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Title: Literary studies, volume 1 (of 2)
Author: Walter Bagehot
Editor: Richard Holt Hutton
Release date: April 15, 2026 [eBook #78449]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1891
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78449
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY STUDIES, VOLUME 1 (OF 2) ***
LITERARY STUDIES
VOL. I.
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
[Illustration: (signed) Yours, Walter Bagehot.
Woodburytype Company.]
LITERARY STUDIES
BY THE LATE
WALTER BAGEHOT
M.A. AND FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON
_WITH A PREFATORY MEMOIR_
EDITED BY
RICHARD HOLT HUTTON
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
_FOURTH EDITION_
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
1891
_All rights reserved_
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
The only changes that have been made in this edition are corrections
of the press, the need of which has been discovered since the third
edition was issued. For a few of these I have been indebted to the very
carefully annotated American edition of Mr. Bagehot’s works brought out
at Hartford, Connecticut, by Mr. Forrest Morgan, of the Travellers’
Insurance Society. In some cases I think that the American editor has
missed Mr. Bagehot’s meaning, and have not, therefore, accepted his
corrections.
R. H. H.
_November 1, 1890._
ADVERTISEMENT.
Several of the following Essays were published by Mr. BAGEHOT himself in
a volume which appeared in 1858, entitled ‘Estimates of some Englishmen
and Scotchmen’—a volume which has now long been out of print. A good
many others are republished, now for the first time, from _The National
Review_, in which they appeared, while one other,—that on Henry Crabb
Robinson,—is taken, with the kind permission of the Editor, from
_The Fortnightly Review_; two short metaphysical papers are from the
_Contemporary Review_, and three—one biographical and two political—from
the _Economist_. The Prefatory Memoir is also republished, with the
Editor’s permission, from _The Fortnightly Review_. In all cases the date
of the first publication has been appended to each Essay. The Portrait
was taken in photography by Monsieur Adolphe Beau, in 1864. It has been
printed by Messrs. Locke & Whitfield by the Woodbury process.
_November 1878._
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
PAGE
PRELIMINARY MEMOIR ix
ESSAY
I. THE FIRST EDINBURGH REVIEWERS (1855) 1
II. HARTLEY COLERIDGE (1852) 41
III. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1856) 75
IV. SHAKESPEARE—THE MAN (1853) 126
V. JOHN MILTON (1859) 173
VI. LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU (1862) 221
VII. WILLIAM COWPER (1855) 255
_APPENDIX._
I. LETTERS ON THE FRENCH COUP D’ÉTAT OF 1851 (1852) 309
II. CÆSARISM AS IT EXISTED IN 1865 361
III. MEMOIR OF THE RIGHT HON. JAMES WILSON (1860) 367
MEMOIR BY THE EDITOR.[1]
It is inevitable, I suppose, that the world should judge of a man chiefly
by what it has gained in him, and lost by his death, even though a
very little reflection might sometimes show that the special qualities
which made him so useful to the world implied others of a yet higher
order, in which, to those who knew him well, these more conspicuous
characteristics must have been well-nigh merged. And while, of course,
it has given me great pleasure, as it must have given pleasure to all
Bagehot’s friends, to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s evidently
genuine tribute to his financial sagacity in the Budget speech of 1877,
and Lord Granville’s eloquent acknowledgments of the value of Bagehot’s
political counsels as Editor of the _Economist_, in the speech delivered
at the London University on May 9, 1877, I have sometimes felt somewhat
unreasonably vexed that those who appreciated so well what I may almost
call the smallest part of him, appeared to know so little of the essence
of him,—of the high-spirited, buoyant, subtle, speculative nature in
which the imaginative qualities were even more remarkable than the
judgment, and were, indeed, at the root of all that was strongest in
the judgment,—of the gay and dashing humour which was the life of every
conversation in which he joined,—and of the visionary nature to which the
commonest things often seemed the most marvellous, and the marvellous
things the most intrinsically probable. To those who hear of Bagehot
only as an original political economist and a lucid political thinker,
a curiously false image of him must be suggested. If they are among the
multitude misled by Carlyle, who regard all political economists as ‘the
dreary professors of a dismal science,’ they will probably conjure up
an arid disquisitionist on value and cost of production; and even if
assured of Bagehot’s imaginative power, they may perhaps only understand
by the expression, that capacity for feverish preoccupation which makes
the mention of ‘Peel’s Act’ summon up to the faces of certain fanatics
a hectic glow, or the rumour of paper currencies blanch others with the
pallor of true passion. The truth, however, is that the best qualities
which Bagehot had, both as economist and as politician, were of a kind
which the majority of economists and politicians do not specially
possess. I do not mean that it was in any way an accident that he was
an original thinker in either sphere; far from it. But I do think that
what he brought to political and economical science, he brought in some
sense from _outside_ their normal range,—that the man of business and
the financier in him fell within such sharp and well-defined limits,
that he knew better than most of his class where their special weakness
lay, and where their special functions ended. This, at all events, I
am quite sure of, that so far as his judgment was sounder than other
men’s—and on many subjects it was much sounder—it was so not in spite of,
but in consequence of, the excursive imagination and vivid humour which
are so often accused of betraying otherwise sober minds into dangerous
aberrations. In him both lucidity and caution were directly traceable to
the force of his imagination.
Walter Bagehot was born at Langport on February 3, 1826. Langport is an
old-fashioned little town in the centre of Somersetshire, which in early
days returned two members to Parliament, until the burgesses petitioned
Edward I. to relieve them of the expense of paying their members,—a
quaint piece of economy of which Bagehot frequently made humorous boast.
The town is still a close corporation, and calls its mayor by the old
Saxon name of Portreeve, and Bagehot himself became its Deputy-Recorder,
as well as a Magistrate for the County. Situated at the point where the
river Parret ceases to be navigable, Langport has always been a centre
of trade; and here in the last century Mr. Samuel Stuckey founded the
Somersetshire Bank, which has since spread over the entire county, and
is now the largest private bank of issue in England. Bagehot was the
only surviving child of Mr. Thomas Watson Bagehot, who was for thirty
years Managing Director and Vice-Chairman of Stuckey’s Banking Company,
and was, as Bagehot was fond of recalling, before he resigned that
position, the oldest joint-stock banker in the United Kingdom. Bagehot
succeeded his father as Vice-Chairman of the Bank, when the latter
retired in his old age. His mother, a Miss Stuckey, was a niece of Mr.
Samuel Stuckey, the founder of the Banking Company, and was a very pretty
and lively woman, who had, by her previous marriage with a son of Dr.
Estlin of Bristol, been brought at an early age into an intellectual
atmosphere by which she had greatly profited. There is no doubt that
Bagehot was greatly indebted to the constant and careful sympathy in
all his studies that both she and his father gave him, as well as to a
very studious disposition, for his future success. Dr. Prichard, the
well-known ethnologist, was her brother-in-law, and her son’s marked
taste for science was first awakened in Dr. Prichard’s house in Park Row,
where Bagehot often spent his half-holidays while he was a schoolboy in
Bristol. To Dr. Prichard’s ‘Races of Man’ may, indeed, be first traced
that keen interest in the speculative side of ethnological research,
the results of which are best seen in Bagehot’s book on ‘Physics and
Politics.’
I first met Bagehot at University College, London, when we were neither
of us over seventeen. I was struck by the questions put by a lad with
large dark eyes and florid complexion to the late Professor De Morgan,
who was lecturing to us, as his custom was, on the great difficulties
involved in what we thought we all understood perfectly—such, for
example, as the meaning of 0, of negative quantities, or the grounds of
probable expectation. Bagehot’s questions showed that he had both read
and thought more on these subjects than most of us, and I was eager to
make his acquaintance, which soon ripened into an intimate friendship, in
which there was never any intermission between that time and his death.
Some will regret that Bagehot did not go to Oxford; the reason being that
his father, who was a Unitarian, objected on principle to all doctrinal
tests, and would never have permitted a son of his to go to either of the
older Universities while those tests were required of the undergraduates.
And I am not at all sure that University College, London, was not at that
time a much more awakening place of education for young men than almost
any Oxford college. Bagehot himself, I suspect, thought so. Fifteen years
later he wrote, in his essay on Shelley: ‘A distinguished pupil of the
University of Oxford once observed to us, “The use of the University
of Oxford is that no one can over-read himself there. The appetite
for knowledge is repressed.”’ And whatever may have been defective in
University College, London—and no doubt much was defective—nothing of
the kind could have been said of it when we were students there. Indeed,
in those years London was a place with plenty of intellectual stimulus
in it for young men, while in University College itself there was quite
enough vivacious and original teaching to make that stimulus available
to the full. It is sometimes said that it needs the quiet of a country
town remote from the capital, to foster the love of genuine study in
young men. But of this, at least, I am sure, that Gower Street, and
Oxford Street, and the New Road, and the dreary chain of squares from
Euston to Bloomsbury, were the scenes of discussions as eager and as
abstract as ever were the sedate cloisters or the flowery river-meadows
of Cambridge or Oxford. Once, I remember, in the vehemence of our
argument as to whether the so-called logical principle of identity (A is
A) were entitled to rank as ‘a law of thought’ or only as a postulate of
language, Bagehot and I wandered up and down Regent Street for something
like two hours in the vain attempt to find Oxford Street:—
‘And yet what days were those, Parmenides,
When we were young, when we could number friends,
In all the Italian cities like ourselves,
When with elated hearts we joined your train,
Ye sun-born virgins, on the road of truth!
Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought
Nor outward things were closed and dead to us,
But we received the shock of mighty thoughts
On single minds with a pure natural joy;
And if the sacred load oppressed our brain,
We had the power to feel the pressure eased,
The brow unbound, the thoughts flow free again
In the delightful commerce of the world.’
Bagehot has himself described, evidently from his own experience, the
kind of life we lived in those days, in an article on Oxford Reform: ‘So,
too, in youth, the real plastic energy is not in tutors, or lectures, or
in books “got up,” but in Wordsworth and Shelley, in the books that all
read because all like; in what all talk of because all are interested;
in the argumentative walk or disputatious lounge; in the impact of
young thought upon young thought, of fresh thought on fresh thought, of
hot thought on hot thought; in mirth and refutation, in ridicule and
laughter; for these are the free play of the natural mind, and these
cannot be got without a college.’[2]
The late Professor Sewell, when asked to give his pupils some clear
conception of the old Greek Sophists, is said to have replied that he
could not do this better than by referring them to the Professors of
University College, London. I do not think there was much force in the
sarcasm, for though Professor T. Hewitt Key, whose restless and ingenious
mind led him many a wild dance after etymological Will-of-the-wisps—I
remember, for instance, his cheerfully accepting the suggestion that
‘better’ and ‘bad’ (_melior_ and _malus_) came from the same root, and
accounting for it by the probable disposition of hostile tribes to call
everything bad which their enemies called good, and everything good which
their enemies called bad—may have had in him much of the brilliance,
and something also, perhaps, of the flightiness, of the old sophist,
it would be hard to imagine men more severe in exposing pretentious
conceits and dispelling dreams of theoretic omniscience, than Professors
De Morgan, Malden, and Long. De Morgan, who at that time was in the
midst of his controversy on formal logic with Sir William Hamilton, was,
indeed, characterised by the great Edinburgh metaphysician as ‘profound
in mathematics, curious in logic, but wholly deficient in architectonic
power;’ yet, for all that, his lectures on the Theory of Limits were a
far better logical discipline for young men than Sir William Hamilton’s
on the Law of the Unconditioned or the Quantification of the Predicate.
Professor Malden contrived to imbue us with a love of that fastidious
taste and that exquisite nicety in treating questions of scholarship,
which has, perhaps, been more needed and less cultivated in Gower Street
than any other of the higher elements of a college education; while
Professor Long’s caustic irony, accurate and almost ostentatiously dry
learning, and profoundly stoical temperament, were as antithetic to the
temper of the sophist as human qualities could possibly be.
The time of our college life was pretty nearly contemporaneous with
the life of the Anti-Corn-Law League and the great agitation in favour
of Free-trade. To us this was useful rather from the general impulse
it gave to political discussion, and the literary curiosity it excited
in us as to the secret of true eloquence, than because it anticipated
in any considerable degree the later acquired taste for economical
science. Bagehot and I seldom missed an opportunity of hearing together
the matchless practical disquisitions of Mr. Cobden—lucid and homely,
yet glowing with intense conviction,—the profound passion and careless,
though artistic, scorn of Mr. Bright, and the artificial and elaborately
ornate periods, and witty, though somewhat _ad captandum_, epigrams of
Mr. W. J. Fox (afterwards M.P. for Oldham). Indeed, we scoured London
together to hear any kind of oratory that had gained a reputation of
its own, and compared all we heard with the declamation of Burke and
the rhetoric of Macaulay, many of whose later essays came out and
were eagerly discussed by us while we were together at college. In
our conversations on these essays, I remember that I always bitterly
attacked, while Bagehot moderately defended, the glorification of
compromise which marks all Macaulay’s writings. Even in early youth
Bagehot had much of that ‘animated moderation’ which he praises so highly
in his latest work. He was a voracious reader, especially of history, and
had a far truer appreciation of historical conditions than most young
thinkers; indeed, the broad historical sense which characterised him
from first to last, made him more alive than ordinary students to the
urgency of circumstance, and far less disposed to indulge in abstract
moral criticism from a modern point of view. On theology, as on all other
subjects, Bagehot was at this time more Conservative than myself, he
sharing his mother’s orthodoxy, and I at that time accepting heartily the
Unitarianism of my own people. Theology was, however, I think, the only
subject on which, in later life, we, to some degree at least, exchanged
places, though he never at any time, however doubtful he may have become
on some of the cardinal issues of historical Christianity, accepted the
Unitarian position. Indeed, within the last two or three years of his
life, he spoke on one occasion of the Trinitarian doctrine as probably
the best account which human reason could render of the mystery of the
self-existent mind.
In those early days Bagehot’s manner was often supercilious. We used
to attack him for his intellectual arrogance—his ὕβρις we called it,
in our college slang—a quality which I believe was not really in him,
though he had then much of its external appearance. Nevertheless his
genuine contempt for what was intellectually feeble was not accompanied
by an even adequate appreciation of his own powers. At college, however,
his satirical ‘Hear, hear,’ was a formidable sound in the debating
society, and one which took the heart out of many a younger speaker;
and the ironical ‘How much?’ with which in conversation he would meet
an over-eloquent expression, was always of a nature to reduce a man, as
the mathematical phrase goes, to his ‘lowest terms.’ In maturer life he
became much gentler and mellower, and often even delicately considerate
for others; but his inner scorn for ineffectual thought remained, in
some degree, though it was very reticently expressed, to the last. For
instance, I remember his attacking me for my mildness in criticising a
book which, though it professed to rest on a basis of clear thought,
really missed all its points. ‘There is a pale, whitey-brown substance,’
he wrote to me, ‘in the man’s books, which people who don’t think take
for thought, but it isn’t;’ and he upbraided me much for not saying
plainly that the man was a muff. In his youth this scorn for anything
like the vain beating of the wings in the attempt to think, was at
its maximum. It was increased, I think, by that which was one of his
greatest qualities, his remarkable ‘detachment’ of mind—in other words,
his comparative inaccessibility to the contagion of blind sympathy. Most
men, more or less unconsciously, shrink from even _thinking_ what they
feel to be out of sympathy with the feelings of their neighbours, unless
under some strong incentive to do so; and in this way the sources of much
true and important criticism are dried up, through the mere diffusion
and ascendancy of conventional but sincere habits of social judgment.
And no doubt for the greater number of us this is much the best. We
are worth more for the purpose of constituting and strengthening the
cohesive power of the social bond, than we should ever be worth for the
purpose of criticising feebly—and with little effect, perhaps, except the
disorganising effect of seeming ill-nature—the various incompetences and
miscarriages of our neighbours’ intelligence. But Bagehot’s intellect
was always far too powerful and original to render him available for the
function of mere social cement; and full as he was of genuine kindness
and hearty personal affections, he certainly had not in any high degree
that sensitive instinct as to what others would feel, which so often
shapes even the thoughts of men, and still oftener their speech, into
mild and complaisant, but unmeaning and unfruitful, forms.
Thus it has been said that in his very amusing article on Crabb Robinson,
published in the _Fortnightly Review_ for August 1869, he was more than a
little rough in his delineation of that quaint old friend of our earlier
days. And certainly there is something of the naturalist’s realistic
manner of describing the habits of a new species, in the paper, though
there is not a grain of malice or even depreciatory bias in it, and
though there is a very sincere regard manifested throughout. But that
essay will illustrate admirably what I mean by saying that Bagehot’s
detachment of mind, and the deficiency in him of any aptitude for playing
the part of mere social cement, tended to give the impression of an
intellectual arrogance which—certainly in the sense of self-esteem or
self-assertion—did not in the least belong to him. In the essay I have
just mentioned he describes how Crabb Robinson, when he gave his somewhat
famous breakfast-parties, used to forget to make the tea, then lost his
keys, then told a long story about a bust of Wieland during the extreme
agony of his guests’ appetites, and finally, perhaps, withheld the cup
of tea he had at last poured out, while he regaled them with a poem of
Wordsworth’s or a diatribe against Hazlitt. And Bagehot adds, ‘The more
astute of his guests used to breakfast before they came, and then there
was much interest in seeing a steady literary man, who did not understand
the region, in agonies at having to hear three stories before he got
his tea, one again between his milk and his sugar, another between his
butter and his toast, and additional zest in making a stealthy inquiry
that was sure to intercept the coming delicacies by bringing on Schiller
and Goethe.’ The only ‘astute’ person referred to was, I imagine, Bagehot
himself, who confessed to me, much to my amusement, that this was always
his own precaution before one of Crabb Robinson’s breakfasts. I doubt
if anybody else ever thought of it. It was very characteristic in him
that he should have not only noticed—for that, of course, anyone might
do—this weak element in Crabb Robinson’s breakfasts, but should have
kept it so distinctly before his mind as to make it the centre, as it
were, of a policy, and the opportunity of a mischievous stratagem to
try the patience of others. It showed how much of the social naturalist
there was in him. If any race of animals could understand a naturalist’s
account of their ways and habits, and of the devices he adopted to get
those ways and habits more amusingly or instructively displayed before
him, no doubt they would think that he was a cynic; and it was this
intellectual detachment, as of a social naturalist, from the society in
which he moved, which made Bagehot’s remarks often seem somewhat harsh,
when, in fact, they were animated not only by no suspicion of malice, but
by the most cordial and earnest friendliness. Owing to this separateness
of mind, he described more strongly and distinctly traits which, when
delineated by a friend, we expect to find painted in the softened manner
of one who is half disposed to imitate or adopt them.
Yet, though I have used the word ‘naturalist’ to denote the keen and
solitary observation with which Bagehot watched society, no word
describes him worse, if we attribute to it any of that coldness and
stillness of curiosity which we are apt to associate with scientific
vigilance. Especially in his youth, buoyancy, vivacity, velocity of
thought, were of the essence of the impression which he made. He had
high spirits and great capacities for enjoyment, great sympathies indeed
with the old English Cavalier. In his Essay on Macaulay he paints that
character with profound sympathy:—
‘What historian, indeed,’ he says, ‘has ever estimated
the Cavalier character? There is Clarendon, the grave,
rhetorical, decorous, lawyer—piling words, congealing
arguments—very stately, a little grim. There is Hume, the
Scotch metaphysician, who has made out the best case for
such people as never were, for a Charles who never died, for
a Strafford who could never have been attainted, a saving,
calculating North-countryman, fat, impassive, who lived
on eightpence a day. What have these people to do with an
enjoying English gentleman? Talk of the ways of spreading a
wholesome Conservatism throughout the country ... as far as
communicating and establishing your creed is concerned, try a
little pleasure. The way to keep up old customs is to enjoy
old customs; the way to be satisfied with the present state of
things, is to enjoy that state of things. Over the “Cavalier”
mind this world passes with a thrill of delight; there is an
exultation in a daily event, zest in the “regular thing,” joy
at an old feast.’[3]
And that aptly represents himself. Such arrogance as he seemed to have
in early life was the arrogance as much of enjoyment as of detachment
of mind—the _insouciance_ of the old Cavalier as much at least as the
calm of a mind not accessible to the contagion of social feelings. He
always talked, in youth, of his spirits as inconveniently high; and
once wrote to me that he did not think they were quite as ‘boisterous’
as they had been, and that his fellow-creatures were not sorry for the
abatement; nevertheless, he added, ‘I am quite fat, gross, and ruddy.’
He was, indeed, excessively fond of hunting, vaulting, and almost all
muscular effort, so that his life would be wholly misconceived by anyone
who, hearing of his ‘detachment’ of thought, should picture his mind as
a vigilantly observant, far-away intelligence, such as Hawthorne’s, for
example. He liked to be in the thick of the _mêlée_ when talk grew warm,
though he was never so absorbed in it as not to keep his mind cool.
As I said, Bagehot was a Somersetshire man, with all the richness
of nature and love for the external glow of life which the most
characteristic counties of the South-west of England contrive to give to
their most characteristic sons:—
‘This north-west corner of Spain,’ he wrote once to a newspaper
from the Pyrenees, ‘is the only place out of England where I
should like to live. It is a sort of better Devonshire; the
coast is of the same kind, the sun is more brilliant, the sea
is more brilliant, and there are mountains in the background.
I have seen some more beautiful places and many grander, but I
should not like to live in them. As Mr. Emerson puts it, “I do
not want to go to heaven before my time.” My English nature by
early use and long habit is tied to a certain kind of scenery,
soon feels the want of it, and is apt to be alarmed as well as
pleased at perpetual snow and all sorts of similar beauties.
But here, about San Sebastian, you have the best England can
give you (at least if you hold, as I do, that Devonshire is
the finest of our counties), and the charm, the ineffable,
indescribable charm of the South too. Probably the sun has some
secret effect on the nervous system that makes one inclined to
be pleased, but the golden light lies upon everything, and one
fancies that one is charmed only by the outward loveliness.’
The vivacity and warm colouring of the landscapes of the South of England
certainly had their full share in moulding his tastes, and possibly even
his style.
Bagehot took the mathematical scholarship with his Bachelor’s degree in
the University of London in 1846, and the gold medal in Intellectual and
Moral Philosophy with his Master’s degree in 1848, in reading for which
he mastered for the first time those principles of political economy
which were to receive so much illustration from his genius in later
years. But at this time philosophy, poetry, and theology had, I think,
a much greater share of his attention than any narrow and more sharply
defined science. Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Martineau and John Henry Newman, all in their way exerted a great
influence over his mind, and divided, not unequally, with the authors
whom he was bound to study—that is, the Greek philosophers, together
with Hume, Kant, J. S. Mill, and Sir William Hamilton—the time at his
disposal. I have no doubt that for seven or eight years of his life the
Roman Catholic Church had a great fascination for his imagination, though
I do not think that he was ever at all near conversion. He was intimate
with all Dr. Newman’s writings. And of these the Oxford sermons, and the
poems in the _Lyra Apostolica_ afterwards separately published—partly,
I believe, on account of the high estimate of them which Bagehot had
himself expressed—were always his special favourites. The little poetry
he wrote—and it is evident that he never had the kind of instinct for,
or command of, language which is the first condition of genuine poetic
genius—seems to me to have been obviously written under the spell which
Dr. Newman’s own few but finely-chiselled poems had cast upon him. If
I give one specimen of Bagehot’s poems, it is not that I think it in
any way an adequate expression of his powers, but for a very different
reason, because it will show those who have inferred from his other
writings that his mind never deeply concerned itself with religion, how
great is their mistake. Nor is there any real poverty of resource in
these lines, except perhaps in the awkward mechanism of some of them.
They were probably written when he was twenty-three or twenty-four.
‘TO THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.
‘“Casta inceste.”—_Lucretius._
‘Thy lamp of faith is brightly trimmed,
Thy eager eye is not yet dimmed,
Thy stalwart step is yet unstayed,
Thy words are well obeyed.
‘Thy proud voice vaunts of strength from heaven,
Thy proud foes carp, “By hell’s art given:”
No Titan thou of earth-born bands,
Strange Church of hundred hands.
‘Nursed without knowledge, born of night,
With hand of power and thoughts of light,
As Britain seas, far reachingly
O’er-rul’st thou history.
‘Wild as La Pucelle in her hour,
O’er prostrate realms with awe-girt power
Thou marchest stedfast on thy path
Through wonder, love, and wrath.
‘And will thy end be such as hers,
O’erpowered by earthly mail-clad powers,
Condemned for cruel, magic art,
Though awful, bold of heart?
‘Through thorn-clad Time’s unending waste
With ardent step alone thou strayest,
As Jewish scape-goats tracked the wild,
Unholy, consecrate, defiled.
‘Use not thy truth in manner rude
To rule for gain the multitude,
Or thou wilt see that truth depart,
To seek some holier heart;
‘Then thou wilt watch thy errors lorn,
O’erspread by shame, o’erswept by scorn,
In lonely want without hope’s smile,
As Tyre her weed-clad Isle.
‘Like once thy chief, thou bear’st Christ’s name;
Like him thou hast denied his shame,
Bold, eager, skilful, confident,
Oh, now like him repent!’
That has certainly no sign of the hand of the master in it, for the
language is not moulded and vivified by the thought, but the thought
itself is fine. And there is still better evidence than these lines
would afford, of the fascination which the Roman Catholic Church had for
Bagehot. A year or two later, in the letters on the _coup d’état_, to
which I shall soon have to refer, there occurs the following passage.
(He is trying to explain how the cleverness, the moral restlessness,
and intellectual impatience of the French, all tend to unfit them for a
genuine Parliamentary government):—
‘I do not know that I can exhibit the way these qualities of
the French character operate on their opinions better than by
telling you how the Roman Catholic Church deals with them.
I have rather attended to it since I came here. It gives
sermons almost an interest, their being in French, and to those
curious in intellectual matters, it is worth observing. In
other times, and even now in out-of-the-way Spain, I suppose
it may be true that the Catholic Church has been opposed to
inquiry and reasoning. But it is not so now and here. Loudly
from the pens of a hundred writers, from the tongues of a
thousand pulpits, in every note of thrilling scorn and exulting
derision, she proclaims the contrary. Be she Christ’s workman
or Antichrist’s, she knows her work too well. “Reason, reason,
reason!” exclaims she to the philosophers of this world. “Put
in practice what you teach if you would have others believe
it. Be consistent. Do not prate to us of private judgment,
when you are but yourselves repeating what you heard in the
nursery, ill-mumbled remnants of a Catholic tradition. No;
exemplify what you command; inquire and make search. Seek,
and we warn you that ye will never find, yet do as ye will.
Shut yourselves up in a room, make your mind a blank, go
down (as you speak) into the depth of your consciousness,
scrutinise the mental structure, inquire for the elements of
belief,—spend years, your best years, in the occupation,—and
at length, when your eyes are dim, and your brain hot, and
your hands unsteady, then reckon what you have gained. See
if you cannot count on your fingers the certainties you have
reached; reflect which of them you doubted yesterday, which
you may disbelieve to-morrow; or rather, make haste—assume at
random some essential _credenda_,—write down your inevitable
postulates, enumerate your necessary axioms, toil on, toil
on, spin your spider’s web, adore your own soul, or if ye
prefer it, choose some German nostrum; try an intellectual
intuition, or the pure reason, or the intelligible ideas, or
the mesmeric clairvoyance, and when so, or somehow, you have
attained your results, try them on mankind. Don’t go out into
the byeways and hedges; it is unnecessary. Ring a bell, call in
the servants, give them a course of lectures, cite Aristotle,
review Descartes, panegyrise Plato, and see if the bonne will
understand you. It is you that say _Vox populi, vox Dei_. You
see the people reject you. Or, suppose you succeed,—what you
call succeeding. Your books are read; for three weeks or even
a season you are the idol of the _salons_. Your hard words are
on the lips of women; then a change comes—a new actress appears
at the Théâtre Français or the Opéra; her charms eclipse your
theories; or a great catastrophe occurs; political liberty, it
is said, is annihilated. _Il faut se faire mouchard_, is the
observation of scoffers. Anyhow you are forgotten. Fifty years
may be the gestation of a philosophy, not three its life.
Before long, before you go to your grave, your six disciples
leave you for some newer master, or to set up for themselves.
The poorest priest in the remotest region of the Basses-Alpes
has more power over men’s souls than human cultivation. His
ill-mouthed masses move women’s souls—can you? Ye scoff at
Jupiter, yet he at least was believed in, you never have been.
Idol for idol, the _de_throned is better than the _un_throned.
No, if you would reason, if you would teach, if you would
speculate,—come to us. We have our premises ready; years
upon years before you were born, intellects whom the best of
you delight to magnify, toiled to systematise the creed of
ages. Years upon years after you are dead, better heads than
yours will find new matter there to define, to divide, to
arrange. Consider the hundred volumes of Aquinas. Which of
you desire a higher life than that;—to deduce, to subtilise,
discriminate, systematise, and decide the highest truth, and
to be believed? Yet such was his luck, his enjoyment. He was
what you would be. No, no, _credite, credite_. Ours is the
life of speculation. The cloister is the home for the student.
Philosophy is stationary, Catholicism progressive. _You_ call.
_We_ are heard,” &c. So speaks each preacher, according to his
ability. And when the dust and noise of present controversies
have passed away, and, in the interior of the night, some grave
historian writes out the tale of half-forgotten times, let him
not forget to observe that, profoundly as the mediæval Church
subdued the superstitious cravings of a painful and barbarous
age, in after-years she dealt more discerningly still with the
feverish excitement, the feeble vanities, and the dogmatic
impatience of an over-intellectual generation.’[4]
It is obvious, I think, both from the poem, and from these reflections,
that what attracted Bagehot in the Church of Rome was the historical
prestige and social authority which she had accumulated in believing and
uncritical ages for use in the unbelieving and critical age in which we
live,—while what he condemned and dreaded in her was her tendency to use
her power over the multitude for purposes of a low ambition.
And as I am on this subject, this will be, I think, the best opportunity
I shall have to say what I have got to say of Bagehot’s later religious
belief, without returning to it when I have to deal with a period in
which the greatest part of his spare intellectual energy was given to
other subjects. I do not think that the religious affections were very
strong in Bagehot’s mind, but the primitive religious instincts certainly
were. From childhood he was what he certainly remained to the last, in
spite of the rather antagonistic influence of the able scientific group
of men from whom he learned so much—a thorough transcendentalist, by
which I mean one who could never doubt that there was a real foundation
of the universe distinct from the outward show of its superficial
qualities, and that the substance is never exhaustively expressed in
these qualities. He often repeats in his essays Shelley’s fine line,
‘Lift not the painted veil which those who live call life,’ and the
essence at least of the idea in it haunted him from his very childhood.
In the essay on ‘Hartley Coleridge’—perhaps the most perfect in style
of any of his writings—he describes most powerfully, and evidently in
great measure from his own experience, the mysterious confusion between
appearances and realities which so bewildered little Hartley,—the
difficulty that he complained of in distinguishing between the various
Hartleys,—‘picture Hartley,’ ‘shadow Hartley,’ and between Hartley the
subject and Hartley the object, the enigmatic blending of which last
two Hartleys the child expressed by catching hold of his own arm, and
then calling himself the ‘catch-me-fast Hartley.’ And in dilating on
this bewildering experience of the child’s, Bagehot borrows from his own
recollections:—
‘All children have a world of their own, as distinct from
that of the grown people who gravitate around them, as the
dreams of girlhood from our prosaic life, or the ideas of the
kitten that plays with the falling leaves, from those of her
carnivorous mother that catches mice, and is sedulous in her
domestic duties. But generally about this interior existence
children are dumb. You have warlike ideas, but you cannot say
to a sinewy relative, “My dear aunt, I wonder when the big
bush in the garden will begin to walk about; I’m sure it’s a
Crusader, and I was cutting it all the day with my steel sword.
But what do you think, aunt? for I’m puzzled about its legs,
because you see, aunt, it has only _one_ stalk—and besides,
aunt, the leaves.” You cannot remark this in secular life, but
you hack at the infelicitous bush till you do not wholly reject
the idea that your small garden is Palestine, and yourself the
most adventurous of knights.’[5]
They have a tradition in the family that this is but a fragment from
Bagehot’s own imaginative childhood, and certainly this visionary
element in him was very vivid to the last. However, the transcendental
or intellectual basis of religious belief was soon strengthened in him,
as readers of his remarkable paper on Bishop Butler will easily see, by
those moral and retributive instincts which warn us of the meaning and
consequences of guilt:—
‘The moral principle,’ he wrote in that essay, ‘whatever may
be said to the contrary by complacent thinkers, is really
and to most men a principle of fear.... Conscience is the
condemnation of ourselves; we expect a penalty. As the Greek
proverb teaches, “Where there is shame, there is fear.”... How
to be free from this is the question. How to get loose from
this—how to be rid of the secret tie which binds the strong man
and cramps his pride, and makes him angry at the beauty of the
universe, which will not let him go forth like a great animal,
like the king of the forest, in the glory of his might, but
which restrains him with an inner fear and a secret foreboding
that if he do but exalt himself he shall be abased, if he do
but set forth his own dignity he will offend ONE who will
deprive him of it. This, as has often been pointed out, is the
source of the bloody rites of heathendom.’[6]
And then, after a powerful passage, in which he describes the sacrificial
superstitions of men like Achilles, he returns, with a flash of his own
peculiar humour, to Bishop Butler, thus:—
‘Of course it is not this kind of fanaticism that we impute
to a prelate of the English Church; human sacrifices are not
respectable, and Achilles was not rector of Stanhope. But
though the costume and circumstances of life change, the human
heart does not; its feelings remain. The same anxiety, the same
consciousness of personal sin, which lead, in barbarous times,
to what has been described, show themselves in civilised life
as well. In this quieter period, their great manifestation is
scrupulosity;’[7]
which he goes on to describe as a sort of inexhaustible anxiety for
perfect compliance with the minutest positive commands which may be
made the condition of forgiveness for the innumerable lapses of moral
obligation. I am not criticising the paper, or I should point out that
Bagehot failed in it to draw out the distinction between the primitive
moral instinct and the corrupt superstition into which it runs; but I
believe that he recognised the weight of this moral testimony of the
conscience to a divine Judge, as well as the transcendental testimony of
the intellect to an eternal substance of things, to the end of his life.
And certainly in the reality of human free-will as the condition of all
genuine moral life, he firmly believed. In his ‘Physics and Politics’—the
subtle and original essay upon which, in conjunction with the essay on
the ‘English Constitution,’ Bagehot’s reputation as a European thinker
chiefly rests—he repeatedly guards himself (for instance, pp. 9, 10)
against being supposed to think that in accepting the principle of
evolution, he has accepted anything inconsistent either with spiritual
creation, or with the free will of man. On the latter point he adds,
‘No doubt the modern doctrine of the “conservation of force,”
if applied to decision, is inconsistent with free-will; if you
hold that force is “never lost or gained,” you cannot hold that
there is a real gain, a sort of new creation of it in free
volition. But I have nothing to do here with the universal
“conservation of force.” The conception of the nervous organs
as stores of will-made power, does not raise or need so vast a
discussion.’[8]
And in the same book he repeatedly uses the expression ‘Providence,’
evidently in its natural meaning, to express the ultimate force at work
behind the march of ‘evolution.’ Indeed, in conversation with me on this
subject, he often said how much higher a conception of the creative mind,
the new Darwinian ideas seemed to him to have introduced, as compared
with those contained in what is called the argument from contrivance and
design. On the subject of personal immortality, too, I do not think that
Bagehot ever wavered. He often spoke, and even wrote, of ‘that vague
sense of eternal continuity which is always about the mind, and which no
one could bear to lose,’ and described it as being much more important to
us than it even appears to be, important as that is; for, he said, ‘when
we think we are thinking of the past, we are only thinking of a future
that is to be like it.’ But with the exception of these cardinal points,
I could hardly say how much Bagehot’s mind was or was not affected by
the great speculative controversies of later years. Certainly he became
much more doubtful concerning the force of the historical evidence of
Christianity than I ever was, and rejected, I think, entirely, though
on what amount of personal study he had founded his opinion I do not
know, the Apostolic origin of the fourth Gospel. Possibly his mind may
have been latterly in suspense as to miracle altogether, though I am
pretty sure that he had not come to a negative conclusion. He belonged,
in common with myself, during the last years of his life, to a society
in which these fundamental questions were often discussed; but he seldom
spoke in it, and told me very shortly before his death that he shrank
from such discussions on religious points, feeling that, in debates of
this kind, they were not and could not be treated with anything like
thoroughness. On the whole, I think, the cardinal article of his faith
would be adequately represented even in the latest period of his life by
the following passage in his essay on Bishop Butler:—
‘In every step of religious argument we require the assumption,
the belief, the faith, if the word is better, in an absolutely
_perfect_ Being; in and by whom we are, who is omnipotent
as well as most holy; who moves on the face of the whole
world, and ruleth all things by the word of his power. If we
grant this, the difficulty of the opposition between what
is here called the natural and the supernatural religion is
removed; and without granting it, that difficulty is perhaps
insuperable. It follows from the very idea and definition of
an infinitely perfect Being, that he is within us as well as
without us,—ruling the clouds of the air and the fishes of
the sea, as well as the fears and thoughts of men; smiling
through the smile of nature as well as warning with the pain
of conscience,—“sine qualitate, bonum; sine quantitate,
magnum; sine indigentiâ, creatorem; sine situ, præsidentem;
sine habitu, omnia continentem; sine loco, ubique totum; sine
tempore, sempiternum; sine ullâ sui mutatione, mutabilia
facientem, nihilque patientem.” If we assume this, life is
simple; without this, all is dark.’[9]
Evidently, then, though Bagehot held that the doctrine of evolution by
natural selection gave a higher conception of the Creator than the old
doctrine of mechanical design, he never took any materialistic view of
evolution. One of his early essays, written while at college, on some of
the many points of the Kantian philosophy which he then loved to discuss,
concluded with a remarkable sentence, which would probably have fairly
expressed, even at the close of his life, his profound belief in God,
and his partial sympathy with the agnostic view that we are, in great
measure, incapable of apprehending, more than very dimly, His mind or
purposes:—‘Gazing after the infinite essence, we are like men watching
through the drifting clouds for a glimpse of the true heavens on a drear
November day; layer after layer passes from our view, but still the same
immovable grey rack remains.’
After Bagehot had taken his Master’s degree, and while he was still
reading Law in London, and hesitating between the Bar and the family
bank, there came as Principal to University Hall (which is a hall of
residence in connection with University College, London, established by
the Presbyterians and Unitarians after the passing of the Dissenters’
Chapel Act), the man who had, I think, a greater intellectual fascination
for Bagehot than any of his contemporaries—Arthur Hugh Clough, Fellow
of Oriel College, Oxford, and author of various poems of great genius,
more or less familiar to the public, though Clough is perhaps better
known as the subject of the exquisite poem written on his death in
1861, by his friend Matthew Arnold—the poem to which he gave the name
of ‘Thyrsis’—than by even the most popular of his own. Bagehot had
subscribed for the erection of University Hall, and took an active
part at one time on its council. Thus he saw a good deal of Clough,
and did what he could to mediate between that enigma to Presbyterian
parents—a college-head who held himself serenely neutral on almost
all moral and educational subjects interesting to parents and pupils,
except the observance of disciplinary rules—and the managing body who
bewildered him and were by him bewildered. I don’t think either Bagehot
or Clough’s other friends were very successful in their mediation, but
he at least gained in Clough a cordial friend, and a theme of profound
intellectual and moral interest to himself which lasted him his life, and
never failed to draw him into animated discussion long after Clough’s
own premature death; and I think I can trace the effect which some of
Clough’s writings had on Bagehot’s mind to the very end of his career.
There were some points of likeness between Bagehot and Clough, but many
more of difference. Both had the capacity for boyish spirits in them,
and the florid colour which usually accompanies a good deal of animal
vigour; both were reserved men, with a great dislike of anything like
the appearance of false sentiment, and both were passionate admirers of
Wordsworth’s poetry; but Clough was slightly lymphatic, with a great
tendency to unexpressed and unacknowledged discouragement, and to the
paralysis of silent embarrassment when suffering from such feelings,
while Bagehot was keen, and very quickly evacuated embarrassing
positions, and never returned to them. When however, Clough was happy
and at ease, there was a calm and silent radiance in his face, and his
head was set with a kind of stateliness on his shoulders, that gave him
almost an Olympian air; but this would sometimes vanish in a moment into
an embarrassed taciturnity that was quite uncouth. One of his friends
declares that the man who was said to be ‘a cross between a schoolboy
and a bishop,’ must have been like Clough. There was in Clough, too, a
large Chaucerian simplicity and a flavour of homeliness, so that now
and then, when the light shone into his eyes, there was something, in
spite of the air of fine scholarship and culture, which reminded one of
the best likenesses of Burns. It was of Clough, I believe, that Emerson
was thinking (though, knowing Clough intimately as he did, he was of
course speaking mainly in joke) when he described the Oxford of that day
thus:—‘“Ah,” says my languid Oxford gentleman, “nothing new, and nothing
true, and no matter.”’ No saying could misrepresent Clough’s really
buoyant and simple character more completely than that; but doubtless
many of his sayings and writings, treating, as they did, most of the
greater problems of life as insoluble, and enjoining a self-possessed
composure under the discovery of their insolubility, conveyed an
impression very much like this to men who came only occasionally in
contact with him. Bagehot, in his article on Crabb Robinson, says that
the latter, who in those days seldom remembered names, always described
Clough as ‘that admirable and accomplished man—you know whom I mean—the
one who never says anything.’ And certainly Clough was often taciturn to
the last degree, or if he opened his lips, delighted to open them only
to scatter confusion by discouraging, in words at least, all that was
then called earnestness—as, for example, by asking, ‘Was it ordained that
twice two should make four, simply for the intent that boys and girls
should be cut to the heart that they do not make five? Be content; when
the veil is raised, perhaps they will make five! Who knows?’[10]
Clough’s chief fascination for Bagehot was, I think, that he had as
a poet in some measure rediscovered, at all events realised, as few
ever realised before, the enormous difficulty of finding truth—a
difficulty which he somewhat paradoxically held to be enhanced rather
than diminished by the intensity of the truest modern passion for it.
The stronger the desire, he teaches, the greater is the danger of
illegitimately satisfying that desire by persuading ourselves that what
we _wish_ to believe, is true, and the greater the danger of ignoring the
actual confusions of human things:—
‘Rules baffle instincts, instincts rules,
Wise men are bad, and good are fools,
Facts evil, wishes vain appear,
We cannot go, why are we here?
‘Oh, may we, for assurance’ sake,
Some arbitrary judgment take,
And wilfully pronounce it clear,
For this or that ’tis, we are here?
‘Or is it right, and will it do
To pace the sad confusion through,
And say, it does not yet appear
What we shall be—what we are here?’
This warning to withhold judgment and not cheat ourselves into beliefs
which our own imperious desire to believe had alone engendered, is given
with every variety of tone and modulation, and couched in all sorts of
different forms of fancy and apologue, throughout Clough’s poems. He
insists on ‘the _ruinous_ force of the will’ to persuade us of illusions
which please us; of the tendency of practical life to give us beliefs
which suit that practical life, but are none the truer for that; and is
never weary of warning us that a firm belief in a falsity can be easily
generated:—
‘_Action will furnish belief_,—but will that belief be the true one?
This is the point, you know. However, it doesn’t much matter.
What one wants, I suppose, is to predetermine the action,
So as to make it entail, not a chance belief, but the true one.’
This practical preaching, which Clough urges in season and out of season,
met an answering chord in Bagehot’s mind, not so much in relation to
religious belief as in relation to the over-haste and over-eagerness of
human conduct, and I can trace the effect of it in all his writings,
political and otherwise, to the end of his life. Indeed, it affected him
much more in later days than in the years immediately following his first
friendship with Clough. With all his boyish dash, there was something
in Bagehot even in youth which dreaded precipitancy, and not only
precipitancy itself, but those moral situations tending to precipitancy
which men who have no minds of their own to make up, so often court. In
later life he pleased himself by insisting that, on Darwin’s principle,
civilised men, with all the complex problems of modern life to puzzle
them, suspend their judgment so little, and are so eager for action,
only because they have inherited from the earlier, simpler, and more
violent ages, an excessive predisposition to action unsuited to our epoch
and dangerous to our future development. But it was Clough, I think,
who first stirred in Bagehot’s mind this great dread of ‘the ruinous
force of the will,’ a phrase he was never weary of quoting, and which
might almost be taken as the motto of his ‘Physics and Politics,’ the
great conclusion of which is that in the ‘age of discussion,’ grand
policies and high-handed diplomacy and sensational legislation of all
kinds will become rarer and rarer, because discussion will point out all
the difficulties of such policies in relation to a state of existence
so complex as our own, and will in this way tend to repress the excess
of practical energy handed down to us by ancestors to whom life was a
sharper, simpler, and more perilous affair.
But the time for Bagehot’s full adoption of the suspensive principle in
public affairs was not yet. In 1851 he went to Paris, shortly before
the _coup d’état_. And while all England was assailing Louis Napoleon
(justly enough, as I think) for his perfidy, and his impatience of
the self-willed Assembly he could not control, Bagehot was preparing
a deliberate and very masterly defence of that bloody and high-handed
act. Even Bagehot would, I think, if pressed judiciously in later life,
have admitted—though I can’t say he ever _did_—that the _coup d’état_
was one of the best illustrations of ‘the ruinous force of the will’ in
engendering, or at least crystallising, a false intellectual conclusion
as to the political possibilities of the future, which recent history
could produce. Certainly he always spoke somewhat apologetically of
these early letters, though I never heard him expressly retract their
doctrine. In 1851 a knot of young Unitarians, of whom I was then one,
headed by the late Mr. J. Langton Sanford—afterwards the historian of
the Great Rebellion, who survived Bagehot barely four months—had engaged
to help for a time in conducting the _Inquirer_, which then was, and
still is, the chief literary and theological organ of the Unitarian
body. Our _régime_ was, I imagine, a time of great desolation for the
very tolerant and thoughtful constituency for whom we wrote; and many of
them, I am confident, yearned, and were fully justified in yearning, for
those better days when this tyranny of ours should be overpast. Sanford
and Osler did a good deal to throw cold water on the rather optimist and
philanthropic politics of the most sanguine, because the most benevolent
and open-hearted of Dissenters. Roscoe criticised their literary work
from the point of view of a devotee of the Elizabethan poets; and I
attempted to prove to them in distinct heads, first, that their laity
ought to have the protection afforded by a liturgy against the arbitrary
prayers of their ministers; and next, that at least the great majority
of their sermons ought to be suppressed, and the habit of delivering
them discontinued almost altogether. Only a denomination of ‘just men’
trained in tolerance for generations, and in that respect, at least,
made all but ‘perfect,’ would have endured it at all; but I doubt if
any of us caused the Unitarian body so much grief as Bagehot, who never
was a Unitarian, but who contributed a series of brilliant letters on
the _coup d’état_, in which he trod just as heavily on the toes of his
colleagues as he did on those of the public by whom the _Inquirer_ was
taken. In those letters he not only, as I have already shown, eulogised
the Catholic Church, but he supported the Prince-President’s military
violence, attacked the freedom of the Press in France, maintained
that the country was wholly unfit for true Parliamentary government,
and—worst of all perhaps—insinuated a panegyric on Louis Napoleon
himself, asserting that he had been far better prepared for the duties of
a statesman by gambling on the turf, than he would have been by poring
over the historical and political dissertations of the wise and the good.
This was Bagehot’s day of cynicism. The seven letters which he wrote on
the _coup d’état_ were certainly very exasperating, and yet they were
not caricatures of his real thought, for his private letters at the time
were more cynical still. Crabb Robinson, in speaking of him, used ever
afterwards to describe him to me as ‘that friend of yours—you know whom
I mean, you rascal!—who wrote those abominable, those most disgraceful
letters on the _coup d’état_—I did not forgive him for years after.’ Nor
do I wonder, even now, that a sincere friend of constitutional freedom
and intellectual liberty, like Crabb Robinson, found them difficult to
forgive. They were light and airy, and even flippant on a very grave
subject. They made nothing of the Prince’s perjury; and they took
impertinent liberties with all the dearest prepossessions of the readers
of the _Inquirer_, and assumed their sympathy just where Bagehot knew
that they would be most revolted by his opinions. Nevertheless, they had
a vast deal of truth in them, and no end of ability, and I hope that
there will be many to read them with interest now that they are here
republished. There is a good deal of the raw material of history in
them, and certainly I doubt if Bagehot ever again hit the satiric vein
of argument so well. Here is a passage that will bear taking out of its
context, and therefore not so full of the shrewd malice of these letters
as many others, but which will illustrate their ability. It is one in
which Bagehot maintained for the first time the view (which I believe he
subsequently almost persuaded English politicians to accept, though in
1852 it was a mere flippant novelty, a paradox, and a heresy) that free
institutions are apt to succeed with a stupid people, and to founder with
a ready-witted and vivacious one. After broaching this, he goes on:—
‘I see you are surprised. You are going to say to me as
Socrates did to Polus, “My young friend, _of course_ you are
right, but will you explain what you mean, as you are not yet
intelligible?” I will do so as well as I can, and endeavour to
make good what I say, not from a prior demonstration of my own,
but from the details of the present and the facts of history.
Not to begin by wounding any present susceptibilities, let me
take the Roman character, for, with one great exception—I need
not say to whom I allude—they are the great political people
of history. Now is not a certain dulness their most visible
characteristic? What is the history of their speculative
mind? A blank. What their literature? A copy. They have left
not a single discovery in any abstract science, not a single
perfect or well-formed work of high imagination. The Greeks,
the perfection of human and accomplished genius, bequeathed
to mankind the ideal forms of self-idolising art; the Romans
imitated and admired. The Greeks explained the laws of nature;
the Romans wondered and despised. The Greeks invented a system
of numerals second only to that now in use; the Romans counted
to the end of their days with the clumsy apparatus which
we still call by their name. The Greeks made a capital and
scientific calendar; the Romans began their month when the
Pontifex Maximus happened to spy out the new moon. Throughout
Latin literature this is the perpetual puzzle—Why are we free
and they slaves?—we prætors and they barbers? Why do the stupid
people always win and the clever people always lose? I need
not say that in real sound stupidity the English people are
unrivalled. You’ll have more wit, and better wit, in an Irish
street-row than would keep Westminster Hall in humour for five
weeks.... These valuable truths are no discoveries of mine.
They are familiar enough to people whose business it is to
know them. Hear what a douce and aged attorney says of your
peculiarly promising barrister. “Sharp? Oh! yes, yes: he’s too
sharp by half. He isn’t _safe_, not a minute, isn’t that young
man.” “What style, sir,” asked of an East India Director some
youthful aspirant for literary renown, “is most to be preferred
in the composition of official despatches?” “My good fellow,”
responded the ruler of Hindostan, “the style _as we_ like, is
the Humdrum.”’[11]
The permanent value of these papers is due to the freshness of their
impressions of the French capital, and their true criticisms of Parisian
journalism and society; their perverseness consists in this, that
Bagehot steadily ignored in them the distinction between the duty of
resisting anarchy, and the assumption of the Prince-President that this
could only be done by establishing his own dynasty, and deferring _sine
die_ that great constitutional experiment which is now once more, no
thanks to him or his Government, on its trial; an experiment which, for
anything we see, had at least as good a chance then as now, and under
a firm and popular chief of the executive like Prince Louis, would
probably have had a better chance then than it has now under MacMahon.
I need hardly say that in later life Bagehot was by no means blind to
the political shortcomings of Louis Napoleon’s _régime_, as the article
republished from the _Economist_, in the second appendix to this volume,
sufficiently proves. Moreover, he rejoiced heartily in the moderation
of the republican statesmen during the severe trials of the months
which just preceded his own death, in 1877, and expressed his sincere
belief—confirmed by the history of the last year and a half—that the
existing Republic has every prospect of life and growth.
During that residence in Paris, Bagehot, though, as I have said, in a
somewhat cynical frame of mind, was full of life and courage, and was
beginning to feel his own genius, which perhaps accounts for the air of
recklessness so foreign to him, which he never adopted either before
or since. During the riots he was a good deal in the streets, and from
a mere love of art helped the Parisians to construct some of their
barricades, notwithstanding the fact that his own sympathy was with those
who shot down the barricades, not with those who manned them. He climbed
over the rails of the Palais Royal on the morning of December 2nd to
breakfast, and used to say that he was the only person who did breakfast
there on that day. Victor Hugo is certainly wrong in asserting that no
one expected Louis Napoleon to use force, and that the streets were as
full as usual when the people were shot down, for the gates of the Palais
Royal were shut quite early in the day. Bagehot was very much struck by
the ferocious look of the Montagnards.
‘Of late,’ he wrote to me, ‘I have been devoting my entire
attention to the science of barricades, which I found amusing.
They have systematised it in a way which is pleasing to the
cultivated intellect. We had only one good day’s fighting,
and I naturally kept out of cannon-shot. But I took a quiet
walk over the barricades in the morning, and superintended the
construction of three with as much keenness as if I had been
clerk of the works. You’ve seen lots, of course, at Berlin, but
I should not think those Germans were up to a real Montagnard,
who is the most horrible being to the eye I ever saw,—sallow,
sincere, sour fanaticism, with grizzled moustaches, and a
strong wish to shoot you rather than not. The Montagnards are a
scarce commodity, the real race—only three or four, if so many,
to a barricade. If you want a Satan any odd time, they’ll do;
only I hope that _he_ don’t believe in human brotherhood. It
is not possible to respect any one who does, and I should be
loth to confound the notion of _our_ friend’s solitary grandeur
by supposing him to fraternise,’ &c. ‘I think M. Buonaparte is
entitled to great praise. He has very good heels to his boots,
and the French just want treading down, and nothing else—calm,
cruel, business-like oppression, to take the dogmatic conceit
out of their heads. The spirit of generalisation which, John
Mill tells us, honourably distinguishes the French mind, has
come to this, that every Parisian wants his head _tapped_ in
order to get the formulæ and nonsense out of it. And it would
pay to perform the operation, for they are very clever on what
is within the limit of their experience, and all that can be
“expanded” in terms of it, but beyond, it is all generalisation
and folly.... So I am for any carnivorous government.’
And again, in the same letter:—
‘Till the Revolution came I had no end of trouble to find
conversation, but now they’ll talk against everybody, and
against the President like mad—and they talk immensely well,
and the language is like a razor, capital if you are skilful,
but sure to cut you if you aren’t. A fellow can talk German
in crude forms, and I don’t see it sounds any worse, but this
stuff is horrid unless you get it _quite_ right. A French lady
made a striking remark to me:—“_C’est une révolution qui a
sauvé la France. Tous mes amis sont mis en prison_.” She was
immensely delighted that such a pleasing way of saving her
country had been found.’
Of course the style of these familiar private letters conveys a gross
caricature not only of Bagehot’s maturer mind, but even of the judgment
of the published letters, and I quote them only to show that at the time
when he composed these letters on the _coup d’état_, Bagehot’s mood was
that transient mood of reckless youthful cynicism through which so many
men of genius pass. I do not think he had at any time any keen sympathy
with the multitude, _i.e._, with masses of unknown men. And that he ever
felt what has since then been termed ‘the enthusiasm of humanity,’ the
sympathy with ‘the toiling millions of men sunk in labour and pain,’
he himself would strenuously have denied. Such sympathy, even when men
really desire to feel it, is, indeed, very much oftener coveted than
actually felt by men as a living motive; and I am not quite sure that
Bagehot would have even wished to feel it. Nevertheless, he had not the
faintest trace of real hardness about him towards people whom he knew
and understood. He could not bear to give pain; and when, in rare cases
by youthful inadvertence, he gave it needlessly, I have seen how much
and what lasting vexation it caused him. Indeed, he was capable of great
sacrifices to spare his friends but a little suffering.
It was, I think, during his stay in Paris that Bagehot finally decided
to give up the notion of practising at the Bar, and to join his father
in the Somersetshire Bank and in his other business as a merchant and
ship-owner. This involved frequent visits to London and Liverpool, and
Bagehot soon began to take a genuine interest in the larger issues of
commerce, and maintained to the end that ‘business is much more amusing
than pleasure.’ Nevertheless, he could not live without the intellectual
life of London, and never stayed more than six weeks at a time in the
country without finding some excuse for going to town; and long before
his death he made his home there. Hunting was the only sport he really
cared for. He was a dashing rider, and a fresh wind was felt blowing
through his earlier literary efforts, as though he had been thinking
in the saddle, an effect wanting in his later essays, where you see
chiefly the calm analysis of a lucid observer. But most of the ordinary
amusements of young people he detested. He used to say that he wished he
could think balls _wicked_, being so stupid as they were, and all ‘the
little blue and pink girls, so like each other,’—a sentiment partly due,
perhaps, to his extreme shortness of sight.
Though Bagehot never doubted the wisdom of his own decision to give up
the law for the life of commerce, he thoroughly enjoyed his legal studies
in his friend the late Mr. Justice Quain’s chambers, and in those of the
present Vice-Chancellor Sir Charles Hall, and he learnt there a good deal
that was of great use to him in later life. Moreover, in spite of his
large capacity for finance and commerce, there were small difficulties in
Bagehot’s way as a banker and merchant which he felt somewhat keenly. He
was always absent-minded about _minutiæ_. For instance, to the last, he
could not correct a proof well, and was sure to leave a number of small
inaccuracies, harshnesses, and slipshodnesses in style, uncorrected.
He declared at one time that he was wholly unable to ‘add up,’ and in
his mathematical exercises in college he had habitually been inaccurate
in trifles. I remember Professor Malden, on returning one of his Greek
exercises, saying to him, with that curiously precise and emphatic
articulation which made every remark of his go so much farther than
that of our other lecturers, ‘Mr. Bagehot, you wage an internecine war
with your aspirates’—not meaning, of course, that he ever left them out
in pronunciation, but that he neglected to put them in in his written
Greek. And to the last, even in his printed Greek quotations, the slips
of this kind were always numerous. This habitual difficulty—due, I
believe, to a preoccupied imagination—in attending to small details, made
a banker’s duties seem irksome and formidable to him at first; and even
to the last, in his most effective financial papers, he would generally
get some one else to look after the precise figures for him. But in
spite of all this, and in spite of a real attraction for the study of
law, he was sure that his head would not stand the hot Courts and heavy
wigs which make the hot Courts hotter, or the night-work of a thriving
barrister in case of success; and he was certainly quite right. Indeed,
had he chosen the Bar, he would have had no leisure for those two or
three remarkable books which have made his reputation,—books which have
been already translated into all the literary and some of the unliterary
languages of Europe, and two of which are, I believe, used as text-books
in some of the American Colleges.[12] Moreover, in all probability,
his life would have been much shorter into the bargain. Soon after his
return from Paris he devoted himself in earnest to banking and commerce,
and also began that series of articles, first for the _Prospective_ and
then for the _National Review_ (which latter periodical he edited in
conjunction with me for several years), the most striking of which he
republished in 1858, under the awkward and almost forbidding title of
‘Estimates of some Englishmen and Scotchmen’—a book which never attracted
the attention it deserved, and which has been long out of print. In
republishing most of these essays as I am now doing,—and a later volume
may, I hope, contain those essays on statesmen and politicians which
are for the present omitted from these,—it is perhaps only fair to say
that Bagehot in later life used to speak ill, much too ill, of his own
early style. He used to declare that his early style affected him like
the ‘jogging of a cart without springs over a very rough road,’ and no
doubt in his earliest essays something abrupt and spasmodic may easily
be detected. Still, this was all so inextricably mingled with flashes of
insight and humour which could ill be spared, that I always protested
against any notion of so revising the essays as to pare down their
excrescences.
I have never understood the comparative failure of this volume of
Bagehot’s early essays; and a comparative failure it was, though I do not
deny that, even at the time, it attracted much attention among the most
accomplished writers of the day, and that I have been urged to republish
it, as I am now doing, by many of the ablest men of my acquaintance.
Obviously, as I have admitted, there are many faults of workmanship
in it. Now and then the banter is forced. Often enough the style is
embarrassed. Occasionally, perhaps, the criticism misses its mark, or
is over-refined. But taken as a whole, I hardly know any book that is
such good reading, that has so much lucid vision in it, so much shrewd
and curious knowledge of the world, so sober a judgment and so dashing a
humour combined. Take this, for instance, out of the paper on ‘The First
Edinburgh Reviewers,’ concerning the judgment passed by Lord Jeffrey on
the poetry of Bagehot’s favourite poet, Wordsworth:—
‘The world has given judgment. Both Mr. Wordsworth and Lord
Jeffrey have received their rewards. The one had his own
generation—the laughter of men, the applause of drawing-rooms,
the concurrence of the crowd; the other, a succeeding age,
the fond enthusiasm of secret students, the lonely rapture of
lonely minds. And each has received according to his kind. If
all cultivated men speak differently because of the existence
of Wordsworth and Coleridge; if not a thoughtful English
book has appeared for years without some trace for good or
for evil of their influence; if sermon-writers subsist upon
their thoughts; if “sacred” poets thrive by translating their
weaker portions into the speech of women; if, when all this
is over, some sufficient part of their writing will ever be
fitting food for wild musing and solitary meditation, surely
this is because they possessed the inner nature—an “intense
and glowing mind”—“the vision and the faculty divine.” But,
if perchance in their weaker moments the great authors of the
Lyrical ballads did ever imagine that the world was to pause
because of their verses, that “Peter Bell” would be popular
in drawing-rooms, that “Christabel” would be perused in the
City, that people of fashion would make a hand-book of the
“Excursion,” it was well for them to be told at once that it
was not so. Nature ingeniously prepared a shrill artificial
voice, which spoke in season and out of season, enough and
more than enough, what will ever be the idea of the cities of
the plain concerning those who live alone among the mountains;
of the frivolous concerning the grave; of the gregarious
concerning the recluse; of those who laugh concerning those who
laugh not; of the common concerning the uncommon; of those who
lend on usury concerning those who lend not; the notions of the
world, of those whom it will not reckon among the righteous.
It said, “This won’t do.” And so in all times will the lovers
of polished Liberalism speak concerning the intense and lonely
“prophet.”’[13]
I choose that passage because it illustrates so perfectly Bagehot’s
double vein, his sympathy with the works of high imagination, and his
clear insight into that busy life which does not and cannot take note
of works of high imagination, and which would not do the work it does,
if it could. And this is the characteristic of all the essays. How
admirably, for instance, in his essay on Shakespeare, does he draw out
the individuality of a poet who is generally supposed to be so completely
hidden in his plays; and with how keen a satisfaction does he discern and
display the prosperous and practical man in Shakespeare—the qualities
which made him a man of substance and a Conservative politician, as well
as the qualities which made him a great dramatist and a great dreamer.
No doubt Bagehot had a strong personal sympathy with the double life.
Somersetshire probably never believed that the imaginative student, the
omnivorous reader, could prosper as a banker and a man of business,
and it was a satisfaction to him to show that he understood the world
far better than the world had ever understood him. Again, how delicate
is his delineation of Hartley Coleridge; how firm and clear his study
of ‘Sir Robert Peel;’[14] and how graphically he paints the literary
pageant of Gibbon’s tame but splendid genius! Certainly the literary
taste of England never made a greater blunder than when it passed by this
remarkable volume of essays with comparatively little notice.
In 1858 Bagehot married the eldest daughter of the Right Honourable
James Wilson, who died two years later in India, whither he had gone as
the financial member of the Indian Council, to reduce to some extent
the financial anarchy which then prevailed there. This marriage gave
Bagehot nineteen years of undisturbed happiness, and certainly led to the
production of his most popular and original, if not in every respect his
most brilliant books. It connected him with the higher world of politics,
without which he would hardly have studied and written as he did on the
English Constitution; and by making him the Editor of the _Economist_ it
compelled him to give his whole mind as much to the theoretic side of
commerce and finance, as his own duties had already compelled him to give
it to the practical side. But when I speak of his marriage as the last
impulse which determined his chief work in life, I do not forget that he
had long been prepared both for political and for financial speculation
by his early education. His father, a man of firm and deliberate
political convictions, had taken a very keen interest in the agitation
for the great Reform Bill of 1832, and had materially helped to return
a Liberal member for his county after it passed. Probably no one in all
England knew the political history of the country since the peace more
accurately than he. Bagehot often said that when he wanted any detail
concerning the English political history of the last half-century, he had
only to ask his father, to obtain it. His uncle, Mr. Vincent Stuckey,
too, was a man of the world, and his house in Langport was a focus of
many interests during Bagehot’s boyhood. Mr. Stuckey had begun life at
the Treasury, and was at one time private secretary to Mr. Huskisson; and
when he gave up that career to take a leading share in the Somersetshire
Bank, he kept up for a long time his house in London, and his relations
with political society there. He was fond of his nephew, as was Bagehot
of him; and there was always a large field of interests, and often there
were men of eminence, to be found in his house. Thus Bagehot had been
early prepared for the wider field of political and financial thought, to
which he gave up so much of his time after his marriage.
I need not say nearly as much on this later aspect of Bagehot’s life as
I have done on its early and more purely literary aspects, because his
services in this direction are already well appreciated by the public.
But this I should like to point out, that he could never have written
as he did on the English Constitution without having acutely studied
living statesmen and their ways of acting on each other; that his book
was essentially the book of a most realistic, because a most vividly
imaginative, observer of the actual world of politics—the book of a
man who was not blinded by habit and use to the enormous difficulties
in the way of ‘government by public meeting,’ and to the secret of the
various means by which in practice those difficulties had been attenuated
or surmounted. It is the book of a meditative man who had mused much
on the strange workings of human instincts, no less than of a quick
observer who had seen much of external life. Had he not studied the men
before he studied the institutions, had he not concerned himself with
individual statesmen before he turned his attention to the mechanism of
our Parliamentary system, he could never have written his book on ‘the
English Constitution.’
I think the same may be said of his book on ‘Physics and Politics,’ a
book in which I find new force and depth every time I take it up afresh.
It is true that Bagehot had a keen sympathy with natural science, that
he devoured all Mr. Darwin’s and Mr. Wallace’s books, and many of a
much more technical kind, as, for example, Professor Huxley’s on the
‘Principles of Physiology,’ and grasped the leading ideas contained in
them with a firmness and precision that left nothing to be desired. But
after all, ‘Physics and Politics’ could never have been written without
that sort of living insight into man which was the life of all his
earlier essays. The notion that a ‘cake of custom,’ of rigid, inviolable
law, was the first requisite for a strong human society, and that the
very cause which was thus essential for the _first_ step of progress—the
step towards unity—was the great danger of the second step—the step
out of uniformity—and was the secret of all arrested and petrified
civilisations, like the Chinese, is an idea which first germinated in
Bagehot’s mind at the time he was writing his cynical letters from Paris
about stupidity being the first requisite of a political people; though I
admit, of course, that it could not have borne the fruit it did, without
Mr. Darwin’s conception of a natural selection through conflict, to
help it on. Such passages as the following could evidently never have
been written by a mere student of Darwinian literature, nor without the
trained imagination exhibited in Bagehot’s literary essays:—
‘No one will ever comprehend the arrested civilisations unless
he sees the strict dilemma of early society. Either men had
no law at all and lived in confused tribes, hardly hanging
together, or they had to obtain a fixed law by processes of
incredible difficulty. Those who surmounted that difficulty
soon destroyed all those that lay in their way who did not.
And then they themselves were caught in their own yoke. The
customary discipline which could only be imposed on any early
men by terrible sanctions, continued with those sanctions, and
killed out of the whole society the propensities to variation
which are the principle of progress. Experience shows how
incredibly difficult it is to get men really to encourage the
principle of originality;’[15]
and, as Bagehot held, for a very good reason, namely, that without a long
accumulated and inherited tendency to discourage originality, society
would never have gained the cohesion requisite for effective common
action against its external foes. No one, I think, who had not studied as
Bagehot had in actual life, first, the vast and unreasoning Conservatism
of politically strong societies, like that of rural England, and next,
the perilous mobility and impressibility of politically weak societies,
like that of Paris, would ever have seen as he did the close connection
of these ideas with Mr. Darwin’s principle of natural selection by
conflict. And here I may mention, by way of illustrating this point, that
Bagehot delighted in observing and expounding the bovine slowness of
rural England in acquiring a new idea. Somersetshire, he used to boast,
would not subscribe 1,000_l._ ‘to be represented by an archangel;’ and in
one letter which I received from him during the Crimean War, he narrated
with great gusto an instance of the tenacity with which a Somersetshire
rustic stuck to his own notion of what was involved in conquering an
enemy. ‘The Somersetshire view,’ he wrote, ‘of the chance of bringing
the war to a successful conclusion is as follows:—_Countryman_: “How
old, zir, be the Zar?”—_Myself_: “About sixty-three.”—_Countryman_:
“Well, now, I can’t think however they be to take he. They do tell I that
Rooshia is a very big place, and if he doo goo right into the middle
of’n, you could not take he, not nohow.” I talked till the train came
(it was at a station), and endeavoured to show how the war might be
finished without capturing the Czar, but I fear without effect. At last
he said, “Well, zir, I hope, _as you do say, zir_, we shall take he,” as
I got into the carriage.’ It is clear that the humorous delight which
Bagehot took in this tenacity and density of rural conceptions, was
partly the cause of the attention which he paid to the subject. No doubt
there was in him a vein of purely instinctive sympathy with this density,
for intellectually he could not even have understood it. Writing on the
intolerable and fatiguing cleverness of French journals, he describes
in one of his Paris letters the true enjoyment he felt in reading a
thoroughly stupid article in the _Herald_ (a Tory paper now no more), and
I believe he was quite sincere. It was, I imagine, a real pleasure to him
to be able to preach, in his last general work, that a ‘cake of custom,’
just sufficiently stiff to make innovation of any kind very difficult,
but not quite stiff enough to make it impossible, is the true condition
of durable progress.
The coolness of his judgment, and his power of seeing both sides of a
question, undoubtedly gave Bagehot’s political opinions considerable
weight with both parties, and I am quite aware that a great majority of
the ablest political thinkers of the time would disagree with me when
I say, that personally I do not rate Bagehot’s sagacity as a practical
politician nearly so highly as I rate his wise analysis of the growth
and _rationale_ of political institutions. Everything he wrote on the
politics of the day was instructive, but, to my mind at least, seldom
decisive, and, as I thought, often not true. He did not feel, and avowed
that he did not feel, much sympathy with the masses, and he attached far
too much relative importance to the refinement of the governing classes.
That, no doubt, is most desirable, if you can combine it with a genuine
consideration for the interests of ‘the toiling millions of men sunk in
labour and pain.’ But experience, I think, sufficiently shows that they
are often, perhaps even generally, incompatible; and that democratic
governments of very low tone may consult more adequately the leading
interests of the ‘dim common populations’ than aristocratic governments
of very high calibre. Bagehot hardly admitted this, and always seemed to
me to think far more of the intellectual and moral tone of governments,
than he did of the intellectual and moral interests of the people
governed.
Again, those who felt most profoundly Bagehot’s influence as a political
thinker, would probably agree with me that it was his leading idea
in politics to discourage anything like too much action of any kind,
legislative or administrative, and most of all anything like an ambitious
colonial or foreign policy. This was not owing to any _doctrinaire_
adhesion to the principle of _laissez-faire_. He supported, hesitatingly
no doubt, but in the end decidedly, the Irish Land Bill, and never
belonged to that straitest sect of the Economists who decry, as contrary
to the laws of economy, and little short of a crime, the intervention of
Government in matters which the conflict of individual self-interests
might possibly be trusted to determine. It was from a very different
point of view that he was so anxious to deprecate ambitious policies,
and curb the practical energies of the most energetic of peoples. Next
to Clough, I think that Sir George Cornewall Lewis had the most powerful
influence over him in relation to political principles. There has been no
statesman in our time whom he liked so much or regretted so deeply; and
he followed him most of all in deprecating the greater part of what is
called political _energy_. Bagehot held with Sir George Lewis that men
in modern days do a great deal too much; that half the public actions,
and a great many of the private actions of men, had better never have
been done; that modern statesmen and modern peoples are far too willing
to burden themselves with responsibilities. He held, too, that men have
not yet sufficiently verified the principles on which action ought to
proceed, and that till they have done so, it would be better far to act
less. Lord Melbourne’s habitual query, ‘Can’t you let it alone?’ seemed
to him, as regarded all new responsibilities, the wisest of hints for our
time. He would have been glad to find a fair excuse for giving up India,
for throwing the Colonies on their own resources, and for persuading the
English people to accept deliberately the place of a fourth or fifth-rate
European power—which was not, in his estimation, a cynical or unpatriotic
wish, but quite the reverse, for he thought that such a course would
result in generally raising the calibre of the national mind, conscience,
and taste. In his ‘Physics and Politics’ he urges generally, as I have
before pointed out, that the practical energy of existing peoples in the
West is far in advance of the knowledge that would alone enable them to
turn that energy to good account. He wanted to see the English a more
leisurely race, taking more time to consider all their actions, and
suspending their decisions on all great policies and enterprises till
either these were well matured, or, as he expected it to be in the great
majority of cases, the opportunity for sensational action was gone by. He
quotes from Clough what really might have been taken as the motto of his
own political creed:—
‘Old things need not be therefore true,
O brother men, nor yet the new;
Ah, still awhile, th’ old thought retain,
And yet consider it again.’
And in all this, if it were advanced rather as a principle of education
than as a principle of political practice, there would be great force.
But when he applied this teaching, not to the individual but to the
State, not to encourage the gradual formation of a new type of character,
but to warn the nation back from a multitude of practical duties of a
simple though arduous kind, such as those, for example, which we have
undertaken in India—duties, the value of which, performed even as they
are, could hardly be overrated, if only because they involve so few
debatable and doubtful assumptions, and are only the elementary tasks
of the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the civilisation of the
future—I think Bagehot made the mistake of attaching far too little value
to the moral instincts of a sagacious people, and too much to the refined
deductions of a singularly subtle intellect. I suspect that the real
effect of suddenly stopping the various safety-valves, by which the spare
energy of our nation is diverted to the useful work of roughly civilising
other lands, would be, not to stimulate the deliberative understanding
of the English people, but to stunt its thinking as well as its acting
powers, and render it more frivolous and more vacant-minded than it is.
In the field of economy there are so many thinkers who are far better
judges of Bagehot’s invaluable work than myself, that I will say a very
few words indeed upon it. It is curious, but I believe it to be almost
universally true, that what may be called the primitive impulse of all
economic _action_, is generally also strong in great economic _thinkers_
and financiers—I mean the saving, or at least the anti-spending,
instinct. It is very difficult to see why it should be so, but I think
it _is_ so. No one was more large-minded in his view of finance than
Bagehot. He preached that, in the case of a rich country like England,
efficiency was vastly more important than the mere reduction of
expenditure, and held that Mr. Gladstone and other great Chancellors of
the Exchequer made a great deal too much of saving for saving’s sake.
None the less he himself had the anti-spending instinct in some strength,
and he was evidently pleased to note its existence in his favourite
economic thinker, Ricardo. Generous as Bagehot was—and no one ever
hesitated less about giving largely for an adequate end—he always told
me, even in boyhood, that spending was disagreeable to him, and that it
took something of an effort to pay away money. In a letter before me,
he tells his correspondent of the marriage of an acquaintance, and adds
that the lady is a Dissenter, ‘and therefore probably rich. Dissenters
don’t spend, _and quite right too_.’ I suppose it takes some feeling of
this kind to give the intellect of a man of high capacity that impulse
towards the study of the laws of the increase of wealth, without which
men of any imagination would be more likely to turn in other directions.
Nevertheless, even as an economist, Bagehot’s most original writing was
due less to his deductions from the fundamental axioms of the modern
science, than to that deep insight into men which he had gained in many
different fields. The essays, published in the _Fortnightly Review_ for
February and May 1876[16]—in which he showed so powerfully how few of
the conditions of the science known to us as ‘political economy’ have
ever been really applicable to any large portion of the globe during
the longest periods of human history—furnish quite an original study in
social history and in human nature. His striking book, ‘Lombard Street,’
is quite as much a study of bankers and bill-brokers as of the principles
of banking. Take, again, Bagehot’s view of the intellectual position and
value of the capitalist classes. Every one who knows his writings in
the _Economist_, knows how he ridiculed the common impression that the
chief service of the capitalist class—that by which they _earn_ their
profits—is merely what the late Mr. Senior used to call ‘abstinence,’
that is, the practice of deferring their enjoyment of their savings
in order that those savings may multiply themselves; and knows too
how inadequate he thought it, merely to add that when capitalists are
themselves managers, they discharge the task of ‘superintending labour’
as well. Bagehot held that the capitalists of a commercial country do—not
merely the saving, and the work of foremen in superintending labour,
but all the difficult intellectual work of commerce besides, and are so
little appreciated as they are, chiefly because they are a dumb class
who are seldom equal to explaining to others the complex processes by
which they estimate the wants of the community, and conceive how best
to supply them. He maintained that capitalists are the great generals
of commerce, that they plan its whole strategy, determine its tactics,
direct its commissariat, and incur the danger of great defeats, as well
as earn, if they do not always gain, the credit of great victories.
Here again is a new illustration of the light which Bagehot’s keen
insight into men, taken in connection with his own intimate understanding
of the commercial field, brought into his economic studies. He brought
life into these dry subjects from almost every side; for instance, in
writing to the _Spectator_, many years ago, about the cliff scenery of
Cornwall, and especially about the petty harbour of Boscastle, with its
fierce sea and its two breakwaters—which leave a mere ‘Temple Bar’ for
the ships to get in at—a harbour of which he says that ‘the principal
harbour of Liliput probably had just this look,’—he goes back in
imagination at once to the condition of the country at the time when a
great number of such petty harbours as these were essential to such trade
as there was, and shows that at that time the Liverpool and London docks
not only could not have been built for want of money, but would have been
of no use if they had been built, since the auxiliary facilities which
alone make such emporia useful did not exist. ‘Our old gentry built on
their own estates as they could, and if their estates were near some
wretched little haven, they were much pleased. The sea was the railway of
those days. It brought, as it did to Ellangowan, in Dirk Hatteraick’s
time, brandy for the men and pinners for the women, to the loneliest
of coast castles.’ It was by such vivid illustrations as this of the
conditions of a very different commercial life from our own, that Bagehot
lit up the ‘dismal science,’ till in his hands it became both picturesque
and amusing.
Bagehot made two or three efforts to get into Parliament, but after an
illness which he had in 1868 he deliberately abandoned the attempt, and
held, I believe rightly, that his political judgment was all the sounder,
as well as his health the better, for a quieter life. Indeed, he used to
say of himself that it would be very difficult for him to find a borough
which would be willing to elect him its representative, because he was
‘between sizes in politics.’ Nevertheless in 1866 he was very nearly
elected for Bridgewater, but was by no means pleased that he was so near
success, for he stood to lose, not to win, in the hope that if he and
his party were really quite pure, he might gain the seat on petition.
He did his very best, indeed, to secure purity, though he failed. As a
speaker, he did not often succeed. His voice had no great compass, and
his manner was somewhat odd to ordinary hearers; but at Bridgewater he
was completely at his ease, and his canvass and public speeches were
decided successes. His examination, too, before the Commissioners sent
down a year or two later to inquire into the corruption of Bridgewater
was itself a great success. He not only entirely defeated the somewhat
eagerly pressed efforts of one of the Commissioners, Mr. Anstey, to
connect him with the bribery, but he drew a most amusing picture of the
bribable electors whom he had seen only to shun. I will quote a little
bit from the evidence he gave in reply to what Mr. Anstey probably
regarded as home-thrusts:—
‘42,018. (_Mr. Anstey._) Speaking from your experience of
those streets, when you went down them canvassing, did any
of the people say anything to you, or in your hearing, about
money?—Yes, one I recollect standing at the door, who said,
“I won’t vote for gentlefolks unless they do something for
I. Gentlefolks do not come to I unless they want something
of I, and I won’t do nothing for gentlefolks, unless they do
something for me.” Of course, I immediately retired out of that
house.
‘42,019. That man did not give you his promise?—I retired
immediately; he stood in the doorway sideways, as these rustics
do.
‘42,020. Were there many such instances?—One or two, I
remember. One suggested that I might have a place. I
immediately retired from him.
‘42,021. Did anybody of a better class than those voters,
privately, of course, expostulate with you against your
resolution to be pure?—No, nobody ever came to me at all.
‘42,022. But those about you, did any of them say anything
of this kind: “Mr. Bagehot, you are quite wrong in putting
purity of principles forward. It will not do if the other side
bribes?”—I might have been told that I should be unsuccessful
in the stream of conversation; many people may have told me
that; that is how I gathered that if the other side was impure
and we were pure, I should be beaten.
‘42,023. Can you remember the names of any who told you
that?—No, I cannot, but I daresay I was told by as many as
twenty people, and we went upon that entire consideration.’
To leave my subject without giving some idea of Bagehot’s racy
conversation would be a sin. He inherited this gift, I believe, in great
measure from his mother, to whose stimulating teaching in early life
he probably owed also a great deal of his rapidity of thought. A lady
who knew him well, says that one seldom asked him a question without
his answer making you either think or laugh, or both think and laugh
together. And this is the exact truth. His habitual phraseology was
always vivid. He used to speak, for instance, of the minor people, the
youths or admirers who collect round a considerable man, as his ‘fringe.’
It was he who invented the phrase ‘padding,’ to denote the secondary
kind of article, not quite of the first merit, but with interest and
value of its own, with which a judicious editor will fill up perhaps
three-quarters of his review. If you asked him what he thought on a
subject on which he did not happen to have read or thought at all, he
would open his large eyes and say, ‘My mind is “to let” on that subject,
pray tell me what to think;’ though you soon found that this might be
easier attempted than done. He used to say banteringly to his mother, by
way of putting her off at a time when she was anxious for him to marry,
‘A man’s mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.’ He told
me once, at a time when the _Spectator_ had perhaps been somewhat more
eager or sanguine on political matters than he approved, that he always
got his wife to ‘break’ it to him on the Saturday morning, as he found it
too much for his nerves to encounter its views without preparation. Then
his familiar antitheses not unfrequently reminded me of Dickens’s best
touches in that line. He writes to a friend, ‘Tell —— that his policies
went down in the _Colombo_, but were fished up again. _They are dirty,
but valid._’ I remember asking him if he had enjoyed a particular dinner
which he had rather expected to enjoy, but he replied, ‘No, the sherry
was bad; tasted as if L—— had dropped his h’s into it.’ His practical
illustrations, too, were full of wit. In his address to the Bridgewater
constituency, on the occasion when he was defeated by eight votes, he
criticised most happily the sort of bribery which ultimately resulted in
the disfranchisement of the place.
‘I can make allowance,’ he said, ‘for the poor voter; he is
most likely ill-educated, certainly ill-off, and a little
money is a nice treat to him. What he does is wrong, but it
is intelligible. What I do not understand is the position
of the rich, respectable, virtuous members of a party which
countenances these things. They are like the man who stole
stinking fish; they commit a crime, and they get no benefit.’
But perhaps the best illustration I can give of his more sardonic humour
was his remark to a friend who had a church in the grounds near his
house:—‘Ah, you’ve got the church in the grounds! I like that. It’s
well the tenants shouldn’t be _quite_ sure that the landlord’s power
stops with this world.’ And his more humorous exaggerations were very
happy. I remember his saying of a man who was excessively fastidious in
rejecting under-done meat, that he once sent away a cinder ‘because it
was red;’ and he confided gravely to an early friend that when he was in
low spirits, it cheered him to go down to the bank, and dabble his hand
in a heap of sovereigns. But his talk had finer qualities than any of
these. One of his most intimate friends—both in early life, and later in
Lincoln’s Inn—Mr. T. Smith Osler, writes to me of it thus:—
‘As an instrument for arriving at truth, I never knew anything
like a talk with Bagehot. It had just the quality which the
farmers desiderated in the claret, of which they complained
that though it was very nice, it brought them “no forrader;”
for Bagehot’s conversation did get you forward, and at a most
amazing pace. Several ingredients went to this; the foremost
was his power of getting to the heart of the subject, taking
you miles beyond your starting point in a sentence, generally
by dint of sinking to a deeper stratum. The next was his
instantaneous appreciation of the bearing of everything you
yourself said, making talk with him, as Roscoe once remarked,
“like riding a horse with a perfect mouth.” But most unique of
all was his power of keeping up animation without combat. I
never knew a power of discussion, of co operative investigation
of truth, to approach to it. It was all stimulus, and yet no
contest.’
But I must have done; and, indeed, it is next to impossible to convey,
even faintly, the impression of Bagehot’s vivid and pungent conversation
to anyone who did not know him. It was full of youth, and yet had all
the wisdom of a mature judgment in it. The last time we met, only five
days before his death, I remarked on the vigour and youthfulness of his
look, and told him he looked less like a contemporary of my own than one
of a younger generation. In a pencil-note, the last I received from him,
written from bed on the next day but one, he said, ‘I think you must
have had the evil eye when you complimented me on my appearance. Ever
since, I have been sickening, and am now in bed with a severe attack on
the lungs.’ Indeed, well as he appeared to me, he had long had delicate
health, and heart disease was the immediate cause of death. In spite of
a heavy cold on his chest, he went down to his father’s for his Easter
visit the day after I last saw him, and he passed away painlessly in
sleep on the 24th March 1877, aged 51. It was at Herds Hill, the pretty
place west of the river Parret, that flows past Langport, which his
grandfather had made some fifty years before, that he breathed his
last. He had been carried thither as an infant to be present when the
foundation stone was laid of the home which he was never to inherit;
and now very few of his name survive. Bagehot’s family is believed to
be the only one remaining that has retained the old spelling of the
name, as it appears in Doomsday Book, the modern form being Bagot. The
Gloucestershire family of the same name, from whose stock they are
supposed to have sprung, died out in the beginning of this century.
Not very many perhaps, outside Bagehot’s own inner circle, will carry
about with them that hidden pain, that burden of emptiness, inseparable
from an image which has hitherto been one full of the suggestions of
life and power, when that life and power are no longer to be found; for
he was intimately known only to the few. But those who do will hardly
find again in this world a store of intellectual sympathy of so high a
stamp, so wide in its range and so full of original and fresh suggestion,
a judgment to lean on so real and so sincere, or a friend so frank and
constant, with so vivid and tenacious a memory for the happy associations
of a common past, and so generous in recognising the independent value of
divergent convictions in the less pliant present.
R. H. H.
_November 1, 1878._
LITERARY STUDIES.
[Illustration]
_THE FIRST EDINBURGH REVIEWERS._[17]
(1855.)
It is odd to hear that the Edinburgh Review was once thought an
incendiary publication. A young generation, which has always regarded the
appearance of that periodical as a grave constitutional event (and been
told that its composition is intrusted to Privy Councillors only), can
scarcely believe, that once grave gentlemen kicked it out of doors—that
the dignified classes murmured at ‘those young men’ starting such views,
abetting such tendencies, using _such_ expressions—that aged men said,
‘Very clever, but not at all sound.’ Venerable men too exaggerate. People
say the Review was planned in a garret, but this is incredible. Merely to
take such a work into a garret would be inconsistent with propriety; and
the tale that the original conception, the pure idea to which each number
is a quarterly aspiration, ever was in a garret is the evident fiction of
reminiscent age—striving and failing to remember.
Review writing is one of the features of modern literature. Many able
men really give themselves up to it. Comments on ancient writings are
scarcely so common as formerly; no great part of our literary talent is
devoted to the illustration of the ancient masters; but what seems at
first sight less dignified, annotation on modern writings was never so
frequent. Hazlitt started the question, whether it would not be as well
to review works which did not appear, in lieu of those which did—wishing,
as a reviewer, to escape the labour of perusing print, and, as a man, to
save his fellow-creatures from the slow torture of tedious extracts. But,
though approximations may frequently be noticed—though the neglect of
authors and independence of critics are on the increase—this conception,
in its grandeur, has never been carried out. We are surprised at first
sight, that writers should wish to comment on one another; it appears a
tedious mode of stating opinions, and a needless confusion of personal
facts with abstract arguments; and some, especially authors who have
been censured, say that the cause is laziness—that it is easier to write
a review than a book—and that reviewers are, as Coleridge declared, a
species of maggots, inferior to bookworms, living on the delicious brains
of real genius. Indeed it _would_ be very nice, but our world is so
imperfect. This idea is wholly false. Doubtless it is easier to write one
review than one book: but not, which is the real case, many reviews than
one book. A deeper cause must be looked for.
In truth, review-writing but exemplifies the casual character of modern
literature. Everything about it is temporary and fragmentary. Look at
a railway stall; you see books of every colour—blue, yellow, crimson,
‘ring-streaked, speckled, and spotted,’ on every subject, in every
style, of every opinion, with every conceivable difference, celestial
or sublunary, maleficent, beneficent—but all small. People take their
literature in morsels, as they take sandwiches on a journey. The volumes
at least, you can see clearly, are not intended to be everlasting. It
may be all very well for a pure essence like poetry to be immortal in a
perishable world; it has no feeling; but paper cannot endure it, paste
cannot bear it, string has no heart for it. The race has made up its mind
to be fugitive, as well as minute. What a change from the ancient volume!—
‘That weight of wood, with leathern coat o’erlaid,
Those ample clasps, of solid metal made;
The close-press’d leaves, unoped for many an age,
The dull red edging of the well-fill’d page;
On the broad back the stubborn ridges roll’d,
Where yet the title stands in tarnish’d gold.’
And the change in the appearance of books has been accompanied—has been
caused—by a similar change in readers. What a transition from the student
of former ages!—from a grave man, with grave cheeks and a considerate
eye, who spends his life in study, has no interest in the outward world,
hears nothing of its din, and cares nothing for its honours, who would
gladly learn and gladly teach, whose whole soul is taken up with a few
books of ‘Aristotle and his Philosophy,’—to the merchant in the railway,
with a head full of sums, an idea that tallow is ‘up,’ a conviction that
teas are ‘lively,’ and a mind reverting perpetually from the little
volume which he reads to these mundane topics, to the railway, to the
shares, to the buying and bargaining universe. We must not wonder that
the outside of books is so different, when the inner nature of those for
whom they are written is so changed.
It is indeed a peculiarity of our times, that we must instruct so many
persons. On politics, on religion, on all less important topics still
more, every one thinks himself competent to think,—in some casual manner
does think,—to the best of our means must be taught to think rightly.
Even if we had a profound and far-seeing statesman, his deep ideas and
long-reaching vision would be useless to us, unless we could impart a
confidence in them to the mass of influential persons, to the unelected
Commons, the unchosen Council, who assist at the deliberations of the
nation. In religion the appeal now is not to the technicalities of
scholars, or the fictions of recluse schoolmen, but to the deep feelings,
the sure sentiments, the painful strivings of all who think and hope.
And this appeal to the many necessarily brings with it a consequence.
We must speak to the many so that they will listen,—that they will like
to listen,—that they will understand. It is of no use addressing them
with the forms of science, or the rigour of accuracy, or the tedium of
exhaustive discussion. The multitude are impatient of system, desirous of
brevity, puzzled by formality. They agree with Sydney Smith: ‘Political
economy has become, in the hands of Malthus and Ricardo, a school of
metaphysics. All seem agreed what is to be done; the contention is, how
the subject is to be divided and defined. _Meddle with no such matters._’
We are not sneering at ‘the last of the sciences;’ we are concerned with
the essential doctrine, and not with the particular instance. Such is the
taste of mankind.
We may repeat ourselves.
There is, as yet, no Act of Parliament compelling a _bonâ fide_ traveller
to read. If you wish him to read, you must make reading pleasant. You
must give him short views, and clear sentences. It will not answer to
explain what all the things which you describe, are _not_. You must
begin by saying what they are. There is exactly the difference between
the books of this age, and those of a more laborious age, that we
feel between the lecture of a professor and the talk of the man of
the world—the former profound, systematic, suggesting all arguments,
analysing all difficulties, discussing all doubts,—very admirable, a
little tedious, slowly winding an elaborate way, the characteristic
effort of one who has hived wisdom during many studious years, agreeable
to such as he is, anything but agreeable to such as he is not: the
latter, the talk of the manifold talker, glancing lightly from topic to
topic, suggesting deep things in a jest, unfolding unanswerable arguments
in an absurd illustration, expounding nothing, completing nothing,
exhausting nothing, yet really suggesting the lessons of a wider
experience, embodying the results of a more finely tested philosophy,
passing with a more Shakespearian transition, connecting topics with a
more subtle link, refining on them with an acuter perception, and what
is more to the purpose, pleasing all that hear him, charming high and
low, in season and out of season, with a word of illustration for each
and a touch of humour intelligible to all,—fragmentary yet imparting
what he says, allusive yet explaining what he intends, disconnected
yet impressing what he maintains. This is the very model of our modern
writing. The man of the modern world is used to speak what the modern
world will hear; the writer of the modern world must write what that
world will indulgently and pleasantly peruse.
In this transition from ancient writing to modern, the review-like essay
and the essay-like review fill a large space. Their small bulk, their
slight pretension to systematic completeness, their avowal, it might be
said, of necessary incompleteness, the facility of changing the subject,
of selecting points to attack, of exposing only the best corner for
defence, are great temptations. Still greater is the advantage of ‘our
limits.’ A real reviewer always spends his first and best pages on the
parts of a subject on which he wishes to write, the easy comfortable
parts which he knows. The formidable difficulties which he acknowledges,
you foresee by a strange fatality that he will only reach two pages
before the end; to his great grief there is no opportunity for discussing
them. As a young gentleman, at the India House examination, wrote ‘Time
up’ on nine unfinished papers in succession, so you may occasionally read
a whole review, in every article of which the principal difficulty of
each successive question is about to be reached at the conclusion. Nor
can any one deny that this is the suitable skill, the judicious custom of
the craft.
Some may be inclined to mourn over the old days of systematic arguments
and regular discussion. A ‘field-day’ controversy is a fine thing.
These skirmishes have much danger and no glory. Yet there is one immense
advantage. The appeal now is to the mass of sensible persons. Professed
students are not generally suspected of common sense; and though they
often show acuteness in their peculiar pursuits, they have not the
various experience, the changing imagination, the feeling nature, the
realised detail which are necessary _data_ for a thousand questions.
Whatever we may think on this point, however, the transition has been
made. The Edinburgh Review was, at its beginning, a material step in
the change. Unquestionably, the _Spectator_ and _Tatler_, and such-like
writings, had opened a similar vein, but their size was too small.
They could only deal with small fragments, or the extreme essence of a
subject. They could not give a view of what was complicated, or analyse
what was involved. The modern man must be told what to think—shortly, no
doubt—but he _must_ be told it. The essay-like criticism of modern times
is about the length which he likes. The Edinburgh Review, which began the
system, may be said to be, in this country, the commencement on large
topics of suitable views for sensible persons.
The circumstances of the time were especially favourable to such an
undertaking. Those years were the commencement of what is called the
Eldonine period. The cold and haughty Pitt had gone down to the grave in
circumstances singularly contrasting with his prosperous youth, and he
had carried along with him the inner essence of half-liberal principle,
which had clung to a tenacious mind from youthful associations, and
was all that remained to the Tories of abstraction or theory. As for
Lord Eldon, it is the most difficult thing in the world to believe that
there ever was such a man. It only shows how intense historical evidence
is, that no one really doubts it. He believed in everything which it
is impossible to believe in—in the danger of Parliamentary Reform,
the danger of Catholic Emancipation, the danger of altering the Court
of Chancery, the danger of altering the Courts of Law, the danger of
abolishing capital punishment for trivial thefts, the danger of making
landowners pay their debts, the danger of making anything more, the
danger of making anything less. It seems as if he maturely thought, ‘Now
I know the present state of things to be consistent with the existence
of John Lord Eldon; but if we begin altering that state, I am sure I do
not know that it will be consistent.’ As Sir Robert Walpole was against
all committees of inquiry on the simple ground, ‘If they once begin that
sort of thing, who knows who will be safe?’—so that great Chancellor
(still remembered in his own scene) looked pleasantly down from the
woolsack, and seemed to observe, ‘Well, it _is_ a queer thing that I
should be here, and here I mean to stay.’ With this idea he employed,
for many years, all the abstract intellect of an accomplished lawyer,
all the practical _bonhomie_ of an accomplished courtier, all the energy
of both professions, all the subtlety acquired in either, in the task of
maintaining John Lord Eldon in the cabinet, and maintaining a cabinet
that would suit John Lord Eldon. No matter what change or misfortunes
happened to the Royal house,—whether the most important person in
court politics was the old King or the young King, Queen Charlotte or
Queen Caroline—whether it was a question of talking grave business to
the mutton of George the Third, or queer stories beside the champagne
of George the Fourth, there was the same figure. To the first he was
tearfully conscientious, and at the second the old northern circuit
stories (how old, what outlasting tradition shall ever say?) told with a
cheerful _bonhomie_, and a strong conviction that they _were_ ludicrous,
really seem to have pleased as well as the more artificial niceties of
the professed wits. He was always agreeable, and always serviceable. No
little peccadillo offended him: the ideal, according to the satirist,
of a ‘good-natured man,’ he cared for nothing until he was himself
hurt. He ever remembered the statute which absolves obedience to a king
_de facto_. And it was the same in the political world. There was one
man who never changed. No matter what politicians came and went—and a
good many, including several that are now scarcely remembered, did come
and go,—the ‘Cabinet-maker,’ as men called him, still remained. ‘As to
Lord Liverpool being Prime Minister,’ continued Mr. Brougham, ‘he is
no more Prime Minister than I am. I reckon Lord Liverpool as a sort of
member of opposition; and after what has recently passed, if I were
required, I should designate him as “a noble lord with whom I have the
honour to act.” Lord Liverpool may have collateral influence, but Lord
Eldon has all the direct influence of the Prime Minister. He is Prime
Minister to all intents and purposes, and he stands alone in the full
exercise of all the influence of that high situation. Lord Liverpool
has carried measures against the Lord Chancellor; so have I. If Lord
Liverpool carried the Marriage Act, I carried the Education Bill,’ &c.
