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CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS,
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CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMs.
3| 1300k of ſāig cellantità.
BY
JAMES HANNAY,
Author of “Essays from The Quarterly,” “Singleton Fontenoy, R.N.,”
“Satire and Satirists,” etc.
- EDINBURGH
w I L L I A M P. N I M M O.
1865.
2-
| 2 .." •y ...”
y’ 3
EDINBURGH >
PRINTED BY SCHENCE AND M*FARLANE,
ST JAMES SQUARE.
HB 2 b it at 2 b,
w IT H E S T E E M AND AFFECT | ON,
TO
CHA RL ES WORDS WORTH, D.C.L,
BISHOP OF ST ANDREWS.
× 3 ×
A/3 2/3 6.
0 0 N T E N T S,
—$–
- PAC, IC
PLUTARCH, º * - - º º - l
THACKERAY, . ... • - * e . 42
A LETTER TO AN ADMINISTRATIVE REFormer, e º . 60
PROFESSOR RAMSAY, . e - * * . 70
CAXTONIANA, . - - * e * 7
THE SCOTTISH NEW YEAR’s DAY, g e s . 84
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU, , . º º . 88
A Radical ROMANCE, . * & ſº * . 102
ON SERMONs, . - e e ſº º , 106
LORD EGLINTON, - º e e º . 111
MR EDGAR’s HISTORIES FOR YOUTH, . • e , 116
THE DISAPPoſNTMENTS OF DEMOCRACY, . . . e . 126
THE DELEGATE–AN ECLOGUE, . e e s . 13]
CAPTAIN SPEKE, º e º e • . 133
THE DEVELOPMENT of ENGLISH PoETRY, & & , 137
HOLLAND, 148
DUTCH PRESBYTERIANISM, * º e & . 153
EDUCATION IN HOLLAND, 15S
THE DUTCH CLERGY, 163
GENERAL FEATUREs of DUTCH LIFE, . . * . 168
172
JOHN GEORGE EDGAR,
viii CONTENTS.
FREE CHURCH PRETENSIONs,
CHANGES OF NAME AND SURNAME,
ToM DUNCOMBE,
THALATTA,
Scott ISH CLERICAL EDUCATION,
THE Scot ABROAD,
EPIGRAMs,
LORD AMBERLEY,
THE CoRRESPONDENCE OF LEIGH HUNT,
SPECIMIENs of A NEW DIBDIN,
DR GUTHRIE AS MoDERATOR,
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND,
LoRD BURY,
THE SCOTTISH SUNDAY QUESTION,
THE SNOB ABROAD,
HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE,
SIR RALPH ABERGROMBY,
DR GUTHRIE,
PROFESSOR WILSON, ;
*
PAGE
177
182
187
I93
200
205
213
214
219
229
232
238
272
277
283
287
292
306
310
OHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
PLU TARGH.
(Quarterly Review, October 1861.")
THE appearance of a new version—as in some sort this
is—of the “Lives” of Plutarch, is not only a literary
event, but one of no little historical importance. For
Plutarch is not merely the first of biographers by right of
having produced a great number of biographies of the first
class, but he holds a position unique, peculiar, and entirely
his own, in modern Europe. We have all “naturalised"
the old gentleman, and admitted him to the rights of
citizenship, from the Baltic to the Pillars of Hercules.
He was a Greek, to be sure, and a Greek no doubt he is
still. But as when we think of a Devereux or a Stanley
we call him an Englishman, and not a Norman, so who
* Plutarch's Lives. The Translation called Dryden's, corrected
from the Greek and revised by A. W. Clough, sometime Fellow and
Tutor of Oriel College, Oxford, and late Professor of the English Lan-
guage and Literature at University College, London. In 5 volumes.
1859.
A.
2 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
among the reading public troubles himself to reflect that
Plutarch wrote Attic prose of such or such a quality ?
Scholars know all about it to be sure, as they know that
the turkeys of our farm-yards came originally from Mexico.
Plutarch, however, is not a scholar's author, but is popular
everywhere, as if he were a native. It is as though the
drachmas which he carried in his purse on his travels were
still current coin in the public markets and exchanges.
Now this, we repeat, is a unique phenomenon. There
is no other case of an ancient writer, whether Greek or
Latin, becoming as well known in translations as he was
in the classical world, or as great modern writers are in
the modern one. Neither is there another case of the
world’s accepting, as it does with “Plutarch's Lives,” all
translations with more or less thankfulness. Nor, again,
will another instance be found of an ancient writer’s form-
ing so curious a link between his world of thought and
those who care for nothing else but what he tells them
about or in that world. It is, indeed, wonderful how little
translators have yet achieved for the classical men ; and
this fact might well deserve serious consideration in our
age. Pope’s “Homer’ is, perhaps, our most popular
translation. But is there any other version of an ancient
much read | Some are read, no doubt, as aids to the
study of the originals; and some, like our “Horaces,” for
the pleasure of seeing how far a delicate and difficult task
has been overcome. We have plenty of “cribs,” and we
have a few works of art, of which last the “Aristophanes’
of Mr Frere is (as far as it goes) an unrivalled specimen.
Where, however, is the mere stranger to look for transla-
tions which shall justify to him the tantalising and pro-
PLUTARCH. 3
voking praise he hears on all hands of the antique men
They are not to be found.
We are told by the literary historians that Plutarch was
translated into modern Greek in the fourteenth century;
and a pious archbishop of Heleno-Pontus had, three cen-
turies earlier, expressed a hope of his etermal salvation
conjointly with Plato.” But we do not find him quoted
by our own chroniclers, as the Latin poets and Cicero
sometimes are. His real glory begins with the revival of
letters, when Latin versions of his “Lives” appeared, and
were followed by Greek editions (though not till early in the
sixteenth century) both of the “Lives” and the “Morals.”
Plutarch, however, was destined to be famous through
translations chiefly. The folios of Venice and Florence
would get abroad, no doubt, and obtain their share of
notice from the scholars who were now labouring like
miners in the long-buried cities of antiquity. But the im-
portant day for Plutarch and the modern world was that
on which the eyes of Jacques Amyot, a French churchman,
first fell upon his text. Amyot was born at Melun, of
humble parents, in 1513 (just four years before the ap-
pearance of the editio princeps of the “Lives,” in Greek,
at Florence), and studied at Melun, Paris, and Bourges.
He held a chair in the last-named town, thanks to the
kindness of Margaret, sister of Francis I. ; and some early
versions which he made from the “Lives” induced that
“humane great monarch " to present him to the Abbaye
of Bellozane. He went to Venice, attached to an ambas-
sador, where he had no doubt access to important MSS. of
his favourite author. He was for some time at the Council
~ Fabricius, Bibl. Graec., ed. Harles, v. 156.
4 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
of Trent. He received something from each of several
successive kings of France, and died a bishop, rich and
renowned, in 1583. Such is a brief summary of the career
of a man to whom Plutarch owes his modern fame, and to
whom the modern world owes Plutarch. But Amyot's
literary merits do not even stop here. He was one of the
earliest writers of attractive French prose. He had an
immense influence on Montaigne ; and, what is still more
important, our own countryman, Sir Thomas North, trans-
lated from Amyot's translation, and supplied Shakespeare
with the groundwork of his “Coriolanus,” “Julius Cæsar,”
and “Antony and Cleopatra.” Very few men of letters
have done so much for the world as Jacques Amyot,
Bishop of Auxerre.
Amyot finished the “Lives” before the “Morals,” and
published them in 1559. It was the year that Mary
Stuart's first boy-husband died ; and Montaigne was a
young gentleman of twenty-six. By-and-by the “Morals”
appeared, and made Montaigne an essayist ; so at least he
tells us himself, for Plutarch and Seneca, he says, formed
him, and he preferred Plutarch of the two. “I draw from
them,” are his words, “ like the Danaides, filling and
emptying, sans cesse.” He read no books so much as
Plutarch’s “Lives” and “Morals,” and especially admired
the “Comparisons” in the “Lives,” “the fidelity and sin-
cerity of which equal their profundity and weight.” And
he further expressly tells us that he read them in Amyot,
“to whom I give the palm over all our French writers,
not only for the naïveté and purity of his language, but
for having had the wisdom to select so worthy a book.”
Montaigne had, indeed, some personal acquaintance with
PLUTARCH. 5
Amyot; and it is a fact that he quotes Plutarch no less
than two hundred times. As every essayist traces his
pedigree to Montaigne, what a noble, flourishing tree must
that be esteemed which rooted itself and spread its healthy
green leaves in Chaeronea in the first century !
Amyot's folios were popular, strange as popular folio
sounds to us. The fact is, that this was the first time that
the gentlemen of feudal Europe made the personal acquaint-
ance of the gentlemen of classical Europe. Of course there
had always been a vague traditionary knowledge of the
Roman and Greek heroes. Niebuhr remarks that stories
about them used to be read out of Walerius Maximus to
the German knights as they sat at dinner; and the medi-
aeval chroniclers frequently garnish their descriptions with
allusions to their mighty names. But all was dark and
shadowy about them, and they wore always a quasi-feudal
garb, just as the Virgin Mary was spoken of as “a Princess
of coat-armour” by our countrywoman Dame Juliana
Bermers. In Shakspeare’s “Troilus and Cressida,” with
its “Lord AEneas,” we see the influence of the mediaeval
view of the ancients; but when he writes from Plutarch,
they become different men. It was Amyot that worked
this change, by showing them in their real characters as
described by an ancient in a civilised age.
We must not be surprised then to hear that Amyot's
“Plutarch '' was the favourite reading of Henri Quatre,
nor that De Retz found only among the “men of Plutarch”
parallels to the heroic Montrose. Homme de Plutarque
became indeed a typical description in France, as we name
plants after their discoverers and classifiers. Amyot might
be superseded by Dacier, but Plutarch was still read by
6 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
the generation of Rousseau, who himself sat up till sunrise
over the old Boeotian's page. Later still, whatever varnish
of classicality adorned the heads of the “revolutionary
heroes” seems to have come from the same inexhaustible
Source. We know that this has been urged against the
Plutarchian influence. But the answer is, that without it
the “heroes” would have been still more brutal and vul-
gar than some of them were. The “Gracchus.’” and
“Hampden º’ of our own Sunday papers are very unlike
the children of Cornelia or the landholder of Bucks; they
bear the names with much the same appropriateness that
negroes do those of Caesar and Pompey. It would, how-
ever, be too extravagant, we venture to think, to decline
studying on that account the historians of the Roman
Republic or the English Civil War.
Amyot's folios, we say, were popular; and in time it
occurred to an Elizabethan knight, Sir Thomas North, to
translate them. Sir Thomas was a collateral ancestor of
the Guildford family, being a younger son of Edward, the
first Lord North, and studied at Lincoln's Inn in the
reign of Philip and Mary. But this is nearly all we know
of his personal history. In a late edition of his “Plutarch's
Lives,” dedicating afresh to Queen Elizabeth, he speaks of
“the princely bounties of your blessed hand . . . . .com-
forting and supporting my poor old decaying life”—which
looks as if he had not prospered in the world. He made
no secret of the source of his translation of the “Lives,”
which he first published in 1579, for his title-page runs
thus:– “The Lives of the noble Grecians and Romains,
compared together by that grave, learned philosopher and
historiographer, Plutarch of Chaeronea ; translated out of
PLUTARCH. 7
Greeke into French by James Amiot, Abbot of Bellozane,
Bishop of Auxerre; . . . . and out of French into English
by Sir Thomas North, Knight.” This was homest in Sir
Thomas, and is also a sign how highly esteemed Amyot's
work had become within twenty years from its publication.
He laid the book at the feet of Queen Elizabeth in an
epistle breathing all the high-flown and stately loyalty of
the day. Some expressions of his testify that he knew
the value of biography, that he looked on it as an art pre-
serving the record of great men's lives, in order that such
record may help to produce other great men.
North’s “Plutarch” was successful in England, as
Amyot's had been in France; and this though (as Mr
Payne Collier remarks) each copy sold for more than
five pounds of our money. The first edition, we have
said, appeared in 1579 ; and editions are known of 1595,
1612, and 1631. Who can estimate the influence of
such a book on the education of the leading men of the
kingdom in those gallant old ages' or guess how often
the growing young cavaliers of the country turned over
its venerable pages in the big bay-windows of English
country-houses during the warm summer afternoons !
The heroes were pagans to be sure, not equal in type to
Christian chivalry, “tender and true,” of the northern
lands. But in valour, in patriotism, in noble manliness
of intellect, in a deep sense of the value of friendship,
“Plutarch’s men” were not unworthy the cordial study
of the descendants of the Crusaders; and besides, such
study widened the views of our ancestors, and enlarged
their knowledge of politics and society. Other classical
authors taught the principles of antiquity; Plutarch
8 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
showed the persons. Perhaps it is not too much to say,
that he has done more than any one writer to create that
sort of personal affection for the best men of the antique
world which has always been so common among people of
good culture. s
Though we cannot expect to enjoy North’s “Plutarch” as
it was enjoyed in his own time, we cannot open it without
perfectly understanding why it was esteemed and liked;
and there are men even now who use it in preference to
modern translations. Of course, its style is stiff and what
we commonly call quaint, with an odd familiar homeliness
running through, now its stateliness, and now its pathos.
But there is great directness of picturesque force some-
times; and we find not a few touches of that naïveté which
our French neighbours have so long agreed to assign to
Amyot. We might quote the death of Demosthenes, the
interview between Augustus and Cleopatra, the last hours
of Cicero, as good specimens of North's manner. But a
briefer passage shall introduce the worthy old Knight to
a generation which has forgotten him. It is from the
“Pericles,” and describes how the cultivated fortitude of
the refined Athenian statesman at last broke down as he
stood beside the corpse of his beloved son —
“Moreover he lost at that time by the plague the more part
of his friends and kinsfolkes, and those specially that did him
the greatest pleasure in governing of the State. But all this
did never put down his countenance, nor anything abate the
greatnesse of his mind, what misfortune soever he had sustained.
Neither saw they him weep at any time, nor mourne at the
funerals of any of his kinsmen or friends, but at the death of
Paralus, his youngest and lawfull begotten Sonne : for the loss
PLUTARCH. 9
of him alone did onely melt his heart. But as he would have
put a garland of flowers upon his head, sorrow did so pierce his
heart when he saw his face, that then he burst out in teares and
cried amaine: which they never saw him do before all the days
of his life.”
There is something very affecting in the forcible simpli-
city of the last sentence. Sometimes this same simplicity
has a comic effect ; as when Amyot telling that Cicero
was “fort maigre,” North renders it “dog-lean ; ” or when
he narrates that Clodius “had a sight of rascals and knaves
with him.” His use, too, of modern equivalents for the
ancient distinctions of rank has a strange look. Plutarch
mentions that Cicero's mother was of good birth, råv učy
wnrágo. . . . ysyovávez. zoºg, on which Amyot describes her
as of noble family, and North as “a Gentelewoman born.”
Historians of the language might pick a good deal illus-
trative of its progress out of this translation.
But we must come to what gives, after all, the greatest
hold on posterity to Sir Thomas North, the relation
between him and Shakspeare. There is now no doubt of
the fact, which Farmer and Warton in the last century
helped to make certain and known, which Mr Knight in
our own times judiciously turned to account in his edition,
that to North’s “Plutarch "we owe Shakspeare's Roman
plays. Just as we have taken ships from the French, and
used them as models in our dockyards, so we took
“Plutarch’s Lives” from them, and used them to enrich
our Drama It is one of the most curious chapters in our
literary history.
The dates of these Plays, as everybody knows, are
uncertain, though there seems no doubt that they belong
10 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
to the later period of the great poet’s life. But that
Shakspeare employed the “Plutarch” of North, the reader
shall here see for himself. We transcribe for his perusal
a certain portion of North’s “Antony,” which we have
also compared with the corresponding portion of Amyot,
whom he closely follows. Let the reader then imagine
Shakspeare reading the following passages in his folio
North (perhaps, as Mr Collier suggests, the edition of
1595)—if his veneration will allow him to look over the
shoulders of such a man :— •
“Therefore when she [Cleopatra] was sent unto by diverse
letters both from Antonius himself and also from...his friends,
she made so light of it, and mocked Antonius so much, that
she disdained to set forward otherwise but to take her barge in
the river of Cydnus, the poope whereof was of gold, the sailes of
purple, and the oars of silver, which kept stroke in rowing after
the sound of the music of flutes, hordboyes, cithermes, vials, and
such other instruments as they played upon in the barge. And
now for the person of her selfe—she was laid under a pavilion
of cloth of gold of tissue, apparelled and attired like the god-
desse Venus commonly drawne in pictures; and hard by her
on either hand of her, pretie, fair boyes apparelled as Painters
do set foorth god Cupid, with little fans in their hands, with
which they they fanned wind upon her. Her Ladies and
Gentlewomen, also the fairest of them, were apparelled like the
Nymphes Nereides (which are the Myrmaides of the waters),
and like the Graces; some stearing the helme, others tending
the tackle and ropes of the barge, out of which there came a
wonderful passing sweete savour of perfumes that perfumed
the wharfe's side, pestered with innumerable multitudes of
people. Some of them followed the barge all along the river
side, others also ran out of the citie to see her coming in. So
that, in the end, there ranne such multitudes of people one
BLUTARCH. 11
after another to see her, that Antonius was left quite alone in
the market-place, in his Imperial seat, to give audience; and
there went a rumour in the people's mouthe that the goddesse
Venus was come to play with the god Bacchus for the general
good of all Asia.”
This description, which, by the way, is a good deal
expanded from the conciseness of the Greek, is surely a
very striking one, and could not but make an impression
on Shakspeare's imagination. Now turn to “Antony and
Cleopatra,” Act ii, Scene 2, and see how he glorifies it
with poetry and music, and yet how substantially he
adheres to his author:— -
“ENOBARBUs.
“The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver;
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water, which they beat, to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description : she did lie
In her pavilion (cloth of gold of tissue),
O'er-picturing that Venus, where we see
The fancy outwork mature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did. # * ,
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her f' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
12 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned in the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air.”
A curious little detail of proof, were such needed, that
North suggested to Shakspeare this delicious painting, is
supplied by the poet's mention of “mermaids.” Of these
Gothic personages the Greek of course knew and said
nothing; the modern translators added them to show
what the Nereides were. Dryden in his “All for Love”
made an unlucky attempt to improve on this same ancient
picture ; and Mr Tennyson’s Cleopatra in the “Dream
of Fair Women” is still the Cleopatra of Plutarch. Three
of our greatest poets, imitating while depicting her, have
thrown that pearl into their poetic wine.
In “Antony and Cleopatra.” Shakspeare has followed
Plutarch more exactly (Mr Hallam thought too exactly)
than in the other Roman plays. But whole speeches in
“Coriolanus” are directly rendered from North's prose.
What, however, is more important is, that the characters
are Plutarch’s men, how handled we need not say, but still
taken from the old biographer, whose biographical instinct
(as we shall presently see) was poetic genius in its way.
Hence that air of classicism, of genuine antiquity, breath-
ing through these plays, and distinguishing them indefin-
ably, though really, from “Troilus and Cressida.” There
the material was chivalrous fiction ; and Nestor and Lord
PLUTARCH. 13
AEneas defy each other to prove their mistresses worthy
the “splinter of a lance.”
We may safely assume that North’s was the “Plutarch”
of such men as Falkland, Clarendon, and Sydney, whether
they could read him with pleasure in the original or not ;
and that it did no little to form the peculiar classical party
which was one element in the Long Parliament. But as
the literary school of the Restoration formed itself, and as
our prose grew modern, familiar, and more colloquial,
North’s “Plutarch” went out of fashion. We find editions
mentioned in 1657 and 1676; but, a few years afterwards,
old Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, thinking that the time
had come for a new translation, began his arrangements
for one, and announced its approach under the presidency
of the great name of Dryden. He had obtained, he said,
the assistance of “persons equal to the enterprise, and not
only critics in the tongues, but men of known fame and
abilities for style and ornament.” This, we suspect, was a
side-blow at the memory of the worthy Sir Thomas North,
Knight, as a “dry, old-fashioned wit,” a sentence passed
upon CHAUCER in that period by the ingenious Mr
Cowley ! The literary fashion then was to sneer at the
elder writers of the country much as Horace did at
Plautus; and the age, pluming itself on many things,
especially plumed itself on being “polite.” “Polite
Letters,” that was the phrase of our ancestors about this
time for what we call light literature. -
The great Dryden having hoisted his banner, men were
not wanting to serve under it. “His reputation,” says
Johnson, “was such, that his name was thought necessary
to every poetical or literary performance.” There worked
14 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
under the protection of it now several writers whom the
world still remembers, including a few whom it still
honours. Somers undertook the “Life of Alcibiades,” and
Evelyn of “Alexander;” “Otho' was translated by Garth;
“Solon” and “Pelopidas” by Creech; Charles Boyle, after-
wards the unlucky antagonist of Bentley, did “Lysander.”
The list further comprises the names of Rycaut and Rymer,
Dr Stephen Waller (the poet's fourth son and executor),
and Dr Smalridge. But of the others, though Duke has a
page or two in Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets,” all memory
has, generally speaking, vanished. One name, indeed, has
provoked some speculation in the journals of the day since
Mr Clough's new edition appeared. Mr Clough, in his
Appendix to volume fifth, ascribes the “Life of Cicero”
to “Thomas Fuller, D.D.” Can this have been, a con-
temporary has asked, the celebrated wit and scholar " '
There need be no mystery on the subject, for the real
name of the translator was “Samuel Fuller, D.D,” as a
reference to the original edition will show. He was evi-
dently the Dr Samuel Fuller of whom there is still extant
“A Sermon preached before the King, June 25th, 1682,”
and the error is one of those not easy to avoid in produc-
ing five considerable octavos. -
The first volume of Dryden’s “Plutarch” appeared in
1683, and the work was completed in 1686. But what
Dryden did towards the heavy part of the labour, was
little more than a potentate does now-a-days when he turns
up the first sod of a new railway. He left to the young
Templars and wits about town, the university-men and
physicians of literary taste, who made up his corps, the
task of translation, and himself achieved only the Epistle-
PLUTARCH. 15
Dedicatory to the Duke of Ormond and the Life of the
old biographer. Indeed, while preparing these for the
first volume, he was immersed in controversy, political and
personal, deep in the muddy sea of agitation of Charles
II.’s latter years ; and, no doubt, only regarded his
“Plutarch' as task-work to be executed for so much
money. -
But, whatever Dryden did, he did with some at least of
the characteristics of real power. On the copper coinage,
as on the gold coinage of his brain, there is still the head
of a king. The Dedication and Life are truly Drydenian ;
hasty, but full of easy, rapid, and careless vigour. In the
first, he besprinkles the great Tory chief of the Butlers
from a perfect fountain of delicious flattery. In the second,
he shows a real insight into Plutarch's character, which in
its kindliness and humanity was akin to his own. “There
is an air of goodness about him,” says Dryden; and makes
many acute remarks on biography, which were not so easy
to make then as now.
The translation itself has a certain piebald look, the
result of its being dome by so many “hands” (to use the
established term); is less poetical than North's, and is
studded with the colloquialisms, and sometimes even slang
expressions, of Charles T.I.'s time. Probably, too, the
Langhornes were right, when it came to their turn, in
doubting whether all the translators translated from the
original, and in impugning the accuracy of many parts of
their work. We shall have to praise our new editor, Mr
Clough, a little further on, for the careful winnowing, the
thorough washing, if we may so speak, which he has be-
stowed upon it. But still the book is modern English,
16 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
and has a certain ease and flow, which it would be absurd
to seek in that of the Elizabethan knight, whose fashion
of writing has for ever passed away. One might prefer
the older version, but it would not the less be impossible
to adopt it, even as the basis of a version for general use
in our time. The Drydenian “Plutarch,” meanwhile, with
less picturesqueness and pathos than North's, is free from the
conventional, artificial tone of the Langhorne “Plutarch.”
With all its faults, coarseness included, it has the manly
freedom and some of the careless graces of that loose-talk-
ing, wine-bibbing generation.
Dryden’s “Plutarch” now took its turn of popularity,
and became the standing English “Plutarch” for nearly a
century. There was a second edition in 1716, from old
Jacob's shop, the “Shakspeare's Head ;” and another
(touched up with the help of Dacier's new French version,
according to the Langhornes) in 1727, which was again
supplanted by a third, in 1758. These facts surely indicate
a great interest in this writer, whose influence must thus
have sunk very generally into the English mind. But in
truth, our éountrymen appear to have never tired of him,
for the same prosperity attended the labours of the brothers
Langhorne, whose “Plutarch,” published in 1770, ran
through edition after edition ; latterly, under the editorial
care of the accomplished Archdeacon , , "angham. Lang-
hornes’ “Plutarch” we may safely p, où-ce to have been
an article of furniture in every decent British household,
these three generations back. The brothers, John and
William Langhorne, have long been forgotten in any other
association, though John passed for a poet in his day, when
that title was more readily conceded than it is now.
PLUTARCH. 17
A sentiment of gratitude, mixing itself up with boyish
recollections, will prevent most of us from doing any in-
justice to the Langhornes, whose book has no doubt often
been the first classical book read from real spontaneous
curiosity and interest. Mr Clough, we think, goes too far
in summarily characterising it as “dull and heavy.” But
it was quite time, nevertheless, that it should be super-
seded by something better. Besides requiring much cor-
rection in particular passages, it is certainly not written in
a good style, and we assent to the new editor when he pro-
nounces it “inferior in liveliness” to its predecessor.
What an irreverent critic has called a “priggish” look
marks it; an air of the lecture-room, less suited to the
genial nature of Plutarch himself, than the rival air of the
coffee-house. To show how the picturesque element is apt
to disappear under such treatment, let us once more turn
to the memorable Cleopatra chapter in the “Antony.” This
is what the Langhornes made of the scene on the Cydnus:—
“Though she had received many pressing letters of invita-
tion from Antony and his friends, she held him in such con-
tempt, that she by no means took the most expeditious method
of travelling. She sailed down the river Cydnus in a most
magnificent galley. The stern was covered with gold, the sails
were of purple, and the oars were silver. These in their motions
kept time to the music of flutes, pipes, and harps. The queen,
in the dress and character of Venus, lay under a canopy em-
broidered with gold of the most exquisite workmanship; while
boys, like painted Cupids, stood fanning her on each side of the
sofa. Her maids were of the most distinguished beauty, and,
habited like Nereids and Graces, assisted in the steerage and
management of this vessel. The fragrance of burning incense
was diffused along the shores, which were covered with multi-
IB
18 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
tudes of people. Some followed the procession, and such
numbers went down from the city to see it, that Antony was
at last left alone on the tribunal. A rumour was soon spread,
that Venus was come to feast with Bacchus for the benefit of
Asia.”
What a contrast, this description, with its roundabout
amplifications and “genteel” conventional phraseology, to
that of the quaint, forcible, pictorial Sir Thomas North
All the oriental splendour is tamed and toned down into
the effeminate glitter of a modern drawing-room in a novel.
It really reads like an account of the expedition from the
reporter of a fashionable newspaper.
In spite, then, of the undoubted merits of the Langhorne
version, a livelier and more accurate one has long been a
desideratum.” But how was the want to be supplied ?
Mr Clough, we may suppose, felt that the labour of a
translation entirely new was uncalled for, so long as any
existing one supplied the materials of a better and more
graceful edifice. So he sought and found these in the
Drydenian version, of which our opinion has been already
given. But any reader who chooses to compare the ori-
ginal form of that version with that which it bears in the
work before us, will see that Mr Clough's has been no
trifling labour. He has rebuilt it, so to speak, and with a
constant eye to the edifice of the Greek architect of which
* Mr George Long published in 1848 a new translation of thirteen
of the Roman Lives of Plutarch, selected for their bearing on the later
history of the Republic. A detailed notice of these does not fall within
our plan; but we gladly testify to the point and spirit which mark
them, in common with all the writings of this scholar. Some of the
notes are especially curious and suggestive; see particularly those on
the Brutus.
PLUTARCH. 19
it is a copy, cleaning here, restoring there, and touching
up everywhere. He has improved the “Alcibiades” of
Somers, though the style of Somers was praised in its day
by Addison. He has chastened down the exuberant
joyeuseté (to borrow a favourite word from the patriarch
Amyot) of the Restoration without sacrificing flow or ease.
He has, throughout, employed the best recent texts, to
secure the exactness of meaning dear to scholarship. And
he does not the less deserve to have such labours recog-
mised, because they are labours of a kind which would
appear exceedingly distasteful to many men (if many such
there were) who had given proofs so decided, as Mr Clough
has, of the possession of original literary genius.
Let us now, however, turn our attention to Plutarch
himself. What is known of his personal history is known
from incidental notices of himself and his affairs, scattered
up and down the voluminous and miscellaneous writings
which constitute what are called his Moral Works. These
notices have been picked out, like grains of gold, from the
mass by many scholars—from Rualdus to Donaldson. He
was of a good old family in Chaeronea; a family not only
respectable in local rank, but marked by a turn for letters
and philosophy. The year when he first drew breath in
the moist Boeotian air is uncertain. But it must have
been from A.D. 40 to A.D. 50, for he was a student of
philosophy in A.D. 66, when Nero was in Greece, and he
talks in the “Antony” of that emperor's having lived in
his time. He visited Egypt, he visited Italy, residing for
Some time and lecturing at Rome. He settled finally at
his birthplace, where he spent his old age in literature,
philosophy, and the discharge of local duties as archon
20 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
and priest of Apollo. He lived as long as to A.D. 106,
the eighth year of the reign of Trajan, but how much
longer is uncertain. He was married happily to a wife of
the name of Timoxena, and had several sons who attained
manhood and left descendants. On the whole, then, we
know more about Plutarch's personal history and circum-
stances than we do about those of his most famous contem-
poraries in literature, such as Martial, Juvenal, Quintilian,
and Suetonius. Excepting the younger Pliny, indeed, there
is no man of letters who flourished during Plutarch's long
life, so familiarly known to us, the great Tacitus himself
the sovereign of them all in genius included.
For the truth is, that though the mere facts which we
learn about our biographer are few, they are suggestive
facts; while the setting in which we find them, the way in
which they are told us, give us really important informa-
tion about his character and disposition. There was a
dash of our modern Pepyses and Boswells about Plutarch,
a good-natured egotism and turn for gossip and anecdote.
He likes to bring in a story told him by his grandfather
Lamprias, or a piece of advice given him by his father, or
an adventure of his own ; a tendency which helped him
no doubt to the friendship of Montaigne. He left on
record a letter of consolation to his wife on the death of
their daughter, little Timoxena, and a very charming and
tender letter it is. He tells the world not only that he
lived at Chaeronea, but why, because he did not wish his
own small birthplace to become smaller, “even by one in-
habitant.” So too as to the fact of his discharging the office.
of local magistrate. He dares say people laugh when they
see him busy about its details; but these must not be
PLUTARCH. 21
sneered at, says he, if useful to the commonwealth. He
had, in fact, all the local, hereditary, family, and personal
instincts very strong. He clearly also had a sweet and
cheerful temper, eminently social and domestic. He
must have been a notable talker ; and probably did not
object to a sober cup of wine. Accordingly he much
loved the dialogue as a literary form ; and he was so
inveterate a collector of table-talk, apophthegms, and ama,
that many of the stories and sayings of heroes which he
gives in the “Lives” had previously done service, and are
met with in his other works. It is impossible not to
picture him to oneself crowned with a festal garland, and
telling these to his friends, say on Plato's birthday for
instance, which he always kept as a day at Once sacred and
joyful. He was abundantly learned in philosophy, of course;
but above all, he was rich in the philosophic temper; and
had that quick and wide sympathy with all things human
which is the right basis of character for a true biographer.
Without that, he would never have succeeded equally well
in drawing Antony and Coriolanus, the brilliant Athenian
Alcibiades, and the shrewd Roman of the old School, the
first Cato.
This unabated cheerfulness of Plutarch, in such an age,
is a very noteworthy phenomenon. For we are to re-
member that he was old enough to know, and even to see,
the abominable life of Rome during the worst part of the
first century. He was a student under Nero ; seems to
have been in Rome itself under Domitian ; and was
certainly contemporary, during the freshest part of his
life, with that splendid, ghastly, sinful society, of which
the Roman writers have left a picture so brilliant and
22 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
so terrible. The martyrdom of the Stoic philosophers;
the exile and murder of the brave and wise ; the bloody
spectacles of the Circus, with its shivering wretches
flung in among wild beasts; the prosperous scoundrels of
servile birth carried by in their rich litters; the imperial
harlots drawn by silver-shod mules; all such things as
these were to Plutarch what to our generation were the
Reform Bill, the first appearance of Mr Thackeray's novels,
or the opening of the new Italian Opera in Covent Garden.
All that darkened the soul of Tacitus and maddened the
heart of Juvenal presented itself to the young Chaeronean
on his first Italian tour. And then too he was a Greek, a
native of that rich old Boeotia which, let the Attic wits
laugh as they pleased, had produced Pindar and Epami-
mondas, but where now the meanest tool of the Roman
despot was more potent than the descendant of native
heroes and gods. He was a man of letters and a philo-
sopher also ; and in these capacities were there not some
additional miseries for him 'ſ Was there not the pain of
witnessing the degradation of such of his own countrymen,
and they were many, as profaned those titles, aretalogi,
diners-out, buffoons, legacy-hunters, parasites, who lived
on the corruption of the city's luxury like the baser fish of
the Tiber 1 Was there not too the hack jeer of the
upstarts of the time at all Greeks as “Greeklings, and
all philosophers as babblers, to be borne? Yet Plutarch
lived through whatever of public or private wickedness
and wretchedness he saw, with unspoiled temper, and the
absense of any deep tinge of melancholy from his writings
makes itself markedly felt. He lived as completely under
the influence of books as the younger Pliny, and was for
PLUTARCH. 23
ever thinking of the Past, without being made miserable
by the contrasts which it forced upon him. Indeed, in
his “Political Precepts,” he indulges in a dry little laugh
at those among his Greek contemporaries who kept
harping on old Greek glories which they could never
imitate. He wishes that they would try to renew some
of the better qualities of the ancients, their moderation
and self-denial, for instance, but thinks that Marathom
and Plataea may at this time of day be left to the schools
of the Sophists. The passage is worth remembering,”
since one charge against Plutarch has been an undue
and mistaken admiration of antiquity to the exclusion of
all sense of the difference of conditions between different
ages.f
Mr Clough has some observations, in his Preface, on
Plutarch's relation to the bad imperial reigns, which the
reader will find especially interesting at this particular
point which we have reached:—
“It may be said, too, perhaps not untruly, that the Latin,
the metropolitan writers less faithfully represent the general
spirit and character of the times, than what came from the pen
of a simple Boeotian provincial, writing in a more universal
language, and unwarped by the strong local reminiscences of
the old home of the Senate and the Republic. Tacitus and
Juvenal have more, perhaps, of the “antique Roman” than of
the citizen of the great Mediterranean Empire. The evils of
the imperial government, as felt in the capital city, are depicted
in the Roman prose and verse more vividly and more vehe-
* See it in the IIoxtrix& IIzazyyáAgora, Op., ed. Reiske, ix., 243.
+ Lord Macaulay pushes this too far in his Essay (not reprinted) on
“History” (Edinburgh Review, 1828).
24 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
mently than suits a general representation of the state of the
imperial world, even under the rule of Domitian himself.”
With Plutarch’s philosophy, as a system, we are not
particularly concerned on this occasion. He takes his
proper place among the Neo-Platonists, and has been de-
fined as “a Platonist tinctured with Orientalism.”* But
it does behove us to know that, though philosophy did
not give him his genius for biography, it gave him the
motive for applying it, and that there is much in his philo-
sophy which is noble and wise. He believed with all his
heart, and it was a warm heart, in the Divine government
of the world, in Providence, and Immortality. He believed
most fervently that, in the long run, Good triumphed in
the universe ; and that, relying on so mighty a truth, a
man ought ever to be ready to bear all and lose all for the
sake of what his conscience and knowledge taught him to
be right. Here, then, are the moral bases of Plutarch as
a historian of the doings of men. That he knew anything
of Christianity there is no evidence, but he preached the
best principles accessible to human reason before Chris-
tianity was revealed. He rejected the more superstitious
parts of his own faith, and detested the foreign additions
which made it worse; and, if he officiated as a priest of
Apollo, we know that he would do this in no blind, gro-
velling way. He loved Grecian traditions too well not to
respect the old ceremonies of Grecian worship, and these
would symbolise to him the higher ideas which his philo-
sophy taught him, besides serving him as means for keep-
ing alive in the people that reverence for the Unseen and
Eternal without which man is meaner than the brutes.
* Donaldson’s “History of Greek Literature,” iii., 178-182.
PLUTARCH. 25
No generous reader but will think kindly of the old philo-
sopher, the child of an age of buffoons and revellers, when
he pictures him far away from the hum and splendour of
Rome, going through the ancient rites of the temple at
Delphi, in the rocky and secluded valley which still thrills
the traveller with its loneliness.” Without a kindly heart
for such things, would he ever have represented so well to
us the older Greek life at all !
There is no doubt, we repeat, that it was a philosophical
motive which first set Plutarch writing “Lives.” “I began
them,” he says more suo, “for the benefit of others, and
continue them for my own” (Tºmoleon). “I am not writ-
ing histories,” he tells us in a more famous passage, “but
Lives.” He meant, in fact, to exhibit the great men of
the old times and preach upon them : to point a moral
upon their virtues or their shortcomings for the benefit of
well-meaning people generally. He had no literary object
in view, strictly speaking, but one which he thought much
higher. The philosophical schools of antiquity did not
esteem literature, as such, so greatly as some may think.
In the opening of his “Pericles,” Plutarch lets us see
very clearly his feeling on the point. He observes there
that—
“No generous or ingenuous young man ‘would' feel in-
duced by his pleasure in their poems to wish to be an Ana-
creon, or Philetas, or Archilochus. For it does not necessarily
follow,” he proceeds, “that if a piece of work please for its
gracefulness, therefore he that wrought it deserves our admira-
tion. . . . . But virtue, by the bare statement of its actions,
can so affect men's minds as to create at once both admiration
* I visited Delphi, the modern Castri, in 1844, when a midshipman
of H.M.S. Orestes.
26 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
of the things done and desire to imitate them. . . . . And so,
we have thought fit to spend our time and pains in writing of
the lives of famous persons” (Clough, i., 320).
In order to do justice to our biographer, then, we must
always remember that this was his point of view, and that
he would have esteemed criticism of his mere execution a
very secondary matter. We must remember, also, that the
writing his “Lives” in parallels was an essential part of his
moral plan, and that the ancients, in quoting him, quoted
the parallels and not the single Lives: talking of Plutarch's
“Pelopidas and Marcellus,” Plutarch’s “Aristides and Cato”
(each of which made a book), and so with the rest. Obvi-
ously, when there were two persons to compare, a moral
could be twice as well pointed and enforced,—not to men-
tion that the opportunity was excellent of reviving the
glory of the old Greeks by placing them on an equality
with the men whose race still governed the world in the
writer's time. Again, the classifying and coupling men
in this way, implied a previous conception of the character
common to both : the conception of an idea or whole as
material for each “book,” to form which was evidently a
philosopher's task. Hence the unity of Plutarch's great
work, one of its chief titles to immortality. Every hero
is at once measured by a moral standard and put in rela-
tion with some other hero. Over the whole performance a
planning, creating spirit moves and breathes. Every Life
helps you to understand and appreciate every other Life ;
each Greek is a Greek, and each Roman a Roman, but
both are more perfectly understood by the opposition.
The value of this use of parallelism, which Plutarch has
contrived to identify with his name, extends over many.
PLUTARCH. 27
fields of intellectual inquiry, and might, we think, be bene-
ficially employed still.
We cannot indeed assert that equal judgment is shown
by Plutarch in all his selections of men for comparison.
Sometimes he chooses a pair for their resemblance of cha-
racter, and sometimes rather for a similarity in their des-
tinies. Thus he joins Pelopidas and Marcellus because
they were “both great men who fell by their own rash-
ness”—the common quality of these warriors. But surely
his motive for coupling Alcibiades and Coriolanus was
only that both quarrelled with their own States, since they
were quite unlike in disposition, and belonged to totally
different kinds of life and civilisation. Caesar and Alex-
ander came naturally together to him, each being a con-
queror representing also the cultivated intellect and ripe
or over-ripe development of his time. Demosthenes and
Cicero met by an irresistible affinity, in endowments, posi-
tion, and fate, for his purposes. But if he was not always so
happy, we must remember the difficulty of his task, seeing
that, besides the infinite variety of human character, every
man is more or less at the mercy of the conditions under
which he finds himself placed. All things considered, his
comparative unacquaintance with things Roman included,
we are rather surprised that Plutarch has done so wonder-
fully well. How happily the austere virtue of Aristides
sets off that of Cato the Elder . How well Phocion and
the younger Cato, the two ungenially virtuous men of
decadent ages, both sarcastic reformers, and both failing in
their reforms, suit each other
Of course we must say something here of the ancient
charge against Plutarch, that in working out these parallels
28 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
he is unduly favourable to his countrymen. Who can help
liking his own people better than those of another country'ſ
But try Plutarch fairly. Compare his treatment of the
Romans with that of the English by the French, or the
French by the English writers, nay, with that of a Tory hero
by a Whig historian, and vice vers& / Consider the circum-
stances under which his judgments had to be delivered,
subject as he was to any proconsul or procurator appointed
by a Roman emperor We are pretty confident that from
such a thorough-going examination Plutarch would emerge
not only an honest but a generous man. In his “Comparison
of Fabius with Pericles,” he says, “No action of Pericles
can be compared to that memorable rescue of Minucius.”
In “Demosthenes and Cicero,” he gives Cicero the pre-
ference in almost every point of character, except where he
rebukes his vanity. In “Lysander and Sylla” he frankly
pronounces the achievements of Sylla “beyond compare.”
He condemns the private life of Alcibiades, yet is not
harsh in his narrative of that of Antony. And when he
“Sums up” between Cimon and Lucullus, he even goes so
far as to say that if Cimon had lived to retire into an easy
old age, he might have been luxurious and self-indulgent,
too !
Has he not, we would now ask, been hardly dealt with
in the matter of his authority as an historian'ſ Critics
have handled him very roughly on this score. They say
that he contradicts himself sometimes; that he is too fond
of a good story (Mitford's standing objection); that his
military narratives are incorrect or imperfect; that he is
not, in short, a severe, elaborate, and perfectly trustworthy
historical writer. Now, considering that he has left fifty
PLUTARCH. 29
biographies,” ranging over the events of some thirteen
hundred years, from Theseus downwards, it would indeed
be madness to expect from him unvarying accuracy of de-
tail. Nor did he ever intend to be an original historian,
like his contemporary Tacitus, to be a fountain of authority,
that is, to succeeding ages. He assumes that you know
the general facts, and only aspires to show you the men, in
his capacity of a didactic and moralising biographer. He
draws you the figures and actions of history, as it were,
in the Bayeux tapestry, with running titles more copious
and instructive than those of that old work of art, but he
does not pretend to supersede the chroniclers. These
are his portraits with his remarks; are they like 2 We
take it that that is the question for the critic of Plutarch.
He is vague in his accounts of Sertorius's campaigns.
Very true. But does he not, in spite of this, delineate the
man Sertorius faithfully He repeats some dubious
anecdotes of Pericles; yet, may we not suppose that Peri-
cles was much such a person as he, on the whole, would
have us think him to be! Observe, too, that there is
never a trace of malignity perceptible in Plutarch, what-
ever anecdotes he may be telling. If he errs, it is from
over-fondness for stories. He knew that stories illustrated
character, and did not, perhaps, always sufficiently remem-
ber that no stories at all about a man would be better than
* Forty-six arranged in parallels, and four (Artaa!eraces, Aratus,
Galba, Otho) which stand by themselves, and did not originally belong
to this collection. Several parallel lines are lost, of which Epami-
nondas and Scipio the Younger must be deeply regretted. Eight
“Comparisons” are missing, and the order in which the lives now
stand is not the original one.
30 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
inexact ones. Yet he constantly shows his honesty of in-
tention by qualifying them with “as Hermippus says,” or,
“so Theopompus reports,” etc. And this way he has of
making a confidant of the reader helps to cement his fami-
liarity with one. We get to know, and even to relish his
weak points, just as we are rather amused than bored by
the occasional digressions on physics and such subjects,
which he winds up so naïvely with, “but enough of this,”
or, “this, however, rather belongs to another occasion "
The fact is, that he wrote the “Lives” in his latter years,
under the mild sway of Trajan, and that he must be ex-
cused for occasional garrulity. It was a Greek weakness
from which not even philosophers were exempt.
But we must not suppose that the “Lives” are without
historical value apart from their biographical charm. Do
we ever meet a modern work on Greece or Rome for some
part of which Plutarch is not a leading authority ? If, as
Byron says, -
“Mitford in the nineteenth century,
Gives, with Greek truth, the good old Greek the lie,”
—does not his frequent reference to him betray his sense
of his importance " We encounter his name in the foot-
notes of the lucid page of Grote, and Bishop Thirlwall
says that he is always entitled to attention. His reading
is admitted by all men, Niebuhr included though his tone
is patronising, to have been immense. Parts of “Antony,”
one of his best biographies, are indispensable to Roman
history. He uses and he quotes many a work which sunk
long ago under the waves of time, the Memoirs of Sylla,
and Augustus, and Dellius (our old friend “moriture
PLUTARCH. 31
Delli’) included, for, as Heeren remarks in his valuable
treatise,” he seems always to have used autobiographical
works when he had an opportunity. Now, if being, as he
admits, no first-rate Latin scholar, he still refers to so
many Latin authors as we find him citing, what may we
not suppose to have been his general information ? Un-
doubtedly we are not always in a position to test him.
But in some cases we are. We have, for example, as
abundant material for judging Cicero's real character as
that of any great historical personage. Now, we are
among those who think with respect and kindness of that
great man ; and we should be quite content to accept,
generally and substantially, Plutarch's account of his career
and disposition.
Suppose, however, that we now turn to that feature of
Plutarch which admits of less controversy, to which he
owes his peculiar moral value and wide-spread European
fame, to his genius as a biographer. There he reigns
supreme. A certain eye for the seizure and presentation
in a “Life” of a great personality was to him what dramatic
genius was to Shakspeare, or the faculty for telling a story
to Livy. It was an instinct, working in him all his days,
and finding him incessant employment in his old age. He
fancied, the good man, that he was only a philosophical
teacher, helping the new generation to be good boys. In
reality he was as much a genius and an artist as any of
his countrymen who helped to build or adorn the Par-
thenon. Perhaps he was in great measure unconscious of
this ; and so much the better.
All genius, of course, rests on a moral basis, and is
* De Fontibus et Auctoritate Wit. Par. Plutan'chi. Göttingen, 1820.
32 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
mixed up, for good or evil, with the personal character.
In Plutarch's case, a heartfelt reverence for the great and
the good was blended with a human sympathy which
made him long to know great and good men familiarly,
long to be able to connect that which was transcendant and
heroic in them with that which they shared with every-
day mankind. Here was Plutarch’s object, not to recog-
mise nobleness only, which all healthy, clear-sighted minds
do, not to gather personal and private details only, which
the tattler and gossip do after their kind; no, but to seize
the relation between them | He wanted to make the little
things about a hero throw light on the great things about
him. He yearned to know him in his entirety. Why he
should have been able to achieve the result he arrived at
in literature is Nature’s secret, very jealously kept. But
this was his ideal; and this constitutes his originality.
There are biographers who deal with the hero, and bio-
graphers who deal with the man. But Plutarch is the
representative of ideal biography, for he delineates both
in one. Even if a writer should appear who did the work
better, he could not improve on the thought, which ought
to secure Plutarch a place among the creative spirits of the
world. It is no exaggeration to say, that his faculty was
Shakspearian inf kind if not in degree; and when Shak-
speare went, as we have seen, to the old Greek for material,
he did not only find marble there, he found statues ready
hewn. The poet owes nearly as much to the biographer as
the biographer to the poet. º
The next thing we would point out is, that Plutarch
keeps his familiar details in subordination. He first thinks
of his great man as a great man before busying himself
PLUTARCH. 33
with the domestic touches (highly as he values them)
necessary to the full portraiture. So, his hero's dignity
loses nothing, which is a very important consideration. A
writer of mean parts may be “graphic” by working up
little items of description with care; but to seize a cha-
racter or event as a whole, and only use details as acces-
sories, requires high intellect. When you close your
“Plutarch,” after reading, say his “Themistocles,” your
first thought is of the complete character, daring, subtle,
generous, but with a dash of something Ostentatious or
theatrical about it. You do not reflect how skilfully this
's done, but how life-like it is. Only afterwards, and on
further examination, do you perceive how admirably the
minutiae, trifling each in itself—have fallen into their
proper places. That as a schoolboy he was ambitious and
prominent among his fellows; “that the trophy of Mil-
tiades would not let him sleep;” his pointed sayings; the
dog that swims alongside one of the galleys when Athens
takes to the sea; Xerxes' gold chair and such things; are
distributed so judiciously through the narrative that they
give it animation and reality without being obtrusive.
When once, however, we have recognised his grasp of
character in all its width and variety, we may indulge our-
sºlves, not improperly, in studying the charm of his handling
of details. The quantity of anecdotes and bons-mots which
he has accumulated in these “Lives” is wonderful. He
had a passion for them, and occasionally (with a weakness
seen in other old gentlemen) tells them over and over
again. He follows his heroes from school to public life
and home again, peeps into their family circle, tarries with
them over the wine, watches how they bear prosperity and
C
34 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS,
misfortune, and lingers by their death-beds, or bends down
to them as they lie dying on the battle-field, to catch their
last words, and see how they face their last trial. Every-
thing, he thinks, that a man can say or do shows character;
and why write biography if not completely? As he is
always reverent and kindly, he never offends by this
copiousness; while his subjects are personages of such
historical importance, that hardly anything they do or
say can seem quite trivial.
The sayings which Plutarch records are even more wel-
come than his anecdotes, and have many of them passed
into familiar use in modern times. It completes the cha-
racter of a great man if he talks greatly, as many of
Plutarch’s men did; and, whether or no, we are better
acquainted with him by having specimens of his familiar
speech. It is worth remarking too that the men of action
have usually been better talkers than the men of letters—
or were so at least in antiquity. The latter might dis-
course more richly in conversation, but did not equal the
soldiers and statesmen in those brief, terse, solid dicta which
strike like cannon-shot, being propelled indeed by the ex-
plosive force of a great individuality. Pompey's exclama-
tion that if he stamped his foot in any part of Italy troops
would spring up, and the “Caesarem vehis /" of his greater
rival and conqueror, affect one more than those brilliant
pleasantries of Cicero's, which Plutarch has preserved to
the number, if we recollect right, of nineteen. We would
note too, that the sayings attributed to his heroes by
Plutarch, generally bear intrinsic evidence of their genuine-
ness, and harmonise with the descriptions he gives of their
habits of mind and thought. Thus, those of Themistocles
PLUTARCH. 35
are showy and splendid; of Phocion, curt and sharp; of
the elder Cato, grave and shrewdly humourous. Plutarch
is indeed, here and elsewhere, one of our chief authorities
for the table-talk of the ancients.
While his attention to the particulars just mentioned
does much for the fulness and richness, the body and
colour, of his portraiture, Plutarch is equally to be praised
for his backgrounds—for the scenery and accessories of his
art. He gives fine delineations of the circumstances under
which his men acted or suffered, and so stamps the reality
of his narrative on the reader's imagination and memory.
As specimens of these, we would point to the rejoicings at
Naples when Pompey recovered from his illness; but
especially to the death-Scenes of Demosthenes, Cicero, and
the younger Cato. The figure of the Greek Orator, stagger-
ing from the altar of the Temple of Neptune, with the
poison seizing his vitals, haunts the memory like a ghost.
That of the Roman orator, trying, while he is being hunted
for his life, to snatch a little rest, and the story how the
crows swarmed ominously round the house and into the
very chamber, are not less impressive; while, whose feel-
ings are not stirred strangely, on reading of the last night
which the stoic of Utica spent alive, and how “the birds
began to sing” as he rose to bare his breast to the sword!
A gentle sensibility to all that is picturesque, and especially
to whatever is tender and melancholy, makes much of the
charm of Plutarch. He is not a writer who owes much to
style in its strict and limited sense, or who is ever compared
in that respect to the masters of Attic prose. The old
critics seem all agreed that his “dictio” is “duriuscula.”
Dr Donaldson pronounces that “he is not a good writer of
36 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
Greek.” His handling of admirable material on a free broad
scale is his great merit, though of course there are flashes of
genius where the expression, too, makes itself remarkable.
He was a philosopher with his head full of great ideas, and
an artist with his heart full of the images of mighty men
—men who were the flower of two great races.* Nothing
tawdry, nothing effeminate, nothing petty attracted him.
If he liked trifles, it was only when they were characteristic
of men about whom everything was interesting, or when
their mention relieved his sunny and affectionate nature
after those serious and lofty studies which were the busi-
ness of his life. *
Vivid moral portraiture, this was Plutarch's great object
and his successful achievement. We do not think he
aimed at any special triumph as a writer, with this or the
other political view. He wanted great men with marked
characters, that they might illustrate general moral ideas,
the best a pagan knew. He found them in different
countries, and in different causes.
The superiority of Plutarch as a writer of “Lives” over
any surviving classic is undoubted. Cornelius Nepos is
an acute and elegant biographer, but his “Lives” are not
portraits. Suetonius, who flourished in Plutarch's old
age, has likewise high merit. He is a lively and forcible
narrator, and brings together an immense deal of material,
not only solid and valuable, but curious, minute, and
piquant, about his Caesars. Yet the inferiority of his
* Of forty-nine Greeks and Romans (the entire number of Lives, ex-
cluding Artaceraes) whom he has celebrated, at least thirty-nine were
of the royal, noble, or ancient families of their respective countries; a
strong testimony to the worth of the classic aristocracies
PLUTARCH. * 37
method, of classing successively by themselves the wars,
political acts, tastes, or personal habits of the men, is
very marked. His “Lives” lack unity, and the writer
himself lacked the eye for dramatic character and poetic
delineation of Plutarch. We know, in short, only one
ancient biography with which it would not be a kind of
degradation to Plutarch to compel him to compete. Of
course, we are thinking of the “Agricola” of his great
contemporary, Tacitus. The profundity and subtlety, the
deep tragic pathos, relieved by the most brilliant and
piercing wit of that immortal historian, must undoubtedly
place him above the mark of the humbler though not less
genuine artist of Chaeronea. His is a more potent
nature altogether, as wine is stronger than milk; and
Plutarch must give way before him, as his countrymen
before the eagles of Rome. But though there is a
condensed force about the “Agricola,” with its weighty
aphorisms and burning epigrams, which Plutarch cannot
rival, we may still doubt if he is not as successful in his
portraiture as Tacitus, though in a less impressive and, on
the whole, inferior style : at all events, he is infinitely
more fit for popular reading. His amiability gives him a
hold on the general heart like Goldsmith. He is above
no reader, and below no reader. And as he connects the
studies of the public with those of the scholar, so he brings
together the modern and ancient worlds by showing how
much that is good and noble is common to both.
The time is now come to consider how the example of
Plutarch as a biographer has affected the art of biography
in modern times. His general influence, allowing for the
many successful translations of his “Lives,” has, no doubt,
38 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
been very great on the English as on other literatures.
Probably every English biographer has known something
of him, and learnt something from him. And it is a
singular testimony to his merit, that so few should have
produced any “Lives” that will bear the least comparison
with his.
It is not a hopeful sign for our biography that every
dunce should think himself entitled to sneer at Boswell
for no other reason than that he had a transcendent
veneration for one of the greatest and best men this
country ever produced. Boswell was, no doubt, an inferior
man to Plutarch, but he had quite enough in common
with him to deserve that the likeness between them
should be pointed out. A hearty reverence for worth was
the primum mobile of literary exertions in both. The
virtues of these great men, Plutarch says—
“Serve me as a sort of looking-glass, in which I may see
how to adjust and adorn my own life. Indeed, it can be com-
pared to nothing but daily living and associating together; we
receive, as it were, in our inquiry, and entertain each successive
guest . . . . . and select from their actions all that is
noblest and worthiest to know.
“Ah, and what greater pleasure could one have º'
or, what more effective means to one's moral improvement?
Democritus tells us we ought to pray that of the phantasms
appearing in the circumambient air, such may present them-
selves to us as are propitious, and that we may rather see those
that are agreeable to our natures and are good, than the evil
and unfortunate; which is simply introducing into philosophy
a doctrine untrue in itself, and leading to endless superstitions.
My method, on the contrary, is, by the study of history,
PLUTARCH. 39
and by the familiarity acquired in writing, to habituate my
memory to receive and retain images of the best and worthiest
characters.”
Boswell, with all his weaknesses, might honestly have
professed as true a love of greatness as the Greek. But
their resemblance was more marked in the homelier
qualities. They both loved talk and stories, and had
strong personal and local attachments. A writer might
have greater parts than either of them, and not produce
half their effect, just for want of their peculiar disposition.
And we may be perfectly sure of one thing, that the kind
of man utterly unfit for biography is the model “clever
man,” full of the “enlightened epoch " notions, so fashion-
able just now. The whole moral being of such a man
would have to be changed before he could loyally picture,
at once in its majesty and its simplicity, a great character
of the past. Fulke Greville's romantic friendship, Izaak
Walton's old-fashioned tenderness, are out of his range.
