crowd before him that there was 
 no immediate danger if they slowly dispersed, but he 
 considered it judicious to adjourn the meeting to 
 another locality to hear the conclusion of Mr. Choate's 
 speech. The post of danger, he added, was just un- 
 der the platform, and that he and those with him on 
 the platform would be the last to go out. As Choate 
 
 4
 
 60 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 slowly walked by the side of Butler in the rear of the 
 procession, thinking every moment that a dreadful 
 catastrophe might occur, he still could not resist the 
 temptation to indulge in a bit of humorous mischief 
 at the expense of the politician and lawyer he had 
 fought for so many years, and whispered to him : 
 " Brother Butler, when you told me we should all be 
 in five minutes in that locality unmentionable to ears 
 polite, did you have the slightest idea of insinuating 
 that both of us would go to the same place ? " It may, 
 however, be added that Mr. Butler probably saved, by 
 his admirable coolness in that hour of peril, as many 
 men as he was afterward the instrument of killing in 
 his office of Major-General. 
 
 Many illustrations might be cited of Mr. Choate's 
 insidious power over a jury, secret even to the twelve 
 who were to render the verdict. One of these was 
 furnished by a hard-headed, strong-hearted, well- 
 educated farmer, who was one of a jury that gave 
 five verdicts in succession for Choate's clients. The 
 way he expressed his admiration of the great advocate 
 was peculiar. It was in these words : " I understand, 
 sir, that you are a relative of Mr. Choate. I must tell 
 you that I did not think much of his flights of fancy ; 
 but I considered him a very lucky lawyer, for there 
 was not one of those five cases that came before us 
 where he wasn't on the right side." This was said 
 with the utmost simplicity, and without the remotest 
 notion that an imaginative mind could exercise a sub- 
 tle effect on a mind entirely unimaginative, through
 
 EUFUS CIIOATE. 61 
 
 that grand function of the imagination by which the 
 person who has it enters into the interior recesses of 
 natures which differ fundamentally from his own, and 
 identifying himself for the moment with their indi- 
 vidualities, extorts from them their well-considered 
 " Yes." 
 
 But perhaps a stronger instance of Choate's method 
 of concealing his power at the time he was exercising 
 it with the most potent effect, occurred in an impor- 
 tant case where the evidence was so conflicting and 
 the points of law so intricate that dispassionate minds 
 might have long paused before deciding the question 
 in dispute. One resolute juryman said to another, as 
 he entered the " box," " Now, mind you, there is one 
 man in this crowd who will not give a verdict for the 
 client of that man Choate. Why, sir, he is the great 
 corrupter of juries. I know all his arts. He is en- 
 gaged by fellows who wish to subvert justice between 
 man and man. I hate him with my whole heart and 
 soul." When the verdict was given for Choate's cli- 
 ent, with hardly a discussion in the jury-room, the 
 wonder was expressed that this obstinate member of 
 the conclave agreed so readily with the rest. " Oh," 
 he said, " the case was a plain one. Choate was right 
 this time ; and you know it would have been scanda- 
 lous for me to violate justice because I had a prejudice 
 against the person who supported it. Let him appear 
 before us in a case where he is palpably wrong, as in 
 the Tirrell trial or the Dalton trial, and I will show 
 you that I 'm all right. He never can humbug me ! "
 
 52 SOME llECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 His power of lifting, of idealizing his clients, of 
 making them the heroes or heroines of a domestic or 
 sensational novel, was never more brilliantly illus- 
 trated than in the celebrated Tirrell trial, to which I 
 have before alluded. Here were murder and arson, 
 committed in a low brothel, as the subject of the pic- 
 ture or story ; but a great artist a sort of Yankee 
 Spagnaletto or Victor Hugo was suddenly impro- 
 vised to paint or narrate the scene and incidents. 
 The whole event was elevated into the domain of high 
 tragedy. Those who listened to Mr. Choate's argu- 
 ment can never forget the strange kind of interest 
 with which he invested the wild and " fast " young 
 man and his stupid, drunken harlot. It was as if 
 Albert Tirrell and Maria Bickford were on a par with 
 Othello and Desdemona. Indeed, the advocate might 
 have been supposed to hold a brief from Othello 
 against a charge of murdering his wife. There are 
 certain almost miraculous effects produced by the^ 
 mere tone of voice with which a great advocate pro- 
 nounces the simplest words. Thus when Choate said, 
 " Albert loved Maria," the auditors felt the same kind 
 of pity which they might have felt had Garrick or 
 Kean uttered the words, " Othello loved Desdemona." 
 It is considered a great merit in an actor's or orator's 
 voice if, in patlietic passages, he has " tears in his 
 tones ; " but Choate in this instance had in his tones 
 something which suggested the whole sad, horrible 
 incidents of guilt and misery which it was his task 
 to recount, and which resulted from the fatal attach-
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 53 
 
 ment of " Albert " to " Maria." There is no accurate 
 report of his argument in this trial ; and indeed if 
 every word he spoke had been faithfully taken down, 
 still his voice, his tones, the meaning he put into his 
 utterance of some plain words, could not have been 
 reported. 
 
 One incident of this trial afforded Mr. Choate an 
 excellent opportunity of exerting his incomparable 
 power of ridiculing what he might find it difficult to 
 dispose of by reasoning. Roxbury is but four miles 
 from Boston, and is now, indeed, incorporated with 
 the city proper. After the evidence for the defence 
 was all in, and the arguments were to begin, the 
 prosecuting attorney brought forward a resident of 
 Roxbury to give additional evidence against Tirrell. 
 Choate's method of demolishing the effect of what this 
 witness had to say is among the cherished traditions 
 of the Suffolk Bar. " Where was this tardy and be- 
 lated witness, that he comes here to tell us all he 
 knows, and all he doesn't know, forty-eight hours 
 after the evidence for the defence is closed ? Is the 
 case so obscure that he never heard of it ? Was he ill 
 or in custody ? Was he in Europe, Asia, or Africa ? 
 Was he on the Red Sea, or the Yellow Sea, or the 
 Black Sea, or the Mediterranean Sea? . . . No, gen- 
 tlemen, he was at none of these places (comparatively 
 easy of access), but and I would call your attention, 
 Mr. Foreman, to the fact, and urge it upon your atten- 
 tion he was at that more remote, more inaccessible 
 region, whence so few travellers return Roxbury ! "
 
 54 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 One of the greatest of Webster's arguments was 
 that on the trial of the Knapps for the murder of Mr. 
 White, of Salem. It is now generally conceded that 
 as the law of Massachusetts stood at the time, John 
 Francis Knapp was illegally convicted. So far as 
 the technical law was concerned, he was as innocent 
 as any peaceful citizen who walked the streets of 
 Salem. His guilt was plain, but he was not legally 
 guilty ; and it was only by Webster's overmastering 
 hold on the minds and consciences of the jury that 
 they rendered a verdict equitably just, but legally 
 wrong. At the time of the trial Mr. Choate was a 
 young lawyer, engaged in doing some minor services 
 to the leading counsel who appeared for the prosecu- 
 tion. Had he been then the man who saved Tirrell 
 from being illegally hanged, and had been counsel for 
 John Francis Knapp, there can be little doubt that, 
 with the law on his side, he would have been more 
 than a match for Webster. It is curious that what is 
 called " Lynch law " is sometimes conducted under 
 all tlie solemn forms of regulated courts of justice. 
 That it was not exercised in the Tirrell case was 
 owing to Rufus Choate. 
 
 The effect of Choate' s oratory was aided by the 
 strength of expression he could throw into his face. 
 " Why," said an old farmer, listening to an argument 
 directed against his own interests, " why, that fel- 
 low can cant his countenance so as to draw the tears 
 out of your eyes." He also had a singular power of 
 so changing the tone of his voice, that, in conversing
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 56 
 
 gravely with one person, he could throw in an " aside " 
 to another which was audible to the latter alone. On 
 one occasion two members of a legal firm called upon 
 him in order to suggest the naming of a day for con- 
 sultation on an important case in which he was en- 
 gaged as leading counsel. He happened at the time 
 to be overwhelmed with business, and hastily remarked 
 that the only hours he had to spare within a week 
 were after five o'clock in the afternoon of the ensuing 
 day. That day was Sunday. The senior member of 
 the firm, with a slight Pharisaical sniff meant to indi- 
 cate a superior scrupulosity in the matter of ceremo- 
 nial piety, solemnly replied : " Mr. Choate, I have 
 been for thirty years a member of the Bar, but my 
 conscience has forbidden me ever to transact any 
 worldly business on the Sabbath." Choate himself 
 was in religious matters a Calvinist of the austerest 
 type. He gave one glance at the reprover of his 
 sacrilegious proposal, a glance which penetrated to 
 the inmost depths of the little pettifogging soul that 
 wriggled plainly to his eye under its mere crust of reli- 
 gious formality, and gravely remarked: " You know, 
 
 Mr. A , this cause is peculiarly one which falls 
 
 under that class of cases somewhere, I think, men- 
 tioned in Scripture, which concerns the doing of good 
 on the Lord's Day ; but I honor your scruples so much 
 that I would not for the world ask you to do violence 
 to them." The conclusion of this address was accom- 
 panied with a wave of his hand which brought it for a 
 few moments before his mouth ; and the junior part-
 
 5Q SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 ner caught these words : " He 's an infernal fool ; you 
 come." How this swift, significant command entered 
 his ears without getting into those of his senior, the 
 young man could never understand, as the three were 
 only a few feet apart during the short conference. 
 Meanwhile the oracular teacher of the proprieties of 
 religion moved pompously out of the office, fully im- 
 pressed with the idea that he had risen amazingly in 
 the estimation of the great Mr. Choate by his con- 
 scientious refusal to perform a duty of justice and 
 mercy on what he erroneously called the " Sabbath." 
 The only departure from literal fact in the narration 
 of this anecdote is in substituting the milder adjective 
 " infernal " for the stronger one impatiently used by 
 Mr. Choate in qualifying the noun " fool." 
 
 In alluding to Mr. Choate's imaginative power of 
 transforming himself into the personalities of his 
 clients, of surveying acts and incidents from their 
 point of view, I have expressed my wonder that he 
 could so quickly relieve himself of the burden he 
 carried when the cause was decided against him. 
 Byron, for instance, is an example of intense genius, 
 with sensibility so blended with imagination that the 
 type of human nature he adopted as the fit vehicle for 
 the expression of his ideas on human life dominated 
 at last his own individuality. The type he adopted 
 was the misanthropical type of our immensely various 
 humanity. He dashed into it ; but the trouble with 
 him was that when his genius got in to this form of 
 individual character, it could not get out. Hence the
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 67 
 
 monotony of his splendid poetry. Shakspeare, in his 
 drama of " Timon of Athens," went deeper into the 
 spiritual sources of misanthropy than even Byron did, 
 and expressed the imaginative experience he gained 
 by it in passages of more dreadful scorn and hatred 
 of ordinary men and women than Byron ever dreamed 
 of uttering ; but, unlike Byron, ho found no difficulty 
 in escaping from the mental mood which engrossed 
 him for the time, and passed on to enter into and re- 
 produce other forms of character representing more 
 healthy and joyous perceptions of human life. Now 
 Clioate, with much of Byron's intensity, had more of 
 Shakspeare's comprehensiveness. The self-abandon- 
 ment by which he seemingly became a person entirely 
 different from himself, in identifying himself with his 
 client, was accompanied by an admirable power of 
 self-direction, which enabled him easily to escape 
 from his transient metamorphosis. He not only could 
 go m, but could get out of, every individuality he as- 
 sumed for the time. And this flexibility of mind was 
 not necessarily a violation of intellectual conscien- 
 tiousness. It simply shed light on the case in dispute 
 by bringing in individual character as a factor in set- 
 tling a complicated case of right or wrong. But, at 
 all events, Mr. Choate cleared his mind of all the 
 vexations of a jury trial after the decision had been 
 made. " I sometimes feel," he remarked to a legal 
 friend, " when a case has gone against me, like the 
 Baptist minister who was baptizing in winter a crowd 
 of converts through a large hole made in the ice.
 
 68 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 One brother Jones, I think disappeared after im- 
 mersion, and did not re-appear ; probably drifted ten 
 or fifteen feet from the hole, and was vainly gasping 
 under ice as mauy inches thick. After pausing a few 
 minutes, the minister said, 'Brother Jones has evi- 
 dently gone to kingdom come : bring on the next.* 
 Now, I am not unfeeling ; but after all has been done 
 for a client that I could do, and I never spared my- 
 self in advocating his legal rights, the only thing 
 left for me is to dismiss the case from my mind, 
 and to say with my Baptist brother, ' Bring on the 
 next.' " 
 
 That this habit of mind was entirely disconnected 
 from any languid abandonment of the cause of his 
 client while there was the slightest hope of saving 
 him, is humorously shown in a letter which Professor 
 Brown publishes in his biography, relating to a cause 
 decided against his clients by the Supreme Court at 
 Washington. " The court," he wrote to the Washing- 
 ton lawyer engaged with him in the cause, " has lost 
 its little wits. Please let me have (1) our brief for 
 the law ; (2) the defendant's brief for the sophis- 
 try ; (3) the opinion for the foolishness ; and never 
 say die." The august Supreme Court of the United 
 States, which Choate was accustomed publicly to 
 celebrate as the perfection of wisdom and equity, 
 was never so disrespectfully treated as in this de- 
 liciously impudent private letter. The humor of it 
 could hardly have been exceeded by Swift, Sterne, 
 or Sydney Smith.
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 69 
 
 Of the extravagance of this humor let me give 
 
 some instances. Thus, Mr. C was distinguished 
 
 among all the able leaders of the Suffolk Bar for his 
 strict attention to the interests of his clients, for his 
 attendance at a consultation at the exact minute 
 appointed, for the gravity of his behavior and life 
 in every respect, and especially for his rigorous ob- 
 servance of office hours. In fact, he was the very 
 incarnation of Boston respectability. On one occa- 
 sion, when he was solemnly conferring with the di- 
 rectors of a great corporation on a pending suit, Mr. 
 Choate darted into the room, exclaiming : " Well, 
 
 Mr. C , I am glad to find you in your office for 
 
 once. Do you know that for the past forty-eight 
 hours I have hunted for you day and night through 
 every theatre, bar-room, and dance-hall in Boston, 
 without getting a sight of you ? I desire a consulta- 
 tion in the case of and ; and now I have 
 
 at last discovered you, after my long search, I shall 
 insist on an interview," The delicious incongruity 
 
 of the charge with Mr. C 's character, he being 
 
 known as the most punctual, punctilious, and decor- 
 ous of Boston mankind, raised a roar of laughter 
 from the business men present ; and tradition ob- 
 scurely hints though this is of doubtful authentic- 
 ity that even Mr. C smiled. 
 
 On the morning after Charles Sumner's Fourth of 
 July oration on " The True Grandeur of Nations," 
 there naturally gathered at his office in Court Street 
 a crowd of approvers and disapprovers of his extreme
 
 60 SOME KECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 views of the policy and duty of peace. Professor 
 Lieber, among others, was there, and I remember 
 the earnestness with which he assailed Sumner on 
 the ground that his abstract principles degraded 
 from their intrinsic dignity all the great battle-fields 
 of freedom. Sumner was evidently annoyed, but 
 could only get in here and there a palliating word 
 in the rush of Lieber's indignant eloquence. " Do 
 you tell me, my dear Sumner," he shouted, " that 
 I must give up Thermopylae and Marathon and 
 Scmpach ? " Then Choate, whose office was on the 
 same floor, suddenly dashed into the room, add- 
 ing : " And Waterloo ! Come, Lieber, to my den ; 
 don't bother Sumner any more. I have something 
 to discuss with you ; and we '11 fight it out, yard- 
 arm to yard-arm, to your heart's content. Our dear 
 Charles will be sufficiently punished for his heresies 
 on military glory by less redoubtable antagonists 
 than you. Come along, I say ! " And he half coaxed, 
 half dragged, the impassioned Lieber from Sumner's 
 office into his own, though the great publicist had 
 only begun the harangue he intended to address to 
 his friend. I never witnessed a more comical scene. 
 Even Sumner, irritated and harassed as he was, 
 joined in the general laughter at the success of 
 Choate's flank movement to protect him from the 
 disastrous effects of Lieber's direct assault. 
 
 There are so many traditions of Choate's wit and 
 humor that the task of selection is difficult. Thus, 
 on his first election to the national House of Repre-
 
 RUrUS CHOATE. 61 
 
 sentatives he was once asked by a lady why Mrs. 
 Choate did not accompany him to Washington. " I 
 assure you, Madam," he replied, " that I have spared 
 no pains to induce her to come. I have even offered 
 to pay half her expenses." Then there is his remark 
 on John Quincy Adams's relentlessness as a debater. 
 " He had," said Choate, " an instinct for the jugular 
 and the carotid artery as unerring as that of any 
 carnivorous animal." Of a lawyer who was known 
 to be as contentious as he was dull-witted he said, 
 " He 's a bull-dog, with confused ideas." While argu- 
 ing a case he took a position which appeared to 
 be equitable ; but the court demanded that he should 
 find a precedent for it. " I will look, your Honor, 
 and endeavor to find a precedent, if you require 
 it ; though it would seem to be a pity that the court 
 should lose the- honor of being the first to establish 
 so just a rule." Of an ugly artist who had painted 
 a portrait of himself he declared, as though he were 
 paying a compliment to the skill of the painter, that 
 "it is a jiagrant likeness." When he met the Rev. 
 W. R. Alger, shortly after the latter had sent him 
 a copy of his " Poetry of the East," he remarked, 
 with a felicitous combination of wit and wisdom : 
 " Tlie Orientals seem to be amply competent to meta- 
 physics, wonderfully competent to poetry, scarcely 
 competent to virtue, utterly incompetent to liberty." 
 He was once engaged as leading counsel in an im- 
 portant mercantile case. The jury was composed 
 mostly of farmers and drovers drawn from the west-
 
 62 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 era part of Massachusetts, and it was feared that 
 they would hardly be capable of doing justice to the 
 merits of a complicated commercial transaction, the 
 very phrases and figures of which they were necessa- 
 rily incompetent to comprehend. His anxious client, 
 just before the trial began, asked him what he thought 
 would be the verdict. " Oh," he replied, " the law 
 on our side is as strong as thunder, but" with a 
 sHght shrug of his shoulders "what those bovine 
 and bucolical gentlemen from Berkshire may say, 
 God only knows ! " It is my impression, however, 
 that in spite of the difficulties he encountered he 
 won the verdict. 
 
 Much has been said of Mr. Choate's handwriting. 
 It was always the favorite jest of the Suffolk Bar. 
 A genius akin to that of Young or ChampoUion 
 would be required to decipher his briefs. Yet with 
 his eye on his brief, Mr. Choate never hesitated for 
 a word in making a statement in which every word 
 used was significant and important. Everybody who 
 has attended a jury trial knows that the best advo- 
 cates often pause in their exposition of their case, and 
 indulge in that hateful sound which may be expressed 
 in letters in tliis way : " err^ err, errP That sound 
 tends to kill the effect of all eloquence. To be sure, 
 we are told that " to err is human ; " but when an 
 orator indulges in that interruption of the stream of 
 his talk, we feel, in closing the quotation, that it is 
 indeed " divine " to " forgive." The short-hand which 
 Mr. Choate used, though undecipherable by any other
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 63 
 
 human intelligence, never left him at a loss for the 
 exact word, even in legal arguments before an as- 
 sembly of jurists ; and he never " err-err-errcd." 
 
 Mr. George Ticknor, the historian of Spanish liter- 
 ature, was ohce called as a witness in a case in which 
 Mr. Choate was engaged. After his examination he 
 sat by the side of the eminent counsellor within the 
 bar. He was attracted by the notes which Mr. Choate 
 had made of the evidence, and remarked to him that 
 the handwriting reminded him of two autograph let- 
 ters in his possession, one of Manuel the Great of 
 Portugal (dated 1512), and another of Gonsalvo de 
 Cordova, the great captain, written a few years earlier. 
 Nobody who has looked over such collections as those 
 of Mr. Ticknor or Mr. Prescott can refrain from feel- 
 ing a sensation of wonder that any sense can be 
 elicited from such seemingly unintelligible scrawls. 
 "These letters," said Mr. Ticknor to Mr. Choate, 
 "were written three hundred and fifty years ago, 
 and they strongly resemble your notes of the present 
 trial."' Choate, with that droll, quizzical expression 
 which lent such humor to his face, instantly replied : 
 " Remarkable men, no doubt ; they seem to have been 
 much in advance of their time." How delicious this 
 is! the quiet assumption that the infallible sign of 
 advance in chirography is to make handwriting more 
 undecipherable than Egyptian hieroglyphics ! It may 
 here be stated that one of the most charming ad- 
 dresses he ever prepared for lyceums was a lecture 
 on the " Romance of the Sea." Those who heard it
 
 64 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 forty years ago now speak of it as a masterpiece of 
 eloquence ; it enjoyed a popularity similar to that 
 of Wendell Phillips's lecture on " The Lost Arts : " 
 all who listened to it were clamorous to see it in 
 print. The manuscript, however, was stolen by some 
 literary rogue, who probably conceived he might make 
 a modest yearly income by delivering it in remote 
 country towns to which its reputation had not ex- 
 tended. One can imagine his consternation when 
 he found that he could not decipher a word of the 
 manuscript ; that he had wickedly come into posses- 
 sion of a treasure belonging to that description of 
 lost property which is commonly advertised as of 
 no value except to its owner. 
 
 It is sad, in reviewing a career like that of Mr. 
 Choate, to see on how frail a foundation rests the 
 reputation of a great lawyer and advocate, unless he 
 becomes connected here and there with causes that 
 assume historic importance. Erskine, a man whose 
 natural powers were much below Choate's, owes his 
 eminent position to his advocacy of certain persons 
 who were in danger of being convicted of high 
 treason at that miserable period in English history 
 (the last six years of the eighteenth century) when 
 the administration of the younger Pitt, commanding 
 an immense majority in the House of Commons and 
 the House of Lords, seemed bent on depriving the 
 English people of the right of free speech, and of 
 the right of associating to protest against abuses in 
 government, and to petition for their removal. The
 
 RUFUS CnOATK 66 
 
 greatness of Erskine is due to his success in making 
 a jury of twelve men, as in his defence of Hardy, in 
 1794, overturn the tyrannical projects of King, Lords, 
 and Commons. The men marked out by the min- 
 istry to be hanged, drawn, and quartered for high 
 treason were saved by his skill and eloquence, and 
 the liberal principles of the English Constitution vin- 
 dicated against every department of the English gov- 
 ernment, including the judicial. There is no other 
 example in history where one man has so influenced 
 twelve other men as to make them nullify the laws 
 of a constitutional government, of which every de- 
 partment was against both him and them. So un- 
 mistakably was the popular spirit indicated by juries 
 directed by Erskine, that the Government found it- 
 self in the dilemma of being compelled to abolish 
 trial by jury altogether, or to abandon its doctrine 
 of constructive treason. Erskine thus comes into 
 an important period of English history as an eminent 
 force, fully equal to the great Mr. Pitt, inasmuch as 
 he prevented the execution of the worst measures of 
 the Government. Still, as a debater in the House of 
 Commons, Erskine made no figure at all ; and the 
 great majority of his arguments at the Bar, however 
 successful in private causes, are forgotten. 
 
 Now, Choate never had a similar opportunity to be- 
 come historical by successfully vindicating before the 
 courts a precious principle of liberty which the courts 
 were inclined to repudiate. The causes in which he 
 was engaged were private, not public causes, and the 
 
 5
 
 QQ SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 great powers he exhibited in conducting them have 
 left no record in history or literature. In his private 
 diary he frequently mentions the unsatisfactoriness 
 of all the fleeting reputation gained by his political 
 speeches and legal arguments. At one time he con- 
 ceived the idea of writing a series of essays, in which 
 he could set down the results of his wide extra-profes- 
 sional reading and tliinking. The volume was to be 
 called " The Lawyer's Yacations." He even went so 
 far as to tell his friend Judge Warren that he intended 
 to write such a book. " How far have you got in it ? " 
 asked the judge. " Well," Choate replied, " I 've got 
 as far as the titlepage and a motto. The title is 
 ' The Lawyer's Vacations ; ' the motto I 've forgotten. 
 But I shall show that the lawyer's vacation is the 
 space between the question put to a witness and his 
 answer." And, in fact, such was hardly an exag- 
 gerated representation of the vacation that Choate 
 allowed himself. 
 
 But suppose that some kind genius at the time 
 when Choate had arrived at the age of forty had 
 showered upon him an independent fortune. He was 
 then in the possession of robust health, and his mind 
 was in the fulness of its strength and fertility. 
 Retiring from the practice of the law, his insatiable 
 intellectual activity would have sought some subject 
 or subjects on which it might be profitably exercised. 
 My impression is that he would have selected a great 
 historical epoch in the Old World, or perhaps fastened 
 his attention on the annals of New England. All his
 
 RUrUS CHOATE. G7 
 
 knowledge of law, all his experience at the Bar, all 
 his acquired skill in analyzing evidence, would have 
 been devoted to his theme. His masterly reasoning 
 power, his capacity for large generalizations, would 
 have been employed on a vast multitude of discon- 
 nected facts, which he would have investigated with 
 the zeal of an antiquary, and assimilated, disposed, 
 and combined with the skill of an artist and the 
 sagacity of a thinker. Every philosophy of history, 
 from Vico's to Hegel's, he would have read and 
 digested. Being free from all calls upon his time 
 preferred by importunate suitors, his mind would 
 have soon gained a grand repose, without losing any 
 of its healthy vigor. When he had obtained all the 
 materials necessary for the foundation of his history, 
 there can be no doubt that his narrative would have 
 possessed an interest and fascination which would 
 charm alike the scholar and the ordinary reader ; for 
 the whole representation would be alive. The indi- 
 viduals and events of past ages would have been made 
 as real as the friends we daily accost in the streets 
 or the incidents which actually pass before our eyes. 
 His imagination would have brooded over his general- 
 ized facts, vitalizing all it touched ; not a character 
 would have been allowed to appear on his page as a 
 mere name ; and then what wit, what humor, what 
 bright fancy, what ingenious phrases, what happy epi- 
 thets would have aided to give variety to the generally 
 sustained march of the style ! He would, I think, 
 have excelled Prescott, Irving, Bancroft, Palfrey,
 
 G8 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 and Motley ; for, without any disrespect to those 
 eminent historians, he was intrinsically more richly 
 gifted than any of them. But it was not allowed to 
 Mr. Clioate to exhibit his rare faculties except under 
 the spur of continually succeeding occasions. So far 
 as the literature of the country is concerned, he has 
 loft on it no appreciable mark of his literary powers, 
 though in Professor Brown's two volumes there will 
 be found some splendid specimens of his logic and 
 rhetoric, of his learning and his command of the 
 resources of the English language, which would do 
 credit to our best prose writers. It is the old irony 
 of fate. Nature liberally bestowed on this man some 
 of the finest and noblest qualities, which she is gen- 
 erally so niggardly in intrusting to her children, 
 vivid imagination, vigorous intelligence, quickness of 
 perception, capacity for unintermitted, self-rewarding 
 toil ; wit, humor, a genial disposition ; an intense 
 love for the beautiful and good ; an instinctive attrac- 
 tion for the higher things of the mind ; a heroic senti- 
 ment which recognized the slightest manifestation of 
 heroism in the humblest of mankind and womankind, 
 and which kindled into rapture when it contemplated 
 and communed with the grand heroic spirits which 
 illuminate history ; a practical sagacity which pre- 
 vented enthusiasm from obscuring the teachings of 
 sober judgment ; a heart overflowing with beneficence 
 and good-will to all human beings ; a brain teeming 
 with facts, ideas, and images, incapable of pausing in 
 its creative activity, and finding its repose only in
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 69 
 
 a variation of the objects to which its activity was 
 directed. And we can conceive of the old grand 
 Dame muttering, as she accomplished her work : 
 " Well, you fools have long been waiting for a man 
 of genius to ofiPset the commonplace creatures I or- 
 dinarily fashion to do their work in this miserable 
 world : here he is ! " Then we may conceive of Cir- 
 cumstance, the god of this lower world, stepping in 
 and declaring that this favorite of Nature shall not 
 be a great poet, or a great historian, or a great politi- 
 cal philosopher, but shall exercise his genius on per- 
 ishable topics, and be defrauded of his right to attain 
 the permanent fame which men less endowed easily 
 accomplish. He shall scatter his native gifts in a 
 thousand ways ; delight everybody he meets in a 
 chance conversation with the abundant wealth of his 
 intellect and wit ; thrill popular assemblies by occa- 
 sional orations which leave no record beyond the 
 hour ; captivate senates with an eloquence which is 
 connected with no measure he has himself originated ; 
 be allowed some few hours in a week to commune 
 with Greek and Latin poets, historians, and philoso- 
 phers, whom he aches to emulate, but whom he shall 
 have hardly the leisure to translate ; and shall be 
 compelled to toil for his daily bread in courts of law, 
 where his magnificent abilities shall be acknowledged 
 and rewarded, but the results of which shall have no 
 place on the memory of mankind. Such was Choate's 
 fate. Circumstance controlled Nature. Everybody 
 who knew him, everybody who listened to him,
 
 70 SOME KECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 whether young men of letters or grave judges, felt 
 that a strange original genius had somehow dropped 
 down into our somewhat prosaic New England, had 
 done his life-work in a wonderfully meteoric way, and 
 had vanished from us suddenly, without leaving on 
 our politics or literature the abiding impression which 
 his genius seemed so capable of impressing on both. 
 That he was one of the most remarkable men our 
 country has produced is beyond doubt ; but it is diffi- 
 cult for those who knew him to convey to a younger 
 generation, which never passed " under the wand of 
 the magician," the effect he produced on their own 
 minds and hearts. 
 
 Mr. Choate, in his published writings, suffers much 
 from the necessary divorce between his style and the 
 inflections of his voice. His Dartmouth oration on 
 Webster is among the manuscripts in the Boston 
 Public Library, and it appears to the eye a mere 
 chaos of indecipherable words, sprinkled with semi- 
 colons and colons, relieved here and there by fierce 
 dashes of the pen, indicating a pause between the 
 comma and the semicolon. It contains also the long- 
 est sentence ever written by man since Cadmus in- 
 vented letters. His penmanship was so bad that 
 when he wrote an important note to Daniel Webster, 
 touching the refusal of the Boston city government to 
 grant Faneuil Hall for a meeting of the supporters of 
 the 7th of March speech, Mr. Webster could not make 
 out the meaning of a single word. "Tell Choate," 
 said Webster to Mr. Harvey, " that his handwriting is
 
 RUEUS CHOATE, 71 
 
 barbarous ; that he should go to a writing-school and 
 take a quarter's lessons. He gives me advice as to 
 what it is proper for me to do, and I cannot under- 
 stand one of his infernal hieroglyphics." 
 
 The peculiarity of Choate's written style was this, 
 that it required the inflections of his voice to make it 
 as clear and flowing as it came from his own mind. 
 I would venture to undertake the reading of the most 
 formidable sentence in his eulogy on Webster, and by 
 merely imitating his tones prove that the style was as 
 lucid and exact as it was kindling and expansive. In 
 view of the number of his adjectives as contrasted 
 with the meagreness of his nouns, it was said of him 
 that he " drove a substantive and six." Yet he put 
 meaning into every one of his adjectives, and was 
 really the least verbose of impassioned orators. His 
 epithets always stood for things, each adjective de- 
 scribing, qualifying, modifying, or emphasizing the 
 main idea he desired to convey. In Fletcher's " Two 
 Noble Kinsmen," Arcite says, 
 
 " We felt our fiery horses 
 Like proud seas under us." 
 
 In driving his perilous team of " a substantive and 
 six," Mr. Choate partook in this grand elation of con- 
 scious genius ; gloried in urging on his fiery steeds in 
 headlong haste to their appointed goal, and came in 
 at the end of the race flushed, it may be, and breath- 
 less, but still victorious over all competitors. He 
 never met at the Bar anybody who could match him
 
 72 SOME EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 in fearlessly driving that " substantive and six " in 
 the legal " Olympian games." In his case, Pindar 
 directed the chariot as well as sung the triumphs of 
 the race. 
 
 It' is to be remarked that Choate's real emphasis 
 was in the lower note of his flexible voice. His sub- 
 stantive came in quietly after an ascending scale of 
 adjectives, the last uttered in the loudest tone he could 
 command. Thus, in the well-known caricature of his 
 method in a supposed legal controversy as to whether 
 the second-hand harness of his client was worth a six- 
 pence, he is reported as saying : " To be sure, gentle- 
 men of the jury, this was not a harness distinguishable 
 by the meretricious gloss and glitter calculated to 
 catch the eye of the vulgar crowd ; but I will put it 
 to you as citizens and as men whether it was n't a safe, 
 SOUND, SUBSTANTIAL, SECOND-HAND harness." 
 The substantive " harness " in this connection was, as 
 it were, dropped in as a seemingly unimportant word ; 
 but as he pronounced it, without any physical empha- 
 sis, it became all the more mentally emphatic. This 
 peculiarity pervaded all his spoken eloquence ; the 
 high, the almost screaming tone with which he uttered 
 his last smiting adjective subsided in a second to the 
 deep, intense, quiet utterance of the noun. 
 
 I am strongly tempted, in conclusion, to imitate 
 one of his long sentences in summing up my impres- 
 sion of his intellectual character. Suppose I put it in 
 this way : " He was endowed by Nature with a will 
 singularly vigorous and a mind eminently plastic;
 
 RUrUS CHOATE. 73 
 
 and this combination of force and fluency, this com- 
 bination by which self-direction is never lost in all the 
 fervors of seeming self-abandonment, the flexible intel- 
 lect flowing into all the multitudinous moulds which 
 the various exigencies of the case may demand, 
 now this, now that ; homely, if need be, clad in the 
 * russet gray ' of the peasant, and anon doffing the im- 
 perial robes and putting on the regal crown ; every- 
 where and in every situation equal, just equal, to the 
 claims of the occasion ; never faltering in any of the 
 Protean shapes it pleased him to assume, but always 
 strong, always earnest, always determined to carry to 
 its ultimate the uppermost conception glowing in his 
 ever-fertile brain; now jesting, now reasoning, but 
 whether jesting or reasoning, never losing sight of his 
 purpose to persuade, to convince, to overpower the 
 persons he was to influence ; contracting or expand- 
 ing his mind with equal ease, so that it resembled the 
 fabled tent of the Oriental prince, which might be so 
 condensed as to become a mere toy for a lady's finger, 
 and then again so spread out that armies might re- 
 pose under its grateful shade ; gifted with wit, humor, 
 fancy, imagination, passion, understanding ; immensely 
 acquisitive as well as inquisitive of knowledge ; tire- 
 less in industry, so that it could be said of him, as 
 Coke said of Raleigh, that he could ' toil terribly ; ' 
 facing the most abstruse problems of law with an in- 
 trepidity of intellect which no difficulties could daunt, 
 and no obscurity perplex ; fearless in grappling with 
 opposition, whether the opposition came in the sub-
 
 74 SOME KECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 stance of a man or in the spectre of an idea ; so im- 
 perturbably serene at the centre of his being, that in 
 the very tempest and whirlwind of his eloquence he 
 never lost the admirable poise of his nature, nor the 
 fine discretion which makes eloquence efficient for its 
 intended purpose : this man stands before us a won- 
 derful example of the impulses and capacities of gen- 
 ius, of genius ever attended by that reason which 
 looks before and after ; by that learning without which 
 reasoning is but an idle exercise, an abundant agita- 
 tion of wit on matter so slight as to do no justice to 
 the powers it so sparsely feeds with facts, facts with- 
 out which the logic of Aristotle himself would be but an 
 ingenious delusion and a pleasing snare ; something 
 that the poet has indicated in that fine line 
 
 * Ne subtler web Arachne cannot spin ; ' 
 
 and, yet more, with Reason and Learning, having for 
 their constant companion Imagination, with ' his gar- 
 land and singing robes about him,' decorating, en- 
 livening, penetrating, vitalizing the argument and the 
 facts, so that the logic becomes as beautiful as ' a 
 golden exhalation of the dawn,' and we watch its pro- 
 cesses as we would that of an army marching to as- 
 sured victory, with all its banners flaming in the 
 consenting and joyous air: with all these powers 
 working in glad harmony together, each assisting the 
 other, each knowing its place, each instinctively con- 
 scious when it should be master or servant, and each 
 seemingly unfettered in its own spontaneous move-
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 75 
 
 meiit, to all these powers and accomplisliments, I 
 8aj, he added the great tidal wave of passion, impel- 
 ling, hurrying everything onward that it caught in its 
 tyrannous sweep, and leaving but wrecks on the op- 
 posing shore, where it broke in iridescent spray and 
 foam." 
 
 This is, of course, little better than a caricature of 
 the way in which Mr. Choate grappled with the diffi- 
 culties of the long sentence, the sentence of Hooker, 
 Milton, Clarendon, and De Quincey ; but still, if it 
 were read by anybody who could imitate the inflections 
 of Mr. Choate's voice, and thus indicate the natural 
 way in which every stated thought or fact suggests 
 something which modifies or enforces it, and the ac- 
 cumulating process goes on to the point where it 
 rhythmically closes, I think my feeble imitation would 
 present little to puzzle the grammarian or perplex the 
 minds of ordinary men. The fact that juries and 
 popular audiences had no trouble in getting at his 
 meaning proves that his long sentences were lucid, 
 however obscure they may appear to the eye as read 
 in the mangled reproductions of reporters. Oh, if 
 the inflections of his voice could be printed ! Then 
 it would be shown that the soul of the man threaded 
 every intricacy of the complicated sentence, delicately 
 noting each variation of the dominant thought, and 
 vitalizing the whole with its kindling inspiration. I 
 have listened to some of the arguments and addresses 
 in which he exhibited this mastery of the resources 
 of the English language, making words his " servile
 
 76 RECOLLECTIONS OF RUFUS CHOATE. 
 
 instruments," and forcing everything to bend to his 
 
 will, syntax, it may be said, among the rest, when 
 
 he inevitably brought to my mind the glorious image 
 
 in which Charles Lamb celebrates the rising of the 
 
 sun, 
 
 " To see the sun to bed, and to arise, 
 Like some hot amorist, with glowing eyes, 
 Bursting the lazy bonds of sleep that bound him, 
 With all his fires and travelling glories round him."
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 In the commerce of nations it is important that 
 there should be an interchange of minds as well as of 
 merchandise. In the annual reports of our Secre- 
 taries of the Treasury the imports and exports are 
 correctly given in the current coin or currency of the 
 land, and the balance of trade, either for or against 
 us, is correctly estimated ; but in stating the value of 
 our imports there is an unavoidable omission of our 
 annual importations of skilled laborers, of inventors, 
 of engineers, and of men of genius generally in the 
 various departments of art, literature, and science. 
 The worth of such men cannot be gleaned from the 
 records of the Custom House ; yet it is plain that they 
 must add enormously to the wealth of the country by 
 simply diffusing their exceptional knowledge or exer- 
 cising their exceptional talents. Indeed, there can be 
 no imported wealth which exceeds in value the im- 
 portation of the creators of wealth. The body which 
 contains an ingenious and inventive mind may not be 
 equal in bulk to a single case of goods which comes 
 over in the same ship with it; but if the mind 
 lodged in the body be that of a Watt, an Arkwright, 
 or a Bessemer, it is impossible to compute the number
 
 78 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 of the fleets that may be needed to export the pro- 
 ducts of his brain. Even in the matter of pure 
 science, it is difficult to estimate the value in dollars 
 and cents of an imported man of science of the first 
 class. He may seem to scorn all applications of his 
 discoveries to useful ends ; but it is certain that a 
 crowd of bright, practical minds will follow in the 
 path of his discoveries, and convert all his additions 
 to the knowledge of Nature into additional means for 
 the conquest of Nature. 
 
 At any rate, there can be no doubt that the vessel 
 which brought Louis Agassiz to our shores brought a 
 scientific intelligence and scientific force which out- 
 valued not only all the rest of the cargo, but of a 
 thousand ordinary cargoes. In getting thorough pos- 
 session of him, in making him an American citizen, 
 and in resolutely refusing, with his hearty concur- 
 rence, to deliver him up to the country which after- 
 ward claimed his services, the United States must be 
 considered to have made a good bargain. He was too 
 poor when he arrived here to pay any " duties " into 
 the Treasury ; but the impulse he gave to science in 
 this country enriched us in a degree that cannot be 
 measured by any money standard. Indeed, the Amer- 
 ican opponents of his scientific theories were and ai*e 
 among the foremost to acknowledge the marvellous 
 effects of his scientific inspiration ; for he popularized 
 pure science, and lifted high in public esteem the 
 whole body of investigators who were loyally engaged 
 in its service. From him came the most notable of
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 79 
 
 all the maxims which illustrate the disinterestedness 
 of the chivalry of science. At the time he was ab- 
 sorbed in some minute investigations in a difficult 
 department of zoology, he received a letter from the 
 president of a lyceum at the West, offering him a 
 large sum for a course of popular lectures on nat- 
 ural history. His answer was : " I cannot afford 
 
 TO WASTE MY TIME IN MAKING MONEY." The WOrds 
 
 deserve to be printed in capitals ; but Agassiz was 
 innocently surprised that a sentiment very natural 
 to him should have excited so much comment. He 
 knew that scores of his brother scientists, American 
 and European, would have used the words " afford " 
 and " waste " in the same sense, had they been sim- 
 ilarly interrupted in an investigation which promised 
 to yield them a new fact or principle. Still, the an- 
 nouncement from such an authority that there was 
 a body of men in the United States who could not 
 afford to waste time in making money had an im- 
 mense effect. It convinced thousands of intelligent 
 and opulent men of business, who had never be- 
 fore thought a moment of time devoted to the 
 making of money could be wasted, that science 
 meant something; and it made them liberal of 
 their money when it was asked for scientific pur- 
 poses. It did even more than this, it made 
 them honor the men who were placed above the 
 motives by which they themselves were ordinarily 
 influenced. 
 
 My first impression of the genius of Agassiz was
 
 80 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 gained when he was in the full vigor of his mental 
 and physical powers. Some thirty-five years ago, at 
 a meeting of a literary and scientific club of which I 
 happened to be a member, a discussion sprang up con- 
 cerning Dr. Hitchcock's book on " bird-tracks," and 
 plates were exhibited representing his geological dis- 
 coveries. After much time had been consumed in 
 describing the bird-tracks as isolated phenomena, and 
 in lavishing compliments on Dr. Hitchcock, a man 
 suddenly rose who in five minutes dominated the 
 whole assembly. He was, he said, much interested 
 in the specimens before them, and he would add that 
 he thought highly of Dr. Hitchcock's book, as far as it 
 accurately described the curious and interesting facts 
 he had unearthed ; but, he added, the defect in Dr. 
 Hitchcock's volume is this, that " it is dees-creep-^eeve, 
 and not com-par-a-^eeve." It was evident throughout 
 that the native language of the critic was French, and 
 that he found some difficulty in forcing his thoughts 
 into English words ; but I never can forget the in- 
 tense emphasis he put on the words " descriptive " 
 and " comparative," and by this emphasis flashing 
 into the minds of the whole company the difference 
 between an enumeration of strange, unexplained facts 
 and the same facts as interpreted and put into rela- 
 tion with other facts more generally known. The 
 moment he contrasted " dees-creep-teeve " with " com- 
 par^a-teeve" one felt the vast gulf that yawned 
 between mere scientific observation and scientific 
 intelligence, between eyesight and insight, between
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 81 
 
 minds that doggedly perceive and describe and minds 
 that instinctively compare and combine. The speaker 
 vehemently expressed his astonishment that a scien- 
 tist could observe such phenomena and yet feel no 
 impulse to bring them into relation to other facts 
 and laws scientifically established. The critic was, of 
 course, Agassiz, then in the full possession of all his 
 exceptional powers of body and mind. You could 
 not look at him without feeling that you were in 
 the presence of a magnificent specimen of physical, 
 mental, and moral manhood ; that in him was real- 
 ized Sainte-Beuve's ideal of a scientist, " the soul 
 of a sage in the body of an athlete." At that time he 
 was one of the comeliest of men. His full and ruddy 
 face, glowing with health and animation, was crowned 
 by a brow which seemed to be the fit home for such a 
 comprehensive intelligence ; and the slight difficulty 
 he overcame in enunciating English words only lent 
 to them increased significance. He gave the impres- 
 sion that every word he uttered embodied a fact or a 
 principle. Afterward he so adapted his organs of 
 speech to the English language, that he ended in 
 speaking and writing it as though it were his mother- 
 tongue. If there was any exception to be made, it was 
 in one of his favorite terms, " development." He 
 never completely overcame his tendency to pronounce 
 it " devil-opement." 
 
 It was my good fortune to meet him often during 
 the last twenty-five years of his life ; but my first im- 
 pression the impression of the comprehensiveness of 
 
 6
 
 8^ RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 his mind was more and more confirmed as I came 
 to know him more intimately. All the facts and prin- 
 ciples of his special science were systematized in his 
 vast and joyous memory, so that he was ever ready 
 to reply to any unexpected question concerning the 
 most obscure nooks and corners of natural history ; 
 but in replying, he ever indicated that his immense 
 grasp of the details of his science was free from any 
 disposition to exaggerate any detail out of its connec- 
 tions. No isolated fact could exist in his mind. The 
 moment it was apprehended, it fell easily into rela- 
 tionship to the throng of other facts quietly stored 
 in his broad intelligence, and became one of a 
 group which illustrated a principle. His knowledge 
 of particulars was extensive, minute, and accurate. 
 Every separate fact was vividly present to the eye of 
 his imagination, and yet all his knowledge was gen- 
 eralized knowledge. In thinking therefore on hia 
 accumulated, his multitudinous materials, it may be 
 said that details were never in his way or out of his 
 way : those that he needed crowded at once upon his 
 mind ; those he did not need kiept at a respectful dis- 
 tance. I often watched the operations of his intellect 
 when he was unexpectedly drawn into a discussion, 
 but I never could detect any sign of that confusion of 
 mind which results from a disturbance of the proper 
 relations of memory to understanding. The facts he 
 needed, as I have said, came at once to do his bidding; 
 and the thousands of irrelative facts which were also 
 at his command never obtruded on his attention to
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 83 
 
 obstruct the rapid course of his lucid argument. It 
 would seem as if there never was among naturalists 
 an intellect more thoroughly disciplined than his, or 
 which was less hampered by the abundance of the 
 material on which it worked. 
 
 But the marvel of Agassiz, and a never-ceasing 
 source of wonder and delight to liis friends and com- 
 panions, was the union in his individuality of this 
 solidity, breadth, and depth of mind with a joyousness 
 of spirit, an immense overwhelming geniality of dis- 
 position, which flooded every company he entered with 
 the wealth of his own opulent nature. Placed at the 
 head of a table, with a shoulder of mutton before him, 
 he so carved the meat that every guest was flattered 
 into the belief that the host had given him the best 
 piece. His social power exceeded that of the most 
 brilliant conversationists and of the most delicate 
 epicures ; for he was not only fertile in thoughts, but 
 wise in wines and infallible in matters of fish and 
 game. It was impossible to place him in any com- 
 pany where he was out of place. The human nature 
 in him fell into instinctive relations with every kind 
 and variety of human nature outside of him. His 
 wide experience of life had brought him into familiar 
 contact with emperors, kings, and nobles, with scien- 
 tists and men of letters, with mechanics, farmers, and 
 day-laborers, in short, with men divided by race, 
 rank, wealth, and every other distinction from other 
 men ; and by the felicity of his cosmopolitan nature 
 he placed himself on an easy equality with them all,
 
 84 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 never cringing to those conventionally above him, 
 never " condescending " to those intellectually below 
 him, but cordially welcoming everybody he met on 
 the common ground of human brotherhood. Himself 
 a strong man, his test of manhood was entirely inde- 
 pendent of conventional rules. When he discovered 
 a real man, it was indifferent to him whether he occu- 
 pied a palace or a hovel ; and certainly no man of 
 science ever equalled him in captivating the represent- 
 atives of all grades of rank and intelligence by sheer 
 force of human sympathy. The French, or Austrian, 
 or Brazilian emperor, the peasant of the Alps, the 
 " rough " of our Western plains, agreed at least in 
 one opinion, that Agassiz was a grand specimen 
 of manhood. His scientific contemporaries, though 
 brought into occasional antagonism with his opinions, 
 admitted that he possessed the one exceptional charm 
 which they lacked ; for this wonderful creature could 
 by his social qualities make pure science popular 
 among a large class of voters who had hardly risen to 
 an appreciation of the immense advantages which had 
 followed the many practical applications of pure sci- 
 ence to their own welfare and advancement. Indeed, 
 the impulse that Agassiz gave to the cause of science 
 in the United States is universally admitted to have 
 been as remarkable as it was beneficent. A distin- 
 guished American scientist, who was entirely unin- 
 fluenced by the geological and zoological theories of 
 Agassiz, once confided to me his judgment as to the 
 value of the great naturalist's work as a scientific
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 85 
 
 force. " T look upon him," he said, " as a prophet, as 
 an apostle of science ; he has made every honest in- 
 vestigator his debtor ; he has not only elevated in 
 public esteem the intellectual class to which he be- 
 longs, but he has induced the moneyed class and the 
 political class to give science the means of carry- 
 ing out its purposes. Since Agassiz came into the 
 country you cannot but have noticed that private 
 capitalists. State Legislatures, and the Congress of 
 the country have been liberal of aid to every good 
 scientific enterprise. We owe a great part of this 
 liberality to Agassiz. He it was who magnetized the 
 people with his own scientific enthusiasm. He made 
 science popular, because in him science was individ- 
 ualized in the most fascinating and persuasive of 
 human beings. All the rest of us are more or less so 
 dominated by our special lines of investigation, or so 
 infirm in physical health, or so unsympathetic with 
 ignorant people, or so supercilious, or so controlled 
 by some innate ' cussedness ' of disposition, that we 
 cannot readily adapt ourselves to the ways of men of 
 the world ; but Agassiz, with his enormous physical 
 health and vitality, and his capacity to meet all kinds 
 of men on their own level, drew into our net hundreds 
 of people, powerful through their wealth or their 
 political influence, who would never have taken any 
 interest in science if they had not first been interested 
 in Agassiz. And these men were the men who gave 
 us the money we needed for the extension of scientific 
 knowledge and the promotion of scientific discovery.
 
 86 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 Agassiz is a great scientific intelligence ; but he is 
 even greater, considered as an immense scientific 
 force." 
 
 The extraordinary influence which Agassiz exerted 
 over assemblages of men who had small perception of 
 the scope of his thinking was due to a general impres- 
 sion of his disinterestedness, as well as to his magnetic 
 personality. On one occasion, when his Museum was 
 in need of money for a purely scientific purpose, he 
 invited the members of the Legislature of the State of 
 Massachusetts to visit it, with the design of inducing 
 them to vote the sum he required. After a short per- 
 suasive address, delivered in the hall of the Museum, 
 he led them over the building, pointing out the great 
 things that had been achieved, and the still greater 
 things that were to follow if his plan were carried out. 
 In ascending the stairs I happened to overhear two 
 shrewd legislators, evidently farmers, who were con- 
 sidering the propriety of giving the proposed legisla- 
 tive aid. " I don't know much," said one, " about the 
 value of this Museum as a means of education, but 
 of one thing I am certain, that if we give Agassiz 
 the money he wants, he will not make a dollar by 
 it. That's in his favor." The appropriation was 
 made a day or two after, though it was generally 
 considered that no other man could have wrung the 
 sum from the reluctant hands of that economical 
 Legislature. 
 
 It is hardly necessary now to affirm that Agassiz 
 did not win tliis distinction of being the greatest
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 87 
 
 scientific force of the country by any of the various 
 arts of insincerity and indirection. Of no man could 
 it be said with more truth that his behavior was always 
 the expression of his nature. The naturalness of his 
 " good manners " constituted their charm. He was 
 what Dryden calls one of " God Almighty's gentle- 
 men," a gentleman inborn and inbred ; a gentleman 
 who had no need of being trained artificially in the 
 rules of politeness, because in him the gentleman was 
 but one expression of the large individuality of the 
 man. So little was there of varnish in his manners, 
 so little of the restraint on sensibility which we are 
 accustomed to consider as the perfection of good- 
 breeding, that he did not hesitate to indulge in occa- 
 sional outbreaks of intellectual and moral wrath which 
 coxcombs might consider decidedly improper and un- 
 genteel. Indeed, when anything which he deemed of 
 vital moment was up for discussion, his speech was 
 as spontaneous as that of a generous, warm-hearted, 
 ingenuous, impetuous boy ; and yet the finest gentle- 
 men of his time admitted that he generally excelled 
 them all in his instinctive conformity to that higher 
 law of good-breeding which regulates the intercourse 
 of mind with mind. He was the recognized head, the 
 chairman, of a peculiar Boston club, admission to 
 which depended rather on antipathy than sympathy, 
 as regards the character and pursuits of its members. 
 It was ingeniously supposed that persons who looked 
 on all questions of science, theology, and literature 
 from different points of view would be the very
 
 88 RECOLLECTIONS OE AGASSIZ. 
 
 persons who would most enjoy one another's company 
 once a month at a dinner-table. Intellectual anarchy 
 was proclaimed as the fundamental principle of this 
 new organization, or rather disorganization ; no man 
 could be voted in who had not shown by his works 
 his disagreement with those who were to be associated 
 with him ; and the result was, of course, the most 
 tolerant and delightful of social meetings. Societies 
 based on mutual admiration had been tried, and they 
 had failed ; here was a society based on mutual repul- 
 sion, and it was a success from the start. The two 
 extremes were Agassiz the naturalist and Emerson 
 the transcendentalist ; and they were the first to be- 
 come intimate friends, nothing could exceed the 
 admiration of Agassiz for Emerson's intellectual and 
 personal character. The other members agreed to 
 disagree after a similar charming fashion, and the 
 contact and collision of so many discordant minds 
 produced a constant succession of electric sparks both 
 of thought and wit. Probably not even the club of 
 which Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, and Gold- 
 smith were members brought so many forcible indi- 
 viduals into such good-natured opposition, or afforded 
 a fairer field for the display of varied talents and 
 accomplishments. When they were all seated at one 
 board, and the frolic hostilities of opinion broke out 
 in the free play of wit and argument, of pointed asser- 
 tion and prompt retort, the effect was singularly exhila- 
 rating. Indeed, there is no justification for a long din- 
 ner where the attraction is simply in the succession
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 89 
 
 of choice dishes and the variety of rare wines. In 
 all really good dinners the brain and heart are more 
 active than the palate and the stomach. But dur- 
 ing the long period that Agassiz presided over the 
 association it may be said that though he did not con- 
 tribute the most sparkling sayings, he was still the 
 informing and inspiring life of the club. He radiated 
 his vital courtesy and cheer through the whole assem- 
 bly of notables, fused them into a compact body of 
 friends, and was most warmly acknowledged as their 
 natural head by those members who were specially 
 distinguished for their conversational brilliancy and 
 charm. Agassiz himself prized the club above all 
 others, because it brought him once a month into 
 intimate relations with persons who were not particu- 
 larly interested in the subjects which absorbed his 
 own intellect and tastes. He delighted in hearing 
 and in replying to objections to his scientific convic- 
 tions made by persons who approached the deep ques- 
 tions which the advance of geology and zoology had 
 raised, from points of view opposite to his own. It is 
 said that he was somewhat irritable and impatient in 
 discussing his theories with naturalists and physicists ; 
 but he certainly exhibited neither irritability nor im- 
 patience in discussing the same theories with theo- 
 logians, metaphysicians, and men of letters ; and he 
 was always delighted to meet on neutral ground op- 
 ponents who did not pretend to have the knowledge 
 which would qualify them to contest his conclusions 
 so far as they were derived from the special facts of
 
 90 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 his own science. He has been charged with arrogance 
 and self-assertion, but he never showed a trace of 
 these qualities in his familiar intercourse with the 
 members of this club. His associates in that society 
 remember him not only with respect but with love. 
 Ask Holmes, Lowell, Cabot, Hoar, Hedge, Norton, 
 and, could we question the dead, ask Sumner, An- 
 drew, Motley, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Peircc, Dana, 
 Emerson, what they think of Agassiz, and the 
 response would surely be one of affection for the won- 
 derful creature who combined such endless fertility 
 of generalized knowledge with such unbounded geni- 
 ality of nature. It would almost seem that there 
 never existed a distinguished man who called forth so 
 much love from a wide variety of distinguished men, 
 whose love carried with it so much implied respect. 
 Indeed, everybody who was honored by the friendship 
 of Agassiz feels honored in the memory of it. 
 
 The " recollections " which any of his acquaint- 
 ances can record of such a noble specimen of physical, 
 intellectual, and moral manhood must be more or 
 less disappointing ; for the general impression left 
 on the minds of all who knew him can hardly be 
 expressed in details of his life and conversation. 
 " That dear Agassiz " was the judgment passed upon 
 him by a French custodian of scientific collections, 
 who had frequent opportunities to know how insati- 
 able was the greed for knowledge which character- 
 ized this greatest of modern naturalists ; and " that 
 dear Agassiz " expresses the feeling which is still
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 91 
 
 uppermost in the hearts of all American friends 
 who survive him. 
 
 And, first, no justice can be done to Agassiz which 
 docs not recognize the deep religiousness of his nature. 
 In his youth and early manhood he was a pronounced 
 materialist. It is said of the ordinary New England 
 divinity student that at a certain time in his life he 
 " experiences " religion. At a corresponding period 
 in his purely scientific career Agassiz may be said 
 to have " experienced " irreligion. The same ardor 
 of nature which made him a resolute scientist made 
 him, at least on the negative side, a resolute atheist. 
 And he was perfectly honest in his disbelief. It is 
 difficult to fix the date when he became a theist. One 
 thing however is certain, that he passed into all the 
 mental and moral moods which lead many modern 
 scientists to ignore or deny the existence of God, and 
 to rest satisfied in the general conception of " Law," 
 without seeing or feeling any need of a Law-giver. 
 I have said that he passed into these moods, thor- 
 oughly " experienced " them, and felt as well as 
 understood all the logic and all the facts on which 
 such " Positivism " is founded. But he gradually 
 passed out of this state as he came nearer and 
 nearer, as an investigator, to the inmost meaning 
 of Nature. He ended, much to the contempt and dis- 
 gust of many of his most distinguished scientific 
 contemporaries, in a belief in God more intense than 
 that professed by the majority of theologians. His 
 experience of religion was even more marked than
 
 92 RECOLLECTIONS OP AGASSIZ. 
 
 his previous experience of irreligion, and it carried 
 with it all the force of his nature. Having gone 
 through all the dreary and dogmatic scepticism in 
 which most men of science were contented to re- 
 main, he amazed his own class of scientists, in his 
 " Essay on Classification," by urging them to aban- 
 don their neutral or hostile attitude toward natural 
 theology, and to look on the various divisions and 
 classes of Nature as the embodiment of thoughts 
 previously existing in a divine creative mind. The 
 scorn with which this essay was received in some 
 quarters was unspeakable. Its author lost caste 
 among many of the foremost naturalists of France, 
 Germany, and England. He was, indeed, accused of 
 shamming religion in order to induce the Puritans 
 of America to give him money to carry out his sci- 
 entific schemes. It was held to be disgraceful that 
 a great naturalist who had done so much to extend 
 the limits of the " Knowable " should forfeit his in- 
 tellectual rank by ignominiously giving in to the 
 claims of the priests, and asserting that the " Un- 
 knowable " was a personal and infinite God, " known " 
 more or less to the student who explores scientifi- 
 cally the facts of Nature with a mind untrammelled 
 by either atheistic or theistic prejudices and pre- 
 conceptions. 
 
 The European scientists were strangely at fault 
 in considering the theism of Agassiz as at all influ- 
 enced by the class that they contemptuously desig- 
 nated as " the priests." His education as a scientist
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 93 
 
 was entirely independent of all the influences which 
 surround the childhood, youth, and early manhood 
 of most English and American men of science. He 
 never felt the passions or appreciated the theories 
 of any of the theological systems from the dictation of 
 which they may pride themselves on being emanci- 
 pated. He always seemed to me strangely ignorant 
 of the doctrines which divided the various sects and 
 churches of Christendom, or at least strangely indif- 
 ferent to them. If he was of any sect, my impression 
 is that he inclined to the sect of Unitarians ; but I 
 would not assert even that. In reading his " Essay 
 on Classification" I was reminded of the ideas of 
 law presented in the first book of Hooker's " Eccle- 
 siastical Polity," and I sent the volume to him. He 
 much admired the first book, but took small interest 
 in what followed; and of Hooker's position as the 
 greatest thinker of the Church of England, and as 
 one of the leading minds in the Elizabethan period 
 of English literature, he knew little or nothing. He 
 was, in fact, a naturalist pure and simple, and he 
 rose into supernatural sm in the most natural way. 
 
