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Cornell University Library 
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 Lectures and addresses / by Sir Robert A 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 646 167 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029646167 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 > 
 
LECTURES 
 AND ADDRESSES 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR ROBERT ALLISON 
 
 M.P. FOR NORTH CDMBEKLAND 1885-I9OO 
 
 LONDON 
 
 ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS 
 
 187 PICCADILLY, W 
 1913 
 
V 
 
 ^•2'1<12.^« 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Fifteen Yeaes in Paeuament. 
 
 House of Commons — No. I. . 
 House of Commons — No. II. . 
 
 Speakers of the House of Commons 
 
 The Constitution of the United States 
 
 Edmund Burke. 
 
 Milton 
 
 Thomas Carlyle 
 
 Sir Walter Scott 
 
 Quotations 
 
 The Journals of Sir Daniel Lk Fleming 
 
 Ballads of the Border . . . : 
 
 Hymns and their Writers 
 
 PAOE 
 
 1 
 
 m 
 
 43 
 64 
 79 
 103 
 128 
 146 
 165 
 192 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 well-known member, a year or two ago, in publishing an account of 
 his own experiences, styled it 'Four years in Parliament with hard 
 labour.' Undoubtedly there are points of view from which it may be 
 so regarded. Lord Macaulay thus described it half a century ago: 
 
 'The tedious and exhausting routine of a political life, waiting 
 whole evenings for a vote, and then walking half a mile at a foot's 
 pace round and round the crowded lobbies ; dining amidst clamour 
 with a division of twenty minutes long between two mouthfuls, trudging 
 home at three in the morning through the sludge of a February thaw, 
 and sitting on a closely packed bench through the hottest weeks of a 
 London summer.' 
 
 This is still an accurate description of the life we lead, with the 
 exception that our hours are now limited to midnight. I certainly 
 have never enjoyed holidays so much since I left school, and there is 
 a sort of schoolboy gladness which affects the oldest and staidest 
 member of the House, when the long-expected vacation is drawing 
 near, and the Leader of the House is asked in anxious tones to name 
 the day. These holidays, indeed, of late years have been more uncer- 
 tain quantities than they were of old. When I first entered Parliament 
 there was still a sort of tradition that it was the rule and custom that 
 the vacation should begin in August, in time for the hallowed festival 
 of St. Grouse, and be prolonged to February. There were dim recol- 
 lections of a day more distant still, described by Sir G. Trevelyan in 
 ' Macaulay 's Life,' who tells us 
 
 ' how they met in the autumn, when the first touch of winter reminded 
 them that a season had arrived when it was pleasant to forsake the 
 country for the town ; how they broke up in December for their 
 Christmas festivities, and rose again at the end of Ju,ne, when the 
 most alluring time in the country had arrived.' 
 
 This is indeed a delightful picture, of which nothing but the memory 
 has survived. During my own experience matters for the most part 
 assumed a very different form, and there have been few years when 
 there has not been either an Autumn Session, or where the ordinary 
 Session has not been prolonged into the autumn months. On one 
 occasion we sat right up to Christmas Day, and threats — terrible threats 
 — were held out of our spending it within the vicinity of the House. On 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 another occasion we sat to December 2Srd, and met again in the early 
 days of January. These prolonged Sessions were trying enough to the 
 ordinary private member, but must have been still more irksome to 
 Ministers who have important measures to prepare, and the demands on 
 whose time when the House is sitting are so serious and unintermitting. 
 And only the other day the gratitude of public men was claimed in a 
 leading organ of the press for the present Government on the distinct 
 ground that they had restored a genuine recess. It is undoubtedly a 
 real claim which they are entitled to make upon us, and for which even 
 an opponent may express his heartfelt thanks. 
 
 There is much in one's first entrance to the House of Commons to 
 stir, even in the coldest heart, those national and patriotic sentiments 
 which are held to be befitting to the trust to which he has been elected. 
 As you enter for the first time through the great hall of Westminster, 
 you cannot forget the great scenes which it has witnessed, or fail to be 
 impressed by the recollection of them. Here it was that Strafford was 
 tried and condemned, and took his last farewell of his unhappy master. 
 Here, a little later, Charles himself had to face his fierce accusers, and 
 the spot where they are believed to have stood has, in my own time, by 
 the care of Sir Reginald Palgrave, the chief clerk, been marked by brass 
 plates upon the floor. Another plate upon the wall marks the site of 
 a door through which the king had passed with his soldiers when he 
 attempted to arrest the five members. As you look above, you 
 remember that these are the very rafters which have rung with the 
 eloquence of Burke and Sheridan at the famous trial of Warren 
 Hastings. As you go into the cloisters, whose roof is a noble speci- 
 men of mediaeval stone-carving (where you leave your coat), you are 
 close to the little room, or closet, where Cromwell is said to have 
 signed the death warrant of the king. And when you reach the 
 chamber itself, though it dates only from the great fire that took place 
 some sixty years ago, yet even in that time it has accumulated many 
 memories and traditions of exceeding interest, and you cannot forget 
 that it was across that table, from those benches, leaning on those very 
 desks, that the great Parliamentary giants of our own day, and the 
 days immediately preceding it, carried on their famous and eventful 
 battles. And when you reach the tea-room, a yet older table meets 
 your view, discovered in some old lumber-room by the late Speaker 
 
 3 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 (Lord Peel), and probably that from which Cromwell ordered the mace 
 — the bauble, as he called it — to be removed, when he bade the Long 
 Parliament go about its business. 
 
 And now, supposing you have taken your seat, let us go through the 
 business of the day and see how it is arranged. Let us take a day in 
 the middle of the Session. In the morning there are the sittings of 
 Committees and Commissions, commencing from 11 to 12 and lasting 
 until 2 or 3 o'clock. These are either Committees to which the con- 
 sideration of public or private bills have been committed, or Com- 
 missions of members who have been asked to hear evidence and report 
 to the House on some special subject, which may be the cause of 
 Intemperance, the Housing of the Poor, the Solway Fisheries, the 
 Venezuelan boundary, or the Transvaal raid, or any other subject that 
 may, for the time, be engrossing the public mind. The sitting of these 
 bodies usually closes before 3 o'clock. At that time, if you are in the 
 lobby, you will be startled by one of the ushers suddenly shouting at 
 the top of his voice : ' Hats off: Mr. Speaker ' — and you will see a short 
 procession, consisting of the Sergeant-at-Arms with the mace, Mr. 
 Speaker, his chaplain, secretary, and train-bearers, pass with measured 
 paces down the passage, through the lobby, into the House of Commons. 
 In the days of Lord Peel it was held to be almost in itself a religious 
 ceremony, and it has lost none of its impressive dignity in the hands of 
 the present Speaker, Mr. Gully. Then follow prayers, a service the 
 principal importance of which lies in the fact that attendance at it 
 secures you the seat which you occupy for the rest of the day and night. 
 That this, I fear, is the main reason for attending prayers is very dis- 
 tinctly shown by the appearance of two of the benches of the House of 
 Commons on these solemn occasions. They are the benches occupied 
 by the Government and the leading members of the Opposition, who, at 
 this time, are always conspicuous by their absence. Now, it must be 
 clear that it is at least as necessary for them as for other people to pray, 
 charged as they are with important functions, and having in their hands 
 the destinies of this and it may even be of other nations. But they do 
 not attend this service, simply because their seats are reserved for them, 
 and there is no occasion for them to secure them. A knotty point in 
 connection with this method of securing your seat was submitted in the 
 course of one Session to the Speaker's judgment. Mr. Gedge, whose 
 
 4 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 attention was not so deeply occupied with his devotions as to prevent 
 him stealing a glance around, spied, as he fancied, Sir C. Dilke hurrying 
 to his seat at the conclusion of the last prayer. ' Was this,' he asked, 
 ' a sufficient compliance with the rules ? Could Sir Charles be said to 
 have been present at prayers ?' The Speaker, however, contented him- 
 self with stating what the rule was, and declined to interfere with the 
 particular case brought under his notice. Another point was once 
 raised before Mr. Speaker Peel. The rule then was that upon the seat 
 that you wished to claim you should, at some period before prayers, 
 deposit your hat, and on famous occasions it was quite usual to see every 
 seat occupied by a hat. On one occasion, however, some careful observer 
 saw a member who had just deposited his hat leaving the House shortly 
 after in a hansom cab with a hat on. Could a member have two hats ? 
 Could he be permitted thus to drive his coach, or in this case his hansom, 
 through the ancient and venerable customs of the House ? The point 
 was gravely submitted to the highest authority and as gravely answered, 
 Mr. Peel ruling that it was an undoubted evasion of the understanding 
 which had long prevailed. Since then, however, a large card has been 
 substituted for one's hat, and a member is no longer deprived of his 
 head-covering in order that he may retain his seat. I'he management of 
 your hat is almost one of the fine arts — you remove it when you stir — 
 or speak — but there are times when you can only speak with it on — as 
 when you speak after a division has been called. There was once an 
 amusing scene in connection with this rule. Mr. Gladstone wished to 
 address the Speaker after a division had been called — ^he had as usual 
 no hat — and seized on the nearest to him, which happened to be 
 Mr. Herschell's, and proved to be far too small for the head of the 
 Prime Minister, who sat with it delicately poised over the vast circum- 
 ference of his head. In my time there have been four chaplains to the 
 Speaker : Mr. Byng, Mr. White, Canon Farrar, and Canon Wilberforce. 
 Each has had his individual excellencies. The perfection of Mr. Byng's 
 exit from the House, as with the three customary bows, he backed down 
 its whole length with admirable gravity, can never be forgotten by any 
 who witnessed it. About Mr. White, with his scrupulously clean kid 
 gloves of lavender hue, there was a courtly air which impressed itself 
 upon one's mind : while the silver tones of Canon Farrar, and yet more 
 of his successor, Canon Wilberforce, lent an attraction to the service 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 which might occasionally, one would fancy, secure the attendance of a 
 front-bench man. 
 
 Prayers over (and they do not occupy more than five minutes), the 
 Speaker takes the chair, and we proceed to the consideration of what 
 is termed private business : that is, of bills submitted by railway com- 
 panies and corporations of one sort or other. As these have, as a rule, 
 either been or are about to be submitted to a Select Committee their 
 consideration is not prolonged. At this time you may observe seated 
 on the Government Bench an elderly individual, generally an old member 
 of the House, who, as the Clerk of the Table runs over the titles of 
 bills, keeps continually attempting to rise from his seat and continually 
 taking off his hat, apparently in honour of the Speaker. You wonder 
 what he is doing, and tremble for the condition to which the brim of 
 his hat must be reduced. He is supposed to be in charge of private 
 bills, and in dumb show he is moving their first, second, or third 
 reading, as the case may be. His arduous labours are usually rewarded 
 by a baronetcy. 
 
 *rhe proceedings connected with these private bills are usually 
 finished by half-past three, though on some occasions they have 
 extended to a much later hour. They are followed by questions to 
 Ministers, which any member can put, on any subject, I think I may 
 say, under the sun, and I am not quite certain that even the planet 
 itself might not be brought within the scope of a question by some 
 ingenious and diligent representative of the people. The only con- 
 dition precedent to your putting it is that you have given due notice of 
 your intention to do so. In earlier days it was the custom for the 
 member to read the question he was putting at full length — and you 
 had the gratification thus of making quite a little speech, and finding 
 yourself reported at full length in the Times. But questions in recent 
 years have multiplied so greatly — as late as 1880 there used to be not 
 more than twenty-five or thirty — that this opportunity of a young 
 member's testing his voice has been given up, and you now simply say 
 that you desire to ask the Minister in whose department the matter of 
 your question lies, question No. So-and-so. One Scotch member, 
 Mr. Weir, who in the matter of questions has established an unenviable 
 notoriety, has further simplified the operation by omitting everything 
 except the numbers, and when he rises he simply says No. 39 or 40, as 
 
 6 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 the case may be.* There is no doubt that in recent times this process of 
 questioning has been greatly abused. Mr. Curzon, the other day 
 likened it to the fire of a Maxim gun directed on you, from which it was 
 difficult to emerge without risk. Not only were Ministers asked in the 
 gravest manner whether some trivial matter had been brought to their 
 notice, and what steps they proposed to take in reference to it, but it 
 had grown to be a habit to prepare a series of questions following on 
 the main one, and held, as it were, in reserve, which were introduced by 
 the phrase ' arising out of the answer just given.' Thus, after having 
 asked the main question and received the ministerial reply, which, if 
 the questioner is a member of the same party, has probably been 
 addressed to 'my honourable friend,* in the hope, usually vain, of 
 warding off further attack, the questioner proceeds : ' Mr. Speaker, 
 Sir, arising out of the answer of the right hon. gentleman, I beg to 
 ask the right hon. gentleman if he wishes the House to under- 
 stand that the Government have not been informed that a postcard 
 addressed to one of my constituents was not delivered until three 
 hours after the usual time, and that no steps have been taken to 
 rectify the inconvenience so caused to my constituent.' He is informed 
 probably that such is indeed the case. But he has not yet shot all his 
 bolts. ' Then, Sir,' he triumphantly exclaims, ' I beg to give notice that 
 in consequence of the most unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I shall 
 take an early occasion of calling the attention of the House to this 
 subject, and shall move a resolution.' This further abuse, under which a 
 list of sixty questions often meant one hundred and twenty, has been 
 greatly reduced by the action of the present Speaker in refusing to 
 admit that the second question naturally arises from the first, as indeed, 
 it very seldom does. There have been proposals to do away with 
 questions altogether, but I doubt if this is needed. There are occasions 
 when important steps are to be taken by the Government, when it is 
 extremely to the public interest that their representatives should be 
 allowed to ask for information, and when even a second question may be 
 extremely useful and to the point. 
 
 * Sir W. Lawson's epigram on Mr. Weir was one of his happiest efforts : 
 ' As Mr. Weir, with questions queer 
 The paper nightly crams. 
 Oh ! was there ever any weir 
 Produced so many dams?' 
 
 7 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 There are occasions when business is delayed beyond its usual hour 
 by a motion for what is termed the adjournment of the House. The 
 rule is that any member may make this motion if its subject be of 
 urgent public importance, and if he has secured the Speaker's assent to 
 his doing so, and has the support of at least forty members of the 
 House. You are sitting, we will say, at 3.30 in the division lobby that 
 adjoins the House, writing a letter or enclosing an order for the 
 admission of some constituent, when you are startled by an unusual and 
 hearty burst of cheering. You ask the reason, and are informed that 
 McGregor has moved the adjournment on the groimd that his con- 
 stituency in the north of Scotland has not been provided with a slice of 
 deer forest and a flock of sheep. Or it may be, the O'Dashit who is anxious 
 for the immediate introduction of a bill to reduce the rents in Ireland by 
 one-half. You hurry in and find the hero of the hour addressing, it 
 may be, a very small audience in a very listless fashion, for though 
 many have supported him in his motion, not by any means all have 
 remained to hear his speech. Their motives in supporting him were 
 varied, and many, no doubt, have done so not from any deep and 
 absorbing interest in the particular question, but because they know 
 very well that the progress of some other measure to which they are 
 opposed will be efiectually blocked by the action which has been taken. 
 
 In an ordinary way, however, questioners have been disposed of by 
 4.30 or 5 o'clock, and at that time the main business of the day begins. 
 Unless the bill to be discussed is being considered in Committee, or the 
 subject before the House is Supply — i.e., the provision of money for the 
 public service — the Speaker remains in the chair, and save for a brief 
 interval of twenty minutes, or at most, half an hour, continues to sit 
 there until the House rises.* If, however, the question to come before it 
 is in Committee stage, his place is taken by the Chairman of Com- 
 mittees, who sits, however, on a chair at a lower elevation, and whose 
 advent, as that of an inferior dignity, is marked by the removal of the 
 mace from the table. The etiquette of the House ordinarily requires 
 that the Chairman should be clad in evening dress, even though his 
 functions should begin in the afternoon. There are three distinct 
 periods in the sitting, which come and go as regularly as the tides. 
 There is one period up to about half-past seven, when the seats are 
 * Even this short interval of rest has been abolished (1913). 
 8 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 usually well filled, and when it is extremely difficult for the ordinary 
 and undistinguished private member to perform the operation of catch- 
 ing the Speaker's eye. At half-past seven an exodus begins, and he 
 may then address to his heart's content, an assembly where very often, 
 to use the language of the Prayer-book, not more than two or three are 
 gathered together. This is the dinner-hour, and lasts until 9.30 or 10 
 o'clock. Many, of course, dine in the rooms within the precincts of the 
 House, but a large number probably prefer to do so at their own homes 
 or clubs. To enable them to do this without altering the balance of 
 parties in the House, the system of what is called pairing has been 
 adopted. There is a table in the inner lobby with some loose sheets of 
 paper on it, near which, about 6.30 o'clock, you may often see a number 
 of members waiting, very much like servants with a straw in their 
 mouths in the street on a hiring day. They are members who wish to 
 pair with some one on the other side in order that they may both leave 
 the House together and agree to return at a fixed time. Woe to that man 
 who attempts to pass the whips who are stationed at the door without 
 having secured a pair. He is remorselessly thrust back, and no school- 
 boy found out of bounds has a more unpleasant experience than the 
 member in such a case. At ten the House is full again, and Cabinet 
 Ministers and leaders usually seize upon the hours from ten to twelve 
 to reply to speeches delivered by those of the same calibre from five to 
 seven. There is no doubt that this division of the evening into periods 
 leads, in the case of debates prolonged over several days, to a consider- 
 able waste of time, for in order that these persons of ' light and leading ' 
 may speak in the favoured hours which I have named, a great many 
 other persons have to keep the debate alive from seven to ten, and 
 address dreary and depressing speeches to audiences who are still more 
 depressed, and who, if we except the Speaker and the officials of the 
 House, may often be counted on the fingers of one hand. At twelve the 
 House adjourns the business that is before it, and though after that the 
 Clerk runs over the orders of the day and calls out the names of the 
 various bills, nothing can be discussed if one member is found who 
 objects, and that member, I need hardly say, usually presents himself. 
 About twenty minutes after twelve, the usher at the door, having seen 
 the Speaker leave the chair, calls out in cheery tones the time-honoured 
 formula, ' Who goes home ? ' and everybody mentally responds that he is 
 
 9 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 quite prepared to do so. This formula is itself one of the antiquities of 
 the House, and dates from wilder days, when in consequence of thieves 
 and footpads it was necessary for members to be accompanied to their 
 homes. 
 
 And now let me say something of speaking in the House of 
 Commons — how it is that it is so difficult to speaic there — and how there 
 have been many members of great literary ability, men such as Addison 
 and Gibbon, who have never been able to overcome the difficulty of 
 making a first speech. Gibbon, when he had been a member of the 
 House for many years, tells us in his delightful autobiography : ' I am 
 stiU a mute — it is more tremendous than I had imagined. I am not 
 armed with intrepid energy of mind and voice. The good speakers fill 
 me with despair — the bad ones with terror.' These last words express 
 what I have no doubt is a common feeling with many members. They 
 feel they cannot make speeches so good as many of those they hear, and 
 they do not like to risk making such bad ones as many of those they 
 are compelled to listen to. Sir George Stokes, the eminent astronomer, 
 and recently member for the University of Cambridge, never overcame 
 the initial difficulty. Though often apparently on the point of rising, 
 like Gibbon, he remained a mute, and the House never heard his voice. 
 Mr. Feilden thus described his first attempt. ' The Bill,' he said, ' had for 
 him a peculiar interest, because it was upon it he made his maiden 
 attempt at speaking in the House of Commons. He should never forget 
 it. They all knew how nervous he was — and how shy — and how difficult 
 it was for him to make a speech ; therefore they could imagine on that 
 occasion how doubly shy and nervous he was. He knew he was 
 particularly nervous, and he did not like it at all. When, at last, after 
 rising two or three times, the Speaker's eye was turned to him — he had 
 no idea what an awful eye it was until then — and he heard his name 
 called out in what he then regarded as most cruel tones, and, as he thought, 
 every eye in the House turned upon him, he would have given fifty 
 sovereigns to have been able to bolt out of the House of Commons and 
 not go back again.' Even the first Lord Derby, when Lord Stanley, 
 confessed, according to Macaulay, 'My throat and lips, when I am going 
 to speak, are as dry as those of a man who is going to be hanged." 
 Tierney said ' he never rose without feeling his knees knock together.' 
 Only the other day we saw a distinguished general, who unabashed had 
 faced the enemy in the field, when he received the appointment of Black 
 
 10 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 Rod, and had in a very simple formula to summon the Speaker of the 
 House of Commons to the Lords', his knees knocked together when he 
 reached the table, the words refused to come, and he had to be assisted 
 by the Speaker himself in his dilemma. 
 
 And now let us suppose that, having been recently elected, you 
 propose to make a speech. How different the conditions to which 
 you have been accustomed ! You have been the candidate, and the 
 candidate, of course, at a contested election, fills the principal place 
 in the arena. You have been introduced to crowded meetings, and 
 your entrance has been greeted with rapturous applause. You have 
 taken your seat on the platform, the centre of attraction to all admiring 
 eyes : your Chairman has introduced you in some highly complimentary 
 phrases which lead you complacently to suppose that you are even a 
 greater man than you had imagined, and as you rise amid renewed 
 cheering you feel that you are about to make a speech which will leave 
 a lasting impression on the history of your country. You pass in 
 orderly manner through the various topics of your speech and end with 
 a carefully preparedjperoration — or it may be two — which is received, as 
 you sink back into your chair with what the local press describes as loud 
 and prolonged applause. How different is all this to speaking in the 
 House of Commons ! There you rise an unknown man with an uneasy 
 conviction that the great majority of your audience wish you at Jericho. 
 In the first place, it is not always easy to get the opportunity of 
 speaking at all. You have to perform what is called the operation of 
 catching the Speaker's eye as it rolls in its orbit. With this object you 
 must wait until the orator who is addressing the House has concluded 
 his remarks. Again and again you fancy the end has come, and are on 
 the point of starting to your feet only to find that he has opened another 
 subject, and, having refreshed himself with a little cold water, is starting 
 off with renewed facility, which you profoundly envy. At last, however, 
 he sits down — ^your hour has come — you are on your legs — but so are 
 twenty other members — and you have the pleasure of hearing that it is 
 not you, but Mr. Smith, who has been called on by the Speaker. The 
 duty of selecting one to speak out of the twenty or thirty to rise cannot 
 be easy. When Speaker Shaw Lefevre was congratulated on his skill he 
 said, ' I have not been shooting rabbits all my life for nothing, and I 
 have learned to mark the right one.' You sit down again and calmly 
 wait — as calmly as you can. Your fate may be even more unfortunate 
 
 11 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 than this. In the concision of the moment (it often occurs) you may 
 fancy you have been called on, and may have begun your opening 
 sentences only to be interrupted by loud cries of ' Order, order ! ' all 
 around, and to find that another member is addressing the House, so 
 that it is he and not you who hsis caught the Speaker's eye. You have 
 nothing for it but to await the conclusion of his speech when once more 
 you are on your legs — this time with the certainty that you will not be 
 selected, as it will now be the turn of a speaker on the other side of the 
 House. This waiting period may last through several speeches, and, in 
 the meantime, you have the pleasing satisfaction of hearing from other 
 members the very arguments you have so painfully elaborated, and are 
 fortunate if some one has not lighted on the telling quotation which 
 you had proposed to introduce. You keep arranging and re-arranging 
 your notes — striking out the portions that are already used — until they 
 are in a state of wild confusion, which augurs very badly for the clearness 
 and lucidity of your oration. By this time, too, some Minister thinks 
 it useful to intervene in the debate, and when you rise with him your 
 chance, of course, is simply nil. A Minister of equal calibre on the 
 other side must now, of course, reply, and your opportunities are again 
 deferred— and deferred for a considerable time, for Ministers of light and 
 leading can seldom compress their remarks to less than three-quarters of 
 an hour. At length your chance comes — ^your name is actually called — 
 but with it has come the dinner hour — and after cold and stony glances 
 directed at you, and a sort of who-the-deuce-are-you expression, you 
 have the gratification of seeing the larger portion of your audience 
 quietly leave the chamber at the very moment when you are prepared to 
 electrify them with the speech on which so much of the previous mid- 
 night oil has been expended. All this adds to the confusion you 
 already feel. Your notes are by this time in a chaotic state : your 
 audience is confined to the Speaker, the Sergeant-at-Arms, and some 
 ten or a dozen members whom you feel have remained, not for the 
 pleasure of listening to you, but in the hope of securing a chance 
 themselves when you have finished. Even your closest friend you see 
 depart — the attraction of dinner having proved too powerful for him — 
 and you have the satisfaction of picturing him over his soup, describing 
 with a chuckle to a friend how he has left you addressing an audience of 
 a dozen members. What wonder under such circumstances that your 
 
 12 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 periods are halting — your most eloquent sentences fall flat — that your 
 decaying energies are exhausted long before you reach that eloquent 
 peroration that was to have brought down the house. You flounder on 
 like a lame cab horse for a few moments longer, and then, in sheer 
 despair, abruptly sit down, and find that you have at length evoked a 
 genuine interest in the breasts of yoiu" scanty audience, not, alas ! by 
 your speech, but by sitting down on your hat which you had carefully 
 placed behind you. That, indeed, brings down the House even in its 
 most jaded moods, but not in the way that you had fondly hoped for. 
 I fear these failures do not always meet w^ith the sympathy they deserve. 
 Of one who had so failed it was once observed, * He rose without a 
 friend, and sat down without an enemy.' 
 
 Even the greatest speakers have peculiar mannerisms which cling to 
 them in a strange and persistent way. Who that ever heard a great 
 speech by Mr. Gladstone in the House can forget the curious action, 
 with which, when he approached some telling passage or some sly hit at 
 his opponents, he gently scratched the top of his head with the thumb 
 of his right hand. Mr. Goschen's habit is quite different, but not less 
 characteristic. At certain recurring periods of his speech he evinces a 
 marked desire to strangle himself, and grasps himself firmly by the 
 throat, leaving you under the impression that he is in imminent danger 
 of being self-garotted. There was one member in a recent Parliament 
 who seemed when he spoke to be fixed upon a pivot, round which he 
 steadily and unintermittingly revolved in half circles. Starting with his 
 face to his audience on the left, he described an orbit until he faced 
 those on the right, and then as regularly returned in a fashion that was 
 exasperating to behold. You may have notes, though, as I have said, 
 you have nowhere to put them, but you may not read your speech. 
 The acoustic properties of the present chamber are good, and within the 
 compass of even an ordinary voice ; but the air is dry and dusty, and 
 the throat soon needs the aid of those lubricating beverages, the com- 
 position of which is enveloped in mystery, and which are assiduously 
 brought in from the lobby by the hands of admiring friends. Lord 
 Randolph Churchill, on one occasion, with the frankness that dis- 
 tinguished him, revealed the nature of his own particular compound 
 by audibly exclaiming in the middle of his address, ' brandy and seltzer.' 
 There is no place where your top hat (a head-dress which you usually 
 
 13 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 discard as much as possible) plays so important a part as in the House 
 of Commons. It is yotu: guide, philosopher, and friend. It is your 
 constant and inseparable companion, the sharer of all your joys and 
 sorrows, for the simple reason that you have no place to put it except 
 upon your head. Ministers, as a rule, never wear their hats — I never 
 saw Mr. Gladstone with his on — but that is because they leave them in 
 their private rooms. Private members have no such places — they have 
 not even a hat peg — and therefore you are obliged to wear it day and 
 night. Mr. Keir Hardie, a.s you know, introduced the cap, but hi-- 
 example has not been followed. When I first entered Parliament the 
 only soft hats worn were those worn by Mr. Burt and Mr. Cowen, but 
 they are now more numerous. 
 
 Although our political disputes are bitter, and strong language is 
 often used by the one side to the other, not less striking is the good 
 fellowship which prevails between the individual members of the House 
 to whatever parties they may belong. You may one day see two 
 opponents as bitterly opposed as it would seem possible to be, and the 
 next you will find them playing chess together in the smoking-room 
 (chess being the only game permitted), or walking arm-in-arm in the 
 lobby. No one, I trust, objects to such intimacy between political 
 opponents or would wish to adopt the principle of Mr. Pickwick, who 
 denounced Mr. Sergeant Buzfuz, who was counsel for the opposite party 
 for daring to presume to tell Mr. Sergeant Snubbin, who was counsel for 
 him, that it was a fine morning. There is, too, an absolute equality of 
 members. The humblest among them wiU receive exactly the same 
 consideration from the officials of the House and his fellow members as 
 would the leader of the House himself, or the wealthiest man who sits 
 in it. They do not inquire whether he has a million a year or thirty 
 shillings a week, whether his father was a baron or a blacksmith, he 
 comes there as the duly accredited representative of others, and is 
 entitled to, and receives their respectful consideration. If he has any- 
 thing to say, he can say it, if he has nothing, why, perhaps so much the 
 better ; if he has nothing, but thinks he has, as sometimes happens, it is 
 brought home to him in a quiet but unmistakable way which he cannot 
 long resist. As Mr. Chamberlain declared not long ago, the House of 
 Commons is one of the fairest and most generous of representative 
 assemblies. No new member, no man who has anything to say, any 
 
 14 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 knowledge to communicate, has ever had the right to complain of his 
 reception there. But it has, at the same time, an unerring insight into 
 character. It knows a bore by instinct, born of long experience, and 
 though he struggle long, his struggles will, in the end, be ineffectual, 
 and he will subside a sadder but a wiser man. Mr. Gladstone described 
 it as a great moral school. ' It is," he said, ' a school of temper, for if 
 in Parliament any one unhappily goes astray in point of temper, rely 
 upon it he will not be five minutes older before he has found out his 
 mistake. It is a school of patience : a school of honour : a school of 
 justice where, in many ways, the advantage and importance of these 
 high qualities is impressed on those who are admitted to its ranks." 
 
 I spoke just now of the good feeling that prevails between members 
 opposed, and bitterly opposed, in politics. I remember a striking 
 instance when Mr. Pamell was exonerated from the charges brought 
 against him in connection with the Pigott forgeries. The first man to 
 congratulate him and shake him by the hand was Sir Walter Barttelot, 
 one of the strictest and most unbending of Tory squires. And so to 
 whatever party a member may belong there is genuine rejoicing among 
 aU when he is freed from any imputation that may have rested on his 
 honour ; genuine sorrow when the contrary is the case — for it is 
 felt that the character of each man is an integral part of the character 
 of the whole House, and that the reputation of the whole House suffers 
 even in the person of one of its humblest components. 
 
 I mentioned just now the name of Mr. Pamell. I shall never forget 
 the scene that took place on that memorable occasion when he was at 
 length exonerated from the terrible charge (the most terrible ever 
 brought against a public man), under which, for two years, he had lain. 
 I mention it, too, because his bearing in it explains, I think, one of the 
 chief causes of his extraordinary power. It was an evening in March 
 1889. Pigott had fled. His forgeries had been confessed. Mr. Parnell, 
 of course, had been anxiously expected in the House of Commons. He 
 had been looked for at question time. Still more when Mr. Gladstone, 
 a little later, rising to the full height of the triumphant occasion, had 
 delivered a splendid speech. But still Mr. Pamell delayed. At length, 
 about 10 o'clock, he quietly sauntered in, and, hardly at first observed, 
 took his accustomed seat ; but the moment he was recognised there was 
 such a scene as I certainly have never, and the House of Commons itself 
 
 15 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 has seldom witnessed, members rising and cheering from all quarters of 
 the House, and even standing on the benches in their desire to mark the 
 scenic character of the event. But Mr. Pamell, the man most deeply 
 interested, was apparently unmoved; he spoke, when he rose, in his 
 usual cold and quiet and most unimpassioned tones, without a taunt at 
 his accusers, and to all appearance unmoved at what had taken place. 
 It was this frigid reserve which constituted his strength. He and those 
 he led were closely banded together, but the bond never took the form 
 of cordial intercourse. In the House Mr. Pamell lived alone. ' Like a 
 star he dwelt apart.' After such a triumph we may all the more regret 
 the sad close of a great career. 
 
 We have, of course, amusing interludes sometimes — oases in the 
 desert of dreary long debates. I remember one in which Sir George 
 Elliot, who though he sat as a Welsh member, was intimately connected 
 with Durham, and had been himself a pit boy, played the principal 
 part. We were discussing one of the numerous Employers' Liability 
 Bills we have had before us, and had a long and dull debate. About 
 eleven, Sir George, who had just entered the House, and about whom 
 there was an air of genial hilarity which betokened fun, rose to speak. 
 The House responded to the occasion, and punctuated his sentences 
 with laughter and applause. ' I know,' said Sir George, leaning over 
 the Benches in front of him, and speaking with comical solemnity, ' I 
 know what I am speaking about,' while a wave of his hand around con- 
 veyed the idea that there were many who did not. ' Do not,' he 
 continued, ' put a collar round the neck of the working man and allow 
 him to be led entirely by the Trades Unions.' ' What I say is this,' he 
 went on, and the crowded benches leaned forward to catch the words of 
 oracular wisdom that were to follow in tones so impressive as to be 
 nearly inaudible, ' there must be a limit to it.' Here he looked round 
 at the listening Senate with an aspect of supreme sagacity. But his 
 success did not tempt him to be too lengthy, as it might have done a less 
 experienced orator. Waving his copy of the orders of the day like a 
 policeman's baton above his head, and glancing upwards at the clock, he 
 observed, ' I see the clock is going round, I must be brief, what I say is 
 this, do not hand over the destinies of this country to the Trades 
 Unions,' and then I think I see him now, as still waving his baton and 
 smiling to all around, he gracefully, bowing all the while, retreated from 
 
 16 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 the House instead of resuming his seat as, according to all rules and 
 regulations, he should have done. 
 
 Colonel Saunderson once, when he was ridiculing the old cry of 
 three acres and a cow, said that in Ireland they were more generous, 
 they threw in a bull as well, and accordingly we have occasionally an 
 Irish bull introduced for our delectation. Mr. Field, a well-known Irish 
 member, produced two last session in a single speech. Speaking on tht 
 Diseases of Animals Bill, he gravely assured us that Irish herds had 
 been decimated to the extent of two-thirds ! His next sentence began, 
 ' The time has come, Sir, and is rapidly arriving.' There is an old anec- 
 dote of some one who, when his speech was interrupted with laughter, 
 said severely, ' I heard a smile,' but this was beaten last session by Mr. 
 Lough, who is an Irishman, though he sits for a Metropolitan con- 
 stituency. In the course of his speech he made an appeal to a Minister 
 of the Crown who was sitting opposite. ' The right hon. gentleman,' 
 he continued, ' shakes his head. I am very sorry to hear it.' Perhaps 
 none of these are quite so imaginative as that which is put down to 
 the credit of Sir Boyle Roche in the last century. 'I smell a rat,' 
 he said, 'I see him floating in the air; but I will yet nip him in 
 the bud ! ' 
 
 There were, too, a few slips of the tongue, or ' buUs,' during the dis- 
 cussions on the Local Government (Ireland) Bill. One membei 
 remarked that certain provisions in the Bill for the relief of distress in 
 Ireland were intended to meet " ordinary exceptional ' distress ; another 
 member described the Chief Secretary for Ireland as ' iron-bound in red 
 tape ' ; and a third, speaking on a clause dealing with coroners, objected 
 to making those officials ' removable fixtures.' But even those trivial 
 samples of confused utterances stirred a rather dull and listless assembly 
 — melancholy by natural inclination — to much-needed merriment. 
 
 Occasionally we have scenes which are not so pleasant. Colonel 
 Saunderson once observed that, though he did not accuse the Irish 
 members of being murderers, he did say that they consorted with men 
 whom they knew to be so. Mr. Healy at once replied that if the hon. 
 and gallant member alluded to him, he was a liar. The intervention of 
 the Speaker was at once demanded, and after a stormy debate Mr. 
 Healy was suspended for a week. As soon as he had withdrawn, Mr. 
 Sexton repeated his companion's phrase, with the addition of an adjec- 
 
 17 c 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 tive to lend it further force ; and there was no doubt every Irish 
 member present would have done the same, with variations, if the 
 gallant colonel had not at last withdrawn the charge. On another 
 occasion he called a well-known Irish Nationalist ' a murderous ruffian,' 
 but consented, after a long and heated discussion, to substitute the 
 words 'excited politician.' The gallant colonel once said that if you 
 want to see Norval you must go to the Grampian Hills, and if you want 
 to hear an Irish patriot at his best you must hear him as he stamps his 
 native bog. If his own addresses to his constituents are modelled on 
 those he delivers in the House of Commons, only more so, his meetings 
 must be of a more amusing and exciting character than any we are 
 accustomed to on this side of the Channel. 
 
 It is a great advantage to be able to sleep soundly in the House of 
 Commons, though it is an accomplishment I have never, myself, been 
 able to acquire. But, no doubt, it adds greatly to one's comfort. Sir 
 Richard Temple was a past-master in the art. Who that has seen him 
 can forget it ? As his massive and conspicuous head revolved in its 
 orbit, now falling back as though it must drop on to the knees of the 
 members who sat behind, now forward, to the dismay of those in front, 
 he would suddenly pull it up at the last moment, stare wildly round, 
 and be off to sleep again as soundly as before. To sleep, or at all 
 events to simulate profound repose, has always been a favourite artifice 
 of leading men during the attacks of their opponents. Lord North, in 
 the last century, often adopted it during the bitter onslaughts made 
 upon him. ' Even now,' said a speaker, ' in the midst of all our troubles 
 and anxieties, the noble lord is asleep.' ' I only wish I was,' was the 
 prompt reply. On another occasion he asked a friend to awake him 
 when his assailant reached his own time. When his friend performed 
 the duty he met with the answer, ' Ah ! you have waked me a century 
 too soon.' 
 
 I remember once when Mr. Chaplin was making an animated attack 
 on Mr. Gladstone. The latter, to all appearance, was hushed in the 
 most complete repose: not a flicker of interest wandered over his 
 expressive face : he seemed in the last stage of physical decay, on the 
 point of falling from the bench on which he sat. But he started to 
 his feet the moment Mr. Chaplin sat down, and replied with a vigour 
 which neither his assailant nor those who heard it are likely to forget. 
 
 18 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 On other occasions he used to be affected with an almost pi'eternatm-al 
 wakefulness. Some Irish member was addressing the House during the 
 long Home Rule debates ; every one was asleep, or nearly so, when Mr. 
 Gladstone would be seized with a desire to hear the speaker's every 
 syllable. On such occasions he would cross over to a seat just below 
 the orator, and, with hand to ear, insist on drinking in every word 
 of the discourse, to the intense amusement of the spectators of the 
 scene. 
 
 On my first introduction to the House, a scene, as curious and as 
 disorderly as any I have witnessed, took place. You remember that the 
 Parliament which sat from 1880-1885 had been occupied with a stormy 
 discussion as to whether Mr. Bradlaugh should, or should not, be allowed 
 to take the Oath, and how, as a result, he had been excluded from his 
 seat during the greater portion of its duration. When we met in 1886 
 it was known that Mr. Peel had only consented to retain his office on 
 the understanding that Mr. Bradlaugh should be allowed to swear. It 
 was known, too, that a protest would be made, and there was great 
 interest felt as to what the result would be. The protest, however, 
 though made, was not persisted in, and the swearing-in began. I never 
 saw such a scene of wild confusion, and I suppose, outside Donnybrook 
 Fair or a football scrimmage, there never was one. No regulations had 
 been made, and everybody, apparently, wanted to swear at once. There 
 was a sort of free fight upon the floor for the possession of the three or 
 four Testaments that were provided, and you saw Cabinet Ministers 
 and leading men all over the place administering the oath to themselves 
 in the most free-and-easy manner, and contrary to all the rules and 
 orders of the House. I believe many never swore at all. And in the 
 centre of the throng was the towering form of Mr. Bradlaugh, thinking, 
 no doubt, that this was a curious commentary on the sanctity and 
 importance of the Oath which had been so often dwelt on in the long 
 debates he had listened to in the previous Parliament. There was 
 another scene in connection with Mr. Bradlaugh which was sad enough. 
 It was when he was on his death-bed, and Mr. Smith was induced by 
 some of his Conservative followers to support the motion to expunge 
 from the records of the House the resolution by which he had been 
 excluded. It passed nem. con., but it was known, to the deep regret of 
 all, that the man who had fought and won so hard a battle was on the 
 
 19 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 point of passing away, and too ill to have the news of the graceful 
 action of his opponents communicated to him. 
 
 One other scene I may mention — the most painful of all. It was 
 that terrible one which occuiTed on the night when, by use of the 
 Closure, the second Home Rule Bill was passed through the Committee 
 stage in July 1893. It was known that the guillotine was to fall at ten. 
 At that hour Mr. Chamberlain was speaking, and had dramatically 
 contrived to let fall some forcible expressions, as the fateful hour struck. 
 The House was at once cleared for the division — and what then took 
 place, I, though I was there, do not pretend to tell ; indeed, during the 
 next half-hour one heard half a dozen different accoiuits as to what had 
 taken place. All we knew was that suddenly one quarter of the House 
 was the stage where a free fight was going on, and one trembled, as one 
 saw the blows going straight from the shoulder, for what might ensue. 
 Huddled together like frightened sheep, we watched — some ran this 
 way, and others that — until at the advent of Mr. Speaker Peel, who 
 had been summoned, peace fell on the contending hosts and order was 
 restored. It was a night I never wish to see again ; though it has been 
 out-Heroded by the recent scenes in the Austrian Reichsrath and the 
 French Chamber. 
 
 I am afraid you will not consider the accommodation very adequate 
 which we provide for you when you are pleased to visit us. The very 
 name by which you are then described — strangers — is a curious one to 
 apply to British citizens when they wish to visit the representative 
 assembly which they have themselves elected. It is, no doubt, a sur- 
 vival from other days, when all access to the House was jealouslv 
 guarded, and when it was forbidden, under heavy penalties, to report 
 what took place therein. The Strangers' Gallery is, no doubt, incon- 
 veniently small and badly placed, only one-half of the House being 
 visible from its benches. In the American Congress, I am told that 
 visitors are freely admitted to the floor of the House, and access is 
 made easy instead of difficult. That, of coiurse, would be impossible 
 in ours unless it were enlarged, and the question of enlargement is a 
 serious one, on which opinion is much divided. 
 
 After all, we do not treat you very much worse than we do ourselves. 
 We are said to be returned to a seat in the House of Commons, but it 
 is a seat if you can find one, and when matters of importance are being 
 
 20 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 discussed it is often impossible to do so. I fear we hardly treat our 
 ladies even so well. Their gallery only holds twenty-four, and the 
 atmosphere, I am often told, is not all that could be desired. They are 
 hid, too, behind a grating, and it cannot be said of them what the 
 Roman poet said of others : ' They go to see, that they may themselves 
 be seen.' Their very admission was fiercely debated even fifty years 
 ago, and the Speaker of the day, on being appealed to, gave it as his 
 opinion ' that he had come to a distinct and positive conclusion that the 
 measure was most undesirable.' In that he was supported by many 
 members — among others by Mr. Philip Howard and Mr. Blamire, who 
 sat as Cumberland representatives. Mr. Aglionby, on the other hand, 
 was in favour of their admission, and said that the only prepos- 
 terous feature in the debate was the kind of opposition made to the 
 proposal. 
 
 In the course of the discussion, an anecdote was told which I think 
 might have decided the question. Napoleon had objected to some lady 
 because she interfered in politics. ' What,' said she, ' do you mean by 
 politics ? ' He declined to give a definition. ' Shall I do it for you ? ' 
 she replied. ' By politics I do not mean the noisy disputes which begin 
 and end in ringing the changes on the watchwords of political parties 
 in the State, each striving for the mastery because of the advantages it 
 brings ; but by politics 1 understand the science of government, and the 
 art of forming such institutions as shall produce the content and secure 
 the happiness of those who live under them.' In such politics women 
 may well take their part, and of such they may even yet hear a little 
 sometimes in the House of Commons. They have twice, whilst I have 
 been a member, allowed their feelings to prevail to the extent of mark- 
 ing their pleasure or displeasure by audible sounds, and had to be 
 reprimanded by the Sergeant-at-Arms. On the occasions of all Mr. 
 Gladstone's great speeches during the last ten years one well-known 
 figure could always be dimly discerned through the grating in the same 
 place — that of his wife, whose watchful care he has so often alluded to, 
 and who might well feel anxious at efforts which would have been 
 extraordinary in a young man, and were absolutely marvellous in a 
 man of over seventy-five. 
 
 You will perhaps ask whom of those I have heard I consider the 
 greatest orator .? Well, I have always considered Mr. Bright to occupy 
 
 21 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 that position. I had not, indeed, many opportunities of hearing hiin 
 in the House of Commons, but I have often heard him on the platform? 
 and in his great orations it always seemed to me, as I listened, that it 
 would be impossible almost to alter a word without spoiling the rhythm 
 and melody of the sentence. They were perfect poems rather than 
 orations. When you add to this his singularly noble face and presence, 
 his command of the purest English, his tuneful voice and perfect and 
 impressive gestures, you have all that goes to make a great orator. His 
 speeches, too, are an exception to the rule which Lord Rosebery, on the 
 authority of Fox, laid down the other day, that no speech reads well if 
 it was a good one. Mr. Bright's are as delightful to read as they were 
 to hear. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, no doubt, could make a dozen speeches to one 
 of Mr. Bright's ; his foot, as Mr. Bright said, was ever in the stirrup, 
 and all would be excellent, though sometimes a little too diffuse and 
 without that perfect form which characterised those of Mr. Bright. 
 After hearing some of his longer efforts one could not but admit the 
 truth of the remark, ' If he had spoken less he would have said more.' 
 Yet when one calls to mind his expressive face, with its changing lights 
 and shadows (a face which, if he had not been a statesman, would have 
 made him the first actor of the day), his flexible and melodious voice, 
 aud his gi'aceful action as his hand sweeps round to give effect to the 
 sentences he utter, one must feel that he is in the very first rank of our 
 finest orators. It is sometimes said that he has not the power of coining 
 phrases which distinguished his great rival. Lord Beaconsfield. That, I 
 think, is a mistake. There are many that have issued from his mouth 
 even in the last ten years. When he declared in the House of Commons 
 with an irresistible twinkle of his eye that he was an old Parliamentary 
 hand, the House was convulsed with laughter, and next morning the 
 whole country chuckled with delight. Such phrases as ' it holds the 
 field ' in the debate on the first Home Rule Bill (and no one who heard 
 it can forget the expressive gesture as he raised his right hand above his 
 head and summoned his hosts around him) — 'the dim and distant 
 future,' ' the original sin ' imputed to the Irish people — his sly hit at 
 Mr. Chamberlain, ' he has so many right hon. friends ' — his description 
 in Court Square, Carlisle, of the compensation proposals of the then 
 Government as 'the death-warrant of temperance reform' — ^his com- 
 
 22 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 parison of the Irish Church Establishment to the ' noxious upas-tree ' — 
 all these are phrases which live in the memory of those who heard 
 them, and became at once common coin. Perhaps he has made too 
 many, rather than too few. There was one when he declared it passed 
 the wit of man to provide for the inclusion of the Irish members which 
 we, his followers, sometimes wish had not occurred to him, which was 
 persistently quoted by our opponents, and to which we were not always 
 able to reply so satisfactorily as we should have liked. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain is acknowledged to be the first debater in the House, 
 dangerous in attack, still more dangerous in reply, with a clear incisive 
 style which all who run may read. Nor must I omit to allude to the 
 graceful style of Mr. Balfour, the charm of whose speaking all who hear 
 acknowledge. Perhaps the most powerful speech — most powerful in 
 reaching its object — that I have listened to was that delivered by Sir 
 Henry Fowler on the Indian Cotton Duties. We had gone down 
 expecting to be defeated, and those who know the House can easily 
 imagine the excited feeling that prevailed. There were rumours of 
 serious defections in our ranks on the part of Lancashire members. A 
 sense of coming triumph flashed in the eyes of our opponents. The 
 hour of victory had come at last. But Sir Henry spoke, and their hosts 
 were scattered on a thousand hills. They fled in all directions, and you 
 heard members on every side saying, ' I cannot vote for this.' That was 
 the celebrated occasion when Mr. Chamberlain, to avoid voting, took 
 refuge, I do not exactly know where. 'There are methods,' said 
 Mr. Speaker Peel grimly, when the matter was brought to his notice, 
 but he forbore to indicate what they were. 
 
 You sometimes hear that in these latter times the House of 
 Commons has fallen into its decadence — that its manners are not what 
 they were, and its debates unworthy the glories of its former days. I 
 believe that this is not the case, and that when, on great occasions? 
 you visit us, we can still furnish forth a banquet as excellent as any that 
 was spread in years gone by. We have in the House at the present 
 time the most eminent Greek scholar of the day in Professor Jebb — 
 one of the first historians in Mr. Lecky — a man most distinguished 
 in science in Sir John Lubbock — brilliant writers like Mr. Balfour, 
 Mr. Morley, and Mr. Birrell. The House which contains and listens to 
 such men, cannot be said to be in its decadence. If there be danger, it 
 
 2S 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 is a danger that will be averted. It will be averted by a sense of dignity 
 in the House itself, by a determination on the part of the people who 
 elect it to make its future worthy of its past. ' Every true citizen,' as 
 Mr. Chamberlain once said, ' whatever his political opinions, is jealous 
 for the credit of that Parliament to which we owe so much in the past, 
 and which, as years go on, becomes more than ever the central institution 
 of the Empire.' In the words of Wordsworth : 
 
 ' It is not to be thought of that the flood 
 Of British freedom, which to the open sea 
 Of the world's praise from dark antiquity 
 Hath flowed, with pomp of waters unwithstood. 
 That this most famous stream in bogs and sand should perish.' 
 
 No, it is not to be thought of, and we may be sure that the best men 
 of all parties and classes will unite to make our Parliament worthy of 
 being the national assembly of the most practical, sensible, prompt, and 
 energetic race of men among all the races of the world, and that united 
 they will succeed. 
 
 24 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 House of Commons — No. II. 
 
 ^X T^HEN Mr. Wheatley, your secretary, was kind enough to inform 
 ' ' me that you would welcome another series of such further 
 Parliamentary notes as I had been able, from my own experience or 
 reading, to put together, I had some doubt of my competence for the 
 task. But, relying on your kindness, I have ventured to undertake it, 
 and only hope you have not overrated your capacity to listen to what I 
 fear will be neither altogether novel nor entertaining. And yet I am 
 not quite astonished at the interest that our proceedings in Parliament 
 arouse. 
 
 From many points of view it is an interesting and fascinating life — 
 full of variety and entertainment. Mr. Disraeli, at the end of his first 
 day in the House of Commons, writes, after supping at the Carlton ' on 
 Guinness's and broiled bones': 'Thus ended the most remarkable day 
 of my life.' And that is, no doubt, what many feel at the close of 
 their first day. It must be so, or no one would undergo the intolerable 
 boredom which, from other points of view, it too frequently involves. 
 On the one hand you have gathered there all that is most illustrious 
 in our State — the most distinguished statesmen and lawyers — the great 
 leaders of the commercial world — some of our most famous writers — 
 and you have these men working under conditions which call forth all 
 their powers, and with the knowledge that the eyes of the world are 
 upon them, and that its verdict will be their prize or condemnation. 
 They feel, too, that they are there as the heirs of a long line of illus- 
 trious predecessors, meeting in a place from which, by those who have 
 gone before them, a great Empire has been governed and built up for 
 centuries. If Westminster Abbey be the Valhalla of our English race 
 — the resting-place of those who have wrought for it immortal deeds, or 
 
 25 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 those who have recorded them in immortal words — not less is the stately 
 palace which stands beside it the theatre in which those men have toiled 
 and laboured, or from which their enei^ies have been directed and 
 applied to the spread of that great Empire over which the Queen 
 holds sway. 
 
 This is one side of the picture — as I said, an interesting and 
 fascinating one. But there is another which is vastly less attractive — 
 times when you are compelled to listen to endless speeches the most 
 dreary that can emanate from human bores, or else find your only 
 relaxation in trudging hour after houi- at a snail's pace round stuffy, 
 crowded lobbies, an operation compared with which the treadmill itself 
 would be a welcome change. Mr. Lecky spoke eloquently the other day 
 of this side of the question when he described the toleration that is 
 extended not only ' to every antagonism and eccentricity of opinion, 
 but to all the boredom which the loquacity and monotony of faddisni, 
 factiousness, and impracticability could impose upon a long-suffering 
 audience.' And unfortunately you never know which side will present 
 itself to your notice. In the House of Commons it is — as Lord 
 Beaconsfield once said it was in politics — the unexpected which always 
 happens. It would indeed often be safe to conclude that what you are 
 assured will happen will not take place, and that what you are told will 
 be the course of business «'ill be something very different. You go 
 down there expecting an interesting and possibly exciting evening, and 
 all remains as dull as ditch-water ; you think everything wiU be quiet 
 and still, and some unexpected breeze springs up and at once the placid 
 dullness of the millpond gives place to the wild fury of a tempestuous 
 ocean. 
 
 We are accustomed, you know, in the physical world to think that 
 our most sudden storms reach us from the West, and are brought to us 
 across the Irish Channel and the seas that lie beyond it ; and so it is 
 in the political arena that of late years these outbreaks have usually, 
 though not always, come from the Irish quarter. It is quite certain, 
 however, that it is very difficult even for the most experienced to fore- 
 cast the course of business with any certainty. There is, we will 
 suppose, a division coming on in which you are anxious to take part ; 
 you are informed by the Whips that there is no chance of the question 
 concerned being even reached until a late hoiu- at night, and you accord- 
 
 26 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 ingly decide to absent yourself until after dinner. You return, in all 
 probability to find that all is over — the division is past and gone 
 without you — and it may even be the House itself adjourned and the 
 famihar beacon no longer sparkles in the clock tower. 
 
 There is a familiar and amusing scene which may be witnessed 
 almost every evening at the Bar of the House from 7 to 7.30. There 
 stands a group of members anxious to take part in a division which 
 they have been assured by the Whips would come on about that time ; 
 at 7.S0, accordingly, they have paired, intending to go home to dinner, 
 and expecting the division to take place in time for them to do so. 
 They have laid their plans ; but so also have others, who possibly have 
 already refreshed their inner man, or who intend to do so in the House 
 itself; time to them is no object, and one after another they rise with 
 exasperating deliberation to continue a debate which, in the opinion of 
 the diners-out, has been long exhausted, and consists only of a lame 
 repetition of what has gone before. It is a trying process for those 
 who wish to go, still more for those who desire to speak, and not much 
 that is then said can reach the reporters' ears. To address the House 
 at such a moment demands a com^age not less than that which is 
 required for a frontal attack upon the Boer lines, and a Boanerges 
 himself is not always equal to the task. 
 
 I know it is nowadays oftentimes the custom to speak of the House 
 of Commons in a depreciatory fashion, and to imply even that that 
 great assembly is in its decline. It would be sad if it were so, and 
 especially at the very time when, more than ever, it has become the 
 representative of the whole people and speaks the voice of the nation 
 at large. I do not believe that it is so. In one respect, certainly, I 
 venture to affirm, after an experience of some years, that it is not so, 
 and that is in the mutual courtesy and consideration which is habitually 
 shown by all members, of whatever party they may be, to one another, 
 and by every officer of the House to every member within its walls — 
 * Duke's son, cook's son,' or whoever he may be. I do not mean to say 
 that there is no party feeling — there is, I dare say, something even of 
 the spirit of the question once asked by a little girl of her mother: 
 ' Mamma, are the Whigs born wicked, or do they become so ? ' ' They 
 are born bad, and they become worse ' — but the feeling, if it exists, is 
 accompanied by the most perfect fairness and absolute courtesy to all, 
 
 27 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 however remote in political geography they may be. It has, indeed, 
 repeatedly been said to be one of the fairest of all assemblies, and a 
 distinguished statesman has declared himself of the opinion that in all 
 his experience, which is a long one, he has never known an unfavourable 
 judgment of the House to be an unjust one. Greater praise could not 
 be given to an assembly where party differences and disputes run so 
 high, and where opinions are inevitably so divergent. The Speaker 
 himself, the other day, said that ' now as ever, and he would say pre- 
 eminentl)' now, it was the most tolerant and best-ordered House of 
 Representatives that was to be found in the world. From five years' 
 experience in the Chair, he could say that it had shown itself to be 
 a place where a man might say what he desired, limited always by 
 the rules of courtesy and relevance — rules, he was glad to say, very 
 seldom exceeded.' 
 
 It has, too, few equals as a legislative assembly when it chooses to 
 bend itself in earnest to the task. And owing to its diverse composition 
 it has this advantage, that whatever subject you touch upon, there is 
 always some one who is specially acquainted with it. However remote 
 the country or the subject with which you have to deal, there is always 
 somebody who has been there, or who has special acquaintance with it. 
 Last Session we had a Bill dealing with the raising of the age of the 
 half-timers : and straightway we had a member who had himself worked 
 as a half-timer in a mill, and who could give the results of his own 
 experience. Such speeches always meet with the careful attention they 
 deserve. Generally speaking, I believe, it is still true to say that its sense 
 of honour is the highest — its perceptions of humour the keenest — its 
 business capacity the largest — its purity the most stainless- — its appre- 
 hension of talent the quickest and most generous — and its instinct the 
 finest of any of its rivals throughout the world. 
 
 No doubt there are sometimes, and have of late been, scenes — 
 scenes which I fear the Reporters' Gallery does not minimise, and 
 sometimes rather exaggerates — scenes which all regret, and no one is 
 anxious to defend. But they are not so bad as those in other repre- 
 sentative assemblies. A witty writer recently wrote of those in the 
 Austrian House : 
 
 ' No base procedure rules restrain the wild, untutored Czechs, 
 They have no vile formalities the patriot's soul to vex, 
 
 28 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 While we must catch the Speaker's eye before a word is said, 
 In free and happy Austria they blacken it instead.' 
 
 And we must remember, too, ' Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona ' — 
 that there have been scenes in days long gone by, and worse than any 
 that recent times have known. I saw that which occurred on the third 
 reading of the Home Rule Bill in 1893, that when Mr. Bradlaugh took 
 the oath in 1886; I have seen Irish members suspended in platoons — but 
 after all nothing that would compare to that which is related to have 
 occurred in July 1835. It was thus described by a spectator in the 
 Press the following day : 
 
 'Had a blind person been conducted into the House and not 
 told wher'e he was, he would have supposed he was in some 
 zoological establishment. The most confused sounds, mysteriously 
 blended, issued from all corners of the House. At intervals a sort of 
 drone-like humming, having almost the sound of a distant hand organ 
 or bagpipes, issued from the back benches : coughing, sneezing, and 
 ingeniously extended yawning, blended with other sounds, produced a 
 tout ensemble which we have never heard excelled. A single voice 
 from the ministerial benches imitated very accurately the yelp of a 
 kennelled hound. Another hon. member crowed like a cock, while not 
 far from the same spot issued sounds like the bleating of a sheep 
 blending occasionally with an 'imitation of the bray of an ass. The 
 deafening uproar was completed by the cries of " Chair ! chair ! " — 
 "Order" — groans — laughter — proceeding generally from all parts of the 
 House.' 
 
 Again, in 1837, Greville writes of a similar occurrence : ' Such 
 a scene of disorder and such a bear-garden never was beheld ' — while in 
 the following year when O'Connell was ordered to be reprimanded for a 
 speech made outside the House, the same authority informs us ' the 
 scene was such as a conjunction of Bedlam and Billingsgate might 
 produce.' I am confident such scenes would not be possible to-day : * 
 and the forecast of Sir Erskine May made in reference to those incidents 
 has been fulfilled, that the Commons as they advanced in power and 
 freedom would .show also greater self-restraint and a more ready 
 obedience to the authority of the Speaker. The complaint of the 
 present House has, I think, been in an opposite direction, and people 
 
 * I am afraid we must except the disorderly scenes when the Prime Minister was 
 refused a hearing on the third reading of the Parliament Bill in 1911. 
 
 29 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 say it is too dull and too decorous. We seem to have toned down, and 
 become more respectable and sedate in all directions. For instance, the 
 rush of the House of Commons in a new Session, with the Speaker at 
 its head, to the House of Lords to hear the Queen's Speech, is not 
 quite the proceeding of a severely deliberative assembly, but I have never 
 seen an3rthing I could describe in the words which Disraeli used of it in 
 his early days. 'The rush,' he says, 'was terrific: Abercromby {i.e., 
 the Speaker) nearly thro^vn down and trampled upon, and his mace- 
 bearer banging the members' head with his gorgeous weapon and 
 cracking skulls with impunity.' I do not know how far this scene may 
 have been due to the brilliant fancy of the writer — but it certainly is 
 not one we could hope to see to-day. Then what an improvement in 
 the drinking habits of the members has taken place ! You hear indeed 
 of the vast amount of excellent whisky which is stored for our use 
 in the cellars which concealed Guy Fawkes, but though I admit the 
 sale of intoxicating liquors within the House is not on a satisfactory 
 legal footing, yet drunkenness, or anything approaching to it, is for the 
 most part conspicuous by its absence. It was not so in earlier days. 
 In the recently published Carlisle manuscripts George Selwyn writes, in 
 February 1782 : ' Sir E. Bering spoke, drunk as usual' ; and you know 
 the epigram about Pitt and his colleague Dundas. 
 
 Pitt says : ' I cannot see the Speaker, Hal — can you ?' 
 Dundas replies : ' Not see the Speaker, Billy ? I see two.' 
 Well such things are unknown in recent history, and are in fact 
 impossible in the state of public feeling in the House, and I hope in 
 the constituencies too. 
 
 The question whether the Parliamentary oratory has or has not 
 declined is one that is difficult to answer, for the simple reason that in 
 earlier days there were no full reports permitted to be taken. The 
 history of Parliamentary reporting is one of the most curious in that of 
 all our institutions. For many long years it was considered a high 
 crime and misdemeanour to publish any report of the proceedings. 
 Even members themselves were expelled and imprisoned for notes of 
 speeches they had taken down, and the notes containing them ordered to 
 be burned by the common hangman. A Lord Mayor of London was 
 confined in the Tower. But the thirst of the public — the natural thirst 
 — was strong, and in the end prevailed. For many years, indeed, the 
 
 30 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 rule forbidding publication was evaded rather than disobeyed. The 
 names of the speakers were omitted, or they were given as the 
 Honourable Marcus Cato, or the Right Honourable Marcus TuUius 
 Cicero, or other Roman worthies ; while the scene of the debate was the 
 Senate of Lilliput. 
 
 We must remember, however, that the great objection was not so 
 much to the publication of the debates, as to the partiality of the 
 reporters and the scurrilous nature of their allusions to public men. 
 Thus in the last century (I mean the eighteenth), towards the close, one 
 speaker is described as ' a little, petty, insignificant insect ' ; another as 
 ' the scoundrel ' ; while generally all the wit, the learning, and the 
 argument were thrown on one side, on the other nothing but what was 
 low, mean, and ridiculous. Under such circumstances we can hardly 
 wonder that objections were raised. The struggle was continued 
 for many years ; in the end publicity prevailed and the printers 
 triumphed. 
 