But there will be no high things done in biography till we
learn to revive that gentle old spirit, and apply it in forms
suitable to our own age. Talent alone never produced a
great “Life,” and never will. The “Agricola” ends in a
burst of passionate affection like a choral wail. Johnson's
“Life of Savage” is full of his friendship for the unlucky
reprobate whose society had cheered his solitude and
poverty in his early London days.
Hoping, however, that the truths here expressed may
one day bear literary fruit, what else may we learn in bio-
graphy from Plutarch's example His method of writing
lives in “parallels” it would be very difficult to imitate,
though that feature of his plan should not be abandoned
40 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMs.
without reluctance. His copious employment of detail
there is a growing disposition to appreciate, to an extent
which we perceive is already producing a reaction. Ever
since the Waverley Novels appeared there has been a set
in favour of a dramatic and picturesque treatment of his-
tory. There was nothing new in the tendency, as the
Superiority of the older over the newer translations of
Plutarch, in such respect, might alone serve to convince
us. The feeling for reality and completeness in literary
art is, of course, substantially sound. Let us, by all means,
have past ages reproduced with all their circumstances and
conditions if possible, not only their principles and ideas
and actions, but manners, costume, furniture, and orna-
ments. Let the classic man sacrifice in his garland, and
the feudal man hear mass in his mail. On all this, it is,
in the present temper of the reading world, superfluous to
insist. But let us bear in mind also, that Plutarch never
overdoes it, and yet that it may be overdone. It is not
the deepest fact about the seventeenth century that people
wore steeple-hats, and went out to fight in buff jerkins,
though such details assist one in getting familiar with
things more important.
Again, we may learn from Plutarch that good bio-
graphies are not necessarily long. Nine or ten of his go
conveniently into an octavo volume. This merit he shared
with the ancients generally. The “Agricola” is a pretty
little pamphlet. The “Caesars,” in Suetonius, are as port-
able as a handful of their coins. Now, this is a mighty
advantage, for a good book that is short will be read far
oftener than a good book that is long. Our own earlier
“Lives,” those, for instance, which Wordsworth calls
PLUTA.R.C H. 41
“Satellites burning in a lucid ring
Around meek Walton's heavenly memory,”
are of moderate as well as graceful proportions. The bulk
of Middleton’s “Cicero’ is accounted for by the extent
of the subject. Johnson is uniformly reasonable —his
“Milton” occupies eighty-five, and his “Dryden’ a hun-
dred and eighteen pages. But it would not be difficult to
point to “Lives” of men as inferior to Milton or Dryden
as the biographers themselves to Johnson, filling six and
ten times the space.
But, after all, Plutarch will be read by thousands who
care nothing for the art of biography, and to whom critical
disquisitions on the subject can be little attractive. It is
time to return to them, before bidding him farewell.
There is now no danger of his influence being otherwise
than good. The “classical republican * is extinct, or,
where he survives, begins, we suspect, to see that there
were nobler things in antiquity than the dagger of Brutus.
We now learn from classical history just the opposite les-
Sons to those which it was once thought to teach ; while
the revolutionary movement in Europe has thrown off the
toga, finally, and sticks to the blouse, which is its more
appropriate garment. On the other hand, a growing sense
among the best English youth of the value of our history
as the basis of our political liberties prevents us from
apprehending any spurious classicism from the influence
of the ancients. Much as there is to learn from the Greeks
and Romans, their special influence is not likely to disturb
the minds of statesmen and potentates again. Meanwhile,
the charm of Plutarch as a writer remains unbroken. He
will be read for many an age, under the influence of that
42 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
“nature” which makes Greek and Roman “kin ” to
Englishman and Scot. Many a reader will secretly ask
himself what he, living in a brighter light of knowledge,
ought to be, when heathens and pagans could live and die
like Plutarch's men. Nor will he forget to thank the
memory of the wise, kind-hearted old biographer himself.
Plutarch, we repeat, will be read, and read, we think,
among ourselves, for the future, in the version of Mr Clough.
We have given that version our cordial praise before, and
shall only add, that it is brought before the world in a
way which fits it admirably for general use. The print is
clear and large, the paper good, and there are excellent and
copious indexes.
TH A C K E RA Y.
(Edinburgh Courant, January 1864).
PREFATORY NOTE TO THE FIRST REPRINT.
I HAVE ventured to reprint this sketch of the illustrious
writer, whom England has just lost, because it is the fullest
—if I am not mistaken—which has yet appeared in any
periodical. A mere rhapsody of admiration is generally
inspired by the writer's wish to be admired; himself; but
men of sense will, it is hoped, 'be thankful for a careful
accumulation of the kind of details on which alone a judg-
ment about character can be formed. These have been
THACKERAY. 43
grouped together here, with the object of making Mr
Thackeray's Life and Writings illustrate each other, as far
as the humble scale of the essay—and the strict reticence
imposed by the recentness of his loss—permit. The more
fully his life is made known to the world, the more clearly _2^
will the harmony of his works with it appear. (Perfect L^
frankness and honesty of character will be seen to be his
great distinction) (He laid bare all his severest thoughts
about human nature, and life, in obedience to the law of
this character, though he knew it exposed him to shallow
charges of cynicism, and though he cannot but have been
conscious of unaffected benevolence towards all the world,
of a ready sympathy with every form of excellence, and of
a hearty, activity in doing good to everybody who came in
his way. On this honesty, as a basis, rested the whole of
his genius, the positive side of which produced his deep
and truthful delineations of life ; the negative his hearty
and pleasant satire, always Horatian rather than Juvenalian, |
always exciting Mirth rather than Hate. If he ever erred
in literary judgment at all, it was when his anxiety to do
justice to the weak made him press a little hard on the
strong. This is curiously illustrated in a passage which
the reader will find quoted from one of his letters at p. 52;
There was nothing more charming about Mr Thackeray,
and this too receives illustration in what follows, than the
kindly footing on which he stood with the younger genera-
tion. He was not a man to have a little senate ; he held
sycophants, and all who encouraged them, in contempt; his
friends and acquaintances were of all varieties of class and
character, and differed from him in their ways of thinking
about everything. But he made it a duty to befriend and
44 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
cherish anybody in whose merit and sincerity he believed,
however casual the accident which had brought them under
his notice. These are the traits which endear his memory
to all who knew him, and which will pleasantly connect
him henceforth in their minds, with the best and greatest
of the humourists and moralists to whom he is now
gathered. - -
EDINBURGH, Jan. 4, 1864.
. . “Crasso nihil statuo fieri potuisse perfectius. Erat summa
gravitas; erat cum gravitate junctus facetiarum et urbanitatis ora-
torius, non scurrilis lepos; Latine loquendi accurata et sine molestia
diligens elegantia; in disserendo mira explicatio ; . . . . quum de
aequo et bono disputaretur, argumentorum et similitudinum copia.”
- —CIGERO.
“Let us love his Memory, and profit by his Example.”
–Pope on Fenton's Death.
By birth Mr. Thackeray belonged to the upper middle
class, a section of our curiously divided society which con-
tains many cadets of old families, and forms a link between
the aristocracy and the general bulk of the liberal professions.
He used sometimes to say that “it takes three generations
to make a gentleman;” and though this was not a maxim
which he would have applied strictly in the case of another
man, he was far from insensible to the advantage in him-
self. He was descended from an old stock, apparently of
Saxon origin, long settled in Yorkshire. His great-grand-
father was Dr Thackeray, of Harrow, who went to Cam-
bridge in 1710, an excellent scholar and clever man, who
THACKERAY. 45
partly educated Sir William Jones, and whose epitaph was
written by his pupil Dr Parr. The son of the Doctor mar-
ried a Miss Webb, of the old English family to which the
Brigadier Webb, of Marlborough's wars, belonged,—whose
portrait is drawn with something of the geniality of kins-
manship in “Esmond.” This Thackeray, we believe, was
the first of the race to settle in India ; where his son also
sought his fortunes ; and where his grandson the novelist
was born—at Calcutta—in 1811. There are numerous
descendants of the scholarly old Headmaster of Harrow
scattered over the English Church, and in the Indian Ser-
vice, and traces of the influence of family connections are
found all through the books of the man who has made his
name famous. The feudal feeling of Scott, which in any
case is Scotch rather than English, Thackeray did not share.
Heraldry to him had only the quaint interest and pretti-
mess of old chimal But it is impossible to appreciate either
his philosophy, his style, or his literary position, without
remembering that he was a well-born, well-bred, and well-
educated gentleman.
ſ Like other English children born in Indil young
Thackeray was sent home early, and the voyage, during
which he had an eager and wondering peep at the great
Napoleon in his island prison, was among his earliest recol-
lections. He received his education at Charterhouse, the
well-known Greyfriars of his stories, an old and famous
public school. He somewhere talks of the “monkish
seclusion” of his school-days, and in his critical and ques-
tioning moods he has sufficiently proved that he knew the
weak points of the old educational system. But he never
lost an opportunity of showing his respect for Charter-
46 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
house, and he was perfectly aware how much he owed to
it. In after-life, he let most of his Greek slip away; but
his acquaintance with the Latin language, and especially
the Latin poets, was eminently respectable, and exercised
a profound influence over his genius and his diction. The
Odes of Horace he knew intimately well, and there are
subtle indications of the knowledge, the smell of Italian
violets hidden in the green of his prose, only to be truly
enjoyed by Horatians. A quotation from Horace was one
of the favourite forms in which he used to embody his
jokes. If you bored him with genealogy, he would begin—
“Quantum distet ab Inacho,”
which was quite a sufficient hint ; and when a low fellow
in London hanged himself, he observed that it was a
“dignus vindice NODUs.” Latin writers, French writers,
and English eighteenth century men were the three sources
at which his genius fed, and on which it was nourished.
From Charterhouse he went to Cambridge, which he
left without taking a degree; and he entered on life with
health, strength, a noble figure, an excellent genius, and
twenty thousand pounds,-the last of which blessings was
the first (owing, it is said, to unfortunate speculations) to
leave him. But this loss was not complete, till he had had
the full benefit of a good culture and a good experience.
He travelled over Europe, and resided in its capitals, while
his mind was young and fresh, and laid in those stores of
observation to which we owe sketches with which every-
body is familiar. He had an interview with Goethe at
Weimar, his description of which may be seen in the
“Life of Goethe’ by Mr Lewes; and he studied art at
THACKERAY. 47
Rome. If he had had his choice, he would rather have
been famous as an artist than as a writer; but it was des-
tined that he should paint in colours which will never .
crack and never need restoration. All his artist experience /
did him just as much good in literature as it could have
f
t
y
in any other way; and, in travelling through Europe to see |
pictures, he learned not them only, but men, manners, and
languages. He read German; he knew French well and
spoke it elegantly; and in market-places, salons, hotels,
museums, studios, the sketch-book of his mind was always |
filling itself. Paris was one of his most important head-
quarters in every way, and to his stay there the world |
owes perhaps the best of his poems—the “Chronicle of
the Drum.” His poetic vein was curiously original. He
was not essentially poetical, as Tennyson, for instance, is.
Poetry was TOEThé predominant mood of his mind, or the |
intellectual law by which the objects of his thought and
observation were arranged and classified. But inside his V
fine sagacious common-sense understanding, there was, so to |
speak, a pool of poetry, like the impluvium in the hall of l f
a Roman house, which gave an air of coolness and freshness
and nature to the solid marble columns and tessellated floor.
The highest products of this part of his mind were the
“Chronicle” above mentioned, the “Bouillebaisse,” the lines
on Charles Buller’s death at the end of one of his Christ-
mas Books, and the “Ho, pretty page with dimpled chin.”
of another of them. A song or two in his novels, and some L-T
passages in which rural scenery is quietly and casually
described, might also be specified./ But all this is chiefly
valuable as showing that his nature was complete, and that
there wanted not in his genius that softer and more sen-


48 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
sitive side natural to one whose observation was so subtle
and his heart so kind.) He was essentially rather moralist
* and humourist, thinker and wit, than poet; and he was too
\manly to over-work his poetic vein as a man may legiti-
mately work his mere understanding. This honourable
self-restraint, this decent reticence, so natural to English
-S gentlemen, was by some writers of the Gushing School
mistaken for hardness. The Gusher is always for plenty
of sentimentalism;-for showing his heart on his sleeve,
after having previously inflated the vessels of that organ
with wind to make it look bigger. This kind of thing
was not in Thackeray's way, and wide as his sympathies
were, he despised it. “I shall not try to describe her
grief,” he makes Sam Titmarsh say in the “Hoggarty
Diamond,” “for such things are sacred and secret; and a
man has no business to place them on record for all the
world to read.” Few of his sentences are more charac-
teristic.
Thackeray was still young and opulent when he began
to make the acquaintance of London men of letters.
Certain it is, that he lent, or in plainer English, gave five
hundred pounds to poor old Maginn, when he was beaten
in the battle of life, and like other beaten soldiers made a
prisoner—in the Fleet. With the generation going out, -
that of Lamb and Coleridge, he had, we believe, no
personal acquaintance. Sydney Smith he met at a later
time ; and he remembered with satisfaction that some-
thing which he wrote about Hood gave pleasure to that
delicate humourist and poet in his last days. But his
first friends were the Fraserians, of whom Father Prout,
always his intimate, and Carlyle, always one of his most
THACKERAY, 49
appreciating friends, survive. From reminiscences of the
wilder lights in the Fraser constellation were drawn the
pictures of the queer fellows connected with literature in
“Pendennis,”—Captain Shandon, the ferocious Bludyer,
—stout old Tom Serjeant, and so forth. Magazines in
those days were more brilliant than they are now, when
they are haunted by the fear of shocking the Fogy
element in their circulation; and the effect of their
greater freedom is seen in the buoyant and unrestrained
comedy of Thackeray's own earlier Fraser articles. “I
suppose we all begin by being too savage,” is the phrase
of a letter which he wrote in 1849; “I know one who did.”
He was alluding here to the “Yellowplush Papers” in
particular, where living men were very freely handled.
This old, wild satiric spirit it was which made him) ºv-
interrupt even the early chapters of “Vanity Fair,” by \
introducing a parody, which he could not resist, of some
contemporary novelists. In the last fifteen years of his
life he wrote under greater restraint, and with a sense of
his graver responsibilities as one of the leading men of |
letters of the country. But his satire was never at any time
malignant; and the fine freedom of his early writing
developed his genius as the scenes of the arena developed
the athlete. He was writing for twelve or thirteen years,
as a professional author, before “Vanity Fair” made him.
really known to the world at large. The best works of
that epoch will be found in the “Miscellanies” published
by Bradbury and Evans in 1857. But there is much of his
writing buried in periodicals, some of which have been
long dead. He was connected with at least one failure,
the Parthenon, an ill-omened name borne after a long
T)
50 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
interval by another journal quite recently defunct. He
certainly contributed some things to the Times, during
Barnes' editorship, an article on Fielding amongst them;
though not, we should' think, leading articles; a kind of
work for which he had no relish, and for which he believed
himself to have no turn. Fraser was the organ with
which he was most successfully connected till the days
~ of his Punch engagement. | It was indeed as a magazimist
that he educated himself for a novelist /With a play-
ful reference to his early and mºtiºn ambition
to be an artist, he called himself Michael Angelo Tit-
marsh, and published under that name, not only articles
but books. The “Paris Sketchbook,” the “Second Funeral
of Napoleon” (comprising the “Chronicle of the Drum ”),
the “Fatal Boots,” the “Hoggarty Diamond,” the “Irish
Sketchbook,” the “Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo,”
sufficiently attest his activity during the years which pre-
ceded the great epoch of “Vanity Fair.” These books are
full of sense, and wit, and humour, and it seems extraordi-
nary that their author should have been within a year or two
of forty before he was really famous. Their very truthful-
ness, however, the easy quiet of their best philosophy, the
slyness of their choicest irony, the gentlemanly taste of
their heartiest abandon, all this was caviare to the vulgar,
including the vulgar of the critical press. The offer of
“Vanity Fair” was declined by one publisher; and good
judges said that a necessary impulse was given to its
appreciation, by an article during its progress in the
... Jºdinburgh Review. It was still the fashion, as far as it was
fashionable to speak of Thackeray at all, to treat him as a
}
| satirist. An admirable Satirist he had, indeed, just proved
\
TEIA CECERAY. f 5].
himself in the “Snob Papers,” a series that stands high
above anything ever given to the world in Punch, except-
ing Hood’s “Song of the Shirt.” Nor was Thackeray
ever ashamed of the title of satirist, knowing by what
great men it had been borne before him, and how much
honest work there was in the world for satire to do. But
that he was a satirist only, he had proved, long before the
“Snob Papers,” to be absurd. Anybody who can read,
for instance, the story of Sam Titmarsh's sufferings and
the loss of his child, after the Diddlesex catastrophe, in -
the “Hoggarty Diamond,” without seeing that the writer's LA
tenderness and power of representing tenderness were ex-\ſ
quisitely deep and exquisitely real, may-conclude himself
disqualified by nature for having an opinion on literary
matters. There are few whose judgment on such things
is worth much,--but his is certainly worth nothing.
When Thackeray wrote “Vanity Fair,” in 1846, ’7, '8,
he was living in Young Street, Kensington, a street on
your left hand, before you come to the church ; and here,
in 1848, the author of this sketch had first the pleasure of
seeing him, of being received at his table, and of knowing
how essentially a kind, humane, and perfectly homest man
he was. “Vanity Fair” was then unfinished, but its suc-
cess was made, and he spoke frankly and genially of his
work and his career. “Wamity Fair” always, we think,
ranked in his own mind as best in story of his greater
books; and he once pointed out to us the very house in
Russell Square where his imaginary Sedleys lived,—a s /
The man and the books were equally real and true; and it
was natural that he should speak without hesitation of his
*
/
52 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
books, if you wished it ; though as a man of the world,
and a polished gentleman who knew the world thoroughly,
literature with him only took its turn among other topics.
From this point of view, his relation to it was a good deal
like that of Scott. According to Lockhart, people were
wrong in saying that Sir Walter declined at all markedly
to talk about literature, and yet his main interest was in
active life. Just so, Thackeray was not bookish, but still
turned readily to the subject of books, if invited. His
reading was undoubtedly large in Memoirs, Modern History,
Biography, Poetry, Essays, and Fiction,-and, taken in
conjunction with his scholarship, probably placed him, as
a man of letters, above any other novelist except Sir
Bulwer Lytton. Here is a characteristic fragment from
one of his letters, written in August 1854, and now before
us:– “I hate Juvenal,” he says; “I mean I think him a
truculent brute, and I love Horace better than you do, and
rate Churchill much lower; and as for Swift, you haven’t
made me alter my opinion. I admire, or rather admit, his
power as much as you do ; but I don't admire that kind
of power so much as I did fifteen years ago, or twenty
shall we say. Love is a higher intellectual exercise than
Hatred; and when you get one or two more of those
young ones you write so pleasantly about, you’ll come over
to the side of the kind wags, I think, rather than the cruel
ones.” Passages like this, which men who knew him
will not need to have quoted to them,-have a double
value for the world at large. They not only show a
familiar command of writers whom it is by no means easy
to know well,—but they show what the real philosophy
was of a man whom the envious represented to the igno-
THACKERAY. 53
rant as a cynic and a scoffer. Why, his favourite authors
were just those whose influence he thought had been bene-
ficial to the cause of virtue and charity. “I take off my
hat to Joseph Addison,” he would say, after an energetic
testimony to his good effect on English life. He was, ink-
fact, even greater as a moralist than as a mere describef of ~ \ |
sl_____2=--~~~~.” “”. “-º-rea:--~~~~3- it....... A
manners; and his very hatred of quackery and meanness %
was proved to be real by his simplicity, humanity, and /
kindliness of character. In private, this great satirist, )
whose aspect in a crowd was often one of austere polite- ſ
ness and reserve, unbent into a familiar naïveté which
somehow one seldom finds in the demonstratively genial. )
And this was the more charming and precious that it rested
on a basis of severe and profound reflection, before the
glance of which all that was dark and serious in man's
life and prospects lay open. The gravity of that white
head, with its noble brow, and thoughtful face full of
feeling and meaning, enhanced the piquancy of his play-
fulmess, and of the little personal revelations which came
with such a grace from the depths of his kindly nature. ,
When we congratulated him, many years ago, on the touch ,
in “Vanity Fair” in which Becky “admires” her husband .
when he is giving Lord Steyne the chastisement which i ,
ruins her for life, “Well,” he said, “when I wrote the
sentence, I slapped my fist on the table, and said that º
is a touch of genius !’” The incident is a trifle, but it \
will reveal, we suspect, an element of fervour, as well as }
a heartiness of frankness in recording the fervour, both
equally at variance with the vulgar conception of him. \
This frankness and bonhommie made him delightful in
a tête-a-teté, and gave a pleasant human flavour to talk
54 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
- Z.
/ of sense, and wisdom, and experience, and lighted up
22%
Z
by the gaiety of the true London man of the world.
Though he said witty things, now and then, he was not
a wit in the sense in which Jerrold was, and he com-
plained, sometimes, that his best things occurred to him
after the occasion had gone by! h shone most,--as in his

... -- -v6ooks—in little subtle remarkš on life, and little descrip-
2. beive sketches suggested by the tal We remember in
*
*
particular, one evening, after a dinner-party at his house,
a fancy picture he drew of Shakspeare during his last
years at Stratford, sitting out in the summer afternoon
watching the people, which all who heard it, brief as it
was, thought equal to the best things in his Lectures.
But it was not for this sort of talent, rarely exerted by
him, that people admired his conversation. They admired,
above all, the broad Sagacity, sharp insight, large and tole-
rant liberality, which marked him as one who was a sage
as well as a story-teller, and whose stories were valuable
because he was a sage. Another point of likeness to him
in Scott was that he never overvalued story-telling, or for-
got that there were nobler things in literature than the
purest creations of which the object was amusement. “I
would give half my fame,” wrote Scott, “if by so doing I
could place the other half on a solid basis of science and
learning.” “Now is the time,” wrote Thackeray, to a
young friend in 1849, “to lay in stock. I wish I had
had five years' reading before I took to our trade.” How
heartily we have heard him praise Sir Bulwer Lytton for
the good example he set by being “thoroughly literate!”
We are not going to trench here on any such ground as
Thackeray's judgments about his contemporaries. But we
may notice an excellent point bearing on these. If he
THACKERAY. 55
heard a young fellow expressing great admiration for one
of them, he encouraged him in it. When somebody was
mentioned as worshipping an eminent man just dead, “I
am glad,” said Thackeray, “that he worships anybody.”
After “Vanity Fair,” Thackeray's fame steadily in-
creased. “Pendennis” appeared during 1849 and 1850,
and though it was generally considered inferior in mere
plot to its predecessor, no inferiority was perceived in the
essential qualities of character, thought, humour, and style,
The announcement in the summer of 1851 that he was
about to lecture on the English Humourists gave a thrill
of pleasure to intellectual London; and when he rose in
Willis' Rooms to commence the course with Swift, all that
was most brilliant in the Capital was assembled to hear
him. Amidst a throng of nobles, and beauties, and men
of fashion, were Carlyle, and Macaulay,+Hallam with his
venerable head, and Charlotte Bronte, whose own fame
was just at its height, and who saw in the lecturer her
ideal of an elevated and highminded master of literary
art. The lectures were thoroughly appreciated. Every-
body was delighted to see the great masters of English of
a past age brought to life again in their habits as they
lived, and endowed with the warm human reality of the
lecturer's Dobbins, and Warringtons, and Pendennises.
It was this power, and not the literary criticism, which con-
stituted the value of Thackeray's Lectures, and will secure
their place in the biographical literature of the country.
Towards the close of 1852, “Esmond” appeared, and
Thackeray sailed for America.” “Esmond” constituted a
* He recalled the present writer from a tour in Scotland in October,
and placed the MS. of the “Humourists” in his hands to edit and
annotate during his absence.
56 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
new epoch in his career. By this time his celebrity, and
the impression made by his distinct and peculiar genius, -
so different from that of the common sentimental schools,
—had provoked a certain amount of reaction. Plebeians
who disliked him as a gentleman,—Mechanics’ Institute
men who disliked him as a scholar, Radicals who knew
that he associated with the aristocracy, and the numerous
weaklings to whom his severe truth and perfect honesty of
art seemed horrible after the riotous animal spirits, jolly
caricature, and lachrymose softness of the style which he
was putting out of fashion,-this crew, we say, was by no
means satisfied with the undoubted fact that Thackeray
was becoming the favourite writer of the cultivated classes.
v/ They accordingly began to call his honesty cynicism, and
his accuracy reporting. But tears are pure in proportion
to the depth from which they come, and not to the quantity
in which they flow, and the tenderness of a writer is to be
estimated by the quality of his pathos. What these people
called hardness was fidelity to truth, and what they called
stenographic detail was finish of art. The richer imagina-
tiveness of “Esmond,” and the freer play of feeling in
which the author allowed himself to indulge when dealing
with a past age, came in good time to rebuke cavillers,
and prove that Thackeray's mind was rich as well as
wide. “Esmond,” we take it, is the favourite novel of his
choicest admirers. He takes certain liberties with history
in it. For instance, the Duke of Hamilton, whom he re-
presents as about to marry Beatrix when he is cut off in
a duel, left a widow, spoken of by Swift in the “Journal
to Stella.” But as Scott makes Leicester quote the
“Midsummer Night's Dream ” in “Kenilworth,” when
THACKERAY. 5.
Shakspeare was about twelve or thirteen years of age,
this may be excused.
It is a pity that Thackeray did not write expressly on
America, for we think that he would have written the
most impartial English book to which that country has yet
given rise. When he returned from this first visit, he was
a good deal away from town. “Since my return from
America,” he writes in August 1854, “I have hardly been
in London at all, and when here, in such a skurry of busi-
ness and pleasure as never to call a day my own scarcely.”
The passage is significant. Few lives were more engrossed
than his, discharging, as he did, at once the duties of a
man of letters and a man of fashion. He dined out a
great deal during the season. He went to the theatres.
He belonged to three clubs, the Athenaeum, Reform, and
Garrick, to say nothing of minor associations for the pro-
motion of good fellowship. With less of this wear and
tear, we should have had more work from him, should
have had, perhaps, the History which long dwelt in his
imagination as one of the creations of the future. As
it is, he achieved a great deal during the last eight or
ten years of his life. Two such elaborate novels as
the “Newcomes” and “Virginians,” a second trip to
America, and a ramble over Great Britain, with a new set
of Lectures, on the “Four Georges,”—not to mention a
contested election, and what he did for the Cornhill,
established on the strength of his name, and for a time
directly conducted by him, ºthese were great doings for a
man who, though naturally robust, was plagued and
menaced by more than one vexatious disorder of long
continuance. And he did them greatly,–going into the
4-
CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
world gaily and busily to the last, and always finding time
for such holy little offices of personal kindness and charity
as gave him—we believe and know—more real pleasure
than all his large share of the world's applause. He was
much gratified by the success of the “Four Georges” (a
series which superseded an earlier scheme for as many dis-
courses on “Men of the World”) in Scotland. “I have
had three per cent. of the whole population here,” he
wrote from Edinburgh, in November 1856. “If I could
but get three per cent of London l’’ He thoroughly ap-
preciated the attention and hospitality which he met with
during these lecturing tours. And if, as would sometimes
happen, a local notability's adoration became obtrusive, or
such a person thrust his obsequious veneration upon him
beyond the limits of the becoming, his forbearance was all
the more respectable on account of his sensitiveness.
Latterly he had built himself a handsome house in
Kensington, to which he moved from Onslow Square,
Brompton, his residence after leaving the Young Street
in which he wrote “Vanity Fair.” It was a dwelling
worthy of one who represented literature in the world,
and who, planting himself on his books, yet sustained
the character of his profession with all the dignity of a
gentleman. A friend who called on him there from Edin-
burgh, in the summer of 1862, knowing of old his love
of the Venusian, playfully reminded him what Horace
says of those who, regardless of their sepulchre, employ
themselves in building houses:—
“Sepulchri
Immemor, süruis domos.”
“Nay,” said he, “I am memor sepulchri, for this house
THACKERAY. 59
*-
will always let for so many hundreds (mentioning the sum)
a year.” How distant, then, seemed the event which has
just happened, and with which the mind obstimately re-
fuses to familiarise itself, though it stares at one from a
thousand broadsheets | Well, indeed, might his passing:
bell make itself heard through all the myriad joy-bells of
the English Christmas! It is long since England has lost
such a son, it will be long before she has such another to
lose. He was indeed emphatically English,_English as
distinct from Scotch, no less than English as distinct
from Continental,—a different type of great man from
Scott, and a different type of great man from Balzac.
The highest purely English novelist since Fielding, he
| combined Addison's love of virtue with Johnson's hatred |
of cant, Horace Walpole's lynx-like eye for the mean and Y
the ridiculous. with the gentleness and wide charity for.
mankind as a whole, of Goldsmith. Non omnis mortu
est. He will be remembered in his due succession with
these men for ages to come, as long as the hymn of praise
rises in the old Abbey of Westminster,” and wherever the
English tongue is native to men, from the banks of the
Ganges to those of the Mississippi.t This humble tribute
to his illustrious and beloved memory comes from one
whom he loaded with benefits, and to whom it will always
throw something of sadness over the great city where he
first knew him, that it contains his too early grave.
* “Dum Capitolium
Scandet cum tacita virgine Pontifex.”
f “Dicar qua violens obstrepit Aufidus,” ete,







60 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
A LETTER TO AN ADMINISTRATIVE
R E FOR ME R.
(Idler, March 1856).
MY DEAR BARNABAs, I was very much surprised the
other day, when, en calling at your oil and pickle ware-
house, I learned that you had just gone out to reform the
British Constitution. I had called to give my usual order
for gherkins and red cabbage, and to have, may-be, a chat
with you, when your young gentleman (for so he calls
himself)—I mean the foreman—said, with some emphasis,
that Mr BLOGG was at the London Tavern on important
business. “What,” said I, “ has this war—confound it !
—raised the price of vinegar?” “Sir,” said he, “Mr B.
is not concerned, now, with the rise in vinegar, but with
the fall of Kars!” This was an antithesis which pleased
me, and I came away speculating on the state of affairs
which has brought us to a condition when quiet fellows
like yourself feel bound to rush into political business
headlong.
But I was still more astonished at a later period, on
perusing a speech and a pamphlet by my old acquaintance.
Mr Blogg is changed, indeed;—I scarcely know him in his
new character. The “degradation of England”—“in-
famous imbecility of our oligarchy”—“right man in right
place”—“men of business at the helm,”—why, bless me,
is this our old Barnabas? I knew you to be head of a
good old business house—a man of brains, in your way,
A LETTER TO AN ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMER. 61
and well off-and I never expected you to be so violent.
The style is as strong as your chilis. They have got hold
of you, Mr Blogg, I mean the clique of ambitious Cockney
bores and boors, of whom we have heard so much lately;
they have turned your head and spoiled your temper; and
you have made an exposure of yourself which your best
friends must long regret. As an old customer, I am sorry
to see this exhibition. But you are unhappily become
exactly a “representative man,” an embodiment of a vast
amount of existing cant, stupidity, mistake, and misrepre-
sentation; and I have a duty to perform I must en-
deavour to improve your temper by an application of the
flagellum. You have lost your old kindliness;–I must
try and awaken it by some such process as is found to in-
crease the affectionateness of elderly gentlemen. In fact,
I must criticise your speech and pamphlet, and see what
sort of case is made out by your Morleys, Corduroys,
etc., etc., who seem engaged in a conspiracy to get the
government of the country into the hands of the whole-
sale trade.
As for the style, spirit, intellectual force, of you and
your friends, I tell you frankly I don’t think much of
them. Your rhetoric is not so good as your walnuts; and
if you do no better in your warehouses than you do on the
platform, I pity your families. To be sure, I may be pre-
judiced; for, as a man of letters, I have naturally read
many great orators and famous pamphlets. But I think
everybody agrees with me here; for you complain that the
country does not listen to you; and the Times (which
created you) pronounces you a failure. How is this? Do
people think that you make a very ordinary show, that
62 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
you have none of you produced anything but stale sugges-
tions and old platitudes " If I were an Administrative
Reformer, I would consider that possibility. It is not
very likely that you are too able and pure for public
life (as I see one of you suggests), since, if so—if nobody
will listem to ability and purity—our country is plainly
come to a dead stop. Indeed, Barnabas, entre mous, I
would drop this last suggestion. Give Corduroy a hint :
of course he does not mind being laughed at, or he would
never have come into public life; but we shall doubt his
Sanity if he asserts that England is hopelessly corrupt, and
he, Mr Corduroy, a sensible, honest fellow.
However, “talk” is not your “line;” you’re “men of
business,” and so forth. Very well. You are right in
assuming this point. I think you must see, that if oratory
is in question, none of you are likely to match Lord Pal-
merston, or Lord Derby, or even Lord John Russell. But
—stop a bit. In your plan of reform, do you mean to
retain debating bodies / Do you mean to have cultivated
men in leading positions If so, you must have oratorical
talent, whether you admire it or not. This, let me remind
you, is a democratic necessity—not an aristocratic one.
Debating was of little consequence in the really aristocratic
and kingly days. I think it a misfortune that men are
chosen in this country for government too much by their
power of oratory: but this is one of your democratic evils.
In France, where it had full play, it played itself out finely
—as in Rome it had played the same game long before.
In both these countries a fellow was chosen to govern the
people on the ground that he had amused them.
We agree in this, do we ? I presume so; for your
A. LETTER, TO AN ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMER. 63
favourite doctrine is, let us have practical men; and a prac-
tical man is not necessarily a speaker.
Well—you, Barnabas, are a practical man. You have
“covered the ocean with your pickles;” your “gherkins
are in every land where the language of England is spoken.”
Bravo | Let us hope that the practical talent required for
conducting a nation is the same as that required for con-
ducting a business. I don't believe it, Blogg; and I’ll tell
you why. |
First, there's that plaguy House of Commons. The
people will have it ; it's a free people, and it must. So,
speakers we must have, better than you (I'm candid), and
better than Morley or Corduroy. Then, there's the state
of social cultivation of the age. We must have gentlemen
to conduct our affairs.
Take a case—the Peace Conferences. I suppose Claren-
don's imbecile, since he's an earl,-though, by-the-bye,
Chatham’s mother was a Williers, and the Pitts never
produced a great man till after that marriage. But mang-
port, as you would say ; assume that C. is imbecile, how
the deuce would a man of business make a plenipotentiary 't
How would he tackle Brunow and Buol '! There's your-
self, Barnabas ; why, Brunow would fancy you had come
in for the coal-scuttle the moment you entered the room.
But, joking apart, government consists, the highest part of
it, in managing men, in knowing men, in dealing with
foreign statesmen, in conciliating powers at home and
abroad. It is infinitely more delicate an affair than con-
ducting operations determined only by money interests.
You may be a capital hand in managing Bodger and Stagg
of Rio, in deciding on the goodness of a bill, and yet be
64 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
unfit to negotiate with Louis Napoleon, or to pronounce on
a despatch from Constantinople. In fact, politics requires
an education incompatible with the simultaneous cultiva-
tion of a money business ; and this is best secured in a
hereditary order.
You bellow. What, the aristocracy? They are effete,
you say, both in your speech and your pamphlet. The
English people talk more nonsense about aristocracy than
any people in Europe; and just at present that nonsense is
at its height. -
Lord Derby, who is almost as able a man as yourself,
observed some time since that he could not quite under-
stand in what sense the term aristocracy was used now-a-
days. I see with pleasure that your association does not
mean to destroy the House of Peers.” But I see that you
delight also in reviling the “aristocracy,” as if everything
that went wrong was the fault of some one mysterious
body of men so called. What is the aristocracy " If you
mean an ancient privileged body of great families tyran-
nizing over the masses by virtue of blood, I answer that
there is no such body in England. There is a House of
Peers, which in point of blood is not exclusive, for it is
full of the descendants of the Bloggs and Corduroys. And
if you come to blood, I want to know why that section
of it so seldom turns out a fellow worth his salt, and why
all its ablest men come from the ancient families! You
gape. This is the fact, Barnabas. Take the men from
Lord Halifax to Lord Derby, the Bolingbrokes, Mans-
fields, Erskines, Chesterfields, and Byrons, from the black-
guard Lord Wharton, to the pious Lord Lyttelton; to a
* This is kind of Blogg. See his pamphlet. (Noodles and Co., 1856).
A LETTER TO AN ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMER. 65
man the best of them were of the regular old tap. When,
therefore, you tell me the House of Peers does not produce
men to meet the crisis, I answer, first, that it is not true;
secondly, that if it was, it would be as much the fault of
the people as the families.
But this is the only country in Europe where aristocracy
is confounded with peerage. This is the only country
where a fellow who has won his coronet by jobbery, and
wears it on a numskull, is called “noble,” to the exclusion
of the gentlemen of the kingdom, the gentilshommes, Bar-
: nabas, I mean, whom Coke and Selden knew to be noble,
and whom Mr Hallam knows to be noble in the strict
ancient sense of that term. I cannot expect you to have
studied the question. But I can tell you, that if you
assert that the ancient blood of the kingdom does not
produce able men in every sphere of activity, you babble
mendaciously. Our two greatest seamen are noble, Dun-
donald and Napier; our statesmen, Derby, Palmerston,
the Greys (I take them from all sides), are usually able in
exact proportion as they are gentle. The greatest philoso-
pher living, Sir William Hamilton, is of most ancient
family; Bulwer, Landor, Thackeray, are of good descent.
Anything in blood you ask? EST, EST PROFECTO ILLA VIs
—to adopt an expression of Cicero's. For great historical
facts are not to be put down, and RACE is one of them.
Mr Disraeli is of the aristocracy of the Jews, the Sephar-
dim; so was Spinoza. We owe our Indian empire to two
very well descended men, Clive and Hastings; we owe the
best literature of the century to three very well-born men,
Byron, Shelley, and Scott.
And here a word of caution. One really great man,
E
66 CGIARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
such as Byron or Scott, outweighs a whole generation of
little fellows; so don’t come down on me with a host of
every-day notabilities. Ten donkeys don't make a horse;
ten geese don't equal an eagle. It is part of the Cockney
philosophy of the time to believe that everything depends
on numbers, as if men were like onions, of which two are
better than one, and so forth. But the truth is, that the
excellence of the world, and the work of the world, belong
to a few, who in all ages govern the many, and lead them
and teach them; and the earth would not be habitable if
this were not the case. Ask Mr Carlyle, who, you may be
sure, looks on your “Administrative Reform Association’
as the greatest humbug of the age. To return.
It is not, then, that “blood” has proved a failure, dear
B.; and by abusing the “aristocracy” you really do no
harm to any sensible man's faith in it. I think our
administration very bad, but not for the same reasons as
you do. The faults which are found in our administration
are part of the godless, mechanical aspect of the age, a
characteristic lying far deeper than Morley's yard-measure
will ever penetrate. But I can tell you that a very great
part of our administrative evils are owing to “British
freedom ;” to the fact that ministers are turned out one
after another, so that statesmen are at the mercy of clerks;
to the necessity of finding places for boobies of electors
and provincial idiots; to the necessity of employing
fellows because they can “jaw,” in the House or out of
it, etc. These are all democratic evils, however. That
certain families have more power than others, is owing to
their property; and that property is omnipotent, we owe
to the general worship of wealth, which is nowhere more
A LETTER TO AN ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMER. 67
conspicuous than among your class. “The power of
money, as the world is now constituted,” said Lord
Bolingbroke, in 1733, “is real power; and all power
without this is imaginary.” The Pelhams, Russells,
Cavendishes, and such families, owed the continuous
influence they exercised in the last century to their wealth.
When the Clintons took up the Pelham succession, they
became powerful politicians too. Since the Sutherland,
Gower, and Howard properties have become so united,
that connection has become potent and formidable. Now,
assuming that property is power, I am prepared to show
that it is better that landed property should have the sway,
than the kind of property which your party represent.
The honour of England is obviously a matter of greater
personal importance to these families than to yours, for
nobody in Europe knows the names of your families, and
everybody in Europe knows those of Howard and Stanley.
Now, admitting that, as a general rule, a firm is conducted
with more success than a Government, I must repeat,
that it does not follow that he who can do the first can do
the second. As a Radical, you probably hold the selfish
philosophy. Will a man, taken from his counting-house
to Downing Street, have the same motives to work early
and late, in a place out of which he must be turned in a
year or two, to make room for a fellow who has been
“chaffing” him from the Opposition, that he had to work
equally hard for his fortune, and his children? I believe
you will answer, No. But is it a case of willingness to work
only! Take the Crimean failures, which occasioned all this
discussion. Did everything depend on Newcastle's willing-
ness to work? Why, it is not denied that he fagged like a
68 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
copying-clerk. No. But before an order of his (and it
was his business to order) could turn up, executed, on the
hills of the Crimea, it had to go through office after office,
referred here, copied there, according to what is called the
“system ; ” and its execution depended on a whole string
of men from Downing Street to the office at Balaklava.
“Ah, but Frederick the Great would have ” Yes,
Barnabas ; but have you considered how ! By courts-
martial and despotic power. Give a man the power to
shoot and imprison, or, like Old Francia, to hang a tailor
who doesn’t do his work, and you’ll get it better done.
The Czar gets it famously done by such processes. But
British liberty, you see, my Barnabas, interferes here. In
fact, once more we find democracy at the bottom of the
mischief. Yet there are idiots who taunt us with the
superiority of France in administration,-a superiority
owing to her despotism; and the same idiots think they
are doing democracy a good turn thereby.
But, to be consistent, Blogg, your association should,
instead of talking about the “right man,” have produced
the right man. That would have settled the question.
You were asked for a Cromwell, and you produced Mr
Tite. As for Mr Layard, his services to ancient Nineveh
are much more important than to modern Babel. I see no
proof that he is a practical man, except as an antiquarian.
He is not even a very good speaker. His suggestions are
few. His accusations are often false. I should go in for him
in preference to any of you, of course, because he is a man of
culture. Hence, my surprise at his public appearances,
“h 3ngo.) wyíz y&é oi reºs fºovorzow
*
# ºr' to riv &y?gos.”
A LETTER TO AN ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMER. 69
“Demagogy is not the work of a cultivated man,” says
Aristophanes. He should leave it to such misguided
blockheads as met, t'other day, to try and get off Pam's
head, which has more in it than all their shaggy skulls
together. To such as one of their orators, from whose
os impurum comes balderdash and bile, whose nature is
like a chimney on fire, hot and sooty, dirty and dangerous,
—I may apply another sentence of the Attic satirist :—
3. X -
“T& 3’ &xxo, a.o. ºrg%a’so r, 3n22).oyuzó.
©oy?, alºéð, 'yá).oyz; 2.2x0s, &yáezios e?”
“All qualities combine, all circumstances,
To entitle and equip you for command,
A filthy voice, a villanous countenance,
A vulgar birth, and parentage, and breeding” (Frere).
Such men are fit for such work ; but not Mr Layard.
I think, my Barnabas, that we do want new men in the
administrative department. But I don't think we want
your kind of men; and I don't think we shall do any
good by throwing our faults exclusively on one class.
Statesmanship is a profession,-the noblest of all. I wish
the rising aristocracy would remember that fact, and labour
a little more than they do to qualify themselves for it. I
wish more of them were like Lord Stanley. I wish there
was as much opening as there was in Queen Anne's time,
for men of parts and of study, to those positions where
the business of the state is to be learned,—for a man
cannot walk out of the city into Government, and become
an impromptu administrator, as your friends seem to
think. I wish there was less agitation, and more educa-
tion. But I cannot consent that a set of fellows like you
should assume to be representatives of the middle classes.
70 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
I know that your triumph would saddle us with a mere
money Government ; whereas a mismanaged historico-
monied Government is better. I believe your class would
fail if they were tried,—that after money-grubbers and
blockheadism, we should have Chartism and violence. The
old heraldic writers (of whom I am rather fond) tell us
that “the lion when sick cureth himself with the blood of
an ape.” But this is a dream of antiquity; and no more
than I believe it, do I believe that the sick British lion
can derive his healing from the administrative reformers.
*
I am, dear Barnabas,
In sorrow and in anger,
Your friend,
BARNABAS BLOGG, Esq., X. X. X.
Oil and Pickle Warehouse, City.
P R 0 F E S S 0 R R A M S A. Y.”
(Edinburgh Courant, February 1865).
MR RAMSAY was the descendant of a family of great anti-
quity in Perthshire. For six centuries at least, the Ram-
says of Bamff have held land in the south-eastern corner of
that county. Sir Gilbert Ramsay of Bamff, Knight, was
created a Baronet in 1666; and from this gentleman, the
late Professor—a third son of Sir William, the seventh
* Mr Ramsay died at San Remo.
PROFESSOR RAMSAY. 71
Baronet—was lineally descended. Born at Edinburgh in
February 1806, he received his first education at the High
School during the rectorship of Mr Pillans. He also
attended the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, from
the last of which he proceeded to Cambridge. He was
still an undergraduate at Cambridge when he undertook
the duties of the Glasgow Mathematical Chair, which he
discharged for two years. In 1830, he graduated at Cam-
bridge ; and in 1831, he was chosen to succeed Mr Walker
as Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow.
It was during his long tenure of that office that his chief
influence was exercised, and his reputation as a scholar
acquired. Successive batches of our Scottish youth passed
through his hands, to Oxford, to Cambridge, to the Bar, the
Church, and other employments, diffusing through the
whole social body the good effects of his admirable training.
Mr Ramsay was a strict and accurate teacher, who, acting
up to a high standard of duty himself, expected that others
should share his elevation of feeling. The idle and care-
less probably thought him severe; and his keen, rapid
clearness of intellect must have made stupidity a painful
thing for him to deal with. But he inspired lasting respect
and affection in his best pupils, many of whom now hold
posts of honour and influence in the world; and the con-
tact of his vigorous mind, and dignified gentlemanliness of
tone, must have benefited every mature not naturally in-
capable of receiving good impressions. So far, Professor
Ramsay’s influence, though wide and deep, was compara-
tively limited in its range. But his writings extended it over
the empire, and made him known and esteemed wherever
British scholarship penetrated. In 1840 appeared his
72 . CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMs.
“Extracts from Tibullus and Ovid ; ” in 1851, his
“Roman Antiquities;” in 1858, his edition of the “Pro
Cluentio;” and soon afterwards an enlarged edition of his
“Manual of Latin Prosody.” Most of these works have
been widely circulated; all are executed with an admirable
completeness, neatness, and finish, and are used as text-
books by the best schoolmasters. But the literary power
in its highest sense, of Professor Ramsay, is seen to greatest
effect in the biographies which he contributed to the well-
known Dictionaries bearing the name of Dr William Smith.
His “Cicero,” for instance, is a masterpiece of lucid and
vigorous narrative and disquisition. He writes a fine, clear,
unaffected, and, so to speak, bracing kind of English style,
free from every taint of the impurities and affectations of
the age ; classical equally in its directness, wholesomeness,
and manly grace; healthful as the waters of the Eurotas,
transparent as the atmosphere of the AEgean. Master of
his subject at first-hand to begin with, he uses all the eru-
dition, ancient and modern, British and German, illustra-
tive of it, with the independent common sense of a vigorous
and accomplished man of the world. There is no pedantry
or prolixity, no useless theorising or dreaming, about the
writings of William Ramsay. All is plain, practical,
homely, business-like, the work of a man whose general
culture was as good as his professional culture, whose
mind, liberalised and refined by honourable family tradi-
tions, to begin with, had been early enriched by the expe-
riences of society and travel, and was habitually kept fresh
by communion with the best literature of his own genera-
tion. He knew his Thackeray as he knew his Horace;
did not disdain to amuse himself with a novel of Paul de
PROFESSOR RAMSAY. * 73
Kock, any more than with an epigram of Martial; and would
discuss the social life of the ancients with as keen a relish
for its humanity as for the latest reading in a text sug-
gested by Orelli or Classen. To the sturdiest industry as
as a scholar, he added the warmest interest in life, and its
ordinary pursuits and enjoyments. In his healthy days,
he was an ardent sportsman and a capital shot. He was
one of the earliest amateurs in photography. He would
leave the coins of the Ptolemys to criticise with a rural eye
a new litter of porkers, and passed genially from a corrupt
passage in Plautus to speculate on the disease which of
late years has attacked the larch trees.
Many a heart will now turn wistfully to the recollection
of those summers and autumns at Rannagulzion, made so
charming by his cordial and lettered hospitality, and by
the spectacle of a dearly-loved home, rich in the attrac-
tions of domestic affection, and a graceful and simple
refinement, when all the hues of heaven were on the trees
in that romantic glen leading down to the valley of the
Ericht, and the woods of Craig Hall. Nowhere was Mr
Ramsay happier than there, during his well-earned holiday,
—though a holiday in which the great studies of his life
went steadily on. With sad and yet sweet tenderness, his
friends will recall that cheerful library, of which the win-
dows looked far over the ancient clump of holly trees
planted by the Abbots of Coupar-Angus, and through an
opening in purple hills, to the distant plain of Strathmore.
The wild beauty without was an admirable setting for the
cultivated comfort within,_the rows of excellent editions
clothed with sober splendour, the piles of MS., fruits of
many a patient hour, the drawers of curious coins,—the
74 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
modest but beautiful traces of a love of ancient art. But
the great charm of the room was the room's master,
always kind, cordial, simple;—full of shrewd, pleasant,
critical talk, with a gleam of humour in it like that of his
keen blue Northern eye; rich with varied information;
and suggesting by everything about him, his compact,
well-formed head prematurely grey, his straight lithe figure
and frank independent manner, a character of perfect
reality and honesty, based on a profound sense of the
divine government of the world, and the high destiny and
responsibility of man. Such was William Ramsay, and as
such will his friends, and those dearer even than his friends,
love to remember him, when the sharp pain of separation
has been mercifully healed by time, and much that cannot
be recalled without suffering, now, has become the source
of a new pleasure as one of the solemn and tender posses-
sions of the past.
Mr Ramsay resigned his Chair in May 1863, amidst ex-
pressions of admiration and regret from his colleagues,
which touched him deeply; and passed the following
winter in Rome, with which city he was previously well
acquainted. He employed himself there in collating the
most important MSS. of Plautus, an author on whom he
had long laboured. His Prolegomena and his text of
some portions of Plautus must, we think, be ready, or
nearly so, and will, we hope, be given to the world by the
nephew who succeeded him in the Glasgow Chair. But,
undoubtedly, his ill-health and death have deprived us of
much important work that he was quite ready to execute
under favourable conditions. Enough remains, however,
to secure him a permanent place among the scholars of this
CAXTONIAN A. 75
age; and Scotsmen will long remember with pride and
pleasure the name of a man who has helped to keep alive
the ancient literary glory of the land of Buchanan.
CA XT () NIAN A.”
(Edinburgh Courant, December 1863).
How many of Sir Bulwer Lytton's novels will be generally
read a century hence is a question on which we hardly
like to pass an opinion. But critics and literary historians
will, we think, recur to his writings as illustrating more
copiously than those of any other man of his time the
changes of taste and opinion during a part of the nineteenth
century. From the nature and constitution of his mind,
he has always reflected himself in his books, and by the
same law his craving for popular sympathy and admiration
has made him dress himself so as to look his best in the
mirror of contemporary fashion and opinion. He is now
—though scarcely an old man—the oldest of England’s
favourite writers. He was famous twenty years before
Tennyson or Thackeray, and a dozen years before Dickens;
and he still continues to keep his popularity, and trim
sails to the changing breeze of public favour. When Sir
Bulwer Lytton began life, the anti-Byronic reaction—
(which, as we have elsewhere said,t was set going by Byron
* Caactoniana : A Series of Essays on Life, Literature, and
Manners. By Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, Bart.
+ Satire and Satirists.
76 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
himself in “Don Juan") was dominant. The world was
tired of mysterious heroes, children of passion and gloom; .
and Peacock and Disraeli had introduced the lively satirical
novel of modern life. “Pelham ” was Bulwer's contribu-
tion to this movement, and its run showed how effectively t
he had contrived to hit the prevailing feeling. But the
“Wilhelm Meister’ element—thanks to Carlyle's trans-
lation, and other influences—was also spreading amongst
the rising youth of the age, and the Novel of Art, Culture,
and Philosophy was to have its day amongst us. Without
renouncing his pleasant comic worldly vein, the author
of “Pelham ” became the author of “Godolphin,” the
“Disowned,” and “Earnest Maltravers.” This class of
fictions, none of them repetitions of each other, but all
marked by a family likeness, became the representatives
of a Bulwerian philosophy which turned the heads of most
of us while under twenty, though the cleverest of us
would be puzzled to say what the philosophy was. The
Ideal and the Beautiful were largely insisted on. The
True—though never exactly defined—was constantly re-
commended to us. And there was something peculiarly
fascinating in the ease with which our heroes were repre-
sented as having attained a mastery of what were called
the Mysteries of Life. Prodigious classical attainments
seemed to have come to them without effort. Damsels of
voluptuous beauty fell into their arms, of course without
the preliminary prose of matrimony, but what was more
curious, without there being much wickedness in the seduc-
tion. The hero was such a wonderful fellow that your
astrologer's daughter came to him to be loved, or your
peasant's daughter to be educated, whether he sought the
CAXTONIAN A. 77
little innocent or not. In fact, he was obeying his Destiny.
And he talked so finely to the Stars in any case, that no-
body had the heart to be hard upon him. The triumph
of this kind of thing was in “Eugene Aram,” where the
hero who had committed a murder was escorted to the
gallows amidst the tears of whole circulating libraries.
All he had done was to knock a low fellow on the head
in order to be able to purchase the best editions of the
classics. We fear that when we first read that book, we
were prepared to immolate Podger in the cause of Kuster's
“Aristophanes” or the “Lucian” of Hemsterhuys. But
as years rolled by, we came to see that, clever as it was,
“George de Barnwell” was cleverer; and that—its mo-
rality apart—there was something wretchedly melodra-
matic in making Aram happen to go and live just where
his victim's relations did, and fall in love with one of
them. His soliloquies, too, are sad bombast when tried by
the standard of any lofty poetry; and the whole business
smells of the paint-pot and the theatrical lamp.
In all these stories, however, there was one distinctive
feature—the writer went about his work in the spirit of
an artist. There was a coherence and completeness about
each book which no other novelist of the time has so uni-
formly sustained; and in seeking materials to work from,
the writer gradually and naturally enlarged his conceptions
of life. As he has changed his name from Bulwer to
Lytton, so there is a Lyttonism of his later years which
is quite unlike Bulwerism, and is a great improvement
upon it. “Harold,” for instance—(which we once heard
Thackeray call a “fine piece of old tapestry”)—is a vast
advance upon “The Last Days of Pompeii" and the in-
78 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS,
tolerable staginess of “Arbaces of the Burning Belt,”—clever
and picturesque as the novel is. But the real first book of
Sir Edward’s later manner is “The Caxtons.” Without
“Tristram Shandy,” there would have been no “Caxtons,”
of course. But to make “The Caxtons” out of “Tristram
Shandy” required a man of talent for all that. The public
taste had now changed. There was a revival of interest
in the Queen Anne men. Thackeray was beginning to be
profoundly influential. The boys whom “Maltravers ”
had fascinated were getting married, and escaping from
the illusions of youth ; while the generation younger than
they, were growing up, not in the Bulwerian faith, but as
believers in Tennyson, Carlyle, Thackeray, Browning,
Ruskin, Kingsley, and so on. Sir Edward was equal to
the occasion. He converted old enemies by writing like a
sober, thoughtful, moral, unaffected, middle-aged gentle-
man; and he made new friends by meeting the demand
for a simpler, more realistic, more domestic style of fiction.
He has now a set of admirers who only care for his Caxton
Novels, who would think “ Pelham ” flippant, “Mal-
travers’ immoral, and “Harold’ a little heavy ; and
those who sat up all night at sixteen flying through
“Godolphin’ by the aid of a surreptitious light, wonder
to find their old divinity—now a wise old gentleman in
a dressing-gown—preaching to them on the vanity of Post-
humous Reputation In the good old days, the hero of
the beloved books only talked in that style when he was
hipped, when Annabel's adoration bored him, or when he
was exhausted by a little too much study of Plato.
But the Essay has now had a revival, like other forms
of literature once out of fashion, and here is Sir Edward
CAXTONIANA. 79
still master of the situation. The Essay is an old friend
of his, as all who know his “Student” are aware, and it
must be pleasant to him to find the public again disposed
to enjoy that species of composition. We can hardly fancy
him anywhere more at home. His Novels are full of the
essay element, not only as being full of himself, but of
that kind of clever disquisition which is derived from a
critical study of life and books. He is therefore an essayist
by a double right, and with a relation to two schools of
the art, an essayist after the order of Montaigne, and an
essayist after the order of Macaulay. No doubt, he has
to introduce the personal element in the quiet indirect
way demanded by the reticence and reserve of modern
manners, but it is there. And though he never writes
as a reviewer, the papers are full of the kind of criticism
which we expect in reviews. It is curious to a reader
who knows Sir Bulwer Lytton’s books well, to see how
subtly personal feeling permeates his opinions in the book
before us. There is nothing more important, for instance,
in the history of his career, than that he has failed as a
poet. This is the secret of his throwing peculiarly cold
water on the poetical ambition for future renown; and of
his yet hinting at the same time that what a man's con-
temporaries are most likely not to appreciate is his poetry.