 Indeed, far from compromising the cause of science 
 in order to win the good-will of theologians, he gave 
 the theologians a great shock by early advancing 
 the theory that mankind had no common ancestor, 
 but that its various races were derived from separate 
 originals. He did not much care about names ; he 
 had no objection to the name Adam or the name 
 Eve, but he believed in numerous Adams and numer-
 
 94 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 ous Eves. A storm of theological opposition was 
 raised against him in New England on account of 
 this heresy ; and I remember asking him, before the 
 clatter had subsided, how he contrived to preserve 
 his scientific independence while living in a commu- 
 nity which was generally hostile to all opinions that 
 clashed violently with its theological, philanthropic, 
 and political beliefs and passions. " Why," he an- 
 swered, " the reason is plain : I never was a quarter 
 of a dollar ahead in the world, and I never expect 
 to be. When a man of science wants money for 
 himself, he may be compelled to subordinate science 
 to popular opinion ; when he wants money simply 
 for the advancement of science, he gets it somehow, 
 because it is known that not a cent sticks in his own 
 pocket." And he added, in reference to his own 
 theory : " You know that my belief in the essential 
 unity of the races of mankind is not based on their 
 physical descent from a common ancestor, but on 
 the higher ideal ground of a plan existing in the 
 Divine Mind, discriminating man from every other 
 class of animals, yet carried out according to the 
 laws which regulate the geographical distribution of 
 both men and animals on this planet. Before this 
 scientific discussion is carried far, many of my theo- 
 logical opponents will find that the Divine plan in 
 the creation of njian is of mucli more importance 
 than any question of his physical descent, or the 
 agreement or disagreement of my theory with their 
 interpretations of the first chapter of Genesis. I
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSI Z. 95 
 
 approach the whole question from a standpoint en- 
 tirely different from theirs, as I do every other ques- 
 tion where science comes into collision with popular 
 belief. And, mind you, my method of arriving at 
 the doctrine of the Divine Existence is a purely sci- 
 entific method ; and you will find, perhaps before 
 you die, that this ostentatious denial or ignoring of 
 God, common among naturalists whom I warmly 
 esteem, and whose additions to natural liistory I am 
 the most ready to acknowledge, will end in making 
 the science itself sterile. The Positive system, under 
 its many names and modifications, will fail at last 
 in generating the enthusiasm for new discoveries. 
 When the present generation of observers has passed 
 away, the new generation will be more zealous in 
 establishing their dogmas of atheism than any of 
 their theological opponents will be in defending their 
 superstitious dogmas founded on the beliefs of past 
 ages. Their disbelief might be of small account if 
 it were not certain to interfere with their original 
 researches. But I fear science will suffer in the 
 hands of its seeming devotees. They will become 
 controversialists instead of being investigators. Now, 
 the progress of science depends on the ever-recurring 
 numbers A noble young men who will be attracted to 
 science by the hope of advancing it by new discover- 
 ies, and the unselfishness with which they enter on 
 this course must be as complete as that which we 
 know has animated. Christian missionaries. If on the 
 threshold of their career they are supplied with suf-
 
 96 KECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 ficient scientific facts and theories td induce them to 
 engage in a free fight with the persons around tliein 
 who are not scientifically enlightened, they will spend 
 in the popularizing of current scientific hypotheses 
 the energies which should be sacredly devoted to 
 the increase of scientific facts. And then I will 
 frankly tell you that my experience in prolonged 
 scientific investigations convinces me that a belief 
 in God a God who is behind and within the chaos 
 of ungeneralized facts beyond tlie present vanishing- 
 points of human l?;nowledge adds a wonderful stim- 
 ulus to the man who attempts to penetrate into the 
 region of the unknown. For myself, I may say that 
 I now never make the preparations for penetrating 
 into some small province of Nature hitherto undis- 
 covered, without breathing a prayer to the Being 
 who hides His secrets from me only to allure me gra- 
 ciously on to the unfolding of them. I sometimes 
 hear preachers speak of the sad condition of men 
 who live without God in the world; but a scientist 
 who lives without God in the world seems to me 
 worse off than ordinary men." 
 
 Of course I do not pretend to give the exact words 
 of Agassiz in this report. I am only sure as to the 
 playful remark about his never having a quarter of 
 a dollar ahead in the world, and of the solemn and 
 somewhat reserved way in which he spoke of the 
 involuntary prayer which ever accompanied his in- 
 vestigations into the Unknown. The rest embodies 
 his general opinions, often expressed, that every
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OE AGASSIZ. 97 
 
 rounded theory of the universe must be imperfect ; 
 that the Divine secret still remains undiscovered ; 
 and that scientists would be more profitably em- 
 ployed in extending the boundaries of positive sci- 
 ence than in propounding any dogmatic system 
 miscalled " positive philosophy." Of one thing I am 
 sure, he had a deep conviction, as strong as that 
 of Augustine or Bernard or Luther or Edwards or 
 Wesley or Channing, that there were means of com- 
 munication between the Divine and the human mind. 
 He had an inward experience of this mystical fact, 
 a fact which lies at the centre of all religion, 
 almost as strong as that which we freely accord 
 to the experience of men of religious genius. This 
 "familiar grasp of things Divine" was not one of 
 the least of the fascinations of Agassiz ; and he 
 strenuously insisted that the human mind, in what- 
 ever direction of art, science, or literature it was 
 exercised, would starve and dwindle on its own re- 
 sources alone. It must, he declared, be sustained 
 and enriched by some Divine Power above it if it 
 desired to be continuously powerful ; it must be open 
 to inspiration from the Creator of the world if it 
 would gather strength for the difficult task of inves- 
 tigating it. 
 
 He thus proved that he possessed, in addition to 
 the ordinary equipment of the accomplished man of 
 science, that subtile spiritual essence which is soul. 
 Theologically speaking, all of us have souls, as well 
 as bodies and understandings; but in the common 
 
 7
 
 98 RECOLLECTIONS OE AGASSIZ. 
 
 experience of life soul may be said to be a rare, an 
 exceptional quality of human beings. It comes out 
 in flashes here and there ; but the majority of men, 
 as they ordinarily meet their fellows, indicate but 
 slight j)ossession of it. Hence the justification of the 
 seeming profanity of the passionate artist, who was 
 trying to convince a dull man of culture that this 
 mysterious quality was evident in the picture he was 
 showing him. " I am not sure," he at last exclaimed, 
 as he found his exposition produced no effect, "I 
 
 am not sure that you have any soul ; but, by , I 
 
 know that / have ! " Certainly all who came into 
 contact with Agassiz were made aware that he had a 
 soul, whether or not they had one. Indeed, it flamed 
 out in every expression of his magnificent nature, 
 was evident in every statement of fact or affirmation 
 of principle, in the simplest as well as the greatest 
 things conveying the impression of intense, abun- 
 dant even superabundant spiritual life. 
 
 A belief in the immortality of the soul was of 
 course natural to a man who had such an inward, 
 vehement experience of its reality and force. "To 
 execute great things," says Yauvenargues, " a man 
 must live as though he had never to die." Agassiz 
 lived in this way. He must have been surprised when 
 he received the first intimation, about the age of fifty- 
 five, that he was mortal. His physical health was so 
 great, that when he was superintending the arrange- 
 ment and publication of one of his early works, he 
 labored fur a couple of months steadily at his desk at
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 99 
 
 the rate of sixteen or eighteen hours a day, taking no 
 exercise ; and when the delightful task was completed 
 he started on an excursion among the Alps, which 
 exacted as much labor from his limbs as the months 
 preceding it had exacted from his brain. In fact he 
 seemed, up to the period of his first attack of disease, 
 utterly insensible to bodily as to mental fatigue. He 
 never had an hour in his life when he was not pleas- 
 antly occupied ; and he innocently wondered, when the 
 people he met in society sometimes complained of be- 
 ing bored with life. Every contrivance to kill time ap- 
 peared to him the funniest of all jokes. " Time ! " he 
 was wont to exclaim ; " my only trouble is that I have 
 not enough time for my work. I cannot understand 
 why anybody should be idle ; much less can I under- 
 stand why anybody should be oppressed by having 
 time hang on his hands. There is never a moment, 
 except when I am asleep, that I am not joyfully occu- 
 pied. Please give to me the hours which you say are 
 a bore to you, and I will receive them as the most 
 precious of presents. For my part, I wish the day 
 would never come to an end." His recreations were 
 only variations in his occupations. He told me that 
 he had never known a dull hour in his whole life. 
 He had many vexations in the course of his career, 
 but his vexations were only new stimulants to his 
 tireless activity. His experience of life was so intense 
 and joyous that he hardly admitted the thought that 
 he was not to live forever. Death, physical death, 
 misht alter his mode of activitv. He admitted that
 
 100 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 this accident must happen to him at some time or an- 
 other, but his faith in the continuousness of his indi- 
 vidual life never wavered. To be ten minutes in his 
 company was to obtain the strongest argument for the 
 immortality of the soul. The grandeur of his scien- 
 tific schemes, especially the scheme of completing his 
 Museum so that it should visibly represent the com- 
 prehensive plan existing in his ever-dilating mind, 
 impressed you with the feeling that the physical man 
 himself would " never say die " to the most impor- 
 tunate command of that grim skeleton who huddles 
 into a common grave the philosopher whose brain is 
 glowing with unrealized conceptions, and the hus- 
 bandman who has only just relaxed his grasp on the 
 plough. When Goethe heard of the death of his 
 mother, he wondered why a woman of such incessant 
 mental activity should have " consented to die." Hun- 
 dreds of the friends of Agassiz, who could not pretend 
 to have a tenth part of his marvellous vitality, must 
 have felt a similar wonder when they heard of his de- 
 parture from earth. No two ideas seemed more in- 
 compatible than the idea of Agassiz and the idea of 
 death ; for that grand soul, with its confident and ex- 
 hilarating acti^ity exercised on large designs which 
 could be completed within the limits of no mortal life, 
 appeared to carry within it the principle of deathless- 
 ness ; and this impression was strengthened by the 
 fact that what it could possibly achieve here was but 
 a small part of the vast work it contemplated. He 
 once told me, in illustration of the theory that the
 
 EECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 101 
 
 mind worked during even a dreamless sleep, that on 
 one occasion, after toiling on a problem which he felt 
 sure a few hours more of consecutive thinking would 
 solve, ho was compelled by physical fatigue to go to 
 bed. He slept for some seven hours, and when he 
 awoke he found the answer to his last obstinate ques- 
 tioning of Nature clear in his mind. It would seem 
 that this might be a faint type of the unwearied con- 
 tinuousness of his thinking faculty throughout all the 
 long sleep of death. 
 
 It is well known that Agassiz held to the doctrine of 
 the immortality of the souls of animals as well as to 
 the immortality of the souls of men. In a conversation 
 I had with him a number of years ago, he attempted 
 to explain to me his conception of the employments 
 of a naturalist in the next stage of existence, and 
 of the unbounded wealth of material which his soul 
 would possess in observing the souls of the objects of 
 his pursuit. To the proposition that animals had no 
 souls he of course emphatically dissented, whenever 
 it was brought forward. On one occasion, when the 
 subject was up for discussion, I told him that in a re- 
 cent visit to the country I had obtained confirmation 
 of his theory from an unexpected quarter ; for I had 
 overheard a farmer, who was goading a yoke of reluc- 
 tant oxen to perform an impossible task, exhaust all 
 the vocabulary of blasphemy on the poor beasts, sing- 
 ling out not their bodies, but their souls, as the things 
 he specially desired to consign to eternal perdition ; 
 and that he was as particular in selecting the inward,
 
 102 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 unseen, immaterial essence of the toiling creatures 
 for profane condemnation as he would have been in 
 swearing at an average Christian man. " Ah ! " said 
 Agassiz, with a laugh, " that reminds me how stupid 
 most of the keepers of animals are, and how little the 
 fellows know of the minds and feelings of the crea- 
 tures they oppress." He then went on to indicate 
 that his theory as to animals having souls was derived 
 from his interior knowledge of their natures. And 
 indeed his sympathies included all kinds of animals, 
 as they included all kinds of men ; and he was repaid 
 in kind. There is not, I think, a single instance of 
 his having been injured by any serpent or beast how- 
 ever poisonous or ferocious, though much of his life 
 was passed in the company of animals. It is asserted 
 that they have no language ; but he found no difficulty 
 in conversing with them, and they seemed to under- 
 stand him very well, adapted as his modes of commu- 
 liicating Avith them were to their different natures. 
 There probably never was a naturalist who combined 
 such a knowledge of their physical organization with 
 such a penetrating glance into what he called their 
 souls. He was, in the aesthetics of zoology, the dra- 
 matist of the animal kingdom, as Shakspeare was the 
 dramatist of the human race. Whether he had to do 
 with a jelly-fish or a whale or an elephant, he knew 
 each of them, as Shakspeare knew the varieties of hu- 
 man kind, from "the heart outward, and not from 
 the flesh inward." It was curious to notice his be- 
 havior in presence of the domesticated animals. The
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 103 
 
 neigli of a horse to him was a more friendly neigh 
 than any ever heard by a hostler or a jockey. He 
 carried serpents in his hat and in his pockets with a 
 grand unconcern, and dropped them sometimes even 
 in his bed-room, so that his wife was frequently 
 troubled by finding them coiled up in her boots. 
 " Beauty," says the poet, " is its own excuse for be- 
 ing." Agassi z went beyond this tolerant maxim, to 
 the extent of affirming that deformity has its own 
 excuse for being. The fact that any animal existed- 
 was with him a justification of its existence ; and af- 
 ter conversing with it, and penetrating to its interior 
 nature, he treated it as Shakspeare treated Dogberry 
 or Ancient Pistol or Mrs. Quickly, or any of the other 
 queer blood-relations connected with him through a 
 common descent from Adam. As there was no form 
 of human existence which was too low to be beneath 
 the humane sympathies of Shakspeare, so there was 
 no kind of animal existence which was too low to en- 
 gage the sympathies of Agassiz. And the most evil 
 members of the animal kingdom had no malignant 
 feeling toward him ; indeed, they cheerfully consented 
 to let him kill them, knowing that by such a submis- 
 sion to his will they were practically elected as repre- 
 sentatives of their species in the grand legislative 
 assembly of the Animal Kingdom gathered in the 
 great hall of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 
 under the literal " Speakership " of Agassiz ; that is, 
 under the man who was alone capable of being the 
 interpreter of their language, so that its signs could
 
 104 RECOLLECTIONS OE AGASSIZ. 
 
 be clearly understood by the human race, from which 
 they were divided by peculiarities of organization and 
 of soul. One can almost conceive of these martyrs of 
 the animal kingdom as rejoicing while enduring the 
 death which insured to the species to which they be- 
 longed an intelligent recognition of their merits from 
 the members of the superior race, to whom they were 
 thus introduced through his friendly agency. When- 
 ever I look at them, preserved so carefully in their 
 glass jars filled with alcohol, I for one am delighted 
 to find them in such excellent spirits ! 
 
 But Agassiz was not merely an accurate scientific 
 observer in the realm of zoology ; he was a powerful 
 scientific thinker, and from his youth was intensely 
 interested in the great question of classification. He 
 studied all the various systems of classification with 
 intense interest, and came to the conclusion that the 
 divisions of the animal kingdom according to type, 
 class, order, family, genus, and species were not 
 devices of the human understanding to classify its 
 knowledge, but corresponded to ideas in the Divine 
 Mind in His plan of creation ; and that this arrange- 
 ment in Nature was gradually discovered by science, 
 not invented by it. He naturally desired to confer 
 with the champions of all systems ; and in his early 
 manhood, after mastering the theory of Cuvier, he 
 hastened to Germany to consult with Oken, the tran- 
 scendentalist in zoological classification. " After I 
 had delivered to him my letter of introduction," he 
 once said to me, " Oken asked me to dine with him,
 
 KJECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 105 
 
 and you may suppose with what joy I accepted the 
 invitation. The dinner consisted only of potatoes, 
 boiled and roasted ; but it was the best dinner I ever 
 ate, for there was Oken. He unfolded to me, during 
 the hours of a long afternoon, the principles of his 
 system more completely than I could have obtained 
 them from his books. There never was such a feast ! 
 never before were such potatoes grown on this planet ! 
 for the mind of the man seemed to enter into what 
 we ate sociably together, and I devoured his intellect 
 while munching his potatoes. I repeat it 1 never 
 ate such a dinner before or since." 
 
 In connection with his studies on the true method 
 of classifying animals, Agassiz was passionately inter- 
 ested in their geographical distribution. " If I live," 
 he once exclaimed, " I hope to be able to write a good 
 book on that subject. It is of immense importance, 
 having vital relations to other branches of investiga- 
 tion now pursued by some of the best minds of our 
 time. My convictions are almost settled on this 
 matter. I think that the area over which animals 
 roam is determined by their constitution and habits. 
 Indeed, I am almost willing to assert that when God 
 gave them legs He made the gift under the inexorable 
 condition that they should never run away." 
 
 The theories of Agassiz, as a thinker, are now the 
 subject of vehement controversy among men of sci- 
 ence. It is, however, my general impression that the 
 facts necessary to place the Darwinian theory on the 
 solid foundation of a law of Nature are yet un disco v-
 
 106 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 ered ; and it was this absence of facts to confirm the 
 most captivating of theories which impelled Agassiz 
 to his passionate opposition, his " noble rage," when- 
 ever the theory was mentioned. Indeed, that theory 
 was the hSte noire of his later scientific life. It 
 diverted him from his own selected paths of investi- 
 gation into the turmoil of controversy, so that his 
 scientific debates were carried on at the expense of 
 limiting his scientific discoveries. He was conscious 
 of it himself, for the last of his published essays 
 records his belief that science suffers by every diver- 
 sion of the energies of scientists which tends to 
 substitute premature theorizing for continuous inves- 
 tigating. But in all his contests he never undervalued 
 the positive contributions that any of his opponents 
 had made to zoology ; and his admiration of Darwin 
 was always warmly expressed, checked only by dis- 
 agreement with him on theoretical grounds. Owen 
 was another eminent Englishman whose fame he ex- 
 tended in the United States by enthusiastically point- 
 ing out to all questioners the grounds of his admiration 
 of that great zoologist ; and when Owen was up for 
 exposition or discussion, it was only by some side re- 
 mark that his auditors learned that Owen and Agassiz 
 were antagonists on certain disputed questions. He 
 loved his scientific enemies as few Christians have 
 grace enough to love their personal enemies ; but he 
 always demanded that they should be men who were 
 practical investigators of the facts of zoology. For 
 amateurs who took the facts at second hand, and
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 107 
 
 built up ingenious systems by combining the discov- 
 eries of many specialists in science, he had an almost 
 irrational indifference. I once asked him what he 
 thought of an attack on his scientific position made 
 by an accomplished scholar and thinker, who had 
 mastered the different theories put forth by the ac- 
 knowledged representatives of his science, and had 
 decided that Agassiz must be ranked in the second or 
 third class. He burst into a roar of laughter, treating 
 what I considered a serious attack as a great joke. 
 " Why, just think of it," he exclaimed ; " he under- 
 takes to fix my place among zoologists, and he is not 
 himself a zoologist ! " He wondered that I did not 
 join in the laugh at what he deemed the funniest 
 literary incident that had recently occurred. " And," 
 he added, " don't you know that he has never been an 
 observer ? " 
 
 The meaning of " observation," in his mind, differed 
 strangely from the common use of the word. With 
 him it meant tlie strenuous exertion of all the facul- 
 ties behind the eye, as well as the assiduous training 
 of the eye itself. After he had been some fifteen 
 years in this country, I asked him what he thought 
 was the best result here of his efforts as a teacher of 
 science, and he answered : " I have educated five ob- 
 servers. One of them, to be sure, has turned out to 
 be my deadliest personal enemy ; but I still affirm that 
 he 5s a good observer, and that is the best compliment 
 I could pay him were he my dearest friend." 
 
 At the time that " spiritualism " was most popular
 
 108 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 in New England the men of science were adjured by 
 intelligent ladies and gentlemen who thought they 
 could believe the testimony of their eyes, and who 
 thus considered themselves to be " observers," to in- 
 vestigate the phenomena. Agassiz was among the 
 foremost of the scientists who stepped forward in an- 
 swer to this appeal ; but he and his associates could 
 not force the spiritualists to comply with any of the 
 conditions under which scientists observe. They 
 were constantly taunted for not investigating the 
 wonders which they were constantly prevented by the 
 wonder-workers themselves from investigating accord- 
 ing to the accredited methods of science. Agassiz 
 during this controversy happened to meet Home, the 
 chief magician of the sect, in a railway car. " It is 
 sad, Mr. Agassiz," said Home, " that the prejudices of 
 you men of science interpose to prevent the advance- 
 ment of science, owing to the fact that you refuse to 
 investigate the phenomena which are nightly presented 
 to all unprejudiced observers." " Mr. Home," was the 
 reply, " I never refuse to investigate anything which 
 promises to advance science ; and nothing will give 
 me more delight than to investigate the marvels 
 which occur, as you say, at your meetings." " Well, 
 then," replied Home, " come this very night and wit- 
 ness the appearance of the spirit hand." " Nothing 
 will give me more pleasure," answered Agassiz, " than 
 to be one of the selected guests around the table where 
 the spirit hand appears. My opinion is that it is a 
 physical hand, with a little phosphorus rubbed over it ;
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 109 
 
 but I am open to conviction. I am a little skilled in 
 the use of weapons, and all I ask is that I shall have 
 the privilege of putting my stiletto through it. If the 
 hand is a spirit hand, no harm will occur ; if it is a 
 human hand, I feel confident in my power to transfix 
 it on the table, much to the discomfort of its posses- 
 sor." Home declined the test. Such a want of faith, 
 he said, would necessarily prevent the spirit hand 
 from appearing. And, indeed, all means of investiga- 
 tion which Agassiz suggested were dismissed as not 
 calculated to induce the spirits to communicate with 
 any company of which he was a member. 
 
 The geniality of the nature of Agassiz compre- 
 hended, as I have said, all mankind, and all the 
 branches of the animal kingdom. His sympathies, in 
 the full meaning of Wordsworth's lines 
 
 " Aloft ascending and descending down, 
 Even to inferior kinds," 
 
 were universal ; but added to this was a personal 
 affectionateness to his mother, his wife, his children, 
 and his particular friends which it was beautiful to 
 witness. His fiftieth birthday was celebrated by the 
 Saturday Club with a special dinner ; and notable 
 poems were read on the occasion by such friends as 
 Lowell, Holmes, and Longfellow. Longfellow's verses 
 are too familiar to be quoted in full, but every reader 
 will remember that they represent Nature as taking 
 the boy by the hand, and leading him irresistibly on 
 to his true vocation of discovering her secrets, which 
 she gladly unfolded to the favorite she had chosen.
 
 110 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 There were toil and struggle in the pursuit, but she 
 still lured him on to his object, and 
 
 " Whenever the way seemed long, 
 And his heart began to fail, 
 She would sing a more wonderful song, 
 Or tell a more marvellous tale." 
 
 And at last came the crowning stanza, where the 
 natural mother mourns over the seductions of the 
 great mother, that have drawn her beloved son from 
 the fireside where she wished to keep him : 
 
 " And the mother at home says, ' Hark I 
 For his Voice I listen and yearn ; 
 It is growing late and dark. 
 And my boy does not return.' " 
 
 I sat near Agassiz at the table, and watched the effect 
 of the poem as read in the quiet, subdued tones of 
 Longfellow's voice. His head was bent modestly 
 down, with a musing smile on his lips, as he recalled 
 the scenes of his childhood and youth ; but when 
 came the allusion to his mother, it was curious to 
 note the effect of natural emotion on a vigorous 
 nature which had intrepidly and even gayly faced 
 death in every form without the least fear of it. 
 The ruddy face palpably reddened still more with 
 restrained feeling ; in a second or two the tears 
 gathered in the bright eyes, and as the last line was 
 uttered they dropped slowly down his cheeks, one 
 after another, with that slight gasp of suppressed 
 emotion in the throat which it is almost terrible to 
 witness in a strong man. The silence that ensued
 
 EECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. Ill 
 
 could not have been more than half a minute, but it 
 seemed to us who were present to endure an hour. 
 Longfellow himself could not have dreamed of pro- 
 ducing such an effect, for his tone of voice in the last 
 verse was almost monotonous. But Agassiz recovered 
 his equanimity as by magic, lifted his great head from 
 its recumbent posture, and, with eyes still glistening, 
 bowed and smiled his acknowledgments to the poet 
 with exquisite grace and good-fellowship. The ordi- 
 nary course of conversation at a festive dinner then 
 ran fluently on. It was the first time that I had seen 
 a great, brave, strong man shed tears, and I am not 
 ambitious of ever seeing it again. It was inexpres- 
 sibly affecting and inexpressibly painful. 
 
 It may be well to add that " Louis " was the favor- 
 ite son of Madame Agassiz. She was the wife of a 
 Protestant clergyman ; and Professor Silliman, who 
 visited her in 1851, tells us that although nearly four- 
 score, "her healthful person was erect, tall, and dig- 
 nified, while her animated and warm address placed 
 us instantly at ease." As soon as Professor Silliman 
 told her that he was the friend of her son, that his 
 adopted country welcomed him among its most pre- 
 cious possessions, " her strong frame was agitated, 
 her voice trembled with emotion, and the flowing tears 
 told the story of a mother's heart not yet chilled by 
 age. . . . The next morning she came, walking alone 
 a long distance in the rain, to bid us farewell, and 
 parted from us, evidently with deep emotion, and not 
 concealed, for we had brought the vision of her favor-
 
 112 RECOLLECTIONS OE AGASSIZ. 
 
 ite son near to her mental sight again. She brought 
 for Mrs. Silliman a little bouquet of pansies, and bade 
 us tell her son her pensees were all for him." Such 
 a mother ! In reading but a few days ago these 
 passages from the journal of the venerable Professor 
 Silliman, I detected the cause of the unwonted out- 
 break of sensibility which marked the celebration of 
 the fiftieth birthday of Agassiz. 
 
 Agassiz, when he first visited the United States, 
 had no intention of making here his permanent home ; 
 but he ended in becoming a passionate patriot of his 
 adopted country ; and his love for it, his delight in it, 
 and his determination to remain in it were expressed 
 in terms which might almost have satisfied the re^ 
 quirements of Mr. Jefferson Brick. The warm recog- 
 nition he met from his scientific brethren must have 
 been very gratifying ; but he also found that he soon 
 became a favorite with every kind and variety of our 
 people, scholars, merchants, manufacturers, me- 
 chanics, and farmers, and that he could not appear 
 before any audience without receiving the most flatter- 
 ing testimonials of regard as well as of respect. The 
 hearts, the minds, the purses of the people were open 
 to him. He often remarked to me, as he doubtless 
 remarked to thousands of others, that he had never 
 known such a population as ours. In Europe, if you 
 desired to advance science, you had a hard task in 
 getting money from kings and nobles ; but here, he 
 said, tlie democracy seemed more liberal than kings 
 and nobles. He never ceased to be amazed at the
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 113 
 
 amount of money he obtained from our citizens and 
 legislators in aid of his scientific schemes, and at the 
 short space of time that was consumed in obtaining it. 
 His surprise at first resembled that of Jenny Lind 
 when she faced the immense audience that attended 
 her opening concert, the price of admission being 
 ten dollars. " Where," she asked Barnum, " does 
 de peoples gets all de money ? " The recognition of 
 Agassiz was not confined to the cultured or the mon- 
 eyed classes. In his scientific explorations in various 
 parts of the country he found that when he desired 
 aid to unearth some curious object he had discovered, 
 a few minutes' talk with farm-laborers or miners near 
 by would send them after him to the spot where they 
 were to use their shovels and pickaxes in his unpaid 
 service. His fame was so diffused that no queer 
 living thing was caught in wood or river, no strange 
 rock unearthed in opening the track for a new rail- 
 road, that was not sent to him as the one man in the 
 country that could explain it. His magnetic power 
 when he was himself in the field of observation resem- 
 bled that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, drawing all 
 living creatures after him to the sound of his alluring 
 music. He made everybody interested in natural 
 history who came within his sphere. To all general 
 statements there are, of course, exceptions ; and the 
 exception in the case of Agassiz was, as may easily 
 be guessed, that of a hard-headed Yankee stage-driver 
 among the New Hampshire hills. On one occasion 
 while journeying through the White Mountain region 
 
 8
 
 114 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 he and his scientific companion, seated on the top of 
 the stage, irritated the driver by repeatedly calling 
 upon him to stop when they noticed anything botan- 
 ically fascinating on the road, and jumping down from 
 their seats in order to obtain it. Professor Felton, 
 who was with them, kept his seat during the whole 
 ride, and told the driver in explanation of their con- 
 duct that they were naturalists. On the next day, 
 when the coachman had another load of passengers, 
 he narrated to those near him on the box the strange 
 freaks of his yesterday's companions. " Their keeper," 
 he added, " called them naterals ; and certainly they 
 behaved as sich." 
 
 Agassiz came at last, as I have said, to love our 
 country so dearly that no inducements were strong 
 enough to tempt him to leave it. He showed to me, 
 shortly after the correspondence was closed, the series 
 of letters which passed between him and the minis- 
 ter of Xapoleon III. The Emperor offered him the 
 post of director of the Jardin des Plantes, with a seat, 
 I think, in the Senate. The position was one which 
 a scientific man of the highest rank might well covet, 
 and the emoluments of the office, with that of the other 
 office associated with it, were quite large. His ac- 
 ceptance of the offer would have given him at Paris 
 a rank equal to that which Cuvier occupied in his 
 time. He respectfully declined it, on the ground that 
 he was then engaged in original researches in the 
 United States which promised to be very fruitful in 
 zoological discovery, and which would take him some
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 115 
 
 years to complete. He considered that the corre- 
 spondence was closed ; but he was surprised by re- 
 ceiving another letter from the minister, renewing the 
 offer, and informing him that the high office would 
 be kept open for him until his American researches 
 were completed. Agassiz justly thought that this was 
 the greatest compliment ever paid to him ; but his 
 determination to live and die in his adopted country 
 was fixed, and his letter indicating this determination 
 closed the correspondence. I preserve but a vague 
 memory of the letters ; they will probably be pub- 
 lished in the forthcoming biography of Agassiz by the 
 accomplished and high-souled woman, the companion 
 of his scientific journeys, the partner of his thoughts, 
 troubles, anxieties, triumphs, and aspirations, who 
 was at once the wife of his mind and of his heart. 
 The simplicity, the earnestness, the depth of his affec- 
 tions were never so clearly indicated to his friends as 
 in the slightest reference he made to her. Such mar- 
 riages are surely made in heaven before they are after- 
 ward consummated on earth ! 
 
 Another bond which held him to the United States 
 was his high esteem for our American men of science. 
 He felt they were not properly appreciated abroad, 
 especially in England. He hoped to live to the time 
 when this country would be recognized as one of the 
 centres of science, and not as a mere scientific colony 
 of Germany, France, and Great Britain ; when the 
 judgments of our scientific associations and journals 
 would confer or confirm reputations all over the world ;
 
 116 KECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 
 
 and when none of our scientists would value, as some 
 of them now do, a slight recognition in foreign jour- 
 nals of science more than the warmest appreciation 
 from American organs of scientific opinion. On the 
 latter point he was wont to indulge in delightful out- 
 bursts of noble rage. " Don't you see," he exclaimed, 
 " that every American man of science who is elated 
 by foreign recognition, and makes it a mark of honor 
 distinguishing him from his brethren here, stamps 
 himself as a provincial as much as a Canadian or New 
 Brunswick politician does when he is unduly excited 
 by a favorable notice from the government at Lon- 
 don ? Do you suppose that men like Bache or Henry 
 or Peirce or Wyman, or a dozen others, care what is 
 said of them abroad ? They stand on what they are 
 and on what they have done and are doing ; and they 
 know that everything they really do to advance sci- 
 ence passes inevitably into the current of scientific 
 thought, and must be respected, whatever Edinburgh 
 or London or Paris or Berlin may say. They are 
 metropolitans, not provincials ; and I hate to see an 
 American of scientific genius show himself a provin- 
 cial in spirit, when his genius might easily place him 
 among the metropolitans, and force foreigners as 
 far as in science any man can be a foreigner to 
 frankly acknowledge his equality with the best of 
 them. You can easily make this country a centre of 
 scientific intelligence if you discard the foolish notion 
 that your true judges are not in your own country but 
 in Europe. Respect yourselves, and they will soon
 
 KECOLLECTIONS OF AGASSIZ. 117 
 
 come to respect you. Be indifferent to what they 
 say, if you desire them to say pleasant things of you." 
 Indeed, Agassiz spoke on this matter as we have heard 
 some self-respecting men of letters speak of the ab- 
 jectness of spirit whicli leads many of our authors to 
 value a bit of condescending praise awarded to them 
 by some obscure critic in an English magazine or 
 review as of more worth than the most careful, cor- 
 dial, and intelligent judgment passed upon them by 
 an American organ of literary opinion. 
 
 Indeed, few native-born Americans accepted more 
 thoroughly than did Agassiz the ideas and sentiments 
 on which our institutions are founded. He had a 
 boundless confidence in the intellectual as well as 
 the material future of the country. As he was him- 
 self brought into cordial relations with every class 
 of our society, and was liked and aided by all classes, 
 he considered that pure science (which he specially 
 represented) would always have its claims recognized 
 by our democracy, if men of science followed his exam- 
 ple in coming into close contact with the minds and 
 hearts of the people. He had immense confidence 
 in education ; but then he desired that educators 
 should be persons capable not merely of communi- 
 cating knowledge, but of communicating the sacred 
 thirst for knowledge. In his will he described him- 
 self as " Louis Agassiz, Teacher T Every schoolmaster 
 and schoolmistress in the land must have felt an un- 
 wonted, ennobling thrill in reading that announcement, 
 for it gave to his or her work a dignity which could
 
 118 RECOLLECTIONS OE AGASSIZ. 
 
 not be denied, after one of the foremost minds of the 
 age had adopted "teacher" as his peculiar distinction. 
 Indeed, Agassiz always insisted that something resem- 
 bling miracles might be wrought in re-forming the 
 people through zw-forming them, if teachers could be 
 inspired with the grandeur of the task imposed upon 
 them; and his hope for the future of the country 
 rested on his firm belief that it would produce teachers 
 competent to grapple with ignorance and vice, and 
 to educate the democracy whose will, enlightened by 
 knowledge, was to determine the fate of the land. 
 He thought the profession of the teacher the noblest 
 of all professions ; and he extended the office of 
 teachers so as to include all good and great minds 
 engaged in disseminating knowledge or in increasing 
 it. He himself gloried in the title of " schoolmaster," 
 and preferred it to that of " professor ; " no school- 
 master or schoolmistress ever conversed with him ten 
 minutes without gaining new inspiration, as well as 
 new information, by contact with that compr.ehen- 
 sive mind and opulent soul ; and there is no danger 
 that our young democracy will grow up to manhood 
 unfitted to perform their duties and vindicate their 
 rights, provided the spirit of Agassiz animates their 
 teachers.
 
 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OP RALPH 
 
 WALDO emerson: 
 
 It is impossible for those who knew Emerson only 
 through his writings to understand the peculiar love 
 and veneration felt for him by those who knew him 
 personally. Only by intercourse with him could the 
 singular force, sweetness, elevation, originality, and 
 comprehensiveness of his nature be fully appreciated ; 
 and the friend or acquaintance, however he might 
 differ from him in opinion, felt the peculiar fascina- 
 tion of his character, and revolved around this solar 
 mind in obedience to the law of spiritual gravitation, 
 the spiritual law operating, like the natural law, 
 directly as the mass, and inversely as the square of 
 the distance. The friends nearest to him loved and 
 honored him most; but those who only met him 
 occasionally felt the attraction of his spiritual power, 
 and could not mention him without a tribute of re- 
 spect. There probably never was another man of 
 the first class, with a general system of thought at 
 variance with accredited opinions, who exercised so 
 much gentle, persuasive power over the minds of his 
 opponents. By declining all temptations to contro- 
 versy he never raised the ferocious spirit which con-
 
 120 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 troversy engenders; he went on, year after year, in 
 affirming certain spiritual facts which had been re- 
 vealed to him when his soul was on the heights of 
 spiritual contemplation ; and if he differed from 
 other minds, he thought it ridiculous to attempt to 
 convert them to his individual insight and experi- 
 ence by arguments against their individual insights 
 and their individual experiences. To his readers in 
 the closet and his hearers on the lecture platform 
 he poured lavishly out from his intellectual treasury 
 from the seemingly exhaustless Fortunatus' purse 
 in his mind the silver and gold, the pearls, rubies, 
 amethysts, opals, and diamonds of thought. If his 
 readers and his audiences chose to pick them up, they 
 were welcome to them ; but if they conceived he was 
 deceiving them with sham jewelry, he would not con- 
 descend to explain the laborious processes in the 
 mines of meditation by which he had brought the hid- 
 den treasures to light. I never shall forget his curt 
 answer to a superficial auditor of one of his lectures. 
 The critic was the intellectual busybody of the place, 
 dipping into everything, knowing nothing, but con- 
 triving by his immense loquacity to lead the opinion 
 of the town. " Now, Mr. Emerson," he said, " I ap- 
 preciated much of your lecture, but I should like to 
 speak to you of certain things in it which did not 
 command my assent and approbation." Emerson 
 turned to him, gave him one of his piercing looks, 
 
 and replied, " Mr. , if anj-thing I have spoken 
 
 this evening met your mood, it is well ; if it did not.
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 121 
 
 I must tell you that I never argue on these high 
 questions ; " and as he thus somewhat haughtily es- 
 caped from his would-be querist, he cared little that 
 this gossip and chatterer about philosophy and reli- 
 gion would exert all his influence to prevent Emerson 
 from ever lecturing again in that town. 
 
 Indeed, everybody who intimately knew this seer 
 and thinker had the good sense never to intrude into 
 the inward sanctities and privacies of his individual 
 meditations, and vulgarly ask questions as to the 
 doubts and conflicts he had encountered in that utter 
 loneliness of thought where his individual soul, in 
 direct contact as he supposed with the " Oversoul," 
 was trying to solve problems of existence which per- 
 plex all thoughtful minds. He would do nothing 
 more than make affirmations regarding the deep 
 things of the spirit, which were to be accepted or 
 rejected as they happened to strike or miss the point 
 of inlet into the other intellects he addressed. 
 
 This austere reticence was consistent with the 
 most perfect sincerity. Indeed, Emerson preached 
 sincerity as among the first of virtues. He never 
 hesitated to tell the poets, prose writers, reformers, 
 "fanatics," who were his friends and acquaintances, 
 exactly what he thought of them ; and there was 
 never a doubt of his mental and moral honesty in 
 their reception of his criticism. He could afford to 
 be sincere, for everybody felt that there was no taint 
 of envy, jealousy, or malice in his nature. When he 
 frankly told such men as Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes,
 
 122 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 and Whittier that in a particular poem they did not 
 come up to his high ideal of what a poet should be 
 and do, they assented to the criticism, and never 
 dreamed that his judgment was influenced by the 
 failure of his own poetry to attract that public at- 
 tention which was righteously due to its vital excel 
 lence ; for they all cordially agreed in thinking that 
 he was the greatest poet the country had produced. 
 There is not a solitary instance of his hesitating, 
 kindly disapprobation of a writer who ranked among 
 his associates which did not make the writer grate- 
 ful to Emerson for his criticism, and which did not 
 make him sensible that nothing base or mean could 
 have prompted it. So it was with the ardent re- 
 formers. Garrison and Phillips, not to mention 
 others, instinctively felt that Emerson was a man 
 not to be assailed when he differed from them in 
 their method of applying to affairs the moral sen- 
 timent of which Emerson was the most eloquent 
 and authoritative spokesman : not, indeed, a voice 
 crying in the wilderness, but a voice which seemed 
 to utter eternal decrees, coming from the serene 
 communion of the speaker with the very source of 
 moral law. 
 
 The native elevation of Emerson's mind and the 
 general loftiness of his thinking have sometimes 
 blinded his admirers to the fact that he was one of 
 the shrewdest of practical observers, and was capa- 
 ble of meeting so-called practical men on the level 
 of the facts and principles which they relied upon
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 123 
 
 for success in life. When I first had the happiness 
 to make his acquaintance I was a clerk in a banking- 
 house. I have a faint memory of having written in 
 a penny paper a notice of his first volume of Essays 
 which differed altogether from the notices that ap- 
 peared in business journals of a higher rank and 
 price. The first thing that struck me was the 
 quaint, keen, homely good-sense which was one of 
 the marked characteristics of the volume ; and I 
 contrasted the coolness of this transcendentalist, 
 whenever he discussed matters relating to the con- 
 duct of life, with the fury of delusion under which 
 merchants of established reputation seemed some- 
 times to be laboring in their mad attempts to resist 
 the operation of the natural laws of trade. They, I 
 thought, were the transcendentalists, the subjective 
 poets, the Ronsseaus and Byrons of business, who 
 in their greed were fiercely " accommodating the 
 shows of things to the desires of the mind," without 
 any practical insight of principles or foresight of con- 
 sequences. Nothing more amazed me, when I was a 
 clerk, recording transactions in which I incurred no 
 personal responsibility, than the fanaticism of capital- 
 ists in venturing their money in wild speculations. 
 The willingness to buy waste and worthless Eastern 
 lands ; the madness of the men who sunk their mil- 
 lions in certain railroads ; and the manias which 
 occasionally seize upon and passionately possess busi- 
 ness men, surpassing in folly those fine frenzies of 
 the imagination which are considered to lead to
 
 124 SOME KECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 absurdities belonging to poets alone, all these facts 
 early impressed me with the conviction that a tran- 
 scendentalist of the type of Emerson was as good 
 a judge of investments on earth as he was of invest- 
 ments in the heavens above the earth. 
 
 As far as my memory serves me at this time, I 
 think to me, in my youthful presumption, belongs 
 the dubious honor or dishonor of calling liim our 
 " Greek- Yankee, a cross between Plato and Jona- 
 than Slick." I am less certain as to the other state- 
 ment, that he was " a Hindoo-Yankee, a cross be- 
 tween Brahma and Poor Richard ; " and there are 
 so many competitors for the distinction of originat- 
 ing these epigrammatic impertinences that I should 
 no more dare to present my claims to priority in 
 inventing them than to re-open the controversy re- 
 specting the authorship of " Beautiful Snow," or 
 " Rock me to sleep, Mother." But I always won- 
 dered that the Franklin side of his opulent and genial 
 nature did not draw to him a host of readers who 
 might be repelled by the dazzling though puzzling 
 sentences in which his ideal philosophy found expres- 
 sion. It is to be supposed that such persons refused 
 to read him because they distrusted his constant 
 tendency to combine beauty with use. The sense 
 of beauty, indeed, was so vital an element in the 
 very constitution of his being that it decorated every- 
 thing it touched. He was a thorough artist, while 
 inculcating maxims of thrift far beyond those of 
 Poor Richard. His beautiful genius could not be
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 125 
 
 suppressed even when he discoursed of the ugliest 
 sides of a farmer's life ; he shed an ideal light over 
 pots and cans, over manure-heaps and cattle-raising ; 
 and when he announced that maxim of celestial 
 prudence, " Hitch your wagon to a star," the tran- 
 scendcntalist was discovered peeping through the 
 economist, and it became hard to believe that he was 
 in ordinary affairs a really practical man. He should 
 have stuck, the economists said, to the wagon, and 
 left out the star ; though the introduction of the star 
 was really the most practical thing in his quaint 
 statement of the vital dependence of individual thrift 
 on directing and all-embracing law. 
 
 The raciest testimony that ever came within my 
 knowledge as to the soundness of Emerson in prac- 
 tical matters was delivered by a sturdy, stalwart 
 Vermonter in a car on the Fitchburg Railroad. My 
 journey was to be a tedious one of three hundred 
 miles, and when I took my seat in the car I felt 
 that my fellow-passengers would give me no such 
 glimpses into their characters as would be afforded 
 by a ride of ten miles in a stage-coach. In a railroad 
 car the passengers are gloomily reticent, as if they 
 expected to be launched into eternity at any moment ; 
 in a stage they indulge in all the fury of gossip, and 
 reveal themselves while praising or censuring others. 
 There were two persons in front of me, mighty in 
 bulk, but apparently too much absorbed in their own 
 reflections to speak to each other. The train, as 
 usual, stopped at Concord. Then one of the giants
 
 126 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 turned to the other, and lazily remarked, " Mr. 
 Emerson, I hear, lives in this town." 
 
 " Ya-as," was the drawling rejoinder ; " and I under- 
 stand that, in spite of his odd notions, he is a man of 
 con-sid-er-able propity." 
 
 This apposite judgment was made when Emerson's 
 Essays had been translated into most of the languages 
 of Europe, and when the recognition of his genius was 
 even more cordial abroad than it was among his few 
 thousands of appreciative admirers at home ; but the 
 shrewd Yankee who uttered it was more impressed 
 by his thrift than by his thinking. He belonged to 
 the respectable race of c?escendentalists, and was evi- 
 dently puzzled to understand how a trawscendentalist 
 could acquire " propity." 
 
 On one occasion, in my early acquaintance with 
 Emerson, I was hastily summoned to lecture at a 
 country town some five miles from Boston, because 
 Emerson, who had been expected to occupy the desk, 
 had not signified his acceptance of the invitation. 
 He either had neglected to answer the letter of the 
 committee, or his own note in reply had miscarried. 
 About ten minutes before the lecture was to begin, 
 Emerson appeared. Of course I insisted on having 
 the privilege of listening to him, rather than compel 
 the audience to listen to me. He generously declared 
 that as the mistake seemed to have arisen from his 
 own neglect, I had the right to the platform. When 
 I solemnly assured him that no lecture would be heard 
 that, evening in that town unless he delivered it, he,
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 127 
 
 still somewhat protesting, unrolled his manuscript, 
 and took his place at the desk. The lecture, though 
 perhaps not one of his best lyceum discourses, was 
 better than the best of any other living lecturer. 
 When it was over, he invited me to take a seat in the 
 chaise which had brought him from Boston. I gladly 
 accepted. The horse was, fortunately for me, one of 
 the slowest beasts that ever had the assurance to 
 pretend to convey two persons faster by carriage, 
 from one point to another, than an ordinary pedestrian 
 could accomplish in a meditative walk. The pace 
 was, I think, about two miles an hour. As soon as 
 we got into the chaise, I began to speak of the lecture, 
 and referring to what he had said of the Puritans, I 
 incidentally alluded to the peculiar felicity of his use 
 of the word " grim," and added that I noticed it was a 
 favorite word with him in his published Essays. " Do 
 you say," he eagerly responded, " that I use the word 
 often ? " " Yes," I replied, " but never without its 
 being applicable to the class of persons you are char- 
 acterizing." He reflected a minute or two, and then 
 said, as if he had experienced a pang of intellectual 
 remorse, " The word is probably passing with me into 
 a mannerism, and I must hereafter guard against it, 
 must banish it from my dictionary." 
 
 By this time we had passed out of the town into 
 the long country road which led to Boston. Emerson 
 was in his happiest mood. He entered into a peculiar 
 kind of conversation with his young companion, in 
 which reverie occasionally emerged into soliloquy.
 
 128 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 and then again became a real talk between the two, 
 though ever liable to subside into reverie and solilo- 
 quy if his interlocutor had tact enough to restrain his 
 own tendency to self-expression. I shall never for- 
 get that evening. The moon was nearly at its full, 
 undisturbed by a cloud, and the magical moonlight 
 flooded the landscape and skyscape with its soft, 
 gentle, serene, mystical radiance, making strangely 
 unreal all things that seem so substantial when 
 viewed in the " insolent," revealing glare of the sun. 
 Astronomers tell us that the moon is a dead body, all 
 its central fires burned out, and swinging in space as 
 a lifeless mass of matter, good for nothing except to 
 give us light for about half the nights of every month 
 in the year, or to illustrate the operation of the law 
 of gravitation ; but of all the lights in the solar or 
 stellar system it is pre-eminently the idealist and 
 transcendentalist of the tenants of the sky ; and I 
 never felt its mystical charm more profoundly than 
 on this ride of two hours with Emerson. The lazy 
 horse seemed to be indulging in the luxury of his own 
 reflections, and was only kept from stopping altogether 
 and setting up as a philosopher on his own account, 
 renouncing his ignominious bondage to harness and 
 bridle, by the occasional idle flap of Emerson's whip 
 on his hide, a stimulant to exertion which was so 
 light that I thought its full force could not have 
 broken the backbone of an ordinary fly. So we 
 " tooled on." The conversation at last drifted to 
 contemporary actors who assumed to personate lead-
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 129 
 
 ing characters in Shakspeare's greatest plays. Had 
 I ever seen an actor who satisfied me when he pre- 
 tended to bo Hamlet or Othello, Lear or Macbeth ? 
 Yes, I had seen the elder Booth in these characters. 
 Though not perfect, he approached nearer to perfec- 
 tion than any other actor 1 knew. Nobody, of course, 
 could really satisfy a student of Shakspeare. Still, I 
 thought that the elder Booth had a realizing imagi- 
 nation ; that he conceived the nature of the person he 
 embodied in its essential individual qualities ; that so 
 firm and true was his imaginative grasp of a character 
 that he preserved the unity of one of Shakspeare's 
 complex natures while giving all the varieties of its 
 manifestation. Macready might be the more popular 
 actor of the two, at least in all " refined " circles ; 
 but the trouble with Macready was, that while he was 
 gifted with a good understanding he was strangely defi- 
 cient in impassioned imagination, and that he accord- 
 ingly, by a logical process, inferred the character he 
 wished to impersonate by a patient study of Shak- 
 speare's text, and then played the inference. 
 
 "Ah," said Emerson, giving a tender touch of his 
 whip to the indolent horse, an animal which, during 
 the three minutes I consumed in eulogizing Booth, 
 showed a natural disposition to go to sleep, "I see 
 you are one of the happy mortals who are capable of 
 being carried away by an actor of Shakspeare. Now, 
 whenever I visit the theatre to witness the perform- 
 ance of one of his dramas, I am carried away by 
 the poet. I went last Tuesday to see Macready in
 
 130 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 ' Hamlet.' I got along very well until he came to the 
 
 passage, 
 
 * thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel* 
 Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,' 
 
 and then actor, theatre, all vanished in view of that 
 solving and dissolving imagination, which could re- 
 duce this big globe and all it inherits into mere 
 ' glimpses of the moon.' The play went on, but, 
 absorbed in this one thought of the mighty master, I 
 paid no heed to it." 
 
 What specially impressed me, as Emerson was 
 speaking, was his glance at our surroundings as he 
 slowly uttered, " glimpses of the moon ; " for here 
 above us was the same moon which must have given 
 birth to Shakspeare's thought, its soft rays of conse- 
 crating light insinuating a sceptical doubt of the real 
 existence of the world of matter, which, in the fierce 
 glow of the noontide sun, appears so imperturbably 
 conscious of a solid, incontestable reality. 
 
 Afterward, in bis lecture on Shakspeare, Emerson 
 made use of the thought suggested in our ride by 
 moonlight. He said : " That imagination which di- 
 lates the closet he writes in to the world's dimensions, 
 crowds it with agents in rank and order, as quickly 
 reduces the big reality to be the ' glimpses of the 
 moon.' " It seems to me that his expression of the 
 thought as it occurred to him when he felt the en- 
 chantment of the moonlight palpably present to his 
 eyes and imagination, is better in my version than in
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 131 
 
 the comparatively cold language in which he afterward 
 embodied it. But in the printed lecture there is one 
 sentence declaring the absolute insufficiency of any 
 actor, in any theatre, to fix attention on himself while 
 uttering Shakspeare's words, which seems to me the 
 most exquisite statement ever made of the magical 
 suggestiveness of Shakspeare's expression. I have 
 often quoted it, but it will bear quotation again and 
 again, as the best prose sentence ever written on this 
 side of the Atlantic : " The recitation begins ; one 
 golden word leaps out immortal from all this painted 
 pedantry, and sweetly torments us with invitations to 
 its oivn inaccessible homes' 
 
 Emerson's voice had a strange power, which affected 
 me more than any other voice I ever heard on the 
 stage or on the platform. It was pure thought trans- 
 lated into purely intellectual tone, the perfect music 
 of spiritual utterance. It is impossible to read his 
 verses adequately without bearing in mind his peculiar 
 accent and emphasis ; and some of the grandest and 
 most uplifting passages in his prose lose much of 
 their effect unless the reader can recall the tones 
 of his voice, a voice now, alas ! silent on earth 
 forever, but worthy of being heard in that celestial 
 company which he, " a spirit of the largest size and 
 divinest mettle," has now exchanged for his earthly 
 companions. There was nothing sensual, nothing 
 even sensuous, nothing weakly melodious, in his 
 utterance ; but his voice had the stern, keen, pene- 
 trating sweetness which made it a fit organ for his
 
 132 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 self-centred, commanding mind. Yet though peculiar 
 to himself, it had at the same time an impersonal 
 character, as though a spirit were speaking through 
 him. Thus in his lecture on Swedenborg he began 
 with a compact statement of the opinions of the 
 Swedish sage, opinions which seemed to be wide 
 enough to compel all men, pagans and Christians, to 
 assent to his dogmatic statements. The exposition 
 was becoming monotonous after the lapse of a quarter 
 of an hour. The audience supposed that he was a 
 convert to the Swedenborgian doctrines. At the con- 
 clusion of his exposition he paused for half a minute, 
 and then, in his highest, most piercing tones, he put the 
 question, " Who is Emanuel SWEDENBORG?" his 
 voice rising as he accented every syllable. The effect 
 was electric. Many persons in the audience who had 
 begun to betray a decided disposition to go to sleep 
 waked up. The lecturer then proceeded to give, in 
 short, flashing sentences a criticism of the Sweden- 
 borgian ideas, which seemed to have bored him as 
 they undoubtedly bored many of his hearers ; and 
 everybody present eagerly listened to the objections 
 which rendered it reasonable for them to recognize 
 Swedenborg as a very great representative man, with- 
 out making it necessary for them to abandon the 
 churches to which they were attaclied and swell the 
 congregations of those of the New Jerusalem. 
 
 Again, after reciting the marvels of Shakspeare's 
 genius, placing liim above all other writers, he came 
 to the consideration of the serious side of this great-
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 133 
 
 est of poets. What did he teach ? " He converted 
 the elements, which waited on his command, into en- 
 tertainments. He was master of the revels to man- 
 kind. Is it not as if one should have, through majestic 
 powers of science, the comets given into his hand, or 
 the planets and their moons, and should draw them 
 from their orbits to glare with the municipal fire- 
 works on a holiday night, and advertise in all towns, 
 * very superior pyrotechny this evening ' ? " All this 
 was delivered in an intense and penetrating yet some- 
 what subdued tone, and it is hardly possible to convey 
 by printers' ink and types the gradual rise of his voice 
 as he added : " One remembers again the trumpet text 
 in the Koran, ' The heavens and the earth, and all 
 that is between them, think ye we have created them 
 IN JEST ? ' " It is only by a typographical rise from 
 italics to capitals that the faintest indication can be 
 conveyed of the upward march of his voice as it finally 
 pealed forth in " jest." 
 
 In another lecture he had occasion to refer to what 
 Mr. Choate had called " the glittering generalities of 
 the Declaration of Independence." If a printer could 
 put it into the smallest type possible to be read by 
 the aid of the microscope, he could not fitly show the 
 scorn embodied in the first part of the sentence in 
 which Emerson replied ; nor could the same printer's 
 largest types suggest an idea of the triumphant tone, 
 shot as from a vocal ten-inch gun, in which he gave 
 the second portion of it : " Glittering generalities ! 
 rather blazing UBIQUITIES ! "
 
 134 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Emerson's generous and thorough appreciation of 
 the genius and character of Henry D. Thoreau was 
 shown in many ways and on many occasions. At my 
 first or second visit to Concord as a lecturer before 
 its Lyceum, he said to me, in the quaint, condensed 
 fashion of speech in which he always sketched an 
 original character : " You should know Thoreau. He 
 became disgusted with our monotonous civilization, 
 and went, self-banished, to our Walden woods. There 
 he lives. He built his own hut, cooks his own food, 
 refuses to pay taxes, reads -^schylus, abjures models, 
 and is a great man." From my first introduction, 
 Thoreau seemed to me a man who had experienced 
 Nature as other men are said to have experienced re- 
 ligion. An unmistakable courage, sincerity, and man- 
 liness breathed in every word he uttered, I once met 
 him and Mr. Alcott in State Street, in the busiest 
 hour of the day, while I was hurrying to a bank. 
 They had paused before a saloon to get a glimpse of 
 the crowds of merchants and brokers passing up and 
 down the street. " Ah ! " I laughingly said, after 
 shaking hands, " I see it is eleven o'clock, and you 
 are going to take a drink." Mr. Alcott, in his sweet- 
 est and most serene tones, replied for both : " No ; 
 vulgar and ordinary stimulants are not for us. But 
 if you can show us a place where we can drink Bacchus 
 himself, the soul of the inspiration of the poet and the 
 seer, we shall be your debtors forever." There is 
 hardly any biography recently published more inter- 
 esting than Mr. Sanborn's life of Thoreau ; for Mr.
 
 R.iLPH WALDO EMERSON. 135 
 
 Sanborn knew him so intimately that he gives us an 
 " interior " view of tlie remarkable person he has 
 taken for his subject. Indeed, what can be more in- 
 teresting than the spectacle of a man whose indepen- 
 dence was so rooted in his nature that he coolly set up 
 his private opinion against the average opinion of the 
 human race, and contrived so to incorporate his opin- 
 ion into his daily life that he came out in the end a 
 victor in the contest ? And in respect to the sympa- 
 thy that Nature iiad for Jiim in return for his sym- 
 pathy with her, one feels that he must have been in 
 Emerson's mind when he celebrated, in " Wood Notes," 
 his " forest seer : " 
 
 " It seemed as if the breezes brought him ; 
 It seemed as if the sparrows taught him ; 
 As if by secret sight he knew 
 "Where, in far fields, the orchis grew. 
 Many haps fall in the field 
 
 Seldom seen by wishful eyes ; 
 But all her shows did Nature yield 
 
 To please and win this pilgrim wise. 
 He saw the partridge drum in the woods ; 
 
 He heard the woodcock's evening hymn ; 
 He found the tawny thrush's brocjds ; 
 
 And the shy hawk did wait for him ! 
 What others did at distance hear, 
 
 And guessed within the thicket's gloom, 
 Was shown to this philosopher. 
 
 And at his bidding seemed to come." 
 
 Miss Fredrika Bremer, in her book recording her 
 tour in the United States, took unwarrantable liber- 
 ties in describing the households of those peraons
 
 136 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 whose hospitalities she enjoyed. Emerson was spe- 
 cially annoyed at her chatter about him and his family. 
 What vexed him most, however, was her reference to 
 Samuel Hoar, a man whom Emerson, as well as all 
 other citizens of Concord, held in distinguished honor 
 as the living embodiment of integrity, intelligence, 
 wisdom, piety, and benevolence. Emerson's well- 
 known quatrain, with the simple title " S. H.," is a 
 monument to this good and wise man's memory : 
 
 " With beams December's planets dart 
 
 His cold eye truth and conduct scanned ; 
 July was in his sunny heart, 
 October in his liberal hand." 
 
 Yet this venerable sage, whose native dignity should 
 have shielded him from the impertinence of even a 
 gossip so incorrigible as Miss Bremer, was represented 
 in that lady's book as a garrulous old gentleman, who 
 at his own table, to which she was an invited guest, 
 had made in lieu of the ordinary grace a prayer which 
 she considered so long as to be tiresome. " As if," 
 said Emerson to me, in his deepest indignant tone, 
 "as if Mr. Hoar was expected to pray for her 
 entertainment ! " 
 
 He had, from the start, a strong antipathy to " spir- 
 itism." When departed spirits, by " knockings " and 
 moving furniture, first began to inform us poor mor- 
 tals that they were still alive, alive, however, in a 
 world which appeared, on the whole, to be worse than 
 that from which death had released them, the great 
 question of immortality was considered by many pious
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 137 
 
 persons to have obtained new evidences of its truth 
 from these materialistic manifestations. Emerson's 
 fecHng was that so exquisitely expressed by Tennyson 
 
 " How pure at heart and sound in head, 
 With what divine affections bold, 
 Should be the man whose thought would hold 
 An hour's communion with the dead ! 
 
 " In vain shalt thou, or any, call 
 
 The spirits from their golden day. 
 