 There was the famous debate in the House of Commons on their 
 petition, in which Burke played the part of chief obstructor, and divided 
 the House some three-and-twenty times. ' Posterity,' he said, ' will 
 bless the pertinacity of this hour.' The painful and embarrassing 
 conflict was at an end, and though it remained, and I believe still is, a 
 breach of privilege, the offence has long been committed with impunity. 
 Reporters are now welcomed, and not forbidden, and the extraordinary 
 ability, candour, and good taste with which they perform their difficult 
 task leaves nothing to be desired. Ah ! how many halting periods have 
 they amended — how many sentences have they restored to a gram- 
 matical form originally wanting — how often have they filled up the 
 lines of an argument, which if given as delivered would have been 
 hazy and obscure indeed ! Some people I know are not content with 
 their reported speeches. They think they should be fuller or more 
 detailed. Cobbett is said once to have made such complaint, and to 
 have been punished by being left severely alone, and for two sessions to 
 have remained unreported. But yet more severe was the sentence on 
 another member : he was reported exactly word for word as he spoke — 
 a revenge in many cases too terrible to think upon. There are many 
 interesting names among those of Parliamentary reporters, and many 
 who have been distinguished in politics and law have made their first 
 
 31 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 start in the Gallery. We may name Sir Edward Clarke among the 
 number. 
 
 I said it was difficult to compare the eloquence of our own and 
 earlier days. If great events in themselves can inspire great orations, 
 I suppose we might look for the highest efforts in the stirring scenes 
 which occurred in the seventeenth century. For a knowledge of those 
 momentous debates we are indebted to Mr. John Rushworth, Sir Simon 
 d'Ewes, and Mr. Burton, a Westmoreland M.P. The former was one of 
 the assistant clerks in the House of Commons, and made shorthand 
 notes of what he heard. It was he who took down, as we may conceive 
 with a trembling hand. King Charles' speech when he went to arrest the 
 five members — the original record of which incident you may see to-day 
 in the journals of the House. But the reports we have of men like 
 Pym and Cromwell, Hampden and Wentworth, give but the line of 
 argument which they pursued ; the form has vanished. If the 
 professional reporter had been there, Pym would not have come down to 
 us as a prosing pedant, and Cromwell as hopelessly muddled, rough, and 
 incoherent. In the next century it is but little better. The reporting 
 was a mere burlesque of what occurred, and this owing to the restrictions 
 imposed by Parliament itself. It is sad to think of the vast treasures of 
 eloquence of Bolingbroke, Windham, Chatham, and many another 
 squandered and forgotten for the want of ' the chiel among them 
 taking notes,' the sacred prophet and interpreter in the Gallery. 
 Johnson was among the reporters then, and we know from his own 
 admission that he made no pretence to a real report of what was said. 
 It was generally the mere coinage of his own imagination, and he often 
 had not even been present at the debates which he reported. It w£is 
 Johnsonese. Let me give you a well-known specimen, that in which 
 Pitt replied to the taunt that he was young. 
 
 ' Sir, the atrocious crime of being a young man with which the 
 hon. member has with such spirit and decency charged upon me I shall 
 neither attempt to palliate nor deny, but content myself with wishing that 
 I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth and not 
 of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience. Whether 
 youth can be imputed to any man as a reproach I will not, Sir, assume 
 the province of determining, but surely age may become justly con- 
 temptible if the opportunities which it brings have passed away without 
 improvement, and vice appears to prevail when the passions have 
 
 32 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 subsided. The wretch that having seen the consequences of a thousand 
 errors continues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy 
 to stupidity, is surely the object of either abhorrence or contempt, and 
 deserves not that his grey head should secure him from insults.' 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that no one ever spoke like this, and 
 that not the most tolerant assembly would endure it. There is reason 
 to believe that the greater portion existed only in the imagination of 
 the reporter. Wilberforce, On another occasion, was thus reported : 
 
 'Potatoes, sir, make men healthy, vigorous, and active, but what 
 is more in their favour they make men tall, and more especially I am 
 led to say this, being rather under the common size I have to lament 
 that my guardians have not nurtured me under that genial vegetable.' 
 
 Let me give one more instance. A speaker was addressing the 
 House' of Lords on a motion made by the Duke of Newcastle, and he 
 said that the nation would ever rest grateful to the Duke for his action. 
 This is Johnson's version : 
 
 'My Lords, the noble duke who made the present motion has 
 supported it by such strength of argument, and so fully explained the 
 advantages of the method which it tends to recommend., that not only 
 the present age but posterity probably may be indebted to him for 
 juster notions of a military establishment than have yet been attained, 
 even by those whose profession obliges them to such enquiries. Nor, my 
 lords, could we expect him from his long experience and extensive 
 capacity— experience gained in the heat of war and in the midst of 
 dangers ; a capacity not only cultivated by solitary disquisitions in 
 retirement and security, but exercised by difficulties and quickened by 
 opposition. Such abilities, my lords, matured by such an education 
 have justly made the noble duke the oracle of war, and procured him 
 the esteem and reverence of all the powers on earth.' 
 
 Of this we may say it is magnificent but not reporting. For all but 
 a very few speakers the reporters indeed do a great deal sis I have already 
 said, and we know there has been a recent trial in which they have 
 claimed that the speeches as given are their own, that they have the 
 copyright, and not the speakers, that the changes they effect are so far- 
 reaching that hardly a single sentence is left in the words actually 
 spoken. This I think is a magnifying of their office which will scarcely 
 be supported, and much as all who have to speak admire the ability 
 which they bring to their arduous task (it is sometimes tedious to listen 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 to a speech — what must it be to write it out ?), and the sagacity with 
 which they relinquish the valueless hum's and ha's, it is still true that 
 the value of the speeches of all our great orators is due to the special 
 characteristics which they individually impart to them, that each has his 
 own mint which cannot be mistaken for another's. It would be im- 
 possible, for instance, for any reporter to make a speech of Cobden's 
 read like one by Bright, or to destroy the marked characteristics of such 
 orators as Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone. The latter, indeed, with 
 his parentheses and provisoes and exceptions — one of his sentences is 
 .said to have been a quarter of a column long — must have sorely tried 
 their patience, but he and they generally emerged triumphant even from 
 the darkest parenthetical labyrinths. We may safely assert that the 
 generation that has heard four such masters as those I have named need 
 shrink from comparison with no other period in our own history, and 
 with no other orators the world has known. 
 
 A great change, marked even in my own time, has come to the 
 House of Commons in the use of and appreciation for classical quo- 
 tation. The time was when Virgil and Horace were familiar there : 
 now they are hardly ever heard, and when they are occasionally 
 attempted, if one judge by the reports on the following day, they are 
 as strange to the reporters above as to the members who sit below. 
 Thus I remember Mr. Goschen one day quoting, 'Solvuntur risu tabulae' 
 — the case is dismissed with a laugh ; but only one paper, as far as I 
 observed, had the words correctly; while, when a few nights after. Lord 
 Randolph Churchill, in almost his last speech, made an incursion into a 
 less familiar passage from the same author, the Times was the only 
 journal that even attempted to print the lines. I doubt if such an 
 incident as is related of Pitt would be possible to-day. On one 
 occasion, after the Peace of Amiens, he was replying to the taunts of 
 the Opposition, and applied some lines from Virgil beginning : 
 
 ' Me si fata meis paterentur ducere vitam ^ 
 
 (If fate would let me lead a life according to my will) — 
 when suddenly his memory failed him. Fox, bending over from the 
 front bench opposite, immediately came to his rescue and prompted 
 him to the end of the passage. Mr. Gladstone quoted largely, and 
 usually from Virgil or Horace. Thus he is speaking of the number of 
 
 34 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 objections which have been raised to some financial plan he had recom- 
 mended. His memory brings back to him the famous description in 
 the ^neid of the Winds rushing from all the points of heaven at the 
 bidding of the god : 
 
 ' Una Eurusque notusque ruunt, creberque procellis, Africus ' — 
 
 or as Dryden translates: 
 
 ' The raging winds rushed through the hollows round, 
 And dance aloft in air and skim along the ground, 
 South, east, and west, with mixed confusion roar, 
 And roll the foaming billows to the shore.' 
 
 Or, again, in a Budget speech he finds himself without a surplus. ' The 
 only security for the Chancellor of the Exchequer,' he says, ' lies in his 
 utter destitution.'' And then Juvenal comes to his aid with the well- 
 known line : 
 
 'Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator' 
 
 (The traveller with an empty purse will sing in the footpad's face). 
 But the patience of the House must have been sorely tried when on 
 another occasion he repeated some seven or eight lines of Lucretius, 
 a poet not so popular or well-known, whose long-drawn hexameters 
 would be very useful if one were speaking against time. The longest 
 quotation I have found was one made by Lord Stanley, afterwards 
 Lord Derby, in 1838, when he was attacking Lord Melbourne's Govern- 
 ment, and taunting it with being kept in office by O'Connell and his 
 Irish colleagues. He quoted some twenty lines of Hotspur's speech in 
 Henry IV., beginning: 
 
 ' But shall it be, that you, — that set the crown 
 Upon the head of this forgetful man ; 
 And, for his sake, wear the detested blot 
 Of murderous subordination ' 
 
 I need not say that none but one who had already won the ear of the 
 House could ever have ventured with success on such a feat. 'AU 
 things change,' said Lord Beaconsfield, ' and quoting Virgil will be the 
 next thing to disappear.' His forecast has come true. Quotations 
 generally have gone out of fashion, and it was in reference to their 
 disuse that, according to Sir Algernon West, Mr. Gladstone, contrary 
 
 35 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 to his usual habit, once used strong language. He had spoken of Pitt's 
 use of Virgil, and mentioned one of his most apposite quotations, 
 adding, ' If a quotation was made in the House now they would not 
 
 care a d n/ And I fear they would hardly wince at a false 
 
 quantity, as we are told they used to do in earlier days. The House 
 can still laugh, however, with Sir W. Lawson, when once replying to 
 Mr. Caine, he said he knew enough of Latin to understand the sig- 
 nificance of 'Cave canem.'' 
 
 In some respects the rules of the House of Lords as to speaking 
 are even more democratic than those of the Lower Chamber. With us 
 the Speaker, as you know, is the sole arbiter of our destinies. Every- 
 thing depends on his compelling eye. The Lord Chancellor, who is the 
 Speaker of the House of Lords, has none of the authority possessed by 
 the iirst Commoner — he cannot decide a question of order, or even 
 arrange as to which peer shall speak. If two peers rise, a motion is 
 made that one or other of them shall be heard, and, if need be, the 
 question would be settled by a division. The Woolsack on which the 
 Lord Chancellor sits is not, I believe, technically within the House at 
 all, and when he wishes to address the peers he leaves it and steps a few 
 paces to one side. If the House of Commons is a formidable audience, 
 still more awe-inspiring is the Upper Chamber. The late Archbishop 
 of Canterbury describes in striking language, in a letter, the difficulty 
 he had in taking part in its debates, and how its icy coldness and 
 indifference seemed to crush out of him all desire to do so. 
 
 I once witnessed a very amusing scene there. It was the speech of a 
 new peer who had recently been called, in middle age, to the Upper 
 House. I do not give his name, though he is no longer living. He 
 had evidently nursed the notion in the retirement in which he had lived 
 before his succession to the peerage that he was a very considerable 
 orator, whose words the world would not willingly let die. The House, 
 after its hard labours, lasting I suppose some fifteen minutes, was just 
 about to adjourn when this unfamiliar figure presented himself to their 
 notice. I think I see him now — a tall, white-haired gentleman with 
 pallid face gently flushed by the excitement natural to such an effort : 
 his figure swaying back and forward — now turning to the Lord Chan- 
 cellor, and now, with his back to that dignitary, glancing to where the 
 reporters sit, in anxiety lest a single word might be lost to the outside 
 
 36 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 world. The longer he was on his legs the more eloquent and incom- 
 prehensible he grew, and though more than once as he lowered his voice 
 to a solemn whisper it seemed that the end had come, the passing hope 
 in his hearers' breasts that it was so departed, as once more they saw 
 him pull himself up to his full height, and heard his voice rising and 
 falling like the soughing of the wind through the forest. For a short 
 time he was listened to with a sort of silent fascination. Who on earth 
 could he be ? And what was to be done ? The situation was growing 
 serious. The Marquis of Salisbury looked in despair at Lord Granville, 
 but no proposal came from the Opposition Bench. At length a private 
 peer — I think it was Lord Camperdown — proposed that the noble lord 
 be not heard. The Chairman hesitated, apparently for a moment, to 
 put the question, thinking probably that the orator would take the 
 hint and resume his seat. But not so. Taking advantage of the Lord 
 Chancellor's momentary pause with the eye of a consummate strategist, 
 the orator was off again with a withering glance at the unlucky peer, 
 and an added melancholy to his voice, indicating surprise that such an 
 intervention should be possible. 
 
 A happy inspiration now seized the Leader of the House. Waiting 
 for a moment when the speaker, in his regular revolutions, had turned 
 his back upon the House and had his eye fixed on the gallery at the 
 end, he suddenly moved that the House do now adjourn ; the motion 
 was put with unusual alacrity by the Chancellor, and when the orator 
 turned to see what was happening, the forms of his brother peers in full 
 retreat met his astonished gaze and the Chamber was deserted. No one 
 could face such an ordeal twice — not even with the blood of all the 
 Plantagenets in his veins — and beyond, I think, asking a question, the 
 speaker's voice was not heard in the Gilded Chamber again. 
 
 Still, in spite of its stolid indifference and coldness, a set debate 
 there, when you are fortunate enough to hear one, is a rare intellectual 
 treat, and with such orators as Lord Salisbury, Lord Rosebery, and the 
 Duke of Argyll (now seldom heard), need fear comparison with none. 
 What strikes one most about Lord Salisbury is his entire independence 
 of all notes — he replies with unfailing accuracy to the speeches of others, 
 taking up point by point without a single note of any kind to refresh 
 his memory. Nothing, again, could be more felicitous than the replies 
 of Lord Granville when he was Leader of the Opposition — full of that 
 
 37 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 light, felicitous badinage which so admirably suited his position as the 
 leader of a slender force in the presence of the master of vast battalions. 
 In the House of Commons no business can be done unless there ai'e 
 forty members present — this has been the rule since, I think, the 
 seventeenth century; in the Upper Chamber, on the contrary, no 
 quorum is required. Hence we had that amusing scene last Session 
 when half-a-dozen peers, who felt strongly on the subject of Cromwell's 
 statue, out-voted the Lord Chancellor and another member of the 
 Government who happened to be present on a motion condemning its 
 erection. Cromwell, however, in death resistless as in life, has had his 
 way, and we have not only the statue outside, but a bust of him within, 
 as well. As to the quorum, I fear if that was required there would be 
 very few sittings of the Peers. 
 
 Speeches must not be read, though the notes of them may be as 
 voluminous as you please. The comparative failure of Burke was due, 
 it is said, to his delivering written speeches, though they are speeches 
 which are now part and parcel of the nation's most prized literature. 
 No doubt it is essential to have fully thought out what you intend to 
 say, but having done so, the less your speeches are read the better they 
 will be. It would be difficult to lay down rules or to prophesy before- 
 hand as to who will succeed, who fail. Lord Macaulay says : ' It is a 
 place in which I would not promise success to any man. ... I should 
 say being a good writer, a good orator, a good mob orator or at 
 debating clubs, was rather a reason for failure than otherwise.' Sheil, 
 who was himself a fine speaker, gave his advice to Disraeli in the fol- 
 lowing words. After speaking of his first speech, often declared to 
 have been a failure as exhibiting unlimited command of language, 
 courage, temper, readiness — he went on : ' Now get rid of your genius 
 for a Session ; speak often, but shortly. Be quiet — try to be dull. 
 Astonish them by speaking on subjects of detail : quote figures, dates, 
 calculations, and in a short time the House will sigh for the wit and 
 eloquence which they know they have in you ; they will encourage you 
 to pour them forth, and you will have the ear of the House.' The 
 House, as a whole, is very kind to those who address it, but sometimes, 
 possibly, the felicitations addressed to individuals in reference to their 
 speeches is a little tinged with flattery. Thus, in reference to the first 
 speech of Sir John Packington, Mr. Disraeli tells us, after describing it 
 
 38 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 as commonplace, ' I supported him most zealously, and he went to bed 
 thinking he was an orator, and wrote to Mrs. Packington, I have no 
 doubt, to that effect. 
 
 I have spoken of eloquence ; but there is another kind of eloquence 
 about which I should say a word, and that is the eloquence of the silent 
 member. That may seem paradoxical, but it is an eloquence which 
 plays as large a part in the debates as any other — and not the least 
 important. After all, numerically, the silent member is (fortunately) 
 the strongest factor in the House. There are more than 650 members, 
 but by far the largest part of them contribute nothing to the debates. 
 Probably we should not be far wrong if we said they are carried on by 
 not more than 100 members. Possibly Gibbon, who was a silent 
 member himself, voiced a very general feeling when he said that the 
 good speeches he heard HUed him with despair, the bad ones with terror 
 — he could not hope to make as good as some he heard, and was afraid 
 of making as bad as some he was compelled to listen to. Mr. Storer, 
 who was M.P. for Carlisle from 1774 to 1780, in a letter to Lord 
 Carlisle in the recent Carlisle Papers, gives expression to a like feeling 
 when he writes in reference to his attempts at speaking in the House, 
 and quotes the French proverb, ' Better is the enemy of good ' ; how- 
 ever well he did, he was sure to hear much better and was discouraged. 
 But though the silent member does not speak, he is not therefore dumb. 
 His voice is not unheard. They have to express approval, or the con- 
 trary — to cheer the combatants on either side — to call with stentorian 
 tongues, ''Vide! Vide!'' when some obnoxious person has caught the 
 Speaker's eye, or ' Hear, hear ! ' when some partisan of his own side 
 has been successful. This familiar ' Hear, hear ! ' has an interesting 
 pedigree. We find it in the papers I quoted from just now. There 
 we find : ' The Master of the Rolls got up, and before he sat down 
 changed his opinion seven times, and as often the party which thought 
 they had got him roared out the " Hear him ! " ' This was soon 
 corrupted into ' Heerum,' for on a later occasion we are told : ' Sir W. 
 Lowther spoke short but close to the purpose, and had very loud 
 " Heerums " from the Ministerial Bench.' 
 
 This is the ordinary eloquence of the silent member, although 
 occasionally, in moments of great excitement, he gives vent to his 
 feelings in somewhat more discordant cries. But he is an important 
 
 39 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 factor of the House ; the drudge without whom business could not be 
 carried on. See him, when a division is called, as he hunies in from 
 the tea-room, the smoke-room, or the Terrace, anxiously enquiring how 
 he is to vote ; or as he carefully punctuates with cheers the elaborate 
 period of his favourite leader ; or again when, at the hour approaching 
 midnight, some well-known bore rises to continue the debate, and is 
 met by a roar that would unnerve the boldest and renders the most 
 powerful organ inaudible. See him on these occasions, and you 
 estimate the full value and importance to his country of the silent 
 member. 
 
 It is rather curious, but a great deal as to the particular shade of 
 your political opinion, and your relation to the party in power or 
 Opposition, is indicated by the position of your seat. Of course, 
 broadly, one party sit on the one side, the other on the other ; but the 
 House is farther sub-divided by the gangways which run across the 
 centre and those who sit above the gangway, behind the Ministers or 
 Opposition leader, as the case may be, are supposed to be more thick- 
 and-thin supporters than those who sit below, who are considered to be 
 in a greater condition of independence. The climax of your in- 
 dependence is reached when you occupy the front comer seat below the 
 gangway. That is the favourite haunt of the freest spirit who is not 
 ready — ' Jurare in verba magistri ' — and is appropriately occupied 
 at present by Mr. James Lowther on the one side and Mr. Labouchei'e 
 on the other. The corner seat on the bench behind Ministers is usually 
 occupied by some one who thinks he has had claims on the Government 
 which had been overlooked, or by some one who has left the Government 
 and is ready to play the part of candid friend. At present it is 
 occupied by Mr. T. Bowles, and was in days gone by the seat from which 
 Lord Randolph Churchill used to admonish the friends he had left. The 
 seat behind that again — the corner of the third bench — is that usually 
 reserved for the oldest members of the House in either party ; on one 
 side it is now filled by Sir Wilfrid, who, in spite of his youthfulness, is 
 the father of the Liberal party ; Mr. Beach, on the other^ who is now 
 the father of the Tory party and of the House, does not apparently 
 care to appropriate a seat ; but his predecessor. Sir J. Mowbray, was 
 most particular, and in his reminiscences, recently published in Black- 
 wood, has detailed his wounded feelings when he found his favourite 
 
 40 
 
FIFTEEN YEARS IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 seat filled — ' I was much disconcerted to find my place taken ' — and he 
 was not relieved until he had had an explanation with the intruder and 
 provided against a recurrence of the incident. Much, therefore, may 
 depend on where you sit — that is when you are fortunate enough to 
 secure a seat — which, when matters of great interest are being discussed, 
 is not always so easy as you might expect. 
 
 The history of the House of Commons, as a great representative 
 assembly, is, of course, with all its great traditions, a continuous one 
 since the early days when Edward I. first called it into being. But as 
 far as the chamber in which it meets is concerned it is very different. 
 It has had no less than three habitations at Westminster. In its early 
 days, down to 1546, many certainly of its meetings were held in the 
 splendid Chapter House — the ' capitulum incomparabile ' of Matthew 
 Paris, which still remains to us very much in its original condition. 
 The Speaker sat in the Abbot's stall, and possibly disorderly members 
 were punished at the central pillar of Purbeck marble, where criminals, 
 it is said, were publicly flogged. From thence, in 1546, at the initiative 
 of Edward VI., who offered the chapel of the disestablished Monks of 
 St. Stephen's, it moved across the road to the chamber which remained 
 in use down to the great fire of 1834. It was rebuilt after the tire, and 
 is now the passage through which strangers go to the Central Lobby, 
 and which is adorned by statues of the great statesmen of the past. 
 At the higher end you may observe some brass marks in the floor 
 which mark the spot where the old table is said to have stood, and 
 which have been inserted by Sir Reginald Palgrave, the late chief 
 clerk, who has done so much for the archasology of the House. It 
 was, we are told, a dark, narrow room. It was also considerably smaller 
 than the present chamber, and one can understand the complaint of 
 Cobbett when he wrote : 
 
 ' Why are 658 of us crammed into a space that allows us no more 
 than half a foot square apiece ? There we are, crammed into this little 
 hole, squeezing one another, treading upon each other's toes, running 
 about to get a seat, going to the hole at 7 /^>'clock in the morning to 
 stick a bit of paper with our names on to the bench to indicate 
 that we wish to sit there for the day ; routed out of the place 
 again after a division has taken place and scrambling for a seat just 
 as people do when they are let into a dining-room at public dinners.' 
 
 And though our present quarters are somewhat larger, a similar 
 
 41 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 complaint might very well be made to-day. But small as the old 
 chamber was — ' without decoration — no marble, no gold, no paintings,' 
 as a foreign visitor remarked — it is impossible to pass through 
 those old walls which once contained it without being affected by 
 the genius of the place — without remembering that here the battles 
 of the Constitution have been fought — the privileges of freedom 
 vindicated — the liberties of England won. It was here that the 
 floor of the English House of Commons was profaned by the unhappy 
 Charles I., who left his guards at the door as he faltered into the 
 Speaker's chair ; and here that Cromwell, a few years later, dismissed 
 the discredited remains of the Long Parliament. It was here that 
 Fox and Chatham, and the younger Pitt, Burke, and Sheridan, 
 whose statues now adorn the room, delivered those great orations 
 which are part and parcel of the English language, and played so 
 large a share in the nation's history. And though the present 
 chamber, with its sixty years of life, has no memories that can be 
 compared with those that cling round its predecessor, yet in it many 
 great men whom we have seen and known have borne their part in the 
 great controversies of the day : it is hallowed to us by illustrious 
 memories — it is the classical sanctuary of Britain's intellectual greatness 
 — the chosen palladium of her proudest attributes — her freedom, 
 eloquence, and power. 
 
 42 
 
THE SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF 
 COMMONS 
 
 YOU will understand at once that I have been directed to the 
 subject of this lecture by a recent event* in connection with 
 the representation of our ancient city. I thought it might be interest- 
 ing in its present position to say something of the ancient office of the 
 Speaker of the House of Commons, and of the distinguished men by 
 whom it has in past days been filled ; and if there should be, as I can 
 hardly believe there are, any yet burning cinders of past, and I hope 
 forgotten, fires yet lying about our path, I shall certainly endeavour to 
 avoid them, and believe I shall have no difficulty in doing so. M\' 
 work, indeed, will deal with the past, and not the present. It is, 
 perhaps, singular, when we remember the powerful families who for so 
 many years held the representation of the various Cumberland con- 
 stituencies in their hands — the Lowthers, Howards, and others — it is 
 singular to find that now for the first time our county has contributed 
 to the list of those who have been called to fill the Speaker's Chair in 
 the House of Commons.f Westmoreland, the sister county, has far 
 outstripped us in the race. The third on the roll of those who have 
 filled the office is Sir James Pickering, who was Knight of the Shire for 
 that county in the reign of Richard II., and in three of his Parliaments 
 filled the Chair. The Speakership, as you will readily conceive from 
 the fact that in its origin the office was simply that of Chairman of the 
 House of Commons, is by no means one of the oldest institutions of 
 the State. Yet, though not the oldest, it has existed under its present 
 name for full five hundred years, and so is in itself an illustration of 
 
 * Mr. Gully, M.P. for Carlisle, was elected Speaker in April 1895. His re- 
 election for Carlisle in August I89S was, contrary to precedent, opposed, but 
 without success. 
 
 t The anomaly has been redressed by the election of the present Speaker, Mr. 
 Lowther, M.P. for Mid-Cumberland, who succeeded Mr. Gully. 
 
 43 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 that ' majesty of immemorial antiquity ' which is the distinctive boast 
 of our English Constitution. 
 
 It is not, indeed, very easy to say who the first Speaker who actually 
 bore the title was ; just as it is not quite certain when the representa- 
 tives of the people — the Knights of the Shire on the one hand, and the 
 members for the boroughs on the other — first separated themselves from 
 that General Council in which Barons, and Prelates, and Abbots sat 
 together to discuss the affairs of the nation, and decide upon the 
 questions from time to time submitted to them by the King. The 
 change, like so many others in our English institutions, was not 
 enacted in any statute ; it came by custom, and custom soon passed 
 into law. As the poet said: 
 
 ' No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rang : 
 Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprang.' 
 
 No doubt that Council itself had a chairman. He was styled, we learn 
 from one old chronicler, ' Procurateur des Prelats, contes, barons, et 
 autres gents.' But about the commencement of the fourteenth century 
 the Knights of the Shire and borough dignities began to sit in their 
 separate chambers, and from that time we may assume the office of 
 Speaker to have existed. Early lists of those who have fiUed it go 
 back as far as 1258, and indicate Peter de Montfort, brother of the 
 famous Simon, the introducer of the representative system amongst us, 
 as the first holder of the office ; while names are given of those who 
 it is believed succeeded him, in the Parliaments of Edward II. and 
 Edward III. 
 
 However this may be, in the fourteenth century we reach firmer 
 ground, and Sir Erskine May, than whom there can be no better 
 authority, informs us that Sir Thomas Hungerford, in 1377, was the 
 first Speaker to whom that title was expressly given. The title, indeed, 
 was not quite fixed at first. He is sometimes called the Speaker, some- 
 times the Parleur — ' qui avait les parolez pour les communez ' — some- 
 times the Prolocuteur. The latter title is still held, as you are 
 probably aware, by the chairman of the Lower House of Convocation. 
 But though Parliament itself has retained the title which it borrowed 
 from the French Assemblies, its principal officer has continued to be 
 known by the more English title of the Speaker. Not only has the 
 
 44 
 
SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 name remained amongst ourselves : it has travelled to other lands, and 
 there is a Speaker of the House of Representatives in the United 
 States, and Speakers of the various other representative bodies 
 throughout our Colonial possessions. The Speaker, however, of the 
 American Chamber, though he bears the same name, is very different 
 in the position which he occupies and the spirit in which his functions 
 are discharged. The name remains, but the substance has been changed, 
 as we shall think greatly for the worse. 
 
 The distinctive note of the Speaker amongst ourselves is his impar- 
 tiality. He is chosen, indeed, by a party, because here a majority 
 implies a party. But on his way from his place on the benches of the 
 House to the Chair he is expected to shake ofl^ or leave behind him all 
 party ties and sympathies. It is very different in the United States. 
 ' There,' as Mr. Bryce tells us in his work on the American Constitution, 
 
 ' the Speaker has immense political power, and is permitted — nay, ex- 
 pected — to use it in the interest of his party: he decides in their favour 
 all such points as are not covered by the rules. His authority over the 
 arrangement of business is so great that he can frequently advance or 
 postpone particular Bills or Motions in a way which determines their 
 fate. Although he does not figure in party debates, he may, and does, 
 advance the leaders of his party privately, and when they hold a party 
 meeting he is present, and gives counsel. He is generally the most 
 eminent member of his party who has a seat in the House, and is really 
 almost its leader.' 
 
 His patronage, too, is, as Mr. Bryce further reminds us, tremendous, 
 and by its exercise he can give support to himself and his own section 
 of the party, reward his friends, and give politicians the opportunity of 
 rising to distinction, or practically extinguish their political careers. 
 This elevation of the Speaker into a party leader is entirely different 
 from what prevails amongst ourselves, and we are glad to recognise 
 that, after its five centuries of existence, there is amongst all parties 
 a deepening conviction that the holders of the office should maintain 
 that rigid impartiality which has been its best and noblest character- 
 istic, and that when he speaks he should do so in the best and highest 
 interests of all parties in the State, and all members in the House over 
 whose deliberations he presides. The Speakers, indeed, are not perhaps 
 often mentioned in our ordinary histories, but, nevertheless, as we shall 
 
 45 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 see, they have played their part — and that an important part — in 
 the formation of our Constitution and in the preservation of our 
 liberties. 
 
 You may perhaps ask where, at the time when it first became a 
 separate assembly, the House of Commons had its residence, and where 
 the first Speaker took the chair. You may perhaps be astonished to 
 find that it had no recognised place which it could properly call its 
 o\vn. The great Council of the nation had been accustomed to 
 assemble in the Great Hall at Westminster; but when the division 
 of the two chambers took place it seems not quite clear what meeting 
 place they at first assigned to the Lower House. But about the 
 middle of the fourteenth century we have clear evidence of its assembling 
 in the Chapter House of the Abbey Church of Westminster, originally 
 erected by Henry HI., and termed by the historian of the day ' an 
 incomparable building.' At a later period it was restored and 
 beautified by Edward III., and here it would seem the old House of 
 Commons originally sat.* In 1376 it is already termed ' their ancient 
 place in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey,' and in a con- 
 temporary poem of the day, ascribed, I believe wrongly, to the author 
 of ' Piers Plowman,' the poet, when he is describing a Chapter House, 
 speaks of it as 'a great Church carven and covered, quaintly 
 enriched with seemly ceilings set aloft, and as Parliament House 
 painted about.' This building, therefore, which you may still visit, 
 was the original House of Commons, and here in the Abbot's stall no 
 doubt the first Speaker took the chair. I do not know if he used 
 towards any unruly member of the House those penal instruments 
 which the Abbot was accustomed to employ, for it was here that 
 refractory and erring monks were flogged and scourged in the presence 
 of the whole community. If he did, he no doubt found them useful 
 in preserving that order, which it may have been as difficult to secure 
 in those days as it sometimes is in our own. It is strange to 
 think that here, perhaps, were passed some of the strong measures that 
 were taken for curtailing the privileges of the Church — that here 
 clerical abuses were denounced, and that on the table in the very 
 
 * Mr. Dasent, in his work on the Speakers (1911), seems to think the House also 
 sat in the Painted Chamber, the old Hall of Edward the Confessor, in which he is 
 said to have died, and also at times in the Refectory of the Abbey. 
 
 46 
 
SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 Chapter House itself was laid the famous Black Book which dealt so 
 formidable a blow at the monasteries of England, and not least at the 
 Abbey Church of Westminster itself. It is said that its use by the 
 Commons was granted on condition of its repairs and maintenance 
 by the Crown ; however that in the first instance may have been, full 
 rent may be said to have been paid in 1862, when, with the sanction of 
 Mr. Gladstone, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the 
 building was restored at the public charge. Here, then, until the 
 end of the reign of Henry VIH. in 1547, the Commons remained. 
 They then removed, but whither did they go ? To St. Stephen's 
 Chapel — the chapel of the monks of St. Stephen's — which had been 
 disestablished by the very Chamber that took their place. This 
 remained the House of Commons for nearly three hundred years, 
 down to 1834, when it was destroyed by fire. Here it was that 
 Charles I. looked round for the five members ; this was the House that 
 Cromwell abruptly closed ; which heard at a later date the glorious 
 eloquence of Pitt and Burke and Fox — and here, I presume, 
 Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Villiers, who is now the father of the House, 
 took their seats when they were first elected. It was situate at the 
 south-west corner of Westminster Hall, above St. Stephen's crypt, 
 which some of you may possibly have seen, and its site is now occupied 
 by the hall through which you pass when you visit the House. You 
 will probably agree with me in thinking that this was a strange lodging- 
 house for the House of Commons, the great forerunner of legislative 
 assemblies throughout the world. Fears have sometimes been expressed 
 in recent days that if the Church was disestablished, churches and 
 cathedrals might possibly be converted to secular uses. I believe these 
 fears are idle, and certainly have received no sanction from any 
 legislation that has been proposed. But it is strange that the very 
 thing they dreaded has already taken place, has taken place in what we 
 are accustomed to call ' the good old times,' and that for five hundred 
 years our representatives used to meet, without protest, first in the 
 Chapter House of the Abbot of Westminster, and later in the 
 disestablished Church of the monks of St. Stephen's.' And this is why 
 to this day Parliament is often called St. Stephen's. We have now, at 
 last, a chamber of our own. There are some who would desire to see 
 us housed in a yet larger building what would give to every member his 
 
 47 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 own seat and desk. Such aspirations, I have observed, are most loudly 
 expressed at the commencement of a new Parliament, when there is a 
 new-bom and natural anxiety to hear every word of every speech : they 
 grow fainter towards the close, and I believe for my own part the present 
 chamber is of a most convenient size, and though no doubt inconveniently 
 crowded on the occasion of a great debate, is amply sufficient for 
 ordinary times. 
 
 I have mentioned that Sir Thomas Hungerford was the first on 
 whom the title of Speaker was conferred in 1376-7. His tenure of the 
 office was short, and he was succeeded by Sir Peter de la Mare, who was 
 a person of much greater note. Sir Peter had been a leader in the 
 Parliament of 1376. That Parliament was a famous one. It was 
 summoned at the close of the reign of Edward III., when the people 
 were suffering from great abuses introduced under the influence of John 
 of Gaunt, Shakespeare's time-honoured Lancaster, and Alice Perrers, 
 who had entire control of the King, already old and incapable, sinking 
 into dotage, and sadly distressed by the death of the famous Black 
 Prince, to whom he had looked as his successor. It was to the House 
 of Commons, now growing into power, that people turned in their 
 distress, and their cause was worthily voiced by Sir Peter de la Mare, 
 who boldly discharged the task committed to him. In the poem of 
 ' Piers Plowman,' in the version written in 1376, a fable is told how the 
 rats and mice assembled in council together to concert measures against 
 the cat. The cat is John of Gaunt ; the rats and mice, the members of 
 the House of Commons — the rats, I take it, the knights of the shire, 
 and the mice the burgesses of the towns. ' Rat,' I am afraid, in later 
 days, as applied to a member of Parliament, has received a somewhat 
 more sinister meaning. Various proposals were made as to how the cat 
 was to be dealt with : but the poem at last describes how ' There spoke 
 a raton of renown, most reasonable of tongue.' This raton of renown 
 is no other than Sir Peter de la Mare, who made himself the mouth- 
 piece of the demands of the people's representatives, and boldly stood 
 up against the King and his importunate advisers. For the moment he 
 prevailed, and redress was given. The succession of Richard II., the 
 infant son of the Black Prince, was secured. But no sooner had the 
 Parliament separated than the old influences over Edward resumed 
 their sway, and Sir Peter was placed in prison, an unfortunate augury 
 
 48 
 
SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 for Speakers yet to come. It was owing to this fact that he was not 
 elected to the chair in the succeeding Parliament of 1377, which undid 
 much of the good work of its predecessors, but Edward III. dying in 
 the summer of that year, and a new Parliament being summoned, Sir 
 Peter was released, and elected to the place of Speaker. He was 
 re-elected as a member to a succeeding Parliament, and stands forth 
 in the history of his day as indeed ' a raton of renown,' a worthy fore- 
 runner of the great Speakers that were to be. They were not all as 
 independent as himself. Sir John Bussy, who was three times Speaker 
 at the close of the reign of Richard II., pursued a very different coiu'se. 
 He made himself one of the chief parties in the attempt to destroy 
 the liberties of the country and the powers of Parliament, on which 
 that monarch embarked in his later years, and he met at the hands of 
 Henry IV. the fate which he deserved in being beheaded. It was not 
 a light matter in those days to be the Speaker. Sir John's name 
 lives in Shakespeare's Richard II., the same play in which our own 
 Bishop of Carlisle, who was also on Richard's side, is introduced. 
 One of his speeches, as reported by the poet, is hardly in language 
 that would be termed parliamentary in a Speaker's mouth to-day. 
 ' Thither,' he says to Green, one of his associates, who has announced 
 his intention of going to Bristol to oppose the new King Henry, 
 
 ' Thither will I with you : for little office 
 The hateful Commons will perform for us ; 
 Except, like curs, to tear us all to pieces.' 
 
 He was more unfortunate than our bishop, for though he had supported 
 Richard and pleaded his cause, he escaped with banishment, Henry, in 
 the play, remarking to him : 
 
 'For though mine enemy thou hast ever been. 
 High sparks of honour in thee I have seen.' 
 
 We must conclude he had seen none such in Sir John Bussy, or 
 Bushy, as Shakespeare terms him, and so his punishment was more 
 severe. In truth, as these two instances will show, the Speakership in 
 those days was not a bed of roses. It was not an office fervently to be 
 desired. The strain in later days, no doubt, has been great — it was 
 certainly not less so, though very different, in eeirlier times. Their 
 
 49 E 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 difficulty then was to adjust the position in which they stood respec- 
 tively to the House of Commons, whose mouthpiece they were and for 
 whom they spoke, and the Throne, between which and the House of 
 Commons they had to stand. They had, as it werfe, to be the servants 
 of two masters, and we know on the highest authority how difficult it 
 is to occupy a position of that kind. It was all the more difficult 
 because in those days the relation of the House of Commons, with its 
 gradually extending authority and increasing powers, to the King was 
 itself stiU unfixed. It was for a long* period in a state of transition : 
 now the House was stronger, now the King, and Speakers must often 
 have found it extremely hard to decide on which stool it was most safe 
 to stand. 
 
 Their functions were not the same as they are to-day. The House 
 of Commons was then usually called together for the sole purpose of 
 granting the King supplies. It took advantage of his needs in that 
 respect to call attention to the grievances from which the nation 
 suffered. In the old phrase, ' grievances precede supply.' The Speaker 
 on these occasions had to voice its complaints, and so ran the certain 
 risk of incurring the King's displeasure. To this fact, no doubt, we 
 owe it that there was, and still is, in the form of election, an assump- 
 tion of reluctance to undertake the office — a reluctance which was then 
 probably real enough. Thus, after the approval of the House to the 
 election of the Speaker has been signified by a division or general 
 consent, after he has been 'eluz par ses compagnons,' he is led, or 
 rather dragged, to the chair by his proposer and seconder, 'gently 
 resisting and protesting.' He submits himself, in his own words, to 
 the pleasure of the House. There is, as Lord Stanhope phrases it, 
 'the usual coy demur.' He asked in early days that a favourable 
 interpretation may be placed on aU his words — that no offence might 
 be taken at them, and that his utterance might be regarded as the 
 utterance of the House he represented. All this was due, no doubt, to 
 the fact that it was, oftentimes, a service of real danger he was under- 
 taking, a danger which led Sir Peter de la Mare to the gaol in 
 Nottingham and deprived Sir John Bussy of his hesid. 
 
 We have all heard of the ' Nolo Episcopari,' but there was some- 
 times an equal, and even more natural, disposition to decline the 
 Speaker's Chair. Thus, Sir Richard Rich, in 1537, besought the King 
 
 50 
 
SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 to elect another Speaker, as 'he had neither learning, boldness, nor 
 experience for that office, and that therefore he was the least capable 
 to undertake such honourable employment.' It would have been well 
 if his refusal had been accepted, for he was one of the most despicable 
 men that ever filled the chair, and on his perjured evidence it was that 
 the great Sir Thomas More was condemned. The Crown occasionally 
 endeavoured to assert its privilege by refusing to elect the Speaker 
 chosen by the Commons. It did so in the case of Sir Edward 
 Seymour in 1679. After a struggle, both Crown and Commons 
 yielded, and another member, not put forward at first by either, was 
 installed. 
 
 Other instances may be cited of Speakers who, on the one hand, 
 threw over the interests confided to them by the Commons and became 
 the subservient instruments of regal oppression; or, on the other, of 
 those who maintained with loyalty their independence, and stood boldly 
 in the breach against the usurpations of the King. There is the well- 
 known case of Sir John Finch in the third Parliament of Charles I., a 
 time of stress and trial more difficult perhaps than any subsequent 
 Speaker has had to face. Sir John Eliot had made a motion con- 
 demning the imposition of poundage and tonnage. The Speaker 
 thereupon declared that it was the King's pleasure that the House 
 should be at once adjourned. He was met by shouts of ' No ! ' on 
 every side. Eliot then rose to speak on the question of adjournment, 
 but Finch declared he had his Majesty's express command to adjourn 
 instantly if any one should attempt to speak. It was a critical 
 moment. As he rose to leave the chair, two members stepped for- 
 ward, seized him by the arms and thrust him back into his seat. He 
 endeavoured to escape, and for a moment seemed to have succeeded. 
 But crowds of members hurrying up barred the way, seized him, and 
 retained him in the chair. 'God's wounds,' cried one, 'you shall sit 
 till we please to rise.' Finch continued to plead for their consideration. 
 ' What would any of you do,' he said, ' if you were in my place ? Let 
 not my desire to serve you faithfully be my ruin.' In vain he pleaded. 
 ' You have protested yourself to be our servant,' they said, ' but if you 
 do not what we command, that protestation is but a compliment. The 
 Scripture says, " His servant ye are whom ye obey :" if you will not 
 obey us, you are not oiu* servant.' This was inexorable logic. Finch 
 
 51 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 remained, and the debate proceeded to its close. It was the last sitting^ 
 of that Parliament, which was not summoned again for twelve years. 
 It was a difficult duty on that occasion the members had to perform, 
 but it was by these men and amid such scenes that our Parliamentary 
 liberties were secured. 
 
 It is probable that from the date of this debate on the question of 
 adjournment that the rule arose which distinguished the House of 
 Commons from other legislatures — that the Speaker should never leave 
 the chair save after a motion duly made and carried for the purpose. 
 It was a rule which in the time of Speaker Denison led on one occasion 
 to an awkward dilemma. The motion to leave the chair had, by some 
 mistake, been omitted. The members had departed, and he was left in 
 durance vile, until some one could be recalled to make the customary 
 motion. In later days the rule has been relaxed, and now on ordinary 
 occasions the House automatically adjourns by the Speaker leaving 
 the chair. 
 
 As an instance of a different kind, we may take the case of William 
 Lenthall, the Speaker of the Long Parliament which was summoned by 
 Charles I. in 1640. He had seen some stormy scenes already, and on 
 one occasion confessed he had not expected to come away alive. But 
 his greatest hour of trial came when the King visited the House in 
 1642 in search of the five members. The site of the room through 
 which he passed from the Gi-eat Hall of Westminster to St. Stephen's 
 Chapel has quite recently been marked by a brass plate upon the wall. 
 ' By your leave, Mr. Speaker,' said his Majesty, ' I must honour your 
 chair a little.' He then proceeded to explain the object of his visit. 
 'Is Mr. Pym here?' he said. There was no reply. Then came the 
 demand for Holies ; but again without response. Turning to Lenthall, 
 he said, ' Are any of these persons in the House ? ' It was then that 
 the Speaker replied in the memorable words of singular force and 
 dexterity, and full of that ready resoiu-ce so essential to the holders of 
 the office — words worthy of the best traditions of the Chair : ' May it 
 please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, but 
 as this House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am, and I humbly 
 beg your Majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer but this- 
 to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me.' Charles then 
 retired from the House amid cries of 'Privilege!' and the House 
 
 52 
 
SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 adjourned with the feeling that they had but just escaped a massacre. 
 So strong, indeed, was the presentiment of danger that one member, Sir 
 Simon D'Ewes, retired to his lodgings and made his will. 
 
 They were dangerous days for members as well as Speakers. Lenthall, 
 however, did not go without his reward. A little later, the House had 
 in its hands the appointment of the Master of the Rolls. ' I would,' 
 said Lenthall, audibly, 'you would appoint me;' and he was accord- 
 ingly appointed. He afterwards returned to the chair, and gave, it is 
 said, a casting vote in favour of negotiating with Charles in the Isle of 
 Wight — the best thing, as Wood says, he ever did. Notwithstanding 
 this, he was amongst the twenty members who were excluded from 
 clemency at the restoration of Charles II., on account, it is said, of the 
 part he had taken in the trial of Charles I. 
 
 He lived, indeed, in troublous times, and would seem to have 
 discharged his duties in them with singular impartiality. His tomb 
 was discovered in the Church of Burford in Oxfordshire, not many 
 years ago, and the only inscription on it was that which was 
 placed there by his own direction, 'Vermes sum' ('I am but a 
 worm '). 
 
 One can understand well how in troublous days like these it was not 
 always easy to secure a Speaker. It has been difficult for other reasons. 
 There are, as you may well imagine, many great qualities required for 
 the fit performance of so high an office. They are qualities not always 
 easy to find in one man. These general requirements have never been 
 more specifically expressed than in the speech of Sergeant Yelverton, 
 when he was called to the chair in the reign of Elizabeth. 
 
 ' Neither,' he said, ' from my person or nature does this choice 
 arise : For he that supplieth this place ought to be a man, big 
 and comely, stately and well-spoken: his voice good, his carriage 
 majestical, his nature haughty, and his purse plentiful and heavy. . . . 
 But contrariwise, the stature of my body is small, myself not 
 so well-spoken, my voice low, my carriage lawyer-like' (I do not 
 
 S[uite know the carriage that is indicated) 'and of the common 
 iashion, my natvu-e soft and bashful, my purse thin, light, and never 
 yet plentiral.' 
 
 Of course this language of depreciation was often used merely pro 
 forma. Even Sir Edward Coke, the great lawyer, thus spoke of himself 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 when he was appointed to the chair and presented himself before 
 Elizabeth for her approval : 
 
 ' As in the heavens a star is but an opacum corpus, a mute body, 
 until it has received its light from the sun, so stand I here an opacum 
 corpus until your Highness'' bright shining wisdom has looked upon me 
 and allowed me. I am untimefy fruit, not yet ripe — but a bud scarcely 
 blossomed : I fear your Majesty will think thab among so many fair 
 fruits they have picked but a shaking leaf.' 
 
 This might perhaps be appropriate language to the ear of Elizabeth ; 
 it would be sadly out of place to-day. The attributes that were named 
 by Yelverton do not include one that is nowadays as needful as any 
 other, that of patience. It certainly is one that is sorely needed to 
 enable the occupant of the chair to endure the tedious iteration of 
 speeches he is compelled to hear for long hours together. It is a 
 quality in which some Speakers have certainly been found lacking, and 
 in other days have expressed themselves with considerable freedom. 
 When Burke was defending the printers who had been put on trial 
 for reporting speeches, and was speaking at interminable length in 
 order to protract the debate, Sir Fletcher Norton, who was then 
 the Speaker, exclaimed with a vigour that would vastly astonish us 
 to-day : ' For God's sake, let us go on and get done with the debate.' 
 
 It was in this debate that a Mr. Onslow spoke of himself as being 
 the descendant of three Speakers, and plumed himself very much 
 upon the fact. Burke's retort was : 
 
 'I have not the advantage of a Parliamentary genealogy : I was 
 not bom with order running through my veins. But as this gentle- 
 man boasts of his father, his son will never boast of him. The Parlia- 
 mentary line is cut off.' 
 
 For many years the Speakers were usually selected from the knights 
 of the shire or members for the counties, and throughout this has 
 been the usual rule. The first exception occurs in 1554 in the case 
 of Sir Clement Higham, who was member for West Looe in Cornwall. 
 He was elected in the third Parliament of Queen Mary, and was 
 indeed expressly selected by her for the office. It was the Parliament 
 that decided by a formal vote to return to the obedience of the Papal 
 See, reverse the attainder of Reginald Pole, and on its knees received 
 
 54 
 
SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 absolution for the schism and heresy committed in the past. Another 
 exception to the rule occurs in the same year in the case of Sir 
 Robert Brooke, who was chosen Speaker while representing the City of 
 London. It was the Parliament that assented to Queen Mary's marriage 
 with Philip. Both Parliaments were packed with adherents of the 
 Queen, and both Speakers were imposed upon them at the bidding of 
 the Crown. Legal men have always been favourite candidates for 
 the chair. Indeed, Burnet, in his history of his time, in speaking of 
 Sir Edward Seymour, on whom the choice of the Commons fell in 
 the reign of Charles II., describes him as the first Speaker that was 
 not bred to the law. This, perhaps, was hardly the case. No doubt 
 in many instances — the great majority of instances — it was so. In 
 the reign of Queen Elizabeth it seems to have been absolutely the rule, 
 but there were many on the list before who did not belong to the legal 
 profession. Nor in early nor even until quite recent times was the 
 Speakership regarded as the end of the career of him who held it. 
 Sir Harbottle Grimston, who was the first Speaker after the Restora- 
 tion, and the first, it is said, who wore a wig, became Master of the 
 Rolls not long after, and such preferment was by no means uncommon. 
 We need not go further back than the beginning of this century 
 for a famous instance, when Addington, who had been Speaker for 
 eleven years, became Prime Minister in succession to Mr. Pitt. The 
 same had been the case with Mr. Spencer Compton, who was 
 Speaker in 1715 and 1727, and Grenville, who held the office in 
 1789. Both became Prime Ministers after having filled the chair. 
 The case of Addington, however, has been the last of such precedents, 
 and the fact that Mr. Manners Sutton had thought of following it in 
 1832, when he was invited to form one of the Cabinet, proved fatal to 
 his re-election in 1835. Henceforth the Speaker, when once elected to 
 the chair, has been presumed to leave all further ambition behind him, 
 and to look forward only to the Upper House, to which each Speaker 
 since the beginning of the century — for it had not been so before — 
 has been called. 
 
 I need not say there are many eminent names on the roll of 
 those who have filled the office. Among the most distinguished is 
 that of Sir Thomas More, the friend of Erasmus, and the author of 
 Utopia, who was elected to the post in the very first year that he sat 
 
 55 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 in Parliament. His brilliant reputation had no doubt preceded him, 
 and, what was possibly even more important, he was the especial favourite 
 of Henry VIII. ' Whoever may live to see,' said Cardinal Morton, in 
 whose household he was brought up, 'this boy will turn out a 
 marvellous man.'' As Speaker, though the friend of the King, he 
 displayed great independence in his tenure of the chair. In his 
 Utopia we find emphatic protests against that worship of kingly power, 
 that notion that the King could do no wrong, which was being 
 fostered among the people, with what result the next century was 
 unfortunately to see. When Cardinal Wolsey, then in the height of 
 his power, came in person to the House to demand a subsidy for the 
 King, Sir Thomas told him boldly that his coming hither was neither 
 expedient nor agreeable to the ancient liberties of the House. When 
 they met on the following day, the Cardinal said to him : ' Would 
 to God, Sir Thomas, you had been at Rome when I made you Speaker.' 
 ' Your Grace not offended, so would I too, my Lord, for then I should 
 have seen the place I have long desired to visit.' 
 
 At a later period Sir Thomas was made Lord Chancellor, and 
 remained so until he himself at length became the victim of royal 
 caprice, steadily adhering to the end in his loyalty to Parliament and 
 his resistance to the monarch's personal rule. A not less famous 
 Speaker was Sir Edward Coke, whose great legal fame has obscured 
 his other high claims to our gratitude. He, like More, was also elected 
 in the first year of his service in the House under Queen Elizabeth. 
 When, in the accustomed form, he claimed the usual privileges of the 
 House from the Queen's representative, he was met with this reply, 
 which showed with what jealousy the growing power of the Commons 
 was regarded by the occupants of the throne: 'Privilege of speech,' he 
 was told, ' is granted to you, but you must know what privilege you 
 have : not to speak every one what he listeth, or what cometh in his 
 brain to utter, but your privilege is Aye or No.' And he was further 
 warned that if there were ' idle heads that wiU not shrink to hazard 
 their own estates, which will meddle with reforming our Church, and 
 transforming the Constitution,' he was to pay no heed to them, but to 
 leave these matters to others better able to judge. Coke became Lord 
 Chief Justice, and when he was deprived of that office, mainly because 
 he would not do the royal bidding in the administration of the law, he 
 
 56 
 
SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 once more entered the House of Commons, and though no longer Speaker, 
 battled for the people's cause. James placed him for a time in the 
 Tower, but on being released he entered Parliament again, and was a 
 leading spirit of the Committee that drew up the Petition of Right. 
 When that famous charter of English liberty was under discussion in 
 the House, and the Speaker, Finch, of whom I have already spoken, 
 endeavoured to prevent any allusions derogatory to the King, or his 
 Ministers and favourites, Coke is described by the historian as standing 
 up with tears running down his furrowed face, faltering and sitting 
 down again, and finally taking courage, and in vigorous words denounc- 
 ing the Duke of Buckingham as the cause of all their miseries and 
 disasters. Yes! it is by such men, in such times, our freedom has 
 been preserved, and the debt we owe them can never be too often 
 dwelt upon. There is a long line of Parliamentary worthies which 
 stretches in unbroken order from the earliest times to our own, and of 
 which illustrious Speakers have formed no little part. Some daring 
 spirits have always been found to teach the monarch of England 
 that there was a power mightier than his own, and they spoke most 
 loudly when they were most required. It is to their efforts that it is due, 
 in the main, that Parliamentary institutions did not perish in Englfuad 
 as they did in so many other lands — that they have remained among 
 us, the great bulwark at once of our liberty and our power. 
 
 Among other notable names in the list I will only mention Sir 
 Thomas Chaucer, the poet's son, who was five times Speaker in the 
 reign of Henry IV., and Robert Harley, the famous statesman of the 
 days of Queen Anne, to whom we owe the Harleian Collection in the 
 British Museum, and who, on account of his minute acquaintance 
 with the forms of the House, was chosen Speaker at what was thought 
 the early age of forty-two. I have already mentioned the name of 
 Onslow in connection with the office. The most eminent member of 
 that family was Speaker for thirty-three years in the reign of 
 George II., and was elected by a more general concurrence, we are 
 told, than had ever been known before. He was a great adherent, as 
 indeed Speakers are obliged to be, of all the forms and rules that are 
 laid down. A Mr. Murray had been accused of seditious behaviour. 
 He was ordered to apologise on his knees. When called to the bar 
 he declined to do so. Mr. Speaker Onslow said, ' Your obeisance, sir, 
 
 57 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 your obeisance.' He still declined. ' Sir,' said the Speaker, ' you must 
 kneel.' ' Sir, I beg to be excused : I never kneel, but to God. I cannot 
 kneel to any body else.' He was accordingly committed to Newgate to 
 reflect at leisure upon his contumacy. Another, shortly afterwards, 
 was also bidden to kneel to the Deity of the House of Commons. He 
 complied with the request, but as he rose he wiped his knees with 
 his pocket-handkerchief, and said, 'It is the dirtiest House I was 
 ever in ! ' 
 
 Speakers have sometimes been placed in strange positions and had 
 curious duties to perform. None, perhaps, was moi-e strange than that 
 which fell to the lot of Sir John Trevor. He was accused of having 
 been guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour in taking from one ot 
 the City companies a bribe of lOOOZ. to expedite the progress of a Bill, 
 and had to put the question from the chair in his own case, when the 
 ' Ayes ' had it. If he had returned to the House on the following day 
 he would have had to put the motion for his own dismissal, but for- 
 tunately a convenient illness prevented him from attending. Nor could 
 the task of that Speaker have been an easy one who was commissioned 
 by the Commons, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, to represent to her 
 Majesty the duty which, in their opinion, devolved upon her of taking 
 to herself a husband. Sir Thomas Gargrave, to whom the office fell, 
 discharged the duty in forcible and becoming language, but, as we 
 know, did not achieve his purpose. She pointed out, in reply to the 
 request, that children were uncertain blessings, and might grow up 
 ungracious ; for her, it would be enough that a marble stone should 
 declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin. 
 
 In those days, too, the action of Speakers was often obliged to be 
 peremptory enough. When the Act of Union with Scotland was under 
 discussion in the time of James I., a Sir Christopher Piggott, who was 
 opposed to the measure, standing up with his hat on, in defiance of the 
 most stringent rule of Parliamentary etiquette, loudly vociferated : 
 
 'Let us not join murderers, thieves, and roguish Scots — as much 
 difference between them and us as between a judge and a thief. They 
 have not suffered two kings to die in their beds these two hundred 
 years. Our King hath hardly escapen, and now he is come amongst us, 
 let us free him from all such attempts hereafter.' 
 
 The speech was deeply resented by the King, and the Speaker was 
 
 58 
 
SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 commanded to pronounce judgment upon him. The sentence was that 
 he should be dismissed from his place of Knight of the Shire for Bucks, 
 and carried to the prison of the Tower, there to remain during the 
 pleasure of the House. This was a somewhat drastic proposal, but 
 such interference with freedom of speech was then by no means without 
 precedent. 
 
 The ladies, perhaps, will think that the most ungracious action on 
 the part of a Speaker was that of Abercromby — the only Scotch 
 Speaker there has ever been — in 1836, when he succeeded in excluding 
 them for a further period from admission to the House. Their presence 
 had been originally allowed, but in consequence of some disorder which 
 took place amongst them in 1778 they had not, from that time onward, 
 been permitted to attend. It was thought, however, when the new 
 Houses of Parliament were opened, this exclusion might be reversed. 
 Accordingly, a Committee was appointed to consider the question. It 
 reported in favour of their admission. The report was then brought 
 before the House, and approved by it, by a majority of forty. The 
 Government of the day accordingly inserted a sum in the Estimates to 
 provide for their accommodation. This proposal came on for discussion, 
 as such proposals usually do, at the fag-end of the Session. The ladies' 
 opponents mustered in full force, and, in defiance of the usual rule, 
 appealed to the Speaker himself for his opinion on the point. 
 
 ' As,' he said, ' the House has already twice decided in favour of the 
 admission of ladies to the Strangers' Gallery, I have felt it a matter of 
 great doubt whether I should give any opinion at all upon the matter ; 
 but as I have been called upon by the House to do so, I must say that, 
 having well considered the subject and looking upon it as a question 
 of the order and decorum of the House, and with reference to the 
 influence that might be exercised upon the House, I have come to a 
 distinct and positive conviction that the measure is most undesirable. 
 I have formed this opinion without reference to those whom it may 
 please or displease in the discharge of what I conceive my duty to 
 the House.' 
 
 The resolution against granting the money was accordingly carried by 
 forty-two to twenty-eight. 
 
 It may be curious to observe the conduct of our own representatives, 
 on this occasion. Mr. Philip Howard, I find, who was certainly not 
 deficient in courtesy to the ladies, said he must vote against the grant, 
 
 69 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 becaiise he was convinced that the good sense of the country was 
 opposed to making the ladies of England political partisans. Mr. 
 Blamire joined him in his opposition. They and others appeared to 
 treat it as a joke. Mr. Aglionby, on the other hand, who was, I 
 think, the only Cumberland member who supported it, was of opinion — 
 which possibly we shall all share to-day — ^that the only preposterous 
 feature in the debate was the kind of opposition made to the pro- 
 position. One member, in the course of the discussion, related an 
 anecdote of Napoleon and Madame de Stael which might very well 
 have concluded the matter. Napoleon had been complimenting her 
 upon her ability, but regretted that she interfered in politics. She 
 asked him to define what he meant by politics ; he declined to do 
 so. She replied : 
 
 ' I will do it for you. By politics, I do not mean the noisy disputes 
 which begin and end in ringing the changes on the watchwords of 
 political parties in the State, each striving for the mastery, because of 
 the advantages it brings : but by politics I understand the science of 
 government and the art of forming such institutions as shall produce 
 the content and secure the happiness of those who live under them. 
 Is this a subject on which your Majesty will say "women ought to have 
 no knowledge " ? '' 
 
 These were the views which gradually prevailed, and though, for a 
 vear or two. Speaker Abercromby succeeded in excluding the ladies 
 from the House, his sentence was soon reversed, and under a new 
 Speaker, and after a lady had been called to the throne which she still 
 fills, they were admitted to the gallery, where they still remain. In 
 quite recent years, owing to the conduct of certain ladies, their 
 admission has been subject to considerable limitations, and only those 
 who are closely related to members are allowed to enter. Tliey have 
 never, I am afraid, been accommodated as they ought to be. In the 
 old House, I am told, their seats were in the ventilator, which does not 
 sound extremely comfortable : in the present, I fear, it is little better, 
 for if not in the ventilator itself, a great deal of the impure atmosphere 
 of the House must undoubtedly pass through the gallery to which they 
 -are admitted. It seems no doubt absurd to-day that such a question 
 as their admission should have been seriously discussed only fifty or 
 sixty years ago. In the light of the progress that has since been 
 made, who can say where, in another fifty years, they may have arrived ? 
 
 60 
 
SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 By that time, they may, perhaps, have stepped from their bicycles to 
 the Speaker's chair itself ! 
 
 Among the most striking scenes in which the Speakers have 
 borne a psirt must have been that when Oliver Cromwell, after having 
 declined with some reluctance, as it is supposed, the title of King, was 
 installed by the Speaker as Lord Protector. 
 