Just so, he has always been divided between a contempt for
what he used to call the Herd in imitation of the ancient
philosophers, and a feeling that they must often be right
since they bought his books. The “Caxtoniana” throws
a great deal of light on his other works to anybody who
knows how to study it, and thinks it worth while to take
the trouble. It is interesting to find him faithful, among
80 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
many changes, to his old belief in the Ideal in art. He
sturdily repudiates all the kind of portraiture which the
realists give us, and holds by the divine power, the clair-
voyance,—of the imagination. Here is a clever specimen
of his doctrine:—
RICHARDSON AND LOWELACE.
“Certainly if there were any creature in the world whom a
quiet prim respectable printer could never have come across in
the flesh and the blood, it would be a daring magnificent liber-
time—a roué of fashion the most exquisitely urbane—a prodigal
of wit the most riotously lavish. It was only through clairvoy-
ance that a Richardson could have ever beheld a Lovelace. But
Richardson does not only behold Lovelace, he analyses and
dissects him—minutes every impulse in that lawless heart, un-
ravels every web in that wily brain. The refiners on Shak-
speare who would interpret his life from his writings, and reduce
his clairvoyance into commonplace reminiscence, would, by the
same process of logic, prove Richardson to have been the con-
fidential valet of Wilmot, Lord Rochester; or, at least in some
time of his life, to have been a knavish attorney in the Old
Bailey of love.”
Indeed he goes so far as to ask us to believe that a man
might describe the Nile better without ever having seen it,
than he could describe a lake with which he was familiar.
The truth, we take it, is that he suspects his own characters
of lacking flesh and blood, which, compared with those of
Scott or Thackeray, they certainly do, and that he there-
fore holds to the superiority of air and moonlight. Another
instance of this ever-present habit of introspective reference
is afforded by the passages which we are about to quote:–
LITTLE PLAGIARISTS AND BIG ONES.
“In truth, the more we examine the alleged evidences of Le
CAXTONIANA, 81
Sage's plagiarism, the more visible the originality of his ‘Gil
Blas’ becomes. It is the same with all writers of first-rate genius.
They may seize what they did not inherit with an audacity
that shocks the moral nerves of a critic, yet so incorporate in
their own dominion every rood of ground they annex that the
result is an empire the world did not know before. Little wits
that plagiarise are but pickpockets; great wits that plagiarise
are conquerors. One does not cry “Stop thief l’ to Alexander
the Great when he adds to the heritage of Macedon the realms
of Asia; one does not cry ‘Plagiarist l' to Shakspeare when we
discover the novel from which he borrowed a plot. A writer's
true originality is in his form—is in that which distinguishes
the mould of his genius from the mintage of any other brain.
When we have patiently examined into all Lawrence Sterne's
alleged thefts, collated passages in Burton's ‘Anatomy’ with
passages in ‘Tristram Shandy,' the chief amaze of a discerning
critic is caused by the transcendent originality with which
Sterne's sovereign genius has, in spite of all the foreign sub-
stances it laid under contribution, preserved unique, unimita-
ting and inimitable, its own essential idiosyncrasy of form and
thought. True, there are passages in ‘Tristram Shandy’ taken
almost literally from Burton's ‘Anatomy.” But can any book
be less like another than Burton’s “Anatomy' to ‘Tristram
Shandy?' When you have shown us all the straws in a block
of amber, and proved to our entire satisfaction that the amber
had imbedded the straws, still the amber remains the amber,
all the more curious and all the more valuable for the liberty it
took with the straws.”
TEIE FLUCTUATIONS OF FAMR.
“Among the rising generation, neither Scott nor Byron,
according to the invariable laws to which the fluctuations of
fame are submitted, can receive other than the languid appro-
bation with which persons speak of a something that has just
gone out of fashion without having yet acquired the veneration
F
82 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
due to antiquity. In proportion as a taste in authorship,
architecture, in the arts of embellishment—down even to those
employed on furniture and dress—has been carried to enthu-
siasm in its own day, is the indifference with which it is put
aside for some new fashion in the day that immediately succeeds.
Ilet time pass on—and what was undervalued as rococo, be-
comes again, if it have real merit, the rage as classic. I am
not therefore at all surprised when a young lady, fresh from the
nursery, tells me that all Lord Byron ever wrote is not worth a
stanza by a Mr Somebody, of whom, out of England, Europe
has never heard; nor does it amaze me when a young gentle-
man, versed in light literature, tells me he finds Scott, as a
romance writer, heavy, and prefers the novels of a Mr or Miss
Somebody, whose very name he will have forgotten before he is
forty. When suns set, little stars come in fashion. But suns
re-arise with the morrow. A century or two hence, Byron and
Scott will not be old-fashioned, but ancient; and then they
may be estimated according to their degree of excellence in that
art which is for all time, and not, as now, according to their
place in or out of the fashion, which is but of a day. Milton
and Shakspeare were for a time out of fashion. So, indeed,
was Homer himself.”
Can anybody doubt that the resemblance of “The
Caxtons” to “Tristram Shandy” prompted the first of
these pleasant little dissertations !—and the author's failure
to achieve poetic renown the second
Of course, there are portions of these essays the origi-
mality of which is dubious, an inevitable thing when a
writer discusses what has a hundred times been discussed
before. But, on the whole, they are most agreeable read-
ing; shrewd, lively, graceful, and thoughtful always;
in style, bookish though never verbose, while habitually
elegant; in tone and temper genial, manly, and gentle-
A SKETCH. S3
manly. The knowledge of literature which they show, is
something of which we have no experience in Scotland in
the present generation, and for that, as well as for their
fluent and finished English, they ought to be sedulously
studied on this side of the Tweed.
—$—
A SKETCH,
(Puppet-Show, 1848).
Now that the reign of pillories is o'er,
And stocks confine the “patriot ” no more,
What splendid prospects open on the sight,
Of realms illumined by O'Connor's light !
Of tailors sitting cross-legged on a throne,
And making laws—and small-clothes—of their own;
Of private soldiers making monarchs bleed,
And shoeblacks polishing a nation's creed;
While purblind tradesmen, by delusion queer,
Trust those in Government they won't for beer
In yonder narrow street, that crowded hall,
With dirty tables, and a whitewashed wall,
Sees forty “patriots,” daily met to bawl:
With cautious step, soft gliding through the den,
Armed with our pencil, we will sketch the men.
As on a dunghill, 'mongst the feather'd race,
He who crows loudest holds the highest place,
So here, the noisest brawler leads the rest,
The worthy offspring of a rebel nest—
Feargus, still used to share, for many a year,
The poor man's profit, and the rich man's sneer;
84 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
For who, within our dark and foggy clime,
Prefers hard labour to unpunished crime !
Say, who would till the land, or plough the deep,
If lies could clothe him, and sedition keep?
Better than shuttle, anvil, spade, or flail,
The workman's dole, derision, and the jail.
Next on our list, see yonder babbler rise,
Whose glasses half conceal his goggle eyes;
He gilds, with harlot ornaments, his lead,
And writes at once for buttermen and bread—
Skilled in describing all the burglar race,
Or raising blushes on a virgin face.
Eccentric Cuffey, shalt thou miss the pen,
Bravest of tailors—foolishest of men ;
Shall he triumphant from the lash escape,
Whom Nature's self stamped kinsman of the ape'ſ
Or England’s laws be altered at his will,
When no clown trusts his breeches to his skill'—
When such are leaders, who would dare describe
All the inferior creatures of the tribe t
Sad will be England’s fall, if fall it must,
And these shall gibber o'er the sacred dust
—49—
T H E SCOTT IS H NEW YEAR’S D A Y.
(Edinburgh Courant, January 1865).
THERE are few things more characteristic of a nation than
the way in which it keeps its holidays; and the whole
subject is one on which nations seem apt to run into ex-
tremes. That the Catholic countries of Europe overdo the
THE SCOTTISH NEW YEAR’s DAY. 85
matter, is what few sensible and moderate observers will
deny. If you go into the London Docks, where the flags of
every maritime Power are represented, you will often find
Spanish and Portuguese vessels lying idle, because the
crews are nominally doing honour to some saint of whose
history they know nothing, and whose cultus exercises no
practical influence over their lives. Protestantism is seen
from this point of view to be naturally the religion of in-
dustrious and enterprising States, and to be at the bottom
of much of the productiveness which has distinguished,
for instance, Britain, Prussia, and America, in modern
times. But there are two sides to everything, and the in-
quiry has often been made during this generation whether
the people of Great Britain have holidays enough. In-
dustry has assumed such enormous proportions in these
days as to cast into the shadow everything else. When
the multitudes of our great cities take their recreation,
they take it with something like fierceness. Excursion-
trains carry them by thousands. Their enjoyment is not
in leisure, but in excitement. And they get about as
little spiritual benefit out of the change as could well be
conceived possible. It is natural that it should be asked
whether more frequent holidays would not be a benefit, if
only by teaching the populace to take their pleasure with
a little more thoughtfulness and moderation ?
Such speculations have doubtless been awakened in the
minds of many readers here by the proceedings of the last
day or two. The Scottish New Year's Day is certainly
one of the least satisfactory holidays in the world. Its
general aspect to a disinterested observer is that of a
drunken Sunday. The closed shops give it the Sunday
86 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS,
dulness, while the drunkenness robs it of the Sunday
gravity and decorum. There were several features of this
last holiday which made it one of the most dismal on
record. In the first place, we may refer to what our own
report showed of the want of public spirit displayed by
our Edinburgh shopkeepers. Because, for that one day,
the bulk of them were to do no trade, they neglected to
have the pavement cleaned, and filth was the natural
accompaniment of the unexpected thaw. What with this,
what with the weather, and what with the general ignor-
ance how to make the most and best of a holiday, the
whisky-drinking was above the usual level of that tide.
The police were busy quite early on Monday afternoon ;
and it was impossible to stray through the popular
thoroughfares for purposes of philosophical observation
without meeting disgusting spectacles. There was nothing
jovial or genial in the debauchery of which one saw traces
at every dozen yards. A “Thracian” pugnacity, as
Horace would have called it, was one element ; and those
who were not quarrelsome were dull and sulky. The
drunkenness of boys, and even of women, was a further
accompaniment of the mirth. Altogether the sight was a
cheerless one,—that of the revelry, as it seemed, of an
over-worked discontented population, obstinately bent on
getting excitement of some kind, and yet conscious that it
was only half-successful. The poor fellows looked as if
they would have liked to get jolly, had they only known
how, and as if they were cross with themselves and their
neighbours, on account of the failure. The absence of
gaiety would not have been so painful, if there had been
anything imposing in the gravity of the scene. But a
THE SCOTTISH NEW YEAR’s DAY. 87
heavy and gloomy recklessness of debauchery is the most
depressing thing imaginable.
Whether, if Christmas Day were kept, as well as New
Year's Day, by the Scotch, it would tend to improve the
present state of things, is a question that may properly
engage the attention of the more liberal and cultivated
minds amongst us. That it is kept far more by the upper
and middle class than it used to be, is generally known.
The old Reformers objected to such festivals as “supersti-
tious,” but it is difficult to see what religious mischief
they could do now; and anybody talking of them, in the
sixteenth century style, as “abominations,” would, in our
age, be simply laughed at as a fanatical ass. It is certain
that in England the celebration of Christmas is a practical
benefit to the community of the highest importance. We
say nothing of the religious aspects of the question. But
we attach the greatest value to the effects of the day on
the charity of the country. For a fortnight, almost, the
Times has swarmed with acknowledgments of sums received
by the different charitable institutions of London, sums
the giving of which was directly inspired by the associations
of the season. Here, then, is a holiday with a meaning
in it, and bearing fruits that even people who
“blaspheme custard through the nose,”
in their horror of such festivals, cannot dare to despise.
And what is of great importance is just that Christmas is
not a day only but a season, the day itself throwing a
certain festal glory over the days in its neighbourhood.
With us, the first of January has to bear the whole brunt
of the popular hilarity; and when it happens, from weather
or other cause, to be a failure, great is the failure thereof,
88 CPHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
The way it was kept this time was discreditable to our
civilisation ; and ought to shut the mouths of those who
fancy that some peculiar superiority belongs to everything
that themselves have been accustomed to see and do since
childhood. If we had more holidays, some of them better
selected, and all of them directed more than they are by
the spirit of our best and most genial Society, the effect on
the popular temper, manners, and morals, would be un-
questionably beneficial.
—$–
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.”
(Edinburgh Courant, March 1862).
IT is not every day that we have before us a standard
edition of an eighteenth century classic. But this is
what Mr Moy Thomas has given to the world in the book
to which we now, though much later than we had in-
tended,—desire to do some little justice. Of the accom-
plished editor, we must first speak. Mr Thomas is not
only the author of some very thoughtful and graceful
essays ; he is one of the best critical inquirers into the
literary history of all that period covered by Lady Mary’s
life. He is sound on Pope and Swift; great on Collins
and Chatterton ; unrivalled on Richard Savage. We owe
to his zeal the best monograph ever written on Savage's
ill-starred career ; and he was the first person to clear up
whatever can be known exactly of the scene and circum-
* The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Edited
by her Great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe. Third Edition, with Addi-
tions, Corrections, etc., and a New Memoir, by W. Moy Thomas.
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 89
stances of Chatterton's early and awful death. In short,
he ranks among the leading critics of the literary bio-
graphy of those times. And few perhaps know what an
amount of research, and how much keen sagacity is re-
quired by a writer of this stamp. Let anybody who would
realise it amuse himself by investigating the original autho-
rity for any of those traditionary stories and anecdotes of
a century ago, which most strike his fancy. He will find
himself losing the scent after trying half a library ;
drawn off to examine a will, or an old file of newspapers,
and constantly liable to lose his labour unless he can
instantly apply an acute decisive insight to the last fact
turned up. He must have patience, judgment, tact, taste,
as well as great information ; and his labours are infinitely
important, because on the certainty of historic facts de-
pends our judgment of historic characters. A single story
about a famous man often determines the world's opinion
of him, and it is only the critic of Mr Thomas's stamp
who can tell us whether or not the story is a lie. We
doubt if this kind of criticism is as much appreciated as it
Ought to be, though aesthetic criticism of very ordinary
merit finds ready public acceptance.
Mr Thomas has this time applied his curious lore and
his critical acumen to the remains of one of the most
remarkable personages of the eighteenth century. Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu is a unique personage in English
literature. No other Englishwoman has so much literary
fame, nor is associated with such great literary names,
nor has so various and many-sided a celebrity. One of
our best letter-writers, our earliest Oriental traveller,-
Pope's friend and enemy, the introducer of inoculation,-
the cousin of Fielding, she has very diverse claims to
90 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMs.
the remembrance of posterity. And she mixes herself up
specially with Scottish social history, as the sister-in-law
of the Jacobite Earl of Mar, as the mother-in-law of the
well-known Earl of Bute. But beyond all that, a certain
romantic piquancy belongs to her name, such as few
beautiful women who are famous and witty escape ; and
such as easily gathers round the memory of those who are
oftener talked of than read. “Lady Mary” was becoming
a mythical figure, in fact, to the popular eye, when the
present editor took up his task. Lord Wharncliffe's
edition, somehow, never reached the general reading .
world, though well deserving to do so, if only for the
admirable “Anecdotes” of Lady Louisa Stuart. People
thought of Lady Mary, they hardly knew on what
grounds, as one who had purchased her superiority to
her sex at the price of the most precious and lovely attri-
butes of the womanly character. Pope's satire had much
to do with the diffusion of this belief; and it is curious
that his favourite way of libelling her was by libelling an-
other woman of genius. His nicknaming her “Sappho,”
—considering what he wished to be implied, was itself
a libel on the poetess of Lesbos. And when Mr Thomas
shows how baseless Pope's charges were, he is just doing
for the brilliant Englishwoman what scholarship had pre-
viously done for the “AEolian girl.” The reader who only
reads Lady Mary's Letters in the old editions (in which
some of them are spurious to begin with), and who takes
her character on hearsay, is a believer in a legendary
Lady Mary belonging to the world of myth. Mr Thomas's
criticism brings her out of tradition into history.
It may not be amiss to recapitulate the leading events
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAG U. 91
of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's life. As regards
birth, she was a Pierrepont, the daughter of Evelyn
Pierrepont, Earl of Kingston by inheritance, and Duke of
Kingston by creation, and was born in May 1689, the
year after her great enemy Pope. Her blood was every-
where remarkable, for besides that the Pierreponts were
ancient, they were distinguished, and while her mother
was a Fielding, her grandmother was an Evelyn. Lord
Kingston left his children very much to themselves, and
his excellent library first stimulated and then cultivated
his pretty daughter's studious taste. Lady Mary per-
formed the remarkable feat of teaching herself Latin,
which would alone prove the solid character of her talent,
—a point on which we shall have a word to say presently.
And it was her talent as much as her good looks that first
attracted Mr Wortley her husband to her. “He was a
man of learning, a friend and associate of the most
eminent literary men of his days”—says Mr Thomas.
This gentleman,—a Whig, and a man of good business
talents as a member of Parliament, —apparently agreed
with Propertius, who says—
“Me juvat in gremio doctae legisse puellae’’
—and assiduously courted the young lady in spite of
Lord Kingston's opposition. Lord Kingston insisted on
certain settlements which Mr Wortley declined to make;
and the result was that the lovers eloped in the early
autumn of 1712. This involved the sacrifice of Lady
Mary's dot, a sacrifice to principle and passion combined,
for which she much admired her husband. But things
went well for him. Queen Anne's death in 1714 brought
in the Whigs. Wortley, who was a Montagu in the male
92 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMIS.
line,—was at once made by his cousin Lord Halifax a
Commissioner of the Treasury; and in 1716 was appointed
Ambassador to the Sublime Porte. He and his wife left
for Constantinople, by way of Vienna, and remained in
the East till May 1718, when they returned to England
by Genoa.
This tour and Eastern residence supplied Lady Mary
with the subject of her best Letters; and till they
appeared after her death, in 1763, the English public had
never had anything like an accurate and yet brilliant
account of Turkish life and society. Not only was the
Porte in those days still a great and vigorous Power;
there was a mysterious romantic halo about the East in
the eyes of Western Europe, which has now all but dis-
appeared. Lady Mary was the first modern writer to tell
the truth about the Turks, to describe the splendid
aspects of their life without fabulous detail, and to
penetrate below the surface, and show the real character
and influence of their social institutions. She anticipated
“Eothen" in the vivacity of her descriptions; Mr
Urquhart in the vindication or palliation of Eastern
usages; Kinglake and Eliot Warburton in lively and
piquant comparison between the Eastern and Western
worlds. She was a literary ancestress of Byron moreover,
who much admired her talents;–and so, in one way
and another, she was the herald and forerunner of all our
Oriental travellers down to Titmarsh (the “Fat Con-
tributor”) and Mr Albert Smith. We have now perhaps
used up the poetic, and got to the depths of the cynical,
view of the East; and the world, tired of repetitions
of one or the other, may profitably recur to the clever
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU’. 93
woman who anticipated both. But in introducing ino-
culation, she did a service to mankind, such as no mere
lively sketcher will ever do. We have almost forgotten,
now, what smallpox was in those days, when it was
hardly less terrible than leprosy had been in the Middle
Ages. It emptied nurseries like the plague. It killed or
blinded the finest of the youth of the time; and it fell
upon the roses of the loveliest cheeks of Europe with a
power as blasting and mysterious as that which has in our
own age ravaged the vines of the South. Lady Mary had
had the Smallpox, and had made a wonderful recovery
from it, though not without some damage to her good
looks. But it had carried off her only brother ; and was
thus a doubly terrible subject of remembrance to her.
She took up the subject of inoculation at Constantinople,
and pursued it in England, with a zeal that may justly
be called pious. At Constantinople she inoculated or
“ingrafted” her son Edward Wortley. It must be ad-
mitted that he was unworthy the trouble of the experi-
ment. For he turned out one of the greatest scamps of
his generation ; and was a thorn in the side of his
celebrated, but certainly not happy, mother, as long as
he lived. Hundreds of better people than himself, how-
ever, benefited by the experiment (“ in corpore vili,” we
may truly say !) which had been made upon him.
Inoculation spread, in spite of much opposition, in
England; and prepared the way for the greater discovery
of vaccination in due time. We have said that Lady
Mary was a literary ancestress of Lord Byron. She was,
also, a scientific ancestress of Dr Jenner. To her myrtle-
crown of beauty, and her laurel-crown of wit, we must add
94 N. CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
the Oaken-leaved crown, the corona civica, due to those
who have saved fellow-creatures' lives. And, certainly, the
Smallpox was not less deadly to our ancestors than even
their incessant wars.
The period which followed Lady Mary’s return from
Constantinople, and which intervened between that and
the long exile of her later life, is chiefly known as
the period of her quarrel with Pope. Famous writers
quarrel now. But they don't now lampoon each other,
publicly, any more than they fight duels; contenting
themselves with abuse of each other in private, in the
smoking-rooms of clubs 'Twas different with the war-
like generation of the age of Anne. When A quarrelled
with B, it was precisely as if his Sovereign had quarrelled
with the King of France. He withdrew his ambassador.
He issued a declaration of war. And he marched on the
enemy’s territory with flags flying, in the face of the world.
Pope's war with Lady Mary was as much a matter of
notoriety as the war of the Spanish Succession. But
nobody can yet say with certainty about what it began.
They had once been friends, as Pope and Addison had
once been friends. During Lady Mary's absence in the
East, Pope had written letters to her, laboured and
artificial as all his letters are, and full of the conventional
gallantry expressed with broad license of allusion, which
was characteristic of the time. She had replied in her
capacity of a woman of wit, freely and vigorously,–but
not with any more personal warmth towards Pope than
was due to the nature of the correspondence with a man
of so much mark. “The fashion ” of writing in this style
was “a French importation”—says Mr Thomas, very well,
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAG.U. 95
—“which the hostile tariffs of the Whigs were unfor-
tunately unable to prevent.” Whether Pope ever presumed
beyond the conventional mark, and got snubbed and
laughed at by Lady Mary, is uncertain, though it is not
improbable. There was a tradition among her descendants
to this effect, as we see in the “Anecdotes” of her grand-
daughter, Lady Louisa Stuart, and Mr Thackeray evi-
dently inclines to accept it. Pope seems to have been
willing that the world should believe something of the
kind, for, in speaking of himself, he says—
“Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,
Sappho can tell you how this man was bit,”
—as if “Sappho" had hurt his feelings in some matter
about which they were tender. However, neither Croker,
nor Thackeray, neither Mr Carruthers, Mr Peter Cunning-
ham, nor our present editor, can tell us with any certainty
what the first cause, or the earliest date, of this famous
quarrel was. We shall give a specimen of Mr Thomas's
“Memoir,” by extracting part of what he says on the
subject, as at least suggesting
ONE PROBABLE CAUSE OF TEIE QUARREL.
“Another account, given at second-hand by Spence from the
Countess of Pomfret, who professes to have had it from Lady
Mary, is, that “when she became acquainted with the Duke of
Wharton, Mr Pope grew jealous; and that occasioned the
breach between them.’ This could, of course, be only a sur-
mise. It may have been one of the causes to which Lady Mary
assigned his ill-will, and the statement is therefore not incon-
sistent with the spirit of her accounts at other times. The
allusions to the Duke of Wharton in Lady Mary's correspon-
dence occur only in letters written during the years 1724 and
96 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMs.
1725, which appears to have been the only period of their
intimacy. This was after her estrangement from Pope; but
the witty and profligate young Duke attacked Pope in a satire,
of which he gave Lady Mary a copy, and of which he was far
too imprudent to conceal the authorship. This may account
for Pope's elaborate satire upon him under the name of Clodio;
for the Duke, in the last years of his life, was an ardent
supporter of the Tory and Jacobite party, to which Pope
belonged — -
‘Clodio, the scorn and wonder of our days,
Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise ;
Born with whate'er could win it from the wise,
Women and fools must like him, or he dies.”
“But it was, I suspect, at this exact point of time that a
ground of offence arose, which Pope would be little likely to
acknowledge, but which was far more calculated to wound his
pride and turn what was before a mere coolness into bitter ani-
mosity. The preface of Mary Astell, affixed to the copy of the
letters written during the embassy, bears date December 18, 1724;
the second preface, May 31, 1725; and the last letter in that com-
pilation is addressed to Pope, and contains, besides more prosaic
banter, her clever parody upon his well-known epitaph on the
Lovers struck by Lightning. It has been already shown, by an
ample test, that, except in a few doubtful instances, the letters
in these volumes did not consist of any real correspondence,
but were, in fact, subsequent compilations; and there are strong
reasons for believing that the letter to Pope referred to was no
more genuine than any of the others. It will not escape the
reader's observation that its contents, both in verse and prose, are
more ingenious and elaborate than they were likely to have been
if really written in an inn at Dover, after a sea-passage in No-
vember, and in answer to a letter ‘this minute received.' If,
indeed, the report in the newspapers were correct, none of the
letters which close the pretended correspondence could have been
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAG.U. 97
written at the dates which they bear in Lady Mary's handwriting;
for the Weekly Journal of the 11th of October 1718 announces
that on Thursday sevennight last the Honourable Wortley Mon-
tagu, Esq., late Ambassador at the Ottoman Court, and his lady,
arrived in town;' and it is very improbable that this particular
letter could have been written on the 1st of November ; for the
letter of Pope “this minute received ' ' from Paris,' to which it
professes to be an answer, is dated September 1,’ and was evi-
dently written after news had reached England of her arrival at
Genoa. The letter is, indeed, one which, if written at the date
affixed, would probably have served to abate those raptures with
which the poet continued to address her. But if it would have
been offensive to write it at the moment, to fabricate it after-
wards, and to insert it in the copy of the collection which Lady
Louisa Stuart informs us was circulated among her friends,
was an offence still more unpardonable. The piquancy of the
poem could not have failed to attract attention, or the whole
matter to come quickly to the ears of Pope. His letter contain-
ing the story of the Lovers struck by Lightning, with his epitaph
upon them, was a composition which he appears to have regarded
with a peculiar pride, for he addressed copies of it only slightly
varied to several of his friends. He was, therefore, little likely to
relish the ridicule cast upon his somewhat exaggerated sentiment,
or the amusement which the friends of Lady Mary derived from
the spectacle of his supposed humiliation. Pope revelled in the
vulgar attacks made upon him by small critics and poor poets,
and dexterously turned them to the advantage of his own re-
nown. But to be beaten by a woman with his own weapons,
and with no more expenditure of labour or pains than might be
bestowed in a chance minute Snatched during a journey at an
inn; to be represented as laughed out of countenance, and out
of all his fine sentimentalism and artificial moralisings, in the
presence of an audience who enjoyed his discomfiture, was an
offence which Pope's sensitive and spiteful nature could not
easily forgive. It was with Lady Mary too common a practice
G
98 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
to exercise her wit at the expense of friends, and to be after-
wards surprised at their resentment, for us to wonder at the
simplicity with which, if these suppositions be correct, she in-
duced persons to inquire what was the cause of his ill-will.
Pope would naturally avoid the confession that her satire had
wounded him; but the offence appears to reveal itself in his
allusions to her as ‘that dangerous thing, a female wit,” as one
who had ‘too much wit’ for him; and particularly in his note
to the “Dunciad,” declaring that the offensive passage which had
been supposed to refer to Lady Mary, was intended to apply to
all “bragging travellers.” Of the existence of his ill-feeling she
had soon convincing proof. The ‘Capon's Tale,' written by Pope
or Swift, or both, and published in their Miscellany, appears to
have been the first attack. Then followed the allusion to ‘Lady
Marys’ in the “Dunciad,' 1728, which was at once fixed upon her
by Curll, and to which Pope subsequently appended an insult-
ing note. Pope accused her of retaliating in a “A Pop upon
Pope,” and appears to have suspected her of having had a hand
in a libel called ‘ One Epistle to Mr A. Pope,’ published in
1730; which explains the appearance of a still more savage
attack in his ‘Imitation of the first Satire of the Second Book of
Horace,’ under the name of Sappho. Pope, indeed, denied that
the satire referred to her; but his readers so applied it, which
served his purpose; and there can now be little doubt of the
insincerity of his denial. After this, attacks, or what were
understood by the public as attacks, both upon herself and her
husband, were frequent ; and the popularity of Pope's Satires
at length rendered her so conspicuous, that she may well have
become disgusted with that scene from which she soon after-
wards finally retired.”
Whatever the reason of Pope's hatred to Lady Mary,
we cannot approve the form which most of his satire took.
The lady was satirical enough in tendency, herself. She
IADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAG.U. 99
was one of the authors of a satire where Pope is told that
his versification is—
“Hard as thy heart and as thy birth obscure.”
The Diary she left behind her, and which her daughter
Lady Bute burned, seems to have been sufficiently sea-
soned with scandal and sarcasm. But, though she would
have scorned the plea of unfitness for satirical warfare on
the ground of sex,−though she was as ready for battle
and rapid in it as the Virgilian Camilla, that does not
justify Pope's assailing her in libels which were absolute
lies. Mr Moy Thomas shows pretty clearly, that when
Pope inquired—
“Who starved a sister, or denied a debt 7”
—he was cramming a couple of falsehoods into a single
line. But, supposing it to be pleaded for him, that he
believed these accusations true, no such excuse can be
made for his conduct in another matter handled in Mr
Thomas's Memoir. It is now, we fear, only too certain,
not only that Pope contrived a trick to get his Letters
published,—which has long been known, but that he
cooked the Letters (as they say in Parliament) before
publication. When the long-expected Crokerian edition
appears, the world will hear enough about this, the
Athenaeum, it is well known, having illustrative MS.
matter in reserve. Meanwhile, let us see what Mr Thomas
says about Pope's treatment of his Letters to Lady Mary.
“It becomes significant,” observes he, “that on collation
with the originals, it appears that in preparing them for
publication he omitted passages, interpolated passages, and
100 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
made other alterations, with the manifest object of heighten-
ing the appearance of familiarity between them.” Instances
of this manipulation,-and it is a species of forgery, are
to be found in Mr Thomas's Notes; and are more injuri-
ous to Pope's memory, than all his lampoons on Lady
Mary are injurious to hers.
But enough of this painful subject. We have mentioned
before, that Lady Mary passed the last twenty years of her
life abroad. They were passed in Italy, and away from
her husband, though the separation seems to have been
unaccompanied with hostile feeling on either side. She
returned to England in January 1762, and died in the
August following, in London, in her seventy-fourth year.
Those who love our eighteenth century literature, with-
out overvaluing it, or being blind to its faults, will always
turn to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's writings as among
its best and most characteristic productions. She was no
mere “wit” to begin with, no epigrammatist with fine
eyes only, like some of those French women of whom
our neighbours in Paris are so proud. She had, indeed,
plenty of wit, but it was of that good English kind, which
—to borrow an illustration from the vinous art—has a
“body’ of sense in it ; and which reminds one of her
cousin Fielding's. Shrewdness and Sagacity of substan-
tial quality form the base of her intellectual character;
and her gaiety and brilliance are never to be separated
from the real power which belongs to her. People think
of her wit, without remembering her sense, as they think
of her beauty, without remembering that she was a good
housewife and a good mother. To form a full conception
of her, it is necessary to bear in mind that she was a solid
*
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 101
student, and well-read woman, and that she introduced
into England a medical discovery of the first import-
ance ; as also, that in spite of her beauty and daring,
her love of wit and proud self-confidence, no charge
of her enemies against her character in essential points
has been fairly substantiated. This is much to say in
an age when research is enabling us to know the con-
temporaries of Lady Mary better than they knew each
other, and is bringing to light things which they hoped
would be buried with them in their graves. Among her
contemporaries as they stand in the eyes of posterity, Lady
Mary will always hold a high place. Her Letters are
some of the best in the language, less airy and subtly
epigrammatic than those of Walpole, and somewhat in-
ferior in style to Chesterfield’s, but equally valuable in
their way. The higher literature of our age has more
spirituality and sentiment than that of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Our lighter literature, too, is free from some of the
grosser faults of its predecessor at that time. But for
sense and clearness, and outspoken decisiveness about life,
for a mastery of the whole “common sense” view of
existence and Society, and for a genuine love of literature
both as an art and a tradition, we shall never surpass the
people among whom Lady Mary Wortley Montagu lived,
and of whom she was justly one of the most distin-
guished.
A HINT TO QUACK.
OF Scotia's learning, Quack is in despair.
Would you serve learning, Quack! Resign your Chair.
102 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
A R A DIC A. L R 0 M A N G E.
(Edinburgh Cowrant, January 1861).
THERE happens every now and then, among our country-
men, some social incident just important enough, in its
general bearings, to be discussed in the leading columns of
newspapers, yet light enough to give an amusing variety to
them. Of such a nature is the “Sylphide scandal,” about
which we have all heard at intervals during the last month
or two, and which—after sailing like a bubble during that
period, has finally burst,--to the disappointment, as We
suspect, of many of our contemporaries. The story went,
—and it was a newspaper correspondent who set it going,
—that the Marquis of Downshire, returning on board his
yacht, suddenly, at Naples, found the captain making love
in a romantic attitude to his daughter; that, thereupon,
the incensed patrician (“a man of gigantic strength”) hurled
the presumptuous lover into the sea, which closed for
ever on him and his passion. It is not often that the
British public gets hold of anything as good as this, -or
half so calculated to excite intense interest in an age at
once fond of romances and Radicalism. The fierce poetry
of the incident was indubitable, as every novel-reader felt
with a thrill. Here was an oligarch,-proud as Lucifer
and cold as ice,—a stern haughty man, unacquainted with
the nobler impulses of our nature, but whose daughter
(a true Zuleika of the best Byronic type) had seen the
noble character of the romantic young Sailor who sailed
their yacht, and too tenderly betrayed her secret heart
A RADICAL ROMANCE. I03
to him And, now, when this golden-haired child of the
sea had at last flung himself on his knees to pour out his
hidden tenderness, what had been his doom —death—
and the Wavel The circumstances were plain at a glance,
and Naples was a delightful bit of scenery as a background.
But while the gentle sighed over the business, different
emotions possessed the bosoms of Podger of the Weekly
Whoop, and others of the same kidney. They sharpened
their pens, and waited for the telegram that was to
announce the marquis's arrest. The aristocracy had done
it at last ; a marquis had committed a fearful crime; and
his death on the gallows (the block being reserved for
political offences) would strike terror to the hearts of an
overbearing order.
There was only one fault, it seems, in this “thrilling”
narrative. It was a lie. And, the explanation turned out
to be such a stupid, unromantic one, after all. Not only
had Lord Downshire never drowned the gentleman who
sailed his yacht for him, but the gentleman himself was a
staid old naval captain, much respected in “the service,”
as his wife very properly told the world through the Times.
While Podger had been brewing his thunder, and a hun-
dred Lauras and Matildas dreaming of the youth now
“ — tossed with tangle and with shells,”
as Mr Tennyson says, - Lord Downshire and Captain
Grandy had been on a quiet cruise, “luffing ” and “jib-
ing” without a suspicion of either the hangman or the
penny-a-liner being so deeply interested in their respective
fates. So, now, the explanation has come; and Lord Down-
shire seems, from his letters on the subject, to be furious.
104 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
It would be more natural in an Irish gentleman,—and
there are no pleasanter fellows when of the right sort, to
laugh at the whole business, which reminds one of the
stories of Lever and Maxwell. The fools in the matter
were the scribbling gobemouches who first believed and
repeated the tale, and the portion of the public which shut
its eyes, and opened its mouth, to take it in. There is no
doubt that this “London Correspondence” of the papers,
is in many respects a nuisance. Journals of a good class,
in communication with London men of letters of a good
class too, are careful what is written for them in that way,
and by whom. But this care is not universal ; and in
many papers, of course, such Correspondence is merely a
case of Town Mouse and Country Mouse, the ridiculus
'mus in each case being a small nibbling animal. When
this is so, the Correspondent, having no access to sub-
stantial persons in the various London worlds of which
the country world wishes to hear, repeats at third-hand
all the loose gossip and scandal that rests on nobody's
authority in particular. Like the prison called Dionysius's
Ear, near Syracuse, his long ear repeats, in a thousand-fold
magnified reverberation, whatever noise reaches it. He is
especially fond of personality, and of all that properly
belongs to the private social life. But to such a man, a
story about “a marquis” is irresistible, because there he
gratifies, at once,—(and they often go together),—the
curiosity of a flunkey, and the malignity of a leveller.
There is a certain interest in the question why scandal
about the aristocracy, which is by no means an unpopular
body on the whole,_should so readily find a circulation
and a kind of acceptance. Every man of the world meets
A RADICAL ROMANCE. 105
stories floating as he goes along concerning people of rank,
the falsity of which is evident on the face of them. We
are inclined to think that they spring from ignorance and
prurience, rather than democratic malignity, though this,
on occasion, makes a base use of them. People lie about
lords and ladies as they do about actors and actresses,
not because these are theatrical, or those noble, but
because both are public in their different ways. To gossip
about a Mr Tomkins excites no interest in a mixed audi-
ence, because nobody knows who he is. But a title is an
advertisement, just as a reputation is. All persons of
mark are in the same boat. Coleridge was once in a hotel
where a gentleman told him, as a piece of news, that “the
poet Coleridge had hanged himself—which,” he added,
“ is an odd incident.” “But the oddest thing, sir”—
replied the author of “Christabel”—“is that after doing
So, he should be here talking to you.” We dare say there
must be more than one of the British Peerage who has
learned equally strange facts about himself; and we do
not wonder that some of them are known to be glad to get
back to that metropolis which makes everybody obscure,
out of the range of the hundred telescopes turned upon
their castles in their own counties.
A gossip with a turn for speculation often bases a whole
theory about the morals and conduct of what Cockneys
call the h’order, upon the bits of scandal which he hears,
in going through life, about them. He forgets what a
Small proportion it is of the class that ever comes before
the world, even in that way, and how little difference in
the great leading points of human nature, it makes to a
lord to have had from his cradle the distinctions which
106 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
seem so wonderful to him. The Divorce Court has, to
be sure, abated one form of scandalum magnatum, by
revealing that model of virtue the British middle-class-
man, in a light in which his admirers do not love to
contemplate him. But there still remains too much of a
peculiar mixture of envy and credulity about the public,
which makes flying falsehoods stick to them, like flies to a
“ catch-'em-alive-O.” This should be rubbed off by de-
grees, and the natural good sense of John Bull, and his
kindly feeling towards his betters, be kept clean (to follow
up the metaphor), and in good order. For our part, when
we next hear in a railway carriage, that the Mana, Cat has
a “lively.” London Correspondent, or that Lady Wilhel-
mina Skeggs is no better than she ought to be, we shall
compose our countenance into one of grave democratic
severity and morality, and tell the story of the marquis
who drowned the “Jolly Young Waterman’’ in the Bay
of Naples.
0 N S E R M 0 N S.
(Edinburgh Courant, August 1862).
AT this particular time of the year, subjects not at all
political come in for an attention which is not bestowed
on them in busier periods. We are not, therefore, sur-
prised that some of our contemporaries should have been
ON SERMONS. 107
lately discussing the question of sermons. It is one that
comes before the world, now-a-days, at intervals, and for
the most part is introduced in the language of complaint.
People justly interested in all that concerns religion, and
by no means unfriendly to the clerical class, are yet often
heard to speak with a certain impatience of the present
condition of the British pulpit. They say that our preach-
ing is falling off-that it is duller, and therefore less effec-
tive than it used to be ; that it is too conventional both
in substance and delivery ; and that the brains invested in
its cultivation bear no proportion to those engaged in
other intellectual pursuits. And they ask whether this is
a necessary and irremediable result of historical changes;
or whether an improvement may not be looked for, when
the clergy (by which they here mean the clergy of British
churches generally) realise the full force of the complaint,
and set about improving in the department complained of
That sermons no longer hold the place they did in our
literature, is, we think, too obvious for anybody to deny ;
and this fact is a striking corroboration of the general view
of those whose opinions we have just quoted. Formerly,
the sermons of illustrious British divines took their place
on the library shelf alongside the great works of art of
their best contemporaries. In a poetical age, we had
poetical sermons; in a witty age, witty Sermons; in a philo-
sophical age, philosophical sermons. Jeremy Taylor was a
worthy contemporary of Milton; and South of Dryden;
while Butler's “Sermons on Human Nature” are well known
landmarks in the history of the philosophy of the country.
This parity of literary rank may be claimed for some
preachers, 'as late as Horsley or Paley. But though, of
108 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
course, we have still sometimes what may fairly be called a
good volume of sermons, will anybody pretend that, as a
branch of literature, this branch holds its relative rank
to-day! The contrary is notorious;–and yet this is the
fairest possible test. The press is as open to a preacher
as to anybody else, and for him, as for everybody who
publishes, the audience is larger than it ever was. If
sermons, then, as a general rule, do not acquire literary
status (and we are not speaking of the trashy ones which
sell without acquiring it), the reason can only be that
fewer sermons deserving that rank are delivered. If they
were delivered, they would be published ; and not seeing
them, we have a right to conclude that they don’t exist.
De non apparentibus et mom eacistentibus eadem est ratio.
No doubt, this obscuration of the literature of the pul-
pit is partly the result of the immense increase of every
other kind of literature. No doubt, also, it is compatible
with a great deal of useful influence being exerted by the
pulpit, notwithstanding; especially in the case of congrega-
tions little acquainted with the higher literature of the age.
But these are poor consolations, or rather, they are not pro-
perly consolations at all. To dwell upon them, would be
to encourage a low level of preaching, and this, in time,
would alienate the feeling of the educated classes from the
churches, even though, from a wish to set a good example,
they should continue going there. In these matters, how-
ever, different classes cannot be viewed as altogether
apart. The mere mob-preacher has his mob, no doubt,
and they just suit each other. But in the case of the great
bulk of respectable uneducated or less educated people,
half their respect for the preacher depends on their belief
ON SERMONS. 109
that he is worthy to address their betters. And, what is
more, they are most effectually addressed by a preacher
from that point of view. If he is always stooping to some
imaginary level before his mind, he is more likely to lower
himself, than to raise his audience.
We must, then, have Superior preaching, and it can
only come from superior thinking, and study. Whatever
increases the general culture of the clergy, increases their
effectiveness in the pulpit. Thus, what was the strength
of Robertson, of Brighton, whom the Blackwood writer on
Sermons very fairly quotes as an example that truly effec-
tive preaching is still possible ! His talent, no doubt, was
an indispensable element; but not less so was his know-
ledge of what are the real thoughts and doubts agitating
the souls of this generation. He was en rapport with the
most sensitive student of the latest mystic or sceptic; and
could always prove his right to convert such a one by
proving that he understood and sympathised with him.
The preacher more than any man ought to know the age,
and its place in the history of former ages. Not, -as is
well observed in the Saturday Review, that he should
preach on the times in the narrowest sense,_that he
should give his version of the kind of reflections that
people expect in newspapers. His task is a higher one.
He has to appeal to the immer feeling, to the speculative
deeps, in man; and the age to him is a new phase of
the eternal spiritual history of the race, which can only be
fully understood through its culture. While this is indis-
pensable, then, even to the moral part of a preacher's duty,
it is not the less valuable as an aid to him in the in-
tellectual part of it. One of the most powerful resources,
1 10 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
for instance, of the pulpit orator will always be the history
of Christianity, especially of its first moral victories in
the ancient world. And these can only be brought home
to the popular understanding by men profoundly and
familiarly acquainted with that world’s social and domestic
condition. It is here that classical learning becomes of so
much importance, as transfiguring what to most people are
mere geographical terms and proper names into living and
glowing realities.
But though such accomplishments as we have thus
glanced at are absolutely necessary to a high-class preacher,
there are other points on which it is of supreme import-
ance to insist. Many observers who are content with a
sufficiently modest intellectual standard in sermons, com-
plain of their merely traditional and conventional tone
otherwise. They say that even the voice and delivery of
great part of the bulk of the clergy is unnatural, unreal,
and unlike any other kind of oratory intended to produce
emotion or conviction in the hearer. In short, they say,
that there is a conventional type of preaching in the
ascendant, just now, which fails for all the higher pur-
poses of exhortation; and that many of our pastors leave
behind them, in entering the pulpit, all the simplicity,
directness, and fresh human reality of ordinary speech.
Remarks of this kind are so frequent that it is not likely
they have no truth to rest upon; and they ought to meet
with serious consideration in the proper quarter. They
do not by any means apply to Scotland alone; but they
have an additional significance in Scotland, from the fact
that so much depends here on the preacher and his
preaching. A stranger seeing so much stress laid on
LORD EGLINTON. 111
“trial sermons” and so forth, amongst us, would be apt
to expect that we bore away the palm in sacred oratory,
much as the Italians do in music. But it is to be feared
that this is not the case, and that the constant reference to a
merely popular standard of taste in the matter has been
one of the depressing influences. The decline complained
of, however, belongs to no ecclesiastical system in parti-
cular, and is therefore evidently the result of general
causes which deserve investigation. In all such instances,
the first thing necessary is that the phenomenon should
be clearly and temperately described, and fairly looked in
the face.
L 0 R D E G L IN T 0 N.
(Edinburgh Courant, October 1861).
ON Friday” was laid in his family vault at Kilwinning the
most popular patrician of his time. It is no exaggeration
to apply this description to the thirteenth Earl of Eglin-
ton, and it embodies at once what was most characteristic
of him, and what he would most have wished to be remem-
bered for, himself. Other men of his order were as much
respected, and some were abler, more learned, or higher in
the State. But no noble of the three kingdoms was so
widely and generally loved. This is a kind of fame which
excites less emulation than some kinds, but which is rarer
and higher, and more consolatory to those who have to
lament his life suddenly broken, and his too early grave.
* October 11, 1861.
112 CBHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
History and mature combined to make Lord Eglinton a
thorough gentleman. His career cannot be separated from
his ancestry, because his ancestry both consciously and un-
consciously inspired and created it. As heir-male of the
House of Seton and heir-general of the House of Mont-
gomerie, -the descendant of some of the bravest among
men and the fairest among women, he drew from roots
that lay deep in the past the qualities of character which
bloomed into such engaging flower. Representing through
his pedigree the best of the Norman colonists who did so
much not only for the civilisation but for the independence
of Scotland, it was natural in him to be at once a friend
of improvement and a lover of nationality. If there was
no better landlord and no truer Scotsman, this was not by
accident, but because these were the characters belonging
to his blood. There met to form Lord Eglinton some-
thing of what was best in the different lines which centred
in him, the earnestness of old “Greysteel” the Marston-
Moor man,—the chivalry of the ballad-hero of Otterburn,
—with the strong local feeling, and honest, if mistaken,
instincts of a recent ancestor who talked of the “misery
and slavery of being united to England l’” These quali-
ties were, however, so harmoniously proportioned that the
sentiment never ran away with the good sense, nor the
generosity with the prudence of his character. He shone
on the turf without impairing his refinement, and kept up
his hereditary splendour without damaging his estate. So
beautiful and well-balanced was his nature that he created
all the effects of a man of genius without possessing extra-
ordinary powers; and is now deplored wherever he was .
known as if he had taken part in the greatest transactions
IORD EGLINTON. 113
of the day. His popularity, like that of Sir Philip Sydney,
depended less on what he achieved than on what he was ;
and sprang from a general admiration of his whole bearing
and conduct similar to that excited by the unconscious
goodness of a child or beauty of a woman.
A mere narrative therefore of the external events of
Lord Eglinton's life very insufficiently explains the emo-
tion which his death has created, and which can only
be understood by remembering the personal goodness
of every day of his existence. Our readers hardly need
to be reminded that he was born at Palermo in Sicily
(where his father was temporarily discharging diplomatic
duties) on the 29th September 1812, and that he suc-
ceeded his grandfather as thirteenth Earl on the 14th
December 1819. Though he was for some time at Eton,
his intellectual culture as a boy, we believe, was not made
such a paramount matter as in many cases, which perhaps
explains the freshness which he brought in later years to
intellectual pursuits. He was first made famous by the
Tournament of 1839,-a splendid poetic extravagance,
easily traceable to the influence of Sir Walter Scott and
that school of literature, on a youth of large fortune, whose
ancestors had tilted before half the Courts of Europe. A
less selfish sacrifice of money in the way of amusement could
hardly have been devised ; and this was the character of
Lord Eglinton's amusements through life. His pleasures
like his business occupations were such as benefited others,
for they were eminently sociable;—they were also eminently
healthy and manly, and becoming a man who loved the tradi-
tions of the country-life of the English and Scottish nobles.
Lord Eglinton's Conservatism in politics was of a piece
H
114 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
with everything else about him. It was based on senti-
ment, fortified by common sense, and tempered—while
adorned—by geniality. He wished to see our institutions
preserved, but he wished them to be so administered that the
people should love them. He may be excused for “stand-
ing by his order,” because he meant his order to be like
himself. Following up these ideas, he became a member of
Lord Derby's first Government in 1852, and again in 1858;
each time discharging the high and difficult office of Lord-
Lieutenant of Ireland with a care that satisfied every
intellect, and a kindness that touched every heart, in the
island. It was characteristic of Lord Eglinton, that while
his mere talent was never the most prominent thing
about him, he always rose rather above expectation when
the occasion came. His speech at the Burns' Festival
in Ayrshire was perfectly admirable, and may be read
with pleasure, even now, when a herd of inferior animals
have trodden over and over the ground. The essence of his
oratory then and always was a union of plain good sense
with a frank and pleasant liveliness. He was never dull,
and never extravagant, blending in his speeches, as in
his manners, the gravity with the suavity of a gentleman.
Public men of all grades will do well to consider how
Archibald William Montgomerie, Lord Eglinton, never
professing “popular” politics, came to live and die
perhaps the most generally liked man of his time. To us
it seems that several lessons may be derived from the fact.
In the first place, we can hardly help seeing how little a
thing mere cleverness is, compared with that nobleness
of nature which marks out the man to be loved and trusted.
There is no doubt that the diffusion of cheap education is
LORD EGLINTON. 115
*
likely to give us “clever” politicians enough. Put fine
characters are formed at least as much by tradition as by
schools, and the tendency is so much to despise tradition,
that we feel it our duty on every opportunity to point
out good examples of its results. If any nobleman ever
acted on the maxim of Noblesse oblige it was Lord
Eglinton ; and that he did this from traditional inspira-
tion his whole conduct showed. Our aristocracy have
nothing to gain by deserting this—their proper—field, and
attempting to rival the pushing men of other classes in
agitations and discussions for which these are much better
fitted. Let them be statesmen if they will ; but, above
all, let them live down calumny by acting up to their own
proper ideal, and this will do them more good than
truckling to opinion, and imitating aggressive innovation.
Lord Eglinton would not have been a bit more popular if
he had delighted to lay his escutcheon in the dirt for the
world to walk over. His high bearing was indeed one
element in creating the regard which he inspired—for it
harmonised with his position, and gave grace and dignity
to his natural kindness. This would be ill exchanged for
the sort of thing one sees coming out of newer schools of
opinion and manners, schools the ugly incidents of whose
domination would be most felt by the helpless classes of
the community.
We must not, however, imitate the old custom of fight-
ing out our feud-fights at a funeral ; especially at that of
a man who loved his countrymen of every party, and did
his duty in kindliness to them all. Our intention was only
to point out the essential characteristics of one whose
memory will be long cherished in the land to which he
116 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
belonged, and with peculiar pride by the party of which
he was the great ornament on this side of the Border. To
describe is to praise him ; and the chief consolation his
admirers will feel is, that the very suddenness of his
death is likely to stamp deep on the world's memory the
impression of his example.
MR EDGAR'S HISTORIES FOR YOUTH,”
(Edinburgh Courant, September 1862).
MR EDGAR has won for himself the position of being the
best master in our day of a very important—while diffi-
cult, and also peculiar—kind of literature. He writes the
best Histories for the Young of any man of his time.
Now, this is a task, the right discharge of which is a
matter of much consequence to every one of us who has
youngsters; and which can only be performed by a writer
in whom several uncommon qualifications meet. To write
for children is difficult enough ; but Mr Edgar writes for
an age, the literary needs of which are still harder to
satisfy than those of children. He writes for the lad who
is just beginning to read English books for pleasure, and
who is busy in his school hours with Caesar or Virgil.
What sort of English books such a lad falls in with, is a
matter that may affect his tastes, and through his tastes
his principles, for life. His imagination is beginning to
* Cavaliers and Roundheads. By John G. Edgar.
Memorable Events of Modern History. By John G. Edgar.
MR EDGAR’s HISTORIES FOR YOUTH. 117
awaken, his affections are strong and easily moved in
any direction,-and what he now reads with genuine
gusto has an influence keener perhaps than any exer-
cised on him by books in after years. Fiction now
commences to kindle him ; but it is most important to
remember that Fiction chiefly enthrals boys as an image
of Reality, and that if Reality be made attractive, it will
carry the day even against Fiction itself. We are great
friends of good novels and romances, and have a hearty
contempt for the blockheads who preach up what they
call “Useful Knowledge” to the exclusion of other
studies. But suppose you can combine the kind of
interest that Truth gives, with the kind of interest Fiction
gives? This is the great desideratum for a boy's book,
and it is the skill shown by Scott in supplying it, which
makes his “Tales of a Grandfather” such a charming and
valuable work. The heart in it appeals to boy and man
alike, while the exquisitely managed narrative carries the
young reader along, and perhaps first shows to him that
learning may be a pleasure. Such a book demands not
skill only in the author, but a happy buoyant youthful
temperament, which meets the wants of fresh intelli-
gences by being fresh and gay itself. Probably, those
who look on Mr Dickens's geniality as being real and
inexhaustible, expected great things from his “Child's
History of England.” And, according to their theory,
they were right. Yet, the “Child's History of England”
is a miserable failure, as complete a failure as a very
clever man ever made. It is dry, hard, and unread-
able, to begin with. But it has worse faults than
dryness and unreadableness. It is written on a theory
118 - CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
*
altogether absurd as the basis for such a book, the
theory that past times are to be represented to children, as
times out of which we may be glad to have escaped.
The Druids cannot be sketched even, without an intro-
duction of the ghastly old eighteenth century notion that
they were conscious impostors, and without some shabby
innuendoes against supposed “Druids” deluding the world
now. Again, when James the Sixth comes on the stage,
the contemporary flatteries of him are denounced, without
any explanation of how such flatteries came to be matters
of course, or any allowance for the real goodness of the
men who are censured for them. All this kind of thing
is mischievous in a Child's History. The young should
have the best aspects of their country's Past put before
them, should have whatever was noble and beautiful in
it vividly portrayed, that their patriotism may be early
rooted, and their more generous feelings—admiration,
emulation, love, pity—early roused. This need involve
no falsehood, nor any suppression of the crimes and
failings of historical personages. But complicated pro-
blems should be avoided ; and everything like satire, or
contemporary application of the old stories, left for after
years. The doubts and sorrows, the controversy and
cynicism, of life, will begin early enough ; for it is
the misfortune of our time, and not its glory, as some
people seem to think, that we do not grow up (as our
ancestors did) with a faith in the institutions of our
country, as real, natural, and trusting, as that which we
have for our fathers and mothers. And suppose these
institutions have a bad side,-well, then, at least, let our
youngsters hear the good one first ; and the good side is
MR EDGAR's HISTORIES FOR YOUTH. 119
evident in every page of any history that is at once gener-
ous and profound.
Nothing is more striking in Mr Edgar's books than the
fairness with which the Past is allowed to speak for itself.
He does not disguise, indeed, that he admires old times,
and old heroes, and old families; but he takes no improper
advantage of his position as a historian, to insinuate an
wn due admiration of these into the youthful intellect. He
does not take a side in telling his story, because he knows
that there is an element of good in both sides, and that
this is the element which is of supreme value to the young.
He draws moral and poetic honey from the rose, without
too much caring whether it is a White Rose or a Red one.
This is particularly seen in one of his latest works,—(one
of the two just published, the names of which are given
below), his “Cavaliers and Roundheads.” The tempta-
tion was strong, here, to go in heart and soul for the King.
The King's cause had its own share of the truth which
Cavaliers and Roundheads represented between them. The
Parliament—as the honest Hallam well shows—committed
many a grave fault ; and those who maintain that a Revo-
lution was necessary, will not deny that a Monarchy was
necessary too. Then, the loyal party is the picturesque
party, the party of those who love tradition, and revelry,
and song; and it requires a discrimination beyond the
common to see the poetry in a Puritan, or the vulgar
selfishness that tainted some of the Cavaliers. But Mr
Edgar has this kind of discrimination. He does not
identify Conservatism with Jacobitism, like some writers
who can only see the operatic element in history, and
who treat Buchanan with disrespect because Mary had fine
120 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
eyes. He is aristocratic in his opinions, not from snobbish
but from feudal sympathies. He knows that the ascend-
ancy of a system like Laud's would have been risen against
in an earlier century by Beauchamps and Nevilles, and
that the first movers against Charles were gentlemen, who
moved against him from a gentleman's point of view. A
sham-aristocratic upstart of our time calling Cromwell
“a brewer” is to Mr Edgar—(whose historical ideas are
permeated by genealogy)—a fellow fit only for “the second
table.” He is thus able to do impartial justice even to
Revolutionists, because he accurately understands how
much they differed from the Revolutionists of to-day. And
thus, if his affections on the whole draw him to the King's
banner, they are duly balanced by his sense and know-
ledge, while his very “prejudices” (if we must use the
word) neutralise each other. Thus, the fact that neither
Lord Derby in England nor our own Scottish Montrose
got fair play from the Royalists, prevents him from being
too much influenced by the fact that these great nobles
deliberately chose the Royal side. The result of all these
“checks and balances” of sentiment is that Mr Edgar's
own clear judgment and generous heart get fair play; and
that he writes of the struggle between Cavalier and Round-
head, with a complete sympathy for neither, but with a
hearty respect for both. This was Coleridge's point of
view. It was also the point of view of De Quincey ; and
apparently—(what is more curious, and not less instruc-
tive)—of the Duke of Wellington, whose vigorous intellect
took a natural interest in the contests of those robust,
manly, and high-aspiring times.