&c. And though the general views of Lord Eldon may be described,—though
one can say at least negatively and intelligibly that he objected to
everything proposed, and never proposed anything himself,—the arguments
are such as it would require great intellectual courage to endeavour
at all to explain. What follows is a favourable specimen. ‘Lord Grey,’
says his biographer, ‘having introduced a bill for dispensing with the
declarations prescribed by the Acts of 25 and 30 Car. II., against the
doctrine of Transubstantiation and the Invocation of Saints, moved the
second reading of it on the 10th of June, when the Lord Chancellor again
opposed the principle of such a measure, urging that the law which had
been introduced under Charles II. had been re-enacted in the first
Parliament of _William III._, the founder of our civil and religious
liberties. It had been thought necessary for the preservation of these,
that papists should not be allowed to sit in Parliament, and some test
was necessary by which it might be ascertained whether a man was a
Catholic or Protestant. The only possible test for such a purpose was an
oath declaratory of religious belief, and, as _Dr. Paley_ had observed,
it was perfectly just to have a religious test of a political creed.
He entreated the House not to commit the crime against posterity of
transmitting to them in an impaired and insecure state the civil and
religious liberties of England.’ And this sort of appeal to Paley and
King William is made the ground—one can hardly say the reason—for the
most rigid adherence to all that was established.
It may be asked, How came the English people to endure this? They are
not naturally illiberal; on the contrary, though slow and cautious, they
are prone to steady improvement, and not at all disposed to acquiesce
in the unlimited perfection of their rulers. On a certain imaginative
side, unquestionably, there is or was a strong feeling of loyalty, of
attachment to what is old, love for what is ancestral, belief in what
has been tried. But the fond attachment to the past is a very different
idea from a slavish adoration of the present. Nothing is more removed
from the Eldonine idolatry of the _status quo_ than the old cavalier
feeling of deep idolatry for the ancient realm—that half-mystic idea that
consecrated what it touched; the moonlight, as it were, which
‘Silver’d the walls of Cumnor Hall,
And many an oak that grew thereby.’
Why, then, did the English endure the everlasting Chancellor?
The fact is, that Lord Eldon’s rule was maintained a great deal on the
same motives as that of Louis Napoleon. One can fancy his astonishment
at hearing it said, and his cheerful rejoinder, ‘That whatever he was,
and Mr. Brougham was in the habit of calling him strange names, no
one should ever make him believe that he was a _Bonaparte_.’ But, in
fact, he was, like the present Emperor, the head of what we call the
party of order. Everybody knows what keeps Louis Napoleon in his place.
It is not attachment to him, but dread of what he restrains—dread of
revolution. The present may not be good, and having such newspapers,—you
might say no newspapers,—is dreadful; but it is better than no trade,
bankrupt banks, loss of old savings; your mother beheaded on destructive
principles; your eldest son shot on conservative ones. Very similar was
the feeling of Englishmen in the year 1800. They had no liking at all for
the French system. Statesmen saw its absurdity, holy men were shocked at
its impiety, mercantile men saw its effect on the 5 per cents. Everybody
was revolted by its cruelty. That it came across the Channel was no
great recommendation. A witty writer of our own time says, that if a
still Mussulman, in his flowing robes, wished to give his son a warning
against renouncing his faith, he would take the completest, smartest,
dapperest French dandy out of the streets of Pera, and say, ‘There, my
son, if ever you come to forget God and the Prophet, you may come to look
like _that_.’ Exactly similar in old conservative speeches is the use of
the French Revolution. If you proposed to alter anything, of importance
or not of importance, legal or social, religious or not religious, the
same answer was ready: ‘You see what the French have come to. They made
alterations; if we make alterations, who knows but we may end in the
same way?’ It was not any peculiar bigotry in Lord Eldon that actuated
him, or he would have been powerless; still less was it any affected
feeling which he put forward (though, doubtless, he was aware of its
persuasive potency, and worked on it most skilfully to his own ends); it
was genuine, hearty, craven fear; and he ruled naturally the common-place
Englishman, because he sympathised in his sentiments, and excelled him in
his powers.
There was, too, another cause beside fear which then inclined, and which
in similar times of miscellaneous revolution will ever incline, subtle
rather than creative intellects to a narrow conservatism. Such intellects
require an exact creed; they want to be able clearly to distinguish
themselves from those around them, to tell to each man where they differ,
and why they differ; they cannot make assumptions; they cannot, like the
merely practical man, be content with rough and obvious axioms; they
require a _theory_. Such a want it is difficult to satisfy in an age of
confusion and tumult, when old habits are shaken, old views overthrown,
ancient assumptions rudely questioned, ancient inferences utterly
denied, when each man has a different view from his neighbour, when an
intellectual change has set father and son at variance, when a man’s own
household are the special foes of his favourite and self-adopted creed.
A bold and original mind breaks through these vexations, and forms for
itself a theory satisfactory to its notions, and sufficient for its
wants. A weak mind yields a passive obedience to those among whom it is
thrown. But a mind which is searching without being creative, which is
accurate and logical enough to see defects, without being combinative
or inventive enough to provide remedies,—which, in the old language,
is discriminative rather than discursive,—is wholly unable, out of the
medley of new suggestions, to provide itself with an adequate belief; and
it naturally falls back on the _status quo_. This is, at least, clear
and simple and defined; you know at any rate what you propose—where you
end—why you pause;—an argumentative defence it is, doubtless, difficult
to find; but there are arguments on all sides; the world is a medley
of arguments; no one is agreed in which direction to alter the world;
what is proposed is as liable to objection as what exists; nonsense
for nonsense, the old should keep its ground: and so in times of
convulsion, the philosophic scepticism—the ever-questioning hesitation
of Hume and Montaigne—the subtlest quintessence of the most restless
and refining abstraction—becomes allied to the stupidest, crudest
acquiescence in the present and concrete world. We read occasionally
in conservative literature (the remark is as true of religion as of
politics) alternations of sentences, the first an appeal to the coarsest
prejudice,—the next a subtle hint to a craving and insatiable scepticism.
You may trace this even in Vesey junior. Lord Eldon never read Hume or
Montaigne, but sometimes, in the interstices of cumbrous law, you may
find sentences with their meaning, if not in their manner; ‘Dumpor’s case
always struck me as extraordinary; but if you depart from Dumpor’s case,
what is there to prevent a departure in every direction?’
The glory of the Edinburgh Review is that from the first it steadily
set itself to oppose this timorous acquiescence in the actual system.
On domestic subjects the history of the first thirty years of the
nineteenth century is a species of duel between the Edinburgh Review and
Lord Eldon. All the ancient abuses which he thought it most dangerous
to impair, they thought it most dangerous to retain. ‘To appreciate
the value of the Edinburgh Review,’ says one of the founders, ‘the
state of England at the period when that journal began should be had
in remembrance. The Catholics were not emancipated. The Corporation
and Test Acts were unrepealed. The game-laws were horribly oppressive;
steel-traps and spring-guns were set all over the country; prisoners
tried for their lives could have no counsel. Lord Eldon and the Court
of Chancery pressed heavily on mankind. Libel was punished by the most
cruel and vindictive imprisonments. The principles of political economy
were little understood. The laws of debt and conspiracy were on the
worst footing. The enormous wickedness of the slave-trade was tolerated.
A thousand evils were in existence which the talents of good and noble
men have since lessened or removed: and these efforts have been not a
little assisted by the honest boldness of the Edinburgh Review.’ And even
more characteristic than the advocacy of these or any other partial or
particular reforms is the systematic opposition of the Edinburgh Review
to the crude acquiescence in the _status quo_; the timorous dislike to
change because it was change; to the optimistic conclusion, ‘that what
is, ought to be;’ the sceptical query, ‘How do you know that what you say
will be any better?’
In this defence of the principle of innovation, a defence which it
requires great imagination (or, as we suggested, the looking across
the Channel) to conceive the efficacy of now, the Edinburgh Review was
but the doctrinal organ of the Whigs. A great deal of philosophy has
been expended in endeavouring to fix and express theoretically the creed
of that party: various forms of abstract doctrine have been drawn out,
in which elaborate sentence follows hard on elaborate sentence, to be
set aside, or at least vigorously questioned by the next or succeeding
inquirers. In truth Whiggism is not a creed, it is a character. Perhaps
as long as there has been a political history in this country there have
been certain men of a cool, moderate, resolute firmness, not gifted with
high imagination, little prone to enthusiastic sentiment, heedless of
large theories and speculations, careless of dreamy scepticism; with a
clear view of the next step, and a wise intention to take it; a strong
conviction that the elements of knowledge are true, and a steady belief
that the present world can, and should be, quietly improved.
These are the Whigs. A tinge of simplicity still clings to the character;
of old it was the Country Party. The limitation of their imagination
is in some sort an advantage to such men; it confines them to a simple
path, prevents their being drawn aside by various speculations, restricts
them to what is clear and intelligible, and at hand. ‘I cannot,’ said
Sir S. Romilly, ‘be convinced without arguments, and I do not see that
either Burke or Paine advance any.’ He was unable to see that the most
convincing arguments,—and some of those in the work of Burke, which he
alludes to, are certainly sound enough,—may be expressed imaginatively,
and may work a far firmer persuasion than any neat and abstract
statement. Nor are the intellectual powers of the characteristic element
in this party exactly of the loftiest order; they have no call to make
great discoveries, or pursue unbounded designs, or amaze the world by
some wild dream of empire and renown. That terrible essence of daring
genius, such as we see it in Napoleon, and can imagine it in some of
the conquerors of old time, is utterly removed from their cool and
placid judgment. In taste they are correct,—that is, better appreciating
the complete compliance with explicit and ascertained rules, than the
unconscious exuberance of inexplicable and unforeseen beauties. In their
own writings, they display the defined neatness of the second order,
rather than the aspiring hardihood of the first excellence. In action
they are quiet and reasonable rather than inventive and overwhelming.
Their power indeed is scarcely intellectual; on the contrary, it resides
in what Aristotle would have called their ἦθος, and we should call
their nature. They are emphatically pure-natured and firm-natured.
Instinctively casting aside the coarse temptations and crude excitements
of a vulgar earth, they pass like a September breeze across the other
air, cool and refreshing, unable, one might fancy, even to comprehend the
many offences with which all else is fainting and oppressed. So far even
as their excellence is intellectual, it consists less in the supereminent
possession of any single talent or endowment, than in the simultaneous
enjoyment and felicitous adjustment of many or several;—in a certain
balance of the faculties which we call judgment or sense, which placidly
indicates to them what should be done, and which is not preserved without
an equable calm, and a patient, persistent watchfulness. In such men the
moral and intellectual nature half become one. Whether, according to
the Greek question, manly virtue can be taught or not, assuredly it has
never been taught to them; it seems a native endowment; it seems a soul—a
soul of honour—as we speak, within the exterior soul; a fine impalpable
essence, more exquisite than the rest of the being; as the thin pillar of
the cloud, more beautiful than the other blue of heaven, governing and
guiding a simple way through the dark wilderness of our world.
To descend from such elevations, among _people_ Sir Samuel Romilly is
the best-known type of this character. The admirable biography of him
made public his admirable virtues. Yet it is probable that among the
aristocratic Whigs, persons as typical of the character can be found.
This species of noble nature is exactly of the kind which hereditary
associations tend to purify and confirm; just that casual, delicate,
placid virtue, which it is so hard to find, perhaps so sanguine to
expect, in a rough tribune of the people. Defects enough there are in
this character, on which we shall say something; yet it is wonderful to
see what an influence in this sublunary sphere it gains and preserves.
The world makes an oracle of its judgment. There is a curious living
instance of this. You may observe that when an ancient liberal, Lord
John Russell, or any of the essential sect, has done anything very
queer, the last thing you would imagine anybody would dream of doing,
and is attacked for it, he always answers boldly, ‘Lord Lansdowne said
I _might_;’ or if it is a ponderous day, the eloquence runs, ‘A noble
friend with whom I have ever had the inestimable advantage of being
associated from the commencement (the infantile period, I might say) of
my political life, and to whose advice,’ &c. &c. &c.—and a very cheerful
existence it must be for ‘my noble friend’ to be expected to justify—(for
they never say it except they have done something very odd)—and dignify
every aberration. Still it must be a beautiful feeling to have a man like
Lord John, to have a stiff, small man bowing down before you. And a good
judge certainly suggested the conferring of this authority. ‘Why do they
not talk over the virtues and excellences of Lansdowne? There is no man
who performs the duties of life better, or fills a high station in a more
becoming manner. He is full of knowledge, and eager for its acquisition.
His remarkable politeness is the result of good nature, regulated by good
sense. He looks for talents and qualities among all ranks of men, and
adds them to his stock of society, as a botanist does his plants; and
while other aristocrats are yawning among stars and garters, Lansdowne is
refreshing his soul with the fancy and genius which he has found in odd
places, and gathered to the marbles and pictures of his palace. Then he
is an honest politician, a wise statesman, and has a philosophic mind,’
&c. &c.[18] Here is devotion for a carping critic; and who ever heard
before of _bonhomie_ in an idol?
It may strike some that this equable kind of character is not the most
interesting. Many will prefer the bold felicities of daring genius,
the deep plans of latent and searching sagacity, the hardy triumphs of
an overawing and imperious will. Yet it is not unremarkable that an
experienced and erudite Frenchman, not unalive to artistic effect, has
just now selected this very species of character for the main figure in
a large portion of an elaborate work. The hero of M. Villemain is one to
whom he delights to ascribe such things as _bon sens_, _esprit juste_,
_cœur excellent_. The result, it may be owned, is a little dull, yet it
is not the less characteristic. The instructed observer has detected
the deficiency of his country. If France had more men of firm will,
quiet composure, with a suspicion of enormous principle and a taste
for moderate improvement: if a Whig party, in a word, were possible in
France, France would be free. And though there are doubtless crises
in affairs, dark and terrible moments, when a more creative intellect
is needful to propose, a more dictatorial will is necessary to carry
out, a sudden and daring resolution; though in times of inextricable
confusion—perhaps the present is one of them[19]—a more abstruse and
disentangling intellect is required to untwist the ravelled perplexities
of a complicated world; yet England will cease to be the England of
our fathers, when a large share in great affairs is no longer given to
the equable sense, the composed resolution, the homely purity of the
characteristic Whigs.
It is evident that between such men and Lord Eldon there could be no
peace; and between them and the Edinburgh Review there was a natural
alliance. Not only the kind of reforms there proposed, the species of
views therein maintained, but the very manner in which those views and
alterations are put forward and maintained, is just what they would
like. The kind of writing suitable to such minds is not the elaborate,
ambitious, exhaustive discussion of former ages, but the clear, simple,
occasional writing (as we just now described it) of the present times.
The opinions to be expressed are short and simple; the innovations
suggested are natural and evident; neither one nor the other require
more than an intelligible statement, a distinct exposition to the world;
and their reception would be only impeded and complicated by operose and
cumbrous argumentation. The exact mind which of all others dislikes the
stupid adherence to the _status quo_, is the keen, quiet, improving Whig
mind; the exact kind of writing most adapted to express that dislike is
the cool, pungent, didactic essay.
Equally common to the Whigs and the Edinburgh Review is the enmity to the
sceptical, over-refining Toryism of Hume and Montaigne. The Whigs, it is
true, have a conservatism of their own, but it instinctively clings to
certain practical rules tried by steady adherence, to appropriate formulæ
verified by the regular application and steady success of many ages.
Political philosophers speak of it as a great step when the idea of an
attachment to an organised code and system of rules and laws takes the
place of the exclusive oriental attachment to the person of the single
monarch. This step is natural, is instinctive to the Whig mind; that
cool impassive intelligence is little likely to yield to ardent emotions
of personal loyalty; but its chosen ideal is a body or collection of
wise rules fitly applicable to great affairs, pleasing a placid sense
by an evident propriety, gratifying the capacity for business by a
constant and clear applicability. The Whigs are constitutional by
instinct, as the Cavaliers were monarchical by devotion. It has been
a jest at their present leader that he is over familiar with public
forms and parliamentary rites. The first wish of the Whigs is to retain
the constitution; the second—and it is of almost equal strength—is
to improve it. They think the body of laws now existing to be, in the
main and in its essence, excellent; but yet that there are exceptional
defects which should be remedied, superficial inconsistencies that
should be corrected. The most opposite creed is that of the sceptic,
who teaches that you are to keep what is because it exists; not from
a conviction of its excellence, but from an uncertainty that anything
better can be obtained. The one is an attachment to precise rules for
specific reasons; the other an acquiescence in the present on grounds
that would be equally applicable to its very opposite, from a disbelief
in the possibility of improvement, and a conviction of the uncertainty
of all things. And equally adverse to an unlimited scepticism is the
nature of popular writing. It is true that the greatest teachers of that
creed have sometimes, and as it were of set purpose, adopted that species
of writing; yet essentially it is inimical to them. Its appeal is to
the people; as has been shown, it addresses the _élite_ of common men,
sensible in their affairs, intelligent in their tastes, influential among
their neighbours. What is absolute scepticism to such men?—a dream, a
chimera, an inexplicable absurdity. Tell it to them to-day, and they will
have forgotten it to-morrow. A man of business hates elaborate trifling.
‘If you do not believe _your own_ senses,’ he will say, ‘there is no use
in _my_ talking to you.’ As to the multiplicity of arguments and the
complexity of questions, he feels them little. He has a plain, simple, as
he would say, practical way of looking at the matter; and you will never
make him comprehend any other. He knows the world _can_ be improved. And
thus what we may call the middle species of writing—which is intermediate
between the light, frivolous style of merely amusing literature, and the
heavy, conscientious elaborateness of methodical philosophy—the style of
the original Edinburgh—is, in truth, as opposed to the vague, desponding
conservatism of the sceptic as it is to the stupid conservatism of the
crude and uninstructed; and substantially for the same reason—that it is
addressed to men of cool, clear, and practical understandings.
It is, indeed, no wonder that the Edinburgh Review should be agreeable to
the Whigs, for the people who founded it were Whigs. Among these, three
stand pre-eminent—Horner, Jeffrey, and Sydney Smith. Other men of equal
ability may have contributed—and a few did contribute—to its pages; but
these men were, more than any one else, the first Edinburgh Review.
Francis Horner’s was a short and singular life. He was the son of
an Edinburgh shopkeeper. He died at thirty-nine; and when he died,
from all sides of the usually cold House of Commons great statesmen
and thorough gentlemen got up to deplore his loss. Tears are rarely
parliamentary: all men are arid towards young Scotchmen; yet it was one
of that inclement nation whom statesmen of the species Castlereagh, and
statesmen of the species Whitbread—with all the many kinds and species
that lie between the two—rose in succession to lament. The fortunes and
superficial aspect of the man make it more singular. He had no wealth,
was a briefless barrister, never held an office, was a conspicuous member
of the most unpopular of all oppositions—the opposition to a glorious
and successful war. He never had the means of obliging any one. He
was destitute of showy abilities: he had not the intense eloquence or
overwhelming ardour which enthral and captivate popular assemblies: his
powers of administration were little tried, and may possibly be slightly
questioned. In his youthful reading he was remarkable for laying down,
for a few months of study, enormous plans, such as many years would
scarcely complete; and not especially remarkable for doing anything
wonderful towards accomplishing those plans. Sir Walter Scott, who,
though not illiberal in his essential intellect, was a keen partisan on
superficial matters, and no lenient critic on actual Edinburgh Whigs,
used to observe, ‘I cannot admire your Horner; he always reminds me of
Obadiah’s bull, who, though he never certainly did produce a calf,
nevertheless went about his business with so much gravity, that he
commanded the respect of the whole parish.’ It is no explanation of the
universal regret, that he was a considerable political economist: no real
English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of
a political economist: he is much more likely to be sorry for his life.
There is an idea that he has something to do with statistics; or, if that
be exploded, that he is a person who writes upon ‘value:’ says that rent
is—you cannot very well make out what; talks excruciating currency; he
may be useful as drying machines are useful;[20] but the notion of crying
about him is absurd. The economical loss might be great, but it will not
explain the mourning for Francis Horner.
The fact is that Horner is a striking example of the advantage of keeping
an atmosphere. This may sound like nonsense, and yet it is true. There
is around some men a kind of circle or halo of influences, and traits,
and associations, by which they infallibly leave a distinct and uniform
impression on all their contemporaries. It is very difficult, even for
those who have the best opportunities, to analyse exactly what this
impression consists in, or why it was made—but it _is_ made. There is a
certain undefinable keeping in the traits and manner, and common speech
and characteristic actions of some men, which inevitably stamps the same
mark and image. It is like a man’s style. There are some writers who can
be known by a few words of their writing; each syllable is instinct with
a certain spirit: put it into the hands of any one chosen at random,
the same impression will be produced by the same casual and felicitous
means. Just so in character, the air and atmosphere, so to speak, which
are around a man, have a delicate and expressive power, and leave a
stamp of unity on the interpretative faculty of mankind. Death dissolves
this association, and it becomes a problem for posterity what it was
that contemporaries observed and reverenced. There is Lord Somers. Does
any one know why he had such a reputation? He was Lord Chancellor, and
decided a Bank case, and had an influence in the Cabinet; but there have
been Lord Chancellors, and Bank cases, and influential Cabinet ministers
not a few, that have never attained to a like reputation. There is
little we can connect specifically with his name. Lord Macaulay, indeed,
says that he spoke for five minutes on the Bishops’ trial; and that
when he sat down, his reputation as an orator and constitutional lawyer
was established. But this must be a trifle eloquent; hardly any orator
could be fast enough to attain such a reputation in five minutes. The
truth is, that Lord Somers had around him that inexpressible attraction
and influence of which we speak. He left a sure, and if we may trust
the historian, even a momentary impression on those who saw him. By a
species of tact they felt him to be a great man. The ethical sense—for
there is almost such a thing in simple persons—discriminated the fine
and placid oneness of his nature. It was the same on a smaller scale
with Horner. After he had left Edinburgh several years, his closest and
most confidential associate writes to him:—‘There is no circumstance
in your life, my dear Horner, so enviable as the universal confidence
which your conduct has produced among all descriptions of men. I do not
speak of your friends, who have been near and close observers; but I
have had some occasions of observing the impression which those who are
distant spectators have had, and I believe there are few instances of any
person of your age possessing the same character for independence and
integrity, qualities for which very little credit is given in general to
young men.’[21] Sydney Smith said, ‘the Ten Commandments were written
on his countenance.’ Of course he was a very ugly man, but the moral
impression in fact conveyed was equally efficacious; ‘I have often,’ said
the same most just observer, ‘told him, that there was not a crime he
might not commit with impunity, as no judge or jury who saw him would
give the smallest credit to any evidence against him. There was in his
look a calm settled love of all that was honourable and good—an air of
wisdom and of sweetness. You saw at once that he was a great man, whom
nature had intended for a leader of human beings; you ranged yourself
willingly under his banners, and cheerfully submitted to his sway.’ From
the somewhat lengthened description of what we defined as the essential
Whig character, it is evident how agreeable and suitable such a man was
to their quiet, composed, and aristocratic nature. His tone was agreeable
to English gentlemen: a firm and placid manliness, without effort or
pretension, is what they like best; and therefore it was that the House
of Commons grieved for his loss—unanimously and without distinction.
Some friends of Horner’s, in his own time, mildly criticised him for a
tendency to party spirit. The disease in him, if real, was by no means
virulent; but it is worth noticing as one of the defects to which the
proper Whig character is specially prone. It is evident in the quiet
agreement of the men. Their composed, unimaginative nature is inclined
to isolate itself in a single view; their placid disposition, never
prone to self-distrust, is rather susceptible of friendly influence;
their practical habit is concentrated on what should be done. They do
not wish—they do not like to go forth into various speculation; to put
themselves in the position of opponents; to weigh in a refining scale the
special weight of small objections. Their fancy is hardly vivid enough
to explain to them all the characters of those whom they oppose; their
intellect scarcely detective enough to discover a meaning for each grain
in opposing arguments. Nor is their temper, it may be, always prone to be
patient with propositions which tease, and persons who resist them. The
wish to call down fire from heaven is rarely absent in pure zeal for a
pure cause.
A good deal of praise has naturally been bestowed upon the Whigs for
adopting such a man as Horner, with Romilly and others of that time; and
much excellent eulogy has been expended on the close boroughs, which
afforded to the Whig leaders a useful mode of showing their favour.
Certainly the character of Horner was one altogether calculated to
ingratiate itself with the best and most special Whig nature. But as
for the eulogy on the proprietary seats in Parliament, it is certain
that from the position of the Whig party, the nomination system was
then most likely to show its excellences, and to conceal its defects.
Nobody but an honest man would bind himself thoroughly to the Whigs. It
was evident that the reign of Lord Eldon must be long; the heavy and
common Englishman (after all, the most steady and powerful force in
our political constitution) had been told that Lord Grey was in favour
of the ‘Papists,’ and liked Bonaparte; and the consequence was a long,
painful, arduous exile on ‘the other side of the table,’—the last place
any political adventurer would wish to arrive at. Those who have no
bribes will never charm the corrupt; those who have nothing to give will
not please those who desire that much shall be given them. There is an
observation of Niel Blane, the innkeeper, in ‘Old Mortality.’ ‘“And
what are we to eat ourselves, then, father,” asked Jenny, “when we hae
sent awa the haile meal in the ark and the girnel?” “We maun gaur wheat
flour serve us for a blink,” said Niel, with an air of resignation. “It
is not that ill food, though far frae being sae hearty and kindly to a
Scotchman’s stomach as the curney aitmeal is: the Englishers live amaist
upon it,”’ &c. It was so with the Whigs; they were obliged to put up with
honest and virtuous men, and they wanted able men to carry on a keen
opposition; and after all, they and the ‘Englishers’ like such men best.
In another point of view, too, Horner’s life was characteristic of those
times. It might seem, at first sight, odd that the English Whigs should
go to Scotland to find a literary representative. There was no place
where Toryism was so intense. The constitution of Scotland at that time
has been described as the worst constitution in Europe. The nature of
the representation made the entire country a government borough. In the
towns, the franchise belonged to a close and self-electing corporation,
who were always carefully watched: the county representation, anciently
resting on a property qualification, had become vested in a few
titular freeholders, something like lords of the manor, only that
they might have no manor; and these, even with the addition of the
borough freeholders, did not amount to three thousand. The whole were
in the hands of Lord Eldon’s party, and the entire force, influence,
and patronage of Government were spent to maintain and keep it so. By
inevitable consequence, Liberalism, even of the most moderate kind, was
thought almost a criminal offence. The mild Horner was considered a man
of ‘very violent opinions.’ Jeffrey’s father, a careful and discerning
parent, was so anxious to shield him from the intellectual taint, as to
forbid his attendance at Stewart’s lectures. This seems an odd place to
find the eruption of a liberal review. Of course the necessary effect
of a close and common-place tyranny was to engender a strong reaction
in searching and vigorous minds. The Liberals of the north, though far
fewer, may perhaps have been stronger Liberals than those of the south;
but this will hardly explain the phenomenon. The reason is an academical
one; the teaching of Scotland seems to have been designed to teach men
to write essays and articles. There are two kinds of education, into
all the details of which it is not now pleasant to go, but which may be
adequately described as the education of facts, and the education of
speculation. The system of facts is the English system. The strength of
the pedagogue and the agony of the pupil are designed to engender a good
knowledge of two languages; in the old times, a little arithmetic; now
also a knowledge, more or less, of mathematics and mathematical physics.
The positive tastes and tendencies of the English mind confine its
training to ascertained learning and definite science. In Scotland the
case has long been different. The time of a man like Horner was taken
up with speculations like these: ‘I have long been feeding my ambition
with the prospect of accomplishing, at some future period of my life, a
work similar to that which Sir Francis Bacon executed about two hundred
years ago. It will depend on the sweep and turn of my speculations,
whether they shall be thrown into the form of a discursive commentary
on the “Instauratio Magna” of that great author, or shall be entitled
to an original form, under the title of a “View of the Limits of Human
Knowledge and a System of the Principles of Philosophical Inquiry.” I
shall say nothing at present of the audacity,’ &c. &c. And this sort
of planning, which is the staple of his youthful biography, was really
accompanied by much application to metaphysics, history, political
economy, and such like studies. It is not at all to our present purpose
to compare this speculative and indeterminate kind of study with the
rigorous accurate education of England. The fault of the former is
sometimes to produce a sort of lecturer _in vacuo_, ignorant of exact
pursuits, and diffusive of vague words. The English now and then produce
a learned creature like a thistle, prickly with all facts, and incapable
of all fruit. But passing by this general question, it cannot be doubted
that, as a preparation for the writing of various articles, the system of
Edinburgh is enormously superior to that of Cambridge. The particular,
compact, exclusive learning of England is inferior in this respect to
the general, diversified, omnipresent information of the North; and
what is more, the speculative, dubious nature of metaphysical and such
like pursuits tends, in a really strong mind, to cultivate habits of
independent thought and original discussion. A bold mind so trained will
even _wish_ to advance its peculiar ideas, on its own account, in a
written and special form; that is, as we said, to write an article. Such
are the excellences in this respect of the system of which Horner is an
example. The defects tend the same way. It tends, as is said, to make a
man fancy he knows everything. ‘Well then, at least,’ it may be answered,
‘I can write an article on everything.’
The facility and boldness of the habits so produced were curiously
exemplified in Lord Jeffrey. During the first six years of the Edinburgh
Review he wrote as many as seventy-nine articles; in a like period
afterwards he wrote forty. Any one who should expect to find a pure
perfection in these miscellaneous productions, should remember their
bulk. If all his reviews were reprinted, they would be very many. And
all the while he was a busy lawyer, was editor of the Review, did the
business, corrected the proof sheets; and more than all, what one would
have thought a very strong man’s work, actually managed Henry Brougham.
You must not criticise papers like these, rapidly written in the hurry
of life, as you would the painful words of an elaborate sage, slowly and
with anxious awfulness instructing mankind. Some things, a few things,
are for eternity; some, and a good many, are for time. We do not expect
the everlastingness of the Pyramids from the vibratory grandeur of a
Tyburnian mansion.
The truth is, that Lord Jeffrey was something of a Whig critic. We have
hinted, that among the peculiarities of that character, an excessive
partiality for new, arduous, overwhelming, original excellence, was by no
means to be numbered. Their tendency inclining to the quiet footsteps of
custom, they like to trace the exact fulfilment of admitted rules, a just
accordance with the familiar features of ancient merit. But they are most
averse to mysticism. A clear, precise, discriminating intellect shrinks
at once from the symbolic, the unbounded, the indefinite. The misfortune
is that mysticism is true. There certainly are kinds of truth, borne in
as it were instinctively on the human intellect, most influential on
the character and the heart, yet hardly capable of stringent statement,
difficult to limit by an elaborate definition. Their course is shadowy;
the mind seems rather to have seen than to see them, more to feel
after than definitely apprehend them. They commonly involve an infinite
element, which of course cannot be stated precisely, or else a first
principle—an original tendency—of our intellectual constitution, which
it is impossible not to feel, and yet which it is hard to extricate in
terms and words. Of this latter kind is what has been called the religion
of nature, or more exactly, perhaps, the religion of the imagination.
This is an interpretation of the world. According to it the beauty of the
universe has a meaning, its grandeur a soul, its sublimity an expression.
As we gaze on the faces of those whom we love; as we watch the light of
life in the dawning of their eyes, and the play of their features, and
the wildness of their animation; as we trace in changing lineaments a
varying sign; as a charm and a thrill seem to run along the tone of a
voice, to haunt the mind with a mere word; as a tone seems to roam in the
ear; as a trembling fancy hears words that are unspoken; so in nature the
mystical sense finds a motion in the mountain, and a power in the waves,
and a meaning in the long white line of the shore, and a thought in the
blue of heaven, and a gushing soul in the buoyant light, an unbounded
being in the vast void air, and
‘Wakeful watchings in the pointed stars.’
There is a philosophy in this which might be explained, if explaining
were to our purpose. It might be advanced that there are original
sources of expression in the essential grandeur and sublimity of nature,
of an analogous though fainter kind, to those familiar, inexplicable
signs by which we trace in the very face and outward lineaments of
man the existence and working of the mind within. But be this as it
may, it is certain that Mr. Wordsworth preached this kind of religion,
and that Lord Jeffrey did not believe a word of it. His cool, sharp,
collected mind revolted from its mysticism; his detective intelligence
was absorbed in its apparent fallaciousness; his light humour made
sport with the sublimities of the preacher. His love of perspicuity
was vexed by its indefiniteness; the precise philosopher was amazed at
its mystic unintelligibility. Finding a little fault was doubtless not
unpleasant to him. The reviewer’s pen—φόνος ἡρώεσσιν—has seldom been
more poignantly wielded. ‘If,’ he was told, ‘you could be alarmed into
the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my
joke against you’ (Sydney Smith _loquitur_) ‘about the moon. D—n the
solar system—bad light—planets too distant—pestered with comets: feeble
contrivance; could make a better with great ease.’ Yet we do not mean
that in this great literary feud, either of the combatants had all the
right, or gained all the victory. The world has given judgment. Both
Mr. Wordsworth and Lord Jeffrey have received their reward. The one had
his own generation; the laughter of men, the applause of drawing-rooms,
the concurrence of the crowd: the other a succeeding age, the fond
enthusiasm of secret students, the lonely rapture of lonely minds. And
each has received according to his kind. If all cultivated men speak
differently because of the existence of Wordsworth and Coleridge; if
not a thoughtful English book has appeared for forty years, without
some trace for good or evil of their influence; if sermon-writers
subsist upon their thoughts; if ‘sacred poets’ thrive by translating
their weaker portion into the speech of women; if, when all this is
over, some sufficient part of their writing will ever be fitting food
for wild musing and solitary meditation, surely this is because they
possessed the inner nature—‘an intense and glowing mind,’ ‘the vision
and the faculty divine.’ But if, perchance, in their weaker moments, the
great authors of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ did ever imagine that the world
was to pause because of their verses: that Peter Bell would be popular
in drawing-rooms; that Christabel would be perused in the City; that
people of fashion would make a hand-book of the Excursion,—it was well
for them to be told at once that this was not so. Nature ingeniously
prepared a shrill artificial voice, which spoke in season and out of
season, enough and more than enough, what will ever be the idea of the
cities of the plain concerning those who live alone among the mountains;
of the frivolous concerning the grave; of the gregarious concerning the
recluse; of those who laugh concerning those who laugh not; of the common
concerning the uncommon; of those who lend on usury concerning those who
lend not; the notion of the world of those whom it will not reckon among
the righteous—it said,[22] ‘This won’t do!’ And so in all time will the
lovers of polished Liberalism speak, concerning the intense and lonely
prophet.
Yet, if Lord Jeffrey had the natural infirmities of a Whig critic, he
certainly had also its extrinsic and political advantages. Especially
at Edinburgh the Whigs wanted a literary man. The Liberal party in
Scotland had long groaned under political exclusion; they had suffered,
with acute mortification, the heavy sway of Henry Dundas, but they had
been compensated by a literary supremacy; in the book-world they enjoyed
a domination. On a sudden this was rudely threatened. The fame of Sir
Walter Scott was echoed from the southern world, and appealed to every
national sentiment—to the inmost heart of every Scotchman. And what a
ruler! a lame Tory, a jocose Jacobite, a laugher at Liberalism, a scoffer
at metaphysics, an unbeliever in political economy! What a gothic ruler
for the modern Athens;—was this man to reign over them? It would not have
been like human nature, if a strong and intellectual party had not soon
found a clever and noticeable rival. Poets, indeed, are not made ‘to
order;’ but Byron, speaking the sentiment of his time and circle, counted
reviewers their equals. If a Tory produced ‘Marmion,’ a Whig wrote the
best article upon it; Scott might, so ran Liberal speech, be the best
living writer of fiction; Jeffrey, clearly, was the most shrewd and
accomplished of literary critics.
And though this was an absurd delusion, Lord Jeffrey was no every-day
man. He invented the trade of editorship. Before him an editor was a
bookseller’s drudge; he is now a distinguished functionary. If Jeffrey
was not a great critic, he had, what very great critics have wanted, the
art of writing what most people would think good criticism. He might not
know his subject, but he knew his readers. People like to read ideas
which they can imagine to have been their own. ‘Why does Scarlett always
persuade the jury?’ asked a rustic gentleman. ‘Because there are twelve
Scarletts in the jury-box,’ replied an envious advocate. What Scarlett
was in law, Jeffrey was in criticism; he could become that which his
readers could not avoid being. He was neither a pathetic writer nor
a profound writer; but he was a quick-eyed, bustling, black-haired,
sagacious, agreeable man of the world. He had his day, and was entitled
to his day; but a gentle oblivion must now cover his already subsiding
reputation.
Sydney Smith was an after-dinner writer. His words have a flow, a vigour,
an expression, which is not given to hungry mortals. You seem to read
of good wine, of good cheer, of beaming and buoyant enjoyment. There is
little trace of labour in his composition; it is poured forth like an
unceasing torrent, rejoicing daily to run its course. And what courage
there is in it! There is as much variety of pluck in writing across a
sheet, as in riding across a country. Cautious men have many adverbs,
‘usually,’ ‘nearly,’ ‘almost:’ safe men begin, ‘it may be advanced:’ you
never know precisely what their premises are, nor what their conclusion
is; they go tremulously like a timid rider; they turn hither and thither;
they do not go straight across a subject, like a masterly mind. A few
sentences are enough for a master of sentences. A practical topic wants
rough vigour and strong exposition. This is the writing of ‘Sydney
Smith.’ It is suited to the broader kind of important questions. For
anything requiring fine nicety of speculation, long elaborateness of
deduction, evanescent sharpness of distinction, neither his style nor
his mind was fit. He had no patience for long argument, no acuteness
for delicate precision, no fangs for recondite research. Writers, like
teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders. Sydney Smith was a
‘molar.’ He did not run a long sharp argument into the interior of a
question; he did not, in the common phrase, go deeply into it; but he
kept it steadily under the contact of a strong, capable, heavy, jaw-like
understanding,—pressing its surface, effacing its intricacies, grinding
it down. Yet as we said, this is done without toil. The play of the
‘molar’ is instinctive and placid; he could not help it; it would seem
that he had an enjoyment in it.
The story is, that he liked a bright light; that when he was a poor
parson in the country, he used, not being able to afford more delicate
luminaries, to adorn his drawing-room with a hundred little lamps of
tin metal and mutton fat. When you know this, you see it in all his
writings. There is the same preference of perspicuity throughout them.
Elegance, fine savour, sweet illustration, are quite secondary. His only
question to an argument was, ‘Will it tell?’ as to an example, ‘Will it
exemplify?’ Like what is called ‘push’ in a practical man, his style goes
straight to its object; it is not restrained by the gentle hindrances,
the delicate decorums of refining natures. There is nothing more
characteristic of the Scandinavian mythology, than that it had a god with
a hammer. You have no better illustration of our English humour, than the
great success of this huge and healthy organisation.
There is something about this not exactly to the Whig taste. They do
not like such broad fun, and rather dislike unlimited statement. Lord
Melbourne, it is plain, declined to make him a bishop. In this there
might be a vestige of Canningite prejudice, but on the whole, there was
the distinction between the two men which there is between the loud wit
and the _recherché_ thinker—between the bold controversialist and the
discriminative statesman. A refined _noblesse_ can hardly respect a
humorist; he amuses them, and they like him, but they are puzzled to
know whether he does not laugh at them as well as with them; and the
notion of being laughed at, ever, or on any score, is alien to their shy
decorum and suppressed pride. But in a broader point of view, and taking
a wider range of general character, there was a good deal in common.
More than any one else, Sydney Smith was Liberalism in life. Somebody
has defined Liberalism as the spirit of the world. It represents its
genial enjoyment, its wise sense, its steady judgment, its preference
of the near to the far, of the seen to the unseen; it represents, too,
its shrinking from difficult dogma, from stern statement, from imperious
superstition. What health is to the animal, Liberalism is to the polity.
It is a principle of fermenting enjoyment, running over all the nerves,
inspiring the frame, happy in its mind, easy in its place, glad to
behold the sun. All this Sydney Smith, as it were, personified. The
biography just published of him will be very serviceable to his fame.
He has been regarded too much as a fashionable jester, and metropolitan
wit of society. We have now for the first time a description of him as
he was,—equally at home in the crude world of Yorkshire, and amid the
quintessential refinements of Mayfair. It is impossible to believe that
he did not give the epithet to his parish: it is now called Foston _le
Clay_. It was a ‘mute inglorious’ Sydney of the district, that invented
the name, if it is really older than the century. The place has an obtuse
soil, inhabited by stiff-clayed Yorkshiremen. There was nobody in the
parish to speak to, only peasants, farmers, and such like (what the
clergy call ‘parishioners’) and an old clerk who thought every one who
came from London a fool, ‘but you I do zee, Mr. Smith, be no fool.’ This
was the sort of life.
‘I turned schoolmaster, to educate my son, as I could
not afford to send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned
schoolmistress, to educate my girls, as I could not afford
a governess. I turned farmer, as I could not let my land.
A man-servant was too expensive; so I caught up a little
garden-girl, made like a milestone, christened her Bunch, put
a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler. The girls taught
her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals.
Bunch became the best butler in the county.
‘I had little furniture, so I bought a cart-load of deals;
took a carpenter (who came to me for parish relief, called
Jack Robinson) with a face like a full-moon, into my service;
established him in a barn, and said, “Jack, furnish my house.”
You see the result!
‘At last it was suggested that a carriage was much wanted in
the establishment. After diligent search, I discovered in
the back settlements of a York coach-maker an ancient green
chariot, supposed to have been the earliest invention of the
kind. I brought it home in triumph to my admiring family.
Being somewhat dilapidated, the village tailor lined it, the
village blacksmith repaired it; nay, (but for Mrs. Sydney’s
earnest entreaties,) we believe the village painter would
have exercised his genius upon the exterior; it escaped this
danger however, and the result was wonderful. Each year added
to its charms: it grew younger and younger; a new wheel, a new
spring; I christened it the _Immortal_; it was known all over
the neighbourhood; the village boys cheered it, and the village
dogs barked at it; but “Faber meæ fortunæ” was my motto, and we
had no false shame.
‘Added to all these domestic cares, I was village parson,
village doctor, village comforter, village magistrate, and
Edinburgh Reviewer; so you see I had not much time left on my
hands to regret London.’
It is impossible that this should not at once remind us of the life of
Sir Walter Scott. There is the same strong sense, the same glowing,
natural pleasure, the same power of dealing with men, the same power of
diffusing common happiness. Both enjoyed as much in a day, as an ordinary
man in a month. The term ‘animal spirits’ peculiarly expresses this
bold enjoyment; it seems to come from a principle intermediate between
the mind and the body; to be hardly intellectual enough for the soul,
and yet too permeating and aspiring for crude matter. Of course, there
is an immense imaginative world in Scott’s existence to which Sydney
Smith had no claim. But they met upon the present world; they enjoyed
the spirit of life; ‘they loved the world, and the world them;’ they
did not pain themselves with immaterial speculation—roast beef was an
admitted fact. A certain, even excessive practical caution which is
ascribed to the Englishman, Scott would have been the better for. Yet his
biography would have been the worse. There is nothing in the life before
us comparable in interest to the tragic, gradual cracking of the great
mind; the overtasking of the great capital, and the ensuing failure; the
spectacle of heaving genius breaking in the contact with misfortune.
The anticipation of this pain increases the pleasure of the reader; the
commencing threads of coming calamity shade the woof of pleasure; the
proximity of suffering softens the ὕβρις, the terrible, fatiguing energy
of enjoyment.
A great deal of excellent research has been spent on the difference
between ‘humour’ and ‘wit,’ into which metaphysical problem ‘our limits,’
of course, forbid us to enter. There is, however, between them, the
distinction of dry sticks and green sticks; there is in humour a living
energy, a diffused potency, a noble sap; it grows upon the character of
the humorist. Wit is part of the machinery of the intellect; as Madame
de Staël says, ‘_La gaieté de l’esprit est facile à tous les hommes
d’esprit_.’ We wonder Mr. Babbage does not invent a punning-engine;
it is just as possible as a calculating one. Sydney Smith’s mirth was
essentially humorous; it clings to the character of the man; as with the
sayings of Dr. Johnson, there is a species of personality attaching to
it; the word is more graphic because Sydney Smith—that man being the man
that he was,—said it, than it would have been if said by any one else.
In a desponding moment, he would have it he was none the better for the
jests which he made, any more than a bottle for the wine which passed
through it: this is a true description of many a wit, but he was very
unjust in attributing it to himself.
Sydney Smith is often compared to Swift; but this only shows with how
little thought our common criticism is written. The two men have really
nothing in common, except that they were both high in the Church, and
both wrote amusing letters about Ireland. Of course, to the great
constructive and elaborative power displayed in Swift’s longer works,
Sydney Smith has no pretension; he could not have written ‘Gulliver’s
Travels;’ but so far as the two series of Irish letters goes, it
seems plain that he has the advantage. Plymley’s letters are true;
the treatment may be incomplete—the Catholic religion may have latent
dangers and insidious attractions which are not there mentioned—but
the main principle is sound; the common sense of religious toleration
is hardly susceptible of better explanation. Drapier’s letters, on
the contrary, are essentially absurd; they are a clever appeal to
ridiculous prejudices. Who cares now for a disputation on the evils to be
apprehended a hundred years ago from adulterated halfpence, especially
when we know that the halfpence were not adulterated, and that if they
had been, those evils would never have arisen? Any one, too, who wishes
to make a collection of currency crotchets, will find those letters worth
his attention. No doubt there is a clever affectation of common-sense
as in all of Swift’s political writings, and the style has an air of
business; yet, on the other hand, there are no passages which any one
would now care to quote for their manner and their matter; and there are
many in ‘Plymley’ that will be constantly cited, so long as existing
controversies are at all remembered. The whole genius of the two writers
is emphatically opposed. Sydney Smith’s is the ideal of popular, buoyant,
riotous fun; it cries and laughs with boisterous mirth; it rolls hither
and thither like a mob, with elastic and common-place joy. Swift was a
detective in a dean’s wig; he watched the mob; his whole wit is a kind
of dexterous indication of popular frailties; he hated the crowd; he was
a spy on beaming smiles, and a common informer against genial enjoyment.
His whole essence was a soreness against mortality. Show him innocent
mirth, he would say, How absurd! He was painfully wretched, no doubt,
in himself: perhaps, as they say, he had no heart; but his mind, his
brain had a frightful capacity for secret pain; his sharpness was the
sharpness of disease; his power the sore acumen of morbid wretchedness.
It is impossible to fancy a parallel more proper to show the excellence,
the unspeakable superiority of a buoyant and bounding writer.
At the same time, it is impossible to give to Sydney Smith the highest
rank, even as a humorist. Almost all his humour has reference to the
incongruity of special means to special ends. The notion of Plymley
is want of conformity between the notions of ‘my brother Abraham,’
and the means of which he makes use; of the quiet clergyman, who was
always told he was a bit of a goose, advocating conversion by muskets,
and stopping Bonaparte by Peruvian bark. The notion of the letters to
Archdeacon Singleton is, a bench of bishops placidly and pleasantly
destroying the Church. It is the same with most of his writings. Even
when there is nothing absolutely practical in the idea, the subject is
from the scenery of practice, from concrete entities, near institutions,
superficial facts. You might quote a hundred instances. Here is one: ‘A
gentleman, in speaking of a nobleman’s wife of great rank and fortune,
lamented very much that she had no children. A medical gentleman who was
present observed, that to have no children was a great misfortune, but
he had often observed it was _hereditary_ in families.’ This is what we
mean by saying his mirth lies in the superficial relations of phenomena
(some will say we are pompous, like the medical man); in the relation
of one external fact to another external fact; of one detail of common
life to another detail of common life. But this is not the highest topic
of humour. Taken as a whole, the universe is absurd. There seems an
unalterable contradiction between the human mind and its employments.
How can a _soul_ be a merchant? What relation to an immortal being have
the price of linseed, the fall of butter, the tare on tallow, or the
brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit ‘petty expenses,’ and
charge for ‘carriage paid’? All the world’s a stage;—‘the satchel, and
the shining morning face’—the ‘strange oaths;’—‘the bubble reputation’—the
‘Eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances.’
Can these things be real? Surely they are acting. What relation have they
to the truth as we see it in theory? What connection with our certain
hopes, our deep desires, our craving and infinite thought? ‘In respect of
itself, it is a good life; but in respect it is a shepherd’s life, it is
nought.’ The soul ties its shoe; the mind washes its hands in a basin.
All is incongruous.
_Shallow._ Certain, ’tis certain; very sure, very sure; death,
as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a
good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?
_Silence._ Truly, cousin, I was not there.
_Shallow._ Death is certain.—Is old Double, of your town,
living yet?
_Silence._ Dead, sir.
_Shallow._ Dead. See! See! He drew a good bow,—and dead. He
shot a fine shoot. John of Gaunt loved him well, and betted
much money on his head.—Dead! He would have clapped i’ the
clout at fourscore, and carried you a forehandshaft, a fourteen
and fourteen and-a-half, that it would have done a man’s heart
good to see.—How a score of ewes now?
_Silence._ Thereafter as they be; a score of ewes may be worth
ten pounds.
_Shallow._ And is Double dead!—
It is because Sydney Smith had so little of this Shakespearian humour,
that there is a glare in his pages, and that in the midst of his best
writing, we sigh for the soothing superiority of quieter writers.
Sydney Smith was not only the wit of the first Edinburgh, but likewise
the divine. He was, to use his own expression, the only clergyman who
in those days ‘turned out’ to fight the battles of the Whigs. In some
sort this was not so important. A curious abstinence from religious
topics characterises the original Review. There is a wonderful omission
of this most natural topic of speculation in the lives of Horner and
Jeffrey. In truth, it would seem that, living in the incessant din of
a Calvinistic country, the best course for thoughtful and serious men
was to be silent—at least they instinctively thought so. They felt no
involuntary call to be theological teachers themselves, and gently
recoiled from the coarse admonition around them. Even in the present
milder time, few cultivated persons willingly think on the special dogmas
of distinct theology. They do not deny them, but they live apart from
them: they do not disbelieve them, but they are silent when they are
stated. They do not question the existence of Kamschatka, but they have
no call to busy themselves with Kamschatka; they abstain from peculiar
tenets. Nor in truth is this, though much aggravated by existing facts,
a mere accident of this age. There are some people to whom such a course
of conduct is always natural: there are certain persons who do not, as
it would seem cannot, feel all that others feel; who have, so to say, no
_ear_ for much of religion: who are in some sort out of its reach. ‘It is
impossible,’ says a late divine of the Church of England, ‘not to observe
that innumerable persons (may we not say the majority of mankind?) who
have a belief in God and immortality, have, nevertheless, scarcely any
consciousness of the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. They seem to live
aloof from them in the world of business or of pleasure, “the common
life of all men,” not without a sense of right, and a rule of truth and
honesty, yet insensible’ to much which we need not name. ‘They have never
in their whole lives experienced the love of God, the sense of sin, or
the need of forgiveness. Often they are remarkable for the purity of
their morals; many of them have strong and disinterested attachments
and quick human sympathies; sometimes a stoical feeling of uprightness,
or a peculiar sensitiveness to dishonour. It would be a mistake to say
that they are without religion. They join in its public acts; they are
offended at profaneness or impiety; they are thankful for the blessings
of life, and do not rebel against its misfortunes. Such men meet us at
every step. They are those whom we know and associate with; honest in
their dealings, respectable in their lives, decent in their conversation.
The Scripture speaks to us of two classes, represented by the church and
the world, the wheat and the tares, the sheep and the goats, the friends
and enemies of God. We cannot say in which of these two divisions we
should find a place for them.’ They believe always a kind of ‘natural
religion.’ Now these are what we may call, in the language of the
present, Liberals. Those who can remember, or who will re-read our
delineation of the Whig character, may observe its conformity. There is
the same purity and delicacy, the same tranquil sense; an equal want of
imagination, of impulsive enthusiasm, of shrinking fear. You need not
speak like the above writer of ‘peculiar doctrines;’ the phenomenon is no
speciality of a particular creed. Glance over the whole of history. As
the classical world stood beside the Jewish; as Horace beside St. Paul;
like the heavy ark and the buoyant waves, so are men in contrast with one
another. You cannot imagine a classical Isaiah; you cannot fancy a Whig
St. Dominic; there is no such thing as a Liberal Augustine. The deep sea
of mysticism lies opposed to some natures; in some moods it is a sublime
wonder; in others an ‘impious ocean,’—they will never put forth on it at
any time.
All this is intelligible, and in a manner beautiful as a character;
but it is not equally excellent as a creed. A certain class of Liberal
divines have endeavoured to petrify into a theory, a pure and placid
disposition. In some respects Sydney Smith is one of these; his sermons
are the least excellent of his writings; of course they are sensible
and well-intentioned, but they have the defect of his school. With
misdirected energy, these divines have laboured after a plain religion;
they have forgotten that a quiet and definite mind is confined to a
placid and definite world; that religion has its essence in awe, its
charm in infinity, its sanction in dread; that its dominion is an
inexplicable dominion; that mystery is its power. There is a reluctance
in all such writers; they creep away from the unintelligible parts of the
subject: they always seem to have something behind;—not to like to bring
out what they know to be at hand. They are in their nature apologists;
and, as George the Third said, ‘I did not know the Bible needed an
apology.’ As well might the thunder be ashamed to roll, as religion
hesitate to be too awful for mankind. The invective of Lucretius is truer
than the placid patronage of the divine. Let us admire Liberals in life,
but let us keep no terms with Paleyans in speculation.
And so we must draw to a conclusion. We have in some sort given a
description of, with one great exception, the most remarkable men
connected at its origin with the Edinburgh Review. And that exception
is a man of too fitful, defective, and strange greatness to be spoken
of now. Henry Brougham must be left to after-times. Indeed, he would
have marred the unity of our article. He was connected with the Whigs,
but he never was one. His impulsive ardour is the opposite of their
coolness; his irregular, discursive intellect contrasts with their quiet
and perfecting mind. Of those of whom we have spoken, let us say, that
if none of them attained to the highest rank of abstract intellect; if
the disposition of none of them was ardent or glowing enough to hurry
them forward to the extreme point of daring greatness; if only one can be
said to have a lasting place in real literature, it is clear that they
vanquished a slavish cohort; that they upheld the name of freemen in a
time of bondmen; that they applied themselves to that which was real,
and accomplished much which was very difficult; that the very critics
who question their inimitable excellence will yet admire their just and
scarcely imitable example.
_HARTLEY COLERIDGE._[23]
(1852.)
Hartley Coleridge was not like the Duke of Wellington.[24] Children are
urged by the example of the great statesman and warrior just departed—not
indeed to neglect ‘their book’ as he did—but to be industrious and
thrifty; to ‘always perform business,’ to ‘beware of procrastination,’
to ‘NEVER fail to do their best:’ good ideas, as may be ascertained by
referring to the masterly despatches on the Mahratta transactions—‘great
events,’ as the preacher continues, ‘which exemplify the efficacy of
diligence even in regions where the very advent of our religion is as yet
but partially made known.’ But
‘What a wilderness were this sad world,
If man were always man and never child!’
And it were almost a worse wilderness if there were not some, to relieve
the dull monotony of activity, who are children through life; who act on
wayward impulse, and whose will has never come; who toil not and who spin
not; who always have ‘fair Eden’s simpleness:’ and of such was Hartley
Coleridge. ‘Don’t you remember,’ writes Gray to Horace Walpole, when
Lord B. and Sir H. C. and Viscount D., who are now great statesmen, were
little dirty boys playing at cricket? For my part I do not feel one bit
older or wiser now than I did then.’ For as some apply their minds to
what is next them, and labour ever, and attain to governing the Tower,
and entering the Trinity House,—to commanding armies, and applauding
pilots,—so there are also some who are ever anxious to-day about what
ought only to be considered to-morrow; who never get on; whom the earth
neglects, and whom tradesmen little esteem; who are where they were; who
cause grief, and are loved; that are at once a by-word and a blessing;
who do not live in life, and it seems will not die in death: and of such
was Hartley Coleridge.
A curious instance of poetic anticipation was in this instance vouchsafed
to Wordsworth. When Hartley was six years old, he addressed to him these
verses, perhaps the best ever written on a real and visible child:—
‘O thou, whose fancies from afar are brought,
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel
And fittest to unutterable thought
The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol;
Thou fairy voyager, that dost float
In such clear water that thy boat
May rather seem
To brood on air than on an earthly stream;
O blessed vision, happy child,
Thou art so exquisitely wild,
I think of thee with many fears
For what may be thy lot in future years.
...
O too industrious folly!
O vain and causeless melancholy!
Nature will either end thee quite,
Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,
Preserve for thee by individual right
A young lamb’s heart among the full-grown flocks.’
And so it was. As often happens, being very little of a boy in actual
childhood, Hartley preserved into manhood and age all of boyhood which
he had ever possessed—its beaming imagination and its wayward will. He
had none of the natural roughness of that age. He never played—partly
from weakness, for he was very small, but more from awkwardness. His
uncle Southey used to say he had two left hands, and might have added
that they were both useless. He could no more have achieved football, or
mastered cricket, or kept in with the hounds, than he could have followed
Charles’s Wain or played pitch and toss with Jupiter’s satellites. Nor
was he very excellent at school-work. He showed, indeed, no deficiency.
The Coleridge family have inherited from the old scholar of Ottery St.
Mary a certain classical facility which could not desert the son of
Samuel Taylor. But his real strength was in his own mind. All children
have a world of their own, as distinct from that of the grown people who
gravitate around them as the dreams of girlhood from our prosaic life; as
the ideas of the kitten that plays with the falling leaves, from those of
her carnivorous mother that catches mice and is sedulous in her domestic
duties. But generally about this interior existence, children are dumb.
You have warlike ideas, but you cannot say to a sinewy relative, ‘My
dear aunt, I wonder when the big bush in the garden will begin to walk
about; I’m sure it’s a crusader, and I was cutting it all the day with
my steel sword. But what do you think, aunt, for I’m puzzled about its
legs, because you see, aunt, it has only _one_ stalk; and besides, aunt,
the leaves.’ You cannot remark this in secular life; but you hack at the
infelicitous bush till you do not altogether reject the idea that your
small garden is Palestine, and yourself the most adventurous of knights.
Hartley had this, of course, like any other dreamy child, but in his
case it was accompanied with the faculty of speech, and an extraordinary
facility in continuous story-telling. In the very earliest childhood he
had conceived a complete outline of a country like England, whereof he
was king himself, and in which there were many wars, and rumours of wars,
and foreign relations and statesmen, and rebels and soldiers. ‘My people,
Derwent,’ he used to begin, ‘are giving me much pain; they want to go
to war.’ This faculty, as was natural, showed itself before he went to
school, but he carried on the habit of fanciful narration even into that
bleak and ungenial region. ‘It was not,’ says his brother, ‘by a series
of tales, but by one continuous tale, regularly evolved, and possessing a
real unity, that he enchained the attention of his auditors, night after
night, as we lay in bed, for a space of years, and not unfrequently for
hours together.’... ‘There was certainly,’ he adds, ‘a great variety of
persons sharply characterised, who appeared on the stage in combination
and not in succession.’ Connected, in Hartley, with this premature
development of the imagination, there was a singular deficiency in what
may be called the _sense_ of reality. It is alleged that he hardly
knew that Ejuxrea, which is the name of his kingdom, was not as solid
a _terra firma_ as Keswick or Ambleside. The deficiency showed itself
on other topics. His father used to tell a story of his metaphysical
questioning. When he was about five years old, he was asked, doubtless
by the paternal metaphysician, some question as to why he was called
Hartley. ‘Which Hartley?’ replied the boy. ‘Why, is there more than one
Hartley?’ ‘Yes, there is a deal of Hartleys; there is Picture Hartley
(Hazlitt had painted a picture of him), and Shadow Hartley, and there’s
Echo Hartley, and there’s Catchmefast Hartley,’ seizing his own arm very
eagerly, and as if reflecting on the ‘summject and ommject,’ which is to
say, being in hopeless confusion. We do not hear whether he was puzzled
and perplexed by such difficulties in later life; and the essays which
we are reviewing, though they contain much keen remark on the detail of
human character, are destitute of the Germanic profundities; they do not
discuss how existence is possible, nor enumerate the pure particulars of
the soul itself. But considering the idle dreaminess of his youth and
manhood, we doubt if Hartley ever got over his preliminary doubts—ever
properly grasped the idea of fact and reality. This is not nonsense. If
you attend acutely, you may observe that in few things do people differ
more than in their perfect and imperfect realisation of this earth.
To the Duke of Wellington a coat was a coat; ‘there was no mistake;’
no reason to disbelieve it; and he carried to his grave a perfect and
indubitable persuasion that he really did (what was his best exploit),
without fluctuation, _shave_ on the morning of the battle of Waterloo.
You could not have made him doubt it. But to many people who will never
be Field Marshals, there is on such points, not rational doubt, but
instinctive questioning. ‘Who the devil,’ said Lord Byron, ‘could _make_
such a world? No one, I believe.’ ‘Cast your thoughts,’ says a very
different writer, ‘back on the time when our ancient buildings were
first reared. Consider the churches all around us; how many generations
have passed since stone was put upon stone, till the whole edifice was
finished! The first movers and instruments of its erection, the minds
that planned it, and the limbs that wrought at it, the pious hands
that contributed to it, and the holy lips that consecrated it, have
long, long ago been taken away, yet we benefit by their good deed. Does
it not seem strange that men should be able, not merely by acting on
others, not by a continued influence carried on through many minds in
succession, but by a single direct act, to come into contact with us,
and, as if with their own hand, to benefit us who live centuries later?’
Or again, speaking of the lower animals: ‘Can anything be more marvellous
or startling, than that we should have a race of beings about us, whom
we do but see, and as little know their state, or can describe their
interests or their destiny, as we can tell of the inhabitants of the
sun and moon? It is indeed a very overpowering thought, that we hold
intercourse with creatures who are as much strangers to us, as mysterious
as if they were the fabulous, unearthly beings, more powerful than man,
and yet his slaves, which Eastern superstitions have invented.... Cast
your thoughts abroad on the whole number of them, large and small, in
vast forests, or in the water, or in the air, and then say whether the
presence of such countless multitudes, so various in their natures, so
strange and wild in their shapes, is not’ as incredible as anything can
be. We go into a street, and see it thronged with men, and we say, Is
it _true_, _are_ there these men? We look on a creeping river, till we
say, _Is_ there this river? We enter the law courts: we watch the patient
Chancellor: we hear the droning wigs:—surely this is not real,—this is
a dream,—nobody would do _that_,—it is a delusion. We are really, as
the sceptics insinuate, but ‘sensations and impressions,’ in groups or
alone, that float up and down; or, as the poet teaches, phantoms and
images, whose idle stir but mocks the calm reality of the ‘pictures on
the wall.’ All this will be called dreamy; but it is exactly because it
_is_ dreamy that we notice it. Hartley Coleridge was a dreamer: he began
with Ejuxrea, and throughout his years, he but slumbered and slept. Life
was to him a floating haze, a disputable mirage: you must not treat him
like a believer in stocks and stones—you might as well say he was a man
of business.
Hartley’s school education is not worth recounting; but beside and along
with it there was another education, on every side of him, singularly
calculated to bring out the peculiar aptitudes of an imaginative mind,
yet exactly, on that very account, very little likely to bring it down
to fact and reality, to mix it with miry clay, or define its dreams by
a daily reference to the common and necessary earth. He was bred up in
the house of Mr. Southey, where, more than anywhere else in all England,
it was held that literature and poetry are the aim and object of every
true man, and that grocery and other affairs lie beneath at an wholly
immeasurable distance, to be attended to by the inferior animals. In
Hartley’s case the seed fell on fitting soil. In youth, and even in
childhood, he was a not unintelligent listener to the unspeakable talk of
the Lake poets.
‘It was so,’ writes his brother, ‘rather than by a regular course of
study, that he was educated; by desultory reading, by the living voice
of Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, Lloyd, Wilson, and De Quincey;
and again, by homely familiarity with townsfolk and countryfolk of every
degree; lastly, by daily recurring hours of solitude—by lonely wanderings
with the murmur of the Brathay in his ear.’
Thus he lived till the time came that he should go to Oxford, and
naturally enough, it seems, he went up with much hope and strong
excitement; for, quiet and calm as seem those ancient dormitories, to
him, as to many, the going among them seemed the first entrance into
the real world—the end of torpidity—the beginning of life. He had often
stood by the white Rydal Water, and thought it was coming, and now it
was come in fact. At first his Oxford life was prosperous enough. An
old gentleman, who believes that he too was once an undergraduate,
well remembers how Hartley’s eloquence was admired at wine parties and
breakfast parties. ‘Leaning his head on one shoulder, turning up his
dark bright eyes, and swinging backwards and forwards in his chair, he
would hold forth by the hour, for no one wished to interrupt him, on
whatever subject might have been started—either of literature, politics,
or religion—with an originality of thought, a force of illustration,
which,’ the narrator doubts, ‘if any man then living, except his father,
could have surpassed.’ The singular gift of continuous conversation—for
singular it is, if in any degree agreeable—seems to have come to him by
nature, and it was through life the one quality which he relied on for
attraction in society. Its being agreeable is to be accounted for mainly
by its singularity; if one knew any respectable number of declaimers—if
any proportion of one’s acquaintance should receive the gift of the
English language, and ‘improve each shining hour’ with liquid eloquence,
how we should regret their present dumb and torpid condition! If we
are to be dull—which our readers will admit to be an appointment of
providence—surely we will be dull in silence. Do not sermons exist, and
are they not a warning to mankind?
In fact, the habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of
mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in
other people’s minds. S. T. Coleridge, it is well known, talked to
everybody, and to everybody alike; like a Christian divine, he did not
regard persons. ‘That is a fine opera, Mr. Coleridge,’ said a young
lady, some fifty years back. ‘Yes, ma’am; and I remember Kant somewhere
makes a very similar remark for, as _we_ know, the idea of philosophical
infinity—.’ Now, this sort of talk will answer with two sorts of
people—with comfortable, stolid, solid people, who don’t understand it at
all—who don’t feel that they ought to understand it—who feel that they
ought not—that _they_ are to sell treacle and appreciate figs—but that
there _is_ this transcendental superlunary sphere, which is known to
others—which is now revealed in the spiritual speaker, the unmitigated
oracle, the evidently celestial sound. That the dreamy orator himself
has no more notion what is passing in their minds than they have what
is running through his, is of no consequence at all. If he did know
it, he would be silent; he would be jarred to feel how utterly he was
misunderstood; it would break the flow of his everlasting words. Much
better that he should run on in a never-pausing stream, and that the
wondering rustics should admire for ever. The basis of the entertainment
is that neither should comprehend the other.—But in a degree yet higher
is the society of an omniscient orator agreeable to a second sort of
people,—generally young men, and particularly—as in Hartley’s case—clever
undergraduates. All young men like what is theatrical, and by a fine
dispensation all clever young men like notions. They want to hear about
opinions, to know about opinions. The ever-flowing rhetorician gratifies
both propensions. He is a notional _spectacle_. Like the sophist of old,
he _is_ something and says something. The vagabond speculator in all
ages will take hold on those who wish to reason, and want premises—who
wish to argue, and want theses—who desire demonstrations, and have but
presumptions. And so it was acceptable enough that Hartley should make
the low tones of his musical voice glide sweetly and spontaneously
through the cloisters of Merton, debating the old questions, the ‘fate,
free-will, foreknowledge,’—the points that Ockham and Scotus propounded
in these same enclosures—the common riddles, the everlasting enigmas of
mankind. It attracts the scorn of middle-aged men (who depart πρὸς τὰ
ἱερά, and fancy they are wise), but it is a pleasant thing, that impact
of hot thought upon hot thought, of young thought upon young thought, of
new thought upon new thought. It comes to the fortunate once, but to no
one a second time thereafter for ever.
Nor was Hartley undistinguished in the regular studies of the University.
A regular, exact, accurate scholar he never was; but even in his early
youth he perhaps knew much more and understood much more of ancient
literature than seven score of schoolmasters and classmen. He had,
probably, in his mind a picture of the ancient world, or of some of it,
while the dry _literati_ only know the combinations and permutations of
the Greek alphabet. There is a pleasant picture of him at this epoch,
recorded by an eye-witness. ‘My attention,’ he narrates, ‘was at first
aroused by seeing from a window a figure flitting about amongst the
trees and shrubs of the garden with quick and agitated motion. This was
Hartley, who, in the ardour of preparing for his college examination, did
not even take his meals with the family, but snatched a hasty morsel in
his own apartment, and only sought the free air when the fading daylight
prevented him from seeing his books. Having found who he was that so
mysteriously flitted about the garden, I was determined to lose no time
in making his acquaintance, and through the instrumentality of Mrs.
Coleridge I paid Hartley a visit in what he called his den. This was a
room afterwards converted by Mr. Southey’—as what chink was not?—‘into
a supplementary library, but then appropriated as a study to Hartley,
and presenting a most picturesque and student-like disorder of scattered
pamphlets and folios.’ This is not a picture of the business-like
reading man—one wonders what fraction of his time he did read—but
it was probably the happiest period of his life. There was no coarse
prosaic action there. Much musing, little studying,—fair scholarship, an
atmosphere of the classics, curious fancies, much perusing of pamphlets,
light thoughts on heavy folios—these make the meditative poet, but not
the technical and patient-headed scholar; yet, after all, he was happy,
and obtained a second class.
A more suitable exercise, as it would have seemed at first sight, was
supplied by that curious portion of Oxford routine, the Annual Prize
Poem. This, he himself tells us, was, in his academic years, the real and
single object of his ambition. His reason is, for an autobiographical
reason, decidedly simple. ‘A great poet,’ he says, ‘I should not have
imagined myself, for I knew well enough that the verses were no great
things.’ But he entertained at that period of life—he was twenty-one—a
favourable opinion of young ladies; and he seems to have ascertained,
possibly from actual trial, that verses were not in themselves a very
emphatic attraction. Singular as it may sound, the ladies selected were
not only insensible to what is, after all, a metaphysical line, the
distinction between good poetry and bad, but were almost indifferent to
poetry itself. Yet the experiment was not quite conclusive. Verses might
fail in common life, and yet succeed in the Sheldonian theatre. It is
plain that they would be _read out_; it occurred to him, as he naïvely
relates, that if he should appear ‘as a prizeman,’ ‘as an intelligible
reciter of poetry,’ he would be an object of ‘some curiosity to the fair
promenaders in Christchurch Meadow;’ that the young ladies ‘with whom he
was on bowing and speaking terms might have felt a satisfaction in being
known to know me, which they had never experienced before.’ ‘I should,’
he adds, ‘have deemed myself a prodigious lion, and it was a character I
was weak enough to covet more than that of poet, scholar, or philosopher.’
In fact, he did not get the prize. The worthy East Indian, who imagined
that, in leaving a bequest for a prize to poetry, he should be as sure
of possessing poetry for his money as of eggs, if he had chosen eggs,
or of butter, if he had chosen butter, did not estimate rightly the
nature of poetry, or the nature of the human mind. The mechanical parts
of rhythm and metre are all that a writer can be certain of producing,
or that a purchaser can be sure of obtaining; and these an industrious
person will find in any collection of the Newdegate poems, together with
a fine assortment of similes and sentiments, respectively invented and
enjoined by Shem and Japhet for and to the use of after generations. And
there is a peculiar reason why a great poet (besides his being, as a
man of genius, rather more likely than another, to find a difficulty in
the preliminary technicalities of art) should not obtain an academical
prize, to be given for excellent verses to people of about twenty-one.
It is a bad season. ‘The imagination,’ said a great poet of the very
age, ‘of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is
healthy, but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a
ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition
thick-sighted.’[25] And particularly in a real poet, where the disturbing
influences of passion and fancy are most likely to be in excess, will
this unhealthy tinge be most likely to be excessive and conspicuous.
Nothing in the style of Endymion would have a chance of a prize; there
are no complete conceptions, no continuance of adequate words. What
is worse, there are no defined thoughts, or aged illustrations. The
characteristic of the whole is beauty and novelty, but it is beauty which
is not formed, and novelty which is strange and wavering. Some of these
defects are observable in the copy of verses on the ‘Horses of Lysippus,’
which Hartley Coleridge contributed to the list of unsuccessful attempts.
It does not contain so much originality as we might have expected; on
such a topic we anticipated more nonsense; a little, we are glad to say,
there is, and also that there is an utter want of those even raps, which
are the music of prize poems,—which were the right rhythm for Pope’s
elaborate sense, but are quite unfit for dreamy classics or contemplative
enthusiasm. If Hartley, like Pope, had been the son of a shopkeeper,
he would not have received the paternal encouragement, but rather a
reprimand,—‘Boy, boy, these be bad rhymes;’ and so, too, believed a
grizzled and cold examiner.
A much worse failure was at hand. He had been elected to a Fellowship,
in what was at that time the only open foundation in Oxford, Oriel
College: an event which shows more exact scholarship in Hartley, or
more toleration in the academical authorities for the grammatical
delinquencies of a superior man, than we should have been inclined, _a
priori_, to attribute to either of them. But it soon became clear that
Hartley was not exactly suited to that place. Decorum is the essence,
pomposity the advantage, of tutors. These Hartley had not. Beside the
serious defects which we shall mention immediately, he was essentially
an absent and musing, and therefore at times a highly indecorous man;
and though not defective in certain kinds of vanity, there was no tinge
in his manner of scholastic dignity. A schoolmaster should have an
atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being
himself. But an excessive sense of the ludicrous disabled Hartley
altogether from the acquisition of this valuable habit; perhaps he never
really attempted to obtain it. He accordingly never became popular as a
tutor, nor was he ever described as ‘exercising an influence over young
persons.’ Moreover, however excellently suited Hartley’s eloquence might
be to the society of undergraduates, it was out of place at the Fellows’
table. This is said to be a dull place. The excitement of early thought
has passed away; the excitements of active manhood are unknown. A certain
torpidity seems natural there. We find too that, probably for something
to say, he was in those years rather fond of exaggerated denunciation
of the powers that be. This is not the habit most grateful to the heads
of houses. ‘Sir,’ said a great authority, ‘do you deny that Lord Derby
ought to be Prime Minister? you might as well say, that I ought not to
be Warden of So and So.’ These habits rendered poor Hartley no favourite
with the leading people of his college, and no great prospective
shrewdness was required to predict that he would fare but ill, if any
sufficient occasion should be found for removing from the place, a person
so excitable and so little likely to be of use in inculcating ‘safe’
opinions among the surrounding youth.
Unhappily, the visible morals of Hartley offered an easy occasion. It
is not quite easy to gather from the narrative of his brother the exact
nature or full extent of his moral delinquencies; but enough is shown
to warrant, according to the rules, the unfavourable judgment of the
collegiate authorities. He describes, probably truly, the commencement
of his errors—‘I verily believe that I should have gone crazy, silly,
mad with vanity, had I obtained the prize for my “Horses of Lysippus.”
It was the only occasion in my life wherein I was keenly disappointed,
for it was the only one upon which I felt any confident hope. I had made
myself very sure of it; and the intelligence that not I but Macdonald was
the lucky man, absolutely stupefied me; yet I contrived for a time to
lose all sense of my misfortunes in exultation for Burton’s success.... I
sang, I danced, I whistled, I ran from room to room, announcing the great
tidings, and trying to persuade myself that I cared nothing at all for my
own case. But it would not do. It was bare sands with me the next day.
It was not the mere loss of the prize, but the feeling or phantasy of
an adverse destiny.... I foresaw that all my aims and hopes would prove
frustrate and abortive; and from that time I date my downward declension,
my impotence of will, and my melancholy recklessness. It was the first
time I sought relief in wine, which, as usual in such cases, produced
not so much intoxication as downright madness.’ Cast in an uncongenial
society, requiring to live in an atmosphere of respect and affection—and
surrounded by gravity and distrust—misconstrued and half tempted to
maintain the misconstruction; with the waywardness of childhood without
the innocency of its impulses; with the passions of manhood without the
repressive vigour of a man’s will,—he lived as a woman lives that is lost
and forsaken, who sins ever and hates herself for sinning, but who sins,
perhaps, more on that very account; because she requires some relief
from the keenness of her own reproach; because, in her morbid fancy, the
idea is ever before her; because her petty will is unable to cope with
the daily craving and the horrid thought—that she may not lose her own
identity—that she may not give in to the rigid, the distrustful, and the
calm.
There is just this excuse for Hartley, whatever it may be worth, that
the weakness was hereditary. We do not as yet know, it seems most likely
that we shall never know, the precise character of his father. But with
all the discrepancy concerning the details, enough for our purpose is
certain of the outline. We know that he lived many and long years a prey
to weaknesses and vice of this very description; and though it be false
and mischievous to speak of hereditary vice, it is most true and wise
to observe the mysterious fact of hereditary temptation. Doubtless it
is strange that the nobler emotions and the inferior impulses, their
peculiar direction or their proportionate strength, the power of a fixed
idea—that the inner energy of the very will, which seems to issue from
the inmost core of our complex nature, and to typify, if anything does,
the pure essence of the immortal soul—that these and such as these should
be transmitted by material descent, as though they were an accident of
the body, the turn of an eyebrow or the feebleness of a joint,—if this
were not obvious, it would be as amazing, perhaps more amazing, than
any fact which we know; it looks not only like predestinated, but even
heritable election. But, explicable or inexplicable—to be wondered at
or not wondered at—the fact is clear; tendencies and temptations are
transmitted even to the fourth generation both for good and for evil,
both in those who serve God and in those who serve Him not. Indeed, the
weakness before us seems essentially connected—perhaps we may say on a
final examination essentially identical—with the dreaminess of mind, the
inapprehensiveness of reality which we remarked upon before. Wordsworth
used to say, that ‘at a particular stage of his mental progress he used
to be frequently so wrapt into an unreal transcendental world of ideas,
that the external world seemed no longer to exist in relation to him,
and he had to convince himself of its existence by _clasping a tree_ or
something that happened to be near him.’ But suppose a mind which did not
feel acutely the sense of reality which others feel, in hard contact with
the tangible universe; which was blind to the distinction between the
palpable and the impalpable, or rather lived in the latter in preference
to, and nearly to the exclusion of, the former. What is to fix such a
mind, what is to strengthen it, to give it a fulcrum? To exert itself,
the will, like the arm, requires to have an obvious and a definite
resistance, to know where it is, why it is, whence it comes, and whither
it goes. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made of,’ says Prospero. So,
too, the difficulty of Shakespeare’s greatest dreamer, Hamlet, is that
he cannot quite believe that his duty is to be done where it lies, and
immediately. Partly from the natural effect of a vision of a spirit which
is not, but more from native constitution and instinctive bent, he is for
ever speculating on the reality of existence, the truth of the world.
‘How,’ discusses Kant, ‘is Nature in general possible?’ and so asked
Hamlet too. With this feeling on his mind, persuasion is useless and
argument in vain. Examples gross as earth exhort him, but they produce no
effect; but he thinks and thinks the more.
‘Now whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,—
A thought which quarter’d hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward,—I do not know
Why yet I live to say, “This thing’s to do,”
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do ’t.’
Hartley himself well observes that on such a character the likelihood
of action is inversely as the force of the motive and the time for
deliberation. The stronger the reason, the more certain the scepticism?
_Can_ anything be so certain? Does not the excess of the evidence alleged
make it clear that there is something behind, something on the other
side? Search then diligently lest anything be overlooked. Reflection
‘puzzles the will,’ Necessity ‘benumbs like a torpedo:’ and so
‘The native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.’
Why should we say any more? We do but ‘chant snatches of old tunes.’
But in estimating men like the Coleridges—the son even more than the
father—we must take into account this peculiar difficulty—this dreamy
unbelief—this daily scepticism—this haunting unreality—and imagine that
some may not be quite responsible either for what they do, or for what
they do not—because they are bewildered, and deluded, and perplexed, and
want the faculty as much to comprehend their difficulty as to subdue it.
The Oxford life of Hartley is all his life. The failure of his prospects
there, in his brother’s words, ‘deprived him of the residue of his
years.’ The biography afterwards goes to and fro—one attempt after
another failing, some beginning in much hope, but even the sooner for
that reason issuing in utter despair. His literary powers came early to
full perfection. For some time after his expulsion from Oriel he was
resident in London, and the poems written there are equal, perhaps are
superior, to any which he afterwards produced. This sonnet may serve as a
specimen:—
‘In the great city we are met again
Where many souls there are, that breathe and die
Scarce knowing more of nature’s potency
Than what they learn from heat or cold or rain,
The sad vicissitude of weary pain:—
For busy man is lord of ear and eye,
And what hath Nature, but the vast, void sky,
And the throng’d river toiling to the main?
Oh! say not so, for she shall have her part
In every smile, in every tear that falls,
And she shall hide her in the secret heart
Where love persuades and sterner duty calls;
But worse it were than death or sorrow’s smart,
To live without a friend within these walls.’
He soon, however, went down to the lakes, and there, except during one or
two short intervals, he lived and died. This exception was a residence
at Leeds, during which he brought out, besides a volume containing his
best poems, the book which stands at the head of our article—the Lives of
Northern Worthies. We selected the book, we confess, with the view mainly
of bringing a remarkable character before the notice of our readers—but
in itself the work is an excellent one, and of a rare kind.
Books are for various purposes—tracts to teach, almanacs to sell, poetry
to make pastry, but this is the rarest sort of book, a book to _read_.
As Dr. Johnson said, ‘Sir, a good book is one you can hold in your hand,
and take to the fire.’ Now there are extremely few books which can, with
any propriety, be so treated. When a great author, as Grote or Gibbon,
has devoted a whole life of horrid industry to the composition of a large
history, one feels one ought not to touch it with a mere hand—it is not
respectful. The idea of slavery hovers over the ‘Decline and Fall.’ Fancy
a stiffly dressed gentleman, in a stiff chair, slowly writing that stiff
compilation in a stiff hand: it is enough to stiffen you for life. Or is
poetry readable? Of course it is rememberable; when you have it in the
mind, it clings; if by heart, it haunts. Imagery comes from it; songs
which lull the ear, heroines that waste the time. But this Biographia is
actually read; a man is glad to take it up, and slow to lay it down; it
is a book which is truly valuable, for it is truly pleasing; and which
a man who has once had it in his library would miss from his shelves,
not only in the common way, by a physical vacuum, but by a mental
deprivation. This strange quality it owes to a peculiarity of style. Many
people give many theories of literary composition, and Dr. Blair, whom we
will read, is sometimes said to have exhausted the subject; but, unless
he has proved the contrary, we believe that the knack in style is to
write like a human being. Some think they must be wise, some elaborate,
some concise; Tacitus wrote like a pair of stays; some startle as Thomas
Carlyle, or a comet, inscribing with his tail. But legibility is given
to those who neglect these notions, and are willing to be themselves, to
write their own thoughts in their own words, in the simplest words, in
the words wherein they were thought; and such, and so great, was in this
book the magnanimity of Hartley.
As has been said, from his youth onwards, Hartley’s outward life was
a simple blank. Much writing, and much musing, some intercourse with
Wordsworth, some talking to undergraduate readers or lake ladies, great
loneliness, and much intercourse with the farmers of Cumberland—these
pleasures, simple enough, most of them, were his life. The extreme
pleasure of the peasantry in his conversation, is particularly remarked.
‘Aye, but Mr. Coleridge talks fine,’ observed one. ‘I would go through
fire and water for Mr. C.,’ interjected another. His father, with real
wisdom, had provided (in part, at least) for his necessary wants in the
following manner:—
‘This is a codicil to my last will and testament.
‘S. T. COLERIDGE.
‘Most desirous to secure, as far as in me lies, for my dear
son Hartley, the tranquillity essential to any continued and
successful exertion of his literary talents, and which, from
the like characters of our minds in this respect, I know to
be especially requisite for his happiness, and persuaded that
he will recognise in this provision that anxious affection
by which it is dictated, I affix this codicil to my last
will and testament.... And I hereby request them (the said
trustees) to hold the sum accruing to Hartley Coleridge from
the equal division of my total bequest between him, his brother
Derwent, and his sister Sara, after his mother’s decease,
to dispose of the interests or proceeds of the same portion
to or for the use of my dear son Hartley Coleridge, at such
time or times, in such manner, or under such conditions, as
they, the trustees above named, know to be my wish, and shall
deem conducive to the attainment of my object in adding the
codicil, namely, the anxious wish to ensure for my son the
continued means of a home, in which I comprise board, lodging,
and raiment. Providing that nothing in this codicil shall be
so interpreted as to interfere with my son H. C.’s freedom of
choice respecting his place of residence, or with his power of
disposing of his portion by will after his decease according as
his own judgments and affections may decide.’
An excellent provision, which would not, however, by the English law,
have disabled the ‘said Hartley’ from depriving himself of ‘the continued
means of a home’ by alienating the principal of the bequest; since the
jurisprudence of this country has no legal definition of ‘prodigality,’
and does not consider any person incompetent to manage his pecuniary
affairs unless he be quite and certainly insane. Yet there undoubtedly
are persons, and poor Hartley was one of them, who though in general
perfectly sane, and even with superior powers of thought or fancy, are as
completely unable as the most helpless lunatic to manage any pecuniary
transactions, and to whom it would be a great gain to have perpetual
guardians and compulsory trustees. But such people are rare, and few
principles are so English as the maxim _de minimis non curat lex_.
He lived in this way for thirty years or nearly so, but there is nothing
to tell of all that time. He died January 6, 1849, and was buried in
Grasmere churchyard—the quietest place in England, ‘by the yews,’ as
Arnold says, ‘that Wordsworth planted, the Rotha with its big silent
pools passing by.’ It was a shining January day when Hartley was borne to
the grave. ‘Keep the ground for us,’ said Mr. Wordsworth to the sexton;
‘we are old, and it cannot be long.’
We have described Hartley’s life at length for a peculiar reason. It is
necessary to comprehend his character, to appreciate his works; and there
is no way of delineating character but by a selection of characteristic
sayings and actions. All poets, as is commonly observed, are delineated
in their poems, but in very different modes. Each minute event in the
melancholy life of Shelley is frequently alluded to in his writings. The
tender and reverential character of Virgil is everywhere conspicuous in
his pages. It is clear that Chaucer was shrewd. We seem to have talked
with Shakespeare, though we have forgotten the facts of his life; but
it is not by minute allusion, or a tacit influence, or a genial and
delightful sympathy, that a writer like Hartley Coleridge leaves the
impress of himself, but in a more direct manner, which it will take a few
words to describe.
Poetry begins in Impersonality. Homer is a voice—a fine voice, a fine
eye, and a brain that drew with light; and this is all we know. The
natural subjects of the first art are the scenes and events in which the
first men naturally take an interest. They don’t care—who does?—for a
kind old man; but they want to hear of the exploits of their ancestors—of
the heroes of their childhood—of them that their fathers saw—of the
founders of their own land—of wars, and rumours of wars—of great
victories boldly won—of heavy defeats firmly borne—of desperate disasters
unsparingly retrieved. So in all countries—Siegfried, or Charlemagne, or
Arthur,—they are but attempts at an Achilles: the subject is the same—the
κλέα ἀνδρῶν and the death that comes to all. But then the mist of battles
passes away, and the sound of the daily conflict no longer hurtles in
the air, and a generation arises skilled with the skill of peace, and
refined with the refinement of civilisation, yet still remembering the
old world, still appreciating the old life, still wondering at the old
men, and ready to receive, at the hand of the poet, a new telling of
the old tale—a new idealisation of the legendary tradition. This is the
age of dramatic art, when men wonder at the big characters of old, as
schoolboys at the words of Æschylus, and try to find in their own breasts
the roots of those monstrous, but artistically developed impersonations.
With civilisation too comes another change: men wish not only to tell
what they have seen, but also to express what they are conscious of.
Barbarians feel only hunger, and that is not lyrical; but as time runs
on, arise gentler emotions and finer moods and more delicate desires
which need expression, and require from the artist’s fancy the lightest
touches and the most soothing and insinuating words. Lyrical poetry, too,
as we know, is of various kinds. Some, as the war song, approach to the
epic, depict events and stimulate to triumph; others are love songs to
pour out wisdom, others sober to describe champagne; some passive and
still, and expressive of the higher melancholy, as Gray’s ‘Elegy in a
Country Churchyard.’ But with whatever differences of species and class,
the essence of lyrical poetry remains in all identical; it is designed
to express, and when successful does express, some one mood, some single
sentiment, some isolated longing in human nature. It deals not with man
as a whole, but with man piecemeal, with man in a scenic aspect, with man
in a peculiar light. Hence lyrical poets must not be judged literally
from their lyrics: they are discourses; they require to be reduced into
the scale of ordinary life, to be stripped of the enraptured element,
to be clogged with gravitating prose. Again, moreover, and in course
of time, the advance of ages and the progress of civilisation appear
to produce a new species of poetry which is distinct from the lyrical,
though it grows out of it, and contrasted with the epic, though in a
single respect it exactly resembles it. This kind may be called the
_self-delineative_, for in it the poet deals not with a particular
desire, sentiment, or inclination in his own mind, not with a special
phase of his own character, not with his love of war, his love of ladies,
his melancholy, but with his mind viewed as a whole, with the entire
essence of his own character. The first requisite of this poetry is
truth. It is in Plato’s phrase the soul ‘itself by itself’ aspiring to
view and take account of the particular notes and marks that distinguish
it from all other souls. The sense of reality is necessary to excellence;
the poet being himself, speaks like one who has authority; he knows and
must not deceive. This species of poetry, of course, adjoins on the
lyrical, out of which it historically arises. Such a poem as the ‘Elegy’
is, as it were, on the borders of the two; for while it expresses but
a single emotion, meditative, melancholy, you seem to feel that this
sentiment is not only then and for a moment the uppermost, but (as with
Gray it was) the habitual mood, the pervading emotion of his whole life.
Moreover, in one especial peculiarity, this sort of poetry is analogous
to the narrative or epic. Nothing certainly can, in a general aspect,
be more distantly removed one from another, the one dealing in external
objects and stirring events, the other with the stillness and repose of
the poet’s mind; but still in a single characteristic the two coincide.
They describe character as the painters say _in mass_. The defect of the
drama is, that it can delineate only motion. If a thoughtful person will
compare the character of Achilles, as we find it in Homer, with the more
surpassing creations of dramatic invention, say with Lear or Othello,
he will perhaps feel that character in repose, character on the lonely
beach, character in marble, character in itself, is more clearly and
perfectly seen in the epic narrative, than in the conversational drama.
It of course requires immense skill to make mere talk exhibit a man as
he is ἑτάρων ἄφαρ. Now this quality of epic poetry the self-delineative
precisely shares with it. It describes a character—the poet’s—alone by
itself. And therefore, when the great master in both kinds did not
hesitate to turn aside from his ‘high argument’ to say—
‘More safe I sing with mortal voice unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,’
pedants may prose as they please about the ‘impropriety’ of
‘interspersing’ species of composition which are by nature remote; but
Milton felt more profoundly that in its treatment of character the
egotistical poetry is allied to the epic; that he was putting together
elements which would harmoniously combine; that he was but exerting the
same faculties in either case—being guided thereto by a sure instinct,
the desire of genius to handle and combine every one of the subjects on
which it is genius.
Now it is in this self-delineative species of poetry that, in our
judgment, Hartley Coleridge has attained to nearly, if not quite the
highest excellence; it pervades his writings everywhere. But a few
sonnets may be quoted to exemplify it:—
‘We parted on the mountains, as two streams
From one clear spring pursue their several ways;
And thy fleet course hath been through many a maze
In foreign lands, where silvery Padus gleams
To that delicious sky, whose glowing beams
Brightened the tresses that old poets praise,
Where Petrarch’s patient love and artful lays,
And Ariosto’s song of many themes,
Moved the soft air.—But I, a lazy brook,
As close pent up within my native dell,
Have crept along from nook to shady nook,
Where flow’rets blow and whispering Naiads dwell.
Yet now we meet that parted were so wide,
For rough and smooth to travel side by side.
‘Once I was young, and fancy was my all,
My love, my joy, my grief, my hope, my fear,
And ever ready as an infant’s tear,
Whate’er in Fancy’s kingdom might befall,
Some quaint device had Fancy still at call,
With seemly verse to greet the coming cheer;
Such grief to soothe, such airy hope to rear,
To sing the birth-song, or the funeral
Of such light love, it was a pleasant task;
But ill accord the quirks of wayward glee
That wears affliction for a wanton mask,
With woes that bear not Fancy’s livery;
With Hope that scorns of Fate its fate to ask,
But is itself its own sure destiny.
‘Too true it is my time of power was spent
In idly watering weeds of casual growth
That wasted energy to desperate sloth
Declined, and fond self-seeking discontent;
That the huge debt for all that nature lent
I sought to cancel,—and was nothing loth,
To deem myself an outlaw, severed both
From duty and from hope,—yea, blindly sent
Without an errand where I would to stray:—
Too true it is, that knowing now my state,
I weakly mourn the sin I ought to hate,
Nor love the law I yet would fain obey:
But true it is, above all law and fate
Is Faith, abiding the appointed day.
‘Long time a child, and still a child when years
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I:
For yet I lived like one not born to die,
A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears;
No hope I needed, and I knew no fears.
But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking,
I waked to sleep no more, at once o’ertaking
The vanguard of my age, with all arrears
Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man,
Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is grey,
For I have lost the race I never ran;
A rathe December blights my lagging May;
And still I am a child, tho’ I be old,
Time is my debtor for my years untold.’
Indeed, the whole series of sonnets with which the earliest and best
work of Hartley began is (with a casual episode on others), mainly and
essentially a series on himself. Perhaps there is something in the
structure of the sonnet rather adapted to this species of composition.
It is too short for narrative, too artificial for the intense passions,
too complex for the simple, too elaborate for the domestic; but in an
impatient world where there is not a premium on self-describing, who so
would speak of himself must be wise and brief, artful and composed—and in
these respects he will be aided by the concise dignity of the tranquil
sonnet.
It is remarkable that in this, too, Hartley Coleridge resembled his
father. Turn over the early poems of S. T. Coleridge, the minor poems
(we exclude the ‘Mariner’ and ‘Christabel,’ which are his epics), but
the small shreds which Bristol worshipped and Cottle paid for, and you
will be disheartened by utter dulness. Taken on a decent average, and
perhaps excluding a verse here and there, it really seems to us that they
are inferior to the daily works of the undeserving and multiplied poets.