 Except, like them, thou too canst say, 
 * My spirit is at peace with all/ 
 
 " They haunt the silence of the breast, 
 
 Imaginations calm and fair, , 
 
 The memory like a cloudless air, 
 The conscience as a sea at rest." 
 
 Emerson's impatience when the subject came up 
 for discussion in a company of intelligent people was 
 amusing to witness. He was specially indignant at 
 the idea of women adopting spiritism as a profession, 
 and engaging to furnish all people with news of their 
 deceased friends at a shilling a head. The enormous 
 vulgarity of the whole thing impressed him painfully, 
 especially when he was told that some of his own 
 friends paid even the slightest attention to the revela- 
 tions, as he phrased it, of " those seamstresses turned 
 into sibyls, who charged a pistareen a spasm ! " 
 Brougham's well-known remark that the idea of 
 Campbell's writing his life added a new horror to 
 death, was a just anticipation of a terrible fact ; for 
 Campbell did write his life, and made a dreadful
 
 138 SOME UECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 wreck of Brougham's reputation. Happily, Emerson's 
 last days were clouded by a failure of memory, or he 
 might have mourned that his spirit would be called 
 by " mediums " from " its golden day," to furnish the 
 public with information detailing his present " gossip 
 about the celestial politics," translated from the terse 
 and beautiful language in which he was accustomed 
 to speak his thoughts on earth into the peculiar dia- 
 lect which uneducated mediums generally use in their 
 rapt communion with the spirits of such men as 
 Bacon, Milton, Webster, and Channing, spirits 
 who, as far as their style of expression and elevation 
 of thought are concerned, appear to have found their 
 immortality a curse ; spirits who have dwindled in 
 mental stature just in proportion as they have as- 
 cended into the region of incorporeal existence ; 
 spirits not made perfect, but decidedly mperfect in 
 heaven. 
 
 After his return from his second visit to England, 
 in 1847, 1 had a natural wish to learn his impressions 
 of the distinguished men he had met. His judgment 
 of Tennyson was this, that he was the most " satisfy- 
 ing " of the men of letters he had seen. He witnessed 
 one of Macaulay's brilliant feats in conversation at a 
 dinner where Hallam was one of the guests. The 
 talk was on the question whether the " additional let- 
 ters " of Oliver Cromwell, lately published by Carlyle, 
 were spurious or genuine. "For my part," said 
 Emerson, " the suspicious fact about them was this, 
 that they all seemed written to sustain Mr. Carlyle's
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 139 
 
 view of Cromwell's character; but the discussion 
 turned on the external evidences of their being for- 
 geries. Macaulay overcame everybody at the table, 
 including Hallam, by pouring out with victorious vol- 
 ubility instances of the use of words in a different 
 meaning from that they bore in Cromwell's time, or 
 by citing words which were not in use at all until half 
 a century later. A question which might have been 
 settled in a few minutes by the consent of a few men 
 of insight, opened a tiresome controversy which lasted 
 during the whole dinner. Macaulay seemed to have 
 the best of it ; still, I did not like the arrogance with 
 which he paraded his minute information. But then 
 there was a fire, speed, fury, talent, and effrontery in 
 the fellow which were very taking." When Emerson, 
 on his return, made in his " English Traits " his short, 
 contemptuous criticism on Macaulay as a writer rep- 
 resenting the material rather than the spiritual inter- 
 ests of England, it is evident that the verbal bullet 
 hit the object at which it was aimed in the white : 
 " The brilliant Macaulay, who expresses the tone of 
 the English governing classes of the day, explicitly 
 teaches that good means good to eat, good to wear, 
 material commodity ; that the glory of modern phi- 
 losophy is its direction or 'fruit,' to yield economi- 
 cal inventions, and that its merit is to avoid ideas 
 and to avoid morals. He thinks it the distinctive 
 merit of the Baconian, philosophy in its triumph over 
 the old Platonic, its disentangling the intellect from 
 theories of the all-Fair and the all-Good, and pinning
 
 140 SOME KECOLLECTIONS OE 
 
 it down to the making a better sick-chair and a better 
 wine-whey for an invalid, this not ironically, but in 
 good faith ; that ' solid advantage,' as he calls it 
 meaning always sensual benefit is the only good." 
 This criticism, though keen, is undoubtedly one-sided. 
 Macaulay felt it. In the height of his fame, in Janu- 
 ary, 1850, he writes in his diary : " Many readers give 
 credit for profundity to whatever is obscure, and call 
 all that is perspicuous shallow. But, coragio I and 
 think of A. D. 2850. Where will your Emersons be 
 then ? " Well, it may be confidently predicted they 
 will at least march abreast of the Macaulays. 
 
 In all Emerson's experience as a lecturer there 
 was only one occasion when he received that tribute 
 to a radical orator's timely eloquence which is ex- 
 pressed in hisses. The passage of the Fugitive Slave 
 Law stirred him into unwonted moral passion and 
 righteous wrath. He accepted an invitation to de- 
 liver a lecture in Cambridgeport, called for the pur- 
 pose of protesting against that infamous anomaly 
 in jurisprudence and insult to justice which had the 
 impudence to call itself a law. Those who sympa- 
 thized with him were there in force ; but a score 
 or two of foolish Harvard students came down from 
 the college to the hall where the lecture was deliv- 
 ered, determined to assert "the rights of the South," 
 and to preserve the threatened Union of the States. 
 They were the rowdiest, noisiest, most brainless set 
 of young gentlemen that ever pretended to be en- 
 gaged in studying " the humanities " at the chief
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 141 
 
 university of the country. Their only arguments 
 were hisses and groans, whenever the most illustri- 
 ous of American men of letters uttered an opinion 
 which expressed the general opinion of the civilized 
 world. If he quoted Coke, Holt, Blackstone, Mans- 
 field, they hissed all these sages of the law because 
 their judgments came from the illegal lips of Emer- 
 son. It was curious to watch him, as at each point 
 he made he paused to let the storm of hisses sub- 
 side. The noise was something he had never heard 
 before ; there was a queer, quizzical, squirrel-like or 
 bird-like expression in his eye as he calmly looked 
 round to see what strange human animals were 
 present to make such sounds ; and when he pro- 
 ceeded to utter another indisputable truth, and it 
 was responded to by another chorus of hisses, he 
 seemed absolutely to enjoy the new sensation he 
 experienced, and waited for these signs of disappro- 
 bation to stop altogether before he resumed his dis- 
 course. The experience was novel ; still there was 
 not the slightest tremor in his voice, not even a 
 trace of the passionate resentment which a speaker 
 under such circumstances and impediments usually 
 feels, and which urges him into the cheap retort 
 about serpents, but a quiet waiting for the time 
 when he should be allowed to go on with the next 
 sentence. During the whole evening he never uttered 
 a word which was not written down in the manu- 
 script from which he read. Many of us at the time 
 urged Emerson to publish the lecture. Ten or fifteen
 
 142 SOME KECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 years after, when he was selecting material for a 
 new volume of Essays, I entreated him to include in 
 it the old lecture at Cambridgeport ; but he, after 
 deliberation, refused, feeling probably that, being 
 written under the impulse of the passion of the day, 
 it was no fit and fair summary of the characters of 
 the statesmen he assailed. Of one passage in the 
 lecture I preserve a vivid remembrance. After af- 
 firming that the eternal law of righteousness, which 
 rules all created things, nullified the enactment of 
 Congress, and after citing the opinions of several 
 magnates of jurisprudence that immoral laws are 
 void and of no effect, he slowly added, in a scorch- 
 ing and biting irony of tone which no words can 
 describe, " but still a little Episcopalian clergyman 
 assured me yesterday that the Fugitive Slave Law 
 must be obeyed and enforced." After the lapse of 
 thirty years, the immense humor of bringing all 
 the forces of nature, all the principles of religion, 
 and all the decisions of jurists to bear with their 
 Atlas weight on the shoulders of one poor little 
 conceited clergyman to crush him to atoms, and he 
 in his innocence not conscious of it, makes me 
 laugh now as all the audience laughed then, the 
 belligerent Harvard students included. 
 
 Emerson's good sense was so strong that it always 
 seemed to be specially awakened in the company of 
 those who were most in sympathy with his loftiest 
 thinking. Thus when " the radical philosophers " 
 were gathered one evening at his house, the conver-
 
 RALPH WALDO EMEESON. 143 
 
 sation naturally turned on the various schemes of 
 benevolent people to reform the world. Each per- 
 son present had a panacea to cure all the distempers 
 of society. For hours the talk ran on ; and before 
 bed-thnc came, all the sin and misery of the world 
 had been apparently expelled from it, and our planet 
 was reformed and transformed into an abode of 
 human angels, and virtue and happiness were the 
 lot of each human being. Emerson listened, but 
 was sparing of speech. Probably he felt, with La- 
 mennais, that if facts did not resist thoughts, the 
 earth would in a short time become uninhabitable. 
 At any rate, he closed the sSance with the remark : 
 " A few of us old codgers meet at the fireside on a 
 pleasant evening, and in thought and hope career, 
 balloon-like, over the whole universe of matter and 
 mind, finding no resistance to our theories, because 
 we have, in the sweet delirium of our thinking, none 
 of those obstructive facts which face the practical 
 reformer the moment he takes a single forward step ; 
 then we go to bed, and the pity of it is we wake 
 up in the morning feeling that we are the same poor 
 old imbeciles we were before ! " 
 
 A transcendentalist is sometimes compelled, by 
 what Cowley calls "the low conveniencies of fate," 
 to subordinate the principles of his system of thought 
 to the practical exigency of the hour. A curious il- 
 lustration of this fact occurred, some fifteen or twenty 
 years ago, in the early days of the " Saturday Club." 
 After some preliminary skirmishing, Emerson asked
 
 144 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Agassiz to give him a short exposition of his leading 
 ideas as a naturalist in respect to what was known 
 of the genesis of things. Agassiz, in his vehement, 
 rapid way, began at the microscopic " cell," beyond 
 which no discovered instrument of investigation 
 could go, and proceeded to show the gradual ascent 
 from this " cell " to the highest forms of animal life. 
 He took about half an hour in making his condensed 
 statement, and then Emerson's turn began. " But, 
 Mr. Agassiz, I see that all your philosophy is under 
 the law of succession ; it is genealogical ; it is based 
 on the reality of time. But you must know that some 
 of us believe with Kant that time is merely a sub- 
 jective form of human thought, having no objective 
 existence." Then suddenly taking out his watch, 
 and learning that he had only fifteen minutes to get 
 to the Fitchburg Railroad in order to be in " time " 
 to catch the last train to Concord on that after- 
 noon, he took his hat, swiftly donned his overcoat, 
 and as he almost rushed from the room he assured 
 Agassiz that he would discuss the subject at some 
 other " time," when he was less pressed by his 
 engagements at home. For years afterward, when 
 the transcendentalist met the naturalist at the club, 
 I watched in vain for a recurrence of the contro- 
 versy. I do not think it was ever re-opened between 
 them. 
 
 Many of Emerson's friends and acquaintances 
 thought that his sense of humor was almost as keen as 
 his sense of Beauty and his sense of Right. I do not
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 146 
 
 remember an instance in my conversations with him, 
 when the question came up of his being not under- 
 stood, or, what is worse, misunderstood by the 
 public, that he did not treat the matter in an exqui- 
 sitely humorous way, telling the story of his defeats 
 in making himself comprehended by the audience or 
 the readers he addressed as if the misapprehensions 
 of his meaning were properly subjects of mirth, in 
 which he could heartily join. This is the test of the 
 humorist, that he can laugh with those who laugh 
 at him. For example, on one occasion I recollect 
 saying that of all his college addresses I thought the 
 best was that on " The Method of Nature," delivered 
 before the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville Col- 
 lege, Maine, August 11, 1841. He then gave me a 
 most amusing account of the circumstances under 
 which the oration was delivered. It seems that 
 after conceiving the general idea of the address, he 
 banished himself to Nantasket Beach, secluded him- 
 self for a fortnight in a room in a public house 
 the windows of which looked out on the ocean, mov- 
 ing from his chamber and writing-desk only to take 
 early morning and late evening walks on the beach ; 
 and thought, at the end, he had produced something 
 which was worthy of being listened to even by the 
 Society of the Adelphi. At that time a considerable 
 portion of the journey to Waterville had to be made 
 by stage. He arrived late in the evening, travel- 
 worn and tired out, when almost all the sober in- 
 habitants of Waterville had gone to bed. It appeared 
 
 10
 
 146 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 that there was some doubt as to the particular citi- 
 zen's house at which he was to pass the night. " The 
 stage-drivoi'," said Emerson, " stopped at one door, 
 rapped loudly ; a window was opened, something in 
 a night-gown asked what he wanted; the stage- 
 driver replied that he had inside a man who said he 
 was to deliver the lit-ra-rye oration to-morrow, and 
 thought he was to stop there ; but the night-gown 
 disappeared, with the chilling remark that he was 
 not to stay at his house. Then we went to another 
 and still another dwelling, rapped, saw similar night- 
 gowns and heard similar voices at similar raised 
 windows ; and it was only after repeated disturb- 
 ances of the peace of the place that the right house 
 was hit, where I found a hospitable reception. The 
 next day I delivered my oration, which was heard 
 with cold, silent, unresponsive attention, in which 
 there seemed to be a continuous unuttered rebuke 
 and protest. The services were closed by prayer, 
 and the good man who prayed, prayed for the ora- 
 tor, but also warned his hearers against heresies and 
 wild notions, which appeared to me of that kind for 
 which I was held responsible. The address was 
 really written in the heat and happiness of what I 
 thought a real inspiration ; but all the warmth was 
 extinguished in that lake of iced water." The con- 
 versation occurred so long ago that I do not pretend 
 to give Emerson's exact words, but this was the sub- 
 stance of his ludicrous statement of the rapture with 
 which he had written what was so frigidly received.
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 147 
 
 He seemed intensely to enjoy the fun of his material 
 discomforts and his spiritual discomfiture. 
 
 Emerson had some strange tastes and some equally 
 strange distastes in regard to poets. Usually his 
 criticism was wonderfully acute and accurate, com- 
 pressing into a few significant words what other 
 critics would fail to convey in an elaborate analysis. 
 He darted, by a combination of insight and instinct, 
 to the exact point in a poet's writings where the 
 poetry in him was best embodied and expressed; 
 and his reading of the passages which had most im- 
 pressed him excelled that of the most accomplished 
 professional elocutionist I ever listened to. But he 
 never could endure Shelley, and declared that if the 
 objections of practical men to poetry rested on such 
 poets as Shelley, he should cordially agree with them. 
 He admitted, of course, the beauty of " The Skylark " 
 and " The Cloud ; " but as an apostle of hope and 
 health and cheer, he could not pardon the note of 
 lamentation which runs through Shelley's poetry, and 
 thought that his gifts of imagination and melody, re- 
 markable as they were, w^ere no atonement for his 
 unmanly wailing and sobbing over the ills of exist- 
 ence. A poet, he said, should invigorate, not depress, 
 the soul. It was in vain to tell him that such ethereal 
 powers of imagination and sentiment as Shelley pos- 
 sessed should be considered apart from the direction 
 they happened to take, owing to the unfortunate cir- 
 cumstances of his life. No ; he would discard such 
 sick souls from his sympathy, as he would discard all
 
 148 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 sick bodies. He showed always a comical disgust of 
 sick people generally. Everybody who heard his lec- 
 ture called ^' Considerations by the Way," must remem- 
 ber the peculiar force and bitterness with which be 
 described sickness " as a cannibal which eats up all 
 the life and youth it can lay hold of, and absorbs its 
 own sons and daughters. I figure it as a pale, wail- 
 ing, distracted phantom, absolutely selfish, heedless 
 of what is good and great, attentive to its own sensa- 
 tions, losing its soul, and afflicting other souls with 
 meanness and mopings, and with ministrations to its 
 voracity of trifles. Dr. Johnson severely said, ' Every 
 man is a rascal as soon as he is sick.' " And then he 
 went on to say that we should give the sick every aid, 
 but not give them " ourselves." Then followed a 
 cruelly wise remark which shocked many in the au- 
 dience, and the real import of which was taken only 
 by a few. " I once asked a clergyman in a country 
 town who were his companions ? what men of ability 
 he saw ? He replied that he spent his time with the 
 sick and the dying. I said he seemed to me to need 
 quite other company, and all the more that he had 
 this ; for if people were sick and dying to any purpose, 
 we would leave all and go to them, but, as far as I had 
 observed, they were as frivolous as the rest, and some- 
 times much more frivolous." Every one who has ob- 
 served how many conscientious clergymen are con- 
 verted into nerveless moral valetudinarians, losing all 
 power of communicating healthy moral life, by con- 
 stantly acting as spiritual nurses to the sick, com-
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 149 
 
 plaining, and ever-dying but never dead members of 
 their parishes, must acknowledge the half-truth in this 
 apparently harsh statement. 
 
 The feeling that it is the duty of the teacher of 
 his fellow-men, whether preacher, poet, romancer, or 
 philosopher, to console by cheering and invigorating 
 them, entered into all Emerson's criticism. When the 
 " Scarlet Letter," in many respects the greatest ro- 
 mance of the century, was published, he conceded that 
 it was a work of power ; " but," he said to me, with 
 a repulsive shrug of the shoulders as he uttered the 
 word, " it is ghastly." It seemed to me that " ghostly " 
 would be a more truthful characterization of it ; but 
 it was impossible to remove from his mind the general 
 impression any book had left on it by arguments. 
 " Ghastly ! " he repeated " ghastly ! " He seemed 
 quietly impregnable to any considerations respecting 
 the masterly imaginative analysis which Hawthorne 
 had displayed in depicting the spiritual moods of his 
 guilty hero and heroine, and his keen perception of 
 the outlying spiritual laws which, being violated in 
 their sin, reacted with such terrible force in their 
 punishment. The book left an unpleasant impression 
 on him ; that was enough, as it was enough to lead 
 him to condemn Goethe's " Faust." 
 
 In judging of works of immensely less importance, 
 which only excited his ridicule, his irony was often 
 delicious. Then there were popular books whose 
 daily sale exceeded that of all his own volumes in ten 
 years ; these he spoke of with admirable humor and
 
 150 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 good-humor. Talking with him once on the character 
 of the first Napoleon, I asked him if he had read the 
 Rev. Mr. Abbott's history of the exploits and objects 
 of the Emperor. " Yes," he dryly answered ; " and it 
 has given to me an altogether original idea of that 
 notable man. It seems to teach that the great object 
 of Napoleon in all his wars was to establish in be- 
 nighted Europe our New England system of Sunday- 
 schools. A book like that is invaluable ; it revolu- 
 tionizes all our notions of historical men." 
 
 In such recollections of Emerson as I have here re- 
 corded there has been, of course, no attempt to portray 
 his character as a whole, but simply to exhibit some 
 aspects of it. There was a side of his nature, or rather 
 the very centre of his nature his " heart of heart " 
 on which I suppose even his intimate friends 
 (with whom I do not presume to rank myself) would 
 speak with a certain reserve. Dr. Bartol, one of 
 these friends, whose beautiful tribute to Emerson has 
 been published, hints of the loneliness of thought in 
 which a large portion of his life was probably passed. 
 The incommunicable elements in Emerson's spiritual 
 experience must, indeed, have exceeded what he felt 
 himself capable of communicating, not to speak of 
 that portion he was indisposed to communicate. In 
 one of his most characteristic essays there is a preg- 
 nant sentence in which he declares that in its high- 
 est moods "the soul gives itself, alone, original, and 
 pure, to the Lonely, Original, and Pure, who on that con- 
 dition gladly inhabits, leads, and speaks through it."
 
 KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 151 
 
 This mystic communion of the soul with its source had 
 with him a solemnity so sacred that it must needs be 
 secret ; it either exalted his mortal nature into a " beati- 
 tude past utterance," or depressed it with ominous mis- 
 givings and " obstinate questionings " which could find 
 no adequate outlet in words ; and though we detect in 
 the noblest passages of his writings traces of this im- 
 mediate personal communion with the Highest and the 
 Divine, it is doubtful if he ever spoke of it to his nearest 
 relatives and friends. In this Emerson differed from 
 most men of profound religious genius, who are some- 
 times garrulous on those points where he was inexora- 
 bly mute. He never exclaimed, as other pious souls 
 have exclaimed, " See what the Lord has done for me .'" 
 His reticence was the modesty of spiritual manliness. 
 What he felt on such high matters, he felt to be inde- 
 scribable and unutterable ; but how awful must have 
 been at times his sense of spiritual loneliness, his lips 
 austerely shut even when the closest, dearest, and most 
 trusted companions of his soul delicately hinted their 
 wish he would speak ; but he died and made no sign. 
 
 Still, at just one remove from the sacred secrecy 
 of his inmost individual consciousness and experi- 
 ence, he is ever found to be the frankest of writers. 
 Matthew Arnold has revived a phrase originally used 
 by Swift in his " Battle of the Books," and made it 
 stand as a mark of the perfection of intellectual 
 character. It is curious that this phrase " sweet- 
 ness and light " should have been uttered by the 
 greatest cynical apostle of bitterness and gloom who
 
 152 SOME KECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 has left a record of his genius in English literature, 
 and also uttered, so far as the side he took is con- 
 cerned, in an ignominious literary brawl, in which 
 he was the champion of Temple, Boyle, and Atter- 
 bury, against Bentley, the greatest scholar in Europe. 
 Bentley was of course victor in the contest, even 
 in the opinion of all candid scholars at first opposed 
 to him. 
 
 But " sweetness and light " are precious and in- 
 spiring only so far as they express the essential sweet- 
 ness of the disposition of the thinker, and the essen- 
 tial illuminating power of his intelligence. Emerson's 
 greatness came from his character. Sweetness and 
 light streamed from him because they were in him. 
 In everything he thought, wrote, and did we feel 
 the presence of a personality as vigorous and brave 
 as it was sweet ; and the particular radical thought 
 he at any time expressed derived its power to ani- 
 mate and illuminate other minds from the might of 
 the manhood which was felt to be within and behind 
 it. To " sweetness and light " he therefore added 
 the prime quality of fearless manliness. 
 
 If the force of Emerson's character was thus inex- 
 tricably blended with the force of all his faculties of 
 intellect and imagination, and the refinement of all 
 his sentiments, we have still to account for the pe- 
 culiarities of his genius, and to answer the question. 
 Why do we instinctively apply the epithet " Emer- 
 sonian" to every characteristic passage in his writ- 
 ings ? We are told that he was the last in a long
 
 IIALPH WALDO EMERSON. 153 
 
 line of clergymen, his ancestors, and that the mod- 
 ern doctrine of heredity accounts for the impressive 
 emphasis he laid on the moral sentiment; but that 
 does not solve the puzzle why he unmistakably dif- 
 fered in his nature and genius from all other Emer- 
 sons. An imaginary genealogical chart of descent 
 connecting him with Confucius or Gotama would be 
 more satisfactory. At the time he acquired noto- 
 riety but had not yet achieved fame, it was confi- 
 dently asserted in all Boston circles that his brother 
 Charles the " calm, chaste scholar " celebrated by 
 Holmes was greatly his superior in ability, and 
 would, had he not died early, have entirely eclipsed 
 Ealph. Emerson himself, the most generous and 
 loving of brothers, always inclined to this opinion. 
 But there is not an atom of evidence that Charles, 
 had he lived, would have produced works which 
 would be read by a choice company of thinkers and 
 scholars all over the world, which would be trans- 
 lated into all the languages of Europe, and would 
 be prized in London and Edinburgh, in Berlin and 
 Vienna, in Rome and Paris, as warmly as they were 
 in Boston and New York. What distinguishes the 
 Emerson was his exceptional genius and cliaracter, 
 that something in him which separated him from all 
 other Emersons, as it separated him from all other 
 eminent men of letters, and impressed every intelli- 
 gent reader with the feeling that he was not only 
 " original, but aboriginal." Some traits of his mind 
 and character may be traced back to his ancestors,
 
 154 RECOLLECTIONS OF EMERSON. 
 
 but what doctrine of heredity can give us the genesis 
 of his genius ? Indeed, the safest course to pursue is 
 to quote his own words, and despairingly confess 
 that it is the nature of genius " to spring, like the 
 rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible ; to 
 abolish the past, and refuse all history."
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 In the satires of Dryden and Pope, the god or god- 
 dess of Dulness descends on some tenant of Grub 
 Street, and after congratulating him on his success 
 in making stupidity popular, commonly ends with 
 the injunction, " Be thou dull ! " The meaning is, 
 that he who has raised himself to notoriety by feeble 
 thoughts embodied in bad verses should continue 
 true to that power whose aid has lifted him to a 
 transient eminence. In this way Dryden and Pope 
 wrought their revenges on what they called the 
 dunces, on Flecknoe and Shadwell, on Gibber and 
 Theobald, in short, on all authors who were the 
 enemies of Mr. Dryden and Mr. Pope. If we could 
 conceive of some more benignant deity descending 
 on the cradle of Oliver Wendell Holmes, his injunc- 
 tion to the infant would undoubtedly have been this : 
 " Be thou bright ! " It is certainly true that Holmes 
 has never been able to escape from the fate which 
 doomed him to be brilliant. He has made desper- 
 ate attempts to be dull, for he has written a score 
 of medical addresses, in which the latest results of 
 medical discovery have been stated with all due re- 
 gard to those terrible Latin names of diseases which
 
 156 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 frighten half to death the tenants of most sick-beds ; 
 but into these addresses he has insinuated strokes 
 of wit and humor which force smiles or laughter 
 from those healthy men who are yet to know the 
 awful significance of the aches and pains which 
 modern medicine is exerting all its skill to alle\date. 
 On the philosophy of the mind, as connected with 
 physiology, he has shown himself one of the boldest 
 and most original thinkers on facts which the latest 
 science has established. The books in which these 
 facts and the logical inferences from them are stated 
 at length are to the unprofessional reader the dullest 
 of all books ; yet as Autocrat, Poet, and Professor of 
 the Breakfast Table he has made them fascinating to 
 thousands of readers whom the elaborate treatises 
 of Maudsley and Carpenter would disgust. His little 
 octodecimo on the " Mechanism of Morals " is a mas- 
 terpiece of its kind, condensing the result of his labo- 
 rious professional life in one of the most charming 
 contributions ever made to practical ethics. As a 
 serious poet the stream of his sentiment flows over 
 golden sands, sparkling with pathos, if such a 
 phrase can be allowed ; and in those verses in which 
 he gives full play to the ludicrous eccentricities of 
 his fancy and imagination he is never a mere versi- 
 fier of jokes, but always a witty and humorous poet. 
 In his last work, the biography of his friend Motley, 
 abounding as it does in felicitous strokes of char- 
 acterization, as well as in calm, judicial estimates 
 of evidence, he never loses his old attractiveness.
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 157 
 
 Indeed, whatever may be said of Dr. Holmes's views 
 on some of the deepest subjects which can command 
 the attention of thoughtful minds, nobody ever ac- 
 cused him of being dull. The self-imposed reti- 
 cences in this charming sketch of Motley's career 
 do not prevent him from piquant disclosures which 
 present the historian of liberty in his true character 
 as a singularly brave, honest, and noble gentleman. 
 The man had the usual infirmities of men ; but that 
 he was a grand specimen of cultured American man- 
 hood, as well as a notable example of American in- 
 telligence, cannot be doubted by anybody who enjoyed 
 the pleasure of his acquaintance, or by anybody who 
 has studied his works. Manhood free, resolute, 
 intrepid, and somewhat disdainful manhood is the 
 impression of Motley derived from the reading of his 
 histories ; and it was eminently the same impres- 
 sion which familiar knowledge of him stamped on 
 the minds of his friends. Dr. Holmes's biography 
 reflects the feelings and judgments of all these 
 friends, whether in the United States or in Europe. 
 
 John Lothrop Motley was born in Dorchester, 
 Massachusetts, April 15, 1814. His biographer tells 
 us that the historian's life was saved a hundred 
 years before he was born. One of his maternal an- 
 cestors, a child living in Haverhill, Massachusetts, 
 was hidden by a housemaid under a wash-tub in the 
 cellar of her father's house when it was assailed by 
 Indians in 1708. The savages missed their prey by 
 this comical contrivance, and Motley thus became a
 
 158 MOTLEY, THE HISTOEIAN. 
 
 possible human being a hundred and six years before 
 he entered life. His father was a prosperous Boston 
 merchant who had Irish blood in his veins, and his 
 mother was a daughter of that race of Lothrop which 
 has given so many excellent Protestant clergymen 
 to New England churches. Thomas Motley, the 
 father, is still remembered in Boston as one of the 
 finest of that old school of commercial men who 
 were prominent in society as well as in commerce, 
 and in whom the sagacity of the merchant was com- 
 bined with the manners and the sentiments of the 
 accomplished and genial gentleman. The mother, 
 by the testimony of all who knew her, was remark- 
 able for her somewhat regal beauty, for " the charm 
 of her serene and noble presence," and for the ad- 
 mirable way in which she performed all the duties 
 of a matron. The son .was one of those pre-emi- 
 nently handsome boys who, as the world goes, seem 
 doomed to be ruined because fortune has saved them 
 from laboring for a living, and Nature has been prod- 
 igal in lavishing upon them physical beauty. When 
 Motley had grown to man's estate. Lady Byron de- 
 clared that he more resembled her husband than 
 any person she had ever met ; but Wendell Phillips, 
 his playmate and classmate, objects to this opinion 
 on the ground that Motley was handsomer than 
 Byron. And here it may be well to state that Mr. 
 Phillips, though the greatest iconoclast of institu- 
 tions and reputations that modern New England has 
 ever seen, has always been exceedingly tender to
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 159 
 
 Motley, though Motley must liave often offended him 
 by the course he took in political affairs. It may 
 also be affirmed that Motley never said a harsh 
 word of Phillips. The affection between them was 
 so close that though they took widely divergent 
 roads, which led eventually however to the same 
 goal, each instinctively recognized the integrity of 
 the other, while they seemed diametrically opposed 
 in methods as well as in aims. There can be no 
 clearer evidence than this of Motley's strong hold 
 on the hearts of all his classmates during the " ups 
 and downs" of his subsequent career. 
 
 The beautiful boy was saved from being spoiled by 
 a combination in his nature of an immense intel- 
 lectual ambition with a corresponding self-distrust. 
 To the end of his life he w^as consumed with a desire 
 to perform great things, and to the end of his life 
 he was painfully sensible that he had not come up 
 to his lofty ideal. Like many other young men of 
 genius, he was desultory in his studies, and in school 
 and college never reached the standard of " the good 
 boy" or the diligent student. His intellect devel- 
 oped by a process of intellectual irritation. A cer- 
 tain swiftness of mind, catching quickly at the spirit 
 of what he studied, but neglecting the orderly tech- 
 nicalities which denote the progress of a student in 
 his class, distinguished his course through school 
 and college. All his schoolmates and classmates had 
 immense confidence in the brilliancy of his talents, 
 but his " grade " did not correspond to his reputa-
 
 160 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 tion. His fellow-students were also sometimes of- 
 fended by the almost cynical haughtiness of his 
 behavior. Still his reserve would so often give way 
 to a hilarious sympathy with their pursuits that he 
 never lost popularity amid all the eccentricities of 
 seclusion in which he indulged. His great distinc- 
 tion, in which he excelled all his playmates and 
 classmates, was his knowledge of foreign languages. 
 His early familiarity with German impressed even 
 George Bancroft while Motley was a boy in his 
 school at Round Hill; and afterward, when Motley 
 was a student in Harvard College, an address by 
 him on Goethe in one of the college exhibitions was 
 so good as to induce such a trained scholar as Joseph 
 Cogswell to send it to Madame Goethe. Her reply 
 was significant. " I wish," she said, " to see the 
 first book that young man will write." 
 
 After leaving Harvard College he spent two years 
 in Europe, studying in the universities both of Berlin 
 and Gottingen. In the latter university he made the 
 acquaintance of a young man who afterward became 
 the greatest of modern statesmen, Bismarck, and 
 the acquaintance ripened into a personal friendship 
 which continued until Motley's death. Dr. Holmes 
 prints a letter from Bismarck's secretary, in which this 
 friendship is recorded in cordial terms. " The most 
 striking feature of his handsome and delicate appear- 
 ance," says Bismarck, " was uncommonly large and 
 beautiful eyes. He never entered a drawing-room 
 without exciting the curiosity and sympathy of the
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 161 
 
 ladies." The biographer does not add that as university 
 students they were once arrested and lodged in the 
 same guard-house by a few superserviceable police- 
 men of Berlin, on the charge of disturbing the peace 
 of that city. The amount of tlie offence consisted 
 in singing a little too loudly as they were returning 
 from a students' festival. In the after meetings of 
 Bismarck and Motley, when the former had become 
 a disturber of the peace indeed, this occurrence prob- 
 ably was an enjoyable topic of conversation. Being 
 at the time " fellow-lodgers in the house No. 161 
 Friedrich Strasse," living in the closest intimacy, 
 " sharing meals and out-door exercise," they doubt- 
 less contrived to endure that night's confinement 
 with philosophical composure. 
 
 On his return to the United States in 1834, Motley 
 gave no extraordinary evidence of the wisdom ac- 
 quired by his German studies, except his marriage, 
 in 1837, to the beautiful and intelligent Mary Ben- 
 jamin, a lady beloved by everybody who knew her, 
 and whom he may be said to have won as his wife 
 against a score of brilliant competitors. Dr. Holmes 
 remarks of this admirable woman, that those who 
 remember her find it difficult to speak of her amia- 
 bility, her sincerity, her frankness, her sister-like 
 feeling for the many young men who could never 
 aspire to be her lovers, with " the common terms 
 of praise they award to the good and the lovely." 
 Certainly no wife of a man of letters was ever more 
 warmly loved or more deeply mourned by her hus- 
 
 11
 
 162 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 band. While she lived she was his companion in 
 every respect, the companion of his intellect as 
 well as of his heart. Indeed, her whole life was 
 blended with his, and it may be mentioned as one 
 of the felicities of his career, as far as his happiness 
 and not his fame was concerned, that her death an- 
 ticipated his own only by a short period. The in- 
 tellectual irritability of the husband, never satisfied 
 with what he had done, yet feeling that there was 
 no adequate appreciation in some of the social circles 
 in which he moved of what his genius and toil had ac- 
 complished, was charmingly contrasted with the soft, 
 sweet manners of the wife, proud of the just glory 
 of her husband, yet tolerant of the ignorant " fashion- 
 ables " who knew him to be a celebrity, but were as 
 blind to the patient labor as to the vivid genius on 
 which the celebrity was founded. The good wife 
 walked by his side through life, cheering and ani- 
 mating him in all his noble ambitions, rejoicing in 
 the successes of his literary and diplomatic career, 
 while she softened their occasional mortifications, 
 and never losing her love and trust and pride in 
 him until they were parted by death. Literary his- 
 tory has no more beautiful record of wifely devotion. 
 It is probable that even he never fully appreciated 
 what a beneficent angel she had been to him, until, 
 broken in body and mind, he mourned unavailingly 
 over her grave. 
 
 On his return from Germany Motley had some 
 vague connection with the profession of the law, as it
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 163 
 
 was not practised in the city of Boston. He could 
 not even boast, as Macaulay boasted, of having had 
 one client. He was in easy circumstances, a brilliant 
 member of the best Boston society, fortunate in his 
 domestic relations, and seemingly doomed to be an 
 elegant do-nothing, sauntering away his existence in 
 the learned idleness of such students as read books 
 merely to gratify their intellectual curiosity, or to 
 gather materials for animated conversation with ama- 
 teurs in literature as indolent as themselves. But he 
 was really impelled all this time by an almost morbid 
 literary ambition, which found its first expression in 
 a kind of psychological autobiography wliich he called 
 a novel, and which he published in 1839, under the 
 title of " Morton's Hope." The failure of this book 
 was complete and almost ignominious, in spite of 
 many admirable passages both of reflection and de- 
 scription, the merit of which was apparent amid all 
 the anarchy of the narrative. It exhibited in an 
 exaggerated form a mental defect which is more or 
 less visible in his histories, namely, a tendency to 
 treat subordinate details with such fulness and rich- 
 ness as somewhat to interfere with a clear perception 
 of the main design. In " Morton's Hope " this defect 
 was so prominent as to enable scores of people, who 
 were incompetent to write any half-dozen of its bril- 
 liant paragraphs, to sneer at the work as a whole. 
 " Have you heard," said a wit of the family of Morton 
 to his acquaintance, " that our friend Motley's failure 
 is ' Morton's Hope ' ? " Motley himself came to hate
 
 164 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 his own book so much that it was dangerous to refer 
 to it in his presence. What he probably most dis- 
 liked in it was the compound of Byronism, Bulwerism, 
 and Vivian Grreyism which marked its general spirit 
 and tone. As soon as a true scholar strenuously 
 devotes himself to the task of exploring the obscure 
 records of history, and of reproducing the great men 
 and events of the past, he feels ashamed of giving 
 emphasis to his own individual caprices of thought 
 and emotion. He becomes absorbed in the contem- 
 plation of the actual wrongs and sufferings of man- 
 kind, so that the petty grievances of his own lot shrink 
 and shrivel into comparative insignificance as viewed 
 through the blaze of fires that have consumed heroes 
 and martyrs. It was a merciful Providence which 
 led Motley to select for the hero of his first history 
 William the Silent. His sensitiveness so apt to de- 
 generate into petulance, his self-assertion so strangely 
 mingled with self-distrust, ceased to vex him as he 
 came into daily contact, morally and mentally, with 
 the character of such a miracle of fortitude and self- 
 abnegation as the first William of Orange. It may 
 here be added that in this forlorn novel of " Morton's 
 Hope " Motley indicated that early passion to explore 
 the sources of history which afterward impelled him 
 to wander over Europe in search of original materials 
 for the histories which now bear his name. The 
 dust of two or three centuries remained undisturbed 
 on hundreds of important manuscripts in European 
 collections until it was rudely scattered by this inde-
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 165 
 
 fatigable American student. That he was not in- 
 tellectually suffocated by the dust lie had raised 
 was due to the fact that in him the fine instincts 
 and intelligence of the artist disposed and har- 
 monized the accumulations and discoveries of the 
 drudge. 
 
 In 1841 Motley received the appointment of secre- 
 tary of legation to the Russian mission ; but after a 
 few months' residence in St. Petersburg he resigned 
 the post and returned to Boston. For five years he 
 was engaged in a variety of occupations, among which 
 his historical novel of " Merry Mount " may be spe- 
 cially mentioned as an attempt to make his historical 
 studies available for the purpose of romantic creation. 
 " Merry Mount " (not published until 1849), though 
 it obtained some slight recognition, was not on the 
 whole a literary success. He came to the conclusion 
 that he could not rival Walter Scott and Cooper ; that 
 what imagination he possessed was the imagination of 
 the historian who reproduces, rather than that of the 
 romancer who both reproduces and creates ; and he 
 was confirmed in this impression by the success of an 
 article on Peter the Great which appeared in the 
 " North American Review " for October, 1 845. Dr. 
 Holmes lingers lovingly over this paper, indicating, as 
 it does, some of the talent for the picturesque of the 
 historian who was yet to be. Had it been published 
 in the " Edinburgh Review," it would certainly have 
 attracted general attention on both sides of the Atlan- 
 tic ; but the " North American " at that time was so
 
 166 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 feebly supported financially that some of us who wrote 
 for it at a dollar a page were wont to call it the Mount 
 Auburn of literature, affording a most beautiful mau- 
 soleum wherein an article could be buried. Motley's 
 historical sketch of Peter the Great, though all alive 
 in itself, could not escape being decently wrapped in 
 the cerements of that eminently well-printed, that 
 eminently good, that eminently respectable, and that 
 eminently uncirculated quarterly. Those who have 
 caught the tone of Motley's style in his histories must 
 be constantly reminded of it in re-reading this article 
 in the "North American." Charles the Twelfth of 
 Sweden is characterized as the " crowned gladiator." 
 " I know," said Peter, " the Swedes will have the ad- 
 vantage of us for a considerable time, but they will 
 teach us at length to beat them ; " and afterward 
 comes that fine touch, in reference to Peter's appren- 
 ticeship in the jlrt of ship-building, of the " colossal 
 puerility of the Russian marine." Again, Peter, the 
 undisputed proprietor of a quarter of the globe, is 
 represented as opening his eyes to the responsiljilities 
 of his position, and as having " voluntarily descended 
 from his throne for the noble purpose of qualifying 
 himself to reascend it." But perhaps the most strik- 
 ing characteristic of Motley's insidiously insulting and 
 cavalier way of disregarding the dignity of history, 
 when dignity stands in the way of reality and fact, is 
 to be found in this sentence : ^ The Normans had, to 
 be sure, in the eleventh century, taken possession of 
 the Russian government with the same gentleman-like
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 167 
 
 effrontery with which, at about the same time, they 
 had seated themselves upon every throne in Europe." 
 That phrase, " gentleman-like effrontery," never re- 
 appears in Motley's histories ; but the wit of the 
 statement is peculiar to the wit of Motley throughout 
 the nine octavos in which he appears as the champion 
 of liberty against oppression. His keen scorn is even 
 more deadly than his impassioned invectives, when- 
 ever he has a tyrant or bigot to demolish. He makes 
 him detestable that is easy ; but ho also makes him 
 ridiculous, and that can only be done by such unex- 
 pected strokes of wit as that we have quoted. The 
 emperors, kings, archdukes, dukes, counts, and other 
 select specimens of human kind who appear in Mot- 
 ley's pages are engaged in a war with the people. 
 They are gentlemen ; those they oppress are merely 
 producers of wealth, on whom gentlemen, however, 
 must depend for subsistence ; but all the rights of the 
 plebeians, whether in the property created by their 
 labor or in tlie thoughts created by their minds, must 
 be discarded as of no account when noble or pope 
 decides with " gentleman-like effrontery " that they 
 have neither the right to profit by their own industry 
 nor to think by the exercise of their own brains. 
 Motley was struck by the folly as well as the guilt of 
 these pretenders to make merchandise of men. He 
 was convinced that what is called the people of any 
 age outvalued all its rulers. By patient study of his- 
 tory he was inspired with an ambition to vindicate 
 the popular view of human rights and duties against
 
 168 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 the autocratic, the monarchical, the aristocratic view. 
 Individually, he was the most fastidious of human 
 beings. He had a genuine horror of vulgarity in all 
 its forms. He came, however, to the conclusion that 
 the so-called " vulgar " constituted the most important 
 portion of the human race ; and casting aside all tlie 
 prejudices of education, of caste, taste, and all the 
 conventional sentiments current in the circles in 
 which he moved, he ached to become the historian of 
 human liberty in some era where aristocracy and 
 democracy were most violently opposed, and where 
 the event of the struggle was of world-wide impor- 
 tance. He fixed on the revolt of the Netherlands 
 against the tyranny of Philip the Second of Spain as 
 his subject, and to this contest he devoted his mature 
 intellectual life. 
 
 He felt convinced that modern civilization, as we 
 know it, depended on the success of those Dutch 
 burghers, traders, sailors, and fishermen in their war 
 against the impudent attempt of Spain to dominate 
 Europe ; and with a " gentleman-like effrontery " of 
 the true, intrepid kind, he entered upon a crusade 
 against the conventional gentlemen whom he con- 
 sidered to be the enemies of the human race. What 
 he scorned in that " refined " society in which he 
 moved was its tendency to become fossilized in certain 
 notions of gentility, and its incapacity to appreciate 
 those great movements of the human heart and mind 
 which prove that humanity is alive, and which it 
 is the pleasure, the business, and the glory of the
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 169 
 
 historian to investigate. One of his acquaintances 
 was a curious specimen of a class of men who have no 
 consciousness of this incessant movement. He really 
 thought that the course of affairs since the deluge had 
 come to a " finality " in the best society of Boston. 
 There it not only should stop, but had stopped. On 
 once being asked what he thought of the new temper- 
 ance reform, he sublimely replied : " As to what the 
 lower-class, moral people think of the subject I know 
 nothing ; but among the gentlemen of my acquaint- 
 ance there is but one opinion, and that opinion is 
 decidedly unfavorable." Motley despised all forms 
 and shades of this social conceit, and the more of it 
 which was thrust upon his attention, the more fiercely 
 democratic he became in sentiment and belief. He 
 was a gentleman to the innermost core of his being, 
 a gentleman by nature, by culture, by refinement of 
 thought, by refinement of sensibility, by instinctive 
 repugnance to bad manners and coarse-grained men ; 
 but to him the worst possible vulgarity was the vul- 
 garity of the conventionally polite, who think they 
 are gentlemen because they despise nine-tenths or 
 ninety-nine hundredths of the human race on the 
 ground that they do not belong to their peculiar social 
 class. Motley sometimes raged against this vulgarity, 
 sometimes laughed at it ; but whether he inveighed or 
 satirized, he ever considered a man who held such ig- 
 noble sentiments as no gentleman. Indeed, it is one 
 of the great offices of history to teach " the curled 
 darlings " of the state how small and inconsiderable
 
 170 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 they are as they appear in the grand drama of a 
 nation's life. 
 
 As early as 1846 Motley's attention was strongly 
 drawn to the subject of the Dutch Republic, and he 
 began collecting materials for a history of it. The 
 more he investigated, the more he became convinced 
 of the interest, the importance, the grandeur of the 
 theme. He saw before him a comparatively unoccu- 
 pied ground of modern history, which had never been 
 treated with that exhaustive research into original 
 materials by which each of the great contemporary 
 historians of our time had won his fame in the special 
 subject he had treated. He devoured everything that 
 was in print relating to the history of the Netherlands, 
 but he knew that no historical reputation could be 
 reached by compilation, though the compiler should 
 be as great a master of fluent narrative as Irving or 
 Prescott, or as fertile in novel ideas as Guizot or 
 Grote. He felt that he must be a discoverer as well 
 as a narrator and thinker, an antiquary as well as an 
 artist. Filled with his subject, his soul glowed at the 
 thought of making an important addition to history, 
 and he braced up his will to undertake the lowest 
 offices of that obscure drudgery which had ended in 
 making Thierry a blind paralytic, with no organ alive 
 in him but his brain, and which had tested the enthu- 
 siasm and fortitude of every modern historian worthy 
 of the name. There was no question as to the fact 
 that the bright, jovial, quick-witted Motley, whose 
 conversation was the charm of every select dinner
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 171 
 
 party, and whose last epigram was the talk of the 
 town,^ had deliberately made up his mind to be as in- 
 defatigable in industry as he was acknowledged to be 
 keen in wit and swift in intelligence. He had a defi- 
 nite plan, to which he proposed to dedicate his life. 
 What could arrest him in carrying it out ? What 
 could prevent him from realizing the proud anticipa- 
 tions conveyed in the lines of his friend ? 
 
 " Let us hear the proud story that time has bequeathed 
 From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed ; 
 Let him summon its tyrants and tell us their doom, 
 Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with 
 his broom ! " 
 
 Now the lives of literary and scientific men are some- 
 times but too full of the rivalries engendered by vanity, 
 and by contests for precedence in discovery. The 
 most humorous exemplification of these infirmities of 
 noble minds is found in the case of the Philadelphia 
 scientist who had the misfortune to discover a new 
 species of rat. On that Rat he based his claim to sci- 
 entific renown. Anybody who doubted his claim of 
 squatter sovereignty or right of eminent domain over 
 that Rat was his personal enemy. Meanwhile his 
 brother scientists, emulous of his reputation as a dis- 
 coverer, began to question his right to claim that Rat 
 as exclusively his own. From obscure doubts as to 
 his priority in observation they proceeded by degrees 
 to question whether the Rat was really a new species. 
 
 1 For instance, here is one specimen : *' Give me," he said, " the 
 luxuries of life, and I will do without the necessities."
 
 172 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 They then asserted that whether it was new or not, 
 no less than five scientists of equal eminence had an- 
 ticipated him in its discovery. Each of these five, of 
 course, set up his separate howl that the Rat was ex- 
 clusively his. The original discoverer went about 
 everywhere shrieking that a combination of scientific 
 liars and blackguards had combined to rob him of the 
 glory of his Rat. The first effect was to split the 
 " Wistar parties " into vehement and virulent factions. 
 Thence the contagion spread into the fashionable cir- 
 cles of Philadelphia, and young maidens even signal- 
 ized their first appearance in society by chattering 
 with beautiful volubility on the superior claims of this 
 or that dear love of a savant to put this Rat into the 
 possessive case. Suddenly the Rat who appears, to 
 do him justice, to have been what Mr. Artemus Ward 
 would have styled " an amoosin' little cuss " disap- 
 peared. Then society was shaken to its foundations. 
 " You have stolen my Rat ! " was shouted from six 
 persons at once, the first discoverer being of course 
 the strongest in respect to sharpness and pertinacity 
 of screech and scream. The contest only ended by 
 the placing of the whole six in a hospital of incurables, 
 where, it is to be hoped, the escaped Rat demurely 
 surveyed them all from his philosophic hole, wonder- 
 ing, perhaps, in that rat's head of his, whether his 
 race was likely to increase in intelligence by that 
 course of evolution through which rat brains in the 
 distant future were to become similar to the brains 
 deposited in the heads he now gazed upon from his
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 173 
 
 snug loop-hole of retreat. You can almost hear him 
 squeak to Darwin, 
 
 " Visions of glory, spare my aching sight ! " 
 
 But meanwhile the sceptre of zoological science de- 
 parted from Philadelphia forever, and was usurped by 
 New York or Boston, whose naturalists had during 
 all this time been tranquilly engaged in making addi- 
 tions to natural history, and had never been disturbed 
 with this controversy as to who first discovered that 
 worthless kind of Rat. Their motto in science then 
 was, 
 
 " Forget the steps already trod, 
 And onward urge thy way." 
 
 This extravaganza merely illustrates the constant 
 danger to progress in literature and science springing 
 from quarrels among their individual professors. 
 Time is lost in these ignoble brawls. Boston itself 
 once came near losing its position as a scientific cen- 
 tre owing to the infuriated controversy among scien- 
 tific men as to the first discoverer of the properties of 
 sulphuric ether. There was the thing itself, mitigat- 
 ing or annihilating pain ; but the pain it at first cre- 
 ated among the various claimants and their friends 
 was perhaps greater than the pain it destroyed among 
 the patients to whom it was early applied. Not only 
 were the various claimants ruined, but it was to be 
 feared that scientific discovery in Boston would come 
 to an end. This catastrophe was averted by a pun. 
 A benevolent gentleman announced his intention of
 
 174 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 erecting a monument in the Public Garden in honor 
 of the beneficent discovery ; and a wit suggested, in 
 one of the Boston newspapers, that all the claimants 
 should be represented on the sides of the monument, 
 while over them all, in letters of gold, should be writ- 
 ten the word "Either." From that moment the 
 Boston scientists composed their animosities, and pro- 
 ceeded to their true work of advancing science, with- 
 out regard as to who was first or second in inventing 
 or applying an idea. 
 
 All this may seem to be digression, but it really is 
 not so. Had "William H. Prescott been possessed by 
 the spirit which animated the Philadelphia professor 
 who gloried in his Rat, the nine octavos of Motley 
 would never have been w^ritten, and the cause of his- 
 tory would have suffered an immense loss. After 
 Motley had thoroughly matured the plan of his work, 
 he learned, to his surprise, that Prescott had made 
 large preparations for writing the " History of Philip 
 the Second of Spain," though his "History of the 
 Conquest of Peru" had not yet been published. 
 Prescott was then the most popular of American his- 
 torians ; Motley was known only as the author of two 
 unsuccessful novels, and of some articles in a review : 
 and with a pang which only noble spirits can feel 
 when they give up a cherished design which has en- 
 twined itself with their moral and intellectual life, he 
 prepared to abandon the great object of his ambition. 
 " I had not," he said, " first made up my mind to 
 write a history, and then cast about to take up a
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 175 
 
 subject. My subject had taken me up, drawn me on, 
 and al)Sorbcd me into itself. It was necessary for me, 
 it seemed, to write the book I had been thinking much 
 of, even if it were destined to fall dead frpm the press, 
 and I had no inclination or interest to write any other." 
 At last he called upon Prescott, unfolded to him his 
 plan, indicated the points where the historian of " The 
 Rise of the Dutch Republic " would cross the path of 
 the historian of " Philip the Second," and frankly ex- 
 pressed his willingness to abandon his project rather 
 than interfere with Prescott's intended work. Those 
 who knew and remember Prescott may well conceive 
 how that serene and beautiful intelligence, incapable 
 of envy, and delighting in recognizing merit even 
 though it should eclipse his own, received such a 
 proposition. He first, with great good sense, assured 
 Motley that the two books could not injure each other, 
 as the same topics gained increased interest as viewed 
 by two different minds. Then he warmly encouraged 
 him to carry out his undertaking, and placed at his 
 disposal all the books in his own library bearing upon 
 it. He gave him to understand that history would be 
 enriched by his labors ; and that any additions to his- 
 torical knowledge he might make would be welcomed 
 most cordially by his brother historians. " Had the 
 result of that interview," said Motley, " been different, 
 had he distinctly stated, or even vaguely hinted, 
 that it would be as well if I should select some other 
 topic, or had he sprinkled me with the cold water 
 of conventional and common-place encouragement, I
 
 176 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 should have gone from him with a chill upon my 
 mind, and no doubt have laid down the pen at once ; 
 for, as I have already said, it was not that I cared 
 about writing a history, but that I felt an inevitable 
 impulse to write one particular history." And as the 
 top and crown of literary magnanimity it must be 
 recorded that Prescott's first two volumes of the 
 " History of Philip the Second " were published in 
 1855, while Motley's history of "The Rise of the 
 Dutch Republic" did not appear until 1856. But 
 Prescott, in his preface to the work he was never to 
 complete, calls attention to the forth-coming work of 
 Motley with generous praise, declaring that the revolt 
 of the Netherlands was only an episode of his history, 
 and asking the reader's attention to the more minute 
 account of his brother historian, not a page of whose 
 work had yet seen the light, but which he thus her- 
 alded with all the impressiveness that attached to his 
 own honored name. Most intelligent readers in Europe 
 and the United States were eager to receive the vol- 
 umes of Prescott ; very few indeed were the readers 
 who expected anything from the pen of Motley. It 
 seems to me, therefore, that there is something inex- 
 pressibly beautiful in this cordial testimony to Motley's 
 possible merits by a man who was in the full assur- 
 ance of acknowledged celebrity, and who thus nobly 
 anticipated the fame of one who was engaged, like 
 himself, in the hard task of lifting the veil which 
 shrouds the historic past. Among authors it would 
 be difficult to name one who was more pure from all
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 177 
 
 the besetting sins of men of letters than William H. 
 Prescott. Eulogy which might be considered as offen- 
 sive when addressed to the living may safely be ven- 
 tured in noting the rare virtues of the dead. At the 
 time he was cheering Motley on to historical labors 
 which in some respects traversed his own, he had a 
 profound sense, derived from reading passages in 
 " Merry Mount," that he was encouraging a formid- 
 able competitor, who might displace him from the 
 position he then occupied as the most prominent and 
 popular of American historians. I have a great re- 
 spect for Prescott's histories, but Prescott's literary 
 character outvalues a hundredfold all his literary tri- 
 umphs. There was no possibility that such an exqui- 
 sitely amiable heart and intelligence should be ever 
 vexed by any controversy as to whether he or Motley 
 had discovered an historic " Rat." Motley so deeply 
 felt the stainless purity of Prescott's character and 
 intellect that he could never speak of his disinterest- 
 edness without deep emotion. 
 
 The more Motley reflected on the portion of his 
 work already written, the more he was convinced that 
 he could not hope to complete it satisfactorily on this 
 side of the water. In 1851 he accordingly took his 
 family to Europe, and lived for five years the life of a 
 recluse, prowling among the state archives at Berlin, 
 Dresden, the Hague, and Brussels, and finding every 
 year reasons for modifying the most confident opin- 
 ions he had formed the year before. The history of 
 "The Rise of the Dutch Republic " was thus the result 
 
 12
 
 178 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 of ten years' labor, continually changing its form as 
 new materials were placed within the author's reach, 
 and ending at last in the great historical epic, with 
 the first William of Orange for its hero, which we now 
 read with so much instruction and delight. This work, 
 though widely circulated both in Europe and America, 
 has probably never yet been estimated at its full 
 worth. I have recently gone over it, pencil in hand, 
 noting its singular felicities in respect to style, to 
 thought, to picturesque description, to imaginative re- 
 alization of persons and events, and to positive discov- 
 eries of new facts, and I might fill a whole number of 
 the Magazine by merely pointing out these excellences 
 in detail. Dr. Holmes has printed one letter (Novem- 
 ber, 185S) addressed to him while Motley was in Brus- 
 sels, showing how completely the latter was living, 
 mentally and morally, day after day, in the sixteenth 
 rather than in the nineteenth century. " I am," says 
 Motley, " in a town which, for aught I know, may be 
 very gay. I don't know a living soul in it. We have 
 not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory 
 in the fact. . . . En revanche^ the dead men of the 
 place are my intimate friends. I am at home in any 
 cemetery. With the fellows of the sixteenth century 
 I am on the most familiar terms. Any ghost that 
 ever flits by night across the moonlight square is at 
 once hailed by me as a man and a brother. 'I call 
 him by his Christian name at once. . . . Whatever 
 may be the result of my labor, nobody can say that 
 I have not worked like a brute beast. But I don't
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 179 
 
 care for the result ; the labor is in itself its own re- 
 ward, and all I want. I go day after day to the archives 
 here (as I went all sunnncr at the Hague), studying 
 the old letters and documents of the fifteenth [six- 
 teenth] century. Here I remain among my fellow- 
 worms, feeding on these niusly mulberry-leaves, out 
 of which we are hereafter to spin our silk. How can 
 you expect anything interesting from such a liuman 
 cocoon?" 
 
 In 1856 he went to London in search of a publisher. 
 Murray declined the huge manuscript, and it was pub- 
 lished at the author's expense by John Chapman. Its 
 success was brilliant and immediate. Fifteen thou- 
 sand copies w^ere sold in England in 1857. Guizot 
 superintended a French translation of it. It was also 
 translated into Dutch, German, and Russian. The 
 pirated editions in English were Numerous. The 
 American edition was published by the Harpers, and 
 it is needless to say that it found hosts of readers 
 here. Among others, so eminent a scholar as Dr. Lie- 
 ber was in a rapture of enthusiasm about the book. 
 " Congress and Parliament," he wrote, " decree thanks 
 for military exploits; rarely for diplomatic achieve- 
 ments. If they ever voted their thanks for books 
 and what deeds have influenced the course of human 
 events more than some books? Motley ought to 
 have the thanks of our Congress ; but I doubt not he 
 has already the thanks of every American who has 
 read the work. It will leave its distinct mark upon 
 the American mind."
 
 180 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 Hardly pausing in his historical labors for rest or 
 recreation, he proceeded at once to gather materials 
 for the continuation of his work. The first two vol- 
 umes of the " History of the United Netherlands," the 
 fruit of enormous original research, were published in 
 1860. On the breaking out of our civil war his patri- 
 otism was roused to the highest pitch, and for a period 
 he forgot the history of every country but his own. 
 
 He was extremely popular as a man in the most 
 influential circles of London society, and he used his 
 popularity to make his patriotism efficient. You could 
 not get him to converse on any other topic than the 
 wrong of the rebellion. He fought our battles in 
 every drawing-room he entered, encountering prejudice 
 with resolution, and shaming ignorance by the torrent 
 of facts and arguments with which he overwhelmed it. 
 His two long letters in the " London Times" going over 
 the whole grounds of the controversy produced a 
 marked effect on the public opinion of England. He 
 was like a man possessed, a fervid missionary of a 
 political creed on which, as he thought, the salvation 
 of a nation depended. When he returned to the 
 United States in 1861, his old American companions, 
 sufficiently excited themselves, were astonished at the 
 superior zeal and vehemence of his patriotism. Mr. 
 Lincoln appointed him minister to Austria, and on his 
 way to his post he stopped a sliort time in England 
 to have another tussle with his English opponents. 
 When he arrived at Vienna he wrote, under date of 
 November 16, 1861, to Holmes : " I do what good I
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 181 
 
 can. I think I made some impression on Lord John 
 Russell, with whom I spent two days after my arrival 
 in England, and I talked very frankly and as strongly 
 as I could to Palmerston, and I have had long conver- 
 sations and correspondences with other leading men in 
 England. I have also had an hour's conversation 
 with Thouvenal in Paris. I hammered the Northern 
 view into him as soundly as I could. . . . Our fate is 
 in our own hands, and Europe is looking on to see 
 which side is strongest. When it has made the dis- 
 covery, it will back it as also the best and most moral. 
 . . . Yesterday I had my audience with the Emperor. 
 He received me with much cordiality, and seemed in- 
 terested in the long account which I gave him of our 
 affairs. You may suppose I inculcated the Northern 
 views. We spoke in his vernacular, and he asked me 
 afterward if I was a German. I mention this not 
 from vanity, but because he asked it with earnestness, 
 as if it had a political significance." This must have 
 been the first time that an American ambassador at the 
 Austrian court was suspected of being a German, 
 owing to the ease and rapidity with which he conversed 
 in the language, and the absolute purity of his pro- 
 nunciation. 
 