Such, then, being the character of Mr Edgar's histories—
MR EDGAR's HISTORIES FOR YOUTH. 121
(and what we have said of his “Cavaliers and Roundheads”
is equally true of other works of his, for instance, the
excellent one on the “Wars of the Roses”), we have
next to remark on their style. It is no exaggeration to
say that he writes one of the best styles of the time, and
this is the more gratifying because he is a Scot, and style
just now is one of our weak points in Scotland. We don’t
quite know why this should be so, but it is. Robertson,
it is true, was cumbrous and pompous; but Hume and
Adam Smith—each in his own way—wrote charming
English. Nothing can be better than Hume's flowing
grace, and Smith's easy good sense and bonhommie;
while now-a-days, our Scottish literati are often prolix,
verbose, and ponderous, which some of them try to
relieve by streaks of sentimentalism, pietism, and a curious
affectation of maiveté;—
“Affecting to be unaffected,”
as Congreve says, and disgusting one, like the coquetteries
of an old girl of sixty. If the writer before us did not
modestly profess to write to the young only,–(though in
truth his books are fit for boys, just as Dr Johnson said
claret was, being fit for men also), -his style would
attract marked attention. It is infinitely better English
than that of the many bagmen by nature, and literary
men by presumption, who contrive to get reviewed and
talked about, and who, failing that, would review and
talk about themselves. And why Fundamentally, no
doubt, because a graceful way of expressing himself is
a natural gift of Mr Edgar's, but also, in great mea-
sure, because he has long studied a few standard and
canonical English authors. Hume is evidently one of
122 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
these, and Bolingbroke another, men who are incom-
parable stylists in their different modes. But Mr Edgar
is also, we take it, that rare thing now-a-days, - a
reader of Clarendon. Now, Clarendon, besides his genius
as a painter of portraits, -a branch of literary art in
which Isaac Disraeli thought him equal to Tacitus,
and this is hardly an exaggeration,-Clarendon, we say, is
the very ideal and exemplar of a style at once flowing and
stately,–full of dignity, yet full of sweetness. His influ-
ence on the last century was immense. It is very slight
on our own. This is partly owing to political causes;
for the world has heard so much against his policy, that it
has come to distrust his narrative. But there are other
* reasons,—non-political ones, for the popular neglect of
this great writer. His style, like that of Bolingbroke,
is a long-sentenced style ; and what our generation really
loves is the epigrammatic manner. Our popular style is,
in fact, still based on the later manner of Dr Johnson, on
the concise pointed English,_(and, just as happened in
Gothic architecture, the pointed style succeeded to that of
the fuller and rotunder circular arch style in our litera-
ture), which the great Doctor wrote in his later years.
He had been so long talking, that he had insensibly modi-
fied his early turgidity; and we, carrying his change
still farther, are in reality pollard-Johnsons.
But this is a digression that might carry us anywhere.
We were saying that Mr Edgar has obviously studied
Clarendon; and that Clarendon ought to be studied more,
is an addition for which the reader will excuse us. We
shall now quote a specimen of Mr Edgar's way of telling
a story;-not a passage chosen as showing the influence of
MR EDGAR's IIISTORIES FOR YOUTH. 123
any particular writer on him, but simply a sketch com-
plete in itself, and affording a pleasant example of his
ease and elegance of hand. It is a sketch of a Cavalier,
Dormer, Lord Carnarvon, who fell at the battle of Newbury.
From these Dormers, Philip Dormer Stanhope, the famous
Lord Chesterfield, took one of his names:— $
CARNARWON.
“One day, while Charles was still before Gloucester, there
rode into the royal camp a young English earl, whose wit and
valour made him of high account among ‘the barons of Eng-
land who fought for the crown.” This was Robert Dormer,
Earl of Carnarvon, one of the gayest and most graceful of
Cavaliers. Tall and slender, with high aquiline features, and
chestnut hair waving in loose locks, the high-spirited noble-
man won all hearts in his own day, as he still wins the hearts
of those who look upon him as he appears on the canvas of
Vandyke, in his loose jerkin of velvet, his rich collar of lace,
and his embroidered sword-belt.
“The family of Dormer was one of respectable antiquity in
England, and flourished for generations as gentlemen of Bucks.
At length one of its members, after having been created a
baronet by King James, was elevated to the peerage with the
rank of a baron. A son of the lord who also flourished in the
reign of James, married Alice, daughter of Sir Richard Moly-
neux of Sefton, in Lancashire; and they had one son named
Robert. The husband of the Lancashire lady died before his
father, the first Lord Dormer; and when, in 1616, the old peer
went the way of all flesh, her son Robert succeeded to the
barony.
“The young Lord Dormer would seem to have had all the
advantages enjoyed at that period by men born with silver
spoons in their mouths. After being educated at Oxford, he
travelled not only on the Continent, but even in Turkey and
124 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
the East. On his return, he was recognised as a nobleman of
high courage and accomplishments; but he appears to have
been extravagantly fond of field sports, and to have had some
liking for the gaming-table. While gaming, however, he
abstained from the deep potations in which many of his friends
indulged, and gained some reputation for the moderation which
he exercised in regard to the social cup.
“But young English nobles were soon to have more serious
occupation than flying hawks, riding after hounds, or rattling
dice. Some years after Charles succeeded to the English crown,
Lord Dormer was metamorphosed into Earl of Carnarvon;
and, when those troubles began of which he was not destined
to witness the end, he at once took part with the King. His
loyalty appears to have been put to the test; for he had espoused
a daughter of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke; and that
nobleman having taken the side of the Parliament, implored
him to abandon the Royal cause. Carnarvon, however, was not
to be coaxed or coerced into a change of politics. “I pray you,'
he said to his father-in-law, “to leave me to my honour and my
allegiance.' j
“When the struggle in Parliament became more keen, Car-
narvon did not swerve from his faith; and when war broke
out he girded on his sword, mustered his men, and mounted
his war-steed. At the time of Strafford's impeachment, Car-
narvon exerted himself strenuously to save the great Lord-
Lieutenant. When, in 1642, Hampden left London to rouse
the men of Bucks to arms on behalf of the Parliament, the
Cavalier earl hurried thither also to rally loyal hearts around
the King's banner. On the day of Edgehill, when Cavalier and
Roundhead first met in the shock of war, Carnarvon commanded
a strong squadron of cavalry under Rupert; and he took part
in that Prince's too eager pursuit of the Parliament's horse,
which left the Royalist infantry exposed. While thus doing his
duty in the field, the earl won fame in the Cavalier camp by
MR EDGAR’s HISTORIES FOR YOUTH. 125
his conversational brilliancy; and ‘Carnarvon's keen blade and
keener wit’ were celebrated in popular song.
“On the morning of the 20th of September 1643, Carnarvon
was at Newbury and elate with anticipation. Early in the
day, and ere yet Essex had moved to Bigg's Hill, he was seen
surrounded by a number of light-hearted Cavaliers, and busily
engaged measuring a gateway with his sword.
“What is my Lord Carnarvon doing?” asked a passer-by.
“‘Ascertaining whether Essex's horns will pass through,
when we bring him in prisoner,’ Carnarvon answered with reck-
less vivacity; and his comrades, at this allusion to the Parlia-
mentary General's matrimonial misfortunes, laughed long and
loud. e
“In the battle of Newbury, Carnarvon, at the head of his
cavalry, bore himself with his wonted valour. But he was not
destined to see another field. After making a brilliant charge,
and routing a body of Parliamentary horse that had come into
the action as Essex's body-guard, the earl was riding carelessly
back through the scattered troopers, when one of them, recog-
nising his tall figure and aquiline features, ran him through
the body.
“When Carnarvon fell, he was seen by a friend, who came
to his assistance. -
“‘You are hurt, my Lord,” said this personage.
“‘My hurt is mortal,' said the earl. ‘But is the King
safe?”
“The wounded Cavalier indeed had no reason to indulge in
hope. Even as he spoke death was rapidly approaching. He
had the consolation, however, in that hour when he felt that
soul and body were about to part, of believing that, in drawing
his sword in the King's cause, he had done his duty, and of
knowing that he had done his duty with a clear conscience as
well as a fearless heart.
“‘Can I carry any message from you to the King?' asked
his friend, dwelling on his last word.
126 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
“‘No,' answered Carnarvon, ‘I will not die with a suit in
my mouth to any king but the King of Heaven.’
“That evening, as the sun went down behind the hills of
Berks, a dead body passed into Newbury, and was conveyed
along the street, stretched across a horse, ‘like that of a calf.'
The Royalists of the little town looked gloomily towards the
beast and its burden. The corpse was that of a Cavalier. It
was Carnarvon l’’
This is an average, but not more than an average,
specimen of Mr Edgar's literary powers. In the exercise
of those powers, he has produced quite a little library of
historical works,—generous in sentiment, sound in prin-
ciple, and pleasant to read. Our readers will understand
us, when we say, that every gentleman may safely and
profitably place them in the hands of his boys. And this
alone is no mean praise. The wise ancients well knew
the indelible nature of early impressions;–how, as Quin-
tilian says, “ natura tenacissimisumus eorum quae rudibus
annis percipimus: ut sapor, quo nova imbuas, durat; nec
lanarum colores, quibus simplex ille candor mutatus est,
elui possunt.”
THE DISAP POINTMENTS OF DEMOCRACY,
(Edinburgh Courant, February 1862).
AMONG the disappointments with which Democracy has
afflicted its European and American admirers, there is one
that a philosophical Conservative views with peculiar
THE DISAPPOINTMENTS OF DEMOCRACY. 127
satisfaction. Perhaps the most plausible of the notions
which excited Europe in the last half of the eighteenth
century, (and which in our languid age it is difficult to
get anybody either to attack or defend), was that we
could always command a rush of superior talent for the
State by removing the artificial barriers which kept it
out. People believed then in the “Village Hampden,” and
thought you had only to bring him forward, and educate
him, and that he was fit for anything. “Give us,”—
shouted the Frenchman,—the “Open Career.” We will
base everything on it, answered the Yankee, establishing
a Constitution in which all men were declared free and
equal. Great Britain took things more quietly; but the
seductive philosophy circulated in her literature, and
helped to produce her Reform Bill,—which luckily did
not create half the changes anticipated by its friends.
Well, a considerable period has rolled over; and the world
by its want of interest in the subject tacitly proclaims its
disappointment. The “Village Hampden” is at a discount;
and our village “Miltons” continue to be “inglorious,”
though unhappily they have ceased to be “mute.” We
at home can afford to take things easily,–at all events
for the present. It is true that we have no great states-
men, except those who might easily have attained power
a century ago. It is true that our professions seem
rather to be deteriorating, and that the fact of men's
becoming officers and barristers, who fifty years since
would have been clerks or bagmen, seems to do more
harm by lowering the tone of such bodies, than good by
any fresh access of talent it brings to them. But we can
wait, and look about us. Our institutions, and the free-
128 - CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
dom they secure, are safe at all events, and we have the
inestimable privilege of studying the effect of thorough-
going changes in our neighbours. To Frenchmen and
Americans, the case is different. They attained the “Open
Career” by making a clean sweep of every obstacle, and
any disappointment they may feel, is embittered by Të-
morse on the one hand, and saddened by the hopelessness
of the future on the other. France no doubt is a great
Power, and the cheap luxury which the common French-
man wants is probably more widely attainable than it ever
was. But France had far higher ambitions than these a
century ago. Not only did she desire political freedom,
but she desired to head European speculation and
European literature. As it is, her present greatness is
chiefly based on mere force ; her freedom is still a hope,
and her literature is fast becoming a memory. France
may be great, but Frenchmen are smaller than they used
to be. The brilliant old society is replaced by a mere
monied horde; Montesquieu is unrepresented; and Wol-
taire represented only by impure novelists, who have lost
the art of writing classic French. Such facts may be
nothing to a common Parisian of to-day, but they would
have been death to the aspiring young men who were
young in '89. To do these men justice they believed in
an ideal. Some of them became Savages, but they had a
certain poetry in their Savagery, and anticipated any-
thing but a money-making despotism, prosaic even in its
debauchery, as the result of all their struggles and all
their blood.
How equally disappointing the results of Democracy
are in America, we all know. What we are concerned with
TELE DISAPPOINTMENTS OF DEMOCRACY. 129
to-day, is the intellectual disappointment, as in France's
case, and this is still more marked in America than in
France. The greatest men of the States have been ex-
cluded from the Presidency by what now seems to be as
regularly developed a system as that of the Athenian
ostracism ; and Mr Gladstone or Mr Disraeli would never
have risen as high in the great Democratic Republic, as
they have contrived to do in the most aristocratic state
of society existing in Europe. But, on the old revolu-
tionary theory, not only ought Gladstones and Disraelis to
have risen higher in America—they ought to have been
more plentiful there than here. Yet the failure of the
theory is as conspicuous in the one particular as in the
other. America. Succeeds only in breeding second-rate
men, and she puts them, when she does get them, into
third-rate places. Democracy thus exhibits, on that side
of the Atlantic, a double failure. It fails in producing its
men, and, at the same time, it fails in rewarding them.
So important a fact is clearly connected with general
laws, which deserve careful and scientific study. In the
first place, we may learn from it that the supply of
superior men does not depend on circumstances only, as is
often calmly assumed. If shaking the social bag would
have brought them out, America would have had plenty,
and France, too; and we should have had more in propor-
tion as we assimilated ourselves to those countries. But
what if shaking the bag, besides its natural impotence to
improve the contents, should have a tendency to send
out the worst of the contents first $ We are inclined to
think that Democracy will soon be generally admitted to
operate so, though Mr Carlyle and other writers have
* I
130 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
vainly endeavoured to teach the great truth in question to
this age. For, a man’s Superiority just consists in what
he has not in common with the multitude,-and yet under
Democracy the multitude has to decide whether he is a
Superior man or no. As they cannot understand him,
they take those whom they can understand, and hence in-
ferior talent is at a kind of premium in Democracies,
both because it is superior to no talent at all, and because
it is not so superior as to be at too great a height above the
standard of the vulgar. Second-class greatness in every-
thing is just what the mob likes. A mob would un-
doubtedly prefer Roebuck to Cuffey, for instance. But
then it would also prefer Roebuck to Burke; and what is
more, it would be content with Cuffey till it heard Roe.
buck. A mob does not improve of itself; it is more
stupidly Conservative than the stupidest Conservative in
its own way. And the worst of Democracy is that it has
& tendency to stop improvement, because it consecrates,
so to speak, the vulgar opinion. Where there is a
governing upper class, so that it be not too narrow or
exclusive, the mass rises in its tone and condition, after
and in imitation of it. But where the mob is the Govern-
ment, there is an unimproving level; and, above all, a low
type of individuality, for which no vulgar material pros-
perity in a nation will atone. It is the marked and de-
cided lack of individuality,+the want of great men,
the poverty in heroic and brilliant characters, about
our modern Democratic Societies, which we think the
most offensive but yet most instructive phenomenon of
these times.
THE DELEGATE–AN ECLOGUE. 131
T H E D E L E G AT E–A N E (; L 0 G U E,
A FTER COL LIN S.
(Puppet Show, 1848).
Scene—John Street. Time—Mid-day.
IN moody temper, through the crowded street,
The Chartist Pugsby toiled with weary feet;
An empty blue-bag in his hand he bore,
His breeches-pocket held but scanty store.
The day was hot—a public-house stood near,
But Pugsby could not spare the tin for beer.
With desperate sorrow wild, th’ affrighted man
Thrice slapp'd his corduroys, and thus began:
“‘Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day,
When from my shop-board first I took my way !’
“Ah ! little thought I that to raise the wind,
In this great town, so hard a job I'd find
Bethink thee, Pugsby, how wilt thou assuage,
When fails thy purse, thy landlord’s savage rage
Soon must thy purse be empty as thy head—
Then where, O Pugsby, wilt thou look for bread
Here tick is difficult, and duns are rough,
For London tradesmen all are up to snuff.
‘Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day,
When from my shop-board first I took my way !’
132 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
“Cursed be the vanity which can persuade
Weak men to take sedition as a trade;
The peaceful shop is better than the hall,
The kettle's singing than the ‘patriot's' bawl.
Yet vanity can tempt us up to town,
For boys to chaff, and Peelers to put down.
‘Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day,
When from my shop-board first I took my way.'
“Oh, cease my fears —all frantic as I go,
(Like carter's horse) I hear the sounds of wo (!!)
What if a special constable I meet,
Or rampant Peeler seize me on his beat':
O hapless youth ! for she thy love hath won,
The tender Peggy will be most undone !
Big Swelled my heart in parting with the maid,
When blubbering in the kitchen thus she said,
‘Farewell the youth whom sighs could not detain,
And plummy Peggy's heart implored in vain ''
Oh, let me safely to the fair return,
Wipe off her tears, and cut this here concern "
He said, and called on Heaven to bless the day
When to his shop-board back he bent his way.
ON AN ANSWERER OF RENAN.
You answered Renan'ſ That is strange, if true,
Men only answer when they’re spoken to,
And Renan speaks to scholars, not to you.
CAPTAIN SPEEE, 133
CAPTAIN SPEKE,
(Edinburgh Courant, September 1864).
THE feeling of pain and pity with which the news of Cap-
tain Speke's death has been everywhere received, shows
that the country is still alive to the importance of those
fine qualities of the national character which he happily
illustrated by his whole career. Scotland has produced
more than her own share of African travellers, but we
believe that the wildest lover of “nationality” amongst us
would hardly deny that Speke eclipsed them all. It seems
to be agreed that new researches may extend or modify the
details of his great discovery, but that he did essentially
discover the ancient secret that he sought. The contro-
versies from which he was so awfully snatched away leave
his supreme merit among African travellers untouched.
And when more is known, as more will be known, of the
Lake Nyanza and its region, he will still be looked back to
as the virtual founder of our modern knowledge of the
whole subject.
The interest attaching to such a man is not confined to
the special discoveries which he makes. There is an
interest of character about him, throwing light on his class
and his nation. The appearance of one Speke implies the
existence of hundreds of young fellows high-spirited and
adventurous, and sharing in the traditions of a high-spirited
and adventurous nation. If a strict inquiry were made
into the origin of much that is now most familiar as well
134 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
as valuable in our civilisation, it would be found to be due
to just this kind of men. One traveller brings home a new
fruit, another a strange bird, a third an art which gets
naturalised in its new country, while all contribute to
that intercourse and commerce between nations which has
now become one of the master-facts of the world. It has
been so, in generation after generation, up through the
times of the Elizabethan Shirleys and Willoughbys to those
of Sir John Mandeville, and the still earlier warriors and
pilgrims of the Crusades. And,--what is especially worth
notice in the history of the subject, all this gain was
come at by men whose object primarily was not gain at
all. A restless hunger for adventure, an inexplicable
longing to see strange lands, these have been the motive
force of discoveries the most practical and profitable in
their results. The mill has ground the corn, but it is the
breeze of poetry that has turned the sails of the mill. In
reading the books of Captain Speke himself, one does not
gather that he was ever profoundly intent on his discovery
for the sake of its scientific value, much less for that of the
fame which it might bring him. He liked the excitement,
the sport he met on the way, the very danger itself of the
journey, with its varieties and uncertainties. Now, this is
a temper which competitive examinations and those kind
of things do not test, and which much in our new way of
looking at educational questions has no tendency to develop.
It is essentially the temper of a gentry rather than either
of a commercial class, or of a nobility inclined to luxury and
the arts. Speke inherited it from his ancestral Somerset-
shire, from the county of Admiral Blake, -the county
that sent many a rover in the old times to the western
CAPTAIN SPEKE. 135
ports of Bristol and Bridgewater, a county of moderate-
sized estates, and a certain primitive and old-fashioned
standard of manners. We must not be too eager to get
rid of the influences under which such characters are
formed, under which you have the apparently curious com-
bination in a man of unrivalled services to geography with
a passion for partridge-shooting. There is no necessary
incompatibility between new ideas and old habits. But,
somehow, we rarely see new ideas advocated, whether for
purposes of political improvement or otherwise, without
their being accompanied by a querulous depreciation of the
favourite amusements and tastes of other times. Yet,
surely our age has seen nothing more characteristically
English than that the source of the Nile should have been
reached, not by an elaborately equipped expedition of
savans, but by a Somersetshire Squire's sporting son, with
a fowling-piece in his hand,-a young Indian soldier on
leave, to whom science was one of his amusements. The
force of the old English individuality and pluck, seasoned
with humour, could not farther go. At the same time,
however, we must not overlook the importance of Speke's
military position in the matter, by forgetting that we owe
his triumphs to the fact that he was in a service where his
value was known and appreciated. One most important
result of Britain's possession of a foreign empire which
makes our military men travellers by the nature of their
employment, is that their cloth holds such an honourable
place in literature and science. The names of Rennell and
Leake, -as in our own day of Rawlinson, have a place in
letters as distinctly as in the Army List. This is honour-
able to a profession which gets its fair share of obloquy
136 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
from the enemies of established institutions, and which is
often represented as hostile or indifferent to the arts of
peace, and the triumphs of civilisation.
One regret we must all have in the case of the lamented
gentleman of whom we have been speaking, a regret,
however, felt not so much on his own account as on that
of the country. He received,—as has been justly pointed
out by a journal with which we have seldom reason to
agree,_marks of honour from foreign Governments never
extended to him by his own. Her Majesty's present
Ministers seem to have disdained to recommend to her
Majesty for distinctions of any kind, a name which will be
not the least among the illustrations of her reign in future
ages. The gallant soldier, the dauntless explorer, remained
undecorated and undistinguished, while the orders intended
by the great Sovereigns of past times for men of valour and
genius were being bestowed on the obscurest Supernume-
raries of the Whig theatre. We can quite understand that the
ancient Somersetshire gentleman was too proud, that the
chase-loving soldier was too simple,_to practise those arts
of sycophancy which have made certain “scientific” cele-
brities of this age ignobly prosperous and notorious. We
all know that science has its social toadies, equally skilful
in making reputations out of the labours of their own
class, and getting advancement through the favour of their
superiors. Captain Speke was not this kind of man.
But it is the business of Government to do for modest
merit what obtrusive and servile mediocrity does for itself;
and to save this country from the disgrace of being the
last in Europe to recognise personal Superiority, when it
comes unrecommended by titles and wealth.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH POETRY. 137
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH POETRY.”
(Edinburgh Cowrant, November 1861).
WE are inclined to rank the beautiful little volume, of
which the name is subjoined to this article, among the
most important books lately published. For it must not
be regarded only as an anthology or literary nosegay. It
is not merely a jar containing some of the sweetest poetic
honey that has been hived during these three centuries in
the British oak : it is a valuable contribution to the his-
tory of English literature; inasmuch as it is an anthology
compiled on philosophical principles, and under the dicta-
tion of a highly-cultivated—while exquisite—taste. The
editor divides English Poetry into Four Epochs, each
represented by a Book, and each defined with much
felicity and at the same time brevity, in the Notes. He
views the Epochs as connected together, not chronologi-
cally only, but by the finest, subtlest, and yet strongest
threads of influence,—influence historical, moral, tradi-
tional, literary. And to him, also, the poetry of every
period is not something existing in the period, and apart
from it, but something rooted in the soil of its innermost
life, and related to all that is best among contemporary
things. In fact, poetry is seen to be the true Linnaean
Flower-clock of History, blooming and fading and bloom-
* The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in
the English Language. Selected and Arranged, with Notes, by Francis
Turner Palgrave, Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.
138 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
* ing again in new colours, as the day of the world rolls
along.
Such is the well-designed plan—well-achieved by Mr
Francis Turner Palgrave in this “Golden Treasury.”
There is a scholarly finish about all that he has done,
whether as editor or writer, in the volume, which deserves
the highest respect, and which we hail with pleasure from
a man inheriting the honourable name he bears.
Let us first quote a passage from Mr Palgrave in which
he tells us under what principles of selection, and by what
course of investigation, he has arrived at the result we have
praised —
THE EDITOR'S CANONs.
“The editor is acquainted with no strict and exhausive de-
finition of Lyrical Poetry; but he has found the task of practical
decision increase in clearness and in facility as he advanced with
the work, whilst keeping in view a few simple principles
‘Lyrical” has been here held essentially to imply that each
poem shall turn on some single thought, feeling, or situation.
In accordance with this, narrative, descriptive, and didactic
poems—unless accompanied by rapidity of movement, brevity,
and the colouring of human passion—have been excluded.
Humourous poetry, except in the very unfrequent instances
where a truly poetical tone pervades the whole, with what is
stictly personal, occasional, and religious, has been considered
foreign to the idea of the book. Blank verse and the ten-
syllable couplet, with all pieces markedly dramatic, have been
rejected as alien from what is commonly understood as Song,
and rarely conforming to lyrical conditions in treatment. . . .
“That a poem shall be worthy of the writer's genius, that
it shall reach a perfection commensurate with its aim, that we
should require finish in proportion to brevity,+that passion,
TEIE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH POETRY. 139
colour, and originality cannot atone for serious imperfections in
clearness, unity, or truth, that a few good lines do not make a
good poem,--that popular estimate is serviceable as a guide-post
more than as a compass, above all, that excellence should
be looked for rather in the whole than in the parts—such and
other such canons have been always steadily regarded. He may,
however, add that the pieces chosen, and a far larger number
rejected, have been carefully and repeatedly considered; and
that he has been aided throughout by two friends of inde-
pendent and exercised judgment, besides the distinguished
person [Mr Tennyson] addressed in the dedication. . . . .
“Chalmers’ vast collection, with the whole works of all acces-
sible poets not contained in it, and the best anthologies of dif-
ferent periods, have been twice systematically read through ,
and it is hence improbable that any omissions which may be
regretted are due to oversight. The poems are printed entire,
except in a very few instances (specified in the notes) where a
stanza has been omitted. The omissions have been risked only
when the piece could be thus brought to a closer lyrical unity;
and, as essentially opposed to this unity, extracts, obviously such,
are excluded. In regard to the text, the purpose of the book
has appeared to justify the choice of the most poetical version,
wherever more than one exists; and much labour has been
given to present each poem, in disposition, spelling, and punctua-
tion, to the greatest advantage.”
These canons we venture to pronounce sound; and we
attribute Mr Palgrave's success to the strictness with which
he has adhered to them. His task was a twofold one, not
alone the selection of a historically representative series of
poems, but of a series of poems marked by perennial and
universal, as well as representative, interest. Had he
worked under only one of these conditions, he might still
have given us a valuable book, and it would have cost
140 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
him less labour. We should have had much curious and
amusing, as well as fine, matter ; Donne’s “Pair of Com-
passes,” perhaps; the verses in which Lord Herbert of
Cherbury anticipates the metre of “In Memoriam ; ”
Cowley’s “Clad all in White; ” or the poem of Crashaw
on “St Cecilia,” in which occurs that truly exquisite
couplet,_
“But though she cannot tell you why,
She can love and she can die.”
And in one way the poetic Epochs might thus have been
more vividly discriminated than they are here, for they
would have reappeared with all their peculiarities strictly so
called, their quaintnesses, temporary moods and humours,
and freaks of garb. But Mr Palgrave resisted the tempta-
tion of making this kind of impression, because he had a
higher object in view, to gather, namely, from each poet
only what might have a living interest for “all time.”
The result is, and let it be well pondercd, a degree of
uniformity of tone, a harmonious similarity, such as would
never have been seen in a collection dealing with any but
the highest, choicest, and most finished poetry. “Great
excellence,” as our Editor well says, “has from the be-
ginning of things been even more uniform than mediocrity.”
This is a lesson to the odd and eccentric among writers,
and generally to those who despise the characteristics by
which writers become classical. And for this, as well as
other reasons, we should like Mr Palgrave's book to be
read by our younger poets, and especially by our news-
paper critics, who judge by a rough kind of tasting, which
does better for judges of cheese, than for men who venture
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH POETRY. 141
to pronounce on the “milk of Paradise.” We have seldom
met a book more instructive when studied as the result of
culture, than the “Golden Treasury,” which is evidently
the work of one who regards all poets of all ages as ex-
planatory of each other, and to whom the
A / * 2} z
@o.ſvgºroºf pºol x?ivos too; 9% ouquy
of Sappho is as familiar as the Ligurinus of Horace, the
Sonnets of Petrarch, the Tragedies of Racine, or the
“Break, break, break,” of the Laureate.
Book First embraces the period from Sir Thomas Wyat
of Henry the Eighth's reign to our countryman, Drum-
mond of Hawthornden, and thus takes in the “Eliza-
bethan Poetry.” We may fairly call this the most poetical
Epoch of the Four ; and early as it was, and young, poor,
and undeveloped, as England then comparatively was, Mr
Palgrave gives sixty-one specimens of its poetry—nearly
a fourth of his whole materials. The Epoch was charac-
terised by natural force, fertility, and variety, but chiefly,
we think, by the fact that poetry permeated the whole
body of society, and thus, itself, was tinted by, and
flavoured with, all the essential characteristics of that great
and energetic time. The Fourth Book—of which Words-
worth is the presiding spirit, as Shakspeare, Milton, Gray,
are of the previous Three—contains more poems than the
First, of course. But it is significant that they are drawn
from the poets, and the poets only, of the age. In Book
First, we have charming little creations from wags like
Nash, from courtiers like Vere, from a diplomatist like
Wyat, as well as from Shakspeare, Spencer, and Marlow.
Take the following:—
142 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
A RENUNCIATION.
“If women could be fair, and yet not fond,
Or that their love were firm, not fickle still,
I would not marvel that they make men bond
By service long to purchase their goodwill;
But when I see how frail those creatures are,
I muse that men forget themselves so far.
“To mark the choice they make, and how they change,
How oft from Phoebus they do flee to Pan ;
Unsettled still like haggards wild they range,
These gentle birds that fly from man to man;
Who would not scorn and shake them from the fist,
And let them fly, fair fools, which way they list”
“Yet for disport we fawn and flatter both,
To pass the time when nothing else can please,
And train them to our lure with subtle oath,
Till, weary of their wiles, ourselves we ease;
And then we say when we their fancy try,
To play with fools, O what a fool was Il''
This is singularly pleasing; it has the charm of simpli-
city and the charm of ingenuity in one. But it is the work
of an amateur-Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of
Oxford—whose quarrel with Sir Philip Sydney is among
the best remembered bits of gossip of the Elizabethan age.
In Wordsworth's era, men made a business of poetry, in
Shakspeare's, they carried their poetry into all their busi-
ness; though we don't pretend that this way of putting
it has more than the half-truth of an epigram.
We have said that Shakspeare presides over the First
Book, in which his lyrics and sonnets play a great part;
and along with him we have Spenser, Sidney, Daniel,
THE TEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH POETRY. 143
Drayton, besides the poets already mentioned. It is,
indeed, one good part of Mr Palgrave's plan to quote,
while always quoting the best poetry, as many of the poets
as possible. And this gives a better notion of the literary
opulence of the nation than anything else could, for there
are seventy-four poets drawn upon, in all !
“Our Muses”—says the Editor, in coming to Book Second,
—“now give expression to political feeling, to religious thought,
to a high philosophical statesmanship, in writers such as Mar-
vell, Herbet, and Wotton; whilst in Marvell and Milton, again,
we find the first noble attempts at pure description of nature,
destined in our own ages to be continued and equalled. Mean-
while the poetry of simple passion—although before 1660 often
deformed by verbal fancies and conceits of thought, and after-
wards by levity and an artificial tone—produced in Herrick and
Waller some charming pieces of more finished art than the
Elizabethan ; until in the courtly compliments of Sedley it
seems to exhaust itself, and lie almost dormant for the hundred
years between the days of Wither and Suckling and the days
of Burns and Cowper. That the change from our early style
to the modern brought with it at first a loss of nature and sim-
plicity is undeniable; yet the far bolder and wider scope which
poetry took between 1620 and 1700, and the successful efforts
then made to gain greater clearness in expression, in their re-
sults have been no slight compensation.”
A good and pregnant bit of criticism. The selections are
again admirably made. We are especially glad to see
Marvell's fine Horatian Ode upon Cromwell given in full.
Who has not somewhere seen the stanzas on the “Execution
of Charles'!”— -
“While round the arméd bands
Did clap their bloody hands;
144 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try;
Nor call'd the gods, with vulgar spite,
To vindicate his helpless right;
But bow’d his comely head
Down, as upon a bed.”
And Marvell was a Republican | Yes; but the Republi-
cans of that day were scholars and gentlemen.
Here is a little strain in quite a different key, but still
belonging to the same period. Waller's “Go, lovely
Rose,” is hacknied now, but his “Girdle” is less known:-
ON A GIRDLE. Aº
“That which her slender waist confined
Shall now my joyful temples bind:
No monarch but would give his crown
His arms might do what this has done.
It was my heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer:
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love
Did all within this circle move.
A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair:
Give me but what this ribband bound,
Take all the rest the Sun goes round.”
We have only a few such prettinesses as this, com-
bining English sentiment with French epigram, in the
language; they belong just to the time of Waller and
Suckling. The Elizabethans had not acquired the familiar
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH POETRY. 145
finish ; the generation of Congreve retained the wit, but
had spoiled the sentiment.
This Book takes in both Milton and Dryden, the last of
the early poets, the first of the new. Dryden holds a
great place in English literature, and not only as a poet,
for he wrote at once the first modern poetry, and the first
modern prose. Over his genius we pass as over a bridge
from Milton to Pope.
Let us again extract from Mr Palgrave, from his Note
this time on the poetry of his Third Book, that of the
eighteenth century:-
ENGLISH POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTEI CENTURY.
“It is more difficult to characterise the English poetry of the
eighteenth century than that of any other. For it was an age
not only of spontaneous transition, but of bold experiment; it
includes not only such divergences of thought as distinguish
the ‘Rape of the Lock’ from the ‘Parish Register,’ but such
vast contemporaneous differences as lie between Pope and
Collins, Burns and Cowper. Yet we may clearly trace three
leading moods or tendencies: the aspects of courtly or edu-
cated life represented by Pope and carried to exhaustion by his
followers; the poetry of Nature and of Man, viewed through a
cultivated, and at the same time an impassioned, frame of mind
by Collins and Gray; lastly, the study of vivid and simple nar-
rative, including natural description, begun by Gay and Thom-
son, pursued by Burns and others in the north, and established
in England by Goldsmith, Percy, Crabbe, and Cowper. Great
varieties in style accompanied these diversities in aim ; poets
could not always distinguish the matter suitable for subjects so
far apart; and the union of the language of courtly and of com-
mon life, exhibited most conspicuously by Burns, has given a
tone to the poetry of that century which is better explained by
EC
146 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
reference to its historical origin than by naming it, in the com-
mon criticism of our day, artificial. There is, again, a noble-
ness of thought, a courageous aim at high and, in a strict sense,
manly excellence in many of the writers; nor can that period
be justly termed tame and wanting in originality which pro-
duced poems such as Pope's Satires, Gray's Odes and Elegy, the
Ballads of Gay and Carey, the Songs of Burns and Cowper. In
truth, poetry at this as at all times was a more or less uncon-
scious mirror of the genius of the age; and the brave and
admirable spirit of inquiry which made the eighteenth century
the turning-time in European civilisation is reflected faithfully
in its verse.”
We need add little to this summary, especially as the
poems of this period—Gray's, for example, and Cowper's
—are probably more read still than either earlier or later
ones. The change first introduced by Dryden, and doubt-
less connected with the great popular movement, and
breaking-up of English life, of the Civil War, took the form
of a more colloquial and simple diction in the first instance,
which reached its perfection in the Queen Anne men. In
natural affinity with this was a predominance of common
sense over imaginative views, more or less marked in all
the poetry of the last century, and working in harmony
with the general social transition from feudal to nineteenth
century life. To call the poetry belonging to this phase of
thought “artificial” is certainly an unsatisfactory inas-
much as it is a very incomplete way of describing it.*
But the epithet is not unjust when applied to a great deal
of what was popular between Dryden and Byron ; and Mr
* We wish our Editor had given Johnson’s “Lines on Levett,” as
being truly characteristic of some of the best qualities of the cen-
tury, and not less poetical than several specimens in his volume.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH POETRY. 147
Palgrave, we think, would allow the term “revival”
(though somewhat vulgarised of late) to be a right one to
apply to the movement, which, heralded by the Ballads
of Burns (whose Scottish character, however, limited his
ânfluence”), and practically begun by Coleridge, was made
general by Scott and Byron, and culminated in Words-
worth. Each of these men, the men of the Fourth Book
of the “Golden Treasury,”—might well have an essay to
himself. But we shall only say that the tendency of the
School was to combine Elizabethan and seventeenth cen-
tury depth of feeling and truthfulness, and the old philoso-
phising habit, with the clearer, freer, more practised diction,
and greater recognition of everyday and homely life, of the
intervening period. The causes of this revival, which,
however, should not be viewed as unconnected with the
immediately preceding time, might open a large in-
quiry. It is sufficient to say now that there is always an
incalculable element in such events; and that, moreover,
we are still too near this particular one, to be able to see
it as a separable whole with quite satisfactory distinctness.
As in the case of a ship ahead of us at night, we can make
out the lights and their position, but the general hull is
dark and undefined to the eye. We must, indeed,
content ourselves generally—we speak now of the whole sub-
ject—with having given a mere outline of the inquiry sug-
gested by Mr Palgrave's interesting work. The thoughtful
reader who cares to pursue it, or who only wants a pure
and lasting pleasure from the data on which it is based,
will take care to procure the work for himself.
* It deserves to be remembered to the credit of Gifford of the Quar-
terly, the forgotten satirist of the “Baviad” and “Maeviad,” that he
early saw the importance of our great countryman.
148 CEHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
HOL LAND,
(Edinburgh Courant, September 1863).
WE have before us some notes made during a recent tour
in Holland, a résumé of the results of which may not be
without interest at this period of the year. It is the cus-
tom of the British tourist, for the most part, to go as far
as he possibly can for his money. He measures his success
by his mileage; sees nothing in any country but the regu-
lar “sights;” and making no inquiry about institutions or
manners, returns, having viewed Europe only from the
outside. Holland is passed over with little notice by the
ordinary autumnal scamperer of this kind, though it is
precisely, from race, history, religion, and social life, a
country calculated to throw light on our own. The people
are essentially Teutonic; so like the British even in physi-
cal type that you may easily mistake a Dutchman for an
Englishman or Scotchman at a table d'hôte. Their long
War of Independence, their obstinate Protestantism, their
commercial and colonial development, their party struggles,
ending in the constitutional monarchy of a great family
mixed up with the noblest part of their history, are
features with which we should all sympathise, even if our
ancestors had no part or lot in them as friends or rivals.
In homelier matters, an everyday sympathy between us
and the Hollanders is very natural. They resemble us
much more in private character and ordinary habits than
the French do. They are intensely domestic ; great people
|HOLLAND. 149
for the ties of family and relationship ; steady church-
goers; industrious and accumulative ; given to dividing
into “sets,” and maintaining social distinctions, with a
very strong national feeling, and a very strong historical
feeling. Even the external aspect of their country, though
new to a native of these islands, slides into his familiarity
with a certain ease. Its rich level plains recall parts of
Essex, and of the eastern counties of England. There is
no romantic beauty such as we have in the North; or such
as—bathed in a balmy and voluptuous atmosphere, and
hallowed by ruins of immemorial antiquity—makes the
charm of Southern Europe. But there is everywhere a
cheerful prosperous prettiness, kept fresh by a continual
breeze in the hottest days from the sea; and in the towns,
the old red buildings, each retaining its own individuality,
the quiet canals shaded with chestnut and elm trees, the
deep rich toned bells, the lively tinkle of the carillon,
exert something of the influence of a simple poetry.
France and her Revolution, much as they have done to
modernise the Netherlands, have not swept away all the
primitive character, the old-fashioned respectfulness, cor-
diality, and social subordination of Dutch life. Mean-
while, the comparative isolation of the country in Europe
keeps its national peculiarities alive; and the traveller still
recognises there that quiet, broad, shrewd humour which
is found in the Colloquia of Erasmus, and on the canvas
of Jan Steen.
We hear little of their politics now-a-days in Europe,
but that is a good sign. Their Parliament is chiefly occu-
pied with colonial questions. There is, in fact, little for
democratic agitators to agitate about. The Suffrage is as
150 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
low as any “Liberal” gifted with common sense wishes
to see it; while the political career is so open that one of
the present ministers is a man who commenced life as mate
of a ship. The House of Orange is strong, not only by
being rooted in the very history of the country, but be-
cause there is a general persuasion that without the House
of Orange, the national unity and independence could not
be maintained. The very faults of the Princes of that
family are such as the people readily pardons; they are
gallant and generous men; and the present King, fond of
his sport, and of his palace in Guelderland, is content to
rule by ministers of whatever party finds itself in power.
The questions which divide the Church, though sufficiently
grave, are not questions that embroil it with the State.
Accordingly, there has been leisure left to the statesmen
of Holland to attend to those social questions which in
larger countries are often thrust aside by the pressure of
party politics. Thus the educational system of the country
is one of the best in Europe; and the army is maintained
on a scale which would do credit to a much more populous
nation. But the chief energy of the people is absorbed in
industry. The windmills that everywhere dot the land-
scape hardly labour more steadily in grinding grain, in Saw-
ing timber, in raising the water to prevent the overflowing
of the canals, than the Dutch themselves. Heavy labour
has become a habit with them, and they set about it with
a steady persistency which is curious to watch, as they
push their ponderous barges along the canals with poles,
or lift the weighty bridges for the shipping to pass under,
or trudge patiently under heavy burdens by the sides of
their quays. It is this quality which has kept their com-
HOLLAND. 15]
merce flourishing long after its decline from the meridian
greatness of the seventeenth century, and in spite of the
heavy taxation which has loaded their backs for ages.
Accordingly, the country thrives in all its interests, com-
mercial and agricultural. The trade with England has
been especially increasing in dairy and farm produce; and
Englishmen have even recently been tempted to outbid the
natives in the high rents given for the farms that lie near
the watershed of the Maas. &
After this brief glance at the general characteristics of
the country, we proceed to notice such points as are more
peculiarly interesting to Scotsmen. The general organisa-
tion of the Dutch and Scotch Churches is, as we all know,
the same, Consistory, Classis, and Synod answering in
the one, to Kirk-Session, Presbytery, and Assembly in the
other. The ministers of the Scotch Churches at Amster-
dam and Rotterdam are paid by the State, and sit in the
Synod which meets at the Hague, like the other ministers
of the Netherlands Reformed Church. Anciently, the
Scotch population at Rotterdam was so considerable that a
long and important street built on one of the dykes bore
the name of the “Scotch Dyke,” which it still retains in
common parlance to this day. Portraits of the old pastors,
—the earliest of them in a beard, hang in the vestry-
room of their present worthy successor, the Reverend J.
M. Brown. Their families became naturalised in the
country, and some prospered so well that from one of
them came a Burgomaster of Rotterdam in the last century,
while the late Minister of Marine, an Admiral, was the
grandson of another. As the Scottish colonisation of the
city, so to speak, dwindled, the congregation dwindled
152 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
too, and at present it does not exceed a hundred, composed
mainly of families of Scottish descent rather than of Scots-
men proper. In consequence of this decline in numbers,
Government some years ago suppressed one of the two
pastors of the charge. Rotterdam has no less than nine
Protestant denominations, a list of which is now before us
in a document prepared periodically, and called the
Dominie's Briefe. The parson in Holland is designated
Dominie So-and-so; and since they do not preach in certain
fixed churches as with us, but turns about in the different
churches of the city, it becomes necessary to issue a kind
of bill of fare for the Sunday, that church-goers may know
where to look for their favourite ecclesiastical dish. The
nine Protestant bodies are the Netherlands Reformed
Congregation,-that is to say, the State Church, though
the State pays all Churches; the Lutheran Congregation ;
the Remonstrants, representing the old Arminianism;
the Baptists; the Walloon Church; the English Presby-
terians; the Scotch Church; the English Episcopal Church;
and the German Evangelical Congregation. Some of these
bodies, as the reader will readily guess, are only represented
in the important commercial cities of the country. But it
would be a mistake to interpret the existence of the others
as hostile to the National Church in the sense in which
Dissenting Churches are so here. They have not split off
the original Establishment in an attitude of declared
enmity; but are rather ancient varieties of Protestantism
which have grown up side by side with it, in a rivalry not
necessarily acrimonious. Indeed, the Remonstrants, from
whom such an attitude was most reasonably to be expected,
are on the best terms with the Church from which their
DUTCH PRESBYTERIANISM. | 53
ancestors separated, and the clergy of the two associations
interchange ministerial offices freely. The Remonstrant
Congregations are small, but wealthy, and of good social
rank and intelligence; nor is the old quarrel of Calvinist
and Arminian (once so formidable even in its political
consequences in the Netherlands) any longer a matter of
discord and bitterness at this day.
DUTCH PRES BYTE RIAN ISM.
(Edinburgh Cowrant, September 1863).
WHEN we said in our recent article on Holland that Cal-
vinism and Arminianism were no longer sources of discord
in the Dutch Church, we touched upon one of the most
curious passages in the history of that country. In the
seventeenth century, the theological question became a
political one of the highest importance. The austerer
forms of belief always attract the common people, for
reasons which have been admirably pointed out by Adam
Smith;* and Arminianism was first welcomed by the culti-
vated and opulent classes of the cities, who constituted the
strength of the Republican or States party, as opposed to
the party of the Stadtholder. By a policy which, what-
ever else it was, was admirably shrewd, Prince Maurice of
Nassau allied himself with the Calvinists, and the triumph
of this combination between populace and prince produced,
* Wealth of Nations, Book v., cap. 1, art, 3.
154 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
among other events, the exile of Grotius, and the execution
of Barneveldt. But the singular result now is, that Armi-
nianism has really revenged itself quietly in the long run.
Calvinism is no longer a necessary characteristic of Dutch
orthodoxy; and if a Remonstrant freely exchanges pulpits
with the representative of his ancient persecutors, it is
doubtless as much because there is no risk of conflicting
doctrine, as because the age generally is more moderate in
all such matters. This result may teach us that Presby-
terianism is no necessary security for “sound Calvinism,”
as some people Suppose; and the careful inquirer will find
that in Holland,-where the Presbyterian form of Govern-
ment passes unquestioned,—there is a freedom of theological
speculation which England has never attained, and to
which Scotland is totally a stranger.
If Calvinism and Arminianism, in fact, have ceased to
be antagonistic there, the main cause is that questions still
more serious have succeeded them. There are, speaking
roundly,–three parties in the Dutch Church, the Ortho-
dox, or Biblical party; the Liberal party, and the party of
the Modern Theology. The Orthodox men base them-
selves, of course, on the established traditions, modified as
these are by the moral success of Arminianism. They
have to resist Neology generally in all its shapes, and in
its latest German garbs. They are strongest among the
aristocracy, who regard their influence as conservative;
among the women, who are always conservative in theo-
logy; and among the common people, as distinguished
from the middle class, who respect their characters, and
venerate the hereditary beliefs. The Orthodox clergy are
dignified venerable old gentlemen, many of whom adhere
DUTCH PRESPYTERIANISM. 155
to the antique knee-breeches, and to the pipe, once the
general mark of a pastor in Holland, but (in the levity of
these modern times) now Superseded, for the most part, by
the cigar. The great seat of Orthodoxy is Utrecht. There
are celebrated preachers, and some scholars, of the party,
though it has recently shown signs of more weakness in
literature than becomes it. The Liberals are chiefly in-
fluential in the middle class, and in the smaller towns.
Their opinions have that vagueness which belongs to
“Liberalism” everywhere, and they hold a half-and-half
position between the Orthodox and the disciples of what
is called the “Modern Theology” mentioned above. Ley-
den, the Batavian Athens, the famous University at which
so many of our Scotch ancestors were educated, is the
stronghold of the Modern Theology. This school draws
its disciples from the young pastors, and represents the
influence of German speculation on the Dutch mind.
Hegel, Schleirmacher, Frederick Christian Baur, are the
names held in honour by this section of Young Holland;
and when we say that probably half the rising students of
the Dutch Church belong to it, our readers may suppose
that speculations which excite a kind of frenzied dismay
here, are there received, discussed, and in large measure
accepted, as mere matters of course. Thus, M. Ernest
Renan's late book was translated into Dutch immediately,
though there is yet no English version of it; and that,
though French is much more widely known in Holland
than in Great Britain. The difficulties of the Dutch
Church turm, it will be seen, on central questions,—on the
very essence of all that is involved in a religion based upon
the Scriptures, and not on the social, semi-political, or
156 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
disciplinary questions which vex the Established Church
of Scotland. There are signs that the higher difficulties
will begin here, too, in their turn; but, meanwhile, the
Dutch Church is free from some of the embarrassments of
the Established Presbyterianism of the North.
For instance, the Patronage Question is by no means
such a source of trouble in Holland as it is with us. The
State abolished the collation-regt some time ago ; and
though it retains the power of approving the choice made
of a proponent, or probationer, by the Consistory, that
approval is almost entirely a matter of form. And so in
the case of the few nobles who have a right to nominate;
a leet is laid before them, but as a general rule they accept
the Consistory's man. Again, it is of no small importance
to the Dutch Church that Presbyterianism is the only
recognised form of Protestantism in the country. Men of
all ranks are Presbyterians, as a matter of course, noble or
simple. And from this and other causes, a certain dignity
and amenity attaches to the prevalent form of worship
there, the absence of which is complained of in some Pro-
testant countries. The old cathedrals, though not pre-
tending to the splendour of those in the great Roman
Catholic kingdoms, are wanting neither in decency of
arrangement, nor in heirlooms of antiquity, nor in a grave
beauty of ornamentation. In some, the pulpit stairs are
carved with a curious grace, recalling the masterpieces of
Grinling Gibbons. In some, there is painted glass, precious
for its age, and more precious for its execution. In some,
there are stately marble monuments to the memory of the
mighty admirals who disputed with England the sove-
reignty of the sea. But what most attracts, and what
DUTCH PRESBYTERIANISM. 157
must often astonish the traveller from the North, is the
noble organ music, which, in more than one church of the
Netherlands, vies with anything of the kind in Europe.
The organ of the Groote Kerk, the Cathedral of St Law-
rence at Rotterdam, is at least eighty feet high, and has
some pipes which are thirty feet long. That at Haar-
lem is of almost equal proportions, and is said to be still
finer in tone. The use of the organ has been opposed at
certain periods in Holland, but the national love of music
has always succeeded in maintaining it, and it may be con-
sidered as universal. In fact, the organ Supersedes the
precentor, whose office it makes somewhat meaningless;
and it exerts beyond doubt an admirable effect on the
singing of the congregation. The musical notation of the
psalm-tunes is ordinarily printed in the Dutch psalm-
books, a detail which would alone suffice to prove the
greater diffusion of musical knowledge among the people.
Amongst other features of Dutch Presbyterianism, we
must not omit the observance of Sunday, which may be
generally described not only as less strict than that pre-
vailing in Scotland, but as in some respects less strict than
that prevailing in London. A kind of theatre frequented by
the lower orders is open on Sundays in Rotterdam; and if
this is not the case at the Hague, it is less because such a
thing would be forbidden by the authorities, than because
it would not suit the domestic habits of the Dutch, who
usually have family gatherings on Sunday evenings. The
celebrated band of the Royal Guards plays in public on
Sundays at the Hague during summer; and places of
amusement, such as gardens attached to taverns, etc., are
freely resorted to. The Dutch, however, are steady church-
158 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
goers, as we observed before; the shops are shut on the
Sunday almost without exception; and if a Dutch Sunday
is not kept like a Scotch one, it is at least more regarded
than is common on many other parts of the Continent.
EDUCATION IN HOLLAND.
(Edinburgh Courant, September 1863).
THERE are few questions about Holland more interesting
to a Scotsman than the state of the higher education there.
It is a subject which at different periods has had a keen
personal interest and importance for our countrymen. Not
only had we Scottish Churches, still surviving, at Amster-
dam and Rotterdam; not only had we a Scottish Guard in
the service of the House of Orange, descendants of whom
hold an honourable rank among Dutch families at this day,
but it was quite common for our ancestors to go to the
Dutch universities for an important part of their instruc-
tion. Lord Monboddo, for example, studied law at Gron-
ingen, and Lord Hailes at Utrecht. But the favourite
university was the still more famous one of Leyden.
Thanks to the courtesy which is so freely shown to foreign
men of letters in the Netherlands, we had an opportunity
of inspecting the “Album” of that illustrious seat of
learning. We found a compatriot, Joannes Rose, Scotus,
éntered as a student of theology as early as 1594. But
EDUCATION IN HOLLAND. 159
the period when the Scottish names lay thickest, was from
the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eight-
teenth century. Between 1727 and 1737, there were
seven Campbells and ten Gordons studying there. The
Scotus after the Union became Scoto-Britannus, and there
he was in the Album, recognisable at a glance, a Maxwell,
a M*Dowall, a Swinton, or what not. Dr Carlyle in 1745
found twenty-two British students at Leyden, and it claims
the education of several of our most famous divines, in-
cluding Macknight. The last edition of Buchanan was
published by Burman there, ten years after the well-known
Edinburgh edition of Ruddiman. This old relation of
Scotland to the Continent was not without benefit in many
ways. It enlarged the culture, and liberalised (by which
we don’t mean that it democratised, a very different pro-
cess!) the characters of Scottish professional men; and
retarded that provincialism which it is so hard for a small
country, united to a great one with different institutions,
to escape.
The University of Leyden is no longer resorted to, from
so many different parts of Europe, as it formerly was.
Nor does Europe hear so much of it as in the days when
Henry the Fourth of France personally solicited Joseph
Scaliger to accept one of its chairs. But it still holds a
general and a local rank which justifies us in giving a few
memoranda upon it as a typical place of Dutch education.
It has still an average of six hundred students, and the
Princes of Orange go there, as did their great kinsman
Prince Maurice in the sixteenth century, while it was but
a young institution. Among its recent and present profes-
sors, are men of European distinction. The venerable
160 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
Peerlkamp, now retired, is beyond all doubt one of the
first Latin scholars and critics in Europe; and his “Horace,”
though little enough known or noticed in Scotland, pro-
duced an excitement in Germany which gave an entirely
new impetus to the study of that delightful classic. The
Greek professor, Charles Gabriel Cobet, at present Rector
Magnificus of the University, is widely known as a shrewd,
penetrating, most accomplished philologer, and respected
on the spot as the homestest, if also one of the severest, of
teachers. In conjunction with his colleague of the Theo-
logical Faculty, Kuenen, he edits a philological magazine,
the Mnemosyne, in which questions of literary interest are
discussed in the Latin language. Another of the Faculty
of Theology, Scholten, is a leader of “advanced” opinions
in his science, and has exercised an important influence on
contemporary opinion. These are men of middle life, and
in full activity; there being an excellent regulation by
which every professor is required to give up active service,
rude donatus, at seventy years of age. They are men, too,
interested in all modern questions, and anything but desti-
tute of modern attainments. Cobet will speak to a visitor
in Latin, French, or Italian, as he may prefer; and will
discuss Jules Janin with him, as readily as Plautus or
Aristophanes. But Greek is his business, and he treats it
as such; and an announcement that Cobet meant to hold
forth on rope-dancing or the potato disease, would startle
Leyden scarcely less than an overflow of the Rhine. From
all this, the reader will guess that there is a wholesome
veneration and admiration for their chief professors among
the Leyden students, which is very pleasant to witness.
The vacation at Leyden is not so unreasonably long as
EDUCATION IN HOLLAND. 161
here. It begins in the first week of July, and ends in the last
week of September. A professor's income is 2800 florins,
about £230,—from the State,_and as much again from his
fees. For some £500 a year, then, the Dutch, whose country
is not a cheap one, be it remembered, to live in, get nine
months' work from scholars of European distinction; a fact
which makes certain complaints that we hear in this coun-
try appear sufficiently mean, ludicrous, and contemptible.
And the work has this character, which some so-called
scholars would consider alarming, it is carried on through
the medium of the Latin language. The lectures in
Letters and Law are delivered in Latin, which, according
to the ancient custom of the universities, is the official
language of the institution. There is now before us a
programme of the work of the coming session; the Series
Lectionwm, in Academia Lugduno-Batava habendarum, post
feras Astºvas an”? 1863. It is there announced that
Cobet will explain Plato, Demosthenes, and Homer, on
Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, at ten o'clock; but
the announcement is made, and will be carried out, wholly
through the vehicle of the ancient tongue. The custom
has many advantages. It secures that Leyden shall be a
university, and not a mere school, much less a kind of
superior Dame's school, to begin with; and it stamps a
certain familiarity with the most important literary lan-
guage of the world, on the minds of the students, for life.
The students enter, as may be gathered from this fact,
when older than most of ours; at eighteen or nineteen
years of age. There is no collegiate system as in Eng-
land, but they live in lodgings, and mess together in .
messes of different size, at houses which make a business
L
162 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
of catering for them. The Leyden student is probably
seldom so rich as many of the undergraduates of Oxford.
But neither, on the other hand, is there the squalor
amongst them which is complained of by friends of the
students of Scotland. They have generally an allowance
of from 1300 to 2000 florins, some £108 to £170 a year.