If any reader will peruse any six of the several works intituled ‘Poems
by a Young Gentleman,’ we believe he will find the refined anonymity
less insipid than the small productions of Samuel Taylor. There will be
less puff and less ostentation. The reputation of the latter was caused
not by their merit but by their time. Fifty years ago people believed
in metre, and it is plain that Coleridge (Southey may be added, for
that matter) believed in it also; the people in Bristol said that these
two were wonderful men, because they had written wonderfully small
verses;—and such is human vanity, that both for a time accepted the
creed. In Coleridge, who had large speculative sense, the hallucination
was not permanent—there are many traces that he rated his Juvenilia at
their value; but poor Southey, who lived with domestic women, actually
died in the delusion that his early works were perfect, except that he
tried to ‘amend’ the energy out of Joan of Arc, which was the only good
thing in it. His wife did not doubt that he had produced stupendous
works. Why, then, should he? But experience has now shown that a certain
metrical facility, and a pleasure in the metrical expression of certain
sentiments, are in youth extremely common. Many years ago, Mr. Moore is
reported to have remarked to Sir Walter Scott, that hardly a magazine
was then published, which did not contain verses that would have made a
sensation when they were young men. ‘Confound it, Tom,’ was the reply,
‘what luck it was _we_ were born before all these fellows.’ And though
neither Moore nor Scott are to be confounded with the nameless and
industrious versifiers of the present day, yet it must be allowed that
they owed to their time and their position—to the small quantity of
rhyme in the market of the moment, and the extravagant appreciation of
their early productions—much of that popular encouragement which induced
them to labour upon more excellent compositions and to train themselves
to write what they will be remembered by. But, dismissing these
considerations, and returning to the minor poems of S. T. Coleridge,
although we fearlessly assert that it is impossible for any sane man to
set any value on—say the Religious Musings—an absurd attempt to versify
an abstract theory, or the essay on the Pixies, who had more fun in
them than the reader of it could suspect—it still is indisputable that
scattered here and there through these poems, there are lines about
himself (lines, as he said in later life, ‘in which the subjective object
views itself subjectivo-objectively,’) which rank high in that form of
art. Of this kind are the Tombless Epitaph, for example, or the lines,—
‘To me hath Heaven with bounteous hand assigned
Energic Reason and a shaping mind,
The daring ken of truth; the Patriot’s part,
And Pity’s sigh, that breathes the gentle heart;
Sloth-jaundiced all! and from my graspless hand
Drop friendship’s priceless pearls, like hour-glass sand.
I weep, yet stoop not! the faint anguish flows,
A dreamy pang in morning’s fev’rish doze;’
and so on. In fact, it would appear that the tendency to, and the faculty
for self-delineation are very closely connected with the dreaminess
of disposition and impotence of character which we spoke of just now.
Persons very subject to these can grasp no external object, comprehend
no external being; they can do no external thing, and therefore they are
left to themselves. Their own character is the only one which they can
view as a whole, or depict as a reality; of every other they may have
glimpses, and acute glimpses, like the vivid truthfulness of particular
dreams; but no settled appreciation, no connected development, no regular
sequence whereby they may be exhibited on paper or conceived in the
imagination. If other qualities are supposed to be identical, those will
be most egotistical who only know themselves; the people who talk most of
themselves will be those who talk best.
In the execution of minor verses, we think we could show that Hartley
should have the praise of surpassing his father; but nevertheless it
would be absurd, on a general view, to compare the two men. Samuel
Taylor was so much bigger; what there was in his son was equally good,
perhaps, but then there was not much of it; outwardly and inwardly he was
essentially little. In poetry, for example, the father has produced two
longish poems, which have worked themselves right down to the extreme
depths of the popular memory, and stay there very firmly, in part from
their strangeness, but in part from their power. Of Hartley, nothing
of this kind is to be found—he could not write connectedly; he wanted
steadiness of purpose, or efficiency of will, to write so voluntarily;
and his genius did not, involuntarily, and out of its unseen workings,
present him with continuous creations; on the contrary, his mind teemed
with little fancies, and a new one came before the first had attained any
enormous magnitude. As his brother observed, he wanted ‘back thought.’
‘On what plan, Mr. Coleridge, are you arranging your books?’ inquired
a lady. ‘Plan, madam? I have no plan: at first I had a principle; but
then I had another, and now I do not know.’ The same contrast between
the ‘shaping mind’ of the father, and the gentle and minute genius of
the son, is said to have been very plain in their conversation. That of
Samuel was continuous, diffused, comprehensive.
‘Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless motion,
Nothing before and nothing behind, but the sky and the ocean.’
‘Great talker, certainly,’ said Hazlitt, ‘_if_ you will let him start
from no _data_, and come to no conclusion.’ The talk of Hartley, on the
contrary, though continuous in time, was detached in meaning; stating
hints and observations on particular subjects; glancing lightly from side
to side, but throwing no intense light on any, and exhausting none. It
flowed gently over small doubts and pleasant difficulties, rippling for a
minute sometimes into bombast, but lightly recovering and falling quietly
in ‘melody back.’
By way, it is likely, of compensation to Hartley for this great
deficiency in what his father imagined to be his own _forte_,—the power
of conceiving a whole,—Hartley possessed, in a considerable degree,
a species of sensibility to which the former was nearly a stranger.
‘The mind of S. T. Coleridge,’ says one who had every means of knowing
and observing, ‘was not in the least under the influence of external
objects.’ Except in the writings written during daily and confidential
intimacy with Wordsworth (an exception that may be obviously accounted
for), no trace can perhaps be found of any new image or metaphor from
natural scenery. There is some story too of his going for the first time
to York, and by the Minster, and never looking up at it. But Hartley’s
poems exhibit a great sensibility to a certain aspect of exterior nature,
and great fanciful power of presenting that aspect in the most charming
and attractive forms. It is likely that the London boyhood of the elder
Coleridge was,—added to a strong abstractedness which was born with
him,—a powerful cause in bringing about the curious mental fact, that
a great poet, so susceptible to every other species of refining and
delightful feeling, should have been utterly destitute of any perception
of beauty in landscape or nature. We must not forget that S. T. Coleridge
was a blue-coat boy,—what do any of them know about fields? And
similarly, we require in Hartley’s case, before we can quite estimate his
appreciation of nature, to consider his position, his circumstances, and
especially his time.
Now it came to pass in those days that William Wordsworth went up into
the hills. It has been attempted in recent years to establish that the
object of his life was to teach Anglicanism. A whole life of him has been
written by an official gentleman, with the apparent view of establishing
that the great poet was a believer in rood-lofts, an idolator of piscinæ.
But this is not capable of rational demonstration. Wordsworth, like
Coleridge, began life as a heretic, and as the shrewd Pope unfallaciously
said, ‘once a heretic, always a heretic.’ Sound men are sound from the
first; safe men are safe from the beginning, and Wordsworth began wrong.
His real reason for going to live in the mountains was certainly in part
sacred, but it was not in the least Tractarian:—
‘For he with many feelings, many thoughts,
Made up a meditative joy, and found
Religious meanings in the forms of nature.’
His whole soul was absorbed in the one idea, the one feeling, the one
thought, of the sacredness of hills.
‘Early had he learned
To reverence the volume that displays
The mystery, the life which cannot die;
But in the mountains did he _feel_ his faith.
All things responsive to the writing, there
Breathed immortality, revolving life,
And greatness still revolving; infinite;
There littleness was not.
...
—In the after-day
Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn,
And ’mid the hollow depths of naked crags,
He sate, and e’en in their fixed lineaments
Or from the power of a peculiar eye,
Or by creative feeling overborne,
Or by predominance of thought oppressed,
E’en in their fixed and steady lineaments
He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind,
Expression ever varying!
...
A sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.’
The defect of this religion is, that it is too abstract for the
practical, and too bare for the musing. The worship of sensuous
beauty—the southern religion—is of all sentiments the one most deficient
in his writings. His poetry hardly even gives the charm, the entire
charm, of the scenery in which he lived. The lighter parts are little
noticed: the rugged parts protrude. The bare waste, the folding hill,
the rough lake, Helvellyn with a brooding mist, Ulswater in a grey day:
these are his subjects. He took a personal interest in the corners of
the universe. There is a print of Rembrandt said to represent a piece of
the Campagna, a mere waste, with a stump and a man, and under is written
‘Tacet et loquitur;’ and thousands will pass the old print-shop where
it hangs, and yet have a taste for paintings, and colours, and oils:
but some fanciful students, some lonely stragglers, some long-haired
enthusiasts, by chance will come, one by one, and look, and look, and
be hardly able to take their eyes from the fascination, so massive is
the shade, so still the conception, so firm the execution. Thus is it
with Wordsworth and his poetry. _Tacet et loquitur._ Fashion apart, the
million won’t read it. Why should they?—they could not understand it.
Don’t put them out,—let them buy, and sell, and die;—but idle students,
and enthusiastic wanderers, and solitary thinkers, will read, and read,
and read, while their lives and their occupations hold. In truth,
his works are the Scriptures of the intellectual life; for that same
searching, and finding, and penetrating power which the real Scripture
exercises on those engaged, as are the mass of men, in practical
occupations and domestic ties, do his works exercise on the meditative,
the solitary, and the young.
‘His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.’
And he had more than others,
‘That blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened: that serene and blessed mood
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.’
And therefore he has had a whole host of sacred imitators. Mr. Keble,
for example, has translated him for women. He has himself told us that
he owed to Wordsworth the tendency _ad sanctiora_, which is the mark of
his own writings; and in fact he has but adapted the tone and habit of
reverence, which his master applied to common objects and the course of
the seasons, to sacred objects and the course of the ecclesiastical
year,—diffusing a mist of sentiment and devotion altogether delicious
to a gentle and timid devotee. Hartley Coleridge is another translator.
He has applied to the sensuous beauties and seductive parts of external
nature the same _cultus_ which Wordsworth applied to the bare and the
abstract. It is—
‘That fair beauty which no eye can see,
Of that sweet music which no ear can measure.’
It is, as it were, female beauty in wood and water; it is Rydal Water on
a shining day; it is the gloss of the world with the knowledge that it is
gloss: the sense of beauty, as in some women, with the feeling that yet
it is hardly theirs:—
‘The vale of Tempe had in vain been fair,
Green Ida never deemed the nurse of Jove,
Each fabled stream, beneath its covert grove,
Had idly murmured to the idle air;
The shaggy wolf had kept his horrid lair
In Delphi’s cell and old Trophonius’ cave,
And the wild wailing of the Ionian wave
Had never blended with the sweet despair
Of Sappho’s death-song,—if the sight inspired
Saw only what the visual organs show;
If heaven-born phantasy no more required
Than what within the sphere of sense may grow.
The beauty to perceive of earthly things,
The mounting soul must heavenward prune her wings.
And he knew it himself: he has sketched the essence of his works:—
‘Whither is gone the wisdom and the power,
That ancient sages scattered with the notes
Of thought-suggesting lyres? The music floats
In the void air; e’en at this breathing hour,
In every cell and every blooming bower,
The sweetness of old lays is hovering still;
But the strong soul, the self-constraining will,
The rugged root that bare the winsome flower,
Is weak and withered. Were we like the Fays
That sweetly nestle in the fox-glove bells,
Or lurk and murmur in the rose-lipped shells,
Which Neptune to the earth for quit-rent pays;
Then might our pretty modern Philomels
Sustain our spirits with their roundelays.’
We had more to say of Hartley: we were to show that his Prometheus was
defective; that its style had no Greek severity, no defined outline; that
he was a critic as well as a poet, though in a small detached way, and
what is odd enough, that he could criticise in rhyme. We were to make
plain how his heart was in the right place, how his love affairs were
hopeless, how he was misled by his friends; but our time is done and
our space is full, and these topics must ‘go without day’ of returning.
We may end as we began. There are some that are bold and strong and
incessant and energetic and hard, and to these is the world’s glory;
and some are timid and meek and impotent and cowardly and rejected and
obscure. ‘One man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth
every day alike.’ And so of Hartley, whom few regarded; he had a
resource, the stillness of thought, the gentleness of musing, the peace
of nature.
‘To his side the fallow deer
Came and rested without fear;
The eagle, lord of land and sea,
Stooped down to pay him fealty;
And both the undying fish that swim,
In Bowscale-tarn did wait on him;
The pair were servants of his eye,
In their immortality;
And glancing, gleaming, dark or bright,
Moved to and fro for his delight.
He knew the rocks which Angels haunt
Upon the mountains visitant.
He hath kenned them taking wing,
And into caves where Fairies sing
He hath entered; and been told
By voices how men lived of old.
Among the heavens his eye can see
The face of thing that is to be,
And if that men report him right
His tongue could whisper words of might.
—Now another day is come,
Fitter hope and nobler doom,
He hath thrown aside his crook,
And hath buried deep his book.’
‘And now the streams may sing for others’ pleasure,
The hills sleep on in their eternity.’
He is gone from among them.
_PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY._[26]
(1856.)
After the long biography of Moore, it is half a comfort to think of a
poet as to whom our information is but scanty. The few intimates of
Shelley seem inclined to go to their graves without telling in accurate
detail the curious circumstances of his life. We are left to be content
with vain ‘prefaces’ and the circumstantial details of a remarkable
blunderer. We know something, however;—we know enough to check our
inferences from his writings; in some moods it is pleasant not to have
them disturbed by long volumes of memoirs and anecdotes.
One peculiarity of Shelley’s writing makes it natural that at times
we should not care to have, that at times we should wish for, a full
biography. No writer has left so clear an image of himself in his
writings; when we remember them as a whole, we seem to want no more.
No writer, on the other hand, has left so many little allusions which
we should be glad to have explained, which the patient patriarch would
not perhaps have endured that anyone should comprehend while he did
not. The reason is, that Shelley has combined the use of the two great
modes by which writers leave with their readers the image of themselves.
There is the art of self-delineation. Some authors try in imagination
to get outside themselves—to contemplate their character as a fact, and
to describe it and the movement of their own actions as external forms
and images. Scarcely any one has done this as often as Shelley. There
is hardly one of his longer works which does not contain a finished
picture of himself in some point or under some circumstances. Again, some
writers, almost or quite unconsciously, by a special instinct of style,
give an idea of themselves. This is not peculiar to literary men; it is
quite as remarkable among men of action. There are people in the world
who cannot write the commonest letter on the commonest affair of business
without giving a just idea of themselves. The Duke of Wellington is an
example which at once occurs of this. You may read a despatch of his
about bullocks and horseshoe-nails; and yet you will feel an interest—a
great interest, because somehow among the words seems to lurk the mind of
a great general. Shelley has this peculiarity also. Every line of his has
a personal impress, an unconscious inimitable manner. And the two modes
in which he gives an idea of himself concur. In every delineation we see
the same simple intense being. As mythology found a Naiad in the course
of every limpid stream, so through each eager line our fancy sees the
same panting image of sculptured purity.
Shelley is probably the most remarkable instance of the pure impulsive
character,—to comprehend which requires a little detail. Some men are
born under the law: their whole life is a continued struggle between
the lower principles of their nature and the higher. These are what are
called men of principle; each of their best actions is a distinct choice
between conflicting motives. One propension would bear them here; another
there; a third would hold them still: into the midst the living will
goes forth in its power, and selects whichever it holds to be best. The
habitual supremacy of conscience in such men gives them an idea that
they only exert their will when they do right; when they do wrong they
seem to ‘let their nature go;’ they say that ‘they are hurried away:’
but, in fact, there is commonly an act of will in both cases;—only it is
weaker when they act ill, because in passably good men, if the better
principles are reasonably strong, they conquer; it is only when very
faint that they are vanquished. Yet the case is evidently not always so;
sometimes the wrong principle is of itself and of set purpose definitely
chosen: the better one is consciously put down. The very existence of
divided natures is a conflict. This is no new description of human
nature. For eighteen hundred years Christendom has been amazed at the
description in St. Paul of the law of his members warring against the
law of his mind. Expressions most unlike in language, but not dissimilar
in meaning, are to be found in some of the most familiar passages of
Aristotle.
In extreme contrast to this is the nature which has no struggle. It
is possible to conceive a character in which but one impulse is ever
felt—in which the whole being, as with a single breeze, is carried in
a single direction. The only exercise of the will in such a being is
in aiding and carrying out the dictates of the single propensity. And
this is something. There are many of our powers and faculties only in
a subordinate degree under the control of the emotions; the intellect
itself in many moments requires to be bent to defined attention by
compulsion of the will; no mere intensity of desire will thrust it on
its tasks. But of what in most men is the characteristic action of the
will—namely, self-control—such natures are hardly in want. An ultimate
case could be imagined in which they would not need it at all. They
have no lower desires to pull down, for they have no higher ones which
come into collision with them; the very words ‘lower’ and ‘higher,’
involving the contemporaneous action and collision of two impulses, are
inapplicable to them; there is no strife; all their soul impels them in
a single line. This may be a quality of the highest character: indeed in
the highest character it will certainly be found; no one will question
that the whole nature of the holiest being tends to what is holy without
let, struggle, or strife—it would be impiety to doubt it. Yet this
same quality may certainly be found in a lower—a much lower—mind than
the highest. A level may be of any elevation; the absence of intestine
commotion may arise from a sluggish dulness to eager aspirations; the
one impulse which is felt may be any impulse whatever. If the idea were
completely exemplified, one would instinctively say, that a being with
so single a mind could hardly belong to human nature. Temptation is the
mark of our life; we can hardly divest ourselves of the idea that it is
indivisible from our character. As it was said of solitude, so it may be
said of the sole dominion of a single impulse, ‘Whoso is devoted to it
would seem to be either a beast or a god.’
Completely realised on earth this idea will never be; but approximations
may be found, and one of the closest of those approximations is Shelley.
We fancy his mind placed in the light of thought, with pure subtle
fancies playing to and fro. On a sudden an impulse arises; it is alone,
and has nothing to contend with; it cramps the intellect, pushes aside
the fancies, constrains the nature; it bolts forward into action.
Such a character is an extreme puzzle to external observers. From the
occasionality of its impulses it will often seem silly; from their
singularity, strange; from their intensity, fanatical. It is absurdest
in the more trifling matters. There is a legend of Shelley, during an
early visit to London, flying along the street, catching sight of a new
microscope, buying it in a moment; pawning it the instant afterwards
to relieve some one in the same street in distress. The trait may be
exaggerated, but it is characteristic. It shows the sudden irruption of
his impulses, their abrupt force and curious purity.
The predominant impulse in Shelley from a very early age was ‘a passion
for reforming mankind.’ Mr. Newman has told us in his Letters from the
East how much he and his half-missionary associates were annoyed at being
called ‘young people trying to convert the world.’ In a strange land,
ignorant of the language, beside a recognised religion, in the midst
of an immemorial society, the aim, though in a sense theirs, seemed
ridiculous when ascribed to them. Shelley would not have felt this at
all. No society, however organised, would have been too strong for him
to attack. He would not have paused. The impulse was upon him. He would
have been ready to preach that mankind were to be ‘free, equal, pure,
and wise,’—in favour of ‘justice, and truth, and time, and the world’s
natural sphere,’—in the Ottoman Empire, or to the Czar, or to George III.
Such truths were independent of time and place and circumstance; some
time or other, something, or somebody (his faith was a little vague),
would most certainly intervene to establish them. It was this placid
undoubting confidence which irritated the positive and sceptical mind of
Hazlitt. ‘The author of the “Prometheus Unbound,”’ he tells us, ‘has a
fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic
flutter in his speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic. He is
sanguine-complexioned and shrill-voiced. As is often observable in the
case of religious enthusiasts, there is a slenderness of constitutional
stamina, which renders the flesh no match for the spirit. His bending,
flexible form appears to take no strong hold of things, does not grapple
with the world about him, but slides from it like a river—
‘And in its liquid texture mortal wound
Receives no more than can the fluid air.’
The shock of accident, the weight of authority, make no impression on
his opinions, which retire like a feather, or rise from the encounter
unhurt, through their own buoyancy. He is clogged by no dull system of
realities, no earth-bound feelings, no rooted prejudices, by nothing that
belongs to the mighty trunk and hard husk of nature and habit; but is
drawn up by irresistible levity to the regions of mere speculation and
fancy, to the sphere of air and fire, where his delighted spirit floats
in ‘seas of pearl and clouds of amber.’ There is no _caput mortuum_ of
worn-out threadbare experience to serve as ballast to his mind; it is
all volatile, intellectual salt-of-tartar, that refuses to combine its
evanescent, inflammable essence with anything solid or anything lasting.
Bubbles are to him the only realities:—touch them, and they vanish.
Curiosity is the only proper category of his mind; and though a man in
knowledge, he is a child in feeling.’ And so on with vituperation. No two
characters could, indeed, be found more opposite than the open, eager,
buoyant poet, and the dark, threatening, unbelieving critic.
It is difficult to say how far such a tendency under some circumstances
might not have carried Shelley into positions most alien to an essential
benevolence. It is most dangerous to be possessed with an idea. Dr.
Arnold used to say that he had studied the life of Robespierre with the
greatest personal benefit. No personal purity is a protection against
insatiable zeal; it almost acts in the opposite direction. The less a man
is conscious of inferior motives, the more likely is he to fancy that he
is doing God service. There is no difficulty in imagining Shelley cast by
the accident of fortune into the Paris of the Revolution; hurried on by
its ideas, undoubting in its hopes, wild with its excitement, going forth
in the name of freedom conquering and to conquer;—and who can think that
he would have been scrupulous how he attained such an end? It was in him
to have walked towards it over seas of blood. One could almost identify
him with St. Just, the ‘fair-haired republican.’
On another and a more generally interesting topic, Shelley advanced a
theory which amounts to a deification of impulse. ‘Love,’ he tells us,
‘is inevitably consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love withers
under constraint; its very essence is liberty; it is compatible neither
with obedience, jealousy, nor fear; it is there most pure, perfect,
and unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality, and
unreserve.... A husband and wife ought to continue united only so long as
they love each other. Any law which should bind them to cohabitation for
one moment after the decay of their affection would be a most intolerable
tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration. How odious an usurpation
of the right of private judgment should that law be considered, which
should make the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the
caprices, the inconstancy, the fallibility, of the human mind! And by so
much would the fetters of love be heavier and more unendurable than those
of friendship, as love is more vehement and capricious, more dependent
on those delicate peculiarities of imagination, and less capable of
reduction to the ostensible merits of the object.’ This passage, no
doubt, is from an early and crude essay, one of the notes to ‘Queen Mab;’
and there are many indications, in his latter years, that though he might
hold in theory that ‘constancy has nothing virtuous in itself,’ yet in
practice he shrank from breaking a tie hallowed by years of fidelity and
sympathy. But, though his conduct was doubtless higher than his creed,
there is no evidence that his creed was ever changed. The whole tone
of his works is on the other side. The ‘Epipsychidion’ could not have
been written by a man who attached a moral value to constancy of mind.
And the whole doctrine is most expressive of his character. A quivering
sensibility endured only the essence of the most refined love. It is
intelligible, that one who bowed in a moment to every desire should have
attached a kind of consecration to the most pure and eager of human
passions.
The evidence of Shelley’s poems confirms this impression of him. The
characters which he delineates have all this same kind of pure impulse.
The reforming impulse is especially felt. In almost every one of his
works there is some character, of whom all we know is, that he or she
had this passionate disposition to reform mankind. We know nothing else
about them, and they are all the same. Laon, in the ‘Revolt of Islam,’
does not differ at all from Lionel, in ‘Rosalind and Helen.’ Laon differs
from Cythna, in the former poem, only as male from female. Lionel is
delineated, though not with Shelley’s greatest felicity, in a single
passage:—
‘Yet through those dungeon-walls there came
Thy thrilling light, O liberty!
And as the meteor’s midnight flame
Startles the dreamer, sunlight truth
Flashed on his visionary youth,
And filled him, not with love, but faith,
And hope, and courage, mute in death;
For love and life in him were twins,
Born at one birth: in every other
First life, then love its course begins,
Though they be children of one mother:
And so through this dark world they fleet
Divided, till in death they meet.
But he loved all things ever. Then
He passed amid the strife of men,
And stood at the throne of armed power
Pleading for a world of woe:
Secure as one on a rock-built tower
O’er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro.
’Mid the passions wild of human-kind
He stood, like a spirit calming them;
For, it was said, his words could bind
Like music the lulled crowd, and stem
That torrent of unquiet dream
Which mortals truth and reason deem,
But is revenge, and fear, and pride.
Joyous he was, and hope and peace
On all who heard him did abide,
Raining like dew from his sweet talk,
As, where the evening star may walk
Along the brink of the gloomy seas,
Liquid mists of splendour quiver.’
Such is the description of all his reformers in calm. In times of
excitement, they all burst forth—
‘Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever,
Or the priests of the bloody faith;
They stand on the brink of that mighty river
Whose waves they have tainted with death;
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells:
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
Like wrecks in the surge of eternity.’
In his more didactic poems it is the same. All the world is evil, and
will be evil, until some unknown conqueror shall appear—a teacher
by rhapsody and a conqueror by words—who shall at once reform all
evil. Mathematicians place great reliance on the unknown symbol,
great X. Shelley did more; he expected it would take life and reform
our race. Such impersonations are, of course, not real men; they are
mere incarnations of a desire. Another passion, which no man has ever
felt more strongly than Shelley—the desire to penetrate the mysteries
of existence (by Hazlitt profanely called curiosity)—is depicted in
‘Alastor’ as the sole passion of the only person in the poem:—
‘By solemn vision and bright silver dream
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.
The fountains of divine philosophy
Fled not his thirsting lips; and all of great,
Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past
In truth or fable consecrates, he felt
And knew. When early youth had past, he left
His cold fireside and alienated home
To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.
Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness
Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought
With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,
His rest and food.’
He is cheered on his way by a beautiful dream, and the search to find
it again mingles with the shadowy quest. It is remarkable how great
is the superiority of the personification in ‘Alastor,’ though one of
his earliest writings, over the reforming abstractions of his other
works. The reason is, its far greater closeness to reality. The one
is a description of what he was; the other of what he desired to be.
Shelley had nothing of the magic influence, the large insight, the bold
strength, the permeating eloquence, which fit a man for a practical
reformer: but he had, in perhaps an unequalled and unfortunate measure,
the famine of the intellect—the daily insatiable craving after the
highest truth which is the passion of ‘Alastor.’ So completely did he
feel it, that the introductory lines of the poem almost seem to identify
him with the hero; at least they express sentiments which would have been
exactly dramatic in his mouth:—
‘Mother of this unfathomable world!
Favour my solemn song; for I have loved
Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,
And my heart ever gazes on the depth
Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed
In charnels and on coffins, where black Death
Keeps records of the trophies won from thee,
Hoping to still these obstinate questionings
Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,
Thy messenger, to render up the tale
Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,
When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness;
Like an inspired and desperate alchymist,
Staking his very life on some dark hope,
Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks
With my most innocent love; until strange tears,
Uniting with those breathless kisses, made
Such magic as compels the charmed night
To render up thy charge ... and though ne’er yet
Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,
Enough from incommunicable dream,
And twilight phantasms and deep noonday thought,
Has shone within me, that serenely now,
And moveless (as a long-forgotten lyre,
Suspended in the solitary dome
Of some mysterious and deserted fane),
I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain
May modulate with murmurs of the air,
And motions of the forests and the sea,
And voice of living beings, and woven hymns
Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.’
The accompaniments are fanciful; but the essential passion was his own.
These two forms of abstract personification exhaust all which can be
considered characters among Shelley’s poems—one poem excepted. Of course,
all his works contain ‘Spirits,’ ‘Phantasms,’ ‘Dream No. 1,’ and ‘Fairy
No. 3;’ but these do not belong to this world. The higher air seems never
to have been favourable to the production of marked character; with
almost all poets the inhabitants of it are prone to a shadowy thinness:
in Shelley, the habit of frequenting mountain-tops has reduced them to
evanescent mists of lyrical energy. One poem of Shelley’s, however, has
two beings of another order; creations which, if not absolutely dramatic
characters of the first class—not beings whom we know better than we know
ourselves—are nevertheless very high specimens of the second; persons who
seem like vivid recollections from our intimate experience. In this case
the dramatic execution is so good, that it is difficult to say why the
results are not quite of the first rank. One reason of this is, perhaps,
their extreme simplicity. Our imaginations, warned by consciousness and
outward experience of the wonderful complexity of human nature, refuse
to credit the existence of beings, all whose actions are unmodified
consequences of a single principle. These two characters are Beatrice
Cenci and her father Count Cenci. In most of Shelley’s poems—he died
under thirty—there is an extreme suspicion of aged persons. In actual
life he had plainly encountered many old gentlemen who had no belief in
the complete and philosophical reformation of mankind. There is, indeed,
an old hermit in the ‘Revolt of Islam’ who is praised (Captain Medwin
identifies him with a Dr. Some-one who was kind to Shelley at Eton); but
in general the old persons in his poems are persons whose authority it is
desirable to disprove:—
‘Old age, with its gray hair
And wrinkled legends of unworthy things
And icy sneers, is naught.’
The less its influence, he evidently believes, the better. Not
unnaturally, therefore, he selected for a tragedy a horrible subject
from Italian story, in which an old man, accomplished in this world’s
learning, renowned for the ‘cynic sneer of o’er experienced sin,’ is the
principal evil agent. The character of Count Cenci is that of a man who
of set principle does evil for evil’s sake. He loves ‘the sight of agony:’
‘All men delight in sensual luxury;
All men enjoy revenge; and most exult
Over the tortures they can never feel,
Flattering their secret peace with others’ pain:
But I delight in nothing else.’
If he regrets his age, it is from the failing ability to do evil:
‘True, I was happier than I am while yet
Manhood remained to act the thing I thought;
While lust was sweeter than revenge: and now
Invention palls.’
It is this that makes him contemplate the violation of his daughter:
‘There yet remains a deed to act,
Whose horror might make sharp an appetite
More dull than mine.’
Shelley, though an habitual student of Plato—the greatest modern writer
who has taken great pleasure in his writings—never seems to have read
any treatise of Aristotle; otherwise he would certainly seem to have
derived from that great writer the idea of the ἀκόλαστος; yet in reality
the idea is as natural to Shelley as any man—more likely to occur to
him than to most. Children think that everybody who is bad is very bad.
Their simple eager disposition only understands the doing what they wish
to do; they do not refine: if they hear of a man doing evil, they think
he wishes to do it,—that he has a special impulse to do evil, as they
have to do what they do. Something like this was the case with Shelley.
His mind, impulsive and childlike, could not imagine the struggling kind
of character—either those which struggle with their lower nature and
conquer, or those which struggle and are vanquished—either the ἐγκρατής
or the ἀκρατής of the old thinker; but he could comprehend that which
is in reality far worse than either, the being who wishes to commit sin
because it is sin, who is as it were possessed with a demon hurrying
him out, hot and passionate, to vice and crime. The innocent child is
whirled away by one impulse; the passionate reformer by another; the
essential criminal, if such a being be possible, by a third. They are
all beings, according to one division, of the same class. An imaginative
mind like Shelley’s, belonging to the second of these types, naturally
is prone in some moods to embody itself under the forms of the third. It
is, as it were, the antithesis to itself.—Equally simple is the other
character—that of Beatrice. Even before her violation, by a graphic touch
of art, she is described as absorbed, or beginning to be absorbed, in the
consciousness of her wrongs;
‘_Beatrice._ As I have said, speak to me not of love.
Had you a dispensation, I have not;
Nor will I leave this home of misery
Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady
To whom I owe life and these virtuous thoughts,
Must suffer what I still have strength to share.
Alas, Orsino! all the love that once
I felt for you is turned to bitter pain.
Ours was a youthful contract, which you first
Broke by assuming vows no Pope will loose:
And yet I love you still, but holily,
Even as a sister or a spirit might;
And so I swear a cold fidelity.’
After her violation, her whole being is absorbed by one thought,—how and
by what subtle vengeance she can expiate the memory of her shame. These
are all the characters in Shelley; an impulsive unity is of the essence
of them all.
The same characteristic of Shelley’s temperament produced also most
marked effects on his speculative opinions. The peculiarity of his
creed early brought him into opposition to the world. His education
seems to have been principally directed by his father, of whom the only
description which has reached us is not favourable. Sir Timothy Shelley,
according to Captain Medwin, was an illiterate country gentleman of an
extinct race; he had been at Oxford, where he learned nothing, had made
the grand tour, from which he brought back ‘a smattering of bad French
and a bad picture of an eruption at Vesuvius.’ He had the air of the
old school, and the habit of throwing it off which distinguished that
school. Lord Chesterfield himself was not easier on matters of morality.
He used to tell his son that he would provide for natural children
_ad infinitum_, but would never forgive his making a _mésalliance_.
On religion his opinions were very lax. He, indeed, ‘required his
servants,’ we are told, ‘to attend church,’ and even on rare occasions,
with superhuman virtue, attended himself; but there, as with others of
that generation, his religion ended. He doubtless did not feel that any
more could be required of him. He was not consciously insincere; but he
did not in the least realise the opposition between the religion which
he professed and the conduct which he pursued. Such a person was not
likely to influence a morbidly sincere imaginative nature in favour
of the doctrines of the Church of England. Shelley went from Eton,
where he had been singular, to Oxford, where he was more so. He was a
fair classical scholar. But his real mind was given to out-of-school
knowledge. He had written a novel; he had studied chemistry; when
pressed in argument, he used to ask, ‘What, then, does Condorcet say
upon the subject?’ This was not exactly the youth for the University of
Oxford in the year 1810. A distinguished pupil of that University once
observed to us, ‘The use of the University of Oxford is, that no one
can over-read themselves there. The appetite for knowledge is repressed.
A blight is thrown over the ingenuous mind, &c.’ And possibly it may be
so; considering how small a space literary knowledge fills in the busy
English world, it may not be without its advantages that any mind prone
to bookish enthusiasm should be taught by the dryness of its appointed
studies, the want of sympathy of its teachers, and a rough contact with
average English youth, that studious enthusiasm must be its own reward;
that in this country it will meet with little other; that it will not
be encouraged in high places. Such discipline may, however, be carried
too far. A very enthusiastic mind may possibly by it be turned in upon
itself. This was the case with Shelley. When he first came up to Oxford
physics were his favourite pursuit. On chemistry, especially, he used
to be eloquent. ‘The galvanic battery,’ said he, ‘is a new engine. It
has been used hitherto to an insignificant extent: yet it has worked
wonders already. What will not an extraordinary combination of troughs
of colossal magnitude, a well-arranged system of hundreds of metallic
plates, effect?’ Nature, however, like the world, discourages a wild
enthusiasm. ‘His chemical operations seemed to an unskilful observer
to promise nothing but disasters. He had blown himself up at Eton. He
had inadvertently swallowed some mineral poison, which he declared had
seriously injured his health, and from the effects of which he should
never recover. His hands, his clothes, his books, and his furniture,
were stained and covered by medical acids,’ and so on. Disgusted with
these and other failures, he abandoned physics for metaphysics. He rushed
head-long into the form of philosophy then popular. It is not likely
that he ever read Locke; and it is easy to imagine the dismay with which
the philosopher would have regarded so ‘heady and skittish’ a disciple:
but he continually invoked Locke as an authority, and was really guided
by the French expositions of him then popular. Hume, of course, was
not without his influence. With such teachers only to control him, an
excitable poet rushed in a moment to materialism, and thence to atheism.
Deriving any instruction from the University, was, according to him,
absurd; he wished to convert the University. He issued a kind of thesis,
stating by way of interrogatory all the difficulties of the subject;
called it the ‘necessity of atheism,’ and sent it to the professors,
heads of houses, and several bishops. The theistic belief of his college
was equal to the occasion. ‘It was a fine spring morning on Lady Day in
the year 1811, when,’ says a fellow-student, ‘I went to Shelley’s rooms.
He was absent; but before I had collected our books, he rushed in. He
was terribly agitated. I anxiously inquired what had happened. “I am
expelled.” He then explained that he had been summoned before the Master
and some of the Fellows; that as he was unable to deny the authorship of
the essay, he had been expelled and ordered to quit the college the next
morning at latest.’ He had wished to be put on his trial more regularly,
and stated to the Master that England was ‘a free country;’ but without
effect. He was obliged to leave Oxford: his father was very angry; ‘if he
had broken the Master’s windows, one could have understood it:’ but to be
expelled for publishing a _book_ seemed an error incorrigible, because
incomprehensible.
These details at once illustrate Shelley’s temperament, and enable us to
show that the peculiarity of his opinions arose out of that temperament.
He was placed in circumstances which left his eager mind quite free. Of
his father we have already spoken: there was no one else to exercise a
subduing or guiding influence over him; nor would his mind have naturally
been one extremely easy to influence. Through life he followed very much
his own bent and his own thoughts. His most intimate associates exercised
very little control over his belief. He followed his nature; and that
nature was in a singular degree destitute of certain elements which most
materially guide ordinary men. It seems most likely that a person prone
to isolated impulse will be defective in the sensation of conscience.
There is scarcely room for it. When, as in common conflicting
characters, the whole nature is daily and hourly in a perpetual struggle,
the faculty which decides what elements in that nature are to have the
supremacy is daily and hourly appealed to. Passions are contending; life
is a discipline; there is a reference every moment to the directory
of the discipline—the order-book of the passions. In temperaments not
exposed to the ordinary struggle there is no such necessity. Their
impulse guides them; they have little temptation; are scarcely under the
law; have hardly occasion to consult the statute-book. In consequence,
simple and beautiful as such minds often are, they are deficient in the
sensation of duty; have no haunting idea of right or wrong; show an easy
_abandon_ in place of a severe self-scrutiny. At first it might seem
that such minds lose little; they are exempted from the consciousness of
a code to whose provisions they need little access. But such would be
the conclusion only from a superficial view of human nature. The whole
of our inmost faith is a series of intuitions; and experience seems
to show that the intuitions of conscience are the beginning of that
series. Childhood has little which can be called a religion; the shows
of this world, the play of its lights and shadows, suffice. It is in
the collision of our nature, which occurs in youth, that the first real
sensation of faith is felt. Conscience is often then morbidly acute; a
flush passes over the youthful mind; the guiding instinct is keen and
strong, like the passions with which it contends. At the first struggle
of our nature commences our religion. Childhood will utter the words; in
early manhood, when we become half-unwilling to utter them, they begin to
have a meaning. The result of history is similar. The whole of religion
rests on a faith that the universe is solely ruled by an almighty and
all-perfect Being. This strengthens with the moral cultivation, and grows
with the improvement of mankind. It is the assumed axiom of the creed
of Christendom; and all that is really highest in our race may have the
degree of its excellence tested by the degree of the belief in it. But
experience shows that the belief only grows very gradually. We see at
various times, and now, vast outlying nations in whom the conviction of
morality—the consciousness of a law—is but weak; and there the belief in
an all-perfect God is half-forgotten, faint, and meagre. It exists as
something between a tradition and a speculation; but it does not come
forth on the solid earth; it has no place in the business and bosoms
of men; it is thrust out of view even when we look upwards by fancied
idols and dreams of the stars in their courses. Consider the state of
the Jewish, as compared with the better part of the Pagan world of
old. On the one side we see civilisation, commerce, the arts, a great
excellence in all the exterior of man’s life; a sort of morality sound
and sensible, placing the good of man in a balanced moderation within
and good looks without;—in a combination of considerate good sense, with
the _air_ of aristocratic, or, as it was said, ‘godlike’ refinement.
We see, in a word, civilisation, and the ethics of civilisation; the
first polished, the other elaborated and perfected. But this is all;
we do not see faith. We see in some quarters rather a horror of the
_curiosus deus_ interfering, controlling, watching,—never letting things
alone,—disturbing the quiet of the world with punishment and the fear
of punishment. The Jewish side of the picture is different. We see a
people who have perhaps an inaptitude for independent civilisation, who
in secular pursuits have only been assistants and attendants on other
nations during the whole history of mankind. These have no equable,
beautiful morality like the others; but instead a gnawing, abiding,
depressing—one might say, a slavish—ceremonial, excessive sense of law
and duty. This nation has faith. By a link not logical, but ethical,
this intense, eating, abiding supremacy of conscience is connected
with a deep daily sense of a watchful, governing, and jealous God. And
from the people of the law arises the gospel. The sense of duty, when
awakened, awakens not only the religion of the law, but in the end the
other religious intuitions which lie round about it. The faith of
Christendom has arisen not from a great people, but from ‘the least of
all people,’—from the people whose anxious legalism was a noted contrast
to the easy, impulsive life of pagan nations. In modern language,
conscience is the _converting_ intuition,—that which turns men from the
world without to that within,—from the things which are seen to the
realities which are not seen. In a character like Shelley’s, where this
haunting, abiding, oppressive moral feeling is wanting or defective, the
religious belief in an Almighty God which springs out of it is likely to
be defective likewise.
In Shelley’s case this deficiency was aggravated by what may be called
the abstract character of his intellect. We have shown that no character
except his own, and characters most strictly allied to his own, are
delineated in his works. The tendency of his mind was rather to personify
isolated qualities or impulses—equality, liberty, revenge, and so on—than
to create out of separate parts or passions the single conception of an
entire character. This is, properly speaking, the mythological tendency.
All early nations show this marked disposition to conceive of separate
forces and qualities as a kind of semi-persons; that is, not true
actual persons with distinct characters, but beings who guide certain
influences, and of whom all we know is that they guide those influences.
Shelley evinces a remarkable tendency to deal with mythology in this
simple and elementary form. Other poets have breathed into mythology
a modern life; have been attracted by those parts which seem to have
a religious meaning, and have enlarged that meaning while studying to
embody it. With Shelley it is otherwise; the parts of mythology by which
he is attracted are the bare parts—the simple stories which Dr. Johnson
found so tedious:—
‘Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains.
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains,
She leapt down the rocks
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine,
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing,
She went ever singing,
In murmurs as soft as sleep;
The earth seemed to love her,
And heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.
Then Alpheus bold,
On his glacier cold,
With his trident the mountains strook,’
&c. &c.
Arethusa and Alpheus are not characters: they are only the spirits of
the fountain and the stream. When not writing on topics connected with
ancient mythology, Shelley shows the same bent. ‘The Cloud,’ and the
‘Skylark,’ are more like mythology—have more of the impulse by which
the populace, if we may so say, of the external world was first fancied
into existence—than any other modern poems. There is, indeed, no habit
of mind more remote from our solid and matter-of-fact existence; none
which was once powerful, of which the present traces are so rare. In
truth, Shelley’s imagination achieved all it could with the materials
before it. The materials for the creative faculty must be provided by
the receptive faculty. Before a man can imagine what will seem to be
realities, he must be familiar with what are realities. The memory
of Shelley had no heaped-up ‘store of life,’ no vast accumulation of
familiar characters. His intellect did not tend to the strong grasp of
realities; its taste was rather for the subtle refining of theories,
the distilling of exquisite abstractions. His imagination personified
what his understanding presented to it. It had nothing else to do. He
displayed the same tendency of mind—sometimes negatively and sometimes
positively—in his professedly religious inquiries. His belief went
through three stages—first, materialism, then a sort of Nihilism, then
a sort of Platonism. In neither of them is the rule of the universe
ascribed to a character: in the first and last it is ascribed to animated
abstractions; in the second there is no universe at all. In neither of
them is there any strong grasp of fact. The writings of the first period
are clearly influenced by, and modelled on, Lucretius. He held the same
abstract theory of nature—sometimes of half-personified atoms, moving
hither and thither of themselves—at other times of a general pervading
spirit of nature, holding the same relation to nature, as a visible
object, that Arethusa the goddess bears to Arethusa the stream:
‘The magic car moved on.
As they approached their goal
The coursers seemed to gather speed:
The sea no longer was distinguished; earth
Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere:
The sun’s unclouded orb
Rolled through the black concave;
Its rays of rapid light
Parted around the chariot’s swifter course,
And fell like ocean’s feathery spray
Dashed from the boiling surge
Before a vessel’s prow.
The magic car moved on.
Earth’s distant orb appeared
The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens:
Whilst round the chariot’s way
Innumerable systems rolled,
And countless spheres diffused
An ever-varying glory.
It was a sight of wonder: some
Were horned like the crescent moon;
Some shed a mild and silver beam
Like Hesperus o’er the western sea;
Some dash’d athwart with trains of flame,
Like worlds to death and ruin driven;
Some shone like stars, and, as the chariot passed,
Bedimmed all other light.
Spirit of Nature! here,
In this interminable wilderness
Of worlds, at whose immensity
Even soaring fancy staggers,—
Here is thy fitting temple.
Yet not the lightest leaf
That quivers to the passing breeze
Is less instinct with thee:
Yet not the meanest worm
That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead
Less shares thy eternal breath.
Spirit of Nature! thou,
Imperishable as this glorious scene,—
Here is thy fitting temple.’
And he copied not only the opinions of Lucretius, but also his tone.
Nothing is more remarkable than that two poets of the first rank should
have felt a bounding joy in the possession of opinions which, if true,
ought, one would think, to move an excitable nature to the keenest and
deepest melancholy. That this life is all; that there is no God, but only
atoms and a moulding breath; are singular doctrines to be accepted with
joy: they only could have been so accepted by wild minds bursting with
imperious energy, knowing of no law, ‘wreaking thoughts upon expression’
of which they knew neither the meaning nor the result. From this stage
Shelley’s mind passed to another; but not immediately to one of greater
belief. On the contrary, it was the doctrine of Hume which was called
in to expel the doctrine of Epicurus. His previous teachers had taught
him that there was nothing except matter: the Scotch sceptic met him at
that point with the question—Is matter certain? Hume, as is well known,
adopted the negative part from the theory of materialism and the theory
of immaterialism, but rejected the positive side of both. He held, or
professed to hold, that there was no substantial thing, either matter or
mind; but only ‘sensations and impressions’ flying about the universe,
inhering in nothing and going nowhere. These, he said, were the only
subjects of consciousness; all you felt was your feeling, and all your
thought was your thought; the rest was only hypothesis. The notion
that there was any ‘_you_’ at all was a theory generally current among
mankind, but not, unless proved, to be accepted by the philosopher.
This doctrine, though little agreeable to the world in general, has an
excellence in the eyes of youthful disputants; it is a doctrine which
no one will admit, and which no one can disprove. Shelley accordingly
accepted it; indeed it was a better description of his universe than
of most people’s; his mind was filled with a swarm of ideas, fancies,
thoughts, streaming on without his volition, without plan or order. He
might be pardoned for fancying that they were all; he could not see the
outward world for them; their giddy passage occupied him till he forgot
himself. He has put down the theory in its barest form: ‘The most refined
abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life which, though startling
to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its
repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were,
the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one
of those who am unable to refuse my assent to the conclusions of those
philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived.’ And
again: ‘The view of life presented by the most refined deductions of the
intellectual philosophy is that of unity. Nothing exists but as it is
perceived. The difference is merely nominal between those two classes of
thought which are vulgarly distinguished by the names of ideas and of
external objects. Pursuing the same thread of reasoning, the existence
of distinct individual minds, similar to that which is employed in
now questioning its own nature, is likewise found to be a delusion.
The words, _I_, _you_, _they_, are not signs of any actual difference
subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts thus indicated, but are
merely marks employed to denote the different modifications of the one
mind. Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts to the monstrous
presumption that I, the person who now write and think, am that one
mind. I am but a portion of it. The words, _I_, and _you_, and _they_,
are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement, and totally
devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually attached to them. It
is difficult to find terms adequate to express so subtle a conception as
that to which the intellectual philosophy has conducted us. We are on
that verge where words abandon us; and what wonder if we grow dizzy to
look down the dark abyss of how little we know!’ On his wild nerves these
speculations produced a great effect. Their thin acuteness excited his
intellect; their blank result appalled his imagination. He was obliged to
pause in the last fragment of one of his metaphysical papers, ‘dizzy from
thrilling horror.’ In this state of mind he began to study Plato; and it
is probable that in the whole library of philosophy there is no writer
so suitable to such a reader. A common modern author, believing in mind
and matter, he would have put aside at once as loose and popular. He was
attracted by a writer who, like himself, in some sense did not believe
in either—who supplied him with subtle realities different from either,
at once to be extracted by his intellect and to be glorified by his
imagination. The theory of Plato, that the all-apparent phenomena were
unreal, he believed already; he had a craving to believe in something
noble, beautiful, and difficult to understand; he was ready, therefore,
to accept the rest of that theory, and to believe that these passing
phenomena were imperfect types and resemblances—imperfect incarnations,
so to speak—of certain immovable, eternal, archetypal realities. All
his later writings are coloured by that theory, though in some passages
the remains of the philosophy of the senses with which he commenced
appear in odd proximity to the philosophy of abstractions with which he
concluded. There is, perhaps, no allusion in Shelley to the _Phædrus_;
but no one can doubt which of Plato’s ideas would be most attractive to
the nature we have described. The most valuable part of Plato he did
not comprehend. There is in Shelley none of that unceasing reference to
ethical consciousness and ethical religion which has for centuries placed
Plato first among the preparatory preceptors of Christianity. The general
doctrine is that
‘The one remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven’s light for ever shines, earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,
Until death tramples it to fragments.’
The particular worship of the poet is paid to that one spirit whose
‘Plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear;
Torturing th’ unwilling dross that checks its flight
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;
And bursting in its beauty and its might
From trees, and beasts, and men, into the heaven’s light.’
It is evident that not even in this, the highest form of creed to which
he ever clearly attained, is there any such distinct conception of a
character as is essential to a real religion. The conception of God is
not to be framed out of a single attribute. Shelley has changed the
‘idea’ of beauty into a spirit, and this probably for the purposes of
poetry; he has given it life and animal motion; but he has done no more;
the ‘spirit’ has no will, and no virtue: it is animated, but unholy;
alive, but unmoral: it is an object of intense admiration; it is not an
object of worship.
We have ascribed this quality of Shelley’s writings to an abstract
intellect; and in part, no doubt, correctly. Shelley had, probably by
nature, such an intellect; it was self-enclosed, self-absorbed, teeming
with singular ideas, remote from character and life; but so involved is
human nature, that this tendency to abstraction, which we have spoken of
as aggravating the consequences of his simple impulsive temperament,
was itself aggravated by that temperament. It is a received opinion in
metaphysics, that the idea of personality is identical with the idea of
will. A distinguished French writer has accurately expressed this: ‘Le
pouvoir,’ says M. Jouffroy, ‘que l’homme a de s’emparer de ses capacités
naturelles et de les diriger fait de lui une _personne_; et c’est parce
que les _choses_ n’exercent pas ce pouvoir en elles-mêmes, qu’elles ne
sont que des choses. Telle est la véritable différence qui distingue
les choses des personnes. Toutes les natures possibles sont douées de
certaines capacités; mais les unes out reçu par-dessus les autres le
privilège de se saisir d’elles-mêmes et de se gouverner: celles-là sont
les personnes. Les autres en ont été privées, en sorte qu’elles n’ont
point de part à ce qui se fait en elles: celles-là sont les choses.
Leurs capacités ne s’en développent pas moins, mais c’est exclusivement
selon les lois auxquelles Dieu les a soumises. C’est Dieu qui gouverne
en elles; il est la personne des choses, comme l’ouvrier est la personne
de la montre. Ici la personne est hors de l’être; dans le sein même des
choses, comme dans le sein de la montre, la personne ne se rencontre pas;
on ne trouve qu’une série de capacités qui se meuvent aveuglément, sans
que la nature qui en est douée sache même ce qu’elles font. Aussi ne
peut-on demander compte aux choses de ce qui se fait en elles; il faut
s’adresser à Dieu: comme on s’adresse à l’ouvrier et non à la montre,
quand la montre va mal.’ And if this theory be true—and doubtless it is
an approximation to the truth—it is evident that a mind ordinarily moved
by simple impulse will have little distinct consciousness of personality.
While thrust forward by such impulse, it is a mere instrument. Outward
things set it in motion. It goes where they bid; it exerts no will upon
them; it is, to speak expressively, a mere conducting thing. When such
a mind is free from such impulse, there is even less will; thoughts,
feelings, ideas, emotions, pass before it in a sort of dream. For the
time it is a mere perceiving thing. In neither case is there a trace
of voluntary character. If we want a reason for anything, ‘il faut
s’adresser à Dieu.’
Shelley’s political opinions were likewise the effervescence of his
peculiar nature. The love of liberty is peculiarly natural to the simple
impulsive mind. It feels irritated at the idea of a law; it fancies it
does not need it: it really needs it less than other minds. Government
seems absurd—society an incubus. It has hardly patience to estimate
particular institutions: it wants to begin again—to make a _tabula rasa_
of all which men have created or devised; for they seem to have been
constructed on a false system, for an object it does not understand. On
this _tabula rasa_ Shelley’s abstract imagination proceeded to set up
arbitrary monstrosities of ‘equality’ and ‘love,’ which never will be
realised among the children of men.
Such a mind is clearly driven to self-delineation. Nature, no doubt, in
some sense remains to it. A dreamy mind—a mind occupied intensely with
its own thoughts—will often have a peculiarly intense apprehension of
anything which by the hard collision of the world it has been forced to
observe. The scene stands out alone in the memory; is a refreshment from
hot thoughts; grows with the distance of years. A mind like Shelley’s,
deeply susceptible to all things beautiful, has many pictures and images
shining in its recollection which it recurs to, and which it is ever
striving to delineate. Indeed, in such minds it is rather the picture in
their mind which they describe than the original object; the ‘ideation,’
as some harsh metaphysicians call it, rather than the reality. A certain
dream-light is diffused over it; a wavering touch, as of interfering
fancy or fading recollection. The landscape has not the hues of the
real world; it is modified in the _camera obscura_ of the self-enclosed
intelligence. Nor can such a mind long endure the cold process of
external delineation. Its own hot thoughts rush in; its favourite topic
is itself and them. Shelley, indeed, as we observed before, carries this
to an extent which no poet probably ever equalled. He described not only
his character but his circumstances. We know that this is so in a large
number of passages; if his poems were commented on by some one thoroughly
familiar with the events of his life, we should doubtless find that it
was so in many more. On one strange and painful scene his fancy was
continually dwelling. In a gentle moment we have a dirge—
‘The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
And the year
On the earth her deathbed, in a shroud of leaves, dead
Is lying.
Come months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier
Of the dead cold year,
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
‘The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling;
For the year;
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone
To his dwelling.
Come, months, come away;
Put on white, black, and gray;
Let your light sisters play—
Ye, follow the bier
Of the dead cold year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.’
In a frenzied mood he breaks forth into wildness:
‘She is still, she is cold
On the bridal couch;
One step to the white deathbed,
And one to the bier,
And one to the charnel—and one, O, where?
The dark arrow fled
In the noon.
Ere the sun through heaven once more has roll’d,
The rats in her heart
Will have made their nest,
And the worms be alive in her golden hair;
While the spirit that guides the sun
Sits throned in his flaming chair,
She shall sleep.’
There is no doubt that these and a hundred other similar passages allude
to the death of his first wife; as melancholy a story as ever shivered
the nerves of an excitable being. The facts are hardly known to us, but
they are something like these: In very early youth Shelley had formed
a half-fanciful attachment to a cousin, a Miss Harriet Grove, who is
said to have been attractive, and to whom, certainly, his fancy often
went back in later and distant years. How deep the feeling was on either
side we do not know; she seems to have taken an interest in the hot
singular dreams which occupied his mind—except only where her image might
intrude—from which one might conjecture that she took unusual interest in
him; she even wrote some chapters, or parts of some, in one of his boyish
novels, and her parents doubtless thought the ‘Rosicrucian’ could be
endured, as Shelley was the heir to land and a baronetcy. His expulsion
from Oxford altered all this. Probably he had always among his friends
been thought ‘a singular young man,’ and they had waited in perplexity
to see if the oddness would turn to unusual good or unusual evil. His
atheistic treatise and its results seemed to show clearly the latter, and
all communication with Miss Grove was instantly forbidden him. What she
felt on the subject is not told us; probably some theistic and undreaming
lover intervened, for she married in a short time. The despair of an
excitable poet at being deprived of his mistress at the same moment that
he was abandoned by his family, and in a measure by society, may be
fancied, though it cannot be known. Captain Medwin observes: ‘Shelley,
on this trying occasion, had the courage to live, in order that he might
labour for one great object—the advancement of the human race, and the
amelioration of society; and strengthened himself in a resolution to
devote his energies to this ultimate end, being prepared to endure every
obloquy, to make every sacrifice for its accomplishment: and would,’
such is the Captain’s English, ‘if necessary, have died in the cause.’
It does not appear, however, that disappointed love took solely the very
unusual form of philanthropy. By chance, whether with or without leave
does not appear, he went to see his second sister, who was at school
at a place called Balham Hill, near London; and, while walking in the
garden with her, ‘a Miss Westbrook passed them.’ She was a ‘handsome
blonde young lady, nearly sixteen;’ and Shelley was much struck. He found
out that her name was ‘Harriett,’—as he, after his marriage, anxiously
expresses it, with two t’s, ‘Harriett;’ and he fell in love at once. She
had the name of his first love; ‘fairer, though yet the same.’ After his
manner, he wrote to her immediately. He was in the habit of doing this to
people who interested him, either in his own or under an assumed name:
and once, Captain Medwin says, carried on a long correspondence with
Mrs. Hemans, then Miss Browne, under his (the captain’s) name; but which
he, the deponent, was not permitted to peruse. In Miss Westbrook’s case
the correspondence had a more serious consequence. Of her character we
can only guess a little. She was, we think, an ordinary blooming young
lady of sixteen. Shelley was an extraordinary young man of nineteen,
rather handsome, very animated, and expressing his admiration a little
intensely. He was doubtless much the most aristocratic person she had
ever spoken to; for her father was a retired innkeeper, and Shelley had
always the air of a man of birth. There is a vision, too, of an elder
sister, who made ‘Harriett dear’ very uncomfortable. On the whole, the
result may be guessed. At the end of August 1811, we do not know the
precise day, they were married at Gretna Green. Jests may be made on it;
but it was no laughing matter in the life of the wife or the husband. Of
the lady’s disposition and mind we know nothing, except from Shelley;
a medium which must, under the circumstances, be thought a distorting
one. We should conclude that she was capable of making many people happy,
though not of making Shelley happy. There is an ordinance of nature at
which men of genius are perpetually fretting, but which does more good
than many laws of the universe which they praise: it is, that ordinary
women ordinarily prefer ordinary men. ‘Genius,’ as Hazlitt would have
said, ‘puts them out.’ It is so strange; it does not come into the room
as usual; it says ‘such things:’ once it forgot to brush its hair. The
common female mind prefers usual tastes, settled manners, customary
conversation, defined and practical pursuits. And it is a great good that
it should be so. Nature has no wiser instinct. The average woman suits
the average man; good health, easy cheerfulness, common charms, suffice.
If Miss Westbrook had married an every-day person—a gentleman, suppose,
in the tallow line—she would have been happy, and have made him happy.
Her mind could have understood his life; her society would have been a
gentle relief from unodoriferous pursuits. She had nothing in common
with Shelley. His mind was full of eager thoughts, wild dreams, singular
aspirations. The most delicate tact would probably have often failed, the
nicest sensibility would have been jarred, affection would have erred,
in dealing with such a being. A very peculiar character was required, to
enter into such a rare union of curious qualities. Some eccentric men of
genius have, indeed, felt in the habitual tact and serene nothingness of
ordinary women, a kind of trust and calm. They have admired an instinct
of the world which they had not—a repose of mind they could not share.
But this is commonly in later years. A boy of twenty thinks he knows
the world; he is too proud and happy in his own eager and shifting
thoughts, to wish to contrast them with repose. The commonplaceness of
life goads him: placid society irritates him. Bread is an incumbrance;
upholstery tedious: he craves excitement; he wishes to reform mankind.
You cannot convince him it is right to sew, in a world so full of sorrow
and evil. Shelley was in this state; he hurried to and fro over England,
pursuing theories, and absorbed in plans. He was deep in metaphysics;
had subtle disproofs of all religion; wrote several poems, which would
have been a puzzle to a very clever young lady. There were pecuniary
difficulties besides: neither of the families had approved of the match,
and neither were inclined to support the household. Altogether, no one
can be surprised that in less than three years the hasty union ended
in a ‘separation by mutual consent.’ The wonder is that it lasted so
long.—What her conduct was after the separation, is not very clear: there
were ‘reports’ about her at Bath—perhaps a loquacious place. She was not
twenty, probably handsome, and not improbably giddy: being quite without
evidence, we cannot judge what was rumour and what was truth. Shelley
has not left us in similar doubt. After a year or two he travelled
abroad with Mary, afterwards the second Mrs. Shelley, the daughter of
Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin—names most celebrated in those
times, and even now known for their anti-matrimonial speculations. Of
their ‘six weeks’ tour’ abroad, in the year 1816, a record remains, and
should be read by any persons who wish to learn what travelling was in
its infancy. It was the year when the Continent was first thrown open
to English travellers; and few probably adopted such singular means of
locomotion as Shelley and his companions. First they tried walking,
and had a very small ass to carry their portmanteau; then they tried a
mule; then a _fiacre_, which drove away from them; afterwards they came
to a raft. It was not, however, an unamusing journey. At an ugly and
out-of-the-way château, near Brunen, Shelley began a novel, to be called
‘The Assassins,’ which he never finished—probably never continued—after
his return; but which still remains, and is one of the most curious
and characteristic specimens of his prose style. It was a refreshing
intellectual tour; one of the most pleasant rambles of his life. On
his return he was met by painful intelligence. His wife had destroyed
herself. Of her state of mind we have again no evidence. She is said to
have been deeply affected by the ‘reports’ to which we have alluded;
but whatever it was, Shelley felt himself greatly to blame. He had been
instrumental in first dividing her from her family; had connected himself
with her in a wild contract, from which neither could ever be set free;
if he had not crossed her path, she might have been happy in her own way
and in her own sphere. All this preyed upon his mind, and it is said he
became mad; and whether or not his horror and pain went the length of
actual frenzy, they doubtless approached that border-line of suffering
excitement which divides the most melancholy form of sanity from the
most melancholy form of insanity. In several poems he seems to delineate
himself in the guise of a maniac:
‘“Of his sad history
I know but this,” said Maddalo; “he came
To Venice a dejected man, and fame
Said he was wealthy, or he had been so.
Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe;
But he was ever talking in such sort
As you do,—but more sadly: he seem’d hurt,
Even as a man with his peculiar wrong,
To hear but of the oppression of the strong,
Or those absurd deceits (I think with you
In some respects, you know) which carry through
The excellent impostors of this earth
When they outface detection. He had worth,
Poor fellow! but a humourist in his way.”—
—“Alas, what drove him mad?”
“I cannot say:
A lady came with him from France; and when
She left him and returned, he wander’d then
About yon lonely isles of desert sand
Till he grew wild. He had no cash nor land
Remaining:—the police had brought him here—
Some fancy took him, and he would not bear
Removal; so I fitted up for him
Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim;
And sent him busts, and books, and urns for flowers,
Which had adorned his life in happier hours,
And instruments of music. You may guess,
A stranger could do little more or less
For one so gentle and unfortunate—
And those are his sweet strains, which charm the weight
From madmen’s chains, and make this hell appear
A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear.”
“Nay, this was kind of you,—he had no claim,
As the world says.”
“None but the very same,
Which I on all mankind, were I, as he,
Fall’n to such deep reverse. His melody
Is interrupted; now we hear the din
Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin;
Let us now visit him: after this strain
He ever communes with himself again,
And sees and hears not any.”
Having said
These words, we called the keeper: and he led
To an apartment opening on the sea—
There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully
Near a piano, his pale fingers twined
One with the other; and the ooze and wind
Rushed through an open casement, and did sway
His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray:
His head was leaning on a music-book,
And he was muttering; and his lean limbs shook;
His lips were pressed against a folded leaf,
In hue too beautiful for health, and grief
Smiled in their motions as they lay apart,
As one who wrought from his own fervid heart
The eloquence of passion: soon he raised
His sad meek face, and eyes lustrous and glazed,
And spoke,—sometimes as one who wrote and thought
His words might move some heart that heeded not,
If sent to distant lands;—and then as one
Reproaching deeds never to be undone,
With wondering self-compassion; then his speech
Was lost in grief, and then his words came each
Unmodulated and expressionless,—
But that from one jarred accent you might guess
It was despair made them so uniform:
And all the while the loud and gusty storm
Hissed through the window; and we stood behind,
Stealing his accents from the envious wind,
Unseen. I yet remember what he said
Distinctly—such impression his words made.’
And casual illustrations—unconscious metaphors, showing a terrible
familiarity—are borrowed from insanity in his subsequent works.
This strange story is in various ways deeply illustrative of his
character. It shows how the impulsive temperament, not definitely
intending evil, is hurried forward, so to say, _over_ actions and crimes
which would seem to indicate deep depravity—which would do so in ordinary
human nature, but which do not indicate in it anything like the same
degree of guilt. Driven by singular passion across a tainted region, it
retains no taint; on a sudden it passes through evil, but preserves its
purity. So curious is this character, that a record of its actions may
read like a libel on its life.
To some the story may also suggest whether Shelley’s nature was one of
those most adapted for love in its highest form. It is impossible to
deny that he loved with a great intensity; yet it was with a certain
narrowness, and therefore a certain fitfulness. Possibly a somewhat
wider nature, taking hold of other characters at more points,—fascinated
as intensely, but more variously.—stirred as deeply, but through more
complicated emotions,—is requisite for the highest and most lasting
feeling. Passion, to be enduring, must be many-sided. Eager and narrow
emotions urge like the gadfly of the poet: but they pass away; they are
single; there is nothing to revive them. Various as human nature must
be the passion which absorbs that nature into itself. Shelley’s mode
of delineating women has a corresponding peculiarity. They are well
described; but they are described under only one aspect. Every one of his
poems almost has a lady whose arms are white, whose mind is sympathising,
and whose soul is beautiful. She has many names—Cythna, Asia, Emily; but
these are only external disguises; she is indubitably the same person,
for her character never varies. No character can be simpler. She is
described as the ideal object of love in its most simple and elemental
form; the pure object of the essential passion. She is a being to be
loved in a single moment, with eager eyes and gasping breath; but you
feel that in that moment you have seen the whole. There is nothing to
come to afterwards. The fascination is intense, but uniform. There is not
the ever-varying grace, the ever-changing expression of the unchanging
charm, that alone can attract for all time the shifting moods of a
various and mutable nature.
The works of Shelley lie in a confused state, like the _disjecta membra_
of the poet of our boyhood. They are in the strictest sense ‘remains.’
It is absurd to expect from a man who died at thirty a long work of
perfected excellence. All which at so early an age can be expected are
fine fragments, casual expressions of single inspirations. Of these
Shelley has written some that are nearly, and one or two perhaps that
are quite, perfect. But he has not done more. It would have been better
if he had not attempted so much. He would have done well to have heeded
Goethe’s caution to Eckerman: ‘Beware of attempting a large work. If you
have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it, all other
thoughts are repelled, and the pleasantness of life itself is for the
time lost. What exertion and expenditure of mental force are required
to arrange and round off a great whole; and then what powers, and what
a tranquil undisturbed situation in life, to express it with the proper
fluency! If you have erred as to the whole, all your toil is lost; and
further, if, in treating so extensive a subject, you are not perfectly
master of your material in the details, the whole will be defective,
and censure will be incurred.’ Shelley did not know this. He was ever
labouring at long poems: but he has scarcely left one which, as a whole,
is worthy of him; you can point to none and say, This is Shelley. Even
had he lived to an age of riper capacity, it may be doubted if a being
so discontinuous, so easily hurried to and fro, would have possessed
the settled, undeviating self-devotion that are necessary to a long and
perfect composition. He had not, like Goethe, the cool shrewdness to
watch for inspiration.
His success, as we have said, is in fragments; and the best of those
fragments are lyrical. The very same isolation and suddenness of impulse
which rendered him unfit for the composition of great works, rendered him
peculiarly fit to pour forth on a sudden the intense essence of peculiar
feeling ‘in profuse strains of unpremeditated art.’ Lord Macaulay has
said that the words ‘bard’ and ‘inspiration,’ generally so meaningless
when applied to modern poets, have a meaning when applied to Shelley.
An idea, an emotion grew upon his brain his breast heaved, his frame
shook, his nerves quivered with the ‘harmonious madness’ of imaginative
concentration. ‘Poetry,’ he himself tells us, ‘is not, like reasoning,
a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man
cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say
it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible
influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness;
this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades
and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our nature
are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure.... Poetry is the
record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling sometimes
associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone,
and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and
delightful beyond all expression: so that even in the desire and the
regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does
in the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpenetration of a
diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a
wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain
only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it.’ In verse, Shelley has
compared the skylark to a poet; we may turn back the description on his
own art and his own mind:
‘Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow-clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
...
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace-tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower.
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aërial hue
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view.
Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves.
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.’
In most poets unearthly beings are introduced to express peculiar removed
essences of lyrical rapture; but they are generally failures. Lord Byron
tried this kind of composition in ‘Manfred,’ and the result is an evident
failure. In Shelley, such singing solitary beings are almost uniformly
successful; while writing, his mind really for the moment was in the
state in which theirs is supposed always to be. He loved attenuated ideas
and abstracted excitement. In expressing their nature he had but to set
free his own.
Human nature is not, however, long equal to this sustained effort of
remote excitement. The impulse fails, imagination fades, inspiration dies
away. With the skylark it is well:
‘With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest; but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.’
But in unsoaring human nature languor comes, fatigue palls, melancholy
oppresses, melody dies away. The universe is not all blue sky; there
is the thick fog and the heavy earth. ‘The world,’ says Mr. Emerson,
‘is mundane.’ A creeping sense of weight is part of the most aspiring
nature. To the most thrilling rapture succeeds despondency, perhaps
pain. To Shelley this was peculiarly natural. His dreams of reform,
of a world which was to be, called up the imaginative ecstasy: his
soul bounded forward into the future; but it is not possible even to
the most abstracted and excited mind to place its happiness in the
expected realisation of impossible schemes, and yet not occasionally be
uncertain of those schemes. The rigid frame of society, the heavy heap
of traditional institutions, the solid slowness of ordinary humanity,
depress the aspiring fancy. ‘Since our fathers fell asleep, all things
continue as they were from the beginning.’ Occasionally we must think of
our fathers. No man can always dream of ever altering all which is. It
is characteristic of Shelley, that at the end of his most rapturous and
sanguine lyrics there intrudes the cold consciousness of this world. So
with his Grecian dreams:—
‘A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls its fountains
Against the morning-star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies:
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.’
But he ends:
‘O, cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past—
O, might it die or rest at last!’
In many of his poems the failing of the feeling is as beautiful as its
short moment of hope and buoyancy.
The excellence of Shelley does not, however, extend equally over the
whole domain of lyrical poetry. That species of art may be divided—not
perhaps with the accuracy of science, but with enough for the rough
purposes of popular criticism—into the human and the abstract. The sphere
of the former is of course the actual life, passions, and actions of
real men,—such are the war-songs of rude nations especially; in that
early age there is no subject for art but natural life and primitive
passion. At a later time, when from the deposit of the _débris_ of a
hundred philosophies, a large number of half-personified abstractions
are part of the familiar thoughts and language of all mankind, there
are new objects to excite the feelings,—we might even say there are
new feelings to be excited; the rough substance of original passion
is sublimated and attenuated till we hardly recognise its identity.
Ordinarily and in most minds the emotion loses in this process its
intensity or much of it; but this is not universal. In some peculiar
minds it is possible to find an almost dizzy intensity of excitement
called forth by some fancied abstraction, remote altogether from the
eyes and senses of men. The love-lyric in its simplest form is probably
the most intense expression of primitive passion; yet not in those
lyrics where such intensity is the greatest,—in those of Burns, for
example,—is the passion so dizzy, bewildering, and bewildered, as in the
‘Epipsychidion’ of Shelley, the passion of which never came into the real
world at all, was only a fiction founded on fact, and was wholly—and even
Shelley felt it—inconsistent with the inevitable conditions of ordinary
existence. In this point of view, and especially also taking account of
his peculiar religious opinions, it is remarkable that Shelley should
have taken extreme delight in the Bible as a composition. He is the least
biblical of poets. The whole, inevitable, essential conditions of real
life—the whole of its plain, natural joys and sorrows—are described in
the Jewish literature as they are described nowhere else. Very often
they are assumed rather than delineated; and the brief assumption is
more effective than the most elaborate description. There is none of the
delicate sentiment and enhancing sympathy which a modern writer would
think necessary; the inexorable facts are dwelt on with a stern humanity,
which recognises human feeling though intent on something above it. Of
all modern poets, Wordsworth shares the most in this peculiarity; perhaps
he is the only recent one who has it at all. He knew the hills beneath
whose shade ‘the generations are prepared:’
‘Much did he see of men,
Their passions and their feelings: chiefly those
Essential and eternal in the heart,
That mid the simple form of rural life
Exist more simple in their elements,
And speak a plainer language.’
Shelley has nothing of this. The essential feelings he hoped to change;
the eternal facts he struggled to remove. Nothing in human life to him
was inevitable or fixed; he fancied he could alter it all. His sphere
is the ‘unconditioned;’ he floats away into an imaginary Elysium or
an expected Utopia; beautiful and excellent, of course, but having
nothing in common with the absolute laws of the present world. Even in
the description of mere nature the difference may be noted. Wordsworth
describes the earth as we know it, with all its peculiarities; where
there are moors and hills, where the lichen grows, where the slate-rock
juts out. Shelley describes the universe. He rushes away among the stars;
this earth is an assortment of imagery, he uses it to deck some unknown
planet. He scorns ‘the smallest light that twinkles in the heavens.’ His
theme is the vast, the infinite, the immeasurable. He is not of our home,
nor homely; he describes not our world, but that which is common to all
worlds—the Platonic idea of a world. Where it can, his genius soars from
the concrete and real into the unknown, the indefinite, and the void.
Shelley’s success in the abstract lyric would prepare us for expecting
that he would fail in attempts at eloquence. The mind which bursts
forward of itself into the inane, is not likely to be eminent in the
composed adjustments of measured persuasion. A voluntary self-control is
necessary to the orator: even when he declaims, he must only let himself
go; a keen will must be ready, a wakeful attention at hand, to see that
he does not say a word by which his audience will not be touched. The
eloquence of ‘Queen Mab’ is of that unpersuasive kind which is admired in
the earliest youth, when things and life are unknown, when all that is
intelligible is the sound of words.
Lord Macaulay, in a passage to which we have referred already, speaks
of Shelley as having, more than any other poet, many of the qualities
of the great old masters; two of these he has especially. In the first
place, his imagination is classical rather than romantic,—we should,
perhaps, apologise for using words which have been used so often, but
which hardly convey even now a clear and distinct meaning; yet they seem
the best for conveying a distinction of this sort. When we attempt to
distinguish the imagination from the fancy, we find that they are often
related as a beginning to an ending. On a sudden we do not know how a
new image, form, idea, occurs to our minds; sometimes it is borne in
upon us with a flash, sometimes we seem unawares to stumble upon it, and
find it as if it had long been there: in either case the involuntary,
unanticipated appearance of this new thought or image is a primitive
fact which we cannot analyse or account for. We say it originated in
our imagination or creative faculty: but this is a mere expression of
the completeness of our ignorance; we could only define the imagination
as the faculty which produces such effects; we know nothing of it
or its constitution. Again, on this original idea a large number of
accessory and auxiliary ideas seem to grow or accumulate insensibly,
casually, and without our intentional effort; the bare primitive form
attracts a clothing of delicate materials—an adornment not altering its
essences, but enhancing its effect. This we call the work of the fancy.
An exquisite delicacy in appropriating fitting accessories is as much
the characteristic excellence of a fanciful mind, as the possession
of large, simple, bold ideas is of an imaginative one. The last is
immediate; the first comes minute by minute. The distinction is like what
one fancies between sculpture and painting. If we look at a delicate
statue—a Venus or Juno—it does not suggest any slow elaborate process
by which its expression was chiselled and its limbs refined; it seems
a simple fact; we look, and require no account of it; it exists. The
greatest painting suggests, not only a creative act, but a decorative
process: day by day there was something new; we could watch the tints
laid on, the dresses tinged, the perspective growing and growing. There
is something statuesque about the imagination; there is the gradual
complexity of painting in the most exquisite productions of the fancy.
When we speak of this distinction, we seem almost to be speaking of the
distinction between ancient and modern literature. The characteristic of
the classical literature is the simplicity with which the imagination
appears in it; that of modern literature is the profusion with which the
most various adornments of the accessory fancy are thrown and lavished
upon it. Perhaps nowhere is this more conspicuous than in the modern
treatment of antique subjects. One of the most essentially modern of
recent poets—Keats,—has an ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn:’ it begins—
‘Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian! who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy!’
No ancient poet would have dreamed of writing thus. There would have
been no indistinct shadowy warmth, no breath of surrounding beauty:
his delineation would have been cold, distinct, chiselled like the urn
itself. The use which such a poet as Keats makes of ancient mythology is
exactly similar. He owes his fame to the inexplicable art with which he
has breathed a soft tint over the marble forms of gods and goddesses,
enhancing their beauty without impairing their chasteness. The naked
kind of imagination is not peculiar to a mythological age. The growth of
civilisation, at least in Greece, rather increased than diminished the
imaginative bareness of the poetical art. It seems to attain its height
in Sophocles. If we examine any of his greater passages, a principal
beauty is their reserved simplicity. A modern reader almost necessarily
uses them as materials for fancy: we are too used to little circumstance
to be able to do without it. Take the passage in which Œdipus contrasts
the conduct of his sons with that of his daughters:
ὦ πάντ’ ἐκείνω τοῖς ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ νόμοις
φύσιν κατεικασθέντε καὶ βίου τροφάς.
ἐκεῖ γὰρ οἱ μὲν ἄρσενες κατὰ στέγας
θακοῦσιν ἱστουργοῦντες, αἱ δὲ σύννομοι
τἄξω βίου τροφεῖα πορσύνουσ’ ἀεί.
σφῷν δ’, ὦ τέκν’, οὓς μὲν εἰκὸς ἦν πονεῖν τάδε,
κατ’ οἶκον οἰκουροῦσιν ὥστε παρθένοι,
σφὼ δ’ ἀντ’ ἐκείνων τἀμὰ δυστήνου κακὰ
ὑπερπονεῖτον. ἡ μέν ἐξ ὅτου νέας
τροφῆς ἔληξε καὶ κατίσχυσεν δέμας,
ἀεὶ μεθ’ ἡμῶν δύσμορος πλανωμένη
γερονταγωγεῖ, πολλὰ μὲν κατ’ ἀγρίαν
ὕλην ἄσιτος νηλίπους τ’ ἀλωμένη,
πολλοῖσι δ’ ὄμβροις ἡλίου τε καύμασι
μοχθοῦσα τλήμων, δεύτερ’ ἡγεῖται τὰ τῆς
οἴκοι διαίτης, εἰ πατὴρ τροφὴν ἔχοι.
What a contrast to the ravings of Lear! What a world of detail
Shakespeare would have put into the passage! What talk of ‘sulphurous and
thought-executing fires,’ ‘simulars of virtue,’ ‘pent-up guilts,’ and
‘the thick rotundity of the world!’ Decorum is the principal thing in
Sophocles. The conception of Œdipus is not
‘Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,
With harlocks, hemlock, nettle, and cuckoo-flowers.’
There are no ‘idle weeds’ among the ‘sustaining corn.’ The conception of
Lear is that of an old gnarled oak, gaunt and quivering in the stormy
sky, with old leaves and withered branches tossing in the air, and
all the complex growth of a hundred years creaking and nodding to its
fall. That of Œdipus is the peak of Teneriffe, as we fancied it in our
childhood, by itself and snowy, above among the stormy clouds, heedless
of the angry winds and the desolate waves,—single, ascending, and alone.
Or, to change the metaphor to one derived from an art where the same
qualities of mind have produced kindred effects, ancient poetry is
like a Grecian temple, with pure form and rising columns,—created, one
fancies, by a single effort of an originative nature: modern literature
seems to have sprung from the involved brain of a Gothic architect,
and resembles a huge cathedral—the work of the perpetual industry of
centuries—complicated and infinite in details; but by their choice
and elaboration producing an effect of unity which is not inferior to
that of the other, and is heightened by the multiplicity through which
it is conveyed. And it is this warmth of circumstance—this profusion
of interesting detail—which has caused the name ‘romantic’ to be
perseveringly applied to modern literature.
We need only to open Shelley, to show how essentially classical in its
highest efforts his art is. Indeed, although nothing can be further
removed from the staple topics of the classical writers than the abstract
lyric, yet their treatment is nearly essential to it. We have said, its
sphere is in what the Germans call the unconditioned—in the unknown,
immeasurable, and untrodden. It follows from this that we cannot know
much about it. We cannot know detail in tracts we have never visited;
the infinite has no form; the immeasurable no outline: that which is
common to all worlds is simple. There is therefore no scope for the
accessory fancy. With a single soaring effort imagination may reach her
end; if she fail, no fancy can help her; if she succeed, there will
be no petty accumulations of insensible circumstance in a region far
above all things. Shelley’s excellence in the abstract lyric is almost
another phrase for the simplicity of his impulsive imagination.—He shows
it on other subjects also. We have spoken of his bare treatment of the
ancient mythology. It is the same with his treatment of nature. In the
description of the celestial regions quoted before—one of the most
characteristic passages in his writings—the details are few, the air
thin, the lights distinct. We are conscious of an essential difference
if we compare the ‘Ode to the Nightingale,’ in Keats, for instance—such
verses as
‘I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs:
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild,
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine,
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves,
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath:
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy.
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.’
—with the conclusion of the ode ‘To a Skylark’—
‘Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.’
We can hear that the poetry of Keats is a rich, composite, voluptuous
harmony; that of Shelley a clear single ring of penetrating melody.
Of course, however, this criticism requires limitation. There is an
obvious sense in which Shelley is a fanciful, as contra-distinguished
from an imaginative poet. These words, being invented for the popular
expression of differences which can be remarked without narrow
inspection, are apt to mislead us when we apply them to the exact results
of a near and critical analysis. Besides the use of the word ‘fancy’ to
denote the power which adorns and amplifies the product of the primitive
imagination, we also employ it to denote the weaker exercise of the
faculty which itself creates those elementary products. We use the word
‘imaginative’ only for strong, vast, imposing, interesting conceptions:
we use the word ‘fanciful’ when we have to speak of smaller and weaker
creations, which amaze us less at the moment and affect us more slightly
afterwards. Of course, metaphysically speaking, it is not likely that
there will be found to be any distinction; the faculty which creates the
most attractive ideas is doubtless the same as that which creates the
less attractive. Common language marks the distinction, because common
people are impressed by the contrast between what affects them much and
what affects them little; but it is no evidence of the entire difference
of the latent agencies. Speech, as usual, refers to sensations, and not
to occult causes. Of fancies of this sort Shelley is full: whole poems—as
the ‘Witch of Atlas’—are composed of nothing else. Living a good deal in,
and writing a great deal about, the abstract world, it was inevitable
that he should often deal in fine subtleties, affecting very little the
concrete hearts of real men. Many pages of his are, in consequence,
nearly unintelligible, even to good critics of common poetry. The air
is too rarefied for hardy and healthy lungs: these like, as Lord Bacon
expressed it, ‘to work upon stuff.’ From his habitual choice of slight
and airy subjects, Shelley may be called a fanciful, as opposed to an
imaginative, poet; from his bare delineations of great objects, his keen
expression of distinct impulses, he should be termed an imaginative,
rather than a fanciful one.
Some of this odd combination of qualities Shelley doubtless owed to
the structure of his senses. By one of those singular results which
constantly meet us in metaphysical inquiry, the imagination and fancy are
singularly influenced by the bodily sensibility. One might have fancied
that the faculty by which the soul soars into the infinite, and sees
what it cannot see with the eye of the body, would have been peculiarly
independent of that body. But the reverse is the case. Vividness of
sensation seems required to awaken, delicacy to define, copiousness to
enrich, the visionary faculty. A large experience proves that a being
who is blind to this world will be blind to the other; that a coarse
expectation of what is not seen will follow from a coarse perception of
what is seen. Shelley’s sensibility was vivid but peculiar. Hazlitt used
to say, ‘he had seen him; and did not like his looks.’ He had the thin
keen excitement of the fanatic student; not the broad, natural, energy
which Hazlitt expected from a poet. The diffused life of genial enjoyment
which was common to Scott and to Shakespeare, was quite out of his way.
Like Mr. Emerson, he would have wondered they could be content with a
‘mean and jocular life.’ In consequence, there is no varied imagery from
human life in his poetry. He was an abstract student, anxious about
deep philosophies; and he had not that settled, contemplative, allotted
acquaintance with external nature which is so curious in Milton, the
greatest of studious poets. The exact opposite, however, to Shelley, in
the nature of his sensibility, is Keats. That great poet used to pepper
his tongue, ‘to enjoy in all its grandeur the cool flavour of delicious
claret.’ When you know it, you seem to read it in his poetry. There is
the same luxurious sentiment; the same poise on fine sensation. Shelley
was the reverse of this; he was a waterdrinker; his verse runs quick
and chill, like a pure crystal stream. The sensibility of Keats was
attracted too by the spectacle of the universe; he could not keep his
eye from seeing, or his ears from hearing, the glories of it. All the
beautiful objects of nature reappear by name in his poetry. On the other
hand, the abstract idea of beauty is for ever celebrated in Shelley; it
haunted his soul. But it was independent of special things; it was the
general surface of beauty which lies upon all things. It was the smile of
the universe and the expression of the world; it was not the vision of
a land of corn and wine. The nerves of Shelley quivered at the idea of
loveliness; but no coarse sensation obtruded particular objects upon him.
He was left to himself with books and reflection.
So far, indeed, from Shelley having a peculiar tendency to dwell on and
prolong the sensation of pleasure, he has a perverse tendency to draw out
into lingering keenness the torture of agony. Of his common recurrence
to the dizzy pain of mania we have formerly spoken; but this is not the
only pain. The nightshade is commoner in his poems than the daisy. The
nerve is ever laid bare; as often as it touches the open air of the real
world, it quivers with subtle pain. The high intellectual impulses which
animated him are too incorporeal for human nature; they begin in buoyant
joy, they end in eager suffering.
In style, said Mr. Wordsworth—in workmanship, we think his expression
was—Shelley is one of the best of us. This too, we think, was the second
of the peculiarities to which Lord Macaulay referred when he said that
Shelley had, more than any recent poet, some of the qualities of the
great old masters. The peculiarity of his style is its intellectuality;
and this strikes us the more from its contrast with his impulsiveness.
He had something of this in life. Hurried away by sudden desires, as
he was in his choice of ends, we are struck with a certain comparative
measure and adjustment in his choice of means. So in his writings; over
the most intense excitement, the grandest objects, the keenest agony,
the most buoyant joy, he throws an air of subtle mind. His language is
minutely and acutely searching; at the dizziest height of meaning the
keenness of the words is greatest. As in mania, so in his descriptions
of it, the acuteness of the mind seems to survive the mind itself.
It was from Plato and Sophocles, doubtless, that he gained the last
perfection in preserving the accuracy of the intellect when treating of
the objects of the imagination; but in its essence it was a peculiarity
of his own nature. As it was the instinct of Byron to give in glaring
words the gross phenomena of evident objects, so it was that of Shelley
to refine the most inscrutable with the curious nicety of an attenuating
metaphysician. In the wildest of ecstasies his self-anatomising intellect
is equal to itself.
There is much more which might be said, and which ought to be said, of
Shelley; but our limits are reached. We have not attempted a complete
criticism; we have only aimed to show how some of the peculiarities of
his works and life may be traced to the peculiarity of his nature.
_SHAKESPEARE—THE MAN._[27]
(1853.)
The greatest of English poets, it is often said, is but a name. ‘No
letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, no character of
him drawn with any fulness by a contemporary,’ have been extracted by
antiquaries from the piles of rubbish which they have sifted. Yet of
no person is there a clearer picture in the popular fancy. You seem to
have known Shakespeare—to have seen Shakespeare—to have been friends
with Shakespeare. We would attempt a slight delineation of the popular
idea which has been formed, not from loose tradition or remote research;
not from what some one says some one else said that the poet said, but
from data, which are at least undoubted, from the sure testimony of his
certain works.
Some extreme sceptics, we know, doubt whether it is possible to deduce
anything as to an author’s character from his works. Yet surely people
do not keep a tame steam-engine to write their books; and if those books
were really written by a man, he must have been a man who could write
them; he must have had the thoughts which they express, have acquired the
knowledge they contain, have possessed the style in which we read them.
The difficulty is a defect of the critics. A person who knows nothing of
an author he has read, will not know much of an author whom he has seen.
First of all, it may be said, that Shakespeare’s works could only be
produced by a first-rate imagination working on a first-rate experience.
It is often difficult to make out whether the author of a poetic
creation is drawing from fancy, or drawing from experience; but for art
on a certain scale, the two must concur. Out of nothing, nothing can
be created. Some plastic power is required, however great may be the
material. And when such a work as ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Othello,’ still more, when
both of them and others not unequal have been created by a single mind,
it may be fairly said, that not only a great imagination, but a full
conversancy with the world was necessary to their production. The whole
powers of man under the most favourable circumstances, are not too great
for such an effort. We may assume that Shakespeare had a great experience.
To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.
It is not enough to have opportunity, it is essential to feel it. Some
occasions come to all men; but to many they are of little use, and to
some they are none. What, for example, has experience done for the
distinguished Frenchman, the name of whose essay is prefixed to this
paper. M. Guizot is the same man that he was in 1820, or, we believe as
he was in 1814. Take up one of his lectures, published before he was
a practical statesman; you will be struck with the width of view, the
amplitude and the solidity of the reflections; you will be amazed that
a mere literary teacher could produce anything so wise; but take up
afterwards an essay published since his fall—and you will be amazed to
find no more. Napoleon the First is come and gone—the Bourbons of the old
_régime_ have come and gone—the Bourbons of the new _régime_ have had
their turn. M. Guizot has been first minister of a citizen king; he has
led a great party; he has pronounced many a great _discours_ that was
well received by the second elective assembly in the world. But there
is no trace of this in his writings. No one would guess from them that
their author had ever left the professor’s chair. It is the same, we
are told, with small matters: when M. Guizot walks the street, he seems
to see nothing; the head is thrown back, the eye fixed, and the mouth
working. His mind is no doubt at work, but it is not stirred by what is
external. Perhaps it is the internal activity of mind that overmasters
the perceptive power. Anyhow there might have been an _émeute_ in the
street and he would not have known it; there have been revolutions in his
life and he is scarcely the wiser. Among the most frivolous and fickle of
civilised nations he is alone. They pass from the game of war to the game
of peace, from the game of science to the game of art, from the game of
liberty to the game of slavery, from the game of slavery to the game of
licence; he stands like a schoolmaster in the play-ground, without sport
and without pleasure, firm and sullen, slow and awful.
A man of this sort is a curious mental phenomenon. He appears to get
early—perhaps to be born with, a kind of dry schedule or catalogue of the
universe; he has a ledger in his head, and has a title to which he can
refer any transaction; nothing puzzles him, nothing comes amiss to him,
but he is not in the least the wiser for anything. Like the book-keeper,
he has his heads of account, and he knows them, but he is no wiser for
the particular items. After a busy day, and after a slow day, after a
few entries, and after many, his knowledge is exactly the same: take his
opinion of Baron Rothschild, he will say, ‘Yes, he keeps an account with
us;’ of Humphrey Brown, ‘Yes, we have that account, too.’ Just so with
the class of minds which we are speaking of, and in greater matters. Very
early in life they come to a certain and considerable acquaintance with
the world; they learn very quickly all they can learn, and naturally
they never, in any way, learn any more. Mr. Pitt is, in this country,
the type of the character. Mr. Alison, in a well-known passage, makes it
a matter of wonder that he was fit to be a Chancellor of the Exchequer
at twenty-three, and it _is_ a great wonder. But it is to be remembered
that he was no more fit at forty-three. As somebody said, he did not
grow, he was cast. Experience taught him nothing, and he did not believe
that he had anything to learn. The habit of mind in smaller degrees is
not very rare, and might be illustrated without end. Hazlitt tells a
story of West, the painter, that is in point: When some one asked him if
he had ever been to Greece, he answered, ‘No, I have read a descriptive
catalogue of the principal objects in that country, and I believe I am as
well conversant with them as if I had visited it.’ No doubt he was just
as well conversant, and so would be any _doctrinaire_.
But Shakespeare was not a man of this sort. If he walked down a street,
he knew what was in that street. His mind did not form in early life
a classified list of all the objects in the universe, and learn no
more about the universe ever after. From a certain fine sensibility of
nature, it is plain that he took a keen interest not only in the general
and coarse outlines of objects, but in their minutest particulars and
gentlest gradations. You may open Shakespeare and find the clearest
proofs of this; take the following:—
‘When last the young Orlando parted from you,
He left a promise to return again
Within an hour; and, pacing through the forest,
Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,
Lo, what befel! he threw his eye aside,
And, mark, what object did present itself!
Under an oak, whose boughs were moss’d with age,
And high top bald with dry antiquity,
A wretched ragged man, o’ergrown with hair,
Lay sleeping on his back: about his neck
A green and gilded snake had wreath’d itself,
Who with her head, nimble in threats, approach’d
The opening of his mouth; but suddenly
Seeing Orlando, it unlink’d itself,
And with indented glides did slip away
Into a bush: under which bush’s shade
A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,
Lay crouching, head on ground, with cat-like watch,
When that the sleeping man should stir; for ’tis
The royal disposition of that beast,
To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead:
This seen,’ &c. &c.
Or the more celebrated description of the hunt:—
‘And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles,
How he outruns the wind, and with what care
He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles:
The many musits through the which he goes
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.
‘Sometimes he runs among a flock of sheep,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;
And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer;
Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear:
‘For there his smell with others being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,
Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled,
With much ado, the cold fault cleanly out;
Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies,
As if another chase were in the skies.
‘By this, poor Wat, far off, upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still;
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;
And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick that hears the passing bell.
‘Then thou shalt see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn and return, indenting with the way;
Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay:
For misery is trodden on by many,
And being low, never relieved by any.’
It is absurd, by the way, to say we know _nothing_ about the man who
wrote that; we know that he had been after a hare. It is idle to allege
that mere imagination would tell him that a hare is apt to run among a
flock of sheep, or that its so doing disconcerts the scent of hounds.
But no single citation really represents the power of the argument. Set
descriptions may be manufactured to order, and it does not follow that
even the most accurate or successful of them was really the result of a
thorough and habitual knowledge of the object. A man who knows little
of Nature may write one excellent delineation, as a poor man may have
one bright guinea. Real opulence consists in having many. What truly
indicates excellent knowledge, is the habit of constant, sudden, and
almost unconscious allusion, which implies familiarity, for it can
arise from that alone,—and this very species of incidental, casual,
and perpetual reference to ‘the mighty world of eye and ear,’ is the
particular characteristic of Shakespeare.
In this respect Shakespeare had the advantage of one whom, in many
points, he much resembled—Sir Walter Scott. For a great poet, the
organisation of the latter was very blunt; he had no sense of smell,
little sense of taste, almost no ear for music (he knew a few, perhaps
three, Scotch tunes, which he avowed that he had learnt in sixty years,
by hard labour and mental association), and not much turn for the minutiæ
of nature in any way. The effect of this may be seen in some of the best
descriptive passages of his poetry, and we will not deny that it does
(although proceeding from a sensuous defect), in a certain degree, add
to their popularity. He deals with the main outlines and great points of
nature, never attends to any others, and in this respect he suits the
comprehension and knowledge of many who know only those essential and
considerable outlines. Young people, especially, who like big things, are
taken with Scott, and bored by Wordsworth, who knew too much. And after
all, the two poets are in proper harmony, each with his own scenery. Of
all beautiful scenery the Scotch is the roughest and barest, as the
English is the most complex and cultivated. What a difference is there
between the minute and finished delicacy of Rydal Water and the rough
simplicity of Loch Katrine. It is the beauty of civilisation beside the
beauty of barbarism. Scott has himself pointed out the effect of this on
arts and artists.
‘Or see yon weather-beaten hind,
Whose sluggish herds before him wind,
Whose tattered plaid and rugged cheek
His Northern clime and kindred speak;
Through England’s laughing meads he goes,
And England’s wealth around him flows;
Ask if it would content him well,
At ease in those gay plains to dwell,
Where hedgerows spread a verdant screen,
And spires and forests intervene,
And the neat cottage peeps between?
No, not for these would he exchange
His dark Lochaber’s boundless range,
Not for fair Devon’s meads forsake
Ben Nevis grey and Garry’s lake.’
‘Thus while I ape the measures wild
Of tales that charmed me yet a child,
Rude though they be, still, with the chime,
Return the thoughts of early time;
And feelings roused in life’s first day,
Glow in the line and prompt the lay.
Then rise those crags, that mountain tower,
Which charmed my fancy’s wakening hour.
Though no broad river swept along,
To claim perchance heroic song;
Though sighed no groves in summer gale,
To prompt of love a softer tale;
Though scarce a puny streamlet’s speed
Claimed homage from a shepherd’s reed,
Yet was poetic impulse given
By the green hill and clear blue heaven.
It was a barren scene and wild,
Where naked cliffs were rudely piled,
But ever and anon between,
Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;
And well the lonely infant knew
Recesses where the wallflower grew,
And honeysuckle loved to crawl
Up the low crag and ruined wall.
...
From me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask
The classic poet’s well-conned task?