 His mind and feelings were so wrought up by the 
 calamities of his country that in the early years of the 
 war he almost abandoned literary work altogether, 
 and it was only when the side he so passionately es- 
 poused was plainly nearing success that he resumed 
 it. " I wish," he wrote to Holmes, in 1862, " I could
 
 182 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 bore you about something else but American politics. 
 But there is nothing else worth thinking of in the 
 world. All else is leather and prunella. We are 
 living over again the days of the Dutchmen, or the 
 seventeenth-century Englishmen." He early took 
 strong ground for the emancipation of the slaves. 
 When he heard of the news of the battle of Gettysburg 
 and the surrender of Vicksburg, his family, with the 
 exception of his youngest child, were absent frcm the 
 house. How to express his joy he knew not, but ex- 
 press it he must. So he rushed up stairs to the room 
 where the infant was sleeping, and screeched through 
 the key-hole of the door, " Yicksburg is ours ! " 
 
 There are characteristic touches in these letters from 
 Vienna which are exquisite in the humor with which 
 he flouts all despotic theories. Thus he speaks of the 
 Archduke Maximilian : " He adores bull-fights, and 
 rather regrets the Inquisition, and considers the Duke 
 of Alva everything noble and chivalrous, and the 
 most abused of men. It would do your heart good to 
 hear his invocations to that deeply injured shade, 
 and his denunciations of the ignorant and vulgar Pro- 
 testants who have defamed him." And again : " We 
 have nothing green here but the Archduke Max, who 
 firmly lielieves that he is going forth to Melico to es- 
 tablish an American empire, and that it is his divine 
 mission to destroy the dragon of democracy, and 
 establish the true Church, the Right Divine, and all 
 sorts of games. Poor young man ! " 
 
 Mr. Sumner was in the habit of telling, with much
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 183 
 
 humor, one amusing incident in Motley's diplomatic 
 career in Vienna. After the close of the joint war of 
 Prussia and Austria against Denmark on the question 
 of the duchies, Bismarck came to Vienna to settle the 
 terms of peace with the Emperor. He arrived too late 
 to go to the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
 and remembering that his old university chum, Motley, 
 was the American minister, he drove directly to his 
 house and found Motley just retiring from a modest 
 family dinner, with nothing but the remains of the des- 
 sert on the table. The old friends cordially joined hands 
 and hearts; fresh viands were furnished from Motley's 
 kitchen, and fresh Burgundy from his cellar, and for 
 hour after hour the old collegians went over their stu- 
 dent experiences and frolics at the University of Ber- 
 lin, without speaking a word about politics. After 
 cracking his last walnut and swallowing his last glass 
 of wine, Bismarck, long after midnight, left Motley's 
 house, and sauntered away whistling to his hotel, with 
 an immense internal satisfaction at the entertainment 
 he had derived from his first night's experience at 
 Vienna. But the eyes of Europe were all this time 
 on the terrible man of " blood and iron." The foreign 
 embassies were in an uproar. Was it possible that 
 there was to be an alliance between Prussia and the 
 United States ? It was known that New York was, 
 in respect to its German population, the third or 
 fourth German city in the world. What naeant this 
 mysterious visit to the American minister, the first 
 visit the dreaded Prussian statesman had made on
 
 184 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 entering Vienna? Telegrams flew to London, Paris, 
 Turin, and St. Petersburg. The ingenuity of diplo- 
 matists was taxed to account for what was unaccount- 
 able. Sumner himself, as chairman of the Senate 
 Committee of Foreign Affairs, received private letters 
 from eminent persons abroad earnestly inquiring 
 whether the United States had resolved to depart 
 from non-interference with the affairs of Europe, as 
 recommended by the immortal Washington, etc., 
 absurd letters, at which Sumner, who knew Motley's 
 early associations with Bismarck, exhibited his teeth 
 in the most genial and humorous of smiles. He 
 laughed with Motley over the occurrence some years 
 afterward, when the affair was explained to him just 
 as he had divined it. It is a pity that this one hu- 
 morous incident in the whole dreary correspondence 
 of the American Department of State with its minis- 
 ters abroad is not recorded in any state paper. But 
 it is certain that for a day or two it seriously disturbed 
 the consultations of every cabinet in Europe. 
 
 Motley was six years in Vienna, and then resigned, 
 in a fit of indignation growing out of the miserable 
 M'Cracken affair. Mr. John Bigelow has lately pub- 
 lished a defence of Mr. Seward's conduct in this busi- 
 ness, the amount of which is that Mr. Seward could 
 not have shielded Motley from President Johnson's 
 jealous, irrational anger without running the risk of 
 being himself dismissed from the State Department, 
 a catastrophe which he contemplated with horror, 
 as it might, in the President's then irritable and sus-
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 185 
 
 picious state of mind, lead to some new appointment 
 disastrous to the country. Dr. Holmes considers the 
 defence as little better than an impeachment, and 
 Mr. Bigclow liimself does not make the most of his 
 case. 
 
 The historian, after his resignation, returned with 
 new zeal to his historical labors, and in 1868 pub- 
 lished the last two volumes of his " History of the 
 United Netherlands." Their reception showed how 
 different was the estimate formed of Motley's mind 
 and character, by the great public of Europe and the 
 United States, from the estimate of him formed by 
 Mr. Andrew Johnson and Mr. Andrew Johnson's 
 special ambassador (truly) extraordinary abroad, Mr. 
 George W. M'Cracken. In the summer of 1868 he 
 returned with his family to Boston, and was warmly 
 greeted by all his old friends. He appeared to be in 
 the full vigor of bodily and mental health, and his 
 powers of conversation were such as surprised the 
 most redoubtable talkers of that city. Dr. Holmes 
 mentions his connection with the Saturday Club of 
 Boston, an association composed of some fifteen or 
 twenty persons, who were elected to membership on 
 the ground that they were generally opposed to each 
 other in mind, character, and pursuits, and that there- 
 fore conversation at the monthly dinner of the club 
 would naturally assume quite an animated if not 
 controversial tone. Motley delighted in this associa- 
 tion, as it gave full play for the friendly collision of 
 his own intellect with the intellects of others, Intel-
 
 186 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 lects of which some were as keen, bright, and rapid 
 as his own. " Always remember me," he wrote from 
 Vienna, " to the club, one and all. It touches me 
 nearly when you assure me that I am not forgotten 
 by them. To-morrow is Saturday, the last of the 
 month [the time of the meeting of the club]. We 
 are going to dine with our Spanish colleague. But 
 the first bumper of the Don's champagne I shall 
 drain to the health of my Parker House friends." 
 On his return to Boston in 1868 he was, of course, 
 warmly welcomed by the fraternity, whose monthly 
 dinners he constantly attended. Perhaps, as Dr. 
 Holmes has described the club generally in a note to 
 his biography, it may not be an indecorum to lift the 
 veil from one of its dinners in which he bore a main 
 part in the conversational achievements. Motley laid 
 down some proposition, which Holmes, of course, 
 instantly doubted, and then Lowell plunged in, differ- 
 ing both from Motley and Holmes. A triangular 
 duel ensued, with an occasional ringing sentence 
 thrown in by Judge Hoar for the benevolent purpose 
 of increasing a complication already sufficient to task 
 the wit and resource of the combatants. In ordinary 
 discussion one person is allowed to talk at least for 
 a half or a quarter of a minute before his brother 
 athletes rush in upon him with their replies ; but in 
 this debate all three talked at once, with a velocity of 
 tongue which fully matched their velocity of thought. 
 Still, in the incessant din of voices, every point made 
 by one was replied to by another or ridiculed by a
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 187 
 
 third, and was instantly followed by new statements 
 and counter-statements, arguments and counter-argu- 
 ments, hits and retorts, all germane to the matter, 
 and all directed to a definite end. The curiosity of 
 the contest was that neither of the combatants re- 
 peated anything which had been once thrown out of 
 the controversy as irrelevant, and that while speaking 
 all together the course of the discussion was as clear 
 to the mind as though there had been a minute's 
 pause between statement and reply. The discussion 
 was finished in fifteen minutes ; if conducted under 
 the ordinary rules of conversation, it would have 
 lasted a couple of hours, without adding a new 
 thought, or fact, or stroke of wit applicable to the 
 question in debate. The other members of the club 
 looked on in mute wonder while witnessing these 
 feats of intellectual and vocal gymnastics. If any 
 other man than Judge Hoar had ventured in, his 
 voice and thought would both have been half a minute 
 behind the point which the discussion had reached, 
 and would therefore have been of no account in the 
 arguments which contributed to bring it to a close. 
 On this occasion I had no astronomical clock to con- 
 sult ; but, judging by the ear, I came to the conclusion 
 that in swiftness of utterance Motley was two-six- 
 teenths of a second ahead of Holmes, and nine-six- 
 teenths of a second ahead of Lowell. 
 
 In the autumn of 1868 Motley warmly supported 
 Grant for the Presidency. For the victorious general 
 he had then a genuine admiration. Shortly after
 
 188 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 Grant was sworn in he was appointed minister to 
 England, and unanimously confirmed by the Senate. 
 He accepted the post with some misgivings ; but still, 
 when he sailed from the country he had no reason 
 to suppose that he left a single enemy behind him. 
 
 The wretched story of his recall is told by Dr. 
 Holmes with admirable temper, but yet with an inci- 
 sive vigor of style and thought which demolishes 
 every pretence by which the real reason for his dis- 
 missal has been attempted to be disguised. 
 
 It would be a curious subject of inquiry whether 
 or not Grant ever read " The Rise of the Dutch Re- 
 public." There are so many points of similarity 
 between his best and noblest qualities and those of 
 William the Silent that, if he had read the book, 
 one would think that Motley's vivid presentation of 
 the Dutch hero would have endeared the author to 
 him. Indeed, Motley was so confident of the support 
 of Grant that when vague rumors of his intended 
 removal reached him he spoke of them slightingly. 
 " Of one thing I am sure," he said, " and that is the 
 friendship of the President." 
 
 There can be little doubt that Motley's sensitive 
 nature was stung to the quick by the act of his govern- 
 ment. President Johnson treated him with sheer 
 brutality, and though he was justly irritated, he did 
 not feel himself dishonored ; but what cut him to the 
 heart in the conduct of President Grant was the 
 attempt to show that his dismissal from office was 
 due to his disobedience of the instructions of his
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 189 
 
 government ; thus placing him, as he supposed, before 
 the eyes of Europe and America as a disgraced minis- 
 ter. The wrong wrung his very soul, and he could 
 never forgive, and, what was worse, he never could 
 forget it. Still, he resumed his historical studies, 
 and in 1874 published " The Life and Death of John 
 of Barneveld," a continuation of " The History of the 
 United Netherlands," and bringing his Dutch annals 
 down to the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. 
 Valuable and interesting as the work is, it may be 
 said that if he had shortened Barneveld's life by a 
 half, he might have lengthened his own; for the 
 materials were more intractable than any he had 
 before encountered, the handwriting especially of 
 the great Advocate of Holland being so bad as almost 
 to be undecipherable even by the aid of the micro 
 scope. 
 
 On the last day of the year in which this noble 
 work appeared, Mrs. Motley died. This blow, coming 
 as it did in the midst of bodily illness and mental 
 distress, broke his heart. He visited the United 
 States for the last time in the summer of 1875 ; re- 
 turned to England in the autumn; and after strug- 
 gling manfully for more than two years with the 
 illness which prevented him from engaging in any 
 strenuous mental exertion, he died peacefully on the 
 29th of May, 1877, the last words on his lips being, 
 " It has come ! it has come ! " He was buried by the 
 side of his wife in Kensal Green Cemetery. On his 
 gravestone the simple dates of his birth and death
 
 190 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 are given, followed by a text chosen by himself : " In 
 God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." 
 
 In judging Mr. Motley as an historian we must first 
 refer to the importance of the great European epoch 
 to which his histories are devoted. He seized, with 
 the divining glance of genius, on that exact point in 
 European history where Man, if we may so express 
 it, first came into resolute hostility to Privileged Men. 
 The reader who fails to perceive this fundamental fact 
 will follow the course of his thoughtful, picturesque, 
 and glowing narratives without catching his main 
 purpose. The government of the United States the 
 inheritor of the ideas of Human Rights, the strug- 
 gles of whose champions with monarchs and nobles, 
 through tumults, battles, sieges, proscriptions, and 
 massacres, he spent his life in depicting twice 
 appointed him to represent itself in Europe, and 
 twice subjected him to insults which no honorable 
 gentleman could bear without remonstrance and 
 indignation. His enemies and defamers will gain 
 no additional reputation by having their names 
 associated with his ; but the historian whom they 
 attempted to dishonor will be held in grateful remem- 
 brance by the American people, as the man who first 
 explored the obscure sources and vitalized the repre- 
 sentation of the ideas, the events, and the martyrdoms 
 whose final result was the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence and the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 His work, as he originally conceived it, was to have 
 the general title of "The Eighty Years' "War for
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 191 
 
 Liberty," comprehending the three volumes of " The 
 Rise of the Dutch Republic," the four volumes of 
 " The History of the United Netherlands," the two 
 volumes of " The Life and Death of John of Barne- 
 veld," and " The History of the Thirty Years' War," 
 ending with " The Peace of "Westphalia," in 1648. 
 The last-mentioned history, which would have been 
 the crowning event of his literary career, he did not 
 live long enough even to begin, though he must have 
 accumulated large materials for it. The portions of 
 his grand plan which he did complete are among the 
 most valuable contributions to history which the pres- 
 ent century, singularly rich in historical literature, 
 has produced ; for his nine octavos are based on 
 sources of information still remaining in manuscript, 
 and which, in many cases, he was the first to dis- 
 cover and investigate. In this task of original re- 
 search he worked, in his own emphatic language, like 
 " a brute beast." The novelty and importance of 
 many of the facts he thus rescued from oblivion 
 gained for him the respect and esteem of every his- 
 torical scholar in Europe ; for there was hardly a 
 European nation on whose history his researches did 
 not shed light. ' For the history of the United 
 Provinces," as he himself said, " is not at all a pro- 
 vincial history. It is the history of European liberty. 
 Without the struggle of Holland and England against 
 Spain, all Europe might have been Catholic and 
 Spanish. It was Holland that saved England in the 
 sixteenth century, and, by so doing, secured the
 
 192 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 triumph of the Reformation, and placed the indepen- 
 dence of the various states of Europe upon a sure 
 foundation." Indeed, his books illustrate the contem- 
 porary annals of England, France, and Germany 
 almost as much as they do those of Holland and 
 Belgium. Especially is this the case with the Eng- 
 land of Elizabeth and the Great Britain of James the 
 First. He delved in the English State-paper Office 
 and among the MSS. of the British Museum until he 
 unearthed new facts which gave a shock of pleased 
 surprise to many of the most diligent English anti- 
 quaries and historical students. Speaking of the liber- 
 ality of modern European governments in opening 
 their archives to the inspection of the historian, he 
 describes the advantages the latter now enjoys in 
 words which literally embody his own experience. 
 " He leans over the shoulder of Philip the Second at 
 his writing-table, as the King spells patiently out, 
 with cipher key in hand, the most concealed hiero- 
 glyphics of Parma or Guise or Mendoza. . . . He enters 
 the cabinet of the deeply pondering Burghley, and 
 takes from the most private drawer the memoranda 
 which record that minister's unutterable doubtings ; 
 lie pulls from the dressing-gown folds of the stealthy, 
 soft-gliding Walsingham the last secret which he has 
 picked from the Emperor's pigeon-holes or the Pope's 
 pocket, and which not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor 
 Leicester, nor the Lord Treasurer is to see, nobody 
 but Elizabeth herself; he sits invisible at the most 
 secret councils of the Nassaus and Barnevelds and
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 193 
 
 Buys, or pores with Farnesc over coming victories 
 and vast schemes of universal conquest ; he reads the 
 latest bit of scandal, the minutest characteristic of 
 king or minister, chronicled by the gossiping Venetians 
 for the edification of the Forty ; and after all this 
 prying and eavesdropping, having seen the cross- 
 purposes, the bribings, the windings in the dark, he is 
 not surprised if those who were systematically de- 
 ceived did not always arrive at correct conclusions." 
 Motley thus " interviews," as it were, all the sov- 
 ereigns, statesmen, generals, and churchmen of the 
 sixteenth century, so that through him we know them 
 as we know, or rather, perhaps, as we do not know, 
 the leading personages of our own time. 
 
 After having thus amassed and digested his mate- 
 rials, the task of composition seems to have been to 
 Motley a positive pleasure. He could write from an 
 early hour in the morning to late in the afternoon of 
 an English day with unabated vigor and delight, 
 receiving no other inspiration than what he derived 
 from his subject-matter. His daughter mentions that 
 for years before his death he did not indulge even in 
 the student's luxury of smoking. He once laugh- 
 ingly said to me that what cured him of the habit 
 was the circumstance that when he went to Europe 
 he could get no good cigars. The charm of his 
 narrative style comes from his unwithholding self- 
 abandonment to the scenes, events, and persons that 
 filled his mind to overflowing. 
 
 When a New England farmer was asked to buy a 
 13
 
 194 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 machine which hatched eggs into chickens without 
 the interposition of the hen, he naturally objected 
 that the thing could not be done better by the machine 
 than by the hen ; " and then, you know," he added, 
 " hens' time is worth nothing." In every estimate 
 of an historian's penetrative and persistent research 
 into the obscure recesses of history, his time, like the 
 time of the hen brooding over her eggs, is popularly 
 reckoned as worth nothing. Certainly no great his- 
 tory has ever been written, with the exception, per- 
 haps, of Macaulay's, which at all remunerated the 
 historian for the time he expended on his work. But 
 Motley, like the other great historians of his period, 
 despised lucre as compared with fame, and was willing 
 to consider his time as worth nothing, provided he 
 could add anything to historical knowledge. After 
 his " brute work " was done a work, however, 
 which required great intellectual discrimination in 
 the separation of the wheat of history from its chaff 
 he sat down to write his narrative in a perfect 
 glow of moral and mental enthusiasm. Hence his 
 style is not only spirited and impetuous, but joyous. 
 Even its defects testify to the elation of heart and 
 brain out of which it spontaneously sprang. Its 
 fascination to the reader is due to its freshness, 
 vivacity, vigor, brilliancy, and the spirit of enjoyment 
 manifest in every page. Its faults may be said to 
 come from the excess of its virtues. What is called 
 the " dignity of history " is frequently violated, but 
 this violation is found to be the result of a more than
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 195 
 
 common effort to reach the reality of history. Motley 
 had come so intimately near to the interior life of 
 the externally august personages who imposed upon 
 Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
 that he found it impossible to pay any proper regard 
 to tlie grandeur of their station and the splendor of 
 their habiliments. He unfrocks and unclothes priest 
 and king alike, and exhibits both in the nudity of 
 their essential feebleness or wickedness. He leaves 
 not " a rag of righteousness " on the form of any 
 tyrant or bigot whom he selects for exposure, relent- 
 lessly stripping him of every pretension of self-delu- 
 sion and self-justification by which his crimes have 
 been heretofore palliated. He is among the first of 
 those modern historians who have had the courage to 
 declare that the old tolerant plea of " sincerity " in 
 religious belief is no excuse for crimes which are 
 committed by the bigots of that belief. Inhuman 
 depravity is not vindicated by tracing it to mistaken 
 views of religious obligation. The inhumanity must 
 condemn either the man or his belief. 
 
 Motley's power of characterization is specially ex- 
 hibited in his portraiture of Philip the Second of 
 Spain. He has followed, with the pitilessness of 
 justice, the whole course of the life of that champion 
 of " the true religion." Every low amour in which 
 he indulged is as well known to him as to the transi- 
 tory harlot who for the moment attracted the Most 
 Catholic King's appetites. There is something almost 
 vindictive in the patience by which he proves the
 
 196 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 Most Catholic King's violation of all those precepts 
 of Christianity which are intended to restrain sensual 
 lusts. That Philip ever felt toward any woman that 
 passion which poets and decent men call love, is 
 demonstrated by Motley to have been an impossibility. 
 Ascending from vices of the senses to vices of the 
 soul, the relentless historian shows him to have been 
 devoid of friendship even for such agents of his will 
 as Alva and Farnese ; that there was no good in him, 
 and that of all the base and cruel men of his time, 
 he was the basest and most cruel, worse even than 
 the instruments he employed to destroy political and 
 spiritual freedom by means of conquest and massacre. 
 Motley sustains this opinion by citations from Philip's 
 private letters, and there is hardly a dark line in the 
 portrait which is not confirmed by Philip's own hand. 
 The crowned monster hated the whole human race, 
 and from his birth to his horrible death in torments 
 unutterable, the historian paints him with a minute~ 
 ness of touch which it is almost frightful to contem- 
 plate. Suetonius has black passages enough in his 
 sketches of the Caesars, but the cumulative effect of 
 Motley's repeated proofs of the inhumanity of the 
 second Philip exceeds in horror many of the most 
 horrible pictures of depravity in the pages of the 
 Roman historian. 
 
 It is curious that it did not occur to Motley while 
 delineating such a character, who was, after all, next 
 to the Pope, the head of Christendom, that Chris- 
 tianity itself was a religion unsuited to the fierce
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 197 
 
 populations of Europe. There is a terrible phrase of 
 the Christian Church, meant to embody all its holy 
 wrath against a possible foe of its precepts and tenets. 
 That })hrase is "Antichrist." Now in the sixteenth 
 century, according to the principles of Christianity 
 as embodied in its authentic documents, " Antichrist " 
 was perfectly embodied in the person of the Most 
 Catholic King. Christianity is essentially humane ; 
 Philip was essentially inhuman. There is not a pre- 
 cept of Christ which Philip did not violate on system. 
 How much more sincere would it have been for hjm 
 to have revived the graceful heathenism of Greece 
 and Rome, and connected it as a point of faith with 
 the sanguinary practices of the early Druids, than to 
 have disgraced Christianity by making it responsible 
 for acts which every good-natured worshipper of Jupi- 
 ter and Venus would have recoiled from with horror, 
 and which no Druid priest familiar with bloody sacri- 
 fices could have been tempted by all Philip's mines of 
 gold and silver in the new America to indorse ! In 
 reading the history of modern Europe one is con- 
 stantly wondering why a paganism more brutal than 
 that which obtained in Greece and Rome a paga- 
 nism which Socrates and Cicero would have protested 
 against with all the eloquence of instinctive reason, 
 morality, and humanity should have dared to call 
 itself the religion of Christ. Perhaps if the course of 
 Christianity had been directed to the East rather than 
 to the West, it would have found in the Buddhists of 
 Asia more consistent disciples than it has ever found
 
 198 MOTLEY, THE HISTOUIAN. 
 
 in the " civilized " communities of Europe, where, 
 history tells us, it has been so often barbarously and 
 grotesquely caricatured. Philip's God was a combina- 
 tion of Belial and Moloch, a God representing a 
 magnified image of his own character. Atheism as to 
 such a deity is the first condition of Christian faith. 
 And yet he shot, hanged, racked, burned, or buried 
 alive all men, women, and children who refused to 
 worship his God, that is, the apotheosis of Philip ! 
 
 Philip the Second is Motley's favorite horror in his- 
 toric characterization, as much as James the Second 
 is Macaulay's. Both portraits are elaborated in a 
 similar relentless fashion, epigram coming constantly 
 in to add new zest to invective. Indeed, it may be 
 said that Motley hated Philip even more than he 
 hated Mr. Ex-Secretary Fish, and Mr. Ex-Under- 
 Secretary Bancroft Davis. But his masterpiece in 
 characterization is, on the whole, the " Bearnese," 
 Henry of Navarre, Henry the Fourth of Prance. 
 Neither in English nor French literature is to be 
 found such a complete representation of this man in 
 all the variety of his talents and accomplishments, of 
 his virtues and his vices, as Motley has given ; and 
 Motley does this not merely by analyzing his charac- 
 ter, but by showing him to us as he was in council 
 and in action. Whenever in " The History of the 
 United Netherlands," or " The Life and Death of 
 John of Barneveld," Henry comes upon the scene, the 
 reader welcomes him as an auditor in a theatre wel- 
 comes a great actor, comic or tragic ; for he knows
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 199 
 
 that there is in store for him a short period of intense 
 and unmitigated enjo3^mcnt. The strange levity of 
 Henry the Fourth in all matters of religion, his tricks, 
 his lies, his libertinism, his unscrupulousness, his 
 determination to be an absolute king, are all vividly 
 brought out in connection with his splendid talents, 
 his position as the Catholic head and defender of the 
 Protestant interest in Europe, his cordial detestation 
 of Spanish and Austrian schemes to dominate the 
 mind as well as the territory of the Continent, and 
 the magnificent almost the mad courage with 
 which he plunged into the thick of a battle, with 
 the proud command to his nobles and men-at-arms, 
 " Follow my plume ! " Motley seizes the distinctive 
 characteristics of this gay, buoyant, versatile, and 
 wnmoral spirit, and preserves the unity of the charac- 
 ter amid all the wide varieties of its manifestation. 
 The contrast between Henry, whose life seemed 
 passed in the open air, and his rival, the gloomy, 
 mediocre, cowardly, and dyspeptic . letter-writer se- 
 cluded in the Escurial, who sent his bloody mandates 
 over Europe, but had never shown any gallantry in 
 the field, is exhibited by Motley in its most piquant 
 aspects. It may be added that it is curious that a 
 scholar like Motley, in his incessant attempts to load 
 Philip with ever new burdens of ridicule and dishonor, 
 should not have recalled to his memory that deli- 
 ciously witty scene, in " The Birds " of Aristophanes, 
 where Prometheus is represented as coming down 
 from the skies to blab the secrets of the gods with an
 
 200 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 umbrella over his head to prevent Jove from seeing 
 him. As if the astute Henry of Navarre, the cleverest 
 rogue in Christendbm, in fact with a touch of the 
 " Jupiter-Scapin " in him, could not detect the per- 
 son and movements of Philip under his seemingly 
 impenetrable umbrella ! 
 
 But these two men, prominent as they are, convey 
 but a limited notion of the richness and variety of 
 Motley's gallery of historical characters. In "The 
 Rise of the Putch Republic " we have as the central 
 figure the first William of Orange. Then come the 
 Counts Egmont and Horn ; Cardinal Granvelle and 
 the Duchess Margaret of Parma ; Ruy Gomez da Silva, 
 Alva, Requesens, and Don John of Austria ; Louis of 
 Nassau and Saint Aldegonde ; the Duke of Anjou, 
 Charles the Ninth, and Henry the Third of France. 
 These are but a few among many marked characters. 
 Then in " The History of the United Netherlands " we 
 have Elizabeth and James the First ; Leicester, Burgh- 
 ley, Walsingham, Buckhurst, Howard of Effingham, 
 Sir Francis Vere, Sir John Norris, Sir Francis Drake, 
 Sir John Hawkins, Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of 
 Essex, the Earl of Salisbury ; the three great generals 
 of the age, Prince Maurice of Nassau, Alexander of 
 Parma, and Spinola ; Guise, Mayenne, Coligny, Sully, 
 Duplessis-Mornay, Henry the Fourth ; the Cardinal- 
 Archduke Albert, the Duke of Lerma, Mendoza, Me- 
 dina-Sidonia, Fuentes, and Philip the Third of Spain ; 
 the Popes Paul the Fourth, Paul the Fifth, and Sixtus 
 the Fifth ; Hohenlo, Heemskerk, Barneveld, and
 
 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 201 
 
 scores of others. In " The Life and Death of John of 
 BarncTcld " some of these are still active daring the 
 twelve years' truce of Holland with Spain, and we 
 have in addition masterly portraits of Jacob Arminius 
 and Hugo Grotius as theologians ; of Prince Maurice 
 as a statesman ; of Francis Aerssens, the most accom- 
 plished of diplomatists ; and above and beyond all, of 
 Barneveld himself. The most piquant revelations of 
 the pedantry of James the First of Great Britain, and 
 of the libertinism and the grand speculative views on 
 European politics of Henry the Fourth of France, are 
 contained in these last volumes from Motley's pen. 
 
 In description our American historian is generally 
 considered to hold a prominent place among the most 
 picturesque historians of the century. Take Prescott 
 at his best, as in the account of the great naval battle 
 of Lepanto, and it is difficult to find his match in sim- 
 ple force and clearness of representation, for the facts 
 are placed before us through tlie medium of words, 
 and yet the picture formed in the imagination of the 
 reader seems to be independent of the words by which 
 it is conveyed. Motley's account of the same battle is 
 notoriously inferior, and, indeed, exhibits him at his 
 worst. He should be judged by his vivid picturing of 
 those events in which he not only makes his reader 
 the witness of a ceremony, siege, conflict, or martyr- 
 dom, but so enlists his sympathies that he is as it 
 were mentally forced to become a participator in it. 
 This immediate consciousness, this realizing sense of 
 an incident which, though it occurred three centuries
 
 202 MOTLEY, THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 ago, affects the reader as if it had passed yesterday 
 before his very eyes, is the impression which Motley's 
 best descriptions and narrations make on our feelings 
 and imaginations. Among these may be instanced the 
 account of the executions of Egmont and Horn ; the 
 doings of the Holy Inquisition in the Low Countries ; 
 the conduct of the heretics when they were doomed 
 to be beheaded, racked, burned, or buried alive ; the 
 " Reign of Terror and Council of Blood " inaugurated 
 by Alva ; the sack of Zutphen ; the siege of Haarlem ; 
 the siege of Leyden ; the sack of Antwerp by the 
 Spanish mutineers ; the siege of Maestricht ; the 
 " French fury " at Antwerp ; the assassination of Wil- 
 liam of Orange ; the siege of Antwerp ; the defeat of 
 the Spanish Armada; the siege and battle of Nieu- 
 port ; the siege of Ostend ; the passion of Henry the 
 Fourth for Margaret de Montmorency ; the assassina- 
 tion of Henry ; the escape of Grotius ; and the trial 
 and execution of Barneveld. To say that in respect 
 to mere interest these excel any fictitious scenes in 
 ordinary novels is to do but scant justice to the power 
 displayed in their description. They absolutely ab- 
 sorb and inthrall the attention of the reader. 
 
 It is necessary to pause here, not for want of mat- 
 ter, but for want of space. Yet it would be unjust 
 to Motley not to emphasize that element of attractive- 
 ness in his histories which is derived from his perso- 
 nal character. Those who knew him intimately read 
 his works with the same delight that they listened to 
 his conversation, when some great question of justice
 
 MOTLEY, TIIE HISTORIAN. 203 
 
 or freedom which had touched his heart stimulated 
 all the faculties and evoked all the acquirements of 
 his fertile and richly stored intellect, and when he 
 poured forth his eloquence in a torrent of speech 
 every wdrd of which was alive with a generous ardor 
 for truth and right, and a noble disdain for every- 
 thing false, mean, base, and cruel. As the historian 
 of liberty in its early struggles with political and ec- 
 clesiastical despotism, every quality of his large and 
 opulent nature found frank expression in his books. 
 The reader of his works is therefore not only enriched 
 by the new facts and striking thoughts he communi- 
 cates, but by the direct communication of the author's 
 soul to his own. That soul was the soul of a singu- 
 larly noble, sincere, honorable, and intrepid gentle- 
 man, who felt the mere imputation of a stain as a 
 wound; and to the young men of the country inti- 
 macy with such a spirit through his writings cannot 
 but exert a healthy stimulus on all that is best both 
 in their exertions and their aspirations.
 
 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHARLES SUMNER. 
 
 The first two volumes of Mr. E. L. Pierce's excellent 
 biography of Charles Sumner are confined to what 
 may be called the period of his preparation for political 
 life. They end at the time when his influence as a 
 force in national affairs really began. The abundant 
 materials which Mr. Pierce has in his possession assure 
 us that his forth-coming volumes will far exceed in 
 interest and value those which he has already published. 
 Meanwhile, all recollections of Sumner, recorded by 
 friends who surveyed him from various points of view, 
 cannot but aid him in making his biography complete. 
 The charm of Mr. Pierce's work, so far as it is pub- 
 lished, is the absence in it of partisanship. "Warm as 
 is his sympathy with his subject, he is not specially 
 affected by that disease of admiration, that lues Bos- 
 weUiana, that furor hiographicus, which Macaulay de- 
 clares "is to writers of lives what the goitre is to an 
 Alpine shepherd, or dirt-eating to a negro slave." 
 Indeed, he generally lets Sumner tell his own story, 
 without any of those exclamation-points of admiring 
 wonder which generally prove that the biographer is 
 the slave rather than the social and intellectual equal 
 of the man whose life he depicts.
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 205 
 
 It was the misfortune of Sumner that, more than 
 any other public man of his time, he was subjected to 
 the extremes of adulation and obloquy. His real 
 character can hardly be discerned amid the tumult of 
 puffs and scoffs, of exaltations and execrations, which 
 the mere mention of his name excited during his pub- 
 lic career. Sumner himself was inclined to take the 
 compliments at more than their real worth, while he 
 experienced another though different satisfaction in 
 reading the calumnies. The compliments he consid- 
 ered as indications that all lovers of liberty and justice 
 were on his side ; the calumnies delighted him, because, 
 as they grew fiercer and fiercer, they seemed to prove 
 that his blows directed at slavery and injustice were 
 telling more and more against the enemies of freedom 
 and right. It is difficult to say whether his enjoyment 
 was more intense in exhibiting to his friends the pri- 
 vate letters from distinguished men, abroad and at 
 home, which exalted him to the skies, or in spreading 
 before them other letters, mostly anonymous, which 
 damned him to everlasting infamy as the foe of his 
 country and of the human race. It must be confessed 
 that, during the rebellion, our Southern friends did 
 not confine themselves within the limits of good taste 
 in their private communications to their Northern 
 opponents. It is impossible for me to compute the 
 number of times that Sumner's soul was consigned to 
 perdition, with all the additions of superfluous profanity 
 known to gentlemen in whom profanity appears to be 
 a secretion in the throat. These private threats and
 
 206 KECOLLECTIONS QF 
 
 public denunciations were a source of humorous pleas- 
 ure to Sumner. He never swore as an individual ; 
 nobody ever heard an oath slip from his lips even in 
 his ecstasies of philanthropic rage ; but he was the 
 best swearer by proxy and quotation that I ever lis- 
 tened to. The oaths launched at him by his Southern 
 enemies, the oaths which some Republican Senators 
 would occasionally hurl at him when they were vexed 
 by his obstinacy in clinging to his own view of a party 
 question that had been decided against him by a ma- 
 jority of Republican statesmen, these, in narrating 
 his experiences in political life to a friend, he would 
 roll over on his tongue in quite an unsanctified but 
 still innocent fashion, and laugh at the profanity as 
 something exquisitely comical. The more people swore 
 at him, the more delighted he was ; and it is a pity 
 that he did not have the same sense of humor in esti- 
 mating the hyperboles of panegyric addressed to him 
 by his admirers, which he unquestionably had in esti- 
 mating the hyperboles of execration shot at him by 
 his assailants. 
 
 My acquaintance with Sumner preceded by a few 
 years his celebrated oration on " The True Grandeur 
 of Nations," delivered in Boston on the Fourth of July, 
 1845. He had recently come back from Europe, after 
 one of the most successful social campaigns which a 
 young American had ever made abroad. From the 
 first I was attracted by his grand, cordial way of re- 
 ceiving even a chance acquaintance ; and I soon came 
 to love him very much, as did scores of other young
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 207 
 
 men, wlio dropped occasionally into his law office for 
 an hour's conversation. We all had a special liking 
 for some English, or French, or German author ; and 
 here was a man who had seen and conversed with our 
 particular idol a year or two ago, who was still in 
 familiar correspondence with him, and was willing to 
 show us, in confidence, a letter from him dated only 
 a month before. Sumner thus consumed in private 
 conversation with us and other more learned loungers 
 a vast amount of time which probably should have 
 been devoted to establishing himself in his profession. 
 Whether he would have ever become a great advocate 
 or a great judge, had he devoted his whole energies 
 and his constantly accumulating stores of legal learn- 
 ing to the profession of the law, it is difficult to say. 
 My impression of him, in 1843, was this, that he was 
 a man who would devote himself to assisting and cheer- 
 ing on others to eminence rather than strive to become 
 eminent himself. He was even then a philanthropist, 
 a lover of mankind, to the very core of his nature. In 
 conversing with him I found that all his study of his- 
 tory had impressed him with a horror of war, that all 
 his study of law had kindled his soul into an ambition 
 to make jurisprudence identical with ethics, and that 
 his mind was specially bent on schemes which pro- 
 posed such an extension of the law of nations that all 
 conflicts of nations with each other should be decided 
 hereafter by tribunals on principles of reason and jus- 
 tice, and that the sword should be appealed to only 
 after every moral restraint on the passions of men had
 
 208 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 been urged in vain. He not only quoted in illustration 
 of his conception all great writers on international 
 law, but he was particularly interesting in citing the 
 unpublished opinions of eminent living European 
 jurists with whom he had conversed on the subject, 
 and who confided to him aspirations in the direction 
 of his own ideal of a Congress of Nations, which they 
 probably would not have risked their reputations as 
 practical men by putting into print. This ambition 
 to extend the scope of international law was never 
 absent from his mind; and later in life, when he made 
 his celebrated speech on " Constructive Claims," all 
 who knew him intimately must have felt that he was 
 aiming at an addition to the laws of nations, that he 
 was innovating on the established code while he was 
 seemingly only expounding it. On the occasion of his 
 last visit to Great Britain, after the Treaty of Wash- 
 ington had been concluded, I laughingly asked him, as 
 we shook hands on the wharf, if he were going to 
 England to collect his " constructive claims." He 
 laughed in return ; but he added : " I can tell you one 
 
 fact you do not know. Lord said to me, a few 
 
 weeks ago, ' Mr. Sumner, had you not made that speech, 
 we should not be here to negotiate the treaty which 
 has just been happily concluded.' So, you see, in mak- 
 ing that speech, which has resulted in arbitration, I 
 knew what I was about. The arbitration in this 
 case may not be very satisfactory ; indeed, I voted for 
 the treaty only under great stress from friends whose 
 arguments did not altogether convince my judgment ;
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 209 
 
 but the establishment of the principle of arbitration 
 must still be considered a great advance on the old 
 ways of diplomatic intercourse between nations. And 
 you will fmd that Great Britain will never, in any 
 future war, place herself again in the predicament in 
 which my speech demonstrates she was placed in the 
 matter of the rebel cruisers." 
 
 But my object at present is to show what a delight 
 it was to hear Sumner tell anecdotes of his experience 
 of English life after he had returned from his first 
 joyous visit to England, and when he was still a young 
 man, full of enthusiasm for literature as well as for 
 jurisprudence, and thoroughly enjoying, in endless 
 talk with chance visitors, the leisure of a lawyer with- 
 out clients, before the lawyer had been tempted to 
 appear publicly in the field of either philanthropic 
 enterprise or political discussion. Laying his head 
 far back on his chair, and indolently stretching his 
 long legs to the full length of their possible extension, 
 he would discourse for hours on every subject and 
 every personage which the questions of his visitors 
 aroused in his singularly tenacious memory. " Did 
 you meet Talfourd, Mr. Sumner, while you were in 
 England ?" " Oh, yes ; and that reminds me of a lu- 
 dicrous incident connected with Dr. Channing's send- 
 ing him his lecture on temperance. Channing, you 
 know, was captivated, as all of us were, by Talfourd's 
 exquisite tragedy of ' Ion.' Well, he sent his pamphlet 
 to Talfourd, with the full assurance that the author of 
 such a dramatic poem would gladly receive a 'lecture 
 
 U
 
 210 RECOLLECTIONS OE 
 
 so full of moral truths ; but the good doctor forgot to 
 prepay the postage. In the condition of the postage 
 laws at that time the sum demanded for it was very 
 large, and Talfourd refused to take it from the office. 
 Meanwhile it was exhibited among the letters and 
 documents uncalled for ; and at last the envelope be- 
 came so torn that the subject, as well as the name of 
 the person to whom it was addressed, became visible 
 to the public eye. Talfourd was unmercifully quizzed 
 by the members of his special club on his unwilling- 
 ness to take out from the office such a precious docu- 
 ment, especially as its subject indicated that it had 
 some particular reference to him. I happened to be 
 at the club one night, or rather morning, when Tal- 
 fourd came in from the House of Commons, which had 
 just adjourned. After calling for broiled bones and 
 claret, he beckoned me to his table, and asked some 
 questions regarding this Dr. Channing. Of course I 
 told him what a noble philanthropist Channing was, 
 and how greatly he was esteemed by the best men in 
 the United States. ' Well, Sumner,' was his reply, ' I 
 wish, if you see him on your return, you would beg 
 him to send me no more of his pamphlets without pay- 
 ing the postage ; and you may add, though it may be 
 at the expense of my character for sobriety, which is 
 unimpeached, that I belong, like my friend Charles 
 Lamb, to the tipsy school.' " 
 
 And then, perhaps, the querist might be one who 
 had heard of the breakfasts where men of letters met 
 each other at the table of Samuel Rogers. "Have
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 211 
 
 you ever, Mr. Sumner, been present at one of these? " 
 " Many times," was the reply ; " but you must uot be 
 deluded with the idea that the feeling among the per- 
 sons invited to them was always cordial and friendly. 
 I remember, on one occasion, after we had sat down 
 at the table, Rogei-s remarked that a prominent law- 
 yer and writer whom he named, though invited, had not 
 yet appeared. Then came a series of bitter sarcasms 
 directed at the absent but expected guest, to which 
 the host blandly contributed his full share. Sud- 
 denly the object of this combined attack entered the 
 room, when Rogers rose, shook hands with him in his 
 
 most charming way, and added, '- Ah ! my dear , 
 
 how glad we are to see you ! "We were just speaking 
 of you as you came in ! ' " Sumner, indeed, keenly 
 perceived the organized hypocrisy which constitutes 
 the formal politeness at great London dinner and 
 breakfast parties, and knew how much conceit, envy, 
 hatred, and malice may be expressed without any 
 violation of " good manners." 
 
 Again, some visitor might ask, " Did you ever meet 
 Macaulay?" And Sumner would answer :" That re- 
 minds me of a curious circumstance in my London 
 experience. At a dinner at Lord Lansdowne's the 
 question of codification came up for discussion, and I 
 was appealed to as an American to give what informa- 
 tion I could as to how far the laws of the separate 
 States and the United States had Ijcen, harmonized 
 into a code. I answered in general terms. A gentle- 
 man who sat opposite to me at the table, and who had
 
 212 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 not spoken before, then began to put to me a series of 
 questions. Tliey were so searching, and were so evi- 
 dently intended to get at the very root of the matter, 
 that I was driven from point to point, knowing all the 
 time that I must in the end come to the exact, the 
 real advance that our country had made in this direc- 
 tion. This terrible fellow was content with no gen- 
 eralities. His penetrating analysis went pitilessly on, 
 every new question presenting new difficulties for me 
 to clear up ; but while I was drawing on all my re- 
 sources of information to answer him, I felt confident 
 in my own mind that the questioner was Macaulay, 
 though I was then ignorant of the fact that he had re- 
 turned from India. And I was right ; it wa% Macau- 
 lay. He was fresh from his great work on the India 
 penal code, and knew more about codification than any 
 English lawyer at the table. And, by the way, per- 
 haps you have heard of the sarcasms that his legal 
 opponents launched against that code. I was told in 
 legal circles that though it had cost the government a 
 guinea a word, it was utterly impracticable." And it 
 may be added here that Macaulay's code, with some 
 modifications, has only been recently adopted by the 
 Indian government. It had to undergo a storm of 
 opposition lasting forty years before its merits were 
 recognized. 
 
 The defect of Sumner as a relator of such memories 
 as these was his disposition to be too minute and cir- 
 cumstantial in his narrative. His imaginative mem- 
 ory was roused when he was asked any question as to
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 213 
 
 his intercourse with an eminent man, and he recalled 
 in a dreamy way the irrelevant as well as the relevant 
 incidents which were connected with it. Thus he 
 would consume ten minutes in telling a story which a 
 man like Choate would have flashed upon his hearer 
 in one. 
 
 During all the early period to which I refer, Sumner 
 appeared to be a thorough philanthropist in thought 
 and feeling, rather than a man capable of putting 
 philanthropy into aggressive action, and of becoming 
 a great public force. In listening to him one got the 
 impression of a certain indolence of nature, which 
 would be content with uttering moral opinions with- 
 out backing them up with moral might. Suddenly, 
 as by a flash of lightning, the forces which had been 
 silently gathering in his soul during long studies, long 
 meditations, and long conversations on moral ideas, 
 broke out in a Fourth-of-July oration. His subject 
 was " The True Grandeur of Nations ; " the occasion 
 was the commemoration of Independence-day, which 
 the municipality of Boston celebrates annually with 
 an oration and other fire-works. The great success of 
 Sumner was due to the fact that his oration was stu- 
 diously framed so as to be utterly mappropriate to the 
 occasion. It happened that a considerable number of 
 army and navy officers were present, some of them 
 suggesting to the audience memories of the war of 
 1812. Foreseeing that there was to be a kind of be- 
 nevolent mischief in Sumner's oration, I took a posi- 
 tion at the extreme end of the hall in which it was
 
 214 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 delivered, in order to watch its effect on the counte- 
 nances of the bewildered or belligerent auditors as his 
 famous plea for peace was developed, each proposition 
 illustrated by some vivid picture of the horrors of war, 
 and both propositions and pictures relentlessly leading 
 to the conclusion that among communities of reason- 
 able and Christian men war should be abolished. The 
 contrast between the expenses of supporting Harvard 
 College and the man-of-war " Ohio," then floating in 
 Boston harbor, together with his somewhat clumsy ridi- 
 cule of the spangled costume by which an officer of the 
 militia is distinguished by his dress from an ordinary 
 citizen, must have been resented as an inexpiable of- 
 fence not only by the captains and commodores of the 
 regular army and navy who were present in full regi- 
 mentals, but by the militia officers whose companies 
 escorted the procession to the hall, and who altogether 
 outshone their professional brethren in the freshness 
 and brilliancy of their military accoutrements. The 
 whole scene, as 1 viewed it from the outside, seemed 
 to me so deliciously humorous that I fear the moral 
 grandeur of Sumner's sentiments did not impress me 
 half as much as his almost child-like innocence while 
 he went on dealing stab after stab to estimable servants 
 of the United States, who had come there with the rea- 
 sonable expectation that on the Fourth of July, at least, 
 they would not only be honorably mentioned, but 
 might also count on being overwhelmed by a multi- 
 tude of those hollow compliments which on such occa- 
 sions are ordinarily lavished on " the brave defenders
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 215 
 
 of the country, whether on land or sea." They could 
 not have dreamed that the usclessncss of their profes- 
 sion would bo the orator's theme, when they remem- 
 bered how scanty were their emoluments, and how 
 severe was the code of professional honor which pre- 
 vented them from resorting to those ignoble contri- 
 vances by which many civil officers of the government 
 increased their meagre " wage" by illicit and unlaw- 
 ful gains. Sumner, as might naturally have been 
 expected, was called to account by many speakers in 
 the dinner that followed in Faneuil Hall ; but he 
 bore his punishment meekly ; and the peculiar fasci- 
 nation of his smile was never more charmingly 
 apparent than during the time he sweetly listened to 
 the diatribes of his angry opponents, even when his 
 friend Dr. Palfrey felt himself compelled to join in 
 the chorus of dissent. 
 
 On the next day his law office was beset by friends 
 and foes alike. The remonstrants were there in great 
 force ; and Sumner had to reply oif-hand to those who 
 agreed with him in full, to those who half agreed with 
 him, and to those who totally disagreed with him. 
 For hours he was mobbed by a successive crowd of 
 intelligent men, whose questions were so searching 
 that a speech longer than his oration would have 
 been required to answer them ; and sympathizers 
 were almost as difficult for Sumner to manage as 
 non-sympathizers. Hillard, whose office was con- 
 nected with Sumner's, divided only by a door, 
 and who was then in close friendship with him,
 
 216 KECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 quietly remarked to me, amidst the din of voices : 
 " What folly is all tliis ! Each of these men professes 
 to be a Christian ; Sumner, as I understand it, has 
 simply applied the principles of Christianity to war, 
 and he has raised a tumult fiercer than if he had 
 insulted Boston, on the national anniversary, by an 
 open profession of paganism." 
 
 In a few months after this oration on the Fourth of 
 July, 1845, it became evident that Sumner had estab- 
 lished himself as a power among two classes of our 
 New England population which it is never safe for any 
 politician or statesman to disregard or despise; name- 
 ly, earnest, progressive clergymen, and warm-hearted, 
 cultivated women. In speaking of " cultivated" wom- 
 en, it is of course implied that the phrase includes not 
 only those women of large hearts who have been high- 
 ly educated as to the knowledge of many languages 
 and many literatures, but those women who have been 
 trained in the austere discipline of practical life to re- 
 gard moral obligations as the most important and per- 
 manent of all the ties on which civil society rests, 
 though they may speak no language but their own, 
 and have read but few books except the Bible and 
 " Pilgrim's Progress." The influence which Sumner 
 early obtained among these sources of real power 
 went on increasing to the day of his death. There 
 was from the first something feminine, though not 
 effeminate, in the delicacy of his perception of moral 
 obligations. 
 
 Meanwhile a considerable portion of intelligent,
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 217 
 
 practical men honestly delivered their opinion that 
 Sumner was, in the most expressive term of Yankee 
 contempt, " a greenhorn." They saw clearly that war 
 was a hateful condition of human affairs to which 
 all " Christian" states must be at times exposed ; that 
 preparations for possible wars should properly enter 
 into the economy of all strong governments ; that the 
 precepts of the Christian religion were historically 
 proved to be weak against human avarice and human 
 ambition ; and that the best way, on the whole, to pre- 
 vent war was to be prepared for it. These men did 
 not add that the great provocations to war were moral, 
 springing from the stalwart assertion of the rights of 
 man against the oppressions of privileged men ; that 
 there could be no peace as long as any man was de- 
 prived of his rights ; and that the fiery philanthropists 
 who appear as the champions of reason, justice, and 
 peace, who denounce religious superstition and polit- 
 ical tyranny in words which stir multitudes into re- 
 volt against what is truly revolting, are the most 
 efficient provokers of war. When they ask this king 
 or that aristocracy to combine with other kings and 
 other aristocracies to prevent the nations they rule 
 from indulging in the expensive expedient of war, they 
 suppose a condition of things which would reduce the 
 people they rule into a weak submission to servitude, 
 against which human nature, at least in Europe and 
 the United States, instinctively uprises with arms in 
 its hands. Fifteen or sixteen years after the oration 
 which first made him prominent among the public
 
 218 RECOLLECTIONS OE 
 
 men of the country, Sumner's earnest preaching of 
 the seemingly peaceful doctrine of right and justice 
 ended in making him one of the most prominent of 
 those American statesmen who, in the most frightful 
 of civil wars recorded in history, were for waging war 
 to its utmost limits, until justice and right were estab- 
 lished throughout the land. He would, of course, 
 have preferred that the dread arbitrament of war 
 should have been avoided ; but when it came, who was 
 more vehement than he to prosecute it on principles 
 that could end only with the entire prostration of the 
 South ? Most wars, indeed, when waged in civilized 
 states, are either the direct or remote results of the 
 insurrection of the human heart, the human con- 
 science, and the human reason against the attempt of 
 a few privileged men to degrade human nature itself 
 by an insolent assertion of superiority over the great 
 mass of mankind. 
 
 But to return to the immediate subject. Sumner's 
 reputation grew day by day, as the great Christian 
 layman of New England, from the time the oration 
 on " The True Grandeur of Nations " was published. 
 The peace societies naturally welcomed so eloquent an 
 adherent; but the series of speeches and addresses 
 which followed it, with his favorite emphasis on 
 Right, always prominent, with a capital R, or with 
 the whole word in capitals, so worked into the mind 
 and moral sentiment of Massachusetts that he became 
 at last the Senator of that State in Congress, by the 
 operation of the Darwinian law of natural selection
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 219 
 
 and " the survival of the fittest " among the contend- 
 ing politicians who desired to obtain the place. 
 
 In 184G, a year after his Fourth-of-July oration, he 
 made a new application of its principles in his noble 
 Phi Beta address at Cambridge, on " The Scholar, the 
 Jurist, the Artist, the Philanthropist." The men se- 
 lected to represent these were John Pickering, Joseph 
 Story, Washington Allston, and William Ellery Chan- 
 ning. Having been present on the occasion of the de- 
 livery of this oration, I can bear testimony to the gen- 
 eral enthusiasm with which it was received both by the 
 old and the young men who were present ; the tribute 
 to Judge Story, especially, was the best compact state- 
 ment that has ever been made of Story's real contribu- 
 tions to jurisprudence, considered as a science. And 
 yet a young sprig of the law, hardly out of his legal 
 teens, superciliously remarked to one of his compan- 
 ions, as he left the hall, that the whole speech sounded 
 to him as if it were made up out of four rejected obit- 
 uary notices ; and the joke made him quite a reputa- 
 tion among the whole body of young gentlemen of his 
 turn of mind, whose wit consisted in sneering at any 
 man who was so demented as to be inspired by any 
 moral enthusiasm whatever for what Sumner emphat- 
 ically called the " Right." 
 
 But the special criticism on Sumner, advanced even 
 by some persons whose minds were absorbed in ques- 
 tions relating to philanthropy, was this, that he 
 was a pedantic philanthropist. If there is one among 
 Sumner's many orations which may be selected from
 
 220 RECOLLECTIONS OE 
 
 the rest as pre-eminently able, it is his college address 
 (1848) on "The Law of Human Progress." After 
 having delivered it before the Phi Beta Kappa So- 
 ciety of Union College, Schenectady, New York, he 
 repeated it before scores of popular lyceums in New 
 England and New York. The audiences were doubt- 
 less amazed that a proposition which they were pre- 
 pared to accept without question was historically 
 considered, that the obscure hints of the law in an- 
 cient poets and philosophers were elaborately set 
 forth, and that the theories of Descartes, Pascal, Vico, 
 Leibnitz, Lessing, Perrault, Fontenelle, Turgot, Con- 
 dorcet, and a host of other modern writers were quoted 
 to prove his ultimate conclusion, that, in the words of 
 Pascal, the succession of men, as they appear age after 
 age, may be regarded as one man, " who lives always, 
 and learns continually." A quick-witted woman, who 
 had heard the lecture at a village lyceum, told me that 
 when Sumner first announced his proposition, she 
 agreed to it at once as an obvious truth. " But," she 
 added, " when he went on, summoning this and that 
 great man of whom I had never heard to testify to its 
 validity, I began to grow suspicious ; the truism took 
 on more and more the character of a paradox ; and 
 after his citations of authorities had come to an end, I 
 came to the conclusion that human progress was one 
 of Sumner's benevolent heresies, and was inclined to 
 disbelieve in it altogether." 
 
 Yet the value of Sumner's historical method of 
 treating the genealogy of freedom, and the importance
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 221 
 
 that his large legal and general learning gave to his 
 arguments for human rights, were at once evident 
 when he became a member of the Senate of the United 
 States, and plunged into a hand-to-hand and mind-to- 
 mind fight with the accomplished lawyers and debat- 
 ers who thought, or pretended to think, that the tru- 
 isms accepted at most New England firesides were 
 damnable paradoxes, which all friends of the Union 
 and the Constitution must passionately denounce or 
 derisively reject. Then the laborious antiquarian of 
 liberty came in to reinforce its resolute champion, 
 citing precedents as fluently as he asserted principles, 
 and basing the disputed proposition that two and two 
 make four on a mass of accredited authorities in mat- 
 ters of government and legislation which were entire- 
 ly independent of the judgments of his own intellect 
 and the monitions of his own individual conscience. 
 Thus he could not be contemptuously dismissed by 
 his brother Senators as a mere " freedom screecher," 
 for he screeched Grotius and Puffendorf ; screeched 
 L'HSpital and Turgot ; screeched Hale, Holt, Mans- 
 field, Chatham, Camden, Burke, and Fox ; screeched 
 Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Mar- 
 shall, Jackson, Story, and Webster, and never seemed 
 to indulge in an impulse of enthusiasm without having 
 in his brain an authority which justified the words 
 that came hot from his heart. Therefore, what struck 
 popular audiences as pedantry became, when Sumner 
 entered the Senate of the United States, an element 
 of power. His legal opponents, treating him at first
 
 222 RECOLLECTIONS OE 
 
 as a mere enthusiast, were soon forced to admit that 
 the briefless barrister they affected to despise had em- 
 ployed the time which they had spent in the practice 
 of the law in local courts, with fat fees as the just 
 reward of their industry, in a patient and prolonged 
 study of every branch of law, national and interna- 
 tional ; that he was intimately acquainted with the 
 most important decisions of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, and of the judgments of the State tri- 
 bunals so far as they bore on the subject which hap- 
 pened to be under discussion ; and that the attempt to 
 put him down by technical objections ended in rous- 
 ing a kind of legal porcupine, bristling all over with 
 technicalities, and shooting out his pointed quills to the 
 right and the left, never more delighted than when his 
 political enemies called forth the special capacity in 
 which he pre-eminently excelled. His vast memory 
 became indeed " a tremendous engine of legislative 
 oppression " when its stores of precedents, legal or 
 historical, were called forth by the questions, the 
 taunts, the sneers, or the invectives of his political 
 adversaries. 
 
 The great body of the reformers and philanthropists 
 of the country at last settled on Sumner as their man, 
 because they found that in a national assembly which 
 included lawyers and jurists he could bring learning 
 to the aid of moral enthusiasm, and hunt up pre- 
 cedents to sustain all the principles which he and they 
 mutually advocated. This was all the more impor- 
 tant, because such a combination of the technical
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 223 
 
 lawyer and the philanthropic statesman was a rare 
 phenomenon in our politics. They came to the con- 
 clusion that though four added to four made eight 
 in the minds of simple people, it might mean nine or 
 eighty-eight in the minds of members of Congress ; 
 and they witnessed with ever-increasing admiration 
 the long array and immense weight of the authorities 
 which the Senator from Massachusetts brought to bear 
 on this proposition of moral arithmetic, when its sound- 
 ness was vehemently questioned by eminent publicists 
 both from the South and North. But as Pulteney, the 
 great opponent of Walpole, said, nearly a century and a 
 half ago, " The heads of parties are, like the heads of 
 snakes, carried on by the tails ; " and Sumner was the 
 head of a party within his party, which was clamor- 
 ous for every new advance in the path which event- 
 ually led to negro emancipation. He developed by 
 degrees a kind of moral implacability, derived from 
 the uncompromising ethical fierceness of his chief sup- 
 porters. He could bear ordinary taunts and invectives 
 with fortitude, but when suspicions were suggested 
 that he was not up to the requirements of " the party 
 of right," he was greatly disturbed. The charge that 
 any one was ahead of him in the legislative champion- 
 ship of justice and freedom, and had grounds for 
 inveighing against his short-comings in the cause, 
 inflicted on him an immedicable wound, unless it was 
 healed by an immediate proposal of some new measure, 
 which it might take a year of debate to get organized 
 into a law.
 