Their social life is essentially civilised, and you are pretty
sure to find in their chambers a piano and a Shakspeare.
The duelling of the German universities is unknown
there. The drink is comparatively inocuous, Rhine wine
or Bavarian beer. A ramble or a drive to the villages
through which poor Oliver Goldsmith trudged with his
flute; some tippling of liqueurs in a suburban garden; a
row on the canals; and a frequent consumption of cigars,
very good and very cheap, constitute their favourite amuse-
ments. Every five years there is a masquerade, in which
some scene from the much loved national history is worked
up with taste and elaboration. At that time, Leyden
bursts into a universal jollity; the jealousy between the
student and the townsman is forgotten; and from all parts
of Holland, men who have been educated at the old “Lug-
dunum Batavorum” come back to the haunts of their
youth, and renew its gaiety and hilarity. The university
life, in fact, permeates the nation, and helps to keep up
that good patriotic and historical feeling which has been
proof against so many enemies, and is still proof against
those subtle foes, the spirits of cosmopolitanism, revolution,
and centralisation.
THE DUTCH CLERGY. 163
T H E D U T C H C L E R G W.
(Edinburgh Courant, September 1863).
OUR notes on Holland would be altogether incomplete, if
they comprised nothing on the subject of the culture and
social condition of the Dutch clergy. We may begin, then,
by saying that they are drawn almost entirely from the
middle classes. There are probably not half a dozen mem-
bers of the aristocracy in the Dutch Church. The Dutch
noblesse is found principally in the cavalry, or the navy,
and plays no great part even in the politics of the country
under the present system. Sir William Temple observed,
two centuries ago, that the noble families of North and
South Holland had been swept away by the Spanish war;
and it is now, as then, in Friesland and Guelderland that
they are chiefly to be looked for. How the abolition of
primogeniture, and the general effect of that centralisation
which Holland also owes to France, will ultimately affect
the order, remains to be seen. Even during their student
life, they are not on such friendly relations with the middle
class as is happily the case in England. The Dutch Church,
however, has little to offer to their ambition, apart from
this. Positions of rank there are none ; and the salaries
of the clergy are anything but high. Seventeen hundred
florins, about £140 a year, is a respectable stipend in Rot-
terdam. In Amsterdam, there are some which are better.
But in country places, the pastor has often only his annual
fifty. The Dutch, however, though frugal, are kindly, and
164 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMs.
make their clergy many presents. The position, too, is
thoroughly respectable, and they connect themselves in
marriage with decent families. Probably a half, certainly
a third, of them are sons of clergymen. And in literature,
generally, they are stronger than might be expected from
their pecuniary position. The philologers and men of
letters of the country admit their respectability in this
particular ; and even the students most keen in “new
views,” the hardy young speculators against whom the
village communes send up remonstrances to the authorities,
don’t complain that the party of resistance is ignorant or
unlearned. Holland has always had too many classical
scholars, her universities have kept up too high a standard,
for the cant of an illiterate bigotry to get the upper hand
there. When Mr Spurgeon was in Holland some time
ago (on which occasion, by the way, he made one of his
most creditable appearances in the Scotch Church of Rot-
terdam), he said something deprecating the necessity of
clerical learning. But Leyden only laughed. It is not in
the city which holds the bones of Joseph Scaliger that that
kind of stuff goes down. Leyden can tolerate a heretic, but
it expects him to be a scholar. Professor Scholten is said
to be sufficiently “liberal,” or “broad,” or whatever else
the right word is, in his views, and, by a natural law, his
disciples are outstripping him in that direction. But
Scholten writes a good Latin style, and has published a
theological work in that language. Fancy asking one of
the little clique which is called the Scotch “Liberal” or
“Broad” Church to produce such a book Why, they
could no more do it, than Scholten as a Professor of Theo-
logy would stoop to puff Ernest Renan’s “Life of Jesus”
THE DUTCH CLERGY. 165
anonymously in a newspaper | The “Liberal” of the
Dutch Church will probably produce much trouble in that
institution yet. But a Dutch “Liberal ” fights his battle
openly, and knows how to use his weapon. He is a
scholar ; and he is not a traitor or a sneak.
From what we have said, the reader will not be sur-
prised to hear that two of the most popular Dutch poets
are clergymen of the Dutch Church. One of these is
Beets, author of the “Camera Obscura,” who is a pastor
at Utrecht. The other is Ten Kate, the translator of
Dante and Milton, who is a pastor at Amsterdam. And
here we may observe that the very isolation of the Dutch
language in Europe forces Dutchmen to be more or less
generally linguists. We all know how little Dutch has
ever been studied in Great Britain. Lord Macaulay
learned it, late in life, for a special historical purpose.
Mr Buckle, that prodigy of industry, learned it during a
residence at the Hague. But we confess we cannot add a
third instance among our contemporaries to these two.
The Dutch, in fact, are in pretty much the same position
in which we Scots should have been, if we had continued
to speak the language of Bishop Douglas and Sir David
Lindsay. Accordingly, they are compelled to study more
widely known tongues. Their scholars often retain the old
facility of speaking Latin. Even their commercial classes
speak French. And English and German are widely studied
by their professional men. This fact alone is highly
favourable to the culture of their clergy. But still more
important is the rule that a student must pass his exami-
nation in classics and philosophy, before beginning his
theological course. In Scotland, our only security is the
166 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
Presbyterial examination. But long before a Dutch student
has got that length, he has been put through hands by a
classical professor, has been tackled, say by Cobet, on such
subjects as the Doric Dialect, and the Return of the Hera-
clidae. Not till after he has proved a certain competency
in letters, does he begin three or four years of theology.
When he has passed the professorial examination in that,
he preaches twice, what is called his concio, before a pro-
fessor, on which occasion he invites his friends to hear his
newly developed powers. Finally, after six or seven years
of study, he is examined by the council of clergy of his
province. He preaches before them once, and sustains an
examination in four books of the Old Testament, and four
books of the New. The students of Leyden are examined
at Amsterdam, the Hague, Middelburgh (in Zealand), and
Bois-le-Duc (in Brabant); those of Utrecht, at Utrecht,
Arnheim, and Zwolle; those of Groningen, at Gromingen,
Leuwarden, and Assen. The examination is easier at Bois-
le-Duc, or Middelburgh, than in the greater places; but we
leave our readers to guess what chance their old friend the
“Weem Probationer’” would have had anywhere between
Flushing and the farthest point of the Zuider Zee.
It is very much because the intellectual rank of the
Netherlands clergy is so respectable, that we do not hear
more of the Roman Catholic Church in their country.
People are so accustomed to think Holland emphati-
cally Protestant, as to forget that out of a population of
3,521,416, the Catholics number 1,220,087. There are
whole villages of North and South Holland, the most
famous and populous portions of the Netherlands, in which
* See p. 200, for a curious exposure of the present state of clerical
education in Scotland.
THE DUTCH CLERGY. 167
the peasantry have all along adhered to the ancient faith.
There is a seminary for their priests a few miles from
Leyden. But then it is so inferior to Leyden, that the
Protestant faith retains its dignity, and has an intellectual
pre-eminence which amply compensates for the tenacity of
the boors to their hereditary creed. Nor is this intellectual
respectability confined to the National Church. That
Church is not plagued with bigoted and ignorant sects,
hostile to its comfort on Radical grounds and from
interested motives, and bringing the common Presby-
terianism into contempt among the educated classes of the
nation. The Remonstrants are strongest in the best por-
tions of society; and the Walloon Church (to which Joseph
Scaliger belonged, and which in spite of its Calvinistic
traditions is conspicuously latitudinarian), has in Albert
Réville a theologian of European celebrity. Such facts
rather strengthen the National Church, by keeping up the
character of Presbyterianism generally, than otherwise.
Of course, the great difficulty of all is the widespread
Rationalism or Neology to which allusion has been several
times made. But this is a difficulty common to all
Churches, and less mischievous in Churches which hold
learning in honour than anywhere else. We are not aware
that the Dutch Church can be charged with neglecting
any of its practical and moral duties for the sake of that
activity of speculation which belongs to its age and its
contiguity to Germany. The charities of the country are
enormous ; its social life is pure ; and while things are
thus fundamentally healthy, it is vain to blame tendencies
which are the legitimate results of the freedom of Pro-
testantism, and of the toleration of which Holland was one
of the first countries in Europe to set the example.
168 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
GENERAL FEATURES OF DUTCH LIFE,
(Edinburgh Courant, September 1863).
FROM what we have said of the ecclesiastical affairs of
Holland, our readers will have gathered that Presby-
terianism has proved compatible there, with a resident
monarchy and a friendly relation to the State; with the
maintenance of good terms between the principal religious
bodies; with a very fair culture among the clergy; and
with a system of religious life and observances free from
undue austerity or rigidity. On the other hand, we have
shown that it has proved no security for the maintenance
of Calvinistic orthodoxy, or, indeed, of orthodoxy of any
kind whatever. We now proceed to give some notes on
other features of Dutch life, illustrative of the practical
working of the national institutions. We are somewhat
puzzled by the admitted inferiority of the press of Holland.
It is one of the oldest—perhaps it is the oldest—press in
Europe. Our namesake the Haarlem Courant (in which
family paper every well-regulated Dutch pater familias
takes care to announce his wife's lying in) has existed since
1650. But the Dutch newspapers are generally owned
and edited by Jews. They have no literary merit or
character; and in a well-educated country like Holland this
is fatal to their influence among the better classes. A
Dutch gentleman goes to his native journal for local news,
but to a French one for intellectual entertainment. This
is regretted by patriotic men, and some men of letters and
GENERAL FEATURES OF DUTCH LIFE. 169
professors have tried to introduce a better state of things,
though, hitherto, without success. Perhaps, however, this
is the only social matter in which the Netherlands are
conspicuously weak. They have excellent scholars and
writers in Peerlkamp, Cobet, Backhuysen van dem Brink,
Van Lennep, etc.; a good School of painters, comprising
Israels, Meyer, Tieneman, and Kruseman van Elten; while
Opzoomer, Scholten, and others keep alive the national
repute for philosophy and theology. But in the less
showy departments of life, Holland is particularly strong. .
The Infirmary at Rotterdam has been frequently visited
by foreign deputations as a model of all that an infirmary
ought to be. The other charitable institutions found
everywhere, such as Orphan Asylums, Hospitals, Refuges,
and so on, are worthy the honourable old fame of the
country for such works. Sir William Temple, in his
“Observations on the Netherlands”—(which is far his
ablest book, by the way, and is in high esteem among the
Dutch, who have naturalised it in their literature)—says
“charity seems to be very national among them ;” and
Napoleon is said to have observed that the poor were better
lodged there than his marshals. Large and frequent col-
lections for charitable purposes are made in the Dutch
Churches. And the general regard for cleanliness tells
equally in favour of the humbler classes. Neither in
Amsterdam, nor Rotterdam, nor the Hague, does one see
so much dirt and squalor in proportion to the extent and
population of these cities, as may be seen every day about
the wynds and closes of Edinburgh'; nor is any Dutch
canal,—even in Amsterdam, where the canals are at their
worst,-so offensive to the senses as the Water of Leith.
170 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
There are some lighter but not less characteristic parti-
culars of the life of Holland from which we may derive
instruction. The essential politeness of the people to
strangers is at least equal to that of the French. The
famous French politeness has in fact diminished, since the
democratic spirit Saturated the country; while America
exhibits a brutality at which the gorge of civilised men
rises. Now, though the social spirit of Holland,-her
monarchy notwithstanding, —is essentially Republican,
there is none of the rudeness commonly associated with
Republicanism in her popular manners. Republicanism
has indeed fallen unjustly into bad odour in modern Europe
from its association with Democracy. It is a perfectly
legitimate form of government in itself, and, under certain
conditions, is compatible with order, excellent administra-
tion, and great prosperity and eminence both of public
and private life. Holland did all her greatest things, pro-
duced all her greatest statesmen, writers, admirals, and
painters, before the House of Orange acquired sovereignty,
much as she owed from the first to the brilliant services
done her by that great family. But, then, though she
was a Republic, she was never a democratic Republic. In
some respects, as Temple observes, she rather resembled
an Oligarchy; and her De Wits and Barnaveldts were men
of a higher social stamp, and a far higher culture, than the
Lincolns and Sewards. Accordingly the Republican spirit
recognisable even now has none of that low, levelling cha-
racter, hostile to social and individual superiority, which
is the peculiar mark of modern democracy. A gentleman
finds himself treated with just as much regard and respect
there, as if he were in Kent or Sussex; with more (we re-
GENERAL FEATURES OF DUTCH. LIFE. 171
great to add) than he meets in some parts in Scotland.
This is the more welcome, because the Netherlands were
undoubtedly much Gallicised by the French Revolution
and Occupation. Those events profoundly modified their
system of law, and established the centralisation in accord-
ance with which they are now governed. Yet, thanks to
the good Teutonic blood of the Dutch,--who, along with
the Scandinavians, are certainly our nearest kinsmen on the
Continent, thanks to their obstinate nationality, and the
comparative isolation caused by their peculiar language
and life, their social and domestic character has been
wonderfully little Gallicised, all things considered. It is
not so with the Belgians, whose social leanings are far
more French, and whose capital we lately heard charac-
teristically described by a Frenchwoman as “a little ape of
Paris.” Young Belgium finds life in Holland “slow,” less
brilliant, gay, luxurious, showy, than that of Brussels. But
it is just that same love of cheap and glittering dissipation
which is one of the obstacles to the establishment in France
of political freedom, and of a healthy noble school of litera-
ture. Fortunately, the Belgians feel the dignity of an inde-
pendent national existence, and have had in Leopold a king
capable of making their monarchy respected. No really con-
siderable party desires annexation to France amongst them.
But so strong is the distrust of France among the smaller
Powers, that Dutchmen are reconciled to the loss of Bel-
gium, chiefly because it seems to keep France (so to speak)
a step farther off. Gallia amica sed non vicina, France as
a friend but not as a neighbour, was the favourite saying of
an eminent statesman of the Netherlands. We trust it
may long be popular there. And, meanwhile, we should
172 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
never forget ourselves, that Gallia would be far too vicina
to us also, if she was allowed to seize Belgium; and we
should familiarise ourselves with the resolution to support
the independence of the whole Low Countries with all our
strength, whenever it may become necessary.
J 0 H N G E 0 R G E E D GA. R.
(Edinburgh Courant, May 1864).
THERE died in London, on the 15th ult, a Scottish gentle-
man, whose services to the literature of this generation
ought to preserve for him an honourable place in the
memory of his countrymen. Mr Edgar had made peculiarly
his own, and reigned with no rival though with many
imitators, at the head of, one valuable branch of historical
writing. He was unsurpassed as the author of histories
for the young. By these we do not mean children's books,
however valuable such may be in their way. We speak of
narratives of great and serious transactions addressed to
the well-educated youth of the country, at that important
period of life when they first begin to relish history as
distinct from fiction, and to think of the prominent men
of the past with the love or hatred, the admiration or scorn,
which go so far in forming their political opinions and
sympathies as their minds ripen. Mr Edgar's superiority
in hitting the exact tone in which such narratives should
JoHN GEORGE EDGAR. I 73
be written, was shown in many books, in none more than
in his “Wars of the Roses” and “Cavaliers and Round-
heads;” and it was a superiority which could only be
achieved by a fine nature as well as a fine mind. To speak
successfully to the hearts of high-spirited lads while their
enthusiasm and generosity were most fresh, this was not
a task for which mere cleverness would have sufficed. The
talent required, on the other hand, for the strictly literary
part of the duty which Mr Edgar took upon himself is
much more likely to be underrated than overrated by
popular opinion. But a calm reader who is well acquainted
with the ancient and modern masterpieces of history, will
be the last man to fall into such a mistake. It is difficult
in one way to write for boys, and difficult in another to
write for men. Mr Edgar's books meet the double diffi-
culty, and may be enjoyed by both. They are marked by
a singularly clear perception and grasp of the body of facts
to be dealt with : by the liveliest sense of whatever is
instructive, graceful, noble, or picturesque in such facts;
and the style is uniformly excellent. It is not a showy
style; but it is singularly clear, masculine, and free from
every trace of literary impurity or fashionable affectation.
There is one Scotchman, as we all know, who stands on
a pedestal by himself; but leaving Carlyle out of the
question, it would be difficult to point to any Scotch-
man of letters whose prose is better than that of Mr
Edgar. He had formed it by the long study of a few his-
torical writers, especially Clarendon, Hume, and Scott;
and the study was essentially one of love, rather than
ambition. He had a natural passion for history as other
men have for the lighter kinds of literature, or for the arts
174 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
and sciences; but it was not a passion for history as a
branch of letters, as a department of literary art. Any
feeling he had of the last sort was secondary, and sprang
out of his enthusiastic regard for the past ages, which it
is the business of history to record. This enthusiasm was
the key-note of his nature, both moral and intellectual; and
that he ever became a writer of historical books was rather
an accident of life, the result of his persistent affection for
the study of past ages, than the fruit of any fixed plan for
the acquirement of literary reputation or position.
Mr Edgar died so young, and was so exclusively
occupied with his favourite pursuits and amusements, that
the mere events of his life are briefly told. He was born
in 1827, and was the fourth son of the late Rev. John
Edgar of Hutton, in Berwickshire, who represented, we
believe, the ancient family of Edgar of Wedderlie, settled
for ages in the parish of Westruther in that county. He
was educated at Coldstream School, under a man of good
local reputation, Mr Richard Henderson, and the Latin
which he acquired there proved of great value to him
afterwards, in reading the old mediaeval chronicles. He
went to a commercial situation in Liverpool in 1843; and
in 1846 left Liverpool for the West Indies, where he re-
mained till 1848. Returning to Liverpool in the last
mentioned year, he resumed his Liverpool duties till 1852,
when he settled in London. By this time his taste for
reading and for questions of history and politics had over-
come any attraction which commerce may once have had
for him. A connection by marriage with the late worthy
and intelligent Mr Bogue the publisher, another Berwick-
shire man, probably facilitated his entry into the Lon-
JOHN GEORGE EDGAR. 175
don world of literature, and in a few years he was well
known to the younger generation there, and had com-
menced a career of successful industry in his favourite
department of history. He contributed to several journals,
but he was always rather a writer of books than a
journalist. He studied his subjects for their own sake,
and then made what literary use he could of them ; but he
was little interested in the general pursuits of the literary
world proper, and profoundly indifferent to the arts by
which literary advancement is sometimes pursued there.
Indeed his appearance in the modern metropolitan world
of wags and cynics and tale-writers had something
about it that was not only picturesque but unique. He
came in among those clever, amusing, and essentially
modern men like one of Scott's heroes. Profoundly
attached to the feudal traditions,—a Tory of the purest
Bolingbrokian School as distinct from the Pittite Tory
or modern Conservative, and supporting these doctrines
with a fearless and eccentric eloquence, to which his
fine person and frank and gallant address gave at once
an easy and a stately charm, he represented in London
the Scot of a past age. The ordinary Cockney writer
looked with astonishment on a man who was as familiar
with Matthew Paris and Froissart, and the Paston Letters,
as he himself with Dumas or Dickens; and who had a
veneration for the houses of Home or Stanley, which
the Cockney rarely retains even for his grandfather and
grandmother. But the best men of the London school,
and especially the men of culture and aspiration, looked
on him with affection ; and it was impossible for any-
body seriously to dislike him. He was so cordial and
176 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
genial, so faithful in friendship, and so pleasant in the
unbendings of social life, that differences of opinion
vanished before his laugh. As years went on, his books
became better and better known. He began to conquer
the modesty and distrust of self which made him shrink
from undertaking works of more pretension than those
which he had begun. Latterly he published some histori-
cal fictions, of which “How I won my Spurs” is perhaps
the best ; and he made serious preparations for a book on
the Barons' Wars, in which he was to take the side of the
English monarchy, and which certainly would have ex-
hibited admirable knowledge, and talents for investigation
and description that must have commanded an attention
which his previous performances had been too modest even
to desire to invite. In the midst of these projects, inchoate
and incomplete, death has overtaken him. He had a
splendid constitution, on which he presumed too much, and
which he thought would fight him through anything. So
after a bout of solitary literary labour, during which he
had lived more suo upon tea and tobacco, he was attacked
with brain fever in the first week of April. He would not
believe it serious, nor would he send for advice, till at last
he became delirious, and it was too late. His brother,
Andrew Edgar, Esq., of the English bar, found him hardly
able to recognise his nearest relatives about the 13th, and
he died on the 15th, in the evening. He was attended to
his grave in Highgate Cemetery on the 19th inst. ; and so
passed away from the sight of his friends, a brilliant,
gallant, and most generous gentleman, who was admired by
all who had carefully read his books, and loved by all
who had carefully studied his character.
FREE CHURCH PRETENSIONS. 177
FREE CHURCH P RETENSIONS
(Edinburgh Cowrant, May 1864).
IN addressing the General Assembly of the Free Church
on Tuesday,” Dr Buchanan reminded them that their
Church had now attained its majority ; and he liberally
offered himself to be roasted whole by the public on the
occasion. The way in which he achieved this was by pro-
ceeding to exalt his own denomination in a ridiculous
manner, at the expense of all other Churches. The Doctor
is not a bad speaker. His English is more respectable
than we are accustomed to from such quarters; and if he
has hitherto given no proofs of scholarship, that is probably
because he wishes to remain intelligible to the mass of his
brethren. We have no fault to find with him, except defen-
sively; but when he tells us that the Free Church is pure,
and blooming, and prosperous, to the exclusion of all possible
IEstablishments, he inevitably provokes, at this ecclesias-
tical time of the year, a little free and candid criticism.
Dr Buchanan, we see, still adheres to a pretension which
the new relations of his Church to other dissenters is every
day making more and more obsolete. He would still have
the world to believe that his Church is the Church, that
in 1843 the Church itself seceded from the State, and not
merely one powerful party in the Church from the Church.
“Let me ask the Assembly,” he says, “to advert to the
grand peculiarity by which all along our Church has been
* May 24.
M
178 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
distinguished from all other Nonconformist Churches in
the kingdom, I might even say in the world. Of all such
Churches, ours is the only one that ever undertook, or was
ever called on to undertake, a really national work. . . . .
Its separation from the State was a strictly corporate act.”
This kind of claim, so far from being new, is one of the
oldest known. “A peculiar people,” was the pet phrase
which the English Dissenters of the seventeenth century
always applied to themselves; and all our Scotch seces-
sions have professed in their turn to represent the real
true-blue old Presbyterianism of the nation. In order,
therefore, to prove that his particular sect differed from
these, except in degree, Dr Buchanan should have conde-
scended to figures, and shown that the Church of 1843
voted itself (so to speak) out of itself, by a genuine
majority. But unfortunately for the Doctor, the statistics
are in the way of his doing anything of the kind. The
secession was a large secession, but it was no more. The
whole number of members of the General Assembly for
1843 was 456. The Free Church had only 193 of these,
—73 of whom were elders, and 31 chapel ministers. In
the country at large, the figures were still less favourable
to Dr Buchanan's assumption. Of 1203 clergymen in the
Church of Scotland, 752 adhered to the Church, while of
those who went out, 162 were quoad Sacra ministers. All
this is matter of mere arithmetic, easily accessible to any-
body who likes. But it is pleasant to be able to apply
plain intelligible tests to the vague assertions of interested
declaimers. The withdrawal of a minority, however big,
does not destroy the unity of a corporate body. If the
Radicals of the present Town Council walked out some
FREE CHURCH PRETENSIONS. 179
day, and refused to act, it would still be the Town Council.
If thirty or forty regiments of the line mutinied, the re-
mainder would still form the British army. Mr Banting
is still Mr Banting, though he has lost considerable bulk
by persevering in his now well-known regimen. The Free
Church is only national in the sense in which whisky-
drinking is national. There are a number of people
attached to it in every county; but the nation has not by
any formal act, qua, a nation, adopted it as an institution.
What Dr Buchanan takes for corporate unity is only nume-
rical agglomeration. The respectable amount of the num-
bers is nothing to the point for his purpose. And even
that consideration itself becomes much less important when
we remember that the movement was not a movement of
the educated classes; and that to this day, the Free Church
is still (as Dr Buchanan incautiously reminds us) most
powerful in the wildest, remotest, and most ignorant dis-
tricts of the country, districts from which nothing of what
is greatest in its historical life has come, neither govern-
ing nor reforming elements, neither philosophy, nor litera-
ture, nor industrial and scientific invention.
It is more to the purpose what Dr Buchanan tells us of
the growth and success of the Sustentation Fund. The
general fact of its increase he puts clearly and well. But
he passes lightly over its difficulties and inequalities, and
evades the one fatal fact that no sum which ecclesiastical
engineering can raise out of the congregations avails to
tempt a competent class of students. The Candlishes and
Guthries are handsomely enough paid ; and in the long
run, they are sure of a testimonial,—a piece of luck now,
we believe, in preparation for Dr Guthrie, who will care-
180 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
fully look the other way while it is being got ready, as
Mrs Gamp did while the rum and water were being mixed
for her at Mr Mould's. But the average income of Free
Church country ministers is scarcely more than L. 130; and
it is notorious that in order to raise lads who will put up
with such a prospect for life, it has been proposed to re-
cruit among the shop-boys. The whole sum raised for the
Fund looks great, but we must measure its greatness by
the work it has to do. Dr Buchanan can hardly believe
a shop-boy ministry, educated in the evenings, likely to be
of much effect in the controversies of a period like the
present; but if he says they are good enough for their
pastoral work, then he admits that his Church is, after all,
only a useful sect for the inferior classes. And this is
contrary to the whole theory of his speech, which was that
his Church was an adequate organ for the religious in-
struction of the “nation.”
Dr Buchanan seems to view with as much complacency
as Cardinal Wiseman the difficulties of the Churches
of England and Scotland; and thinks the age of endow-
ments is passing away. Their doctrinal difficulties, how-
ever, are common to all Churches, being produced by the
aspect of modern literature and science, and have nothing
to do with their relation to the State. They are felt in
the Presbyterian Churches of Holland and France, in the
Lutheran Churches of Sweden and Germany, and in the
Roman Catholic Church itself; and their solution is quite
a separate question from that between Voluntaryism and
Establishments. People forget that a Church may be free
from such difficulties by being below the region in which
they arise; but better, after all, culture, speculation, in-
FREE CHURCH PRETENSIONS. 181
quiry, and difficulties, than the jog-trot routine of an
ignorant peacefulness. Meanwhile, politically and socially,
the Church of England is as strong as ever she was,
stronger than she was a generation ago. Every distinct
attack on her is defeated in the House of Commons; and
even the complaint that literates are crowding her portals
is an exaggerated one, as any careful reader of the ordina-
tion lists will learn. With regard to the Scotch Estab-
lishment, she is in an infinitely better position than Dr
Buchaman must once have expected to see her in; and,
unable to meet such facts as the success of her Endowment
Scheme, or her undoubted missionary and educational
energy, he is reduced to taunts which are merely non-
sensical: “The yoke of Lord Aberdeen’s Bill sits un-
easily on its galled neck; and those strange indications we
have seen in certain quarters, to seek security in some sort
of alliance with the prelatic Church of England, betray a
sense of insecurity which time is more likely to increase
than to diminish.” This is really unworthy of a man of
Dr Buchanan’s brains. Why, even the brisk, half-lettered,
saucy, underbred agitator, who is most notorious for his
zeal in the cause of forms of worship parodying those of
the Church of England, professes that he advocates them
to prevent defections to what Dr Buchanan calls Prelacy.
The temporary conspicuousness of such men proves nothing
against the Church of Scotland, which at once treats them
with reasonable toleration, and declines to commit itself
to their immature and weakly ambitious schemes.
182 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMs.
CHANGES OF NAME AND SURNAME,
(Edinburgh Courant, August 1862).
A GOOD deal of discussion has been excited lately by the
increasing prevalence of a tendency to innovation in the
matter of family names. One case of the sort was brought
before Parliament towards the close of the session, in
which a Welsh gentleman had got into a squabble with a
peer, by changing his surname to Herbert. At that time
it was laid down by men of position, and not satisfactorily
refuted, that everybody has a right to change his name if
he pleases; that, of course, the most dignified way of doing
so is to get formal permission, and have it gazetted, but
that, in any case, the change is legal, and must be accepted
by Society if it is regularly carried out in common usage.
Soon after this discussion, its effects became apparent.
One “Joshua Bugg,” in the southern counties of England,
advertised in the Times that he meant in future to call
himself “Norfolk Howard.” Other persons followed this
example, and effected metamorphoses more remarkable
than any recorded by Ovid. The latest we have seen made
public was not of this kind, but was a notice that the old
Lancashire Hoghtons of Hoghton Tower were about to
resume the De Hoghton of their feudal predecessors. The
whole tendency seems to us one which society ought to
discourage, and the existence of which is a sign of the
degeneracy and vulgarity of modern taste.
Perhaps the best condemnation of the set of feeling in
CHANGES OF NAME AND SURNAME. 183
such directions is, that it is strongly American in charac-
ter. Mr Dickens told us, long ago, in the “American
*Notes,” that young American women in large numbers
took new Christian names every year. Of course, their
motive was to get rid of such common baptismal names as
Mary, Elizabeth, or Martha, which are only the names of
saints and heroines, and to bloom out in the finery of
Angelina, Violetta, and so forth, the “heroines” not of
history, but of novels. Even this less objectionable hunger
for innovation in the matter of Christian names is getting
too strong amongst ourselves. The good old Scotch rule
(which was also, by the way, the Greek rule) of calling
your eldest son after your father, is on the wane; and that
prevalence of particular names which gave so much local
colour to our districts, and kept alive the ties of blood and
of tradition, is dying out. This takes place in families of
all-classes. Young M*Toddy is no longer Sandy M*Toddy,
like his grandfather the provincial Bailie. He has become
Mortimer M*Toddy, and his intimates in the Parliament
House always call him Mortimer, a title which, in the
extremely improbable case of his attaining the Bench, he
will assuredly assume in preference to his patronymic.
But the taking of such names, as Christian, or as second
ones, though in strictness they ought not to be taken
where there is no hereditary reason, will always be more
or less general. The vanity of mankind is too deeply
rooted to be interfered with, there; and where euphony is
served by such additions, and the public ear gratified by
them, he would be a harsh critic who should treat them
harshly. Certain classes of the community are even tacitly
allowed great freedom in such matters. Actors, for in-
184 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
stance, habitually do with their names what they please.
They add to them, alter them, or change them altogether;
and the Jack Delamere of an actor's daily life is often as
purely fictitious as the Hamlet or Horatio which he bears
in the evening. In the literary world too, since the light
literature man became so prominent, something of the same
kind has taken place. William Snooks, for instance, is
commonplace, and Bill Snooks vulgar. But Stanley
Snooks at the head of an article, or on a yellow cover,
has a certain pleasant aristocratic levity, and yet compact-
ness, about it. This kind of taste, we say, is as old as the
hills; as old as Aristophanes at any rate; for a man in one
of the plays says that his wife would make him give their
son a name, “with a hippos in it.”
But when the inclination in question goes so far as to
induce people to adopt new surnames, and make them
hereditary, that is quite another thing. It may be con-
venient that such a change should be recognised, so that
the law may deal with the parties under their new appella-
tion. If Podger, as Plantagenet, steals a goose, let him be
indicted as Plantagenet by all means, if he was known in
the district where he offended by that name. But to
encourage people in adopting, for merely fantastic reasons,
other names than their hereditary ones, is absurd. A man's
surname, next to his skin, to which Goethe, in his “Auto-
biography,” well likens it, is the most individual and cha-
racteristic thing about him. It is no mere cloak, as
Goethe there says, to be taken on and off according to
pleasure. For instance, it indicates, speaking broadly, his
nationality, his ethnology, the part of the country he came
from, all which are circumstances determining his type of
CHANGES OF NAME AND SURNAME. 185
character and constitution. In noble families, for instance,
it is infinitely more important than the mere title. The
title may have been carried by half-a-dozen houses, and
may have been selected by the present house for reasons
purely arbitrary. But the gentile name of the family is
what connects them with history in the truest sense;
under it, if they got their title honourably, their honours
were won. And here, we may observe, that some of
our noble families have set a bad example, we don’t
mean by changing their surnames, but by reverting to
remote and early forms of them. All the historic distinc-
tion of the Seymours, for instance, gathers round the name
of Seymour. Why disguise it under the archaic form of
St Maur? Or why should the Burkes call themselves De
Burgh! The effect of such innovations is to give the im-
pression that these families are ashamed of being English-
men or Irishmen. Yet we know that the descendants of
the Normans called themselves Englishmen in a very few
generations; that they became ultra-English against the
French, in England, and ultra-Scots against the English, in
Scotland. What should we say to Lord Elgin if he wrote
himself “Brus?” The true theory of a nobility is to be,
not distinct from the people, but the leading portion of
the people itself. To resume the “de” again, once univer-
sal, and dropped by universal consent, is equally wrong in
theory and bad in taste. It is a practical anachronism.
And just as much an anachronism of a different kind is
the assuming of distinguished surnames by persons dis-
satisfied with their own. This is the worst feature of the
innovation under review, not so much that Bugg is not
content to be Bugg, as that he will insist on being Howard.
186 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMIS.
Once men did adopt such surnames, and shared the pro-
tection in return for swelling the following of great fami-
lies. But this was only under particular conditions of
society, and in far distant ages. Society is settled now.
Surnames are fixed and determined, and carry historical
meanings and associations along with them. If a man
will get rid of that which he inherits, let him show some
ingenuity about that which he adopts. When Mr Disraeli's
Sephardim ancestors were persecuted out of Spain, they
formed in Italy a new surname for themselves, and have
made it illustrious. But to seize an illustrious name ready
made is quite another thing. Before a man does this, let
him remember that he may disgrace it. And let him
reflect that it is the fault of his own family if their name
be still ignoble. These are questions of association in great
measure. Hallow the vulgar name by genius, or valour, or
piety, and it will cease to be vulgar. If the race is good,
the name will make itself respectable; if it is not good,
a great name will not elevate it. Wainly does Caudle,
under the influence of new wealth, transform himself,
nominally, into Clifford. The great old surname sits on
him like a coat made for some other man. Nobody meet-
ing him thinks of Wordsworth’s “Shepherd Lord.” No-
body seeing Mrs C. wafts a sigh to the memory of Fair
Rosamond
THE JEALOUS LORD.
Lord Booby hates Disraeli;-stop a bit;
His principles | What then He hates his wit
TOM IDUN COMBE. 187
TO M D UN 00 MB E.
(Edinburgh Courant, November 1861).
THERE is always a certain sentimental interest in contem-
plating the last of any breed or class, whether of man or
other animals. This is the charm of the Dodo to a scien-
tific mind; and how largely fiction has profited by it we
know from the cases of the Mohicans, and the Tribunes,
and ever so many other examples. A philosophical poli-
tician has just at present an opportunity of feeling the full
force of the kind of melancholy, curiosity of which we
speak. There is a vacancy in Finsbury. A once cele-
brated M.P. has passed away. “Tom Duncombe,”—the
last of the Radical gentlemen, is dead.
Of course, there are many decent Radical borough
members to whom the title in question is given by the
usual courtesy of the age. “Gentlemen,” says an Eliza-
bethan lawyer, “be made right cheap in this kingdom.”
But this is not what we mean. Tom Duncombe was a
man of fashion and connections, a dandy, a dragoon, a
rake; and he combined with these advantages a profession
of ultra-politics, which (aided by very good brains) secured
him a free seat in Parliament, and a certain distinction
through life. The social position would not have done it
alone, nor the good brains and the ultra-politics. But,
coming together, they were irresistible, and in Finsbury,
change what might, Duncombe was safe. The stolid but
not ungenial Radical ten-pounder listened with delight to
188 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
a lord’s brother advocating changes which would have
Swamped all lords together; and swore that “Tom,” in
addition to being a gentleman, was a trump. The very
fact that the idol’s private reputation was a little queer
and rakish was in his favour with the kind of man who is
potent in Finsbury elections. The morals of the Regency
gave a piquancy in his eyes to the politics of White Con-
duit House. If “Tom’s” name was mixed up in public
gossip with that of the most famous hetaerae of the day,
why this was a kind of distinction. Finsbury liked an
amount of moral deterioration which seasoned the character
as mouldiness does cheese. In Scotland, a rake turned
politician has to rub out the spots from his character with
a little cant for grease. But Finsbury made no such
demands on Duncombe any more than old Rome did on
Clodius. There was, indeed, a classical air about the
whole business; and Clodius if he pleased might destroy
his own constitution so long as he was always ready to
join in destroying that of the country. We have observed
this ancient connection between an easy view of morals and
an extreme view of politics to be as natural to men of rank
now as in the Clodius and Catiline times. A grandee, let
us suppose, Scandalises the county, and shuts up his castle
from the county society, by placing an unrecognisable
person at the head of his table. The sons in this case
usually enter into public life on high-flying popular prin-
ciples. It makes up to them for the want of support from
their own class, and revenges them on those of their equals
who have given them the cold shoulder. And, as politi-
cians, they get at once the advantages of patrician connec-
tion and of Radical politics. Their birth gives them an
TOM D'UN COMBE. 189
advantage over the local Sugar-broker, their opinions over
the country gentry. The Radical's private and secret
passion for a lord is often doomed to languish ungratified
by the lord’s political coyness. His lordship cannot
make up his mind to declare against his own order; the
Rad. has a dread of “Toryism,” such as a man feels in this
cold weather for the wholesome matutinal tub. But when
the lord is a Radical too, then, indeed, Podger's heart
yearns towards him,
& & tenuis sub artus
Flamma dimanat.”
—and he rushes with ill-concealed partiality into his em-
brace.
Such was the feeling of Finsbury towards the young
Duncombe at a period now beginning to look very distant.
We do not say that his individual position was that of one
of the group of sons of an irregular old grandee sketched
above. But we mean that his birth, his dandyism, and
even his “gay” reputation, were items in his success, and
that his success was essentially that of a Radical gentle-
man. Probably we shall do him no injustice by supposing
that he was fully sensible of the advantages of the com-
bination. Yet we are willing to believe that often when
he rounded a period against restrictions on the suffrage,
he consoled himself by reflecting that he was impotent to
destroy them. And, indeed, it is a curious thought that
he leaves the world more Conservative than he can almost
ever have remembered to see it. He entered public life
just when the Whigs were making up their minds to head
the revolutionary tendency and seize its profits. He swam
by always taking care to be on the topmost and most
190 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
advancing wave of agitation; and he contrived to keep
afloat in the calm as in the storm. But, latterly, he was
living on his political capital; sucking in a political winter
the paws of his préstige; allowed to retain his seat because
it was certain that nature would not allow him to retain it
long. If he was ever sincere, heart and soul, in his Ballot
and other cries, he must have deplored the apathy of the
new generation, and wondered how ineffectual his dema-
gogism had, on the whole, been. But we may safely
assume that “Tom’’ always put the most violent side of
his real politics forward; that he was quite as content to
be returned by Finsbury sober as by Finsbury drunk, pro-
vided that wonderful borough did return him. And we
can fancy him reflecting at last with the Emperor Augustus,
after unbroken success in his main object, that he had well
played out the Comedy of Life.
We must now guard ourselves from seeming to under-
rate his talents, which were quite superior to those of
demagogues in general. Not only had he a clever effective
gift of oratory, but he had a kind of pluck and of humour
which belonged to his generation rather than to ours.
The young politician of our day is not only as grave as a
nun, but is apt to cant atrociously, and to flavour his
oratory after the fashion of Mr Pecksniff and Mr Chad-
band. The very humbug of Duncombe's generation had
a heartier and healthier air, and they were on the whole
less apt to toady individuals or the public. There was a
spice of satire in Duncombe's speeches which kept the
hearer awake like a pinch of Snuff. Our popular speakers
distribute neat little philanthropical sentiments to their
audience as tame and tasteless as charity-children's buns.
TOM IDUN COMBE. 19 |
The sort of talent required for a Radical gentleman
is more often found in the class to which Duncombe
belonged than in the men who shine, like Cobden and
Bright, by dint of hardheaded sense and violent declama-
tion. And as the popular taste runs now in favour of
rough business-like brains, this fact tells against the species
of which we have been treating. Bernal Osborne, for
example, who is a variety of the species, is turning out a
comparative failure, and has abandoned all its distinctive
features. But there are other equally important circum-
stances to be remembered. The Whigs were responsible
for the existence of many Radical gentlemen in former
times, having driven them into Radicalism by their oli-
garchical exclusiveness. This explains the so-called Radi-
calism of a man like Sir William Molesworth, who assuredly
was never a Democrat, or he would hardly have edited the
absolutist Hobbes. Again, what we will freely call the
Fogyism of some Tories of the old régime also drove into
what was loosely styled Radicalism, men who were, like
Sir Francis Burdett, thoroughly aristocratic at heart.
Some of these men, strange to say, became Radicals by
dint of sheer feudal feeling, by looking on the Castle-
reaghs, Sidmouths, and Eldons, as a set of upstarts; much
as, under the early Hanover Kings, some of the Jacobites
took to talking a kind of Republicanism. But there is
now no longer an excuse for these anomalies. The Whigs
are so feeble, considered as Whigs, that they must take in
private gentlemen of good family, however anxious they
may be to confine their Ministries to Russells, Cavendishes,
and Howards. And the Tories are in harmony with the
most advanced thought of the age, besides being led by
192 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
the very first noble of the kingdom. There is therefore
less excuse for a gentleman's becoming a demagogue than
in Duncombe's young days; and the “Paphlagonian” and
the “Sausage-seller” may be left to fight the rivalry for
the position out, as in the comedy of Aristophanes. We
can hardly fancy anything more likely to have a good effect
on the people than such a spectacle. And the talent once
expended by better men in Radicalism may be more use-
fully employed in social improvement, in useful adminis-
tration, in teaching the people the historic bases and origin
of our liberties and greatness, and in cultivating their
respect and affection by honest arts.
—º-
HOW TO WIRITE A BIOGRAPHY.
Take your facts from the last man ;-let no theft appal ye;
Then, take thought from Carlyle, and take style from
Macaulay; -
Throw in plenty of “sympathy,”—rubbing your eyes
about
Men whom, if living, you’d snub and tell lies about :
Pass the word to the critics, and fling your pen down,
And your bran-new biography's out on the town.
BLOGG ON FAMILY.
Blogg Sneers at ancient birth ;-yes, Blogg, we see,
Your ears are longer than your pedigree.
THALATTA. 193
T H A L A TT A.”
(Edinburgh Courant, January 1863).
WHEN the last number of this Romance appeared in
Fraser, we pronounced it a “showy failure,” and we hold
the same opinion, even more strongly, now that it is all
before us at once, in a volume. The reason why the failure
should be signal, lies on the surface. To paint the life and
character of a Prime Minister, with all the political and
social accessories belonging to Such a career, demands a
knowledge of politics and the great world, to begin with,
of which the author of “Thalatta” is altogether destitute.
He has, obviously, about as much personal acquaintance
with such worlds as a U. P. minister of Auchterarder has
with the domestic life of the Pope. No doubt, this ignor-
ance would not prevent a writer of genius from succeeding
so far as to produce something brilliant and amusing even
while untrue. “Vivian Grey” is capital reading, though
Disraeli then wanted the experience of life which has
made his later novels so much more valuable. But middle-
aged mediocrity is quite a different thing from boyish
genius. The author of “Thalatta’ is a shrewd, tolerably
clever man, well read in the literature of the day; but the
nearest approach to genius in him is a certain sensibility to
the creations of superior minds, and liveliness of mimetic
faculty, which, together, make him occasionally catch the
* Thalatta / or, the Great Commoner : A Political Romance.
London.
N
194 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
tone of his betters rather happily. The influence of the
last powerful mind which has impressed him, is seen
reflected in his pages like the moon in a pail of water.
But there is no originality of thought or feeling, no evi-
dence of inherent and inborn pith and strength, about his
book. The reader finds himself in a world of echoes,
hearing now a note of Kingsley, now a note of Tennyson,
sometimes a faint reverberation of Carlyle's loud melan-
choly scorn, or Thackeray's thoughtfully-playful irony.
The village blacksmith who went up a tree, and whistled,
sometimes like a thrush and sometimes like a nightingale,
played the same trick on the neighbourhood which cleverish .
men of this numerous class do. But, unfortunately, there
are worse things about “Thalatta’ than the general second-
hand air of thought and sentiment which everybody widely
read in the literature of this age must recognise. The
book contains some direct plagiarisms; much sham
classicism; not a little looseness of style and quotation;
and (we regret to add) a considerable sprinkling of snob-
bism, affectation, and personal spite.
In the very first chapter, we have a family history of the
Warrenders, intended to show how the qualities of Scan-
dinavian blood may exist permanently in a family, taking
different forms of expression in different ages. The whole
view comes from a novel called “Eustace Conyers,” of
which most of our readers probably never heard, but which
ought not to be plundered for all that. Plagiarisms even
of detail could easily be pointed out. But, indeed, the
general Conservatism of “Thalatta” (as far as it is Con-
servative) is one entire plagiarism, cribbed as neatly as
the writer cribs a joke. To apply Carlyle's doctrine of
THALATTA. 195
Hero-Worship to feudal institutions, and to show their
modern adaptability, strengthened by classical example and
illustration, such a conception never grew in the author of
“Thalatta’s” brain; and having borrowed it without grati-
tude, he employs it without dexterity. The following
passage, for example, shows that he does not know what
he is talking about, and is calculated to do Conservatism
a great deal of harm:—
MEN AND MEASURES.
“And so, musing upon fate, upon the doom which haunts a
fated house, by the shores of the Northern Sea as by the sleep-
less Cephisus, in the fisher's hovel as in the palace of the King
—I prepare at length to lay aside my pen. But this is a book
on politics, you say; and you think therefore that it might be
advisable to point the moral which it enforces. But it points
to nothing, neither to the legerdemain of Whig, or Tory, or
Radical. It is a man we want, not legislative antidotes. All
history has proved, all true religion has asserted, that the form
is worthless if the spirit be dead. Christendom is the life of
Christ. The life of a Divine Person, and not the dogmas of
priests, lies at the root of all the truth, and goodness, and
greatness of eighteen hundred years. Whatever is most cha-
racteristic in the life of any nation is due to the influence of
some half-dozen men, whose high deeds or thoughts inspired
the race, thereby raising it out of itself, out of its savageness,
and its meanness, and its selfishness, to the level of sacrifice,
and to the sense of duty. I have no confidence in measures—I
believe in men. Mowbray was the last of the men who were
greater than their measures. He did not enfranchise the ten-
pounders, but he stirred the imagination and wakened the faith
of the nation. Had he lived, the tem-pounders might not have
been enfranchised. The people would have been satisfied to be
led by one in whom they recognised a chief, a guide, a leader.
196 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
They would not have required to be saved by an ingenious
piece of mechanism. But he died; and as the Whigs, who
cultivate “Houses' instead of ‘Men,’ succeeded to the Govern-
ment, and had neither personal genius nor lofty virtue to offer
to the people, they were forced to try the ten-pound experiment.
Whether it has worked well, I do not stay to inquire. Upon
the whole, I am inclined to agree with Darcy, who once said—
“‘There must be a Divine Governor of the world. Else into
what a mess we should get when Lord John, for instance, is at
the helm. And as long as there is a Divine Leader, it does not,
perhaps, matter very much who is Prime Minister.”
It positively never enters into the writer's head that we
chiefly want “men” because they bring good “measures”
along with them. The common mistake lies not in over-
valuing “measures,” but in expecting good ones as readily
from a little man as a great man. “Darcy’s” joke in the
last paragraph we have met with in a novel before. “Do
you believe in Peel?” asks one of the characters. “Chiefly
in Providence,” is the reply. Such pleasantries, like the
gushing rhapsodies of other parts of “Thalatta,” are only
excusable in lively lads of two-and-twenty. The author of
“Thalatta” is far too practised an imitator to be able to
use that plea. And Mazeppa loses his poetry at Astley's.
With regard to what the Saturday Review—cruelly
ironical—called the “enormous classical learning” of this
gentleman, we think it worthy of particular notice. Its
highest praise is that “pallida mor's,” “mens sana in
corpore sano,” and “ loquaces lymphae tuge—O famed Ban-
dusian well !”—are all rightly spelt on the same page;
and this is not only satisfactory, but encouraging, and
should rouse in our “literary men” here a spirit of emula-
THALATTA. 197
tion. We are puzzled, however, by the following flash of
scholarship —
“For this was the twelfth of August (DIES IMMEMOR), and
Miles Warrender and an old college chum were taking their
pleasure on his moors.”
Does this mean, that grouse-shooting day is a day for-
getful and unmindful of other days But that is not
sense. Does it mean, that it is a day never to be for-
gotten itself? But that is not Latin. On the whole, we
fear, the author's notions about the right use of immemor
are loose, and we wonder what he makes of it in our
friend of the “famed Bandusian well.” It does not follow,
however, now-a-days, because a man does not know the
classical languages, that he may not do the “classical
business” in the style of the subjoined :—
“With ruffled plumage the kingly bird nestles in the unwary
breast of Hermione. Apollo strings his lyre beside the bank of
the Amphrysus, and night after night, upon old Latmos, Diana
stoops to kiss the dead Endymion. Here the smiling Hebe
fills with flowing nectar the cup of an enamoured god; and
Bacchus, flushed with the grape-juice and crowned with the
wine-leaf, springs lightly from his chariot,
* * while his eye
Makes Ariadne's cheek look blushingly.”
Death itself is changed by the magic pencil into an influence
graceful and endearing. Hyacinthus forsakes not the beautiful
world, and the pleasant sunshine that he loves; but, as a deli-
cate flower, still communes with the god. The melancholy
tree is charged with the drooping spirit of Cyparissus; and in
the feathered anemone Adonais blooms into a purer and gentler
life. But now bow down, bow down; for lo! Aphrodite in her
198 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
immortal girlhood woos young Anchises among the sheep-cots
on Ida—Ida, that looks down on windy Troy 1"
Though written in all seriousness, this reads like the
burlesques of Bulwer in “Punch's Prize Novelists;” and
we have had nothing like it, in Edinburgh, since the
“Poems by a Painter.”
Generalities of this kind at third and fourth hand, and
Spoony declamations about the “blue AEgean” from fel-
lows who never inhaled a breeze scented by the lemon
groves of Poros, or drank Tenedos wine, mulled, under
the shadow of old Athos, are fashionable in our light
literature just now. They are found to be easy, and they
are thought to be safe. Yet, they are by no means with-
out their dangers. Thus, how fine it sounds to close a
chapter with the sonorous reflection that “the nicknames
of Aristophanes have outlasted the Phidian Zeus !” The
worst of it is, that Aristophanes did not produce his great
satirical effects by nicknames, but by the dramatic por-
traiture of real living persons brought on the stage under
their proper appellations. It is in this way that Socrates
figures in the “Clouds;” Lamachus in the “Acharnians;”
Cleon, very slightly disguised, in the “Knights;” and to cha-
racterise the Athenian satirist as distinctively great in “nick-
names” is to mislead the innocent public. Perhaps the
author of “Thalatta” exhausted his Greek on his title-page.
The reader can now understand why this literary gentle-
man is so angry with “Classical Editors.” Nobody has
more to fear from them; and for our parts, we think his
satire on the subject (barring a few fibs which nothing can
justify), both natural and excusable. But we object, on
constitutional grounds, to its being put into the mouth of
THALATTA. 199
a British peer. A certain “Lord Maurice” is brought in
at a certain “Lord Windermere's,” saying just the same
things about an “Editor,” that Tom M’Cad, advocate, says
to his friend Dr M'Stotty, about a critic who occasionally
exposes the ignorance and laughs at the puffery of the
couple. We object, as Conservatives, to British noblemen
being employed in such undignified work. Or, rather, we
object altogether to this writer's despotic way of creating
peers and potentates generally. It is fair enough to magnify
Tom’s day's shooting by the leave of the factor, into the
possession of an immense moor of his own, or to promote
his little cutter into a yacht. But neither MºCad nor
M“Stotty should be elevated to the Upper House; nor
should “basely plebeian names” be talked of so glibly by
their friend and equal. The author of “Thalatta’s” real
well-wishers will advise him to cut the miserable school
of Theodore Hook, which did so much harm to the cause
of Conservatism, and to cultivate his better qualities. He
has fair abilities of a plain kind; a good eye for nature ;
and apparently a genuine love of at least all that literature
which can be come by pretty easily. On this foundation,
something very respectable may be built by dint of study,
and thought, and a rigid extirpation of the various weak-
nesses belonging to literary dandyism and sentimentalism,
or absurd social pretension. It is because “Thalatta” is
so unluckily full-blown a specimen of some of the worst
aspects of the literature of the day that we have bestowed
so much attention upon it. And if the author has the
amount of common sense which he gives indications of in
his better moods, he will put our criticism to the right
use. But whether he does so or not is his own affair.
200 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
SCOTT IS H C L ERICAL EDUCATION,”
(Edinburgh Cowrant, May 1863).
A CASE was brought before the General Assembly of the
Church on Saturday f which illustrates with curious and
painful felicity much that has been said on the subject of
clerical education in the Cowrant. It seems that last
February one Mr John Anderson, a student of divinity,
appeared before the Presbytery of Weem for examination.
He had “finished his course at the University;” he had
“attended the Divinity Hall for three full sessions;” and
it only remained that the Presbytery should examine him
before he became authorised to fulfil the duties of a Chris-
tain preacher in this critical and inquiring age. The Pres-
bytery of Weem performed this task in what, on their own
showing, ought to have been a most satisfactory way.
“They proceeded to examine him strictly and privately on
his knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, and of
Philosophy and Theology.” The result of these “strict’”
gentlemen's investigations was that Mr Anderson was
found qualified. But they were not unanimous. Mr
Cameron of Logierait thought the candidate's appearance
unsatisfactory, and entered his reasons of dissent. The
Presbytery seem to have been a little indignant at this ;
* I reprint this article, that Englishmen may see with what a
wretched standard of clerical attainments Scotch Presbyteries and
Synods are apt to be content.
+ 23d May, 1863.
SCOTTISH CLERICAL EDUCATION. 201
and their Committee, after pooh-poohing “the mere opinion
of an individual member,” came to the resolution that the
Presbytery had “dome their duty in a proper manner.”
The case now went to the Synod of Perth and Stirling,
which “unanimously” agreed to dismiss the complaint,
and to affirm the judgment of the Presbytery. From the
Synod, the regular transition was to the Assembly, and,
thanks to that fact, a “Certified Copy of Mr John Ander-
son's Written Examination, February 4, 1863,” is now
before us.
This document is interesting, because it shows what
amount of proficiency in a student in subjects of para-
mount importance satisfies the judgment of modern Church
Courts. The first thing that strikes one is the almost
ludicrous easiness of the questions put. Only a dozen or
a dozen and a half are allotted to each branch, and the
great bulk of them ought not to puzzle the humblest tiro.
In Logic, for instance, Mr Anderson was asked what a pro-
position was, and how many propositions there were in a
syllogism In Theology, he was requested to state the
number of the tribes of Israel; and whether the Jews
were ever carried into captivity In Natural Philosophy
he had to say what “a pulley” was ; and he gave no
answer whatever to the following questions —“What is
the distance of the earth from the sum " and “What is
the distance of the moon from the earth!” The moon is
evidently one of Mr A.’s weak points, and he was lucky in
finding a charitable Presbytery, and a still more charitable,
because “unanimous,” Synod. For, when his examiners
inquired, “What is it that causes eclipses of the moon " "
part of the answer was, that these are caused “by that
202 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
luminary wandering beyond its usual course !” We all
know that terrestrial luminaries suffer occasional eclipse
through wandering from their proper route, as Dr Guthrie
did when he went out of his way to attack the character of
a certain Highland village, or as the Scotsman does when
it strays into historical and literary allusions. But the
moon's character, Diana's character, for regularity is well
established. At first we thought that, as the moon may
legitimately be said to “wander ’’ in poetry, our student
was a disciple of the Physics-from-Psyche” school; but
this, it seems, is not the case.
We turned, however, with the keenest curiosity, to the
classical part of Mr Anderson’s Presbyterial ordeal, and
some of our readers will be glad to know what we found
there. Unluckily, the Latin part of his examination is not
given; why, we are unable to conjecture. But the Greek
part of it is ; and a singular exhibition it makes. This suc-
cessful candidate for a place in the ranks of the Scottish
clergy was set to translate three verses (27-29) of the 9th
chapter of the Gospel according to St Luke, and to “parse”
one of them. The translation is not only inelegant, but
in some parts inaccurate, to begin with ; and as for the
parsing, there are at least six errors in a verse of twenty-
two words. Three times, wrong futures are attributed to
familiar verbs; two well-known mouns are confounded
with each other; and a pronoun in constant use is ludi-
crously blundered about. Now, we have no doubt that
Some giggling blockheads will address us on this occasion
as Jack Cade in Shakspeare addresses Lord Say, for Jack
* A living Scotch Professor of Divinity told his class that “physics”
was derived from “Psyche.”
SCOTTISH CLERICAL EDUCATION. 203
thought “a noun” and “a verb’ were “such abominable
words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.” But
though fools may laugh, the sensible men of the Church
are well aware that this is no laughing matter. If men
are allowed to enter a Church which makes so many
demands on their activity, while unfit to deal with a little
bit of the Greek Testament, what sort of theological com-
petency may we expect from them in middle life . This
is a serious question at all times, but it is more than seri-
ous when the present relations of the Protestant Churches
to Romanism and Rationalism are taken into account.