Nay, Erskine, nay—On the wild hill
Let the wild heathbell flourish still;
Cherish the tulip, prune the vine,
But freely let the woodbine twine,
And leave untrimmed the eglantine.
Nay, my friend, nay—Since oft thy praise
Hath given fresh vigour to my lays,
Since oft thy judgment could refine
My flattened thought or cumbrous line,
Still kind, as is thy wont, attend,
And in the minstrel spare the friend.
Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale,
Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my tale.’
And this is wise, for there is beauty in the North as well as in the
South. Only it is to be remembered that the beauty of the Trosachs is the
result of but a few elements—say birch and brushwood, rough hills and
narrow dells, much heather and many stones—while the beauty of England
is one thing in one district and one in another; is here the combination
of one set of qualities, and there the harmony of opposite ones, and is
everywhere made up of many details and delicate refinements; all which
require an exquisite delicacy of perceptive organisation, a seeing eye, a
minutely hearing ear. Scott’s is the strong admiration of a rough mind;
Shakespeare’s, the nice minuteness of a susceptible one.
A perfectly poetic appreciation of nature contains two elements,—a
knowledge of facts, and a sensibility to charms. Everybody who may have
to speak to some naturalists will be well aware how widely the two may
be separated. He will have seen that a man may study butterflies and
forget that they are beautiful, or be perfect in the ‘Lunar theory’
without knowing what most people mean by the moon. Generally such people
prefer the stupid parts of nature—worms and Cochin-China fowls. But
Shakespeare was not obtuse. The lines—
‘Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,
Or Cytherea’s breath,’
seem to show that he knew those feelings of youth, to which beauty is
more than a religion.
In his mode of delineating natural objects Shakespeare is curiously
opposed to Milton. The latter, who was still by temperament, and a
schoolmaster by trade, selects a beautiful object, puts it straight out
before him and his readers, and accumulates upon it all the learned
imagery of a thousand years; Shakespeare glances at it and says something
of his own. It is not our intention to say that, as a describer of the
external world, Milton is inferior; in _set_ description we rather think
that he is the better. We only wish to contrast the mode in which the
delineation is effected. The one is like an artist who dashes off any
number of picturesque sketches at any moment; the other like a man who
has lived at Rome, has undergone a thorough training, and by deliberate
and conscious effort, after a long study of the best masters, can produce
a few great pictures. Milton, accordingly, as has been often remarked,
is careful in the choice of his subjects; he knows too well the value of
his labour to be very ready to squander it; Shakespeare, on the contrary,
describes anything that comes to hand, for he is prepared for it
whatever it may be, and what he paints he paints without effort. Compare
any passage from Shakespeare—for example, those quoted before—and the
following passage from Milton:—
‘Southward through Eden went a river large,
Nor changed its course, but through the shaggy hill
Passed underneath ingulfed; for God had thrown
That mountain as his garden mould, high raised
Upon the rapid current, which through veins
Of porous earth, with kindly thirst up-drawn
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Watered the garden; thence united fell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from its darksome passage now appears:
And now divided into four main streams
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country, whereof here needs no account;
But rather to tell how,—if art could tell,—
How from that sapphire fount the crispèd brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy error under pendant shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant; and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art
In beds and curious knots, but nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrowned the noontide bowers. Thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view;
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm;
Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind,
Hung amiable (Hesperian fables true,
If true, here only), and of delicious taste:
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed:
Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store;
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.’
Why, you could draw a map of it. It is _not_ ‘Nature boon,’ but ‘nice
art in beds and curious knots;’ it is exactly the old (and excellent)
style of artificial gardening, by which any place can be turned into trim
hedgerows, and stiff borders, and comfortable shades; but there are no
straight lines in nature or Shakespeare. Perhaps the contrast may be
accounted for by the way in which the two poets acquired their knowledge
of scenes and scenery. We think we demonstrated before that Shakespeare
was a sportsman, but if there be still a sceptic or a dissentient, let
him read the following remarks on dogs:—
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flewed, so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew,
Crook-kneed and dewlapped like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tunable
Was never holloa’d to nor cheered with horn
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly.’
‘Judge when you hear.’ It is evident that the man who wrote this was
a judge of dogs, was an out-of-door sporting man, full of natural
sensibility, not defective in ‘daintiness of ear,’ and above all things,
apt to cast on Nature random, sportive, half-boyish glances, which reveal
so much, and bequeath such abiding knowledge. Milton, on the contrary,
went out to see nature. He left a narrow cell, and the intense study
which was his ‘portion in this life,’ to take a slow, careful, and
reflective walk. In his treatise on education he has given us his notion
of the way in which young people should be familiarised with natural
objects. ‘But,’ he remarks, ‘to return to our institute; besides these
constant exercises at home, there is another opportunity of gaining
pleasure from pleasure itself abroad; in those vernal seasons of the
year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness
against nature, not to go out and see her riches and partake in her
rejoicing in heaven and earth. I should not therefore be a persuader to
them of studying much in these, after two or three years, that they have
well laid their grounds, but to ride out in companies, with prudent and
staid guides, to all quarters of the land; learning and observing all
places of strength, all commodities of building and of soil, for towns
and tillage, harbours and ports of trade. Sometimes taking sea as far as
our navy, to learn there also what they can in the practical knowledge
of sailing and of sea-fight.’ Fancy ‘the prudent and staid guides.’ What
a machinery for making pedants. Perhaps Shakespeare would have known
that the conversation would be in this sort:—‘I say, Shallow, that mare
is going in the knees. She has never been the same since you larked her
over the fivebar, while Moleyes was talking clay and agriculture. I do
not hate Latin so much, but I hate “argillaceous earth;” and what use is
_that_ to a fellow in the Guards, _I_ should like to know?’ Shakespeare
had himself this sort of boyish buoyancy. He was not ‘one of the staid
guides.’ We might further illustrate it. Yet this would be tedious
enough, and we prefer to go on and show what we mean by an experiencing
nature in relation to men and women, just as we have striven to indicate
what it is in relation to horses and hares.
The reason why so few good books are written, is that so few people
that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in
a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the
style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of
employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to
see. His life is a vacuum. The mental habits of Robert Southey, which
about a year ago were so extensively praised in the public journals,
are the type of literary existence, just as the praise bestowed on them
shows the admiration excited by them among literary people. He wrote
poetry (as if anybody could) before breakfast; he read during breakfast.
He wrote history until dinner; he corrected proof sheets between dinner
and tea; he wrote an essay for the ‘Quarterly’ afterwards; and after
supper by way of relaxation composed the ‘Doctor’—a lengthy and elaborate
jest. Now, what can anyone think of such a life—except how clearly it
shows that the habits best fitted for communicating information, formed
with the best care, and daily regulated by the best motives, are exactly
the habits which are likely to afford a man the least information to
communicate. Southey had no events, no experiences. His wife kept house
and allowed him pocket-money, just as if he had been a German professor
devoted to accents, tobacco, and the dates of Horace’s amours. And it
is pitiable to think that so meritorious a life was only made endurable
by a painful delusion. He thought that day by day, and hour by hour,
he was accumulating stores for the instruction and entertainment of a
long posterity. His epics were to be in the hands of all men, and his
history of Brazil the ‘Herodotus of the South American Republics.’ As if
his epics were not already dead, and as if the people who now cheat at
Valparaiso care a _real_ who it was that cheated those before them. Yet
it was only by a conviction like this that an industrious and caligraphic
man (for such was Robert Southey), who might have earned money as a
clerk, worked all his days for half a clerk’s wages, at occupation much
duller and more laborious. The critic in the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ lays
down that you should _always_ say that the picture would have been better
if the painter had taken more pains; but in the case of the practised
literary man, you should often enough say that the writings would have
been much better if the writer had taken less pains. He says he has
devoted his life to the subject—the reply is, ‘Then you have taken the
best way to prevent your making anything of it.’ Instead of reading
studiously what Burgersdicius and Ænœsidemus said men were, you should
have gone out yourself, and seen (if you can see) what they are.
After all, the original way of writing books may turn out to be the best.
The first author, it is plain, could not have taken anything from books,
since there were no books for him to copy from; he looked at things for
himself. Anyhow the modern system fails, for where are the amusing books
from voracious students and habitual writers? Not that we mean exactly
to say that an author’s hard reading is the cause of his writing that
which is hard to read. This would be near the truth, but not quite the
truth. The two are concomitant effects of a certain defective nature.
Slow men read well, but write ill. The abstracted habit, the want of
keen exterior interests, the aloofness of mind from what is next it, all
tend to make a man feel an exciting curiosity and interest about remote
literary events, the toils of scholastic logicians, and the petty feuds
of Argos and Lacedæmon; but they also tend to make a man very unable to
explain and elucidate those exploits for the benefit of his fellows.
What separates the author from his readers, will make it proportionably
difficult for him to explain himself to them. Secluded habits do not tend
to eloquence; and the indifferent apathy which is so common in studious
persons is exceedingly unfavourable to the liveliness of narration and
illustration which is needed for excellence in even the simpler sorts of
writing. Moreover, in general, it will perhaps be found, that persons
devoted to mere literature commonly become devoted to mere idleness.
They wish to produce a great work, but they find they cannot. Having
relinquished everything to devote themselves to this, they conclude on
trial that this is impossible. They wish to write, but nothing occurs
to them. Therefore they write nothing, and they do nothing. As has been
said, they have nothing to do. Their life has no events, unless they are
very poor. With any decent means of subsistence, they have nothing to
rouse them from an indolent and musing dream. A merchant must meet his
bills, or he is civilly dead and uncivilly remembered. But a student may
know nothing of time and be too lazy to wind up his watch. In the retired
citizen’s journal in Addison’s _Spectator_, we have the type of this way
of spending the time:—Mem. Morning 8 to 9, ‘Went into the parlour and
tied on my shoe-buckles.’ This is the sort of life for which studious men
commonly relinquish the pursuits of business and the society of their
fellows.
Yet all literary men are not tedious, neither are they all slow. One
great example even these most tedious times have luckily given us, to
show us what may be done by a really great man even now, the same who
before served as an illustration—Sir Walter Scott. In his lifetime
people denied he was a poet, but nobody said that he was not ‘the best
fellow’ in Scotland—perhaps that was not much—or that he had not more
wise joviality, more living talk, more graphic humour, than any man in
Great Britain. ‘Wherever we went,’ said Mr. Wordsworth, ‘we found his
name acted as an _open sesame_, and I believe that in the character of
the _sheriff’s_ friends, we might have counted on a hearty welcome under
any roof in the border country.’ Never neglect to talk to people with
whom you are casually thrown, was his precept, and he exemplified the
maxim himself. ‘I believe,’ observes his biographer, ‘that Scott has
somewhere expressed in print his satisfaction, that amid all the changes
of our manners, the ancient freedom of personal intercourse may still be
indulged between a master and an _out-of-door_ servant; but in truth he
kept by the old fashion, even with domestic servants, to an extent which
I have hardly ever seen practised by any other gentleman. He conversed
with his coachman if he sat by him, as he often did, on the box—with his
footman, if he chanced to be in the rumble. Indeed, he did not confine
his humanity to his own people; any steady-going servant of a friend of
his was soon considered as a sort of friend too, and was sure to have a
kind little colloquy to himself at coming or going.’ ‘Sir Walter speaks
to every man as if he was his blood relation,’ was the expressive comment
of one of these dependents. It was in this way that he acquired the great
knowledge of various kinds of men, which is so clear and conspicuous
in his writings; nor could that knowledge have been acquired on easier
terms, or in any other way. No man could describe the character of
Dandie Dinmont, without having been in Lidderdale. Whatever has been
once in a book may be put into a book again; but an original character,
taken at first hand from the sheepwalks and from nature, must be seen in
order to be known. A man, to be able to describe—indeed, to be able to
know—various people in life, must be able at sight to comprehend their
essential features, to know how they shade one into another, to see how
they diversify the common uniformity of civilised life. Nor does this
involve simply intellectual or even imaginative prerequisites, still
less will it be facilitated by exquisite senses or subtle fancy. What is
wanted is, to be able to appreciate mere clay—which mere mind never will.
If you will describe the people,—nay, if you will write for the people,
you must be one of the people. You must have led their life, and must
wish to lead their life. However strong in any poet may be the higher
qualities of abstract thought or conceiving fancy, unless he can actually
sympathise with those around him, he can never describe those around
him. Any attempt to produce a likeness of what is not really _liked_ by
the person who is describing it, will end in the creation of what may
be correct, but is not living—of what may be artistic, but is likewise
artificial.
Perhaps this is the defect of the works of the greatest dramatic
genius of recent times—Goethe. His works are too much in the nature of
literary studies; the mind is often deeply impressed by them, but one
doubts if the author was. He saw them as he saw the houses of Weimar
and the plants in the act of metamorphosis. He had a clear perception
of their fixed condition and their successive transitions, but he did
not really (if we may so speak) comprehend their motive power. So to
say, he appreciated their life, but not their liveliness. Niebuhr, as is
well known, compared the most elaborate of Goethe’s works—the novel of
Wilhelm Meister—to a menagerie of tame animals, meaning thereby, as we
believe, to express much the same distinction. He felt that there was a
deficiency in mere vigour and rude energy. We have a long train and no
engine—a great accumulation of excellent matter, arranged and ordered
with masterly skill, but not animated with over-buoyant and unbounded
play. And we trace this not to a defect in imaginative power, a defect
which it would be a simple absurdity to impute to Goethe, but to the
tone of his character and the habits of his mind. He moved hither and
thither through life, but he was always a man apart. He mixed with
unnumbered kinds of men, with courts and academies, students and women,
camps and artists, but everywhere he was with them yet not of them. In
every scene he was there, and he made it clear that he was there with
a reserve and as a stranger. He went there _to experience_. As a man
of universal culture and well skilled in the order and classification
of human life, the fact of any one class or order being beyond his
reach or comprehension seemed an absurdity, and it was an absurdity.
He thought that he was equal to moving in any description of society,
and he was equal to it; but then on that exact account he was absorbed
in none. There were none of surpassing and immeasurably preponderating
captivation. No scene and no subject were to him what Scotland and Scotch
nature were to Sir Walter Scott. ‘If I did not see the heather once a
year, I should die,’ said the latter; but Goethe would have lived without
it, and it would not have cost him much trouble. In every one of Scott’s
novels there is always the spirit of the old moss trooper—the flavour of
the ancient border; there is the intense sympathy which enters into the
most living moments of the most living characters—the lively energy which
_becomes_ the energy of the most vigorous persons delineated. Marmion was
‘written’ while he was galloping on horseback. It reads as if it were so.
Now it appears that Shakespeare not only had that various commerce with,
and experience of men, which was common both to Goethe and to Scott, but
also that he agrees with the latter rather than with the former in the
kind and species of that experience. He was not merely with men, but of
men; he was not a ‘thing apart,’ with a clear intuition of what was in
those around him; he had in his own nature the germs and tendencies of
the very elements that he described. He knew what was in man, for he felt
it in himself. Throughout all his writings you see an amazing sympathy
with common people, rather an excessive tendency to dwell on the common
features of ordinary lives. You feel that common people could have
been cut out of him, but not without his feeling it; for it would have
deprived him of a very favourite subject—of a portion of his ideas to
which he habitually recurred.
‘_Leon._ What would you with me, honest neighbour?
_Dog._ Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you, that
decerns you nearly.
_Leon._ Brief, I pray you; for you see ’tis a busy time with me.
_Dog._ Marry, this it is, sir.
_Verg._ Yes, in truth it is, sir.
_Leon._ What is it, my good friends?
_Dog._ Goodman Verges, sir, speaks a little off the matter:
an old man, sir, and his wits are not so blunt, as, God help,
I would desire they were; but, in faith, honest as the skin
between his brows.
_Verg._ Yes, I thank God, I am as honest as any man living,
that is an old man, and no honester than I.
_Dog._ Comparisons are odorous:—_palabras_, neighbour Verges.
_Leon._ Neighbours, you are tedious.
_Dog._ It pleases your worship to say so, but we are the poor
duke’s officers; but, truly, for mine own part, if I were as
tedious as a king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all of
your worship.
...
_Leon._ I would fain know what you have to say.
_Verg._ Marry, sir, our watch to-night, excepting your
worship’s presence, have ta’en a couple of as arrant knaves as
any in Messina.
_Dog._ A good old man, sir; he will be talking; as they say,
When the age is in, the wit is out; God help us! it is a world
to see!—Well said, i’faith, neighbour Verges:—well, God’s a
good man; an two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind:—An
honest soul, i’faith, sir; by my troth he is, as ever broke
bread; but God is to be worshipped: All men are not alike;
alas, good neighbour!
_Leon._ Indeed, neighbour, he comes too far short of you.
_Dog._ Gifts that God gives,’—&c. &c.
* * * * *
‘_Stafford._ Ay, sir.
_Cade._ By her he had two children at one birth.
_Staff._ That’s false.
_Cade._ Ay, there’s the question; but, I say,’tis true:
The elder of them, being put to nurse,
Was by a beggar-woman stol’n away:
And, ignorant of his birth and parentage,
Became a bricklayer, when he came to age;
His son am I; deny it, if you can.
_Dick._ Nay, ’tis too true; therefore he shall be king.
_Smith._ Sir, he made a chimney in my father’s house, and the
bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore, deny it
not.’
Shakespeare was too wise not to know that for most of the purposes of
human life stupidity is a most valuable element. He had nothing of
the impatience which sharp logical narrow minds habitually feel when
they come across those who do not apprehend their quick and precise
deductions. No doubt he talked to the stupid players, to the stupid
door-keeper, to the property man, who considers paste jewels ‘very
preferable, besides the expense’—talked with the stupid apprentices of
stupid Fleet Street, and had much pleasure in ascertaining what was
their notion of ‘King Lear.’ In his comprehensive mind it was enough if
every man hitched well into his own place in human life. If every one
were logical and literary, how would there be scavengers, or watchmen,
or caulkers, or coopers? Narrow minds will be subdued to what they ‘work
in.’ The ‘dyer’s hand’ will not more clearly carry off its tint, nor
will what is moulded more precisely indicate the confines of the mould.
A patient sympathy, a kindly fellow-feeling for the narrow intelligence
necessarily induced by narrow circumstances,—a narrowness which, in some
degrees, seems to be inevitable, and is perhaps more serviceable than
most things to the wise conduct of life—this, though quick and half-bred
minds may despise it, seems to be a necessary constituent in the
composition of manifold genius. ‘How shall the world be served?’ asks the
host in Chaucer. We must have cart-horses as well as race-horses, draymen
as well as poets. It is no bad thing, after all, to be a slow man and to
have one idea a year. You don’t make a figure, perhaps, in argumentative
society, which requires a quicker species of thought, but is that the
worse?
‘_Hol._ _Via_, Goodman Dull; thou hast spoken no word all this
while.
_Dull._ Nor understood none neither, sir.
_Hol._ _Allons_, we will employ thee.
_Dull._ I’ll make one in a dance or so, or I will play on the
tabor to the worthies, and let them dance the hay.
_Hol._ Most dull, honest Dull, to our sport away.’
And such, we believe, was the notion of Shakespeare.
S. T. Coleridge has a nice criticism which bears on this point. He
observes that in the narrations of uneducated people in Shakespeare, just
as in real life, there is a want of prospectiveness and a superfluous
amount of regressiveness. People of this sort are unable to look a long
way in front of them, and they wander from the right path. They get on
too fast with one half, and then the other hopelessly lags. They can
tell a story exactly as it is told to them (as an animal can go step by
step where it has been before), but they can’t calculate its bearings
beforehand, or see how it is to be adapted to those to whom they are
speaking, nor do they know how much they have thoroughly told and how
much they have not. ‘I went up the street, then I went down the street;
no, first went down and then—but you do not follow me; I go before you,
sir.’ Thence arises the complex style usually adopted by persons not
used to narration. They tumble into a story and get on as they can. This
is scarcely the sort of thing which a man could foresee. Of course a
metaphysician can account for it, and like Coleridge, assure you that
if he had not observed it, he could have predicted it in a moment; but,
nevertheless, it is too refined a conclusion to be made out from known
premises by common reasoning. Doubtless there is some reason why negroes
have woolly hair (and if you look into a philosophical treatise, you
will find that the author could have made out that it would be so, if he
had not, by a mysterious misfortune, known from infancy that it was the
fact),—still one could never have supposed it oneself. And in the same
manner, though the profounder critics may explain in a satisfactory and
refined manner, how the confused and undulating style of narration is
peculiarly incident to the mere multitude, yet it is most likely that
Shakespeare derived his acquaintance with it from the fact, from actual
hearing, and not from what may be the surer, but is the slower process
of metaphysical deduction. The best passage to illustrate this is that
in which the nurse gives a statement of Juliet’s age; but it will not
exactly suit our pages. The following of Mrs. Quickly will suffice:—
‘Tilly-fally, Sir John, never tell me; your ancient swaggerer
comes not in my doors. I was before Master Tizzick, the
Deputy, the other day; and, as he said to me,—it was no longer
ago than Wednesday last,—Neighbour Quickly, says he;—Master
Dumb, our minister, was by then;—Neighbour Quickly, says he,
receive those that are civil; for, saith he, you are in an ill
name:—now, he said so, I can tell you whereupon; for, says
he, you are an honest woman, and well thought on; therefore
take heed to what guests you receive: Deceive, says he, no
swaggering companions.—There comes none here;—you would bless
you to hear what he said:—no, I’ll no swaggerers.’
Now, it is quite impossible that this, any more than the political
reasoning on the parentage of Cade, which was cited before, should have
been written by one not habitually and sympathisingly conversant with the
talk of the illogical classes. Shakespeare felt, if we may say so, the
force of the bad reasoning. He did not, like a sharp logician, angrily
detect a flaw, and set it down as a fallacy of reference or a fallacy
of amphibology. This is not the English way, though Dr. Whately’s logic
has been published so long (and, as he says himself, must now be deemed
to be irrefutable, since no one has ever offered any refutation of it).
Yet still people in this country do not like to be committed to distinct
premises. They like a Chancellor of the Exchequer to say, ‘It has during
very many years been maintained by the honourable member for Montrose
that two and two make four, and I am free to say, that I think there is a
great deal to be said in favour of that opinion; but, without committing
her Majesty’s Government to that proposition as an abstract sentiment,
I will go so far as to assume two and two are not sufficient to make
five, which, with the permission of the House, will be a sufficient basis
for all the operations which I propose to enter upon during the present
year.’ We have no doubt Shakespeare reasoned in that way himself. Like
any other Englishman, when he had a clear course before him, he rather
liked to shuffle over little hitches in the argument, and on that account
he had a great sympathy with those who did so too. He would never have
interrupted Mrs. Quickly; he saw that her mind was going to and fro over
the subject; he saw that it was coming right, and this was enough for
him, and will be also enough of this topic for our readers.
We think we have proved that Shakespeare had an enormous specific
acquaintance with the common people; that this can only be obtained by
sympathy. It likewise has a further condition.
In spiritedness, the style of Shakespeare is very like to that of Scott.
The description of a charge of cavalry in Scott reads, as was said
before, as if it was written on horseback. A play by Shakespeare reads
as if it were written in a playhouse. The great critics assure you, that
a theatrical audience must be kept awake, but Shakespeare knew this of
his own knowledge. When you read him, you feel a sensation of motion,
a conviction that there is something ‘up,’ a notion that not only is
something being talked about, but also that something is being done. We
do not imagine that Shakespeare owed this quality to his being a player,
but rather that he became a player because he possessed this quality of
mind. For after, and notwithstanding everything which has, or may be
said against the theatrical profession, it certainly does require from
those who pursue it a certain quickness and liveliness of mind. Mimics
are commonly an elastic sort of persons, and it takes a little levity of
disposition to enact even the ‘heavy fathers.’ If a boy joins a company
of strolling players, you may be sure that he is not a ‘good boy;’ he
may be a trifle foolish, or a thought romantic, but certainly he is not
slow. And this was in truth the case with Shakespeare. They say, too,
that in the beginning he was a first-rate link-boy; and the tradition is
affecting, though we fear it is not quite certain. Anyhow you feel about
Shakespeare that he could have been a link-boy. In the same way you feel
he may have been a player. You are sure at once that he could not have
followed any sedentary kind of life. But wheresoever there was anything
_acted_ in earnest or in jest, by way of mock representation or by way
of serious reality, there he found matter for his mind. If anybody could
have any doubt about the liveliness of Shakespeare, let them consider the
character of Falstaff. When a man has created _that_ without a capacity
for laughter, then a blind man may succeed in describing colours. Intense
animal spirits are the single sentiment (if they be a sentiment) of
the entire character. If most men were to save up all the gaiety of
their whole lives, it would come about to the gaiety of one speech in
Falstaff. A morose man might have amassed many jokes, might have observed
many details of jovial society, might have conceived a Sir John, marked
by rotundity of body, but could hardly have imagined what we call his
rotundity of mind. We mean that the animal spirits of Falstaff give him
an easy, vague, diffusive sagacity which is peculiar to him. A morose
man, Iago, for example, may know anything, and is apt to know a good
deal; but what he knows is generally all in corners. He knows number 1,
number 2, number 3, and so on, but there is not anything continuous, or
smooth, or fluent in his knowledge. Persons conversant with the works of
Hazlitt will know in a minute what we mean. Everything which he observed
he seemed to observe from a certain soreness of mind; he looked at people
because they offended him; he had the same vivid notion of them that
a man has of objects which grate on a wound in his body. But there is
nothing at all of this in Falstaff; on the contrary, everything pleases
him, and everything is food for a joke. Cheerfulness and prosperity
give an easy abounding sagacity of mind which nothing else does give.
Prosperous people bound easily over all the surface of things which
their lives present to them; very likely they keep to the surface; there
are things beneath or above to which they may not penetrate or attain,
but what is on any part of the surface, that they know well. ‘Lift
not the painted veil which those who live call life,’ and they do not
lift it. What is sublime or awful above, what is ‘sightless and drear’
beneath,—these they may not dream of. Nor is any one piece or corner of
life so well impressed on them as on minds less happily constituted. It
is only people who have had a tooth out, that really know the dentist’s
waiting-room. Yet such people, for the time at least, know nothing but
that and their tooth. The easy and sympathising friend who accompanies
them knows everything; hints gently at the contents of the _Times_, and
would cheer you with Lord Palmerston’s replies. So, on a greater scale,
the man of painful experience knows but too well what has hurt him, and
where and why; but the happy have a vague and rounded view of the round
world, and such was the knowledge of Falstaff.
It is to be observed that these high spirits are not a mere excrescence
or superficial point in an experiencing nature; on the contrary, they
seem to be essential, if not to its idea or existence, at least to its
exercise and employment. How are you to know people without talking to
them, but how are you to talk to them without tiring yourself? A common
man is exhausted in half an hour; Scott or Shakespeare could have gone on
for a whole day. This is, perhaps, peculiarly necessary for a painter of
English life. The basis of our national character seems to be a certain
energetic humour, which may be found in full vigour in old Chaucer’s
time, and in great perfection in at least one of the popular writers
of this age, and which is, perhaps, most easily described by the name
of our greatest painter—Hogarth. It is amusing to see how entirely the
efforts of critics and artists fail to naturalise in England any other
sort of painting. Their efforts are fruitless; for the people painted are
not English people: they may be Italians, or Greeks, or Jews, but it is
quite certain that they are foreigners. We should not fancy that modern
art ought to resemble the Mediæval. So long as artists attempt the same
class of paintings as Raphael, they will not only be inferior to Raphael,
but they will never please, as they might please, the English people.
What we want is what Hogarth gave us—a representation of ourselves. It
may be that we are wrong, that we ought to prefer something of the old
world, some scene in Rome or Athens, some tale from Carmel or Jerusalem;
but, after all, we do not. These places are, we think, abroad, and had
their greatness in former times; we wish a copy of what now exists, and
of what we have seen. London we know, and Manchester we know, but where
are all these? It is the same with literature, Milton excepted, and even
Milton can hardly be called a popular writer: all great English writers
describe English people, and in describing them, they give, as they must
give, a large comic element; and, speaking generally, this is scarcely
possible, except in the case of cheerful and easy-living men. There
is, no doubt, a biting satire, like that of Swift, which has for its
essence misanthropy. There is the mockery of Voltaire, which is based on
intellectual contempt; but this is not our English humour—it is not that
of Shakespeare and Falstaff; ours is the humour of a man who laughs when
he speaks, of flowing enjoyment, of an experiencing nature.
Yet it would be a great error if we gave anything like an exclusive
prominence to this aspect of Shakespeare. Thus he appeared to those
around him—in some degree they knew that he was a cheerful, and humorous,
and happy man; but of his higher gift they knew less than we. A great
painter of men must (as has been said) have a faculty of conversing, but
he must also have a capacity for solitude. There is much of mankind that
a man can only learn from himself. Behind every man’s external life,
which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and
which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbour,
as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark
half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a
room to himself. And if we would study the internal lives of others, it
seems essential that we should begin with our own. If we study this our
_datum_, if we attain to see and feel how this influences and evolves
itself in our social and (so to say) public life, then it is possible
that we may find in the lives of others the same or analogous features;
and if we do not, then at least we may suspect that those who want them
are deficient likewise in the secret agencies which we feel produce them
in ourselves. The metaphysicians assert, that people originally picked
up the idea of the existence of other people in this way. It is orthodox
doctrine that a baby says: ‘I have a mouth, mamma has a mouth: therefore
I’m the same species as mamma. I have a nose, papa has a nose, therefore
papa is the same genus as me.’ But whether or not this ingenious idea
really does or does not represent the actual process by which we
originally obtain an acquaintance with the existence of minds analogous
to our own, it gives unquestionably the process by which we obtain our
notion of that part of those minds which they never exhibit consciously
to others, and which only becomes predominant in secresy and solitude and
to themselves. Now, that Shakespeare has this insight into the musing
life of man, as well as into his social life, is easy to prove; take, for
instance, the following passages:—
‘This battle fares like to the morning’s war,
When dying clouds contend with growing light;
What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,
Can neither call it perfect day nor night.
Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea,
Forc’d by the tide to combat with the wind;
Now sways it that way, like the self-same sea
Forc’d to retire by fury of the wind:
Sometime, the flood prevails; and then, the wind:
Now, one the better; then, another best;
Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast,
Yet neither conqueror, nor conquered;
So is the equal poise of this fell war.
Here on this molehill will I sit me down.
To whom God will, there be the victory!
For Margaret my queen, and Clifford too,
Have chid me from the battle; swearing both
They prosper best of all when I am thence.
Would I were dead! if God’s good will were so;
For what is in this world but grief and woe?
Oh God! methinks it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain:
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run:
How many make the hour full complete,
How many hours bring about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live.
When this is known, then to divide the time:
So many hours must I tend my flock;
So many hours must I take my rest;
So many hours must I contemplate;
So many hours must I sport myself;
So many days my ewes have been with young;
So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean;
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece;
So minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years,
Pass’d over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely!
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroider’d canopy
To kings, that fear their subjects’ treachery?
O yes, it doth; a thousand-fold it doth.
And to conclude,—the shepherd’s homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade,
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
Is far beyond a prince’s delicates,
His viands sparkling in a golden cup,
His body couchèd in a curious bed,
When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him.’
‘A fool, a fool!—I met a fool i’ the forest,
A motley fool!—a miserable world;—
As I do live by food, I met a fool;
Who laid him down and basked him in the sun,
And railed on lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms,—and yet a motley fool.
“Good-morrow, fool,” quoth I: “No, sir,” quoth he,
“Call me not fool, till heaven hath sent me fortune:”
And then he drew a dial from his poke,
And looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says, very wisely, “It is ten o’clock:
Thus may we see,” quoth he, “how the world wags;
’Tis but an hour ago since it was nine;
And after an hour more,’twill be eleven;
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale.” When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time,
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
That fools should be so deep-contemplative;
And I did laugh, sans intermission,
An hour by his dial.’
No slight versatility of mind and pliancy of fancy could pass at will
from scenes such as these to the ward of Eastcheap and the society
which heard the chimes at midnight. One of the reasons of the rarity
of great imaginative works is that in very few cases is this capacity
for musing solitude combined with that of observing mankind. A certain
constitutional though latent melancholy is essential to such a nature.
This is the exceptional characteristic in Shakespeare. All through
his works you feel you are reading the popular author, the successful
man; but through them all there is a certain tinge of musing sadness
pervading, and, as it were, softening their gaiety. Not a trace can
be found of ‘eating cares’ or narrow and mind-contracting toil, but
everywhere there is, in addition to shrewd sagacity and buoyant wisdom, a
refining element of chastening sensibility, which prevents sagacity from
being rough, and shrewdness from becoming cold. He had an eye for either
sort of life:—
‘Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungallèd play;
For some must watch, and some must sleep,
Thus runs the world away.’
In another point also Shakespeare, as he was, must be carefully
contrasted with the estimate that would be formed of him from such
delineations as that of Falstaff, and that was doubtless frequently made
by casual though only by casual frequenters of the Mermaid. It has been
said that the mind of Shakespeare contained within it the mind of Scott;
it remains to be observed that it contained also the mind of Keats. For,
beside the delineation of human life, and beside also the delineation of
nature, there remains also for the poet a third subject—the delineation
of _fancies_. Of course, these, be they what they may, are like to, and
were originally borrowed either from man or from nature—from one or
from both together. We know but two things in the simple way of direct
experience, and whatever else we know must be in some mode or manner
compacted out of them. Yet ‘books are a substantial world, both pure
and good,’ and so are fancies too. In all countries men have devised to
themselves a whole series of half-divine creations—mythologies Greek and
Roman, fairies, angels, beings who may be, for aught we know, but with
whom, in the meantime, we can attain to no conversation. The most known
of these mythologies are the Greek, and what is, we suppose, the second
epoch of the Gothic, the fairies; and it so happens that Shakespeare has
dealt with them both and in a remarkable manner. We are not, indeed,
of those critics who profess simple and unqualified admiration for the
poem of ‘Venus and Adonis.’ It seems intrinsically, as we know it from
external testimony to have been, a juvenile production, written when
Shakespeare’s nature might be well expected to be crude and unripened.
Power is shown, and power of a remarkable kind; but it is not displayed
in a manner that will please or does please the mass of men. In spite of
the name of its author, the poem has never been popular—and surely this
is sufficient. Nevertheless, it is remarkable as a literary exercise, and
as a treatment of a singular, though unpleasant subject. The fanciful
class of poems differ from others in being laid, so far as their scene
goes, in a perfectly unseen world. The type of such productions is
Keats’s ‘Endymion.’ We mean that it is the type, not as giving the
abstract perfection of this sort of art, but because it shows and
embodies both its excellences and defects in a very marked and prominent
manner. In that poem there are no passions and no actions, there is no
art and no life; but there is beauty, and that is meant to be enough, and
to a reader of one-and-twenty it is enough and more. What are exploits
or speeches? What is Cæsar or Coriolanus? What is a tragedy like Lear,
or a real view of human life in any kind whatever, to people who do not
know and do not care what human life is? In early youth it is, perhaps,
not true that the passions, taken generally, are particularly violent,
or that the imagination is in any remarkable degree powerful; but it
is certain that the fancy (which though it be, in the last resort, but
a weak stroke of that same faculty, which, when it strikes hard, we
call imagination, may yet for this purpose be looked on as distinct) is
particularly wakeful, and that the gentler species of passions are more
absurd than they are afterwards. And the literature of this period of
human life runs naturally away from the real world; away from the less
ideal portion of it, from stocks and stones, and aunts and uncles, and
rests on mere half-embodied sentiments, which in the hands of great poets
assume a kind of semi-personality, and are, to the distinction between
things and persons, ‘as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto
wine.’ The ‘Sonnets’ of Shakespeare belong exactly to the same school
of poetry. They are not the sort of verses to take any particular hold
upon the mind permanently and for ever, but at a certain period they take
too much. For a young man to read in the spring of the year among green
fields and in gentle air, they are the ideal. As first of April poetry
they are perfect.
The ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is of another order. If the question
were to be decided by ‘Venus and Adonis,’ in spite of the unmeasured
panegyrics of many writers, we should be obliged in equity to hold, that
as a poet of mere fancy Shakespeare was much inferior to the late Mr.
Keats and even to meaner men. Moreover, we should have been prepared
with some refined reasonings to show that it was unlikely that a poet
with so much hold on reality, in life and nature, both in solitude and
in society, should have also a similar command over unreality: should
possess a command not only of flesh and blood, but of the imaginary
entities which the self-inworking fancy brings forth—impalpable
conceptions of mere mind: _quædam simulacra miris pallentia modis_ thin
ideas, which come we know not whence, and are given us we know not why.
But, unfortunately for this ingenious, if not profound suggestion,
Shakespeare in fact possessed the very faculty which it tends to prove
that he would not possess. He could paint Poins and Falstaff, but he
excelled also in fairy legends. He had such
‘Seething brains;
Such shaping fantasies as apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.’
As, for example, the idea of Puck, or Queen Mab, of Ariel, or such a
passage as the following:—
‘_Puck._ How now, spirit! whither wander you?
_Fai._ Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough briar,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moones sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green:
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dew-drops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I’ll be gone;
Our queen and all our elves come here anon.
_Puck._ The king doth keep his revels here to-night;
Take heed the queen come not within his sight.
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling:
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild:
But she, perforce, withholds the lovèd boy,
Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove, or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled star-light sheen,
But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,
Creep into acorn-cups, and hide them there.
_Fai._ Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call’d Robin Good-fellow: are you not he
That fright the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometimes make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?
_Puck._ Thou speak’st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon, and make him smile,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab;
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her wither’d dew-lap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from beneath, down topples she,
And _tailor_ cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips, and loffe;
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.—
But room, Fairy, here comes Oberon.
_Fai._ And here my mistress:—Would that he were gone!’
Probably he believed in these things. Why not? Everybody else believed in
them then. They suit our climate. As the Greek mythology suits the keen
Attic sky, the fairies, indistinct and half-defined, suit a land of mild
mists and gentle airs. They confuse the ‘maidens of the villagery;’ they
are the paganism of the South of England.
Can it be made out what were Shakespeare’s political views? We think it
certainly can, and that without difficulty. From the English historical
plays, it distinctly appears that he accepted, like everybody then, the
Constitution of his country. His lot was not cast in an age of political
controversy, nor of reform. What was, was from of old. The Wars of the
Roses had made it very evident how much room there was for the evils
incident to an hereditary monarchy, for instance, those of a controverted
succession, and the evils incident to an aristocracy, as want of public
spirit and audacious selfishness, to arise and continue within the realm
of England. Yet they had not repelled, and had barely disconcerted our
conservative ancestors. They had not become Jacobins; they did not
concur—and history, except in Shakespeare, hardly does justice to them—in
Jack Cade’s notion that the laws should come out of his mouth, or that
the commonwealth was to be reformed by interlocutors in this scene.
‘_Geo._ I tell thee, Jack Cade the clothier means to dress the
Commonwealth, and turn it, and set a new nap on it.
_John._ So he had need, for ’tis threadbare. Well, I say it was
never a merry world in England since gentlemen came up.
_Geo._ O miserable age! Virtue is not regarded in
handycraftsmen.
_John._ The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons.
_Geo._ Nay more: the king’s council are no good workmen.
_John._ True; and yet it is said, Labour in thy vocation; which
is as much as to say, as let the magistrates be labouring men,
and therefore should we be magistrates.
_Geo._ Thou hast hit it, for there is no better sign of a brave
mind than a hard hand.
_John._ I see them! I see them!’
The English people did see them, and know them, and therefore have
rejected them. An audience which, _bonâ fide_, entered into the merit
of this scene, would never believe in everybody’s suffrage. They would
know that there is such a thing as nonsense, and when a man has once
attained to that deep conception, you may be sure of him ever after. And
though it would be absurd to say that Shakespeare originated this idea,
or that the disbelief in simple democracy is owing to his teaching or
suggestions, yet it may, nevertheless, be truly said, that he shared
in the peculiar knowledge of men—and also possessed the peculiar
constitution of mind—which engender this effect. The author of Coriolanus
never believed in a mob, and did something towards preventing anybody
else from doing so. But this political idea was not exactly the strongest
in Shakespeare’s mind. We think he had two other stronger, or as strong.
First, the feeling of loyalty to the ancient polity of this country—not
because it was good, but because it existed. In his time, people no more
thought of the origin of the monarchy than they did of the origin of the
Mendip Hills. The one had always been there, and so had the other. God
(such was the common notion) had made both, and one as much as the other.
Everywhere, in that age, the common modes of political speech assumed
the existence of certain utterly national institutions, and would have
been worthless and nonsensical except on that assumption. This national
habit appears as it ought to appear in our national dramatist. A great
divine tells us that the Thirty-nine Articles are ‘forms of thought;’
inevitable conditions of the religious understanding: in politics,
‘kings, lords, and commons’ are, no doubt, ‘forms of thought,’ to the
great majority of Englishmen; in these, they live, and beyond these, they
never move. You can’t reason on the removal (such is the notion) of the
English Channel, nor St. George’s Channel, nor can you of the English
Constitution in like manner. It is to most of us, and to the happiest of
us, a thing immutable, and such, no doubt, it was to Shakespeare, which,
if any one would have proved, let him refer at random to any page of the
historical English plays.
The second peculiar tenet which we ascribe to his political creed,
is a disbelief in the middle classes. We fear he had no opinion of
traders. In this age, we know, it is held that the keeping of a shop is
equivalent to a political education. Occasionally, in country villages,
where the trader sells everything, he is thought to know nothing, and
has no vote; but in a town where he is a householder (as, indeed, he is
in the country), and sells only one thing—there we assume that he knows
everything. And this assumption is in the opinion of some observers
confirmed by the fact. Sir Walter Scott used to relate, that when, after
a trip to London, he returned to Tweedside, he always found the people in
that district knew more of politics than the Cabinet. And so it is with
the mercantile community in modern times. If you are a Chancellor of the
Exchequer, it is possible that you may be acquainted with finance; but if
you sell figs it is certain that you will. Now we nowhere find this laid
down in Shakespeare. On the contrary, you will generally find that when
a ‘citizen’ is mentioned, he generally does or says something absurd.
Shakespeare had a clear perception that it is possible to bribe a class
as well as an individual, and that personal obscurity is but an insecure
guarantee for political disinterestedness.
‘Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,
His private arbours and new-planted orchards
On this side Tiber; he hath left them you,
And to your heirs for ever: common pleasures,
To walk abroad and recreate yourselves.
Here was a Cæsar! when comes such another?’
He everywhere speaks in praise of a tempered and ordered and qualified
polity, in which the pecuniary classes have a certain influence, but no
more, and shows in every page a keen sensibility to the large views,
and high-souled energies, the gentle refinements and disinterested
desires in which those classes are likely to be especially deficient.
He is particularly the poet of personal nobility, though, throughout
his writings, there is a sense of freedom, just as Milton is the poet
of freedom, though with an underlying reference to personal nobility;
indeed, we might well expect our two poets to combine the appreciation
of a rude and generous liberty with that of a delicate and refined
nobleness, since it is the union of these two elements that characterises
our society and their experience.
There are two things—good-tempered sense and ill-tempered sense. In our
remarks on the character of Falstaff, we hope we have made it very clear
that Shakespeare had the former; we think it nearly as certain that he
possessed the latter also. An instance of this might be taken from that
contempt for the perspicacity of the _bourgeoisie_ which we have just
been mentioning. It is within the limits of what may be called malevolent
sense, to take extreme and habitual pleasure in remarking the foolish
opinions, the narrow notions, and fallacious deductions which seem to
cling to the pompous and prosperous man of business. Ask him his opinion
of the currency question, and he puts ‘bills’ and ‘bullion’ together
in a sentence, and he does not seem to care what he puts between them.
But a more proper instance of (what has an odd sound), the malevolence
of Shakespeare is to be found in the play of ‘Measure for Measure.’ We
agree with Hazlitt, that this play seems to be written, perhaps more
than any other, _con amore_, and with a relish; and this seems to be the
reason why, notwithstanding the unpleasant nature of its plot, and the
absence of any very attractive character, it is yet one of the plays
which take hold on the mind most easily and most powerfully. Now the
entire character of Angelo, which is the expressive feature of the piece,
is nothing but a successful embodiment of the pleasure, the malevolent
pleasure, which a warm-blooded and expansive man takes in watching
the rare, the dangerous and inanimate excesses of the constrained and
cold-blooded. One seems to see Shakespeare, with his bright eyes and his
large lips and buoyant face, watching with a pleasant excitement the
excesses of his thin-lipped and calculating creation, as though they were
the excesses of a real person. It is the complete picture of a natural
hypocrite, who does not consciously disguise strong impulses, but whose
very passions seem of their own accord to have disguised themselves and
retreated into the recesses of the character, yet only to recur even
more dangerously when their proper period is expired, when the will is
cheated into security by their absence, and the world (and, it may be,
the ‘judicious person’ himself) is impressed with a sure reliance in his
chilling and remarkable rectitude.
It has, we believe, been doubted whether Shakespeare was a man much
conversant with the intimate society of women. Of course no one denies
that he possessed a great knowledge of them—a capital acquaintance with
their excellences, faults, and foibles; but it has been thought that this
was the result rather of imagination than of society, of creative fancy
rather than of perceptive experience. Now that Shakespeare possessed,
among other singular qualities, a remarkable imaginative knowledge of
women, is quite certain, for he was acquainted with the soliloquies of
women. A woman we suppose, like a man, must be alone, in order to speak a
soliloquy. After the greatest possible intimacy and experience, it must
still be imagination, or fancy at least, which tells any man what a woman
thinks of herself and to herself. There will still—get as near the limits
of confidence or observation as you can—be a space which must be filled
up from other means. Men can only divine the truth—reserve, indeed, is
a part of its charm. Seeing, therefore, that Shakespeare had done what
necessarily and certainly must be done without experience, we were in
some doubt whether he might not have dispensed with it altogether. A
grave reviewer cannot know these things. We thought indeed of reasoning
that since the delineations of women in Shakespeare were admitted to be
first-rate, it should follow,—at least there was a fair presumption,—that
no means or aid had been wanting to their production, and that
consequently we ought, in the absence of distinct evidence, to assume
that personal intimacy as well as solitary imagination had been concerned
in their production. And we meant to cite the ‘questions about Octavia,’
which Lord Byron, who thought he had the means of knowing, declared to be
‘women all over.’
But all doubt was removed and all conjecture set to rest by the coming
in of an ably-dressed friend from the external world, who mentioned that
the language of Shakespeare’s women was essentially female language; that
there were certain points and peculiarities in the English of cultivated
English women, which made it a language of itself, which must be heard
familiarly in order to be known. And he added, ‘except a greater use of
words of Latin derivation, as was natural in an age when ladies received
a learned education, a few words not now proper, a few conceits that
were the fashion of the time, and there is the very same English in the
women’s speeches in Shakespeare.’ He quoted—
‘Think not I love him, though I ask for him;
’Tis but a peevish boy:—yet he talks well;—
But what care I for words? yet words do well,
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
It is a pretty youth:—not very pretty:—
But, sure, he’s proud; and yet his pride becomes him;
He’ll make a proper man: The best thing in him
Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue
Did make offence, his eye did heal it up.
He is not tall; yet for his years he’s tall:
His leg is but so so: and yet ’tis well.
There was a pretty redness in his lip;
A little riper and more lusty red
Than that mix’d in his cheek; ’twas just the difference
Betwixt the constant red, and mingled damask.
There be some women, Silvius, had they mark’d him
In parcels as I did, would have gone near
To fall in love with him: but, for my part,
I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet
I have more cause to hate him than to love him:
For what had he to do to chide at me?
He said, my eyes were black, and my hair black,
And, now I am remember’d, scorn’d at me:
I marvel, why I answer’d not again;
But that’s all one;’
and the passage of Perdita’s cited before about the daffodils that—
‘take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,
Or Cytherea’s breath;’
and said that these were conclusive. But we have not, ourselves, heard
young ladies converse in that manner.
Perhaps it is in his power of delineating women, that Shakespeare
contrasts most strikingly with the greatest master of the art of
dialogue in antiquity—we mean Plato. It will, no doubt, be said that the
delineation of women did not fall within Plato’s plan; that men’s life
was in that age so separate and predominant that it could be delineated
by itself and apart; and no doubt these remarks are very true. But what
led Plato to form that plan? What led him to select that peculiar
argumentative aspect of life, in which the masculine element is in so
high a degree superior? We believe that he did it because he felt that
he could paint that kind of scene much better than he could paint any
other. If a person will consider the sort of conversation that was held
in the cool summer morning, when Socrates was knocked up early to talk
definitions and philosophy with Protagoras, he will feel, not only
that women would fancy such dialogues to be certainly stupid, and very
possibly to be without meaning, but also that the side of character
which is there presented is one from which not only the feminine but
even the epicene element is nearly if not perfectly excluded. It is
the intellect surveying and delineating intellectual characteristics.
We have a dialogue of thinking faculties; the character of every man
is delineated by showing us, not his mode of action or feeling, but
his mode of thinking, alone and by itself. The pure mind, purged of
all passion and affection, strives to view and describe others in like
manner; and the singularity is, that the likenesses so taken are so
good,—that the accurate copying of the merely intellectual effects and
indications of character gives so true and so firm an impression of the
whole character,—that a daguerreotype of the mind should almost seem to
be a delineation of the life. But though in the hand of a consummate
artist, such a way of representation may in some sense succeed in the
case of men, it would certainly seem sure to fail in the case of women.
The mere intellect of a woman is a mere nothing. It originates nothing,
it transmits nothing, it retains nothing; it has little life of its own,
and therefore it can hardly be expected to attain any vigour. Of the
lofty Platonic world of the ideas, which the soul in the old doctrine
was to arrive at by pure and continuous reasoning, women were never
expected to know anything. Plato (though Mr. Grote denies that he was a
practical man) was much too practical for that; he reserved his teaching
for people whose belief was regulated and induced in some measure by
abstract investigations; who had an interest in the pure and (as it
were) geometrical truth itself; who had an intellectual character (apart
from and accessory to their other character) capable of being viewed as
a large and substantial existence, Shakespeare’s being, like a woman’s,
worked as a whole. He was capable of intellectual abstractedness, but
commonly he was touched with the sense of earth. One thinks of him as
firmly set on our coarse world of common clay, but from it he could paint
the moving essence of thoughtful feeling—which is the best refinement
of the best women. Imogen or Juliet would have thought little of the
conversation of Gorgias.
On few subjects has more nonsense been written than on the learning of
Shakespeare. In former times, the established tenet was, that he was
acquainted with the entire range of the Greek and Latin classics, and
familiarly resorted to Sophocles and Æschylus as guides and models.
This creed reposed not so much on any painful or elaborate criticism of
Shakespeare’s plays, as on one of the _à priori_ assumptions permitted
to the indolence of the wise old world. It was then considered clear,
by all critics, that no one could write good English who could not also
write bad Latin. Questioning scepticism has rejected this axiom, and
refuted with contemptuous facility the slight attempt which had been made
to verify this case of it from the evidence of the plays themselves. But
the new school, not content with showing that Shakespeare was no formed
or elaborate scholar, propounded the idea that he was quite ignorant,
just as Mr. Croker ‘demonstrates’ that Napoleon Bonaparte could scarcely
write or read. The answer is, that Shakespeare wrote his plays, and that
those plays show not only a very powerful, but also a very cultivated
mind. A hard student Shakespeare was not, yet he was a happy and pleased
reader of interesting books. He was a natural reader; when a book was
dull he put it down, when it looked fascinating he took it up, and the
consequence is, that he remembered and mastered what he read. Lively
books, read with lively interest, leave strong and living recollections;
the instructors, no doubt, say that they ought not to do so, and
inculcate the necessity of dry reading. Yet the good sense of a busy
public has practically discovered that what is read easily is recollected
easily, and what is read with difficulty is remembered with more. It is
certain that Shakespeare read the novels of his time, for he has founded
on them the stories of his plays; he read Plutarch, for his words still
live in the dialogue of the ‘proud Roman’ plays; and it is remarkable
that Montaigne is the only philosopher that Shakespeare can be proved
to have read, because he deals more than any other philosopher with the
first impressions of things which exist. On the other hand, it may be
doubted if Shakespeare would have perused his commentators. Certainly,
he would have never read a page of this review, and we go so far as to
doubt whether he would have been pleased with the admirable discourses of
M. Guizot, which we ourselves, though ardent admirers of his style and
ideas, still find it a little difficult to _read_—and what would he have
thought of the following speculations of an anonymous individual, whose
notes have been recently published in a fine octavo by Mr. Collier, and,
according to the periodical essayists, ‘contribute valuable suggestions
to the illustration of the immortal bard’?
‘THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
‘ACT I. SCENE I.
‘P. 92. The reading of the subsequent line has hitherto been
“’Tis true; for you are over boots in love;”
but the manuscript corrector of the Folio, 1632, has changed it
to
“’Tis true; _but_ you are over boots in love,”
which seems more consistent with the course of the dialogue;
for Proteus, remarking that Leander had been “more than over
shoes in love,” with Hero, Valentine answers, that Proteus was
even more deeply in love than Leander. Proteus observes of the
fable of Hero and Leander—
“That’s a deep story of a deeper love,
_For_ he was more than over shoes in love.”
Valentine retorts—
“’Tis true; _but_ you are over boots in love.”
_For_ instead of _but_ was perhaps caught by the compositor
from the preceding line.’
It is difficult to fancy Shakespeare perusing a volume of such
annotations, though we allow that we admire them ourselves. As to the
controversy on his school learning, we have only to say, that though
the alleged imitations of the Greek tragedians are mere nonsense, yet
there is clear evidence that Shakespeare received the ordinary grammar
school education of his time, and that he had derived from the pain
and suffering of several years, not exactly an acquaintance with Greek
or Latin, but, like Eton boys, a firm conviction that there are such
languages.
Another controversy has been raised as to whether Shakespeare was
religious. In the old editions it is commonly enough laid down that,
when writing his plays, he had no desire to fill the Globe Theatre,
but that his intentions were of the following description. ‘In this
play,’ Cymbeline, ‘Shakespeare has strongly depicted the frailties of
our nature, and the effect of vicious passions on the human mind. In
the fate of the Queen we behold the adept in perfidy justly sacrificed
by the arts she had, with unnatural ambition, prepared for others; and
in reviewing her death and that of Cloten, we may easily call to mind
the words of Scripture,’ &c. And of King Lear it is observed with great
confidence, that Shakespeare, ‘_no doubt_, intended to mark particularly
the afflicting character of children’s ingratitude to their parents,
and the conduct of Goneril and Regan to each other; _especially_ in the
former’s poisoning the latter, and laying hands on _herself_, we are
taught that those who want gratitude towards their parents (who gave
them their being, fed them, nurtured them to _man’s_ estate) will not
scruple to commit more barbarous crimes, and easily to forget that, by
destroying their body, they destroy their soul also.’ And Dr. Ulrici,
a very learned and illegible writer, has discovered that in every one
of his plays Shakespeare had in view the inculcation of the peculiar
sentiments and doctrines of the Christian religion, and considers the
‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ to be a specimen of the lay or amateur sermon.
This is what Dr. Ulrici thinks of Shakespeare; but what would Shakespeare
have thought of Dr. Ulrici? We believe that ‘_Via_, goodman Dull,’ is
nearly the remark which the learned professor would have received from
the poet to whom his very careful treatise is devoted. And yet, without
prying into the Teutonic mysteries, a gentleman of missionary aptitudes
might be tempted to remark that in many points Shakespeare is qualified
to administer a rebuke to people of the prevalent religion. Meeting
a certain religionist is like striking the corner of a wall. He is
possessed of a firm and rigid persuasion that you must leave off this and
that, stop, cry, be anxious, be advised, and, above all things, refrain
from doing what you like, for nothing is so bad for any one as that. And
in quite another quarter of the religious hemisphere, we occasionally
encounter gentlemen who have most likely studied at the feet of Dr.
Ulrici, or at least of an equivalent Gamaliel, and who, when we, or such
as we, speaking the language of mortality, remark of a pleasing friend,
‘Nice fellow, so and so! Good fellow as ever lived!’ reply sternly,
upon an unsuspecting reviewer, with—‘Sir, is he an _earnest_ man?’ To
which, in some cases, we are unable to return a sufficient answer. Yet
Shakespeare, differing, in that respect at least, from the disciples of
Carlyle, had, we suspect, an objection to grim people, and we fear would
have liked the society of Mercutio better than that of a dreary divine,
and preferred Ophelia or ‘that Juliet’ to a female philanthropist of
sinewy aspect. And, seriously, if this world is not all evil, he who
has understood and painted it best must probably have some good. If
the underlying and almighty essence of this world be good, then it is
likely that the writer who most deeply approached to that essence will be
himself good. There is a religion of week-days as well as of Sundays,
of ‘cakes and ale’ as well as of pews and altar cloths. This England lay
before Shakespeare as it lies before us all, with its green fields, and
its long hedgerows, and its many trees, and its great towns, and its
endless hamlets, and its motley society, and its long history, and its
bold exploits, and its gathering power, and he saw that they were good.
To him, perhaps, more than to any one else, has it been given to see that
they were a great unity, a great religious object; that if you could only
descend to the inner life, to the deep things, to the secret principles
of its noble vigour, to the essence of character, to what we know of
Hamlet and seem to fancy of Ophelia, we might, so far as we are capable
of so doing, understand the nature which God has made. Let us, then,
think of him not as a teacher of dry dogmas, or a sayer of hard sayings,
but as
‘A priest to us all,
Of the wonder and bloom of the world’—
a teacher of the hearts of men and women; one from whom may be learned
something of that inmost principle that ever modulates
‘With murmurs of the air,
And motions of the forests and the sea,
And voice of living beings, and woven hymns
Of night and day and the deep heart of man.’
We must pause, lest our readers reject us, as the Bishop of Durham the
poor curate, because he was ‘mystical and confused.’
Yet it must be allowed that Shakespeare was worldly, and the proof of it
is, that he succeeded in the world. Possibly this is the point on which
we are most richly indebted to tradition. We see generally indeed in
Shakespeare’s works the popular author, the successful dramatist; there
is a life and play in his writings rarely to be found, except in those
who have had habitual good luck, and who, by the tact of experience,
feel the minds of their readers at every word, as a good rider feels
the mouth of his horse. But it would have been difficult quite to make
out whether the profits so accruing had been profitably invested—whether
the genius to create such illusions was accompanied with the care and
judgment necessary to put out their proceeds properly in actual life.
We could only have said that there was a general impression of entire
calmness and equability in his principal works, rarely to be found where
there is much pain, which usually makes gaps in the work and dislocates
the balance of the mind. But happily here, and here almost alone, we
are on sure historical ground. The reverential nature of Englishmen has
carefully preserved what they thought the great excellence of their
poet—that he made a fortune.[28] It is certain that Shakespeare was
proprietor of the Globe Theatre—that he made money there, and invested
the same in land at Stratford-on-Avon, and probably no circumstance
in his life ever gave him so much pleasure. It was a great thing that
he, the son of the wool-comber, the poacher, the good-for-nothing, the
vagabond (for so we fear the phrase went in Shakespeare’s youth), should
return upon the old scene a substantial man, a person of capital, a
freeholder, a gentleman to be respected, and over whom even a burgess
could not affect the least superiority. The great pleasure in life is
doing what people say you cannot do. Why did Mr. Disraeli take the
duties of the Exchequer with so much relish? Because people said he was
a novelist, an _ad captandum_ man, and—_monstrum horrendum!_—a Jew, that
could not add up. No doubt it pleased his inmost soul to do the work of
the red-tape people better than those who could do nothing else. And so
with Shakespeare: it pleased him to be respected by those whom he had
respected with boyish reverence, but who had rejected the imaginative
man—on their own ground and in their own subject, by the only title
which they would regard—in a word, as a moneyed man. We seem to see him
eying the burgesses with good-humoured fellowship and genial (though
suppressed and half-unconscious) contempt, drawing out their old stories,
and acquiescing in their foolish notions, with everything in his head
and easy sayings upon his tongue,—a full mind and a deep dark eye, that
played upon an easy scene—now in fanciful solitude, now in cheerful
society; now occupied with deep thoughts, now, and equally so, with
trivial recreations, forgetting the dramatist in the man of substance,
and the poet in the happy companion; beloved and even respected, with a
hope for every one and a smile for all.
_JOHN MILTON._[29]
(1859.)
The ‘Life of Milton,’ by Professor Masson, is a difficulty for the
critics. It is very laborious, very learned, and in the main, we believe,
very accurate. It is exceedingly long,—there are 780 pages in this
volume, and there are to be two volumes more: it touches on very many
subjects, and each of these has been investigated to the very best of
the author’s ability. No one can wish to speak with censure of a book on
which so much genuine labour has been expended; and yet we are bound, as
true critics, to say that we think it has been composed upon a principle
that is utterly erroneous. In justice to ourselves we must explain our
meaning.
There are two methods on which biography may consistently be written.
The first of these is what we may call the exhaustive method. Every fact
which is known about the hero may be told us; every thing which he did,
every thing which he would not do, every thing which other people did to
him, every thing which other people would not do to him,—may be narrated
at full length. We may have a complete picture of all the events of his
life; of all which he underwent, and all which he achieved. We may, as
Mr. Carlyle expresses it, have a complete account ‘of his effect upon
the universe, and of the effect of the universe upon him.’ We admit
that biographies of this species would be very long and generally very
tedious, we know that the world could not contain very many of them; but
nevertheless the principle on which they may be written is intelligible.
The second method on which the life of a man may be written is the
selective. Instead of telling everything, we may choose what we will
tell. We may select out of the numberless events, from among the
innumerable actions of his life, those events and those actions which
exemplify his true character, which prove to us what were the true limits
of his talents, what was the degree of his deficiencies, which were his
defects, which his vices,—in a word, we may select the traits and the
particulars which seem to give us the best idea of the man as he lived
and as he was. On this side the flood, as Sydney Smith would have said,
we should have fancied that this was the only practicable principle on
which biographies can be written about persons of whom many details are
recorded. For ancient heroes the exhaustive method is possible. All
that can be known of them is contained in a few short passages of Greek
and Latin, and it is quite possible to say whatever can be said about
every one of these: the result would not be unreasonably bulky, though
it might be dull. But in the case of men who have lived in the thick of
the crowded modern world, no such course is admissible; overmuch _may_
be said, and we must choose what we will say. Biographers, however, are
rarely bold enough to adopt the selective method consistently. They
have, we suspect, the fear of the critics before their eyes. They do
not like that it should be said that ‘the work of the learned gentleman
contains serious omissions: the events of 1562 are not mentioned; those
of October 1579 are narrated but very cursorily:’ and we fear that in any
case such remarks will be made. Very learned people are pleased to show
that they know what is _not_ in the book; sometimes they may hint that
perhaps the author did not know it, or surely he would have mentioned
it. But a biographer who wishes to write what most people of cultivation
will be pleased to read must be courageous enough to face the pain of
such censures. He must choose, as we have explained, the characteristic
parts of his subject; and all that he has to take care of besides, is
so to narrate them that their characteristic elements shall be shown:
to give such an account of the general career as may make it clear what
these chosen events really were; to show their respective bearings to one
another; to delineate what is expressive in such a manner as to make it
expressive.
This plan of biography is, however, by no means that of Mr. Masson. He
has no dread of overgrown bulk and overwhelming copiousness. He finds,
indeed, what we have called the exhaustive method insufficient. He not
only wishes to narrate in full the life of Milton, but to add those of
his contemporaries likewise: he seems to wish to tell us not only what
Milton did, but also what every one else did in Great Britain during
his lifetime. He intends his book to be not ‘merely a biography of
Milton, but also in some sort a continuous history of his time.... The
suggestions of Milton’s life have indeed determined the tracks of these
historical researches and expositions, sometimes through the literature
of the period, sometimes through its civil and ecclesiastical politics;
but the extent to which I have pursued them, and the space which I have
assigned to them, have been determined by my desire to present, by their
combination, something like a connected historical view of British
thought and British society in general prior to the Revolution.’ We need
not do more than observe that this union of heterogeneous aims must
always end, as it has in this case, in the production of a work at once
overgrown and incomplete. A great deal which has only a slight bearing
on the character of Milton is inserted; much that is necessary to a true
history of ‘British thought and British society’ is of necessity left
out. The period of Milton’s life which is included in the published
volume makes the absurdity especially apparent. In middle life Milton
was a great controversialist on contemporary topics; and though it would
not be proper for a biographer to load his pages with a full account
of all such controversies, yet some notice of the most characteristic
of them would be expected from him. In this part of Milton’s life some
reference to public events would be necessary; and we should not severely
censure a biographer, if the great interest of those events induced him
to stray a little from his topic. But the first thirty years of Milton’s
life require a very different treatment. He passed those years in the
ordinary musings of a studious and meditative youth; it was the period of
‘Lycidas’ and of ‘Comus;’ he then dreamed the
‘Sights which youthful poets dream
On summer eve by haunted stream.’
We do not wish to have this part of his life disturbed, to a greater
extent than may be necessary, with the harshness of public affairs.
Nor is it necessary that it should be so disturbed. A life of poetic
retirement requires but little reference to anything except itself. In
a biography of Mr. Tennyson we should not expect to hear of the Reform
Bill, or the Corn Laws. Mr. Masson is, however, of a different opinion.
He thinks it necessary to tell us, not only all which Milton did, but
every thing also that he might have heard of.
The biography of Mr. Keightley is on a very different scale. He tells
the story of Milton’s career in about half a small volume. Probably this
is a little too concise, and the narrative is somewhat dry and bare. It
is often, however, acute, and is always clear; and even were its defects
greater than they are, we should think it unseemly to criticise the last
work of one who has performed so many useful services to literature with
extreme severity.
The bare outline of Milton’s life is very well known. We have all heard
that he was born in the latter years of King James, just when Puritanism
was collecting its strength for the approaching struggle; that his father
and mother were quiet good people, inclined, but not immoderately, to
that persuasion; that he went up to Cambridge early, and had some kind of
dissension with the authorities there; that the course of his youth was
in a singular degree pure and staid; that in boyhood he was a devourer of
books, and that he early became, and always remained, a severely studious
man; that he married, and had difficulties of a peculiar character with
his first wife; that he wrote on Divorce; that after the death of his
first wife, he married a second time a lady who died very soon, and a
third time a person who survived him more than fifty years; that he wrote
early poems of singular beauty, which we still read; that he travelled
in Italy, and exhibited his learning in the academies there; that he
plunged deep in the theological and political controversies of his
time; that he kept a school, or rather, in our more modern phrase, took
pupils; that he was a republican of a peculiar kind, and of ‘no church,’
which Dr. Johnson thought dangerous; that he was Secretary for Foreign
Languages under the Long Parliament, and retained that office after
the coup-d’état of Cromwell; that he defended the death of Charles the
First, and became blind from writing a book in haste upon that subject;
that after the Restoration he was naturally in a position of some danger
and much difficulty; that in the midst of that difficulty he wrote
‘Paradise Lost;’ that he did not fail in heart or hope, but lived for
fourteen years after the destruction of all for which he had laboured,
in serene retirement, ‘though fallen on evil days, though fallen on evil
times;’—all this we have heard from our boyhood. How much is wanting to
complete the picture—how many traits, both noble and painful, might be
recovered from the past—we shall never know, till some biographer skilled
in interpreting the details of human nature shall select this subject for
his art.
All that we can hope to do in an essay like this is, to throw together
some miscellaneous remarks on the character of the Puritan poet, and on
the peculiarities of his works; and if in any part of them we may seem
to make unusual criticisms, and to be over-ready with depreciation or
objection, our excuse must be that we wish to paint a likeness, and that
the harsher features of the subject should have a prominence, even in an
outline.
There are two kinds of goodness conspicuous in the world, and often
made the subject of contrast there; for which, however, we seem to want
exact words, and which we are obliged to describe rather vaguely and
incompletely. These characters may in one aspect be called the sensuous
and the ascetic. The character of the first is that which is almost
personified in the poet-king of Israel, whose actions and whose history
have been ‘improved’ so often by various writers, that it now seems trite
even to allude to them. Nevertheless, the particular virtues and the
particular career of David seem to embody the idea of what may be called
sensuous goodness far more completely than a living being in general
comes near to an abstract idea. There may have been shades in the actual
man which would have modified the resemblance; but in the portrait which
has been handed down to us, the traits are perfect and the approximation
exact. The principle of this character is its sensibility to outward
stimulus; it is moved by all which occurs, stirred by all which happens,
open to the influences of whatever it sees, hears, or meets with. The
certain consequence of this mental constitution is a peculiar liability
to temptation. Men are, according to the divine, ‘put upon their trial
through the senses.’ It is through the constant suggestions of the outer
world that our minds are stimulated, that our will has the chance of
a choice, that moral life becomes possible. The sensibility to this
external stimulus brings with it, when men have it to excess, an unusual
access of moral difficulty. Everything acts on them, and everything has
a chance of turning them aside; the most tempting things act upon them
very deeply, and their influence, in consequence, is extreme. Naturally,
therefore, the errors of such men are great. We need not point the moral—
‘Dizzied faith and guilt and woe,
Loftiest aims by earth defiled,
Gleams of wisdom sin-beguiled,
Sated power’s tyrannic mood,
Counsels shared with men of blood,
Sad success, parental tears,
And a dreary gift of years.’
But, on the other hand, the excellence of such men has a charm, a kind
of sensuous sweetness, that is its own. Being conscious of frailty,
they are tender to the imperfect; being sensitive to this world, they
sympathise with the world; being familiar with all the moral incidents of
life, their goodness has a richness and a complication: they fascinate
their own age, and in their deaths they are ‘not divided’ from the
love of others. Their peculiar sensibility gives a depth to their
religion; it is at once deeper and more human than that of other men.
As their sympathetic knowledge of those whom they have seen is great,
so it is with their knowledge of Him whom they have not seen; and as is
their knowledge, so is their love; it is deep, from their nature; rich
and intimate, from the variety of their experience; chastened by the
ever-present sense of their weakness and of its consequences.
In extreme opposition to this is the ascetic species of goodness.
This is not, as is sometimes believed, a self-produced ideal—a simply
voluntary result of discipline and restraint. Some men have by nature
what others have to elaborate by effort. Some men have a repulsion from
the world. All of us have, in some degree, a protective instinct; an
impulse, that is to say, to start back from what may trouble us, to shun
what may fascinate us, to avoid what may tempt us. On the moral side of
human nature this preventive check is occasionally imperious; it holds
the whole man under its control,—makes him recoil from the world, be
offended at its amusements, be repelled by its occupations, be scared by
its sins. The consequences of this tendency, when it is thus in excess,
upon the character are very great and very singular. It secludes a man in
a sort of natural monastery; he lives in a kind of moral solitude; and
the effects of his isolation for good and for evil on his disposition
are very many. The best result is a singular capacity for meditative
religion. Being aloof from what is earthly, such persons are shut up with
what is spiritual; being unstirred by the incidents of time, they are
alone with the eternal; rejecting this life, they are alone with what
is beyond. According to the measure of their minds, men of this removed
and secluded excellence become eminent for a settled and brooding piety,
for a strong and predominant religion. In human life too, in a thousand
ways, their isolated excellence is apparent. They walk through the
whole of it with an abstinence from sense, a zeal of morality, a purity
of ideal, which other men have not. Their religion has an imaginative
grandeur, and their life something of an unusual impeccability. And these
are obviously singular excellences. But the deficiencies to which the
same character tends are equally singular. In the first place, their
isolation gives them a certain pride in themselves, and an inevitable
ignorance of others. They are secluded by their constitutional δαίμων
from life; they are repelled from the pursuits which others care for;
they are alarmed at the amusements which others enjoy. In consequence,
they trust in their own thoughts; they come to magnify both them and
themselves—for being able to think and to retain them. The greater the
nature of the man, the greater is this temptation. His thoughts are
greater, and, in consequence, the greater is his tendency to prize them,
the more extreme is his tendency to overrate them. This pride, too, goes
side by side with a want of sympathy. Being aloof from others, such a
mind is unlike others; and it feels, and sometimes it feels bitterly, its
own unlikeness. Generally, however, it is too wrapt up in its own exalted
thoughts to be sensible of the pain of moral isolation; it stands apart
from others, unknowing and unknown. It is deprived of moral experience
in two ways,—it is not tempted itself, and it does not comprehend the
temptations of others. And this defect of moral experience is almost
certain to produce two effects, one practical and the other speculative.
When such a man is wrong, he will be apt to believe that he is right.
If his own judgment err, he will not have the habit of checking it by
the judgment of others; he will be accustomed to think most men wrong;
differing from them would be no proof of error, agreeing with them would
rather be a basis for suspicion. He may, too, be very wrong, for the
conscience of no man is perfect on all sides. The strangeness of secluded
excellence will be sometimes deeply shaded by very strange errors. To
be commonly above others, still more to think yourself above others, is
to be below them every now and then, and sometimes much below. Again,
on the speculative side, this defect of moral experience penetrates
into the distinguishing excellence of the character,—its brooding and
meditative religion. Those who see life under only one aspect, can see
religion under only one likewise. This world is needful to interpret
what is beyond; the seen must explain the unseen. It is from a tried and
a varied and a troubled moral life that the deepest and truest idea of
God arises. The ascetic character wants these; therefore in its religion
there will be a harshness of outline, a bareness, so to say, as well as a
grandeur. In life we may look for a singular purity; but also, and with
equal probability, for singular self-confidence, a certain unsympathising
straitness, and perhaps a few singular errors.
The character of the ascetic, or austere species of goodness, is almost
exactly embodied in Milton. Men, indeed, are formed on no ideal type.
Human nature has tendencies too various, and circumstances too complex.
All men’s characters have sides and aspects not to be comprehended
in a single definition; but in this case, the extent to which the
character of the man, as we find it delineated, approaches to the moral
abstraction which we sketch from theory, is remarkable. The whole being
of Milton may, in some sort, be summed up in the great commandment
of the austere character, ‘Reverence thyself.’ We find it expressed
in almost every one of his singular descriptions of himself,—of those
striking passages which are scattered through all his works, and which
add to whatever interest may intrinsically belong to them one of the
rarest of artistic charms, that of magnanimous autobiography. They have
been quoted a thousand times, but one of them may perhaps be quoted
again. ‘I had my time, readers, as others have, who have good learning
bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places, where the opinion was it
might be soonest attained; and as the manner is, was not unstudied in
those authors which are most commended; whereof some were grave orators
and historians, whose matter methought I loved indeed, but as my age
then was, so I understood them; others were the smooth elegiac poets,
whereof the schools are not scarce, whom both for the pleasing sound of
their numerous writing, which in imitation I found most easy, and most
agreeable to nature’s part in me, and for their matter, which what it is,
there be few who know not, I was so allured to read, that no recreation
came to me better welcome: for that it was then those years with me which
are excused, though they be least severe, I may be saved the labour to
remember ye. Whence having observed them to account it the chief glory
of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, to praise, and by that
could esteem themselves worthiest to love those high perfections, which
under one or other name they took to celebrate, I thought with myself
by every instinct and presage of nature, which is not wont to be false,
that what emboldened them to this task, might with such diligence as
they used embolden me; and that what judgment, wit, or elegance was my
share, would herein best appear, and best value itself, by how much more
wisely, and with more love of virtue I should choose (let rude ears be
absent) the object of not unlike praises: for albeit these thoughts to
some will seem virtuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to
a third sort perhaps idle; yet the mentioning of them now will end in
serious. Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves
such a reward, as the noblest dispositions above other things in this
life have sometimes preferred: whereof not to be sensible when good and
fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, and
withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For by the firm settling of these
persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a proficient, that if
I found those authors any where speaking unworthy things of themselves,
or unchaste of those names which before they had extolled, this effect
it wrought with me, from that time forward their art I still applauded,
but the men I deplored; and above them all, preferred the two famous
renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but honour of them
to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts
without transgression. And long it was not after, when I was confirmed
in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write
well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that
is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things; not
presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless
he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is
praiseworthy.’
It may be fanciful to add, and we may be laughed at, but we believe
that the self-reverencing propensity was a little aided by his singular
personal beauty. All the describers of his youth concur in telling us
that this was very remarkable. Mr. Masson has the following account of
it:—
‘When Milton left Cambridge in July 1632, he was twenty-three
years and eight months old. In stature, therefore, at least,
he was already whatever he was to be. “In stature,” he says
himself at a latter period, when driven to speak on the
subject, “I confess I am not tall, but still of what is nearer
to middle height than to little: and what if I were of little;
of which stature have often been very great men both in peace
and war—though why should that be called little which is great
enough for virtue?” (“_Staturâ, fateor, non sum procerâ, sed
quæ mediocri tamen quàm parvæ propior sit; sed quid si parvâ,
quâ et summi sæpe tum pace tum bello viri fuere—quanquam
parva cur dicitur, quæ ad virtutem satis magna est?_”) This is
precise enough; but we have Aubrey’s words to the same effect:
“He was scarce so tall as I am,” says Aubrey; to which, to make
it more intelligible, he appends the marginal note:—“_Qu._
_Quot_ feet I am high? _Resp._ Of middle stature;”—i.e. Milton
was a little under middle height. “He had light brown hair,”
continues Aubrey,—putting the word “abrown” (“auburn”) in the
margin by way of synonym for “light brown;”—“his complexion
exceeding fair; oval face; his eye a dark gray.”’
We are far from accusing Milton of personal vanity. His character was too
enormous, if we may be allowed so to say, for a fault so petty. But a
little tinge of excessive self-respect will cling to those who can admire
themselves. Ugly men are and ought to be ashamed of their existence.
Milton was not so.
The peculiarities of the austere type of character stand out in Milton
more remarkably than in other men who partake of it, because of the
extreme strength of his nature. In reading him this is the first thing
that strikes us. We seem to have left the little world of ordinary
writers. The words of some authors are said to have ‘hands and feet;’
they seem, that is, to have a vigour and animation which only belong to
things which live and move. Milton’s words have not this animal life.
There is no rude energy about them. But, on the other hand, they have,
or seem to have, a soul, a spirit which other words have not. He was
early aware that what he wrote, ‘by certain vital signs it had,’ was
such as the world would not ‘willingly let die.’ After two centuries we
feel the same. There is a solemn and firm music in the lines; a brooding
sublimity haunts them; the spirit of the great writer moves over the
face of the page. In life there seems to have been the same peculiar
strength that his works suggest to us. His moral tenacity is amazing.
He took his own course, and he kept his own course; and we may trace in
his defects the same characteristics. ‘Energy and ill-temper,’ some say,
‘are the same thing;’ and though this is a strong exaggeration, yet there
is a basis of truth in it. People who labour much will be cross if they
do not obtain that for which they labour; those who desire vehemently
will be vexed if they do not obtain that which they desire. As is the
strength of the impelling tendency, so, other things being equal, is
the pain which it will experience if it be baffled. Those, too, who are
set on what is high will be proportionately offended by the intrusion
of what is low. Accordingly, Milton is described by those who knew him
as a ‘harsh and choleric man.’ ‘He had,’ we are told, ‘a gravity in his
temper, not melancholy, or not till the latter part of his life,—not
sour, not morose, not ill-natured; but a certain severity of mind,
not condescending to little things;’—and this, although his daughter
remembered that he was delightful company, the life of conversation,
and that he was so ‘on account of a flow of subjects and an unaffected
cheerfulness and civility.’ Doubtless this may have been so when he was
at ease, and at home. But there are unmistakable traces of the harsher
tendency in almost all his works.
Some of the peculiarities of the ascetic character were likewise
augmented by his studious disposition. This began very early in life,
and continued till the end. ‘My father,’ he says, ‘destined me to the
study of polite literature, which I embraced with such avidity, that
from the twelfth year of my age I hardly ever retired to rest from my
studies till midnight; which was the first source of injury to my eyes,
to the natural weakness of which were added frequent headaches: all of
which not retarding my eagerness after knowledge, he took care to have
me instructed,’ &c. Every page of his works shows the result of this
education. In spite of the occupations of manhood, and the blindness and
melancholy of old age, he still continued to have his principal pleasure
in that ‘studious and select’ reading, which, though often curiously
transmuted, is perpetually involved in the very texture of his works.
We need not stay to observe how a habit in itself so austere conduces
to the development of an austere character. Deep study, especially deep
study which haunts and rules the imagination, necessarily removes men
from life, absorbs them in themselves; purifies their conduct, with some
risk of isolating their sympathies; developes that loftiness of mood
which is gifted with deep inspirations and indulged with great ideas,
but which tends in its excess to engender a contempt for others, and a
self-appreciation which is even more displeasing to them.
These same tendencies were aggravated also by two defects which are
exceedingly rare in great English authors, and which perhaps Milton
alone amongst those of the highest class is in a remarkable degree
chargeable with. We mean a deficiency in humour, and a deficiency in a
knowledge of plain human nature. Probably when, after the lapse of ages,
English literature is looked at in its larger features only, and in
comparison with other literatures which have preceded or which may follow
it, the critics will lay down that its most striking characteristic
as a whole is its involution, so to say, in life; the degree to which
its book-life resembles real life; the extent to which the motives,
dispositions, and actions of common busy persons are represented in
a medium which would seem likely to give us peculiarly the ideas of
secluded, and the tendencies of meditative men. It is but an aspect of
this fact, that English literature abounds,—some critics will say abounds
excessively,—with humour. This is in some sense the imaginative element
of ordinary life,—the relieving charm, partaking at once of contrast and
similitude, which gives a human and an intellectual interest to the world
of clowns and cottages, of fields and farmers. The degree to which Milton
is deficient in this element is conspicuous in every page of his writings
where its occurrence could be looked for; and if we do not always look
for it, this is because the subjects of his most remarkable works are
on a removed elevation, where ordinary life, the world of ‘cakes and
ale,’ is never thought of and never expected. It is in his dramas, as we
should expect, that Milton shows this deficiency the most. ‘Citizens’
never talk in his pages, as they do in Shakespeare. We feel instinctively
that Milton’s eye had never rested with the same easy pleasure on the
easy, ordinary, shop-keeping world. Perhaps, such is the complication
of art, that it is on the most tragic occasions that we feel this want
the most. It may seem an odd theory, and yet we believe it to be a true
principle, that catastrophes require a comic element. We appear to feel
the same principle in life. We may read solemn descriptions of great
events in history,—say of Lord Strafford’s trial, and of his marvellous
speech, and his appeal to his ‘saint in heaven;’ but we comprehend
the whole transaction much better when we learn from Mr. Baillie, the
eye-witness, that people ate nuts and apples, and talked, and laughed,
and betted on the great question of acquittal and condemnation. Nor
is it difficult to understand why this should be so. It seems to be a
law of the imagination, at least in most men, that it will not bear
concentration. It is essentially a glancing faculty. It goes and comes,
and comes and goes, and we hardly know whence or why. But we most of us
know that when we try to fix it, in a moment it passes away. Accordingly,
the proper procedure of art is to let it go in such a manner as to ensure
its coming back again. The force of artistic contrasts effects exactly
this result. Skilfully-disposed opposites suggest the notion of each
other. We realise more perfectly and easily the great idea, the tragic
conception, when we are familiarised with its effects on the minds of
little people,—with the petty consequences which it causes, as well as
with the enormous forces from which it comes. The catastrophe of Samson
Agonistes discloses Milton’s imperfect mastery of this element of effect.
If ever there was an occasion which admitted its perfect employment,
it was this. The kind of catastrophe is exactly that which is sure to
strike, and strike forcibly, the minds of common persons. If their
observations on the occasion were really given to us, we could scarcely
avoid something rather comic. The eccentricity, so to speak, of ordinary
persons, shows itself peculiarly at such times, and they say the queerest
things. Shakespeare has exemplified this principle most skilfully on
various occasions: it is the sort of art which is just in his way. His
imagination always seems to be floating between the contrasts of things;
and if his mind had a resting-place that it liked, it was this ordinary
view of extraordinary events. Milton was under the great obligation to
use this relieving principle of art in the catastrophe of Samson, because
he has made every effort to heighten the strictly tragic element, which
requires that relief. His art, always serious, was never more serious.
His Samson is not the incarnation of physical strength which the popular
fancy embodies in the character; nor is it the simple and romantic
character of the Old Testament. On the contrary, Samson has become a
Puritan: the observations he makes would have done much credit to a
religious pikeman in Cromwell’s army. In consequence, his death requires
some lightening touches to make it a properly artistic event. The pomp of
seriousness becomes too oppressive.
‘At length for intermission sake they led him
Between the pillars; he his guide requested
(For so from such as nearer stood we heard),
As over-tired, to let him lean a while
With both his arms on those two massy pillars
That to the arched roof gave main support.
He unsuspicious led him; which when Samson
Felt in his arms, with head a while inclined,
And eyes fast fix’d, he stood, as one who pray’d,
Or some great matter in his mind revolved:
At last with head erect thus cry’d aloud,
“Hitherto, lords, what your commands imposed
I have perform’d, as reason was, obeying,
Not without wonder or delight beheld:
Now of my own accord such other trial
I mean to show you of my strength, yet greater,
As with amaze shall strike all who behold.”
This utter’d, straining all his nerves he bow’d,
As with the force of winds and waters pent
When mountains tremble, those two massy pillars
With horrible convulsion to and fro.
He tugg’d, he shook, till down they came, and drew
The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder,
Upon the heads of all who sat beneath,—Lords,
ladies, captains, counsellors, or priests,
Their choice nobility and flower, not only
Of this, but each Philistian city round,
Met from all parts to solemnise this feast.
Samson with these immix’d, inevitably
Pull’d down the same destruction on himself;
The vulgar only ’scaped who stood without.
_Chor._ O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious!
Living or dying thou hast fulfill’d
The work for which thou wast foretold
To Israel, and now ly’st victorious
Among thy slain self-kill’d,
Not willingly, but tangled in the fold
Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoin’d
Thee with thy slaughter’d foes, in number more
Than all thy life hath slain before.’
This is grave and fine; but Shakespeare would have done it differently
and better.
We need not pause to observe how certainly this deficiency in humour
and in the delineation of ordinary human feeling is connected with a
recluse, a solitary, and to some extent an unsympathising life. If we
combine a certain natural aloofness from common men with literary habits
and an incessantly studious musing, we shall at once see how powerful a
force is brought to bear on an instinctively austere character, and how
sure it will be to develope the peculiar tendencies of it, both good and
evil. It was to no purpose that Milton seems to have practised a sort of
professional study of life. No man could rank more highly the importance
to a poet of an intellectual insight into all-important pursuits and
‘seemly arts.’ But it is not by the mere intellect that we can take in
the daily occupations of mankind; we must sympathise with them, and see
them in their human relations. A chimney-sweeper, _quâ_ chimney-sweeper,
is not very sentimental; it is in himself that he is so interesting.
Milton’s austere character is in some sort the more evident, because he
possessed in large measure a certain relieving element, in which those
who are eminent in that character are very deficient. Generally such
persons have but obtuse senses. We are prone to attribute the purity of
their conduct to the dullness of their sensations. Milton had no such
obtuseness. He had every opportunity for knowing the world of eye and
ear. You cannot open his works without seeing how much he did know of
it. The austerity of his nature was not caused by the deficiency of his
senses, but by an excess of the warning instinct. Even when he professed
to delineate the world of sensuous delight, this instinct shows itself.
Dr. Johnson thought he could discern melancholy in ‘L’Allegro.’ If he had
said solitariness, it would have been correct.
The peculiar nature of Milton’s character is very conspicuous in the
events of his domestic life, and in the views which he took of the great
public revolutions of his age. We can spare only a very brief space for
the examination of either of these; but we will endeavour to say a few
words upon each of them.
The circumstances of Milton’s first marriage are as singular as any in
the strange series of the loves of the poets. The scene opens with an
affair of business. Milton’s father, as is well known, was a scrivener—a
kind of professional money-lender, then well known in London; and having
been early connected with the vicinity of Oxford, continued afterwards to
have pecuniary transactions of a certain nature with country gentlemen
of that neighbourhood. In the course of these he advanced 500_l._ to a
certain Mr. Richard Powell, a squire of fair landed estate, residing
at Forest Hill, which is about four miles from the city of Oxford. The
money was lent on the 11th of June 1627; and a few months afterwards Mr.
Milton the elder gave 312_l._ of it to his son the poet, who was then a
youth at college, and made a formal memorandum of the same in the form
then usual, which still exists. The debt was never wholly discharged;
for in 1651 we find Milton declaring on oath that he had never received
more than 180_l._, ‘in part satisfaction of his said just and principal
debt, with damages for the same and his costs of suit.’ Mr. Keightley
supposes him to have ‘taken many a ride over to Forest Hill’ after he
left Cambridge and was living at Horton, which is not very far distant;
but of course this is only conjecture. We only know that about 1643 ‘he
took,’ as his nephew relates, ‘a journey into the country, nobody about
him certainly knowing the reason, or that it was more than a journey of
recreation. After a month’s stay he returns a married man, who set out a
bachelor; his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr. Richard Powell,
then a justice of the peace’ for the county of Oxford. The suddenness of
the event is rather striking; but Philips was at the time one of Milton’s
pupils, and it is possible that some pains may have been taken to conceal
the love-affair from the ‘young gentlemen.’ Still, as Philips was
Milton’s nephew, he was likely to hear such intelligence tolerably early;
and as he does not seem to have done so, the _dénouement_ was probably
rather prompt. At any rate, he was certainly married at that time, and
took his bride home to his house in Aldersgate Street; and there was
feasting and gaiety according to the usual custom of such events. A
few weeks after, the lady went home to her friends, in which there was
of course nothing remarkable; but it is singular that when the natural
limit of her visit at home was come, she absolutely refused to return to
her husband. The grounds of so strange a resolution are very difficult
to ascertain. Political feeling ran very high: old Mr. Powell adhered
to the side of the king, and Milton to that of the parliament; and this
might be fancied to have caused an estrangement. But on the other hand,
these circumstances must have been well known three months before.
Nothing had happened in that quarter of a year to change very materially
the position of the two parties in the State. Some other cause for Mrs.
Milton’s conduct must be looked for. She herself is said to have stated
that she did not like her husband’s ‘spare diet and hard study.’ No
doubt, too, she found it dull in London; she had probably always lived
in the country, and must have been quite unaccustomed to the not very
pleasant scene in which she found herself. Still, many young ladies have
married schoolmasters, and many young ladies have gone from Oxfordshire
to London; and nevertheless, no such dissolution of matrimonial harmony
is known to have occurred.
The fact we believe to be, that the bride took a dislike to her husband.
We cannot but have a suspicion that she did not like him before marriage,
and that pecuniary reasons had their influence. If, however, Mr. Powell
exerted his paternal influence, it may be admitted that he had unusual
considerations to advance in favour of the alliance he proposed. It is
not every father whose creditors are handsome young gentlemen with fair
incomes. Perhaps it seemed no extreme tyranny to press the young lady a
little to do that which some others might have done without pressing.
Still, all this is but hypothesis; our evidence as to the love-affairs of
the time of King Charles I. is but meagre. But, whatever the feelings of
Miss Powell may have been, those of Mrs. Milton are exceedingly certain.
She would not return to her husband; she did not answer his letters; and
a messenger whom he sent to bring her back was handled rather roughly.
Unquestionably, she was deeply to blame, by far the most to blame of the
two. Whatever may be alleged against him, is as nothing compared with her
offence in leaving him. To defend so startling a course, we must adopt
views of divorce even more extreme than those which Milton was himself
driven to inculcate; and whatever Mrs. Milton’s practice may have been,
it may be fairly conjectured that her principles were strictly orthodox.
Yet, if she could be examined by a commission to the ghosts, she would
probably have some palliating circumstances to allege in mitigation
of judgment. There were, perhaps, peculiarities in Milton’s character
which a young lady might not improperly dislike. The austere and ascetic
character is of course far less agreeable to women than the sensuous
and susceptible. The self-occupation, the pride, the abstraction of the
former are to the female mind disagreeable; studious habits and unusual
self-denial seem to it purposeless; lofty enthusiasm, public spirit, the
solitary pursuit of an elevated ideal, are quite out of its way: they
rest too little on the visible world to be intelligible, they are too
little suggested by the daily occurrences of life to seem possible. The
poet in search of an imaginary phantom has never been successful with
women; there are innumerable proofs of that; and the ascetic moralist
is even less interesting. A character combined out of the two—and this
to some extent was Milton’s—is singularly likely to meet with painful
failure; with a failure the more painful, that it could never anticipate
or explain it. Possibly he was absorbed in an austere self-conscious
excellence; it may never have occurred to him that a lady might prefer
the trivial detail of daily happiness.
Milton’s own view of the matter he has explained to us in his book on
divorce; and it is a very odd one. His complaint was that his wife would
not talk. What he wished in marriage was an ‘intimate and speaking
help;’ he encountered a ‘mute and spiritless mate.’ One of his principal
incitements to the ‘pious necessity of divorcing,’ was an unusual
deficiency in household conversation. A certain loquacity in their
wives has been the complaint of various eminent men; but his domestic
affliction was a different one. The ‘ready and reviving associate,’ whom
he had hoped to have found, appeared to be a ‘co-inhabiting mischief,’
who was sullen, and perhaps seemed bored and tired. And at times he is
disposed to cast the blame of his misfortune on the uninstructive nature
of youthful virtue. The ‘soberest and best-governed men,’ he says, are
least practised in such affairs, are not very well aware that ‘the
bashful muteness’ of a young lady ‘may oft-times hide the unliveliness
and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation;’ and are rather
in too great haste to light the nuptial torch: whereas those ‘who have
lived most loosely, by reason of their bold accustoming, prove most
successful in their matches; because their wild affections, unsettling
at will, have been as so many divorces to teach them experience.’ And
he rather wishes to infer that the virtuous man should, in case of
mischance, have his resource of divorce likewise.
In truth, Milton’s book on divorce—though only containing principles
which he continued to believe long after he had any personal reasons
for wishing to do so—were clearly suggested at first by the unusual
phenomena of his first marriage. His wife began by not speaking to him,
and finished by running away from him. Accordingly, like most books which
spring out of personal circumstances, his treatises on this subject have
a frankness, and a mastery of detail, which others on the same topic
sometimes want. He is remarkably free from one peculiarity of modern
writers on such matters. Several considerate gentlemen are extremely
anxious for the ‘rights of woman.’ They think that women will benefit by
removing the bulwarks which the misguided experience of ages has erected
for their protection. A migratory system of domestic existence might suit
Madame Dudevant, and a few cases of singular exception; but we cannot
fancy that it would be, after all, so much to the taste of most ladies
as the present more permanent system. We have some reminiscence of the
stories of the wolf and the lamb, when we hear amiable men addressing
a female auditory (in books, of course) on the advantages of a freer
‘development.’ We are perhaps wrong, but we cherish an indistinct
suspicion that an indefinite extension of the power of selection would
rather tend to the advantage of the sex which more usually chooses.
But we have no occasion to avow such opinions now. Milton had no such
modern views. He is frankly and honestly anxious for the rights of
the man. Of the doctrine that divorce is only permitted for the help
of wives, he exclaims, ‘Palpably uxorious! who can be ignorant, that
a woman was created for man, and not man for woman? What an injury is
it after wedlock to be slighted! what to be contended with in point of
house-rule who shall be the head; not for any parity of wisdom, for that
were something reasonable, but out of a female pride! “I suffer not,”
saith St. Paul, “the woman to usurp authority over the man.” If the
Apostle could not suffer it,’ he naturally remarks, ‘into what mould is
he mortified that can?’ He had a sincere desire to preserve men from the
society of unsocial and unsympathising women; and that was his principal
idea.
His theory, to a certain extent, partakes of the same notion. The
following passage contains a perspicuous exposition of it: ‘Moses, Deut.
xxiv. 1, established a grave and prudent law, full of moral equity, full
of due consideration towards nature, that cannot be resisted, a law
consenting with the wisest men and civilest nations; that when a man hath
married a wife, if it come to pass that he cannot love her by reason of
some displeasing natural quality or unfitness in her, let him write her
a bill of divorce. The intent of which law undoubtedly was this, that if
any good and peaceable man should discover some helpless disagreement
or dislike, either of mind or body, whereby he could not cheerfully
perform the duty of a husband without the perpetual dissembling of
offence and disturbance to his spirit; rather than to live uncomfortably
and unhappily both to himself and to his wife; rather than to continue
undertaking a duty, which he could not possibly discharge, he might
dismiss her, whom he could not tolerably, and so not conscionably,
retain. And this law the Spirit of God by the mouth of Solomon, Prov.
xxx. 21, 23, testifies to be a good and a necessary law, by granting
it that “a hated woman” (for so the Hebrew word signifies, rather than
“odious,” though it come all to one), that “a hated woman, when she
is married, is a thing that the earth cannot bear.”’ And he complains
that the civil law of modern states interferes with the ‘domestical
prerogative of the husband.’