 224 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Sumner was early accused of the foible or vice 
 of vanity, and the accusation was repeated again and 
 again up to the day of his death. He was doubtless 
 open to the charge ; but it is extremely difficult for 
 anybody who knew him intimately and loved him 
 heartily to state the peculiar form this foible assumed, 
 considered as one of the many ingredients which went 
 to make up his character, so that those who knew 
 him not can view it in its relations with the nobler 
 and predominating qualities of his nature. To him 
 there was a glory, perhaps sometimes a vain-glory, 
 in doing a good act, in making a good speech, or in 
 writing a good book. If, in the early days of his 
 career, anything done by himself attracted the atten- 
 tion of men he esteemed, he delighted in showing to 
 his intimate acquaintances the flattering letters he re- 
 ceived ; but he delighted even more in the success of 
 his friends. If Hillard wrote a notable article in the 
 " North American Review," if Longfellow published a 
 new poem, or Prescott a new history, or Lieber a new 
 work on the philosophy of politics, or Story a new 
 treatise elucidating some difficult department of law, 
 he expended all his energies in the attempt to set 
 forth its merits. He was more vain, if the expression 
 may be allowed, of the works of his friends than 
 of his own. He wished that everything they wrote 
 should be properly appreciated, and that the public 
 opinion should be in accord with his own. It is,^ 
 impossible to compute the amount of labor he con- 
 sumed in aiding his literary and legal brethren when
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 225 
 
 any one of them was engaged in an enterprise which 
 required toilsome research. His learning and his 
 time were always at their disposal, and his glory in 
 their glory became occasionally almost vain-glorious. 
 Now vanity, when it becomes a vice, is ever allied to 
 envy, and of envy Sumner had not a particle in his 
 nature. His cordial recognition of the merits of others 
 exceeded in warmth any feeling he might have of his 
 own deservings. Where literature was concerned, he 
 was from the first superior to all political and social 
 prejudices. There was a period, some forty years ago, 
 when a distinguished historian, of strong Democratic 
 principles, was personally the most unpopular man in 
 Boston, where he held an important political office. 
 " Why," a cultivated gentleman said to me at this 
 
 time, " do you young men of the Lyceum invite 
 
 him to lecture before you ? " " We invited him be- 
 cause, being an eminent man of letters, we supposed 
 we should attract to our course of lectures persons of 
 culture like yourself." " Then you have made a great 
 mistake. He is a person tolerated by nobody except 
 by Charles Sumner and William H. Prescott, who tol- 
 erate everybody." This was really a tribute to Sum- 
 ner's magnanimity, as he had then little sympathy 
 with the political views of the man whom Boston 
 society, through one of its mouthpieces, thus inexor- 
 ably proscribed. The linking of his name with that 
 of Prescott, the most genial and amiable of human 
 beings, was also honorable to him. 
 
 Not many years after this, Sumner himself came 
 15
 
 226 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 under the ban of " good society." The occasion was 
 a debate at a meeting of the Boston Prison Discipline 
 Society (1847). He had done or said before this 
 some things which offended the inner circles of Bos- 
 ton society, but in setting forth his views on prison 
 discipline, he in the heat of debate made some need- 
 lessly cutting remarks on persons of the first respect- 
 ability in the city, and he was thenceforth voted by 
 them to be " vulgar." His offences against what was 
 considered social and political decorum went on 
 increasing year after year, and the houses where he 
 had before been a welcome visitor closed their doors 
 to him one after the other. It is curious that this 
 fashionable ostracism continued after he had made 
 himself a great reputation in the Senate of the United 
 States, and held the position of chairman of the Sen- 
 ate Committee on Foreign Relations. He was a polit* 
 ical force of the first rank, in the opinion of ambassa- 
 dors of foreign states, when numbers of the commercial 
 and manufacturing aristocracy of his native city rated 
 and berated him as a vulgar fanatic. Mr. Samuel 
 Hooper a Boston merchant, who represented Boston 
 in the national House of Representatives for many 
 years, before, during, and after the war of the Rebel- 
 lion, and who was an intimate friend of Sumner told 
 me that one of his solid mercantile friends once asked 
 him how he managed to get along with " that fellow 
 Sumner." 
 
 " Oh, very well," was the reply. " I meet him very 
 often. He appears to be invited to every party given
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 227 
 
 in "Washington. You can't go anywhere without 
 meeting him." 
 
 " But you don't say he is considered a gentleman ? 
 You don't say that he is a man that one would ask, 
 now, to dine at your table or mine ? " 
 
 " No," Mr. Hooper rejoined, with that dry, delicious, 
 and quietly malicious humor which characterized him, 
 " I don't think that it would become you to invite him 
 to your house. But society in Wasliington is mixed 
 up of heterogeneous elements such as we never find 
 in Boston. There is, you know, a lot of ambassadors 
 from the various countries of Europe, dukes, earls, 
 barons, knights, and other persons with this or that 
 title prefixed to their names, and they are compelled, 
 for political reasons, to invite all kinds of persons to 
 their dinners. Sumner seems to be their favorite 
 guest ; but I would not, of course, advise you to invite 
 him to dinner. In Boston we are naturally more cau- 
 tious in selecting the persons who are to eat our 
 meats and drink our wines. In "Washington we have 
 to be less discriminating." 
 
 And the good Boston merchant departed, fully as- 
 sured that his friend Hooper entirely agreed with him 
 as to the propriety of excluding such a fanatic as Sum- 
 ner from the inner sanctuary of his own unpolluted 
 dwelling. And yet at this very time Sumner was rec- 
 ognized at the seat of government as one of the pow- 
 ers to be consulted in the settlement of matters which 
 intimately affected the prosperity of tlie commerce of 
 Boston, in common with that of the whole commerce 
 of the country.
 
 228 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 In questions relating to domestic affairs, Sumner 
 was almost always in collision with his Democratic 
 opponents, and often with his Republican friends. In 
 foreign affairs, however, he generally carried with him 
 both the Democratic and the Republican members of 
 his special committee of the Senate. This was owing 
 primarily to his exceptional knowledge of international 
 law, the study of which had occupied his attention from 
 the time he entered the Law School at Cambridge ; 
 but this advantage was supplemented by his immense 
 correspondence with the leaders of European opinion. 
 Many of these leaders were occupants of offices under 
 their respective governments ; others were professors 
 of international law in the universities of England, 
 France, and Germany; wherever, indeed, there was 
 a man competent to deliver a wise opinion on the law 
 of nations, whether in office or out of it, Sumner con- 
 trived that a private letter from that person addressed 
 to himself should be an element which should prop- 
 erly be considered in the judgment of the Senate 
 Committee on Foreign Relations as to the immediate 
 question before them. It is probable that Mr. Fierce, 
 in the forth-coming volumes of his " Life of Sumner," 
 will demonstrate how Lord Palmerston was forced 
 to abandon his early insolent pretensions regarding 
 " belligerency" by the knowledge which Sumner pos- 
 sessed, through his private correspondence, that some 
 eminent member of the House of Commons would rise 
 on some occasion, and put a question to the first Lord 
 of the Treasury which it would be awkward for him
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 229 
 
 to answer. That question would be asked, because 
 Sumner had suggested it to one of his numerous 
 correspondents who were members of the House. 
 Indeed, it may be confidently asserted that there was 
 a series of communications between influential mem- 
 bers of the English House of Commons and House of 
 Lords, addressed (privately, of course) to Mr. Sum- 
 ner, the chairman of the Senate Committee on For- 
 eign Relations, which seriously influenced the action 
 of the governments of the United States and Great 
 Britain. The power that Sumner obtained was due 
 to his exact information regarding the real public 
 opinion underlying all the votes of Parliament and all 
 the judgments of the press. This power he exercised 
 with a kind of inexorable and implacable persistence, 
 knowing that if his demands were resisted, England 
 would be placed in the position of a power of the second 
 rank in Europe. " That," he once told me, " is my 
 object. If England should abandon her proud pre- 
 eminence among the governments of Europe as the 
 special representative of civil and religious liberty, if 
 she should, in her relations to our country, dare to 
 violate the recognized principles of international law, 
 she must be inevitably reduced to the ignominious 
 position of a power of the second class. My speech, 
 which has so often been laughed at, and which every 
 English journal denounces, though not one of the 
 newspapers has ever condescended to print it in full, 
 is really pondered by the shrewd ministers and 
 diplomatists of other European governments. They
 
 230 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 know that until the questions I have mooted have 
 been settled, England cannot be considered a power 
 of the first rank, because she has not settled her debt 
 of justice to us. We have shown a capacity of impro- 
 vising armies and navies which naturally excites sur- 
 prise abroad ; and so long as Great Britain insolently 
 denies our right to have the differences between us 
 adjusted by fair arbitration, she has a terrible enemy 
 on her flank should she choose to indulge in the 
 luxury of war." 
 
 The relations between Mr. Seward and Sumner 
 during the administration of Andrew Johnson were 
 of a singular kind, and explain the difficulties he 
 afterward unsuccessfully encountered in his dealings 
 with Mr. Fish during the administration of President 
 Grant. Seward and Sumner were old political and 
 personal friends, and understood each other perfectly 
 when they came into political hostility. They were 
 generally in accord as to the foreign policy of the 
 government at the time they were most vehemently at 
 variance on the domestic question of reconstruction. 
 It was pleasant to listen to Sumner as he narrated 
 any one of his many interviews with the Secretary of 
 State. Thus, he would say : " As soon as I heard of 
 the position of Seward on this question, I hurried to 
 his house to expostulate with him. Once together in 
 liis private room I immediately began : ' Mr. Seward, 
 you have lost the great opportunity of your life to be 
 ranked among the most illustrious of our statesmen. 
 You have done much more. You have forfeited by
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 231 
 
 this act a largo part of your reputation among re- 
 formers and philanthropists, which you had justly 
 acquired by your efforts in the cause of justice and 
 freedom. This last offence is inexpiable, unless it be 
 at once repented of and disclaimed. History will 
 hold you up as one of those men who met a great 
 occasion, on which the happiness and welfare of op- 
 pressed millions depended, by a weak compliance 
 with the intrigues, the false statements, and the 
 sopliistical logic of their oppressors. I beg you to 
 pause in time.' And then," Sumner would add, with 
 exquisite na'ivetS, " Seward would get mad [as what 
 man would not ?] , and denounce me and my political 
 friends as fools and fanatics ; and, you know, he was 
 very liberal of those profane adjectives which men in 
 excitement apply to fools and fanatics. And so we 
 would go on for perhaps half an hour in the fiercest 
 contention, until our mutual noble rage was ex- 
 hausted. Then Seward, recovering his equanimity, 
 would say, ' Sumner, let us leave this matter, where 
 we cannot agree, and proceed'to foreign affairs, where, 
 I think, we have no radical cause of difference. Now 
 I am placed, as Secretary of State, in a peculiarly em- 
 barrassing position as to foreign ambassadors. While 
 this question of belligerency is pending between our 
 government and that of Great Britain we cannot con- 
 sider any claims of other governments, however just 
 they may be. I wish you would allow me to say, if 
 Mr. , representing , and Baron , repre- 
 senting , or any other of the European ministers,
 
 232 RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 call upon me for redress, that the trouble is not in 
 my department, but in the Senate Committee on For- 
 eign Relations. As you are the chairman of that 
 committee, and all the claims are in your possession, 
 it may expose you to some misrepresentation, perhaps 
 some obloquy ; but I think it would be more proper 
 that you should bear the burden than I. Of course, 
 we cannot consider any claim from any quarter until 
 Great Britain has receded from her first pretension.' 
 And so we would have another half -hour's talk, per- 
 fectly friendly on both sides, in which it was agreed 
 that I should be referred to as the obnoxious person 
 who obstructed the consideration of any claims, until 
 Great Britain had acknowledged the principle on 
 which all should be settled. When the ambassadors 
 came to me, I always told them that a few minutes' 
 conversation with the British minister would inform 
 them of the real difficulty in the case. So, you see, 
 though Seward and I were at swords' points on many 
 questions, we got along together very well in respect 
 to matters of foreign policy. We never really quar- 
 relled, though we sometimes violently disagreed." 
 
 One can easily understand why " a new hand " in 
 the office of Secretary of State, like Mr. Fish, who 
 had little of Mr. Seward's flexibility, could not con- 
 trive to fall into agreeable relations with the chair- 
 man of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 
 and why President Grant <jame positively to hate him. 
 Sumner had become so accustomed to dominate in 
 matters of state, was so blunt and belligerent in his
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 238 
 
 conversations with Lincoln and Seward, that he could 
 hardly understand why his outspoken advice should 
 not be received by a new administration as it had 
 been received by the old. Seward's appreciation of 
 his mastery of foreign affairs, which was not only due 
 to Sumner's knowledge of international law, but to 
 his extensive correspondence with the leaders of Eng- 
 lish and European opinion on every disputed question 
 which came up during and after the war, prevented 
 him from ever getting into any quarrel with Sumner 
 which would dissolve their personal friendship. Even 
 after, as I have said, he had exchanged epithets with 
 Sumner which would have justified, to the Southern 
 mind, an exchange of pistol-bullets, he would say, 
 
 " Now, I desire to see your last letters from , 
 
 from Lord , from the Duke of , and any 
 
 other correspondents of yours in Europe. The des- 
 patch I am going to write requires all the interior 
 information I can possibly obtain regarding the real 
 feelings and intentions of the men who represent 
 public opinion abroad." Mr. Seward felt that it 
 would be folly to quarrel with a senator who not only 
 had the principles of international law in his brain, 
 but had the opinions of its latest expositors in his 
 pocket. Mr. Lincoln, again, so clearly discerned the 
 impolicy of making an enemy of the formidable Mas- 
 sachusetts Senator, who so specially represented the 
 moral sentiment of the Northern people, that he bore 
 with much magnanimity Sumner's somewhat rude 
 intrusions of advice as to what should be the Presi-
 
 234 KECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 dent's policy. A few days before Lincoln's second in- 
 auguration as President, Sumner called at the White 
 House, and told him that he was determined to de- 
 feat in the Senate his favorite measure regarding 
 Louisiana, because it embodied a vicious principle, 
 which would be quoted as a precedent when any large 
 scheme of reconstruction, applying to all the rebel 
 States, might be brought forward. Lincoln blandly 
 listened to the Senator's remonstrances, and replied : 
 " Mr. Sunmer, I am not convinced by your arguments ; 
 and as to your threat of defeating the bill, I can tell 
 you it is impossible, for I know that a clear majority 
 of the Senate is in its favor.'* " But I tell you, Mr. 
 President," answered Sumner, " it shall and will be 
 defeated." " Try it," was the quiet retort. Sumner 
 did try it. He appeared on the last night of the ses- 
 sion of Congress with a small law library, partly on 
 his desk, and partly piled up on either side of it. 
 The bill was introduced, and it was supposed that it 
 would be immediately passed. Sumner, however, had 
 the floor, and began to speak. After he had spoken 
 an hour or two, it occurred to Senator Wade, of Ohio, 
 that it would be well to ask Sumner as the session 
 of Congress would soon expire, and as there was 
 much necessary business still remaining to be done 
 how long the Senator from Massachusetts intended to 
 occupy the attention of the Senate. Sumner replied, 
 in his most courteous tones, that he feared he could 
 not get through his argument in less than six hours ; 
 the Senator from Ohio must see, from tlie books he
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 236 
 
 had about him, every one of which contained matter 
 bearing on the question of debate, and from which he 
 proposed to make copious extracts, that his speech 
 must be of unusual length, and that he could not 
 promise that it would come to a close before the le- 
 gal session of Congress came to an end. Wade, who 
 had in his charge what was, in effect, Lincoln's bill, 
 was on this announcement compelled to abandon it. 
 Sumner thus managed to have the whole great sub- 
 ject of reconstruction postponed to the period when it 
 could be discussed in all its larger relations to the 
 welfare of both sections of the country. 
 
 It is very likely that this incident, as Sumner told it 
 to me, may be inaccurate in details. If so, the fault is 
 in my memory, not in his long narrative. But his ob- 
 ject in telling it was to illustrate a beautiful quality of 
 Lincoln's character. " I thought," he said, " that the 
 President would consider my opposition as a personal 
 affront. Instead of that, you may suppose my sur- 
 prise when he sent me a note on the next day, asking me 
 to accompany Mrs. Lincoln, in his carriage, to the cere- 
 monies of the inauguration, and also to accompany her 
 to the inauguration ball in the evening. As to the ball, 
 you may imagine the kind of wonder which was excited 
 when, with Mrs. Lincoln on my arm, I made my way 
 through the thick throng of ladies and gentlemen pres- 
 ent, and placed her in her selected seat. The thing 
 was nothing in itself ; but it still, I thought, read a les- 
 son to shrewd politicians, when they had to undertake 
 the task of pleasing such a man as Abraham Lincoln."
 
 236 KECOLLECTIONS Or 
 
 It is evident that Sumner's way of rushing in upon 
 Lincoln and Seward with his vehement advice was not 
 adapted to the mental and moral constitution of Grant 
 and Fish. Perhaps they would not concede the value 
 of the information he was able to give, while they re- 
 sented the strenuousness, amounting almost to physi- 
 cal force, with which he urged his opinions on their 
 attention. The quarrel which ensued came in the nat- 
 ural order of things. 
 
 Much has been said about Sumner's lack of humor- 
 ous perception; but this defect has been somewhat 
 overstated. There was, it must be admitted, a certain 
 tendency in his eloquence to grandiloquence, a ten- 
 dency which was in his mind as well as in his words. 
 Coleridge, in the admirable criticism on his friend 
 Wordsworth, in the "Biographia Literaria," states that 
 the great poet sometimes brings in thoughts and images 
 too great for the subject they illustrate ; and he calls 
 this " mental bombast," as distinguished from verbal. 
 It is a vice of style into which serious minds are apt to 
 slide, when they are deficient in that sense of humor 
 which would instinctively correct or prevent it. Sum- 
 ner undoubtedly was not without his full share of this 
 defect. Still, in my conversations with him I often 
 found him genially open to impressions of the humor- 
 ous"' side of the questions he commonly debated with 
 passionate fervor. At the time when he was among 
 the most strenuous of those Republicans who opposed 
 the renomination of Grant for the Presidency, I called 
 upon him one evening at his rooms in Boston. He
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 237 
 
 immediately began to declaim against the nomination 
 of Grant as a " nomination not fit to be made " for a 
 second term. In a pause, perhaps of half a minute, 
 when his vehemence was somewhat exhausted, and he 
 stopped to gather breath for a new assault, I took the 
 opportunity to remark that what he had just said re- 
 minded me of something that I had read in a news- 
 paper the day before. " What was it ? " he eagerly 
 asked. " Oh, nothing but this, a coincidence of opin- 
 ion between your friend B. and your friend Agassiz." 
 " B. and Agassiz ! how could they have anything in 
 common ? What has Agassiz to do with the next Re- 
 publican nomination for the Presidency ? " " Well," I 
 replied, " I know nothing about the matter but what the 
 newspaper states. There is an absurd report abroad 
 that Agassiz, on geological grounds, predicts that the 
 world will be smashed to pieces on October 22. The 
 news was communicated to your friend B. while he 
 was absorbed in arranging multitudinous rows of fig- 
 ures demonstrating that Grant could not be re-elected, 
 and he only paused a moment in his calculations 
 to exclaim, ' Good ! Anything to beat Grant ! ' " At 
 this Sumner absolutely roared with laughter, and I 
 feared he would drop from his chair, so convulsed was 
 he with the sudden turn given to his serious thinking. 
 I then ventured to add that he must, of course, know 
 the motto which was suggested for Mr. Greeley, the 
 candidate of the Democrats and the discontented Re- 
 publicans. " No," he said, recovering his accustomed 
 earnestness ; " what is it ? " " Simply this : ' If any man
 
 238 KECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 attempts to tear down the American flag, bail him on 
 the spot ! ' " And then he laughed more uproariously 
 than before. Stale as the jokes were, he had never 
 heard of them ; but he must have had some sense of 
 humor to appreciate their point when introduced, as 
 they were, in the height of his moral passion against 
 what he thought the sins of Grant's administration. 
 
 On the other hand, there were occasions when he 
 seemed singularly obtuse to the most exquisite exam- 
 ples of humor. In 1853 was published a book which 
 ranks with the most fascinating of all modern biogra- 
 phies, the " Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, His- 
 torical Painter, from his Autobiography and Journals," 
 edited and compiled by Tom Taylor. It is one of the 
 mysteries of what is called literary success that this 
 work should not have obtained a circulation almost 
 equal to " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Speaking only as one 
 reader, I can say that at the time they were published 
 I happened to take up each work early in the evening 
 of one day, and it was very late in the morning of the 
 next that I went to bed. In both cases sleep was im- 
 possible until the biography and the novel came to an 
 end. In Haydon 's autobiography, full as it is of 
 interesting matter, there is no description more deli- 
 ciously humorous than his account of a dinner which 
 he gave in December, 1817, for the purpose of intro- 
 ducing Keats to Wordsworth, with Charles Lamb as one 
 of the party. " Lamb," he says, " soon got delight- 
 fully merry. He made a speech, and voted me absent, 
 and made them drink my health." Then he turned
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 239 
 
 to Wordsworth, and said, " Now, you old Lake Poet, 
 you rascally poet, why do you call Voltaire dull ? " 
 After the dinner came tea, and then a stranger came 
 in, who, like Wordsworth, was a comptroller of stamps, 
 and had a vague notion that his brother comptroller 
 was an eminent poet. As Lamb was dozing by the 
 fire, the comptroller, being in literary company, nat- 
 urally desired to show himself competent to appreciate 
 poets, and turning to Wordsworth, solemnly asked, 
 " Don't you think, sir, Milton was a great genius ? " 
 The scene that ensued is fully described by Haydon ; 
 but the special point of it is that Lamb took up a can- 
 dle, and walking up to the prosaic comptroller, asked, 
 with great solemnity, " Sir, will you allow me to look 
 at your phrenological development ? " The result of 
 the whole series of embarrassments arising from 
 Lamb's reiterated demand to have " another look at 
 that gentleman's organs " was that Haydon and Keats, 
 nearly bursting with suppressed laughter, forced him 
 into the adjoining painting-room; and while Words- 
 worth and others of the company were trying to pacify 
 the enraged functionary. Lamb, struggling with his 
 captors in the painting-room, was heard at intervals 
 exclaiming, " Who is that fellow ? Allow me to see his 
 organs once more." It would appear to be impossible 
 that any person who had caught a glimpse of the pecul- 
 iar humor of Charles Lamb should not perceive that this 
 incident was a delightful practical specimen of it ; yet 
 Sumner, referring to Haydon's detailed narrative of 
 the occurrence, remarked to me : "I am sorry that such
 
 240 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 a story as that should have been published. We who 
 love and appreciate Charles Lamb must be pained at 
 seeing him represented in such a disreputable light as 
 insulting the guest of his host in so unjustifiable a 
 manner. He must have taken too much wine at din- 
 ner, or he could never have been guilty of such an 
 indecorum." Yet Sumner, while he made this re- 
 mark, would have felt offended if you had questioned 
 his capacity to enjoy the humor of Lamb. It was 
 plain, from all the circumstances narrated at the din- 
 ner, that Lamb was not intoxicated at all. His con- 
 duct was a humorous protest against the commonplace 
 comptroller of stamps, who had asked, " Don't you 
 think that Milton was a great poet ? " Phrenology was 
 then a theory new in Great Britain, and Lamb's demand 
 to explore the " bumps " of the man who had intruded 
 himself into literary and artistic society without the 
 remotest notion of what was indisputably established 
 among them as settled questions, ridiculous to doubt, 
 was but a practical, a characteristic, outbreak of his 
 peculiar humor. Yet Sumner could not see it. 
 
 But those who knew Sumner most intimately must 
 heartily recognize those commanding traits of charac- 
 ter which made his foibles and deficiencies appear of 
 small account in their general judgment of the man. 
 He was a grand specimen of physical, intellectual, and 
 moral manhood, ready to do and to suffer anything in 
 the cause of what he considered true, just, honorable, 
 and humane. Far from being confined to the question 
 of slavery, which was his special task, he, in the spirit
 
 CHARLES SUMNER, 241 
 
 of Bacon, proudly took all benevolent and intelligent 
 legislation " for his province ; " and he was as sound 
 on financial questions as on those questions which 
 made him the special champion of liberty and justice. 
 Above all, he was intrepid, and can hardly be said to 
 have ever felt the sensation of fear whenever he had a 
 noble cause to advocate or an absurd opinion to con- 
 trovert. On many occasions indeed, on all promi- 
 nent occasions of his career as a statesman he was 
 called upon to exhibit what is called " backbone ; " and 
 the bravery in his will and in his heart always an- 
 swered to that which was in his brain. 
 
 Sumner, in common with all thoughtful and culti- 
 vated persons who speak the English tongue, had a just 
 admiration for the genius and character of Edmund 
 Burke. He sympathized deeply with the philanthropic 
 spirit which animated the works of that illustrious 
 philosophical statesman, even when he differed from 
 his opinions. Probably the compliment he most prized 
 was that paid to him by the eldest son of Earl Fitz- 
 william, as he and Lord Milton were looking at the 
 portrait of Burke by Sir Joshua Reynolds in a gallery 
 of paintings in Wentworth House. " It seems to me, 
 Mr. Sumner, " said Lord Milton, " that in this posi- 
 tion, and in this light, there is a marked resemblance 
 between your countenance and that of Burke." 
 
 Sumner spent the leisure hours of the last years 
 of his life in carefully correcting his orations and 
 speeches. They were published in successive volumes, 
 each receiving the last touch of the author's pen, with 
 
 16
 
 242 BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 a special solicitude that every quotation should be ver 
 ified. He hoped that his spoken words would become 
 a part of American literature, as the speeches of Burke 
 were indisputably an essential portion of English liter^ 
 ature, " the third Englishman," as Choate was wont 
 to call him. He did not, of course, indulge in the 
 pleasing conceit that his speeches were equal to 
 Burke's ; but he felt that in preparing and delivering 
 them, he had some claim to participate in the exulta- 
 tion of soul with which Burke welcomed, on a memo- 
 rable occasion, the glorious unpopularity which resulted 
 from the diif erence between himself and his Bristol con- 
 stituents on certain questions where justice and human- 
 ity were concerned. After declaring with an honest 
 pride that no charge had been made against him of 
 venality or neglect of duty, he proudly adds : " It is not 
 alleged that to gratify any anger or revenge of my 
 own or of my party, I have had a share in wronging or 
 oppressing any description of men, or any one man in 
 any description. No ! The charges against me are all 
 of one kind : that I have pushed the general princi- 
 ples of justice and benevolence too far, further than 
 a cautious policy would warrant, and further than the 
 opinions of many would go along with me. In every 
 accident which may happen through life, in pain, in 
 sorrow, in depression, and distress, I will call to mind 
 this accusation ; and be comforted." Burke, in revis- 
 ing his speech, evidently put a semicolon rather than a 
 mere comma after the word " accusation," in order to 
 give emphasis to the pause which naturally followed,
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 243 
 
 as he spoke, before he drew " comfort " from the 
 " accusation." This simple, dispassionate statement 
 stands now as one of the grandest passages in English 
 eloquence. The great master of that eloquence had 
 been constantly libelled, caricatured, misapprehended, 
 and denounced for those virtues which most endear 
 him to that posterity to which he confidently appealed ; 
 and in this sentence he lifted obloquy into a spiritual 
 region of the soul, where it became a crown of glory, 
 a supreme source of moral self-satisfaction beyond that 
 which any selfish statesman can feel in the moment 
 when his ambition is gratified to the utmost by reach- 
 ing that height of power to which his energies may 
 have been unscrupulously directed. Sumner, also, 
 had the noble consolation and comfort which Burke 
 experienced when he uttered those immortal words. 
 The charges against Mm were that he, too, had pushed 
 the principles of justice and benevolence further than 
 a cautious policy would warrant ; but fortunately he 
 lived long enough to witness that the irresistible tide 
 of events forced his party to admit, as politic, measures 
 which he had urged on the ground of principle, and to 
 adopt his seemingly abstract maxims of justice and 
 benevolence as the most necessary and efficient of 
 political expedients.
 
 GEORGE TICKN0R.1 
 
 It was the good fortune of George Ticknor that he 
 could reside in no place, even for a few weeks, without 
 enjoying the advantages of the best society in it. 
 Accordingly his letters and journals are crammed 
 with records of his interviews with magnates and 
 celebrities. The ordinary republican, as he reads the 
 work, is dazzled by the procession of kings, princes, 
 grand-dukes, dukes, earls, and counts, which passes 
 before his astonished eyes ; and the man of letters, or 
 the man of science, is no less surprised at the throng 
 of persons, associated in his mind with the great in- 
 tellectual achievements of the first half of the nine- 
 teenth century, with whom Mr. Ticknor was on terms 
 of intimacy. 
 
 The preparation of this Memoir was confided to 
 Mr. George S. Hillard, in every respect qualified to 
 perform such a labor of love ; but after the conclusion 
 of the tenth chapter he was prostrated by sudden 
 illness, and the duty of completing it was undertaken 
 by Mrs. Ticknor and her eldest daughter, who have 
 executed the task with general good taste and judg- 
 
 ^ Life, Journals, and Letters of George Ticknor. Boston : James 
 R. Osgood & Co. 1876. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 624, 533.
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 245 
 
 ment, and have refrained almost too carefully from 
 allowing affection to urge them into any undue praise 
 of the husband and father, whose worth, talents, and 
 learning they commemorate. 
 
 Mr. Ticknor was fortunate in his parentage, as in 
 everything else. Both his father and mother were 
 educated persons, and both had been engaged in the 
 noble profession of teaching. His father, Elisha Tick- 
 nor, a graduate of Dartmouth College, seems to have 
 drifted into trade only because failing health com- 
 pelled him to relinquish his occupation as a teacher ; 
 and in trade he acquired the competence which ena- 
 bled him to gratify the scholarly ambitions of his 
 darling son. 
 
 George Ticknor was born on the first day of August, 
 1791. His early education was undertaken by his 
 parents ; he was sent to Dartmouth College in 1805, 
 and for two years received the kind of instruction 
 which was then dispensed to ingenuous youth in that 
 institution of learning; was, by his own confession, 
 idle there, and learned little ; but in 1807, on his return 
 to Boston, was put by his father under the tuition of 
 the Rev. Dr. Gardiner, with whom he studied for three 
 years, obtaining from that forcible and genial scholar 
 a strong taste for classical learning as well as a mod- 
 erate proficiency in it. He then studied law in the 
 office of William Sullivan ; in 1813 he was admitted 
 to the bar, and was so successful during the first and 
 only year in which he practised his profession, that 
 his fees not only paid the rent of his office, but also
 
 246 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 mounted up to a sum suflEicient to discharge the mod- 
 erate bill of his office boy. In spite of this splendid 
 triumph of professional skill, he came to the con- 
 clusion that his talents and tastes did not lie in the 
 direction of the law. His intimacy with all the per- 
 sons who then represented the best intellectual society 
 of Boston and its vicinity, Gardiner, Buckminster, 
 Wells, Dexter, Sullivan, Prescott, Parker, Warren, 
 John Adams, inflamed him with a desire to make 
 liimself a scholar and a cultivated man of letters. 
 Among other things, he was interested in the German 
 language and literature. In order to gratify this 
 mental whim, he had to borrow a German grammar 
 from one friend, and to send all the way up to a 
 town in New Hampshire for a German dictionary 
 which was the precious possession of another. 
 
 He decided, after scanning the means of getting an 
 education worthy of the name in the United States, to 
 go to Germany in search of it. Before venturing on 
 this enterprise, he visited Washington ; dined with 
 President Madison ; stayed some days with Jefferson 
 at Monticello ; saw every prominent American that it 
 was desirable to see, between Boston and Richmond ; 
 and returned to Massachusetts fully equipped with 
 such letters of introduction from these men to their 
 friends abroad, as would enable him to invade Euro- 
 pean society with an adequate social force. Indeed, 
 in reading the whole body of his diaries and corre- 
 spondence, we are specially impressed by the potency 
 acquired by a personage who is literally a man of
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 247 
 
 "letters," all doors flying open when the magical 
 letters are produced. 
 
 In May, 1815, when young Ticknor arrived in Liv- 
 erpool, he learned to his surprise, and somewhat to 
 his dismay, that Napoleon had escaped from Elba and 
 was established in Paris. Bred in the Federal school 
 of American politics, he expected that all England 
 would feel more than his indignation at the event; 
 but he found that Roscoe the historian, and the Whigs 
 he met at Roscoe's table were opposed to the war 
 against " the disturber of the peace of Europe." Call- 
 ing on his way to London on Dr. Parr, he records two 
 utterances of that pompous clerical scholar and fierce 
 Whig politician. " Thirty years ago, sir," said the 
 Doctor, " I turned on my heel when I heard you 
 called rebels, and I was always glad that you beat us." 
 As to the return of Napoleon, he exclaimed with his 
 peculiar lisp, " Thus, I should not think I had done 
 my duty, if I went to bed any night without praying 
 for the success of Napoleon Bonaparte." In London 
 Mr. Ticknor met Sir Humphry Davy, Campbell, Gif- 
 ford, Byron, and Lady Byron, and all turned to him 
 the amiable sides of their characters. Gifford, the 
 editor of the Tory " Quarterly Review," " a position," 
 says Hazlitt, "for which he was eminently qualified by 
 a happy combination of defects, natural and acquired," 
 Gifford, the libeller of the United States, and a 
 critic of the school of distaste, disappointed his an- 
 ticipations. "I found him a short, deformed, and 
 ugly little man, with a large head, sunk between his
 
 248 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 shoulders, and one of his eyes turned outward ; but 
 withal, one of the best-natured, most open, and well- 
 bred gentlemen I have met." Gifford introduced him 
 to Byron. It is curious to the present generation of 
 readers, who know what Byron was in 1815, to read 
 the account of the young American's impression of 
 his character at that time. Byron, as he appeared 
 to Ticknor, contradicted all his expectations. " In- 
 stead of having a thin and rather sharp and anxious 
 face, as he has in his pictures, it is round, open, and 
 smiling ; his eyes are light and not black ; his air 
 easy and careless, not forward and striking; and I 
 found his manners affable and gentle, the tones 
 of his voice low and conciliating, his conversation 
 gay, pleasant, and interesting in an uncommon de- 
 gree." Byron talked on various subjects, America, 
 his own poems, Lord Holland, Scott, Jeffrey, Rogers, 
 in a style which would not have misbecome a 
 teacher of a Sunday-school. Then a friend rushed 
 into the room with the announcement of Napoleon's 
 defeat at Waterloo, and his retreat toward Paris. 
 Byron paused a moment, and then exclaimed, " I am 
 
 d d sorry for it ! " After another slight pause, 
 
 he added, " I did n't know but I might live to see 
 Castlereagh's head on a pole. But I suppose I shan't 
 now." After Meade's victory at Gettysburg, think of 
 
 Bryant or Longfellow exclaiming, " I am d d 
 
 sorry for it ! " Byron, in this flash of seemingly ec- 
 centric caprice, indicated the elemental character of 
 his genius, which was independent of nationality as of
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 249 
 
 all the other constraints imposed by civilization. Tick- 
 nor did not seem to understand the import of Byron's 
 impatient exclamation. It remains, however, as a 
 most remarkable indication of that passion for revolt 
 and anarchy, which was inherent in his emotional 
 nature, and that scorn of all the limitations on self- 
 will which was a characteristic of his somewhat 
 chaotic mind. What struck Ticknor most in his in- 
 tercourse with Byron were his superficial qualities, his 
 geniality, his toleration, his frank confession of his 
 own faults, his readiness to do justice to all who might 
 be called his rivals in the race for poetical eminence, 
 and his tender courtesy to his wife. The poet, in- 
 deed, seems to have had a liking for the young 
 American, and to have shown him only the amiable 
 traits of his character. " I think," says Ticknor in 
 his diary, " I have received more kindness from Lord 
 Byron than from any person in England on whom I 
 had not the regular claim of a letter of introduction." 
 On the last day of June, 1815, Ticknor left London 
 for Gottingen, where he remained for twenty months, 
 pursuing his studies at that leading German univer- 
 sity, with an ardor which left him no time for amuse- 
 ment or society. The intellectual atmosphere of the 
 place was favorable to habits of industry. " If a 
 man who means to have any reputation as a scholar," 
 he wrote, " sees his best friend once a week, it is 
 thought quite often enough." Here he first felt the 
 vast distance between German and American scholar- 
 ship. Had he been naturally inclined to indolence,
 
 250 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 he would have been shamed into exertion by the fact 
 that some of his instructors were not much older 
 than himself, and appeared to be his superiors, rather 
 by their accomplishments than their talents. The 
 acquirements of his Greek tutor, Dr. Schultze, forced 
 from him the confession that in the United States 
 " we do not know what a Greek scholar is ; we do not 
 even know the process by which a man is to be made 
 one." Stung by the spirit of emulation, he devoted 
 his time from five in the morning to ten at night, 
 with short interruptions, to his various studies, learn- 
 ing, among other things, that recreation may be 
 found in some of the finer forms of work ; that the 
 weariness resulting from labor undertaken from a 
 sense of duty is charmed away by the labor which is 
 genially welcomed as a means of delight. Probably 
 Ticknor was never happier than during the twenty 
 months he passed in Gottingen, "unresting and un- 
 hasting" in his tireless pursuit of knowledge, not 
 "under difficulties," but under the facilities of such 
 teachers and professors as Dissen, Benecke, Schultze, 
 Eichhorn, Gauss, and Blumenbach. 
 
 In the autumn of 1816, during a vacation of six 
 weeks, he visited, among other places, Leipsic, Dres- 
 den, Berlin, Wittenberg, Halle, and Weimar, well 
 recommended by letters of introduction to the nota- 
 bilities of northern Germany. At Weimar he had, 
 of course, an interview with Goethe. Indeed, if Tick- 
 nor had taken it into his head to go to Olympus, the 
 first person he would have sought, with a letter of
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 251 
 
 introduction in his pocket, would have been Jupiter. 
 In his diary he describes the great German as 
 " something above the middle size, large but not 
 gross, with gray hair, a dark, ruddy complexion, and 
 full, rich black eyes, which, though dimmed with age, 
 are still very expressive. His whole countenance is 
 old ; and though his features are quiet and composed, 
 they bear decided traces of the tumult of early feeling 
 and passion." Goethe was simple in manner, spoke 
 in praise of Wolf, and in reference to Byron's separa- 
 tion from his wife, said it was involved in such mys- 
 tery, and was so poetical in itself, that if Byron had 
 invented it he could hardly have had a more fortu- 
 nate subject for his genius. " He fervently deplored 
 the want of extemporary eloquence in Germany, and 
 said, what I never heard before, but which is emi- 
 nently true, that the English is kept a much more 
 living language by its influence." "Here," said 
 Goethe, " we have no eloquence : our preaching is 
 a monotonous, middling declamation ; public debate 
 we have not at all; and if a little inspiration some- 
 times comes to us in our lecture-rooms, it is out of 
 place, for eloquence does not teach." In after-life, 
 Ticknor was wont to quote this last observation in a 
 more restricted sense than Goethe probably meant it. 
 Eloquence does teach when it not only communicates 
 knowledge, but the thirst for knowledge. Scientists 
 of ardent natures, like Tyndall, William B. Rogers, 
 and Agassiz, inflame students with a love of the sub- 
 jects on which they discourse. The teacher who sue-
 
 252 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 ceeds best, is he who puts his whole soul into his 
 speech, and thus imparts his soul to others in the 
 very process of conveying information to their under- 
 standings. Barry Cornwall's ideal of the true teacher 
 can never be antiquated : 
 
 " For he was like the sun, giving me light, 
 Pouring into the caves of my young brain 
 Knowledge from his bright fountains," 
 
 In March, 181T, Mr. Ticknor, then at the age of 
 twenty-five, left Gottingen for an extended tour in 
 France, Italy, Spain, and Great Britain. At Frank- 
 fort he met Frederick von Schlegel, whom he found 
 to be " a short, thick little gentleman, with the ruddy, 
 vulgar health of a full-fed father of the Church," full 
 of knowledge, and eager to impart it. In the evening 
 of the same day he visited Yon Berg, the President 
 of the Diet, who impressed him as a man of almost 
 universal information, possessing among other accom- 
 plishments a minute knowledge of the history of the 
 American Revolution, which he specially indicated by 
 jocosely directing his wife to give Ticknor a very 
 small cup of tea, if she gave him any at all, because 
 he came from a town which had once rebelliously 
 wasted and destroyed several cargoes of it. 
 
 At Paris Ticknor resided nearly five months, and 
 had his usual good fortune in meeting and conversing 
 with all the celebrities, native and foreign, collected 
 in that centre of intellectual Europe. CEhlenschlager, 
 tlie Danish poet and dramatist, then at the age of
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 258 
 
 forty, appeared to him "hearty, happy, and gay, en- 
 joying life as well ^s anybody, but living in Paris 
 knowing and caring for nobody, . . . vain, but not 
 oppressively so." This last trait is felicitously 
 touched. In social intercourse the vain man, whose 
 vanity is but one form of his benevolence, sees others 
 in the same deceptive light in which he views himself. 
 He becomes oppressive only when he diminishes other 
 individualities in magnifying his own. The two men 
 in Paris who made the strongest impression on Tick- 
 nor were Germans, A. W. Schlegel and Humboldt. 
 The former, he writes, " wakes at four o'clock in the 
 morning, and, instead of getting up, has his candle 
 brought to him, and reads five or six hours, then 
 sleeps two or three more, and then gets up and works 
 till dinner at six. From this time till ten o'clock 
 he is a man of the world, in society, and overflowing 
 with amusing conversation ; but at ten he goes to his 
 study and works until midnight, when he begins the 
 same course again." 
 
 Schlegel was undoubtedly a coxcomb in dress and 
 manner, and his affectations were justly subjects of 
 ridicule ; but Ticknor does not, in all his interviews 
 with him, sufficiently recognize the fact that he was 
 one of the greatest interpretive critics of the nine- 
 teenth century. His lectures on Dramatic Art, deliv- 
 ered in Vienna in 1808, are landmarks in the progress 
 of criticism as it advanced toward something which 
 may be called a science. He told Ticknor that in 
 writing them in German, he had endeavored to keep
 
 254 GEOEGE TICKNOR. 
 
 before him as models English and French prose, 
 which he preferred to the ordinary prose style of 
 German authors. The young American scholar was 
 able conscientiously to say that he thought the critic 
 had succeeded in this attempt. The wonder is that 
 neither in his journals nor in his letters does he seem 
 to appreciate A. W. Schlegel's supreme gift as a 
 critic, his power of transforming himself into an 
 inhabitant of the country whose literature he pre- 
 sented and criticised, and of following the develop- 
 ment of its literature from age to age, with an 
 imaginative sympathy with the conditions and cir- 
 cumstances under which its masterpieces were pro- 
 duced. The " History of Spanish Literature " would 
 have been a more fascinating, if not a more learned, 
 work, had Ticknor caught from Schlegel the funda- 
 mental point of view from which the literature of a 
 nation should be 'surveyed. We have in these vol- 
 umes abundant testimonies to Schlegel's knowledge 
 and brilliancy in conversation, but not a word as to 
 those principles of criticism for which he is now 
 remembered among men. 
 
 At Paris Ticknor also seems to have had rare 
 opportunities of meeting Alexander von Humboldt, 
 Alexander the Great, as distinguished even from 
 his eminent brother William. Humboldt in 1817 
 was in the full flush of his fame, magnificent in 
 physical development as in mental power. Ticknor 
 found that he was superior to all conventions, though 
 the favorite of fashionable society, sleeping when
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 255 
 
 he was weary, eating when he was hungry, and 
 studying from ten to fifteen hours out of the twenty- 
 four. If he was invited to dinner at six o'clock, he 
 considered the invitation simply as an opportunity for 
 intellectual amusement and excitement, and really 
 dined at a restaurant at five. His high rank and 
 captivating manners, joined to his prodigious acquire- 
 ments, rendered him one of the idols of Parisian 
 society. Ticknor in warmly testifying to what he 
 was, is provokingly reticent as to what he said. He 
 saw also all the prominent persons of the Restora- 
 tion, Madame de Stael, Lacretelle, Benjamin Con- 
 stant, Barante, Villemain, Chateaubriand, Madame 
 Recamier, the Duke and Duchess de Broglie, La- 
 fayette, Talma, and others. 
 
 While in Gottingen he received the news of his 
 appointment as Professor of the French and Spanish 
 Languages and the Belles-Lettres, in Harvard College. 
 His letter to his father in relation to this appoint- 
 ment shows him to have been a model son. He 
 thought he could not accept the office without pro- 
 longing his European tour some six months, in order 
 to spend that time in Spain, to acquire a competent 
 knowledge of the Spanish language and literature. 
 His acceptance of the post was delayed until Novem- 
 ber, 1817, when he was in Rome. In September of 
 that year he left Paris for Italy, visiting, on the way, 
 Lafayette, at La Grange. He then proceeded to 
 Geneva, crossed the Alps by the Simplon road, and 
 arrived at Milan on the first of October, and on the
 
 256 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 second of November, at Rome. He spent four months 
 in that city engaged in the study of Italian, and 
 under a competent guide " in exploring the different 
 portions of ancient Rome and their ruins." In Italy, 
 as in Germany and France, he endeavored to master 
 the language so that he could speak it well. In high 
 society he found that Italian was not the language of 
 conversation, except at Canova's parties, and some- 
 times at those of the Portuguese Ambassador. Resi-^ 
 dence in Rome only perfected the fluency and facility 
 with which he could speak French and German. At 
 last, in despair, he hired a professor of architecture 
 to teach him Italian by explaining to him in that 
 language the principles, theory, and history of the 
 art. He says that of all the sovereigns in Europe he 
 most desired to see the Pope, on account of the firm- 
 ness and dignity he had displayed in " difficult and 
 distressing circumstances, when kings and govern- 
 ments, of force incomparably greater, had shrunk 
 and yielded " to the autocracy of Napoleon. He was 
 presented by Abb^ Taylor, an Irish Catholic, and 
 was accompanied by Professor Bell, the distinguished 
 anatomist of Edinburgh. " On entering we knelt and 
 kissed his hand. He is, you know, very old, but he 
 received us standing, and was dressed with character- 
 istic simplicity and humility as a friar, without the 
 slightest ornament to distinguish his rank. Bell 
 spoke no Italian, and therefore the conversation was 
 chiefly with us, and, as we were Americans, entirely 
 on America. The Pope talked a good deal about our
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 257 
 
 universal toleration, and praised it as much as if it 
 were a doctrine of his own religion, adding that he 
 thanked God for having at last driven all thoughts of 
 persecution from the world, since persuasion was the 
 only possible means of promoting piety, though vio- 
 lence might promote hypocrisy." The Pope went so 
 far as to declare that the time would come when the 
 New would dictate to the Old World. He spoke with 
 particular emphasis of the naval successes of the 
 United States against the English in the war of 1812. 
 "But," said the Irish Abb^, "the Americans had 
 done very well, because they had always the English 
 for masters." " Yes, M. Abb^," answered the Pope, 
 jocosely, " that is very true ; but I would advise you 
 to take care that the scholars do not learn too much 
 for the masters." Indeed, the Bostonian was natu- 
 rally surprised to hear from the lips of a Pope prin- 
 ciples of religious toleration which would have been 
 heartily indorsed by William EUery Channing, at that 
 time under the ban of Protestant orthodoxy in New 
 England. 
 
 From Italy Ticknor proceeded to Spain, where he 
 stayed about six months. The sixty pages of his let- 
 ters and diary devoted to Spain are full of entertain- 
 ment and instruction. As soon as he had crossed the 
 Pyrenees he discovered that he had not only passed- 
 from one country and climate to another, but had 
 gone back two centuries in time. He found, as re- 
 gards manners, that Cervantes and Le Sage were the 
 
 historians on whose statements he should depend for 
 
 17
 
 258 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 information. The king he did not hesitate to call a 
 vulgar blackguard ; the aristocracy, with some excep- 
 tions, appeared to him hopelessly corrupt ; the middle 
 class, to be mediocre and inefficient ; and the peasants, 
 to constitute the finest material he had met in Europe 
 out of which to make a great and generous people, 
 but that this material was either unused or perverted. 
 He had unusual opportunities afforded him of prose- 
 cuting his Spanish studies, and the society to which 
 he was introduced was the best in Spain ; but he was 
 shocked at the ignorance of librarians and at the bad 
 arrangement and administration of the libraries he 
 explored. In the great library at Madrid he found 
 " confusion worse confounded." In a lumber-room 
 of this library, where there was a great pile of books 
 called useless, and, as his conductor warned him, of 
 no more value than mere waste paper, the second 
 book he took up was La Place's " M^canique Celeste." 
 In November, 1818, he sailed from Lisbon for Eng- 
 land, and as quickly as possible left London for 
 Paris, where he found books and means for studying 
 Spanish literature which he had vainly sought in 
 Spain. Socially he enjoyed great advantages, being 
 admitted into all salons^ whether those of the ultra 
 loyalists or of the liberals. His journals furnish a 
 provoking display of celebrated names, and some 
 piquant descriptions of the persons to whom the 
 names were attached, but little of their conversation 
 which may be considered characteristic. 
 
 In the middle of January, 1819, Ticknor arrived in
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 259 
 
 London. The house he most frequented was Lord 
 Holland's, for there he mingled in a literary and po- 
 litical society such as was unexcelled by any he had 
 seen in Europe, including, as it did, Mackintosh, 
 Brougham, Sydney Smith, Frere, Heber, Lord Lans- 
 downe. Lord Lauderdale, and Lord John Russell, 
 among other frequent guests. Lord Holland was the 
 most gracious of hosts, but his wife was the worst- 
 mannered woman in Great Britain. It is astonishing 
 how he contrived to make his dinners and receptions 
 the most attractive in England, while every English- 
 man of genius who accepted his invitations was 
 snubbed and insulted, more than once, by his vixenish 
 spouse. The stories told of her conduct make one 
 wonder that men who had any self-respect should 
 submit to her caprices, even when, by submission, 
 they were introduced to such society. Ticknor dis- 
 liked her from first to last, though he won her regard 
 by the courage with which he replied to an insulting 
 question by a more insulting answer. She informed 
 him that she understood New England was originally 
 colonized by convicts sent over from the mother- 
 country. He retorted that he was not aware of it, but 
 said that some of the Yassall family (the ancestors 
 of Lady Holland) had settled early in Massachu- 
 setts ; that a house built by one of them was stand- 
 ing in Cambridge ; and that a marble monument to 
 one of the family was to be seen in King's Chapel, 
 Boston. She was at first stunned by this imperti- 
 nence ; but in the conversation which ensued she
 
 260 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 asked him to send her a drawing of the monument, 
 which on his return to Boston he was careful to do. 
 This is the most conspicuous instance in Ladj Hol- 
 land's long career in which her insolence and malice 
 were fairly rebuked and overthrown. Shall we not 
 exclaim, in view of the victory of our countryman 
 over obstacles from which the first poets, politi- 
 cians, and publicists of Europe had shrunk appalled, 
 " Bravo, Ticknor " ? From that time Lady Holland 
 liked him : he never overcame his dislike of her. 
 
 As a natural result of his success in London 
 society, Mr. Ticknor had an opportunity to be invited 
 as a guest to some of the great country mansions of 
 England. He passed two days at Hatfield, the seat of 
 the Marquis of Salisbury, and three days at Woburn 
 Abbey, the seat of the Duke of Bedford. At both of 
 these places he met distinguished personages. His 
 residence in Edinburgh brought him into relation 
 with all the prominent Scotch celebrities, of whom 
 Walter Scott and Playfair appeared to him the, best. 
 John Wilson, not then developed into the vehement 
 Professor of Moral Philosophy and the Christopher 
 North of the " Noctes," but kno^vn as the author of 
 " The Isle of Palms," seemed to him " a pretending 
 young man." James Hogg was so vulgar that he 
 thought his conversation corresponded to his name, 
 and was strangely out of keeping with the exquisite 
 delicacy of sentiment embodied in his poem of " Kil- 
 meny." Indeed, in Hogg, as in Ben Jonson, fineness 
 of fancy seems to have been a sort of secretion of his
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 261 
 
 mind, and to exist apart from the general character 
 of the man, which was bluff, rude, and coarse. Mac- 
 kenzie the novelist appeared to him " a lively little 
 gentleman," voluble in talk on common subjects, but 
 conveying no notion of " The Man of Feeling." 
 Jeffi'cy, whom he had met before in Boston, he found 
 always charming, but though brilliant in all parties 
 and assemblies, he was seen to best advantage in his 
 own house. Dr. Thomas Brown, the metaphysician, 
 and the successor of Dugald Stewart in the Univer- 
 sity, impressed him as a man affecting in society a 
 " dapper sort of elegance, and writing poetry just 
 above thread-paper verses." Lord Elgin, then about 
 fifty, he set down as a " fat, round, and stupid man," 
 whose conversation justified what his appearance prom- 
 ised. Scott delighted him beyond measure. Among 
 other experiences of his intercourse with the great 
 poet and novelist, he records going with him to the 
 theatre to see a representation of " Rob Roy," a drama 
 founded on the novel. When the performance was 
 over, Scott turned to him and said, " That 's fine, 
 sir ; I think that is very fine ;". and then looked up to 
 him with " a most comical expression of face, half- 
 way between cunning and humor," and added, " All I 
 wish is, that Jedediah Cleishbotham could be here to 
 enjoy it ! " 
 
 Mr. Ticknor left Liverpool on the last day in April, 
 1819, and arrived in Boston early in June. In Au- 
 gust, his introduction to the professorships of the 
 French and Spanish languages and of the Belles-
 
 262 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 Lettres, in Harvard College, took place. It is safe to 
 assert that this young professor, at the age of twenty- 
 eight, was the most accomplished student of general 
 literature then resident in the United States. So far 
 as comprehensive culture could fashion a man into 
 largeness and fulness of mind, he was a model profes- 
 sor. He had not only studied hard, and accumulated 
 a valuable library of books selected by himself during 
 his four years' residence abroad, but he had enjoyed 
 the inestimable advantage of a conversational inti- 
 macy with most of the first minds in Europe. He 
 had, by contact with such minds, collected, in his own 
 words, " that sort of undefined and indefinite feeling 
 respecting books and authors which exists in Europe 
 as a kind of unwritten tradition, and never comes to 
 us because nobody takes the pains to collect it sys- 
 tematically, though it is often the electric principle 
 that gives life to the dead mass of inefficient knowl- 
 edge, and vigor and spirit to inquiry." This is one 
 of the profoundest observations in all Ticknor's writ- 
 ings. There is a certain something in the intellect 
 and heart of a prominent statesman, or man of let- 
 ters, or man of science, which cannot be learned from 
 what he publishes, but which transpires in his famil- 
 iar talk. Daniel Webster even went so far as to say 
 that conversation, in the large sense of being a com- 
 merce between good minds, was the most important 
 element in culture. The secret thought underlying 
 written thought, the secret doubt underlying positive 
 assertion in written books, escape in the genial con-
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 263 
 
 verse of one strong intellect with another. Ticknor, 
 accordingly, had acquired much more in Europe than 
 was contained in the volumes he brought with him to 
 Boston. It may have been that it was knowledge of 
 this kind which brought him into continual collisions 
 of opinion with the authorities of Harvard College. 
 He appeared as a general reformer of the methods of 
 college instruction ; but after having been an active 
 professor for fifteen years he resigned his position, 
 with the feeling that he had succeeded perfectly in 
 his own department, but had failed miserably in pro- 
 curing such changes in the other departments as he 
 deemed necessary " to make the large means of the 
 College more effectual for the education of the com- 
 munity." But this is anticipating events. In 1821 
 he married Miss Anna Eliot, the daughter of one of 
 the first of Boston merchants, a marriage which was 
 certainly among the happiest recorded in the annals 
 of men of letters. His social position in Boston was 
 in the front rank both of fashion and literary culture. 
 Among his intimate friends were the two Prescotts, 
 father and son, F. C. Gray, Dr. Jacob Bigelow, the 
 Rev. William E. Channing, James Savage, and Daniel 
 Webster. Of these, James Savage generally known 
 later in life as the genealogist of New England 
 was, in character, one of the solidest of the " solid 
 men of Boston." He was the soul of integrity and 
 honor ; every form of baseness, meaness, and fraud 
 instinctively shrank from him abashed ; no scoundrel 
 of any kind, however rich or famous, could appear in
 
 264 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 any company which he honored with his presence, 
 without slinking away in abject fear of such a chival- 
 ric champion of common-sense and common honesty. 
 His hatred of iniquity sometimes blazed out in a fury 
 of wrathful eloquence which amazed those who spe- 
 cially esteemed him as a prodigy of genealogical 
 knowledge, and even disturbed the equanimity of 
 those who chiefly knew him as the most valued and 
 trustworthy of friends. It is curious that James 
 Savage, the most eloquent of men when his soul was 
 stirred to its depths, should now be particularly hon- 
 ored merely as an accurate antiquarian. We have 
 listened to him at times, when his heart, kindled by 
 the memory of some rascalities of politicians he had 
 formerly abhorred, freed his utterance from all the 
 feebleness of old age, and his voice rang in piercing 
 tones through the whole house, and was even heard 
 by passers-by in the street. Thomas Jefferson was 
 his pet aversion, and, when provoked by opposition, 
 his invective against that apostle of democracy gave 
 to his voice a penetrating power, which almost ena- 
 bled the neighborhood to partake of the edification 
 and enjoyment that were specially intended only for 
 his guests. A certain tough and stalwart manliness 
 characterized all he said and did. It was seen in his 
 piety, in his benevolence, in his social affections, in 
 his mode of conducting business, even in his rapid, 
 defiant walk as he paced the streets. As you passed 
 him on the sidewalk, you felt the city was the safer 
 for bavins: sucli an embodiment of straightforward
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 265 
 
 integrity "vrithiQ its limits. In short, he was a model 
 citizen, a character which, to our national injury, 
 is gradually losing its old command of the respect of 
 voters. 
 
 During the years of Mr. Ticknor's labors as a pro- 
 fessor, though engaged in a constant conflict with the 
 men who governed Harvard College, he enjoyed unu- 
 sual opportunities of discoursing with the most eminent 
 Americans of his time. In 1835 he resigned his pro- 
 fessorship, and with his family made a second visit to 
 Europe. Judging from the letters and diaries in these 
 volumes, it was a triumphal procession. Every door, 
 however jealously guarded from ordinary intrusion, 
 seems to have felt the magic of Mr. Ticknor's " open 
 sesame." His second invasion of Europe, indeed, was 
 even more victorious than his first. He sought every- 
 body, saw everybody, and was welcomed by everybody. 
 It is useless to record his social exploits in detail. If 
 anybody can name a European celebrity he should 
 have liked to see, during the period between 1835 and 
 1838, he must be singularly exacting, unless he finds 
 the name of that person in the index of this book. 
 Among other men whom he now met for the second 
 time, he was captivated anew by Sydney Smith. In 
 1819, in witnessing his witty victories in the contests 
 of wits at Holland House, he had come to the conclu- 
 sion that Sydney Smith's humorous sallies were really 
 " logic in masquerade ; " and when, in 1835, he went 
 to hear him preach at St. Paul's, he decided that the 
 sermon was the best he had ever heard in Great
 
 266 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 Britain, though he had listened to archbishops, bishops, 
 and to representatives of all the various degrees of the 
 Episcopal hierarchy. Still, in his second tour one is 
 provoked at the mention of so many names associated 
 with so few ideas. The fashionable lords, ladies, right 
 honorables, and honorables oppress the democratic 
 imagination with a sense of titles of rank divorced 
 from titles to consideration. It is vexatious that Lord 
 this and Lady that, however charming in their sur- 
 roundings, say nothing which equals in piquancy the 
 ordinary utterances of Grub Street. Without taking 
 the extreme view of Matthew Arnold, that the English 
 aristocracy, while presenting splendid specimens of 
 gentlemanly manners, are still impenetrable to ideas, 
 one is tempted to adopt that opinion in reading Mr. 
 Ticknor's record of his intercourse with them. 
 
 It is impossible, in a brief review like the present, to 
 do more than direct the attention of the reader to Mr. 
 Ticknor's accounts of his interviews with Miss Edge- 
 worth and with Wordsworth, the first the represen- 
 tative of common-sense, and the second of the sense 
 which is uncommon ; of his descriptions of Ludwig 
 Tieck, and of his fine readings of Shakspeare's plays ; 
 of his reception at the court in Dresden, and the inti- 
 macy he formed with Prince John of Saxony, to whom 
 he was bound by an interest almost equal to that of 
 the Prince, in " Dante ; " and of his conversations with 
 Neander, Humboldt, Ancillon, Savigny, Von Raumer, 
 Retzsch, and other eminent Germans. Prince John's 
 translation of " Dante " into German was subjected to
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 267 
 
 as severe a test as that of Longfellow's into English. 
 Ticknor was present when Tieck read a part of Prince 
 John's unpublished translation of the " Purgatorio ; " 
 and the scholars present were relentless in criticisms. 
 Mr. Ticknor was surprised at the popularity of his 
 pastor, Dr. William Ellery Channing, in Europe. He 
 found that such persons as Mrs. Somerville and Joanna 
 Baillie considered him as the greatest living master of 
 English prose ; and Channing' s little book on slavery, 
 which was published while Ticknor was in Dresden, 
 added immensely to his European reputation. The 
 demand for his books exceeded the supply ; and Baron 
 Biilow brought to Ticknor a letter from the Duchess 
 of Anhalt-Dessau, earnestly asking for aid in her 
 desire to procure a complete copy of Channing's works. 
 At Berlin he visited Neander, the historian of the 
 Christian Church. After mounting three or four 
 flights of stairs, he found Neander in his scholastic 
 den, buried in books, dirty in his person, so near-sighted 
 that he could not see an inch before his nose, so ab- 
 sorbed in his studies that ".his practical knowledge 
 was not much wider than his vision," but learned, 
 earnest, kind, and conscientious. Alexander von 
 Humboldt was the great personage at that time in 
 Berlin ; the favorite of the monarch and the idol of 
 the multitude ; talking freely on subjects which other 
 courtiers carefully avoided ; a liberal in politics, though 
 the pensioner of a king ; conversing equally well on 
 all subjects with " incredible velocity, both in French 
 and English," and unsparing in sarcasms on individ-
 
 268 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 uals he deemed worthy of his contempt. Mr. Ticknor 
 discovered that his valet-de-place, and the people of the 
 inn where he lodged, thought more of him when they 
 learned that he was a friend of Humboldt. 
 