The most melancholy part of all this is, that the only
unusual thing about the business was Mr Cameron's pro-
test. The Presbytery were quite satisfied with their pro-
bationer, and the Synod were quite satisfied with the Pres-
bytery. Mr Anderson's certificates were all in order ; and
among them one reads (with a significant smile) the testi-
mony of an Edinburgh professor that his “proficiency was
good.” In the Assembly debate on the subject, Mr M*Far-
lane, Rannoch, threw down the gauntlet for the young man,
and challenged Presbyteries generally to show that they
were not in the habit of passing others no better qualified.
“Taking the whole examination in comparison with the
average of students even of the metropolitan Presbytery,
Mr Anderson was not so lame as his respected co-presbyter
would represent him to be. He was as well qualified as
many whom he had seen passed by the different Presby-
teries, and he thought his answers in divinity were very
good.” Nobody contradicted the reverend gentleman, and
we may assume, therefore, that what he said was true.
Of course, it will be understood that we make no attack,
204 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
properly so called, on Mr Anderson. His character is
spoken of in the highest manner; and time will doubtless
ripen his intellect and increase his knowledge. All we
say is, that though he ought to have every justice, and not
to be tried by a sterner standard than his peers, and
though the Assembly's Committee will doubtless give him
perfectly fair play, yet that the general standard ought to
be everywhere higher. We know that this is the opinion
of the best men within the Church, and of her best friends
without it ; and to shirk such questions is a mere ostrich-
policy, which would be equally contemptible in a Conser-
vative journal, for its cowardice and its stupidity.
—$—
THE TWO EDINBURGH PROFESSORS.
The courteous Oxford, kind to our renown,
Assumes two Greek Professors in our town.”
The Chair divided all may find who seek,
One man’s Professor, t'other knows the Greek.
A RADICAL MYSTERY EXPLAIN.E.D.
Can you tell why it is, that in country or city,
The Rads never puff the productions of Whitty!f
He's so sharp, shrewd, and honest, the pitiful elves
Think he cannot be possibly one of themselves.
* By sending to our great scholar Mr Weitch, the Clarendon Press
proofs of his “Greek Verbs,” addressed “Professor” Weitch.
+ The late Edward Michael Whitty, the most brilliant democratic
writer of his time.
THE SCOT ABROAD. 205
THE SCOT ABR0 AD."
(Edinburgh Cowrant, October 1864).
THIS very readable and instructive book is welcome, not
only for its own sake, but because it contains at once a
pledge and a proof that Mr Hill Burton means to write
the History of Scotland in a complete and continuous
narrative. Mr Burton has not only been long occupied
with such inquiries, and in familiar communication with
other students of similar tastes, but his literary talents are
of proved excellence in this particular department. He is
sagacious, clear-headed, and critical; but there is also a
certain humanity, a certain appreciation of the humourous
and genial elements of life and character, about him, with-
out which historical writing must always be a dry and
bloodless affair. His “Scot Abroad” is made particularly
pleasant reading by this combination. He deals with a
great variety of persons and incidents, and he never deals
with them—like so many merely shrewd and critical writers
—from the outside alone. He feels with the man ; he
places himself in the situation; and this, too (what we
especially like about him), in a quiet, undemonstrative, and
easy-going way. His admiration is expressed by a smile
and not by an outburst ; his humour by a chuckle rather
than a guffaw. His style is not perfectly equal throughout.
Sometimes he writes with a looseness of phrase below his
talent and his subject. For instance, we cannot approve
* The Scot Abroad. By John Hill Burton.
206 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
such a sentence as the following:—“Fortune favoured
them (the Guises) mightily at one stroke, when Mont-
gomery poked out the eye of Henry II. in the tiltyard ”
(vol. i., p. 171). But, on the whole, it is a good style, clear,
flowing, and effective in more than one kind of expression ;
and enlivened by a dash of occasional—not too frequent—
quaintness, in keeping with the writer's love of the odder
and more piquant incidents of history. Perhaps it is at its
best, on the serious side, in the passage which we sub-
join as our first extract :—
TEIE SCOTTISH CEHARACTER.
“It is fortunate, after all, that those who like to see a little
of the good that is in the world can pass over that fermentation
of the evil passions and selfish propensities, and look back upon
the long, stern, honest struggle for independence, which was
the real operative cause of the desired result. Had it been
otherwise, Scotland may read the fate she would have had
in Ireland. The Scots repaid the oppressors in the bloody re-
taliation of the three hundred years' War—the Irish are still
taking it out. A sort of general balance of victories and defeats
—of injuries and retaliations—put the two enemies in a position
for bargaining, which they did with surly suspicion at first,
with cordiality when they came better to know each other as
friends. Their amity was recorded in a State paper such as no
other part of the world can show—a fusion, by mutual consent,
between two nations, the one six or eight times as powerful and
populous as the other, with no other inequality save the placing
of the centre of government in that spot within the larger of
the two to which it would naturally have gravitated.
There are some less reasonable ethnological theories afloat
in the world than that we may to Some extent attribute to this
long struggle the national characteristics which make the Scots
appear a dry, hard, stern, unamiable, practical people, with
THE SCOT ABROAD. 207
little capacity for cheerful enjoyments or susceptibility to the
lighter and more transient excitements. Perhaps the original
nature of the people and the work they had to do may have
reacted on each other, leaving these characteristics deepened
and hardened in the end. That the people had a nature sus-
ceptible to the deeper enthusiasm, the character of the struggle
itself sufficiently tells. And in the tragedies and bereavements
that it caused, the devotion it demanded, and the deep love for
home and country to which it testified, we may, perhaps, attri-
bute a certain sweetness and plaintive tenderness in the lyrical
literature of the country, a vein of gentleness and beauty run-
ning through her rugged nature, like the lovely agates which
nestle in the hollows of the black trap rocks, or the purple
amethysts that sparkle in her granite corries.”
The “Scot Abroad” is, in fact, an illustration of one
particular phase of the national character and history. We
have the Ancient League with France discussed, because
to it was due the Scottish immigration into that country;
while a description of the separate types of Scots roving
adventurers naturally follows it, because France was the
first loadstone which drew them to the Continent. Mr
Burton, passing lightly over the early or fabulous stories
about the League, holds that it first derived “efficient pur-
pose” from the War of Independence against England, and
from the claims of the English Kings to the French Crown.
He is patriotic in the only sensible way,+not attaching
too much importance to the separate existence and claims
of what we now call Scotland, in the prae-Brucian period,
—not stigmatising as villains all landholders on the north
side of the Tweed who did not regard Edward and England
with abhorrence from the beginning, but still rejoicing
that events enabled the northern part of the British island
208 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
to develop an independent life of its own, and enjoy the
dignity of a separate nation. Laying down as a basis that
our great struggle was against the English Normans,—
(though hardly, we think, expressing sufficient gratitude to
those Norman colonists among ourselves who supplied so
much of the leadership of our resistance), he devotes his
first volume to an exposition of the natural alliance with
England's chief enemy which followed the successful asser-
tion of our autonomy. He traces it, and its consequences,
in the politics, the domestic civilisation, the Protestantism,
and the universities of Scotland. And he seems to us to
deal with these great subjects in a spirit of more than
common equity and moderation,-in a spirit (for example)
much better than that of the remarkable but disagreeable
work of the late Mr Buckle. He hates bigotry, but he can
see the good side of a bigot. His cordial appreciation of
Knox is particularly estimable; and generally he is free
from that sectarian bitterness which divides Scotsmen
about the history of their beautiful little kingdom in a way
in which Englishmen have ceased to be affected by theirs.
But if the first volume is the more instructive of the two,
the second is the more amusing. It is less political and
more literary, less novel in some points of view, but more
biographical and anecdotic. Portraits are given of all the
different types of men who made the name of Scot famous
in Europe, the Scholar, the Soldier, the Statesman, the
Artist. We particularly like the chapter on our Old
Scholars, a subject which we have never before seen
handled with so much liveliness. Mr Burton is fully alive
to the transcendent merit of Buchanan, of whom and his
European reputation we may say,+borrowing an epigram
TBE SCOT ABROAD. 209
from Arthur Johnston, that Scotland had many Swans
but only one Phoenix :—
“Mille tulit, fateor, sub iniquo sidere cygnos;
Unum Phoenicem Scotica terra dedit.”
He was, in truth, the founder of our literary reputation in
Europe. In the days of Erasmus we had none, as is curi-
ously shown in the “Ciceronianus,” an admirable dialogue
written to ridicule the Italian scholars who would admit
no merit in any but a Ciceronian style of Latinity. All
the Latin writers of Europe are there passed in review
according to their nations, till Erasmus, wishing to have a
hit at his own countrymen, makes Bulephorus say, “Shall
we sail to Holland then º’ “To Scotland, first,” says
Nosoponus, derisively. “I would not object,” is the
answer, “if I knew anybody there that you would tolerate,
—(Won gravarer, si quem illic mossem quem te latwrum.
existimem)”—and he goes on to express his preference for
Denmark, the country of Saxo Grammaticus. In this part
of his work, Mr Burton has some shrewd remarks on
TELE USE OF LATIN BY THE OLD SCOTTISEI WRITERS.
“A free access to this great medium for the exchange of
thought was indeed one of the compensating benefits which the
Scots derived from the contest with England. The exclusion
of the Scots scholars from English ground only prompted their
aspiring spirits to seek a wider arena of distinction, and they
found it in securing to themselves as an audience the learned
men of all the world. When there arose two distinct languages,
an English and a Scottish, the latter afforded a far too limited
intellectual dominion to satisfy the ambition of Scottish men
of letters. Hence they had recourse to Latin; and Buchanan,
as the first among them in the use of this language, was at the
O
210 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
same time the first of Latin marrators throughout the world
since the days of Tacitus. It is not correct to speak of the
Latin as a dead language among Scots scholars. They did not,
perhaps, treat it with the strict accuracy which English scholar-
ship had attained; that would, indeed, have been to treat it as
a dead language, which cannot move. Buchanan, Bellenden,
and Johnston had their provincialisms and peculiarities, as I.ivy
the Paduan, and Sallust the Sabine had ; and in the same
manner they could afford to have them, since, instead of adjust-
ing their sentences to the precedents laid down for them by the
sentences of other authors not like minded with themselves, or
living under the same mental conditions, they drew, in their
own way, on the resources of the language used by them,
adapted it to the purposes of a new order of society, and made
it the vehicle of original and striking thoughts.”
We must not, however, overrate Buchanan's want of
nicety in the composition of verse. Tate in his “Horatius
Restitutus” gives some instances of it, but remarks that
such also occur in the lyrics of Casimir Serbievius, the
famous Polish Jesuit, and even in those of the greatest
modern Latinists of later times. We have been a good
deal puzzled by a note of Mr Burton's containing the
following
ANECDOTE OF PORSON.
“I remember Professor Pillans telling how he had once
spoken to Porson about Buchanan, and found, much to his sur-
prise and a little to his indignation, that the arch-critic had
never heard of such a name in letters. It would not do, how-
ever, to take credit for ignorance about one whose works came
through the classic presses of Stephens and Weisten, and whose
text was sifted and purified of casual inaccuracies by the skilled
eye of Burmann, not to speak of the like homage paid to him
by Ruddiman, a mere Scotsman. So Porson condescended to
THE SQOT ABROAD. 21 |
take a glance. It was very brief. His instincts at once led him
to the unpardonable crime, and roaring out, ‘Ugh—a false
quantity l’ he flung the little Wetsten from him as if it had
stung him. It is said that Lord North, Sound asleep during
one of Burke's philippics on him, started awake when the
orator used a false quantity in the word vectigal.”
We cannot believe that Porson had never heard of
Buchanan, and suspect that Pillans either misunderstood
him, or was afterwards misunderstood himself. It is true
that we are unable to point to any mention of Buchanan
by Porson, though his “Tracts” by Kidd is now before us.
But he was familiar with his contemporary Muretus ; and
we must remember that Buchanan translated the Medea
and Alcestis of Euripides—the latter of which versions is
referred to by Porson's disciple Monk, in his edition of
that play, and must have been known to the still greater
critic. A propos of anecdotes, we subjoin another, the sub-
ject of which is the famous --
Marshal stair.
“There are two common anecdotes bringing out this charac-
teristic—one represents Louis XIV. testing his breeding by
offering him the pas in entering the royal carriage. Stair made
his bow and stepped in. “A vulgar man,’ said Louis, “would
have teased me with hesitations and excuses.’ The other rests
on his remarkable resemblance to the Regent Orleans, who,
desiring to turn a scandalous insinuation or jest on it, asked
the Ambassador if his mother had ever been in Paris? The
answer was, ‘No, but my father was l’ There is perhaps no
other retort on record so effective and so beautifully simple. If
the question meant anything, that meaning was avenged; if it
meant nothing, there was nothing in the answer.”
Mr Burton is too patriotic to add that this incomparable
212 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
retort, if it was ever made by Stair, was not made by him
first. It occurs in Macrobius, as having been made by a
Provincial to the Emperor Augustus, who had put the
same questionable question.
We conclude with a curious account of a “rise” taken
by one of our local guides out of a
FRENCH LITERARY TOURIST.
“But M. Dargaud met with wonders in Edinburgh denied to
the eyes and ears of the common herd even of tourists. He
gives a succinct account of the manner in which Darnley was
put to death before the house of the Kirk-o'-Field was blown
up to conceal the deed. This account is carefully culled from
the traditions which he collected ‘au pied de l'église expiatoire
bâtie sur ce funébre lieu.' This statement suggests uneasy sus-
picions as to the stories that may be palmed off by guides upon
confiding tourists. Monstrous falsehoods are told by the whole
class; and it is a signal exemplification of their resolution
utterly to abandon their sense and discretion along with their
work, that holiday tourists should take instructions in the most
abstruse portions of archaeology from the most ignorant of the
human race. The ‘rises’ which this class of public instructors
take out of their victims are in the general case extravagant
enough. Yet the guide who so far fathomed the French histo-
rian's appetite and discretion as to show him the expiatory
church on the scene of the death of Darnley, must have been
an honour to his profession.”
The reader has now sufficiently seen what a mine of
agreeable reading the “Scot Abroad” is; and will probably
be of our opinion, that if Mr Burton had never written
anything else it would have given him a distinguished
place among the men of letters of this country.
EPIGRAMS. 213
PRIAPUS HIGG LITERATULUS LOQUITUR.
“The Age is false; with cant all things are rife;
Kings, nobles, priests, are bad; oh, weary life!
I must console me with my neighbour's wife l’’
DAME ID A PFEIFFER.
Through regions by wild men and cannibals haunted,
Old Dame Ida Pfeiffer goes lone and undaunted;
But, bless you, the risk’s not so great as it’s reckon'd,
She’s too plain for the first, and too tough for the second.
BLOGG ON THE CLASSICS.
“I’ll put down Latin,” Blogg says, “for I hate it:”
Blogg can't destroy, more than he can translate it.
“When Latin’s settled, I will put down Greek, too.”
Does he know Homer'—Yes, but not to speak to.
A RADICAL REFORMER.
Tomkins will clear the land, they say,
From every foul abuse:
So chimneys in the olden day,
Were cleansed by a goose.
214 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
L 0 R D A M B E R L E Y.
(Edinburgh Cowrant, February 1865). -
WHEN a new ship is launched, a time-honoured custom
requires that a bottle of wine should be broken against
her bows. The launch of Wiscount Amberley into public
life has not been neglected by the Scotsman, but unluckily
our contemporary has nothing better to celebrate it with
than a bottle of small beer. “A speech by Lord Amber-
ley, son of Earl Russell,” the Scotsman says, “if it cannot
be said to have given resuscitation to the question of
reform, has given importance to a reform meeting at
Leeds, and begun a career to the speaker.” This is kind,
but it is not English. A man may begin his career by
making a speech ; but to talk of his speech as having
begun a career to him, is an oddity inexcusable in the
most humble stages of a Scotch journalist's life. We
fancy that in cases of this kind the errand-boys in training
are put on to practise political criticism, while lads a little
older are being taught on another part of the premises to
garble a Conservative statesman's address. There is a fine
bond uniting these geniuses, who are only in different
phases of their development; and their common jealousy
of the stranger prevents their proprietor from sending to
the Reform Club for educated contributors.
This kind of thing—habitual, here—looks particularly
bad on occasions of real interest. To a Whig who can
write, or has read anything, the entry of a new Russell
s". ~~~ & 64-val &c., -e.ac. * * /…/~e. cy. ~/..nºaº. c-CºA-
LORD AMBERLEY. *. 215
into public life must always be an important event.
The family has even a European reputation for its attach-
ment to the popular side of politics. Niebuhr him-
self somewhere brings it in to illustrate the importance of
hereditary opinions in the great houses of free States, a
subject naturally forced on a historian of Rome, if only by
several curious passages in Livy. Of course, there is a
great deal of vulgar delusion on the point. Some people
suppose that the Russells have figured as “friends of the
people” from the Conquest downwards, and that they had
a main hand in getting up Magna Charta, of which Earl
Russell is always talking. But in those ages England
never heard of them. The name does not occur in Domes-
day, except among the sub-tenants; and they were only
decent Dorsetshire squires when they had the luck to
attract the attention of Henry the Eighth. In fact, they
rose as tools of despotism ; they did nothing for the cause
of freedom during the Civil War; and the man who be-
came famous by losing his head in Charles the Second’s
reign (his head would never have made him famous in any
other way) was the proved associate of men in the pay of
the French Court. The Liberalism of the Russells is after
all only a modern affair, and has never been rendered
illustrious by a great action or a great speech ; but the
wealth and prominence of the House have advertised it to all
ends of the earth, and certainly only such men of the party
as are up to their grammar ought to be employed to sing
its praises. The juvenile Amberley is unfortunately not a
Whig only, but a prig. He is one of those chips of the
old block who are too like the block ; a mere abridgment
of his father; a smaller pedant, a feebler bore. If he was
216 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
a downright dunce he would be more respected ; but he
has just that irritating amount of ability, that degree of
talent, mediocre in relation even to the mediocrity of his
sire, which robs him of pity without bringing him admira-
tion. A premature reviewer, a precocious sage, a lad
logical in knickerbockers, and statistical while still in his
teens,—is one of the curses of our society. He can do
everything a little, and nothing brilliantly; thinks just as
other people do, and says what it is obvious to say ; is
fluent, but a fribble ; tolerable, yet tedious; and has about
as little genius, originality, or daemonic force as a mahogany
table has blossom or sap. The type is a common one just
now, and we shudder when we see it in a lord, because there
is no getting rid of the cleverish lord, who is toadied by
flunkeys, and encouraged in dismal oratory by reporting.
A young Whigling of rank breaking the shell is a melan-
choly spectacle, because these kind of poultry are attended
by the same superstitious reverence which induced the
ancients to take omens from the feeding of sacred chickens.
A thousand journals will discuss this Lord Amberley's
cackle, and his way of treating the public grain of political
questions.
In the speech at Leeds which has suggested these obser-
vations, Lord Amberley began by something like a direct
advocacy of mere agitation. “If the people really do not
desire the possession of the franchise, I would teach them
to desire it.” Why? The franchise was made for man,
and not man for the franchise; and if all the essentials of
good government are secured under a limited system of
representation, why extend it ! Then, he came to what he
evidently thought a most knowing hit, which would take
LORD AMBERLEY. 217
the enemy's breath away. “There is a circumstance which
is exceedingly surprising, and that is, that those who are
so constantly talking of the popular apathy about reform,
say also that these listless people who have not the slight-
est desire for the possession of votes would, if once en-
franchised, be converted into a frantic and unreasonable
mob, who would carry everything before them—who would
be determined to have everything their own way—and
would listen to no voice in the councils of the nation that
was not in harmony with their own. It does seem a little
strange and inconsistent that those who are so indifferent
to the possession of power should yet be so immoderate in
its use.” But the inconsistency is quite imaginary. The
love of power grows with the indulgence of power, to begin
with ; and periods of distress and excitement which now
pass harmlessly because the mob is not the source of poli-
tical power among us, would not necessarily pass harmlessly
under other conditions. Has this young man never heard
of '48 and '49, and of the Chartist Convention, and the
arrests and trials and punishments, in which his own
father took such a part And does he suppose that a
Parliament in which a Chartist majority was possible would
have shown “no particular tendency either to abolish the
House of Lords, overthrow the Church, or seize the pro-
perty of the rich and divide it among the poor.” The poor
Whigling forgets, in the feeble impudence of his attack on
men like Lyndhurst, that the present House of Commons
is not the creation of the Reform Bill only, but of the
resistance to the Reform Bill,—that it is what it is,
because it was not reformed too much. Lord Amberley,
so far from giving due weight to this side of things, took
2 || 8 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
occasion to pledge himself to Mr Gladstone's theory, by
which the burden of showing why anybody whatever is
kept out of the suffrage is thrown on the world at large.
He them went on to sneer at the House of Lords, which,
considering that his connection with that body was the
only reason in life why anybody was listening to him at
that moment, must decidedly be pronounced ungrateful.
And the whole tirade was unrelieved by a single graceful
or brilliant expression,--by a single novel thought or feli-
citous illustration. The very glibness of the flow of the
speech was a part of the mediocrity of the speaker.
A young man of undeveloped powers would have had less
command of the commonplaces of oratory; but Lord
Amberley's stream ran easily, precisely because its volume
was small. The Radicalism of Lord Amberley will be
mischievous in a kind of way which he does not intend;
its weakness will lessen the public respect for an order to
which his mere criticism could do no harm. He has made
a wretched start in life; and the less attention the Whigs
draw to it, the better for them and for him.
THEOLOGUS INDOCTUS “LIBERALEM” SE
JACTANS.
Quoth Principal Jubbles, that “Liberal” card,
Let us widen our doctrine, old Calvin was hard.
Ah, ha! cries a student, that’s just why you hate him,
You find him too hard when you’ve got to translate him.
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF LEIGH HUNT. 219
f
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF LEIGH HUNT.”
( Edinburgh Cowrant, May 1862).
It has been disputed by moralists whether it is an advan-
tage to a man to attain old age, but whatever the true
opinion may be, nobody can doubt that Leigh Hunt was
fortunate in the privilege of reaching length of years. He
outlived his early faults. He developed successfully all
the nobler parts of his nature. He triumphed over mis-
fortune. And not only did he keep his fame alive to the
last, which, as Dr Johnson once said, is no inconsiderable
Success, but he enjoyed in advanced life an Indian summer
of fame, not less brilliant and far more soft and agreeable
than that of his youth. His was altogether a pleasant old
age, a ſucunda Senectus such as the ancients loved to
look forward to ; and one felt inclined, watching the
unabated vivacity of the old poet, to address him in the
words of Anacreon to the grasshopper,
“rd 3: yºga's oil as reigs,
goſpá, yayêvãs, pſa wave,
* * *
~ $" a, ºf ??
ožºv s? 080ig Galoios.
Old age certainly failed to wear him out in spirit, and he
remained intelligent, cheerful, and song-loving, to the last.
His place in English literature is not difficult to define,
and it is a very honourable one. He was, take him all in
all, the finest belles-lettrist of his day. Isaac Disraeli, the
* The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt. Edited by his Eldest Son.
220 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS,
only contemporary belles-lettres man worthy of being put
in comparison with Leigh Hunt, was assuredly a man of
genius; and he was more learned than Leigh. But though
Disraeli has sometimes exquisite felicities of criticism and
expression, his inferiority in poetic genius places him
altogether on a lower level. We cannot say, of course,
that Leigh Hunt was a great poet. But, then, his poetry
was of a fine and delicate quality, and it permeated all
that he did, his criticism, his humour, his gossip, giving
these a certain grace and airiness not to be obtained
through any meaner gift. His natural branch of literature
was that of ornament, and he was guided in producing it,
equally by fresh vivid feeling and a cultivated taste. So
that, though he could not claim to rank either with the
chief poets or prose writers of the age, his influence in
promoting the amenities, the higher amusements, of letters,
was substantially exerted in their cause, and in the same
intellectual region. He did much good by helping to
make the great men of his generation known to many who
would not otherwise have appreciated them so soon; and
by reviving a love of the older writers whom the eighteenth
century had allowed to fall into oblivion. To use a
homely image, he was an admirable taster. He had a
critical palate as quick and as nice as that required in the
tea trade or the wine trade. And, taking an almost
sensual pleasure in the enjoyable parts of books, he was
led, when young, into the riotous extravagance of a literary
voluptuary. Hence the over-indulgence of a love of Sweet
sights, and sounds, and fancies, which gives a nauseating
effect to his earlier writings, and which had an undoubtedly
bad influence on his friend Keats. This Sybaritism it
TÉIE CORRESPONDENCE OF LEIGH HUNT. 221
was, and its corresponding affectations and conceits, which
disgusted Lockhart with Hunt, and made our fine trenchant
countryman, whose lucid penetrating intellect has never
been sufficiently admired amongst us, look on him with
contempt. We are not going into the old question of
Hunt’s quarrel with the Scottish Tories, in those early
days. It was afterwards made up, and the worst features
of it regretted, on both sides. But we are sure that Hunt
in his first stage must have been inevitably repulsive, by
his conceit and agressiveness, to men of a different political
and literary school. We find in these volumes (vol. i. p.
104) Keats writing to him, “The last Ealaminer was a
battering ram against Christianity, blasphemy, Tertullian,
Erasmus, Sir Philip Sydney, etc.” Not having the British
Museum at hand, we cannot refer to the Easaminer of May
1817; but in spite of the jocosity of the letter, it is plain
that Hunt was indulging in a friskiness of satire which
his opponents could not be expected to like so much as his
friends. Yet the attacks on him in Blackwood are some-
times called merely wanton and undeserved, as if a gentle-
man who serves at “a battering-ram” must not take the
risk of arrows, stones, boiling-lead, and what not, from the
defenders on the Castle walls
This Correspondence is properly a companion to Leigh
Hunt's “Autobiography,” one of the most charming and
instructive of all his works. We can follow him by the
help of both books through his whole life, and see the his-
tory of his mind, from the turbid fervour of his boyhood
to the calm, cheerful, enlightenment of his old age. The
general facts of his career are too well known to need
more than the barest recapitulation. He was the son
222 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
of a clergyman of a respectable Barbadian family; and
was in his sixteenth or seventeenth year when the present
century opened. He was educated at Christ Hospital;
started the Ea:aminer newspaper, where he wrote an article
on George the Fourth, for which he was imprisoned ; went
to Italy just at the time his friend Shelley was drowned,
and lived there three years—part of the time with Lord
Byron ; returned to London, and had heavy struggles as a
man of letters, at a period when he might have been
expected to have made a solidly successful position ; was
pensioned, and passed his remaining years in comfort and
in intellectual activity up to the last. The Correspondence
presents a tolerably full picture of him through all this
experience. A good deal of it is not very important
perhaps, but it is all very readable ; and the book is
equally interesting as a storehouse of amusing matter, and
a contribution to the social and literary history of the first
half of the century. Hunt's letters are all very charac-
teristic. They are not to be put in comparison with those
of Gray or Cowper, who belonged, we must remember, to
a letter-writing generation. But they are lively and
graphic, and have the indispensable merit, as letters, of
reflecting the writer's actual mood. One is amused at the
frank raptures of Hunt with the cheapness of fruit in
Italy. “What do you think,” he says, “ of the finest
large grapes, exactly a halfpenny a pound ! What of
eleven of the finest peaches for three halfpence An ab-
solution,” he adds, “is as cheap as apricots” (vol. i., p. 193).
“But,” he afterwards says, “nothing can make up to me
for the want of proper treey trees and grassy walks. I am
often seized with a desire to walk through particular spots
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF LEIGH HUNT. 223
in England; generally a path in a field. Sometimes I long
for the Hendon Road; sometimes to that pretty entrance
to Hampstead for Kentish Town ; often for the Hamp-
stead lanes and the slopes of West End.” While “longing”
thus, Hunt was at Florence, and Italy was the country
whose language and literature he knew better than any
other but the English. The passage shows how large a
place external nature held in his little circle of enjoyments
and supports; but no future Hunt will find this feeling
gratified in the northern outskirts of London, as it used
to be. The mason and bricklayer are frightening away
from their slopes the Dryads and Oreads of that jolly
Cockney paradise where many a man of letters has loitered
happily before dining at the Spaniards or Jack Straw's
Castle.
It was after Leigh Hunt returned from Italy, and when
he was in middle life, that he fell upon the most troublous
period of his career. He had given up a Government
clerkship (which he got, by the way, from a Tory Admin-
istration) to plunge into Liberal journalism early in life.
The Examiner had succeeded, and even his imprisonment,
the worst part of which was its expensiveness, had its good
side, by the political dignity and repute it gave him, and
by making him more widely known. But Shelley's death,
and Byron's early disgust with the Liberal, made the
Italian expedition a failure. The Examiner became the
subject of a dispute between his brother and himself, and
finally passed out of his hands. With a large family,
some of them sore trials to him, Leigh Hunt found him-
self obliged to begin the world again, and went through
miseries, a clear, though brief, indication of which his son
224 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
here gives us. In order to understand the liability of a
man so well known as Hunt to these, we must remember,
what has been said before, that he was a pure belles-lettrist.
He did not belong to that class engaged in the business-
like branches of literature, whose work, being a necessary
article of consumption, secures for them the steady pros-
perity of a butcher or baker. Much less was he one of
those “middle-men º’ of the profession, who farm out work
from the booksellers, and (so to speak) Sublet it, putting
their name to publications for which they have done only
what corresponds with the labours of the factory overseer,
or the nautical supercargo. He was purely an artist,
appealing mainly to the cultivated, opulent, and fastidious
class. In his little shop, you could not buy tripe or
sausages, but pastoral milk, dainty macaroons, honey like
that of Hymettus, or of Borgue in Galloway. His wares
were of a simple and rural kind,-
“Sunt nobis mitia poma
Castaneae molles, et pressi copia lactis.”
Now, these are not the moneymaking kind of trades,
especially under the charge of men with little head for
figures and details. Just at that time, too, we are speak-
ing of the time from '30-2, onwards,-utilitarianism was
very powerful; politics ran high; and “Liberalism” was
so successful that individual Liberals even of mark were
ungratefully kicked aside. We all know from Moore's
Diary and Sydney Smith's Memoirs, how much professed
Whig partisans took to grumbling during the years of
which we speak. But Leigh Hunt was a Liberal, a man
who remembered when the Whigs themselves were throw-
ing cold water on Reform; and, as one of the real men of
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF LEIGH HUNT. 225
the movement, he, of course, had less chance of recognition
than the professed henchmen who helped a faction to ride
on the back of the movement into power. Tom Moore
had assiduously fiddled while King Whig was mounting
the Many-headed Beast to charge Downing Street; and
yet Tom esteemed himself as ill used, as he used to be
when Lady Holland was sulky, and did not even ask him
to sit down to breakfast, perhaps thinking that it was
cheaper to have a lap-dog:-
‘‘Constat leviori bellua sumtu
. Nimirum, et capiunt plus intestina poetae.””
Leigh Hunt, then, who was no parasite, was but little
likely to have anything done for him; and long years
passed before the Whigs got him a pension. During these
years, he received noble kindness from the late Duke of
Devonshire, a large-hearted patrician, not unmindful how
his Cavendish ancestors had befriended Hobbes. Among
men of letters who stuck by him, was our own illustrious
Carlyle, for a considerable time his near neighbour, among
the red-brick terraces and quiet trees of Chelsea, kept
alive by the river which there still suggests something of
the freshness of the country; and the warm-hearted Laman
Blanchard, over whose memory a halo of love brighter even
than his crown of wit still hangs. Macaulay, too, behaved
well to Leigh Hunt, and figures several times to advantage
in this Correspondence, excepting in one laughable para-
graph, where he describes Carlyle (a writer superior to
himself not merely in size but in species) as “a man of
talents,” “absurdly overpraised ſ” He introduced Hunt
to the Edinburgh Review, in which Leigh's best paper, we
* Juv., sat, vii., pp. 77, 8.
P
226 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
think, was that on Pepys. Here is a short letter from
Macaulay, very like a bit of one of his articles, though
more colloquial than he ever condescended to be in print:-
SPENSER.
“I do not know that we differ in judgment about Spenser.
But there is a liking which does not depend on the judgment.
I see Rousseau's genius as clearly as any of his admirers. But
he does not attract me. I read “Gil Blas’ once a year; and I
do not care if I never see Rousseau's novel again. It is the
same with painting. I know that the “Raising of Lazarus,’ in
the National Gallery, is a great work; and I partly feel its
merit. But I look at it with little or no pleasure, and should
be very little concerned if I heard that it was burned. On the
other hand, there are pictures of much less fame and power
which, if I could afford it, I would hang over my fireplace, and
look at half an hour every day. So with female beauty. If a
man were to say that Mrs Siddons was not a fine woman, we
should think that he must have no eyes. But a man might
well say that, though a fine woman, she did not attract him,
that she did not hit his taste, and that he liked Miss Foote's or
Miss O'Neil's looks better. Just so I say about Spenser. To
deny him the rank of a great poet would be to show utter
ignorance of all that belongs to the art. But his excellence is
not the sort of excellence in which I take especial delight.”
This is characteristic, and deserves the attention of those
who would understand Macaulay's genius. What he
missed in the “Fairy Queen,” and the “Nouvelle Heloise,”
was no doubt the human element, the dramatic reality,
which he found, though allied with a meaner kind of
power, in the justly popular novel of Le Sage; and his
sympathy with which naturally accompanied his own gift
for investing with a novel-like interest a narrative of
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF LEIGH EIUNT. 227
events. Having quoted one of the comparatively few
letters to Leigh Hunt from eminent men in these volumes,
let us add another from “Father Prout,” the wittiest of
scholars and the most scholarly of wits, referring to a
well-known French poem, which both correspondents had
translated:—
FATHER PROUT TO LEIGEI HUNT.
“From the Rev. Francis S. Mahony.
“16 Great Marlboro’ Street, 20th May, 1847.
“My DEAR MR HUNT,-The other day (this day month) I
spent some hours with Kirkup in Firenze, and talked much of
you and other pleasant subjects connected with the old Shelley
period of literature and philosophy, winding up with a flask of
Montepulciano, concerning which I need say nothing to the
happy translator of Redi's dithyrambic, which you have truly
rendered a “Redi made easy' for all Cockneydom.
“I should not have bothered you about your old friend or
about myself, knowing your time to be of such value; but on
looking into two volumes freshly issued by you—and I never
miss anything from that quarter—my vanity was fairly knocked
on the head by an assertion which precedes your prose version
of ‘Vert-Vert.’ You ‘never heard or read' of a version in
metre published in Fraser a dozen years ago, when that (barrel)
organ was in full tune under Maginn's inspiration. I send you
the version, which, singularly enough, anticipates your own
idea of dividing the story into distinct parts with distinct titles.
You will say, if you read it, that it is rather impudent to call it
a translation, but I have certain theories which I am prepared
to defend on that topic; and I will ever maintain that the
French phrase, sacréblew 1 for instance, is not correctly trans-
lated by writing the English words—‘accursed blue;’ the true
version must necessarily be “Damn your eyes!’ You have in
this nutshell the whole theory in question,
228 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
“An edition of a thousand copies of the book Isend you has
been long ago absorbed into the libraries of England and Ire-
land; but as Tom Moore, who figures also in the volume, has
actually printed, in his last issue of the ‘Melodies,’ that he never
heard of any Latin or French translations of any songs of his,
Save some very poor attempts which he enumerates, omitting
(as the Athenaeum remarked on the subject) the part of Hamlet
in that respect, you have a great precedent for ignoring the
existence of my ‘Vert-Vert' without having the same paltry
motive, which I fear induced Tom to print what he knew to be
a positive lie, for he both heard and sorely complained of the
thing.
“I make no apology for writing to you freely, as I know
how you scorn humbug; and I hold valued recollections of a
day's converse with you some years ago in some shady part of
Chelsea, where I had the pleasure of paying you my sincere
respects.-I am, dear Mr Hunt, your admirer,
“FRANK MAHONY.”
It will be seen that “Tom Moore ” again comes out in
a shabby character, here; just as in another place we find
him persisting in reprinting a squib on Hunt’s “Byron
and his Contemporaries,” long after Leigh had apologised
for that book and remodelled his view of all the events
mentioned in it. Leigh Hunt was most honourably
active in repairing the errors of his early days; and
was kindly and charitable in every line he wrote. But
whether his volunteer Birthday Odes to the Queen, or
the fact that the Whigs had done him, though tardily,
justice, or his obligations to the Duke of Devonshire,
whether some or all of these things annoyed his brother
“Liberals,”—we don’t know. Certain it is, that for some
time, even in his old age, he suffered injustice at their
SPECIMIENS OF A NEW DIBDIN. 229
hands. Mr Dickens caricatured him as Harold Skimpole,
in “Bleak House.” The Athenaeum gave him several sly
stabs. Yet, having lived down so much, he also lived
down these things, and died at peace with all the world,
in what was an euthanasia for a man of his long warfare
with the cares of life. A true lover of letters and of
mankind,-friendly, genial, and essentially honourable in
nature, Leigh Hunt has left a good and pleasant memory
behind him; and his books will long be remembered among
the gayest and gracefullest contributions to the Belles
Lettres of England. -
—Q–
SPECIMENS OF A NEW DIBDIN.
(Punch, 1851).
NOTHING LIKE HOCK.
A PLAGUE of those musty old lubbers
Who said that a Mid. must not think ;
That a gun-room was no place for “rubbers,’
And “grog” was the right thing to drink
Johannisberg I could they have twigg'd it,
How their vulgar ideas 'twould mock
And, spite of their rules,
The old fools
Would surely, one fancies, have swigg'd it,
And sworn their was nothing like Hock
}
CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
My father, when I gave a guinea
For a bouquet for Eleanor B 2
Said, “Jack, never be such a ninny;
You'll ruin your mother and me.”
I pass'd round the Sunny Rudesheimer,
And bow’d to that worthy old cock:
He was sulky—and mother,
And sister, and brother.
I humm'd from an opera rhymer,
And swore there was nothing like Hock
T’ other day, as my uncle was preaching,
From the family pew out Islunk—
The Dean is a good hand at teaching;
But the previous night I’d been drunk;
So I bolted for soda ; outpour'd it
With some wine for the foundation rock.
It was grand it was glorious !
- Fresh, foaming, victorious !
And I worship'd the Rhine as I floor'd it,
And swore there was nothing like Hock
Then trust me, if you must be drinking,
Let the grape line the way to the grave;
Rum-and-water—at least to my thinking—
Is coarse as the salt of the wave :
As for me, wine's my one only tipple—
I am just going off to the dock—
Seedy, well, late or early,
To set you up, fairly—
SPECIMIENS OF A NEW DIBDIN. 231
At sea with a bore,
Or at leisure on shore,
'Pon my honour, there’s nothing like Hock
ºmsºmºsº
THE PRIDE OF THE OUEAN.
SEE the shore lined with Cockneys—the tide comes in fast;
The nautical Tomkins cries, “Sharp there ! avast !”
The blocks and the wedges the mallets obey,
(As the dockyards what similar blocks in town say).
Miss Higsby, the figure-head makes at the sign,
Like her pa’s, have its features all redden’d with wine !
And built at a cost that all Manchester shocks,
The Pride of the Ocean is launched from the stocks.
Soon the pennant is flying ; the vessel they rig
For a very old sailor of family Whig ;
And now round to Portsmouth she goes to be stored,
And has six months to wait to get seamen on board.
She’s wanted at home ; so, to Malta she hies,
And, Snug at a buoy, off Valetta she lies;
Then cruises a little, when—how the folks stare l—
The Pride of the Ocean’s in want of repair
Our prize is sent home then ; with ardour they burn ;
They patch up the bows, and they alter the stern;
Try a fresh batch of masts; and—this seems an odd do!—
This extravagant vessel they fit with a Screw
Still, still she won’t sail; the “Returns” prove her crimes;
And the gallant Sir Charley writes off to the Times.
232. CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
So now, as she’ll never defend the old cause
Of our nation, our freedom, religion, or laws,
Her timbers are crazy, and open her seams,
Sir Booby, her builder, awakes from his dreams.
“Ah ! he sees his mistake;” but the Lords, in a sulk,
The Pride of the Ocean cut down to a hulk.
D R GUTHRIE AS MODERATOR.
(Edinburgh Cowrant, May 1862).
WE are told that when Cicero in the course of his celebrated
speech Pro Murena was delivering the brilliant passages
in which he banters the Stoics, Cato was heard to observe,
“What a facetious Consul we have ſ” If a facetious
Consul be a proper subject for irony, what shall we say to
a Comic Moderator'. This was the character in which Dr
Guthrie made his appearance on Thursday,” having “his
shapely gastrocnemić in full silken relief,” as the Scotsman
(with overwhelming humour) described him. The Doctor
was introduced on the occasion, as “at the head of all
the gifted and popular preachers of our day,” praise half
of which seems unjust to Mr Spurgeon, and the other half
of which we cannot criticise, since Dr Candlish did not say
what he thought the highest kind of gifts for a Christian
divine, in an age of accumulated erudition and widespread
* May 22.
DR GUTHRIE AS MODERATOR. 233
scepticism. His philanthropy was justly extolled, for
nobody will forget his Ragged Schools, even though they
should cease to remind the world of their existence, by
perambulating the streets with a drum. Then came
the speech with its predominantly facetious character,
on which we propose to offer some observations. Such
speeches are apt to be altogether mistaken by super-
ficial readers. The carefully-got-up fun, the little bit of
natural description, the profuse professions of charity to-
wards all churches and parties, are only the Doctor's
garnishing. At bottom, he is a very active and very
knowing member of his own denomination, with all its
characteristic prejudices in full force, and the “genial”
element, which ordinary folk think the essence of his mind,
is nothing but its ornamental part. A faithful Establish-
ment man, trusting all that verdant and flowery rhetoric,
would find that, like the beautiful green hanging-papers of
which we heard so much the other day, it had arsenic at
the bottom of its pleasant hue. We don't mean that Dr
Guthrie would do him, individually, any harm ; but that
Dr Guthrie fundamentally does as little justice to political
or ecclesiastical opponents, as the sourest and narrowest
sectary who passes for a bigot. In short, he is a funny
and genial bigot ; and it is mere conventionalism which
makes people fancy that bigotry is necessarily cold, gloomy,
and bitter. Human nature admits of great variety, and
we can easily believe in an Inquisitor who should poke the
heretic he meant to burn playfully in the ribs, or sigh
gracefully as he sent a female martyr to the scaffold.
These days, thanks to philosophy and the ascendancy of
lay power in Europe, are gone by. But fanatical pre-
234 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
judice has still a good deal of power in the world, and
may co-exist with liveliness and minor poetry, as well
as with asceticism and logical rigidity.
Now, just let the reader, with no unkindness indeed,
but by way of a literary study if he likes, look at Dr
Guthrie's Thursday speech in the light of our theory.
The pleasant part of it, the garnishing, is of full average
quality. We have “the oil of peace on the stormy
waters,” the “star” over the “Alps,” and all that kind
of thing. But look into the harangue, pick out the
passages in which the speaker is really talking to the
stronger heads of his audience ; such as the following:—
“The Free Church is nearly a major now—(laughter)—and
ought to be getting into its senses. What is the history of the
last nineteen years? Harmonious settlements, unscattered
flocks, peace, and a good measure of plenty within our borders
—(loud cheers)—mutual regard among the brethren. No ranks
frowning here upon ranks there—(cheers)—no right and left
hand of the Moderator. (Laughter and cheers). These har-
monious settlements, unscattered flocks, some measure of plenty,
and great measure of peace—these spring from liberty of
thought and action—these have characterised the last nineteen
years of our history—(cheers)—and although our revenues have
not been such as to afford such livings to our ministers as we
could have wished, they have been the astonishment of the
world, and put us in circumstances far better than are con-
templated in the blessed saying—‘Better a dinner of herbs,
where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” (Re-
newed cheers).”
Ought the little joke about the Free Church being “a
major” now, ought the scriptural phrase at the end, really
to mislead anybody? The meaning of the passage is
D.R. GUTHRIE AS MODERATOR. 235
simple. It means that the members of the Church of
Scotland hate each other, that they are divided by faction
and jealousy, and that the Free Church, on the contrary,
is a temple of peace and brotherly love. An ordinary
sectary would say so in plain English, and be abused by
both sides as a bigot. Dr Guthrie virtually says it, with
a grin of fun, and a simper of sentiment ; and we are told
that he is such a “genial” man, that his very opponents
ought to love him. Now, this is the kind of humbug
against which we protest. The new Moderator of the Free
Church has a right to believe in the exclusive excellence
of his friends. He has a right to abuse his enemies. But
he has no right to enjoy these privileges, and pass all the
while for a philanthropist superior to the predilections of
party or sect. Besides, it is very unfair to Dr Candlish
That worthy does not pretend to be “genial,” and honestly
passes off his vinegar as vinegar. The result is that he gets
more abuse than his fair share. Dr Guthrie's vinegar, on
the other hand, figures as a nice light acid wine, season-
able drinking in a warm May. We should have greater
tolerance for this error, if we did not observe that Dr
Guthrie carefully cultivates it for his own material advan-
tage. The fact is, that he belongs to a denomination
which necessarily bases itself on illiberality, which is by its
very existence a protest against the prevailing law and con-
stitution of the country, which must therefore be narrow,
Self-sufficient, and tinged with spiritual pride. But, then,
he is a “popular ” preacher; a vague liberalism is in
fashion, and he must be liberal. The result is a clever com-
promise, leading to such curious mixtures of comic geniality
and practical intolerance as we have just seen, and making
236 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
the Doctor the “success” that he is. To our minds,
however, the result has something disagreeable about it.
It is like the apple which Bob Sawyer, when a boy, pre-
sented to the young lady who afterwards married Mr
Winkle, and which she objected to as having been kept
in his breeches-pocket till it was “unpleasantly warm.”
Dr Guthrie's self-conscious geniality has as “unpleasantly
warm " a character, and one as suggestive of the breeches-
pocket, as that celebrated apple.
The Doctor's forte is not reasoning, so he relies on illus-
tration mainly in this speech. Having to touch the Car-
dross Case, he compares the pursuer to Pharaoh in the
Red Sea, thus getting some fun, and raising “cheers and
laughter,” out of the fourteenth chapter of Exodus. After
this pleasantry from the Pentateuch, he proceeds to deal
with the difficulties of presentees in the Establishment,
“not rejoicing ” at them—of course, that is part of the
business—but so describing them, all the same, that his
audience yelled with pleasure. Here, again, a comic illus-
tration supplies the place of learning and argument —
“If the people are dissatisfied, and if they have the pluck to
fight their own battle, through what a frightful ordeal has the
poor presentee to go—(loud laughter and cheers)—and then,
how are the people tempted to manufacture reasons which the
Church Courts must allow to bolster up a good cause with bad
arguments 1 We thought—and the longer we tried our way
and saw the other, we had the more confidence we were right
—that a man in the capacity of a free agent was not bound to
give his reasons, nor a woman neither. (Loud laughter and
cheers). A man is not bound to give reasons why he refuses a
servant. A constituency are not bound to give reasons why
they refuse a candidate for the membership of Parliament.
T)R. GUTHRIE AS MODERATOR. 237
I am not bound as a patient to give reasons why I decline such
and such a physician. A client—may, a criminal—is not
bound to give his reasons why he declines the services of a
particular lawyer; and everybody knows that a lady is not
bound to give her reasons why she declines a suitor—(renewed
laughter and cheers)—even though she might have no better
reason than that, when the gentleman came to pay his addresses,
he took out his spectacles, placed them on his nose, and read a
long lumbering speech.”
A very small logical faculty would have saved Dr
Guthrie from such an exposure as this. In the first place,
we want to know how the “bad arguments” of an opposi-
tion prove that their “cause” is a “good one,” or what is
to prevent a good cause (if they have one) from being
supported by good arguments? In the second place, does
not Dr Guthrie see that his joke about “the lady” is a
mere begging of the question? that a presentee has a
primá facie right at law to his benefice, and that the lady's
suitor has no rights but what she confers upon him " If
this is the strength of argument with which Rome is
assailed, we don’t wonder that she is neither overthrown
nor converted; and that Passaglia disdains to come here to
that contest in the Latin language, to which the Cowrant
is always wanting our champions to challenge him.
Graver reasoning was not perhaps to be expected from
a clerical droll. And, yet, what is the worst part of such
an exhibition ? Simply this, that Dr Guthrie—minor poet
and mild comedian as he is, a man of good philanthropical
activity no doubt, but not a theologian, not a reasoner—is
one of a race apparently destined to have no successors in
their Church He did not glance at this difficulty on
238 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
Thursday, while exulting in the pecuniary prosperity of
the leading men of his body, and mildly hinting at the
penury of its pastoral clergy in the country districts. Yet,
if the Establishment has its internal aches and pains, that
is better, as being compatible with real strength at bottom,
than an intellectual atrophy, a perishing by sheer weak-
ness, such as that with which the Free Church is threatened,
and of which Dr Begg's late proposal to call her shop-boys
into her ministry was a humiliating result. Dr Begg was
at least kind to his Church. He saw her in a state of con-
sumption, and suggested that she should have fresh ass’s
milk. Dr Guthrie gives her only jokes and metaphors,
and tries to entertain her with ridicule of the parent whom
she first deserted, and has ever since abused. His whole
speech on the occasion of taking the Moderator's Chair
was unworthy the occasion,-shallow, flippant, spiteful,
tawdry, and vulgar.
MR BUCKLE ON CIWILISATION IN SCOTLAND.”
(Edinburgh Cowrant, July 1861)
FROM several passages in this volume, it appears that Mr
Buckle has a full sense of its importance, and that he anti-
cipates much excitement and interest as the result of its
publication. We notice this little trait of vanity and
dogmatism, because we believe it explains a great deal of
* The History of Civilisation in England. By Henry Thomas
Buckle. , Volume the Second. London.
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 239
the narrowness of mind which we find in it, and which led
the author a year or two ago to treat Sir John Coleridge
with a rudeness going far to destroy any pretensions that
he may otherwise have had to the character of a gentleman.
We hope the book will be read in Scotland, because intel-
lectual inquiry is a good thing, per se, and stimulates the
general intelligence. But though an essay on our history
from a positivist point of view is a sufficient novelty to
justify some curiosity about it, we warn the public to
expect nothing so wonderful, or original, or important, as
its author seems to think he has produced.
It is necessary, however, to state what Mr Buckle's
“point of view” is, before we remark on the way in which
he has applied his doctrine to Scottish history. Mr Buckle,
then, in tracing the civilisation of any given country, leaves
out as superfluous or exploded all consideration of Provi-
dence, to begin with; he makes no account of race; and he
views religion and civil government as on the whole
rather hindrances than otherwise to the general progress.
This, it will be admitted, clears the ground wonderfully,
and we naturally ask what is to supply the place of these
ancient powers? Nor is Mr Buckle slow to give the
answer. The physical conditions of life—the discoveries
of philosophers—the growth of Science—these forces, acting
under the domination of an irresistible necessity, are the
real civilisers of mankind. Political action proper having
retarded their operations, Mr Buckle is in politics a friend
of democracy, which, by favouring freedom, leaves the
field open for his pet influences. Viewing the king, the
noble, the priest, and the statesman as for the most part
nuisances, Mr B. concentrates his affections on the philo-
240 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
sopher, and on the inductive or Baconian philosopher
above all. History with him, then, is the science of human
development as acted on by the influences above mentioned,
operating in spite of the influences hitherto dealt with by
the mass of historians; and, as the creature of such irre-
sistible laws, man is gradually worked up into a civilised
being out of barbarism. As far as his personality is con-
cerned, meanwhile, homo, according to Mr Buckle, goes
chiefly by his sense of his own personal interest; but
whatever he thinks or fancies on the subject, he is a mere
atom acted on by events, the sequence of which he may
attain to tracing (when he ripens into Buckleism), but the
power of which carries him along, a helpless and irre-
sponsible item in the general mass.
So bold a doctrine as this, having a direct bearing on
everyday questions of politics and religion, and expressed
in a sufficiently readable style, naturally attracts attention.
Nobody but a bigot will grudge Mr Buckle that attention,
however much he may dislike either his doctrine, or his
disagreeable way of putting it. But it would be a great
mistake to suppose that there is anything new in the
scheme. To remove SUPERNATURALISM, and substitute
obsBRVATION (which is, after all, the key to it) is as old as
Epicurus, and has been put by Lucretius into such lan-
guage as Mr Buckle will never command:—
“Nam veluti pueri trepidant, atque omnia caecis
In tenebris metuunt : sic nos in luce timemus
Interdum nihilo quae Sunt metuenda magis.
.# }s * 3& * k
“Hunc igitur terrorem animi, tenebrasque necesse est
Non radii solis, neque lucida tela diei
Discutiant, sed naturae species ratioque.”
MR. BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLANT). 241
However, there is no need to go so far back; for the
half-a-dozen writers on whom this author has formed him-
self are all of quite recent times. The basis of his system
belongs to Comte, whom we observe him (though fond of
quotation) to be shy of mentioning. Next to Comte, his
greatest obligations are to Mill. His politics he has in
common with Godwin and with Tom Paine,—the “Age of
Reason,” by the last of whom, had a greater run in its
day than the “History of Civilisation.” In short, Mr
Buckle's book is not a temple towards which other men
have supplied the stones merely. It is rather a warehouse,
where a certain order prevails, but where the materials
have been supplied in complete readiness by different
manufacturers. At the loftiest estimate, then, Mr Buckle
could not claim a place with Hume or Berkeley, nor above
Mackintosh and Dugald Stewart, allowing (what we do not
allow) that his literary genius is equal to that of the last
two. For he does not create a philosophy out of pre-
vious men's hints, but helps himself to it ready made. Of
course, this leaves him the praise of arrangement, and his
arranging faculty shows a good deal of comprehensiveness.
It leaves him, also, the praise of style. Even in style,
however, he is below the highest standard of philosophical
writing; and does not get beyond that respectable level
of ease, fluency, and agreeable vigour which is now found
in the better class of newspapers.
So much, then, for the general character of Mr Buckle's
views and talent. We have next to show how Scotland
fits into his scheme. Scotland, we regret to say, is a kind
of whipping-boy on this occasion. For Mr Buckle, highly
indignant at the Superstition and priestcraft which afflict
Q
&
242 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
mankind, instead of exposing them in England (the history
of which he is writing), crosses the Border, and uses Scot-
land as his “frightful example.” We think this rather
hard, because, allowing that the Scotch clergy have more
power than the English, the English have quite enough to
illustrate his argument, which is all that the present volume
is intended to do. Indeed, if by “superstition,” “theo-
logy,” etc., our philosopher means Christianity generally
(which we may fairly assume), England is quite as “bad”
at bottom as Scotland, from his point of view. Rain is
prayed for in English churches; damnation is preached
from English pulpits; the “Essays and Reviews” are
made in England the grounds of penal action, and so forth.
The difference between the countries, in matters of this
kind, is simply one of degree; and to rank Scotland with
Spain, as contra-distinguished from England, is an unphilo-
sophical exaggeration. What Mr Buckle was bound to do,
and to do in limine, was to compare the whole existing
civilisation of Scotland with that of England, and then to
show how much of Scotland's inferiority (if she be inferior)
is due to her ecclesiastical and theological peculiarities.
A comparison of this kind would be very curious, and
might be very valuable. But instead of making it, Mr
Buckle—from the one assumption that the clergy have more
power in Scotland—proceeds to treat our whole history as
a kind of qualified misfortune; so that it is hard to tell
whether he admits the country to be civilised or not.
And certain we are of one thing, that nobody can account,
on Mr Buckle's own principles, for Scotland's having
attained the degree of civilisation which belongs to her.
This will appear more clearly in the course of our review,
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 243
and, accordingly, is fatal to the permanent value of the
book, which is vitiated, throughout, by the author’s a
priori intention to look at everything Scottish as spoiled
by the national theology. To do Mr Buckle justice, he is
above mere Cockney prejudices, and seems to have no
national jealousies to affect his opinion of the Scottish
character. That is not his failing; but he is determined
that the country shall fit into his theory, and he lops it
here, and hammers it flat there, so as in the long run to
do us as much injustice as if he were a personal enemy.
The reader will be prepared to understand why Scotland
is matched with Spain, and what Mr Buckle's opinion of
her is, from the following passage —
“While, however, in regard to loyalty, the opposition between
Scotland and Spain is complete, there is, strange to say, the
most striking similarity between those countries in regard to
superstition. Both nations have allowed their clergy to exer-
cise immense sway, and both have submitted their actions, as
well as their consciences, to the authority of the Church. As
a natural consequence, in both countries intolerance has been,
and still is, a crying evil; and in matters of religion, a bigotry
is habitually displayed, discreditable indeed to Spain, but far
more discreditable to Scotland, which has produced many philo-
sophers of the highest eminence, who would willingly have
taught the people better things, but who have vainly attempted
to remove from the national mind that serious blemish which
mars its beauty, and tends to neutralise its many other admir-
able qualities.
“Herein lies the apparent paradox, and the real difficulty of
Scotch history. That knowledge should not have produced the
effects which have elsewhere followed it; that a bold and in-
quisitive literature should be found in a grossly superstitious
244 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
country, without diminishing its superstition; that the people
should constantly withstand their kings, and as constantly
succumb to their clergy; that while they are liberal in politics,
they should be illiberal in religion; and that, as a natural con-
sequence of all this, men who, in the visible and external
department of facts and of practical life, display a shrewdness
and a boldness rarely equalled, should nevertheless, in specu-
lative life, and in matters of theory, tremble like sheep before
their pastors, and yield assent to every absurdity they hear,
provided their Church has sanctioned it; that these discre-
pancies should coexist, seems at first sight a strange contra-
diction, and is surely a phenomenon worthy of our careful
study.”