His notion would seem to have been that a husband was bound not to
dismiss his wife, except for a reason really sufficient; such as a
thoroughly incompatible temper, an incorrigible ‘muteness,’ and a
desertion like that of Mrs. Milton. But he scarcely liked to admit that,
in the use of this power, he should be subject to the correction of
human tribunals. He thought that the circumstances of each case depended
upon ‘utterless facts;’ and that it was practically impossible for a
civil court to decide on a subject so delicate in its essence, and so
imperceptible in its data. But though amiable men doubtless suffer much
from the deficiencies of their wives, we should hardly like to intrust
them, in their own cases, with a jurisdiction so prompt and summary.
We are far from being concerned, however, just now with the doctrine of
divorce on its intrinsic merits: we were only intending to give such an
account of Milton’s opinions upon it as might serve to illustrate his
character. We think we have shown that it is possible there may have
been, in his domestic relations, a little overweening pride; a tendency
to overrate the true extent of masculine rights, and to dwell on his
wife’s duty to be social towards him rather than on his duty to be social
towards her,—to be rather sullen whenever she was not quite cheerful.
Still, we are not defending a lady for leaving her husband for defects of
such inferior magnitude. Few households would be kept together, if the
right of transition were exercised on such trifling occasions. We are
but suggesting that she may share the excuse which our great satirist
has suggested for another unreliable lady: ‘My mother was an angel; but
angels are not always _commodes à vivre_.’
This is not a pleasant part of our subject, and we must leave it. It
is more agreeable to relate that on no occasion of his life was the
substantial excellence of Milton’s character more conclusively shown,
than in his conduct at the last stage of this curious transaction. After
a very considerable interval, and after the publication of his book on
divorce, Mrs. Milton showed a disposition to return to her husband; and,
in spite of his theories, he received her with open arms. With great
Christian patience, he received her relations too. The Parliamentary
party was then victorious; and old Mr. Powell, who had suffered very much
in the cause of the king, lived until his death untroubled, and ‘wholly
to his devotion,’ as we are informed, in the house of his son-in-law.
Of the other occurrences of Milton’s domestic life we have left ourselves
no room to speak; we must turn to our second source of illustration for
his character,—his opinions on the great public events of his time. It
may seem odd, but we believe that a man of austere character naturally
tends _both_ to an excessive party spirit and to an extreme isolation. Of
course, the circumstances which develope the one must be different from
those which are necessary to call out the other: party-spirit requires
companionship; isolation, if we may be pardoned so original a remark,
excludes it. But though, as we have shown, this species of character is
prone to mental solitude, tends to an intellectual isolation where it is
possible and as soon as it can, yet when invincible circumstances throw
it into mental companionship, when it is driven into earnest association
with earnest men on interesting topics, its zeal becomes excessive. Such
a man’s mind is at home only with its own enthusiasm; it is cooped up
within the narrow limits of its own ideas, and it can make no allowance
for those who differ from or oppose them. We may see something of this
excessive party-zeal in Burke. No one’s reasons are more philosophical;
yet no one who acted with a party went further in aid of it or was more
violent in support of it. He forgot what could be said for the tenets of
the enemy; his imagination made that enemy an abstract incarnation of his
tenets. A man, too, who knows that he formed his opinions originally by a
genuine and intellectual process, is but little aware of the undue energy
those ideas may obtain from the concurrence of those around. Persons who
first acquired their ideas at second-hand are more open to a knowledge of
their own weakness, and better acquainted with the strange force which
there is in the sympathy of others. The isolated mind, when it acts with
the popular feeling, is apt to exaggerate that feeling for the most part
by an almost inevitable consequence of the feelings which render it
isolated. Milton is an example of this remark. In the commencement of the
struggle between Charles I. and the Parliament, he sympathised strongly
with the popular movement, and carried to what seems now a strange
extreme his partisanship. No one could imagine that the first literary
Englishman of his time could write the following passage on Charles I.:
‘Who can with patience hear this filthy, rascally Fool speak so
irreverently of Persons eminent both in Greatness and Piety? Dare you
compare King _David_ with King _Charles_; a most Religious King and
Prophet, with a Superstitious Prince, and who was but a Novice in the
Christian Religion; a most prudent, wise Prince with a weak one; a
valiant Prince with a cowardly one; finally, a most just Prince with
a most unjust one? Have you the impudence to commend his Chastity and
Sobriety, who is known to have committed all manner of Leudness in
company with his Confident the Duke of _Buckingham_? It were to no
purpose to inquire into the private Actions of his Life, who publickly at
Plays would embrace and kiss the Ladies.’
Whatever may be the faults of that ill-fated monarch—and they assuredly
were not small—no one would now think this absurd invective to be even
an excusable exaggeration. It misses the true mark altogether, and is
the expression of a strongly imaginative mind, which has seen something
that it did not like, and is unable in consequence to see anything that
has any relation to it distinctly or correctly. But with the supremacy
of the Long Parliament Milton’s attachment to their cause ceased. No one
has drawn a more unfavourable picture of the rule which they established.
Years after their supremacy had passed away, and the restoration of the
monarchy had covered with a new and strange scene the old actors and
the old world, he thrust into a most unlikely part of his _History of
England_ the following attack on them:—
‘But when once the superficiall zeal and popular fumes that acted their
New Magistracy were cool’d and spent in them, strait every one betook
himself (setting the Commonwealth behind, his privat ends before) to
doe as his own profit or ambition ledd him. Then was justice delay’d,
and soon after deni’d: spight and favour determin’d all: hence faction,
thence treachery, both at home and in the field: ev’ry where wrong, and
oppression: foull and horrid deeds committed daily, or maintain’d, in
secret, or in open. Som who had bin call’d from shops and warehouses,
without other merit, to sit in Supreme Councills and Committees as thir
breeding was, fell to huckster the Commonwealth. Others did therafter as
men could soothe and humour them best; so hee who would give most, or,
under covert of hypocriticall zeale, insinuat basest, enjoy’d unworthily
the rewards of lerning and fidelity; or escap’d the punishment of his
crimes and misdeeds. Thir Votes and Ordinances, which men looked should
have contain’d the repealing of bad laws, and the immediat constitution
of better, resounded with nothing els, but new Impositions, Taxes,
Excises; yeerly, monthly, weekly. Not to reckon the Offices, Gifts, and
Preferments bestow’d and shar’d among themselvs.’
His dislike of this system of committees, and of the generally dull
and unemphatic administration of the Commonwealth, attached him to the
Puritan army and to Cromwell; but in the continuation of the passage we
have referred to, he expresses, with something, let it be said, of a
schoolmaster feeling, an unfavourable judgment on their career.
‘For _Britan_, to speak a truth not oft’n spok’n, as it is a Land
fruitful enough of men stout and courageous in warr, soe it is naturally
not over-fertill of men able to govern justly and prudently in peace,
trusting onely in thir Motherwit; who consider not justly, that civility,
prudence, love of the Publick good, more then of money or vaine honour,
are to this soile in a manner outlandish; grow not here, but in mindes
well implanted with solid and elaborat breeding, too impolitic els and
rude, if not headstrong and intractable to the industry and vertue either
of executing or understanding true Civill Government. Valiant indeed,
and prosperous to win a field; but to know the end and reason of winning,
unjudicious, and unwise: in good or bad succes, alike unteachable. For
the Sun, which wee want, ripens wits as well as fruits; and as Wine and
Oil are imported to us from abroad, soe must ripe understanding, and
many Civill Vertues, be imported into our mindes from Foren Writings,
and examples of best Ages; we shall els miscarry still, and com short
in the attempts of any great enterprize. Hence did thir Victories prove
as fruitles, as thir Losses dang’rous; and left them still conq’ring
under the same greevances, that Men suffer conquer’d: which was indeed
unlikely to goe otherwise, unles Men more then vulgar bred up, as few of
them were, in the knowledg of antient and illustrious deeds, invincible
against many and vaine Titles, impartial to Freindships and Relations,
had conducted thir Affairs: but then from the Chapman to the Retailer,
many whose ignorance was more audacious then the rest, were admitted
with all thir sordid Rudiments to bear no meane sway among them, both in
Church and State.’
We need not speak of Milton’s disapprobation of the Restoration. Between
him and the world of Charles II. the opposition was inevitable and
infinite. Therefore the general fact remains, that except in the early
struggles, when he exaggerated the popular feeling, he remained solitary
in opinion, and had very little sympathy with any of the prevailing
parties of his time.
Milton’s own theory of government is to be learned from his works. He
advocated a free commonwealth, without rule of a single person, or House
of Lords: but the form of his projected commonwealth was peculiar. He
thought that a certain perpetual council, which should be elected by
the nation once for all, and the number of which should be filled up
as vacancies might occur, was the best possible machine of government.
He did not confine his advocacy to abstract theory, but proposed the
immediate establishment of such a council in this country. We need not
go into an elaborate discussion to show the errors of this conclusion.
Hardly any one, then or since, has probably adopted it. The interest of
the theoretical parts of Milton’s political works is entirely historical.
The tenets advocated are not of great value, and the arguments by which
he supports them are perhaps of less; but their relation to the times in
which they were written gives them a very singular interest. The time
of the Commonwealth was the only period in English history in which the
fundamental questions of government have been thrown open for popular
discussion in this country. We read in French literature discussions
on the advisability of establishing a monarchy, on the advisability
of establishing a republic, on the advisability of establishing an
empire; and, before we proceed to examine the arguments, we cannot help
being struck at the strange contrast which this multiplicity of open
questions presents to our own uninquiring acquiescence in the hereditary
polity which has descended to us. ‘King, Lords, and Commons’ are, we
think, ordinances of nature. Yet Milton’s political writings embody the
reflections of a period when, for a few years, the government of England
was nearly as much a subject of fundamental discussion as that of France
was in 1851. An ‘invitation to thinkers,’ to borrow the phrase of Neckar,
was given by the circumstances of the time; and, with the habitual
facility of philosophical speculation, it was accepted, and used to the
utmost.
Such are not the kind of speculations in which we expect assistance from
Milton. It is not in its transactions with others, in its dealings with
the manifold world, that the isolated and austere mind shows itself to
the most advantage. Its strength lies in itself. It has ‘a calm and
pleasing solitariness.’ It hears thoughts which others cannot hear.
It enjoys the quiet and still air of delightful studies; and is ever
conscious of such musing and poetry ‘as is not to be obtained by the
invocation of Dame Memory and her twin daughters, but by devout prayer to
that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge,
and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar.’
‘Descend from Heav’n, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art call’d, whose voice divine
Following, above th’ Olympian hill I soar,
Above the flight of Pegaséan wing.
The meaning, not the name, I call; for thou
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top
Of old Olympus dwell’st, but heav’nly born:
Before the hills appear’d, or fountain flow’d,
Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play
In presence of th’ Almighty Father, pleased
With thy celestial song. Up led by Thee
Into the Heav’n of Heav’ns I have presumed,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air,
Thy temp’ring. With like safety guided down,
Return me to my native element;
Lest from this flying steed, unrein’d (as once
Bellerophon, though from a lower clime),
Dismounted, on th’ Aleian field I fall
Erroneous there to wander and forlorn.
Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound
Within the visible diurnal sphere;
Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fall’n on evil days,
On evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compass’d round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visit’st my slumbers nightly, or when morn
Purples the east: still govern thou my song,
Urania, and fit audience find, though few;
But drive far off the barb’rous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears
To rapture, till the savage clamour drown’d
Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend
Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores;
For thou art heav’nly, she an empty dream.’
‘An ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found John Milton in
a small chamber hung with rusty green, sitting in an elbow-chair, and
dressed neatly in black: pale, but not cadaverous.’ ‘He used also to sit
in a gray coarse cloth coat at the door of his house near Bunhill Fields,
in warm, sunny weather;’ and the common people said he was inspired.
If from the man we turn to his works, we are struck at once with two
singular contrasts. The first of them is this. The distinction between
ancient and modern art is sometimes said, and perhaps truly, to consist
in the simple bareness of the imaginative conceptions which we find in
ancient art, and the comparatively complex clothing in which all modern
creations are embodied. If we adopt this distinction, Milton seems in
some sort ancient, and in some sort modern. Nothing is so simple as the
subject-matter of his works. The two greatest of his creations, the
character of Satan and the character of Eve, are two of the simplest—the
latter probably the very simplest—in the whole field of literature. On
this side Milton’s art is classical. On the other hand, in no writer
is the imagery more profuse, the illustrations more various, the dress
altogether more splendid. And in this respect the style of his art seems
romantic and modern. In real truth, however, it is only ancient art in a
modern disguise. The dress is a mere dress, and can be stripped off when
we will. We all of us do perhaps in memory strip it off for ourselves.
Notwithstanding the lavish adornments with which her image is presented,
the character of Eve is still the simplest sort of feminine essence—the
pure embodiment of that inner nature, which we believe and hope that
women have. The character of Satan, though it is not so easily described,
has nearly as few elements in it. The most purely modern conceptions will
not bear to be unclothed in this matter. Their romantic garment clings
inseparably to them. Hamlet and Lear are not to be thought of except as
complex characters, with very involved and complicated embodiments. They
are as difficult to draw out in words as the common characters of life
are; that of Hamlet, perhaps, is more so. If we make it, as perhaps we
should, the characteristic of modern and romantic art that it presents
us with creations which we cannot think of or delineate except as very
varied, and, so to say, circumstantial, we must not rank Milton among
the masters of romantic art. And without involving the subject in the
troubled sea of an old controversy, we may say that the most striking of
the poetical peculiarities of Milton is the bare simplicity of his ideas,
and the rich abundance of his illustrations.
Another of his peculiarities is equally striking. There seems to be such
a thing as second-hand poetry. Some poets, musing on the poetry of other
men, have unconsciously shaped it into something of their own: the new
conception is like the original, it would never probably have existed had
not the original existed previously; still it is sufficiently different
from the original to be a new thing, not a copy or a plagiarism; it is
a creation, though, so to say, a suggested creation. Gray is as good an
example as can be found of a poet whose works abound in this species
of semi-original conceptions. Industrious critics track his best lines
back, and find others like them which doubtless lingered near his fancy
while he was writing them. The same critics have been equally busy with
the works of Milton, and equally successful. They find traces of his
reading in half his works; not, which any reader could do, in overt
similes and distinct illustrations, but also in the very texture of the
thought and the expression. In many cases, doubtless, they discover more
than he himself knew. A mind like his, which has an immense store of
imaginative recollections, can never know which of his own imaginations
is exactly suggested by which recollection. Men awake with their best
ideas; it is seldom worth while to investigate very curiously whence
they came. Our proper business is to adapt, and mould, and act upon
them. Of poets perhaps this is true even more remarkably than of other
men; their ideas are suggested in modes, and according to laws, which
are even more impossible to specify than the ideas of the rest of the
world. Second-hand poetry, so to say, often seems quite original to the
poet himself; he frequently does not know that he derived it from an old
memory; years afterwards it may strike him as it does others. Still, in
general, such inferior species of creation is not so likely to be found
in minds of singular originality as in those of less. A brooding, placid,
cultivated mind, like that of Gray, is the place where we should expect
to meet with it. Great originality disturbs the adaptive process, removes
the mind of the poet from the thoughts of other men, and occupies it
with its own heated and flashing thoughts. Poetry of the second degree
is like the secondary rocks of modern geology—a still, gentle, alluvial
formation; the igneous glow of primary genius brings forth ideas like
the primeval granite, simple, astounding, and alone. Milton’s case is an
exception to this rule. His mind has marked originality, probably as much
of it as any in literature; but it has as much of moulded recollection
as any mind too. His poetry in consequence is like an artificial park,
green, and soft, and beautiful, yet with outlines bold, distinct, and
firm, and the eternal rock ever jutting out; or, better still, it is like
our own lake scenery, where nature has herself the same combination—where
we have Rydal-water side by side with the everlasting upheaved mountain.
Milton has the same union of softened beauty with unimpaired grandeur;
and it is his peculiarity.
These are the two contrasts which puzzle us at first in Milton, and which
distinguish him from other poets in our remembrance afterwards. We have
a superficial complexity in illustration, and imagery, and metaphor; and
in contrast with it we observe a latent simplicity of idea, an almost
rude strength of conception. The underlying thoughts are few, though
the flowers on the surface are so many. We have likewise the perpetual
contrast of the soft poetry of the memory, and the firm, as it were
fused, and glowing poetry of the imagination. His words, we may half
fancifully say, are like his character. There is the same austerity in
the real essence, the same exquisiteness of sense, the same delicacy of
form which we know that he had, the same music which we imagine there was
in his voice. In both his character and his poetry there was an ascetic
nature in a sheath of beauty.
No book perhaps which has ever been written is more difficult to
criticise than _Paradise Lost_. The only way to criticise a work of the
imagination, is to describe its effect upon the mind of the reader—at any
rate, of the critic; and this can only be adequately delineated by strong
illustrations, apt similes, and perhaps a little exaggeration. The task
is in its very nature not an easy one; the poet paints a picture on the
fancy of the critic, and the critic has in some sort to copy it on the
paper. He must say what it is before he can make remarks upon it. But
in the case of _Paradise Lost_ we hardly like to use illustrations. The
subject is one which the imagination rather shrinks from. At any rate, it
requires courage, and an effort to compel the mind to view such a subject
as distinctly and vividly as it views other subjects. Another peculiarity
of _Paradise Lost_ makes the difficulty even greater. It does not profess
to be a mere work of art; or rather, it claims to be by no means that,
and that only. It starts with a dogmatic aim; it avowedly intends to
‘assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to man.’
In this point of view we have always had a sympathy with the Cambridge
mathematician who has been so much abused. He said, ‘After all, _Paradise
Lost_ proves nothing;’ and various persons of poetical tastes and
temperament have been very severe on the prosaic observation. Yet,
‘after all,’ he was right. Milton professed to prove something. He was
too profound a critic—rather, he had too profound an instinct of those
eternal principles of art which criticism tries to state—not to know
that on such a subject he must prove something. He professed to deal with
the great problem of human destiny; to show why man was created, in what
kind of universe he lives, whence he came, and whither he goes. He dealt
of necessity with the greatest of subjects. He had to sketch the greatest
of objects. He was concerned with infinity and eternity even more than
with time and sense; he undertook to delineate the ways, and consequently
the character of Providence, as well as the conduct and the tendencies
of man. The essence of success in such an attempt is to satisfy the
religious sense of man; to bring home to our hearts what we know to be
true; to teach us what we have not seen; to awaken us to what we have
forgotten; to remove the ‘covering’ from all people, and ‘the veil’ that
is spread over all nations; to give us, in a word, such a conception of
things divine and human as we can accept, believe, and trust. The true
doctrine of criticism demands what Milton invites—an examination of the
degree in which the great epic attains this aim. And if, in examining it,
we find it necessary to use unusual illustrations, and plainer words than
are customary, it must be our excuse that we do not think the subject can
be made clear without them.
The defect of _Paradise Lost_ is that, after all, it is founded on a
_political_ transaction. The scene is in heaven very early in the history
of the universe, before the creation of man or the fall of Satan. We have
a description of a court. The angels,
‘By imperial summons called,’
appear
‘Under their hierarchs in orders bright:
Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced,
Standards and gonfalons ’twixt van and rear
Stream in the air, and for distinction serve
Of hierarchies, and orders, and degrees.’
To this assemblage ‘th’ Omnipotent’ speaks:
‘Hear, all ye Angels, progeny of light,
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Pow’rs,
Hear my decree, which unrevoked shall stand:
This day I have begot whom I declare
My only Son; and on this holy hill
Him have anointed, whom ye now behold
At my right hand; your Head I him appoint;
And by myself have sworn, to him shall bow
All knees in Heav’n, and shall confess him Lord:
Under his great vicegerent reign abide
United as one individual soul
For ever happy. Him who disobeys,
Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day,
Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls
Int’ utter darkness, deep ingulph’d, his place
Ordain’d without redemption, without end.’
This act of patronage was not popular at court; and why should it have
been? The religious sense is against it. The worship which sinful men
owe to God is not transferable to lieutenants and vicegerents. The whole
scene of the court jars upon a true feeling. We seem to be reading about
some emperor of history, who admits his son to a share in the empire, who
confers on him a considerable jurisdiction, and requires officials, with
‘standards and gonfalons,’ to bow before him. The orthodoxy of Milton is
quite as questionable as his accuracy. The old Athanasian creed was not
made by persons who would allow such a picture as that of Milton to stand
before their imaginations. The generation of the Son was to them a fact
‘before all time;’ an eternal fact. There was no question in their minds
of patronage or promotion. The Son was the Son before all time, just as
the Father was the Father before all time. Milton had in such matters
a bold but not very sensitive imagination. He accepted the inevitable
materialism of biblical, and, to some extent, of all religious language
as distinct revelation. He certainly believed, in contradiction to the
old creed, that God had both ‘parts and passions.’ He imagined that earth
‘Is but the shadow of heaven and things therein,
Each to other like more than on earth is thought.’
From some passages it would seem that he actually thought of God as
having ‘the members and form’ of a man. Naturally, therefore, he would
have no toleration for the mysterious notions of time and eternity
which are involved in the traditional doctrine. We are not, however,
now concerned with Milton’s belief, but with his representation of his
creed—his picture, so to say, of it in _Paradise Lost_; still, as we
cannot but think, that picture is almost irreligious, and certainly
different from that which has been generally accepted in Christendom.
Such phrases as ‘before all time,’ ‘eternal generation,’ are doubtless
very vaguely interpreted by the mass of men; nevertheless, no sensitively
orthodox man _could_ have drawn the picture of a generation, not to say
an exaltation, _in_ time.
We shall see this more clearly by reading what follows in the poem:
‘All seemed well pleased; all seemed, but were not all.’
One of the archangels, whose name can be guessed, decidedly disapproved,
and calls a meeting, at which he explains that
‘orders and degrees
Jar not with liberty, but well consist;’
but still, that the promotion of a new person, on grounds of relationship
merely, above, even infinitely above, the old angels, with imperial
titles, was ‘a new law,’ and rather tyrannical. Abdiel,
‘than whom none with more zeal adored
The Deity, and with divine commands obeyed,’
attempts a defence:
‘Grant it thee unjust,
That equal over equals monarch reign:
Thyself, though great and glorious, dost thou count,
Or all angelic nature join’d in one,
Equal to him begotten Son? by whom
As by his Word the mighty Father made
All things, ev’n thee; and all the Spirits of Heav’n
By him created in their bright degrees,
Crown’d them with glory, and to their glory named
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Pow’rs,
Essential Pow’rs; nor by his reign obscured,
But more illustrious made; since he the Head,
One of our number thus reduced becomes;
His laws our laws; all honour to him done
Returns our own. Cease then this impious rage,
And tempt not these; but hasten to appease
Th’ incensed Father and th’ incensed Son,
While pardon may be found, in time besought.’
Yet though Abdiel’s intentions were undeniably good, his argument is
rather specious. Acting as an instrument in the process of creation would
scarcely give a valid claim to the obedience of the created being. Power
may be shown in the act, no doubt; but mere power gives no true claim to
the obedience of moral beings. It is a kind of principle of all manner
of idolatries and false religions to believe that it does so. Satan,
besides, takes issue on the fact:
‘That we were formed then, say’st thou? and the work
Of secondary hands, by task transferr’d
From Father to his Son? Strange point and new!
Doctrine which we would know whence learned.’
And we must say that the speech in which the new ruler is introduced to
the ‘thrones, dominations, princedoms, powers,’ is hard to reconcile with
Abdiel’s exposition. ‘_This day_’ he seems to have come into existence,
and could hardly have assisted at the creation of the angels, who are not
young, and who converse with one another like old acquaintances.
We have gone into this part of the subject at length, because it is the
source of the great error which pervades _Paradise Lost_. Satan is made
_interesting_. This has been the charge of a thousand orthodox and even
heterodox writers against Milton. Shelley, on the other hand, has gloried
in it; and fancied, if we remember rightly, that Milton intentionally
ranged himself on the Satanic side of the universe, just as Shelley
himself would have done, and that he wished to show the falsity of the
ordinary theology. But Milton was born an age too early for such aims,
and was far too sincere to have advocated any doctrine in a form so
indirect. He believed every word he said. He was not conscious of the
effect his teaching would produce in an age like this, when scepticism
is in the air, and when it is not possible to help looking coolly on his
delineations. Probably in our boyhood we can recollect a period when
any solemn description of celestial events would have commanded our
respect; we should not have dared to read it intelligently, to canvass
its details and see what it meant: it was a religious book; it sounded
reverential, and that would have sufficed. Something like this was the
state of mind of the seventeenth century. Even Milton probably shared in
a vague reverence for religious language. He hardly felt the moral effect
of the pictures he was drawing. His artistic instinct too, often hurries
him away. His Satan was to him, as to us, the hero of his poem. Having
commenced by making him resist on an occasion which in an earthly kingdom
would have been excusable and proper, he probably a little sympathised
with him, just as his readers do.
The interest of Satan’s character is at its height in the first two
books. Coleridge justly compared it to that of Napoleon. There is the
same pride, the same satanic ability, the same will, the same egotism.
His character seems to grow with his position. He is far finer after
his fall, in misery and suffering, with scarcely any resource except
in himself, than he was originally in heaven; at least, if Raphael’s
description of him can be trusted. No portrait which imagination or
history has drawn of a revolutionary anarch is nearly so perfect; there
is all the grandeur of the greatest human mind, and a certain infinitude
in his circumstances which humanity must ever want. Few Englishmen feel
a profound reverence for Napoleon I. There was no French alliance in
_his_ time; we have most of us some tradition of antipathy to him.
Yet hardly any Englishman can read the account of the campaign of 1814
without feeling his interest in the Emperor to be strong, and without
perhaps being conscious of a latent wish that he may succeed. Our opinion
is against him, our serious wish is of course for England; but the
imagination has a sympathy of its own, and will not give place. We read
about the great general—never greater than in that last emergency—showing
resources of genius that seem almost infinite, and that assuredly
have never been surpassed, yet vanquished, yielding to the power of
circumstances, to the combined force of adversaries, each of whom singly
he outmatches in strength, and all of whom together he surpasses in
majesty and in mind. Something of the same sort of interest belongs to
the Satan of the first two books of _Paradise Lost_. We know that he will
be vanquished; his name is not a recommendation. Still we do not imagine
distinctly the minds by which he is to be vanquished; we do not take the
same interest in them that we do in him; our sympathies, our fancy, are
on his side.
Perhaps much of this was inevitable; yet what a defect it is! especially
what a defect in Milton’s own view, and looked at with the stern realism
with which he regarded it! Suppose that the author of evil in the
universe were the most attractive being in it; suppose that the source
of all sin were the origin of all interest to us! We need not dwell upon
this.
As we have said, much of this was difficult to avoid, if indeed it
could be avoided in dealing with such a theme. Even Milton shrank, in
some measure, from delineating the Divine character. His imagination
evidently halts when it is required to perform that task. The more
delicate imagination of our modern world would shrink still more. Any
person who will consider what such an attempt must end in, will find
his nerves quiver. But by a curiously fatal error, Milton has selected
for delineation exactly that part of the Divine nature which is most
beyond the reach of the human faculties, and which is also, when we try
to describe our fancy of it, the least effective to our minds. He has
made God _argue_. Now the procedure of the Divine mind from truth to
truth must ever be incomprehensible to us; the notion, indeed, of His
proceeding at all, is a contradiction: to some extent, at least, it is
inevitable that we should use such language, but we know it is in reality
inapplicable. A long train of reasoning in such a connection is so out
of place as to be painful; and yet Milton has many. He relates a series
of family prayers in heaven, with sermons afterwards, which are very
tedious. Even Pope was shocked at the notion of Providence talking like
‘a school-divine.’ And there is the still worse error, that if you once
attribute reasoning to Him, subsequent logicians may discover that He
does not reason very well.
Another way in which Milton has contrived to strengthen our interest in
Satan, is the number and insipidity of the good angels. There are old
rules as to the necessity of a supernatural machinery for an epic poem,
worth some fraction of the paper on which they are written, and derived
from the practice of Homer, who believed his gods and goddesses to be
real beings, and would have been rather harsh with a critic who called
them machinery. These rules had probably an influence with Milton, and
induced him to manipulate these serious angels more than he would have
done otherwise. They appear to be excellent administrators with very
little to do; a kind of grand chamberlains with wings, who fly down
to earth and communicate information to Adam and Eve. They have no
character; they are essentially messengers, merely conductors, so to say,
of the providential will: no one fancies that they have an independent
power of action; they seem scarcely to have minds of their own. No effect
can be more unfortunate. If the struggle of Satan had been with Deity
directly, the natural instincts of religion would have been awakened; but
when an angel possessed of mind is contrasted with angels possessed only
of wings, we sympathise with the former.
In the first two books, therefore, our sympathy with Milton’s Satan is
great; we had almost said unqualified. The speeches he delivers are of
well-known excellence. Lord Brougham, no contemptible judge of emphatic
oratory, has laid down, that if a person had not an opportunity of access
to the great Attic master-pieces, he had better choose these for a model.
What is to be regretted about the orator is, that he scarcely acts up to
his sentiments. ‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,’ is, at
any rate, an audacious declaration. But he has no room for exhibiting
similar audacity in action. His offensive career is limited. In the
nature of the subject there was scarcely any opportunity for the fallen
archangel to display in the detail of his operations the surpassing
intellect with which Milton has endowed him. He goes across chaos, gets
into a few physical difficulties; but these are not much. His grand aim
is the conquest of our first parents; and we are at once struck with the
enormous inequality of the conflict. Two beings just created, without
experience, without guile, without knowledge of good and evil, are
expected to contend with a being on the delineation of whose powers every
resource of art and imagination, every subtle suggestion, every emphatic
simile, has been lavished. The idea in every reader’s mind is, and must
be, not surprise that our first parents should yield, but wonder that
Satan should not think it beneath him to attack them. It is as if an army
should invest a cottage.
We have spoken more of theology than we intended; and we need not say how
much the monstrous inequalities attributed to the combatants affect our
estimate of the results of the conflict. The state of man is what it is,
because the defenceless Adam and Eve of Milton’s imagination yielded to
the nearly all-powerful Satan whom he has delineated. Milton has in some
sense invented this difficulty; for in the book of Genesis there is no
such inequality. The serpent may be subtler than any beast of the field;
but he is not necessarily subtler or cleverer than man. So far from
Milton having justified the ways of God to man, he has loaded the common
theology with a new encumbrance.
We may need refreshment after this discussion; and we cannot find it
better than in reading a few remarks of Eve.
‘That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awaked, and found myself reposed
Under a shade on flow’rs, much wond’ring where
And what I was, whence thither brought, and how.
Not distant far from thence a murm’ring sound
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved
Pure as th’ expanse of Heav’n.... I thither went
With unexperienced thought, and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake, that to me seem’d another sky.
As I bent down to look, just opposite
A shape within the wat’ry gleam appear’d,
Bending to look on me. I started back;
It started back: but pleased I soon return’d;
Pleased it return’d as soon with answ’ring looks
Of sympathy and love: there I had fix’d
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warn’d me. What thou seest,
What there thou seest, fair Creature, is thyself;
With thee it came and goes: but follow me,
And I will bring thee where no shadow stays
Thy coming, and thy soft embraces, he
Whose image thou art; him thou shalt enjoy
Inseparably thine: to him shalt bear
Multitudes like thyself, and thence be call’d
Mother of Human Race. What could I do
But follow straight, invisibly thus led?
Till I espy’d thee, fair indeed and tall
Under a platan; yet methought less fair,
Less winning soft, less amiably mild,
Than that smooth wat’ry image. Back I turn’d:
Thou following cry’dst aloud, Return, fair Eve;
Whom fly’st thou?’
Eve’s character, indeed, is one of the most wonderful efforts of the
human imagination. She is a kind of abstract woman; essentially a
typical being; an official ‘mother of all living.’ Yet she is a real
interesting woman, not only full of delicacy and sweetness, but with all
the undefinable fascination, the charm of personality, which such typical
characters hardly ever have. By what consummate miracle of wit this charm
of individuality is preserved, without impairing the general idea which
is ever present to us, we cannot explain, for we do not know.
Adam is far less successful. He has good hair,—‘hyacinthine locks’ that
‘from his parted forelock manly hung;’ a ‘fair large front’ and ‘eye
sublime;’ but he has little else that we care for. There is, in truth,
no opportunity of displaying manly virtues, even if he possessed them.
He has only to yield to his wife’s solicitations, which he does. Nor are
we sure that he does it well. He is very tedious; he indulges in sermons
which are good; but most men cannot but fear that so delightful a being
as Eve must have found him tiresome. She steps away, however, and goes to
sleep at some of the worst points.
Dr. Johnson remarked, that, after all, _Paradise Lost_ was one of the
books which no one wished longer: we fear, in this irreverent generation,
some wish it shorter. Hardly any reader would be sorry if some portions
of the later books had been spared him. Coleridge, indeed, discovered
profound mysteries in the last; but in what could not Coleridge find a
mystery if he wished? Dryden more wisely remarked that Milton became
tedious when he entered upon a ‘tract of Scripture.’ Nor is it surprising
that such is the case. The style of many parts of Scripture is such that
it will not bear addition or subtraction. A word less, or an idea more,
and the effect upon the mind is the same no longer. Nothing can be more
tiresome than a sermonic amplification of such passages. It is almost
too much when, as from the pulpit, a paraphrastic commentary is prepared
for our spiritual improvement. In deference to the intention we bear it,
but we bear it unwillingly; and we cannot endure it at all when, as
in poems, the object is to awaken our fancy rather than to improve our
conduct. The account of the creation in the book of Genesis is one of the
compositions from which no sensitive imagination would subtract an iota,
to which it could not bear to add a word. Milton’s paraphrase is alike
copious and ineffective. The universe is, in railway phrase, ‘opened,’
but not created; no green earth springs in a moment from the indefinite
void. Instead, too, of the simple loneliness of the Old Testament,
several angelic officials are in attendance, who help in nothing, but
indicate that heaven must be plentifully supplied with tame creatures.
There is no difficulty in writing such criticisms, and, indeed, other
unfavourable criticisms on _Paradise Lost_. There is scarcely any book
in the world which is open to a greater number, or which a reader who
allows plain words to produce a due effect will be less satisfied with.
Yet what book is really greater? In the best parts the words have a magic
in them; even in the inferior passages you are hardly sensible of their
inferiority till you translate them into your own language. Perhaps no
style ever written by man expressed so adequately the conceptions of a
mind so strong and so peculiar; a manly strength, a haunting atmosphere
of enhancing suggestions, a firm continuous music, are only some of its
excellences. To comprehend the whole of the others, you must take the
volume down and read it,—the best defence of Milton, as has been said
most truly, against all objections.
Probably no book shows the transition which our theology has made since
the middle of the seventeenth century, at once so plainly and so fully.
We do not now compose long narratives to ‘justify the ways of God to
man.’ The more orthodox we are, the more we shrink from it; the more
we hesitate at such a task, the more we allege that we have no powers
for it. Our most celebrated defences of established tenets are in the
style of Butler, not in that of Milton. They do not profess to show a
satisfactory explanation of human destiny; on the contrary, they hint
that probably we could not understand such an explanation if it were
given us; at any rate, they allow that it is not given us. Their course
is palliative. They suggest an ‘analogy of difficulties.’ If our minds
were greater, so they reason, we should comprehend these doctrines:
now we cannot explain analogous facts which we see and know. No style
can be more opposite to the bold argument, the boastful exposition of
Milton. The teaching of the eighteenth century is in the very atmosphere
we breathe. We read it in the teachings of Oxford; we hear it from the
missionaries of the Vatican. The air of the theology is clarified. We
know our difficulties, at least; we are rather prone to exaggerate the
weight of some than to deny the reality of any.
We cannot continue a line of thought which would draw us on too far for
the patience of our readers. We must, however, make one more remark, and
we shall have finished our criticism on _Paradise Lost_. It is analogous
to that which we have just made. The scheme of the poem is based on an
offence against positive morality. The offence of Adam was not against
nature or conscience, nor against any thing of which we can see the
reason, or conceive the obligation, but against an unexplained injunction
of the Supreme Will. The rebellion in heaven, as Milton describes it,
was a rebellion, not against known ethics, or immutable spiritual laws,
but against an arbitrary selection and an unexplained edict. We do not
say that there is no such thing as positive morality: we do not think
so; even if we did, we should not insert a proposition so startling at
the conclusion of a literary criticism. But we are sure that wherever a
positive moral edict is promulgated, it is no subject, except perhaps
under a very peculiar treatment, for literary art. By the very nature of
it, it cannot satisfy the heart and conscience. It is a difficulty; we
need not attempt to explain it away. There are mysteries enough which
will never be explained away. But it is contrary to every principle of
criticism to state the difficulty as if it were not one; to bring forward
the puzzle, yet leave it to itself; to publish so strange a problem, and
give only an untrue solution of it: and yet such, in its bare statement,
is all that Milton has done.
Of Milton’s other writings we have left ourselves no room to speak; and
though every one of them, or almost every one of them, would well repay a
careful criticism, yet few of them seem to throw much additional light on
his character, or add much to our essential notion of his genius, though
they may exemplify and enhance it. _Comus_ is the poem which does so the
most. Literature has become so much lighter than it used to be, that we
can scarcely realise the position it occupied in the light literature
of our forefathers. We have now in our own language many poems that are
pleasanter in their subject, more graceful in their execution, more
flowing in their outline, more easy to read. Dr. Johnson, though perhaps
no very excellent authority on the more intangible graces of literature,
was disposed to deny to Milton the capacity of creating the lighter
literature: ‘Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a
rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.’ And it would not be
surprising if this generation, which has access to the almost indefinite
quantity of lighter compositions which have been produced since Johnson’s
time, were to echo his sentence. In some degree, perhaps, the popular
taste does so. _Comus_ has no longer the peculiar exceptional popularity
which it used to have. We can talk without general odium of its defects.
Its characters are nothing, its sentiments are tedious, its story is not
interesting. But it is only when we have realised the magnitude of its
deficiencies that we comprehend the peculiarity of its greatness. Its
power is in its style. A grave and firm music pervades it: it is soft,
without a thought of weakness; harmonious and yet strong; impressive, as
few such poems are, yet covered with a bloom of beauty and a complexity
of charm that few poems have either. We have, perhaps, light literature
in itself better, that we read oftener and more easily, that lingers more
in our memories; but we have not any, we question if there ever will be
any, which gives so true a conception of the capacity and the dignity of
the mind by which it was produced. The breath of solemnity which hovers
round the music attaches us to the writer. Every line, here as elsewhere,
in Milton excites the idea of indefinite power.
And so we must draw to a close. The subject is an infinite one, and if
we pursued it, we should lose ourselves in miscellaneous commentary, and
run on far beyond the patience of our readers. What we have said has at
least a defined intention. We have wished to state the impression which
the character of Milton and the greatest of Milton’s works are likely to
produce on readers of the present generation—a generation different from
his own almost more than any other.
_LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU._[30]
(1862.)
Nothing is so transitory as second-class fame. The name of Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu is hardly now known to the great mass of ordinary
English readers. A generation has arisen which has had time to forget
her. Yet only a few years since, an allusion to the ‘Lady Mary’ would
have been easily understood by every well-informed person; young ladies
were enjoined to form their style upon hers; and no one could have
anticipated that her letters would seem in 1862 as different from what
a lady of rank would then write or publish as if they had been written
in the times of paganism. The very change, however, of popular taste and
popular morality gives these letters now a kind of interest. The farther
and the more rapidly we have drifted from where we once lay, the more
do we wish to learn what kind of port it was. We venture, therefore, to
recommend the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as an instructive and
profitable study, not indeed to the youngest of young ladies, but to
those maturer persons of either sex ‘who have taken all knowledge to be
their province,’ and who have commenced their readings in ‘universality’
by an assiduous perusal of Parisian fiction.
It is, we admit, true that these letters are not at the present day very
agreeable reading. What our grandfathers and grandmothers thought of them
it is not so easy to say. But it now seems clear that Lady Mary was
that most miserable of human beings, an ambitious and wasted woman; that
she brought a very cultivated intellect into a very cultivated society;
that she gave to that society what it was most anxious to receive, and
received from it all which it had to bestow;—and yet that this all was to
her as nothing. The high intellectual world of England has never been so
compact, so visible in a certain sense, so enjoyable, as it was in her
time. She had a mind to understand it, beauty to adorn it, and wit to
amuse it; but she chose to pass a great part of her life in exile, and
returned at last to die at home among a new generation, whose name she
hardly knew, and to whom she herself was but a spectacle and a wonder.
Lady Mary Pierrepont—for that was by birth her name—belonged to a
family which had a traditional reputation for ability and cultivation.
The _Memoirs of Lucy Hutchinson_—(almost the only legacy that remains
to us from the first generation of refined Puritans, the only book,
at any rate, which effectually brings home to us how different
they were in taste and in temper from their more vulgar and feeble
successors)—contains a curious panegyric on _wise William_ Pierrepont, to
whom the Parliamentary party resorted as an oracle of judgment, and whom
Cromwell himself, if tradition may be trusted, at times condescended to
consult and court. He did not, however, transmit much of his discretion
to his grandson, Lady Mary’s father. This nobleman, for he inherited from
an elder branch of the family both the marquisate of Dorchester and the
dukedom of Kingston, was a mere man ‘about town,’ as the homely phrase
then went, who passed a long life of fashionable idleness interspersed
with political intrigue, and who signalised his old age by marrying
a young beauty of fewer years than his youngest daughter, who, as he
very likely knew, cared nothing for him and much for another person.
He had the ‘grand air,’ however, and he expected his children, when he
visited them, to kneel down immediately and ask his blessing, which,
if his character was what is said, must have been _very_ valuable. The
only attention he ever (that we know of) bestowed upon Lady Mary was
a sort of theatrical outrage, pleasant enough to her at the time, but
scarcely in accordance with the educational theories in which we now
believe. He was a member of the Kit-Cat, a great Whig club, the Brooks’s
of Queen Anne’s time, which, like Brooks’s, appears not to have been
purely political, but to have found time for occasional relaxation and
for somewhat unbusiness-like discussions. They held annually a formal
meeting to arrange the female toasts for that year; and we are told that
a whim seized her father to nominate Lady Mary, ‘then not eight years
old, a candidate; alleging that she was far prettier than any lady on
their list.’ The other members demurred, because the rules of the club
forbade them to elect a beauty whom they had never seen. ‘Then you shall
see her,’ cried he; and in the gaiety of the moment sent orders home to
have her finely dressed and brought to him at the tavern, where she was
received with acclamations, her claim unanimously allowed, her health
drunk by every one present, and her name engraved in due form upon a
drinking-glass. The company consisting of some of the most eminent men
in England, she went from the lap of one poet, or patriot, or statesman,
to the arms of another, was feasted with sweetmeats, overwhelmed with
caresses, and what perhaps already pleased her better than either, heard
her wit and beauty loudly extolled on every side. Pleasure, she said,
was too poor a word to express her sensations; they amounted to ecstasy:
never again, throughout her whole future life, did she pass so happy
a day. Nor, indeed, could she; for the love of admiration, which this
scene was calculated to excite or increase, could never again be so fully
gratified; there is always some alloying ingredient in the cup, some
drawback upon the triumphs, of grown people. Her father carried on the
frolic, and we may conclude, confirmed the taste, by having her picture
painted for the club-room, that she might be enrolled a regular toast.
Perhaps some young ladies of more than eight years old would not much
object to have lived in those times. Fathers may be wiser now than they
were then, but they rarely make themselves so thoroughly agreeable to
their children.
This stimulating education would leave a weak and vain girl still
more vain and weak; but it had not that effect on Lady Mary. Vain she
probably was, and her father’s boastfulness perhaps made her vainer; but
her vanity took an intellectual turn. She read vaguely and widely; she
managed to acquire some knowledge—how much is not clear—of Greek and
Latin, and certainly learned with sufficient thoroughness French and
Italian. She used to say that she had the worst education in the world,
and that it was only by the ‘help of an uncommon memory and indefatigable
labour’ that she had acquired her remarkable attainments. Her father
certainly seems to have been capable of any degree of inattention and
neglect; but we should not perhaps credit too entirely all the legends
which an old lady recounted to her grandchildren of the intellectual
difficulties of her youth.
She seems to have been encouraged by her grandmother, one of the
celebrated Evelyn family, whose memory is thus enigmatically but still
expressively enshrined in the diary of the author of _Sylva_:—‘Under this
date,’ we are informed, ‘of the 2d of July 1649, he records a day spent
at Godstone, where Sir John’ (this lady’s father) ‘was on a visit with
his daughter;’ and he adds, ‘Mem. The prodigious memory of Sir John of
Wilts’s daughter, since married to Mr. W. Pierrepont.’ The lady who was
thus formidable in her youth deigned in her old age to write frequently,
as we should now say,—to open a ‘regular commerce’ of letters, as was
said in that age—with Lady Mary when quite a girl, which she always
believed to have been beneficial to her, and probably believed rightly;
for she was intelligent enough to comprehend what was said to her, and
the old lady had watched many changes in many things.
Her greatest intellectual guide, at least so in after life she used to
relate, was Mr. Wortley, whom she afterwards married. ‘When I was young,’
she said, ‘I was a great admirer of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_, and that was
one of the chief reasons that set me upon the thoughts of stealing the
Latin language. Mr. Wortley was the only person to whom I communicated
my design, and he encouraged me in it. I used to study five or six hours
a day for two years in my father’s library; and so got that language,
whilst everybody else thought I was reading nothing but novels and
romances.’ She perused, however, some fiction also; for she possessed,
till her death, the whole library of Mrs. Lennox’s _Female Quixote_, a
ponderous series of novels in folio, in one of which she had written, in
her fairest youthful hand, the names and characteristic qualities of ‘the
beautiful Diana, the volatile Clemene, the melancholy Doris, Celadon the
faithful, Adamas the wise, and so on, forming two columns.’
Of Mr. Wortley’s character it is not difficult, from the materials before
us, to decipher the features; he was a slow man, with a taste for quick
companions. Swift’s diary to Stella mentions an evening spent over a
bottle of old wine with Mr. Wortley and Mr. Addison. Mr. Wortley was
a rigid Whig, and Swift’s transition to Toryism soon broke short that
friendship. But with Addison he maintained an intimacy which lasted
during their joint lives, and survived the marriages of both. With Steele
likewise he was upon the closest terms, is said to have written some
papers in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_; and the second volume of the
former is certainly dedicated to him in affectionate and respectful terms.
Notwithstanding, however, these conspicuous testimonials to high ability,
Mr. Wortley was an orderly and dull person. Every letter received by him
from his wife during five-and-twenty years of absence, was found, at
his death, carefully endorsed with the date of its arrival, and with a
_synopsis_ of its contents. ‘He represented,’ we are told, ‘at various
times, Huntingdon, Westminster, and Peterborough in Parliament, and
appears to have been a member of that class who win respectful attention
by sober and business-like qualities; and his name is constantly found in
the drier and more formal part of the politics of the time.’ He answered
to the description given more recently of a similar person: ‘Is not,’ it
was asked, ‘Sir John —— a very methodical person?’ ‘Certainly he is,’
was the reply, ‘he files his invitations to dinner.’ The Wortley papers,
according to the description of those who have inspected them, seem to
contain the accumulations of similar documents during many years. He
hoarded money, however, to more purpose, for he died one of the richest
commoners in England; and a considerable part of the now marvellous
wealth of the Bute family seems at first to have been derived from him.
Whatever good qualities Addison and Steele discovered in Mr. Wortley,
they were certainly not those of a good writer. We have from his pen and
from that of Lady Mary a description of the state of English politics
during the three first years of George III., and any one who wishes to
understand how much readability depends upon good writing would do well
to compare the two. Lady Mary’s is a clear and bright description of
all the superficial circumstances of the time; Mr. Wortley’s is equally
superficial, often unintelligible and always lumbering, and scarcely
succeeds in telling us more than that the writer was wholly unsuccessful
in all which he tried to do. As to Mr. Wortley’s contributions to the
periodicals of his time, we may suspect that the jottings preserved
at Loudon are all which he ever wrote of them, and that the style and
arrangement were supplied by more skilful writers. Even a county member
might furnish headings for the _Saturday Review_. He might say: ‘Trent
British vessel—Americans always intrusive—Support Government—Kill all
that is necessary.’
What Lady Mary discovered in Mr. Wortley it is easier to say and shorter,
for he was very handsome. If his portrait can be trusted, there was
a placid and business-like repose about him, which might easily be
attractive to a rather excitable and wild young lady, especially when
combined with imposing features and a quiet sweet expression. He attended
_to her_ also. When she was a girl of fourteen, he met her at a party,
and evinced his admiration. And a little while later, it is not difficult
to fancy that a literary young lady might be much pleased with a
good-looking gentleman not uncomfortably older than herself, yet having a
place in the world, and well known to the literary men of the age. He was
acquainted with the classics too, or was supposed to be so; and whether
it was a consequence of or a preliminary to their affections, Lady Mary
wished to know the classics also.
Bishop Burnet was so kind as to superintend the singular studies—for
such they were clearly thought—of this aristocratic young lady; and the
translation of the _Enchiridion_ of Epictetus, which he revised, is
printed in this edition of her works. But even so grave an undertaking
could not wholly withdraw her from more congenial pursuits. She commenced
a correspondence with Miss Wortley, Mr. Wortley’s unmarried sister,
which still remains, though Miss Wortley’s letters are hardly to be
called hers, for her brother composed, and she merely copied them. The
correspondence is scarcely in the sort of English or in the tone which
young ladies, we understand, now use.
‘It is as impossible,’ says Miss Wortley, ‘for my dearest
Lady Mary to utter thought that can seem dull as to put on a
look that is not beautiful. Want of wit is a fault that those
who envy you most would not be able to find in your kind
compliments. To me they seem perfect, since repeated assurances
of your kindness forbid me to question their sincerity. You
have often found that the most angry, nay, the most neglectful
air you can assume, has made as deep a wound as the kindest;
and these lines of yours, that you tax with dulness (perhaps
because they were writ when you was not in a right humour,
or when your thoughts were elsewhere employed), are so far
from deserving the imputation, that the very turn of your
expression, had I forgot the rest of your charms, would be
sufficient to make me lament the only fault you have—your
inconstancy.’
To which the reply is:
‘I am infinitely obliged to you, my dear Mrs. Wortley, for the
wit, beauty, and other fine qualities, you so generously bestow
upon me. Next to receiving them from Heaven, you are the person
from whom I would choose to receive gifts and graces: I am very
well satisfied to owe them to your own delicacy of imagination,
which represents to you the idea of a fine lady, and you have
good nature enough to fancy I am she. All this is mighty well,
but you do not stop there; imagination is boundless. After
giving me imaginary wit and beauty, you give me imaginary
passions, and you tell me I’m in love: if I am, ’tis a perfect
sin of ignorance, for I don’t so much as know the man’s name:
I have been studying these three hours, and cannot guess who
you mean. I passed the days of Nottingham races [at] Thoresby
without seeing, or even wishing to see, one of the sex. Now,
if I am in love, I have very hard fortune to conceal it so
industriously from my own knowledge, and yet discover it so
much to other people. ’Tis against all form to have such a
passion as that, without giving one sigh for the matter. Pray
tell me the name of him I love, that I may (according to
the laudable custom of lovers) sigh to the woods and groves
hereabouts, and teach it to the echo.’
After some time Miss Wortley unfortunately died, and there was an obvious
difficulty in continuing the correspondence without the aid of an
appropriate sisterly screen. Mr. Wortley seems to have been tranquil and
condescending; perhaps he thought placid tactics would be most effective,
for Lady Mary was not so calm. He sent her some _Tatlers_, and received,
by way of thanks, the following tolerably encouraging letter:
‘_To Mr. Wortley Montagu._
‘I am surprised at one of the _Tatlers_ you send me; is it
possible to have any sort of esteem for a person one believes
capable of having such trifling inclinations? Mr. Bickerstaff
has very wrong notions of our sex. I can say there are some
of us that despise charms of show, and all the pageantry of
greatness, perhaps with more ease than any of the philosophers.
In contemning the world, they seem to take pains to contemn
it; we despise it, without taking the pains to read lessons
of morality to make us do it. At least I know I have always
looked upon it with contempt, without being at the expense of
one serious reflection to oblige me to it. I carry the matter
yet farther; was I to choose of two thousand pounds a year
or twenty thousand, the first would be my choice. There is
something of an unavoidable _embarras_ in making what is called
a great figure in the world; [it] takes off from the happiness
of life; I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great
estates and titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought
only to be given to fools, for ’tis only to them that they are
blessings. The pretty fellows you speak of, I own entertain
me sometimes; but is it impossible to be diverted with what
one despises? I can laugh at a puppet-show; at the same time
I know there is nothing in it worth my attention or regard.
General notions are generally wrong. Ignorance and folly are
thought the best foundations for virtue, as if not knowing
what a good wife is was necessary to make one so. I confess
that can never be my way of reasoning; as I always forgive an
_injury_ when I think it not done out of malice, I can never
think myself _obliged_ by what is done without design. Give
me leave to say it (I know it sounds vain), I know how to
make a man of sense happy; but then that man must resolve to
contribute something towards it himself. I have so much esteem
for you, I should be very sorry to hear you was unhappy; but
for the world I would not be the instrument of making you so;
which (of the humour you are) is hardly to be avoided if I am
your wife. You distrust me—I can neither be easy, nor loved,
where I am distrusted. Nor do I believe your passion for me is
what you pretend it; at least I am sure was I in love I could
not talk as you do. Few women would have spoke so plainly as
I have done; but to dissemble is among the things I never do.
I take more pains to approve my conduct to myself than to
the world; and would not have to accuse myself of a minute’s
deceit. I wish I loved you enough to devote myself to be for
ever miserable, for the pleasure of a day or two’s happiness. I
cannot resolve upon it. You must think otherwise of me, or not
all.
‘I don’t enjoin you to burn this letter. I know you will. ’Tis
the first I ever writ to one of your sex, and shall be the
last. You must never expect another. I resolve against all
correspondence of the kind; my resolutions are seldom made, and
never broken.’
Mr. Wortley, however, still grumbled. He seems to have expected a young
lady to do something even more decisive than ask him to marry her. He
continued to hesitate and pause. The lady in the comedy says, ‘What right
has a man to intend unless he states his intentions?’ and Lady Mary’s
biographers are entirely of that opinion. They think her exceedingly
ill-used, and Mr. Wortley exceedingly to blame. And so it may have been;
certainly a love-correspondence is rarely found where activity and
intrepidity on the lady’s side so much contrasts with quiescence and
timidity on the gentleman’s. If, however, we could summon him before
us, probably Mr. Wortley would have something to answer on his own
behalf. It is tolerably plain that he thought Lady Mary too excitable.
‘Certainly,’ he doubtless reasoned, ‘she is a handsome young lady, and
very witty; but beauty and wit are dangerous as well as attractive.
Vivacity is delightful; but my esteemed friend Mr. Addison has observed
that excessive quickness of parts is not unfrequently the cause of
extreme rapidity in action. Lady Mary makes love to me before marriage,
and I like it; but may she not make love also to some one else after
marriage, and then I shall not like it.’ Accordingly he writes to her
timorously as to her love of pleasure, her love of romantic reading, her
occasional toleration of younger gentlemen and quicker admirers. At last,
however, he proposed; and, as far as the lady was concerned, there was no
objection.
We might have expected, from a superficial view of the facts, that there
would have been no difficulty either on the side of her father. Mr.
Wortley died one of the richest commoners in England; was of the first
standing in society, of good family, and he had apparently, therefore,
money to settle and station to offer to his bride. And he did offer both.
He was ready to settle an ample sum on Lady Mary, both as his wife and
as his widow, and was anxious that, if they married, they should live
in a manner suitable to her rank and his prospects. But nevertheless
there was a difficulty. The _Tatler_ had recently favoured its readers
with dissertations upon social ethics not altogether dissimilar to those
with which the _Saturday Review_ frequently instructs its readers. One
of these dissertations contained an elaborate exposure of the folly of
settling your estate upon your unborn children. The arguments were of
a sort very easily imaginable. ‘Why,’ it was said, ‘should you give
away that which you have to a person whom you do not know; whom you may
never see; whom you may not like when you do see; who may be undutiful,
unpleasant, or idiotic? Why, too, should each generation surrender its
due control over the next? When the family estate is settled, men of the
world know that the father’s control is gone, for disinterested filial
affection is an unfrequent though doubtless possible virtue; but so long
as _property_ is in suspense, all expectants will be attentive to those
who have it in their power to give or not to give it.’ These arguments
had converted Mr. Wortley, who is said even to have contributed notes
for the article, and they seem to have converted Lady Mary also. She
was to have her money, and the most plain-spoken young ladies do not
commonly care to argue much about the future provision for their possible
children; the subject is always delicate and a little frightful, and on
the whole, must be left to themselves. But Lord Dorchester, her father,
felt it his duty to be firm. It is an old saying, that ‘you never know
where a man’s conscience may turn up,’ and the advent of ethical feeling
was in this case even unusually beyond calculation. Lord Dorchester had
never been an anxious father, and was not now going to be a liberal
father. He had never cared much about Lady Mary, except in so far as he
could himself gain _éclat_ by exhibiting her youthful beauty, and he
was not now at her marriage about to do at all more than was necessary
and decent in his station. It was not therefore apparently probable
that he would be irritatingly obstinate respecting the income of his
daughter’s children. He was so, however. He deemed it a duty to see
that ‘_his_ grandchild never should be a beggar,’ and, for what reason
does not so clearly appear, wished that his eldest male grandchild
should be immensely richer than all his other grandchildren. The old
feudal aristocrat, often in modern Europe so curiously disguised in the
indifferent exterior of a careless man of the world, was, as became him,
dictatorial and unalterable upon the duty of founding a family. Though
he did not care much for his daughter, he cared much for the position of
his daughter’s eldest son. He had probably stumbled on the fundamental
truth that ‘girls were girls, and boys were boys,’ and was disinclined
to disregard the rule of primogeniture by which he had obtained his
marquisate, and from which he expected a dukedom.
Mr. Wortley, however, was through life a man, if eminent in nothing else,
eminent at least in obstinacy. He would not give up the doctrine of the
_Tatler_ even to obtain Lady Mary. The match was accordingly abandoned,
and Lord Dorchester looked out for and found another gentleman whom he
proposed to make his son-in-law; for he believed, according to the old
morality, ‘that it was the duty of the parents to find a husband for a
daughter, and that when he was found, it was the daughter’s duty to marry
him.’ It was as wrong in her to attempt to choose as in him to neglect
to seek. Lady Mary was, however, by no means disposed to accept this
passive theory of female obligation. She _had_ sought and chosen; and
to her choice she intended to adhere. The conduct of Mr. Wortley would
have offended some ladies, but it rather augmented her admiration. She
had exactly that sort of irritable intellect which sets an undue value
on new theories of society and morality, and is pleased when others do
so too. She thought Mr. Wortley was quite right not to ‘defraud himself
for a possible infant,’ and admired his constancy and firmness. She
determined to risk a step, as she herself said, unjustifiable to her own
relatives, but which she nevertheless believed that she could justify to
herself. She decided on eloping with Mr. Wortley.
Before, however, taking this audacious leap, she looked a little. Though
she did not object to the sacrifice of the customary inheritance of her
contingent son, she by no means approved of sacrificing the settlement
which Mr. Wortley had undertaken at a prior period of the negotiation to
make upon herself. And, according to common sense, she was undoubtedly
judicious. She was going from her father, and foregoing the money which
he had promised her; and therefore it was not reasonable that, by going
_to_ her lover, she should forfeit also the money which _he_ had promised
her. And there is nothing offensive in her mode of expression. ‘’Tis
something odd for a woman that brings nothing to expect anything; but
after the way of my education, I dare not pretend to live but in some
degree suitable to it. I had rather die than return to a dependency upon
relations I have disobliged. Save me from that fear, if you love me. If
you cannot, or think I ought not to expect it, be sincere and tell me so.
’Tis better I should not be yours at all, than, for a short happiness,
involve myself in ages of misery. I hope there will never be occasion
for this precaution; but, however, ’tis necessary to make it.’ But true
and rational as all this seems, perhaps it is still truer and still more
rational to say, that if a woman has not sufficient confidence in her
lover to elope with him without a previous promise of a good settlement,
she had better not elope with him at all. After all, if he declines to
make the stipulated settlement, the lady will have either to return to
her friends or to marry without it, and she would have the full choice
between these satisfactory alternatives, even if she asked no previous
promise from her lover. At any rate, the intrusion of coarse money among
the refined materials of romance is, in this case, even more curious and
remarkable than usual.
After some unsuccessful attempts, Lady Mary and Mr. Wortley did elope
and did marry, and, after a certain interval, of course, Lord Dorchester
received them, notwithstanding their contempt of his authority, into
some sort of favour and countenance. They had probably saved him money
by their irregularity, and economical frailties are rarely judged
severely by men of fashion who are benefited by them. Lady Mary, however,
was long a little mistrusted by her own relations, and never seems to
have acquired much family influence; but her marriage was not her only
peculiarity, or the only one which impartial relations might dislike.
The pair appear to have been for a little while tolerably happy. Lady
Mary was excitable, and wanted letters when absent, and attention when
present: Mr. Wortley was heavy and slow; could not write letters when
away, and seemed torpid in her society when at home. Still, these are
common troubles. Common, too, is the matrimonial correspondence upon
baby’s deficiency in health, and on Mrs. Behn’s opinion that ‘the cold
bath is the best medicine for weak children.’ It seems an odd end to
a deferential perusal of Latin authors in girlhood, and to a spirited
elopement with the preceptor in after years; but the transition is only
part of the usual irony of human life.
The world, both social and political, into which Lady Mary was introduced
by her marriage was singularly calculated to awaken the faculties, to
stimulate the intellect, to sharpen the wit, and to harden the heart of
an intelligent, witty, and hard-headed woman. The world of London—even
the higher world—is now too large to be easily seen, or to be pithily
described. The elements are so many, their position is so confused, the
display of their mutual counteraction is so involved, that many years
must pass away before even a very clever woman can thoroughly comprehend
it all. She will cease to be young and handsome long ere she does
comprehend it. And when she at last understands it, it does not seem a
fit subject for concise and summary wit. Its evident complexity refuses
to be condensed into pithy sayings and brilliant _bons-mots_. It has
fallen into the hands of philosophers, with less brains perhaps than the
satirists of our fathers, but with more anxiety to tell the whole truth,
more toleration for the many-sidedness of the world, with less of sharp
conciseness, but, perhaps, with more of useful completeness. As are the
books, so are the readers. People do not wish to read satire nowadays.
The epigrams even of Pope would fall dull and dead upon this serious and
investigating time. The folly of the last age affected levity; the folly
of this, as we all know, encases itself in ponderous volumes which defy
refutation, in elaborate arguments which prove nothing, in theories which
confuse the uninstructed, and which irritate the well-informed. The folly
of a hundred years since was at least the folly of Vivien, but ours is
the folly of Merlin:
‘_You_ read the book, my pretty Vivien,
And none can read the text, not even I,
And none can read the comments but myself—
Oh, the results are simple!’
Perhaps people did not know then as much as they know now: indisputably
they knew nothing like so much in a superficial way _about_ so many
things; but they knew far more correctly where their knowledge began and
where it stopped; what they thought and why they thought it: they had
readier illustrations and more summary phrases; they could say at once
what it _came to_, and to what action it should lead.
The London of the eighteenth century was an aristocratic world, which
lived to itself, which displayed the virtues and developed the vices of
an aristocracy which was under little fear of external control or check;
which had emancipated itself from the control of the crown; which had
not fallen under the control of the _bourgeoisie_; which saw its own
life, and saw that, according to its own maxims, it was good. Public
opinion now rules, and it is an opinion which constrains the conduct,
and narrows the experience, and dwarfs the violence, and minimises the
frankness of the highest classes, while it diminishes their vices,
supports their conscience, and precludes their grossness. There was
nothing like this in the last century, especially in the early part of
it. The aristocracy came to town from their remote estates,—where they
were uncontrolled by any opinion or by any equal society, and where the
eccentricities and personalities of each character were fostered and
exaggerated,—to a London which was like a large county town, in which
everybody of rank knew everybody of rank, where the eccentricities
of each rural potentate came into picturesque collision with the
eccentricities of other rural potentates, where the most minute allusions
to the peculiarities and the career of the principal persons were
instantly understood, where squibs were on every table, and where satire
was in the air. No finer field of social observation could be found for
an intelligent and witty woman. Lady Mary understood it at once.
Nor was the political life of the last century so unfavourable to the
influence and so opposed to the characteristic comprehension of women
as our present life. We are now ruled by political discussion and by
a popular assembly, by leading articles, and by the House of Commons.
But women can scarcely ever compose leaders, and no woman sits in our
representative chamber. The whole tide of abstract discussion, which
fills our mouths and deafens our ears, the whole complex accumulation
of facts and figures to which we refer every thing, and which we apply
to every thing, is quite unfemale. A lady has an insight into what she
sees; but how will this help her with the case of the _Trent_, with
the proper structure of a representative chamber, with Indian finance
or parliamentary reform? Women are clever, but cleverness of itself
is nothing at present. A sharp Irish writer described himself ‘as
bothered intirely by the want of preliminary information;’ women are
in the same difficulty now. Their nature may hereafter change, as some
sanguine advocates suggest. But the visible species certainly have not
the intellectual providence to acquire the vast stores of dry information
which alone can enable them to judge adequately of our present
controversies. We are ruled by a machinery of oratory and discussion,
in which women have no share, and which they hardly comprehend: we are
engaged on subjects which need an arduous learning, to which they have no
pretensions.
In the last century much of this was very different. The Court still
counted for much in English politics. The House of Commons was the
strongest power in the State machine, but it was not so immeasurably the
strongest power as now. It was absolutely supreme within its sphere,
but that sphere was limited. It could absolutely control the money, and
thereby the policy of the State. Whether there should be peace or war,
excise or no excise, it could and did despotically determine. It was
supreme in its choice of _measures_. But, on the other hand, it had only
a secondary influence in the choice of _persons_. Who the Prime Minister
was to be, was a question not only theoretically determinable, but in
fact determined by the Sovereign. The House of Commons could despotically
impose two conditions: first, that the Prime Minister should be a man
of sufficient natural ability, and sufficient parliamentary experience,
to conduct the business of his day; secondly, that he should adopt the
policy which the nation wished. But, subject to a conformity with these
prerequisites, the selection of the king was nearly uncontrolled. Sir
Robert Walpole was the greatest master of parliamentary tactics and
political business in his generation; he was a statesman of wide views
and consummate dexterity; but these intellectual gifts, even joined to
immense parliamentary experience, were not alone sufficient to make him
and to keep him Prime Minister of England. He also maintained, during
two reigns, a complete system of court-strategy. During the reign of
George II. he kept a _queen-watcher_. Lord Hervey, one of the cleverest
men in England, the keenest observer, perhaps, in England, was induced,
by very dexterous management, to remain at court during many years—to
observe the queen, to hint to the queen, to remove wrong impressions
from the queen, to confirm the Walpolese predilections of the queen, to
report every incident to Sir Robert. The records of politics tell us few
stranger tales than that it should have been necessary for the Sir Robert
Peel of the age to hire a subordinate as safe as Eldon, and as witty as
Canning, for the sole purpose of managing a clever German woman, to whom
the selection of a Prime Minister was practically intrusted. Nor was this
the only court-campaign which Sir Robert had to conduct, or in which he
was successful. Lady Mary, who hated him much, has satirically described
the foundation upon which his court favour rested during the reign of
George I.:—
‘The new Court with all their train was arrived before I left
the country. The Duke of Marlborough was returned in a sort of
triumph, with the apparent merit of having suffered for his
fidelity to the succession, and was reinstated in his office of
general, &c. In short, all people who had suffered any hardship
or disgrace during the late ministry would have it believed
that it was occasioned by their attachment to the House of
Hanover. Even Mr. Walpole, who had been sent to the Tower for
a piece of bribery proved upon him, was called a confessor to
the cause. But he had another piece of good luck that yet more
contributed to his advancement; he had a very handsome sister,
whose folly had lost her reputation in London; but the yet
greater folly of Lord Townshend, who happened to be a neighbour
in Norfolk to Mr. Walpole, had occasioned his being drawn in to
marry her some months before the queen died.
‘Lord Townshend had that sort of understanding which commonly
makes men honest in the first part of their lives; they follow
the instructions of their tutor, and, till somebody thinks it
worth their while to show them a new path, go regularly on in
the road where they are set. Lord Townshend had then been many
years an excellent husband to a sober wife, a kind master
to all his servants and dependents, a serviceable relation
wherever it was in his power, and followed the instinct of
nature in being fond of his children. Such a sort of behaviour
without any glaring absurdity, either in prodigality or
avarice, always gains a man the reputation of reasonable and
honest; and this was his character when the Earl of Godolphin
sent him envoy to the States, not doubting but he would be
faithful to his orders, without giving himself the trouble of
criticising on them, which is what all ministers wish in an
envoy. Robotun, a French refugee (secretary to Bernstoff, one
of the Elector of Hanover’s ministers), happened then to be at
the Hague, and was civilly received at Lord Townshend’s, who
treated him at his table with the English hospitality, and he
was charmed with a reception which his birth and education did
not entitle him to. Lord Townshend was recalled when the queen
changed her ministry; his wife died, and he retired into the
country, where (as I have said before) Walpole had art enough
to make him marry his sister Dolly. At that time, I believe, he
did not propose much more advantage by the match than to get
rid of a girl that lay heavy on his hands.
‘When King George ascended the throne, he was surrounded by
all his German ministers and playfellows, male and female.
Baron Goritz was the most considerable among them both for
birth and fortune. He had managed the king’s treasury thirty
years with the utmost fidelity and economy; and had the true
German honesty, being a plain, sincere, and unambitious man.
Bernstoff, the secretary, was of a different turn. He was
avaricious, artful, and designing; and had got his share in the
king’s councils by bribing his women. Robotun was employed in
these matters, and had the sanguine ambition of a Frenchman. He
resolved there should be an English ministry of his choosing;
and, knowing none of them personally but Townshend, he had
not failed to recommend him to his master, and his master
to the king, as the only proper person for the important
post of Secretary of State; and he entered upon that office
with universal applause, having at that time a very popular
character, which he might possibly have retained for ever if he
had not been entirely governed by his wife and her brother R.
Walpole, whom he immediately advanced to be paymaster, esteemed
a post of exceeding profit, and very necessary for his indebted
estate.’
And it is indisputable that Lord Townshend, who thought he was a very
great statesman, and who began as the patron of Sir Robert Walpole,
nevertheless was only his Court-agent—the manager on his behalf of the
king and of the king’s mistresses.
We need not point out at length, for the passage we have cited of itself
indicates how well suited this sort of politics is to the comprehension
and to the pen of a keen-sighted and witty woman.
Nor was the Court the principal improver of the London society of the
age. The House of Commons was then a part of society. This separate,
isolated, aristocratic world, of which we have spoken, had an almost
undisputed command of both Houses in the Legislature. The letter of the
constitution did not give it them, and no law appointed that it should
be so. But the aristocratic class were by far the most educated, by
far the most respected, by far the most _eligible_ part of the nation.
Even in the boroughs, where there was universal suffrage, or something
near it, they were the favourites. Accordingly, they gave the tone to
the House of Commons; they required the small community of members who
did not belong to their order to conform as far as they could to their
usages, and to guide themselves by their code of morality and of taste.
In the main the House of Commons obeyed these injunctions, and it was
repaid by being incorporated within the aristocratic world: it became
not only the council of the nation, but the debating-club of fashion.
That which was ‘received’ modified the recipient. The remains of the
aristocratic society, wherever we find them, are penetrated not only
with an aristocratic but with a political spirit. They breathe a sort
of atmosphere of politics. In the London of the present day, the vast
miscellaneous _bourgeois_ London, we all know that this is not so. ‘In
the country,’ said a splenetic observer, ‘people talk politics; at London
dinners you talk nothing; between two pillars of crinoline you eat and
are resigned.’ A hundred and fifty years ago, as far as our rather ample
materials inform us, people in London talked politics just as they now
talk politics in Worcestershire; and being on the spot, and cooped up
with politicians in a small social world, their talk was commonly better.
They knew the people of whom they spoke, even if they did not know the
subjects with which they were concerned.
No element is better fitted to counteract the characteristic evil of an
aristocratic society. The defect of such societies in all times has been
frivolity. All talk has tended to become gossip; it has ceased to deal
with important subjects, and has devoted itself entirely to unimportant
incidents. Whether the Duc de —— has more or less prevailed with the
Marquise de —— is a sort of common form into which any details may be
fitted, and any names inserted. The frivolities of gallantry—never very
important save to some woman who has long been dead—fill the records
of all aristocracies who lived under a despotism, who had no political
authority, no daily political cares. The aristocracy of England in the
last century was, at any rate, exempt from _this_ reproach. There is
in the records of it not only an intellectuality, which would prove
little,—for every clever describer, by the subtleties of his language
and the arrangement of his composition, gives a sort of intellectuality
even to matters which have no pretension to it themselves,—but likewise
a pervading medium of political discussion. The very language in which
they are written is the language of political business. Horace Walpole
was certainly by nature no politician and no orator; yet no discerning
critic can read a page of his voluminous remains without feeling that
the writer has through life lived with politicians and talked with
politicians. A keen observant mind, not naturally political, but capable
of comprehending and viewing any subject which was brought before it, has
chanced to have this particular subject—politics—presented to it for a
lifetime; and all its delineations, all its efforts, all its thoughts,
reflect it, and are coloured by it. In all the records of the eighteenth
century the tonic of business is seen to combat the relaxing effect of
habitual luxury.
This element, too, is favourable to a clever woman. The more you can
put before such a person the greater she will be; the less her world,
the less she is. If you place the most keen-sighted lady in the midst
of the pure futilities and unmitigated flirtations of an aristocracy,
she will sink to the level of those elements, and will scarcely seem to
wish for anything more, or to be competent for anything higher. But if
she is placed in an intellectual atmosphere, in which political or other
important subjects are currently passing, you will probably find that
she can talk better upon them than you can, without your being able to
explain whence she derived either her information or her talent.
The subjects, too, which were discussed in the political society of the
last age were not so inscrutable to women as our present subjects; and
even when there were great difficulties they were more on a level with
men in the discussion of them than they now are. It was no disgrace to
be destitute of preliminary information at a time in which there were
no accumulated stores from which such information could be derived. A
lightening element of female influence is therefore to be found through
much of the politics of the eighteenth century.
Lady Mary entered easily into all this world, both social and political.
She had beauty for the fashionable, satire for the witty, knowledge for
the learned, and intelligence for the politician. She was not too refined
to shrink from what we now consider the coarseness of that time. Many
of her verses themselves are scarcely adapted for our decorous pages.
Perhaps the following give no unfair idea of her ordinary state of mind:
‘TOWN ECLOGUES.
‘ROXANA; OR, THE DRAWING-ROOM.
‘Roxana, from the Court retiring late,
Sigh’d her soft sorrows at St. James’s gate.
Such heavy thoughts lay brooding in her breast,
Not her own chairmen with more weight oppress’d;
They groan the cruel load they’re doom’d to bear;
She in these gentle sounds express’d her care.
“Was it for this that I these roses wear?
For this new-set the jewels for my hair?
Ah! Princess! with what zeal have I pursued!
Almost forgot the duty of a prude.
Thinking I never could attend too soon,
I’ve miss’d my prayers, to get me dress’d by noon.
For thee, ah! what for thee did I resign!
My pleasures, passions, all that e’er was mine.
I sacrific’d both modesty and ease,
Left operas and went to filthy plays;
Double-entendres shock my tender ear;
Yet even this for thee I choose to bear.
In glowing youth, when nature bids be gay,
And every joy of life before me lay,
By honour prompted, and by pride restrain’d,
The pleasures of the young my soul disdain’d:
Sermons I sought, and with a mien severe
Censur’d my neighbours, and said daily prayer.
“Alas! how chang’d—with the same sermon-mien
That once I pray’d, the _What d’ye call’t_ I’ve seen.
Ah! cruel Princess, for thy sake I’ve lost
That reputation which so dear had cost:
I, who avoided every public place,
When bloom and beauty bade me show my face,
Now near thee constant every night abide
With never-failing duty by thy side;
Myself and daughters standing on a row,
To all the foreigners a goodly show!
Oft had your drawing-room been sadly thin,
And merchants’ wives close by the chair been seen,
Had not I amply filled the empty space,
And saved your highness from the dire disgrace.
“Yet Coquetilla’s artifice prevails,
When all my merit and my duty fails;
That Coquetilla, whose deluding airs
Corrupt our virgins, still our youth ensnares;
So sunk her character, so lost her fame,
Scarce visited before your highness came:
Yet for the bed-chamber ’tis her you choose,
When zeal and fame and virtue you refuse.
Ah! worthy choice! not one of all your train
Whom censure blasts not, and dishonours stain!
Let the nice hind now suckle dirty pigs,
And the proud pea-hen hatch the cuckoo’s eggs!
Let Iris leave her paint and own her age,
And grave Suffolka wed a giddy page!
A greater miracle is daily view’d,
A virtuous Princess with a Court so lewd.
“I know thee, Court! with all thy treach’rous wiles,
Thy false caresses and undoing smiles!
Ah! Princess, learn’d in all the courtly arts,
To cheat our hopes, and yet to gain our hearts!
“Large lovely bribes are the great statesman’s aim;
And the neglected patriot follows fame.
The Prince is ogled; some the king pursue;
But your Roxana only follows you.
Despis’d Roxana, cease, and try to find
Some other, since the Princess proves unkind:
Perhaps it is not hard to find at Court,
If not a greater, a more firm support.”’
There was every kind of rumour as to Lady Mary’s own conduct, and we
have no means of saying whether any of these rumours were true. There
is no evidence against her which is worthy of the name. So far as can
be proved, she was simply a gay, witty, bold-spoken, handsome woman,
who made many enemies by unscrupulous speech, and many friends by
unscrupulous flirtation. We may believe, but we cannot prove, that
she found her husband tedious, and was dissatisfied that his slow,
methodical, _borné_ mind made so little progress in the political world,
and understood so little of what really passed there. Unquestionably
she must have much preferred talking to Lord Hervey to talking with Mr.
Montagu. But we must not credit the idle scandals of a hundred years
since, because they may have been true, or because they appear not
inconsistent with the characters of those to whom they relate. There were
legends against every attractive and fashionable woman in that age,
and most of the legends were doubtless exaggerations and inventions. We
cannot know the truth of such matters now, and it would hardly be worth
searching into if we could; but the important fact is certain, Lady Mary
lived in a world in which the worst rumours were greedily told, and often
believed, about her and others; and the moral refinement of a woman must
always be impaired by such a contact.
Lady Mary was so unfortunate as to incur the partial dislike of one of
the great recorders of that age, and the bitter hostility of the other.
She was no favourite with Horace Walpole, and the bitter enemy of Pope.
The first is easily explicable. Horace Walpole never loved his father,
but recompensed himself by hating his father’s enemies. No one connected
with the opposition to Sir Robert is spared by his son, if there be a
fair opportunity for unfavourable insinuation. Mr. Wortley Montagu was
the very man for a grave mistake. He made the very worst that could be
made in that age. He joined the party of constitutional exiles on the
Opposition bench, who had no real objection to the policy of Sir Robert
Walpole; who, when they had a chance, adopted that policy themselves;
who were discontented because they had no power, and he had all the
power. Probably too, being a man eminently respectable, Mr. Montagu was
frightened at Sir Robert’s unscrupulous talk and not very scrupulous
actions. At any rate, he opposed Sir Robert; and thence many a little
observation of Horace Walpole’s against Lady Mary.
Why Pope and Lady Mary quarrelled is a question on which much discussion
has been expended, and on which a judicious German professor might even
now compose an interesting and exhaustive monograph. A curt English
critic will be more apt to ask, ‘Why they should _not_ have quarrelled?’
We know that Pope quarrelled with almost every one; we know that Lady
Mary quarrelled or half quarrelled with most of her acquaintances. Why,
then, should they not have quarrelled with one another?
It is certain that they were very intimate at one time; for Pope wrote
to her some of the most pompous letters of compliment in the language.
And the more intimate they were to begin with, the more sure they were
to be enemies in the end. Human nature will not endure that sort of
proximity. An irritable, vain poet, who always fancies that people are
trying to hurt him, whom no argument could convince that every one is
not perpetually thinking about him, cannot long be friendly with a witty
woman of unscrupulous tongue, who spares no one, who could sacrifice
a good friend for a bad _bon-mot_, who thinks of the person whom she
is addressing, not of those about whom she is speaking. The natural
relation of the two is that of victim and torturer, and no other will
long continue. There appear also to have been some money matters (of
all things in the world) between the two. Lady Mary was intrusted by
Pope with some money to use in speculation during the highly fashionable
panic which derives its name from the South-Sea Bubble,—and as of course
it was lost, Pope was very angry. Another story goes, that Pope made
serious love to Lady Mary, and that she laughed at him; upon which a
very personal, and not always very correct, controversy has arisen as to
the probability or improbability of Pope’s exciting a lady’s feelings.
Lord Byron took part in it with his usual acuteness and incisiveness,
and did not leave the discussion more decent than he found it. Pope
doubtless was deformed, and had not the large red health that uncivilised
women admire; yet a clever lady might have taken a fancy to him, for the
little creature knew what he was saying. There is, however, no evidence
that Lady Mary did so. We only know that there was a sudden coolness or
quarrel between them, and that it was the beginning of a long and bitter
hatred.
In their own times Pope’s sensitive disposition probably gave Lady
Mary a great advantage. Her tongue perhaps gave him more pain than his
pen gave her. But in later times she has fared the worse. What between
Pope’s sarcasms and Horace Walpole’s anecdotes, Lady Mary’s reputation
has suffered very considerably. As we have said, her offences are _non
proven_; there is no evidence to convict her; but she is likely to be
condemned upon the general doctrine that a person who is accused of much
is probably guilty of something.
During many years Lady Mary continued to live a distinguished fashionable
and social life, with a single remarkable break. This interval was her
journey to Constantinople. The powers that then were, thought fit to send
Mr. Wortley as ambassador to Constantinople, and his wife accompanied
him. During that visit she kept a journal, and wrote sundry real letters,
out of which, after her return, she composed a series of unreal letters
as to all she saw and did in Turkey, and on the journey there and back,
which were published, and which are still amusing, if not always select,
reading. The Sultan was not then the ‘dying man’; he was the ‘Grand
Turk.’ He was not simply a potentate to be counted with, but a power to
be feared. The appearance of a Turkish army on the Danube had in that
age much the same effect as the appearance of a Russian army now. It
was an object of terror and dread. A mission at Constantinople was not
then a _bureau_ for interference in Turkey, but a serious office for
transacting business with a great European power. A European ambassador
at Constantinople now presses on the Government there impracticable
reforms; he then asked for useful aid. Lady Mary was evidently impressed
by the power of the country in which she sojourned; and we observe in
her letters evident traces of the notion that the Turk was the dread of
Christendom,—which is singular now, when the Turk is its _protégé_.
Lady Mary had another advantage too. Many sorts of books make steady
progress; a scientific treatise published now is sure to be fuller and
better than one on the same subject written long ago. But with books of
travel in a stationary country the presumption is the contrary. In that
case the old book is probably the better book. The first traveller writes
out a plain, straightforward description of the most striking objects
with which he meets; he believes that his readers know nothing of the
country of which he is writing, for till he visited it he probably knew
nothing himself; and, if he is sensible, he describes simply and clearly
all which most impresses him. He has no motive for not dwelling upon the
principal things, and most likely will do so, as they are probably the
most conspicuous. The second traveller is not so fortunate. He is always
in terror of the traveller who went before. He fears the criticism,—‘this
is all very well, _but_ we knew the whole of it before. No. 1 said
that at page 103.’ In consequence he is timid. He picks and skips. He
fancies that you are acquainted with all which is great and important,
and he dwells, for your good and to your pain, upon that which is small
and unimportant. For ordinary readers no result can be more fatal.
They perhaps never read,—they certainly do not remember anything upon
the subject. The curious _minutiæ_ so elaborately set forth, are quite
useless, for they have not the general framework in which to store them.
Not knowing much of the first traveller’s work, that of the second is a
supplement to a treatise with which they are unacquainted. In consequence
they do not read it. Lady Mary made good use of her position in the front
of the herd of tourists. She told us what she saw in Turkey,—all the best
of what she saw, and all the most remarkable things,—and told it very
well.
Nor was this work the only fruit of her Turkish travels; she brought home
the notion of inoculation. Like most improvers, she was roughly spoken
to. Medical men were angry because the practice was not in their books,
and conservative men were cross at the agony of a new idea. Religious
people considered it wicked to have a disease which Providence did not
think fit to send you; and simple people ‘did not like to make themselves
ill of their own accord.’ She triumphed, however, over all obstacles;
inoculation, being really found to lengthen life and save complexions,
before long became general.
One of the first patients upon whom Lady Mary tried the novelty was her
own son, and many considerate people thought it ‘worthy of observation’
that he turned out a scamp. When he ran away from school, the mark of
inoculation, then rare, was used to describe him, and after he was
recovered, he never did anything which was good. His case seems to have
been the common one in which nature (as we speak) requites herself for
the strongheadedness of several generations by the weakness of one.
His father’s and his mother’s family had been rather able for some
generations; the latter remarkably so. But this boy had always a sort of
practical imbecility. He was not stupid, but he never did anything right.
He exemplified another curious trait of nature’s practice. Mr. Montagu
was obstinate, though sensible; Lady Mary was flighty, though clever.
Nature combined the defects. Young Edward Montagu was both obstinate and
flighty. The only pleasure he can ever have given his parents was the
pleasure of _feeling_ their own wisdom. He showed that they were right
before marriage in not settling the paternal property upon him, for he
ran through every shilling he possessed. He was not sensible enough to
keep his property, and just not fool enough for the law to take it from
him.
After her return from Constantinople, Lady Mary continued to lead the
same half-gay and half-literary life as before; but at last she did
not like it. Various ingenious inquirers into antiquated minutiæ have
endeavoured, without success, to discover reasons of detail which might
explain her dissatisfaction. They have suggested that some irregular
love-affair was unprosperous, and hinted that she and her husband were
not on good terms. The love-affair, however, when looked for, cannot
be found; and though she and her husband would appear to have been but
distantly related, they never had any great quarrel which we know of.
Neither seems to have been fitted to give the other much pleasure, and
each had the fault of which the other was most impatient. Before marriage
Lady Mary had charmed Mr. Montagu, but she had also frightened him;
after marriage she frightened, but did not charm him. He was formal and
composed; she was flighty and _outrée_. ‘What _will_ she do next?’ was
doubtless the poor man’s daily feeling; and ‘Will he ever do anything?’
was probably also hers. Torpid business, which is always going on, but
which never seems to come to anything, is simply aggravating to a clever
woman. Even the least impatient lady can hardly endure a perpetual
process for which there is little visible and nothing theatrical to
show; and Lady Mary was by no means the least impatient. But there was
no abrupt quarrel between the two; and a husband and wife who have lived
together more than twenty years can generally manage to continue to
live together during a second twenty years. These reasons of detail are
scarcely the reasons for Lady Mary’s wishing to break away from the life
to which she had so long been used. Yet there was clearly some reason,
for Lady Mary went abroad, and stayed there during many years.
We believe that the cause was not special and peculiar to the case, but
general, and due to the invariable principles of human nature, at all
times and everywhere. If historical experience proves anything, it proves
that the earth is not adapted for a life of mere intellectual pleasure.
The life of a brute on earth, though bad, is possible. It is not even
difficult to many persons to destroy the higher part of their nature by a
continual excess in sensual pleasure. It is even more easy and possible
to dull all the soul and most of the mind by a vapid accumulation of
torpid comfort. Many of the middle classes spend their whole lives in a
constant series of petty pleasures, and an undeviating pursuit of small
material objects. The gross pursuit of pleasure, and the tiresome pursuit
of petty comfort, are quite suitable to such ‘a being as man in such
a world as the present one.’ What is not possible is, to combine the
pursuit of pleasure and the enjoyment of comfort with the characteristic
pleasures of a strong mind. If you wish for luxury, you must not nourish
the inquisitive instinct. The great problems of human life are in the
air; they are without us in the life we see, within us in the life we
feel. A quick intellect feels them in a moment. It says, ‘Why am I here?
What is pleasure, that I desire it? What is comfort, that I seek it? What
are carpets and tables? What is the lust of the eye? What is the pride
of life, that they should satisfy _me_? I was not made for such things.
I hate them, because I have liked them; I loathe them, because it seems
that there is nothing else for me.’ An impatient woman’s intellect comes
to this point in a moment; it says, ‘Society is good, but I have seen
society. What is the use of talking, or hearing _bon-mots_? I have done
both till I am tired of doing either. I have laughed till I have no wish
to laugh again, and made others laugh till I have hated them for being
such fools. As for instruction, I have seen the men of genius of my
time; and they tell me nothing,—nothing of what I want to know. They are
choked with intellectual frivolities. They cannot say “whence I came, and
whither I go.” What do they know of themselves? It is not from literary
people that we can learn anything; more likely, they will copy, or try to
copy, the manners of lords, and make ugly love, in bad imitation of those
who despise them.’ Lady Mary felt this, as we believe. She had seen all
the world of England, and it did not _satisfy_. She turned abroad, not in
pursuit of definite good, nor from fear of particular evil, but from a
vague wish for some great change—from a wish to escape from a life which
harassed the soul, but did not calm it; which awakened the intellect
without answering its questions.
She lived abroad for more than twenty years, at Avignon and Venice
and elsewhere; and, during that absence, she wrote the letters which
compose the greater part of her works. And there is no denying that they
are good letters. The art of note-writing may become classical—it is
for the present age to provide models of that sort of composition—but
letters have perished. Nobody but a bore now takes pains enough to make
them pleasant; and the only result of a bore’s pains is to make them
unpleasant. The correspondence of the present day is a continual labour
without any visible achievement. The dying penny-a-liner said with
emphasis, ‘That which I have written has perished.’ We might all say so
of the mass of petty letters we write. They are a heap of small atoms,
each with some interest individually, but with no interest as a whole;
all the items concern us, but they all add up to nothing. In the last
century, cultivated people who sat down to write a letter took pains to
have something to say, and took pains to say it. The postage was perhaps
ninepence; and it would be impudent to make a correspondent pay ninepence
for nothing. Still more impudent was it, _after_ having made him pay
ninepence, to give him the additional pain of making out what was half
expressed. People, too, wrote to one another then, not unfrequently,
who had long been separated, and who required much explanation and
many details to make the life of each intelligible to the other. The
correspondence of the nineteenth century is like a series of telegrams
with amplified headings. There is not more than one idea; and that idea
comes soon, and is soon over. The best correspondence of the last age
is rather like a good light article,—in which the points are studiously
made,—in which the effort to make them is studiously concealed,—in which
a series of selected circumstances is set forth,—in which you feel, but
are not told, that the principle of the writer’s selection was to make
his composition pleasant.
In letter-writing of this kind Lady Mary was very skilful. She has the
highest merit of letter-writing—she is concise without being affected.
Fluency, which a great orator pronounced to be the curse of orators, is
at least equally the curse of writers. There are many people, many ladies
especially, who can write letters at any length, in any number, and at
any time. We may be quite sure that the letters so written are not good
letters. Composition of any sort implies consideration; you must see
where you are going before you can go straight, or can pick your steps
as you go. On the other hand, too much consideration is unfavourable
to the ease of letter-writing, and perhaps of all writing. A letter
too much studied wants flow; it is a museum of hoarded sentences. Each
sentence sounds effective; but the whole composition wants vitality. It
was written with the memory instead of the mind; and every reader feels
the effect, though only the critical reader can detect the cause. Lady
Mary understood all this. She said what she had to say in words that were
always graphic and always sufficiently good, but she avoided curious
felicity. Her expressions seem choice, but not chosen.
At the end of her life Lady Mary pointed a subordinate but not a useless
moral. The masters of mundane ethics observe that ‘you should stay in
the world, or stay out of the world.’ Lady Mary did neither. She went
out and tried to return. Horace Walpole thus describes the result: ‘Lady
Mary Wortley is arrived; I have seen her; I think her avarice, her
art, and her vivacity are all increased. Her dress, like her language,
is a _galimatias_ of several countries; the groundwork rags, and the
embroidery nastiness. She needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no
petticoat, and no shoes. An old black laced hood represents the first;
the fur of a horseman’s coat, which replaces the third, serves for the
second; a dimity petticoat is deputy and officiates for the fourth;
and slippers act the part of the last. When I was at Florence, and she
was expected there, we were drawing _sortes Virgilianas_ for her; we
literally drew
“Insanam vatem aspicies.”
It would have been a stranger prophecy now even than it was then.’ There
is a description of what the favourite of society becomes after leaving
it for years, and after indulging eccentricities for years! There is a
commentary on the blunder of exposing yourself in your old age to young
people, to whom you have always been a tradition and a name! Horace
Walpole doubtless painted up a few trivialities a little. But one of the
traits is true. Lady Mary lived before the age in which people waste half
their lives in washing the whole of their persons.
Lady Mary did not live long after her return to England. Horace Walpole’s
letter is written on the 2nd February 1762, and she died on the 21st
August in the same year. Her husband had died just before her return, and
perhaps, after so many years, she would not have returned unless he had
done so. _Requiescat in pace_; for she quarrelled all her life.
_WILLIAM COWPER._[31]
(1855.)
For the English, after all, the best literature is the English. We
understand the language; the manners are familiar to us; the scene at
home: the associations our own. Of course, a man who has not read Homer
is like a man who has not seen the ocean. There is a great object of
which he has no idea. But we cannot be always seeing the ocean. Its face
is always large; its smile is bright; the ever-sounding shore sounds on.
Yet we have no property in them. We stop and gaze; we pause and draw
our breath; we look and wonder at the grandeur of the other world; but
we live on shore. We fancy associations of unknown things and distant
climes, of strange men and strange manners. But we are ourselves.
Foreigners do not behave as we should, nor do the Greeks. What a strength
of imagination, what a long practice, what a facility in the details
of fancy is required to picture their past and unknown world! They are
deceased. They are said to be immortal, because they have written a good
epitaph; but they are gone. Their life and their manners have passed
away. We read with interest in the catalogue of the ships—
‘The men of Argos and Tyrintha next,
And of Hermione, that stands retired
With Asine, within her spacious bay;
Of Epidaurus, crowned with purple vines,
And of Træzena, with the Achaian youth
Of sea-begirt Ægina, and with thine
Maseta, and the dwellers on thy coast,
Waveworn Eïonæ; ...
And from Caristus and from Styra came
Their warlike multitudes, in front of whom
Elphenor marched, Calchodon’s mighty son.
With foreheads shorn and wavy locks behind,
They followed, and alike were eager all
To split the hauberk with the shortened spear.’
But they are dead. ‘“So am not I,” said the foolish fat scullion.’ We
are the English of the present day. We have cows and calves, corn and
cotton; we hate the Russians; we know where the Crimea is; we believe in
Manchester the great. A large expanse is around us; a fertile land of
corn and orchards, and pleasant hedgerows, and rising trees, and noble
prospects, and large black woods, and old church towers. The din of
great cities comes mellowed from afar. The green fields, the half-hidden
hamlets, the gentle leaves, soothe us with ‘a sweet inland murmur.’ We
have before us a vast seat of interest, and toil, and beauty, and power,
and this our own. Here is our home. The use of foreign literature is
like the use of foreign travel. It imprints in early and susceptible
years a deep impression of great, and strange, and noble objects; but we
cannot live with these. They do not resemble our familiar life; they do
not bind themselves to our intimate affection; they are picturesque and
striking, like strangers and wayfarers, but they are not of our home,
or homely; they cannot speak to our ‘business and bosoms’; they cannot
touch the hearth of the soul. It would be better to have no outlandish
literature in the mind than to have it the principal thing. We should
be like accomplished vagabonds without a country, like men with a
hundred acquaintances and no friends. We need an intellectual possession
analogous to our own life; which reflects, embodies, improves it; on
which we can repose; which will recur to us in the placid moments—which
will be a latent principle even in the acute crises of our life. Let us
be thankful if our researches in foreign literature enable us, as rightly
used they will enable us, better to comprehend our own. Let us venerate
what is old, and marvel at what is far. Let us read our own books. Let us
understand ourselves.