 'His Highness, standing under cloth of State,' says the historian of 
 the day, ' the Speaker, in the name of Parliament, presented to him first 
 a robe of purple velvet, which the Speaker put upon His Highness. 
 Then he delivered to him the Bible, richly gilt and bossed. After that 
 the Speaker girt the sword about His Highness, and delivered into his 
 hand the sceptre of massive gold. And then, this done, he made a 
 speech to him on the several things presented.' 
 
 It must have been a striking scene, and the memory of it, and of 
 many another enacted there, cannot but be pleasant to us as we pass 
 through the Hall of Westminster where they took place, and which, 
 fortunately, was spared to us by the fire of 1834. 
 
 The Speaker, as you are aware, though he does not vote on ordinary 
 occasions, has a casting vote in case of a tie. The most famous instance 
 of this having been given was on the occasion when Melville, the 
 friend of Pitt, and a member of his administration, was impeached. 
 The matter was put to the vote. The numbers were equal. The 
 Speaker, as he announced them, is said to have turned as white as 
 ashes, for the responsibility of the decision devolved upon him. After 
 a painful silence of many minutes he gave the casting vote against the 
 Government. Pitt, it is said, pressed his hat upon his head, and it was 
 seen that this was done to conceal the tears that were trickling 
 down his cheeks. In my own experience a casting vote has only once 
 been given. It was on a question of altering the law for the purpose of 
 legalising a marriage that had taken place outside the kingdom. I 
 mention it because I had myself intended to vote for the alteration of 
 the law, but my opinion was changed by one of the speeches that were 
 delivered, and the numbers in the division were accordingly equal. It 
 is not quite true, therefore, that speeches never alter the votes. On 
 this occasion Mr. Speaker Peel voted with the * noes ' in accordance with 
 the rule that prevails in such cases, to leave matters as they are. As, 
 on ordinary occasions, he does not vote, so neither does he speak^ 
 
 61 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 when in the chair, on questions that are before the House. In this 
 respect he differs from the Lord Chancellor, who, though Chairman of 
 the Upper House, frequently addresses it, and addresses it as a leading 
 member of the party which has placed him in the chair. When the 
 House of Commons is in Committee, and the Speaker is no longer in 
 the chair, he can of course address it, like any other member, but in 
 modem times he has not often availed himself of the privilege. I do 
 not think he has done so at all in the last ten years, and indeed the 
 whole tendency of modem usage is to secure to the Speaker that 
 perfect impartiality and that freedom from connection with party, 
 which gives to the office so much of its power and influence with 
 all political parties and all members of the House. In former days the 
 Speaker had imposed upon him the duty of reading prayers. He was 
 ordered, I think, about the time of Queen Elizabeth, to commence at 
 a somewhat startling hour, namely, half-past eight : and early as the 
 hour was all members who were not present were directed to pay a fine 
 to the poor-box. If the fine were now enacted the poor-box would 
 undoubtedly be a somewhat rich one, as nowadays the only apparently 
 recognised reason for attending prayers is to secure a seat. The 
 members of the Government who, one would suppose, ought to pray 
 at least as much as other people, are always conspicuous by their absence, 
 and that for the simple reason that they have seats reserved for them, 
 and are so under no obligation to secure them for themselves. You 
 are aware, I dare say, that one of the difficulties of a private member in 
 the House of Commons is connected with the due control and manage- 
 ment of his hat. The Spteaker also, it appears, has a hat — a three- 
 cornered, peaked, black beaver one. But so far as I can gather, not 
 even the oldest member has ever seen it worn, and no one seems to know 
 exactly what would happen if he put it on. It is one of the last 
 resources of civilisation, and is only used, it is believed, when the Hou3e 
 of Commons is in a state of actual riot. It might, I suppose, have 
 been useful on the famous occasion which occurred at the conclusion of 
 the Committee on the Home Rule Bill in 1893, but when that disturb- 
 ance took place the Speaker was not present, and Mr. Mellor was in the 
 chair. It is said that a threat to put it on was made in a very excited 
 scene in the course of the last century: let us hope it will be long 
 before it is required again. 
 
 62 
 
SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 I have thus endeavoui-ed to say something to you of the office of 
 the Speaker, and of those who have filled it in days gone by. I 
 pointed out that the Speakers were not often prominently mentioned in 
 the histories of the day. There is an exception in the case of the 
 Constitutional History of Dr. Stubbs, who is careful, for the period 
 with which he deals, to give the names of the successive Speakers, and 
 some account of the way in which their duties were discharged. That, 
 I think, is an admission on the part of a very high authority, that they 
 have played a part, and an impoi-tant part, in that great work of 
 developing and moulding the Constitution, of which we are all so 
 proud. No doubt, the chai-acter of their duties to-day has changed. 
 I have indicated how, at first, it was their main function to intervene 
 and moderate, as it were, between the Commons and the King — to be 
 the mouthpiece of the demands that were made by the people's repre- 
 sentatives, and to bring those demands in a reasonable and temperate 
 spirit before the King, and to endeavour to secure his compliance with 
 them. It was a delicate, often, as we have seen, a very dangerous, task, 
 but it is a task that no longer needs to be performed. The relation of 
 the Crown to Parliament has been settled, and settled satisfactorily in 
 this country. That most ingenious instrument, the Cabinet, though in 
 name unknown to the Constitution (and one of the marks of our 
 E.nglish Constitution is that it has never been written out), has solved 
 the problem. It has been accepted by the Crown as its mouthpiece, 
 and as it also enjoys the confidence of the majority of the repre- 
 sentative House, it has reconciled the two rival powers and made them 
 one. The chief task, then, of the old Speakers has passed away. 
 Another awaits them which is not always easy, and is perhaps as 
 important — to preserve order and decorum in the proceedings of the 
 first representative assembly of the world, and when political passions 
 are running high and fierce disputes are being carried on, so to 
 moderate between the contending parties, with wise and prudent 
 impartiality, as to restore that dignity which is so essential to a 
 legislative body. Let us hope in that task they will be successful, 
 and that the English Parliament may remain what it has always been — 
 a model and example of what the representative House of a free people 
 ought to be. 
 
 63 
 
THEi CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 THE details of Constitutions are not usually very interesting reading, 
 and, though they are important, they are apt, I am afraid, to be 
 somewhat dull, and dulness, I know, is the one unpardonable sin in a 
 lecture. I fear this lecture will be no exception to the rule. The 
 American Constitution, however, when we regard its history and its 
 origin, must always be of absorbing interest to ourselves. When we 
 remember how it was the work of men of our own race and tongue who 
 had gone out from this country carrying their lives and fortunes in their 
 hands to find the freedom denied them here — of men who were com- 
 pelled, in the end, by measures which all parties now condemn, to 
 assert, and successfiiUy to assert, their independence — we cannot deny the 
 interest of that eventful hour in their history when, having fought and 
 won the battle, their leaders representing the various States met together 
 in convention and made this memorable declaration : ' We, the people 
 of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish 
 justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for common defence, 
 promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ovu:- 
 selves and our posterity, do ordain said establish this Constitution for 
 the United States of America.' And that the Constitution so founded 
 is important and is fiall of great lessons is proved by the many references 
 we constantly have in our public press and by public men to its details, 
 to points in which it seems to be less successful, to others in which, in 
 the opinion of critics, it is more effectual than om: own. Those criticisms 
 in recent years have been mainly, perhaps, in two directions. One has 
 been in reference to the checks by which hasty action on the part of the 
 Executive or the Legislature has been prevented, and under which, it 
 may be well questioned, whether it is not more difficult than among 
 ourselves to give immediate effect to any formed opinion and resolved 
 
 64 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 intention of the nation. The other is the means by which a large 
 amount of business which with us is transacted at Westminster to the 
 grief of an over-burdened Parliament, is devolved upon the local 
 legislatures of the States that form the Union. The difficulty in this 
 matter is to ensure easy and concerted action of the whole while pro- 
 moting local and individual freedom in the parts, and this difficulty is 
 usually held to have been successfully met in the American Constitution. 
 What is wanted is, that the people of each State should have full and 
 entire control of their own domestic affairs, which they will naturally 
 manage better than any distant governing body could do, and the 
 management of which will form a field where their energies may be 
 exercised and their political capacity enlarged: while to the Central 
 Government must be handed over all those matters which are of common 
 concern to all the States and the nation as a whole, and which can only 
 be efficiently dealt with by a government which has at its back the 
 combined authority and physical power of all the members of the 
 Union. This is the problem which the American Constitution is held 
 to have successfully solved — a Constitution which has been described as 
 the finest specimen of constructive statesmanship the world has ever seen. 
 The history of the convention which framed the Constitution is so 
 interesting and striking that it may be worth while briefly to repeat its 
 story. The difficulties of the American nation were by no means at an 
 end when, in 1783, a victorious army was disbanded, and Washington 
 had retired, a second Cincinnatus, to his home at Mount Vernon, where 
 he offered a glass of wine and a bit of mutton to all who chose to visit 
 him. They had been victorious in the field. The policy of George III. 
 was dead and gone, happily for us as well as them. But had they 
 founded a nation that would endure .'' There were many clear-sighted 
 observers outside who said that they had not. There were many even 
 amongst themselves who were aixaid that it was the case. There were 
 all the mutual antipathies and clashing interests of the rival States 
 which, even in the presence of the common danger, it had been hard 
 enough to reconcile, and which again and again had threatened to 
 paralyse the army of Washington and to render his task impossible. 
 Even the physical difficulty of inter-communication between the various 
 States was not a light one. The steam engine was not yet invented. 
 Those, therefore, who predicted failure — who said a United Government 
 
 65 F 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 was a visionary idea — were not without powerfiil arguments to found 
 themselves upon. But the common sense, the energy, the determination, 
 of the leaders of the American people, in the end, won the day. In 
 May 1787, a Convention, at which all the thirteen States, save one, were 
 represented, assembled in the plain brick building in Philadelphia, 
 from which the Declaration of Independence had been issued eleven years 
 before. It consisted of fifty-five members. Washington was chosen 
 president. For five months they sat with closed doors, secrecy enjoined 
 on all. In September the result appeared in the draft of the Federal 
 Constitution. It was like the issue of the Papal conclave, when the 
 Cardinals are assembled for the election of a Pope, and when at length 
 the thin line of smoke is seen rising from the chapel in the Vatican, 
 where they have been confined, which announces that an election has 
 been made and the ballot papers have been burnt, and, as the bells ring 
 from every church in Rome and the guns of St. Angelo boom forth, the 
 people cry, ' Hahemus pontificem '' — ' We have a Pope.' So might the 
 American people have cried, ' We have a Constitution.' Not only were 
 the proceedings of the Convention kept secret at the time — they were 
 not revealed until fifty years had passed, and the last survivor of those 
 who sat there had been gathered to his fathers. I need not say how 
 impossible, in the fiswie of an interviewing press, such secrecy would have 
 been to-day, and how easily publicity might have marred the success of 
 the undertaking. An anecdote is told of the aged Franklin as the 
 Convention rose from its last meeting. On the back of the chair on 
 which the President had sat was a half-sun, brilliant with gilded rays. 
 As he rose for the last time, Franklin pointed to the chair, and said, 
 ' As I have sat here all these months, I have often wondered whether 
 yonder sun is rising or setting. Now I know it is a rising sun.' It was 
 indeed a rising sun. The Constitution then published, and afterwards 
 accepted, in the end, by all the States, was formed for a people 
 numbering thirteen States and barely two millions of men. To-day it 
 is the Constitution of forty-five States with sixty-five millions of 
 population and an estimated wealth of thirteen thousand millions a 
 year.* America, as has well been said, has passed us in a canter, and 
 to her we may say with Horace, and say it with pride, for she is sprung 
 
 * This lecture was delivered in 1897. To-day there are forty-eight States, with, 
 according to the Census of 1910, some ninety miUions of population. 
 
 66 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 from ourselves : ' O matri forti filia fortior' (' O daughter stronger than 
 thy mother strong'). The Constitution so framed has lasted with 
 barely an amendment. None was made from 1804 to 1870, and that it 
 has been so is a striking testimony to the ability and capacity of those 
 who framed it. 
 
 And now, before we speak further of the American Constitution, 
 let us look for a moment at our own. And here we are at once 
 confronted with a difference — an important difference between them. 
 The American Constitution is a written one, contained in the precise 
 and formal language of a Statute which deals specifically with all its 
 various details. Ours, as you know, is absolutely unwritten. Its most 
 important parts are not to be found either in the Statutes or in the 
 text-books of the common law. It has ' growed ' like Topsy. It has 
 sprung, stone by stone, into a mighty building from the changing 
 scenes and conditions of our eventful history. It has broadened down, 
 in the words of Lord Tennyson, from * precedent to precedent,' by the 
 common sense and skill of the people working towards a great end with 
 patience and endurance through long and eventful years. It consists 
 nominally, like its descendant, the American, which in this respect 
 imitated it, of three members, in our own case called King, lx)rds and 
 Commons. It is best described as a Constitutional Monarchy — a 
 Monarchy that is, in the apt phrase of the great French statesman, 
 M. Thiers, where the King reigns but does not govern. But the 
 ingenious method by which this result has been brought about, by which 
 the three parts have been co-ordinated together through the invention 
 of a fourth power — the Prime Minister and his Cabinet — is one of the 
 most successful, as it is one of the most important, parts of our English 
 Government. Yet, the position of the Cabinet is defined in no statute. 
 It is, strictly speaking, unknown to the Constitution. You can point to 
 no one year when its authority can be said to have been established. 
 And yet it is the mainspring of our Government and that which keeps 
 all the other parts in orderly and harmonious motion. Take away the 
 Prime Minister and his Cabinet, and the rest of the mechanism is 
 worthless. The Sovereign acts upon the advice of the Prime Minister, 
 guided and influenced by his Cabinet, and, as the Prime Minister enjoys 
 the confidence of the House of Commons and is dependent for his 
 position upon the continuance of that confidence, a Sovereign is thus 
 
 67 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 always in harmony with the predominant feehng of the great assembly 
 of the people's representatives. There is no statute or legal usage 
 which prescribes that the Prime Minister, and those who form his 
 Cabinet, shall be members of either House of Parliament, but you will 
 have to go back a long way in our history before you find an instance of 
 their not being so. Practically the Prime Minister must enjoy the 
 support of a majority of the Lower House, or that House, having entire 
 control of the finances, would know how to deal with the situation^ 
 Theoretically, the Sovereign can dismiss a Ministry, but he has not done 
 so since William IV. dismissed the Government of Lord Melbourne in 
 1834, and that is a precedent which is not likely to be repeated. 
 Theoretically, the choice of a Prime Minister, when a change of 
 Government occurs, resides with the Sovereign. But whatever the- 
 Sovereign may wish, the Prime Minister must be the man who can- 
 command a working majority in Parliament. In 1880, for instance, it 
 was said there was a preference for Lord Granville or the Marquis of 
 Hartington, but Mr. Gladstone had been designated at the general 
 election, and he was sent for and appointed. Theoretically, the 
 Sovereign can veto a measure that has passed the House of Commons 
 and the House of Lords, but it is a veto which has not been exercised 
 for a still longer period. The last occasion was in the days of Queen, 
 Anne in 1707. Queen Anne, we know, on high authority, is dead, and 
 her policy, in this respect, is at least as dead as herself. The consent of 
 the Sovereign to every measure is still given in the old Normaji-French,. 
 ' La reine le veult^ but it is an interesting piece of antiquarianism which 
 not even the most advanced Radical would wish to disturb. It is the- 
 Prime Minister as the head of the Cabinet that is the real executive in 
 this country : he appoints the judges ; he is, to a large extent, 
 responsible for the Bishops. He has the right to advise in regard tO' 
 every department of the State. He is, in fact, the great co-ordinating 
 power which unites the other parts of the Constitution and enables 
 them to move easily and harmoniously together. Nowhere else is there 
 a position so powerful and so anomalous. The Crown, though of course 
 it possesses great moral influence and weight, increasing, no doubt, with 
 the ability, moral character and experience of the possessor, still acts on 
 the advice of its responsible advisers, and their responsibility, fully and 
 freely accepted, stands between the Throne and the people. This in- 
 
 68 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 genious machinery has not been perfected in a day. It has been growing 
 for a century at least, perhaps for two. And in comparing its 
 American rival, we must remember that when that was framed our own 
 Constitution had not reached the happy point of development where it 
 stands secure to-day. The King was still supreme and exercised 
 his own will to an extent which would be impossible to-day. Indeed, 
 it was largely due to the obstinacy, prejudice, and folly of George III. 
 that our difficulties with our American kinsmen began. Thus, we shall 
 see that the framers of the new Constitution followed, both in what they 
 did and what they avoided, the theory of our English Constitution 
 rather than its practical development, which was, indeed, in that day, yet 
 hardly visible. But both may well be held in admiration. The English 
 Constitution has been said to be the most subtle organ that has ever 
 proceeded from progressive history — the American is the most 
 wonderful work ever struck off at a given moment by the brain and 
 purpose of man. We know how highly the Americans themselves are 
 accustomed to rate it. There is an anecdote which tells us that, in the 
 opinion of Americans, the world revolves on its axis subject to the 
 Constitution of the United States ! 
 
 Let us now turn to the American Constitution and let us begin with 
 the President. T^ie President, in some respects, is more like a king than 
 our Prime Minister. WTien the Constitution was drawn up, the 
 position of our Prime Minister, as we have seen, was not so fully 
 established as it is to-day : had it been so the powers of the President 
 would probably have been other than what they are. He is a king, but 
 a king whose power for good or evil is limited by the short duration of 
 his office. He is elected for four years, and though he may be re-elected, 
 there is no precedent for more than one re-election. No President has 
 enjoyed a third term. Eight years is, therefore, the extreme limit of his 
 rule. He is chosen by an electoral college to which each State 
 contributes the number of members which it returns to the Senate and 
 the House of Representatives together. It was no doubt intended that 
 this college should impartially select the man that it considered most fit 
 for the office, after quiet and deliberate consideration ; but this intention 
 has not been carried out, and, as a matter of fact, the members who are 
 elected to the college are returned under a specific pledge to vote for one 
 or other of the party nominees who have been put forward, and so the 
 
 69 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 election is decided as soon as the electoral body has been constituted. 
 That takes place in November, and a year ago last November, as you 
 may remember, it was known that Mr. McKinley was to be President, 
 though really he is not elected until January and did not come into 
 office until the 4th of March. This sort of interregnum between the 
 election of the President and his assumption of office would seem to be 
 one of the weak points of the Constitution. The old President remains 
 in office for four months after his successor has been designated. There 
 may have been great excitement at the election. The policy of the 
 outgoing President may have been condemned, but for four months he 
 remains the head of the State and for four months his successor must 
 continue to be only a spectator of affairs. It is evidently a position of 
 danger and one wonders that great inconvenience has not resulted, but 
 we shall find a similar position when we are dealing with the House of 
 Representatives. The President is not a member of either House of 
 Parliament, and the Cabinet whom he chooses, consisting of eight 
 members, are also debarred by the Statute establishing the Constitution 
 from being so. The executive in fact, and this was the object of the 
 provision, is entirely sundered from the legislative power. Congress 
 makes the law ; the President and his Cabinet administer it. This ia, 
 of course, entirely different from our own case, where the Prime Minister 
 and his Cabinet are invariably members of one or other House of 
 Parliament. It would be thought very unconstitutional if they were 
 not, though, in fact, there is no Statute prescribing that they shall be. 
 The President, however, is armed with an effective veto on legislation 
 which is not a mere bndvmfuhnen as in the case of our own Sovereign, 
 but is constantly exercised. If he veto a bill, it is returned to the 
 House where it originated, and is not carried unless it secures a majority 
 of two- thirds. If it does, however, it becomes law whether the President 
 likes or not. He can make treaties, but they must be reported to and 
 approved by the Senate. The important treaty providing for 
 arbitration between ourselves and the United States was in this position 
 a year ago. The President is Commander-in-Chief in time of war, but 
 cannot declare it : that is left to Congress. He possesses an enormous 
 amount of patronage in respect of which he must sometimas feel 
 ' Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,' and, in reference to much of 
 it, requires the approval of the Senate, which possibly does not make his 
 
 70 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 task more simple. Mr. Bryce estimated the number of posts in his gift 
 at 3500. There are nearly 2000 Post-masterships alone. 
 
 It is related that a friend one day met Mr. Lincoln during the Civil 
 War. ' You look anxious, Mr. President,' he observed ; ' is there bad 
 news from the front ? ' ' No,' answered the President, ' it is not the 
 war, it is that post-mastership at Brownsville, Ohio.' You may perhaps 
 have read of the crowds which surroimded Mr. McKinley the moment 
 his election was assured. One can easily imagine that, under such 
 circumstances, the Presidency is far from a bed of roses. A single 
 post-mastership is enough to disturb the peace of mind of an English 
 member, or was imtil, two or three years ago, the appointment was 
 given to the Post Office ; 2000 would soon have landed him in a lunatic 
 asylum. It is made more difficult by the rule prevailing in America 
 under which, after a presidential election, all the ' ins ' go out and all the 
 'outs' are anxious to go in. It is a fair subject for discussion whether the 
 President of the United States or our own Prime Minister is possessed 
 of more real power. The President has, as we have seen, a term of 
 office absolutely fixed with which nothing can interfere. No hostile vote 
 of Congress can deprive him of it. The Prime Minister, on the other 
 hand, is dependent for his tenure on retaining the confidence of 
 Parliament, though, if he does so, his period of power may be greatly 
 prolonged, and, as a matter of fact, both Mr. Gladstone and Lord 
 Salisbury have been at the head of affairs for a longer period than any 
 President. The President, again, has the power of veto on all 
 legislation, but the Prime Minister, on the other hand, being in 
 Parliament, has a direct influence on legislation such as no President 
 possesses. The Prime Minister, too, is more absolute in the matter of 
 appointments, though it is well that they are not so numerous, the 
 spoil system not having extended yet to this country. The Prime 
 Minister can commit the country to peace or war, though, of course, in 
 this, as in other respects, his power is limited by the fact that it rests on 
 the possession of a majority in the House of Commons, as well as the 
 general concurrence of his Cabinet. On the whole, I think it is true 
 that a great Prime Minister, enjoying the confidence of the House of 
 Commons, is more powerful than the President of the United States. 
 
 Next in order to the President comes the Senate, answering to our 
 House of Lords, and the House of Representatives, corresponding to the 
 
 71 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 House of Commons. Together they are called the Congress. The 
 constitution of these two bodies, and the mode of election to them, was 
 adopted with the view of evading one of the great difficulties which 
 confronted the framers of the American Constitution. There were then, 
 just as there are now, States large and small. If the representation of 
 the States in the Federal Congress had been based solely on popula- 
 tion, it wtis evident that the large States in the Union would have an 
 overpowering voice over the smaller ones. The latter, indeed, would 
 have been entirely out-voted. The difficulty was a serious one and 
 threatened, at one time, to wreck the efforts of the Convention. It was 
 ingeniously surmounted by making the Senate the representative of the 
 States, while the House of Representatives was to be elected on a basis 
 strictly proportioned to the population the State contained. Each 
 State, therefore, whether having a population as large as New York, 
 with its five or six millions, or as small as Nevada, with its forty 
 thousand, sends two members to the Senate. They are chosen by the 
 legislative assembly of the State, which is itself elected by the people. 
 This provision of each State returning two Senators was deemed so 
 important that, by the Constitution, it was made unalterable for ever. 
 No combination of large States can ever take away this provision, which 
 was made in the interests of the small ones. It is the law of the Medes 
 and Persians that changeth not. Senators sit for six years, and one-third 
 of the Senate retires every two years, so that two-thirds of the House 
 always consists of old and experienced members. At first there were 
 26 Senators, two for each of the 13 States; to-day there are 84, 
 for the 42 States which now compose the Union. All writers on the 
 Constitution have agreed in praising the capacity of the Senate, and, in 
 view of the discussions amongst ourselves as to the formation of a 
 second chamber, its position and character is full of interest. Many 
 have attributed its success to its double election : it is more probable it 
 is due to the greater attraction it possesses for the ablest and most 
 ambitious men. The Senator has a longer term of service and a more 
 independent position than a member of the Lower House, who is, we 
 shall see, elected only for two years. A second chamber on a similar 
 footing in our own coimtry would, I suppose, be elected by the County 
 Councils. The Senate, Mr. Bryce says, is a most practical assembly. 
 Comparing it with the House of Lords, he points out that if the debates 
 
 72 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 do not rise to the best level of that Assembly, yet it seldom wears the 
 air of listless vacancy and superannuated indolence which our own Upper 
 House presents on all but a very few nights every session. Its consent 
 is required to all foreign treaties, which it can discuss, if it chooses, in 
 secret session, and return to the President with any alterations Or 
 amendments it may desire. It has to concur in the appointments to the 
 various offices which the President may make. This is its work as an 
 executive body. Legislation is the work of both Chambers, and the 
 Senate, in both capacities, has exercised a steadying and moderating 
 power, and is the part of the Constitution of which Americans are most 
 proud, and which, in their opinion, has been the most successful. I am 
 bovmd to add that in recent years the position of the Senate has, to some 
 extent, deteriorated, and the action it has taken on the Arbitration 
 Treaty has not raised its reputation. 
 
 The other House of Congress, the House of Representatives, the 
 House, as it is usually termed, is elected entirely on a population basis, 
 one member being returned for every 174,000 persons. Originally it 
 was one for every 30,000, but there is a provision under which, at each 
 successive census, the basis is enlarged according to the increase of 
 population that has taken place. The districts for which the members 
 sit are left to the legislatures of the respective States to arrange, it 
 being stipulated only that each district shall contain the required 
 population to send a representative. In connection with this redistribu- 
 tion of districts we have the word Gerryrrumder, from a statesman who 
 distinguished himself in this kind of work. There are at present 356 
 representatives. Each is elected only for two years, and there is a 
 provision similar to that which we saw in the case of the President, only 
 more so, namely, that while the election takes place in November of one 
 year, the sitting of the Parliament does not begin until December of the 
 next — a whole year thus elapsing between election and the actual 
 business of the session. A special session may indeed be held, if the 
 President requires, after the existing House has adjourned, which takes 
 place in March. But this course has very seldom been adopted. It was 
 talked of as a possibility last year. It was intended, of course, that this 
 long interval between tiie time of election and getting to work should 
 allow the excitement of the struggle to subside and popular feehng to 
 moderate before the session of the Chamber began. But it may very 
 
 73 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 well be doubted whether the arrangement does not inflict upon the 
 Union a condition of temporary legislative paralysis which must often 
 be inconvenient. The old House continues to sit for four months after 
 its successor has been elected — at least a curious position of affairs for 
 either side. If the founders of the Constitution covdd have looked down 
 the centuries to come, they would probably have drawn it in a different 
 fashion. 
 
 Each Parliament has two sessions. There is a long one begin- 
 ning in December, a year after the election, and lasting to July or 
 August, a short one from the following December to March, when the 
 term expires. The principal power of the House of Representatives is 
 that all taxes, by which money is to be raised, must originate in it ; 
 though the Senate may amend and alter details, and often does so. 
 This is different to the power of our own Second Chamber, which can 
 indeed reject a Money BiU, but is not allowed to amend or alter its 
 provisions. It was by the use of this provision that Mr. Gladstone 
 passed the paper duties through the House of Lords by making it part 
 of the Budget of the year. The work of the House of Representatives 
 is largely carried on in Committees which sit in private, and to which 
 each Bill, approved by the House, is referred. The difficulties of legis- 
 lation ai-e greater than even among ourselves, because there is no body, 
 like the Ministry, who is responsible for the legislation that is proposed, 
 and armed with power sufficient to carry it into law. The Cabinet, as 
 we saw, have no seats in the House. There is one custom which an 
 English member may be permitted to contemplate with envy, and that is 
 that the sitting of the Chamber begins at twelve and the adjovu'nment, 
 as a rule, is made at five or six — a happy condition of affairs. Not less 
 pleasing, perhaps, is the arrangement under which each member is paid, 
 and receives the handsome solatium of £1000 a year. I am bound to 
 say that, in the States, it has not had the effect to promote which it is 
 mainly advocated here, namely, that of introducing working-men to 
 seats in Parhament. On the contrary, some hold that it has had a 
 deleterious effect on the composition of the House by leading to constant 
 chfmges in its personnel. It is esteemed so good a thing that it is 
 thought it ought to go round, as it were, and re-elections of old and 
 experienced members are less common than they might be. The 
 Speaker, like our own, whose name he bears, is the first man in the 
 
 74 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 House, but, unlike our own, whose chief note is his perfect impartiality 
 in the chair, he is a party leader who is expected to do — and does do — 
 all he can to promote the interests of the party to which he belongs. 
 There is one limitation to the power of Congress which I must refer to, 
 and which is of great importance. It is with regard to amendments of 
 the Constitution itself. So jealous were its framers with regard to any 
 alteration that they have made it extremely difficult to effect even 
 needful amendments. Two methods of doing so are prescribed : under 
 the first, Congress may itself, by a two-thirds majority in each House, 
 propose such amendments, and the legislatures of three-fourths of the 
 States must then ratify them before they are finally accepted. Under 
 the second, the legislatures of two-thirds of the States may call upon 
 Congress to summon a convention to draft and consider the amendments, 
 and such amendments must then be ratified by a convention of thi-ee- 
 fourths of the States. It is a cumbrous machinery, and you will not be 
 surprised to hear there have been very few amendments.* None were 
 made at all from 1804 to 18T0, and it is undoubtedly a tribute to the 
 wisdom of the original framers of the Constitution that it has been able 
 to adapt itself to conditions as regards population and area and number 
 of States so different to those under which it was originally framed. 
 One other limitation I may mention, which would be a serious thing for 
 a good many people in this country, and that is, that the Constitution 
 declares that no titles of any kind shall be conferred. 
 
 You may have already gathered that the Cabinet is very different to 
 our own, although it preserves the name. With us, you know, there is 
 a collective as well as an individual responsibility in each member of the 
 Cabinet. The Prime Minister is the head, but each member is 
 responsible for the collective action that is taken, and there is a serious- 
 check on the power of the Prime Minister in the fact that any minister^ 
 disapproving his policy, can at once resign. To give an instance : we 
 now know that Lord Beaconsfield, in 1878, was in favour of war with 
 Russia; he was checked by the resignation of Lord Carnarvon and 
 Lord Derby and the disagreement of the rest of his Cabinet. The 
 Cabinet in the States is quite different. It is simply a group of persons 
 assisting the President in the work of administration, with no joint or 
 
 * The only amendment since 18T0 is that by which in the present year Congress, 
 has been permitted to levy an income-tmx. 
 
 75 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 collective responsibility. The President is supreme and he is responsible, 
 not to Congress, but to the people who have elected him. 
 
 I now come to another part of the Constitution, and almost the last 
 I shall have to name. The Constitution of the United States being 
 contained in a Statute has, of course, to be interpreted like any other 
 law, and the necessary duty of interpretation is committed to a very 
 important body, called the Supreme Court. It consists of nine judges 
 appointed by the President, subject to the confirmation of the Senate 
 •and holding office for life. On them is placed the duty of settling all 
 <lisputes as to the meaning of the Constitution. That is contained in a 
 comparatively short statute — shorter than many of our Acts of Parlia- 
 ment. You can read it through in a short quarter of an hour. Its 
 language, however, is general, and, to some extent, elastic. It lays 
 •down general principles and avoids details. Congress, further, may pass 
 a law and some of the States may hold it to be vltra vires. The 
 Supreme Court is called in to decide. An interesting case occurred a 
 few years ago : Congress proposed to establish an income-tax. There 
 had been one during the war, but it had been discontinued, and it was 
 proposed to establish it permanently. Objections were taken, and it 
 was referred to the Supreme Court, who held, in the end, that the 
 imposition of an income-tax was contrary to the article of the Constitu- 
 tion and illegal. It was one of the planks of Mr. Bryan at the late 
 election to endeavour to get rid of this disability and to levy a general 
 income-tax on wealth. The importance of the Supreme Court is 
 therefore evident, and some of its Chief Justices have had much to do in 
 moulding the Constitution of the States. In oiu- own country, at times, 
 the Courts have had like duties to discharge, even though our Constitu- 
 tion is not to be found in any statute. When Charles I. proposed to 
 levy ship-money and Parliament opposed, it was in the Courts that the 
 battle was decided and won. This feature of the American Constitution, 
 the Supreme Court, was ingrafted into the Home Rule Bill in 1892 by 
 Mr. Gladstone. All questions as to whether the Irish Legislature had 
 passed laws uUra vires were to be submitted to the Judicial Committee 
 •of the Privy Council. 
 
 And the mention of that thorny question reminds me of one other 
 point, and this is the last in reference to which the example of the 
 United States was often invoked in the course of oiu* Home Rule debates, 
 
 76 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 It is the system under which, while some subjects are entirely reserved 
 to Congress and can be dealt with by it alone, others, not included in 
 the reservation, are left to the various States to treat according to their 
 respective wishes and desires. 
 
 An American citizen, it has been said, is a citizen of two countries at 
 once — that is, of some State and of the nation. It is the point on which 
 the United States differs from all republics that have gone before, and 
 by which, it is contended, so immense a territory is successfully ruled 
 from a single centre. To give you an idea of the immensity of the 
 country, I may tell you that Texas, a single State, is as large as the 
 Austrian Empire with part of Germany thrown in. Within its own 
 borders each State is supreme, save in those matters which have been 
 expressly reserved to the Central Government. Many matters that 
 amongst ourselves are dealt with by the Imperial Parliament are, in 
 America, transacted in the State Legislatures. You are most familiar, 
 perhaps, with the way in which this system works in respect to the 
 Liquor Laws. Maine and Kansas prohibit the sale of liquor altogether ; 
 adjoining States permit it. Each State, in all these matters, controls its 
 own local Government and has what we call complete Home Rule. 
 There are some points in which, perhaps, we may think this is carried 
 too far : thus, a man may be divorced in one State for reasons which 
 would not apply in another. In one, divorce is easy — in another, it is 
 difficult. In making this criticism, however, we must not forget that, in 
 our own case, the marriage law is quite different in Scotland from what 
 it is on the other side of the border, and that, to a large extent, the 
 Scotch have preserved their own laws. There is no doubt, as Mr. Bryce 
 has pointed out, that there are abuses connected with the local legisla- 
 tures, depending in part on the difficulty of getting the best men to 
 enter them, but, admitting this, it is, I think, quite certain that the 
 Constitution of the United States is the most successful attempt to solve 
 the problem how to secure concerted action on a great scale, by a 
 central power, without sacrificing local independence. Without it, it 
 would seem to be certain that so great an expanse of country, containing 
 such variety of inhabitants, must, ere this, have been split up into 
 separate Governments and ceased to form a whole. Home Rule has 
 been the cement that has joined the whole together, and, as such, is 
 worthy of our careful study and consideration. Greece, in older days, 
 
 77 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 provided local self-government for the constituent States, but failed in 
 securing permanent concerted action by a central power. Rome erred 
 in the opposite direction. She set up concerted action on a gigantic 
 scale, but in doing so extinguished local self-government. The United 
 States have solved the problem for the largest area to which it has ever 
 been applied, and, in the complete independence possessed by every State 
 in everything save where the Federal principle is concerned, we have the 
 surest guarantee of the permanence of the system they have established. 
 It is matter of pride that the men who founded it had belonged to our 
 own race — a race long accustomed to habits of local self-government, and 
 in whom the political instinct had been trained by a long series ot 
 constitutional struggles. The principle of self-government runs as life- 
 blood in our very veins. And, as has been observed, this great principle 
 of Federalism contains within itself, in its further developments, the 
 seeds of permanent peace between all the great nations of the world. It 
 is from this quarter will be ushered in that which Lord Tennyson has 
 described as the 'Parliament of man, the federation of the world.' 
 Many a long struggle may take place before it comes, but common sense 
 will surely win the day at last, and the foolish rivalries and costly 
 armaments of nations will disappear. The Americans believe in the 
 expansion of their countiy over all the earth. This, no doubt, is tall 
 talk, but we may be allowed, as we look forward to the future develop- 
 ment of the Anglo-Saxon race in the United States, in our own colonies, 
 and in India, with its extraordinary capacity for self-government of 
 which the States are so splendid an example — we may, not unreasonably, 
 be permitted to dream of a day when this great principle of Federation 
 will bind together all the nations of the earth as the vast States of the 
 Union are bound together by it to-day. 
 
 78 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 WHEN Mr. Whitelaw Reid, the American Ambassador, recently 
 unveiled a commemorative tablet to Edmund Burke at Bath, 
 he enumerated the great men who had been connected with that city. 
 The list included Lord Nelson, Lord Clive, General Wolfe, Goldsmith, 
 Wordsworth, Scott, Johnson, Fielding, Dickens, Landor, Gainsborough, 
 and many others. Of them all he said the greatest was Edmund Burke. 
 This is, indeed, high praise — perhaps too high, and yet Burke was 
 undoubtedly the greatest political thinker we have ever had. The 
 ambassador quoted the remark that what Shakespeare was to morals, 
 Burke was to politics — meaning, I presume, that Burke threw round 
 politics a halo of great and disinterested ideas, just as Shakespeare 
 illustrated morality by the splendid creations of his poetry. Of 
 Edmund Burke I am to speak to you to-night. 
 
 As I have occasionally the fortune, or misfortune, as the case may 
 be, to appear on platforms as a party politician, and as some people, I 
 dare say, would be uncomplimentary enough to consider me a partisan 
 rather than a politician, it may be worth while to say at the outset, 
 that this lecture, though dealing with a great political character, has 
 not and is not intended to have any reference whatever to party 
 politics. I shall not attempt to claim the verdict of Burke either on 
 this or that side of any of the questions in which we are more especially 
 interested to-day. I shall not attempt to decide whether he would now 
 have been a Liberal Unionist, or something else. He has been quoted 
 by both sides, with what justice I shall not inquire. It is indeed 
 pleasing and encouraging amid the growing asperities of contemporary 
 political strife (for growing I am sometimes afraid they are), to find as 
 we contemplate the career and writings of such a man as Burke that 
 
 79 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 there is much in them which all parties can admire and much with 
 which they cannot but agree. Though of him were written the lines so 
 often quoted and so often now applied to others, which describe him as 
 one who 
 
 ' Born for the universe, narrowed his mind, 
 And to party gave up what was meant for mankind,' 
 
 though he has written in his pamphlet on the ' Cause of the Present 
 Discontent,' the ablest defence of Party Government that anywhere 
 exists, and was to a large extent a Party man, yet still we can see in 
 him the exponent of great principles which belong to all parties and all 
 times, and which all can recognise as of essential importance to the 
 State. And besides this. Time's effacing fingers have worn away the 
 roughness and bitterness of contemporary quarrels, and from our more 
 distant and more impartial standpoint we are able to do full justice to 
 whatever was of enduring importance in his work. And certainly not 
 even the stoutest Tory, if he be here, need fear to acknowledge his 
 greatness when so staunch an upholder of the creed as Samuel Johnson, 
 who declared that the first Whig was the Devil, cultivated throughout 
 life the most cordial relations with him, and has left on record his 
 opinion in these memorable words : ' Sir, Burke is such a man that if 
 you met him in the street for the first time when you were stopped by 
 a drove of oxen, and he and you took shelter for five minutes, he would 
 talk to you in such a manner that when you parted you would say, 
 " that is an extraordinary man," or if he went into a stable and said a 
 word to the ostler, the ostler would make the same remark.' Johnson 
 has left on record, too, the secret by which, in spite of great divergence 
 of opinion, their friendship was preserved. Speaking to Goldsmith he 
 said, ' You must shun the subject on which you disagree. For instance, 
 I can live very well with Burke ; I love his knowledge, his genius, his 
 diffusion and effulgence of conversation ; but I would not talk to him of 
 the Whigs.' If such was the verdict of Johnson can we wonder that 
 Macaulay after reading again his works in his later years amid the 
 serene retreat of Holly Lodge laid them down with the expression, 
 ' Admirable, the greatest man since Milton.' 
 
 And yet we are often told that this man, so extraordinary in the 
 opinion of Johnson, so admirable in the judgment of Macaulay, is 
 
 80 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 seldom read. I remember that Mr. Matthew Arnold, in republishing^ 
 some Irish Essays, said that it was almost as true to ask with regard to 
 Burke the question which Burke himself once asked with regard to 
 Bolingbroke, ' Who now reads him ? ' And he proceeded to point out 
 how little use we make of many of our prose writers — how much more 
 familiar the French are with theirs, and how much larger a space in 
 their education such a writer as Pascal, for instance, fills than is filled by 
 any similar writer in our own. This, I dare say, is true enough, and if 
 true is deeply to be regretted. From some points of view there is, 
 indeed, excuse enough for us if we occasionally forget the writers 
 of older days. When we regard the vast mass of literature that pours 
 upon us daily and hourly from the contemporary press, when we think 
 only of the newspaper and periodical writings with which every one is 
 supposed to be in some degree acquainted — when to this we add the 
 hurry and bustle attending the often too numerous engagements of 
 modem life, it will not be deemed extraordinary that there should often 
 not be much leisure found for the study of those authors who are some- 
 what by time and other circumstances removed from our view. And 
 yet we should remember that it is not so important to read the latest 
 works, or to keep up with all the varied developments of literature by 
 which we are surrounded, as it is to read thoroughly and ponder closely 
 the best works of olden times — books which will teach us how to think, 
 and how to think rightly, on the most important topics. Not many 
 share the opinion of Mr. Cobden that a number of the Times is worth 
 all the chapters of Thucydides, one of the most philosophic and keen- 
 sighted of all historians, who, on the comparatively narrow stage of his 
 country's history, at a particular period, has laid down principles and 
 established rules which apply to the far wider field which is to be found 
 in the history of all nations and of all States. 
 
 It is in the power of such writers to make others think because they 
 thought long and deeply themselves. They lived in days when there 
 was time to think. In a letter to one of his correspondents, Burke 
 himself remarks that a certain writing of his ' has put people in a mood 
 a little unusual to them : it has set them on thinking.' This i& 
 precisely the mood which it would seem to be of importance to 
 encourage in these modern days. There is so much danger of our 
 falling into the opposite error of thinking too little. Bishop Butler 
 
 81 G 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 warned us of it long ago. He said the use of books and papers of 
 amusement was so great even then, and people were becoming so accus- 
 tomed to getting all the thinking done for them, that they were giving 
 up the idea of thinking for themselves at all. How many people take 
 their ideas from the leading article of the paper they happen to take in, 
 and how they see exactly what they are told by their oracle to see. 
 How patiently and how confidently we sit at the feet of our instructors 
 in the press, unwitting that possibly they never heard of the question 
 on which they are instructing us till yesterday, and have devoted 
 possibly not more than an hour or two to the consideration of it. And 
 yet I hope we sometimes tire a little when we hear all the arguments on 
 one side of a question described as convincing, trenchant, irresistible, 
 conclusive, and those on the other dismissed with a contemptuous wave 
 of the hand as poor and halting and of no value whatsoever. We 
 begin, I hope then, to wish to think for ourselves, to endeavour to go to 
 the root of the matter with which we have to deal. If, then, Burke be 
 a writer beyond others, able to endow us with this power of thinking 
 for ourselves, and if, as we are assured by Mr. Arnold, he is not now 
 usually read, then I thought it might not be an altogether useless task 
 to recall this writer to your recollection and to do so by giving you 
 some account of his life and works. And certainly, least of all, would 
 it be so before a Society like this, who may be supposed to be ready to 
 bave their attention turned to those literary masterpieces which are 
 what Thucydides wished his history to be, ' everlasting possessions of 
 the whole human race.' Such we have, I believe, in the writings of 
 Edmund Burke, of whom, in one of his poems Wordsworth has 
 eloquently declared that in him 
 
 ' Wisdom, like the goddess from Jove's brain. 
 Broke forth in armour of resplendent words.' 
 
 We need not spend a large amount of time over the records of 
 his early years. He was born in Dublin in 1728 or 1729, for, like some 
 other eminent men, the date of his birth is not quite certain. His 
 father was a Protestant ; his mother a Roman Catholic ; and thus from 
 his own family circumstances he acquired a tolerant way of looking at 
 those differences of religion about which it is so difficult for us every- 
 where to acquire a spirit of toleration, and nowhere more so than it is 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 in Ireland. The tendency was yet further developed by the fact that 
 lie married a Roman Catholic wife, though himself a Protestant. 
 Whatever her creed she proved an admirable wife, insomuch that he 
 repeatedly declared that ' every care vanished the moment he entered 
 under his own roof,' a circumstance which those who are still unmarried 
 ■no doubt will lay to heart. He was sent to school to a Yorkshire 
 Quaker of the name of Shackleton, who made so deep an impression on 
 him that thirty years after he alludes in terms of peculiar tenderness to 
 his death. Through life, a member of the Society of Friends had 
 always a special claim upon his regard, and their sect he regarded as one 
 of the purest that he knew. From school he went to Trinity College, 
 Dublin. There he was the contemporary of Goldsmith, though at that 
 time they had no acquaintance. In 1750, at the age of twenty-one, he 
 -came to London. The vast gulf placed between his own poor country 
 And more prosperous England at once struck his eye. ' Every village,"' 
 he says in one of his letters, ' as neat and compact as a hive ; the inns 
 like palaces. What a contrast to our own country, where you scarce 
 find a cottage ornamented with a chimney.' In London he read for the 
 Bar. It is said he paid frequent visits to the House of Commons, the 
 scene of his future triumphs, where we may picture him as the young 
 €agle accustoming his eye to the sun ere he soars aloft. Though he 
 ■studied for the Bar, he was never called. His legal studies, no doubt, 
 helped on the formation of his mind, and he withdrew from them 
 before they had had time to cramp it. ' Law,' he said, ' in my opinion 
 is one of the first and noblest of human sciences — a science which does 
 more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than all the other 
 Icinds of learning put together ; but it is not apt, except in persons 
 very happily born, to open and liberalise the mind exactly in the same 
 proportion.' His father, indignant at his neglect of his profession, 
 ■withdrew his allowance, and left him to fatten on the slender pittance 
 which he was able to derive from his literary toils. To render this the 
 easier he married, and thus began the serious business of his life. 
 
 Thrown now upon his own resources, he was not long in making his 
 first appearance upon the literary stage. In 1756 there issued from 
 the Press a pamphlet entitled, ' The Vindication of Natural Society,' or 
 ,as it was otherwise called, ' A View of the Miseries and Evils arising to 
 Mankind from every species of Civil Society, by a late noble writer.' 
 
 83 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 The late noble writer to whom it was then supposed to be attributed 
 was Lord Bolingbroke, who had died in 1751, and who had left behind 
 him a number of unpublished writings — a blunderbuss as Dr. Johnson 
 called them, which he dared not fire himself, and which he therefore- 
 left to be discharged by his executors after his decease. Among these 
 were some speculations in the current tone of the eighteenth century, in 
 favour of Natural as opposed to Revealed Religion. Natural Religion 
 was that religion which a man could discover by his own unaided 
 faculties for himself without the aid of Revelation. Burke's treatise- 
 was an admirable imitation of the style of Bolingbroke, so good that it 
 deceived some of the best critics of the day. It was intended to throw 
 contempt on Bolingbroke's argument as to religion, and to do so by 
 showing that precisely similar arguments might be used to prove the 
 advantage of natural Society over civil or artificial Society. If one was 
 a good thing, so was the other. No one, I need hardly say, was less 
 likely to be really in favour of a state of nature than was Burke. No 
 one had a more profound admiration for all that regulated machinery 
 which is the distinctive advantage of a well-ordered State. But you 
 can eeisily imagine the sort of argument that Burke used. He had no 
 difficulty in showing the many evils which are found inseparable from 
 the best forms of government and the most wisely administered 
 constitutions. We should have none, I am afraid, to-day. War alone,, 
 it is sad to say, is the matter which fills nearly all history, and the 
 foreign relations of States are summed up too often in the recital of the 
 struggles in which they have been engaged. It is true, in a state of 
 natm-e they would have fought too, but how much more deadly has the 
 fight become by the elaborate contrivances of man. The mere division 
 of mankind into different societies, this is in itself a source of danger 
 and discord. ' Examine history,'' says Burke, ' consult present expe- 
 rience, and you will find by far the greater part of the quarrels between 
 separate nations had scarce any other occasion than that these nations 
 were different combinations of people and called by different names ; 
 to an Englishman the name of a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Italian — 
 much more a Turk or a Tartar — raises too often ideas of hatred and 
 contempt.' Again he points out the evils which arise fi-om the fact 
 that the rules of justice have often to be set aside for reasons of State 
 policy — that the Governors of States too often profess themselve.s 
 
 84 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 unable to observe those laws of morality which are held to be incum- 
 bent on individuals. ' All writers on the science of politics,' he says, 
 ' are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must 
 frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves ; that 
 truth must give way to dissimulation ; honesty to convenience ; and 
 humanity itself to the reigning interest. The whole of this mystery of 
 iniquity is called the reason of State. It is a reason which I own I 
 cannot penetrate.' And all this, whatever the form of government 
 might be, whether a despotism, or the rule of an aristocracy or 
 a democracy, or if you endeavour to fuse them all into that mixed 
 system of government which is our own — still you have the difficulty of 
 guiding their actions by the rule of a strict morality, still you have 
 those sacrifices and offerings which must be made to Moloch and which 
 bear witness to the infirmity and imperfection of the constitution you 
 have set up. He is struck, of course, by the difficulty from which 
 Socialism proposes to deliver us — by the vast disproportion of the 
 number of the poor to the rich — by the inequality in the distribution of 
 wealth — how while in a state of nature it would be the law that a man's 
 acquisitions are in proportion to his labours, in a state of artificial 
 society, those who labour most enjoy the fewest things, while those who 
 labour not at all — the non-toilers and non-spinners of whom we have 
 heard — have the greatest number of enjoyments. For all these evils, 
 Burke in his treatise professes he can find no cure : he will quit the 
 scene, and return to the blissful days when 
 
 ' Man walked with beasts, 
 Joint tenants of the shade.' 
 
 The most interesting part in the performance is that it was principally 
 and mainly meant to show that on any subject you can produce a 
 plausible case : that the most specious arguments might be used against 
 positions which are the most unquestionably established, and that if 
 you once give the reins to your imagination and allow it to soar 
 unfettered, there are no lengths to which you may not be carried. 
 This was an idea — a principle to which we shall see Burke again and 
 again return in the course of his political career. Of all men, the man 
 for whom he had the least toleration, and with whom he had the least 
 in common, was the mere theorist, the man who argues always from 
 
 85 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 pi-inciples to facts, instead of from facts to principles. For principles- 
 in their proper place he had full respect ; but he never forgot that he 
 had to deal with facts. We are not, he would have said in the common 
 phrase, we are not governed by logic. It was this that so kindled his 
 rage against the authors of the great French Revolution — men whom he 
 held to be mere charlatans in politics — writing of the origin of society, 
 the rights of man, the limits of authority, the principle of laws, without 
 the most elementary acquaintance with the real conduct of public- 
 affairs. It was no fault of their own that that was so. From such 
 men he was himself removed as far as the poles asunder. It was, he 
 maintained, the grand distinction of our English local self-government 
 that no man could remain a mere theorist in the management of public- 
 affairs. Every one had some opportunity of becoming practically 
 acquainted with it, and of enlarging his ideas by the experience that it 
 brought. In his own case his every page is marked by that profundity 
 which long acquaintance with public business and a close watching of 
 the cuiTents of human action and human thought never fail to give. 
 And therefore it is that his writings are so replete with lessons of 
 deepest interest to every political student and every lover of his- 
 country. 
 
 It will only be necessary merely to name his next appearance on the 
 field of literature — his essay on ' The Sublime and Beautiful.' It is an 
 attempt to systematise the principles which underlie our ideas of what 
 is beautiful, and is full of ingenious ideas on the various mental 
 phenomena, which do no discredit to the young philosopher of twenty- 
 seven. Shortly after this he undertook to do the historical abstract for 
 the Annual Register, a task which he continued for many years with 
 such ability that his connection with it gives to the old volumes of the 
 publication an intrinsic value even at the present day. In Society 
 Burke began to be recognised as a coming man. At David Garrick's, on 
 Christmas Day, 1758, an unwonted event occurred. In the course of the 
 conversation a young man ventured to contradict on a matter of history 
 no less a person than Samuel Johnson, and, strange to say, he was not 
 forthwith annihilated by the heavy cannon of the doctor's wrath. It 
 was an event unprecedented, and it was felt that one who could engage 
 on equal terms with the literary dictator of the day could be no> 
 common man. 
 
 86 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 Burke having made his reputation, was now to commence his public 
 career. In 1761 he went to Ireland as private secretary to a Mr. 
 Hamilton, who is generally known as Single Speech Hamilton — a speech, 
 by the way, which his young secretary is said to have composed. 
 Ireland, as you know, was then, as now, one of the difficulties of English 
 government. A Whiteboy outbreak occurred while Burke was there, 
 and one of the earliest subjects to which his attention was called was 
 the condition of his native land. ' I have studied it with more care 
 than is common,' he writes. We have from his hands a tract upon the 
 Popery Laws, which gives an admirable account of the monstrous system 
 by which England foolishly endeavoured to drive the people into the 
 fold of the Protestant religion. ' It was,' he declared, ' a system which 
 differed essentially, and perhaps to its disadvantage, from any scheme 
 of religious persecution now existing in any country in Europe, or 
 which has prevailed in any times or nations with which our history has 
 made us acquainted.' It was not only its evil effect upon religion he 
 denounced, but still more that on the tenure of the land. No Catholic 
 was permitted to hold it, and this in a country where, as Burke said, 
 the landowner never takes upon himself, as is usual with us, to supply 
 all those conveniences, a house and offices, which Sire essential to a 
 completely furnished farm. In Ireland he spent two years. In 1765 
 he became Secretary to Lord Rockingham, the leader of the great Whig 
 Party, who had then just become Prime Minister, the first and one of 
 the few occasions on which the Whigs held office in the reign of George 
 III. He was returned to Parliament for the little pocket borough of 
 Windover, and his case has, of course, been often quoted in defence of 
 the system of little boroughs. On the 27th January, 1766, he made 
 his first speech on the question of the complaints of our American 
 colonies, a question which was now beginning to stir the country, which 
 resulted in the great American war and the loss of our colonies for ever. 
 He was complimented by Pitt, who had not yet become the Earl of 
 Chatham. His friend Johnson said, ' Sir, there is no wonder at all ; we 
 who know Mr. Burke, know that he will be one of the first men in the 
 country.' One of the great achievements of the Government with 
 which he was connected was the repeal of the Stamp Act, which had 
 imposed taxation on our colonies. It would have been well had they 
 remained in office to carry out that policy of conciliation of which 
 
 87 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 Burke, as we shall see, never ceased to proclaim the wisdom. In this 
 year he wrote his first political pamphlet, and be it remembered that a 
 ■considerable portion of his works consists of these usually ephemeral 
 pamphlets, which in most cases perish with the hour, but which in his 
 and one or two other cases have become part of the permanent 
 literature of the English nation. The first of the series was entitled, 
 ' Observations on the Present State of the Nation.' It was followed by 
 * Some Account of a Short Administration,' and ' Thoughts on the 
 Cause of the Present Discontent.' As a political pamphleteer he has 
 had few equals : Milton, Swift, and Defoe among the dead can perhaps 
 alone be named along with him. As an orator, too, he is in the first 
 rank, though, sad to say, it is related of him that he was sometimes the 
 ■dinner-bell of the House of Commons. On one occasion a story is told 
 that when he appeared in his place with a vast mass of papers in his 
 hand, a member rose and said : ' Mr. Speaker, I hope the honourable 
 gentleman does not mean to read that large bundle of papers, and to 
 bore us with a long speech into the bargain.' Burke, who was some- 
 what touchy, bundled his papers together, and tore out of the House. 
 George Selwyn, the wit, remarked that it was the first time he had seen 
 « lion put to flight by the braying of an ass. 
 
 The object of his early pamphlets was to discredit that form of 
 government introduced by George III., which was styled Government 
 by the King's finends. That monarch's idea of government was to keep 
 all the patronage in his own hands and to surroimd himself with an 
 obsequious band of placemen, all tranquillity and smiles. 
 
 He determined to be the real as well as the titular ruler of the 
 nation. He never forgot the advice he received from his mother on 
 coming to the throne. 'George,' she said, 'be king.' George III. was 
 king, but he was about the last of that sort. The king reigns but does 
 not govern — that admirable definition of a limited monarchy which was 
 given by Mr. Thiers, was not his idea at all. No party in his scheme of 
 government was to be powerful enough to oppose his will. Each was to 
 be put in its proper place by the due distribution of official favours. It 
 was Burke's great object to break down this pernicious scheme, and to 
 strengthen for this purpose the party to whidti he himself belonged. 
 His 'Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent': contains one of the 
 best defences of Party that we have. He held it to be a body of men 
 
 88 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 vinited to promote the National Interest by their joint endeavour upon 
 some principles upon which they are all agreed. Those principles he 
 ordered for himself to be the principles of morality enlarged, and 
 ' I neither now do nor ever will admit of any other,' a noble definition of 
 his faith which might well be the watchword of every politician. Let us 
 see how Burke carried his principles into practice. 
 
 Let us see him first in his attitude towards the great American 
 ><juestion. That great struggle, as far as English history was concerned, 
 was the most momentous event of the eighteenth century. The 
 Speeches which he delivered upon it, and the letters which he wrote, 
 mark the very highest point in his career. Here, at all events, the 
 policy which he advocated and the measures which he recommended 
 would now, by the light of past experience, have the support of all 
 parties in the State, and could he have succeeded, our great loss would 
 never have been sustained. Some people, you know, take a despairing 
 ■view of the relations of colonies to the mother-country. They think 
 that the French Minister, Turgot, was right when he said colonies were 
 like fruits clinging to the tree only till they ripen, and then falling 
 .away. But there is a more hopeful view than this which aims at 
 maintaining the connection which subsists — but which can only be 
 carried out by a policy of concession and conciliation — such a policy as 
 George III. and his advisers did not pursue. The view taken of a 
 colony in those days was, to a great extent, that it existed for the sake 
 of the mother-country and was to be worked for her benefit. It placed 
 the colonies not so much in the position of a State in Federation, as of 
 a conquered State. In trade, we interfered to fine the colonists for the 
 benefit of the home traders. Lord Chatham declared they were not 
 permitted to make so much as a nail for a horse's shoe. We spoke of 
 our subjects, our dependencies, and then we madly proceeded to tax 
 them, unrepresented as they were in the English House of Commons, 
 The famous Act which imposed the taxation, passed, it is said, almost 
 unnoticed in a single sitting. And when we remember who they were 
 ■who were then taxed — that they were men and the sons of men who had 
 left their native soil in search of greater freedom than was there to be 
 found — can we wonder at the result, or cease to marvel at the blindness 
 <of those who expected any other .-' They were certainly the last men in 
 the world on whom to try such an experiment. 
 
 89 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 ' The tempers and characters of these men,' as Burke said, ' were 
 unalterable by any human art. We canpot, I fear, falsify the pedigree 
 of this free people and persuade them that they are not sprung from a 
 nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. The language in 
 which they would hear you tell them this tale would detect the 
 imposition ; your speech would betray you ; an Englishman is the 
 unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.' 
 
 Burke threw all his strength into the cause of the colonists. It was- 
 not the amount of the taxation —that might be small enough — Hampden 
 would not have been ruined by the payment of 20*. of ship-money — but 
 the payment of half 20*. on the principle on which it was demanded 
 would have made him a slave. No man doubted that tea in America 
 could bear an imposition of Sd. in the £ ; but no commodity will bear 
 Sd. or a farthing, when the general feeling is irritated and two millions^ 
 of people resolve not to pay. His whole soul revolted against the 
 narrow pedantic view of those who were in favour of maintaining the 
 tax that had been levied. But his arguments fell in vain. The struggle 
 lasted until 1776, when the Declaration of the Independence of America 
 was proclaimed, and England retired worsted from a conflict in which it 
 would have been well for her never to have engaged. 
 
 You may know the story that is told of Franklin, when after the war 
 he was dining with the English and French Ambassadors. A toast wa& 
 demanded from each. ' I give you,' said the Englishman, ' George III., 
 who like the sun in his meridian splendour enlightens the whole world.*" 
 ' And I,' said the Frenchman, ' Louis XVI., who, like the moon, sheds 
 his benignant rays over the universe.' ' And I ask you,' broke in 
 Franklin, ' to drink to George Washington, who, like Joshua of old, 
 commanded both sun and moon to stand still, and they obeyed him.' 
 
 Burke's view was to maintain our friendly relations with the colonies,^ 
 and with that view not to insist on a too literal interpretation of our 
 strict rights ; to be generous in the belief that so we should best secure 
 that great prize which is to be found in the hearts and affections of a 
 free people. Peace was what he aimed at : not peace through the 
 medium of war — not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of 
 intricate negotiations, but peace sought in its natural course and its- 
 ordinary haunts — peace by removing the grounds of difference. It is a 
 policy which has since been pursued in other quarters, and has been, 
 
 90 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 abundantly justified in its success — a success never more marked than it 
 has been in our own day, when we have seen our colonists^astening with 
 one accord to place their vast and growing resources at the service of the 
 mother-country in the hour of trial. It is a sight that promises well for 
 the peace of the world in the future — for nothing, I believe, could ensure 
 that peace more than that the powerful Anglo-Saxon race — English,. 
 Scotch, and Irish — should stand shoulder to shoulder all the wide world 
 over. In his advocacy of the cause of the colonists, Burke exposed 
 himself to the taunt of being an American. 
 
 'I am charged,' he said, ' with being an American. If warm 
 affection towards those on whom I claim any share of authority be a . 
 crime, I am guilty of the charge ; but no man ever lived more zealous 
 than myself for the supremacy of Parliament and the rights of the 
 Imperial Crown.' 
 
 It is a charge often levied since, and generally with as little 
 foundation as in the case of Burke — perhaps the first of our great 
 Imperialists and one of the truest. 
 
 Let us turn now from the distant West to the yet remoter East, and 
 consider Burke in his discharge of his duty to our Indian feUow-subjects. 
 You remember how, just at the very time when the loss of our American 
 colonies occurred, and our greatness in the Western hemisphere was so 
 eclipsed, the loss was, as it were, redeemed by the foundation of our 
 great Indian Empire, numbering to-day perhaps a sixth of the whole 
 human race. You know how our possessions there were built up by a 
 series of splendid achievements, beginning with those of Clive and 
 continued by a long line of illustrious successors. Yet here again a 
 danger intervened — the danger of thinking too much of ourselves and 
 our own interests and too little of our subjects. India was then 
 regarded as a region rich in untold wealth, a sort of Eldorado in the- 
 East, a dream that in our days has been rudely and for ever dispelled. 
 The first occasion on which the affairs of this great Empire were brought 
 under Burke's notice was in 1784, on the question of Fox's East India 
 Bill. Down to that time the government of India was in the hands of 
 the East India Company, which was simply a trading body responsible 
 to no one save its shareholders, and to them mainly for the dividends it 
 declared. Throughout all India it was said not a native ate a mouthful 
 of rice without the Company's leave. But it was felt as time went on 
 
 91 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 that this was a dangerous form of government for a great dependency. 
 By no one more so than by Burke, who had devoted much pains to the 
 study of the question. The objects of the Company were commercial. 
 Its servants were anxious to make their fortunes. They went out 
 penniless, and returned Nabobs. 
 