 At Vienna, Mr. Ticknor easily made his way into 
 the most exclusive society of that city, into that 
 select and sacred circle where no other American 
 citizen, not an ambassador, had ever before been ad- 
 mitted. His account of his conversations with Prince 
 Metternich bring into strong relief the prominent 
 qualities of that statesman. Metternich in Austria, 
 Nesselrode in Russia, Palmerston in England, might 
 be classed together as politicians who simply adapted 
 their theories and conduct to the condition of the 
 countries they aspired to govern. None of them had 
 any political faith apart from the system of govern- 
 ment established in the nation of which he was the 
 first minister. Palmerston, transplanted to St. Peters- 
 burg or Vienna, would have acted as Nesselrode acted 
 in Russia, and as Metternich acted in Austria; if 
 Nesselrode or Metternich had been transplanted to 
 England, he would have exercised all his skill in an 
 attempt to " manage " the House of Commons. All 
 these statesmen were powerful, not on account of their 
 fixed convictions in regard to any of the principles of 
 government, but through the pliability of their minds 
 in accommodating principles to the facts " of the 
 situation." Metternich seems to have talked frankly 
 with Ticknor. " In your country," he said, " democ- 
 racy is a reality ; in Europe it is a falsehood, and I
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 269 
 
 hate all falsehoods. ... If I were a citizen of your 
 country I should belong to the old conservative party, 
 of which Washington was the head. . . . You have 
 always managed your affairs with foreign nations with 
 ability. . . . You will become more and more demo- 
 cratic ; your system is one that wears out fast. I do 
 not know where it will end, nor how it will end ; but 
 it cannot end in a quiet, ripe old age. ... I do not 
 like my business. The present state of Europe dis- 
 gusts me. When 1 was five-and-twenty years old I 
 foresaw nothing but change and trouble in my time ; 
 and I sometimes thought that I would leave Europe 
 and go to America, or somewhere else, out of the reach 
 of it. But my place was here. . . . And so I have 
 gone on, and have been here at the head of affairs 
 since 1809. ... I labor for to-morrow. It is with 
 to-morrow that my spirit wrestles, and I am but too 
 happy if I can do something to prevent the evil it may 
 threaten, or add something to the good of which it is 
 capable." That dreadful " to-morrow " is indeed the 
 phantom which all wise ministers of absolute mon- 
 archies have the most cause to dread. It is the im- 
 mense advantage of constitutional governments that 
 with them to-morrow is abundantly able to take care 
 of itself. 
 
 It is to be said of Professor Ticknor, that, in all his 
 interviews with potentates and prime ministers, he ever 
 stood bravely up to his principles as a citizen of a 
 republic. The Grand Duke of Tuscany having asked 
 him in what country he thought it would be the great-
 
 270 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 est good fortune for a man to be born, he instantly 
 answered, " America ; " and when called upon to give 
 his reasons for such a preference, he somewhat bluntly 
 replied that in the United States the mass of the 
 community, " by being occupied about the affairs of 
 state, instead of being confined, as they were else- 
 where, to the mere drudgery of earning their own 
 subsistence," were more truly men than the inhabit- 
 ants of other countries, and therefore " it was more 
 agreeable and elevating to live among them." The 
 Duke " blushed a little, but made no answer." 
 
 Mr. Ticknor returned from Europe in the summer 
 of 1838. His friends were among the first citizens of 
 Boston; his literature and scholarship, generally ac- 
 knowledged, were rendered more attractive by the zest 
 he could communicate to a learned conversation by 
 his reminiscences of distinguished European men 
 of letters and scholars with whom he had been on 
 familiar terms ; and his ample means, his cultivated 
 manners, and his possession of the best house, both 
 as regards situation and elegance, which then existed 
 in the city, made him a leader in the society of the 
 place. His position was so assured that one of his 
 friends, Nathan Hale, pleasantly suggested that the 
 name of Boston be changed into Ticknorville. In New 
 York and other cities the good society of Boston was 
 for a long time regarded as the select circle of culti- 
 vated gentlemen and ladies in which Ticknor moved, 
 and to which he almost gave the law. The mistake 
 arose from an oversight of the fact that Boston has a
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 271 
 
 hundred " circles ; " that nobody who has anything to 
 say on any subject, whether he be an extreme conser- 
 vative or an extreme radical in all matters relating to 
 society, politics, and religion, can fail to find there a 
 coterie " hospitable to his thought ; " and that though 
 the city is not comprehensive in the large sense of in- 
 cluding in one society its best intellectual and moral 
 forces, it is comprehensive in the minor sense of afford- 
 ing each division of these clashing forces a social 
 stronghold of its own. The reader of these " Memoirs " 
 will be a little surprised that such names as R. W. 
 Emerson, John G. "Whittier, Theodore Parker, Charles 
 Sumner, not to mention others, are omitted in their 
 pages ; but then these men had inner social circles of 
 their own. It was not to be supposed that Mr. Ticknor 
 could, as a man of eminent respectability, have any 
 sympathy with their audacities of thought and con- 
 duct; but we are disappointed that such persons as 
 Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell should not have re- 
 ceived the just praise, either in diary or letter, which 
 is lavished by him on some European titled medioc- 
 rities. No notion can be obtained of the vital intel- 
 lectual and moral movement going on in Boston and 
 Massachusetts from 1838 to 1861, by studying Mr. 
 Ticknor's letters. They indicate benevolent feeling, 
 patriotic feeling, good sense ; but show little insight, 
 though an occasional glimpse of foresight. As a po- 
 litical thinker he was somewhat of an amateur, taking 
 no active part in politics, but generally agreeing in 
 opinion with such statesmen and jurists as Webster
 
 272 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 and Curtis, wise to the extent of being over-wise, 
 thinking that political logic was an adequate offset to 
 political passion, and underrating the force of the real 
 elements of political power in the nation. 
 
 As a man of letters he was highly esteemed by 
 his friends, and doubtless deserved their esteem ; 
 but to chance visitors, though always courteous, 
 the metallic sharpness of his voice seemed to be an 
 affronting expression of the settled convictions of 
 his mind. There is an amusing story told of a young 
 man, who visited him for the first and last time, ven- 
 turing modestly to suggest that the case of Laura 
 Bridgman introduced some new problems in the phi- 
 losophy of perception as expounded by recent meta- 
 physicians, but who was stunned into silence by Mr. 
 Ticknor' s decisive answer, that " Mr. Locke's opinions 
 had satisfied him on all matters of that kind." So- 
 cially, ' his judgments ever had something of this 
 positiveness ; his intellect was not open to new ideas ; 
 he excluded from his toleration what he had not 
 included in his studies and experience ; and he some- 
 times weighed heavily on the Boston mind during the 
 period he was supposed to have undertaken its direc- 
 tion. But his great work, " The History of Spanish 
 Literature," was all this time in process of compo- 
 sition. He enjoyed during ten years, as Mackintosh 
 enjoyed during nearly his whole life, all the glory of an 
 expected work, before a page of it had been printed. 
 He was known to be engaged on his self-elected task ; 
 he had purchased, regardless of expense, the finest
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 273 
 
 library of Spanish literature possessed by any living 
 man ; he had resided in Spain ; and he had conversed 
 with every European and American celebrity inter- 
 ested in the history and literature of Spain. The 
 result showed how conscientiously exact he had been 
 in verifying every date, estimating the value of every 
 authority, weighing the worth of opposing schools of 
 criticism. He indeed produced such a masterpiece of 
 patient and exhaustive research that one of his critics 
 declared there were not six men in Europe capable 
 of reviewing it, as far as the facts of Spanish litera- 
 ture were concerned. Its form and construction were 
 also praised by such critics as Prcscott and Motley, 
 who complimented the author for the art displayed in 
 dividing the subject into appropriate periods, and con- 
 necting the literature of Spain with its history. The 
 style of the work is excellent of its kind, clear in state- 
 ment, manly in tone, but somewhat hard and cold in 
 its sustained elegance, and containing few of those fe- 
 licities of phrase which are observable in the author's 
 private diaries and correspondence. 
 
 It is curious that Hallam's letter to him declaring 
 that his work indicated a marvellous reach of knowl- 
 edge in a foreigner, that it could not be superseded by 
 any writer out of Spain, and could not, unless Spain 
 became very different from what it was in 1850, be 
 superseded by any writer in it should have objected 
 to Ticknor's too frequent use of the word " genial." 
 The word might be offensively prominent, but cer- 
 tainly not the quality. If the historian of Spanish 
 
 18
 
 274 GEORGE TICK:N'0R. 
 
 Literature failed in anything, it was in not having 
 a thorough!}' " genial " appreciation of the peculiar 
 character of the Spanish people and of the genius of 
 its authors. His erudition was not accompanied with 
 corresponding imaginative sympathy and insight ; he 
 never thoroughly, and with full heart and divining 
 mind, put himself in the place of Lope de Vega, 
 Cervantes, and Calderon ; the secret of the genius of 
 Spain eluded him while he was diligently studying 
 every book which could shed the faintest light upon 
 it. He could not, by any effort of imagination, cosily 
 make himself a contemporary of the age he aimed to 
 depict. The materials of his work were, after years 
 of tireless research, lodged safely in his house in Park 
 Street, Boston ; but his verdicts on the great writers 
 of Spain were unfortunately delivered from the same 
 locality with a Bostonian's moral energy and emphasis. 
 The wonder is that this greatest of Spanish scholars, 
 outside of Spain, should have ignored or forgotten all 
 he must have learned from such German students of 
 Spanish literature as A. W. Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck. 
 Incomparably superior to both of them, so far as re- 
 gards an external knowledge of the literature of Spain, 
 he was perhaps inferior to both in all that intuitive 
 knowledge which comes from the power of perceiving, 
 realizing, interpreting, vitalizing, and reproducing the 
 spirit of a literary age, and the souls of the men who 
 shed lustre on it. Wide as had been his experience of 
 many lands and many peoples, he could not, like his 
 friend Prescott, imaginatively expatriate himself, and
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 275 
 
 while writing on Spanish themes, become so far a Span- 
 iard for the time as to detect, by sympatliy, the inner, 
 vital facts of the Spanish heart and imagination. 
 
 As a citizen of Boston Mr. Ticknor cheerfully took 
 upon himself the duty of discharging all those unre- 
 munerated services, in the cause of education and be- 
 nevolence, which the city exacts from its opulent and 
 cultivated inhabitants. In Boston a man loses " caste " 
 unless he submits to a tax on his time and property, 
 entirely dissociated from the tax levied by the asses- 
 sors. Benevolence there is one of the tests of re- 
 spectability ; and selfishness and avarice, pure and 
 undefiled from any admixture of philanthropy, are 
 considered not only inhuman, but unfashionable. Mr. 
 Ticknor, though a member of many benevolent asso- 
 ciations, was specially attracted by enterprises which 
 were intended to advance art, literature, and science. 
 The Boston Public Library which is now the best 
 public library on the American continent, and which 
 promises to be one of the great libraries of the world 
 is indebted to him, as one of its original trustees, not 
 only for his good judgment in selecting the higher 
 class of works, but for making it so popular in the 
 free distribution of books that no party which has 
 ever obtained power in the civic government has 
 dreamed, in its most economic plans for reducing 
 expenses, of refusing to the trustees of the Public 
 Library any money which they asked. The library, 
 indeed, may be called the most popular institution in 
 the city, though its demands for money now average
 
 276 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 a hundred thousand dollars a year. Tlie library was 
 opened to the public in 1854, in a small schoolhouse 
 in Mason Street, with a collection of twelve thousand 
 volumes. The munificent donations of Mr. Bates, of 
 the firm of Baring Brothers & Co., led to Mr. Tick- 
 nor's third visit to Europe in 1856. He was absent 
 fifteen months, establishing agencies for the library, 
 buying books, and aiding its interests in other re- 
 spects. He was cordially welcomed by his old friends, 
 and ma.de some new acquaintances. 
 
 On his return from Europe Mr. Ticknor was for 
 some years connected with the Public Library, and 
 on the death of Mr. Everett in 1863 he was elected 
 President of the Board of Trustees, and held the 
 position for a year, when he resigned. Now, when 
 the institution has outgrown in usefulness the most 
 sanguine expectations of its founders, every citizen of 
 Boston has reason to hold in respect the memory of 
 George Ticknor, who did more than any other man 
 to give it that popular character which insures its 
 stability, and who left to it his magnificent library 
 of Spanish books. 
 
 Shortly after his return from Europe he wrote a 
 letter, full of good sense, to Mr. Justice Curtis, in 
 which he gave his reasons for believing that a civil 
 war in this country would please the governing pow- 
 ers in Europe. " In my judgment," he says, " when- 
 ever the fatal hour that strikes the dissolution of our 
 Union comes, those who stand hy it longest will have 
 the least sympathy in Europe^ He thus predicted
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 277 
 
 what, to the amazement of many American gentle- 
 men who were great lovers of England, actually 
 occurred when the Rebellion burst forth. The sur- 
 prise was so great that old Federalists, old Democrats, 
 Antislavery men who had been accustomed to count 
 on the sympathy of their friends in Great Britain, 
 were united as one man in their indignation against 
 the governing classes of England, whether liberal or 
 illiberal. In the eastern, middle, and northwestern 
 States, it may be safely said that there were few cul- 
 tivated or uncultivated men who did not feel a rage 
 against "the mother-country," fiercer than that which 
 was felt in 1776 or 1812. Fortunately for the peace 
 of both nations, the American mind in such matters 
 is ungifted with the faculty of memory ; and after the 
 first explosion of righteous wrath was over, the en- 
 mity gradually subsided. 
 
 During the four years preceding the Rebellion, Mr. 
 Ticknor was recognized as a supporter of the meas- 
 ures of compromise designed to avert it ; after it had 
 broken out, and during its continuance, he belonged 
 to that class of conservatives who opposed almost 
 all the daring " war measures " by which the Con- 
 federacy was eventually overthrown ; and while 
 warmly sympathizing with the cause of the nation 
 and giving freely of his means to sustain it, his mind 
 was so oppressed by the technicalities of constitu- 
 tional law, that he wished the war to be conducted on 
 principles which would probably have insured the 
 triumph of the Rebels, had they been carried out.
 
 278 GEORGE TICKNOR. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson Davis, in arms against the Union and 
 the Constitution, and reviling the " Yankees " as the 
 scum of the earth, was specially disgusted at the im- 
 pudence of the Northerners in their so-called violation 
 of the Constitution of the United States. Many intel- 
 ligent and patriotic men of the North objected, on con- 
 stitutional grounds, to the measures which Mr. Davis 
 specially dreaded. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Ticknor was engaged in a biogra- 
 phy of Prescott the historian, who had died in 
 January, 1859. The volume, carefully and lovingly 
 written, was published in 1864, when the writer had 
 reached the age of seventy-two. For forty years the 
 biographer and the subject of the biography had been 
 united in the closest bonds of friendship. The " Life 
 of Prescott " attained an immediate popularity, and 
 it still holds its place among the most delightful of 
 literary biographies. 
 
 Mr. Ticknor survived the war, and all the measures 
 of reconstruction which followed the termination of 
 the war, preserving to the last his interest in public 
 affairs. His life-long labor, his beloved " History of 
 Spanish Literature," was ever on his table for correc- 
 tions, alterations, omissions, or additions. His physi- 
 cal health was always remarkably good ; and when 
 in January, 1871, he died, his death seemed the re- 
 sult of mere bodily decay, as his mind was clear to 
 the last. Without pain he quietly withdrew from the 
 world, having enjoyed in it every satisfaction the 
 world could give.
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR. 279 
 
 It only remains to be said, that the letters and 
 journals of Mr. Ticknor are of so interesting a charac- 
 ter, and introduce the reader to so many men and 
 women distinguished by rank, fashion, learning, and 
 genius, without requiring him to move from his own 
 fireside, that they cannot but obtain a wide and per- 
 manent popularity. As a biography, the work is 
 open to the criticism that Mr. Ticknor, as he was, is 
 almost submerged in his copious accounts of the cele- 
 brated people he knew. Though recognized in his 
 native city as quite a formidable personage in him- 
 self, we continually lose sight of him in the still more 
 formidable personages whom it was his good fortune 
 to meet.
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 It may be afl&rmed that those American readers of 
 the works of Matthew Arnold who have diligently 
 followed him from his first to his latest volume, who 
 have most keenly felt the fascination of his style and 
 the limitations of his character, and who have scrib- 
 bled over the margins of his pages with alternate 
 notes of admiration and interrogation, will specially 
 welcome the new edition of his writings published by 
 the Macmillans. In an extended consideration of his 
 labors much might be said in his praise which the 
 nece'ssary brevity of this review compels us to omit ; 
 and our simple object is to state some reasons which 
 account for the fact that he is not popular, in any 
 large sense of the word, either on this or the other 
 side of the Atlantic. 
 
 It is doubtless to be supposed that Mr. Arnold's 
 estimate of our. civilization will not be flattering to 
 our national vanity or national pride. A writer who 
 has repeatedly told his own countrymen that their 
 higher classes are " materialized," their middle classes 
 " vulgarized," and their lower classes " brutalized," 
 cannot be expected to proclaim, after a few months' 
 residence in this country, that the conduct, politics.
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 281 
 
 society, science, and literature of the United States 
 come up to the high ideal standards which he is accus- 
 tomed to apply to other nations as well as to his own. 
 It may be said that the general characteristic of 
 Mr. Arnold's poetry is moral and intellectual scepti- 
 cism and despondency ; and that the general charac- 
 teristic of his criticism is moral and intellectual 
 superciliousness. When he writes in verse from his 
 inner self, from his " heart of heart," he moans ; 
 when he writes in prose he is prone to assume the 
 air of " a superior being," condescending even to 
 those he graciously applauds. When a man, in the 
 expressive phrase of Dickens's Mr. Wegg, " drops 
 into poetry," it is supposed that some kindling senti- 
 ment prompts him to choose verse as the most appro- 
 priate vehicle for his outburst of thought and emotion. 
 In Mr. Arnold's case this process is reversed. When 
 he is out of spirits, he sings ; when he feels himself a 
 being superior to his contemporaries, he criticises. 
 In his mood of dejection he embodies his feeling in a 
 stanza like this, taken from his poem on " The Grand 
 Chartreuse : " 
 
 " Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 
 
 The other powerless to be bornj 
 With nowhere yet to rest my head, 
 
 Like these, on earth I wait forlorn. 
 Their faith, my tears, the world deride ; 
 I come to shed them at their side." 
 
 Also, when in a milder mood, but one which is still 
 haunted by spectres of a melancholy that seems
 
 282 MATTHEW AUNOLD. 
 
 inborn, and to lie at the very root of his nature, he 
 declares, 
 
 " Too fast we live, too much are tried, 
 Too harassed to attain 
 Wordsworth's sweet calm, or Goethe's wide 
 And luminous view to gain." 
 
 It may be said that Mr. Arnold's sorrowful view of 
 li.fe in his poems is characteristic of many great poets. 
 Byron, for example, is fiercely misanthropic in mat- 
 ters of human concern, where Mr. Arnold is merely 
 gently despondent and despairing. But Byron's orig- 
 inal, not to say aboriginal, energy of nature is so 
 great, that, while his thoughts tend to depress the 
 soul, his energy stimulates it. "We get from his 
 poems few principles on which a rational human 
 being would think of basing his conduct ; but he 
 inspires, impels, inflames hundreds of thousands of 
 readers who have no sympathy with his misanthropy. 
 Mr. Arnold goes deeper, perhaps, than Byron into the 
 causes which induce many thinkers to be dejected 
 in surveying the phenomena of human life, but he 
 lacks Byron's immense vigor. A comparative feeble- 
 ness of constitution prevents him from giving to his 
 thoughts the great element of power. This is said 
 without questioning the exquisiteness of much of 
 his poetry, and the delight it communicates to 
 many cultivated minds ; but its effectiveness on 
 ordinary readers is injured by the general melan- 
 choly of its tone, and by its lack of impassioned 
 imagination.
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 283 
 
 One cannot speak of Matthew Arnold without 
 thinking of his father, wliose biography by the late 
 Dean Stanley made, at the period when it was pub- 
 lished, so deep an impression. It stimulated tlie 
 reader to carry liberal and generous ideas into prac- 
 tical work for the good of mankind. The father had 
 the great quality of soul. Everybody felt that he an- 
 nounced no principle for which he would not willingly 
 have died. In fact, he was recognized as a spiritual 
 force ; and he communicated spiritual life because he 
 was himself all alive. It can hardly be doubted that 
 the scholarship of the son is far richer and larger 
 than that of the father ; that in theology he has ad- 
 vanced to conclusions from which the father would 
 have recoiled ; that he has successfully occupied re- 
 gions of literature which the father barely entered; 
 and that even in matters of education, especially the 
 education of the middle classes, the son is far beyond 
 the father in clear ideas and methods of culture ; yet 
 the son, with all his intelligence and acquired knowl- 
 edge, has not the father's magical gift. He can in- 
 form, but he cannot inspire and invigorate : the soul 
 is wanting. That wonderful passage of experience 
 and intelligence into will, by which high reason, or 
 even ordinary good sense, impels reasonable minds to 
 instant action, is lacking in the most radical of Mat- 
 thew Arnold's teachings and preachings. We agree 
 or disagree with him, as we read ; but if we agree, 
 we receive from him no impulse to conform our con- 
 duct to his ideas. It would be difficult to detect
 
 284 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 among those who most admire his writings a single 
 individual who has been led to act nobly by any in- 
 spiration derived directly from his numerous books. 
 And yet most of these books are specially marked 
 by the emphasis laid on righteousness, and on self- 
 renunciation as the fruit of righteousness. 
 
 The explanation of this fact is not far to seek. 
 The expansion of his intelligence has been purchased 
 at the expense of weakening his will. It cannot be 
 said that he is destitute of the peculiarities and in- 
 firmities of individuality, however much he may be 
 lacking in its powers ; for no modern writer of equal 
 reputation and genius is so full of idiosyncrasies and 
 tastes and distastes, especially the latter. But the 
 heart of his being is not thoroughly sound and strong 
 Something languid, discontented, dissatisfied, some- 
 thing which makes the impression of a certain subtle, 
 feline resentment at the non-acknowledgment of his 
 own claims to eminence, is observable in the inmost 
 recesses of his moral nature. A compassionate con- 
 tempt for other minds appears to be a necessary 
 condition of any self-satisfaction he may find in con- 
 templating his own- This ungracious quality too 
 often takes the form of a condescension, which exas- 
 perates alike those who agree and those who disagree 
 with him in matters of literary, political, and theolog- 
 ical discussion. Now, the Almighty may very properly 
 condescend to the human beings he has created ; but 
 he is the only being who has a right to condescend, 
 except, it seems, Mr. Matthew Arnold ; and the latter
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 285 
 
 uses the privilege at times in a fashion which makes 
 us regret that the exception was made in his favor. 
 It may be affirmed that you may do all in your power 
 to injure a fellow-creature, even if you go to the ex- 
 tent of robbing, torturing, and enslaving him ; he 
 may sullenly bear these injuries, but beware of 
 condescending to him ! No man can descend so low 
 as not acutely to feel this last insult to what is 
 immortal in him, his personality. 
 
 It is difficult to illustrate Mr. Arnold's superb 
 superciliousness except by examples drawn from that 
 department of life where superciliousness reigns 
 supreme, namely, fashionable society. Thus it is 
 reported that two high-bred women, one from New 
 York, the other from Boston, happened to meet 
 in what is ironically called a " social " circle. Both 
 were rich and accomplished, and both claimed to have 
 ancestors. Boston, in the course of a little conversa- 
 tion between the two, alluded, in the most seemingly 
 unpretentious way, to the trivial circumstance that 
 her ancestors came over in the " Mayflower." " Ah ! " 
 replied New York, with a little lift of her eyebrows 
 expressive of innocent surprise, " I did not know be- 
 fore that the ' Mayflower ' brought over any steerage 
 passengers." 
 
 " And the imperial Yorkist passed on, 
 In matron meditation, Boston free." 
 
 The retort certainly was not delicate ; but still in 
 what Bacon calls the " great ship of Time " no one is
 
 286 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 so careful to distinguish between cabin and steerage 
 passengers as Mr. Arnold. His exacting taste de- 
 mands the " culture " of the few highly educated 
 people who occupy the state-rooms, though genius 
 and saintliness may be among the motley assemblage 
 in the steerage. The slightest taint of vulgarity re- 
 pels him, as though it were an inexpiable sin. All 
 his readers must remember his mischievous delight in 
 quoting, in essay after essay, a verse of a hymn, 
 which he eventually robs of the capital letter begin- 
 ning each line, and which he declares expresses the 
 average piety of a Protestant devotee of the middle 
 class : 
 
 " My Jesus to know, and feel his blood flow, 
 'T is life everlasting, 't is Heaven below." 
 
 Now, that such doggerel as this is exceptional in 
 all Orthodox Congregational hymn-books he must 
 know very well ; but it serves his turn in his effort to 
 show the vulgarity which steals into the worship of 
 dissenting Christians. He is never tired of thrusting 
 it into tlieir faces as a proof that they cannot adore 
 their Redeemer without shocking every principle of 
 good taste, and of ironically recommending to them a 
 small dose of " literature " to sweeten and refine the 
 bald announcement of their "dogma." If uneducated 
 or imperfectly educated Protestant saints ever swear, 
 it must be when they read such polite exhortations 
 for them to sing and pray in Oxford English ; and 
 they might be justified in swearing by assuming
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 287 
 
 that, considering the provocation, profanity in some 
 emergencies becomes a religious exercise. 
 
 No injustice is done to Mr. Arnold in saying that 
 condescension in the form of superciliousness more or 
 less infects his ablest writings. He is very careful to 
 abstain from every kind of that passionate invective, 
 of that righteous wrath, in which vehement minds are 
 apt to indulge when their souls are excited by the 
 contemplation of some great wrong; there is hardly 
 a trace in his works of the noble rage so dominant in 
 Milton, Chatham, or Burke ; but, on the other hand, 
 there is no recent English writer who excels or even 
 equals him in the exquisitely polished poison with 
 which he deliberately tips the light and shining arrows 
 of his sarcasm. The wounds he inflicts may seem to 
 be a mere scratch on the surface ; but they fester, 
 they eat into the flesh, which they hardly seem to 
 touch ; and the dull and prolonged pain they cause is 
 as hard to bear as the sting of a scorpion or the bite 
 of a centipede. It is said that curates of the Church 
 of England have a not unnatural desire to become 
 bishops ; but what curates would not rather prefer to 
 remain curates than to occupy the positions of the 
 Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester, after they had 
 been subjected to Matthew Arnold's ironical compli- 
 ments in " Literature and Dogma " ? These dig- 
 nitaries of the Church had, in Convocation, declared 
 their intention "to do something for the honor of 
 Our Lord's Godhead," and to mark their sense of that 
 " infinite separation for time and eternity which is
 
 288 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 involved in rejecting the Godhead of the Eternal 
 Son." Throughout the volume, Arnold seizes every 
 opportunity to bring in that unfortunate phrase, " to 
 do something," until the poor bishops are practically 
 stretched on the rack of an intellectual inquisition 
 which is as cruel as the old Spanish model of bodily 
 torment. How studiously polite, how affectedly ur- 
 bane, how inexpressibly bland, is the manner of the 
 critic as he sees his victims writhe under the applica- 
 tion of his gilded thumb-screws. The first turn and 
 twist of the engines of torture might not inflict much 
 pain ; but it is their continual repetition which wounds. 
 The poor creatures, when he makes a point against 
 their special dogma, are, as it were, compassionately 
 urged " to do something " for " the Godhead of the 
 Eternal Son." Their pious anxiety to begin a work 
 which, it would appear, they have long neglected, and 
 their confidence in their power " to do something " 
 when their sacerdotal functions are properly exercised, 
 are pressed home on the bishops with a witty relent- 
 lessness that borders on malice; while at the same 
 time the critic is employed in an attempt to under- 
 mine their whole system of theology, and does all he 
 can to make them ridiculous in the eyes of the world. 
 It is hardly possible to inflict acute pain in a more 
 seemingly gentle way. And then, throughout the dis- 
 cussion, the reader who reads between tlie lines is 
 aware that substantial injustice is done to the bishops. 
 He may take pleasure in seeing how a master in the 
 rhetorical art can, to all appearance, be victorious
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 289 
 
 over able adversaries by insisting on holding them to 
 an unlucky phrase whieh has slipped from them in 
 an unguarded moment ; yet the victory is still not 
 one of reason, but of wit. At least, it has none of the 
 " sweet reasonableness " which it is the object of the 
 book to enforce. 
 
 A critic who does not hesitate to satirize men high 
 in the Established Church, as well as persons low in 
 dissenting congregations, can hardly be expected to 
 deal genially with contemporary men of letters. When 
 he is " down among the dead men," he is sufficiently 
 complimentary ; but how few living authors are in- 
 debted to him for a friendly word ! His essays " On 
 Translating Homer" provoked combats nearly as 
 fierce as those tlic great epic poet celebrates. He 
 contrived to excite the enmity of living translators of 
 Homer by his exasperating superciliousness in sum- 
 ming up their demerits. Homer, says Mr. Arnold, 
 has four distinctive qualities, which his translator 
 should keep constantly in mind, or he will fail in 
 rendering him adequately. Homer is, first, eminently 
 rapid ; secondly, he is eminently plain and direct, both 
 in the evolution of his thought and in the expression 
 of it ; thirdly, he is eminently plain and direct in the 
 substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and 
 ideas ; and, finally, he is eminently noble. From 
 Chapman to Wright, every translator is found to be 
 deficient in one or more of these inexorable con- 
 ditions. Living translators of Homer were specially 
 angry at the cool way in which Mr. Arnold applied 
 
 19
 
 290 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 his tests, and among them all none was more enraged 
 than F. W. Newman. He could not endure the pity- 
 ing but penetrating force of Arnold's criticism, or the 
 imperturbable calm of his manner of stating it. In- 
 vective the good man might have borne with forti- 
 tude; but that this comparative stripling in Greek 
 literature should assume toward such a veteran as 
 himself the air of a superior being, was too much for 
 his philosophy. He was angry, and, what is more 
 indiscreet, he showed that he was angry ; and this 
 gave his antagonist an opportunity to overwhelm liim 
 anew with his bland and sedate condescension. Other 
 translators had their own wrongs to avenge, and an 
 exciting controversy was the result, in which nobody 
 kept his temper except the person who had caused 
 the disturbance. In one of the chapters " On Trans- 
 lating Homer " Mr. Arnold quotes a passage from 
 Goethe, which must be new even to many scholars 
 who pride themselves on their familiarity with the 
 writings of the great German. "From Homer and 
 Polygnotus," says Goethe, " I every day learn more 
 and more clearly that in our life here above-ground 
 we have, properly speaking, to enact Hell." That 
 Matthew Arnold had learned the same lesson from 
 Homer and Polygnotus must have been the settled 
 conviction of most of the translators he offended. 
 
 But then the keen critic had laid himself open to 
 criticism. He illustrated his own principles of trans- 
 lation by rendering into English hexameters a passage 
 or two from the Iliad. His critics made themselves
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 291 
 
 merry over his versions, or perversions, of the origi- 
 nal, lie watched warily for an opportunity to retort, 
 and he found it in the preface to his " Essays in Crit- 
 icism." S})eaking of himself as a Professor, he mod- 
 estly states that he is shy of claiming the title, because 
 he shares it with so many quacks and jugglers, like 
 Professor Pepper, Professor Anderson, and the like. 
 He cannot, he says, compete, merely as Professor of 
 Poetry in the University of Oxford, with such shining 
 lights as these. " I," he adds, " have my humble 
 place in a hierarchy whose seat is on earth ; and I 
 serve under an illustrious Chancellor who translates 
 Homer, and who calls his Professor's leaning toward 
 hexameters ' a pestilent heresy.' Nevertheless, that 
 cannot keep me from admiring the performance of 
 my severe chief. I admire its freshness, its manli- 
 ness, its simplicity ; although, perhaps, if one looks 
 for the charm of Homer, for his play of divine light, 
 Professor Pepper must go on, I cannot." The cool 
 insolence of this deadly thrust is incoraparably good, 
 considered as satire. The Earl of Derby had sneered 
 at Arnold's hexameters, and had translated Homer. 
 Arnold patronizes his chief by admitting the merits 
 of his version ; but he indicates, in a light, fleering 
 way, that in translating the first of the great poets of 
 the world he has made only one slight mistake, the 
 mistake of leaving out all the poetry. The truth of 
 the criticism only made it the more exasperating. 
 The allusion to Professor Pepper at the end must 
 have stung the arrogant Earl to the quick. At any
 
 292 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 rate, he was careful, we think, to indulge in no more 
 flings at his Professor's hexameters. 
 
 But a more provoking form of Mr. Arnold's fine 
 scorn of what shocks his fastidious taste or offends 
 his cherished opinions is his habit of adopting a mode 
 of attack which he disclaims so far as he is himself 
 concerned, but which is most in vogue among those 
 writers who sympathize with his adversary's method 
 of conducting the warfare of words. Thus, Charles 
 Sumner never used profane language as a proper ex- 
 pression of his own angry feelings ; but he had no 
 objection to quoting the profanity of brother Senators, 
 whose passions had been aroused by his opposition to 
 their opinions. Readers of Wordsworth, when they 
 come upon the first portion of one of his humane max- 
 ims, must have wondered how he could escape falling 
 into the fault he palpably condemned. The passage 
 begins thus : 
 
 *' He who feels contempt 
 For any living thing " 
 
 How, the reader asks, can the poet avoid expressing 
 something like contempt for the person who is sup- 
 posed to experience it ? But Wordsworth glides over 
 the difficulty with perfect ease, as is seen by his 
 conclusion : 
 
 " He who feels contempt 
 For any living thing, has faculties 
 IVliich he has never used." 
 
 In a similar way, though for a different and less 
 humane purpose, Mr. Arnold expresses his dislike of
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 293 
 
 tlic style of Mr. Kinglake, as shown in the latter's 
 brilliant history of " The Invasion of the Crimea." 
 He calls it " the Corinthian style," detests it utterly, 
 as having " the glitter of the East with the hardness 
 of the West ; " and ends by quoting an unfavorable 
 criticism of it by somebody whom he styles " a brother 
 Corinthian," and who had, it seems, declared that Mr. 
 Kinglake combined " the passion for tinsel of a sen- 
 suous Jqw with the savage spleen of a dyspeptic 
 Englishman." But Mr. Arnold hastens to add : " I 
 do not say this of Mr. Kinglake's style ; I am very 
 far from saying it. To say it, is to fall into just that 
 hard, brassy, overstretched style which Mr. Kinglake 
 himself employs so far too much, and which I, for my 
 part, reprobate. But when a brother Corinthian of 
 Mr. Kinglake says it, I feel what he means." When Mr. 
 Kinglake read this criticism, must he not have felt 
 that the "brother Corinthian " who made the somewhat 
 brutal assault on his manner of writing was far more 
 merciful than the fastidious critic w^ho quoted it ? 
 
 It would be needless to select other passages from 
 Mr. Arnold's books in proof that his taste is so re- 
 fined that he finds little to commend in his contem- 
 poraries. Bishop Colenso is the favorite " Pontiff of 
 the Philistines ; " Macaulay is " the Apostle of the 
 Philistines," and his Roman Ballads " pinchbeck." 
 He is not daunted even by such despots as Ruskin 
 and Carlyle, but draws a marked line of distinction 
 between their genius and intelligence. Their defi- 
 ciency in the latter quality seems to grieve him much.
 
 294 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 Thackeray and George Eliot he does not even men- 
 tion; and of Dickens he said nothing good during 
 the great romancer's life, classing " Little Dorrit " 
 among Magnall's Questions, Joyce's Scientific Dia- 
 logues, and Beecher's Sermons in his catalogue of 
 the library of an average British Philistine. After 
 Dickens's death, for a purpose of his own, he quoted 
 and praised those portions of " David Copperfield " 
 which contained a satire on middle-class religion and 
 middle-class education. It was said of a lawyer, emi- 
 nent for his learning and his ability, and the singular 
 absence of passion in his arguments, that he could 
 not speak fifteen minutes before a jury without run- 
 ning the risk of not only losing his case, but of mak- 
 ing every man of the twelve his personal enemy. 
 The secret of his unpopularity was that he spoke 
 down to court and jury from an inaccessible height of 
 wisdom which they could not hope to reach, but from 
 which he for tlie time descended, in such a way as 
 to give them the impression that he cowdcsccnded. 
 " Some men," said Mr. Choate, " w*e dislike for cause ; 
 others, peremptorily." He must have meant by the 
 latter the men who condescend. 
 
 It is to be feared that we have apparently under- 
 valued the real power and influence of Mr. Arnold in 
 thus frankly stating certain defects and limitations in 
 his cliaracter which have not been without their effect 
 in giving an undue bias to his intellect. There is a 
 class of educated readers in England and the United 
 States who, not being writers, are delighted with
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 295 
 
 criticisms which are really funeral services over the 
 souls of would-be writers who fail to come up to ideal 
 standards of excellence. How many men and women, 
 who might eventually have become good writers, are 
 killed at the start by harsh judgments, it is hard to 
 determine. Byron expresses his astonishment at the 
 success of such critical homicides. He says, 
 
 " Strange that the soul, that very fiery particle, 
 Should, let itself be snuffed out by an article." 
 
 But it is often snuffed out, to the great satisfaction 
 of the class of readers we have referred to, who would 
 probably meet a similar fate if they ventured to ap- 
 pear in print. Their discretion is rewarded by the 
 tranquil enjoyment they experience in witnessing the 
 death-bed agonies of their more ambitious friends and 
 neighbors, who, conquering the natural fear which 
 the austere critics are so calculated to excite, have 
 ignominiously fallen in their desperate attempt to rise. 
 This class of readers, who have generally " gone 
 through college " without having college go through 
 them, are prone to pride themselves on their culture, 
 and resent the most diffident criticisms regarding the 
 perfection of their idol, Matthew Arnold, whom they 
 look up to as the apostle of culture. Now, the im- 
 portance of culture cannot be overstated ; but as has 
 been . pleasantly remarked, the maxim is in danger of 
 being so perverted as to end practically " in the cul- 
 ture of self-importance." This hateful perversion of 
 the true creed is observable in the behavior of literary
 
 296 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 fops and coxcombs who imitate the master, as other 
 fops and coxcombs vainly try to imitate, in the inter- 
 course of society, the self-centred, refined insolence of 
 manner and irreproachable costume of the acknowl- 
 edged leaders of fashion. Mr. Arnold is as immeas- 
 urably beyond such affectations in literature as he is 
 in dress. It seems cruel to make him in the least 
 degree responsible for a shallow superciliousness of 
 tone in polite literary circles, which a few sentences 
 in his writings may still have had some influence in 
 producing. His leading maxim is that " conduct," 
 the cultivation of righteousness, properly occupies 
 three-fourths of human life ; " culture " is the remain- 
 ing fraction ; and he emphasizes this because he 
 believes that it has been unduly disregarded, and is, 
 moreover, absolutely necessary for the right regula- 
 tion of conduct. What may be called his vital super- 
 ciliousness is a quality which has its roots deep down 
 in his intellectual and moral character, and though a 
 serious defect, is entirely different from the sham 
 substitute, which consists in despising what one can- 
 not emulate, and in sneering at well-intended efforts 
 for excellence which one has never had the nerve 
 even to attempt. 
 
 If vre examine carefully the earlier prose essays of 
 Mr. Arnold, we shall find that his method of assail- 
 ing English Philistinism was by a sudden, a violent 
 change of the point of view in his way of looking at 
 things specially repugnant to the English mind. In 
 his dissertations on " The Function of Criticism
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 297 
 
 at the Present Time," and " The Literary Influence 
 of Academies," he opened a lively campaign at 
 everything insular and ]:)rovincial in English habits of 
 tliought, and showed no toleration for what he con- 
 sidered the brag and bluster of English political and 
 literary conceit. He was necessarily one-sided ; but he 
 made narrowness an agent to promote comprehensive- 
 ness. Desiring to get the English mind " out of its 
 ruts," he urged English thinkers to include in their 
 confident generalizations a number of facts and ideas 
 which they had hitherto excluded; and these neglected 
 facts and ideas he exaggerated out of their true rela^ 
 tions, in order to force them on public attention. He 
 lacked, as we have said, the kindling, magnetic power 
 which springs from original energy of nature ; but he 
 possessed, in a striking degree, the minor quality of 
 suggestivencss. He had light in abundance, though 
 he was wanting in the heat which ordinarily accompa- 
 nies light. His suggestivencss made him command 
 the attention of many thinkers who, like Emerson, 
 believe that the best benefit we receive from other 
 minds is not so much instruction as " provocation." 
 
 In his essay on the " Function of Criticism," Mr. 
 Arnold takes the ground that the critic, earnest to ac- 
 quire the best that is thought and known in the world 
 and to see all things as they really are, should avoid 
 direct contact with practical life, and decline to ap- 
 ply his advanced ideas to existing facts. Reformers 
 naturally resented the principle thus confidently an- 
 nounced, because they knew by experience that it was
 
 298 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 impossible to prevent ideas from coming into conflict 
 with current abuses in Church and State. Thus M. 
 Kenan said, in substance, to the Emperor Napoleon 
 the Third : " Allow us thinkers and scholars to think 
 and investigate freely, and communicate the results 
 of our thinking and research to the few other scholars 
 who care for the things of the mind, and we will not 
 object, with our impertinent opposition, to anything 
 you may do with the uneducated and prejudiced mil- 
 lions of France. We do not address them at all." 
 Well, the eventual result was Kenan's " Life of Jesus," 
 which became such an element of disturbance in the 
 whole Imperial system of government, that any alcove 
 in a large public library might be packed full of books 
 and pamphlets which this truly incendiary volume 
 called fortli from all classes of the French population, 
 clerical and political. Mr. Arnold, as an English- 
 man, could not expect to rival M. Kenan in creating a 
 similar outburst of the public mind by such a volume 
 as " Saint Paul and Protestantism," or " Literature 
 and Dogma ; " but everything that could be done by 
 the audacities of theological thinking, aimed directly 
 at the cherished tenets of all English churches and 
 sects that pretended to orthodoxy, was done by Mr. 
 Arnold in these two heretical books. He fondly 
 thought, like Kenan, that he could keep at a distance 
 from the smoke and dust of a combat that his own 
 writings tended to provoke. Such men may flatter 
 themselves that they are addressing thinkers alone, 
 when they are really rousing mobs. One is reminded
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 299 
 
 of the intelligent contraband who during our Civil 
 War entertained an audience in Dedham, Massachu- 
 setts, with an account of a furious conflict of Federals 
 and Rebels on the banks of the Potomac. " But," 
 asked a critical auditor of his flaming narrative, 
 " wliere were you when the battle was raging ? " 
 " Oh ! I was back among the baggage." " But how 
 far were you from the bullets and the cannon-balls ? " 
 " Well," was the instant reply, " not so far as Ded^ 
 ham ! " Probably the critic was a thouglitful Abo- 
 litionist, who, discontented with the avowed objects 
 of the war, concluded to stay at home until Eman- 
 cipation was proclaimed ; but he doubtless was soon 
 swept into the crowd of volunteers, conscripts, 
 colonels, and brigadier-generals that reinforced the 
 Army of the Potomac. He had, like Renan and 
 Arnold, intended to judge dispassionately of battles 
 from a discreet and distant point of view, but was 
 whirled into the midst of the contest by a fate he 
 could not withstand. 
 
 The prose of Mr. Arnold, when he is in his best 
 mood, almost realizes his ideal of what he calls the 
 Attic style, having its " warm glow, blithe movement, 
 and soft pliancy of life." Take such an essay as that 
 on " Religious Sentiment," and it seems, as we read, 
 that it cannot be improved. In some of his theological 
 and political discussions his style, it must be confessed, 
 loses much of its charm. It is important, however, 
 to discriminate between listening to Mr. Arnold and 
 reading him. It is well known that some of the ablest
 
 300 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 Englishmen scandalously neglect the elementary rules 
 of elocution. In the United States almost every per- 
 son, from the farmer who speaks in a town-meeting 
 to the accomplished orator who addresses the Senate 
 of the country, considers that the second part of his 
 sentence should be as audible as the first. So far as 
 we have heard eminent English speakers who have 
 addressed American audiences, we have been surprised 
 at the difference between the effect produced by what 
 they speak and the effect produced by what they write. 
 In Mr. Arnold's case, we remember a singular illustra- 
 tion of this general fact. One of his masterpieces of 
 compact criticism is certainly his lecture on Heine. 
 An accomplished professor of literature in one of our 
 best colleges heard it delivered at Oxford, and came 
 home fully impressed with the belief that Mr. Arnold 
 was an overrated man. When published as an article 
 in a magazine it attracted the notice of Mr. Emerson, 
 who was vehement in its praise, and asked every per- 
 son he met why there were no such critics in America. 
 Even Carlyle heard of it, and had to read it. He was 
 of course enraged, for he was accused of mistaking 
 the main current of Gerpian literature after Goethe. 
 " Have you heard," he growled to an American friend, 
 " of poor Matt Arnold ? What creature do you think 
 he has selected as the writer who has continued, since 
 Goethe, the main current of German literature ? Why 
 it is that PIG, Heine ! " 
 
 In coming to the consideration of Mr. Arnold's 
 theological writings, one is impressed, and sometimes
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 301 
 
 oppressed, by his theological learning and his skill in 
 coolly reversing all the standards of popular belief ; 
 but he has not the first qualification of a religious re- 
 former on a large scale, for though a keen and well- 
 equipped critic of theological dogmas, he is not a man 
 of religious genius. The exaltation of soul, the fer- 
 vor, the rapture, the ecstasy of those great natures 
 who have vitally experienced new vievrs of religion, 
 and verified them by the facts of their own conscious- 
 ness, are entirely absent from his cool statements of 
 revolutionary opinions. Paul's Epistles are considered 
 the bulwarks of orthodoxy ; but Mr. Arnold attempts 
 to prove that the doctrines derived from them are 
 gross misinterpretations of the Apostle's meaning. 
 In " Literature and Dogma " he defends the strange 
 hypothesis that the God revealed in the Old Testament 
 is not a personal God, but only the " Eternal, not our- 
 selves, that [and not who] makes for righteousness." 
 The almost endless succession of texts he quotes in 
 order to sustain his view of Israel's God as an eternal 
 It, is calculated to make Jew and Christian alike tired 
 of the very name of Righteousness. The old Puritans 
 called good works not the offspring of Divine Grace 
 the " rag of righteousness." One thinks, in reading 
 the book, of the honest Hibernian, who in celebrating 
 the superiority of the United States to Great Britain 
 as a residence for a workingman, told exultingly to a 
 fellow-countryman that when he first came over to 
 this blessed land he had n't a rag to his back, and now, 
 he exclaimed, " I 'm kivered with 'em ! " Certainly the
 
 302 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 readers of " Literature and Dogma " must feel that 
 at the end they are covered with " the rags of right- 
 eousness." The special point he makes is that the 
 language of the Bible is " fluid, passing, and literary, 
 not rigid, fixed, and scientific ; " and this, the first 
 step toward a right understanding of the Bible, de- 
 mands culture in the person who takes it. By the 
 application of this principle he gives a new inter- 
 pretation to the texts on which the doctrines of all 
 orthodox churches and sects are based ; and his inter- 
 pretation, if accepted, demolishes the doctrines. As 
 long ago as 1838 Mr. Emerson, in his celebrated ad- 
 dress to the Cambridge divinity students, announced 
 Mr. Arnold's leading idea with more condensed vigor, 
 in speaking of the theological misinterpretations of 
 the words of Jesus. " The idioms of his language," 
 he said, " and the figures of his rhetoric have usurped 
 the place of his truth ; and churches are not built on 
 his principles, but on his tropes." The remarkable 
 thing to be noted in Mr. Arnold's work is the confi- 
 dence he seems to have that his method of viewing the 
 Bible will draw unbelievers, especially such unbelievers 
 as find edification in Mr. Bradlaugh's teachings, to a 
 rational study of the Scriptures ; but in fact " Litera- 
 ture and Dogma " is a volume which believers, unbe- 
 lievers, misbelievers, and make-believers would unite 
 in neglecting or condemning. It might be supposed 
 that the author would say a word to conciliate the 
 Unitarians; but he seemed to dread contact with them, 
 alluding to tliem only to warn them from the indul-
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 303 
 
 gencc of any complacency they might feel in hoping 
 tiiat he was coming over to their side, forgetting 
 that this denomination possessed, in James Martineau, 
 one of the foremost theological scholars and thinkers of 
 our day, and one who, in respect to mere " culture," 
 had a right to be ranked among the best writers of 
 the age. Thus excluding sympathy from all quarters, 
 subtly insulting all liberals and illiberals in turn, Mr. 
 Arnold's " Literature and Dogma," full of bright and 
 penetrating thought as it is, and thronging with felici- 
 ties of diction that make the ordinary rhetorician 
 survey it with " admiring despair," ended in convin- 
 cing only one person of the infallibility of its interpre- 
 tation of the Bible. It is needless to add that the 
 person thus convinced was the author. And this 
 result might lead many crabbed orthodox divines to 
 reverse his definition of God as the " Eternal, not our- 
 selves, that makes for righteousness," so as to make 
 it read : " The temporal, not ourselves, who make's for 
 Matthew Arnold's revelation of the true meaning of 
 the Scriptures." 
 
 If space permitted, we should like to enumerate 
 some of the positive additions made by Mr. Arnold to 
 the language of literary criticism. No writer of our 
 generation has been more prolific in devising felicitous 
 phrases, distinctions, and definitions, which have 
 easily passed into circulation as representatives of 
 facts in our intellectual and moral constitution, and 
 which hardly lose their freshness and force even when 
 he persistently repeats them in essay after essay
 
 304 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 They, embody in pointed expression the delicacy and 
 the depth of his perceptions. They often have the 
 fatal certainty of those insights which reward the 
 steady gaze of a spiritual observer of spiritual facts. 
 They are specially prominent in his literary papers, 
 and one would readily exchange hundreds of pages 
 which he has devoted to theology and politics for a 
 series of articles that would include a more extended 
 consideration of the men of genius incidentally re- 
 ferred to in his books, such as Sophocles, Plato, Dante, 
 Lucretius, Montaigne, Bossuet, Voltaire, Goethe, Spen- 
 ser, Keats, not to mention others. In the present 
 inadequate notice of him, we feel that we have been 
 led unconsciously into placing too much emphasis on 
 some of his peculiarities, which are calculated to pro- 
 voke, if not to exasperate, many readers who are none 
 the less charmed by the exquisite beauty of his style ; 
 by the graceful ease with which he commands at will 
 all the resources of his large learning ; by the inflexi- 
 ble honesty and independence of spirit which marks 
 his partial and sometimes prejudiced judgments of 
 men and things ; and by the expansiveness, the fer- 
 tility, the subtilety of his intellect, when his intellect 
 has fair play, and is not controlled by obvious faults 
 in his disposition and intellectual character.
 
 BARRY CORNWALL AND SOME OF HIS 
 CONTEMPORARIES. 
 
 Bryan Waller Procter ^ occupies a prominent 
 place among poets of the second class, in a genera- 
 tion signalized by the appearance of such imaginative 
 minds/ of the first class as Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
 Byron, Scott, Shelley, and Keats. In the early part 
 of the nineteenth century there was in Great Britain 
 a revival of letters, such as the nation had not wit- 
 nessed since the grand Elizabethan period of its liter- 
 ary history. Inspiration was in the very air of the 
 time ; and sensitive hearts and intellects inhaled it in 
 the mere unconscious effort of breathing. The stim- 
 ulus of this new atmosphere was specially felt in its 
 quickening effect on the imagination and the passions. 
 In tlie age of Dryden and Pope, the poet made his 
 mark by the condensation and point of the heroic 
 couplets in which he embodied his practical thinking; 
 in the new age inaugurated by Wordsworth, the poet 
 
 ^ Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall). An Autobiographical 
 Fragment and Biographical Notes, with Personal Sketches of Con- 
 temporaries, Unpublished Lyrics, and Letters of Literary Friends. 
 Boston : Roberts Brothers. 
 
 Barry Cornwall and Some of his Friends. By James T. Fields. 
 Boston : J. R. Osgood & Co. 
 
 20
 
 306 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 penetrated below the maxims of practical thinking 
 into the profounder region of ideal thought. 
 
 The mistake committed by most of the followers 
 and imitators of Pope was due to their fond delusion 
 that they became poets simply by exercising an ac- 
 quired knack of putting the commonplaces of common- 
 sense into smooth ten-syllabled verses. Their utter 
 sterility, both of thought and of the results of logical 
 thinking, invited and provoked the reaction against 
 the whole poetic system of which Pope was the head. 
 Persons whom he would hardly have condescended 
 to admit into the " Dunciad," came to be at last the 
 only representatives of his school. But it was found 
 that the revolution which violently overturned the old 
 dynasty furnished dunces and charlatans with new 
 temptations, motives, and opportunities to hide their 
 poverty of thought and incapacity for thinking under 
 a skilful mimicry of Wordsworth's thoughtfulness and 
 Byron's passion. They indulged to their heart's con- 
 tent, or rather to their tongue's content, in wild out- 
 bursts of senseless sensibility, expressed in a throng 
 of irrelevant metaphors and images which represented 
 nothing, which illustrated nothing, and which were 
 accordingly good for nothing. Wordsworth's theory 
 of the intimate, mysterious connection of the soul of 
 man with the soul indwelling in visible Nature was 
 almost as much a discovery in the realm of poetry as 
 Newton's demonstration of the law of gravitation was 
 a discovery in the realm of science. As expressed in 
 his lines on revisiting the ruins of Tintern Abbey,
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 307 
 
 and in his immortal Odo on Immortality, it gave the 
 key-note to the poetry of the century. Talfourd was 
 justified in his assertion that Wordsworth was both 
 " ridiculed and pillaged " by Byron ; for the stanzas 
 in the third canto of " Childe Harold " which arc 
 specially elemental in thought and feeling, penetrat- 
 ing as they do into the very soul of Nature, are 
 merely the translation of Wordsworth's mysticism 
 into Byronese. But Byron popularized the original 
 thought of Wordsworth by giving it the stamp of his 
 own individuality, and infusing into it the heat of 
 his own passion. He made it infectious in making it 
 his own. The effect of the establishment and domes- 
 tication of this transcendental element in the poetry 
 of the period was to relieve vagueness of thought and 
 expression from its old stigma of being identical with 
 vacuity of mind. The finest passages of Wordsworth, 
 Byron, and Shelley might be called vague, because they 
 demanded a certain subtilety of perception in the reader 
 to be appreciated at their full worth ; the vagueness, 
 in their case, was the result of exceptional depth and 
 delicacy of thought and feeling. But the new school 
 of poets supplied no critical tests by which mediocrity 
 might be instantly distinguished from excellence ; for 
 obscurity of expression was no longer the one unpar- 
 donable sin of rhetoric, and three quarters of the 
 readers of Wordsworth, nine tenths of the readers of 
 Shelley, and at least a half of the readers of Byron did 
 not comprehend they weiie content merely to feel 
 the noblest and most orimnal ideas concerniu"; Nature
 
 308 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 which were announced in their writings as divinations 
 of the soul working under the impulse of impassioned 
 imagination. There was therefore a vast opportunity 
 presented for second-rate, third-rate, and fifth-rate 
 poetasters to puzzle, distract, and dazzle a public 
 which had come to consider vagueness and obscurity 
 as perfectly consistent with a high order of genius, 
 and which had not acquired the power of discrimi- 
 nating between the transcendentalists, who really 
 transcended ordinary minds by superior gifts of in- 
 sight, and impudent pretenders to transcendentalism, 
 who were unintelligible merely because they had no 
 definite idea of anything, no real passion for anything, 
 and no capacity to express anything. 
 
 On the other side, there was one admirable and 
 settled principle taught to the rhymers brought up in 
 the school of Pope, that their littleness, whether of 
 brain or character, was inevitably revealed in adopt- 
 ing his form of versification and in submitting to his 
 poetic laws. The austere requirements which he ex- 
 acted of all persons who aspired to be poets after his 
 model, were vigor of thinking and vigor in expressing 
 the results of thinking ; and he placed a special em- 
 phasis on clearness of thought and expression. The 
 pretenders who seemingly adhered to his somewhat 
 pedantic rules were instantly detected by their lack of 
 his terseness and brightness, of his graceful fancy 
 and strong good sense, of liis incisive reasoning and 
 epigrammatic point. Young's series of seven satires 
 on the Universal Passion prove that an able man, writ-
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 309 
 
 ing under the limitations of what is called the school 
 of Dryden and Pope, finds in them nothing which 
 .obstructs the action of a fertile, original, and ener- 
 getic mind. Even Cowper in his satires submits to 
 the autocracy of Pope without losing any of that 
 originality of mind and character which made him 
 the fit precursor of Wordsworth in writings worthier 
 of his genius. Churchill found the heroic couplet an 
 efficient medium of communication with the public, 
 allowing free and full vent to all the ferocity and 
 brutality of his nature, as well as to the coarse strong 
 vein of sense, wit, humor, and sentiment which was 
 inseparably associated with his ferocity and brutality. 
 But the vast majority of the followers of Pope were a 
 feeble folk, perhaps best represented, in the dying out 
 of his system and method, by William Hayley, who 
 was as a man kindly and well meaning, and who was 
 as a poet the perfection of amiable imbecility. Still, 
 he, no less than the other small poets of the school 
 he represented, was compelled to be clear in thought 
 as well as "correct" in versification; and his lucidity, 
 therefore, only made his mediocrity more glaringly 
 and distressingly conspicuous. 
 
 It was not so with the followers and imitators of 
 Wordsworth and Byron. Many of them obtained a 
 transient reputation, with no more real pretensions to 
 renown than were found in their profuse indulgence 
 in obscurity and rant. The new school of poets, 
 subordinating understanding to insight, and logic to 
 spiritual perception, aimed to restore the long-lost
 
 310 BAURY CORNWALL 
 
 connection between the bard and the seer. In thus 
 striking at the deepest sources of poetry, they aban- 
 doned the current standards of excellence established 
 by the most influential critics of the time ; and when 
 the leading organ of critical opinion, the " Edinburgh 
 Eevicw," decried the grandest, most profound and 
 original passages of Wordsworth as the prolix out- 
 pourings of a " rapturous mysticism," as the dull pro- 
 ducts of "forced and affected ecstasies," the result 
 was to bring criticism itself into disrepute, since it 
 thus plainly showed its incapacity to discern what it 
 derided. If men of the first class could thus be con- 
 temptuously underrated, fifth-rate men might well hope 
 to pass off their really " forced and affected ecstasies " 
 as the genuine inspiration of the Muse ; since their 
 unintelligible rant could call forth no harsher judg- 
 ment than that rendered in the case of the loftiest 
 spiritual experiences of imaginative genius, in the 
 expression of which there were palpable marks of 
 the presence of " the vision and the faculty divine." 
 And not only was the criticism of the poetry of the 
 time deficient in perception of the higher qualities of 
 the new school of poets, but it was further vitiated by 
 intense political prejudices and personal enmities ; so 
 that at last it became almost impossible for well- 
 meaning readers to be honestly guided in their judg- 
 ment of books by consulting the decisions of the 
 self-created authorities in matters of literature and 
 taste. Tlius Keats was merely the friend and acquaint- 
 ance of Hunt and Ilazlitt : there was no evidence in
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES- oil 
 
 his verse of his political opinions ; and yet he was 
 l)rutally assailed in the " Quarterly Review " and in 
 " Blackwood's Magazine " as a drooling, babyish fool, 
 with no genius, because he happened to be connected 
 with a radical set whom all good Tories were taught 
 both to despise and abhor. 
 