With these principles, if such they may be called, in our minds, we
gladly devote these early pages of our journal[32] to the new edition
of Cowper, with which Mr. Bell has favoured us. There is no writer
more exclusively English. There is no one—or hardly one, perhaps—whose
excellences are more natural to our soil, and seem so little able to
bear transplantation. We do not remember to have seen his name in any
continental book. Professed histories of English literature, we dare say,
name him; but we cannot recall any such familiar and cursory mention as
would evince a real knowledge and hearty appreciation of his writings.
The edition itself is a good one. The life of Cowper, which is
prefixed to it, though not striking, is sensible. The notes are clear,
explanatory, and, so far as we know, accurate. The special introductions
to each of the poems are short and judicious, and bring to the mind at
the proper moment the passages in Cowper’s letters most clearly relating
to the work in hand. The typography is not very elegant, but it is plain
and business-like. There is no affectation of cheap ornament.
The little book which stands second on our list belongs to a class of
narratives written for a peculiar public, inculcating peculiar doctrines,
and adapted, at least in part, to a peculiar taste. We dissent from many
of these tenets, and believe that they derive no support, but rather the
contrary, from the life of Cowper. In previous publications, written for
the same persons, these opinions have been applied to that melancholy
story in a manner which it requires strong writing to describe. In this
little volume they are more rarely expressed, and when they are it is
with diffidence, tact, and judgment.
Only a most pedantic critic would attempt to separate the criticism on
Cowper’s works from a narrative of his life. Indeed, such an attempt
would be scarcely intelligible. Cowper’s poems are almost as much
connected with his personal circumstances as his letters, and his
letters are as purely autobiographical as those of any man can be. If
all information concerning him had perished save what his poems contain,
the attention of critics would be diverted from the examination of their
interior characteristics to a conjectural dissertation on the personal
fortunes of the author. The Germans would have much to say. It would be
debated in Tübingen who were the Three Hares, why ‘The Sofa’ was written,
why John Gilpin was not called William. Halle would show with great
clearness that there was no reason why he _should_ be called William;
that it appeared by the bills of mortality that several other persons
born about the same period had also been called John; and the ablest of
all the professors would finish the subject with a monograph showing
that there was a special fitness in the name John, and that any one
with the æsthetic sense who (like the professor) had devoted many years
exclusively to the perusal of the poem, would be certain that any other
name would be quite ‘paralogistic, and in every manner impossible and
inappropriate.’ It would take a German to write upon the Hares.
William Cowper, the poet, was born on November 26, 1731, at his father’s
parsonage, at Berkhampstead. Of his father, who was chaplain to the
king, we know nothing of importance. Of his mother, who had been named
Donne, and was a Norfolk lady, he has often made mention, and it appears
that he regarded the faint recollection which he retained of her—for she
died early—with peculiar tenderness. In later life, and when his sun was
going down in gloom and sorrow, he recurred eagerly to opportunities
of intimacy with her most distant relatives, and wished to keep alive
the idea of her in his mind. That idea was not of course very definite;
indeed, as described in his poems, it is rather the abstract idea of what
a mother should be, than anything else; but he was able to recognise her
picture, and there is a suggestion of cakes and sugar-plums, which gives
a life and vividness to the rest. Soon after her death he was sent to a
school kept by a man named Pitman, at which he always described himself
as having suffered exceedingly from the cruelty of one of the boys. He
could never see him, or think of him, he has told us, without trembling.
And there must have been some solid reason for this terror, since—even
in those days, when τύπτω meant ‘I strike,’ and ‘boy’ denoted a thing
to be beaten—this juvenile inflicter of secret stripes was actually
expelled. From Mr. Pitman, Cowper, on account of a weakness in the eyes,
which remained with him through life, was transferred to the care of an
oculist,—a dreadful fate even for the most cheerful boy, and certainly
not likely to cure one with any disposition to melancholy; hardly indeed
can the boldest mind, in its toughest hour of manly fortitude, endure to
be domesticated with an operation chair. Thence he went to Westminster,
of which he has left us discrepant notices, according to the feeling
for the time being uppermost in his mind. From several parts of the
‘Tirocinium,’ it would certainly seem that he regarded the whole system
of public school teaching not only with speculative disapproval, but with
the painful hatred of a painful experience. A thousand genial passages
in his private letters, however, really prove the contrary; and in a
changing mood of mind, the very poem which was expressly written to
‘recommend private tuition at home’ gives some idea of school happiness.
‘Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise,
We love the play-place of our early days;
The scene is touching, and the heart is stone
That feels not at that sight, and feels at none.
The wall on which we tried our graving skill,
The very name we carved subsisting still,
The bench on which we sat while deep employed,
Though mangled, hacked, and hewed, not yet destroyed;
The little ones unbuttoned, glowing hot,
Playing our games, and on the very spot,
As happy as we once, to kneel and draw
The chalky ring, and knuckle down at taw;
To pitch the ball into the grounded hat,
Or drive it devious with a dextrous pat;
The pleasing spectacle at once excites
Such recollections of our own delights,
That viewing it, we seem almost t’ obtain
Our innocent sweet simple years again.
This fond attachment to the well-known place,
Whence first we started into life’s long race,
Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway,
We feel it e’en in age, and at our latest day.’
Probably we pursue an insoluble problem in seeking a suitable education
for a morbidly melancholy mind. At first it seems a dreadful thing to
place a gentle and sensitive nature in contact, in familiarity, and
even under the rule of coarse and strong buoyant natures. Nor should
this be in general attempted. The certain result is present suffering,
and the expected good is remote and disputable. Nevertheless, it is no
artificial difficulty which we here encounter—none which we can hope by
educational contrivances to meet or vanquish. The difficulty is in truth
the existence of the world. It is the fact, that by the constitution of
society the bold, the vigorous, and the buoyant, rise and rule; and that
the weak, the shrinking, and the timid, fall and serve. In after-life,
in the actual commerce of men, even too in those quiet and tranquil
pursuits in which a still and gentle mind should seem to be under the
least disadvantage, in philosophy and speculation, the strong and active,
who have confidence in themselves and their ideas, acquire and keep
dominion. It is idle to expect that this will not give great pain—that
the shrinking and timid, who are often just as ambitious as others,
will not repine—that the rough and strong will not often consciously
inflict grievous oppression—will not still more often, without knowing
it, cause to more tremulous minds a refined suffering which their coarser
texture could never experience, which it does not sympathise with, nor
comprehend. Some time in life—it is but a question of a very few years
at most—this trial must be undergone. There may be a short time, more or
less, of gentle protection and affectionate care, but the leveret grows
old—the world waits at the gate—the hounds are ready, and the huntsman
too, and there is need of strength, and pluck, and speed. Cowper indeed,
himself, as we have remarked, does not, on an attentive examination, seem
to have suffered exceedingly. In subsequent years, when a dark cloud
had passed over him, he was apt at times to exaggerate isolated days of
melancholy and pain, and fancy that the dislike which he entertained
for the system of schools, by way of speculative principle, was in fact
the result of a personal and suffering experience. But, as we shall
have (though we shall not, in fact, perhaps use them all) a thousand
occasions to observe, he had, side by side with a morbid and melancholy
humour, an easy nature, which was easily satisfied with the world as he
found it, was pleased with the gaiety of others, and liked the sight
of, and sympathy with, the more active enjoyments which he did not care
to engage in or to share. Besides, there is every evidence that cricket
and marbles (though he sometimes in his narratives suppresses the fact,
in condescension to those of his associates who believed them to be the
idols of wood and stone which are spoken of in the prophets) really
exercised a laudable and healthy supremacy over his mind. The animation
of the scene—the gay alertness which Gray looked back on so fondly in
long years of soothing and delicate musing, exerted, as the passage which
we cited shows, a great influence over a genius superior to Gray’s in
facility and freedom, though inferior in the ‘little footsteps’ of the
finest fancy,—in the rare and carefully-hoarded felicities, unequalled
save in the immeasurable abundance of the greatest writers. Of course
Cowper was unhappy at school, as he was unhappy always; and of course too
we are speaking of Westminster only. For Dr. Pitman and the oculist there
is nothing to say.
In scholarship Cowper seems to have succeeded. He was not, indeed, at
all the sort of man to attain to that bold, strong-brained, confident
scholarship which Bentley carried to such an extreme, and which, in
almost every generation since, some Englishman has been found of hard
head and stiff-clayed memory to keep up and perpetuate. His friend
Thurlow was the man for this pursuit, and the man to prolong the just
notion that those who attain early proficiency in it are likely men to
become Lord Chancellors. Cowper’s scholarship was simply the general and
delicate _impression_ which the early study of the classics invariably
leaves on a nice and susceptible mind. In point of information it was
strictly of a common nature. It is clear that his real knowledge was
mostly confined to the poets, especially the ordinary Latin poets
and Homer, and that he never bestowed any regular attention on the
historians, or orators, or philosophers of antiquity, either at school
or in after years. Nor indeed would such a course of study have in
reality been very beneficial to him. The strong, analytic, comprehensive,
reason-giving powers which are required in these dry and rational
pursuits were utterly foreign to his mind. All that was congenial to him,
he acquired in the easy intervals of apparent idleness. The friends whom
he made at Westminster, and who continued for many years to be attached
to him, preserved the probable tradition that he was a gentle and
gradual, rather than a forcible or rigorous learner.
The last hundred years have doubtless seen a vast change in the common
education of the common boy. The small and pomivorous animal which we so
call is now subjected to a treatment very elaborate and careful,—that
contrasts much with the simple alternation of classics and cuffs which
was formerly so fashionable. But it may be doubted whether for a
peculiar mind such as Cowper’s, on the intellectual side at least, the
tolerant and corpuscular theory of the last century was not preferable
to the intolerant and never-resting moral influence that has succeeded
to it. Some minds learn most when they seem to learn least. A certain,
placid, unconscious, equable in-taking of knowledge suits them, and alone
suits them. To succeed in forcing such men to attain great learning is
simply impossible; for you cannot put the fawn into the ‘Land Transport.’
The only resource is to allow them to acquire gently and casually in
their own way; and in that way they will often imbibe, as if by the mere
force of existence, much pleasant and well-fancied knowledge.
From Westminster Cowper went at once into a solicitor’s office. Of the
next few years (he was then about eighteen) we do not know much. His
attention to legal pursuits was, according to his own account, not
very profound; yet it could not have been wholly contemptible, for his
evangelical friend, Mr. Newton, who, whatever may be the worth of his
religious theories, had certainly a sound, rough judgment on topics
terrestrial, used in after years to have no mean opinion of the value of
his legal counsel. In truth, though nothing could be more out of Cowper’s
way than abstract and recondite jurisprudence, an easy and sensible
mind like his would find a great deal which was very congenial to it in
the well-known and perfectly settled maxims which regulate and rule the
daily life of common men. No strain of capacity or stress of speculative
intellect is necessary for the apprehension of these. A fair and easy
mind, which is placed within their reach, will find it has learnt them,
without knowing when or how.
After some years of legal instruction, Cowper chose to be called to the
bar, and took chambers in the Temple accordingly. He never, however, even
pretended to practise. He passed his time in literary society, in light
study, in tranquil negligence. He was intimate with Colman, Lloyd, and
other wits of those times. He wrote an essay in the _Connoisseur_, the
kind of composition then most fashionable, especially with such literary
gentlemen as were most careful not to be confounded with the professed
authors. In a word, he did ‘nothing,’ as that word is understood among
the vigorous, aspiring, and trenchant part of mankind. Nobody could seem
less likely to attain eminence. Every one must have agreed that there
was no harm in him, and few could have named any particular good which
it was likely that he would achieve. In after days he drew up a memoir
of his life, in which he speaks of those years with deep self-reproach.
It was not indeed the secular indolence of the time which excited his
disapproval. The course of life had not made him more desirous of worldly
honours, but less; and nothing could be further from his tone of feeling
than regret for not having strenuously striven to attain them. He spoke
of those years in the Puritan manner, using words which literally express
the grossest kind of active Atheism in a vague and vacant way; leaving
us to gather from external sources whether they are to be understood in
their plain and literal signification, or in that out-of-the-way and
technical sense in which they hardly have a meaning. In this case the
external evidence is so clear that there is no difficulty. The regrets of
Cowper had reference to offences which the healthy and sober consciences
of mankind will not consider to deserve them. A vague, literary,
omnitolerant idleness was perhaps their worst feature. He was himself
obliged to own that he had always been considered ‘as one religiously
inclined, if not actually religious,’ and the applicable testimony, as
well as the whole form and nature of his character, forbid us to ascribe
to him the slightest act of licence or grossness. A reverend biographer
has called his life at this time, ‘an unhappy compound of guilt and
wretchedness.’ But unless the estimable gentleman thinks it sinful to
be a barrister and wretched to live in the Temple, it is not easy to
make out what he would mean. In point of intellectual cultivation, and
with a view to preparing himself for writing his subsequent works, it
is not possible he should have spent his time better. He then acquired
that easy, familiar knowledge of terrestrial things—the vague and general
information of the superficies of all existence—the acquaintance with
life, business, hubbub, and rustling matter of fact, which seem odd
in the recluse of Olney—and enliven so effectually the cucumbers of
the ‘Task.’ It has been said that at times every man wishes to be a
man of the world, and even the most rigid critic must concede it to be
nearly essential to a writer on real life and actual manners. If a man
has not seen his brother, how can he describe him? As this world calls
happiness and blamelessness, it is not easy to fancy a life more happy—at
least with more of the common elements of happiness,—or more blameless
than those years of Cowper. An easy temper, light fancies,—hardly as
yet broken by shades of melancholy brooding;—an enjoying habit, rich
humour, literary, but not pedantic companions, a large scene of life and
observation, polished acquaintance and attached friends: these were his,
and what has a light life more? A rough hero Cowper was not and never
became, but he was then, as ever, a quiet and tranquil gentleman. If De
Béranger’s doctrine were true, ‘_Le bonheur tient au savoir-vivre_,’
there were the materials of existence here. What, indeed, would not De
Béranger have made of them?
One not unnatural result or accompaniment of such a life was that
Cowper fell in love. There were in those days two young ladies, cousins
of Cowper, residents in London, to one of whom, the Lady Hesketh of
after years, he once wrote:—‘My dear Cousin,—I wonder how it happened,
that much as I love you, I was never in love with you.’ No similar
providence protected his intimacy with her sister. Theodora Cowper,
‘One of the cousins with whom Thurlow used to giggle and make giggle in
Southampton-row,’ was a handsome and vigorous damsel. ‘What!’ said her
father, ‘What will you do if you marry William Cowper?’ meaning, in the
true parental spirit, to intrude mere pecuniary ideas. ‘Do, sir!’ she
replied, ‘Wash all day, and ride out on the great dog all night!’ a
spirited combination of domestic industry and exterior excitement. It
is doubtful, however, whether either of these species of pastime and
occupation would have been exactly congenial to Cowper. A gentle and
refined indolence must have made him an inferior washerman, and perhaps
to accompany the canine excursions of a wife ‘which clear-starched,’
would have hardly seemed enough to satisfy his accomplished and placid
ambition. At any rate, it certainly does seem that he was not a very
vigorous lover. The young lady was, as he himself oddly said:—
‘Through tedious years of doubt and pain,
Fixed in her choice and faithful ... _but in vain_.’
The poet does indeed partly allude to the parental scruples of Mr.
Cowper, her father; but house-rent would not be so high as it is, if
fathers had their way. The profits of builders are eminently dependent on
the uncontrollable nature of the best affections; and that intelligent
class of men have had a table compiled from trustworthy data, in which
the chances of parental victory are rated at ·0000000001, and those of
the young people themselves at ·999999999,—in fact, as many nines as you
can imagine. ‘It has been represented to me,’ says the actuary, ‘that
few young people ever marry without some objection, more or less slight,
on the part of their parents; and from a most laborious calculation,
from data collected in quarters both within and exterior to the bills of
mortality, I am led to believe that the above figures represent the state
of the case accurately enough to form a safe guide for the pecuniary
investments of the gentlemen, &c. &c.’ It is not likely that Theodora
Cowper understood decimals, but she had a strong opinion in favour of
her cousin, and a great idea, if we rightly read the now obscure annals
of old times, that her father’s objections might pretty easily have
been got over. In fact, we think so even now, without any prejudice of
affection, in our cool and mature judgment. Mr. Cowper the aged had
nothing to say, except that the parties were cousins—a valuable remark,
which has been frequently repeated in similar cases, but which has not
been found to prevent a mass of matches both then and since. Probably
the old gentleman thought the young gentleman by no means a working
man, and objected—believing that a small income can only be made more
by unremitting industry,—and the young gentleman admitting this horrid
and abstract fact, and agreeing, though perhaps tacitly, in his uncle’s
estimate of his personal predilections, did not object to being objected
to. The nature of Cowper was not, indeed, passionate. He required beyond
almost any man the daily society of amiable and cultivated women. It
is clear that he preferred such gentle excitement to the rough and
argumentative pleasures of more masculine companionship. His easy and
humorous nature loved and learned from female detail. But he had no
overwhelming partiality for a particular individual. One refined lady,
the first moments of shyness over, was nearly as pleasing as another
refined lady. Disappointment sits easy on such a mind. Perhaps, too,
he feared the anxious duties, the rather contentious tenderness of
matrimonial existence. At any rate, he acquiesced. Theodora never
married. Love did not, however, kill her—at least, if it did, it was
a long time at the task, as she survived these events more than sixty
years. She never, seemingly, forgot the past.
But a dark cloud was at hand. If there be any truly painful fact about
the world now tolerably well established by ample experience and ample
records, it is that an intellectual and indolent happiness is wholly
denied to the children of men. That most valuable author, Lucretius, who
has supplied us and others with an inexhaustible supply of metaphors on
this topic, ever dwells on the life of his gods with a sad and melancholy
feeling that no such life was possible on a crude and cumbersome earth.
In general, the two opposing agencies are marriage and money; either
of these breaks the lot of literary and refined inaction at once and
for ever. The first of these, as we have seen, Cowper had escaped. His
reserved and negligent reveries were still free, at least from the
invasion of affection. To this invasion, indeed, there is commonly
requisite the acquiescence or connivance of mortality; but all men are
born, not free and equal, as the Americans maintain, but, in the old
world at least, basely subjected to the yoke of coin. It is in vain that
in this hemisphere we endeavour after impecuniary fancies. In bold and
eager youth we go out on our travels. We visit Baalbec, and Paphos, and
Tadmor, and Cythera,—ancient shrines and ancient empires, seats of eager
love or gentle inspiration. We wander far and long. We have nothing to
do with our fellow-men. What are we, indeed, to diggers and counters?
We wander far; we dream to wander for ever, but we dream in vain. A
surer force than the subtlest fascination of fancy is in operation.
The purse-strings tie us to our kind. Our travel-coin runs low, and we
must return, away from Tadmor and Baalbec back to our steady, tedious
industry and dull work, to ‘_la vieille Europe_ (as Napoleon said) _qui
m’ennuie_.’ It is the same in thought. In vain we seclude ourselves in
elegant chambers, in fascinating fancies, in refined reflections. ‘By
this time,’ says Cowper, ‘my patrimony being nearly all spent, and there
being no appearance that I should ever repair the damage by a fortune
of my own getting, I began to be a little apprehensive of approaching
want.’ However little one is fit for it, it is necessary to attack some
drudgery. The vigorous and sturdy rouse themselves to the work. They find
in its regular occupation, clear decisions, and stern perplexities, a
bold and rude compensation for the necessary loss or diminution of light
fancies and delicate musings,—
‘The sights which youthful poets dream,
On summer eve by haunted stream.’
But it was not so with Cowper. A peculiar and slight nature unfitted him
for so rough and harsh a resolution. The lion may eat straw like the ox,
and the child put his head on the cockatrice’ den; but will even then the
light antelope be equal to the heavy plough? Will the gentle gazelle,
even in those days, pull the slow waggon of ordinary occupation?
The outward position of Cowper was, indeed, singularly fortunate. Instead
of having to meet the long labours of an open profession, or the anxious
decisions of a personal business, he had the choice among several
lucrative and quiet public offices, in which very ordinary abilities
would suffice, and scarcely any degree of incapacity would entail
dismissal, or reprimand, or degradation. It seemed at first scarcely
possible that even the least strenuous of men should be found unequal to
duties so little arduous or exciting. He has himself said—
‘Lucrative offices are seldom lost
For want of powers proportioned to the post;
Give e’en a dunce the employment he desires,
And he soon finds the talents it requires;
A business with an income at its heels,
Furnishes always oil for its own wheels.’
The place he chose was called the Clerkship of the Journals of the House
of Lords, one of the many quiet haunts which then slumbered under the
imposing shade of parliamentary and aristocratic privilege. Yet the idea
of it was more than he could bear.
‘In the beginning,’ he writes, ‘a strong opposition to my
friend’s right of nomination began to show itself. A powerful
party was formed among the Lords to thwart it, in favour of
an old enemy of the family, though one much indebted to its
bounty; and it appeared plain that, if we succeeded at last,
it would only be by fighting our ground by inches. Every
advantage, as I was told, would be sought for, and eagerly
seized, to disconcert us. I was bid to expect an examination
at the bar of the House, touching my sufficiency for the post
I had taken. Being necessarily ignorant of the nature of
that business, it became expedient that I should visit the
office daily, in order to qualify myself for the strictest
scrutiny. All the horror of my fears and perplexities now
returned. A thunderbolt would have been as welcome to me as
this intelligence. I knew, to demonstration, that upon these
terms the clerkship of the journals was no place for me. To
require my attendance at the bar of the House, that I might
there publicly entitle myself to the office, was, in effect, to
exclude me from it. In the meantime, the interest of my friend,
the honour of his choice, my own reputation and circumstances,
all urged me forward; all pressed me to undertake that which
I saw to be impracticable. They whose spirits are formed like
mine, to whom _a public exhibition of themselves, on any
occasion, is mortal poison_, may have some idea of the horrors
of my situation; others can have none.
‘My continual misery at length brought on a nervous fever:
quiet forsook me by day, and peace by night; a finger raised
against me was more than I could stand against. In this
posture of mind, I attended regularly at the office; where,
instead of a soul upon the rack, the most active spirits were
essentially necessary for my purpose. I expected no assistance
from anybody there, all the inferior clerks being under the
influence of my opponent; and accordingly I received none.
The journal books were indeed thrown open to me—a thing which
could not be refused; and from which, perhaps, a man in health,
and with a head turned to business, might have gained all
the information he wanted; but it was not so with me. I read
without perception, and was so distressed, that, had every
clerk in the office been my friend, it could have availed me
little; for I was not in a condition to receive instruction,
much less to elicit it out of manuscripts, without direction.
Many months went over me thus employed; constant in the use of
means, despairing as to the issue.’
As the time of trial drew near, his excitement rapidly increased. A short
excursion into the country was attended with momentary benefit; but as
soon as he returned to town he became immediately unfit for occupation,
and as unsettled as ever. He grew first to wish to become mad, next to
believe that he should become so, and only to be afraid that the expected
delirium might not come on soon enough to prevent his appearance for
examination before the lords,—a fear, the bare existence of which shows
how slight a barrier remained between him and the insanity which he
fancied that he longed for. He then began to contemplate suicide, and
not unnaturally called to mind a curious circumstance:
‘I well recollect, too,’ he writes, ‘that when I was about
eleven years of age, my father desired me to read a vindication
of self-murder, and give him my sentiments upon the question: I
did so, and argued against it. My father heard my reasons, and
was silent, neither approving nor disapproving; from whence I
inferred that he sided with the author against me; though all
the time, I believe, the true motive for his conduct was, that
he wanted, if he could, to think favourably of the state of a
departed friend, who had some years before destroyed himself,
and whose death had struck him with the deepest affliction. But
this solution of the matter never once occurred to me, and the
circumstance now weighed mightily with me.’
And he made several attempts to execute his purpose, all which are
related in a ‘Narrative,’ which he drew up after his recovery; and of
which the elaborate detail shows a strange and most painful tendency
to revive the slightest circumstances of delusions which it would
have been most safe and most wholesome never to recall. The curiously
careful style, indeed, of the narration, as elegant as that of the most
flowing and felicitous letter, reminds one of nothing so much as the
studiously beautiful and compact handwriting in which Rousseau used to
narrate and describe the most incoherent and indefinite of his personal
delusions. On the whole, nevertheless—for a long time, at least—it does
not seem that the life of Cowper was in real danger. The hesitation and
indeterminateness of nerve which rendered him liable to these fancies,
and unequal to ordinary action, also prevented his carrying out these
terrible visitations to their rigorous and fearful consequences. At last,
however, there seems to have been possible, if not actual danger:
‘Not one hesitating thought now remained, but I fell greedily
to the execution of my purpose. My garter was made of a broad
piece of scarlet binding, with a sliding buckle, being sewn
together at the ends; by the help of the buckle I formed a
noose, and fixed it about my neck, straining it so tight
that I hardly left a passage for my breath, or for the blood
to circulate; the tongue of the buckle held it fast. At each
corner of the bed was placed a wreath of carved work, fastened
by an iron pin, which passed up through the midst of it: the
other part of the garter, which made a loop, I slipped over one
of these, and hung by it some seconds, drawing up my feet under
me, that they might not touch the floor; but the iron bent, and
the carved work slipped off, and the garter with it. I then
fastened it to the frame of the tester, winding it round, and
tying it in a strong knot. The frame broke short, and let me
down again.
‘The third effort was more likely to succeed. I set the door
open, which reached within a foot of the ceiling; by the help
of a chair I could command the top of it, and the loop being
large enough to admit a large angle of the door, was easily
fixed so as not to slip off again. I pushed away the chair with
my feet, and hung at my whole length. While I hung there, I
distinctly heard a voice say three times, “_’Tis over!_” Though
I am sure of the fact, and was so at the time, yet it did not
at all alarm me, or affect my resolution. I hung so long that I
lost all sense, all consciousness of existence.
‘When I came to myself again, I thought myself in hell; the
sound of my own dreadful groans was all that I heard, and
a feeling like that produced by a flash of lightning just
beginning to seize upon me, passed over my whole body. In a few
seconds I found myself fallen on my face to the floor. In about
half a minute I recovered my feet: and, reeling and staggering,
tumbled into bed again.
‘By the blessed providence of God, the garter which had held
me till the bitterness of temporal death was past, broke just
before eternal death had taken place upon me. The stagnation
of the blood under one eye, in a broad crimson spot, and a
red circle round my neck, showed plainly that I had been on
the brink of eternity. The latter, indeed, might have been
occasioned by the pressure of the garter, but the former was
certainly the effect of strangulation; for it was not attended
with the sensation of a bruise, as it must have been, had I, in
my fall, received one in so tender a part. And I rather think
the circle round my neck was owing to the same cause; for the
part was not excoriated, not at all in pain.
‘Soon after I got into bed, I was surprised to hear a noise
in the dining-room, where the laundress was lighting a fire;
she had found the door unbolted, notwithstanding my design to
fasten it, and must have passed the bed-chamber door while I
was hanging on it, and yet never perceived me. She heard me
fall, and presently came to ask me if I was well; adding, she
feared I had been in a fit.
‘I sent her to a friend, to whom I related the whole affair,
and dispatched him to my kinsman at the coffee-house. As soon
as the latter arrived, I pointed to the broken garter, which
lay in the middle of the room, and apprised him also of the
attempt I had been making. His words were, “My dear Mr. Cowper,
you terrify me! To be sure you cannot hold the office at this
rate,—where is the deputation?” I gave him the key of the
drawer where it was deposited; and his business requiring his
immediate attendance, he took it away with him; and thus ended
all my connection with the Parliament office.’
It must have been a strange scene; for, so far as appears, the outward
manners of Cowper had undergone no remarkable change. There was always
a mild composure about them, which would have deceived any but the most
experienced observer; and it is probable that Major Cowper, his ‘kinsman’
and intimate friend, had very little or no suspicion of the conflict
which was raging beneath his tranquil and accomplished exterior. What
a contrast is the ‘broad piece of scarlet binding’ and the red circle,
‘showing plainly that I had been on the brink of eternity,’ to the daily
life of the easy gentleman ‘who contributed some essays to the “St.
James’s Magazine,” and more than one to the “St. James’s Chronicle,”’
living ‘soft years’ on a smooth superficies of existence, away from the
dark realities which are, as it were, the skeleton of our life,—which
seem to haunt us like a death’s head throughout the narrative that has
been quoted!
It was doubtless the notion of Cowper’s friends, that when all idea of
an examination before the Lords was removed, by the abandonment of his
nomination to the office in question, the excitement which that idea had
called forth would very soon pass away. But that notion was an error. A
far more complicated state of mind ensued. If we may advance a theory on
a most difficult as well as painful topic, we would say that religion is
very rarely the proximate or impulsive cause of madness. The real and
ultimate cause (as we speak) is of course that unknown something which we
variously call predisposition, or malady, or defect. But the critical and
exciting cause seems generally to be some comparatively trivial external
occasion, which falls within the necessary lot and life of the person who
becomes mad. The inherent excitability is usually awakened by some petty
casual stimulant, which looks positively not worth a thought—certainly
a terribly slight agent for the wreck and havoc which it makes. The
constitution of the human mind is such, that the great general questions,
problems, and difficulties of our state of being are not commonly capable
of producing that result. They appear to lie too far in the distance,
to require too great a stretch of imagination, to be too apt (for the
very weakness of our minds’ sake, perhaps) to be thrust out of view by
the trivial occurrences of this desultory world,—to be too impersonal,
in truth, to cause the exclusive, anxious, aching occupation which is
the common prelude and occasion of insanity. Afterwards, on the other
hand, when the wound is once struck, when the petty circumstance has been
allowed to work its awful consequence, religion very frequently becomes
the predominating topic of delusion. It would seem as if, when the mind
was once set apart by the natural consequences of the disease, and
secluded from the usual occupations of, and customary contact with, other
minds, it searched about through all the universe for causes of trouble
and anguish. A certain pain probably exists; and even in insanity, man is
so far a rational being that he seeks and craves at least the outside and
semblance of a reason for a suffering, which is really and truly without
reason. Something must be found to justify its anguish to itself. And
naturally the great difficulties inherent in the very position of man in
this world, and trying so deeply the faith and firmness of the wariest
and wisest minds, are ever ready to present plausible justifications
or causeless depression. An anxious melancholy is not without very
perplexing sophisms and very painful illustrations, with which a morbid
mind can obtain not only a fair logical position, but even apparent
argumentative victories, on many points, over the more hardy part of
mankind. The acuteness of madness soon uses these in its own wretched and
terrible justification. No originality of mind is necessary for so doing.
Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about
us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad—which read like professed
exculpations of a contemplated insanity.
‘To this moment,’ writes Cowper, immediately after the passage which
has been quoted, ‘I had felt no concern of a spiritual kind.’ But now
a conviction fell upon him that he was eternally lost. ‘All my worldly
sorrows,’ he says, ‘seemed as if they had never been; the terrors which
succeeded them seemed so great and so much more afflicting. One moment I
thought myself expressly excluded by one chapter; next by another.’ He
thought the curse of the barren fig-tree was pronounced with an especial
and designed reference to him. All day long these thoughts followed
him. He lived nearly alone, and his friends were either unaware of the
extreme degree to which his mind was excited, or unalive to the possible
alleviation with which new scenes and cheerful society might have been
attended. He fancied the people in the street stared at and despised
him—that ballads were made in ridicule of him—that the voice of his
conscience was eternally audible. He then bethought him of a Mr. Madan,
an evangelical minister, at that time held in much estimation, but who
afterwards fell into disrepute by the publication of a work on marriage
and its obligations (or rather its _non_-obligations), which Cowper has
commented on in a controversial poem. That gentleman visited Cowper at
his request, and began to explain to him the gospel.
‘He spoke,’ says Cowper, ‘of original sin, and the corruption
of every man born into the world, whereby every one is a child
of wrath. I perceived something like hope dawning in my heart.
This doctrine set me more on a level with the rest of mankind,
and made my condition appear less desperate.’
‘Next he insisted on the all-atoning efficacy of the blood of
Jesus, and His righteousness, for our justification. While I
heard this part of his discourse, and the Scriptures on which
he founded it, my heart began to burn within me; my soul was
pierced with a sense of my bitter ingratitude to so merciful
a Saviour; and those tears, which I thought impossible, burst
forth freely. I saw clearly that my case required such a
remedy, and had not the least doubt within me but that this was
the gospel of salvation.
‘Lastly, he urged the necessity of a lively faith in Jesus
Christ; not an assent only of the understanding, but a faith of
application, an actually laying hold of it, and embracing it as
a salvation wrought out for me personally. Here I failed, and
deplored my want of such a faith. He told me it was the gift
of God, which he trusted He would bestow upon me. I could only
reply, “I wish He would:” a very irreverent petition, but a
very sincere one, and such as the blessed God, in His due time,
was pleased to answer.’
It does not appear that previous to this conversation he had ever
distinctly realised the tenets which were afterwards to have so much
influence over him. For the moment they produced a good effect, but
in a few hours their novelty was over—the dark hour returned, and he
awoke from slumber with a ‘stronger alienation from God than ever.’ The
tenacity with which the mind in moments of excitement appropriates and
retains very abstract tenets, that bear even in a slight degree on the
topic of its excitement, is as remarkable as the facility and accuracy
with which it apprehends them in the midst of so great a tumult. Many
changes and many years rolled over Cowper—years of black and dark
depression, years of tranquil society, of genial labour, of literary
fame, but never in the lightest or darkest hour was he wholly unconscious
of the abstract creed of Martin Madan. At the time indeed, the body had
its rights, and maintained them.
‘While I traversed the apartment, expecting every moment that
the earth would open her mouth and swallow me, my conscience
scaring me, and the city of refuge out of reach and out of
sight, a strange and horrible darkness fell upon me. If it
were possible that a heavy blow could light on the brain
without touching the skull, such was the sensation I felt. I
clapped my hand to my forehead, and cried aloud, through the
pain it gave me. At every stroke my thoughts and expressions
became more wild and incoherent; all that remained clear was
the sense of sin, and the expectation of punishment. These
kept undisturbed possession all through my illness, without
interruption or abatement.’
It is idle to follow details further. The deep waters had passed over
him, and it was long before the face of his mind was dry or green again.
He was placed in a lunatic asylum, where he continued many months, and
which he left apparently cured. After some changes of no moment, but
which by his own account evinced many traces of dangerous excitement,
he took up his abode at Huntingdon, with the family of Unwin; and it
is remarkable how soon the taste for easy and simple, yet not wholly
unintellectual society, which had formerly characterised him, revived
again. The delineation cannot be given in any terms but his own:—
‘We breakfast commonly between eight and nine; till eleven,
we read either the Scripture, or the sermons of some faithful
preacher of these holy mysteries; at eleven we attend divine
service, which is performed here twice every day; and from
twelve to three we separate, and amuse ourselves as we please.
During that interval, I either read, in my own apartment, or
walk, or ride, or work in the garden. We seldom sit an hour
after dinner, but if the weather permits, adjourn to the
garden, where, with Mrs. Unwin and her son, I have generally
the pleasure of religious conversation till tea-time. If it
rains, or is too windy for walking, we either converse within
doors, or sing some hymns of Martin’s collection, and by the
help of Mrs. Unwin’s harpsichord, make up a tolerable concert,
in which our hearts, I hope, are the best and most musical
performers. After tea we sally forth to walk in good earnest.
Mrs. Unwin is a good walker, and we have generally travelled
about four miles before we see home again. When the days are
short, we make this excursion in the former part of the day,
between church time and dinner. At night we read, and converse,
as before, till supper, and commonly finish the evening either
with hymns, or a sermon, and last of all the family are called
to prayers. I need not tell _you_, that such a life as this is
consistent with the utmost cheerfulness; accordingly we are all
happy, and dwell together in unity as brethren. Mrs. Unwin
has almost a maternal affection for me, and I have something
very like a filial one for her, and her son and I are brothers.
Blessed be the God of our salvation for such companions, and
for such a life—above all, for a heart to like it.’
The scene was not however to last as it was. Mr. Unwin, the husband of
Mrs. Unwin, was suddenly killed soon after, and Cowper removed with Mrs.
Unwin to Olney, where a new epoch of his life begins.
The curate of Olney at this time was John Newton, a man of great energy
of mind, and well known in his generation for several vigorous books,
and still more for a very remarkable life. He had been captain of a
Liverpool slave ship—an occupation in which he had quite energy enough
to have succeeded, but was deeply influenced by serious motives, and
became one of the strongest and most active of the Low Church clergymen
of that day. He was one of those men who seem intended to make excellence
disagreeable. He was a converting engine. The whole of his own enormous
vigour of body—the whole steady intensity of a pushing, impelling,
compelling, unoriginal mind—all the mental or corporeal exertion he
could exact from the weak or elicit from the strong, were devoted to
one sole purpose—the effectual impact of the Calvinistic tenets on the
parishioners of Olney. Nor would we hint that his exertions were at
all useless. There is no denying that there is a certain stiff, tough,
agricultural, clayish English nature, on which the aggressive divine
produces a visible and good effect. The hardest and heaviest hammering
seems required to stir and warm that close and coarse matter. To impress
any sense of the supernatural on so secular a substance is a great good,
though that sense be expressed in false or irritating theories. It is
unpleasant, no doubt, to hear the hammering; the bystanders are in an
evil case; you might as well live near an iron-ship yard. Still the blows
do not hurt the iron. Something of the sort is necessary to beat the
coarse ore into a shining and useful shape; certainly that does so beat
it. But the case is different when the hundred-handed divine desires
to hit others. The very system which, on account of its hard blows, is
adapted to the tough and ungentle, is by that very reason unfit for the
tremulous and tender. The nature of many men and many women is such that
it will not bear the daily and incessant repetition of some certain and
indisputable truths. The universe has of course its dark aspect. Many
tremendous facts and difficulties can be found which often haunt the
timid and sometimes incapacitate the feeble. To be continually insisting
on these, and these only, will simply render both more and more unfit for
the duties to which they were born. And if this is the case with certain
fact and clear truth, how much more with uncertain error and mystic
exaggeration! Mr. Newton was alive to the consequence of his system: ‘I
believe my name is up about the country for preaching people mad; for
whether it is owing to the sedentary life women lead here, &c. &c., I
suppose we have near a dozen in different degrees disordered in their
heads, and most of them, I believe, _truly gracious people_.’ He perhaps
found his peculiar views more generally appreciated among this class of
young ladies than among more healthy and rational people, and clearly
did not wholly condemn the delivering them, even at this cost, from the
tyranny of the ‘carnal reason.’
No more dangerous adviser, if this world had been searched over,
could have been found for Cowper. What the latter required was prompt
encouragement to cheerful occupation, quiet amusement, gentle and
unexhausting society. Mr. Newton thought otherwise. His favourite motto
was _Perimus in licitis_. The simple round of daily pleasures and genial
employments which give instinctive happiness to the happiest natures,
and best cheer the common life of common men, was studiously watched
and scrutinised with the energy of a Puritan and the watchfulness of an
inquisitor. Mr. Newton had all the tastes and habits which go to form
what in the Catholic system is called a spiritual director. Of late years
it is well known that the institution, or rather practice of confession,
has expanded into a more potent and more imperious organisation. You
are expected by the priests of the Roman Church not only to confess
to them what you have done, but to take their advice as to what you
shall do. The future is under their direction, as the past was beneath
their scrutiny. This was exactly the view which Mr. Newton took of his
relation to Cowper. A natural aptitude for dictation—a steady, strong,
compelling decision,—great self-command, and a sharp perception of
all impressible points in the characters of others,—made the task of
guiding ‘weaker brethren’ a natural and pleasant pursuit. To suppose a
shrinking, a wounded, and tremulous mind, like that of Cowper’s, would
rise against such bold dogmatism, such hard volition, such animal nerve,
is to fancy that the beaten slave will dare the lash which his very eyes
instinctively fear and shun. Mr. Newton’s great idea was that Cowper
ought to be of some use. There was a great deal of excellent hammering
hammered in the parish, and it was sinful that a man with nothing to do
should sit tranquil. Several persons in the street had done what they
ought not; football was not unknown; cards were played; flirtation was
not conducted ‘improvingly.’ It was clearly Cowper’s duty to put a stop
to such things. Accordingly he made him a parochial implement; he set
him to visit painful cases, to attend at prayer meetings, to compose
melancholy hymns, even to conduct or share in conducting public services
himself. It never seems to have occurred to him that so fragile a mind
would be unequal to the burden—that a bruised reed does often break;
or rather if it did occur to him, he regarded it as a subterranean
suggestion, and expected a supernatural interference to counteract the
events at which it hinted. Yet there are certain rules and principles
in this world which seem earthly, but which the most excellent may not
on that account venture to disregard. The consequence of placing Cowper
in exciting situations was a return of his excitement. It is painful to
observe, that though the attack resembled in all its main features his
former one, several months passed before Mr. Newton would permit any
proper physical remedies to be applied, and then it was too late. We need
not again recount details. Many months of dark despondency were to be
passed before he returned to a simple and rational mind.
The truth is, that independently of the personal activity and dauntless
energy which made Mr. Newton so little likely to sympathise with
such a mind as Cowper’s, the former lay under a still more dangerous
disqualification for Cowper’s predominant adviser, viz., an erroneous
view of his case. His opinion exactly coincided with that which Cowper
first heard from Mr. Madan during his first illness in London. This view
is in substance that the depression which Cowper originally suffered
from was exactly what almost all mankind, if they had been rightly aware
of their true condition, would have suffered also. They were ‘children
of wrath,’ just as he was; and the only difference between them was,
that he appreciated his state and they did not,—showing, in fact, that
Cowper was not, as common persons imagined, on the extreme verge of
insanity, but, on the contrary, a particularly rational and right-seeing
man. So far, Cowper says, with one of the painful smiles which make his
‘Narrative’ so melancholy, ‘my condition was less desperate.’ That is,
his counsellors had persuaded him that his malady was rational, and his
sufferings befitting his true position,—no difficult task, for they had
the poignancy of pain and the pertinacity of madness on their side: the
efficacy of their arguments was less when they endeavoured to make known
the sources of consolation. We have seen the immediate effect of the
first exposition of the evangelical theory of faith. When applied to the
case of the morbidly-despairing sinner, that theory has one argumentative
imperfection which the logical sharpness of madness will soon discover
and point out. The simple reply is, ‘I do not feel the faith which you
describe. I wish I could feel it; but it is no use trying to conceal the
fact, I am conscious of nothing like it.’ And this was substantially
Cowper’s reply on his first interview with Mr. Madan. It was a simple
denial of a fact solely accessible to his personal consciousness; and,
as such, unanswerable. And in this intellectual position (if such it can
be called) his mind long rested. At the commencement of his residence
at Olney, however, there was a decided change. Whether it were that
he mistook the glow of physical recovery for the peace of spiritual
renovation, or that some subtler and deeper agency was, as he supposed,
at work, the outward sign is certain; and there is no question but
that during the first months of his residence at Olney, and his daily
intercourse with Mr. Newton, he did feel, or supposed himself to feel,
the faith which he was instructed to deem desirable, and he lent himself
with natural pleasure to the diffusion of it among those around him. But
this theory of salvation requires a metaphysical postulate, which to many
minds is simply impossible. A prolonged meditation on unseen realities
is sufficiently difficult, and seems scarcely the occupation for which
common human nature was intended; but more than this is said to be
essential. The meditation must be successful in exciting certain feelings
of a kind peculiarly delicate, subtle, and (so to speak) unstable. The
wind bloweth where it listeth; but it is scarcely more partial, more
quick, more unaccountable, than the glow of an emotion excited by a
supernatural and unseen object. This depends on the vigour of imagination
which has to conceive that object—on the vivacity of feeling which has to
be quickened by it—on the physical energy which has to support it. The
very watchfulness, the scrupulous anxiety to find and retain the feeling,
are exactly the most unfavourable to it. In a delicate disposition like
that of Cowper, such feelings revolt from the inquisition of others,
and shrink from the stare of the mind itself. But even this was not the
worst. The mind of Cowper was, so to speak, naturally terrestrial. If a
man wishes for a nice appreciation of the details of time and sense, let
him consult Cowper’s miscellaneous letters. Each simple event of every
day—each petty object of external observation or inward suggestion, is
there chronicled with a fine and female fondness, a wise and happy
faculty, let us say, of deriving a gentle happiness from the tranquil and
passing hour. The fortunes of the hares—Bess who died young, and Tiney
who lived to be nine years old—the miller who engaged their affections
at once, his powdered coat having charms that were irresistible—the
knitting-needles of Mrs. Unwin—the qualities of his friend Hill, who
managed his money transactions—
‘An honest man, close buttoned to the chin,
Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within’—
live in his pages, and were the natural, insensible, unbiassed occupants
of his fancy. It is easy for a firm and hard mind to despise the minutiæ
of life, and to pore and brood over an abstract proposition. It may be
possible for the highest, the strongest, the most arduous imagination to
live aloof from common things—alone with the unseen world, as some have
lived their whole lives in memory with a world which has passed away.
But it seems hardly possible that an imagination such as Cowper’s—which
was rather a detective fancy, perceiving the charm and essence of things
which are seen, than an eager, actuating, conceptive power, embodying,
enlivening, empowering those which are not seen—should leave its own
home—the _domus et tellus_—the sweet fields and rare orchards which it
loved,—and go out alone apart from all flesh into the trackless and
fearful and unknown Infinite. Of course, his timid mind shrank from it at
once, and returned to its own fireside. After a little, the idea that he
had a true faith faded away. Mr. Newton, with misdirected zeal, sought to
revive it by inciting him to devotional composition; but the only result
was the volume of ‘Olney Hymns’—a very painful record, of which the
burden is
‘My former hopes are fled,
My terror now begins;
I feel, alas! that I am dead
In trespasses and sins.
‘Ah, whither shall I fly?
I hear the thunder roar;
The law proclaims destruction nigh,
And vengeance at the door.’
‘The Preacher’ himself did not conceive such a store of melancholy
forebodings.
The truth is, that there are two remarkable species of minds on which
the doctrine of Calvinism acts as a deadly and fatal poison. One is the
natural, vigorous, bold, defiant, hero-like character, abounding in
generosity, in valour, in vigour, and abounding also in self-will, and
pride, and scorn. This is the temperament which supplies the world with
ardent hopes and keen fancies, with springing energies, and bold plans,
and noble exploits; but yet, under another aspect and in other times, is
equally prompt in desperate deeds, awful machinations, deep and daring
crimes. It one day is ready by its innate heroism to deliver the world
from any tyranny; the next it ‘hungers to become a tyrant’ in its turn.
Yet the words of the poet are ever true and are ever good, as a defence
against the cold narrators who mingle its misdeeds and exploits, and
profess to believe that each is a set-off and compensation for the other.
You can ever say—
‘Still he retained,
’Mid much abasement, what he had received
From Nature, an intense and glowing mind.’
It is idle to tell such a mind that, by an arbitrary irrespective
election, it is chosen to happiness or doomed to perdition. The evil and
the good in it equally revolt at such terms. It thinks, ‘Well, if the
universe be a tyranny, if one man is doomed to misery for no fault, and
the next is chosen to pleasure for no merit—if the favouritism of time
be copied into eternity—if the highest heaven be indeed like the meanest
earth,—then, as the heathen say, it is better to suffer injustice than to
inflict it, better to be the victims of the eternal despotism than its
ministers, better to curse in hell than serve in heaven.’ And the whole
burning soul breaks away into what is well called Satanism—into wildness,
and bitterness, and contempt.
Cowper had as little in common with this proud, Titanic, aspiring genius
as any man has or can have, but his mind was equally injured by the same
system. On a timid, lounging, gentle, acquiescent mind, the effect is
precisely the contrary—singularly contrasted, but equally calamitous.
‘I am doomed, you tell me, already. One way or other the matter is
already settled. It can be no better, and it is as bad as it can be. Let
me alone; do not trouble me at least these few years. Let me at least
sit sadly and bewail myself. Action is useless. I will brood upon my
melancholy and be at rest;’ the soul sinks into ‘passionless calm and
silence unreproved,’ flinging away ‘the passionate tumult of a clinging
hope,’ which is the allotted boon and happiness of mortality. It was,
as we believe, straight towards this terrible state that Mr. Newton
directed Cowper. He kept him occupied with subjects which were too great
for him; he kept him away from his natural life; he presented to him
views and opinions but too well justifying his deep and dark insanity; he
convinced him that he ought to experience emotions which were foreign to
his nature; he had nothing to add by way of comfort, when told that those
emotions did not and could not exist. Cowper seems to have felt this. His
second illness commenced with a strong dislike to his spiritual adviser,
and it may be doubted if there ever was again the same cordiality
between them. Mr. Newton, too, as was natural, was vexed at Cowper’s
calamity. His reputation in the ‘religious world’ was deeply pledged to
conducting this most ‘interesting case’ to a favourable termination. A
failure was not to be contemplated, and yet it was obviously coming and
coming. It was to no purpose that Cowper acquired fame and secular glory
in the literary world. This was rather adding gall to bitterness. The
unbelievers in evangelical religion would be able to point to one at
least, and that the best known among its proselytes, to whom it had not
brought peace—whom it had rather confirmed in wretchedness. His literary
fame, too, took Cowper away into a larger circle, out of the rigid
decrees and narrow ordinances of his father-confessor, and of course the
latter remonstrated. Altogether there was not a cessation, but a decline
and diminution of intercourse. But better, according to the saying, had
they never met or never parted. If a man is to have a father-confessor,
let him at least choose a sensible one. The dominion of Mr. Newton had
been exercised, not indeed with mildness, or wisdom, or discrimination,
but, nevertheless, with strong judgment and coarse acumen—with a bad
choice of ends, but at least a vigorous selection of means. Afterwards it
was otherwise. In the village of Olney there was a schoolmaster, whose
name often occurs in Cowper’s letters,—a foolish, vain, worthy sort of
man: what the people of the west call a ‘scholard,’ that is, a man of
more knowledge and less sense than those about him. He sometimes came
to Cowper to beg old clothes, sometimes to instruct him with literary
criticisms, and is known in the ‘Correspondence’ as ‘Mr. Teedon, who
reads the “Monthly Review,”’ ‘Mr. Teedon, whose smile is fame.’ Yet to
this man, whose harmless follies his humour had played with a thousand
times, Cowper, in his later years, and when the dominion of Mr. Newton
had so far ceased as to leave him, after many years, the use of his own
judgment, resorted for counsel and guidance. And the man had visions, and
dreams, and revelations!! But enough of such matters.
The peculiarity of Cowper’s life is its division into marked periods.
From his birth to his first illness he may be said to have lived in one
world, and for some twenty years afterwards, from his thirty-second to
about his fiftieth year, in a wholly distinct one. Much of the latter
time was spent in hopeless despondency. His principal companions during
that period were Mr. Newton, about whom we have been writing, and Mrs.
Unwin, who may be said to have broken the charmed circle of seclusion in
which they lived by inciting Cowper to continuous literary composition.
Of Mrs. Unwin herself ample memorials remain. She was, in truth, a most
excellent person—in mind and years much older than the poet—as it were
by profession elderly, able in every species of preserve, profound in
salts, and pans, and jellies; culinary by taste; by tact and instinct
motherly and housewifish. She was not, however, without some less
larderiferous qualities. Lady Hesketh and Lady Austen, neither of them
very favourably-prejudiced critics, decided so. The former has written,
‘She is very far from grave; on the contrary, she is cheerful and gay,
and laughs _de bon cœur_ upon the smallest provocation. Amidst all the
little puritanical words which fall from her _de tems en tems_, she seems
to have by nature a great fund of gaiety.... I must say, too, that she
seems to be very well read in the English poets, as appears by several
little quotations which she makes from time to time, and has a true taste
for what is excellent in that way.’ This she showed by persuading Cowper
to the composition of his first volume.
As a poet, Cowper belongs, though with some differences, to the school
of Pope. Great question, as is well known, has been raised whether that
very accomplished writer was a poet at all; and a secondary and equally
debated question runs side by side, whether, if a poet, he were a great
one. With the peculiar genius and personal rank of Pope we have in this
article nothing to do. But this much may be safely said, that according
to the definition which has been ventured of the poetical art, by the
greatest and most accomplished master of the other school, his works are
delicately-finished specimens of artistic excellence in one branch of it.
‘Poetry,’ says Shelley, who was surely a good judge, ‘is the expression
of the imagination,’ by which he meant of course not only the expression
of the interior sensations accompanying the faculty’s employment, but
likewise, and more emphatically, the exercise of it in the delineation
of objects which attract it. Now society, viewed as a whole, is clearly
one of those objects. There is a vast assemblage of human beings, of
all nations, tongues, and languages, each with ideas, and a personality
and a cleaving mark of its own, yet each having somewhat that resembles
something of all, much that resembles a part of many—a motley regiment,
of various forms, of a million impulses, passions, thoughts, fancies,
motives, actions; a ‘many-headed monstered thing;’ a Bashi Bazouk array;
a clown to be laughed at; a hydra to be spoken evil of; yet, in fine,
our all—the very people of the whole earth. There is nothing in nature
more attractive to the fancy than this great spectacle and congregation.
Since Herodotus went to and fro to the best of his ability over all the
earth, the spectacle of civilisation has ever drawn to itself the quick
eyes and quick tongues of seeing and roving men. Not only, says Goethe,
is man ever interesting to man, but ‘properly there is nothing else
interesting.’ There is a distinct subject for poetry—at least according
to Shelley’s definition—in selecting and working out, in idealising,
in combining, in purifying, in intensifying the great features and
peculiarities which make society, as a whole, interesting, remarkable,
fancy-taking. No doubt it is not the object of poetry to versify the
works of the eminent narrators, ‘to prose,’ according to a disrespectful
description, ‘o’er books of travelled seamen,’ to chill you with didactic
icebergs, to heat you with torrid sonnets. The difficulty of reading such
local narratives is now great—so great that a gentleman in the reviewing
department once wished ‘one man would go everywhere and say everything,’
in order that the limit of his labour at least might be settled and
defined. And it would certainly be much worse if palm trees were of
course to be in rhyme, and the dinner of the migrator only recountable in
blank verse. We do not wish this. We only maintain that there are certain
principles, causes, passions, affections, acting on and influencing
communities at large, permeating their life, ruling their principles,
directing their history, working as a subtle and wandering principle
over all their existence. These have a somewhat abstract character, as
compared with the soft ideals and passionate incarnations of purely
individual character, and seem dull beside the stirring lays of eventful
times in which the earlier and bolder poets delight. Another cause
cooperates. The tendency of civilisation is to pare away the oddness and
licence of personal character, and to leave a monotonous agreeableness as
the sole trait and comfort of mankind. This obviously tends to increase
the efficacy of general principles, to bring to view the daily efficacy
of constant causes, to suggest the hidden agency of subtle abstractions.
Accordingly, as civilisation augments and philosophy grows, we commonly
find a school of ‘common-sense poets,’ as they may be called, arise and
develop, who proceed to depict what they see around them, to describe
its _natura naturans_, to delineate its _natura naturata_, to evolve
productive agencies, to teach subtle ramifications. Complete, as the most
characteristic specimen of this class of poets, stands Pope. He was,
some one we think has said, the sort of person we cannot even conceive
existing in a barbarous age. His subject was not life at large, but
fashionable life. He described the society in which he was thrown—the
people among whom he lived. His mind was a hoard of small maxims, a
quintessence of petty observations. When he described character, he
described it, not dramatically, nor as it is in itself; but observantly
and from without, calling up in the mind not so much a vivid conception
of the man, of the real, corporeal, substantial being, as an idea of
the idea which a metaphysical bystander might refine and excruciate
concerning him. Society in Pope is scarcely a society of people, but
of pretty little atoms, coloured and painted with hoops or in coats—a
miniature of metaphysics, a puppet-show of sylphs. He elucidates the
doctrine, that the tendency of civilised poetry is towards an analytic
sketch of the existing civilisation. Nor is the effect diminished by the
pervading character of keen judgment and minute intrusive sagacity; for
no great painter of English life can be without a rough sizing of strong
sense, or he would fail from want of sympathy with his subject. Pope
exemplifies the class and type of ‘common-sense’ poets who substitute
an animated ‘_catalogue raisonné_’ of working thoughts and operative
principles—a sketch of the then present society, as a whole and as an
object, for the κλέα ἀνδρῶν, the tale of which is one subject of early
verse, and the stage effect of living, loving, passionate, impetuous men
and women, which is the special topic of another.
What Pope is to our fashionable and town life, Cowper is to our domestic
and rural life. This is perhaps the reason why he is so national. It
has been said no foreigner can live in the country. We doubt whether
any people, who felt their whole heart and entire exclusive breath of
their existence to be concentrated in a great capital, could or would
appreciate such intensely provincial pictures as are the entire scope of
Cowper’s delineation. A good many imaginative persons are really plagued
with him. Everything is so comfortable; the tea-urn hisses so plainly,
the toast is so warm, the breakfast so neat, the food so edible, that
one turns away, in excitable moments, a little angrily from anything so
quiet, tame, and sober. Have we not always hated this life? What can be
worse than regular meals, clock-moving servants, a time for everything,
and everything then done, a place for everything, without the Irish
alleviation—‘Sure, and I’m rejiced to say, that’s jist and exactly where
it isn’t,’ a common gardener, a slow parson, a heavy assortment of near
relations, a placid house flowing with milk and sugar—all that the fates
can stuff together of substantial comfort, and fed and fatted monotony?
Aspiring and excitable youth stoutly maintains it can endure anything
much better than the ‘gross fog Bœotian’—the torpid, in-door, tea-tabular
felicity. Still a great deal of tea is really consumed in the English
nation. A settled and practical people are distinctly in favour of heavy
relaxations, placid prolixities, slow comforts. A state between the mind
and the body, something intermediate, half-way from the newspaper to a
nap—this is what we may call the middle-life theory of the influential
English gentleman—the true aspiration of the ruler of the world.
‘’Tis then the understanding takes repose
In indolent vacuity of thought,
And sleeps and is refreshed. Meanwhile the face
Conceals the mood lethargic with a mask
Of deep deliberation.’
It is these in-door scenes, this common world, this gentle round of ‘calm
delights,’ the trivial course of slowly-moving pleasures, the petty
detail of quiet relaxation, that Cowper excels in. The post-boy, the
winter’s evening, the newspaper, the knitting needles, the stockings, the
waggon—these are his subjects. His sure popularity arises from his having
held up to the English people exact delineations of what they really
prefer. Perhaps one person in four hundred understands Wordsworth, about
one in eight thousand may appreciate Shelley, but there is no expressing
the small fraction who do not love dulness, who do not enter into
‘Homeborn happiness,
Fireside enjoyments, intimate delights,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening know.’
His objection to the more exciting and fashionable pleasures was perhaps,
in an extreme analysis, that they put him out. They were too great a task
for his energies—asked too much for his spirits. His comments on them
rather remind us of Mr. Rushworth—Miss Austen’s heavy hero’s remark on
the theatre, ‘I think we went on much better by ourselves before this was
thought of, doing, doing, doing _nothing_.’
The subject of these pictures, in point of interest, may be what we
choose to think it, but there is no denying great merit to the execution.
The sketches have the highest merit—suitableness of style. It would be
absurd to describe a post-boy as sonneteers their mistress—to cover his
plain face with fine similes—to put forward the ‘brow of Egypt’—to stick
metaphors upon him, as the Americans upon General Washington. The only
merit such topics have room for is an easy and dextrous plainness—a sober
suit of well-fitting expressions—a free, working, flowing, picturesque
garb of words adapted to the solid conduct of a sound and serious world,
and this merit Cowper’s style has. On the other hand, it entirely wants
the higher and rarer excellences of poetical expression. There is none
of the choice art which has studiously selected the words of one class
of great poets, or the rare, untaught, unteachable felicity which has
vivified those of others. No one, in reading Cowper, stops as if to draw
his breath more deeply over words which do not so much express or clothe
poetical ideas, as seem to intertwine, coalesce, and be blended with the
very essence of poetry itself.
Of course a poet could not deal in any measure with such subjects as
Cowper dealt with, and not become inevitably, to a certain extent,
satirical. The ludicrous is in some sort the imagination of common life.
The ‘dreary intercourse’ of which Wordsworth makes mention, would be
dreary, unless some people possessed more than he did the faculty of
making fun. A universe in which Dignity No. I. conversed decorously with
Dignity No. II. on topics befitting their state, would be perhaps a levee
of great intellects and a tea-table of enormous thoughts; but it would
want the best charm of this earth—the medley of great things and little,
of things mundane and things celestial, things low and things awful, of
things eternal and things of half a minute. It is in this contrast that
humour and satire have their place—pointing out the intense unspeakable
incongruity of the groups and juxtapositions of our world. To all of
these which fell under his own eye, Cowper was alive. A gentle sense of
propriety and consistency in daily things was evidently characteristic of
him; and if he fail of the highest success in this species of art, it is
not from an imperfect treatment of the scenes and conceptions which he
touched, but from the fact that the follies with which he deals are not
the greatest follies—that there are deeper absurdities in human life than
John Gilpin touches upon—that the superficial occurrences of ludicrous
life do not exhaust, or even deeply test, the mirthful resources of our
minds and fortunes.
As a scold, we think Cowper failed. He had a great idea of the use of
railing, and there are many pages of laudable invective against various
vices which we feel no call whatever to defend. But a great vituperator
had need to be a great hater; and of any real rage, any such gall and
bitterness as great and irritable satirists have in other ages let loose
upon men, of any thorough, brooding, burning, abiding detestation, he
was as incapable as a tame hare. His vituperation reads like the mild
man’s whose wife ate up his dinner, ‘Really, Sir, I feel quite _angry_!’
Nor has his language any of the sharp intrusive acumen which divides in
sunder both soul and spirit, and makes fierce and unforgettable reviling.
Some people may be surprised, notwithstanding our lengthy explanation, at
hearing Cowper treated as of the school of Pope. It has been customary,
at least with some critics, to speak of him as one of those who recoiled
from the artificiality of that great writer, and at least commenced a
return to a simple delineation of outward nature. And of course there
is considerable truth in this idea. The poetry (if such it is) of Pope
would be just as true if all the trees were yellow and all the grass
flesh-colour. He did not care for ‘snowy scalps,’ or ‘rolling streams,’
or ‘icy halls,’ or ‘precipice’s gloom.’ Nor, for that matter, did Cowper
either. He, as Hazlitt most justly said, was as much afraid of a shower
of rain as any man that ever lived. At the same time, the fashionable
life described by Pope has no reference whatever to the beauties of
the material universe, never regards them, could go on just as well in
the soft, sloppy, gelatinous existence which Dr. Whewell (who knows)
says is alone possible in Jupiter and Saturn. But the rural life of
Cowper’s poetry has a constant and necessary reference to the country,
is identified with its features, cannot be separated from it even in
fancy. Green fields and a slow river seem all the material of beauty
Cowper had given him. But what was more to the purpose, his attention
was well concentrated upon them. As he himself said, he did not go more
than thirteen miles from home for twenty years, and very seldom as far.
He was, therefore, well able to find out all that was charming in Olney
and its neighbourhood, and as it presented nothing which is not to be
found in any of the fresh rural parts of England, what he has left us is
really a delicate description and appreciative delineation of the simple
essential English country.
However, it is to be remarked that the description of nature in Cowper
differs altogether from the peculiar delineation of the same subject,
which has been so influential in more recent times, and which bears,
after its greatest master, the name Wordsworthian. To Cowper nature
is simply a background, a beautiful background no doubt, but still
essentially a _locus in quo_—a space in which the work and mirth of life
pass and are performed. A more professedly formal delineation does not
occur than the following:—
‘O Winter! ruler of the inverted year,
Thy scattered hair with sleet-like ashes filled,
Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fringed with a beard made white with other snows
Than those of age, thy forehead wrapped in clouds,
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne
A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,
But urged by storms along its slippery way;
I love thee, all unlovely as thou seemest,
And dreaded as thou art. Thou holdest the sun
A prisoner in the yet undawning east,
Shortening his journey between morn and noon,
And hurrying him, impatient of his stay,
Down to the rosy west; but kindly still
Compensating his loss with added hours
Of social converse and instructive ease,
And gathering, at short notice, in one group
The family dispersed, and fixing thought,
Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares.
I crown thee King of intimate delights,
Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening know.
No rattling wheels stop short before these gates.’
After a very few lines he returns within doors to the occupation of
man and woman—to human tasks and human pastimes. To Wordsworth, on the
contrary, nature is a religion. So far from being unwilling to treat
her as a special object of study, he hardly thought any other equal or
comparable. He was so far from holding the doctrine that the earth was
made for men to live in, that it would rather seem as if he thought men
were created to see the earth. The whole aspect of nature was to him
a special revelation of an immanent and abiding power—a breath of the
pervading art—a smile of the Eternal Mind—according to the lines which
every one knows,—
‘A sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused;
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.’
Of this haunting, supernatural, mystical view of nature Cowper never
heard. Like the strong old lady who said, ‘_She_ was born before nerves
were invented,’ he may be said to have lived before the awakening of the
detective sensibility which reveals this deep and obscure doctrine.
In another point of view, also, Cowper is curiously contrasted with
Wordsworth, as a delineator of nature. The delineation of Cowper is
a simple delineation. He makes a sketch of the object before him,
and there he leaves it. Wordsworth, on the contrary, is not satisfied
unless he describe not only the bare outward object which others see,
but likewise the reflected high-wrought feelings which that object
excites in a brooding, self-conscious mind. His subject was not so much
nature, as nature reflected by Wordsworth. Years of deep musing and long
introspection had made him familiar with every shade and shadow in the
many-coloured impression which the universe makes on meditative genius
and observant sensibility. Now these feelings Cowper did not describe,
because, to all appearance, he did not perceive them. He had a great
pleasure in watching the common changes and common aspects of outward
things, but he was not invincibly prone to brood and pore over their
reflex effects upon his own mind:
‘A primrose by the river’s brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.’
According to the account which Cowper at first gave of his literary
occupations, his entire design was to communicate the religious views
to which he was then a convert. He fancied that the vehicle of verse
might bring many to listen to truths which they would be disinclined to
have stated to them in simple prose. And however tedious the recurrence
of these theological tenets may be to the common reader, it is certain
that a considerable portion of Cowper’s peculiar popularity may be
traced to their expression. He is the one poet of a class which have no
poets. In that once large and still considerable portion of the English
world, which regards the exercise of the fancy and the imagination as
dangerous—snares, as they speak—distracting the soul from an intense
consideration of abstract doctrine, Cowper’s strenuous inculcation of
those doctrines has obtained for him a certain toleration. Of course
all verse is perilous. The use of single words is harmless, but the
employment of two, in such a manner as to form a rhyme—the regularities
of interval and studied recurrence of the same sound, evince an attention
to time, and a partiality to things of sense. Most poets must be
prohibited; the exercise of the fancy requires watching. But Cowper is a
ticket-of-leave man. He has the chaplain’s certificate. He has expressed
himself ‘with the utmost propriety.’ The other imaginative criminals must
be left to the fates, but he may be admitted to the sacred drawing-room,
though with constant care and scrupulous _surveillance_. Perhaps,
however, taken in connection with his diseased and peculiar melancholy,
these tenets really add to the artistic effect of Cowper’s writings. The
free discussion of daily matters, the delicate delineation of domestic
detail, the passing narrative of fugitive occurrences, would seem light
and transitory, if it were not broken by the interruption of a terrible
earnestness, and relieved by the dark background of a deep and foreboding
sadness. It is scarcely artistic to describe the ‘painted veil which
those who live call life,’ and leave wholly out of view and undescribed
‘the chasm sightless and drear,’ which lies always beneath and around it.
It is of the _Task_ more than of Cowper’s earlier volume of poems that
a critic of his poetry must more peculiarly be understood to speak. All
the best qualities of his genius are there concentrated, and the alloy
is less than elsewhere. He was fond of citing the saying of Dryden, that
the rhyme had often helped him to a thought—a great but very perilous
truth. The difficulty is, that the rhyme so frequently helps to the wrong
thought—that the stress of the mind is recalled from the main thread
of the poem, from the narrative, or sentiment, or delineation, to some
wayside remark or fancy, which the casual resemblance of final sound
suggests. This is fatal, unless either a poet’s imagination be so hot
and determined as to bear down upon its objects, and to be unwilling
to hear the voice of any charmer who might distract it, or else the
nature of the poem itself should be of so desultory a character that it
does not much matter about the sequence of the thought—at least within
great and ample limits, as in some of Swift’s casual rhymes, where the
sound is in fact the connecting link of unity. Now Cowper is not often
in either of these positions; he always has a thread of argument on
which he is hanging his illustrations, and yet he has not the exclusive
interest or the undeviating energetic downrightness of mind which would
ensure his going through it without idling or turning aside; consequently
the thoughts which the rhyme suggests are constantly breaking in upon
the main matter, destroying the emphatic unity which is essential to
rhythmical delineation. His blank verse of course is exempt from this
defect, and there is moreover something in the nature of the metre which
fits it for the expression of studious and quiet reflection. The _Task_
too was composed at the healthiest period of Cowper’s later life, in the
full vigour of his faculties, and with the spur the semi-recognition of
his first volume had made it a common subject of literary discussion,
whether he was a poet or not. Many men could endure—as indeed all but
about ten do actually in every generation endure—to be without this
distinction; but few could have an idea that it was a frequent point of
argument whether they were duly entitled to possess it or not, without
at least a strong desire to settle the question by some work of decisive
excellence. This the _Task_ achieved for Cowper. Since its publication
his name has been a household word—a particularly household word in
English literature. The story of its composition is connected with one of
the most curious incidents in Cowper’s later life, and has given occasion
to a good deal of writing.
In the summer of 1781 it happened that two ladies called at a shop
exactly opposite the house at Olney where Cowper and Mrs. Unwin
resided. One of these was a familiar and perhaps tame object,—a Mrs.
Jones,—the wife of a neighbouring parson; the other, however, was so
striking, that Cowper, one of the shyest and least demonstrative of men,
immediately asked Mrs. Unwin to invite her to tea. This was a great
event, as it would appear that few or no social interruptions, casual
or contemplated, then varied what Cowper called the ‘duality of his
existence.’ This favoured individual was Lady Austen, a person of what
Mr. Hayley terms ‘colloquial talents;’ in truth an energetic, vivacious,
amusing, and rather handsome lady of the world. She had been much in
France, and is said to have caught the facility of manner and love of
easy society, which is the unchanging characteristic of that land of
change. She was a fascinating person in the great world, and it is not
difficult to imagine she must have been an excitement indeed at Olney.
She was, however, most gracious; fell in love, as Cowper says, not only
with him but with Mrs. Unwin; was called ‘Sister Ann,’ laughed and made
laugh, was every way so great an acquisition that his seeing her appeared
to him to show ‘strong marks of providential interposition.’ He thought
her superior to the curate’s wife, who was a ‘valuable person,’ but had
a family, &c. &c. The new acquaintance had much to contribute to the
Olney conversation. She had seen much of the world, and probably seen it
well, and had at least a good deal to narrate concerning it. Among other
interesting matters, she one day recounted to Cowper the story of John
Gilpin, as one which she had heard in childhood, and in a short time the
poet sent her the ballad, which every one has liked ever since. It was
written, he says, no doubt truly, in order to relieve a fit of terrible
and uncommon despondency; but altogether, for a few months after the
introduction of this new companion, he was more happy and animated than
at any other time after his first illness. Clouds, nevertheless, began
to show themselves soon. The circumstances are of the minute and female
kind, which it would require a good deal of writing to describe, even
if we knew them perfectly. The original cause of misconstruction was a
rather romantic letter of Lady Austen, drawing a sublime picture of what
she expected from Cowper’s friendship. Mr. Scott, the clergyman at Olney,
who had taken the place of Mr. Newton, and who is described as a dry
and sensible man, gave a short account of what he thought was the real
embroilment. ‘Who,’ said he, ‘can be surprised that two women should be
daily in the society of one man and then quarrel with _one another_?’
Cowper’s own description shows how likely this was.
‘From a scene of the most uninterrupted retirement,’ he
says to Mr. Unwin, ‘we have passed at once into a state of
constant engagement. Not that our society is much multiplied;
the addition of an individual has made all this difference.
Lady Austen and we pass our days alternately at each other’s
_château_. In the morning I walk with one or other of the
ladies, and in the afternoon wind thread. Thus did Hercules,
and thus probably did Samson, and thus do I; and were both
those heroes living, I should not fear to challenge them to a
trial of skill in that business, or doubt to beat them both. As
to killing lions and other amusements of that kind, with which
they were so delighted, I should be their humble servant and
beg to be excused.’
Things were in this state when she suggested to him the composition of a
new poem of some length in blank verse, and on being asked to suggest a
subject, said, Well, write upon that ‘sofa,’ whence is the title of the
first book of the _Task_. According to Cowper’s own account, it was this
poem which was the cause of the ensuing dissension.
‘On her first settlement in our neighbourhood, I made it my
own particular business (for at that time I was not employed
in writing, having published my first volume, and not begun
my second) to pay my devoirs to her ladyship every morning at
eleven. Customs very soon become laws. I began the _Task_; for
she was the lady who gave me the Sofa for a subject. Being once
engaged in the work, I began to feel the inconvenience of my
morning attendance. We had seldom breakfasted ourselves till
ten: and the intervening hour was all the time that I could
find in the whole day for writing; and occasionally it would
happen that the half of that hour was all that I could secure
for the purpose. But there was no remedy. Long usage had made
that which at first was optional, a point of good manners, and
consequently of necessity, and I was forced to neglect the
_Task_, to attend upon the Muse who had inspired the subject.
But she had ill health, and before I had quite finished the
work was obliged to repair to Bristol.’
And it is possible that this is the true account of the matter. Yet
we fancy there is a kind of awkwardness and constraint in the manner
in which it is spoken of. Of course, the plain and literal portion of
mankind have set it down at once that Cowper was in love with Lady
Austen, just as they married him over and over again to Mrs. Unwin. But
of a strong passionate love, as we have before explained, we do not think
Cowper capable, and there are certainly no signs of it in this case.
There is, however, one odd circumstance. Years after, when no longer
capable of original composition, he was fond of hearing all his poems
read to him except ‘John Gilpin.’ There were recollections, he said,
connected with those verses which were too painful. Did he mean, the worm
that dieth not—the reminiscence of the animated narratress of that not
intrinsically melancholy legend?
The literary success of Cowper opened to him a far larger circle
of acquaintance, and connected him in close bonds with many of his
relations, who had looked with an unfavourable eye at the peculiar tenets
which he had adopted, and the peculiar and recluse life which he had
been advised to lead. It is to these friends and acquaintance that we
owe that copious correspondence on which so much of Cowper’s fame at
present rests. The complete letter-writer is now an unknown animal. In
the last century, when communications were difficult, and epistles rare,
there were a great many valuable people who devoted a good deal of time
to writing elaborate letters. You wrote letters to a man whom you knew
nineteen years and a half ago, and told him what you had for dinner, and
what your second cousin said, and how the crops got on. Every detail of
life was described and dwelt on, and improved. The art of writing, at
least of writing easily, was comparatively rare, which kept the number
of such compositions within narrow limits. Sir Walter Scott says he knew
a man who remembered that the London post-bag once came to Edinburgh
with only one letter in it. One can fancy the solemn conscientious
elaborateness with which a person would write, with the notion that his
letter would have a whole coach and a whole bag to itself, and travel two
hundred miles alone, the exclusive object of a red guard’s care. The only
thing like it now—the deferential minuteness with which one public office
writes to another, conscious that the letter will travel on her Majesty’s
service three doors down the passage—sinks by comparison into cursory
brevity. No administrative reform will be able to bring even the official
mind of these days into the grave inch-an-hour conscientiousness with
which a confidential correspondent of a century ago related the growth
of apples, the manufacture of jams, the appearance of flirtations, and
other such things. All the ordinary incidents of an easy life were made
the most of; a party was epistolary capital, a race a mine of wealth. So
deeply sentimental was this intercourse, that it was much argued whether
the affections were created for the sake of the ink, or ink for the sake
of the affections. Thus it continued for many years, and the fruits
thereof are written in the volumes of family papers, which daily appear,
are praised as ‘materials for the historian,’ and consigned, as the case
may be, to posterity or oblivion. All this has now passed away. Sir
Rowland Hill is entitled to the credit, not only of introducing stamps,
but also of destroying letters. The amount of annotations which will be
required to make the notes of this day intelligible to posterity is a
wonderful idea, and no quantity of comment will make them readable. You
might as well publish a collection of telegraphs. The careful detail, the
studious minuteness, the circumstantial statement of a former time, is
exchanged for a curt brevity or only half-intelligible narration. In old
times, letters were written for people who knew nothing and required to
be told everything. Now they are written for people who know everything
except the one thing which the letter is designed to explain to them.
It is impossible in some respects not to regret the old practice. It
is well that each age should write for itself a faithful account of
its habitual existence. We do this to a certain extent in novels, but
novels are difficult materials for an historian. They raise a cause and
a controversy as to how far they are really faithful delineations. Lord
Macaulay is even now under criticism for his use of the plays of the
seventeenth century. Letters are generally true on certain points. The
least veracious man will tell truly the colour of his coat, the hour of
his dinner, the materials of his shoes. The unconscious delineation of a
recurring and familiar life is beyond the reach of a fraudulent fancy.
Horace Walpole was not a very scrupulous narrator; yet it was too much
trouble even for him to tell lies on many things. His set stories and
conspicuous scandals are no doubt often unfounded, but there is a gentle
undercurrent of daily unremarkable life and manners which he evidently
assumed as a datum for his historical imagination. Whence posterity will
derive this for the times of Queen Victoria it is difficult to fancy.
Even memoirs are no resource; they generally leave out the common life,
and try at least to bring out the uncommon events.
It is evident that this species of composition exactly harmonised with
the temperament and genius of Cowper. Detail was his forte and quietness
his element. Accordingly, his delicate humour plays over perhaps a
million letters, mostly descriptive of events which no one else would
have thought worth narrating, and yet which, when narrated, show to
us, and will show to persons to whom it will be yet more strange, the
familiar, placid, easy, ruminating, provincial existence of our great
grandfathers. Slow, Olney might be,—indescribable, it certainly was not.
We seem to have lived there ourselves.
The most copious subject of Cowper’s correspondence is his translation
of Homer. This was published by subscription, and it is pleasant to
observe the healthy facility with which one of the shyest men in the
world set himself to extract guineas from every one he had ever heard of.
In several cases he was very successful. The University of Oxford, he
tells us, declined, as of course it would, to recognise the principle of
subscribing towards literary publications; but other public bodies and
many private persons were more generous. It is to be wished that their
aid had contributed to the production of a more pleasing work. The fact
is, Cowper was not like Agamemnon. The most conspicuous feature in the
Greek heroes is a certain brisk, decisive activity, which always strikes
and always likes to strike. This quality is faithfully represented in the
poet himself. Homer is the briskest of men. The Germans have denied that
there was any such person; but they have never questioned his extreme
activity. ‘From what you tell me, sir,’ said an American, ‘I should like
to have read Homer. I should say he was a go-ahead party.’ Now this is
exactly what Cowper was not. His genius was domestic, and tranquil, and
calm. He had no sympathy, or little sympathy, even with the common,
half-asleep activities of a refined society; an evening party was too
much for him; a day’s hunt a preposterous excitement. It is absurd to
expect a man like this to sympathise with the stern stimulants of a
barbaric age, with a race who fought because they liked it, and a poet
who sang of fighting because he thought their taste judicious. As if to
make matters worse, Cowper selected a metre in which it would be scarcely
possible for any one, however gifted, to translate Homer. The two kinds
of metrical composition most essentially opposed to one another are
ballad poetry and blank verse. The very nature of the former requires a
marked pause and striking rhythm. Every line should have a distinct end
and a clear beginning. It is like martial music, there should be a tramp
in the very versification of it:—
‘Armour rusting in his halls
On the blood of Clifford calls;
“Quell the Scot,” exclaims the lance,
Bear me to the heart of France,
Is the longing of the shield:
Tell thy name, thou trembling field,
Field of death, where’er thou be,
Groan thou with our victory.’
And this is the tone of Homer. The grandest of human tongues marches
forward with its proudest steps: the clearest tones call forward—the most
marked of metres carries him on:—
‘Like a reappearing star,
Like a glory from afar—’
he ever heads, and will head, ‘the flock of war.’ Now blank verse is
the exact opposite of all this. Dr. Johnson laid down that it was verse
only to the eye, which was a bold dictum. But without going this length
it will be safe to say, that of all considerable metres in our language
it has the least distinct conclusion, least decisive repetition, the
least trumpet-like rhythm; and it is this of which Cowper made choice.
He had an idea that extreme literalness was an unequalled advantage,
and logically reasoned that it was easier to do this in that metre
than in any other. He did not quite hold with Mr. Cobbett that the
‘gewgaw fetters of rhyme were invented by the monks to enslave the
people;’ but as a man who had due experience of both, he was aware
that it is easier to write two lines of different endings than two
lines of the same ending, and supposed that by taking advantage of
this to preserve the exact grammatical meaning of his author, he was
indisputably approximating to a good translation. ‘Whether,’ he writes,
‘a translation of Homer may be best executed in blank verse or in rhyme
is a question in the decision of which no man finds difficulty who has
ever duly considered what translation ought to be, or who is in any
degree practically acquainted with those kinds of versification.... No
human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with
sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only
the full sense, of the original.’ And if the true object of translation
were to save the labour and dictionaries of construing schoolboys, there
is no question but this slavish adherence to the original would be the
most likely to gain the approbation of those diminutive but sure judges.
But if the object is to convey an idea of the general tone, scope, and
artistic effect of the original, the mechanical copying of the details
is as likely to end in a good result as a careful cast from a dead man’s
features to produce a living and speaking being. On the whole, therefore,
the condemnation remains, that Homer is not dull, and Cowper is.
With the translation of Homer terminated all the brightest period of
Cowper’s life. There is little else to say. He undertook an edition
of Milton—a most difficult task, involving the greatest and most
accurate learning, in theology, in classics, in Italian—in a word, in
all ante-Miltonic literature. By far the greater portion of this lay
quite out of Cowper’s path. He had never been a hard student, and his
evident incapacity for the task troubled and vexed him. A man who had
never been able to assume any real responsibility was not likely to
feel comfortable under the weight of a task which very few men would be
able to accomplish. Mrs. Unwin too fell into a state of helplessness
and despondency; and instead of relying on her for cheerfulness and
management, he was obliged to manage for her, and cheer her. His mind
was unequal to the task. Gradually the dark cloud of melancholy, which
had hung about him so long, grew and grew, and extended itself day by
day. In vain Lord Thurlow, who was a likely man to know, assured him
that his spiritual despondency was without ground; he smiled sadly, but
seemed to think that at any rate he was not going into Chancery. In vain
Hayley, a rival poet, but a good-natured, blundering, well-intentioned,
incoherent man, went to and fro, getting the Lord Chief Justice and
other dignitaries to attest, under their hands, that they concurred in
Thurlow’s opinion. In vain, with far wiser kindness, his relatives,
especially many of his mother’s family, from whom he had been long
divided, but who gradually drew nearer to him as they were wanted,
endeavoured to divert his mind to healthful labour and tranquil society.
The day of these things had passed away—the summer was ended. He became
quite unequal to original composition, and his greatest pleasure was
hearing his own writings read to him. After a long period of hopeless
despondency he died on April 25, in the first year of this century; and
if he needs an epitaph, let us say, that not in vain was he Nature’s
favourite. As a higher poet sings:—
‘And all day long I number yet,
All seasons through, another debt,
Which I, wherever thou art met,
To thee am owing;
An instinct call it, a blind sense,
A happy, genial influence,
Coming one knows not how nor whence,
Nor whither going.’
...
‘If stately passions in me burn,
And one chance look to thee should turn,
I drink out of an humbler urn,
A lowlier pleasure;
The homely sympathy that heeds
The common life our nature breeds;
A wisdom fitted to the needs
Of hearts at leisure.’
APPENDIX.
LETTERS ON THE FRENCH COUP D’ÉTAT OF 1851.
(_Addressed to the Editor of ‘THE INQUIRER.’_)
LETTER I.
_THE DICTATORSHIP._
PARIS: Jan. 8, 1852.
SIR,—You have asked me to tell you what I think of French affairs. I
shall be pleased to do so; but I ought perhaps to begin by cautioning
you against believing, or too much heeding, what I say. However, I do
not imagine that I need do so; for with your experience of the public
journals, you will be quite aware that it is not difficult to be an
‘occasional correspondent.’ Have your boots polished in a blacking-shop,
and call the interesting officiator an ‘intelligent _ouvrier_;’ be
shaved, and cite the _coiffeur_ as ‘a person in rather a superior
station;’ call your best acquaintance ‘a well-informed person,’ and all
others ‘persons whom I have found to be occasionally not in error,’
and—abroad, at least—you will soon have matter for a newspaper letter.
I should quite deceive you if I professed to have made these profound
researches; nor, like Sir Francis Head, ‘do I no longer know where I
am,’ because the French President has asked me to accompany him in his
ride. My perception of personal locality has not as yet been so tried. I
only know what a person who is in a foreign country during an important
political catastrophe cannot avoid knowing, what he runs against, what is
beaten into him, what he can hardly help hearing, seeing, and reflecting.
That Louis Napoleon has gone to Notre Dame to return thanks to God
for the seven millions and odd suffrages of the French people—that
he has taken up his abode at the Tuileries, and that he has had new
napoleons coined in his name—that he has broken up the trees of liberty
for firewood—that he has erased, or is erasing (for they are many),
_Liberté_, _Egalité_, and _Fraternité_ from the National buildings,—all
these things are so easy and so un-English, that I am pretty sure, with
you, they will be thought signs of pompous impotence, and I suppose
many people will be inclined to believe the best comment to be the one
which I heard—‘_Mon Dieu, il a sauvé la France: la rue du Coq s’appelle
maintenant la rue de l’Aigle!_’[33]
I am inclined, however, to imagine that this idea would be utterly
erroneous; that, on the contrary, the President is just now, at least,
really strong and really popular; that the act of December 2nd did
succeed and is succeeding; that many, that most, of the inferior people
do really and sincerely pray _Domine Salvum fac Napoleonem_.
In what I have seen of the comments of the English press upon recent
events here, two things are not quite enough kept apart—I mean the
temporary dictatorship of Louis Napoleon to meet and cope with the
expected crisis of ’52, and the continuance of that dictatorship
hereafter,—the new, or as it is called, the _Bas_-Empire—in a word, the
coming Constitution and questionable political machinery with which ‘the
nephew of my uncle’ is now proposing to endow France. Of course, in
reality these two things _are_ separate. It is one thing to hold that a
military rule is required to meet an urgent and temporary difficulty:
another, to advocate the continuance of such a system, when so critical a
necessity no longer exists.
It seems to me, or would seem, if I did not know that I was contradicted
both by much English writing and opinion, and also by many most
competent judges here, that the first point, the temporary dictatorship,
is a tolerably clear case; that it is not to be complicated with the
perplexing inquiry what form of government will permanently suit the
French people;—that the President was, under the actual facts of
the case, quite justified in assuming the responsibility, though of
course I allow that responsibility to be tremendous. My reasons for so
believing I shall in this letter endeavour to explain, except that I
shall not, I fancy, have room to say much on the moral defensibility or
indefensibility of the _coup d’état_; nor do I imagine that you want
from me any ethical speculation—that is manufactured in Printing-house
Square; but I shall give the best account I can of the matter-of-fact
consequences and antecedents of the New Revolution, of which, in some
sense, a resident in France may feel without presumption that he knows
something hardly so well known to those at home.
The political justification of Louis Napoleon is, as I apprehend, to be
found in the state of the public mind which immediately preceded the
_coup d’état_. It is very rarely that a country expects a revolution at
a given time; indeed, it is perhaps not common for ordinary persons in
any country to anticipate a revolution at all; though profound people
may speculate, the mass will ever expect to-morrow to be as this day
at least, if not more abundant. But once name the day, and all this
is quite altered. As a general rule the very people who would be most
likely to neglect general anticipation are exactly those most likely to
exaggerate the proximate consequences of a certain impending event. At
any rate, in France five weeks ago, the tradespeople talked of May, ’52,
as if it were the end of the world. Civilisation and Socialism might
probably endure, but buying and selling would surely come to an end; in
fact, they anticipated a worse era than February, ’48, when trade was
at a standstill so long that it has hardly yet recovered, and when the
Government stocks fell 40 per cent. It is hardly to be imagined upon
what petty details the dread of political dissolution at a fixed and
not distant time will condescend to intrude itself. I was present when
a huge _Flamande_, in appearance so intrepid that I respectfully pitied
her husband, came to ask the character of a _bonne_. I was amazed to hear
her say, ‘I hope the girl is strong, for when the revolution comes next
May, and I have to turn off my helper, she will have enough to do.’ It
seemed to me that a political apprehension must be pretty general, when
it affected that most non-speculative of speculations, the _reckoning_ of
a housewife. With this feeling, everybody saved their money: who would
spend in luxuries that which might so soon be necessary and invaluable!
This economy made commerce,—especially the peculiarly Parisian trade,
which is almost wholly in articles that _can_ be spared—worse and worse;
the more depressed trade became, the more the traders feared, and the
more they feared, the worse all trade inevitably grew.
I apprehend that this feeling extended very generally among all the
classes who do not find or make a livelihood by literature or by
politics. Among the clever people, who understood the subject, very
likely the expectation was extremely different; but among the stupid
ones who mind their business, and have a business to mind, there was a
universal and excessive tremor. The only notion of ’52 was ‘_on se battra
dans la rue_.’ Their dread was especially of Socialism; they expected
that the followers of M. Proudhon, who advisedly and expressly maintains
‘anarchy’ to be the best form of Government, would attempt to carry out
their theories in action, and that the division between the Legislative
and Executive power would so cripple the party of order as to make
their means of resistance for the moment feeble and difficult to use.
The more sensible did not, I own, expect the annihilation of mankind:
civilisation dies hard; the organised sense in all countries is strong;
but they expected vaguely and crudely that the party which in ’93 ruled
for many months, and which in June ’48 fought so fanatically against
the infant republic, would certainly make a desperate attack,—_might_
for some time obtain the upper hand. Of course, it is now matter of
mere argument whether the danger was real or unreal, and it is in some
quarters rather the fashion to quiz the past fear, and to deny that
any Socialists anywhere exist. In spite of the literary exertions of
Proudhon and Louis Blanc, in spite of the prison quarrels of Blanqui and
Barbès—there are certainly found people who question whether anybody buys
the books of the two former, or cares for the incarcerated dissensions
of the two latter. But however this may be, it is certain that two days
after the _coup d’état_ a mass of persons thought it worth while to
erect some dozen barricades, and among these, and superintending and
directing their every movement, there certainly were, for I saw them
myself, men whose physiognomy and accoutrements exactly resembled the
traditional Montagnard, sallow, stern, compressed, with much marked
features, which expressed but resisted suffering, and brooding one-ideaed
thought, men who from their youth upward had for ever imagined, like
Jonah, that they did well—immensely well—to be angry, men armed to the
teeth, and ready, like the soldiers of the first Republic, to use their
arms savagely and well in defence of theories broached by a Robespierre,
a Blanqui, or a Barbès, gloomy fanatics, over-principled ruffians. I
may perhaps be mistaken in reading in their features the characters of
such men, but I know that when one of them disturbed my superintendence
of barricade-making with a stern _allez vous-en_, it was not too slowly
that I departed, for I _felt_ that he would rather shoot me than not.
Having seen these people, I conceive that they exist. But supposing that
they were all simply fabulous, it would not less be certain that they
were _believed_ to be, and to be active; nor would it impair the fact
that the quiet classes awaited their onslaught in morbid apprehension,
with miserable and craven, and I fear we ought to say, _commercial_
disquietude.
You will not be misled by any highflown speculations about liberty or
equality. You will, I imagine, concede to me that the first duty of
a government is to ensure the security of that industry which is the
condition of social life and civilised cultivation; that especially in so
excitable a country as France it is necessary that the dangerous classes
should be saved from the strong temptation of long idleness; and that
no danger could be more formidable than six months’ beggary among the
revolutionary _ouvriers_, immediately preceding the exact period fixed
by European as well as French opinion for an apprehended convulsion.
It is from this state of things, whether by fair means or foul, that
Louis Napoleon has delivered France. The effect was magical. Like people
who have nearly died because it was prophesied they would die at a
specified time, and instantly recovered when they found or thought that
the time was gone and past, so France, timorously anticipating the fated
revolution, in a moment revived when she found or fancied that it was
come and over. Commerce instantly improved; New Year’s Day, when all the
Boulevards are one continued fair, has not (as I am told) been for some
years so gay and splendid; people began to buy, and consequently to sell;
for though it is quite possible, or even probable, that new misfortunes
and convulsions may be in store for the French people, yet no one can say
when they will be, and to wait till revolutions be exhausted is but the
best Parisian for our old acquaintance _Rusticus expectat_. Clever people
may now prove that the dreaded peril was a simple chimera, but they can’t
deny that the fear of it was very real and painful, nor can they dispute
that in a week after the _coup d’état_ it had at once, and apparently for
ever, passed away.
I fear it must be said that no legal or constitutional act could have
given an equal confidence. What was wanted was the assurance of an
audacious Government, which would stop at nothing, scruple at nothing,
to secure its own power and the tranquillity of the country. That
assurance all now have; a man who will in this manner dare to dissolve
an assembly constitutionally his superiors, then prevent their meeting
by armed force; so well and so sternly repress the first beginning of an
outbreak, with so little misgiving assume and exercise sole power,—may
have enormous other defects, but is certainly a bold ruler—most probably
an unscrupulous one—little likely to flinch from any inferior trial.
Of Louis Napoleon, whose personal qualities are, for the moment, so
important, I cannot now speak at length. But I may say that, with
whatever other deficiencies he may have, he has one excellent advantage
over other French statesmen—he has never been a professor, nor a
journalist, nor a promising barrister, nor, by taste, a _littérateur_.
He has not confused himself with history; he does not think in leading
articles, in long speeches, or in agreeable essays. But he is capable
of observing facts rightly, of reflecting on them simply, and acting on
them discreetly. And his motto is Danton’s, _De l’audace et toujours de
l’audace_, and this you know, according to Bacon, in time of revolution,
will carry a man far, perhaps even to ultimate victory, and that
ever-future millennium ‘_la consolidation de la France_.’
But on these distant questions I must not touch. I have endeavoured to
show you what was the crisis, how strong the remedy, and what the need of
a dictatorship. I hope to have convinced you that the first was imminent,
the second effectual, and the last expedient. I remain yours,
AMICUS.
LETTER II.
_THE MORALITY OF THE COUP D’ÉTAT._
PARIS: Jan. 15, 1852.
SIR,—I know quite well what will be said about, or in answer to, my
last letter. It will be alleged that I think everything in France is to
be postponed to the Parisian commerce—that a Constitution, Equality,
Liberty, a Representative Government, are all to be set aside if
they interfere even for a moment with the sale of _étrennes_ or the
manufacture of gimcracks.
I, as you know, hold no such opinions: it would not be necessary for me
to undeceive you, who would, I rather hope, never suspect me of _that_
sort of folly. But as St. Athanasius aptly observes, ‘for the sake of
the women who may be led astray, I will this very instant explain my
sentiments.’
Contrary to Sheridan’s rule, I commence by a concession. I certainly
admit, indeed I would, upon occasion, maintain, _bonbons_ and bracelets
to be things less important than common law and Constitutional action.
A _coup d’état_ would, I may allow, be mischievously supererogatory if
it only promoted the enjoyment of what a lady in the highest circles is
said to call ‘bigotry and virtue.’ But the real question is not to be so
disposed of. The Parisian trade, the jewellery, the baubles, the silks,
the luxuries, which the Exhibition showed us to be the characteristic
industry of France, are very dust in the balance if weighed against the
hands and arms which their manufacture employs—the industrial habits
which their regular sale rewards—the hunger and idle weariness which
the certain demand for them prevents. For this is the odd peculiarity
of commercial civilisation. The life, the welfare, the existence of
thousands depend on their being paid for doing what seems nothing when
done. That gorgeous dandies should wear gorgeous studs—that pretty
girls should be prettily dressed—that pleasant drawing-rooms should
be pleasantly attired—may seem, to people of our age, sad trifling.
But grave as we are, we must become graver still when we reflect on
the horrid suffering which the sudden cessation of large luxurious
consumption would certainly create, if we imagine such a city as Lyons
to be, without warning, turned out of work, and the population feelingly
told ‘to cry in the streets when no man regardeth.’
The first duty of society is the preservation of society. By the sound
work of old-fashioned generations—by the singular painstaking of the
slumberers in churchyards—by dull care—by stupid industry, a certain
social fabric somehow exists; people contrive to go out to their work,
and to find work to employ them actually until the evening, body and soul
are kept together, and this is what mankind have to show for their six
thousand years of toil and trouble.