 ' Young men,' Burke declared, ' having obtained a power of which 
 they saw neither the purpose nor the limits, tossed about, subverted and 
 tore to pieces in the gambols of a boyish indifference and malice, the 
 most established rights and the most revered institutions of ages and 
 nations.' 
 
 In 1784 Fox introduced his Bill. It is said it was dra^vn by Burke. 
 The powers of the Company were to be at once annihilated and placed 
 in the hands of seven Commissioners named in the Bill and not 
 . appointed or removable by the Crown. But vested interests proved too 
 powerful. The Bill, like many others, passed the Commons, but was 
 rejected by the King's influence in the House of Lords. "The Govern- 
 ment fell with it, and the younger Pitt, becoming Prime Minister at 
 twenty-three, settled the question on that dual basis which lasted to our 
 own times, and only disappeared when the Queen herself, after the 
 Mutiny, became the direct Sovereign of India, and its army was 
 amalgamated with her own. The great argument used against Fox and 
 Burke was that of the Charter granted to the Company. Burke, in his 
 powerful reply, pointed out that that Charter was one to establish 
 monopoly and create power — that such a Charter might without 
 injustice be abrogated and annulled unless those privileges and powers 
 were strictly exercised as a trust — a trust for which they were account- 
 able, a trust which might cease when it varied from the pmpose for 
 which alone it could have a lawful existence. That trust, he declared, 
 had not been fulfilled, and were we, he said in a famous passage, were we 
 driven out there, nothing would remain to show that the country 
 had been possessed, during the inglorious period of oiu- dominion, 
 by anything better than the ourang-outang and the tiger. Things 
 have changed since then, but principally owing to the efforts of Burke 
 and men like him. 
 
 His interest in India did not cease with the rejection of his Bill. 
 The late Mr. Fawcett used to be called the member for Hindoostan. I 
 •do not know if Burke ever received the same distinction, but certainly 
 
 92 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 he well deserved it. Every incident in its history he closely watched.- 
 Every irregularity in the government of it he brought to light with his 
 relentless eloquence. The most famous instance, of course, is his 
 impeachment of Warren Hastings. He had returned from India in 
 1785. In June of that year Burke gave notice of a motion respecting 
 the conduct of a gentleman just returned from India. The late Governor- 
 General was, in his eyes, the very impersonation of the old system that 
 had flourished under the rule of the Company and under which some 
 things had certainly been done which we can never look back upon 
 without regret. A year later the articles and particulars of the charge 
 were presented to the House, and in 1788 the famous and historic scene 
 of the trial in Westminster Hall began. Burke impeached him in one 
 of his most splendid orations ; a spectator declared that listeners held 
 their breath in an agony of terror as he descanted on the theme. For 
 seven years the trial dragged on, and at last Hastings was acquitted, 
 and as far as he was himself concerned, rightly acquitted, by the House 
 of Lords. But, though he was acquitted, the system of which he was 
 the representative came in his person to an end, and England had made 
 it clear to those who were in future to represent her in her Eastern 
 Empire that they were there as trustees to advance the interests of the 
 vast native populations committed to her charge, and to make every 
 other consideration subservient to that. It was a great step in advance, 
 and it was a step we owe in no small degree to the influence of Burke. 
 
 We have now reached the year 1788. In that year we have seen the 
 trial of Hastings began. But ere it had ceased Burke was no longer 
 member for Bristol, which had elected him in 1774. It was at Bristol 
 that the election incident occurred which is so often quoted. His 
 colleague on that occasion was no orator, and he was so dumfounded 
 by the eloquence of his great coadjutor that when it came to his turn 
 to address the people all he could utter was, ' I say ditto to Mr. Burke, 
 ditto to Mr. Burke.' The story is believed to be apocryphal, but one 
 of the results of recent reforms is that no one, save in a few favoured 
 places, will ever have a colleague on whom to rely again, and everybody 
 will have to make their own speeches and rely on their own merits. 
 This will be a convenient opportunity to relate the circumstances under 
 which the dissolution of partnership between him and Bristol occurred. 
 He had on all occasions fully explained to his constituents his idea of 
 
 93 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 the connection that subsisted between them, how he was their representa- 
 tive and not their delegate, how he demanded at their hand freedom to 
 follow his own judgment and to be guided by his own views. But many 
 of his views unfortunately had run counter to what his constituents 
 deemed their interests, and they had chafed under his independence. 
 He was for freedom of trade with Ireland. Bristol preferred that trade 
 should languish there, that her own might grow. He was for justice to 
 the Roman Catholics ; the Protestant sensibilities of Bristol were 
 alarmed. He was for concessions to America, and again the electors of 
 Bristol trembled for their pockets and saw in the growth of America 
 their own decay. In 1780 the rupture came. In that year he had 
 achieved one of his greatest feats, the speech on Economical Reform, but 
 on going down to seek re-election he found the case hopeless, and in the 
 end retired without going to the poll. His speech on that occasion is 
 well known. It is one of the greatest and most dignified he ever 
 uttered. After warning them not to be peevish with those who serve 
 the people — that membei's could not always obey instructions and have 
 no opinions but those of their constituents, he went on to defend the 
 course he had pursued. 
 
 ' You lament,'' he said, ' that you are not to have me for an advocate ; 
 but if I had been capable of acting as an advocate in opposition to a 
 plan so consonant to my own known principles and the opinions I 
 had previously declared on a hundred occasions I should only disgrace 
 myself without supporting the cause with credit or effect which you 
 wished me to undertake. I should have lost the only thing which can 
 make abilities such as mine of any use to the world now or hereafter, 
 that authority which is derived from an opinion that a member speaks 
 the language of truth and sincerity, and that he is not ready to take up 
 or lay down a great political system for the convenience of the hour ; 
 that he is in Parliament to support his opinion of the public good and 
 does not form his opinion to get there, or to continue in it.' 
 
 And then in touching words he closed his connection with them. 
 
 ' I do not stand before you accused of venality or neglect of duty. 
 It is not said that in the long period of service, I have, in a single 
 instance, sacrificed the slightest of your interests to my ambition or my 
 fortune. It is not alleged that to gratify my own anger or revenge, or 
 that of my party, I have had a share in wronging or oppressing any 
 description of men, or anj' one man in any description. No, the charges 
 against me are all;;of one kind — that I have pushed the principles of 
 
 94 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 l)enevolence and justice too far : further than a cautious policy would 
 warrant, and further than the opinions of many would go along with 
 me. In every accident which may happen through life, in pain, in 
 ■sorrow, in depression and distress, I will call to mind this accusation, and 
 •be comforted/ 
 
 With these noble words he shook off from his feet the dust of 
 Bristol, and departed. 
 
 We must now say something of Burke's connection with another of 
 the great movements of the eighteenth century — the French Revolution 
 — an episode in his career which some of his admirers wish to overlook, 
 but which is far too characteristic and too important to pass by. 
 From the first mutterings of the coming storm while life lasted he set 
 himself in bitterest antagonism to what was going on across the Channel. 
 No doubt he judged sincerely of what he called, and of what no doubt 
 ■was, the most stupendous event in the history of the world — an event 
 which has influenced the destinies of nations and shaped the course of 
 ^events throughout all succeeding history. But while he judged sincerely, 
 it may well be doubted if he made enough allowance for all that terrible 
 social distress, those vast inequalities between the privileged classes and 
 "those who were little better than their slaves, which was the real cause 
 and origin of the outbreak. Nothing universal, he himself admitted, can 
 be rationally affirmed on any political subject. Each Revolution must 
 stand or fall on its own merits, and from this point of view if any 
 Revolution could be justified, not merely as a political movement, or an 
 attempt to frame a new Constitution, but as an escape from an odious 
 and imfair system which had accumulated on the backs of men who were 
 no better than serfs, all the indignities and hardships that a corrupt and 
 privileged aristocracy could invent, that Revolution was the French 
 Revolution. There is, I think, ground for the charge that he over- 
 looked the terrible coiTuptions, the festering rottenness, the vile 
 heartlessness of the wealthier classes which must inevitably have 
 produced a catastrophe, and though the catastrophe was guided by men 
 who worked blindly and madly, yet their very blindness and madness 
 was itself only the result of what had gone before, of the system under 
 which they lived. Burke's writings on this great event extend from 
 1790 to 1796, his passion gathering strength as it went along. Thev 
 include the famous ' Reflections,' a work which was upon the easel for a 
 
 95 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 year, and every phrase in which was polished with a master's art ; thef 
 ' Thoughts on French Affairs,' the ' Appeal from the New to the Old 
 Whigs,' and last the 'letters on a Regicide Peace.' To him the Revolu- 
 tion was but : ' A shapeless monster born of hell and chaos.' He has 
 no moments such as Wordsworth had when he saw 
 
 ' Europe thrilled with joy, 
 France standing on the top of golden hours,' 
 
 nor such as stirred the mighty spirit of Coleridge ' while still the meteor' 
 vision of Liberty was looming on the horizon vague and vast — not yet 
 lurid and terrific, but bright with undefined promise.' 
 
 ' When France in wrath her giant limbs upreared, 
 And with that oath which smote air, earth and sea, 
 Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free.' 
 
 Burke could see no promise defined or modified. He could see no hope- 
 for Freedom in a movement which began by trampling justice under its- 
 feet. And it must be admitted, to the credit of his political foresight,, 
 that what he predicted came to pass — that France in endeavouring ta 
 escape from one set of masters fell into the clutches of another, and had 
 to expiate her errors by shedding the blood of her sons to aggrandise- 
 that name of Napoleon which has cost her so dear. The men whom he- 
 saw endeavouring to guide her through the quicksand were the very 
 men whom most his soul abhorred — the mere theorists — ' the ablest 
 architects of ruin that had ever existed in the world.' 'The busy 
 manufacturers of the dirt-pies of their own imaginary constitutions.'' 
 He felt himself at war with an armed doctrine, a vast colossus with one- 
 foot on a foreign shore, but ready at a moment's notice to plant the 
 other upon the British soil. Under such circumstances, with these 
 views, we cannot wonder at his vehemence. As I have hinted, it may 
 well be that he made too small allowance for all that had gone before. 
 It has been said of him that he pitied the plumage, but forgot the 
 dying bird. He had a thousand tears to shed over the fate of the- 
 unfortunate Marie Antoinette, whose portrait he draws with a perfect 
 skill, but not one tear for all the nation's woes. The excitement of his 
 feelings discoloured all his political views. He voted against the repeal 
 of the Test Act, which he had supported ten years before. And,, 
 
 96 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 strangest of all, he quarrelled with Fox. The scene in the House of 
 Commons on the occasion was dramatic. Burke had been speaking 
 with his usual vehemence against the new French Constitution and its 
 authors, and he had spoken amid increasing interruptions on the part 
 of those among whom he sat, and even, it is said, of Fox himself. 
 Burke said he knew there was a risk of loss of friends in the course h& 
 was taking. Fox whispered to him that there was no loss of friends. 
 ' Yes,' rejoined Burke, ' there is loss of friends. I know the price of my 
 conduct. I have done my duty at the price of my friend — our friend- 
 ship is at an end.' In the Annual Register the scene is thus pathetically 
 recorded by Burke himself : ' Thus ended a friendship which had lasted 
 a quarter of a century. The House proceeded to the order of the day 
 and shortly after adjourned.' 
 
 On the same evening, it is related by Mr. Curwen that, having 
 driven Burke home in his carriage from the House, Burke declined to' 
 speak, and at last tore out of the conveyance without a word, on the 
 ground that Curwen sided with Fox. There was another scene when,, 
 in the midst of one of his harangues, he drew a dagger from his breast 
 and waved it above his head as a symbol of the revolutionary doctrines- 
 he was attacking. Curwen perhaps imitated this when, at a later period, 
 he produced in the House the brown bread and heavy clogs of the 
 Cumbrian farmer. Burke's attempt at the sublime is said to have 
 nearly lapsed into the ridiculous, some awkwardness in his action 
 causing a general titter, which was only stayed by a burst of splendid 
 eloquence which followed. 
 
 His health for some two or three years had now been failing. In 
 1794 a great loss befell him. He had just received from the Govern- 
 ment of the day the offer of the peerage. His title had been chosen 
 (Beaconsfield) destined in later days to be borne by another of our 
 English Statesmen — when he was struck to the very ground by the loss- 
 of his only child, a son. His grief knew no bounds. It found, as all 
 feelings found, eloquent expression in these words : 
 
 ' The storm has gone over me ; and I lie like one of those old oak.v 
 which the late hurricane has scattered around me, I am stripped of all 
 my honours, I am torn up by the roots, I lie prostrate on the earth. I 
 am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Those wh» 
 ought to have succeeded me are gone before me. They who should 
 have been to me posterity are in the place of ancestors.' 
 
 97 H 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 He never recovered the blow, and lived but three years after. In 
 1797 he died. Fox at once proposed that he should be buried in the 
 Abbey, but he had willed it otherwise, and in the little church of 
 Beaconsfield, in the county of Bucks, the bones of this great statesman 
 of the last century were laid. It was here he had spent so many 
 pleasant hours in the country occupations which he loved. He thus 
 describes the purchase of his farm, which was made in 1768 : 
 
 ' I have just made a push with all I could coUect of my own and the 
 aid of friends, to cast a little root in this country. I have purchased 
 a house with about six hundred acres of land, twenty-four miles from 
 London. It is a place exceedingly pleasant ; and I purpose, God 
 willing, to become a farmer in good earnest.' 
 
 Here Johnson visited him, and here he retired from the stir and 
 turmoil of public life. His record of the results of his farming is a not 
 unusual one. 
 
 ' I have been a farmer,' he writes, * twenty-seven years, and it is 
 a, trade the most precarious in its advantages, the most liable to 
 losses, and the least profitable of any that is carried on. It requires 
 twenty times more of labour, of vigilance, of attention, of skill, and let 
 me add of good fortune also, to cany on the business with success, than 
 what belongs to any other trade.' 
 
 It was to this favourite abode that he had returned from Bath to 
 die. 
 
 ' I have been at Bath to no purpose and am to be removed to my 
 house at Beaconsfield tomorrow, to be nearer to a habitation more 
 permanent; humbly and fearfully hoping that my better part may 
 find a better mansion.' 
 
 And here, as I have said, he was buried, his body borne to the 
 tomb by some of the most illustrious statesmen of the day. His 
 genius had raised him from a humble place to a proud position among 
 the greatest of them. 
 
 ' I was not,' he says, in one of his letters, ' rocked and swaddled and 
 dandled into a legislator. " I swim against the stream " is the motto for 
 a man like me. I possess not one of the qualities now cultivated, nor 
 of the arts that recommend men to the favour and protection of the 
 great. I was not made for a minion or a fool. As little did I follow 
 the trade of winning the hearts by imposing upon the understandings 
 of the people. At every step in my progress in life and at every stage, 
 
 98 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 I was traversed and opposed, and at every turnpike I met I was 
 obliged to show my passport, and again and again to prove my sole 
 title to the honour of being useful to the country, by a proof that I 
 was not wholly unacquainted with its laws and the system of its 
 interests both abroad and at home.' 
 
 It is an illustration of the difficulties he had to face, that he — 
 certainly, with the exception of Fox and Pitt, by far the greatest 
 statesman of his time, and in the value of the writings he has left 
 behind, superior even to them — never occupied a seat in the Cabinet. 
 
 I have already alluded to what seems to me the great central idea of 
 Burke's political teaching — the idea to which he again and again returns 
 and which formed the basis of his own conduct. It is, as it were, the 
 golden thread that runs through and as it were connects together all 
 the incidents of his political career — the impossibility of legislating 
 satisfactorily on mere abstract principles, and the necessity of seeing how 
 our principles fit in and can be adjusted to the conditions under which 
 they are to be applied. He is utterly ignorant, he says, how possible 
 kingdoms ought to be governed ; what he wishes to know is the 
 circumstances and present condition of the kingdom in which he lives, 
 and in the government of which he has to bear his share. ' Show me,' 
 he said, ' the thing you contend for to be reason ; show it to be common 
 sense ; show it to be the means of arriving at some useful end.' This 
 was ever the burden of his every utterance. Politics he thought 
 ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of 
 which the reason is but part, and by no means the greater part. He 
 was filled with all that consideration for the past which has distinguished 
 all great statesmen, with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our 
 ancestors which has left us the inheritance of a Constitution so admirable, 
 and likewise the rules and methods by which it is from time to time to 
 be altered and reformed to suit the requirements of changing conditions 
 in the people and their surroundings. ' A disposition to preserve and 
 an ability to improve, these taken together would be my standard of 
 a statesman.' The history of the past he would tell us is to be read for 
 the sake of the principles which it contains which are sure to be 
 applicable to the history of to-day ; and its lessons, if neglected, too 
 surely become, as Coleridge calls them, the lights in the stern of the 
 vessel, only illuminating the path that has been passed over. 
 
 99 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 His contemporaries seem to have been unable to fix his exact 
 position as an orator in the House of Commons. He had to compare 
 with the brilliant debating powers of Fox, the stately eloquence of Pitt, 
 the imaginative rhetoric of Sheridan, and there are occasions when he 
 seems to have failed to hit the temper of that most critical assembly and 
 to have wearied them by his prolixity. One of the charges brought 
 against him was that of being verbose ; but if it was so it was because of 
 the multitude of the ideas that crowded upon him on every subject that 
 he touched. His stream of mind, as Johnson said, was perpetual. On 
 the other hand, on the occasion of his great speeches on American, 
 taxation we learn that the very lobbies and staircases were filled with 
 listeners, and that when he paused to ask if he had tired the gentle- 
 men, he was met with cries of ' Go on, go on ! ' But putting aside 
 the immediate effect of his oratory on his audience, I think it cannot 
 be for a moment doubtful that his speeches, as speeches to be read, 
 are head and shoulders above those of all his contemporaries, if not, as^ 
 I think, of all English statesmen. Even of Pitt's great efforts Lord 
 Lytton in ' St. Stephen's ' admits : — 
 
 ' If read the orations and forgot the age. 
 Words that breathed fire are ashes on the page.' 
 
 This could never be said of Burke's. They glow with perennial fire- 
 Coleridge declared they were more interesting to read than they were at 
 the time of their delivery, and all must now rejoice though his audience 
 may not have done so, that he 
 
 ' Went on refining 
 And thought of convincing while they thought of dining.' 
 
 I will not speak of living oratory lest I should steer upon a rock not 
 very far from the surface I am anxious to avoid. But leaving them apart, 
 I should be disposed to say that in the roll of the world's great orators,. 
 Burke is second only, if he be second, to Demosthenes. His wide and 
 varied information, his wealth of illustration, his close acquaintance with 
 the minute details of every question as well as with the broad principles 
 which applied to it — in these he has never been surpassed. Fox declared 
 that if he were to put all the political information which he had learned 
 from books, all which he had gained from science, and all which any 
 knowledge of the world and its affairs had taught him^ into one scale,, 
 and the improvements which he had derived from his friend's in- 
 
 100 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 ^truction and conversation were placed in the other, he would be at a 
 loss to decide to which to give the preference. He would occasionally, 
 I fear, have been numbered among the obstructive party in the House- 
 Once, when an attempt was made to bring some printers to the bar for 
 having published and criticised the debates, Burke, in a small minority 
 of fifteen, divided the House no less than twenty- three times. When 
 four o'clock came the majority were wearied out, and the victory was 
 won. Posterity, said Btu-ke, wiU bless the pertinacity of that hour. It 
 was in fact the birth-hour of the Fourth Estate. In the course of the 
 debate he administered a sharp rebuke to a Mr. Onslow, who in his 
 speech had boasted that he was the descendant of no less than three 
 Speakers. ' I have not the advantage of a Parliamentary genealogy, 
 «aid Burke ; ' I was not born, like the honourable gentlemen, with order 
 running through my veins. But as that gentleman boasts of his father 
 his son wiU never boast of him ; the parliamentary line is now cut off.' 
 
 There are many amusing anecdotes of his readiness. In his speech 
 on Economical Reform he introduced the well-known aphorism. Magnum 
 vectigal est parsimonia : Frugality is a large income. Unfortunately he 
 made a false quantity by saying vectigal. Lord North, who was 
 slumbering on the front bench opposite, at once opened his eyes and 
 exclaimed, vectigal. 'I thank the noble lord,' said Burke, 'for the 
 •correction, and the more so, as it aftbrds me an opportunity of repeating 
 a maxim which he greatly needs to have reiterated upon him.' He then 
 repeated it correctly. On another occasion, I rather think in the same 
 speech, when alluding to the advisability of abolishing some official 
 places, he was annoyed by continual interruptions from a member who 
 occupied a position in the royal household, and who, among other 
 ejaculations, called upon the orator to remember his duty to the king. 
 Burke paused, and looking at the interrupting member said he was 
 ready to honour the king, but did not feel himself, therefore, constrained 
 to honour also his manservant, his maidservant, his ox, and his ass. 
 
 There is only one other point on which for a moment I shall dwell, 
 and it is to allude to the vast number of striking phrases and aphorisms 
 which may be culled from his writings. These short sentences, drawn 
 from long experience, have been said to be like gold coins —they enrich 
 their possessor while they do not burden him. They are the very 
 essence of concentrated truth. Let me give you one or two examples : — 
 * Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.' ' Justice to others is not 
 
 101 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 always folly to ourselves.' ' Such virtue there is in liberality of 
 sentiments that you grow rich even by the partnership of poverty.' 
 What can be more true than this ? ' Early reforms are amicable 
 arrangements with a friendly power ; late reforms are terms imposed on 
 a conquered enemy.' Or again this : ' Charters are kept when their 
 purposes are maintained ; they are violated when the privilege conferred 
 is used against its end and object.' ' Those who attempt to level never 
 equalise.' Public opinion he describes as too often the opinion ' of the 
 floating multitude which goes with events, and suffers the loss or gain of 
 a battle to decide its opinion of right or wrong.' ' All men that are 
 ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities ; they are 
 there unguarded.' ' Virtues have their place, and out of their place they 
 hardly deserve the name ; they pass into the neighbouring vice.' ' As 
 to the right of men to act anywhere according to their pleasure, without 
 any moral tie, no such right exists. Men are never in a state of total 
 independence of each other.' And this of war : ' The blood of man 
 should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man ; the rest is vanity, 
 the rest is crime.' ' The situation of a man is the perception of his 
 duty.' This might do for a Chancellor of the Exchequer : ' To tax and 
 to please, no more than to love and be wise, is not given to men.' 
 Again : ' All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, 
 every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and 
 barter.' ' Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.' ' Some one has said 
 that a king may make a nobleman, but he cannot make a gentleman.' 
 Those pithy phrases bend themselves easily to quotation, and are often,, 
 oftener perhaps than other man's, heard to-day in the House he so long 
 addressed. 
 
 I shall not detain you longer. I trust I have said enough to show 
 that he was indeed an extraordinary man, and one whom we should not 
 willingly let die. When Trinity College, Dublin, not many years ago, 
 resolved to commemorate the genius of the most brilliant ornament of 
 literature it had produced, Burke and Goldsmith were chosen as the 
 two men whose works had reflected the greatest honour on their 
 country, and I feel sure that not only Ireland, but the English race 
 throughout the world, will be ready to confess that the honour was 
 rightly paid, and that more and more it will be felt that, as far as 
 Burke is concerned, he is one of those whose work we will not willingly 
 let die as long as we profess to be a wise and understanding people. 
 
 102 
 
MILTON 
 
 T FEAR you will think I have chosen a somewhat uninteresting^ 
 ^ subject, and one that certainly is not new, to deal with to-night. 
 I am afraid I must plead guilty, at all events, to the latter charge. I 
 cannot expect to tell you anjrthing you do not already know, or to cast 
 any fresh light on the great and interesting personality of Milton. 
 But I may plead that the old is in some cases better than the new, and 
 that it is not always unpleasant or uninstructive to walk in old and 
 well-frequented paths. And then, further, I do not know if it would 
 be easy to select a life that in many respects is more fit to be laid before 
 men who are striving after a temperate and well-ordered and disci- 
 plined life, as a model and example of what such life should be, than 
 that of Milton. From his earliest years, he set before himself, as 
 indeed, we all should, a high ideal at which to aim, and it was given to 
 him, perhaps more than to most, to reach the ideal at which he aimed. 
 In his account of his early life, he tells us in language that might well 
 be written on the heart of every one, how he had arrived at the opinion 
 that he ' who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter 
 in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem — a composition and 
 a pattern of the best and honourablest things.' Surely that is a grand 
 resolve, to be in one's own life and conduct a true poem. It is the 
 building of which the Apostle speaks, ' fitly framed together.' It is the- 
 note which Shakespeare strikes when he tells us 
 
 ' This above all, to thine own self be true, 
 And it must follow, as the night the day. 
 Thou canst not then be false to any man.' 
 
 And you hardly understand, perhaps, what Milton meant, when he 
 called his life a poem, unless you remember what the word ' poem,' in 
 its origin, means. It is a Greek word, and is the word actually used by 
 
 103 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 the Apostle when he speaks of our being ' God's workmanship ' or poem 
 — ' created for good works ' (Eph. ii. 10), and so Milton when he used it 
 wished to express his endeavour to make his life a true piece of work, 
 worthy of God from whom he derived his being. 
 
 Steadily, we shall see, Milton followed his resolve in a pure youth, 
 A busy manhood, a serene old age. Not that for one moment I wish 
 to present him as a perfect character. If he were, he would be 
 no useful guide for any of us. He is sometimes the lighthouse that 
 warns us from rocks and shoals, as well as the beacon that guides us in 
 the path that we should follow. He was human — he lived in stirring 
 and dangerous times — he had to leave ' the calm and pleasing 
 solitariness ' which he loved, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and 
 hoarse disputes — and we cannot wonder that he committed very 
 grievous errors, that there is language in his writings which we would 
 fain blot from the printed page, and forget for ever in connection with 
 his name. But after all, it is amid the trials and difficulties of life, 
 that great characters — true poems — are formed. 'Talent,' says the 
 great German poet, ' moulds itself in stillness, but character is formed 
 in the great current of the world.' It was in the great current, when it 
 was running its wildest course, that Milton's life was cast, and in spite 
 of all his faults, great and striking as they are, it still remains that he 
 earnestly sought for truth, and that it is permitted us to believe that, 
 more than most men, he attained it. It is to him that our own 
 Wordsworth- — one of the purest poets that has ever lived — turns, when 
 looking back from what seemed to him the corruptions of a later age — 
 
 ' Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour. 
 The world has need of thee.' 
 
 And it is to him that not only the old world turns, but from beyond 
 the seas there has recently come the voice of one of the greatest of 
 American poets, declaring in unison with that of Wordsworth : 
 
 ' The new world honours him, whose lofty plea 
 For England's freedom made her own more sure, 
 Whose song, immortal as its theme, shall be 
 Their common freehold, while both worlds endure.' 
 
 The works of all great writers should, as far as possible, be read and 
 
 104 
 
MILTON 
 
 studied in chronological order. In this way, you can watch the growth 
 of the author's mind and character. In this way you can better under- 
 stand the works themselves, because you can then see the background 
 of events in which they are to be placed. In no case, perhaps, is the 
 rule of greater use than in that of Milton, and in none certainly is it 
 more easy to follow it exactly. In the case of Shakespeare, as possibly 
 you know, it is a literary problem to arrange his plays in the order in 
 which he wrote them. Scholars have devoted much time and pains to 
 the task, and certainly not with entire success. In Milton's case, on 
 the other hand, we know the exact date of every poem and every 
 pamphlet. He has three distinct chronological periods : there is first 
 the period of his youth, of his earlier and lighter poems, coming down 
 to about the end of his thirty-second year. In these we find an echo of 
 the bustle and gaiety of the great and golden era of the Elizabethan 
 age, though even here there are notes of seriousness which stamp their 
 author as cast in a sterner mould than those who had gone before, and 
 mark the advent of one who has well been called ' the moral king ot 
 English literature.' Then, this lighter period passes by, and for 
 twenty years he plays his part in the most stirring scenes of all our 
 English history. Where will you find twenty years into which is 
 •crowded more of momentous life and action than in those which 
 intervene between the opening of the great struggle between the 
 Stuarts and the people, after the dismissal of the Parliament by 
 Charles I., and the close of it, at all events for the moment, in the 
 restoration of his son. 
 
 The deaths upon the scaffold of Strafford and Laud and their 
 unhappy master, the struggles of Pym and Hampden, the eventful rise 
 of Cromwell with all his rugged energy to the first place, the bitter 
 strife that rent the whole country into two hostile camps and set family 
 against family in internecine strife — these are events that in themselves 
 and in their effects make those years perhaps the most eventful in our 
 English history. 
 
 This, then, is the second period in Milton's life. It is that in which 
 he wrote his prose works — those pamphlets which, though intended as 
 aaaere passing comments on the events of the day, such as would now 
 have appeared in some review or magazine, have, by their intrinsic 
 force and excellence in his case, and that of one or two others (and 
 
 105 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 there are only one or two), been deemed worthy of a permanent place 
 in our English literature, and have become what the great Athenian 
 historian wished his work to be, ' everlasting possessions ' of the whole 
 world. And now comes the third and closing period of Milton's life. 
 The political ideals of his youth have failed, the great enterprises of his 
 manhood have come to nought, his hopes have been betrayed ; the reeds 
 on which he leaned have gone into his hand and pierced it ; the over- 
 throwers of tyranny have proved that they themselves could be tyrants ; 
 the monarchy, against which he had protested with all his might, has 
 been restored ; he is fallen, as he says, on evil days, he is blind, the 
 shadows are darkening round, but not one jot does he abate of courage 
 and determination still to write something that the world would not 
 willingly let die. The great purpose of his life, so long interrupted, so 
 long laid aside, is at length achieved, and 'Paradise Lost' and 
 ' Paradise Regained ' are added to the treasures of mankind. Surely it 
 was a noble life which, yielding neither to difficulty nor to disappoint- 
 ment, struggled bravely to its close, and in its latest moments could 
 declare with unfaltering conviction : — 
 
 ' All is best though we oft doubt 
 What the unsearchable dispose 
 Of highest wisdom brings about. 
 And ever best found in the close.' 
 
 Milton is one of the numerous English poets who wei'e bom and 
 lived in London. The Metropolis is positively alive with the reminis- 
 cences of him, though none of the houses in which he lived remain 
 to-day. One of his many London homes — that in York Street,. 
 Westminster — was pulled do^vn some fifteen years ago, and I believe 
 that I reside upon the site. It was in the City, however, that he was^ 
 bom, in a street turning out of Cheapside, in the year 1608, when 
 James I. had been five years upon the throne. 
 
 Three years later, in 1611, the authorised version of the English 
 Bible first issued from the press. Eight years later his great prede- 
 cessor, Shakespeare, died. He was sent to St. Paul's School, on each 
 window of which was inscribed, for the inmates' benefit, ' Aut doce aut 
 disce aut discede ' — ' Either teach or learn, or go about your business.' 
 Here Milton remained until, at the age of seventeen, he went to Cam- 
 
 106 
 
MILTON 
 
 bridge. He became a member of Christ's College, and tradition stilf 
 points out his rooms. It is a somewhat strange coincidence that 
 Wordsworth tells us, in his prelude, that the only occasion on which 
 he ever took too much to drink was at an entertainment that was given 
 in these very rooms. He says : — 
 
 ' Oh, temperate bard, 
 Be it confessed that for the first time seated 
 Within thy innocent lodge and oratory 
 One of a festive circle, I poured out 
 Libations to thy memory, drank till pride 
 And gratitude grew dizzy in a brain 
 Never excited by the fumes of wine 
 Before or since that hour.' 
 
 It was not a good way of showing his devotion to the older bard — 
 that we must all admit — yet we may well pardon Wordsworth his 
 single lapse from the paths of sobriety, ' the weakness of the hour,' as he 
 terms it, for the sake of the interesting character of the occasion which 
 gave rise to it and the ingenuous manner in which he has confessed his 
 fault. At Cambridge Milton remained until 1682, when he was nearly 
 twenty-four. 
 
 He had already become an author. At the age of twenty-one he 
 wrote the famous Christmas hymn, which so good a judge as Hallam 
 declared to be the finest ode in the English language. It was truly 
 prompted by the occasion, for on the very morning at daybreak he tells 
 a friend it was first conceived. A year later we have from his pen the 
 not less famous lines on our greatest dramatist, which begin : — 
 
 ' What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones 
 The labour of an age in piled stones ? ' 
 
 It may not, perhaps, seem much now that Milton, at the age of 
 twenty-two, should have paid to his predecessor a tribute which every one 
 in later days would be prepared to give ; but we must remember that 
 Shakespeare was not then installed on the pinnacle on which he stands 
 so firmly now. The discernment of greatness is indeed not always an 
 easy task to contemporaries. There is an example of the difficulty in 
 Milton's own case. In Westminster Abbey you will find a monument 
 to a poet of the name of Philips. On it this inscription, in Latin^ 
 
 107 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 •* Second to Milton only, and almost equal to him.' This was contem- 
 porary judgment expressed in letters of stone — a monument now only of 
 the folly and want of insight of those who wrote it. Milton was a 
 Puritan of Puritans, stern enough in all conscience, but he had that 
 breadth of view which literary culture never fails to give, and he rightly 
 •discerned the place that Shakespeare was to fill in the great hierarchy of 
 the world's poets. 
 
 Among other lines of the same period were some upon a character of 
 the day, whom it may be interesting to mention. You have heard, 
 I dare say — possibly have used the phi-ase — ' Hobson's choice.' Hobson 
 was a man well known to Cambridge undergraduates in Milton's time. 
 He was the common carrier between London and that town. He also 
 let out horses, and his custom was to insist that each hirer should take 
 the horse that stood next the stable door, so that each might have its 
 turn. This was Hobson's choice, and in the phrase his name, like that 
 •of Captain Boycott and one or two others, has become a part and parcel 
 of the English tongue. Milton wrote some lines upon his death. So 
 far as we can gather our poet was known at College for his deep and 
 habitual seriousness. He was called, perhaps in contempt, the ' lady of 
 Christ's College ' — a term given to him, he seems himself to imply, on 
 account of the pureness and innocence of his life. He tells us how, in 
 lofty fables and romances, he had read of the oaths taken by the 
 knights of old, at the expense of their best blood or their life, to defend 
 the honour and chastity of every woman. 
 
 ' Only,' he adds, ' this my mind gave me, that every free and gentle 
 ^spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight, nor needed to 
 expect the gilt spur or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder to stir 
 him both by his counsel and his arm to secure and protect the weakness 
 of every woman.' 
 
 In such high thoughts he passed his time. Not for him, any more 
 than for Lycidas, of whom he subsequently sung, was it 
 
 ' To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 
 Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair.' 
 
 He rather preferred 
 
 ' To scorn delights and live laborious days,' 
 • 108 
 
MILTON 
 
 to prepare for that great work to which already he looked forward and' 
 to which he had dedicated himself, though many a long year was to 
 intervene ere it could be accomplished. In the meantime he wilF 
 labour on in a spirit of humility and trust, looking forward 
 
 ' To that same lot, however mean or high, 
 Towards which time leads me, and the will of Heaven ? 
 All is, if I have grace to use it so 
 As ever in my great taskmaster's eye.' 
 
 Milton, like some other great men, had been intended by his- 
 parents for the Church. He found himself, however, unable to comply 
 with their wishes. He frankly tells us, that ' perceiving what tyranny 
 had effected in the Church — that he who would take orders must 
 subscribe himself slave and take an oath withal, which unless he took 
 with a conscience that would stretch, he must either straight perjure or' 
 split his faith ; he thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before 
 the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and 
 forswearing.' His father, who had himself resigned a handsome 
 inheritance for religion's sake, admired, no doubt, his son's high prin- 
 ciple, and so, in Milton's as in Carlyle's case, what ' feeble tatter of 
 connection with clerical outlooks there had been, fell to the ground.' 
 
 Yes, they were both excluded by conscientious conviction from 
 taking service as ministers of the English Church — but none the less 
 they both became two of the greatest teachers of the universal Church^ — 
 and in their lives and practice affbrd a high example of that best of all' 
 precepts, ' Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' 
 
 The next seven years were the happiest and serenest of all Milton'.'- 
 life. His father had removed from London into the country — to 
 Horton, in Buckinghamshire. The village stands in a district the 
 name of which is familiar to our ears, the Chiltem Hundreds, that 
 strange locality of which members of Parliament accept the charge 
 when they wish to retire from public life. The post, I believe, is a 
 sinecure, and no salary is attached to it. The district is peopled, we 
 may suppose, with the unhappy ghosts of departed politicians, who 
 wander aimlessly about, and fancy, perhaps, they are still in the division^ 
 lobby. Here for five years Milton remained, communing with Nature 
 and with books — with books, perhaps, more than Nature — though there 
 
 109 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 is abundant evidence in his writings that the signs and sounds of 
 country life sank deeply into his memory and were treasured up for 
 -after use. Here he proceeded deliberately to fit himself for the lofty 
 aspirations he had formed — not with impetuous haste and impatience — 
 but with the calmness that is born of confidence and trust. Here he wrote 
 his ' Idylls ' to mirth and melancholy — ' L' Allegro ' and ' II Penseroso.' 
 Here, too, was composed Comus, a sort of play that was performed at 
 Ludlow Castle, and here ' Lycidas,' the most splendid tribute that was 
 ever dedicated by one friend to the memory of another, if we except the 
 famous ' Adonais,' which Shelley wrote to the memory of Keats. 
 
 It is in this latter poem of ' Lycidas,' published in 1637, that we 
 detect something of that more serious spirit in which Milton is to 
 plunge into the great conti-oversies of the day. In his earlier poems 
 there has been something that is the reflex of the age that went before, 
 there is something, even, of the Cavalier about him, and, as we have 
 just seen, the great Puritan poet of the future, was himself the 
 composer of a play. But ' Lycidas,' and more especially the lines in it 
 which deal with the abuses of the Church, strikes another key. They 
 mark the awakening passion with which he is to fling himself into the 
 midst of the coming struggle and the firmness with which he will 
 hold the opinions he has formed. Before, however, the great contest 
 begins, there is an interlude of foreign travel. He spends two years in 
 Italy, to which he finds his fame has already reached. The scenery of 
 its hills and lakes imprinted itself upon his mind, and in the great epic 
 that was the work of his closing years of blindness, you find him 
 referring in the well-known lines : — 
 
 ' To the autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
 In VaUombrosa, which the Etruscan shades 
 High arched embower,' 
 
 and to 
 
 ' The mist and exhalations that now arise 
 From hill and streaming lake, dusky or grey 
 Till the sun paint the fleecy skirts with gold.' 
 
 The Italian lakes, so far as we know, were the only ones he was 
 acquainted with. When Wordsworth visited the monastery of 
 VaUombrosa in 1840, the monks still showed the cell where Milton is 
 
 110 
 
MILTON 
 
 believed to have stayed. Here, too, he met and talked with Galileo — 
 the Tuscan artist as he calls him — 
 
 ' Who views the moon through optic glass 
 At evening from the top of Fiesole 
 Or in Val d'Arno to descry new lands, 
 Rivers or mountains, in her spotted lobe.' 
 
 His visit to this aged man of scienoe — the Darwin of his day — then 
 though still living in his own house under the close guard and super- 
 vision of the Inquisition, for daring to think otherwise in Astronomy 
 than the Franciscan or Dominican licence taught, must particularly 
 have touched so warm a friend of freedom as Milton was. In after days 
 he would remember that Galileo, like himself, was visited with 
 blindness. Again, he is careful to remind us that as at college so 
 now, amid all the temptations of foreign travel, he has kept the 
 pureness and innocence of his youth. 
 
 ' I again call God to witness,' he says, ' that in all those places 
 where so many things are considered lawful, I lived sound and untouched 
 from profligacy and vice, having this thought perpetually with me, that 
 though I might escape the eyes of men, I certainly could not the eyes 
 of God.' And now he must return, for things are becoming serious at 
 home. The quarrel is deepening between the people and the king. 
 He thinks it base to be travelling abroad while his fellow-citizens are 
 fighting for liberty at home. Yet he returns not immediately to take 
 any prominent part in the great events that were already going on. 
 He hires a house in Aldersgate and undertakes the tuition of his 
 nephews, who have been entrusted to his charge. On this, Dr. Johnson 
 has founded a famous taunt against him. ' This Milton, he says, ' is a 
 man of great promises and small performances, hasting home, because 
 his countrymen are contending for liberty, and when he reaches the 
 scene of action, vapouring away his patriotism in a boarding school.' 
 I fear for the moment the great Doctor's Toryism got the better of 
 him. It is unworthy of one, who had himself been a schoolmaster, and 
 what is more, it is untrue. Against it, however, we must set the 
 generous acknowledgment of Milton's greatness, which the great 
 Dictator makes elsewhere, when he declares that his works will possibly 
 be read when every other monument of British greatness is obliterated, 
 and that he is not the greatest of Epic poets only because he was not 
 
 111 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 the first. Milton, however, had made no promises or boasts of what 
 he was going to do, and even if he had, they would have been more 
 than redeemed by the twenty years of splendid intellectual service 
 which, in his prose works he rendered, to the cause which he supported. 
 For the moment, he bides his time. He was not one to rush, heedless, 
 into the fiay ; he waited till the spirit moved, till the call came, and 
 then flung himself, like Prince Rupert, at the head of his cavaliers,, 
 with all the vehemence of his nature, upon the foe. 
 
 His natural ambition, indeed, still was to undertake and execute- 
 some great literary work, and that in poetry. There was an inward 
 prompting, he tells us, that grew daily upon him, that by labour and 
 study, joined with the strong propensity of nature, ' I might, perhaps^ 
 leave something so written to after-times as they should not willingly 
 let it die.' He even went so far, as with characteristic painstaking, ta 
 make out a list of subjects, no less than 99 in number — 61 from the 
 Bible, and 38 from British history — some one of which might form his 
 theme. Among them was the Arthurian legend, in our early British 
 history, which another poet, in our own day, has made his own — 
 
 ' The British theme 
 By Milton left unsung.' 
 
 But it was not to be. Taught, by what he emphatically called ' GodV 
 secretary, conscience,' he hung up the harp he loved so well, and took 
 down the rougher and more unlovely weapons of political strife. He 
 laid aside his glorious dream — his lofty ambition — at the imperative 
 call, as he felt, of a great duty. It was no voluntary choice of his own, 
 this political writing, on which he spent so many years of toil. It was 
 not what he loved best. It was, he tells us himself, 'a manner of 
 writing wherein knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial 
 power of Nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account it,, 
 but of my left hand.' Milton's left, indeed, was better than most men's 
 right, and if he had not been one of our first poets, he would still have 
 remained one of the gi-eatest prose writers of our literature. There 
 are, indeed, as I have already hinted, deep blemishes in his pamphlets, 
 which one well could wish he had never penned. It is difficult, we 
 know, to touch pitch without a stain, and it is not easy amid the mire 
 and dirt and mud of political conflicts in stirring days, on burning 
 
 112 
 
MILTON 
 
 questions, for the most careful to avoid using language that calmer 
 moments would condemn. Milton, certainly, did not escape the 
 danger. He might have qualified for the modem editor of some of our 
 most partisan journals. His epithets were not nice — 'numbskull,^ 
 ' beast,' ' beetle,' ' fool,' ' superlative fool,' ' puppy,' ' knave,' ' idiot,' 
 * mongrel,' ' cur,' ' ass,' ' puling priests,' 'apostate scarecrows,' ' vagabonds 
 and ignoramuses.' These, and the list might be largely added to, are 
 some of the epithets which he hurls in torrents at his opponents' heads. 
 They fall as thick as the leaves in Vallombrosa. Billingsgate, you 
 would imagine, never had a more competent professor of its tongue. 
 Even the language he permitted himself to use as to the death of 
 Charles I. is coarse and violent to a degree that nothing can excuse. 
 In his use of his left hand, he fell even below its level. He became a 
 partisan of partisans. And yet, in spite of all this, it remains true, as 
 Lord Macaulay said, that his pamphlets ' as compositions which deserve 
 the attention of every one who wishes to become acquainted with the 
 full power of the English language, abound with passages compared 
 with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance.' 
 His arguments are clothed in a gorgeous panoply that bewilders the 
 reader and the stately march of his sentences, as they pass before us, 
 fills us with amazement. It was in reference to them that Wordsworth 
 declared : — 
 
 ' Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea.' 
 
 He lived in days when our noble translation of the Bible first fell upon 
 the people's ears ; it was there, we may believe, that he gathered his 
 earliest inspirations, and though there is in him a weeilth and magnifi- 
 cence of words, that is somewhat alien to that vigorous simplicity and 
 condensed force which we prize so much in our authorised version, it 
 is there, perhaps, and there only, that we can find his parallel. I am 
 not going to attempt to take you through all the thirty pamphlets 
 which he wrote on the various subjects which he dealt with — though to 
 one of the most celebrated I shall have to refer a little later on. 
 Enough that I have reminded you that he must be ranked as a great 
 prose writer as well as a great poet, and that to his prose writings the 
 best years of his manhood were given — given, not because he liked it, 
 but because, from his own point of view, it was the one path which duty 
 called on him to take. 
 
 113 I 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 I now turn to another incident in his career — ^his marriage, which 
 took place about four years after his return to England. That his 
 heart was open to the gentle passion, he has already shown in his Italian 
 sonnets, addressed to some fair unknown whom he had met in the course 
 of his joumeyings. Either on that occasion his love was not returned, 
 or his own words were fulfilled, when he declares that, in the presence of 
 so much beauty — 
 
 ' Grace can alone preserve him, ere the dart 
 Of fond desire yet reach his inmost heart.' 
 
 But he was not always to be so fortunate. His marriage, indeed, when 
 it came, was a most singular affair. We are told nothing of the 
 wooing. All we know is, that it does not seem, on the whole, to have 
 been one of those marriages that are said to be arranged in Heaven. 
 We are simply imformed that, about Whitsuntide, 164.3, he took a 
 journey into the country, nobody certainly knowing the reason, and 
 that after a month's stay, home he returns, a married man, that had 
 gone out a bachelor. His wife was Mary, the daughter of Richard Powell, 
 an ardent Cavalier who lived near Oxford. Milton was thirty-five, his 
 wife was but seventeen. She was one of a large family, and some few 
 of her nearest relations, we are rather ominously informed, accompanied 
 the newly-married couple to their London home. 
 
 Then, for a short time, they were left alone together to settle 
 down, and then, almost ere the honeymoon was over, came an earnest 
 request that the bride might return to spend the remainder of the 
 summer with her own family. It was granted. She was to return at 
 Michaelmas ; but Michaelmas arrived, and Mary Powell did not. 
 Milton, no doubt, wrote indignant letters, and what letters they must 
 have been ! He even sent special messengers, but the second wooing 
 proved a great deal more difficult than the first had been. His bride 
 did not return. Here was a practical difficulty which, for the moment, 
 distracted Milton's mind from all the affairs of State. Here was 
 rebellion at home; here was a revolution which put that other 
 revolution, that was going on outside, almost out of mind. It must be 
 grappled with at once, and without delay he proceeded to do it. In 
 that very autumn there issued from the press the first of his three 
 tractates on divorce. There is some uncertainty as to the date, and it 
 
 114 
 
MILTON 
 
 might almost seem as if, in the very first hours of their newly-wedded 
 life, the disillusion had burst upon his mind, and, in the very presence 
 almost of his young wife, he had been penning elabdtate arguments for 
 their separation. The idea is so unpleasant that we will hope it is not 
 true, and that Milton only took the step when he found that she was 
 resolute against returning to him. However this may have been, there 
 is no doubt that he plunged into the controversy with all his accustomed 
 vehemence — stirred, in this case, by direct personal feeling in the question. 
 With Milton's views upon divorce I cannot ask you to agree. The 
 binding character of the marriage tie — its irrevocable character save 
 under the gravest conditions, we hold, I suppose, most of us, to be one 
 of the securities and one of the chief securities of the purity and sanctity 
 of family life. Those who marry must look before and after, as so 
 important an event demands. Even then, as Milton tells us, ' for all 
 the wariness that can be used, it may befall a discreet man to be mistaken 
 in his choice.' Milton, however, perhaps had not looked before. He 
 had married in haste, or perhaps been married — unfortunately, to repent 
 at leisure. In the bitter hours of his repentance he formulates his remedy. 
 His particular case must be met by a general relaxation of the marriage 
 law for all persons and for all time. Divorce made easy, this is his 
 panacea for our ills. It is a remedy that met with as little encourage- 
 ment in his day as I believe it will do in our own. Churchmen and 
 Presbyterians alike were both against him. No one, indeed, has painted 
 more graphically the disasters of such an ill-starred imion as he fancied 
 he had made. ' A living soul bound to a dead corpse ' — ' a mixture of 
 minds that cannot unite ' — 'a worse condition than the loneliest 
 single life " — ' a powerful reluctance and recoil of nature on either 
 side, blasting all the context of mutual society ' — ' the undoing and 
 disheartening of one's life.' Such are some of the powerful phrases 
 in which he portrays his condition. And then comes the remedy, by 
 which he doubts not, he tells us, to wipe away ten thousand tears out 
 of the lives of men. Yet, little as we may agree with him in the remedy 
 he proposes, we cannot deny that in these pamphlets we have a noble 
 and passionate cry for a lofty and sublime ideal of married life. It 
 was because his ideal had been so high, that there were, when it had 
 not been realised, such abysses of despair. 
 
 Woman, according to Milton, was to be man's best companion, in 
 
 115 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 the sense most flattering to her — ^the companion of his intellect and his 
 mind. Fit and matchable converse in all things, this, he tells us, had 
 been his dream. For the moment it was gone. What, you will ask, 
 was the sequel of all this to Mary Powell and her husband ? I rejoice 
 to say it was more favourable than we might at first sight expect. 
 There are faults and errors in the lives of great men which we pardon 
 and condone for the sake of their eflects on the character of those who 
 have committed them. Thus, we may blame Sir Walter Scott for the 
 foolish pride which led him to add field to field of the border-land he 
 loved so well, with the result that bankruptcy and misery ensued, yet 
 we can hardly regret it when we remember the splendid courage with 
 which he faced disaster, and the unflinching toil with which, now an old 
 man, he retrieved his loss. And so, too, with Milton and his wife. 
 
 'To err is human; to forgive, divine.' 
 
 Milton forgave divinely. He had erred, his fury and anger had been 
 intense, but not less complete was the atonement that he made. Nearly 
 two years had elapsed since the departure, when overtures came from 
 Ojdbrd for a reconciliation. A surprise was planned, by which Milton 
 was entrapped into an interview. The result has been detailed in the 
 tenth book of his Paradise Lost. 
 
 ' She ended weeping, and her lowly plight 
 Immoveable, till peace obtained from fault 
 Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought 
 Commiseration ; soon his heart relented 
 Towards her, his life so late, and sole delight, 
 Now at his feet, submissive in distress. 
 Creature so fair, in reconcilement seeking 
 His counsel, whom she had displeased, his aid, 
 As one disarmed, his anger all he lost. 
 And thus with peaceful words upraised her.' 
 
 She returned to his house, becanie the mother of four children, and died 
 in 1652, nine years after her marriage. If it did not turn out all that 
 Milton dreamed of in his early days, at all events it was something very 
 much better than at first it promised to be — something of that which 
 he himself sang : — 
 
 'That wedded love, mysterious law. 
 Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets.' 
 
 116 
 
MILTON 
 
 His home became, in the end, the home of his wife's family, when 
 the troubles that awaited so many of those who took the side of the 
 king fell on them, and they were obliged to fly from Oxford. There it 
 was her father died, and there, on the whole, we are permitted to 
 believe, she led a happy and contented life. 
 
 Milton may not, like some other great men, like Socrates, Dante, 
 Hooker, John Wesley, Coleridge, Carlyle (the list is a somewhat 
 formidable one), have been quite one's ideal of a companion for domestic 
 life. There was, it would almost seem, something of hardness in his 
 nature, a want of tenderness and pity, a pre-occupation in his own 
 absorbing engagements that blunted his sympathy with others, and 
 these should be borne in mind when we deal with the very unpromising 
 commencement of his man-ied life. Perhaps he had, first of all, wedded 
 literature ; had made it, as Miss Coleridge says, in speaking of similar 
 difliculties in her father's case, *a Sarah, and sunk the poor mortal 
 spouse into the place of Hagar, with the results that can readily be 
 conceived.' Let us be thankful that it all ended under happier auspices 
 than it began, and hope that there was, in the issue, something of that 
 true communion between him and his wife which he has so beautifully 
 portrayed in the pamphlets to which the incident of their quarrel gave 
 rise. Hasty marriages, especially with angels, are perhaps some of the 
 pitfalls of life that Milton's unfortunate example warns us against. 
 
 We have seen how it was out of his own bitter personal experience 
 that his writings on divorce came into being. It is the same with 
 another of his most famous tracts. You know how, at that time, the 
 press and all that issued from it was under the strictest supervision. 
 Nothing that was not licensed by authority was permitted to be 
 published. It was as difficult to publish a new book as it is nowadays 
 to open a new public-house. Milton, perhaps, may have expected that, 
 with the extinction of the Star Chamber and the old regime, these 
 hateful restrictions would be allowed to pass away. If so, he was 
 disappointed. Just as in Church matters, he found that Presbyter was 
 only priest writ large, so in this he discovered that Parliament had 
 taken over all the old and musty weapons of the monarchy. The 
 licensing authority, indeed, was changed, and so were the objects of its 
 attack, but the tyrannical spirit that animated it was still the same. 
 This was not the liberty for which Milton had been contending. He 
 
 117 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 had himself treated their regulations with contempt. His pamphlets 
 had been submitted to no authority ; so long as they were pleasing to 
 those in power and written in their interest, no notice was taken of the 
 illegality of his proceedings. But his writings on divorce were widely 
 condemned, and the notice of the Licensers was called to his offence. 
 Milton is at a white heat at once, and proceeds to write his Areo- 
 pagitica. It is in the form of a speech supposed to be delivered to the 
 High Court of Parliament which, in Athens, sat on the Areopagus — the 
 Mars' Hill of St. Paul's great oration. Hence it has derived its singular 
 and perhaps somewhat repelling name. It is, no doubt, the best-known 
 of all his prose pieces, and well deserves to be so, not only from the 
 sustained sublimity of its style, but also from the deep importance of 
 its subject. It is full of passages that I dare say many of you are 
 familiar with : — 
 
 ' As good almost kill a man as kill a good book ; who kills a man 
 kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but he who destroys a good 
 book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. 
 Many a man lives a burden to the earth, but a good book is the 
 precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on 
 purpose to a life beyond life.' 
 
 And again : — 
 
 ' I know nothing of the licenser, but that I have his own hand for 
 his arrogance ; who shall warrant me his judgment ? The State, 
 replies the Stationer ; but has a quick return — the State shall be my 
 governors, but not my critics ; they may be mistaken in the choice of a 
 licenser as easily as their licenser may be mistaken in an author . . . 
 no, give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely, according 
 to my conscience, above aU liberties.' 
 
 This was the note that Sheridan was still striking, though in another 
 direction, a century later, when in his famous oration he declared : — 
 
 ' Give them a corrupt House of Lords, give them a venal House of 
 Commons, give them a tyrannical prince upon the throne and a truckling 
 Court around him, and let me have but an unfettered press, and I will 
 defy them to encroach but a hair's-breadth upon the liberties of 
 England.' 
 
 But Milton's was the first voice that was raised in its behalf. To 
 his own great chagrin, it was raised in vain. The censorship remained, 
 only in new hands, and in the days of the second Charles Paradite 
 
 118 
 
MILTON 
 
 Lost itself, which Dr. Johnson, to his immortal credit, as we have seen, 
 admitted ' was not the greatest of heroic poems only because it was not 
 the first,' only just escaped the condemnation of the licensing powers. 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom it was submitted, did such 
 ordinary work as this by deputy. One Tompkins was the deputy before 
 whose tribunal Paradise Lost appeared. It is said he hesitated at the 
 line in which an eclipse is described, which, 
 
 ' With fear of change 
 Perplexes monarchs.'' 
 
 A change of monarchs was something too awful for Tompkins to con- 
 template, but recollecting, perhaps, that it was only poetry — possibly, 
 in his opinion, rather poor stuff — he permitted it at length to receive 
 his imprimatur. It would be impossible to present a stronger argument 
 for an unlicensed press than this incident affords. If it was to be 
 unlicensed anywhere, surely it was in England, for, as with a fine burst 
 of eloquence, Milton, towards the close of his pamphlet, says : — 
 
 ' Consider, Lords and Commons, what nation it is whereof ye are, 
 and whereof ye are the governors ; a nation not slow and dull, but of a 
 quick, ingenious and piercing spirit ; acute to invent, subtle and 
 sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point, the highest 
 that human capacity can soar to.' 
 
 But I will not trouble you with more quotations ; nor, indeed, 
 further with his works in prose. 
 
 You may perhaps have been thinking all this time that Milton 
 occupied some high and distinguished position in the service of the 
 State, a position worthy of the talents and genius he had already 
 displayed. It is not so. His audience may have been fit, but as yet 
 they were certainly few. His name, I think, does not even occur in the 
 great history of the time, by Clarendon. He played no great part in 
 the field ; so far as we know he never even took up arms. But at last, 
 in 1649, after the death of the king, he did receive official recognition 
 of his merit, and was appointed to the Latin secretaryship of the 
 Council, an office which he held down to the Restoration. This, of 
 course, brought him into immediate contact with Cromwell. He had 
 to indite the dispatches of the State to foreign courts ; and his whole 
 time was to be at the public service. It was a task that was to cost him 
 
 119 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 dear, for three years after his appointment, the calamity of blindness 
 fell upon him. At the age of forty-three he is permanently deprived of 
 sight. A generation that has witnessed the heroic courage of the late 
 Mr. Fawcett, imder a like calamity, does not need to be reminded how 
 the greatness of great men only shines out more clearly in the midst of 
 trials such as these. His first thoughts, indeed, may have been such as 
 he puts into the mouth of Samson : — 
 
 ' Now blind, disheartened, shamed, dishonoured, quelled, 
 To what can I be useful ? wherein serve 
 My nation and the work from Heaven imposed ? 
 But to sit idle on the household hearth 
 A burdenous drone, to visitants a gaze. 
 Or pitied object.' 
 
 But his second thoughts must have been very different. At the end 
 of a year's blindness, he thus writes to a friend — and it is a passage full 
 of consolatory thought to all who suffer, and shows the true spirit in 
 which misfortunes should be met :— 
 
 'Though this,' speaking of a symptom he had just described, ' may 
 perhaps offer to your physician a ray of hope, yet I make up my mind 
 to the malady as quite incurable, and I often reflect that as the wise man 
 admonishes, days of darkness are destined to each of us, so the darkness 
 which I experience, less oppressive than that of the tomb, is, by the 
 singular goodness of the Deity, passed amid the pursuits of literature 
 and the cheering salutations of friendship . . . while He so tenderly 
 leeids me by the hand and conducts me on the way, I will, since it is His 
 pleasiu*e, rather rejoice than repine at being blind.' 
 
 He will not murmur, and so arrives at the consoling conclusion : — 
 
 ' God doth not need 
 Either man's work or his own gifts ; who best 
 Bears his mild yoke, they serve him best, his state 
 Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
 They also serve who only stand and wait.' 
 
 His various avocations were continued ; his pen was always at the 
 service of the State, when called for ; and, more than all, he once more 
 begins to dwell on the great poem he has so long designed to write and 
 which has been so long deferred. 
 
 In 1656 he married his second wife, who only lived a year. A 
 
 120 
 
MILTON 
 
 little later came the death of the great Protector himself, and then 
 followed that series of events that led to the Restoration. Why Milton 
 was spared on that occiision has never been precisely known. That he 
 was named for special punishment is certain ; that he was ordered to be 
 arrested by the Serjeant-at-arms is not less so, though we do not know 
 that he ever reached the prison; but what combination of kindly 
 influences ultimately secured his release is left to our conjecture to 
 determine. At any rate his name was not found in the list of 
 exceptions to the Bill of Indemnity, when it at last appeared. The 
 author of the Iconoclast, the defender of the execution of Charles I., the 
 bitterest opponent of the re-established monarchy, went free. Such an 
 act of generosity must undoubtedly be placed to the credit of Charles II., 
 whose credit greatly needs whatever we can discover in his favour ; as 
 most assuredly, on the other hand, deep would have been his con- 
 demnation had he pursued another, and what almost seems the more 
 natural, course. And yet we should never have known what we had 
 lost. Who would ever have dared to suppose that Milton's literary life 
 was yet to begin — ^that the triumphs of the past were but the shadows 
 of those greater ones that were yet to come — and that what he had 
 already written would, in future days, be mainly read because of some- 
 thing else that he was still to write. Who could dream that in the 
 mind of the poor blind secretary, whose aspirations on public affairs 
 had been crushed to the ground by the irony of events, whose ideals 
 had faded before his geize, who had just escaped the doom of death by 
 the contempt or indifference, it may be, of his opponents — who had 
 ' Darkness before, and danger's voice behind,' — who, I say, could have 
 dreamed that there lay in the mind of such a one the immortal achieve- 
 ments that were to crown his closing years ? Yet so it was. There 
 is much in Milton that recalls to one's mind the circumstances of 
 Dante's life and writings. But in nothing are they more alike than in 
 that dauntless courage which carried them triumphant through trials 
 and calamities before which weaker spirits must have quailed. Dante, 
 too, was a politician, and his political ideals, too, had failed ; he was 
 banished from the city he had loved and served ; in middle life, 
 ' In the mid way of this, our mortal life,' he found himself alone and 
 companionless, and yet his magnanimity, his lofty self-reliance, his 
 unswerving trust, are the main elements in the grandeur of his poem. 
 
 121 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 Yes, these things are there, as they are in Milton, because, as Milton 
 instinctively felt in his earlier years, the lives of such men must be 
 themselves true poems — a composition and pattern of the honourablest 
 things. They had both striven to make their lives so, and the best 
 proof of their success is the immortal legacy which, in their works, they 
 have given to all mankind. 
 