 Procter grew up into manhood at the period when 
 this fertility in original genius was accompanied with 
 this anarchy in the decisions of critical jurisprudence. 
 He was an imitator of none of his contemporaries ; 
 but what powers of thought, fancy, imagination, and 
 passion he possessed were naturally influenced by the 
 poetic medium in which his mind moved. He had a 
 passionate love of poetry in every form in which it 
 found expression, and even keenly appreciated the 
 merits of poets who denied merit to each other. 
 There was a singular union in him of boldness and 
 modesty. When his feelings and imagination were 
 touched, he resolutely abandoned himself to the in- 
 spiration of his theme, and ventured freely into fine 
 audacities of thought and expression; but in indi- 
 vidual disposition he was the reverse of self-assertion, 
 and in conversation was rather reticent. There was, 
 however, a precious something in his nature which 
 attracted esteem and love. His numerous friends 
 and acquaintances, including at least a hundred per- 
 sons eminent or prominent in politics, art, literature, 
 and science, never seemed disposed to exercise on 
 him the intolerance they frequently displayed in their 
 intercourse, or non-intercourse, with each other. The
 
 312 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 imperturbable kindliness of his nature, the delicate 
 sense of justice he evinced in refusing to have his lit- 
 erary opinions affected by political animosity or per- 
 sonal prejudice, and the absence in him of egotism 
 while genially mixing with a crowd of able egotists, 
 made him a delightful companion to all who had the 
 pleasure of enjoying his companionship. It is proba- 
 ble that much of his diffidence, extending at times to 
 self-abnegation, came from that dramatic element in 
 his individual disposition which found through his 
 genius brilliant, though not to him satisfactory, ex- 
 pression in his " Dramatic Scenes " and no less dra- 
 matic " Songs." His ambition evidently was to be an 
 observer of human life and character, and, as a poet, 
 to be able to pass oi^t of himself at will inta a world 
 of imagined beings, in which impartial justice should 
 be done to types of character and moods of mind 
 widely different from his own. He wished to be a 
 dramatist in the sphere of ideal life, as he was in 
 actual life, a dramatist through his sympathetic in- 
 sight into minds and hearts that came under his daily 
 observation, and for whose infirmities and defects he 
 had the large toleration which is an indispensable 
 element of true dramatic genius. His immense ad- 
 miration of Robert Browning, a poet who appeared 
 after he had himself almost abandoned even the habit 
 of making verses, was due to his admiration of 
 Browning's exceptional dramatic power, by which he 
 multiplied his individual existence by making his 
 mind inhabit and animate so many different forms of
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. 313 
 
 human character, Procter had in his early poetic 
 manhood a similar desire for this extension of his 
 individual being; but he felt in his poetic middle age 
 that he had not been endowed with a similar power 
 of realizing it. 
 
 As Procter was born in 1787 and died in 1874, his 
 life included three generations of poets, extending 
 even to the period when the fame of Browning and 
 Tennyson authors who began to write after he had 
 practically ceased to publish anything was con- 
 tested by a new brood of poets, now fighting for 
 prominence in the public eye, with novel theories of 
 poetry sustained by novel theories of criticism. All 
 three of these generations seem to have loved and 
 honored him. He was celebrated in verse by the 
 octogenarian Landor and by the youthful Swinburne. 
 " Barry," exclaims Landor, 
 
 " Barry, your spirit long ago 
 Has haunted me ; at last I know 
 The heart it springs from : one more sound 
 Ne'er rested on poetic ground ; " 
 
 and Swinburne, after Procter had let fall, in a conver- 
 sation with him and Bayard Taylor, that his poetry 
 was now (1868) less known than it had been, could not 
 rest until he had denied it in some graceful stanzas. 
 There were some vernal blossoms, the young poet said, 
 that " bear no fruit eternal ; " but he adds : 
 
 "No time casts down, no time upraises. 
 Such loves, such memories, and such praises 
 As need no grace of sun or shower,
 
 314 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 No saving screen from frost or thunder, 
 To tend and house around and under 
 The imperishable and peerless flower." 
 
 Indeed, there hardly ever was a sweet and an hon- 
 orable old age cherished by more tender marks of 
 domestic affection, and ministered to by a larger 
 troop of attached friends and admirers, than the old 
 age of this poet. 
 
 The interesting " Biographical Notes", published by 
 his family, and the pleasing memories of him re- 
 corded in the charming little volume by Mr. Fields 
 exhibit him as he was in himself, and as he appeared 
 in his relations with his intimate friends. " The Au- 
 tobiographical Sketch " provokingly stops at the very 
 beginning of his career, and is characterized, or if we 
 may invent a more intense word fitting his case, is 
 " peculiarized," by his persistent habit of underrating 
 his powers. He was the son of a man of moderate 
 fortune, scanty education, and mediocre abilities, but 
 one in whose nature parsimony was indissolubly con- 
 nected with integrity, and who was uncompromisingly 
 honest in thought, word, and act, without having 
 the grace of generosity to make his rectitude lova- 
 ble. His mother was simply " the kindest and 
 tenderest mother in the world." At the age of five 
 Bryan was sent to a boarding-school near London, and 
 had to fight his way, as well as he could, among older 
 boys ; at the age of thirteen he was sent to the great 
 public school of Harrow, where he bore himself cred- 
 itably among the boys, both as to learning his lessons
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 315 
 
 and using his fists, without, however, having any 
 particular ambition to excel others either in scholar- 
 ship or pugilism. Among his school-fellows there 
 were two striplings afterwards celebrated all over the 
 world, Robert Peel, who lived to become one of the 
 foremost statesmen of England ; and Noel Byron, who 
 attained an equal celebrity as a poet. Of Peel, Proc- 
 ter says nothing, though he must have shown as a 
 boy some of the qualities which eventually made him 
 the great compromiser between opposite political fac- 
 tions, and may perhaps in his dealings with other 
 boys have early given in his adhesion to the economic 
 doctrine which only in his old age he consented to 
 carry out, of " buying in the cheapest market and 
 selling in the dearest." Of Byron, Procter says that 
 none of his companions could have dreamed of his 
 blossoming into a poet, as he was loud, coarse, capa- 
 ble very capable of a boy's vulgar enjoyments, 
 playing at hockey and racquets, and " occasionally 
 indulging in pugilistic combats," Procter's vacations 
 were spent in a large mansion of his mother's uncle, 
 where, he tells us, his imagination was first awakened 
 by a bedroom papered in the old-fashioned way, 
 which " suggested many wonderful thoughts " and 
 was not without its terrors. There looked out of the 
 paper, he says, " strange faces and objects, partaking 
 at once of the bird and the beast," some beautiful, 
 some terrible, but all disturbing to his brain. He 
 began to dream, to recollect his dreams, to dwell 
 upon them, and to strive " to discover their meanings
 
 316 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 and origin." Then the meadows, fields, and gardens 
 around the house stirred a strange rapture in his soul. 
 There happened also to be in his uncle's family a 
 female servant who was " the daughter of a man who 
 had failed in a profession or business," and who was 
 the most cultivated person in the spacious mansion. 
 She had read some of the English historians and 
 poets, was familiar with the novels of Richardson and 
 Fielding, and narrated to the eager boy " their stories 
 fluently and emphatically, and with marvellous taste 
 and discrimination of the characters. But above all 
 high above all she worshipped Shakspeare. She 
 it was," he adds, " who first taught me to know and 
 love him," and by reciting to him passages from the 
 plays made him resolve, " I will buy a Shakspeare 
 with the first money I get." This vow he kept ; and 
 thus, as a boy, he entered " into a world beyond his 
 own." Shakspeare led him at last to study the whole 
 dramatic literature of the Elizabethan age, and the 
 result was evident when he came to publish his 
 " Dramatic Poems." 
 
 The youth on leaving Harrow was not sent to 
 Oxford, because his father, " a saving soul," was de- 
 termined against it by the statement of a friend he 
 had consulted. " I never learned much at Oxford," 
 said this critic, " and my boy has learned nothing 
 nothing except extravagant habits." Bryan was ac- 
 cordingly sent directly to study law under a solicitor 
 in a Wiltshire village. He thoroughly prepared him- 
 self for this profession by " reading all the Enghsh
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 317 
 
 poets from Chaucer down to Burns," all the romances 
 of Le Sage, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Inchbald, 
 and Radcliffe, most of the classics which had been 
 translated into English, and most of the histories ac- 
 cessible to ordinary English readers. In order fur- 
 ther to qualify himself for the arduous duties of the 
 practice of law he fell in love, and began to write 
 verses. At the age of twenty he went up to London 
 with the intention of living by his pen, and at the 
 same time to prosecute the legal studies thus happily ' 
 begun. It was not until 1815, when he contributed 
 some poems to the " Literary Gazette," that his talent 
 attracted attention. In 1816 his father died leaving 
 him a modest competence, which he was disposed to 
 spend freely, though at about this time he began the 
 serious study of conveyancing, and soon afterwards 
 entered into partnership with a solicitor, an unpro- 
 ductive partnership as it proved, which was dissolved 
 in 1820, after he had incurred some losses. A pas- 
 sion for literary distinction which for many years 
 had been stirring within him now found an adequate 
 outlet in his " Dramatic Scenes, and Other Poems," 
 published in 1819. The volume passed deservedly to 
 a second edition. In 1820 it was succeeded by " A 
 Sicilian Story ; " in the same year by " Marcian Co- 
 lonna ; " and in 1821 by the tragedy of "Mirandola," 
 which was not only a success on the stage, having a 
 run of sixteen nights, but also a success with the 
 reading public, passing rapidly through three editions. 
 The author's gains reached the sum of X630. In
 
 318 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 1823 appeared "The Flood of Thessaly, and Other 
 Poems ; " and then, with the exception of " Effigies 
 Poeticae," a thin volume published in 1824, the au- 
 thor's literary ambition subsided. The reason for 
 this is found in the fact that the poet had realized his 
 poetic ideal in one of the happiest marriages recorded 
 in the lives and loves of the poets. In 1820 he had 
 been introduced to the family of Basil Montague. 
 He fell in love with a daughter of Mrs. Montague by 
 a former husband, became engaged to her in 1821, 
 and married her in 1824. He thus obtained the 
 great prize of life, a prize in winning which either 
 Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, or Byron might have 
 envied while congratulating him. He insured his 
 domestic happiness and domestic peace by marrying 
 a noble woman, whose talents and accomplishments 
 fitted her to appear in any society in Great Britain 
 on a footing of equality, who could enter no society 
 where she would not be recognized as a brilliant ad- 
 dition to it, and who tenderly loved and appreciated 
 the husband by whom she was adored. 
 
 His domestic happiness he celebrated in his well- 
 known " Poet's Song to his Wife ; " but we should 
 rather select some passages from the little-known 
 " Epistle from an Obscure Philosopher," as more auto- 
 biographic in spirit. In this he describes both the 
 ecstasy of the lover and the calm " sober certainty 
 of waking bliss " of the husband : 
 
 She stood disclosed, 
 A perfect soul within a perfect form ;
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 319 
 
 Unparalleled, intelligent, divine. 
 Dreams of some inner Heaven then took my soul 
 Captive, and flushed the thrilling nerves with joy, 
 Commingling with my sleep and blessing it. 
 And when she warmed with love, my eyes amazed 
 Met thrice the wonders I before had seen ; 
 I drank in fragrance thousand times more sweet 
 Than ever lay upon the hyacinth's lip ; 
 Music I heard, sphere-tuned, harmonious. 
 Ravishing earth and sky : swarms of delight 
 Encompassed me, until my soul o'erwhelmed 
 Sank in the conflict ; and I then poured forth 
 My heart in numbeis such as lovers use : 
 
 perfect Love, soft joy, untinged with pain ! 
 
 sky kept cloudless by the sighs of Spring ! 
 
 Bird, that bear'st sweet sounds through sun and rain, 
 Give thy heart way, and sing 1 
 
 Look down, dear Love, as Heaven looks down on earth ! 
 
 Be near me, round me, like the enfolding air ! 
 Impart some beauty from thy beauteous worth, 
 
 Or be thyself less fair. 
 
 As the hart panteth for the water-brooks. 
 
 As the dove moaneth in the lone pine-tree, 
 So, left unsunned by thy care-charming looks, 
 
 1 pant, I mourn for thee ! 
 
 She came unto my home ; and with her came 
 Infinite love, content, divine repose. 
 Life rose above its height, and we beheld 
 Beauty in all things, everywhere delight ! 
 The sun that dwelt in our own hearts shed forth 
 Its beams upon the world, and brightened it ; 
 And from that brightness, as the ground takes back 
 The dews it gently lends, we gathered light 
 That led us through the dim sweet paths of life, 
 Until our hearts bloomed forth in happiness.
 
 320 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 It is not surprising that the lover, blessed in pos- 
 sessing the object of his affection, should have re- 
 sumed his profession as a conveyancer, and worked 
 steadily to provide his goddess with a suitable temple. 
 At the time he married, the property bequeathed to 
 him by his father yielded an income of five hundred 
 pounds. He added largely to this by laboring with 
 all his might to make himself a conveyancer of the 
 first class ; he worked so hard that for some time he 
 sat up all night for two nights in every week, in order 
 that his business might be effectually done, and 
 added further to his income by taking into his office 
 some forty or fifty pupils, among whom were two 
 who afterwards became distinguished in literature ; 
 namely, A. W. Kinglake, the author of " Eothen " and 
 " The Invasion of the Crimea," and Eliot "Warburton, 
 the author of " The Crescent and the Cross." By in- 
 domitable industry, by sheer practical, prosaic work, 
 Procter obtained the means of making his London 
 house one of the great centres of literary and intellec- 
 tual society. As a man and as a poet he was per- 
 fectly contented with the domestic paradise he had 
 created by his professional exertions, and gave vent 
 to the poetic impulses stirring within him only se- 
 cretly, and as it were by stealth, singing the joyous- 
 ness of wine, in which he only moderately indulged ; 
 exulting in glad conceptions of the sea, on which 
 he never ventured, even to cross the patch of water 
 which separates Dover from Calais ; and putting him- 
 self into a number of dramatic positions, some of
 
 AND SOME OP HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 321. 
 
 which were happily foreign to his own. All these 
 moods of his brooding intellect and heart, some of 
 them resting on solid grounds of individual expe- 
 rience, but most of them springing from imagined 
 scenes, incidents, and characters intensely realized to 
 his own mind as he dreamed by his happy fireside, 
 suddenly blazed out, eight years after his happy mar- 
 riage, in his book of " English Songs." The volume 
 gained at once an extensive popularity which it still re- 
 tains. It will probably float more securely down the 
 stream of time than any of his other works. 
 
 In the same year (1832) that the songs were pub- 
 lished, Procter was appointed to the office of Metro- 
 politan Commissioner of Lunacy. Whether he owed 
 this distinction to the fine poetic frenzy exhibited in 
 his lyrics may be doubted ; but from his ceasing to 
 publish any more verses, it may be suspected that he 
 considered his new post as one which directed him 
 rather to keep a sharp lookout on poets than further 
 to bring his own sanity into question. In 1835 he 
 made the mistake of writing " The Life of Edmund 
 Kean," a publication unfortunate in every respect, 
 and which was mercilessly criticised in the " Quarterly 
 Review " and " Blackwood's Magazine." The latter pe- 
 riodical had for years pursued him with an apparently 
 motiveless malice ; and the appearance of the Life of 
 Kean furnished it with an opportunity for defamation 
 which it did not hesitate to seize. " This," it said, 
 " is the silliest book of the season. To say that it is 
 like a couple of bottles of small-beer would be to libel 
 
 21
 
 322 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 that fluid." In 1866 he published a memoir which was 
 worthy both of his heart and his head, his charm- 
 ing vohime on Charles Lamb. " I have found in your 
 work," Carlyle wrote to him, " something so touching, 
 brave, serene, and pious that I cannot but write to 
 you one brief word of recognition. . . . Brevity, per- 
 spicuity, graceful clearness ; then also perfect vera- 
 city, gentleness, lovingness, justness, peaceable candor 
 throughout ; a fine, kindly sincerity to all comers ; 
 with sharp enough insight, too, quick recognition 
 graphically rendered, all the qualities, in short, 
 which such a book could have 1 find visible in this, 
 now dating, it appears, in your seventy-seventh year. 
 Every page of it recalls the old Procter whom I used 
 to talk with forty-two years ago, unaltered except as 
 the finest wines, and such like, alter by ripening to 
 the full ; a man as if transfigured by his heavy-laden 
 years, and to whom the hoary head is as a crown. 
 Upon all which another old man congratulates him, 
 and says with a pathetic kind of joy his Euge, euge^ 
 In 1861, five years before this, Procter had resigned 
 his office as ono. of the Commissioners of Lunacy, 
 owing to the condition of his health ; and the last 
 ten years of his life were more or less oppressed 
 by the infirmities of age. He died on the 4th of 
 October, 1874. 
 
 Procter's relations with all the men of letters of his 
 time were cordial and friendly ; but his sympathies 
 were specially attracted to that circle of writers which 
 included Lamb, Hunt, and Hazlitt. He liked them
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 323 
 
 all the more because they were atrociously slandered 
 and socially in bad odor. Professor Ticknor, who 
 met almost everybody of note in England, was once 
 introduced to this cluster of authors, who despised 
 fashionable society and were rejected by it. In 1819, 
 at a dinner at Godwin's house, and afterwards at a 
 meeting of the Saturday Night Club at Hunt's, he 
 saw " these people," as he somewhat superciliously 
 calls them, together, when they felt called upon " to 
 show off and produce an effect ; " for then " Lamb's 
 gentle humor, Hunt's passion, and Curran's volubility, 
 Hazlitt's sharpness and point, and Godwin's great 
 head full of cold brains, all coming into contact and 
 conflict, and agreeing in nothing but their common 
 hatred of everything that has been more successful 
 than their own works, made one of the most curious 
 and amusing olla podrida I ever met." It is some- 
 what surprising that a man whose entire studies in 
 Europe were directed to the object of making himself 
 an accomplished student and critic of various litera- 
 tures should dispose of such persons as Lamb, Hunt, 
 Hazlitt, and Godwin in such a contemptuous way, 
 and speak of them as " these people," thus echoing 
 the fashionable slang current in the higher social 
 circles in which Ticknor habitually moved. Indeed, 
 nothing he records of the conversation at Holland 
 House is so good as two remarks made to him by 
 Hazlitt, one that " Curran was the Homer of black- 
 guards," and the other that the Emperor Alexander of 
 Russia " was the Sir Charles Grandison of Europe."
 
 324 BAEUY CORNWALL 
 
 Prcoter evidently thought that " these people " were 
 worthy of |3eing cultivated, though he knew them so 
 intimately that none of their faults escaped his atten- 
 tion. If he is uncharitable at all, it is in his estimate 
 of Godwin. He was repelled by the frigidity of that 
 philosopher's character. The poet Campbell, he said, 
 had ordinarily a cold, Scotch, cautious, and canny 
 manner ; but " there was sap behind the bark. If the 
 oppression of the Poles, or any other flagrant enor- 
 mity, was brought before him, his energy quickly 
 flamed up. And he was also very vivacious, not to 
 say riotous, in his cups." Godwin, on the contrary, 
 was ever " very cold, very selfish, very calculating." 
 All his philanthropy was put into his books, leaving 
 nothing to be put into his life. His conduct towards 
 Shelley " was merely an endeavor to extract from him 
 as much money as possible." The special champion 
 of equity as distinguished from legality, he still did 
 not hesitate to deny a pecuniary liability to a friend, 
 because " there was no witness to the loan." And yet 
 this man, Procter adds, " has in his study compiled 
 fine rhetorical sentences which strangers have been 
 ready to believe flowed warm from his heart. I have 
 always thought him like one of those cold intellectual 
 demons of whom we read in French and German 
 stories, who come upon earth to do no good to any 
 one and harm to many." This seems to us too harsh 
 a judgment of the author of " Political Justice " and 
 of the novel of " Caleb Williams." Godwin was the 
 type of a class of men whose hearts find no adequate
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 325 
 
 expression except through their brains. There is 
 ])assion enough both in his political writings and in 
 his romances, but it is passion intellectualized ; pas- 
 sion used, even economized, to give heat to analysis 
 and impetus to reasoning. His big head rested on a 
 short, slight body ; and all the blood he had was sent 
 "through the veins of his intellectual frame." He 
 was poor, and as his poverty proceeded from the in- 
 disposition of the general public to pay for reasonings 
 which were intended to prove that the people were 
 the needless victims of superstition and injustice, and 
 that they might, by following the processes of his 
 logic, emancipate themselves from their oppressors, 
 he was compelled to keep up the interesting connec- 
 tion between his strong mind and his frail body by 
 borrowing from his friends and acquaintances money 
 which was never repaid. Talfourd tells' us that the 
 next day after his first introduction to him at Lamb's 
 chambers, Godwin called upon him, and, after " a lit- 
 tle chat on indifferent matters," carelessly observed 
 that he was in need of X150 for a few weeks, and re- 
 quested Talfourd to lend it to him. On learning that 
 his new acquaintance was a young lawyer struggling 
 for existence, and had no money for such a benevo- 
 lent purpose, Godwin blandly remarked, " Oh, dear ! I 
 thought you were a young gentleman of fortune; don't 
 mention it, don't mention it ; I shall do very well 
 elsewhere ; " and then continued the conversation first 
 started without any seeming consciousness that there 
 had been such an insignificant break in it. It seems
 
 326 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 to us that there was nothing of the demon in Godwin, 
 though there was much of the intellectual pedant. 
 His calm, supreme confidence in the unassailable truth 
 of his opinions may have come from his laying an un- 
 due emphasis on the first syllable of his name ; and 
 his habit of borrowing money from everybody who 
 would lend it was distinguished from Hunt's only by 
 the absence of geniality in his manner of asking for 
 such favors, and perhaps by a thoroughly reasoned, a 
 true philosophical absence of gratitude to those who 
 conferred them. 
 
 Procter made the acquaintance of Leigh Hunt in 
 1817. He found him residing in a small and scantily 
 furnished house, with a tiny room for a study, which 
 contained few books ; but among them were an edition 
 of the Italian poets in many volumes, Warton's edi- 
 tion of Milton's minor poems, and the complete works 
 of Spenser. No edition of Shakspeare was in the col- 
 lection. " There were always a few cut flowers, in a 
 glass of water, on the table." His suppers of cold 
 meat and salad had little to tempt the epicure, but 
 the guests were such men as Lamb, Hazlitt, Peacock, 
 and Coulson ; and at small cost the company enjoyed 
 all the raptures and glories of conviviality. Thought 
 and wit, knowledge and humor, were not wanting in 
 such an assemblage ; and the festivities were some- 
 times prolonged to two or three o'clock in the morn- 
 ing. Hunt, says Procter, " was always in difficulty 
 about money; but he was seldom sad, and never 
 sour." His friends did what they could to prevent
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORAllIES. 327 
 
 poverty from souring the disposition of a man who 
 ever resolutely opposed gayety to misery, and preached 
 the gospel of cheer while bailiffs were watching at his 
 humble door. He reminds us more of old Dekkar 
 the Elizabethan dramatist, who turned his calamities 
 into commodities, and though in a debtors' prison 
 was still " all felicity up to the brim," than of any 
 other professional man of letters in English literary 
 history. Mr. Fields, who saw much of Hunt in 1851, 
 thirty-four years after Procter first made his acquaint- 
 ance, declares that " in his bare cottage in Hammer- 
 smith the temperament of his spirit heaped up such 
 riches of fancy that kings, if wise ones, might envy 
 his magic power. . . . When he looked out of his 
 dingy old windows on the four black elms in front of 
 his dwelling, he saw, or thought he saw, a vast forest, 
 and he could hear, in the note of one poor sparrow 
 even, the silvery voices of a hundred nightingales." 
 
 Procter was the constant friend of this Harold 
 Skimpole in money matters as well as in heart mat- 
 ters. "I have reasons," Hunt said to Mr. Fields, 
 "for liking our dear friend Procter's wine beyond 
 what you saw when we dined together at his table 
 the other day." It is a pity that Procter did not 
 record more special examples of Hunt's peculiarities 
 of thought and character tlian he has done in his 
 tribute to his old associate. Perhaps the one instance 
 he gives is better than any other he could recall to 
 his memory. Hunt " led a very correct and domestic 
 life;" during an intimacy extending to forty years,
 
 328 BARRY CORNWALL- 
 
 Procter never heard him utter an oath or " indulge in 
 an indelicate hint or allusion ; " but he had a crotchet 
 or theory about the social intercourse between the 
 sexes which he at one time harped upon so fre- 
 quently as to bore his companions without winning 
 any converts to his opinion. " Dash him ! " said 
 Hazlitt, " it 's always coming out, like a rash. Why 
 does n't he write a book about it, and get rid of it ? " 
 
 This was exactly what Hazlitt himself did, in the 
 strange hallucination which clouded his keen intellect, 
 and for the time made his friends fear that he would 
 end his days in an insane asylum, when he fell madly 
 in love with Sophia Walker, the daughter of the 
 keeper of the lodging-house where he resided. He 
 wrote and published "Liber Amoris," one of the 
 most mortifying instances ever exhibited in literature 
 of a strong man, mature in age, and somewhat cynical 
 in his observations of life, falling violently back into the 
 mental and sensuous condition of a babbling, blubber- 
 ing, boobyish boy ; but after the book was published, 
 "the rash" that had broken out all over him sub- 
 sided, and his intellect resumed its normal clearness 
 and force. While under the influence of his insane 
 passion he not only abandoned all literary work, but 
 he bored every acquaintance he met with the most 
 minute details of his infatuation. " I am a cursed 
 fool," he said, as in the course of his wanderings he 
 
 happened to buttonhole Procter ; " I saw J going 
 
 into Wills' coffee-house yesterday morning ; he spoke 
 to me. I followed him into the house, and while he
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 329 
 
 lunched I told him the whole story. Then I wan- 
 dered into. Regent's Park, where I met one of M 's 
 
 sons. I Avalkod with him some time, and on his 
 
 using some civil expression, by ! sir, I told him 
 
 the whole story. Well, sir, I then went and called on 
 Haydon, but he was out. There was only his man 
 
 Salmon there ; but by ! I could not help myself. 
 
 It all came out ; the whole cursed story ! Afterwards 
 I went to look at some lodgings at Pimlico. The 
 landlady at one place, after some explanations as to 
 rent, etc., said to me very kindly, ' I am afraid you 
 are not well, sir ? ' ' No, ma'am,' said I, ' I am not 
 well ; ' and on inquiring further, the devil take me if 
 1 did not let out the whole story from beginning to 
 end ! " Procter knew the girl who thus degraded 
 Hazlitt into an imbecile chatterer. " Her face," he 
 says, " was round and small, and her eyes were 
 motionless, glassy, and without any speculation (ap- 
 parently) in them. Her movements in walking were 
 very remarkable, for I never observed her to make a 
 step. She went onwards in a sort of wavy, sinuous 
 manner, like the movement of a snake. She was 
 silent, or uttered monosyllables only, and was very 
 demure. Her steady, unmoving gaze upon the per- 
 son she was addressing was exceedingly unpleasant." 
 This essentially stupid and vulgar wench may have 
 had in her some of the fascination of the witch ; but 
 we find nothing in Procter's description of her, or her 
 traits as exhibited in the ravings of her lover in 
 " Liber Amoris," which are not consistent with the
 
 330 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 theory that she was quite an ordinary specimen of 
 selfish, cold-blooded maidenhood, endowed with a low 
 kind of feminine craft, cunning, and malice, and on 
 the whole the occasion rather than the cause of the 
 unexpected outburst in Hazlitt of a sentimental mad- 
 ness as wild as any recorded in the Confessions of 
 Rousseau. 
 
 Of Hazlitt as a writer, thinker, and critic, Procter 
 had a high opinion, and he also esteemed him as a 
 man. " Some things," he says, " of which he has 
 been accused were referable merely to temporary 
 humor or irritability, which was not frequent, and 
 which was laid aside in an hour. All other times 
 (by far the greater portion of his life) he was a can- 
 did and reasonable man. He felt acutely the injuries 
 and slanders, however, which were spit forth on 
 him, and resented them." When a question arose 
 in a company of intellectual men, " the most sensible 
 reply always came from him." So enduring was the 
 impression left by Hazlitt' s power on Procter's mind 
 that he was never tired of quoting pointed sentences 
 culled from the writings of his friend ; and shortly 
 before his death he wrote to Mr. Fields, " I despair 
 of the age that has forgotten to read Hazlitt." 
 
 In the " Sketches " of literary men, now first pub- 
 lished, Procter adds little to what he had previously 
 written of Charles Lamb. . This delightful companion, 
 distinguished not more by his genius than by his 
 character, his character being indeed a prominent 
 element in his genius, was among the dearest and
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 331 
 
 most valued of Procter's friends. Lamb signs him- 
 self, in a short letter printed in this volume, " yours 
 ever and two evers." Mr. Fields's book contains 
 a characteristic anecdote of Lamb's generosity. 
 " Thinking, from a depression of spirits which Proc- 
 ter in his young manhood was once laboring under, 
 that perhaps he was in want of money, Lamb looked 
 him earnestly in the face as they were walking one 
 day in the country together, and blurted out, in his 
 stammering way, ' My dear boy, I have a hundred- 
 pound note in my desk that I really don't know what 
 to do with : oblige me by taking it, and getting the 
 confounded thing out of my keeping.' " Procter as- 
 sured him that he was not in an impecunious condi- 
 tion, but found it hard work to make his companion 
 believe it. 
 
 Like the rest of the race of authors, and indeed, it 
 may be added, the rest of mankind, Procter knew 
 Samuel Rogers, the poet and banker. Rogers must 
 have begun to look old forty years before he died. 
 Jokes which date back as far as the year 1830 depend 
 for their point on the fact that there was then some- 
 thing withered and ghastly in his countenance. The 
 story runs that an acquaintance who met him in a 
 public conveyance, looking like a corpse on its travels, 
 said to him, " Now that you are rich enough, Rogers, 
 why don't you set up a hearse of your own ? " Mr. 
 Fields, who saw him in his last years, denies that his 
 face, faded as were its features, looked spectral and 
 sepulchral. He gives an amusing account of the old
 
 332 BAERY CORNWALL 
 
 man's indignation at Samuel Lawrence's recent por- 
 trait of him. " Rogers himself wished to compare it 
 with his own face, and had a looking-glass held up 
 before him. We sat in silence as he regarded the pic- 
 ture attentively, and waited for his criticism. Soon 
 he burst forth, ' Is my nose so dashed sharp as that ? ' 
 'No! no!' we all exclaimed, 'the artist is at fault 
 there, sir.' ' I thought so,' he cried ; ' he has painted 
 the face of a dead man, dash him ! ' Some one said, 
 ' The portrait is too hard.' ' I won't be painted as 
 a hard man,' rejoined Rogers. ' I am not a hard 
 man, am I, Procter?' Procter deprecated with en- 
 ergy such an idea as that. Looking at the portrait 
 again, Rogers said, with great feeling, ' Children 
 would run away from that face, and they never ran 
 away from me.' " 
 
 What most impressed Mr. Fields was the feeble 
 manner in which Rogers's best stories were received 
 by the gentlemen present at his breakfast-table. 
 Mentioning his surprise to Procter, the latter told 
 him that they " had heard the same anecdotes every 
 week, perhaps for half a century, from the same lips." 
 In fact, the bard of Memory had almost lost the 
 faculty whose pleasures he had sung. The winding- 
 sheet nearly covered his mind years before it envel- 
 oped his body. Procter, who remembered him in 
 what may be called the prime of his old age, says, 
 " It has been rumored that he was a sayer of bitter 
 things. I know that he was a giver of good things ; 
 a kind and amiable patron, where a patron was
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORAllIES. 333 
 
 wanted ; never ostentatious or oppressive, and always 
 a friend in need. He was ready with his counsel ; 
 ready with his money. I never put his generosity to 
 the test, but I know enough to testify that it existed, 
 and was often exercised in a delicate manner and on 
 the slightest hint." Procter gives but one instance of 
 his " sub-acid words." After going to see the statue 
 of Campbell, he remarked, " It is the first time that I 
 have seen him stand straight for many years." 
 
 Perhaps the account of Coleridge is the most nota- 
 ble of Procter's " Sketches." Wordsworth caught 
 Coleridge in his inspired moments, when he described 
 
 him as 
 
 " The rapt one with the godlike forehead; 
 The heaven-eyed creature." 
 
 Procter speaks of him as having " a weighty head, 
 dreaming gray eyes, full, sensual lips, and a look and 
 manner which were entirely wanting in firmness and 
 decision. His notions also appeared weak and unde- 
 cided, and his voice had nothing of the sharpness or 
 ring of a resolute man. When he spoke, his words were 
 thick and slow ; and when he read poetry, his utter- 
 ance was altogether a chant." Procter, like all per- 
 sons who met Coleridge, was amazed at the immense 
 extent of his reading, ranging from Jacob Behmen 
 and Thomas Aquinas to " Peter Simple " and " Tom 
 Cringle's Log." He was ready to talk with " every- 
 body on everything," and grateful to the listener who 
 would relieve him of some portion of the burden of 
 his information by taking it, through the ear, on his
 
 334 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 own shoulders. One amusing instance is given of the 
 impossibility of dethroning him from his dominant 
 place in conversation. Dining once with a company 
 of lawyers, he provoked one of the party into saying 
 to his neighbor at the table, " I '11 stop this fellow ; " 
 and he accordingly said to the host, " I 've not forgot- 
 ten my promise to give you the extract from ' The 
 Pandects.' It was the ninth chapter you were allud- 
 ing to. It begins : ' Ac veteres quidam philosophic " 
 " Pardon me," Coleridge at once said, " there I think 
 you are in error. The ninth chapter begins in this 
 way : ' Incident scepe causes^ etc." Who could stop a 
 talker so ready with unexpected knowledge as that ? 
 Again, Coleridge once went from Highgate to London 
 to consult a friend regarding some matters affecting 
 the welfare of his unfortunate son Hartley. He ar- 
 rived at two o'clock ; found a number of persons con- 
 versing in his friend's drawing-room; talked until 
 four o'clock, when dinner was announced ; talked all 
 through the dinner ; talked all through the evening to 
 the time when the last stage for Highgate was an- 
 nounced ; and then hurriedly took leave, saying to the 
 
 host, " My dear Z , I will come to you some other 
 
 day, and talk to you about our dear Hartley." " He 
 had," said Procter, " quite forgotten his son and every- 
 body else, in the delight of having such an enrap- 
 tured audience." Again, "Wordsworth, apologizing to 
 Rogers for being late at one of his breakfasts, said 
 that he had been to see Coleridge, and had been 
 detained by listening to his inexhaustible flow of
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 335 
 
 conversation. Rogers naturally inquired, " How was 
 it you called so early upon him ? " " Oh," replied 
 Wordsworth, " I am to dine with him this evening, 
 and " " And," said Rogers, concluding the sen- 
 tence, "you wanted to take the sting out of him 
 beforehand." 
 
 Thomas De Quincey, the author of " The Confes- 
 sions of an Opium-Eatcr," was a writer of whom 
 Procter knew little, and the little he knew he cor- 
 dially disliked. What he says of him in the " Notices " 
 is right enough so far as it goes, but he evidently had 
 no appreciation of the massiveness and range of his 
 erudition, or of his grand qualities of sentiment, 
 reason, and imagination. The defects of De Quin- 
 cey's writings spring from the fact that they are all, 
 more or less, " Confessions." Even when he aban- 
 dons the form of personal narrative, and expatiates 
 on politics, theology, history, philosophy, art, litera- 
 ture, and science, the peculiarities of his individuality 
 are ever prominent. Whether he discourses of the 
 Ca3sars or of Dr. Parr, of the Essenes or of Words- 
 worth's poetry, of German literature or of Tory princi- 
 ples, a subtile element runs through the most widely 
 varying subjects he treats, giving evidence that he is 
 writing a kind of psychological autobiography even 
 in discussing topics which are seemingly most im- 
 personal in themselves. This egoism leads him to 
 violate the law of proportion, and to disturb the rela- 
 tions naturally existing between the different parts 
 of whatever subject he grapples with. He wanders
 
 336 BAREY CORNWALL 
 
 into an episode where at first he meant only to bring 
 in a pertinent illustration ; and when he once starts 
 off in one of these zigzag movements of his mind, it 
 is impossible for him to keep himself to his " objec- 
 tive point." He translates trivialities into thundering 
 polysyllables, and subjects them to the most painful 
 processes of analysis, merely because they have be- 
 come associated in his mind with some obscure oddity 
 in his own intellectual constitution or moral experi- 
 ence. His caprices, his personal animosities, his 
 obstinate prejudices, his tendency in discussing the 
 most important questions to lay stress on the weakest 
 argument for the side he supports, are but signs of 
 the impatient pressure of Thomas De Quincey's indi- 
 viduality to be uppermost in everything his mind 
 touches, even when the matter under discussion has 
 to ordinary readers no connection with the said 
 Thomas at all. But with all these deductions from 
 the value of his writings as a whole, the plain fact 
 remains that he was a scholar, a thinker, a great mas- 
 ter of English style, and a man whose general large- 
 ness and depth of nature are evident even in his 
 strangest freaks of intellectual eccentricity. Above 
 all, he was the last of that school of English prose 
 writers who had sufficient grasp and power of mind 
 to venture on the composition of long, intricate, art- 
 fully balanced sentences, which took up in their ma- 
 jestic sweep all the subsidiary considerations con- 
 nected with the main thought to be expressed, either 
 limiting its scope or adding to its force, and which
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 337 
 
 were brought to a rhythmical end in cadences that 
 pleased the ear as well as satisfied the mind. Cami> 
 bell says of Wallace, the stalwart hero of Scotland, 
 
 " The sword which seemed fit for archangel to wield 
 Was light in his terrible hand." 
 
 Considered as an intellectual weapon, the long sen- 
 tence, so efficient in the hands of Hooker, Taylor, 
 and Milton, was generally abandoned for Dryden's 
 smaller weapon, even in the age when Clarendon 
 gave one of the latest examples of its effective use. 
 Burke seized and brandished it anew, wielding it as 
 such a giant might have been expected to wield it, 
 while at the same time freely availing himself of the 
 rapier, the dagger, and all the other small arms in 
 the armory of rhetoric which had, from the time of 
 Dry den, been found to be the easiest for ordinary 
 controversialists to handle. The prominent prose 
 writers of the present century, including such widely 
 contrasted masters of prose eloquence as Southey, 
 Landor, and Macaulay, did not dare to take up the 
 sword which had somewhat rusted since it fell from 
 the hands of Burke. De Quincey felt no such dis- 
 trust of his powers. The weapon " fit only for an 
 archangel to wield " is certainly not " light " as he 
 swings and brandishes it ; but at any rate it is one 
 which he alone among his contemporaries ventured 
 to grasp and wield with a resolute purpose. Indeed, 
 the prose style of De Quincey is of itself evidence 
 that he possessed an original and creative mind. 
 
 22
 
 338 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 But it is time to turn from the authors that Procter 
 knew to a short consideration of his own works. His 
 dramatic scenes, his songs, and his narrative and de- 
 scriptive poems form a body of verse of no inconsider- 
 able bulk and variety, in bulk exceeding that of the 
 poetic works of Collins, Gray, and Campbell com- 
 bined. It cannot be said that any portions of his 
 writings can claim to elude criticism on the ground 
 that they were youthful productions. In 1815, when 
 the name of " Barry Cornwall " first became known 
 by his occasional contributions to the " Literary Ga- 
 zette," he was three years older than Keats was when 
 he died. In 1819, when his volume of "Dramatic 
 Scenes, and Other Poems " appeared, he was two years 
 older than Shelley was when he died. Whatever im- 
 maturity may be discovered in Procter's earlier efforts 
 could therefore not be referred to any immaturity in 
 respect to age. Charles Lamb affirmed that if he 
 had found any of his " dear boy's " dramatic scenes 
 in exploring the almost forgotten works of the minor 
 dramatists of the Elizabethan age, he would not have 
 hesitated to reprint them in his " Specimens ; " but 
 his " dear boy " was then thirty-two years old. There 
 can be no doubt that by brooding long over his mod- 
 els Procter had caught something of their peculiar 
 audacity and verve, and become capable of repro- 
 ducing, in a manner of his own, that strange charm 
 which fascinates us in the best passages of Middleton, 
 Dekkar, Wel^ster, Heywood, and Fletcher. His suc- 
 cess in this, however, seems to us greater in his
 
 AND SOME or HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 339 
 
 " Dramatic Fragments " than in his first " Dramatic 
 Scenes." But taking his works as a whole, the one 
 criticism to be made upon them is that their apparent 
 substance, estimated by the number of printed pages 
 they occupy, is disproportioned to their real substance, 
 estimated by the amount of thought, imagination, 
 knowledge, experience, and passion they convey. 
 Wo have to pick and cull, sift and reject, when we 
 come to distinguish between the faculties which the 
 poet displays and the matter on which they are exer- 
 cised. A certain antiquated kind of reviewing, much 
 cherished still by what Procter would himself have 
 called the " ferrets " of criticism, depends for its suc- 
 cess on discovering unwarrantable rhymes, defective 
 lines, and broken or discordant images in the verses 
 it reviews ; but the fundamental question, in such a 
 poet as Procter, relates to substance rather than to 
 form. Judged by this test, he exhibits a decided pre- 
 dominance of stimulant over nutriment, of melody 
 over matter, of poetic quality and force over original 
 poetic observation and experience. However large, 
 rich, eloquent, melodious, and potent may be the 
 power of utterance, the inevitable question at last 
 comes up to the poet as to the man of business, 
 " What have you to say ? " Wordsworth answered 
 it, more or less satisfactorily, to the last generation ; 
 Tennyson has answered, and is now happily alive to 
 continue answering it, with a somewhat faltering 
 tongue, to the present generation ; but there still re- 
 mains a mischievous tendency to exalt the mere pos-
 
 340 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 session and exercise of poetic faculty, apart from the 
 matter in which it is embodied. Literary history 
 proves that all great poets are distinguished by their 
 more or less rapid accumulation and assimilation of 
 poetic materials, drawn from all quarters of the 
 known intellectual and moral world, as well as from 
 their own observation and experience ; and that their 
 divining and shaping imaginations operate on a tangi- 
 ble substance of knowledge, however different may 
 be their modes of representing, transforming, or 
 transfiguring it. After making all proper deductions, 
 however, from the mass of Procter's poetry, we find 
 that what remains is a solid addition to the poetical 
 literature of the century. His songs, as Longfellow 
 says, " have the very pulse of music in them ; " even 
 when little is expressed that has any intellectual and 
 imaginative value, the sentiment and the melody are 
 still sweet and attractive, and there are some scores 
 of them which are remarkable for other qualities 
 than the mere indefinite beauty which comes from 
 vague images wedded to harmonious sounds. " The 
 Sea," " King Death," " The Sea-King," " Belshazzar," 
 " Wine," " Song of the Outcast," " A Storm," " Full- 
 er's Bird," " A Poor House," " To the Singer Pasta," 
 " The Lake has Burst," " A Bacchanalian Song," 
 "The Blood Horse," "The Rising of the North," 
 have a grand lyric energy which produces an instan- 
 taneous effect on the brain as well as on the blood. 
 Among the " Unpublished Verses," printed now for 
 the first time in the present volume, " The Burial
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 341 
 
 Club " and " The Field Preacher " have a similar 
 energy. Then what can exceed the exquisite beauty 
 and softness of " The Chamber Scene," " A Repose," 
 " After Death," " To the South Wind," " Home," " I 
 Die for thy Sweet Love," and other poems of the same 
 general kind ? " Touch us gently, Time ! " is perhaps 
 the most popular of all his songs. Longfellow sent 
 him, in 1853, a slip from an American newspaper, 
 wherein the editor states, that in opening twenty- 
 seven of his exchanges he found that each of them 
 contained this home-inspired lyric. Longfellow then 
 goes on to say that on the 1st of June, 1853, it must 
 have been left at a hundred and forty thousand doors, 
 and read by half a million readers. " The pleasure 
 I have had," he concludes, " in seeing this poem so 
 reflecting and flashing from thousands of mirrors 
 makes me hope it will give you pleasure to see it." 
 Perhaps " The Poet's Song to his Wife," " Golden 
 Tressed Adelaide," "A Prayer in Sickness," and 
 " Softly woo away her Breath " should be welcomed 
 in every household where *' Touch us gently, Time ! " 
 has entered with its sweet consecration of home life 
 and home feeling. 
 
 A large portion of Procter's work consists of mis- 
 cellaneous poems, from which numerous examples 
 might be cited of his tenderness, thoughtfulness, mel- 
 ody, and grace ; of his deep and delicate sentiment, 
 playful fancy, intense passion, and strong, daring 
 imagination. In reading them one is impressed anew 
 with the exceeding wealth of England in poetry, by
 
 342 BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 the mere thought that she can afford to forget so 
 much ill Procter's verse which would enrich a more 
 barren poetical literature than her own. What she 
 does not forget, however, is excellent ; and the poet, 
 dying at the advanced age of eighty-seven, had not 
 the mortification of outliving his reputation. The 
 melodies which had charmed the generation of Words- 
 worth and Byron charmed also the generation of 
 Tennyson and Browning, and still charm the genera- 
 tion of Buchanan, Rossetti, and Swinburne. At the 
 age of eighty, Procter wrote to Mr. Fields that he had 
 recently visited the house where he had played with 
 a wooden sword when he was at the age of five. 
 " What," he exclaims, " has occurred since ? Why, 
 nothing that is worth putting down on paper. A few 
 nonsense verses, a flogging or two (richly deserved), 
 and a few white-bait dinners, and the whole is reck- 
 oned up. Let us begin again." This is the transient, 
 querulous discontent of an old man vexed with bodily 
 infirmities, and for the moment forgetting the glow and 
 gladness which he had put into his verse, because 
 both the gladness and the glow had been in his life. 
 In one of his "Dramatic Fragments " he put into the 
 mouth of an assumed character this statement : 
 
 " Age is a grave 
 Where Kindness and quelled Passion and mute Love 
 Lie, hand in hand, cold, dead, perhaps forgotten ! " 
 
 But this was not the old age of Procter. Passion 
 was quelled, but kindness and love neither died out 
 of his own heart nor were wanting: in the hearts of
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 343 
 
 his family and friends. He had lived a good life, un- 
 spotted by any mean or base passion, and delivered 
 over to no impulse of his impassioned Muse which 
 made him violate one of his duties as a husband and 
 father ; and while he was on his death-bed, his " non- 
 sense verses" were sung or read by thousands of men 
 and women he had never seen, whose hearts and 
 imaginations his poetry had stimulated, enriched, 
 elevated, consoled, and cheered.
 
 DANIEL DER0XDA.1 
 
 It is a common remark that, since the publication 
 of " Adam Bede," the appearance of a new work by 
 George Eliot is welcomed, not as an ordinary literary 
 incident, but as an important literary event. Accord- 
 ingly " Daniel Deronda " has been, during the past 
 season, the one book which has attracted all classes 
 of readers, which has been the subject of general 
 comment, and which has elicited criticisms as diverse 
 as the different points of view from which it has 
 been surveyed. During the serial publication of the 
 novel there was manifested as little disposition to 
 deny the reality as the originality of the leading 
 character ; for he took a strong hold on the sympa- 
 thies of readers. Questions as to what he would do 
 next, and whether he would marry Mirah or Gwen- 
 dolen, were warmly, sometimes fiercely, debated ; and 
 to judge from the tone of the disputants, he appeared 
 to be a much more real personage to them than Mr. 
 Tilden or Mr. Hayes. The notion of assailing him as 
 a reflecting puppet, a sort of personified meditative- 
 ness, has sprung up since the almost universal dis- 
 appointment at the unanticipated conclusion of the 
 
 ^ North American Review, January, 1877.
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 345 
 
 story, a conclusion which many readers have re- 
 sented as though it were a personal grievance or 
 affront. It would, however, seem that no embodied 
 abstraction could have thus become the object of 
 such intense personal interest ; and the vexation at 
 the denouement is the strongest of all proofs that the 
 character has the reality which marks all great 
 imaginative creations. 
 
 In classifying works of fiction, the general rule is to 
 discriminate between novels of incident and novels of 
 character ; between novels in which the main interest 
 is in what the persons do, and novels in which the 
 main interest is in what the persons are. " Daniel 
 Deronda " is a novel both of incident and character ; 
 and in addition, it exhibits a wealth of subtile, deep, 
 and comprehensive thought altogether unexampled 
 among the novels of the time. One feels in reading, 
 re-reading, and studying the book, that in respect to 
 mere largeness of intellect, it is unmatched among 
 the works of the most distinguished novelists of the 
 century. Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray may excel 
 George Eliot in their special departments of fiction ; 
 but if we apply the intellectual test, and ask which of 
 the four has mastered most thoroughly the knowledge 
 and advanced thought of the age, the judgment of all 
 cultivated persons would be given unreservedly in 
 favor of the author of "Daniel Deronda." In sobriety, 
 breadth, and massiveness of understanding, in familiar 
 acquaintance with the latest demonstrated truths of 
 physical, historical, economic, and metaphysical sci-
 
 346 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 ence, and in the capacity to use these truths as ma- 
 terials for a philosophy of nature and human nature, 
 this woman is the acknowledged peer of such men as 
 John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. Leaving out 
 of view the peculiar powers which make the great 
 novelist, and fastening our attention on the under- 
 standing alone, it is obvious that George Eliot might 
 hold in one corner of her broad brain all that portion 
 of Scott's intellect which dealt with the philosophy of 
 history as distinguished from its picturesqueness ; in 
 another corner, all that part of the intellect of Dickens 
 which in dealing with political economy was prone to 
 substitute benevolent sentiments for inexorable laws ; 
 and in still another corner, all that portion of the 
 intellect of Thackeray which penetrated beneath the 
 social shams he pitilessly satirized to the principles 
 which make society possible. It is difficult to con- 
 ceive of either of these eminent masters of characteri- 
 zation as adequately treating any subject requiring 
 great powers of analysis and generalization ; but a 
 thoroughly reasoned treatise on ethics, politics, social 
 science, or the philosophy of history from the pen of 
 George Eliot would excite no surprise at all, as her 
 intellect is plainly competent to such a task. This 
 general largeness of mind, this tranquil grasp of the 
 outlying problems of human life and human destiny, 
 distinguishes her from all the other novelists of the 
 age ; for she not only looks at things and into things, 
 but she looks through things to the laws of life they 
 illustrate and by which they are governed. She dispels
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 347 
 
 that pleasant illusion, fondled by most writers of fiction, 
 that the individual is dominant in human affairs, and 
 gets what he desires if he has the energy to struggle 
 for it. The pitiless laws of existence, which are in- 
 dependent of human wish or will, and which crush all 
 who oppose their action, she perceives with a sad cer- 
 tainty of insight. To the egotist and sentimentalist, 
 raging or moaning at the constitution of things. Nature 
 seems cruel and Providence seems cruel ; but she, 
 looking at individuals in relation to the mighty ex- 
 ternal forces they obey or resist, sees that unselfish- 
 ness is the condition both of usefulness and happiness, 
 and that Providence has no pets. 
 
 But George Eliot has wide-ranging sympathies as 
 well as large discourse of reason, delicious humor as 
 well as affluent thought, a shaping and realizing power 
 of imagination as well as manifold resources of obser- 
 vation and experience. Indeed, all her faculties and 
 qualities are but the varying expression of one large, 
 noble, and opulent nature. In depicting human life, 
 her power of characterization stoops to the humblest" 
 and rises to the loftiest types of human character. It 
 ranges from Mrs. Poyser to Dorothea Brooke ; from 
 the frivolous Hetty to the superb Gwendolen ; from 
 the mentally imprisoned rustic worthies who gather 
 at the alehouse in Ravenloe to the crowd of emanci- 
 pated mechanics who fearlessly debate all questions 
 in their London tavern club ; from representatives 
 of religious prudence, provident even in their hesitat- 
 ing trust in Providence, all the way up to such em-
 
 348 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 bodiments of the fervors and exaltations of religious 
 genius as Dinah in " Adam Bede," and the Rev. Mr. 
 Lyon in " Felix Holt," and Mordecai in " Daniel De- 
 ronda." Indeed, if George Eliot be not what is tech- 
 nically styled " a believer," she is incomparably skilful 
 in exhibiting the interior moods of all classes of be- 
 lievers. The phenomena of the spiritual world, as 
 reported in the experience of saints and martyrs, she 
 has studied with more intentness than the phenomena 
 of the material world ; and her great powers are never 
 more conspicuous than when, concentrating the full 
 force of her sympathetic imagination, she records with 
 soul-awakening eloquence the ecstasies and the agonies 
 of lofty spirits, touched, either in approval or reproof, 
 by the spirit of God. 
 
 In presenting this wide variety of character, George 
 Eliot employs two methods of characterization, each 
 of which is good of its kind. In the majority of her 
 humble personages, whose minds are necessarily re- 
 stricted to a few ideas and experiences, the characters 
 are represented as fixed, and the object is to make 
 every act and word logically true to their strongly 
 conceived individualities. Many critics consider these 
 characters as her best, and loudly bewail her depar- 
 ture from that region of stagnant village life where 
 she won her first laurels. But she also has the higher 
 art of exhibiting character, not as grown, but as grow- 
 ing, and of indicating the most refined changes pro- 
 duced by external circumstances in the vital processes 
 of its development. By the first method we are made
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 349 
 
 acquainted with persons whose limitations have been 
 reached, and of whom we can only say that they have 
 lived ; by the second, we become expectant witnesses 
 of the acts of persons whose limitations are yet un- 
 determined, and of whom we can only say that they 
 are intensely living. We know what the mother of 
 Felix Holt is from the beginning; we cannot tell 
 what Gwendolen will be until the end. Still, whether 
 George Eliot portrays character as grown or as grow- 
 ing, she ever appears on the scene as a looker-on, pour- 
 ing forth a stream of remarks, wittily wise or tenderly 
 wise, and all tending to the moral that individual life is 
 subject to the laws of life, and that ignorance, caprice, 
 self-will, and revolt will have a hard time of it when- 
 ever they come into impotent conflict with the consti- 
 tution of things. As an apparently disinterested ob- 
 server of her own creations and of the progress of her 
 own devised story, she impresses the cultivated reader 
 with a never-ceasing wonder at the singular closeness, 
 applicability, compactness, and fertility of her thinking, 
 whenever an occasion is offered or is seized to insinuate 
 it into the substance of the narrative. 
 
 This tendency of her mind has reached its height in 
 " Daniel Deronda," which so overflows with thoughts 
 that an ordinary novel-reader, dazzled by the blaze 
 which is intended to enlighten him, is tempted to 
 complain that he is impeded rather than assisted by 
 the subtle meditation which is brought in to reinforce 
 clear representation. A reference to the greatest cre- 
 ator and delineator of human character that the world
 
 350 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 has ever seen is always in point. Shakspeare is open 
 to the objection, that, considered strictly from the 
 point of view of the dramatist, he laid upon his char- 
 acters a heavy burden of superfluous thought, which 
 retarded the action of the play, and at the same 
 time added nothing to our knowledge of the dramatis 
 personce. "Whatever violation of the rules of dramatic 
 art Shakspeare may have committed, and however 
 superfluous much of his thinking may appear to dra- 
 matic critics, the great body of his readers could ill 
 spare the undramatic thinking he so profusely poured 
 into his dramas ; but if we could imagine Shakspeare 
 as a writer of novels after the modern pattern, it is 
 easy to conjecture that he would have retrenched 
 some of the maxims of general wisdom which he put 
 into the mouths of his characters to be spoken from 
 the stage, and used them in commenting on his per- 
 sonages and on the incidents in which they appeared. 
 He also might have been his own critic. George 
 Eliot is no Shakspeare ; but her simple presentation 
 of Daniel Deronda as a character who, like Hamlet, 
 speaks and acts for himself without any side explana- 
 tions from the author of his being, might give rise to 
 much of the same kind of criticism which has been 
 profusely expended on Hamlet. There are almost as 
 many Hamlets as there are professors who endeavor, 
 each on his own hypothesis, to reconcile the contra- 
 dictions of Hamlet's character. But suppose that 
 Shakspeare had himself annotated Hamlet as George 
 Eliot has annotated Daniel Deronda?
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 351 
 
 Passing from this general consideration of George 
 Eliot's genius to the work immediately under review, 
 the first thing that strikes a careful reader is a cer- 
 tain clumsiness in its construction. Many of the 
 misconceptions regarding the purpose of the book are 
 due to the fact, that, in the two initial chapters, 
 Gwendolen is at once introduced to us as glorying in 
 her pride of beauty and in her power of domination, 
 a mood of mind which even the news of the finan- 
 cial ruin of her family does not materially alter. This 
 is the method of all the great epics of literature, but 
 it is unfortunate in the case of the present novel. 
 Then follow eighteen explanatory chapters, giving the 
 previous history of Gwendolen and Deronda up to 
 the time they accidentally met at Leubronn, when the 
 necklace which she had pawned was restored to her 
 by this intruding stranger. A vital point in the story, 
 the fact that Deronda had rescued Mirah from sui- 
 cide, had placed her with the Meyricks, had heard 
 her pathetic narrative, and had been strangely im- 
 pressed by such an entirely novel example of guileless 
 maidenhood, before he saw Gwendolen at the gaming- 
 table, is a fact generally overlooked by readers, 
 owing to the method which the author has adopted 
 of beginning her novel, as it were, in the middle. 
 George Eliot is understood to be a writer who never 
 reads any reviews of her books, and undertakes the ^ 
 task of being her own critic. We think that, on the 
 whole, she is her best critic. In the explanatory 
 headings of many of her chapters, intended to give
 
 352 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 the clew to her meaning, she imitates very happily 
 the quaint, stately, and picturesque diction of English 
 prose-writers, two centuries or two centuries and a 
 half old, reproducing the style of Hooker or Burton 
 or Sir Thomas Browne as felicitously as Scott repro- 
 duced the style of the Elizabethan dramatists in his 
 frequent quotations from an imaginary " Old Play." 
 But the starched sentences placed at the head of the 
 first chapter of "Daniel Deronda," the object of which 
 is to explain why she does not begin at the natural 
 beginning of the story, are pedantic and heavy, giving 
 no adequate idea of her usual skill in this kind of imi- 
 tation. She certainly had at hand, in Spenser's let- 
 ter to Raleigh, expounding the design of the " Faerie 
 Queene," a sentence pat to her purpose. A historiog- 
 rapher, says Spenser, " discourseth of affairs orderly, 
 as they were done, accounting as well the times as 
 the actions ; but a poet thrusteth into the middest 
 even where it most concerneth him, and there re- 
 coursing to things forepast, and divining of things 
 to come, maketh a pleasing analysis of all." In 
 addition to the ingenious and elaborate obscurity of 
 the heading of the first chapter, the first sentence in 
 the chapter itself contains a word which seemed to 
 most novel-readers portentously scientific, and which 
 has enabled gentle dulness to indulge in many a fee- 
 ble joke. " What," the author asks in reference to 
 Gwendolen, " what was the secret of form or expres- 
 sion which gave the dynamic quality to her glance ? " 
 If the mild scoffers at this terrible word will intermit
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 353 
 
 their innocently malicious giggling for a few minutes, 
 and turn to their dictionaries for the information they 
 so evident'ly need, they will not only ascertain the 
 meaning of " dynamic," but understand why the term 
 is specially applicable to the genius of the author who 
 sees fit to use it. 
 
 Casting aside sucli obvious objections to " Daniel 
 Deronda," and coming directly to the question whether 
 the novel indicates a decline in George Eliot's power 
 of creating character, and of vividly imagining scenes 
 and incidents in which character finds adequate ex- 
 pression, we are inclined to think that it shows a pal- 
 pable advance on her previous works. Of course it 
 is hopeless to argue against those who consider her 
 genius limited to the representation of the rustic Eng- 
 lish life pictured in " Silas Marner," or the provincial 
 town life so delightfully portrayed in"Middlemarch." 
 Such persons are so confirmed in their just admiration 
 of these, that they resent her abandoning the secure 
 field which she has made her own for the new re- 
 gions which she seems ambitious to occupy. They 
 are not affected by the argument that the author may 
 naturally be reluctant to go on repeating herself. 
 Indeed, they have something of the feeling of the boy, 
 who, having taken an extravagant liking for one 
 juvenile story, insisted that his uncles, aunts, and 
 cousins, if they desired to make him a present of a 
 book, should select that particular tale, because, he 
 said, he hnew that to be good, and was uncertain as 
 to the interest of any others. The result was that 
 
 23
 
 354 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 he had a dozen copies of the story he prized. But the 
 hopeful sign in " Daniel Deronda " is, that the range 
 of George Eliot's genius has not yet reached its term ; 
 that her vigorous faculties show no symptoms of de- 
 cay in their present exercise on new pliases of human 
 life and liuman character ; that the power which de- 
 lighted us in her previous novels is independent of 
 circumstance and locality ; and that she will hereafter 
 produce works as different from " Daniel Deronda " 
 as " Daniel Deronda " is from " Adam Bede." 
 