To keep up this system we must sacrifice everything. Parliaments,
liberty, leading articles, essays, eloquence,—all are good, but they are
secondary; at all hazards, and if we can, mankind must be kept alive. And
observe, as time goes on, this fabric becomes a tenderer and a tenderer
thing. Civilisation can’t bivouac; dangers, hardships, sufferings,
lightly borne by the coarse muscle of earlier times, are soon fatal to
noble and cultivated organisation. Women in early ages are masculine,
and, as a return match, the men of late years are becoming women. The
strong apprehension of a Napoleonic invasion has, perhaps, just now
caused more substantial misery in England than once the wars of the Roses.
To apply this ‘screed of doctrine’ to the condition of France. I do not
at all say that, but for the late _coup d’état_, French civilisation
would certainly have soon come to a final end. _Some_ people might have
continued to take their meals. Even Socialism would hardly abolish _eau
sucrée_. But I do assert that, according to the common belief of the
common people, their common comforts were in considerable danger. The
debasing torture of acute apprehension was eating into the crude pleasure
of stupid lives. No man liked to take a long bill: no one could imagine
to himself what was coming. Fear was paralysing life and labour, and as I
said at length, in my last, fear, so intense, whether at first reasonable
or unreasonable, will, ere long, invincibly justify itself. May 1852
would, in all likelihood, have been an evil and bloody time, if it had
been preceded by six months’ famine among the starvable classes.
At present all is changed. Six weeks ago society was living from hand to
mouth: now she feels sure of her next meal. And this, in a dozen words,
is the real case—the political excuse for Prince Louis Napoleon. You ask
me, or I should not do so, to say a word or two on the moral question
and the oath. You are aware how limited my means of doing so are. I have
forgotten Paley, and have never read the Casuists. But it certainly does
not seem to me proved or clear, that a man who has sworn, even in the
most solemn manner, to see another drown, is therefore quite bound, or
even at liberty, to stand placidly on the bank. What ethical philosopher
has demonstrated this? Coleridge said it was difficult to advance a new
error in morals,—yet this, I think, would be one; and the keeping of
oaths is peculiarly a point of mere science, for Christianity, in terms
at least, only forbids them all. And supposing I am right, such certainly
was the exact position of Louis Napoleon. He saw society, I will not say
dying or perishing—for I hate unnecessarily to overstate my point,—in
danger of incurring extreme and perhaps lasting calamities, likely not
only to impair the happiness, but moreover to debase the character of the
French nation, and these calamities he could prevent. Now who has shown
that ethics require of him to have held his hand?
The severity with which the riot was put down on the first Thursday in
December has, I observe, produced an extreme effect in England; and with
our happy exemption from martial bloodshed, it must, of course, do so.
But better one _émeute_ now than many in May, be it ever remembered.
There are things more demoralising than death, and among these is the
sickly-apprehensive suffering for long months of an entire people.
Of course you understand that I am not holding up Louis Napoleon as
a complete standard either of ethical scrupulosity or disinterested
devotedness; veracity has never been the family failing—for the great
Emperor was a still greater liar. And Prince Louis has been long
playing what, morality apart, is the greatest political misfortune to
any statesman—a visibly selfish game. Very likely, too, the very high
heroes of history—a Washington, an Aristides, by Carlyle profanely called
‘favourites of Dryasdust,’ would have extricated the country more easily,
and perhaps more completely from its scrape. Their ennobling rectitude
would have kept M. de Girardin consistent, and induced M. Thiers to vote
for the Revision of the Constitution; and even though, as of old, the
Mountain were deafer than the uncharmed adder, a sufficient number of
self-seeking Conservatives might have been induced by perfect confidence
in a perfect President, to mend a crotchety performance, that was visibly
ruining, what the poet calls, ‘The ever-ought-to-be-conserved-thing,’
their country.
I remember reading, several years ago, an article in the _Westminster
Review_, on the lamented Armand Carrel, in which the author, well known
to be one of our most distinguished philosphers, took occasion to
observe that what the French most wanted was, ‘_un homme de caractère_.’
Everybody is aware—for all except myself know French quite perfectly—that
this expression is not by any means equivalent to our common phrase, a
‘man of character,’ or ‘respectable individual,’ it does not at all refer
to mere goodness: it is more like what we sometimes say of an eccentric
country gentleman, ‘He is a character;’ for it denotes a singular
preponderance of peculiar qualities, an accomplished obstinacy, an
inveterate fixedness of resolution and idea that enables him to get done
what he undertakes. The Duke of Wellington is, ‘_par excellence, homme de
caractère_;’ Lord Palmerston rather so; Mr. Cobden a little; Lord John
Russell not at all. Now exactly this, beyond the immense majority of
educated men, Louis Napoleon is, as a pointed writer describes him:—‘The
President is a superior man, but his superiority is of the sort that
is hidden under a dubious exterior: his life is entirely internal; his
speech does not betray his inspiration; his gesture does not copy his
audacity; his look does not reflect his ardour; his step does not reveal
his resolution; his whole mental nature is in some sort repressed by
his physical: he thinks and does not discuss; he decides and does not
deliberate; he acts without agitation; he speaks, and assigns no reason;
his best friends are unacquainted with him; he obtains their confidence,
but never asks it.’ Also his whole nature is, and has been, absorbed
in the task which he has undertaken. For many months, his habitual
expression has been exactly that of a gambler who is playing for his
highest and last stake; in society it is said to be the same—a general
and diffusive politeness, but an ever-ready reflection and a constant
reserve. His great qualities are rather peculiar. He is not, like his
uncle, a creative genius, who will leave behind him social institutions
such as those which nearly alone, in this changeful country, seem to be
always exempt from every change; he will suggest little; he has hardly an
organising mind; but he will coolly estimate his own position and that
of France; he will observe all dangers and compute all chances. He can
act—he can be idle: he may work what is; he may administer the country.
Any how _il fera son possible_, and you know, in the nineteenth century,
how much and how rare that is.
I see many people are advancing beautiful but untrue ethics about his
private character. Thus I may quote as follows from a very estimable
writer:—‘On the 15th of October, he requested his passports and left
Aremberg for London. In this capital he remained from the end of 1838 to
the month of August 1840. In these twenty months, instead of learning to
command armies and govern empires, his days and nights, when not given
to frivolous pleasures, were passed on the turf, in the betting-room, or
in clubs where high play and desperate stakes roused the jaded energy of
the _blasé_ gambler.’—(A. V. Kirwan, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, in _Fraser’s
Magazine_.)
The notion of this gentleman clearly is, that a betting man can’t
in nature be a good statesman; that horse-racing is providentially
opposed to political excellence; that ‘by an interesting illustration
of the argument from design, we notice an antithesis alike marvellous
and inevitable,’ between turf and tariffs. But, setting Paley for a
moment apart, how is a man, by circumstances excluded from military
and political life, and by birth from commercial pursuits, really and
effectually to learn administration? Mr. Kirwan imagines that he should
read all through Burke, common-place Tacitus, collate Cicero, and
annotate Montesquieu. Yet take an analogous case. Suppose a man, shut out
from trading life, is to qualify himself for the practical management
of a counting-house. Do you fancy he will do it ‘by a judicious study
of the principles of political economy,’ and by elaborately re-reading
Adam Smith and John Mill? He had better be at Newmarket, and devote
his _heures perdues_ to the Oaks and the St. Leger. He may learn there
what he will never acquire from literary study—the instinctive habit
of applied calculation, which is essential to a merchant and extremely
useful to a statesman. Where, too, did Sir Robert Walpole learn business,
or Charles Fox, or anybody in the eighteenth century? And after all, M.
Michel de Bourges gave the real solution of the matter. ‘Louis Napoleon,’
said the best orator of the Mountain, ‘may have had rather a stormy
youth (laughter). But don’t suppose that any one in all France imagines
you, you _Messieurs_, of the immaculate majority, to be the least better
(sensation). I am not speaking to saints’ (uproar). If compared with
contemporary French statesmen, and the practical choice is between him
and them, the President will not seem what he appears when measured by
the notions of a people who exact at least from inferior functionaries _a
rigid decorum in the pettiest details of their private morals_.
I have but one last point to make about this _coup d’état_, and then I
will release you from my writing. I do not know whether you in England
rightly realise the French Socialism. Take, for instance, M. Proudhon,
who is perhaps their ideal and perfect type. He was _représentant de
la Seine_ in the late Assembly, elected, which is not unimportant,
after the publication of his books and on account of his opinions. In
his ‘_Confessions d’un Révolutionnaire_,’ a very curious book—for he
writes extremely well—after maintaining that our well-known but, as we
imagine, advanced friends, Ledru Rollin, and Louis Blanc, and Barbès, and
Blanqui are all _réactionnaires_, and clearly showing, to the grief of
mankind, that once the legislator of the Luxembourg wished to preserve
‘equilibrium,’ and the author of the provincial circulars to maintain the
‘tranquillity,’ he gives the following _bonâ fide_ and amusing account of
his own investigations:—
‘I commenced my task of solitary conspiracy by the study
of the socialisms of antiquity, necessary, in my judgment,
to determine the law, whether practical or theoretical, of
progress. These socialisms I found in the Bible. A memoir
on the institution of the Sabbath—considered with regard to
morals, to health, and in its relation to the family and the
city—procured for me a bronze medal from my academy. From the
faith in which I had been reared, I had precipitated myself
head-long, head-foremost, into pure reason, and already, what
was wonderful and a good omen, when I made Moses a philosopher
and a socialist, I was greeted with applause. If I am now in
error, the fault is not merely mine. Was there ever a similar
seduction?
‘But I studied, above all, with a view to action. I cared
little for academical laurels. I had no leisure to become
_savant_, still less a _littérateur_ or an archæologist. I
began immediately upon political economy.
‘I had assumed as the rule of my investigations that every
principle which, pushed to its consequences, should end in a
contradiction, must be considered false and null; and that if
this principle had been developed into an institution, the
institution itself must be considered as factitious, as utopian.
‘Furnished with this criterion, I chose for the subject of
investigation what I found in society the most ancient,
the most respectable, the most universal, the least
controverted,—property. Everybody knows what happened; after
a long, a minute, and, above all, an impartial analysis, I
arrived, as an algebraist guided by his equations, to this
surprising conclusion. Property, consider it as you will,—refer
it to what principle you may, is a contradictory idea; and as
the denial of property carries with it of necessity that of
authority, I deduced immediately from my first axiom also this
corollary, not less paradoxical, the true form of government
is _anarchy_. Lastly, finding by a mathematical demonstration
that no amelioration in the economy of society could be arrived
at by its natural constitution, or without the concurrence and
reflective adhesion of its members; observing, also, that there
is a definite epoch in the life of societies, in which their
progress, at first unreflecting, requires the intervention of
the free reason of man, I concluded that this spontaneous and
impulsive force (_cette force d’impulsion spontanée_), which
we call Providence, is not everything in the affairs of this
world: from that moment, without being an Atheist, I ceased to
worship God. He’ll get on without your so doing, said to me one
day the _Constitutionnel_. Well: perhaps he may.’
These theories have been expanded into many and weary volumes, and
condensed into the famous phrase, ‘_La Propriété c’est le vol_;’ and have
procured their author, in his own sect, reputation and authority.
The _Constitutionnel_ had another hit against M. Proudhon, a day or two
ago. They presented their readers with two decrees in due official form
(the walls were at the moment covered with those of the 2nd of December),
as the last ideal of what the straightest sect of the Socialists
particularly desire. It was as follows:—‘Nothing any longer exists.
Nobody is charged with the execution of the aforesaid decree. Signed,
Vacuum.’
Such is the speculation of the new reformers—what their practices would
be I can hardly tell you. My feeble income does not allow me to travel to
the Basses Alpes and really investigate the subject; but if one quarter
of the stories in circulation are in the least to be believed (we are
quite dependent on oral information, for the Government papers deal in
asterisks and ‘details unfit for publication,’ and the rest are devoted
to the state of the navy and say nothing), the atrocities rival the
nauseous corruption of what our liberal essayist calls ‘Jacobin carrion,’
the old days of Carrier and Barère. This is what people here are afraid
of; and that is why I write such things,—and not to horrify you, or amuse
you, or bore you—anything rather than that; and they think themselves
happy in finding a man who, with or without whatever other qualities or
defects, will keep them from the vaunted Millennium and much-expected
_Jacquerie_. I hope you think so, too—and that I am not, as they say in
my native Tipperary, ‘Whistling jigs to a milestone.’ I am, sir, yours
truly,
AMICUS.
P.S.—You will perhaps wish me to say something on the great event of
this week, the exile of the more dangerous members of the late Assembly,
and the transportation of the Socialists to Cayenne. Both measures were
here expected; though I think that both lists are more numerous than was
anticipated: but no one really knew what would be done by this silent
Government. You will laugh at me when I tell you that both measures have
been well received: but properly limited and understood, I am persuaded
that the fact is so.
Of course, among the friends of exiled _représentants_, among the
_littérateurs_ throughout whose ranks these measures are intended to
‘strike terror and inspire respect,’ you would hear that there never was
such tyranny since the beginning of mankind. But among the mass of the
industrious classes—between whom and the politicians there is internecine
war—I fancy that on turning the conversation to either of the most recent
events, you would hear something of this sort:—‘_Ça ne m’occupe pas_.’
‘What is that _to me_?’ ‘_Je suis pour la tranquillité, moi._’ ‘I sold
four brooches yesterday.’ The Socialists who have been removed from
prison to the colony, it is agreed were ‘pestilent fellows perverting
the nation,’ and forbidding to pay tribute to M. Bonaparte. Indeed, they
can hardly expect commercial sympathy. ‘Our national honour rose—our
stocks fell,’ is Louis Blanc’s perpetual comment on his favourite events,
and it is difficult to say which of its two clauses he dwells upon with
the intenser relish. It is generally thought by those who think about
the matter, that both the transportation, and in all cases, certainly,
the exile will only be a temporary measure, and that the great mass of
the people in both lists will be allowed to return to their homes when
the present season of extreme excitement has passed over. Still, I am
not prepared to defend the _number_ of the transportations. That strong
measures of the sort were necessary, I make no doubt. If Socialism
exist, and the fear of it exist, something must be done to re-assure
the people. You will understand that it is not a judicial proceeding
either in essence or in form; it is not to be considered as a punishment
for what men have done, but as a perfect precaution against what they
may do. Certainly, it is to be regretted that the cause of order is so
weak as to need such measures; but if it _is_ so weak, the Government
must no doubt take them. Of course, however, ‘our brethren,’ who are
retained in such numbers to write down Prince Louis, are quite right
to use without stint or stopping this most un-English proceeding; it
is their case, and you and I from old misdeeds know pretty well how it
is to be managed. There will be no imputation of reasonable or humane
motives to the Government, and no examination of the existing state of
France:—let both these come from the other side—but elegiac eloquence
is inexhaustibly exuded—the cruel corners of history are ransacked
for petrifying precedents—and I observe much excellent weeping on the
Cromwellian deportations and the ten years’ exile of Madame de Staël.
But after all they have missed the tempting parallel—I mean the ‘rather
long’ proscription list which Octavius—‘_l’ancien neveu de l’ancien
oncle_’—concocted with Mark Antony in the marshes of Bononia, and whereby
they thoroughly purged old Rome of its turbulent and revolutionary
elements. I suspect our estimable contemporaries regret to remember of
how much good order, long tranquillity, ‘_beata pleno copia cornu_’ and
other many ‘little comforts’ to the civilised world that very ‘strong’
proceeding, whether in ethics justifiable or not, certainly was in fact
the beginning and foundation.
The fate of the African generals is much to be regretted, and the
Government will incur much odium if the exile of General Changarnier
is prolonged any length of time. He is doubtless ‘dangerous’ for the
moment, for his popularity with the army is considerable, and he divides
the party of order; he is also a practical man and an unpleasant enemy,
but he is much respected and little likely (I fancy) to attempt anything
against any settled Government.
As for M. Thiers and M. Emile de Girardin—the ablest of the exiles—I
have heard no one pity them; they have played a selfish game—they have
encountered a better player—they have been beaten—and this is the whole
matter. You will remember that it was the adhesion of these two men that
procured for M. Bonaparte a large part of his _first_ six millions.
M. de Girardin, whom General Cavaignac had discreetly imprisoned and
indiscreetly set free, wrote up the ‘opposition candidate’ daily, in the
_Presse_ (he has since often and often tried to write him down,) and M.
Thiers was his Privy Councillor. ‘_Mon cher Prince_,’ they say, said the
latter, ‘your address to the people won’t do at all. I’ll get one of the
_rédacteurs of the Constitutionnel_ to draw you up something tolerable.’
You remember the easy patronage with which Cicero speaks in his letter
of the ‘boy’ that was outwitting him all the while. But, however, observe
I do not at all, notwithstanding my Latin, insinuate or assert that
Louis Napoleon, though a considerable man, is exactly equal to keep the
footsteps of Augustus. A feeble parody may suffice for an inferior stage
and not too gigantic generation. Now I really _have_ done.
LETTER III.
_ON THE NEW CONSTITUTION OF FRANCE, AND THE APTITUDE OF THE FRENCH
CHARACTER FOR NATIONAL FREEDOM._
Paris: January 20, 1852.
SIR,—We have now got our Constitution. The Napoleonic era has commenced;
the term of the dictatorship is fixed and the consolidation of France
is begun. You will perhaps anticipate from the conclusion of the last
letter, that _à propos_ of this great event, I should gratify you with
bright anticipations of an Augustan age, and a quick revival of Catonic
virtue, with an assurance that the night is surely passed and the day
altogether come, with a solemn invocation to the rising luminary, and an
original panegyric on the ‘golden throned morning.’
I must always regret to disappoint any one; but I feel obliged to
entertain you instead with torpid philosophy, constitutional details, and
a dull disquisition on national character.
The details of the new institutions you will have long ago learnt from
the daily papers. I believe they may be fairly and nearly accurately
described as the Constitution of the Consulate, _minus_ the ideas of the
man who made it. You will remember that, besides the First Magistrate,
the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Council of State (which
we may call, in legal language, the ‘common form’ of continental
constitution), the ingenious Abbé Sièyes had devised some four principal
peculiarities, which were to be remembered to all time as master-pieces
of political invention. These were the utter inaction of the First
Magistrate, copied, as I believe, from the English Constitution—the
subordination to him of two Consuls, one to administer peace and the
other war, who were intended to be the real hands and arms of the
Government—the silence of the Senate—the double and very peculiar
election of the House of Representatives. Napoleon the Great, as we
are now to speak, struck out the first of these, being at the moment
working some fifteen hours a day at the reorganisation of France. He said
plainly and rather sternly that he had no intention of doing nothing—the
_idéologue_ went to the wall—the ‘excellent idea’ put forth in happy
forgetfulness of real facts and real people was instantly abandoned—for
the Grand Elector was substituted a First Consul, who, so far from being
nothing, was very soon the whole Government. Napoleon the Little, as
I fear the Parisian multitude may learn to call him, has effaced the
other three ‘strokes of statesmanship.’ The new Constitution of France
is exactly the ‘common form’ of political conveyancing, _plus_ the _Idée
Napoléonienne_ of an all-suggesting and all-administering mind.
I have extremely little to tell you about its reception; it has made no
‘sensation,’ not so much as even the ‘fortified camps’ which his Grace
is said to be devising for the defence of our own London. Indeed, ‘_Il a
peur_’ is a very common remark (conceivable to everybody who knows ‘the
Duke,’) and it would seem even a refreshing alleviation of their domestic
sorrows. In fact, home politics are now _the_ topic; geography and the
state of foreign institutions are not, indeed, the true Parisian line—but
it has, in fine, been distinctly discovered that there are no _salons_
in Cayenne, which, once certain, the logical genius of the nation, with
incredible swiftness, deduced the clear conclusion that it was better
not to go there. Seriously, I fancy—for I have no data on which to found
real knowledge of so delicate a point—the new Constitution is regarded
merely as what Father Newman would call a ‘preservative addition’ or
a ‘necessary development,’ essential to the ‘chronic continuance’ of
the Napoleonic system; for the moment the mass of the people wish the
President to govern them, but they don’t seem to me to care how. The
political people, I suppose, hate it, because for some time it will
enable him, if not shot, to govern effectually. I say, if not shot—for
people are habitually recounting under their breath some new story of
an attempt at assassination, which the papers suppress. I am inclined
to think that these rumours are pure lies; but they show the feeling.
You know, according to the Constitution of 1848, the President would now
be a mere outlaw, and whoever finds him may slay him, if he can. It is
true that the elaborate masterpiece of M. Marrast is already fallen into
utter oblivion (it is no more remembered than yesterday’s _Times_, or the
political institutions of Saxon Mercia); but nevertheless such, according
to the antediluvian _régime_, would be the law, and it is possible that
a mindful Montagnard may upon occasion recall even so insignificant a
circumstance.
I have a word to say on the Prologue of the President. When I first began
to talk politics with French people, I was much impressed by the fact to
which he has there drawn attention. You know that all such conversation,
when one of the interlocutors is a foreigner, speaking slowly and but
imperfectly the language of the country in which he is residing, is
pretty much in the style of that excellent work which was the terror
of our childhood—Joyce’s ‘Scientific Dialogues’—wherein, as you may
remember, an accomplished tutor, with a singular gift of scholastic
improvisation, instructs a youthful pupil exceedingly given to feeble
questions and auscultatory repose. Now, when I began in Parisian society
thus to enact the _rôle_ of ‘George’ or ‘Caroline,’ I was, I repeat, much
struck with the fact that the Emperor had done everything: to whatever
subject my diminutive inquiry related, the answer was nearly universally
the same—an elegy on Napoleon. Nor is this exactly absurd; for whether
or not ‘the nephew’ is right in calling the uncle the greatest of modern
statesmen, he is indisputably the modern statesman who has founded the
greatest number of existing institutions. In the pride of philosophy and
in the madness of an hour, the Constituent Assembly and the Convention
swept away not only the monstrous abuses of the old _régime_, but that
_régime_ itself—its essence and its mechanism, utterly and entirely. They
destroyed whatever they could lay their hands on. The consequence was
certain—when they tried to construct they found they had no materials.
They left a vacuum. No greater benefit could have been conferred on
politicians gifted with the creative genius of Napoleon. It was like the
fire of London to Sir Christopher Wren. With a fertility of invention and
an obstinacy in execution, equalling, if not surpassing, those of Cæsar
and Charlemagne, he had before him an open stage, more clear and more
vast than in historical times fortune has ever offered to any statesman.
He was nearly in the position of the imagined legislator of the Greek
legends and the Greek philosophers—he could enact any law, and rescind
any law. Accordingly, the educational system, the banking system, the
financial system, the municipal system, the administrative system, the
civil legislation, the penal legislation, the commercial legislation
(besides all manner of secondary creations—public buildings and public
institutions without number), all date from the time, and are more or
less deeply inscribed with the genius, the firm will, and unresting
energies of Napoleon. And this, which is the great strength of the
present President, is the great difficulty—I fear the insurmountable
difficulty—in the way of Henry the Fifth. The first revolution is to
the French what the deluge is to the rest of mankind; the whole system
then underwent an entire change. A French politician will no more cite
as authority the domestic policy of Colbert or Louvois than we should
think of going for ethics and æsthetics to the bigamy of Lamech, or the
musical accomplishments of Tubal Cain. If the Comte de Chambord be (as it
is quite on the cards that he may be), within a few years restored, he
must govern by the instrumentality of laws and systems, devised by the
politicians whom he execrates and denounces, and devised, moreover, often
enough, especially to keep out him and his. It is difficult to imagine
that a strong Government can be composed of materials so inharmonious.
Meanwhile, to the popular imagination, ‘the Emperor’ is the past; the
House of Bourbon is as historical as the House of Valois; a peasant is
little oftener reminded of the ‘third dynasty’ than of the long-haired
kings.
In discussing any Constitution, there are two ideas to be first got rid
of. The first is the idea of our barbarous ancestors—now happily banished
from all civilised society, but still prevailing in old manor-houses, in
rural parsonages, and other curious repositories of mouldering ignorance,
and which in such arid solitudes is thus expressed: ‘Why can’t they have
Kings, Lords and Commons, _like we have_? What fools foreigners are.’
The second pernicious mistake is, like the former, seldom now held upon
system, but so many hold it in bits and fragments, and without system,
that it is still rather formidable. I allude to the old idea which
still here creeps out in conversation, and sometimes in writing,—that
politics are simply a subdivision of immutable ethics; that there are
certain rights of men in all places and all times, which are the sole and
sufficient foundation of all government, and that accordingly a single
stereotype Government is to make the tour of the world—that you have
no more right to deprive a Dyak of his vote in a ‘possible’ Polynesian
Parliament, than you have to steal his mat.
Burke first taught the world at large, in opposition to both, and
especially to the latter of these notions, that politics are made of
time and place—that institutions are shifting things, to be tried by
and adjusted to the shifting conditions of a mutable world—that, in
fact, politics are but a piece of business—to be determined in every
case by the exact exigencies of that case; in plain English—by sense and
circumstances.
This was a great step in political philosophy—though it _now_ seems the
events of 1848 have taught thinking persons (I fancy) further. They
have enabled us to say that of all these circumstances so affecting
political problems, by far and out of all question the most important is
_national character_. In that year the same experiment—the experiment,
as its friends say, of Liberal and Constitutional Government—as its
enemies say, of Anarchy and Revolution—was tried in every nation of
Europe—with what varying futures and differing results! The effect
has been to teach men—not only speculatively to know, but practically
to feel, that no absurdity is so great as to imagine the same species
of institutions suitable or possible for Scotchmen and Sicilians, for
Germans and Frenchmen, for the English and the Neapolitans. With a
well-balanced national character (we now know) liberty is a stable thing.
A really practical people will work in political business, as in private
business, almost the absurdest, the feeblest, the most inconsistent
set of imaginable regulations. Similarly, or rather reversely, the
best institutions will not keep right a nation that _will_ go wrong.
Paper is but paper, and no virtue is to be discovered in it to retain
within due boundaries the undisciplined passions of those who have
never set themselves seriously to restrain them. In a word—as people
of ‘large roundabout common-sense’ will (as a rule) somehow get on in
life—(no matter what their circumstances or their fortune)—so a nation
which applies good judgment, forbearance, a rational and compromising
habit to the management of free institutions, will certainly succeed;
while the more eminently gifted national character will but be a source
and germ of endless and disastrous failure, if, with whatever other
eminent qualities, it be deficient in these plain, solid, and essential
requisites.
The formation of _this_ character is one of the most secret of marvellous
mysteries. Why nations have the character we see them to have is,
speaking generally, as little explicable to our shallow perspicacity,
as why individuals, our friends or our enemies, for good or for evil,
have the character which they have; why one man is stupid and another
clever—why another volatile and a fourth consistent—this man by
instinct generous, that man by instinct niggardly. I am not speaking
of actions, you observe, but of tendencies and temptations. These and
other similar problems daily crowd on our observation in millions and
millions, and only do not puzzle us because we are too familiar with
their difficulty to dream of attempting their solution. Only this much
is most certain,—all men and all nations have a character, and that
character, when once taken, is, I do not say unchangeable—religion
modifies it, catastrophe annihilates it—but the least changeable thing
in this ever-varying and changeful world. Take the soft mind of the boy,
and (strong and exceptional aptitudes and tendencies excepted) you may
make him merchant, barrister, butcher, baker, surgeon, or apothecary.
But once make him an apothecary, and he will never afterwards bake
wholesome bread—make him a butcher, and he will kill too extensively,
even for a surgeon—make him a barrister, and he will be dim on double
entry, and crass on bills of lading. Once conclusively form him to one
thing, and no art and no science will ever twist him to another. Nature,
says the philosopher, has no Delphic daggers!—no men or maids of all
work—she keeps one being to one pursuit—to each is a single choice
afforded, but no more again thereafter for ever. And it is the same with
nations. The Jews of to-day are the Jews in face and form of the Egyptian
sculptures; in character they are the Jews of Moses—the negro is the
negro of a thousand years—the Chinese, by his own account, is the mummy
of a million. ‘Races and their varieties,’ says the historian, ‘seem to
have been created with an inward _nisus_ diminishing with the age of
the world.’ The people of the South are yet the people of the South,
fierce and angry as their summer sun—the people of the North are still
cold and stubborn like their own North wind—the people of the East ‘mark
not, but are still’—the people of the West ‘are going through the ends
of the earth, and walking up and down in it.’ The fact is certain, the
cause beyond us. The subtle system of obscure causes, whereby sons and
daughters resemble not only their fathers and mothers, but even their
great-great-grandfathers and their great-great-grandmothers, may very
likely be destined to be very inscrutable. But as the fact is so, so
moreover, in history, nations have one character, one set of talents, one
list of temptations, and one duty—to use the one and get the better of
the other. There are breeds in the animal man just as in the animal dog.
When you hunt with greyhounds and course with beagles, then, and not till
then, may you expect the inbred habits of a thousand years to pass away,
that Hindoos can be free, or that Englishmen will be slaves.
I need not prove to you that the French _have_ a national character.
Nor need I try your patience with a likeness of it. I have only to
examine whether it be a fit basis for national freedom. I fear you will
laugh when I tell you what I conceive to be about the most essential
mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive,
permanent, and on a large scale; it is much _stupidity_. I see you are
surprised—you are going to say to me, as Socrates did to Polus, ‘My
young friend, _of course_, you are right; but will you explain what you
mean?—as yet you are not intelligible.’ I will do so as well as I can, or
endeavour to make good what I say—not by an _à priori_ demonstration of
my own, but from the details of the present, and the facts of history.
Not to begin by wounding any present susceptibilities, let me take
the Roman character—for, with one great exception—I need not say to
whom I allude—they are the great political people of history. Now, is
not a certain dullness their most visible characteristic? What is the
history of their speculative mind?—a blank. What their literature?—a
copy. They have left not a single discovery in any abstract science;
not a single perfect or well-formed work of high imagination. The
Greeks, the perfection of narrow and accomplished genius, bequeathed to
mankind the ideal forms of self-idolising art—the Romans imitated and
admired; the Greeks explained the laws of nature—the Romans wondered and
despised; the Greeks invented a system of numerals second only to that
now in use—the Romans counted to the end of their days with the clumsy
apparatus which we still call by their name; the Greeks made a capital
and scientific calendar—the Romans began their month when the Pontifex
Maximus happened to spy out the new moon. Throughout Latin literature,
this is the perpetual puzzle—Why are we free and they slaves? we prætors
and they barbers? Why do the stupid people always win, and the clever
people always lose? I need not say that, in real sound stupidity, the
English are unrivalled. You’ll hear more wit, and better wit, in an Irish
street row than would keep Westminster Hall in humour for five weeks. Or
take Sir Robert Peel—our last great statesman, the greatest Member of
Parliament that ever lived, an absolutely perfect transacter of public
business—the type of the nineteenth century Englishman, as Sir R. Walpole
was of the eighteenth. Was there ever such a dull man? Can any one,
without horror, foresee the reading of his memoirs? A _clairvoyante_,
with the book shut, may get on; but who now, in the flesh, will ever
endure the open _vision_ of endless recapitulation of interminable
Hansard. Or take Mr. Tennyson’s inimitable description:—
‘No little lily-handed Baronet he,
A great broad-shouldered genial Englishman,
A lord of fat prize oxen and of sheep,
A raiser of huge melons and of pine,
A patron of some thirty charities,
A pamphleteer on guano and on grain,
A quarter sessions chairman, abler none.’
Whose company so soporific? His talk is of truisms and bullocks; his head
replete with rustic visions of mutton and turnips, and a cerebral edition
of Burn’s ‘Justice!’ Notwithstanding, he is the salt of the earth, the
best of the English breed. Who is like him for sound sense? But I must
restrain my enthusiasm. You don’t want me to tell you that a Frenchman—a
real Frenchman—can’t be stupid; _esprit_ is his essence, wit is to him
as water, _bons-mots_ as _bonbons_. He reads and he learns by reading;
levity and literature are essentially his line. Observe the consequence.
The outbreak of 1848 was accepted in every province in France; the
decrees of the Parisian mob were received and registered in all the
municipalities of a hundred cities; the Revolution ran like the fluid of
the telegraph down the _Chemin de fer du Nord_; it stopped at the Belgian
frontier. Once brought into contact with the dull phlegm of the stupid
Fleming, the poison was powerless. You remember what the Norman butler
said to Wilkin Flammock, of the fulling mills, at the castle of the Garde
Douloureuse: ‘that draught which will but warm your Flemish hearts,
will put wildfire into Norman brains; and what may only encourage your
countrymen to man the walls, will make ours fly over the battlements.’
_Les braves Belges_, I make no doubt, were quite pleased to observe what
folly was being exhibited by those very clever French, whose tongue they
want to speak, and whose literature they try to imitate. In fact, what
we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in
common society, is nature’s favourite resource for preserving steadiness
of conduct and consistency of opinion. It enforces concentration; people
who learn slowly, learn only what they must. The best security for
people’s doing their duty is, that they should not know anything else to
do; the best security for fixedness of opinion is, that people should be
incapable of comprehending what is to be said on the other side. These
valuable truths are no discoveries of mine. They are familiar enough to
people whose business it is to know them. Hear what a dense and aged
attorney says of your peculiarly promising barrister:—‘Sharp! oh yes,
yes! he’s too sharp by half. He is not _safe_; not a minute, isn’t that
young man.’ ‘What style, sir,’ asked of an East India Director some
youthful aspirant for literary renown, ‘is most to be preferred in the
composition of official despatches?’ ‘My good fellow,’ responded the
ruler of Hindostan, ‘the style _as we_ like is the Humdrum.’ I extend
this, and advisedly maintain that nations, just as individuals, may be
too clever to be practical, and not dull enough to be free.
How far this is true of the French, and how far the gross deficiency I
have indicated is modified by their many excellent qualities, I hope at a
future time to inquire.
I am, sir, yours truly,
AMICUS.
LETTER IV.
_ON THE APTITUDE OF THE FRENCH CHARACTER FOR NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT._
Paris: Jan. 29, 1852.
SIR,—There is a simple view of the subject on which I wrote to you last
week, that I wish to bring under your notice. The experiment (as it is
called) of establishing political freedom in France is now sixty years
old; and the best that we can say of it is, that it is an experiment
still. There have been perhaps half-a-dozen new beginnings—half-a-dozen
complete failures. I am aware that each of these failures can be
excellently explained—each beginning shown to be quite necessary. But
there are certain reasonings which, though outwardly irrefragable,
the crude human mind is always most unwilling to accept. Among these
are different and subtle explications of several apparently similar
facts. Thus, to choose an example suited to the dignity of my subject,
if a gentleman from town takes a day’s shooting in the country, and
should chance (as has happened) at first going off, to miss some six
times running, how luminously soever he may ‘explain’ each failure
as it occurs, however ‘expanded a view’ he may take of the whole
series, whatever popular illustrations of projectile philosophy he
may propound to the bird-slaying agriculturists—the impression on the
crass intelligence of the gamekeeper will quite clearly be ‘He beint
noo shot homsoever—aint thickeer.’ Similarly, to compare small things
with great, when I myself read in Thiers and the many other philosophic
historians of this literary country, various and excellent explanations
of their many mischances;—of the failure of the constitution of 1791—of
the constitution of the year 3—of the constitution of the year 5—of
the _charte_—of the system of 1830—and now we may add, of the second
republic—the annotated constitution of M. Dupin,—I can’t help feeling
a suspicion lingering in my crude and uncultivated intellect—that some
common principle is at work in all and each of these several cases—that
over and above all odd mischances, so many bankruptcies a little suggest
an unfitness for the trade; that besides the ingenious reasons of
ingenious gentlemen, there is some lurking quality, or want of a quality,
in the national character of the French nation which renders them but
poorly adapted for the form of freedom and constitution which they have
so often, with such zeal and so vainly, attempted to establish.
In my last letter I suggested that this might be what I ventured to call
a ‘want of stupidity.’ I will now try to describe what I mean in more
accurate, though not, perhaps, more intelligible words.
I believe that I am but speaking what is agreed on by competent
observers, when I say that the essence of the French character is a
certain mobility; that is, as it has been defined, a certain ‘excessive
sensibility to _present_ impressions,’ which is sometimes ‘levity,’—for
it issues in a postponement of seemingly fixed principles to a momentary
temptation or a transient whim; sometimes ‘impatience’—as leading to
an exaggerated sense of existing evils; often excitement,’—a total
absorption in existing emotion; oftener ‘inconsistency’—the sacrifice of
old habits to present emergencies; and yet other unfavourable qualities.
But it has also its favourable side. The same man who is drawn aside
from old principles by small pleasures, who can’t bear pain, who forgets
his old friends when he ceases to see them, who is liable in time of
excitement to be a one-idea being, with no conception of anything but the
one exciting object, yet who nevertheless is apt to have one idea to-day
and quite another to-morrow (and this, and more than this, may I fancy be
said of the ideal Frenchman) may and will have the subtlest perception
of existing niceties, the finest susceptibility to social pleasure, the
keenest tact in social politeness, the most consummate skilfulness in
the details of action and administration,—may, in short, be the best
companion, the neatest man of business, the lightest _homme de salon_,
the acutest diplomat of the existing world.
It is curious to observe how this reflects itself in their literature.
‘I will believe,’ remarks Montaigne, ‘in anything rather than in any
man’s consistency.’ What observer of English habits—what person inwardly
conscious of our dull and unsusceptible English nature, would ever say
so. Rather in our country obstinacy is the commonest of the vices, and
perseverance the cheapest of the virtues. Again, when they attempt
history, the principal peculiarity (a few exceptions being allowed for)
is an utter incapacity to describe graphically a long-passed state of
society. Take, for instance—assuredly no unfavourable example—M. Guizot.
His books, I need not say, are nearly unrivalled for eloquence, for
philosophy and knowledge; you read there, how in the middle age there
were many ‘principles:’ the principle of Legitimacy, the principle of
Feudalism, the principle of Democracy; and you come to know how one
grew, and another declined, and a third crept slowly on; and the mind is
immensely edified, when perhaps at the 315th page a proper name occurs,
and you mutter, ‘Dear me, why, if there were not _people_ in the time of
Charlemagne! Who would have thought that?’ But in return for this utter
incapacity to describe the people of past times, a Frenchman has the gift
of perfectly describing the people of his own. No one knows so well—no
one can tell so well—the facts of his own life. The French memoirs, the
French letters are, and have been, the admiration of Europe. Is not now
Jules Janin unrivalled at pageants and _prima donnas_?
It is the same in poetry. As a recent writer excellently remarks, ‘A
French Dante, or Michael Angelo, or Cervantes, or Murillo, or Goethe,
or Shakespeare, or Milton, we at once perceive to be a mere anomaly; a
supposition which may indeed be proposed in terms, but which in reality
is inconceivable and impossible.’ Yet, in requital as it were of this
great deficiency, they have a wonderful capacity for expressing and
delineating the poetical and voluptuous element of every-day life.
We know the biography of De Béranger. The young ladies whom he has
admired—the wine that he has preferred—the fly that buzzed on the
ceiling, and interrupted his delicious and dreaming solitude, are as well
known to us as the recollections of our own lives. As in their common
furniture, so in their best poetry. The materials are nothing; reckon up
what you have been reading, and it seems a _congeries_ of stupid trifles;
begin to read,—the skill of the workmanship is so consummate, the art
so high and so latent, that while time flows silently on, our fancies
are enchanted and our memories indelibly impressed. How often, asks Mr.
Thackeray, have we read De Béranger—how often Milton? Certainly, since
Horace, there has been no such manual of the philosophy of this world.
I will not say that the quality which I have been trying to delineate
is exactly the same thing as ‘cleverness.’ But I do allege that it is
sufficiently near it for the rough purposes of popular writing. For this
_quickness_ in taking in—so to speak—the present, gives a corresponding
celerity of intellectual apprehension, an amazing readiness in catching
new ideas and maintaining new theories, a versatility of mind which
enters into and comprehends everything as it passes, a concentration
in what occurs, so as to use it for every purpose of illustration, and
consequently (if it happen to be combined with the least fancy), quick
repartee on the subject of the moment, and _bons-mots_ also without
stint and without end—and these qualities are rather like what we style
cleverness. And what I call a proper stupidity keeps a man from all the
defects of this character; it chains the gifted possessor mainly to his
old ideas; it takes him seven weeks to comprehend an atom of a new one;
it keeps him from being led away by new theories—for there is nothing
which bores him so much; it restrains him within his old pursuits, his
well-known habits, his tried expedients, his verified conclusions, his
traditional beliefs. He is not tempted to ‘levity,’ or ‘impatience,’
for he does not see the joke, and is thick-skinned to present evils.
Inconsistency puts him out,—‘What I says is this here, as I was a
saying yesterday,’ is his notion of historical eloquence and habitual
discretion. He is very slow indeed to be ‘excited,’—his passions, his
feelings, and his affections are dull and tardy strong things, falling in
a certain known direction, fixing on certain known objects, and for the
most part acting in a moderate degree, and at a sluggish pace. You always
know where to find his mind.
Now this is exactly what, in politics at least, you do not know about
a Frenchman. I like—I have heard a good judge say—to hear a Frenchman
talk. He strikes a light, but what light he will strike it is impossible
to predict. I think he doesn’t know himself. Now, I know you see at once
how this would operate on a Parliamentary Government, but I give you a
gentle illustration. All England knows Mr. Disraeli, the witty orator,
the exceedingly clever _littérateur_, the versatile politician; and
all England has made up its mind that the stupidest country gentleman
would be a better Home Secretary than the accomplished descendant of the
‘Caucasian race.’ Now suppose, if you only can, a House of Commons all
Disraelis, and do you imagine that Parliament would work? It would be
what M. Proudhon said of some French assemblies, ‘a box of matches.’
The same quality acts in another way, and produces to English ideas a
most marvellous puzzle, both in the philosophical literature and the
political discussion of the French. I mean their passion for logical
deduction. The habitual mode of argument is to get hold of some
large principle; to begin to deduce immediately; and to reason down
from it to the most trivial details of common action. _Il faut être
conséquent avec soi-même_—is their fundamental maxim; and in a world
the essence of which is compromise, they could not well have a worse. I
hold, metaphysically perhaps, that this is a consequence of that same
impatience of disposition to which I have before alluded. Nothing is such
a bore as looking for your principles—nothing so pleasant as working them
out. People who have thought, know that inquiry is suffering. A child a
stumbling timidly in the dark is not more different from the same child
playing on a sunny lawn, than is the philosopher groping, hesitating,
doubting and blundering about his primitive postulates, from the same
philosopher proudly deducing and commenting on the certain consequences
of his established convictions. On this account Mathematics have been
called the paradise of the mind. In Euclid at least, you have your
principles, and all that is required is acuteness in working them out.
The long annals of science are one continued commentary on this text.
Read in Bacon, the beginner of intellectual philosophy in England, and
every page of the ‘Advancement of Learning’ is but a continued warning
against the tendency of the human mind to start at once to the last
generalities from a few and imperfectly observed particulars. Read in
the ‘Meditations’ of Descartes, the beginner of intellectual philosophy
in France, and in every page (once I read five) you will find nothing
but the strictest, the best, the most lucid, the most logical deduction
of all things actual and possible, from a few principles obtained
without evidence, and retained in defiance of probability. Deduction
is a game, and induction a grievance. Besides, clever impatient people
want not only to learn, but to teach. And instruction expresses at least
the alleged possession of knowledge. The obvious way is to shorten the
painful, the slow, the tedious, the wearisome process of preliminary
inquiry—to assume something pretty—to establish its consequences—discuss
their beauty—exemplify their importance—extenuate their absurdities.
A little vanity helps all this. Life is short—art is long—truth lies
deep—take some side—found your school—open your lecture-rooms—tuition is
dignified—learning is low.
I do not know that I can exhibit the way these qualities of the French
character operate on their opinions, better than by telling you how
the Roman Catholic Church deals with them. I have rather attended to
it since I came here; it gives sermons almost an interest, their being
in French—and to those curious in intellectual matters it is worth
observing. In other times, and even now in out-of-the-way Spain, I
suppose it may be so, the Catholic Church was opposed to inquiry and
reasoning. But it is not so now, and here. Loudly—from the pens of a
hundred writers—from the tongues of a thousand pulpits—in every note of
thrilling scorn and exulting derision, she proclaims the contrary. Be she
Christ’s workman, or Antichrist’s, she knows her work too well.—‘Reason,
Reason, Reason!’—exclaims she to the philosophers of this world—‘Put
in practice what you teach, if you would have others believe it; be
consistent; do not prate to us of private judgment when you are but
yourselves repeating what you heard in the nursery—ill-mumbled remnants
of a Catholic tradition. No! exemplify what you command, inquire and
make search—seek, though we warn you that ye will never find—yet do as
ye will. Shut yourself up in a room—make your mind a blank—go down (as
ye speak) into the “depths of your consciousness”—scrutinise the mental
structure—inquire for the elements of belief—spend years, your best
years, in the occupation; and at length—when your eyes are dim, and your
brain hot, and your hand unsteady—then reckon what you have gained: see
if you cannot count on your fingers the certainties you have reached:
reflect which of them you doubted yesterday, which you may disbelieve
to-morrow; or rather, make haste—assume at random some essential
_credenda_—write down your inevitable postulates—enumerate your necessary
axioms—toil on, toil on—spin your spider’s web—adore your own souls—or,
if you prefer it, choose some German nostrum—try the intellectual
intuition, or the “pure reason,” or the “intelligible” ideas, or the
mesmeric _clairvoyance_—and when so or somehow you have attained your
results, try them on mankind. Don’t go out into the highways and
hedges—it’s unnecessary. Ring the bell—call in the servants—give them a
course of lectures—cite Aristotle—review Descartes—panegyrise Plato—and
see if the bonne will understand you. It is you that say “_Vox populi—Vox
Dei_;” but you see the people reject you. Or, suppose you succeed—what
you call succeeding—your books are read; for three weeks, or even a
season, you are the idol of the _salons_; your hard words are on the
lips of women; then a change comes—a new actress appears at the Théâtre
Français or the Opéra—her charms eclipse your theories; or a great
catastrophe occurs—political liberty (it is said) is annihilated—_il faut
se faire mouchard_, is the observation of scoffers. Any how, _you_ are
forgotten—fifty years may be the gestation of a philosophy, not three
its life—before long, before you go to your grave, your six disciples
leave you for some newer master, or to set up for themselves. The poorest
priest in the remote region of the _Basses Alpes_ has more power over
men’s souls than human cultivation; his ill-mouthed masses move women’s
souls—can you? Ye scoff at Jupiter. Yet he at least was believed in—you
never have been; idol for idol, the _de_throned is better than the
_un_throned. No, if you would reason—if you would teach—if you would
speculate, come to us. We have our _premises_ ready; years upon years
before you were born, intellects whom the best of you delight to magnify,
toiled to systematise the creed of ages; years upon years after you are
dead, better heads than yours will find new matter there to define, to
divide, to arrange. Consider the hundred volumes of Aquinas—which of you
desire a higher life than that? To deduce, to subtilise, discriminate,
systematise, and decide the highest truth, and to be believed. Yet such
was his luck, his enjoyment. He was what you would be. No, no—_Credite,
credite_. Ours is the life of speculation—the cloister is the home for
the student. Philosophy is stationary—Catholicism progressive. You
call—we are heard,’ &c., &c., &c. So speaks each preacher according to
his ability. And when the dust and noise of present controversies have
passed away, and in the silence of the night, some grave historian writes
out the tale of half-forgotten times, let him not forget to observe that
skilfully as the mediæval church subdued the superstitious cravings of
a painful and barbarous age—in after years she dealt more discerningly
still with the feverish excitement, the feeble vanities, and the dogmatic
impatience of an over-intellectual generation.
And as in religion—so in politics, we find the same desire to teach
rather than to learn—the same morbid appetite for exhaustive and original
theories. It is as necessary for a public writer to have a system as it
is for him to have a pen. His course is obvious; he assumes some grand
principle—the principle of Legitimacy, or the principle of Equality, or
the principle of Fraternity—and thence he reasons down without fear or
favour to the details of every-day politics. Events are judged of, not by
their relation to simple causes, but by their bearing on a remote axiom.
Nor are these speculations mere exercises of philosophic ingenuity. Four
months ago, hundreds of able writers were debating with the keenest
ability and the most ample array of generalities, whether the country
should be governed by a Legitimate Monarchy, or an illegitimate; by a
Social, or an old-fashioned Republic; by a two-chambered Constitution,
or a one-chambered Constitution; on ‘Revision,’ or Non-revision; on
the claims of Louis Napoleon, or the divine right of the national
representation. Can any intellectual food be conceived more dangerous
or more stimulating for an over-excitable population? It is the same in
Parliament. The description of the Church of Corinth may stand for a
description of the late Assembly: every one had a psalm, had a doctrine,
had a tongue, had a revelation, had an interpretation. Each member of
the Mountain had his scheme for the regeneration of mankind; each member
of the vaunted majority had his scheme for newly consolidating the
Government; Orleanist hated Legitimist, Legitimist Orleanist; moderate
Republican detested undiluted Republican; scheme was set against scheme,
and theory against theory. No two Conservatives would agree what to
conserve; no Socialist could practically associate with any other. No
deliberative assembly can exist with every member wishing to lead, and no
one wishing to follow. Not the meanest Act of Parliament could be carried
without more compromise than even the best French statesmen were willing
to use on the most important and critical affairs of their country.
Rigorous reasoning would not manage a parish-vestry, much less a great
nation. In England, to carry half your own crotchets, you must be always
and everywhere willing to carry half another man’s. Practical men must
submit as well as rule, concede as well as assume. Popular government has
many forms, a thousand good modes of procedure; but no one of those modes
can be worked, no one of those forms will endure, unless by the continual
application of sensible heads and pliable judgments to the systematic
criticism of stiff axioms, rigid principles, and incarnated propositions.
I am, &c.,
AMICUS.
P.S.—I was in hopes that I should have been able to tell you of the
withdrawal of the decree relative to the property of the Orleans family.
The withdrawal was announced in the _Constitutionnel_ of yesterday; but I
regret to add was contradicted in the _Patrie_ last evening. I need not
observe to you that it is an act for which there is no defence, moral or
political. It has immensely weakened the Government.
The change of Ministry is also a great misfortune to Louis Napoleon.
M. de Morny, said to be a son of Queen Hortense (if you believe the
people in the _salons_, the President is not the son of his father, and
everybody else is the son of his mother), was a statesman of the class
best exemplified in England by the late Lord Melbourne—an acute, witty,
fashionable man, acquainted with Parisian persons and things, and a
consummate judge of public opinion. M. Persigny was in exile with the
President, is said to be much attached to him, to repeat his sentiments
and exaggerate his prejudices. I need not point out which of the two is
just now the sounder counsellor.
LETTER V.
_ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE PRINCE-PRESIDENT._
SIR,—The many failures of the French in the attempt to establish a
predominantly Parliamentary Government have a strong family likeness.
Speaking a little roughly, I shall be right in saying that the
Constitutions of France have perished, both lately and formerly, either
in a street-row or under the violence of a military power, aided and
abetted by a diffused dread of impending street-rows, and a painful
experience of the effects of past ones. Thus the Constitution of 1791
(the first of the old series) perished on August 10, amid the exultation
of the brewer Santerre. The last of the old series fell on the 18
Brumaire, under the hands of Napoleon, when the 5 per cents. were at
12, the whole country in disorder, and all ruinable persons ruined. The
Monarchy of 1830 began in the riot of the three days, and ended in the
riot of February 24; the Republic of February perished but yesterday,
mainly from terror that Paris might again see such days as the ‘days of
June.’
I think all sensible Englishmen who review this history (the history of
more than sixty years) will not be slow to divine a conclusion peculiarly
agreeable to our orderly national habits, viz., that the first want
of the French is somebody or something able and willing to keep down
street-rows, to repress the frightful elements of revolution and disorder
which, every now and then, astonish Europe; capable of maintaining, and
desirous to maintain, the order and tranquillity which are (all agree)
the essential and primary prerequisites of industry and civilisation. If
any one seriously and calmly doubts this, I am afraid nothing that I can
further say will go far in convincing him. But let him read the account
of any scene in any French revolution, old or new, or, better, let him
come here and learn how people look back to the time I have mentioned
(to June, 1848), when the Socialists,—not under speculative philosophers
like Proudhon or Louis Blanc, but under practical rascals and energetic
murderers, like Sobrier and Caussidière—made their last and final stand,
and against them, on the other side, the National Guard (mostly solid
shopkeepers, three-parts ruined by the events of February) fought (I will
not say bravely or valiantly, but) furiously, frantically, savagely, as
one reads in old books that half-starved burgesses in beleaguered towns
have sometimes fought for the food of their children; let any sceptic
hear of the atrocities of the friends of order and the atrocities of the
advocates of disorder, and he will, I imagine, no longer be sceptical
on two points,—he will hope that if he ever have to fight it will not
be with a fanatic Socialist, nor against a demi-bankrupt fighting for
‘his shop;’ and he will admit, that in a country subject to collisions
between two such excited and excitable combatants, no earthly blessing is
in any degree comparable to a power which will stave off, long delay, or
permanently prevent the actual advent and ever-ready apprehension of such
bloodshed. I therefore assume that the first condition of good government
in this country is a really strong, a reputedly strong, a continually
strong Executive power.
Now, on the face of matters, it is certainly true that such a power
is perfectly consistent with the most perfect, the most ideal type
of Parliamentary government. Rather I should say, such and so strong
an executive is a certain consequence of the existence of that ideal
and rarely found type. If there is among the people, and among their
representatives, a strong, a decided, an unflinching preference for
particular Ministers, or a particular course of policy, that course of
policy can be carried out, and will be carried out, as certainly as
by the Czar Nicholas, whose Ministers can do exactly what they will.
There was something very like this in the old days of King George III.,
of Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Perceval. In those times, I have been told, the
great Treasury official of the day, Mr. George Rose (still known to the
readers of Sydney Smith) had a habit of observing, upon occasion of
anything utterly devoid of decent defence, ‘Well, well, this is a little
too bad; we must apply our _majority_ to this difficulty.’ The effect
is very plain; while Mr. George Rose and his betters respected certain
prejudices and opinions, then all but universal in Parliament, they in
all other matters might do precisely what they would; and in all out
of the way matters, in anything that Sir John could not understand, on
a point of cotton-spinning or dissent, be as absolute as the Emperor
Napoleon. But the case is (as we know by experience of what passes under
our daily observation) immensely altered, when there is no longer this
strong, compact, irrefragable, ‘following;’ no distinctly divided,
definite faction, no regular opposition to be daily beaten, no regular
official party to be always victorious—but, instead, a mere aggregate
of ‘independent members,’ each thinking for himself, propounding, as
the case may be, his own sense or his own nonsense—one, profound ideas
applicable to all time; another, something meritorious from the Eton
Latin grammar, and a mangled republication of the morning’s newspaper;
some exceedingly philosophical, others only crotchetty, but, what
is my point, each acting on his own head, assuming not Mr. Pitt’s
infallibility, but his own. Again, divide a political assembly into three
parties, any two of which are greater than the third, and it will be
always possible for an adroit and dexterous intriguer (M. Thiers has his
type in most assemblies) to combine, three or four times a fortnight, the
two opposition parties into a majority on some interesting question—on
some matter of importance. The best government possible under the
existing circumstances will be continually and, in a hazardous state of
society, even desperately and fatally weakened. We have had in our own
sensible House of Commons—aye, and among the most stupid and sensible
portion of it, the country gentlemen—within these few years, a striking
example of how far party zeal, the heat of disputation, and a strong
desire for a deep revenge will carry the best intentioned politicians in
destroying the executive efficiency of an obnoxious Government. I mean
the division of the House of Commons on the Irish Army Bill, which ended
in the resignation of Sir Robert Peel. You remember on that occasion
the country party, under the guidance of Lord G. Bentinck, in the teeth
of the Irish policy which they had been advocating and supporting all
their lives, and which they would advocate and support again now, in the
teeth of their previous votes, and (I am not exaggerating the history)
almost of their avowed present convictions, defeated a Government, not
on a question of speculative policy or recondite importance, but upon
the precautionary measures necessary (according to every idea that a
Tory esquire is capable of entertaining) for preventing a rebellion, the
occurrence of which they were told (and as the event proved, told truly)
might be speedy, hourly, and immediate. Of course I am not giving any
opinion of my own about the merits of the question. The Whigs may be
right; it may be good to have shown the world how little terrible is the
bluster of Irish agitation. But I cite the event as a striking example of
an essential evil in a three-sided Parliamentary system, as practically
showing that a generally well-meaning opposition will, in defiance of
their own habitual principles, cripple an odious executive, even in a
matter of street-rows and rebellions. I won’t weary you with tediously
pointing the moral. If such things are done in the green tree, what may
be done in the dry? If party zeal and disputation excitement so hurry
men away in our own grave, business-like experienced country—what may we
expect from a vain, a volatile, an ever-changing race?
Nor am I drawing a French Assembly from mere history, or from my own
imagination. In the late Chamber, the great subject of the very last
_Annual Register_, there were not only three parties but four. There
was a perpetually shifting element of 200 members, calling itself the
Mountain, which had in its hands the real casting vote between the
President’s Government and the Constitutional opposition. In the very
last days of the Constitution they voted against, and thereby negatived,
the proposition of the questors for arming the Assembly; partly because
they disliked General Changarnier, and detested General Cavaignac; partly
because, being extreme Socialists, they would not arm anybody who was
likely to use his arms against their friends on the barricades. The
same party was preparing to vote for the Bill on the Responsibility of
the President, actually, and according to the design of its promoters,
in the nature of a bill of indictment against him, because they feared
his rigour and efficiency in repressing the anticipated convulsion. The
question, the critical question, _Who_ shall prevent a new revolution?
was thus actually, and owing to the lamentable divisions of the friends
of order, in the hands of the Parliamentary representatives of the very
men who wished to effect that revolution, was determined, I may say,
ultimately, and in the last resort by the party of disorder.
Nor on lesser questions was there any steady majority, any distinctive
deciding faction, any administering phalanx, anybody regularly voting
with anybody else, often enough, or in number enough, to make the
legislative decision regular, consistent, or respectable. Their very
debates were unseemly. On anything not pleasing to them, the Mountain
(as I said) a yellow and fanatical generation—had (I am told) an
engaging knack of rising _en masse_ and screaming until they were tired.
It will be the same, I do not say in degree (for the Mountain would
certainly lose several votes now, and the numbers of the late Chamber
were unreasonably and injudiciously large), but, in a measure, you will
be always subject to the same disorder—a fluctuating majority, and a
minority, often a ruling minority, favourable to rebellion. The cause, as
I believe, is to be sought in the peculiarities of the French character,
on which I dwelt, prolixly, I fear, and _ad nauseam_, in my last two
letters. If you have to deal with a _mobile_, a clever, a versatile,
an intellectual, a dogmatic nation, inevitably, and by necessary
consequence, you will have conflicting systems—every man speaking his
own words, and always giving his own suffrage to what seems good in his
own eyes—many holding to-day what they will regret to-morrow—a crowd of
crotchetty theories and a heavy percentage of philosophical nonsense—a
great opportunity for subtle stratagem and intriguing selfishness—a
miserable division among the friends of tranquillity, and a great power
thrown into the hands of those who, though often with the very best
intentions, are practically, and in matter of fact, opposed both to
society and civilisation. And, moreover, beside minor inconveniences
and lesser hardships, you will indisputably have periodically—say three
or four times in fifty years—a great crisis; the public mind much
excited, the people in the streets swaying to and fro with the breath of
every breeze, the discontented _ouvriers_ meeting in a hundred knots,
discussing their real sufferings and their imagined grievances, with
lean features and angry gesticulations; the Parliament, all the while in
permanence, very ably and eloquently expounding the whole subject, one
man proposing this scheme, and another that; the Opposition expecting to
oust the Ministers, and ride in on the popular commotion; the Ministers
fearing to take the odium of severe or adequate repressive measures,
lest they should lose their salary, their places and their majority:
finally, a great crash, a disgusted people, overwhelmed by revolutionary
violence, or seeking a precarious, a pernicious, but after all a precious
protection from the bayonets of military despotism. Louis Philippe met
these dangers and difficulties in a thoroughly characteristic manner.
He bought his majority. Being a practical and not over sentimental
public functionary, he went into the market and purchased a sufficient
number of constituencies and members. Of course the _convenances_ were
carefully preserved; grossness of any kind is too jarring for French
susceptibility; the purchase money was not mere coin (which indeed the
buyers had not to offer), but a more gentlemanly commodity—the patronage
of the Government. The electoral colleges were extremely small, the
number of public functionaries is enormous; so that a very respectable
body of electors could always be expected to have, like a four-year
old barrister (since the County Courts), an immense prejudice for the
existing Government. One man hoped to be _Maire_, another wanted his
son got into St. Cyr or the Polytechnic School, and this could be got,
and was daily got (I am writing what is hardly denied) by voting for
the Government candidate. In a word, a sufficient proportion of the
returns of the electoral colleges resembled the returns from Harwich
or Devonport, only that the Government was the only bidder; for there
are not, I fancy, in any country but England, people able and willing
to spend, election after election, great sums of money for procuring
the honour of a seat in a representative assembly. In fact, to copy the
well-known phrase, just as in the time of Burke, certain gentlemen had
the expressive nickname of the King’s friends, so these constituencies
may aptly be called the King’s constituencies. Of course, on the face of
it, this system worked, as far as business went, excellently well. For
eighteen years the tranquillity was maintained. France, it may be, has
never enjoyed so much calm civilisation, so much private happiness; and
yet, after all such and so long blessings, it fell in a mere riot—it fell
unregretted. It is a system which no wise man can wish to see restored;
it was a system of regulated corruption.
But it does not at all follow, nor I am sure will you be apt so to
deduce, that because I imagine that France is unfit for a Government
in which a House of Commons is, as with us, the sovereign power in the
State, I therefore believe that it is fit for no freedom at all. Our own
constitutional history is the completest answer to any such idea. For
centuries, the House of Commons was habitually, we know, but a third-rate
power in the State. First the Crown, then the House of Lords, enjoyed the
ordinary and supreme dominion; and down almost to our own times the Crown
and House of Lords, taken together, were much more than a sufficient
match for the people’s House; but yet we do not cease to proclaim, daily
and hourly, in season and out of season, that the English people never
have been slaves. It may, therefore, well be that our own country having
been free under a Constitution in which the representative element
was but third-rate in power and dignity, France and other nations may
contrive to enjoy the advantage from institutions in which it is only
second-rate.
Now, of this sort is the Constitution of Louis Napoleon. I am not going
now, after prefacing so much, to discuss its details; indeed, I do not
feel competent to do so. What should we say to a Frenchman’s notion of
a 5_l._ householder, or the fourth and fifth clauses of the New Reform
Bill? and I quite admit that a paper building of this sort can hardly be
safely criticised till it is carried out on _terra firma_, till we see
not only the theoretic ground-plan, but the actual inhabited structure.
The life of a constitution is in the spirit and disposition of those
who work it; and we can’t yet say in the least what that, in this case,
will be; but so far as the constitution shows its meaning on the face
of it, it clearly belongs to the class which I have named. The _Corps
Législatif_ is not the administering body, it is not even what perhaps
it might with advantage have been, a petitioning and remonstrating body;
but it possesses the Legislative veto, and the power of stopping _en
masse_ the supplies. It is not a working, a ruling, or an initiative, or
supremely decisive, but an immense checking power. It will be unable to
change Ministers, or aggravate the course of revolutions; but it could
arrest an unpopular war—it could reject an unpopular law—it is, at least
in theory, a powerful and important drag-chain. Out of the mouths of its
adversaries this system possesses what I have proved, or conjectured, or
assumed to be the prime want of the French nation—a strong executive. The
objection to it is that the objectors find nothing else in it. We confess
there is no doubt now of a power adequate to repress street-rows and
revolutions.
At the same time, I guard myself against intimating any opinion on the
particular minutiæ of this last effort of institutional invention. I do
not know enough to form a judgment; I sedulously, at present, confine
myself to this one remark, that the new Government of France belongs,
in theory at least, to the right class of Constitutions—the class
that is most exactly suited to French habits, French nature, French
social advantages, French social dangers—the class I mean, in which the
representative body has a consultative, a deliberative, a checking and a
minatory—not as with us a supreme, nearly an omnipotent, and exclusively
initiatory function.
I am, yours, &c.
AMICUS.
P.S.—You may like five words on a French invasion. I can’t myself
imagine, and what is more to the point, I do not observe that anybody
here has any notion of, any such inroad into England as was contemplated
and proposed by General Changarnier. No one in the actual conduct of
affairs, with actual responsibility for affairs, not, as the event
proved, even Ledru Rollin, could, according to me, encounter the risk and
odium of such a hateful and horribly dangerous attempt. But, I regret
to add, there is a contingency which sensible people here (so far as I
have had the means of judging) do not seem to regard as at all beyond the
limits of rational probability, by which a war between England and France
would most likely be superinduced; that is, a French invasion of Belgium.
I do not mean to assure you that this week or next the Prince-President
will make a razzia in Brussels. But I do mean that it is thought not
improbable that somehow or other, on some wolf-and-the-lamb pretext,
he may pick a quarrel with King Leopold, and endeavour to restore to
the French the ‘natural limit’ of the Rhine. Now, I have never seen the
terms of the guarantee which the shrewd and cautious Leopold exacted
from England before he would take the throne of Belgium; but as the
only real risk was a French aggression upon this tempting territory, I
do not make any doubt but that the expressions of that instrument bind
us to go to war in defence of the country whose limits and independence
we have guaranteed. And in this case, an invasion of England would be
as admissible a military movement as an invasion of France. I hope,
therefore, you will use your best rhetoric to induce people to put our
pleasant country in a state of adequate and tolerable defence.
I see by the invaluable _Galignani_, that some excellent people at
Manchester are indulging in a little arithmetic. ‘Suppose,’ say they,
‘all the French got safe, and each took away 50_l._, now how much do you
fancy it would come to (40,000 men by 50_l._, nought’s nought is nought,
nought and carry two)—compared to the _existing_ burden of the National
Debt?’ Was there ever such amiable infatuation! It is not what the French
could carry off, but what they would leave behind them, which is in the
reasonable apprehension of reasonable persons. The funds at 50—broken
banks—the _Gazette_ telling you who had _not_ failed—Downing-street
_vide_ Wales—destitute families, dishonoured daughters, one-legged
fathers—the mourning shops utterly sacked—the customers in tears—a
pale widow in a green bonnet—the Exchange in ruins—five notches on St.
Paul’s—and a big hole in the Bank of England;—these, though but a few of
the certain consequences of a French visit to London, are quite enough to
terrify even an adamantine editor and a rather reckless correspondent.
LETTER VI.
_THE FRENCH NEWSPAPER PRESS._
PARIS: Feb. 10.
SIR,—We learn from an Oriental narrative in considerable circulation,
that the ancient Athenians were fond of news. Of course they were. It is
in the nature of a mass of clever and intellectual people living together
to want something to talk about. Old ideas—common ascertained truths—are
good things enough to live by, but are very rare, and soon sufficiently
discussed. Something else—true or false, rational or nonsensical—is quite
essential; and, therefore, in the old literary world men gathered round
the travelling sophist, to learn from him some thought, crotchet, or
speculation. And what the vagabond speculators were once, that, pretty
exactly, is the newspaper now. To it the people of this intellectual
capital look for that daily mental bread, which is as essential to them
as the less ethereal sustenance of ordinary mortals. With the spread
of education this habit travels downward. Not the literary man only,
but the _ouvrier_ and the _bourgeois_, live on the same food. This
day’s _Siècle_ is discussed not only in gorgeous drawing-rooms, but in
humble reading-rooms, and still humbler workshops. According to the
printed notions of us journalists, this is a matter of pure rejoicing.
The influence of the Press, if you believe writers and printers, is
the one sufficient condition of social well-being. Yet there are many
considerations which make very much against this idea: I can’t go into
several of them now, but those that I shall mention are suggested at
once by matters before me. First, newspaper people are the only traders
that thrive upon convulsion. In quiet times, who cares for the paper?
In times of tumult, who does not? Commonly, the _Patrie_ (the _Globe_
of this country) sells, I think, for three sous: on the evening of the
_coup d’état_, itinerant ladies were crying under my window, ‘_Demandez
la_ Patrie—_Journal du soir—trente sous—Journal du soir_;’ and I remember
witnessing, even in our sober London, in February 1848, how bald fathers
of families paid large sums, and encountered bare-headed the unknown
inclemencies of the night air, that they might learn the last news of
Louis Philippe, and, if possible, be in at the death of the revolutionary
Parisians. ‘Happy,’ says the sage, ‘are the people whose annals are
vacant;’ but ‘woe! woe! woe!’ he might add, ‘to the wretched journalists
that have to compose and sell leading articles therein.’
I am constrained to say that, even in England, this is not without its
unfavourable influence on literary morals. Take in the _Times_, and you
will see it assumed that every year ought to be an era. ‘The Government
does nothing,’ is the indignant cry, and simple people in the country
don’t know that this is merely a civilised _façon de parler_ for ‘I have
nothing to say.’ Lord John Russell must alter the suffrage, that we may
have something pleasant in our columns.
I am afraid matters are worse here. The leading French journalist is,
as you know, the celebrated Emile de Girardin, and, so far as I can
learn anything about him, he is one of the most fickle politicians in
existence. Since I have read the _Presse_ regularly, it has veered from
every point of the compass well-nigh to every other—now for, now against,
the revision of the constitution,—now lauding Louis Napoleon to the
skies—now calling him plain M. Bonaparte, and insinuating that he had
not two ideas, and was incapable of moral self-government—now connected
with the Red party, now praising the majority; but all and each of
these veerings and shiftings determined by one most simple and certain
principle—to keep up the popular excitement, to maintain the gifted M. de
Girardin at the head of it. Now a man who spends his life in stimulating
excitement and convulsion is really a political incendiary; and however
innocent and laudable his brother exiles may be, the old editor and
founder of the _Presse_ is, as I believe, now only paying the legitimate
penalty of systematic political _arson_.
When a foreigner—at least an Englishman—begins to read the French papers,
his first idea is ‘How well these fellows write! Why, every one of them
has a style, and a good style too. Really, how clear, how acute, how
clever, how perspicuous; I wish our journalists would learn to write
like this;’ but a little experience will modify this idea—at least I
have found it so. I read for a considerable time these witty periodicals
with pleasure and admiration; after a little while I felt somehow that
I took them up with an effort, but I fancied, knowing my disposition,
that this was laziness; when on a sudden, in the waste of _Galignani_,
I came across an article of the _Morning Herald_. Now you’ll laugh at
me, if I tell you it was a real enjoyment. There was no toil, no sharp
theory, no pointed expression, no fatiguing brilliancy, in fact, what
the man in Lord Byron desired, ‘no nothing,’ but a dull, creeping,
satisfactory sensation that now, at least, there was nothing to admire.
As long walking in picture galleries makes you appreciate a mere wall, so
I felt that I understood for the first time that really dulness had its
interest. I found a pure refreshment in coming across what possibly might
be latent sense, but was certainly superficial stupidity.
I think there is nothing we English hate like a clever but prolonged
controversy. Now this is the life and soul of the Parisian press.
Everybody writes against everybody. It is not mere sly hate or solemn
invective, nothing like what we occasionally indulge in, about the
misdemeanours of a morning contemporary. But they take the other side’s
article piece by piece, and comment on him, and, as they say in libel
cases, _innuendo_ him, and satisfactorily show that, according to his
arithmetic, two and two make five; useful knowledge that. It is really
good for us to know that some fellow (you never heard of him) it rather
seems can’t add up. But it interests people here—_c’est logique_ they
tell you, and if you are trustful enough to answer ‘_Mon Dieu, c’est
ennuyeux, je n’en sais rien_,’ they look as if you sneered at the
Parthenon.
It is out of these controversies that M. de Girardin has attained his
power and his fame. His articles (according to me, at least) have no
facts and no sense. He gives one all pure reasoning—little scrappy
syllogisms; as some one said most unjustly of old Hazlitt, he ‘writes
pimples.’ But let an unfortunate writer in the _Assemblée Nationale_, or
anywhere else, make a little refreshing blunder in his logic, and next
morning small punning sentences (one to each paragraph like an equation)
come rattling down on him: it is clear as noonday that somebody said
‘something followed,’ and it does not follow, and it is so agreed in all
the million _cabinets de lecture_ after due gesticulation; and, moreover,
that M. de Girardin is the man to expose it, and what clever fellows they
are to appreciate him; but what the truth is, who cares? The subject is
forgotten.
Now all this, to my notion, does great harm. Nothing destroys
common-place like the habit of arguing for arguing’s sake; nothing is
so bad for public matters as that they should be treated, not as the
data for the careful formation of a sound judgment, but as a topic or
background for displaying the shining qualities of public writers. It is
no light thing this. M. de Girardin for many years has gained more power,
more reputation, more money than any of his rivals; not because he shows
more knowledge—he shows much less; not because he has a wiser judgment—he
has no fixed judgment at all; but because he has a more pointed, sharp
way of exposing blunders, intrinsically paltry, obvious to all educated
men; and does not care enough for any subject to be diverted from this
logical trifling by a serious desire to convince anybody of anything.
Don’t think I wish to be hard on this accomplished gentleman. I am not
going to require of hack-writers to write only on what they understand—if
that were the law, what a life for the sub-editor; I should not be
writing these letters, and how seldom and how timidly would the morning
journals creep into the world. Nor do I expect, though I may still, in
sentimental moods, desire, middle-aged journalists to be buoyed up by
chimerical visions of improving mankind.
You know what our eminent _chef_ (by Thackeray profanely called Jupiter
Jeames) has been heard to say over his gin and water, in an easy and
voluptuous moment: ‘Enlightenment be ——, I want the fat fool of a
thick-headed reader to say, “Just _my own_ views,” else he ain’t pleased,
and may be he stops the paper.’ I am not going to require supernatural
excellence from writers. Yet there are limits. If I were a chemist, I
should not mind, I suppose, selling now and then, a deleterious drug on
a due affidavit of rats, then and there filed before me; yet I don’t
feel as if I could live comfortably on the sale of mere arsenic. I fancy
I should like to sell something wholesome occasionally. So, though one
might, upon occasion, egg on a riot, or excite to a breach of the peace,
I should not like to be every day feeding on revolutionary excitement.
Nor should I like to be exclusively selling diminutive, acute, quibbling
leaders (what they call in the Temple special demurrers), certain to
occupy people with small fallacies, and lead away their minds from the
great questions actually at issue.
Sometimes I might like to feel as if I understood what I wrote on, but
of course with me this indulgence must be very rare. You know in France
journalism is not only an occupation, it is a career. As in far-off
Newcastle a coalfitter’s son looks wistfully to the bar, in the notion
that he too may emulate the fame and fortune of Lord Eldon or Lord
Stowell, so in fair Provence, a pale young aspirant packs up his little
bundle in the hope of rivalling the luck and fame of M. Thiers; he comes
to Paris—he begins, like the great historian, by dining for thirty sous
in the Palais Royal, in the hope that after long years of labour and
jealousy he, too, may end by sleeping amid curtains of white muslin lined
with pink damask. Just consider for a moment what a difference this one
fact shows between France and England. Here a man who begins life by
writing in the newspapers, has an appreciable chance of arriving to be
Minister of Foreign Affairs. The class of public writers is the class
from which the equivalent of Lord Aberdeen, Lord Palmerston, or Lord
Granville will most likely be chosen. Well, well, under that _régime_
you and I might have been important people; we might have handled a red
box, we might have known what it was to have a reception, to dine with
the Queen, to be respectfully mystified by the _corps diplomatique_. But
angry Jove forbade—of course we can hardly deny that he was wrong,—and
yet if the revolutions of 1848 have clearly brought out any fact, it
is the utter failure of newspaper statesmen. Everywhere they have been
tried: everywhere they have shown great talents for intrigue, eloquence,
and agitation—how rarely have they shown even fair aptitude for ordinary
administration; how frequently have they gained a disreputable renown by
a laxity of principle surpassing the laxity of their aristocratic and
courtly adversaries! Such being my imperfect account of my imperfect
notions of the French press, I can’t altogether sympathise in the extreme
despondency of many excellent persons at its temporary silence since the
_coup d’état_. I might even rejoice at it, if I thought that the Parisian
public could in any manner be broken of their dependence on the morning’s
article. But I have no such hope; the taste has got down too deep into
the habits of the people; some new thing will still be necessary; and
every Government will find some of its most formidable difficulties in
their taste for political disputation and controversial excitement. The
ban must sooner or later be taken off; the President sooner or later
must submit to censure and ridicule, and whatever laws he may propose
about the press, there is none which scores of ingenious men—now animated
by the keenest hatred, will not try every hazard to evade. What he
may do to avoid this is as yet unknown. One thing, however, I suppose
is pretty sure, and I fancy quite wise. The press will be restrained
from discussing the principles of the Government. Socialists will not
be allowed to advocate a Democratic Republic. Legitimists will not be
allowed to advocate the cause of Henri Cinq, nor Orleanists the cause of
the Comte de Paris. Such indulgence might be tolerable in more temperate
countries, but experience shows that it is not safe now and here.
A really sensible press, arguing temperately after a clear and
satisfactory exposition of the facts, is a great blessing in any country.
It would be still more a blessing in a country where, as I tried to
explain formerly, the representative element must play (if the public
security is to be maintained) a rather secondary part. It would then be
a real stimulus to deliberate inquiry and rational judgment upon public
affairs; to the formation of common-sense views upon the great outlines
of public business; to the cultivation of sound moral opinions and
convictions on the internal and international duties of the State. Even
the actual press which we may expect to see here, may not be pernicious.
It will doubtless stimulate to many factious proceedings, and many
interruptions of the public prosperity; it may very likely conduce to
drive the President (contrary, if not to his inclination, at least
to his personal interest) into foreign hostilities and international
aggression; but it may be, notwithstanding, useful in preventing private
tyranny, in exposing wanton oppression, in checking long suffering
revenge; it may prevent acts of spoliation like what they call here _le
premier vol de l’aigle_—the seizure of the Orleans property;—in a word,
being certain to oppose the executive, where the latter is unjust its
enemy will be just.
I had hopes that this letter would be the last with which I should tease
you; but I find I must ask you to be so kind as to find room for one, and
only for one more.
I am, yours, &c.,
AMICUS.
LETTER VII.
_CONCLUDING LETTER._
PARIS: Feb. 19, 1852.
SIR,—There is a story of some Swedish Abbé, in the last century, who
wrote an elaborate work to prove the then constitution of his country to
be immortal and indestructible. While he was correcting the proof sheets,
a friend brought him word that—behold! the King had already destroyed
the said polity. ‘Sir,’ replied the gratified author, ‘our Sovereign,
the illustrious Gustavus, may certainly overthrow the Constitution, but
never _my book_.’ I beg to parody this sensible remark; for I wish to
observe to you, that even though Louis Napoleon should turn out a bad and
mischievous ruler, he won’t in the least refute these letters.
What I mean is as follows. Above all things, I have designed to prove to
you that the French are by character unfit for a solely and predominantly
Parliamentary government; that so many and so great elements of
convulsion exist here, that it will be clearly necessary that a strong,
vigorous, anti-barricade executive should, at whatever risk and cost,
be established and maintained; that such an Assembly as the last is
irreconcileable with this; in a word, that riots and revolutions must, if
possible, come to an end, and only such a degree of liberty and democracy
be granted to the French nation, as is consistent with the consolidated
existence of the order and tranquillity which are equally essential to
rational freedom and civilised society.
In order to combine the maintenance of order and tranquillity with
the maximum of possible liberty, I hope that it may in the end be
found possible to admit into a political system a representative and
sufficiently democratic Assembly, without that Assembly assuming and
arrogating to itself those nearly omnipotent powers, which in our country
it properly and rightfully possesses, but which in the history of the
last sixty years, we have, as it seems to me, so many and so cogent
illustrations that a French Chamber is, by genius and constitution,
radically incapable to hold and exercise. I hope that some checking,
Consultative, petitioning Assembly—some βουλή, in the real sense of the
term,—some _Council_, some provision by which all grave and deliberate
public opinion (I do not speak more definitely, because an elaborate
Constitution, from a foreigner, must be an absurdity) may organise and
express itself—yet at the same time, without utterly hampering and
directing—and directing amiss—those more simple elements of national
polity on which we must, after all, rely for the prompt and steady
repression of barricade-making and bloodshed.
I earnestly desire to believe that some such system as this may be found
in practice possible; for otherwise, unless I quite misread history, and
altogether mistake what is under my eyes, after many more calamities,
many more changes, many more great Assemblies abounding in Vergniauds
and Berryers, the essential deficiencies of debating Girondin statesmen
will become manifest, the uncompact, unpractical, over volatile, over
logical, indecisive, ineffectual rule of Gallican Parliaments will be
unequivocally manifest (it is _now_ plain, I imagine, but a truth so
humiliating must be written large in letters of blood before those that
run will read it), and no medium being held or conceived to be possible,
the nation will sink back, not contented but discontented, not trustfully
but distrustfully, under the rule of a military despot; and if they yield
to this, it will be from no faith, no loyalty, no credulity; it will be
from a sense—a hated sense—of unqualified failure, a miserable scepticism
in the probable success and the possible advantages of long-tried and
ill-tried rebellion.
Now, whether the Constitution of Louis Napoleon is calculated to realise
this ideal and intermediate system, is, till we see it at work, doubtful
and disputable. It is not the question so much of what it may be at
this moment, as of what it may become in a brief period, when things
have begun to assume a more normal state, and the public mind shall be
relaxed from its present and painful tension. However, I should be
deceiving you, if I did not inform you that the state of men’s minds
towards the Prince-President is not, so far as I can make it out, what
it was the day after the _coup d’état_. The measures taken against
the Socialists are felt to have been several degrees too severe, the
list of exiles too numerous; the confiscation of the Orleans’ property
could not but be attended with the worst effect: the law announced
by the Government organs respecting or rather against the Press, is
justly (though you know from my last letter I have no partiality for
French newspapers) considered to be absurdly severe, and likely to
countenance much tyranny and gross injustice; above all, instead of
maintaining mere calm and order, the excessive rigour, and sometimes
the injustice, of the President’s measures, have produced a breathless
pause (if I may so speak) in public opinion; political conversation is
a whispered question, what will he do next? Firstly, the Government is
dull, and the French want to be amused; secondly, it is going to spoil
the journals (depreciate newspapers to a Frenchman, disparage nuts to
a monkey); thirdly, it is producing (I do not say it has yet produced,
but it has made a beginning in producing) a habit of apprehension;—in
fact, I believe the French opinion of the Prince-President is near about
that of the interesting damsel in George Sand’s comedy, concerning her
uninteresting _prétendu_: ‘_Vous l’aimez? n’est-ce pas?’ ‘Oui, oui,
oui, certainement je l’aime. Oui, oui, mille fois, oui, Je dis que oui.
Je vous assure. AU MOINS je fais mon possible à l’aimer_:’ the first
attachment is not extinct, but people have begun—awful symptom—to add
the withering and final saving clause. Yet it is, I imagine, a great
mistake to suppose that the present Constitution, if it work at all, will
permanently work as a despotism, or that the _Corps Législatif_ will be
without a measure of popular influence; the much more helpless _Tribunal_
was not so in the much more troublesome times of the Consulate. And
the source of such influence and the manner of its operation may be, I
imagine, well enough traced in the nature of the forces whereby Louis
Napoleon holds his power.
A truly estimable writer says, I know, ‘that the Legislative body cannot
have, by possibility, any analogy with the consultative and petitioning
senate of the Plantagenets,’ nor can any one deny that the likeness
is extremely faint (no illustration ever yet ran on all fours), the
practical differences clear and convincing. But yet, according to the
light which is given me now, I affirm that for one vital purpose,—the
resisting and criticising any highly unpopular acts of a highly unpopular
Government,—the _Corps Législatif_ of Louis Napoleon must, and will,
inevitably possess a power compared with which the forty-day followers
of the feudal _noblesse_ seem as impotent as a congregation of Quakers;
a force the peculiarity of which is that you can’t imprison, can’t
dissolve, can’t annihilate it—I mean, of course, the moral power of
civilised opinion. You may put down newspapers, dissolve Parliaments,
imprison agitators, almost stop conversation, but you can’t stop thought.
You can’t prevent the silent, slow, creeping, stealthy progress of
hatred, and scorn, and shame. You can’t attenuate easily the stern
justice of a retarded retaliation. These influences affect the great
reservoir of physical force—they act on the army. A body of men enlisted
daily from the people take to the barracks the notions of the people; in
spite of new associations, the first impressions are apt to be retained;
you overlay them, but they remain. What is believed elsewhere and out of
doors gives them weight. Each soldier has relations, friends, a family—he
knows what they think. Much more with the officers. These are men moving
in Parisian society, accessible to its influences, responsible to its
opinion, apt to imbibe its sentiments. Certainly _esprit de corps_—the
habit of obedience, the instinct of discipline, are strong, and will
carry men far; but certainly, also, they have natural limits. Men won’t
stand being cut, being ridiculed, being detested, being despised, daily
and for ever, and that for measures which their own understandings
disapprove of. Remember there is not here any question of barbarous
bands overawing a civilised and imperial city; no question of ugly
Croats keeping down cultivated Italians; it is but a question of French
gentlemen and French peasantry in uniform acting in opposition to other
French gentlemen and other French peasants without uniform. Already
there has been talk (I do not say well-founded, but still the matter
was named) of breaking two or three hundred officers, for speaking
against the Orleans decrees. Do you fancy that can be done every day?
Do you imagine that a Parliament, whatever its nominal functions may be
(remember those of the old _régime_), speaking the sense of the people
about the question of the day, in a time of convulsion, and in a critical
hour, would not be attended to, or at any rate thought of and considered,
by an army taken from the people—commanded by men selected from and
every day mixing with common society and very ordinary mankind. The 2nd
of December showed how readily such troops will support a decided and
popular President against an intriguing, divided, impotent Chamber. But
such hard blows won’t bear repetition. Soldiers—French soldiers, I take
it especially, from their quickness and intelligence, are neither deaf
nor blind. If there be truth in history or speculation, national forces
can’t long be used against the nation: they are unmerciful, and often
cruel to feeble minorities; they are ready now for a terrible onslaught
on mere Socialists, just as of old they turned out cheerfully for awful
dragonnades on the ill-starred Protestants; but once let them know and
feel that everybody is against them—that they are alone, that their acts
are contemned and their persons despised,—and gradually, or all at once,
discipline and habit surely fail, men murmur or desert, officers hesitate
or disobey, one regiment is dismissed to the Cabyles, another relegated
to rural solitudes; at last, most likely in the decisive moment of the
whole history, the rulers, who relied only on their troops, are afraid to
call them out; they hesitate, send spies and commissioners to inquire.
‘_Vive le Gouvernement Provisoire!_’—the black and roaring multitude
rises and comes on; but two seconds, and the obnoxious institutions are
lost in the flood; nothing is heard but the cry of the hour, sounding
shrill and angry over the waste of Revolution—‘_Vive le Diable!_’ With
such a force behind them, a French Parliament, of whatever nature, with
whatever written duties, is, if at the head of the movement, in the
critical hour, apt to be stronger than the strongest of the Barons.
Nor do I concur with those who censure the President for ‘recommending’
avowedly the candidates he approves. It is a part of the great question,
How is universal suffrage to be worked successfully in such a country as
France? The peasant proprietors have but one political idea that they
wish the Prince to govern them;—they wish to vote for the candidate most
acceptable to him, and they wish nothing else. Why is he wrong in telling
them which candidate that is?
Still, no doubt, the reins are now strained a great deal too tight. It
is possible, quite possible, that a majority in this Parliament may
be packed, but what I would impress on you is that it can’t always be
packed. Sooner or later constituencies who wish to oppose the Government
will, in spite of _maires_ and _préfets_, elect the opposition candidate:
it is in the nature of any, even the least vigorous system of popular
election, to struggle forwards and progressively attain to some fair and
reasonable correspondence with the substantial views and opinions of the
constituent people.
I therefore fall back on what I told you before—my essential view or
crotchet about the mental aptitudes and deficiencies of the French
people. The French, said Napoleon, are _des machines nerveuses_.
The point is, can their excitable, volatile, superficial, over-logical,
uncompromising character be managed and manipulated as to fit them
for entering on a practically uncontrolled system of Parliamentary
Government? Will not any large and omnipotent Assembly resemble the
stormy Constituent and the late Chamber, rather than the business-like,
formal, ennui-diffusing Parliament to which in our free and dull country
we are felicitously accustomed? Can one be so improved as to keep
down a riot? I foresee a single and but a single objection. I fancy,
indeed I know, that there is a school of political thinkers not yet
in possession of any great influence, but, perhaps, a little on the
way thereto, which has improved or invented a capital panacea, whereby
all nations are, within very moderate limits of time, to be surely and
certainly fitted for political freedom; and that no matter how formed—how
seemingly stable—how long ago cast and constructed, be the type of
popular character to which the said remedy is sought to be applied. This
panacea is the foundation or restoration of provincial municipalities.
Now, I am myself prepared to go a considerable length with the school
in question. I do myself think, that a due and regular consideration of
the knotty points of paving and lighting, and the deciding in the last
resort upon them, is a valuable discipline of national character. It
exercises people’s minds on points they know, in things of which there
is a test. Very few people are good judges of a good Constitution; but
everybody’s eyes are excellent judges of good light; every man’s feet
are profound in the theory of agreeable stones. Yet I can’t altogether
admit, nevertheless, that municipalities are the sufficient and sole,
though they may be very likely an essential prerequisite of political
freedom. There is the great instance of Hindostan to the contrary.
The whole old and national system of that remarkable country—a system
in all probability as ancient as the era of Alexander, is a village
system; and one so curious, elaborate, I fancy I might say so profound,
that the best European observers—Sir Thomas Munro, and that sort of
people—are most strenuous for its being retained unimpaired. According
to them, the village hardly heard of the Imperial Government, except
for the purpose of Imperial taxation. The business of life through
that whole vast territory has always been practically determined by
potails and parish-vestries, and yet nevertheless and in spite of this
capital and immemorial municipal system, our subjects, the Hindoos,
are still slaves and still likely to be slaves; still essentially
slavish, and likely, I much fear, very long indeed to remain so. It is
therefore quite certain that rural and provincial institutions won’t
so alter and adapt all national characters, as to fit all nations for
a Parliamentary Constitution; consequently, the _onus probandi_ is on
those who assert that it will so alter and mould the French. Again, I
assure you that the French do think of paving and lighting; not enough,
perhaps, but still they have begun. The country is, as you know, divided
into departments, arrondissements, and communes; in each of these there
is a council, variously elected, but, in all cases, popularly and from
the district, which has the sole control over the expenditure of the
particular locality for every special and local purpose, and which, if
I am rightly informed, has, in theory at least, the sole initiative in
every local improvement. The defect, I fancy, is that in the exercise
of these, considerable bodies are hampered and controlled by the veto
and supervision of the central authority. The rural councils discuss
and decide what in their judgment should be then done and what money
should be so spent; the better sort of the agricultural population have
much more voice in the latter than have the corresponding class in
England, in the determination and imposition of our own county rate; but
it is the central authority which decides whether such proposals and
recommendations shall in fact be carried out. In a word, the provinces
have to _ask leave_ of the Parisian Ministry of the Interior. Now I
admit this is an abuse. I should maintain that elderly gentlemen with
bald heads and local influence ought to feel that they, in the final
resort, settle and determine all truly local matters. Human nature
likes its own road, its own bridge, its own lapidary obstacles, its own
deceptive luminosity. But I ask again, can you fancy that these luxuries,
to whatever degree indulged in, alter and modify in any essential
particular, the levity and volatility of the French character? How much
light to how much logic? How many paving stones to how much mobility? I
can’t foresee any such change. And even if so, what in the meantime?
We are left then, I think, to deal with the French character pretty much
as we find it. What stealthy, secret, unknown, excellent forces may,
in the wisdom of Providence, be even now modifying this most curious
intellectual fabric, neither you nor I can know or tell. Let us hope
they may be many. But if we indulge, and from the immense records of
revolutionary history, I think, with due distrust, we may legitimately
and even beneficially indulge, in system-building and speculation, we
must take the _data_ which we have, and not those which we desire or
imagine. Louis Napoleon has proposed a system: English writers by the
thousand (if I was in harness instead of holiday-making I should be most
likely among them) proclaim his system an evil one. What then? Do you
know what Father Newman says to the religious reformers, rather sharply,
but still well, ‘Make out first of all where you stand—draw up your
creed—write down your catechism.’ So I answer to the English eloquence,
‘State first of all what you would have—draw up your novel system for
the French Government—write down your political Constitution.’ Don’t
criticise but produce; do not find fault but propose—and when you have
proposed upon theory and have created upon paper, let us see whether the
system be such a one as will work, in fact, and be accepted by a wilful
nation in reality—otherwise your work is nought.
And mind, too, that the system to be sketched out must be fit to protect
the hearths and homes of men. It is easy to compose polities if you do
but neglect this one essential condition. Four years ago, Europe was in
a ferment with the newest ideas, the best theories, the most elaborate,
the most artistic Constitutions. There was the labour, and toil, and
trouble, of a million intellects, as good, taken on the whole, perhaps,
as the world is likely to see,—of old statesmen, and literary gentlemen,
and youthful enthusiasts, all over Europe, from the Baltic Sea to the
Mediterranean, from the frontiers of Russia to the Atlantic Ocean. Well,
what have we gained? A Parliament in Sardinia! Surely this is a lesson
against proposing politics which won’t work, convening assemblies that
can’t legislate, constructing executives that aren’t able to keep the
peace, founding Constitutions inaugurated with tears and eloquence, soon
abandoned with tears and shame; beginning a course of fair auguries and
liberal hopes, but one from whose real dangers and actual sufferings a
frightened and terrified people, in the end, flee for a temporary, or may
be a permanent, refuge under a military and absolute ruler.
Mazzini sneers at the selfishness of shopkeepers—I am for the shopkeepers
against him. There are people who think because they are Republican there
shall be no more ‘cakes and ale.’ Aye, verily, but there will though; or
else stiffish ginger will be hot in the mouth. Legislative Assemblies,
leading articles, essay eloquence—such are good—very good,—useful—very
useful. Yet they can be done without. We can want them. Not so with all
things. The selling of figs, the cobbling of shoes, the manufacturing
of nails,—these are the essence of life. And let whoso frameth a
Constitution of his country think on these things.
I conclude, as I ought, with my best thanks for the insertion of these
letters; otherwise I was so full of the subject that I might have
committed what Disraeli calls ‘the extreme act of human fatuity,’ I might
have published a pamphlet: from this your kindness has preserved me, and
I am proportionally grateful.
I am, yours,
AMICUS.
II.
_CÆSARISM AS IT EXISTED IN 1865._
[Lest the preceding letters should be supposed to express Mr.
Bagehot’s complete and final judgment on the character of the
imperial _régime_ of Louis Napoleon, it has been thought well
to publish a paper which he contributed to the _Economist_
after a visit to France in 1865, of a nature to correct the
misapprehensions to which the somewhat youthful essays which
precede might give rise. It appeared soon after the publication
of the Emperor’s Life of Julius Cæsar.]
That the French Emperor should have spare leisure and unoccupied
reflection to write a biography, is astonishing, but if he wished to
write a biography, his choice of a subject is very natural. Julius
Cæsar was the first who tried on an imperial scale the characteristic
principles of the French Empire,—as the first Napoleon revived them,
as the third Napoleon has consolidated them. The notion of a demagogue
ruler, both of a fighting demagogue and a talking demagogue, was indeed
familiar to the Greek Republics; but their size was small, and their
history unemphatic. On the big page of universal history, Julius Cæsar is
the first instance of a democratic despot. He overthrew an aristocracy—a
corrupt, and perhaps effete aristocracy, it is true, but still an
aristocracy—by the help of the people, of the unorganised people. He said
to the numerical majority of Roman citizens, ‘I am your advocate and
your leader: make me supreme, and I will govern for your good, and in
your name.’ This is exactly the principle of the French Empire. No one
will ever make an approach to understanding it, who does not separate it
altogether, and on principle, from the despotisms of feudal origin and
legitimate pretensions. The old Monarchies claim the obedience of the
people upon grounds of duty. They say they have consecrated claims to
the loyalty of mankind. They appeal to conscience, even to religion. But
Louis Napoleon is a Benthamite despot. He is for the ‘greatest happiness
of the greatest number.’ He says, ‘I am where I am, because I know better
than any one else what is good for the French people, and they know that
I know better.’ He is not the Lord’s anointed; he is the people’s agent.