 Milton lived for fourteen years after the Restoration of 1660. There 
 is a story related by Pope, that Charles II. went so far as to offer to 
 restore him to his post of secretary. His wife, for he had now married 
 for the third time, wished him to accept it. ' Thou art right,' said 
 Milton, •• you, like other women, would ride in your coach ; for me, my 
 aim is to live and die an honest man.' There is a story about his 
 friend, Andrew Marvell, to the same effect. Charles II. was anxious to 
 secure him too, and one day he sent his secretary to seek him out. 
 The secretary went to the house in which he lodged ; he went to the 
 first floor — he was not there ; to the second, with the like result ; at 
 length he found him in a little garret at the top of the house. In the 
 course of conversation, he placed a cheque for iflOOO upon the table — 
 a mark, he said, of the king's esteem. Marvell rang the bell for his 
 servant. ' What did I dine on, yesterday ? ' he asked. ' That little 
 shoulder of mutton,' answered the servant. ' What shall I dine on 
 to-day ? ' ' The shoulder, cold.' ' And to-morrow 't ' ' Mutton broth.' 
 * You can go,' said Marvel. Turning to the king's emissary, ' You see my 
 dinners are provided for and I want not the king's money.' And so 
 Milton, too, would remain loyal to his party and his cause. He would 
 not change the opinions he had formed ; he cannot bow the knee to the 
 new idol that has been set up ; all he asks is to be let alone and in the 
 privacy of his little house to endeavour, with what success he can, to 
 carry out the long-meditated ideal of his youth. He will not argue, he 
 
 tells us 
 
 ' Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot 
 Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer 
 Right onward,' 
 
 or as it is, we are told, in the first copy of his poem, ' up hillward.' 
 
 At this time Milton once more changed his residence. While he 
 held the Latin secretaryship, he had lived in a small street in West- 
 minster, with a garden running down, in those days, to St. James's Park. 
 
 122 
 
MILTON 
 
 Here, of course, he was close to Whitehall, to which, day by day, he 
 wovdd be led by some friendly hand across the Park, to the meetings of 
 the Council. It was here he married his second wife, and the register 
 of the adjoining church of St. Margaret's contains the record of the 
 event. In this pleasant house, in ' Petty France,' as it was then 
 called — York Street, as it is termed to-day — she died with her infant 
 daughter, in the year succeeding to the marriage, and was commemorated 
 in the sonnet which begins : 
 
 ' Methought I saw my late espoused saint 
 Come to me, like Alcestis, from the grave.' 
 
 But Milton's attendance on the Council was now over. It was, 
 accordingly, no longer necessary for him to be near Whitehall, and so 
 we find him returning once more to the busy haunts of the city, where 
 first he had seen the light. 
 
 At Jewin Street first, and afterwards in Bunhill Fields, both in the 
 immediate vicinity of Aldersgate, he spent the fourteen years that 
 intervened between the restoration of Charles II. and his death. Here 
 he would pursue those quiet studies among his books, .so long 
 interrupted, and now, alas ! only possible through the aid of others. 
 The ardent young Quaker, Thomas Elwood, tells us how he went every 
 day, in the afternoon, to read to him such books in the Latin tongue 
 as he pleased to hear. Much that was passing around him, in the State, 
 was most distasteful to him. The black day of St. Bartholomew, with its 
 expulsion of 2000 Christian ministers from their homes — the returning 
 licence and debauchery of which the example was set at Court, and only 
 too readily followed by the people — these things must have galled his 
 heart and sorely tried his patience. These are what he is thinking of 
 when he writes : — 
 
 ' Though fallen on evil days. 
 On evil days, though fallen, and evil tongues. 
 In darkness and with dangers compassed round 
 And solitude.' 
 
 But his refuge is at hand : — 
 
 « So much the rather thou, celestial light. 
 Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers 
 Irradiate ; there plant eyes that I may see and tell 
 Of things invisible to mortal sight.' 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 And, unfortunately, thCTe were not only troubles outside, but there 
 were others at home as well. Pictures have been painted — no doubt 
 very beautiful ones — which represent the blind poet with his three 
 daughters, all reverently grouped around him and assisting him in 
 various ways in his literary task. Unfortunately, we are driven to 
 believe that these are only pictures. There are some very unpleasant 
 stories of the fashion in which he was really treated by them ; and the 
 question perhaps again arises, as in the case of his first wife, whether in 
 the absorption of his high occupations, he had quite fulfilled his 
 obligations towards those of his own household. At all events, he 
 seems to have been unfortunate in his relations with those women with 
 whom he was most closely and intimately connected. We cannot be 
 ungallant enough to think that all the blame is to be laid upon their 
 shoulders. There was, perhaps, something wanting in his domestic 
 sympathies. 'His soul,' Wordsworth tells us, 'was like a star, and 
 dwelt apart,' and in this apartness, this want of consideration for others, 
 it may be, his fault lay. Charlotte Bronte tells us that Milton did not 
 understand women, and, therefore, failed in his representation of them. 
 You may remember the passage in Shirley, where she makes her heroine 
 say : 
 
 ' Milton tried to see the first woman, but he saw her not ; it was his 
 cook he saw ; or our housekeeper, as I have seen her, making custards in 
 the cool dairy, with rose-trees and nasturtiums about the latticed 
 window, preparing a cold collation for the rectors — preserves and 
 creams — puzzled "What choice to choose, for delicacy best." ' 
 
 Whatever truth there may be in this, we know that Milton was, at 
 all events, not unmindful of this side of a woman's duties. We have 
 the evidence which was given by his maid-servant, after his death, who 
 related in reference to his will, which had been declared by word of 
 mouth upon his death-bed, that shortly before his decease, something 
 having been prepared for dinner that he very well liked, he said to 
 his wife : — 
 
 ' God have mercy on thee, Betty, I see thou wilt perform, according 
 to thy promise, in providing me such dishes as I like, whilst I live ; and 
 when I die, thou know'st I have left thee all.' 
 
 The third Mrs. Milton had evidently discovered that even poets are not 
 
 124 
 
MILTON 
 
 all soul ; and had made a veiy sensible use of the discovery. Whatever, 
 therefore, Milton may have expected to find, and did or did not 
 succeed in finding in womankind, in earlier days, it is some consolation 
 to know that, in the midst of his last domestic troubles, it was from a 
 woman''s hand that he once more sought, and it is permitted to us to 
 believe, on this occasion, received consolation. For the third time he 
 mamed, and under the happier auspices of his third wife, peace and 
 contentment would seem, in some degree, to have been restored to his 
 household. There are pleasant memories of his sitting and singing 
 with his wife — of dictating his poems to his friend, the Quaker, Elwood 
 — or, wrapt in an old grey coat, sunning himself at the door of his little 
 house. I said, I think, that all the houses in which he lived had 
 disappeared. But I see, while I am writing, that there is an exception. 
 It is that of the cottage at Chalfont St. Giles', in Buckinghamshire, to 
 which Milton went in the year of the famous plague, and in which it is 
 said the concluding lines of Paradise Lost were actually composed. 
 The cottage still stands, and I saw, not very long ago, that the Queen 
 had sent ^^20 towards a fund for the purchase of it. So that if any of 
 you should be tempted by your devotion to the poet's memory, when 
 you are next in London, to pay a visit to a shrine that is closely 
 connected with him, the opportunity still remains for you to do so. 
 
 Paradise Lost was followed by Paradise Regained, that by Samson 
 Agonistes, and then, in 1674, at the age of sixty-five, the end came. 
 He was buried in St. Giles', not, we are glad to learn, without a 
 * concourse of the vulgar,' whose respect, thus humbly shown, shadowed 
 forth that wide circle of worshippers throughout the world to whom, 
 one day, the name of Milton was to be a household word. In some 
 statistics that were published the other day, I saw that Mr. Stoneham, 
 the city bookseller, finds that Milton sells more readily than any 
 standard authors, other than Shakespeare, Tennyson, Longfellow, and 
 Byron ; while from the same figures it appeared that Messrs. Routledge 
 had sold as many as 1850 copies of Milton in a single year. It i.s 
 satisfactory to know that though Milton is not, perhaps, among 
 authors in most popular request — ^while he cannot, perhaps, compete for 
 the moment with such works as Trilby — yet he has an audience which 
 still continues to read him, and which will continue to do so long after 
 such ephemeral rubbish has been consigned to its appropriate dust-bin. 
 
 1S5 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 I will not trespass upon your patience with any criticisms on these 
 great works of his later days. I have already given you the opinion of 
 Dr. Johnson. Dryden, too, fixed their position, when, in a burst of 
 generous applause, he exclaimed when he first read them : ' He has cut 
 us all out, and the ancients too.' That has been the verdict of the 
 literary world and of the world at large in later days. I will not assert 
 that everybody reads the Paradise Lost ; still less, that they read it 
 from the beginning to the end, but that it and his other poems are 
 read, and greatly read, I do not doubt. He possesses what, after all, 
 perhaps, is one of the most striking tests of success that a poet can give 
 us — that of endowing our ordinary conversation with fresh and 
 felicitous expressions, which we have made our own because Milton 
 seems to have provided us, once for all, with the very words we need to 
 express the idea in our minds. 
 
 Who does not know, who almost has not quoted the famous lines — 
 
 ' Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
 In Vallombrosa ' ; 
 
 or — 
 
 ' Grace w£is in all her steps, heaven in her eyes. 
 In every gesture, dignity, and love ' ; 
 
 or again, such phrases as — 
 
 'The Paradise of fools to few unknown' — 
 
 'Necessity, the tyrant's plea'; 
 
 'Who overcomes 
 ' By force, hath overcome but half his foe ' — 
 
 'With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, 
 Confusion worse confounded ' — 
 
 ' A heaven on earth ' — 
 
 ' Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.' 
 
 May I add one from his prose, in which he said he had but the use 
 of his left hand — 
 
 ' He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter 
 in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem ' — 
 
 All these, and hundreds more that you may find, are familiar 
 
 126 
 
MILTON 
 
 expressions which Milton, in his exquisite style, has said for the worldv 
 once for aU, and which nobody will ever be able to say so well again. 
 
 The main characteristic of his poetry is that which distinguishes our 
 own Wordsworth— its perfect purity in thought and word. There is not 
 a line which either of them need wish to have omitted. In Milton's 
 case this stands out all the more clearly for us when compared with the 
 poets of his day, who were often licentious both in word and act. You 
 know how beautifully he has himself described this quality : — 
 
 ' So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity 
 That when a soul is found sincerely so 
 A thousand liveried angels lacquey her. 
 Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt. 
 And in clear dream and sober vision 
 Tell her of things that no gross ears can hear. 
 Till oft converse with Heavenly habitants 
 Begins to cast a beam on the outward shape, 
 The unpolluted temple of the mind, 
 And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence. 
 Till all be made immortal.' 
 
 Milton's poem is the outcome of the grand ideal which he had 
 formed for the regeneration of the English State — of the world in which 
 he lived. In practical life, he had failed to realise it. His efforts have 
 been in vain, his ideals have vanished. The currents against which he 
 has struggled have overwhelmed him, and left him standing alone, the 
 blind champion of a lost cause. But not one word does he recant ; not 
 for a moment will he hear of failure. No ; he will enshrine his ideals in 
 immortal verse and make them the everlasting possession of the world. 
 
 127 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 I DO not know whether any of you have ever in the course of a 
 summer's hoHday, or at any other time, visited the httle village of 
 Ecclefechan, some twenty miles away across the border. It is an 
 ordinary, apparently uninteresting village, as you well can find, but in 
 it you will see a little cottage, as poor and humble as its neighbours are, 
 yet carefully preserved and tended : and in that cottage a book, in 
 which are written the names of many visitors, from every quarter of the 
 world. Again, in the columns of the London Press not long ago, there 
 was an advertisement asking for subscriptions for the piurchase of a 
 house which, if you saw it, you would say was but a very ordinary 
 house, in an ordinary and somewhat uninteresting London street. The 
 first subscriber is the Emperor of Germany. To what is the interest, 
 the enduring interest, of this house and cottage due ? What dis- 
 tinguishes them from the houses and cottages that stand around ? In 
 the one, Thomas Carlyle first saw the light. In the other, he lived for 
 over fifty years, and wrote some of his most famous works. Yes, that 
 it is which brings to worship at the shrine of that little cottage men 
 the most distinguished on the world's roll of fame, which leads them to 
 endeavoin- to preserve for us and for posterity the surroundings in which 
 he lived and worked. The kingdom of literature is, beyond aU others, 
 a democratic kingdom. To its thrones are exalted, not necessarily the 
 mighty, or the noble, or the wealthy. Those who fill them may come 
 from the palace, but they may come from the cottage : and if once a 
 man's lips are touched with the divine gift of genius, the doors of the 
 literary kingdom and its loftiest rewards are never closed ' against the 
 poorest child of Adam's kin.' 
 
 And so Thomas Carlyle, from the humble cottage at Ecclefechan, 
 has come to be one of the undoubted kings of our EngUsh literature. 
 I make no pretence to-night to speak of him or his work in any 
 
 128 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 exhaustiTe manner, or to weigh the exact position he will hold in the 
 long and famous hierarchy of our British authors. All I wish is to 
 take a general view of one who will always be recognised as ore of the 
 great literary forces of the nineteenth century — of one, who more than 
 most men, throughout a prolonged and arduous life, fulfilled the time- 
 worn, but not time-excluded injunction of the Hebrew teacher, 
 ' Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' As Carlyle 
 was bom at Ecclefechan, so do his remains lie there, by his own 
 deliberate choice. You know it is the custom in this country, and 
 a wise and commendable custom we shall admit it to be, that when 
 any exceptionsdly great man dies, he is buried with our other great ones, 
 in the Abbey Church at Westminster. It is the desire of the whole 
 nation that it should be so : that not only heads that have worn the 
 crown, but those that have been wreathed with the laurel too — not only 
 those who have distinguished themselves in war, but those who have 
 been illustrious in peace as well — and peace, you know, 
 
 ' Has its victories 
 No less renowned than war "" — 
 
 that all these should rest there, and there do rest many famous men of 
 every rank, of every creed, of every form and variety of genius. You 
 remember Nelson's words in his last hour, ' Victory or Westminster 
 Abbey ! ' and we can hardly wonder, when we think of those who lie there, 
 that a tomb in it should be counted the highest honour which the voice 
 of the nation can bestow upon her sons. So strong is the sentiment 
 that upon more than one occasion it has been allowed to over-ride the 
 distinctly expressed desire of those who have passed away to be buried 
 in some other spot. The wish of the nation has been interpreted by 
 the survivors almost as a command. Dickens, for instance, is there, 
 though his own wish on the matter had been expressed in a different 
 direction. But Carlyle's wishes have not been, perhaps could not be, so 
 over-ridden, and in the little village, where his earliest years were passed, 
 he rests from toil, and Ecclefechan has become a name ' to the world's 
 four quarters blown.' 
 
 He may have felt, as Burke felt when he wrote, ' I had rather sleep 
 in the southern comer of a country churchyard, than in the tomb of 
 all the Capulets.' However this may be, I am sure we all feel that for 
 
 189 K 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 far stronger reasons, it is well that, like Wordsworth at Grasmere, 
 within sound of the rippling stream ; like Scott at Dryburgh, amid the 
 scenes he loved, and over which he threw the inspiration of his genius, 
 so Carlyle lies amid the scenes and the people from which he sprung, 
 and from whom he derived many of the characteristic features which 
 distinguished him in life. Here, we know from his writings it was, by 
 these wooded hills, the little stream that still runs through the town, 
 he first began to think. 
 
 'It struck me,' he says, ' as I sat by it one silent noontide, and 
 watched it flowing, gurgUng, to think how this same stream had 
 flowed and gurgled through all the changes of weather and of fortune, 
 from beyond the earUest date of history. On the morning when 
 Joshua forded Jordan, even as at the mid-day when Cassar swam the 
 Nile and kept his Commentaries dry, this little stream, assiduous as 
 Tiber, Eurotas, or Siloa, was murmuring on across the wilderness, 
 as yet unnamed, unseen. Here, too, as in the Euphrates or the 
 Ganges, is a vein or veinlet of the grand world-circulation of 
 waters, which has lasted, and will last, simply with the world. Nature 
 alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom : the idle crag thou 
 sittest on is six thousand years of age.' 
 
 And surely it is well that amid the scenes that thus prompted the 
 eai'liest workings of his mind on the great mysterious problems of our 
 life, in the quiet simplicity of the village of his birth, and far from the 
 noise and din and turmoil of the Babylon where his later lot was cast, 
 he should rest in death. 
 
 But apart from considerations of this kind, and beyond any such 
 appropriateness as this, Carlyle is himself in a very marked degree the 
 production and the work of the Border district. People you know have 
 sometimes disputed whether it is the age that makes the man great, or 
 the great man that makes the age. In a case like Carlyle's, it is easy, I 
 think, to see that just as geologists tell us great results are brought about 
 by the slow, resistless processes that are going on constantly around us, 
 so such a character as this — such a genius, if you like — might be evolved 
 from the antecedent circumstances of his family and the district in 
 which they lived. The Border district has given us many distinctive 
 gifts to literature. It has given us the Border Ballads, those stirring 
 songs, full of the very spirit of freedom and independence, and in which 
 too is found a vein of tender and pathetic sentiment, which is linked 
 
 130 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 inseparably to the very names of the hills and dales and streams. 
 There is in those ballads, as we all feel, something which stirs and 
 inspires our hearts. It is this which has made that Border Country, in 
 Scott's own words, ' Meet nurse for a poetic child,' and we know how 
 truly it was so in his own case : how of his yearly rambles through 
 Liddesdale, Mr. Shorteed, his companion, used to say ' he was making 
 himself all the time, and did not know it until years had passed away.' 
 
 Why, there is hardly, I suppose, a scene, an incident, or a character 
 in all his poems or romances, of which the first suggestion is not to be 
 traced to some old verse in the Border minstrelsy, or some locality in 
 the district. What was true of Scott was true no less of Bums. It was 
 amid the same hills and dales, and through the wild moorlands, that 
 his poetic spirit was nursed and grew : and here too were reared the 
 hardy peasantry from whom he sprang, and to the homeliest incidents 
 of whose lives, their Saturday nights, their merry meetings and their 
 sorrows, he has given an immortality such as genius alone can give, 
 which will be green as long as the world endures. And so, sprung 
 from the same peasantiy, in a different form, but not with a lesser 
 amount of genius, as its latest, but not, I hope, its last gift, this district 
 has given us Carlyle. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin has somewhere tried to explain why and how it is that 
 this district of the Border should have been so fruitful as it has been in 
 literary force and power — why it would seem to have had so large a 
 share of great writers springing up within it. He notices first the 
 character of the scenery, that it is neither, on the one hand, absolutely 
 mountainous, nor yet, on the other, perfectly flat ; that it is a mixture 
 of hill and vale, where there is demand at once for man's energy and 
 man's endurance, and yet room also for ideas of rest and repose. Again, 
 he instances the peculiar beauty, as he fancies, of the sound of the 
 Border streamlets, unmatched, he says, to his ear, for the mystery and 
 sweetness of their murmurs and whispers and low fall, and this he finds 
 reflected in the cadences of the ballads I have named. But most of all 
 he thinks it has been due to the stirring events, of which, by its very 
 position, as a border, and therefore an unquiet and unsettled district, 
 it has been the scene — to the pathetic incidents, the stern and thrilling 
 tales that must have been so abundant in the lives of those who dwelt 
 there. For years they lived in a constant condition of terror and alarm, 
 
 131 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 and something of the sternness and ruggedness that was so produced is 
 reflected in the character of their descendants. Here we cannot doubt 
 some of the most prized and valuable characteristics of the Scottish 
 character took their rise. Here was certainly a field in which might 
 grow the indomitable spirit, the unflinching courage, and the stem 
 individuality that at a critical period in our own history saved England 
 from the Stuarts, and in the face of thumb-screw and rack enabled 
 Scotland to maintain that Protestant faith to which she so stoutly and 
 so unfalteringly adheres. It was here, too, in Eskdale and Annandale, 
 that some of the most notable and terrible struggles and sufferings of 
 the Covenanters were enacted. You may read in Macaulay how the 
 hills resounded with their hymns of praise, how the moors were crimsoned 
 with their blood. You have all heard of the Wigtownshire Mart)TS, 
 and their miserable death in the Solway's tide. The memory of these 
 things would sink deep into the hearts of the people, and the whole 
 atmosphere must, as it were, for long have been charged with the 
 influences they were so calculated to arouse. Amongst the most sacred 
 traditions of Carlyle's early home, we can well believe would be 
 reverence and affection to the memory of these Covenanters, and for the 
 simple faith for which they died. Certainly it was not unfitting that a 
 man so reared should be the first historian to do full justice to the 
 character of the most illustrious of English Puritans, the great 
 Protector, Cromwell. These were the influences amid which Carlyle 
 grew. There is, it has been said, a country accent, not in speech only, 
 but in thought, conduct, character, and manner, which never forsakes a 
 man. This Border accent Carlyle most undoubtedly possessed. He had 
 his share of its more rude and rugged side, and also its tenderness as 
 well. There were memories and traditions of some rude incidents 
 enough in his own early family history. One he mentions in his 
 reminiscences which were published shortly after his death by Mr. 
 Froude. His forefathers, he tells us, dwelt long at Borrens, an old 
 Roman station in the parish of Middleby. On one occasion, in times 
 of Border robbery, some Cumberland cattle had been stolen and driven 
 away. The traces of them disappeared at Borrens, and the angry 
 Cumbrians demanded of the poor farmer, Carlyle's ancestor, what had 
 become of them. In vain he answered that he knew nothing of them and 
 had no concern with them. He was seized by the people, and despite his 
 
 132 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 own desperate protestations, despite his wife's shriekings and his children's 
 cries, he was hanged on the spot. Such scenes must of necessity live in the 
 remembrance of his descendants and colour their thoughts and feelings. 
 We have seen how closely Carlyle was connected with this Border 
 district, and how much he was indebted to it. He was bom here and 
 his early years were spent here. And yet, more than this, perhaps the 
 most important portion of his life was passed here too : the six years 
 which he spent at the lonely farm of Craigenputtock, which he had 
 inherited through his wife, upon the wild Dumfi-iesshire moors, and 
 which he has now left to the University of Edinburgh, to assist the 
 Scottish students of the future in starting on careers, some of which we 
 hope may have something of the consistency and greatness of his own. 
 In these six years he was laying the seeds of all his future life. Much 
 as he wrote afterwards, perhaps some of his very best work was 
 accomplished here: work certainly written when his style was purer, 
 less eccentric, less grotesque, less Carlylese, than it afterwards became. 
 The whole of the five volumes of his Miscellanies, containing some of the 
 most beautiful essays which the English language knows, were written 
 then, and I certainly should not be luiwilling to exchange a volume of 
 his last great work, that on Frederick the Great, for another essay such 
 as, in those earlier years, he wrote on Johnson, Scott, or Burns. He has 
 described the simple life he led in a letter to the German poet, Goethe. 
 
 ' Our residence,"' he tells him, ' is not in the town of Dumfries itself, 
 but twelve miles to the north-west, among the gaunt hills and black 
 morasses which stretch westward through Galloway to the Irish Sea. 
 In this wilderness of heath and bog, our estate stands forth as a green 
 oasis. It is a tract of ploughed, partly enclosed and planted ground, 
 where com ripens, and trees afford a shade — although sun-oimded by 
 sea-mews and rough-woolled sheep. Here, with no small effort, have we 
 built and furnished a neat, substantial dwelling. Here, in the absence of 
 professional or other office, we live to cultivate literature, according to 
 our strength and in our own peculiar way. We wish a joyful growth to 
 the roses and flowers of our garden : we hope for health and peaceful 
 thoughts to further our aims. The roses, indeed, are still to be planted, 
 but they flourish already in anticipation. Two ponies which carry us 
 everywhere, and the mountain air, are the best medicine for weak nerves. 
 This daily exercise is my only recreation, for this nook of ours is the 
 loneliest in Britain, six miles removed from any one likely to visit us.' 
 
 But Carlyle was not only thus closely connected with the Border, he 
 
 183 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 is also in an especial degree one of ourselves, the ordinary middle class. 
 It has been said, I forget now by whom, that among the various 
 epithets by which the nineteenth century may be described, it may well 
 be called, and will perhaps be known as ' the working man's century.' 
 
 By that, I take it, it was meant that it is the century in which, for 
 the first time, the working classes have received the full rights of 
 citizenship, and are no longer held to be incapable to take their part in 
 the government of the country which, by the sweat of their brow and 
 the labour of their hands, they do so much to aggrandise and enrich. 
 Well, if it be so, if it be in this sense the workmen's century, it is 
 certainly not inappropriate that one of the great teachers of that 
 century — it may be after-ages will say its greatest teacher — should have 
 sprung directly from the working class, and should account it his glory 
 and his pride to have done so. 
 
 There is no mistaking his feeling upon this point. ' I have,' he 
 says, to quote the Reminiscences again — and his account of his father, in 
 those Reminiscences, is one of the most beautiful chapters in biography 
 that I know : — 
 
 ' I have a sacred pride in my peasant father, and would not exchange 
 him even now for any king known to me. Let me thank God for that 
 greatest of blessings and strive to live worthy of it.' 
 
 And James Carlyle, the father, was a man of whom any one might well 
 be proud. By trade he was a mason. 
 
 ' Nothing,' says his son, ' that he undertook to do, but he did 
 faithfully and like a true man. I still look on the houses that he 
 built with a certain proud interest. They stand firm and sound 
 to the heart, all over the little district where he worked. No one 
 that comes after him will ever say, " Here was the finger of a hollow 
 eye-servant.' ' They are little texts for me. Nay,' he goes on, ' am I 
 not also the humble James Carlyle's work ? I owe him much 
 more than existence. I owe him a noble and inspiriting example 
 It was he that exclusively determined on educating me, that from his 
 small hard-earned funds sent me to school and college, and made me 
 whatever I am, or may become. Let me not mourn for my father: 
 let me do worthily of him. Let me learn of him. So shall he still live 
 here in me, and his work plant itself honourably forth into new 
 generations.' 
 
 It was thus the son sought to imitate the example of his father — to 
 
 134 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 learn of him — ^to make the work which his hand had to do as true and 
 real as that of his father he knew had been. ' Let me write my books, 
 as he built his houses,' was his prayer. Yes, real work was the distin- 
 guishing characteristic both of father and of son : the endeavour to do 
 well whatever was done. 
 
 I saw an amusing story narrated the other day, which illustrates 
 how this trait existed in other members of the family. A distin- 
 guished American had gone to Ecclefechan to make some inquiries 
 about the family of Carlyle. The first man he came across was 
 the road-man, engaged in his ordinary avocations, who told 
 him he had lived there all his life. ' Ah, then, of course you knew the 
 Carlyles ? ' Oh, yes, he knew them all ! ' Let me see, there was Jock, 
 the Doctor — a good sort of fellow Jock was.' * And Tom,' said the 
 stranger, anxious to get to the point he was aiming at. ' Oh, yes, there 
 was Tom, a moonstruck sort of fellow always busy with his books : lives 
 mostly in London Tom does — but James, James, sir, was the man of 
 that family : he lives at the Newlands farm there, and brings more pigs 
 into Ecclefechan market than any farmer in the parish.' So James, he 
 thought, made good work in pigs. Good work — ^that was the lesson 
 they all taught. It is a lesson which, if all be true that we hear, it is 
 not altogether unnecessary for these modern centuries to remember. 
 
 In days long gone by, in the days when they were building our old 
 cathedrals and castles, it used to be the custom for the masons to put 
 their individual mark on the stones they hewed, so that their share in 
 the work might be known and recognised for ever. They were so proud 
 of it that they liked to know, each of them, what they had done them- 
 selves. There is a good deal of work nowadays, they say, with which 
 it would not be so pleasant for those who built it to remain connected — 
 their share in which, if they consulted their own credit, they would be 
 anxious to disavow rather than to proclaim abroad. 
 
 If this sort of scamped work be one of the failings, one of the errors 
 of the day, no better antidote can be found than in the example and 
 teachings of Carlyle. The houses and the bridges which his father had 
 built he saw, with pride, stand the test of time — he determined that his 
 own work also, so far as his labour could ensure, should also endure and 
 go down to a long posterity. Let us hope that such examples will not 
 be without their use, that such teaching will not fall on idle ears, that 
 
 1S5 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 English work throughout the world will once again be known as that 
 sterling, honest, truthful work which has made the reputation and 
 contributed to the prosperity of England in other days. Then need we 
 fear no danger, either at home or from abroad, for as Shakespeare says, 
 
 ' Nought can make us rue 
 If England to herself do keep but true.'' 
 
 But then, you know, England cannot keep true to herself in a sort of 
 general, indefinite, kind of way. She can only keep true by each 
 individual Englishman determining for himself that his own work shall 
 be well and truly done, and endeavouring to make his children capable 
 of a similar high resolve. This is the great, the only secret of national 
 progress — the only road to national prosperity, for, as has well been 
 said, no political constitution, however good, can ennoble knaves, no 
 privileges can assist them, and no possessions can enrich them. 
 
 And don't imagine that because Thomas Carlyle worked with his 
 head and not with his hands, he did not need all the energy and all the 
 force that nature could supply. Don't imagine that when he says work 
 he did not know what work was. The record of his early struggles is 
 the record of a hard and painful fight. Fate often seemed against him. 
 He consoled himself with the reflection that may sometimes, perhaps, 
 console others in like plight. ' Ill-luck,' he says, ' take it quietly : you 
 ai-e never sm-e but it may be good and the best.' It has often been so 
 with men of letters, and no Uves frequently are more sad to read than 
 theirs. ' Look,' says Carlyle himself, in one of his works — drawing, no 
 doubt, from his own experience — ' look at the biography of authors ! ' 
 Except the Newgate Calendar it is the most sickening chapter in the 
 history of man. 
 
 The calamities of these people are a fertile topic : and too often 
 their faults and their vices have kept pace with their calamities. Nor 
 is it difficult to see how this has happened. Talent of any sort is 
 usually accompanied with a peculiar fineness of sensibility : of genius 
 this is the most essential constituent ; and life in any shape has sorrows 
 enough for hearts so formed. The employments of literature sharpen 
 the natural tendency : the vexations that accompany them frequently 
 exasperate it into morbid soi-eness. Hence the unhappiness of literary 
 men, hence often their faults and folly. 
 
 136 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 Few spectacles are more afflicting than that of such a man, so gifted 
 and so fated, so jostled and tossed to and fro in the rude bustle of the 
 world, the bufFetings of which he is so little fitted to endure. It is no 
 «asy matter, in the first place, to catch the ear of the great world around 
 us. Carlyle's own first efforts were discouraging enough. He records 
 how, after long consideration, he took his resolution to try Jeffrey with 
 an actual contribution to the great Edinburgh Review, then in the full 
 height of its fame. Carefully he prepared it, and penned the brief note 
 that was to accompany it, and Usher it into the presence of the great 
 man, and left them himself at Jeffrey's house in George Street. His 
 hopes had never risen very high — never, indeed, risen at all — but for a 
 fortnight or so they did not quite die out ; and then it was absolute 
 zero. No answer, no return of manuscript, no notice of it at all — a form 
 of catastrophe more complete than even he had anticipated. And this 
 was not his only experience of a like kind ; but he characteristically 
 consoles himself with the remark, which it may be well to place on 
 record for intending authors and rising genius, that perhaps it is no 
 disadvantage if the door be several times slammed in their face, as a 
 preliminary. 
 
 Five years later he could scarcely find a publisher for one of his great 
 works — some think almost his greatest — the Sartor Resarfus. Murray, 
 the chief of publishers, declined to have anything to do with it, and 
 it was obliged to appear by instalments in the pages of some monthly 
 magazine. Can we wonder that, years after, when he was on the 
 pinnacle of his fame, and his rectorial address to the students of 
 Edinburgh had been received with raptures of applause, can we wonder 
 to find him bitterly pointing out that 
 
 ' there was no idea, nor shadow of an idea, in that address, but what had 
 been set forth by me tens of times before; and yet now the poor gaping 
 sea of blockheadism receives it as a kind of inspired revelation, and 
 runs to buy my books, when I have got quite done with their buying or 
 refusing to buy. 
 
 * If,' he goes on — alluding to his wife's death — ' the public would 
 give me ten thousand a year, and bray unanimously their hosannas 
 heaven high for the rest of my life, who now would there be to get the 
 smallest joy or profit by it ? ' 
 
 It was in some such mood as this, I fancy, that he must have 
 given his often-quoted definition of the English people : ' The people 
 
 187 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 of England are thirty millions, mostly fools.'' I dare say you 
 may remember another celebrated man who arrived at a somewhat 
 similar conclusion — the illustrious claimant in the Tichborne Case, 
 as he was called — the partial success of whose monstrous imposition 
 certainly went a considerable way to prove the truth of Carlyle's bitter 
 proposition. Let us hope the time will come when popular judgments 
 will rest on surer and safer grounds. The sudden mutations and 
 vacillations they too often undergo, the strange vicissitudes through 
 which they pass, these are among the truisms of history from the earliest 
 period to our own date, and among its most disheartening incidents. 
 Burke, in the letter which he wrote when he was rejected by his 
 constituents at Bristol, only recounted an experience which has too 
 often befallen great men in every department of life. They may console 
 themselves as he consoled himself: — 
 
 ' I have read the book of life a long time, and I have read other 
 books a little : nothing has happened to me but what has happened to 
 men much better than me : and in times and in nations full as good as 
 the age and the country that we live in.' 
 
 But it is the characteristic of Carlyle's life and character — that 
 which inspired it with a healthy tone, and makes it good for us to read 
 and study — that, in spite of all his difficulties, in spite of discourage- 
 ments and disappointments — discouragements from want of health and 
 poverty, he laboured steadily on and persevered in the line that he had 
 marked out for himself. He was determined, so far as in him lay, his 
 life should be a perfect completed work, that might stand as one of his 
 father's houses stood, a mark to those who should follow after. In 
 words that might well be written in gold, he tells a young man who had 
 written to him for advice, that he had observed this truth : — 
 
 'That whatever of real human work a man puts into his grand 
 enterprise, just about the same quantity of real human victory does he 
 in the end get out of it.' 
 
 This is what so distinguishes his own career from that of too many 
 of the sons of genius. This is what distinguishes it pre-eminently from 
 such lives as those of Burns or Byron. We all know how there are 
 dark clouds hanging over those, how from some aspects they ended in 
 sorrow and failure. What was the cause of the failure .'' Carlyle, in his 
 essay on the poet Bums, one of the earliest and most delightful of all 
 
 138 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 his writings, has told us in solemn words where, in his opinion, the 
 cause of that failure was to be found :— 
 
 ' We are forced to answer,' he says, ' with himself : it is his inward, 
 not his outward, misfortune that brings him to the dust. Seldom, 
 indeed, is it otherwise : seldom is a life morally wrecked but the grand 
 cause lies in some internal mal-arrangement.' 
 
 And Carlyle's own life, on the other hand, was not morally wrecked, 
 because he had what those others lacked, a single aim to do what he 
 believed to be his duty and a true religious principle of morals by which 
 to do it. And so he stands out, and will stand out for all time, like 
 some giant mountain towering aloft in its strength, a sign to all men 
 that the path of duty is the path of safety, and that in it those who 
 would be conquerors must steadily and persistently walk. 
 
 And Carlyle's strength never failed him ; he could always do any- 
 thing that he thought he ought to do, or knew he had to do. No 
 labour in getting up the minutest details of his great historical works 
 was ever spared by him. No bit of work was ever scamped. He could 
 always bend all his powers to the completion of his task, whatever it 
 might be. An old man over sixty he sets himself to the work of his 
 Life of Frederick with a library of two thousand volumes, specially 
 collected for the purpose, around him, visits the battlefields and the 
 scenes he has to describe, and works with all the energy of youth. In 
 earlier years, when his French Revolution was just ready for the press, 
 he lent the manuscript to John Stuart Mill to read. Mill's maidservant 
 unfortunately lighted the fire with it : — 
 
 ' It shall be written again,' Csirlyle says, ' my fixed word and 
 resolution : which proved to be such a tax as I never tried before or since.' 
 
 Any one who has the least experience of composition can readily 
 believe this. In everything it was the same. All his life long he was a 
 martjn^ to dyspepsia of a very aggravated kind. On one occasion he 
 consulted a doctor in reference to it. ' It is all tobacco, sir : give up 
 tobacco.' Most people would, perhaps, take a last pipe — many, two or 
 three. Not so Carlyle. 
 
 'Gave it up at once, instantly and entirely,' he says. 'Unfortu- 
 nately,' he has to add, ' but found after long months that I might as well 
 have ridden sixty miles in the opposite direction, and poured my 
 sorrows into the long fairy ears of the first jack-ass I came across.' 
 
 1S9 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 And what he could do with tobacco, he could do with everything 
 ■else, and so he presents us with an admirable example of one who has 
 attained to that high position in which he can say, he is master 
 -of himself. 
 
 It would be impossible, of course, to attempt any detailed exami- 
 nation of the works of which Carlyle was the author, nor any 
 enumeration of the subjects with which they deal. Being the man he 
 was, we are not surprised to find that the characters in history with 
 whom his sympathies most fully went were men of strength and power 
 ■of will, like Dante, or Cromwell, or Luther ; that the great periods in 
 history that have occupied his pen have been periods of great 
 earnestness and intenseness, in which great and sweeping changes have 
 been achieved — when the flood-gates of human wrath have been opened 
 wide, and some institutions, rotten to the core, have been arraigned 
 before the bar of public opinion and finally and conclusively condemned. 
 Two such periods, one in our own history, one in that of our French 
 neighbours, he has illustrated in his Life of Cromwell and his French 
 Revolution. Of the latter he says, it was written from a man's very 
 heart, and it remains, and ever will remain, the most striking picture of 
 the most striking catastrophe that has ever taken place in the history 
 of the world. From his very heart it was written, and yet in the 
 •despondency arising out of previous failui-e he felt, he says, that the 
 world would trample it, too, under foot. ' No,' said his wife, ' they can 
 never trample that.' 
 
 Of Cromwell it is not too much to say that he had never been 
 known to modem England till Carlyle revealed him, and if he had done 
 nothing else he would live for this alone. It may well be that he may 
 have made him, and some others too, too much a hero — that in his 
 admiration of the strength of character and the power of wiU, which a 
 man like Cromwell possessed and without which he could not have done 
 the work he did, he may have blinded himself to some of his failings 
 and his faults : that his picture may require correction before it can be 
 accepted as a true and perfect portrait ; yet still no conception of him 
 can be gained without Carlyle's assistance, and it is his assiduous care 
 that has placed every speech and every letter on record for us to form 
 our judgment on. 
 
 His last great historical work. Frederick the Great, dealing also 
 
 140 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 with a man of strong character, is one with regard to which, perhaps^ 
 there will be more difficulty amongst ourselves in accepting the subject 
 as a hero. Frederick, indeed, accomplished much, he laid the 
 foundation of that united Germany which we know to-day, so powerful 
 on the Continent for good or ill, but we can hardly approve the means 
 by which he attained his ends. The conquests he made and the 
 territories he acquired seem in many ways utterly indefensible, and one 
 cannot help regretting that Carlyle should seem to have given the 
 sanction of his approval to such events : to the (as it seems to us) almost 
 immoral means which those early HohenzoUems used in promotion of 
 their laudable ambition, to make Prussia a great and powerful state. 
 It almost seems sometimes in these, his later works, as though Carlyle 
 was going to bow down before the graven image of success, and to 
 worship power under any guise, so long only as it maintained its 
 strength, and we turn again with fresh pleasure to his best and earlier 
 work, when he had not begun to distrust and almost despair of those 
 popular forces which we still hope will fulfil his earlier auguries and 
 disappoint his later fears, and will do so mainly by paying timely heed 
 to the warnings he has so abundantly given. 
 
 But though we have no time to consider minutely or in detail his 
 multitudinous works, some thirty volumes there are in all — some wit, 
 in reference to the commendations on silence that occur in them, called 
 them the gospel of Silence in thirty volumes — we may refer to one or 
 two of their principal characteristics, and the first, certainly, is his 
 sincerity, his indisputable air of truth. And no one better than 
 himself has described the importance of this quality. In his essay on 
 Bums, which might almost be called, the Manual of the man of letters, 
 so fiill of valuable lessons is it — he says : 
 
 ' To every poet, to every writer, we would say, be true if you would 
 be believed. Let a man but speak forth with genuine earnestness the 
 thought, the emotion, the actual condition of his own heart, and other 
 men, so strangely are we all knit together by the tie of sympathy, 
 must and will give heed to him. In culture, in extent of view, we may 
 stand above the speaker or below him ; but in either case, if his words 
 are earnest and sincere, they will find some response within, for as face 
 answers to face, so does the heart of man to man.'' 
 
 This is the lesson of all others he is never weary of impressing by 
 
 141 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 precept and example. Nature's laws are eternal : her still, small voice, 
 speaking from the inmost heart of us, shall not under terrible penalties 
 be disregarded. No one man can depart from the truth without danger 
 to himself — no one million of men, no thirty millions of men. 
 
 ' Show me a nation fallen everywhere into this course, so that each 
 expects it, permits to others and himself, and I will show you a nation 
 travelling on the broad way.' 
 
 And his second characteristic is the insight he displays into the 
 workings of the human heart — the fashion in which he looks poor 
 human nature through and through, and probes its failings and its 
 weakness to the very core. And this in his earliest work, composed 
 almost, we would fancy, before he had seen or known the world. But 
 he tells us this same world may be seen in Mossgiel and Tarbolton, if we 
 look well, as clearly as it ever came to light in Crockford's or the 
 Tuilleries. The men and women whom he puts before us are real people, 
 stripped of the disguises in which they too often parade themselves. 
 No one by a few touches could paint a more living portrait. He 
 delights, it is true, in exposing the weaknesses of poor humanity, in 
 stripping off the rags behind which it would shelter itself from 
 our gaze. 
 
 ' When I read,' he says, ' of pompous ceremonials, Frankfurt Coro- 
 nations, Royal Drawing-rooms, Levees, and what not, on a sudden, as 
 by some enchanter's wand, the clothes fly off the whole dramatic corps, 
 and dukes, grandees, bishops, generals, anointed presence himself, every 
 mother's son of them, stand shuddering there without a shirt upon them, 
 and I know not whether to laugh or weep.' 
 
 Well, it is an ordeal which it would be difficult for the best of us to 
 face, who are none of these high personages ; but we are none the worse 
 for being reminded, and the world is none the worse of being reminded, 
 that it is the spirit, the soul within, which is the animating, energising 
 force which moves the world, and which is a reflection on earth of the 
 spirit of God himself. To preach this, he says, it was that sages and 
 martyrs, the poet and the priest, in all times have spoken and suffered, 
 bearing testimony through life and death of the God-life that is in man, 
 and how in that only he has strength and freedom. And as he is ever 
 alive to the weaknesses of the individual, so is he to those of society as 
 well, the aggregate of individuals. 
 
 142 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 One gets a little wearied of being told, perhaps, that the world is 
 always out of joint. ' You have,' said Dr. Quincey, ' you have put 
 another hole in the tin kettle of society. How do you propose to tinker 
 it ? ' Well, Carlyle was not always ready with his remedy. He some- 
 times seemed to despair of a remedy at all, or worse still, to be ready to 
 accept the sway even of some one of despotic power, if only order could 
 be restored. But notwithstanding this drawback, and it must be made, 
 after all it was something to have set men's minds in motion, to have 
 stirred them up to nobler and higher aims, and to have inspired them 
 with resolution to search for them. There could be no stagnation 
 where his rebukes and reproaches fell. And, after all, stagnation, self- 
 contentment, the resting satisfied with the mere material forms of 
 happiness, these are the worst of ills. And never were Carlyle's 
 warnings against these things more needed then in an age when the 
 increase of material wealth, unprecedented perhaps in any other period 
 of the world's history, has so enormously multiplied the incitements to 
 gain, the avenues for luxury, the inducements to pleasure. These are 
 the dangers against which we have to war, and no one in this respect 
 has, indirectly it may be, done better service than Carlyle. 
 
 His humour furnished him with a powerful weapon. What 
 inimitable satire his pages contain ! Read his paper written at the 
 time when people were beginning to think of some kind of a memorial 
 to Cromwell, but had actually subscribed no less than £25,000 for one to 
 Hudson, the great Railway King, as he was called. It was never erected, 
 because the bubble connected with Hudson burst too soon. 
 
 ' But why,' he asks, ' was it not set up that the whole world might see 
 it, that our religion might be seen, mounted on some figure of a loco- 
 motive, garnished with scrip rolls proper and raised aloft in some 
 conspicuous place. To all subscribers I have earnestly lu-ged : complete 
 your sin-offering, buy with the five-and-twenty-thousand pounds what 
 utmost amount of braaen metal it will cover — say ten tons of brass — 
 model it into the enduring brass portrait, an express image of King 
 Hudson, as he received the Grandees of this country at his levees and 
 his soirees, and mount him in what you consider the highest pinnacle 
 of the English world, and I assure you he will have beneficial effects 
 there. It will say to all, " Allah, Illallah," there is still one God in 
 England, and this is his prophet.' 
 
 I have spoken of him, I think more than once, as stern, rugged, 
 
 143 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 severe, and perhaps these are the qualities that some of his works at all 
 events lead us to associate with him. He has been called, I think, the 
 cynic of Chelsea, as well as its Prophet. But no one can doubt his 
 tenderness of heart, least of all after the publication of his two volumes 
 of Reminiscences. In that portion of them devoted to his father and 
 his wife he has reared perhaps the noblest monuments that tender 
 affection and esteem have ever erected to the memory of those who are 
 passed away. In India, you know, there is a famous temple raised 
 centuries ago by an Indian potentate to the honour of his wife, still 
 conspicuous for its graceful outline and the whiteness of its marble 
 walls ; but more graceful still, more tenderly exquisite, perhaps more 
 enduring, is the portrait Carlyle has painted of the noble woman who 
 was so true a helpmeet to him, throughout his long and troubled life. 
 And not less touching is his picture of the old Scottish peasant, from 
 whom he inherited so many of his characteristic traits. To him he 
 owed this very tenderness, this emotional side of his character, which is 
 so strongly marked in these, the latest productions of his pen. ' I have 
 often seen him weep,' he says ; ' his voice would thicken, and his lips 
 would curve as he read the Bible.' It was well that the story of his 
 wife's devotion to him should be known — how but for her perhaps his 
 works would never have been written. And those works were their only 
 children. In a beautiful passage, the last that I shall quote, he speaks 
 of her little bit of a first chair, with its wee, wee arms. 
 
 ' I have looked at it,' he says, ' a hundred times : from of old with 
 many thoughts. No daughter or son of hers was ever to sit here : so it 
 was appointed to us, darling : I have no book a thousandth part as 
 beautiful as thou, but yet these books were our only children, and they 
 were truly ours, and will perhaps live some time in the world after we 
 are gone.' 
 
 It is impossible not to love the man who could write this, and the 
 great heart of humanity has gone out to Carlyle, in spite of all his 
 eccentricities of thought and style. 
 
 Yes, their works, to use his own expression, their works, we believe, 
 wiU live : they will live because they are the works of one with whom it 
 is good for us to walk, and by walking with whom we shall gather fresh 
 strength, fresh impulse, for whatever work of our own we have to do in life. 
 He may ridicule our weaknesses, and sometimes even appear to satirise 
 
 144 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 and make light of our efforts to improve and to progress, but still the 
 people feel that he is one who has felt with them, suffered with them, 
 who from the very bottom of his heart means and wishes well to them 
 and theirs, and their heart answers to his heart, as face to face. He may 
 sometimes even seem to despair and despond over their future ; he had 
 not in reference to himself and his own career, he tells us, much of what he 
 calls ' common hopeing hope.' He was always Thomas the Doubter. 
 But of desperate hope, as he styles it, he had ample store, and that 
 desperate hope in his own case, by hard work, by unfaltering courage, 
 was abundantly fulfilled, as by the same work and the same courage 
 it will be in the case of others. These, with that reverential belief in an 
 all-wise omnipotent Being — without which, he told the students at 
 Edinburgh, no nation ever came to great things, and no man either — 
 these were the weapons with which he warred. They were weapons 
 with which he was armed in his father's home by the example and 
 the teaching of the old Scottish peasant he so dearly loved. I said this 
 border district of ours had given many distinctive gifts to literature ; 
 perhaps it has given us none greater, none more valuable, than he of 
 whom I have spoken to-night, whose words will influence for good 
 generations yet to come. 
 
 145 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT* 
 
 1 OUGHT, perhaps, to apologise for having chosen a subject on 
 which it is impossible to strike out any new or untrodden path ; 
 but you may, I dare say, have observed that there has quite recently been 
 a considerable awakening of interest in the character and writings of 
 Sir Walter Scott. His great works, indeed, I hope have never ceased to 
 be largely read, and the true nobility of his character to be widely 
 appreciated ; but, just as in other matters, the tide of fashion ebbs and 
 flows, so too it may have been in this. And undoubtedly of late the 
 interest in him and his writings has deepened and increased. We hear 
 of Scott on every side, in all directions. No less than three new 
 editions of his novels are issuing from the press. Our great actor, Mr. 
 Irving, has recently chosen one of his best-known romances, 7%e Bride 
 of Lammermoor, for reproduction on the English stage, and a great 
 many people have, in consequence, been renewing their acquaintance 
 with that celebrated novel. It is related that in one of the acute stages 
 of recent political crisis, Mr. Gladstone was discovered by a very early 
 visitor deeply immersed in the history of Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton. 
 Another, too, of his greatest novels, Ivanhoe, has just, as you may be 
 aware, been reproduced at another theatre by Sir Arthur Sullivan with 
 great and singular success. All this is most gratifying to us who love 
 him. It is due, perhaps, partly to the publication in full of the Journal 
 which Sir Walter kept during the last seven years of his eventful 
 career: a journal which no doubt was used by Lockhart in his 
 celebrated Life, but from which many striking and interesting passages 
 were then omitted. Mr. Swinbiume was so much struck, I saw, with the 
 value of its publication that he termed 1890, at the close of which it 
 appeared, in turf phraseology, ' Scotfs year.' In that journal he has 
 
 ♦Delivered 1891. 
 146 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 taken us into his confidence as few great men have ever done before, 
 and the full pathos of the great struggle which filled his closing years 
 is revealed in all its intensity to our view. The courage and resolution 
 with which he faced disaster has long been known, but now, for the 
 first time, we are able to measure them at their full proportions, and to 
 recognise the nobility of his character in all its greatness and it 
 strength; and I feel sure that the one verdict given will be that 
 expressed by himself in lines written in his diary on the completion on 
 one occasion of his daily task : 
 
 ' And long ere dinner-time I have 
 Full eight close pages wrote : 
 What, duty, hast thou now to crave ? 
 Well done, Sir Walter Scotf 
 
 Sir Walter owed no debt to duty. The debt we all owe to her in 
 his case was more than fully paid, and the record of its payment is one 
 that must be useful to every man to read, whatever his work in life may 
 be. Thank God, said some one, we know nothing about Shakespeare. 
 Thank God, we may say, we know all about Scott ; and the more we 
 know, the more we like. This view of Scott is strikingly endorsed by 
 Lord Tennyson in the volume published the other day, which contains 
 four lines to Sir Walter Scott, the almost rough sincerity and simplicity 
 of which stir the blood : 
 
 ' O great and gallant Scott, 
 True gentleman, heart, blood, and bone, 
 
 I would it had been by lot 
 To have seen thee, and heard thee, and known.' 
 
 I hope, indeed, I am discharging a work of supererogation in 
 recommending to any literary society the study of Sir Walter's works. 
 There is a stoi'y of some one who advised that whenever a new work 
 came out we should immediately proceed to read an old one, one 
 that had stood the test of time : for age, it had been said, is a 
 recommendation in four things — old wood to burn, old wine to drink, 
 old ftiends to trust, and old books to read. And so I think one 
 might not inaptly parody his advice by saying that on the 
 appearance of a new novel you should, instead of reading it 
 turn again to the re-perusal of some old favoiuite of the ' Waverley 
 Series.' Novels, I observe from the returns furnished from time to time 
 
 147 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 from our Free Libraries, are always largely read. The proportion, 
 indeed, varies in Scotland as opposed to England, for while in the latter 
 it is no less than eighty-six per cent., across the border it is only forty- 
 seven. I do not know to which category Carlisle may incline when 
 TuUie House unfolds its treasures to the world. With the tendency, 
 however, I do not in the least quarrel, provided that the novels read are 
 those which are likely to elevate and improve the mind. Amid the too- 
 often dull and prosaic realities of our daily life, it is pleasant to wander 
 amid the scenes traced for us by the genius and imagination of great 
 men — it is improving to mark their subtle delineation of character, the 
 growth of good ones, the gradual fall and ultimate ruin of the bad — 
 and to watch the light they shed upon famous scenes and illustrious 
 actors in our national history. A novel, said a learned judge the other 
 day, is a sort of locomotive engine. The bell rings, the story starts, and 
 in a moment you are thousands of miles away from all earthly troubles, 
 your business, your office, and your home. It is the same feeling 
 that was expressed by Lord Rosebery the other day, adopting the 
 words of Newman, when he said : — 
 
 ' I am in a frame of mind higher and more serene than these mortal 
 troubles can affect. Away with you, troubles — away with you into 
 space ! ' 
 
 Max:aulay, he reminded us, had expressed this sense of the comfort 
 and solace that literature has given when he wrote — 
 
 ' In the last hours of shame I deigned to stand 
 
 Before the frowning peers at Bacon's side, 
 On a far shore I smoodied with tender hand 
 
 Thro' months of pain the sleepless bed of Hyde. 
 I brought the wise and brave of ancient days 
 
 To cheer the cell where Raleigh pined alone ; 
 I lightened Milton's darkness with the blaze 
 
 Of the bright ranks that guard the eternal throne.' 
 
 Nowhere may you better do all this than in the works of the great 
 author of whom I am to speak to-night.' ' You can hardly,' Mr. 
 Hutton says, ' read any novel of Scott's and not become better aware 
 what public and political issues mean.' There are many, I believe, who 
 have been introduced to history through their pleasant and fascinating 
 portals. It is better, I have heard it said, to read history in the 
 
 148 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 romances of Scott than romance in the history of Macaulay. And 
 though this no doubt is somewhat of a parodox, like many paradoxes it 
 possibly contains an admixture of the truth. Scott has done for the 
 various phases of our modern history what Shakespeare has done for 
 the manifold types of human character. ' Not fit to tie his brogues,' he 
 said himself. The whole history of his beloved and native land was 
 part and parcel of his very being. He thus, for instance, in his journal, 
 runs briskly over a single morning's work : 
 
 ' I murdered Maclennen at Thrieve Castle : stabbed the black Douglas 
 in the town of Stirling : astonished King James before Roxborough : 
 and stifled the Earl of Mar in his bath in the Cannon Gate. A wild 
 world, my masters, this Scotland of ours. 
 
 ' For treason, d'ye see 
 Was to them a dish of tea ; 
 And murther, bread and butter.' 
 
 When, three years before his death, a proposal was made to him to 
 write on the subject of Scotch history for an Encyclopaedia, he says : 
 
 * It would be very easy work. I have the whole stuff in my head and 
 could write currente calamo.^ Yes, it is pleasant and elevating to 
 wander, with him as a guide, along the paths he knew and loved so well, 
 and there is the further advantage — a priceless one for every author to. 
 possess — that he could, in the words of Bishop Van Mildert at the 
 Durham Banquet : 'Reflect upon the labours of a long literary Ufe 
 with the proud consciousness that everything he had written tended 
 to the practice of virtue and to the improvement of the human race.' 
 And not less high was the testimony of Dean Stanley, when he spoke of 
 
 * the profound reverence, the lofty sense of Christian honour, purity, 
 and justice, that breathed through every volume of the romances of 
 Walter Scott.' 
 
 Yes, Sir Walter should never be forgotten, and least of all, here in 
 Carlisle. It was not only that he often passed through and was there- 
 fore familiar with our border city — the Waverley route, you know, still 
 «nds there — but he had a closer and a special connection with the whole 
 district. It was in this Cumberland neighbourhood — at Gilsland — he 
 met the lady who became his wife : it was at Carlisle that the intimacy 
 between them gi'ew, and it was in the old Church of St. Mary's — now 
 the Cathedral nave — that the marriage knot was tied. The record may 
 
 149 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 still be read in the pages of St. Mary's register under date December 
 24th, 1797, and is one of the most interesting that the book contains. 
 One of the witnesses who signs her name is Jane Nicolson, a descendant 
 of Bishop Nicolson, through whom, it is possible, it was that they had 
 known each other. Jane Nicolson was with Miss Carpenter as 
 companion when they met Sir W. Scott at Gilsland. They went 
 there with Mr. and Mrs. Bird, he a minor canon of the Cathedral and 
 an uncle of the late Mr. Halton. John Bird was a witness with Jane 
 Nicolson, and Brown was the officiating minister. The spot — the very 
 spot on which they stood — was sacred to him to the end of life, and in 
 the journal, during one of his last-recorded visits — that in 1828, only 
 three years before his death — his daughter, who was with him, writes : 
 ' Early in the morning, before we started, papa took me with him to the 
 Cathedral. This he had often done before, but he said he must stand 
 once more on the spot where he married poor mamma.' And then she 
 proceeds, ' After that we went to the Castle, where a new showman went 
 through the old trick of pointing out Fergus Macivor's very dungeon. 
 Peveril, the familiar name by which Scott in his own family was known, 
 said : " Indeed, are you quite sure, sir ? ■" and on being told that there 
 was no doubt, was troubled with a fit of coughing which end?d in a 
 laugh. The man seemed exceedingly indignant, so I whispered who it was, 
 I wish you had seen the man start, and how he stared and bowed as he 
 parted from us.' Yes, Carlisle was a place he loved, though it was, as 
 he says in another portion of the journal, * a sad place in my domestic 
 remembrances since here I married my poor Charlotte.' He adds, ' I 
 have not forgiven them for destroying their quiet old walls and building 
 two lumpy things like mad-houses. The old gates had such a respectable 
 appearance once " When Scotsmen's heads did guard the wall." ' 
 
 The ' lumpy things,' I am afraid, are the court-houses with which 
 we are still familiar — built, I think, in 1810, or at least begun then. 
 And it was not only with our own city that he was thus so tenderly 
 connected, but the whole border district that lies around us on either 
 side of the Solway Firth, on the shores of which so much of the 
 interest of many of his tales is centred. All this was his especial 
 training ground and the scene from which he drew some of his most 
 delightful characters. He came at a fortunate period for collecting that 
 mass of floating tales and anecdotes which still lingered on the lips of 
 
 150 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 the common people, but which in the course of another generation, a 
 generation of railways and daily papers, and the stir and bustle that 
 accompany them, might, unfortunately, have disappeared. He did for 
 Scotland what Homer is said to have done for his own day — collected 
 and put into literary form the current traditions which had been handed' 
 down from father to son in songs and lays, and by so doing established 
 a national character and a national spirit. Homer was a nation-maker : 
 and so were Burns and Scott. Lockhart, I think, tells us that there is 
 hardly a scene, an incident, or a character, in all his poems or romances, 
 of which the first suggestion may not be traced to some old verse in the 
 border minstrelsy, or to some incident or character which he fell in with 
 during those raids which he made from time to time through the border 
 hiUs and dales. Their very names, indeed, were music in his ear, and 
 from the vast stores of verse and anecdote which a powerful memory 
 placed at his disposal, he was able to select what was most 
 appropriate to each. He peopled the whole land with the creations 
 of his fancy, and Scotland can never forget the man who has thrown 
 round her an imperishable interest of which hotel-keepers have not been 
 the last to reap the full fruition. Read a book of travels in Scotland 
 before Sir Walter wrote — such, for instance, even as that of Gilpin — and 
 you will have some idea of what Scott did for his native land. He 
 formed, indeed, a very modest estimate of his own achievements. He 
 was, he said on one occasion, but as the housemaid who rubs up the 
 brasses in some old building — ^there was nothing new or original in her 
 work — that in this way he had been perhaps a good housemaid to 
 Scotland and given it a rubbing up : and in so doing might have 
 deserved some praise for assiduity, but that was all. This, no doubt, 
 presents one aspect of what he achieved ; but it overlooks the brilliant 
 fancy which threw such a glamour over every scene on which it lighted, 
 and has peopled the hills and vales and lakes of his native land, and the 
 very streets of Edinburgh and Glasgow, with a host of familiar 
 characters whom we seem to know as well or better than those with 
 whom we live to-day. ' If I have a knack for anything,' he says, ' it is 
 for selecting the striking and interesting points out of dull details.' His 
 fancy was always at work, and even when suffering from a most painful 
 disease he was able to amuse himself by comparing the gnawing pain 
 that wrung him to the troubles of a small round turret in the monastery 
 
 151 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 of Aberbrothwick, at which he had once seen an excited crowd tugging 
 with a rope to bring it to the ground. ' It is,' he said, * exactly the 
 condition of my stomach.' It is this power of recalling and representing 
 to us in aU. their minute details the familiar incidents and scenes of 
 'daily life which constitutes the distinctive mark of literary genius : we 
 all see the same things, but there are eyes and no eyes ; and it is 
 the characteristic of great men to touch what they see with fresh and 
 additional interest and to see more than is revealed to ordinary minds. 
 
 I need not recall to you the vast range of history over which he 
 travels in the course of his romances, and with the characters and 
 incidents of which he make us more familiar than we have ever been 
 before. I remember Kingsley, in the inaugural lecture which he 
 delivered from the chair of history at Cambridge, telling us that if we 
 would imderstand history we must understand men — we must fill the 
 mind with live human figures, men of like passions with ourselves, and 
 see how each lived and worked in the time and place in which God had 
 put him. Sir Walter enables us to do this in some of the most 
 striking epochs of our national life, and therefore it is from him you 
 may learn far more than the mere history-books of the period will teach 
 you. He began what proved to be the vocation of his life almost by 
 chance. Up to the age of forty-three he was a poet, and much of his 
 poetry is of the highest, if not the very highest, class.* He was one of 
 the nations favourite singers even when on her ears were falling the 
 music of Wordsworth and Byron and Coleridge and SheUey and Keats. 
 There are passages in his poems that are more often recited and more 
 familiar to us than any other in the world. Who that has been to 
 Melrose but has insisted on seeing it, regardless of coughs and colds, 
 ' by the pale moonlight ? ' Scott, indeed, we know on his own authority 
 had never seen it so himself: 
 
 ' In calling back the days of my youth,' he once wrote to Bernard 
 Barton, ' I was surprised into confessing what I might as well have kept 
 to myself — that I had been guilty of sending persons a bat-hunting to 
 see the ruins of Melrose by moonlight, which I never saw myself.' 
 
 Barton had been requested by a lady friend to ask Sir Walter to 
 
 * * He is in narrative second only to Chaucer, in some forms of lyric second to 
 none. ' — Saintibury. 
 
 152 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 copy the famous lines for an autograph collection. Scott complied with 
 the lady's petition, but with this variation : 
 
 ' Then go and meditate with awe 
 On scenes the author never saw. 
 Who never wandered by the moon 
 To see what could be seen by noon.' 
 