It will be seen—especially from our italics—that there
is no mincing matters here. The writer postulates that
knowledge has “not produced the effects which have else-
where followed it,” and that our old “superstitions”
remain “undiminished.” Were such a thing literally
true, it would well deserve study, and we cannot blame
Mr Buckle for trying to “account” for it. Unfortunately,
the necessity of “accounting ” for it makes him exagge-
rate or pervert for five hundred pages the doings of five
hundred years. .
He very early gives us one of his favourite geographical
explanations of our Superstition —
“Whatever in any country increases the total amount of
amazement, or whatever in any country increases the total
amount of peril, has a direct tendency to increase the total
amount of superstition, and therefore to strengthen the hands
of the priesthood. By applying these principles to Scotland,
we shall be able to explain several facts in the history of that
country. In the first place, the features of its scenery offer a
MR. BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 245
marked contrast to those of England, and are much more likely,
among an ignorant people, to suggest effective and permanent
superstitions. The storms and the mists, the darkened sky
flashed by frequent lightning, the peals of thunder reverberating
from mountain to mountain, and echoing on every side, the
dangerous hurricanes, the gusts sweeping the innumerable
lakes with which the country is studded, the rolling and
impetuous torrent flooding the path of the traveller and stop-
ping his progress, are strangely different to those safer and
milder phenomena, among which the English people have
developed their prosperity, and built up their mighty cities.”
Now, all these phenomena, as far as they are peculiar to
Scotland, are Highland phenomena. They don’t explain
the Lowland history (which is the basis of Scottish civilisa-
tion) at all; and cannot be connected with the strength
of the Presbyterian Church in modern times in any
way.
The early interruptions to agriculture and the growth of
trade by invasions (p. 166, seq.) were real practical influ-
ences in Scottish history. But this is a mere truism, and
the remark has been made by everybody. At the very
outset, however, Mr Buckle exaggerates the Scottish back-
wardness even of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. He
is consistent with himself when he omits all notice of the
Saxon and Norman colonisation of the country, for that
would land him under the operation of Race, which he
ignores. But he might have found in Chalmers (for
whom he has a just respect) many indications of a greater
social advancement than he allows us. And he should not
pass over in silence the Chartularies of our great religious
houses, the lessons of which confirm this view, and teach
246 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
us our obligations to those old monks in whom Mr Buckle's
narrowness sees nothing but their superstition.
It is, however, necessary to Mr Buckle to make the worst
of everything in those distant times, because the greater
the barbarism, the more easy to explain the power of the
nobles and clergy, according to him. But this cuts two
ways. The more barbarous the people, the more they
needed nobles and clergy, and the greater their obligations
to them. We do not find that Mr Buckle wishes that
Scotland had failed in establishing her independence ; in-
deed, his language about the struggle is generous enough.
But who led and organised that struggle, if not the nobles?
What would have become of Scotland's freedom, but for
Robert Bruce and such as Robert Bruce,—the Douglases,
Lindsays, Maxwells, Setons, Campbells, Somervilles,
Grahams —
“Thomas Randal and Hugh de la Hay,
And good Sir David the Barclay ?”
In estimating the value of an order, a Supreme and
transcendent service of this kind is not to be passed over.
They were “barbarous,” “violent,” “turbulent,” etc., no
doubt. All that we readily admit. But such were the con-
ditions of the time, and the great fact is that the nobles
maintained their superiority, given the conditions. Their
castles, of the strength of which this philosopher complains
(p. 173, note), did, indeed, enable them to defy their own
kings, but every such castle was an additional security that
the country should not be permanently held by the invader.
These are important offsets to the mischief they may have
done from wantonness of power; and look at their lines,
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 247
see the men they produced The Douglases, besides in-
numerable warriors, like the Good Sir James or Archibald
the Grim, have their Gawain the poet, their statesman the
Regent, to be proud of. The Lindsays have warriors,
poets, historians, statesmen, ecclesiastics of distinction,
repeatedly. These were the model Scotsmen, the types of
manhood on whom all Scotsmen formed themselves. One
would think that a fact like this had something to do with
the “civilisation” of a country in the highest sense. But
the Buckle class of speculators see only one side of civilisa-
tion; they forget that it does not consist only in a nation's
having good bread and broadcloth, or even good physicians,
stethoscopes, and collections of fossils, but also in its
having patriotic and social traditions pervading it, ideas
of honour, loyalty, courtesy, noble manners, and such
elements. Let Mr Buckle deny if he can that the Scottish
aristocracy, whose power he calls (p. 199) “a cruel
malady,” helped to give Scotland these. Let him also
deny if he can that much was contributed to the formation
of the national character in the same way, by the mediaeval
Church. No doubt, the Church was “superstitious;” and
no doubt, as it grew old and too rich, it grew corrupt.
But here again we are to consider the offsets. A philoso-
pher raised even one step above materialism will be glad
that there was a Church which, whatever its superstitions,
kept alive, in ages of rude life and little knowledge, a feel-
ing of the Divine origin of nature and of the moral
responsibility of man. Besides, a writer who insists so
much on sequence and development, should allow for what
the Church prepared, towards the future. What learning
there was, it handed down; what schools and universities
248 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS,
there were, it founded and fostered. Had the Church not
done well, after ages would not have been able to do
better.
Mr Buckle, however, sees little in any mediaeval institu-
tion but the harm it did; and such is human history, that
instances of the harmful operation of institutions are easily
gathered together for the amusement of the bigot or the
fool. The whole sketch of the period before the Reforma-
tion in this book is ungenerous and unfair, and that of
the Reformation itself (as we are now to show) curiously
one-sided. Mr Buckle, seizing what he thinks the peculiar
problem of Scotch history, pronounces it to be the union
of liberal politics with illiberal religion. “That the
people should constantly withstand their kings and as
constantly succumb to their clergy,” is the phenomenon
which puzzles him. Now, on this theory, the discern-
ing reader will observe, it is rather a difficult thing to
account for the Reformation, so sweeping a Reformation,
too, as it was For, if the character of the Scotch makes
them succumb always to priests, how came they to get rid
of the old Catholic system in so wholesale a fashion in the
sixteenth century | It would be mere trifling to urge that
the same character made them turn against one set of
priests, and next day begin worshipping another: a people
instinctively Conservative in such matters sticks to those
it has, as the Irish and other nations have stuck to theirs.
Our philosopher adopts a mode of escaping this con-
tradiction which we fear will do him no good in the eyes
of his Radical admirers. He gives the credit of the Scot-
tish Reformation to the Scottish aristocracy. Of course,
he does not mean this as a compliment. On the contrary,
MR. Blu CKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 249
he assumes that they acted from sordid motives. But,
dwelling on the political jealousies previously, between
nobles and clergy, he sees in the Reformation the revenge
of the aristocracy on the hierarchy, and credits the former
with a movement which the mass of the Scotch perhaps
admire more heartily than any other in their history.
We need scarcely point out, that, if this be the true ex-
planation of our Reformation, a greater testimony to the
value of an aristocracy was never given than by the man
who makes it, and, that making it, he stultifies his previous
statement that the existence of the order was a mere
“malady.” But is it the true one'
That there is some truth in it (and Mr Buckle is always
using partial truths in support of his preconceived theory),
we readily agree. Indeed, when our dissenter-demagogues
at the Tricentenary last autumn, talked the usual ecclesias-
tical Radicalism about 1560, we pointed out, in the Cowrant,
their ingratitude to the gentlemen of that epoch, and
reminded them of some facts which Mr Buckle here
adduces. Mr Cunningham, too, and Mr Lorimer, among
recent writers, have made remarks similar to ours. But
had we said, as Mr Buckle says, that “the success or
failure of the Reformation in Scotland was simply a ques-
tion of the success or failure of the aristocratic power,”
we should have exaggerated. The nobles and people
together were undoubtedly too strong for the Church, but
that the nobles by themselves could have put down
the Church, supposing the Church to have been backed
by the people, is not at all so clear. Yet, on Mr Buckle's
general theory of the Scottish character and condition, the
people ought to have stuck to the Church. For they
250 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
always “succumb to their clergy.” They were “exces-
sively ignorant,” and “excessively superstitious” (p. 232).
But this superstitious and priest-ridden people really
showed an animosity to the Church as genuine as the
political and selfish animosity which Mr Buckle attributes
to the nobles. The “raschall multitude,” as Knox calls
them, were foremost in the destruction of cathedrals and
monasteries. They crowded to the satirical dramas of Sir
David Lindsay. They rioted at every display of the
ceremonies of the old worship. The people, in short,
followed their noble leaders in this cause, as they had
followed them in the War of Independence, because it was
a cause which they themselves believed in.
So simple a view of affairs, however, does not do for Mr
Buckle, because if he is not allowed his peculiar interpreta-
tion of this epoch, he cannot link together the chain of his
theory of all the epochs. The contradictions in which he
is thus involved are imperative on him, and his subsequent
narrative exhibits the same faults. All clerical influence
being with him the result of superstition, the Presbyterian
Church is made to succeed the Catholic Church in every-
thing but “name and form :”—
“The nobles had overturned the Church; but the principles
on which Church authority is based remained intact. All that
was done was to change the name and the form. A new hier-
archy was quickly organised, which succeeded the old one in
the affections of the people. Indeed, it did more. For the
Protestant clergy, neglected by the nobles, and unendowed by
the State, had only a miserable pittance whereupon to live, and
they necessarily threw themselves into the arms of the people,
where alone they could find support and sympathy. Hence, a
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 251
closer and more intimate union than would otherwise have been
possible. Hence, too, as we shall presently see, the Presby-
terian clergy, Smarting under the injustice with which they
were treated, displayed that hatred of the upper classes, and
that peculiar detestation of monarchical government, which they
showed whenever they dared. In their pulpits, in their Pres-
byteries, and in their General Assemblies, they encouraged a
democratic and insubordinate tone, which eventually produced
the happiest results, by keeping alive, at a critical moment, the
spirit of liberty; but which, for that very reason, made the
higher ranks rue the day when, by their ill-timed and selfish
parsimony, they roused the wrath of so powerful and implacable
a class.”
It is assumed, from this point, that the new clergy have
been like, say, the Spanish clergy, in all but title. Their
sole redeeming characteristic was, that it being their
interest to preach democracy, they kept alike a spirit of
freedom. This atones, thinks Mr Buckle, for their brutal
rudeness to James the Sixth, and partly makes up for the
superstition in which they have since kept their country-
Iſle]] ...—
“The evidence which has been collected proves that the
Presbyterian ministers carried their violence against the con-
stituted authorities of the State to an indecent, if not to a criminal
length; and we cannot absolve them from the charge of being
a restless and unscrupulous body, greedy after power, and
grossly intolerant of whatever opposed their own views. Still,
the real cause of their conduct was, the spirit of their age, and
the peculiarities of their position. None of us can be sure that,
if we were placed exactly as they were placed, we should have
acted differently. Now, indeed, we cannot read of their pro-
ceedings, as they are recorded in their own Assemblies, and by
the historians of their own Church, without an uneasy feeling
252 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
of dislike, I had almost said of disgust, at finding ourselves in
presence of so much of superstition, of chicanery, of low, sordid
arts, and yet, withal, of arrogant and unbridled insolence. The
truth, however, is, that in Scotland the age was evil, and the
evil rose to the surface. The times were out of joint, and it
was hard to set them right. The long prevalence of anarchy,
of ignorance, of poverty, of force, of fraud, of domestic tumult,
and of foreign invasion, had reduced Scotland to a state which
it is scarcely possible for us to realise. . . . . -
“Much they did which excites our strongest aversion. But
one thing they achieved, which should make us honour their
memory, and repute them benefactors of their species. At a
most hazardous moment they kept alive the spirit of national
liberty. What the nobles and the crown had put in peril, that
did the clergy save. . . . .
“It was they who taught their countrymen to scrutinise,
with a fearless eye, the policy of their rulers. It was they who
pointed the finger of scorn at kings and nobles, and laid bare
the hollowness of their pretensions. They ridiculed their
claims, and jeered at their mysteries. They tore the veil, and
exposed the tricks of the scene which lay behind. The great
ones of the earth, they covered with contempt; and those who
were above them, they cast down. Herein, they did a deed
which should compensate for all their offences, even were
their offences ten times as great. By discountenancing that
pernicious and degrading respect which men are too apt to pay
to those whom accident, and not merit, has raised above them,
they facilitated the growth of a proud and sturdy independence,
which was sure to do good service at a time of need.”
It is no compliment to democracy, we may observe here,
that it should have involved the permanent degradation of
the country.
The Scotch nobility having for their own ends made a
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 253
Reformation, and having refused to bestow the church
lands on the reformed clergy—these last (says Mr Buckle)
threw themselves on the people as democrats, and thus
acquired the power over them which they used so long for
their degradation. The connection thus established be-
tween Scottish democracy and Scottish superstition will
be piquant to many. Not that there is anything new in
it, for it is substantially the same kind of thing that has
often been said by our Episcopalian polemics, by Lawson,
Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, and so forth. There is no
doubt a share of truth in the view, as we have had to
remark about other of the generalisations which Mr Buckle
has helped himself to, for his own purposes. But that is
all; and we need not say that sound philosophies are not
to be made by stretching bits of truth out, and piecing
them together in this fashion. To quote Clarendon when
you want to discredit a Covenanter, and then again Wod-
row when you want to damage a Cavalier, is convenient,
but hardly fair; and this is Mr Buckle's custom through-
out. Truth lies between party extremes, and is not to be
found in bits of invective like the following —
“When the Scotch Kirk was at the height of its power, we
may search history in vain for any institution which can com-
pete with it, except the Spanish Inquisition. Between these
two there is a close and intimate analogy. Both were intole-
rant, both were cruel, both made war upon the finest parts of
human nature, and both destroyed every vestige of religious
freedom. One difference, however, there was, of vast import-
ance. In political matters, the Church, which was servile in
Spain, was rebellious in Scotland. Hence, the Scotch always
had one direction in which they could speak and act with un-
restrained liberty. In politics, they found their vent. There
254 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
the mind was free. And this was their salvation. This saved
them from the fate of Spain, by securing to them the exercise
of those faculties which otherwise would have lain dormant, if,
indeed, they had not been entirely destroyed by that long and
enfeebling servitude in which their clergy retained them, and
from which, but for this favourable circumstance, no escape
would have been open.”
An historical student, whether Presbyterian or not,
Soon learns to recognise in such passages as this, the spirit
not of the philosopher but of the pamphleteer. He must
be a dull fellow, indeed, if he does not see that there was
another “difference” of “vast importance” between Kirk
and Inquisition besides that here pointed out. The Kirk
was powerful, not by dint of a “secular arm” ever ready
to help it, but by dint of the hold which it gained for
itself over the popular mind. A clergy, many of whom
were low-born men of small culture, were of course often
extravagant and brutal, and the Presbyterian Church has
been vexed by the pretensions of such men all along. But
it is useless to dwell on these features of the body. We
should rather inquire what good they were able to do, in
spite of their own disadvantages, and those of their
country’s condition at that time?
Mr Buckle allows them to have done no good, except
as far as they were rebels in politics. But the spirit of
political freedom is older in Scotland than Presbyterianism.
Buchanan’s “De Jure Regni” was published before Andrew
Melville's return from Geneva. And the spirit of that
treatise is classical, not religious, aristocratic rather than
democratic. Like all sound early liberalism, that of
Buchanan was a mixture of the feudal with the classical
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 255
idea; and what precedents he had for his doctrine of
Scottish popular rights he derived from the stands made
by the nobles against the kings. There was, indeed, an
amount of intellectual activity among the Scottish literary
class, long prior to the days of Jenny Geddes, for
which Mr Buckle nowhere gives them credit. Joseph
Scaliger, who had visited Edinburgh (little as that fact is
known), observes in the “Scaligerana,” that les Ecossais sont
bons philosophes; and it is by no means clear that we should
have been reduced to servitude even if James and Charles
had succeeded in establishing Episcopacy. The Kirk is
entitled to the credit of resisting the Stuarts, no doubt;
but we cannot agree with Mr Buckle that this was her
supreme service, and that all her domestic action was
purely mischievous.
Let us see what Mr Buckle's opinions of the Church's
doings at home in the seventeenth century are.
His main proposition is, that the new or reformed clergy
were just the old priests in another shape, preaching “a
system which aimed at destroying all human happiness,”—
overturning the right of “private judgment,”—and so on ;
and he introduces them to us in this fashion —
“How they laboured to corrupt the national intellect, and
how successful they were in that base vocation, has been
hitherto known to no modern reader; because no one has had
the patience to peruse their interminable discourses, commen-
taries, and the other religious literature in which their senti-
ments are preserved. As, however, the preachers were, in
Scotland, more influential than all other classes put together,
it is only by comparing their statements with what is to be
found in the general memoirs and correspondence of the time,
256 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
that we can at all succeed in reconstructing the history of a
period, which, to the philosophic student of the human mind, is
full of great, though melancholy, interest. I shall, therefore,
make no apology for entering into still further details respect-
ing these matters; and I hope to put the reader in possession
of such facts as will connect the past history of Scotland with
its present state, and will enable him to understand why it is
that so great a people are, in many respects, still struggling in
darkness, simply because they still live under the shadow of
that long and terrible night which, for more than a century,
covered the land. It will also appear that their hardness and
moroseness of character, their want of gaiety, and their indiffer-
ence to many of the enjoyments of life, are traceable to the
same cause, and are the matural product of the gloomy and
ascetic opinions inculcated by their religious teachers. For in
that age, as in every other, the clergy, once possessed of power,
showed themselves harsh and unfeeling masters. They kept the
people in a worse than Egyptian bondage, inasmuch as they
enslaved mind as well as body, and not only deprived men of
innocent amusements, but taught them that those amusements
were sinful. And so thoroughly did they do their work, that,
though a hundred and fifty years have elapsed since their
supremacy began to wane, the imprint of their hands is every-
where discernible. The people still bear the marks of the lash;
the memory of their former servitude lives among them ; and
they crouch before their clergy as they did of old, abandoning
their rights, sacrificing their independence, and yielding up
their consciences to the dictates of an intolerant and ambitious
priesthood.” -
He then goes on to extract, from the writings of the
Presbyterian divines of the seventeenth century, everything
that is most gloomy and rigid, and especially all their
instances of “particular providences,” which he gloats over
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 257
as bits of superstition. This is done with very com-
mendable industry, though not more than other writers
bestow on their tasks, without bragging of it in Mr
Buckle's peculiar fashion. But—leaving the theologians
to defend what is, specially theological (and at bottom Mr
Buckle's quarrel is as much with the Bishops of Exeter or
Oxford as with any Presbyterian minister)—we say that
he is not philosophically fair in the way he does his work.
For instance, it makes all the difference between two
kinds of “superstition” whether they rest on authority, or
appeal to a common standard. A superstition that acts
through ceremonies is much more noxious, intellectually,
than a superstition that acts through sermons. The “Par-
doner” who, in Sir David Lindsay’s poem, offers to the
populace for Sale—-
“The tail-part of St Bride's cow,
The snout of old St Antony's sow,
Whilk bore his holy bell,”
degraded his hearers far more than the minister who, terri-
fying his with the example of Ananias, at all events
appealed for authority to a book which the man could
consult for himself. Mr Buckle should give to the Bible
as a book the same fair play that he gives to the “Wealth
of Nations.” And the Bible, considered from a literary
point of view, assuredly holds a high place in education,
and cannot have permeated the Scottish intellect, as it did
in the seventeenth century, without both exercising and
enriching it. It may be true that the overwhelming
attention paid by that century to theology retarded the
growth both of literature (including philosophy) and trade.
This is a charge which was made against it long before
B.
258 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMs.
º
Mr Buckle's days. But Nature works by action and re-
action,--by giving us too much of a thing at one time,
and too little at another. The predominance of a severe
religiosity in that age spiritualised the people preparatory
to the great trade development of later ages. We would
rather See a populace too deeply tinged with Calvinism,
than a populace in whom all sense of the unseen world
and the infinite was dulled by the mere roar of steam-
engines and crowded streets.
The fact is that the seventeenth century was pre-
eminently both religious and superstitious, in England as
well as Scotland. Laud was a believer in dreams; and
Charles the First, it is well known, felt disturbed when
the gold head of his cane broke off in his hand. Mr
Buckle accumulates instances of the superstitions of the
poor preachers, here, which we could easily match from
the memoirs of great gentlemen and ladies in the South.
For instance, Lady Bacon, the philosopher's mother, writes
to her son Antony, -
“Alas! what excess of bucks at Gray's Inn, and to feast it
on the Sabbath. God forgive and have mercy upon England!"
How Buckle grins when he picks a passage of this sort
out of Rutherford or Dickson | Yet Lady Bacon was a
woman of the highest cultivation, and knew, we suspect, ,
more Greek (for one thing) than Buckle himself. She
writes again,_ - -
“One of the prophets, Nahum, I think, saith that the Lord
hath His way in the whirlwind; the storm, and tempest, and
clouds are the dust of his feet. The wind hath had great power;
it hath thrown off a number of tiles, some fruit trees,” etc.
The man who sneers at this kind of piety in his
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 259
ancestors, among whom it was unfeigned and genuine,—
may possibly be a philosopher, but we are quite certain
that, whether or mo, he is a snob.
We now give, as belonging to this part of the subject,
a curious specimen of the way in which Mr Buckle does
injustice to the Scotch clergy while exposing their peculiar
superstitions: &
“It was, moreover, wrong to take pleasure in beautiful
scenery; for a pious man had no concern with such matters,
which were beneath him, and the admiration of which should
be left to the unconverted. The unregenerate might delight in
these vanities, but they who were properly instructed saw Nature
as she really was, and knew that as she, for about five thousand
years, had been constantly on the move, her vigour was well-
nigh spent, and her pristine energy had departed. To the eye
of ignorance, she still seemed fair and fresh; the fact, however,
was, that she was worn out and decrepit; she was suffering
from extreme old age; her frame, no longer elastic, was lean-
ing on one side, and she soon would perish. Owing to the sin
of man, all things were getting worse, and nature was de-
generating so fast, that already the lilies were losing their
whiteness, and the roses their smell. The heavens were waxing
old; the very sun, which lighted the earth, was becoming
feeble. This universal degeneracy was sad to think of; but the
profane knew it not. Their ungodly eyes were still pleased by
what they saw. Such was the result of their obstinate deter-
mination to indulge the senses, all of which were evil; the eye
being, beyond comparison, the most wicked. Hence, it was
especially marked out for divine punishment; and, being con-
stantly sinning, it was afflicted with fifty-two different diseases
—that is, one disease for each week in the year.
“On this account, it was improper to care for beauty of any
kind; or, to speak more accurately, there was no real beauty.
**
260 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
The world afforded nothing worth looking at save and except
the Scotch Kirk, which was incomparably the most beautiful
thing under heaven.”
We can fancy a dabbler in literature chuckling over
this, and admiring the wonderful research with which
“the great Buckle” has brought to light some of the
strange Scottish superstitions of the past. But now turn to
Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets” (Ed. P. Cunningham, vol. i.,
p. 119), and read the following from his Life of Milton:-
“There prevailed in his (Milton's) time an opinion that the
world was in its decay, and that we have had the misfortune to
be produced in the decrepitude of Nature. It was suspected
that the whole creation languished; and that everything was
daily sinking into gradual diminution.”
And this opinion Johnson supposes Milton himself to
have been influenced by. So little fair is it to suppose
such fancies peculiar to the Scotch clergy, or invented by
them for their own profit. -
Mr Buckle may reassure himself, after reading all the
horrors in which he has just been revelling. Nature can-
not be expelled even by a Presbyterian furca. The same
men who made such awfully strict regulations for the
government of their flocks have left on record complaints
which sufficiently show their want of complete success.
The generation which Mr Buckle pictures as wretched
ascetics, broken down by priestly tyranny, produced the
best existing translation of Rabelais; imported a most
respectable quantum of French wine; fought admirably;
and were, in every way, one of the manliest breeds of
men in Europe. A nineteenth century book-worm, pass-
ing his life between libraries and clubs, is hardly entitled
MR. BTCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 261
to doubt the general virility of those who conquered at
Marston Moor, or those who fought against Claverhouse.
It is sheer impudence to talk of the character of a people
as “dwarfed and mutilated,” which could do what the
Scotch did from 1600 to 1700.
After all, the proof of the pudding, as the saying is,
lies in the eating. We admit that a batch of queer old
Covenanting pamphlets may be of great value in showing
the tendencies of a time. And we admit that the Kirk
discipline of the country has considerably checked the
more brilliant elements in the Scotch people. But Mr
Buckle—true to his essentially unfair, and, therefore, un-
philosophical character—has never once alluded to any
but the darker features of our national life. He never
says a word of the Scottish ballads or Scottish music.
He never mentions a Scottish poet or humourist—not
Burns, nor Smollett, nor even Scott. But, what is far
more extraordinary, he quite ignores what many greater
men than himself have thought the most noticeable
feature in Scottish history, the good education, and per-
sonal superiority, at an early period, of the Scotch work-
ing classes. Macaulay kept himself carefully free from
anything like Scottish feeling, but even he has spoken of
this phenomenon, once or twice, with something approach-
ing to enthusiasm. If Buckle does not believe in the
phenomenon, he is bound to tell us why. If he does be-
lieve in it, he is bound to reconcile it with the deplorable
picture he draws of the training of the Scottish people.
There is one part of that training from which he might
advantageously borrow a not yet exploded precept, “Thou
shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”
262 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
The difficulty of understanding how Scotland ever became
civilised, on Mr Buckle's view of her history, grows greater
as we draw near the conclusion of his book. We have
seen that, according to his showing, she had little chance of
it, down to about 1700. The nobles had been beasts of
prey ; the Reformation a mere change of superstitions;
trade and science had yet to rise, and so forth. But when
we reach the epoch of the Union, and when we find Hut-
cheson and Hume in due course appearing, we expect to
find the writer taking a more cheerful tone. Not he. He
admires our philosophers infinitely, but even they—the salt
of the earth—had been spoiled by the parsons. They
might be sceptical, and were. But the popular mind was
so steeped in theology, that philosophers themselves became
“ deductive” instead of “inductive,” and never produced
their proper effect on the people accordingly. This is Mr
Buckle's “key” to the eighteenth century in Scotland, as
he tells us in the following passage:–
“Over grammar Schools the clergy possessed an authority
fully equal to that which they had in the universities. They
also appointed and removed, at their own pleasure, teachers of
every grade, from village schoolmasters to tutors in private
families. In this way, each generation, as it arose, was brought
under their influence, and made subject to their notions.
Taking the mind of Scotland while it was young and flexible,
they bent it to their own method. Hence, that method became
supreme; it reigned everywhere; not a voice was lifted up
against it; and no one had an idea that there was more than
one path by which truth could be reached, or that the human
understanding was of any use, except to deal deductively with
premises, which were not to be inductively examined.
“The inductive or analytic spirit being thus unknown, and
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLANT). 263
the deductive or synthetic spirit being alone favoured, it hap-
pened that, when, early in the eighteenth century, the circum-
stances already mentioned gave rise to a great intellectual
movement, that movement, though new in its results, was not
new in the method by which the results were obtained. A
secular philosophy was, indeed, established, and the ablest men,
instead of being theological, became scientific. But so com-
pletely had the theological plan occupied Scotland, that even
philosophers were unable to escape from its method, and, as I
am about to show, the inductive method exercised no influence
over them. This most curious fact is the key to the history of
Scotland in the eighteenth century, and explains many events
which would otherwise appear incompatible with each other.
In that country, men have always been deductive;
even the most liberal thinkers being unable to liberate them-
selves from the universal tendency, and being forced to accept a
method which time had consecrated, and which was interwoven
with all the associations of the national mind.”
And what he thinks the result has been, another quota-
tion shall exhibit. We use italics now and then to draw
attention to the moderation, the politeness, the nice exacti-
tude of statement, so eminently characteristic of Mr
Buckle. It is of some importance to know what are the
manners, and what the scrupulousness, of the kind of
people who expect to substitute their authority for that of
gentlemen and of clergymen:-
“Early in the eighteenth century, a movement was felt all
over Europe, and in that movement Scotland participated. A
spirit of inquiry was abroad, so general and so searching that
no country could entirely escape from its action. Sanguine
men were excited, and even grave men were stirred. It seemed
as if a long night were about to close. Light broke forth where
before there was nothing but darkness. Opinions which had
264 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
stood the test of ages were suddenly questioned; and in every
direction doubts sprung up, and proofs were demanded. The
human mind, waxing bold, would not be satisfied with the old
evidence. Things were examined at their foundation, and the
basis of every belief was jealously scrutinised. For a time, this
was confined to the higher intellects; but soon the movement
spread, and, in the most advanced countries, worked upon
nearly all classes. In England and in France the result was
extremely beneficial. It might have been hoped, that in Scot-
land likewise, the popular mind would gradually have become
enlightened. But not so. Time rolled on ; one generation
succeeded another; the eighteenth century passed away; the
nineteenth century came; and still the people made no sign.
The gloom of the middle ages was yet upon them. While all
around was light, the Scotch, enveloped in mist, crept on, grop
ing their way, dismally, and with fear. While other nations
were shaking off their old superstitions, this singular people
clung to theirs with undiminished tenacity. Now, indeed, their
grasp is gradually slackening, but with extreme slowness, and
threatening reactions frequently appear. This, as it always has
been, and still is, the curse of Scotland, so also is it the chief
difficulty with which the historian of Scotland has to contend.
Everywhere else, when the rise of the intellectual classes, and
that of the trading and manufacturing classes, have accompanied
each other, the invariable result has been a diminution of the
power of the clergy, and, consequently, a diminution of the in-
fluence of superstition. The peculiarity of Scotland is, that,
during the eighteenth century, and even down to the middle of
the nineteenth century, the industrial and intellectual progress
has continued without materially shaking the authority of the
priesthood. Strange and unequalled combination | The country
of bold and enterprising merchants, of shrewd manufacturers,
of far-seeing men of business, and of cunning artificers; the
country, too, of such fearless thinkers as George Buchanan,
David Hume, and Adam Smith, is awed by a few noisy and
MIR, BD CKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 265
ignorant preachers, to whom it allows a license, and yields a
submission, disgraceful to the age, and incompatible with the
commonest notions of liberty. A people in many respects very
advanced, and holding upon political subjects enlightened views,
do, upon all religious subjects, display a littleness of mind, an
illiberality of sentiment, a heat of temper, and a love of perse-
cuting others, which shows that the Protestantism of which
they boast has done them no good; that, in the most important
matters, it has left them as narrow as it found them ; and that
it has been unable to free them from prejudices which make
them the laughing-stock of Europe, and which have turned the
very name of the Scotch Kirk into a byword and a reproach
among educated men.”
The first thing that strikes one about this theory is, that
Mr Buckle has neglected to point out the connection
between the influence of our theologians, and our philo-
sophers' love of deduction. He says that one flowed from
the other, but he does not explain why or how. Now, it is
absurd to assume the omnipotence of even a clergy like the
Scotch clergy of older times. Their severity did not blight
the gaiety of Dr Pitcairne, nor the geniality of Allan Ram-
say, any more than their Whiggism prevented Ruddiman
or Goodall from being Jacobites. And, it is especially
far-fetched to make their influence explain the partiality
of Hutcheson or Hume for deduction, since that partiality
is explicable in an easier and more natural way. A man
of sense, not bent on “accounting for” an assumption
taken up beforehand and itself an exaggeration, finds him-
self in no such necessity of resorting to paradoxes. He sees
in Hutcheson and Hume men naturally falling into their
places in the history of British philosophy, and exercising
as much influence over their countrymen as philosophers
266 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMs.
can expect to do. Take Hutcheson for example,_and you
can easily understand his point of view by noting that he
belonged to the generation which just succeeded to
Shaftesbury, and was just contemporary with Butler. Dr
Carlyle, who was at Glasgow when Hutcheson was a pro-
fessor, observes that he was always quoting Shaftesbury.
(“Autobiography,” p. 85). And his doctrine, that “all
men have a moral faculty which is an original principle,” is
also the doctrine of Butler, who treats “virtue” as “a
natural law” of humanity, in his “Sermons on Human
Nature.” Such similarities of view are naturally found in
contemporaries; and if Hutcheson had been determined in
his way of thinking by merely Scotch-Presbyterian influ-
ences, as these appear in the eyes of a Buckle, he would
never have derived anything from Shaftesbury at all. He
took to philosophy, just as an Englishman might have
done, and was acted upon, as everybody is, more or less,
by the current of thought flowing in his time. Hume, in
the same way, was acted upon by Berkeley. But it does
not follow, for all that, that men like Hume achieved none
of their work by induction, as a careless reader would
gather from Mr Buckle. It is true, as Mr Buckle says,
that Hume's “Natural History of Religion” is a deductive
or a priori argument. But take his famous essay “On the
Populousness of Ancient Nations,” the effect of which (as
Mr Hill Burton * has remarked) was felt in our economical
literature down to and beyond the time of Malthus, and
what do we find him doing there Just carefully gather-
* Mr Buckle has borrowed freely from this valuable writer, and
shows his gratitude—and discrimination—by bracketing him as a
historian with Mr Robert Chambers.
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 267
ing together such facts recorded by the classic writers as
would throw light on the question which he was discussing.
Bacon himself could not have wished an induction more
carefully performed than this, in the course of which the
great David (a descendant of one of the noble families
whose existence was “a malady”) examined nearly all
the surviving literature of antiquity. Mr Buckle professes
unbounded admiration for Hume, as well he may, but of
course sees nothing in him that does not suit his own
theory. Once, indeed, he speaks rather slightingly of his
classical learning. This is rich in an author who tells us
(pp. 400, 401) that the Stoic philosophers “have never
possessed authority,” and who therefore may be assumed
to be in total ignorance of the existence of so famous a
man as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Let us now see whether these Scotch philosophers had
no influence on Scotland, and whether she remained
“enveloped in mist" during the last century, as our
pedant pretends. We shall first quote Dr Carlyle, a
thoroughly intelligent man,—on Hutcheson's influence:—
“It was owing to Hutcheson and him [Leechman] that a new
school was formed in the western provinces of Scotland, where
the clergy till that period were narrow and bigoted.”
We next turn to Hume's Essays, written in the first
half of last century, and find him saying:—
“Our sectaries, who were formerly such dangerous bigots, are
now become very free reasoners.”—(“Of Superstition and En-
thusiasm”).
Next we take up the “Wealth of Nations,” which was
in progress some thirty years later than the date of this
268 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMs.
Essay; and Adam Smith is found talking (book v., cap. 1)
of “WHATEVER REMAINs” of “the old fanatical spirit,”—
showing that not much was left of it them. But Adam
Smith is Mr Buckle's greatest of all Scotchmen, so we
shall treat the reader to a specimen of the harmony
between their opinions of the Scottish Church:-
“There is scarce perhaps to be found anywhere in Europe a
more learned, decent, independent, and respectable set of men
than the greater part of the Presbyterian clergy of Holland,
Geneva, Switzerland, and SCOTLAND.”—(“Wealth of Nations,”
wbi sup.)
Adam Smith was not the man to have spoken in this
tone of a body of fanatics.
But why multiply such quotations' There is one fact
which everybody knows about the Church of Scotland in
the last century, that the Moderate party, headed by
Robertson, was predominant in it. This fact is fatal to
Mr Buckle's “fanatical” theory alone. The Moderate men
had their faults, but the Church was never so socially and
intellectually powerful as during their ascendency. And
the names of that party's leaders, Robertson, Blair,
Campbell, MacKnight, Carlyle, are the only names of the
Presbyterian divines of last century which now live in the
general history or literature of the British empire.
The rise of trade and the improvement of agriculture in
Scotland after the Union give Mr Buckle an occasion for
some of his favourite hits at the Scotch aristocracy. He
talks of their “overthrow” (p. 312), a sufficiently absurd
expression when we remember what their position is even
now. And he calls this overthrow elsewhere “a fortunate
circumstance” (p. 307). Unluckily for Mr Buckle, it can
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 269
be proved that the Scotch aristocracy took the lead in the
Social improvement of the country, precisely as they had
done in the Reformation and in the War of Independence.
He is fond of quoting Mr Chambers's “Domestic Annals
of Scotland,”—a book which does not, indeed, entitle its
author to rank with original historians, but which is both
valuable and interesting. He might have found there, if
truth had been his object, that “the first notable attempt
at planting was by Thomas, Sixth Earl of Haddington,”
that “Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk” was “another
early improver,” and so on, ad lib. (“Dom. Ann.,” vol. iii.,
p. 417). Mr Chambers, in fact, points out, that it was
Tady Elizabeth Mordaunt, wife of the heir of the Duke of
Gordon of that time, who first set improvements going at
all. He describes the establishment in 1723 of “A
Society for Improving in the Knowledge of Agriculture;”
and who was “the animating spirit of the fraternity 1 °
(“Dom. Ann.,” vol. iii., p. 484). Why, a Maxwell of Gallo-
way, whose associates in the good work were the Marquis of
Lothian, the Earl of Kinnoull, Lord Elibank, Sir George
Dunbar of Mochrum, etc., etc. Mr Buckle sets a high
value on statistics; he ought therefore to know, that the
Father of Statistics in Scotland was Sir John Sinclair of
Ulbster, the chief of a family still esteemed amongst us for
the talents and good-nature of its members.
Agricultural—rather than commercial—improvement is
the proper business of an aristocracy. Yet, the second
Bank ever established in Scotland was established on the
strength of the support of the Earl of Ilay in 1727.
“Domestic Annals,” vol. iii., p. 537). The most improv-
ing Provost ever known in Edinburgh—Drummond—
270 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMs.
belonged to the Perth family. The great Virginia trade
of Glasgow was frequently recruited from the west-country
gentry. By what right does Mr Buckle ignore or despise
such facts as these ? - -
It is indeed well known to students of genealogy (and
nobody else can speak with authority on the subject), that
on the whole the Scottish aristocracy has produced a larger
proportion of the eminent men of the kingdom than any
aristocracy in Europe. Our best soldiers, sailors, authors,
and judges have belonged to it; which helps to explain, and
to excuse (if it needed excuse) the vein of feudalism still
running through the country, in spite of the liberalism in
, which Mr Buckle exults, and the fanaticism which he
exaggerates. It is especially fortunate that there should
always have been a feeling of this kind to help to reconcile
the Scottish people to their leaders; for nothing can be
more certain than that the ascendancy of the populace at
any time would have perilled the very progress which, and
which alone, excites Mr Buckle's admiration. The Union
itself could never have passed under a system of universal
suffrage. And, when Robertson laboured in 1778 to induce
people to consent to abolishing the penal laws against the
Catholics, his house had to be protected from the mob by
soldiers. (See Cunningham’s “Church History of Scot-
land,” vol. ii., p. 547).
We must now bring our examination of this work to a
close. We have shown what Mr Buckle's general theory
of the history of Scotland is, at a length as great as the
limits of a newspaper permit. We venture to think, too,
that we have shown its incompleteness; its failure to
MR BUCKLE ON CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND. 271
account for the actual civilisation of Scotland as it exists;
and the unfair partiality with which the known facts of
history have been handled for its construction. Our great
complaint is, that he exaggerates the importance of parti-
cular classes of phenomena in order to serve the cause of
his theory. There is often some truth in what he says,
but it is not the whole truth; and many truths equally
important with those which he does use, are not recog-
nised in his book at all. In conclusion, we need hardly.
say that we have no wish to defend any existing evil
which he may have touched on. There is to be found,
among nobler characteristics, in Scotland, a more marked
predominance of the uglier features of ecclesiastical
influence, than readily appears on the surface of life in
some other countries. This has been a hundred times
remarked upon by Scotsmen themselves; and is to be
attributed, we believe, where it exists, to the democratic
character of our ecclesiastical life. On the other hand, it
is not an unmixed evil; and a philosopher may well put up
with its inconveniences, when he remembers that religious
democracy has after all proved compatible with Scottish
civilisation such as it is, and that irreligious democracy
means Jacobinism. We may be offended now and then
by the violence and the narrowness which we now meet
chiefly (let us be thankful) among the Presbyterian dis-
senters. We may wish for a higher standard of scholar-
ship, and a more beautiful standard of manners. But we
will not therefore rush for relief into the arms of a school
of materialist speculators, the acceptance of whose views
involves difficulties as great as those of our existing system,
and who ask us, by way of a preliminary qualification for.
272 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
their academy, to believe that our ancestors have never
been anything but barbarians or bigots, or the dupes of
both.
—6–—
L 0 R D B U R Y.
(Edinburgh Courant, December 1860).
LoRD BURY has promised the people of Wick a harbour of
refuge ; and in the meantime, he has found in their Burghs
a harbour of refuge himself. Having been unseated for
bribery at Norwich, he came down to get rid of the odour
of corruption in the healthy breezes of the far North. It
was a compliment to Scotland, and ought to be acknow-
ledged. A Scottish candidate with a pure political repu-
tation would perhaps have been better. But the Wick
Burghs must take what they can get, and they might do
worse than drink their political small beer at the respect-
able sign of the “Keppel's Head.” *
We have no very great objections to Lord Bury. He is
what is called a nice young man, and is even rather clever,
we believe. We have a vague recollection that, in coming
home from Canada, he got up a periodical among the pas-
sengers; which itself indicated a pleasant album-writing
and keepsake-reading turn of mind. In fact, our object
to-day—besides that of congratulating him on getting a
less expensive seat than Norwich—is to hold him up as a
LORD BURY. 273
type of the clever young Whig lord. It has been com-
plained that there are no young Whigs coming up, and this
gives serious uneasiness to the “great Liberal party.” If
the Whig aristocracy should fail, judging from all appear-
ances, the Church must go without Bishops, and the State
without Ministers. All patriotic men, then, are interested
in preserving the noble breed, and we confess we hate to
See a heartless Radical attacking the “old women” of the
party, as he calls them ; for what is that but shooting the
hens !
Now it is a great point to have secured Lord Bury. He
is so active, that he was down at Wick almost before people
of less information knew that Mr Laing was to resign. He
went there with so little dependence on aristocratic influ-
ence, that he absolutely did not call on the Duke of
Sutherland first, and ask him for his support. He was
there before the Duke wrote, expressing his “good wishes”
in his behalf. We don’t hear, indeed, who asked the Duke
to do so much, but his Grace, we are also told, “declined to
interfere” in the election. How nice of his Grace, not to
profess that he was going to break the law, which he would
have been doing in such a case ! And how innocent and
maidenish even, the notion that the mere “good wishes”
of the Duke of Sutherland, in black and white, counted
for nothing in the Wick Burghs . This it is—in spite of
one's naughty Norwich experience—to be of a pure and
spotless kind of character. Another man would have
turned up “Dod;” found that a factor of the Sutherland
family had represented the place for twenty-two years;
and said as little about his own relations to the Duke as
possible. But this is the Superiority the Whig aristocrat
S
274 CEIARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
has over a coarser kind of fellow. He does things deli-
cately. If he bribes, it is in kid gloves. Against mal-
odorous corruption, he arms himself with a pastille. And
if he pelts a Tory gentleman, it is at least with rotten
plover's eggs. It is astonishing how this delicacy suc-
ceeds. The people like “rose-water Radicalism,” and
never suspect that the smell of the thing is the best of it.
In rose-water Radicalism, Lord Bury is as abundant as
the finest young Whigs. The Wick Burghs, if we mis-
take not, contain a somewhat Radical population, rather
seriously inclined. The right man, under such circum-
stances, is a strong Liberal who is also of an austere turn.
But Lord Bury only goes “the whole hog”—in sugar—an
object we sometimes see in the sweetmeat shops. He
is an out-and-out Liberal in general professions, but
extremely safe and cautious when you take him into
details. He is for extending the suffrage, of course; but
when you ask how, or in what degree, you puzzle him.
The measure, he says, ought “not to be so niggard as to
exclude the great portion of the intelligent working classes,”
nor “so sweeping as entirely to destroy the present power
of the middle classes.” If Lord Bury were told of some-
body, that he was not so tall as “Jacob Omnium,” nor
yet so short as Lord John Russell, he would find it diffi-
cult to fix his height ; and we can fancy an honest cobbler
of Kirkwall, a non-elector, wondering whether the glib
young gentleman meant that he ought to have a vote or
no. But one thing is clear. The Wiscount can’t abide
real Radicalism, and, of course, he has his fling at Mr
Bright, who, now that the Whigs are “in,” is a regular
cockshy of theirs. It is not for us to defend the great
LORD BURY. 275
demagogue, and a harpoon is ready for him in the bows of
the Courant whenever he comes up to spout. But, that
men who are really trading on popular love of change, who
would like to be thought friends of extensive innovation,
who, if a Conservative stood against them, would pass the
word for democracy, that these men should always be
hammering away at the cleverest democrat in the king-
dom, -is too bad. Besides, in some pretty little orators,
it is almost impudent. What Bright is, compared with
Chatham or Burke, we know ; but, compared with the
general Whiglings, he is a vulture to a cock-sparrow.
A Conservative uses shot against him, that he would
never use against Lord Bury, for fear of spoiling him for
stuffing.
But Lord Bury had other things to talk about besides
the necessity of a homoeopathic reform at an indefinite
period. He had to give his views on education ; and
dissent being powerful in those parts, he naturally pro-
fessed his wish to open the schools. With a politeness to
the Church of Scotland, which we should be very sorry to
See any Scotchman imitate towards the Church of Eng-
land, he expressed his belief that “a teacher” ought not
“to be excluded from our schools, because he does not
belong to one particular sect.” “Great cheering” fol-
lowed at this point, according to the Northern Ensign.
Some of the mob may have thought that they had got
hold of a bigot, but his Lordship is only a free-and-easy-
going Whig, superior to ecclesiastical prejudices. He is
for opening the schools to all denominations whatever, and
our Free Church friends will appreciate the fact, as one
more sign that there is no alternative but that, if the pre-
276 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
sent system be destroyed. Any change, in short, will be
made, not “in the spirit of John Knox,” but in that of Mr
Robert Lowe. And Lord Bury's views on such subjects
may be gathered from a pet scheme of his, which nothing,
doubtless, but his great modesty prevented him from
dwelling on at this election. Lord Bury, after all, is chiefly
known by his devotion to the cause of marriage with a
deceased wife's sister. A clever young man of his calibre
generally enters on public life now-a-days with a crotchet,
and the best sort of crotchet is one opposed to an existing
law. There are fellows that would marry their grand-
mothers, if the old ladies themselves had not the sense to
see the wisdom of the prohibition. So, there will always
be some people desiring to do what custom and instinct
and precept forbid, and of a class of these Lord Bury has
been the defender. When will he bring up a good fat peti-
tion from his new constituents in favour of his cherished
scheme ;
But enough of this. Our object was to congratulate
Lord Bury and his party, and we must not lose sight of
it. We say, then, that so nice a young nobleman, with
such mild agreeable liberal views (not a headache in a
hogshead of them) is a great accession to the Whigs, now
that he is restored to Parliament. We wish them joy of
him. And we venture to claim some credit for Scotland
in the matter, too. Scotland has long been a country
where English politicians—exhausted by the smell of the
Thames and the eloquence of the metropolitan members—
come for health and recreation. But a new field of use-
fulness is opening to us. When any obstinate Parliamen-
tary Election Committee persists in turning out an English
THE SCOTTISH SUNDAY QUESTION. 277
member for, we won't repeat the word, but we all know
what, let us always have a place ready for him, and let us
not think of bothering him with an opposition The
stupid people at Norwich want our politeness, and so they
put this young gentleman to a great deal of unnecessary
expense.
THE SCOTTISH SUNDAY QUESTION.
(Edinburgh Cowrant, December 1864).
THERE are few more curious things in the eyes of an im-
partial observer than the kind of way in which such ques-
tions as the observance of Sunday are now discussed in
Scotland. There is generally a fight about them, in which
the combatants are on one side bigots, and on the other
buffoons. The Sunday question is not a very difficult one;
and there seems no reason why those who think our
Sunday too lax, and those who think it too strict, should
not advocate their respective causes with the common
sense, moderation, and politeness which belong to contro-
versy in civilised countries. There prevails now-a-days, at
all events in the larger part of the empire, a very prevalent
persuasion that, considered merely from a civil point of
view, Sunday is an excellent institution. The tendency of
the age is not to work too little, but too much; not to
sink into mysticism, by too prolonged contemplation of
278 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
supersensual ideas, but to neglect them altogether; not to
overrate the worth of the great Christian tradition and
literature, but to forget their existence in the hurry of
business and pleasure. A day solemnly set apart for rest
and religious offices, keeps these materialising influences of
the age in check; and helps the dullest blockhead to un-
derstand the power of those spiritual beliefs which have
affected all our literature and our politics, and played so
great a part in the history of mankind. Such being the
moral and temporal worth of the Sunday, it would seem
an obvious principle that its integrity ought to be carefully
protected; that work on it should be reduced to a minimum
where circumstances make its total abolition impossible;
and that its recreations should be of the purest and most
innocent character. No doubt, there will always be con-
flicting views of the rightful observance of the day. Some
will be for making it more austere than the holiest men have
thought necessary. Some will be for making it resemble
as much as possible the ordinary days of the week. A
portion of the public will hold a middle position between
the two. But for the life of us, we cannot understand
why the question should not be agitated without threats of
ruin or damnation on the one hand, and low street ribaldry
on the other. It is unaccountable to us why ministers
cannot refrain from vulgar scolding, and editors from vulgar
jesting, when this particular—and on the whole grave and
serious—subject turns up. The fact is characteristic of
our Northern civilisation, and it is a permanent one
evidently for the present.
Let us take the late meeting against Sunday railway
trains, and the Scotsman's article on it, in illustration of
THE SCOTTISH SUNDAY QUESTION. 279
these reflections. Sir James Baird does not make his case
a bit stronger by threatening the country with “God’s
wrath,” and the loss of its “prosperity’ if it does not do
what he wishes. This is low ground to take up, from his.
point of view, for one thing ; and for another, it is trench-
ing on mysteries which have proved to be beyond the
reach of much higher intellects. But there are natural
restraints on men of his condition which prevent them from
going altogether too far, and which are not so potent in the
case of speakers like the Reverend James Bell of Hadding-
ton, and the Reverend Mr Ireland of Portobello. The former
preacher said, that “if religious and beloved Scotland
was to be deluged with these abominations, he believed
she would soon be reduced to the level of those Continental
nations that so systematically desecrated the Sabbath.”
There is here an odd mixture of provincial and spiritual
conceit. Scotland has her own share of religious merit,
though she will do well not to destroy its beauty by bragging
of it. But is she to talk so contemptuously of “the level.”
of other nations, from many of which she has much to learn,
—much in cleanliness and sobriety, much in tolerance
and generosity,+much in culture and the application of
scientific discovery to the relief of man's estate'ſ All
this is greasy cant. And it is dangerous cant. It may
provoke people to inquire how France continues to main-
tain her “ level” with her Sunday, and so on ; inquiries
which, handled by the Radical demagogue (supposing us
again to see a breed of Radical demagogues with brains),
might prove very mischievous to Mr Bell and his friends.
Still,—whatever its drawbacks of this kind,-the meet-
ing of Tuesday had a case, and a good case, and one to
280 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
which the article in yesterday's Scotsman was a perfectly,
contemptible reply. In fact, that journal hardly attempted
a reply in the proper sense at all. It dealt chiefly in long-
winded jocosity about the Chairman's speech, and avoided
any detailed criticism of the general facts brought forward
at the meeting, “If even some small proportion of
the stories told about the running of goods trains is
true,” the Scotsman says, “there is ground of complaint.”
Why not inquire? Even if Sir James Baird is wrong in
assigning passengers to so many as eight of the ten trains
which he tells us pass Millerhill every Sunday, that is only a
partial error, not an error in spirit, when the object of the
meeting is considered. And, then, we are told that the
object of a recent extra train on the North British is to
bring people in to church,--a statement of which no proof
is offered, except that it arrives in time for them to go
there. To reach town when the church bells are ringing
is not the same thing as to reach it for the purpose of
attending service, though the one fact makes the other
possible. But to rob the Scotsman of this theory would
be to spoil the one joke, and that an old joke, for the
sake of which the article seems to have been written. Sir
James Baird, it appears (though we don't know how the
fact came officially before the world), drives into Edin-
burgh to church in a carriage. Now, says the Scotsman,
he might come by the train. And in leading up to this,
in beating it out thin,_in dancing round and round it
with the clumsy antics of an imperfectly-trained bear bred
in the provinces, at least three mortal fourths of a mortal
column are taken up. The poverty of these fellows' wit is
astonishing, and would not be credited in London or Paris.
THE SCOTTISE SUNDAY QUESTION. 281
“He drives a private carriage through the Fourth Com-
mandment and into Edinburgh.” Why, we remember this
little jest some half-a-dozen times in the Scotsman, our-
Selves. And it was stolen, at its first appearance, from the
well-known illustration of O'Connell's, about driving a coach
and four through an Act of Parliament. Poor as humour,
it is abject as reasoning. The reasoning founded on it is
that Sir James commits the same kind of sin, as he
considers it, by being driven to his church in a carriage,
as the Railway Company by running the train. Now, even
if the train by which he might come were a special Church
train, there would still be the difference that the Company
ran it for profit, making the motive, that is the very soul
of the act, different. But Sir James and his friends deny
that it is a Church train,_that to bring people to Church
is the reason of its running, so the Scotsman bºgs the
question. In fact, this elaborate piece of ponderous
comedy is only another version of the same writer’s well-
worn pleasantry about the clergyman's Sunday dinner.
For some years his reputation rested on the astonishing
epigram, that if a clergyman disapproved of regular week-
day work being carried into Sunday, he had no right on
that day to eat and drink. In the Fife Radical villages
this is probably the favourite piece of wit of modern times.
People, however, pardom old jokes more readily than old
calumnies. Professor Balfour is spoken of in the article
before us as “the celebrated Sabbath pedestrian who walks
twice the distance for the purpose of sight-seeing.” This
is, if not a direct falsehood, a suggestion of what is false.
It is based on the circumstance that news of a great flood
having reached a house in England where Mr Balfour was,
282 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
one Sunday, he walked over to the scene, ready to offer
any of the assistance which might so easily have been re-
quired from a man of science. Educated men will see the
difference between this and what the Scotsman wishes to
be believed instead of it. The basest part of the affair is,
that if the Professor were a rival writer who could reply to
this parish satirist, and knew how to “lay it on,” he might
reduce him to silence in a week ; and make his assailant
as shy of him as if he were a bit of Latin.
On the whole, then, we think this last specimen of
Scottish religion on the one hand, and Scottish “Liberalism”
on the other, humiliating to the country. But what does
come very clearly out of the affair is, that there is a distinct
and undeniable increase of Sunday traffic on the railways.
For the reasons given above, and not for the reasons of
Sir James Baird and his friends,--we protest against the
innovation. We are not prepared to say that there should
be no possibility of railway locomotion on Sundays, because
railways have superseded other modes of travelling so
much, that in cases of urgency, want of communication
by them means want of communication altogether. But
when we find goods being carried to and fro, as if law
and custom made no distinction between one day and
another, it is time to remind Railway Directors that their
dividends are not paramount objects of consideration in a
civilised society. The twaddle about our “liberties” is
only sickening. We do not go for our religion to fanatics,
but neither do we go for our freedom to illiterate drolls.
THE SNOB ABROAD. 283
T H E S N 0 B A B R () A D.
(Edinburgh Courant, October 1864).
A LETTER has just appeared in the Times, suggesting some
reflections which unfortunately are only too apt to recur to
one again and again at this season, as the years roll by.
The writer, an English tourist, dating from Amiens, records
a scene which he had recently witnessed in the Cathedral
of Boulogne. He found the sacred building full of British
excursionists, “walking about with their hats on, and with
pipes in their mouths;” and as he innocently adds, he had
“Some difficulty in persuading” those whom he addressed
“of the gross impropriety of their conduct.” We dare say.
he had. Blackguards of the kind are not likely to have
been very open to considerations of reason or decency; and
ought rather to have been treated as the lowest classes of
animals are when found straying into a flower garden.
“It is this sort of behaviour,” the writer goes on, “that
serves to confirm foreign Catholics in their belief that the
English, since their severance from Rome, have lost all faith
in Sacred things, and all respect for those solemn mysteries
which are the common inheritance of both branches of the
Catholic Church.” Of course we cannot be answerable for
the delusive impressions of foreigners about British Pro-
testantism. They are, as a general rule, very imperfectly
acquainted with the tenets of the Church of England; and
Scotland has now such comparatively little separate inter-
course with the Continent, that she cannot expect her own
284 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMs.
Church to be any better known to them. But we can all
understand with what admirable effect a scene like that
described above could be handled by the foreign priest for
the edification of his flock. How natural it would be to
him, and to them, to believe, that with our allegiance to
the Papacy, we had cast off all respect for places of wor-
ship, and for the most sacred and august names in the
Creed. It is not improbable, indeed, that the influence of
our lower forms of bigotry goes for something in the
formation of such blackguards as those referred to. We
have many preachers who talk as if out of Protestantism
there was no Christianity, and out of their own sect no
real Protestantism. These views the snob readily em-
braces, and he has a particularly zealous dislike of a
Church which insults him by praying in Latin But,
on the whole, we don’t attach much importance to such
feelings, as far as the behaviour complained of is con-
cerned. The men Mr Bevan saw in the Cathedral of
Boulogne, acted as they did from what may be familiarly
described as an abstract caddism. They would have shown
equal indecency in a museum or a theatre, if permitted,
but enjoyed peculiar facilities, from the fact that Con-
timental churches lie open to all comers, as places of per-
petual and uninterrupted worship of one kind or another.