 The special admirers of George Eliot, those who 
 think her genius is confined to the reproduction in 
 vivid forms of the rustic life of that portion of Eng- 
 land in which she happened to pass her youth, must 
 admit that in the present work she has shown almost 
 equal power in depicting the life of the gentry and of 
 the upper middle classes of provincial England. The 
 general tone of the society is finely indicated, while 
 every individual in it is distinguished from the rest by 
 some subtile stroke of characterization. In the first 
 book, Mrs. Davilow and her daughters, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Gascoigne, Rex Gascoigne, Anna Gascoigne, the 
 Arrowpoints, Lord Brackinshaw, are made as well 
 known to the reader as to Gwendolen the heroine. 
 Passing to the city, what an image of domestic life is 
 presented in the household of Mrs. Meyrick and her 
 daughters ! Some readers may be intolerant of Mor- 
 decai the Jew ; but nobody can fail to enjoy the ex- 
 quisite humor exhibited in delineating the Jewish 
 familv of the Cohens, includinor Cohen himself, his
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 355 
 
 wife, his mother, his astonishing little son Jacob, and 
 his hardly less astonishing little daughter Adelaide 
 Rebekah. Sir Hugo Mallinger and Lady Mallinger, 
 Mr. Bult, Mr. Vandernoodt, Mr. Lush, not to mention 
 others who move more or less in what is called Lon- 
 don society, are as real as any persons we daily meet 
 in the street. The perfection of characterization in 
 all these persons, whether they are honest or dis- 
 honest, is unraarred by a single touch of caricature. 
 The representation is bold and distinct ; but no temp- 
 tation of wit or humor, no impulse of sympathy or an- 
 tipathy, is allowed to exaggerate or obscure a single 
 trait of their natures ; and the mirror the author holds 
 up to them reflects their mental and moral lineaments 
 so exactly that each of them would, in a moment of 
 pleased or vexed surprise, wonderingly admit the 
 accuracy of the likeness. 
 
 Should we, therefore, confine our attention merely 
 to such persons as we have named, the book might 
 properly be considered a remarkable one ; for charac- 
 terization of such nicety, fairness, truth, and strength 
 is an exceptional gift, and a more exceptional virtue, 
 among the novelists of the time. But in this praise 
 we have not touched the heart of the book, or named 
 the cliaracters which should justly give it a prominent 
 position among the great novels of the century. Still, 
 let us first quote a few examples of George Eliot's 
 power -in describing, characterizing, and satirizing 
 some of the aspects of English life. The opening 
 chapter of the book places us as spectators in one of
 
 356 DANIEL DEROXDA. 
 
 the fashionable gambling-hells of Germany, " one of 
 those splendid resorts which the enlightenment of ages 
 has prepared " for this species of pleasure " at a heavy 
 cost of gilt mouldings, dark-toned color, and chubby 
 nudities, all correspondingly heavy, forming a suita- 
 ble condenser for human breath belonging in great 
 part to the highest fashion, and not easily procurable 
 to be breathed in elsewhere in the like proportion, at 
 least by persons of little fashion." Can anything ex- 
 ceed the penetrating force of this satire ? The foul 
 air of the gambling-room, which makes those who 
 breathe it physically sick, has still the grand recom- 
 mendation of being the condensation of all the breaths 
 of all the people of fashion therein congregated, and 
 therefore gives a kind of gentility to every plebeian who 
 has the good fortune to inhale it. Again, how many 
 persons are hit in this description of Mr. Yander- 
 noodt, a diner-out welcome in every society : " He 
 was an industrious gleaner of personal details, and 
 could probably tell everything about a great philoso- 
 pher or physicist except his theories or discoveries." 
 As to scholarship, this gentleman professes his con- 
 tempt for those " Dryasdust fellows who get a reputa- 
 tion by raking up some small scandal about Semiramis 
 or Xitocris. ... I like to know the manners of my 
 time, contemporary gossip, not antediluvian. ... I 
 don't care a straw about the faux pas of the mummies." 
 The picture of the Meyrick family is probably as feli- 
 citous as anything that the author has ever done in 
 what some people deem her limited sphere of charac-
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 357 
 
 terization. Both the reality and the lovablcncss of 
 the mother aud her daughters are so starthngly true 
 that we cau hardly resist the impression, as we read, 
 that they are among our valued personal friends and 
 acquaintances. The account of their reception of 
 Mirali, when Deronda, after rescuing her from suicide, 
 brings her to their perfect home, and the scene in 
 which Ilerr Klesmer appears to pass judgment on 
 Mirah's musical capacity, arc admirable illustrations 
 of the writer's power of giving lifelike reality to what 
 she sympathetically depicts. It is odd that such a 
 mother shrewd, kind-hearted, and practical should 
 have for a son such an eccentric, tempestuous, and 
 scatterbrained personage as Ilans Meyrick, an artist 
 of " irregular " genius, subject to fits of incalculable 
 caprice, yet commonly held within bounds byhisaffec- 
 tionatcness, and distinguished from the Bohemian of 
 Balzac by a restraining British constitution of nature. 
 He is one of the most marked among the minor char- 
 acters of the novel, radiant in humor and good-humor, 
 and never knowing what he will say or do a moment 
 beforehand. Deronda objects to Agrippa's legs, in 
 one of his historical pictures. Hans replies that they 
 are good realistically. " But they are impossible legs," 
 urges Deronda. " Then," Hans retorts, " they are good 
 ideally. Agrippa's legs were possibly bad ; I idealize 
 that, and make them impossibly bad. Art, my Euge- 
 nius, must intensify." It is hopeless to caution him 
 against the effects of his sudden impulses. " Since," 
 he says, "I got into the scrape of being born, every-
 
 358 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 thing I have liked best has been a scrape for myself 
 or for somebody else. My painting is the last scrape ; 
 and 1 shall be all my life getting out of it." When 
 Deronda assures him that Mirah can, under no con- 
 ceivable circumstances, marry him, the half-grave, 
 half-merry egotist is not a bit abashed. " I go," he 
 declares, " to science and philosophy for my romance. 
 Nature designed Mirah to fall in love with me. The 
 amalgamation of races demands it, the mitigation of 
 human ugliness demands it, the affinity of contrasts 
 assures it. I am the utmost contrast to Mirah, a 
 bleached Christian, who can't sing two notes in tune. 
 Who has a chance against me ? " 
 
 A character almost as picturesque as Hans is Herr 
 Klesmer, " a felicitous combination of the German, 
 the Sclave, and the Semite, with grand features, 
 brown hair floating in artistic fashion, and brown 
 eyes in spectacles," one of those forcible men who 
 hold their right rank in well-dressed, well-bred con- 
 ventional society, though their clothes never fit them', 
 and though their manners have a brusqueness which 
 is ever in danger of violating the conventional rules 
 of good-breeding. As an artist who has identified 
 himself with his art, his imperiousness of demeanor 
 and emphasis of speech seem to spring from his 
 feeling of the dignity of the art he represents, rather 
 than from any arrogance of personal disposition. In 
 all matters regarding music he speaks with that dog- 
 matism which is based on certain knowledge ; what 
 Mrs. Gamp calls "the torters of tlie Imposition"
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 859 
 
 could not wring from him a polite compliment to a 
 mediocre performance ; and Gwendolen's beauty, on 
 his first introduction to her, only forced from his gal- 
 lantry the equivocal praise, " It is always acceptable 
 to see you sing ! " Nothing can be better than his 
 retort on Mr. Bult, the " political platitudinarian," 
 whose " monumental obtuseness " he hated as the 
 awkward mimicry of the dignity of a gentleman, 
 when that wooden politician patronizingly informed 
 him that he was sure he had too much talent to be " a 
 mere musician." " No man," replied Klesmer, " has 
 too much talent to be a musician. Most men have 
 too little. A creative artist is no more a mere musi- 
 cian than a great statesman is a mere politician. "We 
 are not ingenious puppets, sir, who live in a box and 
 look out on the world only when it is gaping for 
 amusement. We help to rule the nations and make 
 the age as much as any other public man. We count 
 ourselves on level benches with legislators ; and a 
 man who speaks effectively through music is com- 
 pelled to something more difficult than parliamentary 
 eloquence." Mr. Bult's only resource is to turn to 
 Miss Arrowpoint, and with undiminished gravity to 
 remark, " Your pianist does not think small beer of 
 himself." But the great musician's whole soul comes 
 out only in his interview with Gwendolen, when she 
 desires to learn his judgment as to her capacity to 
 succeed in public as an actress and singer. The emo- 
 tions which are stirred during the conversation give 
 all the more emphasis to the thoughts which it elicits.
 
 360 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 The interview is strictly an event in the progress of 
 the story, for Gwendolen's fate depends on Herr Kles- 
 mer's decision ; but the principles of art announced 
 in it apply to hundreds of other cases, which resemble 
 Gwendolen's only in the one particular need of con- 
 verting a means of elegant amusement into a source 
 of income. Fortune enables a great number of young 
 women to acquire sufficient training in music to sing 
 and play acceptably in drawing-rooms, and sufficient 
 training in elocution to win applause in private the- 
 atricals ; and when a reverse of fortune occurs they 
 are commonly smitten with Gwendolen's ambition to 
 be singers in public concert-rooms and actresses on 
 the public stage. It seems to them easy to win ap 
 plause from the sensitive, vulgar public, after the 
 fastidious critics of the drawing-room, persons noto- 
 riously existing in a constant state of semi-boredom, 
 have condescended to confess, in that fashionable 
 drawl which is the happiest of all developments from 
 the imbecility of the baby's drool, that they have been 
 quickened and inspired by what they have listlessly 
 seen or yawningly heard. But the moment the public 
 is faced, the amateur is made cruelly conscious of the 
 difference between the criticism of parlors and the 
 criticism of theatres. The very persons who would 
 have considered an invitation to the private entertain- 
 ment as a compliment deserving of any number of 
 compliments in return, become the bitterest critics of 
 the public exhibition ; and those fashionable friends 
 who delighted in the performances of the opulent
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 361 
 
 amateur arc not wont to buy tickets for the " benefit " 
 night of the unsuccessful actress. Ilerr Klcsmer 
 unveils to Gwendolen the austere facts of the pro- 
 fession which her self-confidence impels her to choose 
 as a means of recovering fortune. " The gods," he 
 declares, "have a curse for him who willingly tells 
 another the wrong road ; " and then, full of remorse- 
 ful pity and tenderness for the beautiful creature 
 Avhose expectations he must disappoint, he proceeds to 
 unfold those inexorable laws by which alone success 
 in any of the fine arts can be attained. In the course 
 of a hurried conversation, broken now by pauses and 
 now by outbursts of passion, a true philosophy of art 
 is evolved. That conversation, indeed, is a text-book 
 for all amateurs who aspire to be artists ; and if dili- 
 gently studied it will serve both as a guard against the 
 delusions of self-esteem, and as a guide in the paths 
 which lead to excellence. 
 
 It would be easy to go on enumerating the minor 
 details of incident, character, and reflection which 
 contribute to make the appearance of this book a 
 literary event. But there are four characters which 
 stand out from the rest with such a stamp of power 
 and originality on them, that they impress the least 
 thoughtful reader as altogether beyond the ken and 
 grasp even of such novelists as Dickens and Thack- 
 eray. These are Gwendolen Harleth, Daniel Deronda, 
 Mirah, and Mordecai. 
 
 Gwendolen is a masterpiece of characterization. 
 Tlie conception, delineation, and development of this
 
 362 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 specimen of haughty maidenhood are alike admirable. 
 Many novelists create characters ; but few, like George 
 Eliot, create souls as well as characters. And the soul 
 which she creates, embodies, and calls by the name of 
 Gwendolen Harleth, she also constantly watches, so 
 that the reader is allowed to note all that throng of 
 interior emotions, thoughts, volitions, and events 
 which precede outward acts, whether the acts be 
 comparatively unimportant or absolutely momentous. 
 As the beholder as well as creator of this soul, she 
 never seems to lose sight of it, either by day in its 
 conscious feeling and thinking, or by night in its 
 vague fears and perturbing dreams. The scrutiny is 
 as relentless as that of a naturalist who has a jelly- 
 fish under his microscope, and as tenderly considerate 
 as that of a mother who holds her new-born babe in 
 her arms. While freely handling this palpitating 
 mass of spiritual life, her touch is so delicate as never 
 to inflict a bruise. And during all the time that the 
 soul is subjected to this intense imaginative observa- 
 tion and analysis, the bodily presence animated by the 
 soul is as vividly apparent to the external eye as is the 
 invisible, mysterious essence within it to the eye of the 
 mind. This is assuredly masterly characterization ; 
 but the statement still does not cover the whole ground. 
 Gwendolen is not only thus made spiritually and physi- 
 cally alive, but the outlying social and spiritual laws 
 she obeys or violates are discerned with the same 
 sureness of insight which penetrates into the depths 
 and records all the changes of her individual being.
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 363 
 
 It is an indication of George Eliot's skill that from 
 the first she connects Gwendolen's self-assertion and 
 self-confidence with perfect bodily health. Nature 
 teaches humility by deranging digestion as well as by 
 heaping up impediments to the schemes of pride ; in 
 both cases humility comes from the perception that 
 the inward power is weak before the outward obstacle. 
 But up to the time that a banker's knavery had made 
 wreck of her mother's fortune, Gwendolen had en- 
 countered nothing that was stronger than her own 
 determination ; exulting in her health, her beauty, 
 and her inborn instinct of commanding, possessing " a 
 decision of will which made itself felt in her graceful 
 movements and clear, unhesitating tones," with " a 
 certain unusualness about her " w-hich acted with the 
 effect of a potent charm, and giving to petty objects, 
 surveyed from her heights of self-exaltation, a kind of 
 " hazy largeness," she reduced all persons in imme- 
 diate relations with her to the position of confessed 
 inferiors. Her meek governess predicted that she 
 would never rest until she had brought the world to 
 her feet ; her mother, wdiom she caressed and tor- 
 mented by turns, always appeared before her " in an 
 apologetic state of mind for the evils brought on her 
 by her step-father ; " her half-sisters were compelled 
 to be satisfied when they excited her contempt in a 
 milder form than was common. As to the great 
 mass of human beings, she did not, like Grandcourt, 
 call them beasts, but she was determined not to be 
 sacrificed "to creatures worth less than herself," to
 
 364 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 make " the very best of the chances that life offered 
 her, and conquer difficulties by her exceptional clever- 
 ness." Her ideal " was to be daring in speech and 
 reckless in braving dangers ; " but beneath this autoc- 
 racy of disposition there was a furtive spiritual ele- 
 ment, which, though inefficacious as a spiritual re- 
 straint, occasionally surprised her by betraying her 
 superstitious liability to fits of spirituals dread. On 
 her first day at Offendene, when her spirit of maid- 
 enly domination was at the highest, her little sister 
 Isabel happened to open a hinged panel in the wain- 
 scot of one of the rooms, and revealed a picture of " an 
 upturned dead face, from which an obscure figure 
 seemed to be fleeing with outstretched arms." For a 
 moment she shuddered with an unspeakable horror, 
 the vague spiritual dread at the heart of her being 
 shooting suddenly up, through layer after layer of 
 pride and self-complacency, to affright her with a 
 prophetic glimpse of the upturned face of her future 
 detested husband, struggling with death in the harbor 
 of Genoa, and she, the obscure figure of the picture, 
 fleeing in thought from any sympathy with his des- 
 perate attempts to regain the boat. 
 
 The transitory emotion, however, passes rapidly 
 away ; and she proceeds in her career with a supreme 
 confidence in her courage and in her sense of supe- 
 riority. As a high-spirited maiden, untouched by 
 love, and too full of exulting health to be contami- 
 nated by sentimentality, she graciously receives the 
 admiration and adoration of men so long as they keep
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 365 
 
 at a respectful distance ; but when her cousin, Rex 
 Gascoigne, makes love to her in earnest, and pre- 
 sumes to take and press her hand with the imploring 
 eagerness of a feeling which she does not share, she 
 becomes a mountain of ice, freezing him to the heart's 
 core. " Pray don't make love to me," she exclaims ; 
 " I hate it ! " She feels a maiden's horror at the 
 slightest profanation of her person. She cannot en- 
 dure the thought that her hand or lip should be pas- 
 sionately touched by a man who has not succeeded in 
 taking possession of her soul. After rejecting Rex, 
 she puts her arms round her mother's neck with " an 
 almost painful clinging ; " sobs, cries, protests that she 
 can't love people, but on the contrary hates them, and 
 ends by declaring, " I can't bear any one to be very 
 near me but you." The emotion is doubtless to be 
 referred to a kind of remorse. She knows that out 
 of mere pride of domination, and of delight in seeing 
 her admirers reduced to the position of slaves to her 
 caprice, she has lured her obedient friend and servant 
 Rex Gascoigne to the point of declaring his love. 
 She breaks his heart as cruelly as the most hardened 
 coquette could have done ; and yet she regrets that 
 she has made him miserable. Still, the feeling that 
 prompts her resentment of his familiarity is purely 
 maidenly, and is, indeed, the instinctive defence of 
 women against the first approaches of men to estab- 
 lish a more intimate relation with them than that of 
 friend. It is better that the hearts of men should be 
 broken easily mended as experience proves them to
 
 366 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 be than that the girl-woman should sanction the 
 least liberties taken by that importunate affection 
 which is too eager to ask the question whether it be 
 reciprocated. 
 
 It is characteristic of Gwendolen, tliat, never having 
 felt the attraction of love, she should be pleased by 
 the sobriety and reserve of Grandcourt, who conducts 
 his courtship in the grand style, without any of those 
 disagreeable incidents of kneeling, kissing, and fond- 
 ling which attend the sentimental style of wooing. In 
 Grandcourt's suit her ambition is reconciled with her 
 girlish feeling ; for this rich landed gentleman never 
 pesters her with any of the preposterous outbreaks of 
 emotion which mark the attentions of a lover whose 
 heart flashes forth in every act and word. The court- 
 ship seems to be proceeding happily on the way to 
 marriage, when Gwendolen's pride is stung and her 
 conscience wounded by the apparition of Mrs. Glasher 
 and her children, revealing to her the fact that she 
 is on the point of connecting her fresh vitality with 
 an outworn life, full of " backward secrets," and re- 
 spectful to her, not from the restrained fervor of an 
 ardent love, but from the mere exhaustion resulting 
 from a previous passionate experience. She flies 
 from him with a mingled feeling of terror and dis- 
 gust. At the gambling-table at Leubronn she first 
 comes under the notice of Deronda, who is sufficiently 
 interested in her " dynamic glance " to return the 
 necklace she has pawned. She is recalled to England 
 by the news of her mother's loss of fortune. Her
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 367 
 
 confidence in her power to conquer circumstances 
 and to make life what she wills and wishes it to be, 
 is not dashed by this calamity. She resents the idea 
 of descending to the office of being a teacher in a 
 school, or of becoming a governess ; she aspires to be 
 a singer and an actress, compelling applause from the 
 public as she has compelled it in every private circle 
 in which she has appeared. Herr Klesmer, with 
 cruel kindness, demonstrates to her the impossibility 
 of success in that direction of her talents. Baffled on 
 every side where she thinks to make her will efficient, 
 she at last commits the crime of marrying Grand- 
 court, with the feeling that his will must yield to 
 hers, and that she can serve Mrs. Glasher and do 
 justice to Grandcourt's children, while she at the 
 same time carries out her own dream of dominating 
 every society in which she appears. A month of 
 married life proves to her that her girlish, petulant 
 imperiousness is no match for the persisting will of 
 her husband, a will that has the quality of a crab or 
 a boa-constrictor, which goes on relentlessly " pinch- 
 ing or crushing " without the slightest regard to the 
 active or passive resistance of its victim. " Any ro- 
 mantic illusions she had in marrying this man had 
 turned on her power of using him as she liked. He 
 was using her as he liked." 
 
 Grandcourt is one of that detestable class of hu- 
 man beings, instinctively hated by all good men who 
 regard the rights and feelings of others, and by all 
 bad men in whom depravity has not extinguished
 
 368 V DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 every generous instinct of human nature. He is just 
 the person who if he were encountered on our West- 
 ern plains by the wild, semi-savage freebooters who 
 give the law to that region, would be very properly 
 selected as a person to be " shot at sight." In civil- 
 ized society, and in civilized society alone, could such 
 a sneering, selfish, cynical, and cruel specimen of 
 aristocratic insolence be tolerated. He looks upon all 
 members of the human race outside of his immediate 
 associates as simply brutes ; even the persons he ne- 
 cessarily meets when residing at one of his country- 
 houses, he drawlingly designates as " rather a ragged 
 lot ; " and the experience of vice, having destroyed 
 whatever of soul he may have originally possessed, 
 has left him with the exterior manners of a conven- 
 tional gentleman, with a conventional gentleman's su- 
 preme disdain for all creatures who do not belong to 
 his set, and with a conventional gentleman's continual 
 and unlimited liability to be bored. Morally isolated 
 from his race, and selfish to the inmost core of his 
 being, his will grows doggedly strong as fast as 
 his human sympathies contract ; and he deliberately 
 brings his will to bear on Gwendolen for the purpose 
 of slowly crushing out of her all soul and individ- 
 uality. His parasite, Mr. Thomas Cranmer Lush, 
 contemptuously recognized by Sir Hugo Mallinger as 
 a kind of " half caste among gentlemen," happens to 
 be the object of her special aversion, and this is con- 
 sidered a sufficient reason to employ him in the busi- 
 ness of tormenting and insulting her into abject
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 369 
 
 submission. The natural result is, that she hates her 
 husband mortally ; but she fears as well as hates him. 
 In her misery she seeks some moral support. She 
 finds it in Deronda. 
 
 Daniel Deronda appears to us one of the noblest and 
 most original characters among the heroes imagined 
 by poets, dramatists, and novelists. His relation to 
 Gwendolen is one fertile in immoral possibilities. 
 " You are a dangerous young fellow," says Sir Hugo 
 Mallinger to him, "a kind of Lovelace who will 
 make all the Clarissas run after you, instead of your 
 running after them." Indeed, the situation is exactly 
 that which French novelists have delighted to repre- 
 sent ; and it is easy to understand how it would have 
 been treated by novelists of such widely differing 
 characters and genius as Honord de Balzac, George 
 Sand, Jules Sandeau, Th^ophile Gautier, Prosper 
 Merim^e, Alexandre Dumas, and Charles de Bernard. 
 They would all have agreed in lowering the moral 
 standard both of Gwendolen and Deronda ; they would 
 have made the sensuous elements in their natures gain 
 the ascendency over the spiritual, in the complications 
 of duty and passion which the polite pitilessness, the 
 ceremonious .brutality of Grandconrt would have con- 
 stantly multiplied, and the result would have been 
 an inculcation of the rights of passion in a highly 
 wrought tale of guilt and ruin, in which every step in 
 the downward path would have been indicated with 
 marvellous precision, and subjected to the most re- 
 fined processes of psychological analysis. George 
 
 2+
 
 870 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Eliot pursues a different method because she of all 
 novelists penetrates with most certainty of insight 
 through the hollowness of all theories.of the rights of 
 -passion, and most firmly grasps the central idea of 
 duty which underlies all reasonable and moral life. 
 Deronda, when he discovers that he has unconsciously 
 established a spiritual mastery over the soul of Gwen- 
 dolen, and that she looks up to him as the one person 
 she has met in life before whom her pride and ambi- 
 tion are abashed, is placed in a position more delicate 
 than that of a Jesuit priest before a distressed beauty. 
 He is really ner father confessor, from whom she 
 hardly dares to expect absolution, but whose aid she 
 still pathetically implores. Acting from the instinct 
 of one of that rare class of gentlemen who have been 
 aptly styled " God Almighty's gentlemen," he comes 
 to her, not after the French fashion, as a half- con- 
 scious, half-unconscious seducer, but as a respect- 
 ful, magnanimous friend and helper, tenderly, wisely, 
 even austerely, giving her such aid and counsel as it 
 is in his power to bestow. It has been objected that 
 he offers to her only the commonplaces of consolation, 
 and directs her to use only commonplace means of 
 resisting the hard conditions of her fate. This objec- 
 tion overlooks the fact that truisms are vitalized into 
 truths when uttered from his lips ; that these truths 
 have been inwrought into the substance of his charac- 
 ter ; that purity of heart and justness of judgment 
 have in him been organized into powers ; and that 
 neither his heart nor his intellect can be imposed
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 371 
 
 upon by any of the grand French fallacies of passion, 
 which, if followed out, could only rescue her from her 
 present degradation by plunging her into a degrada- 
 tion worse than that she now experienced. In short, 
 he influences her by the magnetism of his character 
 rather than by the agreeableness of his opinions ; and 
 the proud creature, reduced to an ignominious vas- 
 salage by her detested husband, receives Dcronda's 
 practical precepts with a pathetic humility. He is her 
 outward conscience, and sees clearly into her moral 
 condition from the first. " Strange and piteous," he 
 says, " to think what a centre of wretchedness a deli- 
 cate piece of human flesh like that might be, wrapped 
 round with fine raiment, her ears pierced for gems, her 
 head held loftily, her mouth all. smiling pretence, the 
 poor soul within her sitting in sick distaste of all- 
 things ! " What was the experience and the discipline 
 which thus made him a discerner and consoler of souls ? 
 George Eliot gives the answer to this question in 
 every mode that a novelist can adopt, by descrip- 
 tion, by analysis, by reflection, by the direct presen- 
 tation of Deronda in scenes of intense dramatic 
 interest. The essential fact is this, that Deronda 
 differs from other heroes of romance in being a man 
 of comprehensive intellect as well as of comprehen- 
 sive sympathies. There is, however, a doubt as to 
 his birth, which, while it increases his toleration of 
 other individualities, infuses into his nature a subtile 
 melancholy which somewhat impairs the resolute 
 exercise of his will. Still, the essential excellence of
 
 372 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 his nature is in his quiet abandonment of that ele- 
 ment of self-assertion which enables most forcible 
 persons, indifferent to the rights and interests of 
 others, to obtain the prizes of life. His special pecu- 
 liarity consists in taking the point of view of all per- 
 sons with whom he comes in contact or collision, and 
 in his disposition to surrender his own claims to 
 theirs. Such a person must be considered a strange 
 phenomenon in romance ; for in romance the reader 
 instinctively sympathizes with the hero who domi- 
 nates other individualities by the superior force of 
 his own personality. In literature the most remarka^ 
 ble instance of this combination of intellectual grasp 
 with intellectual modesty and charity is found in 
 Shakspeare. That this disposition of mind deserves 
 to be classed among the highest and most difficult of 
 all virtues is shown by the example of him who, 
 nailed to the cross, in the utmost stress of mortal 
 agony still recognized the natural prejudices of his 
 tormentors in his prayer, " Father, forgive them, for 
 they know not what they do."' Towards this highest 
 ideal of moral and intellectual manliness Deronda 
 was obscurely striving from his youth upwards. 
 Self-sacrifice for others was combined in him with a 
 compassionate, intuitive knowledge of the egotisms, 
 of the sufferings, of the wrongs of others ; but while 
 he thus admitted every claim on his sympathy, he 
 was in danger of losing that impulse of moral wrath 
 at wrong-doing which is the general condition of 
 efficiency in the work of well-doing. Deronda, how-
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 373 
 
 ever, has his critics constantly by him in the persons 
 of his warmest friends. When at college he gives 
 up his own chances in order to aid Hans Meyrick in 
 obtaining a much-needed scholarship, Sir Hugo Mal- 
 linger tells him : " My dear boy, it is good to be un- 
 selfish and generous ; but don't carry that too far. 
 [t will not do to give yourself to be melted down for 
 the benefit of the tallow-trade ; you must know where 
 to find yourself." Even Hans Meyrick warns him 
 against a disposition he has to take even " an antedi- 
 luvian point of view, lest he should do injustice to the 
 megatherium." This comprehensiveness of sympathy 
 and intelligence makes him the most charitable and 
 the most helpful of friends ; but it leaves him without 
 a definite aim in life. That aim is supplied by his 
 love for Mirah, the fascination exerted over him by 
 Mordecai's eloquence, and by the discovery of his own 
 Jewish descent. It is difficult to conceive how such a 
 character, so elaborately analyzed and represented by 
 George Eliot, could have found an object which would 
 have concentrated its energies in any of the ambi- 
 tions presented by ordinary English life. By his na- 
 ture he is bound to devote himself to some grand, 
 unselfish cause, where a kind of Shakspearian tolera- 
 tion for the infirmities of individuals is to be com- 
 bined w^ith a hero's purpose to overcome seemingly 
 hopeless obstacles, and a martyr's vision of the gran- 
 deur of the ultimate object which it is the hero's 
 purpose to realize. It happens, as it were by acci- 
 dent, that his latent capacity for self-consecration is
 
 374 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 directed to the re-establishment of the Jewish nation. 
 He had become keenly aware that his " too reflective 
 and diffusive sympathy " was impairing his power of 
 will, and he longed "for some external event or 
 some inward light that would urge him into a defi- 
 nite line of action, and compress his wandering 
 energy." In the path of duty he selected, the author 
 has been careful to surround him with disgusts and 
 dissuasives such as all ideal reformers, all champions 
 of an overmastering idea, have to overcome. The 
 Jewish family of the Cohens, so far as they are repre- 
 sentative, make his grand project apparently hope- 
 less ; and Sir Hugo Mallinger is at hand with his 
 sound common-sense to expose what he deems the 
 illusions of the sense which is uncommon. " I have 
 long expected," he says, " something remarkable 
 from you, Dan ; but for God's sake don't go into any 
 eccentricities ! I can tolerate any man's difference 
 of opinion, but let him tell it me without getting him- 
 self up as a lunatic. At this stage of the world, if a 
 man wants to be taken seriously he must keep clear 
 of melodrama. . . . You have a passion for people 
 who are pelted, Dan. I 'm sorry for them too ; but 
 so far as company goes, it 's a bad ground of selec- 
 tion." Such ugly facts as the Cohen family, and such 
 sensible arguments as those of Sir Hugo, have always 
 been vainly presented to minds like Deronda's ; and 
 human progress is in some way connected with the 
 refusal of elevated spirits to admit the validity of 
 such facts and arguments.
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 375 
 
 The commanding influence which raises Deronda 
 from a comprehensive thinker on human life to an 
 earnest enthusiast is found in the character and 
 speech of Mordecai. On this character George Eliot 
 has lavished her utmost skill in conceiving, present- 
 ing, and vitalizing religious phenomena. She por- 
 trays this consumptive prophet in all the external 
 shabbiness of his plebeian condition, clad in mean 
 clothes, working in a common handicraft, coughing, 
 gasping, choking, as his feeble frame gives scant 
 utterance to the on-rush of his burning words, stretch- 
 ing forth his yellow skeleton hands in passionate sup- 
 plication, and his " dark-haired eager Jewish face " 
 illuminated with a holy passion which might befit an 
 Isaiah or Ezekiel. Whatever may be thought of him, 
 it is certain that in no previous English novel has 
 such an example of religious genius been introduced 
 with such startling effect. He may be contemptu- 
 ously dismissed as a person unwarrantably intruded 
 into a romance ; shallow readers may be offended at 
 such an apparition being thrust forward among the 
 Grandcourts, Gwendolens, Lushes, Meyricks, and 
 Mallingers of English life : but the fact still remains 
 that all who really appreciate the highest qualities of 
 George Eliot's genius must be particularly impressed 
 by this wonderful delineation. It is even better and 
 nobler than that of Savonarola as presented in 
 " Romola." The loftiest sympathies of the writer's 
 soul are combined with her finest powers of reason 
 and imagination, in the attempt to lift Mordecai to an
 
 376 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 ideal prominence above the other personages of the 
 book, a book which is peculiar among novels for 
 the breadth of the view it takes of human life and 
 human character. She endows him with the Hebraic 
 fervor of imagination and intensity of will, while she 
 emancipates him from the Hebraic narrowness of 
 view ; and she pours into his passionate speech an 
 Hebraic eloquence unexampled in English literature 
 since the utterances of the Hebrew prophets were first 
 translated into our English tongue. Mordecai is one 
 of those enthusiasts who believe that in the spiritual 
 universe soul answers to soul, and that influence is 
 almost independent of language. " Why," asks 
 Deronda, " did you write in Hebrew ? " "I had," re- 
 plies Mordecai, " the ranks of the great dead around 
 me ; the martyrs gathered and listened. ^^ But the 
 dreadful test to which his enthusiasm was subjected 
 he found in the inattention of his own race. To 
 write in English, he says, from that " breath of divine 
 thought which is within me, would excite men to 
 smile at it, and to say, ' A poor Jew ! ' and the chief 
 smilers would be my own people.''^ The pathos of this 
 is indescribably deep. It bears a faint resemblance 
 to the chill of heart which a thoroughgoing New 
 England Abolitionist of the old type might have ex- 
 perienced when he found numbers of free negroes in 
 the Northern States despising their enslaved brethren 
 in the States of the South. Reformers who are capti- 
 vated by an ideal must expect to meet with opposition 
 from many members of the contemned and degraded
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 377 
 
 race they ardently desire to serve. Mordecai feels 
 the opposition all the more keenly because his physi- 
 cal life is daily decaying, while his unrecognized 
 ideas are daily becoming more clear to his soul. In 
 this condition of spiritual loneliness he foresees and 
 welcomes the friendship of Deronda. Upon this 
 fresh, pure life, capable of efforts which are impossi- 
 ble to him, he relies with unalterable trust. He dies 
 content when he is assured that Deronda has become 
 the heir of his ideas, and will devote all the energies 
 of his noble heart and all the resources of his large 
 intellect to the attempt to realize them. 
 
 Mirah is commonly voted by critics to be an insipid 
 specimen of feminine excellence. If this be true, it 
 is because the author has failed in conveying to other 
 minds the conception which evidently filled and de- 
 lighted her own, and has only succeeded in represent- 
 ing a childish nature when she intended to represent 
 a childlike one. Mirah appears to us an exquisite 
 creation, endowed with a simplicity of character which 
 is as forcible as it is simple. An artless Jewish 
 maiden of genius ; bearing in her blood and soul the 
 fine results of the inherited instincts and ideas due 
 to a hundred generations of culture ; with the artistic 
 sense developed in her to its last perfection, though 
 it is limited in respect to artistic power; fervidly 
 attached to her religion because " it was of one fibre 
 with her affections, and had never presented itself to 
 her as a set of propositions," and also because it was 
 the religion of her mother, whose memory she adores
 
 378 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 and whose spiritual presence she constantly feels ; a 
 thoroughly natural, genuine, and guileless creature, 
 fleeing from evil with an instinctive abhorrence, and 
 relying on good, when she meets it, with an in- 
 stinctive trust, she would be proof against the 
 charge of being insipid were it only for one charac- 
 teristic which is always found associated with power ; 
 namely, the identity in her nature of conscience and 
 sensibility with will, so that every monition of duty or 
 prompting of affection is followed by its appropriate 
 act. Her virgin ingenuousness stands every test and 
 trial ; the sharpest scrutiny cannot detect in her the 
 slightest proclivity to falsehood ; and the quaint, odd 
 way she has of unexpectedly flashing her sincerities 
 of feeling on the attention of those who are more 
 experienced than herself, lends piquancy and fascina- 
 tion to her ebullient but resolute innocence. Deronda 
 passes unconsciously from the position of a protector 
 to that of a lover; and this change is shown with 
 consummate skill, both in subtile psychological analy- 
 sis of the moods and needs of these mated souls, and 
 in picturing scenes where their characters have full 
 opportunities for complete self-expression. It is to 
 be added that in this novel the softening sensuous 
 elements which enter into the complex passion of 
 love are omitted, in respect both to the attraction 
 which draws Deronda to Mirah and in that which 
 draws Gwendolen to Deronda. 
 
 George Eliot has anticipated and answered in the 
 book itself most of the criticisms which have been
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 379 
 
 made upon it since its publication. The criticisms of 
 it in the most prominent organs of literary opinion 
 seem to be written by Sir Hugo Mallinger, or Grand- 
 court, or even by Thomas Cranmer Lush ; but there 
 is nothing said against the leading character which is 
 not more felicitously said by those personages in the 
 book itself. The chief defect in the story is that it 
 suddenly stops rather than artistically ends. The 
 conclusion is meagre, and bears the marks of having 
 been hurried up. There i-s a remote possibility that 
 the author intends to follow the precedents of Thack- 
 eray and Anthony Trollope, and introduce in her next 
 novel some of the leading characters whose fortunes 
 are left undetermined in the present. In that case 
 we shall be informed whether or not Rex Gascoigne 
 eventually marries Gwendolen, and how it fares with 
 Deronda and Mirah in their mission to the East. 
 Still, the conclusion of "Felix Holt" and "Middle- 
 march " is as unsatisfactory as that of " Daniel 
 Deronda ; " in respect to each, the words " To be Con- 
 tinued " would seem proper substitutes for " Finis." 
 But it appears to be the fate of this remarkable nov- 
 elist to raise expectation to the height only more or 
 less to disappoint it, and to give an absorbing interest 
 to characters whom she abruptly leaves, without con- 
 descending to gratify that natural curiosity in readers 
 which she has labored so successfully to excite.
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 
 
 After reading for the third or fourth time 
 " George Eliot's Life, as Related in her Letters and 
 Journals," arranged and edited by her second hus- 
 band, J. W. Cross, our first favorable impression of 
 Mr. Cross has deepened with each fresh examination 
 of his work. In no other biography of the kind is 
 there such a complete self-effacement of the biogra- 
 pher in the subject of his biography. He presents 
 his wife as she lived and labored in her high calling, 
 but he intrudes himself simply to connect the letters 
 and journals into something like a consistent narra- 
 tive. The reader constantly complains that he has 
 not made his own contributions to the book more 
 voluminous and more luminous. He tells us little or 
 nothing of some matters which he must have thor- 
 oughly known, and which he must have felt that his 
 readers ached to know. All the mysteries of George 
 Eliot's life are left unexplained, or only partially ex- 
 plained. His only aim seems to have been to make 
 his work an autobiography, compiled from the letters 
 and journals of his wife. "With exasperating modesty 
 and diffidence he declines to venture an opinion on 
 some matters as to which the admirers of George
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 381 
 
 Eliot arc divided in opinion. He evidently adores 
 his wife, thinks that what she says in defence of 
 her conduct is a final judgment which no courts in 
 Christendom can overrule, and only appears to state 
 the conditions under which a letter was written, dis- 
 appearing the moment the information is given. 
 Indeed, so far as Mr. Cross enters into this autobiog- 
 raphy of George Eliot he leaves the impression of a 
 somewhat shy gentleman, but still a gentleman of 
 unmistakable honor, intelligence, and integrity. If 
 any faults are to be found in his editorial labors, they 
 are faults of omission and not of commission. 
 
 If any admirer of George Eliot's writings expected 
 to find in these volumes much which would throw 
 new light on the genesis and processes of her genius, 
 he is doomed to disappointment. The letters are 
 genuine letters, without a trace of insincerity or affec- 
 tation ; but they chronicle her maladies much more 
 than they reveal the method of her creations. The 
 pangs of childbirth are usually considered the most 
 dreadful physical torments entailed on women for the 
 sin or indiscretion of Eve. In reading this biography 
 we are made to believe that they are slight in compar- 
 ison with the pangs of bookbirth. A third, at least, 
 of her letters and journals is taken up with distress- 
 ing accounts of her attacks of headache, dyspepsia, 
 rheumatism, and other miseries connected with a 
 frail and infirm bodily constitution. Throughout the 
 work one gets the general impression that he is fol- 
 lowing, week after week, month after month, the life
 
 382 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIEE. 
 
 of an invalid. She hardly seems competent at any 
 time to produce the great works of genius which bear 
 her name. Her spiritual health, when we recur to 
 her novels, seems strangely at variance with the 
 almost constant physical ill health which she ruefully 
 records in her letters. We can hardly recall another 
 instance of a mind so strong, broad, hardy, beautiful, 
 heroic, and creative, lodged in a body so ill adapted 
 to house such a spiritual guest. Thus in a letter 
 written when she was twenty-one years old, she says 
 she cannot " attack Mrs. Somerville's connection of 
 the Physical Sciences" until she has applied four 
 leeches to her suffering head. It was the noble soul 
 in the weak frame that burst through all these ob- 
 structions and overcame all these difficulties. As the 
 world goes, she might, like her weak sisters in in- 
 validism, have been justified in leading the life of an 
 effortless valetudinarian, fearful every moment that 
 activity of any kind would bring back her headaches, 
 and plaintively demanding of the healthier members 
 of her family a constant attention to her wants and 
 her whims. It is frightful to think how many in- 
 mates of otherwise happy households are cursed by 
 the care they have to bestow on some sick, sensitive, 
 and selfish relative, who commonly contrives to sur- 
 vive them all. 
 
 "When we say, however, that the correspondence of 
 George Eliot dwells too much on her constantly re- 
 curring bodily troubles, we do not mean that her let- 
 ters, taken as a whole, are not remarkable specimens
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 383 
 
 of epistolary composition ; for they are full of keen 
 
 observation, weighty thoughts, penetrating glances 
 
 into the problems of human life, and descriptions of 
 
 scenery which are as notable for their accuracy as for 
 
 their vividness and power. When she first appeared 
 
 as a novelist she was about thirty-seven years old. 
 
 We remember that after reading the first chapters of 
 
 " Scenes of Clerical Life," published in " Blackwood's 
 
 Magazine," we were both charmed and puzzled, 
 
 charmed by the style, and puzzled as to whom among 
 
 living celebrities could the authorship be ascribed ; 
 
 for the writer was evidently a great master of English 
 
 prose, and his sentences had the last grace of good 
 
 prose, that of exquisite rhythm. No novice could 
 
 have written " Amos Barton," for on every page was 
 
 the evidence that it proceeded from the mind of a 
 
 person long practised in the art of forcing language 
 
 to convey thought and feeling with perfect exactness, 
 
 and at the same time with perfect ease and freedom. 
 
 The private letters and journals now published show 
 
 that George Eliot was a great prose writer, in her 
 
 correspondence with intimate friends, long before 
 
 the " Scenes of Clerical Life " were dreamed of ; yet 
 
 hardly one of these friends discovered that she was 
 
 the George Eliot who was talked about in all literary 
 
 circles, until she confided the fact to such persons 
 
 as she thought would keep the secret as long as it 
 
 could be kept from the public. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to dwell at length on the first 
 period of her life. She was the child of a thoroughly
 
 384 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 
 
 practical and a thoroughly honest man of the English 
 middle class, but at the same time a man limited in 
 his conceptions to what are called Tory notions in 
 Church and State. Caleb Garth in " Middlemarch " 
 is an idealized, yet substantially truthful representa- 
 tion of her father. To this father she was literally 
 true to the death. She was the only genius born in 
 the family. Her brothers and sisters doubtless grew 
 up to be admirable specimens of the average virtue 
 and intelligence of the middle classes of Great Britain. 
 They belonged to what Abraham Lincoln called " the 
 plain people," the people who, in England as in the 
 United States, have done the work which has aided 
 the slow progress of that real civilization which is 
 gradually lifting the lower and dependent classes 
 into a higher rank among the forces that control the 
 politics of the few nations on the globe which have 
 arrived at the dignity of being ruled by constitutional 
 governments. But the one daughter of this excellent 
 family in whose career we are especially interested 
 was a thinker from her childhood, and at the same 
 time the most affectionate of human beings. She 
 could not as a girl live without love, and could not 
 accept an opinion or a creed which she had not veri- 
 fied by her own vital experience, whether the experi- 
 ence came from the exercise of her reason or from 
 the feelings of her heart. As she grew up into 
 womanhood she was overcome by the emotional side 
 of evangelical Christianity, and her whole soul was 
 absorbed in it. It afforded her what she thought a
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 385 
 
 substantial ground for her two primary impulses, which 
 were })erfect self-sacrifice for the good of others, and 
 an awful sense of the obligations of duty. In this 
 period of her life she showed all the peculiarities 
 which prophesied a new Protestant saint. She knew 
 enough, as she thought, of the pleasures of the world 
 to appreciate all their value, and to condemn them 
 as valueless. She was overcome by the sense of sin, 
 even while indulging in what the general theological 
 sense of the world has come to consider comparatively 
 sinless. She had, as a woman of genius, an instinc- 
 tive sense of the splendor and beauty of the great 
 authors she had read and assimilated, and yet she 
 had a fear that her intense appreciation of exceptional 
 but still unsanctified genius might be a grievous vio- 
 lation of her duty. Her letter to Miss Lewis, at the 
 age of twenty, on the bad effects of novels, illustrates 
 her renunciation of even the cherished companions of 
 her youthful years. She had at the age of eight a 
 passionate admiration of "Waverley." During this 
 interval of evangelical piety she half surrendered her 
 delight in the novels of Scott. She read books which 
 taught tliat the indulgence of her taste for even inno- 
 cent works of fiction might lead her down to perdition. 
 Her sense of the folly of this extreme creed kept her 
 on the sane path of reasonable evangelicism ; but 
 she persisted in it until she read the works of Isaac 
 Taylor. This good Christian, in his many books, 
 especially in his " Physical Theory of a Future Life," 
 and in his elaborate discussion of facts connected 
 
 25
 
 386 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LITE. 
 
 with "Ancient Christianity," unsettled in her mind 
 that faith in the Christian religion it was designed to 
 establish on an indestructible foundation. The book 
 which completed the work of making her reject all 
 orthodox creeds was Charles Hennell's " Inquiry Con- 
 cerning the Origin of Christianity." When after- 
 wards she met in London Mackay, Lewes, Herbert 
 Spencer, not to mention others, all her old theological 
 opinions were cast aside by her understanding, while 
 they still held a strange influence over lier heart and 
 soul. It is curious that her greatest efforts in char- 
 acterization are those which embody men or women 
 of religious genius. So far as we remember, there is 
 not a single character in any of her novels who at- 
 tracts our sympathies by his scepticism. The intense 
 experience througli which she passed as an unques- 
 tioning Christian animates all her novels. In her life 
 she never swerved from religion, as she understood it. 
 In all her published letters she expresses something 
 like horror at vulgar irreligion. No novelist or dra- 
 matist has approached her in her singular power of 
 embodying religious character ; and the reason is that 
 she had " experienced " religion vitally. All after- 
 addition of scepticism added not any element to her 
 power. To the last she made religion the central 
 part of life ; for in religion she found her deepest 
 belief that self-sacrifice for others was the funda- 
 mental base of all ethics, and tliat to give humanity 
 what a Yankee might call " a shove forwards " was 
 the greatest thing that the best and noblest men
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 387 
 
 and women could hope, in this imperfect world, to 
 do. One of the puzzles of her life is, that in mat- 
 ters regarding religion she allowed her understand- 
 ing to adopt opinions which her deepest reason and 
 affections repudiated, ller heart ever gave the lie 
 to her head. 
 
 " The best good Christian she, 
 Although she knew it not." 
 
 But the fact remains that in her published works the 
 reader would search in vain for any indication of her 
 private sceptical tendencies. 
 
 What some liberal critics would call the great mis- 
 take of her life, if not, as both English and American 
 matronhood assert, the great blot on her character, 
 was her marriage with George H. Lewes. According 
 to English law the marriage was illegal. The wife of 
 Mr. Lewes abandoned him after committing adultery ; 
 she felt or pretended to feel remorse for her conduct, 
 and was received back into the household she had dis- 
 honored. Then some new seducer tempted her to fly 
 away from her husband and children. Thus his home 
 became homeless. By a technicality of English law, 
 Lewes had forfeited his right to be divorced from his 
 faithless partner, because in a moment of compassion 
 he had received her back as his " lawfully " wedded 
 wife. In this condition, as a twice-dishonored hus- 
 band, he met Miss Evans. He was fascinated by 
 her, and she gradually became fascinated by him. 
 There was no outward beauty on eitl:ker side ; Lewes
 
 388 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 
 
 was one of the homeliest men in Great Britain, and 
 Miss Evans had no personal attractions, if we except 
 the sweetness of her voice and the singular beauty of 
 expression in her eyes. Each saw the visage of the 
 other " in the mind." Miss Evans, repudiating the 
 technicality of the English law, consented to be united 
 to Mr. Lewes ; went abroad with him, was married to 
 him, we think, in some foreign city, and returned to 
 England a kind of social rebel, frowned upon by all 
 women except those intimate friends who knew her 
 motives and never faltered in their friendship. As 
 she never sought " society," and rather disliked it, 
 she bore with exemplary patience all the social disad- 
 vantages of her illegal rather than immoral conduct. 
 Seven years before her union we find in one of her 
 letters this remark about the novel of " Jane Eyre," 
 then the literary sensation of the season : " All self- 
 sacrifice is good, but one would like it to be in a 
 somewhat nobler cause than that of a diabolical law 
 which chains a man soul and body to a putrefying 
 carcass." After her marriage, she wrote to her friend 
 Mrs. Bray, " that any unworldly, unsuperstitious wo- 
 man who is sufficiently acquainted with the realities of 
 life can pronounce my relations to Mr. Lewes immoral, 
 1 can only understand by remembering how subtile and 
 complex are the influences which mould opinion." 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the legality or moral- 
 ity of the connection, there can be no doubt that it 
 led to the happiest results to both parties. Lewes had 
 been practically homeless for two years. There was
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIEE. 389 
 
 danger that his children would grow up uneducated 
 and uncarcd for. lie was fast drifting into Bohemian 
 habits. Four years after his new marriage, Mrs. Lewes 
 states in her journal that their " double life is more 
 and more blessed more and more complete." A few 
 weeks after, Lewes writes in his journal that he owes 
 an intellectual debt of gratitude to Herbert Spencer. 
 He says : " My acquaintance with him was the bright- 
 est ray in a very dreary, wasted period of my life. . . . 
 I owe him another and deeper debt. It was through 
 him that I learned to know Marian ; to know her was 
 to love her, and since then my life has been a new 
 birth. To her I owe all my prosperity and happiness. 
 God bless her ! " 
 
 It is curious that on this first introduction he did 
 not make a favorable impression. He was a brilliant 
 converser on all topics that come up for discussion 
 at a dinner-table ; was one of the best story-tellers 
 in London ; was a man of various accomplishments, 
 seeming to know everything without having thoroughly 
 mastered anything, and with a self-confidence and self- 
 sufiiciency which offended many grave persons who 
 were not captivated by his wit and pleasantry. The 
 austere Lucy Aiken once met him at a dinner-party, 
 and in a letter to Dr. Channing records her dislike of 
 him, as a flippant, pretentious, and irreverent person. 
 Miss Evans, on first seeing him, says that in appear- 
 ance he was " a miniature Mirabeau." In March, 1853, 
 he seems to have overcome her repugnance, for she 
 says, " Lewes is always genial and amusing. He has
 
 390 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 
 
 quite won my liking in spite of myself." A month 
 after, he had advanced in her opinion, for she writes 
 to Mrs. Bray : " Lewes especially is kind and attentive 
 to me, and has quite won my regard after having had 
 a good deal of my yituperation. Like a few other 
 people in the world, he is much better than he seems, 
 
 a man of heart and conscience wearing a mask of 
 flippancy." 
 
 During the next fifteen months he gained her love, 
 
 love, we think, born somewhat of compassion in 
 considering his desolate home and neglected children, 
 but which after their union ripened into an intensity 
 of affection seldom equalled in the annals of matri- 
 mony. After completing any of her great books, the 
 manuscript concludes with a dedication of the work to 
 her " dear husband." The manuscript of " Romola " 
 may be selected as an example. The inscription runs 
 thus : " To the husband whose perfect love has been 
 the best source of her insight and strength, this 
 manuscript is given by his devoted wife, the writer." 
 
 " Romola " was the novel which, of all her works, 
 most tasked- the energies of her mind and most ex- 
 hausted her bodily strength. " I began it," she said 
 to Mr. Cross, " a young woman ; I finished it an old 
 woman." Yet the inscription of " Middlemarch " to 
 Lewes, nine years after, shows that the "old woman" 
 still glowed with undiminished affection for her 
 " George," as she lovingly called him : " To my dear 
 Imsljand, George Henry Lewes, in this nineteenth year 
 of our blessed union."
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S PEIVATE LIFE. 391 
 
 Indeed, the honeymoon in the case of this couple 
 lasted as long as the life of the husband. 
 
 Lewes himself was also immensely benefited by 
 his marriage. She was his salvation. All the works 
 for which he will be remembered were written in the 
 years when her ardent sympathy with his labors was 
 at once his inspiration and his guide. His love and 
 reverence for her were unbounded, and exhibited on 
 all occasions, public as well as private. Mr. Estcott 
 has, since the autobiography was published, given 
 quite a vivid picture of him as he appeared at the 
 Sunday receptions of his wife. " The function," he 
 says, " was more like a religious ceremonial than a 
 social reunion, and Mr. Lewes played to perfection 
 the part of Hierophant. The gifted lady sat in the 
 centre of a crowd of worshippers, of whom some were 
 permitted to hold personal converse with her. But 
 the majority gazed at her reverently and mutely from 
 afar, as if they were looking upon the Beatific Vision. 
 If any one spoke in too loud a tone, or spoke at all, 
 when George Eliot happened to be speaking herself, 
 he was at once met with a ' hush ' of reprehension 
 by Mr. Lewes, and was made to feel that he had 
 perpetrated a sort of impiety." 
 
 He continues : " George Eliot had unquestionably 
 immeasurable charm of mind, manner, and conversa- 
 tion for those who knew her well ; but I must say 
 that I never advanced beyond the outer circle of 
 worshippers, and that I always felt myself one of the 
 Levites at the gate."
 
 392 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 
 
 We have heard a number of visitors at these recep- 
 tions, both those who were in the inner and those who 
 were in the outer circle, relate their experiences, and 
 they all agree in ascribing to Mr. Lewes this devo- 
 tional air and attitude to his wife ; while those who 
 happened to be in the inner circle on such occasions 
 agree in ascribing to Mrs. Lewes the charm of un- 
 pretentious, unassuming modesty of behavior while 
 conversing with such thinkers as Spencer and Mill. 
 
 But perhaps we owe to this marriage illegal in a 
 technical point of view, but violating no principle of 
 absolute morality the great works of fiction which 
 have rendered the name of George Eliot illustrious, 
 and which promise to live as long as the English 
 literature of the nineteenth century interests people 
 who speak the English language. When she first 
 thought of writing a story, he doubted whether she 
 had the power of dramatic presentation. Still, he 
 urged her to try ; and in less than two months she 
 wrote the first of the " Scenes of Clerical Life," 
 that devoted to the " Sad Fortunes of Amos Barton." 
 Lewes at once appreciated it, and sent it to John 
 Blackwood for publication in " Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine." He was just the person to look after his wife's 
 interests in dealing with publishers. He saved her 
 from all the annoyances connected with authorship; 
 and finding that she was susceptible to that commonest 
 kind of criticism which ignores the writer's aim and 
 purpose, he at last selected for her reading all those 
 portions of contemporary comments on her works
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 393 
 
 which would please her, and concealed from her all 
 those which hetrayed ignorance, envy, or malice and 
 prejudice. It was not that she wished to be praised 
 or flattered, she was superior to that ignoble ambi- 
 tion ; but her sensitive nature was hurt by reading 
 a criticism which misconceived the whole spirit of 
 the work on which she had conscientiously expended 
 months of labor, and every page of which represented 
 an expenditure of vitality which her weak physical 
 frame could ill spare. Criticism which indicated an 
 intuitive glance into the processes of her mind, and 
 proved that the critic had for the time assumed her 
 point of view before objecting to her treatment of a 
 subject, was always welcome to her ; but purely ex- 
 ternal criticism, which condemned without in the least 
 understanding her, had the effect of throwing her into 
 long moods of depression, during which she felt as if 
 the very sources of her creative activity were smitten 
 as by paralysis. Lewes did her great service by not 
 allowing her to be disturbed by reviews which could 
 do her no good, but which might do her much evil. 
 
 And then at the time of their union they were 
 poor, and were called upon not only to support and 
 educate his children, but to support the wretched 
 mother of his children, the last task one of almost 
 superhuman benevolence. They had to look sharply 
 at every sixpence that was spent, and often to deprive 
 themselves of the simplest pleasures. Now, Lewes 
 knew, to a farthing, the exact money-value of every 
 drop of ink which flowed from his wife's pen. It is
 
 394 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 
 
 refreshing to observe that from the moment the suc- 
 cess of the " Scenes of Clerical Life " indicated the 
 province of literature that the genius of George Eliot, 
 as distinguished from her talent, was to enrich with 
 new and original works, money poured into the family 
 with almost bewildering rapidity. For " Adam Bede" 
 Blackwood gave her X800 for four years' copyright; 
 its success was so great that he sent her voluntarily 
 an additional <400 before the first year of its publi- 
 cation had elapsed; and then came another 800 for 
 the second year after the agreement. It was evident 
 that Blackwood felt that he had obtained a great prize 
 in the new author, and that he wished to retain the 
 prize by his liberality. For " The Mill on the Floss " 
 he gave 2,000 for the first edition of 4,000 copies. 
 When " Romola-" was in preparation, Smith, Elder, & 
 Co. offered ,10,000 for the copyright at home and 
 abroad; and they finally paid X 7,000 for its serial 
 publication in the " Cornhill Magazine." For " Mid- 
 dlemarch " and " Daniel Deronda " the author must 
 have received much larger sums. The Harpers, of 
 New York, paid 1,200 merely for the advance sheets 
 of " Middlemarch." In November, 1859, she writes to 
 a friend that the offers made to her by rival publishers 
 are so great, that if she could be seduced by them 
 she might have written three poor novels, and made 
 her fortune in a year. " Happily," she adds, " I have 
 no need to exert myself when I say, ' Avaunt thee, 
 Satan ! ' Satan, in the form of bad writing and good 
 pay, is not seductive to me."
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 395 
 
 It is with regret that want of space prevents us 
 from entering upon an elaborate consideration of 
 many topics that these volumes suggest. We have 
 said that they do not shed so much new light on the 
 interior facts and processes of her mind as the reader 
 could wish. There is one passage, however, in a let- 
 ter to John Blackwood, while she was engaged in 
 writing " The Mill on the Floss," which is suggestive 
 of her method. " My stories," she says, " grow in me 
 like plants, and this is only in the leaf-bud. I have 
 faith that the flower will come, not enough faith, 
 though, to make me like the idea of beginning to print 
 till the flower is fairly out; till I know the end as 
 well as the beginning." This indicates her marvel- 
 lous power of representing character as it grows. 
 Dickens once said that in reading the novels of many 
 of his contemporaries it appeared to him as if the 
 authors lived next door to their characters. " Now," 
 he added, " I always live inside of mine." George 
 Eliot might, with even greater truth, have said this 
 of her own creations. She placed herself, by imagi- 
 nation and sympathy, at the inmost core of the na- 
 tures of her characters, and delineated them from 
 within, not approached them from without. She did 
 not merely look at them, but she looked i^ito them, 
 and also looked through them to the spiritual laws 
 they obeyed or violated. She kept a sort of relentless 
 watch on all the subtile, interior movements of their 
 minds and hearts ; and they could not pass into a 
 dreaming sleep without being still subject to this
 
 396 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 
 
 piercing glance into the fantasies and wild incidents 
 of their dreams. 
 
 It has always seemed to us that the genius and 
 character of George Eliot widened and deepened as 
 the years passed on, and that " Romola," " Middle- 
 march," and "Daniel Deronda" are the greatest of 
 her works. They certainly show that she did not 
 repeat the characters she had once depicted, but en- 
 larged her field of characterization with each succes- 
 sive novel. However this opinion may be questioned, 
 there can be no doubt that Lewes, after his union 
 with her, became a much better man and a much 
 abler writer than before. He produced, by patient 
 thought and study, several scientific works of de- 
 cided merit. The union between the two continued 
 " blessed " up to the day of his unexpected death, 
 which occurred in November, 1878. The shock to 
 her of this event was terrible. She at last recovered 
 sufficiently to see her intimate friends, and to arrange 
 her husband's manuscripts for publication. In every 
 duty she was called upon to perform she was cor- 
 dially assisted by Mr. J. W. Cross, with whom and 
 with whose family she had enjoyed an uninterrupted 
 friendship for more than thirteen years. He had such 
 a love and reverence for her that it is hardly a mat- 
 ter of wonder that the friendship ended in marriage, 
 about eighteen months after the death of Mr. Lewes. 
 She lived only a little more than seven months after- 
 wards, dying on the 22d of December, 1880. The 
 paragraph with which Mr. Cross concludes the Auto-
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S PRIVATE LIFE. 397 
 
 biography may well serve as the conclusion of this 
 brief article : " The place that may belong to her in 
 the minds and in the hearts of future generations 
 will be finally adjudged on the merits of her works. 
 We who write and we who read to-day will never 
 know that final verdict, but I think that those of us 
 who loved her may trust to it with confidence." 
 
 University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridg-e.