 While when we reach Loch Katrine and Loch Achray, the very heath 
 flowers and harebells seem to remind us of him, when we remember his 
 description of Ellen in the Lady of the Lake, how 
 
 ' A foot more light, a step more true, 
 Ne'er from the heath flower dashed the dew : 
 E'en the slight harebell raised its head 
 Elastic from her airy tread.' 
 
 The early poems of Mr. Ruskin have just, as you know, been 
 published. Scott's influence is the most noticeable of all the influences 
 of the time upon his youthful talent, and to have to helped to form and 
 mould the character of Ruskin is distinction in itself. He thus writes 
 of Scott : 
 
 ' TVas night. I stood by Tweed's fair stream, 
 Methought it sang a dirge from him 
 Who once on its green borders drew 
 The fanciful, the fairy crew ; 
 
 * » « « » 
 
 The billows wept that they no more 
 When rolling toward the hallowed shore. 
 Might dance unto the living lays 
 That minstrel's magic voice could raise : 
 When every mocking mountain rang 
 With the rich numbers that he sang : 
 When grimy forests when he spoke. 
 Their hoary locks in wonder shook. 
 And bent their spiry heads when he 
 Charmed Scotland's hills with harmony,' 
 
 It was Scott, indeed, who had the credit of revealing the beauties of 
 the Trossachs to the world, though possibly this was not quite the case. 
 There is a story, however, told in Miss Wordsworth's tour, of a guide to 
 Loch Lomond who told her that Walter Scott had spoiled his trade. 
 ' I wish I just had him here : I should sink the boat, even if I drowned 
 
 153 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 myself, for ever since he wrote his " Lady of the Lake," everybody 
 goes to see that filthy hole, Loch Katrine. The devil confound his 
 ladies and his lakes/ Then there are such passages as ' Caledonia, stern 
 and wild,' — ' Breathes there a man,' — or 
 
 ' Call it not vain ; they do not err 
 Who say that when one poet dies, 
 Mute Nature mourns her worshipper 
 And celebrates his obsequies.' 
 
 And of woman generally, who has more deftly focussed for us the 
 verdict of mankind : 
 
 ' O woman, in our hours of ease 
 Uncertain, coy, and hard to please : 
 When pain and anguish wring the brow, 
 A ministering angel thou.' 
 
 You all know him, too, as the author of 'Bonnie Dundee,' the 
 finest song of its character that ever was or ever will be written. 
 
 Down to 1814, then, he was a poet. But in that year, while turning 
 over an old fishing book for a cast of flies, he lighted upon some 
 chapters of a novel that he hjid once written and laid aside. The desk 
 in which it had been laid has just, I see, passed as a treasure into the 
 hands of Mr. Murray, the great publisher. The task intermitted was 
 renewed and Waverley was finished, and in the course of a few weeks 
 was given to the world. From that day everything has been Waverley 
 in Scotland. There are Waverley routes and Waverley hotels, Waverley 
 coaches and Waverley steamboats. A curious story is told of the 
 rapidity with which it was composed. A gentleman passing through 
 Edinburgh, in Jtme 1814, called on a friend whose house was opposite 
 to Sir Walter Scott's. While they were sitting, a shade came over the 
 friend's face, and his visitor thought he was unwell. ' No,' he said, ' I 
 shall be well enough presently : change places with me : there is a 
 confounded hand in sight of me here which has often bothered me 
 before, and now it won't let me fiU my glass with a good will.' He then 
 pointed out the hand, and added : ' Since we sat down I have been 
 watching it : it fascinates my eye : it never stops, page after page is 
 finished and still it goes on unwearied, and so it will be until candles are 
 brought in, and God know how long after that. I can't stand the sight 
 of it while I am not at my books.' ' Oh,' said the visitor, ' some stupid, 
 
 154 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 dogged engrossing clerk.' ' No,' said the host, ' I well know what hand 
 it is — it is Walter Scott's.' And what a portrait gallery that hand has 
 traced for us. What periods of history, what scenes, what various 
 countries it ranges over. Waverki/, you know, deals with the period of 
 the '45 and the exploits of Prince Charlie. In Sob Roy, we go back to 
 the early rebellion of 1715, and the still wilder days when in the 
 Highlands prevailed — 
 
 ' The good old rule, the simple plan. 
 That they should take who have the power 
 And they should keep who can.' 
 
 The scenes of Old Mortality are laid a century and more before, and 
 paint for us the gloomy sternness of Balfour of Burley in the 
 Covenanters' fight and the relentless ferocities of Claverhouse. The 
 Heart of MidlotMan introduces us to one of the Dukes of Argyle, a 
 famous politician in the reign of George II., and to Queen Caroline, his 
 Consort ; while Ivanhoe transports us back a full five hundred years to 
 the earlier stages of English history when our nation was yet a-making, 
 and Saxon and Norman had not yet combined. The luckless Mary 
 Stewart sheds the undying interest which ever clings to her upon the 
 pages of TTie Abbot; while her great rival, Elizabeth Tudor, with 
 her throng of admirers, fills the chapters of the succeeding Kenilworth. 
 The Pirate carries us to Norway, Peveril of the Peak to the Isle of Man, 
 Quentin Durward to Prance in the days of Louis XI. and Charles the- 
 Bold. In the Fortunes of Nigel is found perhaps the most complete 
 picture we have of the canny shrewdness of James I., while Woodstock is 
 not less conspicuous for its drawing of the Cavaliers and Buckingham 
 and Charles II. Anne of Geiersteim, one of the latest of the series, yet 
 with hardly a trace of failing force, centres our interest on the Swiss 
 struggles for freedom in the fifteenth century, brings us to the court of 
 King Ren^ in Navarre, and recalls to us again the restless ambition of 
 Margaret of Anjou, the widow of Henry VI. ; while The Talimnan 
 brings home to us the distant Crusades with Richard Coeur de Lion and 
 Saladin. All these poured, rather than issued, from the press in a short 
 period of some fourteen years. Intermingled with these we have his 
 domestic romances — dealing with individual interest and domestic 
 scenes — such as The Antiquary, Gviy Mamnerimg, St. Ranan's Well, 
 Redgauntlet— the scenes of which are laid on our own Solway Firth and 
 
 155 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 in the district adjoining to it, and perhaps the Bride of Lammermoor. 
 Who that has read them does not remember the Old Antiquary with 
 his marvellous discoveries of old camps and inscriptions — full of and 
 doggedly adhering to his own interpretations — type of all antiquaries, 
 past, present, and to come ; the ancient beggar, Edie Ochiltree ; Meg 
 Merrilees, the Gipsy ; Meg Dodds, the innkeeper ; Glossin, the writer to 
 the signet in Guy Mannering ; Peter Peebles in Redgauntlet ; Caleb 
 Balderstone, the old serving-man ; Elspeth the fishwife ; Wandering 
 Willie, the old musician, born as he says within sound of the Solway's 
 roar — all these and many other familiar names. No wonder that, as Carlyle 
 says, ' such a series was looked for, not only in our own country but 
 throughout Europe, as a sort of annual harvest.' When Lord Holland 
 was asked his opinion of one of the romances — ' Opinion,' he said, * we 
 could not sleep for reading it. Nothing slept but my gout.' When 
 George IV. visited Scotland in 1 822, and Sir Walter went on board his 
 yacht in Leith roads, the monarch exclaimed : ' Sir Walter Scott, the 
 man in Scotland I most wish to see ! ' And yet you will be astonished to 
 learn, that though the works were so famous and apparently so well 
 known, the authorship of them for many years was never openly avowed, 
 but rather studiously concealed. Even from the members of his own 
 family the knowledge was withheld. His publishers and one or two 
 chosen intimates only were admitted to it, but to the outer world he 
 remained the great unknown and the author of Waverley down to a 
 ■comparatively short period before his death. It was only in 1827, four 
 years before his death, that the secret was at last divulged, and his 
 journal simply records : ' I plead guilty — so that splore is ended.' Yet 
 he did not in this way escape the penalties which fall upon the heads of 
 great authors. I was told that one of the pages of Guy Mannering 
 was accidentally enclosed with an article that Scott was publishing at the 
 time for the periodical press, and so to the printers, at all events, the 
 secret was known. 
 
 The source, no doubt, was generally suspected, and apart from this 
 he was, before he wrote a novel, as a poet the first literary authority of 
 the modern Athens. It is amusing in the Journal to read the strange 
 requests that daily poured upon him, and were apparently not 
 committed to the waste-paper basket. The postage in which the 
 answers involved him he estimates at more than a himdred a year, 
 
 156 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 and he lived, unfortunately, before the days of postcards, which some 
 great men, we know, find so convenient. He was consulted on all sorts 
 of topics by all sorts and conditions of men. Thus, a schoolboy,, 
 the captain of Giggleswick, is advised not to become the editor of the 
 ' Yorkshire MufRn ' at the age of seventeen. A soldier writes to aak 
 him to obtain his discharge. A gentleman informs him — without 
 prepaying his communication, which cost Id. — that he approves of 
 three volumes of the Heart of Midlothian, but not the fourth. Sir 
 Walter's comment is that he perhaps should be content if people 
 approve three-fourth of what he writes. A lady demands that he 
 should himself father a novel which she has written. ' That won't pass,' 
 he says. Another lady desires his intervention in circumstances under 
 which an engagement between her and her accepted lover has been 
 broken off by some anonymous letter-writer. A gentleman who has 
 just tetumed from Botany Bay requests his acceptance of a couple of 
 emus which he had brought home. 
 
 ' I at first,' he says in his journal, * accepted the creatures, conceiving 
 them in my ignorance to be some sort of blue and green parrot which, 
 though I do not admire their noise, might scream and yell at their 
 pleasure if hung up in the hall among the armour. But your emu, it 
 seems, stands fully six feet high in his stocking soles — ^hang them, they 
 might eat my collection of old arms. No. I'll no emus.' 
 
 His reputation was not confined to his own country. When he 
 visited France in 1826, he was received with open arms. 
 
 ' It would,' he says, ' be an unworthy piece of affectation did I not 
 allow that I had been pleased — highly pleased — to find a species of 
 literature intended only for my own covmtry has met so favourable and 
 extensive a reception in a foreign land.' — Ivanhoe. 
 
 It was indeed in the year before this, in 1825, that his fame had 
 reached its zenith, and his fame and his prosperity had so far gone hand 
 in hand together. In the early pages of his journal, he describes: 
 complacently how much there was then in life to comfort him. His 
 eldest son, independent, and recently married to the daughter of one of 
 his father's oldest friends — his second son, with a good deal of talent 
 and in the way of cultivating it — his eldest daughter married to 
 Lockhart, a man of tastes and habits most congenial to his own — ^his. 
 
 157 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 second daughter, Anne, an honest Scotch lass — ^his wife frail indeed, 
 * but likely to see me out/ All this he looked round upon, and was 
 amply contented, as he well might be with his lot in life. Wealth had 
 flowed upon him, as it has but seldom flowed to literary men, and on the 
 banks of his favourite Tweed, amid the very scenes that most of all he 
 loved, he had added field to field and reared the imposing pile of 
 Abbotsford. And yet in the very year in which he penned the lines, 
 and before its close, the storm-clouds gathered round him, and calamity 
 followed upon calamity with a steady and unintermitting step that 
 might almost recall to him the fate of Job. 
 
 The end of the year 1825 saw the commencement of a wide 
 commercial distress. Financial ruin was seen on every side. Sir 
 Walter was too closely embarked in commercial undertakings (though 
 his secret in this matter was also carefully concealed) not to dread the 
 eflect on his own position. In his journal in November, he tells us he 
 cannot write for thick-coming fancies. 
 
 ' My spinning-wheel is old and stiff, 
 The rock o''t winna stand, sir ; 
 To keep the temper pin in tifl' 
 Employs oft my hand, sir : ' 
 
 and in face of apprehended difficulties, he at once proceeds to register a 
 vow to practise strict economy. 
 
 ' No more building, no purchase of land till times are safe, no 
 buying of books, or expensive trifles — I mean to any extent — and this 
 should make me sleep in spite of thunder.' 
 
 Unfortunately, these good resolutions came too late. The blow he 
 feared descended. On December 17th, Ballantyne gave him the sad 
 intelligence of the ruin that had overwhelmed them, and ere six months 
 were over he had to describe himself in very different terms to those 
 which he had used so shortly before. His wife, he says, is dead, he 
 himself ' lonely, aged, deprived of my family, all but poor Anne ; an 
 impoverished and embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my 
 thoughts and counsel.' Yet even amid such disasters, and in the face of 
 such crushing blows, his courage and resolution begin from the very first 
 to burst through the clouds by which he is surrounded in a manner that 
 shows the stuffs of which he was made. There were, indeed, and we can 
 
 158 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 hardly Wonder that there should be, some moments of weakness, but after 
 all his sorrow was for others rather than himself. 
 
 'I suppose,^ he says in his diary, 'it will involve my all. But I 
 think nobody can lose a penny — that is one comfort. Men will think 
 pride has had a fall. Let them indulge their own pride in thinking that 
 my fall makes them higher, or seems, at least, to do so. I have the 
 satisfaction to recollect that my prosperity has been of advantage to 
 many, and that some, at least, will forgive my transient wealth for the 
 innocence of my intentions and my real wish to do good to the poor. 
 The news will make sad hearts at Darnick and in the cottages at 
 Abbotsford, which I do not now have the least hope of preserving. It has 
 been my Delilah, and so I have often termed it : and now the recollection 
 of the extensive woods I have planted and the walks I have formed from 
 which strangers must derive the pleasure and the profit, will excite 
 feelings Ukely to sober my gayest moments. I have half resolved never 
 to see the place again. How could I tread my halls with such a 
 diminished crest, how live an indebted man where I was once the 
 wealthy and the honoured ? I was to have gone there on Saturday in 
 joy and prosperity to receive my friends. My dogs will wait for me in 
 vain. It is foolish, but the thoughts of parting from these dumb 
 creatures have moved me more than any of the painful reflections I have 
 
 Eut down. Poor things ! I must get them kind masters. There may 
 e those who loving me may love my dog because it has been mine. I 
 must end this, or I shall lose the tone of mind with which men should 
 meet distress.' 
 
 And yet amid all the sorrow which he felt, his natural humoiu' again 
 and again breaks out. Thus he says : 
 
 ' An odd thought strikes me : when I die, wiU the journal of these 
 days be taken out of the ebony cabinet at Abbotsford and read as the 
 transient pout of a man with sixty thousand pounds : with wonder 
 that the well-seeming baronet should ever have experienced such a 
 hitch ; or will it be found in some obscure lodging where the decayed son 
 of chivalry has hung up his scutcheon for twenty shillings a week, and 
 where one or two old friends will look grave, and whisper to each other : 
 " Poor Gentleman, a well-meaning man, nobody's enemy but his own, 
 thought his parts could never wear out ; family poorly left ; pity he took 
 that foolish title." ' 
 
 And again, when he first went again into public, he says : — 
 
 ' I went to Court for the first time to-day, and like the man with the 
 large nose, thought everybody was thinking of me and my mishaps. 
 Some smile as they wish me good day, as if to say, think nothing of it, 
 
 159 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 it is quite out of our thoughts. Others greet me with the affected 
 gravity one sees and despises at a funeral. The best-bred just shook 
 hands and passed on.'' 
 
 But deeply as he felt it aU, and terrible as was his grief, not less 
 dogged was his resolution and not less marvellous the elasticity of spirit 
 which enabled him to surmount the depression which threatened to 
 engulf him. Thus already on January 19th, a month after the news 
 of his disaster first reached him, he writes : 
 
 ' I feel quite composed and determined to labour. I feel neither 
 dishonoured nor broken down by the bad, now really bad news, I have 
 received. I have walked my last in the domains I have planted, and 
 sat for the last time in the halls that I have built. But death would 
 have taken them from me even if misfortune had spared them. Yet I 
 will not yield without a fight. It is odd when I set myself to work, I 
 am exactly the same man I ever was : neither low-spirited nor 
 distressed.' 
 
 A few days later he is able to report that sleep is once more 
 retiu-ning to him. On February 3rd he writes : 
 
 ' This is the first morning since my troubles began that I have felt 
 at awaking — 
 
 I had drunk deep 
 
 Of all the blessedness of sleep. 
 
 Nay, already I am indifferent to the change. I think the Romans call 
 it Stoicism.' 
 
 And how touching this, in the midst of his distress. 
 
 ' A dog,' he says, ' howled all night and left me little sleep. Poor 
 cur ! I dare say he had his distresses as I have mine.' 
 
 All through his terrible difficulties, what marked him most was his 
 power of strong resolve. ' I will not be beat till I have tried a rally, and 
 that a bold one.' It was here that he differed so greatly from his 
 predecessor. Bums, who was absolutely deficient in self-control and in 
 regard to whom I think it is Wordsworth who says that ' if he had 
 possessed perfect self-control he might have been a higher poet, though 
 he would have been a very different one.' Scott, however, always had 
 himself in complete control. Thus even in regard to so trifling a 
 matter as smoking, he says : 
 
 ' I could lay it aside to-morrow. I laugh at the dominion of custom 
 
 160 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 in this and many other things. We make the giants first and then — do 
 not kill them." 
 
 It was this power which came to his rescue in the troubles which had 
 fallen to his lot, and which enabled him, at the cost indeed of gigantic 
 efForts, but still enabled him, to retrieve his position and leave behind 
 him a name more honoured, more respected, and more loved than even 
 otherwise it would have been. 
 
 It is not astonishing to find that the result — the pecuniary result — 
 of his imrivalled labours is unparalleled in the history of literature. In 
 the first month of 1826 he is bankrupt to the time of £140,000. But 
 by December, 1827, in less than two years, he has by his own unaided 
 pen produced no less than £32,000 in reduction of his debt. No 
 wonder that he tells us in his journal of the surprise of his creditors at 
 the exertions which, in so short a time, have produced so large a sum. 
 Woodstock alone, written in three months — ^and in three months when 
 he was at the very bottom of the abyss — produced more than £8000. 
 ' I question,' he says, ' if more was ever made by a single work on a 
 single author's labour in the same time.' His rate of composition was, 
 I suppose, the fastest known in the record of literary men. We have it 
 carefully noted down from day to day. Thus in fifteen days, from 
 January 19th to February 2nd, in 1826, the very year of his ruin and 
 within a few weeks of his first hearing of it, he writes a volume. ' A 
 volume,' he says, ' at lowest is worth a thousand pounds,' so that he 
 reckons he was writing at a rate of no less than £24,000 a year. By 
 such efforts his disasters were retrieved, Abbotsford itself once more 
 became his own, and the gratitude of his creditors insisted on presenting- 
 him with the books and heirlooms which most he prized and loved. 
 His courage had beaten back disaster, and his integrity and high- 
 mindedness had won for him a place in the hearts of his fellow- 
 countrymen such as no author has ever held before. 
 
 But if the result was great, no less so was the effort required to win 
 it, and it was won at the cost of his life. ' No rest for Sir Walter but 
 in the grave,' are his own words. For five years he laboured on, 
 producing, amongst other works, his Life of Napoleon, for which alone 
 he received £13,000 ; when, in the midst of the composition of Count 
 Robert of Paris — ^the last of his romances, and the only one I have never 
 been able to read — the beginning of the end appeared. An illness of 
 
 161 M 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 some months followed. Paralysis made its gradual inroad upon his 
 powerful frame. Then came the visit of Wordsworth, just on the eve 
 of Sir Walter's departure for Italy, a visit commemorated by the famous 
 sonnet which begins : 
 
 ' A trouble not of clouds or weeping rain. 
 Nor of the setting Sun's pathetic light, 
 Engender'd hangs on Eildon's triple height : ' 
 
 and ends — 
 
 ' Be true 
 Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea 
 Wafting your charge to soft Parthenope ! ' 
 
 He reached Italy and spent the winter there, but returned to die — 
 and to die by the scenes he had so loved in life, and in his last moments 
 to hear the rippling of the Tweed make its familiar music in his ear. 
 A death as fitting and as appropriate as that of Wordsworth amid his 
 own beloved lakes, or that of our recent Laureate, by whose deathbed all 
 England waited and watched a few days ago. 
 
 I need not delay you by detailing the salient points in his character. 
 His industry and love of work stand foremost. He is himself never 
 tired of dwelling upon the need and importance of this in order to 
 attain success in life. It even entered into and coloured very dis- 
 tinctively his conception of another world. After observing that the 
 Scriptural expressions as to heavenly melodies being the task of the 
 blessed are doubtless metaphorical, he goes on to say : 
 
 ' They have a poor idea of the Deity, and the rewards which are 
 destined for the just made perfect, who can only accept the literal 
 sense of an eternal concert, a never-ending birthday ode. I rather 
 suppose there should be understood some commission from the highest, 
 some duty to discharge, with the applause of the satisfied conscience. I 
 cannot help thinking that a life of active benevolence is more consistent 
 with my ideas than an eternity of music' 
 
 On the importance of work here, and of the rigorous discharge of 
 duty, he dwells again and again : 
 
 ' Whatever may be alleged to the contrary, to each duty performed 
 there is assigned a degree of mental peace and high consciousness of 
 honourable exertion corresponding to the difficulty of the task accom- 
 plished. That rest of body which succeeds to hard and industrious 
 
 162 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 toil is not to be compared to the repose which the spirit enjoys under 
 similar circumstances.' 
 
 Again, he tells us to beware of stumbling over a propensity which 
 easily besets us for not having our time fully employed. We should do 
 instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of reflection or 
 recreation after business, and never before it. Like most great men he 
 had the power of turning to use the odd moments of the day. 
 
 ' It is astonishing,' he tells us, ' how far even half an hour a day will 
 •carry a man, if regularly bestowed on one object, in making himself 
 master of it. The habit of dawdling away time is easily acquired, and 
 so is that of putting every moment to use or to amusement.' 
 
 Some of his best advice on this and other subjects is conveyed in the 
 short headings to the chapters of his novels which are described as 
 quoted from old plays, but are really his own composition. What can 
 be better than this from the Fortunes of Nigel ? — 
 
 ' We are not worst at once — our course of evil 
 Begins so slowly, and from such slight source. 
 An infant's hand might stem its breach with clay : 
 But let the stream get deeper, and philosophy, 
 Ay, and religion too, shall strive in vain 
 To turn the headlong torrent.' 
 
 He was, too, beyond all things else a genuine man. Carlyle, who as 
 we all know, does not scatter his praises indiscriminately, and who 
 ought beyond all others to be a judge of what is genuine, declares that 
 even the surliest critic must allow that Scott was a genuine man. No 
 affectation dwelt in him : no shadow of cant. The truth is, our best 
 definition of him was perhaps this : that he was, if not a great man, 
 then something much pleasanter to be, a robust, thoroughly healthy, 
 and withal prosperous and victorious man. It can be said of him that 
 when he departed he took a man's life along with him. No sounder 
 piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of 
 time. And then, beyond all this, there was the best of all, his 
 thorough goodness. We all remember the last words almost which fell 
 from his lips, when addressing Lockhart by his bedside, he said : 
 ' Be a good man, for nothing else can bring you any comfort when 
 you come to lie here : be virtuous, be religious, be a good man.' 
 
 163 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 This was the great characteristic of his own life in his public and 
 private relations ; it stands conspicuous in his works, and no less so in 
 his private journal, which has now been published to the world, and in 
 which there is not a line or a word which he or any friend of his need 
 desire to have omitted. 
 
 164 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 I DO not know if the subject I have chosen is one I can make 
 interesting, but it may suffice to spend an hour upon, and be not 
 altogether inappropriate to a literary society, which, though it terms 
 itself scientific, does not altogether, I presume, turn its back upon 
 literature. 
 
 For some years past I have kept a note-book of quotations as used 
 by speakers and writers to give point to their thoughts, in which they 
 borrow from some previous author words which more accurately express 
 what they Avish to say, or express it in more perfect form than their 
 own, perhaps, could hope to do. It is complimentary, no doubt, to 
 those who, as it were, first minted the lines which have thus become a 
 sort of current coin of the literary realm. A species of immortality is 
 conferred upon them, and the words which they wrote, it may be 
 centiuies ago, in some chance moment, at the dictate of the passion or 
 impulse of the hour, have become winged words, winging their way to 
 the end of time, as the most perfect expression of the thought or 
 incident they were intended to describe. 
 
 In literature form counts for a great deal: style, as Lord Chesterfield 
 says, is the dress of thought, and it may be that in these rapid days, 
 when, as the late Lord Justice Bowen observed, ' the world is full of 
 knowledge and the air seems positively to hum with instruction,' we 
 have less time to attend to the form of what we say and write, and may 
 be proportionately more glad to quote what has been sung or said in 
 times when leisure had not departed from our midst. And stiU more 
 will it be the case if it be true, as Mr. Pearson in his book on national 
 life and character somewhat pessimistically forecasts, that the day will 
 come when fancy and imagination will find no expression in literature, 
 and no further additions will be made to the stores of spiritual wealth 
 that now exist. 
 
 165 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 I am not to-night going to speak of proverbs and aphorisms, in 
 which so much of the wisdom of our ancestors is treasured up, and which 
 form so large a part of our daily conversation. I am rather thinking of 
 passages which are differentiated from these by their greater length and 
 less compact and condensed expression. But none the less they are 
 due, like those, to the power in those who wrote them of observing life, 
 drawing lessons from it, and expressing them in phrase that sticks in 
 the memory of mankind. Dr. Johnson, whose taste in literary matters 
 was generally good, when some one objected to quotations, and said 
 they argued pedantry, replied : ' No, Sir, it is a good thing, there is a 
 community of mind in it, classical quotation is the parole of literary 
 men aU over the world.' And, as Isaac Disraeli says, ' The wisdom of 
 ages is preserved for us by quotation.' No doubt there is danger on the 
 other side : quotation may be overdone, or may spring from the mere 
 desire to air one's own reading, as Young writes : 
 
 ' Some for renown on scraps of learning dote 
 And think they grow immortal as they quote.' 
 
 Such error tends to correct itself, for, as nothing is more happy and 
 more instructive than apt quotation — to quote happily has been said to 
 need almost as much talent as to write the passage that is quoted — so, 
 nothing is more tedious and wearisome than quotations thrown at you 
 by the dozen — not springing spontaneously to the speaker's mind, but 
 plodded over and sought for, with more heed for a reputation for vast 
 reading than for perfect appropriateness to the position they are going 
 tofiU. 
 
 I need hardly say, public speakers have found quotations an extremely 
 useful ornament to their speeches. Such quotations are usually limited 
 to two languages, Latin or English. When Greek is used it is invariably 
 translated. The orators of a bygone day more generally used the Latin, 
 and were, of course, especially fond of Virgil or of Horace. In this 
 connection it has been said that Rome has four times conquered the 
 world, once by force of arms, the second time by her Church, the 
 third by Jurisprudence, and a fourth by the numerous phrases and 
 quotations her writers have supplied. In later and less classical days 
 the vernacular is more in vogue, and the Latin quotation is far more 
 unusual, I am told, in the House of Commons than it once was. (It is 
 
 166 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 confined now principally to mayors' banquets, and such-like dignified 
 assemblies. When it is quoted or used in the House of Commons it is 
 felt to be so strange that it is extremely difficult to get any but the 
 simplest lines correctly reported. Thus Mr. Goschen the other day 
 quoted ' Solvuntur risu tabulae,'' ' the case is dismissed with a laugh,' and 
 only one paper was correct in the report, and many made tremendous 
 hash of the well-known line; while when Lord Randolph Churchill a 
 night or two after made an incursion into a less-familiar passage in the 
 same language, TTw Times was the only journal that attempted to print 
 the lines. Of our great orators Mr. Bright made the largest use of these 
 treasures of the past, and very few of his great effiarts will be found that 
 do not contain a verse from some favourite poet. His choice was varied, 
 and it needs almost encyclopaedic reading to trace all his quotations 
 to their source. I have, almost at random, found him borrowing from 
 Gray, Spenser, Watts, Whittier, Milton, Dante (in his case translated), 
 'the unhappy Chatterton,' Hosea Biglow, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, 
 Bayley, Cowper, Allingham, Scott, Pope, Monckton Milnes, Ebenezer 
 Eliot, the Com Law poet, Morris's Ejpic of Hades, which he calls 
 'another gem added to the wealth of the poetry of our language,' 
 Byron, Montgomery, and Young — a range of reading that is tolerably 
 wide, you will admit. On one occasion Mr. Bright introduced what I 
 should term a less pleasing form of quotation. He asked leave to make 
 an alteration in a line or two of what he rightly termed one of the most 
 beautiful poems in our language, and, speaking of the fondness of 
 statesmen for office, said: 
 
 ' For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey. 
 That pleasing anxious office e'er resigned. 
 Left the warm precincts of the Treasury, 
 Nor cast one last long lingering look behind.' 
 
 That, I think, is an example to be avoided, and, if you want to 
 paraphrase, use your skill on something less beautiful than Gray's Elegy. 
 Let me take you to a happier specimen of Mr. Bright's power, one 
 in which, upon a quotation from Cowper, he builds up a passage of 
 great and striking eloquence. He is speaking of the evil of war. ' You 
 recollect, many of you, I dare say, the beautiful ode written by one of 
 our best poets, who puts into the mouth of an ancient British queen, 
 
 167 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 who is supposed to have lived two thousand years ago, a complaint and 
 a denunciation which she utters against the power of Rome, who at 
 that time was invading her country and slaughtering her people. She is 
 made to say, in the indignation with which her heart is filled : 
 
 " Rome shall perish. Write that word 
 In the blood that she has spilt. 
 Perish hopeless and abhorred. 
 Deep in ruin and in guilt." 
 
 Well, what has happened to that great Empire? No completer 
 ruin has history shown than the great ruin of the conquering and 
 sanguinary Roman Empire. Ves, and the punishment which has fallen 
 upon ancient empires, on their rulers and their people, will visit modern 
 realms, with their rulers and their people, if they persist in the piursuit 
 of empire and glory, sacrificing uncounted and countless multitudes of 
 human lives. . . . The retribution sometimes of individuals and some- 
 times of nations comes slowly, but it is sure to come. The great Italian 
 poet has said (and this is fiwm Dante) : 
 
 ' " Tlie sword of heaven is not in haste to smite. 
 Nor yet doth linger — " ' 
 
 And so the orator pursues his way. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, too, quotes largely. As, however, you would almost 
 expect from his Oxford training and classical tastes, he quotes more 
 exclusively from the Latin. In his old Budget speeches the illustrations 
 which he borrows are mainly in that tongue. They are not used so 
 much to illustrate the meaning as to lighten the heaviness of his 
 discourse. 
 
 One other example I will give in a different style from Mr. Glad- 
 stone, in which a quotation already made suggests another from the 
 same source. He is speaking of preserving the Constitution by the 
 method of reform applied to its various parts. ' My noble friend '-^it 
 was Lord John Manners, the present Duke of Rutland, himself the 
 author of two famous lines which are often on our lips : 
 
 ' Let laws and learning, wealth and commerce die. 
 But leave us stiU our old nobility ' — 
 
 * My noble friend tempts me to ground upon which, if I had not 
 
 168 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 heard the words of Tennyson from his mouth, I should not have 
 ventured to tread. My noble friend described England as 
 
 " A land of old and wide renown, 
 Where freedom slowly broadens down 
 From precedent to precedent." 
 
 My noble friend stopped with those lines. Perhaps it did not suit his 
 purpose to go on : but Mr. Tennyson proceeds, and adds these lines, 
 not a whit less worthy of his fame : 
 
 " And statesmen at her coimsel met. 
 Who knew the seasons when to take 
 Occasion by the hand, and make 
 The bounds of freedom wider yet : 
 By shaping some august decree, 
 Which kept her throne unshaken still. 
 Broad based upon the people's will. 
 And compassed by the inviolate sea." ' 
 
 That is very happy, though, as matter of fact, the two quotations do 
 not come from the same poem, although both are by Tennyson. 
 
 Mr. Canning, too, is worthy of mention, Avhose quotations are as 
 varied and as happy as those of Mr. Bright himself. He is speaking at 
 the dose of one of his great orations of popularity : 
 
 ' I am not insensible to the goodwill of an enlightened community. 
 The man who disregards it is not worthy to hold high station in a 
 country which boasts a popular constitution. ... I desire to retain 
 popularity, but I would hold it honourably or not at all. Laudo 
 manentem, or to use the beautiful paraphrase of Dryden : 
 
 " I can applaud her when she's kind, 
 But when she dances in the wind 
 And shakes her wings and will not stay, 
 I puff' the prostitute away." 
 
 Yes, Sir, I love, I covet, I enjoy popularity : but I will not court it by 
 the surrender of conscientious judgment or the sacrifice of my settled 
 opinions.' 
 
 Or, again, he is addressing those 'who cradled amid the sober 
 blessings of the British Constitution pant for other schemes of liberty 
 than those which that Constitution sanctions — other than are com- 
 patible with the just equality of civil rights or the necessary restraints 
 of social obligation,' and he tells them it may be said of them ' in the 
 
 169 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 language which Dryden puts into the mouth of one of the most 
 extravagant of his heroes : 
 
 " They would be free as Nature first made man, 
 Ere the base laws of servitude began, 
 When wild in woods the noble savage ran." 
 
 Noble and swelling sentiments,' he adds, ' but they cannot be reduced to 
 practice.' 
 
 Perhaps the happiest quotation ever made in the House of 
 Commons was one by Pitt from Virgil. It was in the peroration of his 
 great speech on the Emancipation of Slaves. The early morning sun 
 was just shining into the Chamber when he spoke. Pitt quoted a well- 
 known line from the Georgics which describes the coming of the 
 Chariot of the Sun to those favoured regions, while more inhospitable 
 shores are still in evening twilight : 
 
 ' Nosque ubi primus equis oriens adflavit anhelis, 
 Illis sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper.' 
 
 I am glad that is a quotation which is not likely, owing to our 
 better habits, to be used again. On another occasion he failed to 
 remember the whole of some lines he was quoting from the same poet, 
 when Fox, kindly bending over from the Opposition Bench, prompted 
 him to the end af the passage. 
 
 Apt quotation has sometimes given immortality to lines of which 
 we should never otherwise have heard and which have in themselves no 
 intrinsic quality to recommend them. It needs, as I said, not less 
 inventive power to rightly apply a quotation than is needed to be its 
 original author. Such are the famous lines which O'Connell applied to 
 Sir James Graham when he was leaving the reform party with Lord 
 Stanley in 1836 : 
 
 ' It is not a party,' said O'Connell, ' that he denies : it is not a 
 faction, that woiud be a harsh term. What is it then that 
 
 ' Down thy hill, romantic Ashbum, glides, 
 The Derby diUy carrying three insides.' 
 
 The lines are from a poem by Mr. Canning, and are the only portion 
 of it that has survived. There is another quatrain of no particular 
 merit of its own by a poet little known by name, though the author of 
 some once favourite songs, on which politicians have ruthlessly seized^ 
 
 170 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 torn from their original meaning and turned it to a use which is 
 particularly happy. The lines are : 
 
 ' Oh, no, we never mention her, 
 Her name is never heard ; 
 My lips are now forbid to speak 
 That once familiar word.' 
 
 The lines are from a love song by T. H. Bayley, who, on his honey- 
 moon, wrote another well-known favourite, ' Fd be a butterfly,' and are 
 now solely used to express the attitude of protectionists to the word 
 protection — an application so felicitous that it often recurs in modern 
 speeches. I do not know by whom it was first made, but I think by 
 Mr. Bright. 
 
 As orators quote so they often themselves provide matter to be 
 quoted. There is the famous passage spoken by Mr. Bright in the 
 House of Commons under circumstances which gave intensity to his 
 words — when every one felt that he had lost or might soon lose a dear 
 relative or friend — in the dark winter of 1854-5, when this country was 
 waging the Crimean war : 
 
 ' The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land : you may 
 almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one as when the 
 first bom was slain of old to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two 
 side posts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on : he takes his 
 victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and 
 the cottage of the poor and lowly, and it is on behalf of all these that 
 I make this solemn appeal.'' 
 
 Or take this from Mr. Gladstone. At the end of the great debate 
 on the Reform Bill of 1866 : 
 
 ' I shall not attempt to measure with precision the forces which are 
 to be arrayed against us in the coming issue. The great division of 
 to-night is not to be the last but only the first of a series of divisions. 
 You may drive us from our seats. You may slay, you may bury the 
 measure we have introduced. But we will write upon its gravestone 
 for an epitaph this line, with certain confidence in its fulfilment : 
 " Exoriere ahquis nostris ex ossibus ultor " (" And thou avenger 
 of our wrongs from our dead bones shall spring "). You cannot fight 
 against the future. Time is on our side. The great social forces, 
 which move onward in their might and majesty, which the tumult 
 of these debates does not for a moment impede or disturb, 
 those social forces are against you : they work with us : they are 
 
 171 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 marshalled to our support. And the banner which we now carry in the 
 fight, though perhaps at some moment of the struggle it may droop 
 -over our sinking heads, yet will float again in the eye of heaven and will 
 be borne by the firm hand of the united people of the three kingdoms, 
 perhaps not to an easy but to a certain and to a not distant victory.' 
 
 It was, indeed, not distant — for in the next year his rival on that 
 night, Mr. Disraeli, carried a larger Reform Bill than that which was 
 then rejected. Mr. Disraeli himself quoted little in his great speeches ; 
 but he is, as you all know, the author of phrases which will live as long, 
 at any rate, as politicians endure : 
 
 ' England dislikes coalitions ' — 
 
 ' Plundering and blundering ' — 
 
 ' Peace with honour ' — 
 
 ' A scientific frontier ^ — 
 
 ' Men of light and leading ' — 
 
 * Hare-brained chatter of irresponsible politicians ' — 
 
 ' Organized hypocrisy ' — 
 
 these are some of the many epigrammatic phrases which issued from 
 his fertile mind. 
 
 I might quote many more passages from great speakers, but must 
 pass on, after finding room for two from the first Lord Lytton, who, 
 though from physical causes not a gi-eat orator, in style and form is 
 one of the most perfect of them all. The first is from a speech de- 
 livered in 1859 in support of the Reform Bill introduced by the 
 Government of the day of which he was a member : 
 
 ' It is said the Bill is not final. The fault you allege is its merit. 
 It is its merit if it meets the requirements of the day present, and does 
 not give to-day what you may regret to-morrow that you cannot 
 restore. Democracy is like the grave — it perpetually cries give, give, 
 and like the grave it never restores what it once has taken. You live 
 under a constitutional monarchy which has all the vigour of health, all 
 the energy of movement. Do not surrender to Democracy that which 
 is not ripe for the grave.' 
 
 The other is from an early speech on the Government of Ireland. I 
 heard it quoted myself three times in the House of Commons in one 
 evening, by three different speakers, in the course of the Home Rule 
 
 172 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 Debate of 1886. Of course they had each been absent when the others 
 spoke : 
 
 ' No people on the earth,' said Lord Lytton, ' can be governed under 
 the system her Majesty's Ministers propose. To-day coercion — 
 to-morrow concession. This quick alternation of kicks and kindness — 
 this coaxing with the hand and spurring with the heel — this system at 
 once feeble and exasperating of allowing the justice of complaint and yet 
 of stifling its voice — of holding out hopes and fears, terror and con- 
 ciliation, all in a breath — is a system that renders animals and men 
 alike not tame, but savage, that would make the most credulous people 
 distrustful, and the mildest people ferocious.' 
 
 I said I would now pass on, but before doing so I must give a single 
 specimen from Bm-ke, the most quoted of all great orators, and from 
 whom if I do not give you more it is only because there is such wealth 
 on every hand that one is bewildered how to choose. Here is one from 
 his great speech on Conciliation with America : 
 
 ' We cannot falsify the pedigree of this great people and persuade 
 them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood 
 of freedom runs. The language in which they would hear you tell the 
 tale would detect the imposition : your speech would betray you. An 
 Englishman is the unfittest person in the world to argue another 
 Englishman into slavery.' 
 
 One more from the same speech. He is arguing as to what con- 
 stitutes the real power and unity of Empire. It is not the clauses of an 
 Act of Parliament or any of the mere details of Government — 
 
 ' Dead instruments — passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the 
 English communion that gives them all their life and efficacy. It is the 
 spirit of the English Constitution which, infused throughout the mighty 
 mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies, every part of the 
 Empire, even down to the minutest member. Is it not the same 
 virtue which does everything for us here in England .'' Do you imagine 
 it is the land tax which raises your revenue ? The annual vote in the 
 Committee of Supply which gives you yoiu- army ? or the Mutiny Bill 
 which inspires it with bravery and discipline ? No, surely, no. It is 
 the love of the people : it is their attachment to their Government from 
 the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution,, 
 which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into them that 
 liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble and 
 your navy nothing but rotten timber.' 
 
 To come to the poets. Shakespeare, I need hardly say, has supplied 
 
 173 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 to the world the most numerous quotations not confined only to the 
 tongue in which he wrote, but translated into many another. ' He was 
 not,' as Ben Jonson said, ' of an age, but for all time,' and we may add 
 all countries and conditions of men. Who can say how often his 
 splendid lines on Mercy — the same virtue, which under the name of 
 Charity carried the burning eloquence of St. Paul to its very loftiest 
 heights — who can say how often the lines — 
 
 ' The quality of mercy is not strain'd. 
 It droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven 
 Upon the place beneath : it is twice blessed. 
 It blesseth him that gives and him that takes' 
 
 have been quoted.'' Or those beginning : 'AH the world's a stage ' ; or, 
 
 ' There is a tide in the affairs of men 
 Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune ' ; 
 or — 
 
 ' Conscience doth make cowards of us all, 
 And thus the native hue of resolution 
 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, 
 And enterprises of great pith and moment 
 .... their currents turn awry 
 And lose the name of action.' 
 
 To give the hundredth part of the good things of the ' myriad- 
 minded' poet, to use the phrase of Coleridge, would occupy the night. 
 
 Milton is not, perhaps, so largely used, and we are told his great 
 works are nowadays not widely read — but after all this must be admitted 
 that even if he be not so largely quoted no one has endowed our every- 
 day language with more felicitous expressions which we have made our 
 own, and which we use as the gentleman talked prose without knowing 
 it. We use them because Milton seems to have provided them once for 
 all with the very words we need to express the idea in our minds. Thus 
 his expression of — 
 
 'The storied windows richly dight. 
 Casting a dim religious light.' 
 
 His phrases — 
 
 ' The light fantastic toe ' — 
 'Darkness visible' — 
 ' Fit audience find though few ' — 
 174 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 'On hospitable thoughts intent' — 
 
 ' The paradise of fools ' — 
 
 ' The hell within him '— 
 
 ' From morn to dewy eve ' — 
 
 ' Peace hath her victories not less renowned than war.' 
 
 His description of ambition as — 
 
 ' The last infirmity of noble minds ' 
 
 Such lines as — 
 
 ' The mind is its own place, and in itself 
 Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' 
 
 'Not to know me argues yourself unknown.' 
 
 ' The world was all before them where to choose 
 Their place of rest, and Providence their Guide.' 
 
 ' The day star. 
 That tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore 
 Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.' 
 
 ' Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, 
 In every gesture dignity and love.' 
 
 ' Childhood shows the man 
 As morning shows the day.' 
 
 All these are for ever part and parcel of our daily talk. The poet 
 has said them in his exquisite style once for all, and no one will ever be 
 able to say them so well again. 
 
 Of Wordsworth, who naturally suggests himself by the side of 
 Milton, Coleridge said that ' since Milton he knew of none with so many 
 felicities and unforgettable lines and stanzas.' And his verdict has been 
 amply justified. I need not vindicate this position to the author of — 
 
 ' A creature not too bright or good 
 For human nature's daily food, 
 A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
 To warn, to comfort, and command.' 
 
 ' That best portion of a good man's life 
 His little nameless unremembered acts 
 Of kindness and of love.' 
 
 175 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 ' Thou, while thy babes around thee cling, 
 Shall show us how divine a thing 
 A woman may be made,'' 
 
 reminding us of Coleridge — 
 
 ' A mother is a mother still. 
 The holiest thing alive.' 
 
 ' The world is too much with us late and soon, 
 Getting and spending we lay waste our power.' 
 
 ' The good old rule 
 Sufficeth them, the simple plan 
 That they should take who have ihe power. 
 And they should keep who can.' 
 
 ' Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.' 
 
 ' Every gift of noble origin 
 Is breathed upon by hope's perpetual breath.' 
 
 ' Plain living and high thinking are no more.' 
 
 ' I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds 
 With coldness still returning, 
 Alas, the gratitude of men 
 
 Hath oftener left me mourning.' 
 
 ' Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting 
 And cometh from afar.' 
 
 ' Though inland far we be 
 Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 Which brought us hither.' 
 
 These must suffice for the unnumbered felicities of the greatest of 
 all our great Lake poets. It would, of course, be impossible to deal at 
 this length with all the poets. One would like to say a word for Byron, 
 who has given us much that is inimitable, much that is in daily use. 
 
 The description of the lover who ' had sighed to many though he 
 loved but one.' The lines — 
 
 ' Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not, 
 Who would be free themselves must strike the blow ? ' 
 
 176 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 ' Battle's magnificently stem array.'' 
 
 ' There is a pleasure in the pathless woods. 
 There is a rapture in the lonely shore, 
 There is society where none intrudes 
 By the deep sea, and music in its roar. 
 I love not man the less, but nature more.' 
 
 ' Lord of himself, that heritage of woe.' 
 
 ' She was his life. 
 The ocean to the river of his thoughts.' 
 
 These are familiar to us all, and were all minted in that shorty 
 eventful life of one who, with all his faults and all his defects, Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold placed as after Wordsworth the first poet of the 
 nineteenth century. Nor must I speak of Pope, whose terseness and 
 lucidity makes him so eminently quotable, so often quoted. 
 
 Scotchmen will say I have omitted Burns : they must believe that 
 it is not because I do not prize him, but because to give a tithe of the 
 beauties he has bestowed upon us would occupy us for a far longer- 
 time than it is possible here to spend. No one has been more success- 
 ful in his endeavour to — 
 
 ' The giftie gie us 
 To see oiu'selves as others see us.' 
 
 And as we read his revelations of our nature we feel — 
 
 ' A chiel's amang us, takin' notes, 
 And faith he'll prent it.' 
 
 And what a wealth of poetry is still left for me to deal with. It 
 would seem that every one, whatever his state and condition in life may 
 be, has had expressed for him in inimitable language precisely what he 
 would wish to say. The lover. I often think when I read those painful 
 effusions which sometimes call forth the laughter of our law courts in 
 certain well-known trials, how much better it would be if those who so 
 laboriously and painfully write them would fall back upon the treasures 
 of the past and avail themselves of the stores of passion that lie ready to 
 their hands. Every passing phase of the lover's condition, every fleeting 
 emotion in his heart has been expressed, and far better than ever it can. 
 be expressed again. If his suit is delayed he can say with Spenser : 
 
 177 N 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 ' Full little knowest thou that hast not tried 
 What heU it is in suing long to bide, 
 To lose good days that might be better spent, 
 To waste long nights in pensive discontent. 
 To spend the day, to be put back to-morrow, 
 To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow.' 
 
 He can protest his devotion with Ben Jonson : 
 
 ' Drink to me only with thine eyes, 
 And I will drink with mine ; 
 Or leave a kiss within the cup, 
 And ril not ask for wine.' 
 
 Or, with Shakespeare : 
 
 ' Doubt thou the stars are fair, 
 
 Doubt thou the sun doth move, 
 Doubt truth to be a liar, 
 But never doubt I love.' 
 
 Or with Kemble : 
 
 ' I give thee all, I can no more 
 Though poor my offering be : 
 My heart and lute are all the store 
 That I can bring to thee.' 
 
 If he has made himself unduly anxious and is inclined to say : 
 
 ' No sea I find 
 Is troubled like a lover's mind,' 
 
 he can reason with himself in the beautiful and eminently sensible 
 lines of Sir John Suckling : 
 
 ' Why so pale and wan, fond lover ? 
 Prithee why so pale .'' 
 Will, when looking weU won't move her. 
 Looking ill prevail .'' ' 
 
 Or he may endeavour to hasten her decision by hinting, and this hint 
 would be perhaps most safely thus conveyed, with Herrick : 
 
 ' Gather ye rosebuds while ye may 
 Old time is still a-flying : 
 And this same flower that smiles to-day. 
 To-morrow may be dying.' 
 
 178 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 If he is in foreign lands across the sea, and unable to write so 
 frequently as he has promised, the Earl of Dorset supplies him with : 
 
 ' If we write not by each post, . 
 
 Think not we are unkind 
 Nor yet conclude our ships are lost 
 
 By Dutchmen or the wind ; 
 Our tears we'll send a speedier way, 
 The tide shall bring them twice a day.' 
 
 If in sore trouble and distress, and yet possessed of the love of her 
 ^hom he idolises, then Lovelace aptly paints the bliss which he stiU 
 «njoys : 
 
 ' Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 
 Nor iron bars a cage ; 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 
 That for an heritage. 
 If I have freedom in my love. 
 
 And in my soul am free. 
 Angels alone that soar above 
 
 Enjoy such liberty.' 
 
 And if after all his sighs and groans his rival should be favoured, 
 George Wither comes to his consolation : 
 
 ' Shall I, wasting in despair. 
 Die because a woman's fair ? 
 Be she fairer than the day. 
 Or the flowery meads in May, 
 If she be not so to me. 
 What care I how fair she be ? ' 
 
 While, if he is happily successful, he will learn from Scott how priceless 
 is the treasure he has won : 
 
 ' True love's the gift which God has given 
 To man alone beneath the Heaven. 
 It is the secret sympathy, 
 The silver link, the silken tie. 
 That heart to heart and mind to mind 
 In body and in soul can bind.' 
 
 And no doubt will find in days to come : 
 
 ' When pain or anguish wring his brow, 
 A ministering angel thou.' 
 
 179 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 The statesman, too. He is provided with an apt vocabulaiy. He 
 knows the dangers that beset him. ' Fain,' wrote Sir Walter Raleigh 
 on the window pane, ' Fain would I climb ; but that I fear to fall,' and 
 he can correct the caution that has been thus conveyed by the reply of 
 his Queen : ' If thy heart fail thee, why then climb at aU ? ' or by the 
 bolder lines of the ill-fated Marquis of Montrose, though these were 
 not written so much for the statesman as the lover : 
 
 ' He either fears his fate too much, 
 Or his desert is small. 
 Who fears to put it to the touch. 
 To win or lose it all.' 
 
 Byron will remind him of the vast responsibility that attaches to his 
 position : 
 
 ' A thousand years scarce serve to form a state : 
 An hour may lay it in the dust.' 
 
 He may denounce his opponents with Dryden in almost every mood and 
 tense. One may be 
 
 ' A fiery soul which, working out its way, 
 Fretted the pigmy body to decay. 
 And o'er-informed the tenement of clay ;' 
 
 another ' Resolved to ruin or rule the state,' a third 
 
 ' A man so various that he seemed to be 
 Not one, but all mankind's epitome. 
 Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong ; 
 And everything by starts, and nothing long ; 
 But in the course of one revolving moon, 
 A chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon. 
 Prompt to supply whate'er his country lacks ; 
 Skilfii to gag, and knowing how to tax.' 
 
 To those who would oppose him by devious paths — by pretending to 
 be something which they no longer are — he replies in the lines of 
 Canning : 
 
 ' Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe, 
 Bold I can meet, perhaps return his blow ; 
 But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send. 
 Save, save, oh, save me from the candid friend.' 
 
 180 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 While every statesman, of course, pants for the day which Macaulay 
 has described : 
 
 ' When none was for a party, 
 But all were for the State,' 
 
 but which, unfortunately, they usually think is to come by all joining 
 the party to which they themselves happen to belong — a demand 
 which is somewhat likely to defer to a very distant period the advent of 
 the day. 
 
 You remember, perhaps, how when Lord Cairns wished to express 
 his wounded feelings over Mr. Gladstone's policy in South Africa he 
 fell back with great effect on Abraham Cowley and quoted: 'We 
 grieved, we sighed, we wept, we never blushed before.' He may de- 
 nounce what Pope terms ' The right divine of kings to govern wrong,' or 
 with Cowper : 
 
 ' War's a game that were their subjects wise 
 Kings would not play at,' 
 
 and oppose it as 'Fanned with conquest's crimson flame.' He may 
 paint the little good that often comes from great campaigns from 
 Richard Tarleton : 
 
 ' The king of France, with forty thousand men 
 Went up a hill, and so came down again.' 
 
 Or he may adopt Southey and say, 
 
 ' But what good came of it at last, 
 Quoth Little Peterkin. 
 Why that I cannot tell, said he, 
 But 'twas a famous victory.' 
 
 While, after all, when he has exerted all his talent and put forth all his 
 power, he will still reflect how little the best and wisest of them all can 
 do, for, as Johnson says : 
 
 ' How small of all that human hearts endure. 
 That part which laws or kings can cause or cure ; 
 Still to ourselves in every place confined 
 Our own felicity we make or find.' 
 
 Or will console himself with Pope : 
 
 ' For forms of government let fools contest, 
 Whate'er is best administered is best.' 
 
 181 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 And if the statesman is thus equipped, not less fully armed is^the- 
 patriot, who glories in the renown of England, and wishes that its 
 greatness and its power may ever be maintained. He may range from 
 Shakespeare in the fine passage in King Richard II. : 
 
 ' This royal throne of kings, this sceptred dial. 
 This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
 This other Eden, demi-Paradise, 
 This fortress built by Nature for herself 
 Against infection and the hand of war. 
 This happy breed of men, this little world. 
 This precious stone set in the silver sea. 
 Which serves it in the office of a wall, 
 Or as a moat defensive to a house 
 Against the envy of less happier lands. 
 This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England ' — 
 
 to the song in the comic opera, once quoted by Mr. Chamberlain : 
 
 ' For he himself has said it, 
 'Tis greatly to his credit. 
 That in spite of all temptations 
 To belong to other nations, 
 He remains an Englishman.' 
 
 He can chant with Thompson at Jingoistic orgies — 
 
 ' Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, 
 Britons never shall be slaves.' 
 
 Or, like Campbell, trusting the Queen's Navy : 
 
 ' Britannia needs no bulwarks. 
 No towers along the steep ; 
 Her march is o'er the mountain waves 
 Her home is on the deep.' 
 
 Or he may adopt the soberer strains of Churchill and say : 
 
 ' Be England what she will, 
 With all her faults she is my country still.' 
 
 While a certain other class of patriots is not unprovided for who are 
 good enough to declare in the lines of Barrington : 
 
 ' True patriots all, for be it understood 
 We left our country for our country's good.' 
 
 182 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 I need not say what fields are open to the philosopher and student 
 of human nature. He knows with Pope ' The proper study of mankind 
 is man,'' a line that was once happily quoted by Burke to Boswell when 
 he was about to visit the Isle of Man. He can, with the old lexico- 
 grapher, 
 
 ' Let observation with extensive view 
 Survey mankind from China to Peru.' 
 
 And everywhere he will find it true what Daniel in the fifteenth century 
 declares : 
 
 ' Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is man,' 
 
 while everywhere also he will find himself face to face with those strange, 
 sad problems of human life which inspired one of Virgil's most beautiful 
 and often quoted lines, ' Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia 
 tangunt,' 'There are tears for piteous things which touch men's hearts 
 anigh,' appropriately written by one whose heart was the most tender of 
 all the ancient poets. He will in all ages and climes discover those 
 who 
 
 ' Compound for sins they are inclined to. 
 By damning those they have no mind to ' — 
 
 lines borrowed from the poet who also supplies us with those which are 
 usually misquoted in the form : 
 
 ' He that's convinced against his will 
 Is of his own opinion still,' 
 
 and which should nui : 
 
 ' He that complies against his will 
 Is of his own opinion still.' 
 
 While in the end he will arrive at the safe conclusion that 
 
 ' Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow. 
 The rest is all but leather and prunello.' 
 
 For the importance of the right formation of character in youth, let 
 George Eliot speak : 
 
 ' Our deeds travel with us from afar. 
 And what we have been makes us what we are,' 
 
 While when philosophy has done its all, and spoken its last word, 
 
 183 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 Tickell reminds us what is the aim and object of all our long endeavour 
 in the familiar couplet : 
 
 ' They taught us how to live, and, oh, too high 
 The price of knowledge, taught us how to die.' 
 
 Much comes to us that is very familiar from poets who are comparatively 
 unfamiliar, and from poems that are little read. ' Habent sua fata libelli ' 
 — ' books have their fate ! ' and it is somewhat strange that the author 
 of the line — a little-known poet — should be a conspicuous instance of 
 the truth of his reflection, for this fragment is the only piece of his 
 ■writings that survives, and is usually attributed to another poet. Who 
 has ever traced for us more divinely the silent steps of progress, so slow, 
 so gradual, yet so sure, than Heber, in his Oxford Prize Poem, when he 
 described the building of the temple in days of old : 
 
 ' No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, 
 Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.' 
 
 You all know 
 
 ' Tender-handed stroke a nettle 
 And it stings you for your pains. 
 Grasp it like a man of mettle, 
 And it soft as silk remains.' 
 
 They were written by Aaron Hill on a window pane in Scotland one 
 hundred and fifty years ago. Admirable advice is given us by Lord 
 Chesterfield : 
 
 ' The dews of the evening most carefully shun, 
 Those tears of the sky for the loss of the sun,' 
 
 while a couplet so familiar as 
 
 ' His very foot has music in't, 
 As he comes up the stair,' 
 
 is due to a poet almost unknown of the name of Mickle, who was bom 
 at Langholm and wrote in the last century, one of his pieces being a 
 beautiful song in praise of Eskdale where he lived. Few perhaps are 
 familiar with the poems of Monckton Milnes, the late Lord Houghton, 
 but there is hardly any one who does not know the refrain of his famous 
 
 song : 
 
 ' The beating of my own heart 
 Was the only sound I heard.' 
 
 184 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 Wfe have often upon our lips the lines : 
 
 ' Strange aU this difterence should be 
 Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee,' 
 
 and they are usually attributed to Swift. They are really by John 
 Byrom in an epigram composed by him as to the rival merits of Handel 
 and another musician. 
 
 ' Some say compared to Bononcini 
 That Mynheer Handel's but a ninny ; 
 Others aver that he to Handel 
 Is scarcely fit to hold a candle. 
 Strange all this difference should be 
 'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.' 
 
 Byrom also gives another, which is admirable : 
 
 ' God bless the King : I mean the faith's defender, 
 God bless — no harm in blessing — the Pretender. 
 Who the Pretender is, and who the King, 
 God bless us all — that's quite another thing.' 
 
 Who has ever enjoyed a perfect day in summer, ' alas, like angel's visits 
 few and far between,' when the sun shines bright and clear in the 
 unclouded blue of heaven, and the gentle western breeze just stirs the 
 leaves and wafts to us the odours of the scented flowers, without 
 murmuring to himself with George Herbert, though I hope I must not 
 class him with the unfamiliar poets : 
 
 ' Sweet day, so calm, so cool, so bright, 
 The bridal of the earth and sky.' 
 
 Sometimes a thought, which has long been simmering in the minds 
 of men, finds at last its true and perfect expression, and can hence- 
 forth pass into the current coin of familiar quotation. Thus Tennyson's 
 fine line : ' A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.' 
 That had often been said before by others ; notably by Dante and by 
 Chaucer, who took it from an old Latin prose writer, but it assumed its 
 most complete form in the hands of our own great poet, and in that 
 form will linger in our memories and be quoted to the end of time. 
 A great many of the Latin lines so often in our mouths, such as 
 
 185 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 ' Quos vult perdere Deus 
 Prius dementat.' 
 
 ' Incidit in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdin.' 
 
 ' Semel insanivimus omnes/ 
 
 These all are from quite out of the way poets whom no one has or ever 
 will read. They are usually put down to Horace or Juvenal. Samuel 
 Johnson was once offered ten guineas if he could say where the last was 
 to be found ; he could not do it, but found it many years afterwards by 
 chance in a little-known Latin poet called John the Baptist of Mantua. 
 There are some epitaphs which are models of what such lines should be ; 
 one or two of which I may briefly give. There is Ben Jonson's on 
 Elizabeth : 
 
 ' Underneath this stone doth lie 
 
 As much beauty as could die, 
 
 Which in life did harbour give 
 
 To more virtue than doth live.' 
 
 We can never think of Charles II. without remembering the famous 
 verses of the Earl of Rochester : 
 
 ' Here lies orn- Sovereign lord the King, 
 
 Whose word no one relies on 
 He never says a foolish thing. 
 Nor ever does a wise one.' 
 
 What can be more felicitous than Pope's, intended for Sir Isaac 
 Newton : 
 
 ' Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, 
 God said " Let Newton be," and all was light.' 
 
 Or Coleridge upon an infant : 
 
 ' Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade 
 
 Death came with kindly care. 
 The opening bud to Heaven conveyed. 
 And bade it blossom there.' 
 
 Quotations are sometimes, but rarely, taken from prose authors. 
 This naturally follows from the greater difficulty that there is in 
 recollecting with sufficient accuracy a sentence in prose. But a great 
 many of our common sayings have been coined for us by our great 
 prose writers. They are now detached from their original context, and 
 
 186 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 as used by us are very nearly proverbs. We all know by long expe- 
 rience that corporations have no souls ; the words are from a judgment 
 of Sir Edward Coke, and are used in a somewhat different sense 
 originally. 'Corporations,' he says, 'cannot commit treason, nor be 
 outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls.' ' Reading,' 
 Bacon tells us, ' maketh a full man : conference a ready man ; and 
 writing an exact man.' 
 
 ' A brother of the angle ' is naturally old Isaac Walton's, the most 
 distinguished of the fraternity, while from the same source we get the 
 famous directions for impaling a frog or a worm upon your hook, in 
 which you are bidden ' to use him as though you loved him.' Fletcher 
 of Saltoun provided us with the well-known remark that ' if a man be 
 permitted to make the ballads he need not care who should make the 
 nation's laws.' How incomparable are the words of the great Sir Isaac 
 Newton, and how doubly incomparable as coming from such a source : 
 
 ' I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I 
 seem like a boy playing on the sea shore and diverting myself in now 
 and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, 
 while the great ocean lies all undiscovered before me.' 
 
 We shall never think of Matthew Arnold without recalling that phrase 
 ' sweetness and light,' of which he was the great apostle, but the words 
 were coined by Jonathan Swift in his Battle of the Books, while 
 Gulliver's travels furnish us with the sound reflection that ' he who can 
 make two ears of com or two blades of grass grow where one only grew 
 before, will do more service to his country than the whole race of 
 politicians put together.' From the same source we hear of the gi'eat 
 philosopher ' Who had for eight years been upon a project of extracting 
 sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically 
 sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.' 
 