The real significance of the narrative lies in the fearful
picture it gives of the class of persons who have begun to
travel in our time. It is all very well to say that Boulogne
is the first outpost of the Continent which the snob seizes,
and that many a London Snob never advances beyond it.
He does, as a general rule, now-a-days, advance beyond it.
The Rue de Rivoli smells of him. The French comic
THE SNOB ABROAD. 285
papers make endless sport of him. He flattens his nose,
as far as it is capable of further flattening, in the windows
of the goldsmiths' shops in Genoa. His bluchers tread
contemptuously over the flagstones carved with the arms
of the Knights of St John in the churches of Malta. Nay,
he helps to confirm the sacred prophecies of the degrada-
tion of Jerusalem by showing himself even in the Holy
City. We appeal to all educated men, whether the num-
ber of his vulgarest countrymen now met with abroad
every autumn is not one of the most serious drawbacks in
the holiday of an Englishman? Scotchmen of the same
class have even less excuse, for every Englishman knows
something of England; but it is not uncommon to find a
Scot groping about Paris and Versailles who hardly knows
his way from Holborn to Charing Cross, and who has
never seen the cool woods of Warwickshire, or the wild
roses which swarm in the pleasant lanes of Herts.
The truth is that railways and steamers have altogether
done away with the very theory of travel, as it was held
by our ancestors. In their eyes, travel was a part of
education; was just as much a branch of culture as
the study of grammar or philosophy. Bacon's celebrated
essay on the subject rests on this principle as its basis;
and though few even of the best sort of travellers of the
old school ever rigidly adhered to his ideal, still the ideal
existed, and had more or less effect on generations of
tourists. You were supposed to know something of the
history and languages of foreign countries before you
visited them. You were expected not merely to look at
their picture galleries and palaces, but to attend their
courts of law, inspect their industries, observe their modes
286 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
of farming, and so forth. But who that has watched the
snob of our day in foreign parts ever saw him really
learning anything? When is he known to inquire what
the tenure of land is, how the poor are maintained, or
generally in what ways the new life, in the middle of
which he finds himself, differs from his own He is
brutally incurious about all that; and his ignorance is one
of the chief causes of his insolence. Every peculiarity of
foreign manners is to him a deflection from the standard
which he supposes to be constituted by his own; and he
naturally comes to think that whatever is characteristic of
a strange people is a legitimate butt of his ridicule.
Hence the wretched rudeness with which he treats every-
body, and by which our nation is unfortunately made
hateful or contemptible in the eyes of some of the greatest
nations of Europe. Extreme cases, like this Boulogne
incident, are hardly to be called common. But still that
incident is only an aggravated form of what is a common
disease. Remedy, we are afraid, there is none. We
cannot put an export duty on Snobs, for that is against our
favourite freedom of commerce. But, at least, we can try
to neutralise the ill effect of their conduct by a rigidly
scrupulous attention on our own parts to the duties of
international politeness; and we can rigidly avoid showing
any countenance to such of our compatriots as may mis-
conduct themselves under our own observation.
HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. 287
H E N R Y T H 0 M A S B U (; K L E,
(Edinburgh Courant, June 10, 1862).
IF it be true, as David Hume says, that every institution
rests in the long run on opinion, the death of a philosopher
must be considered a much fitter subject for a leader than
most of those which newspapers discuss. Mr Buckle,
whose death the world learned yesterday, was not a man
in whose philosophy we believed, nor do we think that
posterity will rank him with the highest class of thinkers.
His talent, however, for popular exposition, and the
thorough-going earnestness with which he brought his
wide reading to bear on the higher problems of the age,
justly entitled him to respect, and made him a very
influential writer. But his success, while deserved as a
matter of literature, was chiefly valuable as a sign of the
speculative tendencies of the age. It is not too much to
say, that the theory he propounded of history had for its
object to destroy all received ideas on the subject. It
viewed man's action as being governed by laws like those
which regulate the planets or the tides; and explained the
growth of nations, and the phenomena of their civilisation,
partly by physical circumstances, and partly by the opera-
tion of Science, studying these and their results, and apply-
ing the lessons of the study, practically, in the form of
philosophy. On this scheme, providential agency, equally
with human free will, disappears from history. The action
of individuals becomes insignificant. The moral element
288 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
is regarded as mistaken or perverting. The past generally
is viewed as dark and barbarous; and government and
religion as retarding influences in the course of human
affairs. Of course, no single element in all this doctrine
was new. The skill of Mr Buckle lay in his power of
combining, in support of the doctrine, the results of inquiry
in half a dozen branches of knowledge; and in his power
of putting his thoughts into fresh, flowing, emergetic Eng-
lish. Yet, even these gifts do not alone suffice to account
for his popularity. He would never have been so much
read if there had not been a largely-diffused dissatisfaction
with existing beliefs throughout society. Nor would he
have excited so much interest if the British reading public
had been more familiar than it is with current European
speculation. The moral of his success for those who have
the intellectual training or the religious direction of the
country in their hands, is, that the training and direction
both require improvement. Philosophy can only be op-
posed by philosophy; and if those whose business it is to
maintain orthodoxy in religion and politics were philoso-
phical themselves in handling their subjects, such books
as Mr Buckle's would take less hold on the popular mind.
It is not mere perverseness of taste, as some veterans sup-
pose, but a healthy intellectual love of discovery, and
admiration of intrepidity and erudition, that makes the
youth of a country run after works like the “History of
Civilisation.” And our professed doctors ought not to
leave their youth at the mercy of every innovator. They
ought to be abreast of the tide of European speculation,
and able to calculate its next wave and next tide line.
So far from this being the case, the bad effect is generally
HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. 289
produced before the remedy is ready; and we need only
instance Mr Buckle's second volume as having been a
twelvemonth published without having produced a single
worthy vindication of our Scottish history, of which it
was a kind of impeachment. How striking a comment
this is on certain national deficiencies, we need hardly say.
As for those shallow people who imagine that a merely
speculative book may be disregarded as harmless, they
should ponder the remark of Hume, which we set out with
quoting. On the ultimate depth of “opinion,” which our
institutions rest upon, their stability will depend; and it
is easy to fancy how the fate of a piece of legislation might
turn on the notions formed by legislators about Scotland,
notions which Mr Buckle's book should have helped to
form. Indeed, the public opinion of any generation is
only a compromise arrived at between the conflicting doc-
trines of the generations before it.
Some of our emptier Scotch “Liberals” have only one,
cry in the case of such men as the philosopher whom Eng-
land has just lost. Let us have “freedom of inquiry,”
they say, “the more discussion the better.” This is very
obvious and very easy teaching, but it is only half of what
the world requires. The world does require free investi-
gation; and as far as Mr Buckle was concerned, he was
utterly unchecked, except by the regular literary opposition
which all men lay their account with, who have systems to
establish, and which, by his treatment of all subjects, he
haughtily and defiantly provoked. When a rumour got
abroad in London, that some bigots meant to try and keep
him out of the Athenæum Club, a rally of men determined
to see fair play crushed the conspiracy at once. Philoso-
T
290 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
phical freedom is secured in all the higher regions of
thought now, as it ought to be. But philosophical culture
for the defence of established doctrine against innovation
is not secured ; and “Liberals” who are also professors,
doctors of divinity, etc., would do well to concentrate on
that point the attention which is not now needed for the
defence of liberty of speech and writing. To be sure, the
production of platitudes is an easier and showier task.
Considered as stimulants of intellectual inquiry, and of
the higher culture, books like Mr Buckle's must be pro-
nounced very salutary; and all mere denunciation of them,
unsustained by learning or argument, only strengthens
their effect on the public mind. His doctrine, if accepted,
would certainly not only weaken people's respect for every
institution existing, but would destroy the race’s admira-
tion for some of its greatest men, and tend to sap the
popular reverence for virtue, by making virtue appear a
quality of no great historical or personal importance. To
oppose a doctrine like this, history must be better written
—written with a deeper feeling of the moral and poetic
elements in it, so that man may be seen acting on circum-
stances, as well as circumstances acting on man. The
theory which makes great men of little account in history
is too flattering to democratic jealousy not to have plenty
of supporters now-a-days, and therefore requires as effective
an opposition as can be brought against it. And Churches
will best meet a scheme which treats them as effete ana-
chronisms, by living up to their spiritual tradition in
action, while making themselves perfectly acquainted with
the point of view of their opponents. One of the most
significant symptoms about Mr Buckle's philosophy was
HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. 291
not only its perfect honesty and sincerity, but the gravity
and business-like air which belonged to it. There was no
levity, no caprice, no apparent love of display, in his hetero-
doxy, which, therefore, all the more deserved serious and
thorough-going refutation.
On the whole, while drawing the proper moral from his
success, and apart from the temporary provocations of con-
troversy, it is impossible not to speak regretfully of Mr
Buckle's early death. We were at some pains last July, in
the Cowrant, to show why we could not accept his theory
of Scottish history as a whole; and a retrospective glance
at the articles reminds us that we occasionally expressed
this with some acerbity. There can be no harm in saying,
however, that Mr Buckle, like other bookish and somewhat
Solitary men, was apt to be contemptuously dogmatic, and
to state his views with a disregard of the long-cherished
associations of others, which in some degree justified his
critics in attempting to retaliate. In not a few quarters,
we fear, he was very ill used. But all that is over now.
His unfinished work remains, and will remain, a monu-
ment of his industry and ingenuity, to be opposed, when
opposed, without bitterness, though not, it is to be hoped,
without profit to the cause of truth. There is something
touching—something that awes the imagination—in the
place and circumstances of this famous writer's death. A
disciple of the latest and hardest schools of thought of
modern money-making Europe, he died amidst the gardens
and fountains of the oldest city of the world, the Damascus
of Abraham and St Paul; and the last Sun he was des-
tined to see went down behind the immemorially sacred
heights of Mount Lebanon.
2
9
2
CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
SIR. R. A. L. P. H. A B E R C R O M BY.”
(Edinburgh Cowrant, November 1861).
WE are very glad to welcome the biography of so good and
great a Scotsman as Sir Ralph Abercromby; and we are
certainly not the less disposed to criticise it indulgently
when it comes to us as the posthumous work of his son.
Such a book is professione pºetatis eaccusatus if it cannot be
laudatus, as Tacitus (very unnecessarily in his own case)
pleads. But we have no right to find fault with Lord
Dunfermline for not having shown, in a book which he
executed as a duty, the biographical genius which is one
of the rarest things in literature. We shall content our-
selves, therefore, with a mild protest against the dryness
of the work, regretting infinitely that a larger use was not
made of Sir Ralph's private letters, and the personal recol-
lections of him by friends, which together might have made
his image more life-like and familiar to us. But here our
censure ends. If Lord Dunfermline had not the faculty of
some biographers, he was still more conspicuously free
from the faults of the majority of them. The taste, tone,
and temper of his book are perfect. An atmosphere of
decorum, moderation, and chastened filial affection pervades
it ; and there is nothing in the political allusions to wound
the most susceptible of Conservatives. In short, if this
“Memoir” is dry, it is a wholesome sound dryness like
* Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby, K. B., 1793-1801. A
Memoir by his Son, James, Lord Dunfermline.
SIR. RALPH ABERCROMBY. 293
4-
that of a Christmas log, and not the far commoner dryness
which belongs to dry-rot.
Sir Ralph Abercromby, whose name, like Nelson's, is
indissolubly associated with Egypt, was by descent a
cadet of the Abercrombys of Birkenbog. His father and
grandfather each lived to be senior members of the Scot-
tish Bar, then almost exclusively recruited from their class;
and were Presbyterians and Whigs of the higher type.
Sir Ralph, whose mother was a Dundas of Manor, was
born at the paternal place of Menstrie, in the county of
Clackmannan, in October 1734. Though a Whig, his
father was liberal enough (in the true sense) to send the
boy to a Jacobite school at Alloa, from which he went,
successively, to Rugby, Edinburgh, and Leipsic. He was
thus thoroughly well educated, a fact which told on his after
career; and we learn, with high satisfaction, that he loved
the Roman literature, and retained his relish for the Wolf's
Milk on which he had been suckled, through life. We
quote the passage (one of the too few in which Lord Dun-
fermline has left us any account of his father's private
character and habits), that our youthful readers may take
its lessons to heart :—
“In the country, his habits were retired and simple; he
found active occupation in the management of a small farm;
he acquired an interest in the different schemes of agricultural
improvement which then engaged the attention of the public ;
he read the remarkable publications of the day, and he pos-
sessed an inexhaustible resource in his own reflections, as he
was at all times rather a profound thinker than an extensive
reader. His society was limited to a small circle of relations
and friends, and to the neighbouring gentry and clergy, with
294 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
whom he at all times associated on courteous and friendly terms.
In his intercourse with his neighbours he always endeavoured
to lead the conversation so as to induce his guests to express
their opinions on those subjects on which they were likely to
be best informed, and this they were the more readily induced
to do from the singular affability and modesty of his own manner.
His guests retired not only pleased with the hospitality and
kindness with which they had been received, but the skill with
which he had elicited whatever information each could contri-
bute, had placed them on such good terms with themselves, that
few reflected or were conscious that they had been engaged in
conversation with one who was so much their superior in the
extent of his views and the vigour of his understanding.
“The impression made by the conduct of Sir Ralph in his
retirement attracted the notice of a traveller in Scotland, to
whom he was unknown. “As a country gentleman,’ says the
writer, ‘Sir Ralph was ever attentive to all within the circle of
his movement; he stands high in the estimation of his neigh-
bours and dependants, and when his military glory shall have
fallen into oblivion, it will be gratefully remembered that he
was the friend of the destitute poor, the patron of useful know-
ledge, and the promoter of education among the meanest of his
cottagers; and as a circumstance, it may be mentioned that, in
the village of Tullibody, on his paternal estate, a reading
school, under his inspection, was established many years back.'
“Gratitude and affection may, perhaps, justify an allusion to
another of Sir Ralph's pursuits during his retirement in the
country. For a considerable period of time he regularly de-
voted a portion of each day to the instruction of his son, the
writer of this Memoir. Sir Ralph had not kept up the know-
ledge of Greek which he had acquired at school, but Cicero,
Horace, Caesar, Tacitus, and Livy, were authors with whom he
was familiar, whose merits he tasted, and always read with real
pleasure. His efforts as a teacher were mainly directed to the
perusal and study of these Latin authors, whom he so much
SIR. RALPH ABERCROMBY. 295
admired, and to the formation of a simple, clear, and nervous
style in English composition. The most vivid and enduring
impression that survives, is the remembrance of the wise, ele-
wated, and noble principles which he uniformly and earnestly
inculcated; and now, at the close of a long life, a comparison
of the lessons which he taught, with the results of personal
experience, derived from intercourse with public men and the
world, renders it impossible not to be filled with increased
veneration for the penetration, Sagacity, rectitude, and generous
principles of the instructor, and with a painful consciousness of
the manifold deficiencies of the pupil.”
At twenty years of age, young Abercromby returned
from Leipsic, strongly averse to pursuing the law, and very
anxious to enter the army. His father regretted this, but
being a man of sense gave way; and Ralph Abercromby
joined the Third Dragoon Guards in March 1756. A
grave, calm, high-aspiring youth, he had taken up the
soldier's profession, not as what it is to so many, but as an
intellectual career fit for the best minds, and demanding
the exercise of the soundest moral qualities. And it be-
came to him, what the sister-Service became to Colling-
wood, a man like him in several respects, though of a
nature more genial, and with a vein of humour of which
we see no trace in Sir Ralph.
The “Memoir” notices the earlier portion of Sir Ralph's
services very briefly. But we learn that he was in Ger-
many during some portion of the Seven Years' War; and,
as might be expected, he was deeply impressed through life
by what he then heard, perhaps saw, of Frederick the
Great. Another portion of this early service was spent in
Ireland, but that, too, is all dark for us, except that we
know him to have been learning his profession.
296 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
All the best years of Abercromby’s life were indeed
spent in the mere routine of home service, and were a slow
preparation for the great work he was to do in advanced
age. He avoided serving in the American War, of which
he did not approve ; and this gives us an opportunity of
showing what his politics were. Let nobody suppose that
they were revolutionary in the vulgar sense, or were such
as some of our “French sympathisers” then held, and
were encouraged in holding by at least a section of the
Whigs; for we all know that a great and important part
of the Whig body fell off from the French Revolution when
it showed its true colours:–
“Sir Ralph had anxiously watched the progress, and care-
fully studied the causes and results of the American Revolution;
he admired the conduct and character of General Washington
as a noble example of moderation and patriotism, and he re-
joiced in the development of the great principles of religious
and civil freedom, which he always expected would exercise a
powerful and favourable influence in Europe. With such
opinions, he could not fail to be warmly interested and strongly
excited by the striking events of the French Revolution. From
the first he made a just estimate of the importance and magni-
tude of the crisis that had arisen. His ardent love of liberty
was tempered by a calm and sound judgment; he never was
seduced by theories, however plausible; his views were practical,
and he knew that freedom could not be suddenly and safely
conceded to people who had been long oppressed, and that they
could only be trained to the use and enjoyment of it by experi-
ence, and under the influence and control of energetic and wise
leaders. He never was for a moment dazzled or misled by the
professions of the leaders of the French Revolution, whose con-
duct he condemned as rash and dangerous in conceding to the
people liberties which they were unprepared to understand or
SIR. R.A.LPH ABERCROMBY. - 297
use with discretion. His hopes for the establishment of free-
dom in France were always damped by the fear that liberty
would be abused, and that from aiming at too much they would
fail in obtaining those real benefits which were practical, and
adapted to the circumstances of their situation, and which
might be secured under firmer and wiser guidance. When the
French Revolution was discussed in his presence, he gave ex-
pression to these sentiments, by remarking that the French
people were not sufficiently instructed to submit to the sober
guidance of a Washington, and that they required to be con-
trolled by a firm and emergetic hand, such as that of Frederick of
Prussia, until they could be gradually trained to the exercise of
freedom ; since, if they were not so restrained, the result might
be perilous to themselves, might obstruct the progress of freedom,
and involve the rest of Europe in serious embarrassments.”
Nobody will dispute the excellent sense of these words;
while the fact that near seventy years afterwards, the
“firm and emergetic hand” should still be as much re-
quired as ever, somewhat justifies those among our grand-
sires who were not so hopeful of the Revolution as Sir
Ralph Abercromby.
In February 1793, the National Convention of France
declared war. Sir Ralph, now entering his sixtieth year,
was appointed a brigadier in the force sent to Flanders
under the Duke of York. His fame was still to make ;
and the proof how excellent his long quiet apprenticeship
had been is the way in which he established it during the
few years of advanced life left him. For the Flanders
campaign proved a failure, in spite of the gallantry shown
by our forces on particular occasions; and what first really
established Abercromby's character as a commander, was
the way in which he conducted the retreat through Holland
298 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
in the winter of 1794. It was not “glory” that he won,
but a good solid crown of plainer leaf, the respect due to
a trustworthy, intelligent, quietly brave man, capable of
making the most and the best of desperate situations. Next
year, he went off in command of a force sent to attack the
French and Dutch possessions in the West Indies. Dur-
ing the voyage, a storm arose, and for once, Lord Dunferm-
line (infinitely stingy in this way) treats us to an anecdote.
“At a moment when the Glory was known to be in
the most imminent danger, the confidential servant of Sir
Ralph rushed into the cabin, where he was with Admiral
Christian, and addressing him said, “We are going to be
drowned ſ” Very well, replied Sir Ralph, “you go to
bed.’” The reader, we must add, would quite mistake
Abercromby’s character if he thought this was fun in him.
It was prompt self-possessed matter-of-fact attention to
the situation, which did not admit of terrified flunkeys
running about spoiling the only chance of safety. Viewed
as such, we think it intensely characteristic of the sober
intrepidity of the Scot of that fine old school.
Abercromby commanded in the West Indies for a couple
of years, ’95-97 ; and during that period (with an interval
in which he visited Europe), he reduced St Lucie, Deme-
rara, Berbice, and Trinidad. His next employment was as
head of the forces in Ireland—'97, '98—a highly disagree-
able task, which brought him into the worst relations with
the advisers of Lord Camden, the Lord-Lieutenant, and
which he resigned. The King gave him the command in
Scotland, doubtless as a kind of plaster, and feeling that
he had met with hard usage ; and then—1799—sent him
again to Holland, where an attempt was to be made, in
SIR. RALPH ABERCROMBY. 299
conjunction with Russia, to free the country from the
French. “I breakfasted with Sir Ralph,” wrote a friend,
“the day before he left Edinburgh to take the command
of the expedition to Holland in 1799. I found him in
great spirits, and what I less expected, Lady Abercromby
was perfectly calm and tranquil. On remarking this to
Sir Ralph, he replied, ‘I have an excellent wife, who,
without a murmur, allows me to go where I please.’” This
sensible woman (ungallantly passed over in our review
hitherto) was a Menzies of Perthshire; but Lord Dun-
fermline gives us as Spartan an allowance of his father's
domestic life, as of his talk, letters, and amusements.
The expedition to Holland gave Abercromby SOIſle
further opportunities of showing his great military quali-
ties. He planned and executed (in conjunction with the
fleet) the chief success achieved—that of the Helder.
But after that the course of events was unlucky. The
Dutch did not co-operate with the spirit that had been
expected. The French were reinforced in a way that
had not been expected. Whenever our men and their
allies, the Russians, had to fight, they fought splendidly.
Sir Ralph showed the greatest resource, judgment,
patience, both before and after he was placed under the
command of the Duke of York. But the British forces
got cooped up (it would take a military writer and a long
story to explain how), and had to conclude an armistice,
giving up 8000 prisoners. Sir Ralph, however, had so
clearly done well, that the Ministry offered him a peerage.
But this the high tone of Abercromby's mind would not
permit him to accept. “He was unwilling that his name
should be permanently associated with a service of which
300 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
the result had been so humiliating to the country.” On
all such points his feelings were those of a quietly proud
man, and his language in writing of them is tinged with a
certain gravity, and even severity, which shows that his
strong, steel-like nature had a very fine edge. He would
do his duty with extremest accuracy to the minutest de-
tail. He was keenly sensible to the honours of success
and reputation. But he must be the judge when he had
earned them ; and they had no value for him till that
time had come. It was coming, but with it was coming
the end of all that was mortal in such aspirations; and
death was to place a laurel of more precious beauty than
the coronet would have had, on the cold brows of the
great Scottish soldier.
“On the 22d April 1800, Sir Ralph Abercromby, who was
then in Edinburgh, received a summons from Mr Dundas,
Secretary of State for the War Department, requiring his
immediate presence in London. On the following day, Sir
Ralph took leave of his family, and left Scotland never to re-
turn.”
Such is the simple but not unaffecting language in which
Lord Dunfermline opens his account of the last expedition
of his illustrious father. We shall wind up with a brief
sketch of this—the most striking, the most important, the
most illustrious, and the last—scene in our hero's career.
But it is impossible to narrate it here in detail; nor has
it been our ambition to do more in this article than to give
a rapid summary of a life and character which are not,
we think, sufficiently familiar to the younger generation of
our readers.
Ministers had now determined to strike a blow in the
SIR. RALPH ABERCROMBY. 301.
Mediterranean, and Sir Ralph sailed from Portsmouth for
Gibraltar in May. From Gibraltar he proceeded to
Minorca; and was already en route from thence to Genoa
to join our Austrian allies, when the news of the de-
cisive battle of Marengo induced him to change his
course for Leghorn. There, he saw Lord Keith, after
which he returned to Minorca, and made a careful inspec-
tion of his troops. His instructions now were to attack
and occupy Cadiz, for which extensive preparations were
made at Gibraltar; but when it came to selecting a point
for landing, the naval men thought the conditions un-
favourable, and the scheme was given up. This caused Sir
Ralph much disappointment. But the new orders from
home pointed out Egypt as the best scene of action ; and
Sir Ralph promptly acceded to the plan of endeavouring
to drive the French from that country, and so compelling
them to a peace. He wanted a peace founded on some
striking success of this kind, for it was his fixed belief that
the war, as a war to put down Revolution, could not be
finally successful, and that we ought to wind up our share
in it honourably and vigorously, as soon as possible. He
went into the Egyptian scheme with the greatest keenness;
and an eye-witness describes him at that time (he was
sixty-six years old) as “ten years younger since he left
England.”
The chief preparations for the great expedition now
resolved on were made at Gibraltar and Malta. But the
final rendezvous was in the splendid harbour of Marmorice
Bay, near Rhodes, on the coast of Asia Minor, a bay of
which the mouth is narrow, but which, inside, is a most
noble and extensive anchorage, surrounded by mountains
302 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
clothed with woods from top to base. (It was here that
the Mediterranean squadron wintered in 1840, after the
Syrian War, and we need hardly say that it is not a spot
easily to be forgotten). At Marmorice, Sir Ralph worked
indefatigably, getting everything into order for the great
day of sailing. The sick were sent into an hospital at
Rhodes, with its many classical and many feudal associa-
tions. Horses and mules were bought. Wood and water
were laid in. Maps of Egypt were studied. Every detail
of discipline was carried out ; and instructions for all
kinds of contingencies were drawn up and made familiar
to the officers. On the 22d February, the fleet sailed,
bearing a force estimated at 16,337 men and 627 horses.
The weather was hazy and windy for some days; and by
an unlucky mishap the important engineer officers who had
gone on to reconnoitre the coast were captured by the
enemy. This happened in Aboukir Bay, so it had the
effect of teaching the French where to expect the invasion.
In that bay, however, the greater part of the fleet anchored
on the 2d March ; strong north-west winds blowing the
while, and beating up the heavy surf on the landing-place.
It was the 8th inst. before the landing (all the details of
which had been arranged in Marmorice) began. On that
morning, at two o'clock, the fiery signal-rocket streamed
from Lord Keith's flag-ship, and the first division began to
get into the boats, superintended by Captain Cochrane of
the navy. The men answered “with hurrahs’ to the
heavy concentrated fire which met them from the shore.
As soon as they reached the Sandy, hilly beach, the battle
began. “This,” observed Sir Ralph, in high good-humour,
to General Hope, “is really taking the bull by the horns.”
SIR. R.A.LPH ABERCROMBY. 303
He landed quite in time to direct the troops in this first
engagement, which secured the landing, and passed the
cold night which followed “under a small hut formed
from branches of the date-trees.” The soldiers had built
this specially for him, a pretty little compliment to a
General who was famous for his attention to their comfort
and health. Strange to say, Lord Dunfermline seems to
think it half necessary to apologise for this “trifling inci-
dent’’ (p. 281), though it is just the kind of detail, the
want of which is the only fault we have to find with the
“ Memoir.”
On the 12th, the army advanced five miles, fighting its
way against tirailleurs and cavalry amongst sand-hills and
date-woods. On the 13th a battle followed, in which the
French fell back, and the British lost 1100 in killed and
wounded.
Our army was now about four miles from Alexandria,
with its right resting on the sea, and its left on the Canal
and the Lake. Here was fought on the 21st March the
great battle in which Sir Ralph Abercromby fell. To
attempt a description of it would be beyond the object of
our review ; and with regard to what is its central event
for a biographer of Abercromby, we think it best to tell
that in Lord Dunfermline's own words. Here is his nar-
rative of the good and gallant Commander's death, which
closed with victory a career of labour and honour —
“It has never been ascertained at what precise time Sir Ralph
received the wound which proved to be mortal. Colonel Aber-
cromby states, that his tent being at some distance from that of
Sir Ralph, he did not see him when the first alarm of the
French attack was given, and did not afterwards meet him
304 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
until about break of day, in the rear of the reserve, when the
principal attack had been made, and he then gave him orders
relative to the movements of the troops. Colonel Abercromby
did not afterwards see Sir Ralph until near the close of the
action, when he found him in a small work about the centre of
the line, where there were some guns firing on the enemy.
Colonel Abercromby observed that the clothes of Sir Ralph were
cut, and that there were marks of blood upon them. He asked
if he was wounded, and he answered, ‘Yes, by a spent ball,
but it gives me no uneasiness;' but he added that he felt con-
siderable pain in his breast and side from a blow he had
received from a French dragoon who rode against him when
the cavalry broke in on the right.
“General Ludlow and Colonel Abercromby urged in the
strongest manner that his wound should be examined, but he
persevered in refusing, assigning as his reason that there were
many poor fellows worse wounded than he was, and that the
surgeons were more usefully employed in attending to them.
Sir Ralph dismounted, and walked about with apparent ease,
watching earnestly the manoeuvres of the enemy. After an
interval of half an hour, he complaimed of being very faint, and
sat down on the ground, with his back to the parapet of the
redoubt.
“General Ludlow then sent for one of the surgeons of the
Guards, who were nearest at hand, but only a mate could be
found. The mate looked at the wound, and found that the ball
had entered the thigh, and Sir Ralph was again pressed to leave
the field, but he would not do so until the firing had ceased, and
the enemy had completely retired. As soon as the firing
ceased, Sir Ralph was removed to the tent of Colonel Aber-
cromby, where the wound was again examined by a skilful
surgeon of the Guards, who, not finding the ball where he
expected, advised that Sir Ralph should be carried on board a
ship, to which he at once assented, and he was conveyed on
board the Foudroyant, Lord Keith's flag-ship. Sir Ralph was
SIR. RAILPH ABERCROMBY. 305
placed on a bier, and an officer who was present took a soldier's
blanket, and was adjusting it under his head as a pillow, when
Sir Ralph asked, ‘What is that you are placing under my
head?’ The officer (General Sir John Macdonald, late Adju-
tant-General of the army) replied that it was only a soldier's
blanket; on which Sir Ralph said, ‘Only a soldier's blanket 1 a
Soldier's blanket is of great consequence, and you must send me
the name of the soldier to whom it belongs, that it may be re-
turned to him.’ This was accordingly done, and the blanket
was duly restored, Sir Ralph himself having given directions to
that effect.”
The little detail of the “soldier's blanket” worthily
winds up our story, its touch of homeliness revealing
delightfully the characteristic, plain, unromantic heroism
of the man. Scotland has all along produced two types
of heroism, the romantic type represented by her Mon-
trose,_the plainer one by such as he from whom we are
now to part. They are found sometimes on different sides
of her political and ecclesiastical divisions. But as stand-
ing each for a half of her national character, they are
equally worthy of the admiration of her people ; and that
Sir Ralph Abercromby may henceforth be better known to
his countrymen is, we think, as patriotic a wish as we are
certain that it is a most sincere one on our part.
—$—
EDWARD IRWING AND THE GIFT OF TONGUES.
Poor noble Irving's fault at best was such,
Others believed too little, he too much :
For Gift of Tongues 'twas not unwise to seek;
Oh, would the Spirit grant our clergy Greek
U
306 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
D R GUTH RIE.
(Edinburgh Cowrant, May 1864).
THE retiring manifesto of a public leader of any kind is
always a document of more than ordinary interest. The
last appearance of an actor takes men to the play who care
little for it in general; and the last speech of a statesman
melts friends and conciliates opponents. Dr Guthrie
knows the force of the feeling in human nature on which
this effect depends; and he has made his farewell to the
congregation of Free St John's in public. It would be un-
gracious to submit a paper of the kind, addressed by a
preacher to his flock, to rigid criticism, and all the more
so, because its contents are almost entirely personal matters
between preacher and flock. The style is somewhat dubious
towards the end of the fourth paragraph. The Superflous
observation of the Doctor, that his Master can do without
him, will hardly commend itself to pure tastes ; nor the
sentence in which he brackets himself with King Hezekiah.
But the impression made by the whole is favourable. The
tone is pious and friendly, even when it is most self-
conscious; and the writer shows a full sense of the Sacred-
ness of the tie which has united him to those he is
addressing.
But the interest, whether of the occasion or the epistle, is,
that Dr Guthrie has been much more to the world than a
Free Church minister. He has, in a certain way, been not
only one of the most popular of preachers, but a typical
Scottish preacher to strangers and tourists. Now, though
D.R. GlüTHIRIE. 307
we sometimes hear preaching talked of as if it stood on a
sacred eminence exempt from ordinary laws, there can be
no question that it follows the fashions, and reflects the
opinions of each age, like ordinary literature. A slight
study of such of the sermons of different ages as survive,
will soon convince the reader of this truth. Whatever sort
of preaching, then, is “in fashion,” may be safely taken as
throwing light both on the tastes and the ideas of the
period which admires it. And Dr Guthrie's friends need
hardly be shocked at hearing that his pulpit oratory has
been, just as much as the last new novel, the fruit of an
age which delights in amusing literature. But for Scott,
to name only one popular author, there would have been
mo Dr Guthrie. All the Doctor's descriptive passages,
all his pathetic bits, all his touches of gloom carefully
relieved by lively and sunshiny bursts, all that kind of
thing generally, the good man has owed to his own clever-
mess as inspired, to the public taste as created, by the
masters of the modern British fiction and the modern
British essay. Do we remind him of this, as if it were
anything against him " Not we. It is much to his credit
that he should have enabled himself by any legitimate
means to command the interest of hearers of sermons, in
an age which is apt to be impatient under sermons of all
kinds. One lesson, however, ought to be derived from
the phenomenon. Men who hold what are called Dr
Guthrie’s “views,” are too fond of treating imaginative
literature with sour contumely. It may do them good to
reflect that it is because such literature is universally dif-
fused, that the “ taking” style of a Guthrie is possible, or
effective, or acceptable.
308 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
The success of the retiring preacher, however, is other-
wise instructive, and that in more important relations than
those just referred to. It is much that Dr Guthrie should
have helped to remove the old impression that Scottish
preaching was universally austere, painfully abstract, dryly
logical, and all the rest of it. He has done this, we fear,
only too successfully, by making young preachers aim at
florid illustration to the exclusion of solid reasoning and
distinctly defined doctrine of any kind. But he has done
more. The necessities of popularity have modified the
teaching of his sermons, just as they have formed and
coloured their style. If you strolled in on a Sunday to
hear the Doctor, and he was not painting a bit of moun-
tain scenery, he was pretty sure to be warning his hearers
“not to look with a jaundiced eye at other Churches.”
Now, this was very nice, and characteristic of the period.
Every generation has its pet virtues; and the pet virtues
of this age are tolerance and charity. Of course, we all
knew that when the Establishment required a kick, Dr
Guthrie was as ready to administer it as his neighbours;
and we were puzzled occasionally to distinguish between
the wine of Dr Guthrie and the vinegar of Dr Candlish,
the tipples were so like, though the reputation of the men
was so different, since all agreed that Dr Candlish was—
& 4 —veteris non parcus aceti.”
But, still, it was a mighty thing to see, from the tone of
Free St John's, that professed bigotry was not considered
likely to pay. The tourist, accordingly, who had been
told that the Scotch were bigots, went away, thinking
perhaps that there was little enough in the sermon, were it
boiled down into pure thought, but glad to find his northern
DR GUTHRIE. 309
fellow-subjects more reasonable and humane than he had
expected. This, again, was a satisfactory fact, and a
valuable symptom. The truth is, that the pulpit is
governed by the age, more than the age is governed by the
pulpit. Dr Guthrie taught one set of people, what a more
select set of people had, through books, been teaching him.
The current of opinion is too strong for men, whatever
their forms or traditions require them to say ; and just as
we see the Voluntaries, now-a-days, doing their best to get
rid with a good grace of the stern but inconvenient dogmas
of their predecessors, so the most popular preacher of the
Free Church has, on the whole, found it expedient to be
as little of a strict Free Churchman as possible. Any re-
peated intrusion into his sermons of the old cant would
have alienated the most flattering part of his attendance.
One satisfactory conclusion would seem to be, that the
more popular a preacher is in our time, the less narrow
and mischievous he can venture to show himself. He will
have to keep the worst part of himself out of sight, and to
sing, like the mermaid, with his tail, that is his sectarian-
.ism, well under water. But we must also bear in mind,
that from this very state of things the liberality of a
preacher like Dr Guthrie proves nothing in favour of the
liberality of his particular Church. He is liberal, not qua
Free Churchman, but qua popular preacher ; not because
it is enforced on him by the tenets which he professes, but
because under no other conditions could he master his
rhetoric, or command his celebrity. An out-and-out fanatic
of the old school would never enter the galleries or
studios in which Dr Guthrie learned to paint (according
to his degree of faculty) his storms in Highland gorges, or
310 - CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
his stars glittering over a Syrian landscape. The success
of such art shows, not that his Church can influence the
world from her own point of view, but that, in order to do
So, she must learn that world's own ways and accommodate
herself to its tendencies. The career of the most success-
ful of Free Churchmen is the one which has done least to
prove any special necessity for the existence of a Free
Church.
—Q-
P R O F E S S 0 R W I L S 0 N.”
(Edinburgh Courant, November 1862).
THIS book contains interesting matter about some very
memorable men, and deserves to be — and will be—
widely circulated. It would be flattery to say that, con-
sidered as a biographical work of art, it is entitled to take
any very high rank. But there are few good Lives of
men of letters in the language; and after you have
allowed for Johnson’s Poets, and Walton, all the rest
may be counted on your fingers. Mrs Gordon writes with
excellent taste, with pleasant pious enthusiasm of feeling,
—and, on the whole, with a becoming regard for those who
were connected with her hero in the business and ambi-
tions of life. Where her book is deficient, this we take it
* Christopher North : A Memoir of John Wilson, late Professor
of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. By his
Daughter, Mrs Gordon. Edinburgh.
PROFESSOR: WILSON. 3II
is due either to restraints, or defects of material, for which
she is not responsible. We certainly expected it to tell
us more about some of Wilson's famous contemporaries
than it does. There is very little trace of Scott in it,
considering the nearness of the men, physical, moral,
and political,—to each other. Even Lockhart is chiefly
made familiar to us in letters so exceedingly intimate
and hasty that it was hardly right to publish them with-
out fuller letters to complete the view of their mutual
relations. Lamb and Moore never occur, though there
is a good story current about Lamb and the Professor's
taking a pot of porter, nay, we do them injustice, pots
the man,—together, in London ; while Moore testifies in
his Diary that he dimed in company with Wilson, at
Edinburgh, on the 6th November 1825. There are few of
Wilson's letters preserved, and none of these are striking.
He kept no important diary. His talk has perished. There
is no record of the course of his studies, or of the free
outspoken criticism on the men and events of the day,
which he must have kept uttering all his life. Nay, we
are not even told whether he adhered to the Presbyterian
Church, or became an Episcopalian, which is always an in-
teresting point about a Scotsman, Again, to come to another
side of the subject, we should like to have heard why old
Mrs Wilson was so fearfully opposed to his courtship of
“Margaret ;” and it is not easy to make out whether he
lost all his patrimony or only a part of it. Now, we don’t
say that it was in Mrs Gordon's power to make up by any
care (could love have done it, love, we are sure, would not
have been wanting), for all the desiderata here enume-
rated. But in some such points, we think, she may still
312 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
make her work, to which we wish a growing and per-
manent success, more perfect. A portion of the literary
advice at her service seems good; though in the matter
of express literary contributions from Professor Wilson's
friends the book is ill-furnished to a degree not quite
creditable to those gentlemen. Indeed, there is nothing of
real value beside Mrs Gordon's own handiwork, and the
Letters, etc., in the book, excepting, and this is a marked
exception,-a sketch of a dinner at Wilson's, by Mr Hill
Burton, written with all his customary shrewdness and
quiet humour, in his customary good English.
This Life, then, in its relation to general literary history,
must be looked on as mainly curious for its pictures of the
founding of Blackwood's Magazine, though the interest of
all that period was long ago much forestalled in Lockhart's
Scott. But as a domestic biography it stands alone, quiet
alone as a record of Wilson, and in some respects alone, in
its kind of interest, among the best domestic biographies
of men of letters. Most of these Lives are valuable be-
cause they complement, they supply the other half, of what
is supplied by the works of the men whom they celebrate.
Thus, we all knew that Charles Lamb was a delightful
humourist, moralist, wit : Talfourd showed us that he had
a private life, of which intense domestic devotion under
trials of appalling calamity was the continued tenor. We
all knew that Sydney Smith was a delightful humourist,
moralist, wit, also; not of the school of Lamb, the poetic,
imaginative, somewhat solitary school,—but of dinner-
tables, reviews, and the world : Lady Holland, his
daughter, showed us that Sydney was a hard-working
parish priest, and an affectionate cheerful man, witty at
PROFESSOR: WILSON. 313
home as well as in the reviews and the world. And, gener-
ally, perhaps, the effect of such Memoirs as these is to
Surprise the world, by revealing a whole side of the
memorable man's existence, which only a few discerning ob-
servers were inclined to think possible. Now, it is the main
peculiarity of Mrs Gordon's book, and here we have the
key to Wilson’s whole nature and career, —that it does not
complement Wilson's works in this kind of way, but simply
illustrates them by showing that his life and works were in
wonderful and happy harmony. Wilson’s life was a page
of one of his books; and in reading the narrative of it,
you find that he was just the kind of man you had always
fancied him. Life is one thing, Literature another; and
though at bottom, of course, all Literature is an image of
Life, still, long ages have so modified man, by art, by
learning, by institutions, that there is not much Literature
in which the presence of Nature is very vividly felt. When,
therefore, a writer like Wilson appears, who, even without
transcendent genius, for a very great genius he was not,
is in thorough communication with Nature ; writing as he
acts, and talking as he does both ; a man “all symmetry,”
perfectly healthy, there is a charm about him which even a
rarer kind of mind may be without. As a description,
then, of this fortunate type of man of letters, by no means
a very common type at any time, and least of all just now,
Mrs Gordon's Life of her Father must be pronounced to
have even a scientific value. And because Wilson was
this kind of man, we take a pleasure in his domesticities
and recreations, and can put up with the absence of the
sort of material already described as deficient, better than
in most cases. But Mrs Gordon has also done literature
314 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
and the world a service, if only by taking the trouble to
bring together abundant evidence that here was another
man of real brains who was a most unmistakeably good
fellow. There may be men of genius, whose minds,
like the street conduits, “run wine’’ on Coronation days
and such festivals, but are ordinary gutters of base matter
at common times; for Nature is very various, and produces
strange creatures now and then. But we always hail with
pleasure every new proof that such monsters are only ex-
ceptional ; and that your broad, brawny, demonstrative
Wilsons, not less than your quaint, quiet, deep-eyed Lambs,
are true men at heart. -
We may safely assume that every reader knows the
general outlines of Wilson's history, and that we need not,
at this time of day, proceed to tell how he was born at
Paisley in 1785, and educated at Glasgow and Oxford;
how he bought Elleray; lived in Cumberland for a time;
and returned to Scotland, when circumstances made it ne-
cessary that he should work for his bread. We shall only
notice a few of the leading events of his life, and that in
relation to his writings and his times. It is curious to see,
and far more easily seen in his case than in most, how
exactly his experience can be shown to correspond with his
subsequent literary out-come. The fact that in youth he
had ample means was one cause of this. An athlete, a
lover of nature, a lover of character, he had every oppor-
tunity to indulge these tastes. Not particularly studious,
he was lucky to get at Oxford the Greek which enabled
him to fight his way through Homer like one of Homer's
own heroes. A poet in feeling, if not decisively gifted
with the poet's practical artistic skill,—(for in that music,
PROFESSOR: WILSON. 315
as in the other, you may have the ear without mastering
the instruments),--a lovely residence in Cumberland, and
the neighbourhood and friendship of Wordsworth, de-
veloped him into as good a poet as his mind allowed
him to be. And all these tendencies expanded them-
selves freely, and without check, upon the invaluable
basis of a Supreme physical organisation. The general
governing condition of his being was Plenty. He had all
the human and intellectual feelings and instincts in good
quantity and good proportion; tears and laughter, capabili-
ties of joy, capabilities of pain, all abundant, and each
intensely powerful for the time; so that, big and strong
as he was, he was sentimental when sentimental, to the
verge of the maudlin and lachrymose, and jolly when jolly,
till the roar of his laughter seemed loud enough to shake
all the established proprieties of the world. It was this
enthusiasm, this plentitude of nature, which impressed
everybody, and frightened those who had reason for not
relishing his ascendancy. We do not wonder that some
really worthy people disapproved of such a man's succeed-
ing to the quiet, exquisitely delicate and refined Dr Thomas
Brown. It was bringing in a torch to take the place of a
lamp.
Mrs Gordon is justly indignant at the treatment which
her father met as candidate for the Chair which became
vacant by Brown's death in 1820. When the Whigs said
that Sir William Hamilton was the more learned philo-
sopher, of course they were right, though what they meant
was that he was the better Whig. But what had Sir
William’s attainments to do with Wilson's private life, or
how did it follow that because Sir William knew Aristotle
316 CEHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
better than Wilson, therefore Wilson was a “a bad husband
and father ?” What they really did not like, the Whigs
of that day,+was Wilson’s satire; and, indeed, Wilson used
to thrash them with as little ceremony as he would have
used in thrashing a carter. His satire was essentially and
characteristically pugilistic, and he and Lockhart were the
Pollux and Castor of the Tories of the day,+
“ Hunc equis, illum Superare pugnis
Nobilem .”
Lockhart fought with the javelin, Wilson with the fist;
and though Wilson's satire seems the more ferocious, it was
really much the least cruel of the two. Apropos of Lock-
hart, a truly brilliant writer, who wrote the best English
style of any Scotchman of his time, Sir Walter Scott him-
self not excepted ; who combined far more of Jeffrey's
French cleverness and edge than Jeffrey ever had, with a
vein of poetry and humour, and art-feeling, and a Sound-
ness of scholarship, which Jeffrey never possessed at all,—
Lockhart, we say, is not properly treated by Mrs Gordon.
She seems to say that his London success made him
neglectful of his old Edinburgh friends; yet, on her own
showing, he treated the Professor with every due friendly
reverence to the last, and the general statement itself is
not accepted by those Edinburgh men who knew Lockhart
in both spheres of action best.
Of Wilson's teaching in the Moral Philosophy Chair,
the world has not yet the means of judging, and a good
deal of nonsense is talked about it in the interval. Learn-
ing regarded, Wilson certainly had as much right to lecture
on such a theme as Sydney Smith, who lectured on it
without the temptation of a Chair; and more right than
Ö
PROFESSOR: WILSON. 317
Tom Moore had to discourse on the Fathers (Tom knew
more about the Daughters) in the Edinburgh Review /
Moral Philosophy is a double subject. One may analyse
the moral elements, metaphysically; and one may enforce
moral lessons oratorically, and either duty will be useful,
if well performed. From all accounts, Wilson was strongest
in the last department, and by discharging its duties with
genius and fidelity he must have done a great deal of good.
But in only one region of letters was he first-rate, the
region of the magazinist. Blackwood is his monument, as
the Edinburgh is Jeffrey's; though Wilson has, now, pro-
bably fifty readers for Jeffrey's one. To Blackwood, Wil-
son was what Fonblanque was to the Examiner; what
Captain Stirling for a period was to the Times; what
Lockhart was to the Quarterly; what Rintoul was to the
Spectator. “Editor,” in the booksellers’ sense, he never
seems to have been, but he was the intellectual spirit and
presiding moral power of the whole affair. The important
part of a lighthouse is the light. - -
We agree, again, with Mrs Gordon, in thinking that
Wilson's admirers may be well contented to hear him
called a magazimist, or essayist, if that title be preferred.
He wrote no great book, any more than Addison or Gray;
but he poured out from himself, in abundance, the kind of
stuff of which great books are made. And here we may
recur to what we said before of his oneness of nature, and
may add that he wrote just as he walked, or fished, or
boxed, or leaped, and continued to do so till the end. He
is the most colloquial and rhapsodical of writers, which is
one of the reasons of his great hold over the young. In
middle life, his desultory papers are found somewhat
3.18 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
wearisome, and we settle at last on the “Noctes’’ and the
“Homer.” We esteem the “Noctes” his best work, and
agree with Professor Ferrier in thinking the Shepherd the
glory of the “Noctes.” Professor Ferrier ranks the
Shepherd with Socrates and Falstaff; but though the
opinion of a man of his fine intellect and solid attainments
is always valuable, we hardly believe that he will get even
the most enthusiastic Scotchman to go so far with him.
We may, however, remark that there is more dramatic
power in the “Noctes” than a critic quite appreciates till
after several examinations; and that it is unfair to rank
the book only by its abundance of fun, rhetoric, and
rhapsody. The reader, for example, who turns to the
Dialogues in which De Quincey figures, after a thoughtful
study of De Quincey's Works in the new collected edition,”
will see that the author has most felicitously imitated the
tone of his rare and curious mind. Tickler, too, and North
are skilfully individualised, and the Shepherd is always
pre-eminently himself. Now, few of our readers have
perhaps ever considered how uncommon this power of
creating the real Dialogue is in modern literature, for it
was a branch, we may remark, in which the ancients were
conspicuously strong. It is much to have succeeded in a
walk, where, among your predecessors who have failed, are
found such names as those of Bishop Berkeley and Mr
Landor. The “Minute Philosopher ” and the “Imaginary
Conversations” are truly delightful reading. The reason-
ing of the first is beautifully lucent, and its spirit at once
gay, gentlemanly, and Christian. Mr Landor's Epigrams
sting like Attic bees, while there is Attic honey for those
.* Now proceeding so satisfactorily from Messrs Black's house.
PROFESSOR WILSON. 3.19
who sympathise with him. But the persons in Berkeley's
and Landor's Dialogues are shadowy, and want human
reality, and warmth, and colour. No footsteps are heard on
that classic Sward, in those dreamlike gardens ! Whereas
the Shepherd is as thoroughly a character as any character
in Plautus or Molière. The fault of the “Noctes,” as of all
Professor Wilson’s writings, is, that he overdoes everything;
that his diffuseness sometimes becomes languor; that his de-
clamation is apt to end in noise; and his poetic monologues
to taper away at last into wreaths of indistinct smoke,
He was too great a man ever to become a mere egotist.
But in reading this Life, one understands how his quasi-
autocratic position in Edinburgh became injurious to
him. He saw far too little of England, especially of
London; and we gather from his biographer that he was
never on the Continent at all, and rarely in any Society
where new and different elements of life might have
exerted any influence over him. The effect of his example
on weak imitators was especially disastrous. The poetic
side of his genius produced a Gushing School; and
the comic side a Saucy School; both rapidly becoming
intensely provincial. The Gushing School man might be
known at once, by beginning his paper, “Blue cliffs of
Glemhoolan, where be now your rackdriven,” etc., etc. ;
while the Comic School man talked of “the knout,” an
instrument in his hands scarcely fatal to mosquitoes; and
cast defiance at “Cockneys,” long after Edinburgh had
ceased to produce wits who could have stood for half an
hour the epigrammatic fire of a man like Douglas Jerrold;
and long after the only really great Scottish writer of the
age had taken up his abode among the red-bricked houses,
320 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
pleasant boulevards, and airy river-walks of Chelsea. But
all this the fine old Professor could not help; and his own
good influence meanwhile had permeated the country far
and wide. For he steadily preached a love of Nature,
a love of goodness, and a love of Scotland’s traditions
and institutions. Nor was he narrowly national. No
Scotsman of his time did so much to make the great Eng-
lish poets known, read, and honoured in Scotland; and
his life-long fidelity to Wordsworth was as beautiful as
Jeffrey's early treatment of him was narrow and mean.
But detailed criticisms of criticism are not things for which
there is room in a newspaper.
We subjoin a couple of extracts, the first, a sketch of
De Quincey, which is turned off with a really pleasant
neatneSS :—
DE QUINCEY's DINNER.
“I remember his coming to Gloucester Place one stormy
night. He remained hour after hour, in vain expectation that
the waters would assuage and the hurly-burly cease. There
was nothing for it but that our visitor should remain all night.
The Professor ordered a room to be prepared for him, and they
found each other such good company that this accidental deten-
tion was prolonged, without further difficulty, for the greater
part of a year. During this visit, some of his eccentricities did
not escape observation. For example, he rarely appeared at
the family meals, preferring to dine in his own room at his own
hour, not unfrequently turning night into day. His tastes
were very simple, though a little troublesome, at least to the
servant who prepared his repast. Coffee, boiled rice and milk,
and a piece of mutton from the loin, were the materials that
invariably formed his diet. The cook, who had an audience
with him daily, received her instructions in silent awe, quite
PROFESSOR: WILSON. --- 321
overpowered by his manner; for, had he been addressing a
duchess, he could scarcely have spoken with more deference.
He would couch his request in such terms as these — Owing to
dyspepsia afflicting my system, and the possibility of any
additional disarrangement of the stomach taking place, conse-
quences incalculably distressing would arise; so much so indeed
as to increase nervous irritation, and prevent me from attending
to matters of overwhelming importance, if you do not remember
to cut the mutton in a diagonal rather than a longitudinal
form.’ The cook—a Scotchwoman—had great reverence for
Mr De Quincey as a man of genius; but, after one of these
interviews, her patience was pretty well exhausted; and she
would say, ‘Weel, I never heard the like o' that in a' my days;
the bodie has an awful sicht o' words. If it had been my ain
maister that was wanting his dinner, he would ha’ ordered a
hale tablefu' wi' little mair than a waff o' his haun, and here's
a' this claver aboot a bit mutton nae bigger than a prin. Mr
De Quinshey would mak' a gran' preacher, though I’m thinking
a hantle o' the folk wouldna ken what he was driving at.”
The second is a letter from our great Carlyle, whom
Wilson knew early, and always admired —
WILSON AND CARLYLE.
“A letter from so celebrated a man as Thomas Carlyle
naturally awakens interest, to know how he and Professor
Wilson regarded each other. The terms of affection expressed
in this epistle would lead to a supposition that there had been
an intimate intercourse between them. But either want of
opportunity or other circumstances prevented the continuance
of personal friendship. It seems that these two gifted men
never met, at least not more than once again after their first
introduction, which took place in the house of Mr John Gordon,
at one time a favourite pupil, and ever after a dearly-loved
friend of my father:—
X
322 CHARACTERS AND CRITICISMS.
“‘CRAIGENPUTTock, DUMFRIES,
“‘ 19th December 1829.
“‘MY DEAR SIR,-Your kind promise of a Christmas visit
has not been forgotten here; and though we are not without
misgivings as to its fulfilment, some hope also still lingers; at
all events, if we must go unserved, it shall not be for want of
wishing and audible asking. Come, then, if you would do us a
high favour, that warm hearts may welcome in the cold New
Year, and the voice of poetry and philosophy, numeris lege
solutis, may for once be heard in these deserts, where, since
Noah's deluge, little but the whirring of heath-cocks and the
lowing of oxen has broken the stillness. You shall have a warm
fire, and a warm welcome; and we will talk in all dialects,
concerning all things; climb to hill tops, and see certain of the
kingdoms of this world, and at night gather round a clear
hearth, and forget that winter and the devil are so busy in our
planet. There are seasons when one seems as if emancipated
from the ‘prison called life,' as if its bolts were broken, and
the Russian ice-palace were changed into an open sunny
Tempe, and man might love his brother without fraud or
fear ! A few such hours are scattered over our existence,
otherwise it were too hard, and would make us too hard.
“‘But now descending to prose arrangements, or capabilities
of arrangement, let me remind you how easy it is to be conveyed
hither. There is a mail-coach nightly to Dumfries, and two
stage-coaches every alternate day to Thornhill; from each of
which places we are but fifteen miles distant, with a fair road,
and plenty of vehicles from both. Could we have warning, we
would send you down two horses; of wheel carriages (except
carts and barrows) we are still unhappily destitute. Nay, in
any case, the distance, for a stout Scottish man, is but a morn-
ing walk, and this is the loveliest December weather I can
recollect of seeing. But we are at the Dumfries Post-office
every Wednesday and Saturday, and should rejoice to have the
PROFESSOR: WILSON. 323
quadrupeds waiting for you either there or at Thornhill on any
specified day. To Gordon, I purpose writing on Wednesday;
but any way I know he will follow you, as Hesperus does the
sun. - .
“‘I have not seen one Blackwood, or even an Edinburgh
newspaper, since I returned hither; So what you are doing in
that unparalleled city is altogether a mystery to me. Scarcely
have tidings of the Scotsman-Mercury duel reached me, and
how the worthies failed to shoot each other, and the one has lost
his editorship, and the other still continues to edit. Sir William
Hamilton's paper on Cousin's ‘Metaphysics’ I read last night;
but, like Hogg's Fife warlock, “my head whirled roun', and ane
thing I couldma mind.' O curas hominum ! I have some
thoughts of beginning to prophesy next year, if I prosper; that
seems the best style, could one strike into it rightly.
“‘Now, tell me if you will come, or if you absolutely refuse.
At all events, remember me as long as you can in goodwill and
affection, as I will ever remember you. My wife sends you her
kindest regards, and still hopes against hope that she shall
wear her Goethe brooch this Christmas—a thing only don
when there is a man of genius in the company. -
“‘I must break off, for there is an Oxonian gigman coming
to visit me in an hour, and I have many things to do. I heard
him say the other night that in literary Scotland there was not
one such other man as !—a thing in which, if
would do himself any justice, I cordially agree.—Believe me
always, my dear Sir, yours with affectionate esteem,
• “‘THOMAS CARLYLE.'''
After Carlyle, the less one says the better; and we con-
clude by wishing every success to this loyal and tender
Memorial of our large-brained and large-hearted country-
Iſla,Il.
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