We cannot here discuss what the effect of this system was in ancient
times. These columns are not the best place for an historical
dissertation; but we may set down very briefly the results of some close
and recent observation of the system as it now exists, as it is at work
in France. Part of its effects are well understood in England, but a part
of them are, we think, but mistily seen and imperfectly apprehended.
In the first place, the French Empire is really the _best finished_
democracy which the world has ever seen. What the many at the moment
desire is embodied with a readiness, and efficiency, and a completeness
which has no parallel, either in past history or present experience. An
absolute Government with a popular instinct has the unimpeded command
of a people renowned for orderly dexterity. A Frenchman will have
arranged an administrative organisation really and effectually, while an
Englishman is still bungling, and a German still reflecting. An American
is certainly as rapid, and in some measure as efficient, but his speed
is a little head-long, and his execution is very rough; he tumbles
through much, but he only tumbles. A Frenchman will not hurry; he has a
deliberate perfection in detail, which may always be relied on, for it
is never delayed. The French Emperor knows well how to use these powers.
His bureaucracy is not only endurable, but pleasant. An idle man who
wants his politics done for him, has them done for him. The welfare of
the masses—the present good of the present multitude—is felt to be the
object of the Government and the law of the polity. The Empire gives to
the French the full gratification of their main wishes, and the almost
artistic culture of an admirable workmanship, of an administration
finished as only Frenchmen can finish it, and as it never was finished
before.
It belongs to such a Government to care much for material prosperity, and
it does care. It makes the people as comfortable as they will permit.
If they are not more comfortable, it is their own fault. The Government
would give them free trade, and consequent diffused comfort, if it could.
No former French Government has done as much for free trade as this
Government. No Government has striven to promote railways, and roads, and
industry, like this Government. France is much changed in twelve years.
Not exactly by the mere merit of the Empire, for it entered into a great
inheritance; it succeeded to the silent work of the free monarchy which
revolution had destroyed and impeded. There were fruitful and vigorous
germs of improvement ready to be elicited—ready to start forth—but under
an unintelligent Government they would not have started forth; they would
have lain idle and dead, but under the adroit culture of the present
Government, they have grown so as to amaze Europe and France itself.
If, indeed, as is often laid down, the _present happiness_ of the
greatest number was the characteristic object of the Government, it would
be difficult to make out that any probable French Government would be
better, or indeed nearly so good, as the present. The intelligence of the
Emperor on economical subjects—on the bread and meat of the people—is
really better than that of the classes opposed to him. He gives the
present race of Frenchmen more that is good than any one else would give
them, and he gives it them in their own name. They have as much as they
like of all that is good for them. But if not the present happiness of
the greatest number, but _their future elevation_, be, as it is, the true
aim and end of Government, our estimate of the Empire will be strangely
altered. It is an admirable Government for present and coarse purposes,
but a detestable Government for future and refined purposes.
In the first place, it stops the _teaching apparatus_, it stops the
effectual inculcation of important thought upon the mass of mankind. All
other mental effort but this, the Empire not only permits but encourages.
The high intellect of Paris is as active, as well represented, as that
of London, and it is even more keen. Intellect still gives there, and
has always given, a distinctive position. To be a _Membre de l’Institut_
is a recognised place in France; but in London, it is an ambiguous
distinction to be a ‘clever fellow.’ The higher kinds of thought are
better discussed in Parisian society than in London society, and better
argued in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ than in any English periodical.
The speculative thought of France has not been killed by the Empire; it
is as quick, as rigorous, as keen as ever. But though still alive, it is
no longer powerful; it cannot teach the mass. The _Revue_ is permitted,
but newspapers—effectual newspapers—are forbidden. A real course of free
lectures on popular subjects would be impossible in Paris. _Agitation_ is
forbidden, and it is agitation, and agitation alone, which teaches. The
crude mass of men bear easily philosophical treatises, refined articles,
elegant literature; there are but two instruments penetrative enough to
reach their opaque minds—the newspaper article and the popular speech,
and both of these are forbidden.
In London the reverse is true. We may say that only the loudest sort of
expression is permitted to attain its due effect. The popular organs of
literature so fill men’s minds with incomplete thoughts, that deliberate
treatment, that careful inquiry, that quiet thought have no hearing.
People are so deafened with the loud reiteration of many half truths,
that they have neither curiosity nor energy for elaborate investigation.
The very word ‘elaborate’ is become a reproach: elaboration produces
something which the mass of men do not like, because it is above
them,—which is tiresome, because it needs industry,—difficult, because
it wants attention,—complicated, because it is true. On the whole,
perhaps, English thought has rarely been so unfinished, so piecemeal,
so _ragged_ as it is now. We have so many little discussions, that we
get no full discussion; we eat so many sandwiches, that we spoil our
dinner. And on the Continent, accordingly, the speculative thought of
England is despised. It is believed to be meagre, uncultivated, and
immature. We have only a single compensation. Our thought may be poor
and rough and fragmentary, but it is effectual. With our newspapers and
our speeches—with our clamorous multitudes of indifferent tongues—we
beat the ideas of the few into the minds of the many. The head of France
is a better head than ours, but it does not move her limbs. The head of
England is in comparison a coarse and crude thing, but rules her various
frame and regulates her whole life.
France, _as it is_, may be happier because of the Empire, but France
_in the future_ will be more ignorant because of the Empire. The daily
play of the higher mind upon the lower mind is arrested. The present
Government has given an instalment of free trade, but it could not endure
an agitation for free trade. A democratic despotism is like a theocracy;
it assumes its own correctness. It says, ‘I am the representative of the
people; I am here because I know what they wish, because I know what they
should have.’ As Cavaignac once said, ‘A Government which permits its
principles to be questioned is a lost Government.’ All popular discussion
whatever which aspires to teach the Government is radically at issue with
the hypothesis of the Empire. It says that the Cæsar, the omniscient
representative, is a mistaken representative, that he is not fit to be
Cæsar.
The deterioration of the future is one inseparable defect of the
imperial organisation, but it is not the only one,—for the moment, it
is not the greatest. The greatest is the corruption of the present. A
greater burden is imposed by it upon human nature than human nature
will bear. Everything requires the support, aid, countenance of the
central Government, and yet that Government is expected to keep itself
pure. Concessions of railways, concessions of the privilege of limited
liability,—on a hundred subjects, legal permission, administrative help,
are necessary to money-making. You concentrate upon a small body of
leading official men the power of making men’s fortunes, and it is simple
to believe they will not make their own fortunes. The very principle
of the system is to concentrate power, and power is money. Sir Robert
Walpole used to say, ‘No honest man could be a “Minister;”’ and in France
the temptations would conquer all men’s honesty. The system requires
angels to work it, and perhaps it has not been so fortunate as to find
angels. The nod of a minister on the Bourse is a fortune, and somehow or
other ministers make fortunes. The Bourse of Paris is still so small,
that a leading capitalist may produce a great impression on it, and a
leading capitalist working with a great minister, a vast impression.
Accordingly, all that goes with sudden wealth; all that follows from
the misuse of the two temptations of civilisation, money and women, is
concentrated round the Imperial court. The Emperor would cure much of it
if he could, but what can he do? They say he has said that he will not
change his men. He will not substitute fleas that are hungry for fleas
which at least are partially satisfied. He is right. The defect belongs
to the system, to these men; an enormous concentration of power in an
industrial system ensures an accumulation of pecuniary temptation.
These are the two main disadvantages which France suffers from her
present Government; the greater part of the price which she has to pay
for her present happiness. She endures the daily presence of an efficient
immorality; she sacrifices the educating apparatus which would elevate
Frenchmen yet to be born. But these two disadvantages are not the only
ones.
France gains the material present, but she does not gain the material
future. All that secures present industry, her Government confers; in
whatever needs confidence in the future she is powerless. _Credit_ in
France, to an Englishman’s eye, has almost to be created. The _country_
deposits in the Bank of France are only 1,000,000_l._ sterling; that bank
has fifty-nine branches, is immeasurably the greatest country bank in
France. All discussions on the currency come back to the _cours forcé_,
to the inevitable necessity of making inconvertible notes an irrefusable
tender during a revolution. If you propose the simplest operations of
credit to a French banker, he says, ‘You do not remember 1848; I do.’
And what is the answer? The present Government avowedly depends on, is
ostentatiously concentrated in, the existing Cæsar. Its existence depends
on the permanent occupation of the Tuileries by an extraordinary man.
The democratic despot—the representative despot—must have the sagacity
to divine the people’s will and the sagacity to execute it. What is the
likelihood that these will be hereditary? Can they be expected in the
next heirs—a child for Emperor, and a woman for Regent? The present
happiness of France is happiness on a short life-lease; it may end with
the life of a man who is not young, who has not spared himself, who has
always thought, who has always _lived_.
Such are the characteristics of the Empire as it is. Such is the nature
of Cæsar’s Government as we know it at the present. We scarcely expect
that even the singular ability of Napoleon III. will be able to modify,
by an historical retrospect, the painful impressions left by actual
contact with a living reality.[34]
III.
_MEMOIR OF THE RIGHT HON. JAMES WILSON._[35]
Perhaps some of the subscribers to the _Economist_ would not be unwilling
to read a brief memoir of Mr. Wilson, even if the events narrated were in
no respect peculiar. They might possibly be interested in the biography
of an author of whose writings they have read so many, even if the
narrative related no marked transitions and no characteristic events.
But there were in Mr. Wilson’s life several striking changes. The scene
shifts from the manufactory of a small Scotch hatter in a small Scotch
town, to London—to the Imperial Parliament—to the English Treasury—to the
Council Board of India. Such a biography may be fairly expected to have
some interest. The life perhaps of no _Political Economist_ has been more
eventful.
James Wilson was born at Hawick, in Roxburghshire, on June 3, 1805.
His father, of whose memory he always spoke with marked respect, was a
thriving man of business, extensively engaged in the woollen manufacture
of that place. He was the fourth son in a family of fifteen children, of
whom, however, only ten reached maturity. Of his mother, who died when he
was very young, he scarcely retained any remembrance in after life. As to
his early years little is now recollected, except that he was a very mild
and serious boy, usually successful during school hours, but not usually
successful in the play-ground.
As Mr. Wilson’s father was an influential Quaker, he was sent when ten
years old to a Quaker school at Ackworth, where he continued for four
years. At that time—it may surprise some of those who knew him in later
life to be told—he was so extremely fond of books as to wish to be a
teacher; and as his father allowed his sons to choose their line in life,
he was sent to a seminary at Earl’s Colne in Essex, to qualify himself
for that occupation. But the taste did not last long. As we might expect,
the natural activity of his disposition soon induced him to regret his
choice of a sedentary life. He wrote to Hawick, ‘I would rather be the
most menial servant in my father’s mill than be a teacher;’ and he was
permitted to return home at once.
Many years later he often narrated that, after leaving Earlscome, he had
much wished to study for the Scottish bar, but the rules of the Society
of Friends, as then understood, would not allow his father to consent
to the plan. He was sometimes inclined half to regret that he had not
been able to indulge this taste, and he was much pleased at being told
by a great living advocate that ‘if he had gone to the bar he would
have been very successful.’ But at the time there was no alternative,
and at sixteen he accordingly commenced a life of business. He did not,
however, lose at once his studious predilections. For some years at least
he was in the habit of reading a good deal, very often till late in the
night. It was indeed then that he acquired almost all the knowledge of
books which he ever possessed. In later life he was much too busy to be
a regular reader, and he never acquired the habit of catching easily
the contents of books or even of articles in the interstices of other
occupations. Whatever he did, he did thoroughly. He would not read even
an article in a newspaper if he could well help doing so; but if he read
it at all, it was with as much slow, deliberate attention as if he were
perusing a Treasury minute.
At the early age we have mentioned he commenced his business life by
being apprenticed to a small hat manufacturer at Hawick; and it is still
remembered that he showed remarkable care and diligence in mastering all
the minutiæ of the trade. There was, indeed, nothing of the _amateur_ man
of business about him at any time. After a brief interval, his father
purchased his master’s business for him and for an elder brother, named
William, and the two brothers in conjunction continued to carry it on
at Hawick during two or three years with much energy. So small a town,
however, as Hawick then was, afforded no scope for enterprise in this
branch of manufacture, and they resolved to transfer themselves to London.
Accordingly, in 1824, Mr. Wilson commenced a mercantile life in London
(the name of the firm being Wilson, Irwin, & Wilson), and was very
prosperous and successful for many years. His pecuniary gains were
considerable, and to the practical instruction which he then obtained he
always ascribed his success as an economist and a financier. ‘Before I
was twenty years of age,’ he said at Devonport in 1859, ‘I was a partner
in a firm in London, and I can only say if there is in my life one
event which I regard with satisfaction more than another, it is that I
had then an opportunity of obtaining experience by observation which
has contributed in the main to what little public utility I have since
been to my country. During these few years I became acquainted—well
acquainted—with the middle classes of this country. I also became
acquainted in some degree with the working classes; and also, to a great
extent, with the foreign commerce of this country in pretty nearly all
parts of the world; and I can only say the information and the experience
I thus derived have been to me in my political career of greater benefit
than I can now describe.’
In 1831, the firm of Wilson, Irwin, & Wilson was dissolved by mutual
consent. But Mr. Wilson (under the firm of James Wilson & Co.) continued
to carry on the same kind of business, and continued to obtain the same
success. He began in 1824 with 2,000_l._, the gift of his father, and in
1837 was worth nearly 25,000_l._—a fair result for so short a period,
and evincing a steady business-like capacity and judgment; for it was
the fruit not of sudden success in casual speculation, but of regular
attention during several years to one business. From circumstances which
we shall presently state, he was very anxious that this part of his
career should be very clearly understood.
During these years Mr. Wilson led the usual life of a prosperous and
intellectual man of business. He married,[36] and formed an establishment
suitable to his means, first near his manufactory in London, and
afterwards at Dulwich. He took great pleasure in such intellectual
society as he could obtain; was specially fond of conversing on political
economy, politics, statistics, and the other subjects with which he
was subsequently so busily occupied.[37] Through life it was one of
his remarkable peculiarities to be a _very animated_ man, talking by
preference and by habit on _inanimate_ subjects. All the _verve_,
vigour, and life which lively people put into exciting pursuits, he put
into topics which are usually thought very dry. He discussed the Currency
or the Corn Laws with a relish and energy which made them interesting
to almost every one. ‘How pleasant it is,’ he used to say, ‘to talk a
subject out,’ and he frequently suggested theories in the excitement
of conversation upon his favourite topics which he had never thought
of before, but to which he ever afterwards attached, as was natural,
much importance. The instructiveness of his conversation was greatly
increased as his mind progressed and his experience accumulated. But his
genial liveliness and animated vigour were the same during his early
years of business life as they were afterwards when he filled important
offices of state in England and in Calcutta. Few men can have led a more
continuously prosperous and happy life than he did during those years.
Unfortunately it was not to continue.
In 1836, or thereabouts, Mr. Wilson was unfortunately induced to commence
a speculation in indigo, in conjunction with a gentleman in Scotland. It
was expected that indigo would be scarce, and that the price would rise
rapidly in consequence. Such would indeed appear to have been the case
for a short period, since the first purchases in which Mr. Wilson took
part yielded a profit. In consequence of this success, he was induced to
try a larger venture,—indeed to embark most of his disposable capital.
Unfortunately, the severe crisis of 1837 disturbed the usual course
of all trades, and from its effect or from some other cause, indigo,
instead of rising rapidly, fell rapidly. The effect on Mr. Wilson’s
position may be easily guessed. A very great capitalist would have been
able to hold till better times, but he was not. ‘On January 1,’ he said
at Devonport, ‘in a given year, my capital was nearer 25,000_l._, than
24,000_l._, and it was all lost.’ Numerous stories were long circulated
most of them exaggerated, and the remainder wholly untrue, as to this
period of misfortune in Mr. Wilson’s life; but the truth is very simple.
As is usual in such cases, various arrangements were proposed and
agreed to, were afterwards abandoned, and others substituted for them.
A large bundle of papers carefully preserved by him records with the
utmost accuracy the whole of the history. The final result will be best
described in his own words at Devonport, which precisely correspond with
the balance sheets and other documents still in existence. They are part
of a speech in answer to a calumnious rumour that had been circulated in
the town:—
‘Now, how did I act on this occasion? and this is what this placard has
reference to. By my own means alone, I was enabled at once to satisfy
in full all claims against me individually, and to provide for the
early payment of one-half of the whole of the demands against the firm,
consisting of myself and three partners. I was further enabled, or the
firm was enabled, at once to assign property of sufficient value, as was
supposed, to the full satisfaction of the whole of the remainder of the
liabilities. An absolute agreement was made, an absolute release was
given to all the partners; there was neither a bankruptcy nor insolvency,
neither was the business stopped for one day. The business was continued
under the new firm, with which I remained a partner, and from which I
ultimately retired in good circumstances. Some years afterwards it turned
out that the foreign property which was assigned for the remaining half
of the debts of the old firm, of which I was formerly a partner, proved
insufficient to discharge them. The legal liability was, as you know,
all gone; the arrangement had been accepted—an arrangement calculated
and believed by all parties to be sufficient to satisfy all claims in
full; but when the affairs of the whole concern were fully wound up,
finding that the foreign property had not realised what was anticipated,
I had it, I am glad to say, in my power to place at my banker’s, having
ascertained the amount, a sum of money to discharge all the remainder
of that debt, which I considered morally, though not legally, due. This
I did without any kind of solicitation—the thing was not named to me,
and I am quite sure never were the gentlemen more taken by surprise than
when a friend of mine waited on them privately in London, and presented
each of them with a cheque for the balance due to them. Now, perhaps,
I have myself to blame for this anonymous attack. I probably brought
it on myself, for I always felt that if this matter were made public,
it might look like an act of ostentatious obtrusion on my part, and
therefore, when I put aside the sum of money necessary for the purpose,
I made a request, in the letter I wrote to my bankers, desiring them
as an especial favour that they would instruct their clerks to mention
the matter to no one; and in order that it should be perfectly private,
I employed a personal friend of my own in the city of London, in whose
care I placed the whole of the cheques, to wait on those gentlemen and
present each of them with a cheque, and I obtained from him a promise,
and he from them, not to name the circumstance to any one.’ The secrecy
thus enjoined was well preserved. Many of the most intimate friends of
Mr. Wilson, and his family also, were entirely unacquainted with what
he had done, and learnt it only through, the accidental medium of an
electioneering speech. It may be added, too, that some of those who
knew the circumstances, and who have watched Mr. Wilson’s subsequent
career, believe that at no part of his life did he show greater business
ability, self command, and energy, than at the crisis of his mercantile
misfortunes.
It is remarkable that the preface to Mr. Wilson’s first pamphlet, on the
‘Influences of the Corn Laws,’ is dated March 1, 1839, the precise time
at which he was negotiating with his creditors for a proper arrangement
of his affairs; and to those who have had an opportunity of observing
how completely pecuniary misfortune unnerves and unmans men—mercantile
men, perhaps, more than any others—it will not seem unworthy of remark
that a careful pamphlet, with elaborate figures, instinct in every line
with vigour and energy, should emanate from a man struggling with extreme
pecuniary calamity, and daily harrassed with the painful details of it.
After 1839 Mr. Wilson continued in business for several years, and with
very fair success, considering that his capital was much diminished, and
that the hat manufacture was in a state of transition. He finally retired
in 1844, and invested most of his capital in the foundation and extension
of the _Economist_.
These facts prove, as we believe, the conclusion which he was very
desirous to make clear—that, though unfortunate on a particular occasion,
Mr. Wilson was by no means, as a rule, unsuccessful in business. He did
not at all like to have it said that he was fit to lay down the rules and
the theory of business, but not fit to transact business itself. And the
whole of his life, on the contrary, proves that he possessed an unusual
capacity for affairs—an extraordinary _transacting_ ability.
It may, however, be admitted that Mr. Wilson was in several respects
by no means an unlikely man to meet, especially in early life, with
occasional misfortune. To the last hour of his life he was always
sanguine. He naturally looked at everything in a bright and cheerful
aspect; his tendency was always to form a somewhat too favourable
judgment both of things and men. One proof of this may be sufficient:
he was five years Secretary of the Treasury, and he did not leave it a
suspicious man.
Moreover, Mr. Wilson’s temperament was very active and his mind was
very fertile. And though in many parts of business these gifts are very
advantageous, in many also they are very dangerous, if not absolutely
disadvantageous. Frequently they are temptations. Capital is always
limited; often it is _very_ limited; and therefore a man of business,
who is managing his own capital, has only defined resources, and can
engage only in a certain number of undertakings. But a person of active
temperament and fertile mind will soon chafe at that restriction. His
inventiveness will show him many ways in which money might easily be
made, and he cannot but feel that with his energies he would like to make
it. If he have besides a sanguine temperament, he will believe that he
can make it. The records of unfortunate commerce abound in instances of
men who have been unsuccessful because they had great mind, great energy,
and great hope, but had not money in proportion. Some part of this
description was, perhaps, applicable to Mr. Wilson in 1839, but exactly
how much cannot, after the lapse of so many years, be now known with any
accuracy.
Mr. Wilson’s position in middle life was by no means unsuitable to a
writer on the subjects in which he afterwards attained eminence. He
had acquired a great knowledge of business through a long course of
industrious years; he had proved by habitual success in business that
his habitual judgment on it was sound and good. If he had been a man of
only ordinary energy and only ordinary ability, he would probably have
continued to grow regularly richer and richer. But by a single error
natural to a very sanguine temperament and a very active mind, he had
destroyed a great part of the results of his industry. He had a new
career to seek. He was willing to expend on it the whole of his great
energies. He was ready to take all the pains which were necessary to fit
himself for success. When he wrote his first pamphlet he used to say
that he thought ‘the sentences never would come right.’ In later life
he considered three leading articles in the _Economist_, full of facts
and figures, an easy morning’s work, which would not prevent his doing a
good deal else too. Mr. Wilson was a finished man of business obliged by
necessity to become a writer on business. Perhaps no previous education
and no temporary circumstances could be conceived more likely to train a
great financial writer and to stimulate his powers.
In 1839, Mr. Wilson published his ‘Influences of the Corn Laws;’ in 1840,
the ‘Fluctuations of Currency, Commerce, and Manufactures;’ in 1841,
‘The Revenue; or, What should the Chancellor do?’ in September, 1843, he
established the ‘Economist.’ The origin of the latter may be interesting
to our readers, Mr. Wilson proposed to the editor of the _Examiner_
that he should furnish gratuitously a certain amount of writing to
that journal on economical and financial subjects; but the offer was
declined, though with some regret, on account of the expense of type and
paper. A special paper was, therefore, established, which proved in the
end as important as the _Examiner_ itself. From the first, Mr. Wilson
was the sole proprietor of the _Economist_, though he obtained pecuniary
assistance—especially from the kindness of Lord Radnor. He embarked some
capital of his own in it from the first, and afterwards repaid all loans
made to him for the purpose of establishing it.
It would not be suitable to the design of this memoir to give any
criticism of Mr. Wilson’s pamphlets, still less would it become
the _Economist_ to pronounce in any manner a judgment on itself.
Nevertheless, it is a part of the melancholy duty we have undertaken to
give some account of Mr. Wilson’s characteristic position as a writer on
Political Economy, and of the somewhat peculiar mode in which he dealt
with that subject.
Mr. Wilson dealt with Political Economy like a practical man. Persons
more familiar with the literature of science might very easily be found.
Mr. Wilson’s faculty of reading was small, nor had he any taste for
the more refined abstractions in which the more specially scientific
political economists had involved themselves. ‘Political Economy,’ said
Sydney Smith, ‘is become, in the hands of Malthus and Ricardo, a school
of metaphysics. All seem to agree what is to be done; the contention
is how the subject is to be divided and defined. _Meddle with no such
matters._’ We are far from alleging that this saying is just; nor would
Mr. Wilson have by any means assented to it. But though he would have
disavowed it in theory, it nevertheless embodies his instinctive feeling
and characteristic practice. He ‘meddled with no such matters;’ though he
did not deny the utility of theoretical refinements, he habitually and
steadily avoided them.
Mr. Wilson’s predominating power was what may be called a
business-imagination. He had a great power of conceiving transactions.
Political economy was to him the science of buying and selling, and
of the ordinary bargains of men he had a very steady and distinct
conception. In explaining such subjects he did not begin, as political
economists have been wittily said to do, with ‘Suppose a a man upon
an island,’ but ‘What they do in the city is this.’ ‘The real course
of business is so and so.’ Most men of business will think this
characteristic a great merit, and even a theoretical economist should
not consider it a defect. The _practical_ value of the science of
political economy (the observation is an old one as to _all_ sciences)
lies in its ‘middle principles.’ The extreme abstractions from which such
intermediate maxims are scientifically deduced lie at some distance
from ordinary experience, and are not easily made intelligible to most
persons, and when they _are_ made intelligible, most persons do not
know how to use them. But the intermediate maxims themselves are not
so difficult; they are easily comprehended and easily used. They have
in them a practical life, and come home at once to the ‘business’ and
the ‘bosoms’ of men. It was in these that Mr. Wilson excelled. His
‘business-imagination’ enabled him to see ‘what men did,’ and ‘why they
did it;’ ‘why they ought to do it,’ and ‘why they ought not to do it.’
His very clear insight into the real nature of mercantile transactions
made him a great and almost an instinctive master of _statistical
selection_. He could not help picking out of a mass of figures those
which would tell most. He saw which were really material; he put them
prominently and plainly forward, and he left the rest alone. Even
now if a student of Parliamentary papers should alight on a return
‘moved for by Mr. Wilson,’ he will do well to give to it a more than
ordinary attention, for it will be sure to contain something attainable,
intelligible, and distinct.
Mr. Wilson’s habit of always beginning with the facts, always arguing
from the facts, and always ending with a result applicable to the facts,
obtained for his writings an influence and a currency more extensive than
would have been anticipated for any writings on political economy. It is
not for the _Economist_ to speak of the _Economist_; but we may observe
that through the pages of this journal certain doctrines, whether true or
false, have been diffused, far more widely than they ever were in England
before—far more widely than from their somewhat abstract nature we could
expect them to be diffused—far more widely than they are diffused in any
other country but this. The business-like method and vigorous simplicity
of Mr. Wilson’s arguments converted very many ordinary men of business,
who would have distrusted any theoretical and abstruse disquisition,
and would not have appreciated any elaborate refinements. Nor was this
special influence confined to mercantile men. It penetrated where it
could not be expected to penetrate. The Duke of Wellington was, perhaps,
more likely to be prejudiced against a theoretical political economist
than any eminent man of his day; he belonged to the ‘prescientific
period;’ he had much of the impatient practicality incident to military
insight; he was not likely to be very partial to the ‘doctrines of
Mr. Huskisson’;—nevertheless, the Duke early pointed out Mr. Wilson’s
writings to Lord Brougham as possessing especial practical value; and
when the Duke at a much later period was disposed to object to the
repeal of the Navigation Laws, Mr. Wilson had a special interview to
convince him of its expediency.
Nor is this faculty of exposition by any means a trifling power. On many
subjects it is a common saying ‘that he only discovers who proves;’
but in practical politics we may almost say that he only discovers
who convinces. It is of no use to have practical truths received by
extraordinary men, unless they are also accepted by ordinary men. Whether
Mr. Wilson was exactly a great writer, we will not discuss: but he was a
great _belief producer_; he had upon his own subjects a singular gift of
_efficient_ argument—a peculiar power of bringing home his opinions by
convincing reasonings to convincible persons.
The time at which Mr. Wilson commenced his career as an economical
writer was a singularly happy one. An economical century has elapsed
since 1839. The Corn Laws were then in full force, and seemed likely
to continue so; the agriculturists believed in them, and other classes
acquiesced in them; the tentative reforms of Mr. Huskisson were half
forgotten; our tariff perhaps contained some specimen of every defect—it
certainly contained many specimens of most defects; duties abounded which
cramped trade, which contributed nothing to the exchequer, which were
maintained that a minority might believe they profited at the expense of
the majority; all the now settled principles of commercial policy were
unsettled; the ‘currency’ was under discussion; the Bank of England had
been reduced to accept a loan from the Bank of France; capitalists were
disheartened and operatives disaffected; the industrial energies, which
have since multiplied our foreign commerce, were then effectually impeded
by legislative fetters and financial restraints. On almost all of these
restraints Mr. Wilson had much to say.
Upon the Corn Laws, Mr. Wilson developed a theory which was rare when
he first stated it, but which was generally adopted afterwards, and
which subsequent experience has confirmed. He was fond of narrating an
anecdote which shows his exact position in 1839. There had just been a
meeting of the Anti-Corn Law League at Manchester, and some speakers had
maintained, with more or less vehemence, that the coming struggle was to
be one of class against class, inasmuch as the Corn Laws were beneficial
to the agriculturists, though they were injurious to manufacturers.
The tendency of the argument was to set one part of the nation against
another part. Mr. Wilson was travelling in the North, and was writing
in a railway carriage part of the ‘Influences of the Corn Laws.’ By
chance a distinguished member of the League, whom Mr. Wilson did not
know, happened to travel with him, and asked him what he was about. ‘I
am writing on the Corn Laws,’ said Mr. Wilson, ‘something in answer
to the rubbish they have been talking at Manchester.’ ‘You are a bold
man,’ was the reply; ‘Protection is a difficult doctrine to support by
argument.’ But it soon appeared that Mr. Wilson was the better Free
trader of the two. He held that the Corn Laws were injurious to all
classes; that the agriculturists suffered from them as much as the
manufacturers; that, in consequence, it was ‘rubbish’ to raise a class
enmity on the subject, for the interest of all classes was the same. ‘We
cannot too much lament,’ he says in his ‘Influences of the Corn Laws,’
‘and deprecate the spirit of violence and exaggeration with which this
subject has always been approached by each party, which no doubt has
been the chief cause why so little of real truth or benefit has resulted
from the efforts of either; the arguments on either side have been
supported by such absurd and magnified statements of the influences of
those prohibitory laws on their separate interests, as only to furnish
each other with a good handle to turn the whole argument into ridicule.
It therefore appears to be necessary to a just settlement of this great
question, that these two parties should be first reconciled to a correct
view of the real influences thus exerted over their interests, and the
interests of the country at large; to a conviction that the imaginary
fears of change on the one hand, and the exaggerated advantages expected
on the other hand, are equally without foundation; that there are in
reality no differences in the solid interests of either party; and that
_individuals_, _communities_, or _countries_ can only be prosperous in
proportion to the prosperity of the whole.’ And he proposed to prove
‘that the agricultural interest has derived no benefit, but great injury,
from the existing laws; and that the fears and apprehensions entertained
of the ruinous consequences which would result to this interest by the
adoption of a free and liberal policy with respect to the trade in corn,
are without any foundation; that the value of this property, instead
of being depreciated, in the aggregate, would be rather enhanced, and
the general interests of the owners most decidedly enhanced thereby;’
and, ‘that while incalculable benefit would arise to the manufacturing
interest and the working population generally, in common with all classes
of the community, from the adoption of such policy, nothing can be more
erroneous than the belief that the price of provisions or labour would
on the average be thereby cheapened, but that, on the contrary, the
tendency would rather be to produce, by a state of generally increased
prosperity, a higher average rate of each.’
Whatever might be thought in 1839, in 1860 we can on one point have no
doubt whatever. The repeal of the Corn Laws has been followed by the
exact effect which Mr. Wilson anticipated. Whether his argument was
right or wrong, the result has corresponded with his anticipation. The
agriculturists have prospered more—the manufacturers, the merchants, the
operatives, all classes in a word, have prospered more since the Corn
Laws were repealed, than they ever did before. As to abstract questions
of politics there will always be many controversies; but upon a patent
contemporaneous fact of this magnitude there cannot be a controversy.
It is indisputable also that, for the purposes of the Anti-Corn Law
agitation, Mr. Wilson’s view was exceedingly opportune. Mr. Cobden said
not long ago (we quote the substance correctly even if the words are
wrong), ‘I never made any progress with the Corn Law question while it
was stated as a question of class against class.’ And a careful inquirer
will find that such is the real moral of the whole struggle. If it had
continued to be considered solely or mainly as a manufacturer’s question,
it might not have been settled to this hour. In support of this opinion,
Mr. Wilson made many speeches at the meetings of the Anti-Corn Law
League, though he had little taste for the task of agitation.
We cannot give even an analysis of Mr. Wilson’s arguments—our space is
too brief—but we will enumerate one or two of the principal points.
He maintained that, under our protective laws, the agriculturists never
had the benefit of a high price, and always suffered the evil of a low
price. When our crop was scanty, it was necessary to sell the small
quantity at a high price, or the farmer could not be remunerated. But
exactly at that moment foreign corn was permitted by law to be imported.
In consequence, during bad years the farmer was exposed to difficulty
and disaster, which were greater because, in expectation of an English
demand, large stocks were often hoarded on the Continent, and at once
poured in to prevent the home-grower compensating himself for a bad
harvest by an equivalent rise of price.
Nor was the farmer better off in very plentiful years. There was a
surplus in this country, and that surplus could not be exported, for the
price of wheat was always lower abroad than here. The effect is evident.
As corn is an article of the first necessity, a certain quantity of it
will always be consumed, but more than that quantity will not be readily
consumed. A slight surplus is, therefore, invariably found to lower the
price of such articles excessively. In very good years the farmer had
to sell his crop at an unremuneratingly low price, while in very bad
years he was prevented from obtaining the high price which alone could
compensate him for his outlay. Between the effects of the two sorts of
years his condition was deplorable, and Parliamentary committees were
constantly appointed to investigate it.
Mr. Wilson also explained how much these fluctuations in price contracted
the home demand for agricultural produce. The manufacturing districts
were, he showed, subjected by the Corn Laws to alternate periods of great
excitement and great depression. When corn was very cheap, the mass of
the community had much to spend on other things; when corn was very
dear, they had very little to spend on those things. In consequence, the
producers of ‘other things’ were sometimes stimulated by a great demand,
and at other times deadened by utter slackness. The labouring classes in
the manufacturing districts acquired in periods of plenty a certain taste
for what to them were luxuries, and in periods of scarcity were naturally
soured at being deprived of them. The manufacturers were frequently
induced to invest additional capital by sudden augmentations of demand,
and were often ruined by its sudden cessation. It was therefore
impossible that the manufacturing classes could be steady customers of
the agriculturists, for their own condition was fluctuating and unsteady.
Mr. Wilson also showed that if the landed interest was injured by the
effects of the Corn Laws, this was of itself enough to injure the
manufacturing interests.
‘The connection,’ he wrote, ‘between the manufacturer and
the landed interest in this country is much closer than is
generally admitted or believed; not only is the manufacturer
dependent on the landed interest for the large portion of his
goods which they immediately consume, but also for a very large
portion of what he exports to the most distant countries. All
commerce is, either directly or indirectly, a simple exchange
of the surplus products of one country for those of another. It
is therefore a first essential that we should be able to take
the cotton of America, the sugar and coffee of India, the silk
and teas of China, before they can take our manufactures; and
if this be necessary, then must it follow that in proportion
to the extent to which we can take their produce, will they
be enabled to take our manufactures. Therefore, whatever
portion of these products is consumed in this country by the
landed interest, must to that extent enable the manufacturer
to export his goods in return; and thus any causes which
increase this ability on the part of the landed interest to
consume, must give a corresponding additional ability to the
manufacturers to export. Every pound of coffee or sugar, every
ounce of tea, every article of luxury, the produce of foreign
climes, whether consumed within the castles and halls of
our wealthiest landowners, or in the humble cottages of our
lowliest peasantry, alike represent some portion of the exports
of this country. On the other hand, the dependence of the
landowner is no less twofold on the manufacturer and merchant.
He is not only dependent upon them for their own immediate
consumption, but also for the consumption of whatever food
enters into the cost price of their goods. Although the English
farmer does not export his corn or his other produce in the
exact shape and form in which he produces them, they constitute
not the less on that account a distinct portion of the exports
of this country, and that in the best of all possible forms.
Just as much as the manufacturer exports the wool or the
silk which enters into the fabrics of those materials, does
he export the corn which paid for the labour of spinning and
weaving them. It would be an utter impossibility that this
country could consume its agricultural produce but for our
extensive manufacturing population; or that the value of what
would be consumed could be near its present rate. If without
this aid our agricultural produce were as great as it now is, a
large portion would have to seek a market in distant countries:
it would then have to be exported in the exact form in which it
is produced; the expenses of which being so large would reduce
very greatly from its value and net price, and the landed
interest would be immediately affected thereby. But, as it
is, the produce of the land is exported in the condensed form
of manufactured goods, at a comparatively trifling expense,
which secures a high value to it here. Thus, for example, a few
bales of silk or woollen goods may contain as much wheat in
their value as would freight a whole ship. To this advantage
the landed interest is indebted, exclusively, for the very
superior value of property and produce in this country to any
other; because, by our great manufacturing superiority, a
market is found for our produce over the whole world, conveyed
in the cheapest and most condensed form. While the Chinese,
or Indians, buy our cottons, our silks, or our woollens, they
buy a portion of the grain and other produce of the land of
this country; and therefore the producer here, while indulging
in the delicacies or luxuries of Oriental climes, may only be
consuming a portion of the golden heads of wheat which had
gracefully waved in his own fields at a former day. Is it not,
therefore, sufficiently clear that no circumstance whatever
can either improve or injure one of these interests without
immediately in the same way affecting the other? The connection
is so close that it is impossible to separate or distinguish
them. Any circumstance which limits our commerce must limit our
market for agricultural produce; and any possible circumstance
which deteriorates the condition of our agriculturists must
deteriorate our commerce, by limiting our imports, and
consequently our exports. These are general principles, and are
capable of extension to the whole world, in all places, and at
all times; and the same principle as is thus shown to connect
and combine the different interests of any one country, just
as certainly operates in producing a similar effect between
different countries; and we ardently hope, ere long, to find
not only the petty jealousies between different portions of the
same community entirely removed, but that all countries will
learn that a free and unrestricted co-operation with each other
in matters of commerce can only tend to the general benefit and
welfare of all.’
We do not say that these propositions were exactly discoveries of Mr.
Wilson. During the exciting discussion of a great public question,
the most important truths which relate to it are ‘in the air’ of the
age; many persons see them, or half-see them; and it is impossible to
trace the precise parentage of any of them. But we do say that these
opinions were exactly suited to the broad and practical understanding
of Mr. Wilson; that they were very effectively illustrated by him—more
effectively probably than by any other writer; that he thought them out
for himself with but little knowledge of previous theories; that they,
principally, raised Free Trade from a class question to a national
question; that to them, whether advocated by Mr. Wilson or by others, the
success of the Anti-Corn Law agitation was in a great measure owing; that
whatever doubt may formerly have been felt, an ample trial has now proved
them to be true.
Mr. Wilson’s pamphlet entitled ‘The Revenue; or, What should the
Chancellor do?’ which attracted considerable attention when it was
published in 1841, is worth reading now, though dated so many years ago;
for it contains an outline of the financial policy which Sir Robert
Peel commenced, and which Mr. Gladstone has now almost completed. This
pamphlet, which is not very short (it has 27 moderate pages), was begun
as an article for the _Morning Chronicle_, but proved too long for that
purpose. It was written with almost inconceivable rapidity—nearly all,
we believe, in a single night—though its principles and its many figures
will bear a critical scrutiny even now.
In the briefest memoir of Mr. Wilson it is necessary to say something of
the currency; but it will not be advisable to say very much. If, however,
we could rely on the patience of our readers, we should say a good deal.
On no subject, perhaps, did Mr. Wilson take up a more characteristic
position. He saw certain broad principles distinctly and steadily, and to
these he firmly adhered, no matter what refined theories were suggested,
or what the opinion of others might be.
Mr. Wilson was a stern bullionist. He held that a five-pound note was a
promise to pay five pounds. He answered Sir R. Peel’s question, ‘What
is a pound?’ with Sir Robert’s own answer. He said it was a certain
specified quantity of gold metal. He held that all devices for aiding
industry by issuing inconvertible notes were certainly foolish, and
might perhaps be mischievous. He held that industry could only be really
aided by additional _capital_—by new machines, new instruments, new raw
material; that an addition to a paper _currency_ was as useless to aid
deficient capital as it was to feed a hungry population.
Mr. Wilson held, secondly, that the _sine quâ non_, the great
prerequisite to a good paper currency, was the maintenance of an
adequate reserve by the issuer. He believed that a banker should look
at his liabilities as a whole—the notes which he has in circulation and
the deposits he has in his ledger taken together; and should retain a
sufficient portion of them (say one-third) in cash, or in something
equivalent to cash, in daily readiness to pay them at once. Mr. Wilson
considered that bankers might be trusted to keep such a reserve, as they
would be ruined, sooner or later, if they did not; and if the notes
issued by them were always convertible at the pleasure of the holder, he
believed that the currency would never be depreciated.
He thought, however, that, as bank-notes must pass from hand to hand in
the market, and as in practice most persons—most traders, especially—must
take them in payment whether they wish to do so or not, some special
security might properly be required for their payment. He would have
allowed any one who liked to issue bank-notes on depositing Consols to
a sufficient amount—the amount, that is, of the notes issued, and an
adequate percentage in addition.
Lastly, Mr. Wilson believed that the bank-note circulation exercised
quite a secondary and unimportant influence upon prices and upon
transactions, in comparison with the auxiliary currency of cheques and
credits, which has indefinitely augmented during the last thirty years.
So far from regarding the public as constantly ready for an unlimited
supply of bank-notes, he thought that it was only in times of extreme
panic, when this auxiliary currency is diminished and disturbed, that the
bank-notes in the hands of the public either could or would be augmented.
He believed that the public only kept in their hands as many notes as
they wanted for their own convenience, and that all others were in the
present day paid back to the banker immediately and necessarily.
Unfortunately, however, the currency is not discussed in England with
very exact reference to abstract principles. The popular question of
every thinker is, ‘Are you in favour of Peel’s Bill, or are you against
it?’ And this mode of discussing the subject always placed Mr. Wilson in
a position of some difficulty. He concurred in the aim of Sir R. Peel,
but objected to his procedure. He wished to secure the convertibility
of the bank-note. He believed that the Act of 1844 indirectly induced
the Bank Directors to keep more bullion than they would keep otherwise,
and in so far he thought it beneficial; but he also thought that the
advantages obtained by it were purchased at a needless price; that they
might have been obtained much more cheaply; that the machinery of the
Act aggravated every panic; that it tended to fix the attention of the
public on bank-notes, and so fostered the mischievous delusion that the
augmented issue of paper currency would strengthen industry; that it
neglected to take account of other forms of credit which are equally
important with bank-notes; that, ‘_for one week in ten years_’—the week
of panic—it created needless and intense apprehension, and so tended to
cause the ruin of some solvent commercial men. In brief, though he fully
believed the professed object of Sir R. Peel—the convertibility of the
bank-note—to be beneficial and inestimable, he as fully believed the
special means selected by him to be inconvenient and pernicious.
Opinions akin to Mr. Wilson’s, if not identical with them, are very
commonly now entertained, both by practical men of business and by
professional economists. The younger school of thinkers who have had
before them the working of the Act of 1844 and the events of 1847 and
1857, and are not committed by any of the older controversies, are
especially inclined to them. Yet from peculiar causes they have not been
so popular as Mr. Wilson’s other opinions. His views of finance and of
the effect of Free Trade, which were half heresies when he announced
them, have now become almost axioms. But the truth of his currency theory
is still warmly controverted. The reason is this:—Sir R. Peel’s Act
is a sort of compromise which is suited to the English people. It was
probably intended by its author as a preliminary step; it undoubtedly
suits no strict theory; it certainly has great marks of incompleteness;
but, ‘it works tolerably well;’ if it produces evils at a crisis, ‘crises
come but seldom;’ in ordinary times commerce ‘goes on very fairly.’ The
pressure of practical evil upon the English people has never yet been
so great as to induce them to face the unpleasant difficulties of the
abstract currency question. Mr. Wilson’s opinions have, therefore, never
been considered by practical men for a practical object, and it is only
when so considered that any opinions of his can be duly estimated. Their
essentially moderate character, too, is unfavourable to them—not, indeed,
among careful inquirers, but in the hubbub of public controversy. The
only great party which has as yet attacked Sir Robert Peel’s Bill is
that which desires an extensive issue of inconvertible currency; but
to them Mr. Wilson was as much opposed as Sir Robert Peel himself. The
two watchwords of the controversy are ‘caution’ and ‘expansion:’ the
advocates of the Act of 1844 have seized on the former, the Birmingham
school on the latter; the intermediate, and, as we think, juster opinions
of Mr. Wilson have had no party cry to aid them, and they have not as
yet therefore obtained the practical influence which he never ceased to
anticipate and to hope for them. No more need be said upon the currency
question—perhaps we have already said too much; but to those who knew Mr.
Wilson well, no subject is more connected with his memory: he was so fond
of expounding it, that its very technicalities are, in the minds of some,
associated with his voice and image.
But it was not by mere correctness of economical speculation that Mr.
Wilson was to rise to eminence. A very accurate knowledge of even
the more practical aspects of economical science is not of itself a
productive source of income. By the foundation of the _Economist_ Mr.
Wilson secured for himself, during the rest of his life, competence
and comfort, but it was not solely or simply by writing good political
economy in it. The organisation of a first-rate commercial paper in 1843
required a great inventiveness and also a great discretion. Nothing of
the kind then existed; it was not known what the public most wished to
know on business interests; the best shape of communicating information
had to be invented in detail. The labour of creating such a paper and
of administering it during its early stages is very great; and might
well deter most men even of superior ability from attempting it. At
this period of his life Mr. Wilson used to superintend the whole of
the _Economist_; to write all the important leaders, nearly all of the
unimportant ones; to make himself master of every commercial question
as it arose; to give practical details as to the practical aspects of
it; to be on the watch for every kind of new commercial information; to
spend hours in adapting it to the daily wants of commercial men. He often
worked till far into the morning, and impressed all about him with wonder
at the anxiety, labour, and exhaustion he was able to undergo. As has
been stated, for some months after the commencement of the _Economist_
he was still engaged in his former business; and after he relinquished
that, he used to write the City article and also leaders for the _Morning
Chronicle_, at the very time that he was doing on his own paper far more
than most men would have had endurance of mind or strength of body for.
Long afterwards he used to speak of this period as far more exhausting
than the most exhausting part of a laborious public life. ‘Our public
men,’ he once said, ‘do not know what anxiety means; they have never
known what it is to have their own position dependent on their own
exertions.’ In 1843, and for some time afterwards, he had himself to bear
extreme labour and great anxiety together; and even his iron frame was
worn and tired by the conjunction.
Within seven years from the foundation of the _Economist_, Mr. Wilson
dealt effectively and thoroughly with three first-rate subjects—the
railway mania, the famine in Ireland, and the panic of 1847, in addition
to the entire question of Free Trade, which was naturally the main
topic of economical teaching in those years. On all these three topics
he explained somewhat original opinions, which were novelties, if not
paradoxes then, though they are very generally believed now. To his
writings on the railway mania he was especially fond of recurring, since
he believed that by his warnings, very effectively brought out and very
constantly reiterated, he had ‘saved several men their fortunes’ at that
time.
The success of the _Economist_, and the advantage which the proprietor
of it would derive from a first-hand acquaintance with political life,
naturally led him to think of gaining a seat in Parliament, and an
accidental conversation at Lord Radnor’s table fixed his attention on the
borough of Westbury. After receiving a requisition, he visited the place,
explained his political sentiments at much length ‘from an old cart,’
and believed that he saw sufficient chances of success to induce him to
take a house there. He showed considerable abilities in electioneering,
and a close observer once said of him, ‘Mr. Wilson may or may not be the
best political economist in England, but depend upon it he is the _only_
political economist who would ever come in for the borough of Westbury.’
Though nominally a borough, the constituency is half a rural one, much
under the influence of certain Conservative squires. The Liberal party
were in 1847 only endeavouring to emancipate themselves from a yoke to
which they have now again succumbed. Except for Mr. Wilson’s constant
watchfulness, his animated geniality, his residence on the spot, his
knowledge of every voter by sight, the Liberal party might never have
been successful there. A certain expansive frankness of manner and a
wonderful lucidity in explaining his opinions almost to any one, gave
Mr. Wilson great advantages as a popular candidate; and it was very
remarkable to find these qualities connected with a strong taste for
treating very dry subjects upon professedly abstract principles. So
peculiar a combination had the success which it merited. In the summer of
1847 he was elected to serve in Parliament for Westbury.
Mr. Wilson made his first speech in the House of Commons on the motion
for a Committee to inquire into the commercial distress at that time
prevalent. And it was considered an act of intellectual boldness for
a new member to explain his opinions on so difficult a subject as the
currency, especially as they were definitely opposed to a measure
supported by such overwhelming Parliamentary authority as the Act of
1844 then was. Judging from the report in ‘Hansard,’ and from the
recollections of some who heard it, the speech was a successful one. It
is very clear and distinct, and its tone is very emphatic, without ever
ceasing to be considerate and candid. It contains a sufficient account
of Mr. Wilson’s tenets on the currency—so good an account, indeed, that
when he read it ten years later, in the panic of 1857, he acknowledged
that he did not think he could add a word to it. At the time, however,
the test of its Parliamentary success was not the absolute correctness of
its abstract principles, but, to use appropriate and technical language,
‘its getting a rise out of Peel.’ Sir Robert had used some certainly
inconclusive arguments in favour of his favourite measure, and Mr. Wilson
made that inconclusiveness so very clear that he thought it necessary to
rise ‘and explain,’ which, on such a subject, was deemed at the moment a
great triumph for a first speech.
As might be expected from so favourable a commencement, Mr. Wilson soon
established a Parliamentary reputation. He was not a formal orator,
and did not profess to be so. But he had great powers of exposition,
singular command of telling details upon his own subjects, a very
pleasing voice, a grave but by no means inanimate manner—qualities which
are amply sufficient to gain the respectful attention of the House of
Commons. And Mr. Wilson did gain it. But speaking is but half, and in
the great majority of cases by far the smaller half, of the duties of a
member of Parliament. Mr. Wilson was fond of quoting a saying of Sir R.
Peel’s, ‘That the way to get on in the House of Commons was to take a
place and sit there.’ He adopted this rule himself, was constant in his
attendance at the House, a good listener to other men, and always ready
to take trouble with troublesome matters. These plain and business-like
qualities, added to his acknowledged ability and admitted acquaintance
with a large class of subjects upon which knowledge is rare, gave Mr.
Wilson a substantial influence in the House of Commons in an unusually
short time. The Corn Laws had been repealed, the pitched battle of
Free Trade had been fought and won, but much yet remained to be done in
carrying out its principles with effective precision, in applying them
to articles other than corn, in exposing the fallacies still abundantly
current, and in answering the exceptional case, which every trade in
succession set up for an exceptional protection. These were painful and
complex matters of detail, wearisome to very many persons, and rewarding
with no _éclat_ those who took the trouble to master and explain them.
But Mr. Wilson shrank from no detail. For several years before he
had a seat in the House, he had been used to explain such topics in
countless conversations with the most prominent Free-traders and in the
_Economist_. He now did so in the House of Commons, and his influence
correspondingly increased. He was able to do an important work better
than any one else could do it; and, in English public life, real work
rightly done at the right season scarcely ever fails to meet with a real
reward.
That Mr. Wilson early acquired considerable Parliamentary reputation is
evinced by the best of all proofs. He was offered office before he had
been six months in the House of Commons, though he had, as the preceding
sketch will have made evident, no aristocratic connections—though he was
believed to be a poorer man than he really was—though writing political
articles for newspapers has never been in England the sure introduction
to political power which it formerly was in France—though, on the
contrary, it has in general been found a hindrance. In a case like Mr.
Wilson’s, the prize of office was a sure proof of evident prowess in the
Parliamentary arena.
The office which was offered to Mr. Wilson was one of the Secretaryships
of the Board of Control. Mr. Wilson related at Hawick his reluctance to
accept it, and his reason. Never having given any special attention to
Indian topics, he thought it would be absurd and ridiculous in him to
accept an office which seemed to require much special knowledge. But
Lord John Russell, with ‘that knowledge of public affairs which long
experience ensures,’ at once explained to him that a statesman, under
our Parliamentary system, must be prepared to serve the Queen ‘whenever
he may be called on;’ and accordingly that he must be ready to take any
office which he can fill, without at all considering whether it is that
which he can best fill. After some deliberation, Mr. Wilson acknowledged
the wisdom of this advice, and accepted the office offered him. Long
afterwards, in the speech at Hawick to which we have alluded, he said
that without the preliminary knowledge of India which he acquired at
the Board of Control, he should never have been able to undertake the
regulation of her finances.
When once installed in his office, he devoted himself to it with his
usual unwearied industry. And at least on one occasion he had to deal
with a congenial topic. The introduction of railways into India was
opposed on many grounds, most of which are now forgotten—such as ‘the
effect upon the native mind,’ ‘the impossibility of inducing the Hindoos
to travel in that manner,’ and the like; and more serious difficulties
occurred in considering the exact position which the Government
should assume with regard to such great undertakings in such singular
circumstances—the necessity on the one hand, in an Asiatic country
where the State is the sole motive power, of the Government’s doing
something—and the danger, on the other hand, of interfering with private
enterprise, by its doing, or attempting to do, too much. Mr. Wilson
applied himself vigorously to all these difficulties; he exercised the
whole of his personal influence, and the whole of that which was given
to him by his situation, in dissipating the fanciful obstacles which
were alleged to be latent in the unknown tendencies of the Oriental
mind; while he certainly elaborated—and he believed that he originally
suggested—the peculiar form of State guarantee upon the faith of which so
many millions of English capital have been sent to develop the industry
of India.
Besides discharging the duties of his office, Mr. Wilson represented
the Government of the day on several Committees connected with his
peculiar topics, and especially on one which fully investigated the
Sugar question. Of the latter, indeed, he became so fully master that
some people fancied he must have been in the trade; so complete was the
familiarity which he displayed with ‘brown muscovado,’ ‘white clayed,’
and all other technical terms which are generally inscrutably puzzling
to Parliamentary statesmen. On a Parliamentary Committee Mr. Wilson
appeared to great advantage. Though sufficiently confident of the truth
of his own opinions, he had essentially a fair mind; he always had
the greatest confidence that if the facts were probed the correctness
of what he believed would be established, and, _therefore_, he was
always ready to probe the facts to the bottom. He was likewise a great
master of the Socratic art of inquiry; he was able to frame a series of
consecutive questions which gradually brought an unwilling or a hostile
witness to conclusions at which he by no means wished to arrive. His
examination-in-chief, too, was as good as his cross-examination, and
the animated interest which he evinced in the subject relieved the
dreariness which a rehearsed extraction of premeditated answers commonly
involves. The examination of Lord Overstone before the Committee of 1848
on Commercial Distress, that of Mr. Weguelin before the Committee on the
Bank Acts in 1857, and several of the examinations before the Committee
on Life Insurance, of which he was the Chairman, may be consulted as
models in their respective kinds. And it should be stated that no man
could be less overbearing in examination or cross-examination; much was
often extracted from a witness which he did not wish to state, but it was
always extracted fairly, quietly, and by seemingly inevitable sequence.
Mr. Wilson continued at the Board of Control till the resignation of
Lord John Russell’s Cabinet in the spring of 1852. He took part in the
opposition of the Liberal party to Lord Derby’s Government, and was very
deeply interested in the final settlement of the Free Trade question
which was effected by the accession of the Protectionist party to office.
After a very severe contest he was re-elected for Westbury in July 1852,
and on the formation of the Aberdeen Government he accepted the office
of Financial Secretary to the Treasury, which he continued to hold for
five years, until the dissolution of Lord Palmerston’s administration
in the spring of 1857, and upon his efficiency in which his remarkable
reputation as an official administrator was mainly based.
The Financial Secretaryship of the Treasury is by no means one of the
most conspicuous offices in the Government, and but few persons who
have not observed political life closely are at all aware either of
its difficulty or of its importance. The office is, indeed, a curious
example of the half grotesque way in which the abstract theory of our
historical Constitution contrasts with its practical working. In the
theory of the Constitution—a theory which may still be found in popular
compendiums—there is an officer called the Lord High Treasurer, who is
to advise the Crown and be responsible to the country for all public
moneys. In practice, there is no such functionary: by law his office is
‘in commission.’ Certain Lords Commissioners are supposed to form a Board
at which financial subjects are discussed, and which is responsible for
their due administration. In practice, there is no such discussion and no
such responsibility. The functions of the Junior Lords of the Treasury,
though not entirely nominal, are but slight. The practical administration
of our expenditure is vested in the First Lord of the Treasury, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Financial Secretary of the
Treasury. And of these three the constitutional rule is, that the First
Lord of the Treasury is only officially responsible for decisions in
detail when he chooses to interfere in those decisions. Accordingly, when
a First Lord, as was the case with Sir R. Peel, takes a great interest in
financial questions, the Chancellor of the Exchequer does the usual work
of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Secretary of the Treasury has
in comparison nothing to do. But when, as was the case in the Governments
of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister takes no special
interest in finance, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is very fully
employed in the transaction of his own proper business, and an enormous
mass of work, some of it of extreme importance, falls to the Secretary
of the Treasury. Of late years, the growth of the miscellaneous civil
expenditure of the country has greatly augmented that work, great as it
was before. In general, it may be said that the whole of the financial
detail of our national expenditure is more or less controlled by the
Secretary of the Treasury; that much of it is very closely controlled by
him; and that he has vast powers of practical discretion, if only he be a
man of ability, industry, and courage.
For such an office as this Mr. Wilson had very peculiar qualifications.
He was perfectly sure to be right in a plain case; and by far the larger
part of the ordinary business of the Government, as of individuals,
consists of plain cases. A man who is thoroughly sure to decide
effectually and correctly the entire mass of easy, obvious cases, is a
safer master of practical life than one eminently skilled in difficult
cases, but deficient in the more rudimentary qualification. Nor is the
power of certainly deciding plain cases rightly, by any means very
common, especially among very intellectual men. A certain taint of
subtlety, a certain tendency to be wise above the case in hand, mars the
practical efficiency of many men whose conversation and whose powers
would induce us to expect that they would be very efficient. Mr. Wilson
had not a particle of these defects. He struck off each case with a
certain sledge-hammer efficiency, and every plain case at least with
infallible accuracy.
It might seem overstrained eulogy—a eulogy which he would not have
wished—to claim for Mr. Wilson an equally infallible power of deciding
complicated cases. As to such cases there will always be a doubt. Plain
matters speak for themselves: they do not require a dissertation to
elucidate them: every man of business, as soon as he hears the right
decision of them, knows that it is the right decision. But with more
refined matters it is not so; as to points involving an abstract theory,
like that of the currency, there will and must be differences of judgment
to the end of time. We would not, therefore, whatever may be our own
opinion, claim for Mr. Wilson as infallible a power of deciding difficult
questions as he certainly possessed of deciding plain questions. But we
do claim for him even in such matters the greatest secondary excellence,
if, indeed, a secondary excellence it be. Mr. Wilson was perfectly
certain to be _intelligible in the most difficult case_. Whether he did
right or did wrong, must, as we have said, be from the nature of the
subject-matter very arguable. But _what_ he did and _why_ he did it,
was never in doubt for a moment. The archives of the Treasury contain
countless minutes from his pen, many of them written with what most men
would call rapidity, just while the matter was waiting for decision, and
on all sorts of subjects, many of them very complicated ones—yet it may
be doubted whether any one of those minutes contains a single sentence
not thoroughly and conspicuously clear. The same excellence which has
been shown in countless articles in the _Economist_ appears in his
business-like documents. Wherever his leading articles were written and
under whatever circumstances—and some of the most elaborate of them were
written under rather strange circumstances (for he could catch up a pen
and begin to write on the most involved topic, at any time, in any place,
and, as a casual observer would think, without any premeditation)—but
wherever and however these articles might be written, it may be safely
asserted that they do not contain a sentence which a man of business
need read twice over, or which he would not find easily and certainly
intelligible. At the Treasury it was the same. However complicated or
involved the matter to be decided might be—however much it might be
loaded with detail or perplexed by previous controversy—Mr. Wilson never
failed to make immediately clear the exact opinion he formed upon it, the
exact grounds upon which he formed it, and the exact course of action
which he thought should be adopted upon it. Many persons well acquainted
with practical life will be disposed to doubt whether extreme accuracy
of decision is not almost a secondary merit as compared with a perfect
intelligibility. In many cases it may be better to have a decision which
every one can understand, though with some percentage of error, than an
elaborately accurate decision of which the grounds and reasons are not
easily grasped, and a plan of action which, from its refined complexity,
is an inevitable mystery to the greater number of practical persons.
But, putting aside this abstract discussion, we say without fear of
contradiction or of doubt, that Mr. Wilson added to his almost infallible
power of deciding plain cases, an infallible certainty of being entirely
intelligible in complicated cases. Men of business will be able to
imagine the administrative capacity certain to be produced by the union
of extreme excellence in both qualities.
One subsidiary faculty that Mr. Wilson possessed, which was very useful
to him in the multifarious business of the Treasury, was an extraordinary
memory. On his own subjects and upon transactions in which he had taken
a decisive part, he seemed to recollect anything and everything. He
was able to answer questions as to business transacted at the Treasury
after the lapse of months and even of years without referring to the
papers, and with a perfect certainty of substantial accuracy. He would
say, without the slightest effort and without the slightest idea that he
was doing anything extraordinary: ‘Such and such a person came to me at
the Treasury, and said so and so, and this is what I said to him.’ And
it is quite possible that he might remember the precise sums of money
which were the subject of conversation. A more useful memory for the
purposes of life was perhaps never possessed by any one. In the case of
great literary memories, such as that of Lord Macaulay and of others, the
fortunate possessor has a continued source of pleasurable and constantly
recurring recollections; he has a full mind constantly occupied with its
own contents, recurring to its long loved passages from its favourite
authors constantly and habitually. But Mr. Wilson never recurred to
the transactions in which he had been engaged except when he was asked
about them; he lived as little in the past perhaps as is possible for an
intellectual person; but the moment the spring was touched by a question
or by some external necessity, all the details of the past transaction
started into his memory completely, vividly, and perfectly. He had thus
the advantage of always remembering his business, and also the advantage
of never being burdened by it. Very few persons can ever have had in
equal measure the two merits of a fresh judgment and a full mind.
Mr. Wilson’s memory was likewise assisted by a very even judgment. It was
easier to him to remember what he had done, because, if he had to do the
same thing again, he would be sure to do it in precisely the same way. He
was not an intolerant person, but the qualities he tolerated least easily
were flightiness and inconsistency of purpose. He had furnished his mind,
so to say, with fixed principles, and he hated the notion of a mind which
was unfurnished.
All these mental qualities taken together go far to make up the complete
idea of a perfect administrator of miscellaneous financial business, such
as that of the English Treasury now is. And Mr. Wilson had the physical
qualities also. An iron constitution which feared no labour, and was
very rarely incapacitated even for an hour by any illness, enabled him
to accomplish with ease and unconsciously an amount of work which few
men would not have shrunk from. In the country, where his habits were
necessarily more obvious, he habitually spent the whole day from eleven
till eight, with some slight interval for a short ride in the middle of
the day, over his Treasury bag; and as such was his notion of a holiday,
it may be easily conceived that in London, when he had still more to
do in a morning, and had to spend almost every evening in the House of
Commons, his work was greater than an ordinary constitution could have
borne. And it was work of a rather peculiar kind. Some men of routine
habits spend many hours over their work, but do not labour very intensely
at one time; other men of more excitable natures work impulsively, and
clear off everything they do by eager efforts in a short time. But Mr.
Wilson in some sense did both. Although his hours of labour were so very
protracted, yet if a casual observer happened to enter his library at any
moment, he would find him with his blind down to exclude all objects of
external interest, his brow working eagerly, his eye fixed intently on
the figures before him, and, very likely, his rapid pen passing fluently
over the paper. He had all the labour of the chronic worker, and all the
labour of the impulsive worker too. And those admitted to his intimacy
used to wonder that he was never tired. He came out of his library in an
evening more ready for vigorous conversation—more alive to all subjects
of daily interest—more quick to gain new information—more ready to
expound complicated topics, than others who had only passed an easy day
of idleness or ordinary exertion.
By the aid of this varied combination of powers, Mr. Wilson was able to
grapple with the miscellaneous financial business of the country with
very unusual efficiency. Most men would have found the office work of
the Secretary of the Treasury quite enough, but he was always ready
rather to take away labour and responsibilities from other departments
than to throw off any upon them. Nor was his efficiency confined to the
labours of his office. The Financial Secretary of the Treasury has a
large part of the financial business of the House of Commons under his
control, and is responsible for its accurate arrangement. The passing
a measure through the House of Commons is a matter of detail; and in
the case of the financial measures of the Government, a large part of
this—the dullest part, and the most unenvied—falls to the Secretary of
the Treasury. He is expected to be the right hand of the Chancellor of
the Exchequer in all the most wearisome part of the financial business of
the House of Commons; and we have the best authority for stating that,
under two Chancellors of the Exchequer very different from one another in
many respects, Mr. Wilson performed this part of his duties with singular
efficiency, zeal, and judgment.
The Financial Secretary of the Treasury is likewise expected to answer
all questions asked in the House as to the civil estimates—a most
miscellaneous collection of figures, as any one may satisfy himself
by glancing at them. Mr. Wilson’s astonishing memory and great power
of lucid exposition enabled him to fulfil this part of his duty with
very remarkable efficiency. He gave the dates and the figures without
any note, and his exposition was uniformly simple, emphatic, and
intelligible, even on the most complicated subjects. The great rule, he
used to say, was to answer exactly the exact question; if you attempted
an elaborate exposition, collateral issues were necessarily raised, a
debate ensued, and the time of the House was lost.
Mr. Wilson’s mercantile knowledge and mercantile sympathies were found
to be of much use in the consolidation of the Customs in 1853, and he
took great interest in settling a scheme for the payment of the duties in
cheques instead of bank-notes, by which the circulation has been largely
economised and traders greatly benefited. During the autumn of 1857, his
long study of the currency question, and his first-hand conversancy with
the business of the City, were valuable aids to the Administration of the
day in the anxious responsibilities and rapidly shifting scenes of an
extreme commercial crisis. It would be impossible to notice the number of
measures in which he took part as Secretary of the Treasury, and equally
impossible to trace his precise share in them. That office ensures to its
holder substantial power, but can rarely give him legislative fame.
On two occasions during his tenure of office at the Treasury, Mr. Wilson
was offered a different post. In the autumn of 1856 he was offered the
Chairmanship of Inland Revenue, a permanent office of considerable value
then vacant, which he declined because he did not consider the income
necessary, and because (what some people would think odd) it did not
afford sufficient occupation. It was a ‘good pillow,’ he said, ‘but
he did not wish to lie down.’ The second office offered him was the
Vice-Presidency of the Board of Trade in 1855, which would have been
a step to him in official rank, but which would have entailed a new
election, and he did not feel quite secure that the electors of Westbury
would again return him. He did not, however, by any means wish for the
change, as the Vice-Presidency of the Board of Trade, though nominally
superior, is in real power far inferior to the Secretaryship of the
Treasury.
In the general election of 1857, Mr. Wilson was returned for Devonport,
for which place he continued to sit till his departure for India. He went
out of office on the dissolution of Lord Palmerston’s Administration in
the spring of 1858, and took an active part in the Liberal opposition
to Lord Derby’s Government, though it may be remarked that he carefully
abstained from using the opportunities afforded him by his long
experience at the Treasury, of harassing his less experienced successors
in financial office by needless and petty difficulties.
On the return of the Liberal party to power, Mr. Wilson was asked to
resume his post at the Treasury, but he declined, as, after five years
of laborious service, he wished to have an office of which the details
were less absorbing. He accepted, however, the Vice-Presidency of the
Board of Trade—an office which is not in itself attractive, but which
gives its possessor a sort of claim to be President of the Board at the
next vacancy. The office of President is frequently accompanied by a seat
in the Cabinet, and Mr. Wilson’s reputation on all subjects connected
with trade was so firmly established that in his case it would have been
practically impossible to pass him over, even if it had been wished.
He had, however, secured so firm a position in official circles by his
real efficiency, that the dispensers of patronage were, as he believed,
likely to give him whatever he desired as soon as the exigencies of party
enabled them to do so.
He had not been long in office before he had good reason for thinking
that he would be offered by the Government the office of Financial Member
of the Council of India under very peculiar circumstances. There had
never before been such an officer. One member of Council had since 1833
been always sent out from England, but he had always been a lawyer, and
his functions were those of a jurist and a regulative administrator, not
those of a financier. The mutiny of the Sepoys in 1857 had, however, left
behind it a deficit with which the financiers of India did not _seem_ to
be able to cope, and which a cumbrous financial system did not give them
the best means of vanquishing. There was a general impression that some
one with an English training and English habits of business would have a
better chance of overcoming the most pressing difficulty of India than
any one on the spot. And there was an equally general impression that
if any one were to be sent from England to India with such an object,
Mr. Wilson was the right person. He united high financial reputation,
considerable knowledge of India acquired at the Board of Control, tried
habits of business, long experience at the English Treasury, to the
sagacious readiness in dealing with new situations which self-made men
commonly have, but which is commonly wanting in others.
On personal grounds Mr. Wilson was disinclined to accept the office.
He was on the threshold of the Cabinet here; he was entitled by his
long tenure of office at the Treasury to a pension which would merge in
the salary of Indian Councillor; the emoluments of the latter office
were not necessary to him; his life was very heavily insured for the
benefit of his family; though he had never during his tenure of office
at the Treasury been connected directly or indirectly with any kind of
commercial undertaking (the _Economist_ alone excepted), some investments
which he made in land and securities, entirely beyond the range of
politics, had been very fortunate; since the year 1844 everything of a
pecuniary kind in which he had been concerned had not only prospered,
but remarkably prospered; he felt himself sufficiently rich to pursue
the career of prosperous usefulness and satisfied ambition that seemed
to be before him here. There was no consideration of private interest
which could induce him to undertake anxious and dangerous duties in
India; he even ran some pecuniary risk in leaving this country, as it was
possible that in the vicissitudes of newspaper property the _Economist_
might again need the attention of its proprietor and founder. On public
grounds, however, he believed that it was his duty to accept the office;
he took a keen interest in Indian finance; believed that the difficulties
of it might be conquered, and thought that in even _attempting_ to
conquer them he would be doing the greatest and most lasting public
service that it was in _his_ power to accomplish.
He accordingly accepted the office of Financial Member of the Council of
India, and proceeded to make somewhat melancholy arrangements for leaving
this country. He broke up his establishment here, bade farewell to his
constituents at Devonport and to the inhabitants of his native place,
attended some influential public meetings in towns deeply interested
in the commerce of India, and on October 20, 1859, left England, as it
proved, for ever.
Of Mr. Wilson’s policy in India it would not be proper to give more than
a very brief sketch here. That policy is still fresh in the memory of
the public; it has been very frequently explained and discussed in the
_Economist_; it is still being tried; and, though he was fully persuaded
of the expediency of his measures, he would not have wished for too warm
a eulogy of them while they are as yet untested by the event. In almost
the last letter which the present writer received from him, there was
a sort of reprimand for permitting this journal to draw too great an
attention to his plans, and to ascribe the merit of them too exclusively
to him, and too little to the Government of which he was a member.
On his arrival in India he found that the Governor-General was on a
tour in the Upper Provinces of India, and before doing any business of
importance at Calcutta he travelled thither. This journey he thought
very advantageous, because it gave him a great insight into the nature
of the country, and enabled him to consult the most experienced revenue
officers of many large districts on their respective resources, and on
the safest mode of making those resources available to the public. He was
much struck with the capabilities of the country, and wrote to England in
almost so many words ‘that it was a fine country to _tax_.’ On the other
hand, however, he was well aware of the difficulty of his task. The only
two possible modes of taxation are direct and indirect, and in the case
of India there is a difficulty in adopting either. If we select indirect
taxation and impose duties on consumable commodities, the natives of
India meet us by declining to consume. Their wants are few, and they
will forego most of them if a tax can be evaded thereby. On the other
hand, if we adopt in India a direct tax on property or income, there is
great difficulty in finding out what each man’s property or income is.
In England we trust each person to tell us the amount of his income,
but even here the results are not wholly satisfactory; and it would be
absurd to fancy that we can place as much reliance upon the veracity of
Orientals as upon that of Englishmen.
These difficulties, however, Mr. Wilson was prepared to meet. On February
18, 1860, he proposed his Budget to the Legislative Council at Calcutta,
and the reception given to it by all classes was remarkably favourable.
He announced, indeed, a scheme of heavy taxation, but the Indian public
had been living for a considerable time under a sentence of indefinite
taxation, and they were glad to know the worst. Anything distinct was
better than vague suspense, and, as usual, Mr. Wilson contrived to
make his meaning _very_ distinct. His bearing also exercised a great
influence over the Anglo-Indian public. In England he had been remarkable
among official men for his constant animation and thorough naturalness
of manner: in his office he was as much himself as at a dinner-table or
in the House of Commons: he had no tinge of supercilious politeness or
artificial blandness. In any new scene of action—especially in such a
scene as British India—these qualities were sure to tell beneficially.
Plain directness and emphatic simplicity were the external qualities
most likely to be useful at Calcutta, and these were Mr. Wilson’s most
remarkable qualities.
The principal feature of Mr. Wilson’s Budget was the Income Tax, which
he avowedly framed after the English fashion. It is true that but little
reliance can, perhaps, be placed on the statements of Orientals as to
their wealth. It is very possible that the complicated machinery of forms
and notices which is in use here may not be applicable in India. All this
Mr. Wilson well knew. But he thought that our Indian subjects should have
an opportunity of stating their income before they were taxed upon it.
If they should state it untruly, or should decline to state it, it might
be necessary to tax them arbitrarily. But he did not think, it would be
decent—that it would be civilised—to begin with an arbitrary assessment.
By the Income Tax Act which he framed, it is enacted that other modes may
be substituted if in any instance the English mode of assessment should
prove inapplicable. In other words, if our Oriental fellow-subjects will
not tell us the truth when they are asked, we must tax them as best we
can, and they cannot justly complain of unfairness and inequality. _We_
would have been mathematically just, if _they_ had given us the means.
The reception of Mr. Wilson’s Budget was universally favourable until the
publication of the minute of Sir C. Trevelyan, which, as was inevitable,
produced a serious reaction. Heavy taxation can never be very pleasant,
and in the Presidency of Madras Sir Charles gave the sanction of the
Government—of the highest authority the people saw—to the hope that
they would not be taxed. The prompt recall of Sir Charles, however, did
much to convince the natives of the firm determination of the English
Government, and Mr. Wilson hoped that the ordeal of criticism through
which his measures had to pass would ultimately be favourable to them.
It certainly secured them from the accusation of being prepared in
haste, but it purchased this benefit at the loss to the public of much
precious time, and to Mr. Wilson of precious health. Of the substance
of this minute it is sufficient to say that its fundamental theory that
additional taxation of any sort was unnecessary in India, has scarcely
been believed by any one except its author. Almost every one has deemed
it too satisfactory to be true.
On another point Mr. Wilson’s Budget has been criticised in England,
though not in India. It has been considered to be a protective Budget.
The mistake has arisen from not attending to what that Budget is. The
changes made by Mr. Wilson in the import duties were two. ‘The first was
a reduction from twenty to ten per cent. upon a long list of articles,
including haberdashery, millinery, and hosiery, all part of the cotton
trade; the second was an increase in the duty upon cotton yarn from five
to ten per cent., thus creating a uniform tariff of ten per cent.’[38] Of
these two, it is plain the reduction from twenty per cent. to ten was not
a change that would operate as a protection to Indian industry; and the
increase of the duty on yarn has a contrary tendency. Yarn is an earlier,
cloth a later, stage of manufacture, and in Mr. Wilson’s own words, ‘it
is a low duty on yarn and a high duty on cloth that encourages native
weaving.’ For the effect of the general system of high Customs duties in
India Mr. Wilson is not responsible, but his predecessors. What _he_ did
has no protective tendency.
If the Income Tax should, as may be fairly hoped, become a permanent part
of the financial system of India, it will serve for a considerable period
to keep Mr. Wilson’s name alive there. So efficient an expedient must
always attract the notice of the public, and must in some degree preserve
the remembrance of the Minister by whom it was proposed. Mr. Wilson,
however, undertook two other measures of very great importance. One of
these has been frequently described as the introduction into India of the
English system of public accounts. But it would be more truly described
as the introduction of a rational system of public accounts. There are
three natural steps in national finance, which are certainly clearly
marked in our English system, but which have a necessary existence
independent of that recognition. These three are—first, the estimate
of future expenditure; secondly, what we call the Budget, that is the
official calculation of the income by which the coming expenditure is
to be defrayed; thirdly, the audit which shows what the expenditure has
been and how it has been met. The system of finance which Mr. Wilson
found in India neglected these fundamental distinctions. There were
no satisfactory estimates of future expenditure, and no satisfactory
calculation of future income. In consequence, the calculations of the
official departments have been wrong by millions sterling, and English
statesmen have felt great difficulty not only in saying how the deficit
was to be removed, but likewise in ascertaining what the amount of the
deficit was. At the time of his death, Mr. Wilson was eagerly occupied in
endeavouring to introduce a better system.
Mr. Wilson will likewise be remembered as the first Minister who
endeavoured to introduce into India a Government paper currency. On March
3, 1860, he introduced into the Legislative Council an elaborate plan for
this purpose, which, with a slight modification by Sir C. Wood—curious
in the theory of the currency, but practically not very important—will
speedily, it is probable, be the fundamental currency law—the ‘Peel’s
Act’ of British India.
The exact mode in which Mr. Wilson regarded these great objects, will
perhaps be better explained by two extracts from his latest letters than
by any other means. On July 4, he wrote to a friend:—
‘Firmness and justice are the only policy for India: no
vacillation, or you are gone. They like to be governed; and
respect an iron hand, if it be but equal and just. I have,
I think, more confidence than ever that the taxes will be
established and collected, and without disturbance. But the
task is still an enormous one. I must retrench yet at least
three and a half millions, and get the same sum from my new
taxes to make both ends meet. I am putting the screw on very
strongly, but rather by an improved policy in army and police
than in reductions of salaries and establishments, which cannot
be made. I have set myself _five_ great points of policy to
introduce and carry out.
‘1. To extend a system of sound taxation to the great trading
classes, who hitherto have been exempted, though chiefly
benefited by our enormously increased civil expenditure.
‘2. To establish a paper currency.
‘3. To reform and remodel our financial system, by a plan of
annual budgets and estimates, with a Pay Department to check
issues, and keep them within the authorised limits,—and an
effective audit.
‘4. A great police system of semi-military organisation, but
usually of purely civil application, which, dear though it be,
will be cheaper by half a million than our present wretched and
expensive system,—and by which we shall be able to reduce our
native army to at least one-third;—and by which alone we can
utilise the natives as an arm of defence without the danger of
congregating idle organised masses.
‘5. Public works and roads, with a view to increased production
of cotton, flax, wool, and European raw materials.
‘The four first I have made great progress in: the latter must
follow. But you will call it “a large order.” However, you have
no idea of the increased capacity of the mind for undertaking
a special service of this kind when removed to a new scene of
action, and when one throws off all the cares of engagements
less or more trivial by which one is surrounded in ordinary
life, and throws one’s whole soul into such a special service,
and particularly when one feels assured of having the power to
carry it out. I cannot tell you with what ease one determines
the largest and gravest question here compared with in England;
and I am certain that the more one can exercise real power,
there is by far the greater tendency to moderation, care, and
prudence.’
In a second letter, dated July 19, he wrote to the same friend from
Barrackpore:—
‘The Indian Exchequer is a huge machine. The English Treasury
is nothing to it for complexity, diversity, and remoteness
of the points of action. Our great enemies are time and
distance; and with all our frontier territories there is
scarcely a day passes that we have not an account of some row
or inroad. It is a most unwieldy Empire to be governed on
the principle of forcing civilisation at every point of it.
One day it is the frontier of Scinde and a quarrel with our
native chiefs, which our Resident must check; another, it is
an intrigue between Heraut and Cabul, with a report of Russian
forces in the background; the next, there is a raid upon our
Punjab frontiers to be chastised; then come some accounts of
coolness, or misunderstanding, or unreasonable demands from
our ally in Nepaul; then follow some inroads from the savage
tribes which inhabit the mountains to the rear of Assam and
up the Burrampootra; then we have reported brawls in Burmah
and Pegu, and disputes among the hill tribes whose relations
to the British and the Burmah Governments are ill defined;
then we have Central India, with our loyal chiefs Scindiah and
Holkar, independent princes with most turbulent populations,
which could not be kept in order a day without the presence of
British troops and of the Governor-General’s Agent. Besides
all these, we have among ourselves a thousand questions of
internal administration, rendered more difficult by the
ill-defined relations between the Supreme and the Subordinate
Governments—the latter always striving to encroach, the former
to hold its own. Hence, questions do not come before us simply
on their merits, but often as involving these doubtful rights.
Then we have Courts of Justice to reform, as well as all
other institutions of a domestic kind not to reform alone,
but to extend to new territories. Then we have a deficit of
7,000,000_l._, and had a Government teaching the people that
all could be done without new taxes. But unfortunately all,
except the taxes, are a present certainty—_they_ are a future
contingency. What will they yield? I have no precise knowledge.
I think from three to four millions a year when in full bloom:
this financial year not more than a million.
‘I have now got a Military Finance Commission in full swing;
a Civil Finance Commission also going: I am reorganising the
Finance, Pay, and Accountant-General’s Department, in order
to get all the advantage of the English system of estimates,
Pay Office, and Audit:—and this with as little disturbance
of existing plans as possible. The latter is a point I have
especially aimed at. On the whole, and almost without an
exception, I have willing allies in all the existing Offices.
No attempt that I see is anywhere made to thwart or impede.
‘You can well understand, then, how full my hands are, if to
all these you add the new currency arrangements; you will not
then wonder that my health has rendered it necessary to come
down here for a day or two to get some fresh air.’
It will be observed that in the last extract Mr. Wilson alludes to his
impaired health. For some time after his arrival in India he seemed
scarcely to feel the climate. He certainly did not feel it as much as
might have been anticipated. He worked extremely hard; scarcely wrote
a private letter, but devoted the whole of his great energies to the
business around him. His letters for a considerable time abound with
such expressions as ‘Notwithstanding all my hard work, my health is
excellent.’ From the commencement of the rainy season at Calcutta,
however, he ceased to be equally well, his state began to arouse the
apprehensions of experienced observers, and he was warned that he should
retire for a short time to a better climate. He would not, however,
do so until his financial measures had advanced sufficiently far for
him to leave them. His position was a very peculiar one. In general,
if one administrator leaves his post, another is found to fill it up.
But Mr. Wilson was a unique man at Calcutta. He was sent there because
he had certain special qualifications, which no one there possessed;
and, accordingly, he had no one to rely on in his peculiar functions
save himself. His presence on the spot was likewise very important. The
administration of a department can be frequently transacted by letter,
but the organisation of new departments and new schemes requires the
unremitting attention of the organiser—the impulse of his energy. The
interest, too, which Mr. Wilson took in public business was exceptionally
great, and no one who knew him well would suppose that _he_ would leave
Calcutta while necessary work, or what he deemed so, was to be done there.
Nor was labour the sole trial to which his constitution was exposed. The
success of measures so extensive as his, must ever be a matter of anxious
doubt until the event decides; and in his case there were some momentary
considerations to aggravate that anxiety. There was no experience of
such taxation as he had proposed, and the effect of it must therefore be
difficult to foresee. Moreover, for a brief period, a famine seemed to be
imminent in Upper India, which must have disturbed the whole operation
of his financial schemes. In his debilitated state of health this last
source of anxiety seemed much to weigh upon him.
About the middle of July he went for a week to Barrackpore, near
Calcutta. The change was, however, too slight, and, as might be expected,
he returned to Calcutta without any material benefit. From that time
the disease gradually augmented, and on the evening of August 2, he went
to bed never to rise from it again. For many days he continued to be
very ill, and his family experienced the usual alternations of hope and
fear. He was quite aware of his critical state, and made all necessary
arrangements with his habitual deliberation and calmness.
Lord Canning saw him on the 9th for the last time, and was much struck
with the change which illness had made in him. He believed that he saw
death in his face, and was deeply impressed with the vivid interest
which, even in the last stage of weakness, he took in public affairs,
with his keen desire for the success of his plans, and with the little
merit which he was disposed to claim for his own share in them.
It was hoped that he would be strong enough to bear removal, and it was
intended to delay the mail steamer for a few hours to take him to sea—the
usual remedy at Calcutta for diseases of the climate. But when the time
came there was no chance that his strength would be adequate to the
effort. During the whole of the 11th he sank rapidly, and at half past
six in the evening he breathed his last.
The mourning in Calcutta was more universal than had ever been
remembered. He had not been long in India, but while he had been there he
filled a conspicuous and great part; he had done so much, that there were
necessarily doubts in the minds of some as to the expediency of part of
it. No such doubts, however, were thought of now. ‘That he should have
come out to die here!’—‘That he should have left a great English career
_for this_!’—were the phrases in every one’s mouth. The funeral was the
largest ever known at Calcutta. It was attended by almost the entire
population, from the Governor-General downwards, and not a single voice,
on any ground whatever, dissented from the general grief.
Very little now remains to be said. A few scattered details, some of them
perhaps trivial, must complete this sketch.
Mr. Wilson’s face was striking, though not handsome. His features were
irregular, but had a peculiar look of mind and energy, while a strongly
marked brow and very large eyebrows gave to all who saw him an unfailing
impression of massive power and firm determination.
Mr. Wilson’s moral character in its general features resembled his
intellectual. He was not a man of elaborate scruples and difficult
doubts, and he did not much like those who were. His conscientiousness
was of a plain, but very practical kind; he had a single-minded rectitude
which went straight to the pith of a moral difficulty—which showed him
what he ought to do. On such subjects he was somewhat intolerant of
speculative reasoning. ‘The common sense is so and so,’ he used to say,
and he did not wish to be plagued with anything else.
In one respect his manner did not uniformly give a true impression of
him. He always succeeded in conveying his meaning, in stating what he
wished to have done and why he wished it; he never failed to convince
any one of his inexhaustible vigour and his substantial ability;
but he sometimes did fail in giving a true expression to his latent
generosity and real kindliness. He shrank almost nervously from the
display of feeling, and sometimes was thought by casual observers to
feel nothing, when in reality he was much more sensitive than they
were. Another peculiarity which few persons would have attributed to
him aided this mistake. It may seem strange in a practised Secretary of
the Treasury, but he used to say that through life he had suffered far
more from shyness than from anything else. Only very close observers
could have discovered this, for his manner was habitually impressive and
unfaltering. But common acquaintances, sometimes even persons who saw him
on business, erroneously imputed to unthinking curtness, that which was
due in truth to nervous hesitation.
With his subordinates in office he was, however, very cordial. He
discussed matters of business with them, listened carefully to their
suggestions or objections, and very frequently was guided by their
recommendations. He had no paltry desire to monopolise the whole credit
of what might be done. He probably worked harder than any Secretary of
the Treasury before or since; but so far from depressing those below him,
he encouraged their exertions, co-operated with them, and was ever ready
to bear hearty testimony to the tried merit of efficient public servants.
He was also quite willing to forget the temporary misunderstandings
which are so apt to occur among earnest men who take different views of
public affairs. He was eminently tolerant. Though he had almost always
a strong conviction of his own, he never felt the least wish to silence
discussion. Believing that his own opinions were true, he was only the
more confident that the more the subject was discussed, the more true
they would be found to be. Few men ever transacted so much important
business with so little of the pettiness of personal feeling.
In the foregoing sketch Mr. Wilson has of necessity been regarded almost
exclusively as a public man, but his private life has many remarkable
features, if it were proper to enlarge on them. His enjoyment of simple
pleasures, of society, of scenery, of his home, was very vivid. No one
who saw him in his unemployed moments would have believed that he was one
of the busiest public men of his time. He never looked worn or jaded, and
always contributed more than his share of geniality and vivacity to the
scene around him. Like Sir Walter Scott, he loved a bright light; and the
pleasantest society to him was that of the cheerful and the young.
The universal regret which has been expressed at Mr. Wilson’s death is
the best tribute to his memory. It has been universally felt that on his
special subjects and for his peculiar usefulness he was ‘a finished man,’
and in these respects he has left few such behind him. The qualities
which he had the opportunity of displaying were those of an administrator
and a financier. But some of those who knew him best, believed that he
only wanted an adequate opportunity to show that he had also many of the
higher qualities of a statesman; and it was the feeling that he would
perhaps have such an opportunity which reconciled them to his departure
for India. As will have been evident from this narrative, he was placed
in many changing circumstances, and in the gradual ascent of life was
tried by many increasing difficulties. But at every step his mind grew
with the occasion. We at least believe that he had a great sagacity and
a great equanimity, which might have been fitly exercised on the very
greatest affairs. But it was not so to be.
The intelligence of Mr. Wilson’s death was formally communicated by the
Indian to the Home Government in the following despatch:—
‘To the Right Honourable Sir Charles Wood, Bart., G.C.B.,
Secretary of State for India.
‘SIR,—The painful task is imposed upon us of announcing to Her
Majesty’s Government the death of our colleague, the Right
Honourable James Wilson.
‘2. This lamentable event took place on the evening of
Saturday, the 11th, after an illness of a few days.
‘3. We enclose a copy of the notification by which we yesterday
communicated the mournful intelligence to the public. The
funeral took place at the time mentioned in the notification;
and the great respect in which our lamented colleague was
held was evinced by a very large attendance of the general
community, in addition to the public officers, civil and
military.
‘4. We are unable adequately to express our sense of the great
loss which the public interests have sustained in Mr. Wilson’s
death. We do not doubt, however, that this will be as fully
appreciated by Her Majesty’s Government, as it is by ourselves,
and as we have every reason to believe it will be by the
community generally throughout India.
‘5. But we should not satisfy our feelings in communicating
this sad occurrence to Her Majesty’s Government, if we did not
state our belief that the fatal disease which has removed Mr.
Wilson from amongst us was in a great degree the consequence of
his laborious application to the duties of his high position,
and of his conscientious determination not to cease from the
prosecution of the important measures of which he had charge,
until their success was ensured. Actuated by a self-denying
devotion to the objects for which he came out to this country,
Mr. Wilson continued to labour indefatigably long after the
general state of his health had become such as to cause anxiety
to the physician who attended him, and it was within a few
days only after the Income Tax had become law, and when, at
the earnest request of his medical adviser, he was preparing
to remove from Calcutta for the remainder of the rainy season,
that he was seized with the illness that has carried him off.
‘6. It is our sincere conviction that this eminent public
servant sacrificed his life in the discharge of his duty.—We
have, &c.,
‘CANNING.
‘H. B. E. FRERE.
‘C. BEADON.
‘FORT WILLIAM, _August 13._’
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
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LONDON
FOOTNOTES
[1] This essay appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ for October 1877,
and is now republished, with slight alterations, by the kind permission
of the editor and proprietors of that Review. In most of the alterations
now made, as well as in a great part of the original essay, I have been
greatly assisted by the help of Mrs. Walter Bagehot.
[2] _Prospective Review_, No. 31, for August 1852, a paper too strictly
temporary and practical in its aim for republication now.
[3] See volume ii., page 232, of this work.
[4] See Appendix to this volume, page 335.
[5] See vol. i. p. 43.
[6] See vol. ii. p. 66.
[7] See vol. ii. p. 67.
[8] _Physics and Politics_, p. 10.
[9] Volume ii. p. 71.
[10] _Poems and Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough_, vol. i. p. 175.
[11] See Appendix to this volume, page 329.
[12] Since the first edition of this work was published, the Oxford Board
of Studies have made a text-book of Mr. Bagehot’s _English Constitution_
for that University.
[13] See vol. i. p. 28.
[14] This essay I hope to republish with others on English Statesmen in a
future volume of Studies in Political Biography.
[15] _Physics and Politics_, p. 57.
[16] _The Postulates of Political Economy._
[17] _A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith._ By his Daughter, Lady Holland.
With a Selection from his Letters. Edited by Mrs. Austin. 2 vols.
Longmans.
_Lord Jeffrey’s Contributions to the Edinburgh Review._ A new Edition in
one volume. Longmans.
_Lord Brougham’s Collected Works._ Vols. I. II. III. _Lives of
Philosophers of the Reign of George III._ _Lives of Men of Letters of
the Reign of George III._ _Historical Sketches of the Statesmen who
flourished in the Reign of George III._ Griffin.
_The Rev. Sydney Smith’s Miscellaneous Works. Including his Contributions
to the Edinburgh Review._ Longmans.
[18] Sydney Smith, Memoirs, vol. i. p. 489.
[19] This was published in October, 1855.
[20] ‘Horner is ill. He was desired to read amusing books: upon searching
his library, it appeared he had no amusing books; the nearest approach
to a work of that description being the _Indian Trader’s Complete
Guide_.’—_Sydney Smith’s Letter to Lady Holland._
[21] Letter from Lord Murray.
[22] The first words of Jeffrey’s review of The Excursion are, ‘This will
never do.’
[23] _Hartley Coleridge’s Lives of the Northern Worthies._ A new Edition.
3 vols. Moxon.
[24] This essay was published immediately after the death of the Duke of
Wellington.
[25] Keats in the Preface to Endymion.
[26] _The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley._ Edited by Mrs.
Shelley. 1853.
_Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations, and Fragments._ By Percy
Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. 1854.
_The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley._ By Captain Thomas Medwin. 1847.
[27] _Shakespeare et son Temps: Étude Littéraire_. Par M. Guizot. Paris.
1852.
_Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare’s Plays from early
Manuscript Corrections in a Copy of the Folio, 1632, in the possession of
R. Payne Collier, Esq., F.S.A._ London. 1853.
[28] The only antiquarian thing which can be fairly called an anecdote
of Shakespeare is, that Mrs. Alleyne, a shrewd woman in those times, and
married to Mr. Alleyne, the founder of Dulwich Hospital, was one day,
in the absence of her husband, applied to on some matter by a player
who gave a reference to Mr. Hemmings (the ‘notorious’ Mr. Hemmings, the
commentators say) and to Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe, and that the
latter, when referred to, said, ‘Yes, certainly, he knew him, and he was
a rascal and good-for-nothing.’ The proper speech of a substantial man,
such as it is worth while to give a reference to.
[29] _The Life of John Milton, narrated in connection with the Political,
Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his time._ By David Masson, M.A.,
Professor of English Literature in University College, London. Cambridge:
Macmillan.
_An Account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton._ By
Thomas Keightley; with an Introduction to Paradise Lost. London: Chapman
and Hall.
_The Poems of Milton_, with Notes by Thomas Keightley. London: Chapman
and Hall.
[30] _The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu._ Edited by
her Great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe. Third edition, with Additions and
Corrections derived from the original Manuscripts, illustrative Notes,
and a New Memoir. By W. Moy Thomas. In two volumes. London: Henry Bohn.
[31] _Poetical Works of William Cowper._ Edited by Robert Bell. J. W.
Parker and Son.
_The Life of William Cowper, with Selections from his Correspondence._
Being Volume I. of the Library of Christian Biography, superintended by
the Rev. Robert Bickersteth. Seeley, Jackson, and Co.
[32] This was the second article in the first number of the _National
Review_.
[33] The general reader may not before have read, that the Rue du
Coq l’Honoré is an old and well-known street in Paris, and that
notwithstanding the substitution of the eagle for cock as a military
emblem, there is no thought of changing its name.
[34] [As a curious illustration of Mr. Bagehot’s estimate of the
character of the third Empire, I may mention that all the earlier part
of this paper, all that which dwelt on the good side of the imperial
_régime_ in relation to matters of material prosperity, was reproduced
in the French official journals, while all the equally true and
even more useful criticism on its moral deficiencies, was carefully
omitted.—EDITOR.]
[35] This was published as a supplement to the _Economist_, soon after
Mr. Wilson’s death in 1860.
[36] He was married on January 5, 1832, to Miss Elizabeth Preston, of
Newcastle, and this has given rise to a statement that he was once in
business at Newcastle. This is, however, an entire mistake. He was never
in business anywhere except at Hawick and London. It may be added, that
on the occasion of his marriage he voluntarily ceased to be a member of
the Society of Friends, for whom he always, however, retained a high
respect. During the rest of his life he was a member of the Church of
England.
[37] Among his friends of this period should be especially mentioned Mr.
G. R. Porter, of the Board of Trade, the author of _The Progress of the
Nation_, whose mind he described twenty years later as the most accurate
he had ever known.
[38] _Economist_ of Sept. 8, 1860, p. 977.
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