 Benjamin Franklin gives us the familiar : ' He has paid dear, very 
 dear, for his whistle.' While to Lord Stowell is due ' the elegant 
 simplicity of the three per cents,' to which Mr. Goschen has given the 
 deathblow — and the no less familiar phrase that ' dinner lubricates 
 business.' To Sir Robert Walpole naturally belongs the exalted 
 sentiment that ' all men have their price,' for he knew it by sad expe- 
 rience ; and not less naturally he has informed the world that ' gratitude 
 is a lively sense of future favours.' Dr. Johnson visited the Highlands 
 
 187 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 and only said what he keenly felt in the oft-recurring words : ' The 
 man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon 
 the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among 
 the ruins of lona.' I fear he spoke from some experience, too, when he 
 enriched us with the knowledge that ' Claret is the liquor for boys ; 
 port for men ; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.' 
 
 We often speak of a 'good hater,' and that, too. is from the 
 Johnsonian mint. Who, again, was more entitled to speak of ' the 
 atrocious crime of being a young man ' than Pitt, who was Prime 
 Minister almost as soon as he came of age. His speeches, indeed, 
 furnish us with many a phrase : I will only instance one : 'Necessity is 
 the argument of tyrants : it is the creed of slaves.' ' Facts are stubborn 
 things'; this is an almost proverb that has survived from Smollett's 
 translation of Gil Bias. I may add another from Burke who declares 
 that ' Vice itself loses half its evil by losing all its grossness.'. We 
 often speak of people being 'conspicuous by their absence": it was 
 Tacitus who first used the word of Cassius and Brutus when they were 
 absent from the funeral of Julia, who was the wife of one and the 
 sister of the other. Bunyan has christened for ever the fashionable 
 world as ' Vanity Fair,' and Thackeray by adopting the words as the 
 title of his immortal novel has been content to confess he could find no 
 better designation. Peers, we are often reminded nowadays, are but 
 * the accident of an accident.' It was no fierce democrat who first gave 
 utterance to the truth, but a peer himself, Lord Thurlow, once Lord 
 Chancellor of England. Sheridan's plays are a perfect arsenal of every- 
 day sayings which we should all be poorer to be without. 
 
 ' A progeny of learning ' ; 
 
 ' I own the soft impeachment ' ; 
 
 ' No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope ' ; 
 
 ' When they do agree upon the stage their unanimity is wonderful ' ; 
 
 ' It is a very pretty quarrel as it stands : we should only spoil it by 
 trying to explain it ' ; 
 
 ' I feel my valour oozing out, as it were, at the palm of my hand ' ; 
 
 these are some of the hundred felicities we owe to the bright wit of 
 the inimitable orator of the last century. 
 
 I will quote but one more passage from Webster, the great American 
 statesman, who has spoken of England as — 
 
 188 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 ' A power which is dotted over the whole surface of the globe with 
 her possessions and military posts, whose morning drumbeat following^ 
 the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one 
 continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England/ 
 
 In this connection I need not remind you of the many trite 
 expressions we are ever and again borrowing from the words of our old 
 English Bible. I will but name one from Habbakuk, and that only 
 because we usually quote it wrongly. We usually say, ' He who runs 
 may read ' : the verse is, ' Write the vision : and make it plain upon 
 tables, that he may run that readeth it.' 
 
 Another source from which we borrow are the exclamations which 
 great men and others have uttered at critical and eventful epochs of 
 their lives. When the soldiers of Greece, after a long and arduous 
 campaign, caught sight once more of the blue ocean which they had so 
 long left behind, Xenephon tells us they uttered aloud, ' The sea, the sea,' 
 and what words after all better describe the emotions of those who first 
 catch sight of it .'' Thus Caesar, when he crossed the Rubicon, cried, 
 ' The die is cast,' and every one in similar position has been content to 
 adopt his words. Galileo, in the midst of his bitter persecution, after 
 his recantation, declared of the world that ' still it moves,' while from 
 Francis I. we get the words which he is said to have uttered after the 
 battle of Pavia in 1525 : ' All is lost but honour.' Madame Roland on 
 the scaffold is said to have exclaimed : ' Oh, liberty, what crimes are 
 committed in thy name,' and there have unfortunately been too 
 many episodes in history which have recalled it to men's minds ; while 
 from the experience of the same times, and of the men who decreed her 
 death, the Abbe Sieyes tells us of those ' who would be free and yet know 
 not how to be just.' From the first Napoleon naturally comes the 
 tradition that ' every French soldier carries in his knapsack the baton of 
 a Marshal of France,' while none has more clearly painted for us the 
 folly of the Bourbons and other rulers of like character than Thiers, 
 when he said, ' They learned nothing and forgot nothing.' 
 
 It is sometimes amusing to observe that when some great calamity 
 has stirred men's minds, and every one is writing or speaking of it, how 
 extensive is the use that is then made of the stores provided by the 
 great writers of other days. When a year ago the young Duke of 
 Clarence died, it was more than usually noticeable. Lord Coleridge, 
 
 189 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 speaking in the Law Courts, took refuge in his Horace, and expressed 
 his feeling in the well-worn lines : 
 
 ' Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas 
 Regumque tuiTes/ 
 
 (Pale death enters with indifferent step, the huts of the poor and the 
 castles of the king) — while the Times found another passage in the same 
 author, which it is said Matthew Arnold used to describe as the most 
 touching and beautiful lines he knew : 
 
 ' Linquenda tellus et domus et placens 
 Uxor'— 
 
 translated by Francis thus : 
 
 ' Your pleasing consort must be left. 
 And you of viUas, lands bereft, 
 Must to the shades descend. 
 The cypress only, hated tree, 
 Of all thy much-loved groves, shall thee 
 Its short-lived lord attend.' 
 
 But the great majority found what they needed in our English poets. 
 One used the line of Shakespeare : ' The bitter sentence of poor 
 Clarence's death.' Another quoted from another play : ' This looks not 
 like a nuptial.' While Milton supplied — 
 
 ' Comes the blind fury with the abhorred shears 
 And .slits the thin spun life.' 
 
 Then Shirley was pressed into the service with the appropriate — 
 
 ' The glories of our blood and state 
 Are shadows, not substantial things ; 
 There is no armour against fate. 
 Death lays his icy hand on kings.' 
 
 While Byron expressed what many felt — 
 
 ' Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou ? 
 Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead .-' 
 Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low 
 Some less majestic, less beloved head.' 
 
 Such is the variety — the charming variety — to which in different 
 hands quotation lends itself. It is difficult, as a well-known quotation 
 from Horace teUs us, to say even ordinary things in a proper way : in 
 many cases, as I have shown, they have been already said for us once for 
 
 190 
 
QUOTATIONS 
 
 all in the most perfect way that is possible, and in such cases we cannot 
 do better than quote what has been said so well before. The phrases 
 have been struck out at a white heat under the pressure of some deep 
 feeling aroused by the circumstances in which the writer found himself, 
 and have become for all time the valued possession of the literary 
 world. No Latin poet, for instance, is more frequently laid under 
 contribution than Juvenal. He tells us why it should be so in an often- 
 quoted line of which the meaning is that it was the strong indignation 
 aroused by what he saw around him that prompted his lines, and even 
 gave him the faculty to write. In the contemplation of the terrible 
 condition of society in which he found himself, if nature had denied the 
 poetic faculty, indignation itself would have supplied the verse. ' The 
 inspiration of wrath,' as De Quincey put it, 'spoke through him as 
 through a Hebrew poet, and it must be owned,' he adds, 'that in- 
 dignation never made such good verses as she did in that day,' and that 
 therefore they live for ever as a warning for every society that is in 
 danger of falling into a like decay. Shakespeare was a genius, but his 
 genius was touched by the stirring days of the great Elizabethan period 
 in which he lived when England first rose into a full sense of her high 
 position, when the stir of adventure and new discovery was heard on every 
 side, and therefore it is that his lines glow with a fire which will never 
 be quenched as long as the language endures. 
 
 Milton in succeeding days wrote when his country was passing through 
 a fierce fiimace of civil strife, such as she had never known before — such 
 as we hope she will never know again — and his writings are full of an 
 intense reality which such a period and such surroundings alone can 
 give. Many another name in the hierarchy of our great writers will 
 suggest itself of whom a similar remark might be justly made. As 
 Shelley tells us^ 
 
 ' Most wretched men 
 Are cradled into poetry by wrong : 
 They learn in suffering what they teach in song.' 
 
 It is this reality — ^their contact with striking phases of national or 
 individual life — which gives to great poets and great writers their true 
 immortality : non omnis moriar, I shall not altogether die. Each such 
 an one may say as long as he lives in the hearts and memories of man- 
 kind, and so long as his words rise to our lips on every appropriate 
 occasion. .„. 
 
THE JOURNALS OF SIR DANIEL LE FLEMING 
 
 WE live in an age of progress. We are all ourselves aware of 
 the enormous advances that have been made on every side even 
 within our own limited experience, and we have heard from the lips of 
 those who are older the yet greater strides that have been taken within 
 their cognizance. We are approaching the end of the nineteenth 
 century, and those who see the dawn of the twentieth may, if the future 
 is like the past, dream almost illimitably of the great inventions that 
 are yet to come, by which time will be yet further economised and 
 space almost annihilated. Two thousand years ago, the Latin poet 
 Horace could write : 
 
 ' 'Twas armed with oak and triple brass 
 His breast, who first made bold to pass 
 In fragile bark the stormy seas.' 
 
 But such sensations have long since passed away, and we cross the 
 Atlantic as easily and in as little time as we could have reached London 
 a hundred years ago. But still, evident as are the marks of the progress 
 we are making, we never have a more accurate measure of it than when 
 we can look into some particular period in the past, and see exactly the 
 conditions under which our forefathers then lived, and the surroundings 
 amid which they found themselves. The opportunity of doing so in 
 our own case is furnished by the publication by the Historical Manu- 
 scripts Commission of the journals, diaries, and account-books of Sir 
 Daniel le Fleming, who lived towards the close of the seventeenth 
 century, and was a busy, bustling country gentleman, in the stirring 
 days of the three reigns with which that century concludes, viz., those of 
 Charles H., James IL, and William and Mary. The Lowther influence 
 was then in the ascendant in the two counties of Cumberland and 
 Westmoreland, and Sir Daniel worked with and for them — and also for 
 
 192 
 
THE JOURNALS OF SIR DANIEL LE FLEMING 
 
 himself. As a father of ' nine hopeful sons,^ not to speak of five 
 daughters, he was of opinion that it would be unreasonable that ' he 
 should not be grateful to any generous persons who should get him 
 preferment for them.' Accordingly, he endeavoured quite rightly to 
 keep himself well to the front, and did not allow the world and his 
 friends to forget the fact of his existence. He kept, too, a careful 
 account of all he did — of the letters he received and wrote — and 
 though it may have been a chronicle of small beer at the time he put it 
 down, yet small beer of this kind vastly improves with age, and the 
 records at the end of two centuries are of interest, if not of importance. 
 He was strict, too, in recording his expenditure ; and his account-books 
 are a very complete picture of the man, his character, and his period. 
 As such, I thought they might be useful as a subject on which to 
 address you for a very short time to-night. I will only add that I have 
 borrowed one or two incidents from the papers of the Earl of Lonsdale, 
 which have been published by the same Commission and deal in part 
 with the same period. 
 
 There is one matter I may mention, which does not come within the 
 period of Sir Daniel's own life, but relates to the preceding century, 
 and of which he has preserved the record. It relates to the rebuilding 
 of Carhsle Bridge, which was then decayed and in part fallen down. I 
 do not know how far it will prove a useful hint to the County Council 
 and other bodies who have bridge-building in hand. It is a document 
 under the hand of Lord Dacre, the Warden of the Marches, Simon 
 Senhouse, the prior (or, as he now would be, the Dean), the Mayor, and 
 certain aldermen of the city, appealing for alms and charitable con- 
 tributions from all persons well disposed for the rebuilding of the 
 bridge. And to stimulate their charity, there is appended a grant by 
 four Cardinals to all who give, and as often as they give, of 400 
 days' rehef from penance that has been enjoined. I do not know how 
 far it would go to make rate-paying acceptable in the present day. A 
 parallel though a different principle was sometimes applied to tax- 
 paying. Edward IV., who was a man of very handsome presence, 
 occasionally collected them himself. On one occasion he went to a 
 wealthy widow : ' Verily,' she said, ' for thy handsome countenance thou 
 shall have =^20. The king, it is said, who had looked but for half the 
 sum, thanked her, and lovingly kissed her. Whereupon she doubled her 
 
 193 o 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 benevolence and produced another £Z0. I fear in these prosaic days 
 neither tax nor rate-payer is endeared to us either by religious 
 immunities or such personal attentions from the Crown. 
 
 I have mentioned Sir DaniePs accounts. He was an admirable 
 example of care in this respect. Every item of expenditure was care- 
 fully detailed, and Pepys' diary is not more minute or outspoken. How 
 much he lost at cards or bowls or shovelboard, how much he sent the 
 kitchen-maid at Hutton for his Valentine, what he and his wife 
 contributed to the offertory, his bill for eighteen pairs of shoes ; and his 
 boot bill was, of course, a large one, in point of numbers, though not 
 in price — on one occasion, he buys two dozen pairs for 16«. 4id.; what he 
 paid the pipers and the fiddlers and the morris dancers — all of these are 
 carefully put down. Food was cheap. He pays 9s. 6d. for five salmon, 
 2«. lOd. for a whole side of mutton, and Is. 2d. for a quarter of veal. 
 On January 1st, 1657, he gave Is. for a pound of tobacco, but two 
 years later he seems to have discovered a cheaper method of procuring 
 it, for he pays a pedlar the same amount for 10 lbs. I fear very much 
 that last tobacco had been smuggled, which was not quite the thing for 
 a Justice of the Peace, as Sir Daniel was, to do. His doctor he 
 stimulated by a very businesslike system of payment by results. If his 
 son be not cured under his treatment he pays £10 ; but if successful, 
 the fee is to be £20. A gratuity of Is. is given to a woman who brought 
 Mr. C. Howard and himself a cup of water on Hutton moor in which 
 to drink the king's health at the accession of James II. Water might 
 do for James, but at the restoration of Charles II. the ale flowed freely 
 at Kendal and at home, and the bonfires blazed, and the expense is duly 
 noted in Sir Daniel's accounts. Not, I think, without some self- 
 complacency, he records in his expenditure an item of £5 5*. given to 
 his married daughter, being a sum paid by her husband for the board of 
 their two children with Sir Daniel for six months, which he returns to 
 the mother and regards apparently as a gift to her. 
 
 All his numerous charities are carefully detailed — from the 1*. to 
 the poor traveller, who fought for the king at Edgehill, to the 5s. for the 
 redemption of English slaves in Africa. There are many doles to 
 fiedlamers, as poor lunatics then were called. The origin of the word 
 Bedlamer for a lunatic, and Bedlam for a lunatic asylum, is curious. 
 Bedlam is reaUy a form of Bethlehem, and its use was due to the fact 
 
 194 
 
THE JOURNALS OF SIR DANIEL LE FLEMING 
 
 that there was then at London a priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem, 
 •which was, at one time, the only hospital for lunatics. It liEid been 
 built in 124i7 to receive the Bishop of St. Mary of Bethlehem when he 
 visited this coimtry ; afterwards, in 1402, it became a house for lunatics, 
 and, at the dissolution of the monasteries, was granted to the Mayor 
 and citizens of London to be used for that purpose : and so we have the 
 word Bedlam. It is one of the curiosities of language that thus the 
 name of the city, by its associations one of the most sacred in the 
 world, has given its title to a class the most unfortunate amongst us. 
 
 Sir DaniePs accounts are occasionally interrupted by memoranda of 
 incidents that occurred, some of which give us an idea of the advance 
 we have made since his time. Thus, on the 14th of December, 1680, he 
 notes : 
 
 ' My tenants and I did see a blazing star with a very long tail — 
 reaching almost to the middle of the sky from the place of the sun- 
 setting — and near where the sun did set. Lord have mercy upon us, 
 pardon all our sins, and bless the King and these Kingdoms." 
 
 That comets portended disaster to the State was still a common idea 
 among educated men. Shakespeare, a little earlier, says in Henry VI. : 
 
 ' Comets importing change of times and state 
 Brandish yoiu- crystal tresses in the sky.' 
 
 I can remember more than one very fine comet in the reign of Her 
 Most Gracious Majesty, and I am glad to say they were attended by no 
 imtoward result. 
 
 It seems very strange to us nowadays, I dare say, but the principal 
 duty of an active Justice like Sir Daniel appears to have been to harry 
 the poor unoffending Quakers of the time. It seems partly to have 
 taken the place of hunting and shooting, and it had the advantage of 
 being carried on all the year round. There was no close time for these 
 nonconforming game. Sir Daniel entered into the pursuit with zest. 
 The magistrates of Kendal are found to be a little slack. ' It is necessary,' 
 he says, ' to spur them on.' He needed none himself. There is given 
 a letter from one of his victims from the gaol at Lancaster, appealing 
 to him : 
 
 ' Oh fye, Justice Fleming,' it begins, ' that ever this report should be 
 sounded in our ears that within thy liberties such plundering should be 
 
 195 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 among thy neighbours. We never had the like in our parish since the 
 Scots were among us nor ever expected that our own justices should 
 have made such work as set men of robbing and spoiling true men's 
 goods who dare not spoil themselves or do any hurt to any other man. 
 My friend, William Grave, is lying this day in peril of death and one 
 prisoner is l3ring dead this day upon the chicker table.' 
 
 There is another from Elizabeth Wilson, who has been incarcerated 
 also, and separated ' from her husband and four small babes.' 
 
 We can hardly wonder that protests were made, as for instance, 
 when it is reported by the clergyman at Windermere that on Christmas 
 Day, during his sermon, a Quaker woman had the audacity to stand up 
 and use slanderous language against him. But Sir Daniel hardened his 
 heart. 
 
 ' I am sure,' he says, writing to the Secretary of State, ' that any 
 compliance with the Nonconformists only increases their number, and I 
 fear it will much increase their confidence in desiring. I wish that less 
 than all may fiilly please them, which, if it do, then I will say they are 
 not of the breed of the old presbyterian.' 
 
 In his idea, there was only one way of dealing with them. 
 
 ' It is as clear as the day,' he writes again, ' that nothing will 
 convince them of their errors so soon as the drawing of money from 
 them, for a great part of their religion, notwithstanding their great zeal 
 and fair pretence, is lied to their purse strings. When we have routed 
 all conventicles, the levying of 12rf. for every Sunday will, I hope, bring 
 them to the Church.' 
 
 He was supported in his views by high authorities. The Archbishop 
 of Canterbury of the day announces that if such conventicles cannot be 
 hindered by the bishops, complaint must be made to the nearest Justice 
 of the Peace, and any negligence on their part is to be certified to the 
 King. 
 
 Sir Philip Musgrave writes that he is in hope that Parliament will 
 make some effectual law to prevent the increase of Nonconformists, very 
 much as if they were cattle infected with the rinderpest, or some noisome 
 or destructive animal. Sir Daniel, meanwhile, did what he could to 
 carry out so excellent and desirable an object, and receives many con- 
 gratulations on the thorough manner in which he carries out his work. 
 He is told that he is the most accomplished Justice of the Peace in the 
 Northern counties : ' we want everywhere such steady, sober heads.' 
 
 196 
 
THE JOURNALS OF SIR DANIEL LE FLEMING 
 
 But Sir Daniel, though he was thoroughly in earnest in the matter, was, 
 first of all, a prudent, cautious man ; he wished to put down Noncon- 
 formity, but he wished more to retain the good opinion of those in 
 power ; and when under James II., partly through the influence of 
 William Penn, who was himself a Quaker, and partly owing to the 
 pdicy pursued by James of endeavouring to enlist the Nonconformists 
 in his attempt to give further liberties to the Roman Catholics, this 
 raid against the Quakers was less popular in high quarters. Sir Daniel 
 gracefully accommodated himself, like the Vicar of Bray, to the new 
 r^^me. It is all the more creditable to the poor Quakers to remember 
 that when this scheme of James was more fully developed, and it was 
 seen that he was endeavouring to destroy our common Protestantism 
 and our common freedom, they, in spite of all they had suffered, declined 
 his overtures, forgot their feuds, and remembered only the danger to 
 the State. This was the occasion when, as you remember, the Seven 
 Bishops were sent to the Tower. Well, our Quaker friends had no 
 reason, as you have seen, to love the Archbishop, but, as Macaulay 
 puts it : 
 
 'They were now ready to ask, on bended knees, the blessing of a 
 prelate who was ready to wear fetters and to lay his aged limbs on bare 
 stones rather than betray the interests of his religion and set the 
 prerogative above the laws.' 
 
 Sir Daniel received many invitations to enter Parliament, and was at 
 length elected for Cockermouth in 1685. Some marriages are said to be 
 made in Heaven — and in those days elections, for the most part, were 
 won or lost through the favour of the County Gods, who divided out 
 the representation pretty much as they liked among themselves. Thus, 
 in 1676, Sir John Lowther writes : 
 
 ' I hope I need not appear in person. I have sent the writ down, 
 but told my servant not to deliver it at once if there is such opposition 
 as to require my presence.' 
 
 In 1678 he writes : 
 
 ' I and Lord Morpeth stand for Cumberland, Sir Richard Graham 
 for Cockermouth, Sir Philip Howard and Sir Christopher Musgrave for 
 Carlisle — al agreed.' 
 
 Yes, all agreed and they were elected. On another occfision a 
 suggestion is made that Sir George Fletcher and Sir Wilfred Lawson 
 
 197 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 should cjist lots for the county, and that the loser should have the 
 place at Cockermouth. We do not hear of the Cockermouth Primrose 
 League or the Cockermouth Liberal Association being consulted. Not 
 that the masses were altogether overlooked ; but they were treated in a 
 diflFerent way. I take this from an account of an election at Whitehaven 
 in 1757 : 
 
 ' We have fixed things upon the following plan, which is much the 
 same as followed on the last occasion, except that we have laid down 
 more restrictions to prevent fraud, and the great abuses that have 
 prevailed. There are seven houses fixed for the entertainment of your 
 friends, viz. — The Globe, Mr. Dixon's unlimited ' — (you will see in what 
 follows the idea of limits) — 'the house late John Lucocks, ordinaries 
 130, wine 10 dozen, punch and ale proportionable. These provide for 
 130 at 1*. each, besides the Globe which may be 500 more. ... It is 
 proposed to have 13 houses more for taking off the lower class from the 
 better houses, at not exceeding four guineas a house and in all 40 guineas 
 besides some ale from other houses for the mob.' 
 
 And though of course the candidate can no longer pay for it (fortunately 
 for him), there is perhaps a good deal too much of this even in the 
 present day, and we all hope for a day when such unworthy practices 
 will altogether disappear. 
 
 We had read in Sir Daniel's pages of the methods of taxation which 
 were then in use. The main revenue was then derived from Customs 
 and Excise under which, as for long after, most of the articles of 
 common consumption and wear were severely dealt with and made 
 proportionately dear. There were also occasional subsidies levied at the 
 rate of 4*. in the pound on land, and 2«. 8d. in the pound on goods and 
 other forms of property. Then there was imposed a very unpopular tax 
 termed the hearth tax — a charge of 2*. for every hearth and oven in 
 every dwelling house. This was a renewal of the old chimney or fumage 
 tax of Norman times, and was a burden on rich and poor alike. We 
 need not wonder that it was bitterly resented. There are several letters 
 relating to it. The Kendal magistrates (whom we saw wanted spurring 
 on in the case of the Quakers) were again disposed to leniency, and 
 Sir Daniel is asked by the collectors to stir them up. There is a practice, 
 he is told, of walling up the hearth in a temporary fashion which is 
 plainly fraudulent. He is asked to put a stop to it. It was one of the 
 benefits of the great and glorious Revolution of 1688 that this tax was 
 
 198 
 
THE JOURNALS OF SIR DANIEL LE FLEMING 
 
 put an end to, though it was replaced by another almost as preposterous, 
 viz., the tax on windows, which I suppose some of those living can still 
 almost remember. A tax on light and warmth sins fatally against all 
 our modem ideas on the mattei of sanitation. Then there were other 
 methods by which the monarch of the day raised the wind which were 
 less objectionable. Thus Sir Daniel tells us that in 1670 it was resolved 
 by Parliament that every person going to the play and sitting in a box 
 shall pay 1*., in the pit 6d., and everywhere else Sd. Mr. Labouchere's 
 idea of making a regular charge for titles conferred was also in use. A 
 baronetcy was charged =£"1000. Tlie rate was fixed at the amount of 
 the maintenance of thirty foot soldiers at 8d. a day for three years, 
 which comes to a little more than £1000. A little earlier the price of 
 a barony had been arranged at .£'10,000, a viscounty .fl 5,000, and an 
 earldom £20,000. In modem days we manage things differently, and a 
 contribution, it is said, is demanded for the party election fund before 
 such honours are bestowed. Whether it is so or not, I do not know. 
 Sir Daniel was made a knight. He records how he was summoned to 
 Windsor — 
 
 'When the King was pleased to say he had received so good a 
 character of me as his Majesty would not suffer me to depart his presence 
 without a testimony of his Royal favour, he then being graciously 
 pleased to honour me with Knighthood, and to favour me with his 
 Royal hand to kiss." 
 
 The honour was not quite so spontaneous as it seems, as Sir Daniel had 
 made a specific application for it some years before. * 
 
 In no respect, of course, has the change that has taken place been 
 more marked thsui in the means of locomotion, not only as regards the 
 speed with which we travel, but the convenience we meet with upon the 
 road. If you wish to visit Edinburgh to-day you go by train in a 
 couple of hours, at a cost which, if it is an excursion train, is exceed- 
 ingly small. Even if you decide to bicycle it is not more than a 
 summer day^s run, while, if you choose to linger on the road, you find 
 comfortable hostelries at every turn. It was very different two hun- 
 dred years ago, short as the period seems in the history of a nation's 
 life. 
 
 We have in the Lonsdale MSS. an account of a Scotch trip made by 
 a Mr. Lowther and two friends, which gives one an idea of the discomforts 
 
 199 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 a traveller had then to face. The journey to Edinburgh occupied them 
 several days, and there was not even a stage coach. They pass by 
 Longtown, where they inform us that the church of Arthuret had been 
 recently rebuilt at a cost of £1500, gathered, they say, throughout the 
 whole kingdom with a brief, as we learn elsewhere, from King James I, 
 to commend it to the notice of the faithful. The houses of the 
 Grahams — even of the chief of the clan, the good man of Netherby in 
 the wood, as they term him — are described but as little stone towers 
 garreted and slated or thatched, some even without the garret. At 
 Langholm they have to pass the night in a poor thatched house, the 
 wall of it ' being one course of stones, another of sods and earth, with a 
 door of wiciier rods, and the spider webs being over our heads as thick 
 as might be, in one bed.' One of the party could not sleep for fear of 
 the spiders, neither would he suffer his companions to do so. Across 
 the border they find poor thatched churches, some of them without the 
 doors, sodded up, and no windows. At one place where they halt they 
 find the vicarage has been let as a public-house. In another, they find 
 in the church an instrument which they call ' the Jogges ' fixed up, 
 which they describe to be for such as ofiend, but more especially for 
 women brawlers. It is a machine, they say, through which the head is 
 put with another iron fixed in the mouth, and so ' they abide foaming 
 till such time as the bailiffs please to dismiss them, it taking place in the 
 time of Divine Service.' 'Jogges,' I should imagine, is from the Latin 
 Jugum, a yoke. Poor women brawlers ! They must have had an 
 imhappy time of it. I wonder if the attention of the Sultan of Turkey 
 was directed to the cruelties then being inflicted in these border districts 
 of England and Scotland. 
 
 At Selkirk their only accommodation is ' a choking smoky chamber,' 
 with some drunken, unruly companions who were thrust upon them, 
 who ordered wine, and politely left our tourists to pay the bill. They 
 passed through Galashiels and the now enchanted scenes of Abbotsford, 
 but without any appreciation of the beauties of the district which now 
 draw their admirers from every quarter of the world. Even Yarrow 
 stream called forth no echo in their breast: it still remained what 
 Wordsworth in one of his three poems called it : 
 
 ' A river bare 
 That glides the dark hills under.' 
 
 200 
 
THE JOURNALS OF SIR DANIEL LE FLEMING 
 
 Indeed, the same remarks may be extended to the whole of their 
 Scotch tour. They were close observers of the manners and customs, 
 and even of the dialect of the people, but there is nothing to show any 
 appreciation of the hills and vales, the lakes and rivers, which now 
 attract the whole world to gaze upon their beauties. There was not, 
 until long after, any direct feeling for nature in its softer or more 
 enchanting side, and hardly any recognition of its grander and sterner 
 attributes at all. Men were repelled rather than attracted by the 
 grandeur of scenery which everybody admires to-day. Thus Dr. John- 
 son a hundred years later, in his Highland journey, says : 
 
 ' The hills exhibit very little variety, being almost wholly covered 
 with dark heathj and even that seems checked in its growth. What is 
 not heath is nakedness diversified by now and then a stream rushing 
 down the steep. The eye is astonished and repelled by this wide extent 
 of hopeless sterility. The appearance is that of matter incapable of 
 form or usefulness, dismissed by Nature from her care and disinherited 
 of her favours, left in the original elemental state or quickened only with 
 a sullen power of useless vegetation.' 
 
 What would Scott and Wordsworth say to this dictum of the great 
 doctor ? It serves, however, to measure the debt which we owe to them, 
 though in part, no doubt, the change is due to the more pleasant 
 conditions under which we can now visit even the wildest scenery. Men 
 could not admire what they had often very good reason to fear and 
 dread. At Edinburgh they are entertained by the Society of Brewers, 
 who, we are told, are Englishmen endeavouring to win over the Scotch 
 from his hereditary claret. They were called into the butteries and 
 made to drink gratis. After this they went north as far as Perth, and 
 returned by the same road that they had gone. 
 
 I have spoken of the slowness and inconvenience of the journey. 
 One would think people would have been glad to see any improvement 
 taking place. But this was not always the case. There were some, I 
 suppose I must not call them Tories — Sir Daniel calls them county 
 gentlemen— some, shall we say, stick-in-the-muds who, only a few years 
 after this tour took place, petitioned His Majesty that ' the growing 
 number of stage coaches is a great grievance and hindrance to trade,' 
 and praying that Parliament may be authorised to take effectual 
 measures to put them down. What would these sapient wiseacres have 
 said had they lived in the railway era ? We know : for unfortunately 
 
 201 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 they left their successors — ^the heirs to all their fears and prejudices — 
 who once more prophesied the decay of trade, the disappearance of 
 horses, and who some of them lived to see the destructive agencies they 
 feared so much, prove the best friends of the interests on whose behalf 
 they pretended to speak. 
 
 It was after the restoration of Charles II. that stage coaches began 
 to be introduced. And they were introduced gradually enough in all 
 conscience. Lord Macaulay in his history describes how, in 1669, 
 Oxford was thrilled by the announcement of a great and daring innova- 
 tion to be attempted. It was a vehicle, to be termed the Flying Coach, 
 announced to perform the whole journey from Oxford to London 
 between sunrise and sunset — a feat, we are informed, which was actually 
 achieved. Lord Macaulay gives us an interesting list of the various 
 objections that were taken to improved locomotion : 
 
 ' We smile,'' he adds, ' at them, but it is not impossible that our 
 descendants, when they read the history of the opposition offered by 
 cupidity and prejudice to the improvements of the nineteenth century, 
 may smile in their turn.'' 
 
 There was nothing, of course, I need hardly tell you, in Sir Daniel's 
 day corresponding to the daily or even weekly newspaper. The London 
 Gazette, published under Royal authority, and containing, as such things 
 do, veiy little of the slightest interest, appeared twice a week. But 
 those who lived at a distance from London and could afford the luxury, 
 received what were termed ' newsletters,'' prepared by literary men, and 
 giving an account of the gossip of the clubs and coffee-houses on current 
 events. The advent of these letters must have been anxiously awaited 
 in the county in the stirring and eventful seventeenth century. They 
 furnished the Squire vnth topics for discourse when he met his brother 
 Justices at Quarter Sessions or elsewhere, and he would doubtless allow 
 some echo of their contents to reach the rectory to be reproduced in the 
 parsotfe Sunday sermon. Those which Sir Daniel received have been 
 preserved. They were written for him either by friends or other persons 
 whom he employed for the purpose, and whose remuneration is duly 
 noted down. They contain much that is of interest. In them we see 
 the doings of the day as they appeared to the frequenters of the taverns 
 and coffee-houses at the date of their occurrence. They arrive at Rydal 
 Hall, when its lord was there, about once a week. All kinds of facts, 
 
 202 
 
THE JOURNALS OF SIR DANIEL LE FLEMING 
 
 great and little, true and false, jostle one another in them, just as they 
 would do to-day in the columns of our daily journals. 
 
 It adds to our sense of the completeness of the great fire of London 
 in 1666, to learn that ' the houses are laid so flat to the ground that the 
 city looks just like your fells, for there is nothing to be seen but heaps 
 of stones. You may stand where Cheapside was and see the Thames.' 
 Again we hear from a spectator of the scene, how Cromwell was 
 proclaimed Lord Protector in the great hall of Westminster, with three 
 great shouts made by the soldiers and some few others. ' I saw him 
 in his king-like robes : he came through the hall in great state.' 
 
 This, possibly, was intelligence that would be received at Rydal with 
 uncertain sentiment. But the newsletters generally had the good sense 
 to be on the winning side, and to flow with the tide that was flowing 
 strongest for the moment. There are many interesting incidents in 
 William's Irish campaign — and also after he reached the throne — which 
 it would take too long to detail. 
 
 I had always thought Jack Ketch was a mere soubriquet given to a 
 hangman, but apparently he was a real character. He appears in Sir 
 Daniel's pages in the account of the execution of a protestant at 
 Oxford in 1681. ' Ketch,' we are informed, * was very civil to him — 
 thanks to the five guineas his relations had given to him.' The civility 
 consisted in allowing him to hang till he was quite dead before he 
 quartered and disembowelled him. The period over which the diary 
 extends is that in which the two political parties in the State became 
 known as Whigs and Tories. The latter, indeed, we have used both in 
 its original and its later sense. It was first given to bands of Papist 
 outlaws who frequented the bogs of Northern Ireland. In 1666, we are 
 told, ' In Ireland, all is well. The Tories keep sputtering in some 
 parts of the county, but dare not appear openly or in numbers.' Then, 
 later, it was applied to the party who were opposed to excluding a 
 Roman Cathohc jfrom the succession to the throne, who became, at a 
 later period, the Chm-ch and State party. 
 
 One of Sir Daniel's friends writes to him in 1681 : ' If all men must 
 have distinguishing appellations, I'm a Whig, for I abominate Tory.' 
 The word whig came into use about the same time and was taken from 
 the name given to the Scotch Covenanters — on the whole, I think, the 
 more respectable derivation. There are some anecdotes of famous men 
 —one of the poet Dryden. After the accession of James II., he became 
 
 203 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 9 Roman Catholic, and wrote his famous poem, ' The Hind and the 
 Panther.' At his club he was congratulated on his new religion.' 
 ' Nay,' he replied, ' you are mistaken : my religion is the old religion.' 
 ' Whatever it be in itself,' was the rejoinder, ' 'tis new to you, for within 
 these three days, you had no religion at all." 
 
 There were the usual number of people appealing to the public 
 taste by performing extraordinary feats or exhibiting monstrosities of 
 one form or another. Thus Captain Soupe has found out the art of 
 walking upon the water. 'He showed the experiment on a pond at 
 Islington to the Prince of Tuscany, who gave him twenty guineas for his 
 pains.' He is anxious that the King should see it, and to have a patent 
 for fourteen years. The patent has long expired, if it were ever granted, 
 and we have not made so much progress in this as in some other 
 directions. Then two young Limerick giants ai-e presented to the 
 King — a boy, four years old, four feet six inches high ; a girl, eight 
 years old, six feet high and of thickness proportionable. On the 
 following day, the King touches the Duke of Cambridge for * the evil,' 
 as scrofula was called. The operation, we must presume, came a little 
 late, as a few days after the Duke was dead. Dr. Johnson, I believe, 
 was the last person touched in England in 1715 by Queen Anne. The 
 apparent success of the operation in this case was held to have con- 
 firmed what was lacking to the holders of the idea of divine right in the 
 parliamentary title of the Queen, and the announcement, no doubt, 
 gladdened the heart of many a loyal subject and ardent Churchman 
 rejoicing in mysterious awe at the wonderful ways of Providence. Such 
 superstitions die hard, and even at the end of the seventeenth century 
 found a congenial soil to dwell on. 
 
 The last information given to us by Sir Daniel's newsmonger is that 
 three Justices of the Peace have taken at Totnes the affidavits of several 
 sober people who had seen ' several companies of unarmed men, clothed 
 in white, march in ranks across the meadows and over hedges, who were 
 above a thousand strong.' This is gravely transmitted from Devonshire 
 to Westmoreland as a piece of news ! 
 
 You can easily see, then, from this slight sketch, in how many 
 directions we have progressed since the period with which these papers 
 deal. People speak of the ' good old times.' I must confess, for my 
 own part, that I have never any desire to appear as the laudator temporis 
 4icti — the eulogist of the past. I am filled with gratitude to those who 
 
 204 
 
THE JOURNALS OF SIR DANIEL LE FLEMING 
 
 went before us for the hard contests they waged, and the hardships 
 through which they passed, to win for us the liberties and privileges we 
 enjoy to-day. I hope, if we had lived then, we might have borne 
 ourselves as well. But I am quite content to live in the present. One 
 feels instinctively, as one reads of those old times, that they were 
 uncomfortable times to live in : and behind all we hear the cry of the 
 weak, the suffering, and the poor. We know that there were martyrs 
 then, and that too often the martyrs were the poor folk, and we may 
 well be glad to walk in the comparatively pleasant places in which our 
 lot is cast. 
 
 Yes, we have made great progress. Never, I suppose, in any single 
 reign has the course of that progress been more marked than in that of 
 which we shall very soon be celebrating the sixtieth year ; and the Queen 
 may well look back with satisfaction and feel that, by the noble example 
 of her own life, by her tender care for all classes of her subjects, she has 
 helped on the progress that has been made. Sir Joshua Fitch, speaking 
 the other day, claimed as one of the distinguishing characteristics of the 
 present reign, the immense advance that had taken place in the position 
 and education of women. I need not say how much greater it is since 
 tile time of which we have been speaking. Fancy any woman's head in 
 the ' Jogges ' to-day ! Why, the dames of the Primrose Leagues and 
 the Women's Liberal Associations would march in their thousands hand- 
 in-hand to Westminster to demand that such iniquities should cease. 
 The change is one of the best characteristics of our civilisation — one 
 which was wanting in the civilisations of Greece and Rome — a change 
 which has raised woman to be, in Milton's words, man's best companion 
 in the sense most flattering to her, the companion of his intellect and 
 his mind. 
 
 I need not name the material forms of progress, scattered as are the 
 signs of them on every side. We must not be misled by them. We 
 must see that our progress is real in things that are essential. We 
 must enquire if individual citizens are more pure in their lives ; more 
 sober in their habits ; more true and just in their dealings with each 
 other ? We must ask if comfort, and the means of comfort, are more 
 generally diffused ; the proceeds of labour more justly distributed 't 
 These are the true criteria of progress, and as it can say aye or no to 
 these questions a nation shall stand or fall. 
 
 205 
 
THE HISTORY AND BALLADS OF THE 
 BORDER* 
 
 WHEN you look northward from your little town, or the high 
 ground in its vicinity, your eye catches, as the most prominent 
 object in the landscape, the westernmost summits of the gently rounded 
 heights of that range of hill country which sweeps across from the 
 eastern coast, right away to and along the shores of the Solway Firth. 
 These hills constitute in the main what we call the district of the 
 Border — a district which recalls to our minds by its very name some of 
 the most stirring scenes in our national and local history. The Border 
 land — the land of the Tweed and Teviot — of Liddell and Annan, and 
 Esk and Kirtle — what memories are not connected with every one of 
 its hiUs and dales and streams ? There every field has its battle, and 
 every rivulet its song, and how we still love to visit its old towers and 
 keeps, and dream of the romance and chivalry of the past ! They 
 speak to us of a grandly exciting time, when the chieftain's foot was 
 often in the stirrup, and the midnight foray was man's ordinary 
 pastime. Their very names are instinct with a charm and a poetry 
 which can never be dissociated from them ; and of no man in the world, 
 I suppose, than the Borderer are Goldsmith's lines more true, however 
 far he may have travelled in search of that wealth which Scotchmen 
 proverbially do not despise ; still he says — 
 
 ' Where'er I roam, whatever lands I see, 
 My heart untravelled, fondly turns to thee.' 
 
 The names of his native hiUs and dales are often on his tongue, for they 
 are musical for ever in the Ballads of the Borders — as musical as the 
 melody of the streams that flow beside them, and form so striking a 
 feature in the landscape. The waters and the dales of Annan and 
 Esk and Liddell — of Kirtle and of Yarrow — the Eershope Foot — the 
 Langholm holm — the Cannobie Lee — these are full of memories of joy 
 * Delivered at Longtown. 
 206 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 midst their camps, and mounds, and ditches, preserved by their wild and 
 inaccessible position from the destroying influence of the peaceful 
 plough, so strangely perfect and complete — their roads still to be traced 
 in their onward unswerving course, that turns aside neither from steep 
 hiU nor treacherous morass — with aU the wealth of altars and other relics 
 that they have yielded, and are still yielding, to our antiquaries^ research 
 — I need not remind you, how these early conquerors erected their first 
 and chief barrier just on the edge of this Border district, from Tyne- 
 mouth to Bowness. It was a great military outpost, from behind which 
 their soldiers might sally forth to fresh conquests against the wild tribes 
 that lay in the hills beyond, whom they never wholly subjugated and 
 subdued, and to which they might retire again in times when danger 
 threatened. And when at the beginning of the fifth century they left 
 this country — as it turned out, never to return — they left behind them 
 the native British tribes, the Cymri, whose name still lives, I suppose, in 
 the title given to our county — Cumberland, the land of the Cymri — to 
 carry on the struggle for their native soil against the Picts of the north, 
 and other invaders, such as the Angles and their kindred Saxons, from 
 the east and south. It was, I doubt not, a wild unsettled time, such 
 as the Border has often seen, but a time of which we know but little. 
 But one name is then connected with the district which, though not the 
 topic of any of our more familiar Ballads, has inspired, and still inspires, 
 the song of many a famous poet. It is here, as is generally believed; — 
 and many arguments may be adduced for the belief — it is here that the 
 exploits of the famous King Arthur were performed — the king, whose 
 achievements fill the poetry of the middle ages, and whose memory lives 
 again in modem days in the series of poems in which our Poet 
 Laureate has illustrated his career. It was to this period of our early 
 history that Milton turned, when he was meditating the intended work, 
 which he hoped posterity would not let die. The circumstances of 
 Milton's days, however — the rude revolution which burst over the 
 country in the middle of the seventeenth century, in the end gave 
 another issue to his thoughts, and — 
 
 ' The British theme, the old 
 Romantic tale, by Milton left unsung,' 
 
 was left to others to adorn. And so much, at one time or another, by 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 myth, and poem, and tradition, has it been adorned, that Arthur's very 
 existence has at times been doubted. We need not do this. He was, 
 there seems every reason to believe, a great leader of the native Britons 
 in this district of Strathclyde in the sixth century ; he became to them 
 the champion of their race, the assertor of their Hberties, and has lived 
 on in the grateful memories of his countrymen, as a type of the highest 
 ideal of excellence to which personal prowess and worth — in spite of 
 some great faults and some great errors — can attain. ' The old world,' 
 says one of the chroniclers, ' knows not his peer, nor will the future 
 show us his equal : he alone towers above all other kings — better than 
 the past ones, and greater than those that are to be.' Rex quondam 
 rexque futurus — ^the king that was and yet shall be again — according to 
 the legendary inscription on his tomb — he was treasured up in the 
 recollections of a long posterity, with all the love and fondness 
 which people feel for the leaders who in critical moments have placed 
 themselves at their head. Well, though history — for he lived before the 
 days of historical records — does not fix for us in definite terms the 
 date and the scenes of his great adventures, yet nowhere, as has recently 
 been shown by Mr. Stuart Glennie, in his Arthurian Localities, so much 
 as in this Border district, has he left his mark indelibly in the names of 
 the localities with which he must have been connected. In this respect 
 it is truly Arthur-land — the land through which he swept with his 
 famous battles, bringing peace and deliverance to the people whom he 
 led — peace and deliverance to the poor Britons of the Border, who loved 
 their wild hills and wooded dales, and fought for them with a tenacity 
 as great as has ever been displayed by their successors on other occasions 
 in later days. I need not remind you that at Penrith we have King; 
 Arthur's table — of his connection with Tarn Wadling, which has now 
 disappeared— or how, according to an early song — 
 
 ' A long while 
 He sojourned in merrie Carlisle.' 
 
 But beyond this it has been recently contended by one* who has- 
 explored the whole district from this to Edinburgh, with its Arthur's 
 Seat, for traces of his hero — that his last great battle was fought on the 
 
 * Mr. Stuart Glennie in his Arthurian Localities, and also Professor Veitch in his. 
 Hittory of the Scottish Border. 
 
 209 V 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 and sorrow — they tell us of the sunshine of the past, and of tales, too, 
 of sorrow and buffering such as we hope they may never see again. 
 Well, I think we are near enough to this famous district to make it not 
 altogether uninteresting to us. 
 
 We have reason here to know something of the Border ; and when 
 we look at the rounded outlines of its blue hills, with their ever-varying 
 effects of light and shade, of sun and cloud and mist — we may remember 
 that thence came the men who for centuries kept this district in terror 
 and alarm, and we can picture the hills lit up with the fires that were 
 the signals of their coming. Those days, happily, are past and gone — 
 let us now remember rather that from that district, and out of the 
 wild and stirring life of its indwellers, has come some of the sweetest 
 Minstrelry we know, that has linked the name of the Border with a 
 magic charm, which the most unimaginative of us cannot refuse to feel. 
 Other hills and mountains are loftier far, and fuller of grander and more 
 striking scenes, but none speak to us with a more tender, more real, 
 more human voice, than those of the district of which I am to speak 
 to-night. I need hardly say how different — how much more modem 
 are the associations connected with the mountains of our own Lake 
 district, to those which crowd upon our memories at the sight of their 
 humbler neighbours, the Border fells. 
 
 And you will observe in the first place, the historical associations 
 connected with it are precisely such as the name it bears would lead us 
 to expect. For centuries it was the scene of the struggles of hostile 
 races engaged in that popular modem pastime — the search for a scientific 
 frontier. The rules of the game seem to have been very much the 
 same then as they are now — 
 
 ' That they should take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can.' 
 
 Here they seemed to find a frontier. Nature herself seemed to have 
 stamped on its dreary moors and wastes a character of wildness and 
 desolation, which fitted it to be the barrier between their contending 
 hates. I need not remind you here, where it seems to me we are always 
 so much better able than elsewhere, to realise and bring back to our 
 minds the great power and vast resources of the Roman rule in Britain, 
 and the firm hold it had upon the country, where we still have in our 
 
 207 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 rising ground of Arthuret, to the south of Longtown ; that the Solway 
 itself, as you may remember when next you listen to the lapping of its 
 waters on the shore — the Solway itself was ' the level lake,'' into the 
 waters of which, beneath the glories of the winter moon, the famous 
 brand of the dying king, Excalibur, was thrown, and from which rose 
 the mystic arm, that brandished it thrice, ere it disappeared, in token of 
 the ultimate triumph of the genius of the Celtic race. 
 
 Conjectural as this may be, the real connection of King Arthur with 
 the district, I think, we need not doubt. And other struggles succeeded 
 when he had passed away. And now we have the contests of religion 
 added to those of race : we find a Christian party contending against a 
 pagan one, and as the result of a great and famous battle on the 
 Liddell, ' which for generations,' we are told, ' saddened the song of the 
 Cymri,' we have a Christian bishop, St. Kentigem, known too as 
 St. Mungo the beloved — the young and zealous Christian missionary — 
 appointed to bear rule over the district from Glasgow to beyond Carlisle. 
 He, too, has left his traces amongst us. The three great miracles he 
 performed, you will find borne on the arms of the great commercial city 
 of Glasgow, and amongst ourselves we have churches, and those the 
 oldest in the district, as at Irthington and Crosthwaite, dedicated in 
 his name. 
 
 An interesting story is told by the chroniclers, how the new bishop 
 in his wanderings by Tweedside, met Merlin, the famous seer of the age 
 — who had been among the defeated pagan army at the battle — ^how he 
 met him, and pressed upon him, but in vain, the claims of the new faith 
 he had come to preach. Merlin, like many others, clung to his old 
 gods, to the old superstitions in which he had been reared. He turned 
 again to his native hills and dales for solace, and at length found his 
 grave by Tweed, beneath an aged thorn tree, still, says Sir W. Scott, in 
 his Scottish Minstrelsy, to be seen. There ' Is Merlin prisoner till the 
 judgment day.' St. Kentigem himself was a follower of the great Scotch 
 SaintColumba; and the influence of that great teacher never reached much 
 further south than it did in the sixth and seventh centuries. It was rolled 
 back in the end by that other tide of teaching which came from Rome 
 with St. Augustine ; but the Border was the barrier once again, and so 
 you have in these early events the germ of the distinction that to-day 
 exists between Presbyterian Scotland and Episcopal England. 
 
 210 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 It would be quite impossible for any but a profound antiquary — and 
 I have no pretension to be such — to steer you through the various 
 conflicting strug^es between the different races and nationalities, which 
 strove together on the Border from the seventh to the tenth century. I 
 don't know that even they always make it very clear, even to each other, 
 for antiquaries, I have observed, like doctors, sometimes differ. But it 
 is not difficult to give you an idea of what was happening, to show you 
 how, out of this seething mass in constant contention and ever- varying 
 strife, sprang the Borderers as we find them in later dajrs, having in 
 them, and their habits, and their language, many traces of the old 
 Cymric race, who had been the original possessors of the soil, but among 
 whom had been introduced a large mixture of those other elements, 
 which have united to form our English people. We are, as some one 
 said the other day, a piebald mixture of peoples, and the Borderers are 
 no exception to the rule. We have the Anglo-Saxon — what is called 
 the Teutonic element in our race, largely intermingling with our native 
 stock ; and then, and especially at the period of which we are speaking 
 now, we find another body of strangers invading the district and settling 
 in it, it would seem, in considerable numbers — I mean the Danes and 
 Norse, belonging to the Scandinavian races, from the north of Europe — 
 the great freebooters of the time, whose name was known and feared on 
 every coast. In 875 the Danes took and destroyed Carlisle ; and though 
 the history of their battles is dim and dark and vague, as all history is 
 in such early days, yet they have left behind them their mark in 
 characters which none can dispute, in the names of many localities on 
 the Borders, and the language of those who dwell there. And if we 
 may believe Mr. Worsaae, in his Danes in England, it is not only 
 in these respects that the connection may be noted, but in our personal 
 appearance too : 
 
 ' In the northern paiis of England,' he says, ' I saw, and especiaDy 
 in the rural districts, faces exactly resembling those at home. Had I 
 met the same persons in Denmark or in Norway, it would never have 
 entered fliy mind that they were foreigners.' 
 
 However this may be, nothing certainly is more sure, than that in 
 the names of the localities we know so well to-day, we have the traces of 
 the different peoples who, at one time or another, have been here, and 
 
 211 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 amongst them of the Danes. As we might ahnost expect, the names of 
 some of the most marked objects in our scenery, of our principal rivers, 
 of our chiefest town, of our highest hills, take us back to the old British 
 period, and the original dwellers on the soil. To them belong Annan, 
 and Esk, and Lyne, and Eden, and Caldew, among our streams ; the 
 Cheviots among our hills ; and Carlisle of our larger towns. Car in 
 Carlisle, is said to be Caer, a fort ; and is found also in the family name 
 of Kerr, or Carr — one of the few that can be referred to British origin. 
 But then we have also many names and words in use which remind of 
 the Anglo-Saxon element in our composition. The very common suffix, 
 ton — a town, as you have it in so many of our villages — this is one of 
 its contributions to the nomenclature of the district. And to the same 
 source we owe such words as lee, for a plain — croft — water— ford — cleugh, 
 a rugged ascent, as you have it in Cleughside — and many others too 
 numerous to nam'e. 
 
 But not less clearly have the Danes, too, left their mark behind thenv 
 here. Whenever you find — instead of the ton, or town, I just now 
 mentioned — whenever you find by, or bye, you know that there the 
 Dane has been. And so to them, too, are due some of the most 
 distinctive words in our common dialect — such words as Jell and rig, for 
 a hill ; wath for a ford ; and hope for a valley, scaur or scar, dale. When 
 you use bairn for child ; when they say they wiU gar a person in the 
 sense of make him do it ; when they speak oi fremd folk, of a dyke, of a 
 gowk, of a kirn, of a midden, of a sark, of a neb, of reek* — in all these 
 they are using words we owe to our Danish forefathers, who landed and 
 settled in this district a thousand years ago, and seemed likely at one 
 moment to destroy even the little of Christianity and civilisation to 
 which we had then attained. Sometimes in the name of a place you 
 have two languages — the traces of two diiFerent possessors combined. 
 The second comer finding a place already named, added to it from his 
 own dialect some further name appropriate to the locality. Springkell, 
 for instance, is such a case — for kell is merely Danish for a spring. 
 Scarbank is .possibly another. In Dormanstead, both man and stead 
 mean place — the one Old British, the other Anglo-Saxon. Some think 
 that among the different peoples, which have thus in succession settled 
 
 * These are taken from a long list given by Professor Veitch, in the work already 
 referred to. 
 
 212 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 here, it is to the Danes more than the others that we owe that poetic 
 taste and skill, which have found their outlet in the Border Ballads. 
 But I don't know why we should assign their origin to one race rather 
 than another. In every early race there is a tendency found more or 
 less among them all, to throw into a rhjrthmic form that clings more 
 easily to the memory, the stirring events of a restless and adventurous 
 life, and that vividness — that intense reality — that graphic force we 
 admire and love in them, is due to the conditions under which their 
 authors lived — the conditions of an age when every man felt from day 
 to day that his life was in his hand — when he waged a continual 
 struggle with the powers of Nature or the craft of man — when he had 
 neither time, nor inclination, nor inducement, to utter anything but that 
 which he strongly and intensely felt. 
 
 ' Early poets,' says Sir Walter Scott, ' almost uniformly display a 
 bold, rude, original cast of genius and expression. They have walked at 
 free will, and with unconstrained steps along the wilds of Parnassus, 
 while their followers move with constrained gestures and forced 
 attitudes to avoid placing their feet where their predecessors have 
 stepped before them.' 
 
 Such baUads are the very outcome of the people's life, they breathe 
 their spirit, record the incidents that most thrilled their hearts, and the 
 sentiments and emotions that inspired them. And there is no reason to 
 believe that the old Cymri, who stand out upon the threshold of our 
 history, who loved their native hills, and dales, and stieams, and fought 
 for them so stoutly against the various invaders that sought to dis- 
 possess them, had less of those sentiments and emotions than other early 
 races, or were less able to throw them into the sort of rude rhythms 
 that were then their only Uterature. 
 
 At the close of the eleventh century, the Normans, as you know, 
 established themselves in this country. They brought with them, both 
 in Church and State, more developed ideas of law and government, and 
 organization, than had been known before. Many Norman famiUes 
 settled here amongst us in the north; but I fear they did little to 
 tranquillise the Border, and possibly only introduced another element of 
 disturbance. It was still to remain for centuries to come, what it is 
 described by an old chronicle of the day — ' a certain district lying 
 
 313 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 between England and Scotland ' — claimed by both, the claim acknow- 
 ledged by neither — fit nursing ground for the men 
 
 ' Who stole the beeves to make their broth, 
 From England and from Scotland both.' 
 
 At Carlisle we know the old Castle was erected to frown upon Northern 
 invaders ; and by its side rose the Cathedral, to be the seat of the new 
 Bishopric, which was soon to be established. But past them both, a 
 long tide of invasion, from the one side and the other, must have 
 flowed. Cumberland was Scottish almost as much as English soil. 
 It is not included in the famous Domesday Book, the inventory of the 
 possessions of the English Crown. To understand the whole period, 
 you must set yourselves free, as has been said by Mr. Freeman,* from 
 the bondage of the modern map and modern nomenclature. If you use 
 the words England and Scotland at all in reference to the district, you 
 must remember that they do not represent what they represent in 
 modern days — that they represent rather two forces which were 
 struggling together for the mastery, of which the converging point was 
 the Border line. The northern counties were the cause of standing 
 feud between English and Scottish kings. Sometimes the south of 
 what is now Scotland was annexed to England ; sometimes the north of 
 England was seized by the rival claimant. Cumberland for a con- 
 siderable time was held by them as a fief, for which they did homage to 
 the English Crown. 
 
 David, the king of Scotland — one of the few monarchs who has been 
 called and deserves to be called a saint — to whom she owes so many of 
 her famous churches and abbeys — to whom, perhaps, we owe some of 
 our own religious foundations on this side of the Border — whose 
 liberality to the Church made him, his successor said, ' a sore saint to 
 the crown ' — he held English Cumberland (for there was then a Scotch 
 Cumberland as well) in the twelfth century. His son Henry did the 
 same. A little later it was ceded altogether by the Treaty of Carlisle 
 to the Scottish Crown : only, however, to be surrendered back again 
 some ten years after. It came pretty much to this : it was always 
 claimed by the stronger party for the time. Like any other property 
 in dispute, it was not a pleasant place to dwell in. All the wild and 
 
 * Cf. Hittorical Essays. First Series, p. 57. 
 
 214 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 predatory habits of those who dwelt in it, were encouraged and fed by 
 the uncertain shifting condition of things, in which they found them- 
 selves. At the death of the first holder of the see, in 1156, it was 
 impossible to find a successor : no one cared to be bishop of Carlisle ; 
 and nearly seventy years elapsed before any bishop could be got who 
 would reside within the diocese. What temporalities there were, were 
 held and enjoyed by foreigners. There was ample reason, I dare say, 
 for the ' nolo episcopari ' in this case. There was room enough, no 
 doubt, for the teachings of the ministers of peace ; but extremely little 
 to be extracted in return in way of salaries. We read to-day of the 
 woes and sufferings of the subject races in the Turkish Empire : you 
 may find a not inapt parallel to them in the history of your own 
 district six or seven hundred years ago. In the warfare carried on, 
 churches were violated, and neither sex nor age, I fear, was spared. 
 Again and again, from the page of the old chroniclers, ascends the cry 
 of sorrow and distress. One can imagine the lines to have been penned 
 with trembling fingers. Thus, in 1215, in the chronicle of Lanercost, 
 we read of Alexander, king of Scotland, entering England with his 
 army, and wasting aU the county as far as Carlisle with fire and sword. 
 They then turned aside to the monastery of Holm Cultram, stripped it 
 bare of all that it possessed, and took from a poor monk, who was at 
 the time sick in the hospital, the few scanty rags that covered him. 
 And there were no special correspondents in those days, to spread the 
 news of these barbarities. Force and violence reigned supreme. 
 Bishops, when they were foimd, were as often in the saddle as the 
 sanctuary. John Halton, who was bishop a little later, in the days of 
 Edward I., seems rather to have discharged the duties of commander-in- 
 chief of the Northern forces, or colonel of a Depot-centre. He was 
 constable of Carlisle Castle, and charged with its repair. His letters, 
 many of which remain, are filled with the details of constantly recurring 
 wars. He has often to beg that his diocese may be exempted from 
 payment of the tithes demanded by the Church of Rome. Some 
 parishes are to pay two-thirds — Scaleby figures among these — others, as 
 Arthuret, are exempted altogether, by reason of the hostile inroad of 
 the Scots. 
 
 What could be derived from parishes where frequently there was 
 nothing left to tithe ? It was the aim of Edward I o improve this 
 
 215 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 terrible condition of affairs ; to consolidate the two kingdoms under one 
 crown ; and to do with Scotland as he had done with Wales. An 
 opportunity in the earlier years of his reign presented itself for doing 
 so, in the circumstance that, on the death of Alexander, the crown 
 descended to his granddaughter Margaret, the daughter of the king of 
 Norway. Edward proposed to marry his eldest son to the young Queen, 
 and so unite the kingdoms. But unfortunately his plans were 
 frustrated by the death of Margaret, and three wild and stormy 
 centimes were to intervene ere the Rose and the Thistle could be 
 intertwined. Foiled thus in his attempts at a peaceable solution of the 
 question, you know how Edward afterwards endeavoured to eflFect his 
 object by war; how the independence of the country was asserted 
 among others by William Wallace (himself a Borderer), with all the 
 courage, and, I am afraid also, with all the wildness and vindictiveness 
 of the Borderer's character ; and how, at last, the English king died on 
 Burgh Marsh on the eve of another expedition ; how, on his tomb 
 in the Abbey Church of Westminster you will find the inscription, 
 * Malleus Scottorum ' — the hammer of the Scotch. Perhaps, looking 
 back to-day, it would have been well for both countries if his object 
 had been achieved. Scotland would have escaped the disasters which 
 followed in after days at Pinkie, and Solway Moss, and Flodden ; and 
 many an Englishman would not have bled on the field of Bannockbum. 
 The continued struggles between the successors of Edward and the 
 Scots, embittered yet more, as we might expect, the relations between 
 the countries ; and this embitterment was naturally most strongly felt 
 upon the Borders. Hate and resistance to the Southron — this was 
 their rallying cry ; and it was this, and often this only, that formed 
 their bond of union with their Scottish monarch, of whom, in other 
 respects, they claimed and exercised a considerable measure of inde- 
 pendence. They were most useful, no doubt, when there was war 
 between North and South ; but at other times they were neither 
 agreeable nor profitable as subjects. They claimed to be, and to a 
 considerable extent they were, their own masters, and almost as 
 troublesome to their own kings as they were to anybody else. They 
 had won their possessions by the sword, and by the sword they kept them — 
 
 ' Like as I won them, sae will I keep them, 
 Contrair a' kings in Christentie,' 
 
 216 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 says the outlaw Murray in the ballad, and he only echoed the general 
 feeling upon the subject. Every now and again, when they had grown 
 more unruly than their wont — when there was among them some reiver 
 more notorious than the rest, the Scottish monarch of the day swept 
 down upon his stronghold, and made him an example to his fellows. 
 One of the most signal instances is that of the execution of Armstrong, 
 the laird of Gilnockie, by James V., in 1530 : you have it related in the 
 Ballads. The Armstrongs were the most lawless of all the Border 
 depredators ; and all along the LiddeU stream may still be seen the ruins 
 of their strongholds. James V., who long lived in Scottish memory as 
 the king who made the rush bush keep the cow, in his endeavoiurs to 
 maintain order, undertook an expedition through the Border district. 
 John Armstrong, of Gilnockie, was induced — the ballad says, at the 
 invitation of the king himself, ' The king he writes a luving letter ' — 
 to appear before him. He came with his followers in all the rude pomp 
 of border chivalry. 
 
 ' The Elliotts and Armstrongs did convene — 
 They were a gallant company, 
 We'll ride and meet our lawful king. 
 And bring him safe to Gilnockie. 
 
 ' Make rabbits, and capon, ready then. 
 And venison in great plentie ; 
 We'll welcome here our royal king. 
 And bring him safe to Gilnockie. 
 
 ' When Johnnie came before the king, 
 Wi' a' his men sae braw to see. 
 The king he movit his bonnet to him. 
 He weened he was a king as well as he." ^ 
 
 This shows the sort of subjects they were in their own and ordinary 
 estimation. But no sooner had Johnnie and his companions alighted, 
 than the king ordered the whole party to instant execution. The 
 ballad recounts the pleas that were put in for mercy, and they give us 
 s, good idea of the wealth of a Border laird. First of all he offers the 
 king ' four and twenty milk white steeds,' all foaled in the same year ; 
 
 then^ — 
 
 ' " Four and twenty ganging mills, 
 
 That gang thro' a' the year to me," ' 
 
 217 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 with good red wheat to fill them ; then, he promises that — 
 
 ' " Four and twenty sisters' sons 
 
 Shall all for thee fight, tho' a' should flee ; 
 All between here and Newcastle town. 
 Shall pay their yearly rent to thee." ' 
 
 Nothing apparently touches him more keenly than that the king should 
 consider him a traitor or dishonest — 
 
 ' "Ye lie, ye lie, now king,' he says, 
 " Altho' a king and a prince ye be ; 
 For I've loved nothing in my lite, 
 I well dare say it — but honestie." ' 
 
 Save, and there are, I regret to say, one or two exceptions to our friend's 
 honesty — I suppose to prove the rule — 
 
 ' " Save a fast horse and a fair woman, 
 Twa bonny dogs to kill a deir : 
 But England should have found me meal and malt. 
 If I had lived this hundred year. 
 
 ' " She should have found me meal and malt. 
 And beef, and mutton, in a' plentie ; 
 But niver a Scotch wife could have said 
 That e'er I skaithed her a puir flee." ' 
 
 Armstrong's notions of honesty were those common among his fellow 
 reivers : as we understand it, they blotted it from their list of virtues ; 
 and when one remembers that these men lived only three hundred years 
 ago, and looks round and finds oneself in an era of magistrates' courts, 
 and rural policemen, and sanitary authorities, and school boards, one 
 begins to understand what progress is, and how slowly, how gradually it 
 is won. All Armstrong's pleas, however, were made in vain : having 
 exhausted all his eloquence, he bitterly exclaims — 
 
 ' " To seek het water beneath cauld ice, 
 Surely it is a great folie ; 
 I have asked grace at a graceless face. 
 But there is nane to my men and me ! " ' 
 
 And then he sadly turns to bid a last adieu to his 
 
 ' " Bonny Gilnock hall. 
 Where, on Esk side thou standest stout." ' 
 
 Miss Wordsworth, in her Tour in Scotland in the early years of the 
 present century, tells us that her brother and herself were directed by 
 
 218 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 Sir W. Scott to look for the stumps of the trees where the reivers were 
 hanged, still standing between Hawick and Langholm : at all events, 
 you may still see the ruins of his old tower ; and when you visit it, 
 remember the fate of Armstrong of Gilnockie. 
 
 Such was a good specimen of the old mosstrooper, and his not 
 imusual end ; of the men who, during the foiuteenth, fifteenth, and 
 sixteenth centuries were the terror and dismay of every peaceable man 
 and woman to the north and south of the district in which they lived — 
 the men whom Sir Walter has painted in his Lay of the Last Minstrel 
 in William of Deloraine : 
 
 ' A stark mosstrooping Scot was he 
 As e'er couched Border lance by knee ; 
 Through Solway sands, through Tarras moss. 
 Blindfold he knew the paths to cross ; 
 By wily turns, by desperate bounds. 
 Had baffled Percy's best bloodhounds. 
 In Esk and Liddell fords were none. 
 But he would ride them one by one ; — 
 Alike to him were time or tide, 
 December's snow or July's pride ; — 
 Alike to him were tide or time. 
 Moonless midnight, or matin prime : 
 Steady of heart and stout of hand 
 As e'er drove prey from Cumberland.' 
 
 Of these men there is little but the memory left, and we cannot regret 
 that they belonged to a period that is past and gone — that they have 
 left only to their descendants something of their steadiness of heart, and 
 something of their stoutness of hand, to be used, as we believe, for more 
 useful and more honourable ends. We have, indeed (and they form one 
 of the most characteristic features of our Border scenery) we have many 
 a ruined tower or peel, and associated with it — 
 
 ' Some old rude tale that suiteth well 
 The ruins wild and hoary — ' 
 
 the stronghold into which they retreated with their herds and flocks 
 when threatened by attack, and from which they sallied, when the 
 larder was empty, to prey upon the flocks and herds of their more 
 industrious neighbours. Perched on some hill, or rising ground — on the 
 edge of a precipice or the banks of a torrent, they rise with their grey 
 
 219 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 walls usually three stories high. Into the lowest of these, in the hour 
 of danger, the cattle were driven for security ; the second and third 
 accommodated the family and its dependants, in a fashion that, I fear, 
 would have made the hair of a modem sanitary officer stand on end, if 
 any sanitary officer would ever have dared to present himself upon his 
 errand. On the top of the towers hung the iron grating, which held 
 the beacon fire, that was used to warn against invasion, and to gather 
 the Border clajis together, which passed on from tower to tower with 
 incredible rapidity the warning note. From these towers they issued, 
 ' knowing,' Camden says, ' no measure of law but the length of their 
 sword,' whenever the dish of spurs was served upon the table, as a signal 
 that the larder was empty ; or when, as the mother of one of the 
 Grahams said on a like occasion — ' Ride, Rowley, the hough's in the 
 pot ' — to prey upon their southern neighbours with that characteristic 
 regard for honesty, which we have already seen animating Armstrong of 
 Gilnockie. It was the way they lived. In a marriage contract of the 
 period between a Scott and Elliott, it is arranged that the father-in-law 
 should keep the bride, to receive in return the products of the first 
 Michaelmas moon. You r'emember, I dare say, the story of Wat of 
 Harden, the ancestor of Scott. On one occasion, when the village herd 
 was driving out the cattle to pasture, the old laird heard him call 
 loudly to drive out Harden's cow. ' Harden's cow ! ' echoed the affronted 
 chief, ' is it come to that pass ? — by my faith they shall soon say 
 Harden's kye ! ' and, sounding his bugle, summoned his followers, and 
 next day returned with a noble herd. His descendant made a spirited 
 ballad of the incident, of which I quote three stanzas : 
 
 ' " Ca' out the kye," quo' the village herd, 
 As he stood on the knowe ; 
 " Ca' this ane's nine, and this ane's ten. 
 And bauld Lord William's cow." 
 
 ' " Ah ! by my sooth ! " quoth William then, 
 " And stands it that way now ! 
 When knave and churl have nine and ten. 
 That the Lord has but his cow ? 
 
 ' " I swear by the light of the Michaelmas moon. 
 And the might of Mary high. 
 And by the edge of my broad sword brown. 
 They shall soon say Harden's kye ! " ' 
 
 220 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 A good many of their depredations were doubtless committed in this 
 district, and as our friends here naturally looked upon the matter from 
 a different point of view, we are not surprised to learn that many a one 
 must have taken his last look at the blue Border hills from thi* 
 neighbourhood : and whoever may have given to the neighbouring city 
 its title of ' merrie Carlisle,' it could scarcely, I think, have been the 
 mosstrooping Scots, whose heads so often adorned its gates and walls. 
 
 In the Ballads, as in a mirror, the picture of those times is painted 
 for us with, as Lockhart says, ' their stem deep passions — their daring 
 adventures and cruel tragedies — their rude wild humour, interrupted by 
 hardly a blot of what deserves to be called vulgarity/ They are 
 of different characters : some describe the great struggles that took 
 place between the rival races, national encounters like the famous 
 ' Hunting of the Cheviot,' which ever moved Sir Philip Sidney like the 
 sound of a trumpet ; others the foray, such as that which Wat of 
 Harden made ; and others again, the more homely tender incidents of 
 domestic life. For wild and dangerous as their occupations were — rough 
 and rude as their mode of living was — stem and cruel as the incidents 
 of their career too often were — yet there was, too, another side to it, a 
 tender, pathetic, gentle, softer side, which has also found its appropriate 
 echo in Border song. There on the one hand on the Borders, ' Amid the 
 Cheviot mountains blue,' struggling with the mists and blasts and storms 
 of their native hills — an uncongenial climate and a sterile soil — 
 struggling, too, against the invasions of the Southron, again and again 
 renewed, some of the most prized and valuable characteristics of the 
 sterner side of the Scottish character took their rise. There, at least in 
 part, was nourished and grew strong the indomitable spirit, the 
 unflinching courage, the stem individuality and stubborn independence 
 that, at a critical moment in our history, saved England from the 
 Stuarts, and, in the face of thumbscrew and of rack, made Scotland 
 the most Protestant country in the world. There was bom that instinct 
 for self-rule — that sense of political independence which characterise 
 none more than the people of the Border. And these sentiments 
 amongst us these Ballads are calculated to maintain. There was truth 
 in the saying — ' Give me the making of a nation's ballads, and you may 
 make its laws,' and certainly, if ever there should again arise amongst 
 us a condition of affairs, that threatened the liberties of this country ». 
 
 221 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 in no way would the instinct for freedom and independence be more 
 likely to be awakened than by the memories that our Ballads would 
 recall. They breathe the very air of freedom, and are instinct with the 
 spirit of independence. But in them too, as I said, on the other hand, 
 is also foimd that vein of tender and pathetic sentiment, that note of 
 sweetness and sadness, which lingers round the Border hills and streams, 
 making sacred the very names of YaiTow, and Annan, and Kirtle, and 
 Liddell, and has stirred, and purified, and inspired the heart of many a 
 dweller in the district. ' Wan water,' says one of them — 
 
 ' Wan water, from the Border hills, 
 Dear voice from the old years, 
 Thy distant music lulls and stills, 
 And moves to quiet tears.' 
 
 We cannot unlock the charm : we cannot, we do not wish to analyse it, 
 but we know that it is there — we know that 
 
 ' Here was poetic impulse given, 
 By the green hills and clear blue heaven. 
 
 You remember, I dare say, how Wordsworth, in his poem of ' Yarrow 
 Unvisited,' asks contemptuously — 
 
 ' What's Yarrow, but a river bare. 
 That glides the dark hills under ? 
 There are a thousand such elsewhere. 
 As worthy of our wonder.' 
 
 and yet how, in after years, when visiting the scene, he was compelled to 
 confess there was something he had not found elsewhere — something the 
 memory of which he would fain keep with him — 
 
 ' To dwell with me, to heighten joy. 
 And cheer my mind in sorrow.' 
 
 And so with the whole district. There is a nameless charm about it. 
 It is this which has made it ' Meet nurse for a poetic child ' ; and to 
 have given birth to Scott and Bums, and fed their youthful fancies, is 
 alone a distinction such as no other district in the world can claim. 
 How entirely this was the case with Scott we know ; and how of their 
 yearly rambles in Liddesdale Mr. Shortreed, his companion, said : •' He 
 was making himself all the time, and didn't know till years had passed, 
 
 222 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 perhaps.' And while from these Border scenes he thus drew in his 
 inspiration, he poured over them in return, with all the power of genius, 
 a flood of interest which will never die — which has maxle these old 
 memories the possession, not of a district, but of the world. 
 
 But I must illustrate this pathetic side of the old Ballads, springing, 
 as it does, from the sadness of the past history of the district, linking 
 every object in Nature with some tale of sorrow, by one or two 
 examples. Where could you find painted a more touching picture of 
 sorrow and lonely mourning than in the lament of the widow of one of 
 the old reivers, William Cokeburne, who had been executed before the 
 gate of his own tower, near St. Mary's Loch, by James IV. or V. I dare 
 say you know it : 
 
 ' I sewed his sheet, making my mane, 
 I watched the corpse myself alane ; 
 I watched his body night and day. 
 No living creature came that way. 
 
 ' I took his body on my back. 
 And whiles I gaed, and whiles I sate : 
 I digg'd a grave and laid him in. 
 And happ'd him in the sod sae green. 
 
 ' But think ye nae my heart was sair. 
 When I lay the moul on his yellow hair ! 
 O think ye nae my heart was wae. 
 When I turned about away to go ! 
 
 ' Nae living man I'll love again. 
 Since that my lovely knight is slain ! 
 Wi' a lock of his yellow hair 
 rU bind my heart for ever mair ! ' 
 
 Or if you wanted another instance of the passionate devotion with 
 which love can cling to its departed object, you have one surely in the 
 well-known ballad of the ' Dowie Dens o' Yarrow ' — in which a lady 
 finds the body of her lover, Walter Scott, who has been surprised in the 
 glen and foully murdered by his enemies : 
 
 ' She kissed his cheek — she kaimed his hair 
 She washed his wounds all thorough ; 
 She kissed him till her cheeks were red. 
 On the dowie houms of Yarrow.' 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 Her father comes to her : 
 
 ' " Now baud your tongue, my daughter dear, 
 For a' this bauds but sorrow ; 
 ril wed ye to a better lord 
 Than him ye lost on Yarrow." 
 
 * " O baud your tongue, my father dear, 
 Ye mind me but of sorrow : 
 A fairer rose did never bloom, 
 
 Than now lies cropped on Yarrow." ' 
 
 Whether the lady always remained in the same mind the story does not 
 relate. In another beautiful ballad again, we have a tale of the high 
 courage with which true love can fill a woman's soul. The ballad is 
 called ' The Gay Goss Hawk.' You will find it in Scott's collection. 
 A knight in the north loves a lady in the south countrie — perhaps here 
 in Cumberland — but, unfortunately, the course of their love does not 
 run smooth, and he is not allowed to see her. He accordingly sends his 
 hawk with a letter ' under its pinions gray,' and bids it carry it to his 
 sweetheart in the south, to whom the bird is thus directed : 
 
 ' O well shall ye my true love ken, 
 As soon as her ye see. 
 For of a' the flowers of fair England, 
 The fairest flower is she. 
 
 ' The red that's on my true love's cheek 
 Is like blood-drops on the snaw. 
 The white that is on her breast bare, 
 Like the down of the white sea-maw. 
 
 ' And ever at my love's bower door. 
 There grows a flowering birk, 
 And ye maun sit and sing thereon. 
 As she gangs to the kirk.' 
 
 The bird goes on its errand : 
 
 ' And first he sings a low, low note, 
 
 And sjrne he sang a clear. 
 And aye the o'erword of the song 
 Was — your love can no win here.' 
 
 The lady listens and understands, I need hardly say — I fear her thoughts 
 wandered a little during the service — but, unfortunately, she has a step- 
 mother, who by no means gives her the encouragement she would have 
 
 224 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 liked. She adopts a stratagem to deceive her. She drinks a sleeping 
 potion, and lies apparently dead, having first obtained a promise from 
 her father that if she dies she shall be buried in the north countrie, and 
 allowed to be laid out the night before the burial in St. Mary's Kirk. 
 Her stepmother, however, suspects her, and subjects her to a rigid 
 test : 
 
 ' Then spake her cruel stepmother, 
 
 " TaKe ye the burning lead. 
 And drap a drap on her bosom, 
 
 To see if she be dead." 
 
 ' They took a drap of boiling lead, 
 And drapp'd it on her breast ; 
 " Alas ! alas ! " her father cried, 
 " She's dead without a priest ! " 
 
 ' She neither chattered with her teeth, 
 Nor shivered with her chin, 
 " Alas ! alas ! ■" her father cried, 
 " There is nae breath within ! " 
 
 And so they carry her away to her distant tomb, and she is laid for the 
 night in the church of St. Mary, according to her father's promise, and 
 all is ready for the burial of the fair but unhappy young stranger from 
 the distant southern land, when suddenly her lover appears upon the 
 scene, and at his touch — 
 
 ' She brightened like the lily flower. 
 Till her pale colour's gone, 
 With rosy cheek and ruby lip, 
 She smiles her love upon.' 
 
 I hope there are ladies in the nineteenth century — though I don't think 
 their courage will be put to as severe a test — as true, as constant, and 
 of as high a spirit ; as we hope, or else these ladies would be thrown 
 away, that there are lovers as constant as he who mourned for Helen of 
 Kirkconnell upon the braes of Kirtle : 
 
 ' Oh, Helen, fair beyond compare, 
 ril make a garland of thy hair. 
 Shall bind my heart for ever mair. 
 Until the day I die.' 
 
 The period and the people that gave birth to songs and ballads like 
 
 225 Q 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 these were full, we are sure, of sad and pathetic incidents enough. 
 There were partings, often for ever, from mothers, and wives, and sisters, 
 and children — and sad waitings and watchings for the loved ones that 
 would never return again — sorrowings like those after the fatal field of 
 Flodden, so strikingly described in the verses of the famous, though 
 modem, ballad written by a lady of an old Border family — ' The Flowers 
 of the Forest.' 
 
 ' Dool and wae for the order sent our lads to the Border, — 
 The English for once by guile wan the day ; 
 The Flowers of the Forest that fought aye the foremost. 
 The prime of the land are cold in the clay. 
 
 ' We'll hear na mair lilting at the ewes milking — 
 Women and bairns are heartless and wae ! 
 Sighing and moaning in ilka green loaning, 
 The Flowers of the Forest are a' wide away.' 
 
 One of the latest and most stirring deeds in the tale of this Border 
 History, and one, too, so immediately connected with this district that 
 I ought not to omit it, is that related in the ballad of Kinmont Willie, 
 an incident that took place in the close of the sixteenth century, in the 
 days of Queen Elizabeth. William Armstrong, of Kinmont — said to be a 
 descendant of our friend of Gilnockie — was a noted Border chieftain, 
 and not with the best of reputations. A pamphleteer of the day 
 arguing against subscribing the oath of supremacy, in 1584, asks 
 ironically : 
 
 ' Who shall take order with vice and wickedness ? The court and 
 bishops ? As well ask Martin Elliot and Will of Kinmont to take 
 order with stealing upon the Borders ! ' 
 
 This WiU of Kinmont had been seized by Mr. Sakeld — ' the fause 
 Sakelde,' as the ballad styles him — the deputy of Lord Scrope, who was 
 then the Warden of the Marches — at a meeting which had been held, as 
 usual, for the purpose of settling mutual disputes, on the banks of the 
 river Liddell, near the Kershope Foot. He was carried off in spite of 
 all remonstrance as to the illegality of the seizure, and lodged in the 
 castle of Carlisle, where no doubt he would soon have been ' justified,' 
 to use the term that was in vogue on the other side of the Border — 
 i.e., hanged first and tried after — a sort of justification which has 
 perhaps escaped the notice of our theologians. The news was carried 
 
 226 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 to Buccleugh, who was vested with the office of Warden on the Scottish 
 side. He was vastly indignant. 
 
 ' And have they ta'en him, Kinmount WiUie, 
 Against the truce of Border tide. 
 And forgotten that the bold Buccleugh 
 Is keeper here on the Scottish side ? ' 
 
 He accordingly assembles his followers an hour before the sunset, at the 
 rendezvous of the Woodhouselee, ' carrying ladders long and hie,' and 
 leads them straight to Carlisle town : 
 
 ' Then on we held to Carlisle town. 
 
 At Staneshaw bank the Eden we crossed ; 
 The water was great and mickle of spait. 
 But never a man or a horse we lost.' 
 
 The dark and stormy night — the ascent of the Castle wall under cover 
 of the darkness, from the side of ' the Sacray, a plaine place under the 
 towne and castell ' — the breaking of the prison bars, and the confusion 
 of the garrison numbering 1000 men — the release of the astonished 
 prisoner on the veiy eve of his execution, carried in his irons shoulder- 
 high on the back of one of the band — the alarm that followed — the 
 tolling of the city bells and the beating of the drums — and the recross- 
 ing of the flooded Eden in the grey dawn of an autumn morning — all 
 these are graphically touched, and make a striking picture. 
 
 ' Buccleugh has turned to Eden waters, 
 
 E'en where it flowed from bank to brim ; 
 And he has plunged in wi' a' his band 
 
 And safely swam them through the stream.' 
 
 Lord Scrope, in amazement, standing on the bank exclaims : 
 
 ' He is either himsel' a devil from hell. 
 Or else his mother a witch maun be : 
 I wouldna hae ridden that wan water 
 For a' the gowd in Christantie.' 
 
 We may imagine the glee of the little party when they reached their 
 own neighbourhood again, passing through Longtown at the break of 
 day, and the stir the incident would cause. Queen Elizabeth was 
 deeply incensed at the conduct of Buccleugh, and not very easily 
 pacified. Some time after, when he was presented to her, she demanded 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 of him how he dared undertake an enterprise so desperate and pre- 
 sumptuous. ' What is it,' he replied, ' that a man dares not do ?' 
 ' With ten thousand such men,' said the Queen, ' our brother of Scot- 
 land could shake the firmest throne in Europe !' She little thought 
 that ere half a century had passed, the crown the Scotchmen would 
 shake would be her own, in the hands of her successors. 
 
 Some years later the Queen died, and James VI. of Scotland, 
 succeeding to the throne, made the two countries one. Renewed 
 efforts were made to pacify the Border. You remember the remark 
 of James when a favourite cow he had taken with him to London 
 found its way back to Fife : nothing, he said, surprised him so much 
 as its being able to pass without interruption through the Debateable 
 Land. He exerted himself, accordingly, to introduce greater security 
 of life and property. We are told how the Border churches, many, no 
 doubt, in ruins and decay, were restored. Stringent laws were enacted, 
 and officers appointed for the settling of disputes. The use of horses 
 and arms, save to those unsuspected of felony and theft, was interdicted. 
 Trained bloodhounds were to be kept in the various Border parishes, for 
 the pursuit of depredators : and when arrested, ' Jeddart Justice,' — a 
 phrase which comes to us from the period — was the order of the day. 
 No one was more active in putting in force the law against the moss- 
 troopers than Lord William Howard, or Belted Will. He seems to 
 have been a student, as well as, or perhaps more than, a soldier. On one 
 occasion when he was occupied with an interesting book, a prisoner was 
 brought in : he was asked what was to be done with him. ' Hang him ! ' 
 was the reply. Shortly after, he asked that he should be brought in for 
 examination, and found his hasty order had been carried out. The story 
 is told in Hutchinson, but accords rather with the character that popular 
 tradition has assigned to ' Bauld Willie,' than that which more recent 
 inquiries have shown to be the true one. Some families proved so 
 troublesome, that nothing short of extermination promised success. 
 They were to be stamped out. Among these we find the Grahams, who 
 seem to have made themselves unusually notorious, and to have been 
 regarded as pests for whom there was no cure but one — exportation. A 
 considerable number of them were accordingly transported to Ireland, 
 along with some other families, ' because,' the king's order runs, ' they 
 do all, but especially the Grames, confess themselves to be no meet 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 persons to live in these countries, and also to the intent their lands may 
 be inhabited by others of good and honest conversation.^ Let us be 
 glad that a few ' very respectable '' families of the name were foimd 
 worthy to remain to reckon among their posterity your own neighbour, 
 one of the crowning glories of Cumberland — the great statesman who 
 was at his death the member for Carlisle. The Bill for the exportation 
 of the Grahams was paid by a tax levied on the different parishes — a tax 
 to which I see my own parish contributed 19s. 4d. But in spite of 
 efforts again and again renewed, a century elapsed before there was 
 anything of real peace and quiet on the Borders. On every opportunity 
 the old spirit broke forth. Thus at the Restoration of Charles II., in 
 1662, we are told the Scots and mosstroopers have again revived their 
 old custom of robbing and murdering the English, and often had the 
 inhabitants need to say, with the old ballad, 
 
 ' Lord, send us peace into this realm. 
 That every man may live on his own.' 
 
 It was only by slow degrees that the old roving habits were replaced by 
 a more civilised and peaceable condition of affairs, and far down into the 
 eighteenth century we find the traces of the predatory mode of life that 
 had so long prevailed. Nicolson, writing towards the close of it, finds the 
 last trace in the custom of a man and woman stealing away each other — 
 a pleasant form of larceny — amid the hot pursuit of friends, and getting 
 married by the forger of iron links, whose temple was at Gretna Green : 
 and even this species of larceny has now been put down by the hand of 
 the law. 
 
 I have thus endeavoured, most imperfectly, I know, to trace some of 
 the scenes that are connected with the Borders, and to say something of 
 the Ballads in which their later history is enshrined. I have brought 
 you through a period when here 
 
 ' From age to age 
 Contending nations strove with mutual rage,' 
 
 to a day when we loiter through the district for a summer holiday, and 
 all around see signs that now 
 
 ' Here guardian peace — here smiling culture reigns, 
 And endless Plenty clothes the fertile {dains.' 
 
 n9 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 Such has been the result of Progress on the Borders. Mr. Ruskin 
 remarks somewhere that the scenery most fruitful of literary intellect is 
 not the absolutely mountainous nor the perfectly flat : it is the mixture 
 of hill and vale, where there is demand at once for man's energy and 
 man's endurance, and yet room also for ideas of rest and repose. This^ 
 no doubt, in conjunction with the stirring events of which, by its 
 position, it has been the scene — and Mr. Ruskin adds, the peculiar 
 beauty of the somid of the Scottish streamlets, unmatched, he says, for 
 the mystery and sweetness of their murmurs, and whispers, and low 
 fall — is the reason why, in this limited Border district, there has been 
 produced such a rich crop of poetic fancies, as are to be found in these 
 famous Ballads. They are beautiful in themselves ; but how much more 
 may we prize them, when we remember that to them and to the district 
 which produced them, we owe the inspiration that kindled the genius of 
 Scott ; that there is hardly a scene, an incident, or a character in all his 
 poems and romances of which the first suggestion may not be traced to 
 some old verse in the Border Minstrelsy, or some locality in the district. 
 We know how, to his latest days, he remembered the spot where first, 
 as a child, he read Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry* — the first 
 collection of Ballads given to the world — how he scraped together, he 
 says, a few shillings and bought a copy of the beloved volumes — ' nor do 
 I believe,' he adds, ' I ever read a book half so frequently or with half 
 the enthusiasm.' And we know, too, how in later days, in every incident 
 of life, the old lines sprang unbidden to his memory to describe his 
 feelings and emotions, and the joy with which, in the closing scene of 
 all, he returned to his loved district, wishing that he might, like his own 
 Minstrel in his latest hours, ' Still feel the breeze down Etterick break.' 
 
 And here too, no less, amid these hills and dales, was fed and grew 
 strong the spirit of Burns ; here was reared the hardy peasantry from 
 whom he sprang, and to the homeliest incidents of whose lives — their 
 Saturday nights — their merrymakings and their sorrows — ^he has given 
 an immortality such as genius alone can give, which will be green as long 
 as the world endures. To Scott and Bums we might easily add many 
 another name. Here Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, and Allan Ramsay, 
 and Leyden, and Cunningham, gathered the inspiration for the songs 
 that have made their names a household word. All these we owe to the 
 * Dr. Percy was at one time Dean of Carlisle. 
 
 230 
 
BALLADS OF THE BORDER 
 
 Border and its Ballads — ^to those old songs which have been given to us 
 direct from a people's heart — and to the long and weary strifes and 
 struggles in the district, to which that heart belonged. Is there any 
 other locality that can boast of a more valuable, a more characteristic 
 gift to literature ? And amid the conventionalism and sickly sentiment- 
 ality of much that is written in this nineteenth century ; amid artificial 
 poetry and sensational novels, we may still turn with refreshment to the 
 quaint simplicity and native vigour of our old Minstrelsy, and find there 
 something to stir, without corrupting, oxir imagination, something to 
 ennoble the character, and to help to raise a race of Borderers as stout 
 of hand and as strong of heart as those who have gone before us — just 
 as amid the breezy hills and dales and streams from which it sprang, we 
 may gather fresh strength and new vigour for the work of life. 
 
 231 
 
HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 
 
 1DARE say you have all heard the saying attributed, I think, to 
 Fletcher of Saltoun, though I believe it did not originate with 
 him, 'Give me the writing of a nation''s ballads, and who wiU may 
 make the laws.' His meaning was, that so powerful are these old tales 
 in rhyme, dealing with the stirring events of days gone by, so powerful 
 are they to move and stir the passions and feelings of men to-day, that 
 they do more to encourage patriotism, and devotion to noble causes, 
 than even the best of laws can do. You know how the old ballad of 
 Chevy Chase, the old song of the Percy and the Douglas, moved, as with 
 the sound of a trumpet, Sir Philip Sidney's heart, and nerved him to the 
 great deeds he undertook. And what is true of ballads is, I think, 
 quite as true of hymns. They have their part in building up the 
 spiritual life of the people. What are these hymns of the Christian 
 Church we sing, but the religious experience of men of all ages and 
 nations, sometimes in moments of elation and thankfulness, sometimes 
 in hours of darkness and despair, translated into imperishable verse, and 
 used for ever by those who, in the journey through life, find themselves 
 in similar positions, to rouse their feelings of ardour and devotion, or of 
 resignation and acquiescence in their lot .'' Their feelings have once for 
 all been so felicitously expressed, that we all recognise that the verses 
 in which they are embodied cannot be improved. They are the ever- 
 lasting possession of the human race. To have been the author of even 
 one such hymn confers on a man a sort of immortality, as great as that 
 which waits on those even who have written long treatises, and even if 
 we do not know the author's name, we go on singing his words from 
 age to age with undiminished force. They have translated into speech 
 the spiritual passion of the loftiest genius, and they have done it with 
 such simplicity that they have given exact voice to the bumble longings. 
 
HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 
 
 the most ordinary thoughts, of the most ignorant and unlettered 
 peasant. Jerome, one of the early Christian fathers, speaks of those 
 who went into the fields in his day hearing ' the ploughman at hi* 
 hallelujahs, the mower at his hymns, and the vine-dresser singing the 
 Psalms of David/ 
 
 Dr. Prescott, who always does very thoroughly whatever he under- 
 takes, many years ago delivered some lectures on the subject, which 
 were subsequently published, and if the book is still to be procured I 
 advise every one who is interested in the matter to provide himself with 
 a copy. The hymns in common use have come down to us, as you are 
 aware, from all ages, from all countries, from all forms of faith. And 
 this is that which constitutes their charm. They tell us that through- 
 out all the years, in every land on which the sun shines, men have felt 
 the same lofty aspirations, have soared in moments of joy and gladness 
 to the same height, and again have sunk in the hour of bitter trial 
 and sadness, whether on national or private grounds, to the same depths 
 of sorrow and despair. In them we have ' the pictmre," it has well been 
 said, ' of the moral warfare waged by man from the beginning of the 
 world, often baffled yet never whoUy defeated, struggling upwards to 
 all that is best and highest in his nature, always aware how short of the 
 aim falls the attempt, how great is the gulf that severs the wish from 
 its ftdfilment.'' Yes, and the hymns come to us from all forms of faith. 
 There is a communion of hymns as wide as the communion of Saints ! 
 Here at length is that unity which we all so earnestly desire in the 
 Christian Churches, and which sometimes seems to be so far from us, 
 and to elude our grasp. In the hymns the spirit of controversy and 
 the war of creeds are laid aside, over the baiTen and unprofitable 
 disputes of theologians the hymns of the Church have swept with a 
 healing calm, and when once a hymn has sunk into the hearts of the 
 people, once they have found that it expresses precisely what they felt 
 and wished to say, they do not stay to enquire to what church or 
 communion the author belonged. Enough for them he belongs to that 
 great band of saints which recognise each other whenever they meet — 
 who have the same aspirations and the same desires. 
 
 Many, of course, of our choicest hymns are founded on the Psalms 
 of Dai'id, as they are called, but which, it is agreed, were not all 
 written by the Poet King. Let us take a well-known psalm — Psalm xc. 
 
 SS3 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 — the funeral hymn of the world it is sometimes styled, and one that we 
 are familiar with on those sad occasions, when we meet at the burial of 
 those we have known. It is believed to have been written by Moses, 
 and certainly the feelings it expresses, its sense of God's nearness, the 
 tone of melancholy so appropriate to one of such lofty experience, and 
 on the other hand such bitter disappointments, make it seem quite 
 fitting to have been his work. One of the first occasions on which it 
 was used as a funeral psalm was a very notable one, when John 
 Hampden, the famous English statesman, died of the wounds he 
 received in the engagement of Chalgrove Field, his followers, we are 
 told, as they bore his body to the tomb, chanted this psalm. Then 
 came in the succeeding century Isaac Watts — one of our greatest hymn- 
 writers — a Nonconformist minister, of whom I shall have to speak again, 
 and threw this grand psalm into the well-known hymn, which has been 
 translated into many languages and is of universal use : 
 
 ' Our God, our help in ages past, 
 Our hope for years to come. 
 Our shelter from the stormy blast, 
 And our eternal home : ' 
 
 what tuneful verse is this : 
 
 ' Before the hills in order stood, 
 Or earth received its frame. 
 From everlasting Thou art God, 
 To endless years the same. 
 
 ' A thousand ages in Thy sight 
 Are like an evening gone : 
 Short as the watch that ends the night 
 Before the rising sun.' 
 
 Dr. Protheroe, in his work on The Psalms in Human Life, has 
 dr-awn attention to the interesting fact that certain psalms have been at 
 one time or other the favourites of great men in important crises of 
 their fate, in stirring times, and that in the language of the Psalmist 
 they have found precisely the words they desired, in which to express 
 their own feelings and emotions. When Fisher, bishop of Rochester, 
 after his long struggle with Henry VIII. — a struggle for the rights of 
 conscience if there ever was one — was at length brought to execution, 
 so emaciated, we are told, owing to long imprisonment, that he could 
 
 234 
 
HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 
 
 scarcely stand, we learn that as he mounted the steps of the scaffold the 
 sun shone out, and he murmured the words of Psalm xxxiv., ' They 
 looked unto Him and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed.' 
 How many of the Saints of God in those troublous times, following 
 their Master's example, used in their last moments, like Ridley, as the 
 flames rose round his head, the words of the 31st psalm : ' Into thy hands. 
 Lord, I commend my spirit ' — the words which had come into David''s 
 mouth when he had to face the rebellion of his son Absalom. Again, 
 when Darnley retired to rest on the last evening of his life, on February 
 9th, 1567, at Kirkafield, full of foreboding and unrest, he is said to 
 have soothed his feelings by repeating Psalm Iv., the psalm in our 
 English service-book for the day that was about to dawn, but never 
 dawned for him. How must the words have sunk into his heart : ' My 
 heart is disquieted within me, and the fear of death is fallen upon me. 
 Fearftilness and trembling are come upon me : and an horrible dread 
 
 hath overwhelmed me For it is not an open enemy that hath 
 
 done me this dishonour : for then I could have borne it But it 
 
 was even thou, my companion : my guide, and my own familiar friend.' 
 ' Forlorn victim of a cruel age ! ' says Froude. ' Twenty-one years old, 
 no more. At the end of an hour he went to bed with his page at his 
 side ; an hour later they two were lying dead in the garden beyond the 
 wall.' A few years later, and she who was so strangely intermingled on 
 that evening in his fate is herself arrived at the last sad hour, and at the 
 Castle of Fotheringay ' she kneeled down upon the cushion resolutely 
 and without any token of fear of death, and said aloud the 11th Psalm, 
 which begins : ' In the Lord put I my trust.' Once more, when in 1620 
 the Pilgrim Fathers set forth in the Mayjiower, and reached the shore 
 beyond the Atlantic Ocean, it was, we are told, amid the music of the 
 Psalms that the foundations of the United States of America were laid. 
 And when a few years later, in 1629, they built one of their first towns, 
 the verse of Psalm Ixxvi. rose spontaneously to their lips : ' In Salem is 
 His tabernacle,' and Salem to-day is still the name of the town in 
 Massachusetts to which they fled from the persecution and intolerance 
 of the land they had left behind them. When about the same period, 
 Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, was in the last agony of his Hfe on Tower 
 Hill, deserted by the master he had served so well, what words rose 
 more naturally to his lips than those of the 146th Psalm : ' Put not 
 
 235 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 your trust in princes, nor in any child of man : for there is no help in 
 them.' Finally, when in 1685 the two unfortunate women, the 
 Wigtown martyrs as they are called, were put to a cruel death upon 
 the Solway's shore amid its swirling tides, the younger, Margaret 
 Wilson, having seen the dying agonies of her elder companion, who had 
 passed away, still refused the offer of mercy made by the executioners 
 on the bank, if she would only say ' God save the King.' ' May God 
 save the King, if He wills,' she replied, and then prepared herself to die 
 with the Scotch paraphrase of the 25th Psalm upon her lips : 
 
 ' My sins and faults of youth 
 Do Thou, O Lord, forget.' 
 
 Just one more instance of a martyr of another sort. When David 
 Livingstone was struck down by disease towards the end of his adven- 
 turous journey in Central Africa, moving in bodily pain so that he felt 
 he was dying on his feet, the words that brought comfort to his soul 
 were those of Psalm xxxvii. : ' Commit thy way unto the Lord and He 
 will bring it to pass.' He did commit his way unto the Lord amid 
 clouds and darkness, and He has brought strange things to pass in 
 Central Africa, even in our day. 
 
 And just as special psalms have been written by Moses, or David, or 
 some other author, under the stress and pressure of some strong feeling, 
 and so have adapted themselves to others in like conditions in later days, 
 so it has been with many of the hymns we know. Who in the whole 
 world's history can ever have had such high thoughts stu-ging through 
 his mind, such alternations of fear and courage, such consciousness of 
 his own weakness in the face of great powers and agencies employed 
 against him as Luther, as he travelled to appear before the Diet of 
 Worms in 1521 to answer for his faith ? His friends were full of alarm. 
 They warned him not to go. ' Were there as many devils in Worms as 
 there are roof tiles, I would on,' was his reply. And then he is said to 
 have written the famous hymn which has been called the Marseillaise of 
 the Reformation — ' Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.' In the translation of 
 Carlyle it nms : 
 
 ' A safe stronghold our God is still, 
 A trusty shield and weapon : 
 He'll help us clear from all the ills, 
 That in our days may happen.' 
 
 236 
 
HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 
 
 Again, when John Henry Newman, afterwards Cardinal Newman, 
 was voyaging in the Mediterranean in 1833, at the time dangerously ill, 
 full of doubt and difficulty, and all uncertain what the future had in 
 store, he was for some days becalmed in the straits of Bonifacio. And 
 there, as he drifted to and fro upon the waters, he wrote the famous 
 hymn, translated into many languages, and found in all collections : 
 
 ' Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom. 
 Lead Thou me on.' 
 
 It is interesting to note that when, fifty years later, he was asked 
 what his meaning was in the closing lines : 
 
 ' And with the mom those angel faces smile. 
 Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile ' — 
 
 he replied that poets are not bound to give a sense to all that they have 
 written, or to be ready for examination on the transient state of mind 
 through which they may have passed. You are familiar, I dare say, 
 with the name of H. F. Lyte. It is interesting to know that his 
 exquisite lyric — ' Abide with me ; fast falls the eventide ' — was written 
 on the last Sunday on which he preached, when in great feebleness he 
 was just about to start for Nice, where he shortly after died. I have 
 already spoken of Isaac Watts, one of the foremost of the old masters. 
 You know his hymn — ' There is a land of pure delight.' It adds to its 
 charm to know that the two stanzas : 
 
 ' There everlasting spring abides. 
 And never-withering flowers : 
 Death like a narrow sea divides 
 That heavenly land from ours. 
 
 ' Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood 
 Stand dress'd in living green ; 
 So to the Jews old Canaan stood, 
 While Jordan roU'd between ' — 
 
 were suggested to him by the lovely view across the Southampton 
 waters, on which he lived, to the woods and fields on the other side. 
 Addison again is one of our great hymn-writers — not voluminous, 
 indeed, but all that he produced is of the highest quality. One of hi;- 
 
 hymns is : 
 
 ' How are Thy servants blessed, O Lord, 
 How sure is their defence.' 
 
 237 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 Lord Macaulay tells us it was written after a terrible storm in the 
 Mediterranean which Addison encountered ; and that the lines that 
 speak of the mercy which ' smoothed the tempestuous seas,' and the 
 description of the storm itself : 
 
 ' Confusion dwelt in every face. 
 And fear in every heart. 
 When waves on waves, and gulf on gulf, 
 O'ercame the pilot's art. 
 
 ' Yet then from aU my grief, O Lord, 
 Thy mercy set me free : 
 While in the confidence of prayers 
 My soul took hold on Thee ' — 
 
 were the result of his own experience, written at the very time. 
 
 One instance more. There is no more familiar hymn than Toplady's 
 ' Rock of ages, cleft for me,' a hymn which is said to have soothed the 
 last hours of Prince Albert, and than which none has laid so firm and 
 broad a grasp upon the English-speaking world. When Dr. Harold 
 Browne was forming a Diocesan Hymn-book at Winchester, he asked 
 each incumbent to send in a list of those hymns that were most popular 
 with their congregations. Only one hymn, it is said, appeared in every 
 list — ' Rock of Ages.' Toplady is often spoken of as a Nonconformist ; 
 he was, however, an ordained minister of the Church of England. I 
 remember on one occasion Sir Wm. Wills, late member for Bristol, and 
 afterwards Lord Winterstoke, who resided in the parish where Toplady 
 was Curate, at Blaydon-on-the-Mendips, and I think erected a memorial 
 to him there, described its origin. Toplady, in the course of an 
 excursion, was overtaken by a heavy thunderstorm, and took shelter 
 between two massive piers of the limestone rock which abounds there, 
 and there he penned his hymn which will make his name live to distant 
 generations, and be a stay and comfort to many in days of peril and the 
 hour of death. Strange but inestimable gift to have been conferred on 
 one to soothe and console throughout the ages the last hours of many a 
 soul, and to supply the language appropriate to be used as it passes 
 within the veil. What general, what statesman can say that he has 
 done as much ? The writing of one such hymn confers an immortality 
 beyond the reach of most men. Addison, for instance, whom I just 
 
 238 
 
HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 
 
 named, wrote a great tragedy called Cato, and much of the Spectator ; 
 who now reads them ? But we all know and sing his hymns— 
 
 ' The spacious firmament on high '— 
 ' The Lord my pasture shall prepare ' — 
 ' When all Thy mercies, O my God/ 
 
 Cowper, again, was a voluminous writer. His letters are models of 
 epistolary correspondence. He was one of the three or four best letter 
 writers that we have ; they are the glory of our English language. 
 His poetry in his day was highly esteemed, his translation of Homer is 
 not without great merit, but of what avail are these (if perhaps I except 
 the ballad of John Gilpin and some of his shorter pieces) towards 
 securing recognition over a wider field if he had not been one of our 
 most prized of hymn-writers — of hymns which come from the very 
 depths of his own spiritual experience. He is the author of : 
 
 ' There is a fountain filled with blood ' — 
 
 ' God moves in a mysterious way ' — 
 
 ' Hark, my soul ! it is the Lord ' — (Mr. Gladstone's favoin-ite hymn). 
 
 ' O for a closer walk with God ' — 
 
 ' Sometimes a light surprises.' 
 
 What a beautiful stanza in the last-named hymn : 
 
 ' Set free from present sorrow. 
 
 We cheerfully can say. 
 Even let the unknown morrow 
 
 Bring with it what it may : 
 It can bring with it nothing. 
 
 But he will bear us through ; 
 Who gives the lilies clothing. 
 
 Will clothe His people too.' 
 
 These hymns, all of them, as Mrs. Barrett Browning says, are 'death- 
 less singing,' even though they come from a brain that was oftentimes 
 distraught. Cowper's hymns, indeed, were in a special manner the 
 outcome of his own experience. Thus in one of his letters to Newton 
 he writes : ' God's ways are indeed mysterious ; there is a mystery in my 
 
 239 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 destruction, and in time it shall be explained.' Perhaps on that very 
 day he wrote : 
 
 ' God moves in a mysterious way 
 His wonders to perform ; 
 He plants His footsteps in the sea, 
 And rides upon the storm. 
 
 ' Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take ; 
 The clouds ye so much dread 
 Are big with mercy, and shall break 
 In blessings on your head.' 
 
 One who saw the poet after death says that his features were full of 
 an expression of glad ' surprise.' Let us trust that he, too, had seen 
 the light of which he sings, and that the clouds which had hovered over 
 him so long had passed away and were forgotten. Tate and Brady, the 
 authors of the new version of the Psalms, published in 1696, are not 
 much esteemed as poets, though one was Poet Laureate, and the other 
 wrote a considerable amount of verse. Much even of their Psalms is 
 doggerel. But they live together — though we do not know the propor- 
 tions in which they contributed to their task — they live because they 
 wrote such hymns as : 
 
 ' As pants the heart for cooling streams ' — 
 
 ' While shepherds watched their flocks by night ' — 
 
 ' Have mercy. Lord, on me ' — 
 
 ' Through all the changing scenes of life ' — 
 
 hymns which no one would willingly let die. Richard Baxter, again, 
 was a great polemical writer in the stormy days of the seventeenth 
 century. ' Read any of his works,' said Dr. Johnson, ' they are all 
 good.' The good doctor's advice, I am afraid, now falls on heedless 
 ears, save perhaps with regard to his Sainfs Rest. But he lives as the 
 author of one great hymn : ' Lord, it belongs not to my care.' Of this 
 Dr. Prescott says that the beautiful concluding stanza : 
 
 ' My knowledge of that life is small, 
 The eye of faith is dim ; 
 But 'tis enough that Christ knows all, 
 And I shall be with Him ' — 
 
 240 
 
HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 
 
 was often repeated by Professor Clerk-Maxwell, one of our most dis- 
 tinguished scientists, in his dying hours. 
 
 I have said that the hymns of the Christian Church form a bond 
 which unites all ages together in the great work of religious worship. 
 Passing by the Psalms, of which, as we have seen, various versions have 
 been made for our use, we find in later days that the value of hymns in 
 calling forth devotional feeling was first recognised in the Western 
 Church by St. Ambrose, the great Bishop of Milan. When in the fourth 
 century St. Augustine, the great Christian father, visited the Cathedral 
 of that city with his famous mother, Monica, to whom he owed so much, 
 he writes : ' The Church of Milan had but recently begun to practise 
 this kind of consolation, to the great delight of the brethren, who sang 
 together with heart and voice.' And he relates in his Confessions how, 
 as the music flowed on into his ears, and the truth trickled into his 
 heart, the tide of devotion swelled high within him ; the tears ran down, 
 and there was gladness in his tears. And St. Ambrose himself has 
 described how he foiuid these hymns one of the surest means of arousing 
 religious feeling, and keeping his converts steadfast to the faith he 
 taught, and for which he had many a struggle to wage against the 
 unbelievers of the day. Many of our hymns, now commonly sung, come 
 down from that period, and were the work of Ambrose himself, or those 
 associated with him. They are an expression in simple but magnificent 
 language of the fresh and burning ardour of an undoubting and 
 unclouded faith. They have been translated from the Latin by the Rev. 
 J. Mason Neale, the Rev. Edward Caswall, and others. We have from 
 him a beautiful morning hymn which stands first in some of our hymnals : 
 
 ' Now that the daylight fills the sky. 
 We lift our hearts to God on high ' — 
 
 and also : 
 
 ' The Lamb's high banquet called to share ' — 
 
 Jesu, oiu: Hope, our heart's Desire ' — 
 
 Then there is Prudentius, a Christian poet of the same age, in Spain, 
 who after a life of worldliness determined to devote his later years 
 entirely to the writing of Christian hymns. He gives us, with many 
 others, the well-known one : ' Earth has many a noble city.' You may 
 remember the portrait that is painted in Kingsley's HypaMa of the 
 
 S41 R 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 sportsman-bishop of Ftolemais, in Egypt, Synesius, who was supposed 
 to be more fond of sport than theology ; yet from him we have a 
 beautiful hymn : ' Lord Jesus, think on me "' — while another bishop, 
 Fortunatus, of Poitiers, in France, contributes : ' The Royal Banners 
 forward go.' There is a well-known Lenten hymn from the Greek : 
 ' Christian, dost thou see them ' — it is the work of St. Andrew, who 
 was Archbishop of Crete ; while likewise from the Greek comes the 
 charming evening hymn : 
 
 * The day is past and over ; 
 
 All thanks, O Lord, to Thee ; 
 I pray Thee that ofFenceless 
 The hours of dark may be : ' 
 
 from the pen of St. Anatolius. Then we have two royal claimants to 
 the authorship of two famous hymns, viz.: 'Come, Holy Ghost, our 
 souls inspire' — and 'Come, Thou Holy Spirit, come.' The first is 
 attributed to the Emperor Charlemagne ; the second to King Robert II. 
 of Paris. Both are probably wrong ; the first is possibly the work of 
 Gregory the Great ; the second of Innocent III. Peter Abelard, the 
 great schoolman, the friend of Heloise, is said to be the author of — 
 
 ' Oh, what the joy and the glory must be. 
 Those endless Sabbaths the blessed ones see ; ' 
 
 while to two distinguished monks in the eleventh century, St. Bernard 
 of Clairvaux and St. Bernard of Cluny, we are indebted for the well- 
 known hymns : 
 
 ' Jesu, the very thought is sweet ' — 
 
 ' O sacred head, surrounded ' — 
 
 ' Brief life is here our portion ' — 
 
 ' For thee, O dear, dear coiuitry ' — 
 
 ' Jerusalem the golden.' 
 
 I am afraid I may weary you with these details, but I wished to show 
 how wide and comprehensive was the net which has gathered together 
 these hymns, which we daily sing, often without knowing from what 
 source they come. Truly these hymns deal with that which according 
 to the old maxim has been always, everywhere, and by all believed. 
 Let us now return to the English hymnody of the eighteenth 
 
 242 
 
HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 
 
 century — to the old masters amongst ourselves, to whom so lai'ge a debt 
 is due. Before doing so, however, I must say one word of Bishop Ken, 
 who is the author of perhaps our best morning and evening hymns — 
 ' Awake, my soul, and with the sun ' — and ' Glory to Thee, my God, 
 this night.' 
 
 Ken was Bishop of Bath and Wells at the close of the seventeenth 
 century, and when you visit the beautiful palace of Wells, in the grounds 
 you are shown the summer-house in which he wrote the morning hymn. 
 A friend of mine, who is a little sceptical, observed : ' I wonder they 
 have not another in which that for evening was composed.' Even a 
 third might be needed, as Ken added another hymn for use at the 
 midnight hour. He was deprived of his bishopric in 1691 as a non- 
 juror. ' His elaborate works,' says Lord Macaulay, ' are all forgotten 
 long ago, but his morning and evening hymns are still repeated daily in 
 thousands of dwellings.' I have already mentioned Isaac Watts, and 
 two of his most famous compositions. There are many others of his 
 which will come to you as familiar friends. Such are : 
 
 ' Before Jehovah's awful Throne ' — 
 ' Come, gracious Spirit, Heavenly Dove '— 
 ' From all that dwell below the skies ' — 
 ' Jesus shall reign where'er the sun ' — 
 ' How bright these glorious spirits shine ' — 
 ' Come, let us join our cheerful songs ' — 
 ■■ When I survey the wondrous Cross ' — 
 ' Give me the wings of faith to rise.' 
 
 These are all masterpieces which you recognise as such at once. There 
 is hardly any one to whom we owe more. Dr. Johnson included him in 
 his Lives of the Poets, though his account of him is hardly adequate 
 to his merits. Perhaps the concluding sentence in his life of him 
 indicates where, in the opinion of the good but rather prejudiced doctor, 
 he fell short. He says : 
 
 ' He is at least one of the few poets with whom youth and innocence 
 may be safely pleased, and happy will be that rasuier whose mind is 
 disposed by his verses or his prose to imitate him in all but his non- 
 conformity, to copy his benevolence to man, and his reverence to God.' 
 
 243 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 Thank heaven we do not ask to-day whether he was a Conformist or a 
 Non-conformist ; he has written some of the choicest hymns that we 
 possess, and we want to know no more. A monument to him stands in 
 Poets' Corner in the Abbey Church of Westminster, a tribute to the 
 generous spirit which has ruled its counsels. I now come to another 
 great name — Charles Wesley — whom a Churchman has styled the 
 greatest hymn-writer of all ages. If John Wesley was the prophet of 
 the great revival which he led, Charles was no less surely its poet. He 
 is said to have written from 6000 to 7000 hymns. The famous 
 Christmas hymn : 
 
 ' Hark, the herald angels sing ' — 
 ' Jesu, lover of my soul ' — 
 ' Come, O Thou Traveller unknown ' — 
 ' Hail the day that sees Him rise ' — 
 ' O for a thousand tongues to sing ' — 
 ' Come let us join our friends above * — 
 ' O for a heart to praise my God ' — 
 
 these are all from the pen of Charles Wesley. 
 With what rapidity these verses seem to flow : 
 
 ' O for a heart to praise my God, 
 A heart from sin set free ; 
 A heart that's sprinkled with the Blood 
 So freely shed for me : 
 
 ' A heart resign'd, submissive, meek, 
 My dear Redeemer's Throne : 
 Where only Christ is heard to speak. 
 Where Jesus reigns alone. ' 
 
 Of the beautiful poem, ' Come, O thou traveller unknown,' founded 
 on Jacob's wrestling — a poem rather than a hymn — Watts said it was 
 worth all his own writings put together. These and many others attest 
 his powers. 
 
 Then about the same period we have Doddridge, an Independent 
 minister in the Midland Counties, whose hymns, we are tdd, were 
 
 ^4 
 
HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 
 
 written to enforce his sermons, and given out line l^ line from the 
 pulpit. He is the author of : 
 
 ' Hark the glad sound ' — 
 ' O God of Jacob, by Whose hand ' — 
 ' Oh happy day that fixed my choice ' — 
 ' My God, and is Thy table spread.' 
 
 Two more names must be given before I leave the century. And 
 first, John Newton, who after leading for many years an abandoned life, 
 was converted, and becoming a minister of the Church of England, 
 settled at Olney. Here he met Cowper, who came under his guidance, 
 and who joined with him in writing the Olney hymns. Newton's 
 contributions included : 
 
 ' How sweet the name of Jesus sounds ' — 
 ' Come, my soul, thy suit prepare ' — 
 ' Approach, my soul, the mercy seat.' 
 
 Newton's influence over Cowper has been sometimes criticised in 
 doubt as to whether it was for good or ill. But Cowper has left his own 
 views on record of the debt he owed him, and of the value of that deep 
 sense of religion to which he introduced him. 
 
 ' Prom Thee in all that smoothes the life of man, 
 His high endeavours and His glad success. 
 His strength to suffer and His will to serve. 
 Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor, 
 And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.' 
 
 The second is James Montgomery, who belongs perhaps more 
 properly to the century that follows, though bom in 1771. He was a 
 journalist at Sheffield, and was prosecuted by the authorities more than 
 once for articles he published. If he had written nothing but ' For ever 
 with the Lord,' and ' Prayer is the soul's sincere desire ' — ^this prose- 
 cuted journalist would have gained an immortality such as come to few. 
 
 When I pass from the eighteenth century and reach more modern 
 days there are many names on which I might dwell had time allowed. 
 I can only, in the briefest manner, mention some. There is first of all 
 Keble, one of the sweetest singers and most genuine poets the Christian 
 Church has ever had, though not all his work is adapted for congrega- 
 
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LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 tional use. It may be, indeed, that much of Keble's poetry will not 
 live, but that which by virtue of its great simplicity and directness is 
 fitted for use as hymns, has gained almost universal currency among all 
 English-speaking people and will remain as one of their most prized 
 possessions. From him we have then to name but one or two : 
 
 ' Bless'd are the pure in heart ' — 
 
 ' New every morning is the love ' — 
 
 ' Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear ' — 
 
 and * There is a book, who runs may read.'' 
 
 Then there is Faber, a Roman Catholic priest, with — 'Sweet 
 Saviour, bless us ere we go;' and Horatius Bonar, a Free Chiu*ch 
 minister at Kelso, who wrote : 
 
 ' I heard the voice of Jesus say ' — 
 ' Thy way not mine, O Lord.' 
 
 We have Heber, who after writing the most widely used of 
 missionary hymns — ' From Greenland's icy mountains ' — himself laid 
 down his life in India on the mission-field. Many women have also 
 contributed to our store. Some among them have heroically resigned 
 themselves to lives of suffering, and in feeble health and from sick beds 
 have sent in their songs and hymns, messages of comfort and consolation 
 to those in like conditions. Among women, Mrs. Alexander, wife of 
 the great Archbishop of Armagh, Miss Charlotte £liot« and Miss 
 Havergal stand supreme. There is a beautiful hymn too, found in most 
 collections : 
 
 ' Otu* Blest Redeemer, ere he breathed 
 His tender last farewell ' — 
 
 which was written by a Miss Auber, of whom nothing seems to be 
 known except that she was its author, and published it anonymously in 
 a collection of verse, where it at once caught the public ear and has 
 remained a favoiuite ever since. Another instance of a single hymn by 
 a lady that has come into world-wide note, is that of ' Nearer, my God, 
 to Thee, nearer to Thee,' connected with the disaster of the Titcmk. 
 It is by Mrs. Adams. You know the name of Kirke White, the 
 
 246 
 
HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 
 
 talented lad of Nottingham, who died from over-study at the early age 
 of twenty-one. You remember Byron's lines upon him : 
 
 ' Unhappy White, when life was in its spring, 
 And thy young Muse just waved its joyous wing ; 
 The spoiler came and all that promise fair, 
 Sank to the grave to be for ever there ; 
 Oh ! what a noble heart was there undone. 
 When science self-destroyed its favoured son.' 
 
 Yes, over-devotion to science killed him, but on the back of one of his 
 mathematical papers was found — ' Oft in danger, oft in woe ' — a hymn 
 with which we are all familiar. It was almost his only, but is a 
 permanent contribution to the world's singing. There is another 
 famous hymn I must allude to, of which the version usually sung is by 
 Sir Walter Scott — I mean the ' Dies irae, Dies ilia ' — 
 
 ' Day of wrath, that dreadful day, 
 When heaven and earth shall pass away ' — 
 
 In its original form it was the work of a Franciscan friar, Thomas of 
 Celana, in the thirteenth century. In connection with it I may mention 
 an incident about it connected with Mr. Gladstone. On one occasion, 
 in the Home Rule stmggle of twenty years ago, a political friend asked 
 Mr. Gladstone to dine, and invited some congenial friends to meet him. 
 They came expecting to hear something from their leader in relation to 
 the great question of the hour, some forecast or intimation of what was 
 going to happen. Many attempts were made to lead him in the right 
 direction, but wild horses would not have drawn from the chief a word 
 upon the subject. He had come with his mind fixed on hymns, and he 
 would and could talk of nothing else, the best hymn — his own favourite 
 hymn — even the best position for the organ : on all these topics he was 
 prepared to be diffuse, but on politics not a word. Among other 
 hymns, the ' Dies irae ' was mentioned, and some one said Sir Walter's was 
 a fine translation. Mr. Gladstone pounced on him like a hawk. 
 ' Translation, indeed ! Where do you find that splendid image — 
 
 " When shrivelling like a parched scroll 
 The flaming heavens together roll ! " 
 
 There's no translation there : it is Scott's original genius.' There are 
 
 247 
 
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 altogether no less than 150 translations ; so there is a wide field for 
 choice. One other hymn I must name : 
 
 ' Lord, when we bend before Thy throne 
 And our confessions pour.' 
 
 I do so because its author was Joseph Dacre Carlyle, son of a Dr. 
 Carlyle of this city by his marriage with one of the Dacres of 
 Kirklinton Hall, whose mother was one of the Gilpins of Scaleby. 
 He was educated at the Grammar School, and became in turn Vicar of 
 St. Cuthbert's, Chancellor of the Diocese of Carlisle, Professor of 
 Arabic at Cambridge, and finally Vicar of Newcastle. At the time of 
 his death he was engaged on a translation of the Bible into Arabic — 
 undoubtedly a learned man, but he lives to-day as the author of 
 a hymn. 
 
 Perhaps in this connection I might name the late Dr. Walsham How 
 — not indeed a native of the county, but closely connected with it 
 through the Wyberghs — who is the author of two favourite hymns : 
 ' We give Thee but Thine own ' — and 
 
 ' O Jesu, Thou art standing 
 Outside the fast-closed door.' 
 
 With these, so far as I know, the only contribution from local 
 sources to our general hymnody, I must conclude. I hope I have said 
 something to interest you in the history of these hymns we so often 
 sing, and the part they play in our religious life. We are often told 
 by many, ' Oh ! hymns, they are not poetry.' A story is told of an 
 Oxford Professor of Poetry who, taking in one hand Palgrave's Golden 
 Treasury of English Poetry, and in the other Lord Selbome's Book of 
 Hymns, asked his class how it was that in the first there was nothing 
 bad as poetry, in the second nothing good. This is indeed a sweeping 
 assertion, and if it were true I should be inclined to say so much the 
 worse for poetry. Dr. Johnson, indeed, is often quoted as having been 
 of the same opinion. But though he inveighed against devotional 
 songs and religious verse as not being poetry, his practice contradicted 
 his theory, for as his friend Mrs. Piozzi on one occasion reminded him, 
 there was one verse in one of the hymns — one that I have named — 
 which he could never repeat without bursting into a flood of tears. 
 
 248 
 
HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 
 
 There have been many and various definitions of poetry ; but no one 
 can deny that when a genuinely religious soul strikes on one of the 
 great themes of our religious experience of such transcendent 
 importance to us all, a spark is struck which inevitably finds expression 
 in true and lasting poetry. And it is clear that we cannot afford to 
 belittle in this or any other day an instrument which has proved so 
 powerful an aid to a religious life, which St. Ambrose found the most 
 effectual weapon against the infidelity of his day, which John and 
 Charles Wesley used with such splendid success in the great revival 
 which they led, which has been dignified and adorned by some of the 
 choicest work of men and women hke Ken and Keble, Newman and 
 Faber, Heber and Milman, Miss Havergal and Mrs. Alexander. ' A 
 verse,'' says George Herbert, ' may find him who a serpent flies,' and so 
 a hymn will often penetrate where the other will never reach. 'A 
 hymn,' said one of our saintliest bishops long ago, ' if committed to 
 memory in childhood, perhaps at a mother's knee, will travel with us in 
 our journey through life, it will cheer' us in sad and solitary hours, in 
 long and lonely days, in wakeful nights, and on the sick-bed, and at the 
 hour of death.' 
 
 249 
 
LONDON 
 
 PBINTED BY BTRANOBWATS AND SONS, TOWER STREET 
 
 CAMBRIDGE CIRCUS, W.C.